Another thread sparked off by the Paul McCartney discussion!

It's often struck me that one of the things that happens to composers as they get older is that they become interested in music - or should I say in 'music'. That's to say, they become more eclectically aware of the range of possibilities that have passed under the name of 'music', and interested in exploring some of those possibilities on their own terms. This could explain phenomena as diverse as Brian Ferneyhough's renewal of an explicit engagement with early and pre-Renaissance music in the past 10 years or so; Sandy Goehr's increasing preoccupation with fugue and similar devices from around the age of 40 (he's not the only one, George Benjamin would be another example); erm, that's not a very diverse list so far, but I've been struck by many different examples of this in the past, I may add some more later ...

What I'm talking about is in some sense a broadening of scope that comes with maturity. But there's also an aspect of doing what you feel is expected of you (moving from being a young composer who writes the music he/she wants to an older one who feels 'I'm a musician and this is what's expected of me' or 'I need to show my range'). In this sense there's nothing unique in Paul McCartney's desire to become a 'classical composer'. Again, the scare quotes might be taken to indicate that it's on his own terms: that what he's engaging with is his own (arguably superficial) idea of a classical composer. But what the scare quotes might also alert us to is the possibility that this doesn't just happen to Paul McCartneys; classical composers too can develop the desire to become 'classical composers' (quote unquote). One example that I've commented on before to some people around here is James Dillon, whose increasing preoccupation with writing repertoire-style pieces like last year's piano concerto seems to me to be connected to a notion of 'classical music' not vastly more sophisticated than McCartney's.

Any thoughts?

Apologies to Dillon fans, btw. I do like some of it, honest!

I've often observed the same thing, t_i_n, although I hadn't previously thought of connecting it to Paul McCartney. To add to your list of composers, the names Elvis Costello, Philip Glass, György Ligeti and Steve Reich spring to my mind.

I think it might often be a tendency born of increasing "mastery" over one's musical materials, having begun with the "limitation" of writing the only kind of music one can.

And perhaps it's not always so much about broadening horizons as simply moving them? It seems like many of these are examples of artist moving from one artistic concern to the next. In this sense, I think it applies to the majority of composers and music-makers who are of interest to me.

This is a fascinating thread and I can only see it yielding yet more interesting and thought-provoking material as it develops.

At what point the composer turns into that kind of identifiable "older" composer is, of course, always hard to determine beyond the fact that it will happen at different stages and speeds from one composer to another. I would therefore like to think that this maturing process is something that may be happening permanently in each composer, whether consciously or otherwise, but I do take the point that some composers that have been working for, say three or four decades or more, noticeably find themselves getting involved in explorations that might not at all have occurred to them as priorities in their earlier creative lives; this brings in the Stravinsky example that Ian cites as being equally pertinent as those mentioned in the opening post.

Best,

Alistair

Hands off James Dillon, though!

That's true - and even Bach might be said to have been said to be refining rather than seeking fresh horizons. I suppose it could be argued, however, that the latter persuasion may be more likely to occur in composer of our time than in Bach's and Telemann's though, given the far greater plethora of styles and availability of musics of most eras and places that pertain today in a way and to an extent that Bach, Telemann and their generation could hardly have imagined possible.

Best,

Alistair

I was trying to address something more specific than simple shifts of focus, which as you say are widespread among composers and not of themselves a remarkable phenomenon (though I'd add that their specific manifestations, especially in terms of the dialectic of 'self' and 'other', are often well worth paying close attention). There's a reason why I cited for example Ferneyhough, returning in more detail to something hinted at in his earlier work, and not, say, Tippett or Ligeti, who certainly underwent stylistic evolution in the course of their careers. Again, I'll try to explain this better in the next couple of days. If I manage to do so then that should hopefully also demonstrate why I view the phenomenon I'm talking about as distinct from the general stylistic shifts that Ian mentions as having characterised the last 50 years.

Hmm, yes, why did I think of Ligeti as not quite the same thing? I see his stylistic trajectory as a dual one, partly internally and partly externally motivated, and in that sense he has aspects of both my reconciliation-to-tradition model and my self-meets-other model. I suppose the reason I excluded him is because I don't sense that the Bartok/Stravinsky elements in the later music came from a conscious attempt to join 'a tradition'; rather, in Ligeti's case I think it was more a case of his internal trajectory of restitution of traditional syntactical elements reaching a stage where it gave him permission to align himself with older music.

I'll pick up on your other comments later, since they're very much connected with what I had in mind in my opening post, but you're right about it being in many ways 'the opposite of a "maturing" process', maybe even the 'loss of nerve' thing - I was certainly thinking about it as a double-edged phenomenon, with both positive and negative aspects.

It would surely very cynical if so - of any composers persuaded of the advantages of such disposition, that is, rather than of you for questioning its possibility...

Best,

Alistair