BY CHRISTOPHER HEALEY, COMPOSER
We’ve all seen articles that talk about contemporary music: how little it gets played, and why people hate or love it (for example, you might have seen Alex Ross’ ‘Why do we hate modern music?’ published in The Guardian).
It’s my intention here to write some words around all of this, but I want to say upfront that I’m not here to speculate as to the cause, nor to moralise or assign blame. I’d like to bring you a series of thoughts and questions that may (or may not) offer a slightly different perspective. Let me start with the simple question:
What is contemporary classical music?
I’ve found people tend to have their own series of associations with this term, which can range simply from: ‘The music I know I don’t like’ to ‘that awful piece I heard in that concert last month’ to ‘lots of clanging, screeching, nonsense’ to perhaps even ‘I love that music!’.
As a composer, I’m someone who listens to contemporary classical music probably more often than your average concertgoer, and I think quite truthfully that none of those are really true or false. The reason is simple: contemporary classical music (which, lets think of simply as music by living composers) is not one single thing.
I certainly don’t love all the music written by living composers, and I certainly don’t hate it all. Fortunately, there is, for me at least, a very sizeable grey area in the middle of these two poles in which there is a lot of music that I think is great, and it’s all incredibly different.
To illustrate my point, here are two recordings of works by living composers. I’d wager that if most people would give works like these a chance, they’d probably find that they hear something in they think sounds good, and that they’d like to hear more of:
And if not, that’s okay, too. There’s definitely a lot of other options out there. But your response to these works would let someone like me point you towards some other contemporary classical musical directions you could really love.
Let’s explore another question:
Do you really — really — like all of the music you hear in a ‘classical’ concert?
I know that, in such situations, just like with contemporary music, there is music I love and music I think is painfully boring. You probably don’t even love every piece by your favourite composer. If you’re into Mozart, there’s bound to be a few Mozart works which you just don’t like very much. But if you see that next week’s program has Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 19, a work you’ve maybe never heard, you might attend anyway because you trust Mozart to write music you mostly like. In fact, you may even go despite there being another work on the program that you’re much less interested in.
My next question:
Have you ever heard a work by a composer you weren’t familiar with and been blown away by it?
Well, of course you have. Every single person who goes to a concert has had that experience at some point — that’s how they found out they love a certain composer’s music in the first place.
So here is what I’d love to invite people to consider: What if there is a composer out there whose works you’ve never heard before, but whose music you would find utterly astonishingly, movingly, transcendently glorious; a piece that would seem like it was written just for you because it seemed to affect you so deeply?
Now, I can’t promise you that piece exists. But I can promise you that something close to it, something capable of moving you more than any other piece you’ve ever heard, exists. It’s there, and it has been written in the past 100 years. I can say that with such surety because I’ve heard only the smallest part of the music that is out there; perhaps a few thousand works out of what must be hundreds of thousands from this time period. And even amongst that comparatively small number, there have been works that moved me more than Beethoven or Brahms were ever able. This is not because I’m strange or because I’m biased, but because I believe I have the numbers on my side. And this, like most, will follow a bell curve:
There have been many, many thousands of composers over the past century, and living right now there may be more than at any time in human history. Whatever your music is, it’s going to be found here. This doesn’t lessen Beethoven or Mozart, nor does it glorify contemporary music just because it’s ‘new’. Rather, it is an invitation to explore, and a pledge to you that whatever your best musical experience has been, there is an even better and more meaningful one waiting, if you’re willing to look for it. And I’d suggest that it’s worth looking for, because when you find even a single new work that moves you, it opens the door to many other moving experiences. You might find a work you love, then go and explore that composer’s catalogue and find other works that are even more impacting for you. You might discover their teacher, student or colleagues’ music, and suddenly it will be like there is a world that has opened up to you, which speaks to you like nothing else has thus far. These sorts of things tend to cluster together in predictable ways that are easy to explore – if only you can find the first piece of the puzzle.
No, you wont like every work you hear along the way. You will probably hate some of them, and that is totally fine. You will probably find some of them tedious, trite, boring, bland, mediocre, or just bizarre, and that’s fine, too! Move on with your life; there’s no moral obligation to spend time with music that doesn’t move you — life’s too short.
But!
If the works you’re hearing are being programmed to include not just the dead white male composers, but showcase some of the real diversity of contemporary music that is out there, you will, quite soon, discover something that you actually really enjoy – maybe even love.
Here’s the thing, though. Those responsible for programming music are, in their own special way, kind of scared of you, the audience. They are scared to regularly present too much contemporary music, because they know that the usual line-ups will sell well, and it’s important for them to have an audience at all. I think many symphony orchestras and other classical music ensembles fear that if the program too much new music, the audience will be content to stay home and listen to a CD. They are perhaps quietly terrified that all it would take is one bad experience with a work and you’d simply not come back.
But I don’t think that’s a fear that orchestra’s need worry about. I think as an audience member, you can help organisations realise that you are smarter, stronger, wiser and more resilient than that. That, knowing there is something magical out there you haven’t heard, you think it’s worth it to sitting through some music you maybe won’t like much; just like you might sit through some Brahms so that you can hear that Tchaikovsky you came for (or vice versa). You don’t have to like it, or pretend you do. But if given the chance, over time, the people who program new music will start to get a feel for what contemporary music a particular audience might actually want to hear, and can make better choices about that so you can be pleasantly surprised more often than not.
It’s a process, it will take time, but it is journey I believe would be rewarding for everyone.
I’m not suggesting that we stop programming the composers we all love; simply that a small space is opened up in regular programming for new(er) works so people might have the chance to stumble across some new and special experiences. I think we owe it to ourselves as lovers of music to not give up; to keep looking for something that will move us to new depths, in new ways.
I hope it can be so, for in my composer’s heart-of-hearts, I like to imagine a future world in which people line up around the block to hear the most recent work by their favourite composer, just as they might line up to see the most recent Scorsese, Spielberg or Christopher Nolan film. Building that sort of trust takes time, and a leap of faith. But the most rewarding experiences always do.
Christopher Healey is a young Australian composer and PhD Composition Student at the University of Queensland.
You can support him by visiting his website, Facebook page, or listening – really listening – to his original music. Get started with the works below, or find the scores here.
Birches (recording).Christopher Healey (score and album artwork). Solo flute played by Brigette Tubb.[purchase_link id=”2036″ style=”button” color=”red” text=”Add to Cart”]
Springtime Dances, Winter Weeps (recording).Christopher Healey (score and album artwork). Solo flute played by Brigette Tubb.[purchase_link id=”2049″ style=”button” color=”red” text=”Add to Cart”]
Images supplied.
