The centenary of Pierre Boulez’s birth on March 26 has already had a positive outcome: his music is actually being performed more often this year. More than most composers, he has suffered from being known for something other than his own music, remembered far more as a conductor and a leader of musical organizations like […]
Tag: Composers
Posted inOpinion
The Hands, Distracting
There’s an image embedded in my head though now lost in the depths of social media. It’s from a minor league baseball game, a promotional night where fans made their own signs and paraded them around the field. And there it was, an ur-meme: “Give Me Ambivalence or Give Me Something Else.” That’s resurfaced in […]
Posted inInterview
The Space of Beauty
The premiere of Klaus Lang’s “tönendes licht” did not take place quite as anticipated. Composed for organ and spatially distributed orchestra, the work was due to be performed at St. Stephen’s cathedral, Vienna, in November 2020. In the end, due to ongoing restrictions brought on by the pandemic, the four sections of the orchestra, spread […]
Posted inInterview
Indeterminate Acts
In 1959, the Smithsonian Folkways label released an album called “Indeterminacy,” a piece that features John Cage speaking, and David Tudor playing mashed-up material from the former’s “Fontana Mix” and “Concert for Piano and Orchestra.” Since comedian Stewart Lee and pianists Tania Caroline Chen and Steve Beresford first decided to perform “Indeterminacy” around 15 years […]
Posted inEssay
Seven Lives
I often think about the life Sibelius led in his remote villa of Ainola. He had stopped traveling to his favorite cities—Berlin, Vienna and London—and must have felt quite lonely and isolated. Perhaps part of the reason he burned his Eighth Symphony was that he didn’t feel connected to the new modernistic trends in Europe. […]
Posted inOpinion
An Expansion of the Project
Artificial intelligence may be able to mimic emotion, but it cannot feel it. It may be able to research the context in which it exists, but it doesn’t know it. AI is based on algorithms, patterns and imitation, so how can it possess creativity? Well, it can’t. But, by embracing what it can do—patterns, pastiches, […]
Posted inInterview
The Experience Element
Listening to Magnus Lindberg’s most famous piece, the 1985 work for ensemble, electronics, and orchestra “Kraft,” is a little like getting slapped in the face in super slow motion: You know it’s going to knock you over, but you can’t help appreciating the texture and graceful arc of the hand. Like his colleagues Esa-Pekka Salonen […]
Posted inReview
Modal Incantations
Who was Yvonne Loriod? To most, she is known as a virtuoso pianist, an inspirational teacher at the Paris Conservatoire, and the dedicatee of many pieces by Olivier Messiaen, whom she married in 1961. Few are aware that she was also a composer, which is hardly surprising as none of her works were published in […]
Posted inReport
Played Off
Unless you’re one of about 20 or so leading composers worldwide, chances are you’re not making a living solely from your art. The barriers for entry into this group are incredibly high, and getting higher: dwindling commission fees, organizations with smaller commissioning pots buddying up to fund a shrinking pool of composers, a sharp, widely […]
Posted inPlaylist
A Music and Chess Playlist
When he wasn’t busy scoring for the likes of Sergio Leone, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Marco Bellocchio, Bernardo Bertolucci, Elio Petri, Brian De Palma and Terrence Malick, Ennio Morricone could be found hunched over a chessboard. He was a good enough player to hold former world champion Boris Spassky—who famously lost to Bobby Fischer in 1972—to […]