On Sunday November 28th , the Guardian published a piece by Alex Ross titled, “Why Do We Hate Modern Classical Music?”
First of all, the title of the article by Mr. Ross is misplaced — people don’t “hate” modern classical music, they are just indifferent to so much of it. It’s very frustrating to see him, like so many others before him, criticize listeners for not liking the “right” music. The implication that anyone who rejects a dissonant modernist musical work is necessarily under the… Notion of classical music as a reliable conduit for consoling beauty – a kind of spa treatment for tired souls … is simplistic and insulting. Surely, there are many smart, engaged listeners looking for a deep experience — and who just can’t enjoy endless, disorienting dissonance or hyper-complex rhythms. And the idea that most prefer tonality because it’s all we are fed from the cradle is laughable. Show me a music anywhere, anytime in the world that does or did not have some kind of tonal center and pitch prioritization, other than a tiny sliver of the western classical tradition, and I promise to listen to the complete works of Boulez in one sitting.
Many generations of audiences have been hectored and bullied to like atonality. After all that, a few love it it, a lot more don’t. Philip Ball and other neurobiologists are persuasive on why.
There is also a physiological dissonance created by tones played so close together that the acoustic waves interfere with one another. So at least some of the ugliness of atonal music is produced by physics, not the bourgeois prejudice excoriated by Boulez and Stockhausen. One can hardly blame audiences for suspecting that what is left is musically rather sparse…
But it’s not just about extreme dissonance. Basically it comes down to the fact that it’s difficult for most humans to take pleasure in music that frequently lacks clearly demarcated formal shapes. Most people honestly can’t perceive the substance or depth in much of it. And we need to stop blaming them for their ‘insufficient long-range attention’.
So Ross is wrong to claim that… Classical music as a reliable conduit for consoling beauty must fall away.
This is as senseless as arguing that appreciation of gorgeous sunsets must fall away.
This article could have been written 10, 20, 30 or 40 years ago. In fact, it was; many, many times. Nicolas Slonimsky, bless his elfish little soul, devoted A Lexicon of Musical Invective to the assertion that great music was never appreciated in its time, perhaps as a rebuttal to those who disdained modern music. It’s true that many composers’ greatest works suffered terrible criticism before ultimate acceptance. However, to take just one example here in America, I think it’s clear by now that despite their historic importance as part of Carter’s oeuvre, his string quartets are no more accepted today than they were 50 years ago with his first. Or how about “Pierrot Lunaire”? Despite its historic importance in Schoenberg’s work, it is no more accepted today than it was almost 100 years ago.
Also, that one can occasionally fill concert halls (especially in the UK) in large urban areas for something modern tells me nothing, other than you can find a few hundred people who like just about anything in big cities. I think those in the UK should be careful of patting themselves on the back too much over their supposed greater willingness to embrace challenging new music. What is the evidence?
I heard a discussion on Radio 3 a few years ago, when Barenboim and others were declaring that audiences had to learn to listen to new music in a new way. Seems to me that an art form that requires its audience to change is on very thin ice — you can despise those bourgeois New Yorkers as much as you like, but ultimately if you’re composing pieces that people don’t want to hear, you can’t blame them for not wanting to hear it. And how long can this state of affairs continue?
Not liking certain music is simply not done in polite circles. But why? I have rarely seen an enthusiastic commentary on modern classical music that wouldn’t provide a stone-faced eulogy of the sort …Doesn’t this exhaust pipe sound divine and whoever disagrees is a reactionary. Have you ever heard Alex Ross or other enthusiast actually say something like: I love Stockhausen, but can’t stand Xenakis because I think his music is just vapid noise? But surely, not all of modern classical music is good? Surely, they can’t like it all? I would be equally suspicious of people who like all the canonical composers to the same degree.
I think the better question is: Why it’s so goddamned important for people to embrace modernist music? First it was …Give the public fifty years. Well, fifty plus have come and gone, and they still don’t like it. Now it’s… Oh, let’s give seminars and pre-concert talks, just a few more and they’ll get it.
Is it entirely impossible that much of this music is not really all that great? Think of all the late 19th century salon artists that went into the dustbin of history. Is it possible that much modern classical music took a detour that didn’t pan out all that well? If you have a sensitive ear and some patience, I’m sure you can hear some pattern in Xenakis or Cage or whoever. As for Boulez, Stockhausen etc… they have aged horribly. Their music is incredibly of its time. Their institutionalization of the avant garde also does more harm than good for creativity and yet the classical institution seems hell bent on not only still calling them modern, but on insisting that this is how classical music is supposed to sound. No art with such a limited palette can hope to be popular. People like Milton Babbbit used to see this unpopularity as an endorsement of the new music’s complexity and intellectual superiority, as if were string theory or particle physics. But Ross sees it as a failure on the part of the audience to educate itself.
Excuse me Mr. Ross, but isn’t the ability to write genuinely distinctive tonal music that makes original use of melody, rhythm, and harmony bloody hard? If I were a composer who quickly realized I wasn’t really up to it, I’d be very relieved to find some kind of “organizing principle or theory” that actually made a virtue of my shortcomings.
As for Ross’s analogy between the relative acceptance of modern painting and architecture versus the relative lack of acceptance of modern classical music, he’s ignoring at least one key distinction — works of physical art are typically one of a kind, purchasable objects. Pollock’s “Autumn Rhythm,” for example, may or may not be as graspable or attractive to a mass audience as an Andrew Wyeth or a Norman Rockwell; but there is only one “Autumn Rhythm,” and once it becomes valued by an actual or would-be elite (or both), it’s game over in terms of monetary value; the sky’s the limit. But for a host of obvious reasons, no work of music is an object in any similar way; there is no equivalent to the equation between the potential value and singularity of object that characterizes the physical arts – nor do I see how there could be one – to that of music, especially in an age where sound can be infinitely reproduced.
It almost seems as if the cultural elite would rather forever drive away the small remaining audience for classical music than admit that a lot of the modern stuff isn’t very good…. Death before dishonor. The audience dislikes most of it and the institution’s answer is….Tough kiddo.
The initiatives Ross mentions are no more than further attempts to stuff contemporary music (or rather a certain facet of it) into people’s faces. But it has been going on for years, and it hasn’t worked.
Ross also overlooks a crucial point, which is that, now perhaps more than ever, classical music does not consist of one overarching style to which all aspire. In fact, there are many different types of modern music, some of which are popular, some aren’t. John Adams plays to packed houses wherever he can be persuaded to go, unlike poor old Birtwhistle, Wuorinen, or even Carter. And yet the powers that be – certainly in the UK – have tried for years to push the serialist and post-Webernist line, as if the hostility it aroused in audiences validated the street-cred of its adherents –Mr and Mrs concert-goer from Frodsham don’t like it, so that just shows how superior I am.
But one thing is for sure; however much people acknowledge the force of dissonance or hyper-complexity, everyone’s a sucker for a good melody, or at least a good chord progression. Even Schoenberg never forgot that.
Finally, when Ross gets to would-be remedies, we have this gem:
On a recent trip to MoMA, I was struck by a poster at the entrance: Belong to something brilliant, electrifying, radical, curious, sharp, moving . . . unruly, visionary, dramatic, current, provocative, bold …..
Oh yes of course, that’s the ticket! Yes, more posters, more arch-hucksterism, more etc. Seems to fundamentally contradict Ross’ previous:
No more spa treatment for tired souls, approach.
He’s saying, Trade in your taste for ‘consoling beauty’ – you’ll feel better if you belong to something brilliant, electrifying, radical, curious, sharp, moving, etc.
Right – Belong to. Hmm, I see…
Why not just cut to the clothing and perfume ads? Ross’ thinking and remedies here strike me as those of a PR. man.
People who are drawn compulsively, fervently to any music should recall as best they can how that happened, what we “heard” in what we heard and why it touched us. Yes, the “exposure to” factor is crucial, but we are/were exposed to a great many things and do not respond solely or merely for that reason. It may not be that our answers to that question remain the best or only answers, but they will have the virtue of being tied to and having been tested by actual experience.
As an aside: I have never understood the impulse to participate in the “shock and awe” aspect of new music, and I find the whole process of “cultivating” the “right” people revolting. I can’t stand it in any corner of the musical world. Unfortunately Ross is far too provincial for my taste, and he is far too impressed with the “right people.” His word is not gospel. It isn’t even close. He’s just someone who talks a big game and is able to put sentences and paragraphs together for an audience of people who want to have a musical “guru” to follow.
In closing, I listen to music because I want to be moved, torn, shattered by its emotional power. No other art form in gives me that cathartic charge. Unfortunately, with a few honorable exceptions, most recent classical music inspires either boredom or rage in me. Should one have to work so hard to appreciate it? Does much of it even merit that much attention? As I’ve stated there are honorable exceptions but they seem the exception rather than the rule.
There was only one modern piece I’ve found enjoyable so far, and it had no dissonance at all. A clarinet concerto by Boulez. The music was chosen by Bartabas whose equine spectaculars had the government declare him a national treasure and build him a training center near Versailles. The music sounded like a babbling brook, very pleasant. For another show, Bartabas had a Korean opera small combo of weird instruments and a singer that was super dissonant.
Other than the Boulez, modern music sounds awful to me. I just listened to Elmer Gantry on the net and was instantly bored. How could a composer be so uninspired by such a flamboyant subject. I’ve tried and instantly forgotten modern operas. Except Stella’s seductive Laaaaa Laaaaaaaas in Streetcar.
Thank you for putting words to so many of my thoughts.
Italians composed for the people…. Maybe that’s whey they were successful….and still are…….
This is rather a silly post, at least as it applies to Alex Ross, who has never championed modernist music. He dislikes Carter as much as you do. The modern music he appreciates most is that of Steve Reich and John Adams, who are, most assuredly, tonalist composers, if just not very good ones.
And the whole thing about elitists dissing run-of-the-mill concertgoers for not being as smart as they are is a little old at this point, don’t you think? Modernist music – even Adams and Reich – has found it its listeners, and it is going just fine, thank you very much. A small percentage, sure, but so what? I love Carter, and I don’t know why I should change my mind because a part of the tiny percentage of the population that still attends classical music concert disagrees with me. No populist aesthetic can really apply to the classical audience, which is getting smaller all the time. Ross is wrong, and so are you: the problem isn’t that listeners don’t like modernist classical music, it’s that they don’t like classical music at all – that is, when the term “listeners” is expanded, as it should be, to embrace everybody in the population who considers him- or herself a music lover. if you leave out the rockers and the C&W fans, you’re being as elitist as I am.
What is populism, really, other than a willingness to let someone else make up your mind for you?
Joe,
“Ross dislikes Carter as much as you do…”
Really?
Let’s see how Mr. Ross will react when Carter dies. He’ll go gaga over him and admit how truly great a composer he was.
Mark my words.
“John Adams plays to packed houses wherever he can be persuaded to go, unlike poor old Birtwhistle”
You could at least do the man the courtesy of spelling his name correctly. You don’t know what you’re talking about, frankly. Birtwistle’s music is very rarely played in the US but in the UK his opera “The Minotaur” nearly sold out its run at the ROH, “Gawain” was revived twice by the ROH, his chamber music is a staple on programmes etc. He gets played quite often in Germany and Holland as well. Fine, he’s not a draw like John Adams dreary music, but the audience is there.
“And yet the powers that be – certainly in the UK – have tried for years to push the serialist and post-Webernist line, as if the hostility it aroused in audiences validated the street-cred of its adherents –Mr and Mrs concert-goer from Frodsham don’t like it, so that just shows how superior I am”
Again, you don’t know what you’re talking about. UK arts organizations are like those in the US, a good chunk of their operating income comes from the box office. Unlike Germany and France, which have generous public subsidies (though that’ll end within the next decade or so), one eye is always on the box office. The simply can’t afford to program too much music that might offend people, especially wealthy donors, which is why that stuff is usually shunted off to “Composer Portraits” series or the dreaded New Music purgatory.
If I trusted people like you –and I don’t– I’d believe that I could go to 5 concerts a week in the UK or US and hear nothing but Birtwistle, Fernyehough, Reimann, Kyburz and Pinstcher. That’s nonsense of course, I’d be lucky to find one concert on either continent that has *that* kind of music on the program amidst all the mind-numbingly boring Brahms. If *that* kind of music is played at all, it’s usually in New Music ghetto concerts, which is actually fine with me, its mean I won’t have to sit through some dreary Mozart clarinet concerto to get to something I want to hear.
“The modern music he appreciates most is that of Steve Reich and John Adams”
In “The Rest Is Noise” he called Adams the best composer of the last 30 years. The mind boggles. Look, I get it Mr. Ross, Adams’ music blew your mind when you were a tween, but to claim that utter crap like “Gnarly Buttons” and “El Nino” and the utterly ghastly “Dr. Atomic” are part of the best body of work in the last 30 years is risible.
“Ross is wrong, and so are you: the problem isn’t that listeners don’t like modernist classical music, it’s that they don’t like classical music at all”
Absolutely. It’s easy to see that in a 100 years the traditional orchestral concert could be extinct. The music that makes up the standard concert program has nothing to say to most kids today and once people my age (51) start dying off, there’s not going to be an audience to replace us. Meanwhile, non-tonal orchestral music is a niche audience, like organ recitals or choral concerts or Baroque ensembles that play with valveless horns. It should be treated as such and the practice of sneaking in some Stockhausen in between Brahms and Mozart ended.
“Let’s see how Mr. Ross will react when Carter dies. He’ll go gaga over him and admit how truly great a composer he was”
No he won’t. He’ll note how long he lived, how prolific he was, mention the 2 or 3 pieces of his that he likes and then mention John Adams or Steve Reich as people who are “real composers of the street, composers who connect with The Everyman”.
Mark my words.
“Show me a music anywhere, anytime in the world that does or did not have some kind of tonal center and pitch prioritization.”
When I lived in Africa, native music I heard was very few notes a third to a fifth apart. Maybe using half an octave at most. Several different rhythms would be played together. The Korean opera combo I heard may have sounded dissonant because the instruments were so weird. But the odd singing was pretty much on recognizable notes
Joe,
What are you talking about?
Yes, Ross loves Adams but he also loves and defends a good deal of angular, dissonant and hypercomplex music.
(And haven’t you read the article?)
As someone who is second to none in my love of Arnold Schoenberg’s music, the author of this essay is correct. Most people will never like atonal music, and that is quite understandable. Many years ago I knew a highly educated guy who admitted to me that he didn’t care for classical music at all; he preferred country music (of which I am not a fan of). I told him, “So?” There’s nothing “wrong” with that. Ultimately, any work of art effects us in ways that are inexplicable. But that’s what makes art so wonderful, in my opinion.
Beauty is in the ear of the beholder, period. Don’t let anyone tell you that his taste is “better” than yours when it comes to music, painting, film, etc. It’s all subjective. And I speak as a classically trained musician.