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VOLUME 25, NUMBER 5 MAY, 1995 The Composer, The Musicolo Conference Review gist, and the Culture Wars . FRESH AIR IN REGION VIII Glenn Watkins CI members from Texas, Illinois, Indiana, [Glenn Watkins, Professor of Musicology at the University of SWashington , Hawaii and California came to Michigan, was the invited keynote speaker at the 28th Na the University of the Pacific in Stockton, tional Conference, which was held at the University of Iowa . California to explore connections between world April 5-8, 1995. The editors received permission to reprint music and contemporary composition at the recent his speech in its entirety] 1995 Region VIII Annual ConferenceMusic, World and New. The conference was coordinated by UOP ·T he keynote speech is an improbable species, composer Curt Veeneman, who directs the innova · typically sandwiched somewhere between the tive new music concert series at UOP,Pacific Mar main course and dessert-or as today bet\Yeen ket: Fresh Music from Around the World Many dessert and the first afternoon session. And.for a group ev(:nts at the two day conference were designed to of composers and theorists to have to listen to one of . involve participants in intriguing aspects of indig these sermons delivered by a musicologist is asking for enous music through meaningful activities. · an unusual degree of forbearance. A music theory col league of mine once told me somewhat pointedly that Several lecture-demonstrations introduced the com he was not a musicologist because he could not imag posers to musical ideas and instruments from non ine spending his lifetime-contemplating the laundry lists western cultures. Jay Stebley and Clark Welsh, of the Duke of Ferrara. With that in mind, let me assure assisted by members ofTaraf (San Francisco), dem you of my considerably less arcane intentions by lay onstrated a large array of instruments from the ing out my fundamental thesis at the very beginning. Balkans, including the cimpoi (Romanian bagpipe) Namely, I would like to submit'that the composer's pe and cimbalom. John Kaizan Neptune (Japan) and rennial search for a contemporary identity is similar to Shirley KazuyoMuramoto (Oakland) demonstrated that of the musicologist. And I do not mean just when the shakuhachi and koto and discussed concepts of the musicologist concerns himself with 20th-century Japanese music. John Bergamo (Cal Arts) de music. I mean to suggest that those issues currently scribed his elegant means of understanding and widely discussed under the rubric of the Culture polyrhythm through the use of Indian drum syl Wars have a direct bearing upon the kind of music that lables. you compose and the topics that musicologists and theo rists write about. It is my hope that by establishing a A highlight of the conference was the gamelan dialogue about many of these issues that music of our workshop conducted by Robert Kyr (University of ti.me might take on an increasing sense of relevance in Oregon). Conference participants had the delightful an age when the Museum Exhibition and the Poetry . experience of being personally guided through the Reading have both tended to outdraw the Contempo construction of a composition for Balinese gamelan rary Music Concert which continues to be considered and performing the composition themselves! commercial poison. A panel discussion regarding the interplay of new All ages have an urge to declare a fresh vantage point, and indigenous music featured I Made Arnawa, to assert a claim to "newness" that can help separate faculty of STSI Denpasar (the National Arts Acad them fr~m the immediate past. The current epidemi ~ to emy in Bali) and Guest Artistic Director of Gamel an define a Postmodern moment is only the most recent Sekar Jaya, John Bergamo, professor, California example. Philipe de Vi try announced an Ars Nova in . Institute of the Arts and member of Bracha, Robert the 14th century; Caccini aNuove Musiche in the early . Kyr, Professor, University of Oregon and Director 17th. But the 20th century has outbid them all: Neo- of Pacific Rim Gamelan, Greg Steinke, SCI Chair Classicism and Neue Sachlichkeit have been followed and Director of the Ball Stat~ University School of by the New Simplicity, the New Romanticism-arid Music, and Wayne Vitale, Director of Gamelan now a New Complexity that paradoxically flourishes Sekar Jaya (and translator for I Made Arnawa), with in tandem with a New Age music. The meaning of such Curt Veeneman as moderator. Two interesting terms, however, is rarely made clear. What does "New papers, appropriate to the theme of the conference, Age" really mean, for example? Elisabeth Leguin has were presented as well : "Native American and answered the question thus: Eastern European Influences on a Composition Pro cess" by Greg Steinke and "One Composer's Debt "[New Age is] Anything, it seems, from recordings of interstellar static, to humpback whales discreetly continued on pg. 11 accompanied by synthesizers, to "sci also helps to define it at a ·ery hllilda:Jrn Members' Activities Column entifically formulated, p~ychoacoustic" level. What we rec cle is t as Please send information on your activities simulations of sound environments what we confect ane ~ ; indeed. er is (for performances, include title of work, (oceans, heartbeats), to sub!iminal mes frequently the same as the former in · guise. date(s), performers, location and ifpremiere) sages musically embedded, to "sooth * * * to the following address: ing meditations" for piano or Celtic n the summer of 199 · - Brody harp, to lush, tumescent orchestral fan I wrote a provocative arti le entitled SCI Newsletter tasies, to lightweight jazz and world Pluralism, Difference, and the Crisis of University of Iowa music, to unadulterated field recordings Composers in the Academy-an article re School.of Music of Zuni tribal chants, to Michael Nyman, printed in the l2/94SCI Newsletter. He be Iowa City, IA 52242· to Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, gan by declaring that the title of University or to the latest entry, Gregorian chant..." Composer, "once glorious," now seemed [email protected] "quaint" and that "promises of institutional What constitutes ."new anything" becomes patronage and prestige" had long ince particularly difficult to determine with such evaporated. He further lamented the plight Look at our record! loosely applied terms. And this is especially of the composer by suggesting that young true at a time when scrutiny for the mark Ph.D.s in theory were more likel to find · •3997 member compositions performed ings of continuity with a previous age is sel jobs in the academic market place than com •1305 member composers performed dom encouraged. In our present Postmodern posers. "The emergence of the profes ional •274 member composers performed in climate that has proclaimed the arrival of an . hybrid, 'composer-theorist', he wro e 'sug 1993-94 alone age also frequently characterized as Post . gests that composition on i ov,rn has insuf •661 concerts sponsored in 118 different cities History-wherein all sense of history is ficient status to garner respect in the aca •84 member composers publi.shed in the muted or totally set aside-it is, of course, demic community." SCI Journal of Music Scores easier to assert claims of novelty. Where •64 member compositions recorded on amnesia reigns, anything can seem fresh and I believe the issue can be tated somewhat LPs and CDs new. At the same time the category of the less dramatically, for the mar etability of masterpiece, which is rooted in the act of theory Ph.D.s is surely duel o a lack of comparative evaluation, also disappears. respect for composers than to o viously Why Not Go Online greater need for theory teachers o taff the In such a climate some argue that the prac courses that form the typi aJ core curricu- - with SCION? tice of writing history approaches the prac lum. It should also be added that die asser tice of musical composition. To an extent tion that .the professional hybrid, composer Membership in SCI includes regular informa this has a.lways been so, however, and theorist, has only recentl emeiged. is his tion through SCION. Please register with us Nietzsche was not the first to insist that the torically faulty. In the early , ears ofAme ri by sending the message <SUBSCION> fol historian's subjectivity is essentially that of can higher education, from John Knowles lowed by your e-mail address to: the artist, not the scientist-that history i t Paine to Walter Piston and Roger essions, [email protected] self is "pure story, fabulation, myth con music history and theory teachers were fre ceived as the verbal equivalent of the spirit quently composers, though fe of them were of music." Indeed, there is no such thing as as famous as the ones just mentioned And The SCI· Newsletter a neutral history. Every historian has an the first years after 1955, when the D.M.A. © The Society of Composers, Inc. agenda that is, at the very least, implied by degree in composition in American higher the very selection of materials and the per education was initiated, saw its candidates David K. Gompper, Kirk Corey - editors spective cast around them. typically assuming crossover appointments Jon Price, Laura Beech - production assist. in theory and composition. To be sure, ome But Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings re universities had composers in residence who University of Iowa tooled for a New Age? What does this mean? taught nothing but composition, and the School of Music Can Debussy'sAnd the Moon Descends over Ph.D. in theory (though a somewhat differ Iowa City, IA 52242 ent breed from that offered today) was be (319) 335-1626 the Temple that Was, rescored for Javanese (319) 335-2637 FAX gamelan and recorded with generous ing given at a few institutions.

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