The tyranny and folly of abstraction - an open letter to the Cadets de

[perc2100]

I think your narrow-mindedness makes you sound silly. What I got out of your post:

"Blah blah blah Im in love with REAL drum corps blah blah blah WGI is ruining drum corps blah blah blah please make shows like you did in the 80s Blah blah blah."

This is stupid. Everything evolves. Keep an open mind and give it a fair chance or be left behind. They haven't unveiled any drill or anything, I think you're jumping the gun.

You forgot to use the term "dinosaur," or at least the phrase "get off my lawn"

But, yeah, everything is spot on. Kinda glad I didn't read much beyond the first couple sentences of goofy ranting

[perc2100]

holly molly

maybe we should let the DESIGN hit the field before we start drawing conclusions...

Or maybe at least wait for the corps to have auditions first. Even even one camp?

[perc2100]

One thing I've learned about drum corps is that, most times, arrangers get the source material right and it's usually wise for me to reserve judgement until I see the product on the field.

Another thing I've learned is that the production may not be the same as my expectations. Usually, with time, that ends up being a good thing.

I agree. Talking to some DCI Champion arrangers, and reading stuff some have published, it's fascinating the amount of research that goes on.

For example, when SCV did Bartok String Quartet No. 4 in 2000, the percussion music designers listened to a bunch of different recordings. In one, they realized the string quartet interpreted grace notes in the unusual manner as 16th notes (grace notes in a fastish eighth note melodic rhythm). The arrangers ran with that, as it opened a ton of possibilities with keyboard and battery writing. The arrangers said they heard this interpretation on just that one recording, but found it gave the phrase an aggressive, driving "personality" that they felt fit the needs of the drum corps production.

Sometimes arrangements or performance might not be what I was expecting, but far more often than not the arrangers (especially the best of them) nail it. Given the way the activity works, and the way productions take several months to gel, cultivate, etc. (i.e. constant tweaking), I think it's almost unwise to judge a production before mid/late July!

[perc2100]

This show is gonna SUCK!

No.

This show DOES suck!

[Cappybara]

I respect your opinions on here and I hope you know that, but I do have a question.

Why do you feel that he is "unfairly blaming" WGI for the evolution of modern DCI?

I ask only because there are many who DO see the evolution of modern DCI stemming from WGI influences, so I wouldn't go so far as characterize it as "unfairly blaming". There has been conversation and debate here that leads to the possibility that that assertion has merit. We've all talked about it a little bit. I don't recall seeing your position on this topic.

I know that you enjoy certain shows and claim to enjoy certain corps, and I see that your enjoyment skews to very current shows, but it's ok to recognize something when it happens and talk about it in my book. I don't think we should just deny calling a spade a spade about this.

Mostly I'm trying to be in learning mode, but I was curious.

Sorry I was tired and worded that wrong. WGI has no doubt influenced DCI (hell, look at all the WGI judges) but they are not the ONLY influence. High school shows and just the natural progression of technology/entertainment plays a part in the changes made to DCI.

BUT back to what I was trying to say with my poorly worded response was that I think that the OP is unfairly treating the CHANGES that he attributes to WGI as a bad thing.

[tesmusic]

"The tyranny and folly of abstraction - an open letter to the Cadets design team"

Bravo on a brilliant choice of music for next year in Shostakovich’s 10^th symphony! Truly inspiring choice. With the right choice of concept, this could be a championship caliber program. And bravo for (I think) trying to tell the story without spelling it out through clumsy narration.

I have serious reservations about the choice of concept, and the tyrannical reign of WGI "inspired" abstractions and design in recent years of DCI.

In sum - The concept should arise from the music if the show will work for judges and audiences.

As described on the YEA website, the initial concept for this music is the number 10, or X. So the Cadets are considering sections in multiples of 10, and other permutations of the number as the core of the show concept.

When I read the Cadets' choice of music, I cheered. But when I read the concept, I cringed.

The number of a symphony, or most any piece of classical music, is arbitrary, just like an opus number, and has no connection with the music at all. It follows that this "X" show concept itself is arbitrary.

I’ve not yet heard of a more abstract, more arbitrary, and less connected to the music show concept since I began following DCI in the early 80s.

Imagine making the theme of a show featuring Copland’s 3rd symphony the number three. Nine snares, three quads, (or maybe quads with one drum removed), 27 guard members, and drill written featuring blocks of three, with the field divided into thirds, and a double Z-pull, I mean, 3-pull, resolving into the numbers 1, 2, and 3 to correspond to the rising opening G - C - G phrase of the "Fanfare for the Common Man" theme in movement 4. etc. Or Appalachian Spring’s show concept being based on whatever the heck the opus number is.

I thought spelling it out with narration could be bad. But now we're counting it out for the audience?

“Ten” is a meaningless number: meaningless to Shostakovich, meaningless in terms of the music, and will be meaningless to the audience and the judges. Thinking of sections of the corps in multiples of ten, for example, is a gesture reaching for a concept, but not itself a concept. It’s confusing actually. “10” isn’t a story or a concept. It’s a Bo Derek movie and Pearl Jam album and a volume setting on a guitar amp that’s one notch too low for Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel.

Why such a desperate reach into meaningless abstraction?

The alternative: The music itself is so profoundly full of narrative, emotion, and meaning, why muddle it with abstraction and arbitrary "concepts"?

In fact, choosing "X" to be the initial idea of what this show is "about" might be unwittingly revelatory of why the concept as such cannot succeed and become art, like all of the most successful Cadets shows actually did become by season's end. "X" is not a Roman numeral. It's an empty variable, and it will make Shostakovich's heart-wrenchingly, furious music become all sound and fury, but ultimately signifying nothing.

Instead of "X", tell a story.

Tell a story, like Shostakovich was doing with his symphony. Do it with the emotion of Dudamel and the SBYO, since they are mentioned on your website. They’re not playing “ten”, but they’re channeling the oppression, fury, fear, tragedy, and courage of Shostakovich, who was telling the story of the Soviet people living (and millions dying, and many millions more, freezing and starving in the Gulag) under Stalin’s totalitarian rule.

Ultimately, Shostakovich is a human being and artist trying to tell the truth in a regime full of lies, terror, fear, and brutal oppression.

Want inspiration for this show? Read “The Gulag Archipelago”. Read Shostakovich’s biographies. Read Vaclav Havel. There’s SO much emotional and historical content to work into a stunningly true and innovative show concept. Sure, abstraction is possible to tell this story - visual forms are most always abstractions - but like George Zingali was able to accomplish, that abstraction reveals narrative.

What’s the true show concept that this music is begging to have explored by The Cadets?

I think of drab grey oppressive Soviet ‘colors’ vs. bright individualistic colors of expressive freedom. I think of harsh shapes and angles vs. freeform curvilinear shapes. I think of the battery as a military force (like in his Leningrad symphony, with the incessant snare representing the Nazi army besieging the city), and the many solo voices in the symphonies versus the merciless and faceless collective state.

I think of ONE versus the faceless COLLECTIVE. Solo versus oppressive tutti. That one versus many motif is found throughout Shostakovich’s music, and is all over the 10^th symphony. It is, in fact, the story of the man’s life, the life of an artistic genius, versus the arbitrary whims of Stalin and his totalitarian state.

In the symphony, I hear and imagine:

1. individual versus the collective

2. freedom versus totalitarianism

3. truth versus distortion

4. emotion versus oppression

5. expression versus abstraction

These are all abstract concepts that make little sense if ungrounded in the emotion of the music, but when a drill, or choreography, is written to narrate these oppositions, as in a ballet, great art is created.

The narrative in this symphony is also absolutely relevant today, and would resonate with the judges, and any audience – without having to spell it out for everyone through narration. If Shostakovich did what he did without narration, the Cadets can too.

Right now, people in Ukraine, the Baltic States, and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, are protesting against and fighting the very real forces that threaten their precarious and extremely hard-won freedom. The Russian military continues to invade Ukraine. Russians themselves are protesting the autocratic state, and journalists are facing prison, and even assassination, for criticizing the regime. Thousands have died this year in Ukraine defending themselves against the same brutal oppression that people in the Soviet Bloc suffered from during Shostakovich’s lifetime.

The summer of 2014, the Cadets tried to communicate with freedom means through the voice of Lincoln and other leaders. It was "American Politics" on parade.

If you do it right, next year’s show can much more powerfully, and artistically, communicate what freedom is, and what threatens freedom, than any propaganda-tainted wartime composition Copland wrote.

Shostakovich was the opposite of propaganda. Shostakovich communicated “The Power of the Powerless” (to quote Vaclav Havel’s famous essay) so much more powerfully than anyone I can think of.

What did Havel advocate as an antidote to oppression? "Living in Truth"

How amazing this show concept and show can be if you stay true to Shostakovich’s music.

Why slather meaningless WGI abstraction onto Shostakovich’s genius? Why not tell the story Shostakovich was telling with his music in a way no one has done before?

When concept trumps narrative, when abstraction trumps emotion, you lose an audience, you eviscerate a masterpiece in the process, and you doom a show to suffer from an inarticulate concept that ultimately makes no sense, and ultimately, will suffer on the scoring sheets no matter how well executed.

Trust the music. Trust the story Shostakovich tells.

Drum corps is about music. Visuals must draw inspiration and communicate the meaning of the music at all times, rather than an abstraction like "X" grafted onto the music.

Tell a story and give visual voice to the music, and this could be a show for the ages.

HNSAB.

To quote the high school principal in Billy Madison:

What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

[WGI spells wedgie]

Tough crowd, but that's expected. Insults before inquiry is par for the course with most posters.

The point was to offer feedback BEFORE any major design decisions were made. I've seen this - and other - corps get so far into a concept there's no escaping it, and the show suffers for it, which ultimately it means the members are limited by it, which I always hate to see.

Show concepts can be so arbitrary and so abstract they obscure the emotional and narrative content of the music.

This concept for the Shostakovich show appears to be exactly that, which is a problem. The Cadets will doubtless have the personnel, and surely have the music, to win gold. What has hampered them more than anything else, more often than not in the last 15 years, has been an uneven and sometimes slapdash approach to design.

The Blue Devils more than anyone else in the last decade have developed show designs that reveal meaning and display an aesthetic unity that the judges have rewarded well.

I cited WGI because it is a visually driven medium. DCI design is most effective when the visual reveals the narrative of the music, even if doing so abstractly.

I cannot recall in 30 years of following DCI, though, when a show concept was based on a number of a piece of music. Does that mean this concept is innovative, or just missing the point? The "X" concept is just so arbitrary and abstract it seems to declare from the outset that the concept will have little to do with the music. Concept for concept's sake.

It would be like PR featuring a show of the music to Spartacus, but instead of calling it "Spartacus" and basing the visual on the narrative, they title the show "8", have a drumlins of 8 snares, etc., because the score was the 8th film score composed by Alex North.

[xandandl]

Wedgie,

Having read the thread throughour, your energetic response is being received by many as somewhere between Charlie Brown idealism and a full blown pre-season panic attack.

You assert your opinions with much confidence, some clarity, and definite bias. But no where have you presented for those who read the thread what credentials you bear or what substantive history bolsters your opinions. In grey areas, you leave us little than your own assertiveness of why your perception should be considered either by us or by Allentown.

No ill will here. I for one know too well and personally the foibles of the present CEO, but it is a unit with whom I have had a long, memorable multi-decade connection. Please give a greater horizon to your choices otherwise they come off at times as rantings and tantrums rather than truth. Thank you for the time you have put to this.

By the way, members and alumni use the signature "F(or) HNSAB", a tradition respectfully honored by usually not being used by spectators.

[Cappybara]

Tough crowd, but that's expected. Insults before inquiry is par for the course with most posters.

The point was to offer feedback BEFORE any major design decisions were made. I've seen this - and other - corps get so far into a concept there's no escaping it, and the show suffers for it, which ultimately it means the members are limited by it, which I always hate to see.

Show concepts can be so arbitrary and so abstract they obscure the emotional and narrative content of the music.

This concept for the Shostakovich show appears to be exactly that, which is a problem. The Cadets will doubtless have the personnel, and surely have the music, to win gold. What has hampered them more than anything else, more often than not in the last 15 years, has been an uneven and sometimes slapdash approach to design.

The Blue Devils more than anyone else in the last decade have developed show designs that reveal meaning and display an aesthetic unity that the judges have rewarded well.

I cited WGI because it is a visually driven medium. DCI design is most effective when the visual reveals the narrative of the music, even if doing so abstractly.

I cannot recall in 30 years of following DCI, though, when a show concept was based on a number of a piece of music. Does that mean this concept is innovative, or just missing the point? The "X" concept is just so arbitrary and abstract it seems to declare from the outset that the concept will have little to do with the music. Concept for concept's sake.

It would be like PR featuring a show of the music to Spartacus, but instead of calling it "Spartacus" and basing the visual on the narrative, they title the show "8", have a drumlins of 8 snares, etc., because the score was the 8th film score composed by Alex North.

"Show concepts can be so arbitrary and so abstract they obscure the emotional and narrative content of the music."

You start off with this vague statement but fail to explain WHY or HOW it obscures the emotional and narrative content of the music. Because currently, I'm clueless as to what you mean by that statement.

Also what's wrong with a corps wanting to play certain music and needing to tie it together in some way or another? It is analogous to a show being titled Bernstein because the corps only plays Bernstein pieces. Here the corps uses Shostakovich's 10th and decide to call it X.

I fail to see how this is different than say, 2011 where the show is called Between Angels and Demons and the corps literally dresses up as Angels and Demons. In this case, the Cadets are just performing in 10s.

[xandandl]

In the 40 plus years of DCI, "show concepts" are an add-on tradition more similar to something marching bands in MBA (forerunner of BOA) or the indoor WGI would do.

Cavies' Circus Show or Madison's Wizard of OZ shows were forerunners certainly. But look at SCV and most in early DCI history, it was just music and drill, not stories/philosophical debates/and other impositions.