Amaranth Arthouse Music

I made a promise that I would list the potential shortcomings of the contemporary composer who lacks traditional classical music training. Here is my list in no particular order of importance.

• 1. Your “classically educated” friends will think you’re silly when you mispronounce tricky composer names like “Haydn.”
  2. Allegretto? Is this something off an Italian restaurant menu?
  3. If you’re going to compose a piece comprised of one note for an hour, you should fucking know how to read it! I mean, how are you going to memorize one note if you have to repeat it?
  4. A true story (composer to remain anonymous) – Says he likes MIDI and works with Finale “Notepad,” and then tells me, after some direct probing on my part, that he has “Logic.” Hey people, how are you going to use your “classically trained street smarts” if you can’t figure out what program to use?
  5. You annoyingly clap at the end of every movement at the symphony. The hot date you brought along (first date no less), whom you’ve been emphasizing your “composer” status to use as an aphrodisiac, now thinks you’re a moron and a phony.
  6. You have repeat nightmares of sonata form, in the form of a horribly gigantic wig chasing you down an illustrious, lavish hallway. You reach the end, but are brought back to the beginning. The nightmare seems to change slightly, but the end result is always the same with the wig recounting your steps and, surprise, a piano falls on you (THREE TIMES!).
  7. You don’t know what you’re doing!! Its that simple!
  8. Someone approaches you with a commission for flute and violin. What the fuck is a flute?
  9. You decide to compose a piece with pitch material comprised of a porn soundtrack.
  10. How do you plan to have a good concert if you conduct like someone playing an air guitar at a karaoke bar?

Its not often that someone posits the question “is unorganized sound or non-traditional instrumentation “sound art” but not music?” with the idea of validating sound as art. I commend this approach. The issue I have (separating sound from music) with that is it ends up strengthening the musical reactionary’s view that music is sacred and that a line needs to be drawn as to what music is (of course with the reactionist drawing the line right?). They’re not going to take the time to think about sound as art, but will argue that not only is non-organized sound, etc., not music but that it also is not art. So now where are we?

Hence, I prefer to look at sound art as a subcategory of music. Specifically like this:

Art
Music
Sound and all genres of music

My personal view is that since art and its subcategory of music are so subjective, that music is whatever the composer wants it to be. I debated this with my father yesterday and he angrily asked, “so if I take a piss, is that music?” I replied, “sure. Its not up to me to tell the world if that was music or not, but I reserve the right to call that some of the worst music I’ve ever heard.”

We then broke down the argument, where he reserved “talent” as a key ingredient in music. I said, “so if I have no talent but play the theme for Ode to Joy on the kazoo badly (which anyone can do), are you implying that is not music?” He then refined his argument (although he didn’t realize he was being redundant) to state that “a talented performance” was a key factor in defining music. I then asked, “how much talent exactly does it take to play chopsticks?” Well then he tried to trip me up with references to some variations on chopsticks at which point I asked, “so if I play Mary Had a Little Lam with one finger, off time, is that not music?” He wisely gave up and was content to call me a crackpot which I was content with as well.

ADDENDUM:  By the way, someone playing “Mary Had a Little Lam” on one finger off time could end up as a great work.  I don’t know about pissing in a toilet (who knows if miked right), but a running stream in the middle of a forest contains quite an array of music.

One: An account of a dialogue between myself and shocked Memorial Day observers with some candid wording regarding the current state of wartime affairs in the United States of America. NPR – Obama Calls Fighting Forces ‘Best Of America’.

Two: David Toub plans a new work and outlines: “I’m planning a new piece for what probably will be an ensemble consisting of two women’s voices, violin, cello, marimba, bass clarinet, bass guitar and possibly piano. The work is tentatively going to be titled torture memos (a survivor from guantánamo). The music is already largely written, in that it will mostly be derived from several recent improvisations that were done as part of James Combs’ improvfriday sessions on various social media networks. Almost all of my works started off as improvisations, so this is pretty much standard operating procedure for me. I had thought of using the title Room 101 as that was the torture room in Orwell’s prophetic novel 1984 but I thought the significance might not be obvious to anyone who hasn’t recently read the book.”

Three: Marc Chan blogs in detail regarding Jenny Holzer’s new work in the “Protect Protect” project which utilizes the Bush torture memos.  The redacted documents clearly resemble the style of S21 and Khmer Rouge. We tend to think of the tragedy in Cambodia as random killing of people in a far away, third world country, but the truth is that the S21 carried out a highly structured, policy-based system that was strictly documented.