jshao – MHS 123: Music and Technology in the Twentieth Century

November 28, 2017

The performance of silence

My friends and I always make fun about playing John Cage’s 4’ 33” for the recitals, but unfortunately, none of us have done it so far. It seems that 4’ 33” is the easiest piece to play, and the musicians do not have to practice before the performance since the whole piece is filled with tacet. Also somehow, we do not hear 4’ 33” very often in the concerts, even though it is a very well-known music repertoire by John Cage. At least, I haven’t heard any live performance for this piece.

John Cage is a leading American composer in “chance” music area/music in indeterminacy, and he composed his famous “silent” piece 4’ 33” in 1952. David Tudor played the world premiere of the piece on the piano, and he sat in front of the piano, closed the lid during the movements and set the timing for each movement—the first movement is 33’’, the second movement is 2’ 40’’ and the third movement is 1’ 20’’. After the last movement, David Tudor closed the lid and walked off the stage. Overall, it was a very formal and serious performance.

Many years ago, I also imagined how I would perform John Cage’s 4’ 33” on the piano, and I thought the only thing I needed to do is to not play any note. However, after I watched a lot of videos of this piece, I got shocked by different interpretations from various musicians besides just being silent for four minutes and thirty three seconds. The video performed by Japanese Orchestra—K2Orch—is one of the greatest performance on Youtube, and I think it is an amazing live performance with a violin soloist that I can find online for 4’ 33”. As we know, the performance can’t be totally silent since every sound and noise from the audience and the natural environment is enlarged at the moment. Thus, what happened to the performance of 4’ 33” by K2Orch?

The soloist started to walk on the stage first and the conductor—Yusuke Ichihara—walked after her, and the audiences were keeping clapping when they were walking. I am not sure if the audiences already had the background knowledge of the piece or they already heard the piece before, but I can tell the applause showed their generous welcome. After all the greetings between the conductor and the concertmaster, the conductor and the soloist and so on, the orchestra sat down and the soloist began to tune the violin. Until now, all the processes were same as other music repertoires. After the soloist tuned her instrument, she gave the nod to the conductor to inform him that she was ready. The conductor gave the prep and the down beat, and then the “silent” music started. Thirty three seconds later, the conductor gave the cutoff, and it showed the end of the first movement. Then, the instrumentalists and the conductor took a few seconds break before the second movement started. No one clapped during this time, and it just seems that all the audiences knew 4’ 33” is a three movements piece.

After the conductor gave the prep and the down beat again, the second movement began formally. However, it is very clear that the second movement is a slow movement and it might be adagio because the conductor gave the softer, slower and more smooth prep than the first movement. Two minutes and forty seconds later, the conductor gave a very beautiful cutoff and the release—the second movement was done. Same as taking few seconds break between the first movement and the second movement, after the very short break, the third movement began. I know the last movement is allegro and the dynamic probably should be forte, since the prep from the conductor was more powerful, faster and stronger. After a minute and twenty seconds and the cutoff from the conductor, the whole piece was over. The audiences clapped loudly, and the applause presented that they really enjoyed the performance.

I had to say K2Orch did a fantastic job on this piece. I timed the durations for each movement when they were performing, and all three movements are finished perfectly on time. Actually, stoping on time is not easy to do, even though the players use the watch to keep the time. For example, the performance of William Marx,

he played the first movement as 30’’, instead of 33’’, the second movement was 2’ 23’’, rather than 2’ 40’’, and the last movement was 1’ 40’’, though John Cage wrote 1’ 20’’. Also, the Japanese audiences showed their high respectful for the performers in the video. It is very obvious that they were trying to be very quiet and to not make any noise until the short breaks between the movements—the audiences coughed and moved, even though there was a baby kept crying during the movements. But, since it is a recording of the live, I also can clearly hear the frequency/noise from the recording equipments. Therefore, the “silent” music is not absolutely silent.

If I have to give one suggestion to the performance, I would say maybe the players can be in the performing positions, such as putting or holding their instruments up. So the conductor would not be the only person showing the status of the performance, but also the instrumentalists. Interestingly, this is how the EBU Euroradio Orchestra performed John Cage’s 4’ 33”.

Reading through the comments of the video by K2Orch, many of them are funny, ironic and casual, even though the performance is formal and fabulous. For example, “The second violin sounded a little out of tune to me”, “I’m 18 and it took 30 years for me to master this song”, “and people pay to hear this”, “Do you think they rehearsed the piece!”, “Excellent performance, though I still prefer the Berliner philharmoniker one with Claudio Abaddo. If anyone has it, please post.”

In my opinion, there are three reasons caused these comments and reactions from the most audiences. Firstly, during the real performance, the ideal meaning of being silent always conflicts with the inevitable noise, and a lot of time people think 4’ 33” is a joke because of those unexpected noise, though it is not. Secondly, the function of the composer being more vague in “chance” music, and unusually, the audiences get involved in the compositional process. Finally, the lack of programme-notes or background stories make the audiences hardly to understand the music. For instance, in John Cage’s book Silence (cited from Music imagination and culture by Nicholas Cook, page 11), he explained his imagination of 4’ 33” and the third movement is in A-B-A form.

John Cage said, “The most important piece is my silent piece.” And it is true that we can hear his philosophic thinking in 4’ 33”—music as indeterminacy. Being one of the wonderful recording, K2Orch presents high quality of the performance and the real and live reactions from the audiences. Since John Cage believes Zen Buddhism and uses I Ching (Taoism), I believe that he might also want to explain the idea of “nothing means something/silence is not silent” in his music, besides “everything is natural and random”.

October 31, 2017

“American Tune” is an American?

As a foreigner and if I don’t know what is the “American Tune”, I will probably think about it as the American National Anthem because of the title—the tune for the all american citizens. The title of the song is very direct and also sounds very powerful. After you listen the song, however, you will realize that it actually is a pop-folk song, and it does not sound loud at all. No any wind instrument and no orchestra, just a male singer with his guitar. On the Wikipedia, it even says the genre of the “American Tune” is soft rock, and I am pretty sure that the American National Anthem is not a rock song. But, why a pop music song can be called “American Tune”? And what is the story behind it?

The video of “American Tune” in 1975 by Paul Simon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE3kKUEY5WU

Before we take a deep adventure about the “American Tune”, let us get some basic information. “American Tune” is one of the songs in the third solo studio album—There Goes Rhymin’ Simon—by Paul Simon. Paul Simon is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist and musician, and he born on October 13, 1941 in a Hungarian Jewish family. The album released on May 5, 1973, and it recorded from September 1972 to January 1973. Paul Simon wrote the lyrics of the “American Tune”, and if you listen the song carefully, you can distinguish the melody is taken from St Matthew Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach. Or actually we should say the melody is based on the Christian Passion hymn “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded” by Paul Gerhardt, and its a reworking melody of the earlier secular love song “Mein G’müt its mir verwirret” composed by Hans Leo Hassler. The lyrics is mainly used the first-person pronoun, such as I and we. So, it seems that Paul Simon tells a story about himself and many other american people through the song—“American Tune”.

The lyrics contains four verses, and it is very obvious that the song is about a dark and kind of depressed reflection, rather than a happy song. For example, Paul Simon wrote “Many’s the time I’ve been mistaken” at the beginning of the song, “I don’t have a friend who feels at ease” and “I wonder what went wrong, I can’t help it” in the second verse, “And I dream I was dying” in the third verse and “You can’t be forever blessed” in the verse 4. However, it is also very interesting that in the lyrics, Paul Simon also presented his optimistic side and kept saying “It’s all right, it’s all right.” Was he really alright? Could he be able to recover the bad memory? The answer is maybe, but also could be maybe not…

After we know the background information and the lyrics of the song, can we tell what is the subject that Paul Simon talks in “American Tune”? The answer is absolutely yes. In the third verse of the lyrics, Paul mentions that, “the Statue of Liberty (see below) sailing away to sea”, and everyone knows the Statue of Liberty is the symbol of the United State. Therefore, this song is a meditation about the political things happened in the early 1970s for all american people and the America.

From the 1960s, the US government deiced to bring more armies and weapons into the Vietnam War and terribly, widely attacked the Vietnamese people over the decade. The war not only caused millions of the Vietnamese people passed away and destroyed their homes and lands, but it also made a great numbers of the US soldiers lose their lives and led a lot of american people to have a very hard, confusion and struggle time. The US government gained condemnation from other countries, organizations and many US citizens, even though the original goal is to assist French government to make Vietnam become a free country. Eventually, America lost the war, and the aftereffects became extremely painful for both the US government and the Vietnam. For instance, the economy in US grew very weakly and even had the Great inflation in 1970s after excessively supporting the military for the decades.

Iconic photos of the Vietnam War: http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/19/world/gallery/iconic-vietnam-war-photos/index.html

Under this circumstance and atmosphere, Paul Simon wrote “American Tune” to express his and many american people’s emotions and attitudes. It is a very quiet song, and it performs in a very peaceful way. In my opinion, this incredible quietness shows the heavily struggle and weariness between the feelings of hopeless/depression and hopefulness. Also, the melody of St Matthew Passion states the painfulness and darkness since the initial tune depicts the crucifixion and the suffering of Jesus Christ. However, why Paul Simon decided to use a religious-related (Christian) tune to sing this song, even though he raised in a Jewish family? Why he cannot composer a new, good melody or use a well-known American folksong melody to cooperate the title “American Tune”?

Besides St Matthew Passion’s melody is very famous and almost every person knows it and the story about the tune, it also presents Paul’s political points. Firstly, the biblical meaning of the crucifixion is similar to the suffering of the american people’s lives in the 1970s. Also, his optimistic thought is identical to the resurrection of Jesus’ death as well. Secondly, since Paul born in a Hungarian Jewish family, I assume he is also a jewish. As many people know, lots of scholars consider St Matthew Passion is an Anti-Semitism piece. However, the way Paul Simon used the tune in this situation (about the war and even the races) is somehow to prove the ideal and original American politics’ views—everyone is freedom and equal, and it testifies that everything should blend and mix very well in music and also in the political world.

It is very difficult to avoid any bias in the politics, and it becomes even hard when the music associated with the politics. For example, in William Robin’s article—Colin Kaepernick and the radical uses of “The Start-Spangled Banner” and Anthony Tommasini’s article—Trump Is Wrong if He Thinks Symphonies Are Superior, we can see the controversies always come suddenly through very detailed lyrics, words or even just one phrase. I totally agree with Anthony’s opinion that the symphonies are not superior because every type of the music forms is equally important and significant. However, I think it is a little implausible to make the connection between the music and politics in this case, because Trump is not a professional musician. He might regarded the symphonies as a great type of the music since the orchestra music is normally loud, huge and superior for the audiences. Especially for the amateur audiences, they do think music in this way. Thus, Trump may not put bias into the statement “we write symphonies”, even though he says many bad stuffs sometimes.

Overall, politics influences the music broadly, and Paul Simon’s expresses his attitudes and moods about it clearly in “American Tune”. Also, based on the lyrics and the melody, he builds a good connection between the music and the politics and avoids bias in his music. Therefore, “American Tune” becomes a very popular song over the decades. If you ask me is the “American Tune” an American, even though the melody is not from the American? I will say yes, because this is the song talking about the story in the American and American people in the 1970s.

September 19, 2017September 19, 2017

The sound of the organ

On July 3, 2017, at 8:30pm, in Montreal, Canada. There was an interesting organ concert played by a well-known organist—Hans-Ola Ericsson—at Church of the Immaculate Conception. That is a huge fantastic church with many historical sculptures and paintings. The recital was an event of the Montreal Organ Festival, and more than 500 audiences (including many organists coming from other places to participate the festival) was waiting for the concert starting since it already had delayed for 30 minutes. The program of the concert is half classical music and half contemporary music. The organ is built by Rudolf von Beckerath which is a German organ company, and it has mechanical touching and action for the keys and the stops. It sounds like the Craighead-Saunders organ at Christ Church in Rochester, NY, and obviously it is one of the ideal organ for playing early music, such as the works of Dietrich Buxtehude and Heinrich Scheidemann.

Von Beckerath, 1961
• 3 manuals, 38 stops, 56 ranks
• Mechanical key and stop action

Four years ago, I met Hans-Ola Ericsson in Leipzig, German, and I went to his masterclasses and recitals. Ericsson is one of Olivier Messiaen’s friends, and he performs lots of Messiaen’s music and other modern music. Also, he is a composer as well. I highly admire his talents and musicianships, and I feel his music can inspire people. So, I was very excited to hear his concert again in Montreal.

The concert began with a contemporary piece called Interactions No. 2 for Organ and Tape (1979) by Tamas Ungvary (b. 1936), and the first-half recital ended by Hans-Ola Ericsson’s own music—Melody to the Memory of a Lost Friend XIII (1985, for Organ and Electronics).

Unfortunately, there were over half of the audiences decided to leave during the intermission, probably because that kind of music did not sound right for them or they thought the performer was just crazy. Well, I guess that makes sense… It is difficult for the audiences to accept that the organist was wearing a Sennheiser headset to hear the electronic part and using the Timer on his iPhone to calculate the timing when he was performing in the concert, and letting two speakers to play the electronic accompaniment to the audiences. To be honest, it is even harder to image the picture in your head. It might look like a vanilla sundae with whipped cream and some small pieces of bacons on the top—the tasting is absolutely good with the creation, but people will still feel shocking and ridiculous each time when they see it.

However, did the way of the Ericsson’s playing make the audiences feel uncomfortable, so they left in the middle of the concert? The answer is no. Obviously, if that is the reason, the audiences could close their eyes to keep listening and enjoying the music. Thus, what is the main reason making people decide to leave a famous organist’s concert?

From my point, I do not think that using other technologies (such as electronics and tapes) into the organ music is the most important reason making the audiences leave. But, a special way of using organ as a musical technology to produce a unique sound made the audiences feel uncomfortable.

Listening to the Melody to the Memory of a Lost Friend XIII carefully again, you actually cannot hear the absolute pitches from the organ. Sometimes it sounds same as the electronic music with many overtones. This is because Hans-Ola Ericsson uses soundscape on the organ (pulling the stops not fully out, and the players can get different colors by using different stops) to approach the special sound from the organ. Also, this unusual but more colorful sound can give the listeners more imaginations about the music. For example, the Melody to the Memory of a Lost Friend XIII is composed for the three-hundredth anniversary Bach year in 1985, and Ericsson wrote in the album, “(The decision of) a close friend to end his own life was the starting point and the inspiration for this work. His absence of hope and his despair awoke in me a search for meaning.” Therefore, when you are listening, you can deeply understand what is the story behind this piece, even though you cannot hear the certain notes.

But, the soundscape is not the traditional organ’s voice for the audience, and also it is not one of the sound that the audiences usually expect to hear. Many times when the organists perform new music with the technique of the soundscape, many audiences want to leave during the concerts. This situation happened in four years ago in German as well. A very famous Hungarian organist and composer was playing the recital at Nikolaikirche, Leipzig (One of two churches that J.S. Bach worked and played in Leipzig). After his started to use soundscape, a lot of audiences began to leave the church and made the noises to show the dissatisfaction.

Let’s take a guess—what kind of the sound from the organ will not make the audience be too surprised or when the people walk into Nikolaikirche, what kind of the organ music they would like to hear? The imitated voice as a Whistle(soundscape)? The jazz music with a drum accompaniment from a speaker? Or “real music” composed by classical composers, such as J.S. Bach, Franz Liszt and so on. In general, I think the answer possibly would be the third one. Here is the recording of Jesus bleibet mine Freude (nach BWV 147) played by Jurgen Wolf at Nikolaikirche, Leipzig.

Going back to the period before J.S. Bach—during the Medieval Age and the Renaissance (cite from the page 3), the mainly used organs are the portative and the positive (see the pictures below). Normally, they only contained principals stops and the mixtures to accompany with the singers and other instrumentalists. But, it did not have the some special sounds like soundscape. Also, since organ is the core instrument to play in the churches, the major contributions for the organ music (including J.S. Bach) is various types of the chorale settings(reference from the page 96). Some treatises recorded that during the Baroque period, the correct sound from the organ should sounds like a human voice (singing). This tradition lasted for a long time, and it influenced German organ composers and organists, even during the time of Max Reger. For example (reference Preface by Christopher Anderson from An Introduction to the Organ Music of Max Reger), Reger really effected by J.S. Bach’s music, and the people use the term “historicist modernism” to describe him.

In French, the organists and the composers pursued the orchestral sound from the organ, rather than the human voice in German. For instance, the bright reeds’ stops is one of the main elements for the French style’s organ. Especially in 19th century, after Cavillé-Coll organ company founded in France, the French organists have had more characteristic and easier using organs to approach the loud sound as a big symphony. As Charles-Marie Widor mentioned in his Avant-propos (directly cite from Widor’s Avant-propos), “The modern organ is essentially symphonic.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oR3P3IfGqo (Widor 6th Organ Symphony, the first movement-Allegro, played by Daniel Roth)

Now being an instrument or a musical technology, the organ does not necessarily need to sound like either the human voice or the orchestra in modern music. However, after more than eight centuries’ traditions, how to make the listeners entirely accept a new sound from the organ will be an interesting topic in the future.