Two Parter
Monday, January 26, 2004
Whew, that's a long and wind-ey road to Wagner, pal.
The thing about Wagner is that his use of music and words is constructed in such a way that you could say that things are determined by composition but this fact doesn't constitute a closed system. I guess what I find "open" about Wagner is that within the story you have a system where things are at odds with themselves. I don't think the Ring Cycle is simply a story but plays out a larger metaphorical narrative within which you can find a lot of symbolism and a fair amount of ambiguity about the human condition. The music is very dramatic and I think one of the things interesting about Wagner is that he is using symphonic music underneath his opera, which to my mind is different from a lot of other opera composers prior to and contemporary with Wagner where music exists to support the dialogue (the recitative), or as dramatic or mood prop for specific, story-driven situations. While I think that Mozart made some insanely creative use of music I don't think that even he used the music the same way. I do find moments like the end of Don Giovanni where after our good Don has been sucked into hell and the casts sings, they are singing his music. This opens up a broad spectrum of interpretation, possibilities for what it could all mean. The ending of that opera has many oddities concerning character involvement that make the idea of simple morality play moronic. Mozart's world is far more complex than that. With Wagner I'm not trying to make the case that he breaks from all use of music as dramatic prop but that within that schema he recreates something that to my ears sounds new. These huge pulsing waves of pure music have their own elemental force and yet are more than mere nature, an audiophonic stand-in as it were. I feel that with the best classical music that the more and deeper you listen, the more the pieces open up and while I understand that they are those that hear the fields, the folk dances etc, from the composers I listen to most, I hear far, far more. So Beethoven, Wagner, Bruckner, Mahler for the heavy weights and Debussy, Chopin for the atmospherics. I am thinking here of pre 20C. and I am not saying that these are the only ones just a few examples to ponder. That there are rules for composition and that the composers art is to reinvent the world by breaking as many or few as possible to make their soundscapes is where these composers in particular open up and provide open-ended and sometimes jarringly disruptive sound experiences.
I am not going to make the case that all classical music is great or that it's goals are those things that I find interesting in it, though I would say the goals of those composers I mention do dovetail with my auditory interests. Much of classical is pedantic and closed, some guy composing a paen to a paying Prince trying to get the Benjamins and work the chicks much as any other musicians of any other age.
But the best didn't care, died broke or in debt if need be though that has never been a prerequisite. The best though, they create those listening moments when your mind lets itself go to the music and the emotional space breaks open and thought has to take a back seat, if only for a second, to the sublime.
Sunday, January 25, 2004
Letcher: "I was talking to a guy at work who was trying to convince me that rap was the most brilliant music ever made and I came back with the idea that I like music that is ambiguous, disruptive and open-ended and rap music is the most closed system of music I can imagine." Before you set up a shantytown in front of Letcher's house, consider that he lives in a large city and you'd most likely be run over before you get your signs up. Also keep in mind the quote is one sentence lifted out of a long email thread. And unless you're an obsessive rap collector, Mr. Letcher most likely knows rap better than you do.
Letch, I know you have a ton of classical records, and pre-20th C composition was nothing if not determinate; so's most contempo classical stuff. It can still be ambiguous and disruptive, of course. In a broader sense, I don't think you're calling for "total freedom" all the time; I don't think you even believe such a thing is possible in music. Maybe determinate music requires a certain rigor in its construction that's often lacking in lesser rap - you cited Public Enemy, NWA and some of the earlier post-NWA records among those you find worthwhile. You mentioned Peter Kivy's idea of "pure music" in defense of the possibility of openness in music of determinate construction, e.g. Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner. I have Kivy's "Music Alone" on the way, but until then all I know is a brief definition of "pure music": pure instrumental music, unadorned by lyrical content. What, then, of Wagner?
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
