Jonathan Harvey: article in The Guardian/Total Immersion concerts

[Boilk]

Partly because of the transient nature of the technology, perhaps? A composer "writes" something for the latest bit of kit, only for the equipment to be out-dated within a few months and unavailable within a decade.

It mostly doesn't matter if the equipment becomes unavailable within a decade or a year. Much electronic music was designed for capture on and dissemination via tape, DAT, or computer hard drive - and its preciseness (and authenticity) is therefore captured forever. In fact to a large extent one can date electronic music based on the sounds heard or the gestures used (as they are tied up with software algorithms). One can also guess where pieces were realised, there are such things as "IRCAM" timbres!

Even when "authentic instruments" are found in an antique shop, their reliability is unpredictable and the resulting sounds sound quaintly dated (the synthie Trumpet samples in Harvey's Calling Across Time demonstrating this: can we hear these sounds without smiling?)

One coud say that the Beatles or Abba sound quaintly dated (which they do to my ears), or that Mozart's operas sound "so 1780s".

Meannwhile, a composer can work with such an "antiquated entity" as the Clarinetist Carl Rosman, discover new ways of working with an instrument that will still be around in future centuries, and produce a work that might inspire future performers to "find their own way" with it.

This is an oft repeated 'argument', that we should find ways of extending instrumental technique to keep them relevant to contemporary music. But its raison d'être seems to me to be that we can then simply perpetuate these culturally entrenched instruments into another century! It's analogous to getting a 1984 Apple Mac, installing endless software updates and external hardware add-ons, and thereby keeping a much-beloved machine on life support. Better to replace with an iMac, a MacBook Pro, etc. That's progress.

Is Carl Rosman really doing anything with a clarinet/bass clarinet that Harry Sparnaay (and probably a few others) wasn't doing 30 years ago? Extending instrumental technique has been commonplace in the post WW2 era; I see it as relatively old-hat. It was fresh when Penderecki and Berio were doing it in the 1950s/60s, but isn't half a century on. Electronic music emancipated the serious composer from traditional notions of pitch and timbre, and it seems rather ironic that in recent decades many composers attempted to unshackle themselves from the musical past yet still utilised antiquarian instruments that were designed specifically to harness a more or less consistent timbre and a limited number of fixed pitches. It's like swimming against the tide. Perhapsthis is all too idealistic; I guess a consideration for these composers was getting commissions, and/or they attached more value to traditional modes of performance (i.e. the live performer) than the performance-by-loudspeaker scenario that electronic music requires.

I think if young composers at our music colleges and conservatoires were never allowed near any blank manuscript or chamber ensemble we might start getting more contemporary music!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I don't disagree with much of what you say, Boilk - my previous post was in answer to Harvey's "surprise" that more composers aren't as excited by the possibilities offered by electronic media: too many experiences of duff hardware that is unreliable and quickly outdated puts a lot of people off, in spite of the masterpieces of Stockhausen, Babbitt and many others. And these are not minor figures: Birtwistle has done nothing purely electric since Chronometer nor electro-acoustic since The Mask of Orpheus.

Is Carl Rosman really doing anything with a clarinet/bass clarinet that Harry Sparnaay (and probably a few others) wasn't doing 30 years ago?

Not really. Nor was Sparnaay doing anything really different from what Mühlfeld did for Brahms or Stadler for Mozart: showing composers that the possibilities of the instrument haven't been exhausted. It isn't an argument (or even an "argument") - it's a statement of reality. Composers like working with performers who like working with composers. With or without manuscript paper.

[Serial_Apologist]

Fascinating discussion - whether "sounds" can become outdated or not.

A few years ago, Harvey did say in a radio interview that he was still using equipment (eg the DX7) obtained in the 1980s, and was quite happy that they represented the soundworld he was happy with. But then, he specifically wrote a piece for Markus Stockhausen, using brand new equipment the trumpeter had brought along to the performance. In the early 1990s Stockhausen Sr. mentioned that he was "having" to go back and use studio equipment from the 1960s.

Many musicians involved in experimental and improvised music devise their own instruments, sometimes from household items, using electronics likewise home-invented; treatises have been written on this subject, and, to substantiate some of the points made by Boilk, issues to do with the applicability of traditional instruments and techniques have often figured largely in discussions and debates around the suitability or otherwise of conventional concert venues for presenting such musics. The improvising percussionist Tony Oxley, when asked as to the commercial availability of devices he used to modify and extend the range of sounds available from a relatively conventional jazz drum kit, replied that he had devised his own means.

It might be suggested that conventional techniques of instrumental virtuosity will only become exhausted when composers and performers run out of things to do with familiar instruments. Arguably the sounds available through electronics which are least likely to "date" are those first invented by Cage and Stockhausen in the 1950s and '60s for revealing "hidden" harmonics and overtones producible by conventional instruments, and sampling and modifying sampled sounds in real-time performance - for which available technological means are themselves forever in the process of modification, including for purposes of greater practicability.

S-A

[heliocentric]

The improvising percussionist Tony Oxley, when asked as to the commercial availability of devices he used to modify and extend the range of sounds available from a relatively conventional jazz drum kit, replied that he had devised his own means.

It could be said even that live electronics is more suited to improvisational music than it it to other kinds, one reason being that the music once performed can be preserved only in recorded form.

The "datedness" of electronic sounds and processes can be greatly overstated. Nowadays almost anything that was possible only with bespoke equipment in the 1960s or whatever can be reconstructed using computer programming, with an increasing degree of "fidelity" to the original. While some aging electronic compositions indeed sound "dated" to me, if you're thinking while listening of how a piece of music was made, what it is doing is probably not holding your attention strongly enough for whatever reason. I find that to be the case with Harvey's Mortuos plango... but not with Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge for example.

I think that fewer composers are interested in electronic music more recently because fewer composers are interested in expanding the limits of what (their) music can do. I'm not much of a fan of most of Harvey's music but it's clear that he is interested in such things.

[MrGongGong]

A few thoughts I had catching up on this

It could be said even that live electronics is more suited to improvisational music than it it to other kinds, one reason being that the music once performed can be preserved only in recorded form.

I don't think this is true at all, as someone who makes music that frequently involves live electronic components I would't assume that the process of composition is about making definitive "objects" to be preserved, rather, that I am interested in making experiences that might only happen once .

I think that fewer composers are interested in electronic music more recently because fewer composers are interested in expanding the limits of what (their) music can do. I'm not much of a fan of most of Harvey's music but it's clear that he is interested in such things.

I don't think this is true either

I think that one might think that fewer composers are interested in electronic music if one looks in particular places (Orchestras , major "Classical" music festivals etc ) but actually electroacoustic , live electronics and electronic music have become the mainstay of many composers in the UK . If all you know is Radio 3 you might think that this is a tiny niche when actually it's something we do on the highest level internationally.
The kinds of pieces that Harvey makes with large ensembles and electronics are almost impossible to afford in terms of rehearsal time , however, dig a little (HCMF, Sonorities, Sound Festival etc etc ) and one finds a huge amount of interesting music that draws on and uses these techniques.

The other thing that sprung to mind in relation to this was something that Charles Armikahnian said in a talk a few years ago at Huddersfield. He commented that seeing a computer as part of an instrumental setup was so common across a wide range of musics that it has become almost absorbed into our musical vocabulary so that it's hardly mentioned at all. Live processing (as pioneered by Stockhausen et al) is so much a part of many musics that it is seldom "announced" in the way that it used to be.

I agree with Harvey wholeheartedly on that. Yet very few of his own works are purely electronic! Too often he just dipped his toes in and used electronics as an aural exciter or colouristic thickener. Pure electronics can carry the musical argument very well, as he showed in Mortuos.

It's also true that purely electronic composers, even those of the highest accomplishment such as Bayle, Denis Smalley and Dhomont, are unduly marginalised figures due to the legacies handicapping our contemporary 'classical' music culture, still centred on these antiquarian entities, the orchestra and chamber ensemble.

Absoultely ............ This is one of the areas of music that we , in the UK, are world leaders in.......... Where was the special R3 programme about Trevor Wisharts new piece (Encounters in the Kingdom of Heaven)?? one of (IMV) the most exciting, fascinating and beautiful pieces of this century ......

[heliocentric]

The reason I mentioned for live electronics being more suited to improvisation than to precomposed music is not IMO the only one or for that matter the most important one, and I don't think I stated it very well either, but that's a longer discussion that's maybe not relevant to Harvey in particular.

Also: I'm quite aware that most of the interesting composers working today are doing so with live electronics of one sort or another, but, as you say, that isn't necessarily reflected in the kind of composers who are presented and promoted by the "classical" music institutions, who of course wouldn't know one end of a Max patch from the other. Don't get the impression that "Radio 3 is all I know"; actually I've performed at all three of the festivals you mention, but that's another story too.

I can't say I'm comfortable with the idea of "areas of music that we, in the UK, are world leaders in." Surely it's the aforementioned "classical" institutions which still concern themselves with artists' nationality as if that were automatically something important about them and their work. Isn't that an anachronistic way of looking at things where contemporary creative musicians are concerned?

[Serial_Apologist]

Surely it's the aforementioned "classical" institutions which still concern themselves with artists' nationality as if that were automatically something important about them and their work. Isn't that an anachronistic way of looking at things where contemporary creative musicians are concerned?

Only, one might think, if some as opposed to other national practices, idioms, or musical traditions were considered exhausted of further growth possibilities from within - a [political] can of worms in itself.

S-A

[MrGongGong]

The reason I mentioned for live electronics being more suited to improvisation than to precomposed music is not IMO the only one or for that matter the most important one, and I don't think I stated it very well either, but that's a longer discussion that's maybe not relevant to Harvey in particular.

Also: I'm quite aware that most of the interesting composers working today are doing so with live electronics of one sort or another, but, as you say, that isn't necessarily reflected in the kind of composers who are presented and promoted by the "classical" music institutions, who of course wouldn't know one end of a Max patch from the other. Don't get the impression that "Radio 3 is all I know"; actually I've performed at all three of the festivals you mention, but that's another story too.

I can't say I'm comfortable with the idea of "areas of music that we, in the UK, are world leaders in." Surely it's the aforementioned "classical" institutions which still concern themselves with artists' nationality as if that were automatically something important about them and their work. Isn't that an anachronistic way of looking at things where contemporary creative musicians are concerned?

I wasn't meaning you when I said "radio 3 is all I know" more a mindset of many "music lovers" ........

I guess that I wasn't very articulate in the phrase "areas of music that we, in the UK, are world leaders in." but trying (again !) to show how lots of music is overlooked...... I don't really think Nationality is important BUT there is a culture of music composition in the UK that has a justifiable international reputation. Doing a gig (as we both have ) at HCMF is a big think in terms of contemporary music in the world. The fact that Denis Smalley was born in New Zealand is of less significance than the work he did at UEA and City , for example. And the continuing profile of ex BEAST composers is another thing worthy of note ......... and did I mention Trevor Wishart

[heliocentric]

and did I mention Trevor Wishart

Encounters... is an incredible thing, which I still haven't heard all of. And so is Globolalia, which I have. I don't like his earlier work so much; all those transformations sound so much more convincing with the technology he has at his command now than in older things like Red Bird.

[MrGongGong]

Encounters... is an incredible thing, which I still haven't heard all of. And so is Globolalia, which I have. I don't like his earlier work so much; all those transformations sound so much more convincing with the technology he has at his command now than in older things like Red Bird.

IMV it's the best thing he has done, takes the types of musical transformations and phrasing of Globolalia to an entirely new level
worth a journey to hear in 8 channels
the stereo version is worth getting as well

[Carl Rosman]

Is Carl Rosman really doing anything with a clarinet/bass clarinet that Harry Sparnaay (and probably a few others) wasn't doing 30 years ago?

I could probably claim to be a better singer...

[Bryn]

I could probably claim to be a better singer...

Your singing way be better, but what about your stringing?

[Carl Rosman]

Your singing way be better, but what about your stringing?

Hopeless. Absolutely hopeless.

Anyway, sorry to barge in (I only found the thread by googling myself. Looking for an old tweet, actually)... but I did want to have a word about

This is an oft repeated 'argument', that we should find ways of extending instrumental technique to keep them relevant to contemporary music. But its raison d'être seems to me to be that we can then simply perpetuate these culturally entrenched instruments into another century! It's analogous to getting a 1984 Apple Mac, installing endless software updates and external hardware add-ons, and thereby keeping a much-beloved machine on life support. Better to replace with an iMac, a MacBook Pro, etc. That's progress.

The raison d'être is to continue the 'dialogue' that we've been having through (and with) these instruments over the centuries. I think 'perpetuate these culturally entrenched instruments' is a bit harsh (or at least a bit loaded) - one could say the same about the English (or any) language but of course we keep using it because we still have stuff to say to each other.

Where the Apple Mac analogy falls down for me is that that (or any) Mac is one of any number of tools that do indistinguishably similar things. The reason people keep writing for bass clarinet is that as far as they're concerned it's the best tool for that particular job. Same reason people keep using, I don't know, coffee grinders...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I could probably claim to be a better singer...

And Spaarnay is hopeless on pedal Bass Drum!

Welcome to these 'boards, Carl.

[ahinton]

And a warm welcome to Carl from me, too!

I might add, however, to your entirely correct and appropriate assertion that "the reason people keep writing for bass clarinet is that as far as they're concerned it's the best tool for that particular job" that one reason some people keep writing for the contrabass clarinet is that it never occurs to them (or it does but they don't care) how much it costs to hire one of these for each performance!

Anyway - as you were...