Thanks for taking the time to read this piece Dougald! I find your careful and thoughtful delivery very soothing and engaging at the same time :) And I've recently discovered Dark Mountain so I'm looking forward to exploring the back catalogue further.
Interesting thoughts on improvisation and uncertainty, indeed. "...relearning the craft of making it up as we go along; cooking from the ingredients to hand, rather than starting with a recipe." – I feel like modernity has stripped away our confidence in ourselves so much, in our capacity to do things (both individually and communally), that we hand over responsibility to 'professionals' (I'm particularly thinking of my two current fixations health care and death care here).
I think that it’s not the act of orchestration that is destructive but rather the work that the orchestra is asked to carry out. Take any work by JS Bach and no matter how you orchestrate it, the result will be beautiful, meaningful music. Here’s an example:
Becoming adept at improvisation is certainly worth striving for and I am always grateful for masters I can learn from.
I think you were perhaps implying that it’s up to the conductor, the artistic director, who needs to choose carefully what the work will be. And currently this is where we are sorely lacking with world leaders and their followers who are not able to distinguish what is good and beautiful.
Thanks for the invitation to think more carefully about this, Suzanne.
I don't mean to suggest that "orchestration" is inherently destructive – as you say, it can be beautiful and meaningful. What I'm trying to get at is the strangeness of a situation in which orchestration becomes the everyday mode of collective activity, while improvisation becomes something regarded as special and difficult. It seems to me that this is part of what happened on the journey into modern industrial society – and that it represents an inversion of a general norm in which something like "orchestration" is how special activities are carried out (I'm thinking of collective rituals in many cultures), whereas everyday life is woven through with improvised activity and interaction.
I wish I had read so many more essays in the past issues of Dark Mountain. This one is lovely. I’m deeply interested in this idea of improvisation vs orchestration. For instance Steve Reich was a huge Jazz fan, after his initial tape loops and other experimentations he went to Africa to study percussion. There, learning from master drummers, he saw how one drummer could signal to another to play a new rhythm. So his pieces like “18 Musicians” are conductorless orchestrated improvisations. The basic score is written but for each section a musician is lead and can play the section and improvise on it until they signal a change to the next section. As a live piece it’s a synthesis of both improvisation and orchestration.
And to end with your beginning and ending “When students take to the streets of Paris or London today, it is no longer to bring about a better world, but to defend what they can of the world their parents’ took for granted….In the countries of the post-industrial West, to be a good economic citizen is now to spend on your credit card today and worry how you’ll pay for it later.
The cultural experiment of debt-fuelled consumption appears to be already entering its endgame. When its costs are finally counted, perhaps the loss of the future which we have been retracing will be listed among them?”
So much of that hits. Several years ago I received a life insurance check, years after my brother passed. For a brief moment I had money and options, a monetary gift from a brother who had been gone for well over a decade at that point. I thought about the things I could do, use it to buy something to help create my business or clear away the accrued debt from school which grows day after day, year over year.
I ended up using every penny of it to pay off one of three student loans I had. His gift paid to cut the string of one weight I had been carrying. This was instead of building something or using it to look forward. Somehow this feels apt to how our future at present is rapidly consuming the past.
With some glimmer of hope that is at the bottom of Pandora’s box, last week I was in a truck on the way to a work with several coworkers. One person turned on a pop radio station and right in the middle of random pop commentary the dj mentioned two high rise commercial real estate buildings had sold for $3.2 million dollars that week. The buildings were valued at $110 million dollars each pre-Covid. The plan was to turn them into housing and lofts.
Every documentary or film that shows a New York artist living in a giant loft, comes from a similar time period when the textile and other types of industry departed NY and left massive amounts of unused spaces, often with high ceilings. Denver is just like every city in the US, it’s full of corporate high rises without tenants. Perhaps the capitalist machine has by accident inadvertently created a housing boom which could lead to an urban artistic renaissance like no other in human history. At least this is hope at the bottom, I wish and dream of and who could have predicted that one?
Ah, I see. It’s only because I’m a musician that my brain went with only the musical definition of what it means to orchestrate which mostly involves assigning parts, like the director of a play would cast roles according to who would best carry out the roles.
There is another hopeful parallel here with music though. It’s certainly a fact that most Western classically trained musicians are terrified of improvisation and think of it as something special and difficult because they have been trained to study an historical work and perform it flawlessly. But you might be unaware that there is a growing, although small, movement even in “classical” music training to teach and learn through keyboard improvisation similar to how children in 18th century Naples were taught to be musicians. If you are interested, here’s a book explaining the 18th century, pedagogy, Child Composers in the Old Conservatories by Robert O. Gjerdigen and here’s a wonderful, practical textbook created by a music professor in the Netherlands that presents updated 18th century music lessons. It’s called Harmony, Counterpoint, Partimento by Job IJzerman.
I really like that you delve into so many aspects of how we have allowed ourselves to function without even knowing how or why! It would be so lovely to get back to a feel for time with seasonal festivals where the pace and feel of life is different.
That's fascinating Suzanne – as a some-time improvising musician, I always found it odd that my "classically-trained" counterparts, of whom I was somewhat in awe, so often found the idea of improvisation terrifying: for me it was as simple as sitting down and seeing what happened. I'm so happy to hear that improvisation is making its way back into that field of music.
Fabulous! And - HA! The Earth Centre!!! My wife and I got married there! In fact I discovered, years after it closed, that we were the only people ever to get married there (a former employee told me that after stumbling on my webpage about the wedding, and said that, for most of the staff, it was the most fun day they'd had while working there). If you fancy seeing some photos of the Earth Centre on a sunny February day 22 years ago: https://sumption.org/wedding/
Five years later, while working on BBC iPlayer, I arrived at work and noticed a photo of the severely dilapidated Earth Centre on our home page – fuckers had only gone and used the site as the set for their remake of the post-apocalyptic drama Survivors. That was a gut-punch! It *did* fit the bill though.
And IMPROVISATION, oh yes oh yes oh yes! Certainly, at the core of being human. In the early 90s I discovered free improv music, Derek Bailey's Company Week festivals, and his TV series "On The Edge", and become hooked on the process and products of improvisation: my own, and that of others.
All too often, the intention to Always Be Improvising has sunk to the back of my mind but, 18 months ago – on realising that none of the books I was publishing ever turned out like I had expected them too, and that this was invariably a _good thing_ – I sat down and wrote 3 core values for Peakrill Press: Collaboration; Improvisation; Creative serendipity. (I think "creative serendipity" may just be a roundabout way of saying improvisation, but I like things to come in threes).
Those words of Ecclesiastes tingled my spine (and, although I normally read your articles, I was listening to this one; that made it even better). I spent a lot of lockdown with TS Eliot's East Coker, which draws on Ecclesiastes, and am always delighted to be reminded of it.
There is a time for building
And a time for living and for generation
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane
And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots
And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.
...
Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth
Mirth of those long since under earth
Nourishing the corn. Keeping time,
Keeping the rhythm in their dancing
As in their living in the living seasons
The time of the seasons and the constellations
The time of milking and the time of harvest
The time of the coupling of man and woman
And that of beasts. Feet rising and falling.
Eating and drinking. Dung and death.
–––
Ahhh, dung and death! The things which, along with improvisation and daunsinge, we humans are made of. I love it!
Thanks for taking the time to read this piece Dougald! I find your careful and thoughtful delivery very soothing and engaging at the same time :) And I've recently discovered Dark Mountain so I'm looking forward to exploring the back catalogue further.
Interesting thoughts on improvisation and uncertainty, indeed. "...relearning the craft of making it up as we go along; cooking from the ingredients to hand, rather than starting with a recipe." – I feel like modernity has stripped away our confidence in ourselves so much, in our capacity to do things (both individually and communally), that we hand over responsibility to 'professionals' (I'm particularly thinking of my two current fixations health care and death care here).
Thank you for this, Doug. I has fallen out of the habit of reading Writing Home, but the title of this one drew me back in.
I think the word that's a counterpoint to always-forward-looking innovation is 'wisdom'.
That sounds about right, Joe – and glad to hear this piece drew you back.
I think that it’s not the act of orchestration that is destructive but rather the work that the orchestra is asked to carry out. Take any work by JS Bach and no matter how you orchestrate it, the result will be beautiful, meaningful music. Here’s an example:
https://youtu.be/-w6vtpUpFF8?si=imw411fHA5EMcayT
Becoming adept at improvisation is certainly worth striving for and I am always grateful for masters I can learn from.
I think you were perhaps implying that it’s up to the conductor, the artistic director, who needs to choose carefully what the work will be. And currently this is where we are sorely lacking with world leaders and their followers who are not able to distinguish what is good and beautiful.
Thanks for the invitation to think more carefully about this, Suzanne.
I don't mean to suggest that "orchestration" is inherently destructive – as you say, it can be beautiful and meaningful. What I'm trying to get at is the strangeness of a situation in which orchestration becomes the everyday mode of collective activity, while improvisation becomes something regarded as special and difficult. It seems to me that this is part of what happened on the journey into modern industrial society – and that it represents an inversion of a general norm in which something like "orchestration" is how special activities are carried out (I'm thinking of collective rituals in many cultures), whereas everyday life is woven through with improvised activity and interaction.
I wonder if that makes the point a bit clearer?
I wish I had read so many more essays in the past issues of Dark Mountain. This one is lovely. I’m deeply interested in this idea of improvisation vs orchestration. For instance Steve Reich was a huge Jazz fan, after his initial tape loops and other experimentations he went to Africa to study percussion. There, learning from master drummers, he saw how one drummer could signal to another to play a new rhythm. So his pieces like “18 Musicians” are conductorless orchestrated improvisations. The basic score is written but for each section a musician is lead and can play the section and improvise on it until they signal a change to the next section. As a live piece it’s a synthesis of both improvisation and orchestration.
And to end with your beginning and ending “When students take to the streets of Paris or London today, it is no longer to bring about a better world, but to defend what they can of the world their parents’ took for granted….In the countries of the post-industrial West, to be a good economic citizen is now to spend on your credit card today and worry how you’ll pay for it later.
The cultural experiment of debt-fuelled consumption appears to be already entering its endgame. When its costs are finally counted, perhaps the loss of the future which we have been retracing will be listed among them?”
So much of that hits. Several years ago I received a life insurance check, years after my brother passed. For a brief moment I had money and options, a monetary gift from a brother who had been gone for well over a decade at that point. I thought about the things I could do, use it to buy something to help create my business or clear away the accrued debt from school which grows day after day, year over year.
I ended up using every penny of it to pay off one of three student loans I had. His gift paid to cut the string of one weight I had been carrying. This was instead of building something or using it to look forward. Somehow this feels apt to how our future at present is rapidly consuming the past.
With some glimmer of hope that is at the bottom of Pandora’s box, last week I was in a truck on the way to a work with several coworkers. One person turned on a pop radio station and right in the middle of random pop commentary the dj mentioned two high rise commercial real estate buildings had sold for $3.2 million dollars that week. The buildings were valued at $110 million dollars each pre-Covid. The plan was to turn them into housing and lofts.
Every documentary or film that shows a New York artist living in a giant loft, comes from a similar time period when the textile and other types of industry departed NY and left massive amounts of unused spaces, often with high ceilings. Denver is just like every city in the US, it’s full of corporate high rises without tenants. Perhaps the capitalist machine has by accident inadvertently created a housing boom which could lead to an urban artistic renaissance like no other in human history. At least this is hope at the bottom, I wish and dream of and who could have predicted that one?
Thank you as always Dougald.
Ah, I see. It’s only because I’m a musician that my brain went with only the musical definition of what it means to orchestrate which mostly involves assigning parts, like the director of a play would cast roles according to who would best carry out the roles.
There is another hopeful parallel here with music though. It’s certainly a fact that most Western classically trained musicians are terrified of improvisation and think of it as something special and difficult because they have been trained to study an historical work and perform it flawlessly. But you might be unaware that there is a growing, although small, movement even in “classical” music training to teach and learn through keyboard improvisation similar to how children in 18th century Naples were taught to be musicians. If you are interested, here’s a book explaining the 18th century, pedagogy, Child Composers in the Old Conservatories by Robert O. Gjerdigen and here’s a wonderful, practical textbook created by a music professor in the Netherlands that presents updated 18th century music lessons. It’s called Harmony, Counterpoint, Partimento by Job IJzerman.
I really like that you delve into so many aspects of how we have allowed ourselves to function without even knowing how or why! It would be so lovely to get back to a feel for time with seasonal festivals where the pace and feel of life is different.
That's fascinating Suzanne – as a some-time improvising musician, I always found it odd that my "classically-trained" counterparts, of whom I was somewhat in awe, so often found the idea of improvisation terrifying: for me it was as simple as sitting down and seeing what happened. I'm so happy to hear that improvisation is making its way back into that field of music.
“ they don’t pretend you didn’t make mistakes, but they draw your attention to what made those mistakes worth making”
Fabulous! And - HA! The Earth Centre!!! My wife and I got married there! In fact I discovered, years after it closed, that we were the only people ever to get married there (a former employee told me that after stumbling on my webpage about the wedding, and said that, for most of the staff, it was the most fun day they'd had while working there). If you fancy seeing some photos of the Earth Centre on a sunny February day 22 years ago: https://sumption.org/wedding/
Five years later, while working on BBC iPlayer, I arrived at work and noticed a photo of the severely dilapidated Earth Centre on our home page – fuckers had only gone and used the site as the set for their remake of the post-apocalyptic drama Survivors. That was a gut-punch! It *did* fit the bill though.
And IMPROVISATION, oh yes oh yes oh yes! Certainly, at the core of being human. In the early 90s I discovered free improv music, Derek Bailey's Company Week festivals, and his TV series "On The Edge", and become hooked on the process and products of improvisation: my own, and that of others.
All too often, the intention to Always Be Improvising has sunk to the back of my mind but, 18 months ago – on realising that none of the books I was publishing ever turned out like I had expected them too, and that this was invariably a _good thing_ – I sat down and wrote 3 core values for Peakrill Press: Collaboration; Improvisation; Creative serendipity. (I think "creative serendipity" may just be a roundabout way of saying improvisation, but I like things to come in threes).
Those words of Ecclesiastes tingled my spine (and, although I normally read your articles, I was listening to this one; that made it even better). I spent a lot of lockdown with TS Eliot's East Coker, which draws on Ecclesiastes, and am always delighted to be reminded of it.
There is a time for building
And a time for living and for generation
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane
And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots
And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.
...
Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth
Mirth of those long since under earth
Nourishing the corn. Keeping time,
Keeping the rhythm in their dancing
As in their living in the living seasons
The time of the seasons and the constellations
The time of milking and the time of harvest
The time of the coupling of man and woman
And that of beasts. Feet rising and falling.
Eating and drinking. Dung and death.
–––
Ahhh, dung and death! The things which, along with improvisation and daunsinge, we humans are made of. I love it!