Category Archives: Music Contemplations

Contemplations on Music

Seriousness of Composition, the Composer, Xenakis

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Yesterday I finished reading a two part interview with Xenakis, Reynolds, Lansky, and Mâche (Part 1 and Part 2) and found myself once again encountering Xenakis’s views on composition and music, ones that I had found a deep connection with before and now once again. I’ve always felt a depth of seriousness in his work and in his approach to composition and found a great deal to appreciate. I have noticed that regardless of the style, technique, or character, all of the composers and pieces of music I’ve strongly connected with share a certain seriousness to them. Listening to the music, I always felt a certain sense that there was a great deal of the composer in the work, not necessarily something expressive (and more often the case no sense of expressionism at all), but rather… as if the composer had put a lot on the line for this work, that the work in itself means a great deal to the composer and they exposed something very essential of themselves in bringing the work about.

Thinking about Xenakis and all of this as I am starting to focus on my musical work again, I feel there is a great deal to consider and to learn from…

Hans Otte – Aquarian Music

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I’m sitting here late into the night working away on some writing, listening to some of the loveliest music I’ve heard in quite some time, Hans Otte’s Siebengesang and Wassermanmusik from his album Aquarian Music (also listenable on Rhapsody). Such lovely harmonies and colors, I’m looking forward to getting to know these pieces much better over the next few weeks…

Quebec City and the AMS

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The past Thursday through Sunday I went to Quebec City for the first time to take a little bit of a holiday as well as to go along with Lisa to the American Musicological Society’s National Conference.  The last time I was in Canada was maybe six years ago for a weekend trip to Montreal, back when I was living in New York; I remember having had a good time and was quite looking forward to this trip. 

Of the city itself, I had two opportunities to walk around the city.  The first was on my own on a particularly beautiful morning: the light was clear and vibrant in the cool air, the colors of leaves were rich for the Autumn changes, and the quietness of the city of refreshing.  Walking around the old town I remember walking down one street that reminded me very much of when I used to walk down Polk Street to get to work in San Francisco and as you went North and got over the hills and started to walk down towards the water, on a sunny day you would be greeted by just the most wonderful sight of the bay.  The image in Quebec looking down this street had a similar feel, and although instead of the bay one saw more city, it was still nice to have been reminded of my San Francisco experiences and to have a familiar experience nonetheless.

The second time I went to explore the city with Lisa it was a very solid gray, windy, and cold out.  It certainly showed the city in quite literally a very different light. The old town felt like a nice place to see and visit but not one where one would live in if one were to live in the area.  Lisa and I did have a nice meal at a creperie that day, and it was nice just to be walking around with her and to spend time together there away from the conference.

As for the conference, I did attend a few of the sessions and found I had a very different impression from this conference than the one we went to in Seattle a few years back.  I found a number of the papers to be quite interesting, especially the ones on Ligeti and Stravinsky.  The one Stravinsky paper discussing finding a very strong numerical relationship between the intervallic structure of chords and the rhythmic structure in the Rite of Spring was really quite exciting and probably the paper that most left an impression on me; I will certainly be looking forward to finding time to go through the score to the Rite of Spring when I have a chance!

More than anything it was quite nice to see friends and acquaintances I have met through Lisa over the years.  It’s really great to think back and see how everyone’s careers have developed, from their concerns over their dissertations, to publishing, tenure, and building families.  I am sure it will be nice to continue to see everyone as time goes by and to see how life unfolds for us all.

Overall it was an excellent trip for both visiting a lovely city and for being around a very good conference.  I will be looking forward to both when next I’ll be able to visit Canada and to the next AMS I’ll have a chance to be around (which will most likely be next year’s in Nashville!).

One last note: I did manage to go and try the three things which I had heard quite a bit about: poutine (french fries with gravy and cheese curds), sugar pie (tarte au sucre) and Tim Horton’s (coffee, sandwich, and Canadian Maple doughnut).  I can say that I enjoyed all three as much as I thought I would! ^_^

Bob Snyder – Music and Memory

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A month or so ago I had borrowed Bob Snyder’s “Music and Memory: An Introduction” from the library’s LINK+ system and realized now that I had not gotten around to writing about it. What a great book! I have long had many thought about time, particularly the experience of time, and reading the information presented by Snyder in the book were as if reading many of my own thoughts but done much more deeply and clearly than I had ever taken them. I felt really quite lucky to have come across this book when I did.

Unfortunately, the only problem was that I did not have enough time to read the entire book so had to skim through the rest and take notes with pen and paper (which was surprisingly effective for me to do, as taking the notes and speeding through I felt I did cover a lot of the ground and retained a great deal more than if I had not taken notes; certainly will be exploring taking notes more often in this way). One of my favorite lines I read was when he was talking about expectation as “memory cued by present experience but not fully conscience,” Snyder writes:

“With expectations we can “feel” the future in the present.” (p. 49)

I also very much enjoyed reading the section near the end of memory strategies, particularly memory sabotage. The observations about high vs. low information strategies as well as memory length strategies were those which I had thought about a great deal, and I was glad to see in the appendix listing of many of my favorite composers as examples of memory sabotage (i.e. Feldman, Cage, etc.).

It was really quite interesting to learn all about how memory works (or at least how it is currently understood to work), all the different stages and elements involved in the different levels of memory. I would whole-heartedly suggest this book to any person composing and/or analyzing music as I think it can give some interesting ways to think about music, especially as a tool to help analyze in some way how things do and do not work when listening to a piece of music. I will be looking forward to when I will have a chance to read through this text once again!