EXPANDING HORIZONS
Bernard Holland was scheduled to participate in PMP’s spring 2007 panel discussion, Meet the Press: Journalists on Music (see pages 50 and 51 for coverage), but was unable to attend at the last minute. Below are some reflections offered in absentia.
New Frontiers in Music: Japanese Instruments in New Music
Thoughts
by Peter Burwasser
The central subject explored in the PMP symposium “Traditional Japanese Instruments in New Music” is not a new one. There has been a delicate and beautiful dance going on between the musical cultures of Asia and the West for well over a century, jumpstarted, legendarily, with the Paris Exposition of 1889, when Debussy was first exposed to the gamelan. We are now at a point, as was revealed in musical examples and insightful comments by bass clarinetist/composer Gene Coleman, where the influences have become circular. Westerners such as Ravel, Messaien and Cage have produced Asian inspired work that, in turn, inspired contemporary composers in Japan to create a new synthesis. It was Cage who encouraged the late Japanese master Toru Takemitsu to bring traditional instruments into his works. Coleman’s own work takes yet another turn around the circle. Coleman was joined by two musical guests, Ko Ishikawa, who plays the sho, and Ryuko Mizutani, on koto. These are beautiful handmade instruments of ancient origin. The sho, a bamboo mouth organ consisting of bundled pipes of different sizes, was probably a novelty for most of the well informed audience. The sound Ishikawa produced during his demonstration was extraordinarily detailed and richly toned. The koto, a stringed instrument of the zither family, might have seemed somewhat less exotic. Mizutani’s playing showed off a surprisingly gutsy sound, almost vocal, with seemingly infinite harmonic variation PMP 50
via micro tonality. All three musicians were brought together under the auspices of an NEA sponsored organization called the JapanUS Friendship Commission, when Coleman visited Japan as one of their musical guests in 2001. They have recently been reunited by the Argosy Foundation and Soundfield, Coleman’s presenting organization. Coleman describes his challenge in a way that directs him to new ways of imagining music. He has wondered “how to bring disparate elements together.” The divide, in many ways, remains wide. For example, western technology has strongly influenced instrumental development here. He cites the saxophone as an example of factory derived technology. Japanese wind instruments, which he also writes for, are essentially unchanged in 1,000 years. One of the pieces he played selections from is a work scored for saxophone quartet, three Japanese wind instruments, and electronics. This could be a recipe for senseless cacophony. Coleman simply avoids the potential, perhaps inevitable conflicts between harmony and scale construction. “My approach is to work with noise.” The ingenious structure of the music starts the players on an even ground, with no discernable cultural guideposts, just unpitched noise. Pitched tones then emerge from the soundscape, and then it all reverses back into a pitchless world. Improvisation is included in the mix, but within the context of the composer’s larger architecture. Musicians are allowed, even encouraged to
contribute culture-specific sounds, especially during improvisatory sections. Electrification, computer assistance and video are all an important part of the overall construction. Coleman’s music is a kind of blueprint for what he calls “global exchange.” His guests are “the people you can work with. There is an openness, a willingness to step outside of tradition. This is the basis for new language.” Certainly, when Ishikawa and Mizutani play, there is an immediate sense of possibilities; the sound is vibrant, even wildly beautiful, while at once hewed to a traditional way of making music. What emerges is something new; it sounds like they are stretching well beyond their traditional background. Coleman’s vision, it would seem, is that these disciples of ancient tradition will interact with Westerners of relative artistic daring to point towards a fresh synthesis. The event included frequent question and answer sessions, which included exchanges that must have gladdened Coleman’s heart. The audience was filled with composers and musicians who immediately latched onto the broader implications for his cross-cultural ideas. One man heard echoes of African music in what he heard, another questioner wondered about attaching an electronic distortion pedal to the koto (a handful of players do use electronics). It reflects a natural vision of music without borders.
Sorry to have missed your event but let me add a few thoughts from a distance and after the fact. Classical music has classical music as its own worst enemy—to begin with, how it presents itself. Old folks still love the ritual—people sitting in the dark, musicians onstage wearing funny suits, listeners clapping at the right time and keeping quiet otherwise. Young folks find this ridiculous, and there are a lot more young folks listening to music and increasingly fewer old ones. Through the Internet, videos and the like, the music business is looking for alternative formats with urgency if not desperation. It’s good to hear a string quartet in a Williamsburg saloon or Schoenberg in the round at an ex-synagogue on the Lower East Side. Indeed, lines of communication are being looked for and occasionally established. The Cleveland Orchestra, losing its subscription base at home, is trolling for an audience in Florida. Has it a choice? But dated mannerisms are a side issue. The larger questions are what classical music thinks of the public and what the public thinks of it. Don’t assume, as many do, that classical music cannot sell its products because of uneducated listeners. Audiences 200 years ago didn’t go to hear old music; they expected premieres. This generation is the same: Brahms is not about their lives. It’s a hard sell. And what about today’s Brahmses? They may be around but their attitudes are bad. When composers abandon and estrange their audience as so many in the 20th century did, they can’t convincingly claim ignorance and cultural deficiency as reasons for their unloved state. Those in the music business who roll their eyes at the “short attention spans” of current youth are perhaps shifting the blame from their own inability to hold that attention. Give the public something good, give it a little time and the public will respond. Exposure? By all means. Listen, listen, listen. Education? I wonder. To educate, to make people “understand,” implies a superior educator and an unwashed audience in need of soap and water. If I intellectually know more about it, I’ll like it better. If I can parse sonata form or see how tone rows work, my heart will open. Truly interested listeners have been swindled out of honest reactions to music they don’t like for fear that they don’t “understand” it. You don’t understand an oak tree; you just like to sit under it. Haydn waited before writing his “London” symphonies so that he could learn what English audiences wanted. Giving the audience what it wants has always resulted in very little that approaches these amazing pieces. On the other hand,
on Classical Music by Bernard Holland
classical music that does not address head-on the needs of the public will continue to shrivel up and die. Britten’s statement that “After Beethoven came the rot” examines the harm to music done by images of lonely, misunderstood creators writing for posterity. “Art for art’s sake” implies that an ignorant present will give way to an enlightened future. Schoenberg’s String Trio is brilliant music, but after 62 years does anyone really like it? The great puzzle to me is how we are somehow going to preserve the Schubert G-Major Piano Sonata from extinction and yet admit that classical music doesn’t work anymore. German musicology has told us that only music with sophisticated structure can be great, but I ask you this question: which has had the more profound impact on world culture—Wolfgang Rihm or “Jailhouse Rock?” Music is not going to survive by asking the public to come to it. It, like the Cleveland Orchestra, is going to have to go out and find the public. Bernard Holland was educated at the University of Virginia, the Vienna Academy of Music, and The Paris Conservatory. He came to The New York Times in 1981 where he has served both as chief and national music critic.
Page 48, left to right: Ryuko Mizutani Ko Ishikawa Gene Coleman The sho, a traditional Japanese instrument The koto, a traditional Japanese instrument
PMP 51