Untitled

Where IS the Music?

by Arthur Woodbury

Click address for instant e-mail: awoodbur@satie.arts.usf.edu.

The 1960s: an assessment

The 1960s was a pivotal decade for music. The jazz-based popular music of the previous forty years was all but obliterated by rock and roll, and country music reached its apogee by blending its own sound with jazz-pop-rock, in a mixture known as "the Nashville sound." Jazz, fresh from its own triumphs of the '40s and '50s, was busy tearing itself apart in the excesses of"free jazz," and my major area of activity, classical music (for want of a better term), was assaulting its audience in a frenzy of experimentation. Thus began the long slide into irrelevance for all these musics. The events of the 1960s were critical ones, and the consequences of those musical events have occupied us ever since. Now in the '90s, it's time for a reassessment.

For me, the crisis began in 1972, when I discovered that I wasn't having that much fun with music anymore. I realized that new music had radicalized itself right out of the mainstream. It became difficult to distinguish between what was valid and what wasn't. Neophytes (even non-musicians) and well trained musicians sounded alike (I even wrote a piece, Super Dilettante, that described this problem). Belief in egalitarianism (pungently phrased as "different strokes for different folks") and contempt for past practices were the rule. This provided fertile ground for mediocrities of all kinds. I remember composer Bob Ashley and I having a conversation about the concept of mediocrity. In the role of Devil's Advocate, he was defending it as a philosophically viable state of being, only in the '60s could a conversation like this have taken place. I know it wasn't particularly Zen of me, but to me this was an untenable situation. New music sounded crazy and unreal, and I was convinced that there was no future in it. Obviously, it was time to revaluate my involvement and to reorient myself. I had come to the edge of the abyss, looked over, and saw that there was nothing there! It scared the foo out of me.

My solution was to return to my roots, 1950s jazz. At least I could distinguish quality in this music. I planned to retrace my steps through the '60s and arrive again at 1972, for real this time! I called this my "Second Pass" strategy. I was far from giving up on what we had discovered in the '60s, but I wanted to be more discriminating this time around.

In the '70s I segued from playing jazz to playing minimalist rock, finally arriving back at composition in the early '80s. The journey took me ten years. With the writing of my saxophone and piano piece, Between Categories (1982), for the first time in a long time I felt back on track again. During the '70s I rejected a lot of attitudes, philosophies, ideas and techniques; and as a consequence, I began feeling much better about my music. The decade of the '60s was a necessary trip and many good ideas did come out of it, but ultimately it led down a blind alley. It's my opinion that this "period music" (classical and jazz of the '60s) will all but disappear, maybe to be revisited as a curiosity, probably becoming nothing more than a footnote in some history book. The public dispensed with this music long ago, but the legacy lives on.

The legacy of the '60s

There are many who have built their musical world around what happened in the '60s. They have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. It's going to take a lot to convince them (and the generation of students that followed them), that music's real direction lies elsewhere.

Our habit in the 20th century, particularly from the 1960s on, has been to race forward from one idea to the next in a mad scramble for the next newest thing, a mad marketplace of successive "isms." Like the strip miner, we've been rushing along ripping off those things that are obvious and leaving behind some pretty ugly landscapes. In the '60s it was a contest to see who could find the newest sound. As Roger Sessions said, "there's nothing that gets older faster than a new sound." But, what is most significant about '60s, is that this all happened within a certain prescribed framework, within the twelve tone and/or "chance" music idea. If it didn't happen within this narrow confine it was not considered new music.

In the '50s the notorious twelve-tone system of Arnold Schoenberg was involved in a tough fight for acceptance, and by the '60s the battle finally had been won in the eyes (and ears) of the new music opinion leaders. Its hard-won legitimacy quickly began to dominate music composition, either through efforts to develop the idea further (Stockhausen, Boulez and Babbitt) or by attempting its modification by reacting against the strictures of the system. One way or the other, it was the measuring stick of new music and the road to compositional respectability. After initial resistance, those who opposed it diminished in numbers, even Igor Stravinsky finally capitulated. When Karlheinz Stockhausen, the twelve-tone guru of the '60s avant garde, embraced John Cage's "chance" procedures and marred the two, the die was irrevocably cast. According to those in the field who were respected and influential, "New Music" was somewhere within these borders. Although they seem to be opposites, serialism (near total control) and aleatoric chance procedures, in the final analysis, they sound remarkably similar. In fact, a case can be made for regarding them as two aspects of the same thing.

Within this context, the legacy (and excesses) of the '60s carded forth into the '70s and '80s. Music became a strange mixture of science and alchemy, of finite and random numbers. A composer acquaintance of mine proudly announced (one day in the '60s) that in his newest piece he had built a rhythmic process on a ratio of 25 over 27. At the time I nodded politely while thinking to myself, "My God, most of us are still trying to come to grips with the implications of the ratios of 2 to 3 or maybe on an adventurous day 4 to 5 (or 7 to 5, or 7 to 11), on a hearable basis. What could he possibly be accomplishing or understanding with a complex number like this?" Of course the answer was, "not much." This was not an isolated incident. A lot of this went on in the '60s.

Of course, there are those who contend that this "rushing past understanding into incomprehension" is exactly the point. John Cage said "I don't understand it, it's beautiful!" As a first reaction I can go along with this idea, but when, after repeated hearings, it continues to be "not understood," I get irritated, and then I become suspicious. Maybe there isn't anything to understand (monkey finger-painting). As one wag put it, "maybe this is as heavy as it gets."

This music from the '60s has had its chance (no pun intended) and now, in the '90s, it's time to move on to something more promising. So... where do we go from here? Where is the music?

The new music

Recent advances in electronic technology will play a big role in the upcoming music. In the '60s, my contact with David Tudor and Karlheinz Stockhausen stirred my interest in this area. Experiences with the Moog and Buchla systems fascinated me. However, that technology was so limited we were forced to indulge in electronic "finger painting" to get at the more interesting sounds. By the time I got the equipment configured so that it began to interest me, the signal-to-noise ratio was out of hand.

Another innovation in the '60s was the sudden accessibility of the computer. This new "toy" was fraught with possibilities, but very cumbersome to use. My piece Velox (1970) focused on the computer's ability to create patterns (I used a canon technique as a way of creating textures), but this new resource wasn't all that useful in the making of day-to-day music. I was active in electronic music for about six years before giving it up and returning to acoustic instruments. Impatient, I didn't want to struggle with the unwieldy equipment anymore, I had some music to make. There was just more flexibility, control and variety in the old instruments. I agreed with

Pierre Boulez that we needed to build electronic instruments that were easier to use and ones that could get at the new sounds we wanted to hear. Today, technology has improved so much that ideas we dreamed about in the '60s can now finally be realized. I've become interested again. This is a fertile field for new music. Some of the sounds I heard in the '60s in our better moments are readily available with this new equipment.

Unfortunately, the "finger painting" aspect of electronic music has turned off the general listening public. It will be a while before they lose the bad taste in their ears. If we don't tell them this time around that they are listening to electronic music, and we are a little more careful in making this music, they might give us another chance.

Music is an aesthetic quest, not a scientific one. In the past we've been guilty of confusion on this subject (again, a legacy of the '60s). Music needs a different measuring stick. Debussy's aphoristic statement one hundred years ago, "pleasure is the rule," is particularly valid today. He was railing against the tyranny of intellectual academicism in music, particularly the mandatory use of the formal "rules of music." He was concerned about the academy's insistence that students use the "scientific method" of composing music, going by the rules. It was his contention that this was the wrong way to go about it, he advocated the ear, fantasy, our poetic sensibilities. Today we call this soul.

We suffer from a modem-day equivalent of academic intellectualism: a university professor of my acquaintance recently said, "you can't write something anymore just because it sounds good." He was alluding to the commonly held belief in many university circles that music composition has a higher calling, something beyond just musical pleasure, an intellectual responsibility. This insistence on the intellect smacks of Milton Babbitt, and is an example of the present-day academic tyranny. It's not quite the same as a hundred years ago, but somewhat akin to what Debussy was referring to. It should be pointed out that Debussy did not mean that intellectualism should be excluded, just that it should not be used as a substitute. After all, intellectualism is a tool, not the thing itself.

Reverting to old musics is not the solution, that's just another blind alley, coming from a tradition in order to build on it, however, is necessary. This means some trafficking in older musics, it's unavoidable and not really a bad thing. It's precisely this attempt to exclude (dilute or pollute in some cases) old musics that has caused the last generation of composers and performers so much trouble. They're too busy getting rid of the past to notice that they have eliminated the very things they need to move forward. In some cases, these exclusionary practices have made some composers edit themselves into near silence. It was Milton Babbitt who described how past musics have used up most of the resources. He made the statement "now it's a mad scramble for the crumbs." What a self-limiting assessment! And by making this statement, he attempted to limit it for us all.

The dilemma for today's composer has to do with the musical climate created by the '60s. What has been considered acceptable new music (the "required" compositional practice of the last thirty years) has not been acceptable to the public. Composers in the recent past have had a choice, either write for an audience and risk official censure, or write for official acceptance and sacrifice the audience. We simply have to get fid of these restrictions, open everything up. As composer Morton Feldman said in the '60s, "you make a small circle and exclude me, I draw a larger circle and include you."

It is paradoxical that the cry for "freedom" in the '60s has become anything but that.

Complete freedom is chaos. We experienced a little of that in the last revolution. True freedom, however, needs barriers, a crucible of traditions, something that can be used to define what real freedom is. Otherwise, the concepts of freedom and newness are meaningless. I'm reminded of Janis Joplin's song "Bobby McGee," and the sad line "freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose." Without our reference to tradition, we have no way to go forward and "nothin' left to lose."

We've had enough of extremes, particularly since they both lead to the same place, let's try Buddha's rule, "the middle way." The new revolution should be a quiet one." Instead of flying the banner of freedom and then limiting it, we should choose from a wider variety. The past can instruct us (both the recent and the far past), and enable us to move forward. This includes the use of music of other cultures. We can put them together in new combinations and create a new music. The process of hybridization has often yielded attractive results, witness both jazz and rock and roll in this century (country music as well). Hopefully we will add something new of our own along the way. It has always been this way in music. Pleasure is the rule, and that should be our guide. Follow what turns you on. Prepare yourself technically. Be suspicious of what you are supposed to like. Ultimately, if it's not true for you, it's not true, After all, our own pleasure is at stake, and so is the future of music.