Scott Morrison posted a piece by Paul Horsley to which I respond. Relevant
passages, if not quoted, are provided as footnotes.
Summary: "Schmaltz" and "accessibility" do not determine the strength
of a piece of music. A new standard for evaluating music is presented.
==
All respect to Scott Morrison, I did not find Paul Horsley's piece to
be "thoughtful" at all. Horsley says that "corporatization of classical
music" has debased the quality of art being produced because modern music
does not stir the listener up enough to "at least throw a rotten tomato or
two." The article betrays Horsley's ignorance of music and incompetence as
a critic.
Horsley wrote that:
>...if the classical music industry isn't careful, our search for the next
>Beethoven might yield someone whose music sounds like James Horner's movie
>scores.
It should noted that James Horner started his career as a concert composer,
shifting to film music because of the smaller hassle to hear his work
performed and a fortuitous phone call from a movie producer. One of the
ideas that this article presents which frustrates me is what I call the
Next Beethoven Syndrome. It's natural for us to want hear the next great
composer, but only time will tell who she or he is. It is not for us to
speculate and ruin a composer's career because they don't measure up to the
ephemeral standard of greatness.
In his article, Horsley propagates the false idea that great music must be
complex (footnote 1). Must good music be complex? Must "rehash" be simple?
It was Mozart who said "Music must delight." His music is on the surface
highly accessible, under which surface lies riches of complexity.
Likewise, the only thing that makes a Webern's Symphony more "complex" that
Kernis's Musica Celestis is the presentation of material by the composers.
Reduce Webern's symphony for piano and you have (more or less) a single
line of melody. Reduce Kernis' Musica Celestis and you have the complex
relationships of extended tonality. Kernis' piece mainly uses harmony
for it's construction, which harmony produces melody. Webern uses melody,
which melody is embroidered with occasional counterpoint. Both composers
develop their material during their pieces. Webern's music is only
perceived to be more complex because many listeners lack a basis for
understanding its construction. Moreover, a case could be made that
Musica Celestis is the more complex piece of the two because the harmonic
dimension of Kernis' piece produces a more active texture (in terms of
number of voices active at a given time) than Webern's symphony.
"Complexity" thus becomes a word to describe any music that the listener
cannot "understand" on the first hearing. According to its true
definition, there is no lack of complexity in "accessible" music.
Horsley hopes that a new angst in art from Sept. 11 will solve the
problem of "accessibility," but that angst won't solve anything (2).
Angst comes from the same source as the other emotions in neo-Romantic
music. A composer's style won't magically change when he or she goes
from writing one emotion to another: the flood will instead turn from
complacent "schmaltz" to frustrated "schmaltz."
"Schmaltz" itself, apart from its initial definition, has become an
illegitimate word conceived by a critic to describe a piece he doesn't like
without having to get specific about why he doesn't like it. "Schmaltz"
is also an easy label if a critic cannot figure out why he doesn't like a
piece of music. The effect of word "schmaltz" in a review is to prejudice
the reader to dismiss new music, which they haven't heard, without any
thought of the music's merits by critic or reader.
The idea behind "schmaltz" as I see it is the inability of a composer
to inhabit the worlds he creates; in other words, the music feels like a
lie. Romantic music was never "schmaltzy" because those composers believed
in what they wrote 100%--what they wrote was an inherent part of their
lives and times. (An alternative to schmaltz in Romanticism may be a
perceived--consciously or not--imbalance between structure and content.)
In that light, Neo-Romanticism is "schmaltzy" because it does not issues
brought up by the avant-garde--it is schmaltzy because the listener has
already read the end of the book, so to speak. Taken in this context,
much "schmalz" looses it's "schmatlziness." (Lowell Liebermann, I would
say, fits this scenario.) Another problem confused as "schmaltz" may be a
composer's lack of inner conviction. Since music reflects the composer, a
piece of music written by a normal person will never have the strength that
a piece by someone with guts (ex. Beethoven) has.
Horsley would have us believe that music that is "too easy on the ear" can
be of no lasting value (3). The glaring violation to this rule is Mozart,
whose music is deceptively easy. (To Horsley's credit, his phrasing did
allow for exceptions.) Other Mozarts could exist today, whose music may
seem simple to us but really have lasting value.
The yearning for difficulty which Horsley describes is only snobbery
and can be nothing else (4). By espousing such a philosophy we become
the ultimate cynics --mistrustful of anything that may have value merely
because of its simplicity. Art which is perceived to be difficult is
either a) misunderstood by the listener due to his lack of understanding
or b) not art at all.
It is foolishness to want something you can't understand unless you
genuinely desire to understand it and have the ability to do so. A snob
desires the difficult for no other reason than it's shock value -- they
don't take pleasure in the work itself but in the fact that they can
"understand" something someone else cannot. Crap on canvas is neither
difficult or art -- anyone can make it and even (especially) a child can
see through its pretentiousness. Difficult music for difficulty's sake
alone is worth nothing.
Artists like Schoenberg and Berio are difficult to the average listener
only because of the way they present their material. Their art has
substance the same way Torke's or Liebermann's art has substance. The
material Berio and Liebermann use calls for the different presentations
those composers give their material. Any other way of developing their
material would do it no justice. You can't do to a Liebermann melody what
you can do to Berio motif and vice versa.
Horsley uses Daugherty's "Philadelphia Stories" as an example of
how accessible music lacks substance. He complains that Daugherty's
"Philadelphia Stories" did not pull him out of his seat like any great
work of art should (5). Horsley does nothing to explain why the piece
didn't meet his expectations except to say that the piece was "shallow"
and a waste of $30,000. Such criticism is unfair to the composer as well
as the listener because says nothing of the substance of a piece but only
a reaction to it. You don't need a critic to get a reaction, only an
ordinary audience member.
Horsley's reaction to Daugherty's piece is an ironic twist on the "it
makes no sense" brand of criticism. If it the piece did not frustrate him,
why does Horsley write about it in such derogatory terms? He writes the
way he does for the same reasons that critics in the past have libeled
Beethoven and Brahams -- what he heard did not live up to his preconceived
expectations for the piece. (Twenty years later, though, he may find that
he likes the piece (6).)
Horsley's piece reflects a present trend of critics to decry "accessible
music" (7). Previously, critics were against the demon of serialism.
Before that, Stravinsky, and so on. This leads to the question: When will
critics learn to look past the facade of style and into the inner workings
of a piece? Do they have it within them? Can they sit down and analyze what
makes a piece of music work and then pronounce judgement rather than give
first impressions? Granted a single concert only allows the intrepid critic
one listening, but that is no excuse to present first impressions as
reality to the naive reader.
Without style, what then is the basis to judge music? This is the basis for
constructive criticism: Critics and listeners alike must understand how
the composer presents his or her material. They must understand how music
works on the psychology of the listener. They must be able to grasp the
construction of music: the piecing together of motifs and ideas, how these
ideas interact to produce form, and how this form (not to be confused with
the forms--sonata, minuet, etc.) arches to produce a coherent whole (8).
They must understand that style is the slave to content and that they only
judgement pronounceable on style is how well the style serves the content
of a piece. They must understand the context of the piece's composition.
They must understand that a piece of music is, as Stravinsky has written,
"a form of communion with our fellow man -- and with the Supreme Being"
(9). A piece is disliked because it does not fulfill one or several of
these criteria, whether the listener is conscious of their fulfillment or
not.
As it is, we have much music to be thankful for right now. Michael
Torke is a brilliant orchestration who writes with contagious optimism.
Magnus Lindburg's music is loaded with energy and purpose. Arvo Part's
spirituality is comforting in these confused times. Kurtag's piano music
is remarkable not only for its brevity but also for its depth of felling.
Lowell Liebermann and John Williams may be considered composers of
"Schmaltz" but they sure can write gorgeous melodies. Modern music may
have its faults, but it is not without strength. It's diversity is its
strength. Some day, from this smorgasbord of styles, our desire to hear
the next Beethoven may be fulfilled.
Notes:
1: "Does concert music have to give up complexity to be accessible and,
thus, fundable?"
2: "Political and social strife, too, have a way of making art
complicated for a time -- after which an 'era of good feelings' smoothes
things out again. In the wake of Sept. 11, we might be on the verge of
a new period of angst in art, and it's just what we need right now. [...]
So we got the "New Romanticism," which brought us a whole slew of works
written on the notion that 'it's OK to be schmaltzy again.'"
3: "This trend has gone way too far and has got to stop. History has
shown us that if a piece of music is too 'easy on the ear' the first time
through -- think of Dittersdorf, Raff and other forgotten crowd-pleasers
-- chances are it has limited lasting value. The pieces from previous
centuries that we still want to hear are the ones by Beethoven and
Stravinsky that contemporary audiences struggled with -- and against."
4: "Call this yearning for "difficulty" a form of snobbism if you will --
I call it optimism. We who believe in art's ability to cut against the
grain will continue to hold out the hope that such art can and should
still exist. We are the ultimate optimists."
5: "But this piece, 'Philadelphia Stories,' was so shallow and
insignificant that it made me aware that the Era of Accessibility was
drawing to a close. Not only did this three-movement tone poem sound
like something out of Hollywood, it didn't even strike me as being a very
good movie score. [...] We don't go to hear a major orchestra to be
entertained, as if it were some sort of sandlot softball game. We pay 45
bucks a ticket to hear something that seethes and simmers, that grabs us
by the collar and pulls us out of our seats. Maybe even makes us angry."
6: "And 20 years from now, who knows? You might just find that you like
the piece after all."
7: "If such music is being composed today, it's keeping a low profile.
For the most part, American music has given in to the Lowell Liebermanns
and the Aaron Kernises, the Plaza Art Fair composers of the classical
world." - and - "But I am suggesting that music should stir you up
enough that you might want to blow something up -- or at least throw a
rotten tomato or two."
8: See Ernest Toch's book _The Shaping Forces in Music_
9: From Igor Stravinsky's book _Poetics of Music_, page 142
==
How's that for an "I'm back after not posting anything for over a year"
post? Hope you all gained something from it.
Joseph Sowa
[log in to unmask]
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