Is it True?

The New York Times ran a couple of articles on music this past week, one offering a poignant expression of our shared humanity, the other raising issues that might challenge notions of exactly what our humanity amounts to.  In an odd way, they seem to be obliquely related.  

The first is titled “What I Learned From Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, a Sublime Voice”, written by vocalist Benjamin Appl as a reflection on the relationship with his mentor on the centennial of his birth.  Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (who passed away in 2012) is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century’s greatest singers.  I’d aways found his voice possessed of a natural warmth and clarity that was captivating.  Towards the end of the article Benjamin Appl shares this moment with the reader:

What moved me most was his emotional state in the final weeks of his life. He had devoted himself to music, to art, with almost complete surrender — relentlessly, unflinchingly and at great personal cost. He spoke openly about not having been the ideal father or friend. That honesty still echoes in me today. 

Our last meeting, just weeks before his death in 2012, was cloaked in a quiet stillness. As I entered his home near Munich, a space he had largely designed and furnished himself, bearing his unmistakable touch, I sensed the atmosphere had shifted. We worked on Schubert’s “Harfner Songs” — music about solitude, transience and death. He often wept, asking the great questions of life, wondering whether his career had meant anything, or if he was already forgotten. Then suddenly, through tears, he fixed his gaze on me and said with a trembling voice: “Forgive me, I always tried to sing these songs truthfully, but I never succeeded.”

It was a devastating moment. I knew it would be our last. A few weeks later, he passed away — quietly, peacefully, as if one of his songs had simply faded into silence.

I hesitate in writing anything at all about something this personal but it raises real questions to which any artist can relate.  Let’s allow it to sink in a bit while considering the implications raised in the second article which is an obituary of David Cope.  Unfamiliar to me until now, David Cope was considered the “Godfather of A.I. Music” given his work in the 1980’s using algorithmic composition in the development of computer programming generating music in the style of various classical composers.  While this is in no way my domain the issues his work raised at the time (and now) challenge our notions around the very human process of music making.  In the article, Douglas Hofstadtler (who was involved with David Cope in an early experiment involving a program called “Experiments in Musical Intelligence”) is quoted as saying:

"EMI forces us to look at great works of art and wonder where they came from and how deep they really are," he told The Times afterward. If it were possible to reduce music to little more than various combinations of riffs, he added, then "it would mean that, to my absolute devastation, music is much less than I ever thought it was."

Towards the end of the piece we read:

Over the course of his career, Mr. Cope aroused the ire of so many other composers that he developed a sort of immunity to it, and even reveled in the discomfort his computer-generated music caused. “I want the negative reaction,” he said in “Opus Cope,” a 2021 documentary about his life’s work. “I feed off it.”

In a 2015 article published by the Computer History Museum, he was questioned about whether machines have the capacity to be creative, and he was adamant in his response: “Yes, yes, a million times yes.”

He added: “Creativity is simple; consciousness, intelligence — those are hard.”

To be honest, I’m really not that interested in discussions about A.I.  I understand its implications but there’s something off about the “for and against” analysis.  Also, the idea of A.I. as a creative tool is not that compelling even though I’m reminded of those years working with Andrea Parkins who used her computer sampling program in a kind of “chance operations” manner.  She spoke of it as a Rube Goldberg approach in which there was a “slippage” (her word) with respect to a sound and any sense of meaning it might convey.  It was often unpredictable in ways that were sometimes vexing and I loved it.  While I’m not against the principle of using technology in creative ways I’ll admit that I do have a negative reaction embedded somewhere in all of this so out of respect for Mr. Cope’s challenge let’s see where this leads.  

There seems to be a threat involved but what is it?  

Is it personal, a threat to my own intellectual and emotional territory?  Or is it more general, a threat to the music, culture and traditions that make us who we are?  I will say that I agree with David Cope’s statement that creativity is simple although I doubt we’d have shared the same reasoning as to why.  Simple processes, set in motion, unleash tremendous complexity in interaction with everything they touch, everything there is, process simply being a form of motion.  The idea that consciousness and intelligence are separate issues, apart from creativity, is an assumption I’m not ready to make.  Where would the dividing lines be drawn?  Speaking of dividing lines, is your consciousness different than that which you are conscious of?  Is it different than anything you may think of as not having consciousness?  

At this point we should pause.  Consciousness, creativity and intelligence may have no borders but human beings take the form of human beings and machines take the form of machines.  Seeing process being mimicked by a machine does not mean that intelligence exists in a conscious or creative form within it even if the calculations involved exceed human capacity.  We may think we are speaking about something called A.I. yet it is our own minds, our own thinking, that is at issue.  As cosmic as some of this may sound, common sense works well in this domain.  

Reducing music to information, and by extension assuming this information takes on a life of its own, seems an excellent example of how the technological enterprise of our time is predicated on a false assumption.  Assuming that our humanity and our lives (mine, yours, everyone’s) is any less profound by virtue of the machinery we create is an unfortunate misunderstanding, to put it mildly.  The threat we feel is actually the threat of our ignorance and delusion, about ourselves and each other.  When we offload our humanity to a machine it’s like pouring gasoline on those fires.  Thing is, there is nothing outside of us that can help us, but fortunately our ignorance and delusion are fundamentally human and can be embraced, with compassion.

Getting back to that first article…

Regret and a sense of failure are also human qualities.  They too can be fully embraced with compassion.  I have no doubt in the sincerity of what Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau confided to his student, it is to be honored unquestionably.  We may not be able to say for sure whether it was an expression of failure but I’m not sure that’s the real issue, his sincerity unlocks something much larger.  In “giving it our all” we include everything, the parts we esteem and the parts we’d prefer to reject.  I can think of no artist, no matter how highly their work may be regarded, as being immune from some degree of self doubt, knowing that as much as they loved their work, what they strived for their whole life was always just out of reach.  Certainly there were moments of transcendence, but they too slip from our grasp.  There is no way of knowing, no way of measuring a life’s work in the grand scheme of things.  

This is by no means a statement of futility, quite the contrary.  A large part of making music is not knowing.  This is what makes it real, what makes it true and what makes it creative.  

Pearl at 100

My wife and I met in 1987 here in New York City, at Carnegie Hall to be exact.  She worked in the subscription ticket office and I worked part time as a temp.  My excuse in starting a conversation with her centered around a friend who wanted tickets to see a famous pianist.  My friend wanted to be sure he could get a seat that allowed him to see the pianist’s hands.  Afterwards on our first date, and to our mutual surprise, we discovered that we both grew up in Baltimore.  Much to my own surprise I also discovered that her mother took her to hear Rahsaan Roland Kirk at the Left Bank Jazz Society when she was a young teenager.  I never got to hear Rahsaan Roland Kirk live and was envious but also impressed which pretty much sealed the deal as far as I was concerned.  As things became more serious it came time to meet her mother.  I was doing a gig in Washington DC at Blues Alley and her mother attended, by herself and stayed the whole time.  We spoke, it seemed fine, but I couldn’t get a clear “read” on how she felt about her daughter dating a saxophone player.  A few days after returning home my wife received a letter from her mother and she let me read it.  To my surprise it was essentially a review of the gig, very well thought out and very well written.  OK, so I didn’t see that coming.  

Over the years, Pearl (that’s her name) attended pretty much every concert that I did in Baltimore not to mention those of a number of my colleagues.  In her retirement (from Johns Hopkins as a statistician) Pearl became an active supporter of various cultural and arts organizations.  She maintained an active lifestyle her whole life, read profusely, maintained friendships, never watched television and played in an amateur recorder ensemble.  This month she turned one hundred.  Now residing in an assisted living center she is enjoying her life with a whole new group of folks, albeit with a different rhythm and dynamic than in the past.  We went to visit her to celebrate this milestone and while parts of her memory are fading she seemed happy and conversant.  While I couldn’t say for sure if she remembered me it was somehow OK.  She is living more in the moment than anyone I’ve ever met, inspiring yet somewhat unsettling at first.  My own anxiety was more the issue, she seems not to be suffering at all.  She could express her pleasure or displeasure honestly and freely, there was no residual.  It probably helps that the staff were relaxed and attentive.  They seem genuinely fond of the folks they are taking care of.  

As it happened, I had my saxophone with me.  Michelle (my wife) suggested I might be prepared to play something if circumstances allowed.  I know Pearl enjoyed classical music and so I prepared a few short things to have on hand just in case.  In spite of the fact that this was not going to be a formal performance I practiced seriously given that I still have some uncertainty over my ability to perform classical repertoire in a public setting.  This would serve as a trial run but if it didn’t happen that’d be fine too.  After we arrived Michelle spoke to the fellow running things (his name was Claude) and asked if it would be all right if I played.  He said he’d have to think about it.  I took that as a no-go and dropped some of the angst I was carrying while still trying to process the whole experience emotionally.  Some folks spoke, some didn’t.  I understood what some were talking about, others not so much.  One woman, very nice, apologized for not recognizing me.  We’d never met before but she was so sincere that we wound up having a short conversation.  I sat back down, slightly bewildered, and suddenly here comes Claude, asking me point blank, “do you know ‘Tea for Two’?”  He’s looking right at me and I’m drawing a blank, just the first phrase is running through my head like a dog chasing it’s own tail.  “Maybe, why?” I asked.  “Because I’m going to tap dance and that’s what you’re going to play”, leaving no wiggle room in his declaration.  

Fortunately we had about an hour before “showtime” in the lunch room during which I tried to figure out the tune.  Turned out there was a piano on hand with which to aid in refreshing my memory.  Michelle’s sister offered to help, dialing up a version of the song on her phone and playing it for Pearl, letting her know what was in store.  Turns out it was a version by Ella Fitzgerald with the Count Basie band.  Super swinging.  Pearl listened intently with her eyes closed, bobbing her head on every beat, occasionally letting out a “yea” or “all right” and giving Basie a “not too bad!” after his piano flourish.  I’d never seen her in this uninhibited mode before, quite a contrast to the Scandinavian reserve that I was more accustomed to.  Then, as if nothing had happened, she returned to her meal before asking to be taken outside for some fresh air where she dozed for a bit.  I continued practicing in my head since I wasn’t sure what games my mind might play under the circumstances.

Back in the lunch room Claude was putting on his taps.  No one seemed to sense anything was about to take place until Claude got up and made an announcement, the recognition of which was subtle at best.  You just didn’t know for sure what folks were taking in or not, but something was happening.  I asked Claude for a tempo, he counted it off and we went.  He claimed to have been self taught but he was quite good.  The staff perked up even as they continued their tasks.  We went for a couple of choruses and I was able to elaborate on the tune a bit before giving Claude an outro which he elegantly punctuated.  And we’re done.  Big silence.  This too was somehow OK, more than OK, really…  

Upon leaving I gave Pearl a peck on the cheek and she smiled.  ”See you tomorrow” she said brightly…

Incantation / Elaboration (part two)

I’d never seen people walk out in the middle of an early music concert before…

It was not by any means having to do with the quality of the performance, which was exemplary.  It was instead a testament to the power of music written centuries ago.  

This post might be considered a followup to the previous post from a couple of weeks ago in which I wrote about a listening experience of music from before the time of Bach, and how it left me intrigued if not confused.  At the same time, I felt an affinity towards that music as an improvisor that took time to identify and articulate.  This past week I heard one of the most striking examples of this phenomenon yet, upping the ante in this process of experiencing musical connections across time.  Connections that are very much alive in this crazy period we are living through now.  Somehow it gives me hope.

The venue was the same, the Gotham Early Music Scene’s weekly midtown concerts series here in NYC.  I had written about the blend of voices in the Theotokos ensemble given that I was perfectly situated near the front of the audience.  In this case the ALBA Consort was presented and for whatever reason I decided to listen from a different sonic vantage point, from the side and rather far from the musicians.  Given the amount of reverberation in the church some of the detail was obscured but with a little extra concentration I was still able to hear quite clearly.  The first composition, by Guillaume de Machaut, was slow and spare beginning with psaltery and oud (a middle eastern string instrument) joined by a vocal duo (female and male) creating a spacious almost other-worldly sound out of minimal elements. 

As the second piece began I found myself straining a bit to lean in and discern exactly what was going on.  The vocalists were singing in an unusually low register and the reverberation was making it challenging to zero in on exactly what pitches they were aiming for.  The oud seemed to be playing a completely independent part lending a disjunct quality to the proceedings even as the percussionist maintained a steady pulse.  On the one hand I loved it and at the same time I couldn’t help wonder if they might have gotten lost and were hanging on for dear life.  At this point the couple sitting behind me starting murmuring, I wasn’t sure what about but I could make out the words “is this kind of weird?”  Well, I guess it was which made me all the more interested.  About a dozen folks felt differently though and after the piece ended they and the couple behind me filed out.  This I something I’d only ever experienced at a contemporary music concert.  Or perhaps that time at a Cecil Taylor concert years ago when a full third of the audience left not even midway through a free outdoor performance of his band (featuring the great saxophonist Jimmy Lyons) in Chicago.  Anyway, the rest of the concert was varied and involved music from Spain and Armenia as well as from Balkan, Greek and Moroccan Sephardic traditions leaving me feeling much better than when I'd walked in.  

Upon returning home I began researching that second piece of music and quickly found that its idiosyncratic sound and structure have been of note for quite some time.  The title is “Fumeux fume” written by someone under the name Solage from the fourteenth century and is included in the Chantilly Codex, an important manuscript of medieval music.  It is a three-voice rondeaux in the tradition of the French “art subtilior” (more subtle art), a kind of avant garde of it’s time characterized by a high degree of complexity often utilizing what look like the kinds of graphic scores one might encounter in the twentieth century avant garde.   Perhaps because it appealed to a smaller group of aficionados or that it was more difficult to perform or that it was more challenging for audiences the style fell out of favor.  And yet seven hundred years later some folks are still moved towards the exits.  That’s really awesome when you think about it.  

The concert was recorded and while I tend to resist disseminating on-line listening I want to at least provide something by which you may also become intrigued enough to venture out into the unexpected, in person.  Here is the link to the ALBA Consort’s performance, cued up to “Fumeux fume”.  Once you’ve heard it I invite you to compare it with a recording in which all three parts are sung (as opposed to assigning one of them to the oud) which I suspect may have been truer to the original intent by the TENET Vocal Artists.  Additionally here is yet another vocal version, this one is somewhat clearer (less smokey?) by the ensemble Alla Francesca.  Upon multiple listenings I’ve acclimated to this piece and am deeply moved by it.  In fact, I went so far as to find a version of the composition in modern notation and recorded myself overdubbing all three parts just so I could know the music from the inside.  

Also of interest are the words to this composition.  I have no idea the meaning, perhaps it is metaphorical.  I've also encountered an alternate translation that uses smoke to describe brooding and vexatious states of mind.  

Fumeux fume par fumée, The smoker smokes through smoke, 

Fumeuse speculacion. A smoky speculation.

Qu’antre fummet sa pensée, While others smoke in thought,

Fumeux fume par fumée. The smoker smokes through smoke, 

Quar fumer molt li agree’ Because smoke pleases him greatly

Tant qu’il ait son entencion’. As he meditates.

Fumeux fume par fumée, The smoker smokes through smoke, 

Fumeuse speculacion. A smoky speculation.

My otherwise superficial rendering of the performance and music should in no way be seen as critical.  Confusion is not a bad thing and it often motivates an investigation paying off with more grist for the mill for the process of improvisation.  As always I extend my great thanks to the folks behind this ongoing series.  Attending these concerts each week has become my therapy.

Also on my mind…

...has been the recent passing of pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn.  A wonderful artist beloved by the community, I was fortunate to have worked with her a number of times and recorded with her and bassist Michael Formanek on a recording titled “Mirage”.

I can’t help but appreciate the vocal quality of her sound and I might assert that it does not require much in the way of imagination to hear a connection to the “distant” sounds of Solage.  Perhaps a good example might be Susan’s performance of “O. Sacrum Convivum”, a choral piece by composer Olivier Messiaen whose music, while perennially modern, evokes the spaciousness and mystery of early music.   

PS...I'm adding this a couple of days after having posted the above given that in my continuing exploration of music involving chant and polyphony the following has come across the radar...

Easter Liturgy in 1673 - Old Slavonic Polyphony | Chronos Ensemble

It strikes me as yet another approach in this rich tradition and quite a bracing one at that.  Here is an except from the description provided by the artists:

The Old-Russian liturgical polyphony, as well as the folk music, did not follow the Western system of consonance and dissonance that gave birth to European harmony and tonality. The Russian polyphony was based on the diatonic modal system of the Znamenny chant. This system gave no preference to «consonances» over «dissonances», considering both equally pure and natural. The thirds are not characteristic of this chant, the fourths and seconds occurring much more naturally in the tetrachord-based system.This may partially explain why this typically early-Russian type of polyphony is so valued in the aesthetic system of contemporary classical music. 

Incantation / Elaboration

The music had already started before I realized it, taking me by surprise.  No tuning up and settling in, the ensemble members (four vocalists and four instrumentalists) were focused and ready as soon as they took their places.  Led by the cellist (using his body to direct the music) the sound immediately grabbed me and yet I wasn’t sure why.  The vocal blend, four independent voices unified in perfect intonation, constantly unfolding in harmonic motion was so beautiful that I found it difficult to think.  I could only take it in asking myself how this music held together while seemingly in a state of constant dissolution.

  

The ensemble is called “Theotokos” and they are performing a program of music from before the time of Bach.

In time I began to notice a few things, not so much about the music but more the feelings it elicited.   For one I was beginning to feel like I was in church.  Of course, this was taking place in a church quite literally, just not an actual church service.  While my church going experience is rather limited I recently witnessed an Eastern Orthodox ordination service that lasted more than three hours and this was resonating in a similar way, a non-stop unfolding ritual of chant and liturgy.  Interestingly, during that service I was sitting next to a zen monk and while neither of us knew what was going on it wasn’t wholly unfamiliar since chant and liturgy play an important role in Buddhism as well.  The music being presented on this concert utilized chant much the same way it would have been used in such services and it had much the same effect.

In religious practice chant may serve a number of purposes; a form of announcement, an incantation, a mantra or simply a unifying element for those in attendance given its focusing effect on the mind and body. Chant is typically an intonement on a steady pitch although not always.  It may be flowing and non-metered or it may be rhythmic and repetitive.  But it’s usually not considered music in the way a song would be.  The words may or may not have any literal meaning but in either case it is the embodied act of chanting itself that allows the sounds to take direct effect, bypassing rational mediation.  No matter how you may feel about religious practice it’s hard to imagine being immune to these qualities.  

As the concert proceeded a pattern emerged in which one of the vocalists would go into an unaccompanied chant which was responded to and elaborated upon by the rest of the ensemble in a form of musical polyphony.  Polyphony refers to multiple voices each moving independently of each other, this particular brand of polyphony being quite intricate with little obvious imitation or repetition between the players or within the overall form.  There were cadences (resolution points) but they tended to cascade from one to another in unexpected ways.  This all went on for an hour without stop.  Given no obvious signposts of “where we were” the music began to feel cyclical rather than linear.  At a certain point I found myself thinking about gamelan music due to the timeless quality of continuous flow.  What I couldn’t figure out was how this was all ordered, achieving such cohesiveness within such detail.

It wasn’t until later that it dawned on me that it had to have been the words.  Researching this a bit led to the term “text painting”, a through-composed compositional technique (meaning without return to previous material) in which the flow of the words determines the flow of the music.  This is what allowed the polyphony to be so rich in complexity while retaining a sense of direction.  The program was a presentation of pieces written by a half dozen different composers played from one to the other, all of which were drawn from a musical form known as a passion setting, a form of composition with roots going back to Gregorian chant.  The texts utilized stem from a tradition of recitation of the story of the passion in church services going back to the fourth century.  These particular pieces ranged from the 1400’s into the late 1600’s, a period just prior to the advent of the tonal system that defined the time of Bach onward.  It is a music rich with all sorts of unorthodox musical procedures that eventually became smoothed out with the emergent codification of western harmony combined with an increased attention to compositional structure.

In spite of the fact that I did take history of western music classes in college, this is essentially new to me.  Back then, mostly what was on my mind was John Coltrane, getting a good sound on the saxophone and figuring out how to play chord changes.  I saw very little relevance with respect to most of what we were studying in class.  I feel very differently about that now.  These qualities, born out of a tradition based on the voice and the vocal production of sound (and it’s role in the development of harmony) may seem very far away from the concerns of an improvising saxophonist from a tradition based largely upon rhythm, the heart of which is the drums.  But I wouldn’t make too much of this distinction, at least I don’t want to be held back by it even though I’m still not sure what the effects of all this listening and my practicing of Bach may come to.  After having played the Buescher tenor and Rascher “classical” mouthpiece exclusively for the past several months I went back this past week and picked up my Conn tenor using my “jazz” mouthpiece.  I’m reminded of what my voice on the saxophone is and yet the through-composed unfolding qualities of that concert resonate with the way I improvise solo saxophone.  Without a formal basis for my own process I’ve sometimes wondered whether it was all a reflection of some kind of psychodrama.  I never actually trusted that assessment but I am feeling confident that there is in fact something at the heart of it all, whether I know exactly what it is or not.

I might have guided you to the recording of this concert but unfortunately it suffers from the recording process itself.  Not that it was recorded poorly or unprofessionally, it wasn’t.  The presenters take great care in what they are doing in documenting the concerts they present.  It’s simply the fact that what happens in the room is often elusive to even the best recording processes.  The rich blend and fullness was missing completely and the result was, to be honest, unpleasant compared to what was experienced live.  Instead, I’ll guide you to an excellent example from this time period in the music of composer Carlo Gesualdo, who lived from 1566 to 1613.  Gesualdo’s musical language is highly chromatic in ways that would not reappear again for centuries and exemplifies this kind of constant unfolding.  Have a listen here to his sacred music for five voices.

Interestingly, the music on this recording, the music on this concert and so much of the music we may study from any culture throughout world history can be recognized as spiritual music.  And it is completely up to you what to make of that.