Benjamin Piekut

Piekut faz uma investigação histórica incrível em torno da cena experimentalista nova iorquina da década de 1960, mas viajando até Ann Arbor, trazendo episódios interessantes onde confusões e complexidades afloram - a controvérsia de Cage com a orquestra de NY, a teimosia de Henry Flynt e seus piquetes, a jornada de Charlotte Moorman em seus festivais e sua apropriação (indevida) de uma obra de Cage, a guilda dos compositores jazzistas e os debates sobre afirmação da identidade negra, a ideia da época do jazz como entretenimento e não música artística, o passeio de iggy pop pela cena proto-noise em torno de Robert Ashley. O que então torna o livro não tão bom? É que há pretensões e tentativas de conclusões mais gerais, e geralmente filosoficamente orientadas, que por vezes diminuem os textos, ao invés de justamente dar-lhes uma amplitude maior. E Piekut aqui e ali força uma interpretação que exigiria mais convencimento, ou avança algo que precisaria de mais trabalho argumentativo. De todo modo, o livro não deixa de mostrar a importância de buscarmos o que aconteceu para mostrar como diversas forças ajudam a moldar as cenas e noções do que o experimentalismo é e pode ser.… (mer)

review of
Benjamin Piekut's Experimentalism Otherwise
- The New York Avant-Garde and Its Limits
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - Dec 29, 2015 - Jan 6, 2016

This is just the beginning of my review. Read the full thing or nothing will ever change in this world ever again & no-one will ever be immortal.: full review: "Experimental, Ism; Other, Wise": https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/412180-experimental-ism-other-wise

It's a good thing I have off work for another 6 days or I'd have a very hard time even beginning to approach writing a review of this. The subject of experimental/avant-garde music is so near & dear to yrs truly that any bk on the subject is bound to stimulate a detailed response from me. The emphasis on New York is of considerably lesser importance but then the author has this to say in his Introduction:

"This study is situated in New York City during 1964. That means that other important formations of experimentalism—most important, those in San Francisco and Ann Arbor—come up only tangentially here" [..] "There is no deep reason for this; my book is about New York, not those other places. In fact, I maintain that there is nothing special about the New York stories that I discuss in this project—they are simply a way in, a collection of opportunities to explore experimentalism in the most ordinary fashion." - p 2

Such a 'narrow' focus also enables Piekut to make a detailed examination w/o having to get into 'the larger picture' in too dissipating a way & he does a truly excellent job of it. At 1st, I was a bit annoyed by his stance but it was hard not to be won over by his scholarliness.

When I'm reading a bk, I write pencilled notes inside the front cover referring to specific pages where I've marked the passage to be quoted or otherwise mentioned. If I take more notes than the inside front can accommodate than I usually move to the inside back cover. After that, it's usually to the end page. That was the case here. These notes are the merest reminders of what's on my mind. Another person reading them wdn't find much. My note for the above-quoted p2 is: "Cage rc'vd well at Tudorfest". What that has to do w/ New York City isn't immediately apparent.

What it does have to do w/ is that the 1st chapter in Experimentalism Otherwise is entitled "When Orchestras Attack! John Cage Meets the New York Philharmonic wch focuses nicely on deepening the historic record of the New York Philharmonic's negative response to performing Cage's "Atlas Eclipticalis" on February 9, 1964. It's often the case that when I'm reading a music-related bk I also listen to relevant recordings & read their liner notes. That was the case here insofar as I was listening to the 3 disc collection called Music from the Tudorfest - San Francisco Tape Music Center 1964 from the liner notes in wch it's written that:

[San Francisco Chronicle's Alfred] "Frankenstein's insightful comments are especially noteworthy if one considers the notorious performances of Atlas Eclipticalis (also played simultaneously with Winter Music in its electronic version) by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center two months earlier as part of a series of concerts titled "The Avant-Garde." In contrast to the performances at the Tape Music Center, the reception of the same work was far from favorable. As reported by Calvin Tomkins, shortly after the first amplifed sounds emitted from the loudspeakers, audience members muttered angrily and left their seats; roughly half of the audience had left the hall by the time the work ended. Taking his bows after the work's second performance Cage heard what he first thought was "the sound of escaping air," which he quickly realized was hissing by members of the orchestra. During the third performance some of the musicians whistled into their contact microphones, played scales, and purportedly smashed electronic equipment." - http://www.newworldrecords.org/album.cgi?rm=view&album_id=93159

I was also listening to the Mode Records 3 disc release of "Atlas Eclipticalis" w/ "Winter Music" & reading those notes. Mode does a phenomenal job of releasing excellent recordings of music that's of profound importance to me including a vast catalog of Cage works that they, apparently, hope to one day make complete. I wish them the best. In a review of the CDs presented on Mode's website it's written:

"Historically, performances of Atlas eclipticalis have been prone to insurrection and mutiny. Leonard Bernstein's performances in 1963 created one of the biggest scandals in the New York Philharmonic's history." - http://www.moderecords.com/catalog/0036cage.html

&, as I recall, the liner notes put forth something similarly indicting of the NYP. While I'm completely sympathetic to Cage's philosophical & compositional approaches, I'm also deeply indebted to Piekut's careful 'fair hearing' of the Philharmonic's side of the story. Piekut is the only source I've come across (other than original NYC articles) who doesn't just automatically take Cage's side & demonize the orchestra.

"Cage disagreed, however, with Bernstein's original plan to end the concert with an improvisation by the orchestra. "Improvisation is not related to what the three of us are doing in our works""

Bernstein replied w/:

"What, for example, makes you think that our orchestral improvisation should in any way constitute a "comment" on your work, and that of your colleagues? What, again, gives you the idea that everything in this part of the program must be confined to the realm in which you work? The overall idea is music of chance; and there are chance elements in your work, as well as those of Brown and Feldman, as well as in total improvisation. We are trying to have as comprehensive a look at the aleatory world as is possible in half a subscription program; and it seems also to me that improvisation is an essential fact of such a look." - p 31

I think there're merits to both arguments altho I think that associating improvisation w/ "chance" is a bit misleading. It seems to me that Cage's concern was that his music & Brown's & Feldman's wd be overly conflated w/ improvisation wch wd give the audience an 'easy-way-out' for pseudo-understanding the work. As such. I'm ultimately more sympathetic to Cage's position & suspect Bernstein of some slight disingenuousness. Still, in the interest of fairness, it might've been better if Mode had quoted Bernstein a tad in their "Atlas Eclipticalis" notes.

On a related note, I have the Columbia Masterworks ML 6133 record, "Leonard Bernstein Conducts Music of Our Time" (released 1965), wch is from the era under discussion & wch includes Ligeti's "Atmospheres", Feldman's Out of "Last Pieces", Austin's "Improvisations for Orchestra & Jazz Soloists", & Four Improvisations by the Orchestra. According to the liner notes re the latter:

"The most radical of the four pieces on this disc, "Four Improvisations by the Orchestra," was composed at the moment of the recording. In other words, it is almost one hundred percent improvised. "The orchestra and I are going to compose on the spot," said Leonard Bernstein to the audience in Philharmonic Hall, when he and the orchestra first improvised in public. "Nothing has been fixed or decided upon in advance except two or three signals for starting and stopping. Otherwise, every note you hear will have been spontaneously invented by the New York Philharmonic, with its conductor serving as a kind of general guide, or policeman.["]"

Now, I'm very glad to have this record in my collection & I just relistened to the "Four Improvisations" again to refresh my memory. They're 'ok', expertly played, but the conducting so obviously sculpts it & the 'good taste' of the players does too. For me, in order for an improvisation to be truly interesting there has to be the chance of something more unpredictable. No player in the Philharmonic was likely to go against the grain of Bernstein, the maestro, no wind player was going to circlebreathe the same note throughout the whole piece ignoring the conductor's cues. As such, these pieces are only 'improvisations' in a limited sense - just as most jazz is w/ its head, hierarchical solos, & tail structure.

Piekut places importance on Michael Nyman's experimental music - Cage and beyond (1974) as do I. I read it sometime between the end of 1976 & the beginning of 1978. I was 23 for most of 1977 & turned 24 in September. It was a yr of great musical discovery for me. Below's a list of the records I got that yr:

1977 - 67

0444 “Live Peace in Toronto” - The Plastic Ono Band
0445 “Songs of the Humpback Whale”
0446 “Fate in a Pleasant Mood” - Sun Ra
0447 “Astro Black” - Sun Ra Traded to Pat
0448 “The Magic City” - Sun Ra
0449 “Gerd Zacher - Organ” - Englert, Feldman, Zacher, Cage
0450 “Cage; Schnebel” - ensemble musica negativa
0451 “‘Round Midnight, etc..” - Sun Ra, etc..
0452 “Live at Montrose August ‘76” - Sun Ra, etc..
0453 “Smoke Dreams” - Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band Given to Doug
0454 “Elton Dean” Given to Doug
0455 “The Only Jealousy of Emer” - Yeats/Lou Harrison
0456 “Musical Experiences” - Jean Dubuffet
0457 “Quintette for Piano & Strings; Three Moods” - Leo Ornstein
0458 “Collages / Revelation & Fall” - Gerhard / Davies
0459 “Le Voyage; La Reine Verte; Variations pour une Porte et un Soupir; etc..” - Pierre Henry
0460 “The East Village Other Electric Newspaper”
0461 “Coney Island Baby” - Lou Reed Given to Lamar
0462 “Corrected Slogans” - Music Language
0463 “27’10.554” / The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even...” - Cage / Duchamp/Knaack - Knaack
0464 “1st Concerto / Todtentanz” - Chopin / Liszt - Brailowsky - The Phialdelphia Orchestra - Ormandy
0465 “Chopin” - Brailowsky
0466 “Music from the Morning of the World” - Balinese Gamelan
0467 “Cowell; Cage; Johnston; Nancarrow” - Robert Miller
0468 “Transmutation; 2 Tetragrams” - Dane Rudhyar - Marcia Mikulak
0469 “Electronic Music” - Koenig; Pongrácz; Riehn
0470 “Zyklus; Klavierstuck X” - Karlheinz Stockhausen
0471 “Strauss Waltzes - Vienna Blood, Artist’s Life, Sweetheart Waltz, etc..” - Johann Strauss (78)
0472 “Serenade / Hungarian Dance #5” - Schubert / Brahms {?}
0473 “Chopin Polonaises 1 to 6” - Artur Rubinstein
0474 “Nutcracker Excerpts” - Tchaikovsky
0475 “Violin Concerto” - Tchaikovsky
0476 “Horowitz plays Chopin”
0477 “Elvis’ Golden Records” - Elvis Presley
0478 “Slyvia; Coppélia” - Delibes
0479 “Cinderella - Suites 1 & 2” - Prokofieff Sold
0480 “Lieutenant Kije / Song of the Nightingale” - Prokofieff / Stravinsky {?}
0481 “Hawaiian Favorites” - Harry Richards & his Islanders Sold
0482 “Overtures” - Strauss; Rossini; Lehar; Weber; Nicolai; Beethoven Sold
0483 “Heifetz Plays” - Gluck; Rimsky-Korsakov; Godowsky; Dvorák; Brahms; Ravel; etc..
0484 “John McCormack sings Irish Songs”
0485 “Band of Gypsies” - Hendrix Returned
0486 “Klavierkonzert Nr 4” - Beethoven - Pollini - Böhm-Wiener Philharmonic
0487 “Piano Sonata #2 - Concord, Mass., 1840-60” - Charles Ives - Gilbert Kalish
0488 “Kurzwellen” - Karlheinz Stockhausen
0489 “Oral / Synaxis” - Ivo Malec / Maurice Ohana
0490 “Musics for Piano, Whistling, Microphones and Tape Recorder” - Michael Snow
0491 “Glass Harmonica” - Beethoven; Naumann; Tomaschek; Röllig; etc.. - Hoffmann
0492 “Music with Changing Parts” - Philip Glass
0493 “Enigmatic Ocean” - Jean Luc Ponty Sold
0494 “14 Waltzes” - Chopin - Brailowsky
0495 “2nd Symphony” - Beethoven - Monteux - San Francisco Symphony Orchestra
0496 “Akrata; Achorripsis; Polla Ta Dhina; ST10” - Iannis Xenakis - Simonovitch, etc..
0497 “Metastasis; Pithoprakta; Eonta” - Iannis Xenakis
0498 “NY City R & B” - Cecil Taylor/Buell Neidlinger
0499 “Zoot Allures” - Frank Zappa
0500 “From 12 Etudes in Minor Keys” - Alkan
0501 “Farewell Symphony; Trumpet Concert / Toy Symphony” - Haydn / Leopold Mozart
0502 “Anarchy in the UK; I Wanna be Me” - Sex Pistols (12”EP)
0503 “The Piano Music of Henry Cowell”
0504 “Electric Sound” - Sonic Arts Union (Lucier, Ashley, Behrman, Mumma)
0505 “Dawn & Dusk in the Okefenokee Swamp” - Environments
0506 “The Psychologically Ultimate Seashore & Optimum Aviary” - Environments
0507 “Ensemble Pieces” - Christopher Hobbs; John Adams; Gavin Bryars
0508 “The Sinking of the Titanic; Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet” - Gavin Bryars
0509 “La Caccia” - Walter Marchetti
0510 “Live Electronic Music Improvised” - MEV; AMM

"In Michael Nyman's influential formulation, a set of "purely musical considerations" sets off experimentalism from its close cousin, the avant-garde. Experimentalism, he writes, offers fluid processes instead of static objects; antiteleological procedures instead of goal-driven works; new roles for composers, performers, and listeners instead of the hierarchies of traditional art music; notation as a set of actions rather than as a representation of sounds; a momentary evanescence instead of a temporal fixity; an ontology that foregrounds performance over writing; and a welcoming of daily life instead of its transcendence." - p 5

While I 'have to say' that Nyman's experimental music was a great companion to the music I was listening to in 1977, I also 'have to say' that I find the above distinctions to be more idiosyncratic of Nyman than otherwise useful. In other words, "experimental music" is music that involves experimentation & "avant-garde music" is music that's on the 'cutting edge' of new developments. IMO, both terms are mostly interchangeable altho I think an argument cd be made that not all experiments are cutting edge (imagine music performed using an attempted improvement in violin tuning pegs). Then again, there's plenty of music that gets labeled "experimental" & "avant-garde" that, IMO, is neither but is, instead, an imitation of earlier music that was. Personally, I've chosen to use the term "avant-garde" infrequently b/c of its military associations since I'm anti-military.

Lest the reader think that Piekut adopts Nyman's "influential formulation", we then come to this:

"Rather than reinscribing the usual distinction made between American experimentalism and European avant-gardism, I use the two terms interchangeably here because doing so otherwise would naturalize a difference that has been discursively produced." - p 14

Piekut is very much an intellectual in what's usually an academic sense of highly informed by specialized contemporary thinkers:

"My approach to these matters is inspired above all by the work of Bruno Latour, a philosopher of science associated with actor-network theory (ANT), I proceed from Latour's formulation of the term network: it does not describe the shape of the social formations under study but rather the methods used to understand them and the movements of translation they effect. When studying a network, it is important to identify everything that has an effect in a given situation. These effects reveal a web of connections among people, technologies, texts, and institutions. It is a heterogeneous network—these are things of different kinds, and thus their connection necessarily requires translation." - p 8

Piekut's emphasis on scientific philosophy helps identify his point-of-view (POV) as, perhaps, less that of a person exclusively focused on what're usually considered to be issues of music theory & more that of a general analyst. This method of calling attn to "a web of connections" can be a way of highlighting elements of socio-economic privilege that might be 'invisible' from a less general, more myopic 'music-only-centric' perspective.

"That is why it is crucial to understand a network as heterogeneous, as something far more complex than a simple social network of composers and critics who get each other gigs. Dispersal and durability measure relative strength, so the portable persistence of articles, scores, books, and recordings assumes paramount importance, especially when they end up in authoritative sites of knowledge production such as archives and university libraries." - p 10

I questioned Nyman's distinctions between "experimental" & "avant-garde" above, so I do a similar thing here; Is it still a network then? Yes, I think so.. & the more deeply established the network any given composer/performer/critic has access to, the more establishment they are - even if they're 'anti-establishment' otherwise. Such an observation becomes important as the reader is led thru various manifestations of experimentalism in different cultural milieus.

Piekut has the intellectual's carefulness in language: "Because I agree with Foucault's description of power relations as both "intentional and nonsubjective,"" (p 10). Note that the word used is "nonsubjective" rather than 'objective'. This is another valuable distinction to me insofar as I find both 'objectivity' & 'subjectivity' flawed as concepts.

"Comparing Moorman's Second Annual Avant-Garde Festival and Dixon's October Revolution in Jazz reveals the different kind of resources that could be mobilized on behalf of each festival. Moorman, an assistant to the concert producer Norman Seaman, could draw upon her experience and considerable contacts in concert promotion to attract reporters and critics from several newspapers, national glossy magazines, news film, and radio."

[..]

"Dixon produced the event with little more than his telephone and a list of hungry and eager musicians, and he later recalled incurring debts to both his phone company and his local grocers in the weeks preceding the festival. (Indeed, the fact that the power company cut the cafés electricity on the day of the first concert indicates the precariousness of the situation.)" - p 12

Moorman was white, Dixon was black, the cards were definitely stacked against the latter. That sd, there were signs of the times that were more favorable. Take, eg, Tom Wilson, a black music producer who supported an amazing motley crew of vigorously original musical acts. Irwin Chusid of WFMU has even created a website in his memory ( http://www.producertomwilson.com/ ) decades after Wilson's 1978 demise. As Michael Hall puts it in his January 6, 2014 article for the Texas Monthly:

"Without this producer, Bob Dylan would not have broken through like he did—effectively bringing on the swinging sixties and changing music forever. Without this producer, Simon and Garfunkel might have quit before they ever got started, the Velvet Underground might have stayed underground, Frank Zappa might have spent his career recording on hapless independent labels, and jazz greats Sun Ra and Cecil Taylor would definitely have labored longer in obscurity than they already did. This producer helped them all find their voices and realize their visions, revolutionizing American music. He was a Harvard graduate. He was a Republican. He was a black guy from Waco, Texas."… (mer)