Is This The New Classical Music?
A few weeks ago, I took a well-needed vacation to Nashville and to Atlanta to attend one of those lovely concert-in-the-park concerts that seem to occur around this time of year. Little did I realize just how much my companions and I would be in shock as to what we would be hearing. The concert was one of many in a series with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra with featured guests. We were going to this particular concert to hear country singer Wynonna. Now because none of us had any of the details, we didn't know it would be so pops-oriented --- the orchestra playing western-inspired music in the first half (Copland's Rodeo from Billy the Kid, John Williams March of the Cowboys, etc) and then Wynonna singing some of her songs along with standards with the orchestra as accompaniment. My Nashville friends weren't too pleased with the setup and frankly neither was I. But this was not the first pops concert I had been too and on that long 3 hour drive back to Nashville, I tried to figure out why it irked me so much. Then I came to some sort of conclusion. It wasn't the idea of a pop/classical merger as much as it was the reasons for the occurance.
The past five to ten years or so have seen an abundance of collaborations just like this in every genre. The first one that always comes to mind is the album S&M, the tandem effort of Metallica and the San Francisco Symphony. As far fetched of an idea as that may have been, it was much more succesful than the same idea implemented by the Scorpions with their biggest hit, Rock You Like A Hurricane. For some reason, people thought that this would be a good idea, especially if it was at its most extreme --- pairing heavy metal with classical. Now instead of taking the best parts of both genres to create something new and musically exciting, each group sticks to their previously defined roles, the orchestra providing some sense of overpowering drama that can only be achieved by a massive amount of strings and the other group, no matter what they might be, showing that they can still rock even with those white-haired old fogies behind them, that being what someone might say of orchestral musicians, not my term.
The cheapening of the music does no good for either party. Those orchestras that take part thinking that this might award them some newfound publicity are sorely mistaken on most occasions and those die hard fans of the other present genre clamor for something else, something old instead of this new venture into the classical world (it can be said that fans can be the most brutal, whenever their favorite artist turns in a new direction, unleashing a backlash that could never be predicted). And as a result, the idea that in order to succeed as a new, young classical artist is to be as crossover as possible, no matter how true that might be, is propagated. From this arises artists like Josh Groban and Charlotte Church, finding success in a mainstream world that seems intolerant of the musicians and sounds of old.
So what does all of this mean? Probably nothing. It is, like many things a fad, one that will, if it hasn't already, start to fade away. If anything, it's telling of the public and the industry's idea of what classical music is and should be. But this is by no means a death sentence for the art. If anything, it's a chance for the music to have a place to evolve in American culture, just as it has always done except this time a little more publically. And hey, no one said that evolution was pretty.
The past five to ten years or so have seen an abundance of collaborations just like this in every genre. The first one that always comes to mind is the album S&M, the tandem effort of Metallica and the San Francisco Symphony. As far fetched of an idea as that may have been, it was much more succesful than the same idea implemented by the Scorpions with their biggest hit, Rock You Like A Hurricane. For some reason, people thought that this would be a good idea, especially if it was at its most extreme --- pairing heavy metal with classical. Now instead of taking the best parts of both genres to create something new and musically exciting, each group sticks to their previously defined roles, the orchestra providing some sense of overpowering drama that can only be achieved by a massive amount of strings and the other group, no matter what they might be, showing that they can still rock even with those white-haired old fogies behind them, that being what someone might say of orchestral musicians, not my term.
The cheapening of the music does no good for either party. Those orchestras that take part thinking that this might award them some newfound publicity are sorely mistaken on most occasions and those die hard fans of the other present genre clamor for something else, something old instead of this new venture into the classical world (it can be said that fans can be the most brutal, whenever their favorite artist turns in a new direction, unleashing a backlash that could never be predicted). And as a result, the idea that in order to succeed as a new, young classical artist is to be as crossover as possible, no matter how true that might be, is propagated. From this arises artists like Josh Groban and Charlotte Church, finding success in a mainstream world that seems intolerant of the musicians and sounds of old.
So what does all of this mean? Probably nothing. It is, like many things a fad, one that will, if it hasn't already, start to fade away. If anything, it's telling of the public and the industry's idea of what classical music is and should be. But this is by no means a death sentence for the art. If anything, it's a chance for the music to have a place to evolve in American culture, just as it has always done except this time a little more publically. And hey, no one said that evolution was pretty.
posted by Imani at 12:28 PM
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