When I hear the phrase "classical music" it conjures up images of composers with severe looking faces wearing powdered wigs. Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, Mozart, Straus and Mahler in their long frock coats slaving over reams of score paper, picking notes out on a piano, while all around them heavenly hosts rejoice. Or something like that anyway. The idea that somebody from post 1900 would be considered "classical" is not something that I can easily get my head around.
Certainly they might compose works that make use of similar instruments and for the same deployment of musicians: quartets, trios, chamber ensembles, and full orchestras, but how can they be called classical when they live(d) in modern times? I'm probably sounding pedantic, but in every other art form when something is referred to as classical it is in reference to the style that is being practiced not the means that are used to produce the art.
Would you group Andy Warhol with Van Gogh stylistically? No, of course you wouldn't, so why would Beethoven and contemporary composers be classified in that manner? One only has to listen to Aaron Copeland's Fanfare For The Common Man once to realize that it is from a completely different school of thought than the Ode To Joy. When you start to factor in instruments not even dreamt of by Brahms and Bach; electric guitars, synthesisers, percussion instruments from around the world, and the electronics at the disposal of today's composers the differences are only compounded.
In calling what the men and women who compose today do classical; it does them a great disservice. An audience will be expecting to hear what they would hear from a Brahms concerto or a Strauss Waltz because of preconceived notions about classical music. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth, and a prime example is the work being done by the ensemble Red Hooker from Brooklyn New York.
The quartet of Maxim Moston violin, Peter Hess Clarient, Rob Collins Rhodes keyboard, and Stephen Griesgraber composer, guitar, and electronics are an example of the direction composition for multiple instruments has taken today. Their initial release The Future According To Yesterday is a four-part, 24 minute composition where the electronic compliments the acoustic to create atmospheres that are redolent of sadness and tranquility simultaneously.
"Sometimes She Speaks Gently" is the opening movement. The clarinet and the violin exchange solos that are soothing to the ear without being merely trance inducing. Each one takes a turn in the foreground, establishing its role in the composition. Underneath each precise statement, the Rhodes keyboard creates a swirling atmosphere that evokes mists and fogs.
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