So today NPR had a great set of music playing when I got to work, Holst's Planet Suite, some Bernstein, Copland, and to end it all, Oblivion by Astor Piazzolla(if you don't recognize any of the above, go on youtube and check them out). Of course I immediately make a Piazzolla station on Pandora. After listening to it all day I've had time to think why I myself had never heard of Sr. Piazzolla until last year when my university's sax quartet played a piece of his.
In part I believe it had less to do with him as a famous musician, and more to do with the fact he died only 21 years ago. Think about it, to most professionals in the field, he is still"alive"to them-meaning they forget he's dead and say it is too soon to see if he has any staying power. But those of my generation didn't know him, he has the same respect to us as Copland, Glass (who had the same relative time span as Piazzolla and much more written about him), Britten, or any other highly esteemed 20th century composers.
A brief music history lesson: Astor Piazzolla was a native of Venezuela, born in the 20's. He was a massive composer, and in many ways the legitimizer and reinventor, of the tango. He has one of the Top 50 classic ensemble pieces played from the 20th C. with Oblivion. He died in 1990. Lesson over.
So in my mind,i think he is going to be remembered as one of the greats. I believe most people's reaction to this is"maybe as a footnote." My justification goes thusly:
1) He is a classically trained Western composer
2) He was volumous with smart, sophisticated art music that is still enjoyable and accessible to a wide array of people.
3) He was a memorable individual-a person history can spend unravelling.
4) He had good success while alive. This isn't always a good indicator of lastability, but it does help in justifying one way or another.
5) (for my music history teachers and friends) He was excellent at counterpoint!
6) He had a style he fervently loved and saw amazing potential in: the tango.
Now as I see it these would be common rebuttles(and my counters):
1) He was from a South American country, barely western.
R) alright, he wasn't from Europe or the US. But he is still a classical composer in the Western Styles. Too often I find we as artists are so ethnocentric and xenophobic towards other types of music from being let in to the museum. Time and again cultures have had to struggle to have their unique music somehow incorporated into the museum. Russians struggled for decades when they decided they wanted to be included; jazz took the better part of a century and still remains under a critical eye! So allowing this supposedly exotic westerner in shouldn't be so hard as it seems to be.
2) Just because he wrote a lot means nothing, and accessible is fairly broad of a word. And enjoyable is interpretive, not concrete.
R) true, you can make a thousand pieces and not be recognized. The same goes for artistic complexity and aesthetic. However, I refuse to believe that someone who poured their life and soul into what they did with such tenacity wouldn't be recognized and remembered. And I would assume a great many people find his music enjoyable, otherwise he would never had fame of any sort.
3) we care about his music, not his personage.
R) everybody has a life story. And the more infamous composers seemed to be real...individuals. Sluts,boozers, drug addicts, heart breakers, heart broken, gay, straight, actually a woman, actually not white, Jewish, Atheist, angry, depressed, sad, loved, ... These are the titles historians get hung up on and people love to find out about. Beethoven wouldn't have been nearly as interesting (and possibly inspired) had he not been going deaf, a luckless romantic, angry, drunk, and cocky.
4) "you're only really appreciated when you're dead" is the common saying, being that only retrospectively can a person's entire works be judged.
R) that saying is a dammed lie most of the time with musicians. Yes Poe died in obscurity, but Shakespear was a playboy. A short list of composers who had fame in life: Monteverdi, J.S Bach, Verdi, Mozart, Vivaldi, Beethoven, Copland, Cage, the Schumans, Bernstein, Rimsky-Kosakov, the Italian Three, The Mighty Handful (though only a couple achieved lasting fame), etc...
Composers who only retrospectively have or respects and admittance to the museum: Schubert, Britten (more so than not), Fanny Mendehlsohn, ... I have a harder time with this one. Most composers have had constant jobs, though not all have sought to redefine or push boundaries, just eat three squares a day. But those who last in the history books are usually famous in life, and volumous to boot! You need variety for your players and yourself. However i will say early fame can be a dead sentence if you obtained it from something other than musical genius (like most rappers).
5) You added this, seriously?
R) Ok, I Still think this is funny. My history teacher told us this in class one time, and I have spent a lot of time thinking about this, but in almost every instance it's true (some 20th c. Movements). Having played his Fuguo and Misterio, the man knew counterpoint(cp). But on a larger scale, cp is like textured brushstrokes, it adds an immense amount of interest and sophistication to a work of art.
6) Composers use many forms, and that is in why, in part, they become famous or lasting.
R) Composers *know*many forms and styles. They use them, but not strictly. On top of that, most composers are known for one song type or another. Bach had fugues by the hundreds, Beethoven had his symphonies, not saying that was all they composed, but it is their notoriety. So why can't tango be placed in the same mind set?
I am only using Piazzolla as an example, these premises can stand for any artist.
posted from Bloggeroid
