Recently I went to a concert of new classical works, presented by an organization that typically specializes in the 18th- and 19th-century European classics. The host of the evening discussed the context of the new works, presumably to win over the more reluctant of their series subscribers. His argument was along these lines: We can enjoy the great classic works of the past because they were heard in their time; people learned to love them when they were new, the works became well known, and they entered the standard repertoire. We need to program new works, regardless of if we like them or not, because this is how we create the classics of the future.

As much as I wish this were a sound argument, I think it is problematic. I've also heard variations on this theme many times before, so I thought I'd point out some of the issues:

• First of all, this argument is usually only lip service. The great works of the classical period were heard and performed repeatedly—probably hundreds of times—before they started to make it into the collective awareness. Modern works in this same category are lucky to get a few dozen performances.


• Secondly, it is only starting in the 19th century that an idea of "classic" works evolved. This is a relatively modern phenomenon that we have been able to do without for most of history. Furthermore, the obsession with collecting music from the past really only reached its full potential with sound recordings in the 20th century. Humans used to be perfectly happy to forget about the old and reinvent new art for the present—in fact, this still happens in much of popular music.


• Given the recent appearance of the idea of "classic", there is no reason to assume that our generation will produce classic works for the future. In fact, there is evidence to the contrary. We have, for the first time in history, a situation in which our fundamental cultural problem is not acquiring art, but organizing it. There is SO MUCH music out there, and it's so easy to access, that there is a greatly diminished need for more classics. More likely is that society's various subgroups have the mindspace for a certain number of classic works that fit their self-image. This mindspace is largely filled in most areas, and will only be replaced by works that are superior at building self-image for that group than past works.


• Even if we do produce classics for the future, we are not likely to do so with art that is in styles that fail to reach audiences. This is not to say that new art needs to be populist or compromised, but it does need to communicate something unique and relevant in a way that can be understood by non-specialists without significant investments of time spent studying. All of the classics of the past fit this category. Mozart and Beethoven were edgy in their time, but still popular. Even musicians like Schoenberg and Stockhausen managed to cultivate a degree of popular appeal, because what they did was completely unique at the time and held significant cultural value. Today, however, we face different cultural problems (organization vs. access, for example), and If we are to have a chance at creating new classics, we need to address these issues in new ways. Following the 19th-century model of classics-building probably won't lead to great success. If it did, new works wouldn't be such a hard sell and repeat performances of them would be more common.

It would be nice as composers to be able to sit back comfortably and say that we have inherited the job of creating the classics of the future from the great musicians of the past. Such a position is a little simplistic, however. Music is about culture, and we need to find ways of dealing with the issues of today if we are to create relevant work. After all, classics become classics because they somehow touch the hearts and minds of a (relatively) large group of people in a profound way. And profoundness doesn't come from just doing things in the same old way.

Recently I read both Goethe's and Marlowe's Faust plays--the Faust legend has been a major influence on many generations of composers and authors. I found them exceedingly dull, except that the Marlowe made me think about changing English syntax in relation to the other germanic languages. And in the case of Goethe, I was curious about the psychology that would lead someone to torment over this story for one's entire career.

What they made me realize though, is that ideas of the value and endurance of art are tied to our world views. The Faust legend has very little appeal to someone who believes that Christianity is only one among many competing superstitious ways of understanding the world. After you take out the struggle between Christian sin and virtue, the story become nonsensical. This is especially so when you consider that many of the vices that damn the characters in both versions became pillars of Western civilization over the past 150 years.

Even the core concept behind the myth seems problematic to me, because it is inherently moralistic. The basic premise is that of over-extending and being punished for it. In the case of Faust, the over-extension is in terms of Christian morality: dealing with the devil and so forth. The closest recent parallel I could find is the sub-prime mortgage fiasco in the US. That seems a question of over-extension, the hedge fund speculators having dealt with the devil of questionable investments. In our case, however, there's a lot less gnashing of teeth and a lot more people trying to solve the problem. Punishment, moreover, is largely absent from any discussion I've seen, since it would be ludicrously unproductive. (Granted, Goethe starts hinting at the punishment problem in the end of Part 2 when the angels steal Faust's soul away from Mephistopheles at the last minute. But Part 2 leaves the core of the myth behind anyway, and Goethe refused to have it published during his lifetime, so...)

The value of the Faust myth to art has become historical at best. Increasingly, I think all art follows this path. Faust as an idea served a purpose. It was useful to a Christian society trying to come to grips with the problems in its beliefs. But what would a Confucianist scholar contemporary with Goethe have thought of it? Or would it have made any sense framed by Buddhist morality? Would it have survived in a non-Western literary canon? Even for Christians living today, is it particularly inspiring?

When we make art, perhaps we should keep this specificity of purpose in mind. After all, when art does seem to last, the reality is that it's been reinvented: the music Mozart wrote for his patrons' parties is not really the same as the Mozart that is now part of the Top 100 Relaxing Classical Hits collection in your car CD player. The reasons it has survived have nothing to do with why it was successful during Mozart's lifetime.

So let's forget about immortality and lasting art. Sure, I'd like people to keep on enjoying what I make long after my death. But that's not something anyone can control; it's purely at the whim of historical fancy. And given the exponential increases in the amount of art being made, our abilities to store it, and its accessibility, it seems to me this vision of creating lasting art is becoming increasingly problematic. Art becomes more disposable, more individual, more subjective by the minute. That, in the end, is what Faust really has to say to us today.

I've posted the three papers from my Master's portfolio at UC San Diego on my website for those who are interested. There are abstracts and PDF versions of the papers there.

If you want to leave comments on those papers, please do so on this blog post.

Recently I had a discussion with someone at a concert, about whether or not it was good to fall asleep during a performance. She said that, although she enjoyed the piece that had just been played, she was disappointed that it had been programmed so late in the concert, because it made her feel sleepy. So I asked her why that was a bad thing. She was adamant that the piece would be a better experience if she were able to concentrate all the way through, but I disagree. Paying attention is over-rated, at least in the "serious" music community.

Lots of music is great if you don't pay attention, or can't pay attention. Sometimes music helps me work, because I'm not listening to it actively but it blocks out other distractions. Sometimes I definitely enjoy the feeling of being lulled to sleep in a concert; of just barely being able to make out what's going on, but catching glimpses of the experience through the fog of your dreams. It's better, in any case, to the cold clear realization of, "Oh, this concert is pretty mediocre after all."

So perhaps "I slept through your concert" shouldn't be considered an insult. Perhaps it should be considered a good thing. They could have said, "I was bored during your concert and counting the seconds go by." That would be worse. But falling asleep means that the music had a lulling effect. That's a pretty powerful effect. And people generally like to sleep... so maybe "I slept through your concert" should be promoted to the ranks of "I really enjoyed your concert" or "Your concert made me think a lot" or similar musical compliments that have to do with affect.

What better compliment than, "Your music puts me out like a light; better than sleeping pills"? If you've done something with sound that is stronger than medical science, then why not be happy about it?

So today I read in the Globe and Mail that scientists are increasingly finding biological and genetic support for the age-old adages of love (Siri Agrell, "Sluts and Vermin", The Globe and Mail, 26 Apr 2007, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070426.wxlsexstudies26/BNStory/lifeFamily/home).

For example, female mice who play hard to get tend to inspire faithfulness in their mates, as opposed to those who put out right away. There seems to be a biological reason why women that are unavailable are more desirable, and this builds faithfulness in men. Interesting.

Other adages have similar support, such as the idea that girls like bad boys (instinctual adaptive mechanism to unresponsive men), and that a rebound is a good cure for a break up (dopamine and oxytocin released in the brain). Even the idea that opposites attract--couples with greater genetic difference are statistically more faithful (genetic similarity makes women prone to infidelity).

Unsurprisingly, this is disturbing to many people. And I think the reason for this is that a good part of our societal norms are based on the Christian idea of free will, which has troubled philosophers since long before the advent of genetics. We want to think that we are all unique and different, that we make choices by ourselves to affect our destinies. Yet ever since statistics were adapted to human populations in the 18th century, this is a stance that has been becoming weaker and weaker, though we don't like to talk about it. In fact, modern mass-consumerism is predicated on the idea that, for the majority of people in the majority of life situations, free will doesn't really exist.

So I started thinking about what this means to art, since art as it is defined in the modern sense relies absolutely on free will. We seek out the composer-genius, the master-painter, these artistic figures that were able to create greatness by breaking away from the mundane, the everyday conventions. Then their work becomes the new convention, until this process happens again. It worked for Beethoven in the 19th century anyway.

The problem is, it stopped working in the 20th century. The historically short-lived interest in high art disappeared, and people kept on enjoying the developments of Beethoven and other "common practice period" composers, instead of replacing them with the new, as had always been the case before. It is only as we approach the 21st century that interest in "common practice period" music is evaporating as it "should" have earlier. However, the problem is that it is not being replaced with Schoenberg, Boulez, and Stockhausen, it is being replaced by the new museum music of jazz and classic rock.

Free will would lead us to expect that culture would eventually progress to higher and higher forms of art, as geniuses find ways to bring the understanding of the masses up to par with the "enlightened" avant-garde, who through their efforts have arrived at more fulfilling artistic experiences. A lack of free will would lead us to expect that certain physical models of art, biologically suited to be pleasing or fulfilling to the majority, would be forever recycled in variegated cultural forms.

The latter seems to be the case, though I am not arguing for or against the existence of free will. Instead, I think the concept is problematic. We can assume for the most part that a large part of life is predetermined, not necessarily by some divine force (though if you want to think that, go ahead), but by simple statistical force. And this extends right down to the genetics of our love life, what we find artistically pleasing, and the colour of our hair. But there may also well be numerous areas of varying importance in which individual actions play a great role: we can choose to leave our partners, go to a concert of something new with a friend whose taste we trust, and dye our hair different colours.

But what does this leave for the dominant conception of art? Not much. On it's own, it is useless, except to those who are genetically or biologically or culturally or however else preconditioned to get something out of it. High and low, it's all the same, as long as it fulfills its function for you. Of course, there are the rare cases where people find themselves in the position to spend the necessary time and energy to unravel something different--the cases where the statistics of life have aligned to give them a window into the previously unconsidered. But it's silly to assume that this is necessarily the desirable situation, or better for us, or will lead to a greater artistic understanding by the majority. There's simply no proof of this.

Should we therefore give up our abstract musical ventures and stick to writing catchy tunes? I don't think so. Majority rule tends to be a bad system. But at the same time, we shouldn't blame the lack of acceptance for our work on misguided cultural pundits, or a lack of musical education in the school system, or the commercialness of the media. Who cares if most people like hamburgers better than fois gras? It's just a reality of life. If artists want more people appreciating their work, maybe they should have more babies... ;-)

I've thought a lot lately about the effect that sound, and particularly music, has on our environment. This is what people frequently call Ecomusicology, though I'm not crazy about that term.

Basically, do we have a right to make noise? How must it feel for a bird living on my street? Does it enjoy (or notice) the sounds of cars, airplanes, people playing soccer in the park across the street? Maybe the bird doesn't but the squirrel might.

In a purely physical sense, any unintended noise made by a machine through the use of a non-renewable energy source is waste, though of course certain originally unintended noises have developed social purposes (for example, silent cars would be quite dangerous). But we can't be faulted for not being perfect right off the bat; I'm sure the world will get quieter as the energy crisis becomes more acute.

Now what about the noise of music? In the past, you only ever heard music when people played it in front of you, and this was rare enough and bound by sufficient social convention that most people generally enjoyed it (the exception being street musicians who would try to annoy the locals so that they would get bribes to perform elsewhere). Nowadays, however, music of all kinds is everywhere. The experience of hearing music is the norm rather than the exception.

Music is cheap and plentiful, and individual performances (whether live or recorded) have as much value as any other individual mass-produced object; that is, close to none. Yet music is not free to create; there is an economic and ecological cost, as well as the psychological cost of being exposed to varying degrees of noise at various times, often not of our own choosing. The use of music has measurable physical effects on the world around us.

I suppose if we all had unlimited financial resources and mobile social ties, we could all choose to live in the sonic environment of our choice, including deciding on the kinds of music we want to be exposed to. This would at least reduce the psychological cost of music-making, although not the economic or ecological ones. We might therefore choose a range of exposure from "none, except when I play it myself" to "surprise me as much as possible, I like variety". But this isn't really realistic, so most of us suffer through less than ideal sonic environments, usually by learning to unconsciously tune things out.

That's too bad, because listening can be very enjoyable, and is one of the few truly unique experiences left in our mass-produced environments. The "soundscapes" (to use R. Murray Shafer's term) of different places are very different--San Diego, Toronto, New York, Amsterdam, Cologne, London--these cities all sound very different from one another. And guess what? They also enjoy different kinds of music scenes. I'm sure there must be a correlation, although clearly economic, cultural, and other incentives play a role too. But those other factors also play a role in the soundscape of the city, so in a sense, how the city sounds is tied to how its music sounds.

So I can't help but think that as our cities evolve to become "greener" and necessarily quieter, our music will change too. It will become more responsible, as will the ways that we use it. Last year we reached the point where over 50% of the world's population now lives in cities, which are artificial places, created by people for people. Our music will therefore increasingly become city music (whatever that may be), appropriate to the lives of city dwellers. This is obvious when we look at the sharp decline in the creation of so-called "pastoral" music in the 20th century. How many people nowadays have ever spent an afternoon lying in the sun in a sheep pasture? Different cultural experiences for a different time...

This is an issue I've been thinking about for a long time. Can we actually justify saying one kind of music is better than any other, or that one piece is better than another? I wrote a paper related to this issue recently for my degree... perhaps I'll post it on my website eventually. But I thought I'd summarize some of the conclusions, as I think this has been a driving force in the way I write recently.

I guess basically, I don't believe music holds any value whatsoever. It's just organized sound. People imbue it with value, however, when they use it. At times in history (e.g. the industrial revolution, the Cold War), certain uses of music have been so, well... useful, that people have developed musical canons around them. These people couldn't see how something as useful as the appreciation of, say, Beethoven or the Beatles could be arbitrary, so they took the music to have fundamental value and canonized it. To make things worse, people with political agendas have always fought to have their music included in the canon as well, and when they had power, they often succeeded. This leads us to the convoluted thing we call the musical tradition.

But I think people are wising up to the situation. That's why the record companies' profitability has been in free fall over the past few years. I think part of the reason for the change is sites like MySpace: there's just more access to more music, and when faced with an endless supply of musical variegation, it becomes harder to argue for inherent value. So people are more willing to create their own value, or at least adopt value from someone (person/media source/corporation) they consider an authority on the subject. And there are way more someones claiming to be authorities now than in the past.

So why should I write the kind of music that I write when I can get just as much value from listening to Justin Timberlake? After all, my dislike for Timberlake's music obviously shows that my faculties of musical appreciation are inferior in some sense to many other people's--they like him and I haven't figured out how to like his music yet. Maybe if I practice listening to Timberlake I'll learn to love it, as I had to practice listening to Beethoven and Mozart to learn to love that music. Then maybe I'll finally reach true musical fulfillment.

The reason, I guess, is that most people don't think of music as valueless, although in my mind it most certainly is. I create the music that I do because I want to hear it, plain and simple. However, the other people who hear it will find value in it for any number of reasons and often tell me about that value. That is fascinating to me, to learn about how other people imbue value. And what better way to do it than through something that I have a strong value relation with, such as my own music? Definitely not art for art's sake. More like art as undefined, if art even exists... I simply like to see what comes out of the lack of meaningfulness.

Oh, and there's also the problem that I write the music I want to hear and nobody else does. If you think you can write the music I want to hear, please do! Then I could be a lawyer or do something else that pays well and just enjoy the fruits of your labour instead. Sigh... the fantasies of the composer. ;)