Bang on a Can-ism
Postminimalism, totalism and the music by Michael Gordon, David
Lang and Julia Wolfe
Master Thesis Musicology Laura Jonker
Supervisor: Prof. M. Beirens
Second reader: prof. dr. J.J.E. Kursell Studentno: 5884497
University of Amsterdam
Index
Introduction ... 4
Chapter 1 – A brief history of minimal music ... 7
Young, Riley, Reich, Glass ... 8
The new ensemble ... 10
Minimal musical elements ... 11
Louis Andriessen ... 13
After minimalism ... 13
Chatham, Branca, Zorn ... 14
Downtown musical elements ... 16
Downtown developments ... 17
Chapter 2 – Gordon, Lang, Wolfe ... 18
Michael Gordon ... 18
David Lang ... 20
Julia Wolfe ... 22
Combining the three ... 25
Chapter 3 – Downtown and Bang on a Can ... 26
The success of being downtown ... 26
Bang on a Can ... 28
Influences ... 30
New generation... 31
The Netherlands ... 33
Chapter 4 – Robert Fink & Kyle Gann ... 36
Fink and postminimalism ... 36
Gann and totalism ... 41
Chapter 5 – Trance, cheating, lying, stealing and Lick ... 48
Michael Gordon - Trance ... 49
David Lang – cheating, lying, stealing ... 54
Julia Wolfe - Lick ... 62
Chapter 6 - Postminimalism or totalism? ... 71
The four points ... 71
Comparing the analyses ... 74
Conclusion ... 76
Bibliography ... 78
Books and articles ... 78 2
Websites ... 80 Scores, audio and video ... 83
Introduction
Defining contemporary classical music results in a vast amount of opinions, definitions and terms. Scholars, journalists and authors often try to find a common trait in the music they hear, and compare it to other compositions that they know of. It is of importance for them to place this new music in different perspectives, for example historically, or in society. This can be difficult, because classical music in the 21st century is very diverse. Strict boundaries of genres become obscured or even disappear and musicians from different genres, styles, countries and paths of life are collaborating with each other. Even compositions of one composer often sound different from one another.
When writing articles or reviews about contemporary classical music, all kinds of terms are attached to new compositions. Authors usually agree with each other that
minimalism was the starting point for new developments, but after that opinions vary. Very broad, non-specific terms as ‘new classical’ or ‘post-classical’ are used sometimes, but more common is the classification of postminimalism or totalism.1 Often this indexation is done with some hesitation though, it seems as if it is hard to give this new kind of classical music a name.
Two authors who are not reluctant to do so, are Robert Fink and Kyle Gann. Both have written multiple articles on the American music scene in the late 20th and early 21st century. Broadly speaking, Fink has done so from the perspective of musicology and the struggles within this field to research this music, while Gann has done so as a composer and journalist proving the importance of this new movement. Gann has made compelling arguments on the difference between postminimalism and totalism. Fink is also convincing in his texts, where he sees the problem of the diversity and argues for the general use of the term
postminimalism. Gann in particular, but Fink also to a lesser extent, are quoted and referenced to, for their definitions of the terms. Their views on contemporary classical music are very influential in the discussions of what is going on in the genre, not only in the USA but in other parts of the world.
The difference between the two terms are, however, not very clear by many. There is not (yet) a strict definition of postminimalism and totalism, and the use of the two terms varies with every writer who apply them to a new composition. It is therefore interesting to analyse Fink and Gann’s definition of totalism and postminimalism, to see what the difference
1
Flory 2008, Cleckler 1993
4
is (if there is any) and if the terms are indeed applicable for contemporary classical music. This thesis compares the result of the analyses with a test case; one of the bigger influencers in the contemporary classical music scene, the collective Bang on a Can.
Founded by the American composers Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe, the Bang on a Can collective is renowned for their innovative compositions and concerts. After their studies with Martin Bresnick at Yale, they agreed on one thing: there needs to be a change in the (contemporary) classical music scene. In 1987 they organised the marathon concert Bang on a Can festival. Now, they are among the most well-known composers of the 21st century. Lang and Wolfe both have received a Pulitzer Prize, the three have released multiple successful CD’s and have frequently composed commissioned pieces. They have started their own CD label Cantaloupe Records, and founded the ensemble Bang on a Can All-Stars which perform their music around the globe. They have a firm ground in the downtown New York music scene.
Because of their success, other composers and musicians have been following their example. Similar ensembles like the Bang on a Can All-Stars have been founded and other composers are making compositions in the spirit of Gordon, Lang and Wolfe. They are creating music that is influenced by styles outside of classical music. Bang on a Can has become a successful ‘brand’, other contemporary classical music has even been categorized as ‘Bang on a Can-ism’.2
What lacks though is a clear definition of their music. Many authors and journalist have written reviews of their music, or have interviewed the composers about their techniques and influences. There are, however, not many theoretical papers on the compositions by Gordon, Lang and Wolfe. Some authors briefly mention them when discussing the ‘heritage’ of minimalism (like Jonathan Bernard in an article about the ‘resurgence of tonality in American music 3), but only Fink and Gann repeatedly and extensively discuss BoaC in their articles. What is interesting though, is that they do not agree with each other what their music is. Fink calls it postminimalism, Gann totalism.
A description of the music by Gordon, Lang and Wolfe is needed. The definition will probably give more grasp on the great diversity that is contemporary classical music.
Especially with their apparent large influence, it is good and helpful to research the composers and their music more thoroughly. This thesis is a first attempt at this.
First there will be a short history of American classical music in the 21st century,
2 Krasnow 2001 3
Bernard 2003
5
starting at minimalism. It will discuss the impact of minimalism on contemporary classical music, and what happened shortly after it. This chapter will also focus on the difference between uptown and downtown New York, a division that was very influential on the cultural scene. The following chapter will discuss the lives, education and compositions of Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe at length. After that, the scene of New York at the time of the founding of BoaC is analysed. What follows is an explanation of the Bang on a Can collective and everything belonging to that name, and their influence on other musicians and composers. After the establishment of this historical context, multiple articles by Robert Fink and Kyle Gann are analysed. Their explanations of the terms postminimalism and totalism is looked at, as well as their opinions on the music by Gordon, Lang and Wolfe. Next, three compositions by the composers are analysed and compared with the results of the
historiographical research on the texts by Gann and Fink. Finally, there will be a conclusion in which the question what the terms postminimalism and totalism are about and how they should be applied, will be answered.
Chapter 1 – A brief history of minimal music
To understand where Gordon, Lang and Wolfe are coming from, it is important to describe a part of the history of American music. This chapter begins with the rise of minimal music, as this meant a break in the way music was composed and thought of. It will focus on the music scene in New York, the place where the three Bang on a Can composers lived most of their lives. There they met colleagues and like-minded people, they participated in the cultural scene and the city inspired them to compose. New York and its environment were therefore a vital element in forming their own musical language.
In his book ‘American Music in the Twentieth Century’4 composer and journalist Kyle Gann gives a good description of what happened in New York in the 1960. He writes about the gap that has grown between composer and audience for many years, because of the difference between what a composer wanted to say and what the audience wanted to hear. Minimal music was the “first musical movement in a hundred years that has threatened to close The Gap [between composer and audience].”5
There was a great difference of opinion between composers in uptown and downtown New York about this so called gap and what music should be. The uptown New York scene was more focused on European styles of composing, especially 12-tone music. It was
considered more of a high-brow scene, keeping up with the Western concert traditions. It was a scene of the academy. Composers still used the standard musical forms, like a symphony or sonata. Their instrumentations and orchestrations didn’t deviate much from their European predecessors.
Downtown New York was radical, and almost the complete opposite of uptown. They let go of Europe and its conventions. Concerts took place in alternative locations, like lofts, art galleries and abandoned factories. Composers felt more free, they didn’t had the idea that music was supposed to be complex and abstract. Instead of the unnatural 12-tone technique, they generally used more natural harmonics. For them, it was important that the process behind the music could be heard during a performance. Musicians turned towards non-classical and non-western music for inspiration. Music in the downtown scene was bound to be new, refreshing and exciting. In this scene, minimal music blossomed.6
The term minimal was first used in the visual arts in the 1960 and was quickly applied
4 Gann 1997 5 Gann 1997, p. 184 6 Gann 2006, p. xiii-xix 7
to the new classical music in that period. Because it developed after a period of conceptualism (with John Cage as the biggest name) and serialism, the music composed by La Monte
Young, Terry Riley, Philip Glass and Steve Reich was deemed (too) simple and limited. Critics and audiences started calling it minimalism, a term which bothered most of the composers it was applied to. It could be said that audiences were waiting for minimal music, or at least for something less complicated and confusing then the music preceding. The scene grew between 1958 – 1968 and became big with the release of multiple recordings of
compositions by Steve Reich (1974) and the premiere of Glass’s Einstein on the Beach in New York (1976). 7
Young, Riley, Reich, Glass
One of the first minimalists was La Monte Young. As a composition and ethnomusicology major at UCLA in 1957, his compositions were serialist at first. He started his graduate composition studies at Berkeley in 1958. After a seminar in Darmstadt in 1959, where he learned about Cage and Stockhausen, he shifted to a more tonal style of composing, with long sustained notes and drones. He moved to New York in 1960 were he was quickly asked by Yoko Ono to organise a series of performances and concerts in her loft.8 In this city, he became member of the Fluxus movement and started to compose more conceptual pieces.
In 1967, he was recognized and funded by an art foundation, which gave Young a lot of artistic freedom. The foundation granted him a big house, where Young organized several performances and concerts. As performances of his pieces were rare, these concerts were a unique event. The composer’s name grew in the downtown scene, his influence was considerable and many composers started following his lead.9
One of these composers was Terry Riley. He was friends with La Monte Young, and also studied at Berkeley one semester later than him. Riley’s first influence was bebop, but after meeting Young he started to compose more radical pieces.10 In 1963 he wrote a piece using tape-delay, after a period of living in Europe and composing less. Back in San Francisco in 1964, he wrote his most famous piece In C. The composition became one of the most important pieces in minimal music, as it meant the breakthrough to mainstream audience.11
Playing piano in the ensemble of Terry Riley during the premiere of In C, was Steve Reich. He later became one of the most well-known minimal music composers. He first
7 Gann 1997, p. 187 8 Grimshaw 2014 9 Grimshaw 2014 10 Gann 1997 p. 194 11 Strickland 2014 8
studied philosophy, but after he graduated he started studying composition, first in New York and later in San Francisco. He stayed there and developed an interest in tape-loops and their melodic properties. In 1965 he composed It’s Gonna Rain, using a new phasing technique using tapes.12 In 1966 Reich returned to New York, where he composed Come Out, in which he looped five words from an interview and played them on a tape recorder slightly out of synch. Reich wanted to use the technique in live performance too, and in 1967 he composed
Piano Phase and Violin Phase. He became interested in hearing the actual process of gradual
change behind the music.13
After he attended drumming lessons for five weeks in Africa, he found similarities in African drum rhythms and his own phasing process. He tried to combine the two in his work
Drumming (1970-71). He gained bigger recognition with the audience, went on a European
tour and in 1974 Deutsche Grammophon famously recorded the ensemble Steve Reich and Musicians. Reich started composing for larger ensembles and in 1976 Music for 18 musicians premiered, becoming one of his most popular composition. Shortly after that, another piece for lager ensemble named Tehillim premiered in 1981. After the success of these two pieces, Reich got more commissions for bigger ensembles and orchestras, and his music was
programmed in big concert halls. He gained a great audience and with it came fame.14 Philip Glass, the fourth composer associated with the birth of minimal music, was a classmate of Steve Reich at Juilliard. His pieces from that time were composed in a tonal, old school American (after for example Copland) way and bear no resemblance to his more mature pieces.15 He studied for two years with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. He disagreed strongly with the European popularity of Pierre Boulez and serialism and turned towards non-Western music (as did Young, Riley and Reich).16
He began composing music with techniques used in non-Western music, and his minimalistic style emerged. Performances of his music were often in the unconventional places of downtown New York, like lofts and art galleries. He also collaborated with a lot of other people in this scene, in particular theatre artists. Then, in 1976, his big breakthrough came with the premiere of his opera Einstein on the Beach. This still popular opera was a collaboration with theatre director Robert Wilson and later with dancer and choreographer Lucinda Childs. Glass’s career blossomed after this, and he quickly wrote two more
12 Gann 1997, p.198 13 Griffiths 2014 14 Griffiths 2014 15 Strickland 2014 16 Gann 1997, p. 203 9
successful opera’s, Satyagraha and Akhnaten, which formed a kind of trilogy with Einstein. His music became more subtle, still with a very strong beat and often polytonal.17
Because his music was more tonally oriented and seemingly less complex than other minimal composers, his music gained popularity with a large and varied audience. He got commissions for theatre-music, opera and film and collaborated with a wide range of artists, from visual artists to pop musicians.18
The new ensemble
One of the changes that came with minimal music, was the perspective on ensembles and rehearsal practices. More composers in downtown New York formed their own ensembles, as with these personal ensembles it was far easier to try out new compositions and rehearse pieces until satisfaction.19 Composers themselves selected the ensemble members, which often resulted in a group of players who were highly motivated to rehearse until the piece was perfect.
All four mentioned composers had their own ensemble. La Monte Young founded the Theater of Eternal Music in 1962, which was one of the few groups that could perform his difficult and intricate pieces.20 The group had members with diverse backgrounds and included among others Young himself and his wife Marian Zazeela on vocals, and Terry Riley on violin. Riley also had a group of musicians with which he rehearsed and performed, which for example played the premiere of his composition In C.21
Steve Reich formed his own ensemble in 1967, aptly named Steve Reich and
Musicians. The ensemble quickly grew to eighteen musicians, with Reich himself playing the piano and various percussion instruments. The group gained a lot of recognition for the numerous compositions by Reich they recorded.22 Philip Glass too formed his own ensemble, the Philip Glass Ensemble, for which he wrote numerous pieces like Music in Fifths (1969) and Music in Twelve Parts (1970). In the beginning he composed almost exclusively for the Philip Glass Ensemble. Later he went even so far as to not release the performance rights of his compositions, so the members of his ensemble were ensured of a job. Because of this, the highly skilled and rehearsed ensemble became one with great precision and often the only
17 Gann 1997, p. 205 18 Strickland 2014 19 Gann 1997, p. 199 20 Grimshaw 2014 21 Griffiths 2014 22 Gann 1997, p. 198-199 10
ensemble that could successfully perform the music of Glass.23
These composer-led ensembles did not only influence and change ensemble playing, but also the music composed for it. Because the ensembles usually weren’t that big,
composers had to think outside the box. Compositions were often for amplified ensembles to ensure a larger sound:
“Reich and Glass, writing music centered [sic] on simple processes and working with musicians who were not necessarily virtuosos, introduced ensemble playing in which players doubled each other’s lines exactly, or at least in rhythmic unison. The result, amplified by the use of synthesizers and microphones (in Glass’s music especially), wasn’t chamber music in the conventional sense but a new kind of symphonic genre designed to focus the new
materials to an audience in clear-cut lines. Just as Romantic orchestral music used entire brass or strings choirs playing the same melody, minimalist orchestration achieved similar effects with only five to eight players. This, as much as the tonal simplicity and rhythmic interest, was a key to minimalism’s appeal.”24
One of the biggest changes, however, was in rehearsal and performance practices. Because almost every composer in downtown New York had their own group, there became a greater flexibility in written music. Composers exchanged ideas with their ensembles, tried out new pieces and made last minute changes. There was a bigger social dynamic in the groups of musicians, as they rehearsed and played in the same combination all the time and often had a close relation to the main leading composer.
Minimal musical elements
There are some musical elements that are associated with minimal music. Although all the compositions by the four composers are called minimal, they each have their own specific style. For further analysis, it is important to define these different musical elements. The first minimalist, La Monte Young, focused on composing perfect chords and intervals, with precisely calculated ratios. They were often held for an extremely long time with minimal movement.25 In 1964, Young’s biggest and most influential piece The
Well-Tuned Piano premiered, a piano solo piece composed using very strict mathematically
calculated intervals. Young continued to work on and expand the piece, resulting in a composition with a duration of over six hours. His compositions also featured long drones played in high volume during concerts. Later, Young started composing in just intonation and
23 Strickland 2014 24 Gann 1997, p. 199 25 Gann 1997, p.188 11
invented his own harmonic rules.26
Other than his friend’s interest in long notes, Riley was more interested in the repetition of notes and ideas. His famous piece In C consists of 53 short ideas or motifs, which are repeated for an undefined number of times by various instruments. Because of the constant repetition and recurrence of short melodies, the piece resembles loops and tape-delay in a non-electronic way. He later started adding improvisation to his compositions, which in the end became his only way of composing. Following Young, he also started using just intonation in his pieces.
Steve Reich made recordings of speech and played them in loops on two different tape players with different speeds. He named this new technique ‘phasing’, as the two recordings slowly went out of synchrony and became an abstract sound. Eventually, Reich gradually moved away from process music and strict phasing, towards a more intricate and warm sound. His music became about the development of a musical idea with a focus on harmony and harmonic progression.27 This is clearly audible in his pieces Music for 18 musicians and
Tehillim. Especially this last piece has an interesting history.
Through his studies in other non-Western music and his wife Beryl Korot, Reich became interested in his own Jewish roots. He learned Hebrew, studied the Torah, Talmud and other Jewish traditions like cantillation (psalm-singing). This influence is audible in
Tehillim, which translates to ‘Psalms’. The piece is for ensemble and four women’s voices
and uses old-Hebrew psalm texts (after years of not using any words in his composition). The music follows the metre and rhythm of the text and has longer melodies.28 The technique of developing and adding melodic lines used in both pieces became Reich’s main tool. His
compositions both had a strong harmonic feel and were full of pulse and interlocking rhythms. Glass’ music was dominated by harmony and strong, often tonal chords, more so than his minimal music colleagues.29 He composed the most for his ensemble and developed a style closely related to this group. These style featured most of the instruments playing amplified and largely in unison. His compositions were diatonic, with static harmonies, simple melody lines which were often in unison and with strict (almost rock-like) rhythms. The additive element also became a big part of Glass’s idiom. Small melodic or rhythmic
26 Grimshaw, 2014 27 Bernard 2003, p. 115 28 Törnqvist, 2014 29 Bernard 2003, p. 115-116 12
motifs grew a little bit bigger with every repetition. This seemingly simple process would lead to complex rhythms and ever changing accents in melodies.30
Louis Andriessen
Minimal music became popular in Europe too and one particular Dutch composer was greatly influenced by it. Louis Andriessen’s first compositions were more in the style of European serialism. However, he started reacting against this music and incorporated American genres like jazz, pop but mostly minimal music in his compositions.31 Andriessen didn’t agree with the cultural-political tendencies of the Netherlands and wasn’t shy to speak out against it. In 1969, after an protest in the Concertgebouw called the ‘Notenkrakeractie’, he stopped composing for symphonic orchestras altogether.32
He formed his own ensemble and wrote the piece De Volharding for them in 1972. The ensemble Orkest De Volharding had members that were classical as well as jazz
musicians. Two years later he started teaching instrumentation at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.33 In 1976 De Staat premiered, which meant the international breakthrough of Andriessen. De Staat could be considered as his answer on American minimalism, with its static, mostly dissonant chords and minimal movement of the harmonics and melody.
Furthermore, the text of the singers are in unison with the orchestra, making them equal to the other parts (just like Tehillim by Reich and multiple pieces of Glass).
De Staat won multiple prizes national as well as international, and in 1978 Andriessen
was appointed as composition teacher at the Royal Conservatory. Composers and musicians in America started to get interested in him too. He was asked to give guest lectures at American universities, in New York in particular. He gained popularity in the USA and started getting commissions from large institutions, and his influence on American composers grew.34
After minimalism
With the premiere of Einstein on the Beach and its successful run, and the release of the works by Terry Riley and Steve Reich on record, minimal music became popular among a big audience. Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass became household names, influential even outside of the downtown New York scene. In the beginning of the 1980, minimal music
30
Strickland 2014
31 De Leeuw 2005, p. 198-199 32 Wouters 2014
33 Author unknown, muziekencyclopedie.nl – ‘Louis Andriessen’ 34
Wouters 2014
13
had become accepted as part of contemporary classical music.
With the genre becoming ‘mainstream’ grew the need to experiment further and discover the boundaries of classical music once more.35 Other composers and musicians started to experiment with different musical styles. Classical music, jazz and rock had their own niche in the American music scene, and collaborations between the different genres were almost unthinkable. Especially rock had grown explosively in America, with Elvis Presley, The Beatles and later Jimi Hendrix and The Rolling Stones as its main characters.36 Minimal music, especially the aspect of rhythm in the works or Reich and Glass, always had a rock-feel. An actual use of rock idioms within the compositions was not done though. It paved the way, however, for other composers to go a step further. Minimalists composers reintroduced a steady rhythm and (seemingly) easier harmonics and chord progression to contemporary classical music.
Rock also tried to approach classical music. David Bowie, but especially Brian Eno claimed to be influenced by multiple minimal compositions and they started using their composing techniques in their music. Eno released Music for Airport in 1978, which became one of the biggest compositions in the new ambient style. Popular music musicians tried to earn more respect and make the genre more mature and intellectual, instead of being a raw, unpolished sound only for young rebellious America.
Chatham, Branca, Zorn
In 1977, Rhys Chatham, then the programmer of the Kitchen, started to invite experimental rock bands to play there. The Kitchen was the stronghold of conceptual and downtown art in New York. Chatham, a guitarist himself, was one of the first who dared to take rock bands ‘serious’. He studied with Morton Subotnick and developed an interest in the minimal music style La Monte Young was known for. He took lessons with him, and Chatham’s early compositions bear a resemblance to his compositions. He became the first music programmer at The Kitchen of 1971.
In the mid 70’s, Chatham discovered hard rock and became interested in the many possibilities of the electric guitar. In 1977, his piece Guitar Trio premiered. The composition, which features three electric guitars and a relentless 4/4 drumbeat, sounded a lot like a hard rock song. The success of this experiment pulled Chatham towards the rock-scene even
35 Heisinger 1989, p. 431 36
Gann 1997, p. 291/293
14
more.37 After losing most of his hearing, he switched to composing for brass instruments. In 1987 he moved to Paris, where he composed his enormous piece for 100 guitars, An Angel
Moves Too Fast To See (1989).38
Glenn Branca moved to New York in 1976 where he formed two rock bands. He met Rhys Chatham and the two played together for some time. This stopped when they had a fall out about who had the first idea to use guitar overtones in a composition.39 Branca was a self-taught composer who was interested in theatre music. With his band Theoretical Girls he explored the boundaries of rock and avant garde music. He started composing multiple pieces for guitar and one of his better known pieces is The Spectacular Commodity (1979). After the release of his first CD Lesson no. 1 he started composing longer pieces, and eventually called them symphonies.40
Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham were both of heavy influence on the new genre prog- and/or art rock that developed in New York and America in the late ‘80’s. They inspired other bands (like Sonic Youth) to experiment with this new sound. However, they also gave
inspiration to classical composers and composition students. As Chatham programmed more rock bands in The Kitchen, the classical downtown scene got to know the diversity of guitar and rock music. With that, improvisation and complex ‘noise’ also became more popular with some artists. Almost as a reaction to minimalism, a new kind of complexity resurfaced, with performers and composers strongly referring to atonal and twelve-tone music. The main figure in this improvisation scene was John Zorn.41
Zorn was inspired by the new Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, a group of black musicians and composers stimulating black music, who were associated with free-jazz.42 In 1975, returned to New York after his studies, John Zorn started hosting concerts in his downtown apartment. With an ensemble of like-minded musicians, he started performing his game pieces, which were basically a set of loose rules on which the performers could improvise.43
His work The Big Gundown (1986), which was an arrangement of compositions by film music-composer Ennio Morricone, made Zorn known with the big audience. It also reinforced the idea in the downtown scene that low and high art music could be combined
37 Sandow 2014 38 Gann 1997, p. 299-300 39 Gann 1997, p. 299 40 Gann 1997, p. 302 41 Brackett 2014 42 Gann 1997, p. 321 43 Brackett 2014 15
successfully.44 He and his rock band Naked City became legendary in the New York downtown scene.
Downtown musical elements
Although there was a lot of experimentation and diversity in the music after minimalism, there are still some common elements to be distinguished. Rhys Chatham compositions have a very strong and direct sound. Guitar Trio sounds very minimal, as three electric guitars
continuously strum in one rhythm. In that rhythm, the three guitarist play with overtones on the notes. The piece is divided in three sections, or three different ‘chords’. In the first section, only the low E string is strummed. In the second section, a low E, a B and a high E are played, and in the third section a Em7 chord sounds. Underneath that, the drummer plays a steady 4/4 beat, which gives it instantly the impression of a hard rock song.45
After Guitar Trio Chatham composed more pieces with the combination of drums and guitars, often with the same feel of the Trio. With his brass compositions he continued to develop his own minimal musical style which featured strong beats (often in a straight unrelenting rhythm) and overtones. These are also audible in his big piece An Angel Moves
Too Fast To See, which next to 100 guitars also features an electric bass and drums. The
guitarists are divided into six groups, each with their own special tunings. The composition has a steady 4/4 rock beat, which was necessary to keep the whole group together.46 Chatham himself calls the piece ‘the pinnacle of my long love affair with the electric guitar’ and incorporated elements from the art scene of downtown New York and (post-) minimal music, as well as hard rock in this piece.47
Where Chatham’s composition were loud but still quite transparent in structure, Glenn Branca’s pieces are often more a wall of sound than a clearly distinguishable piece. He used chords cluster, polyrhythmic lines and complicated harmonies with conflicting overtones.48 He mainly composed for ensembles or bands consisting of multiple electric guitars and drums, who performed his innovative pieces in high volume. His later symphonies were also for guitars and drums (sometimes with more instruments), but some were for orchestra. The orchestra pieces are less loud, but still keep the typical sound of complicated harmonies and density heard in his guitar compositions.49 Branca’s music is neither classical, avant-garde or
44 Gann 1997, p. 321 45 Chatham 1977/1982 46 Gann 1997, p. 299-300 47 Chatham 2014 48 Gagne 2014 49 Gagne 2014 16
rock. He continued to develop as composer, never sticking to one idea but almost always using the electric guitar as a basis.50
John Zorn composed pieces which were influenced by a large variety of music genres and styles, including early classical music, avant-garde, free jazz, rock, Indian music and pop music. His game pieces consisted basically of improvisations within a composed structure. The musicians would interpret the given structure according to their own musical abilities. The composed part could be a timeline, or a set of musical genres in which to improvise, or duration of improvisation. In his game piece Cobra (1984), musicians could actively change the course of the piece, by giving hand cues to the leader of the ensemble. This leader would then communicate with the rest of the ensemble, and thus leading them to a new set of improvisations.51
After the success of his Morricone arrangement, and his experiments with the game pieces, Zorn got the idea of file-card compositions. These file-cards contained a short musical idea, mood or chord progression, which combined could become a piece. The separate file-cards could be prearranged for a concert or other performance, forming a more consistent piece of music, as opposed to the often improvised game pieces. Because the work is
composed out of separate card files with different ideas, one file-card piece could contain a lot of opposite styles and genres.52
Downtown developments
And so, in the mid 80’s, the downtown New York scene was thriving. The contrast between the downtown and uptown scene grew bigger. Young composers and musicians grew up with this search of diversity and own identity. The borders between genres and musical styles blurred or were completely erased with every new concert and event. Students at the
conservatories were eager to learn a great diversity of musical styles and experimented a lot. In the midst of all this, Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe and David Lang grew up and started to find their own musical voice.
50 Gagne 2014 51 Bracket 2014 52 Bracket 2014 17
Chapter 2 – Gordon, Lang, Wolfe
The three composers Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe met each other at Yale, where they were all students of Martin Bresnick. They became friends and shared a mutual dissatisfaction of the classical music scene in New York.53 This chapter will discuss the three individual composers, their composition style, opinions and collective work.
Michael Gordon
Michael Gordon (1956) was born in Nicaragua and moved to Miami Beach when he was eight. He learned the piano and started composing pieces at a young age. In 1980 he graduated from New York University with a Bachelor of Arts and in 1982 from Yale
University with a Master in Music. There he studied among others with Martin Bresnick, who also taught the other two composers and became a big influence on the three. In 1983 he formed his own ensemble, The Michael Gordon Philharmonic, which he later renamed The Michael Gordon Band. He toured extensively with the ensemble through the USA and Europe.54
Gordon’s music is characterized by complex rhythms and polyrhythmic structures. His early pieces often feature rhythmic conflicts, with for example one dominant pulse being interrupted by another. This is especially prominent in his pieces Thou Shalt!/Thou Shalt Not! (1982) and Four Kings Fight Five (1988). Gordon started composing the first piece at the end of his studies at Yale. Its premiere was the first performance of the Michael Gordon
Philharmonic. The piece has two very strong melodies or layers, which divides the ensemble in two groups that continue to ‘argue’ throughout the whole piece. The first group consists of a violin, viola, clarinet, electric guitar and electric organ, the second is a marimba and other percussion instruments played by one performer. The two groups never reconcile with each other. Gordon: “The struggle between the ensemble and percussionist continues throughout the piece without resolution –– a jagged, brutal and stark equilibrium of intense battle –– with the percussion playing quarter-note triplets in groups of four or five that consistently interrupt the ensemble’s attempted groove. Perhaps the conflict in this piece is between classical music and rock music, two worlds that seemingly could not coexist in 1983, which I am trying to force into a single statement. Or perhaps it is the struggle between the sacred and the secular,
53 Oteri 1999 54
Gann 2015
18
or anything for which there really is no resolution.”55
Four Kings Fight Five is composed for nine musicians (oboe, clarinet/bass clarinet,
electric keyboard, strings, electric guitar and percussion) and is dedicated to Glenn Branca. It has a very strict pulse with mathematically calculated syncopes on top of that. The piece has a mechanical and harsh sound and often sudden transitions to another sections. However, Four
Kings Fight Five does resolve in the end, with a calm violin melody and the rest of the
ensemble underneath. In both pieces the focus is not so much on the melody (which is sometimes almost a-tonal) as well as on the complex rhythmic figures and their ‘fight’. Gordon’s use of strong pulses remind of the beat used in rock and pop music, but the static melodies and chords in his music are a remnant of minimalism.
After his move to New York, Gordon focused on writing music for small, amplified ensembles. With the use of electric guitars, basses and guitar effects, he tried to find a new, distorted ‘classical’ sound. This sound can be heard in the compositions Industry (1992), a cello solo piece where the instrument is amplified and the sound slowly gets more and more distorted, and Potassium (2000), composed for the Kronos Quartet, and featuring a guitar effect pedal.56 This last piece starts with the quartet playing glissandi towards major or minor chords. Because of the glissandi and the guitar effect (a fuzz box) the chords are not clear. There is an acceleration in the middle of the piece, and after a simple solo violin melody the whole piece quiets down. It ends with a sudden outburst of energy and seemingly continues glissandi. Potassium is rhythmically less complex and the piece seems to resolve around the disturbance of sound and the resulting confusion of the listener.
After his compositions for small ensembles, Gordon began composing for large scale symphonic orchestras and ensembles again. An example of a piece for bigger ensemble is
Trance, composed in 1995. This composition for strings, wind, brass, percussion, electric
guitar, electric bass and synthesizers will be discussed further in chapter 4.
In 2009 Gordon started composing Timber. Wanting to do something different than orchestra or ensemble work, he had a musical plan but no instruments to match these ideas.57 Together with Slagwerk Den Haag he discovered the Greek simantras, large wooden beams to be played with percussion mallets. He used these instruments in the large scale piece where the six percussionists play in a circle with their backs to the audience. The beams, cut in different lengths, are slightly amplified. The piece is rhythmically complex, with many
55 Gordon, michaelgordonmusic.com – program notes Thou Shalt!/Thou Shalt Not! 56 Author unknown, michaelgordonmusic.com – ‘Biography’
57
Gordon, michaelgordonmusic.com – program notes Timber
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repetitions (some measures up to 31 times). With the use of different dynamics and because the simantras do not have an exact pitch, the sonic texture of the piece changes often but subtly. The composition, with its duration of over an hour, is almost meditative-like.
Gordon often combines his music with other art forms, like film, theatre or dance. He has collaborated multiple times with Bill Morrison, a famous cinematographer. For their collective piece Decasia (2001), the audience sat or stood in the middle of the hall, with the orchestra surrounding them on levelled platforms behind multiple projection screens. During the performance, the audience were to be completely submerged in the audio and visual elements of Decasia. Trying to mimic the image of a damaged film in sound, Gordon retuned the orchestra slightly so that everybody just played out of tune. The audience still could hear the intended melody, but “It’s like something very beautiful that’s been layered with mud and junk, but you can still see how beautiful it is –– you can still see that it is shining.”58
David Lang
David Lang (1957) was born in Los Angeles and grew up there. According to Lang, he composed his first pieces for his high school orchestra. As a child he studied many instruments, and played in rock and jazz bands. He early developed an interest in theatre music and his compositions often feature small theatrics.59 He attended Stanford University, the University of Iowa, and finally Yale University where he too studied with Martin Bresnick. He graduated in 1989 with a doctorate in Musical Arts. At Yale he participated in the new music ensemble Sheep’s Clothing, which also performed at the same named all-night concerts, both founded and organised by Bresnick. Both the band and the marathon concerts served as an example for Bang on a Can, the collective Gordon, Lang and Wolfe later formed. In an interview with musician and journalist Ann McCutchan about Lang’s creative process, Lang says that he does not want to create only one kind of music. As a composer, he is more interested in combining styles and things that on first glance do not belong to each other. He composes mostly on commission and always tries to base the piece on an
predetermined title which has an idea attached to it. He says his composing method is very mathematical and he often structures his music on intricate structures or algorithms, which he then fills in with chords.60
Galen Brown describes what process in music means to Lang: “For Lang the musical process is a means to the ends of distancing himself from the potential emotional content of
58 Gordon, michaelgordonmusic.com – program notes Decasia 59 McCutchan 1999 p. 219-226
60
idem
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the music.”61 Brown interviewed Lang about his view on musical process and compares it with compositions methods of Steve Reich. According to him, Lang does not want his
audience to hear the process, as it lies hidden inside the music (as opposed to Reich, were it is very audible and a vital part of the composition). This however does not mean that the
musical processes are not aesthetically pleasing or complex. On the contrast, Brown notes, these processes usually are very intricate and interesting. But, as said, the structure is underneath the piece, which allows the listener to focus on other things in the composition, like the melody or the overall sound. This is not limited to the music of Lang of course, but it is a great example of this idea, which was shared among many composers who came after minimalism.62
Lang’s early pieces are mostly for smaller ensembles. In his piece Slow Movement (1993), all the instruments are amplified and slightly out of tune. For 30 minutes they play one slowly changing chord. The instrumentation is a combination of standard classical instruments and pop instruments: two flutes, three different kind of saxophones, strings, an accordion, percussion but also two electric guitars, a bass guitar and two synthesizers. It was commissioned by ensemble Icebreaker, for whom Gordon also wrote his piece Trance. Another exploration of the boundaries of classical music is cheating, lying, stealing. More on this composition is discussed in chapter 4.
Lang’s piece little match girl passion, premiered in 2007, was awarded a Pulitzer prize in 2008. In the piece, Lang combines the fairy tale of Hans Christian Andersen with the St. Matthew Passion of Johann Sebastian Bach. He has rewritten both text to tell the story about the little girl from different perspectives.63 The piece is for four a cappella voices (soprano, alto, tenor, bass) who accompany themselves with small percussion instruments. Both voices and instruments are amplified. Lang hasn’t specifically given any staging directions, but in his introduction he writes “It is also imagined by the composer that distortion, reverb, sound processing, lighting and staging may be useful in the performance in this work.”64 He has given very explicit instructions for the singers in the score, like ‘gentle but a bit heavy, like a girl trudging through the snow’ or ‘with barely suppressed emotion growing in strength throughout’.65
The composition death speaks (2012) was born out of the wish to write a modern-day
61
Brown 2010 p. 182
62 Brown 2010, p. 188-189
63 Lang, davidlangmusic.com – program notes little match girl passion 64 Lang, davidlandmusic.com – Score little match girl passion
65
idem
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song cycle. Using only the lines where the character ‘Death’ speaks in songs by Schubert, Lang created a libretto compelled out of extracts from every Shubert song. He translated the quotes to English and shortened them. According to Lang, this modern song cycle didn’t belong in contemporary classical music, but more in popular music. He found out that telling a story in songs is more common in the indie rock scene, and so he composed it for musicians and friends from that scene. It became a small ensemble (soprano, violin, electric guitar and piano, all amplified). The result is a hybrid composition of very classical styles and the sound of indie rock.66
David Lang has always had an interest in theatre. His music often feature small
theatrical features, even if the composition isn’t staged. He has composed multiple operas and musical theatres and is usually very close to the creative process, sometimes directing it himself. This is evident in his more recent composition love fail (2012). Again for four voices (two sopranos and two altos) and small percussion, Lang has designed together with Jennifer Tipton a complete decor, including costumes, lighting and a video. However, the singers, reading from special created music stands, sit motionless on stage.
Lang has also composed music for ballet, like amelia in 2002 for La La La Human Steps, which was later made into film directed by Eduard Loch. Additionally, Lang arranged music for the film Requiem for a Dream, which features compositions played by the Kronos Quartet. His own music was part of the soundtrack of La Grande Bellezza (2013).
Julia Wolfe
Julia Wolfe was born in 1958 in Philadelphia. She obtained a bachelor in Music at the University of Michigan and went for her masters to Yale University, where she also studied with Martin Bresnick.67 She graduated there in 1986. In 1989 she started an Ph.D. in
composition at Princeton University, but in 1992 she was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship. This scholarship allowed her to move to the Netherlands and compose for and work with Orkest De Volharding. Through that she met Louis Andriessen, who became of great influence on the three composers. She finished her dissertation at Princeton in 2009.68
Wolfe’s music is always full of other genres and styles. In an interview with composer David Krasnow, she says she is influenced by music she likes the most and performed herself when she was young.69 Her compositions are focused around the sound or timbre of an
66 Lang, davidlangmusic.com – program notes death speaks 67 Gann 2015 68 Gilmore 2014 69 Krasnow 2011 22
instrument, and often feature experiments or alternative playing methods. In addition to that, she uses sound or noise samples, often recorded in her own neighbourhood in New York. In the same interview, she tells about this: “It’s a cool way of expanding your harmonic
language. With conventional instruments, you can expand the harmonic language by getting into microtones, the pitches between the tones, but basically, when you bring in what’s thought of as noise, everything changes. People usually think, A car skid, what kind of harmony is that? But it has tone, and pitch, and an attack, just the way a bow on a cello does.”70 Most of her pieces are for (string) ensemble, although she also has composed multiple string quartets and pieces for small vocal groups.71
The Vermeer Room (1989), and Windows of Vulnerability (1991) are both short pieces
for orchestra and show the different sonic textures Wolfe applies to her compositions. The
Vermeer Room, for small ensemble, consists of blocks of different textures created by the
separate instrument groups. Wolfe says that she got the idea from the news that an X-ray picture revealed a new painting under a scene by Vermeer. The piece tries to mimic this, with chords that quickly become overruled by other (often loud) sounds. In the end the piece calms down, with longer chords and steady rhythms by the strings and percussion on top. It finishes with an abrupt climax of all the instruments together.
Windows of Vulnerability is a very dense piece, composed for large symphonic
orchestra.72 It starts loud, almost frantic and disorienting. It features very complex rhythms and dissonant chords and does not really have one melody. The only thing that is constantly occurring are sudden interruptions of silence (or windows) where only the strings can be heard. In the end, the window becomes bigger and it is almost like the strings and the rest of the orchestra are fighting to be heard. The long chords of the first group are interrupted by outburst and harsh dissonant chords of the other.
Her piece Lick, which is in many ways influenced by pop and rock, will be discussed in depth in chapter 4. Another composition which bears resemblance to popular music, is
Dark Full Ride (2002). This piece for four drum kits is quick but even paced and has all kinds
of different rhythms. Because it features the drum kit in every aspects, if sometimes feels like a drum solo from a rock or pop song. The piece My Lips From Speaking (1993) is actually based on an riff from the song Think by Aretha Franklin.73 In the composition, which is for six pianos, the riff is heard tugged and hidden between harsh dissonant chords and complex
70 Krasnow 2011 71 idem
72 Wolfe, juliawolfemusic.com – program notes Windows of Vulnerability 73
Wolfe, juliawolfemusic.com – program notes My Lips From Speaking
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rhythms. Suddenly, a rugged version of the beginning of Think is played, and repeated over and over again. The riff is pulled apart, stretched to its limits with the lower chords as its basis. After a loud climax, the higher chords become the material. The music is build up again, until there are only two chords left, played together in a frantic rhythm. The piece suddenly stops.
Her two pieces Cruel Sister (2004) and Fuel (2007) are both compositions for string orchestra, with high energy, interlocking rhythms and static harmonies. The first composition is based on an old English ballad that tells the story of two sisters, one warm and light, the other dark and cool. The dark girl pushes the other from a cliff because she is jealous of the man her sister loves. A harp is made out of the breastbone and hair of the dead girl and is played at the wedding of the dark sister.74 The piece does not tell the story in particular, but sketches out the contrast between the two sisters and the mood of the ballad. There are roughly three movements, one with jagged rhythms and dissonant chords, one quieter with a big contrast between the basses and violins, and one pizzicato movement which almost sounds harp-like. The composition is with 30 minutes almost double the length than Wolfe’s earlier pieces. Fuel is accompanied by a movie by Bill Morrison, showing the busy ports of Hamburg and New York. The images closely follow the fast pace of the music.
In 2015 Wolfe was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her composition The Anthracite
Fields (2014), a grand scale music theatre work about the mining community in rural
Pennsylvania. Consisting of five movements and composed for choir and mixed chamber ensemble (specifically the Bang on a Can All-Stars), it tells the story about the men, women and children in this culture and the influence mining for anthracite had on their lives. She interviewed people that have worked in the mines or children of former mineworkers, and weaved quotes and sentences but also children songs in the composition. The music is heavily influenced by folk music from the area, but stills bears the rock and rough sound that is characteristic for Wolfe.75
Although her music is very diverse, it often features fast tempos with nervous bursts of energy. Instead of a slowly build up to a climax, her music often consists of separate blocks (of harmony, rhythm or groups of instruments) that gradually stack up to a full and dense sound.76
74 Wolfe, juliawolfemusic.com – program notes Cruel Sister 75 Mendelssohn Club 2015
76
Gann 2015
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Combining the three
Gordon, Lang and Wolfe have composed pieces together multiple times in the past years. The first composition was The Carbon Copy Building (1999). This music theatre was in
collaboration with the comic strip-artist Ben Katchor. He provided the text and the projections shown during the performance. The instrumentation is very small; four singers, clarinet (including bass clarinet and saxophone), percussion, synthesizer and electric guitar (all
amplified). The story is about two identical apartments built in two different areas of the same city, that have developed in two completely different buildings, one wealthy, one rundown.77 It is clear who of the three composers composed which part in the piece, as each have their own recognizable individual style.
Their second collaboration was Lost Objects in 2001. The composition was a commission by the German baroque orchestra Concert Köln and became a staged oratorio with a libretto by Deborah Artman. With a tractate from the Talmud describing the
obligations of a person when encountering a missing object as the starting point, Artman added other texts about losing, like losing memories and dying languages to the libretto. A rock ensemble (electric guitar, electric bass, keyboard and drums) and a live DJ performed together with the baroque orchestra, three solo voices and a choir. After the premiere in 2001, it was restaged in 2004 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s New Wave Festival and directed by Francois Girard.78
In 2005 Shelter followed, which was again a collaboration with Deborah Artman and a commission by the German ensemble musikFabrik and the BAM’s New Wave Festival. Whereas the other compositions consisted of several small parts, this piece has seven longer movements. Their latest collaboration is Water, in 2008. It discovers in eight parts how human kind depends on water. It features a choir, an orchestra with piano, and electric guitar. As usual, the piece is staged and features several projections.79
77 Lang, davidlangmusic.com – program notes The Carbon Copy Building 78 Gordon 22 March 2007
79
Lang, davidlangmusic.com – program notes Water
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Chapter 3 – Downtown and Bang on a Can
The success of being downtown
Downtown New York in the 1980s was the place where new and exciting music was born. With minimal music and free improvisation as predecessors, musicians and composers were looking for their own style. According to Kyle Gann, in the mid 80’s the stature of the uptown scene started to shrink. The focus of the public was more on the downtown scene, where new, fresh styles and kinds of music were expected to be born.80 Most downtown music was composed with a certain kind of concert venue or an exact audience in mind. This audience was big in the 80’s, because of the commercial success of Glass, Reich and later Zorn. This kind of fame had become important in the USA, and their music was heard in many
households.81
From the 1950s until the 1980s, the way classical music was valued in society gradually changed. With the economic rise, business culture reduced the arts and thus music from an act with great social status to ‘just’ entertainment. Composers and musicians were ought to think more commercially. Musicians and composers from the uptown scene reacted to this with aversion, and started to withdraw themselves from the market. Uptown became a scene of the academy, where the audience were trained listeners and actively seeking for new music. According to Gann, musicians from the downtown scene didn’t want such a radical break with the market, because that would result in the loss of the common listener, the non-musician. This meant a constant struggle between two worlds, because success and profit were deemed more important in society than the cultural or social value of an art piece. The idea of ‘selling out’ was always close, and many composers within the downtown scene had different opinions on how to stay away from this.82
Experiments in downtown music were abundant. All kinds of musical borders were crossed and new genres were born. The general idea always was not to draw on the European traditions (as discussed in chapter 1). Inspiration for compositions came from sounds and noises that surrounded the composers in their everyday life. After minimalism, composers didn’t stick to one style or a certain way of composing.83 The compositions, however, were still labelled according to one genre of music, like ‘jazz’, ‘rock’ or ‘contemporary classical’. The musical genres were rarely combined in one concert, and all had their own concert
80 Gann 2006, p. 3 81 Gann 2006, p. 10 82 Gann 2006, p. 6-8 83 Fink 2004, p: 540-541 26
location. This was thought to be more commercially reliable, and record labels and
advertising companies enforced the gap between the styles even more with every CD they released and concert they promoted.
The success of the downtown scene was also noticed by music programmers and artistic directors. A small evolution of concert locations happened in the 80’s and 90’s. First, downtown music was played in ‘underground’ clubs, like The Kitchen or The Knitting
Factory. Both located in downtown New York, The Kitchen was founded in 1971 and quickly became the place for experimental and avant-garde art. When Rhys Chatham became its first music director and programmer in 1972-73 and later in 1977, it went on to become one of the most important places for downtown music in New York. 84 The Knitting Factory, founded in 1987 did the same for jazz, free improvisation and rock.Artists who felt they didn’t fit in anywhere else, like Philip Glass, Steve Reich and John Zorn were welcome in these two clubs. Many early drafts of pieces were played there as an experiment.
Soon, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), noticed that music made by downtown musicians and composers attracted an audience and started programming it. It organised the Next Wave series for the first time in 1981, with the opera Satyagraha by Philip Glass on the program. In 1983, this series was transformed into a festival, and during the second edition of the Next Wave Festival a year later, Einstein on the Beach was revived. The BAM, existing since 1861, had a larger audience, more capacity and a more ‘official’
reputation than The Kitchen or The Knitting Factory.85 According to their own site, the Next Wave festival “was ground-breaking for taking works that had previously been shown in downtown lofts and small "black box" theaters and presenting them [in BAM’s locations].”86 Along with the BAM, the Lincoln Center of Performing Arts started programming new ‘avant-garde’ music. The Lincoln Center, established in the 1960s, is one of the largest performing centres in New York and has multiple buildings for lectures, theatre performances and concerts. The Center organised together with the New York Philharmonic in 1983 and ’84 the Horizon festival with ‘New Romanticism’ as a theme. The programming was diverse, with for example compositions by Peter Maxwell Davies, John Harbison, Morton Subotnick, John Adams, Milton Babbitt and George Crumb.87 The festival didn’t see further editions, but in 1996 the Lincoln Center Festival was organized. This event saw a broader program, as it was
84 Kolodin 2015 §3/§9 85 Kolodin 2015 §3
86 Author unknown, bam.org – ‘About our programs: Next Wave Festival’ 87
Kuhn 1982/3, Martin 1983/1984
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supposed to be the complete opposite of the regular Center’s programming.88 It still featured music from downtown composers, but combined with other styles and genres too.
Bang on a Can
Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe were friends for several years. They met at Yale through their teacher Martin Bresnick and the events Bresnick organised for his composing-class, which the three were involved in. They had talked about the things they wanted to change in the music scene in New York. They were composing pieces themselves that were not performed, and saw that new music was not really part of the avant-garde art scene. According to them, their friends were not exploring the music scene as much as they did with the poetry or dance scene.89 New classical music did not have an large enough audience, they thought. Gordon, Lang and Wolfe wanted to give innovative music and composers who couldn’t identify with the current scenes a platform. The three felt they were too young to understand and join the debate on uptown and downtown music, and liked music from both sides. In 1987, they decided to try to break through the borders of genres of music and composition methods.
Inspired by the ensembles of Steve Reich and Philip Glass and the famous Kronos Quartet, they organised a 12-hour marathon concert. It featured 23 pieces and they asked the composers to talk about their own piece beforehand.90 They programmed well-known contemporary classical pieces next to unknown compositions. It featured among others Four
Organs by Steve Reich, but also recent compositions of their own and their peers. They had
even made a list of ‘rules’: “no program notes, no composer biographies, no intermission, no advertisements to classical music audiences, an alternative non-concert hall space and an open bar(!).”91 It was held in a downtown art gallery and was a small success, with nearly 400 people attending.
This first marathon concert lead the three composers to form a collective, which they named Bang on a Can. They continued to host the marathon concert every year and moved from the small art gallery to many different places in New York, like The Kitchen, the
Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Lincoln Center. They added a festival to it, of which the Marathon was the main and closing event. They organised this Bang on a Can Festival and Marathon in different cities all over America and the rest of the world. The three composers
88 Clark 2003 89 Oteri 1999 90 idem 91 Gordon 5 March 2007 28
have very strict ideas about what to program at these Marathon concerts. Lang: “We like the people who live in between rooms, the music that we want to be with are the people who are lodged in the wall between pop and classical music, or in the stairway between DJ’s and jazz.”92
Gordon, Lang and Wolfe formed their own ensemble, the Bang on a Can All-Stars in 1992. The ensemble consisted of six members: cello, bass, piano, percussion, clarinet and electric guitar. The All-Star line-up has featured famous musicians, like percussionist Steven Schick, clarinettist Evan Ziporyn (who also composed many pieces for the All-Stars), cellist Maya Beiser, pianist Lisa Moore and Mark Stewart on electric guitar (who is still part of the ensemble). The Bang on a Can All-Stars are seen as the flag-bearers of the compositions by Gordon, Lang and Wolfe. They have recorded many of their music and have performed all over the world.93
In addition to their publishing company Red Poppy Music, established in 1993, the three composers founded their own record company, Cantaloupe Music in 2001. After a record deal with Sony which didn’t work out well, they decided to start something themselves.94 According to their website, they created Cantaloupe especially for
contemporary classical music, or ‘post-classical’ music. The record company have attracted a diverse group of musicians and artists. They have released CD’s with music from Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Louis Andriessen and the Kronos Quartet, but also by Maya Beiser, the ensembles eighth blackbird and Ensemble Resonanz, Brian Eno and Kate Moore.95
Besides the Festival and Marathon, the All-Stars and Cantaloupe Music, BoaC kept expanding itself and its message: creating a platform for young and innovative musicians and composers. They started a second ensemble, called the Asphalt Orchestra. This orchestra is more of a marching band, consisting of twelve people playing brass or percussion. Their repertoire includes of jazz, rock and classical music and can perform anywhere because of their mobility. The musicians in the band are young and willing to explore boundaries.96 In the summer BoaC organizes the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival, a three-week festival where young composers and musicians come together to be taught by well-established experimental performers and composers. It takes place at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, where concerts and other events are held during the Festival
92
Gordon 5 March 2007
93 Author unknown, BangonaCan.org – ‘Bang on a Can All-Stars’ 94 Gann 2006, p. 10
95 Author unknown, cantaloupemusic.com – ‘About’ 96
Asphalt Orchestra 2009
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(including a six-hour marathon concert at the end). Bang on a Can also has a commissioning program, The People’s Commissioning Fund, that stimulates upcoming composers. The Fund annually selects three composers or more who are asked to compose a piece for the Bang on a Can All-Stars. The best pieces end up in the permanent repertoire of the ensemble.97
In 2009, Bang on a Can has founded the Found Sound Nation, a ‘musical outreach program’ that uses new technologies to build bridges and help for example youth in
developing countries. Together with this program they created OneBeat, a collaboration with the State Department of the United States of America. OneBeat is an international music program, where 25 young musicians from different countries come together to create and perform new music. The musicians have different backgrounds, perform music in different genres and play all kinds of instruments. After a residency of two weeks and several recording sessions, the group tours around the USA for another two weeks. Together they perform their new music, but also give workshops in communities and schools that normally do not feature music lessons.98
Influences
With all this activity, Gordon, Lang and Wolfe have set a name and example. Bang on a Can is almost a ‘brand’ of music and activity. There are a couple of musicians and ensembles who have had a clear influence on this process. One of these musicians is clarinettist Evan Ziporyn (1959), a close figure to BoaC. He was, like the three composers, a student of Martin Bresnick at Yale, but also studied gamelan music in Bali. He played at the first Marathon concert, and co-founded and played in the Bang on a Can All-Stars. His compositions combine Western music techniques with Balinese music. He has for example written a piece for the All-Stars with a gamelan ensemble.99 He has worked with Bang on a Can for over 25 years and his music and composition style has left a mark on the ensemble and the three composers. As mention before, the ensembles of Steve Reich and Philip Glass were of importance for the Marathon concert as well as the All-Stars, but a more contemporary match is the aforementioned Kronos Quartet. Founded in 1973 in Seattle (and moved to San Francisco in 1978), they made their New York debut in 1984. The quartet is one of the leading string ensembles in America and have performed over 400 world premières, including pieces by Riley, Glass and Reich. In their concerts, they combine Western classical music with other
97 Author unknown, BangonaCan.org – ‘People’s Commissioning Fund’ 98 Found Sound Nation 2014
99
Author unknown, cantaloupemusic.com – ‘Evan Ziporyn’
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