We have seen a consideration of the role of composership, in the Fauvel, in medieval and renaissance practices of borrowing, in the Classical and Romantic mythologization of the autonomous composer. Our initial model of authorship, Chailou writing Gervais reading, has been shown to be useful in many contexts as a metaphor to help unpack mechanisms of composering and the ideologies that travel with them. And we have seen composerly stances vary from the Medieval to the Renaissance to the Modern, but always continue to manifest a process of adoption despite their transformation.
We, however, have yet to describe the NOW in a new way, which builds on these materials from our examination of the Post-Classical and the Pre-Romantic. Let us re-write Bonaventure writing and develop a typology of composership for the now.
We should be careful— as a good Scholastic, Bonaventure wanted Aristotelian categories, with bright lines between them. The typology I propose is built around a prototype model, where in approaches to composership exhibit family relationships, and the same instance may be present in more than one category. (This is like the practice of 'tagging' in social media; these are many-to-many relationships, not one-to-one.) I will also use specific works and composers as examples, but we should remember that the boundaries between them are fluid and easily crossed – one composer or one work could appear in multiple and even contradictory categories.
(The current version of this essay does not address the aspects of the technological or the economic on composership for the sake of length.)
Idealisms
These Idealisms encompass certain kinds of music with a transcendental or transhistorical truth which can be evoked, even though our situation is so different than the situation of the creation of so much of that music. This may take the form of a spiritual connection with the past manifest aesthetically in a style of composition, or in an notion of identity that is built on an ideal.
The Aesthetic Transcendentalist
There is a mode of 'new musicking' that foregrounds its aesthetic parallels to the Medieval or Renaissance music. This often has stylistic elements, technical elements and associative elements. Examples include Arvo Pärt's Summa and Stephen Hartke's The King of the Sun (1988).(33)
A more recent example: Composer Robert Kyr was recently quoted in the WSJ (34) regarding a newly commissioned work tied programmatically and aesthetically to Josquin des Prez. "The spiritual life and immediacy of this music is something we are thirsty for, and it connects us to something we don't have in most of the music of our own time." The conductor of the work at the premiere, Crag Nelly Johnson picks up on this transcendentalism. "The music itself is sacred, no matter if we find it in a church or concert hall."
As with the construction of 'Classical Music' by Viennese concert culture or in Stravinsky's rhetoric of the transtemporal, the eternal is achieved through the decontextualization, and somehow music as 'the thing itself' is given a special ability to unify people and practices across divides of time, culture and faith. As such, the stance or approach is open to the critique as an empty return to formulas, much as Adorno critiqued Stravinsky, or as a retreat from more 'advanced' aesthetics, hiding conservatism under a temporal exoticism. It can also be seen as simple opportunism, as "early music" is much less threatening to classical concert goers than is "the new music." But at the same moment, it seems unkind to deny the possibility of genuine aesthetic connections across time.
Regardless of one's view of the authenticity of such claims, this language is the language of transcendence that Gadamer described so compellingly. The classical is certainly "timeless," but this timelessness is a mode of historical being."
The Classicist
If Transcendental Aesthetics pursues the classical, the idealism of the Classical remains. Harbison's November 19, 1828, is an interesting example of a double reference– the evocation of a heritage passing from individual to individual through a title which is the death date of Schubert and both aesthetic and material references to Schubert's works.
The Americanist
Americanism has been associated with particular aesthetics and styles, but manifests many features of our adoptive composership. Aaron Copland's Rodeo, long synonymous with an American 'sound' is based on as clear a process of adoption as Stravinsky's Pulcinella, but until recently the specificity of the appropriation of "Hoe-Down" theme to William Hamilton Stepp's performance (or instantiation) of "Bonaparte's Retreat" (35) has been framed as 'inspiration' rather than 'transcription.'
But, again, with a term as polyvalent as 'America' it is a mistake to limit the conversation to a particular aesthetic or style. Milton Babbitt's essay "On being and still being an American composer" presents a a very different compositional voice wrestling with the 'permanence' of the relationship between the composer and academia, but trying to solve the riddle of why the term 'American' has at various times been so loaded.
A serious examination of the idea of American Music would, of course, require a more thorough consideration of nationalism and identity; Alex Dent's recent River of Tears: Country Music, Memory, and Modernity in Brazil is an excellent starting point for such a conversation, since identity in his frame encompasses but is not limited to nationality.
(De)Bricolage
This is a practice which highlights the assembled nature of their musical or compositional practice. Bricolage is Lévi-Strauss' way of handling the utilization of elements of culture (material and otherwise) outside of the cultural context of their initial instantiation, especially their inclusion in assemblages. Debricolage is Lawrence Kramer's expansion of the notion to account for assemblages that draw upon the cultural valences of their elements despite their re-situation.(36)
We have already mentioned Berio's Sinfonia and Gilbert Amy's En Trio; these kinds of works are often described as 'Collages,' a term I think that it would help us to avoid, since that could tie the stance to a particular aspect of style. Albright's cabaret songs and the jazz elements of Harbison Symphony #1 are examples of works that collect materials and approaches, but embed them more fully in a pre-existent compositional voice (with typical biographical programmatic associations).
The Collector
For the collector, it is the knowledge of the sources which distinguishes the Collector from the passive audience or other artists, but in doing so affords the audience the possibility of an elevated experience of listening, hearing not only the sounds, but experiencing the interplay of valences. This stance, encompasses both the generally careful and reverential attitude of a Rochberg, the full range of DJ culture and practice, the messy, cartoon splicing of Zorn's Forbidden Fruit, the stylistic fusions of Mocean Worker, or Kanye West's recent quoting of a very old school King Crimson lick.(37)
The Crossing
This question of Kanye's lift brings us to an interesting point the use of materials from different discursive fields with in with very different valences. Crossing is a loaded term, evoking a complex history of racial dynamics and marketing strategies, but it does seem to connect those questions of without limiting the category to them. Many of the works in our Americanist category seem to be operative in this dimension as well. Kanye West's appropriation of King Crimson's 21st Century Schizoid Man is interesting for its connections play on high/low distinctions within a (broadly) popularist idiom, and its evocation of a future which is now past– Kanye IS the 21st Century Schizoid Man.
Such crossings are always part of a dialogue; think of Ellington's Nutcracker and Peer Gynt Suite, in which the supposedly popular reinvigorates or reinvents the old; low supporting high, and gaining a certain aura in doing so. Recent examples of a high/low (or low/high) crossing would be Christopher O'Riley's seemingly ubiquitous Radiohead covers, or the great cover/transformation by William College's own Chris Lightcap of the Beatle's 'Dig A Pony.' Bad Plus's arrangement of the Babbitt Semi-Simple Variations is similarly a subtle crossing; an outfit none for the 'reinvention' of pop into some sort of pop-jazz hybrid milieu makes an appropriation of the (supposedly) ultimate in the modern Babbitt; this is subtly but powerfully different than the "Jazz Goldberg Variations's" of Uri Caine and others, which seem to set up improvisation as the eternal truth of musicking (see 'Tychasticism' below).
These kinds of technical appropriations are sometimes what might have been in the past seen as extra-musical, and must at some point take into account the shifts in the once (supposedly) clear distinction between art music and popular music. The recent trio of articles by Alex Ross, A.O. Scott and Neal Gabler make clear the extent to which these hierarchies are being renegotiated rather than dissolving. On the poesic side of the system, one might consider the extent to which the successes and philosophical underpinnings of much of the Post-Classical scene is derived from, embedded in and contingent on the expansionistic power of crossing-over in particular organizational and economic frameworks.
Tychasticisms
Tychism is a concept developed by C.S. Peirce to describe the emergence of order from chance events. (Peirce's friend and colleague William James perhaps articulated his friend's idea more succinctly, calling tychism "Peirce's suggestion [that] order results from chance-coming."). So, tychism as a philosophical concept forces to the surface issues of identity, meaning work-concept, and job-descriptions. It emphasizes collectivity, agency through/by intersubjectivity (38), pluralism, and humanism.
All the tychasticisms enumerated below pose serious challenges to the classical (or Classical/Romantic) model of composership, but are highly resonant with the practices of the Early Modern.
The Open & The Aleatoric
There is a persistent exploration of openness in musical work, either through the 'free' works of Kagel like Rrrrr; the seemingly open but highly rule-based game-playing of Zorn's COBRA; the structural aleatory of Stockhausen's Klavierstück XI, Boulez's Third Sonata for Piano or Boucourechliev's vast cycle Archipels; or the textural aleatory of Lutoslawski.
The Improvised
Within tychasticism, I draw a distinction between the open and the improvised simply to highlight that there are differences of opinion about how agency can and should be distributed throughout a musical practice.(39) This is not "the Jazz category," though a lot of jazz would be in here, obviously. The mixture of conservatism and commitment of self and authenticity in Jazz practices makes the 'adoptive' element of the tradition readily apparent.
We have already discussed numerous examples (Bad Plus, Lightcap, Ellington) elsewhere in this typology. Uri Caine's jazz/classical crossings would be an interesting case where the improvised is the ideal which is the historical bridge across events.
Spectacle
We Late Moderns have a problem, largely due to the fact that we are here after Romanticism; performers virtuosity has become an effective common places, and so the experience of a work or a performance is difficult to lend specialness or uniqueness.
The Theatrical
Some works build up theater like Kagel's Rrrrr, Thierry de Mays Musique de Table or Aperghis' Recitation and use physical emplacement and performer's embodiment to amplify the concert experience. Some tychastic works like Zorn's COBRA highlight the individual experience of each round of play to such a degree that the 'cast' is emphasized as much as the work-qua-work, and the question of the best ontological category for the work is unresolvable. Michael Daugherty's Dead Elvis uses pop culture reference to situate the work in the now; there is a single and emphatic point in the work when it becomes clear that Elvis is NOW in the building.
The Post-virtuoso & The Hyper-virtuoso
There is a compositional stance that extends the requisite virtuosity of the performer to the point that it is not the achievement of fidelity to the score but the slippage and imprecisions between the score and a particular performance that are actorialized or rendered meaning-bearing; consider the 'black page' music of Brian Ferneyhough and James Dillon. There are also stances that make virtuosic precision machinic and quotidian; David Lang's Cheating, Lying, Stealing is a fine example made more fascinating by its version as a Rockband™ version, and the presence of numerous Rockband™ 'performances' on Youtube™ with fascinating conversations in the comments on the relationship of precision to virtuosity.
The Transporting
There is also a stream of the spectacular which aspires to transport the audience to a different state. Obviously this is commonly operative in Minimalist (and to a lesser degree in Post-Minimalist) practice. A work like Andriessen's De Staat through length, style and political reference endeavors to achieve political change, while the annual Bang on a Can new music marathon concerts endeavors to effect a change in awareness and the cultural heft of particular musical practices.
There is also the simply cognitive transport of the Feldman of String Quartet No. 2 or Piano and String Quartet, where in the vastness of the durational scale and the microscopic character of the material amplify the concert milieu of the work outside of the everyday.
on the specious present
William James used the term specious present to articulate the difficulty and aporia in our understanding and perception of the now. He defined the concept as ‘the prototype of all conceived times is the specious present, the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible.'(40) Elsewhere in the same work, James asserts ‘We are constantly aware of a certain duration—the specious present—varying from a few seconds to probably not more than a minute, and this duration (with its content perceived as having one part earlier and another part later) is the original intuition of time.’ For James, in the end, the now is not an atomistic time point, but a perpetual transition back and forth between what our sensorium, our memory, and our imagining of what is about to be; for me, that not is a longer now, an expansion of our understanding of our selves and our historical and social milieu.
To greater and lesser extents, all of these stances or aspects of composership perform a mediation between the past and the future; they are ways to bring the potential into the real. Concerning the role of the composer, these aspects seem more inline with Early Modern ideas of authorship than the heroic composer of Classical/Romantic ideologies.
This is to my mind less a revolution against the notion of the autonomous self, and more a re-emergence of the practices of adoption which are an inescapable part of the act of composing, just as they are part of being. We composer all are and always have been Chaillou, making something new not despite the old, but through it, making the music of the future happen now by reassembling the past.
(In case you arrived lated to the conversation, this essay began HERE.)
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33 Hartke's program note presents an interesting case of adoption of the misattributed. "The musical materials derive from a late medieval canon entitled Le ray au soleyl ("the Sun's ray") that was jotted down on some empty staves at the foot of a manuscript page otherwise devoted to a chanson by the Flemish composer Johannes Ciconia (c. 1370-1412), and hence has been generally misattributed to him even though clearly the work of a less accomplished musician (though no less delightful for that)."
34 Brett Campbell, Modern Echoes of the Renaissance. WSJ 1/26/2011
35 The performance was recorded in 1937 by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress, and was transcribed by Ruth Crawford Seeger (see Lomax's "Our Singing Country" 1941)
36 Kramer, Musical Meaning, p. 245
37 Hypotyposes of personal influence and inspiration are manifestation of the problem of technical acceleration— It is an effort to maintain the notion of the personal against the challenge of technical acceleration since the industrial revolution and the transition to Romantic idealism. Walter J. Ong's Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1971) and the easier to find 'Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2002)' are nice surveys of this point.
38 Peirce "We individually cannot reasonably hope to attain the ultimate philosophy which we pursue; we can only seek it there for the community of philosophers." (get reference)
39 Matthew W. Butterfield's 'The Power of Anacrusis: Engendered Feeling in Groove-Based Musics' at MTO (http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.06.12.4/mto.06.12.4.butterfield.html) ties this question to interesting ontological positions
40 James, William, 1890, The Principles of Psychology, New York: Henry Holt.