The Classics

So after going through a lot of new music, avant-garde classical music I found myself listening to the "classics", the warhorses of classical music. I am of course speaking about composers like Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Mahler, and Stravinsky, who I could lump in as a classical composer and a new music composer. He's someone who's influenced many and is important in the development of new music as well as being apart of the "old guard" of classical music.

The interesting thing about all of this is that I've listened to all this music a lot when I was about eighteen years old. In fact, I would turn on the classical music station at all times in my dorm room in college and I always had Wagner's Ring Cycle on various CD's as well as Mahler's symphonies, both of which at the time I thought of as being very heavy and dark music, like heavy metal which I was also interested in at the time.

Coming back to the music now at twenty-eight is a lot more engrossing. I'm a lot smarter, I can hear more of the harmonies and rhythms, and my musical experience has increased so I can understand the music more. That's not to say that I understand how Bach used counterpoint. I have a long way to go to understand that sort of stuff. But the aural ear training is much more on point now than its ever been.

After going through so much new music and going back to the classics I find myself more appreciative of the past, European art, history, and music. I can see why the Romantic, Baroque, Classical, and Renaissance eras were important in the development of twentieth century music. Sure, the teachers in predominantly white schools (and some black educational facilities) will tell you its high art but if you don't understand why its high art then you can't truly understand the music.

There is a lot of references to classical music in other art mediums, namely film and television. But for me the work must be found from the source and studied, otherwise its just a tune you hear and probably forget about. Miles Davis would say, "So what."

-Stravinsky pictured above

New Music, Jazz History, and Science Fiction

I've been doing more research into jazz and new music, avant-garde classical music. I've also been reading science fiction and such.

The science fiction novel is easy enough to explain. It's a science fiction novel set in the future where a scientist is trying to find out what happened to a town in Germany called Eifelheim. Then it goes back into Medieval German times where a priest named Dietrich is working as the communication between humans and these insect-like aliens called Kreken. The novel explores this idea: Can we convert aliens? There's other ideas and tons of rocket science abstraction (dense reading!) in it but this is the primary subject of the book. Its called Eifelheim and its written by Michael Flynn. The book was nominated for a Hugo award back in 2007. Although the book came out in 2006 this is already ancient by today's memelord society.

I also picked up two new books on jazz. Both seem superb after only reading a bit. They're two books written by Nat Hentoff. Jazz Life and Jazz Is. Both explore jazz in a variety of ways with interviews, history, and in depth analysis of the music, the musicians, the audience, and the time periods (some of which include when jazz wasn't popular). Hentoff is a Jewish writer (that wrote for pretty much every major publication) that was well known for his politics. He comes to know the music personally because he met and knew most of the "greats" as a kid in New York. I find his insight on the people to be enlightening. He explains that although the people who play jazz are flawed, the music itself isn't. I'm looking forward to reading both books and I hope to learn a lot more about the history (black history) and people that made such great music.

Then there's the readings on and about the new music scene. I've become a listener of the avant-garde, so called "new music", or as I like to say avant-garde classical music. It started during the Chicago trip when I saw Messiaen's Quartet For the End of Time performed and then it just expanded from there like a mothership dropping its young onto an unsuspecting planet.

I've become particularly fond of Xenakis, Ligeti, Guillermo Gregorio (Argentinian clarinetist and improviser), Stravinsky, Stockhausen, and others. Xenakis wrote a great book about mathematics and music but once I got past the initial introduction the book goes a little over my head. Interesting to check out and read about still.

The thing I like about this sort of music is that it sounds like it could've been completely improvised but it was all written down and thought about. They didn't just throw together random stuff and some people say it sounds random and not music at all (a general opinion on the avant-garde) but I've come to learn that music can be made out of anything and everything, a lesson this music has taught me more so than ever. These composers were revolutionary because they didn't follow the standard norms of composition and influenced music of the twentieth century in a profound way. 

Guillermo Gregorio's music is great. His playing is as my dad put it,"dated". He has a sound that was popular back in the mid to late 1960's jazz, free jazz to be specific. He has the sound of Eric Dolphy, if Dolphy was from Argentina and became an intellectual artist inspired by architecture and European art and philosophy. I don't want to generalize him but his playing reminds me of Dolphy a lot. And I dig that very much.

On the other end of the spectrum (the one where European/American art music and rap don't mix!) I read the entire LA Weekly edition that just came out and in the back they had a list of fifteen of LA's best rappers. I'm not a fan of rap but I figured I would check out some of these guys and see if they had done LA proud with their work. DJ Quik has a nice funky style and Tyler the Creator has become a rap darling. Apparently the guy who doesn't give a fuck about anything actually cares.

All of this stuff will enrich my musical and literary palette. I'm trying to improve the blog, do more editing and limiting my posts and sentences, something before I never would have done because I thought too much editing was a bad thing almost akin to censorship. My goal is to eventually be showcased somewhere on a website and for something to come out of all of this. After all, nobody should write for free. But a free thinker must express his ideas to others lest it all sit inside one's head. As Grace Slick (from Jefferson Airplane) sang in White Rabbit, "Feed your head."

Picture is the composer Ligeti