2 Comments

1. 

   John Brough on November 4, 2007 at 2:20 am

   just realized the link to my web page was incorrect – the one on my name below is the correct blog site.

2. 

   Samuel Vriezen on January 22, 2008 at 10:21 pm

   Dear Ken, I see that the discussion is now splitting across forums – so if you don’t mind, I’ll repeat a bit of what I had to say in reply to your S21-version of this post. This one was in reply to what you wrote:

   *
   I really didn’t want to come across quite that aggressive, because I fully believe you’re all for what you program. But to take up your gallery simile: musical culture as a whole may not be like a gallery, but the orchestra most definitely is.

   Indeed, your orchestra can play the minimalist AND the atonalist, and certainly if they’re Adams and Carter. They write what I would call classical music. But can it play Charlemagne Palestine, Christian Wolff, Horatiu Radulescu, Conlon Nancarrow, Brian Ferneyhough AND a Strauss waltz with the true waltz lilt? I find it hard even to imagine a specialized smaller ensemble that could do all of that.
   *

   So my apologies if you perhaps felt attacked personally by my claim that the orchestra doesn’t stand for anything. With that, I meant that as an institution, its claim to musical centrality, its claim to be able to serve any aesthetic, makes it in fact ideological. Because the orchestra *does* have musical prejudices on the basis of its very history and performance tradition. The orchestra as such has a polemical stance of its own that is too rarely acknowledged. This lack of acknowledgement is what I really meant with the phrase ‘stands for nothing’ – which was perhaps not the sharpest choice of words.

   More specifically, as I put it on S21 in response to Rob Deemer:

   *
   Rob: it’s not that you’re wrong, I think, and neither is Kenneth Woods. Within the limitations of working with conventional orchestras, it’s good advice. Certainly I do agree that time spent badmouthing is time lost rehearsing. But the point does go a little deeper. It’s perhaps easier to see my point if you contrast the way orchestras operate with how certain very specific new music ensembles operate. An ensemble such as Orkest De Volharding here in Amsterdam was originally *all* about stance and polemics, which went up from political activism down to the way phrases are to be articulated. Yes, you can play a note differently because you want to get away from style X or Y. In an ensemble like De Volharding, or, say, in any serious pop group, or in the Wandelweiser Composers Ensemble, there is no note being played without stance. You just can’t play Wandelweiser music with a Carter performance attitude. You can’t play Michael Gordon with a Wandelweiser attitude. You can’t play Tom Johnson with a Ferneyhough mindset. etc, etc.

   Stance sometimes has to be articulated, and then ‘choosing sides’ can’t always be avoided. If there’s absolutely no space at all for such in orchestral rehearsal, then there may be a problem. Of course orchestral performance practice has assumptions and stance like any performance practice (basically Haydn-through-Mahler), only if you always have to avoid being polemical about it, then that means you can’t address it; which means the assumptions of classical music have become naturalized, their artificiality itself invisible: ideological.

   Which is also why no amount of new works of genius will ever change orchestral programming. It’s the dead guys first, second and third and the living guys about thirteenth, and this won’t change. Exceptions notwithstanding, but those are polemical orchestras – Kotik’s work for example.
   *

   If I stress my points, it may be because I find it problematic how in general musical culture sometimes the professional standards of a certain style of music (such as, let’s call it “conductor music”) may set the standards for musical professionalism as a whole. Myself, I’ve hardly written a score for years, because my music is all parts and no central coordination. My work has gradually drifted quite far away from the kind of work that needs conducting. Which means I sometimes have had to do some extra explaining that what I do is still, in fact, serious composition.

   Then, you’re mostly talking about exactly the kind of music I hardly do these days; I hardly can even imagine working with an orchestra, so I suppose that relativizes the range of my point (but, come to think of it – an unconducted work for a self-organising orchestra? could be a very interesting challenge!)