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RIP Olly Wilson


JSngry

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I was saddened to hear of Wilson's passing. I heard a a number of his orchestral works here -- former Detroit Symphony music director Neeme Jarvi championed Wilson's music and, more recently, Leonard Slatkin conducted Wilson's "Lumina" eight or nine years ago. I also interviewed Wilson at length for a long-gone online repository of American music -- I can't remember now who organized it, maybe New Music Box or the American Music Center or the League of American Orchestras. But the idea was to create a reference site for orchestras looking to program new music. There were two components to each entry: a long interview with the composer and then an in-depth analysis of  a major work. I wrote the piece(s) on Wilson and "Lumina." Somewhere I may still have the score. (I would like to find out whatever happened to that interview and analysis -- I haven't thought about it in a while; I hope I have a hard copy somewhere in my files.)

 Wilson was a deep man and composer. He  knew an incredible amount of music and spoke with a distinctive, modernist voice. Not every piece was the same, and he could just as easily draw upon Stravinsky as Lutoslawski as African-American spirituals or post-war jazz -- yet everything came out organic, never pastiche. Rhythm, timbre and color were central and there was something improvisatory about his gestures, even when every element was fairly strictly controlled. He was an "ear" composer not a "system" composer, but he knew whatever system you wanted to lay on him. He was also a fine teacher by all accounts, and I know he and James Newton became close.

He'll be missed.  

Edited by Mark Stryker
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Very sad to hear. I liked his CRI recordings. Those recordings JSngry put up were great! Wilson and other jazz-influenced 20th century legit guys like Hall Overton, Hale Smith and David Amram, represented the 'ear' composers, as opposed to the 'mathematician' composers who grew out of Schoenberg's anti-music systems.

We were lucky to have composers like these, who resisted the lure of the university gigs if they'd just get with the program and write garbage like the rest of the twelve-tone ghouls, and instead chose to write 'ear' music rather than 'slide rule' music.

RIP to a great man.

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Mr. Wilson led a series of interviews with Earl Hines back in the early 1980s (?) at the UC Berkeley campus.  The interviews were enlightening and enjoyable.  I hope the proceedings were preserved in some form.  (...though I couldn't find anything with a quick internet search; maybe back at the Hertz Hall library, as relocated)  They ultimately led to my interviews and light friendship/acquaintance with Mr. Hines in his last couple of years.  Mr. Wilson was quite an educator too, be reputation; I never took any classes from him.  I've lots of respect for educators.  So thanks, Mr. Wilson.

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2 hours ago, sgcim said:

Very sad to hear. I liked his CRI recordings. Those recordings JSngry put up were great! Wilson and other jazz-influenced 20th century legit guys like Hall Overton, Hale Smith and David Amram, represented the 'ear' composers, as opposed to the 'mathematician' composers who grew out of Schoenberg's anti-music systems.

We were lucky to have composers like these, who resisted the lure of the university gigs if they'd just get with the program and write garbage like the rest of the twelve-tone ghouls, and instead chose to write 'ear' music rather than 'slide rule' music.

RIP to a great man.

The man who composed this wrote "slide rule" music and was a ghoul? Also, what were Schoenberg's "anti-music systems"? IIRC he only had one system, and he wrote a good deal before he came up with it and didn't always adhere to it afterwards. In any case, could any music sound more spontaneous than this?:

 

 

 

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18 hours ago, sgcim said:

 Wilson and other jazz-influenced 20th century legit guys...

I'm thinking that instead of looking at it a "jazz-influenced legit", it might be better, at least/especially in Wilson's case, to look at it as another vernacular of the African-American musical vocabulary. Language going where it will, which is more organic thing than "styles" "fusing".  I listen to Wilson's work and almost always hear a very clear language, and it is one I clearly recognize.

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9 hours ago, JSngry said:

I'm thinking that instead of looking at it a "jazz-influenced legit", it might be better, at least/especially in Wilson's case, to look at it as another vernacular of the African-American musical vocabulary. Language going where it will, which is more organic thing than "styles" "fusing".  I listen to Wilson's work and almost always hear a very clear language, and it is one I clearly recognize.

From his bio by J. Reel, " Born in St. Louis, Wilson played jazz piano in his home town, as well as bass in St. Louis orchestras". 

He also cited Charlie Parker as one of his major influences.

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On 3/16/2018 at 6:33 PM, Larry Kart said:

The man who composed this wrote "slide rule" music and was a ghoul? Also, what were Schoenberg's "anti-music systems"? IIRC he only had one system, and he wrote a good deal before he came up with it and didn't always adhere to it afterwards. In any case, could any music sound more spontaneous than this?:

 

 

 

I was talking about AS' Twelve-Tone System of composition. Even Gunther Schuller finally realized what a mistake that was in an article from 1960 where he realized the failure of that system of composition, exclaiming, (loosely) "We've driven audiences out of the concert halls with the Twelve Tone System." 

He then pleaded with composers to add some tonality to their music, add some coherent melodies, or the audience will disappear completely.

4 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

Interview with Wilson:

http://www.bruceduffie.com/ollywilson.html
 

The Duffie interviews are a great source of information on many 20th century composers.

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Can you cite the Schuller piece in which "he realized the failure of that system of composition, exclaiming (loosely) "We've driven audiences out of the concert halls with the Twelve Tone System"?

I ask because, as this interview with Schuller makes clear, he himself continued to make use of that system in many of his own compositions for the rest of his life.


https://ethaniverson.com/interview-with-gunther-schuller-part-2/
 

Also, Schuller's admiration for Schoenberg's music never ceased, and it led him to make several excellent recordings of it -- in particular, the best recording of "Gurreleider" I know and a fine "Transfigured Night." Hey, Gunther even recorded a terrific version of perhaps the most challenging work by that arch serlalist Milton Babbit, "Transfigured Notes." So Gunther was committed to clearing out the concert halls?

41CAPXTHG9L-1.jpg

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3 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

Can you cite the Schuller piece in which "he realized the failure of that system of composition, exclaiming (loosely) "We've driven audiences out of the concert halls with the Twelve Tone System"?

I ask because, as this interview with Schuller makes clear, he himself continued to make use of that system in many of his own compositions for the rest of his life.


https://ethaniverson.com/interview-with-gunther-schuller-part-2/
 

Also, Schuller's admiration for Schoenberg's music never ceased, and it led him to make several excellent recordings of it -- in particular, the best recording of "Gurreleider" I know and a fine "Transfigured Night." Hey, Gunther even recorded a terrific version of perhaps the most challenging work by that arch serlalist Milton Babbit, "Transfigured Notes." So Gunther was committed to clearing out the concert halls?

41CAPXTHG9L-1.jpg

tt came from chapter 25 of 'Musings; The Musical Worlds of Gunther Schuller', pages 174-183. The title of the chapter is, 'Toward a New Classicism?'

Some excerpts were GS proclaiming that, "contemporary music has failed to capture the sustained interest of either lay audiences or PROFESSIONAL PERFORMERS (my emphasis)" , and later that what he thought was the usual reception of new earthbreaking music; a a generation or two of hatred or apathy, and then they would grow to love it.

Instead, he writes, "I resigned myself to the notion that the complexities of Schoenberg and Webern would have to wait their 30 to 40 year turn to be resolved and understood.

The problem is that it is no longer 30 years; it's getting to be 60 years (now 100 years!). And my earlier optimism has long ago been replaced by a growing discomfort..."

Read the rest of it and weep...

Edited by sgcim
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I'll check it out. But why then, I wonder, did Schuller over the following fifty or so years proceed to write the music that he did?

BTW, my take on the "modern music" versus the classical concert audience situation is that it's not a matter of modern composers not writing music that has "some tonality" and "some coherent melodies." Such music is being written, but the audiences that attend classical concerts would much rather hear Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, et al. If they find Schoenberg et al. annoying or incomprehensible, so be it, but  I see no evidence that modern music that has "some tonality" and "coherent melodies" engages them very much if at all.

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Schuller made a conscious effort in his writing to add tonality by assertion, more consonant harmonic intervals, more coherent melodies, and other examples of the advice he gave composers in that lecture. The result IMHO made his music sound deeper, more sonorous, and less superficial than his earlier pieces.I liked the fact that Honegger, one of the great critics of the twelve tone method, was one of Schuller's favorite composers. Honegger described the twelve tone method as adding a 'ball and chain' to the composers who followed Schoenberg's strict method.

Schuller did mention the fact that they were still flocking to concerts of Brahms, Beethoven, et al, but he felt that was because those composers reached their audiences emotionally; something the contemporary music of that time was failing to do.

The tonal composers of the 20th Century, Britten, Walton, Stravinsky (other than that awful piano concerto he wrote in the twelve tone method, which IMHO was proof that even his music couldn't survive the twelve tone method- no matter what the critics said), Bartok, Barber, Hanson, Honegger, Poulenc, Part, Shostokovich, Prokofiev, Copland, et al, continue to be chosen by performers to be presented in the concert hall, and people still find them engaging.

After 100 years, I think the twelve-tone method has been given more than enough time to say that it was just ahead of its time...

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17 minutes ago, sgcim said:

... composers who followed Schoenberg's strict method.

...Stravinsky (other than that awful piano concerto he wrote in the twelve tone method, which IMHO was proof that even his music couldn't survive the twelve tone method- no matter what the critics said)...

After 100 years, I think the twelve-tone method has been given more than enough time to say that it was just ahead of its time...


I think the key to that first phrase is "strict", not "method"  To the best of my knowledge, no non-retro composer is unaware of, or unwilling to use, serial methodology as a tool. Not as a "strict method" (which is indeed "slide rule music" and is indeed irritating, and ultimately, imo, useless).

Case in point - Stravinsky. Serial until the end, was he not?

After 100 years, I think it's safe to say that it's integrated itself well enough into the normalcy of both theory and practice to say that once we rid the hall of all those half-bit/wit "academic" composers and practitioners who would be tinhorn tyrants of some system, no matter what (they have always been among us, i recall feeling very ill towards the "NO PARALLEL FIFTHS!!!! bunch who glared all over elementary theory classes, no context or winking for this bunch, the MEANT it, they were like the Mommy Dearests of learning), serial methodology is just one more way to go about looking at possibilities and architecture in service of a final product. Means to an end, not necessarily the end itself.

Anyway, RIP Olly Wilson.

 

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1 hour ago, sgcim said:

Schuller made a conscious effort in his writing to add tonality by assertion, more consonant harmonic intervals, more coherent melodies, and other examples of the advice he gave composers in that lecture. The result IMHO made his music sound deeper, more sonorous, and less superficial than his earlier pieces.I liked the fact that Honegger, one of the great critics of the twelve tone method, was one of Schuller's favorite composers. Honegger described the twelve tone method as adding a 'ball and chain' to the composers who followed Schoenberg's strict method.

Schuller did mention the fact that they were still flocking to concerts of Brahms, Beethoven, et al, but he felt that was because those composers reached their audiences emotionally; something the contemporary music of that time was failing to do.

The tonal composers of the 20th Century, Britten, Walton, Stravinsky (other than that awful piano concerto he wrote in the twelve tone method, which IMHO was proof that even his music couldn't survive the twelve tone method- no matter what the critics said), Bartok, Barber, Hanson, Honegger, Poulenc, Part, Shostokovich, Prokofiev, Copland, et al, continue to be chosen by performers to be presented in the concert hall, and people still find them engaging.

After 100 years, I think the twelve-tone method has been given more than enough time to say that it was just ahead of its time...

Looking at your list of the tonal composers of the 20th Century whose music continues to be chosen by performers to be presented in the concert hall and whose music people still find engaging -- Britten, Walton, Stravinsky, Bartok, Barber, Hanson, Honegger, Poulenc, Part, Shostokovich, Prokofiev, Copland --  I note that only one of them, Part, is among the living. Can you point to any living tonal composers who have gained a significant foothold with the concert music audience? BTW, I like the music of many of the composer on your list; I just feel that the tastes of the majority of the concert music audience are as I described them above.
 

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Geez guys, we're past serialism and about far enough into minimalism that it's getting moldy. This is all a "debate" about what shouldn't have happened instead of a look at what is happening.

If you want to replace Glass with Schoenberg as the poster child for "where it all went wrong", feel free, I'm totally unconvinced about his overall merit. But, as with serialism, the principles are here to stay, I keep hearing very interesting newer music that refers to all of that.

 

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21 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

Looking at your list of the tonal composers of the 20th Century whose music continues to be chosen by performers to be presented in the concert hall and whose music people still find engaging -- Britten, Walton, Stravinsky, Bartok, Barber, Hanson, Honegger, Poulenc, Part, Shostokovich, Prokofiev, Copland --  I note that only one of them, Part, is among the living. Can you point to any living tonal composers who have gained a significant foothold with the concert music audience? BTW, I like the music of many of the composer on your list; I just feel that the tastes of the majority of the concert music audience are as I described them above.
 

I agree that most of the concert audience goes with Beethoven and his buddies, but living composers like David Del Tredici, John Corigliano, George Crumb, Joan Tower, John Harbison, Margaret Brouwer, and minimalists like Terry Riley, Glass and Reich are still around, along with NYC composers like Julia Wolfe, David Lang and Michael Gordon.

All of these composers started out as serial composers, because that was all that was being taught in composition classes in the second half of the 20th Century. When they realized that their only audience was other serial composers (as Schuller points out in his lecture in 'Musings'), they gradually began to realize that maybe something was wrong.

By then it was probably too late, because the programs on most concerts today are limited to the dead composers you listed in your post.

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Yes, they're still around, and some of them, like Glass and Reich, have audiences that like their kind of thing, but concert audiences by and large?

As for "All of these composers started out as serial composers, because that was all that was being taught in composition classes in the second half of the 20th Century," I don't think that the latter half of that sentence is true. Yes, there was a vogue or more than a vogue in academia for that style or discipline or what have you, but lots of composers, almost certainly including some on your list, managed to find other sorts of tutelage.

BTW, the only audience for those latter-day serial composers was not "other serial composers." On a selective basis, I regularly listened to such music, in concert and on recordings, and I still do. Geez -- how can I take all that "anti-music"? I must be crazy. Nor was I the sole person in attendance at those concerts, and I think it's unlikely that everyone else present was a serial composer. And/or, as related by Charles Rosen, there's the fellow who came up to Eduard Steuermann after Steuermann had played Schoenberg's Piano Concerto without a score and demanded to know how he could do that, given that the music was sheer nonsense. When Steuermann replied that he had memorized the score long ago, the fellow said, "You're lying!"

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3 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

Yes, they're still around, and some of them, like Glass and Reich, have audiences that like their kind of thing, but concert audiences by and large?

As for "All of these composers started out as serial composers, because that was all that was being taught in composition classes in the second half of the 20th Century," I don't think that the latter half of that sentence is true. Yes, there was a vogue or more than a vogue in academia for that style or discipline or what have you, but lots of composers, almost certainly including some on your list, managed to find other sorts of tutelage.

BTW, the only audience for those latter-day serial composers was not "other serial composers." On a selective basis, I regularly listened to such music, in concert and on recordings, and I still do. Geez -- how can I take all that "anti-music"? I must be crazy. Nor was I the sole person in attendance at those concerts, and I think it's unlikely that everyone else present was a serial composer. And/or, as related by Charles Rosen, there's the fellow who came up to Eduard Steuermann after Steuermann had played Schoenberg's Piano Concerto without a score and demanded to know how he could do that, given that the music was sheer nonsense. When Steuermann replied that he had memorized the score long ago, the fellow said, "Your lying!"

He probably was lying. There are plenty of stories of people playing Schoenberg piano pieces, and telling their friends that they forgot the entire second half of the piece, but no one noticed! I'll try to find out the names.

I went to a university that Chas. Rosen taught at, and took a course with him. One conductor got in an argument with him about the horror of serial music, and asked him why music can't go back to the naivete of Ravel. Rosen told him we can't go back to the naivete of Ravel once we've been exposed to Schoenberg."There is no turning back!"

ALL of the composition teachers at that university were serial composers, and the two I studied with insisted that I write in the 12-tone style. I told the first one, a great composer named John Lessard, that I couldn't stand that music, and he confided to me that he despised Schoenberg. I asked him why he didn't write the great music that he had written in the 1950s anymore, and he said, "All of the great tonal music was already written in the 19th Century". He said he liked Webern.

I went to another teacher who I thought would be more open-minded, because he liked my string quartet, and told me it sounded like Shostokovich. But I got the same treatment; we only write in the 12-tone style. He said that it was the same at most schools. Then he confided to me that he couldn't stand Webern. He said Webern sounded like a bunch of little farts. He said he liked Schoenberg...

At that point I just got my degree and never looked back. Today all I write are pieces for the several big bands I play in. I get them played as soon as I finish them, and that's all I really care about. I've written seven extended pieces in the last year or two.

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"He probably was lying." :lol:

  Steuermann gave the world premiere of the Schoenberg Piano Concerto in 1944 and performed it many times thereafter. One would think he'd know it by heart after a while. Further, if Steuermann hadn't memorized the score, why would he try to play that fairly complex work without one? You think he'd choose to get up there and just slop around?

If that conductor, and Rosen for that matter, thought that Ravel's was a music of naivete, they were crazy. It's among the subtlest, slyest, at times one might say secretive music there is. Gaspard de la Nuit is a work of naivete? Mercy! And there are some interesting modern composers -- e.g. Englishmen Robin Holloway and Julian Anderson -- whose works bear definite traces of Ravel at times but are not in the least attempts to write in the style of.


I've heard a few  stories, I think from the  late '40s, about people blanking while playing Schoenberg piano pieces and faking it. Yes, some people in the audience didn't notice because they didn't know the music yet, but those who knew it certainly did notice. In fact, in the one story about such an event that I recall, a young composer in the audience -- could it have been Morton Feldman, begorrah? -- went backstage afterwards and confronted the pianist, who tearfully confessed to what she had done. 

 BTW, it it possible to hear any of your big band pieces on YouTube or the like?

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