hidebound post-Webern serialist/aleatorists like Daniel J. Wolf

MacLaren wrote:

**...hidebound post-Webern serialist/aleatorists like Daniel J. Wolf...**

Once again demonstrating that he has an amazing capacity to write before
getting his facts right. Although I will defend to the death the right of
musics to exist and composers to compose in **post-Webern serialism**,
whether Continental or Babbittonian, or **aleatoric**, in the Boulez mode
and I will attempt to help people understand such musics, some of which I
have studied closely, I have never composed in either fashion myself.
Whether I am **hidebound** or not, I really do not feel competent to say.

I identify myself with a strain of American music that is often called
*experimental*, my teachers (Mumma, Lucier, Young, Wilson and some lessons
with Harrison, Feldman, Cage, Wolff and Jo Kondo) are important figures in
this tradition (which to my ears goes back to Ives, Seeger, Cowell, Partch)
and none of whom has had what could be considered a mainstream place in the
academy. Even though I have all the traveling papers of a good academic, my
pedigree is still considered a bit radical to be a **safe choice** to a
University music department seeking a harmony and counterpoint teacher
(although my training in those subjects is as rigorous and traditional as
can be). (If anybody hears of a University looking for a composer with a
Theory Dissertation from an Ethnomusicology program, please let me know!).

Fortunately, I am able to make something of a living as a composer and
scholar in Germany, where there is great interest in American experimental
music and the US academic traditions are virtually unknown. Here, I am
viewed as an American - or specifically Californian - composer, and I am
not seen as competition to the local traditions. (BTW - although I have
been here for more than seven years, the whole _Musica Negativa_ tradition
- of post-War, post-Adorno, Germany - is largely beyond my capacity to
understand, let alone explain. Microtones do play a role in much of this
music (i.e. Lachenmann, Spahlinger), but largely as an **alienating** or
**distancing** element). (If members of the list would like more
information regarding microtonal practices in central European musics, I
will be pleased to provide what I can).

Pitch usage in my music - whether deliberately or not, I cannot say -
straddles a fence between tonality and atonality that makes it rather
uncomfortable to label. I never accepted the way of listening to serial
musics that was neutral towards interval qualities, nor did I accept a
necessity for process (or **minimal**) musics to use pitch materials
familiar from tonal music. Instead, I was attracted to the spatial aspect
of intervals in Just tonal spaces, in that the ratios stood for distinct
divisions of tonal and physical space and that it was possible to hear or
otherwise sense these relationships. To this end, I have made (a) a series
of sound installations with very dense chords of precisely tuned standing
sine waves, usually in relatively prime ratios to one another, and (b) many
instrumental works in which these relationships are projected into a more
conventionally _musical_ context. In some cases, I have mapped underlying
just materials onto 12tet, in other cases, I have made the underlying array
intonationally explicit.

If anyone is interested, a cd with my string trio _Figure and Ground_ will
be released in mid-1997 (coproduction of Hessischer Rundfunk and Magnetic
Records). My scores are available from Material Press.

Daniel Wolf, Frankfurt

MATERIAL PRESS / LUDWIG-LANDMANN-STR 84B / 60488 FRANKFURT / GERMANY

Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl
with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Tue, 3 Dec 1996 11:06 +0100
Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA02683; Tue, 3 Dec 1996 11:08:08 +0100
Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA01515
Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI)
for id CAA25133; Tue, 3 Dec 1996 02:08:05 -0800
Date: Tue, 3 Dec 1996 02:08:05 -0800
Message-Id: <199612030507_MC1-C99-5A43@compuserve.com>
Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu
Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu

Tonality or not - a good topic, Dan!

Speaking for my own opinions and experience, tonality is a useful tool open
to a composer. Using that tool (or any other) is not mandatory but it can be
useful, largely for the obvious purpose: creating that familiar "coming back
home" sensation in your music.

If that's a feeling you want to portray in your music, then by golly Tonality
is a great tool for a composer.


Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl
with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Fri, 6 Dec 1996 02:15 +0100
Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA21234; Wed, 4 Dec 1996 18:52:31 +0100
Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA08945
Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI)
for id JAA00328; Wed, 4 Dec 1996 09:52:18 -0800
Date: Wed, 4 Dec 1996 09:52:18 -0800
Message-Id: <199612041246_MC1-CA2-1652@compuserve.com>
Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu
Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu