If you look a few posts below, you'll see a long, grumpy rant about the politics and aesethetics of contemporary music. In the piece below I've distilled the essence of that rant into music!

​Oscar Bettison is a Guggenheim award winner and professor of composition at one of the top conservatories in the country, and one time I attended a concert with this piece on the program:

Did you listen to the whole thing? Or give up after like 30 seconds? Rather than continue to tell you what in detail what I think of the piece, I wrote this revised and condensed parody instead! 

Another new piece, with a mix of swing rhythm, blues harmonies (to start), but Bach influence too, of course! And it ends with a comic, (really, kind of ridiculous) waltz. A rough 1st take phone recording

This summer, I've been blessed with the time and the inspiration to write more piano music than ever. I've started sharing most of these new pieces in snippets on my public facebook page, but for those who (including me) think facebook might be evil, I'm putting them here too! Here is one of the first of the summer, my second piece on the simple tune "Mary Had a Little Lamb." (Here's the first, from 2016)

Note: This is the first in a series of practical posts for student pianists and piano teachers. I hope you'll find it interesting as a general music aficionado, but unlike most posts on this page it's not geared toward the listener, and you might therefore find it a bit dry unless you play the piano!

​One of the principal tasks of the pianist is to clearly show and make as clear as possible the different layers in a piece of music. Here is a basic example from Chopin's Nocturne, op. 9/2

"I'm interested in any crazy, creative idea beyond normal imagination," says conductor Long Yu in a New York Times article about the New York Philharmonic premiere of a concerto for violin, percussion and two ping-pong players by Andy Akiho. "Classical music needs more like this."

Does it, though? [Ron Howard voice-over: No, it doesn't] 

For a long time, the dominant mindset in contemporary concert music has been one of heavy-handed and sometimes downright frivolous convention-breaking. This mindset ignores an obvious problem: once convention-breaking is common, it's not only aesthetically problematic, it's also its own convention, and therefore self-defeating as an artistic goal. Classical music doesn't need more of that, it needs less! Music should get back to drawing people in the way it traditionally did in the past, with depth of emotion, beauty and subtle ingenuity. It may not be as easy as adding ping pong to a concerto, but it's definitely worth the effort.

This post got kind of long, so here's a tl;dr summary for those who aren't ready to commit to a long read, or only have 30 seconds to spare:

1. The culture of contemporary classical music (or a highly influential subset within it) is obsessed with  an often cheap, surface-level notion of innovation.

2. This modern version was not much a value to musicians and composers before the early-mid 20th century (not coincidentally, when contemporary music lost its way and became wildly unpopular). Nor is it the reason that we appreciate and love past composers' music. Today's musicians and historians betray their modern bias in trying to force a norm-breaking narrative into music history.

​Whenever I tell people I'm a pianist or that I write music, I brace for the almost-inevitable follow-up: "So what kind of music do you write? Classical? Or...?"

Person I Just Met: So do you do, like, classical music?
Me: Well, that's a complicated question, really! I guess by classical music maybe you mean the distillation and crystallization of various musical traditions in Europe—Renaissance madrigals, Italian opera, Church counterpoint, among others—around 1820?
PIJM: Well really I just meant...
M: But of course those traditions have always fit together rather uncomfortably and meant different things to different people (I mean can you even believe that Bach and Bocherini get lumped together?? Ha! Me neither!), and then in the 20th century they seemed to split between people who think music peaked in the 18th or 19th century (the Traditionalists, one might call them) vs. people who think classical music should make a clean break with the past in order to keep up with the times (the Modernists).
PIJM: ...I'm not sure I follow...
M: You see on the one hand, I agree with the modernists that classical music has to be a living tradition, but generally disagree with them on where that tradition is heading. I also sympathize with the traditionalists in their desire to preserve this canon of great music from 18th and 19th centuries, though I think they're a little close-minded about the possibility for music to keep evolving and improving along similar lines. 
PIJM: ...really I was just wondering if you can play "Pachelbel's Canon."
M: **Shudders in horror**

After hearing this question approximately a thousand times, you'd think I'd have a good answer by now, something short and sweet to describe, or at least give some idea, of what my music is like. And I'm well aware that most people asking it are probably just being polite, ready to move on with their lives and forget what I say (or go listen to Pachelbel's Canon). But the question of what writing "classical music" means today is pretty much the aesthetic battle of my professional life. So since you asked...

The problem is—and sorry-not-sorry for the cliche—what do you mean by classical, exactly? Is it music that stems out of a specific tradition? Is it music that's "relaxing"? (No, please don't ever say that again.) Is it music with a certain type of feel or musical characteristic? Is it music written for a specific purpose? For specific instruments? Is it music that exists primarily as a written document? Is it music you can only understand if you're well-educated? (No, no, no, no, and no.) Of course the actual answer is complicated, and most people are no doubt happy with an approximate answer that isn't terribly accurate or specific, a "you know it when you hear it" type situation. 

Why do I care then? Because people hijack the good name of this pseudo-almost-tradition, and all sorts of stuff gets lumped into this category that people put me in, and I want no part of it! This lumping takes many forms, but the two main ones are:

1. Mediocre music by any dead white guy from Europe, 1600-1800 ("so pleasant!"):

This is the Pachelbel's canon, put-it-on-in-the-background-or-to-fall-asleep brand of "classical music." If it survived in written form for 200 years, then it must be good, right? Uh, wrong! Most of this music was tossed off to be played a single time for a king, duke, or duchess, and doesn't really deserve our attention today. It was written for light entertainment and most of it is extremely generic. Exercise some discretion, people. Music from the past should clear a higher, not lower, standard, than music from the present, in order to garner precious attention, resources, and time. Exhibit 1 (pulled from today's WETA playlist...despite the fact that either he stole the opening from third movement of Bach's Brandenburg no. 1 or vice versa, the rest of this piece is thoroughly forgettable.)

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This week, we listen to and get to know Chopin's Op. 15, no. 2, the beloved nocturne in F sharp major. Special guest Eli Luberoff joins me for a pianist-comparison listening challenge, including excerpts from my favorite Chopin pianist, Ivan Moravec. We talk about the oddities of the Internet and of one Spotify discovery in particular, and then I guide listeners through the piece and show how its subtle and delicate details make it what it is. In the end, of course, we listen to a complete performance (this one, not available anywhere else!)

Some follow-up links:
Ivan Moravec plays Chopin Nocturnes on Spotify
Pianist #2 plays Chopin Nocturnes on Spotify
Spotify mystery / please contact me IMMEDIATELY if you have any info /intel about THIS

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Special guest cellist/vocalist/composer/songwriter Ariel Friedman joins me to share a sublime song of hers and ruminate on genre distinctions and crossover in the classical and folk music realms. We talk about Kinhaven (see episode 20), how she got started with her sister duo band (Ari & Mia), and how they and she have influenced me as a composer and musician through the years.