Check it out HERE

It attempts to encapsulate a surge of interest, catered for by the Southbank, Barbican and ENO, in late twentieth-century music. By interviewing a lot of key players in British contemporary music in quite a short space, it races through quite a few important ideas, many of which fit very closely with the opinions of this blog.

Gillian Moore from the Southbank Centre describes putting on the Warp records concerts, ‘to make the connections between Aphex Twin and John Cage, Squarepusher and Stockhausen’, finding that the people who attended ‘had an almost unlimited appetite for music of richness and complexity’. Conductor Baldur Brönnimann ‘confirms that many people arrive at the avant garde of contemporary music via the wilder shores of pop’. He says of a Joanna Newsom audience that those ‘who came are the ones who look at contemporary music. They look for something that goes deeper, to undiscovered worlds – the bottom of the sea’.

Esa Pekka Salonen says:

There’s a trend in our culture to be constantly up to date because we’re connected through the internet, and an art form that would be entirely backward-looking and museum-like would make no sense. People are interested in what’s happening right now.

He must of course be mainly talking about ‘post-Net’ young people, or tech-savvy adults, which could go some way to explain why the backward-looking classical mainstream is still largely followed by older people.

The only contention I have with all this is the idea of ‘difficult’ music. I think this is certainly part of the way trained musicians see this music, because they see all of the history of music at once, and the same goes for regular concert-goers who have a good knowledge and experience of older music. For them, it seems like it is ‘difficulty’ – i.e. non-tonality, complexity – which people are now gradually ‘getting’, as if these audiences are made up of people who would be fine sitting through a Bach Passion or Mozart opera.

This is, of course, not the case – as suggested in the quotes above. What is heard as ‘difficulty’ by musicians and classical fans is actually just heard as ‘interestingness’ by much of this young audience. And I have to say now, I find listening to Schubert and Mendelssohn and Bach and Brahms a LOT more difficult than listening to any of the modern composers discussed, largely because I often find their works devoid of much interest, fulfilling preordained structures, following all-too-familiar rules and expressing banal or unattractive sentiments. Most people who believe they are qualified to have an opinion on these things would say that I am a freak in this respect, that it is not the natural way to react and that I shouldn’t think I’m representative of much of the population, but that is just because they are validated in their judgements by their own beloved institutions.

So to understand this as ‘difficult’ music is missing the point. In many cases, classical symphonies are just as alien to the musical experiences of young people as modernist works, sometimes more so. We imagine tonality and classical forms to be somehow natural and universally comprehensible, and perhaps there was a time when they were (I don’t think we can judge), but – as with the Warp records example – there is more going on in the rest of culture which is comparable to modern music than there is to archaic forms. I would call it ‘interesting’ music instead of ‘difficult’ music and have done.

In this spirit, I disagree with Oliver Coates‘s quoted comment. Apparently, he doesn’t think ‘classical music should be put on in bars and clubs – people shouldn’t drink or talk over it, they need to be immersed in it. It remains quite serious music’. So, I think this is a) patronising, b) narrow-sighted and c) highly uncreative (surprisingly so from this man). He confuses the extant circumstances of the concert hall for something essential – the normalcy of the setting is confused for ‘neutrality’, whereas actually it is far from neutral (like anything). My experience of new music in bars and clubs is not one of people talking, just like most people don’t tend to enjoy in-depth conversations during alternative pop gigs, and I don’t see what drinking has to do with anything. Mainly though, he’s just displaying a deeply reactionary attitude which amounts to: the big institutions know best how you should be listening to this music, they must keep the power, people and music can’t be trusted to understand each other ‘properly’ outside of the correctly-sanctioned environment (and without a correctly-purchased ticket).

God knows what he means by ‘it remains quite serious music’. Why ‘serious’? Why ‘quite’? And why ‘remains’? The problem with these articles is always that they are written by and for people who accept this idea that ‘people naturally hate new things and interesting things and different things, so isn’t it just amazingly exciting when people actually want to go to new music?!’. This is an attitude that needs to be shaken. People shouldn’t have to read how ‘difficult’ or ‘divisive’ a new piece is going to be before they go and hear it. They shouldn’t have to be reminded that ‘you might hate it’ and ‘some people walk out’ etc. If so-called classical fans want to make such a big display about hating new music, why do we care? I’m not interested in football, but I don’t go to football matches just so I can walk out. The same is true for exhibitions of landscape watercolours and CGI-animated movies. They don’t care how much I hate it, even though I’d find any of these things so much more ‘difficult’ to endure than the longest Stockhausen works…

This is actually one of the key arguments to get new music out of the concert halls. Obviously, the reason why classical die-hards think it appropriate to perform their disgust all over new music programming is because they think it is ‘their’ territory. It’s like when the Young British Artists held their Sensation show in the Royal Academy. While we keep focusing on these venues as the nexus for new music, we will keep having to apologise to ourselves and to subscribing audiences for being so ‘adventurous’ as to dare put a piece written in the last 50 years into a blockbuster concert. We need to escape these terms, because it surely isn’t the way composers want their music to be presented to the public – with apologies and the assurance of ‘difficulty’ and the invitation to ‘make an exception and take the plunge and do something crazy and you just might like it’ etc.

The article also threw up a link to another Guardian article which I missed from 2010, by Alex Ross. It is entitled ‘Why do we hate modern classical music?’ and it should be read. Obviously from what I’ve just been saying, I’m not sure the sentiment expressed in the title is particularly intelligent, but he makes some great points and suggestions, and there are some good comments made below, amongst the requisite, boring, self-righteous reactionary grossness.

Read that article   –   HERE <——-

1. Steve Reich is writing a piece called ‘Radiohead Rewrite’, based on two songs by the band: ‘Everything In Its Right Place’, and ‘Jigsaw Falling Into Place’. It will be premiered by the London Sinfonietta next March. [Has he been having a cheeky read of the biting point manifesto? In the opinion of this humble blogger: Yes, definitely.]
2. The Centre are holding a massive year-long festival next year inspired by Alex Ross’s book The Rest is Noise, with historically-themed concerts tracing the development of twentieth-century music as the year progresses…

…An interesting concept: exciting because it means more modern/contemporary music at this big institution? potentially dangerous because it threatens to frame all this music in a purely ‘historical’ light, without suggesting any overriding contemporary relevance? exciting because it is based on a text which managed to engage a new, non-academic audience with modern music in an exciting and accessible way? potentially dangerous because this canonisation of ‘old but not that old music’ could get in the way of new programming and the importance of really contemporary composition? exciting because it’s managed to get itself mentioned on indie mecca Pitchfork Media amongst other sites, and Alex Ross’s crossover prestige may well draw in certain new crowds interested in progressive art but unfamiliar with the concert hall?

We shall see…

Southbank Centre’s Festival site is HERE <—

Also, Alex Ross’s BLOG and Steve Reich’s SITE

The double LP features new recordings of works by founders Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe, as well as music from Louis Andriessen, Conlon Nancarrow and Dave Longstreth of the Dirty Projectors.

All they want in return is a little comment, thought or memory, assuming you know the ensemble (and if you don’t then I expect y’all to give me due credit), for their anniversary scrapbook.

Download the album ——> HERE <——— and while you’re doing so, maybe just think about how rarely classical ensembles give recordings away for free (especially compared to pop artists).

We’d firstly like to apologise for our quiet period towards the end of 2011, mainly caused by the fact that we were too busy and poor to see any concerts or have any opinions. (Although we’d like to remind you that – even if we’re having a rest – you can always rely on a good read over at Greg Sandow’s blog where, in amongst the baby pictures, he’s recently made some excellent and quite controversial points about music education outreach and performers’ publicity photos.) We hope to be able to post more frequently now that the new year is upon us, especially since there is a lot coming up that we’re very excited about. Hence, here is a brief and cursory overview of some of London’s potential musical highlights over the next few months…

the biting point in LONDON, winter/spring 2012…

• There is so much going on at the Barbican over the next few months, centring on a residency from the Kronos Quartet in late January, with three enticingly-programmed concerts happening across three venues. Then there is an invasion of erudite pop auteur collaborations spanning the season, ranging from Jonny Greenwood and Penderecki, through the Britten Sinfonia’s presentation of new concertos from Nico Muhly and Owen Pallett, to our finally getting the chance to hear Rufus Wainwright perform his Shakespeare Sonnets with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The National’s Dessner brothers present a full-length multimedia concert in The Long Count, and Bryce Dessner adds his voice to a (tragically sold-out) collaboration with Muhly and Sufjan Stevens in April. Tyondai Braxton and Nick Zammuto (of the Books) contribute to a very exciting, evening-length conceptual project by Bang on a Can, while, most bizarrely of all, the Mountain Goats perform with early music vocal consort Anonymous 4. On top of all that, the Barbican cements its position as our favourite big-deal London venue with full performances (with varying degrees of staging) of Einstein on the Beach, Harvey’s Wagner Dream and Barry’s The Importance of Being Earnest.

• Over at the Southbank Centre, highlights should include a showcase by the London Sinfonietta of the composer Olga Neuwirth, who takes inspiration from eccentric synth-chansonnier Klaus Nomi. Although its hardly Sufjan Stevens, they’re also hosting a collaborative concert between the NYO and Bellowhead, as well as continuing their rather slight alternative programming with the Harmonic Series and the Night Shift. They are however presenting Conlon Nancarrow’s complete player piano studies, using instruments identical to Nancarrow’s own, which could be pretty great.

• Nonclassical up the ante with their very exciting upcoming night (January 19th) at XOYO, Shoreditch, featuring minimalism for full orchestral forces, and a headline DJ set from J.D Twitch. They’re also collaborating with the Rambert Dance Company, as part of the Southbank’s Prokofiev season, in an ‘interpretation’ of (Sergei’s) ballet Trapeze. It’s free, although they’re also calling it an ‘hour-long classical club night’ which I think might be a contradiction in terms.

• Nonclassical are also taking part in Reverb 2012 at the Roundhouse. Ostensibly showcasing a ‘new wave of boundary-shattering classical performers’ (‘come and join the revolution…’, they implore), this 5-concert festival in late Feb/early March includes a very exciting programme from the London Contemporary Orchestra, as well as the obligatory Night Shift, a themed concert from Aurora Orchestra, and strangely enough, Imogen Heap. Also a choir competition. Not wholly revolutionary perhaps (and rather hijacked by the Olympics), but definitely something for everyone.

• As far as opera goes, we have ENO‘s London stage premiere (!) of The Death of Klinghoffer in late Feb, while the ROH fulfil their yearly quota of new works by staging the UK premiere of Weir’s Miss Fortune in March (promised to include ‘breakdancing and a burning kebab van’). OperaUpClose have a new production of La Fanciulla del West coming up (and set in Soho), and headphone-toting Silent Opera return with their obligatory take on La Boheme. Also, as you’ll no doubt hear endlessly more of, the biting point’s own house company – Carmen Elektra - make their London debut on March 23rd, with a one-off opera club night in a multi-storey factory building in Peckham.

• Kings Place continue their Out Hear series, with upcoming performances from ensemblebash and CHROMA, amongst all the Brahms (deargod so much Brahms).

I am thinking of starting a London calendar for events that the biting point considers particularly intriguing. Do leave a comment, readers, if there are any other upcoming events that you think we’d be interested in. One of our new year’s resolutions is to try and build more of a sense of community around this and similar sites and publications.

Cool cool welcome back…

The venue itself is yet another superb project from Practice Architecture, the team behind Frank’s Café in Peckham, which hosted the car park Rite of Spring earlier this year. This community-focused temporary space, integrated organically into a warehouse using recycled material from the Olympic Park, is the perfect kind of environment in which to develop a new opera totally detached from large institutions, their audiences and their expectations. The result – Manga Sister - was a small but important project.

Dealing with an entirely unconventional plot – set in a contemporary nursing home and moving between a dark comic reality and an outrageous, anime-inspired fantasy – the opera is an example of a new composition that dealt freely and creatively with an absurd but delightful libretto, without feeling unduly indebted to any musical or theatrical tradition. The story focuses on an elderly, handicapped man, tormented by neglectful nurses (I know, sounds hilarious), whose only solace comes from repeatedly viewing a violent Japanese cartoon. Harry Blake’s music was fantastic – tonal but not banal, using parody effectively but sparingly, and employing a small ensemble with great resourcefulness. The staging, smoothly integrating dance elements and projections onto a simple set, was equally effective, and the singer-actors were all very good.

Through some clever dramatic and musical devices, the piece was lifted from the precarious position of many of the small contemporary comic operas of the kind that you might see at Tête à Tête, in which tiny farcical plot structures are bolstered by the comedic potential of singing swearwords and heavy musical parody. The one moment of humourous quotation in Manga Sister, linking a character connotatively to Mozart’s Queen of the Night, was fairly subtle, and justified by the arresting structural effect of having an amplified, looped recording of the phrase invade the otherwise acoustic score. Otherwise, each hallucinatory ‘viewing’ of the anime fable, whose plot runs parallel to the nursing home narrative, is accompanied by a long, lyrical musical refrain sung by a narrator in the audience. This non-linear structural intervention compliments the invasion of pop culture fantasy into the otherwise mundane setting, and prepares for the piece’s escapist ending.

Thematically, Manga Sister is a relatively slight work, perhaps, compared to the grand aspirations of many opera composers, but this is part of its success. The creative team have put together a funny and quite striking work out of bizarre thematic material that would never normally be considered by opera, but material which is original enough in form and content to elicit some brilliant moments. In tone, it did perhaps err a little too far on the comic side (the characterisation of the neglectful nursing home carers, while fun, could have been a little less endearing). I was also half-expecting (and hoping for) another narrative twist at the end, dragging the story back into a mundane reality which might have cast a darker shadow over the entire piece, and sharpened some of the themes.

However, it is one of the first examples that I’ve seen of a fully-realised contemporary opera run, situated entirely outside of the mainstream institutions (despite some affiliation and assistance from various larger companies), and managing to be engaging and accessible both musically and theatrically. And, as I’d expect, it was well-received critically and attracted an enthusiastic young audience. I think it is very telling that LIVEARTSHOW describe themselves, not as an opera company, but as ‘a company made up of writers, directors, composers, designers and choreographers coming together to create new theatre with music’. It seems that it requires a real interdisciplinary (or at any rate non-’operatic’) attitude in order to countenance putting on a new opera as unconventional as this, in as removed a venue. The claim that Manga Sister was ‘developed through workshops with actors, singers and dancers’ is equally encouraging.

What we need now is a lot of pieces on this kind of scale, happening all the time. Were this to happen, however slight each individual work may seem, it could add up to a genuine movement which could then begin to take charge of what opera ‘should or shouldn’t be’ and what it ‘can and can’t do’.

+++

For further inspiration, a fantastic article by Philip Venables which I recently discovered and thoroughly endorse:

READ it READ it READ it READ

‘…a rallying call to composers: forget every grand opera we’ve ever seen and eliminate every grandiose vision of our work gracing the main stage of the ROH. It won’t.  Once we’ve got over that vanity, everything else is up for grabs, from what our message is, to how we say it, to how we present it.’

‘…I want to be shocked, affronted, disturbed, challenged, riled by opera’s extreme, brutal opinions.  Why is politically outspoken opera so rare, when the other arts are perpetual rebels?  Are we just a bunch of pussies, beholden to the moneyed tastes of the establishment? Just like other art forms, opera can protest injustice, expose psychological problems and help us deal with human catastrophe – and it should.’ 

yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes + yes

The Classical Establishment: Hegemony and Resistance

• Classical music, as we have inherited it, relies overwhelmingly on its institutions. It is very difficult to self-teach a classical instrument or music theory, so educational institutions have always held a lot of influence over young, developing musicians. Orchestras, at the same time, have become so large over the last few hundred years that it is very difficult and costly to get the requisite number of players together, and much more so to guarantee players of a particular quality. For this reason, there are a small number of major league orchestras concentrated in certain cities around the world, and often linked to a small number of venues privileged for the esoteric virtues of their acoustics. Classical music inhabits a relatively small artistic community, especially in Europe, despite its much-flaunted internationalism. In a way, the shrinking of mass interest serves this sense of growing ‘refinement’ – classical culture is close-knit, self-defined and self-preserved. Everyone initiated into this musical community can feel confident in their understanding of the hierarchy of things, from the canonisation of a list of timeless masterpieces, great soloists and opera houses, the ensembles and conductors best suited to play the music of each ‘great’ composer, and specific career-paths that any self-respecting section leader should choose to pursue.

• This mindset is constantly re-validated by the circle of classical initiates, who have been educated in these very select institutions and indoctrinated into the discourses upon which the entire art form seems fundamentally to be based: as journalists, critics and teachers, or just through opining in the concert hall bar, or in comment boxes below YouTube videos. Such musical initiates will constantly validate each other’s opinions, relating for example to which recordings of which symphonies are ‘greater’, in order to demonstrate their understanding of what is both a complicated and fairly arbitrary inheritance of value systems, biographies and jargon – something which can be learnt without much need for lateral thought, and which does actually constitute much of music education. We are taught how to listen, we are taught what to listen for, and we are taught what to value in what we hear.

• This might all seem quite pleasant – a friendly community of like-minded people across the world, sharing in their peculiar passions and interests, developing their little secret languages and geeky in-jokes. But in reality, this little community represents the monolithic core of the entire musical tradition. It holds all the money – a lot of it state-subsidised – and it holds all the power, not only over what people play and hear, but also over the way we are taught about music and the way the rest of society perceives the classical art form. It retains much of the residual prestige that classical music and opera has had, over all other art forms, throughout history – in terms of influence and money. And, as much as our appreciation of other art forms is also guided by our early education, we must remember not to take these facts for granted. Classical music is in thrall to its institutional ‘establishment’, to the values that it has enshrined and to the hegemony which it promotes quite aggressively: that great emphasis in traditional classical culture on things being done ‘properly’ and ‘formally’, ‘as they should be’.

• Now, for any progressive art form (or any kind of discipline at all) to be in thrall to an establishment is massively problematic. The establishment will always represent things ‘as they are’ – the ‘normal’ or the status quo – even while this will always be an illusion. The establishment is thus enshrined in its hegemonic status – its power stemming from its dominance (or perceived dominance) – and it can therefore make itself felt in ways that might otherwise warrant criticism or resistance. It can justify itself merely through its majority status, which can give the appearance of consensus or even universal truth. At the same time, because all art reflects the rest of society and human existence, the classical establishment cannot help but stand in for the Establishment (with a capital ‘E’) in other areas – the government, the cultural (and ‘moral’) majority, the law, the economy etc. This link is not only a symbolic one, as mentioned before, the big classical institutions rely on the government for money and support, just as the government relies on the arts institutions for state events, international prestige and tourism. Perhaps this should go without saying, but then so should the fact that no art form can ever afford to be, or be perceived to be, in thrall to the Establishment. All art should feel the impetus to move towards a better world and social change, and therefore must necessarily move against the status quo.

• For classical music it is especially important to consciously maintain a critique of, and rebellion against, the Establishment. There are maybe four reasons why this is important:

1. the symbolic reasons as stated above, 
2. the fact of the classical establishment’s particularly strong hegemonic power and influence (which represents basically a monopoly on the representation of the art form across the world), 
3. its deeply unpleasant political associations, 
4. and the practical fact that there can be no new creative movement within such an entrenched, self-validating and isolationist cultural environment. 

Power and Dissent

• The classical establishment has so much power, its hegemony is so strong, but there are also so few initiates or non-initiates with enough inclination or confidence to dissent against it. Without parallel movements of dissident artists, of the kind that have always existed in visual art, pop music, theatre and film, the students who enter the classical institutions at such a young age are given no suggestion that they can criticise and question these ‘truths’ and values that the entire art form seems to consist of. As the 20th century progressed, and pop music became such a powerful force, the classical avant garde was absorbed further and further into the Establishment, so that now (as I detailed in my post on modernist tendencies), the neo-modernist, ‘formalist’ avant garde is actually one of the more reactionary wings of the classical establishment.

• The proliferation of ‘pop classical’ and ‘cross-over’ artists has had an equally negative effect, because they represent a totally unpoliticised dissent from Establishment values, cultivated for the cynical pursuit of profit alone, and will always be perceived as more politically-bankrupt than the traditional classical mainstream. Young musicians can then feel ethically principled in following the amoral values of the classical establishment, as opposed to the unashamedly immoral values of the ‘popular’ (‘uneducated, unrefined’) classical world, and there is no impetus for a politicised dissident movement on top of that.

• On a very basic level, one of the most fundamental ways in which art can be political is that it can teach us how to think critically, how to question the perceived truths of our society and our world. Artists have always done this by treating their own traditions, their institutions, rules and values, with the same kind of critical stance, stimulating transferrable critical faculties while perhaps attacking any oppressive or reactionary sentiments within their own culture. Such hegemonic establishments, as a rule, represent the governing power, and therefore – in order to prevent anarchy – they resist radical attitudes. So it is one issue that young musicians aren’t able to develop transferrable politicised sentiments on a microcosmic level. Far more outrageous and pressing, though, is the fact that the classical music establishment, as it is, is probably one of the most politically-backwards establishments in the Western world.

Classy music

• It should, for example, be absolutely untenable for anyone wilfully associated with classical music that their art form is specifically stereotyped by the whole of society, internationally, as ‘posh’. Correct or not, the very suggestion that, more than any other type of music (or indeed artistic tradition), theirs was the domain of a rightfully diminishing and universally ridiculed ‘upper class’ should be totally abhorrent to any serious young musician. This impression threatens to instantly invalidate all other socio-political aspects of a musical work for a huge section of its potential audience. If the upper-class associations are too deeply rooted in the popular consciousness to remove from the classical institutions, which I think they most definitely are, then young musicians must make explicit their dislocation from these institutions. And this needn’t be through constant negative disclaimers railing against this or that concert hall, it could just be through approaching the writing and performance of music without the presumption of any institutionalised ritual, with only the necessities of the work’s conveyance and its implied politics in mind.

• I do not believe that these class issues are all based in ignorant stereotype; most of the more pointless traditions and rituals in classical music culture seem in place only to confirm the eliteness and refinement of the music and its patrons, as well as its supposed ‘immateriality’, possible only through the collectively assumed impossibility of poverty. But it is not just the immense class issues which threaten to politically pollute anything allied to the classical establishment. There is still a lot of sexism within the classical world, more so than in pretty much every other facet of Western culture. This sexist attitude seems to cling quite closely to the hegemonic perspective and its worship of male composers and male conductors, as well as its positioning of these overwhelmingly male roles at the zenith of its accepted hierarchy of ‘power’ and ‘importance’ within the classical culture.

• Mainstream classical music, in its recent topical evasion of all political particularities in preference of old-fashioned universalism, has also explicitly rejected any engagement with racial identities and even with new attitudes towards sexuality, despite the large number of homosexuals working within classical music. Compared with the explicit attitudes of visual art, pop music and film ‘establishments’, the classical establishment comes across as very racist, very classist, quite sexist and actually quite homophobic. By enshrining a set of values which privilege the ‘transcendent’, ‘unworldly’, ‘spiritual’ and ‘universal’, the classical establishment consciously rejects any responsibility in dealing with contemporary political issues, both in terms of the inequalities in minority group politics, and the inequalities inherent in capitalism and global politics. It flaunts its ‘apolitical’ status, and therefore accepts an unethical position within society. Surely it must seem imperative that, in order to begin to create music which engages with society and culture in a progressive way, musicians must criticise and dissent from the classical establishment and its hegemony.

Exalting the rich and holy

• Moreover, at this present moment (in the UK at least), the relationship between arts institutions and money is becoming all the more complicated. The big classical institutions have always dealt in large sums of money. Many of the most famous works require very large orchestras, so a lot of money is spent so that a lot of money can be charged to guarantee a good return from a full house. Operas, in turn, have become so reliant on spectacle that they have had no choice but to sell tickets for frankly obscene sums of money. Such extortionate seat prices should frankly be unconscionable, because they ratify the decadent expenses of the super-rich, and socially-pointed displays of grotesque wealth which shouldn’t be possible in a truly egalitarian society. Such a state of affairs should have serious musicians automatically boycotting these venues, for their art to be taken in the least bit seriously. And I know that, in this case, there are plenty of parallels with the very complicated role that the art market has in the contemporary art world, not to mention the role of Hollywood in english-language film and the major labels within pop music. But there is altogether a more critical attitude towards financial power within these art forms as a whole than there is in classical music, in which the presence and power of money is often hidden.

• There is perhaps an even more controversial institution to which the classical music establishment is aligned than decadent capitalism or the upper classes: institutional religion. Religion still plays a large part in the discourse surrounding classical music. Choral music, in particular, is dominated by its links to Christian ritual, and even contemporary choral music largely rejects all criticism of what would be, for most contemporary artists, a very awkward bedfellow. What is more, most Christian choral music is made to function as a mystifying/aestheticising/abstracting force, often rejecting an engagement with the more ethically valuable aspects of religious practice or a more constructive clarifying/criticising role. It is highly debatable whether a politically progressive contemporary art form can exist as a tool of ritual within the most hegemonic, intrinsically conservative establishments in all of history – the original Establishment, no less. Religious choral music, even removed from its liturgical context, implicitly upholds the politics behind both the classical music establishment (and therefore, symbolically, the social Establishment) and the cultural traditions of the church. This puts it in a very difficult position for articulating socio-political change.

Rip It Up And Start Again

• Constantly criticising and rebelling against the establishment should therefore be the default position for socially-engaged musicians. An attitude of pitiless self-censorship is required with regards to the political implications of every artistic decision, especially with regards to the rituals and traditions inherited from the institutions themselves. Classical music is in too damaged a position politically and culturally for any aspect of it to resist scrutiny. Once a musician is left with those elements that remain politically rigorous, new performance circumstances and creative decisions can be made which support individual politics, not the received ‘truths’ of an overbearing hegemony.

• We have outlined in our manifesto those elements of classical music which we perceive to be essential to the art form, and those which have been adopted (or retained) as the mere accoutrements of cultural chauvinism. Obviously, this might vary with each individual’s own personal politics. We have also mentioned some ways in which classical music can detach itself from its institutions, as far as is possible. We have tried to document in this blog some of the successes of small-scale, localised classical movements (based around geographical centres or online hubs). By bringing low-budget, small-scale, informal musical performances directly to communities, not only would musicians have more flexibility to address explicit socio-cultural issues, but they would easily escape all the residual ‘bad politics’ – perceived or actual – which the classical establishment still clings to.

One of the big questions for everyone at this point of time, especially because it reflects one of the greatest conundrums relating to our present ‘crisis of capitalism’, is the extent to which any real positive change can be effected from within the system. Our manifesto focuses on a vision for a new classical music which can only be truly creative and progressive by evolving completely outside of the existing classical mainstream. But in every art form, there are those politicised artists who manage to criticise the establishment from within, and if musicians were to concede to even some of the many criticisms that I’ve catalogued above, it definitely shouldn’t be too hard to at least begin a creative critique of the classical status quo from an insider position. I’m not sure how serious it would be taken though. The classical establishment’s hegemony is being used more and more as a suit of armour to protect what is seen (quite rightly) as an artistic tradition under threat. The more it is invoked in serious debates about the value of the entire art form, the more credence it will gain amongst the initiates, and the more the whole art form will appear – to everyone else – like nothing but a particularly arcane set of stats, foreign words and arbitrary rules.

2))) Historical Kitsch and the Dangers of Heritage

• The extent to which postmodernism affected classical music remains debatable. Certainly, since a postmodern tendency began to predominate in Western culture, classical music has shrunk into greater and greater obscurity. Most of the hallmarks of postmodernism appeared far more pronounced in pop music. New classical music tended to avoid both its positive aspects – a greater interest in marginalised cultures, a critical attitude to institutionalised value systems and the subversion of established hierarchies – and its negative ones – an over-reliance on irony and a fascination with consumerism. Whilst some evidence of a postmodern deconstructionalist attitude is evident in contemporary music which embraced improvisational techniques, chance-based composition and nonconventional notation systems, the trademark postmodern techniques of pastiche and collage (as well as, of course, vernacularism) remain far more fundamental to pop musics. (See my list on the moment for some exceptions.) Many classical musicians will conclude that they successfully dodged a bullet here, refusing to sell out to a politically questionable cultural movement, their decline in mainstream popularity a sacrifice made for their virtuous puritanism.

• I would argue that, whilst effectively renouncing some of the aesthetic tendencies of postmodernism, classical music has by no means completely avoided its influence. In fact, by consciously rejecting a stake in its most progressive missions – (the enduring sexism, racism and classism of classical music is something which I will go on to explore) – classical music has represented postmodernism in an almost wholly negative way.

• Consumer culture has infiltrated classical music to a far greater extent than anyone would like to admit. Most serious classical institutions would endeavour to distance and differentiate themselves from the kind of explicit consumerist cynicism of the ‘pop classical’ world – the classical charts, crossover artists, and ‘The Only Classical Album You’ll Ever Need!’ compilations. But most mainstream classical music functions along many of the same precepts as these reductive products. The history of classical music has been effectively flattened out into a kind of Argos catalogue of musical commodities, each advertising its own exotic or historical flavour. The contents of the catalogue is finite and rarely changeable. Instead, these same pieces are repeatedly programmed and played ad nauseam, with no justification beyond the retrenchment of their own small but unique list of specifications.

• To expand on this point, most of classical culture now resembles a kind of historical tourism. The original historical circumstances – composers’ autobiographical details, original relevance and performance circumstances of works – have come to overwhelmingly represented how we approach all classical music. Animateurs and proponents of music education rely on historical interest to introduce ‘classic’ programmes. We are trained to hear music from different eras, even if it is being performed right now, through the aesthetic headphones of the time – whether it be classical, romantic, medieval or modernist. The whole of music culture has become about heritage – preserving musical cultures of the past, listening to historical masterworks as they should be heard, and introducing new generations to cultural achievements of past centuries.

• There are some massive problems with this tendency as the governing force for an entire art form. It is necessarily reductive, because there is no way that anyone can ever appreciate the socio-political meanings inherent in a work of art if they are at such a far remove from the socio-cultural context of the time (and no amount of academia can ever fully redress this). So it is the musical work as signifier which becomes important, not the signifieds which that musical work would once have represented. People go to see the great classics because they are the great classics. They signify themselves, and perhaps the people who wrote them, the times in which they were written, the stylistic markers of the time, perhaps, and maybe the names of one or two contemporary political events. They might induce a list of historical and stylistic associations, but what they don’t do is provide any kind of commentary whatsoever on contemporary society. The more we explore, highlight and privilege the historical aspects of musical composition, and look at them as heritage projects, the less we leave them open for engagement with contemporary culture.

• In reality, a concert of classics from different time periods provides a kind of kitsch escapism. We treat music from across history like imperialists treated cultures from across the world, indulging in a kind of historical exoticism. The kitschness stems from the fact that we take an otherwise uncritical view of the historical moments from which these works are taken. We ‘deny the shit’, as Milan Kundera puts it, ignoring oppressive power systems, misogynistic and anti-semitic composers, the celebration of violent aristocratic and imperialistic wars, the reflection of a ‘soul’ of ‘Mankind’ that glorified nationalism and white supremacy, as well as a fanatical devotion to an oppressive and violent religious establishment. The more classical works’ heritage aspects are foregrounded, the more these actual political considerations are marginalised, as we are made to appreciate a ‘masterpiece’ from what is supposedly the ‘subjective’ (and therefore imperialist/religious fundamentalist) viewpoint of its contemporary audience.

• What results is quite a colossal mess. The whole movement seems to seek authenticity as a reaction to what is seen as the shallowness of late twentieth-century culture. And yet, the nexus of the classical establishment’s ‘authenticity’ is still centred on somewhere around the 18th or 19th centuries; the more they attempt to access this, the further they recede from any actual authenticity, which must take the politics of contemporary reality into full account.

• A movement like historically-informed performance practice, indulging an audience’s desire for theme park exoticism in the name of authenticity, carries classical music as far as possible away from contemporary society and political responsibility. Such a movement is the quintessence of a reductive postmodernism which seeks to sell a product’s apparent authenticity by approximating a superficial ‘historical’ aesthetic. It works along the lines of themed restaurants, except the proponents are physically unable to visit the past, so any assumed authenticity can never ever be verified. And all this is at the expense of any requirement to produce meaning in relation to contemporary society.

• The uncomfortable truth is that, by validating the marketable ‘authenticity’ (which is, as I say, nothing more than historical kitsch) of a small number of ‘great’ works and artists, an institution can guarantee ticket sales by repeating a small, economical repertoire of pieces, always played in exactly the same manner. It is the same principle that makes certain clichéd tourist experiences, seen on television, magazines or postcards, incredibly lucrative no matter how ‘inauthentic’ they might actually be. It should be seen as a great political problem that hearing the Vienna Philharmonic playing Mahler conducted by Mariss Jansons should seem more ‘authentic’ an experience than hearing a new piece played by young players and addressing issues pertaining to the community surrounding the audience and venue.

• Exclusivity and prestige have long since become more than uncomfortable social associations for classical music; they have become part of a self-destructive branding strategy, designed to streamline and privilege a rich audience who cannot then help but continue to pay for the same things. Most classical institutions won’t even have considered this a conscious strategy, but for a postmodern society that communicates rapidly through mass media and sees everything in terms of brands, it has been necessary to cement some kind of brand identity to allow the art form to receive any kind of publicity or audience at all. As such, the classical canon has benefited from effectively becoming a very long ‘The Only Classical Album You’ll Ever Need!’ compilation, but it has done so with such effectiveness that most of the people involved at the very centre of the industry haven’t even noticed.

• Clearly, the ‘classical’ brand not only aestheticises the historical context and cultural ‘importance’ of each of its catalogued products into self-justifying Past Times kitsch. It also totally ghettifies new music – the area of classical music most capable of addressing contemporary social issues and assuming political responsibilities, but which happens to be devoid of the kind of historical flavours that most classical connoisseurs have learnt to appreciate (unless, like quite a lot of new music, it is persuaded to adopt past musical styles as a topic, instead of contemporary issues). The very ‘classic’ status of classical music, situating it outside of any timescale, constitutes an abstention from contemporary social responsibility.

The political problems here aren’t just that classical music, like everything else, has sold out. Nor is it just that their marketing strategy has privileged a disengagement with contemporary social relevance and the aestheticisation of any residual historical politics. After all, if classical music hadn’t given way to some aspects of late capitalist culture, it wouldn’t have been able to maintain a hold in society whatsoever. The major problem is actually that classical music still refuses to acknowledge all this, in the way that pop music does. With this refusal, the entire art form relinquishes the power to work within the present cultural system in a creatively critical and progressive manner. Their brand is a powerful and enduring one, socially exclusive and by no means subtle, but by denying its existence, they lose their ability to manage, nuance or subvert it to more progressive ends. They cannot fully represent themselves without acknowledging the assumptions which have been their marketing tools, and they are left without any kind of real cultural or political power, subject to the superficial, uncritical interpretations of the consumers.

My final post on this subject will get a bit more specific, looking at power structures and the role of the establishment within contemporary classical culture, and hopefully pose a few suggestions on how new classical music can take back social responsibility… >>>>>

All art is political art

Despite the beliefs of some classical traditionalists, it shouldn’t be too controversial to state that all art has its politics. Even if it doesn’t deal explicitly with a social problem or ideal, there will be socio-political decisions involved throughout its inception and execution. Musical structures, styles, the deployment of tropes, and the invocation of ‘programmes’, can all function metaphorically, while a composer or musician’s relation to the classical establishment in turn cannot help but resonate symbolically. There are politics inherent in a performer’s approach to traditions and to power structures within ensembles. Most of all, to those scrutinising the state of classical music from an outsider’s position, bringing its aesthetic preoccupations and philosophies alongside those of concurrent art forms, hidden political stances will always emerge in comparison.

I am not about to attempt a fully developed political argument to apply to all classical music. For one thing, I think the situation has gotten very confused, not just in music but in most other art forms, over the last thirty years or so. The gradual capitalist hijacking of institutional structures has made direct political stances very problematic for many artists, their politics quickly co-opted or aestheticised by the market. Others (including many classical musicians) have claimed exemption both from a consumerist society and from any stake in its politics, an impossible position which has left them in denial of any kind of critical power.

What I will attempt to do in the following three posts is to posit three different paradigms, each outlining some basic political problems which (I would argue) all classical musicians must engage with. The real challenge, I think, is to encourage all musicians (especially young ones) to remain critical, to acknowledge the politics which are implied in every aspect of their practice, and to question every inherited assumption, not least the belief that classical music is somehow ‘above’ politics. Only then will musicians be able to see all the many ways in which their art can be used politically, can come to represent and encourage their own beliefs, and can regain its social responsibility at a time of immense political urgency.

1))) Old Modernist Utopia, New Social Apathy

• High modernism, in music as well as other art forms, was often a highly politicised movement. Its practitioners worked with the belief, inherited from Classical and Enlightenment thought, that there could be a direct correlation between form and ideology, that a progressive aesthetic could reflect and inspire progressiveness in society. Modernism focused on momentum, on constantly aspiring and improving, and on an avant garde which would always be able to provoke change through revolutions in form and concept. Modernism was about dreaming of utopias, more advanced than society itself, which were perfect in discipline, proportion and equanimity. The modernist condition can also be linked to totalitarianism, and to social exclusion and alienation. By most accounts, it came to an end, to be superseded by postmodernism, perhaps sometime in the ’70s.

•  The issue here is that, for a lot of contemporary composers, modernism seems still to be a guiding viewpoint. Many composers seem unwilling to depart from the teleology of 19th- and 20th-century composition, taking all its revolutions as unquestionable and either working staunchly within the modernist utopia – which most other artistic traditions have conceded as illusory and no longer helpful – or attempting to continue the march of aesthetic progress. Even where some of the ‘purity’ of form has been disowned, and perhaps even pastiche invoked, contemporary musical languages very rarely depart from anything comparable to art music as validated by one of the modernist progressives of the last 120 years.

• The problem here, for the rest of society, is that the assumed relationship between aesthetics and politics no longer stands. It was as good as dissolved by postmodernism. In the ‘80s, most Western art had to deal with a cultural situation quite different from the rest of the 20th century, more subtle and complex, with a whole host of new voices to attend to. Art no longer automatically stood in for Mankind; there were all sorts of interest group politics being debated, while the dislocation between a modernist aesthetic utopia and the actual social problems of real people became too clear for the old model to remain tenable. Modernism was seen to propagate the interests of ‘Man, at the expense of men’.

• Now, as much as composers and classical devotees may dispute it, a ‘progressive’ aesthetic just does not automatically suggest progressive social values. Postmodernism levelled everything out, bringing the vernacular in line with the academic, permitting a stylistic multiculturalism, and undermining all the power that a formal avant garde once had to shock and agitate through aesthetic alone. In other art forms, social issues were explored in more specific, particular ways, engaging with individual problems and presenting answers, rather than relying on a whole cultural movement to represent society as an abstract concept.

• Composers who deny this fundamental change in the politics of aesthetics not only fail to appreciate the new impotence of their musical language, but they also automatically adopt new, quite different politics. They become musical conservatives, because they are denying the cultural shifts of the last thirty or forty years, whilst hanging on to an artistic aesthetic which is exclusionary in its devotion to a ‘master narrative’ that privileges white males. To stick to this course for political reasons is to inherit the imperialist value systems which validated the modernists in their utopian project.

• However, I think it is more common for musicians to inherit this perspective without acknowledging its political associations. There is a great belief amongst contemporary composers, whose work often fetishises the purported ‘abstractness’ of music (as physical sound or structural game), that their music can be apolitical. This is always a dangerous move. To declare your work as apolitical is tantamount to validating without question the status quo with regards to your establishment, your artistic tradition (past, present and future), your audience, the demographic of the musicians, where your finances come from and the political beliefs of everyone involved. It is the relinquishment of all social responsibility from your art, therefore declaring your art as both irrelevant and impotent. Claiming an apolitical position is itself a political gesture, and it certainly amounts to ‘bad politics’ in a society in which there is so much unrest, inequality and unhappiness.

• Bizarrely enough, musicians will often still claim ‘morality’ for their art, even while they might reject all politics. This trend spans far wider than contemporary composition, just as many aspects of Modernist thought (and, to an even greater extent maybe, the Enlightenment project) still govern how people think and talk about classical music, and how those involved present it to the rest of society. The idea of there being an inherent moral quality to abstract art is a ridiculous construct of the Enlightenment and of Romanticism, yet classical fans’ utter devotion to the 18th- and 19th-century composers who dominate concert programmes means that it is very rarely questioned. The culture of classical music is such a cult of personality – the uncritical worship of olden-day ‘geniuses’ whose own intent and out-of-date beliefs are routinely regurgitated in programme notes as indubitable fact – that music can still be performed under the belief that its ‘inherent morality’ is political justification enough.

• However, history has taught us that it is the amorality of much classical music, its refusal to take any real social stance, that guarantees its appeal to people of all political persuasions, including totalitarian despots. For the vanguard of a serious and heavily state-subsidised art form, any continuing belief in this ‘inherent morality’, which should be seen as amorality, must then actually constitute immorality. It is a refusal to engage with society at society’s level, and therefore a denial of all responsibility in the improvement of that society. It can amount to a calculated, institutionalised apathy.

• Any art form that wishes to change the world for the better must be prepared to come down and meet society at every level. If it then wishes to be critical, which it certainly should, then the criticism should occur there, where the context is clear and the audience attentive. There can be no valid criticism of a social condition if the existence of that social condition is denied – if classical music fails to engage with the power structures and communication channels of contemporary society and is content instead to court obscurity in a long-abandoned modernist utopia.

For classical musicians to escape this dilemma, all they need to do is question the politics of their aesthetics. After justifying or destroying any assumptions, they can then attempt to explore form and aesthetics in a way which acknowledges and engages positively with contemporary issues. Luckily, there is a comparable moment in history, both with reference to the current economic climate and to political art, which can be viewed as an instructive resource: the 1920s and early ‘30s. At this time, new music in Europe and America was rebelling against late Romanticism: what had once been a humanistic and ‘enlightened’ movement but had since become emblematic of the self-justification of a conservative status quo. The result was a musical movement which engaged with modern life as a topic, with popular art, and with new methods of dissemination. Composers were able to make social and political criticism very directly, working explicit socialist messages into musical works that attracted large and diverse audiences. If this artistic spirit were revived, with the internet replacing radios and gramophones, dance music replacing jazz, and globalisation replacing the topic of Fordist production, musicians might have something like a ready-made model for a socially-responsible art music.

Obviously, an outmoded modernism is hardly the only pernicious political trend in contemporary music. And just because classical music might have denied the ubiquity of postmodernism doesn’t mean that it was exempted from the many problems which postmodernism brought. In the next post, I’ll address some of the more characteristically postmodern dilemmas which have impacted on classical music’s conscience. >>>>>

Tête à Tête flaunts its ‘laboratory’ qualities, an acknowledgement that productions are still in experimental stages, perhaps semi-formed or unpolished. It hosts a more varied programme of fragments, staged song-cycles, works-in-progress, cabaret events, along with a few ‘complete’ chamber works. It also puts on a few events in other site-specific locations around the borough. On the whole, it is very favourably skewed towards new writing, even when this is tempered by the suggestion that this isn’t necessarily the ‘final’ performance circumstances for these pieces. The festival has more of a ‘smorgasbord’ feel, with multiple short events every day, rather than nightly ‘performances’.

Grimeborn errs a lot closer to approach of the hugely successful King’s Head Theatre operas. Often full-scale, semi-canonical chamber operas are performed, adapted of course to a very intimate setting. The emphasis is on studio opera as accessible modern theatre, rather than studio opera as a dynamic musical scene to be sampled. They do stud their programme with a few new works, however, as well as the odd genre-bending song-cycle and cabaret evening.

Grimeborn has the better name, of course. Tête à Tête has the better website, merely because it does actually have a website (googling ‘grimeborn’ hauls up an impenetrable mess of Arcola Theatre archives and old reviews). Despite a good library of videos on the Tête à Tête page, I actually thing that the web presence, publicity and marketing of both festivals is quite woeful, considering their intentions. Compared to the OperaUpClose productions, whose new Don Giovanni has found an impressively strong press presence, both festivals seem oddly under-publicised (and the publicity for Tête à Tête is often really really amateurish and silly). This may be because, given the very short run (and, I suppose, small budget) of each individual project, they don’t feel like they need to tap into a wide audience base. Possibly, there are enough of the intrigued opera-curious in Hammersmith and Dalston to fill enough seats anyway. Either way, I think more could be made of these events to fulfil their potential appeal amongst disparate, non-initiate audiences – in particular, because of their healthy focus on new music, in contrast to the other canon-fixated companies bringing their endless Traviatas and Bohèmes to every corner of the city.

—> read a guardian article about all this stuff (mainly Don Giovanni) HERE <—

[I look forward to having enough money to really sample both events and give more of an informed opinion on each. For Tête à Tête especially, when attending a whole wealth of variable yet equally-priced 'experiments', I think some kind of discount season ticket would be good... but that might be unrealistic.]

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I was, however, lucky enough to attend a preview performance of OperaUpClose‘s The Turn of the Screw at the King’s Head Theatre, Islington a little while back. It was my first experience of both the company and the venue, and my impression was mainly positive. I happen to know the work extremely well, much too well to really approach the performance as the majority of the audience would realistically approach it, but the production was still in some ways quite revelatory. The singing was awesome across the board – it was very exciting to hear such voices in such a close proximity – and it was a strange relief not to be semi-consciously double-checking surtitles with every new line. The contemporary costume worked fantastically, and the final scene – with the Governess singing Miles’s ‘Malo’ song curled up on the floor – was pretty much as devastating as it could be. It was well worth seeing, but it did present to me quite a few issues which I think companies like this must be constantly aware of. I’ll talk about these first and then discuss how The Turn of the Screw dealt with them.

The most superficially ‘controversial’ issue was that of the solo piano accompaniment replacing the original orchestral score, and I was quite happy to find that this didn’t bother me at all really, so hopefully it would’ve had even less of an impact on a newcomer to the piece. I enjoyed the stark intimacy of the pianist with relation to the singers, and found it fit the staging very appropriately. We should really be looking at the migration of operas to teeny studios in terms of new potentials, though, not just damage-limitation (or trying to ‘preserve’ as much of the opera house as possible whilst inhabiting a less alienating setting). The ‘gap’ that the sparser accompaniment texture might reasonably leave should be more than compensated for by racking up other elements within the art-form – particularly the theatrical side of things. At such close proximity, far more attention needs to be paid to acting quality, the dramatic justification of small gestures and decisions, the replacement of spectacle with small-scale devices such as physical theatre and the creative use of props, and in general taking responsibility away from the music in the creation of mood and subtext. The orchestra is no longer laid out between audience and stage, as an interruptive element whose presence (and consequent threat of usurpation to a ‘concert’ format) is both tolerated and assimilated into the opera-house experience. In such a venue, there can be no musical excuses for things. Every theatrical consideration, from the slightest pause to the smallest breath, must be dramatically (and therefore psychologically/politically/emotionally) justified.

Obviously, it is very difficult to reconcile these demands with the fact that, when staging a pre-existing operatic work, so much is already prescribed in the score: timings of pauses and events, the tempo of dialogue, the tone of utterances, and the mood of individual scenes amongst other things. In this sense, the score is like a script with lots and lots of really specific stage directions. Some of them cannot be ignored, but I would contest that others definitely can. Tempo, articulation and dynamics markings, for one thing, can definitely be played with. If orchestration can be condensed into a piano reduction without legal issue, then surely the libretto can also be slightly altered. Otherwise, making an effective intimate production of a large-scale work merely requires the right kind of attitude; directors should see the score as a treasury of resources to guide decisions as to how each scene might reach its theatrical potential.

The Turn of the Screw, a strangely popular work at the moment with not just the OperaUpClose version but a Glyndebourne revival and a Grimeborn production all concurrently playing, is an interesting example to explore in this context, because the story demands an inordinate amount of psychological commitment, of skillful manipulation of subtext, and of command of the audience. Many would argue that the kind of ambiguity made possible by the looseness of written language makes any transferral of the work from book to stage difficult anyway, although the kind of subjectivity possible in film has meant that that medium has fared better. I would agree that ambiguity cannot exist in the same non-committal way within a stage production as it could potentially in a book (or even in an unstaged musical manifestation). The opera does, arguably, adopt a stance relative to the ‘ghosts are real’ vs. ‘Governess is mad’ argument, although following the libretto’s suggestions – and reading the story as a ‘straight’ supernatural tale – would probably make quite a dull production, especially as the ghosts are musically characterised too much to really be scary on this level. Obviously, such a slavish interpretation is not the only option open to a director, but the decision that then has to be made requires a cogent directorial vision, following a commitment to telling the story in a particular way, balancing the ambiguities, and trying as hard as possible to conjure up the sense of fear on which the credibility of the whole work depends.

[Don't get me wrong, I'm very much not in the camp of those reviewers who think that a knowledge of the original source text is necessary for any kind of informed decision about this kind of adaptation, or that the efficacy of a production has anything to do with what Henry James did or did not 'intend'. However, I actually think that the most non-committal productions of works like this can result from directors who rely too heavily on what the public 'probably already know' about the literary ambiguities of the original tale.]

In this respect, I don’t really think the OperaUpClose Turn of the Screw took a strong enough stance either way. They constructed a final ‘reveal’, that the Governess was in fact confined to an asylum, which was subtly pre-empted by the prologue, but this loses its overall effect unless the potential of the ghosts’ non-existence is constantly alluded to throughout. This could have been done in many ways, with the suggestion of dream sequences, of characterising Mrs Grose in a more unreliable way (I enjoyed her unconventional characterisation, but was thinking, maybe, that she could have been given additional ‘kooky’ spiritualist or overt stoner qualities), of involving the Governess onstage in the ghost scenes, or of generally being a little bit more subtle with the direction of the children (admittedly, a very challenging demand). And the potential was there, on this small stage, for the kind of ambiguous theatre – of symbol and gesture (of which there is a fair amount in the score) – which could have better served both the uncertainty of the presented reality and the need for real fear. I admired the set design – a kind of ectoplasmic cell representative of various domestic spaces whilst constantly re-evoking the white-walled institution – but I think merely exploiting its gauziness and adding a few projections (familiar theatre tricks) undersold any potential fear that might have been produced by injecting some really unusual, unexpected and uncanny gestures into the presentation of the ghosts. In the same way, I spent the whole first act wishing for more sex from Quint (and Miss Jessell) – since so much potential terror could be produced from the discomfort of the suggestion of confrontational sexuality in close proximity – but when they did put a bit of sexy stuff in at the beginning of the second act, I wasn’t really satisfied. Most of the horror of the book comes from the author daring the reader to imagine the extent of Quint’s relationship with Miles. Audiences now may be desensitised to such images, but I say that the screw must be turned again and again until we regain that sense of fear, and this production did little to that effect.

[I think they missed a trick here - although I'm not sure about the other Screw productions, perhaps somewhere they've achieved my perfect staging - because the relative newness of these performance circumstances, of opera in close confines, lends itself ideally to unexpected occurrences and uncanny gestures.]

It’s a big ask, but we should think enough of our practitioners (and the opportunities that they have to work with experienced non-musical theatre practitioners) to expect great things from what is a very exciting movement. I can see Screw‘s allure, as a short, sparse, claustrophobic opera on a popular text, to attract new audiences, but I also think that it is a very very hard work to get right, especially in these new studio settings. Because – I think it is very important that there is a consensus here - a new, intimate, theatrical operatic movement will demand better productions than we have come to expect from the opera houses. And this doesn’t mean better singing or playing, of course, but more creativity, more challenging approaches, better acting, more social/political relevance or psychological truth, and generally a deeper (or harder) effect on the audience. This new audience will be discerning, they won’t know what ‘the perfect Traviata‘ necessarily looks and sounds like, and they will want something that has actually thought itself through and justified itself at every stage of its inception.

I’m not saying OperaUpClose’s The Turn of the Screw failed in any way, I would recommend to it all – especially those who are sceptical about opera (it runs til the 8th September) – but it isn’t perfect. And I think, if companies want to rehabilitate pieces that have a history of performance in big, heavy-handed productions in opera houses, they need to aspire to perfection (i.e. to have a particular vision or purpose to aim towards). Otherwise, I would impress on all these companies that the best way to avoid the potential problems posed by ‘finding’ the psychological drama in old scores, and navigating the demands of authoritarian musical ‘scripts’, is to stage new works. A contemporary composer and librettist can discuss with the director and designer at length in order to tailor their work – down to the timing of each breath – to the dramatic requirements of these intimate venues, and the forms of theatrical practice and acting that fit them. New scores can be bent to the many facets of these fantastic new venues, and the result could be productions that no longer need to ‘find solutions’ to old problems. It is not only of cultural importance that new writing should regain precedence, but it is of practical importance as well.

BOOK TO SEE THE TURN OF THE SCREW HEEEERE!!!

‘ Forget almost everything you thought you knew about classical music. Forget the regulations and the rigmarole, the politeness and the prissiness. Forget the preening institutions. Forget the vocal doom-sayers. Classical music is in the throes of an extremely welcome revolution. The entrepreneurial spirit that seized and transformed British art in the 1980s is finally animating and unshackling this most stubborn of art forms.’

and

‘ Philharmonic life now needs to be reimagined top to bottom. Let’s hope Peckham’s Rite was not just a sign of rejuvenation but also a proper death knell for the old ways.’

The article is interesting because you can watch the reviewer’s scepticism fall away with every passing observation. He pre-empts all the problems, returning to the ‘screaming blue murder’ which he predicted from ‘large parts of the devoted classical audience’ as every convention is systematically redrawn. In effect, he still voices what he believes to be the reasonable doubts of the classical community – often expecting the very worst from people who would apparently still believe their opinion deserves to be heard – but then he puts these doubts to rest with his own observations:

‘Some complained about the queue for entry, the searches, the time it took to get a drink. For me these were benign signs of classical music’s normalisation. Finally, a night of classical music would be as full of irritations as a normal gig. Some will have been driven mad by the lack of silence and the overhead rattle of trains. For me, these Cagean interventions from the real world were movingly appropriate, though I can’t fully explain why.’

In my opinion, he needn’t be so timid with his own convictions. The idea that there is some consensus of  ‘proper’ classical fans who have to give their collective approval to the success of such potential ventures is, of course, one of the biggest issues within the culture. There are a lot of people whose love for classical music is linked to a cult of insider knowledge involving the ‘right’ way of doing things, the ‘great’ symphonies, the ‘great’ conductors’, the ‘best’ recordings, etc. These people already have an international culture which validates their ideas, and these events are not for them. Moreover, they really don’t need to be asked, because any suggestion that they are entitled to a say in the matter is wrong anyway.

Old myths, new sceptics

Toronyi-Lalic makes some very fine observations but I want to pick up on two turns of phrase which I believe are more symptomatic of the ways in which these new ‘alternative’ classical ventures are still being misunderstood. Both are contained in this one paragraph:

‘The question of qualitative compromise was ever present. In all this desperate bowing and scraping to the young, wouldn’t something have to give? Not that I could see. Not musically. Not acoustically. The lower instruments rumbled out over London as if only now under the low concrete ceiling were they finding their true voice.’

Firstly:

‘ all this desperate bowing and scraping to the young’

which (despite the (unintended?) musical puns) echoes his statement in the previous article that ‘opera and classical music will not gain approval among the under-35s through begging for acceptance. In all this bowing and scraping, doesn’t classical music protest too much?’. The assumption here is, of course, that the ‘age’ of classical music is essentially over 35, whatever that means. He suggests that classical music is ‘coming down’ from somewhere in order to find the youth, bend low to them, and invite them in. The fact is that I know the people who organised and performed the Peckham Rite, and the manner which they chose to present it was natural to them, because they are young – largely under 25 in fact. If 22-year-olds are putting on musical concerts for other 22-year-olds, where does ‘bowing and scraping to the young’ come in? By what virtue should anyone aged over 35 feel that they have any authority over what is being done here? The only person who might legitimately be owed a say is Stravinsky himself, but he was obviously unavailable for comment. (The same might not be completely true of Yellow Lounge, but it remains to be seen how much ‘astroturfing’ is actually going on there.)

In essence, although I’m sure Toronyi-Lalic consciously intended nothing of the sort, the assumption is a very patronising and quite insulting one. It suggests that classical music is somehow stored in some central, institutionalised vault, guarded by an oligarchy of ‘great’ conductors perhaps, and it is borrowed by others on the condition that the central committee is always permitted its own very vocal opinion on how it is being ‘used’. The Peckham Rite wasn’t ‘bowing and scraping to the young’. If anything, young people are actually ‘bowing and scraping’ to the old (and the very old, and the long-dead) by still putting the same pieces on in the same way in concert halls, and clapping at the same time and wearing the same funny clothes. Toronyi-Lalic makes a great point by bringing 1980s British art into the debate. I’m sure any suggestion that an independent art installation in Peckham might have involved the art establishment ‘bowing and scraping to the young’ would be taken as not just insulting but completely bewildering.

The other statement that I want to take issue with is:

 ‘the question of qualitative compromise’

which was, apparently, ‘ever present’ (and it is true that the performance left Peckham resounding with the debate as to whether this really was ‘one of the great Rites of Spring’… (:-p…) (sarcasm…)). Toronyi-Lalic takes great pains to justify his own musical judgements, and I would agree that it was a fantastic performance. Moreover, I wouldn’t argue at all that the quality of musical performance won’t always be very important; no-one wants to listen to bad performances of anything. However, there is this overwhelming trend amongst critics approaching these alternative classical events that apparently there is a very real risk of ‘compromise’ in musical quality (the ‘baby/bathwater’ argument). Clarinettist/composer Mark Simpson, who is soon to play Nonclassical, similarly stated in a recent article in Gramophone magazine:

‘We must make sure that in trying to actively engage new audiences we do not lose sight of the importance of compositional technique and craftsmanship. Part of the experience is going to the event and taking part, but surely we are there to appreciate the music and not be seen as part of a ‘scene’. This is my only worry with this new development.’

Not only do I think such commentators really have nothing to worry about, but moreover I consider this belief itself totally misplaced. I’m not totally sure how critics always come to the conclusion that, by changing the venue and changing the conventions, performers will be encouraged to play badly, or rehearse less, or care less about the quality of their playing. I suppose it is partly to do with the idea that there are more non-musical factors being introduced, maybe lighting, or multi-media elements, or trendy clothing, or alcohol. The critics believe that, for the musicians, these elements will somehow feel like ‘replacements’ for musical factors, perhaps. I think it is also partly to do with how classical commentators perceive the kinds of music which might more normally get performed in these venues – pop, hip hop, electronica, etc. – associating these with musical laziness, or imperfection, or a lack of nuance. (Simpson’s assertions would seem to suggest too that any kind of association of a musical performance with its immediate socio-cultural context – the audience, the location, the politics or aesthetics inherent in the performance’s presentation – should be viewed as irrelevant and somehow actively blocked out with that kind of detached, high modernist approach which should have become redundant decades ago.)

It concerns me, because I believe that this way of looking at these events is actually utterly disconnected with the reality, not only of their actual successes, but also of the ideals and goals behind the movement. There is a mistaken belief that the old conventions of classical concerts are somehow connected to performance quality – that big, airy concert halls, silent audiences, formal dress and a reverent atmosphere somehow create good performances. I think this is totally wrong. There is no causal connection between musical quality and the old conventions and venues, only that those were the only places/circumstances in which you heard any performances, and certainly in which the ‘greats’, who have largely bought equally into this myth, would deign to perform.

By constantly invoking ‘the question of qualitative compromise’, people are completely misunderstanding these events. They are not just cynical marketing devices to trick prejudiced young people into stumbling into an orchestral performance. They don’t in anyway subscribe to some idea that by making performances ‘less good’, less intellectually or emotionally engaging, you can maximise an audience of uncommitted yet vaguely interested punters (the ‘dumbing down’ argument). The reason why I get so annoyed by the suggestions of such articles, which play to the natural conservative cynicism of the classical audience, is that I actually think the very opposite is true. I think one of the major points of this new movement is to actually promote more creative, more exciting and more imaginative performances and compositions.

This is a view which is very much expounded by Greg Sandow in his blog and embryonic book. His opinion is that the arbitrary conventions and practices of concert hall performance limit creativity, performers (and I would say composers) are straitjacketed by the very narrow expectations of their specialised audiences, and the tendency is to tiredly repeat everything in a safe and lacklustre manner. In my opinion, the repetition and entrenchment of any status quo is fundamentally an anti-art pursuit, and nothing could be more conducive to creativity than the kind of real freedom that this new movement is affording. Performers are not only given the opportunity to introduce their music to new audiences, they are made to reinterpret it within radically different circumstances and acoustics, to solve a whole host of new problems in creative ways, to think about attracting, engaging and communicating to an audience that aren’t necessarily to be taken for granted, and they are rewarded with exotic new atmospheres accorded by different modes of intimacy, reception and social context. Composers have an even greater gift: the chance to work with an endless range of new architectural spaces, to cater for a whole host of different DIY ensembles, to meet the creative constraints of many new event contexts, to bring their music into the domains of different artistic disciplines, to communicate to a whole different demographic, and to engage explicitly with social and cultural issues rather than vaguely suggesting them within the apathetic, apolitical walls of the concert hall.

It is a great pity that more classical commentators aren’t considering this new movement in this kind of light, taking a more creative and optimistic approach, rather than trying to pre-empt the complaints and concerns of their illustrious old heroes. Not only are they doing these projects a disservice in their ‘ever present questioning’ of quality (eagerly listening out for the imperfections which will prove their scepticism right), but they’re ignoring all the most exciting opportunities which these events create for musicians. In reality, it doesn’t necessarily matter, because the Peckham Rite (if not, perhaps, Yellow Lounge), was created, promoted and attended primarily by young people who quite rightly don’t care whether the classical establishment approves or not. However, I feel that if each new event weren’t presented with such short-sightedness – and critics might be able to surmount the bigoted mythology which connects the concert hall aesthetic to the notion of musical quality – then some of the real artistic potential of this movement might begin to be realised. And I mean artistic potential in the actual sense, with music speaking creatively and powerfully to culture/society as a whole, rather than the very narrow sense which the classical clique covet: that checklist of aestheticised qualities which add up to the revered but essentially meaningless category of ‘greatness’.

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Revisit the Rite of Spring Project website HERE and the Yellow Lounge website HERE

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be aware of the exciting news, which I picked up from the Nonclassical flyers distributed at the recent (superb) prom performance of G. Prokofiev’s Concerto for Turntables and Orchestra:

‘ALSO COMING SOON: ‘NONCLASSICAL’ A NEW FREE NEWSPAPER CASTING AN UNPARALLELED EYE INTO THE EMERGING ALTERNATIVE CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL SCENE’ … … … … … … …