The Courage of Composers and the Tyranny of Taste: Reflections on New Music by Bálint András Varga

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Courage of Composers and the Tyranny of Taste: Reflections on New Music by Bálint András Varga Toby Young The Courage of Composers and the Tyranny of Taste: Reflections on New Music. By Bálint András Varga. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2017. [viii, 263 p. ISBN 9781580465939 (hardback), $34.95; ISBN 9781787440043 (e-book), $24.99; ISBN 9781787440012 (e-book for handhelds), $24.99.] Index. Courage is an interesting word, connoting an internal strength in the face of severe trauma. Such bravery is traditionally an attribute of "good character," evident in numerous heroes' tales, ranging from ancient myths to Holly-wood movies, that laud courage and self-sacrifice for the greater good. With the notable exception of composers working under political persecution in the traditional sense—for instance, those oppressed by tyrannical state regimes—such subjugation is perhaps not immediately synonymous with the seemingly privileged world of new music. In this intriguing collection of interviews, Bálint András Varga wants us to be convinced of just this: that the modern craft of composition is not a socially indifferent and protected act but instead is symbiotically linked to pressures of external regimes. These pressures may be life threatening or rank as less physically harmful (but with a potential nevertheless to cause severe psychologically damage). Serious concerns over issues of taste, judgment, and public criticism also require an innate courage to put pen to paper. Those familiar with Varga's highly influential and widely cited Three Questions for Sixty-Five Composers (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2011) will know that he is an interviewer of great skill and is extremely well connected in the new-music world. This volume continues the excellent work of Three Questions, offering carefully scripted interviews with thirty-three composers from around the globe. An impressive number of these composers are household names (at least among new-music-loving households): John Adams, George Benjamin, George Crumb, Sofia Gubaidulina, György Kurtág, and Helmut Lachenmann. Alongside these are five other influential programmers and theorists, including Arnold Whittall, a renowned academic and critic, and Nicholas Kenyon, managing director of the Barbican Centre in London and past [End Page 293] director of the influential British music festival the BBC Proms. While the length and style of each contribution varies substantially—ranging from brief emailed testimonies to extensive and in-depth conversations transcribed from tape recordings—all are tied together by Varga's careful curation. Though he poses only one or two central questions (albeit in different ways), it is quite remarkable that every response offers something new and individual to the conversation, with a noticeable lack of repetition from these composers. Several sorts of "courage" emerge across the responses, but the main type—and perhaps the most concerning for the composers featured in this book (certainly the most substantially discussed)—might loosely be described as the courage to be authentic in the face of external expectations. At the core seems to sit an old, well-worn dialectic: whether to challenge audiences' expectations in order to explore new aesthetic areas in the service of intellectual stimulation, or to appease general sensibilities with "moving" artworks whose utterances are perhaps more akin to a music vernacular than a niche dialect. Such a discussion is as much a challenge to personal integrity as it is to the very identity of the composer in society, who might be simultaneously an artist of creative depth and a purveyor of music for entertainment or other utility. In chapter 13, Detlev Glanert calls for composers to fight the cultural pressures to abandon their struggle to produce autonomous art rather than simply serving as a provider of arts and crafts material. As noted in Karl Aage Rasmussen's interview (which incidentally sparks the whole notion of a "tyranny of taste" for Varga), John Cage's reticence at disclosing his infamous 4′33″ was "not because of artistic worries, but because of his fear that it would appear to be 'a joke'" (p. 162). It is perhaps inevitable that such a discussion brings to mind the regimes of censorship experienced by composers in the Soviet Bloc, where judgment of this was...