Art has been hijacked by the addiction-directed internet

Christopher Lyndon-Green's cycle of Valentin Silvestrov's orchestral works for Naxos is remarkable in several ways. His conducting of the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra does full justice to the music of one of our greatest living symphonists. But there is more. For the new release of Silvestrov's magnificent Symphony No. 8 and Violin Concerto with soloist Janus Wawrowski, Christopher Lyndon-Green contributes an essay that expresses what many of us feel, but with an eloquence we cannot match. Here is an extract: 

Is Silvestrov a Postmodernist Composer? 

What, exactly, is meant by the term ‘postmodernism’ has yet to be satisfactorily defined. 

 Jean-Jacques Nattiez has famously written, in his great essay about Boulez’s Répons, ‘Modernism created a gulf with the public, and postmodernism wants to bridge that gap.’ 

Such a ‘definition’ would seem to give free reign to the all-too-often superficial neo-Romanticism of much contemporary composition, to mimicry and facile imitation; to ‘easy listening’ for modern ears; to abandoning challenge or depth of any kind in favour of ‘entertainment.’ 

We are living in a pusillanimous age of ‘political correctness’, this era of a civilisation that has lost its way; thus it is hardly surprising that much of the art that paints a picture of our times reflects lack of purpose and clear direction in its very banality. 

Composers throughout the ages have used ‘models’, have paid homage to their imperishable predecessors in ways that are more often than not loving tributes: think Josquin’s Déploration sur la mort de Jean Ockeghem, Mozart’s very early piano concertos that are unabashed ‘arrangements’ of Johann Christian Bach, or Alban Berg’s Violinkonzert ‘Dem Andenken eines Engels’. Much of what is being written today is, however, merely derivative; betraying a lack of courage or of vision, straining our faith in music as an art-form with any future at all. Much contemporary art qualifies, indeed, barely as ‘entertainment’ any more, for it has been hijacked by the ‘addiction-directed’ processes of the internet, whose attention span is measured not even in minutes, but in seconds. 

Where did we go wrong?!

Comments

Maury said…
I don't think we went wrong. The issue is that great art is and was created under the patronage system. Having said that, there was a sort of inertia in the 19th and first half of the 20th C that supported great art by muscle memory even as the patronage system broke down. The circumstances today though have a richy rich class that has less taste than the average record buyer or concert goer. Thus art has retreated to academia which is not the place of great art, Bruckner excepted. They write books, music and produce art for the academic journals. In the US there is the Amtrak rail Northeast art corridor where these folks ply their trade. I don't know the corresponding site in the UK.
It's easier and far more lucrative for talented music people to forgo difficult methodological studies that classical composers went through and go into pop music. It is not entirely a wasteland since talent will out. So with that in front of them, why haven't classical composers created classical works with the impact of Sgt. Pepper, Crown of Creation, Astral Weeks, Whiter Shade of Pale etc.?
4:27 am
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