THE WILD CHAMELEON OF THE PAMPAS

What is the job of the composer? Obviously, it is to create music, and he does this using the material of his environment and the methods that have proved effective in the past. His job is similar to the job of the architect or builder who specifies what material is to be used in constructing a building. In both occupations, a sort of natural selection has taken place over centuries. The designer of a cathedral that soon collapsed was not asked to build another, and his designs and methods were not copied. Likewise, the composer of fugues containing an abundance of parallel fifths was seldom appointed kapellmeister. The inventive Cistercian who devised the flying buttress earned as high a cloud in heaven as the anonymous genius who invented the octave key on the clarinet. In music, as in building, as in most other enterprises, whatever technique and scheme proved effective became adopted by following generations.

The composers whom we all regard as being the greatest were those who were most successful at garnering the techniques and effects invented by other composers, whereas the composers (e.g., Don Carlo Gesualdo) who completely abandoned the proven formulas are generally regarded as historical curiosities rather than celebrated geniuses. J. S. Bach invented no new form or style; his greatness rests in how he improved on the styles of others—organ works in the style of Buxtehude and Pachelbel; French overtures in the style of Couperin and Muffat. Bach's giant stride in demonstrating the possibility of equal temperament was one of mechanics, not of style.

The great masters often used popular tunes and folk melodies in their compositions. This is not just true of the arrangements of folk music such as the Hungarian Dances by Brahms, but in major works as well. Few listeners know that the opening them of Beethoven's "Eroica" symphony is an old tune that had been around for years before, and that it had been used by Mozart in an early opera. Even highly original composers such as Chopin and Debussy were heavily influenced by earlier music. Debussy was not only influenced by the style of Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894), but he was enthusiastic about the music of a Javanese gamelan orchestra he heard at the Paris exposition in 1889, and it seems certain that the frequent gong effects in his piano music were a consequence of that experience. The harmonic novelty of Debussy's music was a radical departure from German romanticism, but it was preceded by the late piano works of Franz Liszt (1811-1886), music that Debussy was, as a piano student, obviously familiar with. Liszt wrote Nuages gris in 1881; Debussy wrote his Nuages in 1898. Both composers were influenced by the pianistic style of Chopin. These are all threads in the great fabric of music, and no celebrated composer ever turned out a masterpiece that was not indebted to earlier music.

The misfortune of music in the twentieth century has been that after a few remarkably successful works by Debussy and Stravinsky early in the century, works that were seen as revolutionary at the time (although much has been written recently about the similarity of the themes in Le Sacré du printemps to Russian folk tunes), composers began to embrace the premise that the greatness of a piece of music was dependent only on how startlingly new and radical it was. The fabric of music which had extended unbroken back to the time of Pythagoras was being attacked with a chainsaw.

To return to the analogy of the composer as an architect or builder, it's is if the new designers had decided that basing all buildings on rectangles or cubes was passé, a tired idea that had seen its day, and that now it was time to begin designing houses and buildings based on polyhedrons or even amorphous shapes. It wouldn't matter that no one could walk on such floors or that such new edifices would be no improvement over the old ones, it is the concept and the modernness that matters. And so it is with music.

An example of how the actual music is secondary to the revolutionary nature of a composition is the recent string quartet by Karlheinz Stockhausen in which he specifies that the performers are to be flying around, each in a separate helicopter. Are the melodies of any importance? There aren't any. The harmony? There is no harmony, only discord. The rhythm? What rhythm? They're flying around in helicopters—that's the important thing! And what of the aleatory compositions of the late John Cage? Rather than being evolved from the tradition of Western music, they deliberately try and violate that tradition. It doesn't matter that such music is no improvement over the old music, and it doesn't matter that no one wants to listen to this music—except for a few cognoscenti who (a.) claim that there is something to understand about the music, and (b.) they are of the intellectual elite who are capable of understanding it.

What composers should be doing instead is returning to the tradition of incorporating previous styles into their works. Not only does classical music need more dance, but it needs to include various folk elements once again, just as Debussy included elements of the gamelan orchestra and Liszt incorporated Gypsy influences. Classical music needs to embrace elements of rock music, bebop, techno, reggae, ragas, salsa, ska and all other music in the world around us. Modern music should incorporate everything—all the music of the past, and all the music of the world.

One composer who is attempting to do this is Osvaldo Golijov, who was born in Argentina in 1960. He is, as best as I can recall, the first composer I read about before I ever heard his music, but as soon as I read a description of what he was doing, I knew he was on the right track. Once I had determined that Osvaldo Golijov's art was congruent with my aesthetic theory, it was unnecessary for me to first hear one of his pieces. I simply went to the record shop and ordered a CD—any CD containing his music.

When my order arrived, I confess that I was somewhat disappointed. The CD was Night Prayers by the Kronos Quartet (Elektra Nonesuch 979346, distributed by WEA), and there is but one short piece by Golijov on it. The rest of the music is thoroughly dull, and I wondered how long it took to compose some of the pieces. The selection by Golijov is K'vakarat, and it's simply the quartet playing a sparse accompaniment to the plaintive wail of a cantor. I once owned a CD collection of recordings of celebrated cantors, and I think that there are some great singers in this tradition. But K'vakarat sounds no different than any of the tracks on my collection. It's not as if Golijov incorporated cantorial singing into a piece of music, he simply duplicated it. Since the featured soloist on the track is an actual cantor, perhaps Golijov simply wrote the inept accompaniment.

Undeterred, as people with theories often are, I next obtained La Pasión Según San Marcos, (Hanssler Classics 98404, distributed by Collegium, 2 CDs) a cantata with some brilliant moments. The high point of this cantata is "Judas, El Cordero Pascual," which is in the salsa style of Latin America. It's a great piece, and the performance is superb—the best salsa music I've ever heard. The entire Pasión is in a Latino style, but it's not far removed from music of that style I've already heard. Perhaps the reason I'm fond of La Pasión Según San Marcos is simply that I have an appetite for Latin rhythms, but one doesn't necessarily need a preference for things German to appreciate Brahms. That's the difference.

I've been told that other pieces by Golijov are in the Klezmer style of the Jews of Eastern Europe, and it strikes me that as good as he is, Osvaldo Golijov is more of an arranger than an original composer. George Gershwin—or, to cite an example of a living composer of a similar bent, Paul Schoenfield—took ragtime and early jazz and used it to make something of his own. It was a starting point and he incorporated this music in his own original compositions, just as Bach and Beethoven used folk tunes and existing material to make their own unique art. Similarly, Marjan Mozetich used minimalism as a starting point to create his own original style which has only passing references to minimalism. Golijov may one day advance to writing something original which transcends the various styles at which he is so adept, but as of now, he creates replicas of cantorial singing, of Klezmer dances, of salsa—superb duplicates, but duplicates nevertheless. One wonders what genre his next composition will be in—a hip-hop ballet? A macarena symphony? Golijov writes the José Jimenez songbook?

Still, this is music to stir the emotions, and La Pasión Según San Marcos is by itself worth more than all the "advanced" offal of Luigi Nono, Morton Feldman and David Tudor put together for the simple reason that intelligent music lovers may enjoy it. This fact presents a threat to the professors, composers in residence, and professional music critics, so we may expect to hear mutterings against Golijov presently.