A Postmodern Convergence
(Note: This essay was originally part of a term paper written
for Robert Morgan's "Concert Music Since 1970" class in
spring 2002. Some material in this essay was reprinted in my File
Under: Ambiguous column for the November 2004 NewMusicBox.)
Much has been made of the “postmodern” age of music
and its potential to break down longstanding boundaries between
high art and low art. With a classical music struggling to regain
its audience, and greater access to music education and technological
sophistication becoming available to popular musicians, conditions
at the turn of the millennium seem ripe for a rapprochement between
these two tradition-streams of music. Yet the marketing categories
of “classical” and “pop/rock” persist, and
serve to divide most artists decisively, if sometimes arbitrarily,
into one camp or the other. Despite a radical increase in communication
between art music and popular music in the past century, as manifested
through such practices as quotation, sampling, and generalized influence,
a true fusion has yet to be realized on a large scale. In the vast
majority of cases, a well-trained listener will have no problems
identifying the primary genre (i.e., classical or not-classical)
of a piece or song based on its sonic content alone. However, a
small number of musicians are actively attempting to subvert these
boundaries to the greatest extent possible, and their numbers are
slowly growing. In addition to providing a brief history of the
classical/popular divide, I will attempt to demarcate fully the
boundaries that have separated and still separate the two worlds.
The beginning of the 20th century marked a turning point for the
twin spheres of art music and popular music. The advent of recording
technology ushered in major changes in the way that people listened
to music. Up until this time, most popular and folk music was inherently
ephemeral in nature: tunes were learned and sung by heart, with
only a relatively small body of work committed to paper. Songs were
for the most part transmitted orally, if at all. Classical music,
on the other hand, made use of the written score, which would serve
as the definitive document for each piece. The existence of such
a definitive document, clearly specifying every note and detail
of the music to be performed, encouraged classical composers to
see their endeavors as an artistic enterprise, and to strive for
perfection in the recreation of their music. Furthermore, composers
of popular songs usually did not attach their names to their creations,
and thus their identities have all too often been lost to posterity.
The widespread availability of recording technology (and, to a lesser
extent, the sheet music revolution which had occurred several decades
earlier) changed the face of popular music forever. Now, the recording
itself could constitute a definitive document of a piece of music,
allowing the consumer to experience the music directly instead of
having to recreate it him/herself. Additionally, all recordings
were published with the name of the performer (and composer, if
applicable), thus introducing popular music “personalities”
into the currents of Western culture for the first time. Lastly,
and most importantly, there were no longer geographical or temporal
restrictions on who got to hear what music—for the first time
in history, people could have comparable listening experiences at
different times and in different places from each other. In this
way, popular music finally caught up to classical music (which had
been using sheet music for this purpose for centuries), paving the
way for a canon of popular music to take its place alongside
its well-established classical counterpart.
This development had important ramifications for the future of
popular music, as well as for our present discussion. Musicians
soon realized that instead of the local bugle band across town,
they were now competing against the entire repertoire of recorded
music, and that “being the best” was taking on entirely
new meaning. The concept of a “recording artist” began
to take shape, and professional musicians, whether motivated by
fame, riches or genuine artistic impulse, began trying to create
music that would last long beyond the moment of performance.
The decade of the 1960s brought about a sea change in the world
of art music, and an even more radical transformation of popular
music. Communication between the two traditions reached unprecedented
levels. Rock groups such as the Beatles came into contact with the
likes of Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage, while the Velvet Underground
found themselves only one degree of separation away from La Monte
Young through violist/composer John Cale, who was a member of the
band in its first incarnation. Minimalists Terry Riley, Philip Glass
and Steve Reich were among the most prominent composers to form
their own performing ensembles, which were often amplified to extreme
volumes. This new method of live performance drew many comparisons
to the rock band aesthetic, comparisons that were complemented by
the music’s simplified style and relative accessibility. The
period from 1965-1975 witnessed a number of explicit crossover attempts,
primarily originating in the popular music sphere. Frank Zappa gained
the most notoriety with his Varèse-influenced orchestral
pieces (e.g., Lumpy Gravy), but even the Beatles got into
the act with their avant-garde sound collage “Revolution No.
9.” In the early 1970s, the “art-rock” movement
tried to bring classical elements into a rock ‘n’ roll
context, though for the most part these musicians drew their inspiration
from pre-20th-century Romantic art music. As production technology
advanced, a wholly electronic popular music genre finally arose
in the 1980s in the guise of techno. A number of interactions between
minimalism, avant-garde electronic and tape music, computer music,
and Brian Eno’s ambient music now became possible, and techno
artists wasted little time in bringing these elements together via
sampling technology. Some of the most prominent electronica pioneers
of the past twenty years have cited the minimalism of Philip Glass
and Steve Reich as seminal influences. Meanwhile, as popular music
has slowly gained legitimacy within the academic community, the
number of university composers who actively seek to fuse the two
traditions has grown. Even prestigious ensembles such as the Kronos
Quartet have embraced the raw energy and sex appeal of rock music
(most famously in their transcription of Jimi Hendrix's "Star-Spangled
Banner").
Now that we find ourselves at the turn of the 21st century, there
is no doubt that the aesthetics of popular music have infiltrated
the world of art music to an impressive degree. However, it is important
to realize that the avant-garde’s influence on popular music,
though real, remains scattered. Despite the radical increase in
the level of communication and reference across boundaries that
has taken place in the last 40 years, this activity has been, for
the most part, confined to the fringes. The mainstreams of the two
traditions remain solidly separate and easily distinguishable from
one another, even today. The next section will enumerate some of
the stylistic tropes that have served to differentiate art music
and popular music from each other over the years, along with exceptions
from the recent past.
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Writings
Createquity
Brother,
Can You Spare $500: A Guide to Individual Fundraising for Composers
File
Under: Ambiguous
A Postmodern Convergence (1,
2, 3,
4, 5)
Relevant Links and Resources
ArtsJournal:
Critical Conversation
ArtsJournal:
PostClassic
ArtsJournal:
Sandow
beepSNORT
The
Fredösphere
Hertz-Lion
Yields
NetNewMusic
NewFrontEars
NewMusicBox
(guitar
issue, rock
issue 1, rock
issue 2)
Sequenza21
The Rest
is Noise
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