So Paul McCartney won a Classical Brit for Best Album last night. His Ecce Cor Meum inspired much critical bitching (he didn’t orchestrate it himself, he wrote vocal lines that were impossible for choirboys to sing, wasn’t Lennon the talented one anyway, etc.). But it won over the shadowy judging panel of the British Recording Industry Trust and Sir Paul walked away with another trophy for his groaning mantelpiece.
Fair play to him. It did get me thinking, though. The quality of McCartney's musical output is generally acknowledged to have diminished as he has moved into middle age. Almost all prominent classical composers, on the other hand, have got better and better as they got older. There’s rarely a sense of a talent burnt out within a few years, and often the last testaments of composers are their most innovative work. Beethoven’s Late Quartets. Verdi’s Falstaff. Wagner’s Parsifal. The incredible story of Janacek who suddenly found success in his sixties as he created some exquisite quartets, and some exquisitely painful operas.
But not one pop musician has anything like this progressive trajectory. Think of the greats and there’s not one whose best work has been in his or her later years. Not The Beatles, not Prince, not Dylan, not Madonna. Even those who just write rather than perform (and who you’d think might be immune from the modern quest for youth and novelty) seem to lose their muse as they age – witness Burt Bacharach. Any ideas why? Is classical music more about the craft than the inspiration? Or does pop music bring such worldly rewards that successful artists just can’t be bothered any more?
2 comments:
Sho' nuff. Modern trappings, cumulative success and the stability they bring insulate our modern greats from pain and hunger, and without struggle good art never stands a chance. Even if Dylan was facing a pauper's grave he'd just license his most resonant work to some irrelevant corporation and that'd be that, it's not as if Mozart could auction off Eine Kleine Nachtmusik to his local bratwurst concern as a jingle. Music has never been more of an industry and that spells disaster for industrious musicians.
camtronic4000 (almost) hits the nail on the head: lack of material motivation doesn't fully explain why the great classicists - in general - got better as they get older. Beethoven could, I suppose, have kept churning out the same old stuff: he didn't, he improved, he changed, he became more profound. But is this deterioration restricted to contemporary popular music? Is, for instance, Maxwell Davies in decline? I think he is (but I stand to be corrected on that one). OTOH I don't think Ades is going downhill (yet) but he's still young, motivated and has something to say.
Maybe, in the end, the composers reflect their audience. Call me old-fashioned - even old - but the adulation (let alone the money) heaped on the purveyors and writers of the drivel that passes for much of pop music does not extract the best from contemporary pop musicians: it encourages imitation rather than originality or, at best, novelty rather than creativity.
Post a Comment