Gabriel Prokofiev, Classical Crossover and some YouTube Treats
29 July 2007 – 12:24 pm by The Big Ideas TeamA recent and largely futile thread over at Philosophy Forums reminded me how unhelpful musical genre-labels (like “pop”, “rock”, “jazz” and so on) are, and how attached people are to them. Many folks are capable of getting very excited about whether artist x is rock or metal, whether y is “proper” jazz or whether “emo” is a valid generic label or not.
I imagine this is because certain people identify strongly with certain genres in a more or less tribal way, admitting there are good and bad proponents of their chosen genre(s) but despising all who fall into some supposedly opposed genre and reserving for the worst offenders in their own camp the accusation that they’re “not really” rock/jazz/classical/whatever.
This came up in part because I was reading yesterday about the exploits of Gabriel Prokofiev, who moves in both pop and classical circles and has undertaken various projects that might be called “crossovers” between the two. You can watch part of a performance of his string quartet with electronics here and listen to some of the remixes it’s been released with here (hat tip to the overgrown path for both links).
The mainstream press seem united in their adulation for Prokofiev junior. Indeed, while music fans tend to ghettoise themselves, pundits love it when musicians fuse different genres. Perhaps in part it’s because that’s easy to write about, whereas a new composition by James Dillon, say — an equally colourful character — isn’t. There’s something metamusical to say, and writing about things like genre is much easier than just writing about music itself.
It’s easy, for instance, to write about classical music allegedly changing the ways in which it’s performed and listened to in order to make it more “accessible”. So Tony Naylor in yesterday’s Guardian, for instance, in a piece about Prokofiev Jr referred to
live events where you can get pissed and talk over the crap bits, trading ideas - as Mozart once borrowed from folk - with dance music.
It seems to me that a defining quality of classical music, at least as it’s been for the last hundred years or so, is that it’s music that you just listen to; you don’t talk over it or have it on in the background. Listening to music — just that, not doing anything else at the same time — isn’t a regular activity for most people and never has been. But it seems to me that classical music, especially that of the last century, has been designed explicitly for that purpose.
Now, you can listen to any music intently, with your full concentration, if you like, but most of us find we need a certain amount of variety and complexity to keep us interested. On the other hand, using music as wallpaper obscures complexity and ensures we only notice the large-scale stuff (loud bits and quiet bits, fast bits and slow bits). So of course, if we’re not asked to listen closely, “the general public can handle complicated music” (Prokofiev via Naylor). It’s not the music, per se, that’s the problem, its the activity of listening — one use among many that music can be put to — that people find taxing. When Naylor complains that “you can’t make anyone under 40 care” about classical music, I think he really means not the music but the activity of listening in the way classical music is designed to be heard.
Perhaps you’re over 40, or prematurely aged, and feel like listening to some classical music of the twentieth century. Well, YouTube is great for that, and the visual component often helps with the concentration (so I find anyway). May I recommend:
- Gyorgy Ligeti’s Etude No 13 for Piano, with a cheesy intro but some nice photography.
- If that wore you out, Pierre Boulez’s Le Soleil Des Eaux has a bit more light and shade (yes, I know, the lyrics are a bit barking mad).
- Messiaen’s Oiseaux Exotiques, part one and part two.
- Luciano Berio’s folk-influenced Psy for solo cello, his theatrical Sequenza No 5 for solo trombone and his rather drier Sequenza No 7b for solo saxophone
- More piano music; this is Boulez again with his Piano Sonata No 1 (this is a lot tougher and more “abstract” than the Ligeti, mind you).
- Kaaija Saariaho’s “spectral” Noa Noa for solo flute and electronics.
- Stockhausen’s Kontakte for piano, percussion and electronics (with “interpretative” visuals you may or may not like)
- Pascal Dusapin’s Etude No 6 for Piano, which starts soothing and develops into a sort of whirlpool of sound.
- Then we have Toru Takemitsu’s beautiful Equinox for solo guitar and the brief Cross Hatch for two percussionists.
- Iannis Xenakis’s Metasteisis for orchestra with the video simply following a graphical summary of the score, or his volcanic Synaphai for piano and orchestra, parts one and part two. His percussion solo Rebonds is, I think, accessible to anyone who likes a bit of electronica.
- Helmut Lachenmann’s Schattentanz for solo piano, which is typically aggressive Lachenmann stuff; don’t look for pretty tunes in here, although it does have a hammering, insistent sort of riff.
- If that was a bit abrasive, Elliott carter’s lyrical Triple Duo is a nice contrast.
- OK, if you’re ready for more frantic piano-abuse, try George Crumb’s brief but energetic Tora! Tora! Tora!. My favourite comment on the YouTube page is “dont like this kind of shit. paris hilton paris hilton paris hilton”. Uh oh, here come some Google referrals…
- More George Crumb, an excerpt from his piece Black Angels for amplified string quartet. I’m not sure about the video, but the music is completely gripping.
- Here are all three movements of Harrison Birtwistle’s ritualistic piece for six percussionists, “For O, For O, The Hobby-Horse Is Forgot”:
This will take up 25 minutes of your life, but you might well come out the other end having enjoyed it.
- Finally, there’s John Cage performing Water Walk on a popular American TV show. “Inevitably, Mr Cage,” the presenter warns him, “These are nice people, but some of them are gonna laugh. Is that alright?”. The response is classic Cage: “Of course. I consider laugher preferable to tears”. The resulting performance is funny, spooky and theatrical. Is it music? Oh, do leave off.
Apologies for the waywardness of this post; it’s Sunday morning (or it was when I started) and I don’t feel like stringing together a coherent argument. Back to the maths next week, I promise. This post should, however, be taken as a warning of more posts about twentieth century classical music to come.