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Music, politics and the future
by Tommy Fowler
Tommy Fowler's work has been performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the Hilliard Ensemble. Ensemble Bash premiered his Palmas Rojas (for four percussionists with no instruments) at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh. Lullaby was broadcast on Classic FM from Liverpool Cathedral by the Ferguson Ensemble who commissioned the work. A piece for solo cello, Ainekset, was premiered by Louise Paterson of the Vienna Conservatoire. He is working on his first opera as well as a new piece for the Paragon Ensemble, Scotland.
One difficulty in coming to conclusions about contemporary music is the apparent diversity that most musicologists seize on as a basic characteristic. However, contemporary music is not only united by technical features but also by a cluster of cultural meanings.
Connect music with the struggle of the individual consciousness in the face of violent attack; central to European culture for the previous three or four hundred years. Of music's role in the cultural network one can neither say that it reflects or opposes this assault but that it embodies aspects of the struggle. This makes more sense of the differences between composers and also suggests that musical crises are connected to social crises.
Not all musicologists agree that these cultural meanings exists; the better ones seldom go beyond the minutiae of connections between the arts and social background. Precise parallels between music and particular social change and events are dangerous and most writers offer little acknowledgment of the cultural struggles which underly 20th century music. Is the whole development no more than a set of changes in musical language?
As a social phenomenon, music reflects both time and place. For example, the awareness of identity is just as important now as it was when it determined the differences between Bizet and Brahms. Nationalism is a legacy of the 19th century which has shaped and is shaping a major body of contemporary music. However, the new nationalism differs because it has been especially important to those fighting oppression, protecting themselves from outsiders and united either by common language, economic or political interests. This is in contrast to 19th century nationalism which was an upper-middle class intellectual movement of little interest to the aristocracy or the poorest underclass. The very core of nationalist thinking, purity and exclusivity, is an illusion and that was true for other ages as well as ours. For example Purcell's 'English' art was modelled on French and Sibelius spoke Swedish! These contradictions have increased today because of the ease of travel and opportunities to study abroad.
The re-emergence of nationalism is only one of the social factors moving hand in hand with contemporary composition. A period of naive, free, untamed experimentation, carried on a wave of optimism, came to an end during World War I. The emerging neo-classic style represented a pulling back influenced by three major social changes; the trauma of war which shattered optimism; the Depression's economic disaster; and a strong desire among composers to communicate with their audiences. The end of World War II brought a new daring, an urge to wipe the slate clean, and this flourished within an improved economy. The earlier desire to communicate with audiences began to die off because composers felt that, because of the increase in musical pluralism, audiences became fragmented and the mass audience had been replaced by many small, intensely interested, fringe audiences. At the same time there was a renaissance in optimism supported by advances in technology.
The vast majority of the concert-going public find a Stockhausian electronic piece or a Cage-ian "happening" equally boring. Boulez is as incomprehensible as Schoenberg was in his day. So where are we heading? What has happened to modernism? Answer - I offer a quote from this review of an avant-garde composer's work: "His science is an abstract science, a sterile algebra without melodic ideas he plunges into the chaos of the sonority which enervates and tires the listener without satisfying him. There is nothing in these strange compositions but naive disorder, a sickly and sterile exaltation". The composer targeted was Berlioz in 1852!
Britain's recent politics have been dominated by a 'self-first' doctrine against which a groundswell reaction is formulating. In music this has had many effects including the reduction of government funding for music promotion and education. Those musicians who have best been able to progress during this time are those who have been able to obtain private funding either from themselves, their families or from big business. However, even the latter is running dry as the mismanagement of successive governments begins to kick in. What has this meant for composers? The effect on big business has meant a reduction in the frequency of large commissions. However, the increased necessity for smaller bodies to attract private funding has opened new doors for them to provide cash for more smaller commissions.
Despite the fact that the most prominent of Scottish composers today, James MacMillan, appears fiercely nationalistic, there is certainly no move towards any form of ethnic cleansing of composers in Scotland. This is evident in the place that composers like Cresswell and Beamish have in the Scots music scene. With its partial rejection of central government, Scotland seems the ideal place for such a reaction to take root. However, nationalism apart, the composer has to retain an artist's individuality. This is a form of individuality which allows personal freedom to create, while supporting efforts to promote, music. Within that personal artistic freedom, composers often still feel restless and it is this central factor alone that is not affected directly by socio-political issues. Composers will always have doubts about their raison d'etre. They live in a time of less opportunity but greater artistic freedom, and to suggest that innovations somehow indicate a decline in music or an undermining of traditional musical values is as short-sighted a view as those who objected to Le Sacre du Printemps in 1912. As Constant Lambert says: "The dung of today becomes the pot pourri of tomorrow".