another post on why modern classical music sucks

Joe Queenan, over at the Guardian, has a nippy essay on why modern classical music has been wretched for nearly a century. As music snob, it’s an issue I care about. But until I read this essay, I don’t think that I’d encountered an explanation that quite nailed the issue. Queenan’s argument boils down to a few simple points:

1. Music that is purely about sound effects and gimmicks has extremely limited appeal because…
2. People need some driving, often traditional, aesthetic to maintain their listening experience.
3. Music that employs harsh tones makes people physically uncomfortable, unlike paintings that use nasty images, which people can process at their own pace.

This argument explains why other arguments about contemporary music’s suckiness are just wrong. For example, it’s often said that CCM (contemporary classical music) is unpopular because it’s abstract. That’s hogwash – there is lots of abstract music that’s fairly popular. Bebop, hip hop and new age all have large bodies of relatively popular work that have little in the way of lyrics or other traditional musical structure. Abstractness by itself does not make music bad.

Queenan also points out that this explains why CCM is popular in very select contexts, such as film scores. Embedded in larger works, people can take a little CCM as long as it’s motivated by other stuff, like film images. But few people can handle an hour of the stuff by itself. Also, the argument quickly points out that people don’t hate CCM becuase they aren’t versed in music history, the music is either too gimmicky or noisy for the human ear.

I’d also argue that this theory explains well the success of abstract music in other realms, such as jazz or funk. The most successful abstract music doesn’t abolish traditional structure. Rather, new technique and abstraction makes traditional music more exciting. For example, Albert Ayler is notorious as the noisiest jazz musician ever. But once you listen a few times, you realize that he’s just playing church songs, but the squeaking draws out an intensity in the music that few people thought was in there (e.g., Ghosts from the Spiritual Unity album). CCM failed because it tried to abandon too much, rather than hybridize.

Finally, Queenan’s argument explains why CCM won’t be another example of a music that is derided now, but eventually accepted. Successful new music (bebop in the 40’s, for example) usually has much in common with older musics. It’s just that the new technique allows people to show an exciting aspect of the older music. In Bebop’s case, you could use all sorts of tricks (diminished chords, tritone subsitutions, off beat syncopation) to really spice up and expand what you could do with something as simple as 12 bar blues in b-flat. In contrast, CCM doesn’t redeploy older music in quite the same way, unless you count references to other CCM. By having a more traditional and time tested core, bebop could eventually attract followers who could appreciate what was happening, while CCM doesn’t have that and probably never will.