Apropos of the Conlon Nancarrow conversations going on at The Overgrown Path and Sequenza 21, I'm going to steal an anecdote from Ligeti's student Martin Bresnick.
LIGETI: "Martin, who would you say is the greatest living composer?"
BRESNICK: "The greatest living composer? Er--other than yourself, of course--"
LIGETI: "--yes, of course, other than myself."
Ligeti was fond of such questions; he had a Top Three for the twentieth century, for instance, that went something like
1. Bartók,
2. Janáček,
3. Stravinsky.
And sure enough, Ligeti had his own answer all ready: the greatest living composer, in his opinion, was Conlon Nancarrow.
BRESNICK: "Conlon Nancarrow?"
LIGETI: "Conlon Nancarrow. I really think he is the greatest living composer."
BRESNICK [polite, but still dubious]: "Nancarrow? I mean, yes, the player-piano studies are great. They represent quite an achievement--but such a narrow achievement! If I had to choose between Schumann and Chopin, for instance, it would be difficult, but I would still choose Schumann every time. For while Schumann offers a great cello concerto, great symphonies, a body of indispensible songs, Chopin's highest masterpieces are limited almost exclusively to a narrow body of work, his pieces for solo piano--and Nancarrow's body of work is narrower still, limited to player piano!"
LIGETI [thoughtfully]: "Hmm. Maybe, maybe he is not the greatest living composer."
(NOTE: Be sure and read the comments below to see how I completely screwed this story up when I first posted it. Christ, I do the same thing at parties, too.)
Over at ye New Music Box, Frank Oteri conducts fascinating and revealing interview with two of our favorites, new-music power couple Martin Bresnick and Lisa Moore. If you don't know their work, Bresnick is an underrated composer and an enormously important teacher; Moore is one of these unstoppable superpianists who can play with one hand and spin plates with the other while yodeling and smashing bricks with her forehead. We've had a request for more Rzewski, so here she is playing Rzewski's Piano Piece No. 4 (she also discusses issues in Rzewski interepretation in the interview):
And here she is playing some Bresnick.
The funniest part of the interview is probably this bit—
We debated at some point whether it might be an interesting idea if I became Lisa's manager and she became my manager. So if you called up, we had "people." You'd call to speak to Lisa Moore, and I was Lisa Moore's people. And I'd say we'll get back to you or something.
—which they didn't literally do, but wouldn't that have been great! It would be like the story about that actress (which one?) who impersonated a pushy agent in order to get herself work.
The whole conversation has some great insights on the composer/performer relationship, from a couple that lives it. Obviously, she gives gives him feedback on how to write idiomatically for piano, and he gives her feedback on how to interpret his scores; less obviously, she gives him a performer's perspective on how to write for any player, arguing—
I think you should put "no rubato" if you want no rubato. If you want it rhythmic, you've got to put in "tempo giusto." You've got to write something, like "insistent." Louis Andriessen writes "non vibrato." I mean otherwise, you're going to get vibrato.
—and he brings a composer's analytical eye to every score she reads ("Martin's ... coached me on basically everything that I play. And I really trust his instincts").
Unfortunately, the part of the interview where Moore says the word "meshuggaas" with an Australian accent has not been included on the accompanying QuickTime video, so you'll just have to imagine that.
I already "tweeted" this on the "Twitter" but just in case you don't use the "Twitter," TONIGHT at (Le) Poisson Rouge you can go hear music off of Martin Bresnick's new CD, Every Thing Must Go, out today. Performers include our friend Wei-Yi Yang, and of course Prof. Bresnick's people Lisa Moore, plus Ashley Bathgate (cello), Abigail Nims (voice), and the Preludio Saxophone Quartet (duh). Buy tickets here, now.
This week's article for the New Haven Advocate was more stressful to write than usual. I think I've configured my Gmail settings in some moronic fashion such that my messages just get sucked straight into spam filters and die there, and so I found myself sending repeated, increasingly crazed emails to the composers involved (Martin Bresnick, Ted Hearne, Polina Nazaykinskaya, Andrew Norman, Naftali Schindler), culminating in a last desperate phone call to a composer's house on Sunday morning, just before this issue went to press. So, yeah, MANY thanks to all of the above for their patience. (The best part was when I wrote to another composer, bitching that I hadn't heard from him, and then discovered that he had in fact responded in time, but HIS response had been eaten by MY spam filter. Er, sorry about that.)
I'm also sorry this piece is so short—the conversations I did manage to have with those involved were incredibly rich, and I wish I could have presented them in full.
If you get a chance to go to the concert I wrote about, tomorrow night at 8 in Sprague Hall, it should be pretty exciting. Lisa Moore and So Percussion are playing Bresnick's recent Caprichos Enfáticos, which you can preview here. Ted Hearne wrote a piece, Eyelid Margin, for a consort of outdoor instruments (brass and double-reeds), which should be interesting to experience in an medium-sized recital hall; Polina Nazaykinskaya's presenting a trio of Blok songs for mezzo and piano; Andrew Norman will play a new piano piece, called I think Make Believe; and Naftali Schindler has written a Violin Duet, one of my secretly favorite combination of instruments—see B. Bartók, H. Górecki, D.H. Jóhnson—which claims to be influenced by both klezmer and Tuvan throat-singing, so, awesome.
The music of Martin Bresnick can be hazardous to your health! Tim Munro of eighth blackbird reveals the hidden dangers, here. He's all right, thank goodness.
But of course the Bang on a Can Marathon isn't just about music, it's also about hobnobbing with your favorite new-music celebrities! Ha ha, just kidding. There is no such thing as a new-music celebrity. But I weirdly enjoyed my last foray into gossip columnism (where is the Perez Hilton of the new music scene?) and so I'm going to dump a bunch more names now. I saw Judd Greenstein and Missy Mazzoli again, and she totally busted my chops about last year's awkwardness. "Hey, Dan, it's me! Missy! You might not recognize me, because I am in a different building, wearing slightly different clothes from the last time." Sighhh... Point, set, match. Martin Bresnick said hi! He is always very nice.
More Awkward: During one set, I cut rapidly through the listening crowd near the base of the stage, looking for a friend I'd bumped into, then (not finding said friend) stopped without warning and turned around 180°. At which point I literally bumped into Michael Gordon, long one of my favorite composers. Um, sorry. Yeah, I didn't introduce myself.
(Digression: Have I come to expect too much from Michael Gordon? He has these pieces like Decasia and Industry and last year's Marathon miracle Gotham that leave me breathless and tearful, but this only happens 50% of the time. Van Gogh and Trance and Weather have their moments, but they are not sublime, and he's spoiled me for sublime. This year's Michael Gordon entry was All the Stops on the F Train, a musical setting of the names of all the stops on the F Train that left me undazzled and unmoved and wondering if it was my fault. Really I wished that instead of a youth chorus the performers had been a one-on-a-part jazz choir, to go with the pleasing Sesame Street vibe of Bill Morrison's excellent-as-always video accompaniment. Also, there needs to be a moratorium on the setting of preciously inappropriate texts. Whatever, I want to hear it again.)
Yet More Awkward: during the first of that evening's many trips to the restroom of the World Financial Center, I overheard a conversation between composer David Lang and a disabled patron he'd graciously escorted to the lav as they waited for the handicapped stall to open up. Gradually I realized that I was in the only handicapped stall, and that they were waiting for me to finish. I tried to hurry it up, but some things physically cannot be rushed, and so I basically made David Lang and a man in a wheelchair wait for me to finish using the toilet. When I was finally done he said—again, graciously—"Thank you!" David Lang thanked me for getting done with my poop. The only way this could have been a more awkward way to meet David Lang is if I could have somehow combined all the awkwardnesses of previous Bang on a Can encounters, for instance by physically ramming into David Lang and then saying aloud, "Say, that man looks just like David Lang."
(Digression: I'm really warming up to David Lang, basically thanks to vigorous lobbying on the part of Nico Muhly. I think Nico did the same thing to Ben Frost, who keeps mentioning David Lang in interviews. Is Nico on the Lang payroll, under the table, somehow? Whatever, it worked, I'm a fan. Everybody needs to go get a recording of Are You Experienced? It is hilarious and brilliant.)
And finally, I got to meet Owen Pallett, Arcade Fire violinist and Final Fantasy (not the game) mastermind, whose most recent album He Poos Clouds is a must-hear.
Nico: "Danny meet Owen! He sings and plays violin."
Danny: "Of course! I love your records."
Owen Pallett: "Did you just say you love my haircut?"
No! But I did love it! He was completely hot. This much I already knew—I'd seen him in pictures and in YouTube videos such as this one
and was also aware that he was a terrific songwriter and arranger, but what I was pleased to discover hearing him perform live was that he is also a better singer and violinist than he would have to be to pull off his project. Really, he could be a good bit sketchier on the fiddle (he gets a nice sound!), and his vocals could reside totally in that heady, muffled place (he keeps a bright high end in reserve!), and he would totally get away with it.
He admitted he was nervous, backstage and then between songs, and honestly he was right to be. He's a great songwriter and arranger: a popular songwriter draws big, bold signs in satisfying configurations; an arranger lends those glyphs depth and color. But a successful piece of concert music requires a third, distinct skill, which is... I'm not sure what it is. Maybe it's the subordination of those signs to the larger structure, a structure designed to stimulate more than satisfy. Or maybe what I just said is totally meaningless. Anyway, expectations were high, he was not playing to his well-known strengths, and sure enough, the prevailing opinion among my little coven of composer friends was that the piece was not a success.
I disagree. Maybe that's because my expectations were lower (for the reasons outlined above) than those of most of the people I was talking to, or maybe my taste is just not as refined, but I thought the piece had a pleasing shape (described in a bizarre prefatory speech that was not so much a program note as a Flatland-inspired science fiction story allegorizing(?) the form of the piece we were about to hear) and I thought the particulars were nicely realized. I loved the electronic spinning out of the solo violin part into a quasi-impressionist string texture, and I loved the long, ghostly diminuendo with which the piece disappeared into a halo of reverb. And I suspect the acoustic (which tended to turn counterpoint into mush and disappear everything into a pale halo of reverb) did not do the piece any favors. That's the oldest excuse in any composer's book—"It's such a bad hall!"—but the Winter Garden is so obviously a "bad" hall that I'm really going to put that one out there.
Anyways, that's all. See you at the Bang on a Can Marathon, 2009!!
I just now, like yesterday, linked to this silly thing I wrote for the local paper, but failed to mention:
1) that you should be sure and read all the way through, to the thing Chris Arnott wrote about Jack Vees' new piece, because Jack Vees is completely lovable, and his new David Koresh opera sounds freakin' insane.
2) that Wei-Yi's first rehearsal with de Leeuw took place the day after I interviewed him, and so I didn't get to find out till after my deadline "what's Reinbert de Leeuw REALLY like???", the answer to which is, "Awesome." The reports I heard from last night's concert were pretty glowing, so I'm looking forward to catching the show at Carnegie Hall tomorrow.
3) that writing such a short piece about Olivier Messiaen was a little frustrating, because I didn't get to go very far below the surface. I've been thinking a lot about his music lately; the essay that keeps coming to mind is this one, "On the Marionette Theatre" by Heinrich von Kleist. I know some of you have read it already, but those who haven't, please click and read the whole thing right now, because it will make you feel funny inside, it is that beautiful. Conclusion:
"Now, my excellent friend," said my companion, "you are in possession of all you need to follow my argument. We see that in the organic world, as thought grows dimmer and weaker, grace emerges more brilliantly and decisively. But just as a section drawn through two lines suddenly reappears on the other side after passing through infinity, or as the image in a concave mirror turns up again right in front of us after dwindling into the distance, so grace itself returns when knowledge has as it were gone through an infinity. Grace appears most purely in that human form which either has no consciousness or an infinite consciousness. That is, in the puppet or in the god."
"Does that mean", I said in some bewilderment, "that we must eat again of the tree of knowledge in order to return to the state of innocence?"
"Of course", he said, "but that's the final chapter in the history of the world."
You'll probably remember this exchange from the Japanese sci-fi anime Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, in which it is quoted almost verbatim. Right guys? Guys? Hey, where'd everybody go?
Anyways, Messiaen's music takes this proposition seriously. His stated project is a struggle towards the Divine; it is dramatized as a dialogue between the human—the sentimental (an expressive vocabulary drawn from our common archive of tonal signs)—on one side, and the the mechanistic—the mathematical—the animal (not-so-tonal melodic and harmonic structures; overdetermined rhythmic processes; all that damned birdsong) on the other. Messiaen is writing out his desire to eat that second apple; he's trying to roll over that odometer of experience and return to the infinite/zero consciousness of the animal, the puppet, the god. (Or in this case, the God.)
Don'tcha think? This is how I hear Messiaen, though I'm pretty sure it's not how the man himself would have articulated it. (Though when I was telling this hypothesis to somebody, he told me this Kleist is a very important essay to Martin Bresnick, which is exciting, and which I shall have to investigate.) But, so, yeah, I heard great things about last night's performance at Woolsey Hall, and I'm looking forward to hearing the program tomorrow at Carnegie, if any of you New York people are gonna be there. Holler at me! Just not during the quiet parts.
I mentioned that Bang on a Can All-Star Ashley Bathgate and All-Star emerita Lisa Moore are playing at today's Ecstatic Music Festival marathon opener; I didn't mention that they'll also be playing (as "TwoSense") a set in Manhattan Friday night (when, conveniently, the Festival has nothing scheduled) at "The Little Church Around the Corner" (1 E 29th): Bresnick, Chopin, Janacek, Prokofiev, Schnittke, $25 ($15 students)(suggested!), 7:30 pm.
