We have a problem. By we, I mean performing musicians, particularly those of us who border on the evangelical in our belief regarding the importance of contemporary music. Our problem: we are obsessed with abstraction. With the removal of all external factors, with any narrative, with all tools for clarification. There’s surely some long-established rule of online etiquette similar to Godwin’s Law which dictates that the second Nietzsche is mentioned the writer loses all semblance of relatability, but here goes:
‘They muddy the water to make it seem deep’.
The elephant in the room, which, for the time being, I’m going to leave right there in the far corner, behind the pinball machine.
For some time I’ve been thinking about how a standard audience hears new music. How do they engage with something as perceivably foreign to their life experience as avant-garde musical language? Why should they endeavour to find a way to engage? And most strikingly, why do they traditionally struggle, when the genre is so richly colourful?
Historically speaking, we live in a period where audiences are less familiar with the evolution of musical styles. Of course I’m aware of geography as a defining element regarding this familiarity (or lack thereof), with audiences closer to the birthplace of our art at a significant advantage. A matter of weeks ago I attended a concert in Munich, with the extraordinary Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks conducted by my mentor Peter Eötvös. It was a programme of works exclusively by Helmut Lachenmann, including a 40-minute work for solo piano performed by Pierre-Laurent Aimard. Lachenmann’s music, while never far removed from great humour, is defined by its brutality. Yet the concert was sold out and both the composer (who was present to witness a premiere) and the performing musicians received several standing ovations from a relatively diverse audience which included children, adults attired from faux pas to vogue, and a wonderful blind man beside me who had clearly never been informed that growing up involves losing an unchecked child-like range of emotions on one’s face during exciting and enjoyable experiences. The key here, in part, was the audience’s familiarity with Lachenmann. He’s a prominent and constant voice in German culture, and from what I understand the Munich locals have developed a fondness and respect for him and his music. Comparably, in Paris after a performance of Pierre Boulez by Ensemble Intercontemporain I witnessed a similar thing: his relentless similitude was accepted and appreciated by a public who knew him, loved him and had witnessed his evolution first hand. The roots of our art-form grow from European origins, and thus European audiences represent a part of a constant relationship between artist and consumer. These audiences are familiar with the path of change, have protested, acquiesced, and embraced over and over again. In such communities the general and unquestioned belief is that this journey is of ultimate importance to their world. The pride of a local culture, of that culture’s presence on the world stage and the importance of supporting it, intermingled with the audience’s understood and accepted duty to “give it a go”, ensures that contemporary music thrives. Not all of us, however, have grown up under such conditions.
To return to my opening confession regarding abstraction, I must say that abstraction in music is a considerable reason why I do what I do and love it. I say this in a feeble attempt to halt jealous academics and purists. Music, to them, is purely abstract. To suggest that it means anything is, largely, a doomed argument. However, the way I see it, music is, intentionally or not, influenced by the world of the artist. Notice that I don’t claim it to be about the world around them, but rather a result of everything within their experience. It could not be produced in any other world or at any other period of time. Contemporary music is influenced by the world around us, the listener, and the contemporaneous nature of the work means that we share a space with both it and its creator. By listening to the music of our time and striving to understand what it has to say, we are searching for an understanding of our world through ideas and observations of the creatively gifted. We are attempting to piece together, philosophically, elements of life which pain us, bring us joy, or cause us to think and consider. Maybe we are simply seeking the relief of observing mundanity in a mode of communication apparently removed from such things. In order to benefit from this, I would suggest that background knowledge will only help. It can pertain to the specific work, or the general oeuvre of the artist. Anything that furnishes you with a knowledge of where the composer sees themselves, either in relation to the evolution of western music, the promulgation/development of their own national style or to pertinent issues. In January of this year I was fortunate enough to perform Threads, a new work by young American composer Aleksandr Brusentsev. The performance marked a moment of arrival for a long-term project, and the evidence is online. Put simply, the work represented a process of coming to terms with suicide and a general exploration of mental illness. A significant section of the work is dominated by a single violinist scratching with immense pressure, creating gratingly unbearable sound. Upon the completion of the performance an audience member divulged to me that, at this point in the work they had been on the verge of standing up and demanding it stop. What could possibly be a more perfect reaction to a simulation of unrelenting and insuppressible mental disorder?
It should always be a privilege to hear voices of significant creative talent speak. In an episode of the BBC panel show Q.I., British/Danish comedian Sandi Toksvig expressed a wish that poets, painters and writers were taken on space missions, so that we could explore vicariously through the eyes of the most lucid and observant. Space may not yet have been graced by such presence, but Earth has been and, for the time being, continues to be.
Finally to engage with the elephant, who has been waiting so patiently. Perhaps you should ignore “them”, the people patrolling the realm of contemporary art. Perhaps contemporary music shouldn’t be heard, it should be listened to. And listened to with a purpose, with a method. To quote Charles Rosen, the eminent musicologist - ‘To appreciate a new and difficult style…takes an act of will, a decision to experience it again’. Perhaps the mode with which all of us can experiment (particularly those who tell themselves that contemporary music, all of it, is simply not for them) is to remember that it is a voice engaging with our world, this one that we all share. It is the manifestation of someone, who loves something (music) you also love, analysing questions with which you engage and which you quite possibly haven’t yet found the answers to of your own volition. That the world contains beauty as defined differently from our own should not be surprising, the exploration in various modes around its value and beauty is a constant and vital discussion.
Join the conversation. We need you, and I promise it’s worth it.