Talking Music: Conversations With John Cage, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, And 5 Generations Of American Experimental Composers [Paperback] Review

Willian Duckworth is marvelous at asking questions,he is so natural at it that he makes you feel you have known his guests all your life. He allows everyone to feel at home, at ease,like catching more flies with sugar quip.Like asking John Cage for instance, "I don't have a very goodunderstanding of what your early musical training was like,". or to LaMonte Young, asking if he is the "father of minimalism", I guessit doesn't matter now, since most of what is discussed has played itselfout. Here Duckworth interviews creators of primary creative genres ofAmericana leaning toward the achievements of all the various,nefarious"isms", experimentalism, minimalism, well just intonation doesn'tfit, and the ubiquitously opaque post-modernity. And progressing from whoare considered the Mammas and Pappas to the younger generation.The genre ofInterviews seem to be occurring with greater frequency,speaking of one ofthe features of post-modernity. It is the most immediate way of knowingsomeone's art, aesthetic, how they feel about the world,about politics, orhow they don't feel. Obsessions are explored in these interviews,as withJohn Zorn's early buying jags of recordings,jazz etc.,and formative yearsas with La Monte Young and his obsessions with sound, listening totelephone generators,or machines, the inherent drone in these industrialobjects,Also professional associations, and disassociations with the NewYork scene,Fluxus which includes,just about everyone here interviewed isprobed, with nice discussions of the early years of performance art in NewYork City.Education away from academia was an important component ofAmerican music,sorry to say, with those of the post war-generation turningto the east, and World Music, as Steve Reich, Phil Glass,Lou Harrison,Pauline Oliveros and La Monte Young. Young in particular reflects on hiseducation with Pandit Pran Nath on intonation and improvisation andlearning it with Marian Zazeela.Professional associations, how to surviveby being a performance artist, Duckworth pursues and explores with MeridithMonk and Laurie Anderson, finding gigs in New York City or Europe again waseveryone's passion.How do you work? is also a wonderful question, Monkreflects that she has to work all the time to feel attached, whereas sheknows composers who don't work for months and claim to feel they don't loseanything. How creators get into ,what they get into, as Ben Johnstonreflects on his early education with instrument iconoclast Harry Partch,how Partch taught Johnston to sing fractional tones, an eleventh/sixteenth,and how Partch would devote mornings to music, and afternoons to physicalwork, building sheds,or home extensions,or gathering wood. Also Johnstonspeaks about his wonderful string quartets, the Seventh in particular whichis based on an 100-tone scale, and how we come to understand it via therelationships it represents rather than hearing 100 isolated tones. WithLou Harrison we have almost a history of American music, in that his lifetraversed through the primary achievements, the interests in World Music,Tunings, percussion music, and extended techniques,living on both coasts.But Harrison claims he was always a melodic composer, he had to singwhatever he wrote first, to attach himself to the world of sound, no matterhow complex his music became.Some interviews are boring however as the theone with Phillip Glass where he simply recounts his life, and hisinterests, there was not a spirit of adventure, of discovery.Whereas MiltonBabbitt has wonderful reflections on his early studies in music with RogerSessions, and how Babbitt felt he needed to start over. The interview withChristian Wolff was over before it got interesting,Wolff primarilydiscussed his early music, the pieces associated with the CageSchool(Cage,Feldman,Brown,Wolff)(nice photo of them)instead of traversingthe set of problematics of dealing with political imagery. That questioncame as the very last one."Are you still writing politicalmusic?".Duckworth admirably gives nice introductions to eachcomposer, and makes you feel the center of where creativity occurs, whatexcites an artist,and where challenge and repose occurs within music.Onegood question here always was"When did you first hear of JohnCage", or what was the first piece of "so and so" you heard.This makes for a marvelous discussion on what were the initial indeliablemoments on one's creative life. Not everyone is gifted at interviews it isa conditioned and practiced art. This work is a great model toward thatgenre.

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Product Description:
Talking Music is comprised of substantial original conversations with seventeen American experimental composers and musicians-including Milton Babbitt, Pauline Oliveros, Steve Reich, Meredith Monk, and John Zorn-many of whom rarely grant interviews.The author skillfully elicits candid dialogues that encompass technical explorations; questions of method, style, and influence; their personal lives and struggles to create; and their aesthetic goals and artistic declarations. Herein, John Cage recalls the turning point in his career; Ben Johnston criticizes the operas of his teacher Harry Partch; La Monte Young attributes his creative discipline to a Morman childhood; and much more. The results are revelatory conversations with some of America's most radical musical innovators.

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