Here’s a phrase from the biography of Beth Bahia Cohen, a violinist who plays our kind of classical music, but who also plays just about every violin-like instrument found anywhere in the world. And specializes in music from Hungary and Greece.
She’s on the faculty at Berklee. Where, she says, she
teaches Global Strings Ensembles, Greek Music Ensemble, and private lessons in world violin traditions including European classical music.
So how about that!
European classical music, positioned simply as one of many world traditions.
Is that what we do in our field? Nope. As cultural theorists might say, we privilege our music, giving it special status.
Most likely we acknowledge other music, enjoy it, maybe think it’s important. But still we make our kind of classical music special, maybe even think that kids should learn about it in school. As if it were more important than other kinds of music. My Juilliard students often say it’s deeper, more expressive, more emotionally powerful than music of other kinds.
Which of course is their truth, but maybe not a universal truth.
Stepping carefully
I’ll grant that we’re in tricky territory here. Because European classical music — our kind (because there are other kinds of classical music: Indian, Persian, and more) — has a kind of world imprint that other musical traditions may not have. Beth plays traditional Greek and Hungarian music, but in Greece and Hungary I’d think European classical music is more often or at least more prominently heard.
Though, come to think of it, I don’t know that. But certainly European classical music has a wide imprint and much prestige in those countries, and elsewhere in the world.
And that’s tricky, in two ways. First, popular music has a far wider imprint, far wider circulation, far more impact on people. It’s another musical tradition or rather a huge complex of many traditions, happily blending, changing each other. (African music blends with western music and evolves into gospel music and blues. From which R&B emerges, from which disco evolves, and then electronic dance music, which elsewhere in the world blends with Arab music. While African music blends with the R&B that evolved from it. And onward from there.)
And then, second trickiness, the universal imprint of western culture on one hand is, well, universal, but also has a colonialist history. And in the widest cultural world we agree now that all cultures contribute, all get respect.
So we should think that about music, too! And let our music take its place in the wider world.
And then maybe I should have put the next part much earlier…
How we benefit!
Maybe this seems counterintuitive. If we dial back the prestige of classical music, if we step off our pedestal, if we admit that European classical music is less important than we’ve thought it is — wait for it — we’ll do much better than we do now. Be happier, get a wider audience, even grow artistically.
That’s a big admission for many people in our field, but it’s the truth. If we want a new, bigger, younger audience — which we badly need! — then, yes, our prestige stemming from a lingering sense of our superlative importance) does give us an advantage. So many people I meet say, in an apologetic way, that they know they should listen to classical music.
But then they never do it! Which suggests the downside of our prestige. It can scare people away. Makes people think they don’t know enough to enjoy classical music, that they need to be educated in it, that at concerts there are special rules. That they’ll never understand classical music, that maybe they’re not even worthy of it.
And so on! We’ve all encountered these ideas.
Let’s not be scary
And the more we treat our music — which is only the classical music of Europe (India, Iran, and other countries have classical music of their own) — as special, the more we scare people away.
So if we give up on that, and just happily say, hey, European classical music is just one the many kinds of music you can enjoy…if we show that we like other kinds of music, too…if we show that we live in the same multimusical world other people live in…we’ll make ourselves much more approachable.
And we’ll build a bigger audience. And advance in our quest for diversity.
And by opening ourselves to blend with other music, we’ll grow artistically.
i should note that, while I know Beth Bahia Cohen, these are my ideas, and not necessarily hers.
Greg!
Many thanks for this important and penetrating article.
I feel that one of the main trends in music in the 21st Century is the breaking down of the barriers between the European Classical tradition and the rest of the musical world. And you, Greg, are playing an important role in this process. Of course, this has been going on for the last 30-40 years. Arguably Bernstein was one of the original change agents with On The Town, Candide, and West Side Story.
The change is strongest in the Musical Theater where the works of Sondheim, et al, are for all practical purposes, opera, even though they are performed on Broadway rather than in the concert hall. More recent composers include Jason Robert Brown whose music sounds downright classical. Also Adam Guttel.
I believe that the Broadway musical comes closer to fulfilling Wagner’s vision of the gesamkunstwerke than Wagner himself ever did. The union of music, drama, dance, stagecraft, etc, into a coherent whole, is more successful in the works of Rogers and Hammerstein, or in West Side Story or My Fair Lady, than Wagner ever managed to do — mainly because his plots and his librettos were so inane. I mean — does anybody really care whether Brunhilde lives or dies? Doe anybody shed a tear, the way we do for Violetta and Mimi. And that is the essence of drama — you care about the characters. You love them or hate them. And you can’t wait to see what happens to them.
What is the great success story in the performing arts in the twenty first century? There’s really only one contender—Hamilton! So the question is: Is Hamilton defining the path for the future or is it just a one time phenomenon?
What is it that makes Hamilton so special? Is it the rap style that gives the music its unrelenting intensity with a combination of speech, poetry, and singing, usually associated with anger and social protest? Is it the transplanting of rap into the most traditional of narratives, the story of the founding fathers? Is it the subject matter itself, the retelling of the familiar story, with a focus on the under-appreciated genius who did so much to shape our nation? Is it the recasting of the legendary iconic characters as people of color; thereby conveying a strong and timely message of inclusion?
I think we will see more rap in musical theater, perhaps mixed with other musical styles. Otherwise I think the other elements of Hamilton are unrepeatable. But, I could be wrong. We’ll see !!
I agree. We in the classical world should feel free to say that Sondheim is one of the greatest living composers. Simple as that. No ifs, ands, or buts. Though his position on opera, as I understand it, is interesting. As we all can imagine, he’s been approached numerous times to write operas, and could basically write his own ticket at any of the big opera companies. Many of which are doing Sweeney Todd as if it really were an opera.
But Sondheim has held back, saying he wouldn’t feel comfortable creating a piece the way new operas are created. I’ve forgotten exactly what the reasons were, but there certainly is a difference between the Broadway world and the opera world. Longer rehearsal period on Broadway, for instance (by a lot). And the composers won’t do the orchestrating, or, traditionally (not sure how it’s worked with Sondheim) write the overtures or dance music for their shows.
About Wagner…not really germane to the discussion here, but I’ve been very moved by Wagner operas.When the Washington National Opera (I live in DC) did the Ring a few seasons ago, I was deeply touched from beginning to end. It was in fact one of those lifetime art experiences, the kind you never forget. And particularly about Brunnhilde: If I had to name the most moving (and most revelatory) moment in the production, I’d say it was when Wotan puts Brunnhilde to sleep, and (in a breathtaking reversal of what we usually see) she was uplifted, and he was heartbroken and crushed. So she consoled him. She had a future, however unknown, to look forward to. He knew he was finished. Very profound, I thought, and at least for me (and other people I know) profoundly touching.
Hi Greg,
Many thanks for your very substantial response.
So how, in your opinion, if Sondheim decided to write an opera would it be different from his existing works? From my POV, the essential difference is that in opera the principal thing is the music (and the quality of the singing) and everything else is secondary. In musical theater the main thing is the drama. The music serves the drama, not vice versa. Occasionally there is the rare masterpiece where all the elements are stellar — La Traviata, or West Side Story. And within that context, there is the rare performance, where acting, singing, staging, dance, lighting, are all on the highest level.
The opera singer who can’t act is as common as the star of the Broadway musical who can’t sing — even though Rex Harrison managed to create the compelling and now standard approach to Henry Higgins without singing a note.
The music of Andrew Lloyd Webber is IMHO third rate. One would not want to listen to it by itself. However it supports the drama magnificently. The same with the music of Les Miz. In the movie, the singing was, by professional standards, inept. But in the context of the whole, it was a powerful dramatic delivery.
I’m wondering what you think younger group of composers whose style is even more “classical” than Sondheim with a singing style that is closer to lieder or opera as well as orchestral sound, harmony, etc. I am thinking of “Light in the Piazza” and “Floyd Collins” by Adam Guettel, and “Bridges of Madison County” and “The Last Five Years” by Jason Robert Brown. Do you think this represents a good synthesis of opera and musical theater?
There’s a lot of synthesis going on — re your closing question — and that’s a good thing Although maybe synthesis isn’t the word I’d use. More like many things being in the air at once, and people naturally feeling free to use them. Worth noting that in the 1950s there was a Broadway musical that was through-composed, the way opera is, and it ran successfully. The Most Happy Fella, music by Frank Loesser (maybe best known for Guys and Dolls). Also maybe related: that also in the 1950s some new operas ran commercially on Broadway. Mostly by Menotti, for instance the Saint of Bleecker Street.
I’d look at the nature of opera a little differently. There’s really no doubt that the great opera composers intended to create drama with their music. Why else would Verdi have rehearsed the Macbeth-Lady Macbeth duet in Act 1 150 times (so said the singers, if I remember correctly), including one last rehearsal just before the curtain went up on the premiere. The music isn’t difficult. But the drama (the whole thing to be sung in a great hush) is very unusual. In Macbeth Verdi also had a major fight with the bass singing Banquo, who didn’t see why he had to stay around after his character is killed, to play his ghost. From the singer’s point of view, he had nothing left to sing, and someone else could be the ghost. But Verdi wanted (if you can use this term about a ghost) dramatic realism.
Wagner also worked long and hard with a tenor singing Tristan — on the drama. And in fact (though I know you’re not a Wagner fan) the third act of Tristan and Wotan’s monologue in the second act of Die Walkúre need acting (especially the monologue) to bring them alive. Singing them beautifully won’t do much.
And then of course there are opera singers who are among the best actors of their time. Giuditta Pasta and Victor Maurel in the 19th century, Chaliapin and Callas and Tito Gobbi in the 20th (to name just a few names). If you want to hear opera elevated to its proper place by spoken theater-quality acting, listen to the Rigoletto recording with Callas and Gobbi. If you know enough Italian to understand at least most of the words without looking at a translating, the power of what they’re doing is overwhelming, and it’s subtle, too. And then there are videos — Cesare Valetti in a 1950s L’elisir d’amore doing as fine comic acting as you’ll find in the best film and stage productions, a La Rondine (Puccini’s orphan opera, so underrated) also from Italy in the ’50s, in which the quality of acting from just about everyone is on the level of a good film.
And then there are opera singers who don’t act well, in a physical sense — they don’t look convincing, don’t move well. But sing with the most powerful drama. Carlo Bergonzi, the late tenor, would be an example. I remember seeing him in Ballo in maschera (one of his very best roles) at the Met at the end of his career, in the 1980s. In the recitative before his third-act aria, he sang the words “l’immenso ocean” (about the vast ocean that would soon separate him from the woman he loved0, and from the way he sang them I could almost physically see the endless water. Or in his recording of Aida (with Renata Tebaldi, with Karajan conducting), how when he sings the word “puro” in his fourth act duet with Amneris, he sings in a tone of utter, perfect purity.
Or I could cite my own experience singing opera, many many many years ago. When you learn a role like Guglielmo in Cosi fan tutte (the first role I ever sang), you can’t escape knowing that you’re singing drama, not simply singing music. Everything about how Mozart writes your part is done to make the drama come alive.
I was fortunate enough to sing major chunks of Scarpia and Iago, and the same is true there, with wonderful differences. I felt that Puccini had created something like a wonderful Hollywood film. What Scarpia needed, for me to add to what was written, was my personality. There could be many ways to do the role, and I could have fun with it. Iago wasn’t like that. There I felt that Verdi had created very deep and specific drama, and that the first job i had was to understand that, to rise to Verdi’s level, that what he had created, as drama, was more specific and more powerful than what I at least at first could think of on my own. A very humbling experience, and it was all about drama. As music, Iago’s part was subtle and ever-changing, but it was the drama the music expressed that was where the true power lay.
I might put it this way, generalizing about what opera is. It’s completely drama. But drama that for many reasons (including the way singers don’t really know how to act) is as a rule only partially realized. Maybe as a rule only slightly realized.
And yet the drama is there. And once I did see it perfectly realized, when Baz Luhrman (the film director; Moulin Rouge, Australia, the Great Gatsby) directed a production of La Boheme on Broadway. The singers wouldn’t have been cast at the Met, the orchestra was cut down, and had electronic keyboards in it. So opera people could scoff.
But the drama was perfectly realized, at every moment. The best demonstration I’ve ever seen of what opera really is. I remember after the performance encountering a well-known composer who had a commission from a major opera house. And who said he didn’t want that opera company performing his work. He wanted it done by Baz Luhrman on Broadway.
We share these ideas Greg… although you seem to articulate them better than I do. It’s a brave new world… or at least, it will be after the clouds of dust settle. What good is classical music really, if it can’t serve and inspire almost everyone? And it can’t currently serve more than the fine people who’re willing, able and comfortable doing the wherewithal to attend professional concerts or even their kids’ concerts. And then, it’s so bogged down with beautiful slow movements that drag on for the newcomer, they won’t want to come back.
Thus Americans need and deserve a “new classical” movement that makes it a common experience for the widest public; a movement that puts lively classical (and even symphonic bits) in places where people discover other music, keeps it lively, entertaining and engaging with humor, key listening information, personal testimony and more, and even lets people participate in the fun of instrumental music-making (we use toy percussion). An adaptive, humble, audience-centric classical music has a good chance of building new audiences than the art-centric tradition. One hand can certainly wash the other. Only the permission is necessary. It’s time to cut classical music loose.
Good to see you here, Rick! Haven’t had any contact with you for a while, and it’s always welcome. The last time I saw you was at the DePauw conference in the fall of 2016, when you were playing. And Sarah Robinson joined you. First time I’d ever heard her play!
If I articulate these things well, I’m sure it’s because I do it a lot. You, on the other hand, play music a lot better than I do! Amen, of course, to everything you said. I’m looking forward to that new world. Though I suspect that even the slow movements in classical pieces can play their part. I’m thinking of the Gorecki Third Symphony, consisting of six slow movements. And how popular that was in the 1990s. Number six on the British pop charts. And though it never reached that level here, I knew pop critics who loved it, and one pop music publicist who in her spare time did pro bono PR for the recording. (Which was put out by the group of labels she worked for.) Maybe it’s the dead air of the concert hall, and the routine (even at a high level) of playing those pieces over and over that can make the slow movements seem inert to an outsider.
My perspective, well known by some, is different, with abundant musical evidence that American jazz became the predominant classical music of the Western world beginning around the time Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Kenny Clarke emerged, ending with the late work of John Coltrane and the early work of Chick Corea. Too often, too, the compositions which jazz artists used for improvisation are overlooked, possessing a genius equal to the great improvisers, the combination of the two producing jazz. Imagine, for example, Indian classical music without ragas to extemporize on! Same thing, pretty much, with those compositions, also known as standards, or the Great American Songbook. And the greatest jazz artists always knew the lyrics of those songs, adding significant depth to their interpretations. Blues forms are also paramount, of course, as malleable in terms of infinite variation as ragas are.
Further, my view is that American and British rock and pop took over as the primary Western classical music from jazz with some overlapping, but now, or at least since 1980 or so, I feel its undecided which genre allows for the claim of being the current Western classical music. In all likelihood, such a lofty designation now belongs to individual artists transcending whatever genre they happen to be placed within, within the sometimes joyous tumult of our almost global village brought about through communicative innovations that resulted in unprecedented interweaving of cultures.
More specifically regarding bowed instruments, I personally have found enormous inspiration from the use of a Near Eastern kemanche timbre. There’s something magical about the sounds from the bowing of strings which remains unique. Ram Narayan, the Indian sarangi artist, is a musical innovator and creator on such a vast scale of pure substance as it to be a staggering omission that his music is mostly unknown here.
As always from you, Michael, thoughtful and so well worth thinking about. Thanks for sharing it! Of course I was writing from a much more limited perspective, considering the problems traditional European classical music is facing today, too many of them caused or increased by the too-high opinion of this music than many people involved with it have. (That was a cumbersome sentence!) Your wider perspective — which, since I know you well, I know you could widen still more — is a great help in getting beyond that problem. Thanks again for sharing it.
To my mind the real issue is not how important classical music is, whatever that means exactly. Classical music is our tradition, and colonialism is not integral to it and so need not be a part of the discussion. So just as, for example, Indian classical music lovers “privilege” their tradition, and rightly so, we are free to especially value our own. Not because it’s better, but because it’s good and it’s ours – our tradition, our culture, or at least the culture we are building upon.
It’s also worth noting that while it’s is true that “in the widest cultural world we agree now that all cultures contribute, all get respect,” that doesn’t show that all cultures are of equal value. It would take a separate argument to show that. The same is true of pop music. Some people argue that pop should get the same musical respect .as classical, but within the pop world not all pop gets the same respect. Proper respect is not by definition equal respect. Most of us agree that there are such things as good and bad tastes, although we can’t always agree with what they are.
None of this is to say per se that Western classical music is of greater value than Western pop music or music from other parts of the world. That would be a huge subject I’m not qualified to have more than a tentative opinion on (and I daresay the same is true of most of us). But it is – not to put words in anyone’s mouth here – to question the assumptions that seem to lurk beneath the common argument that it would be wrong to say it is.
I agree that demanding respect up front is not a way to get it, or to interest people to find out for themselves if and why respect is deserved. But by the same token, I wonder if we don’t need to be careful that the message that “hey, classical is just one of many equally fine musical languages,” doesn’t sound to many people like “if you don’t like it, don’t give that a second thought, you’re not missing anything important.”
What I’d suggest, for instance to my Juilliard students (picking up here on the end of your comment) would be to say something like: “Classical music is one of many musical traditions. But I love it! And here’s why.” I find that people respond to this. Just skip any arguments about classical music’s importance, and go right to your love for it. People respond to people, not to abstract arguments. I’d hesitate, though, to say anyone was missing something good if they didn’t listen to classical music. That’s an individual taste. Some people will like classical music, some won’t. I’m fine with that.
And of course there are many kinds of classical music! For whatever it’s worth, when people fro our wider musical culture ask me what classical pieces they should start with, I tend to recommend the Brandenburg Concertos and Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians. Music with a beat, so not that far from current music in the big world. Unless I know someone is a romantic, then maybe Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet. Not that there aren’t many other possible recommendations.
The last times I’ve talked to people thoroughly versed in Indian classical music, and who worked with it professionally, and loved it, one person in the US, one from India, neither of them privileged that tradition. They immediately placed in a world context.
As for comparative judgments, those are tricky. I can say that pop music can provide as deep an artistic experience as classical, and feel confident about that. First because I know both kinds of music very well, have worked professionally in both, and have had personal, deep artistic experiences with both. So I’m talking from my direct experience But then there’s also a huge literature about pop music, which documents, analyzes, and gives testimony to the profound artistic experience many people have with it. So this isn’t a discussion where I’d be drawing on a blank slate. Though I’ve found that many people in classical music who either think pop music isn’t artistic or aren’t sure, don’t know much about it. And almost certainly don’t know any of the scholarly, historical, analytical, or journalistic literature about pop music. They may not even know it exists!
As for not all pop music being so good, so what? That’s true in every area of life. Including classical music. I’ll never forget something Renee Fleming said at a panel discussion at Juilliard. She was asked what she thought was the difference between art and entertainment. Her answer was that she didn’t feel she could address that in any kind of totality. But she did say she could tell the difference. She at that time was, she said, singing the title role in Massenet’s Manon at the Met. And that, she said, was fluff! Nothing but entertainment! While Falstaff, which the Met was also doing at that time — that was art.
Finally, about classical music being “our” tradition…depends on who “we” are. It’s a big tradition, historically, in western culture. But plays a much diminished role today. Its prestige (and the vast amounts of money involved with it) are way out of proportion to the number of people who care, and above all to its influence on contemporary culture. Which as far as I can see is close to zero. Films like Brokeback Mountain, Wonder Woman, and The Black Panther shift our culture in giant ways, and as someone pointed out here, Hamilton is surely the most significant art event of our current moment. I could add — based among other things on that vast pop music literature — that Beyoncé’s Lemonade album and video and her Coachella performance would be up there, too. Nothing in classical music can come within miles of any of that. Not talking about intrinsic artistic value, but era-defining cultural impact.
There is no question that musical forms other than classical, and other art forms as well, have far, far greater significance to contemporary culture. What I mean by our tradition is our history, and it is of course a worthy history. So I’m fine with people not liking classical music, just like I’m fine with people not liking sports, or loving nature more than music, or loving science and not literature, which I love. I just think it’s important people are exposed to all of these things and taught their value, whether they learn to love them or not.
By “privilege” – which I probably misused – I just mean concentrate on. As it happens, as I write I’m listening to a wonderful livestream of a band led by Zakir Hussain and Dave Holland. It’s obvious that each loves the other’s tradition, but I would be very surprised if each didn’t think it important “that kids should learn about [their own] in school,” and probably first.
My point about some pop being judged better than other pop is just that if it’s valid to judge one pop song against another, regardless of whether a particular judgment is correct, it’s valid (and not elitist, etc.) to judge one musical form against another, regardless of whether a particular judgment is correct.
I love your beginner’s suggestions, and I’m sure a lot of people come to earlier periods of classical music through later ones. I certainly did. Thanks for the reply.
It’s good talking with you, Ken. Nice to meet you here. I’d offer one caution about judging musical traditions against each other. It’s easy to, in effect, load the dice, to without thinking much about it make the comparison cone out in a way that fits our preferences. I’m sure many of this do this unconsciously, including me.
It’s so simple — we just make the most important factor in the comparison the thing our favorite music genres exceeds at. Example: a jazz musician I know, who’s an amazing improvise, and for whom (I hope he wouldn’t mind my saying this) improvisation is almost a religion. For him it’s pretty obvious that jazz is “better” than classical music, because in classical music there’s hardly any improvisation.
I put better in quotes as a way of stressing that I don’t trust these judgments. For me, I’d always want to ask “better for what?” and leave the inter-genre judgments there.
About teaching music, amen to what you said. I like the idea of teaching music as a world phenomenon, showing where many genres come from, how they work, and where they fit in the world. That’s what the new music history curriculum at the Lawrence University music school works. And for years I’ve heard and read anecdotal accounts of how college students who resist being taught classical music (in a required humanities survey course) become much more open to it if it’s introduced as one of many musics out there in the world.
although we can’t always agree with what they are.
Should be “although we can’t always agree what they are.”
Amen! Fortunately, with examples like the Pulitzer and Harvard music curriculum changes, I see it is starting to happen. I just hope those with more traditional training will be able to adapt.
Hi, Liza! Great to see you here. And yes, the change is happening. One big changing place is the conservatory at Lawrence University, in Wisconsin. I’ll be blogging about that. Visited there a few weeks ago. The dean is an ethnomusicologist, so you know he’d like the phrase I quoted in my post. As in fact he does.
Liza! So great to see you back! Classytroll just posted a rant on our “rhythm/groove blindspot” and it occurred to me that you must have feelings on that too…
For anybody who doesn’t know, Liza’s performances are as rhythmically vibrant and groovy as ANYTHING in hip hop… She’s got one of the world’s best groove pocket drummers, after all!
But she’s also managed to elevate the groove with western style “composer” structures including long-form symphonic development, inventive orchestral colors, etc. And yet it is clear that there’s nobody on HER stage pondering that or feeling important because of it… They are all too busy bumpin’ that beat!
And THAT is what our conservatory kids need to figure out!
When all of these sinking Titanic orchestras who can’t adapt are at the bottom of the Atlantic, most paying gigs will be in studios or amped stage environments…
A player who can’t groove is going to be unemployed!
So anyhow, Liza, I’m very much interested in your thoughts here since I KNOW you’ve navigated this issue with great success…
How do you find classical players that can feel the groove pocket?
Aw shucks, Classytroll! Thanks for all that. As for your question about finding classical players that can feel the groove, so far I can say – luck, practice, patience, on the job training, mixed with jazz musicians in the wind section. Bottom line is we’re not perfect, but we do what we can. Not everyone is always locked in the groove, not everyone can improvise, and not everyone can read music, but we work with what we have. I’m glad you think we have succeeded.
I personally have a stronger classical background, but somehow through fate ended up in the funk world like a fish out of water. My friends helped me find the groove and improve my rhythm. They still teach me to this day. The go-go veterans have helped me improve our pocket. They’re impressed with me and I with them.
By the way, I read that book about branding. Great stuff. Still trying to figure out how to work that magic.
Again, I love your comments. Who are you? Oooooooo I want to know!
Two in our field know the true identity of classytroll… Perhaps YOU could be the third?
Your actions and ideas intrigue my inner circle… And your honesty and humility (in the face of all the superiority puffery that infects most classical types) is sooooooo refreshing!
So far, I’ve only done reveals in person… And only after some more private e-mail vetting. If it looks like I’ll be in D.C. again soon, perhaps I’ll reach out to you first so we can possibly meet offline?
Sure! I hope sooner than later! And I can keep secrets.
Rhythm is classical’s blindspot… Groove pocket training is BADLY needed!
I’ve been hiring players from the “best” conservatories for many years….
But 9 out of 10 can’t find their place in a groove!
Put them in a studio with some session players (and no baton to guide them) and most just don’t know how to be cool. We teach them that in our “superior” western tradition, rhythm is about tempo… Slow down, speed up, rubato here, accel. there… We expect them to bend musical space time as indicated in the score, by the conductor, or by whomever is leading the chamber group.
But we also expect them to master the absurd chops standards of Paganini or Listz! That’s like telling every guitarist that if they can’t shred and tap like Eddie Van Halen then there’s no reason to even bother… CRAZY! As if there aren’t TONS of great guitarists who can’t shred like EVH?
So we set this crazy standard that really only made sense in the 1800s when THAT was how you distinguished yourself (crazy chops I mean). Clearly doesn’t distinguish you AT ALL when EVERY conservatory kid is doing it now does it?
But yet, they run their scales and arps at ever increasing tempos for a decade or so like some human robot chasing the chops holy grail and by the end they can follow a baton or dots on the page with a click accurately enough…
But they have no sense of living, breathing, and modern groovy rhythm!
And that’s the one thing that obviously matters above ALL ELSE in THIS century!
I keep hiring them knowing that 10% will work out eventually, find the groove pocket, pick a place within it, and live there convincingly…
But can’t we get that up to at least 50% “employable upon graduation” at least?
We must teach the kids that groove doesn’t come from the page, or the conductor even… It must come from inside of them. They’ve got to LISTEN to how everybody else (especially bass and kick) is colonizing various parts of the beat and find their own place that contributes without stepping on toes.
The beat is like a big inflated bouncy ball that you can jump onto, sink in a bit, and then rebound off in many possible directions before gravity brings you back down again… Interesting players in non western genres are GREAT at this. The point of good rhythm is that it is a moving target… You can land on any part of the beat and bounce off at any angle you choose (not just the boring dead on symmetrical perfect center we train them to hit).
I’ve seen top conservatory kids go into full meltdown when you ask them to listen and groove.
We can do better!
You know I agree, CT. But I wonder if in past centuries there wasn’t some understanding of artists who were expressively powerful, without having the chops of some others. One example: Giorgio Ronconi, a baritone who created the role of Rigoletto. That’s one of the most technically demanding of all baritone roles, requiring sustained control of high notes, in long, sustained lyrical phrases.
And yet, a leading British critic of the time, Henry Chorley, said that Ronconi, by generally accepted vocal standards, had a usable range of just one octave. Meaning, I take it, that only in that one-octave range could he reliably produce a rounded, balanced, controlled sound.
And yet not only did he sing Rigoletto, but Verdi wanted him to sing the premiere! He must have been very powerful in everything that wasn’t vocal technique.
None of which takes away from the truth of what you wrote here!
Now that I’ve read this latest comment from CT, I’d like to add to my answer to his/her/their question about finding classical musicians that can groove. Maybe I had some luck because I didn’t necessarily find people from the top conservatories. I found people who were interested in mixing the go-go beat with classical. That may be a different population sample with a different mind set.
I once took a sight singing class at a classical conservatory. The cool jazz type people struggled in that class, but they had other strengths.
Liza, on spanning the chasm between western-competent readers and amped grooving, your method is a natural way to get a coalition of the willing on the same page… Learning by doing! And of course, being open to each other’s advice…
That’s EXACTLY how classytroll started back in the day… But since I was at the time hung up on recruiting ONLY from the most exclusive conservatories, I got a much higher “fail rate” when it came time to groove. These days, I’m building the rhythm section first… Then filtering conservatory kids not for chops or reading (they can ALL do that) but for GROOVE!
I’ve found that, for my style of German Counterpoint fused with French Color (and BEATS!), my best process is…
THE BACH FILTER
And what the heck is that?
Well, I’ve got these 12 favorite Bach Chorales that I’ve arranged into a little suite where the meta-structure of keys results in a journey over 20 minutes. I’ve learned these well enough to do a Glenn Gould 1955 Goldberg style jam on Bach’s little dots (Jazz syncopation here, hip hop flow there… Whatever feels right!). When my conservatory kids audition, they have to pick a layer and jam. I was inspired by Prince’s Paisley Park, where he put players through their paces in competitive jam sessions. There was NEVER a dull player on HIS stage… Everybody could Jam, improvise, and listen. His method definitely worked!
For my groove-classical version, if an auditioning player can flow with basic romantic rubato we move on to dropping beats from the drum machine (or a live drummer if I can swing it that day). If that doesn’t scare them off, I plug them into a Big Muff (or whatever FX pedal best fits their instrument) and see if they can scream and growl, or bounce around inside a ping pong delay, etc. I do my best to fluster them knowing I’d rather see a meltdown during an audition than a show.
If they make it through all that… I put them in front of my westward window (or video projection wall) and ask them to improvise whatever they want with me to “capture the moment” as the sun sets (And tipping my hat to Messiaen’s French Color training… We open the windows and let the birds join if seasonably appropriate). You’d be surprised how many freak out when you ask them to simply channel the natural environment (not the page) and make something beautiful happen!
Now for the rhythm section, they don’t have to read but they do have to pass the same “Bach Filter”.
Drummers never have a problem… I play the chorales and mix up tempi and styles and they can usually pick out a groove and find their pocket on the fly. The ones who figure out that I want them to CHALLENGE me too are the ones who get hired!
Bass players are hit and miss though. Even if they read, they don’t always “get” the flow of a Bach-style running bass line, where the bass may in fact be “in charge” but yet must still create room for and enhance the three layers above.
And if they don’t read (which is fine, as long as they can learn 12 melodies before they audition they can still pass the “Bach Filter”) they’ll need a GREAT ear. The 12 chorales I’ve chosen are FULL of fake outs… Implied harmonies that aren’t resolved how your ear expected… The whole point is that with SO MUCH riding on the Bass, that player must REALLY be in on the harmonic jokes and traps that Bach sets for any active ear that attempts to determine his implied direction.
And how do I find a rhythm section that might pass the “Bach Filter”?
Not in any conservatory!
Because for rhythm players, the Bach Filter comes AFTER the groove filter. If you ask around local studios, they all have “first call” session players and that’s a great place to start. Also, high-end wedding and Bar Mitzvah bands often have GREAT drummers and bass players… And you get to hear them cover all the current hits for a few hours in several genres.
So you see, for classytroll, the “Bach Filter” is central to the auditioning of both conservatory classical types (but in that case I’m really filtering for groove) AND rhythm players (there, filtering for harmonic and contrapuntal awareness). And if they pass the “Bach Filter” but fail the “sunset filter”? Well, that’s an unfortunate “near miss” but one that should still send up red flags. I might still be able to hire those kids if they get their classical baggage worked out and learn to live in the moment.
That’s just the method that I find most efficient for me though… I’m always interested in how others solve this problem too. Especially since it has such obvious implications for the future viability of classical conservatory grads!
Wow – thanks for the tips! I may use them.
Hi Classytroll!
As a classical violinist who has played a fair amount of jazz violin, I understand and agree with you about the classical players who don’t feel the groove. And often they are the same people who look down upon anything that is not from the european classical tradition. However that is changing. There is a new generation coming up that does it all — classical, jazz, rock, folk, world music. I feel that this is one of the defining characteristics of music in the 21st century.
Having said that, and placed myself squarely in your camp, I feel obliged to point out that it is a rare jazz musician who can give a convincing rendition of Brahms or Chopin or Fritz Kreisler, mainly because they in turn, don’t have a feel for the rhythmic freedom that this music needs. They can’t find the groove!
You make a good point about our evolving standards… Many of classytroll’s rantings are based on experiences with players from the most exclusive conservatories with the biggest endowments (and no reason to bend to the will of the outside world).
Over the years, I’ve enjoyed the challenge of infiltrating such places and recruiting kids for projects that the institution would NEVER approve! But I’ve experienced more than my fair share of musician meltdowns too!
The pressure these kids are under is tremendous… When your conservatory loans you a $250,000 “acceptable” instrument from the 1800s as soon as you step off the plane (because yours wasn’t good enough to play in their orchestra)… Well, that comes with a LOT of classical baggage and expectations, right?
Still, a few emerge from that pressure cooker having maintained their connection to the larger musical world. A few are willing to let you attach a mic to that 400 year old Amati or whatever, and a few will have a real career.
I just don’t see why some conservatories think it is ok to drop 90% off a cliff into the abyss upon graduation!
There is SOOOO much more supply than demand… But when a conservatory is endowed like a trust fund baby it doesn’t need to care. It will always have enough fresh young faces to pimp out to rich donors in the form of string quartets for their silly parties, etc. Or at least that’s what they tell themselves…
Central to classytroll’s take on the industry is the idea that conservatories that do this exclusively are part of the problem. They SHOULD be educating ALL violinist in ALL styles that might help them make a living.
And if they did that, wouldn’t the rhythmically unique identifiers of “our” music, the Romantic stretching of musical space time found in any great Brahms or Chopin interpretation, for instance, be even more special?
I agree, few players can TRULY do it all, rhythmically speaking…
But classytroll is going to keep chasing that “holy grail” regardless!
I don’t know, Greg.
The Japanese ring in the New Year with “Daiku” or the Big Nine, by a guy named Beethoven. Hundreds of performances, all over the country. The Japanese were colonizers, not the colonized.
Show me the Japanese, the Chinese, the Greek, the Indian, the Persian equivalent of Beethoven’s 9th, and I’ll listen to it – gladly, enthusiastically. I am DYING for a new musical experience on that level.
When folks in Cleveland or Duisburg spend New Year’s Eve listening to that yet-to-be-named work, then I’ll accept the “all cultures are equal” argument.
Western classical music is – quite literally – the summit of all human achievement. Moon landings, atomic power, Einstein’s relativity, the Sistine Chapel ceiling be damned. I would trade them all for the opportunity to hear Mozart’s response to the Eroica!
“Show me the Japanese, the Chinese, the Greek, the Indian, the Persian equivalent of Beethoven’s 9th, and I’ll listen to it – gladly, enthusiastically. I am DYING for a new musical experience on that level.”
For other people, precisely this can happen. I’ve had experiences to rival Beethoven’s 9th with pop albums (Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, for instance.) Though of course you don’t get an equivalent of a Beethoven symphony. You get something else, whose power feels comparable. I might ask, in what I hope is a friendly way, whether you’re not closing off that possibility for yourself by looking for an equivalent. Have you closed off other musical genres for yourself, just possibly, by not yet knowing how to take them on their own terms?
Not at all.
I, too, cherish “Astral Weeks”. Got it on CD and vinyl, give it a spin once in awhile. The title track lyrics I know by heart. But it’s not “Die Winterreise”.
There is a tremendous amount of jazz I love (my small jazz collection amounts to about 300 lps on vinyl and about half again as many on CD). The Oscar Peterson Trio live recording of “Take the A Train” on “Oscar Peterson In Russia” is absolutely electrifying from first note to last. That being said, while it may be “The Duke” it is not The “Archduke”.
I would point out that these are both examples of WESTERN music.
Back to the original question: “Show me the Japanese, the Chinese, the Greek, the Indian, the Persian equivalent of Beethoven’s 9th, and I’ll listen to it – gladly.” Hell, show me the “Astral Weeks” or “Take the A Train” from these cultures and I’ll give’em a spin.! Please, specific examples. All your readers! I’m legitimately curious.
I get so frustrated with this and other classical music blogs, constantly apologizing for what Western classical music isn”t, when it is actually the single greatest flowering of the human intellect and the human spirit in all of history.
Astral Weeks isn’t Winterreisse. Of course it isn’t. And Washington DC, where I now live, isn’t New York, where I’m from. So what? Both have their virtues.
As for recommending something great from other musical cultures, outside the west, I’ll have to leave that to people who know more than I do. I know enough about some nonwestern musical cultures to know that they can give profound experiences, and I’ve sometimes had them. But I can’t point you to anything specific. It’s also unlikely that you or I would get from that music what the people native to it get. You might, as second best, read a thorough book on African drumming. Or read Christopher Small’s book Music of the Common Tongue, which makes a detailed and deeply humane comparison of European classical music with African and Africa-American music. That at least can establish some parameters for discussion, and set forth some reasons for understanding that the African side of that comparison can lead to profound experiences.
Or, Michael Robinson, if you read this — you can say profound things about Indian classical music.
Or anyone else more qualified than me — join in!
When you say classical music is “the single greatest flowering of the human intellect and the human spirit in all of history,” you pretty much put an end to all possibility of discussion. This is your opinion. More power to you. Others might not share it.
But how could we — with any seriousness — try to establish whether what you say is true? We’d have to start, just to give one example, by asking whether European classical music is a greater flowering of the human spirit than western literature. Beethoven and Bach and Mahler are a greater flowering than Homer, Shakespeare, Proust, and Virginia Woolf?
To me it’s crazy even to ask such a question. And then we’d have to rank western visual art. No way to do that. How can we even agree on the parameters for these evaluations? And what if someone says the greatest flowering of human intellect and the human spirit isn’t in art? Maybe it’s in science, or ethics. Or architecture. Or the emancipation of women. Impossible discussion. All we can do is flail at each other, saying “This is better!” “No, that’s better!” Waste of time, IMHO.
Well, its really pretty simple. The unidentified person (I do feel uncomfortable responding to an unidentified person, but will do so in the spirit of perhaps making a move in a chess game, enjoying a friendly debate!) has answered his (or her?) own question. The jazz choice reveals a shallow understanding of that art form. There are jazz artists as great as Bach and Beethoven (to use a simple example, not having time to write a book here!) beyond the comprehension of those lacking a deep knowledge and experience with jazz. There are rock and pop artists as great as those two named German composers, too. Indian classical music, the same. Easily. And I regret that I am not fluent enough with other musical cultures to go beyond my admittedly limited assertions here.
Its an old analogy, but it works. If one has a sophisticated knowledge of Chinese, Indian, Italian, French, and Japanese cuisine, etc., it may be possible to say that any one restaurant or chef exceeds the others on a micro level, but only a person of narrow culture and experience would wrongfully say one of these cuisines is superior to the others in a macro sense.
The unknown person I’m responding to has no doubts because of a limited range of musical experience. Even more, I am suspicious about how much he or she understands the very music they are so defensive about. Nobody said that European classical music was inferior because its not, obviously. All that was said is that other musics are equally great, at least.
I am certain that Back and Beethoven would have been as ecstatic about Indian tabla drumming as Debussy was to hear Indonesian gamelan music. They were about intellectual and expressive growth, not about building aesthetic walls.
typo: Bach (in the last paragraph)
I am going to claim victory here, in that not ONE of you has been able to point me to a single non-western work saying “Give this a listen, it will blow your mind.” I have subscriptions to both Naxos Music library and Spotify. Call now. Operators are standing by.
And yet, with Western classical music triumphant across the globe (look at the nationalities of any randomly chosen competition finalist list if you doubt) you all insist that these others are somehow equal, or even worse, that somehow the Western tradition has to kowtow Greek fiddlers, Indian table drummers or Indonesian gamelan music
Off the Pedastal? My ass! Triple the pedestal in height and illuminate it with mega-watt klieg lights!
You didn’t mean to become the cartoonist here, but you’ve written a comment that’s genuinely funny. You claim victory in a competition that doesn’t exist. The notion that the western musical tradition needs to “kowtow” to other musics is nonsense. just for a start. Nobody has proposed anything like that. The only question here is whether anything not from western classical music can give an experience comparable to Beethoven’s Ninth.
Of course this question in itself is a little ridiculous, because who’s going to have this experience? Who’s going to judge? If someone in India has a profound experience from Indian music — which has happened for centuries — who’s going to say whether it’s as profound as the experience you say you have from Beethoven? On what scales are these experiences to be weighed? The question really is absurd.
If Michael Robinson (who has commented here) has profound experiences with Indian music, how do we compare his experience with your experience of Beethoven? Do you get into some kind of mental boxing ring with him, and slug it out to determine whose musical experience is more profound?
Or are YOU the ultimate arbiter? Are you the one who’s going to slam down a gavel, saying yes, something from another tradition (once someone gives you a link) is equally profound as Beethoven, or isn’t?
The problem there is that you might not be equipped to understand something from another tradition? Just as someone from another tradition might not be equipped to understand Beethoven. There’s a story, perhaps apocryphal, that someone from India heard western classical music and thought there was only one emotion in it, nostalgia. Indian classical music uses many ragas (roughly equivalent to our scales), each embodying and communicating a specific emotion. Are you (or I) equipped to hear this? And therefore equipped to hear what someone from India steeped in this tradition can hear? Can we hear the subtleties in the music, the ways one moment differs from another, in the way one passage in the Ninth flows into another one?
You can search Wikipedia for entires on Indian classical music, and its two great traditions, Carnatic and Hindustani. There you can find the names of many musicians, including two that in my very quick (and obviously inadequate) sampling I liked a lot, Balamuralikrishna and Balaji Shankar.
I found fewer links to the Hindustani instrumental music I’ve long liked, compared to the number of links I found to vocal music. Surely the most famous Indian musician of modern times is Ravi Shankar, whose music is all over Spotify. As are the names you’ll find in Wikipedia.
I’m also liking music by one of Michael’s teachers, Harihar Rao. Especially these tracks:
https://open.spotify.com/track/3etn2WhmmCp1iJ5AClT2Pe
https://open.spotify.com/track/1qUgKrd9BbKAM6ewkXeSbf
I really love the second one.
If you listen to them, and don’t find them as profound as the Ninth — or maybe more modestly, a Schubert song — again you should ask yourself: Am I really qualified to make this comparison? Can I hear the Indian music in the way someone who knows that tradition would hear it?
And finally — a challenge for you. You keep waving the flag of Beethoven’s Ninth? But how deeply do you really understand it? You haven’t said one thing, not anything at all, about the profundity you keep saying it has.
So out with it. Why is Beethoven’s Ninth profound? What profundity is in it? Be specific. Refer to specific details in the score. Particular passages, notable moments in orchestration, composition craftsmanship, or form.
I love, for instance, the statement of the famous last movement melody by low string and bassoon. When I look at the score, it leaves me breathless. The disposition of the instruments, the movement of the instrumental lines, the way so few instruments fill so much musical space, create flowing shapes that move time forward — I’m lost in admiration. A profundity here is the way a theme that’s both popular (in its simplicity), grand, expansive becomes something intimate and intricate. Few composers could do that.
So let’s see your discussion of the Ninth. Are you qualified to understand it? To understand it well enough to compare it to masterly music from other traditions?
A good two-fisted debate would be fun. I took part in a debate about the future of classical music once, at Cambridge University in the UK. Even wore black tie (part of the ground rules for debating). I’ve also been in the audience for a debate on the same subject in Alaska, between two top-ranked college debating teams. Oxford and the U of Alaska (ranked at the time 17th in the world; good for them!).
I can say that much depends on who the audience is, and to what extent the debaters cast their arguments not simply to make the best factual and logical case, but to win over the specific audience hearing them. So the best arguments may very well NOT win!
Would be fun anyway. Though I suspect it’s unlikely to happen simply because of logistics. Getting the debaters to the same place, finding a venue, recruiting the audience. A lot of work! Not saying it’s not worthwhile, but who’s going to do it all?
Greg, do you have a picture of yourself wearing a tie? I have to see that! 🙂
I mean – black tie
I have a photo of Anne and me, before our wedding. Black tie!
I also wore black tie to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony once.
I’ll send you the photo. Also one of me and Ice-T at an LA club. I’m not wearing a tie in that one…(shirt open to my navel, long long long hair…)
Okay, cool!
How about a battle of the bands, so to speak? 😀
Thanks, Greg, for your substantive response. You have provided some links to some Indian music you think is worth hearing, music that may provide a listening experience on a par with some of the best of Western classical music . I will listen this weekend to the Harihar Rao tracks – dutifully, repeatedly -,and hopefully be enthralled. If the Rao tracks bring me half as much satisfaction as “Wandrers Nachtlied II” or “Lied eines Schiffers an die Dioskuren” then you will have made an enormous contribution to my happiness and well-being.
I’m not being flip or facetious when I say that I truly crave a new music experience that will satisfy on the level of the greatest works of the Western classical tradition, whether it be from a new Western composer or from a foreign classical tradition with which I am not familiar.
As an aside, I lived in Mumbai for two years during the early 1990’s (when it was still Bombay) and attended a fair number of Indian classical music concerts. I briefly dated this British hippie chick who was studying sitar there and she dragged me to all kinds of things. Very little of it rubbed of on me, I’m afraid, not because I lacked musical perception but rather owing to her incredibly shapely and lightly clothed figure which tended to dominate my attention whenever I was in her presence.
I need to clarify something here, Greg, both for you and for classytroll, that I waved the flag of Beethoven’s 9th not because I consider it the ne plus ultra of music, Western or otherwise, but because the Japanese revere it on a level I doubt even the Wiener Singverein could manage. Your original post, which we’ve diverged from here, is that we in the West need to mute our enthusiasm for the European tradition and embrace other traditions, traditions that are – in your opinion – every bit as rich as the European one. My riposte was simply: Show me the non-Western work we Europeans/North Americans can and should revere as highly as the Japanese respect Daiku.
On that question, I’m still hearing crickets. And, for the record, I in no way see myself as the arbiter of that question. If the other musical cultures are truly as rich as the the Western, there should be a short list of works or composers any musically literate person could recite – just as any architecturally knowledgeable person could name the Taj Mahal, Angor Wat, Machu Picchu – that are great and worthy of universal admiration.
Continuing with the subject of Beethoven’s 9th, I have to say, Greg, that I was more thrilled to read your analysis and appreciation of that passage from the last movement than perhaps anything I have ever read on this website. I’ve been with you from the beginning here, since you began this blog as a book-in-progress. In all that time, the question that has come to me more often than any other is: “Does Greg Sandow actually like classical music?” Thank you for finally, definitively answering that in the affirmative..
As for my own appreciation of Beethoven’s 9th, I am neither a musician nor a composer. I can follow a score to the level of “Oh, he didn’t take that repeat. Interesting.” I own a dozen or so different recordings of it. Truth is, it’s not my favorite of the Beethoven’s symphonies. I’d give the Eroica or the 7th pride of place there. For me then Ninth is great because it is a secular piece of music that is palpably sacred. “Ahnest du den Schoepfer, Welt?” It makes one feel the presence of the Almighty, however one defines Him, more than any liturgical work I can think of.
Am I qualifed to understand the Ninth? Depends on what you mean by understand. I am confident I grasp it on the level of an experienced and sensitive listener. If confronted with its non-Western equivalent, I am confident I could do the same with careful, repeated listening.
I am surprised that you, of all people, Greg, would pose that question. In doing so, you comprehensively contradict everything you have written here, not just in this post but in the entire collected output of your blog. The idea that classical music has to be analyzed and understood at the technical level in order to be loved and appreciated should be anathema to you. Your shrinking audience is going to get really, really tiny if that’s the case.
Ultimately, the proof is in the listening. Other cultures love Western music, classical as well as popular, whereas ours takes very little notice of theirs. Either we suck as listeners or our music is simply better. I subscribe to the latter view. I’ll adhere to it until convinced otherwise..
Thanks in turn for your response, Thad. Sorry if I was flip in my previous response.
But no, I haven’t contradicted myself. My challenge to you doesn’t mean that I think anyone needs a technical understanding of classical music in order to like it. I’m not saying to you, “How dare you love Beethoven’s Ninth? Prove that you understand it!” If you just said you love the piece, yay for you. I love it, too.
But you set a much higher bar. You said that western classical music is the greatest achievement of humankind, and that it’s better than music from any other tradition. Beethoven’s Ninth was your example. If you’re going to make grand claims like that, it’s perfectly legitimate to quiz you about your understanding. On what basis do you think Beethoven’s Ninth is as transcendently great as you say it is? And that western classical music has that unmatched greatness?
Especially if you think yourself able to compare western classical music to music from other traditions, once someone points you at that other music! (Which, btw, you could easily have found for yourself, just as I did before writing my last comment to you.) If you’re going to issue judgments from on high, we have every right to ask what they’re based on.
So you brought this on yourself. And I haven’t contradicted myself a bit.
A few other points, before I leave this discussion. I have other things that claim my attention. But…
When you hear music from other traditions, what you hear isn’t likely to be a “work,” as we understand that in western classical music. Indian music, for instance, is improvised. As is much of the music of the nonwestern world. If you listen to the tracks I linked, you’re hearing improvising. Music that will never be repeated. How that affects your judgment of quality I can’t imagine, but improvisation (at least as I see it) brings in quality measures all its own. Like, for instance (as I thought when I listened to some of Beth Bahia Cohen’s playing this morning, the delight of utter surprise. Neither she nor I, listening to a recording, knowing what’s coming next. That can be quite profound, in my experience.
Second, we really can’t judge one musical tradition against another as we might judge entries in a competition. We listen, we say A is greater than B.
That’s because we most likely don’t have equal ability to understand A and B. Especially if B comes from a radically different culture. We can never experience it the way people in that culture do.
So for me, the way to place one tradition alongside another is to examine what happens with the music from another tradition. How is it received? What’s the experience people have with it in the other culture?
So you could listen to traditional African drumming. And, whether you liked it or not, you’d be unable to judge it, because you couldn’t understand it. Me neither. For one thing, the rhythms are far more complex than anything we have in the west. So we literally don’t hear them. Second, the music is participatory. It involves its listeners in ways that generally isn’t true in the west, and certainly isn’t true of western classical music. So if you’re just sitting somewhere in the west and listening, from an African point of view you wouldn’t be experiencing the music at all. You wouldn’t be dancing to it, for one thing. And even if you got up and danced, you wouldn’t be doing it with many others. And since the music would be on a recording, you couldn’t experience how the dancing can change with the music and how the music can change with the dancing.
That’s why I’d suggest reading in reasonable depth about a nonwestern music tradition, if you want to have any hope of even beginning to understand it. So I might suggest reading African Rhythm and African Sensibility by John Miller Chernoff, and also Music of the Common Tongue by Christopher Small.
Finally, a word of caution about Japan. Yes, Beethoven’s Ninth is a big item there, but that doesn’t simply reflect the greatness of the music, or the Japanese awareness of that. I’d say two other factors are involved.
First, the relation of Japan to the west, which historically was unlike that of any other nonwestern nation. When the Japanese were first confronted with the west, they quickly understood that they were outgunned, literally and figuratively. So they closed themselves off to the outside, and developed western technology and weapons. As a result, they were never colonized (and in fact became colonizers themselves).
When finally they opened their doors to the west, they’d laid the groundwork for the adoption of western culture, too, alongside their own. I remember being there some years ago, and being given the catalogue of a Japanese music publisher. Not that I could read it! But the cover was revealing. Pictures of the great composers. Familiar portraits of Bach, Handel, Beethoven…plus an earnest Japanese gentleman wearing 19th century western dress.
But in no way would they have universally believed western culture was superior. Because alongside that gentleman were traditional zen gardens and tea ceremonies. And deep philosophy of a kind we learned about in the west only relatively recently.
The other caution would have to do with the fan-like aspects of how they relate to western culture. You can see this very clearly in pop music. How there can be earnest fans of country music, blues, whatever, including bands that play exactly what the original western bands play.
I remember reading about a Japanese salsa band that came to NY and had a kind of triumph. The Japanese musicians had, after listening to recordings, learned to play salsa expertly. And apparently with flair! So they delighted NYC salsa fans.
There was one surprise for the Japanese, though — when people started dancing. In all the time they’d spent listening to salsa recordings (and I’d bet, from what I’ve heard about Japanese fandom, that they knew the recorded history of salsa backwards and forwards), they’d never learned that salsa is dance music.
I’m not saying this to criticize them, or to criticize the Japanese in any larger way. Just suggesting that the Beethoven’s Ninth thing in Japan is among other things a kind of fandom, that doesn’t have to be based on any profound artistic experience that the music might give.
Rock and hip hop have spread all over the world, and we hear rap in different languages now. And Japanese live GoGo music too. Does that mean these genres are superior the way Beethoven’s 9th supposedly is?
If we apply Thad’s logic, that’s exactly what it means!
I think Thad’s logic supports your argument, then!