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Custer's Ghost by Kyle Gann ('77), Noted Author, Music Critic and Composer
Story by Emily Manzo
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"Custer's Ghost" 2) How Miraculous Things Happen (2:58) |
 RELATED About the Artist |
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the Conservatory |
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Listening Room |
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Kyle
Gann's name once came up in a
conversation with a friend; we were talking about music or
critics. "Oh, I've read his articles in the Village Voice,"
my friend said. "His record collection always seems so
daunting!"
"Daunting" may be a better word to describe the man himself. Through reviews, essays, lectures, and books (American Music in the Twentieth Century, and The Music of Conlon Nancarrow), Gann's contribution to the music world of the late 20th century is possibly one of the most important to be made.
However, new music junkies didn't have much opportunity before the year 2000 (although he'd been writing music at least since his undergraduate days as a composition major at Oberlin) to celebrate Kyle Gann the composer, who is no less intimidating than his critic/historian/teacher counterparts.
Gann's CD, Custer's Ghost, is the product of an individual and a visionary, one whose breadth of knowledge and inspiration have combined to make a strong musical statement. It was released in 1999 on Monroe Street Records.
Custer's Ghost is a compilation of the composer's electronic works since 1992 and begins with the trilogy "Fractured Paradise" (1995), "How Miraculous Things Happen" (1997) and "Superparticular Woman" (1992), also subtitled Tuning Studies Nos. 3, 4 and 1, respectively. All of the music on Custer's Ghost is composed in a system called 'just intonation,' where instead of the Western well-tempered tuning system of 12 pitches to the octave, there are sometimes 16, 20 even 31 to the octave, as in the last track, "Custer's Ghost to Sitting Bull" (1998-99).
"Fractured Paradise," based on a 16-pitch scale, is a perfect invocation to Gann's rich and fascinating harmonic world, out of which come the most simple and inviting melodies.
Like other totalist composers who have incorporated into 'classical' composition a bit of the pop vernacular, Gann's affinity to country music is hard not to notice. But in many ways the pop influence of Custer's Ghost isn't as heavy-handed as in the music of some of Gann's peers.
For instance, where Mikel Rouse wraps an arm around sampling techniques, rock drum beats and minimalism, Gann sweeps way back to the 19th century and picks up a good arm-load of romanticism. There is a cadenza-like passage that starts around 8'30" into "How Miraculous Things Happen" that (were they to hear it) would make any composer of a romantic piano concerto green with just intonation envy.
"So
Many Little Dyings" (1994) is centered around an entrancing
sample of Kenneth Patchen reading a line from his poem, "And
What With the Blunders:" "There are so many little dyings
that it doesn't matter which one of them is death," Patchen
reads, as toy piano and ocean waves mingle in the
background.
Underneath its simplistic surface, there is plenty of room for compositional virtuosity on Custer, such as in Gann's use of American Indian drum beats. The driving rhythms in "Ghost Town" (1994) are particularly striking, as a hard groove gathers momentum throughout its ten-minute duration.
While "Custer and Sitting Bull," the album's namesake, stands out even in it's purely audio format, as a performance piece. Gann's power onstage in a live performance of "Custer" could perhaps be imagined by the sharp delivery of his own vocal contribution to these tracks. (Gann performed the piece at Oberlin in November.)
Gann's approach to writing "Custer" and the decision for it to be self-performed was, perhaps, prophesied in an article he wrote for the catalogue of the 1998 Women's Music Festival in Cologne. Gann cites such composers and performance artists as Laurie Anderson and Pauline Oliveros who helped save music from it's near strangulation due to "a paralyzing excess of structure, logic, scientific precision, and individuality," all of which are often "male-identified qualities."
With "female-identified qualities" of "community, receptiveness, emotionality, intuition," and the inclusion of "personal reference" in their music, composers like Anderson and Oliveros restored contact with their audiences and made composing "fun" again.
It is Gann's ability to embrace these very "female-identified qualities" that makes "Custer and Sitting Bull," as well as the rest of the music on Custer, so powerful and engaging. Never sacrificing a communicable idea for a compositional device, Gann's beautiful voice as a composer has been well worth the wait.
Gann reminded readers recently in his witty affirmation of the death of modernism called, "Ding! Dong! The Witch is Dead" (Village Voice, January 19-25, 2000) that "the value of music is not proportional to the quantity or intricacy of its technical apparatus. Like many great composers throughout the ages, Mozart believed in an 'artless art' in which the effort of composing is hidden beneath an effortless surface; this is as it should be." And may Kyle Gann continue to write just "as it should be."
