Contemporary composer Michael Torke’s music invites us to slow down the frenzied pace of our lives, to reflect on who we are as human beings, where we have been and where we are going. His is indeed music for the ages.
We often lament the decline of culture, but I would submit that the decline is more of a schism than a wholesale takeover of the good by the bad. Even amid patches of cultural darkness, there are artists who keep the flame of beauty alive. This is true in every age. The story of Western art music (what we call, for better or worse, “classical music”) in the later 20th century provides a case in point. Just when a cold and technical hyper-modernism was on the rise, a reaction sprang up: a group of composers who rebelled against the atonal norms, opting in many cases for more traditional notions of musical beauty.
Michael Torke, born in Milwaukee in 1961, is one of those composers, one who has made an impact writing highly accessible contemporary music. Torke burst on the scene while still a student in his 20s with a series of orchestral works, many of them depicting colors: Bright Blue Music, Ecstatic Orange, Green, Purple, Ash. There was also the heroic Javelin, composed for the 1996 Olympics. Torke is by no means the first composer to reflect colors in music (I have written in another essay about Sir Arthur Bliss and his A Colour Symphony). But Torke was unique in the vibrant energy of his music, which seemed to reflect the way various colors feel. Torke’s works, in whatever medium, pulsated with life and communicated directly to the listener. After a period of dour, mathematical modernism, Torke seemed to be saying that it was all right for music to evoke simple emotions, joy and wonder—and to use genuine tunes and some recognizable chords.
I remember listening to Torke’s music on the radio as a lad (especially the program Performance Today and station WBJC out of Baltimore) and liking it a lot. Critics were wont to point out Torke’s links to minimalism and his marrying classical music with jazz and pop influences, which was once controversial. What mattered more to me (and still does) was that Torke seemed poised as a continuator of classic mid-century tonal art music, with strong echoes of Gershwin, Ravel, Copland, and especially Stravinsky. It is unfortunate that “profundity” in music is often taken to exclude expressions of happiness and joy (see my comments on Beethoven’s wonderful Fourth Symphony, which has lagged behind his other works in popularity and esteem). We are still captive to a late Romantic attitude that thinks of only sorrow and gloom as being “deep.” To me, Torke’s expressions of joy have the mark of depth and originality. I believe that his coloristic pieces are no flash in the pan, but music for the ages.
I don’t remember now what caused me to remember Torke and try to catch up on what he has been doing all these years. All I know is I happened upon his latest project, an album titled simply Last. Hearing this latest work of Torke’s was like meeting up with an old friend who was always the “life of the party” and finding that he has become a monk, or at least a Stoic philosopher. Formerly a composer of youthful high spirits, Torke here seems to be more allied with mystic minimalists like Arvo Pärt or Pēteris Vasks. The change shows what a versatile composer Torke can be, belying the charges of superficiality that some critics formerly laid at his doorstep.
Torke has given us a series of 12 slow, meditative movements for violin and string orchestra, each bearing a title referring to a specific point in the past: “Last Fall,” “Last Spring,” “Last Year,” “Last Week,” “Last Night,” and so on, finishing with “Last Sunday.” Aware that many listeners now enjoy music as a fragmented “playlist,” Torke has responded by creating a sort of “playlist” that functions as an emotionally cohesive work of music. Torke explains in a brief note that he was inspired by themes of time and memory:
The Stoics recommend that we live in the present: to fret over the past or stress about the future is counterproductive because these lie beyond our control. But I think there are other ways to respond to the past. We can cherish and even mourn what is no longer present. For me, our past populates our present, whether it be last year, last month, last week, or last Sunday.
As someone who is devoted to the recollection of past times, such themes resonate with me. Amid the mad rush of modern life, we need a private sphere where we can hold on to parts of the past—whether our own past or long past—that ground us. Torke reminds us of our endless human capacity for nostalgia, even about quite recent days in our lives. Of course, the past we remember is not the literal past with all its blemishes but something transfigured by our minds, sanctified by our imagination. In this way, the past becomes our past.
As I wrote in my review of the album for Fanfare, this music is less about formal development in the classical sense than about savoring individual moments of grace and beauty. Torke is inviting us to slow down the frenzied pace of our lives, to reflect on who we are as human beings, where we have been and where we are going. And Torke is more explicitly melodic here than in his color works, which often featured prismatic shards of music instead of expansive tunes. Here we get long, warm and expressive melodies for the violin, underneath which rhythmic ostinatos pulsate. Torke has not abandoned his dancelike spirit, but now it is more subliminal, less overt.
These 12 vignettes are like individual snapshots of time, each conveying a subtly different mood tied to tonality and texture. Yet Last is so much more than mere mood music, in the sense of music you play in the background and forget about. This is owing to Torke’s sense of craft and the clear narrative through-line that permeates the cycle. The last movement, “Last Sunday,” really has a spring in its step as we seem to walk confidently into the future. Although many of the individual movements of Last are haunting or elegiac, the effect of the whole is one of a deep, consoling warmth and peace.
I do have some reservations about Torke’s other work, which includes religious pieces, ballet, and opera—though I am curious to hear and learn more. But if Last represents his new vein of expression, I am fully on board Torke’s train, eager to see where he might take us next. Such salve for the soul is sorely needed today, and I applaud Torke for writing music that is accessible and comforting, yet not devoid of substance and craft either. In his own distinctive way, he is nourishing our souls through music.
__________
The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.
The featured image is courtesy of Pixabay.
