David Behrman’s “Long Throw” at Roulette
To continue on a trend, I went to the live taping of David Behrman’s piece Long Throw at Roulette, a performance space in SoHo that specializes in minimalist, experimental music. What I found was that, as much as I enjoy analyzing abstract works, some things are just too avant-garde for my tastes.
For those of you who don’t know, David Behrman is a notable conductor of experimental music that fuses live performances with computer-generated sound. He was a founder of the Sonic Arts Union and has toured with the Merce Cunningham Dance company, where he worked with John Cage.
That influence was quite apparent in the first piece, which melded the sounds of a prepared piano (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prepared_piano), what I suppose should be called a prepared guitar, as there was a CD placed under the strings, and steady stream of electronic noise, all overlaid by excerpts from a interview detailing what one should do if arrested when protesting during the Republican National Convention. These sounds were juxtaposed together, each contributing to the viewer’s interpretations of the other. I personally began to create a narrative between the parts and fit them together, the computer and the live instruments becoming background music to ironically dramaticize the deadpan interview. I’m not sure that this is what I should have done with this modernist piece, but oh well.
However, despite my having liked the first piece, I found the main piece, Long Throw, to be too incomprehensible for my tastes. Again there was the piano and the guitar and the electronic noise. These separate aspects would play against each other in different combinations, and while interesting, it did become rather tedious after an hour. To be blunt, I stopped paying attention after a while. While there were different combinations of sounds, they were still the same sounds over and over again, and I’ve never found that choice to be particularly dynamic or interesting to listen to for extended periods of time.
I really don’t know if I have the right mindset for this type of music. I found the first piece interesting, first of all, because it was short enough not to be boring, and second of all, because it was interposed strategically with a voice that played off the music. Long Throw, however, had far too many stretches of repetitive sounds to keep my interest. The problem isn’t that it was long–I have no problem listening to hour-long symphonies. The problem is that, unlike symphonies, this kind of modernist music doesn’t have discernible themes and sections that play and build from each other, the key word here being discernible. I suppose it’s the same sort of mindset that prevents me from enjoying any terribly minimalistic art piece, like say, for example, an exhibit I saw in Chelsea earlier that was just big circular outlines made from cut-out paper. I can appreciate the vision behind the piece, I can’t however honestly say that they outcome is something I could enjoy.