Introduction
I figured this video would be a decent introduction to Glenn Branca:
In the video, Branca talks about John Cage’s specific reactions upon hearing his work – evidently, Cage didn’t enjoy it. Branca must have been amused in some ways as he chose to put an interview, which featured John Cage talking about why he dislikes Branca’s work, as a track on one of his albums, which can be heard here:
Part 1
Part 2
I thought that might be an interesting place to start with this day – because far from wanting to set this up as a Glenn Branca VS John Cage fest, or anything like that – it does give some kind of context for where Glenn Branca himself may see his work fitting in. I dunno, I could be wrong, and maybe who cares? Basically, I love Branca’s work. It excites me. It inspires me. That’s my main motivation here.
I never get bored of seeing this clip:
And here’s another interesting interview with Branca:
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The Work
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Writing
If you want the technicalities and facts about Branca, then you can have look at the Wikipedia entry.
It’s more interesting for me to read what Branca says himself. This is him talking about the current state of music, from 2009:
The End of Music
By Glenn Branca
We seem to be on the edge of a paradigm shift. Orchestras are struggling to stay alive, rock has been relegated to the underground, jazz has stopped evolving and become a dead art, the music industry itself has been subsumed by corporate culture and composers are at their wit’s end trying to find something that’s hip but still appeals to an audience mired in a 19th-century sensibility.
For more than half a century we’ve seen incredible advances in sound technology but very little if any advance in the quality of music. In this case the paradigm shift may not be a shift but a dead stop. Is it that people just don’t want to hear anything new? Or is it that composers and musicians have simply swallowed the pomo line that nothing else new can be done, which ironically is really just the “old, old story.”
Certainly music itself is not dead. We’ll continue to hear something approximating it blaring in shopping malls, fast food stops, clothing stores and wherever else it will mesmerize the consumer into excitedly pulling out their credit card or debit card or whatever might be coming.
There’s no question that in music, like politics, the bigger the audience gets the more the “message” has to be watered down. Muzak’s been around for a long time now but maybe people just can’t tell the difference anymore. Maybe even the composers and songwriters can’t tell the difference either. Especially when it’s paying for a beach house in Malibu and a condo in New York.
Of course, we could all just listen to all of our old albums, CD’s and mp3’s. In fact, nowadays that’s where the industry makes most of its money. We could also just watch old movies and old TV shows. There are a lot of them now. Why bother making any new ones? Why bother doing anything new at all? Why bother having any change or progress at all as long as we’ve got “growth”? I’m just wondering if this is in fact the new paradigm. I’m just wondering if in fact the new music is just the old music again. And, if that in fact it would actually just be the end of music.
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And here’s another piece he wrote for the NYT:
The 25 Questions
By Glenn Branca
I got the idea for this piece from mathematician David Hilbert’s well-known list of 23 “Paris Problems” (1900) that he hoped to see solved in the new century. Of course there is not the slightest connection between Hilbert’s list of problems and this list of questions. Not to mention the fact that many of these questions contain the answers simply in the asking.
1. Should a modern composer be judged against only the very best works of the past?
2. Can there be truly objective criteria for judging a work of art?
3. If a composer can write one or two or more great works of music why cannot all of his or her works be great?
4. Why does the contemporary musical establishment remain so conservative when all other fields of the arts embrace new ideas?
5. Should a composer, if confronted with a choice, write for the musicians who will play a piece or write for the audience who will hear it?
6. When is an audience big enough to satisfy a composer or a musician? 100? 1000? 10,000? 100,000? 1,000,000? 100,000,000?
7. Is the symphony orchestra still relevant or is it just a museum?
8. Is micro-tonality a viable compositional tool or a burned out modernist concept?
9. In an orchestra of 80 to 100 musicians does the use of improvisation make any sense?
10. What is the dichotomy between dissonance and. tonality and where should the line be drawn?
11. Can the music that sooths the savage beast be savage?
12. Should a composer speak with the voice of his or her own time?
13. If there’s already so much good music to listen to what’s the point of more composers writing more music?
14. If Bach were alive today would he be writing in the baroque style?
15. Must all modern composers reject the past, a la John Cage or Milton Babbitt’s “Who Cares If You Listen?”
16. Is the symphony an antiquated idea or is it, like the novel in literature, still a viable long form of music?
17. Can harmony be non-linear?
18. Was Cage’s “4:33” a good piece of music?
19. Artists are expected to accept criticism, should critics be expected to accept it as well?
20. Sometimes I’m tempted to talk about the role that corporate culture plays in the sale and distribution of illegal drugs throughout the United States and the world, and that the opium crop in Afghanistan has increased by 86 percent since the American occupation, and the fact that there are 126,000 civilian contractors in Iraq, but what does this have to do with music?
21. Can the orchestra be replaced by increasingly sophisticated computer-sampling programs and recording techniques, at least as far as recordings are concerned?
22. When a visual artist can sell a one-of-a-kind work for hundreds of thousands of dollars and anyone on the internet can have a composer’s work for nothing, how is a composer going to survive? And does it matter?
23. Should composers try to reflect in their music the truth of their natures and the visions of their dreams whether or not this music appeals to a wide audience?
24. Why are advances in science and technology not paralleled by advances in music theory and compositional technique?
25. Post-Post Minimalism? Since Minimalism and Post-Minimalism we’ve seen a short-lived Neo-Romanticism, mainly based on misguided attempts to return to a 19th century tonality, then an improv scene which had little or nothing to do with composition, then a hodge-podge of styles: a little old “new music,” a little “60’s sound colorism”, then an eclectic pomo stew of jazz, rock and classical, then a little retro-chic Renaissance … even tonal 12-tonalism. And now in Germany some “conceptual” re-readings of Wagner. What have I left out? Where’s the music?
More of Glenn Branca’s NTY articles can be found here.
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To end, I enjoyed some of the stuff that Branca talked about in these last two interviews.
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p.s. RIP: Allan Sekula. Hey. Today the blog is super lucky to have the wonderful writer and d.l. Thomas Moronic concentrating on Glenn Branca, one of the seminal current makers of music, and a big favorite of mine. If you don't know his work, and if you want a particular entrance, you could start with the piece that lured me in originally, i.e. an earlyish composition called 'The Spectacular Commodity', which is amongst the clips that Thomas has included up above. High volume is encouraged. Or you could start pretty much anywhere too. Thank you so much, T! Otherwise, due to my ongoing sleep problems, I'm up early enough to do the p.s, before I head to the American embassy for what I hope will be a relatively painless procedure resulting in a new passport. ** Scunnard, Hey. Yeah, me too. The more of them, the less merry or something. I think, for me at least, the mere hat changing, as it were, when changing mediums and tasks makes a lot of sense. There's certainly nothing about it that feels like a multiple personality onset. It sounds like you could love it there. I look forward to a grand tour once you get your bearings. ** David Ehrenstein, Very nice characterization of dummies' relationship to humans. Thanks, kudos. Everyone, Mr. E adds to the ventriloquism post with these recommended examples: Avenue Q, 'foxy' Charlie McCarthy, and, re: the McCarthy clip, Busby Berkeley. ** Gary gray, Hi, Gary. Really sharp thoughts there. Blanchot is really great about language's inadequacies without vagueing out into nihilism. Yeah, really interesting and a boon to have access to your thinking about this. Wei wu wei: oh, that's nice. What a nice term. That's a really interesting idea in which to try to ground thinking re: writing. Cool, thanks for sharing that. My weekend lacked glory, but it was all right. How was yours? ** Kyler, Hi, Kyler! I caught this bad sleep, early waking thing from you?! Well, how could you have known, even if so. Nah, I don't know what why the fuck this is happening. First and hopefully last occurrence of this nature in the history and future of my zzz's. A Burroughs dummy? Wow, maybe, I didn't catch that. A Burroughs dummy is kind of an inspired idea. Hunh. Nice quote. Everyone, via Kyler, here's Burroughs on ventriloquism. Go to the indented paragraph. Thanks, buddy. ** Misanthrope, You back? You okay? Oh, right, shit, it was your birthday. Happy belated Birthday, man! Semi-Creationism just seems pathetic. Swallow it or go confused, I say. Uh, anything is possible, but no plans at the moment to use ventriloquism in the novel. Still, as I'm going to have the topic in my head pretty thoroughly through the work for Gisele, it's surely possible that there'll be some collateral effect or something. Hope you're doing good, man. ** Rewritedept, Hi. Yeah, lost both or had them stolen. I'll never know which, I guess. Third time this year that I've had to get a new debit card and live on coins for a week and change all my online bill paying things and blah. Irrational fears can shape one into an original, very interesting person. Good eye on those seeming discrepancies in 'TMS'. They're purposeful, of course, and the spaces between the seeming inaccuracies and what would seem to be accuracies are indeed among the novel's secret entrances. Yeah, mm, maybe late this week. Let me get my current shit aka card/passport resolved, but probably, yeah. I listened to one, no, two Scratch Acid tracks. They sounded good, naturally. I didn't notice that guitar riff resemblance, but, if it's there, you can bet that Pollard made the resemblance for a reason. ** Steevee, 'The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear' sounds really, really interesting. I'll start looking for a way to see it today. Thanks much! I'm still skeptical that my wallet/passport were stolen. I'm always pretty aware of what and who are around me when I'm on the metro. But I am spaced out because of this never-ending sleeplessness state, and I guess the thief could have been incredibly good. There is apparently a real problem here with pickpockets. Gangs of youths, they say. Avoid standing near gangs of youths when on the metro or in crowded public situations, they say. That's in the news a lot, and people are constantly warned to be vigilant. I have been, but to what avail maybe? ** œ, Hi. Me a ventriloquist? Interesting. When writing fiction, for sure I am, since that's part of the nature of doing that task, but, out here, I feel more like I'm my own dummy or something. Thank you for your good wishes re: my passport, etc. thing. Re: the former, I only have a metro ride ahead of me, so, technically, it should just be an annoying breeze at worst. ** Will C., Hi Will! Wow, it's great to see you! I've been wondering where and how and etc. you are. 'Grueling it out': nice. I mean the words, not the effects of your having grueled, although you say it paid off, so ... I always imagine it would be intense to work for Fed Ex, but that's probably just because it's intense to send or await things with/from them. Filson clothing company. Hold on. Oh, I see. (I just googled it.) Strange that hadn't heard of them. Maybe their stuff isn't so present over here. Anyway, big congrats on that score. And about loving Seattle. That's easy to imagine. And the most congrats, of course, me being me, on the growth spurt in your confidence in your writing. Any projects in particular that you're working on or scheming to work on? Yeah, awesome to have you back, man. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Yeah, it seems like the new GV piece could be good, we'll see. The hand-puppet piece, 'Jerk', worked out well, and this one would be in some way a kind of maxed out, related yet different piece. I'll see what Drexciya are all about. I don't think I know of them. Thanks about the passport thing. Hopefully, it'll just be a small stress fest with related victory. ** Martin Bladh, Hi, Martin. Hm, I don't really know how many pages that scrapbook is. It's definitely the longest of the scrapbooks. If I took a guess, it would be pretty random. You might ask Marvin. He'll surely know. There are some photos of it here in the 'Closer' section, if that helps you guesstimate at all. Thanks! ** Grant maierhofer, Hi, Grant! Thanks, man. 'Breaking Bad' must be peaking or something. Every other FB feed item today when I checked in there seemed to be referencing it. Like I think I said here once or twice, I watched a few episodes dubbed into French on TV last year, and it just looked like better than average TV to me, so I guess I need to see the original at some point. Yes, I got your email this morning. The post is great! Thank you so much! I'll get it set up, and I'll give you the launch date very soon. Yeah, fantastic, thank you, Grant! Acconci rules. I'm good, more than good, just downgraded into merely good due to my recent wallet/passport losses and this weird sleep issue thing. But, mainly, I'm really good. You have the voice of someone who is very good too. ** That's that. Branca/Moronic have you incredibly covered today. Enjoy. Assuming I don't get deported or anything today, I'll see you tomorrow.