I'll listen to some of your music because I like hearing new things. I'll listen with an open mind.
I love the Naxos series on Spanish composers, for example....I like music that sounds like, well music. If it has drama, melody, and a beat-- I like it.
A composition student told me "you just like pretty music." to which I replied, "Yeah so crucify me for having taste."
Thanks for your posts!
Kim
Kim
On 4/11/06, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
At 10:44 AM 4/11/06 +0200, Johannes Gebauer wrote:
>I think you can have a different perspective: Perhaps in 200 years time
>someone will find your box
My point is the opposite. I don't mind my stuff going to the dump (which it
will anyway, as I don't have any heirs) if the next generation of composers
will be heard, and hearing the present will once again become normal practice.
In the meantime, playing my music is welcome! :)
And lest anybody take my comments out of context, I don't object to
musicians studying earlier musics. It's part of how composers infuse their
works with rich references, and how performers understand them. It's an
ongoing process of professional artistic development. And I don't find a
problem with 'playing for pleasure' (except that it usually means old music).
But don't you find it disturbing that this professional development process
cycles over and over *in public*, and gets truncated long before it reaches
the present day? And that the cycles spins backward through more Albinonis
and Stölzels as they are exhumed?
Transpose this behavior to the other arts (and put aside the typical
youngster's new-is-better & oldster's old-is-better mentalities, and the
arbitrary price tags put on anything old, good or junk). In homes there are
paintings and prints by friends and contemporaries, in communities there is
theatre by recent if not local playwrights, new novels create excitement as
they are written and published, and (save for a few classic/nostalgia
channels) it's new film and new television that matter to people. Among
those with any interest in the various arts, creativity and invention are
celebrated.
But with music (and often the associated arts of ballet and stage shows)
the behavior is entirely backwards. (I have an extended theory about this,
which should appear in Greywolf Press sometime this summer, and in another
piece on New Music Box also this summer.)
There is only so much time to play and to listen. And though it does not
follow logically that time spent on earlier music is time lost to new
music, it does follow psychologically. People will play what there is to
play. Playing earlier music -- especially Baroque music -- is easier to do.
There's nothing much to learn, no composer to consult, no royalty to pay,
its sounds are integrated into the conservatory system, and it's what the
teachers know. Flood the distribution channels with more earlier music that
is dug out of wet basements and made available on the cheap, and more of it
will be played to the exclusion of the wealth of new material already
there. It's relatively low effort for high reward.
Furthermore, since when did music become the easy artform? Why did
excitement over the next new piece vanish? It's been 30 years since
atonality pretty much died out. That excuse for avoiding the new music is
gone with it. So what's wrong?
>Seriously, any music of even the most mediocre quality is worth
>preserving. Those who are working to publish and perform Stölzel's music
>would probably never publish or perform any of today's music anyway. If
>there is a market for mediocre baroque music, then it is a good thing to
>open it. This gives many musicians an income.
That's absolutely startling! It's a McDonald's mentality brought to concert
music. Concert music might have been a handsome animal once, but now it's
just so much chopped up and sanitized flesh? Most performances are as
important as flipping burgers, if that's what you mean by giving musicians
income. Old music also contributes to artistic laziness and lack of
curiosity that makes contemporary work seem far more formidable than it is,
to both players and audiences. It's a very nasty feedback loop.
>The Early Music movement, along with "rediscoveries" of previously
>unknown music is certainly very much a 20th century phenomenon, and in
>itself part of 20th century music
That's a consequence, not a cause. In practice, composers have had two
paths in the last century: to write for what was available, or to write for
themselves with their musicians and their electronics. I don't think it's
an accident that the focus of creativity and imagination moved away from
concert music, where it once flourished, and into the recording and film
studios. Playing concerts might be a pleasant experience, but it's
delusional to think there's particular creativity to presenting yet another
Bach cantata or Vivaldi concerto. Even when new music is presented in the
concert hall, it is at best the result rather than the driving force of
creative ferment.
I'm sorry to extend this topic so much, but it's on my mind a lot as
composers whom I admire are erased by their own culture, their own society,
because its academics and performers are looking backwards. Did anybody
follow the tragic Julius Eastman story, for example?
Do folks in their heart of hearts believe composers must be dead to have
true cultural meaning? It's certainly the behavior. And if not, where is
the plethora of counterexamples?
Dennis
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Kim Patrick Clow
"There's really only two types of music: good and bad." ~ Rossini
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