Rock: Can the Atomic Oboe be Far Behind? (1972)

Article as it appeared In the New York Times, January 2nd 1972

Written by Michael Kamen of the New York Rock Ensemble

THERE I was, a promising young oboe player. From my vantage point at Juilliard, it seemed that on graduation I might join an orchestra — perhaps the Philharmonic — or maybe be a successful freelance, playing chamber music. Some day I might make records as a soloist; there would be some time to compose, some time to perform — and time to practice and shave my reeds.

But something happened. I quit school and here I am a few years later, my hair all out of proportion, my oboe somewhere next to an ARP synthesizer, a piano, a guitar — some huge speakers, all sorts of stereo gear — playing, singing, and shaking in a rock band that travelled all over the country with a ton and a half of equipment — here I am, being asked to explain it all.

What can I say? What would you like to hear? The future of rock? Who or what is next? Everyone's been wondering about that since the Beatles. To look for directions in any art is a risky business. Just as you chart logical and obvious course, some bastard comes sailing along in the opposite direction — taking everybody but you with him.

No, I won't even try.. But recently I've been noticing that the “established musical community” has been asking many questions about rock. After all, it was only supposed to last a few years and it's still here and flourishing. How come? What is it about this music that attracts seemingly intelligent people?

Well, along with many others, I've never been attracted to the academic side of music. Theory courses bore me; it always seems that too much is made of the intellectual process, while the fact that most music is an emotional, spiritual expression is ignored. I remember once asking a teacher if he really felt that, when Bach sat down to compose, he analyzed his thoughts and checked his rule book on 16th‐century counterpoint as he laboriously structured a piece of music. 

It does not seem likely. Music is the language of a composer; he speaks it as other people speak words. It structures itself; it imposes its own forms. A musical phrase is a logical sequence of events, and other phrases follow it with a sense of inevitability, one phrase leading naturally to the next. You feel the flow and direction of music instinctively. That feeling is the essence of music.

I'm not trying to say that music is all feeling and no thought, but if it's true that to cultivate intellect is to sharpen one's perception, then in that sense the intellect serves the expression of emotions, or any kind of self expression — and not the other way around.

Doesn't it seem that much of the music available today as “serious contemporary composition” has, as part of a search for new forms and new techniques, become so highly intellectualized that an emotional response is nearly impossible? There are exceptions, of course. Not all serious contemporary music is geared directly to the intellect. There must be modern music that is an expression of joy or that celebrates life or that touches on the anguish of the human condition. There is music that is part of the logical progression of ages of emotional thought.

For want of a better term, “rock” — which encompasses nearly every stream of musical thought, past, and present, rock, whose scope includes every instrument and every player and the communications resources to distribute the resulting sounds to anyone open to hear them — rock is that music. If rock is not thought of as “serious” music, perhaps it's because it doesn't take itself seriously; it is generally approached with an attitude that says, “If it feels good, let's play it!”

Rock is not dead — and if it seems to be, from time to time, dying, as so many people say, it is only a symptom of its flexibility and yielding attitude toward new sounds.

Rock is basically an emotional form. Its exact roots are not entirely clear. It draws on many popular styles. I feel that it has basically come from two sources: one, the Black Southern blues, which, in turn, comes from the highly rhythmic African music; two, from the Western ballad. tradition of troubadours, trouvéeres, meistersingers, and minnesingers (who spawned the various groups that abound today), and Alan‐a‐dale and Woody Guthrie, who, parallel the James Taylors and precede the Bob Dylans — poet singers.

All this music has grown out of a need to express personal feelings and make emotional statements. It evolves mostly as songs, or groups of songs, the lyrics of which may be painfully simplistic or even naive or sometimes contrived, but when they are successful they touch on some universal sentiment which anyone can relate to. The troubadours used to go from town to, town singing the news — mostly in sensationalist terms. (The news of Lord Randall, Barbra Allen, the murder of Pretty Polly amounts to a tabloid wire service.) Now the forms of communication have changed records, tapes, radios, TV, and large concerts — but the message is still delivered.

Rock music, in keeping with the dialectics of music in general, is influenced by (and makes great use of) available technology. This technology supplies intellect, which serves the emotions of the music. The recording studio has become a tool that the best artists use with great precision. The studio has, in a sense, replaced the archaic tradition of writing a score, getting a group of musicians to play it, listening, revising, playing it again, each time waiting for a performance to check the score against the mind's original conception of how the piece should sound.

Most of Bach's music, for example, was written for specific church‐or court‐sponsored performances, using similar groups each time. He scored for a basic instrument group and added to it when a virtuoso player or players showed up. He knew basically what his piece would sound like, because he had written for the same combinations before. But modern composers have been liberated from the steady sponsorship of the church or the court, and one of the most interesting games a composer can play is to orchestrate for weird and diverse instruments. I remember high school classmates enthusiastically writing sonatas for two zithers, trombone, and piccolo. It takes great skill to balance different sonorities, especially when years can go by between performances, revisions, and more performances.

In the studio, however, you can balance instruments electronically — to say nothing of the fact that you can alter the sound of any instrument beyond recognition. This, too, is a highly developed skill, more instinctive, more spontaneous, perhaps, but your results are final and immediate. The studio offers attractive creative opportunities which a notated score can never approach. Rock musicians are by and large unschooled, and they rely on their ears to tell them if the music feels right. They work for days, sometimes, to perfect a tune, laying instruments on, one at a time, the same way a composer adds parts to a score — but the translation of thought to sound is direct and infinitely elastic.

This is all to say that rock music, relying on instinctively felt judgments and utilizing available technology, offers musicians incredible freedom. It would be sad if all this amounted to multimillion‐dollar three‐minute songs like “Sugar‐Sugar” and other bubble‐gum delights, but there have been and there will continue to be thousands of young, vital musicians making use of the studio in combination with their talents to create beautiful, vibrant music. These musicians draw on a sound, practical knowledge of many types of music to create what is now known as rock. The truth is that the different categories of music no longer serve as sharp lines separating forms from each other. Rock is open to influences, classical music, jazz, folk, many shades and colors of emotion, as different artists bring their different backgrounds to the music.

It is important to keep in mind the fact that rock is still in its relative infancy, or at the most, its pubescence. It has certainly not realized its full potential. Although the first onslaught of rock music began in the fifties and the progression of music that led directly to its mass popularity had been going on since the turn of the century with jazz, Dixieland, and other “popular” forms, it is only in the last several years that the social, economic, and musical implications of this form have begun to be realized. Les Paul (“Hold That Tiger”) was among the (first to use the electric guitar as a new, electric instrument rather than simply an amplified one.

The familiar impression that all rock groups are irresponsibly loud is not entirely true. Volume plays a large part in rock music. The fact that crowds of 50,000 people and more can attend a single concert is unprecedented — amplification is a vital element of this type of event. The idea is not simply to be audible, but to surround the listener with full, warm sound. It is true that the levels often get out of hand, but once a performance starts it is the intensity that communicates to the audience rather than the level of sound. Quality amplification, large crowds, and disciplined performers make good music together.

As the musicians become more and more familiar with the variety of new sounds and effects available to them, we ad gain the beauty of amazingly expressive instruments. This holds true for all of the new instruments. The electric piano is not merely a louder version of a concert grand — as a matter of fact, no electric keyboard exists that can match the dynamic possibilities of a real piano — but there are sounds that the electric keyboard can make that offer whole new worlds of expression.

These products of new technology don't seek to replace their older, respected counterparts. They can be used together, sensitively and creatively, to complement each other. The popular musicians are pioneering this type of use. It is unfortunate that symphony orchestras have not to date incorporated these instruments on any large scale. Symphonies generally regard these instruments with a disdain similar to that with which they regarded the saxophone when it was invented.

I am not suggesting that Brahms's symphonies should be changed to use electric instruments (although, if Brahms were around, he'd probably flip for the electric bass), but I am saying that orchestras have become rooted to a lineup that hasn't changed in nearly 100 years. They are gradually relegating themselves to the position of institutions dedicated to performing old music. There are people who say that, in the face of their financial trouble, lack of popular support, and musical difficulties (such as the lack of new orchestral music), orchestras should be allowed to die rather than be Federally subsidized.

This is not saying that the musicians will perish, and certainly the music is as alive as ever, but if this kind of institution cannot sustain itself, perhaps it would he wise to allow it to dissolve and ‘regroup itself into new, more viable forms. It would be fantastic, and possible, to hear at one concert, with one group of musicians and a stage full of all sorts of instruments, a Brandenburg concerto, a Beethoven symphony, Stravinsky's “Le Sacre,” and a good, gut‐level rock group. All this music has in common the participation of musicians, performers and composers who are at the same time responsive to the needs of the audience and responsive to the disciplines and beauty of their art. The problem ‘lies not in deciding what kind of nose‐job can be performed on Mozart to make him palatable, but in presenting his musical expression side by side with the expressions of contemporary musicians so that audiences and performers can experience a larger scope of emotions.

There was a frightening prediction made recently, with the aid of a computer, that all the possible permutations of the existing 12 tones will soon be exhausted, leaving us with no new melodies and no new chords. Well, that has been a problem that composers have always faced without any trouble. Music, all music, is an organic substance which can be recycled endlessly. The function of most composers has not been to invent new tunes, but to disguise effectively their use of old ones. The personality of a composer lies in his personal idea of orchestration. The organization of timbres, textures, and rhythms is the earmark of a composer — not his melodies. Melodies can be played fast, slow, backwards, on a trombone or a marimba — the composer's choice is his trademark and contribution. As technology expands, so do these choices.

The ancient Greeks used thunder, lions’ roars, human screams and moans as integral parts of their concept of sound. This was refined through the centuries until it culminated in the large precision orchestras of Wagner and Strauss. Now electronics have produced the synthesizer, which is capable of reproducing any natural sound in any combination, and is also capable of creating new ones Man will constantly apply technology and reflect its advances in his art. I will sit at my piano, writing old songs, play lions’ roars on the ARP, and wait with anticipation for the atomic oboe.