A thought on listening and the millenial age

Listening requires patience, a quality which seems to be diminishing greatly among the general populace.

People argue about what music is, I say that music is sound existing over time. It seems to be a definition that doesn't diminish when looking at non-Western musical traditions. It doesn't require notation, Western instruments, a type of structure, or anything else. Simply sound and time. Both which are continually happening.

I think that the difficulty has become a lack of understanding what the listener's job is. There are undoubtedly many types of listening, which include listening for entertainment (literally...something that happens between two events) such as driving in the car and putting on something familiar, listening for meditation, listening for dance steps, etc. But there is a type of listening that is very important, which seems to be decreasing. Listening for listening!

So...what does this involve? It involves stopping what you're doing, and just LISTENING. Not listening for a purpose of finding a melodic theme, or getting you pumped for a gym workout, or keeping you from getting too "bored" while doing chores. No purpose.

But why?? Why listen for no purpose? After all, we have so much to do, day in and day out. Take care of the house, the yard, the kids, go to work, cook, clean, etc., etc., ad libitum, ad nauseum. Actually, it is because of these things that we NEED to listen for no purpose. When watering, listen to the sound of the water leaving the hose, hitting the leaves, falling to the soil below...it can transform the "chore" of watering into a "blessing" of watering. Sometimes we need to slow down and just experience what we have in front of us.

Now, music is something that gives us an opportunity to do this. It can transport, transform, our mind. It can teach us more about ourselves, how we behave, how we think. Particularly, twentieth century art music, holds many keys to this possibility. More and more, composers are truly just interested in the experience of sound and want to give others and themselves as many opportunities to explore different sounds as possible!

The millenial age is full of electronic gadgets. When we stop talking to our friend at dinner, we have to immediately pull out our blackberry and check our email, stocks, sports scores, news. We can't enjoy the silence between two thoughts anymore because of this constant onslaught of tempting distractions. So, we have two choices: either give in to the distractions (status quo) or learn to choose otherwise. And yes, I believe that the experiencing of music (particularly, the listening for listening's sake) is an avenue through which we can step outside of these distractions.

Pieces to listen to (set all else aside for an hour and just LISTEN!) could include:
--Music for 18 Musicians -- Steve Reich (a twentieth century minimalist masterpiece)
--Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet -- Gavin Bryars (ditto)
--For Bunita Marcus -- Morton Feldman
--Voyage that Never Ends -- Stefano Scodanibbio

Life-changing pieces. Prepare to be entranced, but if you dare to take a listen...you MUST listen all the way through with no distractions, no talking, no phones, no computers, etc. And you will be greatly rewarded!

Plus-Minus Throes

Well, my big compositional project currently is a realization of Stockhausen's seminal and notorious work, Plus-Minus.  Luckily, there are two other realizers on board (Bruce Friedman and Jeff Schwartz), and we're doing two pages each (Bruce, who's idea this was, is stuck with three).

Our instrumentation is clarinet, trumpet, doublebass, and piano.  There is one page written already, and two others underway.  We will hopefully have this ready to perform on a Sonic Liberation Players concert in fall.  

I have two other projects that are on the backburner for a little while:  The Mountain Spirit, a piece for speaking pianist, based on the poem by Gary Snyder, and a piece for dance, choreographed by Kenneth Walker.  Will hopefully soon be back to these!

In non-musical compositional news, I am also working on a photography project that will end up being a sort of collage.  I'm using techniques much like John Cage's techniques for composing Roaratorio, but instead of using a book as fodder, I'm using a small town, and photography rather than sound.  This is underway, I've taken 6 of the 64 planned photos, so will be finished well before summer!

All for now...