Let me ask you a question: When you hear the words “contemporary music,” what do you think of? Some of you might be immediately put off by that phrase, thinking, “Oh god, please, no.” You might be imagining something full of dissonant, crunchy chords and disjointed phrases that don’t seem to lead anywhere. Maybe it’s a solo or chamber piece full of bizarre, even grotesque sounds that seem more like white noise than “music.” Names like Boulez, Stockhausen, and Carter might be going through your head right now, and for good reason, as they were all huge figures in the avant-garde music scene and champions of the atonal, disfigured compositions that some consider off-putting.
What if I told you that you’ve been misled? …Well, okay, kind of. Let me explain.
Problem No. 1: There is no concrete definition of the term “contemporary music.” Taken literally, “contemporary” is just a synonym for “modern” or “present-day.” But how far back can we go before music stops being “modern''?” 100 years? 70? 50? Less? Does “modern” begin with the post-World War II era, or does it go further back? There’s no objective metric.
Problem No. 2: Classical music has evolved and diversified so much over the past century that it’s really difficult to fit all modern classical music under a single umbrella term, like we do with music from the Classical and Romantic eras. We have the Second Viennese School, the seralists, the minimalists, the neo-Classicists, the neo-Romantics, etc. We have music for acoustic instruments, electronics, and combos of both. We have music that adheres to basic tonality/modality, and we have music that completely ignores those concepts. How can you possibly find a single term to encompass all of that!?
Problem No. 3: The term “contemporary music” seems to bear this connotation with experimental, atonal music that sacrifices beauty for complexity or abstraction. While that kind of music definitely exists - Milton Babbitt was unapologetic about the dry, mathematical nature of his work - it’s far from all that contemporary music has to offer. Contemporary music comes in all kinds of different forms - it’s just a matter of exploring them. For example, the Amanda Harberg Clarinet Sonata, which was written in 2015:
Or Jorge Montilla’s Introduction and Joropo for solo bass clarinet, written in 2007:
And that’s not to say that the atonal stuff - which I adore, by the way - doesn’t have any merit. It totally does! It’s just a matter of understanding their meaning and conveying it to the audience.
Which brings me to the point of this blog post and the articles to come. Each week, I’ll be taking a look at one piece of contemporary clarinet rep (including bass clarinet rep!) and doing a deep dive into it. Discussion will include historical context, structural analysis, and, when appropriate, my own opinions on interpretation. If you have the Peter Hadcock orchestral excerpts book, what I’m doing is basically that but for contemporary rep. With this series, I hope to help clarinetists who wish to deepen their understanding of contemporary music and find the meaning behind the madness. For reference, the pieces I discuss here will cover roughly the last 50 years, so anything from 1970 on is fair game. I may look at older rep on occasion.
This post is meant to be an introduction to contemporary rep as a whole. The clarinet has a ton of rep from this genre, some of it better known than the rest. A lot of it is unaccompanied, meaning that you’re all alone on stage, with no one else to help you sell what might be a rather unusual product. This might be daunting to some, but like with any kind of performance anxiety, the solution is to actually go out and perform, and it does get easier over time. I like to think of it this way: You are the sole dominating force on the stage. The situation is entirely under your control, so you get to just let go and show the audience what you’ve got!
What’s so great about contemporary rep, anyway? What is there for us to enjoy about it as performers? Here’s what I love about it:
It pushes boundaries. Most of our “traditional” rep is based in diatonicism and really only strives to, to put it simplistically, “sound pretty.” Think about it: Mozart and Brahms have their differences, but they both strive for a similar kind of beauty in their music; one that’s pleasing to the ear and based in similar harmonic traditions. This is good and fine, but it makes the genre feel somewhat monolithic sometimes, at least to me. Contemporary music, on the other hand, isn’t afraid to do its own thing. It can be raucous, wild, eerie, ethereal, or wacky. It can explore different emotions/characters in ways that traditional rep cannot. In short, it’s different.
It gives greater freedom of expression than traditional rep. With a lot of traditional rep, there are certain performance practices that everyone more or less is expected to follow. On the other hand, I find that contemporary rep has more room for one’s own ideas and interpretive decisions. It’s easier for me to make a piece of contemporary rep feel like “mine” than with most traditional rep. This is especially true for the unaccompanied stuff, where I have full interpretive control of the piece.
It makes full use of the instrument. Listening to contemporary clarinet rep has given me greater insight into the clarinet’s capabilities than anything else, particularly when it comes to extended techniques. Multiphonics, quarter tones, glissandi, timbre trills… There are too many to list here. All of these techniques can be used to create incredible effects you can’t find elsewhere.
The first article will come next week. I hope you find this all helpful!
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