Doing it my way

I was thinking earlier about where music is going in the 21st century, and where I need to go as a composer.

The 20th century was about several movements in music: the radical atonality of Schoenberg et al, the mercurial tonality of Bartók, Prokofiev and Shostakovich, the metric chaos of Stravinsky, the jazz-crossover of Gershwin (and later Stravinsky), neoclassicism (again Stravinsky), and minimalism, the American reaction to the complexity of serialism, and Eastern music contributed devices like drones. At the same time, composers like Ives, Partch, Hába and Wyschnegradsky began to challenge the hegemony of twelve-tone equal tuning. And don't forget Cage and Stockhausen, who blurred the very lines between music and noise.

Now, avant-garde music ranges from the complexity of Ferneyhough and Adès to the simplicity of the "holy minimalists" Pärt, Tavener and Górecki. Romanticism, especially the Wagnerian-Straussian philosophy of Gesamtkunstwerk, lives on in film and video game music.

My goal is to take a middle path and incorporate complexity and simplicity, new and old, tonality and atonality. But where else should I go, besides dropping a bunch of names? I feel like the "final frontier" of music really is microtonality/xenharmonicism. I don't know of many composers who are using rows in 15, 17, 19 or 22 rows (I've done 17 and 19 so far). And I'm scoring everything for a conventional orchestra, not homemade instruments like Harry Partch produced.

Anyway, while I consider how I can bring something new to music, I'm planning on a trip to Russia (Moscow and Petersburg, naturally) in the near future, as I went to Turkey three years ago (then, as part of my study of makams as an extension of tonality). My reasons are both professional and personal. I want to see where the Five, self-taught composers like myself, rebelled against the conservatory establishment and made their innovations that influenced Debussy, Ravel and so many others, and where Tchaikovsky, a product of that establishment, wrote his greatest works.

Of course, money, health and political realities may stand in the way. But I've been planning on this trip for 25 years.