Crossover Mush

I said somewhere recently that I'm not a snob, I'm an elitist, but somedays I wonder. Today's Globe and Mail has an article on the latest trends in crossover, which apparently means taking seriously the attempts by pop musicians to leverage their fame into being considered composers of serious music. This is almost as funny as Alex Ross referring to Radiohead as "those English composers". But let me restrain my inner snob and have a look. Is there any there there?

Here is the Globe article. They assert:

What isn’t so radical any more is the notion of a rock or pop artist composing so-called serious music. Beethoven no longer rolls over in his grave. Rather, he’s propped up on one elbow listening to Radiohead. Musicians such as Parry, Owen Pallett, Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood and the National’s Bryce Dessner – who produced Parry’s Music For Heart and Breath – are at ease in classical and pop genres.

Well, yes, it has been happening, or has been asserted to be happening. In my mind Beethoven is putting in ear plugs right about now. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating. How does cranking out pop albums for a few years imply that you can actually compose real music? Even if Kronos are willing to record it? What we need is to listen to some of this stuff and decide for ourselves. But the problem seems to be that it is hard to find on YouTube. Owen Pallett, who has composed a violin concerto, is represented by stuff like this, which I presume is his pop mode:

Well, it's not Franz Schubert, is it? Here is part of a film score by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead:

That sort of sounds like classical music because it uses strings, but honestly, is there anything there that you wouldn't come up with in about five minutes of noodling around? The Glove avers that:

Pallet, Parry and the others, they’re all young. The full musical spectrum they embrace is a generational matter, really. If you’ve grown up listening to the Beatles and Bartok or Debussy and Devo, the lines inevitably will blur.

I grew up listening to the Beatles, and Bartók and Debussy and, well, not Devo so much as Talking Heads, but how I became a mature musician was by realizing the differences between them, not mushing them altogether. Blurring the lines turns everything into mush. One of the composers mentioned, Richard Reed Parry of Arcade Fire, is represented by a whole composition. Here is his Music for Heart and Breath.

I found it to be a dull, self-indulgent piece, going nowhere very slowly. I suspect that this is what this new generation of sort-of composers thinks classical music is. No rules, just mushily let your feelings flow. With strings!! Referring to his work with Arcade Fire, Parry muses:

In response to the band’s relentless touring and robust, carnivalesque concerts, Parry virtually retreated deep under the skin for his neo-classical work. “What I was craving was the opposite,” he explains. “I was looking for quietude and introverted music. I wanted to feel the smallness of myself.”

Well, ok. But couldn't you have indulged yourself with a little polka music instead?