Composers' Forum Spring 2019

Our guest speaker today, John Zorn, is a composer, arranger, record producer and a saxophonist. He pointed out in the beginning of the lecture that some new music nowadays have become “thorny.” As someone coming from an avant-garde focused music school such as Eastman School of Music, I could strongly relate to that the day I turned to screen scoring. I remember when I was back at Eastman doing my bachelor’s degree in composition, I have seen a great number of colleagues of mine wrote complicated music consisted of complex rows, twelve-tones, microtones and other academic methods. Their music requires pages of pages of program note to explain how intellectual and carefully designed their music is. I used to fall into that category, blindly follow the mainstream in academia. After turning to screen scoring a few years after I graduated, I naively thought I would officially break free from the curse but have come to a realization that music written for any types of multimedia suc...

In this week lecture, we discussed with Jonathan Holland on his career as a composer and his insights. I felt very connected with Jonathan because of his messages he portrayed through his music , his stylistic choices and by being an african american composer. I very much liked the first piece that Jonathan played for us because it used the elements of double mindedness. You could very much point of the main melody and the "harmonically stable" parts in it ; but then on top melodies that were clustered, chromatic lines, and contrasting melody were there. I feel like music that plays with uncommon harmonic and melodic tendencies should be tapped into more because it makes you think a little differently, and challenges what you think sounds "right". I think this was the first composer we heard that composed music based off social issues which was pretty cool. As a composer myself, I ultimate goal is to be able to take social and political issues from my surrounding ...

Jonathan Bailey Holland and My Composition Process I thoroughly enjoyed Jonathan Bailey Holland’s presentation on April 22nd. His presentation initially caught my ear when he spoke about his introduction to music through his father’s record collection. I know that I and many others were introduced to music through their parents’ unique musical interests. Not only was I introduced to music that way, but I also gained my ideas and processes on how to write and orchestrate music through those musical experiences growing up.   Holland spoke next about sometimes, when composing, feeling burdened to write in some of the styles or conventions of the music he already knew or grew up on. In response to that, he spoke to the importance of writing music in response and relation to the things we know or feel passionate about. He posited that otherwise, audiences wouldn’t want to listen or relate to our music. I related to each of those sentiments on a deep level as a composer....

I agree with you that Mr. Holland was very modern and existed in a space of his own. Part of that feeling came to me when he explained his relationship with his hometown-Flint, MI. He said that he had a deep connection to the place but had left for school, only returning intermittently throughout the years. I think that sense of a home lost bled into his music, where he felt it necessary to explore new forms of presentation and took active risks. His experience writing for the Tree Ring group was one of these. He's composing for a group he initially did not know, the same way Flint was unknown to him as he took a turn off the exit and entered the town again (I remember how he remarked that whole neighborhoods were void of people save for two or three houses). Then, instead of turning away, he stays in that uncomfortable space and goes forward. I thought he presented his work subtly and with an open line for discussion. My favorite part of his lecture was this recollection of Flint...

I liked Jonathan's talk, I thought there were some fun moments. He was a cool guy and had some interesting perspectives. While his music lived a bit in the "band" world, with very on-the-nose gestures, and featured some more or less effective quotations from other pieces in the concert repertoire, I still thought that his approach to music made it really worthwhile. Which brings me to an interesting point? How good does our music really need to be for people to actually focus on the music? Take the above paragraph, I just stated that I didn't really care for Jonathan's music (not in an aggressive way, just not my style), yet, I thought he was really cool and enjoyed getting to hang out with him for the evening. I think this just begs the point of making sure we focus on being good humans. Because that said, the hope is that as we continue to do more work, our creations begin to get better, and then the music can take over. Does that make any sense? I hope so. ...

I really enjoyed this last weeks lecture by Mr. Jonathan Bailey Holland. I found his collaborations and commissioned works very interesting. The most interesting, in my opinion, was the song with the Tree Ring folk group! He spoke on how he was writing the music for them without really knowing what the theme would be and without any idea of the lyrics, which were writing afterward. As a songwriter, it’s always very interesting learning all the different ways songwriters, or composers writing a song, get to creating a song. The added instruments - chamber ensemble - added to the Tree Ring group was interesting. Though a bit odd, I found, it did add more color, a little bit more fullness and a nice unique sound to the group. I think a full orchestra would sound even better than the chamber ensemble. I don’t know, what do y’all think?  His more political works also stood out to me! As a Black American songwriter, I’m always thinking of ways in which I can incorporate my realiti...

Jonathan Bailey Holland hinted that for him, composition is essentially a solitary sport. In spite of this, he has engaged in interesting collaborations, and not without their difficulties. For example, he mentioned at least twice that the drummer of the group The Tree Ring couldn’t read music — and in those moments of the lecture, it became clear that notated music is clearly the form that Holland feels most comfortable. Holland’s work “Synchrony” features oboe, bassoon, violin, cello, and piano as its instrumentation, and incorporates pre-existing audio recordings as well. The blending of the live instruments with the audio fragments is extremely effective. The live elements re-contextualize the audio, and vice versa — it makes the ears perk up. Holland made clear that as an artist, he is interested in “reflecting back” his experience, and though he avoided taking on the label of “activist,” the subject matter of “Synchrony” is by its very nature deeply political. On ano...

I thought there was value to Anna Clyne’s work, and I was a fan of seeing how the pieces related to the artwork. I do think the presentation itself was a bit dull, and it isn’t on her. There have been multiple presenters this semester, Nico Muhly and Bora Yoon included, whose work is better heard straight, without preparation or discussion. The oddity of Florent Ghys’ work deserved clarification through a set up and Luke DuBois’ presentation was inherently performative but with Clyne, I simply just wanted to go from one piece to another. During the breaks where we would discuss logistics, I felt disengaged.

I thoroughly enjoyed Anna Clyne’s talk and found it to be enlightening both in terms of the compositions she shared as well as in understanding Clyne’s creative process as an artist, and her appreciation of multisensory creation and exploration. Clyne began the lecture by discussing her piece “Night Ferry” which was commissioned as a 25-minute piece for full orchestra. Because the piece was long, she made a timeline consisting of 7 pages, each page of which was supposed to represent 3 minutes of the piece. She then illustrated the timeline as she composed, each work gradually informing the other. This amalgamation of mediums to together inform the larger artistic whole was a fascinating approach to hear about, and I love the total artistic saturation in an idea that this implies. I also found it interesting to then see a movie based on the music and illustrations, which brought the art and music to life through animation, as though there are no limits on how far or ...

Anna Clyne’s prevention was one of the most interesting presentations so far in the composers' forum, she not only played very wonderful compositions with the detailed explanation but also showed how she utilizes technologies within her compositions. The most inspired thing I found was that she composed her pieces start from the pictures, and how she reflected some details of those pictures in a musical language and all the compositional devices she used work so well and make all the movements which have different image working perfectly as a whole piece of music. For the pieces she composed for the pictures, she observed all the details which have the potential to be related to music, such as the objects, scenery, locations, colors, and curves, and then she would try to use melody and arrangement to depict the scene and mood. One very impressive moment that she played was that she composed the melodic contour depends on the arch in the pictures, she also layered the arrange...

by Clarissa Baquiran This semester of Composer’s Forum has been very inspiring to me because each guest has given a glimpse of their approach to creating music, and Anna Clyne’s perspective is especially fascinating. For the “Night Ferry,” Clyne’s first long orchestra piece, she created a 7-sectioned mural to get a better idea of how to structure the piece, with each section representing 3 minutes. This collage of paint, charcoal, pencil, and illustrations (by Gustave Dore for Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner) depicts a myriad of textures and colors, tempestuous waters, and calmer seas. She translated these images to the orchestra, into the rising and falling of woodwinds and strings, rumbling low instruments, and much more. The beginning reminded me of the introduction of Amy Beach’s “Gaelic Symphony,” where the murmuring chromatic figures in the orchestra gave the sense of turbulent waters. I think that this is a great method,- making your own artw...