An Absurd Response to Concert Black (Part 2 of 3)
My senior year, a close friend and fellow composer, Evan Howard, of whom I am borrowing the title of this post from, decided to build his recital off of the concept of the collage concert. His concert was much more fluid, as each piece on the program was originally composed by him, and he specifically wrote interludes between the works that would combine material from the last piece with the upcoming piece. It was constructed in a cyclical form, starting and ending with the composer himself reciting a line of text, granted the beginning was a rather lengthy monologue, but the music, to contrast the larger scale of the concert, worked out to be through-composed. By the conclusion of the concert, you had felt like you had undertaken a journey and arrived in a completely different place by the end.
That same year, the OWE (Oregon Wind Ensemble) under the direction of Robert Ponto attempted the full immersion concert, where a single piece was performed (or a series of pieces all linked together by a common theme, etc.). We used Michael Daugherty’s UFO (I got to play the contrabassoon cadenza), and managed to eliminate the formal start of a concert with simply having the ensemble wear all black, and warming up and tuning before taking the stage. We even had some neat lighting effects for the first movement (courtesy of the UO Department of Theatre Arts) as well as the fourth movement (courtesy of Lance Miller), but overall we could not successfully avoid the inter-movement activity of the soloist (Dr. W. Sean Wagoner) having to relocate on stage, and the ensemble having to empty spit valves, wipe out their instruments, and just make unneeded noise overall. A good step in the right direction, however.
The final attempt (while I was at UO) of trying to break free from the clutches of mundane performance practice was a themed concert during my interim year with the Oregon Wind Ensemble. The choice was made to build a dance themed concert, though not using just dances, but rather pieces that depicted dancing, or implied the movement of the body of some sort. Using Tielman Susato’s Danserye (a collection of Renaissance dance movements arrange for the wind band) as the anchor piece, we also incorporated pieces such as Ron Nielson’s Morning Alleluias, and my newly revamped Dance of the Muse to construct a seemingly continuous concert. Performers were in the balcony, in the audience, and on stage, and all the movement for the performers was done while other music was taking place to minimize large gaps of nothing. It was a good attempt, and definitely one of the biggest strides taken by the OWE to approach this challenge.
Such new, innovative, and creatively integrated performances directly feed into our postmodern condition — our inability to feel adequately entertained or productive unless engaged in some form of multitasking — and will, I believe, appeal to younger audiences. I am wondering, though, where you would draw the line between art and entertainment. If you rigidly maintain anachronistic, Wagnerian formalities, you clearly distinguish musical performances as art. If, however, you cater to the audience, whether by providing more comfortable seating or by selling popcorn, do you think you in some way reduce the value of the performance to the level of, say, a movie?
I wouldn’t really say that alternative, non-Wagnerian concert settings are catering to the audience. What it is more in my mind is the continued innovation of art music where the performance details are now being taken into account, such as venue, length, atmosphere, location within the venue, etc. I think that these changes are not really for the audience — though they can benefit greatly from it as well — but for the performers, giving them a chance to be a performer rather than just standing on stage, as interesting as that may be to some. The changes can also benefit the composer drastically, increasing their consideration of the space their music will be performed in, rather than just the music itself. I see no reason why these ideas would cross any lines between art vs. entertainment, if there is indeed a line to cross.