Everything about Daniel James Wolf totally explained
Daniel James Wolf (born
September 13,
1961 in
Upland, California) is an American composer of serious music and a
music scholar.
Wolf studied composition study with
Gordon Mumma,
Alvin Lucier, and
La Monte Young, as well as musical tunings with
Erv Wilson and
Douglas Leedy and ethnomusicology.
BA University of California Santa Cruz,
MA,
PhD,
Wesleyan University. Important contacts with
Lou Harrison,
John Cage,
Walter Zimmermann. Managing Editor of
Xenharmonikon, 1985-89. Based in Europe from 1989, he's known as a member of the "Material" group of composers, along with
Hauke Harder,
Markus Trunk.
Wolf's compositions apply an experimental approach to musical materials, with a special interest in
intonation, yet often display a surface that playfully - if accidentally - recalls historical music. Major works include
The White Canoe, an opera seria for hand puppets to the libretto by
Edward Gorey, six
string quartets,
Figure & Ground for string trio,
Field Study for vn, tb, ban, gui,
Decoherence for x orchestras of x players,
Twoity fl,pf, and a collection of Etudes in all equal temperments between 8 and 23 notes per octave.
Three distinct streams combine to form Wolf's oeuvre. Wolf makes sound installations, experimental concert works based on sound structures mostly free from historical associations, and experimental concert works based on reifying the tradition of European art music (or other world musics, particular Javanese gamelan) and then performing operations on its internal principles. The following remarks pertain to this last body of work.
Composer Wolf identifies with the experimental music tradition--especially its American West Coast manifestation-- spiritually, intellectually and personally. Nevertheless, in that portion of his work where his choice of musical materials and forms derive from common practice harmony and counterpoint, he might, to some, suggest a conservative neoclassicist. Where neoclassicism means pursuing classical ideals with novel sonic resources, Wolf's actually employs the reverse tactic -- he explores familiar classical or neoclassical materials with no a priori commitment to received ideals.
He jokingly calls his method "dysfunctional harmony." A metaphor might help explain his meaning. Imagine the principles of common practice music as carried by some genetic code subject to mutations. Either intuitively or methodically, Wolf mutates certain genes and produces harmony or counterpoint that systematically engages our historical understanding but still undermines our expectations. In the long run biological mutations either prove adaptive (and proliferate) or maladaptive (and disappear), but when the sport first appears, it holds only its strangeness, orthogonal to any world of value.
He has written extensively about
modern and
experimental music,
systematic musicology, and speculative
music theory.
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