For as long as people have been making music, they have found a function for it.
While the sounds we make work in the abstract and can stand alone, the relevance of music to dancing, social gatherings, and communication was immediately obvious. Compared to the whole history of sound, the idea of sitting around and listening to music for the sake of the music itself is a new one, developing only in the past five centuries after composers freed themselves from the church.
The problem with this is that when the functions society applies to music change, some genres of music get left out in the cold. An example of music that has been, in some sense, marginalized by the changing habits of society is music that, put simply, takes a long time to develop. This sort of music, in the days before television, radio, and other electronics, provided the most sophisticated form of real-time entertainment that society had to enjoy.
In lieu of films, nightlife was composed of operas or symphonies or other concerts and theater events. The stature that composers and conductors had in society, from appearing on magazine covers to achieving public celebrity, indicate that people had the desire to listen to these forms of music.
The first blows of a hip-hop track or the glossy sheen of some radio pop leave nothing in reserve, which is both a strength and a limitation. The first impression is likely to be strong, since all the elements are already in place, but the result is that there is little left to explore.
However, the symphonic piece and the operatic score use long-term schemes of subtlety to develop their ideas, reaching conclusions that are given their power because of the way in which the rest of the piece has provided context. This sort of development isn’t likely to be immediate, and it certainly doesn’t make itself clear after a few seconds of listening. And when one has in mind a minimalist piece, like Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians,” the length is a necessary feature of the experiment being performed.
What has really changed with recording is the ability of listeners to create the context and function that the music they listen to is used in. The long-developing sort of music thrives in a scenario like that of a concert hall, where attention is focused entirely on the music, and an attitude of patience prevails. But now, as listeners find themselves introduced to music by recordings more than concert-going experiences, people can be left with music, outside of its context, that they aren’t sure what to do with.
The functionality of the concert hall is not what it once was, as the demographics of attendees shift to the older segments of society and its role in introducing music to the public diminishes.
It seems that, if this music is going to survive outside of academia, it will need to pair itself with some new sorts of functions. After all, listening deeply to the development of a piece is hardly an antidote for hours spent in traffic or a mind fatigue from other modern pressures.
One context, however, that seems especially promising is film, which, from its first days as the progeny of opera, made use of elaborate musical accompaniment. Examples like György Ligeti’s ingenious microtonal accompaniment to “2001: A Space Odyssey” give sense to music that could otherwise be baffling or simply off-putting.
I hope that we can count on directors to follow Kubrick’s lead and preserve public access to music that requires a bit more thought ““ and delivers a much greater reward ““ than the three-minute pop song.
If you want to co-host a classical music dance-off party with LaRue, e-mail him at alarue@media.ucla.edu.