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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Wednesday, February 23, 2005
academic
Well, part of my point was: Mr. Toub doesn't like Babbitt and finds Carter vapid and forgettable. I happen to think they're both great composers and their music seems to me full of substance and meaning and, for that matter, great beauty, not to mention drama, etc. I'm happy to agree to disagree about this, there being no accounting for taste and it being a big world, and all of that, but I'm not happy about not giving them the benefit of the doubt in regard to their intention to write what seems to them to be meaningful and satisfying.
As to "Who Cares If You Listen?": I've been thinking about that lately since I've been reading Babbitt's Collected Essays to review them. It's pretty well known that Babbit's original title for that article was "The Composer as Specialist." The Editor decided the title under which it was published in High Fidelity was better. It certainly was eye-grabbing. One could say the editor was really only encapulating what the article was saying, anyway, and I suppose one might see it that way. It seems to me, though, that Babbitt didn't intend that message. (And, for whatever it matters, he's on record as strenuously denying that he intended anything like the message of that title.) The article does say basically that since the layman wouldn't question the authority of the expert doing advanced work in science and mathematics (even though nowadays they do), why should the musical layman feel entitled to question people doing advanced work in music. The obvious answer to that is that a composer is not supposed to be doing advanced work in music, he or she is supposed to be writing music, which by definition is supposed to be communication of some sort. I think there is different problem which is pointed the article, though: a composer spends an enormous chunk of his or her life listening to music, and an awful lot of it, of all different kinds, and thinking, and thinking seriously, about music (not just his own) in a very technical kind of way, to an extent and in ways which a non-composer almost certainly doesn't. (I was trying to avoid a word like technical, but I couldn't think of a less loaded one). Even though what, presumably, first drew him or her to music was, presumably, what also draws the "layman," it would seem to be inescapable that he or she would end up with at least a slightly different, insider, sense of things. One would hope that this "insider's" view wouldn't be an obstacle to his music communicating to someone who wasn't a composer. But, also presumably, a composer tries to write the music that seems most satisfying to him, and it would seem that some times this might leave the composer writing music which is meaningful and satisfying to him which somehow alludes others. (Among works which I think can be said to be intended for insiders (written for other composers?) and concerned with highly technical matters in a very specific way (academic exercises?) The Art of the Fugue, the Von Himmel Hoch Variations, and The Musical Offering of Bach, the Mozart Haydn Quartets, The Diabelli Variations, and bunch of Brahms pieces fall alot more into that category than the Schoenberg 4th Quartet or the Carter Variations for Orchestra, to name two randomly chosen pieces). I can't see, though, that there's a virtue in a composer writing music which doesn't seem to him or her to be as satisfying as he or she can make it just because he or she is afraid that somebody else won't like it. In fact, what can a composer possible go by except his or her own instincts about what's meaningful or beautiful, and how can he or she do anything other than try to frame a piece as carefully and soundly and elegantly as possible?
I don't think anybody would claim to think that academic exercises were musically satisfying. The rub comes with determining what might or might not be merely an academic exercise. It's all too easy, though, and glib, to throw that accusation around.
posted by Rodney Lister
10:57 PM
give them a choice
Jult52 quotes a friend as saying "if pop music were to disappear, what would people dance to?"
And (coincidentally) today a dancer friend of mine told of appearing as a guest teacher at a high school in Massachusetts. He asked the students to bring in some music. They brought in Britney Spears. So he showed them how to improvise a dance with the recording. The next day he brought in Le sacre du printemps, and showed them that the same improvisatory techniques they were using with Spears could be applied to Stravinsky. Within minutes, the energy in the room was exploding.
On the third day, he said, "Okay, which one today? Britney or Igor?" The vote was unanimous, and the soon a gaggle of teenagers was happily stomping about to The Rite of Spring.
posted by Lawrence Dillon
7:34 PM
re: More
[This was entered as a comment on the preceding post, but was truncated so here is the complete entry FWIW]
I don't think your question is particularly offensive, so I figure I might as well up the ante. In my opinion, there are those who compose without meaning or substance. I recognize that this is entirely subjective, and one man's meaning is another man's mindless dribble. However, there have been many works I've sat through with the most open of minds, studied the scores, etc. listened over and over again trying to see what someone might have seen in them, only to come up empty handed.
When I was a teenager in the 70's, it was very inexpensive to attend concerts of "new music" at what was then Carnegie Recital Hall. Usually, these were concerts of the ISCM type, in which there was a small crowd, most of whom appeared to be the friends and students of the composers represented, and the applause was polite. But 5 minutes after each piece, I couldn't remember anything about the works in question, nor did it make me feel anything one way or the other. Not even anger, just nothing.
In my opinion, music needs to express something. Perhaps we're talking about acquired tastes, but even some of the most "difficult" music of composers like Feldman, Riley, Webern, etc. clearly express something. One might not like the music, and that's ok, but you should feel something. You should feel that the composer is trying to express something or other.
In contrast, (and here's where I really up the ante!), "academic" works do absolutely nothing for me. I'm not trying to generalize or categorize. However, I think people like Carter, Babbitt, Wuorinen and other "uptown" composers write for each other on an academic plane. Maybe this is what gives musicologists pleasure, but it does nothing for me whatsoever. Remember, it was Babbitt who wrote a now infamous essay "Who Cares if You Listen?" and I really do think he was serious.
I used to spend hours studying the scores of Carter, listening to records of his works, etc. really hoping to find something of interest. I really, really wanted to like his music. But with the possible exception of a few measures of his earlier work for harpsichord, flute and cello (or whatever it is), I have yet to find anything to engage me. The scores are pretty to look at, and appeal to my intellect in terms of their complexity. But the music is vapid and forgettable, in my opinion.
Now, I have nothing major against most music that I don't like. There are works of Adams, Nancarrow, Schoenberg and others that I really don't like (I love Schoenberg, but his opus 26 is really dull and strikes me as an academic exercise on the order of "Look, I can write a 12-tone work for something other than the piano!"). However, I can still respect the music as expressing something, just something I may not like to hear. Writing music as an academic exercise is anathema, in my opinion. I'm fine with music I think is garbage, because at least it makes me feel something. Not everyone will like my own music (my wife can't stand the string quartet I wrote for her many years ago, for example) and that's fine. Maybe no one will like it. And that's ok, so long as it makes them feel something.
True story: I had sent my former department chair, a wonderful older ob/gyn, a CD of my music courtesy of my iBook, and he sent me a nice e-mail telling me that it gave him a headache. But at least it made him feel something...
posted by David Toub
7:06 PM
more
Well, just to ask the question in the most offensive way possible, who the hell doesn't think he or she is writing music with meaning and substance? I don't think I know of anybody who sets out to write insubstantial music without meaning, (even those bad old academics) do you? For that matter I don't think I know anybody who's not trying to make sure that his or her music is concerned with drama and narrative. Easy enough to try to do, obviously not so easy to accomplish.
posted by Rodney Lister
2:26 PM
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