CHAPTER 1
On a recent flight to Europe, I brought along Norman Lebrecht’s 1997 exposé Who Killed Classical Music?—a controversial book that attempts to explain, as the jacket copy states, “the poignant fate of classical music, an art that has sold its soul and lost control of its future.” The flight attendant noticed the book sitting on my tray table. She smiled and asked, “Are they still writing that anymore?”
It took me a moment to understand what she was asking. Are people still writing classical music? “Uh, yes,” I answered, but that “uh” had exposed a very large issue. Mercifully, she did not follow up with “And who is writing it?” or “How come I have never heard any of it?”
The gist of Lebrecht’s book is that classical music is in crisis because of corporate, money-grabbing, art-stifling, and ignorant policies. Without discussing his thesis, we might ask a larger question: Is new classical music really dead?
It is true that even before the coronavirus pandemic of 2020–21, in city after city and country after country, symphony orchestras were struggling to survive because of shrinking audiences, dwindling private and public support, and unsustainable ticket revenue. On November 15, 2016, the New York Times reported statistics from the League of American Orchestras that indicated, as the headline put it, “It’s Official. Many Orchestras Are Now Charities,” since American orchestras depended more on philanthropy than ticket sales “to buttress them.” But the very same “crisis” had been one of the central concerns of as diverse a group as Handel, when Londoners in the 1730s stopped being interested in his Italian operas; Mozart, when the symphony was going out of fashion in 1785 Vienna; and, as noted by Alex Ross in his The Rest Is Noise, in the 1930s, when “classical music could be sold to the masses [in Germany] only with pressure from above. German listeners had felt the pull of Americanized popular music in the Weimar era, and they kept demanding it under Nazism.”
The situation in which classical music currently finds itself might not be a unique function of an aging cohort of arts patrons in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. One could optimistically point to the fact that there are more orchestras worldwide today than in the nineteenth century, and that new symphony orchestras are being created in a number of countries, including many in China. We could simply be going through a readjustment phase, one that has merely been accelerated by a global health crisis. As music critic Anne Midgette wisely put it in the Washington Post:
When an orchestra closes, it’s seen as an assault on Beethoven and Brahms. By contrast, when a restaurant closes or a car company goes bankrupt, people may bitterly bemoan it, but they don’t see it as a threat to food, nor do they think that cars are endangered. . . . Change isn’t always good, by any means, but it happens. Yet in classical music, there seems to be a belief that every single institution is worthy of preservation, even though the logical extension of this would be a landscape so littered with old institutions, shored up beyond their actual useful life, that there would be no room for anything new.1
In the early 2000s, the Los Angeles Philharmonic built a new framework for its legacy by creating a business model based on the opening of Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2003 and the artistic/business partnership of its chief executive, Deborah Borda, its music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and the hall’s architect, Frank Gehry. Meeting together every week for two years, they created a new vision for the orchestra, one that started with Gehry’s idea of making the new hall something like “a living room” for its audience, and the expansion of the orchestra’s repertory to include world music, jazz, film music built around the participation of John Williams, and new music, as well as the standard repertory.
Nevertheless, it is difficult to be sanguine over the general state of our musical institutions and blithely put them into a context of “classical music has been losing money for people for 500 years”—a memorable line from the Amazon cable television series Mozart in the Jungle. Opera companies in major American urban centers have disappeared. Historic musical institutions in the United States have declared bankruptcy or resorted to lockouts. And in Europe, drastic cuts in governmental support for classical performing arts institutions have shaken the very foundations of what constitutes the responsibility of governments to define the value of their artistic legacy, a situation exacerbated and clarified by the global impact of a microscopic virus. Classical music, as it is currently defined, does seem to be fading further into the past, even though its core repertory seems impervious to assault.
There are a number of theories that attempt to explain this—while others deny it. In 2014, the New York Times ran a large story reporting not only that orchestra subscriptions were significantly down, but that they would most likely continue to decline for decades. The causation offered was the change of habits in modern society, and what were suggested as solutions by the artistic leaders of the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics, and by the newspaper’s chief classical music critic, were, first, shorter concerts; second, events at non-theatrical venues, such as bars; third, informal clothes for the orchestra; and fourth, single-event concert programs (that is, fewer repeated concerts, as if this model could in any way be viable, considering that the costs of rehearsing would remain the same while the income from the concerts would be significantly cut). In other words, there was no discussion about changing what was being played, just how the institutions might package it.
Meanwhile, other branches of the arts and entertainment appeared to be flourishing. Attendance at museums, jazz and rock concerts, live theater, movie theaters, and, above all, sporting events, as well as television viewing (on its various platforms), was bringing in more people (and money) than ever in the new century. The 2018 Broadway season, for example, brought in 1.8 billion dollars with its best-attended and highest-grossing year in history. And lest this be chalked up to crass commercialism, it was a season of dramas, comedies, and musicals—both old and new, simple and complex, some with large casts and some with a cast of one. Entire towns in the United States vie for season tickets to both amateur and professional football and basketball games—analogous to what the classical-music world calls subscriptions. International football and soccer leagues, with their multi-billion-dollar entertainment industry and media dominance, are perhaps the greatest example of the continued viability of subscriptions and time commitment throughout the world.
In the last years of the twentieth century, one major excuse offered for dwindling attendance in classical performing arts—besides a personal favorite: “difficulty parking”—was the attention span of young adults who grew up watching Sesame Street, with its short segments for preschoolers. This theory is contradicted by the fact that young adults (now grown adults) were staying up all night to read enormous books, such as the Harry Potter series, The Lord of the Rings, and A Song of Ice and Fire (also known as Game of Thrones) epics. It has become quite normal for people to spend over three hours watching movies of a length formerly reserved for special films of the past such as Gone with the Wind, Ben-Hur, and Cleopatra—and then viewing “extended” versions of those films plus “extra features.” This does not even address the hours people spend playing video games or “binge watching” entire seasons of television series. Attention-span deficit does not appear to be the problem.
There is, perhaps, another reason. Rather than explore the beautiful and comprehensible music composed during and after World War II, orchestras have remained wedded to performing the same “classic” repertoire our parents and grandparents enjoyed, much of which without question represents the masterpieces of civilization’s musical arts. Then, sandwiched rather uncomfortably between these ever-aging eternal masterpieces, are the works commissioned from living composers. And who would not want to encourage new music?2
The new music that has been presented as new is, almost without exception, non-tonal (sometimes incorrectly called “avant-garde”), enormously complex, and incomprehensible to most people. It appeals to very few music lovers—and, it should be added, was frequently intended as such.
How many times have people come up to me to express their dislike for “modern” music and ask me to explain it? Frequently they blame themselves for not having the capacity to understand it. Sometimes they express a sense of panic at being trapped in a middle seat at the philharmonic as the incomprehensible and frequently offensive music is being performed. This phenomenon has repeated itself for more than a century. A review in Philadelphia during Leopold Stokowski’s years as music director (1912–41) started with, “There was a stampede at the Academy of Music last night, when late comers to Maestro Stokowski’s program of modern music encountered those walking out early.”
Meanwhile, on those rare occasions when orchestras perform contemporary music that the public does want to hear (for example, new music from film scores or video games), the music itself attracts passionate, sell-out audiences who are seen as separate from the classical music public. The music is viewed as of transient interest, denigrated and, more often, ignored by the press, and thus eliminated from any serious discussion. Performed on an absolute minimum of rehearsals (frequently only one), it is orchestral music that is treated as commerce, not art. In 2000, two Russian-American fellows—visual artists—at Berlin’s American Academy became exasperated with me on the subject of contemporary music and said, “Why do you support music that needs no support?”
Commercial music can be defined as music that makes money for itself and its composer. All the operas of Verdi and Richard Strauss, the concertos of Beethoven and Mozart—indeed, let’s face it, all music is commercial in one way or another, whether it is a Gregorian chant composed by a monk who got room and board for his services or a contemporary composition that is commissioned by a symphony orchestra. In a 1781 letter to his father, Mozart wrote, “Believe me, my sole purpose is to make as much money as possible; for after good health it is the best thing to have” (emphasis added). Joseph Haydn lived at the Hungarian palace of Prince Nicolas Esterházy, where he composed music for the family and the court. Richard Wagner captured the heart and mind of King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who bankrolled him with a brand-new theater, a stipend for living expenses, and a house. In the twentieth century, composer, music theorist, and professor Milton Babbitt was employed by various American universities, allowing him to write electronic music, publish articles, and live in a totally secure environment, free from freelancing. In other words, Wagner and Haydn moved in with princes, while Babbitt moved into Princeton.
Should contemporary instrumental music that is beloved by a large public be as valid an expression as the rarified art of Pierre Boulez (1925–2016), certainly the most influential figure in classical music in the second half of the twentieth century? Can we admit into the circle of approbation the popular symphonic music of John Williams, Hans Zimmer, Alexandre Desplat, Ramin Djawadi, and Hildur Guðnadóttir, the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Score (Joker, 2019)—a circle that currently includes the music of George Benjamin, Thomas Adès, Kaija Saariaho, Nico Muhly, and other living classical composers whose voices are supported with commissions, awards, grants, and artistic residencies?
If there are two “kinds” of music in your universe, popular and serious, and those two categories are seen as opposites and determinants of quality, then it might be worth considering that those two adjectives are not in fact opposites in any language or philosophy. You might wonder how and when that came to be. We shall solve that particular mystery later on.
Clearly, serious music can be popular. Puccini’s La Bohème is a good example. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is another. Simple music, like Ravel’s Boléro, can elicit a profound response, and complex music, such as Messiaen’s Chronochromie, can leave some people cold. Classical music can be funny and light (Prokofiev’s “Classical” Symphony), while popular works can be serious, like Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, Kander and Ebb’s Cabaret, Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, and Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown—while some might find these works trivial and superficial.
In politics, we frequently see the binary appellation of liberal versus conservative, whereas these are not opposites either. Everyone is both. The issue is what you wish to conserve and how you wish to support it liberally. In describing music of the last century, “conservative” is still viewed as retrogressive, while the word “modern” and its various appendages—post-modern, modernist, modernistic, along with “experimental”—are deemed good and appropriate.
However, if you were asked if it is day or night, you might want to choose another way of seeing the world, something we might call the kinetic/spectrum view. In that model, the day is always becoming something that is the opposite of what it is. It is becoming night (during the day) and becoming day (during the night). In the northern hemisphere, the days are getting longer in winter, even though the temperatures are dropping.
The difficulty with the yes/no, on/off world of categories was best expressed by New York University’s Jonathan Haidt at the Manhattan Institute regarding universities and identity politics—but it is also true of music. “A funny thing happens when you take young human beings, whose minds evolved for tribal warfare and us/them thinking, and you fill those minds full of binary dimensions. You tell them that one side in each binary is good and the other is bad. You turn on tribal circuits, preparing for battle. Many students find it thrilling; it floods them with a sense of meaning and purpose.”3 In March 2015, the Finnish-born composer/conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen spoke of his mentor Pierre Boulez: “Young people are attracted to black-and-white statements. At least I was. And Boulez was like a black-and-white statement machine. He said, ‘This is wrong, and this is right.’”4
All borders are porous. Wagner, who will become a major character in the drama that follows, once described composition as “the art of transition.” We could expand that statement to “the art of living is the art of transition.” Music and the responses to it are closer to a Wagnerian paradigm—a series of transitions—and cannot be wrestled to the ground on the basis of one thing or the other, except on a singular and ever-evolving personal level, about which we shall also speak.
When George Gershwin died suddenly on June 11, 1937, at the age of thirty-eight, it was Arnold Schoenberg who delivered the eulogy on American radio. Schoenberg’s emotional speech included the following: “There is no doubt that he was a great composer.” In a binary world of popular versus serious music, you would have to choose between Gershwin and Schoenberg. However, if they didn’t, why should we? And it might be of tremendous interest to program late Schoenberg with late Gershwin in a concert. This might help an audience hear how they influenced each other, which they certainly did.
Are there perhaps universal principles in which music celebrates our common humanity, while simultaneously recognizing that we are all different? Political commentator David Brooks rightly pointed out that in defining the world in binary terms “will tear a diverse nation apart.”5
What is true of a nation is true of music.
THE LONG TRADITION
Classical music passed through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, surviving wars and upheavals. However, the natural continuance of a long and ever-developing tradition of art music composed to express a dramatic process that dates back to before Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven was annulled in the middle of the twentieth century, within the democratic West, when contemporary music that did not rise to its newly defined functionality was removed from concert halls and opera houses. We shall investigate the possible reasons for this, which are complex and centrally related to various official dictates from the Nazi and Italian Fascist regimes and the responses to them after World War II.
During that post–World War II period, the well-meaning patriots and patrons, conservatory and university instructors, conductors and composers, music critics, government functionaries, and private foundations that were funneling governmental monies accepted an exclusionary and confrontational definition of what constituted the appropriate and valued art of our time. Their aesthetic judgments were not a natural progression of art but a form of political action and personal survival.
A number of young, creative people growing up in a devastated Europe embraced a new, unemotional, and intellectually challenging music, and, it should be said, many profited mightily from it. Their young lives emanated from a cold, dark place that demanded rules (new rules) to make sense of life and culture after a war they barely understood but the effects of which were everywhere to be found. When I first visited Europe in 1966, it was shocking to see the number of men in wheelchairs and on crutches as I made my way through the streets of Munich, where much of the city was still mountains of destruction, and the pounding noise of jackhammers was the “music” heard at every street corner—and that was more than two decades after the bombings had ceased.
The one thing that was inadmissible to many young Europeans was sentiment. The horrors of war made beauty inappropriate. For them, beautiful was synonymous with vulnerability and was rejected as kitsch. Beauty could only be experienced as a guilty pleasure. As the enormously influential German philosopher Theodor Adorno (1903–1969), who helped shape the intellectual underpinnings of West Germany, wrote provocatively in his Aesthetic Theory, “There is more joy in dissonance than in consonance.” After two world wars, there was a sense of numbness in that post-traumatic world. A new musical universe, justified by complex intellectual structures rather than emotionality, offered a certain artistic protection within the chaos. In retrospect, we can offer another conclusion: that this dissonant music is redolent of loss—of family, home, and community—forcibly removing a population from its recent past transgressions. It was music as medicine—it tastes terrible, but deep down it will do you good—not unlike like the self-punitive architecture that was being constructed in bombed-out Cologne.
The composers who came of age during the war, as well as their students and protégés, took ownership of this position and did not let go of it. Speaking as someone who was taught and encouraged to compose during the 1960s, this music was admittedly fun to write and create. There was a sense of freedom and futurism in those years that titillated those of us caught up in it. We were the best and the brightest, and composing music that made use of mathematical manipulation, electronic sound oscillators, and a brand-new machine called a “computer” was like learning to play a very advanced three-dimensional board game. And, as we were very smart and very creative, we could dazzle, amuse, and confound you all at once. We won awards, earned post-graduate degrees, and got exceptionally high grades for it.
At the same time that the young intellectual (and frequently angry) voices of Europe were being supported, classical music ensembles began to turn away from the former crowned giants of “serious” twentieth-century music—Heitor Villa-Lobos, Howard Hanson, Samuel Barber, Gian Carlo Menotti, Aaron Copland, Paul Hindemith, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and countless others. Those who had achieved universally accepted greatness up to about 1930 (the music we still call “classical”) remained, after which a narrow line of composers who wrote in a complex and non-narrative style (no more stories or descriptions of nature) rose to the top and maintained their position well into the twenty-first century. The amount of twentieth-century music and the number of composers who were discredited remains one of the great mysteries—and tragedies—of that century. Was this merely the zeitgeist, or was it something else?
But that is only part of the conundrum for those looking for compositions to fill out the great—and missing—repertory of Western art music. The new works that won the prizes and major commissions received their world premieres and, like the giants listed above, also disappeared. It would be difficult to create a list of unquestioned symphonic and operatic masterpieces written between 1960 and 2000. That alone should be a cause for inquiry. As a potent example, consider the repertory currently played on classical music radio stations and streaming systems throughout the world. There you will rarely find the new music that won the awards and received the grants.
Has not the gigantic hole in the classical canon, now stretching past seventy-five years, created the disconnect with contemporary audiences? When I was born, Strauss, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Weill, Sibelius, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Hindemith, Korngold, Bartók, Schoenberg, and Britten were alive. Whose names will be on the list of living composers for those born today?
It is also important to recognize that during the second half of the twentieth century, when non-tonal modernism came to dominate the new music played in our concert halls, a vast amount of symphonic music continued to be composed by musicians who generally did not participate in the modernist classical music discourse at all. They just wrote music, sometimes defensively, creating the unique phenomenon of our current era: the two parallel universes of contemporary instrumental music, one that is written about but few people want to hear, and one that is almost never written about and people want to hear, but is not considered “classical.”
This latter music, listened to in concert by millions of people (who might be called “the audience” but who are usually dismissed as “fans”), demonstrates the indestructible continuity of dramatic music from the late nineteenth century into the twenty-first, written by immensely successful composers who have a thorough knowledge of the experiments and achievements of the twentieth century—but who are rarely concerned with winning approbation from those who rejected the very music that carried forth these traditions. This music is sometimes described as sounding like or being “movie music.” It is not, as we shall see.
Although these two worlds exist simultaneously, there has been a general lack of discussion and debate on this phenomenon. Perhaps it is time to shift the narrative and understand that a tradition of classical music was disrupted, but not broken, in the mid-twentieth century.
As already noted, art and politics have always intersected. In the mid-twentieth century a worldwide power was asserted over aesthetic judgments regarding style and function. These judgments came to dramatically influence what music we hear and what music is granted official status by our national and international institutions. At the start of the century, the avant-garde was formed to confront and overthrow our institutions. But by the late twentieth century, our institutions provided the support for the avant-garde with festivals and major commissions in Europe and the United States.
And, in the middle of this story, music emerged as both a political weapon and a target. Both unwanted and, to quote the former director of Vienna’s Konzerthaus, “inconvenient,” a huge cache of great and varied music simply disappeared for more than half a century. How does one eliminate music once it is composed? What happened to all those symphonic composers whose music is no longer played? Why do we struggle to name our greatest living composers when, if that question had been asked a century ago, the names would have rolled easily off the tongue? Puccini, Ravel, Saint-Saens, Elgar, Villa-Lobos . . . Why was the last Italian opera to enter the standard repertory—Puccini’s Turandot—composed in 1924, even though the art form continued with enormous success well into the 1940s and beyond? And why, if the Nazis lost the war, do we still not play the music Hitler banned?