Joe Queenan writes a very funny column that confirms all my suspicions about what passes for modern classical music and opera. (The stuff that seems to appear once and is rarely heard of again.)
His contention: it is not popular because it is generally awful. Queenan says he has tried, really tried, to get into it, but failed:
When I was 18, I bought a record called The New Music. It featured Kontra-Punkte by Karlheinz Stockhausen and Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima by Krzysztof Penderecki. I was incredibly proud of myself for giving this music a try, even though the Stockhausen sounded like a cat running up and down the piano, and the Penderecki was that reliable old post-Schoenberg standby: belligerent bees buzzing in the basement. I did not really like these pieces, but I would put them on the turntable every few months to see if the bizarre might one day morph into the familiar. I've been doing that for 40 years now, and both compositions continue to sound harsh, unpleasant, gloomy, post-nuclear. It is not the composers' fault that they wrote uncompromising music that was a direct response to the violence and stupidity of the 20th century; but it is not my fault that I would rather listen to Bach. That's my way of responding to the violence and stupidity of the 20th century, and the 21st century as well.Queenan writes that this year when he did see an audience respond reasonably well to a new composition, the explanation is that:
...nothing thrills a classical music crowd more than a new piece of music that doesn't make them physically ill.Quite the wit, is Joe.
4 comments:
All good stuff, though he obviously couldn't resist a touch of the good ol' Gruaniad snobbery:
I have tried to come to terms with the demands of modern music. I am no lover of Renaissance Muzak, and own tons of records by Berg, Varèse, Webern, Rihm, Schnittke, Adès, Wuorinen, Crumb, Carter, and Babbitt: I consider myself to be the kind of listener contemporary composers would need to reach if they had any hope of achieving a breakthrough. So far, this has not happened, and I doubt that it will.
Just why is he to be the final arbiter about who will be the next classical music 'star', I wonder?
It's ironic, too, that the kind of music he criticises - Penderecki's Threnody - is full of exactly the same sort of effects and techniques used in Hollywood science fiction films or horror flicks.
Classical music isn't dying, but it is undergoing some strange changes and metamorphosis. He thinks he's writing classical music's obituary, but twenty years from now, we could regard it as his own obituary as a critic.
But Tim, he does address that issue of the difference between movie and concert hall music:
"Why does the public accept atonal music in films, but not in the concert hall? (Jaws wouldn't work if the shark's attacks were synchronised with Carmen. We expect sound effects in the movies, but we're not going to pay to hear them in the concert hall.)"
I don't know enough about modern classical music to have a well considered opinion, but it's just my hunch that he is right. I also liked his "the kids just do it to annoy the oldies" theory.
I must have skimmed that bit, but it seems a little glib. Many of the great movie composers like Eric Korngold and Bernie Hermann began life as regular non-movie composers in Europe, and probably couldn't have expected to end up writing music for the movies. There are a number of crossover examples between movies and twentieth century music that come to mind: Igor Stravinsky's revolutionary 'The Rite of Spring' inspired a number of movie imitations, as did Gustav's Holst's 'The Planets'. (Some of the Star Wars music was written in more or less direct imitation of Holst.)
Bernie Hermann is best known for his soundtrack to 'Psycho' - those repeated upward strokes on the violins in the famous shower scene. That music has become such a cliche that it wouldn't be a surprise to hear it in the concert hall.
I don't know. It just sounds like a generalisation. But his cynicism and criticism of the atonality and difficult quality of most modern music is definitely spot on.
Given that his main point seems to be the one you agree with in your last paragraph, I am not entirely sure why his article has irritated you a bit.
Anyhow, I really love Herman's music for North By Northwest. And I really get the feeling that John Williams does not get the full recognition that he deserves for his contribution to music, or at least movie music. I get the impression that he is just a little too "popular" for the high brow to praise him.
Certainly, Spielberg will go into mourning when Williams dies. (He must be getting old.)
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