Two essays – published in German October 2023 / Keynote »Serie Future« April 28th 2024
» Paul Griffiths | » John Link | » Kenneth Baird
Wunsch-Konzert, 15. Oktober, 2033
Under the heading ‘… amúgy játszunk’, a memorial concert is about to begin in the main auditorium of the Karl Marx World Arts Center, Beijing. A whole section of the audience space has been reserved for the composers whose music will be played. Helmut Lachenmann, nearing the age of ninety-eight, is probably the oldest present. Others of his generation are represented by sheets of glass placed on their seats, showing them, by way of the worldwide mirror web, at home and waiting now, as we are, for the event to start.
Nobody knows how long it will go on. The hundred and six composers invited to contribute were asked to each send something for a solo performer lasting precisely a hundred and six seconds, for it was at the age of a hundred and six—indeed, on his hundred and sixth birthday—that György Kurtág had left this world. The planners have also built into the schedule breaks of a hundred and six seconds between pieces, again precisely, the audience being asked to maintain strict silence during these breaks. There will be no other intervals.
The original expectation, therefore, was that the concert would run for six hours, twelve minutes and forty-six seconds. However, there are composers who, though not among those invited, have sent in pieces to the organising committee, who, so it is said, have accepted any that fulfilled the requirement of playing for a hundred and six seconds precisely. This much was generally known, but nobody knew—perhaps not even the committee members themselves—just how many of these items have been added to the schedule. In the new post-2031 world, the imperatives of equality and those of discernment are still fighting it out.
There is some unease in the audience as it begins to take its seats, along with the inevitable excitement aroused by the prospect of encountering new pieces by—besides Lachenmann—Rendão, Vascos, Naidoo, Saunders, Shchelmikova, Li, Lang (but which one?), Avoka, Momitsu, Balogh, Lubako, Giuranti, Reiss, Reich, and so many more, Everyone in the audience, chosen at random, is aware of the responsibility they have taken on, to remember as much as they can of this extraordinary event and convey it back to people around the world waiting in their streets and villages. Since the abandonment of electronic devices, powers of memory have notably sharpened generally.
Nobody knows what to expect. The programme gives the composers’ names, but these do not indicate too much. Many of them stand for consortia, whose members will be involved to varying extents (if at all) in any particular project. There is also the practice whereby a composer will write something in the manner of another composer and issue the piece under his or her name. Even where the piece is indeed written by the person stated, nothing, of course, may be assumed, since the new aesthetic dispensation has proved for all artists not a restriction but an embrace, enabling them to find possibilities they had not anticipated.
One name, though, is missing. Isabelle Faust comes on to the platform to widespread expressions of surprise and strong approval, which then give way to sprinklings of laughter and applause as she begins to play a favourite piece by the late master being honoured.
Of course. This is how it has to begin.
Paul Griffiths
Back to the Future
One way to imagine a concert in 2033 is to remember what we imagined ten years ago about a concert today. Oddly enough, concert life in 2023, as we emerge from the COVID pandemic, is beginning to seem a lot like it did in 2013. There is a wider range of venues now, to compliment a dizzying blur of styles, but even with all of our new technologies we still hear pianos and violins and trombones and clarinets sounding better than ever, and in spite of Zoom and streaming, the desire to be physically present where the music is being made has survived the pandemic stronger than ever. In our darkest hours I’m not sure we believed it would, but it turns out that we thrive in each other’s company. How could we ever have doubted it?
We hear from a more diverse array of voices now, as the field belatedly realizes how many striking pieces by talented (but not white and male) composers were not so much rejected as never considered for a place on the program. We are paying better attention now to whom we pay attention (and why!) and that is all to the good. Yet we should be circumspect about our virtuousness. When a (white, male) interviewer lamented having to speak of “a black writer” or “a woman writer” instead of just “a writer,” Toni Morrison reminded him “You brought it up.”
Unfortunately the welcome diversification of concert music has come at a time when its social value, and consequently its public support, is in steep decline. Music is patronage art and producing it – for an audience anyway – requires access to capital. Now that the aristocrats of capitalism have abandoned even the pretense of noblesse oblige, and the political right has embraced a particularly cynical and dangerous brand of anti-intellectualism, the only funding model left standing (or maybe teetering) is music as a consumer product. It has its advantages. For those blessed with charisma as well as talent there are audiences to be found, and in a democratic society, why shouldn’t the circulation of art, like policy, be subject to debate in the public square? But, as we’ve rediscovered all too impetuously in the last decade, snake oil can be sold on the open market as readily and as profitably as good medicine, and the social value of music is always difficult to measure, even if somehow we can agree on what constitutes a quality product.
Plato worried about music’s power to change society. It gets into the souls of young people and young people like to stir things up, especially when their provocations cause consternation among the ranks of the formerly young. As the formerly young Elliott Carter said at the tender age of 101, “Things change, and it’s a good thing too!” How would Carter, who died in 2012, have anticipated 2033 (or 2023 for that matter)? I have no idea. But he believed in music as a force for social cohesion and when it came to supporting it, he put his money where his mouth was in more ways than one. I think it’s a safe bet that he would have been optimistic.
Although I have many apprehensions about the future of humanity, I have none whatsoever about the future of music. If we can survive, it will survive. What I look forward to most in 2033 (beyond living to see it!) is a new generation of composers, performers, and listeners who recognize that music’s possibilities are not bound by the values of the moment, however noble they may seem. Music is hard on purists. At its best it takes what we thought were our most firmly held beliefs and turns them sideways. As composers we should be wary of holding on too firmly. We have to be brave enough to take risks (and do so in public) yet humble enough to take advantage of the footholds that the shoulders of giants provide. And if we are honest, we will admit that when we are alone in our studios, with the dead looking over our shoulders, no amount of entrepreneurship can help us answer the only questions that really matter.
John Link
composer and writer
April, 2023
Hannover Talk
In 1959, Ernest Fleischmann travelled from South Africa to become the Manager of the London Symphony Orchestra. A decade later, he would begin a thirty-year journey taking the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra into the first division of American orchestras.
At around the time of Fleischmann’s arrival, Universal Edition Vienna appointed a delightful Anglo-Irishman as its London agent - Bill Colleran. As you might expect, Bill visited Fleischmann quite frequently. On each visit, he would present scores of a couple of Mahler symphonies. After a few visits by Bill, Fleischmann’s patience wore thin.
“Mr Colleran you’re wasting your time: you’re wasting my time. This Orchestra will never play a symphony by Mahler!” Such are the dangers of predicting future repertoire.
It is a great pleasure to be back in Hannover - I was last here for EXPO 2000 when the European Opera Centre performed to represent the European Union - but I am cautious of the Fleischmann trap in answering the question Stephan has put to us. I am also wary - given the respective histories in music of Germany and the UK - of appearing to come here with all the answers. So I thought instead I’d think across the arts in case there are examples we can draw on this afternoon.
Certainly in the UK interest in the contemporary arts is cyclical. In the 1950s the vogue was experimental theatre, centred around Beckett and especially Waiting for Godot. In the late 1960s Boulez attracted sold-out houses at the Proms with contemporary repertoire - notably works by Stockhausen. In the same decade - and I find this almost unbelievable - Allen Ginsburg and the beat poets filled the Royal Albert Hall - 7,000 seats - for a poetry reading: I understand people were turned away. In the 1980s, the yuppies who grew out of the deregulation of the City of London brought a boom in opera sales.
But I’d like to tell you particularly about the year of the millennium. In that year, the Tate group of galleries moved part of its collection from the north bank of the Thames to a redundant electricity generating station on the south bank of the river. The building had been beautifully converted by Swiss architects. The collection covered similar ground to what you might expect in a contemporary music concert - the more challenging pieces from the twentieth century and recently produced work. It became Tate Modern.
The opening of Tate Modern attracted a sizeable amount of media coverage, not least because the new footbridge from the north side of the river to the gallery wobbled until it was adjusted by its designers Arup. But the attendance figures exceeded all expectations. I thought rather cynically that people were going to see the building. So I decided to go, not to look at the building or the collection, but at the people.
I was quite wrong about the motivation of those attending. People were really engaging with some quite difficult work: they were striving to understand what artists were telling them about life in the 20th century. Substantial amounts of time were being spent by people in each gallery - all of which were thematic rather than chronological. More than 5 million people visited Tate Modern in its first year and it has maintained its place in the world’s ten most visited art galleries since. It continues to attract more than double the attendance of the more traditional Tate collection which includes many Constables and Turners, among immediately appealing work.
You’ll be pleased to know that the London Symphony Orchestra did eventually play a symphony by Mahler. In fact, the orchestra had given the first UK performance of the second symphony under Bruno Walter in 1931. But it was Claudio Abbado’s arrival as the orchestra’s music director that helped turn Mahler into the most popular symphonist you could present in a London concert hall. In 1985, Abbado directed an ambitious festival in London centred on the recently opened Barbican Hall. “Mahler, Vienna and the Twentieth Century” gave all Mahler’s symphonies and songs. It highlighted Mahler’s influence on the second Viennese school and the bridge between Mahler and the Viennese school and contemporary work. Britten and Shostakovich were presented as composers directly influenced by Mahler. But so were some of those influenced by the Viennese school - Ligeti, Boulez, Berio, Birtwistle, Rihm, Nono, Ferneyhough, Maderna. Abbado wanted to impart as much understanding as he could of life in Vienna at the start of the twentieth century and the legacy created.
So as well as music - including opera and cabaret - there were talks, films, exhibitions of the fine and applied arts, and theatre performances. You could learn about the decline of the Habsburgs, the development of Freud’s theories, see work by Klimt, Schiele and Kokoschka and design generated by the Wiener Werkstätte, experience the play which inspired Wozzeck and learn about architectural practice of the day.
Beginning to answer Stephan’s question, I have total confidence that live performance will continue to be at centre of music presentation in ten years’ time. After all, live concert-giving has survived the arrival of records, cassettes, DVDs, downloads, streaming, radio and television. I would like to think that the growing use of technology will not only allow increasingly vivid dissemination, but will enable people to draw on a wealth of supporting ancillary material.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, certainly in London, there was an assumption that most concert-goers could read music. Programme notes were invariably analytical; the stave would be printed neatly in the programme, showing the first subject, second subject, start of the development and so on. I’d like to think we’ll move as far away from that approach as we can, allowing a wide range of people including performers and composers to talk about work broadly and with reference to the other arts and to events. In other words, mirroring a little of what Abbado did in the 1980s.
I know from my visit to Tate Modern in 2000 - and indeed from joint research with the BBC when I worked for the Arts Council of Great Britain - that most people want to expand and develop their taste, and to understand what today’s creative artists are saying. The contemporary arts can be more popular than the historic arts, and appeal to a wider range of people. So I think we should approach the next decade with confidence. There is much which is quite clearly in our favour. But we should think more about how to surround live events with material which can assist and support, and how to present this. And we should perhaps keep in the back of our minds as an ambition, 7,000 people attending a live poetry reading.
Kenneth Baird
Hannover April 2024
