Maximum Clarity and Other Writings on Music (review)

Early on in this magnificent collection of essays, editor Bob Gilmore quotes critic Mark Swed describing Ben Johnston as "probably our most subversive composer, a composer able to make both radical thinking and avant-garde techniques sound invariably gracious" (p. xi) This view is supported time and again throughout the forty-two essays Maximum Clarity contains, as Johnston takes thorny theoretical issues and explains them as though you were sitting in his living room, relaxing on a hot summer day. The depth and originality of his thought and writing make me wonder why he has remained in the shadows of new music, known only to those with an interest in microtonality. Many of Johnston's most important works are unavailable on recording, including Knocking Piece, the Chamber Symphony, and the first, third, and fifth string quartets. His work is little represented among scholarly literature: there is only one monograph, Heidi Von Gunden's The Music of Ben Johnston (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1986); a smattering of articles, most notably Randall Shinn's "Ben Johnston's Fourth String Quartet" (Perspectives of New Music 15, no. 2 [Spring– Summer 1977]: 145–73); and one full-length interview (in William Duckworth, Talking Music: Conversations with John Cage, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and Five Generations of American Experimental Composers [New York: Da Capo Press, 1999]). In some ways, Johnston remains a prophet in the wilderness, proclaiming a compelling aesthetic vision. Hopefully this collection will spark a reevaluation of his place in American musical history.

Bob Gilmore, author of the compelling Harry Partch: A Biography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), has returned to a unjustly neglected composer with his new book. His close association with Johnston is evident throughout the work as the essays it contains represent almost all of the composer's written output, from articles published in Perspectives of New Music to unpublished lectures and program annotations. Johnston clearly had input on the collection although Gilmore provided the final ordering and selection of writings. In light of this evidently good relationship between the two men, I found it striking that Maximum Clarity lacks a contemporary voice. Gilmore's few editorial comments are relegated to footnotes while Johnston's current views barely appear. The composer only wrote two new essays for this volume, "Quintet for Groups: A Reminiscence" and "A Notation System for Extended Just Intonation," and they represent the only two writings from the past ten years. As a result, Maximum Clarity exists as a voice from the past, not a vibrant commentary on the present state of music. I find this focus surprising since Johnston's aesthetic stance has long been toward a passionate engagement with contemporary culture. Adding to the lack of voice is the distance at which Gilmore keeps Johnston; we do not get to know the composer as a person. Gilmore supplies a short introduction articulating Johnston's theoretical and aesthetic framework and the influence of other composers on its development, but gives little in the way of biography, stating that Johnston did not want it, and he found it useful only as a framework in understanding the compositions. Instead, Gilmore constructed a fourteen-page chronology listing important moments and works in the composer's life. The chronology will certainly be a welcome beginning for future research, but left me wanting to know more about the man behind the ideas with which I was interacting.

Still, this is a small complaint about a welcome addition to our knowledge of music since 1945. Gilmore divides the writings into four sections, the first being "On Music Theory." Although this section does not contain a systematic explication of Johnston's compositional theory, it does provide some of the most refreshing musical thought from the century's midpoint. Johnston began composing as a neo-classicist, was swayed by serialism while in graduate school, and...