Welcome to Composers' Forum!

Welcome to the Fall 2018 Composers' Forum blog! Here we'll collegially discuss the music of our many fascinating guests.

Each semester, you're required to write one blog post (about 500 words) discussing your reaction to a guest's music and/or their talk. We occasionally also have prompts that require everyone to write a shorter post on the same topic (for example, the first assignment about collaboration). When you're not blogging about a guest yourself, you do need to read other people's posts and leave a comment. This needn't be very long, and is a great way to stay engaged with each other's ideas. We'll be keeping track of who participates in the online discussion, so please chime in whenever there is an opportunity to write. We do not write about guests if they are NYU faculty, so there are weeks in which we won't be writing on the blog.

When you accept your invitation to the blog, please take a moment to set up your profile so we can all get to know each other! Fill in your Blogger profile with a short about me, and upload a picture of yourself. We'd love to hear about what kind of music you love (include 3 of your favorite artists/albums/pieces/songs—I know it's difficult!), the sort of work you do, and what program you're in at NYU, and any other interests you'd like us to know about. Include a link to your website/SoundCloud/other web presence as well, so we can all listen to your music. Some of you have Google Plus set up on your NYU emails, so if you can't do all this, it's fine—please have a picture, though!

You can edit your profile by accessing "user settings" under the "settings" tab on the left, and then clicking edit.

Finally, remember that this blog is private; only students in the class can see it, so don't be afraid to voice your opinions.

500 words on Jonathan Bailey Holland

In this week lecture, we discussed with Jonathan Holland on his career as a composer and his insights. I felt very connected with Jonathan because of his messages he portrayed through his music , his stylistic choices and by being an african american composer. I very much liked the frist piece that Jonathan played for us because it used the elements of double mindedness. You could very much point of the main melody and the "harmonically stable" parts in it ; but then on top melodies that were clustered, chromatic lines, and contrasting melody were there. I feel like music that plays with uncommon harmonic and melodic tendencies should be tapped into more because it makes you think a little differently, and challenges what you think sounds "right".

I think this was the first composer we heard that composed music based off social issues which was pretty cool. As a composer myself, I ultimate goal is to be able to take social and political issues from my surrounding communities and make music that can educate, inspire and create conversation, which I think Jonathan did with his compositions.

I am guessing that Jonathan main instrument was piano but I wish I asked more about his upbringing as a student into the composer world since we are all in that journey, maybe if one of you talked to him and got more info you can comment below to discuss!

Another main point that I saw through his music was his use of use of drum kit, audio tracks and spoken word in classical compositions. I feel like in this day of age, its hard to not use those.

Overall , Jonathan is pretty dope! I wanna be a Jonathan lol

Percussion in the context of New Music

Jason Treuting’s presentation brought percussion in the context of new music to the forefront of my mind. I find percussion to be one of the most interesting instrument because it’s one that is still extremely young and constantly evolving, so therefore extremely compatible with the ever shifting landscape of new music.

Starting mainly with Luigi Russolo’s “Art of Noise,” noise instruments have become more and more common in general repertoire. Percussion instruments being perhaps the first proper manifestation of this idea, it makes sense that Cage stated this in his “The Future of Music – Credo:”

Any sound is acceptable to the composer of percussion music; he explores the academically forbidden «nonmusical» field of sound insofar as is manually possible… As soon as these methods are crystallized into one or several widely accepted methods, the means will exist for group improvisations of unwritten but culturally important music [to exist] (Cage).

To sort of unpack this, it seems to be widely accepted that the direction that percussion music naturally leads composers towards is one that is a huge step in the evolution and advancement of new music overall. Treuting’s path is a wonderful example of this.

In classical orchestras, percussion is arguably used solely to ornament and emphasize, and never as a focal point within the ensemble. When virtuosic percussionists needed to be satisfied, composers had to turn away from classical western music and look to “world music;” They had to find parameters to explore outside of tonal melodic movement, and turn to noise and more gestural movements; Rhythm had to be expanded upon past duple versus triple and become complex polyrhythms, as well as important structural scaffolding and a musical motif. These are all goals that are extremely prevalent in new music in general.

Therefore as soon as I began to see what sort of music Treuting gravitates towards composing and his core idea that all sounds are music, I became extremely excited. He is truly a composer worth noting because he is one forged in a crucible of new music as well as a burgeoning instrument – exactly the type of person Cage predicted would be created and that would help push music forward. Which funny enough Cage seems to be a direct compositional predecessor to Treuting. More specifically, they both share a focus on the individuality of performances and the role of the composer as more of a guide and organizer rather than a creator or leader. This compositional method for Cage seems to be influenced by his religion and investment in philosophy; For Treuting, however, it seems to stem from his forced collaboration as a percussionist left with vague suggestions from composers and his experience as a performer (and therefore more a collaborator rather than leader).

In a time where fixed media is at such a height of popularity due to it’s ease of access and the sheer amount of control it gives creators over a piece of art – especially the ability to make a piece “perfect” – it is extremely refreshing to have artists like Treuting strive to put value into individual performances again, and to see risks not only be taken but to be embraced. For me, as well as being a great excuse to analyze percussion in this context, his presentation was a good reminder that music is expression: it is meant to be risky, there are meant to be mistakes and disagreements in collaboration – and that as composers perhaps we should remember that using sample packs is the easy way out of something difficult. I don’t believe all of his composition methods are for me, but there is definitely something for me to take away from them.

Jason Treuting - Qualms with Sudoku

Jason Treuting spoke to our class this week about some of the percussion pieces he has written. I think one of the major takeaways that many of us had was that he is a believer that “all sound is music,” the idea that anything audible could be considered musical and there is no line distinguishing noise from art. One of the pieces that he shared with us was based on the idea of sudoku puzzles which contain nine numbers horizontally and vertically in a grid pattern, similar to 12 tone rows. I was particularly interested in the idea of this piece because I am addicted to solving sudoku puzzles. I try to complete a Sudoku puzzle every day during my commute to school or back again. I expected him to go into detail about his thought process and an explanation of the guidelines he provided to the performers of the piece. However, I was a little bit disappointed that he did not explain the exact process that he went through to compose the peace, nor do I think I fully understood how performers understood what they were playing while I watched the video of the body percussion performance that he shared with us.

It was interesting to see that the music that each of the players was following was just the nine rows of numbers, but at what point was there a difference between music that Jason had written and music that the performers were just making up on the spot? Obviously, there were some parameters that they were following to end up at rhythms and patterns that sounded to be in sync with one another, but maybe the audience needs to know what those parameters are to be able to fully appreciate the piece and the concept behind it, otherwise who’s to say that the music wasn’t just made up in the moment?

I think some of these thoughts stem from my general dislike of music that must be co-written by the performer at the time of the rehearsal or performance. Although Jason did not fully disclose the guidelines given to the performers, it was clear that they are given a massive amount of responsibility by being provided with a minimal amount of music to follow and therefore must create much of the piece themselves. I understand that many people enjoy this type of collaboration, but I prefer to write and listen to music where musicians collaborate through their interpretation and do not have to worry about being a co-composer.

One Minute of Music (SORRY THIS IS SO LATE)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjTyrfmO_Mw

blu and exile- my world is

Used to listen to this a ton in early high school--gave birth to this idea of really strong samples (musical objects) being placed together, a kind of thing I like to do in my own work

Reflections On Jason Treuting

Jason Treuting's presentation brought about a variety of interesting questions. While I would say our compositional strategies are actually quite different, there are certainly things that I find very engaging about his process, even if I don't always enjoy the aesthetic result. There are many pieces of his that I do enjoy though, but in his compositional strategy they can sometimes be a hit or miss for me. Let me elaborate:

One quality that I find fascinating is how he removes himself from his work. It's no surprise he takes his cues from John Cage, the master of that kind of objectivity. Beginning from the Sonata and Interludes, moving to Music of Changes and Imaginary Landscape no. 4, and culminating in 4'33'', there is this gradual insistence that his presence in his music be meaningless, that for sound to really be just sound he himself must not filter it through his own aesthetic hierarchies. As a result, John Cage produces work that is paradoxically very separate from himself as it is inalienably him, setting up this wall that makes it hard to critique the music itself but rather the rules that set it in place. I see a similar paradox (to perhaps a slightly lesser degree) in the work of Treuting, and one that poses some concerns to his own conceptions of his music.

Towards the end of his lecture, Treuting said that he doesn't think it's important for audiences to know the system that warrants the musical result, and that one can enjoy the aesthetic output without knowledge of the rules that made it so. However the sound is never consistently his own, but the rules are. And perhaps this could be a side-effect of being a composition student hard-wired for criticism, but evaluating the piece and critiquing the structure and the musical material can only really be based on the rules that set it in place, rules of which the audience may not be aware of. The effect becomes this weird separation between audience member and composer, which has its own pros and cons naturally. This isn't to say though that all music must have audible process, but I think (and this could just be my musical bias) that an acknowledgement of the audience/listener experience is important in making pieces that glue to them. It's not manipulation so much as it is cuing into one's bolder musical objects in one's piece, not conceptual. 

As I write this, I realize the paradoxes in my own thinking on this subject. I would never want music to be one thing, especially the things that I only like. But it becomes hard to me to enjoy some of Treuting's music without understanding the mechanisms that birthed it, since I cannot hear them. And the only reason why I can say that is because Treuting's pieces at the CME performance did not strike me as engaging on their own, but when the context was made aware, they did. That's not to say that I don't like his other work that invokes this enigmatic process and produces similar aesthetically results. Some of his pieces, in their somewhat static arc, offer a totally different listening experience for me that I do enjoy. However I found the musical material in Homage to the Triad to not justify the duration, and for me the piece, while it had cool moments, didn't satiate my auditory desire. 

Jason Treuting

Jason Treuting brought many interesting compositional approaches to Composer's Forum this week. Jason is very dedicated to his approach – giving performer’s lots of creative control and working with processes – which makes sense given his background as a percussionist. As he mentioned, percussionists are often given vague guidelines such as “metal: high and low” and left to decide what that means. Though some performers may desire more direction, Jason loves this creative control and wants to give the same to his performers. However, in the world of open-parameter composition, there are many fine lines to take into consideration.

One fine line to consider is how many guidelines does it take for the piece to be “composed”? In thinking of this, we may consider improvisatory pieces by composers like John Zorn and Christopher Burns. Zorn’s Cobra is essentially a set of cards that a conductor can use to impose rules on an ensemble’s improvisation. Burn’s Injunctions is similar, but uses a set of memorized hand signals with no conductor. If these pieces never sound the same, are they really the same “composition”? While most of Jason’s music isn’t improvised, it does often consist of performer’s constructing their own version of his pieces with their own found materials. The general effect of the piece remains, but the performance differs from performer to performer. I do believe a composition can be a general concept that spawns many variations, but the concept must be strong enough carry some consistency between each performance. This is what makes pieces like Riley’s In C so successful.

Another fine line a composer would need to consider is what parameters can they leave entirely up to the performer? Jason indicated that he leaves pitch up to his performers, but has rarely experienced major variation in what people choose. Does this mean we should let performance practice become a substitute for some notations in our music? I admire Jason’s dedication to leaving parameter’s fully in control of the performer, but also think simple safe-guards like “pitches from any mode” can prevent performances outside of the aesthetic we have in mind. Of course, that risk is something Jason may find appealing.

I found the Contemporary Music Ensemble concert of his music quite enjoyable. There was a nice variety of music that I felt captured Jason’s spirit quite well. Along the lines of Zorn and Burns, Treuting’s piece Oblique Music for Four Plus made nice reference to Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies cards. The last piece on the program, Homage to the Triad, seemed longer than it needed to be, but I still found it interesting to watch his process of creating the gradually changing paintings in tandem with the ensemble’s slowly shifting music. I particularly appreciated that he performed with the CME, even though they were showcasing his compositional work. I’m glad to see the composer-performer identity becoming more present in our community. While academia is still not geared in this direction, it is inspiring to see people like Jason Treuting, Caroline Shaw, and Nathalie Joachim leading careers that are not limited to one traditional path.