The thing about New Music

It may seem a deep irony, but the fact remains that I haven't enjoyed the majority of the New Music that I've encountered over the years. Or, I should say, a lot of it is okay and more than its fair share seems pretty pointless beyond providing the composer an opportunity to occupy someone else's time and attention for a space. I will, for instance, tend to enjoy a random pop song for what it is more often on average than a random work of Contemporary Art Music. I guess I've just found way too much of what I've heard at concerts and across the field to be wanting in the things that I most value in that music. Too often, new pieces seem to lack either seriously original ideas or a real interest in presenting the audience with a thoroughly well-crafted and well-considered work, if not both.

However, while I may too often find the results of my genre/style/field/whathaveyou to be fairly jejune, and while I'm suspicious that too much New Music is actually about concerns other than the art work itself, the key for me is that when this music does work well, the resultant experience is more thoroughly engrossing and comprehensively remarkable than any experiences I've had with exceptional examples hailing from any other musical genre. I've indeed been heavily influenced by and continue to love all kinds of music, and have engaged very personal and magical experiences with, for instance, the works of Jane's Addiction. Nonetheless, a truly exceptional, original, and well-crafted piece of Contemporary Art Music occupies me in a way no other music quite can.

This music can be difficult. This is Pollock, not Kinkade. Complex art requires a personal investment from us in order to truly bloom. However, wonderful complicated works can multiply this personal investment, while the unexceptional simply occupies our time and frustrates attempts at any kind of understanding. It's up to the composer, the artist, to make every bit of difficulty well worth the effort - because time is not something to waste, and because when this music does pay off, the experience can be special in unimaginable ways.

The Significance of a Remarkable Teacher

I walked into James Heiner's Theory and Musicianship course at Los Positas Junior College in the fall of 1996. Not counting cramped guitar lesson studios, I'd never actually studied in a music classroom before this. I'd been involved with the visual arts from a young age, but hadn't started playing the guitar until I was a sophomore in high school. Working through various rock, jazz, and classical lessons, I practiced like crazy and subsequently helped start a band later in high school. Though the project never got very far, it nonetheless consumed my life for a couple of years, and it was in the context of this group that I was first forced to figure out the basics of creating and assembling music.

I had little larger life direction when I graduated from high school. Las Positas Junior College sits right next to my home town and was a convenient and obvious choice. Attending community college, I could easily study full time, work nearly full time, and still leave plenty of space for the guitar. Nothing else really seemed that important or interesting. Though I'd done fine in high school, I hadn't bothered to take my SATs as I had no deep desire to go anywhere in particular. Music was the only thing I really enjoyed doing, though I nonetheless still couldn't envision pursuing it as a career. Given all this, my plan was simply to tread water while I searched for the thing that I wanted to engage "seriously."

Within this process, it made sense to fulfill some general credits while seeking an attractive path of study. I also reasoned that enrolling in a few basic music theory courses would both fulfill humanities credits while simultaneously helping me to develop as a songwriter. As I noticed no indication otherwise, I incorrectly assumed that both of the music courses for which I'd signed up were oriented toward novices, and I was therefore utterly unprepared for James Heiner's opening speech to the class that fall. Among other things, Heiner explained that those in the course needed to know how to read music notation, and that everyone in the past who'd remained for the entire year had ultimately opted to major in Music. Hearing this, I knew immediately that it would be my last day in Theory and Musicianship.

A number of us all went up to James Heiner after that first class. I explained to him that I'd made a mistake, that I didn't belong here, that I couldn't read music, and that I would never be a Music major. He simply smiled and replied, "stick around." Within the year, my band had fallen apart and I'd declared my degree, transferring to UC Santa Barbara to complete a concentration in Music Composition a few years later. Looking back, I cannot now imagine my life being about anything else. I have been very privileged to study under a number of remarkable teachers over the years. Nonetheless, James Heiner literally changed everything for me.

The Practice

You have to avoid thinking about the results. You remain focused on accomplishing the small work at hand - today, at this moment - to the best of your ability. To decide for yourself the work that needs to be done by you, and then to set about accomplishing whatever those ends may require. It is so easy to become distracted by so many things, such ancillary things. But the future happens so fast, and there are often only two distinct madnesses from which to choose. It is both incredibly simple and yet remarkably difficult, but in the end it is about the daily practice of opting for a personal reason above a general insanity, about actively choosing for yourself what matters most and then investing life in whatever that actually is, piece by piece and instant by instant.

Confidence

Igor Stravinsky claimed of his 1911 ballet Petrushka that it “was the first piece in which I’ve had the full confidence of my inner ear,” and that it “was the first piece that really represents me, as I think of myself.” Premiered 100 years ago this year, Petrushka was composed on the heels of the tremendously successful ballet The Firebird, which Stravinsky had completed the year before. The composer who once declared that his music was "best understood by children and animals" subsequently finished the tremendously groundbreaking ballet The Rite of Spring in 1913, immediately following Petrushka. The Rite of Spring now ranks as perhaps the single most important and influential composition of the 20th century, if not at the very least among a very few most important.

Igor Stravinsky has since assumed such an iconic role in music history that he’s now practically monolithic in stature. Given this, it’s particularly strange to imagine him as a young composer, still somewhat insecure about what he could accomplish, still refining his techniques, and harboring notions of a sound that he believed could be more. Stravinsky didn’t even feel prepared to compose the confidence-securing ballet The Firebird when he did. In fact, it was visionary impresario Serge Diaghilev who prompted Stravinsky to begin working on the defining piece. Nonetheless, The Rite of Spring started a revolution two years later. Igor Stravinsky had managed to gain a deep confidence in his own unique voice, a permission to follow his natural instincts, and through this personal confidence was ultimately able to create works that changed the course of music. We can't all be Stravinsky, of course, but if an individual follows his or her deepest instincts, who knows what might be possible?