Greg Stepanich

It may be loud, but in theory, it's conservative

Writing in The New York Times this week, critic Allan Kozinn makes the point that rock eminences who venture into the world of classical composition write things that are at demurely at odds with their wilder artistic selves. Here's the crux of his argument:

For one thing, rock stars who become interested in classical music are bizarrely conservative. They may play the most electrifying, guitar-thrashing, edge-of-the-seat stuff with their own bands, but when they decide to write classical music, or what they think of as classical music, they reach for a quill instead of a pen. With the notable exception of Frank Zappa, whose reams of classical music reflect his fascination with Edgard Varèse and other modernists, rock musicians seem to think that the conventions of the 19th century are classical music's current language.

Kozinn cites Billy Joel, Elvis Costello, Paul McCartney and now Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, who has written a French Revolution-themed opera called Ça Ira (It Will Come; it's the name of a quickstep that was popular during the Revolution; I once used it for the finale of a brass quintet). His observation is well-taken, and could have something to do with the mass culture's general conception of classical music as being more or less about Beethoven or Brahms.

But a different spin on this idea occurs to me. A rocker might thrash a guitar with the volume turned all the way up to 11, and say very nasty things about ex-lovers or the government with a full-throated rebel yell. Yet what is the music that being thrashed?

In most cases, I think you'd find that the music itself, while it may be orchestrated in a harsh way, is extremely conservative. Not only is it conservative from the standpoint of the chords, which are mostly living lives of ease in a newish house in Tonic-Dominant Estates, they are also quite conservative from the vantage point of form. It's almost always verse, chorus, verse, chorus — and these days I'm not even hearing any bridges, either. Just parts one and two, over and over and over.

I'm not saying that to be critical of pop music. It's a different form than classical, and you shouldn't expect it to follow the same models. And there are many pop songs that are much better as art than a classical symphony written by someone with little talent, but a lot of education, overstaying his or her musical welcome.

Nevertheless, most of the pop musical vocabulary is rather limited compared to classical. Again, that's not a bad thing; it's just a different thing.

If you're trying to compose a decent rock song, you're trying to focus most of the time on getting a good tune, and once you've got that, you can scream it, or barf blood while playing it, or murmur it in the altogether while curled in a fetal position on a pitch-black stage. It doesn't matter, ultimately. It's the melody that counts most, and as long as the lyrics aren't too ridiculous or obscure, you're on the way to that mansion in the Hollywood Hills.

With the important exception of Zappa, and the jazzier writers such as Steely Dan or Stevie Wonder, pop music speaks a very conservative language. Volume and attitude don't change how unadventurous the music is, theory-wise. Still, that's not what we listen to rock music for.

It is what we listen to classical music for — not all the time, but much of it. How has the composer broken new ground? How has he or she come up with something entirely new, something personal and powerful? That's not what we're doing most of the time with pop music; we might do that with the lyrics, but not as much with the music.

There are exceptions to all of these contentions, of course. Yet it seems to me that we shouldn't be surprised that composers of conservative music in the rock field go with their musical instincts when it comes to writing something else. You don't come to a realization of personal excellence writing songs that use five or six chords in a highly rigid format and then try something totally different for classical.

What you're going to do is try to find the form that will work for you, and that form is going to be something that's been done before.