Thank you for this; nice cohesive overview of the aesthetic in the first paragraph and some cogent observations on the music later on. I still haven't got round to reviewing this one myself because every time I play it I tell myself I need to listen to it "just one more time" before committing pen to paper (well, finger to keyboard). I was also tempted to upload both versions into SoundForge and compare them. Maybe I still will. One thing you didn't mention, unless I missed it (half asleep, 7am here) was the signification of Rebecca (re - return / bec - back / ca - circa). Rebecca's not a group (not that you explicitly state as such) but the name of the process, as it were.
Thanks for reminding me to listen to this excellent album again.

"One can, doubtless, point to the work of the likes of John Cage, Morton Feldman, Alvin Lucier, Helmut Lachenmann, and various electronic pioneers as having explored aspects of this territory before, yet there is something more afoot here than a mere reiteration of existing ideas and practices. One important difference is that the new music largely takes place outside of the bourgeois and academic institutions to which the exponents of twentieth century experimental music were too often confined by their lingering classicism and middle-class mores."

IMHO, Cage, Feldman and their buddies were less confined by middle-class mores, bourgeoius values, and academic institutions than many of the young lions of ea-i.

Do you really think Cage, Feldman, Wolff and their buddies were more constrained by middle-class mores, bourgeoius values and academic institutions than the young lions of ea-i? What's the basis for this theory? Those guys were actually rebelling against things. What has, e.g., Bhob Rainey, rebelled against? He's a product of NEC's Boston Microtonal Society.

Sorry about the double post!

Before Jon and the EAI squad weigh in for chapter two of the AMPLIFY saga, I'll side tentatively with Walt, in that perhaps it was unwise to lump Lachenmann and Lucier in the same bin. There may be a touch of "lingering classicism" in the former's oeuvre (though he would probably strenuously deny it), but I can't see anything remotely classical about what Lucier was doing or where he was coming from. The dreaded word "bourgeois" rears its ugly head, too.. yikes, seems as if everyone has been downloading "Stockhausen Serves Imperialism" from Kenny G's website. Well.. I look forward to seeing this thread hot up a bit over the next few hours.

At least you can spell it right, Dan.

for god's sake, don't turn this thread into another amplify-war...please!!

my comments on the compostional aspects of the disk are this.. i listened last night not being able to see my cd player counte and had no idea when track one turned to track 2. so it sounded like improv to me ven if they had some vague ideas as to what the segments would progress as.. as for the other argument about values and rebellion it is to stupid to even get into. i really enjoyed the disk by the way, especially the playing of renkel,, what exactly is a zither.

With reference to the question of whether "Cage, Feldman, Wolff and their buddies were more constrained by middle-class mores, bourgeoius values and academic institutions than the young lions of ea-i", let me just pick up on one suggestive aspect of one person's (Cage's) life:

"Throughout the years, Cage has been elected to nearly every academy of arts in existence, including the Institute of the American Academy, the Institute of Arts and Letters, and the Academy of Arts and Letters, among others. He's received several honorary doctorate degrees including one from the prestigious California Institute of Arts in 1986. Most recently, Cage was made the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University for 1988/89" (from http://www.cyberchiks.com/cage_interview.htm).

I may be mistaken, but I cannot think of one of the new improvisers who is as embedded in, and lionized by, established, mainstream institutions as this.

Hey, academia eventually caved and adorned him with garlands. That's the way it often goes with revolutionary figures. Be careful, this could happen to a young laptop players too. It certainly did to many of those bourgeois beats!

It's true that much of the 'offcial' recognition of Cage occurred relatively late. Nonetheless, Cage evidently found nothing incongruous in his accepting these plaudits. Moreover, he had been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Award from the National Academy of Arts and Letters as early as 1947, and during the 1960s he held positions at Wesleyan University, the University of Cincinnati, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

I don't think we can entirely dismiss Cage's connections with academia and the arts establishment as being merely a matter of late recuperation by a system that belatedly caved in to him.

Well, when you find an ea-i guys turning down Guggenheims, let us know. Until then, I'm not sure what you're saying.

I'm just saying that Cage, for one, tended to work inside, rather than outside, an established system of institutional grants, recognition, and employment.

I think he was neither inside nor outside, but quite happy to accept the moolah when it was offered him. As far as accepting teaching posts goes, it's just about the only way a composer can sustain him/herself - or maybe you still adhere to this Puccini-esque La Boheme vision of the starving misunderstood artist in a rat-infested garret? OF COURSE Cage accepted commissions and grants! Name me a composer (or musician full stop) who wouldn't? (Cardew, maybe, to answer my own question, but look at the dreadful stuff he ended up writing.)
I don't think, Tomas, that the thread is likely to descend into another Amplify-style discussion, though the odds of that happening are certainly more favourable than Radu Malfatti or Keith Rowe being offered a Professorship in Music at any notable establishment.

I think the key differentiation here is improvisation versus composition. The idea of "just making it up" is a little scary to the academy. It's preferable to have a score. So maybe Radu will get that professorship after all. :-)

As Wayne noted above, Cage's recognition by the powers that be came "relatively late." I don't know just how bohemian you've got to be in order not to be eligible for this "bourgeois" epithet, but those NY alea guys were not exactly living high on the hog in the late 40s and early 50s. (Unless collecting mushrooms is considered a more bourgeois hobby than collecting samplers.)

As I said above, their music was certainly as rebellious/dangerous and anti-academic as anything anybody is doing now and probably more. Sure, times have changed and improv is now probably necessary to get the sneers Cage, Feldman and Brown got for making graphic scores back then. But this isn't a function of anybody's "middle-class mores" IMHO: rather, it's the simple result of the Cage stuff happening nearly 60 years ago. I think the claim that their music was somehow tainted by academy-imposed constraints and/or bourgeois attitudes is inaccurate (and maybe also a little bit insulting -- though I'm not suggesting this was necessarily intended).

Of course, I agree with Dan that a composer must support himself. But I do not see that taking a teaching post is the only way of doing so (e.g. Taku Sugimoto works as a cleaner). The new improvisers are hardly making enough money to support themselves from their music, yet none (or nearly none) have taken teaching posts or received substantial grants from prestigious circles. There is a difference here, I think. Cage was considered worthy of major grants and receives them. He taught in universities. His music is often performed in university-sponsored events or other mainstrean venues. He attracts a rather middle-class audience (a point, curiously enough, that Cardew makes in 'Stockhausen Serves Imperialism'). He was given major awards and other forms of official recognition. In these and various other respects, the circumstances of the new improvisers are different, are they not? They move in rather different circles.

"He was given major awards and other forms of official recognition. In these and various other respects, the circumstances of the new improvisers are different, are they not?"

No. If this difference TURNS OUT to be as you predict, it will only be known 20 years from now, and only if the new improvisers either never get offers or turn down the stuff that Cage EVENTUALLY took. Neither Braxton nor Vandermark turned down their McArthurs, and I don't believe Taku Sugimoto will/would either. Naturally, I could be wrong about this, but lets wait and see before beatifying these fellows now, no?

...not that I think it would be any badge of honor to turn this stuff down anyway. It can be used to make more music and it's less tiring than working as a cleaner. This is all discussed in "Major Barbara" at great length, BTW.

I'm not sure that we need wait 20 years to see whether there is a difference between the old composers and the new improvisers in regard to prestigious grants, awards and prizes. Remember that by 1947 Cage had been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and an award from the National Academy of Arts and Letters. That was fairly early in his career.

Besides, all this is only part of a wider point, namely that the old innovators of contemporary composition I mentioned largely operated with an institutional nexus of bourgeois and academic institutions, while the new improvisers largely do not. I don't think this is merely a function of the fact that the two groups have careers of different lengths. I think that in this respect a certain conventionalism of approach characterised the old innovators pretty much from the start.

For some idea as to how thing might develop, we might consider the case of AMM. After 40 years, only one of the current three members has a regular teaching post: John Tilbury (at Goldsmiths College, London). I suspect it is no coincidence that Tilbury is the one member of the group who is an acclaimed player of composed music by the likes of Cage and Morton.

I have to say that I do not see anything worthy of emulation in the hermetic theory and hierarchical practice of Braxton or the revivalism of the Wynton Marsalis of free jazz, Ken Vandermark. If the new improvisers follow those two performers' footsteps, so much the worse for them.

Of course, I should not be understood as seeking to portray the new improvisers as purist rejecters of all establishment opportunity and money. Sure they'll take some grant funding and the odd scholarship when it happens to be available. Nonetheless, there is a substantial difference of degree between them and the old innovators.

BTW: is that the beginnings of an explanation of Taku Sugimoto's increasing spare style of playing: his cleaning job is leaving him too tired to play more dynamically?

Perhaps I could just broaden this discussion and pose the question of whether in principle it would be a good idea for the new improvisation to seek to instututionalize itself along the lines that experimental music (and jazz) has tended to do? That is, should the new music be thinking in terms of institutes of new improvisation (e.g. something like an IRCAM of new improvisation, complete with an executive director, board of directors and prestigious premises), national and international prizes, university sybilbi, professorships, academic credentials, textbooks, participation in established venues and festivals with high cultural reputations, adherence to the dominant codes of performance (e.g. the wearing of formal clothing), canons of exemplary works, etc? Would such a process of institutionalization affect the nature of the music or its development?

"Sure they'll take some grant funding and the odd scholarship when it happens to be available."

Just like the other (bad fogie) guys who were swayed by this lucre in a way that these young stalwarts could never be.

"Nonetheless, there is a substantial difference of degree between them and the old innovators."

Right. They're young NOW.

Wayne, as far as awards and distinctions go, the Prix Ars Electronica group is already in place. What such an award (normally centering on production and advances in sound representation) means at this point, I really don't know. Confront Records saw fit to use their honorable mention from last year's tally as an item of interest for the FOLDINGS recording on their website, FWIW.

Regarding education, the New England Conservatory has an entire curriculum that focuses on microtonal music and its employment in improvisation and age-old composition, so it's probably safe to assume that the new music will appear in the university arena before too long.

But with respect to "institutes", I can't envision any of your suggestions, as this music and its performers really are anti-establishment at their roots. I just feel fortunate that I get to sit ringside while it continues to evolve.

Also, literature? There is what, maybe a small handful of published works that address the music of the old experimentalists, not including straight-up biographies? And most of them were written decades ago. I could be wrong.

"Right. They're young NOW."

I don't want to get too involved in this, but Walt, they're really not that young. Otomo and Nakamura are in their forties, Gunter Muller is about to turn 50, Rowe and Malfatti are in their sixties. not to say there aren't plenty of young musicians working along these lines also, but I'd say the majority of the primary players are over 40.

Wayne, very informative piece, thanks for publishing it here at Bags. I don’t have the proper poop to enter the fray central, but something you mentioned in a recent post lodged in my gullet (& ties into a piece I’ve been working on recently as per Cap’n Jones orders):

“...the revivalism of the Wynton Marsalis of free jazz, Ken Vandermark.”

This portraiture has been popping up a lot recently & I think it’s pretty unfair, not to mention spurious. As far as I’m concerned, there’s a chasm of difference between Ken’s style of ‘revivalism’ and Wynton’s. Ken harbors an obvious reverence for the free jazz canon along with earnest admiration for luminaries from numerous other artistic disciplines. But he does so without a proselytizing agenda (the Marsalis mantle) in mind, other than simply paying homage to and celebrating those who have shaped him. And where’s the sin in promoting/rejuvenating a free jazz reparatory, anyway? I’m all for artists revisiting the works of Ra, Ayler, Taylor, etc. as long as they’re able to put their own stamp on the repertoire in the process. I think overall Vandermark’s accomplished this and in a positive, relatively ego-less fashion.

Good point. I meant to say that the genre of e-ai is (generally speaking, of course--there's always AMM) young now, not necessarily the practictioners of it. I think there were some older practitioners of alea in the 40s too. As a result, they were immune from fogeyism at the time.

"Besides, all this is only part of a wider point, namely that the old innovators of contemporary composition I mentioned largely operated with an institutional nexus of bourgeois and academic institutions, while the new improvisers largely do not. I don't think this is merely a function of the fact that the two groups have careers of different lengths. I think that in this respect a certain conventionalism of approach characterised the old innovators pretty much from the start."

I'm curious what sort of conventionalism of approach was involved in David Tudor's smashing of expensive pianos or LaMonte Young's feeding these instruments bundles of hay and buckets of water.

Jazz's eventualy museum-ification may indeed be an unfortunate consequence of African-Americans' struggle to see their basic human freedoms -- not to mention simple dignity -- recognized by the cultural powers-that-be in the United States. But I do think that the processes by which figures such as George Russell and organizations such as the AACM (apparently, an acronym really helps when you are applying grant funding) bought into / sold out to the system is much more complex than mention of an ostensibly monolithic "institutional nexus of bourgeois and academic institutions" implies.

And I certainly do not think that aesthetic and socio-political conventions come into being only after they have been ratified by some organizational incarnation of the middle-class, middlebrow consciousness.

Interesting discussion, sorry I'm coming into it a bit late.

As y`all know, I'm one of the young(er, est?) people performing this music that I know of, and know quite a few others within ten years of my age. I both went to music college and teach music (individual saxophone lessons and computer based composition to 11-16 year olds. The computer based composition might sound interesting, but since I try not to impose genres on the kids I teach, it's generally doofdoof music - I just teach them how the technology works unless they're having a lot of trouble with something musical). So although I come from a traditional music background, or more accurately an institutionalised jazz education background, short of a few record recommendations and a lot of fundamental technique work, I don't see any of the music I'm doing as a result of an establishment acceptance of free improvised music. Quite the opposite in fact.

I know two people who hold music university teaching positions and are also involved in improvised music. Sebastian Lexer and John Lely, who both studied with Tilbury at Goldsmiths.

I'm not sure what John teaches, but Sebastian, at the moment is teaching studio techniques at Trinity College of music - he works with MAX/MSP, but I think he's teaching recording technques there mainly. He told me recently that while discussing piano recording, he began talking about how to record inside-piano - the response from the students was "you play inside the piano?". So these positions are, as far as I can tell, incidental to any improvised music practice. Although both of them are more connected to the Cage/Feldman composed music side of things than me - not sure how much of that interest was before or during Goldsmiths, or to what extent it's connected with their jobs.

I saw that Prix Ars Electronica thing on some other website I think - also connected to a CD. Seems a bit stupid to be awarding awards to CDs that only 500 people will listen to. The only funding I've got any interest in myself is that which enables occasional large scale events to happen that otherwise might not - but I'd much rather see a situation where scenes get active enough that they can support those events through ticket sales, and allow musicians to visit for a week or so rather than one large paying gig.

Funding, to me at least, is always an admission that something can't survive. The thing that's always attracted me to improvised music is that it survives whether funding is there or not (at least in England, and I assume Japan) - I know in Berlin, also Switzerland and Austria things are a bit different, but have never been to those places.

I have friends who put CD(R)s out themselves, who have a disposable income of 50GBP per month, including their food budget. An IRCAM or whatever for improvised music would make very little difference to what goes on, unless it made things worse.

BTW, didn't Sun Ra and Bill Dixon both have fellowships at universities during the late-sixties, early seventies?

Re: hay feeding and bashing up.

Both those pieces require expensive pianos to begin with, and disposable expensive pianos at that. They also, to my very limited knowledge, are supposed to take place in concert halls. So the resources and the formalism of presentation are the same, if not the approach.

Incidentally, the hay piece, 4`33", some of Ligeti's pieces and more were introduced to me when I was 15 at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, strongly connected with the Corporation of London and physically connected to the Barbican, by John Dack, now head of the sonic arts faculty at Middlesex University, during a one hour per week musicianship course that ran for a year on Saturday mornings. We performed 4'33" at our end of term concert to around 80 parents and other teenage music students. John Dack was great on that course, but there was never any mention of any improvised music at all, except for some jazz harmony - the most easily written/theorised part of that tradition.

I was thinking about the last time I saw a decent piano at a gig. St. Cyprian's has one, although that's a functioning church which is outside of any of the terms of this discussion. So it's probably MIMEO at the Serpentine Pavilion - a fun gig, but at least within an art context, firmly within the establishment (confirmed by the massive numbers of people treating it like an installation, as if Niemayer had put the performers there to accompany the pavilion, rather than to utilise the space).

Good posts, Nat. Along with Joe's, I believe they show, how a number of categories have been mixed up in some of Mr. Spencer's posts. That Cage and Feldman were "classical" composers making "concert music" can't be denied. If that's the test of being "bourgeois" or having "middle class mores" then they make the grade. But is it a fair test? As you point out, it's not necessary to be "classical" to be "institutionalized": MIMEO did an "establishment" gig at the Serpentine Pavilion. (& Zorn has taken money from Philip Morris.) I'd just add to your case that I don't believe that it's necessary either. If you're feeding hay to your piano or burning your violin in front of an audience in an early 1950's concert hall you're certainly as "countercultural" as anybody improvising with sine waves at a new music festival in the early 2000s.

Furthermore, I think you're absolutely correct that holding a university position -- whether you're Cage, Feldman or Leandre -- is no more a disqualification for making excellent, innovative music than holding a dishtowel. As I said earlier, this was all put quite nicely by GBS.

If my memory serves me correctly the Young piece doesn't specifically call for the hay and water to be thrown or poured inside the piano. The performer brings it onstage and leaves the piano to eat and drink (or not).
The one piece that really fucks your piano is Cale's, which calls for the venerable instrument to be pushed down a mineshaft. Clang!

A few comments in reply to some of the postings of yesterday, plus some older ones:

1. I should like to return again to the Walto’s contention that the differences in ‘institutionalization’ between the old experimental composers and the new improvisers is largely down to their differences. If we take Cage’s first radical composition to be his earliest prepared piano piece, his career as an experimental composer started around 1939. How long did it take Cage after this to accept his first academic post? No time at all. In fact, he had occupied positions at Cornish school in Seattle, Washington in 1937 and Mills College, Oakland in 1938. Thus, if the new improvisers are simply following the same career path as Cage, they should all be academic teachers. Even if we go back to Cage’s first ever composition (in around 1930), it only took him 7 or 8 years to enter academia. Once again, if the new improvisers are simply following the same career path, anyone who started out in around 1996 or 1997 should be taking up an academic post around now. I see no obvious evidence for such a movement into academia. There does seem to be a difference between the new improvisers and at least John Cage in this respect. He was more attracted to – and attractive to – academia than they typically are.

2. I agree with Nat’s post about ‘hay feeding and bashing up’. One of the points I was originally seeking to make was about the relatively traditional venues (and attendant performance and audience conventions) utilized by the old experimental composers (that was part of the “classicism” I alluded to). I would add that writing some 40 years after the Who’s profitable antics in this line, I think we are entitled to be sceptical about the subversiveness of instrument-destruction. Such empty iconoclastic spectacles seem merely to serve to titillate the jaded palettes of cosmopolitan, middle-class, culture consumers.

3. Walto mentions feeding hay to pianos in the early 1950s. However, Le Monte Young’s ‘Piano Piece for David Tudor #1’ was not written until 1960. And wasn’t the piano-smashing in the late 1960s/early 1970s? As for whether earlier innovations were, to use Walto’s word, as “countercultural” in their day as avant-garde initiatives are today, I think that is not the point. Whether or not they did all that could reasonably be expected of them at the time, they inevitably left some things undone. Standing on their shoulders, current musical innovators can and should now go beyond them. For myself, I suspect that their (partial) compromises and conformity with their own time (such as those that led to them largely working within a middle-class or academic social and cultural context) hindered them from seeing and pursuing further musical developments.

4. I’m grateful to Al for bringing up the Prix Ars Electronica prize. I tend to think that this is a lamentably traditionalist initiative. There seems no good reason for this prize, and I suspect it has been instituted simply because such pro As Al points out, Confront records has taken advantage of it. I take this to be a pragmatic step to get some publicity. In general, Mark Wastell and Rhodri Davies (two of the figures behind confront) make greater use of university playing opportunities than many, and they can and do throw in the odd guest lecture or workshop. These opportunities are fairly few and far between, and as far as I can tell they are taken up largely because, outside of London, it is extremely hard in the UK to find suitable and willing venues for ‘reduced’ or ‘near-silent’ music. Fair enough. Needs must. I do not see that, however, as being equivalent to the far more systematic embrace of academic positions, practices and performance contexts, and mainstream cultural practices, engaged in by many experimental composers. If I am wrong in this and a similar process is seen in the new improvisation, I suspect that vitiation of the music will be the result. I think it is naïve to think that organization and performance contexts are neutral and transparent mediums for music. Music is surely shaped by the social relations in which it moves.

5. I agree with Derek that my undoubtedly snide remark about Ken Vandermark being the ‘Wynton Marsalis of free jazz’ is not entirely fair. There is a difference between Marsalis’s “proselytizing agenda” and Vandermark’s efforts. Nonetheless, I have to say that I am dismayed by Vandermark’s ‘free jazz classics’ project. There seems to be an element of cannon-building in this if not, the choice of the title ‘classics’ is unfortunate). I also find it incongruous that instead of embracing the innovative spirit that animated the various people whose work appears in the project by applying that spirit to the changed musical conditions in which he finds himself, Vandermark has turned back to largely repeating or refining not the innovation itself but merely its reified results.

6. I agree with Joe’s comments. I don’t think anything I have said is inconsistent with the points he makes. Beyond that, he reminds me of a question that I think should be of concern: why are so few black people involved in the new improvisation?

7. Going right back to the first contribution to this thread, Dan referred to Fagaschinski and Renkel’s statement that the term ‘Rebecca’ refers to their methodology (re - return / bec - back / ca - circa). I have to say that I have never been certain whether this statement is anything other than an ironic humour on the duo’s part. Could they possibly be pulling our legs here? I’m equally uncertain whether Rebecca is the name of the duo itself, the ur-piece that the duo varies, the duo’s methodology generally, or perhaps all three!

Returning more directly to the music, I was wondering whether anyone has any views on the differences between the new improvisation flourishing in Berlin (of which 'Rebecca' is an example) and the new improvisation that has been emerging from Tokyo? I ask partly with this month's Uchiage festival in Berlin in mind (http://uchiage.klingt.org/). This will bring together many of the leading Japanese and Berlin improvisers in various configurations (Kai Fagaschinski, for example, will be appearing in a fascinating-sounding quintet with Sachiko M, Andrea Neumann, Robin Hayward and Taku Unami).

"Whether or not they did all that could reasonably be expected of them at the time, they inevitably left some things undone. Standing on their shoulders, current musical innovators can and should now go beyond them."

No question. I don't think, though, that, e.g., taking a (probably quite low-paying) job with the Cornish school necessarily made Cage some sort of "bourgeois capitalist tool--certainly not more than cleaning floors at a McDonalds does today, anyway. As I understand it, Nellie Cornish was just trying to create a place where musicians could learn to be more "spiritual" or something like that. Not really too much like being a member of the Tri-Lateral Commission or the Halliburton board of directors.

"Not really too much like being a member of the Tri-Lateral Commission or the Halliburton board of directors".

Indeed not. I never suggested otherwise. Remember that my original point merely had to do with whether the music of Cage and others largely took place inside bourgeois and academic institutions and whether this was caused by to what I called "their lingering classicism and middle-class mores".

One other thing. What could be more of a "mainstream cultural practice" than performing before a quiet seated audience in a concert hall. Cardew, Stockhausen, Cage and many other old-timers certainly tried to get away from that, but, AFAIK, that's exactly what, e.g., Rowe and Nakamora do (and do quite well!).

Al mentioned literature. I notice that Peter Niklas Wilson published a book on 'reductionism' called 'Musik der Reduktion'. Does anyone know of any plans to translate this into English?

Walto asks, 'What could be more of a "mainstream cultural practice" than performing before a quiet seated audience in a concert hall'? Interesting question. Leaving aside the point that seating seems to be something of a luxury at some of the venues at which the new improvisation appears, I think we have to take into account changes in social context. In my experience, a request to sit still and quiet for 45 minutes or so at a time in the presence of music is increasingly regarded by many as radical in the extreme. It becomes even more so when it is joined with a request to focus with extreme attention on music that is very quiet, highly subtle and does not operate within the predictable framework of tonality that generally allows the listener to only half-attend to musical proceedings. The sitting and perhaps a degree of quiet are perhaps highly congruent with dominant cultural practices, but the degree of attention, stillness etc is more at variance with what is considered normative in frenetic and hedonistic Western societies.

"In my experience, a request to sit still and quiet for 45 minutes or so at a time in the presence of music is increasingly regarded by many as radical in the extreme."

Lot of radicals running Boston Symphony Hall and the Met, I guess.

BTW, I've seen both Rowe/Nakamura and AMM, and they were at quite nice venues with comfortable seating. OTOH, I've seen a string trio perform in a windy corn field and Steve Lacy play in a leaky basement.

"It becomes even more so when it is joined with a request to focus with extreme attention on music that is very quiet, highly subtle and does not operate within the predictable framework of tonality that generally allows the listener to only half-attend to musical proceedings."

Tis kinda stuff gets repated over and over. Wo are you cats writing for? Bunch of attention deficit riddled kids? Why would any kinda music require more focus than any other kinda music?

You lost me with much of your last post, Wayne. I see nothing “radical in the extreme” about sitting attentively through a musical concert lasting 45 minutes regardless of its instrumentation or content. Say 4 or 5 hours w/o intermission on the other hand & I think you may have a point. It’s all a matter of listener taste and corresponding embrace/tolerance for what’s coming from the ‘stage.’ But I think most people who attend a concert are present for the express purpose of paying close attention to what's being presented.

Wayne's from the UK, where sitting quietly and listening to music seems to be largely a foreign concept, at least outside of traditional classical venues.

"Such empty iconoclastic spectacles seem merely to serve to titillate the jaded palettes of cosmopolitan, middle-class, culture consumers."

Which is all of us, right?

Nirav (not particularly prole-y)

In reply to the latest comments:

1. Walto commented, "Lot of radicals running Boston Symphony Hall and the Met, I guess". Not really. In relation to any cultural norm (in this case the burgeoning norm of garrulousness), there will typically be both radical and reactionary dissent. The expectation of silence that persists, at least to some degree, in classical concert halls is rooted in a nineteenth and early twentieth century bourgeois and romantic ideology of quasi-religious reverence for supposedly transcendental art and the heroic, extraordinary figures that supposedly produced it. It is a reactionary call from the past (and one I suspect that is increasingly not answered by younger people). I think it differs in nature from that which informs the new improvisation.

2. Walto also said, "I've seen both Rowe/Nakamura and AMM, and they were at quite nice venues with comfortable seating. OTOH, I've seen a string trio perform in a windy corn field and Steve Lacy play in a leaky basement". I don't doubt it. But I suggest that if you took a representative sample of the performances of the new improvisation and classical music respectively, you would find that the two types of music tend to be presented in different types of venue. For a sense of how bad it can get at new improvisation concerts, I recommend coming along to the Amplify 04 fringe concert on 10 May, which includes a duo between Keith Rowe and Burkhard Beins, amongst other things. This will be held at Club der Polnischen Versager, a venue in which the 'seating' largely consists of a flight of concrete stairs.

3. Uli wrote, "Wo are you cats writing for? Bunch of attention deficit riddled kids?". As far as I can tell, young people's short attention spans have not been increasing much with age for some years now. If that is correct, I have in mind the ordinary citizen of today and tomorrow.

4. Uli also asked, "Why would any kinda music require more focus than any other kinda music?". Because the mental processing of music that accords with well-established mental models can rely to some extent on automatic cognitive processes that operate below the level of conscious awareness. Listening to tonal or other conventional music, for example, is (to those who implicitly or explicitly know the conventions) a little like driving a car or typing with a keyboard. Deliberate and conscious attention is not required on each step of the process in order to proceed. Attention is either elsewhere or selectively focussed on the non-routine and surprising aspects of the situation.

5. Derek said that he sees "nothing 'radical in the extreme' about sitting attentively through a musical concert lasting 45 minutes regardless of its instrumentation or content. Say 4 or 5 hours w/o intermission on the other hand & I think you may have a point". In this instance, I'm just reporting my experience about how others view matters.

6. Jon Abbey wrote, "Wayne's from the UK, where sitting quietly and listening to music seems to be largely a foreign concept, at least outside of traditional classical venues". True. I'm open to the suggestion that there are cultural differences on this point (hell, in the UK a recent performance of 4'33" was quite a big news item). I'd be interested in hearing more from others about the reactions of audiences - and especially audience members who are new to the music - to the new improvisation, and especially the near-silent variety. I am inclined to think that in the UK the trend for former industrial cities to regenerate themselves by developing a night-time economy based around corporate-owned entertainment and drinking establishments providing a encapsulated environment of noisy, drunken, hedonistic pseudo-abandon - especially when combined with other factors such as a work hard-play hard ideology emerging from changes in working practices and habituation to ubiquitously high-levels of ambient vehicle and other noise - is producing an ethos and psychology increasingly incompatible with musical or other cultural practices requiring still, silent, subtle attention. Perhaps it's different elsewhere.

7. Finally, Nirav Soni raised the question of whether the phrase "Such empty iconoclastic spectacles seem merely to serve to titillate the jaded palettes of cosmopolitan, middle-class, culture consumers" might be applied to all of us. Let's hope not.

"I recommend coming along to the Amplify 04 fringe concert on 10 May, which includes a duo between Keith Rowe and Burkhard Beins, amongst other things. This will be held at Club der Polnischen Versager, a venue in which the 'seating' largely consists of a flight of concrete stairs. "

I haven't actually been there, but I'm told the capacity is 40 people, so it can't be that bad, can it? this example is also a bit out of context, since there are six other nights of shows that week in Berlin, five of which are in decidedly larger venues. I also don't think this music works as well once there are more than 100 or so people in the room, but that's a different discussion.

and as long as you're talking about AMPLIFY, the Cologne city government is paying for the majority of the Cologne half, it's a subfestival within their tri-annual massive city festival, entirely curated by Keith and myself, but largely funded by them. (www.musiktriennalekoeln.de). the fact that I'm singlehandedly funding the other 70 percent or so of this two week extravaganza may or may not prove your point, I don't know.

I think the general rule in this field is that people are happy to accept funding and are eager to get it, simply because the revenues from CD sales and concerts are almost never self-sustaining. but I think it's extremely rare that any support that is received influences the music (the MIMEO Serpentine Gallery show was an extreme example, where the band did somewhat cater to the wishes of the gallery, and made it more of a "happening" then a concert. on the other hand, without some sort of compromises here and there, MIMEO would likely never play, even if that's not too much of a loss at this point.)

I don't know enough about the specifics of the composers of the fifties and sixties to directly compare, so I'll leave it there.

Wayne, you'll be happy (maybe) to know that the UK has by far the rowdiest, most annoying audiences around, and most other places tend to be much more quiet and respectful of the music.

Jon - I guess you could squeeze 40 people into the concert area of the Club der Polnischen Versager (there is a bare floor as well as the stairs), although you would then have to add zero space to move about to the list of discomforts! That said, I shouldn't be understood as wishing to dissuade anyone from attending. The music promises to be more than good enough to offset a numb backside! And there's a very comfortable bar at the front of the club in which to recover the use of your extremities later. I shall be going myself.

I also shouldn't be understood as implying anything about the Amplify 04 festival arrangements generally; indeed, I'm only familiar with one of the other venues.

On the subject of state funding, I tend to think that it is better to avoid it if possible, especially if its terms oblige you to adopt highly bureaucratic internal and reporting procedures or will otherwise skew your work (I'm thinking here especially of funding for promoters). But if you need it and there are no unacceptable strings attached, take it.

If we were looking for unhappy effects of funding, it might be better to consider those organizations or individuals who were funded over long periods of time under the quite generous state funding systems that were in place in continental Europe until fairly recently. I can't say very much about this myself other than that these arrangements seem to have fostered expectations about levels of remuneration that made the performers in question prohibitively expensive for many promoters based in countries with less generous arrangements.

BTW: I think the UK may just have the rowdiest, most annoying population around.

"I think the UK may just have the rowdiest, most annoying population around."

Keith was telling me about the recent Instal festival that AMM played in Glasgow, and he said that Glasgow has the highest per capita alcohol intake of any city in the world, people just stay in pubs and drink all day. I'm guessing it's not the only UK city in the top ten, either...

"The expectation of silence that persists, at least to some degree, in classical concert halls is rooted in a nineteenth and early twentieth century bourgeois and romantic ideology of quasi-religious reverence for supposedly transcendental art and the heroic, extraordinary figures that supposedly produced it. It is a reactionary call from the past (and one I suspect that is increasingly not answered by younger people). I think it differs in nature from that which informs the new improvisation."

I truly hope you won't take offence at this, but I feel what might aptly be called "religious awe" emanating from your own posts on what you seem to take to be the transcendental and heroic nature that informs "the new improvisation" (if not its egoless, working class heroes). I don't think you've been able to isolate one concrete difference between the practice of this art (or its venues) and, e.g., the unsubsidized performance of polkas on an Oberheim synthesizer in the basement of some old K of C before an entranced gaggle of Polish grandmothers. In spite of this, you stoutly insist that the stuff you happen to love is just intrinsically...better: not just musically, but also with regard to the quotient of political virtue distributed. So much more, well, correct, than any other music, past or present, ever could be.

What can I say? May Nakamura and co. change & improve the world as profoundly as they've changed & improved yours!

Walto - No offence taken at all. I have to say that I neither feel not intend to express "religious awe" in relation to the new improvisation. I do consider that this line of music can reasonably be construed as containing certain elements that are both relatively new and, to a degree, at variance with certain features of the wider artistic and socio-political world (there is more to be said about this, perhaps especially in connection with the role of free improvisation, but we have never got that far). I also consider that spiritual or religious interpretations tend to recuperate this oppositional potential and hence are something (un-)devoutly to be avoided. Discarding your rhetoric about "intrinsically...better" and "political virtue distributed", I see nothing wholly abhorrent in the proposition that different types of music possess different degrees of (potential) opposition to dominant ideas and practices at any given time.

I must confess that I have not directed my mind much towards Polish polka practices (a great image you conjured up there, Walto). As far as the matters we have discussed are concerned, I have not found many of your counter-arguments persuasive. We have only really stratched the surface of the arguments, but others can make their minds up for themselves. And if anyone is keen to consider the differences Walto's polka and the new improvisation, they might like to start by considering the place of improvisation in each (mentioned long ago in the review at the root of this discussion).

Jon - It's possible that other UK cities have world class levels of highest per capita alcohol intake. But I think it's not quite as simply as quantity of alcohol consumed. Figures cited by the British Prime Minister's Strategy Unit recently put the UK overall relatively low in the table of per capita alcohol consumption. Alongside this, however, we have strong cultures of binge drinking and widely held models of idiot inebriation that pattern people's behaviour when under the influence of alcohol. The British also, incidentally, have the highest levels of alcohol consumption amongst women, one of the few ways in which the country is ahead in matters of gender equality.

Moving on, I'd like to ask Walto whether he sees any musical differences between Rebecca or other music in the 'reductionist', electro-acoustic, etc line and other types of composed or improvised music? Is there anything at all distinctive in the music?

Oh - a question for Jon Abbey too: I heard that AMM set at Instal on the radio and thought it was one of the best from the group in many years. Do you happen to know whether there any plans to release it?

"Moving on, I'd like to ask Walto whether he sees any musical differences between Rebecca or other music in the 'reductionist', electro-acoustic, etc line and other types of composed or improvised music? Is there anything at all distinctive in the music?"

I have been persuaded by a recent comment of Jon's that its focus on improv is an important "process difference" from, e.g., earlier electronic or "tape music." I think this focus, and the preference for un-pitched and, often, unfamiliar sounds are the key ingredients. I tend to take the position that there's not much new under the sun. As a result I get something like this:

Webern's pointillism (i.e., non-individual instrument "egoism" + Stapleton's concretism + free jazz's dismissal of scores/rules + approved "instruments" (or non-instruments) & sonorities = e-ai.

In my narrow take, nothing involving monetary subsidies, university positions, political affiliations, seating arrangements, absence of religious convictions, views regarding individual heroism, etc. have any relevance whatever in the correct analysis. Introduction of that sort of stuff, IMHO, is just a kind of "THIS IS OUR MUSIC!" juvenilia. One (dis)advantage of being a so old is that I've heard this before many times: from Deadheads, Starshippers, serialists, Cageists, folk music collectors, bopsters, ecstacy jazzers, Maoist tune-makers, Hopi chant aficionados, punks, gansta rappers, goths, original instrument fanatics, etc., etc. Face it: everybody thinks their own particular faves are the absolutely most non-institutional, countercultural otheriscious!

First, something more general from where I am coming from. I would not have jumped on your “argument” if I did not have the feeling that it is not somewhat a repeat of what I have read in comments of others. Maybe I am wrong but I get the impression that there is a consensus among writers and fans of the new improvisation that somehow a tone every 4 minutes requires more listening focus than ten tones a second. To me that just plainly does not make sense. From a preference point of view I can clearly tell you that maybe a tone every 4 minutes stresses my focus maybe a bit.

“3. Uli wrote, "Wo are you cats writing for? Bunch of attention deficit riddled kids?". As far as I can tell, young people's short attention spans have not been increasing much with age for some years now. If that is correct, I have in mind the ordinary citizen of today and tomorrow.”

Sorry, I did not intend to make this another young vs old issue. As an old fart, me too suffers under phenomen. I really don’t know who the ordinary citizen of today or tomorrow is but to the extend that he/she would stumble on your comment my feeling is that that he/she could be unduly influenced.
“4. Uli also asked, "Why would any kinda music require more focus than any other kinda music?". Because the mental processing of music that accords with well-established mental models can rely to some extent on automatic cognitive processes that operate below the level of conscious awareness. Listening to tonal or other conventional music, for example, is (to those who implicitly or explicitly know the conventions) a little like driving a car or typing with a keyboard. Deliberate and conscious attention is not required on each step of the process in order to proceed. Attention is either elsewhere or selectively focussed on the non-routine and surprising aspects of the situation. “

Again, I don’t know how you know where the focus of other peoples attention is. Of course some people may not be interested to listen to some music for whatever reason. If they do listen, in my experience however especially the “more experienced listeners” (and that may include people who implicitly or explicitly know the conventions, whatever they are) listen with the same focus to conventional or unconventional music. Maybe you should ask one of your heros. I don’t know what Keith Rowe is listening to but it sure is inconceivable for me to believe that he would listen with a different focus on say Nakumura or Bartok.
Yeah, almost everybody knows how to drive a car, but almost nobody can play the tenor like Lester Young.

“I see nothing wholly abhorrent in the proposition that different types of music possess different degrees of (potential) opposition to dominant ideas and practices at any given time.”
I don’t see anything abhorrent in that either. Sticking to propositions against better insight might be a bit over the edge, so.

“7. Finally, Nirav Soni raised the question of whether the phrase "Such empty iconoclastic spectacles seem merely to serve to titillate the jaded palettes of cosmopolitan, middle-class, culture consumers" might be applied to all of us. Let's hope not.”

Let’s keep hope alive!

This is jumping back a bit in the discussion, but I wanted to make it clear that I think funding, university positions etc. etc. do influence music if the positions and funding are dependent on the music being created publicly by the recipient. If I go into a primary school and teach recorder, or teach people where to put a microphone at a university, that of course might affect the music that I make, in the same way as street sweeping, retail work, hospital admin might, or for that matter divorce, sickness. Teaching "improvised music" to "improvised music students" within an educational institution might well do so though, since then it's taking that music into a formalised teacher/pupil relationship, exams, recitals all the baggage that further musical education entails - something I think is opposed to the equal relationships present in most improvised music (or at least most of it that I'm interested in). There may of course be inequalities of technique, and people may have "administrative superiority" if booking gigs/tours, but that's not formalised in the way that university lecturing is.

In reference to funding, Jon will be amused or insulted to hear that one of my friends (who will remain anonymous, partly due to my not remembering which one it was), after the infamous Prévost Pope/Jesus Christ Wire interview, described Jon as the Medici of improvised music. Which made me chuckle.

"Teaching "improvised music" to "improvised music students" within an educational institution might well do so though, since then it's taking that music into a formalised teacher/pupil relationship, exams, recitals all the baggage that further musical education entails - something I think is opposed to the equal relationships present in most improvised music (or at least most of it that I'm interested in)."

I don't really understand this. Suppose that, by day, you "teach improvised music to improvised music students" at a university for a fee or a salary or whatever. How/why must this affect the music you make either alone in a studio alone or at night with your buddies in a club--or, indeed, the octagonal pictures you draw on your graphic score sheet?

Well, this is something I try not to think about too much, but certainly at the particular college I attended, a lot of the faculty seemed to indulge in what I'd call near-pedagogical playing when I'd see them at clubs. Maybe they're just teaching their conceptions so successfully that you know what they're going to sound like when you hear them, but the communicable aspects of what they were teaching were often all I heard when I'd see them live - very few would bring other things into the music - no surprises. I think teaching music, certainly music close to what you play "professionally", can have both a solidifying effect on your views (I think that largely depends on the strengths of students - whether they maintain and argue their own view points), and certainly can lead to a preoccupation with correctness, due to a tendency to focus on particular aspects of playing that a student is doing "wrong".

I for one, although I teach saxophone in as much a pure technical way as possible - i.e. I try to teach my students how the saxophone works first and foremost, still find myself fudging issues of context - I have, for instance spent quite a long time with some students helping them to eradicate certain "accidental" sounds that it takes me quite a lot of effort to play on purpose, and that I work quite hard on developing. Of course I went through that process of eradication and then much later reintroduction, but why should they? (apart from to fulfil their own constructed view of the instrument, and more likely, to fulfill national curriculum requirements that they eventually have to meet for school music lessons - it's difficult to entirely separate their instrumental teaching experience from the ineptness of the government's proscribed curriculum, although I do try - the 30 minute improvisation test for GCSE that's actually a really, really fast composition for instance, I'd really like to slap the person that designed that, and it's been there since I did GCSE myself 9 years ago).

I definitely see how that could happen. There's a trombonist in Boston--you probably know him, connected with Mobius, and plays a lot with Voight and those guys--I always got that feeling about. His stuff wasn't bad--used delays interestingly, e.g.--but something pedagogical about the performances. That made his stuff seem worse, to me at least. FWIW, I don't get the same vibe from Feldman--though he was teaching (in Buffalo?) for many years. Some people are less...oafish maybe? Anyhow, you seem to be making a conscious effort not to be overbearing or proselytizing with your pupils.

Are his initials H.C.?

If so I dropped his class for that reason (amongst others, in fact I've never had more reasons to drop a class).

No, they're T.P.

I've heard that guy play and I liked what he was doing. Just heard him once, though, and certainly never attended his classes.

He was also pretty nice.

jenny

Which guy??

Returning to the conversation...

1. Walto advanced the fascinating formula, "Webern's pointillism (i.e., non-individual instrument "egoism" + Stapleton's concretism + free jazz's dismissal of scores/rules + approved "instruments" (or non-instruments) & sonorities = e-ai".

A few questions and observations on this.

(a) Who is the Stapleton referred to? Steve Stapleton of Nurse with Wound? If so, why has he in particular been cited as a proponent of "concretism"?
(b) I guess that ‘anti-individual instrument egoism’ as a general category is more important than Webern's pointillist instance of it. A certain amount of electro-acoustic improvisation is "laminal" rather than pointillist.
(c) I would have thought that "free improvisation" would be a better point of reference for the eschewal of scores/rules than free jazz, if only because the latter included a greater degree of commitment to prior idiomatic conventions than its less jazzy successor.
(d) Are you saying that only certain instruments (or non-instruments) and sonorities qualify as " electro-acoustic improvisation"?
(e) I assume we would have to regard this more as a continuum, along which music is more or less "e-ai". The music on ‘Rebecca’ probably would not score that high on this scale.

2. Walto said, “In my narrow take, nothing involving monetary subsidies, university positions, political affiliations, seating arrangements, absence of religious convictions, views regarding individual heroism, etc. have any relevance whatever in the correct analysis”. This is hardly an accurate summary of my views; but leaving that aside, would you acknowledge that certain institutions and ideologies hold views regarding music and social organization that are at variance with the components of electro-acoustic improvisation that you have sketched? Obvious examples from the past include Nazi Germany, the GDR and the Soviet Union, all of which tended to disapprove of atonal music generally. But there are other ideologies that promote notions of national or ‘western’ civilization in which traditionalist notions of music such as are repudiated by the new improvisation play at part. Mainstream concert halls and music schools, to take two examples, typically seem to adhere rather strongly to, for instance, the notion of musical works are entities that are produced by a compositional process and exist prior to performance. They also appear inclined to ideologies about special (and egoistic) musical heroes (as reflected, for example, in a stark physical separation of performers and audience and a general fetishism of performers), as well as to hierarchy. Analogous points might be made about universities. I mention this to stress two things. First, that musical ideas and practices can in principle place their proponents in opposition to wider institutions, societies and ideologies. Second, that institutions can adhere to practices and ideologies that are inimical to those that inform the new improvisation, with the result that the formal and informal socialization into institutional values that is an ordinary part of the life of institutions (or just the ordinary working of the institution’s procedures) will tend, where successful, to prevent or undermine the development or embrace of such music on the part of the institution’s members. Perhaps this links up with the points Nat has been making above.

3. Walto added, “introduction of that sort of stuff, IMHO, is just a kind of "THIS IS OUR MUSIC!" juvenilia. One (dis)advantage of being a so old is that I've heard this before many times”. I would point out that, to date, I think I’ve only been talking about the new improvisation versus the old experimental composition. I have not been making universal claims. In any event, just because a proposition has been advanced before on a number of occasions, it does not follow that the proposition is necessarily false (on the same reasoning, the Wright brothers’ claim to have made the first successful flight of a powered, heavier-than-air machine was not rendered false by all the preceding claims to have done likewise). The possibility remains that different musics differ in the degree to which they are inconsistent with socially dominant institutions, ideologies and practices.

4. Uli wrote, “Maybe I am wrong but I get the impression that there is a consensus among writers and fans of the new improvisation that somehow a tone every 4 minutes requires more listening focus than ten tones a second. To me that just plainly does not make sense”. I agree that it is not as simple as saying that music that incorporates extended silences necessarily requires or involves more attention than music that does not. It partly depends on the nature of the music, and especially how predictable the tones are. Perhaps, though, it is the case that, all other things being equal (which in practice they may not be), the introduction of extended silences does place additional demands on attention, if only because of the process of remaining alert across indeterminate periods with limited stimuli and integrating new tones with those occurring before and after does require an unusually effortful focus, at least for many people.

5. Uri also commented, “I don’t know how you know where the focus of other peoples attention is. Of course some people may not be interested to listen to some music for whatever reason. If they do listen, in my experience however especially the ‘more experienced listeners’ […] listen with the same focus to conventional or unconventional music”. I think it is a more of a question of what is required or normative for different types of music. Take the example of contemporary electronic dance music (when played in a dance venue): paying close attention to the music is not required (it is enough to just hear and feel the sound) is not normative (in fact, it would seem somewhat deviant). In conventional music generally, paying unflaggingly close attention is not required. For those who have internalized the conventions (and especially for those who are already highly familiar with a particular piece), many of the elements of the music can be cognitively processed using established mechanisms of a relatively automatic nature that operate below the level of conscious awareness and thus of attention. This is not to say that people cannot subject the elements of the music to constant close attention (although the fine detail of rapid or dense music may be beyond comprehensive close inspection), but it’s a case of making an especial effort from switching from an available and perhaps typical mode of listening to another. Some people doubtless do it to some extent, but I don’t think it is required in order to listen to the music in a satisfactory way or is normative for most conventional music. In the same way, it is possible to drive a car by paying deliberate attention to every move that is made, but this is not necessary and it’s a reasonable supposition that most people don’t do so. By contrast, one of the challenges and pleasures of the new improvisation (and, indeed, some other unconventional musics), is that of engaging with music that, at its best, is less easily assimilated to known expectations and responses and thus must be closely attended to moment-by-moment if it is to be followed and grasped to any extent. Deliberate and active attention is required and normative for this music (or at least the good examples of it).

6. Finally, Uri said, “almost everybody knows how to drive a car, but almost nobody can play the tenor like Lester Young”. True; but if people dedicated as much of their time and effort to playing the saxophone as they currently do to driving their cars, perhaps that would not be the case.

"...would you acknowledge that certain institutions and ideologies hold views regarding music and social organization that are at variance with the components of electro-acoustic improvisation that you have sketched?"

I don't think I understand this question. Institutions/ideologies have held all sorts of views about music--some (IMO) crazy, some less so. Presumably many of them have been at variance views about (components of?) nearly every sort of music, including e-ai.

Stapleton was indeed Steve. I just picked him as an example. I think you get the "free improvisation" part from the other constituents I put in there along with with free jazz. I think you're right to point out that the laminal plays as important a part as the pointillistic in ea-i.

"just because a proposition has been advanced before on a number of occasions, it does not follow that the proposition is necessarily false."

I certainly agree with that!...if not with much else of what you've posted on this subject. I guess I'd respond by saying that pointing out that it's possible that X isn't really much of an argument in support of X.

Walto: "Institutions/ideologies have held all sorts of views about music--some (IMO) crazy, some less so. Presumably many of them have been at variance views about (components of?) nearly every sort of music, including e-ai".

That seems right. If one is looking to consider the political significance or otherwise of the new improvisation (or, indeed, other types of music), that, I think, is a fruitful line of enquiry.

"pointing out that it's possible that X isn't really much of an argument in support of X".

True. I was more responding to an argument against X than putting an argument for X.

"...the equal relationships present in most improvised music..."

Isn't it also fair to say that such relationships exist in a chamber ensemble -- say, a working String Quartet -- that works with wholly "composed" music? Or how about the musician who works solo, variously and often simultaneously playing through the course of his / her own work the roles of composer, instrument builder, orchestrator and performer? Both Harry Partch and Morton Subotnick can serve as examples of this. Maybe even J. S. Bach as well. In such cases, we also have to address the important relationships individuals have with objects, which are hardly ever defined by equality. (Many free improvisors are also defined by such relationships, I feel, but they certainly have no monopoly on them...) Or maybe what's really needed is a re-drawing of the parameters of equality per se. I mean, the equality I've construed out of Nat's comments may not have much meaning in an emsemble in which both Charles Gayle and Barry Guy are members.

As far as the problem of patronage goes... it seems to me that as soon as art "transcends" money, it loses a great deal of its social efficacy. Sad but true. Then again, I live in the States, and funding for culture, when it does work at all, works very differently here than it does abroad.

Finally, I don't know about Sun Ra, but Bill Dixon began teaching at Bennington College in Vermont in 1996. Cecil Taylor had faculty responsibilities during his residencies at both Antioch College (Yellow Springs, OH) and the University of Wisconsin. If I'm not mistaken, Roscoe Mitchell, then getting the Creative Arts Collective off the ground, had some connections to Michigan State University in the mid-1970's. The story of "jazz" on college campuses here in the States, however, is only partly told unless we start discussin phenomena such as The Dave Brubeck Quartet and The Modern Jazz Quartet.

Joe,

No I'd say the members of a chamber group, your string quartet works fine, playing composed music all have predefined levels of dominance during a performance depending on the work they're performing. Moreso, those levels of dominance are determined by an outside individual, one who controls the performance of the quartet across both space and time. A composer who died three hundred years ago, 5000 miles away may still have their instructions followed as closely as possible by four people whose only purpose during that performance is to interpret their work, strikes me as a particularly unequal relationship. Even if the composer tries to create a piece where the four instrumentalists have equal responsibility, their equality is still one of subservience. That's very different to a group where the relationships are part of a continuing negotiation and dialogue between its members, not to say that all free-improvising groups actually do this.

As to Partch and Subotnik, neither of whom's work I've explored much, equality can't be present within the musical process of one individual - what are they equal with? Similarly, neither can socialism, fascism, slavery, language exist with isolated individuals. It's this social aspect to musical processes which makes solo improvisation much more difficult than say, a recital of solo romantic piano music. The piano music is solved by the presence of the composer's contribution to the performance. Solo improvisations tend to be about a musician/instrument relationship, but are always in reference to that person's work within ensembles afaik - I don't know of anyone who's entire musical exploration has been through the medium of solo improvisation. Again, Partch, if composing and performing his own pieces on his own instruments, can be said to be having a dialogue with his-self when he wrote the piece, and designed/built the instrument, there's at least some of the tension that would be the case with the participation of other 'real' as opposed to 'remembered' individuals.

I don't care much about most of this stuff (I know there is an underground and it is great), but I'm pretty damn sure that Dixon has been at Bennington MUCH longer than 7 years. In fact, he's retired now. Milford Graves is there still, as far as I know. Braxton is at Wesleyan, Joe Maneri is at the New England Conservatory in Boston (may have the name wrong, I don't really care and I'm stupid). Wadada Leo Smith is at Cal Arts (and has done Mills, I believe), George Lewis is at UCSD, and that's the tip of the iceberg. These guys are sanctioned.

I would be surprised if some of the players I've met ever get this seal of approval, but others, I wouldn't. I think it has most to do with the players' feelings about academia, although we know that the U's like to be hip (in their own painful way).

Jimmy

ps: Jack Wright *used to be* a professor too. He taught history, though, and it was before his significant entry into music.

pps: Lots of new activity at rasbliutto. Bryan was here in Seoul for a visit recently and he has a pretty bent stack of releases slated for the next few months.

A bad typo -- I meant to indicate that Dixon began his tenure @ Bennington in 1968.

Nat -- I understand your point, but I don't feel we can just single out composers in this regard. By this same logic, doesn't Adolphe Sax, the man who invented the saxophone, created it's internal workings, and designed its interface, exert as much dominance on saxophone players as the individual who has written the specific piece of saxophone literature a given instrumentalist chooses to play? Then magnify this by all the individuals undoubtedly involved in the manufacture of a thoroughly Industrial Age -- brass, wood -- horn such as a saxophone. They, too, by having a willful hand in the production of your Selmer (or whatever), have predetermined the kind of music that will be played, whether you are "reading" or improvising. In fact, if you are freely improvising, risking completely individual originality, you may leave yourself even more vulnerable to all these people -- the one who cut the reed, the one who measured down to the millimetere the bore of the horn, the one who decided to adjust, ever so slightly, the proportion of metals in the alloy that is thwe horn's plating -- than if you were trying to play standard pitches and licks required of you by a composer. One pitted against many, and an anonymous many. This strikes me as being Existentially quite inequitable.

A musician like Morton Subotnick, who participated in the construction of his own electronic instruments (in collaboration with Donald Buchla and then on his own) and thus was able to employ tonalities in pieces such as "Silver Apples of the Moon" and "Until Spring" which still sound completely personal (sui generis), is cutting out the middle-men who populate musical history. This is not hermetic activity, not as I would define it anyway. I mean, both written scores and a musical instruments are, ultimately, merely objects -- technologies, in fact -- even though both do carry the imprint of human intentions.

I'm most interested in the chamber ensemble because there really seems to be no good working definition of what one is unless you do bring it back to the fact that such ensembles exist within a larger social and musical context even as they sustain their own interpersonal dynamic(s). Musica da camera... living room music, as it were.

Bill Dixon.. has there ever been a more overrated musician?

ow. and yes, Sonny Rollins is the first who comes to mind in the field of jazz.

not defending any of his other work, but for me, Dixon's nineties work picks up the chamber jazz legacy of Giuffre/Swallow/Bley more successfully than any other music I can think of. in my opinion, Vade Mecum 2 is one of the highlights of nineties improvised music, and the others aren't too far behind.

Quite agree about Vade Mecum, yes. Disagree about Rollins, though. Before his legendary "retirement" to the Williamsburg Bridge he'd already released a substantial body of top quality work, which is more than one can say for BD. I can see a case for Dixon's trumpet playing being a precursor for some of today's extended trumpet techniques, but as for putting the guy on the same pedestal (same stage even) as CT and Oxley.. oh well, feel free to disagree

Well, there are plenty of overrated musicians. I like Dixon, though. I like his playing and his composition. I'd also be surprised if either CT or Oxley share your opinion.

Abbey makes some sense about Dixon's "extensions" and their impact. I can't say I ever heard a trumpet player hit that tuba range until I heard Dixon's recordings.

Dixon's writings are pretty awesome too. He's super crabby and frequently dogmatic, but there's plenty of good stuff too, and he was a very dedicated teacher by all accounts, something that I think is admirable (some of the guys I mentioned earlier don't even show up for their own classes, man).

Jenny

ps: My vote for "most overrated" goes to Zappa, But I can't expect anyone to agree with me on that.

"My vote for "most overrated" goes to Zappa, But I can't expect anyone to agree with me on that."

dunno about the crowd you hang out in, but I'd be more surprised to hear disagreement on that than agreement. of course, you have to be rated to be overrated.

Never liked Zappa fwiw, maybe it's a generational thing ;)

Joe:

>>By this same logic, doesn't Adolphe Sax, the man who invented the saxophone, created it's internal workings, and designed its interface, exert as much dominance on saxophone players as the individual who has written the specific piece of saxophone literature a given instrumentalist chooses to play?

Adolphe may exert as much dominance on the player as a composer, but the composer him/herself is also affected by Adolphe's design if writing for the saxophone. However, the composer's influence extends over every instrument in an ensemble, regardless of manufacturer/designer. So I think these are different issues.

Also, I'd make quite a big distinction between the score as technology (apart from it being printed paper, I don't think you're describing it in that sense, a score can after all be displayed on a monitor) and the saxophone as technology - would you consider a score to be a tool? I think plenty of arguments could be made for the saxophone being a logical extension of the hammer/axe whatever. The score's existence outside of the materials used to created it means it's definitely a different form of technology.

>>Then magnify this by all the individuals undoubtedly involved in the manufacture of a thoroughly Industrial Age -- brass, wood -- horn such as a saxophone. They, too, by having a willful hand in the production of your Selmer (or whatever), have predetermined the kind of music that will be played, whether you are "reading" or improvising. In fact, if you are freely improvising, risking completely individual originality, you may leave yourself even more vulnerable to all these people -- the one who cut the reed, the one who measured down to the millimetere the bore of the horn, the one who decided to adjust, ever so slightly, the proportion of metals in the alloy that is thwe horn's plating -- than if you were trying to play standard pitches and licks required of you by a composer.

Those elements are exactly what makes playing the saxophone interesting - the particular idiosyncracies of the instrument. A straight-music player's job is to hide those idiosyncracies as much as possible. Extended technique, by its nature, exploits them, so although perhaps you're a bit more at the mercy of the instrument (for example whole areas of my technique can be wiped away by a shitty reed, stuff I'd never need if I was only trying to play one note at a time), but it's more of a relationship. That's the reason why I doubt I'll be shifting to computers for quite a long time - the programmes seem designed to create these sounds, little to work against. And although people might be able to create their own instruments within the framework of the software, the architecture itself is the same (especially with Macs, I'd think). Operating system, hardware, that's pre-existing.

>

I'd like to hear some Subotnik, but without having done so, my comment in the previous post still stands. Morton Subotnik playing an instrument constructed by Morton Subotnik has to deal with the decisions he made a month, year, ten-years ago, just as a saxophone player has to deal with the decisions of others in the construction of the instrument. (and if that instrument is made from pre-fabricated transistors, capacitors, microchips etc., is that much different from choosing between a number of different saxophone/mouthpiece/reed/ligature combinations? There aren't as many, but there's several thousand.)

Having said all that, if I had 6 grand spare, I'd drop it tomorrow on an Aulophone, and instrument construction is something I'd like to get into eventually, acoustic and electronic (have an old wind-synth at my parent's place that I've not used for about 6 years, would like to see how it'd work out now, although that's synthesis, not construction proper).

Nat -- correct; my sense of the score as a technology has little to do with its specific material reality or, in fact, its internal syntax (conventional notation, graphic elements, fish in a fish tank, Mingus' "mental score paper"). The score is a means of recording sounds. So, yes, in one sense, the comparison with musical instruments does NOT really hold. Until we start expanding the definition of musical instruments to include synthesizers, samplers, laptops, turntables, tape loops, closed wave generator / feedback systems, etc. -- machines in which pre-defined routines can be entered, stored, called up and manipulated as they are being played back. And these musical sequences may be allowed to run with very little subsequent intervention on the part of their "creators". Software that is used to generate a piece of music from a set of programming rules and factory default settings, in my admittedly partially-illuminated understanding, is both musical instrument and score in one. And I was wondering if the conflation it represents works retrospectively, to saxophones, pianos, wooden flutes, berimbau, whatever. I think it does to a certain extent, and, because this is so, it releases some issues for me concerning "authorship".

Roland Barthes once famously proclaimed... well, attached his name to an essay in the death of the author in literary discourse was announced. For readers, the text exists independently of the author; a "book" is not the text plus an author, it is only the text. From Barthes' perpective, the author as a figure with authority, intent, an "outlook" or agenda, is as much the product of the text as the text is itself the product of any such putative individual. to read a text for Barthes is to re-write it (for a sample of this in practice, try on his study of Balzac's SARRASINE, S/Z.)

"To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing [...] [However] by refusing to assign a 'secret,' an ultimate meaning, to the text (and the world as text), liberates what may be called an anti-theological activity, an activity that is truly revolutionary since to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end, to refuse God and his hypostases--reason, science, law."

And, if there are no mastermind authors, then we had to re-draw the parameters not just of agency but of originality, too.

"We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture."

How this applies to individual musicians attmepting to interpret a score, I don't know. Can you accept this proposition and really perform classical repertoire with the appropriate enthusiasm, flair, and ear for what makes the work in question special? Barthes, I think, would have elevated all readers, all spectators, to the status of "critic", when he could have quite easily and justifiably done the opposite: exercised humility and levelled the status of all critics in some productive fashion. Becuase I do not believe a musician has to be a "critic" or theoretically-inclined to be successful in his or her own work. Though it is interesting to parse Barthes' propositions alongside some of the claims made in favor of "ego-less" improvisation.

Really, my only point is that the fact that we live in history at all means we are are partners, often unwittingly so, in an probably infinite number of of inequitable and even downright coercive and exploitative relationships. At the risk of sounding like a Maxist, I would say Barthes' proposition is to be considered a balm applied to a stab wound.

Nat> Never liked Zappa fwiw, maybe it's a generational thing ;)

Oh no, I hate him and I'm ten years older than you. Chops, yes: talent, no.

Joe,

Your last couple of questions relate as much to playing music as they do to trying to buy a torch/hi-fi/food - pretty much any object/service that's necessary to survive in most countries of the world can only be obtained by someone, somewhere, and often several parties entering into "inequitable and even downright coercive and exploitative relationships". My general response to that, is that rather than withdrawing from all relationships, or attacking those who don't, people should try to create new ones in any field possible.

Nat -- I think we agree, but big questions looms for me. Are such new relationships truly audible? How does a listener utilize these ideas about social organization, enfranchisement, and power in their evaluation of a given piece of music? Do these relationships exist in the music by virtue of the fact that the musicians embarked on their performance with these aims in mind? Or is it something I can perceive by virtue of the fact that I can establish a relationship to the work itself -- and, by extension, to those who made it?

I know I've asked these questions before. I know there may not be any answer beyond stating a personal preference. I kow the post-strucuturalists had an kind of answer, implicit in the quotes from Barthes (above), regarding the polymorphousness and the polysemy of texts, but then we are brought right back to the non-audible -- not silent -- aspects of music. The "dark matter", as it were, that, though imperceptible, is necessary to the coherence of the universe spun forth by a given instance of music.

An unrelated PS to the dicussion of improvisation and politics: I see that AMM are no longer participating in the Amplify 04 festival in Berlin, and I hear rumours that this is because John Tilbury considers that such participation would be inconsistent with his 'stance vis-à-vis the US and its agenda' . I was wondering whether Jon Abbey is in a position to say anything in public about the reasons behind AMM's apparent withdrawal?

AMM didn't withdraw, Tilbury withdrew. and yes, the reason you cite is basically it, although there's obviously lots of background, history and nuance involved.

everything I've ever tried to do with John has been a struggle, and a lot of it has fallen through. my original plan for AMPLIFY 2003 was built around AMM plus guests (in quartets with Toshi Nakamura, Evan Parker, Christian Wolff, one ending each of the three nights), but Keith, Eddie and myself couldn't get John to travel to the US. I went so far as to offer to hand out copies of any statements he wanted to make at the door to the show, but no go.

it wasn't a secret that I was behind the Berlin festival, which John committed and reconfirmed to doing multiple times over the last year or so. but last week he decided not to do it, and all the talking in the world, from Keith, Eddie, me, wasn't going to change that, so c'est la vie. I'm seriously excited about the replacement plan, the four hour (maybe longer) quartet of Keith/Toshi/Otomo/Sachiko, that should be very memorable, I think.

as I said somewhere else, only a few people very close to the situation fully understand what a miracle it is that Duos for Doris exists in any form. it's pretty safe to say that John and I will no longer be working together, unfortunately.

addendum: John used to always say that there were a "few good Americans", who he would proceed to list, Christian Wolff, Edward Said, there weren't many. I was always very proud to be included on his list, but evidently his list is now down to zero.

If that's his attitude, I wonder how he justifies being part of the Cage season at the Barbican last month.

The only good American is a dead American!