Looking For a Little Romance

Anyone who knows me reasonably well knows that among my less-savory pastimes is TV. In fact, I take my affinity for the box a fair amount further than pastime -- I love it. Nowhere is there a form of artistic expression more perfect for our attention-deficit culture than the half-hour episode. As the talent and budgets working in television have gotten bigger, the quality and artfulness of the average show have risen in leaps and bounds. With the advent of Hulu and network websites, content is more accessible than ever; and in the quest for relevance in art, a half-hour block of stories about our modern world and the people in it is as relevant as it gets.

As we roll into premiere season, I find myself thinking more and more about my favorite shows, what I see in them, and where (if anywhere) they transcend from being entertainment to being art. These are complex questions with plenty of valid answers, but some common threads do appear. One thing in particular has been on my mind: the romantic genius protagonist.

The primetime lineup is filled to the brim with main characters who are masters of their particular field, whether it be diagnostic medicine (House), creative fiction (Californication) or criminal anthropology (Bones); all are savants who live for their work, and all have pronounced trouble interacting with others. Their disconnect from their friends and surroundings makes them the geniuses that they are, but it torments them in private. Variations on this theme are all over television (House, Bones, Californication, Monk, M3ntal, just to name a few), and often they’re some of the highest rated shows on the air. We love characters who are the best at the expense of themselves, savants whose relationship with their surroundings recalls the impenetrability of the Romantic artist.

Meanwhile, the concert music community is, as always, afire with arguments about our inaccessibility and our struggle to relate to the average American. Outreach programs abound that feature “regular-guy” lectures by composers and performers. It seems almost every working chamber group is integrating popular genres into their programming (see Alarm Will Sound, the Turtle Island Quartet, and the Sybarite Chamber Players, to name a few), and with the advent of the Final Fantasy program Dear Friends and other such endeavors, these are trickling into the concert hall too. It doesn’t seem far-fetched to say that relevance is the motivating factor; the more we can say “See? We’re just like you!” the more we can deconstruct our stigma as a bastion of elitism in America and draw the rest of the country in.

We can debate the relative merits of this kind of programming later, but for now let’s tackle a (perhaps) more important question: is this really what people want? I’ve written before that full disclosure and abandonment of the mystery of our craft could be counterproductive. Now that I’ve permanently fixed myself to the boob-tube I’m thinking the entire line of friendliness may be misguided. If characters like Dr. House, Temperance Brennan and Hank Moody are any indication, the fact that an average audience member doesn’t understand a protagonist is not a deal-breaker. In fact, maybe they appreciate the mystery and the disconnect -- after all, half the charm of these characters is that they stubbornly remain themselves no matter how much their relationships suffer. This fascination with the mysterious genius isn’t new; looking as far back as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Jekyll we see a familiar preoccupation with the misunderstood genius.

Suddenly we find ourselves in a different position. In a world whose mainstream entertainment fetishizes a certain Romanticism, our art form is naturally mysterious and given to Romantic tropes. We have a great deal of mystery about us already; instead of trying to sweep it under the rug, what if we made it a selling point? TV shows us that relevance doesn’t necessarily mean characters exactly like ourselves; it can also mean making the unknown enticing and piquing the viewer’s curiosity. If we focused our energies on making the music seductively arcane, rather than striving for accessibility at any cost, what would be the consequence? Would we lose audience members to the prevailing wisdom no one likes this complicated music that they don’t understand? Or maybe, just maybe, can we make this mystery work for us? After all, our music has all the drama, sophistication, romance, and mystery of any TV show’s leading man -- and there’s no Vicodin required.

News on the March: 9/23/09

A quick news blast:

- Foolish Fire, written for Matthew Arau's Wind Symphony at Loveland High School, has been announced as the winner of the George Lynn Prize! After its December premiere by Loveland, the piece will be performed in the spring by the University of Colorado Wind Ensemble. There are lots of other exciting prospects in Foolish Fire's future, so stay tuned!

- Estadio for solo viola will be featured in early October on a masterclass given by the Kronos Quartet. Those of you in the Boulder area are more than welcome to drop by; check the Pendulum website (www.cu-pendulum.com) for more information on the exact dates and times.

- The Fifth House Ensemble's program Black Violet, featuring Movement I from Scenes from Childhood, opens in just two weeks. Check www.fifth-house.com for more information. Those of you in the Chicago area: this promises to be a killer show, so get tickets if you can!

- As always, my proverbial door is open for feedback or inquiries into my music. You can also follow me on Facebook, or on my other web project, the Pendulum site (linked above). Check there for my more opinionated music editorials, as well as breaking news about composition at CU.