I was at a concert the other night where music was performed by an orchestra and choir and most of it was stuff recently written by the conductor himself. It all sounded pretty bland, like watered-down Richard Strauss. For those of you unfamiliar with Strauss operas, just think of the harmonic progressions of John Williams' Star Wars score on overdrive. Lots of rambling chord progressions with no clear sense of a tonic, or home. When you listen to Mozart or Bach or 99% of music written before WWII, there's a clear sense of where harmonic home base lies. The audience can feel when the piece has come to its final chord. Not so with Richard Strauss.
Anyway, the guy conducting who had programmed a lot (and I mean, A LOT) of his own rambling noodling muzak throughout the evening made one fatal mistake.
He included a short piece by Beethoven.
As the orchestra struck the opening phrases of the Beethoven piece, it was as if a whole new universe had opened up to our ears. Suddenly we were in the presence of a real composer, not a hack. By that I mean, we were hearing music with a purpose, with direction, with a drive from a beginning to a middle and to an end. And I was reminded of what I love about Beethoven -- his shear audacity. If Beethoven liked the sound of a particular chord or motif, he would sometimes repeat it. And if he really wanted to fuck with his audience, he'd repeat it again and again.
When Beethoven's Eighth Symphony premiered (I think in Vienna... musicologists reading... help me out?), the critics called it "noise." Now we call it "bold" and "audacious."
Something tells me the same fate does not await the gentleman with the baton I described above. But, really, if you're going to have the nerve to program all your own mushy stuff on a concert, you ought to have the good sense to leave the masters off the program.
After all, would you bring a tin of caviar to McDonald's?
