Below are the 6 most recent journal entries recorded in johnmuniz's LiveJournal:

Sunday, September 3rd, 2006
2:05 pm	Honors thesis deliberations Well, I've done some thinking about the theory portion of my thesis and I have a couple of possibilities in mind. One would be to generalize the principles of tonal counterpoint to pantonal music. There's still the question of how to make this a true harmonic-contrapuntal system instead of bare voice-leading rules since we don't have atonal chord functions, but I have an idea or two. Another topic I considered for a while was an application of Forte's Kh subcomplexes as functionally related to one another. This method itself is new as far as I'm aware but doesn't involve any really substantial, enlightening innovation yet. My advisor shot it down, saying I should get away from pitch-class set theory for a while. Maybe. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006
10:40 am	Be careful what you propose for your honors thesis -- it just might get approved [addressed to my school's music department] I am applying for senior honors in music composition. For my project I propose to write a one-movement piece for chamber ensemble. The instrumentation will be as follows: flute/piccolo (one instrumentalist), B-flat clarinet/bass clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion (one instrumentalist). I project a performance duration of approximately twenty minutes. As part of my project I will also create some theoretical innovation [ack! mayday! mayday!] to serve either as a precompositional resource as demonstrated in the piece or as a system interdependent with the musical material throughout the compositional process. The piece will contain a high level of formal integration, and its structure will stand as a formally meaningful gesture of itself. These formal considerations will serve as a “meta-composition” that will add depth to the work and enhance its more “microscopic” musical features. Along with the composed work I will submit a paper of about fifteen pages in length, which will consist of a moderately detailed analysis of the work as well as a comparison of my composition with outstanding compositions for similar instrumentation already present in musical literature, particularly with regard to orchestration. In preparation for the composition of my project, I will study these precedents, though for the honors project I will only analyze them insofar as they can be meaningfully compared to my own piece. ... Yeah, I'm in trouble. They approved it unanimously. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, March 12th, 2006
11:25 am	Your own front yard can be a dangerous place Late last night two men had a fight just in front of the dorm's locked gates as I, frightened, listened from my bed, not going to the window. They were obviously drunk; each shouted at the other, at the world, and one repeatedly barked out "Fuck!" in a violent spasm for no apparent reason, as though the outbursts were brought on by Tourette's syndrome. Some minutes later there was a struggle; a woman standing nearby wailed in a Continental accent, "No fighting! No fighting!" But they were implacable, and they kept tearing at each other for minutes until one of them let fly a shrill, nervous, yipping laugh of triumph, "Ha-ha-ha! You don't fucking mess with me! Fucking idiot, don't'chu fucking mess with me! Ha-ha!" As I lay there waiting and they finally left, I thought of the terrible hangover both would have the next morning, how they would wake up in bruises and confusion from the previous night's revels. I thought, "Are they already so eager to be in Hell?" (Comment on this)
Saturday, March 11th, 2006
12:07 pm	"Augenmusik": static objects of art vs. dynamic aesthetic experience (some vague reflections) Everyone talks about the transcendental aesthetic experience or at least has some notions about it. You turn the corner in MoMA as Prof. E.W. Williams once did and bam! there's Guernica -- you're sucked in, transported somewhere fantastic and finally dropped back on your feet with a bump. (This is no longer possible since they moved Guernica.) Or you're listening to La Mer and find yourself submerged in warm, slow honey. That sort of thing. Let's assume that this same sort of thing happens in the experience of visual art as in music; if there is a difference, it's one of degree. There are also some grosser and more terrestrial rungs on the aesthetic ladder: Eroica has you marching in Napoleon's ranks, or you absently bob your head in time to the record shop speakers whispering a pop song. What do these musical forms have in common? Insofar as they're intended to be listened to, I'd say they were created with a view toward producing certain visceral effects on an audience in real time, whether in the concert hall or in the living room as the record plays. Music has limited power to communicate syntactical ideas to listeners in real time; and in the extreme case of a listener who knows nothing of the grammar of music, this power is basically nil. Instead, when Beethoven wrote Eroica, he shaped the sonic materials, working through this grammar, in order to suggest the martial theme. In this way the piece of music, when abstracted utterly from the experience of listening, is a static object, just as a painting is when no one looks at it. The composer and audience presumably saw the piece as a tool serving the interests of the real-life experience, just as a key is made with a distinctive shape and jagged edges, not to be enjoyed visually, but so that it will fit into a keyhole and unlock a door. Last night the funniest thing happened in this connection. (Some of you will be well familiar with these ideas.) I went to a concert of very new music performed on violin and cello; some of the pieces consisted of bizarre, "extra-musical" noises and actions that couldn't possibly make any sense to the listener prima facie -- some explanation of the piece's concept is needed first, and then we get it!  . . . But, now knowing this, don't we find that the real art lay in the work's inner structure, which remained hidden from us as we merely listened, instead of in the naive sonic experience of it? What kind of experience are we supposed to get out of a lot of apparently random clicking noises, insofar as we experience them as they're presented, as noise? Surely this is a radical change from the time of Beethoven -- there's been, I think, a transference of value from the visceral experience to a detached reflection on the syntax of the musical work. This departure is such an extreme leap from all that we'd known as music, at least until Schoenberg, that I think there may be some bit of ground for claiming that avant-garde works like the ones I saw performed are in a very real sense not music. I'm only suggesting this tentatively. For that to be the case, the real-time sonic experience would have to be seen as essential to music qua music; surely there's some ground for this too -- what would a Monet be to us if we only looked at the dry conception and the even drier means of execution, instead of primarily engaging the work as subjects? What kind of art would that be? Yet, it seems to me, that's exactly the trend that started with twelve-tone music and all the intricate masses of integral serialism. All the academics stopped using the word "music" just to mean a set of sonic events and our relation to them, and basically started applying the word -- let's face it -- to an obscure syntax. Sometimes you'll hear music theorists, especially those dealing in pitch-class set theory, refer to certain parts of the theoretic grammar as "means of controlling the material," which is just fine, but they come up awfully short when it comes to pitch-class inversion; "You can't hear the inversion operation," Prof. Dubiel of Columbia admits. Webern used to talk about the unity a tone-row gives a serial piece and compares it to the unity afforded by tonal music's being "in a key." But, for God's sake, there's a world of difference there: people can hear a key; they can't hear the retrograde inversion of a tone-row, especially when it's divided up all over the place between different instruments and bunched together in chords. If the row operations themselves aren't what we're supposed to get out of the music, it's not clear what, and Webern knew damn well that audiences wouldn't get anything out of his music in the live premiere. Any thoughts, anybody? P.S. - In case you were thinking of accusing me of being a namby-pamby neo-romantic tonalist or something of that kind, let me make clear that I write lots of abrasive atonal music. Let's keep ad hominem arguments out of this one. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, October 29th, 2005
12:33 pm	A razor's edge Comment with your thoughts on the following meditations. Tell me if you can relate to any of them. I'm reading a translation of Mann's Doktor Faustus. Mann develops the idea that some things have a power to transform or amplify for benefit or ill, having no intrinsic evil or good essence. The conch shell was used anciently in witches' potions but later was adapted as a chalice in the eucharist. Music is like this, says Mann, and I am inclined to believe him. Tristan intoxicates us with our own impulse to transcend self without ever really changing. Once I was playing some music with Laurie and at the climax I felt dizzy and my extremities tingled. She remembers. Was this shock ordained for us? (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, October 3rd, 2005
9:00 am	An impassioned plea for indulgence, an introduction, and a reassurance The twofold weight of posteritas and preteritas lies heavy on the livejournal novitiate. For one thing, his impetus to plunge in may have been pressure from another (usually long-standing) user; or else the tantalizing immensity of the existing body of livejournal literature, like a well-established encyclopedia of science or art, draws out our own boldness to contribute as though the theory needed us. Besides this there is the danger of not writing well, of being boring, and especially of drawing sharp correction from masters of all thought and feeling, who have digested both (and who also have livejournal accounts). But the noblest object of learning is to convince us of our own deficiency. Caution, then, to the flames! so it can never be recovered. To business. My name is John. I'm a music composition and theory major at college. That means that some entries are bound to be longwinded discussions of composition in general, whatever particular piece I'm writing at the moment, or aesthetics, with which I'm really not qualified to deal in any sort of precise manner. A postscript - I will never use emoticons. I have the good fortune to claim tranquility most of the time; it would get a bit monotonous to see an emoticon for "calm" under nearly every entry. And, by way of reassurance, I make a contract with you whereby: 1) I will not talk about romantic relationships beyond the barest facts (and even then only if I must). 2) I will not "get emo." 3) I will not post my lame-ass poetry. 4) I will try not to post naive pseudophilosophical screeds on things like creation vs. evolution. By all means, if you can shed some light on my cogitations or show me where I'm probably not operating at full potential, please comment. Be comforted. I look forward to our next meeting! (8 Comments |Comment on this)