The words “new music” began to instill fear in listeners at the turn of the 20th century. Experiments in radical new styles puzzled the majority of concert audiences across the so-called classical world. These were the very people whose patronage supported orchestras, recital series, and opera companies, particularly in the United States. Their spreading refusal to embrace drastic changes in compositional principles led to an isolation of new music. Without a popular audience, this repertoire retreated into academia or similar institutional ivory towers.
When in college, I had professors who cut their teeth on such pieces, and in one case even studied with arguably the most revolutionary of all composers, Arnold Schoenberg. Often I heard such professors say that the “ears” of audiences simply needed to catch up to these challenging sounds.
But those ears did not catch up. Instead, concert-goers turned away from new music, leaving it to elite ensembles and mission-driven listeners. Works by composers like John Cage, Elliott Carter, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Pierre Boulez kept their intellectual cache, but few drew a strong box office. At the same time, young composers who dared to write lyrical music were met with a sniff of disdain.
To fill the gap of what, in previous eras, would have been a necessary and popularly anticipated stream of new compositions, orchestras turned back to the tried and true (Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky) to entice their audiences. Opera companies battened down the hatches with seasons of Verdi and Puccini. The once innovative recital series that blossomed in most communities atrophied and died. Antipathy to abrasive “new music” dampened the vitality of musical life everywhere.
Except in one place: the world of the concert band. There, new works flourished. Why?
First, young musicians like the challenge of new things, and, unlike symphony orchestras, bands are filled with young players. Furthermore, college and military bands are not dependent on ticket sales for survival. They can afford to experiment. In addition, composers writing for wind ensembles seemed to find ways to innovate, not by removing the aural signposts of our traditional musical language but by adding interesting edges to melody, harmony, and rhythm without tossing out the familiar. Listeners could find their way.
In the 1980s, a new generation of largely American composers started to rise. They did not share their professors’ devotion to the mathematical world of twelve-tone serialism. Innovation for the sake of innovation lost its status. Melody trickled back in, as did graspable harmonies and clearer musical form. By the turn of the 21st century, this generation, and another one right behind it, started to rock the musical world with fabulous new pieces.
My experiences with this new music began fifteen years ago when asked by the Founder and Executive Director of the Dallas Winds, Kim Campbell, to inaugurate a series of pre-concert lectures for that ensemble. Considered America’s finest civilian wind ensemble, the Dallas Winds operate under the motto “Have fun, Make Friends, Be Amazed.” I was intrigued particularly by the “amaze” part, but cautioned Kim, “How will this work? I don’t know the wind repertoire.” “You’ll learn it,” he said. “That’ll be the fun part.”
How right he was. Expecting to be immersed in a sea of vaguely familiar band music from the 19th and early 20th century. I found myself thrown into an ocean of spectacular new pieces for every concert. But it was a new kind of “new music”!
Yes, the Dallas Winds, under the direction of legendary conductors Howard Dunn and Frederick Fennell, and now Maestro Jerry Junkin, plays many grand, traditional works, from Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait to Sousa Marches to works by British greats like Malcolm Arnold and Edward Elgar. But each season offers vivid bouquets of new works by composers like John Mackey, Michael Daugherty, John Corigliano, Eric Whitacre, David Maslanka, Austin Wintory, and my newest favorite, Omar Thomas.
Are these names unfamiliar to you? They were unfamiliar to me, too, until, one by one, I heard the tremendous pieces they have created. If only I could stop everything and journey with you into each of their musical worlds (impractical for both of us)! Instead, let me tell you about one composer and one composition: a piece I experienced in performance Tuesday night at a concert called Let Freedom Ring.
Clearly honoring Veterans’ Day, this program paid tribute to landmarks of our American history, including the aforementioned Lincoln Portrait. But the penultimate work grew out of a tragic aspect of our American history—in this case, a racially motivated massacre of worshipers in a Bible study at the historic Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015. Nine church members were slain. The murderer, a stranger who had been welcomed warmly into their circle of prayer, stood minutes later and killed in the coldest of cold blood. The nation was shaken.
How can a piece of music express such an event? And who should attempt to compose it? These were the questions posed by a very young Omar Thomas before he accepted a commission for Of Our New Day Begun—the title he gave to the c. 12-minute work. In an interview I had the pleasure of conducting with him (brief excerpt below) he revealed how the prospect of the commission overwhelmed him. Once he listened to the wisdom of his dad (“Do it, son!”) and learned that members of the congregation would be present at the work’s first performance in a location across from the church itself, he gave himself over to the project.
At the core of the piece he placed the powerful melody of a work known today as the Black National Anthem. You can get a sense of both its soaring melody and powerful text (Lift Every Voice and Sing) through this performance by American soprano Denyce Graves at the opening of the National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., the newest branch of the complex we call The Smithsonian.
Within the text of that song comes these words, written by James Weldon.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.
There is no way a recorded performance on YouTube can convey the grandeur and passion of a work like Thomas’. You have to hear it performed live, as it was Tuesday in the vibrantly resonant, majestic hall in downtown Dallas known as “The Meyerson.” And you have to hear it “nailed”—performed at a high level (which is a routine task for the Dallas Winds). But still, the combination of Thomas speaking about the piece, and a recorded performance gives you an idea of how engaging this world of “new music” actually is.
I could write much more about this phenomenon, and I will. But meanwhile, take the list of names I placed above and explore their “new” music. I think you’ll be won over. Also explore the list of CDs you find on the Dallas Winds’ website and see what catches your imagination. Write me if you want more ideas.
And, if you hear the words “new music” spoken in a way that implies “eek” or “yuck,” gently suggest that “new music” of the early 20th century had its place, bringing needed expansions of our Western musical vocabulary. But its place is in the past. The “new music” of today is irresistibly alive and beckoning all of us back into the concert hall—especially music written for wind and percussion instruments. It tosses together and refines by fire the best of early 20th-century innovations with the strength of Baroque, classical, and Romantic styles, creating a new world of verve, dynamism, and beauty.
Thank you, Carol, for being such a strong advocate for this amazing, dynamic, and deeply moving music. Everybody who loves “classical” music needs to know that it is alive and well, and sending up vigorous new growth in the band world.