Why we're losing more and more music thanks to 'digital' #HF17

For new music, the primal performance is often also immediately the last time a piece is played. The scores await the archive or dusty drawer; recordings are nowhere to be found. David Dramm searches for these gems of stilted notes. He presents them in the Holland Festival Orphanage: three evenings full of forgotten compositions from the rich festival history waiting to be (re)discovered.

"In the digital age, another illusion is added: that everything can be found. And that's he-le-not true at all! Especially for music!"

Not known

"In the festival's programmes from 1948 onwards, I started to look at chamber music pieces; work for larger instrumentation is out of the question here," David Dramm tells Splendor. The former bathhouse in the heart of Amsterdam is the place for boundless experimentation: workshop, rehearsal space and concert venue of and for top musicians from home and abroad. This is also where Dramm's 'Weeshuis' takes up residence. An intimate venue with esprit full of unbridled passion for the unheard sound. How appropriate, as Dramm "came across a lot of pieces that didn't seem at all familiar to [him]".

Canon as illusion

Dramm (Illinois, 1961) is a composer in his own right. He studied with Robert Erickson, Louis Andriessen and Earle Brown. Dramm has an idiosyncratic take on music history. Don't come at him with a canon. Dramm: "We once lived, but not for long, under the illusion that there was something like Classical Music and that there was like a canon that would go on for centuries, to which each new generation would add a few new pieces. But as it turns out, that's not how music history works. Not even in Bach's time, nor that of Beethoven or Haydn - nobody had anything to do with music from five or 50 years earlier."

Forgetting is normal

According to Dramm, forgetting is normal: "It is only in reproduction, in radio, records and CDs, that the illusion is created that we take everything from the past and carry it with us. So we make radio and TV programmes and records from old things. It's a production line, because by now it's familiar territory. This is based on that one particular idea of culture; the canon."

Do not heat up

Dramm sees a parallel with the sixteenth century when new pieces were produced on the assembly line (and the old work was thrown out with the bathwater) and today's digital age: "Dealing with music is dynamic and changing and so it is not a matter of keeping and reheating and serving up. The only exception is a wave of new technology that emerges. We then need content for that. So we grab old stuff which we then put on that. That is capturing. From that comes the illusion of a fixed canon."

After all, you can collect them, own them and fall back on them. With the emphasis on: back. These days, online music consumption - zapping, with short attention spans - is also one of bite-sized.

Find everything?

John Cage, however, already spoke of: "records that destroy the [musical] landscape". The American composer was all about the immediate(st) listening experience. And also: about not being able to hold it. Nor wanting to, for that matter. Recordings get in the way of that. Dramm agrees and broadens this notion: "In the digital age, there is another illusion: that everything can be found. And that's he-not true at all! Especially for music!"

As it should be

Nothing is forgotten these days? If only it were, but the opposite appears to be true. Already the findable fraction is mistaken for everything and repeated ad nauseam; on radio, TV, CD and on concert stages. Woe betide you if you play differently than on the known CD, even. Many a concert-goer cannot handle that surprise these days. Who expects what he knows, as he knows it and thinks "it should be".

Two goals

Glowing, Dramm prefers to speak of "a great adventure". For him, music history is one full of energy ahead. On the devastated landscape that Cage envisioned, demolished by records, CDs and now Spotify or YouTube, Dramm emphatically puts music he found, which was nowhere to be found. He wanders around the corridors of the archive of the Muziekcentrum van de Omroep in Hilversum: "Tens of thousands of pieces are there. So it's impossible to go and play everything, but with Het Weeshuis we have two goals. 1. To show that there is much more than you can find online. And: 2. To make the music we do perform as accessible as possible."

The full amount

Het Weeshuis's ambition extends further: "We're going for the full range, just as it's not enough to convert a 1955 film and watch it on your phone. That means: the scores will be made available online and the compositions will also be beautifully recorded with top musicians and that's how we create a catalogue - not a canon!" Those recordings can be found in all their glory on the Orphanage site.

Opposing movements

For the Holland Festival's The Orphanage programming, Dramm explicitly sought out opposing movements; frictions or clashes even. As with the combination of Jan van Vlijmen and Misha Mengelberg on the first of three nights.

Following the light

Dramm: "In Van Vlijmen's Serie per sei strumenti (1960), you hear a composer who believes he is writing music of the future. Like an architect, he sets up the musicians. He has everything picked out and carefully determined; they have to do what it says. Van Vlijmen saw the Great Leap Forward and so, according to him, composers should shine light on what is to come - musicians should only follow." Dramm names Van Vlijmen's strictness while appreciating the complex virtuosity; the great musical puzzle full of self-confidence.

Throw open

"Very fascinating," thinks Dramm, "that in a short period of time you had a totally different vision like that of Misha Mengelberg alongside Van Vlijmen. In itself, it was a miracle that the work Around a Composer's Action (1966) was programmed at the time. Mengelberg had a radical vision - a world of difference from Van Vlijmen - about the role of the composer and the musicians. With him, everything was thrown open and freedom was warmly welcomed. Improvised music did not exist in the form we know today. Classically trained musicians therefore had to go wild in the cartoonish, inventive and funny composition. In it, you can hear a mishmash of styles that took place in Mengelberg's head."

Twice

Live at Splendor, the pieces are played in the form of short 20-minute sets. You will also hear the works twice. In between, there is a short conversation by Dramm with guests. "For years a piece hasn't been played," he says: "then it's very strange to play it just once. You can't go back to it; not online, not on CD. We give you a second chance. Then you still hear other details, subtleties. Or you relive it again with the context from the conversation."

Plus: some material is not the same in terms of performance twice, like Mengelberg's piece. For that reason alone, a second time is a godsend. And later you can always take all the time you need for even more in-depth listening when the recordings are online. Or, even more fun, with the recovered scores you can find on the site, revive the pieces yourself.