Brown, Earle (Appleton)

(b Lunenburg, MA, 26 Dec 1926). American composer. A leading representative of the New York School established in the early 1950s in association with Cage, Feldman, Tudor and Christian Wolff, he pioneered such concepts as graphic notation, time-notation and open form.

1. Life.

Brown's early musical background was in jazz. Intent on an aeronautical career, he studied engineering and mathematics at Northeastern University (1944–5) before joining the Army Air Corps. Subsequently, he attended the Schillinger School of Music, Boston (1946–50), and studied the trumpet and composition privately. His encounter with the work of Jackson Pollock and Alexander Calder was particularly influential to his developing musical aesthetic. After moving to Denver (1950–52), he painted, taught the Schillinger method and explored various compositional techniques. At Cage’s invitation, he travelled to New York to work on the Project for Music for Magnetic Tape, the results of which included Octet I (1952–3). This studio experience proved valuable in his later roles as an editor and recording engineer for Capitol Records (1955–60) and as the director of artists and repertoire, and producer for Mainstream-Time Records’ ‘Contemporary Sound’ series (1960–73).

Through Cage and Tudor, Brown was brought to the attention of the European avant garde. Boulez was helpful in establishing contacts with publishers, performers and orchestras; later a strong relationship developed with Maderna. Beginning in 1956, Brown visited Europe on numerous occasions: he lectured at Darmstadt (notably in 1964–5) and received several commissions, including those for Penthatis (Domaine Musical, 1957–8), Available Forms I (City of Darmstadt, 1961) and Available Forms II (Rome Radio Orchestra, 1962). His notational and structural innovations were widely copied; as Feldman noted: ‘I think he’s been ripped off more than any of us, in an overt way’ (1989). Later European distinctions included appointments as composer-in-residence with the Künstler Programm, West Berlin (1970–71), and the Rotterdam PO (1974), visiting professor at the Basle Conservatory (1974–5) and guest conductor with the Cologne RSO (1963–5) and Saarbrücken RSO (1981).

Brown also received recognition in America. He held the W. Alton Jones chair of composition and was composer-in-residence at the Peabody Conservatory, Baltimore (1968–73), where he was awarded an honorary DMus in 1970. His visiting or guest appointments included positions at SUNY, Buffalo (1975), the California Institute of the Arts (1973–83), Yale University (1980–81) and the Aspen and Tanglewood music festivals (each on several occasions). In addition, he served as director of the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University and programming director of the Fromm Weeks of New Music at Aspen, Colorado (1985–90). Among his numerous honours are a Guggenheim Fellowship (1965–6), an award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1972), a commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation (Cross Sections and Color Fields, 1972–5), the Brandeis University Creative Arts Award (1977), a Letter of Distinction from the AMC (1996) and the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Art's John Cage Award for Music (1998).

2. Works.

Many commentators have inaccurately categorized Brown’s work as chance music. With the arguable exception of a small number of graphically notated pieces from the 1950s (most famously December 1952 from Folio [I]; see illustration), however, Brown’s structures have consistently emphasized choice rather than chance. While the majority of his compositions are aleatory to some degree, they are also consistent in evincing a distinctly un-Cagean level of subjective involvement. Most of his scores allow for what he has termed ‘creative ambiguity’, which enables the performers to engage in the creative process, but within parameters (and using material) clearly defined by the composer. His time-notation, first employed in the 1950s (as in Music for Cello and Piano, 1954–5), specifies pitch and dynamics precisely but leaves durations relatively undefined, suggested through timings and visual note lengths in the score. Other contemporaneous pieces, including Twenty-Five Pages (1953) allow for additional flexibilities; as Brown has explained, ‘each page may be performed either side up [and] events within each two-line system may be read as either treble or bass clef’.

Brown’s open forms, influenced by Calder’s mobiles, are typified by Available Forms I (1961). In this work, each of the score’s six unbound pages specifies four or five events. The conductor, who has general control over dynamics and velocity, begins with any event on any page and, in almost a painterly fashion, creates from the available materials an individually shaped version of the work. Further permutations of basic principles occur in Brown’s largest compositions, such as Available Forms II (1962) and Event: Synergy II (1967–8), in which two conductors collaborate to create the sonic mix. Calder Piece (1963–6) uniquely employs a constantly changing mobile (especially made by Calder) as both a performance object and a structural point of reference.

Brown’s later music has tended towards other kinds of ‘creative ambiguity’. In Centering (1973), Windsor Jambs (1980) and Tracking Pierrot (1992), the overall shape of each work is fixed, while elements within each structure remain open. Centering, for example, contains three open-form areas, two of which are accompanied cadenzas. In the fully notated Summer Suite ’95, on the other hand, Brown employed computer technology to transcribe his own performances of graphed sketches, realizing an early desire to ‘get the time of composing closer to the time of performing’. Described as ‘the jazziest of my piano pieces’, the work shows Brown both returning to his musical roots and opening up new directions for his music.

WORKS

published unless otherwise stated

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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GroveA (W. Bland/J. Wierzbicki) [incl. further bibliography]

J. Cage: Silence (Middletown, CT, 1961, 2/1966), 37–8, 85

E. Brown: ‘Notation und Ausführung neuer Musik’, Notation neuer Musik: Darmstadt 1964, DBNM, ix (1965), 64–86; Eng. trans. in MQ, lxxii (1986), 180–201

E. Brown: DBNM, x (1966); Fr. trans. as ‘Sur la forme’, Musique en jeu, 3 (1971), 29–44

G. Chase, ed.: The American Composer Speaks (Baton Rouge, LA, 1966)

H. Russcol: The Liberation of Sound (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1972), 143–8

M. Nyman: Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (London, 1974, 2/1999)

D. and B. Rosenberg: ‘Earle Brown’, The Music Makers (New York, 1979), 79–91

D. Bailey: Musical Improvisation (New York, 1980), 76–88

P. Gena: ‘Freedom in Experimental Music: the New York Revolution’, Tri-Quarterly, no.52 (1981), 223–43

D. Ashton: ‘Earle Brown's Continuum’, Arts Magazine, lvi/5 (1982), 68–9

R. Zierolf: Indeterminacy in Musical Form (diss., U. of Cincinnati, 1983)

P.L. Quist: Indeterminate Form in the Work of Earle Brown (diss., Peabody Institute, Johns Hopkins U., 1984)

K. Potter: ‘Earle Brown in Context’, MT, cxxvii (1986), 679–83

G. Rotter: ‘Interview mit dem Komponisten Earle Brown’, Zeitschrift für Musikpedagogik, xi/36 (1986), 3–10

R. Dufallo: ‘Earle Brown’, Trackings (New York, 1989), 103–12

M. Feldman: ‘Captain Cook’s First Voyage’, Cum Notis Variorum, no.131 (1989), 7–12 [interview]

P.-A. Castanet, ed.: ‘Musique et aleatoire(s)’, Les Cahiers du CIREM, xviii–xix (Rouen, 1990–91)

D.B. Denton: The Composition as Aesthetic Polemic: ‘December 1952’ by Earle Brown (diss., U. of Iowa, 1992)

J. Holzaepfel: David Tudor and the Performance of American Experimental Music, 1950–1959 (diss., CUNY, 1994)

J.P. Welsh: ‘Open Form and Earle Brown’s Modules I and II (1967)’, PNM, xxxii/1 (1994), 254–90

O. Delaigue: ‘Earle Brown et la France’, Sillages Musicologiques: Hommages à Yves Gerard, ed. P. Blayard and R. Legrand (Paris, 1997), 289–308

D. Nicholls: ‘Getting Rid of the Glue: the Music of the New York School’, The New York Schools of Music and the Visual Arts, ed. S. Johnson (New York, 2000)

DAVID NICHOLLS