Loving The Imperfect In Music And Art: Glenn Gould, Nico Muhly, and Sam Amidon

I don't know about you, but I've sure had my fill of over-produced, autotuned popular music. The stuff is written by committee, worked over by computer, analyzed by psychologists to hook us by our lizard brains, and then focus-grouped to be sold to the broadest possible audience. The stuff sounds perfect because it can't be anything but perfect: the computers and the market demand it. You can read all about the current state of the music business in John Seabrook's The Song Machine.

Classical music hasn't fallen into the same pit of over-produced commercialism. Here, the quest for perfection comes with a more human angle. You get a real sense of satisfaction from watching an orchestra of 100+ musicians playing in perfect synchrony knowing that every note had to be practiced and rehearsed.

Where pop music arises from hundreds of executives and producers pumping things through electronics, the classical performance arises from a single mind (sometimes long dead) directing the actions of hundreds of musicians in executing his will. The result is a more singular vision, but it can be austere and off-putting, like a marble statue behind glass in a museum.

This is why I've always gravitated to smaller performances. Solo instrumentalists, or chamber music. I like hearing the contribution of each instrument, and you can really appreciate the effect when just a few voices swell into something majestic.

It's also why I apprectiate the imperfections in a performance. When the performer is so wrapped up in a piece that they do something utterly human, it grounds the music somehow, making us conscious of this fleshy connection between the earth and the divine.

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Glenn Gould is probably the best known example of this. He gave up his successful performance career to focus on recording, and he became a pioneer in the analog era of tape splicing and multi-track recording. If there was ever a perfectionist in recorded music, it was Gould. He focused on Bach, and would spend days in the studio with take after take of one small fugue or a partita. (I can only imagine the otherworldly patience of the technicians who worked with him.) The result was a legacy of recorded interpretation that's as unique, pure, and immortal as the compositions themselves.

The weird thing about it, though, is that Gould hums. And sings. And makes other noises. Right on the recordings. Just about all the time. He also insisted on using a creaky, beat up chair which travelled with him everywhere he went. (The chair is now in a museum in Gould's native Canada.) So sometimes you can hear the chair creaking as well.

Sound engineers did their best to minimize the sounds of the humming and the chair. In the end, there was nothing they could do. These sounds would forever be an integral part of these performances.

Now that Gould is gone, I'm glad they're there. They remind us of the man who made the music, and that this vision of the divine came from human hands.

Here's an early vision of Gould humming at the keyboard. He did it just as much as he got older:

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More recently I've fallen in love with the work of modern composer Nico Muhly.

Muhly was a student of, and assistant to, Philip Glass for several years. You can definitely hear Glass' influence in his compositions: the austere repetition, the geometrical permutations just a few notes over complex metamorphasizing rhythms.

But while Glass' music has a bit of that object-at-a-distance untouchableness about it (as you'd expect from someone who has scored so many high-budget Hollywood movies), Muhly's seems to keep a foot on the dirty, gritty ground.

I especially love this three-part composition performed with folk-singer Sam Amidon. "The Only Tune" borrows from an ancient folk tale, A Northumbrian murder ballad from 1656 of jealousy and sororicide. It's dark stuff that ends with one of the most macabre acts I've ever heard described in music. (I don't want to spoil it for you. The story's only 360 years old.) The piece has the dissonance and foreboding you'd expect from such a subject, and the repetitive experimentation of "modern composition" that can be off-putting to many listeners. But there's the lightness of folk-music there too, and space in the instrumentation for the wind and rain to blow through. It even manages to be, dare I say, a little catchy in places.

If you look to music for an emotional experience, this is a piece that will make you feel something. But you have to let it.

Amidon does not have a perfect voice. If there were a word for the opposite of perfect that was stronger than imperfect, that would describe his voice. It's awkward, nasal, breathy, and often out of tune. It's a banjo of a voice. And it's just the right thing for this song. (He also plays the banjo in it.)

(It's in three parts, sorry for all the links!)

I first heard this piece in the car. It came up as part of a Spotify playlist. I almost switched it off, but then I thought, I've never heard anything like this before. Then I was drawn in by the story that emerged through the repetition, layer by layer, as the instrumentation pulled me under, dragging me into the current.

By the time I reached the end I thought, Holy crap, this song did not just go there. But it had.

I listened to it again and again.

Now for some reason I can't get enough of Amidon. Fortunately he's recorded a lot of folk music of his own, too.

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What about you? Do you enjoy listening to work that's less than perfect? Or is the thoroughly produced and polished more to your taste?

Certainly it's a big enough world that there's room for both.