0:00:03.005,0:00:06.227
I thought if I skipped it might help my nerves,

0:00:06.227,0:00:09.413
but I'm actually having a paradoxical reaction to that,

0:00:09.413,0:00:11.235
so that was a bad idea. (Laughter)

0:00:11.235,0:00:14.656
Anyway, I was really delighted to receive the invitation

0:00:14.656,0:00:18.593
to present to you some of my music and some of my work

0:00:18.593,0:00:21.687
as a composer, presumably because it appeals

0:00:21.687,0:00:25.670
to my well-known and abundant narcissism. (Laughter)

0:00:25.670,0:00:28.278
And I'm not kidding, I just think we should just

0:00:28.278,0:00:31.734
say that and move forward. (Laughter)

0:00:31.734,0:00:34.614
So, but the thing is, a dilemma quickly arose,

0:00:34.614,0:00:36.819
and that is that I'm really bored with music,

0:00:36.819,0:00:39.885
and I'm really bored with the role of the composer,

0:00:39.885,0:00:43.093
and so I decided to put that idea, boredom,

0:00:43.093,0:00:46.067
as the focus of my presentation to you today.

0:00:46.067,0:00:48.355
And I'm going to share my music with you, but I hope

0:00:48.355,0:00:50.590
that I'm going to do so in a way that tells a story,

0:00:50.590,0:00:53.999
tells a story about how I used boredom as a catalyst

0:00:53.999,0:00:56.553
for creativity and invention, and how boredom

0:00:56.553,0:00:59.714
actually forced me to change the fundamental question

0:00:59.714,0:01:01.795
that I was asking in my discipline,

0:01:01.795,0:01:03.854
and how boredom also, in a sense,

0:01:03.854,0:01:08.298
pushed me towards taking on roles beyond the sort of

0:01:08.298,0:01:10.908
most traditional, narrow definition of a composer.

0:01:10.908,0:01:13.379
What I'd like to do today is to start with an excerpt

0:01:13.379,0:01:16.207
of a piece of music at the piano.

0:01:16.207,0:01:25.522
(Music)

0:01:25.522,0:01:28.836
Okay, I wrote that. (Laughter)

0:01:28.836,0:01:30.743
No, it's not — (Applause) Oh, why thank you.

0:01:30.743,0:01:32.374
No, no, I didn't write that.

0:01:32.374,0:01:34.646
In fact, that was a piece by Beethoven,

0:01:34.646,0:01:37.201
and so I was not functioning as a composer.

0:01:37.201,0:01:40.252
Just now I was functioning in the role of the interpreter,

0:01:40.252,0:01:42.313
and there I am, interpreter.

0:01:42.313,0:01:45.022
So, an interpreter of what? Of a piece of music, right?

0:01:45.022,0:01:49.229
But we can ask the question, "But is it music?"

0:01:49.229,0:01:51.009
And I say this rhetorically, because of course

0:01:51.009,0:01:53.830
by just about any standard we would have to concede

0:01:53.830,0:01:55.778
that this is, of course, a piece of music,

0:01:55.778,0:01:58.104
but I put this here now because,

0:01:58.104,0:02:00.387
just to set it in your brains for the moment,

0:02:00.387,0:02:02.228
because we're going to return to this question.

0:02:02.228,0:02:04.010
It's going to be a kind of a refrain

0:02:04.010,0:02:05.821
as we go through the presentation.

0:02:05.821,0:02:08.049
So here we have this piece of music by Beethoven,

0:02:08.049,0:02:11.255
and my problem with it is, it's boring.

0:02:11.255,0:02:18.075
I mean, you — I'm just like, a hush, huh -- It's like -- (Laughter)

0:02:18.075,0:02:19.793
It's Beethoven, how can you say that?

0:02:19.793,0:02:21.528
No, well, I don't know, it's very familiar to me.

0:02:21.528,0:02:24.559
I had to practice it as a kid, and I'm really sick of it. So -- (Laughter)

0:02:24.559,0:02:27.282
I would, so what I might like to try to do is to change it,

0:02:27.282,0:02:29.926
to transform it in some ways, to personalize it,

0:02:29.926,0:02:32.353
so I might take the opening, like this idea --

0:02:32.353,0:02:34.561
(Music)

0:02:34.561,0:02:39.458
and then I might substitute -- (Music)

0:02:39.458,0:02:41.097
and then I might improvise on that melody

0:02:41.097,0:02:44.732
that goes forward from there -- (Music)

0:02:44.732,0:03:10.754
(Music)

0:03:10.754,0:03:13.866
So that might be the kind of thing -- Why thank you.

0:03:13.866,0:03:17.461
(Applause)

0:03:17.461,0:03:19.579
That would be the kind of thing that I would do,

0:03:19.579,0:03:21.676
and it's not necessarily better than the Beethoven.

0:03:21.676,0:03:25.408
In fact, I think it's not better than it. The thing is -- (Laughter) --

0:03:25.408,0:03:30.707
it's more interesting to me. It's less boring for me.

0:03:30.707,0:03:33.877
I'm really leaning into me, because I, because I have

0:03:33.877,0:03:37.449
to think about what decisions I'm going to make on the fly

0:03:37.449,0:03:40.651
as that Beethoven text is running in time through my head

0:03:40.651,0:03:42.856
and I'm trying to figure out what kinds of transformations

0:03:42.856,0:03:44.454
I'm going to make to it.

0:03:44.454,0:03:47.029
So this is an engaging enterprise for me, and

0:03:47.029,0:03:51.687
I've really leaned into that first person pronoun thing there,

0:03:51.687,0:03:54.008
and now my face appears twice, so I think we can agree

0:03:54.008,0:03:57.699
that this is a fundamentally solipsistic enterprise. (Laughter)

0:03:57.699,0:04:00.113
But it's an engaging one, and it's interesting to me

0:04:00.113,0:04:02.533
for a while, but then I get bored with it, and by it,

0:04:02.533,0:04:05.184
I actually mean, the piano, because it becomes,

0:04:05.184,0:04:08.402
it's this familiar instrument, it's timbral range is actually

0:04:08.402,0:04:10.923
pretty compressed, at least when you play on the keyboard,

0:04:10.923,0:04:13.533
and if you're not doing things like listening to it

0:04:13.533,0:04:16.256
after you've lit it on fire or something like that, you know.

0:04:16.256,0:04:18.225
It gets a little bit boring, and so pretty soon

0:04:18.225,0:04:20.385
I go through other instruments, they become familiar,

0:04:20.385,0:04:23.062
and eventually I find myself designing and constructing

0:04:23.062,0:04:27.225
my own instrument, and I brought one with me today,

0:04:27.225,0:04:30.161
and I thought I would play a little bit on it for you

0:04:30.161,0:04:32.367
so you can hear what it sounds like.

0:04:32.367,0:04:43.780
(Music)

0:04:43.780,0:04:49.543
You gotta have doorstops, that's important. (Laughter)

0:04:49.543,0:04:52.651
I've got combs. They're the only combs that I own. (Music)

0:04:52.651,0:04:55.807
They're all mounted on my instruments. (Laughter)

0:04:55.807,0:05:04.866
(Music)

0:05:04.866,0:05:07.451
I can actually do all sorts of things. I can play

0:05:07.451,0:05:09.949
with a violin bow. I don't have to use the chopsticks.

0:05:09.949,0:05:17.802
So we have this sound. (Music)

0:05:17.802,0:05:19.846
And with a bank of live electronics,

0:05:19.846,0:05:23.967
I can change the sounds radically. (Music)

0:05:23.967,0:05:33.041
(Music)

0:05:33.041,0:05:39.292
Like that, and like this. (Music)

0:05:39.292,0:05:41.410
And so forth.

0:05:41.410,0:05:43.549
So this gives you a little bit of an idea of the sound world

0:05:43.549,0:05:46.226
of this instrument, which I think is quite interesting

0:05:46.226,0:05:50.000
and it puts me in the role of the inventor, and the nice thing about —

0:05:50.000,0:05:53.119
This instrument is called the Mouseketeer ... (Laughter)

0:05:53.119,0:05:55.383
and the cool thing about it is

0:05:55.383,0:05:58.951
I'm the world's greatest Mouseketeer player. (Laughter)

0:05:58.951,0:06:00.570
Okay? (Applause)

0:06:00.570,0:06:03.746
So in that regard, this is one of the things,

0:06:03.746,0:06:05.606
this is one of the privileges of being,

0:06:05.606,0:06:08.612
and here's another role, the inventor, and by the way,

0:06:08.612,0:06:10.790
when I told you that I'm the world's greatest,

0:06:10.790,0:06:14.794
if you're keeping score, we've had narcissism and solipsism

0:06:14.794,0:06:16.798
and now a healthy dose of egocentricism.

0:06:16.798,0:06:20.398
I know some of you are just, you know, bingo! Or, I don't know. (Laughter)

0:06:20.398,0:06:25.945
Anyway, so this is also a really enjoyable role.

0:06:25.945,0:06:28.677
I should concede also that I'm the world's worst Mouseketeer player,

0:06:28.677,0:06:30.927
and it was this distinction that I was most worried about

0:06:30.927,0:06:33.864
when I was on that prior side of the tenure divide.

0:06:33.864,0:06:36.350
I'm glad I'm past that. We're not going to go into that.

0:06:36.350,0:06:39.307
I'm crying on the inside. There are still scars.

0:06:39.307,0:06:43.123
Anyway, but I guess my point is that all of these enterprises

0:06:43.123,0:06:46.858
are engaging to me in their multiplicity, but as I've presented them

0:06:46.858,0:06:50.210
to you today, they're actually solitary enterprises,

0:06:50.210,0:06:53.237
and so pretty soon I want to commune with other people, and so

0:06:53.237,0:06:55.755
I'm delighted that in fact I get to compose works for them.

0:06:55.755,0:06:58.841
I get to write, sometimes for soloists and I get to work with one person,

0:06:58.841,0:07:02.150
sometimes full orchestras, and I work with a lot of people,

0:07:02.150,0:07:05.829
and this is probably the capacity, the role creatively

0:07:05.829,0:07:08.991
for which I'm probably best known professionally.

0:07:08.991,0:07:11.966
Now, some of my scores as a composer look like this,

0:07:11.966,0:07:14.039
and others look like this,

0:07:14.039,0:07:16.123
and some look like this,

0:07:16.123,0:07:19.169
and I make all of these by hand, and it's really tedious.

0:07:19.169,0:07:21.502
It takes a long, long time to make these scores,

0:07:21.502,0:07:23.675
and right now I'm working on a piece

0:07:23.675,0:07:25.698
that's 180 pages in length,

0:07:25.698,0:07:29.894
and it's just a big chunk of my life, and I'm just pulling out hair.

0:07:29.894,0:07:32.403
I have a lot of it, and that's a good thing I suppose. (Laughter)

0:07:32.403,0:07:35.967
So this gets really boring and really tiresome for me,

0:07:35.967,0:07:38.940
so after a while the process of notating is not only boring,

0:07:38.940,0:07:42.072
but I actually want the notation to be more interesting,

0:07:42.072,0:07:44.791
and so that's pushed me to do other projects like this one.

0:07:44.791,0:07:47.021
This is an excerpt from a score called

0:07:47.021,0:07:49.212
"The Metaphysics of Notation."

0:07:49.212,0:07:51.756
The full score is 72 feet wide.

0:07:51.756,0:07:54.454
It's a bunch of crazy pictographic notation.

0:07:54.454,0:07:57.340
Let's zoom in on one section of it right here. You can see

0:07:57.340,0:08:01.157
it's rather detailed. I do all of this with drafting templates,

0:08:01.157,0:08:04.774
with straight edges, with French curves, and by freehand,

0:08:04.774,0:08:07.428
and the 72 feet was actually split

0:08:07.428,0:08:10.463
into 12 six-foot-wide panels that were installed

0:08:10.463,0:08:15.347
around the Cantor Arts Center Museum lobby balcony,

0:08:15.347,0:08:19.155
and it appeared for one year in the museum,

0:08:19.155,0:08:22.013
and during that year, it was experienced as visual art

0:08:22.013,0:08:23.914
most of the week, except, as you can see in these pictures,

0:08:23.914,0:08:26.952
on Fridays, from noon til one, and only during that time,

0:08:26.952,0:08:30.332
various performers came and interpreted these strange

0:08:30.332,0:08:33.611
and undefined pictographic glyphs. (Laughter)

0:08:33.611,0:08:37.295
Now this was a really exciting experience for me.

0:08:37.295,0:08:38.898
It was gratifying musically, but I think

0:08:38.898,0:08:41.594
the more important thing is it was exciting because I got to take on

0:08:41.594,0:08:44.490
another role, especially given that it appeared in a museum,

0:08:44.490,0:08:47.766
and that is as visual artist. (Laughter)

0:08:47.766,0:08:50.266
We're going to fill up the whole thing, don't worry. (Laughter)

0:08:50.266,0:08:52.269
I am multitudes. (Laughter)

0:08:52.269,0:08:55.173
So one of the things is that, I mean, some people

0:08:55.173,0:08:56.960
would say, like, "Oh, you're being a dilettante,"

0:08:56.960,0:08:59.537
and maybe that's true. I can understand how, I mean,

0:08:59.537,0:09:01.696
because I don't have a pedigree in visual art

0:09:01.696,0:09:03.732
and I don't have any training, but it's just something

0:09:03.732,0:09:06.199
that I wanted to do as an extension of my composition,

0:09:06.199,0:09:09.099
as an extension of a kind of creative impulse.

0:09:09.099,0:09:12.195
I can understand the question, though. "But is it music?"

0:09:12.195,0:09:14.454
I mean, there's not any traditional notation.

0:09:14.454,0:09:16.707
I can also understand that sort of implicit criticism

0:09:16.707,0:09:20.079
in this piece, "S-tog," which I made when I was living in Copenhagen.

0:09:20.079,0:09:22.066
I took the Copenhagen subway map and

0:09:22.066,0:09:25.198
I renamed all the stations to abstract musical provocations,

0:09:25.198,0:09:27.969
and the players, who are synchronized with stopwatches,

0:09:27.969,0:09:30.830
follow the timetables, which are listed in minutes past the hour.

0:09:30.830,0:09:33.891
So this is a case of actually adapting something,

0:09:33.891,0:09:35.774
or maybe stealing something,

0:09:35.774,0:09:38.115
and then turning it into a musical notation.

0:09:38.115,0:09:40.270
Another adaptation would be this piece.

0:09:40.270,0:09:43.616
I took the idea of the wristwatch, and I turned it into a musical score.

0:09:43.616,0:09:46.854
I made my own faces, and had a company fabricate them,

0:09:46.854,0:09:49.092
and the players follow these scores.

0:09:49.092,0:09:51.113
They follow the second hands, and as they pass over

0:09:51.113,0:09:54.099
the various symbols, the players respond musically.

0:09:54.099,0:09:56.322
Here's another example from another piece,

0:09:56.322,0:09:58.376
and then its realization.

0:09:58.376,0:10:00.855
So in these two capacities, I've been scavenger,

0:10:00.855,0:10:03.242
in the sense of taking, like, the subway map, right,

0:10:03.242,0:10:05.760
or thief maybe, and I've also been designer,

0:10:05.760,0:10:08.075
in the case of making the wristwatches.

0:10:08.075,0:10:11.655
And once again, this is, for me, interesting.

0:10:11.655,0:10:14.974
Another role that I like to take on is that of the performance artist.

0:10:14.974,0:10:17.661
Some of my pieces have these kind of weird theatric elements,

0:10:17.661,0:10:19.815
and I often perform them. I want to show you a clip

0:10:19.815,0:10:21.579
from a piece called "Echolalia."

0:10:21.579,0:10:24.650
This is actually being performed by Brian McWhorter,

0:10:24.650,0:10:25.955
who is an extraordinary performer.

0:10:25.955,0:10:29.387
Let's watch a little bit of this, and please notice the instrumentation.

0:10:29.387,0:10:58.275
(Music)

0:10:58.275,0:10:59.959
Okay, I hear you were laughing nervously because

0:10:59.959,0:11:02.253
you too could hear that the drill was a little bit sharp,

0:11:02.253,0:11:04.381
the intonation was a little questionable. (Laughter)

0:11:04.381,0:11:06.393
Let's watch just another clip.

0:11:06.393,0:11:16.969
(Music)

0:11:16.969,0:11:19.665
You can see the mayhem continues, and there's, you know,

0:11:19.665,0:11:21.543
there were no clarinets and trumpets

0:11:21.543,0:11:23.447
and flutes and violins. Here's a piece that has

0:11:23.447,0:11:26.002
an even more unusual, more peculiar instrumentation.

0:11:26.002,0:11:29.579
This is "Tlön," for three conductors and no players. (Laughter)

0:11:42.327,0:11:44.267
This was based on the experience of actually watching

0:11:44.267,0:11:46.783
two people having a virulent argument in sign language,

0:11:46.783,0:11:48.642
which produced no decibels to speak of,

0:11:48.642,0:11:52.053
but affectively, psychologically, was a very loud experience.

0:11:52.053,0:11:55.721
So, yeah, I get it, with, like, the weird appliances

0:11:55.721,0:11:59.823
and then the total absence of conventional instruments

0:11:59.823,0:12:02.696
and this glut of conductors, people might, you know,

0:12:02.696,0:12:05.599
wonder, yeah, "Is this music?"

0:12:05.599,0:12:09.446
But let's move on to a piece where clearly I'm behaving myself,

0:12:09.446,0:12:11.933
and that is my "Concerto for Orchestra."

0:12:11.933,0:12:13.931
You're going to notice a lot of conventional instruments

0:12:13.931,0:12:17.631
in this clip. (Music)

0:12:17.631,0:12:30.478
(Music)

0:12:30.478,0:12:32.518
This, in fact, is not the title of this piece.

0:12:32.518,0:12:35.073
I was a bit mischievous. In fact, to make it more interesting,

0:12:35.073,0:12:39.358
I put a space right in here, and this is the actual title of the piece.

0:12:39.358,0:12:41.384
Let's continue with that same excerpt.

0:12:41.384,0:12:51.677
(Music)

0:12:51.677,0:12:59.767
It's better with a florist, right? (Laughter) (Music)

0:12:59.767,0:13:02.003
Or at least it's less boring. Let's watch a couple more clips.

0:13:02.003,0:13:15.979
(Music)

0:13:15.979,0:13:19.027
So with all these theatric elements, this pushes me in another role,

0:13:19.027,0:13:21.850
and that would be, possibly, the dramaturge.

0:13:21.850,0:13:26.337
I was playing nice. I had to write the orchestra bits, right?

0:13:26.337,0:13:28.800
Okay? But then there was this other stuff, right?

0:13:28.800,0:13:30.733
There was the florist, and I can understand that,

0:13:30.733,0:13:33.873
once again, we're putting pressure on the ontology of music

0:13:33.873,0:13:36.586
as we know it conventionally,

0:13:36.586,0:13:41.009
but let's look at one last piece today I'm going to share with you.

0:13:41.009,0:13:43.674
This is going to be a piece called "Aphasia,"

0:13:43.674,0:13:47.109
and it's for hand gestures synchronized to sound,

0:13:47.109,0:13:49.848
and this invites yet another role, and final one

0:13:49.848,0:13:52.421
I'll share with you, which is that of the choreographer.

0:13:52.421,0:13:54.899
And the score for the piece looks like this,

0:13:54.899,0:13:59.309
and it instructs me, the performer, to make

0:13:59.309,0:14:02.039
various hand gestures at very specific times

0:14:02.039,0:14:04.293
synchronized with an audio tape, and that audio tape

0:14:04.293,0:14:07.170
is made up exclusively of vocal samples.

0:14:07.170,0:14:09.592
I recorded an awesome singer,

0:14:09.592,0:14:11.937
and I took the sound of his voice in my computer,

0:14:11.937,0:14:14.536
and I warped it in countless ways to come up with

0:14:14.536,0:14:16.804
the soundtrack that you're about to hear.

0:14:16.804,0:14:21.769
And I'll perform just an excerpt of "Aphasia" for you here. Okay?

0:14:21.769,0:15:00.105
(Music)

0:15:00.108,0:15:06.731
So that gives you a little taste of that piece. (Applause)

0:15:06.731,0:15:09.015
Yeah, okay, that's kind of weird stuff.

0:15:09.015,0:15:11.254
Is it music? Here's how I want to conclude.

0:15:11.254,0:15:13.830
I've decided, ultimately, that this is the wrong question,

0:15:13.830,0:15:15.788
that this is not the important question.

0:15:15.788,0:15:18.521
The important question is, "Is it interesting?"

0:15:18.521,0:15:21.413
And I follow this question, not worrying about "Is it music?" --

0:15:21.413,0:15:23.899
not worrying about the definition of the thing that I'm making.

0:15:23.899,0:15:26.352
I allow my creativity to push me

0:15:26.352,0:15:28.512
in directions that are simply interesting to me,

0:15:28.512,0:15:31.561
and I don't worry about the likeness of the result

0:15:31.561,0:15:33.617
to some notion, some paradigm,

0:15:33.617,0:15:36.606
of what music composition is supposed to be,

0:15:36.606,0:15:39.049
and that has actually urged me, in a sense,

0:15:39.049,0:15:40.784
to take on a whole bunch of different roles,

0:15:40.784,0:15:42.919
and so what I want you to think about is,

0:15:42.919,0:15:46.137
to what extent might you change the fundamental question

0:15:46.137,0:15:48.860
in your discipline, and, okay,

0:15:48.860,0:15:51.240
I'm going to put one extra little footnote in here,

0:15:51.240,0:15:52.854
because, like, I realized I mentioned

0:15:52.854,0:15:55.789
some psychological defects earlier, and we also,

0:15:55.789,0:15:59.532
along the way, had a fair amount of obsessive behavior,

0:15:59.532,0:16:01.693
and there was some delusional behavior and things like that,

0:16:01.693,0:16:04.674
and here I think we could say that this is an argument

0:16:04.674,0:16:06.653
for self-loathing and a kind of schizophrenia,

0:16:06.653,0:16:08.589
at least in the popular use of the term,

0:16:08.589,0:16:10.823
and I really mean dissociative identity disorder, okay. (Laughter)

0:16:10.823,0:16:13.886
Anyway, despite those perils, I would urge you

0:16:13.886,0:16:16.461
to think about the possibility that you might take on roles

0:16:16.461,0:16:18.552
in your own work, whether they are neighboring

0:16:18.552,0:16:21.050
or far-flung from your professional definition.

0:16:21.050,0:16:22.827
And with that, I thank you very much. (Applause)

0:16:22.827,0:16:29.026
(Applause)