The larger part of the 20th Century has been an era in which contemporary music has lost, to a great extent, the connection with a regular audience. For many listeners, contemporary music has become too abstract, too theoretical, something incomprehensible and very hard to enjoy. People are drawn to concert halls because of a Beethoven overture, Mozart arias or a Mahler symphony. The familiarity and recognition of these old masterpieces overshadow the interest and curiosity for works written by musicians of today, composers who we should be able to relate to. Our rich history isn’t an excuse to simply ignore the composers of the present or our recent past. It should be a guide to our present time, in which we are as curious to listen to a premiere as we are to listen to an unknown work of Dvorak or Schubert.

The reason for this widening gap is twofold. First of all, contemporary audiences have lost the capacity to listen with a rhetorical ability to a concert. Our ears no longer register the unique character of tonalities, connection between rhythms and the indefinite hierarchy of rules which every work of art follows – or rebels against. Due to orgasmic fortissimos in Skriabin’s music we no longer feel the surprise in Haydn’s symphonies when a sudden forte appears. Because of Strauss’ far reaching harmonies we no longer hear the unique darkness of Schubert’s Unfinished, written in the, at that time, odd key of B-minor.

We keep enjoying this kind of music because we have discovered a certain overall beauty and universal expression behind all the rules. One doesn’t need to understand the revolutionary ideas of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony to get carried away by its music. The identities of the themes and the development of the piece are so strong that we feel a great experience anyway, but just imagine how much more we could open our ears if we would be guided into the structure of the form, the abruptness of the melodies, the relentless repetition of the main motive and the struggle between the major and minor key… Then the symphony will turn from an elegant museum piece into a frantic rollercoaster. Suddenly we experience how every time the period of bars is being changed it feels like a sharp turn, how the battle between C-major and C-minor feels like a sweeping acceleration; every time the main theme is heard in all its unison power, we know that a new section is being unfolded. We hear fate knocking at the door in the exposition and we hear the dramatic mercilessness which makes escape impossible at the beginning of the development section. The entire first movement is a dazzling journey of swiftly changing emotions, which deprives us from catching a single breath. The final strokes come as the end of a battle in which we can finally look back to oversee the fury in which the rollercoaster has taken us.

If it is already difficult for us to truly understand the music of the Classic and Romantic eras, in which so many beautiful melodies carry the piece anyway, how difficult will it be if we are confronted with a piece which lacks any kind of melody? What can we expect from a piece if it doesn’t have clear motives, harmonies, tonalities or a clear structure? A surprise only works if we experience that a pattern of expectations is being broken; if we wonder without a clue through an incomprehensible work of art without any sense of gravity, we deprive ourselves from the joy of consciously being led into the wrong direction.

Here in lies the second reason of the widening gap between contemporary music and their audience. Even though we want to see art as an independent universal form of expression, it has always been very strongly led by or reacted upon historical events. Dodecaphony couldn’t have been written in the way it was composed without the realization of what the Great War had brought. After generations of believing that every step mankind had taken, it had been a step forwards, humanity saw itself confronted with a destruction of unprecedented proportions. The Industrial Revolution shaped Impressionism and the horrors of the Second World War and its Holocaust resulted in Serialism. But as the former created an audience which understood how in a time of mass production it was essential to portrait the world behind reality, the latter lost the connection to the public. How are people supposed to understand a world of musical destruction, in which every note, harmony and rhythm are connected to each other according to a cerebral and frigid blueprint?

As history has pushed certain movements of music, certain composers have seen themselves as important cogs with only one single goal: to keep the Machine of Progression going. As their only goal was to discover new paths, they lost the connection with the audience. The public became a burden, an uncontrollable mass which lacked the capacity to keep up with their development, but at the same time they sought every opportunity possible to perform their works.

Why do we as an audience go to concerts? The challenge is not to lean back passively and stop feeling provoked or surprised, simply because the music we hear is a meaningless display of cerebral tone rows and rhythms. Albert Camus made it as his primary goal to make the audience leave his plays with more questions as with which they came to the performance. Music, as all arts, should do the same.

Therefore as performing musicians we should make an effort to select works which keep the public searching for questions. That’s why the Hafnia Chamber Orchestra performed at their first series of concerts Vasks’ Musica Dolorosa. As it is essential to perform contemporary works, it is essential to select contemporary works which the audience can relate to. They should feel provoked, moved, confused, agitated or exited. That is why works of Mozart and Beethoven are still being performed. Musica Dolorosa was written shortly after the Latvian composer had lost his sister and from the beginning till the end the audience was reminded of the pain and void which this loss had brought him. From the first lamenting motive, through the desperate strikes depicturing fading heartbeats, till the return of the opening sorrow, the audience was captured by the meaning and expression of the music.

Like the music of Vasks, there are countless other composers who have written in a style in which the audience can relate to. Composers as Tansman, a Jewish Pole who fled to France during the Second World War and in whose music we hear the strong influence of Stravinski, or Tubin, Estonia’s leading composer of last century, whose music reminds us of an introvert and mysterious Shostakovich, are rarely performed. Their music is as essential to the development of classical music as the works of Berio, Boulez or Ligeti, but their names hardly appear in programmes.

It’s these composers which the Hafnia Chamber Orchestra presents to its audience. Alongside with great masterworks of the past, we have to keep our audience interested in contemporary music. The Hafnia Chamber Orchestra focuses on modern or contemporary music with a strong connection to the past, with all its tradition and tonality. It is magical to perform music of composers who attend the concerts, to prepare a work while being able to contact the creator at the same time. It gives us performers even more joy if we see that this work results in an engaged concert, in which the public feels they are able to look into the world which the composer presents to them.

Music has been created for an audience, not the other way around. Very often we see composers who don’t expect anything from the listeners, because they feel the audience is miles behind and impossible to bring them up to speed within one generation. History however has always shown that even the most revolutionary composers were understood in their own time, and if not so, shortly after their death. It characterizes the 20^th Century that to many, the dodecaphonic music of Schönberg still sounds as incomprehensible as it was when it was written, about one century ago. As shocked as people reacted to the premiers of Stravinsky’s ballets, these works have become part of the standard repertoire ages ago.

It would be a mistake to state that an audience is not capable of understanding music which is not written in the style of Brahms, Mahler or Stravinsky. Many contemporary composers who search for new paths have captivated their audience very convincingly. Composers as Adès and Maxwell-Davies have brought so much joy to the public! However, it is not the Hafnia Chamber Orchestra’s primary goal to perform these works. As wonderful as these works are, they have managed to create a platform to be heard.

How often do we hear Serenade by Berkeley or one of the Concerto Grossos by Bloch? Andriessen’s Miroir de Peine is quite well known in The Netherlands, but hasn’t managed to reach an audience outside its home country. We all know Barber’s Adagio but how often is his Serenade heard? Movies have made the music of Herrmann and Rota famous across the world, but many other Americans like Harris and Schuman haven’t gotten the recognition their music deserves.

As you can see, the world of music offers us endless works of art and countless new works to explore and share with our audience. As a single musician we could spend our entire life studying the barytone trios of Haydn or analyze the operas of Vivaldi. We can study and study, but we will always have to accept that the world we try to master is too big to comprehend to the fullest. It’s a true blessing that nowadays we see so many specialists. We see orchestras which focus on the Barok or the Early Classics and ensembles which were created to help the most complex and incomprehensible contemporary music find its way to an audience. There are string quartets which focus on Russian music or chamber groups which only perform waltzes… Amidst this we find the Hafnia Chamber Orchestra.

Contemporary music doesn’t have to be abstract. It is not a safe with a time lock which can only be opened after several centuries to be understood. It is there for the performers and the audience at the moment it is being presented. Only the future can tell us if true art has been created. In the meantime, we should experience and enjoy as much as we can.

Simon Casali