So for the past seven or eight years I've occasionally admired Bernhard Günter's music, in a (I see now) half-hearted, lazily abstract "I can respect the idea of this; that collaboration with John Duncan based on that Morton Feldman Beckett libretto is interesting" sort of way. So earlier this evening, after a third of a bottle of absinthe, I had a sudden whim to spin some Günter CDs - something I haven't done in at least a year or two. And, well ... the most level-headed thing I can say about it is that maybe I just don't get it, much as I've tried to. I'm certainly no stranger to electro-acoustic composition or otherwise out-there stuff (Pierre Schaeffer and Iancu Dumitrescu both loom large in my world), but, try as I might, I really don't see what the big to do is about Günter and the rest of the trente oiseaux gang (Francisco Lopez, et al.). The methodology seems central to the aesthetic, but once you've accustomed yourself to the sonics, there really doesn't seem much to it: here's some nearly inaudible hums and glitches, now some silence, repeat to redundancy.
Now I know all about Günter's "my music is not communicative int he traditional sense; it's an aural tree" point taken. But I suppose the question then becomes "is it an interesting aural tree"? As much as I've tried to convince myself otherwise, I have to admit that it strikes me as a decidedly dull and tedious aural tree. Perhaps one more glass of absinthe would have me rolling on the floor in hysterics, thinking about the money I've invested in this stack of CDs.
I emphasize that this is my subjective response. I'm not knocking him or his music. As I said, maybe I just really don't get it.
What I'm wondering is this: do people who proclaim to be such big Günter fans really mean what they say, or do they merely admire it in the same fashion I professed to once admire it - distant, abstract, probably rarely listening to it at all. This isn't to say that they're consciously being dishonest, but have they deluded themselves? The height of pretentious hipsterdom? Or merely my latent philistinism and yokeldom come at last to the forefront of my own consciousness?
― kjoerup, Monday, 16 August 2004 06:47 (twenty-one years ago)
good questions. familiar to anyone who spends so much money on albums that get listened to once or twice.
this is an age of hyperspecialized musical forms. sometimes these extreme statements can be devastating. other times they can seem absolutely laughable. best thing to do is to focus on your own response, and don't bother much with second guessing or conceptualizing the reaction of hypothetical 'big Günter fans'.
if you lived in san francisco, I'd ask you to bring over the absinthe.
― (Jon L), Monday, 16 August 2004 07:00 (twenty-one years ago)
Isn't 'accustoming yourself to the sonics...not much to it' the problem with most things ever recorded? You accustom yrself to the ideas with repeated plays and then you move on. And this apllies with really complicated stuff like cecil taylor unit or xenakis -- you get a handle on the some of the shapes, but there's something that tells you won't get everything, that this is part of the design.
ppl seem to be working on very quiet music now more than ever, trying to come up with sonics at very quiet levels that sustain interest. I like the play with silence and duration that is going on right now; much inspired by new york school type composition, which may not be bettered. I guess you could say its a cageian type 'endgame' but part of me likes 'endgames'.
(gd timing for this thread: I've been reading eddie prevost's collection of essays where he spends time attacking the 'reductionist scene' -- centered around the likes of radu malfatti -- that has sprung up in the last few years)
― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Monday, 16 August 2004 09:17 (twenty-one years ago)