It was
largely by coincidence that all three of the concerts I attended yesterday comprised
mainly 21st century music.
Arch-traditionalist and died-in-the-wool conservative as I am, it is thrilling
to know that the desire to compose new music is as strong as it has ever
been. Classical music is not a dying or
even a diminishing art if the sheer volume of new music being produced is
anything to go by. Only by writing and
performing new music will both the craft of composition and the craft of
listening be sustained by the obligation continually to refresh and revalidate musical
language.
Of course,
the passage of history has ensured that the many thousands of unenticing works written
in the past have disappeared from the public consciousness, but with the music
of our time, there has been no filter of time to weed out the dross, and it is
inevitable that much of the new music we hear today will, quite literally, be
gone tomorrow.
Beyond
that, though, there is this to consider: Until the beginning of the 20th
century and the technologies which allowed mass access to music, there simply
was not the huge demand for new music that exists today. A wholly new genre was evolved to help feed
this new appetite – the genre of Pop music – but this has in no way diminished society’s
need for Classical music; music crafted by creative minds, interpreted by
trained minds and listened to by responsive minds.
But while I
should (and do) rejoice that so much new music is being written that it can
fill three very different concerts in a single day in just one small city
(Singapore), I came away from the experience with a niggling sense of disquiet –
verging on consternation - about the future of Classical music as a distinctive
artistic genre.
The new
music of our time seems to be pulling so far in contrary directions that there
seems a very real danger that it will split entirely. That in itself is not a bad thing; rather like
the humble but vital earthworm which, when cut in two by a gardener’s spade, continues
its existence as two separate creatures, so splitting classical music into two
different genres might actually increase its usefulness to society. Yet I seem to remember reading somewhere that
the earthworm’s much-vaunted self-regeneration was a myth; that while one part
did, indeed, continue after the division, the other simply shrivelled and
died. If that’s the case, how does our Classical
music analogy hold up?
Yesterday’s
concerts revealed a schism between areas of 21st century classical music
creation which was so wide as to seem largely irreconcilable and possibly
irreversible. On the one hand there was
a celebration of cerebral, music demonstrating technical skill at the expense
of widespread appeal, and on the other music which went so far to allure the
most unresponsive ears that it seemed to lose all sense of technical substance.
And in the middle, a third area in which
music itself was entirely peripheral to the performance. Individually, all three approaches had a
value and achieved their aims successfully – I certainly enjoyed all three – but
so different were they that I wonder how long they can continue to rub
shoulders under the generic but increasingly dysfunctional label, “Classical
Music”.
The first
of the three concerts kick-started the “Sounding Now Festival” which promises
to showcase composers living and working in south-east Asia. (https://soundingnow.blog/festival-2018/) Somewhat incongruously, however, this concert
opened with what appeared to be a left-over performance from the regular student-led
Wednesday noon recitals at Yong Siew Toh Conservatory. Hornists Mindy Chang and Alexander Ian Oon,
with the gloriously incongruous but brilliant pianist, Nicholas Loh, performed
Richard Bissill’s Time and Space. The
work dates from 2001, so it did (just) fit into a programme devoted to 21st
century music, but musically it was so detached from anything else in the
programme it seemed to inhabit a wholly different genre. As a performance this was not just
outstanding, it was almost certainly the very finest performance by any of the student
performers in the entire Wednesday series this academic year. It would have drawn gasps of admiration from
any audience, anywhere, and while it received the usual supportive noises from
the student audience, it was obvious that even they, usually so pointedly immune
from the charms or otherwise of performances presented to them by their peers,
found this to be something out of the ordinary.
Bissill’s work was hardly a great masterpiece, but it had a quality
which ensured it lingered in the memory long after the performance was
over. It was well-written, technically
challenging, emotionally engaging, and attractive both superficially on the ear
and more substantively on the intellect.
Of all the 21st century works I heard yesterday, this is the only
one which could, conceivably, still be in the repertory 100 years from
now.
The student
composers whose works were presented in the concert had the enormous good
fortune to have their music performed by an absolutely cracking team of
specialist new-music performers from Germany, “hand werk”. (I do wonder with these groups who tour the
world performing only new music, whether they go back to their hotels each
evening, sit in comfort in armchairs drinking lager and watching television, or
whether they stand naked on their heads on external window-ledges sipping
vinegar through tiny straws?) It is difficult
to imagine that these new works could have been more sympathetically and competently
presented, and the fact that each work’s distinctive character and latent
quality was so clearly conveyed, is down to their stupendous skill as performers
and interpreters.
Each work
required substantial stage re-organisation.
Perhaps conservatories should introduce classes on stage management and crewing
which are as demanding as those on playing the piano or conducting an orchestra;
new music seems to rely so much on stage management, that this aspect often
assumes greater importance than the music itself. To cover these long interruptions to the flow
of music, the various student composers took to the stage to talk about their
work. Not every one had completely
grasped the techniques of talking into a microphone (in some cases the banging
on the end, the breathing into it and the heavy “testing 1-2-3” were as
entertaining as the music itself), but all felt it appropriate to outline the
circumstances and inspiration behind their compositions.
The world
is tumbling into chaos. The Cold War
seems to have reignited. Arab-Israeli and Arab-Arab conflicts are raging with
horrendous loss of life. The Syrians
seem determined to kill their own people by whatever means Assad chooses. Boko Haram continues to kidnap, rape and
murder school girls in Nigeria with apparent impunity. The ceasefire in
Northern Ireland seems to be teetering on the brink of collapse. The US and China seem to be heading for
conflict. A belligerent US administration
seems intent on stirring up conflict with its neighbours in Mexico and
Cuba. And whatever the result of the Malaysian
election, it seems certain, like Brexit in the UK, to tear communities apart in
a proxy and (so far) bloodless civil war.
Surely there is enough in our world to give young composers a real focus
for their creative outlet, be it anger, sorrow, religious conviction or
deliberate indifference; after all, great art has always flourished at times of
conflict. Yet what did these student composers
want to express in their music?
It was
almost as if, for them, music was unconnected with society; that music was a
means of escapism rather than of confronting and coming to terms with
realities. One composer inhabited an imaginary
world of dragons and fictional languages, another the strains and stresses of student
life, and another found creative inspiration in the fact that his room at home
was “moderately untidy”. I blame Richard
Strauss, who elevated the mundanity of domesticity to the level of creative art
and thereby legitimised it for subsequent generations of composers.
There were
some very good ideas here, and all of the composers had clearly grasped the
essential skills of writing music. Most of
it I found absorbing, if occasionally slightly over-stretching its basic
material, but there was one piece which I felt revealed a genuinely creative
mind. However, while its composer, Noah
Diggs, had made highly effective use of performers moving, speaking and playing,
and had posed arresting philosophical questions in what he had written, we have
seen it all before. He has constructed a
persona which revolves around the “what-planet-am-I-on?” concept which, while
both entertaining and intriguing, runs the risk of becoming almost a
self-parody. Here’s a potentially
brilliant composer in danger of falling into creative sterility by resorting to
the easy and familiar rather than continuing to challenge himself as well as
his performers and their audience.
As for the
rest, one felt that the techniques of composing were the beginning and the
ending of the process. None of it smiled,
none of it invoked anger, none of it induced tears. Music should not necessarily do that, but it
should, at least, resonate in some way with the society in which it was born
and a humanity which exists beyond merely exercising the intellect.
The second
concert comprised just a single performer, a single musical instrument, and a
very large amount of electronic and computer gadgetry; so much, in fact, that
the sheer logistics of setting it all up by an over-stretched stage crew
delayed the concert’s start by half and hour.
It was billed as a viola recital, but it was in truth nothing of the sort. It was a bi-media (sound and vision) installation
in which the occasional sounds of the viola merged imperceptibly with a richly
textured pre-recorded soundscape and a continually moving, largely abstract
projected series of images. This all
made for an absorbing 45 minute show. (So
absorbing, in fact, that the handful of audience scattered around the darkened
hall seemed intent on preserving it for posterity through the camera apps on
their smartphones. I was particularly
taken by the lady in front of me who, determined to capture some sense of the
completely dark hall, continually raised her phone to take a picture, only for
the flash to come on, and for her quickly to cover the offending light with her
hand. She kept trying, but every time
she looked at the phone to see how the last photo had come out, all it showed
was a close up of the palm of her hand.)
The musical
sounds – often immensely attractive ones – were layered to create an enticing
soundscape which was effectively allied to the images so that it all coalesced
into a conglomerate whole in which music and projected visuals lost their individual
identities. As an experience it would
have been wonderful had not Mervin Wong committed two fateful blunders. First, he explained that this was in no way a
completed or even fully thought-through work, but something “in its very infant
phase”. Why should any audience feel it worth
their while to sit through something which is not ready for public
consumption? Far better to describe it
as “evolutionary” and imply that it is complete as it stands even if in the
future it may change; that might even get us to come back to hear it a second
time. Second, he promised a “compendium
of sounds extracted from the viola”. The
viola was often presented as a lyrical instrument, with long, sustained eloquently
expressive lines, and once or twice it even did some pizzicato. But there was no
sense that this was exploring the instrument.
Had he told us that it was “utilizing the latent beauty of the viola”,
nobody would have been disappointed – for it did precisely that, and to quite
hypnotic effect.
The third concert
was a performance by a choral group who reforms itself after each of its
bi-annual performances. This year’s manifestation
of the Chamber Choir was one of the best yet, the sound rich and the voices
singularly well blended. There were some
very fine choral singers here, and their conductor, Chong Wai Lun, had clearly
worked them up to a fine state of readiness over the years. Despite being dressed in uniform black, it
was interesting to note how much bare flesh was exposed. Various lengths of dresses and skirts only emphasised
the fact that the shortest skirts were extremely short indeed, while the tendency
of some of the male singers to roll up their sleeves made it look at times like
a party of grave-diggers about to pick up their shovels. Nobody’s sleeves were rolled up tighter than Chong’s,
which made it look as if he was more a gardener tending to his flower beds than
a man coaxing fine music from his singers.
The gardener analogy is good one, though, and I was thinking at the time
what kind of flowers he might have been nurturing with so much dedicated
elbow-grease. I came to the decision
that these were tulips; big, bold, beautiful but unsubtle blooms.
That my mind
was wandering down aimless garden paths was an inevitable consequence, not of
the performance (which was very good) but of the music (which was dire). The programme chosen offered no scope
whatsoever for the choir to do anything other than sing notes in tune and
pronounce words. It was a programme
which celebrated the vacuous; and as such was entirely typical of so much
choral music written this century.
Choral composers have discovered that certain chords sound quite nice
when sung by choirs, and build entire works around the continual repetition of
those chords in unrelated juxtaposition.
One work, which stretched itself out for three complete movements,
seemed to revolve around the same basic chords but not necessarily presented in
the same order. It was frightening to
realise that this completely innocuous, superficial and bland music was
inspired by Shakespeare. What had poor
Shakespeare done that our brave new world should have such people in it that
they belittle his genius so?
The agonies
did not stop there. A work which told a
story about a Chinese magic paint broach did just that, and did it so directly
that one wondered why anybody had bothered to add any music to the mix. What a shame that such fine singers were
given such brainless stuff to sing. It
sounded nice – but the minute it was over I could not recall a single thing
that had been sung.
What is a
21st century composer to do?
Should music be inaccessible to all except those who appreciate and understanding
its technicalities, should it be peripheral to an entertainment which involves other
media, or should it be so blatantly accessible to everyone that it loses all
vestiges of artistic credibility. If all
three are legitimate paths, then I have little hope. However, tacked on accidentally as he was, I
can’t but think that Richard Bissill has the answer, and music could do a lot
worse than follow his lead.