David T. Little

I am about as far behind on my blog-reading as I am on my blog-writing, so this morning I thought I’d try to get caught up on at least the reading part, starting with the wonderfully-written and frequently updated Hell Mouth blog by John Adams. Part of my reason for starting there was also, to be honest, to kick my blog-writing back into action after too-long of a hiatus. (Every time I complain about being too tired to blog, I have a good friend who puts me in my place by reminding me that John Adams posts thoughtful and substantial posts every three-to-four days. And he’s John Adams; a busy guy. I inevitably grumble but concede.)

The post that first caught my attention was this one, about one of my favorite places on earth–Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. I love old cemeteries, and for me, Père-Lachaise is second only to San Michelle’s in Venice, which wins out simply because it’s literally an island of the dead, and that’s pretty creepy. And though San Michelle can boast Diaghilev, Stravinsky, Nono and Ezra Pound among its residents, Père-Lachaise certainly wins out in terms of composer VIPs: Bellini, Bizet, Chausson, Cherubini, Chopin, Dukas, Françaix, Poulenc, and more. And of course there’s also Balzac, Proust, and The Lizard King. (Though it should be mentioned that Vienna’s Zentralfriedhof, probably wins out in terms of the quality of its VIPs–Beethoven, Brahms, Ligeti, Mozart, Schoenberg, Schubert, and others. Still, it doesn’t have the creepy, magical feeling of the other two, and so falls to third place.)

Adams’s description of the cemetery is really wonderful, but the moment that really struck me was the following passage:

We don’t do the pilgrimage to Jim Morrison, but we note with some pleasure that of all the tens of thousands of graves, the one that it is by far and away the most adored, the most visited and the most heaped with flowers and demonstrations of affection is that of a composer, “Fred. Chopin” (as the inscription reads). For all the politicians and wealthy businessmen and puffed up egos that take up room in this seemingly endless cemetery, the ones people gravitate to are those of the artists, and of those, it’s the ones who gave us beauty and a singular awareness of our humanity that receive the most visits. Thus, on this unremarkable weekday afternoon in March with tourist season months away, there is nonethelss a clutch of people clustered around Chopin’s grave, and there is a fresh pile of flowers beneath it.

I first visited Père-Lachaise when I was 16 years old. I had just decided that I wanted to become a composer, though still had no idea what that really meant, or how I was going to do it. I remember that, in the moment when I first saw Chopin’s grave, I was similarly moved. That there must be some deep truth that this man understood, and could share with people; ” beauty and a singular awareness of our humanity,” as Adams puts it. I think that somewhere in my subconscious this re-affirmed my uninformed teenage decision to be a composer, and that the resonance of this moment has kept me going through times of doubt, fear, writers-block, etc. in the years since.

The last few months have been a bit of a whirlwind, which explains why I haven’t been able to post here as regularly as I would have liked. That said, I’m happy to report that everything has gone really well.

My opera Vinkensport was a success, I think, both as a piece and in terms of its reception. Newspeak‘s residency at Princeton went very well, and only a week later we went into the studio to record our first CD, which was hard work, but very fun, and what I’ve heard of the tracks sound really great (and heavy!) (Pictures here.) I just got back from Chicago where I had the privilege to perform Corey Dargel‘s 13 Near-Death Experiences with ICE. I haven’t composed any music since January…(I have done some orchestrations)…but I did turn in my dissertation.

Now, I love what I do…well, I wouldn’t say that I “loved” writing the dissertation…and have learned an amazing amount from the diversity of my opportunities, especially from performing the music of other composers. But having just weathered three months of pure craziness does raise the question of how one balances a life like this. Throughout this whole period, as I was constantly unable to attend friend’s shows, or see family, or, you know, eat dinner, I kept finding myself softly chanting “koyaanisqatsi“. I definitely felt a sense of imbalance.

So far my approach to dealing with periods like this has been: get as much done as you can when you can, never really take too long a break, and sacrifice things like sleep, health, family, etc. Clearly, this is stupid. It’s a very undergraduate way of living, and I really can’t do it anymore. In fact, I think when you’re an adult, the word for this kind of approach is “workaholic,” and most things that end in “-aholic” aren’t especially tenable. This, then, is to be my goal moving forward: To continue to produce as much as possible, but not to over-commit or over-extend myself.

I’ll be sure to let you know how all this goes. But for now, it’s off to Baltimore for a run of performances with Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and then to plan a donor appreciation event for Newspeak, and write a sax quartet. But then that’s it for a while. Really. I promise. I can stop anytime I want. I swear.

“So, you like challenges, right?” This is how a phone call from Dawn Upshaw began, approximately 4 months ago. She was looking to commission a short—20-30 minute—opera for the Graduate Vocal Arts program at the Bard Conservatory. I’d worked with these amazing singers last year as part of the Osvaldo Golijov/ Dawn Upshaw Professional Training Workshop, co-presented by Bard and Carnegie Hall, so I knew they were great, and was excited to have the chance to work with them again. And of course, when Dawn Upshaw is asking, there is pretty much only one right answer: yes.

So there I was, with four months to write an opera that would premiere in six months. Do I like challenges? Apparently, I do! 2009 ended—and 2010 began—in a sleep-deprived frenzy.

First, of course, I needed a libretto. So I contacted my trusted collaborator Royce Vavrek to see a) if he wanted to write one, and b) if he had any ideas for what it could be about. After much discussion and many possibilities being tossed around, he sent me a Wikipedia entry on the strange sport of finch sitting.

Finch sitting (or “vinkensport” in Flemish) is a sport that developed in the late 1500s in Flanders. Basically, the competitors sit in front of a caged bird and mark on a tally stick how many times said bird tweets a specific song—called a “susk-e-wiet”—during the course of an hour. Then they do it again—round two—and so on. It’s like golf, but with birds, and more boring.

But here’s the thing: people who play it get completely obsessed; or at least it would seem so based on the numerous reports of cheating. These incidents—including someone injecting testosterone into their bird so they’d sing more frequently—were what first drew Royce and me to the subject; made us ask, what is it about the need to win that would push people to such an extent? Especially since—hello—it’s finch sitting! It’s not like we’re talking about the Olympics here.

This is ultimately what Vinkensport, of The Finch Opera, is about: why people think they need to win. Some of the characters in the opera just like to win—because winning feels good—while others do it to fill void that they feel in their life. Starting off with these questions/this theme afforded us an opportunity to explore issues of dramatic character in a way he hadn’t been able to in previous collaborations—i.e. the in-progress Dog Days. We get into their lives and experience their joys and sorrows, delusions and all-too-stark realities. Still, at its core, Vinkensport is a comedy. We hope you will laugh.

Vinkensport, of The Finch Opera will be premiered on February 26th at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College alongside a new version of my dear friend Missy Mazzoli’s haunting Song From the Uproar, and L’enfant et les sortilèges by some guy named Maurice Ravel. James Bagwell will conduct all three operas, and Dan Rigazzi will direct the fully-staged productions…(which, as far as I know, will all involve puppets!)

Watched that video in Part 1? Good. So, moving on.

As a composer, the idea of intellectual property is a complex one. I am all for giving stuff away for free, but ultimately, I have to survive. Survival takes money, money takes work, and my work is writing music. But I also see the very real harm that can be done to culture when numbers start being crunched inside of office buildings, and when the people crunching these numbers—most of whom have no business dictating culture at all—start deciding what is culturally allowable. This is one of the things that I like about Creative Commons; it allows the artist to decide upfront how their work is to be used, and the number crunchers, theoretically, stay out of it. Controlling the means of (re)production, you might say.

Well, as you know from watching the video in the previous post, The Winstons would have benefited greatly from Creative Commons licensing. When “electronica” went mainstream and started making money, everyone wanted a cut of it. In the end, the artists got nothing, but some random music companies–who seem to have just stolen the samples (but had good lawyers I guess)–ended up making a bundle. Keep it classy, music industry. Ultimately, the question is: what was the cultural value of the Amen break (or any other samples) remaining free of charge, and, in the end did the good outweigh the damage?

I don’t have a specific answer to this question, but it does bring us to our discussion of UbuWeb. Do you know about this amazing thing? UbuWeb is anti-corporate utopian Internet hub full of amazing avant-garde treats. It’s like the best college radio station you’ve ever heard, and it never goes off the air. On-demand pirate radio for the “aughties.” It was founded in 1996 by a bunch of crazies—(and who doesn’t love crazies?!)—and all materials up there are entirely free for your listening/reading/viewing pleasure. Also, they haven’t asked permission to post any of it.

As they say on the site: “Nothing is for sale on UbuWeb. It’s all free. We know it’s a hard idea to get used to, but there’s no lush gift shop waiting for you at the end of this museum.” (Having visited many of the amazing museums in London when I was there for the DCR concert, I definitely appreciate this analogy.) But wait. Hold up. Say what? So—they upload this stuff, without asking permission, then give it away for free? How is that possible? Well I guess in a utopian sense, the question would be: why would it not be possible? But really, here’s the deal:

“If it’s out of print, we feel it’s fair game. Or if something is in print, yet absurdly priced or insanely hard to procure, we’ll take a chance on it. But if it’s in print and available to all, we won’t touch it. The last thing we’d want to do is to take the meager amount of money out of the pockets of those releasing generally poorly-selling materials of the avant-garde. UbuWeb functions as a distribution center for hard-to-find, out-of-print and obscure materials, transferred digitally to the web. Our scanning, say, an historical concrete poem in no way detracts from the physical value of that object in the real world; in fact, it probably enhances it. Either way, we don’t care: EBay is full of wonderful physical artifacts, most of them worth a lot of money.”

Legal speaking, they can say that they are for educational purposes, which is true. (I actually downloaded the copy of Cardew’s out-of-print Stockhausen Serves Imperialism for my dissertation research form Ubu…speaking of crazies.) But really, the bottom line is, as they say, if they had to “get permission from everyone on UbuWeb, there would be no UbuWeb.” And how terrible would that be?! (I’ll tell you. It would be awful. Life would be exponentially more boring.)

As UbuWeb co-founder Kenny Goldsmith says “As long as we stay within the margins of culture, we’re pretty much safe. When we occasionally dip our toe into the more profitable or mainstream side of the avant-garde, do we get slapped around.” (Sound familiar? No one cared about the use of samples, until people realized they could get rich off of it!)

He continues: “Are we crazy? Yes. Are we exposing ourselves to great risk? Yes. Could we get screwed? Yes. What we’re doing is clearly wrong, and we wouldn’t have a foot to stand on in the court of law. But we think the good greatly outweighs any damage. … UbuWeb can be construed as the Robin Hood of the avant-garde, but instead of taking from one and giving to the other, we feel that in the end, we’re giving to all.”

The good outweighs any damage, indeed. I respect that they are taking a stand like this and saying: “you know what people? The world will be a better place if we upload this totally insane sound art piece, so we’re just going to do it.” If we need anything right now, it’s for the world to be a little bit better!

Watched that video in Part 1? Good. So, moving on.

As a composer, the idea of intellectual property is a complex one. I am all for giving stuff away for free, but ultimately, I have to survive. Survival takes money, money takes work, and my work is writing music. But I also see the very real harm that can be done to culture when numbers start being crunched inside of office buildings, and when the people crunching these numbers—most of whom have no business dictating culture at all—start deciding what is culturally allowable. This is one of the things that I like about Creative Commons; it allows the artist to decide upfront how their work is to be used, and the number crunchers, theoretically, stay out of it. Controlling the means of (re)production, you might say.

Well, as you know from watching the video in the previous post, The Winstons would have benefited greatly from Creative Commons licensing. When “electronica” went mainstream and started making money, everyone wanted a cut of it. In the end, the artists got nothing, but some random music companies–who seem to have just stolen the samples (but had good lawyers I guess)–ended up making a bundle. Keep it classy, music industry. Ultimately, the question is: what was the cultural value of the Amen break (or any other samples) remaining free of charge, and, in the end did the good outweigh the damage?

I don’t have a specific answer to this question, but it does bring us to our discussion of UbuWeb. Do you know about this amazing thing? UbuWeb is anti-corporate utopian Internet hub full of amazing avant-garde treats. It’s like the best college radio station you’ve ever heard, and it never goes off the air. On-demand pirate radio for the “oughties.” It was founded in 1996 by a bunch of crazies—(and who doesn’t love crazies?!)—and all materials up there are entirely free for your listening/reading/viewing pleasure. Also, they haven’t asked permission to post any of it.

As they say on the site: “Nothing is for sale on UbuWeb. It’s all free. We know it’s a hard idea to get used to, but there’s no lush gift shop waiting for you at the end of this museum.” (Having visited many of the amazing museums in London when I was there for the DCR concert, I definitely appreciate this analogy.) But wait. Hold up. Say what? So—they upload this stuff, without asking permission, then give it away for free? How is that possible? Well I guess in a utopian sense, the question would be: why would it not be possible? But really, here’s the deal:

“If it’s out of print, we feel it’s fair game. Or if something is in print, yet absurdly priced or insanely hard to procure, we’ll take a chance on it. But if it’s in print and available to all, we won’t touch it. The last thing we’d want to do is to take the meager amount of money out of the pockets of those releasing generally poorly-selling materials of the avant-garde. UbuWeb functions as a distribution center for hard-to-find, out-of-print and obscure materials, transferred digitally to the web. Our scanning, say, an historical concrete poem in no way detracts from the physical value of that object in the real world; in fact, it probably enhances it. Either way, we don’t care: EBay is full of wonderful physical artifacts, most of them worth a lot of money.”

Legal speaking, they can say that they are for educational purposes, which is true. (I actually downloaded the copy of Cardew’s out-of-print Stockhausen Serves Imperialism for my dissertation research form Ubu…speaking of crazies.) But really, the bottom line is, as they say, if they had to “get permission from everyone on UbuWeb, there would be no UbuWeb.” And how terrible would that be?! (I’ll tell you. It would be awful. Life would be exponentially more boring.)

As UbuWeb co-founder Kenny Goldsmith says “As long as we stay within the margins of culture, we’re pretty much safe. When we occasionally dip our toe into the more profitable or mainstream side of the avant-garde, do we get slapped around.” (Sound familiar? No one cared about the use of samples, until people realized they could get rich off of it!)

He continues: “Are we crazy? Yes. Are we exposing ourselves to great risk? Yes. Could we get screwed? Yes. What we’re doing is clearly wrong, and we wouldn’t have a foot to stand on in the court of law. But we think the good greatly outweighs any damage. … UbuWeb can be construed as the Robin Hood of the avant-garde, but instead of taking from one and giving to the other, we feel that in the end, we’re giving to all.”

The good outweighs any damage, indeed. I respect that they are taking a stand like this and saying: “you know what people? The world will be a better place if we upload this totally insane sound art piece, so we’re just going to do it.” If we need anything right now, it’s for the world to be a little bit better!

Recently, the NYC percussionist and all-around-nice-guy Chris Thompson posted a really great video on Twitter. (Maybe on Facebook too, not sure.) It’s all about the “Amen break.” As the narrator Nate Harrison says, the Amen Beak is “a ubiquitous piece of the pop culture soundscape” In other words, even if you think you don’t know it, you probably do.

The Amen, as he explains, was originally a drum break from a song called Amen, Brother, by The Winstons. This track was released as a B-side in 1969. The A-side, Color Him, Father won a Grammy. Amen, Brother, on the other hand, was pretty much forgotten. Until… well, you’ll see. Although it’s a little long (especially by YouTube and/or viral video standards), and can sometimes feel a bit like sitting in university lecture, it nonetheless provides an interesting history on the beat, played by the late drummer Gregory C. Coleman.

Almost more importantly, though, it offers an analysis of the legal and ethical issues behind the use of this break as a sample–and sampling in general—including a pretty direct attack on capitalism and its propensity for cultural co-optation. (Teh invisable hand iz steelin ur ideas; makin money off ov ur werk.) Following this, he makes a case for the use of Creative Commons licensing—which if you don’t know about you should totally check out here.

There is a part two to all this, but how ’bout watch the video first. Deal?