Sunday, November 07, 1999
At century's end, 'modern music' comes into play
BY JANELLE GELFAND
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A few years ago, the words “modern music” had symphony goers fleeing for the exits.
Twentieth-century music has challenged the classical music public, from the day Arnold Schoenberg announced in 1921 that he had discovered a way to break the music rules.
Yet today, on the verge of a new millennium, orchestras (including the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra) are revisiting the music of our century — and discovering that the experience is painless.
“People like (Philip) Glass and (Steve) Reich and myself, have labored hard to take music back to a larger audience,” says minimalist composer John Adams, who conducted his own composition, Harmonium, with the CSO this weekend. “My only hope would be that we continue to move in classical music to a better rapport between the composer and audience and heal the tremendous rift of suspicion and hostility that began with Schoenberg.”
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NEW MUSIC GLOSSARY
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• Atonal: Music that is not in any specific key. It sounds dissonant (harsh) to most people, as if the notes are wrong.
• Chance music (also called Aleatory): This describes music in which the actual composition of the work takes place through chance, a roll of the dice. Or, the performer may be given choices on how to carry out the performance.
• Modernism: Art that pushes frontiers. Modernism refers to developments after World War I, expressed in music by composers such as Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Varese and Bartok. High Modernism refers to music after World War II.
• Minimalism: Music based upon the repetition of patterns or small snippets of melody over a long time.
• Serial or 12-tone music: If you count all the black and white keys on a piano from C to C, there are 12 notes. Schoenberg's 12-tone music uses every note equally, in a row. The notes of the row may be in any order, but every note must be used once before it is repeated. Rows may be used forward, backward and upside down.
• Tonal: Music that is in an identifiable key.
• Total serialism: Organizing all possible parameters of music, such as notes, duration and loudness.
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More than half of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra's program this season was composed after 1900. The Philadelphia orchestra's entire season is 20th-century. Several orchestras, including the Indianapolis Symphony and the New York Philharmonic, are releasing recordings of 20th-century music.
In fact, new music appeals to that elusive younger audience that orchestras crave to replace their aging subscribers. Some living composers, such as Mr. Glass and Mr. Adams, have as large a following as rock icons.
“We would like to hear more music being written today, something more cutting edge,” says University of Cincinnati student Heidi Pogner, 22, who listens to Led Zeppelin and the Doors and occasionally attends CSO concerts.
“It's music we can relate to. The Baby Boomer generation was taught the classics, but where I went to high school (Norwood High) they introduced us to composers like Stravinsky, John Adams and Philip Glass.”
Modern music is not all “serial” or “12-tone” — Mr. Schoenberg's complex, intellectual and mathematical music that reached a peak in the 1950s and '60s.
We look back on a century that shimmers with Debussy's impressions of Indonesian gamelon music, pulses with minimalism, echoes the classical and romantic masters, unearths worlds of exotic rhythms and folk melodies — and even incorporates jazz and rock.
Decades before California's Silicon Valley was a household word, composers were experimenting with computerized music. A bright new school of Asian composers is emerging from the Pacific Rim.
Nevertheless, while some composers were tossing out familiar landmarks — melody, harmony and rhythm — there arose a revolt among symphony subscribers across the country. The stigma of “modern” music lingers. In Cincinnati, CSO music director Michael Gielen earned the reputation as a bad boy of modern music during his six-year tenure in the 1980s.
“It was the way it was presented,” long-term CSO subscriber Walter Frank says. “I remember when Gielen did Schoenberg's Moses and Aron. The problem was, he was an academician, rather than saying, hey, we're in the entertainment business and we have to deal with our audience.”
But what Mr. Gielen was programming — the “classics” of modern music, from Schoenberg through Stravinsky — are now regularly performed by orchestras. He believed that American composers such as Joseph Schwantner, Pulitzer Prize-winner Gunther Schuller, Elliott Carter and Ned Rorem should be heard.
“People have come to assume that if it's a new piece, it's going to be unpleasant,” Mr. Adams says.
Why? Some blame the dismantling of music education in public schools. Some blame ignorant music directors, or managers concerned about the box office. Some blame careless, uninformed performances. (Mr. Schoenberg once said, “My music isn't modern, it's just badly performed.”)
Others blame programming. Orchestras were clueless about how to present a new piece: Beethoven with Roger Sessions? Haydn with John Adams? Wagner with Joan Tower? Should well-meaning orchestras have evenings of music by only women or only African-Americans?
“You can't say, hey, it's African-American or Hispanic week. That's ridiculous,” says William Eddins, resident conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. “What you do is aggressively program interesting music which reflects all segments of the society.”
Creative programming of modern music can work. Two of the CSO's most successful and well-received concerts in recent years were all-American programs conducted by Mr. Adams and Marin Alsop.
The best way to take the fear out of the unknown — is to make yourself familiar with it. Sample. Listen. Attend concerts. Check out CDs from the public library.
You may prefer composers on the fringe, who merge alternative rock into their music. Or you may be interested in getting to know the great American symphonists from the middle of the century.
You may not like everything you hear — but you may also be surprised at how much you do.
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