The New Needs Friends

“A revolting, nauseating slog,” “a quarter of an hour’s worth of relentless, faceless, arbitrary blarney,” “stunningly pointless and stupid,” “five minutes of mindless, superficial prolefeed,” “hackneyed, dated, superficial rubbish,” and “empty vessels of cheap, surface-deep, musically moribund sound masquerading as something bold and individual” are just some of the many colorful phrases writer Simon Cummings has used to describe new pieces of contemporary music from the UK and abroad. Though I’m yet to find an all-time favorite verdict on his site 5against4, “the basest flogging of a rotted carcass that may once have resembled something equine” is certainly up there as the most memorable.

And yet, in spite of his criticisms—or rather, precisely because of them—Cummings has been a loving friend of contemporary music since he started his site in 2007, dedicating ample space and attention to unsung music he is convinced will survive when “the sieve of time” eventually does its job. (Recent projects include an immersion in the music of Gloria Coates, and a long series on the music of Allan Pettersson.) Beginning his online presence on the early blogging and social networking platform LiveJournal around 2001, the 5against4 name came about in 2007, launching the new site proper as he started his PhD in composition in 2008. Cummings, a freelancer who operates a Patreon to recover some of the costs, has considered opening the site up to other writers, but couldn’t quite let go of a project wrapped up in his personal journeys through music. You’re 5against4, aren’t you?, people ask him at contemporary music festivals. “I should just change my name by deed poll,” Cummings says.

“As a critic, [I] often disagreed with him but always wanted to read him, which is surely the whole point,” Andrew Mellor wrote on X last month following the death of former Spectator opera critic Michael Tanner. From my experience, Cummings’ articles are most likely exchanged with giddy glee between composerly friends in private: heartened that someone has taken an interest in new work that extends to more than a few sentences, and relieved when somebody has boldly, and often entertainingly, gone against the grain.

And in an age where music writing on the new, complex, or unusual is squeezed into ever-smaller spaces, 5against4 is positively lavish in its coverage to contemporary music, and it’s interesting to see how that breathing room remolds the perception of pieces where the die was previously thought cast. Take Helmut Lachenmann’s infamous stylistic left-turn “Marche fatale.” It’s a piece Cummings deems a failure, not because of how it fits into the (oversimplified) framework of regression after progression (“Anyone with even a slight awareness of Lachenmann’s fearless, irreverent musical language won’t find it remotely strange that a work like this should have come from his pen,” he writes) but because the structure completely falls apart in the second half. 

We spoke about being friends with the people you’re writing about, being “really fucked off” about recent Last Night of the Proms commissions, and the wisdom of “Ratatouille”’s Anton Ego.

VAN: You’re a writer who doesn’t pull his punches, especially when it comes to contemporary music. Do you consider yourself a polemicist?

Simon Cummings: I’m just honest. I don’t see that much difference between writing a positive review, a negative review, or a sort of ambivalent review. All you can do is respond to what you hear and be as clear and truthful and authentic to that experience as you can. 

The last thing I want to be doing is writing negative thoughts about music that I’m hearing. Who wants to sit and listen to crap music? Nobody does. Every time I sit down in any concert, every time I put on any album I’ve been sent, I’m hoping with all my being for the most wonderful experience. You’d have to be a masochist to want for anything else.

On the About page of 5against4, I have a very unusual quotation from the Pixar film “Ratatouille.”

From Anton Ego, yes.

This remark he makes about “the new needing friends” I think is a very poignant and meaningful thing. I am coming from a place of friendship towards all new music. I create it myself, this is my world, and the last thing that I want to do is just run around trying to torch things as a way of making things better.

But at the same time, a friend isn’t just someone who tells you what you want to hear all the time. A friend means you the best in every sense, and sometimes that requires some tough love. Even when it’s a negative review, even when there is a touch of polemic to it, I never allow myself to forget the fact that I am coming at this from a place of friendship and positivity. If you say something’s not great, that’s because you want it to be better. Ultimately, 5against4 is a place to be enthusiastic.

Can you think of a time where you have gone completely against the media mainstream? 

That’s a little bit difficult to answer, because what I don’t do and haven’t done for many years is read the mainstream media. The stuff that I’m writing about, I have no idea whatsoever what anyone else thinks about it. I’m not interested. I don’t mean that to sound arrogant—that’s my opinion, and that’s all that matters—but I don’t want to spend my time comparing notes with other writers.

One occasion when quite a few other people contacted me to say that I was going against the grain is when I wrote about the UK premiere of the Thomas Adès opera “The Exterminating Angel.” It really is a fundamentally flawed piece, both musically and theatrically. I remember that was quite a lengthy article, going into all the ins and outs of it, relating it to the Buñuel film. Readers told me I was the odd one out among pretty much all of the broadsheet rags, and that didn’t surprise me, because anyone could have expected that. It disappointed me, I suppose. But then I gave up being disappointed by mainstream media so many years ago, because otherwise you just spend your whole life being disappointed.

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Contrastingly, I feel like a lot of my media diet generally, as a way of keeping up with things, involves checking in with writers and critics, to see what has been written about. Is your media diet essentially non-existent in terms of music criticism?

On a regular basis, it’s sort of non-existent… I’m more interested in following my ears, where they’re leading me, and the various lines of inquiry that I’ve got going on.

Can you ever truly be friends with any of the composers that you write about?

Yes, and I am. Is the question forming at the back of your mind now about subjectivity and objectivity?

It’s more to do with the kind of relationship that traditionally exists: The critic stands to one side offering their opinion, and these two subjects are in some kind of creative dialogue but never really meet.

So you’ve never written about someone you’re friends with?

I have, but—

Has that changed the way you write?

Um, I… This is one of the things that I’m constantly grappling with, trying to work out how to navigate the differences between being an objective critic and—

I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I would just shoot down the word objective, because for me, all listening is so deeply subjective, and everything I listen to is informed by so many personal things. 

I talked before about being truthful and honest and authentic to me, but also as much as possible, as truthful and honest and authentic to them. There’s a phrase that John Ruskin wrote in one of his essays: “You should always go to the author to get at their meaning, not to find yours.” Now, I don’t think he’s saying that your own meaning is irrelevant, because you’re bound to find your own meaning. But to hold also in front of you not just, what am I hearing, but what are they actually trying to say to me, and how are they saying it…

I’m not a critic. I don’t know what I am but I don’t like that word, and I haven’t got a better word to replace it with. But I don’t see how I could do this and not be friendly with [composers]. There’s an element to me that will always be the fanboy. In plenty of concerts, I’m sitting there, the kind of excited, nervous fanboy. That doesn’t get in the way of a serious ability to engage with the music and write about it in a really serious way. If anything, I’ve found that, especially with the deeper composer friendships I’ve got, it’s only made the understanding and my ability to communicate not what they want me to say but what I want to say better. Friendship is integral.

One of the things that draws me back is your particular engagement with the BBC Proms. Last year, you began your round-up of the festival’s offerings with the following: “Staunch conservatives don’t merely hold sway over our current government but also, it seems, our concert halls.”

I was in a really fucking bad mood that day wasn’t I?

Do you think that applies to the wider UK music scene, outside of the Proms?

There are good things going on in the UK, but I do get frustrated with it. I feel that there’s a high element of predictability to it. (That’s not unique to the UK; I feel the same way about the U.S.) But I don’t get hugely enthused about the UK scene as much as I used to. Just in terms of practicality, I would love to be reviewing a lot more that goes on in the UK, because often I feel guilty about the fact that I’ve written a lot about what’s gone on in Norway and in Estonia over the years, and, in terms of concert going, my main focus I suppose is Huddersfield, but that’s quite predictable nowadays too.

As I’ve gone on, I’ve become especially drawn to the neglected things, because that seems a good place to put a lot of attention. I’ve allowed my focus to shift outside the shores a bit, and I do feel a bit guilty about that.

One of the key concepts that you return to in your writing is the superficial; a Proms premiere that’s, say, a new five-minute commission, that will probably be performed once and never again. To what extent does the knowledge of the behind-the-scenes context influence your judgement? Does that engender a sense of empathy, from your compositional perspective, and does knowing the context out of which it’s made shape how you respond to it?

The context in which it’s made… I’m not sure I’d ever allow that to be an excuse for bad music. And, as you’ll have seen, one of the things that repeatedly has truly fucked me off is what people churn out for the Last Night of the Proms. 

You don’t have to write five minutes of empty froth. You don’t have to. You can if you want, but why bother? Why do that? Haven’t we got enough five-minute frothathons already?

I’m not sure how seriously anyone’s taking anything on that occasion, but the point stands. I mean, you get to choose what you write, it’s a big platform and you know that millions of people are going to be listening. But the buck stops with you. Just because it’s a big party of a concert, you can still write what the hell you like. I remember seeing Harrison Birtwistle’s “Panic” played at the Last Night and thinking, yes, thank God we’ve got somebody who’s got the balls to write what they want to write.

I know there are all sorts of pressures on composers; many composers will tell you that’s all there is. Sometimes composing is almost an afterthought because you’ve got to navigate so many pressures to get out the other end—time, money, not having enough rehearsal and not long enough duration to do something substantial, whatever. But being a good and competent composer is finding a way to navigate through all of that, and come out the other end with something that’s really worth hearing, and that’s ideally going to last.

Not all music has to be timeless, I get that. But when you just take a step back and look at how much music clearly isn’t timeless, it’s nice every now and then to listen to something that has clearly got a longer longevity than just tonight, and that people will be listening to and marvelling at for years to come.

In the spirit of positivity and longevity, which works have you contemplated recently that you think you will contemplate again in say, five or 10 years time?

A lot of what I’m hearing in Estonia, I have the absolute conviction that will one day be much better known. I’ve got absolute faith in that.

A better answer is … the difficult stuff. There’s a lot I write about that I almost go out of my way not to write about, because it feels too hard, too difficult. I did an advent calendar of all things, about two or three years ago, and the last entry for that on Christmas Day was Harrison Birtwistle’s “Exody.” It’s this orchestral piece I’ve been wanting to write about for years, and every single time I approached it, I felt overwhelmed by it, like a mountain that, each time you tried to summit it, something went wrong—you took a wrong turn, even though you’ve tried several times. 

“Exody” is a good example of what you’re asking, because it reveals itself slowly, it doesn’t just give it all up straightaway. It’s something to be mined and quarried again and again. ¶