Good Music-Writing and Bad-Music Writing
From Alex Ross’ The Rest is Noise:
“In 1968 and 1969, the culture tilted towards chaos and madness. Violence filled the news—the assasinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the massacre at My Lai in Vietnam, riots on university campuses and in inner cities. Harry Partch’s onetime lover Ramon Novarro was tortured to death by a hustler intent on finding money hidden in his home. Richard Maxsfield, whose 1960 tape recording “Amazing Grace” anticipated minimalism in its use of intersecting loops, flung himself out of a San Francisco window, his mind undone by drugs. And, in August 1969, Charles Manson directed his followers to commit grisly murders in the canyons of Los Angeles, citing the Beatles’ White Album as inspiration.
That same month Steve Reich conceived “Four Organs”, in its own way a cruel, end-of-the-world piece. When the electric organs of the title are amplified at full volume, they become a crushing mass. Yet it seems that a musical center, if not a social one, can still hold. The piece is rooted in a set of six notes that sound like a dominant-eleventh chord on E, one that longs for resolution to the key of A. As maracas provide a stead pulse in 11/8 meter, the notes of the chord are prolonged by degrees and the harmony rotates this way and that. After many changes, it comes to rest on E and A. As Reich commented to Edward Strickland, the ending of the piece is contained within the opening chord, so that it is a matter not of traveling from one place to another but of uncovering the destination inside the point of departure.
In the last years of the twentieth century, minimalism acquired a degree of popularity with mainstream audiences, saturating American music with its influence. But in the early years it caused a fair amount of distress. When “Four Organs” was played at Carnegie Hall in 1973—at a concert by the Boston Symphony under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas—an elderly woman went to the front of the hall and repeatedly struck the edge of the stage with her shoe, demanding that performance stop. Someone else shouted, “All right, I’ll confess!”
Since the Schoenberg revolution began, audiences had been pleading for contemporary composers to return to the plain old major and minor chords. Now the minimalists were giving them more tonality than they could handle. Reich, a meticulous man with no urge to provoke, had the honor of setting off the last great scandal concert of the century.”
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Folks have been debating lately on how, and if, they should incorporate musical theory into writing about music. This small excerpt from Alex Ross’ brilliant The Rest is Noise (seriously, you need this book, it will change the way you listen to music in Bangs-ian fashion, it’s five bucks used on Amazon, buy it) is the way to do it, if you ask me.
I don’t know anything about music theory, not what an E or an A means in terms of sound. But through the crucial context Ross gives, and his descriptions, I don’t need to. My Lai to Manson, this is not going to be a happy work. The E “longs for resolution”, signifying tension. It does what all great music writing should do, make you desperate to hear the music being described.
Compare this to the Owen Pallet Slate piece being bandied about today, and it becomes clear how terrible Pallet’s piece really is. Now, I’m a huge fan of Pallet’s music, from He Poos Clouds to Her, love him on Twitter, and he’s talking about this as if it’s Facebook rant that Slate wanted gussied up to run, so maybe its the editor’s fault as opposed to his. Here’s Pallet’s first mention of theory
This song is all about suspension—not in the voice-leading 4–3 sense, but in the emotional sense, which listeners often associate with “exhilaration,” being on the road, being on a roller coaster, travel. This sense of suspension is created simply, by denying the listener any I chords.
What the hell? What is “the voice-leading 4-3 sense”? How is that different then the “emotional sense”? Why should I be denied I chords? Pallet’s got a very winking sense of superiority throughout the piece, which I notch up to it being a personal Facebook rant meant for friends, where such senses are fine. But claiming that he knows we’re gonna find this boring, that we’re a bunch of norms because we think Blood Orange is boring (when in fact, Blood Orange is a very boring musical project, sorry dude!) comes off in a public piece is pretty elitist. By frontloading the piece with all the theory, it’s like he’s trying to scare off anyone who’d want to learn so that he and the other cool kids can hang out and listen to Stockhausen. The fact that the piece had to be updated with a clarification that “Teenage Dream” is not in the key of G just shows how confusing Pallet makes it.
Of course, The Rest is Noise is a 600-page epic yarn (seriously, buy it) and Pallet’s piece doesn’t crack 1000 words. Ross has got more room. How to incorporate theory into a smaller piece? My humble suggestion is WolframAlpha. The amazing computational website devotes itself to clearly explaining music theory as it word complex algebraic equations, like so. Perhaps by linking to each and every notation, you could help the novice keep along. It also helps to be as good a music writer as Alex Ross, so good luck with that.
