Bodies in Motion

Michel Foucault, in his book Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, describes how discipline has been used as a tool to create power:

“[The disciplinary power] seeks to bind [forces] together in such a way as to multiply and use them. Instead of bending all its subjects into a single uniform mass, it separates, analyses, differentiates… to the point of necessary and sufficient single units. It ‘trains’ the moving, confused, useless multitudes of bodies and forces into a multiplicity of individual elements – small, separate cells, organic autonomies, genetic identities and continuities, combinatory segments” (p. 170).

Symphony orchestras have arranged themselves into “small, separate cells, organic autonomies” for hundreds of years. Though the exact seating of the orchestra may change from piece to piece, these ensembles consistently achieve a compartmentalized ordering of instrumental forces. This allows the specific instruments to work together to maximum efficiency and serves the need of the conductor, who may be challenged by frequent rearrangements of the ensembles. Players must not move from their seats unless a particular piece of music specifically calls for it (e.g. a brass section moving off stage, or a percussionist switching from snare to marimba). The body must remain docile in order to serve the needs of the music.

New music ensembles are different. Depending on the type and size of ensemble, these groups may employ a wider and more fluid arrangement of forces. Groups such as Alarm Will Sound (pictured) also choreograph their movements in order to better communicate with the audience. Compare this video of Eighth Blackbird with this one of Beck in which musicians come together to synchronize their playing. These kinds of movements, rare in traditional classical settings, increase the physical agency of players and demonstrate, in part, a desire to expand the concert experience to a visceral realm.

Though these groups engage the physical, audience members generally do not. Quiet and still, the audience represents Foucault’s “docile bodies,” which are necessary for the classical ritual. If NMEs question the strict physical requirements of traditional classical culture, why does their audience preserve corporeal submission?

Radiohead and McClary

My super cool friend, Erica, recently gave me a new t-shirt for my b-day. Susan McClary is a musicologist who studies music as a product of culture, and has studied the physical and sexual characteristics of western art and popular music. It seemed appropriate to wear the shirt at last Friday's Radiohead concert in Charlotte. The concert was incredible. The band used lighting and video effects to create moods and enhance the concert experience.

While I was singing along and dancing with my girlfriend, it occurred to me that Radiohead has struck a balance between accessibility and experimentation. The crowd soaked it up and cheered for almost every song. Of course, this was a rock show and it can't count as "real art."
Or can it?




In a blog for the National Performing Arts Convention, Greg Sandow criticized the exclusive nature of institutional art organizations (museums, symphonies, etc.). Specifically, he attacks the distinction between "art" and "commercial." My questions: When did money become bad? Is it a reaction to the loss of patronage based funding in classical music? I don't expect everybody to like Radiohead, but I do think they qualify as artists and that they should be paid for their work. "Commercial" seems to be a metaphor for selling-out your values, for taking "the easy way." I think that whenever we don't like music, or when we are jealous of a particular musician's success, we use "commercial" to separate them from the music and musicians we like.

Susan McClary has also written on the culture of prestige in classical communities, arguing that all music contains complex and nuanced codes. I agree, and think it's time to stop insisting that everybody respect/appreciate/know about classical music. It's OK if some people don't like it.

Postmodern critics

I've been asked to explain postmodern in my next post, so here's an example. A recent NPR report commented on the decline of movie critics retained by major newspapers. According to this report, people use RottenTomatoes.com or MetaCritic.com instead of automatically reading newspaper reviews. Many people also use the previews to decide which movies to view.

What does this have to do with postmodernism? "Postmodernism" describes a movement in the arts, academia, and in other parts of cultures. This movement often emphasizes a decentralization of power. In the NPR report, newspaper critics were described as validators of art who has the ability to influence public opinion about a movie. This loss of centralized information can be seen as a characteristic of postmodern culture. People may not newspaper critics because they use the internet or they decide for themselves if they want to view a particular movie.

I have outlined only a few characteristics of postmodernism. I often use the term to emphasize my position that one cannot know everything about something, and that the subjective and immediate experience of an event is important and valid. Postmodern forms of analysis seek to bridge the gap between structural analysis and physical experience. They also typically embrace a subjective position and acknowledge the inherent incompleteness of their position. That's not to say that these tools allow for sloppy work, just that there could be other ways of talking about a subject.

Tag

I have been tagged by Molly Sheridan with a meme. Though a little voice tells me to use the unabridged German dictionary on the floor next to me, I've been reading a lot of postmodern history which encourages the possibility of multiple truths. Let's see where a more subjective reality takes me.

Do to moving, I removed John le Carré's A Perfect Spy from the nearest box. This seemed amazingly appropriate only as I wrote the title in this blog. Line 5 on page 123 begins mid sentence:

Mary has six times confirmed that Tom has his passport and his money and his letter to Matron about his shrimp rash, and his letter to Granny to be handed to her the moment you meet her at London Airport, darling, so that you don't forget. But Tom is even more than usually distracted; he is looking back to the main entrance, watching the people going through the swing doors, and there is something desperate in his face, so desperate that Molly really wonders whether he is thinking of making a dash for it.
"Mums?" Sometimes, when he is distracted, he still calls her that.

Geez, that has a a lot of possible meaning. I'm going on a trip, too, and it requires significant planning. Also, during one observation of a Y/W rehearsal, I definitely had the feeling that the group either didn't want me there or was wondering why anybody would watch them rehearse. Le Carré's books often describe people in awkward positions searching for things they don't want or finding things they cannot keep. Maybe if I talk about spying it will help me keep things in perspective. But maybe it's all a bunch of postmodern rubbish.

I'm tagging, Soho, Sandow, Secret Society, Sequenza, and a serious musician.

Sounds from the Scenes

"Isn't it the truth that classical music has never been more detached from the mainstream than it is now?" asks conductor Kristjan Järvi in an interview with Matthew Westwood. Järvi continues his assessment of classical music's condition:

"There is certainly a change coming about, at least from my side of the spectrum. I see that through my work with different orchestras and my Absolute Ensemble. And it's not this kind of stuff (that) is dumbing down into pop, where (audiences) are just going to hear some nice tunes. Audiences are never actually like that, they are never that stupid. Audiences are super discriminating... You have to challenge them, but at the same time give them something new and of the utmost quality. It can't be cheap in any way."

Rhetoric in new music and other classical communities often centers around combining quality with accessibility, seen here in Järvi's comment "You have to challenge them", in which a high value is placed on complexity and innovation. I believe that "challenging" actually addresses a need to verify the power or significance of the performers and their music. Järvi also emphasizes a hiararchy, "And it's not this kind of stuff (that) is dumbing down into pop..." which is not uncommon.

What do people expect when they attend new music ensemble, or nme, concerts? When I've gone to NME concerts in the past, I expect something "badass" (as my gf says). I want something edgier and more relevant than the older music I usually hear in classical concerts. That's also weird, though, because I really love a lot of that older music. How can I want something better than what I already love?

Incidentally, many new music ensembles and new music blogs reflect the edgy vs classic polemic in their content and titles.

Blog Examples: Renewable Music, The Rest is Noise, Deceptively Simple, because they are dead

NME Examples: RenegadeEnsemble, Alarm Will Sound, newEar, Ossia, Aguavá

Introducing...

Hi, I’m John. Welcome to my blog. This site is part of my master’s thesis in ethno/musicology on contemporary classical music ensembles and their communities. I am combining ethnographic and ethnological research with postmodern criticism to describe how people participate in and with new music ensembles. By creating a blog, I hope to participate in new music’s digital community.

Holy Cow! What does that even mean and why are there so many links?

Basically I’m a grad student and I want a way to engage some of the people who participate in the new classical music scene.

But, John, if you participate in a culture, wouldn’t you risk changing that culture?

Well, it depends. It seems a little pretentious to think that I can cause some major change. Also, cultures are not fixed objects; they move and change over time. Change itself is neither good nor bad, it just is. I’m already a part of that culture. I studied music in college, like many new music folks, and conduct a community orchestra. I perform new music regularly and many of my friends (including my gf, Abby Shupe) compose new classical music.

I thought classical music was written by a bunch of dead white guys.

Not necessarily. Possible reasons for this common characterization include the following. Many American music conservatories emphasize the music of dead white guys (and a few white gals). Diversity has improved over the past fifty years, but a lot of the classical repertoire was written by men who died a while back. That's not a bad thing, but it makes me wonder what we're saying when we talk about how this music the best in the galaxy. Performance instruction of the broad range of styles known as popular, which refers to a dazzling range of music, has been historically excluded from conservatories and other college music schools. “New Music” in classical cultures generally describes music made by living composers.

John, I’m a “classical” musician and I hate that term. Also, I avoid playing the older stuff because [insert reason here]. Please don’t use that term to describe my musical life.

I agree; it’s a silly term. Milton Babbitt, a living composer, spoke about this very issue in an interview in 2001. One popular alternative is “western art music” though I think that term has a couple of HUGE problems: 1. It implies that music made outside this tradition is not art. That’s just silly. Try telling someone that the music they listen to isn’t really art. I’m sure that’ll go really well. 2. “Western” combines the dozens of styles of music from the past 2400 years, depending on who you ask, into one big, oddly shaped lump. That lump gets crammed into books like A History of Western Music by Donald J. Grout, Claude V. Palisca, and J. Peter Burkholder. (I like how Burkholder’s initial comes first. It sounds cool, “J. Pete is on the street with feet walking to the beat of history, looking out for pieces of tunes stitched like fruit of the loom hidden underneath the surface of a symphony” I went to a slam last week. It was awesome.) Anyways, that’s a lot of people to put in one book. (it’s a well-written book, though). I’m going to use classical because I think it’s a little less ridiculous than “western art music,” “serious music” (ever listen to hip-hop?) or “concert music” (lots of musical groups have concerts).

Please feel free to comment, complement, or criticize, especially if you’re not a dead white guy. I’ll update at least twice a week.