Non Class Post: Grey Matter

There might be a place in the universe, one that I would very much like to visit, where pop and classical music meet. Not in a superficial way where classical instruments play pop music, or vice versa, but where the intersection runs deeper, in the function and tonality float through both pop and classical idioms with freedom and often unimaginable beauty.
If that place does in some dimension, exist, the wormhole might exist here, with Gabriel Kahane. In an interview with WNYC, New York public radio's show, Soundcheck, Kahane discusses his true collaborations with both classical musicians and indie rockers.

Some times in his pop songs, the presence of classical influences are subtle and even sublime. In the song Durrants a gently floating 3 against 5 rhythm pervades the forlorn melody and words. The strings take on a role not as melodic content or even accompaniment, but somehow they become like scenery, the setting for the telling of a play, a sad one.
In it's complexity, lies the beautiful simplicity of the story. Therefore not abandoning it's pop roots, by revealing it's emotion with the same rawness that pop music has perfected throughout the 20th century. The interesting thing is that much of the 20th century was spent, especially by Arnold Schoenberg, being concerned with emotional directness. Schoenberg and members of the New Vienne School sought to "express" raw emotion, the emotion from Freud's "id." Pop music kind of put this highly organized and calculated set of ideas out its mind. But somehow learned to do the same thing.


He audibly welds what I would like to socially weld. Where not only would classical and pop music exist harmoniously, both in the literal and idiomatic sense of the word.

For me this is the music for, not just of, but for the people of the 21st century, who have lived through a 100 years of popular musical development. For people who lived through The Beatles, for people who survived the music of the 80s, and witnessed the dismal fall of pop stars like Brittany Spears in the 90s. If I had to place my bet on the characterization of music of the 21st Century it would be a synthesis of two often dueling idioms of music.
Young classical musicians are being raised in a time period inundated with popular music and culture, but are learning the fine art of classical music, it's composition, theory and performance. It is inevitable to me, now, that these two towers of ideas will no longer remain separate.

Many other young composers/singer-songwriters are extending their classical training into their interests in popular music.
Another dweller in the gray is composer, who is mentioned in the interview with Soundcheck is composer Niko Muhly.
Muhly is a composer, in the classical sense of the word, however to look at his album of chamber music, one would assume, without listening to it that it is a pop album. It is packaged with great modern design, and each piece is titled as if it were a pop song. The discography page on the website features not only his albums, but those of Bjork and soundtracks by Phillip Glass on which he collaborated. In addition he has also collaborated with pop musicians like Sam Amidon who plays his own brand of singer-songwriter music.
I recommend going here, and listening to the segment of the piece, "Pillaging Music." To the trained ear, there is a definite influence from pop music. Also listen to the first track, "Clear Music", because it feels quite classical. An interesting contrast.
And another pop musician who is reaching his duel roots across the void between classical music and pop music is so-called "indie rocker" Sufjan Stevens. I hesitate to call him an "indie rocker" because that could imply many other things.
So far there are some highly talented bodies roaming about in the grey matter, but there are yet to be any true "movers and shakers" on the level that Schoenberg was in the turn of the century.
I'll be excited to see, as a musician and someone with an interest in music's social implications, who becomes the next Schoenberg, or the next Beatles.