
Organ Grinding: When the Audience Revolted at Carnegie Hall - tintinnabula
https://theamericanscholar.org/organ-grinding/
======
jackhack
I have only limited formal music education, but I am an ardent amateur
performer and listener. But I agree with the person who ran down the aisle at
the 1970 performance, yelling "Stop! I will confess!"

Western music requires rhythm, melody, harmony. (though rhythm may stand
nearly on its own.) Beauty can be subjective to a degree (some non-Western
cultures do not find dissonant notes to be objectionable in an otherwise
harmonious piece) but coherence of chord progression and melody are
fundamental.

This "Four Organs" piece is to my ear a timing algorithm, far less interesting
than a perpetual canon ("song in rounds") because it implements only rhythm -
melody and harmony are missing. Frère Jacques... no, scratch that, even "Happy
Birthday To You" seems a grand compositional achievement by comparison. It is
a meager elevation beyond the sort of finger and timing exercises every music
student performs -- play a scale in eight notes. Now dotted eights, now
triplets, etc. This sort of timing-coherence pattern is pretty common in
percussion -- two musicians playing in different time signatures so that the
beats periodically align. But the arrogance of four organs playing a
monotonous note stretches this simplistic exercise beyond any value, and to
raise it up as a great achievement is absurdity equal to the art world's all-
black canvas, empty box, or filled rubbish bin.

I'm going to use Rush Limbaugh's definition of art : (paraphrase) "Art is what
I can't do. I can throw paint on a canvas. I can glue litter to a floor. I can
pound the keys of a piano. That's not art. I cannot carve a statue of David
from marble. I cannot paint the Mona Lisa or the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
nor compose an orchestral work. These are all art." [edit: added last
sentence]

~~~
scarecrowbob
As a semi-professional musician, that definition of art as "what I can't do"
is really a rough thing to hear.

Like, there are plenty of musical pieces I can play; that doesn't make them
not art.

I enjoy drawing though I am not great at it; that doesn't make my drawing not
art... that just makes my drawings mediocre art.

So, at the very least, I don't think that's a sustainable definition of art.

For what it's worth, if you can accept that argument, then you might want to
go a step further and question what does qualify as "Great art", and I feel
like it's not just way out in left field to say that in addition to execution,
the difference is in how it treats ideas.

Hypothesizing that people are responding to formal ideas would give at least
an account that avoids a redunctionist and cynical "the emperor has no
clothes" account of why people who seem to know a whole lot about their
respective art forms like things like free jazz, abstract paintings, and
strange performance art.

~~~
jackhack
But you're making the argument. You have skills and training and surely
thousands of hours of practice, of course you can play plenty of pieces.

Limbaugh's point was that he is utterly without art and music talent/training
yet can re-create some of these highly praised "works of art." Of course it
was hyperbolic, and it's not a rock-solid scientific definition of art --
perhaps no such thing can ever exist -- but it's a great practical working
definition. Perhaps it would be better stated "if everyone can do it, it's not
art."

Luciano Pavarotti once called singing "shouting, but on pitch." I think he was
understating his gift.

~~~
phlakaton
I welcome Limbaugh's attempt to pull this piece off! I'm a semiprofessional
musician and organist, generally willing to get way in over my head on pieces,
but trying to perform this would terrify me. How would you ever get back on
track if you lost the meter?...

~~~
scarecrowbob
It's only Limbaugh's ignorance of the context of the piece that makes him
think it's random.

If I didn't know how to read, I'd say that the squiggles on a page are just
squiggles that anyone with a piece of charcoal could make.

~~~
phlakaton
For sure. And yet, it's easy to fall into this trap in modern art. :-)

I remember a particular work of art in MOCA in Los Angeles once upon a time
that was a strip of fur on the wall that extended from eye level down to the
ground, then ran out along the floor for a short distance. My friend and I
were simultaneously amused and outraged by that little work! Surely a nine-
year-old could have done that!...

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tzs
I didn't notice the YouTube link at the bottom of that article, so went
searching myself, and found a different recording of it [1]. That's the 2002
remastered version. It's longer than the one linked in the article--I don't
know if the tempo is just slower or if the remastered version has more
material.

Then I saw a comment mentioning the link in the article. I stopped the
playback of the remastered version, and started the video from the article.

Then I switched from watched the embedded video in the article to watching
that video on YouTube itself.

It turns out that I botched stopping the playback of the remastered version,
and botched the switch to the YouTube page, so I actually had three copies of
the piece playing, at different places within the piece (and possibly one
going at a different tempo).

It took me something like a minute with all three going to realize that
something was wrong. I only noticed because I rewound the one I was actually
watching back to the start, and the intro sounded wrong, prompting me to check
the other tabs.

I think it says something (not sure what) about this work that I could have
three copies at different points within it playing simultaneously and not
quickly notice.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5BSt3oKpWk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5BSt3oKpWk)

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dsrftyjdrtyn
Is anyone else surprised by the high proportion of dismissive comments here?
Of all Reich's work, this is one of my least favourite, but it is certainly
music; not noise, not a joke, and not intended as lazy provocation. Reich
himself has notoriously conservative views on music, and here he is repeatedly
framed as a charlatan!

I often wonder how society will make progress on truly divisive issues when
moderately deviant works like this one remain controversial 45 years onward.
How will we embrace the proverbial other, and react to difference with
compassion when we can't even exercise these principles through our reception
of art?

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mannykannot
I am not a huge fan of so-called minimalist music, though among its prominent
composers, Mr. Reich is the one who appeals to me most, and I think his skills
have developed considerably since this early work.

The boorish, self-centered behavior of certain audience members would have
made it very difficult to appreciate anything of the work at its premiere.
Unfortunately, this is increasingly so even for public performances of works
firmly in the classical canon.

~~~
eadmund
> The boorish, self-centered behavior of certain audience members would have
> made it very difficult to appreciate anything of the work at its premiere.

Is it the audiences or the composers & performers who are boorish & self-
centred? This quote from the article is a bit revealing: ‘For sure, by
tomorrow, everyone in the world is going to know about you and your music.’

Good music isn’t about being known; it’s about _good music_. No doubt someone
could release 40 minutes of flatulence and get everyone talking about it — but
that wouldn’t make it good music. When audiences reject music, maybe it’s
_bad_.

~~~
mannykannot
If the intent was to provoke a hostile reaction, then I would tend to agree,
but I think it was a good-faith attempt to make enjoyable music that was not
immediately successful, but which had a silver lining for the apparently
dejected composer.

If you go to a concert of new works, I think you have a obligation to not
interfere with the rest of the audience's attempt to appreciate it, even if
you do not.

It seems that the objectors' rejection of the work was not shared by the whole
audience, or even a majority.

~~~
melq
Not that I condone the audience's behavior, but this was not the premiere.
They mention having played it in Boston before taking it to NY.

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mortehu
I had a similar experience a couple of years ago, watching Drumming at Lincoln
Center without knowing what I was in for. Through the entire thing I was
convinced it was an elaborate prank. A person walked in halfway through,
instantly fell asleep, and snored so loudly most of the audience could hear
him. Yet at the end the 80 minute piece the audience was ecstatic.

Here's part 1:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9DbqNlUNqc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9DbqNlUNqc)

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johan_larson
Well, at least they got a reaction from the audience. It would make a good The
Onion headline: Classical Music Audience Responds with Something Beyond Polite
Applause.

------
Jgrubb
I don't know what's the matter with me, but I love this.

~~~
sosuke
Nothing is wrong with you, it was enjoyable. Very very different. I found
myself bobbing alone with the maracas enjoying the organs as they built up.

------
teilo
Organ grinding indeed.

I love electronic music and the history of electronic music. But as I was
delving into that history, particularly its early history when it was known as
tape music or avante garde, I discovered that the rift between east and west
coast synthesis goes back much further than I realized.

I am unabashedly turned off by west-coast/avante garde/tape music. When I
tried to enjoy, for example, the seminal work of the west coast school of
synthesis (which is to say, the album which brought it into the public
consciousness), Silver Apples of the Moon, no matter what attention I gave it,
or lack thereof, it was just noise to me. It could not enjoy or appreciate it,
even on a technical level.

I had the same reaction as I listened to early tape music. The following is my
opinion alone. I know it will rankle those who love this stuff: I can find no
beauty here, nor anything that pleases the ear or elevates the spirit. The
emotional chord this music strikes in me differs from nails on a chalkboard
only in degree.

This is not because I can only enjoy the modalities of western diatonic music.
I have learned to appreciate and enjoy a lot of eastern, middle-eastern, and
african music, even in scales decidedly bizarre to western ears. But what all
those schools of music have in common is an internal cultural unity and
structure. Each speaks with its own language, and this language can be
learned.

Avant Garde is deconstructionist by its very nature, rejecting all unity,
structure, and modality as too constraining to the composer. But the result
(again, my opinion) is not an expansion of expression, but a lack thereof, and
a decent into chaos.

~~~
phlakaton
I don't think that's the right definition of avant garde. Though there's no
unified language between _all_ of the works of art collected under this
banner, that's not to say that there aren't working dialects that help to
shape the exploration. Otherwise, your distinction between east-coast and
west-coast synthesis would be meaningless, after all!

Recall that serialism, which is practically the first thing that comes to mind
for many people when they think of avant-garde music, was essentially a
_structuralist_, not a deconstructionist, movement. The deconstruction of the
tonic system was what came before, in the music of the late 19th and early
20th century. Serialism encompasses various attempts to build a new musical
language from the remains.

So it is with Steve Reich. Rather than focusing purely on what Reich's music
takes away, you will get more from his work if you look at what he is trying
to _build._

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phlakaton
This is my second time encountering this piece, and based on my experience
with other electroacoustic compositions, it seems to me that the venue and
position of sound sources would make a huge difference in the perception, and
reception, of this work.

For example, I could see this piece fitting right into a contemporary museum
setting. It wouldn't be at all out of place as an exhibit in the annual
"Garden of Memory" that takes place in Oakland every year. It seems to me to
invite both casual and meditative experiences, neither of which an orchestra
hall is ideally suited for.

What would it be like if I were hearing it in surround sound, with significant
spatial separation between the speakers? Or a binaural recording on
headphones? Would it come off as more of a kind of heterophony?

Even better: can you imagine a piece like this being pulled off at one of
those great Baroque cathedrals in Europe where there are antiphonal organs
positioned around the cathedral? I've been dreaming of the possibilities ever
since I visited one...

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filoeleven
There are a lot of negative comments here about the piece, and I’m not going
to disagree with anyone’s musical tastes. I will however caution you not to
dismiss the composer based on this work alone. A fair amount of his work is as
sparse as this, and some of what is not can still be pretty inaccessible
especially if you’re expecting to hear something more traditional.

One piece of Steve Reich’s in particular though grabbed me when I first heard
it 15 years ago, and I don’t think it will ever let go: Music for 18
Musicians. An acquaintance lent me the disc and said he thought I might like
it. I put on my headphones and hit play, and after a short period of
acclimation was blissfully lost for the next hour. Despite feeling ambivalent
about a lot of minimalism, 18 is my favorite piece of music, hands down.

Take the musical ideas behind Four Organs (steady pulses, phase shifting, slow
evolution, others) and then replace the rigorous organs with singers and
players of instruments with widely varying textures (strings, pianos,
clarinets, marimbas). Give the whole thing a rich harmonic structure. Divide
it into sections with melodies that expand and collapse, or build up in
surprising ways. Make it cathartic and uplifting and human.

It’s still not for everyone, but adventurous listeners should give it a try
when you have an hour or so to spare. Don’t commit to the whole piece
necessarily—the full hour is just in case it catches hold of you—but do commit
to listening past the “Pulses” section. That’s just the intro, and what sounds
at first like a frantic hammering quickly mutates into a framework to hang the
larger, wavelike movements on. It really starts to kick in around the 15
minute mark, when Section 3B begins.

There used to be several good recordings of it on YouTube that have all since
disappeared, which is a shame because it raises the barrier for entry; I would
have loved to link one here. It’ll really take you for a ride though, if you
let it.

~~~
Fellshard
Precisely this. Reich's other works do a much better job, in my opinion, of
accomplishing his goals, engaging you intellectually without boring your ears,
either.

'The Desert Music' is also very good composition, as well, more organic and
almost score-like in its structure, if you want his take on something more
traditional.

------
kindohm
I attended a performance of Four Organs in April 2017. There was an incredible
amount of tension in the room because the performers looked like they were at
their limit of being able to successfully pull off the performance. They did
succeed, and the audience roared with applause and cheers.

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ciconia
The biggest turnoff about classical music is how so-called connoisseurs will
dissect and analyse a piece of music ad nauseum, in order to provide
legitimacy and authority to their aesthetic judgement of a piece of music.

You like the music? Fine. You don't? That's also fine. But personally, reading
stuff like "the final resolution of the cadence sounds like nothing less than
a great Amen" reminds me why I don't go to classical music concert anymore.

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golemotron
It seems like a low grade echo of the more tumultuous premiere of Igor
Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring':

[http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22691267](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22691267)

~~~
mannykannot
That might have been more of a response to the choreography than the music.
Earlier in 1913, a performance of Schoenberg's work turned into a riot during
the 'Skandalkonzert' in Vienna. Even that, however, may not have been so much
about the music as the composer, who apparently behaved haughtily at a
previous concert.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skandalkonzert](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skandalkonzert)

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zaroth
It’s a long essay, but maybe the YouTube link should appear at the top.
Because when you click play and try to listen, you might find yourself feeling
quite like they did back in Carnegie Hall. My vote? Noise, not music.

~~~
kurtisc
I don't like the way judging if something is or isn't art, or is or isn't
music, carries an implication of judging its quality. You can think it's music
if you don't enjoy it, think it's bad at what it sets out to achieve, or think
it's trite.

So I disagree with you on it not being music, there are certainly more
conventional pop/rock songs with noisy sections like this piece that don't
stop being music when those sections begin. But I won't add it to any
playlists.

~~~
zaroth
I have no bone to pick with Reich, but I do think to call something music, the
bar is higher than ‘sound made intentionally’.

~~~
nugi
I would argue you are woefully wrong. Much great music is made of sounds only
fleetingly able to be considered 'intentional'.

A noise that conveys a feeling, no matter that feeling, is music.

Sure, I don't sit around jamming to John Cage, but I similarly feel vaugely
ambivilant about much pop music. Is it any different? Much good hiphop is
atonal, much jazz does not repeat, and much popular techno has but a faint
hint of "humanity". And yet they are not just music, but wildly popular
styles. there are few qualifiers you can put on music, art, etc. without
drifting dangerously into 'I know it when I see it' territory.

~~~
zaroth
It’s certainly true you can find musical qualities in almost any noise, but
“music” by definition is a purposeful structure or arrangement of sounds to
convey an idea or emotion.

That is not to say that all music must follow some prescribed form or another,
but the distinction between sound and music is, at a minimum, structure and
intent.

And it is also possible to intentionally structure some sounds in a way as to
be _not music_ , or unmusic, which is the impression I get listening to Four
Organs.

Structured noise can certainly evoke an emotion — in this case for instance,
confusion and disgust, and likely this is intentional. It may be an _artform_
but I don’t think the noise is meant to be musical so much as it is meant to
provocate.

~~~
tjr225
> And it is also possible to intentionally structure some sounds in a way as
> to be not music, or unmusic, which is the impression I get listening to Four
> Organs.

This is artwork, and your impression is largely irrelevant.

This sentiment that it's too simple or too unintentional reminds me of how I
felt when I was 12 and laid eyes upon Clyfford Still's 1951-52 at the Chicago
Art Institute. It didn't seem like art to me at the time, but now I see that
it is- and that I don't get to define what art is or isn't.

~~~
zaroth
Hah, as artwork the only thing that is relevant is our personal impressions!
My impression may not be relevant to _you_ and vice verse, but who cares?

I never said it wasn’t performance art through noise. It’s _definitely_
performance art through noise.

It’s just that if there is any meaning to the word “music” above and beyond
“structured noise” then I’m not sure this hits the bar.

@jedimastert commented below that in fact it was precisely this threshold
which the artist was exploring in this piece, so instead of foreclosing on the
discussion outright as somehow diminishing their work, maybe appreciate that
there’s an interesting question here which actually isn’t just a matter of
“turn off that god awful noise!”

