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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Friday, February 25, 2005
two points
I have two seperate comments on this thread, so I'll try to be concise.
1. I don't think it's fair to presume that Brittaney Spears doesn't "think deeply about her art." She's a first-rate performer, whether you enjoy her performances or not, and I don't think you get to be a first-rate performer without a tremendous amount of thought and practice. I am sure that she could perform the "deepest" pop and jazz standards totally convincingly. So she's picked a genre that doesn't get any respect -- so what? Now let's think for a moment about the songs that she performs and the composers who write them. It takes a huge amount of talent and artistry to write a pop song that is as well constructed and appealing as the songs that are written for Brittany. Those songwriters may be applying their talents to a maligned art-form, but their talents are formidable nonetheless. And the production value of her albums is extrordinary -- yes her music designed to appeal to the masses, but it takes talent to appeal to the masses.
2. I think a lot of people take the wrong lesson from the Babbit article. His point was that audiences and compsers need to accept the fact that in many cases they live in different worlds. The audiences need to stop getting angry with the composers for writing music that the audiences don't enjoy, and, more importantly from my perspective, composers need to stop getting angry with the audiences and the culture for not liking their music. David Taub says "Unless composers write music that expresses something, and is not written for other composers at an intellectual level, their music is doomed to be relegated to obscurity." To the extent that any music is capable of "expressing something" (a subject for another day) Babbit _does_ express something -- it's just not something that most people are interested in. And that's okay; Babbit has told us that if we're not interested he doesn't mind if we don't bother listening to his music. But to say that he will be "doomed to be relegated to obscurity" is to imply that the goal of composing is to reach a wide audience. Babbit is interested in reaching a narrow, specialized audience, and at that he is very successful. That neither David nor I find ourselves in that audience is irrelevant.
Where Babbit goes astray, in my opinion, is when he claims that academic specialist composers have a right to public funding in the same way that physics or mathematics specialists do. I'm as big a fan of the NEA and of public funding as anybody, but I see the portion directed to obscure new music as public generosity rather than public responsibility. Math, sicence, and many other disciplines benefit the general public but can't necessarily get the money they need in the market -- obscure new music that nobody wants to hear or ever will hear doesn't. (Although I'd love to be persuaded that I'm wrong about this point.) Classical music isn't "dying" as so many people say it is -- it's moving from mainstream to subculture, and we either need to find a way _in_the_marketplace_ to keep it mainstream, or get over our egotism and accept that we are a subculture and behave accordingly. I enjoy industrial music, and there's some brilliant work out there, but I don't hear industrial bands clamoring for public funding.
posted by Galen H. Brown
8:51 PM
Yehudi Wyner's new concerto for the BSO
Last week the pianist Robert Levin and condutor Rober Spano performed a newly commissioned work with the Boston Symphony Orchestra by the composer Yehudi Wyner. In the interests of full disclosure, I do know the composer personally and I admire the few pieces that I have heard by him. Nevertheless, what I have to say about the new piece is not entirely subjective.
The previous evening I had attended the Boston Modern Orchestra project's concert entitled "Minimalism." So, I was naturally expecting something quite different from the earlier evening's concert. We have all attended concerts with high hopes that we would encounter something new that perhaps would produce a long-lasting and memorable experience. The Boston Symphony concert produced something even more shocking: a first-class masterpiece by a living composer.
What was so good about it? Well, besides the extraordinary, clear dramatic profile, the elegance of design, the sense that the musical material was comensurate with its length and development, the musical narrative was surprising and inevitable. Many of these wonderful qualities (including the novel orchestration) may be attributed to the idiomatic writing for the piano and the overall quality of the counterpoint. In addition, the composer paid the greatest compliment to the audience by rewarding them for paying attention.
posted by Larry Thomas Bell
8:29 PM
hitting a nerve
I suspect I really hit a nerve with the last post, given the number of comments. I think that's a good thing-it's important to have an open, free discussion, which I think is a great benefit of a blog.
There are composers who feel that it's appropriate to write music only other composers are likely to appreciate (the WH Auden model). That's fine.
And there are those who feel music composition is a business; to paraphrase one comment, composers sell "notational music" and should do something to attract consumers. That's also fine.
And apparently there are composers who are content to write music for themselves, with the desire that others listen, but that is not the primary objective. And that's fine too.
While my preference is the third one, that's not to say any one approach is valid for everyone. As a corollary, one can have many people who admire his or her music, and that shouldn't suggest that the music is inferior. In addition, one's music could be liked only by a small crowd of people, if at all, and that doesn't mean the music is bad either. I'm not sure there is a definite relation between one's audience and the quality of one's music. Besides, quality is subjective. I never understood how one "wins" a composition contest. How can any work of art be objectively judged, anyway? Would a Botticelli beat out a Kandinsky because Botticelli is more intricate and detailed? Should Two Pages by Philip Glass be judged inferior to a lavish orchestral work by Wagner because the latter is more complex? Why judge at all, in terms of which works should win contests? Isn't it all subjective anyway?
posted by David Toub
3:54 PM
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