Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
Perspectives of New Music is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to Perspectives of New Music
This content downloaded from 195.187.82.235 on Thu, 10 Jan 2019 12:17:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
WONDERFUL TIMES
ROGER REYNOLDS
This content downloaded from 195.187.82.235 on Thu, 10 Jan 2019 12:17:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Wonderful Times 45
This content downloaded from 195.187.82.235 on Thu, 10 Jan 2019 12:17:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
46 Perspectives of New Music
This content downloaded from 195.187.82.235 on Thu, 10 Jan 2019 12:17:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Wonderful Times 47
This content downloaded from 195.187.82.235 on Thu, 10 Jan 2019 12:17:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
48 Perspectives of New Music
This content downloaded from 195.187.82.235 on Thu, 10 Jan 2019 12:17:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Wonderful Times 49
This content downloaded from 195.187.82.235 on Thu, 10 Jan 2019 12:17:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
50 Perspectives of New Music
This content downloaded from 195.187.82.235 on Thu, 10 Jan 2019 12:17:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Wonderful Times 51
The very act of talking about my theo- Even the barest of communications
ries is building a jail I'mgoing to haveabout these mysterious matters can
to break out of. make the artist uncomfortable.
Still, the social and pedagogical
All my music is tonal; it's tonal but it
aspects of a musical life elicit frag-
doesn't have chord progressions. mented remarks from time to time.
The kind of intervallic thinking that There is, for example, the funda-
goes along with relative pitch is not mental matter of pitch and its
part of my cosmos. I am a perfect- organization. Painters as well as
pitcher... I am not the sort ofperson musicians speak of "tonality,"
who can move. which might be understood as the
perceived center, the stable refer-
ence (in tone or color) against
which contrast and movement is
measured. For some composers the
subject is replete with complex
ratios and rule-based transforma-
[My music] is much more often than
pentatonic, tetratonic, more often than tions, while for others it is a matter
not, tritonic, quite often bitonic, andof identity and experience. The
[there is] a lot of monotonic. tonality isfelt, not argued. It is con-
cerned with orientation, not logic.
This content downloaded from 195.187.82.235 on Thu, 10 Jan 2019 12:17:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
52 Perspectives of New Music
My music is made from drones, hocket Alternation, give and take, the
and microtones. I think of hocket as communal instinct, these are basic
communal music. in Erickson's music. On one level it
can be the tonic and the slightly
deviant, the microtonal variant.
Although there may be an actual
alternative (a new tonal level) there
is perhaps only a distinct inflection.
In the field of rhythm the situation
is a bit more clear cut for the lis-
tener. Rapid alternations from one
instrument to another, where sev-
eral musicians contribute to one
lively rhythmic composite; this is
[The hocket people] are doing things termed hocket. It is a performance
that we cannot do because we are not ideal naturally cultivated by the
doing communal music. We are doing Balinese, for example, in their
dictator music: you sit, or else. gamelan ensembles.
This content downloaded from 195.187.82.235 on Thu, 10 Jan 2019 12:17:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Wonderful Times 53
barrier down. Ifyou don'tget the bar- time to such a demanding trial and
rier down, then it's not collaboration. error process. Then, of course,
there is the importance of the
payoff for the performer. Only a
very special set of composerly ears
The real point is that the performer and inquisitiveness will summon
puts into the music what I am unable the adventurous performer to long-
to put in. Iput in what he can't but term engagements. In Erickson's
he puts in what I can't. extraordinary case, what arises out
of such collaboration is not, as one
might think, an improvisatory
response by the performer to guid-
ing structure supplied by the com-
poser. He actually fashions a
custom-made work to the dis-
covered resources of the instru-
ment and a particular performer.
Although he explored improvisa-
tion, per se, earlier in his career,
The great danger with composing Erickson's primary fascination with
improvised stuff is that you can get sound itself argues for a close and
people who do not know how to thoroughly explored relationship
improvise, people I characterize as New with his performers. Dedication
York money players... They'll kill you. and responsiveness, not the rou-
There is no way to survive that kind of tine of pat professionalism, allow
I-played-my-notes professionalism. his music to flower.
This content downloaded from 195.187.82.235 on Thu, 10 Jan 2019 12:17:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
54 Perspectives of New Music
This content downloaded from 195.187.82.235 on Thu, 10 Jan 2019 12:17:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Wonderful Times 55
member of the group if you can stand continues to grow: solo composi-
the isolation. tions, orchestral commissions, new
I'm going to follow my whim, I really manuscripts and recordings.
don't need to be bound... I just don't
want to be bound ... I don't advise
anybody to do this... You need to be America has a tradition of confer-
immune to loneliness, and very few ring on certain of its lawbreakers,
people are. Because you're going to be its outlaws, a special status. It is a
lonely. generous tradition, not easily
tapped, and we are enacting it as
participants in this festival.
Erickson's continuing achievement
brings us here. He the outlaw, we
the people, these the celebratory
times.
This content downloaded from 195.187.82.235 on Thu, 10 Jan 2019 12:17:17 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms