Steven Schwartz wrote:

>Andrys Basten writes:
>
>>I enjoyed David's note, and while one composer dismissed the piece as some
>>kind of command to composers, it was, to me, a plea.
>
>It's a plea, but it's a plea with absolutely no incentive.  Almost every
>composer subsidizes himself or herself.  If there's so little chance of
>earning a living, let alone supporting a family, on what a composer makes
>from writing classical music, why should a composer cater to anyone else?
>Why shouldn't a composer write according to personal interest?

But a plea is not a command, and so composers can of course do what they
want.  I think the question is if a composer wants to survive, to support
a family, by his/her music (though, as you suggest, that's an improbable
situation), that the audience is probably to be considered, that's all, in
at least some of the output.  But if the interest is mainly in expressing
yourselves but there's no interest in writing for paying audiences as many
even major composers did, then that's one's just personal outlook.  Be true
to yourself, whatever that is.

No one's stopping anyone from writing whatever they want.  I think David
was just asking for something that wasn't totally beyond the realm of the
average person in a classical-music audience, as at least part of the
output.

>>The further call for David to study music theory did not help.  There's no
>>question why performance of new music was greeted with great anticipation
>>in the older days - when composers didn't demand of their audiences that
>>they study music theory to understand them.
>
>This is a misconception.  Read Slonimsky's Lexicon of Musical Invective to
>find out all the nasty things in print written about now-beloved composers
>by their contemporaries.

I have, and know almost no one who loves classical music who isn't very
acquainted with that,, but these are composers who were experimenting and
in some works alienating those behind them while also continuing to compose
other works that helped them make a living.

>Brahms was condemned in much the same terms as Andrys slams present-day
>music.

Why generalize so easily? Where did I slam present-day music? I only said
that composers should not depend on their audiences to study music theory.
More on that further down.

>Furthermore, no composer that comes to mind - with the possible exception
>of Xenakis - demands that the hearer know music theory.  I'm always amazed
>when I hear this asserted.

I was referring to a paragraph by Aaron that, in a succession of paragraphs
detailed David's flaws in his personal perspective and spoke to what Aaron
seemed to think were David's excuses for not spending more time on studying
music theory though Aaron adds, "Note that neither of these is necessary
nor sufficient to understanding or enjoyment of trans-tonal music (or, for
that matter, of any other).  As for investing time there is simply no way
around that, although some will always be able to learn it faster than
others."

"...nor sufficient to understanding or enjoyment..." That was an
interesting clause.  Well, of course not, but then what is? besides
natural inclination, as you showed, toward more 'modern' music.

>I liked Schoenberg and Webern, for example, before I had any idea what
>they were doing technically.  I had, on the other hand, heard a lot of
>modern music.

And many just don't react the way you have.  Obviously you are way ahead of
the average classical-music listener.  So I am saying that NO one should
consider David's note a "command" (!) but a "plea," for heaven's sake.

>... the "command" misunderstanding was expressed in Aaron's
>"3) No one needs your permission to write.  Fortunately."

Composers talking to their audience should try not to be so disdainful or
dismissive of anyone's personal takes.  A plea/request is not the same as
some kind of command.

>audience will probably be angry or bored stiff.  It's like expecting an
>audience of monolingual Anglophones to appreciate a reading of Chinese
>poetry, exclusively in the original language.

And that's how much of the audience feels.

>We can also turn this around.  There are plenty of people who have the
>necessary breadth of listening as well as superb technical knowledge who
>dislike some contemporary music.  After all, contemporary music isn't
>monolithically forbidding.  There's a tremendous variety.  It would be odd
>if someone liked all of it.  In other words, there are no guarantees to
>anybody that familiarity and learning will breed something better than
>contempt.  At the same time, it's equally odd to hear people castigate all
>of it in terms only slightly less excoriating than Jeremiah harranguing the
>people of Israel.  This happens, as far as I know, for no other period of
>music.  For these, people tend to judge individual composers or individual
>works, strangely enough.

Yes...  But there is also something going on in that when audiences go in
to hear commissioned works, too often they will hear works that perhaps
mirror these times while their hearts are back in the 19th Century.  And so
now we have some composers who are writing what others call "reactionary"
works in that they are tonal.  So it's a matter of taste and emotional
responses where paying audiences are concerned.  And they WANT to like new
pieces.  No matter how particular premieres might have audiences in former
centuries, they at least were excited to go hear the latest work by
someone.  Not so these days.

Like you, I was lucky in background and only later in training to enjoy
a lot of modern music, and have performed some, but I have "not-enjoyed"
enough of some to understand the pain others can feel.  I think I have an
old late 50's book called "The Agony of Modern music.":)

>>Let composers write for other composers for the joy it does bring,
>>but don't expect that the audience will want to go study more to help
>>composers make a living.
>
>It may be that other composers have the breadth of listening that
>makes appreciating a contemporary piece more likely.  As I say, very few
>composers not working in the movies - even composers of Lovely Tonal Music
>- make a living.  The audience isn't helping them either.

Mainly because symphony organizations and record companies aren't keen to
help many who deserve it.  We're living in a time when the other side of
the coin, music appealing to the lowest common denominator (this is not,
by the way classical-music audiences, but will include them as well in the
calculations), is what the money-changers are most interested in producing
and selling.  So, neither the conventional-complex nor the
challenging-complex gets much attention.

>Until this situation changes, that segment of the audience who prefer to
>whine for the Next Rachmaninoff (I like Rachmaninoff; I may even like the
>Next One), rather than pull up their socks and make a serious effort to
>engage what's out there, can spit in the wind, as far as I'm concerned.

Perhaps it's that attitude which is a factor in turning audiences away from
modern output.

 - A
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