We will survive...

Review of Jeff Wall's photo installation things at MOMA

"He is one of the most staunchly traditional of the untraditional artists to emerge from the turmoil of the 1970s, when art was pulled apart by the political ambition and visual privations of Conceptual Art. He is also one of the best...He depicts a true believer in the Modernist and then Post-Modernist mission that art should change the world, who has been continually forced into deeper artistic waters by his faith in painting."

Wouldn't it be great if there were more staunchly traditional untraditional composers forced into deeper artistic waters by THEIR true believer faith in the older forms?

I had the following conversation with a Junior Composition Professor at a very prestigious university:

OdE: So, do you think you'll ever write an opera?

JCP: Well, it's so hard to get your pieces performed. It took me a year to get my symphony performed.

OdE: Yeah, but write something with a piano score. The good young hungry singers would sing it for free. You have competition on your side.

JCP: Good point. I hadn't thought of that. (Pause) Can I be frank?

OdE: Shoot.

JCP: Well, it's just that that whole unamplified voice tradition just wasn't the one I was raised in. I just didn't grow up with that sound and I just don't hear in that style compositionally. I think more in terms of the pop music canon. I mean, when you think about what music drama's supposed to do, Jesus Christ Superstar is the greatest opera of the Twentieth Century. I just hear more in terms of the pop style of singing.

OdE: Well, I can see what you mean tonally about the pop-music thing and mass-appeal and all that. In terms of that sound, I didn't grow up listening to much opera myself. Most singers didn't, but what about the whole aesthetic of person throwing their voice, to the group with no help... isn't that kind of ancient immediacy and freedom from amplification an important part of the communal experience of music drama too?

JCP: Well, if you don't feel it, then you don't feel it.

OdE: Okay, cool.

So I'm all ready to let this guy go and be the next best thing that's happened to the pop-classical thing. But then an hour later, it comes time for dancing... The occasion on which we've met calls for some dancing and the very good band picks up with "I will survive." Now, if that's not part of this guy's canon, I don't know what is. But the curious thing was that this guy didn't dance. Stuffy classical musicians all over the room were dancing. Professors and parents were dancing. Eighty year old convalescents were dancing. But this man, no. And it was the WAY he wasn't dancing-- furtively and eyes down in the corner like someone hiding away in academia from both stylistic teams at the same time. It's like the guy who keeps telling everyone at school that he has a girlfriend who lives in Canada who he met at summer camp-- but really there's no girlfriend and he spent summer camp reading comics in the cabin. Nothing wrong with that- just please don't hide out.

I ask with a little seriousness what kind of a composer can you be in any genre if -even on several beers- you can't dance to "I will survive."

I guess it's a little idealistic to ask that we all engage with these forms on their own terms as Jeff Wall does, no matter what kind of music you are writing or performing. I dream anyway.
Opera singers: Come home early from the Souk and get thee to Beethoven string quartets and Berio sequenzas.
Academic Composers: Listen to Bellini.

The time for hiding out ended before it began.