Must admit I’ve been avoiding Wuorinen’s music for a while, vaguely aware that my initial aversion years ago might not be the entire picture. I do admire his mixing up atonal-isms with tonal-isms, something I’m also a fan of, tho not via any kind of serial route… Bright red apples indeed!

Um, hi. Perry here. No comp website at present, so the Amazon page will have to do…

I’m less interested in the “difficulty” topic, but I suppose it’s worth noting that it was a much-mentioned subject this weekend at the Marathon in North Adams, where all the Bangers-in-charge were going on about how hard this music used to be for people, and how easy it was for the assembled cast of youngsters (by which I mean our peers) on stage. So I guess everyone agrees on that point, at least.

As for the last bit, you’re right that it’s very indie, but it’s also totally auteur and mid-century retro, to be the institutionally-supported Bad Boy. What bothers me about this version, rather than the indie version (or even the Bad Boy version, really), is that it’s really about this mythical Past when Everything Was Better, and how it’s someone else’s responsibility to get us back there, but certainly not mine (in this case, Wuorinen’s). And then there’s the blame game, where responsibility is shifted onto the shoulders of, you know, music journalists and orchestra managers in this case, or Welfare Queens in others. Either way, it’s totally ferkakte and grosses me out like little else.

The real problem for me, speaking of acidity, is that all those general points turn totally sour in my mind (stomach?) when they are paired with all this talk of The West, casual put-downs of “popular music”, easy categorizations of What is Art and What is Entertainment, and above all, statements like “the composer’s role is to write music. I don’t think the composer has any social obligation whatsoever”, which doesn’t actually seem to me to be a coherent statement, but that’s just me, I guess (as in, what does it mean to have a “role” if you have no “social obligation”? I’m going to have to go write about this separately. See what you’ve done?).

[Actually, his discussion of the good ol’ days, when non-classical musicians knew their place, is really the lowest point in the whole interview, but it’s just so transparently offensive that it hardly warrants discussion. I wish Frank Oteri, who I also respect a lot, would have pushed him a little more when he went down paths like that, but maybe it’s better just to let someone make their bed, fully and completely.]

Anyway, I’d love to know what I’m missing – and I grant that I must be missing something, since you obviously enjoyed this interview, and not in the way I am now enjoying it, which is as a straw man come to life!

Nico responds:
Judd, my dear creature! So good to hear your e-voice. In terms of stuff of Chazz’s that I liked, here it is, in order (with my annotations)

– Composer/performer is a good idea. He wouldn’t say it, but of course Reich & Glass are good models for this. Also he speaks to people playing each other’s music, as in, composer-on-composer action, which as you know I am all in favor of. I wish those 12-toners had been more serious about it, but they were too busy suckling at the Institutional Pap to really have to fight their way through the wilderness, for better or for worse.

– I thought he was very honest (in a good way) about his thoughts about the electronic medium and live players. Of course, he wouldn’t say THIS either, but for me, the relationship between humans and computers is going to be, I think, one of the ways forward, that requires comprehensive mastery of both disciplines (not partial of both, which is sometimes the case.)

– I liked what he said about Ionisation, “Everyone knows it’s a classic in the medium, therefore it’s easy to put together.” Difficulty is 90% psychological is also true, I think. So is, like, shucking oysters and eating them – you think to yourself, “who thought of this!?”. You & I both know a lot of people who are happy to engage in the difficulty of learning Wuorinen or Jessica Rabbit…it’s overcoming a psychological thing like looking down off of high buildings or something. In all seriousness, though, I saw this Ferneyhough Opera a few years ago that was “hard” but was played, like, perfectly, as if it waarn’t no thing. Hard but Idiomatic – it’s like Yoga or something, where you really get to know your technique as a flexible instrument rather than a blunt object.

– What I actually admire about this the most is how totally out of control he is about “what defines success” – I feel like his is a viewpoint in which he is simultaneously “the most successful person at the system” and also “misunderstood.” It’s like this Relativism of being Relevant game that take a lot of chutzpah to play. What’s funny is that “indie” people, too, play this game within the pop/rock world, where there is not a dichotomy but a three-pronged balance between “talent” (both perceived and, you know, f’real) and “success” and “cheating” (like, having a great publicist or something). So Chuzzers has more in common with, like, Ratatat than he’d like to admit.