Chapter 29 – the Orchestral Tradition in the Twentieth Century

Chapter 29 – The Orchestral Tradition in the Twentieth Century Illustration 1: Two Stradivari instruments in museum cases at the Smithsonian, Washington, DC. Is the orchestra becoming a similar museum piece? A brief opening disclaimer—much of this text has dealt with what is collectively known as “classical music”. It's a label that tends to be misleading, especially when compared to what passes as the “classical” tradition today: serious music (i.e. non-popular music often treated like fragile museum pieces and subject to endless discussions and debates about a “correct” way to perform it). It’s usually either that or avant-garde “artistic” music targeting a very small demographic of listeners. One point we need to keep in mind is that Machaut, Dufay, Palestrina, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, et al were not composing for posterity. They were writing music for the market of their times. In other words, they were essentially writing popular music—they just happened to have different instruments available, were immersed in a different musical language. They had a different political, religious, and economic paradigm to work with. Bach and Beethoven in particular were known as extraordinarily talented improvisers. There has been much speculation that if they lived in the 20th century they might have become jazz musicians. Along with its music, each era redefines reality. The music then—the subconscious voice of an era—naturally came out differently. One additional case to make is the meaning behind the label classical. In this case, the root of the word—classic—means timeless. All music and art captures the essence of the moment in which it was created—it would actually be very difficult for it not to do that. The best of it goes beyond and captures something universal, the whisper of the human consciousness that goes beyond any era, and this is frequently what remains when everything else is forgotten. This is what it means to be a classic, and it's not something often easy to sense at the time of its creationi. That is also one of the factors that makes us decide to call something art. Music of every era has winners and losers. History is full of examples of composers who were very popular during their time but who barely get a footnote in music history texts. The average person would probably have trouble naming Classical Era composers other than Mozart and Haydn. Surely there were more than two people writing music during that era! And just as predictably, every era has considered itself modern and dismissed the prior era as “old art”. Like each of those times, our era—as new and imaginative and inspiring (or frustrating and confusing) as we find it—will suddenly find itself last year's news. Unless there is a major break in the pattern of human behavior, it will not be long before the newest and most challenging artworks we manage to produce become subject to the filtering process that decides some works deserve to last while others become deeply buried footnotes in some book of history—if they are remembered at all. 100 years from now there will be a lot of music from our era that richly deserves to be forgotten. And, there will also be a lot that will be remembered as capturing the essence of the era, but also going deeper. It’s not out of the question that some rap and heavy metal made the cut for posterity. THE ORCHESTRAL TRADITION Sometimes when one listens to music--popular and otherwise--of the second half of the 20th century it almost seems as if there had been a sudden radical break, that civilization had started over and that "modern" composers have thrown all old rules out the window and started from scratch. There is little question that some of the art produced in the last century is deliberately rebellious and anarchical. As dadaists (and others) said, “this era we are living in doesn’t make sense. Why should I produce art that does?” Even taking into account the outliers who throw the rules out the window, a complete break from the past never happened. As the dust settles and the perspective of history brings things into focus, to historians it wasn’t even close to happening. As you have already read, before modern electronic ensembles came about, there was a great deal of music written for the orchestra that contains the experimentation and the searching quality found in all new music. Today there is less use of the orchestra as a medium of musical communication for the general public, but there is still much fine music written for this most complex of ensembles. It may seem a contradiction—or at least an anachronism—if you go to an orchestral concert, you'll hear that much of the current repertoire consists of music written before 1900. Music of modern composers (let’s for the moment consider a “modern” composer to be someone still alive) makes up a small percentage of large orchestra concerts. On the occasions when modern music is presented, the music director will often close the program with a nice conservative piece of music by Haydn or Mozart almost as an apology. Along with continued universal financial difficulties, does this signal the ultimate decline of the symphony orchestra outside of a few isolated ensembles and the medium of recordingii? Not necessarily. In Europe, where the orchestra evolved (and the orchestral music is deeply rooted in the folk tradition and culture of countries whose history goes back centuries farther than America), the orchestra is more of an integral part of entertainment and culture. A second important reason is that virtually any amount of orchestral music today would pale in comparison to the incredible wealth of music written from the late Baroque up through the end of the Romantic era. This is a repertoire that will probably never be surpassed in its passionate emotions, its exploitation of the rich orchestral sonorities, and its ability to speak to the common man (or the searching Zeitgeist of the Romantic soul, a lot of which is still in us). The face of music certainly has changed in the last century (to say nothing of the people who produce it—and the effect of economics, recordings, and copyright laws is a topic for a whole other discussion). Perhaps the orchestra, its sound, its group dynamic might no longer reflect the mainstream culture. This should not suggest that the orchestra will gasp its last breath in the near future--a healthy civilization is one that tries not to reinvent the wheel every generation. A population that looks forward to the future is also one that reveres its past and makes room for respected classics in any genre, be it theater, literature, cinema, visual arts, or music. While we in the West are obsessed with change and constantly looking for new answers and trends, we also have a curious tendency to institutionalize and ritualize certain things we want to hang on to: things important enough to keep intact and pass along to future generations. The orchestra, Stradivarius class violins, etc. may likely be one of those. If one were to look at the situation through the eyes of science fiction (as this book began), we have discovered how to store sounds, images, thoughts--perhaps even the very essence of our past selves that travel forward through time--we have created time machines (although only one-way as of yet!). We have created devices that allow us to step into them, almost as if we were stepping into a suit of clothes--and when we put them on, for a few brief seconds we experience the living thoughts, the fears, the passions, the faith of those who have lived before us decades, even centuries earlier. We experience the emotions—the struggles, the sorrows, the fears, and the triumphs—of someone long dead. Whether we realize it or not, that’s a part of the musical experience. That’s the composer’s story being told. In the whole spectrum of things, this could be one of the most important and remarkable inventions ever created by homo sapiens. Something that was right there in front of us all the time. Illustration 2: George Bellows, "Both Members of This Club", 1909 The following is an admittedly incomplete survey of composers and works from the “classical/art” music tradition in the 20th century. Very good cases can be made for many other composers. Many of the composers listed below had the experience of having their music trashed by the musical establishment of the time; and then finding themselves acclaimed as visionaries decades later. The motivation behind their music represents many of the same motivations, frustrations, and fears found in any music of this century, regardless of medium. While there are many important composers of the twentieth century, the following twelve individuals represent some of the major trends in the "classical" music of our era. Most, if not all, of the recommended works can be found on YouTube, the majority available as videos of live performances. CHARLES IVES (1874 – 1954) Charles Ives is perhaps most ruggedly individualistic composer of the 20th century, embodying the pioneering American spirit. Born in Danbury, Connecticut to a musical family, he began experimenting (some would describe it as "tampering") with new musical sounds at an early age, often presaging important European innovations by a decade or more. Because he was so radical and uncompromising during his lifetime, he was largely ignored by other musicians. Unlike Mozart and many other composers, his immediate lack of success as a composer didn't cause him to starve.

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