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New Bottles, Vintage Wine: Reevaluating What It Means for a Work to Be Modern
| Article
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12175 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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2 / 1987 |
2,558 Words |
| Author
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Kenneth LaFave
Ken LaFave is music editor of the Kansas City Star. |
A cluster of discordant strings crescendos, while an out-of-tune piano plays a ghostly reference to "Rock of Ages." A rush of percussive effects, a blast of swooping horns is shrouded in a mist of high, random string harmonics. Is this the last example of post-Modernism in music, a pointless exercise in color-for-its-own-sake? To the contrary, this is John Corigliano's "Three Hallucinations for Orchestra," a singularly nonhallucinatory work, and one typical of the composer's output in that he uses contemporary techniques to achieve the traditional ends of linear structure: conflict, climax, and resolution.
An ethics professor lectures on morality, his lecture interrupted by acrobats, by a singer who can't remember her song, by a telecast of astronauts feuding on the moon, by rape, and, finally, by murder. Another performance statement, perhaps? One intended to subvert meaning, mock middle-class values and, indeed, frustrate any values at all? No. This is Tom Stoppard's Jumpers, a play utilizing every Modern and post-Modern device suitable to making a cogent case for the necessity of moral absolutes.
Stoppard in the theater and Corigliano in the concert hall are prime examples of a rare sort of artist: the traditionalist in modern clothing, or, if you will, the Western artist functioning in what seems to be a post-Western world. They are vintage wine in new bottles, and even a brief look at their works suggests a rethinking of what it means for a work to be modern.
Both Stoppard (an Englishman) and Corigliano (an American) command sizable arsenals of contemporary techniques. A casual listener might be tempted to lump Corigliano in with
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