It’s been the funniest day in music I can remember. It started when The Rambler posted a comprehensive demolition of BBC Radio 4’s pitiful Who Killed Classical Music? programme. I’d already condemned the show before I’d even heard it. Regrettably, my prejudice was justified. A small sampling of the think-piece’s delights:
In one passage the Daily Telegraph‘s Ivan Hewett states that sitting in silence to listen to music is quite a recent ‘cultural invention’, dating back only ‘two and a bit centuries’.
OK, three things. Firstly, if you’re measuring cultural change at a level at which ‘two and a bit centuries ago’ represents the ‘quite recent’, you’re being a little too geological about this.
Secondly, we’re talking about music. A realm entirely made up of ‘cultural inventions’. Why are these bad things?
Thirdly: ‘two and a bit centuries ago’ would also do for the piano; are we about to toss that out too?
If that wasn’t enough, he’s followed up today with yet another death notice for the musical genre that’s been deaded more often (and for longer) than Bluebottle:
If classical music is dying, it is not because the music has got weirder, more dissonant, less accessible. It is a choice we have made as a society. It’s a political decision.
The real laughs came in the afternoon when the London Contemporary Orchestra announced an unusual concert next week in London:
One does not simply sit down and play La Monte Young’s The Well-Tuned Piano. Young is notoriously protective of how his musical activities are presented. Recordings are hard to come by legitimately. Even the tuning scheme of The Well-Tuned Piano remained a secret for 27 years. As noted on Twitter this afternoon, licensing such a performance would be a lengthy, painstaking process. Rehearsals for such a massive undertaking would take at least months, under Young’s direct supervision.
As the day progressed the mystery deepened. No-one besides Young himself has played the piece in public before. No mention of the performance on the Mela Foundation website. Was this a clandestine concert, booked in the hope that no-one close to Young would notice? Did the pianist have access to a score? Would it be legal? Why was the advertised four-hour playing time significantly shorter than Young’s own performances of the piece? Why was there no mention of Marian Zazeela’s lighting design which is integral to the work? Would there be trouble? Five pounds seemed a small price to pay, just to see what would happen.
A composer who knows La Monte Young believes that he had already refused permission to Antoine Françoise to play the piece a long time ago, even sending a cease and desist letter. Why was the gig being advertised today?
Then, at the end of the day, the website changed:
It was entertaining while it lasted, which was about as long as a performance of The Well-Tuned Piano itself. The promise of “unknown material” just adds to the humour. Will this material be unknown to the pianist himself? Just the audience? Or (hopefully!) La Monte Young? It’s a conundrum of Rumsfeldian proportions.
