The Sunday Listen: 'The Hourglass' by Ben Crosland
This week’s Sunday Listen is ‘The Hourglass’, a simple, compelling piano miniature from composer and educator, Ben Crosland, whose work I use regularly in my teaching.
Crosland is part of a new wave of contemporary instrumental solo piano music that has stealthily taken the music streaming world by storm in recent years.
The commercial flowering of solo piano music has roots in the Eighties (solo piano is still not an official genre in the charts, so albums released independently were historically put the New Age genre), but recently there has been even bigger resurgence, particularly off the back of neoclassical superstars such as Nils Frahm and Ludovico Einaudi.
Solo piano music now tots up more listens and brings in more revenue than many artists you see on major labels working in more mainstream genres, such as country, rock and hip-hop. And yet many of the creators of this surprisingly lucrative music live in near complete obscurity, such as Johan Röhr, a Swedish composer, who has been streamed 15 billion times and has more plays than Britney Spears or Abba.
It’s fascinating to consider why this is. Why are ‘peaceful piano playlists’ amongst the most listened to genres on Spotify? Some will argue this is because streaming naturally lends itself to a more mass-passive-listening experience, that the popularity piano music simply belies its modern background music status, pre-packaged calming ambience used to adorn to dentist’s waiting rooms? This is not wholly untrue – there is an increased interest in functional music created to enhance everyday activities such as relaxation, focus, or studying (the current trend for drenching everything in sostenuto pedal somewhat confirms this).
But why piano? Why not solo guitar, or chamber music? Why modern composers above the greats, such as Chopin or Bach. Our enjoyment of this instrument in particular isn’t purely as a form of perfunctory self-medication, surely? What is it about the piano in particular. Maybe its simply something about the sound, its complexity, its ability to channel so many colours and emotions, that puts it rank and file above all other instruments?
I’d love to know what you think. I sometimes think there is a certain poignant nostalgia to the sound of the piano that draws people to it, a sense of longing and reminiscence for something familiar yet bygone, but this in itself is problematic. In an age over-complicated with technology, roughshod landlords, warming oceans, shareholders hoovering up worker’s wages, food monopolies doling out processed poison, entertainment companies not even allowing you to own the media you purchase, and goodness everything else there is to worry about, there is a yearning to escape to simpler times, and grief for the present. It’s a persuasive, yet dangerous politics – hoping to be as good as it once was can easily slip in a wish to return to an idealised past.
Life will never be like it was before, this much we all know. It’s always going to be a bit different, and maybe not “better” per se, but hopefully, with music, we can bring moments of joy and comfort when times are at their most straightening, when we feel most vulnerable mentally or emotionally, and by strengthening ourselves, we can also help others feel such comforts of peace. The hourglass, inevitably, runs on.