Five More Albums: Pulitzer Prize-Winning Music

I posted these reviews on the local public library website: CD’s (albums) of Pulitzer Prize-winning music, whether or not the artist/composer saw it as an “album” or a stand-alone piece.

Elliott Carter: String Quartets – Pulitzer 1960 (for no. 2) and 1973 (for no. 3)
Juliard String Quartet
It begins with a loud, angular declamation from the cello (with a single viola note) and proceeds from there. Unlike some composers who clothe their modernism in lush orchestration (Boulez) or tranquility derived from silence (Cage) or architectural aggression (Xenakis), this is the unvarnished stuff. It’s stark. It’s austere. It is recorded without a whiff of reverb. It is not music of angst, as some would have such “modern” music to be; rather, maybe it expresses little emotion at all. It’s pure mathematics. As a listener, unraveling the complicated formulae that govern the melodic lines and the rhythms is exhausting, maybe impossible – and ultimately extremely rewarding; an intellectual exercise that leads finally to understanding. With that understanding comes the realization that much of what I have just said (stark, austere, non-emotional) is actually not true at all…! There are richly contrasting moments, such as the slow quiet music in the First Quartet that keeps getting overlaid with louder, faster variations on the same sequences. There’s that final quasi-resolve of the Pulitzer-Prize winning Third Quartet (so complex that the liner notes list what’s happening in which speaker on your stereo!) where everything comes together in dissonant but final triple-stops. There are the occasional excursions into pizzicato textures. And above all, there are the rhythms – incomprehensible at first hearing, later resolving into obvious meters – some of them actually groove as they morph and mutate and crosshatch one another. Yes, it’s complicated. Yes, it’s difficult. Yes, it’s far more beautiful than you’d think at first. Give this a listen, and once you’re past the initial trepidation, don’t complain to me that you’re hooked.

John Luther Adams: Become Ocean – Pulitzer 2014
Seattle Symphony conducted by Ludovic Morlot
Listen to it as backgroung sound: it's a pretty soundscape. Listen to it closely: it's a complex layering of wave upon wave of contrapuntal detail. Wagnerian in scope but intimate in detail, this is satisfying music that stands up to repeated listening.
A sad story: I had a chance to hear the world premiere of this piece, played by the Seattle Symphony conducted by Ludovic Morlot, but for some (forgotten) reason I decided to go to some other concert instead (I don’t even remember what that other concert was). Later I found out that this piece had not only won a Pulitzer but also a Grammy (for the recording). It’s kind of like the time I had a chance to personally witness a comet crash into Jupiter (Astronomy club, Berkeley, CA.) I missed that one too because I simply forgot about it until after they’d carted off all of the telescopes.

Julia Wolff: Anthracite Fields – Pulitzer 2015
This large-scale contemporary classical composition (Pulitzer Prize winner 2015) chronicles the world of coal mining. Beginning with a "horror movie soundtrack" and litany of names of people who've died in mines, it proceeds through a number of moods and styles -- from despair to hope for a better life, though there is some doubt to the validity of this hope because the words are drawn from an advertisement. Throughout, the vocal lines become progressively complex and interwoven as the words become more minimalist. This is a very emotional work, good for active listening. Do not attempt to listen to it while doing something else.

Henry Threadgill and Zooid: In for a penny, in for a pound – Pulitzer 2016
This is charmingly disorienting music. It’s jazz-fusion, certainly, but not jazz fused with rock or funk; it’s jazz fused with, …what…?. It’s modernist (or even serialist) classical chamber music. It’s improvised. It’s thoroughly carefully composed. Each of the two CD’s feature one short piece followed by two longer ones. In all, notes scatter in a whimsical manner, seemingly without logic, and yet the notes all go together in the most logical of ways. In some sections, it’s difficult to distinguish who’s playing the melody and who’s playing the rhythm – or is there really a difference? The longer pieces consist of strings of shorter sections; careful listening reveals that some of these sections repeat with different instruments or in different meters or with different parts interposed. The titles sound “classical” in the manner of contemporary chamber music, stating the title and the instrumentation (for example, “Dosepic, for cello”) but these designations are only a general guideline. The eponymous instrument does more improvising than the others, and usually has one unaccompanied solo, but the others are present in the piece. All in all, this is more Elliot Carter than Miles Davis. That is neither a positive nor negative statement; it merely indicates the style of the music. I could also describe it as a kaleidoscope of notes. I’ve had fun listening to it, but it may take several listens to comprehend it fully. Again, that's neither a positive nor negative statement; the music is captivating even as I’m waiting.

Kendrick Lamar: Damn – Pulitzer 2018
“I was takin’ a walk the other day…” And so this begins. As expected from the title, (and in contrast to that innocent opening), this musical "walk the other day" isn't nice. Nobody has ever gotten a Pulitzer in music for writing inoffensive little songs. (Think I'm wrong here? Consider these from previous awards: Julia Wolff’s “Anthracite Fields” is about deaths of coal miners; Winton Marsalis’ “Blood on the Fields” is about slavery; and George Crumb’s startling anti-symphony “Echoes of Time and the River” – which caused a near riot in Seattle in the 1960’s – is about mortality in general. Even the purely instrumental works, such as those by Henry Threadgill or Elliot Carter, are edgy even though they aren't "about" anything.) In the case of “Damn”, the music itself is not shocking in any way; it’s well-composed hip-hop numbers with tunes and chord progressions straight out of jazz standards (and, oddly, few samples or beat-boxes). There are beautiful backup vocals in tight harmony. In fact, much of the album (over the deep subwoofing, obligatory in hip-hop) is understated and often quite pretty – I can’t really imagine this music booming full-blast from a souped-up car cruising the avenue on a Friday evening. It’s the lyrics that are startling. At first listen the words may seem like nothing but a collection of F-bombs and N-bombs. One is tempted to turn it off and comment that it’s no different from all of those other records where the swearing is merely passed from one rapper to another without anyone in the middle thinking about what’s actually being said. That is not the case here. First of all, not every song has the “swears”, and those that do have them for a reason: this is about the despair of the urban poor in the US, and the anger of one constantly exposed to bigotry and racism in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. As stated in “Yah” (the third song), even the Bible is (mis)quoted to support continued oppression (this along with the refrain “ain’t nobody prayin’ for me” which occurs in several of the songs). Most of the songs are narratives. In many, the “characters” in the stories care for one another even as they admit appalling situations and, sometimes, shortcomings. The song “loyalty” is about this. In a linguistic slight-of-hand, “loyalty” is often pronounced so it sounds like “laity” – the “regular” people in this case – or “larity”, maybe a coined word that could mean "the quality of being a lariat” and hence a trap (even loyalty could be a trap!). In the end, this “takin’ a walk the other day” comes full circle. The blind woman in that first tale loses her life at the hands of someone trying to “help” her – and we (listeners) are left feeling guilty for being entertained by the nasty surprise. By the end of the record, we realize that it may have been us (or our political institutions) who supplied that nasty surprise.

Okay, I’m at the end of this, and since the Pulitzer isn’t entirely classical anymore, I’d like to retroactively nominate two non-classical works that should have won some kind of award.
John Coltrane: A Love Supreme (one of the best jazz albums ever, in my opinion)
Simon and Garfunkel: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme (the album, not just the song; a high point for creativity in “pop” music even if it is nearly 60 years old now.)

Also, at the end of this, a self-promo: Check out my author website. You'll find links to all my books there, including the "Tond" novels and a book derived from this very blog.