Two John Cage Stories
Even as the 19th century aesthete cherished the divinely inspired genius, and chaired him through the market place, a significant number of 20th century aesthetes might be said to have deplored the whole concept of genius--as well as all the other external trappings of excellence with which we adorn our attitudes. The 19th century needed musical heroes--the 20th century much preferred anti-heroes. The 19th century affirmed something positive and transcendental, but 20th century science turned the artist's face away from the ideal and turned it, with a cynical smirk, toward the ironic.
One of the main ideas, behind both modernist and the post-modernist academic concert music, was that original solutions to musical problems, thus the creation of unique musical identities, was no longer possible using the musical materials handed down to us from our immediate forebears; the implications of this inherited material were laid on too thick for the music to overcome by any other means than rejection. Thus, anything that displayed a self-conscious break with tradition was considered original. Of course vogues and cliques rapidly developed, and thus we got a whole bunch of original music that all sounded the same.
The first Cage story I want to tell takes place at UCLA where Schoenberg was having him realize a figured bass in four parts on the blackboard. Cage wrote his first realization.
Schoenberg said, "Write another."
Cage wrote another realization.
Schoenberg said, "Write another."
Cage wrote another realization.
Schoenberg said, "Write another."
Cage wrote another realization.
Nine times. Finally, Schoenberg said, "Write another."
And Cage said, "There are no more."
And Schoenberg accepted this.
This story is often upheld, to defend the position that all the musical potentials of the style materials of the past are used up, and only a radical departure will yield anything new. This attitude has been a thorn in my side my whole life--so much so that to comment on it even briefly would be to invoke not a blog, but a book from my fevered brain. Let it go with this one disgusted retort:
it may be that, under the confining restrictions of a 4-part exercise, the number of a certain type of mathematical solution may eventually be exhausted, but, you do the math, there are so many other variables in any style period that it would use up many, many lifetimes for them ALL to be used up. The monkey may some day write Hamlet, but who's got the time?
One of the other main ideas, behind both modernist and the post-modernist academic concert music, is that the emphasis of musical expression should be turned away from what is said, placing the main emphasis upon what is NOT said. Anti-Art readily brings forth Anti-Artists.This brings us to our second Cage story. This one takes place during Cage's residency at the University of Illinois in the 60s:
Once upon a time John was having an argument with a musicologist who considered Cage to be an impostor, a charlatan, a non-musician--certainly NOT a genius. The musicologist made a list of all Cage's musical sins, like a priest accusing a prodigal son, and compared him with Beethoven, that paragon of snooty quality. "This, and this, and this, and this, and this is why Beethoven was a great composer and you're not!"
To which Cage replied, "But, you see, Beethoven HAD to be a great composer and I don't." Buddhist non-attachment trumpets to the anti-composer's rescue.
In a way, Cage is pretty much of a punk for passing the buck on to the audience--asking THEM to make up his music for him. And yet . . . there's something magnificent, indeed heroic, nay, SAINTLY in the gesture of giving up control of a created artwork and letting GOD step in! What a selfless act, to create situations in which the personality of the creator is completely canceled out by the technique of the piece! It may not be a stroke of musical genius, but it is certainly a stroke of philosophic genius--and if you accept the mode of transmission of this philosophic truth as SOUND, how is that not music?
Does anybody sound like Cage? Does nobody sound like Cage? What's the difference?
RFT
Glennallen, AK
February 20, 2011
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Sunday, February 13, 2011
On the Ethics of Genius
On the Ethics of Genius
"If a tree falls in the forest, with no one there to hear, does it make a sound?" Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. Definitions of sound may be consigned to the quibble/semantics garbage pail for all I care. However, sound or no, I have never had any doubt that if a tree falls in the forest, with no one there to hear, it makes no music. Music is communication or it is nothing. With no one there to hear, there is no transmission of idea or energy from one subjective reality to another. Musical truth brings the soul of the individual into more intimate communion with the oversoul, with the saints, with God. The divine intelligence of music wouldn't even bother manifesting without an audience--put another way, it is the subjective reality of the audience that brings the truth of music into energetic manifestation.
There is a commonly held opinion that genius dwells in a rarefied atmosphere beyond the ken of the common man. I vigorously reject this attitude. It may be true that savants like Mozart and Mendelssohn have insight into the mechanics of creation that surpasses the average or even above average aptitude for understanding the abstract mathematics of music, but without the innocence of the child and the connection with the pulsing blood, those abstractions mean nothing.
The following comments are taken from my doctoral thesis article, "On the Ethics of Music Composition."
The single most powerfully validating attribute an expression can have is the ability to invoke the collective mind in the subject, thereby giving him a super-personal experience of himself and, vice versa, the collective mind a super-personal experience of him (see p. 9 of "On the Improv Mind State"). Therefore, since entering a transcendent state, in this regard, becomes a social act, the degree to which an expression is absorbed into the collective mind is very much a measure of its ethical legitimacy.
The "social" dimension of art is the critical point here--the artist does not create in a vacuum, even if there is never a single other living person listening, the vestiges of human intelligence residing in the collective mind field hear every note.
The rightness or goodness of an expression is intimately linked with its presence as a universal identity. A basic proposition of this paper, supported by suggestions made in "On the Improv Mind State," is that humans are multi-dimensional beings. Human beings exist as foci of ego-consciousness graduated over a vertically aligned strata of planes of existence; a whole person does not live on one single plane at a time, but simultaneously on several, possibly an infinite number. A truthful expression of a multi-dimensional being must, therefore, initiate shifts in mind state, and must generate trans-dimensional energies; otherwise the living referent of the expression is only partially represented. Therefore an expression, if it refers to the multi-dimensional world of humanity, must have something to say to humanity, just as any vibration has something to say to a potentially sympathetic frequency.
Contrariwise, if the elements of an expression are fixed in one dimension or another, then the expression cannot be parallel to humankind; since a human being cannot duplicate the experience of such a non-parallel expression with his whole being, complete contact cannot be made. Such a lapse is sufficient to invalidate the expression and to ensure its hasty demise.
Thus an expression may be said to be ethically invalid when it does not engage the whole multi-dimensional being in an intercourse of sympathetic resonance (or duplication). Because higher and the lower constitute a unified reality, the omission of any aspect of this unity makes for a false representation. This invalidation can occur in the material dimension
(1) with expressions which slavishly repeat the literal identities of their referents without initiating a shift in mind state, or
(2) with expressions whose referents are completely ideational, or abstract, with no material point of reference.
The choices a composer makes in building his composition may initiate psychological responses which lead the subject, step by step, toward an experience of his higher self; or they may not.
The virtuoso mental gymnastics at play in a work of genius will always take a secondary place relative to the motion of the heart in its strivings to reach out to the world and touch the heart of another. The heart's desire moving across the waters, undefined or contained by an abstract form, does not express or manifest true feeling, but rather sentimentality, the echo or shadow of feeling; but form without feeling is sounding brass signifying nothing. The a priori logic of music supports and directs the energy of musical truth, but it is not a substitute for this energy; the truth of music cannot be expressed by rational constraints, only articulated by it. The logic is the needlework that holds the magnificent gown of light in place over the restless frame of transcendent reality. Focus on any single aspect of the multi-dimensional resonance of music, at the expense of the others, limits the range of the expression, deflating it, emasculating it, killing it. Thus the work of genius, while in need of abstract underpinnings, must always strive to embrace the scope of a WHOLE person--an holistic spiritual being.
Since humans exist simultaneously on more than one plane of being, expressions must resonate sympathetically with human intelligence trans- dimensionally. Only by resonating in tune with all levels of the personality's subjective experience can an expression be meaningful; only by inspiring the ego to experience itself in its vast array of articulated forms and inarticulate modalities, does an expression validate itself as truthful. Thus the challenge and the opportunity of art is to seduce consciousness out of its comfortable literal mode and direct it towards higher levels of its mental constitution.
In Christianity and Evolution (1971), Teilhard de Chardin describes the way the personal mind relates to the collective mind. Chardin says that a human mind generates a kind of magnetic force-field, and that all the minds of mankind, all those little force-fields, exert an attraction on each other, creating a kind of merged consciousness (the Omega Point). The energy of all those individual minds creates (or, at some point in the distant past, created) a magnetic vortex which draws (drew) all similar minds into it. This vortex manifests itself as a kind of magnetic cloud that hovers over the world of man, a cloud into which an individual mind may reach to access information or to make personal contributions. Living beings thus constantly rebuild or modify the corporate content of this cloud, which is made manifest not only in individual consciousnesses but in an anomalous super-personal mind-space of its own.
The content of this cloud, is truly corporate, because in the collective mind environment the individual is subsumed into the group. The collective mind is an egalitarian environment, an average-seeking energy; no one person is more important than another, even though individuals may sometimes influence whole classes of materials. To borrow an expression from Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics (1971), the collective mind may be thought of as "patterns of interconnection probabilities," (p. 68).
Interconnection is needed to link
(1) the vertical axis of existence through which a human being encounters his multi-dimensional self, and
(2) the horizontal axis, through which he encounters the rest of humanity.
This discussion is leading somewhere--it is leading to the invalidation of the whole idea of genius in favor of a more democratic system of validating art. Ultimately, we are moving to a definition of genius that negates the word's meaningfulness.
Next week: John Cage Stories
"If a tree falls in the forest, with no one there to hear, does it make a sound?" Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. Definitions of sound may be consigned to the quibble/semantics garbage pail for all I care. However, sound or no, I have never had any doubt that if a tree falls in the forest, with no one there to hear, it makes no music. Music is communication or it is nothing. With no one there to hear, there is no transmission of idea or energy from one subjective reality to another. Musical truth brings the soul of the individual into more intimate communion with the oversoul, with the saints, with God. The divine intelligence of music wouldn't even bother manifesting without an audience--put another way, it is the subjective reality of the audience that brings the truth of music into energetic manifestation.
There is a commonly held opinion that genius dwells in a rarefied atmosphere beyond the ken of the common man. I vigorously reject this attitude. It may be true that savants like Mozart and Mendelssohn have insight into the mechanics of creation that surpasses the average or even above average aptitude for understanding the abstract mathematics of music, but without the innocence of the child and the connection with the pulsing blood, those abstractions mean nothing.
The following comments are taken from my doctoral thesis article, "On the Ethics of Music Composition."
The single most powerfully validating attribute an expression can have is the ability to invoke the collective mind in the subject, thereby giving him a super-personal experience of himself and, vice versa, the collective mind a super-personal experience of him (see p. 9 of "On the Improv Mind State"). Therefore, since entering a transcendent state, in this regard, becomes a social act, the degree to which an expression is absorbed into the collective mind is very much a measure of its ethical legitimacy.
The "social" dimension of art is the critical point here--the artist does not create in a vacuum, even if there is never a single other living person listening, the vestiges of human intelligence residing in the collective mind field hear every note.
The rightness or goodness of an expression is intimately linked with its presence as a universal identity. A basic proposition of this paper, supported by suggestions made in "On the Improv Mind State," is that humans are multi-dimensional beings. Human beings exist as foci of ego-consciousness graduated over a vertically aligned strata of planes of existence; a whole person does not live on one single plane at a time, but simultaneously on several, possibly an infinite number. A truthful expression of a multi-dimensional being must, therefore, initiate shifts in mind state, and must generate trans-dimensional energies; otherwise the living referent of the expression is only partially represented. Therefore an expression, if it refers to the multi-dimensional world of humanity, must have something to say to humanity, just as any vibration has something to say to a potentially sympathetic frequency.
Contrariwise, if the elements of an expression are fixed in one dimension or another, then the expression cannot be parallel to humankind; since a human being cannot duplicate the experience of such a non-parallel expression with his whole being, complete contact cannot be made. Such a lapse is sufficient to invalidate the expression and to ensure its hasty demise.
Thus an expression may be said to be ethically invalid when it does not engage the whole multi-dimensional being in an intercourse of sympathetic resonance (or duplication). Because higher and the lower constitute a unified reality, the omission of any aspect of this unity makes for a false representation. This invalidation can occur in the material dimension
(1) with expressions which slavishly repeat the literal identities of their referents without initiating a shift in mind state, or
(2) with expressions whose referents are completely ideational, or abstract, with no material point of reference.
The choices a composer makes in building his composition may initiate psychological responses which lead the subject, step by step, toward an experience of his higher self; or they may not.
The virtuoso mental gymnastics at play in a work of genius will always take a secondary place relative to the motion of the heart in its strivings to reach out to the world and touch the heart of another. The heart's desire moving across the waters, undefined or contained by an abstract form, does not express or manifest true feeling, but rather sentimentality, the echo or shadow of feeling; but form without feeling is sounding brass signifying nothing. The a priori logic of music supports and directs the energy of musical truth, but it is not a substitute for this energy; the truth of music cannot be expressed by rational constraints, only articulated by it. The logic is the needlework that holds the magnificent gown of light in place over the restless frame of transcendent reality. Focus on any single aspect of the multi-dimensional resonance of music, at the expense of the others, limits the range of the expression, deflating it, emasculating it, killing it. Thus the work of genius, while in need of abstract underpinnings, must always strive to embrace the scope of a WHOLE person--an holistic spiritual being.
Since humans exist simultaneously on more than one plane of being, expressions must resonate sympathetically with human intelligence trans- dimensionally. Only by resonating in tune with all levels of the personality's subjective experience can an expression be meaningful; only by inspiring the ego to experience itself in its vast array of articulated forms and inarticulate modalities, does an expression validate itself as truthful. Thus the challenge and the opportunity of art is to seduce consciousness out of its comfortable literal mode and direct it towards higher levels of its mental constitution.
In Christianity and Evolution (1971), Teilhard de Chardin describes the way the personal mind relates to the collective mind. Chardin says that a human mind generates a kind of magnetic force-field, and that all the minds of mankind, all those little force-fields, exert an attraction on each other, creating a kind of merged consciousness (the Omega Point). The energy of all those individual minds creates (or, at some point in the distant past, created) a magnetic vortex which draws (drew) all similar minds into it. This vortex manifests itself as a kind of magnetic cloud that hovers over the world of man, a cloud into which an individual mind may reach to access information or to make personal contributions. Living beings thus constantly rebuild or modify the corporate content of this cloud, which is made manifest not only in individual consciousnesses but in an anomalous super-personal mind-space of its own.
The content of this cloud, is truly corporate, because in the collective mind environment the individual is subsumed into the group. The collective mind is an egalitarian environment, an average-seeking energy; no one person is more important than another, even though individuals may sometimes influence whole classes of materials. To borrow an expression from Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics (1971), the collective mind may be thought of as "patterns of interconnection probabilities," (p. 68).
Interconnection is needed to link
(1) the vertical axis of existence through which a human being encounters his multi-dimensional self, and
(2) the horizontal axis, through which he encounters the rest of humanity.
This discussion is leading somewhere--it is leading to the invalidation of the whole idea of genius in favor of a more democratic system of validating art. Ultimately, we are moving to a definition of genius that negates the word's meaningfulness.
Next week: John Cage Stories
Monday, February 7, 2011
Genius According to J. D. Salinger
Genius According to J. D. Salinger
Much has been said in these first few blog entries about the authentic self expressed in the work of genius. In fact, the expected emphasis, on revelations of towering intellect or of brilliant intuitive connections, has been largely missing from this discussion. I have indicated that if it is honest, true to itself and true to its creator, a work of art will affirm its own validity by transmitting divine truth to its open-minded audience. The introduction of pre-existing formulae compromises the "truth quotient" of a work, only if the formulae self-consciously rely on the external "effects" built into them, rather than on integral relationships discovered between them--
relationships created out of:
affinities of the internal forms each with each other,
affinities inherent in the nature of internal forms--
a relative weighting of archetypal artifacts,
a weighting which depends, for its sense, upon some
cosmic super-structure to fix the artifacts in their proper
place in the arrayed continuum
of the collective unconscious.
What is this gobbledygook about "relative weighting in the collective unconscious?
Well, it's really not gobbledygook. There can be no doubt that there is a kind of electromagnetic cloud of consciousness, surrounding the earth, that is created and used by the corporate mind of man. Residing in this cloud is the library of ideas which have been brought forth from the void by human consciousness, and become common property; these ideas are fixed in place from constant use by, and constant reinforcement of, the collective mind of man.
My teacher Herbert Brun had no patience with music that contained obvious references to earlier works or styles; but perhaps he forgot that the force, that establishes the system of relative weights between the parts of a work of art, is the MIND of the creator; (the anomalous mind of the creator).
NOW HEAR THIS: the relationships found in any sequential system, ultimately make sense only SUBJECTIVELY--we can PERCEIVE truth objectively, but we can only EXPERIENCE it subjectively. There is an inevitable logic that drives all literal, (perhaps literate?) systems, and similar conclusions are arrived at all the time, simply because there is a certain a prior knowledge that consistently predicts the same conclusions over and over again.
Brun did not allow for the possibility of a dilettante composer stumbling onto the same truths that were previously discovered, quite independently, by somebody else. If it's been done, we ought to know about it. (Sound familiar?) Brun also had no patience for naivete--to him, the only socially responsible composer was the one who was as well-educated and erudite as himself. The innocent discovery was not valid because innocence itself was to be deplored.
And yet I have heard pieces written by college students that capture the spirit of Chopin just as truthfully and just as legitimately as Chopin himself. Who's to say that the logic systems of Chopin are Chopin's exclusive intellectual property just because he found them first? Indeed it is the innocent, accidental discovery that most completely validates a work of art--the excitement of discovery that uncovers some cosmic secret. There is no shortage of cosmic secrets.
The J.D. Salinger connection for this week comes, of course, from Catcher in the Rye. The anti-hero of this famous work is a screwed-up teen-ager who has an hysterical fear of phonies. He finds himself entrenched in a society that does not encourage intimacy--a society in which formulation is an accepted substitute for intimacy. He can't get close to anybody, because he can't trust the language of formulation to honestly express or create intimacy. Alienation ensues, and all the world informs against his isolation, even the art:
"Ernie's a big fat colored guy that plays the piano.
He's a terrific snob and he won't hardly even talk to you
unless you're a big shot or a celebrity or something,
but he can really play the piano. He's so good he's
almost corny, in fact. I don't know exactly what I mean
by that, but I mean it. I certainly like to hear him play,
but sometimes you feel like turning his goddamn
piano over. I think it's because sometimes when he plays,
he sounds like the kind of guy that won't talk to you
unless you're a big shot." (p. 146)
One of the problems with the academic musical mind set, is that it tends to fiercely and territorially cherish those stylistic artifacts which most dramatically alienate their music from anything like a popular, or even average audience. The thing about Ernie's self-esteem, is that it projects itself into the expressions of his fingers, and flaunts itself like a prostitute flaunts her carnal wares. Ernie has lost the innocence of the child discovering its private truth for the first time--he has become a professor of truth. Those who can't do, teach--and their lessons always proclaim their superiority to all other lessons in the universe.
I used to play at a country club a few nights a week, and I always played the theme from the Goldberg Variations, at the end of the evening, because I wanted those last few diners to get sleepy and go home. This aria is ornately embellished by Bach, and is the type of tune that invites further embellishment by the performer. Consequently, it is easy to become mannered and insincere in the way you play all the trills, and turns, and appogiaturi; I had to remind myself every night to open myself to accidental experience and hear the piece as though I were playing it for the first time. When I consciously put myself in that mind set, I could truly hear the piece for the first time, every time--it's the same kind of mind set I put myself in when I'm getting ready to play jazz.
"In the first place, I hate actors. They never act like
people. They just think they do. Some of the good
ones do, in a very slight way, but not in a way that's
fun to watch. And if any actor's really good, you can
always tell he knows he's good, and that spoils it. . .
Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were the old couple,
and they were very good, but I didn't like them much.
They were different, though, I'll say that. They didn't act
like people and they didn't act like actors. It's hard to
explain. They acted more like they knew they were
celebrities and all. I mean they were good, but then they
were too good. When one of them got finished making
a speech, the other one said something very fast right
after it. It was supposed to be like people really talking
and interrupting each other and all. The trouble was,
it was too much like people talking and interrupting
each other. They acted a little bit the way old Ernie,
down in the village, plays the piano. If you do something
good, then, after a while, if you don't watch it, you start
showing off. And then you're not as good any more."
(p. 210)
There is a saying among performers that:
"the music must be exciting, but you must not be excited." This rule of thumb speaks for the objective attitude toward performance that forbids emotional involvement with the performance for fear that physical equanimity will be lost, and thereby technical flaws will be introduced. For instance, there is this choral piece by Mendelssohn that I can't sing because I always start to cry--some technical flaw, right? Sobbing through a high tenor line? But to me those tears of sincerity are worth every right note on the page--those tears are showers of truth.
Much has been said in these first few blog entries about the authentic self expressed in the work of genius. In fact, the expected emphasis, on revelations of towering intellect or of brilliant intuitive connections, has been largely missing from this discussion. I have indicated that if it is honest, true to itself and true to its creator, a work of art will affirm its own validity by transmitting divine truth to its open-minded audience. The introduction of pre-existing formulae compromises the "truth quotient" of a work, only if the formulae self-consciously rely on the external "effects" built into them, rather than on integral relationships discovered between them--
relationships created out of:
affinities of the internal forms each with each other,
affinities inherent in the nature of internal forms--
a relative weighting of archetypal artifacts,
a weighting which depends, for its sense, upon some
cosmic super-structure to fix the artifacts in their proper
place in the arrayed continuum
of the collective unconscious.
What is this gobbledygook about "relative weighting in the collective unconscious?
Well, it's really not gobbledygook. There can be no doubt that there is a kind of electromagnetic cloud of consciousness, surrounding the earth, that is created and used by the corporate mind of man. Residing in this cloud is the library of ideas which have been brought forth from the void by human consciousness, and become common property; these ideas are fixed in place from constant use by, and constant reinforcement of, the collective mind of man.
My teacher Herbert Brun had no patience with music that contained obvious references to earlier works or styles; but perhaps he forgot that the force, that establishes the system of relative weights between the parts of a work of art, is the MIND of the creator; (the anomalous mind of the creator).
NOW HEAR THIS: the relationships found in any sequential system, ultimately make sense only SUBJECTIVELY--we can PERCEIVE truth objectively, but we can only EXPERIENCE it subjectively. There is an inevitable logic that drives all literal, (perhaps literate?) systems, and similar conclusions are arrived at all the time, simply because there is a certain a prior knowledge that consistently predicts the same conclusions over and over again.
Brun did not allow for the possibility of a dilettante composer stumbling onto the same truths that were previously discovered, quite independently, by somebody else. If it's been done, we ought to know about it. (Sound familiar?) Brun also had no patience for naivete--to him, the only socially responsible composer was the one who was as well-educated and erudite as himself. The innocent discovery was not valid because innocence itself was to be deplored.
And yet I have heard pieces written by college students that capture the spirit of Chopin just as truthfully and just as legitimately as Chopin himself. Who's to say that the logic systems of Chopin are Chopin's exclusive intellectual property just because he found them first? Indeed it is the innocent, accidental discovery that most completely validates a work of art--the excitement of discovery that uncovers some cosmic secret. There is no shortage of cosmic secrets.
The J.D. Salinger connection for this week comes, of course, from Catcher in the Rye. The anti-hero of this famous work is a screwed-up teen-ager who has an hysterical fear of phonies. He finds himself entrenched in a society that does not encourage intimacy--a society in which formulation is an accepted substitute for intimacy. He can't get close to anybody, because he can't trust the language of formulation to honestly express or create intimacy. Alienation ensues, and all the world informs against his isolation, even the art:
"Ernie's a big fat colored guy that plays the piano.
He's a terrific snob and he won't hardly even talk to you
unless you're a big shot or a celebrity or something,
but he can really play the piano. He's so good he's
almost corny, in fact. I don't know exactly what I mean
by that, but I mean it. I certainly like to hear him play,
but sometimes you feel like turning his goddamn
piano over. I think it's because sometimes when he plays,
he sounds like the kind of guy that won't talk to you
unless you're a big shot." (p. 146)
One of the problems with the academic musical mind set, is that it tends to fiercely and territorially cherish those stylistic artifacts which most dramatically alienate their music from anything like a popular, or even average audience. The thing about Ernie's self-esteem, is that it projects itself into the expressions of his fingers, and flaunts itself like a prostitute flaunts her carnal wares. Ernie has lost the innocence of the child discovering its private truth for the first time--he has become a professor of truth. Those who can't do, teach--and their lessons always proclaim their superiority to all other lessons in the universe.
I used to play at a country club a few nights a week, and I always played the theme from the Goldberg Variations, at the end of the evening, because I wanted those last few diners to get sleepy and go home. This aria is ornately embellished by Bach, and is the type of tune that invites further embellishment by the performer. Consequently, it is easy to become mannered and insincere in the way you play all the trills, and turns, and appogiaturi; I had to remind myself every night to open myself to accidental experience and hear the piece as though I were playing it for the first time. When I consciously put myself in that mind set, I could truly hear the piece for the first time, every time--it's the same kind of mind set I put myself in when I'm getting ready to play jazz.
"In the first place, I hate actors. They never act like
people. They just think they do. Some of the good
ones do, in a very slight way, but not in a way that's
fun to watch. And if any actor's really good, you can
always tell he knows he's good, and that spoils it. . .
Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were the old couple,
and they were very good, but I didn't like them much.
They were different, though, I'll say that. They didn't act
like people and they didn't act like actors. It's hard to
explain. They acted more like they knew they were
celebrities and all. I mean they were good, but then they
were too good. When one of them got finished making
a speech, the other one said something very fast right
after it. It was supposed to be like people really talking
and interrupting each other and all. The trouble was,
it was too much like people talking and interrupting
each other. They acted a little bit the way old Ernie,
down in the village, plays the piano. If you do something
good, then, after a while, if you don't watch it, you start
showing off. And then you're not as good any more."
(p. 210)
There is a saying among performers that:
"the music must be exciting, but you must not be excited." This rule of thumb speaks for the objective attitude toward performance that forbids emotional involvement with the performance for fear that physical equanimity will be lost, and thereby technical flaws will be introduced. For instance, there is this choral piece by Mendelssohn that I can't sing because I always start to cry--some technical flaw, right? Sobbing through a high tenor line? But to me those tears of sincerity are worth every right note on the page--those tears are showers of truth.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Genius According to Somerset Maugham
Genius According to Somerset Maugham
The Moon and Sixpence, (1919) a novel by Somerset Maugham, is ostensibly about Paul Gauguin, but could be about anybody. Moreover, it is a very broad and general discussion of the subject of genius. The word "genius" occurs in the book more than 50 times, and is examined from many varying perspectives. However, Maugham lets us have it right up front, in the second paragraph, with a definitive, early 20th century definition of genius. In speaking of his protagonist, Charles Strickland, he says:
". . . he had genius. To my mind the most interesting thing in art is the personality of the artist; and if that is singular, I am willing to excuse a thousand faults. I suppose Velasquez was a better painter than El Greco, but custom stales one's admiration for him: the Cretan, sensual and tragic, proffers the mystery of his soul like a standing sacrifice. The artist, painter, poet, or musician, by his decoration, sublime or beautiful, satisfies the aesthetic sense; but that is akin to the sexual instinct, and shares its barbarity: he lays before you also the greater gift of himself. To pursue his secret has something of the fascination of a detective story. It is a riddle which shares with the universe the merit of having no answer. The most insignificant of Strickland's works suggests a personality which is strange, tormented, and complex; and it is this surely which prevents even those who do not like his pictures from being indifferent to them; it is this which has excited so curious an interest in his life and character.
Thus it may be seen that "genius" is associated, in the early 20th century mind, with singularity of character at least as much as it is with richness of talent, or loftiness of intellect. The emphasis on the unique character of the genius leads us easily into the realm of originality, since singularity of artistic style must certainly follow from singularity of character.
Originality was the biggest bugga-boo of my early years as a composer. Everybody was so busy trying be original that everybody was trying all the same "new" (sic) things. The students at the university practically screamed in my ear, "How can you be original, if you don't sound just like us?" Another good one was, "Whoever heard of a composer that wasn't famous?"
I have always tried to take a broad view of style, and prided myself on my ability to effortlessly weave together stylistic references from an array of historical and cultural sources. The result was a potpourri with enough stuff in it to offend everybody: to the low-brow, it was too high-brow, and to the high-brow it was too low-brow. In 1995 I had a composition teacher tell me that including a swing drum part and a walking bass in the middle of an abstract piece was the most dissonant thing he'd ever heard.
I don't get it; I mean I didn't make this up, Charles Ives did it all 100 years ago, and Charles Ives is well respected. I guess few have had the courage to be as free with their ego-resolution as Ives was: to him, he and music, all music, were spiritually linked; like a babe in arms, he could not tell where he left off and the sweet breast of mother music began. It is the archetypal resonance in his pieces, that reaches into the soul of his attentive audience, and invokes, more than nostalgia, a sense of timelessness.
Are originality and singularity of character linked with honesty? Is the genius simply he/she who has the courage (or the stupidity) to speak only the truth of him/herself? In a later description Strickland, Maugham notes:
"But though he said nothing of any consequence, there was something in his personality which prevented him from being dull. Perhaps it was sincerity. He did not seem to care much about the Paris he was now seeing for the first time (I did not count the visit with his wife), and he accepted sights which must have been strange to him without any sense of astonishment. I have been to Paris a hundred times, and it never fails to give me a thrill of excitement; I can never walk its streets without feeling myself on the verge of adventure. Strickland remained placid. Looking back, I think now that he was blind to everything but to some disturbing vision in his soul."
Are we all unique beings, flecks of God-consciousness, some more or less willing (in this conformist society) to fess up to our individuality? If so, who chooses which spark of eternal mind will rise to distinction, and which to the obscurity of the void? Who brands the chosen one with the inner vision, so irresistible, so unattainable?
". . . how strange it was that the creative instinct should seize upon this dull stockbroker, to his own ruin, perhaps, and to the misfortune of such as were dependent on him; and yet no stranger than the way in which the spirit of God has seized men, powerful and rich, pursuing them with stubborn vigilance till at last, conquered, they have abandoned the joy of the world and the love of women for the painful austerities of the cloister. Conversion may come under many shapes, and it may be brought about in many ways. With some men it needs a cataclysm, as a stone may be broken to fragments by the fury of a torrent; but with some it comes gradually, as a stone may be worn away by the ceaseless fall of a drop of water. Strickland had the directness of the fanatic and the ferocity of the apostle."
The "ferocity of the apostle" is just the way the personality of Beethoven might be described. The idea of the hero, burdened with a special quest, is so attractive, so romantic, that few weak-minded individuals can avoid the seduction of its ego-stroking balms. Little do they know that the truly unique individual craves, with all possible heart, to be enfolded in the affections of the herd, protected and affirmed by the hearths of mediocrity. The fact that they suffer an outcast station in their own country, all for not being like other people--this is something the truly mediocre never think of; as they promote their own self-esteem, with the bells and baubles of their in-group, they blind themselves to the sensitivities necessary to discern real quality.
"When people say they do not care what others think of them, for the most part they deceive themselves. Generally they mean only that they will do as they choose, in the confidence that no one will know their vagaries; and at the utmost only that they are willing to act contrary to the opinion of the majority because they are supported by the approval of their neighbours. It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set. (italics, mine). It affords you then an inordinate amount of self-esteem. You have the self-satisfaction of courage without the inconvenience of danger. But the desire for approbation is perhaps the most deeply seated instinct of civilised man. No one runs so hurriedly to the cover of respectability as the unconventional woman who has exposed herself to the slings and arrows of outraged propriety. I do not believe the people who tell me they do not care a row of pins for the opinion of their fellows. It is the bravado of ignorance. They mean only that they do not fear reproaches for peccadillos which they are convinced none will discover."
To close this week's blog I quote Arnold Schoenberg:
"It is neither "obligatory" nor "permissible" to write either tonally or atonally. Write or not; but in either case, ask no questions, but do your best. Whoever really has it in him will produce it, whether it be tonal or atonal; let the others--those who do what they can--write tonally or atonally, or make what noise they please. They will certainly shout us down, who fulfill our musical destinies as we may: and they will quickly find the ears of all those who keep their ears open for everything ambiguous, but closed to the truth."
Character, Apostle, Destiny, Truth, all terms from the jargon of high universals. How is the true genius able to tell himself apart from just some schmuck with an obsessive-compulsive personality? The expression of Ego as an end in itself, works against the individual's development of sensitivities to his/her true identity. The use of Ego energy as the motive key to higher dimensions, promotes a consciousness of unimagined levels of self. Thus, doth divine truth pass a course through the entrails of a human being, and shit itself out on the concert stage for the edification of us all.
The Moon and Sixpence, (1919) a novel by Somerset Maugham, is ostensibly about Paul Gauguin, but could be about anybody. Moreover, it is a very broad and general discussion of the subject of genius. The word "genius" occurs in the book more than 50 times, and is examined from many varying perspectives. However, Maugham lets us have it right up front, in the second paragraph, with a definitive, early 20th century definition of genius. In speaking of his protagonist, Charles Strickland, he says:
". . . he had genius. To my mind the most interesting thing in art is the personality of the artist; and if that is singular, I am willing to excuse a thousand faults. I suppose Velasquez was a better painter than El Greco, but custom stales one's admiration for him: the Cretan, sensual and tragic, proffers the mystery of his soul like a standing sacrifice. The artist, painter, poet, or musician, by his decoration, sublime or beautiful, satisfies the aesthetic sense; but that is akin to the sexual instinct, and shares its barbarity: he lays before you also the greater gift of himself. To pursue his secret has something of the fascination of a detective story. It is a riddle which shares with the universe the merit of having no answer. The most insignificant of Strickland's works suggests a personality which is strange, tormented, and complex; and it is this surely which prevents even those who do not like his pictures from being indifferent to them; it is this which has excited so curious an interest in his life and character.
Thus it may be seen that "genius" is associated, in the early 20th century mind, with singularity of character at least as much as it is with richness of talent, or loftiness of intellect. The emphasis on the unique character of the genius leads us easily into the realm of originality, since singularity of artistic style must certainly follow from singularity of character.
Originality was the biggest bugga-boo of my early years as a composer. Everybody was so busy trying be original that everybody was trying all the same "new" (sic) things. The students at the university practically screamed in my ear, "How can you be original, if you don't sound just like us?" Another good one was, "Whoever heard of a composer that wasn't famous?"
I have always tried to take a broad view of style, and prided myself on my ability to effortlessly weave together stylistic references from an array of historical and cultural sources. The result was a potpourri with enough stuff in it to offend everybody: to the low-brow, it was too high-brow, and to the high-brow it was too low-brow. In 1995 I had a composition teacher tell me that including a swing drum part and a walking bass in the middle of an abstract piece was the most dissonant thing he'd ever heard.
I don't get it; I mean I didn't make this up, Charles Ives did it all 100 years ago, and Charles Ives is well respected. I guess few have had the courage to be as free with their ego-resolution as Ives was: to him, he and music, all music, were spiritually linked; like a babe in arms, he could not tell where he left off and the sweet breast of mother music began. It is the archetypal resonance in his pieces, that reaches into the soul of his attentive audience, and invokes, more than nostalgia, a sense of timelessness.
Are originality and singularity of character linked with honesty? Is the genius simply he/she who has the courage (or the stupidity) to speak only the truth of him/herself? In a later description Strickland, Maugham notes:
"But though he said nothing of any consequence, there was something in his personality which prevented him from being dull. Perhaps it was sincerity. He did not seem to care much about the Paris he was now seeing for the first time (I did not count the visit with his wife), and he accepted sights which must have been strange to him without any sense of astonishment. I have been to Paris a hundred times, and it never fails to give me a thrill of excitement; I can never walk its streets without feeling myself on the verge of adventure. Strickland remained placid. Looking back, I think now that he was blind to everything but to some disturbing vision in his soul."
Are we all unique beings, flecks of God-consciousness, some more or less willing (in this conformist society) to fess up to our individuality? If so, who chooses which spark of eternal mind will rise to distinction, and which to the obscurity of the void? Who brands the chosen one with the inner vision, so irresistible, so unattainable?
". . . how strange it was that the creative instinct should seize upon this dull stockbroker, to his own ruin, perhaps, and to the misfortune of such as were dependent on him; and yet no stranger than the way in which the spirit of God has seized men, powerful and rich, pursuing them with stubborn vigilance till at last, conquered, they have abandoned the joy of the world and the love of women for the painful austerities of the cloister. Conversion may come under many shapes, and it may be brought about in many ways. With some men it needs a cataclysm, as a stone may be broken to fragments by the fury of a torrent; but with some it comes gradually, as a stone may be worn away by the ceaseless fall of a drop of water. Strickland had the directness of the fanatic and the ferocity of the apostle."
The "ferocity of the apostle" is just the way the personality of Beethoven might be described. The idea of the hero, burdened with a special quest, is so attractive, so romantic, that few weak-minded individuals can avoid the seduction of its ego-stroking balms. Little do they know that the truly unique individual craves, with all possible heart, to be enfolded in the affections of the herd, protected and affirmed by the hearths of mediocrity. The fact that they suffer an outcast station in their own country, all for not being like other people--this is something the truly mediocre never think of; as they promote their own self-esteem, with the bells and baubles of their in-group, they blind themselves to the sensitivities necessary to discern real quality.
"When people say they do not care what others think of them, for the most part they deceive themselves. Generally they mean only that they will do as they choose, in the confidence that no one will know their vagaries; and at the utmost only that they are willing to act contrary to the opinion of the majority because they are supported by the approval of their neighbours. It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set. (italics, mine). It affords you then an inordinate amount of self-esteem. You have the self-satisfaction of courage without the inconvenience of danger. But the desire for approbation is perhaps the most deeply seated instinct of civilised man. No one runs so hurriedly to the cover of respectability as the unconventional woman who has exposed herself to the slings and arrows of outraged propriety. I do not believe the people who tell me they do not care a row of pins for the opinion of their fellows. It is the bravado of ignorance. They mean only that they do not fear reproaches for peccadillos which they are convinced none will discover."
To close this week's blog I quote Arnold Schoenberg:
"It is neither "obligatory" nor "permissible" to write either tonally or atonally. Write or not; but in either case, ask no questions, but do your best. Whoever really has it in him will produce it, whether it be tonal or atonal; let the others--those who do what they can--write tonally or atonally, or make what noise they please. They will certainly shout us down, who fulfill our musical destinies as we may: and they will quickly find the ears of all those who keep their ears open for everything ambiguous, but closed to the truth."
Character, Apostle, Destiny, Truth, all terms from the jargon of high universals. How is the true genius able to tell himself apart from just some schmuck with an obsessive-compulsive personality? The expression of Ego as an end in itself, works against the individual's development of sensitivities to his/her true identity. The use of Ego energy as the motive key to higher dimensions, promotes a consciousness of unimagined levels of self. Thus, doth divine truth pass a course through the entrails of a human being, and shit itself out on the concert stage for the edification of us all.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Skalkottas
Nicos Skalkottas
Skalkottas, Greek composer, 1904-1949, is one of a legion of "great" composers who was ALMOST never discovered. Indeed, there are so many worthy artists who have never come before the public eye that one must wonder how many WEREN'T EVER discovered. It is common knowledge that the music of no less a composer than Joh. Seb. Bach lay fallow in a corner of a Leipzig library until the St. Mathew Passion was discovered by Mendelssohn in 1829 (54 years after the composer's death). WHAT IF Mendelssohn had not been looking for a piece for his community choir to sing? We know that, of the approximately 350 cantatas written by Bach, slightly more than 200 survive; if you do the math (one cantata=20 minutes (at least)), that's over forty hours of music, from the mind of one of the greatest musician who ever lived, lost. Lost.
Between 1927 and 1930, Nicos Skalkottas was a member of Arnold Schoenberg's Masterclass in Composition at the Academy of Arts in Berlin. Schoenberg, history's foremost musical snob and elitist, included Skalkottas in a short list of individuals he considered to be "a composer." If Schoenberg said you were good, you HAD to be good. So there!
To be so designated by Schoenberg placed him at the zenith of estimable, artistic worthiness; so although one deplores the fact that Nicos was so completely forgotten, it is easy to explain this artistic anonymity when you remember that the composer's prime was right in the middle of World War II. After returning to Greece in 1933, he attempted to mount some performances of his work, but after meeting with hostility and rejection, he simply gave up, and lived out the rest of his life playing back-bench violin in the Athens Opera Orchestra. For years, nobody even knew that he was a composer.
However, when he died, a closet was discovered, in his house, filled to the top with completed scores plus parts, all copied out neatly and professionally, waiting for someone to come along and discover them. Many of these were then lost or destroyed (although, in 1954, some were recovered in the back of a secondhand bookshop), but we still have a fair sampling of his work.
I confess, the only composition with which I am familiar is the Contrabass Concerto. It made a deep impression on me when I first heard it. The piece is filled with the same concentration of ideas that characterizes the terse epigrams of Schoenberg's star pupil Anton Webern, and yet, in Skalkottas, there is also an expansiveness and humor (dig that string bass tango!), not to mention the tonal freedom, that characterizes Schoenberg's other great student, Alban Berg. You may even be so bold as to suggest that Skalkottas was the PERFECT Schoenberg student, the student who found a balance between two dangerous extremes implied in the 12-tone system.
As I sit here trying to think of how to explain what I mean by "dangerous extremes" I flash on the word "snooty." The Schoenberg Masterclass was filled with "snooty" characters. They bought into Beethoven's egocentric vision of the artist as the voice of God. a prophet, a saint who always looked down on the huddled masses with massive condescension. There is none of that in Skalkottas (I don't think there is in Schoenberg either, by the way)--it is full throated song, innocent and aware of its progenitors only peripherally, as it loses itself in enjoying itself.
It is impossible to give here a complete discussion of Herbert Brun's Statement vs. Argument aesthetic principle, but, to summarize:
1. a piece of music that is made completely of itself, original, anomalous, is called a "statement," and
2. a piece that relies on or makes reference to other pre-existing material (like Nixon jokes), must necessarily take on that material as psychological baggage, and therefore makes an "argument." (Perhaps a better word is "paradox?")
Brun always preferred the "statement," and I always tended toward an open-hearted acceptance of the "argument." In any case, Skalkottas certainly fills in the crack in that area; his music is bursting with personality and humanity that renders the underlying technique invisible and insignificant. A perspective that would have served well both snooty britches Webern and Berg. Skalkottas makes a positive statement about human life without fear of bringing in cultural/archetypal artifacts laden with progeny, unafraid to mix the human with the ideal. In other words, he writes like me.
RFT
Glennallen, AK
January 25, 2011
Skalkottas, Greek composer, 1904-1949, is one of a legion of "great" composers who was ALMOST never discovered. Indeed, there are so many worthy artists who have never come before the public eye that one must wonder how many WEREN'T EVER discovered. It is common knowledge that the music of no less a composer than Joh. Seb. Bach lay fallow in a corner of a Leipzig library until the St. Mathew Passion was discovered by Mendelssohn in 1829 (54 years after the composer's death). WHAT IF Mendelssohn had not been looking for a piece for his community choir to sing? We know that, of the approximately 350 cantatas written by Bach, slightly more than 200 survive; if you do the math (one cantata=20 minutes (at least)), that's over forty hours of music, from the mind of one of the greatest musician who ever lived, lost. Lost.
Between 1927 and 1930, Nicos Skalkottas was a member of Arnold Schoenberg's Masterclass in Composition at the Academy of Arts in Berlin. Schoenberg, history's foremost musical snob and elitist, included Skalkottas in a short list of individuals he considered to be "a composer." If Schoenberg said you were good, you HAD to be good. So there!
To be so designated by Schoenberg placed him at the zenith of estimable, artistic worthiness; so although one deplores the fact that Nicos was so completely forgotten, it is easy to explain this artistic anonymity when you remember that the composer's prime was right in the middle of World War II. After returning to Greece in 1933, he attempted to mount some performances of his work, but after meeting with hostility and rejection, he simply gave up, and lived out the rest of his life playing back-bench violin in the Athens Opera Orchestra. For years, nobody even knew that he was a composer.
However, when he died, a closet was discovered, in his house, filled to the top with completed scores plus parts, all copied out neatly and professionally, waiting for someone to come along and discover them. Many of these were then lost or destroyed (although, in 1954, some were recovered in the back of a secondhand bookshop), but we still have a fair sampling of his work.
I confess, the only composition with which I am familiar is the Contrabass Concerto. It made a deep impression on me when I first heard it. The piece is filled with the same concentration of ideas that characterizes the terse epigrams of Schoenberg's star pupil Anton Webern, and yet, in Skalkottas, there is also an expansiveness and humor (dig that string bass tango!), not to mention the tonal freedom, that characterizes Schoenberg's other great student, Alban Berg. You may even be so bold as to suggest that Skalkottas was the PERFECT Schoenberg student, the student who found a balance between two dangerous extremes implied in the 12-tone system.
As I sit here trying to think of how to explain what I mean by "dangerous extremes" I flash on the word "snooty." The Schoenberg Masterclass was filled with "snooty" characters. They bought into Beethoven's egocentric vision of the artist as the voice of God. a prophet, a saint who always looked down on the huddled masses with massive condescension. There is none of that in Skalkottas (I don't think there is in Schoenberg either, by the way)--it is full throated song, innocent and aware of its progenitors only peripherally, as it loses itself in enjoying itself.
It is impossible to give here a complete discussion of Herbert Brun's Statement vs. Argument aesthetic principle, but, to summarize:
1. a piece of music that is made completely of itself, original, anomalous, is called a "statement," and
2. a piece that relies on or makes reference to other pre-existing material (like Nixon jokes), must necessarily take on that material as psychological baggage, and therefore makes an "argument." (Perhaps a better word is "paradox?")
Brun always preferred the "statement," and I always tended toward an open-hearted acceptance of the "argument." In any case, Skalkottas certainly fills in the crack in that area; his music is bursting with personality and humanity that renders the underlying technique invisible and insignificant. A perspective that would have served well both snooty britches Webern and Berg. Skalkottas makes a positive statement about human life without fear of bringing in cultural/archetypal artifacts laden with progeny, unafraid to mix the human with the ideal. In other words, he writes like me.
RFT
Glennallen, AK
January 25, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Undiscovered Genius - 1
UNDISCOVERED GENIUS
A commentary on the history, contexts, and meanings of the word "genius."
My history, wrestling with the word "genius," dates back to about age 14 or 15.
I am a musician, and an Aspie (a victim (sic) of Asperger's Syndrome): at a very early age it became apparent that I was gifted with that Asperger natural fluidity of thought and muscle memory, such that musical instruments and music composition were a mystery revealed. However, having been brought up in the most basic of white trash traditions of Jesus and Mr. Ed, I became a musician in a cultural vacuum. My precocity was noted by all, but my "all" was a congregation of country hicks, to whom the existence of professions of the mind was unknown and unacknowledged. It had not yet occurred to me to compare myself to anybody else, so I was fairly clueless as to the scope of my gift; I did not realize how special I was, and thus I proceeded along my innocent way, uncorrupted, the serpent's apple as yet untasted.
It wasn't until music camp after 9th grade that I met my mad painter friend, son of two nationally known university musicians. He brought the word "genius" into my life. He was an insanely brilliant artist, (who later distinguished himself nationally), but as a teen-ager, he was really pretty much of an asshole. But he had been involved in high culture all his life, and had grown up in the typical artistic atmosphere of ego strife that is always the consequence of intense self-involvement. Thus, the concept of "genius," I'm sure, had been a common subject bandied about his family breakfast table from earliest memory.
To him, to be the BEST was the only way he could validate being who he was. Perhaps, by claiming a divine right of kings, he sought to justify in his mind the excesses of egocentricity that densely characterized his daily life. Surely, as a teen-ager in the 60's, to establish your own personal moral universe must have seemed a reasonable desire for many, and a necessity for some.
My friend introduced me to the idea of hierarchies of excellence, and insisted on putting himself on the top rung of the ladder. And, of course, having once heard of it, I wanted to be a genius TOO. An intense ago battle ensued for the next year or so, I constantly testing myself to see if I measured up to the lofty standards of my mad painter friend.
It's interesting that my first step across the Rubicon of genius-self-validation was accompanied by Robert Schumann, the composer and critic who first brought the word "genius" to public consciousness in his new music magazine of the 1830's Die Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (English: New Journal of Music). To Schumann, the term genius did not refer to some specific artist of towering accomplishment, but, rather, to the zeitgeist, the spiritual muse that whispers in the ear of ALL artists. Only later did the word come to refer to somebody who was BETTER than everybody else. I did not know this then. (We'll get back to this.)
It was during the contemplation of Schumann's Traumerei that I first noticed a subtle movement of spirit permeating the internal workings of the music; the music flowed by and there was a "click" like the tumblers in a padlock syncing into place, and suddenly the music was illuminated with the light of truth; notes that were just notes before were transformed into symbols of portent and significance. I could not put a name to this experience, but I could feel the sense of it, the rightness of it, in my body; I know not whether it was in my gut, in my groin, or in my head. But I could FEEL the music come alive in me.
Then I noticed that I could have the same experience listening to a piece of mine. (By this time, say age 16, I had already written two string quartets, other string chamber music, several piano pieces, a full-length musical, and a symphony concertante.) The detection of subtle movements of spirit became the index of greatness in my mind--if I could sense this movement, the piece was great, if I could not, it was trash; no middle ground for me--genius or nothing. And it was with a solemn and frighteningly overwhelming sense of responsibility that I accepted myself into the ranks of the music immortals.
It took me over 30 years to come to truly understand what a crock this was, but considerations like this haunted me and corrupted me for most of that time. School didn't help: college musicians spend 1/3rd of their time learning about music, and
2/3rds of their time learning how to be a snob, and I learned my lesson well. Being a professional failure didn't help either: as an aspie I have always achieved professional distinctions like teaching jobs, commissions, awards, publications, etc., on a level far below musicians of comparable talent and attainment who weren't autistic; thus my ego had to battle with the dissonance that arose from my own sense of inner excellence and the pitiful dearth of tangible rewards it had brought me. I hasten to add that I can claim the admiration and respect of some of the best, most famous musicians in the country, but the musical establishment at large has essentially passed me by. Poverty and anonymity were good breeding grounds for bitter twisted attitudes; sometimes clinging to the persona of undiscovered genius was the only thought that kept my mind afloat during years of emotional hardship and neglect.
If I had not been an aspie, perhaps these critical mind obsessions would have damaged my music more than they did; but, as an autistic person, my conceptual world hardly ever touched my creative world. Therefore my artistic activities were spared the corrupting influence of the ego-centric self-consciousness that has invalidated the work of so many artists, thank God--but my philosophy of art, and my professional personae were not spared. I strove to become as much of an arrogant asshole as my friend. And so, through conversion reaction, I repelled every possible professional distinction I MIGHT have accrued, and became my own worst nightmare--misunderstood genius, eccentric weirdo, professional failure.
There was one tempering consideration that gained positive ground as time went on: all through my ego battles of the 70's and 80's there ran a motto theme that resounded in my ears with a comforting ring: "here we are with eternity on one side and eternity on the other side, and you're telling me it's 1975!" In other words, in the long run, the glittering bauble of earthly fame counts for less than one note of music reverberant through the eternal halls of the astral plane. If nobody listens to me in this world, at least I am known by heart in higher dimensions. Words of comfort to an unrecognized genius, to be sure!
How my attitude changed on the subjects of genius and greatness is to be the primary concern of this blog, with sideways flights into musical aesthetics and ethics. I intend to provide many examples of unrecognized greatness, and reflect on the larger cosmic significance of creativity.
RFT
Glennallen, AK
Jan 17, 2011
Next week: Skalkatos.
A commentary on the history, contexts, and meanings of the word "genius."
My history, wrestling with the word "genius," dates back to about age 14 or 15.
I am a musician, and an Aspie (a victim (sic) of Asperger's Syndrome): at a very early age it became apparent that I was gifted with that Asperger natural fluidity of thought and muscle memory, such that musical instruments and music composition were a mystery revealed. However, having been brought up in the most basic of white trash traditions of Jesus and Mr. Ed, I became a musician in a cultural vacuum. My precocity was noted by all, but my "all" was a congregation of country hicks, to whom the existence of professions of the mind was unknown and unacknowledged. It had not yet occurred to me to compare myself to anybody else, so I was fairly clueless as to the scope of my gift; I did not realize how special I was, and thus I proceeded along my innocent way, uncorrupted, the serpent's apple as yet untasted.
It wasn't until music camp after 9th grade that I met my mad painter friend, son of two nationally known university musicians. He brought the word "genius" into my life. He was an insanely brilliant artist, (who later distinguished himself nationally), but as a teen-ager, he was really pretty much of an asshole. But he had been involved in high culture all his life, and had grown up in the typical artistic atmosphere of ego strife that is always the consequence of intense self-involvement. Thus, the concept of "genius," I'm sure, had been a common subject bandied about his family breakfast table from earliest memory.
To him, to be the BEST was the only way he could validate being who he was. Perhaps, by claiming a divine right of kings, he sought to justify in his mind the excesses of egocentricity that densely characterized his daily life. Surely, as a teen-ager in the 60's, to establish your own personal moral universe must have seemed a reasonable desire for many, and a necessity for some.
My friend introduced me to the idea of hierarchies of excellence, and insisted on putting himself on the top rung of the ladder. And, of course, having once heard of it, I wanted to be a genius TOO. An intense ago battle ensued for the next year or so, I constantly testing myself to see if I measured up to the lofty standards of my mad painter friend.
It's interesting that my first step across the Rubicon of genius-self-validation was accompanied by Robert Schumann, the composer and critic who first brought the word "genius" to public consciousness in his new music magazine of the 1830's Die Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (English: New Journal of Music). To Schumann, the term genius did not refer to some specific artist of towering accomplishment, but, rather, to the zeitgeist, the spiritual muse that whispers in the ear of ALL artists. Only later did the word come to refer to somebody who was BETTER than everybody else. I did not know this then. (We'll get back to this.)
It was during the contemplation of Schumann's Traumerei that I first noticed a subtle movement of spirit permeating the internal workings of the music; the music flowed by and there was a "click" like the tumblers in a padlock syncing into place, and suddenly the music was illuminated with the light of truth; notes that were just notes before were transformed into symbols of portent and significance. I could not put a name to this experience, but I could feel the sense of it, the rightness of it, in my body; I know not whether it was in my gut, in my groin, or in my head. But I could FEEL the music come alive in me.
Then I noticed that I could have the same experience listening to a piece of mine. (By this time, say age 16, I had already written two string quartets, other string chamber music, several piano pieces, a full-length musical, and a symphony concertante.) The detection of subtle movements of spirit became the index of greatness in my mind--if I could sense this movement, the piece was great, if I could not, it was trash; no middle ground for me--genius or nothing. And it was with a solemn and frighteningly overwhelming sense of responsibility that I accepted myself into the ranks of the music immortals.
It took me over 30 years to come to truly understand what a crock this was, but considerations like this haunted me and corrupted me for most of that time. School didn't help: college musicians spend 1/3rd of their time learning about music, and
2/3rds of their time learning how to be a snob, and I learned my lesson well. Being a professional failure didn't help either: as an aspie I have always achieved professional distinctions like teaching jobs, commissions, awards, publications, etc., on a level far below musicians of comparable talent and attainment who weren't autistic; thus my ego had to battle with the dissonance that arose from my own sense of inner excellence and the pitiful dearth of tangible rewards it had brought me. I hasten to add that I can claim the admiration and respect of some of the best, most famous musicians in the country, but the musical establishment at large has essentially passed me by. Poverty and anonymity were good breeding grounds for bitter twisted attitudes; sometimes clinging to the persona of undiscovered genius was the only thought that kept my mind afloat during years of emotional hardship and neglect.
If I had not been an aspie, perhaps these critical mind obsessions would have damaged my music more than they did; but, as an autistic person, my conceptual world hardly ever touched my creative world. Therefore my artistic activities were spared the corrupting influence of the ego-centric self-consciousness that has invalidated the work of so many artists, thank God--but my philosophy of art, and my professional personae were not spared. I strove to become as much of an arrogant asshole as my friend. And so, through conversion reaction, I repelled every possible professional distinction I MIGHT have accrued, and became my own worst nightmare--misunderstood genius, eccentric weirdo, professional failure.
There was one tempering consideration that gained positive ground as time went on: all through my ego battles of the 70's and 80's there ran a motto theme that resounded in my ears with a comforting ring: "here we are with eternity on one side and eternity on the other side, and you're telling me it's 1975!" In other words, in the long run, the glittering bauble of earthly fame counts for less than one note of music reverberant through the eternal halls of the astral plane. If nobody listens to me in this world, at least I am known by heart in higher dimensions. Words of comfort to an unrecognized genius, to be sure!
How my attitude changed on the subjects of genius and greatness is to be the primary concern of this blog, with sideways flights into musical aesthetics and ethics. I intend to provide many examples of unrecognized greatness, and reflect on the larger cosmic significance of creativity.
RFT
Glennallen, AK
Jan 17, 2011
Next week: Skalkatos.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)