Achim Breiling wrote:

>What do they expect a contemporary or 20th century composer (as I have the
>impression they like to mix all this music together as atonal) to compose?
>Still in the classical style of Hayden, Mozart and Beethoven? Or, as
>evertything that is musically possible in Mrs. Wangs and Mr.Heersinks
>opinion apparently has been said composer should maybe just stop to write
>music? Music as all other creative art develops.  Artists do not want to
>repeat themselves, thus each of them is looking for new approaches.

I agree with music development, and your remarks, with the caveat that if
music develops to the same extent that art has (modern art) it might cease
to be music at all - no harmonic center, incomprehensible melodies (themes),
obscure form, etc.

I offer Rap music(?) as an example of what rock "developed into".  From the
Beatles to Rap - wow, to my ear a giant step backwards.  (not to slam the
genre, its a billion dollar industry, after all, possibly bigger than CM)

>From Beethoven's letter to Archduke Rudolph, July 29, 1819
>
>"The aim in the world of art, as indeed the whole creation, is freedom,
>progress; if 'we moderns' [apostrophes supplied] have not the same firmness
>as our ancestors, yet the refinement of our manners has is many ways
>enlarged our sphere of action."

My only complaint is that it is somehow obliged to evolve, especially
past the point of becoming music in a traditional sense, and somehow that
writing in traditional styles is forbidden as if the composer is taking a
step backwards.  Even today's artists can and do paint traditionally.  If
a painter gives an exhibition displaying painting in a traditional form it
OK but if a composer wrote a set of Baroque Prelude and Fugues or two part
inventions, etc he might be accused of not being very creative.

As I have said on other posts, Hollywood writes the closest thing to
classical music for movie scores. Its amazing how your thinking changes when
you have to make a profit and are not funded by the National Endowment for
the Arts.

As I write this letter I am listening to the Warsaw Concerto on the
Arts channel as a fine example of music written in this century but in a
traditional style.  I wish we had more of that and less music that attempts
to warp every tenet of music.  But, of course, these are my tastes, others
may differ.

Offered in a friendly manner with a smile,

Bill Pirkle