IN CASE OF ALIEN ABDUCTION

It's time to drag that old premise up from the basement once again. You know, the one where a strange visitor from another planet has approached you, or maybe you've been abducted, and you are to explain the ways of your society to him (her, it). When you get around to explaining music, you will naturally explain that young people simply like to make loud noises by playing simple chords using amplified instruments. (Chords are the prominent frequencies in the series of overtones--remember, he's from an advanced civilization, so he'll understand.)

But little green men (and why are there no little green women? Are the aliens sexist?) are generally of a bilious nature, and after a trip lasting hundreds of light-years he's suffering from one terrible case of jet lag, so he'll want you to skip ahead in your detailed explanation to describe what music the most intelligent adults of your society listen to. And here, if you're honest and have read my other editorial screeds, you will admit that most of the adults in Western society listen only to the music that was popular when they were adolescents.

Our visitor now suspects that you are concealing information from him, and he grows testy. Surely the wisest adults must listen to something other than juvenile music. Yes, you answer, we have an educated minority that listens to something called classical music. This arouses his interest, and he asks you to describe the latest and most advanced classical music available so that he may obtain it and return to his galaxy with a sample. To this you reply that in the last fifty years or so, the most advanced and sophisticated music has been noise.

You mean noise like the juvenile music? (He is growing increasingly suspicious and impatient, and you begin to worry about that disintegrator ray of his.) No, you quickly answer, the juveniles make noise because they lack the skills and sophistication to do any better. The new music the wise elders listen to is noise made for the purpose of demonstrating their sophistication.

At this, his eyes start to glow, and he demands to know what, precisely, is the difference between the juvenile noise music and the adult noise music. You think fast, and the only answer you can provide is that the juveniles make noise on instruments developed in the previous century, but adults make noise on instruments devised hundreds of years ago. So who plays your newest and most advanced instruments? You are now trapped. You can answer either that there are no new and advanced instruments, or that such instruments are played by no one.

You dare trifle with Zyglor? I asked you for the most sophisticated, modern and advanced music, and you tell me that it is mere noise played on old instruments?

He presses a button, and a metal table with straps folds down from the wall like an ironing board. At this ominous sight, you begin to panic, and you hurriedly explain that classical music is mostly old music played on old instruments, but you know that will not satisfy him, because what he asked for was the latest and most advanced music.

That's tough luck, pal, and it looks like you've got a date with a long metal probe, but whaddya gonna do? You tried your best, but it just so happens that the most genuinely advanced music of our society was written hundreds of years ago. It is also accurate that, on a basic level, classical music is nothing more than music played on old instruments. It may be old music, or it may be deliberate noise in which the old instruments are employed in a manner for which they were never intended. (I have, in another rant, already cited examples of compositions in which flutes are blown in the wrong end, cellos are bowed in the wrong place, and there are numerous composers who've directed that the brass and woodwinds should rattle their valves and keys for effect.) But when you come down to it, classical music is essentially any music played on old instruments. That is the most succinct definition for classical music that I can devise. The Boston Pops or the London Proms can play the Beatles' song book, and it's a classical concert because the instruments are old. Conversely, Schubert or Vivaldi played on electric instruments is no longer classical music, but it's relegated to the classification of Crossover music, examples of which can be found at the Classical Archives Crossovers page. The precise notes and tempi may be unchanged, but if modern instruments are used, it's no longer classical music.

This is but another example of how the main appeal of classical music is similar to the appeal of a museum, and further evidence of this is the story I've been following in the papers about a wealthy benefactor who has acquired a collection of 30 priceless and historic stringed instruments for daily use by the players of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. Guadagninis, Guarneris and a remarkable 13 Stradivariuses (Stradivarii?), all instruments that were elderly when Mozart was composing, are now the main attraction in Joisey concerts, not the music.

Of course, the same money could've instead gone toward hiring more accomplished musicians, and the New Jersey Symphony players recently took a pay cut, so their best players may be looking for more lucrative jobs. Recent reviews have commented on the "clumsy" playing of their brass and woodwind sections, but that's of no importance as long as you have genuine relics of a bygone golden age on stage. Attendance is now up at their concerts, because people aren't really interested in hearing Mozart, they crave the museum experience of being in the presence of something old and rare and valuable. Attendance would likely be raised much higher still if the musicians themselves were replaced by Egyptian mummies.

Just what is at work here? Is it voodoo or some ancient spell from Cremona that lingers like the scent of garlic? Does some genie emerge from the old fiddles to guide the player's hands so that they will have improved intonation and bowing? Will the back chairs cease accidentally playing on rests? Will they magically come in on time at every entrance? Does anyone reading this seriously imagine that the average concertgoer, given a blindfold test, could discern the difference between the tone of a minor orchestra playing Stradivariuses and the same orchestra playing instruments purchased at K-Mart?

To ask the question is to answer it. The classical audience is not interested in the clever techniques Mozart and Beethoven used to develop simple (and often banal) themes into complex and marvelously-crafted symphonies; the classical audience is interested only in antiques, heirlooms, artifacts, relics, old instruments, old music, an imaginary past imagined by old people. Actually, the music itself is of minor importance. The classical audience would just as soon listen to a Coca-Cola jingle, provided that it was played on the precious artifacts and as long as it was an old jingle that they were familiar with.

When I worked at the classical counter in a record shop, one of the best selling CDs we stocked was a collection of themes from old television shows arranged in the style of various composers. These ersatz arrangements which ostensibly sounded like Haydn and Sibelius, outsold CDs of the actual music of Haydn and Sibelius by a wide margin. The ghastly Caruso 2000 album, which features the voice of Enrico Caruso, digitally extracted from old recordings, doctored and pasted onto an accompaniment by a modern pickup orchestra outsold all the latest albums by such fine modern tenors as Roberto Alagna, Ramón Vargas and Tito Beltran. These singers have CDs which feature exquisite singing and perfect digital sound, but they don't sell for the simple reason that it's impossible to be a relic while one is still alive.

But what of the new advanced instruments that our alien doctor friend inquired about? Advances in musical technology did not end with the invention of the saxophone, and there is a wealth of interesting new instruments which have been developed during the past hundred years-- instruments with beautiful names like the dynamophone, teleharmonium, trylon horn, the perispherenette. There is an entire gallery devoted to them at http://www.oddmusic.com/gallery/index.html, but if you listen to classical music, that's as close as you'll ever come to them.

It's a curious fact that at one time classical music was at the vanguard of innovation, and whatever technology had to offer, classical composers were quick to employ. Once it was popular music which was mired in the past and stuck with the guitar, the harmonica, pipes of pan, lute and bagpipes. Now, in the age of electronics, when technology has more to offer than ever before, the situation is completely reversed, and classical musicians have developed a phobia of any novel sonorities. MIDI sounds are judged only by how closely they mimic the antique instruments. It's as if motion pictures were only judged on how well they could duplicate paintings.

Why is this? Why has classical music fled from innovation? Why is it that the only modern music being regularly performed is deliberately noise? (Modern music is acceptable only if no one can enjoy it--like medication.) Is it a symptom that our civilization's light is almost burned out? Why is it that there is no modern equivalent of the Bach family and no succession of brilliant composers such as flourished in Europe two hundred years ago? Why is it that the sophisticated listener prefers the sound of an instrument made in 1704 to one that is the product of advanced technology? The classical audience seems to believe that any improvement over the sound of the Stradivarius is impossible, and they regard any suggestion that a modern instrument could sound better as blasphemy. (This strikes me as being congruent with the traditional argument that education is not necessary, because all knowledge being contained in the Holy Bible--or the Koran or the Upanishads--it is only necessary to read it and nothing else.)

Being of a somewhat skeptical nature, I give no credence to the numerous testimonials of alien abductions. Even worse, to my lights, than the pathetic morons who claim to have been spirited away and probed are the men of science who actually investigate such absurd claims and search the cosmos for a cluster of objects which correspond to a map some idiot claims to have observed while aboard a UFO. But then, I also hold that it is best to keep an open mind in all things, and it is not wise to dismiss whatever runs contrary to common knowledge. After all, most people of his day and thereafter thought that Johannes Kepler had a few lugs missing, so perhaps bizarre ideas and inexplicable phenomena are worthy of some attention.

If you actually find yourself being abducted by aliens, heed the advice of us wise men here at the Classical Archives, and play it safe by following these simple rules:

1. Do not attempt to resist.
2. Don't mention my name.
3. Forget the entire experience for a few months.
4. If any questions are asked about music, reply that you are completely ignorant on the subject, but that the person they need to interrogate is a human named Christopher Hogwood. (Ask if you can watch.)