The Change We Need
Kyle MacMillan, one of my favorite classical music writers, had an excellent article in Sunday's Denver Post about classical music's next wave of innovators:
This new generation of classical artists possess all the technique necessary to tackle Brahms or Beethoven, but they would rather perform innovative repertoire that blurs into genres from hip-hop to electronica, rock and beyond... They might substitute with the New York Philharmonic one night, play a concert or two with a pop group then join other colleagues in some hybrid ensemble in between.
Sarah and I have written about this sort of genre-hopping in the past - she's been known to lead orchestra performances in bars and used to sing with a punk band, and I've played everything from avant-garde classical to jazz to bluegrass to disco in venues ranging from recital halls to New England barns to college bars - but Kyle puts his finger on what makes the trend significant to the wider world of classical music.
Specifically, this is the generation that will likely put an end to the war that has been going on for more than 50 years between traditionalists, who never trucked with controversial innovators like Carter, Cage, and Babbitt and just wanted everyone to go back to playing Brahms and Beethoven and pretend that most of the 20th century never happened; and hardcore modernists, who decided decades ago that they cared more about impressing each other at conferences than they did about writing music that audiences, even sophisticated ones, could relate to.
To musicians in their 20s today, these battles are not just tired, they're quite literally history. Someone born in 1988 looks at the debate over serialism in much the same way that s/he looks at Communism: a relic of the past, to be viewed through the lens of history, and while perhaps important to study, certainly not an ongoing debate one has with one's friends. The fact that many 20th century composers chose to write music that sounded harsh and deliberately unpleasant to most ears is a fact that young musicians recognize, but they don't associate that fact in any way with the dynamic and genre-busting new music they focus their careers on today. Nor should they. Here's MacMillan again:
All art forms need to be revitalized to survive, and too often classical music has been more concerned with preserving its past than defining its future. These groups offer an exciting way forward. They honor the essence of classical music, while devising meaningful ways to refresh and extend the genre.
On this historic inauguration day, with the word "change" on everyone's lips, I can't think of a more important revolution for the entire music world to embrace.
This new generation of classical artists possess all the technique necessary to tackle Brahms or Beethoven, but they would rather perform innovative repertoire that blurs into genres from hip-hop to electronica, rock and beyond... They might substitute with the New York Philharmonic one night, play a concert or two with a pop group then join other colleagues in some hybrid ensemble in between.
Sarah and I have written about this sort of genre-hopping in the past - she's been known to lead orchestra performances in bars and used to sing with a punk band, and I've played everything from avant-garde classical to jazz to bluegrass to disco in venues ranging from recital halls to New England barns to college bars - but Kyle puts his finger on what makes the trend significant to the wider world of classical music.
Specifically, this is the generation that will likely put an end to the war that has been going on for more than 50 years between traditionalists, who never trucked with controversial innovators like Carter, Cage, and Babbitt and just wanted everyone to go back to playing Brahms and Beethoven and pretend that most of the 20th century never happened; and hardcore modernists, who decided decades ago that they cared more about impressing each other at conferences than they did about writing music that audiences, even sophisticated ones, could relate to.
To musicians in their 20s today, these battles are not just tired, they're quite literally history. Someone born in 1988 looks at the debate over serialism in much the same way that s/he looks at Communism: a relic of the past, to be viewed through the lens of history, and while perhaps important to study, certainly not an ongoing debate one has with one's friends. The fact that many 20th century composers chose to write music that sounded harsh and deliberately unpleasant to most ears is a fact that young musicians recognize, but they don't associate that fact in any way with the dynamic and genre-busting new music they focus their careers on today. Nor should they. Here's MacMillan again:
All art forms need to be revitalized to survive, and too often classical music has been more concerned with preserving its past than defining its future. These groups offer an exciting way forward. They honor the essence of classical music, while devising meaningful ways to refresh and extend the genre.
On this historic inauguration day, with the word "change" on everyone's lips, I can't think of a more important revolution for the entire music world to embrace.
Labels: new music, state of the art, the young people
posted by Sam at
8:36 AM
7 Comments:
Do you have any thoughts on what the subscription concert of today might look ten or twenty years from now as a new generation of musicians with broad interests and a lot of media savvy fill the orchestral and managerial ranks? Judging from the Berlin Phil's sample streams, Medici.tv's beautiful high-def broadcasts, and reports of the Met Opera's success with telecasting, the technology to "be there" from a world away has arrived. It seems reasonable to think that this will have an impact on concert presentations.
I'm not very good at those sorts of predictions, to be honest. I believe there will be changes in the concert hall, but I'd bet they'll be more repertoire than technology-based, and I wouldn't presume to guess what kinds of music orchestra audiences will be embracing down the line. The fact is that the musicians in the article aren't orchestra musicians, and that's the case for a reason: orchestras are the most hidebound, change-resistant, slow-to-react beasts in the music world, and for a lot of people, that's just too stifling a work environment. (I confess it drives me close to the edge at times, though I still love the job.)
The use of internet and streaming media is one that orchestras absolutely have to address, and soon. Outmoded union agreements and upfront equipment cost issues bar us from taking full advantage of what's available, but no one has yet been willing to do the very hard work necessary to replace those agreements with something else, or convince a donor to pony up for a technology that may not show a return for years.
In other words, if you're looking for cutting edge innovation, don't look to orchestras. But the advantage of doing things the strange, meandering way we do them is that, eventually, we get to cherry-pick the best ideas from everyone else's years of experimenting.
Thanks. I thought technological change would come first - kind of like traffic cameras - with providers offering low or no cost equipment in exchange for cuts of future profits. It would be nice to have more streaming concerts from U.S. orchestras and I think the performers could benefit from whatever additional revenue these generate. Hope that the contractual issues can be worked out equitably.
Well, that's exactly the problem. No one's ever figured out a way to make any profit at all from online media. The conventional wisdom in the arts these days is that recordings, broadcasts and live streams are nothing more than promotional material for your organization. There's no profit to be had at all, because the public has been conditioned to expect all internet content to be free.
Point taken. The Berlin Phil and Medici.tv experiments will be closely watched, I am sure, to see if they can cover their costs or turn a profit.
I think there is one very unpleasant way that it might be made to work: Turning the concert hall's surfaces into unblockable spaces for virtual ads. e.g. http://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/article/58509
Don't at least some orchestras make money by distributing concerts on iTunes and such?
If they do, I certainly haven't heard about it. There's a hope that it might become at least marginally profitable in the future, but since most orchestras would raise serious artistic objections to having unmixed, unpatched recordings of live concerts distributed in permanent form, I doubt it'll become commonplace anytime soon. Maybe I'm wrong, but I've spent a lot of time and energy both locally and nationally working on media issues, and it's the area of the business that I'm most pessimistic about.
Ok.
iTunes: My local orchestra (LA Phil) records select concerts for future distribution on iTunes and I have been told that the recordings are professionally processed/mixed before release, including taking the best cuts from concerts given over a weekend. In fact, they specifically ask us in the pre-concert announcement on those evenings to be quiet (but not on other evenings.) It's as if the downloader's experience is more important than the attendees!
Since they've talked up their iTunes distribution program, I just assumed it was turning a profit.
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