Mini-episode: Why is some Classical Music so damn long?
There’s a string quartet written by the American composer Morton Feldman in the 1980s that is about 6 hours long. ‘Einstein on the Beach’, the opera by Phillip Glass and Robert Wilson, is about five hours long and is performed without an...
The Introduction
There’s a string quartet written by the American composer Morton Feldman in the 1980s that is about 6 hours long. ‘Einstein on the Beach’, the opera by Phillip Glass and Robert Wilson, is about five hours long and is performed without an interval. There is of course plenty of classical music that is well under these eye-watering durations. A Vivaldi concerto can be over in ten minutes… Samuel Barber’s ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ is under four minutes and most Chopin Nocturnes are three to five minutes long. But there is still a perception and an understandable one… that classical music is long. And it is a quick leap to the conclusion that it is too long. Well, there might be another way of looking at it.
The Music
The Words
Hello everyone.
Welcome to another mini-episode from the Classical For Everyone podcast… where I give you a few thoughts on some of the questions a listener relatively new to classical music might ask… or might perhaps for a variety of reasons… be reluctant to ask. For today… Why is some Classical Music so damn long?
It is not an unreasonable question. There’s a string quartet written by the American composer Morton Feldman in the 1980s that is about 6 hours long. I don’t have a recording of it but in the background playing is part of his work… For Samuel Becket. In another example of impressive duration… Einstein on the Beach, the opera by Phillip Glass and Robert Wilson, is about five hours long and is performed without an interval. And I can testify to that having been an impressionable, and, let’s be fair, kind of pretentious young person who sat through the whole thing. Apparently it was designed as what Glass and Wilson called ‘a meditation’… and the idea was that you could come and go as you like. Maybe that worked in downtown New York in the 1970s but in Melbourne in the 1990s it just seemed… well rude. So I sat there. For a very long time. Here is one of the more energetic moments from the opera.
So whilst a classical music apologist can sort of get out of this ‘why is the music so damn long’ thing by saying… “Oh no… these were experimental, avant-garde… designed to push the boundaries… excesses of the late 20th century… the rest of the classical music mainstream is much more manageable.” Well… that’s not entirely true. The biggest culprit is still opera. Some would argue these are Museum artifacts… clinging to life support but that’s not the case. Richard Wagner’s four operas that make up his 18 hour ‘Ring of the Nibelungen’ cycle are going to be performed hundreds of times this year around the world. And the demand of tickets will way outstrip supply.
So. Maybe it was a symptom of the wild indulgence of the nineteenth century. But then a complete performance of Handel’s Julius Caesar from 1724 is about 4 hours long. Is it just opera though? Gustav Mahler’s 3rd Symphony is about 100 minutes long. And there’s none of the visual distraction of opera… no large women jumping off towers, no dragons sitting on treasure, no stone statues coming to life…and of course no elephants. For a symphony performance… there’s just an orchestra to look at. Until very recently a bunch of middle-aged white men in the costumes left over from the TV series Downton Abbey. It’s unfair and probably irresponsible to single out Mahler’s 3rd symphony on the basis of its overall duration. To make up for that here is a very small taste of the opening of the symphony. It’s actually pretty wonderful.
By focusing on the longest of classical music works I’m not painting an enticing picture am I. There is of course plenty of music that is well under these eye-watering durations. A Vivaldi concerto can be over in ten minutes… Samuel Barber’s ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ is under four minutes. Most Chopin Nocturnes are about five minutes long. But there is still a perception and an understandable one… that classical music is long. And it is a quick leap to the conclusion that it is too long.
Well there might be another way of looking at it… Why is pop music so damn short? Why, certainly for as long as I can remember, has it been the conventional wisdom that the duration of a perfectly crafted piece of music is three minutes? I blame a man by the name of Emile Berliner… the inventor in the 1880s of what came to be known as the 78… A recorded disc that ran at 78 revolutions per minute and could contain on each side about three minutes of recorded sound. It’s successor, the 7” diameter 45 rpm was not discontinued until about 1990. I’d argue that part of the knee-jerk idea of classical music being overly long is that our collective default for a perfect duration of a piece of music is the radio advertisers’ darling… the three minute song. Once upon a time what counted for mass recreation came in much longer doses. In the 1850s the author Charles Dickens would present book readings to halls crowded with thousands of people. Usually about three hours long. Just a man reading out loud from his book.
And to put things in a modern context… we are still addicted to entertainment that would significantly outlast any but the most indulgent bit of classical music… A NASCAR race is over three hours… just cars going round and round and round in a small circle. An efficient 18 holes of golf takes over four hours. And a one day cricket match is the FAST version of the game. But, you might be thinking, when I’m at a classical music concert I really can’t do much but just listen. At a car race at least I can pick a fight, toss beer cans onto the track and even wander off and get another tattoo. That is a fair point. But that is not about the length of the music… that really leads into the skill of actively listening… a skill that is available to anyone… but that will be a conversation for another time.
I want to come back to opera for a moment. Fans, like me, are thrilled that it is still arguably a vibrant and viable artform… that on a good night the blend of music, drama, setting and staging can create a deeply rewarding experience. But there is no denying it is on the fringe. Harvey Sachs' masterful biography of the conductor Arturo Toscanini also tracks the decline of opera in Toscanini’s native Italy where in the nineteenth century almost every town had an opera house. What killed it off or at least vastly reduced its ubiquity? The cinema. And this happened all over the western world. And then television largely did the same to the cinema.
If, like me, you grew up glued to commercial free-to-air television… I think your brain was wired to entertainment being delivered in small pieces interrupted by commercial messages. Add that to the three minute radio song and it is maybe not surprising that there is a view that any entertainment longer than an episode of Friends is just longer than it needs to be.
How to conclude? Yes, there is some foolishly long classical music. But an average orchestral concert is going to be barely two hours long and made up of usually three or four contrasting works. Once you allow for the trailers and the ads… a movie session in a cinema is longer. But still the question remains… and maybe the answer to ‘why is some classical music so damn long?’ is a series of other questions… why are some books so long?… why are some movies so long?… But answering questions with questions is not very helpful so let me hazard a real answer and it’s boringly simple… composers do what composers want to do. Yes, there are professional considerations… if you’re nineteen and you’re trying to get your music performed you’re probably not going to whip up a four hour long string quartet. But I suspect that for many composers, choice doesn’t have a lot to do with it. Inspiration comes along… and they follow it. And then… if the work finds an audience (and that’s a really big if)… it might just end up outliving the composer and ending up on a streaming service, a concert stage or a podcast in the 21st century.
My name is Peter Cudlipp and I hope this mini-episode from the ‘Classical For Everyone’ podcast on Why is some Classical Music so damn long? has been of some value. And if it got you a little curious then please head to the website: classicalforeveryone.net to explore the full one hour episodes of the podcast, more mini-episodes like this one and a list of the music I’ve included today.
Now here is some music. A short song from a long opera. Here is a little moment from Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro”.
Thanks for listening.