Steve Hackman Blogs 2011

Composer, performer, arranger and conductor for this season's Stella Artois Happy Hour at the Symphony series, Steve Hackman blogs about the concept for the next concert.

Greetings folks!

On behalf of my fellow musicians Zach, Nick and Ranaan, I’m very excited to be hosting—along with Time for Three—the next Stella Artois Happy Hour at the Symphony this Thursday, Jan. 27! I’m especially excited that the concert includes the second movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony—one of the composer’s most beautiful compositions, written in 1812.

What has always struck me about Beethoven’s music is its universal appeal. All listeners, whether connoisseurs of music or total strangers to it, can immediately relate to it and recognize it as the quintessence of what music should be. It’s like watching the perfect jump shot or reading a Shakespeare sonnet—even without knowing the game of basketball or being well-versed in poetry; it occurs to the observer that this is the way a basketball should be shot and this is the way poetry should sound. It has a natural feeling and a perfection of form that is beautiful.

This Allegretto movement from the Seventh Symphony embodies the appeal of Beethoven’s music. It’s certainly among Beethoven's most penetrating works—not as popular as the Ninth symphony (“Ode to Joy”), Fifth symphony and Für Elise—but not far behind. So what is it that makes this music so accessible to listeners?

Keep it simple. You hear that over and over as a musician. The trick is allowing simplicity to develop naturally through an organic creative process. As a composer and songwriter, I can say that every time I sit down to write a “simple” piece, with the goal of appealing to a broad audience, the results are unsatisfactory and forced. However, when one creates with no pretense or qualification and lets the music unfold naturally, the result can be both artistically satisfying and straightforward enough that it will appeal to many.

This Beethoven movement exemplifies this idea. Its beauty lies in its simplicity, yet there is innovation and enormous creative power behind that simplicity! A chord progression that is basic and elementary yet hauntingly beautiful, phrase lengths that are square and ordinary but contain melodies exploding with energy and tension, orchestration that develops in a completely predictable way—when you hear these things it just feels right.

Surprisingly, Beethoven’s Seventh and U2's With or Without You share almost all of these characteristics: basic chord progressions, repeated and varied material and round phrase lengths. Zach, Nick, Ranaan and I didn’t know that when we selected these pieces, but we also didn’t program them on the same concert out of luck. We were seeking the same thing when selecting both pieces: music that would appeal to a vast audience.

Beethoven and U2 weren’t consciously trying to keep it simple. They were merely improvising and using their compositional technique (we'll talk about that next time) to flesh out a single miraculous idea. Yet neither piece feels encumbered by revisions or obsession over details; they feel completely natural. These composers presented something wonderful, then they elaborated, embellished and celebrated it -- and that is what the audience does as the music unfolds.

So come celebrate with us – this Thursday at 6:30 p.m.!