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Composers without borders
CAITLIN ROWLEY essays the influence of pop music on five young Australian composers, and discovers their ambivalence for an "Australian sound".
What is happening to classical music? As the new millennium dawns, and orchestras update the titles of their twentieth century concert series, more and nore classical composers in Australia are showing the influence of pop music, and what's more, showing it off. From Matthew Hindson's Homage to Metallica to the fusion sounds of Coda, it is becoming harder to define boundaries between classical and pop.
This trend is part of a worldwide "new tonality", with its roots back in the 1960s when the early "minimalists" rebelled against the strictures of the prevalent serial, or twelve-tone, methods of composition. Composers such as Steve Reich and Michael Nyman drew inspiration from the popular artists of their time; Nyman formed his style (familiar from Peter Greenaway films such as Prospero's Books and The Cook, the Thief, the Wife and her Lover) from the radical idea of playing the Catalogue Aria from Mozart's Don Giovanni in the style of Jerry Lee Lewis. Jazz players such as John Coltrane as well as rock'n'roll performers influenced the return to tonality in the '60s; today composers can look to dance music, hip-hop, rap, heavy metal and grunge (among others) for inspiration.
While
all this might seem like a rejection of the classical tradition, composers
are actually re-embracing the past. No longer do they feel compelled
to find an entirely new form of musical expression. Instead, they recognise
the importance of communicating with an audience by using old materials
from the established classical tradition in new ways. This can draw
the criticism of "pandering to the audience", but according
to Melbourne composer Stuart Greenbaum, the agenda is not one of universal
accessibility.
"I do not believe that the process of writing new music requires the rejection of old music", says Greenbaum. "The modernist notion that we could totally re-invent musical language seems to me a bizarre and foreign concept. When I compose, I write the music that I want to hear. I seek an expression which reflects who I am and how I feel about the world I live in."
The
same argument, in short, as that used by the early American minimalists
who questioned the validity of a style of music, founded on European
post-war angst, performed in a world of Chuck Berry, hamburgers and
tail-fin cars.
The crossover element in the music of composers interviewed for this
story suggests that perhaps it is no longer appropriate to make a distinction
between pop and classical. Some composers were strongly in favour of
a change of terminology, from pop versus classical styles, to pop versus
classical contexts or situations. Whatever the reference,
there still seems to be an overall distinction between pop music and
pop-influenced classical music, albeit with a grey area between the
two.
Nick Wales is one composer who inhabits this grey area. He makes a living by writing and performing string arrangements for bands such as Pollyanna, Leonardo's Bride and Mental As Anything. He also composes for Coda, a band which plays in such varied venues as The Basement and the Eugene Goossens Hall, and which is currently part of the Musica Viva in Schools program.
Originally formed as a (somewhat experimental) string quartet while Wales was studying composition at Sydney University, Coda has undergone some changes of personnel, most noticeably the addition of a singer, Mina Kanaridis, whose repertoire includes mediaeval and Middle Eastern songs as well as more standard classical works, and a drummer.
A
classic example of the grey area between pop and classical functions
was seen this year when Wales's song Stevie, written for Coda
and performed on their album passion:pop, was nominated for an
Australian Music Centre Award (Best Composition category). The version
nominated was a chamber orchestra arrangement (without words) of the
original.
Wales
sees no distinction between composing dance tracks for nightclubs, soundscapes
for art galleries or art music for the concert hall. "Sure, the
musical languages differ," he says, "but so do the musical
languages of minimalism and 12-tone music."
Drew
Crawford, also a Sydney Uni graduate, is in a similar position. His
music theatre work, Why Are Our Porn Stars Killing Themselves?,
a collaborative piece created with singer Michele Morgan, was first
staged at the nightclub Kinselas. Since then, songs from the show have
been presented in classical concerts, and now appear in new arrangements
by his band DC5 as part of Pulse, a regular event held in Darlinghurst
featuring drum'n'bass and other popular music styles. The latest step
in the career of this versatile work is a proposed restaging with DC5
and The Seymour Group.
The trend is not restricted to Sydney, with similar influences at work across the country. Morpheus New Music Band in Perth performs WA composer James Ledger's pop-influenced music alongside arrangements of Led Zepplin and pop-influenced composers from overseas, such as Michael Torke. Ledger cites a number of popular influences on his music: "Rock, pop, techno, dance, jazz, film, cartoon music and daytime television themes have all made their mark because it is what I hear all the time, directly or indirectly."
The
ubiquity of pop music today, whether Triple J grunge or 2Day-FM Mariah
Carey, in shops, lifts, lobbies, even on station platforms, means that
there must be few composers left who have never been influenced by it.
Pop music soaks into us everywhere we go in public, washing our ears
with beats, melodies, harmonies and phrase patterns.
Stuart
Greenbaum discovered the power of the subconscious when he found that
the middle of his piece Noyz in th' Hood was straight out of
Led Zepplin's Black Dog. "I never owned any Zepplin, but
my older brother played it all the time and it must have sunk in; not
just as brainwashing, but as what I would term 'adrenalin-identification'.
I had no conscious agenda to allow Led Zepplin into my notated music,
it just happened."
Naturally, though, popular music is not the only influence on these
composers. All classically trained, their musical interests encompass
the work of composers such as Monteverdi, Copland, Beethoven, Stravinsky,
Erik Satie, Webern, Varese, Arvo Part and Philip Glass, and some fringe-
dwellers in the world of film scoring (itself sometimes considered a
popular genre) such as Bernard Herrmann and Max Steiner.
So what does all this mean for an "Australian sound"? Considering
that three of the five composers interviewed have been students of Peter
Sculthorpe (well known for his development of an Australian sound with
works such as the Sun Music series and Kakadu), it was interesting
to find that most of them did not think Australian-ness in their music
was something to aim for, or even be overly concerned about. This is
a big change from the ideas which developed with the first major flourish
of Australian classical music in the 1960s, which explored the distinctive
Australian landscape and drew on Asian and Aboriginal music.
"As Peter Sculthorpe has noted recently in his memoirs, such questions about the existence of an Australian identity (or sound) in music are often asked by those who are insecure about their own cultural identity," says Sydney composer Paul Stanhope. "I think this is a fair observation. I also think that inevitably the way we do things in Australia is going to have its own flavour [whether] composers know it or not."
Evidently,
the music of this country has developed enough for composers to feel
that they don't have to define themselves through the use of Australian
or Asian materials. And following the lead of Barry Conyngham, today's
young composers feel no imperative to go to Europe to further their
musical training, choosing America, Japan, or anywhere that takes their
fancy.
Part of this is due to the communications boom which sees the world
becoming smaller day by day, with ideas flowing back and forth between
countries in seconds. In past ages, it took about 100 years for a musical
style to develop, spread, and finally be overtaken by something new;
in the 20th century alone we have seen more than half-a-dozen significant
styles — from impressionism through to new complexitism —
with numerous schools of thought blossoming in between, along with radical
individuals such as Erik Satie and Charles Ives who have been of significant
influence to later composers.
Maybe the return to the simpler tonality of popular music, and the prominence of rhythmic pulse in music for the concert hall, are other instances of what has happened in the past, where simpler musical styles overtake the more complex.
Caitlin
Rowley is a composer and publications coordinator at the Australian
Music Centre.
The above article was published in the 2MBS-FM
monthly magazine 'Fine Music' January 2000. It is reproduced here courtesy
of 2MBS-FM 102.5.
www.2mbs.com 
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