A second interview with composer, Dr. James P. Walsh

This interview continues where Walsh's last interview left off.  See below for other introductory information. Here Jimbo goes deeply into the later experiences that formed his ideas and paints some prtraits of some rather large musical figures that he has been around over the years.

Part 1- Starting Columbia and the tough undergraduate music program there at that time; loving the challenge of it; the shock of studies with Edward Lippman; Jacques Louis Monod; the influence of Paul Henry Lang on the faculty of the time and "preservation of standards"; Richard Taruskin; what the program entailed; problems with "band."

Part 2- Who is Jacques-Louis Monod?; Anti-semitism at Julliard?; Fixed "Do", moveable clefs and the advantages in score reading; music in the middle-ages, iso-rhythmic motets, and music where intellect was valued; rejection of comparative literature; how musical pieces are true compared to fiction which is false; truth and falsity in music; fake and real in Treme- depicting yourself; encounter with Pat Carpenter and form and analysis; organic unity, grund gestalt, and how the composer "thinks" the piece; Pat Carpenter's background; what the importance of Schoenberg was at Columbia, "The Musical Idea"; the growth of music history in the 20th century; Vienna in the early 20th century and delusional philosophies; the rise of St. Cecilia societies.

Part 3- Influence of music pedagogy on music practice; music architecture manuals; historical roadblocks caused by building permanent monuments to yourself; more on Pat Carpenter; How Schoenberg's music was disseminated despite unpopularity; the problem with style designators; organic unity as the way artists think; Pat Carpenter directing Walsh to Monod; changes in music atmosphere at Columbia through electronic music; The Malibu Dolphins and being back in the New York punk scene; Willie Bobo Shaw; Wayne Kramer; authentic standpoint; the Guild of Composers and real first exposure to Monod's music.

Part 4- Mario Davidovsky; Importance of performance of compositions to Walsh, Monod, Schoenberg; Art and money and religion; music for your 'tribe' and academic music; power of suggestion over the listeners appreciation of aesthetic experience; societal viewpoints on institutionally taught composers as opposed to self-taught; prize winning fugues from the Paris Conservatory; the fragmented schools of academic music; are Coherence Creating Scenarios a fiction?; hair-brained, crackpot, music theories; interest in why people don't like music; how Walsh became involved with Jacques-Louis Monod's singular text on (Schoenberg's ) music; perfect summary of the end of Western civilization; realizing the deep beauty behind Monod's analytical tome and the invented language to describe what was happening in the music- hypothetical octave, partitioning of the tritone and much, much more; evolution in music and why Monod believed that the musical idea as he understood it was such a development; generation of music from central idea; difference between music that is complex and music that is complicated; pre-compositional material; Jacques and "pro-compositional" material.

Part 5- What to do with all this information and experiences from training and Columbia experience- COMPOSE!; Ricard Strauss; derivation of  hyper regions from hyper-tonality and movements of the tone row; Pat Carpenter's observations on those discoveries, new problems and the re-insertion of feeling and emotion; conflicts of aims that arose at Columbia- Musicology or Composition; Walsh's approach to teaching composition and how that differs from Columbia; helping to realize students' wildest creative fantasies; difficulties that arise in teaching composition; what is the current language in music?; musical sleepwalkers and other types of musicians; reflections on Viennese music culture and comparisons with New Orleans music culture; how Walsh is working now; interest in techno and DJ's and what that suggests.