So, classical music...

[mrph]

...new classical music. Opinions?

I skimmed an interesting piece in the latest Gramophone magazine, which commented that there's no 'hook' that can be used to get new work into the mainstream - I think they namechecked the Turner Prize as an equivalent hook for modern art, but I don't have the relevant piece to hand.

There's a bit of my brain that thinks the sort of people who appreciated, say, Tarmvred (to pick a not-so random interesting experimental electronic act) at Infest, are also vaguely likely to appreciate a modern classical composer like Tüür... but I'm not sure that's actually true. Hmm.

May need to think on this a little more, but comments are welcome...

Edit: Well, ok, John Adams is on MySpace. That was a pleasant surprise.

Edit2: ...and so are the Kronos Quartet, among others (...and I hadn't realised they'd been busy remixing NIN. I guess that's a decent hook, hmm? :)

Comments

[cyberinsekt.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that's true either.

It would be good to think that the audience for experimental electronica is interested enough in exploring new musics to approach contemporary classical with open ears, but I'm not sure it would happen. Take the case of Frank Zappa. He was a musician who had much the same kind of audience - people interested in defiantly leftfield popular music. Yet when he started to write orchestral music, how much of that audience came along with him? How much of that audience would investigate his modernist influences and start listening to Varese and Boulez? I'd guess not many.

My hunch is that the key obstacle is the instruments being used. Tell people about the Kronos Quartet and the radical sounds they make, and chances are that it will be heard as "radical, for a string quartet". How do you get past Vivaldi?

But there are hooks out there. Tell Sonic Youth fans that Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo both have both played in Glenn Branca's works composed for orchestras composed almost entirely of electric guitars, and you've got a much better chance. I think you can also pull people who admire bands such as Current 93 towards some of the folkloric/shamanistic compositions of Veljo Tormis. John Zorn's fifth string quartet is just waiting for dedicated and curious new listeners: not only is it not called a string quartet, but it's called Necronomicon. That all three of these are esoteric, either explicitly or implicitly, may be a coincidence, or it may not. I do think there is an audience out there that is looking for hidden music, but it may not be an audience that Gramophone understands.