Rhapsody, symphony, originality in Blue

Student composers juggle musicians, professors, and pop culture in their quest for creativity.

As the lights dim, the six musicians begin their performance. Diatonic strings of electronic music bubble out of the speakers, cut by smooth interjections of flute, cello, clarinet, piano, and electric bass. Convoluted strings of language, shards of German, Dutch, and occasionally English float in and out of the mixture.

The scene is not a coffee house in New York, and it's not the soundtrack to an art film. Rather, it's Sudler Hall last Sunday evening, the scene of the undergraduate composers' concert. This first work, Joshua Penman's, MC '01, "Phanerothyme," is comprised of electronic music-box samples and voices taped backwards but played forward "to obtain a garbled, but forward-moving, speech," as Penman writes in his notes. This is the year's first such performance, and many of Yale's young composers are dissatisfied with the infrequent opportunities to hear their music performed.

Professor of Composition Kathryn Alexander explained that finding musicians and opportunities to perform is one of the difficulties of composition study. "The idea is to try to deal with this issue of getting their music played," she said. "They have to learn that being a composer is a social activity." But the competing demands on undergraduate musicians scatter such chances few and far between. "I think what's sorely lacking is opportunities to perform our larger works," composer David Hughes, BK '02, said. "It's not easy to find a group to sit down with week after week. Ideally, the focus should be on the compositional process, not merely on the concert."

Musicians on strike

To many performers, though, contemporary composers seem increasingly divorced from those who perform their music. Elana Arian, CC '03, a violinist in the Yale Symphony Orchestra (YSO), voiced an attitude typical among performers at Yale. "I really like playing new music, I support it and value it. But if a person or an entire orchestra is playing an unreasonably demanding contemporary piece that they really don't enjoy playing, and the audience really doesn't enjoy listening to it, is it really still worth it?" Mark Dancigers, TD '03, said that he sometimes sees a "total disdain" for musicians among his colleagues. But he realizes that collaboration can improve the relations exponentially. Composer Robert Honstein, MC '03, agrees. "At first, I had no relationship to the performers, but now working with them is my favorite part. If you write music that alienates the performer, you won't get a good performance."

Dancigers has a theory about the increasing "academicization" of music. "This is the Age of Science," he explained with a hint of irony in his smile. "And what do scientists do? They run around and talk about things that other people don't understand. And it becomes a sort of epidemic—people in other fields begin to feel that if their work is too easily comprehensible, then they're not as legitimate." The result is music that is intentionally cerebral. Many of his peers concur. "I think that there's this unfortunate tendency of the composer to blind himself to the beauty of music," Hughes said. "There's this vague aesthetic of disjointedness. I think that besides the literal, physical resonance, there should be an aesthetic resonance—the music should convey something true and good." Alexander noted, however, that in the last 20 to 30 years there has been a neo-romantic counter movement to reach out to the audience.

It is a mistake to assume that student composer-performer collaborations are for the benefit of the composer alone. Both parties acknowledge that the process is mutually beneficial. "I don't think there is really bad music," Samuel Sanford Professor of Music Aldo Parisot said. "There are only bad players." New compositions give Yale musicians who have rarely played anything more contemporary than Prokofiev a valuable change of pace. "Just because a player studies with [a world-class teacher] and has fantastic technique doesn't mean she has any sense of rhythm at all," Penman said. Though unusual technique and unreasonable instrumental demands can be frustrating for performers, the skills that they gain when playing contemporary music are invaluable, whether performing Bach or Elliot Carter. And, of course, the thrill of performing a piece for the first time is a unique one.

Fugues vs. finals

Yale's composers said that both they and the music department must come to terms with the fact that Yale is not a conservatory. "It's hard to find performers with the time to dedicate to a student composition," Penman said. "There are wonderful musicians here, but this isn't Julliard—these are students with midterms and finals and papers, and every time they play our music it's as a favor to us." Also, some composers said that the less frequent performance opportunities may affect the kinds of music that they produce. "At a conservatory, when you have many more chances to work with the performers on your pieces, I think the work tends to be more conventional, as well as more attuned to the capabilities of the instruments," Dancigers said. "You'd be less likely to experiment wildly, or at least less likely to write music that's so academic as to be really unpleasant to play."

To remedy their concerns, many undergraduates have talked about creating a composers' colloquium that meets on a regular basis. "It could really be more of a community," Yvonne Wu, MUS '03, said. "I miss the peer-to-peer interaction. As valuable as our professors are, you can be so enhanced by working with people on your level." An organization called Yale College New Music already exists, and could expand to include the kinds of opportunities the composers currently dream of. Other students wish that the Department of Music would pay graduate students to play their music regularly. Penman said that all the composers mourn the YSO's abandoned practice of playing a senior's work every year.

A fifth of Beethoven

The audience at Sunday's concert was substantial enough, but it was unmistakably composed of a high percentage of, well, composers. Contemporary classical music faces a real challenge to sustain audiences in the face of popular music's exponentially greater popularity. "Like all guitarists, I started out playing rock music," Dancigers said. "But rock music has real limitations, and it just got boring...I don't think it's in any way an elitist practice to sit down and organize notes on a page into something complicated and wonderful."

Are classical and popular styles of music bound to converge? Predictions are always tenuous at best, but Yale's young composers seem dubious. "There are people who try to fuse jazz and classical," Honstein said, "but they seem like such different worlds." Hughes concurred. "It's an old question," Hughes said. "When `Porgy and Bess' first came out, everyone said that these styles were blending, but it didn't really happen. Of course there's always going to be influence, but when we talk about the blending of styles, it's to be done on the highest intellectual level. People in the audience shouldn't say, `Gee, that sounds like a cross between Brahms and Kenny G.'" Penman agreed that pop music is not moving toward classical, or vice versa. "I have two reasons to write for people playing instruments: first, it's an interpretive art, engaging the performers, an art that can't exist in dance-club music," he said. "Second is the richness of sound of instruments in a hall. Pop is almost entirely about replication." All the same, Penman said that his music, especially "Phanerothyme," does seem to occupy some space between styles.

The composers agreed that the main problem is simply a lack of exposure, both to new music and to classical music in general. "Most musicians are so classically trained," Wu said. "Twentieth-century music does have to be approached as a different language. It's not going to sound `pretty' all the time; the problem is approaching with old expectations." To most young people, lack of exposure to any classical music at all is the most pressing and worrisome concern. Alexander said that until arts education is restored to schools around the nation, the appreciation for classical music will continue to suffer.

Mozart's sister

Another less widely-recognized difficulty about the world of contemporary music is the huge dearth of female composers. Out of dozens of students in several undergraduate composition classes and seminars at Yale last year, Wu was the only woman. "It was a real challenge," Wu said. "I haven't run into any big walls yet, but I know they will be there—I know that it will be an issue. It's something to stand up for." The gender gap is just as wide in music theory as it is in math and science, and female composers in particular meet resistance every step of the way. Dr. Alexander acknowledged this prejudice after a thoughtful silence. "You're not taken very seriously," she said. "Women composers have to work twice as hard, there's no question." The critical eye upon female composers has a substantial effect on the kind of music that women feel comfortable producing. "I can't think of a single woman I know who writes `pretty' music," Penman said with a smile. Concerned with seeming too feminine, women who write new music tend to veer away from anything that appeals to aesthetics alone. In a way, the less-than-supportive musical environment at Yale helps prepare a crop of young composers to enter a world of immense diversity, performing to a frequently less-than-welcoming audience. Penman has developed a simple strategy: "The attitude is just to shrug and say, `Well, I want to write music.'" True to form, he shrugs nonchalantly and presumably keeps on writing.

Graphic by Marisa Bass.

Back to A&E...