Composers Forum is a daily web log that allows invited contemporary composers to share their thoughts and ideas on any topic that interests them--from the ethereal, like how new music gets created, music history, theory, performance, other composers, alive or dead, to the mundane, like getting works played and recorded and the joys of teaching. If you're a professional composer and would like to participate, send us an e-mail.
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Thursday, January 20, 2005
What's Important?
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy." Music is a tapestry. The idea of music as some sort of Darwinian evolution from Bach to Mozart to Beethoven to Brahms and on down the line is to choose a thread among quilts, which is what theorists and musicologists are paid to do.
The Beatles never won a Pulitzer, nor did Duke Ellington, yet their influence is far-reaching. Major mainstream awards have been and are still typically reserved for the composers who most resemble the judges sitting on the committee--until John Adams wondered aloud if receiving the Pulitzer meant the end of his career. Well, thing change, even there… But even the greatest of classical music composers is unlikely to reach as many people through generations as a single Britney Spears tune does in a week. She’s rewarded with money and fame, and as a commercial targeted marketing construct, she is herself a work of genius, however short-lived.
Academic composition is a market too. Composers choose their markets, either academic, elitest, populist, ethnic, or whatever, whether they cop to it or not. They choose to swim either with or against the prevailing currents. But when something begins to catch hold from the edges—and Thomas Kuhn would suggest that’s where the really interesting work is done--then it runs the danger (or gains the blessings) of being co-opted by the mainstream.
Grunge. Serialism. The new simplicity. The new complexity. Rock. Hip-Hop. They are all symptoms of our times, and have more in common as social phenomena and are subject to marketing forces much more than we would like to admit. Would composers be writing much complex abstract music if academia were not footing the bills? I doubt so many would, except for those who felt some authentic internal drive to do so. But the real composers will write what they hear, what they themselves are interested in regardless. Maybe.
posted by Cary Boyce
7:59 PM
follow-up
Beth Anderson's post is dead on. I would add that in the end, unless US orchestras and music groups embrace new music, they're doomed to extinction. Downloadable music, whether performed by groups in the US or abroad, will make new music more accessible. There's nothing like a live concert performance, but if Schoenberg's op. 16 (written in the early part of the 20th century) is still considered "modern," they're not going to routinely perform more recent music. I often see an occasional modern work included in an orchestra's season as a novelty, but the focus is still on the past. Why not mix the past with the present?
posted by David Toub
1:24 PM
What is important? Future ears decide.
I think that it is not necessary (although it may be fun to try) for us to decide who is central to our understanding of American classical music, or who made the most useful experiments in music or who is a niche composer or who is part of the canon or the standard repertory. Its not a race between John Adams and Morton Feldman, or between small and big concert halls, or between influence and fame. All of these things will be decided by time.
Beauty is important. Fairness is important. Inclusiveness is vital.
Beauty is a large topic and I'll leave it for now.
Consider, just to get you started, the music and work of Elizabeth Austin, Marilyn Bliss, Victoria Bond, Alla Borzova, Chin Yi, Nancy Bloomer Deussen, Elisenda Fábregas, Jennifer Higdon, Katherine Hoover, Lori Laitman, Mary Jane Leach, Anne LeBaron, Beata Moon, Pauline Oliveros, Terry Winter Owens, Maggie Payne, Alla Pavlova, Anna Rubin, Judith Shatin, Alice Shields, Hilary Tann, Joan Tower, Nancy Van de Vate, Aleksandra Vrebalov, Melinda Wagner, Judith Lang Zaimont, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich.
Some of these women composers have been very influential as teachers, all are an inspiration especially to other women, some have won major prizes and had major performances and recordings, but none are yet in either the canon or the standard repertory. But then neither are John Adams or Morton Feldman. Some of their music is more beautiful to me than others but all of it needs to be played and recorded and made available so that all of our ears can hear it, so that future ears have the opportunity of hearing it and deciding if they want to listen to it more or less or never. Future ears will decide what music is performed and what will languish unheard—perhaps to be rediscovered as Hildegard von Bingen’s was 900 years later.
Inclusiveness is not served by having 3 contemporary composers out of 100 performed per year by either large or small ensembles in large or small halls. It is also not served by having 3 women composers on a contemporary music festival out of 100 composers performed. The rules for funding such organizations and events must be changed to stimulate fairness and inclusiveness. Including women composers in this consideration of who and what is most important is just the tip of the topic.
posted by Beth Anderson
10:55 AM
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