Music and Culture - John Mitchell, New Classical Music

Critics are the flies that buzz around the corpse of classical music.

Friday, June 15, 2007

(from a conversation)

Emily Brontë didn't read the Bhagavad Gita--she played the piano in church and listened to her father's sermons. Wuthering Heights is her story of how evil comes into the world.

Heathcliff is not a romantic hero, he's the personification of evil. When he comes back to England he's had his teeth filed to points--that's not romantic.

Sunday, November 5, 2006

I've been listening to the music of several 20th century composers since early in the year, including that of my teacher John Vincent (1902-1977) and three unknown contemporary composers: Alexander Feht, Rich Caruso and Julian Rasmussen. I began months ago with the piano music of Scriabin, went to the symphonies of Vaughan-Williams, then Barber's Essays for Orchestra, and am now listening to the orchestral and chamber music of Hindemith.

Hindemith believed in something he called "co-creation"--that is, the auditors should be able to write the music along with the composer as they are listening to it--with them, of course, a basically subconscious process. He strove for this connection all his life.

Before this year I had not listened for many, many years to much classical music (except for the operas I had to study in the 90s). I preferred hard rock or heavy metal--but last year this attraction ended with "American Idiot" by Green Day--such truth in a title!

Unlike Hindemith, I don't really believe in the importance of classical music as a surviving art form. This music may have symbolically died with the death of Shostakovitch in 1975. But there was still life in the early 60s, as witness two examples: Britten's War Requiem and Barber's Piano Concerto.

The world is changing, and new and varied forms of expression will gradually enter our lives. They will not necessarily be known as "cutting edge" or "hip"--but will creep up on humanity almost unbidden. We will all participate in them. The evolutionary capacity of small, specialized groups will wane.

Thursday, September 7, 2006

There is also in the last few years what seems to be a new trend toward a simplified neo-classicism, with the apparent goal of getting back to the real strengths of classical music. Some composers recommended here are Rich Caruso, Stefania de Kenessey, Alexander Feht, Julian Rasmussen and Fernando Esteban.

Friday, July 9, 2004

So-called "high culture" (with emphasis on the quotation marks, and the word so-called), since the start of the spread of minimalism in the late 1970's (that great palliative meant to lessen the suffering of the dying patient) has been flailing about desperately trying to latch on to some kernel of life along the 360-degree circumference of the circle of creativity--occasionally touching one, probably by accident. However, culture in this century and those to come will have no "high" or "low". The ever-increasing power of the core of humanity (as opposed to the present surface manifestations) will hold sway over our music. Popular genres since the 1950's that have become universal are a foreshadowing of this core influence.

John Mitchell
Los Angeles, California
Saturday, March 16, 2002