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 Last season, the
New York Philharmonic presented the premiere of a piece by David Del Tredici that answered
two big objections to contemporary classical music: New classical works don't sound like
any other music that most people know, and don't concern themselves with any part of life
that many people care about.
But Mr. Del Tredici weaves a
very different web. His Philharmonic premiere, for soprano and baritone soloists and
orchestra, was called "The Spider and the Fly," and one area of modern life it
touched on was sex. Its text comes from a Victorian children's poem, whose apparent
innocence fits easily with a nostalgic musical style that Mr. Del Tredici invented, one
he'd used in works based on another children's classic, "Alice in Wonderland."
But his music was also
wildly grandiose, which marked it as both contemporary and aesthetically complex. The
first words of the piece -- "Walk into my parlor, said the Spider to the Fly" --
are sung by the baritone to a deceptively simple melody, which starts to twist in itchy
delight when the spider points to the "winding stair" he wants the fly to climb.
The fly responds near the
top of the soprano's range with music that's all at once jumpy, anxious and aroused. The
erotic subtext is obvious enough -- and goes beyond simple sex into undertones of
dominance and submission, a dark form of play with pain and bondage that's gone mainstream
lately (in advertising imagery, for instance), but which you won't often hear about in the
classical concert hall. 
Mr. Del Tredici, though, has had his own taste of sexual
decadence, and in an interview with New York's "Time Out" magazine even
discussed his own battles with sex addiction, the kind of subject nobody in classical
music ever mentions publicly, and which I note here only because it helps explain the
soothing ending of his musical extravaganza. The conclusion of his piece, he says,
"is meant to restore trust" and "to reaffirm love," so the work comes
full circle, emotionally, sexually and stylistically as well. It seduces innocence to
voluptuous, excessive heights, then ends with simplicity again. Anyone can hear this, and
can grasp the reasons for Mr. Del Tredici's nostalgic musical style, which, by returning
to classical music's past, itself comments on the innocence we've lost.
And anyone could also
understand Mr. Del Tredici's "Dracula," given its premiere not long ago by the
Eos Ensemble, a group that draws its own kind of younger, less classical audience to
concerts of mostly modern works. "Dracula" (based on a wicked tale by Alfred
Corn, "My Neighbor, The Distinguished Count") is yet another fable of seduction,
but this time more flamboyant, even gothic.
Soprano Wendy Hill spoke and
sang and moaned the text, and was, to put it mildly, staggering, breaking through the
typically timid boundaries of classical music to embody a not-so-helpless woman who
embraces her own downfall. But it was Mr. Del Tredici's score that gave her the impetus,
again giving older classical styles a fiendish twist, framing the world's most elegant
vampire in a wry, antique, exotic light.
But then all of the Eos
program was delightful. First came "Three Pieces for Theater Orchestra" by
Charles Ives, America's first and greatest musical experimenter; they were trifles, but
served as a bracing aural wake-up call. Next was a scene from Ligeti's opera "Le
Grand Macabre," a work that's both entirely modernist and a crazy romp. Then
"Dracula," and finally three pieces by the great Spike Jones, in which classical
masterworks are reworked as 1940s musical cartoons. There wasn't any Brahms or Beethoven,
but none of the music needed explanation. Eos, however, does need a conductor, since its
founder and chief, Jonathan Sheffer, isn't enough of one. He gets a medal for thinking up
the program, but it wasn't fun to watch him beat time with his face buried in the scores.
His orchestra deserves an award too, for performing on its own with such panache.
And speaking of panache, the
Bang on a Can All-Stars, appearing at Alice Tully Hall as part of Lincoln Center's Great
Performers series, exploded forever any notion that contemporary art music has to be
classical. By "art music" I mean works that do what classical music does-play
with musical ideas, as a novelist explores verbal ones.
These pieces did that without feeling classical.
One, Gavin Bryars's "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet," misfired. The work
itself is a wonder, gently breathing an instrumental halo around a tape of a derelict
singing part of a hymn, but here the halo (which Bang on a Can reconceived, with Mr.
Bryars's encouragement) seemed too chancy and complex. "What is that?" I kept
asking myself, when normally I'd settle into thoughtful reverie.
Three other works, however -- Pamela Z's "The
Schmetterling," Julia Wolfe's "Believing" and Steve Martland's "Horses
of Instruction" -- drew some of their delightful sound and spirit from pop,
especially Mr. Martland's piece, which played with amplified jazz and rock bass lines.
Immediately my ears reoriented themselves; the walls of the concert hall seemed to fall
away. Ms. Wolfe's creation was my favorite, first because it had an edgy overlay of urban
noise, and then because each new section grew with such unexpected logic from the one
before.
What finally evolved was a
taut, provocative melody, played and duskily sting by cellist Maya Beiser, and here a
crusty limitation of the classical-music world got blown away. Most classical musicians
work from a crippling mindset: "I'm a cellist; I must play the cello repertory."
But here was Ms. Beiser, singing as well as playing, just as she might do in pop music,
where she might also compose or put the cello down to play some other instrument.
Which made it all the more
wonderful that the All-Stars did three pieces by Meredith Monk, a genuine old master of
alternative art. Ms. Monk leapfrogs classical music, since she's more artless, or at least
apparently so, and at the same time more heartfelt, deeper emotionally than any but the
very greatest classical performers.
Her method is to draw the
best from everyone she works with, and, building on the freedom the All-Stars already
have, she got all five of them singing, and got them dancing, too. If all contemporary
classical music concerts were like this (or like Eos, or like David Del Tredici), there
wouldn't be a problem with contemporary classical music. The usual Lincoln Center audience
might not like it, but a fine, large crowd of other people would listen very happily.
[The executive director of Eos asked me -- challenging
my standards of comparison -- if I'd ever seen a better conductor do Ligeti. The answer is
simple. In graduate school, I sang two very tricky Ligeti vocal works, Aventures and
Nouvelles Aventures, both accompanied by large instrumental ensembles, The
excellent conductor, Preston Trombly (then also a fine composer, now my neighbor in New
York and no longer an active musician), cued every vocal and instrumental entrance --
unlike Jonathan Sheffer, who beat time timidly, cueing only the most obvious moments, such
as major instrumental solos that began after a long pause. Instrumentalists don't need
that kind of cue, but they do like cues for short phrases that pop up in the middle of
fast, complex music.]
Wall Street Journal, April 23, 1999
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