I had a particularly fruitful day at the bookstore yesterday. I seemed to find a gem wherever I looked at the Borders in the Loop. It was just one of those days! I found a good deal on the Grout/Palisca A History of Western Music, also a series of interviews with John Cage, and an edition of Freud's collected writings on art and psychoanalysis.
Most notably, I found Stuart Isacoff's Temperament, which recounts in dramatic fashion the move from cosmologically- and naturally-informed 'just tonality' (or no termperament) in the Western tradition to its current scientifically-informed 'equal temperament', found for example on a piano and guitar. He simultracks historical development of science, philosophy, political history, poetry, and religion as each form part of the engine that literally transformed the manner by which musicians tune their instruments. What he shows is how the evolution of worldviews from mythic to rational-scientific creates a clash at every step of the way. Fascinating read, and he quotes W.A. Mathieu from his Harmonic Experience (warms me heart).
And now you can read my essay -- Temperament and Integral Music -- here. I summarize many of Isacoff's main points and add my own. Hooray that the issue of temperament so relates with Integral Music, and thanks to Isacoff for his wonderful book.
This relatively new field of music is defined as the a study that "places the analysis of music origins and its application to the study of human origins at its very foundation." It comprises three branches:
Evolutionary musicology deals with the origins of music in vocal communication between animals and evolutionary psychology of the emergence of music in humans.
Neuromusicology deals with the nature and evolution of the neural and cognitive mechanisms involved in musical production and perception, via capacities and behavior from the fetal stage to old age.
Comparative Musicology deals with the diverse functional roles and uses of music in human cultures.
While you soak all of that in, here is a quote from its main proponents, Steven Brown, Bjorn Merker, and Nils Wallin:
Just as music brings us in touch with the very deepest levels of our emotions, so too the study of music evolution has the potential to bring us in touch with the very deepest aspect of our humanity, our origins, our reasons for being.
This is a wonderful development for the study of music history. The authors add the more traditional 'ethnomusicology' to the list, which has studied music as an organized cultural activity. By the three-prong nature of biomusicology, we see a more integrative approach. Ken Wilber's Four Quadrants gives us a lens by which to look at biomusicology and its aspects.
The psychological aspects of evolutionary musicology stress the Upper Left quadrant. Neuromusicology stresses the Upper Right quadrant. Comparative musicology stresses the Lower Right quadrant. And much of ethnomusicology stresses the Lower Left quadrant (the rest touches on Lower Left). An Integral Music uses this Four-Quadrant integration of Musicology as one of its foundations.
The secret of music composition, as far as there is one, consists of the ability to simultaneously lost oneself in sound while in possession of knowledge of sonic location. Given first-world technology such as Garage Band, the ability to compose music is as simple the act of play mixed with the act of stop. But sound creation is distinct from music creation. The former is as easy as techno-play; the latter requires consciousness. The subject of one wave of consciousness becomes the object upon which the subject of the next looks upon. Emergence upon any wave is always an act of semi-consciousness, trusted. The 'semi' is important, because the map upon which one plays allows a certain degree of conscious navigation, at least to the point of open but acknowledged spatial intelligence. The play of space in motion become the terrain of music. One can never fully know spatial sound, as it lives. But one can call upon previous harmonic experience, felt in the bones and meat of the body, to give touchstones. After that, it is all emergence, baby. All emergence, which we trust or discard. The best of which we simply let be.
Look for Allaudin to pop up in video in the coming weeks. Finishing touches happening as we speak. Very interestingly, he has had several official names over the years. He has written that he is Allaudin to his friends (all-OW-deen). In his books, he is 'W.A. Mathieu' (and sometimes 'Dr. Overtone'). When he arranged for Stan Kenton and Duke Ellington in the 50s and 60s, not only was he 'William' (his given name) but actually just 'Bill'. I think in his heart of hearts, he might be 'Uncle Al' or even 'Skeikh Allegro'. All of which prompts me to ask, what does it mean when a man not only has multiple names, but multiple names that are in fact authentic to his soul?
Enough writing -- off to play piano, which I've hardcore picked-back-up again. I can orchestrate the highest pings and the lowest booms -- how wonderful!
This is one of my favorite quotes from Allaudin. I've posted it before, but it bears a repeat.
Deconstruction, in the ideas of music of John Cage and Cecil Taylor, for example, has long been afoot in the land to melt down and recase working assumptions, but seems ultimately to have the effect of retooling and remodeling rather than razing and bulldozing. Composed music as an agent for feeling whole constantly needs new definitions and new material to work with. The more adaptable and spry and exchangeable is the stuff of the body, the more the spirit inside has a chance to live.
We can see that deconstructionism can have its healthy and flourishing effects. Deconstructionism has true, but partial, value. Make it the whole story, and, among other things, you start to lose the people you might want to connect with, namely your audience.
From his article, "Adult Creativity in Children's Symbolic Products":
From an undifferentiated matrix of linguistic sounds and tonal sequences, the child proceeds in the second year of life to practice various pitch patterns, including those intervals that eventually constitute the music of his culture. Next, the child produces spontaneous songs that, by the third year of life, feature characteristic bits obtained from the songs of the culture. In a parallel to the onset of representational drawing, a child at the age of three or so becomes increasingly influenced by the songs sung in his culture; by the age of four, he displays the ability to sing the culture's songs, which have now become dominant over the production of spontaneous song. Within another year the child is able to convey not just the overall pattern of a song (its general shifts in contour and dynamics), but the precise patterns, intervals, and meter. He has a first-draft knowledge of music.
Thus as cognition increases, as well as interpersonal, spatial, narrative, and other intelligences increase, so does a child's musical ability to hear and perform musical songs.
Gardner's goes further:
Asked to sing a song, a child of a year and a half or two will simply recreate the activity during the course of which that song is usually sung. At the age of three, his vocal effort will capture whether the songs gets louder or softer, faster or slower, but will not be sifficiently fine to recreate the pitch or metric relations characteristic of the particular song. At the age of four or five, the youngster will get the number of notes and intervals between pitches at least approximately right. By six or seven, he can capture in a simply notation some of the principal events that occur in a song.
One can see how a child's physical/kinesthetic, or sensorimotor, intelligence also effects musical development. Gardner sums up this development as waves of symbolization. Here is my summary of his developmental conception, using much of his own words.
The first wave, which occurs towards the end of the second year of life, role or event structuring. This 'wave' is found most straighforwardly in the area of narrative, where it entails the child's ability to capture in words or gestures the basic structure of an event.
The second wave, which occurs around the age of three, is called topological or analog mapping. As Gardner says, the child is able to capture in his symbolic display (music, narrative, drawing, etc) the relative size, shape, or temporal relations. Thus the representational ability to create symbols emerges.
The the third wave, that of digital mapping, a child becomes able to produce a far more accurate rendering of up to 10 elements in precise systematic relationship to one another. In drawing, singing, and story-telling, a more complex grammar is possible.
At ages 5-7, the ability to create symbols by means of notational systems emerges. We see the spontaneous devising of maps, diagrams, and other self-cuing mechanisms. Notation allows the abstraction and generalizing of variable concepts, thus allowing more complexity in symbolic creation. This is the stage of much originality, charm, and flair.
At ages 7-12, the mastery of various cultural notation systems (writing, mathematics), and actually a kind of retardation of more figurative forms of knowing. This is the time of rules, regulations, and principles -- a narrow but dogged skill-building, according to Gardner. All in all, a cementing of a conventional level.
Adolescence (roughly ages 13-18), brings about self-criticism, and more personal and emotional characteristics within creative activity. An emotional center is is found, to make sense of personal feelings and beliefs. 'Anything goes', in an attempt to self-express as well as communicate to others. This is, in a sense, a virtuoustic stage.
Other developmental research suggests how we might frame subsequent stages (see Wilber, for example, who includes stages such as aperspectival, symbolist, archtypal, and nondual as levels of artistic depiction; or even Gebser, who suggests that an 'integral aperpsectival stage lay past mental symbolism), but Gardner's scheme (in this article) stops here. He leaves adult stages as continuations and expansions of virtuosity, self-criticism, and integration of self and culture.
Inportantly, the adult artist has the option of invoking any of the previous stages, in order to reach his or her creative and symbolic goals. Thus a musician of very high skills can still tumble through a new melody the first time. Or as Gardner says, "each wave may be recapitulated in microgenetic fashion when an individual [artist] invades a new area." So the waves of symbolization, to use Ken Wilber's term, are enduring intelligences that an artist maintains throughout continued development in cognition, morals, ego detachment, worldviews, values, and more.
Adult artists can call upon the earliest skills they learned as a child, or the newest ones they learned as an adult. Any such symbol-making level can bring forth creativity. Creativity is built into our deepest vibrations. We create at any level of development.
This composition of mine was recorded last evening. It was 18 months in the coming! 18 months of a search for the right time, place, and people, and all three coincided last night at the First United Church, in Oak Park, Illinois. The wonderful and resonant space of that church was filled by the gorgeous voices of Christine Kelner, Doug Kelner, and Bill Chin (soprano, tenor, and bass, respectively). Many thanks to Christine for coordination, and to Bill for access to First United. And Doug, thank you for your steady presence in the session.
I could go on and on with thank-yous to Doug, Christine, and Bill. Across-the-board awesome! I have good friend Ben Rogerson to thank, both for sound engineering, as well as tons of support. Dr. Sound! And many thanks to Hannah, for the push and love to help get this thing audible, and out of my inner ear. The truth is, I thank Hannah for everything I do. And this haus bows to Ken Wilber, whose wonderful prayer from No Boundary stirred me from the moment I read it.
Here's what I set to music, both in the plainchant and the motet:
I have a body, but I am not my body. I have desires, but I am not my desires. I have emotions, but I am not my emotions. I have thoughts, but I am not my thoughts. So, who am I?
The full piece is 2 movements -- a plainchant and a motet. The plainchant came first -- composed 22 months ago, in a Brooklyn laundromat, of all places. The idea to set Ken's prayer to plainchant had knocked around my bodies for some time. Who knew it would burst while I separated whites from colors. It is true what the traditions say: melody is divine.
The plainchant was the seed for composition of the polyphonic motet. The single melody became raw material for development in the motet as multiple melodies weaved together -- a very natural progression, but it takes time for everything to germinate, sprout, and grow. Historically, this is how the Western polyphonic composers of the 14th-16th centuries operated. Bach and his contemporaries in the 18th century were also inspired by plainchant. A seed grows to a flower (plainchant), which bears pollen for the tree nearby, and its fruit (motet).
Funny story about its conception, as well: the motet popped 18 months ago in an insurance company lunchroom in Milwaukee where I temped (ick). After I returned from the very first February 2003 IS of Art get-together (awe), on 5 consecutive lunch hours (12 to 1 pm) with just a pencil and my staff paper, I wrote this piece with my juice and sandwich nearby -- very much a channel. I particularly thank painter Philip Rubinov Jacobson for the inspiration that helped birth this piece. He told me to trust the Sea!
Now that I have this piece recorded, it can now die (hopefully to be reincarnated in the future). With two large scale vocal works under my belt -- this piece, as well as my You're Sleeping Motet -- I am juiced to compose another! So stay tuned! The next emergence, in truth, will surprise all of us.
Hannah and I just returned from California, with stays in LA and outside San Francisco. The highlight of the trip was the in fact the prime reason we went out there in the first place -- to meet, hang with, and film several music performances by Allaudin Mathieu, my composition teacher. There is so much I could write, I could write until 4 am (it's 8 pm now). Sufficed to say, the meeting with Allaudin and his wife, Devi, was completely satisfying and enriching. There was magic in the air. Many thanks to both Allaudin and Devi, two full and illuminated souls.
We had a crew of three others along for most of the trip. All told, there was myself, Hannah (director), Kevin Pittman (cinematographer and camera), Jose Rios (camera), and Ben Rogerson (camera and grip). We all had just a great time, in prep for the shoot, in late-nite poker games, early morning load-ins, on-location filming, numerous silly chats, endless stupid jokes, and in the vineyard-tour on Sunday -- a very long wrap party.
We spent some time in LA before we went to San Fran. There we got to be with my brother Chris and his partner Josh. Lunch with Chris in Beverly Hills was very cool. Walks along Venice Beach, with the opportunity to hang with friends Matt Demerritt and Jen Frisbee, were a blast. Partying with old buddy Jamie Schutz, including a walk through the Fox production lot, was a riot.
But the radiant gem of the weekend was my time with Allaudin. He is a brilliant musician and composer, as well as a gentle, subtle man with a wicked humor. Part of me just wanted to be a fly on the wall as I watched him prep his music for Devi, sit at his piano, walk up and down the hill to and from his music barn, and of course improvise his deeply engaged wonderings at his Steinway. Think of interviewing such a genius! but both went well. I even played him some of my recent compositions, and he offered some supportive challenges, at just the right pitch.
All in all, I agree with Allaudin (in a passage from his A Musical Life (which you should all acquire immediately), to run don't walk to be with, in person, the person or person's you regard as your teacher. Even if it means go halfway around the globe -- do it. For in learning about the life and energy of your teachers, you learn about yourself, your life, and your energies. All in a very intuitive way, but unmistakable. Just by being, you teach being.
I'm beaming with excitement to announce that Integral Naked has given a showcase to my recent composition for marimba, called A Whirling Tango. You can listen to it by clicking here.
Here is the description I offered to Integral Naked (pardon the 3rd-person):
'A Whirling Tango' is a composition for solo marimba. It is part of Matthew Dallman's record I Am Sound, which is a collection of largely contemplative compositions to be released in September 2004. The piece was composed for Jennie Dorris, a musician who lives in Boulder. She premiered it on May 30th to a packed-house at Boulder's Burnt Toast cafe. A subsequent performance in July 2004 in a Boulder auditorium was recorded by Jason Digges, an active producer. Matthew's intentions were to explore the use of a tango beat in a contemplative context, with a Bach-inspired theme to develop through several tonal centers. As he sang through the piece in-progress, he found himself in a slow spin next to his piano. And it was that slow-motion spin, and witness to the spin, that gave this piece its name.
If you are not an IN subscriber, and would like to listen to this piece, as well as check out a breathtaking spectrum of dialogues and examples of avant-garde art, on the What's New page, there is a coupon for the first month free.
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