In two comments both dated Aug. 23, David Lamb and Steve Schwartz
nail the essentials of what composers still aim at in 2008 (and what
drives me every day in my personal wrestle with new notes):

David Lamb wrote:

>[Offer] athletic rhythms, memorable lyric lines presented in exciting
>new harmonic garb, clear-cut material developed with a logic we could
>follow, and so forth.  There are still composers who produce music based
>on these principles of what guys my age call "substance" ....

Steve Schwartz in a different thread wrote:

> ... the big problem of any composition is how to say something
>both new (or at least personal) and worth saying.

What has changed, as I see it, are the listening habits/behaviors of
audiences.  Perhaps guided by attention spans of slightly greater than
a gnat's length, a more recent habit of listening has surfaced: partaking
of the music: dipping into a piece, then letting attention wander for a
bit, then dipping into it at some later point, etc.  This manner of
listening tends to connect better with single-affect material, and --
even more -- with music which does not narrate, journey, progress or
even develop.

This is not the previous, former-age pattern of intense connection
in listening -- tracking the progress of the music closely, pretty much
attentive throughout.  Perhaps today's audience expects there to be some
visual complement, some stimulus to another sense along with that of
hearing, and is nervous without that.

[ In 2003 a photographer, snapping me for a photo to go with a newspaper
profile, remarked that his four-year-old daughter got very nervous
whenever there was silence in their home.  She just expected a bed of
noise, or some background music to be present as underscore -- not to
be focussed on -- but just there; and she was uneasy when that underscore
was gone.  ]

Judith Lang Zaimont
Composer
www.jzaimont.com

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