Those of you dropping in on this column for the first time will have missed the start of a discussion of modern music begun here last month, revolving around the question: why did composers start writing music that sounded so weird?
Short answer: It’s a complex subject that touches on global economics, cultural history, evolutions in class and ethnic mobility, the changing nature of music education and concert-going, religion in society, European nationalism, industrialization and technological progress in instrument building.
So let’s move on. In practical terms, 1) choral audiences sometimes want to hear music they haven’t heard before and 2) choral composers want to keep composing new repertoire. So how do we bring the two parties together to meet on the dance floor? Like any healthy relationship, it takes a leap of faith and a bit of compromise.
So, to the audience member who runs for the doors at the hint of an unfamiliar or apparently unpleasant sound: you have to be willing to give these new musical experiences not just a first, but a second and third chance. The first time you went up on a two-wheel bike you probably wobbled and fell. But you persevered, ’cause you had some sense that on the other side of the challenge were new vistas of excitement, freedom and enjoyment.
And to those composers who write in a way that ignores the two reasons why the vast majority of people listen to music — pleasure and solace: you will simply lose your audience — a principled but self-destructive path that many mid-20th-century composers chose.
The musician who wants to connect with listeners must be willing to meet them at least part of the way. This means being open to musical elements that have appeal to non-musicians — traditional tonal harmonic systems, melodic contour that has a comprehensible arc and graspable structure, rhythmic grooves that are anchored in movement and dance, and other elements of popular, folk and indigenous music.
If you think this is the kind of pandering to which no artiste should stoop, go back and listen to pretty much every composer of note from the last 500 years — they knew their dance numbers and their folk songs, their pub cheers and theatre numbers and children’s lullabies and they infused their compositions with these elements, even as they extended the boundaries of where music could go and what it could express. They knew that to both thrive and survive, they had to consider the needs of the people around them as much as their own.
The point I made in last month’s column is that many modern composers are already doing this. The mid-20th century experiments of atonality and serialism, Musique concrète, aleatoric music and spatialization — I know, I know, even the names are off-putting — have almost been entirely abandoned. Or, they are being combined with an aesthetic that does not insist on purging music of the elements the non-specialist listener identifies as music.
English composer Thomas Adès writes very much in this conciliatory mode. His Dances from Powder Her Face is being performed on October 31 and November 1 and 2 by the Toronto Symphony, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir and Toronto Children’s Chorus. The concert also includes Benjamin Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings and Carl Orff’s choral favourite Carmina Burana.
Carmina was a hit when it was first performed in Frankfurt in 1937, and has never waned in popularity. Orff wrote in a manner that wedded the varied and complex sonorities of the modern orchestra to music of deceptive simplicity. In some ways Orff’s music can be seen as the distant ancestor of the groove-based compositions of postmodernists Glass and Reich. Adès’ music also shares certain qualities with Orff’s, combining fun with edginess and possessing an earthy, sensual quality that seems to evoke bar fights and assignations rather than concert halls.
Dances from Powder Her Face, a Canadian premiere, is presumably a suite of music from Adès‘ chamber opera of the same name. The piece may or may not involve choir, but if not, and you want to hear some of his vocal music, take a chance and listen to the opera from which the Dances is derived. I think many listeners ought to be intrigued by some of the arresting vocal and instrumental writing that illustrates the scandal-ridden story of the Duchess of Argyll.
Britten’s Serenade is also a brilliant work. Many ensembles will be programming Britten’s works this year — 2013 being his birth centenary — and if you are willing to take a leap into unfamiliar 20th-century music, Britten is a very good place to begin.
Britten worked throughout his career almost entirely within the framework of “extended tonality.” What is this, exactly? Extended tonality is to traditional tonality as X-Man Wolverine is to pocket knives — that is, more dangerous but cooler.
On October 19 the Grand Philharmonic Choir performs Britten’s War Requiem, considered to be one of the 20th century’s masterworks. Premiered in 1962, it blends the traditional requiem mass text with poems by Wilfred Owen. Owen perished in the First World War, but not before writing poetry that ripped the veils of piety and patriotism away from the gruesome reality of WWI trench combat.
On October 20 the Elmer Iseler Singers will perform St. Cecilia Sings! A Tribute to Benjamin Britten, a concert that also includes music by Howells, Schubert, Vaughan Williams and Canadian Eleanor Daley, who has amassed a body of choral music that is becoming part of the standard repertoire of many Canadian choirs.
On November 6 at Grace Church on-the-Hill, and again on November 15 at Temple Sinai synagogue, the Temple Sinai Ensemble Choir, Toronto Jewish Folk Choir and Upper Canada Choristers join forces during Holocaust Education Week to perform music that addresses the same theme as the Britten requiem — war’s destruction.
The evening includes an original composition by cantor/composer Charles Osborne titled I Didn’t Speak Out, based on the famous indictment of apathy in the face of evil attributed to German theologian Martin Niemoeller. The concerts are free. More information can be found here.
Finally, modern composition reaches back to ancient tradition, as the Pax Christi Chorale hosts the Great Canadian Hymn Competition on October 6. PCC has fashioned itself the sponsor of new works in an area that is notoriously conservative — hymn singing. As with concert music, the continued vitality of the tradition depends on new works. Hosting the event is one of Canada’s greatest singers, Catherine Robbin. More information can be found here.
Benjamin Stein is a Toronto tenor and theorbist. He can be contacted at choralscene@thewholenote.com. Visit his website at benjaminstein.ca.
