How Classical Music Fails
Last week, leading up to the 4th of July, Chicago’s only classical music station presented a week of American music. I was excited by this idea, since American music only makes “guest” appearances on the station - usually at odd hours or when some famous composer is having a birthday. I immediately began making an imaginary playlist in my head of what music I would put on the air if I had a week of airtime to fill.
While I admit, I couldn’t stay glued to my radio all day to monitor what all got played, when I did listen in I was slightly underwhelmed. As noted above, the station does make time for American music occasionally - that is, for about 20 pieces of American music, that it plays again and again. So when I heard Copland’s Appalachian Spring playing for the third time in the week, I felt slightly heart-sick that the station had defaulted to playing their usual 20 pieces over and over again. (I also heard lots of Gershwin, the Copland “cowboy” ballets, Samuel Barber’s greatest hits, and other works that I’ve come to expect when the station says “American music.”) I know, it wasn’t really all that simple: they played some Walter Piston and they played the Bill Schuman 6th Symphony, and a friend who gets up earlier than me said he heard the Copland Piano Variations at 4:30 a.m.
It was about at that point where I stopped feeling grateful for American music week, and started feeling pissed off. Why is it, here in the middle of the United States, that the local classical station needs to segregate American music to a single week of the year? Mahler’s 150th birthday dominated the airways for a month. They think nothing of giving a week or more to Beethoven’s birthday, or flooding the airways with Bach every March (oh hell, every month is Bach month on WFMT!). Why was there absolutely no attention given to the 100th birthday of the American composer Irving Fine? Not a single piece got played from that composer’s distinguished output.
I realized, while gnashing my teeth, that it’s really the entire field of so-called classical music that has failed. Failed to keep the phenomenon of art music relevant to people today. The Chicago Symphony and Lyric Opera are in mild panic over declining subscribers, as the very elderly patrons who have kept them in business die off. Yet they are unwilling to take the chance of playing any music that might be recognized by younger listeners as reflective of their lives and experiences. I have found, time and again, that my students respond better to 20th century and contemporary music than they do to the classics of the 18th and 19th century. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.
The visual arts have accepted that artistic endeavors in the 20th century are challenging, but need to be engaged. They have found ways to educate viewers about their challenges, and create discourse around them. Music has not done this. Music that is in any way challenging simply goes unheard - unperformed, unbroadcast, etc. When the CSO presented Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire a couple of years ago, all the publicity stressed its “revolutionary” character. This piece is over 100 years old! Yet it remains so unfamiliar to listeners that its challenges are as great today as they were when it was written.
Maybe I got roped off with WFMT because American music week came on the heels of the Bang On A Can Marathon, which was streamed live online this year from New York. Here was 12 hours of terrifically played new work, engaging, exciting, challenging at time, but very much work being made in the present. I was grateful to be able to listen in on these programs, because I know that I may not get a chance to hear those works played again any time soon. I sure won’t hear them on WFMT, that seems unwilling to admit that American music is still being written today, and maybe deserves more regular airtime than one week a year.
