[Corrected version]
Another day, more things in our classical music world that make me shake my head and smile.
First a Boston Symphony press release, announcing what they’ll do next season. Bright, shiny language! They’ll offer “fresh, innovative projects alongside many of the most popular and impressive works ever composed for orchestra.”
Which I guess sounds better than “fresh, innovative projects alongside the same stuff we always do.”
Oddity alert: I’m quoting the press release I got by email. It’s different from the version on their website, which doesn’t include the phrase I’m teasing them about.
Hindemith and Stravinsky, contemporary composers
And then another press release, this time for a recording of all Hindemith’s violin sonatas (plus a work for viola d’amore), by violinist Roman Mints. From which we learn that Hindemith is contemporary music:
A longtime champion of of contemporary composers, Roman Mints’s deep appreciation for the works of Paul Hindemith began when he was a young violinist, studying in Moscow in the 1980s: “This music, written not just before I was born but closer to the time of my grandparents’ birth, felt completely contemporary, and daringly advanced in its sound … From the time I put Sonata in D on the stand, I was gripped by the first subject, constructed from seconds and sevenths, marked to be played with stony defiance. I was never the same again and Hindemith became my window into contemporary music.”
And OK, Mints was 13 at the time and living in the Soviet Union, where (by Communist edict) most new classical music was pretty conservative.
But still! Hindemith got famous in the 1920s, almost 100 years ago, and died in 1963. Contemporary music?
Only in a field so anchored in the past could something that old be contemporary. In many ways, we haven’t caught up with the 20th century yet. So pieces 100 years old can seem new.
And, since we’re anchored in the past, we do the same pieces over and over. Which maybe explains why the Boston Symphony tries to put a fresh spin on that, finding a bright and hopeful way to say that — at the core of their season — they still do the same old stuff.
To their credit, they and other orchestras really are doing more new things than they used to. But the phrase I quoted still is spin.
When I first wrote this post, I said that Mints is a violist, and said the recording was of Hindemith’s viola music. This was an intensely silly mistake. I apologize for it, and I’ve corrected the post.
Greg, I occasionally follow you, as we’re kind of acquaintances.
I had the pleasure of seeing/hearing Natalie Dessay at the Carlyle
the other night -she guested on the tail end of another singer’s performance.
Thought of you. She did three songs, music by Michel Legrand.
Her intensity and charisma were striking.
Many thanks for this, John.
Comparable story. I heard Anne Sofie von Otter give a concert with Brooklyn Rider, a string quartet with audacious ideas. She sang classical music, but also songs by Kate Bush, Björk, and Abba! Abba in part because she and they are Swedish.
Even more notable, she sang everything with the same voice. Which doesn’t mean she used a classical voice for the pop songs. Somehow the voice she uses for everything works in both repertoires. Nice to hear music not divided into categories, but just…music.
Duke Ellington said it: never mind trying to define style; there’s only two kinds of music -Good and Bad.
I’m coming more and more to think that the big problem with classical music is that it’s just too old. There are just masses and masses of pieces going back centuries which we feel compelled to keep playing and listening to, just because we think they’re so great.
Why not just forget about that ancient stuff? Popular music has already come up with that solution. Anything written and performed say 10 years ago or earlier (or perhaps even a later cut-off date than that) is considered a “golden oldie,” and few people are the slightest bit interested in it, it seems, except for people who are in their golden age themselves or creative young people who sample bits of it for their new stuff. We could sample bits of Palestrina, Bach, Beethoven, and, yes, Hindemith and let the rest of it go.
I had a mischievous thought about the Beethoven anniversary. Why not playing his music for a year, to celebrate? We’d appreciate it so powerfully if we didn’t hear it for a year!
Too old? “Think” they are great? Perhaps we should close the art galleries to paintings preceding 1900, the Mona Lisa is clearly “too old”! How about that ancient monstrosity the capital building in Washington D.C., surely it needs to be torn down and replaced with a big box made of shiny steel and glass. In reality the so-called “old” music is as relevant and fresh today as a Shakespearean play. Beethoven wrote about revolution and called it his symphony number 3. Is revolution out of date? How about resurrection of the soul; the content of Mahler’s 2nd symphony. Greatness is timeless and unfortunately not enough young folks of today have had sufficient exposure to great music to feel its greatness. Too bad, it’s their loss!
Oh, dear! I’m sorry that what I wrote was so upsetting for you. This is, has been from me and others over many years, a long discussion. Because of that, I don’t recapitulate every part of it each time I pursue it.
But of course there’s nothing wrong with old art, for all the reasons you say. The question is where the emphasis goes. You mentioned art galleries. Well, art museums have found in recent years that the shows that draw the biggest crowds are contemporary art. So they feature it quite a bit.
People who read serious literature don’t stop reading Proust or Virginia Wolff (both favorites of mine). But they’re likely, at least in my experience, to read at least as many new novels as old ones.
I could run this same line of thought through all the arts, except maybe ballet. Classical music stands out because, as generally practiced, it focuses so strongly on the old masterworks. This makes it an outlier in the contemporary world. I don’t say, and have never said, that we should stop playing the old works. Or tear down the capitol building! (Which, if you don’t mind a political comment, needs renovation from the inside, so to speak, not on the outside.) I’d just like to see us play the old works less. Which, and I hope you don’t find this extreme, might lead us to more striking performances. The Eroica might actually sound revolutionary, rather than coming across, as at least to me it so often does, as “good old Beethoven 3.” Played excellently, very often, but without the bite I’d like it to have.
As I said, this is a long discussion. Best continued, I think, if we don’t make assumptions about what any of us means. (Written in my home, a single-family house in Washington, DC, build early in the last century. Renovated inside, it’s true, in 2006, before we bought it, but an old house might be helped by that. I’m sure the capitol building has modern lighting and heating. The exterior of my home is just fine, and I wouldn’t change a thing.)
Even the greatest works can wear a body out. I remember, quite a few years ago, when I played the Beethoven nine over and over so often that I got sick of them and couldn’t stand them again for quite a while. Same thing happened with the Brahms four. Even today I’m happy to hear them, now and then, at a concert or on the radio, but I don’t play them for myself.
So maybe they should quit using the term classical music too!
Maybe you should drop the term “classical music”!
Dear Greg
Let me clarify a couple of things:
First of all, I am violinist and not violist. (yet). It is a CD of complete HIndemith violin music for violin and piano. Plus viola d’amore Sonata.
Secondly, if you don’t mind me putting the quote back into the context, what I meant was – for a 13 y o behind Iron Curtain, who could only listen to what was available, this music did sound very contemporary. Thank God you find it hard to believe, but you should take my word for it, as I have lived there and then. And that is where my interest in the ACTUAL contemporary music started. It just so happened and for me it was a window- a coincidence. If you’d read the complete article of mine, which was published on gramophone web site and from which this quote was taken https://www.gramophone.co.uk/blog/gramophone-guest-blog/how-hindemith-changed-my-life , you would see that later Hindemith has also opened my eyes later to Romantic music as well. HIndemith just happened to be a gateway composer for me in many ways. So that is what I meant. Of course Hindemith is not contemporary music. It just felt to me that way when I was thirteen.
Roman, thanks so much for your courteous comment and correction. My mistake about what instrument you play and what music is on the Cd is very silly. The product of working far too fast, but that’s no excuse.
I’m grateful for your clear and eloquent explanation of what you meant by the passage I quoted. I did understand you, but should have spent more time putting what you said in the proper context, as you’ve done here. I should have much more clearly said that the point I wanted to make was independent of you, and of what you said about Hindemith.
My point (as I also tried to clarify in my response to Larry Wheeler) is about the curious usage of the term contemporary music in the classical music world during the 40 or so years I’ve been in it. As I said to Larry, I’ve seen old Schoenberg pieces called contemporary music, while music from the same period by tonal composers would never be. Or, to give you an example from the 1970s, my first decade as a classical music professional, I was in New York, which was well known a center for contemporary music. By which we all meant atonal music. So the ensembles that played works by the leading atonal composers in New York were called contemporary music groups, and their performances were called contemporary music concerts. While the joyful pieces being premiered in New York by Steve Reich and Philip Glass in that same decade were never called contemporary music, then or afterwards. Even though they were contemporary in the chronological sense.
What had happened was that the term contemporary music — because of the dominance back then of modernist composition — took on connotations of modernism. And as time went on, those connotations grew so strong that they became part of the meaning of the term. “Contemporary music,” in the literal meaning of those words, was simply music written now. But as the term was used, it came to mean music that sounds modernist. Which could include old music as well as new music, as shown by the example of the catalogue of vocal records I gave in my response to Larry Wheeler.
All of which is a long-winded way to explain why I was struck by the words “contemporary music” used in such close association with Hindemith. Maybe I made too much of it! But the phenomenon I tried to talk about is very real. My Juilliard students, in the 23 years I’ve taught there, really don’t know modernist music from any era, and will be (most of them) so braced by just about any modernist piece that they’ll call it contemporary.
All of this conversation taking off from Hindemith has made me curious to hear his music again! It’s been quite a while. So thanks for, indirectly, sparking my interest! Thanks again for your courteous comment and correction. I apologize for any misunderstanding, and of course for my mistake.
I see “contemporary” as a term of art or a somewhat technical term in the classical music field. That is, “contemporary” as compared with all the previous centuries — Palestrina, the Three Bs, etc. Again, we’re not talking about the last decade, as the folks in popular music do, but the last few centuries.
It’s like the term “modern art” in the field of painting — I’ve seen that stretched back to the late 19th century.
Thank you very much for the correction
Although I still disagree that what you learn from our press-release is the fact that Hindemith is contemporary music, I think that basically we were saying the same thing in different ways. And anyway, I am very happy that this release caught your attention even in such a way 🙂 Hopefully you will find time to listen the record. All the best.
Sorry, Greg, but there is so much wrong in this blog I’m shaking my head. First, you refer to “a recording of all Hindemith’s viola music, by violist Roman Mints.” Really? It is a recording of Hindemith’s violin music and Roman Mints is a violinist.
Then, you criticize the press release, writing: “From which we learn that Hindemith is contemporary music.” Roman actually said: “This music…felt completely contemporary” and, “Hindemith became my window into contemporary music.” He said the music was written closer to the time of his grandparents’ birth.
The fact that Roman is “a longtime champion of contemporary music” does not necessarily mean that he thinks Hindemith is contemporary. His bio mentions a lot of contemporary music: Roman Mints has given Russian premieres of works by Desyatnikov, Golijov, Tavener, MacMillan, Scelsi and Mozetich and has also given world premieres of over fifty works by Tabakova, Desyatnikov,Bennett, Finnissy, Irvine, Langer, Vassiliev, Burrell, Miyachi, Duddell, and others.
A little research would contribute greatly to accuracy. Your readers deserve that.
Good to see you here, Larry, and thanks for the correction. Very silly mistake for me to make.
I don’t think I was clear in making my larger point. I didn’t mean to say that this artist thinks Hindemith is contemporary music, or that Shira Gilbert, who wrote the press release, does. But I do think there’s an oddity in the way that term is used in the classical music world, which leads to it being used in the vicinity (so to speak) of Hindemith, in a way that doesn’t quite make sense. A piece can be said to be contemporary music even if it isn’t at all contemporary.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised, for example, to see Pierrot called contemporary music. I’ve seen it done, and seen the piece played by organizations that described themselves as contemporary music groups. I don’t think any of us would raise the proverbial eyebrow to see a Ligeti piece or Xenakis piece called contemporary music, no matter how old they were. While I don’t think anyone would use the term for anything by Menotti or Philip Glass.
Here’s an unmistakable example of what I mean. I once had a voluminous catalogue of vocal records from the pre-LP era, recordings of singers active in the first half of the 20th century. Each singer in the catalogue was given a brief bio. Many of them were Italian singers who’d sung in premieres of operas by Mascagni and other Italian composers, and in their bios, that fact would be noted, with no special emphasis. But for the relatively few singers who were known for singing Schoenberg or other atonal composers, the bios were quite different. These singers would be singled out for their performances of (using just these words) contemporary music.
So a Mascagni opera wouldn’t be contemporary music, but a Schoenberg piece from the same era would be. Because of the rise of modernism, and then its time of great prestige in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70, contemporary music came to be thought of as modernist — disjunct, atonal, whatever. And then the term itself acquired that connotation. Contemporary music came to be thought of as modernist, leaving new pieces that weren’t modernist in a curious terminological limbo.
We’re somewhat past that today, because the new music being written is all over the place stylistically, and isn’t likely to sound modernist. But still the connotation persists. Leading to a situation in which even some of my Juilliard students during the past 20 years might find themselves playing a Hindemith piece, and being braced by how modern it sounded, as compared to the music they usually play. I make an exception for violists here, because so many of them play Hindemith. But students who play other instruments won’t play him much, if at all, and most likely have never played any atonal or 12-tone Schoenberg.
The Hindemith item seems clumsily expressed but I read it this way:
Mints is a champion of (actual) contemporary music. The thing that was the Mints’ window into/way in to (actual) contemporary music, when young, was Hindemith, who seemed more modern than he really is. Now Mints is recording some Hindemith. Nowhere do I see anyone claiming that Hindemith is a contemporary composer himself.
Thanks, Yvonne. Very helpful. I wish I’d said something like this in my post.
It was a contemporary mistake!