Creative work and production line (创与作)

A student recently drew my attention to Jeffrey Gershman's MBM Times article, "Skimming the Top", in which Gershman critiques the generic and formulaic nature of many recent band works. In a nutshell, his complaints following his six criteria are:
i. unimaginative texture (e.g. block scoring, little instrumental independence, unchanging textures)
ii. formulaic melodic writing (e.g. predictable melodic styles and phrase structures, chromatically-conservative melodies)
iii. overly-simple harmonies
iv. uninspired orchestration, lacking in creativity
v. unsophisticated formal structures (e.g. endless and straightforward use of ABA forms)
vi. lack of and even flawed compositional craftsmanship
In short, he characterizes such music as "ear candy", having "all style, no substance".

Whilst he understands the pressures from publishing companies on composers, he is concerned about the kinds of musical diet given to band students. I can't share this concern more: how much shortchanged our students will be if they are not shown the richness and depth of great music!

The plight of composers raised here brings to mind Adrian Pang's reason for leaving Mediacorp back in May (http://tnp.sg/printfriendly/0,4139,239057,00.html): he was basically dissatisfied with the "factory production line" approach, purportedly adopted by Mediacorp. I also recall reading Guo Jian Hong's (Guo Pao Kun's daughter) recent lament in the souvenir programme booklet for "Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral" about there being more 'zuo' (作) than 'chuang' (创) in the local theatre scene.

Rojak, Salad or ...

A journalist in My Paper today revisits the issue of what constitutes "Singapore culture". On the common criticism that Singapore culture is like rojak, she quotes 蔡光明's remark that we should aim for a salad mix instead, where the unique colours and tastes of the salad ingredients are retained, the clash of which sometimes exploited (色彩斑斓，偶有冲突的salad 精彩).

I like his ensuing advice: to successfully present intercultural interactions (文化间的互动), one first needs to assimilate each culture's uniqueness before synthesizing them; simply adding Chinese drums to Indian Dance will not do. Singapore composers, pay heed!

But then again, should it be salad instead of rojak? Or, perhaps, Nonya-style synthesis?

Back to one's inner self

In an interview article in today's My Paper (29 Mar 2010), the xinyao veteran Liang wenfoo, who had just received the Singapore Entertainment Awards 2010 for his outstanding contribution, commented that the young generation nowadays are spoilt for choices when it comes to musical options--there is a kaleidoscopic range of musical styles to choose from. The advantage is that one can explore a whole range of styles and there is a tendency to strive to create new ones. His advice, however, is for young songwriters to 'retreat' (退回来) a little in terms of techniques and return to the inner self (回到心的最根本).

He also cautioned against fast delivery. Call it old school if you like, but he affirms that value of completing something, leaving it aside for a little while, then coming back to it for further revision or polishing (东西是需要过滤和沉定的).

Couple of days ago, just discussed with my students the idea that analysis can be as much a creative act as composing and performing, and that creative acts in music are often a form of problem solving acts. Today I read with great fascination that transcribing ancient guqin scores (古琴普) can be a very high level of problem solving as well.

The article in 早报周刊 interviewed a Singapore guqin expert 纪志群, who described the process as involving tremendous interpretative work, drawing upon knowledge of Chinese ancient music history, archaelogy, historical editions, Chinese theories of tuning, Chinese literature, Chinese aesthetics, and, of course, historical forms of guqin notations and performance traditions.

I particularly like the metaphor he used to describe the relation between the transcriber and the notation. The latter is like the river bed, the former the living water that flows along: while the river bed more or less determines the course of the river, it can be altered by the flowing water. I suppose the same may be said of both a performance and an analytical interpretation--one literally sounded out, the other as sounded in the analyst's mind; if both are slavish 'reproductions' of the score/traditions, they would be 'without life' (无生气); yet ignoring traditions will result in undesirable groundlessness (无源之水， 无本之木). Transcribing guqin notation is no less a creative act!

Analyzing music with your fingers

Roy Howard's talk "French Music in the Footsteps of Chopin" (20 Oct) opened up a different window for me with regard to analysis. He presented a series of examples showing how various French composers such as Faure, Chabrier, and Debussy 'borrowed' (or were inspired by) piano-writing ideas from Chopin. What was fascinating was that many of these borrowings/allusions were not so much audible or perceivable on the score as they were obvious to the pianist when playing the pieces. It was as if (in Howat's words) Chopin's musical ideas were refracted through the prism of the creative minds of these later composers. Such an analytical approach would require someone like Roy Howat who has extensive familiarity with these repertoires as a performer: one might say, his fingers became his analytical eyes and ears for such analyses!

Philip Glass on world music

Love this statement from Glass in an interview with Peter Lavezzoli (2002):

"The fact is that an educated musician today would be foolish not to acquaint himself or herself with traditions from all over the world. They can hide from it if they want to, but the reality is that it's not just that we know it, but the audience know it. It becomes a kind of parachialism to be confined to a Eurocentric tradition." (Lavezzoli, 2006:146)

Wished I had this understanding when I was younger, but then it's never too late. And what an exciting journey it is now that I have started exploring some of these non-Western traditions.

Asking the "what ifs" and "what might-have-beens"

"Every artist's development carries with it a sense of paths not taken, of unfulfilled promise, of possibilities left untouched. No one can retrace these paths, and speculation is ultimately futile. But it can be done with more or less imagination, more or less tact." (Puffett, 1996: 37)

Just read Derrick Puffett's inspiring piece of rumination--if I may call it such--on "what Webern lost", as he puts it, in having studied with Schoenberg, and not say Pfitzner, Schmidt or Schoeck. Apart from indirectly offering a refreshing and fascinating account of aspects of Webern's biography, one interwoven with a fascinating glimpse into Webern's sketches and diary entries, Puffett imaginatively and beautifully illustrates a potentially fruitful way of analyzing music, especially a composer's juvenile works. He quotes E.T. Cone on the two usual games played: to measure early works against the later ones ("imperfect copies") and to find "intimations of a style yet to be formed". He then proposes a third: "finding intimations of a style not later realised".

This exercise (of the musical mind) is potentially exhilarating! Not only does it provide a different motivation for music analysis, it is also a more challenging and intriguing way to integrate analysis with historical/musicological studies.

NTU ADM's official opening

Today is the official opening of NTU's School of Art, Design and Media Building. In the newsflash e-mail, the Acting Chair of ADM Assoc Prof Suresh Sethi is quoted to have said:

"We believe that students at ADM are truly looking for ideas that come from their own lives, their own surroundings – ideas that they assimilate with a scientist’s brain, a poet’s heart and a painter’s vision."

If music were included, I think the additional phrase would be "a musician's voice", which I'd like to think should ideally integrate with the brain, the heart and a vision. Again, to relate to music analysis, to analyze music is to attempt to understand that voice.

Montalcini, 关乃忠，梅兰芳

Coincidentally, two major figures from two very different fields made similar remarks this week.

The oldest living Nobel Prize winner, Italian scientist Rita Levi Montalcini, recalled appreciatively of how the anti-Jewish laws of the Fascist regime in the 1930s had forced her to quit university and do her research in her bedroom. Her advice: 'don't fear difficult moments, the best comes from them.'

The renowned Chinese composer-conductor 关乃忠 (http://www.guannaizhong.com/), now in his 70s and presently in Singapore for the SFY Chinese Orchestra Central Judging, likewise was 'grateful' to the communist for what he went through during the cultural revolution. The lesson he learnt: '苦难是财富' ('adversity is wealth').

These two remarks bring to mind Chen Kai Ge's recent movie 'Mei Lan Fang' (http://ent.sina.com.cn/f/m/mlf/index.shtml), which I watched last month. If I recall correctly, in one episode, the movie character 邱如白 selfishly persuaded 孟小冬 to leave 梅兰芳 for fear that the latter might simply 'live happily ever after' and presumably lose his artistry: '谁毁了梅兰芳这份孤独，谁就毁了梅兰芳!' ... Would Beethoven be as great if he hadn't lost his hearing?....

Looks like artistes (and scientists) thrive in adversities! Analyzing music then, in one sense, is to get a glimpse into the creative productivity of such hardships and constraints.

Wang Jian Min's masterclass

What a coincidence that JR had just analyzed mainland Chinese composer Wang Jian Min's 1st Erhu Rhapsody （王建民 之 第一二胡狂想曲）this semester and the composer came to Singapore to judge the Singapore National Chinese Music Competition and gave a composition masterclass. I went to the session with much eagerness, wanting to hear him talk about composing first-hand. What great initial disappointment it was when he announced that he didn't think it would be appropriate to conduct a composition masterclass in the context of this competition, instead, he would offer some guidance to performers playing his pieces. Fortunately, I did not then walked out, for his ensuing comments for the three performers revealed much about his thinking as a composer and how he hears music.

The first thing that struck a strong resonance in me was when he essentially echoed what Perahia had recently emphasized--the importance of expressing and shaping the music based on an understanding of the imagery or emotions evoked by the music. As he commented on different sections of the music, he was relating emotions to visual imageries, at times pointing to specific folk elements (e.g. the call-and-response of lovers in Mountain Songs 山歌, the sentiments 情怀of a peasant girl, particular tribal dances, etc). The overall shaping of the music was also important to him, especially when (as he said) he deliberately avoided the stereotypical ABA form and opted for multisectional organization. In particular, he called on the performers to give more thoughts on how to shape the many 散板 (metrically freer) passages that he uses in the introduction (引子) or transitions (衔接处).

The second thing which naturally caught my attention was his emphasis that the performer should at least know something about the composer's basic compositional materials. On his 1st Erhu Rhapsody, he revealed that its basic material is drawn from a very specific folk sources (he was not satisfied with the Erhu player's general reference to Yunnan)--the 飞歌 of the 苗族, a minority tribe in Yunnan (for other folk inspiration, see JR's blog). In this case, it is not a particular folk tune but a general musical feature: as manifested in this piece, it is D-F sharp-A with F-natural as a kind of altered note (变音). As JR had discovered, this four-note motive permeates the entire piece in different guises. What dawned on me was a subtle but important music-cultural difference in perspective: in set-theoretic terms, it is an (0347) where the two notes that form the maj/min third are implicitly equal and may be heard as evoking mixture; but Wang's explanation was more along the lines of Chinese traditional concepts of scale, writing on the board D-F sharp -A first, then speaking of the F-natural as a 变音. I should find out more about the Chinese concept here to see how it compares with the western concept of chromatic note. Certainly, it is his frequent melodic pairing of the two notes that distinguishes it from Western practices and gives this piece its characteristic colouring.

In wrapping up his masterclass, he reiterated that for him, there is no one definitive interpretation of his music: he sees the possibility of other viewpoints, different from his own, as long as these interpretations are logical and coherent (and, I suppose, musical engaging--since throughout the masterclass, his concern for the performer engaging the listener came across very strongly). For him, the space 空间 for creativity even in interpretation is very important. I think he would probably extend this space to analytical interpretation; I'm sure he'd be happy to see performers and analysts alike making sense of his multisectional organization (i.e. going beyond mere labelling and identifying of key/pitch centres)

Finally, I was much impressed by his depth of musical thinking AND hearing, which were at the same time anchored by a down-to-earth awareness of and ability to speak to the young music learners he was addressing. He knew when to elicit immediate changes from the performers and when to simply sow the seed. This was certainly great pedagogy in action--reaching down without talking down.

Oh yes, I almost forgot a profound observation he left with the audience: our Chinese music performance standard was very impressive, very promising, however, our performers were perhaps generally too prim and proper, t0o well brought up (太乖了), that's not good for performance and creativity (it's good to break a string sometimes, he told the guzheng player at one point).Well, it's good to be wild sometimes. :)

Thank you, Mr Perahia!

Dear Mr Perahia,

This is an open letter to you.

I've just come away from your piano masterclass this morning at YST conservatory, it was most inspiring--that goes without saying, really--but more than that, I was even more thrilled to hear you affirm one of the central beliefs in my own teaching--namely, the importance of learning harmony and counterpoint to understand tonal music. This message was certainly beautifully illustrated with the Chopin and Beethoven examples.

And you went beyond that--for you, all these technical understanding (and likewise all the piano techniques) serve a greater end. This was when you took us, with Beethoven's example, from the 'starry sky' to the 'moral within us'. The crown of the jewel here--for me, that is--was when you cautioned that any programmatic interpretation of music must be grounded on an informed understanding of the composer and his music. So, with one stroke of the wand, you've set the eyes of both piano students and musicians who spend hours analyzing music on a higher, more inspiring plane.

As I recalled my ex-professor telling us that you won't play a piece of music until you have analyzed it (and I think he said) using Schenkerian analyses, I wondered if I should ask you about it. But of course, before I could ask my question, you were already talking about shaping in music and, lo and behold! you went to the piano and illustrated Schenker's Ursatz, even including a Schenkerian interruption, with your Beethoven and Mozart examples--all these, without mentioning Schenker's name, which might have alienated some of the audience. I don't know whether you studied with Carl Schachter at Mannes College, but you sure have grasped the essence of Schenker's profound insight!

So, thank you again, Mr Perahia, for lending your voice to my teaching!

Yours humbly,
ec

Messiaen on freedom

Came across in a CD sleeve note Messiaen's manifesto that was supposedly being circulated by the composer himself before performances of his early organ piece La Nativité du Seigneur. One statement stands out for me:

"And the abundance of technical means allows the heart to overflow freely."

I am immediately reminded of the American composer Roger Sessions's admonition that

"If the composer is to avoid becoming—and remaining, at least to some degree—the slave of his own technical limitations, he has to learn to overcome them; and he can do this most efficiently by beginning at the beginning."

The obvious point above is of course the importance of grounding in compositional fundamentals, but perhaps less obviously (and back to Messiaen's quote) it also suggests to me that analysis is about identifying the technical means that the composer has made use of in the piece concerned and seeing how these technicalities are turning into expressive results.

The paradox of freedom in music

Just read Douglas Lowry's inaugural address at his investiture as the new Dean of ESM. As he looks into the future for the institution, it is interesting that he should quote Stravinsky:

"My freedom thus consists in my moving about within the narrow frame that I have assigned myself … my freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action …” (fr Poetics of Music)

Lowry then condenses this to "An artist is most free when the limits are most severe."

In the past, I would immediately think of what I normally tell students when persuading them of the value of mastering species counterpoint; this time, I suddenly wonder if we cannot also profitably think of the 'field' of analysis as similarly 'acting' within constraints. When we choose a particular analytical tool (e.g. Roman numeral analysis, voice-leading reduction, phrase analysis, etc), we 'limit' ourselves to a particular frame of musical thinking, shared by a particular musical community, to exercise our 'freedom' of interpretive imaginations. I wonder if my students sometimes resist analysis not because of the mental hard work involved, but because they see analysis as limiting their musical imagination....But then, without a proper frame of reference, our analytical/interpretational ruminations may risk diffusing into incoherence; and without a shared frame of reference, we can't effectively communicate our musical epiphanies.

Of course, this is not to deny the value of thinking out of the box--of stepping out of a particular frame of analytical perspective in order to find/develop a different (or even better) one.