On Repeat
Classical music has a repetition problem, and I'm not just referring to those pesky expositional repeats. There is a large list of composers to draw from when programming, and each name has a mountain of repertoire to choose from. For example, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, even Wagner, whose music has long dominated orchestral repertoire, and whose lifetimes each serve as their own epoch in the history of music, each have of epic list of music that has long been the golden standard of our genre. But I would argue that playing their music season after season and making recording after recording with their names on the cover is actually causing lasting damage to our industry.
I have long been aware of my preference for the new. Not necessarily modern repertoire — although I do have a strong affinity for music written in the last 100 years — moreover simply music that I have not encountered before. Rare is the album that I listen to on repeat. The most exciting music I listen to is something that I've never heard or something that I haven't heard in a long time - a rediscovery if you will. And I find that classical music in particular best lends itself to fresh ears. The few albums or songs I do listen to on repeat are from my favorite pop or jazz artists, like Paul Simon, Ella Fitzgerald, Brad Mehldau, or The Beths. But classical music is the exception where I always crave to find the next twist on an idea, the next sub-genre, or the next element of surprise.
My theory is that this is because much of the genre is built on the idea of creating a pattern and then surprising the listener by breaking that pattern in an interesting way. Once you've seen the thread unravel, you can never hear the piece the same way again. Not to say there isn't a strong case for replayability within the genre! Some works are so full of riveting twists and turns that they can be heard a hundred times and the listener will most likely catch something new. This is how many of the great composers like Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, etc. have remained popular over the centuries — their work is strewn with these moments of revelation.
It's akin to when a movie has an amazing series of plot twists, and then you feel the need to go back and watch again to pick up more details and set-ups that you may have missed the first time. Even though there is more to find in the plot, once you know the twists of the movie they will never truly be a surprise again. That's how I feel about revisiting a Beethoven symphony for the 12th or 15th time. At this point, I know exactly the outline of the last movement of Beethoven's 9th symphony. I know where Beethoven wants us to think the climax is, where it actually is, and where he soothes us into a lull to then build the excitement back up. There are infinite details to be enjoyed in the work, and different performances will undoubtedly bring different insights to the forefront, but the major moments are going to remain essentially the same.
The great irony of this problem is that many of the composers that we play on repeat became popular out of obscurity. Mendelssohn began programming the music of J.S. Bach and made him famous. Bernstein programmed the music of Gustav Mahler to great success, and now his name can be found on nearly every orchestral season in the world. The most recent examples of this can be found in the music of Florence Price and Joseph Bologne de Saint-Georges, two composers that are currently emerging from obscurity and will very likely remain in the zeitgeist for a very long time.
All of these composers are well-deserving of their place in the canon, but I would argue the repetition of music over time, at a certain point, takes away the music's ingenuity through over-familiarization. Classical music thrives on the new. Many performers and orchestras recognize this, as the word "premiere" gets thrown onto programs at every possible chance. Not just "World Premiere," but also phrases like "West Coast Premiere," "New York Premiere," "US Premiere," "North American Premiere," etc. are saturating concert programs.
We should do away with the over-saturation of this term and start making it normal for these programs to be made up of works previously unheard by the audience. And I am not just advocating for lots of new compositions, although that is a piece of this puzzle. There are innumerous composers from which to choose thousands of compositions for any combination of instruments or voices imaginable. This art form has proven itself to be capable of infinite growth, and with an increase in globalization and world-wide internet usage, we now have more access than ever to music from around the world.
The biggest reason that new is not the norm is that there is a quality control issue when it comes to unheard scores. Many of those "premieres" don't end up being of the same quality as Beethoven's 9th Symphony, nor should we expect them to be. Not every movie can be held to the same standard as 2001 Space Odyssey or Titanic or my favorite movie, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and even some of the greatest movies of all time (like the three mentioned above) cannot really compare to each other. They're different, and that's a good thing. That is where our enjoyment of them comes from. But the reality is that some movies are terrible, and some pieces are terrible. Meanwhile, If you are sitting in a concert hall and hear a piece of music that isn't clicking with you, you're stuck with committing your time to hear that piece at least once. It's not like an art museum where your eye can simply draw you to what you find most subjectively attractive or interesting.
So how do we successfully transform concert experiences into discovery experiences without sacrificing quality experiences? Two ideas come immediately to mind:
Improve at conveying what kind of experience the listener should expect, realistically, via social media and other media outlets. Bite-sized clips of popular and Indie music on TikTok and Instagram have proven to be the most useful tools at the moment for helping audiences find the music they are most drawn to, including things they've never heard before or wouldn't have otherwise been exposed to. The same could be true of classical repertoire. Unfortunately, 90% of the classical music clips I come across on such sights are Vivaldi's "Summer," which does little good to diversify the genre and is in fact holding it back.
For the sake of Quality Control, we need better vetting of unheard scores, new music in particular. This means emphasizing education in score reading at music schools so the people choosing this repertoire are better equipped to look at a score and know what it will sound like and if it's reasonably playable. Score reading should not be a skill exclusive to conductors. Oftentimes, the individual commissioning new works is the artistic director rather than the music director, and more often than not that person attended music school majoring in performance in a particular instrument, or sometimes even in arts administration. All of these fields should require experience looking at unfamiliar scores and finding their flaws and strengths.
There is so much great music in the world, and there is so much very bad music in the world, but the existence of the latter should not be an excuse to not enjoy and explore the full breadth this great genre has to offer. The works that have become so-called "standard repertoire" can easily serve as a bouncing-off point and at once a point of reference. They have and continue to familiarize our ears with certain basic ideas of what we can do within the genre, but if we do not as an industry expand our product and as consumers expand our tastes, the canon will only serve to limit our understanding of this art that we love. While I understand the industry-wide instinct to always want to put our best foot forward and present “masterworks,” the reality is that the best concert we can give is one that helps the audience discover and explore, both the music we present and how it can affect the emotions and perspectives of our audience, and to truly affect change in people, shouldn’t we avoid playing them a song they already know?
P