contemporary conundrum

It’s been my observation that the number of people who regularly attend contemporary art museums far out number the number of people who frequent contemporary music concert events.

Why are contemporary art museums so successful at what they do while concerts of new music are often sparsely attended?

Perhaps new music presenters should embrace more of the standardly-used museum management tactics, such as: trendy cafes, gift shops with loaded-to-the-brim with merchandise, incentivized membership plans, social events, educational tours, forums and lectures, multimedia, corporate sponsorship, and high-profile special exhibits that famously travel around the world from one iconic museum to another.

While a few of these amenities and methodologies are tentatively finding their way into our still-antiquated concert culture, the global business of promoting commercial contemporary art clearly has a hands-down marketing advantage over the culture of new music creation, distribution, and presentation.

Perhaps this apparent discrepancy in public awareness between the two arts is rooted in the nature of the product.  Artwork has monetary value in that it can be purchased, owned, and potentially sold at profit.  Music is inherently abstract and merely a collection of transient sound waves in the air.  By its nature, it dissipates into nothing in a matter of seconds after performance.  

In recent times it has become virtually impossible to monetize something as intangible as that. Music’s intrinsic cultural value is relative, uncontainable, fluid, easily manipulated, and fundamentally non-materialistic.

"What kind of music do you write?"

I'm often asked, "What kind of music do you write?"

My response to this tricky question has not become any easier over the years...

After an uncomfortably long silence, I scratch my head, and only then do I begin the deliberate and arduous task of searching for the most appropriate words to reply with. Multiple versions of plausible verbal explanations bombard my weary brain with a chorus of anxious narrators who aggressively compete in vain for the attention of my wandering consciousness.

I say to myself silently, "Ah, THIS question again! How am I to respond?"

Now, put on the spot for a cogent answer, I carefully assess the context and nature of the innocent inquiry about my music and try to find a quick, honest, and suitable response. I dig deep for potential metaphors, search far-and-wide for appropriate comparisons, and hunt the surface of what I know of the humongous musical lexicon for a musical genre that closely relates to what I actually write (or attempt to write). I almost always fail in this process. As hard as I try, I cannot adaquately answer this simple question.

It's not that I don't know what kind of music I write, it's that I can't easily explain what it is or what it sounds like in the abstract to a stranger merely using words. Language falls short.

After I explain that I can't easily describe or label what kind of music I compose, the next question usually is: "Why?"

Here's why...

The fundamental reason why I choose to compose music rather that express myself some other way is that music is inherently an abstract medium. Music, broadly speaking, is about sound manipulated in time. It is also presented culturally as a shared aesthetic and a common emotional experience that is communicated between and within individuals and groups - often across time and place.

That's a broad high-level definition of music, but it doesn't tell you much at all about the individual signatures of its creators. Everyone thinks, speaks, and writes differently. Every voice is unique. Yes, we have our unique influences, hiccups, and biases, but almost by definition the artist as creator marches by a different drummer than everyone else - including other creators. The artist is out in left field trying something different than the pack, sometimes succeeding in what they do and sometimes not. The artist is an outlier. It goes back to the old and useful cliché about the artist as an individualist, a rebel, and nonconformist. What the artist does typically will not fit into neat and orderly categories. It's much more nuanced than that.

Clearly, a lot of composers will think and work differently than I do. But it's very common to read about new works that derive their genesis or inspiration from various non-musical influences. Literature, poetry, painting, film, nature, mathematical models, physics, and even video games have become oft-publicized examples of musical creation and inspiration. For example, you can see this in program notes and marketing brochures. I don't disagree with anyone's inspiration or motives. I just speak for myself. One should take inspiration from wherever they can find it. It's also important to consider that, as a listener, I find it generally irrelevant that the new piece I'm listening to found this or that inspiration while the composer was watching a sunset on a beach (perhaps while they were in residence at an artist's retreat in Europe, or somewhere else equally idyllic). If what the composer sets out to express comes through and is heard by the attentive listener, it really does not need to be articulated or explained by other means. The mood expressed in the music is not necessarily the mood the composer felt when the work was composed. These are separate and independent events in time.

For me, music is a self-contained, self-sufficient ecosystem. While I seek and enjoy stimulating ideas (artistic and otherwise) that exist in other realms, organized sound is my simple and happy sandbox. The musical environment is a unique medium that speaks for itself. New works sink or swim according to the rules we impose on the musical sounds we specify and the larger design we create using it.

My chosen sound world is intentionally abstract. I avoid external associations like the plague. I do not consciously reference text, images, or attempt to replicate processes in the physical world of any kind. Neither do I strive to create socially conscious or political music (although I do my part as a citizen in society). I do not subscribe to any of the countless "isms" floating around in the vast tribal-network of compositional styles and methods. I am not a card-carrying serialist, or spectralist. Nor do I associate myself as a member of the new-romanticism or post-modernist movements. My music is too busy to be labeled minimalist and too simple to fall within the field of new-complexity. The list of what I don't associate with is too large to enumerate.

I title my works in such a way as to minimize the possibility that a listener might read into the music something that it was never intended to represent in the first place. A title such as, "Three Pieces for Violin and Piano" in my view liberates the listener and frees them up to process ideas that actually may be embodied in the essence of the music - ideas that can be experienced directly and with a minimum of unnecessary distraction. It's about as neutral as you can get.

Avoiding the extra baggage of external association may be seen by some as an extremely ascetic approach. It's clearly a marketing issue from the perspective of music promoters. How do you sell "Composition IV" to a trend-seeking audience? But to preload expectations and unduly influence the psychological outcome of a perceptual experience I believe would be counterproductive to the primary intention of creating a truly unique musical expression. It could potentially distort and rob music of its ability to surprise. Music is powerful enough, and when done well, does not require a promoter's shoulders to stand on.

The clearest and most direct way to describe what kind of music I write is to share it. I think my work, if heard, will speak for itself.

And, although I shun most (if not all) external associations in my music (other composers are free to do as they wish), I do not see myself as living on an island. My music is informed by everything I've heard over the course of a lifetime. I've studied - and in some cases assimilated - elements of jazz, bebop, North Indian classical music, Javanese Gamelan, avant-garde, electronic, and world music from various regions. I once played in a rock band. I've also studied art-music of the European classical tradition and music of it's earlier incantations. All of this mixes together into a grand stew. Hopefully the resulting soup is something new and original, not just a mishmash of unrelated styles.

As strange as it seems, it is easier to say what my music is not. It is not, for example, Rock-influenced or derived from that of my teachers, friends, colleagues, predecessors, or mentors. In particular, I do not wish to latch onto labels or categories of any kind - even if they stem from a similar aesthetic-ballpark compared to what I do. For example, in this context, "Classical" means absolutely nothing.

I'm highly suspect of the magnetic draw of artistic schools and trends. They are too convenient, too conforming, and ultimately have a negative impact on the reception of one's work since it tends to impose a colored filter on the expected outcome. The field of music criticism creates labels and by doing so herds an audience into various defined containers.

The kind of music I write can and will change from piece to piece. Not only will I grow, learn, transform, and evolve over time, but I will likely express different ideas with each work that I create along the way. So, in this sense, each piece is intended to be unique. Often, the interior sound world of some works of music stand-off by themselves. These works reveal themselves as uncharacteristic compared to the others.

"What kind of music do you write?" is on the surface a very simple question. But, at least for me, I find the answer quite difficult to enumerate.

Perhaps the reason why I choose to create via organized sound comes down to the fact that there is no other way to express the particular thoughts I muse about using a medium other than the construction of thought via the formation of music.


*****

David Holzman

Romanticism still lives!

The Music Department of Long Island University CW Post presents Grammy Award nominated pianist David Holzman in recital on Tuesday, March 5th, 2019 at 8:15 PM.  The concert will be held at The Great Hall of Long Island University, CW Post Center at 720 Northern Boulevard, Brookville, NY.  

A pre-concert lecture by the artist will take place at 7 PM titled, "A Pianist Confronts Hearing Loss and Epilepsy"

Holzman's performance will feature premiere's by four American composers:  John McDonald, William Bland, James Ricci, and Jeffrey Hall as well as classics by Arnold Schoenberg and Frederic Chopin.

For more information about David Holzman, see battlemuse.com/

This is a nice live recording of a short woodwind quintet that I composed in 2004. The performance was on May 11th, 2007 by The Solar Winds.

A Golden Age of New Music?

Luckily we don't often consider that we are fragile biological creatures situated on a small blue planet hurling at breakneck speed through a vast universe.  We tend to go about the daily activities of life living in the moment without constantly observing larger patterns that can stretch across a lifetime.  Neither do we think persistently about the occasional and subtle patterns that may emerge from a drone of background noise therein. But on occasion we become acutely aware that our world has changed in a significant way.  I've observed that the gradual evolution of cultural norms present throughout our lives is punctuated on occasion by more explosive events that at times can purposely dislodge and unroot our pre-existing systems of aesthetics and stale ideas.  

I've lived through at least one such transformation of musical aesthetics, and that was in the late 1960s and into the early 70s.  At the time radical change seemed quite expected (although a little crazy), but in retrospect the paradigm shift was a true and valid reflection of the era.  

I can only imagine what it must have been like to have been present through other significant artistic movements throughout the course of history. Perhaps the inhabitants of those intermittent zeitgeists experienced a similar sense of loss, excitement, and/or confusion as what we have seen in more recent times.  

In the end, you can only adequately judge and evaluate change from what came before and what will actually occur after. Living in the moment doesn't provide a comprehensive-enough mental map for the long journey - which in practice can take a lifetime to traverse (albeit, in the 20th and 21st centuries, cultural-disruptions have occurred at a higher rate of frequency).

I'm still quite unclear about where the current culture and business of "new classical" music may be headed (excuse the imprecision of my terminology, but the explosion of genres and sub-genres has made terms such as "new classical" virtually useless).  I've tried to speculate about where the road leads, but I am not in a position to see through the trees to a clear path of the future.  I also doubt that there is one path, one solution, or a predominant "ism" to subscribe to.  As a humble lone-practitioner, I simply (and perhaps naïvely) choose to compose music that interests me; what I want to hear: and to some extent what I have not heard enough of in the biosphere of our current new music discourse.  

But if we step back and look at the large forces at play - the activities of music creation (be it live performance or recorded), the present time is notable for its creative energy and unrelenting intensity.

As a composer, I obviously have my personal biases and may not be qualified as an objective observer of all music composed today.  I honestly can't judge it, or make proclamations - one way or another - about its relative value or non-value.  I'm too busy as a composer simply "doing my thing" to take on such a socially complicated and politically-fraught assignment.

But one thing is for sure.  New music as a creative endeavor in our modern world is not dead.  In fact, if we just look at the activities that comprise and define the business of new music, we could conclude that we live in a "Golden Age" relative to the recent past.  In my lifetime I have not seen such a high level of ability, dedication, and talent as we have as we have today.  This situation appears to be true pretty much everywhere in the world. The number and quality of both mainstream and new music specialist musicians has exploded beyond the point where I can track or keep count.  There are literally so many young virtuosic performers, ensembles, and orchestras dedicated to new music active today that I can't list, catalogue, or name a majority of them.  I hesitate to highlight even a few of today's superstars, since I would undoubtedly overlook someone, or some well-deserved music ensemble or organization in the process.

In 1975 the American Music Center published The Contemporary Music Performance Directory.  For the time it was a milestone work.  It brought together in one place all of the resources related to new music performance in the United States.  It listed the major performing ensembles, sponsoring organizations, performing facilities, concert series, and festivals that featured 20th century music in North America along with information about how to contact them.  It was all-in-one paper-bound black book, and it contained just about everything a composer could need in 1975.  It was a go-to Bible of sorts.

If we jump ahead 43 years in time and compare what was the status quo in 1975 against what our current performance environment looks like, the contrast is stunning.

I doubt that a comprehensive, up-to-date printed directory of new music performance could be compiled today given the sheer volume of information and veracity of change.  From what I see on the Internet and in social networking, new music specialist performers, concerts, events, festivals, and venues have multiplied and flourished well beyond what anyone can easily keep track of.  It's a musical "Embarrassment of Riches."  And what I see online and in the field is only the tip of the iceberg.

It's true that our conservatories and universities have supported, encouraged, and contributed to the new found wealth of musical exploration in the 21st century. The number of composers graduating worldwide with degrees in music composition every year is in the thousands. That's quite a change from the 1950s, 60s, or 70s. The number of performers either interested in (or completed dedicated to) new music has also flourished under the auspices of higher education. They've done (and continue to do) their part.  

And while first and second-tier orchestras have perhaps fallen a bit behind with their overall support of new music, I see many more contemporary works scheduled on mainstream programs that I ever have observed in the past.

Even opera - perhaps the most expensive and extravagant forms of performance art - has come a long way over the past decades.  Not only are the complex and difficult operatic productions of the late-20th century routinely performed throughout the world today, new operas are commissioned and produced quite regularly.

While I've never met a composer who feels they receive too many commissions or too many performances, there are now quite a number who can make a decent living working in their chosen profession.  It's no longer a foregone fact that a piece of music will rarely if ever be performed again after its initial premiere (this had been common practice in years past - even for well-established composers of national and international reputation).

The number of venues and types of venues has expanded significantly as well.  There is now a flavor of new music experience for every taste - from the traditional concert hall to the boutique bar room.

All in all, as I look around today, the number of talented musicians performing new music (and the high level of their talent, dedication, and musicianship) is simply staggering compared with what I recall from just a few decades ago.

Efforts to increase audience size and enhance funding (from both public and private sources) will continue, as it always has, in the endless effort to present music to the public. That's a given.  

Overall, the creative new music scene of today (for those who live and work in the industry of new and experimental music) is healthier than it has ever been.

At least that's how it looks from here.