Lessons in the Vernacular

Abstract

Classical music related in some way to vernacular models is, if not a commonplace by now, at the very least nothing new. The fascination early jazz held for classical musicians in the 1920s is one example. One could perhaps point as well to Vaughan Williams's folk-musicinto-the-concert-hall ideals and the nineteenth century's insatiable appetite for sets of variations on popular airs and opera tunes of the day. Even in centuries previous to the nineteenth, European composers found ways of integrating popular elements into their work without going beyond the resources of their respective art music traditions. That may no longer be a possibility. At least from an American perspective, an ever widening gap has opened between the multiplicity of vernacular musics and the increasingly isolated institutions of the classical concert hall. Paradoxically, the effort to bridge that gapalong with other gaps, such as the one separating Western music from others of the world-has become a characteristic feature of new music of the last few decades. Two pieces available on recent recordings offer insight into this effort as it reflects on the relationship between new music and institutions of the musical establishment. Somewhat resembling Berlioz's Le'lio (the sprawling sequel piece to the Symphonie fantastique) crossed with Luciano Berio's Sinfonia, Frank Zappa, and Hooked on Classics, Todd Levin is a composer's selfnarrated odyssey motivated by the question, What kind of music do you write? The text interacts with an aggressively pedestrian orchestral soundtrack of often disorienting and jarring contrasts, most of which is set to a tireless backbeat. Yo Shakespeare is a luxuriant but lean chassis of impulsive rhythmic strata driven by accumulation. It begins soberly but later reveals a more playful side to its personality.