It might be uncool to say, but I’m not a music snob. I think there was an old stereotype about classical musicians that we look down on popular music, which couldn’t be less true. At uni, my friends and I were equally likely to perform a Schubert mass or belt out a chorus of Queen on the bus ride home from the pub. I have my limits - looking at you, Taylor Swift - but I’m keen on Bach, Nina Simone, and Mitski alike. I’m happy at the orchestra and at the techno club; the same goes for many musicians I know. Let’s be honest, the line between Stockhausen and Kraftwerk is pretty slim in places.
Sometimes I feel hemmed in by my Spotify algorithm, though. I wonder about the music that I might enjoy that’s out there in the ether, ignored by the machines that have learned what I reliably like. Genres start to feel restrictive.
I think this is why I’ve found such an interest, over the past year or so, in a particular kind of genre-breaking music: recomposed classical.
If that term seems opaque, think: electro-acoustic, musique concrète, prepared instruments, symphonic techno, ambient synth. And underneath that, it’s Chopin. 1
There are plenty of places to start listening to classical recompositions,2 whether you’re coming at it as an open-minded classical music listener or a fan of shoegaze who thinks Philip Glass seems pretty cool. One of the latest offerings is from DJ and producer Christian Löffler. Self-described as “emotive, melancholic” and “sincere and honest”, his electronic music is layered with acoustic field recordings from his home studio at the Baltic Sea.
Part of what I like so much about classical reworkings is what Christian Löffler’s new album, Parallels, has: nostalgia. Dating back to the label’s founding in 1898, Deutsche Grammophon has built one of the largest sound archives in the world. Parallels is a collection of tracks based on shellac recordings (78s) from this archive. Löffler selected pieces by Wagner, Smetana, Bach, Chopin, Bizet, and Beethoven for his project, incorporating these scratchy historical records into his personal electro-acoustic soundscape.
I think there’s a wistfulness in this idea of returning to something old to look for something new. It’s less wistful, though, than pulling out the original shellac disc, dusting off the record player, and listening to all the squawks and skips of a hundred-year-old recording. That kind of nostalgia is reminiscing about a time-gone-by, pre-Spotify and Apple Music. Parallels is not that nostalgia. This is twenty-first-century music with history echoing inside. I like that Löffler’s music is sentimental and imaginative at the same time; he leaves room for us to recognise melodies and motifs but lets them evolve, too. He said in an interview:
I also wanted to keep some parts of the original music almost untouched, to give the listener a better understanding of the original material in the context of its new “home”.
Does re-homing the material help us understand it differently? Maybe ‘understand’ isn’t the word I would choose. The new context does give me a fresh appreciation for the moods and dimensions within these familiar classical works. The label describes the album as a tribute, “re-inserting [classical composers’] music into contemporary discourse.” There’s certainly a kind of dialogue. Personally, I think pieces like ‘Pastoral’ and ‘Fate’ are more revealing of Löffler’s spirit than of Beethoven’s.
What might help us understand the source material better is reworking it ourselves. The Parallels album release includes a browser app where anyone can play producer. Components of Löffler’s track ‘Moldau’, which lifts melodies from Smetana’s Ma Vlast, have been disassembled again. Slide the controls up and down in the app to adjust the volume balance of the different elements: the original shellac sample, synth pads, field recordings, the bassline.
This is twenty-first-century music with history echoing inside.
If the line between Stockhausen and Kraftwerk was already looking thin, in Parallels the line between Löffler and his source material becomes nearly invisible. The genre disappears. Maybe this is a product of our time; in the digital era, we’ve again become used to samples and rip-offs, remixes and compilations. Another generation’s plagiarism is this one’s homage. I suppose this is the point where the nostalgia disappears - or maybe where it begins.
Either way, I like the freedom from the binary of “classical” or “popular”. And I like this nostalgic space for centuries-old music to belong to today, not just to the past.
In case you missed the link above, you can listen to Parallels here.
Unsolicited Recommendations
This post is packed with things to listen to, so here’s just one recommendation for something to read:
a poem called “Like Sand From a Beach”, by Deshawn McKinney. His chapbook, father forgive me, is on my to-read list, too.
Questions to Ask on the first day of spring.
Viewers of Chef’s Table will recognise an adaptation of Vivaldi’s ‘L’inverno’ (Winter); Max Richter’s version is the show’s opening theme music. His reworked Four Seasons is part of the ‘Recomposed’ series on Deutsche Grammophon.
One of my favourite musicians working in this genre is Víkingur Ólafsson. The Johann Sebastian Bach album is pure life and death.