The Buffalo Festival - II
NEWLIN, DIKA
ON MUSIC By Dika Newlin The Buffalo Festival — II BUFFALO The events which opened the "Buffalo Festival of the Arts Today" were sometimes fascinating, sometimes frustrating, sometimes...
...The pianist is free to play any elements of his choice, wholly or in part and in any sequence...
...Whether through his keen sense of fashion or through his own inner development, or both, Foss has now emerged as the champion of the avant-garde both in Buffalo, where not only his symphony concerts but also his chamber concerts have attracted wide attention, and in New York, where a number of these chamber concerts are being repeated...
...In the middle was David Tudor, officiating not only at the piano but also at a species of electronic switchboard...
...After the cue was given for the first chord of this work—or, to use avant-gardese, the first "simultaneity"—the conductor had nothing to do but stand with folded hands...
...Once again it was a deeply shattering and totally involving musical and human experience...
...not only those stripped aspects of nature that suggest barrenness, timelessness, but also that remote inner space no telescope can reach, where man is alone, in a world of mystery...
...Listen to Cage himself, writing on the occasion of this work's performance at the 25- year retrospective concert of his music in May 1958: "The conductor, by his gestures, represents a chronometer of variable speed...
...It is a howl of rage at the situation which has produced personnel rather than people, manpower rather than men, and which threatens to strangle any communication in a welter of euphemisms, jargon, and grunt-speech.' But aren't many of the avant-gardists, however unwittingly, provoking and contributing to this very situation...
...The very fact that the electronic interludes are "optional" gives us pause...
...After all, the Marx Brothers are louder, funnier, and more to the point...
...Cage then sent all but some 13 players home...
...Will the young composer arise who can use the new methods, not merely to play randomly with sonorities but to make a musical and human statement comparable in importance to Wozzeckl I did not note the emergence of such a figure in this Festival, but if Foss's future efforts unearth him, we shall have cause for gratitude...
...At that, he was more active than Foss had been in the composition that preceded Cage's on the program, The Swallows of Salangan by Morton Feldman...
...At the performance the next day, the musicians were strung out in a long line along the front of the stage...
...Asked to comment later on the audience reaction, Cage said simply: "It was lively...
...The pianist's part is a 'book' containing 84 different kinds of composition, some, varieties of the same species, others, altogether different...
...If they belong there at all, they should be essential, required...
...for piano and orchestra, conducted by the composer...
...Varese chose the title Deserts because for him "it is a magic word that suggests endless correspondence...
...All were encouraged to bring miscellaneous noisemakers—not only those which Cage had indicated, but whatever their own imagination might suggest— and to use these freely at the points indicated in the score...
...If it is supposed to be taken seriously, I consider it not only bad music (if "music" is still the proper word to apply) but an abdication of the responsibility of the composer— more than that, a negation of life itself...
...Both his words and his music are worthy of our respect...
...Harmonious fusion of sound is not an objective...
...About 10 minutes of this was hilariously funny, and the audience responded with laughs in the right places...
...The career of this controversial musical figure has undergone a strange development...
...It was ironic that my visit to the Festival followed by three days one of the rare performances of Alban Berg's Wozzeck at the Metropolitan Opera House...
...A goodly amount of applause, intermingled with some vigorous boos, greeted this momentous event...
...But times have changed...
...We must grant a higher rank to Edgar Varese, who, whatever else he may or may not be, is not a clown or an opportunist...
...For audible and visual clarity the players are separated in space as far as is convenient in a concert hall...
...Here, in the Greek sense, was the true catharsis through pity and terror which Strauss and Hofmannsthal strove for (and sadly missed) in Elektra...
...After what seemed an interminable time, the "performance" drew to a close...
...Berg transcended technique to convey a message which goes straight "vom Herzen zu Herzen...
...I had in mind,' he writes, "not only all physical deserts (of sand, sea and snow, of outer space, of empty city streets) but also the deserts in the mind of man...
...We remember him in his 20s, hymning the 100 per cent American and tonal glories of the Wide Open Spaces ("I am the prairie, mother of men...
...In the performance of the Cage work, besides the usual antics inside, around and under the piano, tastefully punctuated by tuba blasts, the stage was enlivened by the shooting of cap pistols, the popping of balloons, and—climactically— the raising of a dainty yellow umbrella whose gentle swish added an appropriate note to the proceedings...
...This exploration of the lone mind is fascinating, but the next logical step would seem to be the total elimination of man from the scene...
...But the composers lack that sense of form which would tell them when to stop...
...For the final rehearsal, the entire Buffalo Philharmonic was] assembled...
...the American premiere of Tren (Threnody) by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki...
...If this sort of thing is meant to be funny, I have no objection to it, in limited doses and in its proper place...
...The resident conductor and musical director of this 29-year-old organization, which has known the leadership of such noted artists as William Steinberg and Josef Krips, is Lukas Foss...
...This negation is clearly evidenced in the destruction of the subjective sense of time-values which has obviously taken place in Cage as well as in the other composers represented on this program...
...Allen Sapp, in his notes for the Buffalo concerts, remarks that "if there is 'serious music' today it is the angry cry of the individual protesting his submersion into a statistic...
...One's attention soon flags, since the allimportant element of variety is missing...
...The opening program of the festival included, among other things, a "classic" of instrumental-plus- electronic music, Varese's Deserts...
...ON MUSIC By Dika Newlin The Buffalo Festival — II BUFFALO The events which opened the "Buffalo Festival of the Arts Today" were sometimes fascinating, sometimes frustrating, sometimes exasperating, and often deeply disturbing...
...How this works out in practice could be seen and heard in rehearsal and concert situations which differed (to put it mildly) from the usual ones...
...the ambivalence smacks of compromise...
...The weird string sonorities of Tren or the wordless chirping of The Swallows of Salangan beguile the ear for a short time...
...and John Cage's Concert (note well: not "Concerto...
...Stravinsky, with his magnificent time-sense, put his finger on the trouble when (in Expositions and Developments) he said of Cage: "his performances are often, to me, the frustration of time itself...
...At times these qualities were manifested all at once—and perhaps nowhere more vividly than in the February 28 concert of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra which inaugurated the Festival's musical offerings...
...Does electronic music composed by committee, as it sometimes is, really contribute to "asserting the integrity of the individual...
...One feels that the music should be either one thing or the other...
...Many listeners started leaving the hall, while others, seemingly beaten into submission, did what the old hymn "Fortitude" says we should not do in the face of evil—"fold the hands and acquiesce—O shame...
...In the form heard, this last "happening" may well have been a world premiere...
...As for the "strangling of communication," examples of this may be found in any issue of the avant-garde Bible, Perspectives of New Music...
...Yet his Deserts does not quite work because the alternation of the instrumental ensemble (4 woodwinds, 10 brasses, assorted percussion, and a piano) with the "optional electronic interludes" does not convince...
...The orchestral accompaniment may involve any number of players on more or fewer instruments, and a given performance may be extended or shorter in length...
...Then the men sat without instruments in their hands while Cage conducted their silence...
...Indeed, I regard this work as one 'in progress' which I intend never to consider as in a final state, although I find each performance definitive...
...If Foss does this, he will make a cultural contribution to his community of more lasting value than the one-shot "spectacular" of a festival, however entertaining, can hope to achieve...
...I, for one, hope that the further development of Foss' Buffalo activities will give room not only to the peripheral in contemporary music but also to an exploration in depth and breadth of the whole contemporary musical scene...
...But then the joke began to wear thin...
...Cage, at the extreme right of the platform, confined his "conducting" to a series of traffic-cop-like semaphorings...
...and vigorously rejecting anything that smacked of Viennese dodecaphony...
...These 13 were told how to behave at the concert the next day...
Vol. 48 • March 1965 • No. 6
