The Air from Other Planets: How Much Is Too Much?

P  enderecki, that reliable old post-Schoenberg standby, evoking buzzing bees in the basement. I did not really like these pieces, but I would put them on every few months to see if the bizarre might one day morph into the familiar. I’ve been doing that for forty years now, and the compositions continue to sound harsh, unpleasant, gloomy, post-nuclear. It is not the composers’ fault that they wrote uncompromising music that was a direct response to the violence and stupidity of the 20^th Century. But it is not my fault that I would rather listen to Bach. That is my way of responding to violence and stupidity.”
  —  Joe Queenan, ‘Admit It! You’re As Bored As I Am’, The Guardian, 09-JUL-2008, Arts, p. 24.

The afternoon and evening programming at the recent West Cork Chamber Music Festival in Bantry, Ireland, was initially a delight. I crave new music—even pieces that are hard to warm up to, hard to comprehend—and the program for this Festival was notable for the sheer number of recent compositions on the docket.


But 5 consecutive days into the Festival, I had reached the point of saturation. All of the inharmonic sawings and screechings from countless viols; all of the gnashings that can be elicited by knocking the bow against the bodies or tailpieces of violins; all of the scrapings of piano strings with coins and other hardware and bangings of keyboards with fists; all of the noteless, tempoless, ad hoc, arbitrary scratchings of nebulous pitch-envelope “suggestions” on the music staves—all of these eventually became too much for me.


I am pretty sure I was not alone. The majority of the audiences at Bantry were conservative, middle-aged people, hoping and praying for some Baroque or Classical relief. Some people annoyedly folded and refolded their programs; others stared listlessly at their shoes through entire pieces. The performance of Schoenberg’s ‘Pierrot Lunaire’ which ran 35 minutes past the scheduled time was something of a ‘last straw’ in terms of trying the audience’s (and other ensembles’) patience.

While I very much admire Francis Humphry’s bravery and enthusiasm (and while I will gladly return to the West Cork Chamber Music Festival in future years), I do hope that future years’ Bantry programming will be devised so as to have more genre variation within-program, so as not to exceed so many audience-members’ appetites for new music.

With his setting of Stefan George’s poem “Ich fühle Luft von anderem Planeten” (‘I feel the air of another planet’) in the Second String Quartet, Op. 10 (1908), Arnold Schoenberg launched us into space, into new acoustical, mostly-musical realms. We continue on extra-terrestrial musical journeys because we want to, even to this day.

But the fact is, the amount of publicly offered music often has little relation to the quality of that music, let alone to the quality of the context in which it is presented. The quality of the context—and by this, I mean programming—is a crucial factor in the reception of any kind of repertoire. Programming (Irish: eagraithe) is a form of composing. The word ‘compose’ literally means ‘to put together’. I suggest that good programming consummates the composing process by arranging the elements so that they reinforce instead of oppose or beleaguer each other, preferably reinforcing in a way that’s conducive to reassessing and calibrating and illuminating—for us listeners, and for the performers. That way, each new piece is given a fair chance at a favorable reception. Ideally, a programmer/presenter is open to anything that leads to intriguing combinations. Ideally, a programmer/presenter aims to present the listener with ‘Happy New Ears!’, as John Cage calls them.

Healthy ‘fish’ (audience members; musicians) swim against the stream, but not obsessively or to the point of starvation. Healthy presenters do not program streams (Irish: an liosta casaidh) that torrentially roar down miles and miles of steep mountain slopes, in which even hardy fish cannot thrive.

• West Cork Music Festival
  
• Radio Television Éirann RTÉ
  
• Contemporary Music Centre Ireland
  
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