Hollow Earth

So I read this enormous piece by Paul Morley in July's Observer Music Monthly. Through the grapevine I knew he'd been at the The Royal College of Music being taught Classical Music. And I thought yeah I'd better write down my thoughts about that. And then I forgot about it for a week. Then I see (via Blissblog) this article in which Morley interviews Goldie. Then this evening I saw on TV the documentary they made about his experience and so I really couldn't put it off any longer.

Lord in heaven where does one start! Obviously the Alex Ross book has a lot to answer for. Now I got a huge amount out of this book, I can't pretend it didn't mean a great deal for me to see the Classical Music cosmos connected to my own musical map - on a personal level as well seeing how my father's music might also be my own. And this is clearly what Morley, fixated with the delirium of connections as he is, found in the book as well. But truthfully the best thing about that book was also the reason that as it's range edged closer and closer to the present day it started to feel more and more hollow.

If one accepts that the music of Sibelius or Weill or Britten was the contemporary equivalent of Boards of Canada or The Young Gods or Nurse with Wound then what place does Classical Music since the 1960s have in the equation? Rather than cleaving to the history of orchestral music it should have finished off, not with Adams and Part but with (I don't fucking know) The Dirty Projectors and Zomby. Indeed I think "The Rest Is Noise" even weakens the case for people like Steve Reich of whom I have long been a fan. While I'm criticising the book, and there really ought to be little bit more balance in its reception, and this from someone who emailed Ross a (sincere) love letter of gratitude, it's very weak on Electronic Music.

Subsequently I have had a few experiences with Classical music which have served to remind me exactly what I detested about the milieu in the first place. Most notably was the Matmos and London Contemporary Orchestra concert I went to in May. Sick and venal though it is for me to confess this, what really bugged the shit out of me was the kind of people who perform Classical Music. They seemed so confident, happy and upright it practically made me retch. Lots of them wear glasses. The girls have sweeping long hair and often wear ear-rings. They talk cheerfully among themselves and obviously have comfortable little in-jokes. People have no right to be like this! They should be twisted, uncomfortable, miserable and bitter like me and Mark Fisher. 

Paul Morley must have understood from the Ross book that Classical composers like Richard Strauss and Morton Feldman were twisted fucks. Certainly not the equivalent of Rock Stars, that age-old cliche, but the same thing in the sense that they were the visionary, demented decadents of their day. What he seems to fail to get his head around is that to attempt to make Classical Music in 2009 (and his piece was actually very good) is utterly confused. An interesting exercise f'sure but..... And the whole thing about scoring music is this anachronism writ in 20 foot tall neon writing. Who the hell would attempt to do something as inane as scoring music? In the 21st Century it's an utterly nonsensical exercise.

What I especially disliked however was the way that Morley uses Ross against himself and Music Criticism in general. In the film as well he says "Alex Ross is a better Music Journalist than me" (or words to that effect). He seemed to need to apologise for his lack of Music Critical acumen. This I hate with a passion. Look, as I was trying to communicate the other day, Music Journalism is jive. Good music journalists are basically just nutters! It's not about Spelling, Grammar, Philosophy, History, Sociology and it sure as hell isn't about Musicology. It's about riding the zeitgeist, feeling pre-echoes, chasing phantoms down blind alleys, the past crumbling and reassembling itself before your eyes - stuff like that. And communicating those feelings with as much veracity and intensity as possible. And this, which could be said about any discipline whatsoever, as soon as you try and erect gateway criteria or qualifications or rules, it withers and dies.

So when Morley, for the umpteenth thousandth time comes up with statements like this: "Perhaps in the new world where everyone's opinion and roughly compiled knowledge can be evenly distributed throughout the internet as though it all has equal validity, where the authoritative role of the critic has been near fatally wounded by the inexorable spread of user-generated content, by constant access to music that can bypass the recommendations and knowledge of traditional skilled gatekeepers, it isn't so much a risk to tamper with my critical swing." (And let's not pretend that he isn't saying: "...all you worthless bloggers...") I just find it so grim. Ok, he is writing from the perspective of someone who presumably feels challenged in his career, who feels like many other journalist today that the certainties they relied on in the past are no longer there - but this constant flux affects us all. I'm not about to start blaming the Post-Production, Design, Animation and TV Graphics Industry at those moments when I can't get any work. It's adapt or die. And thank god for that, because otherwise you have culture on a life-support machine = Classical Music.