Thomas Moore presents … Glenn Branca Day *

* (restored)

 

Introduction

I figured this video would be a decent introduction to Glenn Branca:

 

In the video, Branca talks about John Cage’s specific reactions upon hearing his work – evidently, Cage didn’t enjoy it. Branca must have been amused in some ways as he chose to put an interview, which featured John Cage talking about why he dislikes Branca’s work, as a track on one of his albums, which can be heard here:

 

I thought that might be an interesting place to start with this day – because far from wanting to set this up as a Glenn Branca VS John Cage fest, or anything like that – it does give some kind of context for where Glenn Branca himself may see his work fitting in. I dunno, I could be wrong, and maybe who cares? Basically, I love Branca’s work. It excites me. It inspires me. That’s my main motivation here.

I never get bored of seeing this clip:

 

And here’s another interesting interview with Branca:

 

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The Work

“Dissonance” (1980)
Glenn Branca – guitar – Anthony Coleman – organ, keyboards – Michael Gross – guitar – F.L. Schröder (aka Frank Schroder) – bass – Stephan Wischerth – drums – Harry Spitz – sledgehammer – Thurston Moore – guitar – Lee Ranaldo – guitar – David Rosenbloom – guitar – Ned Sublette – guitar – Jeffrey Glenn – bass

 

“The Spectacular Commodity” (1981)
Glenn Branca – guitar – Ned Sublette – guitar – David Rosenbloom – guitar – Lee Ranaldo – guitar – Jeffrey Glenn – bass – Stephan Wischerth – drums

 

“Symphony No. 1 (Tonal Plexus)” (1983)
Glenn Branca, Craig Bromberg, Dave Buk, Ann DeMarinis, Barbara Ess, Robert Harrison, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, David Rosenbloom, Richard Edson, Ned Sublette, Wharton Tiers, Gail Vachon, Fritz Van Orden, Stephen Wischerth and Margot Zvaleko

 

“Symphony No. 3 (Gloria)” (1983)
Glenn Branca, Barbara Ess, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Michael Gira, a.o.

 

“The World Upside Down” (1990)
The New York Chamber Sinfonia

 

“Symphony No. 5 (Describing Planes Of An Expanding Hypersphere)” (1995)
Bass – Dan Braun, Tim Sommer – Conductor, Guitar [Harmonics Guitar] – Glenn Branca – Drums – Stephen Wischerth – Guitar – Evans Wohlforth, Jonathan Bepler, Mark Roule, Matthew Munisteri – Mallet Guitar – Al Arthur – Keyboards – Greg Letson, Miriam McDonough – Violin, Guitar – Hahn Rowe

 

“Symphony No. 7 (For Orchestra)” (1989)
The Graz Festival Orchestra

 

“Twisting in Space” (2013)
Guitars: Reg Bloor, Eric Hubel, Greg McMullen and Scott Collins – Bass: Arad Evans – Drums: Libby Fab – Conductor: Glenn Branca

 

“Bad Smells (Music For The Dance Choreographed By Twyla Tharp)” (1982)
Glenn Branca – guitar – Anthony Coleman – organ, keyboards – Michael Gross – guitar – F.L. Schröder (aka Frank Schroder) – bass – Stephan Wischerth – drums -Harry Spitz – sledgehammer – Thurston Moore – guitar – Lee Ranaldo – guitar David Rosenbloom – guitar – Ned Sublette – guitar – Jeffrey Glenn – bass

 

Live (2010)

 

“Symphony 5 (live @ the Kitchen)” (1984)

 

Glenn Branca Ensemble – SESC Belenzinho – São Paulo – 24/07/2012
1. The Tone Row That Ruled The World
2. Carbon Monoxide
3. Quadratonic
4. Lesson Nº 3 (Tribute To Steve Reich)
5. The Blood
6. Lost Chords

 

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Writing

If you want the technicalities and facts about Branca, then you can have look at the Wikipedia entry.

It’s more interesting for me to read what Branca says himself. This is him talking about the current state of music, from 2009:

 

The End of Music
By Glenn Branca

We seem to be on the edge of a paradigm shift. Orchestras are struggling to stay alive, rock has been relegated to the underground, jazz has stopped evolving and become a dead art, the music industry itself has been subsumed by corporate culture and composers are at their wit’s end trying to find something that’s hip but still appeals to an audience mired in a 19th-century sensibility.

For more than half a century we’ve seen incredible advances in sound technology but very little if any advance in the quality of music. In this case the paradigm shift may not be a shift but a dead stop. Is it that people just don’t want to hear anything new? Or is it that composers and musicians have simply swallowed the pomo line that nothing else new can be done, which ironically is really just the “old, old story.”

Certainly music itself is not dead. We’ll continue to hear something approximating it blaring in shopping malls, fast food stops, clothing stores and wherever else it will mesmerize the consumer into excitedly pulling out their credit card or debit card or whatever might be coming.

There’s no question that in music, like politics, the bigger the audience gets the more the “message” has to be watered down. Muzak’s been around for a long time now but maybe people just can’t tell the difference anymore. Maybe even the composers and songwriters can’t tell the difference either. Especially when it’s paying for a beach house in Malibu and a condo in New York.

Of course, we could all just listen to all of our old albums, CD’s and mp3’s. In fact, nowadays that’s where the industry makes most of its money. We could also just watch old movies and old TV shows. There are a lot of them now. Why bother making any new ones? Why bother doing anything new at all? Why bother having any change or progress at all as long as we’ve got “growth”? I’m just wondering if this is in fact the new paradigm. I’m just wondering if in fact the new music is just the old music again. And, if that in fact it would actually just be the end of music.

 

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And here’s another piece he wrote for the NYT:

The 25 Questions
By Glenn Branca

I got the idea for this piece from mathematician David Hilbert’s well-known list of 23 “Paris Problems” (1900) that he hoped to see solved in the new century. Of course there is not the slightest connection between Hilbert’s list of problems and this list of questions. Not to mention the fact that many of these questions contain the answers simply in the asking.

1. Should a modern composer be judged against only the very best works of the past?

2. Can there be truly objective criteria for judging a work of art?

3. If a composer can write one or two or more great works of music why cannot all of his or her works be great?

4. Why does the contemporary musical establishment remain so conservative when all other fields of the arts embrace new ideas?

5. Should a composer, if confronted with a choice, write for the musicians who will play a piece or write for the audience who will hear it?

6. When is an audience big enough to satisfy a composer or a musician? 100? 1000? 10,000? 100,000? 1,000,000? 100,000,000?

7. Is the symphony orchestra still relevant or is it just a museum?

8. Is micro-tonality a viable compositional tool or a burned out modernist concept?

9. In an orchestra of 80 to 100 musicians does the use of improvisation make any sense?

10. What is the dichotomy between dissonance and. tonality and where should the line be drawn?

11. Can the music that sooths the savage beast be savage?

12. Should a composer speak with the voice of his or her own time?

13. If there’s already so much good music to listen to what’s the point of more composers writing more music?

14. If Bach were alive today would he be writing in the baroque style?

15. Must all modern composers reject the past, a la John Cage or Milton Babbitt’s “Who Cares If You Listen?”

16. Is the symphony an antiquated idea or is it, like the novel in literature, still a viable long form of music?

17. Can harmony be non-linear?

18. Was Cage’s “4:33” a good piece of music?

19. Artists are expected to accept criticism, should critics be expected to accept it as well?

20. Sometimes I’m tempted to talk about the role that corporate culture plays in the sale and distribution of illegal drugs throughout the United States and the world, and that the opium crop in Afghanistan has increased by 86 percent since the American occupation, and the fact that there are 126,000 civilian contractors in Iraq, but what does this have to do with music?

21. Can the orchestra be replaced by increasingly sophisticated computer-sampling programs and recording techniques, at least as far as recordings are concerned?

22. When a visual artist can sell a one-of-a-kind work for hundreds of thousands of dollars and anyone on the internet can have a composer’s work for nothing, how is a composer going to survive?
And does it matter?

23. Should composers try to reflect in their music the truth of their natures and the visions of their dreams whether or not this music appeals to a wide audience?

24. Why are advances in science and technology not paralleled by advances in music theory and compositional technique?

25. Post-Post Minimalism? Since Minimalism and Post-Minimalism we’ve seen a short-lived Neo-Romanticism, mainly based on misguided attempts to return to a 19th century tonality, then an improv scene which had little or nothing to do with composition, then a hodge-podge of styles: a little old “new music,” a little “60’s sound colorism”, then an eclectic pomo stew of jazz, rock and classical, then a little retro-chic Renaissance … even tonal 12-tonalism. And now in Germany some “conceptual” re-readings of Wagner. What have I left out? Where’s the music?

More of Glenn Branca’s NTY articles can be found here.

 

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To end, I enjoyed some of the stuff that Branca talked about in these last two interviews.

 

END

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Oh, sure, growing up in LA, you pretty much need to learn to drive. I started driving when I was 14. I love driving. I miss it when I’m over here. As long as Anita can drive, you’ll be just fine. So, one of these days … Really? I mean, the contest thing is a very cool idea from over here. But time, definitely, it would take. Curious what you decide. I join love in feeling sorrow for that crow. Bad dog. Love wondering if when pigeons see a dead pigeon they think, That could have been me, G. ** A, Hi! Oh, maybe your comment arrived while I was already doing the p.s. because I sometimes miss those late ones since I don’t always remember to refresh the page before I launch the post. That would explain it? ** Uday, Aw, thanks. I hope the funeral went as well as something like that could go, and whatever ‘well’ means in that instance. Maybe it was profound? Hope your weekend didn’t impede your forward momentum. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, B. Super interesting sounding story in that book. Eek. Oh, shit, that’s scary about the confusion -> hospital. But you sound clear as a bell, man, so whew. And bringing such great news! Everyone, the new episode of Ben ‘_Black_Acrylic’ Robinson’s masterful and living legendary online music-centric venture Play Therapy v2.0 is online, and it is a guaranteed ecstatic kickstarter to your week. I’m a hardcore addict, and join me in the enlightenment here. Yay!!! ** Joe, HI, Joe!! Awesomeness to see you!! I’m okay. The post-production is moving along as a solid place that we are really hoping will not abate. I found the Daley book at Paris’s greatest bookstore, After8, and I picked it up, and I saw it had a blurb from Ron Padgett, and I flipped through it and was sold. Larry Clark knew the protagonist and moved in some of the same circles and knows that scene very well so he’s rather plentifully quoted in the book. Very happy that you’re being ever more uprighted and, of course, working hard. Me too. Highest five, maestro. ** T, Hey, buddy! I’m still and even more locked into the film work because we’re finally in the final stretch. That’s life’s almost entirely and will likely be until March. I haven’t read ‘The Anarchist Banker’, no. The title is mega-intriguing, obviously. ‘An Incest Diary’ neither. On the hunt. Oh, shit, not feeling tip-top and, ugh, dental to come. You’ll be okay. You’re tough. You’re in love! Wow, that’s great! No, really, it is. Being in love is amazing, or, well, has greatness in its arsenal more than most other things do. Happy you’re embracing it. Nice, pal! Ha ha, I’ve had a fucked up (though much improved now) leg for a month, and that limo would get a lot of use if I don’t just move into it entirely. I know I keep saying this, but let’s hang out. I have post-film studio spates of free time and weekends should our freedoms align. Any interest in going to any of the Presences Electronique gigs? I hope this is the week that Tinker Bell invites you to go bowling. ** Misanthrope, The world loves a winner. Okay, good, you did the mini-golf, that’s all that matters. I was beginning to question your sanity, man. And Elio Jr. graced y’all. He’s probably going through a lot and getting in touch with his true, self-involved pretty boy side at last. Always carry some emojis around in your pocket. That’s the key. ** Steve Erickson, Glad the weekend was a marked improvement. And that’s obviously good news about your dad. Thanks about the sound work. I’m sure we’re going to want to do a lot of fiddling ‘cos we’re pretty detail oriented on that stuff. Vinterberg had such an excellent start, but I feel like he shot his wad pretty early on. But I don’t know. I watched or, rather, rewatched ‘Killing of a Chinese Bookie’ for my biweekly Zoom ‘book’ club thing. It’s kind of the transition film between the early, experimental Cassavetes and later, more conventional films, and it seemed like a mostly very beautiful mix. ** Guy, I’ll run it if I can have a huge, dedicated crew. I think I’d better as the brains behind that operation than a hands-on monitor or something. Yes, let’s co-run it. That’s clearly the best case scenario. That’s the thing about slaves, to grotesquely generalise. They’re all ‘you, you, you’ in presentation but entirely ‘me, me, me’ when it comes down to it. No, I really didn’t see the poem, but I guess now I will. And this time I’ll be eagle-eyed. Cool. Oh, I’m sorry about your friend and his fair weather friends, and addiction sucks, for sure, even though your description of his mania for making a collage out of antiques is kind of exciting to imagine. My weekend was nice enough. I worked on some fiction for the first time in a while, and that was a good move. And mostly quietness. Happy happy today ->! ** Darby🎢, Ooh, a roller coaster, now you’re talking, or, I guess, copy and pasting. Now that you’ve pronounced that name it does sound familiar. I’ll run it by Zac sonically today. Thanks about the mirror thing, but I’ve never liked looking at what I look like. I’ve never liked knowing what people see when I’m with them. It makes me feel too self-conscious. I like pretending I’m just a solid quantity of space or something. I don’t know why. I love myself okay, really, I just don’t want to know what I present physically to others. Weird = me. On the Monster, I’ll have to wait and tell you later because he got some and drank it, and now the fridge is bereft. I think the can was green, but I assume they’re all green? ** oliver, Hey, hey, oliver. Um, I think maybe two possibly three weeks of sound mix left to go. I think the color grader said that part would a week to ten days, I’m guessing more like a week because we’re pretty fast. And finally VFX. Five or six days of that maybe? Your location and immediate past sounded very interesting and fun to me. Hope they were now that they’re all in the past. Well, unless you’re still dive barring. We hope to get a festival premiere this year. I really don’t have the patience to sit on the film any longer. It’s been too long a haul already. Happy initiating week! ** Right. Today I have restored an old post made by the noted author Thomas Moore concerning the late, great, singular composer and guitar master Glenn Branca. Blast it. See you tomorrow.