By Dominic Marcella

It’s hard to know what to make of post-modern music. Sometimes, one might wonder if it is music at all.

There is no clear-cut definition of music – musicians, philosophers, and scientists have been arguing about it for years. But why bother? In an ideal world, everyone would simply listen to whatever he or she enjoys, regardless of what it is called or how it is classified. Unfortunately, this isn’t an ideal world (obviously), and I believe that certain pervasive misconceptions about the role of music have been leading, and continue to lead today, to a decline in the quality of contemporary composition.

Now, I’m not audacious enough to posit a comprehensive definition of “music”, but I will submit that it must have certain qualities. The first quality is intentional organization. Whether one is listening to tonal, atonal, pantonal, or even chance music (chance music still requires someone to choose the context and a mode of interpreting and organizing the notes), it has been, in some way, structured by a human mind. Other requisite qualities are more obvious, and include rhythm, timbre, and dynamics.

Another thing to consider is that music is interactive. It is not inherently so – I can go play an instrument alone in my room for hours devoid of any human interaction – but any form of music that requires more than one person to be played or is performed for an audience is. Now, the purpose of any interactive music is, on the most basic level, to stimulate the listener.

Based on the previous suppositions, all sound can be organized into three very broad categories: successful music, unsuccessful music, and non-music. The difference between successful and unsuccessful music is the degree of stimulation experienced by the listener. Music can be considered successful when the listeners are emotionally “moved”. I say “emotionally moved” because, as Balzac so wisely put it, “The heart must be within the domain of the head.” Feelings are a mental process, and the act of feeling presupposes mental activity. A piece that requires more mental activity is that much more successful. As humans have proved over the years, intellectual stimulation is essential to being, yet, at the core of music is the aesthetic principal, and this cannot be ignored.

Successful music appeals not merely to a part of one, but to one’s entire being. Music that has only cerebral appeal is not successful. Its aesthetics – the way it sounds – not merely the nature of its sonic organization is important. Successful music can be beautiful, ugly, graceful, brutal, or anything in between, but it must appeal to our (figurative) hearts. Arnold Schoenberg understood the importance of balance in music:

It is not the heart alone which creates all that is beautiful, emotional, pathetic, affectionate, and charming; nor is it the brain alone which is able to produce the well-constructed, the soundly organized, the logical, and the complicated. First, everything of supreme value in art must show heart as well as brain. Second, the real creative genius has no difficulty in controlling his feelings mentally; nor must the brain produce only the dry and unappealing while concentrating on correctness and logic.

To assume that one is more valuable than the other is dangerous; one risks limiting the amount of stimulation and consequent pleasure a piece of music can provide. Similarly, to assume that one is easier than the other is equally foolish; a dry, brainy dodecaphonic piece is often easier to compose than an emotionally charged romantic symphony. (A brainy yet emotionally charged dodecaphonic piece, on the other hand, is quite a marvelous thing.)

In order to help illustrate this point, I will provide links to two examples of unsuccessful music. The first has been created with insufficient intellectual activity. The result is deplorable. It is an improvisation performed by Bruce Coates and Han-Earl Park; have a listen:

The musicians thought only about the feelings they wished to convey. They did not think about sonic structure and how they could organize sound to elicit an emotional response. The result is interesting, but not moving. I would not go so far as to say that it has no value, but its value is not musical. It is interesting much the same way in which two children poking each other with sticks is interesting (that is, merely as a quasi-fascinating interaction between two people).

The second example is a piece entitled “Imaginary Landscape No. 1” by John Cage. Cage employed an interesting strategy in composing this piece, emphasizing rhythmic structure. It is interesting, clever, and well-thought out, but by no means moving.

“Imaginary Landscape No. 1” works better as a sonic experiment than a musical composition, and in that respect, it is successful. Cage is showing his audience different ways that sound can be organized, and is encouraging them to think about the effects this organization has on human perception. He has taught audiences to reconsider cultural notions of the relationships between sound and music. In “4’33” (a piece in three movements that is essentially four minutes and 33 seconds of the performers not playing their instruments), the performance becomes about the ambient noise audiences overlook or intentionally tune out.

Cage is more concerned with making a point than composing successful music as I have defined it. The question, then, and here is the crux of the matter, is who cares if I consider his “music” successful or not? In an ideal world, absolutely no one would or should care about how I classify his work. The problem is that many, many contemporary composers prescribe to a ridiculous notion of musical evolution. They see what people like John Cage are have done and believe that it is modern music, and so they emulate, try to improve upon, and take inspiration from it, while largely ignoring the compositional systems and modes of the past.

This is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. Their work still has value, but most people don’t go to see a performance of Cage’s work for the same reason they would go to see one of Beethoven’s. Many post-modern composers refuse, whether from pretentiousness, fear of seeming “backwards”, or a ridiculous desire to be modern, to compose with all of the tools available to them.

Igor Stravinsky’s three famous ballets, The Firebird, Petrushka, and Rite of Spring are excellent examples of successful, modern music. They have both emotional and intellectual appeal, and are limited only by their aesthetic considerations. In The Firebird, for instance, Stravinsky uses polyrhythm extensively, and though there is relatively little melodic movement, the ballet is indisputably moving. In Petrushka, Stravinsky makes clever use of bitonality, and in Rite of Spring there are even atonal sections.

Stravinsky was intelligent, inventive, and courageous. He was not afraid to break from tradition, nor was he afraid to embrace it. He was willing to use any means necessary to create the desired sound. This should be the attitude of all contemporary composers. Only then will their work truly be the result of unbridled human expression and not of a method, trend, or imagined obligation.