A Survivor from Warsaw

In her listening journal on Arnold Schönberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw, Alicyn notes in her last paragraph that “while this seven-minute piece was not typical of Schönberg, it was a testament to his faith and family and to the thousands of people who lost their lives to genocide.” I think this is the most important observation anyone can make about this work. Schönberg’s music is often about the process and I find it to be especially telling that this work does not follow the usual pattern. The work concentrates on something that is so moving and so intimate that a listener realizes that Schönberg was unable to fit his emotions and feelings into the obvious pattern. This piece is an example of the power of music. Schönberg is speaking from the heart and communicates on a deeply personal level to those who have experienced devastating loss and those who are looking for reasons why events like the Holocaust happened.

Unlike many of my fellow students this listening journal, I am unfamiliar with the work and I did not find myself drawn to it. Listening to the piece for the first item without paying special attention to the narration, it did seem random. I particularly thought the orchestra was random. But then, I listened to the piece again with the narration available. Schönberg is ferocious in this piece. I suppose that is to be expected of Schönberg. He has never been afraid to be controversial but this is a different kind of ferocity. This is where I begin to expand on the opinion offered by Alicyn concerning this work. Yes, this is a testament to Schönberg’s faith, family, and those who were lost. However, this is also a condemnation of those who perpetuated the atrocities of the Holocaust. Listening to the text, Schönberg is angry and rightfully so. This is a fierce expression of emotion at the failure of humanity. This is why I feel this piece needs to be included in the Western canon. This is an expression of emotion is its purest state from a master of composition and twentieth century musical innovation.

By mentioning innovation, we come to my feelings on Schönberg. I do not care for his music. Perhaps it is plebian of me, but I enjoy music that I can connect with on a less intellectual level. Attending a concert should not give me a headache. I can accomplish the later state of being quite well on my own, thank you. Of course, this view has little to do with innovation. I am sure I am not alone in finding Schönberg difficult to listen to. However, you must respect the innovation and the influence that Schönberg has had on Western music. There are only a handful of people who have influenced an art form in the way Schönberg has influenced music and for that, the musician must give the devil his due. Arnold Schönberg is a figure towering over twentieth century music and an undeniable addition to the Western canon of music.

Plunderphonics

Like the marauding conquerors from the days of yore, John Oswald loots and pillages indiscriminately from popular song, creating Plunderphonics. In his work, Oswald takes a “plunderphone,” or the smallest familiar fragment of a popular song, a “recognizable sonic quote,”[1] and changes the way people listen to that fragment. He adds drum tracks, chops the song up into pieces or plays a song with another track in the background, sometimes all at once. Still, the plunderphone is recognizable throughout. Western composition is based on continual rearrangement of the scale and Oswald has taken that to the extreme. Oswald’s reorganization is his composition, challenging the idea of composition as the trained musician knows it. Rather than compose from single notes in a scale or key, Oswald uses chunks of existing pop music as if they were those notes. Plunderphonics subverts expectations and questions how far you can take the use of music. Oswald demands that the audience thinks about and listens to songs in an entirely new way, and completely changes the intentions and even image of the original artist.

The most stunning example of an Oswald’s shifting of expectations is his reworking of “The Great Pretender.” Originally recorded by the early rock and roll group The Platters, this classic song has been covered by various artists like Freddie Mercury, Sam Cooke, The Band, and country icon Dolly Parton. In this last entertainer, Oswald finds his muse for the song he titles “Pretender.” The name Dolly Parton conjures up many images and thoughts and I am willing to bet a great deal of money that neither the images or thoughts are subtle. Probably, these images have something to do with big hair, twang, and an extremely exaggerated hourglass figure. This familiar version of Dolly Parton is how “Pretender” begins, but the singer revealed at the end of the song is someone entirely different. Oswald applies a deaccelerando to Dolly’s original track revealing a handsome tenor voice a fourth below Dolly’s original vocals. By suggesting this different aspect of Dolly Parton, Oswald looks at gender expectations and asks how much of what the audience sees and hears is actually true. Someone asked to listen to these two tracks would pick the lower voice as the more natural sounding, begetting the question, who is the real Dolly Parton? Is Dolly Parton the woman she appears to be or is “she” actually a he who has conned the world into believing he is a buxom woman with a chipmunked version of his original voice? This sample has been aptly described as a “sonic sex change.”[2] Oswald challenges gender ideas and the preconceived labels the listener already has, and asks the audience to look at an existing popular artist and idea from a new direction.

John Oswald is completely open about his use of existing recordings of popular entertainers in his Plunderphonics. When his work is based on a song by Elvis Presley, the track he samples in undeniably Elvis Presley. Unfortunately, this is where the art of Plunderphonics runs into a problem. Whereas frequently used musical ideas like the “Dies Irae” are free game, copyrighted works are another story entirely. As is seen in “Pretender,” Oswald alters the fundamental image of a performer. This is famously a point of contention for entertainers whose music has been used and reworked, with the most famous example being Michael Jackson’s strenuous objection to the use of his song, “Bad.” If On the Plunderphponics website, one website heading is an explanation of the litigation that makes several Plunderphonics discs unavailable for purchase. Despite this, Oswald stays true to his commitment to sharing music openly without profit, using the phrase “You may have it but you may not buy it or sell it”[3] in reference to Plunderphonics. John Oswald pairs his unusual way of looking at the sampling of music with his unusual view of music distribution. His work is for those who want to listen to it and explore someone else’s view and reworking of previously recorded music, regardless of prior claims of ownership.

I am not sure that Plunderphonics needs to be added to the canon. I do think that people need to be aware of its existence, if only for the album cover art (which is mind-boggling). Personally, I enjoyed the puzzle aspect of Plunderphonics. The puzzle aspect involves trying to identify that song snippet that you know you know, but you just do not know right now. I also enjoyed how Oswald uses an anagram for everyone’s name, although the ones I have not figured out yet are driving me crazy. Despite the personal enjoyment I derive from Plunderphonics, I would probably not include them in the canon. The main argument against Plunderphonics for me is the recreation of these pieces, which is next to impossible. From a performers’ standpoint, Plunderphonics are problematic. There is little that translates to live performance, leaving a performer to essentially push the play button on the CD. With the inability to connect with a live audience on another level, Plunderphonics takes on the role of another track downloaded from the internet.

[1] Kevin Holm-Hudson, “Quotation and Context: Sampling and John Oswald’s Punderphonics,” Leonardo Music Journal vol. 7, (1997); 21.
[2] Jim Leach, “Sampling and Society: Intellectual Infringement and Digital Folk Music in John Oswald’s Plunderphonics,” in The arts, community, and cultural democracy, ed. Lambert Zuidervaart, Henry Luttikhuizen (New York: Palgrove Macmillan, 2000), 123.
[3] Plunderphonics, “Unavailable…but,” Plunderphonics, http://www.plunderphonics.com/ (accessed April 20, 2009).

Musically, the nation of Mexico offers many enriching ideas, from daring tonalities to new percussion instruments like those seen in Carlos Chávez’s piece Xochipilli. Carlos Chávez is known as one of Mexico’s most famous composers and helped establish the identity of Mexican classical music during the turn of the century. In his listening response to the early chamber works of Chávez, Nick Baker mentions the commissions Chávez received that served to promote Mexican nationalism. Mr. Baker first offers the idea of nationalism in Chávez’s music, but then takes his characterization further. He categorizes Chávez as Universalist, explaining this idea as music beyond nationalism and European traditions. While Mr. Baker’s observations are well thought out and well-informed, the idea of Chávez’s music as beyond nationalism and European ideas is somewhat incomprehensible. I do not see this piece as beyond European music as there are definite elements of Western genres and forms like the fugue. It is also impossible to see Xochipilli as beyond nationalism, as nationalism could be construed as the defining feature of the piece. From Chávez’s use of native percussion to the choice of subject matter, the work is supremely Mexican. It is also useful, when classifying the work as Universalist, to consider what the early twentieth century listener would have thought of this work. In the context of previously available music at that, even a knowledgeable audience member would see this work as something out of the ordinary.

Despite its unique and perhaps otherworldly qualities, Xochipilli does carry some of the familiarities of European composition. The first movement, Allegro Animato, reveals a distinctly familiar shape as it progresses. While the piccolo melody bustles along, the first two percussion instruments enter one after another with the same material, creating a fugue beneath the primary material. There are also multiple examples of imitation throughout the entire piece. While the overall character and tonality of the piece has departed from European ideas, Chávez has not abandoned some of the forms and thoughts of previous generations.

Even with these compositional ideas in place, Chávez overwhelmingly concentrates on showcasing Mexican music and history. In his response, Mr. Baker visits on the extensive research of the history of Mexico and Aztec people that Carlos Chávez conducted while composing this piece. Mr. Baker mentions that the composer “recreated what he thought could be the sounds of an Aztec festival or ritual.” An excellent indicator of that in the actual music is Chávez’s use of angular scales and melodies in all of the parts, even the percussion. It is not very difficult to picture an Aztec temple when listening to the opening melody in the piccolo or the primitive rhythms in the percussion. Mr. Baker uses the phrase “ritualistically repetitive,” which I think is a wonderful way to evoke both the character of Chávez’s music and the history that inspired it. Although the influence of Pre-Columbian art and architecture is also present in this piece, Chávez chose to concentrate more specifically on the Aztec tribe. This much is apparent from the title alone, as Xochipilli was the Aztec god of song (among other things). Here, the phrase “ritualistically repetitive” becomes especially evocative as the Aztecs were known for their custom of sacrificing those they conquered.

From the culture that inspired this piece, to the shifting scales and tonalities, and to the varied instrumentation, the music of Carlos Chávez is original and engaging to today’s listener. To a listener from the 1940s, the music would be no less engaging, although they would surely find Chávez’s composition to be quite exotic. Carlos Chávez was someone who approached composition from a different perspective and painstakingly researched that which he found inspiring and worthy of his compositional skills. As Mr. Baker notes in his response to these works, “Chávez created a style that was inspired by things that came before him but that was all his own.” I think that is an excellent way to look at the uniqueness and charisma that Carlos Chávez brought from Mexico to the world of classical music.