SUGGESTIONS FOR MODERN COMPOSERS

It is quite obvious that the classical tradition has reached a dead end, because for the past 50 years mainstream classical composers have devised nothing new and have been composing works limited to the same boring cacophony over and over. The minimalists such as Philip Glass are dismissed as pop or New Age, but all of the new works I've heard the local symphony premier could just as easily have been written in 1952. It's all imitation Varése, and I know exactly what it will sound like long before the conductor gives the downbeat. There will be harsh dissonances interrupted by glissandi in the trombones and/or tympani; the percussion section will be kept busy with much knocking on temple blocks and whatever other items are at hand.

Indeed, Jan Järvlepp (b. 1953; Ph.D. in composition from the University of California at San Diego) has composed "A Concerto for Recycled Garbage and Orchestra," in which the augmented percussion section bangs on metal cans, plastic bottles, hubcaps, cardboard boxes and paper bags, and they blow into glass bottles filled with various amounts of water. The work was premiered by the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra in 1996 with funding from The Laidlaw Foundation. (Such works always depend on funding from some foundation or other, because there is no sufficient paying audience that would support such a mess .)

The question then arises, where does music go from here? The point of atonality was arrived at early in the twentieth century, and once total dissonance was reached, music would seem to have reached a cul de sac. It is now impossible to become more discordant, so what is left for all the aspiring composers and composers-in-residence?

The answer is to become ridiculous—far more ridiculous, even, than a Concerto for Garbage. Natural Public Radio in the US recently had a feature on a project in Halberstadt, Germany which is performing, if that is the word, a piece by the celebrated John Cage (1912-1992). The performance is an arrangement for pipe organ of Cage's 1985 work ASLSP for solo piano. The title is derived from Cage's direction to play the work "as slow as possible." How slow is "as slow as possible"? The John Cage Foundation has taken the composer's directive quite literally; the Halberstadt performance is scheduled to end in the year 2640. Since no one person can perform this rendition of ASLSP, for obvious reasons, lead weights fill in for the fingers of the organist, while each note change will be played manually on the fifth day of the month, in remembrance of John Cage's birthday. This is likely a tune only the dead will find themselves humming.

The humor of this project and other works by Cage has not escaped me, but the thing about the avant garde is that the concept is always better than the reality of the thing. I am amused by the movies produced by the late Andy Warhol—"Sleep" an eight-hour film of a man sleeping and the even-longer "Empire" which is simply a long, motionless scene of the Empire State Building—but I certainly wouldn't want to sit through any of them. Likewise, such concepts as aleatory music (music which depends on chance or luck) or silent music (such as Cage's most famous composition 4'33") are better talked about than experienced. (Even more amusing is that someone was recently sued by the Cage Foundation for violation of copyright in recording 4'33" without permission.)

The same is true of the recent string quartet by Karlheinz Stockhausen in which each of the players flies around in a separate helicopter. I suppose that's a clever concept, but I have no desire to actually witness a performance. Yet what else can composers devise now that the state of total discord has been reached and all the traditional elements which constitute music have been jettisoned? Like so many spoiled children, contemporary composers can only attempt to try the patience of the audience.

The March 24, 2003 issue of The New Yorker magazine contains a long essay by critic Alex Ross concerning a thought-provoking question—What happened to German music? How is it that this area of Europe that once, I think most of us would agree, produced the world's greatest music, now produces the world's worst? Some examples of contemporary German music are provided in the article. We learn of Georg Friedrich Haas, the composer of a piece entitled "....," who says in a program note, "I would like to avoid using the term 'theme.' " Then there is Germany's greatest composer of today, Helmut Lachenmann, who, according to the New Grove Dictionary of Music, specializes in "the loud and unconventional sounds more in the nature of noise, of the kind generally suppressed in traditional instrumental performance." Lachenmann seems to think it clever to employ standard instruments and objects in nontraditional ways: flutes blown in the wrong end, cellos bowed in places other than the strings, paper crinkled, and hammering on sheet metal. Also mentioned is Helmut Oehring, the composer of "Lethal Injection," "Suck the Brain Out of the Head," and "Do You Wanna Blow Job?".

Now that music has reached such a state, can we even call it music? Or is it now down on all fours with performance art? And since such concept pieces require no musical talent whatsoever, I may as well join in and offer a few suggestions for new masterpieces. I hereby waive all copyrights and abjure any and all title, claim or prerogative in the use of these ideas. I invite all the composers-in-residence and other maestros to take these concepts and run with them:

A string quartet in which the players ruin their instruments by performing underwater. An even more daring work may be achieved if the players are also deprived of breathing apparatus. A piece for a brass ensemble in which the valves of the instruments have had their pistons or rotors removed. The piece could be called the "Incomplete Symphony." A piece in which the players are seated on wired metal chairs and given painful electric shocks at random while they play. Alternately, the audience may receive the shocks; in such a situation, no one would want to attend such a performance, but that doesn't seem to be a problem for any of the modern composers. The "Farewell Symphony" in which each of the players ingests poison at the beginning of the piece. The last player who manages to produce a sound on his instrument is given the antidote. An opera which improves on the pioneering work of Cage in that not only is no music sounded, but no one appears on stage. "Toward the Unknown Region" in which both the orchestra and the conductor wear blindfolds and headsets to block out all sound so that none of them know what the others are doing. Of course, for this concept to be truly effective, the audience must be blindfolded and soundproofed as well. "The Concerto for Air Guitar"—neither the soloist or the orchestra have instruments; they merely mime playing to the sounds of a recording. "Role Reversal" in which the orchestra sits through the performance thumbing through the program booklet. "The Aerobic Workout: a concerto grosso"—the soloists perform while using treadmills and other exercise machines. "Da Capo"—all the musicians perform while standing on their heads.