The inhabitant of the labyrinth

I’m sometimes told I’m a bit of an elitist. I’m not sure if that’s true, but I always respond with that living in North-Western Europe kind of berefts me of a choice in the matter. Were I the poorest person in the Netherlands, I would still belong to the richest 10% of the world. Or so I’m told.

There are different kinds of elitism, however. Reading paper magazines and newspapers, for instance, not out of nostalgia but because one just likes is, can be seen as such, simply because not many still do that. Liking and listening to certain types of music is another example. Jazz comes to mind.

Or using words like berefts.

One kind of music that I really love is from the Second Viennese School. They invented things like the twelve-tone scale and said things like Tonschönheit ist Nebensache (Beauty of sound is less relevant) while centuries of musicians before them had all tried nothing but to make the most beautiful music they could. Beauty for and through God (until and including Bach) and then beauty for art (Mozart and what came then).

This will have been the shortest, least nuanced (or accurate) musical history introduction possible.

What I need in music is what I very much not want in my newspaper. I want to be constantly surprised, panicking is even better. I’m very needy that way. That why I love Bach, Brahms, Richard Strauss, Anton Webern, Keith Jarrett and John Coltrane.

Anton Webern, String Quartet op. 28, Sehr fließend

The Groene Amsterdammer, a periodical we subscribe to, had editor Bas van Putten write a piece comparing musicians such as Webern to Steve Reich and Philip Glass. He paints the latter two firmly in Richard Serra’s corner. Serra was an artist who made huge steel constructions that you best experience by walking between them. In 2006, at his exhibition in the Guggenheim of Bilbao, I bought a huge poster of his sculptures that still hangs in our study.

The Richard Serra poster in our study

Here’s a fragment from the article (translation DuckDuckGo):

“Serra’s and Reich’s goals were at odds with Webern’s modernism where density became the yardstick. Complexity is the forest of meaning, even and perhaps especially where you can no longer see the forest for the trees. The density increases the mystery and your own mandate across the spectrum of interpretation, strengthens the bond between makers and the single early adopter who dares to walk through your wilderness. Look there, between those old oaks, you hear? Nobody. But you do. This creates bonding in the high-culture domain. The bilateral relationship guarantees the exclusive connection with the music. You, sole and voluntary inhabitant of the labyrinth.” -- Van Putten, B (2026, nr. 42), Ruimte Maken, De Groene Amsterdammer

Contrasting Webern above, here is the opening from Glass 3rd string quartet, Mishima:

Philip Glass, 3rd String Quartet, fragment

Van Putten calls (people like) me elitists and dishonest. I am a hypocrite. He pits my so-called high-culture bonding against the simple Serra-like elegance of Reich and Glass. But where I love the quiet of Serra’s borderline architectural art, I find Reich and Glass’ music just plain boring. Endless ostinatos with predictable tried-and-true chord changes that make me reach for a book when I’m hearing it, or the off-switch. Give me Webern or Strauss anytime. I will admit they’re a bit of an acquired taste, but so is anchovies. It doesn’t have anything to do with having to feel that I understand something others do not.

Just because newspapers aren’t boring any more, doesn’t mean music has to take its place.