Thoughts on history, culture, music, the details of our world, and how learning matters. Written by a musician and professor, Learn with Mike provides insight and resources for those looking to maximize their creative potential through developing the skill of learning. Also posts from On Learning Percussion, my more practical posts about musical learning that I hope are helpful for curious learners.
Western Hemisphere, Unite!
The Pan American Association of Composers and the Noisy 1920s |
Dear Reader, I’ve been teaching Percussion Repertoire this semester, and if you know me you can believe I am overdoing it to the max. This year, I’m focusing on gestalt, cultural scenarios or confluences that set the stage for innovations in percussion repertoire. A sort of inversion of the Great Man approach, thoroughly stolen from Martin Bresnick’s formative Analysis from the Composer’s Perspective course. We’re working to explore the canon behind the canon, and nowhere is it clearer than in percussion works of the late 1920s and 1930s, whose noisy sound fused a burgeoning interest in non-Western sound with a bracing and aggressive modernism. From 2023, they sound like the cotton gin—remarkable inventions that transformed our world today. But what was in the air, and what was in the pen? What innovations were evolutions, particularly with regard to the increasing use of percussion as a forum for artistic expression? At the same time, apropos previous postings, what of assumptions did these composers make about their performers, audiences, peers? A few weeks ago, I dove head first into the Pan American Association of Composers, a cabal of Western Hemisphere composers who banded together from 1928-1934 to advocate for the works of Americans as Americans, absent a fealty to the European tradition. Emerging from Edgard Varèse’s International Composers Guild, the PAAC was spurred on by the increasing national self-awareness, interest in indigenous art, and a general desire to promote NEW things. The group was spearheaded by composers Henry Cowell and Carlos Chávez in addition to Varèse. In addition to a life of modernism, Cowell taught a “Music of the World’s Peoples” course after returning from a Fulbright in Berlin through which he worked at the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv, the (then) pre-eminent archive of non-Western Music. He also innovated in the then-nascent string piano field. Chávez, though less known today, is a fascinating composer whose works fused pre-Columbian musics with astute modernism. His work as a conductor and head of the Conservatorio Nacional de Music in Mexico City was responsible for bringing widespread attention to Mexican music, particularly in the energetic days following the 1921 Mexican Revolution. Here he is with Rosa Covarubbias and Frida Kahlo. After an initial meeting in Steinway Hall (!!!), the PAAC (or super PAAC??) articulated a mission statement: It is the hope of the association that the performance of North American works in Central and South America and of Central and South American works in the United States will promote wider mutual appreciation of the music of the different republics of America, and will stimulate composers to make still greater effort toward creating a distinctive music of the Western Hemisphere. Encouragement may be derived from the fact that whereas a few years ago it would have been impossible to find a sufficient number of American composers with new musical ideals to form such an association, today there is a sizable group of progressive men and women who, although representing many different tendencies, are banded together through serious and sincere interest in furthering all the finest music being written in the Americas From: Root, Deane L. “The Pan American Association of Composers (1928-1934).”Anuario Interamericano de Investigacion Musical 8 (1972): 49. https://doi.org/10.2307/779819. At the time of its founding the group had quite an SEO-friendly roll call:
After a series of concerts in the US, famed conductor Nicholas Slonimsky took the group on the road. Sort of. Slonimsky, with the backing of Charles Ives, was dispatched to Europe to “conduct symphonic works by these American modernists.” Although ‘the currency situation was very favorable to the American dollar,” the concerts were a critical event, although not a successful one. Check out these Programs! Wait, there’s MORE. In each case, the PAAC wrote descriptions of each work, and they are aggressive and athletic:
These programs were broadly of a type with the late 1920s. The US was beginning to articulate a position on the world stage, there was a growing nationalism in Western Hemisphere counties, and a unique brand of American music was forming, a “rugged” individualism, a maverick streak, a tendency to go off into the desert making stuff. I give you: George Antheil’s Ballet Mécanique The piece was written for a film by Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy, with input from Man Ray. It’s typically performed in a rather tame percussion ensemble version with only a few airplane propellers, but the original version was slightly more…automated? One Summer, Many SoundsFor a non-musical, non academic but but actually very lurid take on the late 1920s, I returned to Bill Bryson’s One Summer: America, 1927, which sets the stage for a uniquely American America. Think of what happened in one summer:
Bryson’s writing is effervescent and irreverent, and highlights how the US as we exist today was partially a byproduct of the conflicts exacerbated and set into motion in the 1920s: that conflict between isolationism and engagement, the juxtaposition of a provincial history with a growing wealth, political immorality fused with unearned righteousness. A time of progressivism and slumming, Vanderbilts and Vanzetti’s. These contrasts are to me audible in many of the works of this period: the juxtaposition of incredible wealth of the elite and crushing poverty of the depression, the size of the Western Hemisphere, the increasing noise of urban life, a notable turn from Europe (e.g. calling all sirens and airplane propellers), the increasing speed of information and humans (radios, jets). Instruments, not IdeasThese lurid and endearing descriptions reminded me of a set of programs from a few early percussion ensemble concerts: A group headed by John Cage, Lou Harrison and William Russell at Mills College in 1940: And a show led by Cage at the Cornish school in 1939: What luck, then when I unearthed a record of these early works, deaccessioned by the Peabody library and accessioned by yours truly in 2005: In addition to the AMAZING graphic design, I also love the specificity of the instrument listing under the players. It shows how the instruments, the sounds are the novelty, not just the piece. Also, I wish more programs included a prophetic polemic like Cowell’s. OK, why is this important? Broadly speaking, percussion works from this period struggled with form—for many, structuring time without pitch or harmony was a challenge—and so innovative sounds were key. This record came from 1961, when performance practice of these seminal early works had shifted to professional percussionists, not the dancers and book binders of the early days. I’ve struggled to find space for “early” percussion ensemble works in my teaching. A little too square, a little too rigid, and a little too… easy (Cage notwithstanding)? Contextualizing these works as part of an era, as experiments on the way to something, not the thing itself, helps explain their provenance while giving us some powerful ideas about how to bring them to life in 2023. And, it gives me an opportunity to listen to some hot jazz, research the Ford Model A, and think about Babe Ruth’s life in the Ansonia Hotel. I have been focusing more in my teaching and research on starting a learning process from community, how we want something to take shape in the world, how we want it to connect with people, draw people together in a shared space. That perspective can help us research a piece and direct an interpretation in one fluid process. This little foray into castanets, maracas, bongos, and lions roar’s got me thinking about how to honor this era. Maybe by making something noisy, or starting a Pan Something Association of Something? Other Comings and Goings
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Learn with Mike
by Michael Compitello
Thoughts on history, culture, music, the details of our world, and how learning matters. Written by a musician and professor, Learn with Mike provides insight and resources for those looking to maximize their creative potential through developing the skill of learning. Also posts from On Learning Percussion, my more practical posts about musical learning that I hope are helpful for curious learners.
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