Concert programs today exude a positive aura of inclusivity and open-mindedness, encouraging an egalitarian approach to all music. The freedom today to program absolutely anything especially in new music concerts is a welcome relief from the rigid social pressure of the avante-garde culture of the 20th century, a time particularly when bucking the pressure to compose and/or appreciate serial and atonal music amounted to career suicide for a composer and mocking derision towards the average music listener (famously remembered but misunderstood in Milton Babbitt’s article “Who cares if you listen?”).I myself experienced the tail end of those nightmare times. But indeed I am coming from that perspective. The “emperor’s new clothes” fear from that time not to respond critically to music that was either incomprehensible or lousy has today been replaced with a pressure to accept all musical genres as equal and of equal quality. There is a reverse snobbery in maintaining all musical genres are equivalent.

What especially disturbs me is the current trend of adding complete pieces of video, theater, dance, etc. to an already complete abstract musical work or adding different musical genres to a classical concert, all to heighten the audience experience of listening to live performers in a concert hall setting. This creates an aesthetic dissonance, one that often surfaces in the uncertainty of audience reaction. If a visual component is placed on the stage, does one focus more on the music or the visual when each is so independent? When adding global or popular music, should one still listen actively or relax into the “groove?” Should one clap along to the music and voice approval for solos, or stay quiet? Confusion of social propriety is a frequent issue when the traditions of concert hall collide with those of other venues; it is obvious and perhaps even trivial. But the confusion from “additions” to modes of listening is subtler and disturbing. Listening seems to flow to the path of least resistance. Given a cue to emphasize other sensory modes, the mind relaxes comfortably into passive listening. Watching instead becomes active and provides the primary aesthetic cues. The dynamic properties a composer struggles to impart in music flatten down to a single layerof accompaniment.

Changing the way music is presented then changes the mode of attention and listening, dramatically altering its dimensionality. Since the concert hall is dedicated to the fine art of listening, does it stand to reason that all music is best heard in this mode? Does it make sense to place any style of music alongside any other? The impulse to do so is a response to the unlimited musical genres, styles, and histories now so readily accessible in recordings, internet, and live performance. Never before has such a vast spectrum of music been available. As a healthy reaction to open beyond familiar and pre-determined judgments to encompass awareness of the multitudes of global and popular styles, music lovers come to embrace a political correctness mode, essentially chanting the mantra “It’s all good!” After all, who can judge between African drumming and Renaissance motets? We are fortunate to have it all and we should enjoy it all equally. Value judgments and discrimination are discouraged. It’s interesting that this mantra recognizes that the sheer number of world musical styles is too vast to master, but insists such knowledge is not necessary, that all music is ours to use and hear any way we would like, to be presented, manipulated, and combined in any possible way freely. Intoxicating stuff. When it is all clumped together, what happens to the listening experience?

As a pre-concert lecturer for the Los Angeles Phlharmonic, I interact frequently with audiences and can attest that listening to traditional classical music is suffering a reduction to static expectation as well. If classical audiences are losing the ability to follow Beethoven, what tools will they possibly have to follow contemporary concert music? Inclusion of global and popular genres in classical concerts takes listeners on a never-ending chase to absorb different styles. Fado, Indonesian gamelan, reggae, Tibetan chant, Gagaku, klezmer, celtic, bluegrass, samba…we’re supposed to know it all. The mantra “It’s all good!” belies a terrible complexity facing us all today—with the iPod and the ubiquitous “one button touch” access to global, historical, and popular music of every genre, how do we get to know it all? More importantly, should we get to know it all? Beyond the implicit challenge to know a little bit about everything, how can we approach listening in a way that doesn’t leave it flat and on the surface, dependent on extra-musical cues, visual or textual, to determine whether we recognize or “like” the sound we hear in order to follow a musical thread? If music listening does flow to the path of least resistance, are we fated to reach a common denominator where we hear all music through the filter of pop song structure? That’s a very satisfying framework for hearing Bob Dylan or Lady Gaga, but not so good for Beethoven or Ligeti.

What seems certain is that just throwing the musical kitchen sink at listeners carries the danger of flattening music into a single dimension. Active music listening is the hidden half of the unspoken dialogue that sustains the bond of focus between composer, performer and audience that lies at the core of abstract concert music. Without that, music is just another element competing for attention in the highly congested audio spectrum of daily life. The challenge is for us to replace the mantra “It’s all good!” with a realization that includes both wonder and caution: we are world wide and one inch deep.

Here are the stunning responses:

Thinking back for the ''first memory'' I think it was the Mendelssohn violin concerto, a recording of which my violinist uncle played for me in Lincoln, Nebraska.  I was four years old.  The other memory would be the old shellac recording of the Polovstian Dances by the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra on Columbia Records (I EVEN REMEMBER THE LABEL!) which I played on our windup Victrola in the ''music room''.  That would be 83 years ago.  I thought the little instruments were somewhere inside the box. I still adore the Borodin. 
Kenneth Klauss

 I think that the first time I listened to the same piece of music about 400 times was when I was in college.  I just wanted to "swallow" it whole!  That was the Brahms Double Concerto.  There are so many magnificent themes - melodies and harmonies in that piece of work that I never tire of hearing it and we don't get to hear it enough! 
Rochelle Ginsburg

When I was a teenager in the mid 1960's I went by myself to a concert  at Lewisohn Stadium in Manhattan, NY. Van Cliburn played the 2nd Rachmaninoff concerto.  The evening was magical and I was grabbed by the opening measures of the Adagio Sostenuto movement. For days I could not get the melody out of my head.  
Abby Myerson

 Brahms. The line in the Requiem "as one whom his own mother comforteth".  Certainly the words were meaningful to me, having experienced two family deaths as a child, but without the music they would have been arid.   This became my entree into all of Brahms.
Ruth Boyer

I remember first hearing a hi-fi recording of Rimsky-Korsakoff's Scheherazade when I was in 7th grade.  The opening phrase and its endless modifications, key changes, variations and the musical dialogue between the beautiful princess and her potential slayer simply transported me to another realm.  It still does today - I must have every recording ever made by now. And the lights still have to be off when I listen.
Richard Long

2nd movement, Beethoven's Fourth Symphony, forever.
Dorene Wolf

 The first few bars of english horn solo in the middle of The William Tell Overture.
Y. S. Moriarty           

I'm struck by the music of Alan Hovhaness. I discovered him driving to work -- I could pick up a classical station from Princeton whose host knew him well and he would often play his works. He was a prolific composer, and I can recommend arguably his best known work, his Symphony #2 (Mysterious Mountain), and ESPECIALLY his Symphony #50 (Mount St. Helens). The 2nd movement, Spirit Lake, has one of the most beautiful English horn/flute/clarinet/pizz. string/perc. segments I have ever heard, and the 3rd movement, which is Hovhaness' musical rendering of the volcano, will jump you out of your seat -- I would love to see this piece done live just to watch the percussion section at work -- and I think he has the strings depicting birds flying away in terror!
Dottie Rodman

For me it was sitting in the USC music library in graduate school, listening to Brahms’ 3^rd Symphony for the first time (I know, how could I never have heard it before graduate school} and realizing that the final phrase of the last movement was the opening phrase of the first movement.  Pure sublimity.
Kitty Podolsky

This will be different but the horn part to "Victory at Sea" [Richard Rodgers and Robert Russell Bennett] was what made want to be a horn player.  My favorite passage when I was around 6 or 7 was the beginning of the Chopin Polonaise Militaire. My mother loved to play it.
 Johnny Woody

The Largo from Dvorak's New World Symphony.
Fernando Periera 

Dvorak's new world symphony last movement grabbed my attention when i was 14 as it reminded me of the score to JAWS. 
Anthony Aibel 

PROGRAM
Chamber Orchestra
Egmont Overture: Beethoven  
Rosamunde Overture: Schubert
Music from Spider-Man: Elfman 
A Night on Bald Mountain: Moussorgsky 

Concert Orchestra
Symphony No.1, mvt. 3: Mahler 
The Moldau: Smetana
Down a Country Lane: Copland 
Russian Sailors' Dance: Glière 
Sleigh Ride: Mozart
Bacchanale: Saint-Saëns

Sunday December 13, 2009, 4:00 pm      
Robert Margolis Performing Arts Center      
Milken Community High School of  Stephen Wise Temple      
15800 Zeldins' Way at Mulholland Drive 
Los Angeles, California 90049
 
Monday December 14, 2009, 7:30 pm      
Zipper Concert Hall at the Colburn School      
200 South Grand Avenue     
Los Angeles, CA 90012

For tickets and information:

LA YOUTH ORCHESTRA WEBSITE
(310) 571-LAYO
Tickets also available at the door