You walk on stage, and it’s terrifying: senior-recital-gone-wrong, late-to-a-masterclass-with-Big-Name-Soloist, career-ending-farce-with-your-parents-in-the-audience terrifying. As always, it’s inexplicably hot on the boards (or too cold, or the lights are too bright) and you’re sure the audience can see the sweat glisten on your frustrated, unhappy face. You’re flubbing notes left and right, barreling through an old favorite, lilting and swaying, trying to pretend like you’re really, actually feeling it this time, when you find yourself thinking: This is absurd. What are we doing here?
To perform in a traditional classical music context is to attempt to dance gracefully through an arcane series of conventions and traditions without giving the game away: walk out to applause, bow at the audience, play, bow a few more times, smile, walk out to applause. No talking, no clapping between movements, no audience participation, no mistakes.
At a certain point in the 20th century, a jaded, post-War generation of composers decided to stop playing by these rules and start using them to shock, amuse, and confuse. Often connected with ideas of the absurd, the pieces born out of the ennui and existentialism of this heterogeneous mid-century gaggle attempted to poke holes in the unwritten assumptions of Western concert music. But they also tried to expand its limited sonic and theatrical repertoire by including stage directions, speaking, acting, slapstick comedy, costumes, and more. The curtain was pulled away to reveal the Theater of Music in all its glory, a shambling chimera of traditions practically begging to be made the fool.
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