some short and extremely scattered thoughts on Thomas Adès

• opinion has always vacillated on his music but have generally found it to be dazzling and clever and attractive and indeed fun to play
• (playing Life Story right now and enjoying it quite a bit, so let that be a disclaimer that I'm not coming from the place of being a "hater")
• however, do feel like his music attracts a large number of fuccbois(tm) especially of the pretentious composition student type
  • is it the wunderkind thing?
  • is it the "complexity"/"precision" part? that ties into the "dazzling" effect of his music? (see similar influence of Ravel/Stravinsky on 14-year-olds?)
  • something about being a juggernaut of white male refinement and erudition?
• and his music is erudite but, in much of my getting to know it, not much else... like there's plenty to like but I find not much to love
• friend of mine mentioned that he is a younger composer working rather solidly in the Classical Tradition and that is inspiring for people to uphold the status quo etc. also true.
• some of the instrumental works I find particularly hollow: Traced Overhead, Arcadiana, Living Toys
  • Traced Overhead is florid and proliferate and precise and yet the impression, often, is so indistinct. also as a native English-speaker, marking "Quasi allontanandosi" is... well...
    • perhaps the *most* over-notated piece of Adès's I know.. there are passages where I do feel markings are superfluous (while in many other pieces I see why the specificity is at least welcome).
  • Arcadiana is becoming something of a staple and I think it's fun but it rings hollow to me (in comparison to something like, say, ainsi la nuit or Black Angels). the contrast of "O Albion" is so bald as to feel rather dialed in, even sentimental ("oh, here's the *emotional part*"!). there's no nuance in any emotionality the piece does have; I don't feel that any of the movements really shed meaningful light on any of the others (which, with a movement like O Albion so conspicuously/ostentatiously protruding, might have been nice).
  • in light of the rather charming program note for Living Toys, the piece has never registered to me as anything more than an illustration... there's a naïveté there that some might find endearing but it strikes me as v hackneyed
  • Chamber Symphony and Asyla, in my memory of them, felt similarly forgettable, even. 
• I like Life Story quite a bit for its text and I really do feel like the performer can "do something with it", i.e. there's something in it to love and that musicians can personalize and that is at best edifying for others to behold. I don't get that with a lot of his other music, which seems to me so dispassionate it in its expression and so much about execution of these fussy directions in pursuit of momentarily impressive effects ("just do what I tell you and people will love it/you") rather than any "necessary" utterance. need music do anything more than dazzle? I guess not, but it's often mistaken (and sold) as this whole "genius" THING.
• but also even with Life Story it's done as this nasty joke and I think there's a real melancholy in it that people kind of ignore. audiences often laugh at the end and I'd be curious to do/see a version that is more... devastating? rather than biting. otherwise the rest of the goddamn piece, and its lamentations about solipsism and loneliness and malaise, isn't worth hearing.
• it's this outward-facing music clearly assembled of fine materials by an assured and erudite hand. and yet so much just doesn't stick. like he knows (and probably loves) music and I'm fascinated by his tastes (anyone who can get into Couperin and Depeche Mode is a friend of mine), and have learned much from the things he has avowed to have learned from. wish I could feel any of his love for music through his own music.

On my radar today.

6 Pieces, Op. 94: V. Sostenuto (quasi andante mesto), a song by Max Reger, Duo d'Accord on Spotify

seeds (China) (2017)
solo piano

In writing these short pieces I wanted to rediscover how fun composing once was for me, before the weight of having to have "something to say", or even "knowing what you're doing". In many of my earliest compositions I was much more adventurous and curious, and I'm sure it was because I didn't think too much while I was writing; I just wrote, whether or not I knew what it would end up sounding like – musical doodling, if you will. Looking back on those early pieces I'm often surprised by how much more daring my ideas were, when there were no "stakes".

Over the winter holiday I took a short trip, and did my best to compose a complete page of music every day, as quick as possible, so as not to allow time for self-consciousness or doubt. It's a beautiful feeling to be able to surprise yourself; indeed most of these pieces turned out more interesting than I expected.

I learned a thing or two about myself too – what are my habits, tendencies, what do I do default to when I feel stuck? The title, "seeds", refers to the idea that these are each germs from which other music might one day grow, either as direct source material, or conceptual fragments to be more fully explored elsewhere.

(No recording exists as of yet, but perhaps sometime very soon!)

A playlist of tracks that kept me going in 2017. 

A playlist featuring Joni Mitchell, Blood Orange, The xx, and others

Currently on my radar:

Suite, Op. 45, FS 91, "Den Luciferiske" (The Luciferan): III. Molto adagio e patetico, a song by Carl Nielsen, Christina Bjørkøe on Spotify

A recent recording of a piece I performed in November, and have come to love very dearly. This piano sounds particularly beautiful with the sostenuto pedal reverberation effects; I got really lucky that day!

I tend to have a lot of rosy thoughts about music; through the last years of my undergrad I held this belief that making music has to be redemptive somehow, that being the only way I could explain how so many deeply flawed personalities could be so good at it. This was never confirmed and perhaps never could be, and I vacillate on whether I find it to be true.

Another (perhaps related) road I kept trying to go down was the thought of composing as therapy, as if I could heal myself by writing the music I wanted to hear through all the shittiness that I was always losing sleep over. Some part of me wanted to explore the depths of suffering, even put it on display, but of course it was never my intention to share raw anguish than to conjure an antidote – I wanted something that felt like it understood pain but was a means of moving forward. As I type this I realize how ridiculous it sounds to ascribe any of this to abstract music, but there it is.

I laid awake last night with another iteration of this thought, that I might write a piece that would be a talisman, that in the writing of it and the experience of it I could feel safe, protected from harm. It's not far from the feeling I have when I practice, or am otherwise immersed in a piece of music that I feel very strongly about, that music is some kind of refuge.

Thinking about all the projects I want to start composing, I always treat music as some kind of analogue or object. Music as reliquary, music as memorial, music as act of protest, music as documentation. At this point I couldn't imagine writing a piece that is "just a piece". 

Faded Songs (2014/2015/2016)
three palimpsests for mixed ensemble

1. After F. Chopin
   • 2 violins (1st with mute, 2nd with practice mute), viola (with practice mute), cello (with practice mute, contrabass (with practice mute)
2. After J.S. Bach and R.R. Parry (has been performed separately as "each other")
   • clarinet in B-flat, bass clarinet, crotales (bowed)
3. After R. Schumann and J.-C. Risset)
   • clarinet in B-flat, bass clarinet, block of wood (or other clock-like "ticking sound" – NOT a woodblock), 2 violins (with mutes), viola (with mute), cello, double bass, piano solo

I’ve long been fascinated by palimpsests in music – the subtle (and risky!) art of rewriting, deconstructing, even vandalizing an existing work, with the aim of recontextualizing the familiar. The present set of three movements is a compilation of my previous efforts with this technique, through the past two years, slightly revised.

Each of the three pieces I chose as a subject represents to me something very specific, which I’ve tried to elucidate through my erasure. For the Bach and Schumann pieces, especially, I’ve imposed programmatic suggestions: a scene of two sleepers dreaming of each other, and an evocation of the passing of youth and the inexorable procession of time.

Faded Songs was first performed in its entirety by Wild Up, conducted by Christopher Rountree, in April 2016. It was the winner of the 2016 Hugo Davise Composition Competition at UCLA.

Figments in Fracture (2015/16)
piano duo (four hands, one piano)
for the 2016 Yarn/Wire Institute

1. Prelude and Fugue (to Howard Chen)
2. Wallflower Interlude (to David Conte)
3. Recitative and Aria

Figments in Fracture is a set of three short pieces, each an exploration into the conceit of “broken music” – rhythm, melody, and tonality are fractured throughout. They may be performed separately (perhaps as encores), or together as a set, in the printed order.

The first two movements were written for and first performed at the inaugural Yarn/Wire Institute, by Laura Barger (secondo) and the composer (primo). The third movement has not yet been performed, as of August 2017.

"of being a self in a song" (2017)
solo piano
for Mindy Cheng

For better or for worse, my acquaintance with Bach’s Goldberg Variations is inextricably tied to Glenn Gould’s relic 1981 recording. The slow tempos and incessant vocalizing that strike many others as eccentric have been, for me, part of my initial and lasting (and beloved) impression of this music, and not so eccentric at all.

While preparing to write this piece, I read somewhere that Gould habitually vocalized to make up for whatever he could not “get” out of the piano, like some kind of reflex. Apocryphal as it may be, I found this idea poetic (especially in light of his recording of Bach’s “Goldberg” aria – vocal music written for an instrument with no obvious vocal qualities); Gould’s recording (and indeed, his artistry) is marked by what he couldn’t hold back. And so, Gould’s humming, both in itself and as an icon of inescapable selfhood, provided the inspiration for this short piece.

The title is taken from Anne Carson’s novel-in-verse, Autobiography of Red: “Meanwhile, music pounded / across hearts opening every valve to the desperate drama of being / a self in a song”.

This piece was written at the kind request of Prof. Inna Faliks for the Dialogues and Re-imaginings Festival at UCLA. It was first performed by my friend, Mindy Cheng, in June 2017.

The score for this piece is available on IMSLP. Please let me know if you are interested in playing it.

A Flame Out of Focus (2014)
piano and cello
for Niall Ferguson

May 2016

In a lesson with Mario Garuti, I shared this piece, which was then quite new and a big step for me. He saw the first line and exclaimed in jest, "Modern music!"

We both laughed because I thought this was very funny. Then, as he scrolled down to the next line he looked at me again and joked, "Ah no, it's tonal music!"

I thought this was even funnier. Laughs aside, it does kind of illustrate how the piece operates. I had been given an assignment to respond to a character from a painting by Picasso (it was "the pleading woman", from Guernica) and felt quite detached from it. But I found this detachment, both from the artwork and from its grisly subject matter, interesting and troubling. And so I was able to respond to the prompt, by way of investigating my non-response to it.

The piece was first performed in November 2014 at UCLA, by my dear friend Niall Ferguson on cello, and myself at the piano. In 2015, it was a finalist for the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award.

The score for this piece is available on IMSLP. Please let me know if you are interested in performing it.

Fall 2014

In My Own Hands (2016/17)
solo piano

There are two versions of this piece – the first (2016) is a set of variations for right hand alone, followed by a coda, and the other (2017) is a slightly expanded set of variations for alternating left and right hands, followed by the same coda. (The recording above is of the 2017 version.)

Like many of my other works, In My Own Hands is suffused with an air of wistfulness, but I think to date it is the most intensely responsive to my own life. The first version of this piece was written for my undergraduate senior recital – coming at the end of my four years at school, it has a something of valedictory meaning to me. There were things I wanted to say to people that I could no longer reach (and so I sought to express a vulnerability of writing a letter, by having the pianist play with only the right hand until the music becomes so expansive as to require both), and I was about to embark on a whole host of uncertainties after graduation – as many graduates do. 

I revised the piece sometime around the new year, extending the arc of the form and filling in where I thought there was any unnecessarily empty space. It's quite more dramatic, but otherwise stays faithful to the affect of the original.

why compose 

I've found that every piece I finish that I'm happy with was, in some way, the result of a new method of working, some kind of exploration. sometimes there is extramusical "content" or "inspiration" or "what I have to say", but the real pleasure in composing, for me, is derived from the solving of new puzzles, which sometimes "inspiration" provides, or even is, in itself.

I don't think this makes my music any less meaningful to me; there is a real joy in the purposeful arrangement of elements that really does transcend the merely topical. if I can find in myself ideas strong enough to withstand any other mental/spiritual barrier, that is meaningful to me.

it's absurd, really, and I'm indeed actively searching for an avenue to explore worldly matters in my work, to use composition as a means of apprehension – but again, the inspiration is not fully found in the topic but in the quest(ion) of how to confront it.

• artful, as opposed to artlessness
• "arts and crafts", craft as in work, technique (well-crafted)
• technique, as in art (the art of doing something). art as "work" – we say *work* of art

Crudele, acerba, inesorabile morte… (2017)
after a madrigal by Luca Marenzio
string quartet

Just finished a small project yesterday, for string quartet, based on a madrigal by Luca Marenzio ("Crudele, acerba..."). I suppose it leans more toward being an arrangement than a composition, but I feel that I've shaped the material in certain (even "invasive") ways that it feels very much mine (you can't "collaborate" with history, right? Only co-opt it?).

Unfortunately it's one of those pieces that is difficult probably for very annoying reasons (lots of octave doublings on a single instrument, thick polyphonic texture, copious senza vibrato passages... I expect intonation and balance issues to be unreasonable), so who knows if/when I'll get to hear it.

But in the meantime, the score for this piece is available on IMSLP. Please let me know if you are interested in performing it.

Die Heimat (Home)
from Sechs Hölderlin-Fragmente (1958)
by Benjamin Britten
transcribed by yours truly for solo piano

it's been almost three weeks since I moved to this city, which I've spent largely without a piano. as you can imagine this has been rather disorienting for me, and I've been spending much time composing and arranging as a way to stay musically (and spiritually) moored.

I've loved this song by Britten ("Home", on an originally German text by Hölderlin) since I first heard it, and had always wanted to get my hands on it somehow – in the first few days upon my arrival it seemed only fitting to transcribe it for piano, and I couldn't be happier to finally give it a whirl.

---

home
Friedrich Hölderlin (translated by Emily Ezust)

the boatman turns homeward on the mute river
from distant islands, where he has been gathering his harvest;
gladly would I also turn toward home now;
but what have I gathered except sorrow?

you lovely banks that brought me up,
can you still love's grief? 
ah, can you give me,
when I come to you woods of my childhood,
can you give me that peace once again?"

Composer, n.

• "compose," to make, to integrate. " "composite", "complete"
• we say something is "composed" when it is whole, has unity.
• something's "composition" is what it is comprised of, what elements came together to form it.

• to be a composer is to be an integrator; classical ideas of "harmony" relating to cosmic perfection and balance ("music of the spheres")
• music as the reconciliation of elements into a "harmonious" unity.
• I've lately thought of composing as like a jigsaw puzzle where the composer also has to make the pieces. 

A triumvirate

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951-1982) – writer, performance artist, visual artist (Dictée, Exilée, Vidéoème)

Julius Eastman (1940-1990) – composer, singer, pianist (Crazy Nigger, The Holy Presence of Joan d'Arc, Gay Guerrilla)

Claude Vivier (1948-1983) – composer (Wo bist du Licht!, Lonely Child, Glaubst du an die Unsterblichkeit der Seele)

• "involuntary martyrs"
  • how are these artists' works haunted by their deaths? their art is so defined by their lives, and death only further mystifies, mythologizes.
• sui generis as artists and figures within their respective communities
  • refused to fall into tropes of Asian, woman, black, queer. through the most liberal strains of western/American art (performance art, experimentalism, etc), they created highly original bodies of work as if "from scratch" – "Ur-beings" realized by following interests, deeply informed by their personal histories
• each grappled with issues of identity politics
  • who else was like them in the landscape in which they operated? who could they look up to to become without assimilating or playing into cultural presumptions of who they are? ("Asians wearing yellowface", for instance)
  • assertion of complex selfhood, self-realization in an environment where such spiritual liberation is historically only completely granted to white cis men

I'm prouder than I should be of this hardly-blog-worthy meme.

left to right, up to down: Takemitsu ("A Way a Lone"), Boulez ("Sonatine"), Donnacha Dennehy ("Bulb"), Feng ("Figments in Fracture"), Beethoven ("Moonlight" Sonata), Rzewski ("Down by the Riverside"), Adès ("Mazurkas"), generic, Feldman ("Patterns in a Chromatic Field")

Feelin' extra (staves)?

Two examples from Yvar Mikhashoff's virtuosic piano trilogy, Elemental Figures. 

If you thought Rachmaninoff's 4 staves was extra, Mikhashoff more than triples that! At first glance, I'd guess that Mikhashoff employs (/deploys?) an outrageous number of staves to graphically represent the explosiveness/expansiveness of the gesture. A glissando on two staves with 8va lines may sound the all the same but this does look significantly more striking (and ridiculous), which may offer something for the performer's psychology. 

To show stratification of voices, different "bells"... 

"Searched music"

• piano miniatures as avenues of self-discovery:
  • Boulez, Bartók, Schoenberg, Kurtág – experiments, sketches
  • Janáček, Schumann, Mompou – intimacy in microcosm, reaching for innermost sentiment
  • Ligeti, Musica ricercata, literally "searched music"/"found music"; striving for the creation of an Ur-self/Ur-language
    • Lachenmann (Ein Kinderspiel): composition as self-discovery; one must approach new frontiers of self in each piece, poetry of searching
      • Ein Kinderspiel both as "music for children"/"child's play", but also a "going back to the sandbox" approach to composition, invention of idiosyncratic approach to the piano
• form of ricercar – "searching" for key
  • Bach, Ricercars from the Musical Offering
  • Beethoven, String Quartet in B-flat (Op. 18/6), Mvt. 4 "La Malinconia", long searching introduction
  • Mozart, "Dissonance" quartet opening (arrival in C major)
• other "searching music"
  • Joni Mitchell (Blue, Hejira; "All I Want," "This Flight Tonight," "Amelia", "Hejira", "Let the Wind Carry Me")
  • Björk, "Hunter" ("if travel is searching / home what's been found / i'm not stopping / i'm going hunting")
  • Andrew Norman, "Try" (trial-and-error as a form)