Why should I care about Charlie Wilmoth's music?
One of the first comments to an excellent post by Kyle Gann was by someone named Charlie Wilmoth, whose name looked extremely familiar because, as it turns out, he reviews regularly at Dusted. (This is the reason I actually do now have an interest in his music.) He has an essay that promises to explain why one should care about his music, but I'll be damned if it's convinced me; if anything, I'm now a bit confused. The confusion stems from the interaction of this bold lead-off:
My pieces are not "about" things in the sense that many modern classical compositions are "about" things - unlike many composers of contemporary classical music, I begin writing by thinking about sound, and not by thinking about some extra-musical thing and then writing music that mirrors or describes something about that thing. But my music is strongly influenced by the outside world and, even though many of my favorite composers are European, I believe that only an American could make my music.
(Which sounds good! Though having listened to some of the mp3s of his music on his page, I'm a bit skeptical as to the last claim.) with claims like these, the first coming from his homepage and not the essay itself:
Charlie Wilmoth's music combines unusual sounds with jagged, uneven repetitions and jarring juxtapositions that are often inspired by the way humans deal with technology, information, and religion.
The first piece I wrote in which I think I really dealt with this unreasonable-ness in an effective way is a piece for prepared piano called Tether, which I finished in early 2005. The relationship between the music - the piece features a low thwacking sound that just won't go away - and the title is clear enough, but you could also think of the piece in relation to an obsession, or a degree of certainty or inflexibility of thought that borders on pathology. In the first section of the piece, in particular, I was mostly concerned not about whether the repeating sound would return, but when it would return. It is ugly and inevitable.
So in my string quartet, I was interested in getting the listener to believe in something "stupid." Many portions of the piece consist almost entirely of chromatic scales going up and down, which seems to be as stupid as it gets.
So my idea with this large composition I'm working on is to flood the listener's mental space with bullshit. I do not want to provide a clear path through the piece, or give the listener much of an idea what I think is important. (This is a tricky proposition, since I also have to balance that goal against my own taste. I don't want the reader to get the idea that I don't care what the materials are, or in what order they appear.)
But I thought you said… It gets worse if you look at the context of that last quotation.
And none of that actually tells me why I should care. I actually try to avoid bullshit, personally. (Even—if that parenthetical concession is anything to go by—ineffective bullshit.) Writing about the, you know, music might help with that.
Comments
on 2008-07-26 21:30:52.0, Charlie commented:
Hm. Well, I do understand your confusion about the first quote. In modern classical music, composers often write pieces about things, in that they begin with a non-musical idea, then transfer that idea somehow (often involving numbers) into some sort of musical scheme, then write their piece based on that.
That way of doing things seems arbitrary to me. People have to do what they have to do to write their music, and that's cool, but I (and most composers I know) generally dislike sitting through presentations where these sorts of idea-transfers are explained. So I was trying to make clear from the beginning that that is not what I do. I don't sit down before writing and come up with numerical schemes; I just write music, let myself worry about the sound and let extra-musical ideas bounce around in my head as they please.
I gave this presentation to two roomfuls of composers and got nods of recognition right away when I said that, but it may be less clear to a more general audience. I may go back and change the beginning.
Regarding your attempts to avoid BS: in real life, great, but would you want artists to, for example, avoid ugliness in their art, or avoid melancholia? I like a lot of art that reflects ugly and sad things about the world--why should art that reflects false or misleading things be any different?
Anyway, thanks for engaging with the essay, despite its imperfections. It's much harder to write clearly about my own music than it is to write about someone else's. Personally, I'm not yet sure what I think about the essay, but I worked hard on it and a lot of people have had nice things to say about it, so for now I'm leaving it up there.
and, further, on 2008-07-26 21:50:38.0, Charlie commented:
Adding: I don't know who you are. Maybe you listen to a lot of composition talks and still didn't know what I was talking about, in which case I really need to make it clearer.
Sorry, this is the sort of thing I'm close enough to that I can't see there's a problem unless someone tells me so.
and, further, on 2008-07-26 21:59:21.0, ben wolfson commented:
This is the point about BS: if you want me to care about your music, announcing some intentions about having fun with the pervasiveness of bullshit in modern life; otherwise, couldn't I just read DeLillo?
If, somehow, Sonny Sharrock were to come back to life and Last Exit to go on tour, and I were to learn that the ugliness of their music was intended to mirror the ugliness of, I don't know, the New York of the mid-80s when they were formed, or something, that might change the way I listened to them, but would be unlikely to awaken an interest in seeing them (I mean, in fact, I would be interested in seeing them, but if I weren't). I assume that Bill Dixon's Darfur album has something to do with Darfur, but nothing about that got me interested in listening to it.
and, further, on 2008-07-27 14:07:51.0, Charlie commented:
That's cool. I guess you and I are different that way. I'm concerned about the popular perception that modern classical music is something completely separate from the real world, that it's just a bunch of cloistered academics aimlessly playing with numbers. I feel like if composers did a better job explaining why what they do is not that way, more people might like the music.
I personally have had many experiences in which knowing the extra-musical context behind the works of particular musicians has piqued my interest about their music or helped me better understand why I liked it, but if that's not the case with you, that's fine with me.
and, further, on 2008-09-20 12:39:30.0, wilmoth-lover commented:
I love Charlie!