Music of Anthony Braxton

Heffley, Mike Heffley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780935016185
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136566271
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Jazz Music

First Published in 2001. For three decades, Anthony Braxton has been alternately celebrated, dismissed, and attacked for his musical innovations. His ambitious efforts to reconcile and personalize the historically divergent and often conflicting worldviews and principles of African-American (jazz), American Experimental (post-Ives), and Western European (post-serial) traditions have attracted both loyal supporters and passionate critics. Mike Heffley has followed Braxton's widely varied music from its beginning, and in 1988 began a professional musical relationship with him. His biography of Braxton's music is just that-a look at the music as if it were a living entity, with a traceable ancestry, a describable place in the world, and a history full of drama, intrigue, and passion. The music scholar will find here all the information necessary to understand the contents, contexts, and concepts of Braxton's music, and to further that understanding. The general reader will find the human and trans-human qualities that make the music so compelling to its makers and lovers.

fourth arrow …

whistling through the air of the future

Convocation

Having spent so much time establishing Braxton’s performance and conceptual bases in the jazz tradition, and his Western-style composer’s voice and vision as defined by his solo alto work, this might be the logical point to reflect on just what he established with both. This point, because it marks the first confirmative incursion of the “real” world (i.e., that of a musical “other”) to what might have remained a predominantly private universe.

We’ve noted Braxton-the-”jazz”-improviser’s restless thrashings against the constraints of conventional song-form structures; we’ve traced the steps he took into more musical freedom through the freedom from musical input from others, as a solo performer. We’ve established that the areas he charted there were expansions of both African and European ends of the American musicultural spectrum.

We might note here that his odyssey might have ended here. If he were more the eccentric than the universalist, he might have developed himself as a conventional jazz stylist who also made more adventurous experimental solo recordings. Other musicians might have appreciated the latter but seen no entry point to their own participation; he, for his part, might have tried to stake and claim his exclusive rights to that solo territory (like Jelly Roll Morton claiming to be the inventor of jazz) and (in his own mind) fenced others out from it. The proliferation of ensembles from duos to multiorchestras to give bloom to the musical universe that budded in the privacy of solo work attests to and reminds us of an important point about Braxton’s role as an American composer: his processes, voice, and vision have not taken place in a vacuum but have been part of an historical and grass-roots activity shared with other musicians from the first. His value and genius have come not so much from inventing new concepts and techniques as they have from taking seriously enough to personalize and codify those he shared with his peers, to mine and develop their potential relevance to the broadest-based musiculture over time.

A somewhat fresher path to explore from here, however, starts in Braxton’s compulsion to synthesize Western literate and African oral elements to the degree that he has. His system of ordering his musical works—by number, by time and place, often by instrumental combination—serves more than organizational needs. It is similar to the system the Western literate/classical tradition uses with the composers of its canon. That word’s evocation of sacrosanctity is intentional. For those who embrace and celebrate it, the literate tradition literally lifts its heroes and their time-bound world views out of cyclical time and into the timeless and transpersonal immortality of history. History is literacy’s supermagnification and comprehensive preservation (Braxton would call it an “identity summation”) of orality’s myth and legend, and it brings an authority to Western culture that is still numinous with power, however Africanized it has become. Indeed, part of Braxton’s contribution to that Africanization is his honoring of that peculiarly Western numinosity by claiming it neither as foil nor as lesser or greater, but as match to his own measure of the African oral tradition’s different—and in his hands, complementary—numinosity. This is important because the authority and power of Western culture have been contrary to the intent and spirit of the oral tradition, have run the toxic gamut of repression, oppression, exploitation, misappropriation, and slights and damages more well intended but still paving the road to hell. Orality celebrates itself in the moment, cyclically, in performance, always transitory, always renewing; literacy historicizes, fixes what is important into a medium, sets up a mental sacred space in which to celebrate itself through its codes (scores, books, choreographs, scripts). The physical performances, however vital, are almost secondary to their primary blueprints in the way matter has been seen as secondary to spirit in the West.

These two traditions have met head on in America, have clashed, have learned to respect and feed each other, and are evolving so healthily, if still turbulently. Literacy has, generously and naturally enough, shifted its focus from, say, Beethoven to Louis Armstrong, as evident in the body of scholarship and honor granted the latter—but such glory through history is not the same thing as glory in time, and one of the cruellest aspects of the Western experience is the way the two become confused and imbalanced, both by those who seek and those who can confer both. Armstrong (and Beethoven, for that matter) lived for glory—happiness here and now, a response commensurate with their gifts—in their moments, as well as the ages. Had the balance been better, Armstrong might have grinned a bit less and Beethoven might have gotten married.

Braxton’s synthesis is just as full of both moment and ages. He has worked out a music that can draw on all the rich potential of the transitory moment, per Africa and the other oral traditions—and he has granted it all the numinous power and authority conferred by the Western literate ritual called history. In doing so, he has shown that the one thing need not be done at the expense of the other.

Numbering and otherwise cataloguing his music, seen in this light, doesn’t sterilize or rigidify or deflate it; it rather reflects that overarching consciousness, both personal and the transpersonal one of (oral) Muse and (literate) history, that both engenders and forms not only individual pearls but the string that makes them a necklace. The oral tradition has its shadow side too; one needs the empowering and pleasant self-consciousness of consistent purpose in the making and living of one’s shifting, fleeting life. To the listening, Braxton’s meticulous documentation brings a context that can be felt as a good light shone on (what it reveals as) a good darkness (neither good always being pleasant). What’s more, as we’ll see in Chapter Eight, the opus numbers and graphics themselves, as charged with a history of mythical meaning as more conventional verbally descriptive titles, add up to a corpus that resembles a body indeed—a living organism more than the sum of its organized parts, with hints of an intelligence and personality beyond that of the artist’s conscious control.¹

The duo—and the trio, quartet, and other combinations, and indeed every other aspect of every musical event—are neither arbitrary nor random in real time, and need not appear to be to retain their souls’ freedom. Rather, such meticulous definition and documentation gives the fullest access to that freedom. And, as that aspect called “ensemble” attests, in the chapters covering their various sizes, those souls in Braxton’s musical universe are embodied far beyond the flesh of his own idiosyncratic performances of his own music. That’s what makes him, in the end, more the composer than the performer.

Chapter Six

Duo Music

[Example of a] Tri-Metric caption:

1. The egg has healed the rift made by the sperm and is taking on the integrity of the new life; the seed qua seed (the dot in the circle) is dissolved in that life. That life has started to grow from the feeding motion of the nutrients on the lining of the egg.

2. The quantum is interacting with another such on the same (standing) wavelength (literally, in physics terms) as itself; their interaction simulates an “orbit” around a(n implied) “nucleus” of their field of mutual attraction, to move from the atomic to the molecular level of matter.

3. Braxton’s duo music results from the shifting interplay between him and his partners; both lighter line and bolder arrows denote the discrete motion of the points of their statements, now here, now there, a discretion so fast it is experienced as continuous.

[From occult definition of] number: 8. Pythagoras: … 2 = broken line: polarity, resistance, primordial matter …

[From occult definition of] two: 1. polarity, diversity, dualism, (conjunction of) opposites: positive/negative, life/death, man/woman; twins … 3. primordial matter: a. nature as opposed to its Creator; b. Mother Earth as Magna Mater, or womankind in general; 4. the stillness of equilibrium, but also inception …

[From occult definition of] twins: 1. general: A. they represent two opposites, which, in the end, have a synthesizing, complementary function, e.g. life/death, sunrise/sunset, bad/good, hunter/shepherd, vertical mountain/horizontal valley, etc …. b. fertility kings … B. most famous twins are children of an immortal father and a mortal mother (the “hieros gamos” between heaven and earth), e.g …. Castor-Pollux … C. as secondary deities they are usually in the service of a supreme deity; D. they often appear in animal form … 2. they are generally considered to have special powers, which give them an awe-inspiring numinous quality.

Form is at its best a meaningful assortment of oppositions—light and dark, fast and slow, serious and comic, orderly and chaotic. Without this dynamic formal interplay, the sublimest vision and the earthiest realization are equally empty of power. The artist who cannot establish a context of expectation can never surprise. The artist who cannot compel seriousness can never command irony. The artist immune to violence is incapable of peace. The artist who cannot repeat cannot vary.

Robert Grudin

I’ve chosen the following recordings and selections to represent the music Braxton specifically improvised, wrote, or altered for specific duos. Were I doing a comprehensive review, more duets under other musicians’ names and those featured throughout recordings by trios, quartets, and larger ensembles would afford a much larger field than this handful. This review is meant rather to bring Braxton’s definitions to that duo context conventional to both jazz and Western art music traditions.

Duo (Emanem 3313/4(RI), 1974): open improvisations, with guitarist Derek Bailey.

Live at Wigmore (Inner City 1041, 1974): open improvisations, with guitarist Derek Bailey.

Trio and Duet (Sackville 3007, 1974): The Song Is You, Embraceable You, You Go To My Head, with bassist David Holland.

Duets 1976 (Arista AL-4101, 1976): 60, 40P, 62; and an open improvisation post-titled Nickie, with pianist Muhal Richard Abrams.

Elements of Surprise (Moers Music MOMU 01036, 1976): 64, 65, with trombonist George Lewis.

Duets With Anthony Braxton (Sackville 3016, 1977): 40Q, 74A & 74B, with reeds player/composer Roscoe Mitchell.

Birth & Rebirth (Black Saint BSR 0024, 1978): open improvisations, with drummer Max Roach.

One in Two, Two in One (Hat Hut 2R06, 1979): open improvisations, with drummer Max Roach.

For Two Pianos (Arista AL 9559, 1980, released 1982): 95, performed by pianists Frederick Rzewski and Ursula Oppens.

Four Pieces (Dischi Della quercia Q28015, 1981): 101, with pianist/composer Giorgio Gaslini.

Open Aspects ’82 (Hat Art 1995/96, 1982): open improvisation, with synthesist Richard Teitelbaum.

Six Duets (1982) (Cecma 1005, 1982): 6A & 6N; 23J; 69A, 69B, & 69P, with bassist John Lindberg.

Duets 1987 (Ratascan 002, 1987): 86, 134(+96), 40D(96, 108B), with percussionist Gino Robair.

Kol Nidre (Sound Aspects 031, 1988): 85 & 87, with reeds player/composer Andrew Voigt.

Duets, Vancouver 1989 (Music & Arts CD 611): 136, 140(+112+30), 62, 116, with pianist Marilyn Crispell.

As it happens, Braxton’s recorded duos range the spectrum most broadly from the jazz to the European and American concert and experimental traditions. His work as a soloist in the traditional recordings examined above suggests the music of this spectrum as much as “jazz” solos can. He hints, quotes, borrows ideas; a player can always sound like Debussy for a moment, or Stockhausen, or Lester Young or Charlie Parker or Ornette Coleman—or she can explore her own original ideas that transcend the conventional context without leaving it—while soloing on a song.

As an unaccompanied soloist, she can do the same, and more, by isolating those fleeting snatches into their own pieces and working them out there—but one voice is static, however ecstatic. Braxton, although a virtuoso instrumentalist, sees himself primarily as a composer, especially in his solo context; this is signaled by several aspects of that context. For one thing, he has always been utterly unselfconscious about uneven instrumental execution; much of his solo and duo music has the feel of someone practicing rather than presenting a rehearsed piece. He’s typically more overwhelmed by the concepts he’s working on than he is by his own executions of them.

Also, in a context that would seem to invite variety, he, although a multiinstrumentalist, limits himself to his least exotic, most familiar alto sax. Braxton the instrumentalist is the surface, Braxton the composer the core. Variety on the surface would distract from focusing on the veins he’s trying to mine at the core. His alto voice is his most natura...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Millennial/Gravitational Intrigue
• first arrow … from the bow of the past
• second arrow … on the string of the present
• third arrow … in the five fingers of the archer
• fourth arrow … whistling through the air of the future
• fifth arrow … in the eye of the bull
• Appendix: Anthony Braxton’s Introduction to “Catalogue of Works”
• Sources
• Index
• About the author