Last Monday I posted an article on the Dvořák twerking video that has since gussied up over 2 million computer screens in just over a week. Considering my article has received over 31,000 hits (!), it’s safe to say a lot of you saw it. I was also quoted in the Toronto Star as the grouchy naysayer. (Bah humbug!)
Since then, I’ve been mulling over this whole classical music twerking situation, and how it represents a failure in regards to art presenters and their goal of finding ways of selling classical music to younger audiences.
It’s important to first point out that reaching out to a younger audience is a matter of survival for arts groups, and the makers of this video can’t be faulted for that.
Arts presenters have been in panic mode* against the glaringly empty seats found throughout concert halls across Canada, and elsewhere. They’ve been busy plotting all kinds of tactics to spark the interest of the shadowy Gen-Z listener. Of course this is all old news, and the best way to go about dealing with this has been argued endlessly, from print-to-screen.
The most common approach has been to reach out with a message like, “classical music is cool, and you, young person, should pay more attention to it.” Has it worked? Not really.
Where I think it all goes wrong is when they build a one way only bridge. It’s a matter of classical music sitting down and having a beer with popular culture. After all, classical music was once a part of popular culture as well, and so I’m not sure why that is such a leap for some arts groups.
B-classic’s approach was a bit different. They framed their message as a Dvořák dance pop video that concludes, “You just heard three minutes of classical music.” There’s that patronizing message again… sigh!
According to critic and blogger Greg Sandow, there are four keys to attracting a young audience to classical music.
1: Understand and respect the culture outside classical music.
2: Work actively to find your audience.
3: Be yourself.
4: Make music vividly.
These pinpoints make good sense, and B-classic has done most of them well. They presented the music from the perspective of popular culture (check). By going on YouTube – the natural habitat of young folk – they actively found their audience (check). They made music vividly (check).
Where they went wrong was that they misunderstood popular culture, and presented a depiction of nearly all of its negative aspects, including rampant sexism, issues of race, and the fetishization of exotic Asian beauty. There are plenty of wonderful aspects to popular music, but this video seems to have ignored all of them. What a shame.
After thinking about this, I wondered if there are any examples of classical music videos directed at youth that actually seem to work.
Turns out there is – the video in question was created by the innovative and award-winning contemporary jazz group the Bad Plus performing an arrangement of Semi-Simple Variations, by American composer Milton Babbitt. Rolling Stone calls them, “…about as badass as highbrow gets.” I’d have to agree.
Milton Babbitt was best known for being a “Total Serialist” composer. He represented the kind of barbed-wire modernist approach to music that some believe was a big factor in alienating audiences away from art music by living composers. Of course this is an oversimplification, and probably more than a little unfair to a composer whose aesthetic was undoubtedly necessary to the growth of contemporary composition, but I digress.
Here is a quick history of Total Serialism:
In Western Art Music, we organize pitches using a set of 7 notes (do, ré, mi, fa, sol, la, ti), which act like planets revolving around the first pitch of the series (do). This is called tonality. By the early 20th century, composers started getting bored of traditional musical pitch hierarchies. The Austrian composer, Arnold Schoenberg then came along and devised a way of writing music called Serialism, thus rejecting the traditional rules of tonality. Schoenberg, and his gang of Second Viennese School rebels, used a special chart called a “Matrix” to create a sense of order to the pitch material. Total Serialists like Babbitt, took it one-step further, and serialized absolutely everything, including rhythms, dynamics, tempos, meters and other non-pitch elements. One of the first works to use this approach was Messiaen’s Mode de valeurs et d’intensités; Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Milton Babbitt – all became important composers in this new utopia of integral serialism.
Still with me?
Milton Babbitt and the marque, [Total Serialism] became symbols for “difficult” music. The Bad Plus loved Babbitt, and they wanted young people to love him too, so they came up with a way to make him more accessible to an audience who may have felt intimidated by his, “who cares if you listen” clank.
They took Babbitt’s Semi-Simple Variations for solo piano (1956), and arranged it along with the help of some professional dancers.
The result: an innovative depiction of Babbitt’s music, which acts as a two-way street, inhabits YouTube, and makes music from the heart honestly, and vividly. It doesn’t pander to its audience, and presents the music on its own terms by telling its story from the perspective of popular culture. Greg Sandow would be proud.
Here is the original version:
Here is the Bad Plus version:
Now after watching that, I’d say B-classic could have learned a thing or two from the Bad Plus.
I’d love to hear what you think, so please leave your comments below.
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In the meantime, here is another interesting satirical response to B-Classic’s video, featuring the k-pop dance set to Helmut Lachenmann’s, “…Zwei Gefühle – Musik mit Leonardo …“.”
Michael Vincent
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