1
00:00:09,305 --> 00:00:12,305
I thought if I skipped
it might help my nerves,

2
00:00:12,527 --> 00:00:15,527
but I'm actually having
a paradoxical reaction to that,

3
00:00:15,548 --> 00:00:17,369
so that was a bad idea. (Laughter)

4
00:00:17,847 --> 00:00:19,714
Thank you for that introduction,

5
00:00:19,735 --> 00:00:22,228
I was really delighted
to receive the invitation

6
00:00:22,756 --> 00:00:25,756
to present to you some of my music
and some of my work

7
00:00:25,777 --> 00:00:28,777
as a composer, presumably
because it appeals

8
00:00:28,798 --> 00:00:31,798
to my well-known and abundant narcissism.

9
00:00:31,819 --> 00:00:33,770
(Laughter)

10
00:00:33,770 --> 00:00:36,474
And I'm not kidding,
I just think we should just say that

11
00:00:36,474 --> 00:00:38,941
and move forward. (Laughter)

12
00:00:38,962 --> 00:00:42,433
So, but the thing is,
a dilemma quickly arose,

13
00:00:42,515 --> 00:00:44,719
and that is that I'm really bored
with music,

14
00:00:44,740 --> 00:00:47,740
and I'm really bored
with the role of the composer,

15
00:00:48,172 --> 00:00:51,172
and so I decided to put
that idea, boredom,

16
00:00:51,193 --> 00:00:53,612
as the focus of my presentation
to you today.

17
00:00:53,633 --> 00:00:56,216
And I'm going to share
my music with you, but I hope

18
00:00:56,237 --> 00:00:58,714
that I'm going to do so
in a way that tells a story,

19
00:00:58,735 --> 00:01:01,956
tells a story about how I used boredom
as a catalyst

20
00:01:02,003 --> 00:01:04,631
for creativity and invention,
and how boredom

21
00:01:04,653 --> 00:01:07,653
actually forced me to change
the fundamental question

22
00:01:07,674 --> 00:01:09,537
that I was asking in my discipline,

23
00:01:09,558 --> 00:01:11,878
and how boredom also, in a sense,

24
00:01:12,144 --> 00:01:15,735
pushed me towards taking
on roles beyond the sort of

25
00:01:15,889 --> 00:01:18,498
most traditional, narrow definition
of a composer.

26
00:01:18,666 --> 00:01:21,190
What I'd like to do today
is to start with an excerpt

27
00:01:21,211 --> 00:01:23,965
of a piece of music at the piano.

28
00:01:24,029 --> 00:01:27,029
(Music)

29
00:01:33,503 --> 00:01:36,915
Okay, I wrote that. (Laughter)

30
00:01:36,936 --> 00:01:39,032
No, it's not - (Applause)
Oh, why thank you.

31
00:01:39,052 --> 00:01:40,473
No, no, I didn't write that.

32
00:01:40,474 --> 00:01:42,745
In fact, that was a piece by Beethoven,

33
00:01:42,746 --> 00:01:45,083
and so I was not functioning
as a composer.

34
00:01:45,104 --> 00:01:48,060
Just now I was functioning
in the role of the interpreter,

35
00:01:48,081 --> 00:01:50,068
and there I am, interpreter.

36
00:01:50,089 --> 00:01:53,329
So, an interpreter of what?
Of a piece of music, right?

37
00:01:53,352 --> 00:01:57,217
But we can ask the question,
"But is it music?"

38
00:01:57,329 --> 00:01:59,581
And I say this rhetorically,
because of course

39
00:01:59,581 --> 00:02:02,312
by just about any standard
we would have to concede

40
00:02:02,352 --> 00:02:04,421
that this is, of course, a piece of music,

41
00:02:04,421 --> 00:02:06,433
but I put this here now because,

42
00:02:06,433 --> 00:02:08,856
just to set it in your brains
for the moment,

43
00:02:08,887 --> 00:02:11,127
because we're going to return
to this question.

44
00:02:11,127 --> 00:02:12,959
It's going to be a kind of a refrain

45
00:02:12,959 --> 00:02:14,760
as we go through the presentation.

46
00:02:14,760 --> 00:02:17,065
So here we have this piece
of music by Beethoven,

47
00:02:17,065 --> 00:02:19,675
and my problem with it is, it's boring.

48
00:02:19,696 --> 00:02:24,252
I mean - I'm just like, a hush,
huh - It's like - (Laughter)

49
00:02:26,154 --> 00:02:28,188
It's Beethoven, how can you say that?

50
00:02:28,209 --> 00:02:30,617
No, well, I don't know,
it's very familiar to me.

51
00:02:30,617 --> 00:02:34,148
I had to practice it as a kid,
and I'm really sick of it. (Laughter)

52
00:02:34,148 --> 00:02:36,499
So what I might like to try to do
is to change it,

53
00:02:36,499 --> 00:02:38,945
to transform it in some ways,
to personalize it,

54
00:02:38,945 --> 00:02:41,282
so I might take the opening,
like this idea -

55
00:02:41,282 --> 00:02:43,060
(Music)

56
00:02:43,061 --> 00:02:47,035
and then I might substitute - (Music)

57
00:02:47,958 --> 00:02:49,911
and then I might improvise on that melody

58
00:02:49,931 --> 00:02:52,931
that goes forward from there - (Music)

59
00:02:54,202 --> 00:02:57,202
(Music)

60
00:03:19,254 --> 00:03:22,254
So that might be the kind of thing -
Why thank you.

61
00:03:22,366 --> 00:03:25,366
(Applause)

62
00:03:25,961 --> 00:03:28,198
That would be the kind
of thing that I would do,

63
00:03:28,198 --> 00:03:30,698
and it's not necessarily
better than the Beethoven.

64
00:03:30,698 --> 00:03:34,124
In fact, I think it's not better than it.
The thing is - (Laughter) -

65
00:03:34,161 --> 00:03:37,161
it's more interesting to me,
it's less boring for me.

66
00:03:39,547 --> 00:03:43,147
I'm really leaning into me, because I,
because I have to think

67
00:03:43,457 --> 00:03:46,457
about what decisions
I'm going to make on the fly

68
00:03:46,620 --> 00:03:49,730
as that Beethoven text is running
in time through my head

69
00:03:49,751 --> 00:03:52,545
and I'm trying to figure out
what kinds of transformations

70
00:03:52,545 --> 00:03:53,933
I'm going to make to it.

71
00:03:53,933 --> 00:03:56,313
So this is an engaging enterprise for me,

72
00:03:57,766 --> 00:04:03,104
and I've really leaned into
that first person pronoun thing there,

73
00:04:03,787 --> 00:04:06,359
and now my face appears twice,
so I think we can agree

74
00:04:06,379 --> 00:04:09,563
that this is a fundamentally
solipsistic enterprise. (Laughter)

75
00:04:10,799 --> 00:04:13,906
But it's an engaging one,
and it's interesting to me for a while,

76
00:04:13,906 --> 00:04:16,041
but then I get bored with it, and by it,

77
00:04:16,041 --> 00:04:18,283
I actually mean, the piano,
because it becomes,

78
00:04:18,284 --> 00:04:21,861
it's this familiar instrument,
it's timbral range is actually

79
00:04:21,882 --> 00:04:24,752
pretty compressed, at least
when you play on the keyboard,

80
00:04:24,752 --> 00:04:27,222
and if you're not doing things
like listening to it

81
00:04:27,222 --> 00:04:30,154
after you've lit it on fire
or something like that, you know.

82
00:04:30,154 --> 00:04:32,414
It gets a little bit boring,
and so pretty soon

83
00:04:32,414 --> 00:04:35,029
I go through other instruments,
they become familiar,

84
00:04:35,029 --> 00:04:37,746
and eventually I find myself
designing and constructing

85
00:04:37,746 --> 00:04:40,254
my own instrument,
and I brought one with me today,

86
00:04:40,725 --> 00:04:43,660
and I thought I would play
a little bit on it for you

87
00:04:43,661 --> 00:04:45,866
so you can hear what it sounds like.

88
00:04:45,867 --> 00:04:48,803
(Music)

89
00:04:57,669 --> 00:05:00,669
You've got to have doorstops,
that's important. (Laughter)

90
00:05:03,043 --> 00:05:06,043
I've got combs.
They're the only combs that I own. (Music)

91
00:05:06,151 --> 00:05:09,151
They're all mounted on my instruments.
(Laughter)

92
00:05:09,307 --> 00:05:12,307
(Music)

93
00:05:18,366 --> 00:05:20,388
I can actually do all sorts of things.

94
00:05:20,388 --> 00:05:22,078
I can play with a violin bow.

95
00:05:22,078 --> 00:05:23,863
I don't have to use the chopsticks.

96
00:05:23,863 --> 00:05:26,543
So we have this sound. (Music)

97
00:05:31,302 --> 00:05:33,345
And with a bank of live electronics,

98
00:05:33,346 --> 00:05:36,346
I can change the sounds radically. (Music)

99
00:05:37,022 --> 00:05:40,022
(Music)

100
00:05:46,541 --> 00:05:49,541
Like that, and like this. (Music)

101
00:05:52,544 --> 00:05:54,661
And so forth.

102
00:05:54,682 --> 00:05:57,599
So this gives you a little bit
of an idea of the sound world

103
00:05:57,599 --> 00:06:00,185
of this instrument, which I think
is quite interesting

104
00:06:00,185 --> 00:06:02,645
and it puts me in the role
of the inventor,

105
00:06:02,645 --> 00:06:04,158
and the nice thing about -

106
00:06:04,158 --> 00:06:06,850
This instrument is called
the Mouseketeer... (Laughter)

107
00:06:06,850 --> 00:06:08,882
and the cool thing about it is

108
00:06:08,883 --> 00:06:11,883
I'm the world's greatest
Mouseketeer player. (Laughter)

109
00:06:11,904 --> 00:06:13,728
Okay? (Applause)

110
00:06:14,070 --> 00:06:17,070
So in that regard,
this is one of the things,

111
00:06:17,095 --> 00:06:19,085
this is one of the privileges of being,

112
00:06:19,106 --> 00:06:22,645
and here's another role,
the inventor, and by the way,

113
00:06:22,666 --> 00:06:24,857
when I told you
that I'm the world's greatest,

114
00:06:24,878 --> 00:06:28,474
if you're keeping score,
we've had narcissism and solipsism

115
00:06:28,600 --> 00:06:30,603
and now a healthy dose of egocentricism.

116
00:06:30,624 --> 00:06:34,339
I know some of you are just, you know -
bingo! (Laughter)

117
00:06:34,498 --> 00:06:37,498
Anyway, so this is also
a really enjoyable role.

118
00:06:39,814 --> 00:06:43,036
I should concede also that I'm
the world's worst Mouseketeer player,

119
00:06:43,036 --> 00:06:45,742
and it was this distinction
that I was most worried about

120
00:06:45,742 --> 00:06:48,193
when I was on that prior side
of the tenure divide.

121
00:06:48,193 --> 00:06:50,921
I'm glad I'm past that.
We're not going to go into that.

122
00:06:50,921 --> 00:06:53,406
I'm crying on the inside.
There are still scars.

123
00:06:53,407 --> 00:06:56,880
Anyway, but I guess my point
is that all of these enterprises

124
00:06:56,937 --> 00:07:00,513
are engaging to me in their multiplicity,
but as I've presented them

125
00:07:00,593 --> 00:07:04,466
to you today, they're actually
solitary enterprises,

126
00:07:05,110 --> 00:07:08,110
and so pretty soon I want to commune
with other people,

127
00:07:08,137 --> 00:07:11,384
and so I'm delighted that in fact
I get to compose works for them.

128
00:07:11,384 --> 00:07:14,895
I get to write, sometimes for soloists
and I get to work with one person,

129
00:07:14,895 --> 00:07:17,729
sometimes full orchestras,
and I work with a lot of people,

130
00:07:17,729 --> 00:07:20,648
and this is probably the capacity,
the role creatively

131
00:07:20,729 --> 00:07:23,729
for which I'm probably
best known professionally.

132
00:07:23,891 --> 00:07:26,865
Now, some of my scores
as a composer look like this,

133
00:07:26,866 --> 00:07:28,938
and others look like this,

134
00:07:28,939 --> 00:07:31,022
and some look like this,

135
00:07:31,023 --> 00:07:34,023
and I make all of these by hand,
and it's really tedious.

136
00:07:34,069 --> 00:07:36,401
It takes a long, long time
to make these scores,

137
00:07:36,402 --> 00:07:38,574
and right now I'm working on a piece

138
00:07:38,575 --> 00:07:40,597
that's 180 pages in length,

139
00:07:40,598 --> 00:07:43,816
and it's just a big chunk of my life,
and I'm just pulling out hair.

140
00:07:45,094 --> 00:07:48,209
I have a lot of it, and that's
a good thing I suppose. (Laughter)

141
00:07:48,209 --> 00:07:50,866
So this gets really boring
and really tiresome for me,

142
00:07:50,867 --> 00:07:53,920
so after a while the process
of notating is not only boring,

143
00:07:53,943 --> 00:07:56,943
but I actually want the notation
to be more interesting,

144
00:07:56,972 --> 00:07:59,782
and so that's pushed me to do
other projects like this one.

145
00:07:59,802 --> 00:08:01,920
This is an excerpt from a score called

146
00:08:01,921 --> 00:08:03,497
"The Metaphysics of Notation."

147
00:08:03,518 --> 00:08:06,505
The full score is 72 feet wide.

148
00:08:06,656 --> 00:08:09,353
It's a bunch of crazy
pictographic notation.

149
00:08:09,354 --> 00:08:11,967
Let's zoom in on one section
of it right here.

150
00:08:11,967 --> 00:08:13,760
You can see it's rather detailed.

151
00:08:13,760 --> 00:08:16,057
I do all of this with drafting templates,

152
00:08:16,057 --> 00:08:19,846
with straight edges,
with French curves, and by freehand,

153
00:08:20,282 --> 00:08:23,203
and the 72 feet was actually split

154
00:08:23,224 --> 00:08:26,441
into 12 six-foot-wide panels
that were installed

155
00:08:26,505 --> 00:08:31,229
around the Cantor Arts Center Museum
lobby balcony,

156
00:08:32,433 --> 00:08:35,433
and it appeared
for one year in the museum,

157
00:08:35,455 --> 00:08:38,312
and during that year,
it was experienced as visual art

158
00:08:38,313 --> 00:08:41,082
most of the week, except,
as you can see in these pictures,

159
00:08:41,082 --> 00:08:43,844
on Fridays, from noon til one,
and only during that time,

160
00:08:43,844 --> 00:08:46,444
various performers came
and interpreted these strange

161
00:08:46,465 --> 00:08:49,573
and undefined pictographic glyphs.
(Laughter)

162
00:08:49,911 --> 00:08:53,388
Now this was a really
exciting experience for me.

163
00:08:53,409 --> 00:08:56,504
It was gratifying musically,
but I think the more important thing

164
00:08:56,504 --> 00:08:59,333
is it was exciting because
I got to take on another role,

165
00:08:59,333 --> 00:09:01,669
especially given that it appeared
in a museum,

166
00:09:01,669 --> 00:09:04,045
and that is as visual artist. (Laughter)

167
00:09:05,866 --> 00:09:08,866
We're going to fill up the whole thing,
don't worry. (Laughter)

168
00:09:09,486 --> 00:09:11,631
I am multitudes. (Laughter)

169
00:09:12,769 --> 00:09:15,633
So one of the things is that,
I mean, some people would say,

170
00:09:15,633 --> 00:09:18,549
like, "Oh, you're being a dilettante,"
and maybe that's true.

171
00:09:18,549 --> 00:09:20,036
I can understand how, I mean,

172
00:09:20,037 --> 00:09:22,195
because I don't have a pedigree
in visual art

173
00:09:22,196 --> 00:09:24,771
and I don't have any training,
but it's just something

174
00:09:24,771 --> 00:09:27,404
that I wanted to do as an extension
of my composition,

175
00:09:27,404 --> 00:09:29,598
as an extension
of a kind of creative impulse.

176
00:09:29,599 --> 00:09:32,599
I can understand the question, though.
"But is it music?"

177
00:09:32,620 --> 00:09:34,878
I mean, there's not
any traditional notation.

178
00:09:34,899 --> 00:09:37,581
I can also understand
that sort of implicit criticism

179
00:09:37,581 --> 00:09:40,937
in this piece, "S-tog," which I made
when I was living in Copenhagen.

180
00:09:40,937 --> 00:09:42,533
I took the Copenhagen subway map

181
00:09:42,566 --> 00:09:45,566
and I renamed all the stations
to abstract musical provocations,

182
00:09:45,587 --> 00:09:48,357
and the players, who are synchronized
with stopwatches,

183
00:09:48,378 --> 00:09:51,568
follow the timetables, which are listed
in minutes past the hour.

184
00:09:51,568 --> 00:09:53,964
So this is a case of actually
adapting something,

185
00:09:53,985 --> 00:09:55,653
or maybe stealing something,

186
00:09:55,674 --> 00:09:58,014
and then turning it
into a musical notation.

187
00:09:59,281 --> 00:10:02,955
You folks have been neglected,
I'll stand here for a couple of minutes.

188
00:10:02,975 --> 00:10:04,594
(Applause)

189
00:10:04,595 --> 00:10:06,749
Another adaptation would be this piece.

190
00:10:06,769 --> 00:10:08,958
The wristwatch, I should say.

191
00:10:08,979 --> 00:10:12,398
I took the idea of the wristwatch,
and I turned it into a musical score.

192
00:10:12,533 --> 00:10:16,533
I made my own faces, and had
a company fabricate them,

193
00:10:16,554 --> 00:10:18,458
and the players follow these scores.

194
00:10:18,479 --> 00:10:20,144
They follow the second hands,

195
00:10:20,144 --> 00:10:23,680
and as they pass over the various symbols,
the players respond musically.

196
00:10:23,701 --> 00:10:25,923
Here's another example from another piece,

197
00:10:25,944 --> 00:10:27,611
and then its realization.

198
00:10:29,656 --> 00:10:32,534
So in these two capacities,
I've been scavenger,

199
00:10:32,555 --> 00:10:35,032
in the sense of taking, like,
the subway map, right,

200
00:10:35,052 --> 00:10:37,459
or thief maybe,
and I've also been designer,

201
00:10:37,460 --> 00:10:39,774
in the case of making the wristwatches.

202
00:10:39,775 --> 00:10:42,424
And once again, this is,
for me, interesting.

203
00:10:43,355 --> 00:10:46,668
Another role that I like to take on
is that of the performance artist.

204
00:10:46,668 --> 00:10:49,585
Some of my pieces have these
kind of weird theatric elements,

205
00:10:49,585 --> 00:10:50,977
and I often perform them.

206
00:10:50,977 --> 00:10:53,760
I want to show you a clip
from a piece called "Echolalia."

207
00:10:53,760 --> 00:10:56,325
This is actually being performed
by Brian McWhorter,

208
00:10:56,325 --> 00:10:58,049
who is an extraordinary performer.

209
00:10:58,049 --> 00:11:01,427
Let's watch a little bit of this,
and please notice the instrumentation.

210
00:11:01,427 --> 00:11:04,403
(Music)

211
00:11:29,975 --> 00:11:32,038
Okay, I hear you were laughing nervously

212
00:11:32,038 --> 00:11:35,182
because you too could hear that the drill
was a little bit sharp,

213
00:11:35,182 --> 00:11:37,690
the intonation was a little questionable.
(Laughter)

214
00:11:37,690 --> 00:11:39,658
Let's watch just another clip.

215
00:11:39,658 --> 00:11:41,878
(Music)

216
00:11:46,445 --> 00:11:47,609
Okay, that's enough.

217
00:11:47,630 --> 00:11:50,704
You can see the mayhem continues,
and there's, you know,

218
00:11:50,725 --> 00:11:53,573
there were no clarinets and trumpets
and flutes and violins.

219
00:11:53,573 --> 00:11:55,836
Here's a piece that has
an even more unusual,

220
00:11:55,836 --> 00:11:57,289
more peculiar instrumentation.

221
00:11:57,289 --> 00:12:00,363
This is "Tlön," for three conductors
and no players. (Laughter)

222
00:12:13,256 --> 00:12:15,979
This was based on the experience
of actually watching

223
00:12:15,979 --> 00:12:18,750
two people having a virulent
argument in sign language,

224
00:12:18,750 --> 00:12:20,719
which produced no decibels to speak of,

225
00:12:20,719 --> 00:12:23,600
but affectively, psychologically,
was a very loud experience.

226
00:12:23,649 --> 00:12:26,649
So, yeah, I get it, with,
like, the weird appliances

227
00:12:26,670 --> 00:12:30,714
and then the total absence
of conventional instruments

228
00:12:30,735 --> 00:12:33,865
and this glut of conductors,
people might, you know,

229
00:12:33,886 --> 00:12:36,567
wonder, yeah, "Is this music?"

230
00:12:36,688 --> 00:12:40,527
But let's move on to a piece where
clearly I'm behaving myself,

231
00:12:40,548 --> 00:12:43,034
and that is my "Concerto for Orchestra."

232
00:12:43,055 --> 00:12:46,640
You're going to notice a lot
of conventional instruments in this clip.

233
00:12:46,661 --> 00:12:49,661
(Music)

234
00:12:59,852 --> 00:13:02,165
Are you bored? I'm a little bored.

235
00:13:02,178 --> 00:13:04,435
This, in fact, is not
the title of this piece.

236
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I was a bit mischievous.
In fact, to make it more interesting,

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I put a space right in here,
and this is the actual title of the piece.

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Let's continue with that same excerpt.

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(Music)

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It's better with a florist, right?
(Laughter) (Music)

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Or at least it's less boring.
Let's watch a couple more clips.

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(Music)

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So with all these theatric elements,
this pushes me in another role,

244
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and that would be,
possibly, the dramaturge.

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I was playing nice. I had to write
the orchestra bits, right?

246
00:13:58,037 --> 00:14:00,499
Okay? But then there was
this other stuff, right?

247
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There was the florist,
and I can understand that,

248
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once again, we're putting
pressure on the ontology of music

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as we know it conventionally,

250
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but let's look at one last piece
today I'm going to share with you.

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This is going to be
a piece called "Aphasia,"

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and it's for hand gestures
synchronized to sound,

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and this invites yet another role,
and final one I'll share with you,

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which is that of the choreographer.

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And the score for the piece
looks like this,

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and it instructs me,
the performer, to make

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various hand gestures
at very specific times

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00:14:34,739 --> 00:14:36,265
synchronized with an audio tape,

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00:14:36,265 --> 00:14:39,869
and that audio tape
is made up exclusively of vocal samples.

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I recorded an awesome singer,

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and I took the sound
of his voice in my computer,

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and I warped it in countless ways

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to come up with the soundtrack
that you're about to hear.

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And I'll perform just an excerpt
of "Aphasia" for you here. Okay?

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(Music)

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So that gives you a little taste
of that piece. (Applause)

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00:15:41,907 --> 00:15:45,557
Thank you. When this ovation dies down,
I shall continue.

268
00:15:47,994 --> 00:15:50,277
Yeah, okay, that's kind of weird stuff.

269
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Is it music?
Here's how I want to conclude.

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I've decided, ultimately,
that this is the wrong question,

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that this is not the important question.

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The important question
is, "Is it interesting?"

273
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And I follow this question,
not worrying about "Is it music?" -

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not worrying about the definition
of the thing that I'm making.

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I allow my creativity to push me

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in directions that are simply
interesting to me,

277
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and I don't worry
about the likeness of the result

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to some notion, some paradigm,

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of what music composition
is supposed to be,

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00:16:18,306 --> 00:16:20,748
and that has actually
urged me, in a sense,

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00:16:20,749 --> 00:16:22,943
to take on a whole bunch
of different roles,

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and so what I want you to think about is,

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to what extent might you change
the fundamental question

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in your discipline, and, okay,

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I'm going to put one extra
little footnote in here,

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because, like, I realized I mentioned

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00:16:34,772 --> 00:16:37,488
some psychological defects
earlier, and we also,

288
00:16:37,489 --> 00:16:40,489
along the way, had a fair amount
of obsessive behavior,

289
00:16:41,232 --> 00:16:44,192
and there was some delusional
behavior and things like that,

290
00:16:44,192 --> 00:16:46,813
and here I think we could say
that this is an argument

291
00:16:46,813 --> 00:16:49,062
for self-loathing
and a kind of schizophrenia,

292
00:16:49,062 --> 00:16:50,998
at least in the popular use of the term,

293
00:16:50,998 --> 00:16:54,132
and I really mean dissociative
identity disorder, okay. (Laughter)

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Anyway, despite those perils,
I would urge you

295
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to think about the possibility
that you might take on roles

296
00:16:59,150 --> 00:17:01,332
in your own work,
whether they are neighboring

297
00:17:01,332 --> 00:17:03,739
or far-flung
from your professional definition.

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00:17:03,739 --> 00:17:07,365
And with that, I thank you very much.
(Applause)