WEBVTT

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I thought if I skipped
it might help my nerves,

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but I'm actually having
a paradoxical reaction to that,

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so that was a bad idea. (Laughter)

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Thank you for that introduction,

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I was really delighted
to receive the invitation

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to present to you some of my music
and some of my work

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as a composer, presumably
because it appeals

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to my well-known and abundant narcissism.

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(Laughter)

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And I'm not kidding,
I just think we should just say that

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and move forward. (Laughter)

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So, but the thing is,
a dilemma quickly arose,

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and that is that I'm really bored
with music,

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and I'm really bored
with the role of the composer,

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and so I decided to put
that idea, boredom,

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as the focus of my presentation
to you today.

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And I'm going to share
my music with you, but I hope

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that I'm going to do so
in a way that tells a story,

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tells a story about how I used boredom
as a catalyst

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for creativity and invention,
and how boredom

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actually forced me to change
the fundamental question

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that I was asking in my discipline,

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and how boredom also, in a sense,

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pushed me towards taking
on roles beyond the sort of

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most traditional, narrow definition
of a composer.

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What I'd like to do today
is to start with an excerpt

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of a piece of music at the piano.

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(Music)

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Okay, I wrote that. (Laughter)

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No, it's not - (Applause)
Oh, why thank you.

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No, no, I didn't write that.

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In fact, that was a piece by Beethoven,

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and so I was not functioning
as a composer.

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Just now I was functioning
in the role of the interpreter,

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and there I am, interpreter.

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So, an interpreter of what?
Of a piece of music, right?

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But we can ask the question,
"But is it music?"

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And I say this rhetorically,
because of course

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by just about any standard
we would have to concede

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that this is, of course, a piece of music,

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but I put this here now because,

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just to set it in your brains
for the moment,

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because we're going to return
to this question.

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It's going to be a kind of a refrain

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as we go through the presentation.

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So here we have this piece
of music by Beethoven,

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and my problem with it is, it's boring.

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I mean - I'm just like, a hush,
huh - It's like - (Laughter)

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It's Beethoven, how can you say that?

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No, well, I don't know,
it's very familiar to me.

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I had to practice it as a kid,
and I'm really sick of it. (Laughter)

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So what I might like to try to do
is to change it,

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to transform it in some ways,
to personalize it,

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so I might take the opening,
like this idea -

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(Music)

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and then I might substitute - (Music)

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and then I might improvise on that melody

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that goes forward from there - (Music)

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(Music)

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So that might be the kind of thing -
Why thank you.

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(Applause)

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That would be the kind
of thing that I would do,

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and it's not necessarily
better than the Beethoven.

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In fact, I think it's not better than it.
The thing is - (Laughter) -

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it's more interesting to me,
it's less boring for me.

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I'm really leaning into me, because I,
because I have to think

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about what decisions
I'm going to make on the fly

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as that Beethoven text is running
in time through my head

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and I'm trying to figure out
what kinds of transformations

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I'm going to make to it.

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So this is an engaging enterprise for me,

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and I've really leaned into
that first person pronoun thing there,

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and now my face appears twice,
so I think we can agree

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that this is a fundamentally
solipsistic enterprise. (Laughter)

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But it's an engaging one,
and it's interesting to me for a while,

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but then I get bored with it, and by it,

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I actually mean, the piano,
because it becomes,

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it's this familiar instrument,
it's timbral range is actually

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pretty compressed, at least
when you play on the keyboard,

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and if you're not doing things
like listening to it

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after you've lit it on fire
or something like that, you know.

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It gets a little bit boring,
and so pretty soon

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I go through other instruments,
they become familiar,

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and eventually I find myself
designing and constructing

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my own instrument,
and I brought one with me today,

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and I thought I would play
a little bit on it for you

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so you can hear what it sounds like.

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(Music)

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You've got to have doorstops,
that's important. (Laughter)

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I've got combs.
They're the only combs that I own. (Music)

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They're all mounted on my instruments.
(Laughter)

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(Music)

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I can actually do all sorts of things.

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I can play with a violin bow.

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I don't have to use the chopsticks.

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So we have this sound. (Music)

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And with a bank of live electronics,

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I can change the sounds radically. (Music)

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(Music)

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Like that, and like this. (Music)

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And so forth.

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So this gives you a little bit
of an idea of the sound world

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of this instrument, which I think
is quite interesting

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and it puts me in the role
of the inventor,

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and the nice thing about -

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This instrument is called
the Mouseketeer... (Laughter)

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and the cool thing about it is

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I'm the world's greatest
Mouseketeer player. (Laughter)

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Okay? (Applause)

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So in that regard,
this is one of the things,

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this is one of the privileges of being,

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and here's another role,
the inventor, and by the way,

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when I told you
that I'm the world's greatest,

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if you're keeping score,
we've had narcissism and solipsism

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and now a healthy dose of egocentricism.

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I know some of you are just, you know -
bingo! (Laughter)

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Anyway, so this is also
a really enjoyable role.

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I should concede also that I'm
the world's worst Mouseketeer player,

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and it was this distinction
that I was most worried about

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when I was on that prior side
of the tenure divide.

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I'm glad I'm past that.
We're not going to go into that.

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I'm crying on the inside.
There are still scars.

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Anyway, but I guess my point
is that all of these enterprises

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are engaging to me in their multiplicity,
but as I've presented them

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to you today, they're actually
solitary enterprises,

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and so pretty soon I want to commune
with other people,

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and so I'm delighted that in fact
I get to compose works for them.

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I get to write, sometimes for soloists
and I get to work with one person,

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sometimes full orchestras,
and I work with a lot of people,

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and this is probably the capacity,
the role creatively

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for which I'm probably
best known professionally.

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Now, some of my scores
as a composer look like this,

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and others look like this,

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and some look like this,

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and I make all of these by hand,
and it's really tedious.

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It takes a long, long time
to make these scores,

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and right now I'm working on a piece

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that's 180 pages in length,

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and it's just a big chunk of my life,
and I'm just pulling out hair.

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I have a lot of it, and that's
a good thing I suppose. (Laughter)

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So this gets really boring
and really tiresome for me,

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so after a while the process
of notating is not only boring,

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but I actually want the notation
to be more interesting,

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and so that's pushed me to do
other projects like this one.

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This is an excerpt from a score called

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"The Metaphysics of Notation."

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The full score is 72 feet wide.

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It's a bunch of crazy
pictographic notation.

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Let's zoom in on one section
of it right here.

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You can see it's rather detailed.

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I do all of this with drafting templates,

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with straight edges,
with French curves, and by freehand,

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and the 72 feet was actually split

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into 12 six-foot-wide panels
that were installed

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around the Cantor Arts Center Museum
lobby balcony,

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and it appeared
for one year in the museum,

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and during that year,
it was experienced as visual art

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most of the week, except,
as you can see in these pictures,

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on Fridays, from noon til one,
and only during that time,

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various performers came
and interpreted these strange

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and undefined pictographic glyphs.
(Laughter)

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Now this was a really
exciting experience for me.

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It was gratifying musically,
but I think the more important thing

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is it was exciting because
I got to take on another role,

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especially given that it appeared
in a museum,

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and that is as visual artist. (Laughter)

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We're going to fill up the whole thing,
don't worry. (Laughter)

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I am multitudes. (Laughter)

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So one of the things is that,
I mean, some people would say,

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like, "Oh, you're being a dilettante,"
and maybe that's true.

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I can understand how, I mean,

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because I don't have a pedigree
in visual art

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and I don't have any training,
but it's just something

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that I wanted to do as an extension
of my composition,

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as an extension
of a kind of creative impulse.

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I can understand the question, though.
"But is it music?"

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I mean, there's not
any traditional notation.

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I can also understand
that sort of implicit criticism

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in this piece, "S-tog," which I made
when I was living in Copenhagen.

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I took the Copenhagen subway map

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and I renamed all the stations
to abstract musical provocations,

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and the players, who are synchronized
with stopwatches,

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follow the timetables, which are listed
in minutes past the hour.

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So this is a case of actually
adapting something,

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or maybe stealing something,

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and then turning it
into a musical notation.

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You folks have been neglected,
I'll stand here for a couple of minutes.

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(Applause)

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Another adaptation would be this piece.

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The wristwatch, I should say.

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I took the idea of the wristwatch,
and I turned it into a musical score.

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I made my own faces, and had
a company fabricate them,

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and the players follow these scores.

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They follow the second hands,

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and as they pass over the various symbols,
the players respond musically.

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Here's another example from another piece,

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and then its realization.

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So in these two capacities,
I've been scavenger,

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in the sense of taking, like,
the subway map, right,

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or thief maybe,
and I've also been designer,

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in the case of making the wristwatches.

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And once again, this is,
for me, interesting.

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Another role that I like to take on
is that of the performance artist.

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Some of my pieces have these
kind of weird theatric elements,

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and I often perform them.

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I want to show you a clip
from a piece called "Echolalia."

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This is actually being performed
by Brian McWhorter,

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who is an extraordinary performer.

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Let's watch a little bit of this,
and please notice the instrumentation.

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(Music)

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Okay, I hear you were laughing nervously

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because you too could hear that the drill
was a little bit sharp,

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the intonation was a little questionable.
(Laughter)

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Let's watch just another clip.

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(Music)

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Okay, that's enough.

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You can see the mayhem continues,
and there's, you know,

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there were no clarinets and trumpets
and flutes and violins.

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Here's a piece that has
an even more unusual,

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more peculiar instrumentation.

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This is "Tlön," for three conductors
and no players. (Laughter)

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This was based on the experience
of actually watching

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two people having a virulent
argument in sign language,

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which produced no decibels to speak of,

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but affectively, psychologically,
was a very loud experience.

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So, yeah, I get it, with,
like, the weird appliances

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and then the total absence
of conventional instruments

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and this glut of conductors,
people might, you know,

00:12:33.886 --> 00:12:36.567
wonder, yeah, "Is this music?"

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But let's move on to a piece where
clearly I'm behaving myself,

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and that is my "Concerto for Orchestra."

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You're going to notice a lot
of conventional instruments in this clip.

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(Music)

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Are you bored? I'm a little bored.

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This, in fact, is not
the title of this piece.

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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,

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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?

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Okay? But then there was
this other stuff, right?

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There was the florist,
and I can understand that,

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

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as we know it conventionally,

00:14:07.738 --> 00:14:11.659
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,"

00:14:15.374 --> 00:14:18.788
and it's for hand gestures
synchronized to sound,

00:14:19.153 --> 00:14:23.127
and this invites yet another role,
and final one I'll share with you,

00:14:23.127 --> 00:14:25.215
which is that of the choreographer.

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And the score for the piece
looks like this,

00:14:27.599 --> 00:14:30.599
and it instructs me,
the performer, to make

00:14:32.009 --> 00:14:34.738
various hand gestures
at very specific times

00:14:34.739 --> 00:14:36.265
synchronized with an audio tape,

00:14:36.265 --> 00:14:39.869
and that audio tape
is made up exclusively of vocal samples.

00:14:39.870 --> 00:14:42.291
I recorded an awesome singer,

00:14:42.292 --> 00:14:44.636
and I took the sound
of his voice in my computer,

00:14:44.637 --> 00:14:46.721
and I warped it in countless ways

00:14:46.721 --> 00:14:49.503
to come up with the soundtrack
that you're about to hear.

00:14:49.686 --> 00:14:53.779
And I'll perform just an excerpt
of "Aphasia" for you here. Okay?

00:14:56.452 --> 00:14:59.452
(Music)

00:15:32.808 --> 00:15:35.808
So that gives you a little taste
of that piece. (Applause)

00:15:41.907 --> 00:15:45.557
Thank you. When this ovation dies down,
I shall continue.

00:15:47.994 --> 00:15:50.277
Yeah, okay, that's kind of weird stuff.

00:15:50.298 --> 00:15:52.536
Is it music?
Here's how I want to conclude.

00:15:53.335 --> 00:15:55.696
I've decided, ultimately,
that this is the wrong question,

00:15:55.717 --> 00:15:57.674
that this is not the important question.

00:15:57.675 --> 00:16:00.220
The important question
is, "Is it interesting?"

00:16:00.221 --> 00:16:03.221
And I follow this question,
not worrying about "Is it music?" -

00:16:03.270 --> 00:16:06.270
not worrying about the definition
of the thing that I'm making.

00:16:06.290 --> 00:16:08.051
I allow my creativity to push me

00:16:08.052 --> 00:16:10.338
in directions that are simply
interesting to me,

00:16:10.358 --> 00:16:13.260
and I don't worry
about the likeness of the result

00:16:13.261 --> 00:16:15.316
to some notion, some paradigm,

00:16:15.317 --> 00:16:18.305
of what music composition
is supposed to be,

00:16:18.306 --> 00:16:20.748
and that has actually
urged me, in a sense,

00:16:20.749 --> 00:16:22.943
to take on a whole bunch
of different roles,

00:16:22.943 --> 00:16:24.958
and so what I want you to think about is,

00:16:24.958 --> 00:16:27.816
to what extent might you change
the fundamental question

00:16:27.837 --> 00:16:30.559
in your discipline, and, okay,

00:16:30.560 --> 00:16:32.989
I'm going to put one extra
little footnote in here,

00:16:32.990 --> 00:16:34.752
because, like, I realized I mentioned

00:16:34.772 --> 00:16:37.488
some psychological defects
earlier, and we also,

00:16:37.489 --> 00:16:40.489
along the way, had a fair amount
of obsessive behavior,

00:16:41.232 --> 00:16:44.192
and there was some delusional
behavior and things like that,

00:16:44.192 --> 00:16:46.813
and here I think we could say
that this is an argument

00:16:46.813 --> 00:16:49.062
for self-loathing
and a kind of schizophrenia,

00:16:49.062 --> 00:16:50.998
at least in the popular use of the term,

00:16:50.998 --> 00:16:54.132
and I really mean dissociative
identity disorder, okay. (Laughter)

00:16:54.132 --> 00:16:56.383
Anyway, despite those perils,
I would urge you

00:16:56.383 --> 00:16:59.150
to think about the possibility
that you might take on roles

00:16:59.150 --> 00:17:01.332
in your own work,
whether they are neighboring

00:17:01.332 --> 00:17:03.739
or far-flung
from your professional definition.

00:17:03.739 --> 00:17:07.365
And with that, I thank you very much.
(Applause)