Does Bach still rock?

Put another way: Are Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, and Schubert, still the greatest classical music composers of all time or have they been knocked off their raised podium by some 20^th or 21^st century upstart?

In practically any other professional field of endeavor: professional sports, rock music, motion pictures, to name just a few, the 20^th and 21^st centuries have ushered in a fresh breed of groups or individuals whose talent far exceeds the previous generations.

As great as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb were as hitters in their generation; a sound argument could be made their feats have been equaled if not surpassed by Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Ichiro Suzuki, and Mike Trout in the most recent eras.

The same applies to professional football: it would be hard to continue to make the argument that Otto Graham and Johnny Unitas were the greatest quarterbacks of all time compared with Terry Bradshaw, Peyton Manning, and especially Tom Brady.

Both rock music and motion pictures have produced mega stars in the 20^th and 21st centuries which have far exceeded previous generations in raw talent–from Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen; Fleetwood Mac, U2, to Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, and Denzel Washington in the motion picture industry.

Can a similar argument be made when it comes to classical music?

When the New York Times classical music writer, Anthony Tommasini, was tasked to rank his favorite composers of all time, his top five were Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, and Debussy. Only the French composer, Claude Debussy, was considered a 20^th century composer, but just barely. He died from cancer in 1918 when he was 55.

Thanks to Spotify, the Swedish music streaming provider, this marvelous app has allowed me to archive thousands of my favorite songs, most of them classical music, including the Fab Five: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and Haydn; as well as some of my favorite British composers: Handel, Britten, Elgar, Purcell, and Ralph Vaughn Williams.

If, however, you asked me to name some contemporary classical music composers; sadly, other than John Adams and Peter Maxwell Davies, I wouldn’t be able to name many more.

Does that mean there are no contemporary composers equal to the prodigious talents of Mozart and Beethoven; or does it mean, I have a poor and undeveloped understanding of what classical music has to offer?

The answer is both; as it turns out.

William Boughton, Professor of Music in the Yale School of Music, told me that if I’m looking for a replica of a Bach, Mozart or Beethoven writing ‘classical’ music in the 21^st Century I’m not going to find one!  “But there are plenty of genius composers,” Boughton noted, “including, George Benjamin, Thomas Ades, John Adams, Julia Wolfe, and a number of others, who are writing compelling music for, and in, our time. I’ll admit to a very small audience!”

I’m sure it doesn’t help when so many public schools nationwide with limited budgets are slashing music from their curriculum. How are children, after all, expected to know some of the more contemporary composers when they have limited exposure to the genre before they enter adulthood?

Boughton explained that “so much of what we appreciate and love in all art is dependent upon how our minds were influenced at a very early age – the majority of classical music audiences grew up on a diet of Bach, Mozart and didn’t experience modern or contemporary music until later, which means the concert experience was a passive one rather than an interactive.”

After corresponding with a number of music scholars, a common theme many of them cite for explaining why there is so little awareness of contemporary classical music composers is that they are competing against an extremely crowded field of musicians (of different genres) and other forms of entertainment from YouTube videos and iTunes to streaming television shows for hours on end.

For almost 30 years, historian and composer Robert Greenberg has shared his love of music with audiences and students.

Photo Credit: Robert Greenberg

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Historian, composer, pianist, speaker, and author, Robert Greenberg, explained it to me this way: “In a pre-electronic age, when you had to make music yourself or listen to it made by others – live – the demand for fine art music and popular music was all-encompassing.”  “Audiences,’’ Greenberg explained, “expected to have to sit still for a 2-hour concert, or a 5-hour opera, or for an 800-page novel.  The pace of life was slower and there was time to think and consider.  We live in no such world today,” Greenberg observed. “The available media has fragmented the “pubic” into a million-and-one different pieces.  Our attention spans have shrunk to near nothing; YouTube videos longer than seven minutes go unwatched. “

According to a survey conducted by Primephonic , a classical music website and streaming service, half of Americans can’t name a classical composer. The survey additionally reported that only 14 percent of Americans listen to classical music regularly; meaning, more than half of those Americans who enjoy listening to classical music (53 percent) do not listen to it regularly.

Similarly, a CBS News poll showed that country (21 percent) and rock (18 percent) are America’s favorite music genres. Classical music, on the other hand, was the preferred genre of only 10 percent of the respondents, behind popular music (14 percent) and just barely more popular than R&B or Soul (nine percent).

The sentiment that classical music is becoming lost in a sea of competing musical genres is echoed by Tucker Biddlecombe, Director of the Music Teacher Education Program at the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University. “There is brilliant music being made in the world of classical music at the moment, and it’s absolutely on par with the agreed-upon ‘great minds’ of the 19th century” Biddlecombe said. “To name a few: John Adams, Steve Reich, Caroline Shaw, Eric Whitacre, Jonathan Leshnoff, and Gabriela Lena Frank are all writing groundbreaking music that moves the needle in similarly emotional ways as Bach and Mozart.” “The main difference,” Biddlecombe further explained, “is that the medium has expanded, so now they have to compete with countless other composers of different styles of music – and some equally brilliant. Radiohead, Kendrick Lamar, U2, Trent Reznor – all of these artists have created music that inspired a new definition of sound.”

After corresponding with a number of musical specialists, I’ve come to a greater appreciation and a sharper understanding of just how many crazy talented classical music composers there are out there who simply haven’t been able to reach a wider audience.

Contemporary Classical Music composers: John Adams, Philip Glass, and Steve Reich

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As talented as some of these contemporary composers are, however, I haven’t read much about these composers being described as geniuses, wunderkinds, who had the ability to play music at age three and wrote music at age five, traits often described of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the 18^th century. And are these composers producing music that seems to have ‘’fallen from the heavens,” a popular phrase so often attributed to the masterpieces of Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach?

Here, again, it seems, I’m not fully grasping the larger landscape of classical music.

William Robin, assistant professor of musicology at the University of Maryland’s School of Music, informed me that the “widely held belief that all the great classical music was composed in the past, rather than the present, is itself a historical construct, one that dates back to the 19^th century and the new creation of discourses around “greatness” and “genius” that centered on composers and, specifically, Beethoven.” “The idea,” Robin says, “that the music of Bach and Beethoven “fell from the heavens” is a product of 19th century, nationalist and Romantic tropes that elevated music and its composers (and, specifically, Austro-German composers) to a new status. “

Robin argues the works of contemporary artists, such as Kaija Saariaho, David Lang, John Adams, Steve Reich, George Lewis, Louis Andriessen, Anna Thorvldsdottir, and Meredith Monk, who are producing exemplary work—are, in fact, living and breathing embodiments of the Austro-German lineage of Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach.

Interestingly, as much as we enjoy the works of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and others during the present age, they weren’t as warmly received as we might have imagined when they were producing their works while still living.

Markus Rathey, Professor of Music History at Yale’s Divinity School, tells me “Beethoven’s contemporaries did not understand his late string quartets; Bach was criticized for his boring and academic style; and Mahler’s music was harshly criticized by listeners around 1900.”

But over time, Rathey explains, their music vocabulary became part of our musical vocabulary and after 100 years or so, Mahler, Bach, and Beethoven’s music has become normal to us. “We are use to the sound of Bach’s polyphony and Beethoven’s emotional outbreaks,” Rathey says, “and their music has shaped our taste.”

Rathey further suggests that while Gustav Mahler and Richard Wagner have shaped our taste– contemporary composers like David Lang and Steve Reich are challenging our tastes because they create the type of music, we haven’t had a chance to digest for a century.

Driving home the point that there is an ocean of superb music ready to be explored, Anne Midgette , former classical music writer for the Washington Post, told me that “the canon of great composers is not a fixed and immutable thing. Indeed, it’s one of the great tragedies of our field that people believe that these 50 or 100 canonical names somehow represent a higher qualitative standard than the hundreds of composers who are less remembered; we cut ourselves off from the enjoyment of a lot of great music by insisting that the Mozart’s and Beethoven’s represent something on a different plane.”

So, there it is.

I started thinking about and researching this article a couple of weeks ago, with the initial understanding there are no Mozart’s, Bach’s and Beethoven’s to be found in the 21^stcentury. But after speaking and corresponding with a number of music specialists, I’ve come to understand there are indeed some brilliant virtuosos out there if only we would widen our net, seek them out, and drop the overused labels of “greatness” and “genius” too often attributed solely to the Bach’s, Mozart’s, and Beethoven’s of the 18^th century.

A good start in expanding our knowledge of contemporary classical music composers might be to generate appreciably more public funding to the arts in the United States.

According to statistics from the German Orchestra Association, in 2018 there were 129 publicly-funded orchestras in Germany, with around 10,000 members. So, it’s no surprise that Orchestras such as the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden or the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig are considered among the best in the world.

In the United States, the cultural sector is almost entirely privately funded. And more and more articles seem to pop up every few months, such as this article from The Baltimore Sun , chronicling the financial woes of American orchestras.

The public funding of orchestras in Germany additionally pays big dividends. According to the German Music Council, 33 percent of Germans like classical music, this in contrast to only 10 percent in the United States and 15 percent in the United Kingdom

Nuff said!