9/12 - Not Composing

As a percussion performance major in today's world, it's kind of hard not to like percussionist and composer Steve Reich; he's written works for So Percussion, the Kronos Quartet, Amadinda (I think?), has had his pieces performed all over the world and really is one of the keystones of recent percussion literature.

I'm usually a fan of his work, but on NPR music the other day, the article on his piece "WTC 9/11" and on the "First Listen" segment of the same piece, I started questioning his composition, which is something you should always do. Never take anyone's work as immediately good and valid, because it well might not be; just because it's published and one person or group of people could come together to perform it doesn't mean that you as a listener shouldn't question its musicality, it's merit as a work of art, or the opinions of the performers. I had done that with Mr. Reich like I had done with everyone else at the start, and I guess he passed a 'test' in my mind, whenever I hear enough good, out of habit I take for granted that everything else is good. I shouldn't do that. Plenty of people are in the music scene for the business much less than they are the music, and it isn't rare to see a good, honest album followed by a couple of half-baked ones.

And I'm not calling this piece half-baked, it certainly isn't. There are some interesting new compositional ideas that I liked, and it took him quite a while and I actually didn't even mind the music.

What felt off to me was, should any or every event be composed for, whether it's very good, very bad, or somewhere in the middle?

I don't know that I am the most valid person to sum up the emotions of 9/11, not only because there are so many but because, well, when it happened, I was 8, and I had just woken up when my mom called me in to her room to watch tv, which was certainly unusual on a school day. It seems a little weird to think about now, but I probably wasn't shocked or disturbed to the magnitude that you would think a kid would be, because I didn't really understand the situation. I was probably still curious about why I wasn't at school yet, and why I got to watch tv early in the morning.

To me, though, the nation, especially those personally affected, feel grieved, lost, defenseless, heartbroken and even angry, and that's a cocktail of emotions that I haven't felt yet and hopefully don't ever have to. There are pieces written to speak out against powerful dictators and mighty kings, war cries and uplifting songs of national pride, and tragedies that tell of lost love, but I don't think this situation quite falls into any of those categories. We were attacked by a handful of people, and it is absurd to say that that handful, though lethal and powerful in their own right, could have or ever had the upper hand in this fight. Any works written would not be to speak out against an oppressor, or to unite a nation against some seemingly unconquerable foe; no, we are not oppressed, and they are not unconquerable, just tragically and sporadically chaotic, at least to us, and a little difficult to track down.

The music itself sounds to me like the soundtrack to a news article, and not a grandiose or passionate symphony that used to portray the emotions of Shostakovich or Mahler. There are voices, describing the events, saying things they remembered, what they were doing or how the helped, and there are Reich-esque, minimalist string parts. This, to me at least, didn't capture the sentiments of anyone, not any of the people speaking, not even Mr. Reich himself, not that I can ever know for sure.

What do you think? Are some events, like 9/11, the Russian hockey team plane crash, or, on the flip side, the end of a long war, a great sporting triumph, or the fall of an evil dictator, able to be composed for without being programmatic and quirky instead of the art that they're supposed to be?

I'm still not sure on this subject yet. I do love thinking about music though.

M