About twentieth century classical music

I have been reading Alex Ross’ best-selling book about twentieth century classical music “The Rest is Noise”.

Some may think that twentieth century and classical are contradictory terms. What we mean by “classical music” is music that has been written down by a composer in the most minute detail, so generally not improvised, and intended for listening to in the concert hall in respectful silence: serious music as an art form in other words.

(See also About classical music)

I have read the individual chapters of “the Rest is Noise” while listening to the music described in them insofar as I have recordings of the works in my vast CD collection (now nearing 2000). It has been a useful opportunity to rediscover some stuff I’d forgotten I owned, which I acquired many years ago during earlier bouts of exploration of the 20thC repertoire. I actually have quite a large number of CDs of music from the first half of the 20thC. I think a lot of very fine classical music was written during those decades and it doesn’t get performed as much as it ought to.

What I like about Ross’ book is that he has no axe to grind and he is enthusiastic about some of my own favourite composers. He seeks to give an account of all classical music in the 20thC. Inevitably, he admits, he can’t be exhaustive, but he attempts to cover the many often contradictory trends and the more famous composers and their works, putting them in historical context and providing some technical analysis. He wants to stimulate an interest and curiosity. He certainly got me digging out some pieces I hadn’t listened to in a long time.

One reason I started to read the book is that we had recently seen Strauss’ “Salome” at the opera and this is the work Ross takes as the starting point of the “modern” in 1905. Of course this is something of a literary device to start his book with, a big bang of a “succès de scandale”. Strauss’ opera on its opening caused a big stir in the musical world with ts discordant orchestration and its racy subject matter. The plot has Salome failing to seduce John the Baptist then in revenge incestuously inciting Herod to have his head cut off so she can kiss it. For the time the scoring was as outrageous as the story. Of course, Ross once he gets going is quick to point out that the modern had been gradually emerging over the previous decade through the works of composers like Debussy. Strauss himself after a relatively brief experimental period lapsed back into his natural idiom of the lush post-romantic, writing “der Rosenkavalier” which is heavily influenced by the Viennese waltz only two operas later in 1911. The other main character in Ross’ first chapter, Mahler, is also essentially a late romantic rather than a modern. Moderns and late romantics co-existed at the start of the 20thC not unlike how impressionists co-existed with academic painters in late 19thC France.

However such labels, though convenient, are inaccurate. If one thing is true about the 20thC it is that composers are much more individual than in previous centuries in their expression and less tied to convention, notwithstanding their following certain fashions. The greatest follower of different trends was of course Stravinsky, who not unlike another long lived prolific artist of the 20thC, Picasso, went through a whole series of different periods, while retaining his characteristic bold melodic and rhythmic signature. Stravinsky produced a scattered handful of masterpieces beginning with the “Rite of Spring” but also many other works I enjoy less. He was lionized in exile in France and the United States to an extent that made him a household name (as in the one name the man in the street will give you if you ask him “name a 20thC composer”) thereby putting in the shade many other 20thC composers who are equally noteworthy.

Oddly enough living down the street from him in exile in Hollywood was the other composer frequently billed as the grand old man of 20thC classical music, Arnold Schoenberg. In my opinion, Schoenberg has an awful lot to answer for. I like his late romantic “Verklârte Nacht” (Transfirured night) which he wrote in his 20s in 1899 for string sextet and later orchestrated. Then at the start of the 20thC he spent a lot of time writing the rather overblown Wagnerian sprawl of “Gurre-Lieder” a kind of cantata for huge orchestra and voices. That’s one of the few CDs I actually got rid of (I’d bought it 2nd hand from the record library) after listening to it in concert I decided I didn’t really want to hear it ever again. If I thought that was bad, then Schoenberg got worse by becoming “modern”. He rejected the tyranny of writing in a specific key, that is he became atonal. Still later he decided to give each of the twelve notes in the scale a democratically equal chance (dodecaphony, serialism). As you can see his was a purely intellectual approach. He spent a lot of time theorizing and teaching and then put his theories into practice, sometimes rather mechanistically. The result, most of the time is unlistenable, and believe me I have tried to give him a fair hearing. In fact that was his aim, he wanted to prove his intellectual and moral superiority, he was not in the business of trying to please the audience. If by chance he wrote something that went down well with the public, he felt he had somehow got it wrong.

This actually led to a huge schism in 20thC music between those composers writing mainly still tonal music with recognizable tunes seeking to communicate with audiences and the moderns who thought that the former had “sold out” and the only valid form of serious musical expression was to be progressive, to break with all tradition and to make strictly no concessions to the listener. That dichotomy between die-hard high-brow moderns and crowd-pleasing low-brow composers still exists today. I have sat bemused through many a first performance of deadly earnest, rather ugly and totally forgettable music, which I can confidently predict will be consigned to oblivion. There’s an annual festival of this stuff in Brussels called Ars Musica” which I call the “Arse Music” festival as it sounds like so much farting. There are occasional flashes of beauty but largely this music is an assault on your ears and patience. I’m sure nobody genuinely likes it, it just gives you intellectual street cred to claim you do. I’m going to one of the concerts in the series tomorrow, I’ll let you know how I get along.

Still on the subject of modern compositional techniques let me say that I find serialism a strange idea. In its extreme form, writing a line using all twelve notes only once is a much more tightly constrained convention than anything to be found in say 18thC classical music and as such is creatively quite sterile. If you think about it, all the great tunes in Western music are based on a repetition of notes. Take the opening of Beethoven’s 5th symphony: three notes are repeated and then followed by a lower fourth one. Most melodies give you that feeling of completeness and logic you get from passing through the same point again in a slightly different way. So in not repeating notes you run the risk of not writing a tune, only a scramble. Still, occasionally it comes out all right despite itself.

Doggedly modern classical music is the equivalent of abstraction in painting, which I also have little time for. In my humble view, a good painting contains a recognizable image and a good piece of music contains a recognizable tune. (As indeed a good novel contains an interesting story). Scattering notes or scattering blobs of paint apparently randomly, or possibly according to fixed patterns, demonstrates technique but communicates nothing - apart perhaps from a growing feeling of irritation and alienation. It’s all form and no content. “Formalism” by the way was the charge the Soviet establishment unfairly laid against Shostakovich when he became too modern for their taste. Again, music written this way may occasionally come out all right and you can say “that’s an attractive sound or texture” but it doesn’t actually go anywhere.

Some writers of the history of 20thC classical music focus only on the modern, concentrating on Schoenberg and the experimental modernists who followed him, while conveniently ignoring most of the rest, in what they regard as a logical progression. Fortunately “the Rest is noise” is not like that and gives space to everyone. The point is that the 20thC is a rather messy co-existence of different kinds and styles of music, reacting to and against each other, feeding off each other and off many outside influences.

The first half of the 20thC was particularly fertile in this respect and produced many fabulous works. I see the following main strands in what was going on, alongside the modern already discussed. Secondly, there were the late romantics who still went on doing what they had always done, thereby providing seamless continuity with the late 19thC. Most of Elgar and Rachmaninov’s ouput is in the 20thC. Both Mahler and Strauss are largely working in the late romantic idiom of open-ended structures with thick orchestration and long drawn out melodic lines. Thirdly there was the neo-classical reaction to that, returning to shorter classical forms, lighter clearer orchestration and jauntier tunes. Prokofiev’s first symphony is the “classical” example and as an aesthetic neo-classicism informed many lighter pieces by other composers even if they were formally not so tight. Fourthly there was a desire to draw on outside influences, different rhythms and modes found in rediscovered folk music and jazz. This was ethnic input in the broadest sense rather than academic tradition. For the folk we have the Stravinsky of the “Rite of Spring”, Bartok and Janacek, for the jazz Milhaud, Gershwin and Weill as examples.

However, any composer worth his salt dabbied in everything and this is certainly the case with the big three Russians, Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Stravinsky, who for me are major figures in the 20thC repertoire. They took what best suited them from all of these strands and used it at any given moment to produce a given effect, indeed on occasion thriving on juxtaposition. It is this cross-fertilization of different styles and influences that makes classical music from the first decades of the 20thC so exciting and ground-breaking while still being accessible and enjoyable; in short, fun.

From the second half of the 20thC fewer works are represented in my CD collection, and are mainly accounted for by Shostakovich and Britten. For me Shostakovich is the greatest 20thC composer given his breadth of range and depth of emotion and thought. He was a musical genius, a superb orchestrator, a turner of a catchy tune and a master of form. He was capable of conveying by turns the horror of the century in which he lived, sardonic humour and heartfelt human suffering. He was a complex character who chose to compromise with the Soviet régime in order to stay alive in his own country and to be able keep on composing for performance. As a composer he found a kindred spirit in Britten whom he met on several occasions in Russia and England thanks to their mutual friend the cellist Rostropovich, for whom they both composed. Britten had an unerring feeling for the dramatic gesture and is strikingly original in his vocal lines, often written with his lifetime partner Peter Pears in mind.

From the last quarter of the 20thC, after the deaths of Shostakovich and Britten, post 1976, there is hardly anything in my collection apart from the odd bit of Pärt, Tavener and late Tippett. I’ve tried sampling various composers active in the period but they don’t really do it for me. On the one hand there seem to be atonal experimentalists who are just not pleasant to listen to and at the other extreme tonal minimalists who keep on repeating lines gradually changing one note at a time in a way that is just boring, unless you happen to be in a drug induced secondary state. There doesn’t really seem to be much in between. Anyway, Ross has given me a few new names which I shall try out.

So which 20thC pieces do I enjoy listening to ?

I shall make two lists. The first is of operas I have enjoyed at the opera house, theatre or cinema (you’ll see why I add that qualification as the blurring of genres is a constant in 20thC classical music).

1900 Puccini Tosca

1902 Debussy Pelléas et Mélisande

1904 Janacek Jenufa

1905 Strauss Salome

1911 Strauss der Rosenkavalier

1926 Berg Wozzeck

1928 Weill die Dreigroschenoper (Threepenny opera)

1934 Shostakovich Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

1945 Britten Peter Grimes

1957 Bernstein West Side Story

Tosca is a bit of a cheat as it was first performed at the start of 1900 and therefore written before; however, most of Puccini’s operas were written in the 20thC and Tosca is his best. Strauss is in there twice not because I think he’s the best but because the two works are utterly different representing two distinct trends in 20thC music. The four greatest and most performed 20thC composers of operas remain Puccini, Janacek, Strauss and Britten. (See also About opera)

I make no apologies for West Side Story; the tunes are totally memorable and the orchestration brilliant, quite modern in its dissonance.

The next list is rather of pieces I listen to in my living room and kitchen and have not necessarily ever heard performed live, though I’d like to. This is not intended aa a list of the greatest non-operatic works of the 20thC or of significant historic milestones. It is an honest list of CDs I actually play regularly for pleasure, recordings of music that happens to have been written in the 20thC. You may find you know a lot of these pieces without having necessarily thought of them as 20thC classical music. You will probably also find my taste very conventional. Many of these pieces I have known and loved for decades as many other music-lovers and concert-goers have too. My whole point in writing this is to argue that the best of 20thC classical music is not just for pretentious nerds but is genuinely enjoyable for the cultivated masses.

1901 Rachmaninov Piano concerto 2

1904 Mahler Kindertotenlieder

1908 Debussy Images for orchestra

1908 Ives Unanswered question

1910 Debussy Preludes book 1, for piano

1910 Ravel Pavane (orchestra version)

1912 Prokofiev Piano concerto 1

1913 Stravinsky Rite of Spring

1914 Holst Planets

1915 Sibelius Symphony 5

1916 Debussy Sonata for flute viola and harp

1917 Prokofiev Symphony 1 “Classical”

1919 Elgar Cello concerto

1920 Vaughan Williams The Lark ascending

1920 Milhaud Le Boeuf sur le toit

1924 Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue

1924 Shostakovich Symphony 1

1926 Janacek Sinfonietta

1931 Ravel Piano concerto in G

1933 Shostakovich Piano concerto 1 with trumpet

1934 Prokofiev Lieutenant Kijé suite

1936 Barber Adagio for strings

1936 Bartok Music for strings, percussion + celesta

1936 Orff Carmina Burana

1937 Shostakovich Symphony 5

1938 Stravinsky Concerto “Dumbarton Oaks”

1939 Rodrigo Concierto de Aranjuez

1940 Prokofiev Piano sonata 6

1943 Britten Serenade for tenor, horn and strings

1944 Copland Appalachian Spring

1944 Prokofiev Symphony 5

1945 Strauss Metamorphosen

1945 Villa Lobos Bachianana brasiliera 5

1946 Stravinsky Concerto for strings (Basel)

1948 Messiaen Turangalila

1948 Shostakovich Violin concerto 1

1948 Strauss Vier letzte Lieder (4 last songs)

1959 Britten Nocturne

1960 Shostakovich String quartet 8

1969 Shostakovich Symphony 14

1977 Pärt Tabula rasa

1987 Tavener Protecting veil

1991 Messiaen Eclairs sur l'au-delà

This week, exceptionally, I have been to the Bozar to listen to two concerts of 20thC classical music.

On Sunday I saw Valery Gergiev and the Concertgebouw Orchestra in a programme of music from 1903 to 1965. First they played Dutilleux: “Métaboles” which I had never heard, I would describe it as a bit like West Side Story without the tunes. Then there was Leonidas Kavakos in Sibelius: Violin concerto, which I don’t know well. The solo playing was fantastic and the piece typical of Sibelius in the way it built up gradually to climaxes. The main attraction for me was Prokofiev: Symphony 5 which I know well. Gergiev is always superb in the Russian repertoire. He brought electrifying clarity to the many-layered finale. The hall was packed and enthusiastic.

Yesterday I saw the famous modern Ensemble Intercontemporain from Paris who were to have been conducted by their founder Pierre Boulez, but George Benjamin came instead. The hall was less than half full and subdued. They played two pieces by composers I’d never even heard of, Donatoni: Tema and Borowski: Second (a brand new work with the composer in attendance), then Boulez: Eclat/Multiples and Schoenberg: Suite. This was me subjecting myself to the modern in a spirit of discovery. True to form the three pieces in the first half were atonal and tuneless, the main interest being unusual combinations of instruments producing curious sounds eg piano, celesta, xylophones, tubular bells, harp, guitar, mandolin, massed violas, assorted brass and woodwind. I found the Boulez more interesting and got into the first part “Eclat” being literally splinters of sound, but the second part “Multiples” went on for too long before stopping abruptly. I read afterwards that it is one of his famous “works in progress” and gets longer as the years go by. Oddly enough after all that the Schoenberg in the second half seemed like light relief. Everything is relative, I suppose. The Suite is for three strings, three clarinets and a piano. Written in 1926 it still has a clear structure, feet-tapping rhythms and recognizable patterns of notes (sort of distorted tunes); it’s strange but enjoyable.

So there you are, I went out with an open mind and open ears to listen to a lot of pieces I didn’t know and found as usual that I get on better with music from the first half of the 20thC, even old Schoenberg !

Listening to twentieth century classical music doesn’t have to be about making an effort though, there are plenty of pieces, especially from its first fifty years, which are for everyone simply to enjoy.