Being a contemporary composer and a musicologist, I am often asked wich compositions of the late 20th century I admire the most. To arrive at an answer to this question my musical-aesthetic judgement goes into a brief and intensive conference with my personal taste, and the result is as follows:
Stockhausen and Boulez - rather low on my list; Nono - admirable, more intellectual than sensual; Ligeti - great; Henze - with his open, undogmatic vivacious conception of music (which is also politically conceptualized), highly regardable, but with his romantic attitude as an "artist", less so; Luciano Berio - this is what contemporary composition should be - the ideal.
Being a contemporary composer and a musicologist, I often ask myself which works of our time awaken a sense of inner dynamism in me. The answer to this question is quite a bit different. At this level jazz comes into view, Elvis is there, and I can't renounce "Only You". The Beatles appear as a monumental power. I go to the piano, try to play "Michelle", and notice that "hits" can also be rather complex in structure. What's worse, more trivial - I'm almost ashamed of myself, but it's there, note for note, Catherina Valente's "Itsy, Bitsy, Teenie Weenie..." - excuse me Pierre and Karlheinz, but that appears to be more effective for the musical subconscious than "Aus den sieben Tagen".
The schism between "serious" and "popular" music goes straight through my musical conciousness, and it would be a wonder if this complex network of contradictions were not to appear in my artistic and musicological products .There must be wishes, preferences, needs, and emotions in me, that can only be reached by popular music. Is it the liking for that which is trivial, or the longing for something that is taboo in my social and artistic environment? Apparently, popular music has certain qualities which the genres of the "serious" avant-garde simply lack.
Marcel Proust's remarks on this problem are amazingly up to date. About 1900 he wrote:
" You may curse bad music, but don't despise it! The more one plays or sings bad music, (and with far more emotion than good music), the more it fills itself with tears, the tears of the people. Its position is very low in the history of art, but very high in the history of emotion in the human community. The regard (and I don't say love) for lesser music is not only a form of neighbourly love, but far more the knowledge of the social role of music. The people have always had the same postmen, and couriers of sorrow in their agony and joy: that is to say, the bad musicians.
Proust's "in praise of bad music" accurately describes the role of trivial music up to our own generation, except that "popular" doesn't necessarily mean "bad". Within the category of "popular" music there are huge qualitative differences regarding structure and content (the same could be said of serious music). The fact that not only simple, but also complex, innovative pieces of differing popular genres have an incredible proliferation cannot be reduced to keen marketing skills.
The question remains, should the avant-garde of "serious" music retreat to its highly subventioned ivory tower, and (in the best case!) defend their claim of "truth within art itself", which Adorno was clever enough to deliver them in advance? Does the postmodern "revolt" of the 80s mean more than the attempt to reconquer the bourgeois concert-hall? Is it possible that the reflection of one's own situation, of the schism between the musical elements, of the dichotomy within one's own consciousness could contribute to the opening up of cemented down positions, to the creation of a dynamic and contradictory whole out of its rigid and separated parts? Are aesthetic necessity and popularist need mutually exclusive?
In coming to a position, the qualifying character of historical analysis is often helpful. Is there something like a "lost paradise", dating back to a time before the "original sin", or the sinful separation of "serious" from "popular" music? If so, this "original sin" would date back to the second half of the 19th century, at which time the industrial mass-production of trivial music-goods was established (in connection with new possibilities of technical reproduction and the specialization of producers). It was also around this time that Richard Wagner's "Kunst-Religion" originated; the religion of the first composer in musical history who didn't write any "popular" music (which was still a common practice for Brahms).
The theory that would have to be verified in this case is that a certain tension between popular and serious music has always existed. However, this tension should be viewed in the sense of "Harmonia" - or as a vital element of an active and contradictory whole.
I would like to clarify my theory with an example: the music of the 1920s and 30s. Fascism and Stalinism caused grave destruction in all areas of the arts. Their effects are still noticable today, and border on the subject of our investigation. It was directly before the rise of Fascism and Stalinism that many marvellous solutions were found to the overcoming of the rigid barriers between the popular and the serious in art. This development occured mostly in the direct confrontation with Wagner's musical aesthetic. In France this began with Debussy, later with the Six; Stravinsky, Weill, Eisler; in the Soviet Union primarily Shostakovitch. This incredibly active period of creation, in which to a large extent the unity of social, political, and artistic "avantgardism" was achieved, fell prey to the fascists and Stalinists of the 30s. The composers of the 50s, having experienced the total political misuse of the arts, adapted an apparent a-political standpoint, and attempted to flee into a world of abstract problems of material (as such).
Without the basic category of "Verfremdung", which means something like "estrangement", it would be impossible to understand the attemps to integrate popular and serious music into a whole. This concept was developed in the literary theory of Russian Formalism, and continued within Brecht's version of Epic Theatre.
It is exactly this way of thinking that characterizes Kurt Weill's and Hanns Eisler's compositions in works such as "The Threepenny Opera", "Mahagonny", "Die Massnahme", and "Schweyk in World War II". Both Weill and Eisler additionally employed a certain "pedagogical estrangement effect" in this phase of their composition. With this effect, the lesser educated audience is "picked up" within the language it is aquainted with, and led to the point where this common language is purposely destroyed. This moment, which is bound up with the dramatic context, is intended to activate the awareness of the listener, and exclude the possibility of an unconscious and unreflected reception of music. Hanns Eisler said: "Don't leave your brains at the cloakroom!" It is in this sense that Eisler wrote in 1951, with a look both into the history as well as the future of music:
" Composers and listeners have to learn from each other. A composer mustn't take on an artistic problem abstractly, but must finally realize that the use of certain musical techniques is dependent upon the contents. The listener must know that not every piece of music can be understood immediately. This, of course, doesn't apply to every genre of music. Listeners and composers must learn to differentiate between genres, which are easlily understandable, and genres which are more difficult for the listener, or which could even necessitate a certain preparation. We composers must expect the same realism from an audience, which is rightfully demanded of us."
I am convinced that good contemporary composers, who are able to think about themselves and their metier, will never cease to occupy themselves with all of these questions. From the strict conception of autonomy, they will come to results of practicable music: the functions which are set by the composer himself determine the musical means. When Henze writes music for children (for example, "Pollicino"), the musical language is radically different from that of "We come to the River". Berio's "Folk Songs" are much more entertaining than his "Sinfonia" (for Martin Luther King), but at the same time, outstanding music. Henze's conception of "Musica Impura" the purposefully impure, constantly going beyonds the bounds, "in-stranging" mucic, is our contemporary link to the achievements of the 1920s.
And I, as a contemporary composer and a musicologist, refuse to sacrifice the infinite sensual and cognitive treasures of music in which the most wonderful extremes are possible, for the so-called "purity" of a thinly-based dogmatic conception of art.