Book/Site Review

"Talking Music - Conversations With John Cage, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass and Five Generations of Experimental Composers"

John Duckworth

Who would have thought that Devo, the pot hatted experimentalists, would have gone on to sell computers with a cow in the next century. Experimental music has certainly come a long way. I wanted to review a book that explored the "concept" of music and I may have found it here. The term experimental composer kind of gives you thoughts of performance art, which most of the people in this book are. Although William Duckworth’s book isn’t written in any kind of exciting way, the profiles have made me more aware of tones and sounds in all mediums and genres.

Originally I was wondering if this would be one of those books you’re forced to read in school, but the conversations are surpassingly unpretentious. Better than the conversations themselves are the introduction profiles. Straightforward, the intros give us a quick look at lives you might never have even heard of.

I was surprised that I liked Lori Anderson in this book as much as I did. Stripped of the "People Magazine" type interview stuff she seemed a thoughtful artist as well as a basically normal person. The conversation with John Cage didn’t really give me any tidbits of wisdom or anything, however, I found them thought provoking. Conlon Nancarrow’s section was very interesting, simply because of the man and his life story. The chapter on Blue Gene Tyranny was surpassing, mostly because of the fact that it was even in the book.

This book brought back my appreciation of sound in all things. It was nice to get away from the mainstream meadia and read about something different. Also, it was very good to read something that was truly avant-garde without chasing down someone like David Bowie.

It’s a slow but compelling read, I was surprised how much I liked it.

From Book News, Inc.
An exploration of 20th century American experimental music presented through conversations between the author, a composer and musicologist himself, and 16 more or less well- known composers, each of whom is broadly classified as experimentalist, avant-gardist, minimalist, performance artist, or post-modern. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

A very intertaining and solid introduction, November 4, 2001
Reviewer: Philippe Vandenbroeck from HEVERLEE BELGIUM
This is a very entertaining collection of interviews. Duckworth takes his time to explore the issues sufficiently deeply with his interlocutors. Hence, there is substance to the book: it certainly is more than a loose collection of freewheeling conversations. And I am grateful for the fact that Bill Duckworth expanded his survey beyond the obvious collection of Minimalists and Cage. I knew nothing about Pauline Oliveros, Glen Branca or La Monte Young and came away refreshed from reading all their stories. I was generally satisfied by the way Duckworth steers the interviews. The tone is relaxed, sometimes earnest, sometimes tongue-in-cheeck. He is at his very best in the long, sometimes rambling conversations with La Monte Young and John Zorn. But in other cases - such as with the more rigorous and perhaps intellectually more intimidating personality of Steve Reich - Duckworth rigidly sticks to his agenda and fails to capture a number of potentially interesting tangents. The interview with John Cage is outright funny in the way Duckworth fails to catch on with what Cage really tries to get across. He keeps asking the wrong questions whilst Cage, with dwindling patience, is making broad excursions in conceptual hyperspace. But if Duckworth fails to capture a number of interesting opportunities to dig deeper in some of the interviews, this remains a very valuable collection, at least for those new to the whole field of American experimental music.

Reviewer: ginz from Chicago
Willian Duckworth is marvelous at asking questions,he is so natural at it that he makes you feel you have known his guests all your life. He allows everyone to feel at home, at ease,like catching more flies with sugar quip. Like asking John Cage for instance, "I don't have a very good understanding of what your early musical training was like,". or to La Monte Young, asking if he is the "father of minimalism", I guess it doesn't matter now, since most of what is discussed has played itself out. Here Duckworth interviews creators of primary creative genres of Americana leaning toward the achievements of all the various,nefarious "isms", experimentalism, minimalism, well just intonation doesn't fit, and the ubiquitously opaque post-modernity. And progressing from who are considered the Mammas and Pappas to the younger generation.The genre of Interviews seem to be occurring with greater frequency,speaking of one of the features of post-modernity. It is the most immediate way of knowing someone's art, aesthetic, how they feel about the world,about politics, or how they don't feel. Obsessions are explored in these interviews,as with John Zorn's early buying jags of recordings,jazz etc.,and formative years as with La Monte Young and his obsessions with sound, listening to telephone generators,or machines, the inherent drone in these industrial objects,Also professional associations, and disassociations with the New York scene,Fluxus which includes,just about everyone here interviewed is probed, with nice discussions of the early years of performance art in New York City. Education away from academia was an important component of American music,sorry to say, with those of the post war-generation turning to the east, and World Music, as Steve Reich, Phil Glass,Lou Harrison, Pauline Oliveros and La Monte Young. Young in particular reflects on his education with Pandit Pran Nath on intonation and improvisation and learning it with Marian Zazeela.Professional associations, how to survive by being a performance artist, Duckworth pursues and explores with Meridith Monk and Laurie Anderson, finding gigs in New York City or Europe again was everyone's passion.How do you work? is also a wonderful question, Monk reflects that she has to work all the time to feel attached, whereas she knows composers who don't work for months and claim to feel they don't lose anything. How creators get into ,what they get into, as Ben Johnston reflects on his early education with instrument iconoclast Harry Partch, how Partch taught Johnston to sing fractional tones, an eleventh/sixteenth, and how Partch would devote mornings to music, and afternoons to physical work, building sheds,or home extensions,or gathering wood. Also Johnston speaks about his wonderful string quartets, the Seventh in particular which is based on an 100-tone scale, and how we come to understand it via the relationships it represents rather than hearing 100 isolated tones. With Lou Harrison we have almost a history of American music, in that his life traversed through the primary achievements, the interests in World Music, Tunings, percussion music, and extended techniques,living on both coasts. But Harrison claims he was always a melodic composer, he had to sing whatever he wrote first, to attach himself to the world of sound, no matter how complex his music became.Some interviews are boring however as the the one with Phillip Glass where he simply recounts his life, and his interests, there was not a spirit of adventure, of discovery.Whereas Milton Babbitt has wonderful reflections on his early studies in music with Roger Sessions, and how Babbitt felt he needed to start over. The interview with Christian Wolff was over before it got interesting,Wolff primarily discussed his early music, the pieces associated with the Cage School(Cage,Feldman,Brown,Wolff) (nice photo of them) instead of traversing the set of problematics of dealing with political imagery. That question came as the very last one."Are you still writing political music?". Duckworth admirably gives nice introductions to each composer, and makes you feel the center of where creativity occurs, what excites an artist,and where challenge and repose occurs within music.One good question here always was"When did you first hear of John Cage", or what was the first piece of "so and so" you heard. This makes for a marvelous discussion on what were the initial indeliable moments on one's creative life. Not everyone is gifted at interviews it is a conditioned and practiced art. This work is a great model toward that genre.