Hey, why not ask for more?

And so nine orchestras and festivals co-commissioned a new, post-Pulitzer work from Jennifer Higdon.

Jennifer Higdon premieres concerto “On a Wire”
Philadelphia Inquirer
David Patrick Stearns

Though her Pulitzer Prize-winning Violin Concerto limited the soloist role to a single instrument...

Hasn’t she heard that bigger is better? She must not love America very much.

...Higdon got out from under the long history of concertos by writing the new work for six soloists, specifically the contemporary- music [sic] group eighth blackbird.

I presume the question confronting her was “how do I outdo my last big hit?” Her answer, via Stearns: less history; more soloists; hot new music group.

Got it?

(An aside: is there a limit to the number of soloists one can have in order that they retain their status as soloist? Anyway.)

Members of that group think nothing of playing multiple instruments in a given piece, often switching between piccolo and flute or violin and viola.

That’s cool. However, it’s pretty standard fare for flute players to also play piccolo and violinists to play viola. That’s not the best way to support the point that they, and the piece, are out of the ordinary.

In addition, Higdon’s concerto asks its players to practice “extended techniques” - plucking and bowing the innards of the piano...

Not that I find this passage terribly worded—close, though—instead, I take issue with the interplay of description with the premise, that the piece is new and innovative.

You and I know that extended techniques have been practiced for some time (or depending on the argument, since the very beginnings of music). Yet, to place “extended techniques” in scare/air quotes, today, puts them in a position of being exoticisms (outside of a norm), which we know not to be the case. So, I can only assume that othering “extended techniques” is an intentionally misleading puffery strategy.

Please feel free to take issue with that; but I hope it will become somewhat evident, below.

In addition, Higdon’s concerto asks its players to practice “extended techniques” - plucking and bowing the innards of the piano, much like the techniques pioneered by...[?]

1. Erik Satie – Piège de Méduse (1913); inserted sheets of paper into the piano
2. Heitor Villa-Lobos – Chôros no.8 (1925); again, paper inserts
3. Maurice Delage – Ragamalika (1912-22); cardboard inserts
4. Henry Cowell – Aeolian Harp (1923); manipulation of piano strings directly
5. John Cage – Sonatas and Interludes (1946-48); nuts, bolts, doodads, etc.

...much like the techniques pioneered by one of Higdon’s teacher’s, George Crumb.

I also left out all the other, lesser-known experiments with prepared piano and/or playing inside the piano. (The above was mostly found via Wikipedia)

So, circa 1970 George Crumb, you say?

Call me paranoid, but scare quotes around “extended techniques” are patronizing, as well as ignorant, false, and archaic; plus, I sense a bloated case of name-dropping.

-

A few awkward, unrelated moments:

Always a seeker of extra-symphonic sounds, in the past she's trawled the aisles of Home Depot for trinkets that would give her orchestration an ethereal jingle.

Can I assume, then, that junk from True Value would have given her music a transcendental glow?

Higdon has perhaps never cast her net so wide.

[snip]

So many kinds of musical incidents are contained within the 25-minute concerto that you'd think Higdon was inspired by the far-flung literary imagery of the Leonard Cohen song "Bird on a Wire."

Were there program notes?

However, Higdon, 48, swears she has never heard (or heard of) of the song.

-

Back to the meat of the issue.

The Atlanta premiere with a longtime collaborator like Spano turned out to be exactly what she needed in the wake of winning the Pulitzer in April.

I wonder why.

“I think you explored a whole new room in your musical mansion," Atlanta music director Robert Spano told Higdon on Sunday after a post-concert toast.

“I'm hearing things that sound exactly like you, but I haven't heard them before."

So, it’s new, but not too new? Like you just know Toy Story 3 is going to be good, because the others were?

That's one reason he scheduled a recording session the day after Thursday's premiere.

The other reason?

His plan is to rush-release the concerto as a classical-music single.

...to capitalize on her success. I love the free market co-mingled with the arts!

...[it is] yet another triumph in a series of Higdon works that have made her one of the most immediately embraced living American composers.

Example 1. How another immediately embraced American composer followed up his success (Hammerman).

Example 2. God Bless America rendered by the stylings of Canadian Celine Dion.

Pithy Title Goes Here

From the New York Times, a nice article about new music:

A Night of Collaboration and Energetic Activity

I’m hoping for pithy generalizations!

You can measure a new-music group’s success by the composers it commissions.

Bingo!

You can measure a new music group’s success that way. (Your mom can measure…but I digress.)

One could also measure a new music group’s success via number of concerts performed, records sold, attendance, or, perhaps, articles written about. Whew, enough passive voice for now…

When Eighth Blackbird began performing, in 1996, its repertory consisted largely of revivals of older scores and works by young composers in the early stages of their careers. The group has not forsaken those composers, nor has it given up curatorial programming completely, but the program it played at Zankel Hall on Thursday evening showed that it is now in another league.

Eighth Blackbird has been called up from the minors! (Also, I thought they, deliberately, did not capitalize their name...?)

All the music was commissioned by the group, with the first half devoted to the vigorous “Double Sextet” (2007) by Steve Reich and the second to “Singing in the Dead of Night” (2008), an energetic and occasionally spooky collaboration by David Lang, Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe, the composers who run Bang on a Can.

Fair enough. I see that their all-music-we-comissioned concert elevates their stature. Somewhat. From one perspective.

All in all, a good review. One should be careful of pithy generalizations, though; they de-elevate the review. Otherwise, a certain someone may throw Fast Eddie at ya.

Conceit Comes in Many Flavors

Serving up a musical cocktail: eighth blackbird’s tasty music fusion

The words "crossover" and "fusion" are perhaps the most frightening in the music descriptive lexicon.

A few thoughts. 1) I would like to purchase, and subsequently destroy, all copies of this lexicon of which you speak. 2) It is true, there is a lot of bad “crossover” and “fusion” music. However, there is a lot of bad music, period. “Bad” is not genre-specific. Except New Age. That is bad. 3) Of all of the words in the music descriptive lexicon, I would nominate “bad” as the most frightening. “Out-of-tune?”

They indicate a self-conscious crossing of a barrier -- from "classical" to "pop," say -- or a marriage of things that just don't taste great together.

Sometimes. Sometimes they indicate this. You write as if genre-bending is a new idea. I submit that it’s as old as recorded music history.

Yet there are successful ways to bring different influences together.

What? Yes. That’s not what you…

See, for example, the marvelous Chicago-based new music sextet eighth blackbird (the "birds," as their fans call them, don't capitalize their name).

You don’t say. Non-capitalization is a personal pet peeve. Every music department has that one guy who refuses to capitalize basically anything he writes (including his name) which marks him as the second coming of John Cage. We get it. You’re avant-garde, at least in your mind.

e. e. cummings is great. The "birds" also, in their name, reference Wallace Stevens. He used capital letters, when appropriate.

Saturday night at the Harris Theater, they presented one of the most organically realized evenings of music that took the best of several disciplines, discarded classifications and arrived at enchantment.

“Arrived at enchantment”? Wow. That sounds like parody. But, sadly, no.

However. The ensemble mentioned is really rather good, as is the rest of the article. The concert sounds like it was good, too. But “arrived at enchantment” sounds like something from The Simpsons.

Homer and Marge walk into a day spa. Over the loudspeaker, a voice says:

“Welcome! You’ve arrived…at enchantment!”