My Philosophy of Composition in the Twenty-First Century
An Essay by Michael Kurek
Ostensibly, if Modernism was a revolution, its legacy or goal was to make any style or technique possible, to create "a steady state of musical pluralism," a phrase used long ago by Leonard Meyer. It seems to me that Postmodernism was (and again I use the past tense in regard to my own position) both an exploration of that pluralism and a kind of endless search for an identity. While it is not fashionable among Postmodernists actually to find an identity, some poor souls like me do eventually find one and feel pluralism should be able to include us, too. Here's how: it is not necessary for each and every piece of music to reflect pluralism within itself, i.e., by means of eclecticism of style, which seems to be the reigning technique now. Rather, a piece of music with one distinct style and aesthetic approach may be viewed simply as one patch in a quilt, along with different patches, to create a diverse and collectively pluralistic musical landscape. Of course, if we were shown only one patch of a quilt we would not get a sense of the entire quilt's pluralism, and so I do not aspire for my patch to be the only one seen, but only to humbly co-exist in peace with the rest. Admittedly, there is an irony in the fact that the collective pluralism itself may appear to be a postmodern phenomenon, even as I will argue here that an individual quilt patch, being relatively unified in style, can transcend the identity crisis of postmodernism, at least in its aesthetic intent.
It may be symptomatic of our age that our intelligentsia are mistrustful of any kind of certitude whatsoever, lest it lead to intolerance. But the opposite extreme could be a kind of fascism of uncertainty, in which every piece of music is more or less required to exhibit a personal or cultural identity crisis, or to try to be all things to all people (which can end up being very little to anyone). So by pluralism, I mean a marketplace of distinct aesthetic opinions, respectful and tolerant of others, but sometimes conflicting or competing. Would that contemporary music as a genre had the same level of political, philosophical, cultural, and religious diversity we see in the popular music world. Instead, it sometimes feels, in spite of all the talk to the contrary about having broken the bonds of serialism, that we still have a kind of party line, with acceptable styles implicitly defined by a handful of academics who control the grants and prizes that lead to tenure. There are, at least, a few composers I know who have successfully bypassed that system and taken their musical case directly to the audience, as it were, but usually from outside a university teaching position.
On to music -- My quilt patch happens to use traditional techniques -- tonal melody, harmony, and counterpoint -- in a formal narrative, which ends up sounding very traditional. However, I do not believe I am a "Neo-Romantic," because I am not looking backward or intending to be "retro" in the postmodern sense of the term. Rather, I am looking forward to a day when there is a true pluralism. Yes, there is unprecedented diversity of style and technique today, to be sure, but as stated above, I am not convinced that there is yet a great deal of diversity in terms of world view within contemporary classical music. For example, most of the intelligentsia seem to me embarrassed and uncomfortable with music that believes in itself as an emotional, personal expression. According to this mind-set, it is fashionable to write music that stands aloof from culture and "comments" upon it by means of musical quotation, that winks and nods to the elite, in spite of its "accessible" style. While it is theoretically possible, I suppose, for postmodern, eclectic, collage music to be simply a positive celebration of cultural diversity, which does believe in itself, one can often discern in the title, program notes, or spoken commentary a more circumspect examination of culture, a kind of musicology or sociology in sound. I do not mean to imply insincerity of purpose, only to say such a position tends to stand at emotional arm's length from its subject and may represent a kind of crisis of faith or a darkness underlying its entertaining, even attractively marketed, approach. For example, in Berio's Sinfonia nihilistic texts from Beckett and Joyce float adrift in a sea of seemingly "fun" musical quotes; I will resist citing more current examples, but they are numerous and often involve very entertaining references to pop culture or rock music. Yes, a return to tonality is touted as being in vogue today, but it appears to me that it is more often done in a kind of collage and not so much in the same kind of narrative context that used to sweep up its listeners in its flow and cause them to weep the tears of a vicarious dramatic participant. And we are inundated in the novelty of experimentation by way of mixing styles of various countries together, though often it sounds to me as if the composer regards that mixing as an end in itself, rather than as a means to write a really well-crafted piece. Or it is yet another way to hide poor training and/or to find some kind of name recognition in a competitive field of so many ambitious young composers. So after the novelty of the multi-cultural mixture wears off after the first few measures, we are left to sit there and "wait out" the rest of the piece.
However, I am not saying that such experiments or other aesthetic positions than mine should be banned, but again only that voices like mine should also be accepted and respected. Sadly, they are sometimes repressed, for reasons I am still hoping to sort out. For example, I am aware of the tenure cases of certain of my like-minded composer colleagues in which it became difficult to find enough outside evaluators among our other academic composer colleagues who could tolerate a traditional aesthetic and would agree to write a supporting letter. I can only speculate about what psychology might motivate someone in a position of relative power and academic security to feel the need to suppress a younger, weaker composer at another institution who poses no particular threat, simply because his style and ideas differ, when that composer's talent, craft, teaching, and supporting credentials undeniably merit promotion. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that it is possible to go through school and earn a doctorate in composition completely lacking the ability to write a credible and original-sounding tonal melody. I am no psychologist, but I have observed some cases where such composers suffered from "the imposter syndrome" as a result, and out of their own insecurity felt they had to put down film composers and melodists as a defense mechanism. Add to this that often their own spouses, parents, and friends, as musical laymen, generally do not care for their music, which feels hurtful to them. So a certain amount of jealousy and bitterness can influence their reaction to those classical composers who do write melodies. Those come under suspicion as pandering to the public, or they are even marked as traitors, in a sense; outside the club. (How various colleagues regard the case of someone like me, who was squarely in the club but then began to write tonal music, has been interesting to observe.) While it feels as if I am making the same argument that has been going on for a good twenty years now, at least since the time of Rochberg, I am aware of another tenure case from 2007 in which the committee pronounced a certain tonal work by their faculty composer "uninteresting" for not using enough "innovation" and "variety of modern materials" -- during the very same week that composition had received an incredible ovation from the audience for three consecutive performances, and the work was singled out in the review in the paper as being the best thing on the program! So the question becomes: "uninteresting TO WHOM?" -- It seems to me that the ivory- tower mentality is still very much alive and well, if committees are still this out of touch with the classical music audience, and that in some circles serialist fascism has only come to be replaced by postmodernist elitism.
It seems ironic that at the same time in the field of musicology, the U.S. is enjoying so many new university course offerings relating to popular music culture, which one might imagine would indicate a more populist sensibility in academe. However, in my experience some of the very same faculty who advocate for tonal popular music to be included in the curriculum are opposed to new tonal classical music being written by their own school's composition faculty! I am personally participating in MySpace and other more mainstream means to bring my music to a wider audience than might normally discover a living classical composer, and I have been gratified by many warm messages regarding how the music has enriched people's lives. It seems to me this approach is very much in line with the kind of humanistic philosophy that should be at the heart of any university as a cultural center. I suppose I'm saying that, in a world where millions are suffering and hungry and have no opportunity to hear music performed at all, I cannot be content to compose in a style that is meaningful to only a few people in the audience. Considering that the audience for Western classical music of all styles is already only a tiny fraction of the world's population, how can I spend my entire creative life further marginalizing an even more miniscule fraction of elite listeners, when my musical energies might be spent bringing some measure of comfort to that vast majority who come to the concert hall hoping to be moved by the music? I hasten to add that I do not mean to imply a guilt trip upon composers whose voice and true artistic impulse genuinely demand they write in a less accessible style; I want to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they simply find other, non-musical volunteer service activities in order to bring blessing to greater numbers of people than their music seems to impact. And I know of some decidedly inaccessible, nonetheless well-intentioned, compositions that are laced in their titles and program notes with thoughtful messages of broad social consciousness, ironic as it may seem that the music taken by itself turns off the vast majority of the general classical audience they hope to influence.
In terms of musical affect rather than technique, my recent work has also felt quite a bit riskier and less fashionable among my colleagues than did my previous modernist works, in that I now commit to one style and am not ashamed to reveal the kind of emotional vulnerability or earnest sincerity found in earlier classical music or in some of today's popular music. That is generally regarded by some of our top composers, critics, university administrators, and committees as too sentimental and unsophisticated. This circle seems to argue through its unwritten laws (for example, through who wins its prizes and grants) that such a leap of faith in music or any non-relativist philosophy is a naive, taboo view belonging only to an earlier age. I have come, therefore, to believe, in a world where everyone protects his own ego and reputation as a sophisticate, and where humility, gentleness, and kindness are not particularly valued, that it actually takes a great deal more artistic courage simply to reveal the vulnerability of one's emotions in a piece of music than it does to create some supposedly shocking, controversial, or iconoclastic work about which many impressive comments may be made. Even within university music departments, which should be the nurturing womb of the art, I have seen how the weak can be trampled and wonderful teachers destroyed in the ruthless ambition for some kind of supposed academic progress or greater national profile within academe. In these cases it can feel that music itself has lost its soul, and it can feel, in the rather abstract quest to impress other academics, that it has been forgotten that music is ultimately created for, and ultimately made relevant by, the listener, not by how many boasts may be printed in a glossy newsletter. And if music, an innately spiritual activity, loses its soul, having been commandeered by academic ambition or male ego, what is the point of doing it? So if it is naive to display one's emotions and one's leaps of faith in a composition, it seems to me more naive to imagine that the universal human traits of emotion and belief have been, or can forever be, completely stamped out in classical music! It seems to me naive to imagine that emotional music that believes in itself and moves people by means of a traditional dramatic and teleological narrative or an emotional melody, is now a paradise lost that must forevermore be of a commercial or secondary order! I must argue that if that kind of expression can indeed return someday, say in four hundred years, then logically there is no defensible reason it cannot be allowed to return now. True diversity demands a place at the table for a traditional aesthetic, or it is hypocritical and elitist, even though some of it may have become superficially more accessible in sound. I have been criticized for writing music that sounds like it might have been written in 1890 -- by composers whose music still sounds like it might have been written in 1980! Yes, in 1980 I, too, was writing music that sounded like 1980, but I have moved on! Ironically, if moving “on” (that is, forward into a more truly inclusive 21st century) appears to be a move backward, perhaps these remarks will at least help clarify my intentions. What is "new" music now? What is the so-called Music of Our Time (a term often heard in connection with "contemporary" concert events, that is, implying extended techniques)? My argument is that what is new and cutting edge now is neither the old-fashioned modernists' music nor my new-fangled old-fashioned style, but the pluralism that allows us to coexist. ALL music that is being written now qualifies as the music of our time, as new, as contemporary, simply because it IS being written now. It is the music that is actually being written now, regardless of style, that is by definition chronologically "contemporary," that has the power to decide and define the word "contemporary," not anyone's style criteria to which the music must aspire in order to qualify for that description. My music is completely contemporary.
My quilt patch believes (and other patches can believe what they want) that such a thing as "great music" is still possible. I have heard it argued otherwise in the anti-musical-canon, "new-musicology" circles. I believe that in principle, if only arguable rather than empirically verifiable, music can be inherently great based upon its excellence of craft, its self-authenticating internal coherence of syntax, and upon the compelling longevity of its transcendent individual expression. Also, music that convinces the listener of its own personality should not be called "derivative," simply because it shares style traits with other music. For example, Mozart is not "derivative" of Haydn, at least not in the pejorative sense. Therefore I believe it is theoretically still possible to write excellent tonal music today that reflects the individual composer's personality within a musical tradition, and it would be unfair to dismiss it as derivative. Sibelius is a good example of what I mean, as he is still holding his own with, and even eclipsing, many of the composers his critics preferred, because his music evinces a degree of expertise or skill, as those traits are understood within his cultural tradition, and also demonstrates a clear transcendence of individual expression. Just as we can see now that he was not merely a "derivative" composer, and that he was treated unfairly, time can also justify great tonal composers who will yet arise today and tomorrow, albeit now within a more pluralistic milieu. Who really worries now, that the last symphony of Brahms was written after Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun ? Even though the Brahms was "behind its times" in a sense, all we care about now is that it is, inherently, a great and compelling work of art for more universal reasons than its immediate historical context. And it could well be the same with today's tonal composers in another hundred years, when today's musical politics seem irrelevant, if indeed those composers can be encouraged to learn to write great tonal music. (I am not advocating on behalf of poorly written tonal music, just because it is tonal! It is very difficult to write fine tonal music, as I am learning.) It seems to me a disingenuous, cheap shot, to call a contemporary tonal composer's work derivative, based upon the fact that it is somewhat easier for most people to discern its musical influences, when in fact many composers using modernist, extended techniques are often far more derivative (of each other), but are counting on the fact that most people are too unfamiliar with their derivative influences to discern it. In any case, I believe all music is derivative in some respects, so a preoccupation with "who it sounds like" seems fairly irrelevant. What matters to me is whether the composer has uniquely synthesized his or her various influences, for surely everyone has several influences, rather than simply copied the style of a single composer, and simply whether it is a well written, compelling piece of music to listen to.
My quilt patch believes there is a need felt by many educated listeners and performers for more new classical repertoire, especially for the orchestra, that "sounds good" in the idiomatic tradition of the orchestra, that players can sink their teeth into and to which their listeners respond emotionally. Such music would strike a happy medium that an average, educated classical listener would find neither arcane or elitist on the one hand, nor simplistic, commercial, and banal on the other hand. Such music might have a moving and memorable melody and emotional import on the one hand, but this is balanced on the other hand by strong form, tonal sophistication, intellectually substantive counterpoint, and imaginative orchestration. Like the music of Brahms, it should be both challenging and accessible at the same time. The accessibility it does have, for my tastes, should be inherent in the music and not dependent on a clever title or program notes; its thematic imagination, rather than its programmatic imagination, should invite repeated hearings, so as to engender a kind of relationship and loyalty (in fact, love) in the listener. Indeed, many of these comments spring from years of hearing premieres of greatly touted works, including my own, that no one, even me, cared if they heard a second time. So such works were, and still are, respected but put on the shelf, "for later," and I spent my compact disc money largely on the common-practice and early twentieth-century music I loved and wanted to hear again and again. How ironic that the antidote to so-called disposable pop music should be shelvable classical music, most of which also later gets disposed! Therefore, I am describing as my own "market" that "silent majority" of educated listeners, including the great majority of performing classical musicians themselves, who desire a repertoire more challenging and developmental than most film music, but less cerebral or conceptual than most concert music written in recent years, and who seem to have been an audience largely neglected by concert composers since, say, Barber. While I call this a "market," be assured that I genuinely aspire to write the kind of music in which I myself believe and which I myself want to hear, as a listener who happens to belong to that market. Incidentally, I have on occasion suffered (supposedly) from having my music dismissed or put down as somehow "sounding like film music," First of all, there is arguably a great deal of fine film music that is already outliving its contemporaneous, now forgotten, avant-garde classical counterparts, and so I do not regard the comparison as the insult it was intended to be. Second, these comments reveal that the person making them is only listening to the superficial language of the music and is unable to discern between a short statement of a melody by orchestra in a film and what I am doing, for example, a fifteen-minute classical movement in sonata form, complete with development, modulations, extensive counterpoint, and dramatic structure leading to a musical climax! Perhaps one could liken film music to a poem, and a new tonal classical piece to a novel; I am not saying one is better than another, but that there is a difference in formal structure that seems to go purposely unnoticed in such comments, so as to facilitate the broad-brushed, intellectually dishonest dismissal of any classical piece daring to use traditional tonality.
By these standards, where in the concert hall are the great works of today? I believe we are living in a kind of vacuum in our concert halls (while reiterating everyone's right to be there). You would not get that impression reading newspapers and the press releases of symphony orchestras, who simply have to play the best pieces they have, and hype them as if they were great new works, often to the malaise of players in the orchestra who have to contend with them. Yes, you can go hear someone's dazzlingly orchestrated and relatively exciting, accessible new percussion concerto (with the orchestra sounding "like a well-oiled machine," as George Rochberg once put it), and it may even receive a standing ovation as a reward for all the effort and energy coming off the stage. All the pre-concert lectures set us up to believe this is going to be a great work, because that is what we are told to think by the professionals, with a subtle kind of intimidation. And even when the audience genuinely does seem thrilled by the piece, the problem as I see it is that it is only a one-time thrill. I don't see a single person buying the CD in the gift shop or ordering it online later. In spite of the standing ovation, no one really wanted to add it to the listening repertoire of their life. But just think, if that new piece had moved them in the same way the Rachmaninoff second piano concerto or the Barber Adagio does, there would be a much greater demand for a CD afterward. People would play the recording constantly in their cars and fall in love with it. Where are those kinds of works today? It sometimes feels as if the last two generations of composers have rarely contributed anything more than a string of exciting novelty pieces, almost none of which really enter the repertoire the way the above two cited works did, and which will eventually die and be forgotten along with their creators. The New York Times, looking for some kind of musical messiah to remedy this situation, keeps annointing a new Wunderkind composer every couple of years, and yet in spite of the hype, the majority of people simply don't fall in love with the music itself, once they finally hear it, as the sales figures for contemporary classical music CD's clearly and devastatingly demonstrate. It may surprise some readers to learn that most of the Grammy-Award-winning CD's in the "Best Contemporary Composition" category do not sell more than a few thousand copies (or in some cases even a few hundred), many of these actually being purchased by university music libraries for their collections (and then rarely used by library patrons). A survey of recordings which won the Grammy in this category, and which won the Pulitzer Prize in music over the past twenty-plus years reveals the sobering truth that the vast majority of those compositions have not subsequently been much heard or performed and are now forgotten. It is therefore probably wise for music students and others to have a healthy skepticism of such awards and the system that keeps awarding them -- and to keep in mind the story of "The Emperor's New Clothes."
Finally, I have noticed that so-called "dark" works tend to make the most impression in the contemporary concert field, for example those many works dedicated to tragedies like 9/11 or which impress with much percussive bombast. Having taught composition for many years, I feel the need to point out that it is relatively easy, as a matter of technique, to compose a bombast with tone clusters and the like. It is much more difficult actually to compose a narrative piece with melody and counterpoint that holds together formally and goes somewhere. I suspect that this trend has something to do with the fact that most composition prizes and awards are given to young composers under age 25, both to encourage youth generally and perhaps to try and discover the next young Mozart somewhere. But the kind of craft I'm talking about cannot easily be learned by that age, and so young composers do what their technique allows in order to make an impression. (I speak as one who was guilty of this in his own youth and who knew other peers who were, too.) In any case, I do recognize the importance for there to be some artists, like Jeremiahs, to point out all that is dark and ugly in the world, And there may be some artists, it seems in my observation of colleagues particularly those who came from very culturally conservative families, who may simply have a need to distance themselves from their upbringing and to appear more sophisticated by delving into that which gives the impression that they appreciate a philosophical, counter-cultural, or even nihilistic sensibility. But I believe there is also a particular need at this time of pain and war for at least a few artists to undertake a more difficult and risky craft to point out that there can be beauty, hope, healing, and continuity with a great musical tradition, even if we who aspire to the latter are content to remain in the minority. When that minority is too small, it seems a practical reality that the contemporary fine arts risk marginalizing themselves out existence, especially in the onslaught of popular culture and the current sea of media choices. The word "thorny" has come to connote a kind of praise in our contemporary music circles; I am only arguing for the occasional rose to be allowed into our crop of thorns, for a tenderly played major triad not automatically to connote triviality, as it seems to in some academic minds. I have purposely kept this essay in secular terms that do not invoke or judge anyone's broader philosophical or religious views, because I believe my arguments are reasonable at face value, but it behoves me to add that I trust my views as a Catholic Christian do inform my desire to more broadly enrich society with positive and beautiful art which heals and comforts the spirit and somehow reflects an ultimate hope. I do not mean to imply that other views could not also make a positive statement, only that this is where my own views are ultimately grounded. Only music, not words, can really make my case convincingly, though, and so, having stated these goals, I simply work to improve my craft, in hopes that these words will be justified by my music, and not the reverse, and not yet claiming to have achieved these aims.
