#teamclassical

I don't mean literally an onion, of course, or even synaesthetically. I mean in terms of experience and memory. Allow me to explain.

Most of you have probably heard that Beethoven before. Even if you haven't consciously sat down to listen to it or seen it in concert, it's a pretty famous theme that crops up in a lot of places. If you're a musician trained in the Western Concert Music tradition to any appreciable degree, there's pretty much no way you can avoid this piece. It may not be as ubiquitous as his fifth or ninth symphonies, but it's up there.

The Rautavaara is not like this. It has certainly been played live on a few occasions around the world, but it's hardly a staple of the repertoire, and I'm willing to go out on a limb and guess that most of you reading this had never heard it before today. (I myself only stumbled on it very recently, more or less by chance.) And unless you totally fall in love with it and listen to that recording over and over, you're unlikely to hear it again any time soon.

So what? Why does this matter?

When we listen to a performance of a piece of music, we're not only hearing that performance of it. We're hearing all the other performances and uses of it that we remember. We're not reacting exclusively to the music itself; we're also reacting to the layers and layers of memories and feelings that we've wrapped around the piece in past encounters, an onion of resonance and meaning.

I hear the second movement of Beethoven 7, and I think of the Harnoncourt recording I grew up with. I think of the open rehearsal at Tanglewood many years ago, which had one of the best pre-concert talks I've ever heard, but the most frustrating cut-off-the-orchestra-just-before-the-really-good-bit rehearsal process I've ever endured. I think of the performance I saw last summer at Wintergreen that was interrupted by a powerful thunderstorm. I think of the climactic scene of The King's Speech. I think of my mother, who loves this movement perhaps more than any other. Even if you don't have such specific associations with this piece, you probably had a moment of "Oh yeah, this. I've heard this before!" when the main tune came in.

I'm guessing the Rautavaara didn't elicit that reaction. Maybe you enjoyed it, maybe you didn't — it doesn't matter for the purposes of this post. What matters is that you didn't have any prior associations with the music. If it meant anything to you at all, it was thru the inner mechanics of music, or thru sounding like something else you already know. (Both of these are totally fine and valid ways of understanding and approaching music; they're just not what I'm focusing on here.) These may be deep meanings, but they're not personalized, they can't reach back into the depths of your mind and stir forgotten memories, reminding you of who you are and where you've been.

And this is incredibly important for programming new music. Much as I'm a fan of breaking out of the New Music ghetto and mixing contemporary works with canonic ones on regular concert programs, I think it's absolutely critical to remember that new works are coming at these concerts with a serious disadvantage. Even the very best new work — even if we re-animated his corpse and Zombie!Beethoven wrote another symphony that surpassed all his others — doesn't have the layers of meaning and resonance that established works do. A new work might be dynamic and exciting and profoundly moving, but it doesn't come pre-charged with the power to connect with your specific memories and past. New works are not onions.