Morton Feldman: Current Trends in America of it more and more in terms of say my own students. I teach students on a masters and Lecture given at the South African doctorate level. I don't teach undergraduates. I'm Broadcasting Corporation, Auckland Park, teaching in a very fine university for the past Johannesburg, August 1983 twelve years. And I came to this conclusion not only because of my teaching but being on various Transcribed by Rüdiger Meyer juries. Establishment juries. I'm an establishment composer in effect. Of the International Society of Contemporary Music, other juries, The copyright of this lecture is owned by the Estate of internationally and otherwise. But why is it that I Morton Feldman. It is published here with their kind myself give the more establishment pieces by the permission. Any further use of this text must be cleared younger people the award. And that the more with Rüdiger Meyer and the copyright owners. "adventurous" ... I'm not that interested. I hope you don't mind too much if I circumvent This happened to me a month or two ago. And the subject. Of course by doing that I'll probably the reason is that the young establishment talk more about it than not. One of the reasons is composer was guided in having the right kind of that if I was about to talk about what is happening acquired skills to do what he or she wants to do. in music today in America I'll have a heart attack The one that wants to be original or creative on the stage. And I don't think you'd like to see essentially don't know what skills are needed for that. [laughs] I myself, I'm not too happy about their originality. Don't know what to use. Don't what's happening. And I don't think its a question know, more important, what not to use. Doesn't just of the USA, I think it's happening all over. seem to have the discipline, the focus only Let's put it this way - every week in the New York because he or she does not have really strong Times there's an article and the article is usually models. It's not like being at Yale university where titled "The Death of the Avant Garde." [laughs] everybody is trying to rewrite Schoenberg's There is just something about the avant garde, Fourth String Quartet. So it's a very serious, a whatever that was or is, that seems to be annoying very serious problem. Music is very, very, very everybody when it comes to music. Yet the difficult to write. unbelievable avant garde art galleries in New York. On a Saturday afternoon you can't see a picture. Have to wait in line just to see a Jackson So instead of talking about trends which are Pollock, more or less. And thinking about this disquietingly, appallingly conservative, only phenomena has affected my own music in the because there's not a new need for past few years, and I've asked myself some very communication. Not because of anything other very devastating questions. A whole series of than music is very difficult to write. Also what has devastating questions. happened is that, well let's put it this way: When I was growing up in music we would hear a new piece and say "What terrific material, Boy that's The first question that I asked myself: "Is music terrific material." Don't ask me what material is, an art form?" Secondly, if John Cage did the same but you had a sense of the material. Now my thing in painting I don't think you would even students will talk about a piece and they'll say know his name. He might not have been good "What a terrific idea", you see. And I think for enough. Certainly no level of the notoriety. Why anybody that teaches composition it rings true. music? Why is music so entrenched in its music "What a terrific idea". And I could lately tell a forms? And the notion ... I speculate the notion, certain part of the world whether it's La Hoya in you see I'm just the devils advocate I haven't California or Downtown New York, I could tell answered these questions. Remember I just ask where the music is coming from only, not because these questions. And I've come to the conclusion of the material, only because of the ideas in a that maybe music is not an art form. That there sense in which it's a kind of community shared. are really some things that you can't do that you What we have really now all over, dramatized in could do for example in literature, in painting or America only because it's so large, not because it's in the cinema. more gifted, is this kind of folk music of different cities. What we have lost is the fantastic I think that one of the reasons it can't be done is international ... excitement. The international quite simply because music is so difficult to write. concerns that we had in the fifties and into the No other answer except that it's difficult. And we sixties. just don't have the talent around to handle new concepts or even think of them. Now I'm convinced about that, and I'm certainly convinced Now because of this I decided to play a work by a just went through with, when I awarded her a big young American, she just hates it when I would prize, and I had a very important New York, say "female composer", by the name of Bunita South American composer living there now - Marcus. Unfortunately everything is suspicious David Davidowsky, where I had to convince him because I was her major professor. [laughs] And about another piece of Bunita's and he says, "Well ... I wish I wasn't actually, and in a sense I never Morton, I love you, if you say so, it must be really felt I was. Back in 1975 I got a phone call there." [laughs] from Bunita Marcus. And she asked if she could visit me, that she was living in Buffalo with her But actually it's an interesting confrontation and husband. At that time Buffalo was still a very I'm really presenting it more, not so much to the important avant garde music centre. And the non-composers in the audience but to the reason that she was in Buffalo was that she and composers - to confront yourself, you know, on her husband really wanted to go to Toronto the tennis court, with a champ ... that you never because he was a classical guitarist and there was heard of, like these thirteen or fourteen year old somebody terrific for him to study there. But girls that are coming out of nowhere, you know ... being that rents and real estate were just [laughs] appallingly expensive in Toronto they decided Toronto is only an hour and fifteen minutes away. And the music is called MUSIC FOR JAPAN and She was going to settle in Buffalo. And usually I she wrote it for one of the few and perhaps the never saw anybody. Actually I would, if they best groups in Japan called the Ark ensemble. weren't interested in coming into the university I, And she was invited to come over there. for whatever reason, I didn't want to see them. Takemitsu who's nuts about her music also saw to And there was something about her manner on it that she was funded to get there. And so it will the phone - I said "sure". We made an be the ARK ensemble that you're gonna hear and appointment and she came over and she then Bunita Marcus is conducting the group. entered and got her doctorate about two years ago. [A tape recording of MUSIC FOR JAPAN is played.] Now rather going along with the axiom that something new is obviously something new, now that I'm in my late fifties I could mellow a little bit This is probably going to be my only public and repeat Anton Chekhov when he said "talent is forum because as I understand it we're just going always new" and Bunita is certainly the most to be with the composition seminars ... Except my gifted young composer that I know of, certainly in last talk where I talk about myself, so maybe we America. There are others. There's a young man could talk about you. I once called up a friend and by the name of Jo Kondo. And he's Japanese and said, "This evening we're just going to talk about I would say that he's going to be the Webern of you." [laughs] So it might be a very apt time, if the nineties. Very strange stuff. Bunita's is less you could ask me questions. strange. Her work is upfront, she doesn't really need dynamics, it's almost like Bach the way the Q: There is a painting form known as "post work projects itself. And I feel she has an avant-garde" which is quite interesting and does exquisite voice. But most important, getting back seem to be valid, certainly critics regard it as valid. to one of my earlier thoughts, she has a sense of Isn't there some validity in a music form known material, a fabulous sense of material in almost a as post avant-garde? kind of Stravinskian sense. And she has incredible instrumental presence, again in a Stavinskian M.F: Well, I don't know what it means. I'm sense. But also, very important to me, is her pretentious in speaking street talk. And to me notation. Notation is a very, very serious problem post avant-garde means post famous names. which I felt - that is handled only superficially, Essentially that's all it means to me. Until those evidently the late Beethoven never helped when names become famous. I mean, just what are you he started to get involved with incredible detail as gonna do, for example, after Jackson Pollock's he does in his late sonatas. Didn't seem to really gesture in 1951. I mean what in heavens name are leave any influence. Her aspect of detail is in a you gonna do? You know. Or just do two sense really quite uncanny and how she expresses unbelievably beautiful colours you know and it both rhythmically and on the page is unusual. paint them as well as Rembrandt, the way Mark Rothko did. With his mysterious edges. The same I think I embarrassed her enough with this thing in fact, getting back to Bunita Marcus. I lengthy introduction. Obviously I don't want you went over to her apartment in the midst of her to make your mind up for yourself. [laughter] I writing this and I noticed she had a big sign right on top of her desk and it said "Feldman - have to control things, they have to essentially Boulez". And I said "What's that?" And she said, know what they're doing. But I think that's "That's the enemy." [laughter] She says "I just essentially where the problem is. gotta remember, I just gotta remember what I'm dealing with here, to be a composer." And also I think the problem, another thing that interests me about Bunita Marcus is that she And ... I think we hid in the past twenty five years makes the distinction between "problem solving" or thirty years, I think we hid behind this and "solutions". And there's a vast distinction terminology long enough. And I think individually between those two words. Now we know that in we have to come out be tested in a sense. I don't problem solving you don't have to know what think these names really help any. "Modernism", you're doing. We all solve problems in our sleep. "Non-Modernism", you see. Because I think again And we find solutions when we're awake. So if we have to find, we have to find the leadership many times my problems, I could be gnawing at a in ourselves and by finding the leadership in thing, I could be upset for days, I don't know ourselves is knowing in a sense how we can, in a what's wrong. And usually it could be what's sense, develop fantastic technical facility in terms wrong is that the instrumental combination is not of doing what we want to do rather than Feldman working, you see, and that I'm waiting a little to or Boulez, you see. I think that's essentially the get familiar with my material in order to see if problem now. some kind of adjustment has to be involved.

And the problem is now, is not looking for some And this whole kind of consciousness and this new methodology that can make things easier for whole kind of control which of course Wagner us to understand what we're doing. There's a big didn't have and Mozart to some degree had problem about teaching and being a professor and intuitively, you know one of the interesting things being well known and handling students who feel is that when you teach is that the best, one of the that they have to know what they're doing. most interesting periods I like to teach is before There's a famous ... remarks that I made at Yale serialism. And that's some of the greatest pieces twenty years ago when I was invited there to give that Webern, Berg and Schoenberg wrote in those a big seminar and a concert of my music. A very years where Webern just had this chromatic scale famous, one of the most famous musicologists on the edge of a page and it was just like picking after listening to my music and to some degree out notes, you know. The more the system my vague authoritative way of talking, said, "Mr became formalized and understood to some Feldman, I've come to the conclusion that you degree there was a deterioration in the art. I mean don't know what you're doing." And Mel Powell there's a perfect period in a sense. And all history who was the chairman at the time still tells me has those periods. how fantastic it was because I walked off the podium to where this man was sitting, and he I think we're all on our own now, essentially. Now thought I was going to punch him in the nose or in getting back to America I feel that the something, he had no idea what was going to conservatism to some degree is, I don't feel that a happen. And I said to him, "Listen, just because I country could create an art that outstretches the was invited by Yale university to give a lecture political climate. I feel that the political climate, doesn't mean that I know what I'm doing." no matter how strong anybody is, to some degree creates some unconscious "we must stop here." And I say that all the time, I never ask my student Some kind of thing and it's very interesting that in what he's doing. I would say ... you're not America in the fifties and the sixties the political focused. I would use general terms like "you're climate in a sense after McCarthy for example not focused". Or I said, "Your hierarchical created a new kind of radicalism in the art as if to notions" I said, "are absolutely ridiculous. For say, "We can't have anything like this ever happen example if you think that melody is a hierarchical again." I think it affected the art too. And I've notion, look how mediocre your accompaniment seen this happen in other countries as well. That is." You know. That's tossed away as if it were one is programmed. I have a lot of Canadian unimportant, you know. It was the melody they composers that come to study with me. And that wanted or something. And I guide them that way. I find that their work is pretty safe only because But I never guide them in any way of ... give them they get large grants. And they don't want to rock a certain type of security in knowing what they're the boat. And they're not, they're being doing. I think that's why ideas have taken over so programmed and they don't realise it. This many aspects especially in terms of university generosity of helping them out as professionals music. And the sense is that they feel that they has made them so careful in the kind of music they want to write, has really affected their music stuff it's far out." And that was Xenakis. I wanna unconsciously. hear names again. And I think we all wanna hear names again rather than a return to something ... So rather than saying what kind of music is again. happening in America I'd rather just say that I'm waiting for just strong talent to emerge. What I Sounds like a sermon. Born again. [laughs] really think is going to happen, and I'm using Bunita as a model because I see hundreds of Q: What amount of responsibility do you think scores all the time, an awful lot of music, is that the composer has towards the audience? we might go into a period in which the music is not recognizable as either modern or as M.F: None. [laughter] Why? Because if you conservative, as her music is. I never get the haven't got the moral conscience, in a sense, that feeling that I'm listening to Cologne when I'm if the humanity is not in you, you see, then what listening to her, and also don't get the feeling that good is it? What good is it? What good is it to I'm listening to West Coast. To some degree I manipulate the audience to write someone a letter don't know what I'm listening to. I'm listening to like Gluck, "I want to write a music as if I'm a very private voice, with a lot of technique, you actually sitting in the audience." All the responses, see. And hopefully, I'm very interested in creating you know, everything. A lot of that stuff you a kind of intellectual climate, by my colleagues, by know was really audience manipulation. That they my teaching, by my own music as an example, to were involved not necessarily with a sense of time create that kind of music. as it was unfolding but a sense of timing, in a sense that will give, in a sense, that will give the You know history is a burden and the burden is right kind of response in the audience. You have really not to take it on because a terrific musician no idea of how many really fabulous people were in this sense has no argument with history and as involved with the audience. TS Eliot reminded us we take from it what we need, we all do that. But I think that the burden Now there's nothing wrong with it. I recently said we have of history is essentially getting it off our to somebody, I said, "We have enough music. If back as a safe refuge and I think that that was we don't have any music for the next five years it always one of the problems. I once compared will be okay." I said, "What we don't have is history to, especially people who always bring up enough audience." I'm very interested in a history, continuity, tradition, that they're in a bank audience and I'm very interested in a new one. I'm and they talk about it as if they're in a cathedral. not, no longer interested in an audience, in a And by a bank I mean that the assets are there to sense, that wants to hear that which they already draw on without really putting anything in it, you heard. This is not an educated audience. And to see. The way Stravinsky had it. I consider this to insist on some interest, you're insisting on interest some degree cultural welfare, you know, a music mind you, you're not asking to take an adult that just sounds like every other music. "Okay get education course, you're asking for interest out cultural welfare and we're going to play you a doesn't mean that the music is elitist. I'm a New piece next week." Yorker, it's impossible for a New Yorker to be an elitist. [laughter] And I'm kind of fed up, naturally after twenty five years you're waiting and waiting, but I'm certainly You never know who the audience or what it is. not waiting to see this conservatism. This is a very true story. It seems contrived for Conservatism without technique actually, that's the moment but it's true and documented. I was the worst. Then it's a kind of like amateur night of having a conversation with my teacher, I wasn't the reactionary attitudes and that's no good either. studying at the time. His name was, a fabulous So rather than "either/or" it's "neither/nor". I guy by the name of Stefan Wolpe. And Stefan don't like amateur radicalism and I don't like came out of a 1920 Weimar Republic. He was amateur conservatism. I wanna hear names again Marxist and he had a studio on at that time, more like I did when I was twenty four. Names, when so now, one of the more proletariat streets in someone came back and said I heard a piece, it New York. It was on 14th Street and 6th Avenue. was like being at a tennis match. I said, "What do And I brought him a new piece. I wasn't studying you mean?" He said it was like the sound was with him but I was still seeing him, bringing him going from here to here. That was John Cage my music. I brought him a new piece and he says, talking about Ligeti. Earle Brown coming to me "Morton" he says, "it's so esoteric, you're so and saying, "Boy there's a guy in Paris, he just esoteric. Isn't there such a thing as the man in the came from Greece, boy you ought to hear that street?" He was on the second floor. And we're looking down and who's walking across 14th I mean I see tourists coming into New York. Street and 6th Avenue - Jackson Pollock. Going to the Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim [laughter] Museum, the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and they see modern art, modern The man in the street. Jackson Pollock was the art, modern art, modern art, modern art, Madison man in the street and he was nuts about my avenue, 57th street, modern art - they feel they're music. A lot of people have problems with it. A in a lunatic asylum ... They're walking the floor in lot of people don't have problems with it. What's New York. [laughs] Essentially in terms of what's interesting about modern music is that if nobody going on here. You see. So I think it depends on likes it they just can't shut it off. They have to go the community, who walks the floor. You know, on raving about it, against it. I think that modern in a place like Cologne evidently it's the audience music should exist and everybody has the right to who walks the floor. Because there's official just shut it off. Just shut it off. But it should exist support for it. Or an element of tolerance. like anything. Just like I shut off light music or jazz. I'm shutting it off all the time. I consider very much like a newspaper the cultural life of a country. And though I live in Buffalo the But as far as the audience and the composer ... I reason I get the New York Times is because it's a mean I don't think the audience really had a newspaper. And I sit down for an hour and I'm chance. I don't know who the hell the audience is. reading this damn newspaper - It doesn't let up. I'm having some very interesting experience. You One section after another on every category. And know I told you earlier that I asked myself some I feel that a society must make that available. For terrible questions. One, is music really an art example if they're counting heads in my university form? Or is it just a music form? That means - a because they spent millions of dollars for access form that we already know and we feel that the to musical facilities which are not used either by proportions are right and everybody is an expert the college students, by the faculty or by the about it even though you don't know anything community, everybody's very upset. So the first about music. Only because it's like everybody thing they wanna do is say take away the funding else's music. And now if it's not an art form, what from my music concerts. On the other hand is it? Okay, we're not going to settle this at this nobody uses the library either. Nobody, I don't particular meeting. We're never going to settle it. think anybody uses anything. In a sense I think Another question that I ask myself is "Can we get we'll just have to close down everything. rid of the audience?" How do we get rid of the Essentially [laughter] ... just ride around in audience? I was once sitting with a great friend, automobiles. So again it's a question of who walks they were doing a string quartet of mine many the floor. years ago and the audience was fidgety, was annoying. I heard some quiet hisses beginning I think the public has enough. I think the public after ten minutes and I turned to my friend and I has everything ... They got it all and I think there's said "What's this I hear about a live audience?" I an effort that has to be made. And if they don't said, "There's nothing like a dead one." want that effort then it's perfectly fine, being that they have it all. It shouldn't deny a public that I mean that generously. I don't know who's fault wants the other. That considers their right to have it is. I don't think it's anybody's fault. Someone the other. So it's a big problem. And I don't think once described, "Tragedy for me, is when two it's an artistic problem. I think it's a social people are right." [laughter] It's a question of, I problem and I think it's a political problem and don't know, it's just a question of, I think it's a ultimately I think it's a financial problem. I have power play really. There's a marvellous Jewish no idea. I don't think it's an artistic problem at all. joke I love about Sam owes Ben twenty thousand I have had enough experience to realize it is not dollars and in the middle of the night his wife an artistic problem. wakes up and sees Sam walking the floor. And she says what's the matter. And he says "I owe Ben I don't think that anybody has the right to define, twenty thousand dollars and I have to pay him, to already, should define what the public likes, next morning, I don't have it." "Hello, Ben this is doesn't like and should like. I don't think one has Sadie. Sam doesn't have the twenty thousand that right. I don't have that right even in my dollars so you walk the floor all night." [laughter] selection when I give a concert. I give concerts So you see. And I think in art too, really, across the board. Especially in the university. And seriously, it's a question of who walks the floor. a lot of people are very upset because of my avant garde position and I keep on reminding them that as far as I'm concerned the university is like a museum. This is not a private art gallery. And I it was an hour and forty minutes and I had a try to keep my university with all kinds of people standing ovation. [laughter] I was told I had a coming. Conservative. The conservatives when standing ovation with the same piece in Venice a they make a talk usually sound radical. And when year ago. Now in Toronto I'm going to have my the radicals make a talk they usually sound new string quartet which is two and a half hours. conservative. [laughter] We had John Cage and [laughter] Aaron Copland come. [laughs] Aaron sounded like some kind of terrorist. And John Cage was Wait a minute, what's really happening in this, I more or less modifying his position. [laughter] did one of these long things in Berlin. Anybody who's lived in Berlin knows that you're kind of a The audience. Big, big problem. I mean if you captive audience anyway, speaking of an audience grow up in saying there's an audience. If you're anyway. Unless you go to the Academy der Kunst growing up to say, "Who wants to write music if you're out on a street or in a beer hall. So they just there's no audience?" Music doesn't want ya. "If loved it. They just grooved on this hour and a half you need an audience to write music we don't or two hour piece. And I noticed the longer my need you". pieces became, I started to develop a new audience. For whatever reason. Alright it might be Again, that was a very long aside actually from the too expensive for the, and it was only the expense point that I wanted to make. Another question I of the Boston Symphony to do my new violin said, well the only way to really get rid of an concerto but an outfit like Frankfurt Radio is audience is to alienate them. And for the first time doing it. It doesn't seem to be a problem that it's I ever consciously pursued a course of action only an hour and a half and things like that. And I because there were really no problems artistically think these long pieces are going to develop a new for me to solve. It was a life problem, it was a kind of audience that is listening, that wants to social problem. And I solved it number one, by listen, and that needs to listen. Where because only writing for dear friends, well it turns our that intellectually, artistically and certainly musically in the dear friends were some of the finest musicians the past twenty five years unlike the audience with in the world and so I wasn't taking any chances a capital "A", being that they're the audience with there. So I wanted to eliminate the musician. The a small "a", they need it. You see. So that was one musician is a big problem, they dictate the taste, formula where I'm getting a new audience, but they dictate how much they could afford to quite by accident. I was really, I didn't know that I rehearse, how much they want to rehearse. They was going to get a new audience, I just wanted to want to play things that make them shine. They really get rid of the old audience. You know its are not necessarily that gung ho with the like paying alimony you just, it's as if you're never composer. Big problem with the performer. So finished with it. The same twenty minute piece. I'm not thinking about the performer per se Five years go on, twenty years, thirty years - the anymore. I'm just thinking about a few people same attitudes. [laughs] That's music in America. who I know for the past thirty five years. They're nuts about my music and they play it beautifully. You know Milton Babbitt who was a very important American twelve tone composer wrote Okay so that problem is solved. And the second an article, a very famous article in the States called problem is, the whole idea of what is the real "Who cares if they listen?" [laughs] I really wanted length of a piece, given the opportunity. If you to write one that really said "Who cares if they really want to write a piece and you're not perform it?" [laughter] Because what's the point, thinking about an audience, you're not thinking what's the point of performing these things, it's about the performer, then how long is the piece. like vote, it's like people ... in the sense ... I know If you're not kind of unconsciously programmed ... I have friends who are active in the democratic that a half a side of a record is twenty minutes or party. And I'm always very annoyed. They always twenty five minutes, how long could this piece say, "Why don't you get active?" I say, "What do be? I then pursued this very fortunate direction you mean "get active"? We're not going into the and my pieces became an hour, an hour and a enclaves of people who're against our position. half, and I wrote a string quartet - an hour and We're having parties and fund-raising things forty minutes. And we got this marvellous quartet amongst ourselves, I mean we're already going to to do it in California. There was silence vote democratic party. So what do you mean by throughout the piece. There was never silence in a we should be active in this thing?" twenty minute piece of mine. But you know, it was like Nicholas Nickleby, I suppose they And I think it's the same thing with a lot of thought there was some kind of media event. And composers, that we've created a kind of ghetto for ourselves only because we just can't cope with the like London years ago who developed a kind of problem, and we don't know how to cope with Constant Lambert. We never had those types. the problem. See one of the ways of coping with [laughs] Kind of silly, kind of silly kind of music a the problem, for example in Italy, is where the little bit. And that's essentially America. Deeply establishment puts on something avant garde. spiritual, deeply non-commercial in the true sense And then because the establishment puts it on of the word and commercial in the true sense of then everybody has to cope with it. And that'll the word and that is making a very good happen here actually. There's very little audience competitive product. And the young people in a for contemporary music in America. Some of the sense, there's a new leisure class in America - the audiences, I don't know, I don't know exactly young. And they're a captive audience for these what the reason. I would say that maybe in a place events. And Steve Reich, Phil Glass, in a sense I like New York there's just too much activity. I feel, without insulting them too much, represent mean every night there's just too much activity. this. And it's very attractive stuff, very attractive. Places like Paris it's a little different. They're really In fact I wrote a letter to Universal, my publisher, big events. I know that in London when I hear about Phil Glass's last Opera and I said you know the, if I'm in town and the London Sinfonietta's it's unfortunate that it has an avant garde playing, I see a lot of young people at the concerts reputation because there's nothing avant garde just as if it was in the sixties. I think the price of about it. What's avant garde is that it's Soho and admission adds to it. Rather than fifteen dollars different kind of types writing it. But in the letter that they would charge on Carnegie Hall to hear I wrote them I said, don't quote me, I said, Phil Glass or someone. Twenty five dollars at the "Benjamin Britten could never have done it, and last concert, it was jammed. the damn thing should have opened up in Covent Garden, not in Brooklyn someplace." Because it's I would say that Phil Glass is a media rather than sensational, as theatre, as entertainment. With a an artistic phenomena in America. You know great middlebrow theme like Mahatma Gandhi, America is essentially. The formula for America, which is a middlebrow theme. And peace, isn't it and if you kinda take my word for it then you'll crazy how peace has become middlebrow. And never have to go there and you'll know everything it's just the right theme, right theme. And it's a about it, is essentially: It developed, exploited and fantastic thing to hear. Forget that it's simplistic invented middlebrow. No place in the world, just and that certain parts sound like Verdi and some think of it. Popular songs from George Gershwin parts sound like Monteverdi [laughter] and that to Jerome Kern to Cole Porter. And they know some parts sound like southern India. Forget how to update it without costumes, like Chorus about that. It's just terrific theatre. [laughter] Line. And America has two sides, that very swanky middlebrow, that unless you live there and And I think that one of the things against know the kind of middlebrow people that had a originality, also it's so difficult. I think it's a kind good education, they got a BA and are making a of you know, the hatred of the rich or the hatred lot of money and they don't, you know, they really of the poor. I think there's a hatred of the avant want to have a good time but they don't want to garde, or a hatred of originality because it is so have a silly good time. They don't want to see hard to do and what are you gonna do after "Naughty Marietta". And America is great at that. Jackson Pollock threw the paint. You can't And the movies are certainly demonstrating it compete really with me or with Boulez or with now. But there's another side of America. A John Cage or Xenakis. You're wasting your time. I fantastic side. It has two sides. And the side I mean it's as if you're dealing with Chase would say is deeply religious and deeply Manhattan bank, you're dealing with ... [laughs] committed to exquisite values. Like Thoreau, you're dealing with big power structures in trying Emerson. The painters in the fifties. And those to deal with these people. The only thing you are the two Americas actually. could do is like Bunita and just put it on the sign on the wall and say, "This is the enemy, gotta But what's happening in contemporary music is remember that this is the enemy." The same time that the middlebrow is winning out. Because that she's not a third world composer, so to there's a natural, it's in the DNA, the DNA you speak. How does she exist in the midst of all these know, you start off in graduate school, you're people. Rather than getting rid of them the way writing twelve tone music, you know, how long the media is and the way so many people are are you gonna write twelve tone music? You don't happy to. really have a feeling for it and you kind of wanna find your way you know, and you finally wind up But you see if you're not talking about broad in this vast open field, you see, of very high class, issues and you want to give things names. And middlebrow, type of music, not something silly you don't want to do things like that, then you see the conversation one could have is very, very sense what's needed. But not what's needed in difficult you see because then you really have to terms of a society or a social structure or, you go out on a string and arrive at certain opinions know, writing for your professor or writing for an about certain work and really in a sense forcefully arts council or writing for an audience. You see in a sense support the work you believe in. Most how to write without that given and still come up people are pretty ambivalent about that. with, you know, I understand that if we dig long enough we're going to come up with something in One of the things that I always do in my seminar, this town. [laughs] I'm so fed up with analyzing what something is and then having the student when a recording of So how we do that in our own work is essentially something is played for an examination not the big problem today. Not what's happening in recognize it. After writing an A paper of what it is Cologne and what is Cage doing these days and but not recognizing it when they hear it and this where do you think things are going and that kind has happened over, time again. Phasing me almost of business. Because what we've been talking out of the university is what I do many times if about for the past thirty years and evidently things Takemitsu or someone else comes through. I have, went really nowhere because it's essentially don't ask, "What is it?" I usually ask, "How good the same names, it's the same reason. And if it's is it?" Of course no one ... no one has anything to not originality which is a determining factor then say. All my doctoral candidates have nothing to what, how do we explain the phenomena of what say how good it is. And that's wherein the music travels and what music doesn't travel? problem is in our particular time. So I think a Outside of thinking of it as either a Jewish or a whole new value system has to come about. No homosexual conspiracy [laughter] against the one is really fighting for Steve Reich. You're composers in Chicago or Montreal for that matter writing about him, but you're not fighting for in Buenos Aires. them, you know. You pick the London Sunday newspaper and see that idiot write some glowing Buenos Aires can't figure it out at all because the article on Stockhausen again. The way it was at music has everything the music has rhythm. Has one time. Really going out for it and really, you everything, it doesn't travel. The minute ... know ... someone told me that even the music of Montreal by the time it reaches Toronto - it's dead. Names, who are the names, where are the names? [laughter] Very important factor. In other words, I only know two names: Bunita Marcus and Jo if you say originality is not the factor then you Kondo. Both absolutely different, absolutely can't complain if you don't travel. I hope we cover nothing to do with each other. Those are the only and argue and discuss this. Where is the criteria? I two names I know. And very envious of things in give a seminar about once every three years and both. I'm envious of Jo Kondo's lack of the seminar is called "What's allowed and what's dependence on instruments. That he's picking out not allowed". In it I tally on the blackboard all the notes without instruments, which for me is boogie, all the fantasies all the notions, all the inconceivable. Unless I know what instrument is hallucinations that the graduate students think is playing a note, I don't know the note. But he either allowed or not allowed. And it's actually a writes these cra ... you know these beautiful ... very fascinating thing. And very very unusual type of way of working and thinking. Okay you've been very patient with all my serious ramblings. Thank you. The big problem is, and one of the problems we're going to face this week, especially having composition discussions in a sense is that ... what develops that particular instinct to give someone's research or what one wants to do artistically in their music a certain degree of validity. What the great English psychiatrist Ernest Jones and his wonderful book, biography on Freud has a marvellous section on how did Freud know and how could he find the cause and effect, you know. And he talked about Freud as this mineralogist who knows that platinum was platinum and gold was gold and this and that, that instinct to know. Again that sense of material, in a