zorn stuff

From: "lava"
Subject: Re: music zorn likes/New Yorker article

On Fri, 11 Jun 1999, Eric Saidel wrote:

> the more in-depth article that might appeal to us may have significantly > less appeal for Zorn, after all, he does have reasons (presumably) for > being media shy.

Zorn seems to shy away from scholarly articles and publicity in general because he wants the music to speak for itself. Plus, publishing an in-depth paper can be very difficult since there is so much competition to get into periodicals like the Journal of the American Musicological Society, for instance.

Overall I think the Kaplan article is a nice piece. It is quite appropriate for the New Yorker's audience. I really like Kaplan's use of quotations by Harrington and am anxiously waiting for the string quartets to be released! It was odd that Kaplan did not specifically mention Zorn's most recent classical pieces like Le Momo and Amour Fou. I would like to expand on Kaplan's statement: "These days, he [Zorn] tends to write straight through, from start to finish." It is not that simple. In some program notes I wrote back in March, Zorn describes his new compositional process. He was reluctant to talk about it at first, but I was persistent. Here's an excerpt from the notes:

(Sorry for the duplication if you have seen this already. The diacritics and italics did not come through--Momo has a circumflex over the first "o.")

Le Momo

Composed from October 1998 to January 1999, Le Momo was commissioned by the Library of Congress with support from the McKim Fund and is John Zorn's first composition for violin and piano. The piece is inspired by the work of Antonin Artaud (1896-1948), a French poet,dramatist, actor, and theoretician of the Surrealist movement who founded the "Theatre of Cruelty." Le Momo is named after Artaud's poem of the same title, in which the word momo, a slang term from the Marseilles region where Artaud was born, can be translated as "brat," "village idiot," or "simpleton"; the poem celebrates the return of Artaud, "the village idiot from
Marseilles," to the outside world after his nine-year incarceration in insane asylums. Le Momo is one of Zorn's new compositions in a series based on Surrealist artists. The series includes a piano trio entitled Amour Fou ("Mad Love") inspired by the poet and critic Andre Breton (1896-1966), as well as a solo violoncello piece influenced by Joseph Cornell (1903-1972), an American artist known for his enigmatic shadowbox constructions.

In composing Le Momo, Zorn ascribed a series of pitches to nonsense, chantlike texts of Artaud; letters of the alphabet received different pitches, resulting in over two hundred sets of pitches that could serve as melodies or harmonies, if stacked. Throughout the piece, a pitch set is repeated and recontextualized in each instance. Le Momo is a sort of rapid perpetuum mobile, but with periods of tension and release. Zorn used this compositional technique--one quite different from his prior methods--to yield a hypnotic, ritualistic feeling which he found important in Artaud's work. Describing his process, Zorn says, "I wanted to create a hypnotic
effect in my own brain when I was writing it. Sometimes I thought I had to hypnotize myself before I could begin working on the piece. I would often just stare at the page for an hour or two, kind of getting back into where the piece is, to find out where it could be going." Zorn likens his
current compositional process to going on a trip or exhibition: full of surprises and unexpected twists and turns, staying on the predetermined map, yet allowing for spontaneous detours along the way. As he puts it,

"What I like to do is just begin and through composing, work my way
through to the end of the piece. Each day I work a little bit on it and
find a solution to the problem that is in front of me. It's kind of like
going on a trip. You are not quite sure, you could make a turn here or
take a detour there or go straight ahead. Each day I make decisions on
where I am going with the piece and I let it grow. There is a basic
framework that I like a piece to have, and there are things that belong in
the frame and things that don't belong in the frame. Obviously the frame
is what gives the piece its structure, sense of unity, and form. I like
to keep it a very intuitive thing. In that sense the piece is
constantly--as I make decisions--stretching the frame; things are trying
to climb out of the frame, and it is my job to make sure that everything
stays in the frame."

As Zorn's musical language has evolved, his method of composition has changed from notating musical fragments on file cards or sketching game pieces on a blackboard, to creating a work much like a sculptor chips away at a block of marble--carefully, patiently, and constantly attuned to the varying shapes that emerge with every stroke.

Jeni