The Lesson of Ensemble Modern

Concert hall music is in crisis.

Not convinced? A reality check for you: the Philadelphia Orchestra, a concert hall mega institution that has a 110 years legacy, is currently on the blink of bankruptcy. And the Philadelphia Orchestra is certainly not alone – it joins a long list of prestigious concert hall institutions around the globe that are struggling to balance the book. The categorical collapse of the high-brow and the low-brow in music is no longer a mere prophecy, but a current state of affairs that is well documented. Music of the classical canon had long ago ceded economic primacy to music of the popular culture, now it seems to have lost even its priced cultural prestige. The obvious implication for a composer is that he or she must now be critically receptive to the entire spectrum of music-making, but that is hardly news to those of us who are equipped with even a marginally contemporary sensibility. More importantly, given the internal collapse of the boundaries that had previously segregated the different modes of musical production, it is logically incoherent that music's external boundary should still remain intact. Music's internal and external boundaries are the twin orphans of romantic desires, once authenticated by a transcendental enterprise that can no longer sustain itself, if one falls the other should naturally follow suit. In other words, what we are currently witnessing is not the twilight of the classical canon industry, but music's imminent fall from grace – its inevitable dethroning from its esteemed position of cultural and moral superiority over other arts. If music- making was to eventually rekindle romance with its pre-1800 mode of operation, whence there existed no rigid conceptual boundaries between the musical and extra-musical, then concert presenters will have to derive new strategies with which to decode the drastic moments of music- making, and to account for the open-ended-ness of a performance event unfolding in space and time. What should also naturally follow is an increased demand for musicians to diversify, to function as multi-disciplinary polymaths, as directors of performance events: composers better be reading Contemporary Art Review too in addition to Critical Inquiry, Perspectives of New Music, SPIN, and Electronic Musician.

Speaking of legacies, to say that Ensemble Modern carries a legacy would be a gross understatement. Founded in 1980, the list of the group's commissionees over the last two decades reads like a definitive who's who of contemporary music, including John Adams, Pierre Boulez, Helmut Lachenmann, György Ligeti, Steve Reich and Karlheinz Stockhausen, among others. Today, Ensemble Modern remains one of the most active champions of the music of our times, staging 100 concerts annually that feature over 70 new commissions by living composers. It's often too easy – even convenient – to dismiss contemporary music as elitist and commercially inviable; yet, on top of its cultural prestige Ensemble Modern also managed to prove against all odds that music by living composers is capable of attaining wide public recognition. The group's discography of contemporary repertoire, numbering over 50, is only a small testimony to its artistic accomplishments. With two Grammy nominations, several ECHO awards, thousands of new commissions and regular financial support from both the private and public sectors under its belt, Ensemble Modern as a musical institution is alive and kicking by any account – which is not something that you can say of its more conservative counterparts of the concert hall tradition.

Savvy cultural institutions evolve to embody the spirit of our times, to reflect humanistic concerns of the here and the now. A glance at the ensemble's website gives the impression that it is not afraid of breaking boundaries, staging anything from your traditional chamber music concert to visually- stunning multimedia spectacles. Disciplinary boundaries is not the only borders that Ensemble Modern actively seeks to transcend either. The group transplanted five composers into the Pearl River Delta, with the aim of producing new commissions that grasp the essence and characteristic of the region. This gesture was a part of a larger INTO cultural project that connects composers with some of the fastest emerging mega-cities of the world. The Hong Kong edition of INTO will feature compositions by five celebrated composers – Heiner Goebbels (Germany), Benedict Mason (UK), Unsuk Chin (Korea), Johannes Schöllhorn (Germany) and David Fennessy (UK) – each will converse with the sonic and cultural landscape of his/her city of choice, melting driver's radio talk, architectures and street theaters into intensely poetic, geographically-specific musical after- thoughts. Grammy Award winner Heiner Goebbels’ electronic composition Out of promises to translate the mechanics and architecture of Hong Kong into music. Benedict Mason, doubtlessly one of the most unique figures on the music scene today, approaches the region in a humoristic way by employing moving images, producing a multi-layered intellectual commentary in his N.N.. Unsuk Chin, winner of the prestigious Grawemeyer Award and Arnold Schönberg Prize, takes a special angle in Gougalön by using percussions to construct reminiscences of an old market place. Johannes Schöllhorn, twice awarded the Premio V. Bucchi, toys with orchestral colors and sharp-cut accords in No-Man’s Land while David Fennessy discovers the individual in sites of mass production in 13 Factories.

Ensemble Modern's astounding success is at a stark contrast with the dire state of concert hall music to-date. One should of course realize that the group's open-mindedness, exceptional musicianship and appetite for new frontiers are all inter-dependent ingredients for its continuing relevance, particularly to a new generation of concert-goers. We mustn't allow our orchestras and ensembles to become mere musical museums that perpetually recycle cultural relics. For reasons of artistic development as well as economical survival, music must reflect the here and the now. Our city's music institutions have quite a lesson to learn here; as for Ensemble Modern's Pearl River Delta leg – this is a contemporary music mega-event that you simply cannot afford to miss.