How I address criticisms of contemporary music:

Since the end of the common practice era, a divide has been created between musicians and the wider audience: contemporary music has been celebrated by composers and musicians but has not been accepted by the broader public. I stand to neither denounce “abstract music” nor to immerse myself in it. My dream is to see the two worlds come back together again in harmony, where the advances in technique, language, and gesture that have come with new music are more widely recognized and appreciated among non-musicians.

❋ "It doesn't go anywhere"

Atonality has been accused of having melodic incoherence because the process by which the pitches are organized is difficult for non-musicians to hear. I recently met with my grandmother while we were listening to a piece of new music and she observed that the music must be difficult to memorize because she couldn’t hear which note was going to come next. Contrary to popular belief, much atonal music is highly coherent and structured under a system known as 12-tone music, where every pitch is organized efficiently such that no note repeats until every pitch in the scale is heard once. While this system itself is logical and creative, the process can be difficult to see without seeing the score.

I would like to make the structural benefits of atonal music more perceptible and accessible. It can be challenging to appreciate 12-tone melodies because it is hard to hear what those 12 pitches in the melody are. In the excerpt of my piece below, I have ordered the pitches into repeating chunks that are easy to hear. Therefore, one can appreciate 12-tone’s logic without feeling lost.

❋ "It's too dissonant"

Another criticism of contemporary is the use of clashing harmonies and free dissonance. It is often stated that the music of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven is harmonious and rich while the music of composers like Shostakovich and Prokofiev is “jarring.” This feeling of discomfort and anxiety in the latter composers’ music is due to the use of liberated dissonance.

From the Baroque Era to Brahms, the harmony in classical music was organized using a system of tension and release called “voice leading.” Voice leading means that every dissonance must be resolved with a consonance (or a harmonious sound.) However, anyone who has heard the theme from the movie “Psycho” has heard “liberated dissonance”: dissonances that don’t resolve.

Liberated dissonance can be jarring for an audience member - as a conductor was about to perform Stravinsky’s highly dissonant Symphony of Psalms, he warned them that the melody “wanders” and “does not go back home.” However, it might seem strange that liberated dissonance had its origins with Debussy’s music - a composer associated with feelings of reflective calm and meditation. It was Debussy who first used dissonance for colorful effects.

While dissonance indeed creates a feeling of tension, it can also be used to create an ethereal, misty feeling. For example, in the piece below, I use dissonance to create a murky, mysterious feeling rather than one of concrete happiness or sadness. What kind of landscape does the music make you think of? Would you want to stay there long?

Why does my music sound this way?