I’m going to level with you all. I was never able to get into late 20th century music. I loved the pop music, sure. But no matter how hard I tried to find a home, musically and emotionally, in the “classical” works composed during my own lifetime, I seemed to fail over and over, falling back always into the earlier part of the century. I loved Prokofiev, Ravel—composers from my century, indeed, but also composers from before my time.
But things have finally changed. After years of feeling like I was just never going to connect as strongly with composers of my own era, I’ve begun to fall in love with music of the 21st century. Perhaps it’s the abandonment of relentless atonality or the more diverse landscape, but these days, when I click to listen to something written within the last 20 years, more often than not, I’m swept away.
That’s what happened when I first heard this recording of Caleb Burhans’s Contritus, played here by the incomparable JACK Quartet. This piece is a soundtrack for the mind—each moment feeling like a direct readout of my inner world. It’s a bit more peaceful than the inner world I’m experiencing through 2020, and perhaps that’s why it’s resonating so deeply for me just at the moment. I hope it can bring you a bit of peace today, too.
More to come tomorrow from our editor-in-chief as Random Contemporary Music wraps up for the week! - Melinda Beasi
