2024 #30 Writings on Contemporary Notation: An Annotated Bibliography

 

Writings on contemporary music notation: An annotated bibliography by Gerald Warfield
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I know that in-print bibliographies seem dated, and they are, but there's a certain pleasure in combing through them that just isn't equalled by using a contemporary database. Thanks to the Internet Archive, I was able to review Warfield's annotated bibliography which, at the very least, provides a fairly accurate snapshot of the state of research on notation in the 1970s. This was a heady time, with Kurt Stone and others initiating the Index of New Musical Notation project in 1971, and a significant conference on notation in Ghent in 1974. The typescript is frustrating in all the expected ways--the occasional typo, the taxing-to-read font, etc, but it is a valiant effort to at least include some European sources on notation (in French, German, Polish, Swedish, Dutch, Belgian) with annotations that were rather helpful in paring down what might be useful for my own research. Frustrating of course, were the items that were unavailable to Warfield (and his team) for review--some of which remain elusive (if not obsolete) today. The "mimeograph" items aren't connected to archives, so the bibliography is NOT helpful in terms of hunting down these things (often conference proceedings).

I was trained by an "old-school" (ethno)musicologist to value bibliographies. In grad school we spent HOURS looking at über-bibliographies and hunting down sources in the library, making notecards for each source (this was before Zotero was a thing, but you might be surprised to know the Internet was well into use by this time, haha). But there's something valuable about this enterprise, and combing through Warfield's bibliography reminded me of it. There's a human-to-human transfer that says "this is important" or "this might be of interest." There's a different impetus to sit and read through a bibliography that to type in a series of different search strings in hopes that you find what you are looking for. When you read this type of bibliography, you find things you didn't know you were looking for. And that, as far as I'm concerned, is the joy of research for research's sake.

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2024 #25: Looking for Spinoza (Damasio)

 

Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain by António Damásio
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love genre-less books...or at least ones that don't fit neatly into one category. This book is chockfull of accessible neuroscience with helpful diagrams, but it is also a memoir of searching, of curiosity, of embracing the past to understand the present. Damasio makes a strong case that Spinoza was ahead of the game in terms of understanding feeling and emotion in terms of a body-mind connection, but this is no dry scientific work of Spinozan-apologetics. Damasio embraces humanistic inquiry, contextualizing Spinoza's work in a well-researched (and sometimes suprisingly enjoyably sentimental) study of his life. Anathematized from the Sephardic community in Amsterdam, Spinoza's identity during his life was well-known, but his ideas were sub rosa. The inverse was to be his legacy (257). With this study, Damasio contends that Spinoza was a "forerunner of modern biological thinking" (259) in a very important and specific way. He does not resort to hero-worship--Damasio is clear regarding where he think Spinoza misses the mark. But in this book, the result of his "quiet simmering of hints and reflections" (263-4)--one of the best descriptions of the historian's craft I've encountered--Damasio concludes the big takeaway from Spinoza is that "Science can be combined with the best of a humanist tradition to permit a new approach to human affairs and lead to human flourishing." (283). But he is more expansive yet, making the case that our brain, with all its mappings and homeostatic processes and endeavor for self-preservation, is crucial in carrying out Spinoza's "virtuous life in civitas" (274), and that ultimately, even in the face of all we see in the news, "there simply is no alternative to believing we can make a difference." (288)

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2023 #15: Contemporary Music Notation (Valle)

 

Contemporary Music Notation: Semiotic and Aesthetic Aspects by Andrea Valle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I want to preface this with the recognition that I read the book in English translation, so I'm not sure my criticisms of the writing are altogether fair. This is an important book, full of enriching insights, but the writing obfuscates with an over-abundance of dependent clauses, inflated vocabulary, and esoteric references. In other words, a quintessential academic tome. I recognize that semiotics prides itself in jargon-creation, so I do see some of this as symptomatic of the field. That said, semioticians who are fond of quoting and referencing Umberto Eco would do well to read some of his books on writing, or simply to note his ability to write with humor, clarity, and relative concision.

Valle has an impressive knowledge of both semiotics and musical scores, and the inclusion of figures both well known and lesser known makes this a very valuable book. Valle does not look at graphic scores in isolation either (although that is the primary focus), instead tracing lines of connection and departure with integral serialism and the like. Readers who are not at least roughly acquainted with the works of Charles Sanders Peirce and Umberto Eco may find themselves frustrated, especially as Valle ultimately relies heavily on Peircean conceptions of "sign." Inasmuch as the author claims their aim was to "outline a picture as complex as possible" (187), the book truly succeeds. The complexity provides many springboards for further interrogation and anyone pursuing scholarly work in this area would be well-advised to familiarize themselves with Valle's work here. The complexity, on the other hand, sometimes makes the overall narrative rather unwieldy, diving too deeply into self-referentialism and the "'fuga an infitum' of semiosis as a mental process" (186). There are rather fascinating topics that Valle touches upon briefly, such as looking at a new concept of "oral tradition" in works of Stockhausen and Bussotti, and it becomes clear that the author has an expansive mind and ability to make fascinating connections. Many of the more frustrating aspects could have been mitigated with some rigorous editing: in Chapter 2, for example, the revelation of three basic hieroglyphic aspects of notation comes approximately twenty pages after the subject is introduced.

The book is beautifully researched, and along with crucial semiotic sources, also dialogues intentionally with the work of Erhard Karkoschka, REGINALD SMITH-BRINDLE and other foundational scholarship. The absence of an index is extremely frustrating, but certainly not a criticism unique to this particular book. The frustration, however, attests to how much Valle packs into approximately 180 pages, as my own notes are filled with cross-references and maps to navigate Valle's useful and thoughtful interrogations

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2023 #10: Selections from Music: Function and Value (eds. Malecka ad Pawlowska)

 

Music: Function and Value : Proceedings of the 11th International Congress on Musical Signification, Volume 1 by Teresa Malecka
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Read:

VOL. I
Eero Tarasti, "The Concept of Genre: In General and in Music"
Rafaelle Longo, "The Semiotic Player. Notating Time in Graphic Scores."
Grisell Macdonel, "The Musical Work and the Existence of the Performer: Existential Semiotic Analysis of the Sonic Aspect."
VOL. II
Ivana Miladinović Prica, "Rethinking the Concept of Time in the Postwar American Experimental Music--Feldman's Art of Immediacy
Marta Szocka, "Intertextual Links of Graphic Notation in the Works of George Crumb"

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2019 #2: Jennifer Walshe: Spiel mit Identitäten

Jennifer Walshe: Spiel mit Identitäten by Franziska Kloos
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you read the interview with Walshe at the end of the book, you understand that Kloos' work is basically a philosophical expansion of that interview. She engages with primary sources, but the "name-dropping" of philosophers without citation was aggravating on occasion. The opening chapter is valuable in terms of framing the discussion--Kloos provides Erik Erikson, Stuart Hall, and Judith Butler as lenses through which we might understand identity. Chapter 2 wanders a bit more, investigating Walshe's place in the avant-garde and new music. She summarizes the biographies of the alter egos of Walshe's Grúpat and briefly muses upon the reconciling of these individual identities with group identity. There is some redundancy across chapters, but this is unsurprising as one of Kloos' main points is that Walshe's music doesn't fit traditional categories or modes of analysis.

Kloos gives Chapter 4 over to analysis--and this is where the book is weakest for me. Kloos has insightful observations, but her methodologies vary so greatly that some readings of pieces come up short. We don't know what to expect since there is no systematic approach to analysis. It may very well be that this is due to the content of the works themselves (as well as varied access to materials), but then I would have preferred that the analysis be integrated into the prose of the other chapters. Kloos' "listening journal" approach to Walshe's "As mo cheann" addresses the difference between listening with and without a score, but for readers who are looking to engage with the piece academically, this might prove frustrating. Still, in that Kloos includes gesture, breath sounds, and performativity in her discussions, she provides a good example of what solid analyses of contemporary music might look like.

I've always bemoaned the lack of discourse with the work of living composers--but I get it. It is much easier to use a critical eye (and ear) toward music when the composer is dead. Kloos posits, however, that Walshe's music authorizes listeners to be co-creators, in effect--a glimpse at a democratic idea that "those who listen, have a say" (107). In her final statements, Kloos remarks that Jennifer Walshe invalidates the biographical relationship between work and author, but it is her work with the alter egos of Grúpat that allow her to do so without metaphorically "killing" the author ( a la Barthes).

This is an important book and I would love to see it come out in an English translation. It is a good primer on the New Discipline and provides bibliographic value as well (Kloos curates a helpful list of Internet sources).

(Cross-posted at Musically Miscellaneous Mayhem)