Neue Musik I

Apologies for the long hiatus. I’ve been doing other things, but I haven’t forgotten the blog. During my disappearance, I’ve been thinking up a number of topics that I want to blog about. One topic concerns musical life here in German as different from the US.

I’m enjoying an interesting vantage point on the German musical landscape at the moment. Last time I came to live in Europe, I studied in Amsterdam for nearly a year. At the time, I had a vested interest in being involved with the music scene and I had hopes that my music would find friendly ears abroad.

Now in Germany, with almost all of my commissions and work coming from the States, I’m much less invested in having a musical presence as a ‘visitor.’ I think that not being a locally involved participant gives me a kind of detached objectivity when I examine what’s going on.

The most striking music world difference between home and here concerns the relationship of contemporary music to mainstream outlets (conventional orchestra, vocal, chamber, and opera). Over time, German music has divided itself. There’s contemporary music and classical music. They inhabit distinctly separate worlds and their interactions are rare and unhappy.

For the most part, you don’t often hear a commissioned work on a symphony program or the new piece on the recital. It just isn’t done here unless you are a contemporary music specialist. If you are a specialist, you usually don’t have much to do with mainstream performing either. Everything’s divided.

When the two worlds interact or collide it is mostly disastrous. Talking to German musicians who play in the classical mainstream about contemporary music and you’ll hear real passion. Real passionate disdain! Same goes for the audiences. It is like the niche, target-marketed pop music where if you are 14 you like X but not Y; if you are 16 you like Y and not X.

This is going to be a running topic. More tomorrow…