PROJECT REPORT
Devil Music Research Report
This thing we call music is often a very devious creature in that, from time to time, it becomes elusive: one moment it is in our reach and very tangible, and at the next moment it fleetingly escapes our grasp, disappearing, leaving us with silence. When we have the opportunity to give it our complete and undivided attention, intently listening, it can often tell us things about the world and, certainly, about ourselves. However, to indulge in the philosophy of John Cage, it exists all around us, all the time.
So then, what is music and what do we search for within it? If we compare the intricately tonal music of Beethoven to the natural sound collages of Francisco Lopez we are sure to evoke a debate as to what is, indeed, “music.” The answer to this lies entirely within the decision of each individual. To regard the origins of music is in some sense to ponder the universe; it is vast and nearly inconceivable. If look closely at what music is, we realize that at its most fundamental level it is comprised of frequencies, audible and inaudible sonic vibrations, however simple or complex, at varying amplitudes. In this sense there is very little difference between the complex vibrations of a trumpet or the sound of thunder. When we speak of music we often consider the elements of frequency, tempo, rhythm, and pitch, in a controlled environment.
The four white walls of the Berwick Research Institute nurtured the six month long evolution of the imaginary sounds of four Boston area composers, allowing these mere ideas to take shape, to acquire a life, first on paper in the form of a written musical score and finally resonating through the bells of horns and vibrating on the various lengths of string. These sounds filled the box-like shape of the BRI and, for nearly a month and a half, blessed the space with sonic delight.
The ensemble of twenty-five musicians became the mighty power of one, each individual part in turn creating the whole. Allowing itself to be shaped, reshaped, disfigured, refigured and transformed, the zenith of the ensemble was reached on May 18th and May 31st, 2003, two wonderful performances of musical sincerity among friends. The first, celebrating the pioneers who had cleared paths for the next group of adventurers to walk through, to see what they had seen, to hear what they had heard, included the music of the legendary German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, and the celebrated Americans John Adams, Pauline Oliveiros, and Elliott Schwartz. The second performance allowed the new generation to share their musical insight and ideas with the curious and the inquisitive.
Much gratitude is owed to many individuals: to all the performers who gave their time and their patience, sharing what they know; certainly to Dr. David Patterson of the University of Massachusetts/Boston for his guidance and his support; absolutely to the Berwick Research Institute for graciously donating their space to the Devil Music Ensemble for the duration of two months, granting to us the water in which our ideas grew and flourished.
Brendon Wood 2003
Notes from the Old Cookie Factory (The New Berwick Research Institute)
by David Patterson, Professor of Music, University Massachusetts Boston
One performer’s father who drove up from Providence to catch the May 31 concert at the Berwick Institute told me afterward that he had had one of the best times ever listening to music, and that he’d be back for more. How different this is from last century’s movement, which went into full swing by the 1960’s, when the program notes took more time to take in than the composition. In 1958, one of America’s revered composers, Professor Milton Babbitt of Princeton University, wrote an essay entitled “Who Cares If You Listen?” Music, like science and metaphysics, was intended for the highly educated. But even among that audience, numbers dwindled.
The Berwick Institute is not like these academic settings, nor are the composers and performers who participated in the 2003 May Concert Series like those from academe. Inside this defunct cookie factory—Berwick Cake Company, Home of the Whoopie Pie—is a simple square room that holds about 150, leaving just enough room for a small orchestra. Concertgoers sat and stood during the hour-plus programs. There were two concerts: one featuring the music of well-known composers such as John Adams and Pauline Oliveros, and one presenting new pieces by Boston composers. There was much improvisation involved in the first program. In the second program one composer played his new work on an old upright piano. Seeing this reminded me of one of my teachers, Olivier Messiaen, who spoke of having premiered his best-known work on a dilapidated upright piano in a concentration camp. Another composer combined an amateur Boston children’s chorus rehearsal caught on tape with an orchestra of live volunteer performers. While these compositions and performances were not perfect, they generated an excitement very rarely found at concerts of contemporary music. Why? Is there something more to this?
Professor Stanley Fish of the University of Illinois at Chicago writes on “interpretive communities.” His stance is that it is not just the brain or ear that hears but that there are the effects of culture, memory, experience, and life’s journey that combine to interpret. The atmosphere of the Berwick Reasearch Institute and the music presented there on those two evenings revealed a passion for music, a sense of wonder much like that experienced, perhaps, when we were growing up. Remember how amazed we could be to hear, for the first time, a new piece of music? When I ask my students at the University of Massachusetts what music is, they often answer that music is personal expression. That is what epitomized the May concerts at the Berwick.
One might wonder who was in the audience for that concert series at the Berwick. Perhaps the best way to answer that is to say that it was all sorts of people—from the violinist’s father to a young person who happened to read about the concerts in The Boston Globe to some couple on a weekend night’s outing, curious as to what might be going on in the old cookie factory, what new life had been breathed into its space after those many silent years. I spotted a member of the BSO who told me that he was curious to see what was going on at the Berwick. All who attended came with very different “ears” and went away with a wonderful sense of passion and amazement.