Rare Birds
Roll over Beethoven: If the classical God never existed, music would be muchbetter off
Beethoven hovers over everything when it comes to classical music. Still. Wouldmusic be better off without him?
John Lennon Glasses Beethoven
Hsin-Jung Tsai
Computer Chip BeethovenArtwork by Ian Wright
Rock Star Beethoven
Pop Festival Beethoven
Street Art Beethoven
When John Lennon sang his now famous lyric: “Imagine there’s no heaven …” he wasn't necessarily implying: “There is no God.” He was simply saying, “Imagine.”
With that in mind, let me ask you to imagine a world without the music of Ludwig Van Beethoven. A world where musicians, conductors and classical radio stations have stopped performing or broadcasting his piano sonatas, string quartets, symphonies, the one opera — all of it. A world where KUHA 91.7 FM removes from its playlists the works of any composer born before 1900 with a last name beginning with the letter “B."
A world where, when Beethoven’s fifth, sixth, seventh or ninth symphonies are brought up in the meetings that determine the season programming of orchestras or other ensembles, the decision makers immediately respond: “Beethoven? Why? There are so many other things we can play!”
Imagine Beethoven reanimated like Frankenstein, clawing his way out of his grave in Vienna, wiping the maggots from his hair, and after figuring out how to use a debit card he got off the first tourist he strangled, arriving like Lazarus to the steps of New York City's Lincoln Center and seeing that the evening’s musical program is … all Beethoven.
“Mein gott in himmel!” he bellows while shaking the dirt out of his ears. “Hasn’t ANYONE composed anything worth a damn since 1827?”
In this imagined world (the first one, not the one with an undead zombie Beethoven), with Beethoven’s music gone from the airwaves and the concert halls, do we then end up with a void? A hole that, if not filled, will tear apart the fabric of the musical universe and leave budding musicians without the necessary tools they need to make music?
Nah. I don’t think so. In fact, I wonder if we in the United States, at least when it comes to programming radio stations and concert seasons, place too much weight on music by what amounts to a handful of European composers who without the perpetuation of a hierarchical mythology — what composer Morton Feldman called “impregnable divinity” — are relatively minor figures when you consider the scope of music being made all over the planet.
In his 1964 essay “A Life Without Bach and Beethoven” Feldman writes,
Our idol-worshiping tradition is changing. Values and techniques established by a few godlike figures are now, even to a conservative temperament, less intimidating … there are so many composers, so many points of view, that those clinging to the traditional viewpoint are lost.”
Over four decades ago, long before the Internet age, Feldman surveyed the landscape and acknowledged an abundance of composers writing for so-called traditional classical ensembles, as well as tape, non-Western instruments, and, in the music of his friend John Cage, turntables, bowls of water, duck calls, etc. Imagine what he’d say now!
It’s not as if over time composing has become more lucrative as a career and yet there seem to be more people doing it now than ever before.
But I can’t forget that image of a reanimated Beethoven tearing his hair out on the steps of Lincoln Center. In a recent op-ed piece for the New York Times, composer conductor Rob Deemer writes,
One has to remember that composers are working in a field that emphasizes a limited and established repertory of historical works and in many areas lacks even the limited balance between old and new that the other arts are much better at promoting.”
There are a ton of great living composers among us. So why, in the 21st century, do musicians and audiences tolerate even the slightest hint of musical conservatism?
Thankfully, the composers I know, people who compose, improvise and/or use the recording studio to realize their music — I’ll deal with a more accurate definition of that word “composer” some other time — do not sit around wasting time griping about the omnipresence of Beethoven. They're too busy making music. And they maintain a level of optimism that can seem kind of cracked!
“Music is … in a healthy state for the future,” wrote composer Duke Ellington. “In spite of the fact that it may sound as though it is being held hostage.”
The defining quality of 21st century composers may be their ability to make things happen, born out of an impatience with waiting around for some kind of validation. DIY. Do it yourself. Everybody’s doin’ it.
There are a ton of great living composers among us. So why, in the 21st century, do musicians and audiences tolerate even the slightest hint of musical conservatism?
Last week I did the first of what is going to be a regular radio show airing from 5 to 7 p.m. last Thursday of every month on KTRU, the old Rice radio station that lives on the Internet and HD radio. On the show, composer pianist Hsin-Jung Tsai and I play some of our favorite pieces by contemporary composers and then chat about them on the air. Kind of like Coffee Talk but without the coffee. We need a name for the show by the way. Maybe Imagine There’s No Beethoven is appropriate?
On last week's show, we featured György Ligeti’s “Atmospheres” for orchestra, Paola Prestini’s “Inngerutit” (a title neither one of us could correctly pronounce) for clarinet, electronics and voice, Carl Stone’s “Mom’s” for computer electronics, and George Crumb’s “Ancient Voices of Children,” a powerful primal work for mezzo-soprano, boy soprano and ensemble. Hsin-Jung had the score for the Crumb piece in the studio.
After cueing up the Nonesuch recording which features an incredible performance by Jan DeGaeanti, we followed along, quickly becoming totally mesmerized by what we were hearing. It wasn’t an unfamiliar piece; we’d each heard it several times before. But there was something about the music and Crumb’s visually arresting score that, during the broadcast, was transporting.
Is Crumb’s music “better” than Beethoven’s or vice versa? That's the kind of question that leads you nowhere.
“Music is too personal a medium to support an absolute hierarchy of values,” writes music critic Alex Ross. “The best music is the music that persuades us that there is no other music in the world.”
Bach. Beethoven. Mozart. Repeat. Bach. Beethoven. Mozart. Repeat. For some reason, we here in the U.S. and much of Europe are stuck with these “godlike figures” for the foreseeable future. But then again, there’s a whole lotta music being composed right now at this very moment — while you are reading the end of this sentence. And you know what? A lot of it is damn good.
And I imagine Beethoven, wherever he is, would welcome even more opportunities for it to be played. I obviously can’t speak for the man, but I will go further and say that I believe Beethoven might even be willing to give up yet another performance of his Symphony No. 6 in order to make room for something new by a 21st century composer.
Like Chuck Berry, I don't mean any offense.
