Kronos - Dan Visconti Journal

A Composer's Journey & Journal

“When I was growing up, I became absorbed in the Kronos Quartet's visceral and adventurous recordings in much the same way that many adolescents obsess over the albums of the great, iconic rock bands. I'm unbelievably thrilled for a chance to work with the ensemble that, more than any other, reflects my hopes of all that music can be…” –Dan Visconti

Dan Visconti has been commissioned by Kronos and the Hopkins Center through the Kronos: Under 30 Project to write a new work that will receive its world premiere at the Hop on January 14, 2006. Follow Dan as he documents the development of this new composition.

December 21, 2005: "There's No Place Like Home/Q&A"

Just visited some homies in Cleveland en route to my final destination: chez Viscontis in Chicago. I hadn't been back to my old haunt in Cleveland Heights since July, and it was nice to go back under more leisurely pretenses and actually have a chance to enjoy the couple blocks of that silly municipality that I sued to call home. We had a scrumdiddlyumptious fondue extravaganza to kick off the event, as you can see below, which was sorely necessarily due to Cleveland's perpetual wind-chill sucker punch. Here are the spoils from the second course, which you'll notice features some nice carrots, delicious mushrooms, and the ever-popular krab-with-a-'K', which is technically defined as a processed blend of whiting and Alaskan Pollock which with a little imagination is indistinguishable from its authentic counterpart:

Smitty surveys the mean streets of Cleveland Heights:

I also got to meet with multi-genre guitarist Don Better while in Cleveland, who comprises 50% of a duo I'll be writing a new piece for in 2006 (calculation based on organic sovereignty, not body mass—that would get tricky). The work has been commissioned by the Barlow Endowment and will feature Don playing a whole mother load of traditional and no-so-traditional fretted strings, and should be toddling into completion-land around August. Don's also a certified audiophile who specializes by dealing in high-end audio from his home in Shaker Heights, by appointment only. He's just added a few new toys to already burgeoning collection of cabinets, preamps, and turntables, so if you're looking to set up a hot new home theatre or in the market for a tight new stereo system you should take a peek at www.DonBetterAudio.com.

So I was greeted by my father at the airport tonight, who as something of a prank has taken it upon his silly self to grow a beard over the last month. He indulged in similar shenanigans this summer, in which he grew a rather accomplished patch of lip-hair while I was away with the sole intention of getting a rise out of me when I came home. Here's the mustachioed shot from circa August, as well as one I got today of the illustrious prankster's beard. Notice the awesome sammich with so much cheap yellow mustard that it's even photographable and two somewhat oddly placed oranges:

So in lieu of more musical questions (which I'll be roundly bumping off this week, finally) I'd like to invite anyone and everyone to vote on which manifestation of my father's facial hair they find most delightful. Since he doesn't use e-mail or own a computer I hope to read him these (obviously forthcoming; multiple) responses at a later date.

So let's kick off this week's Q and A smorgasbord with an update on the Yale School of Music's financial situation.

Q: Does Yale have any plans currently to expand its music program due to the gift? [see Nov. 15th entry]

A: Yale won't be using the ca$h munney to do much of anything, actually. This is not to dash anyone's early high hopes for expansion/community initiatives/outreach, but some new information has come to light that for understandable reasons the school of music has been less eager to publicize than the initial news of the endowment.

Yale has always had a reputation as the arts ivy—the place to go for music, visual art, drama, and architecture. This didn't happen by accident; in this case, Yale University (worth billions on the stock market) subsidizes the school of music to the tune of two million dollars a year. Thus the inevitable effect of the YSM's endowment has been that the University is withdrawing its subsidy. This hip move on the part of the university is obviously quite a groaner for the school, not the least of which because the 100-mil gift is to be disbursed in five 20-mil installments. So while free tuition is still happening (and happenin'!), don't expect any more big overhauls. In short, the practical effect of the gift has been largely to give the university (which is not the gift's intended recipient) a massive break while well-nigh ensuring that no one who's heard about the gift will ever donate to the school of music again—why should they, after all? They just got a 100-million dollar “endowment”. See?

It'd be ridiculous to paint an unnecessarily dark picture of the situation, of course, and I'm of the attitude that we should count our blessings and be thankful for the quite respectable progress that's already been achieved. Still, it's hard not to be just a little bit disappointed about the whole affair, and it's unfortunate that such well-intentioned philanthropy should in any way create a whiplash effect for the school.

Q: I've read about composers revising their music. How often does this happen and why?

A: It's true that many great and not-so-great composers have substantially reworked major pieces at a later date, and by “reworked” I mean “recomposed all or in part”, not just the usual tweaking and balance issues that happen after the first performance. Bruckner was a famous reviser who left us which several versions of his damn symphonies which create issues of performance and intention that continue to confound scholars to this day. Stravinsky famously revised “The Rite of Spring”, and although he basically left the music alone he completely re-notated everything in order to make it easier to perform (and thus make performances sound more confident). But I think I'm going to take the liberty of revising (ho, ho) your question a little bit so that I don't find myself in the difficult position of speaking for graven idols like Bruckner and Stravinsky. So what I can do is to talk a smidgen about how often I revise.

I revise more than your Aunt Bessie makes pot roast or my dear removed Uncle Reginald pops a Blatz before Redskins games, sonny boy. I revise even more than I embark on tangential digressions in this blog, if you can be expected to believe a whopper like that. Some composers today never revise a damn thing, most do once or twice, but I'm one of those morbidly obsessed revisers who you've probably seen mug shots of on Fox news.

What is the role of revision in my musical life? First of all, it has nothing to do with perfectionism or anything like that. For me I think it's more about brining a given idea to its potential in a way that's faithful to the manner in which it was originally conceived; also, since I was kind of a late bloomer with composing I've always been catching up to myself, trying to scavenge up the know-how to pull off my more developed and more ambitious ideas. I revise, then, when I a) become or am made aware of a specific deficiency in the musical argument that I now have the ability to remedy, b) consider the patient-to-be-resuscitated to be more or less singular in its premise and role, and c) come to the decision that a revision can either bring the fulfillment of a musical idea to its potential yet unreached or else d) come to the decision that I can raise the bar for the musical goal of the piece itself. That's kind of complicated, but specific: a + b + (either c or d). I'm hoping that my crazed revising while slow somewhat as I have more time to work on the initial manifestation of pieces and become more accomplished with my craft. For now, however, the criteria are met often enough, and experience has confirmed my suspicion that fewer better pieces rather than more half-baked ones is the way to go. In “Black Bend”, for example, I first became aware of the heretofore undeveloped tonal plane of the piece and its missing the extreme/grotesque mark I had been aiming for; I figured that I wouldn't be writing any other pieces in which slow blues get assembled and then go haywire; and lastly, saw the opportunity to use a thicker texture and more tonal variety as tools towards these ends.

I guess the last point to be made about all this would be that some people are more motivated to revise than others, and also that some composers' musical makeup lends itself to revising-tendencies more than others. Some composers I know feel that the problem of the distance between who they were when they wrote a piece and who they are currently weighs more heavily on their abilities and interests than others; some deal with revising impulses in new pieces rather than old ones, even defining their entire oeuvre as a series of reactions to previous attempts; some write music for which my above criterion simply don't apply. I find myself now writing pieces than unmistakably attempt to do certain musical things, and I think that's the main reason I've felt compelled to deal with my tinkering instincts within the musical environments that gave them birth.

Q: You wrote about software and equipment you use. What would the ideal studio setup be for you?

A: I don't have many unfulfilled hankerings gear-wise, but right now this studio apartment is totally cramping my style. Both places I've lived alone at have suffered from claustrophobia, and I think it'd solve a lot of problems for me to keep my living area, musical work area, and office is distinctly different quadrants, preferably separated by a wall, door, and even some of those nice hippie hanging-bead things that exotic dancers are always popping out of.

It's important to keep stress from composing and business out of my personal life, which is of course not entirely attainable but something worth striving for nonetheless. I find that I can work better and feel better when I'm either working intensely or resting, and time spent fretting about how the pieces ends while I toss and turn at night or get a drink of water doesn't do anyone any good!

Same reason for separating the musical work from the clerical work, but with the additional consideration of keeping the two worlds from influencing each other. This is embarrassing, but I'd need more than two hands of fingers to count all the times I'd considered dropping a beat to make something fit typographically, or cut an instrument altogether to make more room on a page…anyway, it's a slippery slope before you end up letting your commission fees and contracts muddy up your notes as well. If I was more of the “insanely wealthy” persuasion I would have one computer for work and one for correspondence and business.

Q: Many songs [sic] you have up are very improvised. But improvisation is made up, and that means someone else composes part of your song. Do you see a problem with this?

A: If by “composes” you're referring to any original contributions to the music not directly under control of the capital-C composer, I think that almost all pieces (remember, kids, they aren't songs!) can be said to have multiple composers. Each time someone performs a work by Bach that person is adding his/her own particular set of musical decisions, both conscious and unconscious; the choice to be “historical” and supposedly abnegate responsibility for one's musical choices is itself a personal choice, and capital-C composers can't escape this factor unless we perform our own works or freeze them in the form of a studio album that either can't or isn't intended to be realized by another. Some composers like Milton Babbit honestly desire to exert this level of control in some works, and Babbit in particular began working heavily in electronic works both for this reason and to circumvent the rhythmic sloppiness he found inimical to the precision required for his own musical style. Few composers, however, would abhor another mind meeting with theirs and subtly shaping their piece, just as long as the interpretation rests between clearly-identified boundaries.

The improvised sound in many of my pieces is a sonic and aesthetic decision; whether it is actually improvised or not is another matter entirely. In some works the “improvisation” is written out entirely traditionally; in works where this is not the case, it's only because the level of arbitrary precision required to realize my musical ideas would tend to be impractical to pull off and, more importantly, contrary to the spirit of the music.

So while I think you're mistaken about a few things, your question makes a salient point about control. To elaborate on the point I think you're after, if I did indeed write “improvise for 25 seconds” with no additional information, would that be a cop-out? Although there's nothing wrong with this at all in theory (there are clear parameters), I have to admit that this is a little too vague for expressing the kinds of musical ideas I'm interested in expressing. I have written somewhat similar passages in which the desired sound of such a passage and its trajectory are described more fully, sometimes with a few gestures written out for the performer to riff off of. Still, I think music is a real entity distinct from notation, and I'm not sure that an obsession with authorship has any bearing on the musical phenomena at hand.

Q: Why is not all classical-sounding music called classical? I don't mean crossover, just older stuff.

A: I'm pretty sure you're asking about the distinction between so-called “classical music” as a genre of essentially notated art-music now preserved in concert halls on orchestral instruments and the classic or classical period of music that was written in the mid- to late-18th century primarily in Vienna. “Classical” is a term pilfered from the visual art world (like many musical terms) and refers to certain values expressed in ancient Greek and Roman art: simplicity, balance, grace, detachment, and refinement. Translated to musical terms, these qualities are reflected in a penchant for formal symmetry, clarity of rhetoric, and an aesthetic that is beautiful in a way that is restrained rather than gaudy. The texture of classical period music is a simplification of the high baroque's emphasis on counterpoint and constant activity, and it's in the classical period that the elegant potential of the musical phrase is fully realized. Oh, and we're talking mainly W.A. Mozart and F.J. Haydn.

This is all stuff you could probably have found in a textbook if that maddeningly unclear term “classical” hadn't have created such confusion for you and countless others. But maybe rather than repeat a couple of taxonomic terms that treat the music like a neatly-pinned butterfly, it might be worth talking about how the music got that way. People didn't sit up in 1750 and say “ah, Old Bach kicked the bucket; let's get down to Franz Joseph!”

The sources for musical classicism are essentially two-fold: the simple and bright gallant style developed out of comic opera and the fussy, heavily ornamented style of the empfindsamkeit, also somewhat dubiously referred to as the rococo style.

By 1700, short chamber operas were being stuck in between acts of serious operas. They were simple; they were witty; they were tuneful. In short, they were refreshing in an environment of stodgy Handelian opera seria, and they became pretty popular. These stylistic traits were complemented by the more romantic and rarefied taste of the emfindsam style, which is a style that you can examine in spades in many slow movements by C.P.E Bach. The empfindsam style is really hard to pin down with words, but as I mentioned it was full of fussy ornaments. Also, it was concerned with the emotions not in an overtly romantic way like Schumann or late Beethoven, but more as sensibilities: something to be taken in from a distance, and daintily, like a fine glass of port you sip while seated upon a velveteen sofa in a pansified drawing room. (It's so hardcore. Try it.) Basically, these two contrasting conventions mixed up more or less, but not perfectly, and in many mature Mozart compositions there are strongly gallant gestures that assert themselves as well as the more pathetic little empfindsamstil ones. To further complicate matters, that old fuddy-duddy contrapuntal style from Big Pimp Bach (J.S.) actually comes back in vogue at the end of the century, and there is some full-blown fuguing going down in some of the London Symphonies and, notably, Mozart 41.

Whoa, I kind of went off on a limb there and answered a it more than you asked about, but you brought up a topic that's both heavily obfuscated by poor terminology and as well as graced by its own subtleties.

Q: Why does a composer chose a particular key for a piece of music?

A: This one is a doozy. There's several considerations at play here, from the extremely practical to the more personal to the downright illogical—I'll try to hash them out here in order of most basic to most obscure (and I'll have to hash because I'm not exactly down with how to julienne or dice):

First of all, range is a consideration, both on the dumb practical level as well as more expressive ones, too. Obviously, you don't want to write a piece for cello and go below the lowest note it can play, or some other such foolishness. But you'd also want to take into account issues of tessitura, or where a given passage lies within the playable range of an instrument. Normally it's better for all involved if a given musical thought is written in a range that is comfortably accessible for the player, not least of which because the music will come across more confidently. This is where having a knowledge of specific instruments comes in, because the size and shape of the “envelope” of playability can differ markedly from instrument to instrument.

For example, the human voice, as you might expect, is most comfortable mid-range, and going too far above or below this central comfortable range becomes a problem. Not so for the guitar cello, which certainly runs into greater technical difficulty in the extreme upper part of its range but not at all in the bottom; playing in low positions or on open strings is not at all analogous to an operatic tenor straining for that low G. Now, this said, not infrequently composers will take advantage of these registers either due to simple necessity, or else for a particular expressive effect. The bassoon solo that begins Stravinsky's “Rite of Spring” is located in the extreme high register of acceptable bassoon writing. This lends a feeling of throatiness and extreme urgency to the tone that it would otherwise lack, and also succeeds in taking a passage located in the most boring part of the orchestral mid-range (on the staff in treble clef) and invigorating it with an unexpectedly vivid color. Similarly, in Schubert's “Der Erlkonig” (which, incidentally, I'm convinced that every conservatory student is made to analyze at least 12 times in his or her undergraduate career), the composer repeats each verse at a slightly higher pitch level than preceded it, so that the natural strain this puts on the human voice contributes to the tension and drama. I hope this makes clear that the choice of a key area for range is not a textbook thing at all but rather a whole universe of expressive potential (well, maybe more like a county…or a borough).

But I've so far tackled only part of your question. Let's say we're talking about keys that have pitch centers so close that there's no substantial difference in tessitura. Do composers really specifically hanker for a C Major rather than a B or a D-flat? Well, probably not, but now there's a host of different concerns at play. First of all, ease of notation. C Major has no sharps or flats in its key signature, whereas B has five sharps and D-flat has...crap…five flats. These aren't by any means out of the ordinary or even anything that would give a trained musician much pause, but it's something to at least consider. A bigger issue, I think, is the particular sound or color of a given key as distinct from another. Now obviously, the whole point of something being in a major key is that although you might choose a different pitch as your key center, the sound and internal relationships of that scale always stay the same. So we can rawk out to Pat Boone's “Flip Flop and Fly” in its original, insipid D Major, but it'll still sound flaccid and milquetoast in F Major and equally forgettable in F-sharp Major—our good bud Pat would be crooning the same pabulum while standing on chairs of different heights (but still uke in hand—be careful, Pat, don't fall!) But now if we wanted to “do” “Flip Flop and Fly” in D minor we'd be changing the mode—that is, altering the make-up of the scale to achieve a different sound. My point is that when we speak of using different key centers for the same mode we're talking about a very subtle, elusive difference, not a fundamental one.

So what are some of the factors that might make certain keys sound different than others? Well, it all comes down to the instruments—since, remember, in the abstract there should be no difference, right? Well first of all, most instruments are conceived in a certain “natural” key—for example horns today are pitched in F. You can of course play in any key on today's horn, god bless, but music that takes advantage of the horn's natural, “open” tuning will be a little more full-toned and full of colorful overtones. Playing in a key that uses fewer open pitches will tend to sound correspondingly darker, more covered, and with fewer overtones. The same goes for strings—in this case, keys that take advantage of the resonance of the open strings will sound more brilliant. Take a listen to a work like the Preludium to Bach's third Partita in E Major to witness this kind of thing in action. The same music in E-flat would not only be a lot harder to play, but also would sound a lot less sparkly and resonant.

Now normally musicians make subtle adjustment to certain important scale degrees depending on the key. This has to due with temperament, which I won't even jest about getting into here, but suffice it to say that a violinist won't always play the same F depending on the context. For example, in minor keys, tuning the third down slightly can help emphasize the mode's “minor-ness”, and thus an F in D minor might be played lower than the same in E-flat Major. But there's one important instrument that can't make these kinds of blunders, er, “intonation adjustments”. You guessed it, little Suzy—it's that insolent, coquettish piano! By all that we hold rad! The piano, most ubiquitous of instruments, set in its ways like MacLane in a tub of cement? Well, pretty much, but don't worry, it still gets a prize for being “special” even if special is often synonymous with “creates massive, time-consuming problems when playing with other instruments and frequently derails orchestra rehearsals.” (Alright, it's not quite that bad….) Because of its handicap cum loveable uniqueness, the piano possesses a subtle expressive gradient from key to shining key that other, more not-necessarily-better-but-technically “normal” instruments lack—kind of like the kid in my 2nd grade class who couldn't tie his shoes but could totally reign in Connect-Four. Because there's a slight difference between each key, some composers have their favorite—and I think that B and D-flat have been duly favored for a certain richness and wistfulness by composers from Liszt to Rachmaninoff.

This brings me to my last point (phew!), by which I mean the aforementioned illogical crap. But first, another mini-history lesson. In the middle ages and early renaissance, it wasn't the “in” thing to do to transpose your modes. Whereas the awesome white pimp-shoes I bought this summer in San Jose are also not exactly in, the repercussions I weather for sporting them—mainly, the old “constant ridicule an derision from colleagues and students”—is admittedly a pinch more tolerable than the old “get excommunicated/murdered by the Catholic church” move. No joke—throughout the middle ages there were harshly-enforced restrictions on style and subject matter that were in part responsible for that church's losing its place among serious contenders of musical innovation to many of the Protestant sects—most notable the Lutheran Bach. (Bet you're beating your foreheads against a missal now, Popes Pius-Innocent X!) While this would be a limiting obstruction to the kinds of musical arguments expressed by Bach and his posse (by which I mean all common-period tonal music), it lent each mode a certain “special ness” not unlike the different key areas on the modern piano. For example, the Dorian mode (the octave D-D on the white-keys of the piano) was always on D—that was part of its sonic stamp. Gradually these transposition rules were loosened, but this interesting legacy lead to some pompous theorizing in the 18th and 19th centuries which deserves being explained, then debunked. Read on, gentle readers, because if you read this journal regularly I can assume than you eat pompous theorizing up with a spoon.

Beginning with the baroque doctrine of affections, the idea of assigning certain moods and affects to a given key has been a useful tool for composers. From this notion, however, came the erroneous belief that certain keys abstractly signified a certain affect—permanently. For example (and this is all over publications from the period, too), F Major was considered to be the most pastoral of all keys—and D minor, as Nigel Tufnel will attest, one of the most tragic. Now after reading this hefty e-thesis you're no-doubt aware that there could be reasons for this—perhaps the open sound of the natural horn, the resonance of the open A-string, whatever—but the statement that F is a “pastoral” key in the abstract is pure hokum. However, you can see how, what with this idea in the air, composers wee and great sure wrote a lot of pastoral compositions in F, not the least of which being Beethoven's sixth symphony. Anyhow, you can see how the resulting overabundance of compositions that were nicely paired with the “right” key lead to a fallacious, circular justification of the original loopy premise. It ain't so, but boy, did those cantankerous composers really make things look as if it were.

Q: Where will your Casio keyboard be over the holidays?

A: This is clearly the question I will let the Funboard answer, as per last week's promise: CASIO: [Plays raucous, overly kinetic demo; flashes] I'm not sure how to interpret these signs, but I will say that despite my best efforts the Casio often follows me home for the holidays, like the warm-hearted terrier we all know it to be. But it's an “outside” keyboard so we don't have to worry about the living-room carpet:

Ok, ladies and gents, one and all, and even you, Tiny Tim; enjoy your holidays wherever and whenever they may take you, because we all know that when the feeling hits there's no such thing as holding back. Let's wish for peace on earth as well as actually implementing personal and public policies likely to lead to the realization of this hope. And also remember, to paraphrase Blake: money like muck, no good lest it be spread.

Dan's Bio

Dan Visconti (b. 1982, La Grange Illinois) received a M. M. in Composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM), where he studied with Margaret Brouwer, Orianna Webb and Zhou Long. He continues to teach composition and popular songwriting through the conservatory, and also serves as a faculty member of the Young Composers Program at CIM. This fall, Dan will begin work on his MMA studies at Yale. Dan has won awards and scholarships including student composer awards from BMI and ASCAP, two consecutive first-place awards in the ASCAP/Victor Herbert Young Composers Competition, the NFMC Devora Nadworthy Award for Vocal Writing, and the 2004 BMI Foundation Boudleaux Bryant Commission. He has been the recipient of artist residencies at Copland House and Villa Montalvo. His recent commissions include works for the Moore/Better Duo, the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, the Cleveland Museum of Arts's AKI Festival, the Corigliano Quartet, and Antares. For more info, go to danvisconti.com.

Kronos: Under 30 Project

This year, more than 300 composers from 35 countries applied to the Project, which is a collaboration of the Kronos Quartet and the Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College, in cooperation with the American Music Center. The Kronos: Under 30 Project was created in 2003, Kronos' 30th anniversary year, to support the creation of new work by young artists, and to help Kronos cultivate stronger connections with young composers in order to develop lasting artistic relationships with the next creative generation. The first work commissioned through the Kronos: Under 30 Project, "String Quartet: Oculus Pro Oculo Totum Orbem Terrae Caecat" by Alexandra du Bois, received its premiere at the Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College, in 2003 and has been performed in major venues throughout the United States and Europe. The world premiere of Felipe Perez Santiago's "CampoSanto," the second piece to be commissioned through the Kronos: Under 30 Project, took place in 2004, at Stanford University in California. Both works were featured in Kronos' performance on February 5, 2005, at Carnegie's Zankel Hall in New York.