What To Think About New Old Music

My sister connected with me the music of Alexis Ffrench, a UK-based "contemporary composer and pianist". Check out Bluebird and Exhale on Youtube if you want to sample the sort of stuff I'm talking about here. (Mr. Ffrench may have another, possibly secret life as a grunge artist or death metal composer, but I haven't come across it yet).

I was in a bind listening to these pieces. They are undeniably lovely, pretty music. I have some issues with the use of a string section to ladle on the emotional syrup, but I know those are my own and I have to deal with them alone. But there was something deeper nagging at me about the music and my reaction to it.

The initial thought that I had was about the music's level of derivativeness.

Although Mr. Ffrench does weave in stylistic leanings from soul/R&B music, the overall tone of his work owes a huge debt to a certain era of "classical" music. I would place it at or around the time of Debussy, Ravel and their fellow French (no pun intended) impressionist friends, although I could be off by a decade or four. There's nothing wrong with derivative music - to some extent almost all music is derivative (standing on the the shoulder's of giants; good artists borrow, great artists steal etc. etc.). There are certainly many musicians whose work I deeply enjoy and some of their work is deeply derivative. Dustin O'Halloran and his solo piano works evoke a similar era in French impressionism. Max Richter can do the same, and also manages to evoke some other eras of "classical" music along the way. Yet I don't find myself recoiling from their work the way I did from Mr. Ffrench's pieces.

The best I could come up with was that, to use the two examples I cited above, I don't notice "derivative" output from people who also do "non-derivative" (or at least "less derivative") work. O'Halloran is also a part of Winged Victory for the Sullen and in that duo and other collaborations, he has explored the foundations and edges of a new sort of "contemporary classical" that manages to fuse the orchestral colorism of Ligeti with a blend of post-rock mentality and post-ambient tonality. So yeah, his solo piano pieces sound like a French composer from the late 1800's, but that's just one of his options. Richter ranges all over the map too (though increasingly less so as he gets older), and so I can allow his lacrimose movie soundtrack work that sounds like a timestretched version of Gorecki because its clearly just him playing with style.

So what is my problem with Mr. Ffrench? Do I even have a problem with Mr. Ffrench?

After some more rumination and discussion with Julie, I've ended up here. My main reaction when I listen to his work is that the listener would be better off going back and listening to the actual French impressionists. A listener might object, though, and say "well, yes, I've already heard Debussy and Ravel and what I liked in their music is what I love about Mr. Ffrench's work". To which I want to respond "then you should probably dig a bit deeper, and check out the music of the lesser known impressionists, some of whom wrote lovely music that you would probably like. This might be a good place to dip your toes."

The intellectual music appreciator in me is fine with that answer. Yes, yes, go and checkout some of the music that was amazing and forgotten for whatever reason. This is always good, because history is not always kind to a more subtle kind of greatness, in music and the arts more so than elsewhere. There's so much lovely music from every era of the last 500 years (at least!), so go and explore!

However ... as much as that sort of answer does represent a position I do deeply and truly hold about music, it begs a further question. If the advice after someone has already indicated that they like this music is to go and find other composers who write in this style, why prejudice the present over the past? Because in the here and now, we have Mr. Ffrench writing, well, if not actually in the precise style of French impressionism (probably a good thing), then certainly very pretty music that many people will enjoy. Why is listening to Guy Ropartz, or Charles Tomlinson Griffes or some other obscure composer from 100 years ago better than listening to what someone with similar aesthetic sensibilities is doing today?

After some reflection, I can only answer that it isn't better. They are both options, and in an ideal world, people would do both.

There's only one thing that would make Mr. Ffrench's music actually problematic for me: if he wrote it with the specific idea of trying to be appealing, rather than it coming from his own inner aesthetic sensibilities. But there's no evidence at all that this is true.

So I'll just have to try to deal with the string sections, and try to appreciate the relative simple harmonic structure yet delightful and light melodic flow of Mr. Ffrench's work without constantly connecting it to his stylistic antecedents.