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Zorn List Digest         Saturday, May 2 1998         Volume 02 : Number 351



In this issue:
-
       Re[2]: Leng Tche
       Re: ZAPPA
       Resoundings Fest in Atlanta
       Re: Zappa as a composer
       Re: Boulez
       Re: ZAPPA

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri,  1 May 1998 22:07:27 UT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re[2]: Leng Tche

>>>I noticed in the liner notes of NAKED CITY's Leng
Tche. that there is special thanks given to Mike
Patton and the Melvins.
I noticed that Leng Tche is fairly Melvinesque from
the first time I heard it.
Did Mike or any of the Melvis perform on this album?
Why was thanks given?

Chad<<<

Well, it's been said from, I think, Zorn's mouth that neither played on the
album.

<<
listen to The Melvins "Joe Preston" album the idea for Leng T'che was taken
from the third song "Hands First Flower" 20 min. of slow chords and ambient
noise's!
>>

Melvins were doing this way before Joe, with Charmicarmicat on Eggnog and the
beginning of the Lysol album.  Even way back on Ozma with Eyes Flys.

PeterR

- -

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 01 May 1998 16:30:17 -0700
From: "Patrice L. Roussel" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: ZAPPA

    I was just giving my perception of what happened in France. You
know, what you learn and feel when things are happening in front of your
eyes or from the mouth of other artists who were not moving in the alleys
of power. I guess I should read more about how Boulez is interpreted
these days, instead of trusting what I saw and heard when it was happe-
ning.

    Patrice (who starts to wonder how far from France you have to be
      to see IRCAM as a glamourous institution).

- -

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 01 May 1998 23:30:02 -0400
From: Lang Thompson <[e-mail]>
Subject: Resoundings Fest in Atlanta

Just thought some of you might want to know about the Resounding(s)
festival which will be held in Atlanta July 16, 17 & 18.  It's co-sponsored
by the National Black Arts Festial and the Goethe Institute.  Though the
line-up doesn't seem to be entirely confirmed just yet, it's planned to
include Peter Brotzmann, Leo Smith, Alexander von Schilppenbach, George
Lewis, Peter Kowald, Andrew Cyrille, Paul Lovens, Roscoe Mitchell, Conrad
Bauer, Gunter Sommer and others.  The info number is 888-836-6223.
- ------------------------------------------------------
Lang Thompson
http://www.tcf.ua.edu/wlt4
New at Funhouse:  Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan obituary.

"Zathras beast of burden to many others.  Is sad
life.  Probably have sad death.  But at least
there is symmetry."  --  Zathras

- -

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 2 May 1998 02:50:41 -0300 (ADT)
From: Nathaniel Dorward <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Zappa as a composer

A few bits from Ben Watson/Out to Lunch's comments on Zappa's orchestral
writing in _Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play_: this on
the LSO albums (sorry for the big textual swatch here, but here goes):

    "The beauty of Zappa's orchestral music is a fresh, unacademic
weighing of particular sounds: you can hear him think as he balances drum
rolls and string scratching against the clarinet line....
    "Zappa is an extremely linear--or real-time--composer.  His
musical decisions result from the attention of the listening ear.  Whereas
Darmstadt composers frequently pursue a dialectic of schematic,
mathematical invention versus playability and audibility, Zappa uses
scores to direct musicians rather than to figure abstract shapes.  This
means that he very rarely attains the complex simultaneity that
characterizes Boulez or early Stockhausen.  In writing for full orchestra,
without the automatic simultaneity of playing with an improvising band of
musicians, he does not exploit the specific potential of scores, which is
to generate separate--but simultaneous--events.  However, what he does
contribute is a sense of freewheeling absurdity that academic composers
find impossible to attempt without sounding tiresome. ...
    "This orchestral music is an essential adjunct to the
project/object.  Not only does it allow us to hear Zappa's music refracted
through the traditional vehicle of bourgeois expression, it also
demonstrates the economic vicissitudes and social contradictions involved
in the area.  Just as much as the _200 Motels_ court case, Zappa uses the
opportunity to make all kinds of fissures appear in the for-granted status
of traditional practices.  But it cannot be said that Zappa has left the
field of classical composition behind as he has left fusion (or 'abstract
music using rock sonorities'): a burnt-up field.  If the postmoderns were
correct, and the high-art avant-garde were utterly moribund, Zappa's work
would stand out heroically against minimal piety and neo-religious
obfuscation.  However, new sounds are still being generated with the
symphony orchestra, as the work of James Dillon demonstrates.  In this
context, Zappa's orchestral style sounds like an intriguing burlesque in a
side alley."

A few pages later, in connection with Boulez and _The Perfect Stranger_,
Watson notes that "However, he would not let the collaboration be read as
'endorsement' of Zappa, and puzzled the press with his reticence in
praising Zappa's scores.  'I reserve judgement about all the qualities of
Zappa's music,' he told _Liberation_.  Out of the press conferences,
though, he replied to a question asking if he liked Zappa's music by
saying, 'Certainly.  I found a kind of vitality and it was very good for
our musicians to do that: they were not accustomed at all to it, and
that's good to work on it.'"

Don't know how much I'd agree with all the foregoing, but thought it worth
an airing. --N

                        *

                    Nate Dorward  ([e-mail])
                    website: http://is2.dal..ca/~ndorward/

                        *

        And I hear
            what's missing there
            music is core of the missing
                the code of fly time

                        --Clark Coolidge


- -

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 02 May 1998 08:11:41 -0800
From: George Grella <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Boulez

Patrice L. Roussel writes:

> I was just giving my perception of what happened in France. You
> know, what you learn and feel when things are happening in front of your
> eyes or from the mouth of other artists who were not moving in the alleys
> of power. I guess I should read more about how Boulez is interpreted
> these days, instead of trusting what I saw and heard when it was happe-
> ning.

I know that Boulez has a personality that has rubbed a lot of people the
wrong way, but to complain about his character and/or personal
motivations is just to indulge in gossip.  And attacking him because his
musical style is a certain way, not another way, isn't fair; Zorn, Cecil
Taylor, all the other musicians that people on this list admire could be
attacked in the same manner.

Whether one likes him as a person, or even likes his music, Boulez has
done a great deal for contemporary music and his international stature
has come from hard work and ability, he earned it.  Coincidentally, when
I got home a new copy of the New York Review of Books had arrived with
an article by Charles Rosen, "Who's Afraid of the Avant-Garde?" in which
he mentions Boulez many times, including this relevant footnote:

"It is significant that when Pierre Boulez took over the New York
Philharmonic and started to schedule many unfamiliar works, the
subscription dropped from the 100 percent achieved under Leonard
Bernstein, but that when he left a few years later, it had mounted back
to over 95 percent - and, most important of all, the average age of the
subscribers had fallen by ten years.  And when Boulez initiated a
two-week series at the end of the season called "Rug Concerts," for
which the seats in the parterre were removed and young people could sit
on the floor (like the Prom Concerts in London), 1500 people were turned
away every day for seven days a week.  After he left, there was an
attempt to continue the project, but it failed.  Young music lovers
would come to hear Boulez if they could sit on the floor, but they would
not buy a ticket to sit in a chair or come for a conductor less
adventurous."

You can check out the rest at "www.nybooks.com."

gg

- -

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 01 May 1998 12:58:20 -0700
From: "Patrice L. Roussel" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: ZAPPA

On Fri, 01 May 1998 12:24:22 -0800  George Grella wrote:
>
> Patrice L. Roussel writes:
>
> > Boulez got attacked quite a bit in the '80s for having a very narrow vision
> > of what is great contemporary music. I remember how much he dismissed
> > basically every composer who did not have his card of affiliated serial
> > composer. Even composers such as Ligetti had a hard time to be accepted
> > (I don't remember Boulez' comment about Ligetti, but it was far from being
> > flattering). Anyway, it seems to me that under more and more pressure to
> > open the range of the Ensemble Intercontemporain program, he decided (against
> > his will, I am sure), to get "outsiders" (definition easy to match when you
> > know how narrow Boulez'vision of a good modern composer is). Surprisingly,
> > he chose Zappa. I will always feel that his choice of Zappa was his way to
> > show that he was more open that people thought, but, at the same time, he
> > chose an artist whose "serious" music was more or less falling in the only
> > cannon he believed was worth pushing: post-serial music!
>
> This is not accurate or fair to Boulez, nor is it understanding of the
> context that Zappa/Boulez/Ensemble Intercontemporain fall under.
>
> Boulez has, for DECADES, promoted and performed music that is not serial
> music; Messiaen, Carter, Birtwhistle, Ligeti, Ferneyhough and others.

I was not implying at all that Boulez started to program music outside
serial music after getting Zappa...

Yes, Boulez, has been programming music that is not serial music for a long
time. But when it came to younger composers (than him), he was fairly reluctant
to do so in the '60, and '70s.

Boulez has been highly critical of most of the genres that are not derivative
from serial music (again, I am talking about the period when his power was
in full action).

I don't even want to start with how he treated, for a long time, composers of
his age: Cage (yes, I know, Cage is 13 years older that Boulez), Stockhausen
(after their "dispute"), Xenakis (who had to fight to keep his music studio
alive when IRCAM was gobbling down huge resources for the results we know),
Ligetti, Kagel.

The fact that he has cooled down in that past 20 years does not change what
he did for a long time. With his fascination for power, he ended up to control
a large portion of what contemporary music was in France. Some composers
started seriously to breath when he had to retire from many of his official
positions; unfortunately, it was already too late for many of them.

> Yeah, he's been peforming Ligeti long before the three concerto CD of
                ^^^^^^
I don't know why he ended up to play Ligetti, but it was certainly not
for liking his music.

> recent issue.  Saying that the Ensemble had to open up their range
> completely misunderstands the state of contemporary music, which has the
> broadest range of any point in the history of western art music.
>
> This is a sort of anti-snob snobbery I have seen a lot, especially in
> regards to Boulez.  When he was a younger composer, he was a rigorous
> serialist and, admittedly, very rigid about that in his opinions.  But
> the guy has also been one of the world's leading conductors since the
> 1960's, leading all sorts of non--serial music from the contemporary
> composers above through Wagner, Mahler, the second Viennese school
> [including their non-serial works, of which there are many], Berlioz,
> Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky.  That's a lot of music.  His own work has
> broken free of the same rigid constraints since then as well; listen to
> his piece memorializing Bruno Maderna, among others.  And the Ensemble
> exists to play contemporary music, whether Boulez is leading them or
> not, and that means, yes, non-serial pieces, pieces other than by Boulez
> himself.
>
> Don't be so surprised by Zappa, think of it in terms of music, not
> fashion or attitude.  Zappa's music is firmly in the vein that Varese
> pioneered.  And it is also well made in terms of craft.  Boulez has long
> been an exponent of Varese, so why wouldn't he be sympathetic to Zappa's
> work on musical terms alone?  I know he's been on the record as saying
> it's good music, and he liked it.
>
> Boiulez's ego is certainly such that he has no need to show or prove to
> anybody how open his mind is.  What does he care, what does he have to
> prove?  Zilch.  Especially in terms of contemporary music, he's THE MAN
                                  ^^^^^^^

I am not sure that I follow you there either. Yes, Boulez put out some
interesting compositions in the late '40s and '50s. Anything major after
that? I am not sure. It seems to me that the more unproductive he became
in the '60s, the more bitter he ended up. Have you ever tried to understand
why the supposed "greatest modern composer after WWII" stopped composing
and turned to conducting?

> there; the only comparable figures I can think of who have done as much
> for the whole range of contemporary music are David Robertson [also a
> director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain] and Paul Sacher, in terms of
> programming and performing.
>
> Boulez is demonstrating a new side lately, but it's quite the opposite
            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I have not stated anything related the the "current" Boulez. I don't care
how nice he is becoming in his old age.

> of what Patrice claimed; he's used Berg as a stepping stone BACK in time
> to Mahler.  He's been in the midst of recording a Mahler cycle over the
> past three or four years.

    Patrice.



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Patrice L. Roussel writes:

[I can't say for sure that I know what this all actually means, but I
still disagree with what I think it indicates.]

> Yes, Boulez, has been programming music that is not serial music for a long
> time. But when it came to younger composers (than him), he was fairly reluctant
> to do so in the '60, and '70s.
>


Casting aside the subjective judgement ["fairly reluctant"] I would have
to say, so what?  This is not criticism, this is just saying that you
don't have the same taste that Boulez had in the 60s and 70s, although I
don't feel you have a good idea of what that taste was. As music
director the the NYPO, for example, Boulez was under no obligation to
program music he didn't like, much less music by composers younger than
him.  I don't see the point of judging him on that basis anyway; is the
only criteria that mattered that the composers were younger than him?
Do you mean that if the composer was a younger contemporary even, Boulez
would reject their work, based on AGE?  If their music was not like his,
but if they were older, he'd program them?  Nonsense.  At New York,
Chicago, Cleveland, Boulez brought a lot of contemporary music, which
meant music that was contemporary to him and the audiences, regardless
of the composers exact birthdate.  And much of this music was not serial
music.  Try "Sinfonia" for example, and please, please don't bother to
look up Berio's birthdate.

>
>
> Boulez has been highly critical of most of the genres that are not derivative
> from serial music (again, I am talking about the period when his power was
> in full action).
>
What is his full power and when was it in action?  Was he more powerful
30 years ago or today?  How in the world can you measure it?  And what
does it matter anyway?  Yes, Boulez has been critical of non serial
music, and guess what, he's also been praiseworthy of it.

> I don't even want to start with how he treated, for a long time, composers of
> his age: Cage (yes, I know, Cage is 13 years older that Boulez), Stockhausen
> (after their "dispute"), Xenakis (who had to fight to keep his music studio
> alive when IRCAM was gobbling down huge resources for the results we know),
> Ligetti, Kagel.
>
From mentioning his "treatment" of Cage, I can assume you've read the
Cage-Boulez correspondence?  Cage had a long, productive career full of
premieres and performances.  His musical path in no way intersected with
nor siphoned interest from Boulez's, and vice-versa.  Again, so what?
Are you saying that his "treatment" of Cage, by which I feel you imply
something harsh, was his not agreeing with Cage's ideas, not wanting to
perform Cage's works?  That is/was Boulez's choice, and it is/was an
absolutely valid one.  Unless down to the great, all-powerful Cage.

IRCAM is government funded, but you make it sound like it was/should
have been Xenakis's own home studio.  What do you mean?  Are you
implying that IRCAM bought equipment so Xenakis couldn't buy it?  The
Xenakis deserved French government funding all for himself and not for
French resources?

Now, Stockhausen.  Again, how did Boulez "treat" him?  I get the feeling
that you have your favorites, and if Boulez disagreed with them, that
makes him a bad man in your eyes.  As if Stockhausen never had a
critical word to say about another composer/musician!  These guys are
allowed to dispute, argue and disagree with each other.  Boulez's power
didn't seem to prevent German Radio and Harmonia Mundi from including
many of his works, and many works by other contemporaries who were
perhaps younger than Boulez, on a ten-volume, four-LP-in-each-volume
collection of contemporary music.  Yep, Kagel was there too.


>
>
> The fact that he has cooled down in that past 20 years does not change what
> he did for a long time. With his fascination for power, he ended up to control
> a large portion of what contemporary music was in France. Some composers
> started seriously to breath when he had to retire from many of his official
> positions; unfortunately, it was already too late for many of them.
>

Have you been reading the Joan Peyser biography?  It sounds like it.
The problem with the biography is that it really has very little to do
about music itself.  But if "power" is the issue, well then, the book is
full of it.  As if it matters.

These composers you're talking about, who are they?  What did Boulez do
to them?  How were they unable to breath?  And what does it mean that it
is too late for many of them?  Too late for what?  Say something that
means something, not this emotional assertions.


> I don't know why he ended up to play Ligetti, but it was certainly not
> for liking his music.
>
Wrong.  Boulez records Ligeti's music, with Ligeti's supervision,
because he likes the music.  Like you say, you don't know why.  If you
don't want to believe me, then keep it at that.  Unless he was hoping
for that elusive platinum selling pop hit?


> I am not sure that I follow you there either. Yes, Boulez put out some
> interesting compositions in the late '40s and '50s. Anything major after
> that? I am not sure. It seems to me that the more unproductive he became
> in the '60s, the more bitter he ended up. Have you ever tried to understand
> why the supposed "greatest modern composer after WWII" stopped composing
> and turned to conducting?
>
Boulez has not stopped composing.  You are totally wrong; there is
nothing to understand.  Next time you're in the record store, go the the
bin and find his recent DG recording of "Explosante-Fixe," a world
premiere recording of a recent work.  And as for important Boulez pieces
from post 1950s, "Eclat," "Rituel," "Pli Selon Pli," "Notations,"  the
above mentioned work.  Like you said, you're not sure.  Leave it at
that; I get the impression that you're not close friends with the man,
so I don't trust your judgement as to how "bitter he ended up."  From
what I can see, he's still going, what with his recording of Mahler 9
released last month.


> I have not stated anything related the the "current" Boulez. I don't care
> how nice he is becoming in his old age.
>
But of course, Patrice, you have mentioned the "current" Boulez, you did
so when you gave your idea of his reasons for recording Zappa.  That's
the current Boulez, not just in my terms, but in yours as well.  This is
the Boulez who "cooled down in the last 20 years."

Look, if you don't like Boulez's work and personality, that's your
taste.  But to claim he is this power hungry figure who ruined composers
lives and who ignored some specious obligation to perform music that
wasn't to his taste, but to yours, is ridiculous.  Your criticism of him
is entirely personal, general, emotional and has nothing of substance in
it about his music and his career.  Instead of at least giving him his
due for recording Zappa's work, you have to put him down, say he was
trying to court some sort of public regard which wouldn't seem likely
for a person you also feel is so power mad.  A lot of what you're
claiming here are myths that I have seen many other places.  Boulez
rubbed some people the wrong way.  So did Charles Ives.  So what?  He's
an extremely important musician who has done a great deal for
contemporary music, whether you like him as a human being or not.


gg









- -

------------------------------

End of Zorn List Digest V2 #351
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