During a radio interview between acts at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, a famous singer recently said she could not understand why audiences were so reluctant to listen to new music, given that they were more than ready to attend sporting events whose outcome was uncertain. It was a daft analogy. Having spent most of the last century writing music few people were expected to understand, much less enjoy, the high priests of music were now portrayed as innocent victims of the public's lack of imagination. If they don't know in advance whether Nadal or Federer is going to win, but still love Wimbledon, why don't they enjoy it when an enraged percussionist plays a series of brutal, fragmented chords on his electric marimba? What's wrong with them?
The reason the sports analogy fails is because when Spain plays Germany, everyone knows that the game will be played with one ball, not eight; and that the final score will be 1-0 or 3-2 or even 8-1 - but definitely not 1,600,758 to Arf-Arf the Chalet Ate My Banana. The public may not know in advance what the score will be, but it at least understands the rules of the game.
I have to say that Queenan is almost certainly right here. I grew up in St. Louis when Leonard Slatkin was the director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, and Slatkin enjoyed putting a smattering of work by new composers (or at least 20th Century composers) in many of his programs. They ranged from the unmemorable to the truly horrific. This was not because they offended my bourgeois sensibilities (as the preeners would always have it,) but because they offended my sense of beauty and every other standard by which I could discern "good" music.
Of course, these new academic composers are not interested in "good" music. They are interested in force feeding people steaming piles of crapola and brainwashing people into smiling and saying that they like it. This proves they are real "artists", you see, who aren't tied down by "the man" to things like melody and harmony.
What silly nonsense.
Queenan continues:
In March I saw Harrison Birtwistle's new opera, The Minotaur, at Covent Garden. I entered the concert hall with the same excitement I always have: prepared to be blown out of the room. This did not happen. The Minotaur, Frankenstein with a tauromatic twist, is harsh and ugly and monotonous and generically apocalyptic. Birtwistleites might dismiss me as a Luddite who despises new music, but the truth is, I find nothing new in The Minotaur's dreary, brutish score; it's the same funereal caterwauling that bourgeoisie-loathing composers have been churning out since the 1930s. To me, there is little difference between Birtwistle, now in his 70s, and Eric Clapton, now in his 60s. These are old men doing the same music in their dotage that they used to do as kids.
Earlier this year, I attended a concert at Carnegie Hall by the National Symphony under the direction of Leonard Slatkin. Slatkin is a canny, industrious conductor and a champion of American music. His philosophy seems to be that if Americans do not support living composers, American composers will cease to exist - though if the best America can do is John Corigliano and Philip Glass and the dozens of academics who give each other awards for music nobody likes, this might not be such a bad thing. Slatkin's programme consisted of three gimmicky pieces: Liszt's flamboyant Second Piano Concert, Ravel's everything-but-the-kitchen-sink orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition; and an ambitious new work by a young American named Mason Bates. This last piece, entitled Liquid Interface, examined "the phenomenon of water in its variety of forms", something Ravel and Mussorgsky never got around to. It featured wind machines and bongos and an electric drum pad and a laptop and a gigantic orchestra. It was bloated but thoroughly harmless, and the audience responded warmly; nothing thrills a classical music crowd more than a new piece of music that doesn't make them physically ill. But the concert underscored the problem in including new work on the same programme as the old chestnuts: it is not just asking striplings to compete with titans; it is asking obscure, academically trained liquid interfacers to compete with titans at the top of their game. As the saying goes: you don't send a boy to do Franz Liszt's job.
That Queenan can still fork over the money to purchase tickets for such "events" says alot about his dedication to the art form. It also speaks to a reservoir of goodwill I have largely lost. Last fall I saw a program at the Minnesota Orchestra, which contained a modern piece built largely upon percussion instruments. It was by turns dull and grating, and, most gallingly, totally out of character with the rest of the program. [Adding: My wife informs me the piece was "Haunted Landscape" by George Crumb.] It was as if concert goers were required to do "penance" for the sin of liking music that is beautiful. It is an attitude I'm beginning to resent. I don't need to listen to atonal discordant noise...and that isn't what I pay money to hear. To be forced to listen to it so someone can prove what an ideological bad-ass they are just makes it worse.
I once saw a program in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Like a lot of small city orchestras, this program was designed more to suit the sensibilities of the listeners than anything else. It was the furthest thing from "adventurous" you would be liable to find...with one exception. Along with the old classical war horses they also played selections by the composer Raymond Scott, known best for his song "Powerhouse" which was a staple of Warner Brothers cartoons (usually scenes with assembly lines in them.) It was fascinating to hear 20th century music, some of which I knew in a different context, that displayed such energy...and yet was completely devoid of pretension. It wasn't that the music didn't have an ideological dimension ("Powerhouse" obviously does the same way Chaplin's film Modern Times does), but Scott doesn't preen. The subject matter is sociological, not autobiographical. It says "Look at the world we live in," rather than "Am I bugging you?"
It is a shame becuase I would love to hear something both new and beautiful. I certainly will not stand for being told its wrong for me to want both.
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