Can Music Shock Anymore?

The short of it is no, music cannot shock anymore.

Recently, I have been reading a wonderful book by a truly excellent writer, The Proud Tower by Barbara Tuchman. This book covers many events pre-World War I but the chapter that stands out discusses Richard Strauss. Not being a trained musician, Tuchman writes exceedingly well on the subject of Strauss, his music, and the way he influenced and impacted the world around him.

Strauss is also one of my heros; I know this is dull and simplistic since I am a composer (amature), but it is the truth. After going through well over a decade-plus of formal music training and listening to every conceivable composer I still love Strauss, Bruckner, Bach, Haydn, and Schoenberg; these composers are the foundation of my musical style (I love many others, but for now I will stick with the Germans).

Along with The Proud Tower, I recently read the article “Shock Me if You Can” in the New York Times by Jennifer Schuessler. This article discussed how, why, and if art can shock anyone. It mentions the likes of John Waters, the Saw movies, Lars von Trier, Karen Finley, and Robert Mapplethorpe. With the visual and theatrical arts represented, it only mentioned music twice; first how the controversies surrounding Elvis and gangster rap and how the riot during the premier of the Le Sacre du printemps is a ‘presenter’s dream’ according to one New York artistic director (being snarky, I find that comment exceedingly banal).

In a similar article at WQXR, “100 Years After Stravinsky's 'Rite,' Can Classical Music Still Shock?” this topic was discussed with the likes of Leo Bolstein and BBC Music critic Richard Morrison. According to Morrison, “composers today rarely seek the label enfant terrible, added Morrison. ‘I think they rather like to be liked rather than creating an uproar.’” To me this comment is simplistic yet has many truths in it; many composers today make their living working in academia so they do not have to rely on selling their music and if they could, many of them would love the label enfant terrible. With that said, there is over 100-years of avant garde music out there so any composer who tried to be an enfant terrible today would really just be copying Prokofiev.

The next comment, comes straight from Bolstein,"the problem is the audience is musically illiterate and therefore if you want to do something very daring and sophisticated you’re presuming a literate audience." This comment comes straight from a conductor’s mouth; true but exceedingly snobby. I understand that 101-years ago when the Le Sacre du printemps premiered amature music making was common, but I highly doubt that enough people would have been musically literate to get and appreciate something that was musically “daring and sophisticated.”

The final quote from the article sums up my, and I think many people’s view of music’s inability to shock:

“To some extent, it isn't possible to shock audiences because everything seems to have been done. By the 1960s, composers had explored the outer extremes of total Serialism, computer music and John Cage-style chance. The hybrid, postmodern styles embraced by composers in the last two decades, by contrast, are seldom driven by a need to provoke”

I will only speak for myself, but during the 50s and 60s composers explored total Serialism, computer music, and John Cage type music and what was discovered? That this music was rarely music. It is mainly artistic farting, scratching, and whaling intermixed with silence. Just listen to Peter Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King. I like it, but I don’t want to listen to it for thirty-minutes.

Can Classical Music shock anymore? No.

With that said there is a huge world of Classical Music that I am not familiar with, much of which does not get much press (Classical Music rarely gets any press). I might be missing works that are using disgusting, violent, pornographic, or ultra-realistic subject matter that is intended to shock rather than uplift, enlighten, or entertain. But if people are being shocked by pornography set to Classical Music it is still missing the most important component of music, the music; and in its present incarnation, music cannot shock anymore.