Contemporary classical music isn't all academic

(This is a still photograph with musical accompaniment.)

I enjoy instrumental concert music. Most people, including me, refer to this sort of art music as "classical". Nothing wrong with that. Only a true snob or a perfectionist is likely to correct us for using the term.

My main issue with this type of music is similar to the one I have with classic rock: it isn't very dynamic. How many times can you listen to the same 500 works without a foreboding sense of boredom coming over you with the first few notes? (That was rhetorical, but the answer is probably measured in years.)

When it comes to the various sorts of popular music, one just needs to listen to the music of the most recent crop of artists. With classical music, this is a much more difficult endeavor for a few reasons.

1) Classical is not readily available in most radio listening areas. When classical stations can be found, whether independent, public radio, or on satellite, they tend to focus on the repertoire (that is, the "classics".)

2) There are so many composers and works and titles and instruments and vocalists and styles that it is a bit overwhelming to figure out where to start.

3) Modern and contemporary music, like other arts, has been changed dramatically by technological advances and the devastating wars of the 20th century. There is a tendency to depart from the emotionalism of music from earlier eras and to intellectualize the notes. Melody was lost for a time as serialism, dissonance, and computers infiltrated composition. Now, there are exceptions to this, but in the recent decades, I'm guessing, a novice could probably not name them.

4) This last one isn't a bad thing, it is just a sign of the times. Many fine composers do film scores. Mozart and Beethoven and the rest would undoubtedly have written them too if film were a medium in their times. But a film score needs to be whittled down to a suite, or a have a shorter work gleaned from it to make it accessible for performance. This is mainly because no one really wants to sit through the "incidental" pieces in order to get to the main themes that we all know.

I bring all this up just to say that there are many many wonderful young composers out there in the world. They are creating listenable, expressive, melodic, yet serious music. Not all of it is for all tastes, but anything that satisfies everyone is either a timeless masterpiece or fluff. There are only a few timeless masterpieces.

The photo above is Joby Talbot, an English composer who is 35 or 36 years old. He composes film scores(!), pop music(!!), and classical works. The work attached to the photo is ...similarities between diverse things..., for piano trio and vibraphone from 2002. A piano trio consists of a piano, violin, and a cello. This work was written in memory of Fred Hutchins Hodder, a gifted mathematician and violinist, who died at the age of 20 in 2001. Hodder's parents commissioned Talbot (and other composers) to create works in memory of their son.

This music is simple, yet is recognizable as a contemporary work. It is contemplative and emotional. Elements of minimalism (repeated notes) and the Baroque (think sewing machine) approach to the violin later in the piece, when it brightens considerably, add interest and intensity. By the time it quietly ends, you feel uplifted, even though you've just listened to a work intended to mourn the dead.

(The .mp3 used here came from Talbot's website a few months ago, not from a share site or from my own collection.)