{"id":792,"date":"2020-06-30T23:59:18","date_gmt":"2020-06-30T23:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/imaginedtheatres.com\/?post_type=theatre&p=792"},"modified":"2020-06-30T20:15:55","modified_gmt":"2020-06-30T20:15:55","slug":"500-icons","status":"publish","type":"theatre","link":"https:\/\/www.imaginedtheatres.com\/500-icons\/","title":{"rendered":"500 Icons"},"content":{"rendered":"

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for any number of performers<\/div>\n
duration and tempo variable<\/div>\n

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Instructions to the performer(s)<\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n

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\u2013 At any tempo, recite the names of 500 20th and 21st century musicians.<\/div>\n
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\u2013 The names may be free-associated and spoken in any order, but must not be memorized.<\/div>\n
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\u2013 Do not recite the names from a sheet of paper. Avoid risk-averting aide-memoires<\/em> (projected text, cue cards, mnemonic memorization, audio piped into an in-ear monitor, etc.). The names should be familiar to you and embody music you know and love.<\/div>\n
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\u2013 Amplification is optional; speak (and\/or sing) so your audience can hear you. Do a dry recitation only if it suits you; if the names (and\/or concomitant associations) are beautiful to you, make them beautiful.<\/div>\n
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\u2013 Do not preface the performance with any comments or introductory notes. Just go. Optionally you may conclude your performance by stating \u201c500 Icons. Thank you.\u201d<\/div>\n
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\u2013 To count exactly to 500, you may enlist an assistant to give a discreet signal, or finger some pebbles (or beads) stashed in your pocket or devise any other furtive method to keep count cardinally. This is optional.<\/div>\n
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Notes 2006<\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n

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Apart from indicating areas of interest, bias, expertise, adoration, and ignorance, 500 Icons<\/em> offers a way for musicians to perform a musical autobiography, at once outlining, seeking, and improvising a musical genealogy or at least conveying the fecundity of 20th and 21st century music. A composition for musicians and others who love and know music, I hope the allusions and associations as well as the contrast of known and unknown names in 500 Icons<\/em> will percolate in the ears of listeners and performers.<\/div>\n
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Postscript 2008<\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n

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I did not know of Robert Ashley\u2019s tape piece In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women<\/em> when I composed 500 Icons<\/em>, though in this work, the words are the music. 500 Icons <\/em>is a close cousin carrying a debt to contemporary poets who employ inventories in their work, notably Vanessa Place, Kenneth Goldsmith, and Robert Fitterman as well as John Barton Wolgamot, and of course, the inclusion of evocative catalogues from the assorted lists (genealogies, laws, inventories, Temple dimensions, etc.) that permeate the Bible to various chapters harbored in Moby Dick<\/em> (\u201cCetology,\u201d \u201cthe Grand Armada,\u201d \u201cMeasurement of the Whale\u2019s Skeleton\u201d).<\/div>\n
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I believe 500 Icons<\/em> to be most effective performed solo, however the score reads \u201cfor any number of performers\u201d in case a group manages to realize the piece without devolving into competitive, name-dropping recitation, comical antiphonies, or other theatrical actions that defer attention from the names. Limiting names to 20th and 21st century musicians (composers, performers, improvisors, etc., I deliberately did not provide a definition) is a rhetorical tactic aimed at excavating the recent past; a performer who cannot name 500 Icons (or at least makes the attempt) is not likely to (be mature enough to) perform the piece anyway.<\/div>\n
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Documented performances by a single performer, especially over the course of several decades, of 500 Icons<\/em> might prove useful to scholars as well. Accidental repetitions, mispronunciations, and flat-out failure by falling short of naming 500 Icons<\/em> is not encouraged yet should be accepted\u2014and in retrospect, welcomed by the performer.<\/div>\n

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Postscript 2020<\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n

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A decade down, this piece has opened unexpected treasure. Many names named in my own performances have since died, several of them during the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020. Written while the internet was becoming a stupefying catalog, 500 Icons <\/em>may eventually harken back to a forgotten form of perception.<\/div>\n
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