Apart from reading your interesting comments I didn't do any blogging on the weekend. I was very busy Saturday and today I devoted to music: guitar and composition. Made good headway with both. But now I am back and wanted to expand a bit on my remark about composers today being "largely forbidden the use of traditional formulae." That sparked a lot of comment!
Now, of course, it is an exaggeration. It is certainly not audiences, or some audiences at least, that forbid composers from using traditional formulae--just look at how they love Alma Deutscher! So who is it that issues this edict? Perhaps some music critics, thinkers like Theodor Adorno as Wenatchee mentioned, but also, granting and commissioning bodies. The Grawemeyer Award or Pulitzer prizes are not going to go to a composer who is not writing in a contemporary idiom. Others who might not want to program contemporary music using traditional formulae are conductors and performers generally. They might say something like, "If it sounds like Mendelssohn, we are better off just playing Mendelssohn."
So yes, it's complicated. I don't want to issue any edicts myself; I have neither the desire nor the right! I think every composer--and audience member--should decide for themselves what formulae they want to use and/or listen to. But I don't feel right using traditional formulae myself unless they are well hidden. It feels to me like taking a drink from a bottle of champagne that has been open too long: all the fizz is gone. When I compose I am really, above all, looking for something fresh.
When you look at Frank Martin or Arvo Pärt, yes, their music can sound rather traditional, but on closer examination, they have found a fresh way of using what was a traditional formula. I have tried that myself and I don't find it entirely congenial.
At the end of the day, of course, it is practical considerations that are important: is whatever we are doing working, expressing something? And does anyone want to hear it?
Here is a piece by Morton Feldman: Durations 1 - 5:
There appears to be a collision between the arts organizations that wag fingers at composers who sound even vaguely similar to past tonal composers and the classical music public. The latter with only a few major exceptions refuses to accept as classic those instrumental works that avoid tonal organization. Even those exceptions have tonal interludes and pronounced use of rhythms. That there is a large dose of hypocrisy here is shown by the arts organizations growing embrace of popular music which is almost all tonally organized in some way. But there is little question that serious composers are getting squeezed since even if they write serious new tonal works defiantly, the public is unlikely to support them in a sustaining way to give them independence from the arts organizations.
ReplyDelete"Does anyone want to hear it?" I don't compose music, so I am interested to know how much you write "for yourself" or whether some kind of audience is in the back of your mind. Is the modern composer thinking about how their work will be received once it is finished?
ReplyDeleteMarc in Oz, I tend to take a different approach with different pieces. Sometimes I feel I have to take on a significant compositional challenge and so I am not writing with an audience in mind. But right now, for example, I am writing a piano piece for our local chamber music society and I am very much focused on writing for that audience in particular. I hope I can write something they will enjoy.
ReplyDeleteWell, I'd say that the opened champagne bottle is perpetually fizzy, for those who want to avail themselves of it. If one isn't inclined to do so, whether for aesthetic, ideological, or simply personal reasons, then it doesn't make any material difference if it remains fizzy or not. Except of course that one is always free to return to it.
ReplyDeleteMessiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps at Wigmore Hall at 1130 PT. But I'll listen to the first of the Feldman concerts beforehand. Durations 4 is on the program.