This is music?
Duration: 7:15
Written in: 2018
Faddish, lascivious, exaggerated, inappropriate, irregular, annoying.
Bizarre, too much, just noise, clown music.
The reactions above are criticism for music contemporary to the text: The first line is criticism for medieval music, and the second line comes from comments to a 2017 YouTube video of Patricia Kopatchinskaja playing Ligeti’s Violin Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic. This is music?, whose title comes from a comment from the Ligeti video, pairs critical viewpoints of music from the medieval period together with music of that time. The majority of the music is borrowed, and while quite a lot of the music remains unaltered, all original text has been replaced so that there is never any work that has not been changed in some way. At times I allowed my 21st–century hands to reach more into the borrowed music and warp or overwhelm it with a recurring microtonal cantus firmus (starting in the bass in m. 22) and other original material. The borrowed musical sources, eight in total, begin with Peter Abelard’s Mater salvatoris in 1130 and continue chronologically until Va t’en, mon cuer, written by Gacian Reyneau in ca. 1400. The degree to which the borrowed music is changed vacillates throughout. The criticisms in the selected texts are in many ways echoed by much of what hears about current experimental music. To the listeners either then or now there was/is something about the music that was/is any combination of strange, alienating, annoying, or inappropriate. Whatever their reason for reacting so strongly, this piece shows the relative nature of music and art over time. Sounds that may have once really confused or irritated the medieval listener will doubtfully have a similar effect on even the most traditional listener these days.