Joel-Francois Durand in the Mirror Land

Centers, Fields, and Cracks: Some Solutions to the Problems of Contemporary Composition in the Music of Joël-François Durand

CENTERS, FIELDS, AND CRACKS: SOME SOLUTIONS TO PROBLEMS OF CONTEMPORARY COMPOSITION IN THE MUSIC OF JOËL-FRANÇOIS DURAND RYAN M. HARE O ONE WHO HAS BEEN an active participant in the creation, performance , or study of contemporary music, in this new century or in the previous one, has escaped the debate over its accessibility and relevance . This debate, like an invasive undergrowth, infests every forum for new music: its tangles have ensnared, agitated, and sometimes enraged almost everyone involved at one time or another. People who might otherwise be united in their enthusiasm for the art form are all too often cruelly divided by aesthetic or ideological differences. These differences are made all the more stark by a basic lack of agreement as to what to do about the central and by now quite chronic problem of the reception of new music among general audiences. Few, it seems, even those outside its avid fan base, would deny that contemporary music is important; yet N 174 Joël-François Durand In the Mirror Land many are dissatisfied with what actually makes its appearance under that name. It therefore suffers from a lack of popularity, even by the somewhat tame standards of “popularity” in the world of so-called art music; and living composers are regularly called to account for being out of touch with the public, for not caring what audiences want to hear. In considering just what it is about this music that has contributed to the problem—what features of the music itself make it difficult for audiences to accept—the point is not to assign blame for the situation, or to condemn some particular body of works. Rather, I would prefer to suggest some paths that new music might follow in the future that would approach the problem differently from the way it has been done in the past, and that would do so without compromising artistic and aesthetic ideals. To ask that new music remain intrinsically new and challenging yet at the same time appeal, at least potentially, to a broader range of the listening public is, I realize, to ask a lot; but it is hard to imagine any other way out of the present crisis. Part of the problem, certainly, is that the extraordinary diversity of contemporary music during the past century has itself exacerbated the situation to a level well beyond any historical precedent. The widespread confusion in the musical culture at large over just what contemporary music is, and whether its perceived “accessibility” is at all relevant to its worth, has confronted its promoters with an apparently Sisyphean struggle—one that composers too are drawn into whether they like it or not, with often detrimental effects on their creative energies. The diversity of the present-day musical scene unhelpfully presents the developing composer in particular with a bewilderingly vast range of compositional options, something that I can attest to first hand. This is particularly an issue for a composer who seeks constructive, non-polemical solutions that do not vitiate the essence of what contemporary music is: new music clearly belonging to these first years of the twenty-first century. There is no universal solution, of course, and obviously no composer alive today can single-handedly resolve all these difficulties. However, in his recent music Joël-François Durand has taken some noteworthy steps toward doing so. A brilliant example of his success in this regard is provided by his oboe concerto, La Terre et le feu (1999). What is different about this work, by comparison to Durand’s earlier compositions, is not at all that it adopts a more conservative musical vocabulary (it doesn’t), or that Durand has in any way simplified or “dumbed down” his complex musical ideas (he hasn’t), but that he has achieved a kind of clarity that was never as fully realized previously. It is the nature of this clarity which is of greatest interest: on the one hand, the familiar fingerprints of Durand’s style, and some traditional elements of European-style modernism , are present: one finds complex rhythms, quarter-tones, and of course Centers, Fields, and Cracks 175 a non-tonal harmonic structure. On the other hand, the coherence of the ideas is never lost, the momentum of the musical argument is always clearly perceptible, and the musical expression itself is consequently that much more...