Archives for June 2004

And now I’ve just learned that the New York singer Kate Sullivan has died – what age I don’t know, but younger than me. [Update: turns out she was only 40.] I first became aware of her from her expert, street-smart performance in Mikel Rouse’s opera Dennis Cleveland, on the basis of which I engaged her to sing the part of the Mother in my own opera Cinderella’s Bad Magic. I had hoped to work with her again when I restage the opera next season. (In fact, I was writing the lead for my next opera with her elegant mezzo in mind.) She was a lovely person and a dynamite singer.

I’m getting afraid to check messages.

I just received the shocking and very saddening news that my old friend, a good composer and a very important theorist, Jonathan Kramer died yesterday of leukemia at the age of only 61. (He’s survived by his father.) Jonathan was best known as a sort of postmodern theorist, hired as such at Columbia (in 1989) and for years not really recognized there as a composer as well. He was probably best known for his book The Time of Music, which dealt with goal-directedness versus stasis in our conceptions of musical time; powerfully argued with well-chosen and extensive examples, the book lent academic credence to the experience of time aimed at in minimalist music, relating it to kindred trends in European music.

But Jonathan was one of those rare people in whom analytical prowess and creativity went hand in hand. His music of the 1980s was what I’d have to call postminimalist: it used no repetition or grooves, but he would limit himself to only five or six or seven pitches with such inventiveness that you’d never realize the pitch spectrum was curtailed. My favorite pieces from this period were his Music for Piano Number 5 (1979-80), a Terry Riley-ish romp in mostly 11/16 meter; Moments in and Out of Time (1981-83), a big, Mahleresque orchestra piece that stubbornly adhered to the E minor scale; and a mercurial chamber piece called Atlanta Licks (1984). The limitation to a few pitches led Jonathan to experiment with using such limitations to subtly unify passages of otherwise widely varying style, and in his Notta Sonata for two pianos and percussion (1992-93) he achieved a true postmodernism, a fractured idiom in which unreal musics jostled each other in an impression of split consciousness. I never had the chance to hear his more recent music, but he was in the process of bringing out a new disc.

According to his ex-wife, Jonathan developed a blood disease last August which turned into myloproliferative syndrome, and only last weekend suddenly turned into acute leukemia. There will be a memorial service this Sunday, June 6, at 1 PM at Plaza Jewish Community Chapel in New York, 630 Amsterdam at 91st. He mentored hundreds of students, and was a loved teacher.

Jonathan, in a move that must have made colleagues question his sanity, brought me to teach a semester at Columbia as part of an attempt to loosen the place up and encourage diversity. He combined a roving, curious mind with blunt honesty, incisive opinions, and a genuine desire to make the music world a livelier, freer place. I had long looked forward to his someday receiving his just due as a composer. I hope it happens posthumously. For now, I’m stunned.

As detailed by Anthony Tommasini in an article in today’s Times, the Pultizer board was appropriately stung by John Adams’s criticism of the Pulitzer for music when he won in 2003. “Among musicians that I know,” Adams said in a comment much publicized at the time, “the Pulitzer has over the years lost much of the prestige it still carries in other fields like literature and journalism.” As Tommasini accurately notes,

Anyone perusing the list of winners, he continued, cannot help noticing the absence of most of America’s greatest musical minds, from mavericks like John Cage, Morton Feldman and Harry Partch, to composer-performers like Steve Reich, Laurie Anderson, Thelonious Monk and Meredith Monk. These creative spirits, he wrote, had been passed over year after year, “often in favor of academy composers who have won a disproportionate number of prizes.”

Very true, and well said. So far, so good. It would be wonderful to have the Pulitzer board acknowledge that the Pulitzer has concentrated on a stylistically narrow range of composers, specifically avoiding the more accessible composers whose music has the most public impact. I’d love it if Downtown composers like Steve Reich, William Duckworth, Janice Giteck, Glenn Branca had a crack at the Pulitzer along with the usual academic crowd.

So what’s the Pulitzer board’s beneficent response? They’re broadening the music category to also include music theater, film scores, and jazz, including even possibly jam sessions.

Anything, ANYTHING, rather than admit that Downtown music exists.

Pardon the unintended qualitative implications, but this is a little like telling someone their dinners are all meat and that they could stand to include some fruits and vegetables, and them responding, “OK, I’ll throw in candy bars and chewing gum. NOW are you satisfied?” The response completely misses the point of the complaint. First of all, musical theater has always been eligible for the drama award anyway, and Tommasini lists musicals that have won a drama Pulitzer: Rent, Sunday in the Park with George, South Pacific.

Secondly, it could make perfect sense to institute a separate Pulitzer prize for jazz, a Pulitzer prize for pop recordings or songs, even a Pulitzer for film scores. Those genres deserve to have excellence recognized. But to have a prize for best music in which one has to comparatively evaluate film scores along with notated concert pieces, and jazz performances, and musicals, will put the committee in the position of having to decide to pick the best apple this year, the best orange next year, and the best pomegranate the year after that. Say the committee includes a composer, a film scorer, and a jazz soloist: the composer will presumably want to give it to a concert piece, the film person to a film score, etc., and how will they form any intelligent opinion regarding each others’ categories? How do you weigh a great jazz performance of a particular night against a fine chamber orchestra piece against an excellent score for a good or bad film? It’s meaningless. And this “broadening” will water down an already meaningless prize until it is meaninglesser than ever.

What takes my breath away, though, is the arrogance (I suppose one could more charitably say ignorance) with which they deliberately sidestep the explicit intention of John Adams’s criticism. “Hell no, we’re not going to give our precious music Pulitzer to any of those damn Downtown composers. Before we do that, we’ll open it up to jazz and film scores and Broadway music, just so they’ll quit bugging us about our damn elitism!”