We went to a concert the other night. Tchaikovsky and Beethoven were featured.
Nowadays, if you have them in the program you also need a modern composer as well. In this case the piece was a Trombone Concerto (I won’t mention the name of the very experienced composer for reasons of tact. I’m sure the composer is a great chap). It must have been programmed ages ago, but uncannily turned out to precisely reflect the mood of the immediate times. It was 27 minutes (or in my case 27 hours) of the most dissonant, gloomy, ear-piercing and dystopian music imaginable. It included some delightful passages of harp playing, but I put in my musician’s earplugs just too late to protect my ears from sound of the most enormous wooden mallet thundering down repeatedly upon something or other, painfully affecting the eardrums. Curiously, the music was composed as a bow to Leonard Bernstein in 1991, when Americans were still confident, positive and could still be heard to exclaim, “Isn’t this just the greatest country?”
What the program didn’t point out was that there was an historical parallel between the Beethoven Symphony No. 8 and the Trombone Concerto. Beethoven’s Symphony was composed in 1812, in the middle of an era of chaos and disruption caused by Napoleon (who that year reached Moscow with his army). Yet, Beethoven managed to produce a symphony full of catchy, uplifting melodies; no gloom and misery for him – he instinctively knew what audiences needed at that terrible moment. On the other hand the Trombone Concerto, in this current period of foreboding, instead of lifting us up, left this listener more depressed than ever. And for what? Why? What is the point? We actually we needed to evade reality and have a moment of cheer. There is nothing wrong with escapism; on the contrary, it is a way of maintaining Epicurean ataraxia, or peace of mind. Long live melody and fantasy!
I can just imagine what that horror-show of sounds was like. And, yes, I agree–escapism is a tonic and the diversions renew our energies allowing us to regroup and face the bad stuff. I’d love to have a list of other people’s favorite escape routes.
My predictions for modern music are very pessimistic. Its possible that the Classical and Romantic movements were the height of human musical achievement, and we have been a downward spiral ever since. Any equivalence between this Trombone Concerto and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8 is absurd. This may upset some cultural liberals reading, but I’m afraid not all music is equal. The mark of the truly wise is to admit when their tastes are inferior but nevertheless enjoyable. For instance, I like a lot of rock music, but I’d never pretend that Pink Floyd or Red Hot Chilli Peppers have anything on Mozart or Chopin.