Composer Reports Towson University Music in the United States: Analytic Emphasis Professor N. Scott Robinson Spring 2012 By Trevor J. Hedrick Towson, Maryland May 11, 2012
Having the opportunity to hear a piece of music, see a work of art, feel the texture of a canvas and taste the environment that surrounds oneself is a joy and blessing we tend to take for granted. Everyday noise we hear surrounding our lives has a meaning, a purpose and a function. To some musical composers the noises they hear are their lives. These sounds are their tales and tributes to family, friends or even to those they don t even know. From both a physical sound such as daily motion of the human body, motion of mechanics in piping or instruments to the vacant air chambers, there is always music. Deaf, blind, physically insensitive, or not, music as a tangible and hypothetical art surrounds us. Throughout this paper, there has been discovered through three twentieth century American Composers, Meredith Monk, Steve Reich and Michael Colgrass, found to be more depth in music than one could have ever imagined that also plays a role in turning the tables in American music. If one has ever heard this individual s music, they would wonder who had dropped them on their head as an infant. Meredith Monk is a world renowned artist in many fields. Monk doesn t solely compose musical pieces as a hobby, talent and career; she also enjoys dance, painting and film making within her musical capacities. Previously asked was a blunt question as to who had dropped her on her head as an infant due to her dance and musical compositions and what they look and sound like. She has modeled much of her work after Phillip Glass as well as Steve Reich, both minimalist American Composers. 1 Being born in New York City, a city so jam-packed with different genres, opinions and technological advances than one would know what to do with, Monk made a name for herself. Meredith, after years of study with Beverly Schmidt Blossom in the areas of modern dance and choreography, she graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1964 1. She doesn t teach, instead she performs with the ensemble she founded in 1978 named Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble which helps Monk expand her musical textures and forms. She also founded The House, a company dedicated to an interdisciplinary approach to performance. With having these two groups, Monk strives to weave together music, movement, image and object, light and sound to create new modes of perception. Currently, Monk is hailed as a magician of the voice and one of America s coolest composers. Most of her work has been presented and performed at the Lincoln Center Festival, Houston Grand Opera, London s Barbican Centre and at major venues in countries from Brazil to Syria. She was recently named the 2012 Composer of the Year by Musical America and one of NPR s 50 Great Voices as well as receiving a 2011 Yoko Ono Lennon Courage Award for the Arts 1. From the topics discussed throughout our class, something that came to mind about Monk is her views with minimalism. She, as briefly mentioned, draws inspiration and motivation from Phillip Glass and Steve Reich, both of whom are minimalists themselves. After listening to many of her pieces, she makes great use of her environment around her. Wherever it may be, whatever time of the day it is, she takes it and uses it to her advantage. There is a piece on her website 1 Biography of Meredith Monk, http://www.meredithmonk.org/about/bio.html
titled Songs of Ascension that takes place in an eight story tower on a ranch in California where one movement out of the twenty-one movement piece is focused around dancing up and down steps throughout the tower 1. Another movement is focused on the echo of the tower as well as the harmony that the tower creates on its own in human silence. These intricacies within the music are areas in which most composers and musical artists wouldn t think about day to day. Minimalism is one of the main focuses Monk has and is an area in music throughout the United States that she s had an influence on. Minimalism is portrayed as dissonant and wrong until one hears Meredith Monk turn her minimal art into something completely beautiful. Dolmen Music is another piece she has composed that is so incredibly abstract to where the performers completely immerse themselves into the roles of the characters and chronological time of the piece. The sorrow, joy, curiosity and wonder come over the performers 2. Almost all of Monk s compositions have this effect on the performer. With Meredith s compositions getting out into the public eye, she was sought out by the University of the Arts (Philadelphia), the Juilliard School, the San Francisco Art Institute and the Boston Conservatory to be recognized with the Honorary Doctor of Arts Degree by all above listed institutions 1. As previous mentioned, Meredith Monk has worked closely with Steve Reich within the minimalistic composition realm. With both working together, Steve Reich has been able to follow closely in Monk s tracks with composition ideas. Phasing, counterpoint, displacement of the beat and alliotoric experiments are all words directors, musicians and composers aren t too fond of, depending on whom one might be speaking with. To some, these works provoke anger, to others delight. To Steve Reich, it s the latter. Being also born from New York City, New York during the 1930s, Reich had many experiences outside the east coast classical conservatories. After studying drums with Roland Kohloff to learn jazz, studying composition with Hall Overton as well as Vincent Persichetti and William Bergsma at the Juilliard School and Darius Milhaud, Reich has become quite an achieved composer 3. With that many different teachers, there can also be a great profound personality, teaching and music comprehension difference from instructor to instructor. When listening to Reich s musical works, one could see where the thought of all the great composers previously mentioned might have left a note. Almost all of Reich s work is composed through recordings and many different uses of technology. This kind of composition gives Steve an edge when it comes to musical artists. One piece that stands out from others is New York 1 Meredith Monk: Songs of Ascension (Ann Hamilton s Tower Oct. 2008), [October, 2008], Video clip, Accessed May 3, 2012, YouTube, www.youtube.com, http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=c3msvr3xtfu 2 Biography of Meredith Monk, http://www.meredithmonk.org/about/bio.html. 3 Biography of Steve Reich, www.stevereich.com.
Counterpoint for amplified Clarinet and tape, or 11 Clarinets and Bass Clarinet 1. This piece requires the solo Clarinetist to record 10 tracks of different solo material, and 1 additional track of solo material on Bass Clarinet. After the tracks are recorded, all 11 are combined into one which is then played back through live amplification with the live solo Clarinetist performing on top of the pre-recorded piece. The thing is that this kind of composing is normal for Reich. Throughout the course, in the same regards to Meredith Monk, minimalism was brought to light. Reich doesn t only compose minimalism though. With his background in study with Roland Kohloff, Reich has a rich jazz background 2. In most of his pieces, you can hear rhythms you wouldn t normally hear in a classical recital setting. With not only his more jazzy pieces but his classical and minimalistic work, Reich has achieved many great things since his start in the 1960s. He has received many awards in different countries around the globe including Japan and Sweden. One large achievement of Steve s career comes in the form of a Grammy Award he received in 1990 for Best Contemporary Composition for his piece Different Trains 3. Throughout the piece, Reich used recordings of peoples voice, matched the pitches, rhythm and articulation then wrote for an orchestra to perform over top of the recorded voices. This is a new concept when the piece was composed in the late 1980s. Throughout his compositions, he changed the styles of minimalism through his work with phasing. In a recent Q&A interview with Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Reich answered the question the narrative aspect of the music played an important role in untying you from such processes. When I listen to City Life, for example, it sounds like a symphonic poem. Your music tells stories now. Do you agree with this interpretation? the early phase pieces like Piano Phase and Violin Phase were based on slight changes in rhythmic relationship while pitch stayed constant (in Violin Phase) or changed slightly only after several minutes (in Piano Phase). Timbre never changed as only identical instruments were playing. As for my later work, starting with Music for 18 Musicians. I would say that all of it changes at a faster pace than the early work, though still more slowly than in most classical music. Beyond rate of change, it depends very largely on whether you look at my vocal pieces like Tehillim, The Desert Music, Proverb, You Are (Variations) and Daniel Variations or instrumental pieces like Six Marimbas, Eight Lines, Sextet, the four Counterpoint pieces, the Orchestral pieces, Triple Quartet, Variations for Vibes, Pianos and Strings or Double Sextet. In the vocal pieces no stories are told, but 1 Steve Reich New York Counterpoint (Peter Szucs - Clarinet), [2008], Video clip, Accessed May 3, 2012, YouTube, www.youtube.com, http://youtu.be/pog0537wcfm. 2 Biography of Steve Reich, www.stevereich.com. 3 Steve Reich Different Trains (Part I), [n.d.], Video clip, Accessed May 3, 2012, YouTube, www.youtube.com, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wynaq-lk74a.
there is certainly subject matter though always treated somewhat abstractly. There is yet a third category of pieces that use pre-recorded voices and sounds of life around us, including machines. These pieces would include Different Trains (which began my return to pre-recorded voices from Its Gonna Rain and Come Out), The Cave, City Life and Three Tales. 1 It appears that all three composers have had some relation to each other in one way or the other. Meredith Monk and Steve Reich enjoy composing minimal music while Steve Reich and Michael Colgrass studied with similar instructors including Darius Milhaud. Michael Colgrass, born in the early 1930s was exposed to many American victories and downfalls 2. With having this vast experience under in his eyes, he has been able to store the feelings he had while in those circumstances and use them to convey to Americans today. He s able to convey those feelings to those who weren t around in those times. He enjoys writing music for those that have the imagination to go somewhere without actually traveling to that destination. In a recent piece that Colgrass composed, he wrote on his adventures to Alaska and his views of the aurora borealis. His piece Arctic Dreams relates to material that was covered in class in relation to Native Americans, specifically the Copper Inuit 3. Through the time he resided in Alaska, Colgrass came across katajjaq or throat singing in the Copper Inuit Tribe. He described it perfectly as two joyful women that would try to make each other laugh by making sounds at each other in rhythms that corresponded with each other s rhythm. This is portrayed very well in this piece with having vocals included in the wind orchestra piece. Furthermore, throughout his music, he does a great job of conveying those adventures he s had throughout his life to the listener. Towson University Symphonic Band performed a piece by Michael Colgrass titled Bali. This piece is built around a five-note scale, also using many unique percussive sounds to replicate Balinese music. The music weaves through a lively dance, followed by an explosion and mourning period symbolizing the night club bombings in Bali in 2002 and returning to the powerful dance-like feel to end strongly but mysteriously. With all of Michael s adventures and lifelong experiences, he came up with a method of teaching children: how to write music using graphics. In April of 2009 he did a project with the Middleton Regional High School in Nova Scotia, where high school students wrote seven pieces for band in three days and conducted them in public concert on the fourth. As a result, his method was adopted by the Nova Scotia education system for inclusion in the 1 Biography of Steve Reich. www.stevereich.com. 2 Colgrass, Michael, About Michael Colgrass, Last modified 2010, http://www.michaelcolgrass.com/bio_biography.php 3 Michael Colgrass Talks About Arctic Dreams, [n.d.], Video clip, Accessed on May 2, 2012, YouTube, www.youtube.com, http://youtu.be/tro9q808bqc.
junior high curriculum. Most recently he had students at Toronto s Rockcliffe Middle School write a group composition for the Esprit orchestra in three days, which was premiered on 25 May 2010... 1 With much instruction from his many mentors and private instructors including Wallingford Reigger, Ben Weber, Lukas Foss and Darius Milhaud in both performance primarily on percussion and composition, Colgrass has made great leaps in his music throughout his active years of writing music in the late 1940s 2. With his compositions, he won 1978 Pulitzer Prize for Music for Déjà vu, which was commissioned and premiered by the New York Philharmonic 1. In addition, he received an Emmy Award in 1982 for a PBS documentary Soundings: The Music of Michael Colgrass. He has been awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships, A Rockefeller Grant, First Prize in the Barlow and Sudler International Wind Ensemble Competitions, and the 1988 Jules Leger Prize for Chamber Music 1. Throughout each composer, there are many different great areas of each in which they had an influence in some way to the music of America. As a recap of the three composers, Meredith Monk, Steve Reich and Michael Colgrass actually have much in common that one wouldn t seem to grasp. One point not only being the most simple of them all with the years being active with composing and performing music but the kinds of music they perform. Most of Monk and Reich s work is minimalistic, except, with all minimalistic art whether it be physical or audile there is some form of tonal or center focus to the piece of work. Michael Colgrass does a wonderful job of meshing both the minimalistic sense of sound and the classical timbre of music into one. All great artists bring wonderful gifts and talents to the table when composing and with these adventures and trial and error sequences; we have the final product today. Thanks goes out to those great composers. 1 Biography of Steve Reich. www.stevereich.com. 2 Wehrle, Marlene, Oxford University Press, The Canadian Encyclopedia.
Bibliography Biography of Meredith Monk. http://www.meredithmonk.org/about/bio.html. Biography of Steve Reich. www.stevereich.com. Colgrass, Michael. About Michael Colgrass. Last modified 2010. http://www.michaelcolgrass.com/bio_biography.php Dolmen Music The M6: Meredith Monk Music Third Generation [1979], Video clip. Accessed May 2, 2012. YouTube. www.youtube.com, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwnunyokb2q. Steve Reich Different Trains (Part I) [n.d.], Video clip. Accessed May 3, 2012. YouTube. www.youtube.com, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wynaq-lk74a. Steve Reich New York Counterpoint (Peter Szucs - Clarinet). [2008], Video clip. Accessed May 3, 2012. YouTube.www.Youtube.com, http://youtu.be/pog0537wcfm. Meredith Monk: Songs of Ascension (Ann Hamilton s Tower Oct. 2008) [October, 2008], Video clip. Accessed May 3, 2012. YouTube. www.youtube.com, http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=c3msvr3xtfu Michael Colgrass Talks About Arctic Dreams [n.d.], Video clip. Accessed on May 2, 2012. YouTube. www.youtube.com, http://youtu.be/tro9q808bqc. Wehrle, Marlene. Oxford University Press. The Canadian Encyclopedia.