To the Fullest: Organicism and Becoming in Julius Eastman's Evil
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Title Page To the Fullest: Organicism and Becoming in Julius Eastman’s Evil N****r (1979) by Jeffrey Weston BA, Luther College, 2009 MM, Bowling Green State University, 2012 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2020 Committee Page UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Jeffrey Weston It was defended on April 8, 2020 and approved by Jim Cassaro, MM, MLS, Department of Music Autumn Womack, PhD, Department of English (Princeton University) Amy Williams, PhD, Department of Music Dissertation Co-Director: Michael Heller, PhD, Department of Music Dissertation Co-Director: Mathew Rosenblum, PhD, Department of Music ii Copyright © by Jeffrey Weston 2020 iii Abstract To the Fullest: Organicism and Becoming in Julius Eastman’s Evil N****r (1979) Jeffrey Weston, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2020 Julius Eastman (1940-1990) shone brightly as a composer and performer in the American avant-garde of the late 1970s- ‘80s. He was highly visible as an incendiary queer black musician in the European-American tradition of classical music. However, at the end of his life and certainly after his death, his legacy became obscured through a myriad of circumstances. The musical language contained within Julius Eastman’s middle-period work from 1976-1981 is intentionally vague and non- prescriptive in ways that parallel his lived experience as an actor of mediated cultural visibility. The visual difficulty of deciphering Eastman’s written scores compounds with the sonic difference in the works as performed to further ambiguity. However, the vivid language used within the composer’s titles has historically created a rupture in the Western concert hall and continues to do so today. This tension of sonic, ocular, and cultural visibility resonates particularly strongly in Evil N****r (1979), a work that is part of Eastman’s “N****r series.” I demonstrate that Eastman’s self-defined concept of “organic” music lends itself to analysis through the lens of musical becoming—a process of dialectical movement between thesis and antithesis to construct, or synthesize, identity. Eastman describes his organic music as a formal process of amassing meaning through similarity. However, when analyzing his work, it becomes apparent that both similarity and contrast abound. The play between similarity and contrast in Eastman’s work defined what came before and what followed, a method of sonic growth, reference, and continuity—a process of continuous becoming. In this analysis, I approach Evil and its composer through the lens of becoming. I explore how we can understand Eastman and his work through processes of becoming and where we can find iv these instances in his life and music. I utilize Evil as a case study to demonstrate how Eastman’s search for identity influenced his musicianship, philosophy, and the conception of the work; and illustrate how the juxtaposition, reference, and distillation of pitch set, contour, interval, and temporality inform the growth of motivic material, and thus, the becoming of the work itself. v Table of Contents Preface ............................................................................................................................... xiv 1.0 That Which is Fundamental ............................................................................................ 1 1.1 Julius Eastman (1940-1990) ........................................................................................ 3 1.2 Why Organicism? Why Becoming? ........................................................................... 5 1.3 Organicism and Becoming: An Overview ................................................................. 8 1.4 Eastman’s Organic Music: A Postmodern Conception............................................ 16 1.5 Blackness, Fugitivity, and Becoming in the Philosophy of Julius Eastman ............. 20 1.6 The “N****r series” ............................................................................................... 26 1.7 Summary ................................................................................................................. 30 2.0 Ambiguity and the Archive ............................................................................................ 33 2.1 The Julius Eastman Project..................................................................................... 33 2.2 First Performances .................................................................................................. 38 2.3 Notation and Performance Practice ........................................................................ 40 2.4 Summary................................................................................................................. 48 3.0 Motivic Becoming in Evil N****r ................................................................................. 49 3.1 Motive, Form, Refrain, and Centricity ..................................................................... 49 3.2 Overview of Motives ............................................................................................... 55 3.2.1 Motive 1 – The “Opening” Motive............................................................... 56 3.2.2 Motive 2 - “The Continuo Figure” .............................................................. 59 3.2.3 Motive 3 – The Pedal................................................................................... 73 3.2.4 Motive 4 – The Triad ................................................................................... 75 vi 3.2.5 Motive 5 – The Intervallic Second ............................................................... 77 3.2.6 Motive 6 – Liquidation and The Augmented Pedal ..................................... 82 3.2.7 Motive 7 – The Triplet C# ........................................................................... 84 3.2.8 Motive 8 -The Eighth Note Second ............................................................. 86 3.2.9 Motive 9: The Aleatoric Whole Note and Coda ........................................... 89 3.3 Global Motivic Becoming: Contour, Rhythm, Set ................................................... 92 3.3.1 Global Contour ............................................................................................ 93 3.3.2 Global Rhythm ............................................................................................ 94 3.3.3 Global Subset and Interval .......................................................................... 95 3.4 Functional Harmony vs. Klangfarbenmelodie ......................................................... 97 3.5 Summary................................................................................................................ 107 4.0 Resonances .................................................................................................................. 110 4.1 The Politics of Narrative ........................................................................................ 110 4.2 The Northwestern and New Music America Recordings ....................................... 114 4.3 The Influence of Recorded Media on Performance Practice .................................. 121 4.4 Recommended Performance Instructions to Evil N****r ...................................... 129 4.5 Summary................................................................................................................ 133 5.0 Temporality and Becoming .......................................................................................... 135 5.1 Temporal Being and Becoming ............................................................................. 136 5.2 Temporal Dissonance and Synthesis: Gesture........................................................ 138 5.3 Temporal Dissonance and Synthesis: Form and Density ....................................... 144 5.3.1 A Section (Cells 1-27) .................................................................................. 144 5.3.2 B Section (Cells 28-49) ................................................................................ 145 5.3.3 Coda (Cells 50-52) ...................................................................................... 150 vii 5.4 Summary................................................................................................................ 153 6.0 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 155 6.1 Contributions to Knowledge................................................................................... 162 6.2 Recommendations ................................................................................................. 163 7.0 Houses (2018) ............................................................................................................... 165 7.1 Conception............................................................................................................. 165 7.2 Rehearsal Process .................................................................................................. 169 7.3 Premiere and Recording ........................................................................................ 170 7.4 Movement Overview .............................................................................................. 170 7.5 Summary...............................................................................................................