Will classical music be the new rock’n'roll? Martin Kettle, upon reading a new book by South African scholar Peter Van der Merwe, seems to think it just might be.
But at the moment, it’s very much in the doldrums. In the 18th, 19th and into the early 20th centuries, classical music was the most significant music in western culture. But somewhere in the middle of the 20th century, classical music took a dramatic wrong turning:
At the start of the 21st century, we can see what went wrong more clearly. What went wrong was western European modernism. Modernism is a huge, varied and complex phenomenon, and it took on different qualities in different national cultures. But an essential feature, especially as Van der Merwe argues it, was to turn music decisively towards theory – often political theory – and away from its popular roots.
The pioneer figure was Arnold Schoenberg, with his theory of the emancipation of dissonance (which, as Van der Merwe cleverly points out, also implied the suppression of consonance). But it was after Schoenberg’s death, in the period 1955-80, that his ideas achieved the status of holy writ.
The upshot was a deliberate renunciation of popularity. The audience that mattered to modernists (even the many who saw themselves as socialists) ceased to be the general public and increasingly became other composers and the intellectual, often university-based, establishment that claimed to validate the new music, not least through its influence over state patronage. Any failure of the music to become popular was ascribed not to the composer’s lack of communication but the public’s lack of understanding.
Into the void came first Jazz, then Rock, which gave the public what they were no longer getting from classical music. The sorts of people who might been writing symphonies and operas had they been born a century earlier instead gave us some of the rock canon of the past half-century.
But now modernism shows signs of dying out, perhaps allowing a new generation of composers who’s music can resonate with the general public. Perhaps now the time is right?
Classical music’s second coming, if it is to have one, could hardly be better timed. The popular music that once filled the place it vacated seems in turn to have largely burned itself out. Here, too, creativity is at its lowest ebb since the early 50s. The space awaiting good new music of any kind is immense.
As a rock fan, I find I have to reluctantly agree with that paragraph; Rock no longer seems to be doing anything new, and is reduced to endlessly cannibalising it’s own past. While a lot of good music is still being released, it’s no longer evolving or progressing; I haven’t heard anything much in the past few years that could not have been released two decades earlier. The British scene in particular has become extremely hidebound and conservative, a complete contrast to the heady days of the 70s and 80s.
What will happen in music in the next fifty years is probably anyone’s guess.
Update: The Ministry of Information has some thoughts on the matter.
It’s very true that if one looks at the particularly creative bands of that period, namely prog/art rock and neo-prog, they are extremely stale now – that’s the very reason I loathe them. However, that only means it’s the wrong place to look for creativity, not that such creativity is absent everywhere.
Contemporary ‘rock’ music is evolving and progressing, but one has to step away from the tired rehashing of ‘classic’ and neo-prog – I’m not sure Tim meant to say so, but I agree that that branch is dead.
I wasn’t so much thinking of the neo-prog bands, most of whom don’t try to pretend that they’re doing anything new, and have just as much right to exist as trad jazz or rockabilly. And I love IQ’s last album.
I was thinking more of the post-Britpop indie-rock which has effectively become what passes for mainstream rock nowadays, which I believe has now become very boring. So much of it is locked into the four-chord verse-chorus-verse-chorus format with an occasional strummy middle eight that doesn’t quite have the guts to be a proper solo. This might be acceptable if they could come up with some memorable melodies, but many of them are pretty tuneless as well. Indie fans will probably accuse me of missing the point, and insist that the important thing about these bands is the lyrics rather than the ploddingly uninteresting music.
