Just look at this mess!

"For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them? "
— Thomas More

Last night, I had a particularly interesting conversation about the state of musical affairs in the U.S.--and I suppose the world, why not. We were discussing the place for contemporary music in the recession era orchestra's programming. Two glasses of Cabernet into the chat, I was feeling kind of fiery, so things may have gotten a bit heated...not that anyone was surprised.

There will always be the questions of how to bring more patrons to concerts and how to secure repeat funding from donors. Some around the table approached the issue from the standpoint of accessibility, making the concert experience enjoyable and understandable to the audience. This meant increasing the more easily-embraceable factors of the concert [Old Favorites, if you will] and decreasing the factors that might alienate attendees [most commonly, New music]. It's excellent in theory, but the problem with this stance is that it perpetuates its own mess. When, in the history of concert programming, were pre-existing works given more stature than those happening in the present day? Had I more motivation, I'd research it, but seeing as how I'm sitting in Starbucks avoiding writing personal statements, I'm just going to throw out the question.

When?

Well, whenever it was, it was the beginning of the downfall of artistic vibrancy in society, and perhaps even the downfall of creative, subjective thought on the part of arts patrons. And it makes perfect sense, because the later is required for the maintenance of the former. Thriving communities depend on creativity--not only in their leaders but in their constituents as well--and this extends beyond the arts [though whether we realize it or not, they are part of every element of culture]. The creator is not the only member of the equation for whom it is necessary to think creatively. We can and must absorb/follow/listen/view creatively. We're Capitalists, for Pete's sake! Somewhere along the road to where we are, the creative following process became unnecessary [Maybe it was television.], and we developed a preference for the things we already know, hence the popularity of the Old Favorites and the disapproval of the unknown. We began to experience music the way I experience grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, as comfort food. Now don't misunderstand me; I LOVE tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, but I also get excited about the opportunity to taste butternut squash manicotti or edamame and tofu succotash. [On a sidebar, Luxe Kitchen & Lounge on Detroit, the Chef's special--pay $22, pick a protein, and let the chef go wild for three courses--might just change your world...but I digress] And I'll always be a sucker for Judy Garland and Loretta Lynn recordings, the second movement of the New World Symphony, and the third movement of the German Requiem, especially if Thomas Quasthoff is the soloist.

I do not dare discredit the historical concert or the validity of older works...The old is to be revered on the same level as the new. Without what has gone before us, we would have no precedent for anything that exists now. The trouble arises when we revere the old OVER the new, to the extent that we exclude it altogether. And I'm afraid that if we don't take action soon, exclusion of the new is the direction in which we're headed, toward living in a more humdrum world than we could ever imagine. So by attempting to please and pacify listeners...donors in particular, by giving them only what we think will be approved, we do our entire society a disservice [pardon my melodrama]. We teach stagnation. But isn't that the issue in the first place?

Obviously, something has to change. Every bleeding heart liberal [myself included] can complain about lack of progress, but by what means do we bring progress into being? We've tried the gingerly, not to mention somewhat cowardly, route--In an orchestral setting, this sometimes takes the form of opening with a ten minute contemporary overture by the composer-in-residence and then apologizing for it with Strauss waltzes and pieces akin to Beethoven's 5th for the rest of the concert. In the Cleveland Orchestra's case, this certainly takes the form of a single new music concert at the end of the season...to placate the New Music lovers...on a holiday weekend when everyone's out of town...with a truncated single performance concert schedule...because THAT'S not obvious at ALL. There have, of course, been other organizations who preferred to keep a certain kind of music all in one place. I believe one of them was called the Nazi Party. Bitter, am I? Rather than acceptance and embrace of newness, we perpetuate tolerance, at the very most. We've also taken the more divisive route of shoving a new piece in the middle of a concert with no relevance to anything else in it.

What I suggest: We have to take into account "those crimes to which [our] first education disposed [us]," to at best tolerate the new and revere the old above all else. And it is indeed, I believe, a crime. By steeping our culture in a particular aesthetic, we've deprived it of its ability to examine anything without a palette for excellence [i.e. the old "I just like things to have a pretty melody" adage]. That, I think, is our mess. To clean it up, we must educate compassionately. We should provide a context for the new and bridge the gaps in understanding. Give 'em a frickin' palette. Pre-concert lectures are a good beginning, but perhaps we should more often incorporate MID-concert discussion-- Explain how a new piece relates to an older piece--preferably with both on the same concert. I once heard a composer say that "we all have our own ways of dealing with the past [-Keith Fitch, 2009]." Sometimes these dealings are obvious, whether outright rejection of the past, pronounced continuity, or otherwise, and sometimes they require a bit of study to find in a work--but they are present. Concert administrators should take a studious and linear approach to programming, and please, for the love of God, something other than finding pieces that are Old, New, Borrowed, and Blue, etc. [that's a whole other rant for another day]. I'm speaking chronologically here. A good program can explain how Serialism relates to German Romanticism, how Minimalism relates to the classical Ostinato concept, or how Spectralism relates to Klangfarbenmelodie, whether intentionally or not. And I realize that in some cases we limit art by comparing it to everything that happened before. BUT, for the listener who needs a bridge, where else are we to turn?

I'm not writing revolutionary things here. I'm sure they've been expressed before, and more eloquently than I'm expressing them now. And these steps are likely being taken by certain arts organizations and more industrious orchestras. I'd just like to see them taken with more gusto. I'd like to see more steps taken in general, if not in the direction of my suggestions, then toward SOMEthing.

We've made the mess, and now we have to clean it up.