http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a ... -1/ZONES04
Indianapolis Star, IN
January 1, 2007
COMMENTARY
Roll over, Beethoven? Not yet
By Pierre Ruhe
Cox News Service
January 1, 2007
For all those baby boomers who have decided to follow their favorite graying rockers into unfamiliar territory -- the old-new world of classical music -- a warning: You'll hear evidence that the venerable art form is gasping for breath, if not already dead.
Newly minted classical composers like Sir Paul McCartney and Elvis Costello aren't to blame; they're just eulogizing at what they think is a funeral. Despite the marketing hype, this isn't the place to look for signs of life.
The pop geezers are serious musicians but also businessmen. They pedal as fast as they can, looking for creative outlets and also market niches within the burgeoning AARP demographic. Pop chart hits are probably behind them, however; so to refresh themselves, or to garner a little respect, they dabble in old-timey classical-sounding music.
McCartney, who once was regarded as the most talented surviving Beatle, has in recent years employed teams of arrangers to help him create large-scale symphonic and choral works, in the tradition of Handel's "Messiah."
Team McCartney's efforts include "Liverpool Oratorio," "Standing Stone" and, now, "Ecce Cor Meum" ("Behold My Heart"), an hourlong, Victorian-style monument to pomposity and soggy tunes, sung partly in Latin.
Elvis Costello's ballet score, "Il Sogno" ("The Dream," after Shakespeare's midsummer-night original), is a mind-numbing wash of bland harmonies and limp rhythms. It sounds more like a student exercise in counterpoint than music reflecting his strong personality.
Billy Joel hired his own crew of collaborators (including a young pianist) to create an album of flavorless piano music that was billed as "classical music." What I hear sounds like a burned-out cocktail pianist in some dreary lounge, noodling endlessly at the keys and approximating Chopin nocturnes recalled from his youth. It's a pathetic document.
Sting, a more wily figure, has recorded a disc of lute songs by John Dowland, an English Renaissance master of melancholy. Sting's "unschooled" tenor is reasonably honest and effective in this music, but the whole thing comes across as a vanity project as he tries to find a worthy new cause.
What do these crossover acts have in common?
For one thing, evidence that a pop name can sell classical records: Each of their releases sold tens or hundreds of thousands of units in just a few weeks and scored big on Billboard's classical charts -- which isn't difficult, since traditional classical records sell a relative pittance when compared with a hot record on the pop charts.
The other similarity is the puzzling lack of passion in their music. As composers, McCartney, Costello and Joel couldn't put their unique personalities and styles into their "classical" music. In each of these recordings, their creative voices -- what made them beloved stars in the first place -- are missing.
As a result, these rock stars come off as insincere or incompetent. They've come to classical music as tourists, eager to visit the cliches and have their photo snapped amid the glorious ruins. They share a stiff, antiquated view of what concert-hall music is supposed to be.
It's no accident that this view includes nothing from the past half-century -- about the same time that rock 'n' roll has been around.
Indeed, one might surmise that Sir Paul and the others think their pop music is what contemporary music should sound like; "classical" is the dinosaur that became extinct before rock came along.
So why would a household name at the center of pop culture shut off his creativity and compose wimpy music in an alien language?
Jessica Lustig, whose classical- music public relations firm in New York helped promote McCartney's "Ecce" recording and Carnegie Hall concert, says she backs any artist who wants to try new things. But she also observes, "after long careers as pop stars, they're still seeking some cachet of artistic credibility, and they can get that from classical music."
Sting's former bandmate in the Police, drummer Stewart Copeland, has been more successful than many rock stars in making the transition to orchestral composer. But he takes issue with a simple pop-classical continuum.
Copeland says the real trick in moving from one genre to another is obvious but almost impossible to achieve: A composer, he says, has to put his true self into everything he writes.
