Anyone who's known Anthony Braxton for awhile has heard these words often: "Get ready for the third millennium, people!"
I've known and worked with him closely, off and on, since 1987, first as a musician, then as his graduate teaching assistant at Wesleyan University from 1993-96. I wrote a book about his music, and helped him fund and stage the first full production of the flower of his most recent and mature work as a composer, his opera Trillium R: Shala Fears for the Poor in New York in 1996. Most to the point here, I've had numerous conversations with him about our mutual fascinations with ancient prophetic writings, both biblical and more occult, that have come over time to lend the charge of myth and mystery to mundane markers like millennia. We didn't know exactly what sea change or revelation the new one would bring, but we knew we liked the numerological dimensions of the number "three" and the mythico-theological ones of the unit "thousand." The rest would be details.
Without planning it, we ran into each other last December, just before the real millennial shift--and before the Armaggedon-like attack of September 11--and sparked to the idea of an update interview: a comprehensive retrospective of the past, pulse-taking of the present, pipe-dreaming of the future. What unfolded was a series of five weekly sessions over that holiday season, each one as long as it took to fill two 74-minute minidisks, eat two Red Lobster lunches, and down one carafe of white wine. Great fun! We just kept meeting until we felt we had covered it.
Those who haven't grown up with Braxton's public persona and work, as I have, should know this: he was and remains one of the pioneers and giants of the musical terrain this magazine covers. It would surprise me if the lion's share of the artists, young and old, working in the "improvised & experimental music" enounced in the front-page masthead didn't know and acknowledge Braxton's groundbreaking work from the late 1960s on as crucial to the beginnings and developments of their "medium of expression." Let us recount the ways...
Braxton's 1968 double LP For Alto opened the door onto the single-line instrument as a valid vehicle for solo performances among improvisers; a little later he did the same thing for saxophone quartet, breaking ground for the World Saxophone Quartet and numerous others since. As one of the most popular and successful of the post-'60s (post-Coltrane/Ayler/Coleman/Ra) musicians, Braxton was also the most visible example of multiinstrumentalism as part of the soundscape, expanding the improviser's voice and the music's timbral pallette. Braxton, as those of us who have played with him know viscerally, has fused the realms of the "free" improvisation and the through-composed piece so systematically and consistently, with such increasing sophistication over the years, that the treasures of each--from the heaviest golden crown to the least little bead, previously locked away from each other not only in traditional practice but for want of effective notational devices and aesthetic parameters--gradually merged, modestly at first, then with a great bursting of the walls of the chests containing them, resulting in a double fortune in one gleaming pile, for all the world to sort and run through its fingers with the treasure-hunter's shout of joy. One of the richest of those treasures was musical time. Braxton opened up that field, building on African America's pulse-rooted stretches beyond meter, and on European America's and Europe's experimental and avant-garde concert music, to devise ways more specific to the improviser striking out further from both traditions for newer, more, and more personal gestures.
More than any single musical innovation, however, Braxton's doggedly uphill and ongoing quest to challenge and change the assumptions underlying the musical-cultural terrain of his times, through his prolific recordings and interviews, is what sets him apart most valuably from most others. He came of age in the days (still going strong in powerful new and high-end quarters) when jazz was jazz, rock was rock, art music was art music, and woe to those who messed around with their well-policed borders; when black was black and white was white, and the border patrols policing them were even more vigilant, yea, vicious; when all these little quadrants had their place in a hierarchy that dictated socioeconomic and personal value--and forget about borders between high and low there, think rather in terms of DMZ zones. Braxton has braved and defied all this, often and largely without peer in the role, taking heat and flack few were able or willing to deal with. His payoff for doing so, far more than fame or fortune or honor due, has been to have produced a body of written and recorded music that is to "jazz," "Western art music," and "African-American composer's tradition" what Einstein was to physics, Picasso to Impressionism, Dylan to folk music. We who enjoy a scene with said borders and zones dissolving like a bad dream do owe him the honor of remembrance, respect, attention, understanding and support.
In keeping with that debt, I'm most inclined here to present what Braxton himself wants most from our interview to share--details about his own work--and that in his own words, challenging reading though they often comprise; also, what I and other ex-students have to share about his work as a teacher and bandleader. Our talks ranged wide from musical to larger cultural, political, and historical issues and points. What emerged was a portrait of the artist as perennial philosopher, someone keen and driven to connect with all the information he can about music, first, and all arts and letters everywhen and everywhere, second, to inspire and feed his own body of work.
One theme that wove throughout, to set a context for his own music, was that of the "Southern strategy" (what Braxton also calls the "antebellum gambit"), the racist master-slave mentality of the old South's social system he sees still bearing much fruit from American soil, for both domestic and international consumption. Those who voted for Ralph Nader, those who have read Gail Buckley's (Lena Horne's daughter) history of blacks in the military, and/or those who have been uneasy about Americentric globalization around the world, would resonate well with Braxton's take on things.
But, again, space prohibits those details here. I would urge the most interested readers to see the entire transcript of all five interviews on my website (URLs for that, for a close look at the Trillium opera series, and for more Braxton/Heffley-related writing and music are at the end). There you get a sense of how grounded in music history, in awareness of the music of his peers today, and in world-historical cultural and sociopolitical trends are both Braxton and his own work, for all of his natural focus on his own; and how the level of his thought and discourse serves to elevate that of those around him (mine, in this case).
I asked Braxton to discuss his current work--the "Ghost Trance" series of compositions, and the Trillium series of operas--in the context of the musical system he's been constructing since the 1960s. One aspect of that system is the terminology he uses to describe and explain it. Thus, to use the examples in the following, "house of the rectangle" refers most generally to the fixed aspects of nature--product rather than process, position rather than trajectory; "house of the circle" is the polar opposite of that, spontaneous improvisation, that which streams; and "house of the triangle" is synthesis, of those first two houses and in general. The "house of one" refers to the first of twelve musical components, or "sonic languages" on his chart, the long tone; it also has an anthropomorphizing personal name, Shala. "Identity" refers to what an improvised musical gesture ends in being as a finished product standing in time's moment, after its flow. "Tri-centric" has to do with Braxton's sense of the universe as rather a "tri-verse," a term of Muhal Richard Abrams', stressing trinity rather than unity. His chart of his system will clarify other terms.
BRAXTON I think it was in 1966 when I broke into the fresh space and found a way for myself, because that's what I was looking for: a way where I could contribute to this incredible movement that luck made me a part of. It was in 1966 that I started to build the components of my music. It was after the improvisatory solo concert, when I started to sketch a different way, that I would really enter into the universe of my own music. Starting then, the language musics would become a genesis component of my experiences in the house of the circle. It would be at that point, in seeking to better understand the question of identity, that I would start to isolate the different components of my music. As Leo Smith and I have always talked about and agreed on, the act of defining a methodology and a way of procedure would separate our work from everything, would give us the possibility to define something and walk away from it and go back to it and read it. That was important.HEFFLEY When you say "identity," do you mean something like the proposition of existential identity, where you start expanding out and defining yourself step-by-step in a new way?
BRAXTON By "identity" in this context I'm talking about identity for musical materials, for ideas and compositions, identity with respect to "what am I thinking?" So identity in the house of the rectangle; from a tri-centric perspective, in my system, involves taking materials from the house of the circle, the twelve geometric units; and, in the house of the rectangle, using that information to define architectonic possibilities that could give me the possibility to have a creative experience within a defined concept space.
HEFFLEY Did you call it the house of the circle back then?
HEFFLEY No. When I first started to build my system, I just spoke in terms of what I called language music.
HEFFLEY One language being the trill, one the long tone, and so on…
BRAXTON Yes. With the language musics, it was a way to have improvisatory real-time experiences that would give me the hope of not bumping into the same idea, or using the same devices.It would help me as an improviser have different things to work with.
HEFFLEY And your system chart heading "Identity State" is the last column on the far right, which suggests an end point of definition after the processes of the language units, then the geometric units, finally producing the identity state.
BRAXTON Yes. The house of the triangle in my music system is the house of synthesis logics. For me, this symbol is about integration, or synthesis. Going back to the house of the rectangle, the house of ideas, or architectonic structures, the Tri-Axium Writings [Braxton's three-volume set of books on his "re-philosophical system," published by Frog Peak Press, 1987] would make the combined information connection tri-centric. The Tri-Axium Writings would be a component of what I would later come to call "tri-centric." By that, I'm only saying that the concept of "tri-centric" would involve more than simply music compositions, and more than simply ideas, but rather a systemic context to apply that information (and those connections). That's why when I talk of my work, and when I use the word "tri-centric," I'm referring to what I call a "thought unit," as opposed to a composition, or one methodology. The idea of a "tri-centric thought unit" is a way of expressing the interconnection between the Tri-Axium Writings--which was an attempt to define a world perspective based on particular focuses--and specific examples of that focus, and then questions and answers, or dialectical extensions of that focus, and the music/architectonic system and symbolic ritual holistic system. The Tri-Axium Writings would give me an opportunity to have a context of ideas and perspectives, which is in the house of the rectangle. This information would also include schematic modules that reduce the philosophical particular (target) arguments into "transpersonal" logic associations. [These schematics resemble the diagrams students used to parse grammatical elements of sentences, only in this case the circuitry is directed toward abstract social and philosophical/metaphysical concepts, charting their relationships].
The Tri-Axium Writings comprise Braxton's take on world-historical trends and issues couching the music of the African diaspora and its relationship with the West; the frameworks they provide him (and anyone else who wants them) were conceived as alternatives to those put forth by "jazz" critics, historians and other scholars, and journalists who had no experience creating the music.
BRAXTON The Tri-Axium Writings would also be a context where I would define my own terms, and create my own language. This for me was not a one-dimensional experience, but was rather a chance to establish the philosophical foundation of my music in the sense of given specifics to a general subject area; internal specific subject perspectives related to that subject area; questions and answers on one hand, and then coming back to the integration schematics, which is actually in the next triangle set under that--to define my own set of terms, and to establish my own emotional and feeling perspectives about the information I was writing about.
Still with us here, readers? It helps to remember some of the graphic titles of Braxton's early recordings (the later ones expanded from these abstractions into full-blown pictures of real-life scenarios), geometric shapes connected by lines with alphanumeric sequences. Braxton assents to my comparison of them with Plato's idea of pure forms--perfect circles, triangles, rectangles--being behind all phenomenal reality; and of Pythagoras's similar vision of numbers, particularly those measuring sounds, and of geometry as "earth-measure." To make the conventional notational connection, think of how musicians start with units of numbers and letters (beat one, letter A), sequence them into structure (the geometry), and end with a piece (the static figures of triangles, hexagons, ets.).
Braxton describes the improvisational process's (house of the circle's) relationship to his compositional process (house of the rectangle):
BRAXTON I wanted to find a way that would help me negotiate a music in real time in the house of the circle. Also, I wanted to find a way that would help me to generate compositions that would be relevant to what I was learning. Needless to say, Stockhausen was a profound influence, and so was the great work of Ornette Coleman, and I felt I needed to find in the late '60s and early '70s some way, some sense of myself that could help me from becoming a clone, and that could help me sort out my own interests. So the Tri-Axium Writings, or the early language musics, would be a way to take in experiences in real time and then parlay that information into the house of the rectangle, as far as ideas--because you're improvising, and while you're improvising you get ideas and you have memory. And memory is in the house of the rectangle. What I wanted to do with those memories is take some of those ideas and use them to fashion an architectonic universe that compositionally could bring me back to some aspect of that original experience (memory)...
Most of his early and many of his later pieces would serve as examples of this process. In my book, I made what I called "paradigmatics" out of the chart of his system accompanying this article. They depicted a handful of pieces by circling one or two of the "languages" in the Language Types column, then connecting them to the appropriate elements in the other two columns. The Kelvin series of pieces, built on repetitive elements, is an isolated example of the same approach.
Braxton breaks the "circle of improvisation" into sub-circles: intuition, and logic on the fly...
HEFFLEY So we have the language musics starting, getting into your first codifications of open improvs. What came next?BRAXTON First, establishing the house of the circle--which would be the genesis component of my music system on the tri-plane formed by circle language musics; and then, under the circle, two more circles: intuition, and mutable logic transient states (and/or transitory strategies). Looking at the first circle, the circle of experience, and memory, I would take ideas from real-time improvisation and then look for compositions that would demonstrate that same logic. It would be at that point that I would start what I would call the formula musics, integrating components from real time, using numerology, friends' initials, chess moves--all of that would be in the house of the triangle, looking for ways to integrate method. Thus would begin the compositional musics.
I separated myself from the earlier compositions, which were attempts to write bebop compositions, in the army. In that time period I was very excited about finding fresh harmonic sequences à la "Giant Steps," so I would have a body of musics with fresh harmonic connections. Once I got in the AACM, I began to generate compositional paradigms from the improvisatory experiences I had in the language musics, and the formula musics would come out of that.
(Comparable musical strategies: Bach writing a fugue based on his name's letters rather than on a Lutheran hymn, Schoenberg working with a tone row, or John Cage making a piece based on I Ching throws.)
BRAXTON After that, the schematic musics; that being a defined time space, and boxing in language-state directives in a linear single or multiple time space. The piece for four soprano saxophones (37), the piece for four pianos (16) are examples of schematic musics, extracting from improvisation with respect to reducing an improvisation to one of the key twelve languages, and just making schematic structures. And from there, evolving that idea into the dimensional structures, which would start to factor in color. The basic concept was that, more and more, I tried to extend defined components into the compositions. Later I factored in spatial dynamics.
(Think of synaesthesia--seeing sounds as colors, hearing colors as sounds--and think of the development of perspective in the history of art, regarding "spatial dynamics" (Composition 76 demonstrates both in its graphic title, which is the first such to employ color and perspective). Think too of the process of the universe expanding from a singularity into spacetime, of a union of chromosomes into a human being, and of the number one into two [two points make a line, one line a schema], then three [a plane, a schematic], then four [space...]: now you know why musicians really count off the tunes...)
BRAXTON Thus, in the house of the triangle, I would transpose strategies from the circle to the rectangle involving both conceptual and/or syntactical logics that would later become an architectonic logic, which I would then start to expand from different premises: formula musics, in this context, being the integration of different compositional and nonmusical elements; and later schematic musics, the positing of timespace and design as formal schemes to be filled with musical ideas.In that period I tried the "golden section" and different compositional techniques. I discovered that you could get the same results, or that I could achieve a result that was meaningful to me, by evolving different kinds of premises as far as decision-making inside of schematic empty time spaces and positioning different focuses, and from that point adding color as an intuitive mechanism, expressive in the beginning; and then later, synthesis in the sense of dance and movement. Just trying to develop that line and also express it compositionally. So that would be the route of my evolution there.
(By now we're talking about the arc of the first 100 or so compositions [he's up to number 307], and some of his most groundbreaking recordings from the '60s and '70s [see sidebar]).
BRAXTON Then in the house of the triangle, I would start to look for holistic strategies, ways to integrate idea, real-time experiences. Composition 113 would be an example of an attempt to demonstrate a holistic model [it features not only musical performance but a story staged before a visual backdrop].So: solo experiences, individual experiences, house of the circle; house of the rectangle; duo to orchestral experiences, extending from that point into the house of the triangle as a way of tying up the architectonic logics, which translate for me into structural dynamics on one rectangle; into interaction dynamics--composition as a way of defining interaction dynamics. And composition as a way of defining summation conceptual regions inside the music.
House of the triangle, ritual and ceremonial musics, the beginning of storytelling.
(Ah, think of the beginning of story--of language, from sound to sequence of sounds to epiphanous meaning. Braxton's graphic titles, after the first hundred or so compositions, began to include realistic concretes among the usual abstracts: a hand, a hooded figure, later on sketches of any and every real-world scenario. In his Composition Notes, analytical descriptions of musical elements and structures began to give way to little vignettes and stories. Think of Nietszche, or Heidegger, turning from the German professional philosopher's technical jargon of their early careers to the sheer poetry of their mature writings.)
HEFFLEY When did that come in?BRAXTON In the time period of the 80s, with the story music works like Composition 165 (for creative orchestra). Composition 123 is an example of a composition where I told a story for solo flute and constructed environment, and then I told the story and had the music re-enact the story; that was the beginning. And the story involved area spatial components that the soloist would fulfill inside of this constructed environment.
HEFFLEY You know, this idea about having a phrase represent a narrative kind of reminds me of the West African rhythmic cycles, in which each of the rhythms express a different part of the community…
BRAXTON …and makes something happen. That is connected to Composition 113, the idea of a target signal activation (i.e., talking drums); suddenly a phrase construction has a transcendent component. So I'm really moving toward the Trillium operas.
(These are conceived, still in progress, as a series of thirty-six one-act operas that can be performed in random combinations. Shala combined four, for one four-act production.)
By the time we get to this point, the idea of the triangle, which is synthesis, would also become the context for transposition. What that would mean, for me, would be the erection of imaginary constructs, more and more. And there were several reasons for it: one, imaginary constructs would give me a way to have definite things to deal with, as opposed to Composition 76, which is like a ritual gesture. I wanted to have specific things to deal with, where I could apply the movement system, and have it work in a specific way, like in Composition 123, for solo flute.Also, an imaginary context would give me a way to continue evolving my music, since it was clear I wasn't getting any performances, and that it didn't look like I would get any in a normal kind of way. This was late '70s and '80s, after the Arista record deal. So I felt that part of evolving my music would involve creating imaginary schemas that I could hold onto whether I got a performance or not. So the imaginary schemas would give me a possibility to imagine a context and say that Composition 175, or 174, would be a composition where--174 was for a percussion ensemble, and they're climbing this mountain. What the imaginary scheme would mean for me would be that I could create an imaginary context on the tri-plane.
(The concept of this piece is what Braxton calls "gradient logic:" that which gradually transforms, as, for example, a crescendo transforms softness into loudness. The climb up the mountain...or the move from any one to any many, for that matter.)
BRAXTON So what am I saying? Local experiences, national or greater experiences, and the largest, or galactic experiences, the largest I could think of. My plan here, then as now--because all of this started to come together in this period--was to imagine a state that I could fit my music system into, where I could have different things for people to do, different compositions to write that would fulfill the multitasks of these imaginary states--all the way from the individual experiences in Composition 113 of Ojuwain on the train to the concept of galactic actualization, where I could imagine rocket ships traveling through space in the largest framework that I could think of.
This shift of the music system into "imaginary states" is Braxton's version of leaving behind the German Musik an sich (music as a pure art form, standing alone) to re-embrace the Greek mousik (music as part of a multimedia theater in which the gods and humans work out their fates together). The stories of his operas are like Greek myths about such fates, forces personified in language and sound; the heroine Shala, sword in hand in front of a patriarchal council of power, surrounded by the chorus-like figures of the hooded soloists, might have struck a chord in the original audiences of Antigone. (Of course, that's just another one of my explanatory comparisons; Braxton's musical project is original, however omnivorously it draws from the world past and present.)
BRAXTON As a result of defining that, I could then start to write not only compositions for those states, but to define works in terms of individual reality properties: the concept of twelve city-states, each state demonstrating the identity of the twelve languages. And then inside of that state, write compositions that demonstrate internal possibilities for, say, language #4, stacatto line logics--and making it even more definite and specific by actually defining the states.What all that would mean for me as a composer, then, would be that I've got this expanding universe that I could microscope into different focuses, and in the city-state focus, build twelve city-state territories with roads connecting them; the roads would be rectangles, specific roads; the circle would be the ability to just travel in any direction you want, not on a road; and the triangles would be points of connection, large cities or whatever, where different strategies can interconnect and go to somewhere else.
Or transfer; triangle in this context is transfer. So I tried to take that concept and express it in the individual circle and reality experiences of the individual all the way to the galactic model. If you're at the top, you might want to go down. Or, if you're at the point of the triangle, you might want to switch into the Tri-Axium Writings; or, you might want to transfer from the Tri-Axium Writings to the system of movements--or to the Composition Notes [Braxton's five-volume set of his explanations of each of his works, also published by Frog Peak].
James Fei, one of Braxton's students and bandmates puts it well, in the liner notes to a CD (see www.jamesfei.com/247.html) of one of his own performances with the man: "The music on this disc is unlike anything I have participated in, in terms of mental and physical endurance, mobility between different sets of material, and sheer sonic intensity. [Ghost Trance Music] and No. 247 also continue to expand upon the aspect of music that first drew me to Braxton's work: the creation of new forms where composed and improvised elements are synthesized, not just co-existing in an on-off manner, but deeply integrated into a unified and multi-layered system."
Fei's experience is shared by many of Braxton's students, who have been his main source of bandmates over the last decade or so. His career in academia started at Mills College in the 1980s, and moved up to his tenured position at Wesleyan University in 1990. In many ways, he's a natural as both classroom lecturer and ensemble leader; he's widely read in history, especially music history, and conveys his knowledge of how Western and American music reflects cultural history in a sweeping, conversational overview. He provides his playing students with the experience of learning by contact with a real master, no mere pedagogue or pedant, who genuinely respects and cares about their own potential for mastery. Brandon Evans is another protegé who testifies to this: "Studying and working with Mr. Braxton was an immensely enriching experience in many ways. As a teacher, Mr. Braxton is a highly focused and passionate individual who brings so much experience and insight into his work, there is no way he doesn't transmit that sense of oneness and dedication to his music. This is a shining example for young musicians and artists."
BRAXTON At this point in my life, I have arrived at a juncture that's very interesting. That juncture is that, as much as I enjoy exploring traditional repertoire, and as much as I enjoy, on occasion, collaborating with colleagues or a particular person, at this point, what I really need to advance my work is a group of people who know the system of my music, not just someone who can learn a head, and then we improvise. So academia for me has been a way to meet young people who are interested in my work, whom I then teach my system to. That way, I can advance my work in a way that is more complex outside of academia. Also, at 55 years old, with the experiences that I've had, and with the amount of material that I have in my music system, I need people who can start to build on the connecting concepts of the system. So academia has been a way to find kindred spirits, young men and some young women, who are interested in going through some aspect of my work in a way that my colleagues, the guys I've grown up with, couldn't possibly entertain, because they have their own way of working. At this point, my real interests--except, of course, for the solo musics, which I do alone--can only be carried out with ensembles of various sizes that can achieve an experience through the system of my music. That's been the positive part of being an academic.HEFFLEY Do the Trillium series of operas then represent something of a culmination of your whole system?
BRAXTON No. The Trillium operas, if we would look at the city-state analogy, would be in the major cities in each state, like a giant castle in each state. On the galactic formal scheme model, the Trillium operas would be in the center of the major galaxies. In the area-state formal scheme model, the Trillium operas would be equivalent to the big tree, in Wagner. The big local store.
HEFFLEY So little things like duo projects, or solo projects, or quartets--those would be just, like, other little stories in the big city?
BRAXTON Thank you. The integration schematics from the Tri-Axium Writings serve as the genesis point for creating the libretto. The integration schematics are reductive diagrams of the ideas and arguments inside the Tri-Axium Writings. The integration schematics weren't conceived to tell anyone what to think on any particular subject; they only establish the context of terms and connections. Each person will come out of them with his or her own understanding of relationships. In my opinion, it's a restructuralist approach to information integration that sets up postulates, but doesn't tell anybody what to think. At the same time, it itself is a reduction of the philosophical writings of the Tri-Axium Writings. My influences here go back to the I-Ching, and the sequential logic implications of Dogon mysticism (in the house of number two, Ashmenton). So it's a story, a definite libretto, but it is not an ethnic-centric or dialectic linear state of poetics; rather it is about a modern family dealing in real time with the kinds of things families deal with.
The Trillium operas are post-Wagner/Joplin operas, as opposed to, say, post-Stockhausen, or Schoenberg operas. Trillium is tri-centric; an individual brings his own life to it, because it's not referring to anything, aside from the individual applying himself to that given context. It's not a story that goes anyplace.
The Ghost Trance series was inspired by Braxton's studies of Native American history (specifically, the Ghost Dance movement formed across tribal traditions in the late 1800s). The regular repeated quarter notes evoke the steady pulse of drumming for dancing, and are consciously designed as a platform for a trance state. The way Braxton describes it shows how he deals with influences "out there" from within the context of his own created cosmos:
BRAXTON Let me give you this information about the Ghost Trance musics.Okay, long sounds, in the house of the circle, language musics. Long sounds as an idea, the state of drone; long sounds as a state of being; and then inside of that, going now to the house of one, the house of Shala: those transmutants as a continuous state phenomenon; Ghost Trance musics as an expression of infinity. That is, the universe/the expanding "so-called" universe equals Shala.
Let me give you three instances of Ghost Trance musics, each with three subcomponents. Number One, Ghost Trance musics as an expression of infinity: 1, spatial music mapping prototypes; 2, sustained space logics (for example, something that is meditative); 3, continuous processes.
Number two, Ghost Trance musics: 1, transtemporal mechanisms (it doesn't start, it doesn't end); 2, transtemporal mechanisms (fast, medium, and slow, at any point in time); 3, transtemporal mechanisms (use of multi-tempos, use of combination tempos, use of changing tempos).
Number three: Ghost Trance musics: 1, trans-idiomatic, which translates into trans-spiritual (male, female, and child); 2, no theme as such, but twelve multi-hierarchical identities: no theme--redemptive, transformative, and the phenomenon of hope. 3, tri-metric models: personal models, collective models, and models with special interests.
Finally, as an activist component--because I've given you three statements of Ghost Trance musics--three active components: metric processes, pulse target processes, and mutable processes. That is the model I wanted to establish for the house of one, in a system that, more and more, I've started to understand there's a triangulation between the identity of Shala, the identity of Ashmenton, and the identity of Helena. Shala's at the top in a certain period; in another period, Ashmenton or Helena is at the top.
When Dante Aligheri had written most of his body of work, including much of the Divine Comedy, its grassroots circulation among the Italian populace was establishing him as perhaps the greatest living poet in his language. The rulers of Florence, his home city, had long since exiled him for "corruption" (after he criticized them for theirs). Now, seeing his growing credibility threaten theirs, they invited him to return--on the condition he pay a token part of the fine they'd levied against him, and come barefoot and with a noose around his neck, to signal his penitence for his crime.
Dante chose to remain in exile.
HEFFLEY You scoped out the end of the first house of the Ghost Trance music through the next twenty compositions. Earlier you told me that you had reached a certain point with your opera concept, but you still had a very definite image of where you had to go next before something about it could be realized. You said you had realized your opera complex on one level, but hadn't yet integrated it with the coordinate musics or something.Do you see this process of developing your body of work as a composer as being to just continue on the way it always has up to the end, from plateau to plateau, and that you're always going to be motivated and interested enough to hang in there, even if it continues to be such an uphill battle to get performances?
BRAXTON I would like to hope so. I see creative music as equal to creative living; music and life are really both the same thing, there's no reason why one should not continue to learn and grow. Maybe it changes when you get older, in terms of the rate of how much can be done in a given time frame. But getting older also brings with it a set of experiences and perspectives that can trump out the extra energy of youth. I'd like to hope that I can continue to evolve myself and move toward a point of self-realization in my spiritual life; I would also like to hope that, as a creative person, I can also continue to evolve my music. I think living involves creative music as part of the basic responses inside of a given time perspective, or day. I think what I call music is not just acoustic sonic actualization, but the whole phenomenon and psychology of living. Finding a positive line, finding a way to evolve, finding a way to keep on going and have hope. Recognizing, or at least keeping curiosity, to value curiosity. I would say for the young people, especially the young people of America, but actually the young people of the planet: stay interested in NASA, and in space travel, and in the new things that are happening right now, because this is an incredible period of time, what these guys can do now.
HEFFLEY How do you see the changes of the last thirty years in American creative music?
BRAXTON I am totally excited about the future, I'm totally grateful that I've even been able to be alive to even see the third millennium come in. From my generation--and we've talked about this before--1984 was the future. This is now the post-future. To even be here in the third millennium, and to have the opportunity to experience this, I'm elated and grateful. I'm hopeful of the future.
And yet, in keeping with your question, I came to understand very early that if I wanted to continue my work, I would have to understand that not only was it not probable that I would have normal possibilities to demonstrate every aspect of my work--especially the notated musics--but that the whole proposition would be complex. So in different cycles I've gone into debt to get a piece performed, and then I will recover in five years or so, then go into debt again. That has been the story, say, from Composition 25 for creative orchestra. Right now I still have five more years to get out of debt for Trillium R. I understood that this was going to be a complex direction, and yet, for me, it would be the only way; it wasn't like I even had a choice. This was what I wanted to do, this is what I still want to do, and I'm still excited about it. I wanted to be part of those musics, which were the musics of curiosity, the musics of motivation...
Let me back up just a little bit before we get into the rest of this question, to set the right backdrop. In the beginning, formula musics, alternative coding musics, taking from people's initials; formula musics, quasi-serial adaptations; schematic musics, looking at the composite time space and then dividing that time-space up. Language musics, twelve identities in the house of the circle that could be used for improvisational strategies, to place with the schematic musics; coordinate music linkage formal schemes; dimensional drawing constructions, musics that more and more start to factor internal components in terms of designations about factoring real-time pitch logic integration and strategies. Hieroglyphic structures as a means to start factoring in holistic musics, color and sound; Composition 76, factoring in gesture and movement. Finally, Composition 82, spatial trajectory musics, coming after Stockhausen's Gruppen and Carrie, and Polytrope for Orchestra by Xenakis; trajectoral coding strategies. Composition 113, holistic strategies; Composition 174, gradient logic strategies, and area-space mapping musics; Composition 175, Garthstone Castle, an example of area-space mapping musics. Ghost Trance musics, focusing in on the house of one, the house of Shala; the house of Shala from a tri-centric standpoint, fulfilling the poetic dimensions of the Tri-Axium Writings, going from there into the Trillium operas into, now, the house of one, as the mystic identity space of the number one. Ghost Trance musics into the form-scheme-spatial models: individual circle space into territorial area spaces--extending to continental spaces, as in the United States being a continental space. In the context of my system, going through the twelve great lands of my system as akin to Disneyland, a la post-Disneyland constructions that have tri-centric virtual experiences for twelve sonic playlands that demonstrate continental mapping experiences for the friendly experiencer, single or group tours.
When I think of the future, I'd like to continue to work with my project, to go through the house of two, the house of three, the house of four, to build a music that's consistent with all of the defined parameters of my system: the galactic parameters, stories about going into space, mapping space. I want a music that equals the human genome project; I want a music that equals the projects of NASA going into space with different trajectories that start to map galactic particulars. I want to fulfill all twelve operas of the Trillium musics, which will also be accompanied by the book of Shala, the book of Ashmenton, the book of Joreo.
My project has always been, one, an individual thing; two, it's always been a tri-centric thing; and three, it's always been an occult position. The heart of the work that I'm trying to do, on the plane of symbolic musics, and ritual and ceremony, is to create a context of experience that will bow to the concept of, one, transcendent realities--and by that I mean gods, goddesses, and mystery children. Two, a concept of transcendence that connects the world of ideas into the world of apparent reality that finally connects into the world of transcendence, where, one, the ghosts can come back and play; two, it's transtemporal, past present and future is one unit; three, everything is in every tempo and there's a connection into any part of the tri-centric parameter.
I wanted to build a context of experience that's tri-centric that maps my experience, including the house of humor--especially the house of humor, with my experience--and also the house of constant debt. So that would be my response to your question.
After the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon, I invited Braxton to add a written statement to our interview:
BRAXTON From out of nowhere, the events of September 11, 2001, have sealed the arrival of a new time-space era and the unfolding of a fresh set of "curiosities" and challenges. I join the American people in expressing condolences and solidarity to the victims of this tragedy and their families. I would also like to recognize and thank the men and women who gave so much of themselves to help others in the immediate aftermath of the destruction--especially the firemen, policemen, rescuers, hospital workers and volunteers who met the crisis head-on with courage and determination. Their collective response in a "moment of decision" situation gave insight into the positive synergies (and hope) of our nation. Thank you to these people.Since that moment, America has entered into a series of political/social/vibrational twists and turns that have yet to settle on any one "plane" of sentiment. Suddenly, the concept of cultural vibrational change is no longer a theory, but rather a recognition that the fundamentals of a fresh "vibrational space" have in fact already arrived. We as a species and nation are again sailing the winds of change into what will become "the new balances." Hooray for the experience of life and the challenge of "mystery to not mystery and/or miraculous." The work of the creative artist will continue to have profound meaning on the tri-plane as we peel into the surface of a new century.
My hope is that we will use this time space to renew our relationship with cultural dynamics and begin again the fight for the challenge of composite existence and positive experience. We must rededicate ourselves to the hope of world peace, human rights, and cosmic destiny. The challenge of creative music has never been more important than in periods of profound unrest and re-alignment. There can be no doubt that we have the creative talent on this planet that can assist world evolution and dynamic spirituality (and cohesion)--suddenly, there will be a need for "speculative assumptions" that give insight into the changing vibrational and communal landscape. Creativity is the engine of evolution and healing. We are now in a new era, and there is everything to do.
[The following are available from Mike Heffley's website (almatour.org): his book The Music of Anthony Braxton, and his papers on Braxton's opera and computer music (click Almatour, then Almatexts, then scroll the titles); his recordings with Braxton and of Braxton's music (click Almatour, then Almarecs, then scroll the titles); the complete transcript of this interview (click Anthony Braxton: The Third Millennial Interviews).]
Selections from Braxton's voluminous recorded output are best chosen for the listener new to his work for their range over time, to show his initial groundbreaking and subsequent development. Accordingly, those that express the core of Braxton's system, developed over time, are those by solo alto (the only instrument he uses for solo concerts and recordings), For Alto (Delmark DS 420/1, 1968), Alto Saxophone Improvisations 1979/Language Music (Arista A2L 8602, 1978/1979), and Solo (London) 1988 (Impetus Records IMP LP 18818, 1988).
Those that feature his compositions performed by him and/or others in small combinations from duos to quartets: Three Compositions of New Jazz (Delmark DS&endash;415, 1968), with Leo Smith and Leroy Jenkins; Duets 1976 (Arista AL-4101, 1976),with pianist Muhal Richard Abrams; New York, Fall 1974 (Arista 4023), with trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, bassist Dave Holland, percussionist Jerome Cooper; saxophonists Oliver Lake, Julius Hemphill, and Hamiett Bluiett; synthesist Richard Teitelbaum; and violinist Leroy Jenkins; Composition 98 (hat Art CD 6062, 1981), with trumpeter Hugh Ragin, trombonist Ray Anderson, and pianist Marilyn Crispell; and Four Compositions (Quartet) 1983 (Black Saint 0066), with trombonist George Lewis, bassist John Lindberg, and percussionist Gerry Hemingway.
Those that feature more extensive and developed compositional gestures, for large ensembles, are well represented by Creative Music Orchestra (Ring 01024/5/6, 1972); Creative Orchestra Music 1976 (Arista 4080); For Four Orchestras (Arista A3L 8900, 1978); Composition 96 (Leo 169, 1981); and Eugene (1989) (Black Saint BS 120137-2, 1991), with my Northwest Creative Orchestra.
For his more recent recordings, including the opera Trillum R, see http://www.wesleyan.edu/music/braxton.