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    Stucky - Listening To Contemporary Music

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    Stucky - Listening To Contemporary Music

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    Stucky- Listening to Contemporary Music

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    Stucky - Listening To Contemporary Music

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    Steven Stucky LISTENING TO CONTEMPORARY MUSIC “Just for fun, 1 once counted up the number of 20th-century works in the subscription programs of one of our major American symphony orchestras for one season. The results may surprise you. 40 percent ofthe pieces played that season were ‘writen inthe 20th century. That—at least from my point of view—is good news. But ‘now consider that only a quarter of these 20uh-century works—not 40 percent of the season, only 10 percent—were by composers who are still alive. It seems clear thatthe phrase ~20th-century music.” which used to be synonymous with “avant-garde stuff ‘nobody likes". has now caught up with us. The 20th century now stretches back so far ‘that much of its music has come to seem familiar, comfortable, and safe. Thus the 40 petcent ofits season which our unnamed symphony orchestra devoted to this century {umed out to comprise mostly the tried and true: Mahler, Strauss. Sibelius. Copland, Prokofiev, Bartok. Rachmaninov, Shostakovich Sill. the 10 percent of the season occupied by really new music undoubtedly remained astumbling-block for many concertgoers. Asa composer, lam often asked two sorts of questions by members ofthe audience. Oneis both pra something like “I don’t know how to listen to this kind of music. Can you help?" in the Polite version (or. inthe less polite version, “Do you really expect me to listen to this garbage?”). The other sort of question is, if you like, sociological: “Whois the audience for your music? Whom are you addressing?” Let metry to answer the second question firs. In fact I was asked this question by phone just last. week by a writer for the Tallahassee Democrat. It seems an obvious, honest, straighiforward question. ‘Assuming that a composer (or a painter. or a playwright, or a sculptor. of a novelist) ‘reates because he wants to communicate something (o others, who are those others? ‘Who does the artist expect will understand and appreciate his work? ‘Yet in so-called classical music these days, this is a painfully sensitive question, and its answer is far from obvious. We know. for example, that of all record sales in this country. 4% are of classical music. Out of 100 record buyers. 96 don buy classical ‘music. Is my audience. then. those lonely four who remain? Probably not, I'l bet that three of those people are looking for their umpteenth version of Vivaldi's The Seasons, ‘oF completing thet collection of Pavarotti’s greatest high C's. And so. clearly. rom the point of view of “market share,” Greg Steinke and Ladislaw Kubik and I might as well not compose at al ‘But suppose ltried my best to capture that marke share? To write music that would hit those four listeners out of hundred right where they live? Or to reach out and grab 4 share of. say. the rock audience by “crossing over"? This seems to me a recipe {ot disaster. or for kitsch. or both. Trying to imagine how ether people will reaet tomtusic. and then tailoring your music to elicit these reactions, is equivalent to writing advertising jingles. It may be honest work: itmay even have some value to society. but i'snotar.it'sbusiness. (A recent counterexample should sillbe fresh in our memories. ln many of the formerly Communist countries, officials spent 30 years pressuring composers to write music aimed deliberately at the common man, tunes that could be readily understood by every factory worker, The results were disastrous. We would do well 1okeep that experiment in mind.) The poet T:S. Eliot, 60 years ago, described the same dilemma in his essay “Difficult Poetry.” Readers, he wrote, ofen sufferakind of tage fight, afraid they wil ot be equal to the challenge of something new and strange. Eliot admitted that very often he didn’t “get it” either. Certainly I often feel baffled by & new piece, as perhaps some of you feel. Let me ‘make a suggestion: In place of anxiety over your skills as a listener, focus on the delicious excitement of facing new m absolutely. bracingly alone: without historians or erties or traditions to tell you what to think, free to form your own spontaneousimpressions—lkealistenerin1830hearing Betlon™ Symphonie fantastique forthe fist time, or in 1893 Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, or Stavinsky's Rite of Spring in 1913, or Batiok’s Concerto for Orchestra in 194 Compare the situation in literature. We accept that the authors of supermarket romances, for example, think hard bout their audience and hew religiously to the formulas Already proven to satisfy that audience. We don't ask the same ‘of Thomas Pynchon or Toni Morrison of Salman Rushdie; we Fespect them enough to concede thatthe audience will have to ome te them. One is business, the other art, And yet, more and ‘more, one has the feeling that composers are expected to adopt some easy populism towinback anaudience they have somehow alienated. sounds pretentious, Iknow, butte facts that acomposer's uty is not to any particular listener of any particular imagined audience: a composer's duty is to the work itself. A composer hhas to remember that a trie work of art is rich, multifaceted, and challenging. ls aim is not popularity, its aim is truth, It doesn't give up its secrets at first hearing, because it is built to ast; built not merely to charm at first hearing, but to withstand. the test of fifty hearings... Beethoven, you remember, sneered at the notion that he should consider the limitations of his listeners — or even his performers. 1 would never dare to compare my music to Beethoven's, (Isaid once that I belong 10 that great throng of composers who spend their whole lives tying tobe almost as good as Massenet.) Yet tobe worth his sal ‘any composer has to aim as high as Beethoven, ‘Who is my audience, then? The practical answer is: an audience of one listener. myself. Only if I write music that ‘makes my blood ace, that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, do T have any hope of writing something truthful enough to have the same effect on another listener. can only (£661) D4SMW MeN 405 A,@L905 hhope that this approach will pute in touch with slightly larger audience: those who love the great tradition of Bach, Mozart, Schumann, Debussy. Bartok, and who ae willing not merely to Stack passively and let music wash over them like some rmood-aliering drug, but to work hard enough to meet the composer halfway. By the way, this doesn'tapply only tonew musi. Far from itt Ata preconcer tik in Los Angeles a few years ago, an audience member asked me: “I come to the symphony to relax. ‘Why are you doing this tome?” And I answered as gealy as could, that he had come to the wrong place. Beethoven's Eroica Symphony is not_ for relaxing: neither—despte its slaring difference in quality—is my music, e's go back now tothe frst question. Assuming the best will in the world how do you get the mos out of listening 1 unfamiliar new music. etme offer ive short pieces of advice: (1) don't expect the wrong. things: (2) be prepared. for discontinuity; (3) don't try too har; (4) expectnew instruments, new sounds, and new influences from other cules: and (5) {ive yourself permission to dislike what you hear Don't expect the wrong things. The music of the tradi- tional Bach-to-Brahms repertoire operates with familiar ele- ‘ments: major and minor keys; motifs, melodies and themes, chord progressions; familia formslike sonata orrondo: ways of playing instruments and using sounds that we have leamed 10 recognize. One ofthe ways in which contemporary music often differs is that any or all ofthese familiar elements may be smissng, or may be tumed 1 radically different purposes. John Adams may us familiar chords in unexpected con- texts. Or Ligeti may pile melody upon melody until they are ll submerged in a bundle of sound. Or in place of the contrast between two memorable themes—a principle we depend on heavily. even ifsubconsciously. when listening to Classical and Romantic forms—Penderecki or Xenakis may substitute the contrast of memorable sound-colors or sound-textures. Inthis frame of mind. wnat can be more exhilarating than hearing a new piece forthe very first time!“ ‘that is) can come later. To listen to these sors of music using the old mental and aural categories can be frustrating. even infuriating—like looking atan abstract painting by Jackson Pollock asif it were supposedto bea figurative painting by Andrew Wyeth. Let each new piece you encounter setits own agenda, create its own frame of reference, define its own terms. Check all your preconcep tions at the door: they'll only slow you down. 2. Be prepared for discontinuity. Traditional modes of continuity—how one gets smoothly from one musical event io the next. and how these events are made 10 seem to belong together—are largely thing of the past. Many composers have adopted new techniques derived from the dominant new anisic ‘medium of our century, the film. Thus. instead of orderly, sectional Classical schemes linked by smooth transitions. we ‘might hear instead dissolves, jump cuts, ashbacks. (In music, these techniques ae at leastasold as Stravinsky. but we ae still ‘geting used tothem,) Instead ofthe predictable retum of ideas we have already heard, we might hear instead a stream-of-consciousness narrative. (In music, this idea goes back at least as far as Debussy's Jeux, but, again, we ae stil adjusting.) Beprepared for these 20th-century styles of musical narrative. 3. Don't try too hard to “understand.” Lots of contempo- rary music is composed using elaborate, esoteric techniques. But so were Bach's Musical Offering, Mozart's Jupiter Sym- phony, Brahms’ Haydn Variations. All these works move us

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