Julius Eastman’s Stay On It
This February, the Daily Classical Music Post celebrates Black composers and musicians whose music has been suppressed and ignored. All of these musicians should be added to the music history and music theory curriculum.
Julius Eastman (1940–1990) brilliantly combined minimalism with pop music. He studied at Ithaca College before transferring to Curtis. He originally was a pianist but switched to composition while at Curtis. He also was an extraordinarily talented singer; here’s a link to him singing Peter Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King: https://youtu.be/JuU9WqnrKOs.
Much of Eastman’s music explores both his Black and his gay identity. He increasingly felt that he was not given the opportunities that he should have been given, and he turned to alcohol and drugs. He died homeless, broken, and alone, and his death was not even remarked upon until eight months after he died. Lukas Foss said, “He had an unbelievable voice, and so much talent he didn’t know what to do with it. He didn’t realize what a gift he had.” When he began his downward spiral, a good deal of his scores were confiscated by the local sheriff’s office. In addition, many of his scores are sketchy at best, so unless someone is around now who participated in a performance during Eastman’s lifetime and is able to help reconstruct the works, they are to all intents and purposes lost.
Of his music, Eastman once said, “These pieces are an attempt to make organic music. That is to say, the third part of any part has to contain all the information of the first two parts, and then go on from there. Therefore, unlike Romantic music and Classical music in which you have contrasting sections, these pieces’ sections contain all the information of previous sections, or else the information is taken out at a gradual and logical rate.”
Stay On It, composed in 1973 for voice and various instruments, is, as described by Kyle Gann, “one of the first pieces to introduce pop tonal progressions in an art context.” Alex Ross says, Stay On It “begins with a syncopated, relentlessly repeated riff and a falsetto cry of ‘Stay on it, stay on it.’ There’s a hint of disco in the festive, propulsive sound. But more dissonant, unruly material intrudes, and several times the piece dissolves into beatless anarchy.” The last four minutes or so are just piano, and this is an incredibly powerful way to end the piece. If you are a fan of minimalism, as I am, you will love this piece. If you aren’t a fan, maybe this will make you one!
My classical music post for today is Julius Eastman’s Stay On It.
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