One thread of the pop-influenced-classical-music argument is becoming clearer to me from the comments to . A recurring refrain among younger musicians heavily invested in pop is that those composers who use pop instrumentation but don't really use it in an authentic pop style do so because they don't really respect pop music. They're doing it to make themselves look hip, or to try to "redeem" pop elements by dressing up a classical piece with them.
Now most of the composers one might gather in by this description are friends of mine, and I can tell you one thing for certain about every one of them: they all love and respect pop music. They listen to it, they buy it, they comb it for ideas. Almost all of them played it and wrote it in high school and college, if not afterward.
At this point, however, they are not writing pop music, and they abstract elements from it for their own music the way Roy Lichtenstein might borrow images from comics, or the way Copland borrowed stride piano style for his Piano Concerto. But I know for a petrified fact that they pay homage to pop music in their own work because they really do admire it. And I can recount an interesting and recurring experience from my own teaching that is revealingly parallel.
I've supervised many senior projects in pop music. Though my pop credentials are rather preternaturally thin, I've never hesitated to take one on. The Bard College music department was allowing students to do projects in pop music years before I came there, and as far as I know, not once in the ten years I've been there has any music professor tried to discourage a student from working in pop music, even for course credit.
We have a pop songwriting course taught by Greg Armbruster, who's got tons of real-world experience in styles from rap to Broadway, and whose course we consider a staple of the department. (Hell, I was once advisor to a stunning rhythm and blues project by a guy who had Ray Charles's arranging and singing style down so cold it was scary. Needless to say, I learned more from this kid than he did from me.
) Musical academia has many faults, as I've occasionally hinted, but as far as I can tell in 2007, taking a disapproving or condescending attitude toward pop music is not a widespread one. Nevertheless, year after year after year, we hear a refrain from students: "I'd really rather do my senior project with my rock band, but I hear I can't get credit for that." "I wanted to major in music, but since I'm a pop musician I know the faculty won't let me.
" "I'm doing jazz for my senior concert, because the faculty won't like it if I do a rock concert." None of this is true. Not one member of the faculty flinches when a student expresses interest in pop, nor do those students receive less support than anyone else.
Yet they're all certain, and they all have chimerical third-hand evidence: "A friend of mine knew a guy who did a rock concert and the department flunked him." Never happened. I've rewarded many a rock-band concert with an A.
(OK, there is one real, famous Bard story in support: sometime in the late '60s, the department refused to let Donald Fagen, later of Steely Dan fame, become a music major. But the reason was he hadn't bothered to learn to read music and he didn't want to take theory courses, and according to my colleague Luis Garcia-Renart, who was on his board, Donald agreed with the committee's decision that he'd probably be better off majoring in English. But sheesh, that was 40 years ago, give us a break.
Since then we've been petrified that anyone we flunk will become famous and make us look foolish.) The point is, year after year after year the students come to us believing something that is not true. WIth no malevolent intent, they will subconsciously concoct evidence to support their belief.
It's as though their self-esteem as rebellious teenagers requires them to invent a myth of the pop-disapproving faculty. I am tempted to conclude from this that young people cherish a widespread irrational faith that Pop Music Is Under Siege. We oldsters would love to get rid of it, and make everyone study classical music and jazz.
Therefore, anyone of my generation who borrows pop influences without the air of authenticity cannot simply be incompetent, or abstracting elements for some non-pop-related purpose: they must be motivated by scorn. We all secretly hate pop music, and use it in our ineffective music to make pop music look bad. We so despise it that we rip off its elements superficially, without really listening to it.
We're trying to show the world that any idiot can do pop music. Well, none of it's true. Like the pop-influenced music of my generation or don't like it, but if you imagine it is motivated by opportunism, condescension, or classical snobbism, you are merely projecting your own self-doubt and resentment onto it.
That it is not is a historical fact. And if anyone born after 1975 believes me, I'll be tremendously surprised. Posted by Kyle Gann at March 30, 2007 5:06 PM
Last night we went to hear the University of Arizona Music School's harp ensemble concert.
The program was all over the map, including Christian pop, arrangements of western art music (Chopin, Holst, Villa-Lobos), Irish jigs, Native American flute, ragtime, etc., all arranged or written by the students, and accompanied with various multimedia. Much more of a pop sensibility than anything else, although the overall impression was "eclectic".
Clearly, no bias against pop music was present in this ensemble.
Posted by: at March 30, 2007 6:08 PM
Kyle wrote: No young musician I've told this to has yet believed me.
That's because no young anybody has yet to believe anyone older.
KG replies: Well, I dunno. One day in 1984 Ben Johnston made a passing comment to me about how nice one of my chords would sound in just intonation, and I followed him to the ends of the earth.
Maybe that's because he wasn't trying to convince me of anything.
Posted by: at March 30, 2007 6:44 PM
I believe you! I think that the perceived condescension is, exactly as you say, a result of the relatively unsophisticated use of timbre in classical music. The equivalent might be the many rock bands who hire an orchestra and are obviously trying to be influenced by classical music, but use it for nothing other than rudimentary scale patterns and homophonic textures.
I think classical music fans would find this extremely lame, even offensive and absolutely ignoring the way that classical music actually functions. This lack of timbral sophistication is changing as world-class recording techniques become readily available to the masses on personal computers, and I expect that the upcoming generation of classical composers will bring about a revolution to this effect. It's already in the beginning stages I think, with the likes of Nico Muhly and Mason Bates.
Posted by: at March 30, 2007 9:11 PM
Do you happen to know whether Donald Fagen later learned to read music? Somehow, he's not one of the pop musicians I would have expected to be a non-reader! (But that he was an English major is not a surprise.
)
KG replies: I was about 12 at the time, and Fagen hasn't shown a fondness for revisiting his alma mater. I'm not sure I'd even vouch for my colleague's memory of the event or my memory of what he's told me, but the official Steely Dan web site says Fagen graduated in English.
Posted by: at March 31, 2007 12:59 AM
"No young musician I've told this to has yet believed me.
. .Like the pop-influenced music of my generation or don't like it, but if you imagine it is motivated by opportunism, condescension, or classical snobbism, you are merely projecting your own self-doubt and resentment onto it.
That it is not is a historical fact. And if anyone born after 1975 believes me, I'll be tremendously surprised.
I completely believe you, and I was born in 1979, baby!
On the other hand, I'm not much of a musician, so maybe I don't prove anything. . .
Anyway, anything I've said that sounded like I personally think "the pop-influenced music of [your] generation. . .
is motivated by opportunism, condescension, or classical snobbism" was me being unclear.
Plus, while I might not like all of the popular-music-influenced music of your generation, I absolutely love some of it.
I do think I understand some of the reasons why some people _do_ hold those incorrect beliefs, though, and part of it is the socio-economic stuff I referred to in my earlier comment.
Furthermore, there remains in academia a minority contingent of professors who genuinely do look down on popular music, whether they admit it or not, and another contingent (which has some overlap with the first) that doesn't necessarily look down on popular music but primarily values it based on the criteria on which they judge classical music. So you get people who say things like "I don't have anything against popular music -- The Beatles have a couple of songs that I think are really good," and you get people who seem to only talk about pop music that has chord progressions or counterpoint that they think is clever. It doesn't take very many of these people to make students who are already suspicious for socio-cultural reasons decide that the people who don't reveal the anti-pop-music bias are simply hiding it.
Then consider the message sent by the structure of most university music departments, which almost all focus heavily on classical and jazz. The required theoretical coursework consists of Species Counterpoint, classical harmony, and orchestration for classical instruments. The history requirements are predominantly classical.
The ensembles that you can get credit for performing in are all classical or Jazz, and the vast majority of popular music performance on campus is at non-music-department events. Most departments these days will offer a small selection of popular music courses -- a history course or two, a pop music composition class, but given the larger departmental context they appear to be exceptions to the rule, and they can even appear to be sops to the desires of the student body (even though they are probably all offered because the department really thinks they're important and worth offering and because the professors are passionate about the subject matter). The faculty itself is generally dominated by classical and jazz -- the composition faculty will be all classical, with maybe somebody who does some popular music on the side; the theory and history departments will be similarly dominated.
In the history department there will be people who know lots about classical but nothing about pop, but even people who specialize in pop will necessarily have strong classical backgrounds as well. These structures exist largely for reasons of history and momentum, some are justified and some are not, and in many cases they probably run counter to the beliefs and attitudes of the faculty, but regardless of how that faculty actually feels the structure sends a powerful message to the students that popular music is a second class citizen.
I think you're onto something with the timbre issue, but I'm still working out what I think about it.
KG replies: You're right about the structure of academic departments. Number 1: We would love to expand the pop music part of our department and even offer courses in pop music history, but the administration won't go along with it. Given the small size of our department and the other things we need, it is a difficult argument to make, but we do make it.
Number 2: There are pretty well-established pedagogies for classical music and jazz, but the helpful curriculum for pop music is a little harder to work out. I've pushed commercial electronic software (Logic, Ableton Live) in the department without success. Obviously courses in record production would be helpful.
Does anyone really need instruction in pop-music guitar? Would would-be pop singers submit to a course of vocal instruction? It's not clear.
So we do support anyone who wants to do pop music projects, but someone would have to come show us what a reasonable program for a "pop music major" would be.
Posted by: at March 31, 2007 3:12 AM
I'm definitely confused. Here's a comment and snipped response from your last topic:
.
..For the sake of argument, you could write a string quartet movement structured as a Grateful Dead song, where each instrument gets a chance to play a long, noodley, kind of self-indulgent solo over a repeating tonal/modal chord progression.
It's kind of a boring structure by classical music standards, but I bet the mass audience would react well to it. Even if they didn't, I don't think anyone would say "this is bastardized pop music."
.
..they must be motivated by scorn.
We all secretly hate pop music, and use it in our ineffective music to make pop music look bad. We so despise it that we rip off its elements superficially, without really listening to it. We're trying to show the world that any idiot can do pop music.
Well, none of it's true.
Doesn't the first statement (and your response) contradict the second?
KG replies: Mmmm, clearly not one of the comments I was referring to.
And what I meant to agree with was that I was primarily talking about using pop music instruments.
Posted by: Bill at March 31, 2007 3:30 AM
berklee offers instruction in rock instruments and vocals, and publishes their curriculum textbooks, so somebody's making it work.
as far as the timbre thing goes, i'm not totally convinced.
yes, rock production has put a premium on particular studio or producer sounds, but i feel like people are saying that classical music is not sophisticated timbrally, and that's just weird. berlioz? ravel?
stravinsky? grainger? there's a lot of great colorists out there.
ooo, then there's the big band stuff (and it seems to me that the early 20th century folks in jazz and classical were pulling much of their timbral ideas from one another).
sometimes i think that we should just stop teaching music in school, period. really, where is it getting us?
because when i think about rock music in school, it doesn't make sense: rock is learned behind closed bedroom doors and in garages, on headphones. folk music is learned from other people, usually older, aurally. what would happen if classical and jazz became these sorts of renegade or social activities?
(sometimes i think they are, 'cause god knows i didn't learn about classical music in band class, i learned about it talking to my band director in the mornings before school, and in orchestra outside of school, and on my walkman, etc. it's not like the cool kids are into classical.)
Posted by: at March 31, 2007 1:49 PM
A mildly amusing argument, gentlemen, but one that I suggest is largely moot without namimg the specific professors and composers you're referring to.
I, and way too many other composers and teachers I know, simply do not fit the description of either the anti-pop composer, condescending dismisser of pop as lesser art, or the classical composer attempting to borrow from or integrate influences from the vernacular.
The music I write is a natural expression of my musicianship and professional activities in a wide range of styles and idioms spanning more than thirty years. I did the L.
A. club scene in the 80's with my own rock band, and as recently as last year (reluctantly, to be sure) went back for more with my surf band, the Invisible Guys.
So, any twenty-something pop fan who thinks they can be a composition major and somehow retain their pop music credibility in a way that their elders somehow couldn't or didn't should first go take a look at my catalogue and listen to my records, then do the same for any number of other composers of my generation.
Then they can bite me.
I would add just one more thing. I think that my generation (I am 51) is perhaps the first generation of composers who did not consciously attempt to integrate elements of (what is being referred to here as) pop into "classical" compositions, but rather just found ourselves drawing naturally on our musical inclinations.
I think this was in part possible because many of us did not have any specific plans to go into academia or become "career composers". The lack of Ph.Ds in our bios should tell you something.
We had a freedom to write whatever we wanted to. In fact I, and many others, still planned, upon finishing our degrees, to try our luck with our rock and fusion bands, hopefully get signed, and tour the world's stages.
For me personally, eighteen years in the California E.
A.R. Unit and the contemporary classical music arena was an unanticipated detour (albeit a truly exciting and rewarding one) away from my original musical motivations and career goals.
I really just wanted to be a rock drummer.
KG replies: I've been purposefully avoiding mentioning names because I don't want to hold composers I admire up for undeserved ridicule, and it's too easy to shoot down the principle on a case-by-case basis. But thanks for standing up as Exhibit A.
Posted by: at March 31, 2007 1:53 PM
Then they can bite me.
rock'n'roll cred, right there. can you imagine MTT saying that?
jennifer higdon? joan tower? richard danielpour?
tee hee.
Posted by: at March 31, 2007 3:20 PM
Kyle,
overall, I completely agree with your post, but when I was growing up, I had a band teacher (my only musical mentor in the small town I lived in), who HATED pop music of any sort, particularly rock, and took every opportunity to let me know it was all crap. This guy might be the exception that proves your rule, and he was not a composer, which probably makes a difference.
He felt that music had pretty much ended with Mahler. He informed me that Cage was "very bad music" when I wanted to work on his Clarinet Sonata, and when I told this guy that I had just bought the complete works of Webern (back in the mid-70s this was a major purchase for a guy not yet out of his teens), he asked me, "What for?"
I never experienced this kind of thing from my composition teachers, though, and I think it's largely a thing of the past.
The experience did leave a mark, but I think it also gave me something to push against. Actually, I think I probably experienced more hostility towards minimalism in the academy than I ever did my rock enthusiasms, and not much of that.
Posted by: David D.
McIntire at March 31, 2007 9:04 PM
I am hoping we are discussing this issue as it begins to fade away. I certainly have a skewed view of this (as I am 22, and thusly relatively young in my own composing), however I never rule out re-appropriating snippets of pop music into my own music. That said, I have certainly had my fair share of disdain thrown my way concerning the use of pop music quotes, no matter how far I have abstracted said idea (for some professors I have worked with, merely mentioning that a particular idea came from such-and-such pop song is cause for extreme alarm, whether it sounds like its source or not), or in merely choosing to write parts for two guitars and a trap set (as I have elected to do in one of my most recent pieces).
While the former has frequently been met with alarm (thought not always), I have also been fortunate enough to study with two composers who actively do such a thing, and furthermore are convinced any composer born after the seventies who refuses to acknowledge pop music as a force to be reckoned with is to be considered suspect at best.
In regards to the latter, what still seems to be difficult (at least at the liberal arts college I am currently attending) to pull off is the case of whether such a piece is still taken seriously. I have had no problems with others claiming any sort of snobbery or sarcasm on my part following such compositional choices.
Frequently, though, from professors, the piece is treated as "fun," or "cute," or the like (only following my decision to add electric guitar and trap set to a piece otherwise written for a mid-sized chamber ensemble). My fellow students, no less, are merely excited because I appear to be writing a rock-tune (which I am not). I am endlessly confused with the incessant need to codify this aspect of my writing as "rock.
" Yes, I almost exclusively grew up with rock music (and folk music), however it is confusing why I cannot make such a compositional move (like using electric guitars and a trap set) without the immediate community surrounding my musical activity qualifying its usage as something other than classical/art-music. I do not hear a fundamental difference, in terms of genre, in my re-appropriation of a particular music (or certain instruments synonymous with said music). Furthermore, at this point it is just as natural for me to mine pop music for ideas (or timbres, etc.
) as it is to use any other musical influence in the attempt to write new art music. I suspect, though I am just guessing, that this is a fairly common attitude to have for composers of my generation.
Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't this seem to be the same problem jazz had in supposed "serious" (i.
e. academic) music circles sixty or so years ago (or however earlier, excuse my erroneous time-frame here)? Wasn't Copland's Piano Concerto initially treated in this exact same manner when it was premiered?
What I am getting at, though, is that it seems like this problem is passing (I hope), and perhaps twenty years from now, a pop music influence in contemporary art music will be just as common as a jazz influence is now (which does not help anyone attempting such a thing now). It certainly seems to be moving that way, from my own experiences, however a great deal of progress has yet to be made.
KG replies: What a great, detailed comment.
Thanks. I've been planning to talk about the Copland Piano Concerto and the analogous jazz problem in my next post on the subject. As for teachers, I had the opposite experience.
I remember the mischievous glee with which Ben Johnston told me he had based his Sonata for Microtonal Piano, a huge, forbidding 12-tone piece, on two pop tunes, "What Is This Thing Called Love?" and another I don't remember.
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