a/rhythmia

With pleasure, I'd like to promote the new album of Alarm Will Sound, new music ensemble par excellence. The album, titled a/rhythmia, is a compilation of arrangements and compositions selected from various Alarm Will Sound concerts. The idea, I believe, comes from a series of concerts performed during the group's 2007/2008 seasons. Sound clips can be heard here. I'm pumped to see another album by the group, especially one that features a variety of composers. All of their earlier albums featured a particular composer, and I while I really enjoy those CDs, it's nice to see something that demonstrates the stylistic range that AWS employs in concert.

Tough Calls

So here's the deal. I had to choose two classes for this term at Western Ontario. Initially, I wanted to take Introduction to Interdisciplinary Analysis taught by Jonathan Burston of the Faculty of Media Studies and Emily Ansari's seminar on Shostakovich and Copland. Unfortunately, Burston's class was full, so I looked for and found another interesting course: Chris Roulston's Queer and Feminist Pedagogies. After an exchange of emails, a waiting list, and assurances that I had the cultural studies chops for the class (which I do) I got in. I was very excited, especially as I'm becoming increasingly interested in gender and related topics.

But the serendipitous fit I found in one class led to a conflict with another. Chris's class met at the same time as Emily's. Bummer. So I started searching for another class. Again.

After some discussion with faculty, I settled on the Selected Composer Study course with John Cuciurean (pronounced Koocheren). His class will survey musical works by Pierre Boulez, Milton Babbitt, György Ligeti, George Crumb, and Igor Stravinsky from the mid 20th century. (btw, who names a baby Igor? I know he was born in the 19th century, but come on! Do you you really want a grave robbing sidekick for a kid?). On one hand, this class is a great fit for me. I study new music, these guys wrote new music. I haven't had a class that covers this repertoire, and here's one that does.

On the other hand, the analytic approach might be a problem. This is a music theory course (duh duh DDUUUHHH). I haven't exactly had a great relationship with this field. In fact, at several points in my Master's thesis, I expressly criticized music theory, citing, in particular, its maintenance of objectivity where none exists, the intentionally difficult nature of its devices, and the relative pointlessness of certain music theory pursuits. That last one is in a footnote. I'm also worried about my competency to take this course. I've started reading a few of the articles assigned about George Crumb, and both rely heavily on set theory. I'm not totally lost with set theory, but it slows me down a lot. Oh, and for added drama, my girlfriend is a music theorist and all the issues I’ve raised here have lead to major arguments. So I am, needless to say, concerned about this class.

Amidst these emotional, intellectual, and personal concerns however, I find important sources of inspiration. First of all, nobody, at least to my knowledge, has combined music theory and ethnographic techniques for new music. Maybe I’m crazy, but I feel like there’s real potential for insightful research there. Structural analyses could provide a useful backdrop to a broader ethnographic study of the new music cultures. Indeed, structuralism and its associated tools carry a significant symbolic capital in new music, at least for some people.

Second, if I’m going to be critical about a field, I might as well see what’s happening in that field. In some ways, my earlier criticisms have been based on the bad instructors who taught music theory at the University of Tennessee. (As one friend put it, “I can’t believe they’re allowed to offer a master’s in music theory at UT.”) And isn’t it a least possible that some meaningful things can come out of structural analysis? Surely people aren’t going into music theory careers without believing in their work.

Finally, I wonder how much any of it matters, anyway. I argue for a different approach to new music. So what? In the end, what does any academic field offer, particularly cultural studies, where it’s turtles all the way down?

Who knows? Maybe I’ll learn something. For now, I'm catagorizing my work in the class and my related fears under "entry into the field."

Cheap tricks, part 2

And, here's the promised second installment from the final chapter of my thesis.

In the course of my work on this project, I also began to question the accepted institutionalization of classical music. In my experience, “music” as an undergraduate college major typically addresses a comparatively narrow range of cultures and includes only certain peoples (and times, genres, contexts, social classes, etc.). Only in my graduate education did I become aware of the wealth of musical practices in the world and the inadequacy of my prior knowledge. Moreover, I came to see that, before my graduate work, I had perceived music in terms that echoed the opinions of my informants: I shunned commercial music and exoticized musics that I understood as foreign. I also believed in the intrinsic superiority of difficult music.

In hindsight, I find the preconceptions I once held disconcerting, especially when I consider that I earned an undergraduate degree in music education. Whose music was I preparing to teach, and to whom? The answers that my curriculum presumed were “the greatest music ever written” and “to everybody,” respectively. Such universalist beliefs seem to fuel many people’s rationalization for teaching, performing, listening to, and otherwise consuming art music. Indeed, art music historically has been exempted from cultural studies precisely because of its status as an objectified collection of masterworks.

I have thus come to see and even appreciate western art music as a cultural practice. A long time practitioner of classical music and product of patronage systems, I understand and relate to the style in a very personal and even fulfilling way. But I can no longer support the presentation of art music as appealing to all people, regardless of their cultural background.

Further, through my study of Bourdieu’s theories, I realized that academic culture operates according to parameters that mirror those of artistic culture. Difference certainly helps produce existence in academic cultures, though straying too far from the norm can result in exclusion. We too seek institutional patronage and circulate symbolic capital, such as degrees, awards, fellowships, and recognition by prominent publishers and societies. Similar modes of institutionalization, as well as the frequent education of art musicians in colleges and universities, underscore and enhance the similarities between new music and academic cultures.

Cheap tricks

As I wait for classes to begin at Western, I find myself in a bit of a scholastic holding phase. So I am doing what any self respecting nerd in training would: catching up on some long intended reading. After a failed attempt to read Judith Butler, I remembered that I've been meaning to check out the "Cyborg Manifesto" by Donna Haraway. It's a really interesting analysis of gender and technology, and I hope to apply it to new music, and maybe to Pamela Z in particular.

In the meantime, I thought I'd post excerpts from the final chapter of my thesis. Yes, it's a bit of a cheap trick, but what the heck?

From Chapter 5: Reflections and Conclusions

Many of my perspectives on classical and new music have changed while writing this thesis. When I first began research for this project a year and a half ago, I hoped to find people interested in saving classical music in general and in promoting new music to contemporary audiences specifically. I found many people who espoused this goal, and many who shared my concerns and interest. I discovered and increasingly became part of an avid community of bloggers and musicians frequently debating topics such as survivability and accessibility in art music. And many of the musicians in Alarm Will Sound, eighth blackbird, and even Yarn/Wire described their desires to connect with a broader audience.

While I had found the types of communities, musicians, and discussions I had sought, I increasingly began to question the elitist nature of new music practice and the neocolonialist rhetoric of its strategies. My training as an ethnomusicologist encouraged me to examine the cultural representation and western confrontations of “the other.” With these concepts in mind, I found myself frequently disturbed by what I perceived to be insensitivity to such issues.

As I became increasingly disillusioned with classical and new music, I found discomfort in interactions with, and statements advanced by, many of my friends, colleagues, and informants. I continue struggle to distinguish between the “field” and my personal life (Clifford & Marcus, 1986), and I can no longer listen to new music without consciously reflecting on the culture’s potential exploitation of others, including popular and non-western musicians. Indeed, even as I wrote this conclusion, I spoke with a friend in the doctoral composition program at Indiana University whose attitudes toward cultural appropriation troubled me. Prior to writing this thesis I would have debated with him moral questions surrounding of the use of non-western music and the ramifications of such activities. This time, however, I chose to let the issue pass because I knew the discussion would result in endless exchanges over what constituted appropriation, and that his indoctrination in classical music would prevent him from sympathizing with my perspective.

Next time: More from Reflections and Conclusions!