The Final Countdown

So. Here we are at the final blog post. It has certainly been one swingy semester. One full of ups and downs. One full of twists and turns. It was a crazy ride that I simultaneously couldn’t get enough of and one that I wanted to get off of. I learned so much about both myself and about the music presented to be over the course of 24 classes. But enough about me for now, let’s talk about Postmodernism.

So now, we’ve come to the end of the road with Postmodernist Music. Postmodernist Music is actually a subset of Postmodernism in general. Postmodernism is the belief that all “truth” is fabricated, and as such, nothing can be known for a certain fact. In other words, Postmodernism is inviting people to take everything they see with a grain of salt, to question everything that is and ever was.

Postmodern music, meanwhile, isn’t necessarily its own genre of music. Rather, it is an extension and audibulsation of Postmodern ideas. However, Postmodern music is not in opposition to Modern Music (though it was formed as a reaction). As a matter of fact, it’s not much of anything. It lives in its own world, doing whatever it please, not caring what anyone says about it.

So, what constitutes as Postmodern Music: Every single example we have listened to over the Semester.

There are so many names that appear in the list of composers that are cited as “Important to Postmodern Music”, that labeling all the music we have listened to as “Postmodern” to at least some degree wouldn't be that big of a stretch. Jonathan Kramer posted what he considers the following 16 characteristics of Postmodern Music. This music, in Kramer’s eyes:

1. is not simply a repudiation of modernism or its continuation, but has aspects of both a break and an extension
2. is, on some level and in some way, ironic
3. does not respect boundaries between sonorities and procedures of the past and of the present
4. challenges barriers between 'high' and 'low' styles
5. shows disdain for the often unquestioned value of structural unity
6. questions the mutual exclusivity of elitist and populist values
7. avoids totalizing forms (e.g., does not want entire pieces to be tonal or serial or cast in a prescribed formal mold)
8. considers music not as autonomous but as relevant to cultural, social, and political contexts
9. includes quotations of or references to music of many traditions and cultures
10. considers technology not only as a way to preserve and transmit music but also as deeply implicated in the production and essence of music
11. embraces contradictions
12. distrusts binary oppositions
13. includes fragmentations and discontinuities
14. encompasses pluralism and eclecticism
15. presents multiple meanings and multiple temporalities
16. locates meaning and even structure in listeners, more than in scores, performances, or composers.

As has been pointed out numerous times throughout class, all of the pieces we have listened to fits at least one or more of those characteristics. As does the piece I want to get into today: William Bolcom’s setting of William Blake’s poem series Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

Songs of Innocence and of Experience is a gargantuan composition that would make Beethoven’s 9th look like a pushover by comparison. The work as a whole takes approximately 3 hours to perform and is scored for Orchestra, Choir, and Soloists. The culmination of 25 years of work, the finished product is something to behold.

So what makes it postmodern? Postmodernism is, as I said before, a reaction against the norm. And the instrumentation of this piece clearly reflects that. This was mostly the result of Bolcom’s quest to understand these poems and to set them to music. Along the way, he discovered so many different styles of music (Reggae, Country, and Bluegrass among them), and had an epiphany: one style of music should not be placed on a pedestal as has been the norm for so long.

Thus, along with the traditional orchestra, Bolcom included “...saxophones, guitar, electric guitar, bass guitar, harmonica, electric violin, and ‘country, rock, and folk singers.’ ” The result is a piece of such contrast that it is a piece of art in an of itself.

Now, maybe I’m looking in this too deeply. George Gershwin used Three Saxophones and Banjo in his Rhapsody in Blue. Heck, Georges Bizet used an Alto Saxophone in his score to L'Arlésienne. So instrumentation itself shouldn’t be Postmodern. But the piece’s Orchestration is. Two parts, The Little Black Boy from Part 1 and Laughing Song from Part 2 are good examples of what I’m talking about.

The Little Black Boy (incidentally one of the first Abolitionist Poems ever written) features an modern blues ensemble. There is no indication that there is an orchestra until the last 10-odd seconds. Hear it for yourself here:

By contrast, Laughing Song (The audio for which is regrettably unavailable) starts off in a similar way to the Più Mosso from the Mystic Circles of the Young Girls from The Rite of Spring and plays off just as mysteriously. The quick witted, jaunty, Messiaen-esque orchestra is a good setting for such a jaunty composition.

If you were to listen to these two pieces by themselves without any context, you would never know they were two movements of the same piece. Most multi-movement piece usually falls under the same genre. But this work is a reaction against that. Bolcom saw all these genres of American Music and realized that they shouldn’t be more or less important that any other. And that they’re put together like a traditional symphony is evident of that.

This piece is just the latest out of the hundreds of pieces we’ve listened to that were written when mankind sobered up and thought to itself “What do we do now”? the answer: move forward. It’s like Copernicus said (paraphrased): “When you get to the edge of a wall, climb over that wall and keep shooting”. Even when everything seems to have been invented, every musical device discovered, every style explored, there’s only one thing left to do: try something new.

Now, after 23 blog posts, there’s only one question left to ask: what did I learn from this class? What knowledge did I take away that would be beneficial to me down the road? Well, let’s see. There were plenty of pieces we listened to, some I felt were good, some I felt were bad, along the entire Avant-Garde spectrum. Chances are, sooner or later, I might end up performing one of those pieces or one like it. Even if I don’t personally like the piece very much, or hell, I might even detest it, I’ll still play it anyway because it means something to someone, although I might not see what it is. It’s said that Music is the Universal Language, and I think I finally understand what that truly means this semester.

I guess if I had to sum up what I learned in one sentence, it’s this: Music is for Everyone.

Thank you. Good night.

- Dennis O’Keefe.