PERFORMER AND AUDIENCE

Paul Clark:

When performing 20th Century music how does the audience react compared with the way they react to music of earlier centuries? Is the music as accepted by the general public as a concert of Mozart or Beethoven's music?

Stanislaw Hansel:

Hello, Paul. Thank you for you question.

I have not yet had rotten tomatoes thrown at me but there have been times when I felt that an audience were not going to listen to a piece. Usually I have been pleasantly surprised by the effort audiences make to understand and the questions asked afterwards.

The lesson I have learned is that the performer must show complete integrity and often dividends are paid in return. Of course, the classical public listen to Beethoven and Mozart but there are also people with other preferences who come to new music events who often enough do not appreciate the classical masters but like some of the new music.

I find it helps a lot if the performer explains things before a performance. These days, if a piece is not liked the audience does not boo or make other rude gestures but simply makes little reaction!

Paul Clark:

Dear Stan

Thank you for your reply and the things you have said are very interesting. Being a composer and performer myself I would have to agree that the public do not show signs of dislike, but simply react with less enthusiasm, if they are unsure of whether they like it.

Therefore I think there are both encouraging and disappointing aspects of what you have said.

The fact that audiences do not show any signs of disrespect is good and the fact you have not had rotten tomatoes thrown at you is even more encouraging!

However, Gabriel stated a very interesting point that people seem to be stuck in their own views and opinions of music and are prejudice against anything new. Would you agree with this? And if so, do you not feel frustrated sometimes, at the fact they will not accept 20th century music?

SH: Thanks, Paul, for your message and your interest in this music. It is true that people are not crowding to new music concerts ( at least not any that I know of ) but I am not pessimistic enough to believe that this music can not reach many more people.

My own interest is to see more of it in public centres such as shopping precincts but persuading managements to give something a try is very hit and miss ( mostly miss ).

We see new art in public venues so why not hear new music ? However, when people do get a chance to hear something I find they do tend to try to come to terms with some of it - rarely is there a real rejection.

I hope we can build on this and 20 century music may well become more acceptable next century when it has become historical. However, I must say I am more interested in 21st century music now.

Your question about my own initiation into new music bring clear memories back. I was about sixteen and had played my exam music on piano and piano accordion for several years disliking the little modern pieces I had to play.

I listened a lot to radio three and came across the first performance of Penderecki's St Luke passion this spoke to me directly and I was able to obtain more of his work on record when visiting relatives in Poland.

So far so good. About a year later I heard Stockhausen's 10th piano piece - outrageous but so evocative I spent years thinking of one day playing the piece - of course now it does not seem to make the impact it did then - it really is beautiful in sound and structure.

I should also say that I heard Eonta by Xenakis shortly after the Penderecki and this too sounded outrageous - somehow the experience was memorable because I still remember it and indeed have learned the piano part in recent years (it is impossible!)

How did you come to be interested in new music, Paul? I would be interested to know.

Gabriel Prynn:

Hi, I would say that those who already have a good knowledge of classical music are, ironically enough, often those who have the most prejudice when it comes to New Music. Such people have strong ideas about what music is, and they have real problems with anything outside of that. Those that have little or no real understanding of, or familiarity with classical music often come to contemporary music without pre-conceptions and are therefore more open minded and enjoy the experience more. Unfortunately, the underlying problem is a sociological one. Western society has strong traditions culturally. For some people New Music - especially when it concerns new media (for example music using technology of different sorts, such as pre-recorded tape or live-electronic with live performers) or influences outside the European tradition (rock, jazz, ethnic music) is very troubling for them.

Paul Clark:

Hi, Gabriel!

Thank you very much for replying to my question and what you have said is very interesting. I think it's sad when people can not appreciate any, new music, as new music, whether it is rock, jazz or 20th century classical, people in my opinion should have open minds to everything. Still if that is the way it is, in the majority of cases, then how would you suggest that people, like yourself could make other people more appreciative? Or do you feel that holding Seminars is the best way?

GP: I think, to answer your question, that programming is probably the most important element in contemporary music - or rather, what one plays and how it will be presented.

We want to make sure that there is enough music in a concert that is in some way on the more accessible side. This can mean literally choosing composers whose influences are more in the mainstream like rock or jazz, or who use tonal elements in their pieces.

It can also mean using a performance space in an imaginative and interesting way, for example the kinds of things that the the Electro Acoustic Ensemble do with images projected etc, or like someone I know in Buenos Aries did, having forty John Cage pieces all going on simultaneously in a huge house where people could go freely in and out of each room.

A less radical version of the last idea is what my piano trio, the Trio Fibonacci (based in Montreal and dedicated to new music) also does: it's a modular group, that is to say we include solos and duos in various combinations in our concerts, as well as the set trio formation.

Certainly, seminars are an important element in educating and informing the public.

People can start to understand the preoccupations of composers this century, to penetrate the processes going on in their music, and generally fill in the gaps in their musical knowledge.

Of course, we don't want to preach to people: we have to be careful about going too far with the idea that one must understand a piece of music in order to get any pleasure from hearing it. Firstly, a piece should be able to speak for itself on a purely musical level, and secondly we can afterall only ask so much of a lisener.

As for how I got interested and started in contemporary music, I always had a fascniation for avant-garde art. The main event in my life which really decided my fate as it were, was playing in a masterclass with Frances Marie Uitti at the Dartington Summer School in Devon.

Uitti is a female cellist of American origin although has lived in Europe for may years. She's a real pioneer in contemporary cello performance and was such an inspiration to me that I was determined from that moment on (I was 20) I would keep my interest alive.

This was hard to do at times during the end of my undergraduate and through my post-graduate studies, as new music is not taken very seriously by many teachers, even of the high calibre that I was working with.

But here I am, with a fine career developing in the field.

Looking critically at the audience reaction to the concert will be an interesting aspect of this discussion Paul. (NB)

Faye Wagstaffe:

It may be argued that the composer is more preoccupied with the ideas behind the music rather than the music itself, and that by doing that he loses its accessibility for the average listener. Do you both agree?

How would you defend the relevance of this type of music for performers and composers today?

SH: Hello Faye. Your question reminds me of something Boulez is supposed to have said - that he is not interested in anything in the music except how it is composed.

You are also right that people do not seem to trot off to hear much of this music but then I know that they don't go to hear conventional music either in great numbers unless programmed with something else.

However, I feel that good new music should stimulate or even shock and surprise an audience to be effective. I therefore believe in the idea of using installations to bring new music into public spaces, even for moving audiences rather than seated.

I think some composers have definitely become obsessed with the mathematics of their work to the extent that there is little for the audience to relate to as a work of art. On the other hand there are a number of people who deliberately write using idioms not out of place in popular music - sometimes one can't help feeling that the success of some of this music is precisely because of its allusion to the vernacular.

However, I don't think the latter has anything to do with the problems art music has to solve. Ultimately, I believe the music has to be interesting, engaging the listener long before he can understand it.

I suspect that there are too many weak pieces being offered - perhaps composers who are using too many ideas from other composers - such work is often good but is not strong enough to attract an audience these days. I hope this helps but ask for more if you need. Stan Hansel

GP: Hi, Certainly, a big problem with the music of our time is the notion that one must understand the music - either in a technical or historically contextual sense - in order to appreciate it. The result is that many people feel alienated from it and are afraid to approach it.

We have to accept our responsibility for that. We continue even today in the Wagnerian mode of thought, that the composer is the great genius and the public must come to him.

Composers give seminars on their music and on the music of our day to try to initiate people to it, whereas the music should really speak for itself.

The problem is further compounded by the highly commercial nature of the music industry, particularly regarding areas such as audio and video recording, which classical music is way behind in. Thus we have dug our own grave in many respects.

However, as Boulez himself says, anything worthwhile in life cannot be achieved without a struggle. New music is often very hard to approach, let alone to get any enjoyment from. If contemporary classical music was simply more fun, many more people would be drawn to it. But the human experience at this point in history, particularly over this century, is far from fun and with out wanting to thrust the troubles and misery that we see around us on people, a composer that is really a committed artist must respond to this, hence the dark and troubled works by Bernd Alois Zimmermann.

Boulez is kind of a special case, as it is hard to separate his music from his philosophies which many disagree with. Harvey's music is truly some of the best to have been written within the Eurpoean tradition over the last couple of decades in my opinion, and it is very unfortunate if people are scared off because of the over-intellectualization of our art.

You might like to consider Faye how effective the resource, discussions at college and the seminars have been in approaching this music. Would it have been better to simply have listened 'unprepared'? (NB)

Stuart Jackson:

At what point do you think music loses its traditional meaning, and do you think the Cage and Harvey pieces in the concert are examples of this?

Do you enjoy playing this music and why?

SH: Hello Stuart. Thank you for your question.

There are some who would say that Cage's output does have precedents in traditional music. Cage is noted for opening up silence as a musical possibility, for example, but there are lots of instances of silence in Beethoven and Haydn among many others.

Certainly the effect is different but one may consider what is going on in a silence in traditional music and compare silence as in Cage.

In both cases I think the listener is full of anticipation and a sense of suspense is created; I would say that in both cases the listener has been preconditioned by the music heard before the silence as to the sort of thing he is going to hear after it. I cite this only as an example of overlaps with traditional music.

Your question is very pertinent in asking for the exact point at which music ceases to be traditional and one that I have not considered in that way before.

If you take traditional music to be based on some form of harmonic implication then I suppose the deliberate lack of it in Cage, Xenakis or Stockhausen gives you something which is not traditional .

I know that there is much folk music which does not have harmony as such but one can technically add it in ( eg Arabic music which is monodic ) - you can add notes in to the above mentioned composers but they would not have harmonic implication in most cases.

On the other hand, if traditional music evinces structural origins in binary or ternary forms I know several works of the avantgarde which do also have broad outlines of basic sections.

The interest for me is to be involved with a truly new music, but the more I am part of it the more I realise that each music prioritises techniques of a basic nature but often so as to create an unusual work.

These techniques are surely traditional - mathematical properties and possibilities such as scale and sequence, freedom to improvise , unusual sounds etc etc have always been ingredients.

Your question implies that you envisage a point of departure into the non traditional but I think all composers seek to justify their work by seeking a precedent - Cage looked for it in oriental meditational music and philosophy, Xenakis looks way back to the music of his ancient homeland ( Greece ) , Stockhausen and Boulez probably built on Webern and the point he had reached in serialising all parameters in music ( you will probably have read of the development of serial music out of late Wagner, Liszt through Schoenberg etc )

To sum up, I feel one needs to define traditional music more carefully in order to establish the point you are seeking. However if you can identify this then please contact me again. I am not sure if this reply is of any help in itself but it may help you to formulate your own ideas. Good luck. Stan Hansel

GP: Hi, ..Cage's music is very typical of the 1960's approach (which is still in evidence today) where indeed the object of the composition was to redefine music and our conception of it.

Harvey's 'Three Sketches' are good examples. It is a wonderful instance of how traditional forms - works for flute and piano, solo cello, a cello concerto - can be used but very disparate and colourful ideas can be incorporated. Three Sketches using de-tuning reminiscent of Magyar folk music, quasi-baroque ornamentation, and 19th century virtuosity within an atonal framework.