A couple of posts ago I railed against John Cage for the condescension of his audience. In it I described that Cage’s composition failed because it wasn’t able to express his philosophical point without a didactic explanation. It was not the audience’s failure to comprehend. It succeeded in other ways, by drawing attention to our concert going practices, but in its attempt to get the crowd to listen to its surrounding, it was a bomb. In a way, the problem that Cage had in composing 4:33, was not that his idea that surrounding sounds are uninteresting, but that there are limitations intrinsic to music as an art form in expressing discursive thoughts. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, as music is non-discursive.
A problem that I’ve felt that has progressed from beginning of the twentieth is an increasing gap between the general audience of high art and it’s creators and institutions. When I speak privately with many listeners outside of the classical music world, they often spit when talking about much of the repertoire that’s been written in the 20th century.
Dimitri got no love from some in my classes in high school and college
Much of this is due to ingrained conservatism. In my junior year of high school I brought in a recording of Shostakovich’s 8th String Quartet to orchestra because the second movement rocks. When I played it, many in the class scoffed at its dissonance. Likewise, in college, I wrote a paper on the decline of classical music in the 80s and 90s, which led to the folding of orchestras across the country. To cite an example of music I thought was edgy (and I use this word liberally) that audiences would like, I again brought in The 8th Quartet, which judging by the facial reaction of the listeners in the class, they thought it was ugly and bizarre. This was shocking, and sort of a reality check for me about our society’s preconceived notions about what classical music should be.
This problem doesn’t necessarily mean that our society’s ears are only to blame for the eventual decline and collapse of classical music institutions across the country a decade ago. One issue that must be taken into consideration is the problem that Cage had above, where a small group of composers with incredible influence inside the art music world wrote music that was increasingly impenetrable to even avid classical music listeners. This led to the alienation of new listeners, who are essential in replacing the old, traditionally minded concert base that had listened principally to the high romantics.
This music written in the 20th century is brilliant and because of the philosophical underpinnings of the works, they can’t be dismissed solely on their aesthetics, even if they don’t sound very nice. This protection from a sort of “dead on arrival effect” (because of their antagonistic sound) led to works whose meanings became more and more opaque, and the ideas expressed behind them becoming more so as well. Any display of disgust by audience members was met with equal dismissal by the institution or composer, much like (or worse than) Cage’s reaction to the audience walking out of his first performance of 4:33. This upcoming quote by Gillian Tett is about financiers and their destruction of the financial system, but exchange “financier” with “composer-philosopher” and it suits the topic at hand well:
“Opacity reduces scrutiny and confers power on the few with the ability to pierce the veil.”
What eventually happens happened, is the number of individuals who enjoy works as ideas became smaller and smaller, leading essentially to sophistry of music and eventually economic collapse in the art scene. No new listeners are attracted. This harms all movements in the musical world, because a performing arts organization uses precious resources to put on a work that they can’t sell out, or if the audience walks out half way through a work, the organization won’t make money off drinks at intermission.
I feel that I should be very careful in my attacks on many modernist and post-modern works because much of music enjoyment is subjective. This is on top of the issue I discussed before, where sometimes the general audience’s ears do need to progress. One thing that I can take heart in, though, is that simple economics have seemed to taken hold and boosted the classical music scene after the art music Armageddon of the 90s. It is great to see growing in my field an accessibility in many young composer’s works along with the rise of world music and it’s integration into western art music.