Week 8: No Class Meeting November 9 - See Below for the Listening Activity to Complete During Class Time

For this class time, we will be listening to a piece by the contemporary composer, George Lewis, entitled "The Will to Adorn." Lewis is one of the most important living composers. He specializes in experimental and computer music and invented a music composition platform called Voyager that has revolutionized computer music. He currently teaches at Columbia University. He was also a founder of the Black avant-garde music collective, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Lewis adopted the title for the piece from a 1934 essay by Zora Neale Hurston. In his notes for the CD of "The Will to Adorn," Lewis notes that he was responding to Hurston's idea of adornment as a way to think about Black expressivity. He writes: "What I'm interested in is adornment as a compositional attitude or method – for example, Hurston’s notion of 'decorating a decoration,' which is a recursive move."

For our class-time listening activity:

1. Begin by reading background on George Lewis and "The Will to Adorn."
2. Listen for the first time to "The Will to Adorn." Have a piece of paper or document open. Jot down the adjectives that come to mind as you listen. If you can, try to draw what you hear.
3. Listen to "The Will to Adorn" for a second time.
4. This time, try to pay attention to the moments when the ornament builds and becomes layered - ornamenting the ornament - in the "recursive" mode that Lewis described. Using the Bandcamp recording, note down the time (minutes: seconds) when the ornament is particularly layered.
5. In other discussions of "The Will to Adorn," Lewis has written that this piece also “valorizes instability, and even breakdown.” As you listen for the second time (or third), note down the times (minute:second) when the ornament seems to become unstable or breaks down. Listening again to these sections, try to also come up with words or visual representations for what you hear.
6. Upload your Word document or a photo of your hand-written notes to Moodle. 

Use this link to listen to George Lewis's "The Will to Adorn"