Robert Dusek
Bad Music?5/15/2024 I find the statement "who are you to judge" to be a kind of excuse to justify the creation and performance of essentially bad music. This is especially true for music that is created primarily through music software programs or with A.I. assistance.
A few days ago, I was asked to look at a piece of music that a friend of mine was considering programming for next season. He was unsure of it, and wanted some confirmation that the piece was indeed NOT worth programming. When I looked at the score, I found writing that was uninformed of the instruments and difficult to execute. It violated basic rules of engraving, and it was obvious that the piece was written on a keyboard without attention to instrumental limitations or preferences. The orchestration showed little regard to timbre combinations. Articulations were not specific to the instruments. In short, the MIDI realization that was sent to me along with the score sounded quite promising, but a live performance would be a disaster - the musicians would be frustrated, the sound would be wanting, and the audience would be alienated. Years ago, it was normative to expect that a composer would have an intimate knowledge of all the instruments of the orchestra, and to write intelligently for them. Today the only qualification seems to be a knowledge of music software programs. Is it fair to say that this new breed of composers is writing "bad" music? I think so. A piece for violin which includes music which is impossible to play on the violin is certainly not a good piece. I am happy to report that the piece I reviewed is no longer under consideration for programming. But a larger question remains. Why are so many people writing so much music that is not worth seeing the light of day? Is it just because technology has made the process of writing so easy? Or do we still embrace the "who are we to judge" question? Just because something disguises itself as "art" shouldn't render it immune from evaluation or criticism. And the fact remains; there is good and bad music.
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Listening With Your Eyes1/8/2015 In a couple of weeks I will be presenting on the subject of adjudicating, and so I began thinking about what might I might share. The following are some thoughts that occurred to me while I was pondering the visual aspects of performance.
When it comes to music, we are visual creatures. We tend to deny it; we tend to pretend that it is not about how something looks, but how something sounds that is important. But so very often, it is really about how a performance “looks” that dictates how we will hear the performance. Take, for example, two pianists playing two identical recitals equally well. One is dressed to the nines with a coat and tails; the other dresses casually in a shirt and jeans. One gets a standing ovation while the other receives moderate polite applause. Or what about the soloist who walks on to stage with great confidence and command of her instrument—she can often do no wrong in the eyes of the audience, while the virtuoso who stumbles on to stage is certain to receive questionable reviews. The fact is we tend to judge the merit of a musical performance as much by what it looks like as how it sounds; and being the visual creatures we are, we cannot separate the two. Even when an instrumentalist is auditioning for a position “behind the scrim” so that we cannot see the individual play, we substitute our own thoughts for our visual stimuli and imagine how the performance must have looked. Even when we cannot see anything it appears that our default primary listening tool is still our eyes! This is not surprising. Research has long ago shown that we gather approximately eighty percent of our sensory information from our eyes and that our default “sense” is the visual. We are more adept in processing the information we receive visually than that which we received through our other senses. It only makes sense that we would be strongly influenced by how a performance looks. The first time I performed the Concord Sonata in its entirety I was a sophomore at the Eastman School. Wanting to impress everyone with how “cool” I was, I performed it in an African dashiki and tattered jeans. The only comments that I received from that particular performance was how difficult it was to watch me under those bright lights and how I swayed back and forth too much when I played. Needless to say, I toned down the attire for the next performance and the response was a great improvement. In a perfect world it would not be this way. In a perfect world we would be able to judge the music for what it is or is not, and would not be influenced or distracted by the visual component. But, then again, maybe it is best that way. Musical performance was always meant to be an all-inclusive kind of sensory experience. Whether it’s the concert hall with its chandelier, the feel of the cushy seats, the smell of elderly ladies’ perfume wafting through the balcony and the perfect acoustics, or the sweat of an old jazz club with its smoke stained walls and drunken patrons, a musical performance is a holistic experience and when all the senses are working together to augment the musical offering, the whole is far greater than the sum of the parts and the performance reaches rapturous heights. The important part is that we "experience" the performance. To separate the listening from the seeing is to lose much. There is nothing wrong with listening with your eyes. Color and Composing12/15/2014 I was thinking the other day about the fact that us composers tend to work with a set of twelve and only twelve notes. It's kind of like a painter that starts off with twelve colors on his pallet, and then mixes those specific colors to create a multitude of nuances and feelings. The difficulty is not in mixing together different colors, but in the temptation to mix together too many colors, with the inevitable result being a shade of brown.
I sometimes think the same is with music. There is always a temptation to mix together too many colors and thus create a monochrome piece that has lost its soul. That may be the issue with much serial and/or twelve-tone music. By attempting to use each pitch--each note equally, the color of the composition is lost; although the work may be interesting, it often fails to lead the ear in one direction or another--rather being static, monochrome, brown. This is not to say that serial music is bad; only to point out that its intention as a system to replace the tonal system is wishful thinking at best. Far better the result when the composer mixes notes in such a way as to offer us a colorful collage or a landscape that invites our careful attention. AuthorRobert Dusek Archives
May 2024
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