While an undergrad my theory teacher told our class about a revolutionary new choral and orchestral composition he had heard that had, in his words, changed his life. This piece would soon be performed on our campus, and at his strong encouragement, I bought a ticket to attend. I remember sitting in the hall, listening carefully to the music, and intently studying the text in my program. I waited for a similar life changing experience. As a novice to this more modern musical fare, however, I waited in vain. My ears were attuned to the more mainstream classical sounds of Mozart and Beethoven, and these less familiar, atonal strains sounded more like noise than music.
So it has been for every generation as one era ends and another begins. To our minds, so accustomed to the sounds of Beethoven, it’s hard to imagine how revolutionary his music must have sounded to those used to Mozart. When we have grown up hearing the familiar strains of Bach and Handel, it’s difficult to conceive how progressive those same chord patterns would have seemed to those accustomed to the sounds of Des Prez and Palestrina.
And so it is when old meets new.
Perhaps because of the unique period of time in which we live, when so much music history is behind us and even more is made daily, “new” in terms of repertoire can mean so many things. It can often refer to old, previously undiscovered works newly on the scene. Or it can reference new compositions with the ink—printer ink, that is—still wet. With more access to printed and recorded music from every generation than ever before, the possibilities for discovering the “new” are limitless. Opening ourselves up to the undiscovered, from both the present and the past, can lead us down paths we might never have expected.
Take Emma Kirkby, for example, featured in this month’s cover story. She stumbled upon early music as it was just coming on the scene over 40 years ago. A schoolteacher with no ambitions of becoming a singer, she quickly discovered a passion for Renaissance music and found that her essentially untrained voice was ideally suited for the repertoire. Now, with a 40-year career behind her, the rest is—as they say—history.
About the time Kirkby was finding herself in England, the Miller Theatre (p. 34) was forming across the pond in New York City. Its mission? To give the city what it lacked: a venue and concert series to feature early, Baroque, and new music. Now some 22 seasons later, they offer one of the most diverse programs around featuring “new” music, both early and modern.
Four hours north of New York along the eastern seaboard resides another hotbed of diverse and innovative repertoire. First established to perform all of Bach’s sacred cantatas in a liturgical setting, Emmanuel Music at Boston’s Emmanuel Church now programs everything from Handel to Stravinsky, from the recognizable to the avant-garde. Read what their newly appointed music director, Ryan Turner, has planned to continue both the traditional and innovative in upcoming seasons.
In the years since that concert when I first experienced atonal music, my perceptions of modern music have greatly changed. Music that once seemed dissonant, strange, and new, now sounds congruous, exciting, and familiar. As we experience new sounds, whether of this century or centuries past, our perceptions change. Our definitions of new and old are expanded. It is precisely those mind-expanding, reality-altering new experiences that will change our lives.
