Yakity-Yak

Rainer Bürck: Essays about Music

Music beyond imagination - Ideas about composing and performing.

Rainer Buerck in email conversation with earsay composer/pianist Andrew Czink about Andrew's piano music, composition, performing rock and avant-garde music, and a vision of the music of the future.

Risky Music

Rainer Bürck responds to discussions raised on the cecdiscuss mailing list about popular versus 'academic' music, a discussion of the results of this year's results of the Prix Ars Electronica.

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[R. Bürck also goes by R. Buerck and R. Burck depending on the dictates of technology.]

 

I think when one has put such an awful lot of work into such a project as you did [Andrew Czink's piano project represented by the earsay release Escape Velocity (98002)], one should try to do as many concerts as possible. I speak from my own experience: several times I had to practise quite hard for a long time just to perform a piece (e.g. a premiere) as a one-off, and this is not the kind of thing I want to continue. Life is very short, so I don't see a point in working for months for just one moment. Ok, it is a different thing when one does his own project as you did. But still then... Apart from this, I think that a concert program needs experience which one can only achieve on stage and that it gets better and better if one can perform it several times. I am not quite satisfied when I perform a piece for the first time since I always know that I can do it a lot better after several concerts.

As to scoring your piece, I'd really encourage you to do so. Make this music available. I'd certainly be interested!

It is interesting to read what you wrote about rhythm, especially about speech rhythm. I didn't want to put rhythms down which are based on a beat, and you didn't understand it that way. I was just wondering how you worked with respect to this parameter. You mentioned Ligeti as one of the composers who had an impact on you, and in fact I was thinking of the piano etudes by Ligeti (do you know them?) when I listened to your pieces. Of course your music is different, but it is also slightly related to them.

You also played in a rock band? Me too. We were pretty much into Emerson, Lake & Palmer. That was great fun, and I still get a bit sentimental when I think of those days. Then the music of Stockhausen, Boulez, Xenakis etc became increasingly influential on me. Though my music is completely different in a way now, I think it hasn't changed in a certain respect. I still remember when I listened to ELP's "Brain, Salad, Surgery" for the first time, especially to the piece "Toccata", which was an adaption of the 4th movement of Alberto Ginastera's Piano Concerto. This music created an incredible atmosphere inside me which is hard to describe. I had never heard such a kind of music (since the music we listened to at school was the usual traditional stuff), and it opened a completely new horizon to me. And when I listened to the original version of this piece later, I found that the version by ELP was a LOT better. Even Ginastera admitted that THIS was actually how he had always wanted his music to sound like! There was such a lot of energy in this music, such a lot of pioneering spirit... I was convinced that this was THE music of the future.

And this experience created a certain kind of musical "vision" in my mind, a certain purpose. I don't know how to put it into words, but maybe you understand what I mean. Maybe "purpose" isn't quite the right term, since a "purpose" usually is something which is well-defined. It is more kind of a vague vision which propels an artist to move on and on and to create as much as he can. If there was a clear "purpose" to reach it would certainly be boring and he wouldn't have this energy to carry on. Maybe this is a "romantic" point of view, but I never believed in these analytic systems which musicologists tend to put up.

Even the music by the serialist composers (Stockhausen etc) was actually a product of this vague mystic vision rather than the result of the mathematical serial systems they put up to create their music. This is just what musicologists (at least the German academic specimen) don't understand. They are satisfied when they find out that the numbers work, when their analytic systems are perfect. But they never capture that the composer's intention is completely different. I once read a very convincing essay by Stockhausen. It was on the question why he used serial techniques. His argument was that one of the main aims of contemporary music was to seek new musical worlds which are completely beyond our experience. A composer shouldn't compose according to his imagination, since then he wouldn't create something really new. Imagination is based on our experience. If we really want to create something (radically) new, we MUST avoid this imagination and use abstract methods which lead to completely new and unknown musical worlds. This was the reason for him to use serial techniques. At this time serialism was just a method for him to achieve this purpose, not to put up perfect systems. (Of course it is another story that in the course of time the serial systems grew more and more metaphysical, no longer being mere tools to achieve aristic results.)

I had an experience similar to the one caused by "Toccata" when I listened to Stockhausen's "Klavierstuck X" for the first time, performed by Frederic Rzewski. (Do you know it? It is a MUST!!!) This is one of the most virtuoso and thrilling performances of a piano piece ever! It is just incredible! And there it was again: this vision of a new kind of music which is absolutely new and thrilling, absolutely fascinating. (Another incredible piece is "Eonta" by Xenakis, including an awfully difficult piano part).

You are absolutely right: STYLE is not the thing that matters. I am convinced that a certain kind of musical "vision" could be expressed in completely different ways/styles and still remain almost the same in all of these realizations. I always wanted to create a similar atmosphere, a similar thrill by my own music which I had experienced in music like "Toccata", "Klavierstuck X" (and lots of other great music, of course). And I agree that our aesthetics certainly are very similar. There is a lot I want to say about all this. Similar to you, I have a lot to say, which I will do in subsequent letters.

 

© Rainer Bürck 1998

 

 

What is this talk about "acedemic music" (as opposed to popular music)? Isn't it just a bunch of cliches?

We live in an age where individual experiences, emotions and reflections of individual people are getting more and more standardized by industrial products. Many (most?) people's ideas of "music" are shaped by the cliches of popular music, forming a kind of filter which filters all the music they listen to. Therefore, of course, if certain music doesn't consist of these cliches, there is hardly anything left if one puts it through this filter, and so these people deprive this music of being "music".

In my eyes it would be absolute nonsense to state that "serious" contemporary music is "difficult" to understand and, for this reason, could only attract an academic audience. The problem some people have with this music is rather due to the fact that it lacks cliches they want to recognize.

Natasha* speaks about "academic" music which gives "the opportunity for a listener to emotionally and maybe even intellectually explore such concepts". She hits a very important point. Exploring - just like every real kind of experience - is a PROCESS, and it takes time. For me good and fascinating music is music to which I can listen many and many times without really "capturing" it, and I find music boring which is obvious when listening to it for a second (or even for the first) time.

Of course each kind of music has a different idea and intention and also a different function. It wouldn't be the right place to play a string quartet by Beethoven or a piano piece by Finnissy in a disco. It is a different kind of music which is required in this situation, and this is all right. And I find it great to listen to rock music when I feel like it. But in this case I am aware of the fact that this is just a particular kind of music, an "instant gratification music", as Natasha put it, and that there are different kinds of musical experience beyond that.

So I don't deprive this popular music of its existence. But I do object to those who claim 'pop musics' to be THE music. I do object to those who blame electroacoustic music of only appealing to small audiences. What is a small audience, what is a large audience? For the Rolling Stones maybe 10000 people would be a small audience, but for chamber music 500 people are sizeable. Why think in terms of quantity rather than quality? Is the market the only God we worship? Should we all listen and applaud to the same kind of standardized music? Should we all be happy to eliminate the little bits of individuality we still have?

I don't know which term would be appropriate for music which is opposed to 'pop musics'.'Art music'? I don't really like the term 'academic music', since it gives a wrong impression. Is it called 'academic' because the composers work at academic institutions (and therefore don't have to compose commercially-oriented music), or is it called 'acedemic' because these composers live in a safe little world, writing music according to certain boring academic rules which can be cliches, too? Is Beethoven's or Bach's music 'academic'? Thinking of Stockhausen in the fifties, I wouldn't call his music 'academic'. He was just trying to find a completely new musical language and a completely new aesthetic, which was absolutely opposed to every kind of music which had existed before. And this was quite a risk. He was frowned upon, almost spat upon by many people, but he created this music because he felt he HAD to create it. Later on, serial techniques became acedemic and 'ossified' to cliches. Many pseudo-revolutionary imitators used these techniques to write boring music without taking any risks any more.

Therefore 'serious' music (the term 'serious composer' always reminds me of the 'constant frown' type) is not necessarily synonymous with 'academic' music. Many colleagues working at academic institutions create interesting and exciting music which is far from boring academic rules and far from superficially structured music as well. And this music is very open-minded and risky.

What we need is VARIETY rather than standards. And, thank God, there are still people who have the desire to make individual (long term) experiences which don't coincide with (instant gratification) cliches and standards. And if they are a minority (which is sad enough), why blame them for that?

[Editor's note: Natasha Barrett is a composer based in London, England. She was prize winner at the Bourges Competition in 1998, and her piece is published on the "Cultures electroniques" Vol 11 double CD.]

© Rainer Bürck 1999