Amazing Grace | Ben Johnston
(Hey you, why don’t you listen to the music while you read?)
A couple years ago, discovering the American composer Ben Johnston changed my life. I found his music absolutely breath-taking. I became obsessive in studying his works more than I ever had. I was going to Wawa at 11 at night and getting giant iced coffees so I could stay up reading doctoral theses on his theory of extended just intonation (and loving every minute of it). Now, that’s not to brag; I didn’t understand a word of it the first three or four times. But, as I had recently been appointed to a full-time elementary teaching gig and was missing college a whole lot, I guess a part of me was just happy to get back into something a bit more academic, even if it was only “pretend.”
What I found encapsulating about Johnston’s music was his incredible insistence on reconciling two very different goals that come together much in the same way two north-ends of a magnet don’t. Johnston sought to re-imagine our very system of harmony through extended just intonation. Instead of dabbling with serial music or chromatic harmony, he used entirely new intervals craft-able only by following the harmonic series beyond the sixth harmonic (i.e. where most music theory professors say “There’s more overtones, but we don’t need to look into them today.”
And he wrote string quartets and essays and had interviews about why this was so important. And I was sold. It was genius, nothing short of it. Other modern composers were giving up on harmonic exploration almost entirely and here he dared to suggest an entire sound-world had yet to even be attempted. And, not only that, it sounded good! All of the harmonies, despite being foreign to most ears, were based directly on a natural phenomenon of sound tied to the fabric of this universe as closely as sound or color itself. Within his art, truth and beauty ran in striding parallels to a new direction for all music.
Finally, and most importantly to me, Johnston believed the special ingredient of this music was that it stimulated everyone. He could re-imagine folk songs or pastiche styles from long ago in this new light, and both the academic world and the casual listener both would be impressed. His harmonies created musical scores that looked like calculus papers and yet sounded just like a good arrangement of a folk song with something about it that just sounded…weird, but sort of nice?
And so (well aware of how long it’s taken me to get to this part of the story already), I dedicated my own craft to a similar pursuit. Ready to write in the world of extended just intonation I was not, but striving to write something both academically stimulating and yet (god forbid) fun, seemed to me about as noble a cause as any artist could strive for.
But so, I was with my grandmother not too long ago (who has cherished the gift of Spotify Premium perhaps more than any other gift I’ve given her). And, during our routine Phase 10 card games over lunch, I thought to put this music to the test. In the mix of Harry Connick Jr. and Train and André Rieu, I snuck on this very track of Ben Johnston’s Amazing Grace. It didn’t elicit any response for the first few minutes, so I thought to ask. Her response?
It’s fine, but I think I’ve heard better versions.
Paramount in importance to me is that ideas we share can be followed through to practical realizations. I have less and less patience for things we discuss and discuss but never quite manifest. And here, this art whose dream on paper I began to share myself was dissolved in seconds. Ben Johnston was wrong: this music was not as accessible as he thought. Perhaps, compared to the other music being shared on contemporary experimental concerts it was quite “listenable,” but the fact stands that Amazing Grace as he imagined it was never quite ready for the Top 40. It would be wonderful it things were different, but they’re not.
I still like Johnston’s music a whole lot, and I think the world of extended just intonation is something more worth exploring than most people realize. But what I’m done with is music of empty promises. I’ve sat through too many pieces that deal with “difficult issues to talk about” that are meant to “spark a dialogue” where nothing happened after. These works of art with incredibly ambitious agendas that do nothing for the issues they highlight. Become Ocean by J.L. Adams has not saved the glacial ice caps any more than that new piece about police brutality will save a single life. But we sit in the audience and clap anyway. Which, perhaps, is worse. Worse because we as audience members, and directors, and performers, and house managers and composer feel better from that musical event for having listened, or programmed, or practiced, or funded, or imagined it all ourselves, respectively. We all feel we have been part of the solution, but no one is better off.
I am not opposed to these pieces. I’ve enjoyed many of them, and might even consider that some of my own catalog fits the description. There’s no real good reason why this art shouldn’t exist.
But, goddammit, we’ve got to be careful.
There is very much a bubble surrounding a whole lot of the music we find ourselves in the company of every day. Music that makes promises. Music that “sparks dialogue” or “makes us uncomfortable” or “is part of the change we want to see.” Would you keep taking medicine that didn’t make you better? Wouldn’t you get worse when nothing you were doing was actually part of the solution?
I don’t know about you, but I’m on a strict “I’ll believe it when I see it” basis with music that makes claims. When my grandmother looks up from her hand and says, “Hey that’s pretty nice, who’s that?” or when I walk by concertgoers discussing a piece in the lobby afterward and overhear, “That music really made me reconsider my political views,” then I’ll admit we’ve found a piece of music that really holds weight. Until then, however, I’ll continue to force myself to remember being a part of this musical scene is not, in any way, a substitute for making positive change in the world.
And I hope you’ll do the same.
