Bridges

The border where the vernacular crosses over into the realm of high art has always fascinated me. I think music is the most obvious place this happens, although there are certainly enough examples in other mediums.

The relationship between vernacular and high art in painting and sculpture is complicated by our changing perception of those mediums over the centuries. A Sumerian adoration figure or a Celtic brooch, or even Egyptian tomb paintings, had quite a different meaning to the people who made them than they do for us, not the least of which was that they were part of daily life, not by any means something separate and somehow rarified, although they might, in the case of the Sumerian and Egyptian pieces, have ritual significance. Fine -- substitute Roman or Minoan frescoes or Turkomen rugs, if it will make you happier. The Japanese and Chinese, of course, are in a class by themselves in this regard. In literature, of course, writers periodically plunder folk tales and vernacular usages and forms -- witness the translation of the ballad from vernacular song form into high poetry and back into vernacular song. And of course, who could forget that most of our earliest works of literature were originally sung or chanted by storytellers for audiences of whoever happened to show up -- as likely to be in a marketplace as a princely hall.

I made the point once that "classical" music derives a lot of its substance from the vernacular. Don't forget that Mozart's Magic Flute was created as a popular entertainment. Liszt, Chopin, even Beethoven and Brahms borrowed tunes and rhythms from the folk music of their areas. In the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries, folk influences became a major leg of music -- Dvorak, Bartok, Stravinsky, Ives, Britten, Ravel, Copland, Bernstein, all went back to folk music and even -- and often quite enthusiastically -- into jazz for some of their treatments. In Bernstein's music, especially, the dividing line between high art and popular modes is more than a little blurred. There is now a whole generation of young composers who have incorporated influences not only from the august traditions of Western art music, but from Asian, African, and Native American music as well as rock and pop, jazz and the blues. (The infusion of these last several influences is interesting -- classical traditions in Indian or Indonesian music have made their way not only into contemporary art music, but just as readily into popular music -- don't forget the Beatles' association with Ravi Shankar, and there are any number of rock groups who have used the complex rhythms and tonalities of gamelan -- while African music has exerted its influence from just about every direction.)

It is very seldom, however, that one actually has the experience of listening to musical works that are right on the border, that act as real bridges between the popular and the high-brow. The Eurythmics hit it sometimes, particularly in a few cuts on Touch. Corvus Corax has come up with a few things that erase the centuries between their medieval sources and their contemporary audience. Depeche Mode's Playing the Angel straddles that border for almost its entire 55 minutes, although for most of that time it's still definitely pop, if a very sophisticated variety. The last track, however, "The Darkest Star," leaves the vernacular realm behind: it's an art song, pure and simple, very much of a kind with the late twentieth century avant-garde (and actually more interesting than a lot of it) . (I know, it's the twenty-first century, but if you look at the historical record, centuries don't actually begin until roughly fifteen years after the calendar says so, at least in the West, and recently -- Martin Luther's "95 Theses," the death of Louis XIV, Waterloo, the outbreak of World War I -- so we have a few years yet.) It's really an amazing song. I mean, I was sitting listening to the disc with my mind comfortably ensconced in "pop" territory, and then for what may be the first time I actually listened to what was happening. Not pop. Not even close, even though it holds on to pop music's emphasis on rhythm. (I should point out that in general, pop music is a lot more sophisticated musically now than it was back when we were all doing "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll." Well, OK, I didn't do drugs, but two out of three ain't bad.)

I love it when that happens.