Composer Profile: Cooper Troxell

Cooper Troxell '11, a piano player of thirteen years (currently studying with Anna Polonsky at Vassar), is an independent major. His focus is in music composition and linguistics with the intent to:

"create a musical idiom that uses the forms and structures of natural language to communicate with an audience based on their native linguistic tendencies."

On his musical influences, Cooper recalls: "Like almost everyone else, I have to say that Stravinsky has had a huge influence on me. Although I had heard classical music before coming to college, I never really had a strong interest in listening to it until I listened to The Rite of Spring. After that, I became very interested in modern classical music, and although I still have a hard time fully appreciating music of the classical and baroque eras, I'm working on it. Besides the aforementioned, I would say my influences (or at least my current interests) are Ligeti, Boulez, and Berio, but since I still have a lot to learn, and have huge gaps in my knowledge of music, that will probably change."

On his piece Désordre 56k (for two violins, viola, cell, clarinet, French horn, bassoon and vibraphone), Troxell uses "quotations throughout as memes to convey a certain idea to the audience member.  They may or may not experience a narrative, which is entirely dependent on their own experiences with the source material.  Expect to hear things you've heard before."  I find this last thought incredibly interesting.  It seems to be a common goal in modern music to give the audience new experiences and new musical environments.  But here, Troxell hopes the audience will hear something familiar, which in itself, is unfamiliar in a contemporary piece.

"This piece has a couple of ideas behind it.  First of all, it comes as a result of my frustration with most people's feelings about atonal music - which ranges from indifference to complete hatred.  Because it seems to me that the classical tradition is becomingly increasingly irrelevant, I tried to come up with a solution that is relevant to our current zeitgeist - namely the current musical trend toward appropriation and mash-ups, as well as a love of irony.  Therefore, this piece is a bit of a jab at older people attempting to make all kinds of things hip for young people, such as the Bible re-written in already-outdated teenager-speak.  In this vein, I tried to create a sort of atonal music for young people, which heavily borrows quotations from older composers that may be familiar to them. Of course it's a ridiculous solution, but I feel that it is something that us youngsters can relate to.
     Another idea in there is the idea of nostalgia, and being part of such an old tradition.  I find it very strange to become part of a tradition that extends back for centuries, if not millenia.  So as I attempt to place myself into this vast heritage, I can't help but feel that on a personal level, what really seems old to me is the age of 56k modems, when the internet was like the Wild West, and Mac OS 8.0 would crash at least once per hour.  I find this rather amusing that my personal sense of the far past is so ridiculously lacking in perspective, so I attempted to actually use the sound of a 56k modem to evoke that sense in myself and others of my age, while hopefully imparting that sense of limited perspective to older audience members, who may even remember a time before the internet existed!  Of course this also connects to my attempt to re-establish atonal music for people who may already have certain negative ideas about it.  In creating a highly familiar, yet highly dissonant sound, my hope is that they will move past their preconceived ideas about it, and see why it can express things that tonal music simply cannot.

    All of this leads to a theme of representation and reference in my work, which is the method I am currently pursuing of creating a pseudo-linguistic style.  Because all of these elements - the quotations from established composers, the 56k modem, even the McDonald's jingle - are relatively well-known, the listener will respond to the material he or she does recognize, which will in turn trigger their emotional responses to such pieces, and perhaps the sensation of time or place - where they first heard it, the events in the lives at the time.  It is by connecting with these memories and sense-impressions in the listener that I hope to communicate something to them, although I am not sure what I am communicating, because it is entirely based on their own experiences.  And of course, most people won't recognize all of the melodies, which means that even on that level, no one will have the same experience."