Note from the author: I originally wrote this in the summer of 2022, and for some reason or another, I never got around to publishing it. I found this on my computer recently, and wasn’t going to bother posting it as it’s fairly outdated, but I decided to for two reasons: 1) because I thought I did a pretty good job with this one, and 2) TwoSet Violin recently published an incredibly ignorant video about contemporary violin music, and it seems as good an excuse as any to finally get this online.
In April of 2022, two opinion pieces on classical music were published within one week of each other, that took the internet by storm. In the circles I frequent, these columns were considered both to be Very Bad™, though I wouldn’t be surprised if people with more mainstream opinions shared them, especially the second we’ll talk about today, with captions reading something like “This!”
The first article, published in The Critic, is by Norman Lebrecht, the guy behind the classical music blog Slipped Disc, and is focused on the programming of Black composers in orchestra concerts. The second article, published in the New York Times, is by John McWhorter, associate professor at Colombia University, and is focused on a supposed struggle between spicy and lyrical music in classical concert halls. Let’s take a look at each in turn, starting from the more blunt, and working our way to the more nuanced.
https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/may-2022/bring-on-the-big-beasts/
Norman Lebrecht’s article is, to put it mildly, a dumpster fire. I will spend a rather minimal amount of time refuting it, because all I need to do to prove why it’s poor writing is to summarize it accurately. Lebrecht discusses listening to music by Black composers, specifically George Walker’s Lyric for Strings and Florence Price’s Symphony No. 1 in E Minor, and bemoans them because they’re not as good (read: he doesn’t like them as much) as Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings and Antonin Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 in E Minor. He then complains that we’re playing all this music by racially diverse composers when we could be playing more music by Beethoven instead.
If that summary wasn’t enough to show why his opinion is garbage, well, I don’t know if there’s anything I can say more bluntly than I did, but I’ll try. First off, music is subjective, even when it comes to the so-called “masters.” Almost as a running joke, I dislike Brahms, and there are many classical musicians out there who dislike at least one of the big names: Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, etc. In fact, many musicians and listeners dislike entire genres of common practice music. I’ve had plenty of students in my time blanket assume they dislike classical music as a whole, though often we discover that it’s because they haven’t been exposed yet to composers, sub-genres, or works that they DO like.
So here comes Lebrecht, bemoaning that modern ensembles have an “agenda” of programming works by Black composers, when they could be performing the “great masters” instead. He discusses George Walker, a proven American master composer, and then IN HIS OWN WORDS, writes “I would never consent to the designation of George Walker […] as a deathless American Master.” First off, sir, that’s not for you to decide, but second… why? Judging Walker for his Lyric is like judging Barber for his Adagio; it’s their most famous work but also the most removed from the style of the rest of their respected oeuvres. Could it be that there’s something else about Walker you don’t like? I’m going to let that question hang in the air for a bit, and move on to the second article for today.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/26/opinion/classical-music.html
John McWhorter’s article is more worth talking about, in part because it’s less racially charged, but mostly because it does a great job of perpetuating stereotypes of 20th and (supposedly) 21st century classical composition that I myself work very hard to tear down. He starts with an anecdote about a negative experience performing some crunchy modern choral music, and then goes on to talk about the 12-tone style of Arnold Schoenberg. He mentions three composers in particular: Schoenberg, Pierre Boulez, and Luciano Berio. He even links this beautiful recording of Schoenberg’s Variations for Orchestra, op. 31, conducted by Boulez, while saying “Beethoven’s Fifth, it is not.”
The moral of the story he’s trying to convey is “modern classical music uses scary 12-tone language, which is spooky and unfamiliar, when I’d much rather be listening to music by Stephen Sondheim, or Black composers.” There’s the implication here that Black composers only write in tonal post-romantic or musical theatre styles. Seeing that McWhorter himself is Black, I’m going to presume that’s an accidental conclusion rather than an insidious one.
So, the most obvious problem here is that he’s complaining about “recent” music while using an example of a piece written in 1928 by a composer who died in 1951. I can’t bring myself to call anyone who died before my own parents were born “recent,” and you shouldn’t either. There are several problematic layers to this argument, so let’s lay them out one by one.
First, “there’s a chance that what they’re hearing […] is music composed with the notoriously listener-unfriendly 12-tone method of composition.” This is actually less true than you may think, because realistically, we listen to very little 12-tone music these days. Even compositions written in very dissonant styles, such as the new complexity of Brian Ferneyhough, or the masterfully meticulous craftings of George Crumb, aren’t usually applying this technique. They’re still atonal, for sure, but the 12-tone method is a very specific, regimented compositional technique, and calling every dissonant non-tonal piece 12-tone is similar to older folks calling every gaming console a Nintendo.
In fact, by far the most influential movement in modern classical music has been the American minimalist style, pioneered by composers such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich, and used by big names like John Adams. If you’re gone to hear any modern classical music recently, and I mean the proper meaning of the word modern, odds are the influences are more from these two than they are from Schoenberg, Webern, or Berg.
But even putting that aside, there’s the idea: why would I want to listen to dissonant music, when I could listen to beautiful, consonant music? When I have to explain dissonant music to young students, I often use the comparison of different flavours of food. Why would you want to consume spicy or bitter foods, when you could consume sweet foods? Well, I imagine most people reading this don’t exclusively consume sweet foods. Plenty of you like your black coffees, your IPAs, your spicy wings, your curries, your salsas, your hot sauces, etc. Music is very similar: when you’re young, you prefer sweet things quite a bit, but as you mature, you gain an aural palate that can handle (and even actively seek out!) more bitter and spicy sounds. Cluster chords that sounded bad when you were an inexperienced listener quickly sound like the most beautiful suspensions to the learned music enjoyer.
In fact, it’s funny that McWhorter bemoans the state of modern classical music from a choral perspective, because who’s one of the most famous and successful modern composers currently active? That’s right, it’s the AV cable thief himself, Eric Whitacre. Mr. White Acres’ style is an immediately identifiable one, and one that has a major effect on people. And honestly, some of those chords are crunchy as hell when isolated, but are voice-led so hard that they sound like the most consonant music ever written. Of course, Whitacre’s not nearly as spicy as much of the music McWhorter is complaining about, but his music definitely proves that dissonant sounds can be beautiful and moving when simply handled properly. And as I said before, as the listener gains more experienced, they can handle these sounds in less delicate contexts, to the point where an entire piece of dissonance can be consumed with the ease that one consumes consonance.
All in all, what bugs me the most about people complaining about “scary new music” is that they seem to want to posit themselves as some form of victim, that they’re having crunchy atonal music thrust upon them, when the simple truth is that old tonal music is by FAR the most readily consumed classical music right now. People like Lebrecht complain that orchestras are afraid to programme Beethoven because it’s not “woke” enough, but you talk to anyone programming music for a real orchestra, and they’ll tell you that they DO programme Beethoven alongside new music because they simply can’t get the necessary sales to get the new music out there without Beethoven headlining the concert. We’re at a musical crossroads where a lot of people would really like to hear new and unique stuff, but those people aren’t the ones doing the funding. The people with money tend to have old school tastes, and want the old school stuff that matches the institutions they uphold. This may not be true in every part of the world, but it’s sure as hell true in my part of the world.
Let’s examine a piece of music that may be similar to, but probably isn’t the same one as, the one McWhorter struggled with in his choir. Some spooky, scary choir music by one of the coolest 20th century composers, György Ligeti. Whatever Eric Whitacre thinks he invented with cluster chords, Ligeti had him beat by a couple decades. The main difference being, while Whitacre feels necessary to resolve every phrase’s dissonance to a consonance, Ligeti doesn’t mind taking the entire damn piece to get to the next consonance. For Whitacre, the beauty lies in the resolution of complex sounds. For Ligeti, the beauty lies in the complex sounds themselves. And both are equally valid methods of composition. Ligeti’s music might sound a little more alien at first listen, to the uninitiated consumer, but it honestly doesn’t take too long to come around and be able to appreciate the beauty. I don’t even think this piece takes more than one listen: by the time you’re about halfway through, you’ve most likely started to hear and appreciate the sounds differently than you did at the beginning, after your initial shock of this music that doesn’t quite sound the way you’d expect.
I guess the biggest problem is that McWhorter is telling us not just what kind of music he likes, but that the music he likes is appropriate to like, and that you don’t have to feel bad for liking it. Which would be fine if his music was, y’know, some small niche genre, and not literally the much-beloved norm. It’s a very “Christian conservatives are the most persecuted minority” mindset, in that it tries to appeal to emotions and peoples’ struggles, while also being among the most objectively false things you can say. People in power sure love being the victim, for some twisted reason. And liking older music is fine, but claiming that everyone finds old music good and new music bad is both false and damaging to classical music as a whole.
If you made it this far, I hope that means you’re the kind of person who’s open to trying things you don’t know yet, or things you may not be comfortable with. And I implore you, listen to new music. Go out and seek things you’re unfamiliar with. Let your local performing groups know you’re coming to discover new things, not just to hear old favourites. There’s new music out there for everyone, I promise. You won’t know what your next favourite song will be until you hear it, after all.
Matt Richard 