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There’s something I miss at classical new music concerts, even if I like the music I’m hearing.
So yes, many of us in the classical biz think new music is important, crucial to support, deserving any prestige and funding it might get from major institutions.
But…
I miss a connection to any larger culture. Which I did get when I was a pop music critic, and for a while went to three, four, five shows each week.
Of course not every band was good
Many were meh. But two good things were always happening. Two kinds of cultural connection.
First, the musical styles of the bands always meant something. Came from somewhere. Had evolved at some particular moment by particular people, with particular meaning in the culture of that time.
Punk, for instance. It grew from dismay and rage at the commercial music business, dismay and rage at what seemed like dead-end culture and politics. And, crucially, in Britain, from dismay and rage at what seemed, for younger men, like an impending lifetime of unemployment.
And then when punk mixed into mainstream rock, that meant something new. Meant that rage and dismay had seeped into mainstream culture.
Every musical style I heard, or any echo of a musical style, or any mixture of styles, could be read this way. Felt this way. So even a bad show meant something.
And every band had a following
They all had one. Good bands, bad bands. Somebody loved them. Because if bands didn’t have fans, they wouldn’t have been playing. Couldn’t get booked in a club if the booker didn’t think someone would come.
They all had fans. Three, four, five nights a week, people who loved these bands. People who loved them, who hadn’t just come out for a night at a club.
I miss that…
…at new classical music shows. Do the composers have fans? Sure, there are people who like specific composers. But are they fans? Will they buy every recording, show up at every performance?
Envoi
Thinking now of the Go-Go Symphony show in DC last Friday (which I’ll blog about). Drummers, full symphony orchestra, crowd on its feet dancing. At the Atlas Performing Arts Center, on what might be DC’s hippest street.
There was an MC (rapper, singer, and also MC in the old-fashioned sense, master — or in this case mistress — of ceremonies, our friend and welcomer on stage).
She called for a shout for Southeast DC. Anyone there from Southeast?
And there was a shout! Meaning that people from DC’s African-American majority were in the house. Because that’s who lives in Southeast. Some of these people, maybe, were fans of Ju Ju, the Go-Go Symphony’s fantastic drummer, a go-go superstar.
Cultural connection. We don’t get that at classical new music shows.
And maybe what’s worse is that we don’t expect to get a connection. But why is that? In the past, connections were there. Like when people cried out in excitement at passages in Beethoven symphonies (Paris, 1820s).
Or when Wagner’s music made society matrons in New York confide in their diaries that they’d felt or thought forbidden things (New York, early 20th century).
Does even a trace of that ever happen to us now?
Greg, I love this post as I love all of your posts. Just yesterday I was teaching in my History of Concert Music course a last lecture titled: “The Uncertain Future”. I quoted you at length and engaged my students (all over 55) in a discussion. They are the surviving audience for concert music here in the Midwest (Cincinnati) and I find them open, lively, ready for the new. The stultification lies with those who make music and program it to the lowest common denominator. Thanks as ever for staying up on that soapbox: you can count me as one of your fans.
Maybe the problem is calling in “new classical”, that makes no sense “LIKE INSTANT CLASSIC”…maybe “modern symphonic”, or “contemporary” or “music you can’t hum” would work better.
Maybe it can’t be forced on the public, maybe instead of being called for only by the critics, you need to wait for a growndswell of public opinion to want to hear it.
I know you’re probably only talking about new music compositions here, but what you’re talking about, that is what I feel about Jonathan Antoine. It’s hard for me to explain, but, it means something, it means drama and romance for a new age, for today! And yes his singing makes me think forbidden things lol I would go to every show, if that were possible. It’s not just something I listen to once and put away, like classical music has always been to me. It’s something I feel in every fiber of my being, that I want to listen to over and over till I memorize every word and every note by heart. I want every cd he makes. I want to wear t-shirts with his name on it. When he talks to the audience he makes them laugh, and shout back.. You know? He means something culturally important. He means, don’t be afraid to be yourself, to be different, to be real, the classical world has not made him fake, or made him turn his nose up.. He means classical music can be vibrant and fun and relevant, not just old and stuffy and uptight. I’m sorry I feel I really can’t explain it well, but I definitely am a true fan of his in every sense of the word. If I were a better writer like you I could explain. Thanks for another great article! I’m a definitely becoming a fan of yours too! Maybe you could write a song for Jonathan? That would be amazing! 🙂
Good points, Greg. Music of any style–written at any time–any decade–must be relevant to the people of its time–and the real acid test is if it can stand the test of time. Few can. It can relate to culture, true, but when music reflects the human spirit, that transcends all time. I will say, though, there are works pertaining to cultures. One work commissioned by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich a few years ago, in 2011, was titled ‘Shadows’. It was premiered in New Orleans, and nearly everyone who was present, left the concert and said, ‘that was all about us, and Katrina’ etc. The ‘Shadows’ were about cultures, and peoples who left native lands and migrated to new lands, bringing with them their native culture, language, ethics, and sounds. We need more of this.
Given Canada’s elevated profile in America today, with Justin Trudeau dining at the White House tonight, it’s more than appropriate to point out that the Toronto Symphony’s New Creation Festival, the orchestra’s twelfth, features DJ Stratch Bastid prominently in the programming of two of the three concerts. At the opening concert last Saturday, attended by at least a thousand, Scratch, the Afiara Quartet and the TSO, played a piece for turntablist, string quartet and orchestra that generated an unconventional style of appreciation at the end. The melding of popular and traditional musical sounds and styles was an enormous hit with a crowd that consisted of TSO supporters and clearly a good number of young people who completely identified with the DJ, who, himself, was performing with a symphony for the first time. The last concert, March 12, will feature Scratch remixing his impressions of all the music that was performed over the course of the festival. The concert at the 2,600-seat venue is soldout. The festival saw record attendance this year. Clearly, there is some appetite for the kind of popular relevance you’re talking about, Greg, that is manifesting itself in Toronto this week.