Alabama music
I was banging around Tuscaloosa a few weeks back and stopped by a college auditorium to see a program of music by Paul Hindemith and Arnold Schoenberg. If you ever find yourself drifting into melancholy about the fraction of the public who pays any mind to your work in a field such as, say, "alternative country" music, I suggest you attend a concert of Paul Hindemith and Arnold Schoenberg music in Alabama. As many as forty-five of us were packed into the 800-seat hall, which prompted me to reflect happily that I, a much lesser composer than Arnold Schoenber g, and one who had never played in Tuscaloosa, could show up at an area bar and easily attract a crowd 75% as large. Mr. Schoenberg has had the benefit of many decades of the heavy breathing of the elites, of continuous international performance, of advocacy in the academy -- whereas I have only the paltry resources of Boondoggle Records and a few mildly encouraging clippings from the Sacramento Bee. Any way you look at it, massive public disinterest is devilishly hard to dislodge.
Seeing the show provoked more than ludicrous self-centered comparisons. It put me in mind once again of the question, explored here previously under the title "A>B in music," of what if anything constitutes "good music" and who if anyone gets to decide. Those of us in the audience were thrilled by what we heard, including especially some of the music faculty seated a few rows ahead of me. Safe to say that their happiness lay not only in pure vibrational delectation but also in pride in the strength of their own platoon. In the years ahead, among the first rank of musicians transmitting the best and boldest modern classical compositions to listeners around the world and to the rising generation of music students, will be U.-of-Alabamians.
You could easily imagine a rational person coming upon the scene and saying, Wait -- around what world? The world of 45 people and whoever else they bully into acknowledging their musical predilections as special? And "first rank" -- says who, and with whose pocketbook? Schoenberg and Hindemith music is the kind of music that would vanish in about two minutes if we were to let go of the idea that the musical opinions of a select, small group may enjoy a proper privilege. This sort of music survives, against the tide of public disinterest, only because of colleges, private benefactors, and a handful of exceptional big-city institutions; survives too, I think, because we're inclined to give people who know more about music than we do a stronger vote on what gets to survive. As I said in my previous post, I dislike the implications. But most of the music that I like, that I think makes the world wider and better and more positively vibrant, would be gone without a self-confident elite cheerleading and fundraising for it.
But enough market talk. I wouldn't be bothering to write about the evening except that it was sharply memorable. Since I love music but know little about modern classical (or classical classical either), the program was especially enjoyable. I think this is commonplace for musicians. If it had been a bluegrass group, I might've had some churlish take on the banjo tone, or decried the bass's walking where it "shouldn't," or something like that. But where you can't discriminate, you can just settle in and get lost. Ignorance is bliss! Schoenberg's "Phantasy for Violin With Piano Accompaniment, Op. 47" was a doubly strong dose of not-knowing, since I couldn't detect a key center, or any recognizable movements based on scales I know and use. Unfamiliarity with twelve-tone might seem a pretty major hindrance in appreciating Schoenberg (though I doubt he himself would have maintained that); to be honest I was bored occasionally by an effect of pitter-pattering randomness. But I was impressed by what was left over, with the tonal guideposts gone. (I do understand that just because I didn't recognize them doesn't mean they weren't there.) The piece, which featured a lot of tight one-at-a-time interplay between the two instruments, played to me in fractured terms of rhythmic values and instrumental give-and-take. In other words, two properties that are essential to any piece of music became, for me, the only properties. This put into high relief a conversational brittleness between violin and piano, a kind of sniping tone, that I think I would have missed if I had been following a melody. The closeness to human conversation gave it a tragic tint, like majestic beasts trying to settle some crucial difference but unable to due to the burden of their lack of speech and innate unreasonableness. I'm not joking, completely. I wonder if what draws us to music is something simultaneously natural and non-human -- apart from us but implicating us -- like whatever is fascinating about watching polar bears groom each other. When you spend too much time with lyrical music you lose sight of this.
The Hindemith piece, Sonate, played by English horn and piano, was compositionally my favorite. (The show also had briefer tunes by Henry Cowell and Carl Ruggles.) It announced its nature in its opening seconds, which, with both instruments coming in together on a 4-bar progression, had a gentle, almost in media res, startlingness. "Gently startling" is in fact how I might describe the whole 13 minutes. I was reminded of Eugene Chadbourne's observation that there was a kind of music which, when the public heard it underscoring action in a chainsaw mutilation movie, they approved of entirely, but which, when they heard it played by a band in a bar, outraged and upset them. I thought of that because, as fresh and unusual as the grammar of the piece sounded to me, its wanderingness, its easy fluidity between soothing and disturbing harmonies, and its understatedness (avoiding grand flourishes or themes you could sing) reminded me of music you might hear at the movies. Or maybe it was a sensation of incompleteness, like the music was withholding information because it was meant to augment something else. Both the Schoenberg and the Hindemith illustrated the wild agility of our aural sense, striving as it does to interpret and classify and build imaginative models for whatever strikes it, and the consequent latitude of music to assume a million forms and definitions. But the relative softness of the Sonate, and its easygoing reference to old forms and harmonies, made it, for me, the loveliest as well as the most audacious.
Tuscaloosa, by the way, is lovely too -- not just a Marx Brothers punchline anymore.
9 comments
If we explore beyond the general and personal factors that somehow determine if a particular piece of music is "good", we find ourselves in a more specific landscape where we might ask "good for WHAT?". The concert you describe was certainly good for raising guestions and arousing some interest from one Robbie Fulks, and probably had a deeper effect on those who came with more background and information about the performers and the music itself. It was not, apparently, the sort of music that would be "good" for screwing, dancing or drunken horseplay...but who am I to say such a thing? Some folks out there might find it ideal for any number of purposes. How would we know?
Certainly the writers and performers of any music can only guess what their audience might find useful about the sounds they produce. An example? Of course.
A few years ago I attended, along with the woman who became my Awesome Wife, one of the Discovery Series of chamber music concerts presented by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. It was at the Sheldon Concert Hall, a small venue with beautifully understated decor (it was once a Jewish Temple) and absolutely wonderful acoustics. Our tickets were in the sixth row, dead center. As long-time Symphony season ticket holders we were not new to the game, we knew the music would be off the beaten path and perhaps downright challenging, so we weren't surprised when the small group of string players launched into an atonal piece full of pizzicato, screeching noises and some percussive banging of the instruments. It was pretty cool, we could have handled it just fine.
The trouble came when a female vocalist stepped to the front of the stage, clasped her hands over her ample busom, and began to sing. As the beaded fringes of her dress swung to and fro she launched into a series of notes that were improbably similar to an aria Margaret Dumont might have performed during a Marx Brothers flick.
I was OK, managed to swallow my reaction, but my date was not so lucky. She burst out laughing, stifled it, and looked like she was about to explode. When the singing continued she lost all control and we had to get the hell out of there.
The music was totally serious, and must have been taken as such by the performers and much of the audience. They got what they were looking for. We received a completely different message, but I believe we enjoyed the music in our own way even more than those who "understood" it. Plus, it actually helped build a new relationship!
What does all this mean? I don't know, but it does show that the bond between musician and listener is hard to control and impossible to predict. Keep making the music you want to make, and if you're lucky it will fit into the lives of your listeners like a glove...although they might just wear the left glove on their right hand.
Well. Let the devil take the Hindemith. And disinterest (objectivity) is not synonymous with uninterest (lack of interest). Or shouldn't be. But the compilers of modern dictionaries, along with composers of modern music, don't follow the rules that we fogies were taught. Perhaps I need a new set of ears/eyes. And perhaps I'm not the only one.
The laugh-inducing screech mentioned in the comment above is reminiscent of the response to the singing in the third movement of Schoenberg's 2nd String Quartet. WTF? Then again, that was his intention. Not to induce laughter, necessarily, or outrage, but to make people listen with new ears to new music. Alas. Predictably, he did have trouble in Hollywood writing movie music.
I guess you have to let your audience self-select and hope that some select in instead of out. It's also good to have a day job or a wealthy patron, since the more avant (or alt-) you are, the less able you'll be to support yourself with your art. Tuscaloosa was fortunate to have this opportunity to develop new ears, and to have musicians who can play this complex and challenging music.
Drinking from a fire hose: I know nothing of this stuff. I looked up Schoenberg on the Internet, just to try to get a toehold. This pointed to a universe of thinking that is foreign to me--I have almost no idea where to begin trying to understand this kind of music, and I gather it would take protracted and concentrated thinking to even begin. Maybe I would find it worthwhile, but maybe not. There are so many things I'd love to understand, but life is too short. Sigh.
Both great stuff -- Hindemith gets my vote a bit more for his amazing melodies. But my wife dialed up her ipod this weekend with your tunes on a couple of long drives and now it's "Goodbye Virginia" and "Guess I Got It Wrong" that are overtaking my consciousness. Suppose it's all what hit you last!
You should replace Sasha Frere-Jones in the New Yorker.
And.....no more Tuscaloosa
Some good news is that the campus was unscathed by the tornado.
a guitarist i know (maybe stealing from someone else) said, "jazz is about getting as far away from I-IV-V as you can until people start leaving." i guess the tuscaloosa crowd answers a related question, "how far away can you get and still draw 45 people who aren't drunk?"
what you and my guitarist friend are describing is a dialectic, a showdown between two viewpoints in tension, a philosophical thing. an earlier poster speculated that this music isn't good for drinking and dancing and screwing, and that's right. socrates deviated from I-IV-V so far they made him drink hemlock, not pabst.
i enjoyed robbie's appreciation of the music and wish i had the ears for it.
Schoenberg and his disciples have been the composers to dislike for years, but they continue to be performed. Performing Schoenberg's music well isn't an easy task compared to performing Brahms or Schumann; it takes a real emotional connection to the music. Without that, it can indeed sound like so much chaos. If one looks back over the centuries in Classical music, craftmanship always seems to carry the day. J.S. Bach was described in much the same way as Schoenberg; "awkward", "forced", yet they've both survived their critics. There's something there besides snobbery.
Besides, since when did "elitism" become a four letter word??