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The reality of life for contemporary composers

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#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
Remark by Art Rock: this thread was created to split off an interesting side discussion that originated in an Area51 thread, especially posts 3-6 in the current thread. Please focus on the thread title in the discussion.

I have had it. I refuse to believe living composers and not as good as dead ones.
 
#9 ·
I think the problem is that many of contemporary composers got lost doing soundtracks or experimentalism, in other words they are stuck. Composers today are paid to make 5 minutes long themes, or new age and world music, or they try to attract some academic interest doing experimental music. The situation of composers, like painters and all artists in general, has never been easy. So the problem is not their condition or salary, the problem is what people pay them for. Nobody pays them for symphonies, also what is the value of a symphony today? It's an outdated genre, let's face it. Yet there are not really new genres. I think if today's composers are not considered as good as past ones, it's because maybe they didn't really had a big chance to prove it (also, nobody really cares). How much can you prove with a 3 min piece for a spot? Music needs new directions without getting stuck in innovation for innovation's sake, in past times we had people like Beethoven showing the way to others, but today maybe there are not people who want to take that responsibility, so music is stuck in movie scores which can hardly prove the value of composers in my opinion.
 
#10 ·
Nobody pays them for symphonies, also what is the value of a symphony today? It's an outdated genre, let's face it.
On the other hand, concertos are still quite popular I think, at least for established composers - possibly commissioned by famous soloists. But indeed, I have the feeling (maybe wrong) that contemporary composers may focus more on chamber and solo music, which would be easier to get performed.
 
#11 ·
I, for one, am completely optimistic regarding contemporary classical music / art music (or any other name that you, the reader, are comfortable with!) while hasting to admit that the career of a composer is definitely not an easy one. But if I concentrate on the music itself, oh my god - I keep hearing so many interesting, ravishingly beautiful, imaginative and powerful new scores literally all the time, I really can't see why today's music wouldn't stand up with the music of the past! Everyone is of course entitled to their own opinions which are as valid as mine. I'm definitely looking forward to the post-pandemic era and experiencing the thrill of premiere performances again.

All that being said, I'm very sympathetic to the problems composers are facing - lack of funding, lack of audience interests, lack of opportunities and all that; these are all very real issues. But I think I might be helping at least a tiny bit by buying concert tickets and recordings, listening to the music, speaking about it etc. :)
 
#63 ·
I, for one, am completely optimistic regarding contemporary classical music / art music (or any other name that you, the reader, are comfortable with!) while hasting to admit that the career of a composer is definitely not an easy one. But if I concentrate on the music itself, oh my god - I keep hearing so many interesting, ravishingly beautiful, imaginative and powerful new scores literally all the time, I really can't see why today's music wouldn't stand up with the music of the past!
Could you please list 10 contemporary (living) composers you like? Even "contemporary" has lost all meaning. Anything and everything that can be done is being done. IMO 99% of it will be forgotten.
 
#14 · (Edited)
I have been interviewing contemporary composers since 2014, so I have first hand knowledge of what they are doing, what they think about their career potential; and how well they are doing. I have interviewed more than 70 composers so far, from those in their 20s and 30s to one in his 80s, and those working in a more traditional style to those whose work is experimental. Some have become well known since (certainly not because of) my interview, but most have become more successful since the time of my interview even if still not "well-known."

My interviews ask the same six questions to all of them and their answers ranged from very long and expansive to relatively short and matter-of-fact. Most somewhere in the middle.

I'll just add a couple of thoughts to this thread:

1. These composers, without exception, have a purpose for writing music. Sometimes it is political, more often it is to express their own unique ideas about musical aesthetics. They consider themselves classical music composers pursuing the same profession as the composers of the core repertory. None of them expressed any idea of destroying any tradition or frustration with any tradition, however, many cited influences from popular culture as well as canonical composers.

2. They support themselves with their music in one form or another. Often they have founded or co-founded a performance ensemble and promoted their work and that of their colleagues, and often work individually as performers or vocalists. Usually they have advanced degrees and are professors in universities. Many of them have received commissions and are beginning to make a dent.

Bottom-line: these composers are (to use Joseph Campbell's phrase) "following their bliss." Their artistic integrity is intact and one of the strongest motivating factors for their work. In my interaction with them I sensed that they were brimming with optimism about their careers.

PM me if you would like the link to profiles.
 
#15 · (Edited)
I can imagine that there are loads of less famous musicians out there that play instruments for which there is not a wealth of solo music available (even 'established' instruments like horn or clarinet, but also e.g. marimba, accordion, etc) - do they approach composers to increase their repertoire and get a win-win situation?
 
#21 ·
Although I have read some interesting posts, none of them address my frustration.

There are many in the classical community who think that living composers are not as good as pre-20th century composers.

As an amateur musician I have had the good fortune to meet many outstanding composers. To my ears their music is just as good as anything composed in the 19th century.

I do not have the expertise to explain why since I am not a musicologist. My feelings are based solely on my experiences as a performing musician.
 
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#22 ·
Since I was a child, along with Beethoven etc, I have always listened to John Williams, Hans Zimmer, Howard Shore etc. I do believe the last one in particular to be a great composer, maybe not Beethoven ok (who is like him...?), but I think he wouldn't make a bad impression if he lived in those times. :) which artists would you recommend?
 
#24 · (Edited)
The concept of a CPT period defined as the period of final music including the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods serves a useful purpose. Of course, the end of it is not exact depending on how strictly one wants to to define the endpoint. You will see 1910 as often mentioned, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that even the broadest view could not have the end beyond 1950. (Fwiw, Mayaskovsky’s 27th symphony and Strauss’s 4 Last Songs were composed just prior to 1950.} The fact that some composers continued to composed with CP tonality beyond 1950 is not relevant. Practically no works that remind of the 19th century were being composed after that time.

I mention all this because I believe that it is in the interest of those who love CPT period music and those who love modern, even avant-garde, works to recognize the relative devision between the CPT era and what occurred after. These are 2 distinct periods. Much of the music that is now being called classical music is very different, some of it unrecognizable as anything composed before 1900. As such, if one accepts the concept of distinctly different eras, there is no need for constant conflict between those who prefer one period over the other. I don’t like Avant-garde music and never will, but I no longer criticize it in the context of comparing it to CPT era music. It is from another period and those who love it are IMO, enjoying music from that different period and are having a different experience than listening to a Beethoven symphony. I can respect that.

So, (to bring this back to the OP), it occurs to me that contemporary composers will have to rise and fall based on however successful they can be with contemporary-music audiences. The challenges are different than the 19th century. The ways one might make a living from it are different. Many will have to be content with smaller venues, limited recording with perhaps the occasional performances by major orchestras where there is the money for commissions.
 
#26 · (Edited)
Practically, no works that remind of the 19th century were being composed after that time.
I wonder if anyone agrees with this? If someone would have said it in, say, 1980, I think it would have been quite plausible. But now I'm not so sure.

It's hard for me to give examples given the way the discussion has gone because we're focussing on symphonies, and I don't know much about them really. I could give lots of examples of chamber and solo music and song, at least, I think I could. But, to pick an obvious orchestral example, Rihm's third symphony reminds me of old fashioned classical music, if not 19th century then Mahler. See what you make of it

 
#25 · (Edited)
DaveM said:
Many will have to be content with smaller venues, limited recording with perhaps the occasional performances by major orchestras where there is the money for commissions.
The thing is though that orchestras feel some kind of obligation to program this music alongside CP works -- well, usually either sandwiched between CP favorites or leading off -- and if audiences are averse to it then it's the audience's problem. There isn't a dividing line in practical terms. If you love Beethoven then you're narrow-minded if you don't also at least pay your respects to the avant garde. Part of the problem is the insistence that modern music is an organic continuation or development of CP instead of a break with it. Another is the vestigial 19th century "artist as rebel against 'society' " mindset, and the weird bewilderment when "society" displays its indifference. It seems there's a desire to be considered in the same league and tradition as Bach and Beethoven while at the same time being a George Antheil type. It doesn't compute.
 
#35 · (Edited)
The thing is though that orchestras feel some kind of obligation to program this music alongside CP works -- well, usually either sandwiched between CP favorites or leading off -- and if audiences are averse to it then it's the audience's problem. There isn't a dividing line in practical terms. If you love Beethoven then you're narrow-minded if you don't also at least pay your respects to the avant garde. Part of the problem is the insistence that modern music is an organic continuation or development of CP instead of a break with it...
Just as I now believe that those of us who prefer CPT music shouldn't be critiquing Avant-garde or highly atonal music as awful in comparison (because it is a distinctly different musical design and is a format we either can't or prefer not to understand or appreciate) so to do I think those who prefer very contemporary/avant-garde music should stop trying to hang it on the coattails of CPT music as if it is a natural progression.
 
#34 ·
mbhaub said:
Roughly 100 years ago composers decided music had to have social value, to mean something, to be expressive of their times. Well the 20th c had it's share of horrors, and so much of the music exemplifies this. It's not uplifting, it's not fun. It's often brutal
and not something you can listen to for enjoyment. People don't want that.
Waaaaaaait a second. Who decides that "people don't want that"? I've seen comments here that complain about the warhorses being driven into the ground because *that's* what sells tickets with the corollary complaint that "people" aren't interested in this "brutal" music.
 
#43 · (Edited)
I have had it. I refuse to believe living composers are not as good as dead ones.

Remark by Art Rock: this thread was created to split off an interesting side discussion that originated in an Area51 thread.
Michael Hersch and Richard Barrett are two very skilled, interesting composers. Will their music survive the test of time? I doubt it. The stumbling block in a lot of contemporary 'classical' material is redundant, meaningless complexity. Does this music have anything important to say? Does it communicate truthfully, honestly? Generally not. In my opinion, the only living composer whose work, despite its aphorism and concision, might survive the veridical discernment of time is György Kurtág's.
 
#50 ·
I'd like to add something to this discussion. It is also true that, in my opinion and in my own perception, today's composers do not have an obsession to create masterpieces and become great masters feeling like that is their life mission, their only reason why they are born unlike certain composers of the past. What I mean is: if you read Mozart's and Beethoven's letters for example, you discover they had an obsession for their art, it was not only their job, it was not only hard work it was literally their life, the main thing they lived for. Mozart composed in every single moment of his life. When he was eating, when he was playing pool, when he was having fun with his friends, always. He composed pieces in his mind, then wrote everything down when he could, sometimes though he needed to write the ideas down immediatly and completely detached from the world. Beethoven had always with him, everywhere he went, a notebook on which he constantly wrote ideas. It was their life mission, the reason they were alive. That is true also for all the greatest musicians, dancers, performers of any kind. But I feel like that's not the case for many composers today. They like what they do, yes, it isn't the reason of their existence though. Maybe I'm wrong.
 
#51 ·
They like what they do, yes, it isn't the reason of their existence though. Maybe I'm wrong.
I watched a documentary about Frank Zappa. There is no other way to describe him than as you described Mozart and Beethoven's obsession.

This dichotomy that some here want to claim divides the composers of the CP with today's composers is false, IMO. Don't fall prey to the idea that because you have trouble connecting with today's new classical music that the motivation behind it is either on a lower level than that for earlier composers whose music connect with easily, or that they don't have the same kind of dedication.

Much in the world has changed but what hasn't changed is that composers and artists are still motivated by an aesthetic vision and have developed the craft and discipline to carry it out.
 
#60 · (Edited)
fluteman makes some really interesting points about the state of flux we find ourselves in. Philosopher Christoph Cox, who's written a cool book on the subject, describes sonic flux as "the notion of sound as an immemorial material flow to which human expressions contribute but that precedes and exceeds those expressions" (2018, 2). Here's a talk that may be of interest:



Cox identifies the origin of sonic flux as Edison's 1877 invention of the phonograph, which unintentionally submitted a world of sound beyond music/speech to aesthetic attention. The sounds phonographers wished to capture were made ontologically equivalent - in other words, put in the same category - as environmental noises such as the hum and crackle of the phonograph itself. You can see the impact of this discovery in the work of Luigi Russolo, Edgard Varèse, and Pierre Schaeffer in the first half of the 20th century; Cage's 4'33", but also the 'gradual processes' of minimalism and drone installations by La Monte Young, Éliane Radigue, Max Neuhaus, Alvin Lucier, Maryanne Amacher, etc. in the '60s onwards; and the emergence of ambient/noise music in the '70s and '80s.

Before Edison, sound was "bound to presence," to what was occurring here and now. Audio recording, however, overturned the usual logic of time/space by allowing the "here" to be transported elsewhere; the sounds of Antarctic seals, for example, could be heard in a car while traveling on a Norwegian freeway. Trippy stuff. As Cox says, "audio recording involves an ontological flattening of its source material" (ibid., 56). This is because audio recordings elude the present moment - they are "always at once past and to come, registering bygone sonic moments and casting them into an indefinite future that is never exhausted by playback in the present" (ibid.). Simply put, audio recordings record events of the past but can be manipulated in the future like no other medium. After Schaeffer's "noise studies" of the late '40s, recorded sound became a prominent tool for creation and composition - see the tape delay systems of Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Pauline Oliveros, and Brian Eno but also the adoption of tape collage and musique concrète by the Beatles, Frank Zappa, and Miles Davis. The musical object was transformed into fluid, open-ended auditory material, and the boundaries between "composer," "performer," and "recording engineer" became increasingly blurred. Hip-hop recognizes this blur by calling anyone who alters the sonic flux a "producer." (Speaking of hip-hop, sampling is one of the genre's greatest innovations.) In the Western art music (for lack of a better term) tradition, jazz's golden age and the availability of magnetic tape subjected the classical score to deconstruction and dissolution; indeterminate compositions and graphic scores dismantled the musical object's fixity and encouraged real-time invention. See Stockhausen's Klavierstück XI, Boulez's Third Piano Sonata, Cardew's Treatise, and Brown's December 1952, among many other examples.

To summarize, the second half of the 20th century saw audio recording dismantle the classical score, initiate the practices of sampling, mixing, and remixing, and reevaluate improvisation. In the 21st century, mp3s and the easy copyability of digital data "deals the final blow in the assault of recorded media on the original" (ibid., 73). As mikeh375 pointed out earlier, recorded sound can be manipulated more easily than ever before through DAWs - I disagree, however, that this has led to music being "cheapened creatively."

So... where does the classical concert hall, with its rigid separation of "music" from "noise" and object fetishism, fit into our current state of flux? Hint: it kind of doesn't.

Anyways, this is a huge topic and no forum post - or thread, for that matter - can do it justice. One may observe that experiments with indeterminacy and graphic scores aren't as prominent in Western art music as in the '60s and '70s; I'm curious as to why this is, but I'm sure that publishing costs and the rise of music notation software (with its ossification of CPT-era notational practices) have played a significant role.
 
#62 ·
fluteman makes some really interesting points about the state of flux we find ourselves in.
Impressive post, Portamento, well beyond anything I would have or could have attempted. And as you said, even your wide-ranging effort only scratches the surface of this topic.

I find that listening to any kind of contemporary music, classical, popular, or whatever label one might use, it's hard to find any music that doesn't in some way reflect the influence of some of the things you (and I) have mentioned. Two of the biggest classical 'hits' of recent years that I have mentioned here, John Corigliano's score for The Red Violin and Tan Dun's Score for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, are both very much modern (really postmodern), yet both still largely are written in the conventional practice idiom for the traditional symphony orchestra.

Before you and DaveM pounce on me, I'll quickly have to concede that the traditional symphony orchestra, and traditional acoustic instruments in general, have begun to recede into the background of our musical culture. Once composers are no longer creating music for those instruments, I suspect DaveM's point will be harder to refute. But we are still a ways from that.
 
#65 ·
I think there is a lot at play here.

We've lost a lot of natural filters/gate keeping along the way to the present times. What I mean by that is 200 years ago, composition was restricted to those who cant choose NOT to be composers. Meaning every waking hour they are compelled to pursue music and composition, which was needed to squeeze through all the natural restrictions of the time. These restrictions are:
- Slow spread of information in pre-industrial times. People are focused on their surrounding community. In a way, it was easier to make a name for yourself and gain support.
- The necessity of requiring a patron; building a relationship with said patron; and the requirement to output quality work for said patron
- The patron also happened to employ many of the musicians of the time
- One had to compose music that both the composer and the audience liked. Mutual harmony.
- Publishers were natural gate keepers and decided who to invest in
- Lack of technology increases barrier to entry

Now that the world is connected, people's focus has been spread thin. Their attention is consumed by talented people from all over the world. This makes it impossible to grow as an artist if you cant gain community support to build your foundation. Now you are competing against the world's top talent for people's time as soon as you decide to go into art. You are also competing against immediate on demand access to all the world's dead top talent. And as others has said, the barrier to entry has almost entirely been removed. If you extend this pattern out infinitely, the calculus will say "we are approaching a limit that will make it nearly impossible to be an artist".

And regarding contemporary classical music, most of it is over-intellectualized garbage that does not stir the spirit or soul. Takemitsu said so himself, in his own, well rounded words. I dont know how or why it ever became a motif to make a 20 minute piece that uses extended techniques throughout, without any balancing of the dissonance and tension. A hammer is only good for nails, and bludgeoning people over the head with.
 
#72 ·
Some works

Jurg Frey - 'Paysage pour Gustave Roud'
Alexandra Karastoyanova-Hermentin — Lintarys
Evan Johnson — L'art de toucher le clavecin, 3
Aaron Cassidy: Second String Quartet
Jürg Frey - 'Fragile Balance'
Christophe Bertrand: Haos
Liza Lim — Songs found in dream
Katharina Rosenberger — blur
Marti Epstein — Hidden Flowers
Agata Zubel — Cascando
Katherine Balch — drip music
Haukur Þór Harðarson — I
Yannis Kyriakides — Paramyth
Georg Friedrich Haas: tria ex uno
Ivan Fedele - Breath and Break (2013)
Pascal Dusapin By the way pour clarinette et piano (2014)
György Kurtág - Six Moments Musicaux, Op. 44
Chaya Czernowin — String Quartet
Rebecca Saunders: Dust (2017/18)
Alexandra du Bois — String Quartet: Oculus pro oculo totum orbem terrae caecat
 
#114 ·
Some works

Jurg Frey - 'Paysage pour Gustave Roud'
Alexandra Karastoyanova-Hermentin - Lintarys
Evan Johnson - L'art de toucher le clavecin, 3
Aaron Cassidy: Second String Quartet
Jürg Frey - 'Fragile Balance'
Christophe Bertrand: Haos
Liza Lim - Songs found in dream
Katharina Rosenberger - blur
Marti Epstein - Hidden Flowers
Agata Zubel - Cascando
Katherine Balch - drip music
Haukur Þór Harðarson - I
Yannis Kyriakides - Paramyth
Georg Friedrich Haas: tria ex uno
Ivan Fedele - Breath and Break (2013)
Pascal Dusapin By the way pour clarinette et piano (2014)
György Kurtág - Six Moments Musicaux, Op. 44
Chaya Czernowin - String Quartet
Rebecca Saunders: Dust (2017/18)
Alexandra du Bois - String Quartet: Oculus pro oculo totum orbem terrae caecat
Our lists have quite a few similarities :)

There are fads and trends (like with certain extended techniques and whatnot), and true originality is as rare as it's ever been. But there is an infinite abundance of music left to be made.
Yes, I agree. I did not mean there is little music left to write. I meant there are few original ideas left out there, but there is an infinite amount of ways to execute said ideas, many of them being master pieces that have yet to be composed.
 
#84 ·
The reality of life for contemporary composers
Just reminding people of the thread title. Part of that reality is that there is a large group of classical music listeners that rejects most contemporary classical music. As it obviously affects these composers, there is validity in stating this observation in this thread, even though I'm sure it is not news to the contemporary composers or to those listeners who are interested in their works.

The point has been made in this thread. Can we now continue the discussion without repeating it?
 
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