AmericanComposer Judd Greensteinudd Greenstein writes happy music. a feeling of devoting itself to musical by Kyle Gann By that I don’t mean simply that it’s materials without having been influenced, Jupbeat, energetic, in major keys, without having even been aware that there though it is often those things. I mean were ever sides to choose from. Schoenberg/ it’s characterized by almost a prelapsarian Stravinsky, Babbitt/Glass—all irrelevant. innocence: it doesn’t seem to bear scars from You imagine that if you could ask one of the fractures and antagonisms of 20th- Greenstein’s pieces what we should do about century music. It doesn’t have any “tough” the crisis that audiences have turned away structural elements to prove its intellectual from new classical music in droves, it bona fides, and neither does it indulge in would look at you benignly and respond, audience-baiting comfortable grooves. It “I’m sorry. What was the problem again?” doesn’t seem written either to heal or to It was bound to happen sooner or later. exacerbate the infamous Audience–Composer Greenstein is 30, I’m 54. My teachers Gap that was the defining precondition of remembered an era in which the importance my generation’s careers. It has about it an of modern composers was taken for granted, air of unself-conscious forward-lookingness, no matter how increasingly off-putting their 16 january/februarymay/june 2006 2010 AmericanComposer “His music is bright, clever, inventive, playful. music grew; they watched that world Blessedly absent is the academic conceit that We Live crumble, and they were bitter about the prestige they lost as pop music took center in Troubled, Anxious Times and need to reflect stage. My generation rushed into corrective mode with minimalism, rock influences, that in every piece to show how Serious we are.” slogans like “New Music” and “accessibil- ity,” festivals as marketing ploys. The war between that earlier generation and us left What’s different about Greenstein is his front of a background rhythmic complex- a scorched battlefield, and marked my subtle closeness to pop idiom. What I call ity was called totalism, and was associated generation with a lingering sense of failure an ur-American fusion of triadic harmony with composers like Michael Gordon, that we were unable to revive a status quo and Stravinskian rhythm, he explains as Mikel Rouse, Evan Ziporyn, John Luther for which we retain some nostalgia. But a having grown up writing hip-hop beats Adams. One guesses Greenstein has listened generation was bound to come along for and playing Romantic piano music. His to that music too, but it is part of New which the reduced status of modern classi- quartet for electric guitars Elastic Iridescence Amsterdam’s and the younger generation’s cal music was no tragedy, simply a fact of (2006) contains expression markings like credo that the new, genre-less music has no life; pop music no corporate hegemon, but “a little bit Californian” and “transitioning name and shouldn’t be anointed with one. a fellow traveler; aesthetics no life-or-death from lyrical to funky.” On the other hand, A clue to why Greenstein’s music seems agon, but a shopping mall of viable brands. his First Ballade for piano (2008—sic, so fresh, so unconcerned with history, That generation has arrived. And Greenstein though there doesn’t seem to be a second comes in the middle of his 2004 orchestra (www.juddgreenstein.com) is emerging as yet) is truly Chopinesque in its pianism, piece Today and Everyday. The orchestra one of its chief spokespersons. despite some tricky cross-rhythms running jitterbugs to an abrupt halt, making room Along with William Britelle and Sarah through Coplandy harmonies. A 2006 for a stately brass chorale that would have Kirkland Snider, Greenstein is one of the piano piece called Boulez Is Alive, a playful sounded serenely at home in a work by directors of New Amsterdam records, an reference to that composer’s infamous 1954 some mild early-20th-century master like aggressive New York label serving younger “Schoenberg Is Dead” article, abounds in Holst or Kodály. A composer of my gen- composers. He also directs the NOW exploded Boulezian textures, though in eration would have been screamed at by Judd ensemble, a group of expert Yale alums, charmingly tinkly B major. (Tellingly, teachers, peers, and his own conscience, and his access to lots of fine young, new- this less groove-oriented work is the one “You can’t do that! It sounds too normal!” music-minded virtuosos has brought him that got Greenstein onto this year’s Con- But Greenstein’s willingness to indulge a a ton of performances. He deserves them. temporary Music Festival at Tanglewood.) little normalcy, along with some hip-hop His music is bright, clever, inventive, The mainspring of Greenstein’s music, grooves, California guitar licks, the occa- playful. Blessedly absent is the academic though, is often a polymetric conception. sional dollop of Romanticism, and Boulezian conceit that We Live in Troubled, Anxious Four on the Floor ushers you into it intri- explosions, is why he sounds like he’s not Times and need to reflect that in every cacies by mixing phrase lengths of 15, 13, looking backward. What he does may have piece to show how Serious we are. His and 11 eighth-notes in a heavily marked precedents, but what he refuses to avoid is music is largely diatonic in harmonic lan- 4/4 meter. Folk Music (2004) for flute, indicative of a welcome new post-prohib- guage, and polymetric in rhythm. Non- bass clarinet, guitar, bass, and piano (the itive generation. ideological as it feels, it clearly comes down NOW ensemble) gives the ear quite a ride on the Stravinsky/Glass side of American on the ambiguity of whether it’s in 3/4, as music’s great divide. A string quartet like notated, or 12/16, as heard. Scan through his Four on the Floor (2005), for example, the doodly background patterns in jazzy will repeat a small group of harmonies, Get Up Get Down for orchestra (2006) using rhythmic surprise as its driving ele- and you’ll notice that some of the ones ment—a paradigm that Copland derived running through triplet eighth-notes repeat Composer Kyle Gann is a professor at Bard from Stravinsky, and that I find running every 13 notes, keeping the ear constantly College. His latest book is Music Down- through American music in music by a off balance without intruding into the town: Writings from the Village Voice. His wide range of American composers from smooth musical flow. In my generation, music is recorded on the New Albion, New Adams to Cage. this kind of foot-tapping pop surface in World, Lovely Music, and Cold Blue labels. 17 .