http://music.guardian.co.uk/live/story/0,,2236512,00.html"MacMillan's presence, though, had dictated the programme, or perhaps the other way around. His own symphony, Vigil, formed the second half. [...] the work's 50-minute duration stretches scant musical material perilously thinly."
That sounds a lot more like child abuse (certianly exploitation) to me...
Seriously though, I've been wondering why MacMillan was exercised to this particularly aggressive and over-the-top attack (Abrahamsen and Andriessen obviously aren't even very avant-garde composers, but I suppose it's possible MacMillan doesn't even know who they are).
I think MacMillan feels threatened by concerts like the Andriessen/etc one, and the sinfonietta-style model of contemporary music making in general. His career is built largely on his purported ability to handle an orchestra, and this suits him in several ways. Firstly, his easy-play writing style goes down well with the orchestras as it doesn't require much rehearsing: vacuity, superficiality and essentially reactionary effects driven writing are all plus points here. Secondly, the drying-up of orchestra commissions and performances shrinks the market to only MacMillan and a few broadly similar composers -- lack of competition is always great for business. Thirdly (and ultimately), the lucrative and relatively high-profile nature of orchestral composing ensures great cash returns, as MacMillan is allowed to promote himself on the podium, explain his 'genius' to young musicians, get opinion pieces in the Guardian, and so on. And when you can get paid fat commissions for dreck like 'A Scotch Bestiary', you know you're on to a winner.
The smaller chamber-group approach allows composers like MacMillan fewer places to hide; puts them into competition with other, perhaps very different, composers; and is not so lucrative to composers with highly developed techniques for spinning-out and dressing-up their music. MacMillan would be nobody if this were the predominant method for contemporary music-making. He and his cheerleaders know that, and that's why they write these articles: they're not just 'expressing their opinions' in the wonderful marketplace of ideas, they're making power grabs. It's a particularly transparent one in this case -- only music's mystificatory processes that make it 'natural' and obvious for a composer to be also the conductor and criticiser of his own work, and the refusal to talk about money in any but the vaguest terms, seem to be doing a good job of concealing the process. Certainly I'm sure that if something similar were to be happening in any other industry (outside the arts), posters on the Guardian blogs would be ripping apart the corruption quickly.
It's important that MacMillan & co are not allowed to consolidate their position. I hope that he's getting hysterical because he's worried that he's under threat rather than because he thinks he can squeeze out the competition once and for all.
