Music Alive: Resources and Curation for a 21st-Century Listener

To continue and answer in part a question from the last post (Baby Mozart), I ask here: If Mozart, Beethoven, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Berio, and Boulez are all outdated, then where is the classical art form? What is happening in the 21st century for performers, composers, and most of all, listeners? There is excellent news: the tradition thrives in a way perhaps unheard of in centuries past. Thousands of composers and tens of thousands of performers, all trained to a professional level, play with ensembles around the world, write, produce, and arrange music in both the concert, film/media, and popular scenes, teach, advocate, and spread ideas through sound. The number of composer training programs, competitions, grant opportunities, music-based residencies, and calls for scores that repeat yearly or every few years numbers over 800, and many organizations see music as an avenue to promote messages of social advocacy for good. The sheer amount of opportunities for composers today is promising, but where is the music? Why do orchestras seem completely unaware of what surrounds them? Why do so many orchestras still carry a museum culture?

Perhaps awareness is difficult because it takes time to seek after great music in the riffraff of so many aspiring artists. Certain musicians do rise to the surface though. For example, an orchestra is looking for music with lots of style and excitement—why not commission Valerie Coleman, James Mobberley, or Christian Asplund? Or something thrilling and virtuosic like a piece based on the idea of video games from Andrew Norman or a percussion concerto from Chen Yi? An atmospheric, otherworldly exploration of sound? George Friedrich Haas or Kaija Saariaho would do. Something passionate, deeply personal, and timely? Lansing McLoskey or Alvin Singleton would be marvelous options. Or something simply beautiful and immediate by Hannah Lash or by recent Pulitzer Prize-winner Mary Ellen Childs (not all their music fits in this category, but orchestras seem to like the very accessible)? Or Stephen Hartke, Silvio Ferraz, Gabriel Bolaños, Augusta Read Thomas, Dave Rakowski, Amy Williams, David Felder, Panayiotis Kokoras, Mark Applebaum, Louis Karchin, or so many others? These are already accomplished composers who have been fortunate enough to get some big-name performances, so imagine how many younger composers also have something to offer if these were the highlights of the concert with young composers as the openers!

How do orchestras currently program their concerts? Let’s take a look at an unnamed symphony orchestra’s concert season for an example:

1. First, “Beethoven for the Generations” features only Beethoven to celebrate the legend’s 250th birthday. Of course, one concert is not enough to celebrate: this season will feature ALL nine symphonies and much more from him.

2. The next concert is titled “Beethoven, Brahms, and Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto.” There are four pieces: Brahms, Mendelssohn, [Vivian Fung], and Beethoven. Oh, there was a piece by a living composer, but our embarrassment of the piece left it out of the concert title and hid it in the middle of a cozy program of pieces heard so much that many in the audience have it memorized.

3. Next, “Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, Ax performs Beethoven.” This begins with Louis Andriessen’s The nine symphonies of Beethoven. Even invoking the name of Beethoven as a living composer doesn’t make the cut for a concert title…

4. “Zukerman plays Beethoven’s Violin Concerto,” and Beethoven overshadows Janacek (early 1900s) and even our beloved Mozart.

5. “Beethoven’s Mass in C” has a Haydn and Beethoven sandwich with some James MacMillan (living composer) hidden inside.

6. “Schumman’s ‘Rhenish’ and Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto” is the concert title that excludes Samuel Barber, indisputably one of the most popular American composers ever.

7. “Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony and Midori Plays Dvorak” features the two listed and, oops we forgot Anna Clyne (recent Pulitzer Prize winner).

8. The only mention of a post-1945 composer happens in a celebration of a violinist who played a modern piece by Dutilleux, but wait… “Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, and Tree of Dreams.” At least the piece title is catchy enough to hide a composer’s name that some wouldn’t recognize (and during the concert, Dutilleux’s piece is sandwiched between the big shots from on average 150 years ago).

To sum up the entire concert season’s promotion: yikes.

One solution for this serious issue is the concept of curation. The word has popped up lately among composers and performers, and it deserves further investigation. To curate is to borrow the model that art museums use to showcase their works. A museum sets expectations for the experience, organizes its art into logical categories, provides historical context, and includes knowledgeable historians and other specialists to answer questions. Each museum has a different standing collection and rotates through visiting exhibits. One could consider the standing exhibit the pieces that museum uniquely owns. Could this not translate into the musical experience? Let’s try a new concert season:

1. It’s Beethoven’s 250th birthday! Let’s celebrate with “Regards to Beethoven by the Great Masters of Today.” We commission three composers (or find composers who have already written pieces about Beethoven, like Louis Andriessen), and have a night of homages to our historic forefather. To give some context, the first piece is by Beethoven, followed by the three new pieces (none of them are too long because we all have shorter attention spans these days…). Oh, and no more Beethoven after this—this concert will sell out because Beethoven is the visiting exhibit.

2. “20/20 Vision: Looking to the Future.” We can start with some Messiaen piece with a religious looking forward or maybe one of the Futurists from the early 1900s, then go with two pieces about social issues of today such as climate change or a more equal society. Could music be relevant to today by speaking on issues that matter today?

3. “America, the Beautiful.” It is shocking to me how little investment our orchestras have in playing music written by composers within our own country. Do we really need to import so much culture that is alien to our own? Charles Ives, Elliott Carter, Milton Babbitt, Steve Reich, Phillip Glass, John Cage (not 4:33 unless they really want to do it), John Adams, Augusta Read Thomas, and Jennifer Higdon are easy choices that orchestras need not dig deep in their libraries to find. But let’s add some lesser-known yet highly influential voices in there. Most of the composers I listed at the top can showcase craftsmanship in the United States.

4. “The Fast and the Furious: Concerto Night.” One night of some of the most aggressive, hardcore, virtuosic pieces with the top soloists. A world premiere would build the hype if both the composer and the soloist had a reputation for it.

5. “Stealing Styles: Jazz, Rock, and Pop in the Orchestra.” We’ll give them some Gershwin and then switch it up with some more contemporary music that incorporates popular idioms into concert music (and there is lots of this nowadays).

6. “Who We Are.” This concert will consciously represent the diversity of contemporary composers who are of top caliber. This is not an affirmative action-type event but a realistic showcase of American musical identity. We have fantastic composers of many backgrounds writing in many styles, and this concert clearly shows the influence. This could even be a goal for a concert series…

7. “Deep Listening.” For the mindfulness people, John Luther Adams’s Become Ocean could launch a concert that focuses on color. And audience members could be encouraged to really relax and make the experience comfortable and meditative (lie on the floor?).

8. “The Grand Finale.” It’s the end of the season! The ballet and the local chorus join the orchestra for a world premiere closer with two or three epic pieces to lead into the work. This concert is intended to be the shot heard ‘round the world. People will know about this concert on the news and then look back to see that the entire concert season was filled with exciting projects with lots of documentation for publicity. As the next season is prepared, people will plan to travel for miles, donors will be caught in the excitement for doing something different, and music will seem like a living art form much more than a rusting, disorganized museum.

Is this too idealistic? To further support this vision, people need to know what they are getting into. The advertising hits YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and elsewhere with up-to-date advertising. Bite-size musical excerpts float around everywhere with cliffhangers. Members of the orchestra are the ones being interviewed in promotional materials (not the conductor every time) and speak about how exciting it is to be part of something different and bold. Photos of the composers pop up on all visuals, showing the selection of contemporary composers that the listeners will hear. Marketing connects with different demographics than the 70+ by considering popular topics (orchestras so missed a great opportunity several years ago with the zombie craze, for example! We have so much music about the undead and the macabre!!). At concerts, members of the orchestra stand in the concert lobby afterwards to meet the guests and talk about the music experience (again, in addition to the conductor). The pre-concert experience has video footage playing while people get into their seats that shows the promotions that got them there in more depth: interviews with performers, composers, the conductor, etc. (starting a half hour before showtime). The videos are setting the stage for the concert experience, just like a movie theater prepares its viewers by getting them immersed in cinema before the movie begins. People outside the door are trained musicologists and theorists who answer questions about the concert program, with visible identification such as a name badge or even a visitors information booth. And right after intermission, the conductor gets podium time to welcome everyone to the concert, ask how far people have traveled to the concert, and to set the mood for the last piece with some artful prose (not a lecture). Music presented in such a natural context, without apologies before genuinely valuable new art, would change the atmosphere of orchestra life.

In an age that prizes the new, orchestras would have something to offer. Listeners, performers, donors, academics, and composers would all thrive off the energy of this new concert experience. There is no catch; this is all reasonable. The technology is easy, the resources are waiting, and, most importantly, an eager audience can be reached that would genuinely love this concert experience. Yes, not every piece would be loved by the audience. But with so much context and preparation, they will at least appreciate the vision of the artist. Nevertheless, chances are that as orchestras redefine the concert experience, listeners will redefine theirs. They will broaden their idea of what music is. It is more than notes on a page or structures in major and minor. It is the fingerprint of one human experience, the embodiment of a time, place, and culture, the study of sound in time, the expression of humanity, the vision of something more, the dream of something that was or could have been. It is a deep connection to the spiritual and subconscious, sometimes seeking in sound the deepest of mental and emotional states. It is vulnerability and severity at times, and though uncomfortable at first, the most beautiful experience can be had in sailing in the imaginations of the artists who live the same digital-age life as the listener and share or differ in the perspectives and problems of the current age. Music of this caliber has worth, more than any previous age’s artwork can. Let museum orchestras handle the 19th-century Germans. Bold orchestras will accept a true challenge to upgrade to the 21st century listening experience.

The Gestalt Musical Experience (Something to Say Pt. V)

In the early days of psychology, two opposing views of the world emerged, gestaltism and structuralism. Structuralists theorized that we perceive things in pieces that come together to form a whole. Gestalt thinkers believed (and many still believe) that a complete object is perceived different than its parts. Some Gestalt psychologists were able to prove that the brain indeed processed an entire event in a way that superseded its parts through optical illusions. To put it differently, one can create something that transcends its parts.

Musicians have been long fascinated with the transcendental experience. Stemming from a religious tradition, classical music has its roots in a yearning for something greater than a group of choir boys and later horse hair over gut strings. But even at a more fundamental level, the brain processes music as a Gestalt experience. How does the brain know that the steps of a scale go together? There are infinite notes between each half step, yet the mind only chooses certain frequency distances to qualify as a step. Something smaller sounds like the same note detuned, and something larger sounds like what we call a leap. How does the brain decide to process notes sounding together as chords and the simultaneous movements between chords as a such thing as “progression?” How can music sound like it is going anywhere at all without the aural illusion of movement from one place to another? We take these premises as granted, and we excel in playing different scales and forming harmonic progress through which the brain can create something much more than the independent notes played.

A composer does so much more than manipulate pitch for the transcendental experience. Music flows through time, and the composer uses rhythm and meter to create different expectations or groupings for the mind that give complexity and flow to the music. Different combinations of instruments and tone colors create illusions of continuity or freshness. Many modern composers focus on gestural writing, by which a mixture of rhythms, pitch events, and instruments are fashioned to create one sonic idea with its own character and nuance (which is then developed in transformations).

What happens if a composer decides to extend this idea to styles? Popular musicians like to explore fusion genres such as trip hop, bossa nova, country rap, gypsy punk, and reggaeton. The combination of two former genres comes together in a new sound, audibly influenced yet independent from its parts. Concert music composers have a history of fusing styles together to either be part of a new sound, make something fresh, or to invoke the mystery of a culture they did not understand (whether they cared to understand might be a different story…). However, with the influence of postmodernim, mixing many cultural styles together to create their work of art, including those of popular music, is normative and well-accepted today. Countless compositions in the 20th century bring in a dosage of jazz harmony and rhythms into their music, and quite a few current composers are mixing elements of EDM and metal into their sound. Others reach to the past, reinterpreting principles from Medieval music or reach across the world to other music cultures, such as India’s raga tradition or Balinese gamelan and even write for the instruments of that culture (and again, the subject of cultural sensitivity is a different topic). The combinations and possibilities are endless.

The results of sonic combinations, mixed with their cultural implications, create a rich tapestry of meaning and freshness to contemporary music. And living composers have the opportunity to develop a contemporary voice with the sounds that inhabit the present as well as connect to the age-old tradition. Rather than have many mangled medleys or exotic stereotypes, we have aural alloys that speak to the increasing global interactions we have as we come to understand and have an intercultural dialogue. Those of diverse cultures can and do blend their traditions with the ever-loosely defined Western music tradition that seems to accept more and more cultural variety in its reach. Perhaps we will arrive at a point where we acknowledge that while much of the influence of concert music comes from a Western tradition it ultimately transcends its past. But we have much learning to do of the cultures around us before we can confidently accept this task. Until then, we joyfully take the best we see to make something powerful and interesting.

On Universals (Something to Say Pt. II)

As I mentioned in the previous post, the first rule of academic writing is to avoid superlatives at all costs. "Always" and "never" are almost always asking to be rebutted and almost never help an argument. This especially rings true in music. Sounds are intangible, and we as listeners largely perceive music based on prior experience and learning. Some ethnomusicologists assert that it is almost impossible to understand the music of a different culture because the preconceived notions we carry with us permanently taint our perspectives. Each person will comprehend and enjoy music of any style and variety based on their upbringing (and surely some of that nature that accounts for individual personality differences).

Despite this strong argument, I cannot help but point to certain universals that underpin any sonic experience. These, in and of themselves, are not emotional, but they do have potential to "play with the heartstrings." In fact, some composers treat the compositional process like a game or a riddle to solve, and many musicologists would point to Beethoven as one of these in how he treated musical form. The primary universal (and the only one I feel confident about) is that there is an opposition in all things. The most basic sonic opposition is between sound and silence. Composers must deal with this question, and different cultures take it in different ways. Balinese Gamelan avoids silence during the performance due to traditional beliefs, and Western music emphasizes silence. Indian Carnatic music abolishes silence altogether with a continuous drone that sounds before the first audience members enter the room. While each culture treats silence differently, there is, at the very least, the potential for this opposition to become a factor in the music.

Carnatic music demonstrates the essential opposition between stasis and activity. Our brains are designed to give attention to the most active parts of our surroundings. Hopefully, the music at a concert performance takes this active role the moment the baton falls. Yet, after some time, some aspects of the music take on a passive role due to sameness. Composers and performers, in response to this natural phenomenon, must ensure that their music contains enough variety to sustain interest. Every variation to the music arises out of opposition to something else. High or low, loud or soft, fast or slow, clarinet or violin, muted or overblown, consonant or dissonant, major or minor (or whole-tone or octatonic), choppy or sustained, groovy or floating: these are some of the tools musicians work with. This game of oppositions becomes as simple or as complex as the musician desires it to be, and each culture deals with opposition in its unique ways.

Nevertheless, a caveat exists in this game. When is there too much variety? The brain can only process so much information before the music becomes incomprehensible. Novice composers may vary their music to the point that the variation becomes sameness (and thus static and boring). A good friend pointed out that perhaps the key to writing music is establishing a sense of consistency and tactfully working to build in musical surprises. I believe in this principle as well, and I also believe that the more familiarity one has with a style of music, the more attuned one is to the subtle surprises at play. For example, a Western musician may have great difficulty hearing the difference between common scales in the Middle East because of the melodic limitations of a twelve-note collection. Also, people from non-Western cultures may not find much satisfaction in Western music's harmonic flow because their primary musical style sustains interest in other ways. Repeated, active listening attunes the ear to some of these differences.

To me, an understanding of how opposing forces interact in music is essential for anyone who engages in music as a musician or listener, even if at a subconscious level. It easily maps onto the human experience, in which each of us deals with variety and sameness (the brain is wired this way). So, from this angle, can someone enjoy music, despite its origin and their understanding? Definitely. Will some education help them enjoy it more? Surely. Will a product of one's immediate culture have the greatest impact? Perhaps. But they can certainly enjoy other styles too.

Musings on the Creative Process

The artist looks at a canvas or an empty notebook (with or without staff paper) and sees infinite possibilities. For me, the paralyzing force at the beginning is because of a lack of ideas. Instead, it is the great question, "Which direction, if taken, will be worth the most?" Now, this leads into another question, "What worth can music have in the first place?" It seems like the majority of listeners believe that music has a purpose; however, it varies greatly among them. Many see it as a form of entertainment, others fall close to worshiping it, and then there are many who desire nothing more than background noise so that they do not have to face silence. I personally do not see music as such, though I realize that music has to have some sort of entertaining feature to maintain attention, can be worshipful and bring spiritual experiences to many people including myself, and by nature fills silence naturally. Yet, I still do not have an answer for one reason why music should be written, and that is fantastic. I lean towards creating works that introduce fresh sound worlds, invigorate the spirit, and explore how both tradition and experimentation can come together in a work. But whatever the case, none of this really tells us anything about the empty canvas. Returning to the first question, when we decide a purpose, now we need to make the choice of what we must do to achieve that end. Or not. Honestly, I often improvise. Or I start to do stream-of-consciousness writing (in words).  In the end, the direction we need to take is to take a direction. The first thing an artist needs is material.

Now I have this schematic of the digestive system that will also symbolize the Passion story of Jesus Christ. How did I get there? I thought that it was strange that the wording about the Resurrection is that death would be "swallowed up" in life. For me, I chose this as inspiration because there are a lot of decisions that I didn't want to make myself. The added bonus is that no matter which way the project turns I still have a religious component to it, fulfilling one of my joys in composing. How does this topic decide musical things for me? In this case, it gives me form. I have three parts of the Passion, suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane, the death on the Cross, and the Resurrection. To swallow food, there are similarly three phases. This tells me that I can have three movements to the work. Then, I study how food is swallowed. Food is moistened by saliva, ground into pieces, and falls to the back of the throat. There is nothing emotional about those things, but I can make textures in the music that first become mushy and lose their form, then dissonantly grind one note against another, and finally let the movement have some sort of release, perhaps using some sort of balanced binary form. In other words, the form is AB and coda with A material. Yet, the one complication is, "How can I relate this to the suffering in the Garden?" Because I already have form from the digestive element, I simply apply different emotions related to willful suffering throughout the movement. Yes, it is quite dark, but I think of harmonic language, melodic content, and rhythmic motives can show hesitation, nervousness, anxiety, and at the fore, pain, and adjust my form accordingly. I believe that emotions can sometimes be mapped onto the physical experience of the performers, so when I write these types of passages, I think of how the violin bow will attack the notes, how the clarinet wind will feel as it articulates and how the fingers will feel as they noodle around the instrument, and how the piano hands will touch the keys (or bang the keys). If you ask any of my performers who have played this sort of music, they agree that some moments require suffering or patience. I assure them that it is completely intentional.

Another consideration in the creative process is how God created the universe. He first took material and formed it. Then He shaped it with all sorts of land and water features. Then He created opposition, setting the light apart from darkness. Then life started to happen. In my example, I gave the piece a form. I shaped it to some degree, and I plan to shape it more as time goes by (which still happens while we are on the earth--tectonic plates are still shifting!). Now, I need to have opposition. The most primitive opposition in the toolbox is sound and silence. Then come the differences between the sounds. I have at my disposal high sounds and low sounds, long durations and short durations, timbre varieties, articulation, and dynamics with which I can create opposing forces. Then, I have more complex tools to continue this work that deal with how our mind processes melody, harmony, and meter. This is where the second moment of writer's block hits. "What do I do with all these choices?!" The answer depends on the approach taken. I chose to use fourths and fifths to represent perfection and godliness, rooting it into the perfect interval association from the Medieval ages, and I chose to make minor 2nd configurations into a suffering motive. The task for me is to give the piece life by creating some sort of interaction between these two elements that persists throughout the work, at least for this piece. In traditional narrative form, one of the two ideas would triumph over the other, as if it were battle. I could I have chosen to make godliness triumph over suffering. Yet, Christ chose to keep the wounds in His hands and His feet, which meant that it might not be about putting the suffering behind necessarily. The suffering itself had value. I chose to end the piece by combining perfect fifths and fourths with dissonant seconds, especially in the piano, to create what I personally believe are rich, beautiful sonorities. My oppositions mold into one to become a living thing, as body and spirit come together, first for the spirit to subjugate the body but then to be united eternally in resurrection.

I referred to my thesis piece, Swallowed Up, in that creative process. Of course, there are many decisions to be made, but ultimately the secret to the creative process is making decisions that will impact the course of the music-making, even if it may lead to disaster. I completely scratched my first version of the first movement. I said that I wanted to imitate mushiness in the music. I used a system to increase harmonic fuzz, and it resulted in something that did not work when it came time to make substantial melodies (which I valued in this piece). The third movement also had several prototypes that were well under par. Without those choices, I would not have formed the resultant work.

This is one way to write music. I like metaphors because they give me structure in the endless choices I need to make. Mine are scriptural because my mind is there most often; however, I know of other composers who have used resources such as the Theory of Evolution, The Art of War, painting techniques, and all sorts of word writing practices to formulate their creative processes and specific pieces. If you are an artist, what is your metaphor?