John Dalmas wrote:

>It is not enough to sit down and decide you are going to write great music,
>and then write it.
>
>First you have to be inspired, and then you have to hear it in your mind,
>over and over again, bar by bar.  . . .

I'm afraid I can't take this description seriously, it does not match the
evidence of how either Brahms composed his four symphonies or Beethoven
composed his symphonies.  It probably matches some great symphonies and
symphonists, but it doesn't account for all that are great.  Some of
Haynd's symphonies are basically derrived from his operas, he didn't sit
down to compose the symphony so much as assemble it.

On the otherside there are many, many, many works which were composed in
strict accordance with what Mr. Dalmas thinks is the canonical process of
composing a great symphony, and which somehow do not seem to have made the
grade.

So, since it neither includes all that is great, nor excludes all that is
not great, it seems to have little utility to the composer who is genuinely
trying to compose a great symphony - or his second great symphony having
managed it once, or his third etc.

The simple truth is that working methods are quite variable - some
composers are lead very strongly by their inner ear, others believe in the
process, some through compose, others precompose fragments, some sketch
extensively, others do not - the variety of means creates a variety of
results.

- - -

Underneath this sniping is a larger issue.  It is a larger issue that keeps
getting ignored, but keeps forcing itself back upon us in that it shapes
almost everything everyone says.  Music isn't merely written, it is written
for something.  Even the composer who thinks he is only writing "for"
himself is writing for something, and very often falls into Stravinski's
description "because I am composed of the same clay as others, what please
me might also please them, what interests me also interersts them."

There are many people in classical music, each one wants music that fits
his or her needs.  No one says "just ignore what I want and keep those
other people over there happy." Most of the 19th century repertory was
written for a group of people that much of the avant-garde was written
against.  The people who are alive today who fit the same general habits of
mind that prevailed in the target audience of the 19th century are now in
the position of being lampooned, attacked, insulted - and having what they
want out of classical music ignored on top of all of that.  They rebel by
- attacking, lampooning and insulting and ignoring what they don't like.
My, my, my - what a mess.

It isn't that no one can write a symphony that is a "great" as Beethoven's,
its that the role that Beethoven's music fills is one which, quite simply,
won't get a dime of funding, a minute of reading from any major orchestra
or a column of critical interest.  It won't aquire a defender in the form
of a conductor who can get it played, and it won't interest the people who
do most of the writing about classical music.  Don't despair too much,
almost the same was true in Beethoven's day - witness the case of Franz
Schubert.

- - -

I'm now going to be incredibly inpolitic and address this group of people
who feel left out - I'm going to commit the horrible, almost suicidal sin
of being blunt with them.

Eiter you can continue to try and prove that all greatness is dead and gone
in a futile attempt to hold the line against what you don't like - or you
can support composers who are doing work that matches the goals you have
for music.  As long as your rhetorical program is negative, you will loose.
First because no matter how great Beethoven is, people do eventually want
to play and listen to other things, and because the negative argument is
one which can be ignored.  If you say "there has been no great music since
(fill in the blank)" then the person you are arguing with can merely say "I
think X is great and you won't convince me otherwise." They are even right
to laugh at you, because the date of composition is not what you are
looking for.

The reason I do this is two fold, and very simple.  First, I've seen this
fight rage on for 20 odd years.  Perhaps others have watched it longer,
but after 20 years, it has ceased to hold any intellectual fascination for
me.  It has been 15 years since I saw a new argument, and it was old when
I first tripped over it.  Secondly, I happen to be one of the composers who
is composing music which you might have use for, if you weren't so busy
closing your ears and your eyes, and expending every bit of effort to
prevent growth of music.  All of the moaning about the death of good music
that I have ever heard has not produced one performance of one new work
which was of any use.  Not one.  And in the end the future belongs to the
people who are composing works and getting them performed.  The people who
you are fighting with have a clear road from creation to performance to
recording, and a clear road by which the followers are told what to say
and what to like.  You, as a group, do not.  No wonder that the fight can
continue, the other side merely needs to wait.  Eventually a person dies,
and is replaced.  If the person doing the replacing is part of one group,
then that group advances its power without making one argument.  Either you
need great works or you don't.  All too often the people who moan about
lack of great works really mean "there are a lack of works that I like
instantly".

For a group of people who say they admire greatness in creation, you don't
seem to listen to creative people very much, and seem, instead to have a
shrill insistence on your perogative to annoint who is, and who is not
great.  At a certain point this wears thin.

Stirling S Newberry
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