September - 21st Century Music

LANG: I actually think all of my work has a serious intent. I
think that so much of what we are taught in music is the great
man and the great deep thoughts. In some areas of classical
music, we're only encouraged to write the great masterpieces
that take on the great subjects, and only are about life and
death. There's nothing wrong with that; I think that probably
people can still write music that's pretty good that way. But I
think there's something anticlimactic about it, if you go to a
concert, and there's a piece which proclaims itself a
masterpiece and says it's about dark, serious issues, and it's
going to make you cry. And then at the end of the piece, so
you're in the audience crying. But what a letdown. You're
just getting what was promised! It's as if the composer is
standing there smugly at the end saying, "Oh, I'm proud of
myself. See, I told you that you would cry." To me, I think
it's very important to have the experience that's unexpected. I
think I'm more affected by things in which I have to uncover
the serious intent, than when the serious intent is presented for
me on a platter. Music in our lives is incredibly manipulative.
Most of the music that we hear is music that is supposed to
make us feel something specific, and we know exactly how
we're supposed to feel. Buy this kind of cereal or car, or feel
this emotion in this movie or TV show. We know what those
emotions are; there's no room for subtlety. Classical music
has a nobility now. It is the only musical experience where
you can have the unexpected emotion -- where you're free to
decide for yourself. I think for me, that realization has made
me make my music more abstract.
ALBURGER: You're not interested in the easy manipulation
-- the easy answer.
LANG: Well... Just for myself, I'm not interested in it. I
recognize its value. I recognize when it's in other people's
music, that that might be perfectly valid. But for me, I want to
have the non-television, non-commercial experience.
ALBURGER: It becomes an interesting challenge, I imagine,
because, if you take a large scale work like your Modern
Painters -- an opera, a music drama -- there's a certain
expectation that you're going to take the audience from point
A to point B. How do you factor that in
LANG: It's the frustrating thing! I learned a lot of things
doing that opera, because it was my first grand opera (I had
done smaller things before). This was a traditional opera,
from a traditional commissioner, for a traditional opera house,
working with very traditional singers. Normally in my life, I
don't work with singers with big vibratos. But I was interested
in figuring out what my relation with the tradition was,
because I am, in many ways, kind of a traditional composer, I
think.
LANG: I put my notes down on paper, and I believe in those
musical worlds. I have a problem with them, but I believe in
them. I believe in the orchestral world. I don't like orchestras
and the way orchestra works are being written now, and I have
a tremendous problem with the whole environment, but,
theoretically, I don't believe that everything in that world has
been said. I believe that there are certain social things about
that world and the way that world is set up which make it
difficult to say anything other that what is being said at
present. I basically think that's a big shame. I don't think that
means that...
ALBURGER: ...you need to give up.
LANG: Well, it doesn't mean for me to give up. Whether or
not that world has given up on me is another question. I'm in
an interesting place in relation to the orchestral world and the
opera world, too, because I'm interested in sort of being an
experimental traditionalist. I sort of figured out what I do
recently. It sounds really silly to even put a label on it. I was
watching something on television where somebody was riding
a bicycle off a cliff, or whatever. I just realized I do Extreme
Classical Music. In The Passing Measures, why not have this
beautiful sound last for 45 minutes and change very little
Why not take something which is given -- that the orchestra
can make a beautiful sound -- and put it under a microscope,
and blow it out of proportion, and make something that's
ridiculous and anti-classical music about it But the basic
world that the idea comes from is the classical music world.
ALBURGER: And perhaps, in order to "get the music" in
some sense, one needs to have some sort of connection to that
world.
LANG: Yes. Well, that's an interesting problem for me,
because that's what I'm interested in. But what that means is
that the establishment that knows enough to appreciate what
I'm doing is also exactly the audience that is not interested in
the work! But that's the world I've chosen to live in!
ALBURGER: Again Schoenberg's line to Cage about
"banging your head against the wall."
LANG: Yes. So, back to the opera. It is a very traditional
opera, but I tried to do some things that I considered
subversive. It's about the life of John Ruskin.
ALBURGER: Right.
ALBURGER: You put your notes down on paper.
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