On Jan 31, 2005, at 5:03 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:
Nonetheless, there was a time in the mid-century when many composers, in my opinion, went wildly off track and abandoned even their willing potential audiences. That has not been the case for an extremely long time (at least 30 years now), but the audience for serious music in the US (at least) has not returned.
Around that same time, jazz began to lose it's audience as well, with the advent of bebop. The reason for this was that tempos got too fast to dance to, and no one besides the musicians themselves could really understand or appreciate what was going on melodically or harmonically. With the advent of the avant-garde, jazz audiences began staying away in droves. So now we have the smooth jazz artists pandering to the public in an attempt to get them back. Haven't the minimalist composers done something similar, declaring that it is now okay to write a major triad, or to play music that the audience can tap its feet to? I imagine that the blue-haired matrons in serious music audiences can handle minimalism much better than they could atonalism.
Other audiences may be coming to the music, but the natural audience for serious music retains (especially including conservatory-trained performers) a certain degree of hostility to new music.
I was fortunate enough to hear the world premier performance of Ligeti's Violin Concerto in Paris in 1994. The hall was packed, and they wouldn't let Ligeti off the stage when he was brought on for bows. The applause must have gone on for fifteen minutes. Also on the program were Schoenberg's "Ode to Napolean," and "Dreamtime," a piece for tuba, harp and small orchestra by Philippe Boesmans. I never saw such an enthusiastic audience--made me want to move there.
Each summer I work coaching young musicians and it seems to me that very few of them are getting much in the way of real training in making music. Indeed, I despair over the fact that most of them seem to not even be all that excited about what they are doing in the first place.
I have about 40 woodwind students, and it seems that very few of them have much enthusiasm for what they're doing. I'm constantly trying to think up ways to get them interested enough to practice once in a while. And if one of them shows real promise, what then? I don't want to tell them, "You're gonna get replaced by a virtual orchestra machine someday." But neither do I want to give them false hope.
You said, "Maybe we are in the twilight of our art form." Maybe Art itself is in its twilight, because I don't see that any other art form is in any better shape these days.
******************************************** Lon Price, Los Angeles <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <http://hometown.aol.com/txstnr/>
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