Soul Eyes - Mal Waldron

For a number of years I did not understand Mal Waldron’s piano-playing conception— his halting solos bothered me for some strange reason. I admired his playing on Mingus’s Cafe Bohemia recording—one can hear Mingus intoning, “Yea, Mal, go on”. This evening I’m listening to Mal Waldron’s trio CD, Mal/4. Mal is right out of Bud Powell!

   Whereas Bud Powell was in his playing almost ahead of the beat (a forward pulse), Mal Waldron seems to be playing almost on the beat, a solid pulse. Because Mal Waldron’s playing was of Bud Powell (in a deep way that I had not understood, previously), I now understand why Jackie McLean dug Mal’s playing so much—they recorded quite a bit together.

   I had the pleasure in 1961 of holding the phone for Mal Waldron at the Five Spot (I happened to be sitting next to him at the bar), so that he could take the call in the back. Ornette Coleman was performing that evening with Bobby Bradford (t) and Charles Moffett (d), David Izenzon may have been the man on the bass.

   Mal/3: Sounds with Art Farmer and Elvin Jones is a another beautiful Mal Waldron recording. His beautiful composition, Soul Eyes is a jazz standard. He recorded it with John Coltrane. Coltrane’s recording of it with his quartet is a classic. Stan Getz’s recording with Kenny Barron is also a favorite of mine and should be better known.

While I'm in a Sunday Morning Frame of Mind

Geoff Dyer is one of my favorite authors of fiction, near-fiction, and essays. He writes about backing into some of his literary projects - starting out to write a book about x in place z; going to place r and ending up writing about q instead. I've been attempting to re-read Stanley Cavell's "Music Discomposed" in order to finish my Raffman-Taruskin project, getting their completely wrong-headed critiques of Schoenberg, Babbitt, Boulez, and Martino out of my system. Instead of just dispatching Cavell, I've been enticed to read everyone but Cavell! Sir Donald Francis Tovey, Charles Rosen, Paul Griffiths, Bryan Simms, Anrdré Hodier, Andrew Porter ... and I'll find others to keep from re-reading Cavell! Also, my non-Cavellian reading has caused me to listen to a lot of music - this is listening in addition to verses listening instead of, i.e., listening to music instead of re-reading Cavell.

Now this malady that I suffer from - let's give my disease a name, "Anti-Music-Aesthetics", "AMA" - has plagued me for quite a while. It was first diagnosed by a philosopher of music aesthetics ("MA"); who has, since he diagnosed me, gotten out the MA business and gone back to metaphysics (not a retreat; an advance on his part). According to the philosopher, my disease was caused by my confusing music criticism with music aesthetics - let's give this confusion a name, "Big-Confusion" or "BC". Now I disagree with this diagnosis. But before I go off on this, let's get meta-theoretical, scientific for a moment.

What Music Aesthetics is supposed to be about are theories of what music is about - about theories about theories of organized sound (say); meta-theories along Tarskiean lines, theories of theories of music criticism, theories of theories of the properties of organized sounds, .... My first response was usually, Show me the first-order theory before going on about the philosophical need of further theories of theories. Let's read some Tovey, see if there are any first-order theories hiding in his writings, attend to his music examples, listen to some music; then theorize about what we find in Tovey. This is awfully naïve - I admit it! It would be quite interesting to use Tovey's Beethoven, Oxford University Press (1965) as a source for philosophical reflection on music. For example, I have in my hands Penelope Maddy's new book, Defending the Axioms: On the philosophical foundations of set theory, Oxford University Press (2011), the bibliography shows a preponderance maths' books and papers. Most books on music aesthetics will not show a preponderance of Tovey-type works. The preponderance is on the side of philosophy. In my view what is wrong with music aesthetics is the preponderance of philosophy - philosophers writing for philosophers; rather than philosophers trying to learn from Tovey et al.

So in the next weeks, before I dispence with Stanley Cavell, I'll try to convey what Sir Donald Tovey has to teach us and what data his work might provide for our theories of theories.


Well I'm off not to watch the Academy Awards TV Show. More music please! 

Sunday Morning Matters - Robert Craft's Schoenberg Recording

I spent part of this morning listening to Robert Craft's Naxos recording of Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, Herzgewächse, Four Orchestral Songs, and Chamber Symphony No. 1. This disc is an excellent, budget-priced, introduction to Schoenberg's sweet music. I don't know why the disc's tracts are arranged in a-chronological order - it doesn't matter though, since one may program his or her CD device in a chronologically apt way (one of the two non-sound-quality ways CDs best vinyl recordings, otherwise vinyl reproduces the music best). The three and one-half minute Herzgewächse written for coloratura soprano, celesta, harmonium and harp is a very exciting work of which I was unfamiliar until the Craft recording. The vocal works on the Craft disc are treated in Bryan R. Simms' The Atonal Music of Arnold Schoenberg 1908 - 1923 in Chapter 6 under the heading "New Uses of the voice . . .". Simms discusses Schoenberg's views about a poem and its proper musical setting and his views about surface and deep meaning in a musical context; how a poem and the music should reflect each other at a deep level [page 117]. Both Craft and Simms are worthy of one's Sunday music listening and study.

Running Down the Avant-garde or Into the Hot

In discussions of philosophers of aesthetics one finds disparaging remarks about art journalism, about music journalism especially [when I started in philosophy — in the glorious mid-1960s, at Wayne State University — the footnote phenomenon hadn’t reached its present proportions. The nice thing about bloggin’ is this: one can give a citation and keep on steppin’ (is this a footnote?).]

I have neglected Paul Griffiths two books on modern music and the avant-garde since 1945 and his history of the string quartet [Modern Music: The avant-garde since 1945; Modern Music And After: Directions since 1945; and The String Quartet: A history in my posts. Griffiths has been my guide in all matters concerning (what used to be called) modern music. I recommend Griffiths’ writings to all non-professional music lovers who desire to know and who would like to get straight about the details.

Paul Griffiths' very informative web site is linked under Favorite Web Sites.

I was listening to the Italian composer Franco Donatoni’s [1927 - 2000] exciting com- position that bears the title ”Hot (1989)” per saxophono soprano e sei strumeni. Before listening to Donatoni’s ”Hot” I was listening to Dizzy Gillespie’s ”Manteca Suite” per- formed by his big band with solos by Dizzy Gillespie, trumpet and Lucky Thompson, tenor saxophone. I wondered if Donatoni had Dizzy’s ”Manteca” hovering in the back of his mind when he was committing ”Hot” to paper. I had in mind ”Birth of the Hot”, a glance in Miles’ direction. Both ”Hot” and ”Manteca” are wonderful works.

Andrew Porter & David Carrier

Andrew Porter, Music of Three Seasons: 1974 - 1977. Farrar Struss Giroux, New York (1978).
Writing of Schoenberg's string quartets and the Juillard String Quartet,

Twenty years ago, the Juilliard taught me to love these compositions; their performances were revelatory in the way that Hans Rosbaud's of Schoenberg's orchestral music were. Once, this music had seemed forbidding, baffling, suddenly there shined a light, and there fell from my ears as there had been scales.
[138-9]

David Carrier, The Aesthete In The City: The Philosophy and Practice of American Abstract Painting in the 1980s, Penn State Press (1994), writes,

Theory promised to elevate criticism out of journalism into the academic world. Who would not be tempted by that promise? Certainly I was. Writing about contemporary art, it seemed, might acquire some of the intellectual substance of the texts of Erwin Panofsky, Aby Warburg, and Heinrich Wölfflin, who made art history into a university subject. My sense, looking back, is that the promise was not fulfilled. The theorizing of the 1980s, wildly imaginative and extremely inventive - a grandly bold intellectual adventure - was too abstract.
[4]

Pre-Cavellean Thoughts

Stanley Cavell in his “Music Discomposed” wonders why there is a disparity between competent music criticism and competent criticism as it exists for the arts of literature and painting. Whereas the arts of literature and painting, and criticism thereof, exist simultaneously; this is not the case with new music. That is, there are very few critical works devoted to serving the needs of non-professional music audiences. Like most of the analytical philosophy journals which serve professional philosophers;  journals such as Die Reihe and Perspectives in New Music serve the interests of professional musicians and composers. The journal discussions focus on the problems of the composer, not on the problems of the non-professional listener. In other words there are very few critical bridges of understanding for non-professional music listeners as there are for literature and painting. Criticism of new music, according to Cavell, lags behind performances of new music - new music and competent new music criticism are not contemporaneous.

Andrew Porter the former music critic for The New Yorker was a most competent music critic. Somewhere in his five published volumes of New Yorker pieces he writes that he felt it was his business as a music critic to devote a great deal of his time to covering new (and infrequently presented) 20th century music. As a critic, Porter had pretty rigorous requirements in writing about new music. He wanted a score of the music to follow with his pen flashlight and a tape of the recorded performance to listen to before writing his review. I mentioned Porter's requirements to a friend of mine, the principal violist with a major symphony orchestra; he thought Porter was a bit over the top in this. I don't think so; I think that before philosophers and music historians start riffing in print they should take the kind of care that Porter used to take - they should at least attend to the music, listen to it, give examples of the music; not just second and third order 'learned' professional journal riffs. "Studies show...." instead of "listening to Schoenberg's Violin Concerto" reveals some quite beautiful melodic bits and contrasts; "remarkable, really ... perhaps I'll have to adjust my theory based on this hearing-data...."

Crammin' & Jammin'

I grew up with Arnold Schoenberg. In the early 1960s I wore out the Juilliard String Quartet's recordings of Schoenberg's 1st, 2nd and 3rd string quartets. After that I went to Robert Craft's wonderful Schoenberg recordings on Columbia Records - especially "Pellaeas and Melisande" and "Verklarerte Nacht". Next I went to the Fine Arts Quartet's Bartok. Then I got to the Budapest String Quartet's Beethoven string quartets - especially the late A minor quartet. And then to Pierre Boulez's "Le marteau sans maître" and Karlheinz Stockhausen's "Zeitmasze" - the Craft Columbia recording of these two works. Who were my guides? - Andre Hodeir (Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence and Since Debussy: A View of Contemporary Music), Gunther Schuller (Jazz Review), and Robert Craft's liner notes

Simply put Professors Raffman and Taruskin are listening to Schoenberg, Babbitt, Boulez and Martino through tonal training and with tonal ears. My music education was the other way round - I listened to Beethoven with atonal ears. The other problem with the Raffman and Taruskin argument is that they jump into  dissertations on stability relations - consonance , dissonance and cadence. These tonal aspects of music don't apply in tonal-ways to atonal music.

The jump from "can't hear tonal relationships in atonal music" to "atonal music is artistically defective" needs to be qualified to something akin to "I just don't get it; I can't hear the cadences I'm used to hearing." This makes sense - it could be a cognitive thing, a music training (academy) thing, or listening for something that's not there in the music. I'm inclined to think that it is the later (emphasized) consideration that's really what's really in play in Raffman and and Taruskin. The missing bits - cadences, key signature modulation, expansive melodies; all the 19th century stuff - weren't supposed to be there in the first place.

If one's music education begins with Coleman Hawkins, Charles Parker, Bud Powell, Monk et al., where a lot of cramming was going on, and Schoenberg; one doesn't miss what wasn't there in the first place. And if these treasured bits from the 19th century or the swing era are there in minute quantities and crammed in the tunes real fast; the fans of the music - and aestheticians! - won't hear them any way.

My next post will attend to Stanley Cavell's famous essay "Music Discomposed", a work that professor Raffman relies on in her essay.

Listening to Music

I've been thinking about what I was going to write about Prof. Raffman's view that twelve-tone compositions are artistically defective. But in the mean time, in addition to thinking about how to make my counter-argument as forceful as possible (recall Prof. Raffman has enlisted the aid of the eminent music scholar Prof. Richard Taruskin), I've been following the advice that I give to the atonal-deaf or the atonal-unwilling; I've been listening to a lot of music. Also, I've been re-reading Charles Rosen's Schoenberg monograph, Bryan R. Simms' The Atonal Music of Arnold Schoenberg, and Lewis Lockwood's The Music and Life of Beethoven.

In connection with the above, I've been listening to these recently acquired compact discs: Budapest String Quartet's Complete Beethoven String Quartets, The Zurich String Quintet's Beethoven String Quintets, and  the LaSalle Quartet's Beethoven: The Late String Quartets. I recommend these recordings. I also recommend the LaSalle's Neue Wiener Schule recordings of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. I also recommend the Arditti's Neue Wiener Schule recordings.

The LaSalle Quartet's recording of Beethoven's E flat Op. 127 and C sharp minor Op. 131 Quartets took me to their recording of Schoenberg's Quartet no. 1 in D minor, Op. 7. And the Schoenberg no. 1 by the LaSalle took me the the fabulous mono recording by the Juilliard String Quartet. This last recording by the Juilliard is so fast, so intense, so rhythmically American, so Elvin Jones/Tony Williams.

Point (finally!) - Like most great music, the Beethoven and Schoenberg string quartets exhaust the performances (and performers). I hate to rely on recorded performances. I've only heard one live performance of a Schoenberg quartet, the Op. 7; and that was because I had a direct hand in programming it with the Arditti Quartet. What I found quite interesting was this. The LaSalle's Schoenberg and Beethoven recordings helped me to hear what Beethoven was up to in his Op. 127 and Op. 131. I also think that reading Schoenberg's writings can certainly aid one in understanding what Brahms and Mahler were up to.

How many years did it take performers to catch up with Beethoven and his quartets? With Schoenberg the race has just started.

On February 12, I attended with a friend a concert at the Power Center, in Ann Arbor that featured the Vijay Iyer trio and the Rudresh Mahanthappa (as) and Bunky Green's (as) Apex. The latter group included Craig Taborn, piano; François, bass; and Damion Reid, drums. Apex was fabulous. Iyer, piano who I had enjoyed very much when he and Mahanthappa performed together in the past seemed to be tending toward a Keith Jarrett conception. I don't wish for another Keith Jarrett - one is enough.  

Coming Not So Soon

I won't have any more to say on Professors Raffman et al. for a few days. I'll be spending my time with the music of Schoenberg, Babbitt, and Beethoven, his quartets. I'm also rereading Charles Rosen's wonderful Arnold Schoenberg (1975). Robert Craft called it the best monograph on music that he had ever read at the time that he reviewed it.

Preliminary Rant on Professor Raffman's Paper

Now Professor Raffman causes a problem for herself by jumping from "a piece of music" to "a work of art" [p. 70] Certainly, many of Schoenbeg's pieces are works of art. (something can be a work of art, I guess, even if it is seldom (never) performed. It seems to me that one cannot judge Schoenberg by American standards of taste. Let's consider the Arditti String Quartet vs. the Kronos Quartet in terms of works premiered by each quartet. The Arditti Quartet toured the North American continent biannually. While teaching positions were more numerous in North America the audience for `new' music was greater in Europe. If we look carefully at the Arditti works premiered verses the Kronos, we see that the former premiers works that are far more difficult that the works premiered by the latter. Why? My guess is that the Arditti's European audience is better prepared to accept new music than the Kronos's audience. The Kronos appeals more to their audiences visual sense, whereas the Arditti appeals more to its audience's aural sensibility. Now where are we going with this music-sociology?

If one wants to begin to understand Schoenberg and Babitt one should first of all listen to their music - lots of it in the dark. Point - if Schoenberg and Babbitt were performed more often, both in live performances and on the radio (and on TV!}, audiences would over time realize what's going on in their music and determine for themselves the value of their music. In stead their music which is rarely performed is criticized for not measuring up in the ears of listeners with music that has been performed countless times every day for over 200 years! Point - if one listened to Schoenberg and Babbitt every day, one would begin to understand their music; one would understand variations, intervalic relationships, melody articulated amongst various instruments, fast melodic lines and such. Think of Schoenberg and Babbitt as Miles Davis (say), as musicians who want to double-time the melodic bit so they can play what interests them - the early version of Miles' "Walkin'" compared to later versions.

200+ years of sonata-forms! Let's get past that and create some new, fast music.

More next time. Until then, study Alban Berg's "Why is Schoenberg's Music So Difficult to Understand?" and Gunther Schuller's interviews with Ethan Iverson.

Don't worry; I'll get to the technical bits of Professor Raffman's paper soon enough.

Let's think about Professor Raffman's title, "Is Twelve-Tone Music Artistically Defective?" It reminds me of Professor Milton Babbitt's article with the catchy title, "Who Cares If They Listen?" In an interview aired on WKCR-FM a few days ago, Babbitt said that the title was not chosen by him - the editor of High Fidelity imposed that title against his wishes and in addition made cuts in the article. Point - one should listen to Babbitt's music and read his actual words. The following are links to Raffman, Berg and Schuller:

http://philosophy.utoronto.ca/people/linked-documents-people/DRaffman-Is%20Twelve-tone%20Music%20Artistically%20Defective.pdf

http://www.schoenberg.at/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=478&Itemid=706&lang=en

http://dothemath.typepad.com/dtm/interview-with-gunther-schuller-1.html

http://dothemath.typepad.com/dtm/interview-with-gunther-schuller-2.html

Thanks to Jim Murphy for directing me to the Iverson-Schuller interviews.

Footnote To Previous Post

Yesterday, WKCR-FM, Columbia University's one of a kind, wonderful radio station played 24 hours of Milton Babbitt's music, along with interviews with Babbitt and discussions with friends, former students and learned academicians. I listened from 11AM to 1AM, 13 hours. This is one of two ways to listen seriously to Babbitt's music. The other way is to listen in the dark. Listening to Babbitt on my Mac laptop without additional musical speakers revealed this music in a concentrated way (headphones might have been apt in this situation). I used to listen to, and enjoy, Richard Wagner's operas in a similar way - with a small FM radio. Verisimilitude is fine. But having the music so that it doesn't envelop one is an advantage for one's imaginings. It also aids in one's enveloping the music.

As I promised, next time we'll discuss Diana Raffman's "Is Twelve-Tone Music ...?", Richard Taruskin's 1996 NYT's piece, "How Talented Composers Become Useless", and Dmitri Tymoczko's "The Sound of Philosophy: The musical ideas of Milton Babbitt and John Cage". Raffman's paper, along with her exciting book, Language, Music, and Mind are available at her U. of Toronto page. Tymczko's paper is avalable at his Princeton U. site. See below for links.

http://www.music.princeton.edu/~dmitri/

http://philosophy.utoronto.ca/people/faculty/diana-raffman

Milton Babbitt R.I.P. - Bebop to Babbitt

Milton Babbitt the composer, music theorist, mathematician, and educator died last Saturday at the age of 94. I relished the Composers String Quartet recordings of Babbitt's 2nd and 5th Quartets and the AR/DG vinyl recording with Bethany Beardslee (soprano) of Philomel: For Soprano, Recorded Soprano, and Synthesized Sound, and All Set. Attention to Babbitt's music has involved to a very great extent criticism, both to the music, his theories of composition, and his music polemics.

A phrase for my past comes directly to mind: If you can't cop it, bebop it. Now what this means is this: If one understands bebop, one should be in a position to understand Babbitt's music. Try it. Concentrate on Bird, Diz, Klook, and Bud. OK, Monk too. Now obviously "cop" means comprehend in this context. But it means feel the musics - bebop and Babbitt. My thesis is this: Anyone who can understands (feel) bebop, can understand (feel) Babbitt's music. Now how many listeners undersand bebop? Not many! How many listeners feel bebop? Lots.

Because I grew up with Bird, Diz, Klook, Bud, and Monk Milton Babbitt's music sounded and felt natural to me. Listen to Babbitt's All Set and Gunther Schuller's Variations on a Theme of Thelonius Monk; this will get one closer to what it is.

Next time I'll treat a paper by Professor Diana Raffman, "Is Twelve-Tone Music Artistically Defective?", Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XXVII (2003), pps. 69 - 87.