Episode Transcript
[00:00:16] Speaker A: Ready?
[00:00:17] Speaker B: I'm Aaron Nathans.
[00:00:18] Speaker A: And I'm Michael G. Ronstadt.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: And you're listening to the Nathans and Ron cast.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: I beat you to the end.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: You're listening to.
[00:00:25] Speaker A: I know. Well, it's only. Cause you did every other one, I think.
Anyway, we're gonna jump right into our interview with Kenneth Stewart. Ken is just like Peter Blatchley. Ken is his own brand of Renaissance person, and he's an expert at classical music and the knowledge of the history of classical music. And he knows all about twelve tone.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: Music, twelve tone music, which is a fascinating, somewhat archaic form of music that was created mostly to challenge people and to challenge their patients. Perhaps in listening to it, it was.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Trying to create different sounds that you haven't heard before. It is a tool of tonality and the lack thereof. Welcome, Kenneth Stewart.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: Kenneth Stewart.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: Kenneth D. Stewart is a phenomenal musician on cello and guitar. He's an educator. He is a composer. He is actually a recording engineer and mix engineer. Because I've heard his work in that front, it's amazing. He loves to teach, he loves to study. He loves to connect. He's an improviser. He plays any genre, put an instrument in front of him. But specifically, I've been hearing tons of jazz recently.
Classical, of course, but country and western and, you know, all those things.
[00:01:54] Speaker C: Both types of music, but country and western.
[00:01:58] Speaker A: We're both cello players. We're both guitar players. We both grew up jamming in multiple genres out in Tucson, Arizona. So I want everyone to welcome Ken Stewart.
[00:02:10] Speaker B: Hello, Ken.
[00:02:11] Speaker A: Hi.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: What is dissonance? Why don't you give us an example of something that is not dissonant and then something that is so like dissonance.
[00:02:19] Speaker C: In a lot of ways. My, my, my sort of TED talk definition of dissonance is a musical sound with expectations.
Right. So I'll just use. I'm gonna. I'm gonna use a more tonal definition of dissonance here real quick.
So you have got. I'm gonna go ahead and turn this up and I'll move the microphone so.
Right. Do, do, re, mi, faso, lati, do. Right. That's the sort of the classic tonal scale in the major mode. And one of the dissonances from within that. That we often look at is this one.
Right. This is tried. This is, uh oh. Uh oh.
This is fa and c or t. Fa, do, re, mi, fa, and sol, la, ti. So fa and ti.
That resolves thusly.
Right. And so this first one is like, a little bit. It's like. It's a little bit more, we'll say controversial. A sound as an object that resolves to something that's a little bit more pleasant or resolved as a musical object that's not the only musical object from within the major and minor scale that comes with sort of dissonance and expectations.
It's oftentimes the first one grabbed to sort of demonstrate that principle of, like, oh, here is what's called a tritone or three whole steps.
And then if I put the right bass note underneath it, then when it finally resolves, it makes a lot of musical sense to the ears.
However, there are others.
Right? Like, there are other ways of using these tonal materials that can create this feeling of what's called tension and release. Those are the sort of academic terms for this principle. You know, vacillating or changing or oscillating or going back and forth between sounds of tension.
Right. Sounds of tension and then sounds of release.
And then sound of tension.
And then sound of release.
So are you.
[00:04:57] Speaker A: Are you defining the dissonance as the tension in this situation?
[00:05:01] Speaker C: And so those intervals are called. From a categorical perspective, those intervals are called dissonances. Now, if we are. So I'm. So I still haven't left tonal music yet. We're still in C major, right? Like, we still haven't ventured very far, but we still have all the same words that we'll analyze Ornette Coleman and Schoenberg with, but we're just. We have our C major hat on still. Okay?
So in tonal music, tonal meaning center or atonic meaning that the focal point of all of the musical tension is geared toward principles of tension and release from within this system that, like, says that we have a home, right? So if I'm gonna. I'm gonna improvise a chord progression, right? Now, that's gonna be fairly conventional, right? So if I go, like, right, something. Something, right, like this, it's still. It's still from within the system. Because ultimately I could go, yeah, I could still resolve home or somewhere else. There's still this pull of home. Now, if I were to abstract these individual sounds, so, say, I liked just tritones or just sevenths, categorically. So to sort of say, okay, well, screw the tonal system. I'm now going to create cohesion and unity by taking these musical objects themselves, just these, what are called intervals or sets of note relationships, and place them side by side.
Then you start getting into a vocabulary that you would call atonal music, right? So it's sort of like you know, it's not sort of like saying, well, there's democrats and there's republicans, but then over there are anarchists. Right? It's sort of like atonal music still implies that somewhere lurking is some sort of tonal system. Like, to sidestep it is to sort of still kind of acknowledge its political existence in a way.
So here I'm going to do an improvisation where the only thing that I'm going to be doing is using this tritone interval, right, which was the.
I call it the ti do. Right? Do, re, mi, faso, t do.
That's our archetypal tonal cadence. But this interval, everything I'm playing melodically, I'm moving by steps, but I'm leaping by these tritones. Everything that I've played is based on.
So now I've extrapolated or I've pulled out of the tonal system a musical object of my preference, and I've now created musical unity by saying, I'm going to use that and only that, or I'm going to use that, plus just maybe one or two other things.
[00:08:41] Speaker B: And who is Schoenberg?
[00:08:43] Speaker C: So, Arnold Schoenberg, he is austrian, so he was born in Vienna.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: That is about the only thing I know about classical music, by the way.
[00:08:49] Speaker C: So it's awesome. No, no, no, I appreciate it. So when I said germanic, that's sort of what I mean, german speaking. And yes, he is austrian, so was from Vienna.
This is a composer that worked in the early 20th century.
He was born in the 19th century and then sort of straddled.
Born in 1874, died in 1951, was prominent, was working and writing music through World War one, pre World War one, into World War two, and then was persecuted by Hitler himself. His music was considered degenerate, according to the Third Reich. Later immigrated to the United States and ultimately set up shop in LA.
He lived out the rest of his years in LA, teaching for UCLA. And I don't know, there's something about the Los Angeles climate, apparently. It's, like, hilarious, because, like, so did Stravinsky, like, the two, one of the two most important composers in all of the sort of european art world, Igor Stravinsky and Schoenberg all found themselves in the sort of like, forties and fifties in LA. It was just crazy. That became, like a real center, you know? I don't know, just total beach bums, I imagine. I imagine them just like, just covered in suntan lotion, just like, sitting, like, you know, just gawking at the beautiful bodies on the beach.
[00:10:16] Speaker A: Probably.
[00:10:17] Speaker C: Probably, you know, in my mind, of course, that's something. So Schoenberg is known. Schoenberg is Arnie, Uncle Arnie. You have uncle Igor and uncle Arnie. Uncle Arnie was sort of like known for really shepherding this journey of european art composers from the tonal music space that I described, right? Which is, which is really based on having a key, establishing a key, subverting a key. Right. Tonal music can also mean avoiding, resolving a key. But the fact that you're avoiding it means that you have it. You know what I'm saying? That's what sort of, I'm kind of getting at leading into what he called the emancipation of dissonance. And so there's that word meaning sort of controversial sound again, and saying that like, oh, okay, now let me just take a moment and I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm going to break things down based on the major scale still, because I think for our ears, it's one of the best things that we can do. So I have this. Do, re, mi, fa, sola, ti, do. Right?
All of those intervals are either what we call perfect or major. Perfect are perfect. Perfect sounds are like sounds that you would find in a lot of, like celtic guitar, the violins, the mandolins, guitars, cellos, they're all tuned to these perfect. Or what I like to say is resonant intervals.
These are intervals that occur low in the harmonic series, which is an acoustic phenomenon of musical vibrations.
Right? Like fourths, fists and octaves. There's not a whole lot of musical substance to them. They're very transparent, but they're very acoustic power chords. Power chords are these, are these resonant intervals. And then the rest of the intervals in the major scale are all major. So you've got like major, second major, third major, 7th major, 6th.
Right? So if I were to use all of the available dissonances, though, it would be like. So if I'm playing on all the white keys now, all of a sudden I'm gonna, like, start using the black ones.
Right? So that's where the word chromatic comes from, chromatic in music, meaning not just do, rebi faso, lati do, but like all the other ones. And so then you have this. This real mishmash of, you have a wide variety of intervals, major ones, minor ones, perfect ones, dissonant ones, augmented ones.
And you can sort of hear that.
It's like, it's much harder to create a kind of a unity to the whole, right? So Arnold Schoenberg was one of the, was. Is credited with being there were lots of others. In America, we had composers like Henry Cowell, Charles Ives, Hungary, we had Bela Bartok.
In England, there were composers like, I'm trying to remember.
Well, Edward Elgar was a little more sort of conservative, but there were other cats, french composers like Edgard Verres, whom you mention in twelve tone girl.
To put this all on, Schoenberg, I'm saying, is a little bit of a. That's a little bit of an apocryphal thing to sort of say. However, to follow his. To trace his music is to tell the story of euro american art music in the 20th century. Like, if you followed no other composer and just trace his work, it would parallel the journey that most of the music at the time traced, for the most part.
And so he went from tonal music early in his career. Pieces that you mentioned, for example, verclert de nacht, which means transfigured night, which a beautiful piece of tonal music all the way through, like the piano pieces that started to kind of pull away and then all the way into what you're referencing by the title of your song, dodecaphonic music or twelve tone music. Well, twelve tone, meaning that there is a system by which we are going to be using all twelve of the tones.
There's 88 piano keys, but they repeat. Right. You got, like. You've got like a 123-4567 there's like eight c's, for example, or like, there's eight b flats, but there's 123456. There's like seven e's all throughout the span of the piano. So it's not saying specific piano keys. No, it's saying that there's a system by which we're going to be ordering our notes c, then maybe to f or d flat. Like just the. There's something about the order of the pitches that's going to be serving two functions. One is not expressing tonality, and two is creating some sort of expected unity that we, as listeners are hoping for. So it has to both create some sort of unity, except it can't be tonal. Like some other. Like some form of unity that just isn't that other thing. Please. That's kind of the whole rules of it is like the whole organization is like, you can do anything, but you can't do that. Right. It's like the meatloaf system of, you know, I'll do anything for love, but I won't do that. It's like you can do anything with these notes except, oh, create a tonal system. That's a lot like Beethoven and Bach.
We don't want you to do that. We've done that. But other than that, you could do anything you want, but just don't do that.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: So this is our commercial break. It's a short one.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: It's a short break. Perhaps the shortest that we've ever had.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: I know, but I keep thinking about your dating lives out there. You know, if you happen to be dating someone who only enjoys twelve tone music, this song is for you.
[00:17:15] Speaker B: This song is.
[00:17:16] Speaker C: This is.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. If you. If you ever.
If you need to go out there and find twelve tone music happening live and near you. We have listings of twelve tone music productions.
[00:17:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:33] Speaker B: On our website.
[00:17:35] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. So go to our website, find out where the closest twelve tone concert is and be there. And Basil, you are the star right now. I bet you like twelve tone music.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: Do you like twelve tone music, Basil?
[00:17:53] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:54] Speaker B: Dogs. Dogs tend to love it because it's played in their frequencies.
[00:18:00] Speaker A: Exactly. Exactly.
So back to the interview.
[00:18:04] Speaker B: Back to the interview.
The whole premise of our song is that this is difficult music. And it's kind of ironic because the twelve tone girl, I imagine that most of the people that were into twelve tone, I can't think of a single female 12th tone composer. Do you know of any?
[00:18:23] Speaker C: Okay, so the one that. What's very interesting, actually. Yes, I can. So I would highly recommend, as my first sort of musical shout out would be to listen to Ruth Seeger's. I think it's the string quartet from 1931. This is a piece of serial music, or twelve tone music. It's a very challenging piece of music to listen to. However, it's really incredible.
So Ruth Crawford, she ended up marrying the musicologist Charles Seeger, who was Pete Seeger's. She was basically Pete Seeger's stepmother.
[00:19:07] Speaker B: So I've got a song about Pete Seeger, too, but go ahead.
[00:19:09] Speaker C: Sick. Well, so here's this crazy intersection. And this always happens, right? Like, I'm a contemporary composer, come jazz musician. Come sort of, I would say sort of like more of a roots or appalachian musician. A lot of the bluegrass musicians that I know from this area are also, like, either, like, into some other weird, like, either noise rock or like, into circuit bending or there's always something that's, like, very traditional and very avant garde in all of our tastes. And I think Ruth Crawford is no exception to this. So, fun fact, Ruth Crawford did the transcription of William Step's take on Bonaparte's retreat that Copeland orchestrated that became the rodeo from the hoedown.
[00:20:03] Speaker A: Oh, that's where that came from.
[00:20:05] Speaker C: So she transcribed this 78 recording of this fiddle player that. I'm trying to remember who it was. Agnes Demille, I think. Yeah. So Agnes DeMille commissioned rodeo and she basically sent Aaron Copeland these Ruth Crawford transcriptions, and then he orchestrated them. So he didn't do the musicology of actually going to the source material, finding these fiddle players, finding a lot of this stuff, doing some of this early, you know, ethno and anthropological research. He basically orchestrated it. Right. It's pretty contentious, I'll say that. I went to an old time jam at my friend's house and there was somebody there. It was like sort of like a house party where there was like people picking in, like every room and everyone's drinking and there's just a wild party. And he sort of said, tell me about yourself. You know, I said, oh, I'm a composer. He said, cool. So are you gonna, like, steal everything here?
Right. Like, it's not particularly cool to be a composer in that musical scene. Right. It's a little more nuanced than that. But Aaron Copeland's sort of take on this William Stepp version of Bonaparte's retreat that was done in sort of dead man's tuning, which is like d d ad, I think, is the fiddle tuning. You know, you could allege just straight up cultural appropriation. I mean, I don't think that that's. I don't think that that's ridiculous. Now, I'm not sitting here trying to say that we need to cancel rodeo. I think it's a great ballet. I think Martha Graham, even in sort of, like, the field of dance, did some really revolutionary stuff with it.
[00:21:43] Speaker B: My grandmother studied with her.
[00:21:45] Speaker C: I mean, that's amazing. Right? Like, this is really, really important american music. But to actually trace the journey of how those notes got there. Right? So Ruth Crawford is somebody that I really admire not only for her work as a contemporary composer or as a modernist, I'll say not contemporary, but as a modernist in the early 20th century, but then late career, then turned around and made significant contributions to fiddle repertoire and to sort of american roots heritage. But yes, mostly men.
[00:22:17] Speaker B: Well, yeah, it's aggressive music, isn't it?
There's some machismo in this.
[00:22:22] Speaker C: There is. Although I will say few things are more dissonant than Ruth's string quartet. But yes, absolutely.
You need not look further than a piece of music that isn't actually twelve tone, but is one of Schoenberg's most famous works called Pierrot. Lunaire.
[00:22:37] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
I remember actually really enjoying that in school.
[00:22:42] Speaker C: It's a really interesting piece. I had the wonderful opportunity to hear it live. I recommend hearing it live because it's way more theatrical.
Not only are the musical note choices a bit aggressive and sort of macho, as you say, but also the use of techniques. So the singer is doing a thing called spechtime, which is half singing, half speaking. It scored for a flute, double piccolo clarinet, double bass violin, double viola cello piano. So the actual instrumentation itself is like a little mini orchestra. And the techniques that are being asked of the musicians are like, I'm thinking specifically of a technique for the flute called flutter tongue, where you go right, where you actually buzz while playing the flute.
You know, that's. You know, you're. You know, you're not really going to be hearing Ian Anderson do that, although a little bit. I don't want to. I don't want to be too black and white here. But these extended flute techniques combined with extended clarinet techniques, combined with sprechstimme, combined, combined with really dissonant vocabulary make something that sounds really weird and comical. Right? Like what, Michael, you were saying about a lot of the young kids in youth orchestra laughing at this music. It creates something that's very unusual and, um. And a little more, um, off putting is not quite the right word, but, you know, not your. Not your traditional cup of tea in terms of straight ahead, to borrow the jazz term, straight ahead, playing on your instrument.
[00:24:36] Speaker A: And one of the things that I've noticed is I recently helped premiere a composition with that ensemble. So they call it the Pirro ensemble a lot of times with, you know, and as classically trained musicians, you know. Oh, yeah, okay. That's a. This instrumentation, and cool. And so as a cello player, it's nice that you're. You're included in it, you know?
[00:24:59] Speaker C: No, no, no. Well, yeah, no, absolutely. It's like. It's like. It's like. It's like saying string quartet. Pirot.
Pirro has become just the term for that. Yeah, right. Like, and that's. And that's the extent to which someone like an Arnold Schoenberg has entered into, at least in the academic vernacular, is that you can say Pierrot ensemble and not actually be referring to Pierrot Linnaeur, but rather the genre of pieces that are written for that same instrumentation that have come for the last, you know, hundreds of years, 100 years since. It's a fairly large repertoire, there are a number of musical ensembles that have that same instrumentation. You know, it's sort of like, for example, Bill Monroe is credited in the Bluegrass boys. And, you know, some of the, like, you know, a lot of the stuff that comes from Kentucky were, like, codifying this idea that, like, that for the most part, a bluegrass band is mandolin, guitar, banjo, bass, and, you know, either fiddle or dobro or, you know, like, these specific ones doing that specific thing is that. Yeah, that's what that sort of piece became. Right?
[00:26:19] Speaker A: It kind of highlights in a way the. You could joke around all day, like, oh, yeah, twelve tone music. Oh, it sounds random or something. Ken, you and I were talking this about this a little beforehand, and I always wanted to say, well, you know, it's not random. You know, we were.
It is decided upon, and there is a form to it. And at some level, we feel that organization, I'm sure. But it's interesting to see, like, how you're talking about Ruth Crawford Seeger and how her. She's had a lasting legacy. She was between the two, you know? So my question is, and this is a stupid question, but there are no stupid questions. So is twelve tone music dead, or is it a tool? In my question addendum would be like, is it a tool that composers use today to create stuff still? But it's used just maybe on a more subtle level or a more.
A deeper level because we have so much. It's like computer programming built on top of it, you know, like, it's. It's like, is. How is it used?
[00:27:23] Speaker C: Right.
[00:27:24] Speaker A: And how is it applicable? You've already explained the applicability of these things, but. And how they're connected to a certain extent.
[00:27:31] Speaker C: Yeah. Okay, so. Right, so I would say. All right, so my. So my answer just right away is that, yes, it's dead, sort of. And then, yes, it is also mostly dead. Mostly dead in the sense that, like.
Okay, well, so first of all, you know, shout outs to youtubers like David Bruce, to people like Tanakruel, Adam Neely, twelve tone, pardon the pun, but, like, there's a YouTube channel of music education theory shorts by a person whose moniker is twelve tone. I'm not familiar with his actual name, but one of the discussions is, like, how relevant is the academic concept of contemporary music? Kind of in the wild, right? That's something that's, I think David Bruce has a video called the overwhelming irrelevance of contemporary music. Right? So to call twelve tone music dead is also to, I think, miss a little bit of the point, because, like, academic music itself, there's not really, let's put it in the context of the NCAA. Like, I think that it's a really, really important thing that there is, like, a lot of corporations and video game makers that are making money on the intellectual property and the physical likeness of young players that are, like, barely 18.
And should they be getting some of that pie?
I think so. I think that young athletes should probably be getting some of this money that's being distributed amongst the powers that be that are making the sort of, you know, NCAA college basketball jam for PlayStation and Xbox. There's a lot of money being exchanged on the backs of a lot of these young kids that are not able to advocate for themselves. But is there something equivalent in the music industry that's similar to the NCAA for music? Like, are we following the draft of, like, oh, did you hear. Did you hear that? Like, Sophia Lorenzo's graduating from Indiana University. Wow. You know, like, is there, like, a. Like, are we following music like sports? No, no. But are there organizations like the American Composers Orchestra or teaching organizations like the Atlanta Symphonies, composers residencies? The Philadelphia Orchestra has composers and residencies. New York City has the symphony space.
You know, like, yes, there are there, like, if you think about it as being, like, sports but not famous, yes, there are organizations in which students are graduating and getting placed into and things like this. So it's very much a double edged sword, right? Like, to say, like, is this compositional practice relevant? It's like, well, it's also kind of dealing with larger contexts of relevancy and irrelevance, too.
Um, I. I found that in the last ten years, the tolerance for only notated music to be pretty low. Like, it's. It's. I'm not gonna say a trendy thing, because that implies that. That it's. I don't know, a fad, but I think that it's really important that. That there's a lot more of an open mindedness toward improvisation as a practice in contemporary music. I think. Michael, you mentioned Keiko Abe and the use of what's called indeterminacy, which is where the composer gives you notes and then you get to kind of do what you want with them.
Indeterminacy is like saying twelve tone. It's like saying that the composer made a decision of to how the piece is organized, and then here's how it plays itself on the surface of the music. And, yeah, I think twelve tone music to this day has become sort of like a bit of a. And I don't mean this term pejoratively, but, yes, it is a tool. It is a tool for musical organization, one of many, in the same way that, like using chord symbols, like jazz charts. I know lots of composers these days that will, in certain passages, facilitate improvisation by just using jazz chord symbols. You know, like, is that jazz? Well, no, but are we using some of the vocabularies and tools associated with that music in order to facilitate these other things? Yes. Right. Um. I wanted to share with you guys that. That I was. I was. I was doing my. I was doing my homework prior to this. I was looking up dodecaphonic music, twelve tone music, and reading some wiki articles on it. And there is a Wikipedia article that is called list of Tone Rosen series. So here's this list. And when you organize by date, the latest composition is 1989. So anyway, point being is that here are these composers that are either alive or like just passed away that have composed dodecaphonic music. And a lot of times these tone rows. Let's talk math for just a split second. Two to the power of twelve. We're dealing with the order of pitches. It's like cards. There are thousands of possible tone rows.
[00:32:20] Speaker B: What is a tone row?
[00:32:21] Speaker C: A tone row is an organization of twelve pitches. So it's the chromatic scale. Like dramatic scale is a tone row. Here I'm going to play c to b, a combination of the twelve.
[00:32:32] Speaker A: If you put it into just numbers, it's like saying, okay, 1324. You could put it in any order, one through twelve.
[00:32:39] Speaker C: Usually most of the time like a. Like a programming array. It starts with zero. So you'd say like zero. It's like zero to eleven. And it's some order of the notes.
[00:32:47] Speaker B: Can you play us three different tone rows?
[00:32:49] Speaker C: Uh, yeah, sure. So the one that I'll give is the chromatic scale. So it's just like 012-34-5678 910. Eleven.
I'm gonna go, okay, here's one by Arvo Peart from 1966, from his symphony number two. So zero, three.
Here's Igor Stravinsky's from the Requiem canticles.
It's an order of the twelve.
[00:33:40] Speaker A: Do you remember your tone row on the cello piece you wrote?
[00:33:44] Speaker C: It involved a sort of sequencing fourths. Yeah, it's basically go up a fourth because. Okay, so for context, it was like, it was a protest piece for the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan from 2003. So I was playing around with the military trumpet, funeral call taps. And so the fourth is an organizational device. So what I did was I stuffed a bunch of fourths into this tone row. So like, you could go, right. And so it's like my. My whole organizational system of writing this tone row was, I'm going to put a bunch of taps, quotes.
You have the halfway point and they have the next.
And then you have. That was in thirds, here's in fourths, here's in fifths, here's in sixths.
Right? And so with those notes alone, which is be like how the trumpet works, or the horn or any of the brass instruments, I could literally play.
You can play taps just on the harmonics of a string or just on the harmonics of a bugle.
It's a major chord. So remember that whole thing about saying that tonal music is avoiding tonality, but yet here is this artifact that's like macho chord. It's like only chord. It's like only tonality. So to construct a twelve tone row that makes reference to taps, it's a bit missing the point on purpose. One of my early teachers that I had when I was in my early teens, Doctor Solomon, said, it may be twelve tone, but this piece is tonal. He said, I hate to break it to you, Ken. You succeeded in writing a twelve tone piece, but you failed in writing something atonal. He said, but that's fine. He said, it's a beautiful piece, but I just want you to know that, like, that your materials are so tonal. It's tonal. Right? So what I was demonstrating was the construction of the tone row being.
And then.
And then.
And then just so this piece that I. That I did is for solo cello that Michael has recorded is like, where it's. I lean into the taps.
My form of protest was to create something twelve tone out of this, to sort of lean into both the dissonance of it by saying, for lack of a better word, hey, this is this fucked up thing that's happening in the world. None of us have any agency. Oh, by the way, it turned out to be a lie. So what can I do? Well, I can take the major court of a bugle call and I can turn it into a twelve tone row. That was my form of musical protest in a lot of ways, sort of disrupting the tonality of that. Well.
[00:37:36] Speaker A: And that defines in many ways. You were talking about your whole career in school has been defined by 911.
[00:37:43] Speaker C: To the Orange man. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:37:46] Speaker A: But in your own world, it's like every composer has the thing. They're expressing their life experiences. They're expressing the stuff around them.
[00:37:55] Speaker C: It is very funny, right? Like, I don't. This is by far the most political my work has ever been was this particular piece. It landed really, really hard. I was a guest on the show from the top. I played it on Minnesota public Radio. That was nationally syndicated. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our next young performer from Tucson, 18 year old composer and cellist Kenneth Stewart.
It's one of my more successful pieces. I'm actually, like, more of a chilled out, like, more of a patterns guy than a political guy, you know, for.
[00:38:45] Speaker A: Me, the way you built it, I'm like, this is an introduction to the concept. And it was my introduction to the concept in a way, that hit hard and there. And that's how, like, when we were writing it, I was like, this is how I'm gonna do this twelve tone hook. And I've had some people say, are you gonna put any twelve tone music in there? And I'm like, well, it kind of is, in a way, the material's there. It's just hidden behind a thing, you know?
[00:39:09] Speaker C: I mean, there's so the. So to just give a couple more historical artifacts to your guys's song. One is that there's a very famous violin concerto by one of Arnold Schoenberg's students named Alban Berg.
[00:39:41] Speaker A: I've seen that live. Quite beautiful.
[00:39:43] Speaker C: It's a gorgeous piece. And he was very, very famous for being able to actually use tonal organization with the twelve tone row to be able to quote a chorale of Bach. So, like, the chorale he uses ishaba gnuk, which means, like, I am full, or, I've had enough meaning of the spirit. I am full of the spirit.
What's interesting about that particular chorale melody that actually Bach did not compose, but merely harmonized, is that it has what's called a whole tone fragment, or that the melody, it uses three whole steps, or outlines this tritone interval. So it is actually the most dissonant of all of the chorale melodies. And so Ishaba Ganoug sort of lent itself to this technique, and Alban Berg was able to actually quote Bach and still maintain this twelve tone technique in doing so.
One of the things that I just want to take a moment and acknowledge here is that, like, you don't. I mean, sometimes in the academic music sphere, maybe you do, but in general, you don't get a gold star by adhering to a musical system.
[00:41:06] Speaker A: Yeah, right.
[00:41:07] Speaker C: Like, you just. You just really don't. I don't know. Like, say you guys ended up writing a song where you used every word that rhymes with both orange and purple, but the song sucks. Like, you don't get any points for doing some sort of formalist musical device. So I think what's significant about the Alban Berg violin concerto is that it's stunningly beautiful. I think what's. What's really significant about that was his ability to kind of counteract some of what Arnold Schoenberg was doing with the system, which was to write music that was highly dissonant. And Alban Berg was actually writing music that was very aesthetic, very tonal in its harmony. The opening of the violin concerto itself has the open strings of the violin. Not only does it quote the violin, but the open strings, the open strings of the violin even play into the tone row. So there's like. So using this, you know, I'm much more of a beric kind of guy than I am a Schoenberg or. Or the composer Anton von Fabern, whom you mentioned in your song. I'm much more of a bear guy because he's writing romantic music with it, unfortunately. And he died very tragically. I think it was an insect bite that became septic. Let me look this up. His name is Al Bahn Berg. B E R G.
He sort of looks like Germanic Stephen Fry.
And, yeah, he died in 1935.
So obviously that's, like, predates.
It doesn't predate the Third Reich, but it predates sort of the invasion of Poland. He didn't really see a lot of, like, what became of sort of germanic music at the time of the persecution in things like Kristallnacht or the degenerate art scene. So his music's not quite as ugly, to be honest. Like, for lack of a better word, Alban Berg's music tends to be just a little bit more beautiful. So, yeah, so he passed away. So Alban Berg passed away in 1935, and then ten years later, Anton Webern died. So Anton Webern was actually shot by an american soldier. So he was out beyond curfew.
There's discussion either way as to how much of a nationalist was someone like Webern. I mean, these were discussions that I had with Sam Adler. And it's complicated, right? Because even someone like Sam himself, who is jewish and his father was a cantor in a synagogue, said that there was this time period in which his high school teachers were like, yes, they were like they were removing these sort of jewish heads of state, these jewish centers of power. And he said, for a period of time, my high school teacher was the former head of Germanics at Heidelberg University. He said, they got us. They got us by saying, like, here, you get your best. We'll just do this. You know, sort of separate and what have you. Right. It was. It was. It was a really tumultuous time. And anyway, Webern was. Was shot out because he was out beyond curfew.
And then Schoenberg himself, the older of the three, sort of second viennese school, was the one that was able to sort of emigrate to the United States and sort of like, as I mentioned, sort of lived in LA. Anyway, I know this is sort of like a grim. It, like, took a little bit of a grim turn to discuss these particular.
[00:44:40] Speaker B: Composers, although it is a grim form of music.
[00:44:43] Speaker C: That's what I said. Ugly music for an ugly time. Right? Like, it's like, it's. But someone like Webern was really into writing, like, really, really short pieces that were like, as Stravinsky described, like little crystals.
Berg wrote music that was very romantic and sort of, like, utilized some of these tools for romanticism. And then. And then Schoenberg sort of, like, moved, like, Stravinsky into eras of neoclassicism, and even toward the end of his life, really stopped writing in this way. So it's. It's no one way of working. Trap music is not all rap like string quartets. They're not all in c major. In the same way that no other musical form is bound to the tools of its own organization. Twelve tone music is not the case. I don't know. I would probably revisit it as a composer in my life. Again, I like what you guys did with it with. With regards to making it a sort of a conversational point in describing maybe some of the dissonance that we find in our own romantic relationships, like relatability, musical dissonance, being something like the perseverance of a relationship. Like, I get that you're different from me, but I'm going to do what I can to find middle ground. Right. And you use musical repertoire as a really wonderful. We listen to Verrez or Messienne. Right. Messienne and his bird songs are the thing that you end up sort of like, landing on as, like, this really wonderful kind of, like, medium that's really beautiful. And I think that's actually completely appropriate to even approach this music in general. Like, there's something out there for everybody, you know?
[00:46:22] Speaker A: And I really appreciate you taking time to connect these dots and everything.
[00:46:26] Speaker C: Sure. Of course.
[00:46:27] Speaker A: The connective tissue that has been highlighted in this conversation, everyone's learned something new. I've learned something new. Ken, you've. Oh, yeah, you probably haven't learned a ton new compared to what we've learned new. But there's, like, things you thought about that you hadn't connected in your own life, and.
[00:46:46] Speaker C: Oh, for sure.
[00:46:47] Speaker A: And you probably connected some ideas just because that's what conversation does. And, Aaron, you've been studying this from knowing nothing to doing a podcast on it, which you've gone from, like. Like, I don't know, most improvement award. Like. Like, it's kind of like the. You know, like, I love it. I love it. It's a.
And, you know, more than I do about many aspects of it, which is why I was like, we need to talk to Ken, so. Or Kenneth Stewart, I should say, you know, for all the listeners.
[00:47:23] Speaker C: Yeah. So, Kenneth D. Stewart.com is my website. I'm. It's a weird sort of funny thing. I am one of those middle initial composers, or at least I was in grad school.
[00:47:33] Speaker B: We all have a middle initial.
[00:47:35] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. Right? So, like, it's. It's. It's all good. Yeah. Please reach out. Send me a line.
I'm. I just love nerding out about music, and. And, honestly, I'm just really grateful that you guys, um, have enabled me in the last, uh, you know, better part of a couple hours to just nerd out on music. And let's be clear.
[00:47:57] Speaker A: So, uh, thank you, Ken.
[00:47:59] Speaker C: You're welcome.
[00:47:59] Speaker A: Being a part of this. Uh, Aaron, any final words?
[00:48:03] Speaker B: Yeah, this has been great. I really. I learned a lot.
[00:48:07] Speaker C: I appreciate that. Thank you.
[00:48:08] Speaker B: Fascinating stuff.
[00:48:09] Speaker C: So.
[00:48:09] Speaker B: Yeah, man, very much, Ken.
[00:48:11] Speaker C: Yeah. I'm a fan. I've got all your.
I've got all your albums, so I.
[00:48:16] Speaker B: Look forward to the albums you will make.
[00:48:19] Speaker C: I appreciate that. Thank you very much.
[00:48:25] Speaker B: Good work. Good work.
Try you.
[00:48:32] Speaker A: We have concluded our interview.
[00:48:34] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:48:34] Speaker A: With Ken Stewart. Thank you for learning all about my good friend Ken. Thank you for telling us about your life, because there are many people in this world who I think the rest of the world needs to know. And, Ken, you are one of those experts. Musicians and creators and collaborators. And everyone has learned about the things that you do specifically. That isn't in common with me, because, you know, you grow up together. But we always do different things. And so if you can follow Ken's music online and anywhere, we have told you about it. All right, let's play the song girl.
[00:49:09] Speaker B: Twelve tone girl.
[00:49:09] Speaker D: My girlfriend is pretty amusing.
Don't get her talking about music.
She's got a constant going on about Milton Babbitt.
She always gets the last word, and it's always about Schoonberg. I just want to get out there and live but she's transfixed on the music of Andre Bucharest Liao.
[00:49:45] Speaker B: Well, I tried to talk about Verklecknock, verklecting and how much that early stuff did rock. Oh yeah, and I fell for the organized sound. Edgar Verez captured and found love at first sight. Yeah, but she runs away at the mention of pro coffee, of atoms and glass. To her just cheap knockoff.
Anton Webern makes her happiest. He guided Hartman, Karl Madeus, but I.
[00:50:19] Speaker A: Don'T know who he is.
[00:50:20] Speaker B: Play it, boys.
He's kind of like Mozart, only not at all.
Too many notes.
[00:50:57] Speaker D: We settled on Olivier Messian.
You transcribed so many bird songs. We walked a path of happiness following Stravinsky's rite of spring.
[00:51:12] Speaker B: Sounds pretty, but all that early barbarism graded her while my tonal brain pined for more.
Willie Nelson and some Johnny cash, some fiddle at a good old music band.
[00:51:30] Speaker A: That's the life right there. Yolo.
[00:51:54] Speaker C: Lame girl.
[00:52:20] Speaker D: Living in her far out twelve tone world she lives a life of danger geeking out on favor my baby's gonna take a twelve point turn.
Getting pretty serious when you're living with a serialist my baby's kinda militant when it comes to making dissidents unconventionality all from a tonality speaking fluently all in ambiguity speaking fluently all in ambiguity my baby speaks fluently love language ambiguity.
[00:53:52] Speaker C: Living.
[00:53:53] Speaker D: In a far ab self tone world she lives a life of danger keeping out on me but I'll take. My baby's gonna take a twelve point turn.
[00:54:06] Speaker A: Well, thank you for listening to that song. You may have heard amazing drum parts by Adam Pasquale. He was in a band called Psychedelphia years ago. He works with a lot of musicians in the greater Philly area right now. He is one of my favorite drummers. He plays fast, complicated with his heart. He plays simple, all these things. But you know, I've. I knew him from the jam band world and this song wanted that, so. Yeah. Thank you.
[00:54:34] Speaker B: Thank you, Adam. Good work.
[00:54:36] Speaker A: Word of the day. This is a not our last word of the day, but it is our final episode outlining our entire album. And if you've been on this journey with us, thank you.
[00:54:46] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:54:48] Speaker B: All right.
My word of the day is atonal.
[00:54:52] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:54:53] Speaker A: My word of the day, I believe bitonal.
[00:54:58] Speaker B: Ooh, what does that mean?
[00:55:00] Speaker A: That means you have two different key signatures at once.
Yeah.
If you're a folk musician or jazz musician, it's just a compound chord, you know. Anyway, let's end this thing. Thank you so much.
[00:55:13] Speaker B: Thanks everybody. You've been listening to the Nathan's and Ron cast.
[00:55:19] Speaker A: Sponsored by Michael Ron Cat.
[00:55:22] Speaker B: Peace.
[00:55:25] Speaker D: My baby's gonna take a twelve point turn.
Close.
