Post-Classical Music and Joseph Horowitz (class visitor on Thursday)

Thursday, we'll be joined by Joseph Horwowitz.  You'll get the most out of the discussion if you are familiar with his main ideas and his accomplishments.  

Aside from being a brilliant thinker and concert organizer, Mr. Horowitz is a great example of a musical entrepreneur who has a "portfolio career."  I know him well enough to know he's more interested in big ideas and the history which illustrates them (and which those ideas explain) than he is in talking about himself.  I am, nevertheless, going to focus as much as possible of our discussion on his career, the qualities that have made him successful, and what he observes in others successful people.  

So, reading assignments:

1) Joseph Horowitz biography, on his website.  (You'll see it could use a little updating.  It's very long, but wade through the entire thing--what amazing things he has done.)

2) The Afterword to his book Classical Music in America.  I'll be adding more to point out key ideas as today goes on, but if you want to start reading it, here you go.

3) Mr. Horowitz's definition of "post-classical" music, which he provided for a symposium here at DePauw in 2007:

The 19th century Boston critic John Sullivan Dwight, who more than anyone else defined “classical music” for Americans, did so in juxtaposition with “popular music,” with the concomitant notion that classical music was supreme. (Dwight called Stephen Foster’s “Old Folks at Home” a “melodic itch.”) Dwight’s understanding of “classical music” illustrates why this term is poisonous today; it implicitly deprecates popular and indigenous music of every kind, Western and non-Western. We are challenged to find a term to replace it. For some time, I have opted for “post-classical” to designate a new and more variegated musical landscape into which classical music fits. I consider Philip Glass and Gidon Kremer “post-classical” musicians, and so are many others who matter nowadays. The term has been picked up with some alacrity by others.

4) For that same event, I wrote my own definition of "post-classical."  Here it is:

What is  the “post-classical” world, and why should music educators be interested in it? That’s a question more easily asked than answered,and one that the symposium will explore. 

A preliminary answer is that the “classical” paradigm is one which sees the Western art tradition as superior to others, while the emerging post-classicalworld is fundamentally multi-cultural, embracing non-Western and Western popular traditions to one extent or another. The classical paradigm emphasizes the performance of great works of the past, while the post-classical paradigm is centered in music of the present. The classical paradigm emphasizes acoustic, unamplified performances in traditional concert halls and opera houses; in the post-classical world, there is a growing use of amplification, multimedia presentations, and non-traditional (for classical music) performance venues. The classical tradition emphasizes the values of Werktreue (being true to the work) and Texttreue (being true to the text). The emerging post-classical world embraces improvisational elements (influenced by non-Western and Western popular musics) as well as performances of works in the classical canon that are freer interpretations and reinterpretations of those works than were often encouraged in earlier generations.

So, let's look at some key ideas:

• "Classical" music as understood in America was defined in many ways by what it was and is not: the increasingly popular forms of folk and commercial music, and non-Western music.  Classical music was seen as superior to other forms of music. Even people who didn't like it used to acknowledge that it was, at least in theory, better than the music they actually liked.   I've never seen anyone successfully define "classical music."  To some up, different from and better than other musics.  And I think the operating understanding of classical music is (my words) "the fully-notated art-music works of the common-practice period, those works that preceded them, and those which evolved in response to them while maintaining the notion of complete notation." 
• In the new "musical landscape," classical music "fits" into a wider picture.  It no longer dominates.  As a matter of fact, one of the challenges we face today is communicating the power and excitement of classical music. So many people think it's boring (and often we play it in a boring way).  
• That "wider landscape" includes all forms of popular, folk, and non-Western music. 
• Performances of classical music are being influenced by these other forms of music.

What neither Horowitz's definition above nor mine emphasizes is this:

• The distinctions between musical genres and musical cultures are evaporating; for many of the musicians, especially creative musicians, of the generation immediately preceding yours, they no longer make sense. This is illustrated quite well in the comments from John Adams on page 7 of the Horowitz Afterword. "I don't want to sound arrogant, but my intuition is that the really interesting young composers . . . are best when . . . they write for their own unique ensembles -- and these have more in common with alternative rock than they do with the European 'classical' tradition."
• During the 20th century, a classical-music industry developed.  For many reasons, including the fact that so many composers were writing in atonal styles that mass audiences resisted, that industry came to center on star performers, both conductors and soloists, who could be marketed like Hollywood stars and generate enormous revenue through radio (and then television) advertising, sales of recordings, and ticket sales.  What Horowitz calls a "culture of performance," rather than one of creation, developed in classical music.  In the 18th and 19th centuries, the great performers were also composers.  The star performer of (primarily dead) other people's music is a 20th-century phenomenon.
• In this new era, while a few of these classical-model performers are maintaining careers, the most successful young artists are again composer-performers, composer-arrangers, or performers working closely with composers and arrangers.  Going back to the future, we are once again in a culture of creation (in which older works have a role but less and less of a dominating one).