Steven Stucky, Contemporary Music

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Steven Stucky, composer

Listening to Contemporary Music

by Steven Stucky

Keynote address, Florida State University New Music Festival, April 1993

Just for fun, I once counted up the number of 20th-century works in the subscription

programs of one of our major American symphony orchestras for one season. The re-

sults may surprise you. Forty percent of the pieces played that season were written

in the 20th century. That — at least from my point of view —is good news. But now

consider that only a quarter of these 20th-century works — not 40 percent of the sea-

son, only 10 percent — were by composers who were still alive. It seems clear that

the phrase “20th-century music,” which used to be synonymous with “avant-garde

stuff nobody likes,” has now caught up with us. The 20th century now stretches back

so far that much of its music has come to seem familiar, comfortable, and safe. Thusthe 40 percent of its season which our unnamed symphony orchestra devoted to this

century turned out to comprise mostly the tried and true: Mahler, Strauss, Sibelius,

Copland, Prokofiev, Bartók, Rachmaninov, Shostakovich.

Still, the 10 percent of the season occupied by really new music undoubtedly re-

mained a stumbling-block for many concertgoers. As a composer, I am often asked

two sorts of questions by members of the audience. One is both practical and aesthet-

ic: it goes something like “I don’t know how to listen to this kind of music. Can you

help” in the polite version (or, in the less polite version, “Do you really expect me to

listen to this garbage”). The other sort of question is, if you like, sociological: “Who is

the audience for your music? Whom are you addressing?”

Let me try to answer the second question first. In fact I was asked this question by

phone just last week by a writer for the Tallahassee Democrat. It seems an obvious,

honest, straightforward question. Assuming that a composer (or a painter, or a play-

wright, or a sculptor, or a novelist) creates because he wants to communicate some-

thing to others, who are those others? Who does the artist expect will understandand appreciate his work? Yet in so-called classical music these days, this is a painful-





ly sensitive question, and its answer is far from obvious. We know, for example, that

of all record sales in this country, 4 percent are of classical music. Out of 100 record

buyers, 96 don’t buy classical music. Is my audience, then, those lonely four who re-

main? Probably not. I’ll bet that three of those people are looking for their umpteenth

version of Vivaldi’s The Seasons, or completing their collection of Pavarotti’s greatest

high C’s. And so, clearly, from the point of view of market share, Greg Steinke and

Ladislav Kubik and I might as well not compose at all

But suppose I tried my best to capture that market share? To write music that would

hit those four listeners out of a hundred right where they live? Or to reach out and

grab a share of, say, the rock audience by “crossing over”? This seems to me a recipe

for disaster, or for kitsch, or both. Trying to imagine how other people will react to

music, and then tailoring your music to elicit these reactions, is equivalent to writing

advertising jingles. It may be honest work; it may even have some value to society;

but it’s not art, it’s business. (A recent counterexample should still be fresh in ourmemories. In many of the formerly Communist countries, officials spent 30 years

pressuring composers to write music aimed deliberately at the common man, tunes

that could be readily understood by every factory worker. The results were disas-

trous. We would do well to keep that experiment in mind.)

Compare the situation in literature. We accept that the authors of supermarket ro-

mances, for example, think hard about their audience and hew religiously to the for-

mulas already proven to satisfy that audience. We don’t ask the same of Thomas

Pynchon or Toni Morrison or Salman Rushdie; we respect them enough to concedethat the audience will have to meet them half-way. One is business, the other art.

And yet, more and more, one has the feeling that composers are expected to adopt

some easy populism to win back an audience they have supposedly alienated.

It sounds pretentious, I know, but the fact is that a composer’s duty is not to any par-

ticular listener or any particular imagined audience; a composer’s duty is to the work

itself. A composer has to remember that a true work of art is rich, multifaceted, and

challenging. Its aim is not popularity, its aim is truth. It doesn’t give up all its secrets

at first hearing, because it’s built to last: designed not merely to charm at first hear-ing, but to withstand the test of fifty hearings. The bodice-ripper you buy at the

checkout stand is good for (at most) one reading; James Joyce’s Ulysses is good for

dozens (indeed, it may actually require dozens). There’s the difference: one is busi-

ness, the other art. Beethoven, you remember, sneered at the notion that he should

consider the limitations of his listeners — or even his performers. He was rude,

nasty, and arrogant. But do you suppose that if he had been less arrogant, if he had

aimed lower, his symphonies would have been rich enough, compelling enough still

to thrill us 200 years later? I would never dare compare my music to Beethoven’s. (Isaid once that I belong to that great throng of composers who spend their whole





lives trying to be almost as good as Massenet.) Yet, to be worth his salt, any compos-

er has to aim as high as Beethoven.

Who is my audience, then? The practical answer is: an audience of one listener, my-

self. Only if I write music that makes my blood race, that makes the hair on the back

of my neck stand up, do I have any hope of writing something truthful enough to

have the same effect on another listener. I can only hope that this approach will putme in touch with a slightly larger audience: those who love the great tradition of

Bach, Mozart, Schumann, Debussy, Bartók, and who are willing not merely to sit

back passively and let music wash over them like some mood-altering drug, but to

work hard enough to meet the composer half-way.

By the way, this doesn’t apply only to new music. Far from it! At a preconcert talk in

Los Angeles a few years ago, an audience member asked me: “I come to the sympho-

ny to relax. Why are you doing this to me?” And I answered, as gently as could, that

he had come to the wrong place. Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony is not for relaxing;

neither — despite its glaring difference in quality — is my music.

Let’s go back now to the first question. Assuming the best will in the world, how do

you get the most out of listening to unfamiliar new music? Let me offer five short

pieces of advice: (1) don’t expect the wrong things; (2) be prepared for discontinuity;

(3) don’t try too hard; (4) expect new instruments, new sounds, and new influences

from other cultures; and (5) give yourself permission to dislike what you hear.

1. Don’t expect the wrong things. The music of the traditional Bach-to-Brahms reper-

toire operates with familiar elements: major and minor keys; motifs, melodies, and

themes; chord progressions; familiar forms like sonata or rondo; ways of playing in-

struments and using sounds that we have learned to recognize. One of the ways in

which contemporary music often differs is that any or all of these familiar elements

may be missing, or may be turned to radically different purposes. Adams may use

familiar chords in unexpected contexts. Or Ligeti may pile melody upon melody un-

til they are all submerged in a bundle of sound. Or, in place of the contrast between

two memorable themes — a principle we depend on heavily, even if subconsciously,when listening to Classical and Romantic forms — Penderecki or Xenakis may sub-

stitute the contrast of memorable sound-colors or sound-textures. To listen to these

sorts of music using the old mental and aural categories can be frustrating, even infu-

riating — like looking at an abstract painting by Jackson Pollock as if it were sup-

posed to be a figurative painting by Andrew Wyeth. Let each new piece you en-

counter set its own agenda, create its own frame of reference, define its own terms.

Check all your preconceptions at the door; they’ll only slow you down.

2. Be prepared for discontinuity. Traditional modes of continuity — how one getssmoothly from one musical event to the next, and how these events are made to





seem to belong together — are largely a thing of the past. Many composers have

adopted new techniques deriving from the dominant new artistic medium of our

century, the film. Thus, instead of orderly, sectional Classical schemes linked by

smooth transitions, we might hear instead dissolves, jump cuts, flashbacks. (In mu-

sic, these techniques are at least as old as Stravinsky, but we are still getting used to

them.) Instead of the predictable return of ideas we have already heard, we might

hear instead a stream-of-consciousness narrative. (In music, this idea goes back at

least as far as Debussy’s Jeux, but, again, we are still adjusting.) Be prepared for these

20th-century styles of musical narrative.

3. Don’t try too hard to”understand.” Lots of contemporary music is composed using

elaborate, esoteric techniques. But so were Bach’s Musical Offering, Mozart’s Jupiter

Symphony, Brahms’s Haydn Variations. All these works move us deeply, but not be-

cause we are following the composer’s every machination. When we are thrilled by a

brilliant piece of architecture, it’s not because we know how to calculate the structur-al loading or even because we understand the first thing about what makes buildings

stand up. In just the same way, if you have ever seen and heard a production of

Berg’sopera Wozzeck, you know that it is not necessary to understand Berg’s enor-

mously rigorous and sophisticated structural schemes to respond directly, emotion-

ally to the music’s passion, its tragedy, and its voluptuous sound.

The poet T.S. Eliot, 60 years ago, described the same dilemma in his essay “Difficult

Poetry.” Readers, he wrote, often suffer a kind of stage fright, afraid they will not be

equal to the challenge of something new and strange. Eliot admitted that very oftenhe didn’t “get it” either. Certainly I often feel baffled by a new piece, as perhaps some

of you feel. Let me make a suggestion: In place of anxiety over your skills as a listen-

er, focus on the delicious excitement of facing new music absolutely, bracingly alone:

without historians or critics or traditions to tell you what to think, free to form your

own spontaneous impressions — like a listener in 1830 hearing Berlioz’ Symphonie

fantastique for the first time, or in 1893 Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, or

Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in 1913, or Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra in 1944. In this

frame of mind, what can be more exhilarating than hearing a new piece for the very

first time! “Understanding” (whatever that is) can come later.

4. Expect new instruments, new ways of playing and singing, and influences from other cul-

tures. Throughout the development of Western concert music, composers have rest-

lessly expanded their resources by borrowing instruments and ways of thinking

from outside their own tradition. In Mozart and Beethoven’s time, composers im-

ported outlandish instruments like the bass drum, cymbals, and triangle from Turk-

ish military bands into the European orchestra. Debussy’s generation discovered the

music of the Javanese gamelan and was deeply changed by the encounter. AaronCopland’s and William Schuman’s infatuation with 1920s jazz was essential to the





music they created. Today, John Adams’s music would be very different if you sub-

tracted his love for the big bands of the 1940s; Steve Reich’s music would be impossi-

ble without the inspiration of West African drumming; György Ligeti depends heav-

ily on the music of the Shona people of Zimbabwe. Thus, when you hear tonight Mr.

Kubik’s piece for 1 flute and 10 percussionists, or Mr. Lubet’s music performed by

members of several different ethnic ensembles, or Mr. Steinke’s allusions to the Japa-

nese and Native American cultures, you will be hearing the continuation of a very

long and very honorable tradition in Western art music.

5. And finally, give yourself permission to dislike what you hear. If all your best efforts fail,

nobody says you have to like every new piece you hear. One of my favorite moments

happened a few years back after a concert. A line of people came backstage to shake

my hand and tell me they enjoyed my piece in the usual way. But then a large man

came up to me, smiled, extended his hand, and said cordially, “I really hated your

piece.” That man meant more to me than all the rest, because — instead of telling mepolitely that it was “very interesting,” or more likely just going home mad without

saying anything — he took his own reactions seriously enough to seek me out polite-

ly and talk about them.

Give yourself permission to dislike what you hear. But please — don’t explain your

dislike by claiming that “it isn’t music.” History is strewn with rash talk about what

is and isn’t music: even Beethoven was regularly declared an antimusical lunatic by

critics hearing his radical new symphonies for the first time. The boundaries of music

have been expanding for centuries, and, inexorably, they will continue to widen. Butsince Mahler, Bartók, and Shostakovich have already become accessible (at least to

our beloved 4% market share), perhaps someday soon the composers whose music

we are about to hear will be too. We owe it to ourselves to hope for — no, to work for

that day.

© Steven Stucky

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