On “Listen to This” — by Jennifer Borkowski
When thinking about my response to Alex Ross’ Listen to This, the main thing that hit me about it is that I’d heard it all before, but hearing it before has not resulted in any lasting changes in the way we present symphonic classical music to the public. We are “other” and often “uppity” members of society, misunderstood yet arrogant in the way we insist that others get our music. We haven’t gotten it, that people don’t want to be preached to about what “good” music is, or told that what they like isn’t “high art.” In America, orchestras are dropping like flies. And you know what, it is change or die.
Theodor Adorno wrote a similar essay, On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening in 1938 and still not much has changed. Please, when you’re finished here, take a look at it.
Alex Ross writes about the deadening of classical music and how we moved from rioting and tomato throwing to behaving as a refined yet terribly boring group of people.
Classical concerts began to take on cultlike aspects. The written score became a sacred object; improvisation was gradually phased out. Concert halls grew quiet and reserved. […] Many composers liked the fact that the public was quieting down […] They began to write with a silent, well-schooled crowd in mind.[1]
Well schooled is the real problem. Being too well-schooled has taken away our edge and our real power. I’m using well-schooled here meaning well-behaved and proper, and it isn’t an automatic substitute for intelligent or thoughtful.
Adorno preceded this:
Perfect, immaculate performance in the latest style preserves the work at the price of its definitive reification. It presents it as already complete from the very first note. The performance sounds like its own phonograph record. The dynamic is so predetermined that there are no longer any tensions at all.[2]
Aldous Huxley has raised the question of who, in a place of amusement, is really being amused. With the same justice, it can be asked whom music for entertainment still entertains. Rather, it seems to complement the reduction of people to silence, the dying out of speech as an expression, the inability to communicate at all. […] If nobody can any longer speak, then certainly nobody can any longer listen.[3]
Moving on from these problems of dead concerts, ineffective outreach and stifled communication, let’s look at some possible remedies. How can we get people to speak about music, so that they can listen?
Eric Booth[4] gave an assignment to a Juilliard class to get on a New York City bus and talk to someone about classical music. How’s that for direct? Get out there and talk about it. Make some sort of connection when you’re an accessible human being, not in your tux or gown. (Why do we need to perform in formal attire anyway?)
About many symphonic performances, audiences are bored, but no more bored than the members of the orchestra. Alex Ross complains of this, I don’t like it either.
In a recent talk at Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Mass., Eric Booth offered some more examples of involving audiences in the process. I’ll paraphrase a few.
Members of the Philadelphia Orchestra stood up and spoke for three minutes before the performance about some personal connection to the concert, not about the piece, but about how it affected them personally. Besides connecting the audience to the piece, the benefit was a bit more hidden. The orchestra was not told beforehand who would be speaking. So while they were waiting on stage, these previously lifeless bodies were animated, looking around trying to guess who it would be. They reacted like normal people that the audience had a better chance of connecting to, rather than lifeless bodies simply waiting for a downbeat.
Booth talked about another performance. Instead of the open rehearsal, a string quartet did a “very open rehearsal.” In this, the audience gets to stop and say, „I don’t know what’s really going on here.“ The musicians have to then articulate what it is they are doing. So instead of 90 minutes of perfection without any connection, they connected first and involved them more deeply. They spent the 90 minutes rehearsing and discussing just one movement. When they finally ran the movement through, the public erupted in applause. I believe that they understood so much more of the piece. They were probably rooting for the quartet to play well, since they had gotten to know them. People who were studying the piece and knew it already had more insight into the musician’s decision making process. People who had never heard it before understood why the piece was important to the performers. They involved everybody.
These ideas are just a few to demonstrate how we might connect with audiences without dumbing down. On the contrary, these ideas ask us to be more involved as thinkers, not just musicians.
Adding some afterthoughts on education, Harry Partch will finish this essay.
Traditions remain undisturbed when we say: let us improve ourselves; let us become better pianists, teachers, conductors, better composers. They remain undisturbed when we say: let us increase the knowledge and appreciation of “good” music. Traditions remain undisturbed, uninvestigated, and therefore a culture of music based upon such palpably noble precepts is already senile […] A phalanx of good pianists, good teachers, good composers, and ‘good’ music no more creates a spirit of investigation and a vital age in music than good grades in school create a spirit of investigation and a body of thinking citizens. […] Good grades in school are the result of a less commendable ability, and no aspect of the musical scene could be more depressing than the prospect that those with the ability to get good grades in school, to copy others, to absorb and apply traditions with facility, shall hold the fort of ‘good’ music.[5]
It is not difficult for the alert student to acquire the traditional techniques. Under the pressures of study these are unconsciously and all too easily absorbed. The extent to which an individual can resist being blindly led by tradition is a good measure of his vitality.[6]
[1] Ross, Alex, Listen to This, Farrar, Straus and Giroud, New York, 2010, P. 12
[2] Adorno, Theodor, The Culture Industry; selected essays on mass culture, Routledge Classics, New York, 1991, p. 30
[3] Ibid, p. 30
[4] Eric Booth’s info can be found here: http://www.everydayarts.info/ Eric Booth’s talk is on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzSa7uNxdTE
[5] Harry P A R T C H, Original Preface to “Genesis of a Music”, (1947) University of Wisconsin Press, http://musicmavericks.publicradio.org/features/archive_genesis.html, Retrieved February 25, 2008
[6] Ibid
Laura Lentz
Adam Shames
Alan Tormey
Alexis Del Palazzo
Kira Campo
Vanessa Breault Mulvey
Jonathan Kuuskoski
Angela McCuiston
Jennifer Borkowski
Sarah Greenwald
It is not without reason that the most dynamic area of serious music today is from what some call “post-classical” or “alt.classical”. This starts with David Lang, Julia Wolfe and Michael Gordon of Bang On A Can, and continues with groups like yMusic, ACME, ICE, ETHEL, and their peers. They are bending all of the genres and stereotypes. Most importantly, they are being heard. Often in small venues, but they are booked way out in time. One of the most economical ways to introduce oneself to their work is at home on the computer, the 24/7 New Music stream, Q2, from New York Public Radio, http://www.wqxr.org/q2. Especially the four hour “Nadia Sirota on Q2″.
I absolutely agree with that. What was a bit difficult for me, a bit in the beginning of the Ross book, but more specifically in Booth’s talk, is that there is a general muddying of the waters. What they are talking about is American symphonic music and they present it as the whole of classical music. I do think this discussion needs to be held since the American Symphony as an industry is failing. But it is true, the life in serious music is in new music, by far.
Another thought about that:
In the U.S. symphony orchestras are classical music’s most visible form, but this doesn’t make them the most important. In the new music world, there is tremendous vitality with countless groups absolutely on fire with enthusiastic performances and audiences. I can’t help but wonder if new music might end up being the thing that saves the art form altogether.
Also another thought: Last year, ICE, International Contemporary Ensemble, led by Claire Chase, had three videos of concerts made available on Q2. WBGO has been doing this for a long time for performances at the Village Vanguard. NPR has also dipped their toes into the video area.
The point is, by definition, most people interested in a concert, if aware of the concert, maybe as many as 99%, will never get to that concert. Concerts are in one place at one time. Peter Gelb has taken the Metropolitan Opera into movie theaters with great success. We will never see that model. But the internet is almost infinite in reach. If I am in Alaska and am interested in “attending” an ICE concert or Bang On A Can All-Stars concert at Les Poisson Rouge in NYC, maybe I can do it on the internet and even be charged a “ticket” price. This is not hard today. All these groups have web sites. All they need to do is establish some sort of registration for a nominal fee and have user id’s and passwords, then charge whatever, US$10, to access the videocast from an archive (WBGO has two humungous archives at Livestream and UStream).
A few years ago, when WNYC had kicked out daytime music on FM, we all found our way via sites like publicradiofan.com to other sources. One I joined was WCNY, Syracuse, NY. Good Classical music programming and all live hosted. This was in the day when most audio streaming was mono and about 24kbits. KUSC, Los Angeles, led the PubRadio people to 128kbits and stereo. So, WCNY kept their low-fi stream for people paying their basic minimum membership fee, but established a user id and password utility for a higher membership fee and 80kbit stereo. It works and it is not hard to do.
Regarding WBGO and WCNY, none of this is to costly to do, neither station has much real money with which to play.
Videocasts of serious music concerts could be done from archived concerts at the music groups’ own websites and provide a new revenue stream to the groups that offered it.
Can you imagine? I happen to live in New Jersey, A web site in Alaska could be offering videocasts of John Luther Adams’ work, I could be registered at that site and pay a small fee to see those videocasts? Or, the Wordless Music Orchestra could be giving concerts at BAM in New York, videocasting, and if I lived in Alaska, I could register at their web site, pay a small fee and see that concert?
I could go on and on about this. I see it as a new paradigm.
Great insight! I loved the idea of the open string quartet rehearsal aiming to involve everyone from seasoned performers to inexperienced non-musicians! What a wonderful example of bridging the gap of in accessibility.
Richard, do you know Marvin Rosen on WPRB in Princeton? http://blog.wprb.com/tag/marvin_rosen
This is public radio and he does quite a bit of experimental music. If you’re in NJ, you might not even need go online.
Jennifer-
Marvin and I are very good friends. Me being a musical nincompoop, I greatly value his knowledge and his program at WPRB. I always feature his special programming and his 24 hour marathons on my MusicSprings blog – that is, when he tells me about them or posts up at Facebook.
Really great thread following a really great post. Getting back to Ross’s original conceit of disliking the term “classical music”, I almost wonder if it’s more beneficial in the long run to act as if the equation classical music = symphonic music were true. That is, do the ‘alt.classical’ groups gain or lose from their association with the music currently known as classical? Is instrumentation the only salient factor in whether a composer’s work is closer to Schumann or Deadmau5? Is there a reason other than performance venue that Deadmau5 isn’t considered classical music?
I have never liked the use of the term “Classical” for any kind of music. I had a blog “Whither Public Radio and Serious Music”. This blog dealt with the problems of live hosted PubRadio, but only with what we normally call “Classical” and Jazz.. The blog died as live hosted music gave way to “Classical 24″ and the now defunct “Classical Public Radio Network”. Live hosted Jazz is still pretty safe, but there is in fact a “Jazz 24″ thing out there.
Even “serious” is not a good term. And, by the way, Jazz is or has become very serious music. Many of the greatest Jazz composers and musicians spent time in great music schools. Miles spent time at Juilliard. They studied the great composers. ‘Trane studied Bartok. McCoy Tyner studied Paul Hindemith for “fourths”. I had to see them written out to understand. Brubeck studied at Mills under Darius Milhaud. Leonard Bernstein was seen at a Jazz club right up near the drums, listening to rhythms.Keith Jarrett has concertized and recorded a lot in the “classical” world, along with his monumental Jazz output. Sonny Rollins composed “Concerto for Tenor Saxophone and Orchestra” (you can only hear it in the video “Saxophone Colossus”). Jazz got serious when Miles took his band out of the clubs and into places like Carnegie Hall. He was followed by ‘Trane, the MJQ and many others. Coltrane said he did not want to hear the sounds of hubbub and clinking glass interrupting Jimmy Garrison’s solos. And Jimmy was the double bass player.
And, there is “Classic Rock” ,and, I think classical Country, as evidenced at the Grand Ole Opry, the music of people like Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash, and the Carter Family as opposed what passes today for country music.
So, what are we to do? Use terms like “orchestral” or “symphonic”? Maybe. “Opera” and “Chamber Music” are pretty solid terms in their own right.
I do not think that there will really ever be a solution to this terminology problem in regards to mid- to early 20th century and earlier music. And, today there is so much genre bending that the terms lose any sense of meaning.
Yes. Terminology. Since we can’t separate music from it’s history, classical music works fine. If we’re talking promotion, maybe it’s time to jump ship. In the popular sense, classical kind of means old, even with regard to rock and country. I see the point about “serious” music being problematic. How about art music?
And here are another few terms to throw into the discussion pile:
While living in Vienna, I quickly learned that I was making a faux pas with the term new music. Calling music “new music” was only a term for music composed with roots in the second Viennese school. All other is contemporary music. This includes music newly composed with roots in other trends. Trends here include world music, jazz, or even the group of symphonic composers who’ve gone the Stravinsky route. (after all, their sound language isn’t really new) For me, the distinction came off as a little arrogant, but it is at least clear. I do differentiate between new music and contemporary music following this example.
While I’m at it, there’s apparently another group of composers stemming from the El Sistema movement. I’d call that composition as a social project.
Regarding “art” music, there is the expression “art song” as in, e.g., Ned Rorem. I tend to think of a lot of Peter Gabriel’s music as “art rock”. Music is one of “the arts”. But, that includes all music. So…
I might well settle for the larger pieces from the historic stream from, e.g. Bach to Philip Glass, et al, as being “orchestral”. That does not include Chamber music, where I see no problem. However, what about the great suites by Duke Ellington? Symphonic, no. Orchestral, definitely. Orchestra? Really a “big band”. But, at this point, it gets a bit silly.
A very rich thread with many avenues.
Re: interaction with audience, those are great ideas. I think we can devise infinite ways to do it by following their cue: seek to subvert the paradigm of Mama Bird (music elite) forcing worms down throat of Baby Bird (audience). I was really born as a teacher when I was in a talented kids program in NJ and had prepared another boring lecture on Chopin- then the director walked into class and told me to teach Bach. I had no notes and it was a class of 8/9 year olds. I panicked until I let the 8 year olds lead the class- play, jump around, imitate polyphony with rounds, roleplay Bach and his sons, etc. A while ago I received a letter from a student at the Sorbonne studying musicology- she had a test the next day and was studying our notes from that class when she was 9!
Re: “correct” music: Russell Sherman said that the “musical” students were often very boring- that we impose a construct of what is “musical” and go about rewarding students who conform to it. I think we as music teachers are partly at fault- it’s simply easier to get through the day hearing basically correct (as opposed to jangling, unthinking) phrasing and tone.
Re: “classical” v “popular”- I will risk tomato throwing with these attempts at a differentiation.
1. Classical music breathes freely, interrupting, redoubling, slowing and fully living its own rhythms and inner rhythms, based on phrases, harmonic tension points, Schenkerian undertow and Stanislavskian moment to moment awareness. Pop music generally sticks to a beat.
2. Classical music is only beholden to its own journey, its own genre, form, notions, self discoveries, and composition lifespan. Once a great classical work has “lived” its life, it stops. Popular pieces are more beholden to set forms such as verse/chorus/bridge with repetition that is more informed by the listening audience’s needs. There are of course great songs that have an inevitability to them.
3. The arrangement of classical music has an equivalency to the content itself whereas popular music is more elastic and can often be improved upon with covers.
Anyway, great stuff!
“Classical music breathes freely, interrupting, redoubling, slowing and fully living its own rhythms and inner rhythms, based on phrases, harmonic tension points, Schenkerian undertow and Stanislavskian moment to moment awareness. Pop music generally sticks to a beat.”
Bob, you win the prize. Nicely said. Somewhere in there, along with “moment to moment awareness,” I’d add something about time as well. It is hard to find pop composers who manipulate time so well. I might also add something about development. In pop music, you can usually “get it” without needing to hear the whole. Classical music doesn’t give itself away so easily (even rondo form!)
True- the entirety is crucial in “classical” music. How about a new word? qwwidcx music? (Just randomly typing. Anyway.)
Yes, time, temporal unfolding, is very different in qwwidcx music. Pablo Casals in Bach Cello Suites!!! Or anything, stuff you and we all have played.
This may be (one reason) why class. music is not as popular – (and there is a PhD waiting for someone to explore the impact of popular music having coopted that word!) Because a temporally based art that unfolds organically resembles life itself and that is !dangerous! and not comforting. If time is not predictable- if anything is not predictable- anything could happen and that’s not what we want in entertainment.
Whereas Charlie Watts pounding away in exquisitely almost harmonically implied percussion can get our heartbeats going again after a day at the office!!