Last week, I attended the First International Contemporary Music Festival in Nicosia, Cyprus, which was directed by Peter Sheppard-Skaerved, violinist; Aaron Shorr, pianist; and Evis Sammoutis, composer. The festival was a huge success, drawing large crowds every evening for concerts held at what used to be a shoe factory in the city. I hope to see this festival blossom into an annual tradition, and was privileged to be involved in the inaugural week of concerts, workshops, and masterclasses.
Now a private home, the acoustics of the Shoe Factory were absolutely pristine, and the architecture, decorations, and interior design almost surreal. With a shaded pool in behind a wall of windows, a rooftop terrace with reflection pools and lounging pillows, and contemporary art adorning the walls, entering the Shoe Factory was almost like a momentary escape from reality. It was definitely an escape from the reality of much of the surroundings in Nicosia, which looked somewhat like a wartime film set, complete with border patrol policemen in cages with huge weapons and partially-destroyed buildings around the corner.
The festival showcased contemporary music, almost none of which was written before 1900. For me, being a musician whose training focused primarily on music and composers from the 16th through the 19th centuries, this was a wonderful introduction to music I had not spent much time listening to or studying thoroughly. Although I did spend some time in school learning serial and other twentieth-century compositional techniques, and philosophically debating the merits (and demerits) of certain music from the so-called contemporary period, I was slightly shocked to realize how narrow my physical exposure and my auditory experiences truly were when I attended the festival in Cyprus. Many pieces on the program I had never heard live before, or was unfamiliar with altogether. So, I gained a tremendous amount of valuable absorption time there. I was able to listen and reflect upon music that was new to me, and as a result I began pondering things in a different way, thinking about new things and coming up with new questions to challenge myself with.
The questions, thoughts and challenges, while their conception lay somewhere in the midst of Greek salads, glimpses of premodern churches, salty beaches, and interactions with artists and locals in Cyprus, have actually taken clearer shape upon my return from the festival. After five days of contemporary music concerts that featured eighteen pieces by composers who are still alive today; five days of intense rehearsals and massive concerts, I found it inevitable to stop and consider how far music has come, how new it can be despite its own age and the age of our instruments, and how far music can go from here. How music can be contemplated, experienced, and reflected upon, and how important it is to realize and simultaneously challenge—or sometimes deny altogether—classifications and labels in music. Because music is constantly moving, progressing forward and being propelled by forward-thinking artists, I find it unnecessary and quite cumbersome to adapt labels that aren’t also fluid and flexible. Music being written today is, by definition, contemporary. That is not a helpful label, but simply a relative description. And the baggage that people commonly associate with contemporary or modern music, the assumption that it will inevitably be harsh or disrespectfully different from the classics, that it will be noisy and cacophonous and ugly, is already getting old to me. Beyond the “can you believe that piece didn’t end with a V-I progression?” or “the composer did what with the violin?!” I am saddened by the general attitude towards new music, by the hesitation to give all music proper forums across the world, by the refusal to give contemporary music a chance.
Sadly, however, I think there is good reason behind many arguments against contemporary music. I can see how, after certain composers did certain things and passed off particular pieces as musical genius and innovation, people are disheartened by the progression of music within specific circles. The music often considered useful for study within music institutions is not interesting to me, and is part of the reason even I have fallen into the trap, the automatic reversion to thinking that most contemporary music is “ugly.” Because most students’ exposure to contemporary music is limited, sweeping generalizations are made about all music of the modern era, and quite misguidedly so. I’d like to provide direct evidence that I, an artist whose own conviction that the potential for beauty and interest within music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is relatively low, was turned upside down by my recent trip to Cyprus for a contemporary music festival in which I heard music that was innovative, different, delightful…and, yes, some music that I was not so fond of. But I realized that there is a lot of music I don’t know, and that it is unfair of me to have made my own classifications prematurely. And I might not have come to that realization for a long time, had I not traveled to the festival and immersed myself in the music there. It is my sincere hope that festivals such as this one in Cyprus proliferate to reach students of varying backgrounds throughout the world, because contemporary music festivals today are unfortunately rare and incredibly localized.
An interesting statement was presented to me after I returned, addressing the classification of music—is it an intellectual pursuit, an art, or a craft? (See the tab “Finding Fusions” under the “Ponderings” page for more on this). To me, music is an art, inevitably, necessarily. Music should also be a craft, though sometimes it is unfairly denied this vital qualification. And it should not be—no, it is not possible for music to be—an academic pursuit. The composer, performer, ensemble, or conductor, is responsible for creatively expressing the art of music. As soon as music becomes an intellectual or academic pursuit, it has lost the designation of music in my mind, which automatically denies its being an art. Being an artist means creatively applying one’s skill, not academically explicating possibilities. As a composer, my job is to present musicians with material that reflects my ideas, and simultaneously to present them with material that allows the expression of their own ideas.
I am not interested in non-expressive iterations of sound, in pieces of ‘music’ that do no more than create mathematical problems to be solved. I am not interested in a piece made to be so difficult that trying to unpack the piece is the piece itself. I know this with certainty, I have heard pieces like this and I have begun establishing my own parameters for my taste in music. But that taste is my own, and no one else’s. So instead of seeing others blindly accept the critics’ reviews and the textbooks’ generalizations, I would love to see people begin to explore the world of music and decide for themselves what is interesting or boring, worthwhile or tedious. Music’s beauty is entirely subjective, its value is inherently personal. Classifications should, therefore, be avoided wherever possible. Music is a malleable art, with significant (and, in some cases, solely) abstract qualities. Music will evolve and change as it progresses, while labels and classifications, by definition, are completely opposite in function, seeking to systematize and freeze their subjects. I think there are many people in the music world quite clearly at cross-purposes with themselves here. And to them, I say, can we stop talking about music for a minute and actually listen to it for a while?
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