As a columnist for the American Record Guide ("The Newest Music") I
recently submitted an editorial in response to Don Vroon's recent pieces
on new music. Don is not going to publish the editorial, and it became
clear to me that I could no longer fill the magazine's needs given our
differences on the nature and function of criticism. The piece I submitted
follows.
---
It has become a truism that negative political campaign advertising has two
effects. The first is that it works-candidates who run negative campaigns
tend to win their races. The essential thrust of this kind of campaign is
to drive up the opponent's "negatives". Research is conducted in order to
discover "soft spots" in the public's perception of the opposition. Once
found, these soft spots, whether relevant to the office being sought or
even factual, are magnified so that they become the image of the candidate
foremost in the public mind. And, as mentioned above, this kind of
campaign works-it gets people elected.
The other effect negative political campaigns have is even more pernicious
and probably more long-lasting. According to polling, negative campaigning
reduces voter turnout and pushes people away from politics and from
participation in their own government. This lack of participation reduces
the quality of government and threatens its very legitimacy.
Some observers of the classical music world (including but not limited
to Norman Lebrecht) see a crisis in our music that threatens its viability
as an art form, if not its very existence. Contemporary music-music being
composed today and in the very recent past-is, in pure numeric terms, a
very small part of the world of classical, or concert, music. Our Editor
pointed out in the last issue that contemporary music is the second largest
category of disc sent to <ARG> for review. My experience leads me to guess
that if you limit the numbers to "major" commercial labels, contemporary
music would drop considerably among categories.
Despite the relatively small role contemporary music plays in the concert
music world, most of the controversies in music criticism revolve around
new music and living composers. The century just past saw composers and
their supporters in the critical community divided into warring camps over
virtually every music issue imaginable. Style, dissonance level, form,
and the web of relationships between composer, performer, and audience are
just some of the lines of demarcation for the style wars that have raged
for decades now. Since around 1975, when tonality regained its place as
the way most concert music is organized (if this place was ever lost),
the style wars have been fought over whether composers use tonality or
atonality in the organization of their works. Critics and composers on
one side of the tonal divide claim that those on the other have gravely
contributed to the "decline" of concert music by driving away audiences
while supporters of the other side make accusations of pandering and of
causing the art to become creatively stagnant.
Each side of this tonal divide has devoted dozens of writings to driving
up the "negatives" of the other. Campaigns in the arts, unlike political
campaigns, have no election day, and no clear "winner". However, the
other effect of negative campaigns-driving people away from music, in this
instance-can be seen, if not definitively measured. Anecdotal evidence
like conversation, correspondence, and observation indicates that many
people are discouraged from entering the world of concert music by these
style wars. After all, it is very easy to find writings in prestigious
publications that attempt to eviscerate and delegitimize every style of
composition there is.
This kind of criticism appears in publications of all types and sizes,
including, I'm sorry to say, this one. The following paragraph appeared
in the November/December 1998 issue:
A confession: The crop of composers of all ages and nationalities
writing music that could have been written 50 or, in some extreme
cases, 100 years ago remains something of a mystery to me. The syntax,
harmony, and large scale forms used by Stephen Hartke, James Yannatos,
Francis Judd Cooke, and John Biggs would all have been, with the
possible exception of some small details, acceptable and accessible,
even familiar, to audiences decades ago. In fact, though Biggs's
Oboe and Violin Concertos were written decades apart (1949 and 1993,
respectively), I don't think anyone could confidently say, upon
hearing them, which piece was the earlier of the two. The Oboe
Concerto actually sounds fresher and newer-I wonder if that is
because its language is more in the present of its time than the
Violin Concerto. [p. 335]
This is a model of style wars criticism. Note the (obviously) fake
reluctance on the part of the writer to make his confession, and the
implication that he really doesn't want to understand why and how composers
use a tonal vocabulary. This review paints all of these composers with the
same dismissive broad brush. This kind of thing is very easy for a critic
to do. I know. I wrote it.
Critics on the "other side" of the style wars use a similarly sweeping tone
to indict groups of composers:
The Piano Concerto was written in 1966, but thank goodness it does
not reflect the trends of that period. Still, what music written in
1966 was not sterile? [M/J 2001, p. 104]
Powerful, lasting compositions (in a variety of styles) like Stravinsky's
Requiem Canticles, Shostakovich's Eleventh Quartet and Second Cello
Concerto, and Britten's Burning Fiery Furnace stand as rebukes to this
facile critical broadside.
Just as the label "bureaucrat" is used as political shorthand to demonize
public servants (without the burden of actually having to say anything
of substance), style warriors use the term "academic" as shorthand for
everything wrong in the world of music:
The Clarinet Quintet of Penderecki is one of the most astonishing
pieces I have heard in years. It sports his later "romantic" style,
but has a feeling and tragic fatalism that you would find in a piece
like the Shostakovich Eighth Quartet. I was riveted over and over,
each time feeling that the work had ended far too soon. This piece
has real staying power and should find its place in the clarinet
repertory. When I was in college, compositions like the St. Luke
Passion were all the rage, and we were being forced by goose-stepping
academics to imitate this sort of writing. Years later, I am still
over-whelmed by the spiritual power of that work, though at the time
I felt that there was a little of the charlatan in Penderecki, and
I wondered if he was even capable of writing music that had any sort
of tonal appeal. [M/J 2001, p.112]
This is a remarkable piece of writing, not less so because the first four
sentences (those dealing with the Clarinet Quartet) point to a way out of
the style wars. But, instead of telling the reader what the Quartet sounds
like and what it has to offer players and listeners, the writer gives us
a broadside against teachers introducing him to the techniques used to
make a piece whose "spiritual power" he still finds overwhelming. He
even invokes the Nazis ("goose-stepping academics") in reference to those
who visited the horrors of the Passion visited on him as a student.
Comparing opponents to the Nazis is considered beyond the pale even in
today's debased political environment, where standards apparently are
higher than in music criticism. Finally, the sentence about Penderecki's
"charlatanism" seems totally gratuitous and beside any meaningful point.
If my dismissal of several discs of neo-tonal music is a model of style
wars criticism, then the review of a disc of Kaija Saariaho's vocal music,
beginning on page 165 of the M/J 2001 issue, is a compendium of its
techniques, including some already seen as well as a few new ones. The
reviewer compares Saariaho to two of the bogeymen of the tonalists-Cage and
Boulez-not once, but three times. Nevermind that these composers really
sound very little alike, their names alone are symbols of the decadence of
atonality. He also invokes the specter of twelve-tone technique, which I
don't believe Saariaho uses in the works for which she is known (though it
is possible she did in some of her early pieces). And that brings up the
smoking gun of this writer's dismissive treatment of the disc-the reviewer
did not even engage enough with the material to find out that Kaija
Saariaho is a woman ("He uses a variety of instruments*"). It would not
have taken much digging to find this out, but the reviewer clearly had
another agenda in mind.
How do we get out of this situation, assuming we don't have an interest in
seeing it stay this way? Many critics and others clearly have invested a
lot of energy in fighting these battles, and those who want the music world
to reflect their views and interest will certainly continue the negative
campaigning. If we want our art to grow and prosper, however, a new
approach is necessary.
For my part, I intend to focus my writing, especially my reviews of
concerts and recordings, on the music itself, trying to communicate to
the reader what the music sounds like and how it makes its statement. The
review of the Penderecki Clarinet Quartet quoted above is, in its first few
sentences, a start towards the kind of writing I want to aim for, as the
reviewer places the piece in a stylistic and expressive context. Imagine
how much more valuable the review would have been had the next few
sentences been devoted to some detail about the sound of the piece and the
performers' interpretive responses to it, rather than the material that did
follow.
Again, this kind of focused writing on music is not easy, and will take
great time and effort to achieve. The result, however, will be well worth
the effort.
Steve Hicken
[log in to unmask]
|
