Some time ago I wrote about how I started composing unexpectedly, and using tonal, neo-classical modes (just notes). I didn’t go into how I feel about normal new music, avante garde music, experimental music, contemporary classical, or whatever you might want to call it. We each have our own thoughts about these descriptors. Working over 30 years as a professional symphony and chamber musician, I’ve played at least three hundred works by living composers. While very few did I want to play more than once, it’s important to keep in mind that there are a billion ways to create music.
One of the many challenges as a working performer is the imperative to promote new works, even if we didn’t choose the pieces ourselves. Our job, in fact, is to represent each work in front of us as though we love it. The first part of the challenge for the orchestra is showing full mastery of what’s requested on the page: playing the page, sometimes with awkward runs of notes (aka licks) or new-ish techniques. Patterns and dialects emerge with each pass. Some pleasantly; others, not so much.
It used to be that new music meant experimental ways of organize the same 11 different notes. Whether diatonic or slightly more dissonant, the “experiment” was to dramatize or entertain dramatically by relative harmonic and psychological variances of notes, rhythms, and orchestration. Radical experiments in harmonic function exploded with the turn of the 20th-Century. Composers tried harmonic devices or policies such as serialism, atonality, clusters, pointilism, and quarter-tones. Stravinsky favored primal rhythms yet light dissonances; Bartok used folk dissonances and rhythms; Schoenberg, a completely artificial serial harmonies and melody with common counterpoint; Berg, emotional colors of slowly shifting tonal clusters; Boulez, atonality with usually sparse pointillism; Stockhausen, orgasmic morphing devoid of any historic references.
Today, more often than not, new music favors non-traditional instruments, sounds, or playing techniques in an orgy of seemingly random dissonant notes, where strong rhythms often take precedence over strong melody or harmony. Other composers may choose to use motorific or Minimalist repetition with slow changing harmonies, or a simple groove that builds to a single dramatic climax before abruptly ending.
It seems that many living composers still avoid conventional melody, development, modulation or previously proven structures, as if these were easy, nostalgic, pandering, or uncritical. The results are often less than satisfactory. Gone is the sensual flow of harmonic tensions rising and releasing in a series of waves before a contrasting episode begins rising into trouble or ecstasy again. Have we trashed the techniques to spin an interesting melody into intense drama? Why would that be less challenging for the composer than trying to challenge her audience with static or atonal organizations? What happened to finding just the right notes to compel empathy, dilemma, ambiguity, virtuosity, or catharsis? Were Martinu, Nielsen, and Shostakovich among the last melodic composers? Was the baby in the bathwater?
The academic approach imposed by composition instructors leads many of us to love the non-academic Schubert and Brahms all the more, which may be why most concert programs have mixed programs. Side-by-side comparisons are very instructive. Even though I never lived in Schubert’s time or place; even though that music may not challenge me to be open-minded, or to redefine music itself, I do much prefer the relative simplicity, accessibility, and beauty of their music dialect over modern music. The conventional Common Practice Period, as it’s sometimes called, provides more to play with and listen for. And we have become very good friends.
Tonal music not only comforts me because I know them well enough to sing along with or without the radio, but when listening deeper, I sometimes discover new details, hidden patterns, or correlations with other composers. As a performer I learned to shape phrases dramatically (exaggerate), much like an actor. As audience, I pick up on unusual phrasing, balance, and timing. The potential reward remains to experience renewal, validation, or epiphany. The best works build on what came before. The keys to hearing them are experience (repetition), focus, and patience.
Between the three of us (composer, performer and audience), I am immersed in each encounter, to fall in love again and again with the human imagination, the Earth we are destroying, and the cosmos we can only watch. This never gets old. So I wonder why so few composers today tackle the challenge of creating works in the styles that worked so damn well before, but perhaps with modern subjects and twists. Must music really be so constantly reinvented? Are we not free to buck the trend of avoiding tradition? Must art music be so confusing or non-apparent? Are we writing for good professional reviews or to touch the lives of friends and strangers?
If I said I’m going to invent a new food dish, would I start with something that’s never been eaten before? Or would I take a standard dish and modify it by preparing, cooking, or spicing it slightly differently? My own compositions apply familiar techniques to conventional melody. Some of it sounds more my own than others; but they are generally clear, emotional, and often beautiful. In half of my works I blend in urban pop, jazz and folk elements so they are fun and easy to digest; rather akin to mixing faves like spaghetti, diced BBQ chicken and broccoli. (Gee, that sounds good!)
For this, I might be called a populist composer, and that is exactly what I choose to do; my composing policy. I want to prove to the wider world that not all classical music is confusing, opaque, or academic. My music must be obvious in its joy, melt or build into tears and struggle, and then rebound. This is how human emotions flow from one to another (a classical ideal). This is how we have come to communicate complex emotions. Tonality lets us shape meaningful phrases sure as a great screenplay in English rather than in “Alien.”
Composing lets me weave together a variety of musical styles that might draw listeners into modified sonata structures. It’s amazing what variations can be made with only eleven standard note pitches and eleven standard note durations available. Music builds on what came before and innovation is usually incremental. CutTime is the tool I fashioned by first transcribing the tools that came before. Imitation is the basis for counterpoint and dance in music, connecting present with past. Sample some on my SoundCloud feed. Classical music can be fun and sexy, as well as violent and troubled. There are a thousand ways to spice it up, when we give ourselves permission.
Yes, after a lifetime playing many hundreds of them, I prefer the expressive potential offered by the same 100 traditional composers. They gave us great drama, excitement, beauty, and opportunities to shape music dramatically so we can make them our own. We may wear their genius like a magical hat or a technicolor coat, whether performing or just listening. We can look at human nature in ways that make us love our lives and the world, as paradoxical as it often is. We can trip out, and visualize singing, dancing, or flying along on a magic carpet ride to this music. So when my Big Dream in 1999 happened, from which the Essay No. 1 emerged to make me start composing, what came to mind was music built with this engine. It suddenly became quite natural for me to express some dramas, feelings, griefs, joys, resolve, and even my ethnic heritage in this way.
While I don’t have a chance of composing on the level of a Brahms, a Mahler, or an opera, the simple works that I am able to create (employing long melodies, busy counterpoint, contrary motion, modified sonata forms, surprise modulations, easy development and satisfying climaxes, and conclusions) let me to challenge the status quo with this statement:
New music can feature beauty and convention without being nostalgic.
For me the chief characteristic of great music is memorability. Will my music be something that will haunt you, such as in line at the grocery store? Next is growth. Did this music build authentically to a series of transformational climaxes? And like trying out a new food, did you want to try it again? Esp. as I get older, I care less about spending time on music that lacks compelling direction, peaks and valleys, or obvious dramatic potential. I have learned the value of mediocrity: truly great work stands out because of it.
Tonality tends to offer more surprises per minute: the harmonic changes that act like a kickdrum, the harmonic turns of a phrase that suddenly extend the phrase, the subtle harmonic differences on each restatement, the fireworks of scales and arpeggios with new twists and turns, and the animation of melodic skips and rhythms. These never fail to impress if well-writ. And how about the dramatic urgency and furious counterpoint of a great fugue? Are these really too worn out to express modern life? Must music be continuous statements of ugliness, horror, or nihilism? Was there not also ugliness, horror, and nihilism before?
We still appreciate beauty in the world. The suspensions, the appogiatura, a French sixth chord are not anathema to modern living, esp. when we look from the mountain we are climbing or into our lover’s eyes. And classical, esp. symphonic music, seem to express things unspeakable about the larger questions of life. Gustav Mahler told Jean Sibelius, “Music must embrace the world.” What are we trying to express if not the constant emergence of mixed feelings? Great music offers a balance of inevitability and surprise, classical or not. I don’t learn anything from ALL surprise, from ALL unpredictable notes. But when the music starts to slowly build, twist, and reach into a tremendous climax I never thought possible, we internalize an experience of progress we hope to realize in our own lives.
That progress tends to come when we experience an alternation of surprise and inevitability. Thematic returns comfort us with familiarity while making us anticipate them. It is a second chance to do better. When correct, we experience validation. And when mistaken, we feel tension rise or erupt. The disruption in confidence should be strong, but need not be extreme or disproportional. Limiting the carnage is part of the charm. Compositions with an overabundance of surprise don’t take me anywhere: the emperor gets no clothes from empty gestures, avoiding historical precedent, or theoretical muck-raking. And rhythmic dominance is no substitute for setting up harmonic drive and discourse. Sonata form is neither broken nor a straight-jacket, but effective, adaptable, and infinite.
And really, why can’t we try to please the audience (pander, entertain)? At a rock concert the singers aren’t challenging us to dig deep for meaning; they make it obvious and fun. New music can preserve a balance between pleasantness and mild challenge. If what is memorable in new music is only weird new sounds leading nowhere, or an orgy of rhythm in a short, hip groove, I ask where is the craft, the drama, the clever invention painting a compelling narrative or portrait? Instrumental music is compelling when there is shape, direction, and purpose so that most can feel it welling up inside. That welling up we used to call tension and release is most visceral, and seems largely forgotten.
I accept that many people can’t stand “the standard repertoire.” They may see it as tired and worn, or too successful to compete with. But I don’t think it’s a problem of the music, rather the presentation and performance. Classical is only truly alive when performers exaggerate. The more drippingly emotive the better. If we musicians don’t shape phrases or play with palpable risk, an otherwise note-perfect performance sounds comparatively boring. There’s already enough mediocre music circulating. We must hit our audiences over the head with the difference of music. We should take ownership and flaunt what we can do with this music, including rewriting or condensing works for popular markets. That’s what artistic license and public domain mean. Music is automatically refreshed and modernized this way. Veteran listeners have never heard it this way. The musicians have never played it this way. And the newcomers may never hear it otherwise.
I believe that a historical pendulum eventually swings in the other direction, but half the time quite unpredictably. So the full use of simple 1-4-5 harmonies, which continues as the basis for much popular song, may return to classical. The 20th-Century composers, movies, and TV scores have proved that really any sounds can be employed as music, including random notes. Now can we get back to the relative music of Schumann or Bartok (related, shaped, dynamic, long), while we keep exploring absolute music of pop (extreme, static, short)?
We clearly enjoy many styles of music and discovering what we most prefer. But the warhorse objection to classical is unavailable to those who have never heard standard repertoire performed even once. Often it’s just about our mood going in: finding what we were expecting (confirmation bias).
Add a little wine or beer, a personal tragedy or triumph, connecting with the lead artists, or a good or bad day at work, and we are cocked for a very emotional or spiritual experience. Our minds leap at any reflections of our own stories, feelings, and thoughts. The combination of conductor and orchestra are the sauce and noodles of the Pad Thai. So I recommend newcomers sit in the very last row, where they can relax the most and get a bit carried away without disturbing anyone. This is where my sister sits, and plays along on her air-violin.
Tell me how or why YOU want to interact with classical music?
(Revised Sept. 2022)