Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Mr. Oteri, I am not a Modernist

Regular readers of Sequenza21 will recognize that Mr. Oteri, in his response to my review of Anthony De Mare�s recent concert at Zankel Hall, is trying to stuff me into a new-music "box" which I do not fit. I suppose those who come to my review predisposed to pigeonholing will find ample evidence there to support branding me a "modernist," but I am on the record in my posts and comments for this website with praise for all the minimalists (including Glass), and, while I haven�t had much to say about the New-Romanticists, when I do, you�ll find I like some of them. Furthermore, I do not subscribe to the atonal/dissonant/complexity/good, tonal/consonant/simplicity/bad divide that lurks behind Mr. Oteri�s assessment of my thoughts. I hope he doesn�t either.

It is incumbent upon all composers to use whatever set of materials they employ with imagination and creativity. Because our ears are more accustomed to tonal music, composers who use tonal materials face an uphill battle in their quest for originality. (Note that I require no composer to be revolutionary or willfully obscure.) Different tonal composers have gone about this and continue to go about this is successful ways: Stravinsky has a wide variety of ways of voicing major and minor triads that make them sound fresh and vital. Corigliano is able to establish tonal centers without relying on traditional harmonic progressions. Rzewski, whose music was on the concert, surrounds more traditional passages with greatly contrasting music to the effect of making the former, more brazenly tonal moments sound as natural as unexpected thoughts. And the minimalists have found a new musical/developmental paradigm, and, by placing tonality within it, have refreshed familiar sonorities while discovering some new ones as well.

On De Mare�s concert, Brown, Moravec, Del Tredici, and Hersch delivered precious little in the way of imagination or creativity. (My feelings about Meredith Monk are so mixed that I won�t include her in this discussion.) Instead they offered us empty, recycled musical gestures and labeled them portraits of New York. New York isn�t like anywhere else I�ve ever been, and the music evoking it the other night was like lots of music I�ve already heard written by composers who are long dead, many of whom never even visited the city. Of course, you don�t need to have visited New York to crib Waldteufel�s "Skaters' Waltz" and write a piece called "Wollman Rink:" what Del Tredici gave us, after all, was a prolonged photograph � a postcard � not an environment.

P.S. There are a few other more self-contained quibbles with Oteri (and a big concession) that I am posting within the "comments" section to this piece. Have a look!

posted by David Salvage 3/18/2005