Commentary: Is there a Los Angeles musical style?

The composer and professional Virgil Thomson erstwhile defined American euphony arsenic euphony written by Americans. There is nary arguing with that. Less obvious, however, is figuring retired what, if anything, describes L.A. music.

Los Angeles is the location of movie music. The 2 astir influential classical composers of the archetypal fractional of the 20th century, Stravinsky and Schoenberg, lived here. (In Stravinsky’s case, the Russian composer spent much of his beingness successful L.A. than successful immoderate different city.) The composer with the astir extremist power connected the 2nd fractional of the 20th century, John Cage, was calved and grew up here. Ferreting retired L.A.’s bearing connected jazz and the many, galore aspects of fashionable music, arsenic good arsenic satellite music, is simply a lifetime’s effort.

Yet these seeming incongruities of philharmonic beingness are what fascinate the most. Schoenberg and Stravinsky, for instance, flirted, if futilely, with penning Hollywood movie scores. The wealth was a lure. The anticipation of reaching the masses, irresistible.

Mady Thornquest, pb dancer, and musicians execute astatine the Hear Now Music Festival held astatine the 2220 Arts + Archives connected April 14, 2023, successful Los Angeles.

(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

Picture Schoenberg, successful 1935, successful the bureau of Hollywood’s prevailing movie producer, Irving Thalberg, offering untenable requirements to people MGM’s diagnostic movie adaptation of Pearl S. Buck’s “The Good Earth.” Picture the composer, considered by galore the instigator of the astir daunting euphony of each time, asking for $50,000 (more than $1.1 cardinal contiguous adjusted for inflation) and afloat power of the movie’s sound, including having the actors recite their lines to his rhythms and suggested pitches. Picture, again, 8 decades aboriginal and 3,000 miles away, the caput of the Opera of the Future task successful his bureau astatine the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s ultra-futuristic Media Lab, mulling implicit an thought for an opera based connected that singular Thalberg incidental arsenic a mode to analyse the profound implications of creation and amusement had Schoenberg been fixed the greenish light.

A caller accumulation of Tod Machover’s “Schoenberg successful Hollywood,” which had its premiere successful Boston 7 years ago, yet reaches L.A. connected Sunday day for the archetypal of 4 performances by the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music astatine the Nimoy. Those precise names — Schoenberg, who taught astatine UCLA from 1936 to 1944, Alpert and Leonard Nimoy — couldn’t amended exemplify the marvelous phantasy of L.A. philharmonic juxtapositions.

Also Sunday astatine First Lutheran Church of Venice, the Hear Now Music Festival concludes its 2025 play of 3 concerts. This festival is L.A.’s astir dedicated assets for surveying section music. Over the past 14 years, it has featured much than 200 composers, from the astir celebrated to the astir obscure, from academia and from Hollywood, beryllium they John Williams, an physics wizard astatine CalArts oregon a kid fiddling distant with a guitar successful the garage.

The thought of creator spot and carnal spot are astatine the bosom of Hear Now. If L.A. euphony is anything, it is simply a euphony that challenges the notions of borders. The festival came astir due to the fact that its co-founder, composer Hugh Levick — who divides his clip betwixt France, Spain and Venice Beach — said the euphony that his L.A. colleagues were penning was easier to perceive being performed overseas than successful venues here.

Composers successful L.A. are far-flung. Looking astatine universities alone, UCLA, USC, CalArts, UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego, Pomona College and the Cal State campuses successful Northridge, Long Beach and Fullerton are each centers of philharmonic enactment that person had wide influence.

The seeds of Minimalism, the astir salient benignant of precocious 20th period euphony arsenic propagated astir famously by Philip Glass and Steve Reich, tin beryllium traced to Los Angeles City College successful the 1950s. That’s wherever La Monte Young — portion studying with, and uncovering encouragement from, pianist Leonard Stein (who had been Schoenberg’s assistant) — began to see what would hap if helium radically slowed everything down.

I sat down with Levick precocious to observe what helium had learned from the festival. Having java astatine a Santa Monica cafe, we were adjacent a cottage wherever Cage had lived successful the aboriginal 1930s, erstwhile helium recovered his archetypal euphony job. It was arsenic an adjunct to pioneering animator Oskar Fischinger, who came into creator struggle with Walt Disney implicit “Fantasia.” Cage didn’t past long, falling dormant connected the occupation and dropping a lighted cigaret connected flammable celluloid.

Levick has astir apt encountered a greater assortment of composers successful this portion of the satellite than anyone else. The mode Hear Now works is that immoderate composer tin taxable scores, truthful I asked the evident questions. Could helium observe immoderate commonality, arsenic 1 mightiness in, say, Paris oregon Berlin? Is determination West Coast and East Coast euphony arsenic determination erstwhile seemed to be? Does L.A. person its ain dependable oregon possibly laid-back sensibility?

“Not really,” Levick said. “There are radical whom you could vaguely enactment unneurotic stylistically. They whitethorn person evident influences, but mostly they person gone their ain way. What is simply a small antithetic astir the West Coast and the East Coast is determination is simply a definite fluidity and flexibility present and definite rigidity connected the East Coast.”

When asked what has amazed him implicit the years, Levick pointed to the information that though John Williams, John Adams, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Thomas Adès and Andrew Norman whitethorn pull audiences, curiosity besides drives crowds. Of this year’s festival, which features works by 28 composers, I’ve antecedently encountered lone four.

Even Levick was amazed by the large galore submissions from composers helium didn’t know. Yet that turns retired to beryllium a draw. At this year’s festival, the archetypal 2 programs were sold out. I attended the archetypal astatine 2220 Arts + Archives successful March devoted to often arcane electro-acoustic music, and it attracted a divers and enthusiastic assemblage taking pleasance successful not knowing what to expect. No 2 works were remotely the same.

If Levick shies distant from generalization, helium excessively is simply a composer not easy pinned down. He started retired arsenic a fabrication writer who, portion surviving successful Paris, chanced upon avant-garde jazz and took up the saxophone. That led him people to classical avant-garde. The performance Sunday volition diagnostic his latest work, “The Song of Prophet X,” for speaker/singer and soft quartet, a akin configuration that Schoenberg utilized successful his antiwar “Ode to Napoleon,”

We cannot flight Schoenberg. This play has seen wide solemnisation of the 150th day of his birth. Last year, connected April 30, Hear Now ended its festival with a large-scale performance fixed astatine the UCLA euphony department’s Schoenberg Hall and featuring the UCLA Philharmonia conducted by Neal Stulberg, the aforesaid forces tackling Machover’s “Schoenberg successful Hollywood.”

The field was connected borderline from quality of a convulsive onslaught connected a Palestinian protestation that time conscionable crossed from Schoenberg Hall. Hear Now, nevertheless, went connected arsenic scheduled. The performance was not a governmental statement, the euphony had thing to bash with protestation movements. Even so, the symbolism of the juncture was intolerable to ignore. Schoenberg, who had fled Nazi Germany, wrote scores of protestation euphony specified arsenic “Ode to Napoleon” and “Survivor From Warsaw.” He besides dallied with Hollywood.

Schoenberg mightiness yet beryllium seen arsenic the large juxtaposition. Leonard Stein and John Cage were successful Schoenberg’s UCLA classes. Film composers David Raksin (“Laura”) and Leonard Rosenman (“East of Eden”) studied with Schoenberg. Both Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman brought up Schoenberg erstwhile I interviewed them, and it was their satellite of progressive jazz that led Hugh Levick to Hear Now.

Could we past specify L.A. euphony arsenic simply beryllium euphony of, and unfastened to, juxtapositions?