Sappho, er Sympho

I have this thing about the composer Arnold Schoenberg, who invented a rather overly rigid system of composition in an attempt to re-think how music was created after tonality ate itself. Here is my issue - so he wanted to create a new way to compose as tonality was dead...yet his solution used the pitches and intervals of the old system, a system which had been created over time because of tendencies understood as natural in the relation of those old pitches and intervals. I just feel like, if you are going to re-invent something, start from scratch. Blow up the old model. It is like, to me, he just didn't think BIG ENOUGH. He still used the white notes and black notes on the piano...but tried to say that you should play them in certain orders, not like in the old way but in his new, regimented way.

Eh.

I was reminded of this on March 26 during "Sympho," which brands itself as "orchestra.circa.now." No actually I was reminded of this during "TRACES," performed by Sympho, no wait, performed by symphoNYC...? Anyway, Sympho is the brainchild of conductor Paul Haas, as a way of re-inventing the orchestral concert, which I'll admit could use come tinkering. Instead of overture, concerto, symphony (which only the most conservative of orchestras follow with any regularity these days) , TRACES presented us with one continuous concert of many, many short works held together with connective tissue written by Judd Greenstein, which contained traces (get it? get it?) of the pieces programmed on the concert. The effect was a little like Berio's Sinfonia mixed with a lot of lesser orchestral pieces.

If it seems like I am being harsh, it is perhaps because Sympho (man I hate that name) set the bar rather high for itself: "In June 2006, we debuted our first concert, REWIND, because we felt that the classical music concert experience desperately needed an overhaul..its presentation had become positively archaic. Musicians dressed like cruise-ship waiters...Awkward cough-filled pauses [clearly thinking about Avery Fisher]....Classical music concerts, through their inability (or refusal) to adapt to changing times, were slowly losing their grip on the American cultural imagination. Something had to be done. Thus, Sympho was born....Our REWIND concert...[sent] tremors throughout the industry..."

At any rate, the concert was in the Angel Orensanz Center, which is a cool space. I sat in a folding chair in a darkened corner. The lighting design was incredibly dark, but shifted colors enough so I could read the program about half the time, though the program had full pages that were sort of indecipherable. There was a cheat sheet telling how to know when you were hearing a new piece, though it used terms like harmonics to guide the listener, so so much for aiding the musically unwashed.

The pieces themselves were often esoteric and I think not coincidentally, relatively easy. Arvo Part, Biagio Marini (who?), Gluck. The relative ease of the program was probably a pragmatic decision - the orchestra (SymphoNYC) was essentially a talented post-youth orchestra, and I am guessing they had limited rehearsal time. The big piece of the evening was Copland's Appalachian Spring, which was accompanied by some unusual lighting choices. As the Shaker melody began to play, the altar area of the space was bathed in deep red, taking on a sacrificial look. Appalachian Rite of Spring!

At several points, musicians moved around the halls, and a couple of the pieces were fairly light, though on the whole the evening came across as a little self-serious. If you were going to change one thing about classical music, I would think it would be that.

So back to Schoenberg. I'm not saying classical music couldn't use a shake up. But I don't think that playing obscure pieces with some dark lighting is going to do the trick. I look more towards the Wordless Music model as a possibility...taking the classical out of the situation entirely, so that it's JUST music. Good music, classical or pop, R&B or jazz or Midwestern hilly billy stomp, doesn't need a gimmick.

Still, kudos to Paul Haas and is group for trying. There are far worse composers you could be compared to than Schoenberg.