Well, whether or to what extent anyone anywhere may have been "bored and annoyed" (or either of the two) by such a question, it still seems evident that the question needs asking, provided that the asking is not couched in intelligent, sincere and un-loaded terms as, it seems to me, Baz did "over there", so let's examine a few of the things that he raised.
"First might be mentioned the views of one ‘SimonSagt!’ who wrote the following:
'What a load of the most appallingly pretentious rubbish.
About as much to do with real, crafted, composed, decent, tuneful, creative, honest, uplifting MUSIC as an earwig.'"
Well, that's about a useful as - well, an earwig, I suppose; no attempt at justification, explanation, reasoning - just blunt statements which are no more thanpersonal opinions (if even that) founded, one may suspect, on very little effort having been made to acquire aural experience of the kind of thing with which that listener seems to choose to remain unfamiliar.
Back to Baz...
"This was followed closely by a missive from The Doctor – the admirable Sydney Grew – whose renowned skill at camouflaging a mere instant verbosity by applying sophisticated syntax resulted in this outpouring:
'we are in entire agreement with what the good Mr. Sagt says. Silly titles for works are invariably a "dead giveaway" and a reliable indication that the composer of said works could not possibly be a serious person.
So the word "appalling" is entirely accurate.
The word "pretentious" is also very clearly accurate.
The word "rubbish" (meaning worthless items which one rejects and discards) is absolutely accurate.
And we have never knowingly encountered an earwig but here too trust the accuracy of the judgement expressed in his final sentence by Mr. Sagt. The only astonishing thing is that more Members do not see it and say so.'"
Not a whole lot better in terms of information provision, I fear. The word "appalling appears only to take on relevance and meaningfulness when included in a comment on a piece of contemprary music that has what Dr Grew chooses to call a "silly title", yet even when the title might seem unusual or bizarre or otherwise unclear of meaning it cannot follow of automatic necessity that the music itself is not of any serious intent or substance, still less "appalling" and Dr Grew doesn't tell us that it does so or why it does so either. Dr. Grew then seeks to persuade us that the term "pretentious" is an accurate descriptor, yet he, like Mr Sagt, uses it as the bluntest possible instrument with which to hit out at all manner of unspecified and uncategorised contemporary music it and he also omits to tell us what the music concerned might be "pretending" to be. Likewise, he tacitly accepts the similarly indiscriminate and across-the-board application of the term "rubbish" as "accurate" without telling us why.
No help there, then...
To Baz again...
"According to the impulsive Mr Sagt!, the following constitute his thought-out ‘criteria’ for MUSIC: it must be
real
crafted
composed
decent
tuneful
creative
honest
uplifting
One must assume that these immediately split into other subcategories: since a piece of music performed is (in fact) ‘real’, and since its very presence can only have resulted from ‘creativity’ (since before its actual creation it did not exist), and furthermore since in order for it to have come into existence it must have been ‘composed’, we are left with only the following requirements:
Crafted
Decent
Tuneful
Honest
Uplifting
From these, I rule out immediately the ‘decent’ and the ‘honest’ since such terms do not describe the actual substance but only another person’s view of the impact or quality of that substance (which is therefore subjective). We are therefore left with:
Crafted
Tuneful
Uplifting"
This is a useful piece of debunking as far as it goes, throwing as it does at least a few limbs of the baby out with the bath-water.
Baz then decides to
"come to the crux of my question: has Music composed (and played!) by current contemporary musicians become entrenched in a kind of Religion or Cult (with an accompanying band of adherents and recusants)? This is intended as a serious question!
Many who might think of themselves as ‘catholic’ in taste seem to be upset by what they see as a kind of strict ‘methodism’ creeping into contemporary music. They are, it seems, understandably worried by the emphasis placed upon things like ‘composition procedure’, ‘serialism’, ‘new complexity’, ‘controlled aleatoricism’ and the like, and wonder what has happened to humanity and its natural expressiveness. It has become so bad that whereas we all understood the old adage “Familiarity breeds contempt” we now have to understand a priori (for them) that “UNfamiliarity breeds contempt”...."
It is a fact that some people have gotten themselves worked up about various "isms" and other persuasions and methodologies ofr various different kinds of music composition b ut I am tempted to question whether some of the problem to which Baz addressed his concern may largely have to do with two factors - firstly, the idea that (as he implies) the listener might have to some extent to have to be "in the know" in order to be able to appreciate and respond with intelligence to certain kinds of music and, secondly, the very fact that so many different kinds of music are available to all listeners at any time of day and night almost anywhere and that this very fact might in some way be unwittingly responsible for engendering a lack of confidence in certain listeners as to the validity of their own responses and judgements. What's to do? Well, as a composer myself, my way of listening to familiar or unfamiliar music is not, first and foremost, to concern myself with the kinds of term to which Baz draws attention, for they are each of quite wide range and cannot serve as much more than mere suggestive labels for what one is listening to - only the music itself and wht it does to and for one really matters (which is not, of coruse, to say that one doesn't pick up on what the composer is up to in his/her work - far from it - but that's not really the same thing).
Back to Baz again...
"...‘resident’ composers. Those of us who know (or have managed to work out!) the identities of “ahinton”, “martle”, “aaron cassidy”, “quartertone”, and (of course) “Richard Barrett” will know very well that we are interacting here with well-established composers whose music is widely published, performed and broadcast. It is, of course, highly unfortunate that at least the last three on the list (including, most unfortunately of all, “Richard Barrett” – the source of the thread concerned) no longer post on this thread, But that leaves at least two on the list (and there may be others whose identities I have not yet worked out – give me a bit longer!).
I should like to know from them this: WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO HUMAN EMOTION AND EXPRESSION IN MUSIC?
Music used to express things like ‘joy’, ‘sadness’, ‘tragedy’, ‘pathos’. It used also to evince things like ‘dance’, ‘pastime’, ‘pleasure’. It has also spent much of its time enhancing things like ‘poetry’ and ‘drama’. Often there has been what might be called ‘a tune’, and sometimes (with great effect) an absence of such."
Well, I don't think that it takes too much imagination to deduce who "Richard Barrett" is - or who I am! Anyway, here's my two cents' worth. He asks "What has happened to human emotion and expression in music?". Well, I cannot and will not seek to speak for other composers but, for me, it is still present to such an extent that I believe that, without it, I may as well go and do something else altogether; if a piece doesn't make any emotional sense or impact, I may as well not bother to have written it. Of course one doesn't (or rather I don't) consciously think about such things when conceiving a work - that would, in most if not all instances, seem to be at best counter-productive and at worst artificial and pointless - but I'll defer to Baz again before continuing with my answer here...
"When I attended the Barrett concert I witnessed a group of highly-skilled and dedicated performers who gave a totally professional and polished rendition of some testing and difficult music requiring improvisation skills that would have been the envy of ANY 18th-century composer or performer. BUT…
…where was the ‘joy’, the ‘emotion’, the ‘meaning’, the ‘connection’? Indeed, where was there ANYTHING AT ALL with which humans of even medium intelligence present could connect? Were we just supposed to be ‘swept along’? (This would be unlikely considering the severity and sophistication of the performance). Why were the performers expressing NOTHING at all (as shown by their faces, their lack of movements and gestures – even before tackling the supposed ‘inner meaning’ of the music)?"
It is not my place to comment on Richard Barrett's work in general or this concert (which I did not happen to attend) in particular, but what I would say in more general terms is that I find it well-nigh impossible to comment on what specific things my own work "expresses" - only that it does (hopefully!) express something and that it makes expressive sense to others when they listen to it. Of course, technically deficient and/or inadequately prepared and/or insufficiently intelligent and sensitive performances can stand in the way of the composer's intent, but I can say that I have for the most part been been extremely fortunate in the performers that have presented my work
Back to Baz again...
"Perhaps it is therefore up to the COMPOSERS to convey to US why they write what they do, and what they expect from us (as paying listeners) in return. This is not a complicated or ‘big’ question to ask, and it should therefore be quite a simple question for them to answer!"
It's a short question but it's also the unanswerable (rather than merely unanswered!) question. Composers can sometimes (albeit by no means always) muddy the waters further by talking too much about their music - "what I wanted to do was this", "the point that I was making was that", etc.; if I wanted to "tell" people in verbal detail what any work of mine was intended to convey and if I could actually do it with any degree of success, I'd start to wonder if I'd not have been better off writing an essay in words rather than a piece of music. that music begins where words leave off is so well-known an assertion as to have long since assumed cliché status, but I feel that it is none the less meaningful for that. The composer's job is to put across what he/she wants to convey in the notes that he/she writes and they should accordingly stand on their own two feet and put across their message in their own right.
And finally to Baz's last observation and question...
"It is obvious that at any time in history there has always been ‘the new’ – in music, if this were not the case, polyphony would still sound like that practised at Notre Dame in the 12th century. Composers through the ages have been extending and developing the range and ambitus of what is ‘acceptable’ – harmonically, tonally, rhythmically, improvisationally etc. etc.
What is it that today’s composers feel they are extending, and where exactly are they trying to take it (and us)?"
I was going to say that ther are as many answers to that as there are composers but, in truth, there are as many as there are pieces of music. We're all trying to take music and people that listen to it to wherever it is that our music leads. There has been mention here of "serialism" "Richard Barrett", "new complexity", etc.; the composer George Lloyd is not a name that one would associate with any of these, yet I would associate it with the question here in that he is said to have stated that the purpose of music is to take people to places that they wouldn't otherwise go", an idea that surely applies as much to anyone else's work as it did to his own.
The fact that almost all aspects of human life are more complex and intricate now than ever before may be seen to parallel the fact that not only certain music but the sheer proliferation of different musical styles and persuasions are likewise more complex than ever before, hence so many composers "taking" so many people to so many places; as I suggested before, this does make some people feel rather nervous and wary of certain music, but that's not to say either that it should do so, or that, when it does, it is necessarily the fault of certain composers....
But to return finally to the crux of Baz's question (which I've not yet answered but haven't forgotten!) as to whether "Music composed (and played!) by current contemporary musicians (has) become entrenched in a kind of Religion or Cult (with an accompanying band of adherents and recusants)? I would respond by saying that if and to the extent that it might ever do any such thing, I do fear that certain composers might risk being in for a difficult time, for the notion of intellectually and emotionally challenging music is, it seems to me, quite different in itself to that of music deliberately intended only for some kind of "select few". Now I'm not pointing any fingers here and there would be plenty who would argue that this, that or the other composer never writes from a deliberately exclusivist standpoint, but I think that the principle - even if only as a kind of advance warning of potential risk - is not entirely without possible validity.
Finally, I have to admit that I shudder to imagine what Dr Grew - and most especially the egregious Mr Sagt (with or without his exclamatory suffix) would make of my stuff; doubtless the term horresco referens would come to mind!...
Best,
Alistair
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