In 1990, New York-based composer John Zorn challenged himself to write one hundred tunes in one year’s time.
Each of the hundred tunes would touch on the Jewish musical tradition, and would follow some basic guidelines: a maximum number of staves; the use of certain musical scales… and the tunes would have to be playable by any small ensemble of instruments.
How could Zorn know, as he composed the Masada Songbook’s first short melody, that he was embarking on a project that would unfold over the next two decades of his life?
And how could Zorn know that fifteen years after beginning work, he’d receive a phone call from a stranger granting him $500,000 with no strings attached?
Read on and I’ll take you on a tour of Zorn’s prolific “Masada Books” project, from its humble 1990 origin to the present day.
Acoustic, Electric, Prolific, and Eclectic
The Masada Books now total over 600 tunes.
Songs from Zorn’s hand have now been arranged and adapted for rock power trio; all-female a capella ensembles; classical guitar; string trio; recital for classical violin and piano; accordion and avant-garde heavy metal; and unique ensembles much harder to describe.
Masada songbook tunes have been recorded by jazz notables like Pat Metheny; Uri Caine; and Medeski, Martin, and Wood.
The Masada project is one of the most kaleidoscopically creative music scenes happening in the present day: a flourishing solar system of stellar players, with Zorn’s vision as the sun. His ideas form the framework, the gravitational force that binds this diverse ecosystem of musicians together.
The Birth of a Musical Monster
“My initial plan was to write one hundred tunes in a year that touched upon the Jewish tradition, and that was an interesting challenge. It was really fun as a composer to come home and write something that could be finished sometimes in 10 minutes, sometimes in an hour, or sometimes an evening…
My initial idea was to write a hundred tunes. And then I ended up writing over two hundred for the first book, and then performed it countless times for years.” —John Zorn
After Zorn had written that first batch of two hundred tunes, he handpicked a jazz quartet called Masada to play them. Masada improvised live with these tunes all over the world for a decade.
But that was just the beginning. Zorn’s most productive period was still to come.
“After ten years of performing the first book, I thought ‘Maybe it’d be nice to write some more tunes.’ And I wrote three hundred more tunes.
When I started writing those it was ‘Let’s see if I can write a hundred songs in a month this time.’ I’ve been working on these scales and playing these tunes all this time. In the back of my head somewhere are lodged all kinds of new ideas. Let’s see if I can come up with a hundred tunes in a month instead of in a year.
So in the first month, I popped out a hundred tunes; the second month, another hundred; in the third month, a third hundred tunes. I had no idea that was going to happen.
These three hundred new songs formed the basis for Masada Songbook 2. Instead of touring and recording these compositions with the original Masada group, this time he enlisted a variety of other musicians to arrange and record the new material.
Jazz pianist Jamie Saft recorded a smoldering album of Masada tunes. Next came the Masada String Trio pouring the rich, dark melodies from violin, bass, and cello. For the third album, the violinist from Masada String Trio, Mark Feldman, returned with pianist Sylvie Courvoisier to record an album of Masada tunes arranged as classical recital pieces. UK-based Koby Israelite contributed an album of the tunes featuring accordion, a surprisingly awesome recorder solo (who knew?), and heavy metal guitar.
The floodgates had opened. Masada Book Two now spans twenty studio albums, and Zorn still isn’t done yet.
“…now there’s already a third book, so you never really know what’s going to happen next. At least in my life I don’t know. That’s one of the beautiful things. That’s what makes me want to celebrate the joy of life. There’s always a surprise and there’s always something inspiring and challenging around the corner.
If you just keep yourself involved and keep yourself focused and make sure that you’re not distracted by everything that’s around us, you can get a lot of work done.”
In total sum, fifty-four albums of Masada material have now been recorded, with more on the way.
In 2005, Zorn received a call from a stranger notifying him that he’d been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for his creative work. The MacArthur “genius” grant of $500,000 comes with no conditions on its use — so Zorn was free to use the money as desired to continue his creative work and fund his record label, Tzadik.
Zorn’s Work Ethic
I’m sure we’d all love to be as prolific as John Zorn. So what can we learn from Zorn’s copious body of work?
First, Zorn chose material that was personally meaningful to him. After composing a piece called Kristallnacht, he felt driven to contribute something creative and positive to Jewish culture.
Second, he structured his project very well. He adopted some creative constraints to focus and unify his efforts: the tunes must be short; the melodies must draw their notes from certain traditional musical scales; they must be playable by any small group of musicians. When undertaking a large project of any kind, it always helps to define some guiding principles like Zorn did.
Third, Zorn went through a long period of training and preparation. Yes, he wrote 300 tunes in 90 days. But he didn’t even begin work on the Masada Books until he’d already been recording albums of his compositions for a decade. He was already well-trained and experienced by that point, and then he spent another ten years improvising live with the traditional Jewish scales.
Fourth, Zorn enlists help from other musicians. The melodies Zorn wrote served as skeletons, but his collaborating musicians infuse the tunes with their own flesh and blood.
Zorn has repeatedly said in interviews that he doesn’t feel entirely responsible for the enormous project; he credits the musicians involved for much of it. He also seems to believe in a force larger than himself that lent assistance. Personally, I admire his humility, but I believe Zorn and the musicians who perform his work are indeed responsible for this brilliance. Their abilities and accomplishments are certainly extraordinary — but the decades of training and experience that they brought to these tunes account for that.
That brings us to the fifth and final component of Zorn’s artistic triumph: he guarded his time and energy. He devoted himself to this project for decades. He purposely insulated himself from distractions and made his apartment a fertile workspace.
This quote from Zorn bears repeating:
“If you just keep yourself involved and keep yourself focused and make sure that you’re not distracted by everything that’s around us, you can get a lot of work done.” —John Zorn
Interviews excerpted from: http://www.ktvu.com/news/entertainment/ktvucom-talks-to-saxophonist-john-zorn/nK3hy/
Photo of Masada courtesy of Checiàp