I see two crucial problems here.

Firstly, someone (who?) has to decide exactly and objectively what "critical composition" means, and establish a threshold of "criticality" above which a composer receives the thumbs up. Let's say that's possible. This would then simply give composers a set of criteria they have to fulfil in order for subsidy to be provided. So there is no way of knowing whether they are being "critical" or just pretending to be so in order to get their commission fee. This smacks to me of Stalinism.

Secondly, is it realistic to think that any conceivable government-funded institution in the UK is going to fund only that artistic activity which explicitly or implicitly questions the entire system of which that government is a central element? I don't think so.

The term 'critical composition' may have been coined by N.A. Huber, but I would say the basic concept goes back much further. And in one sense or another, it has been used by both its proponents and detractors to characterise music going back centuries. The most obvious example comes from Adorno's view of Beethoven, arguably drawing upon certain aspects of early romantic ideology (ones which I certainly wouldn't reject wholeheartedly) but conceiving them in post-Marxist terms. To put it in highly simplifying terms (always a big danger when trying to summarise the notoriously un-summarisable Adorno), with Beethoven comes a new model of compositional subjectivity, whereby the composer's primary aim is no longer to please, to be the servant of, their audience. In early romantic terms the alternative is conceived in individualistic terms, so that the composer answers to no-one and nothing other than their own convictions, desires, instincts, will. In Adorno's terms (as I say, I simplify) Beethoven was giving expression to a less individualistic conception, the will of the revolutionary bourgeoisie - though as this class fails to extend to the proletariat the rights it has gained through overthrowing fedalism, they become increasingly conservative and reactionary, leading the revolutionary artist to turn inwards (as Adorno would portray the later Beethoven). Whether or not one accepts Adorno's model, many have concluded that Beethoven entered into a different relationship with his aristocractic audience than had been the case with many earlier composers (including Haydn and to a lesser extent Mozart); Beethoven's own cult of genius was markedly at odds with a subservient view of the composer. But at the same time Beethoven ultimately turns away from being the servant of the class from which he came (Adorno argued that a better representative of this course of action would be Rossini); hence how Adorno could conceive the whole trajectory of the nineteenth century, with the increasing alienation of the artist from the public, as being prefigured in the course of Beethoven's compositional path.

For the detractors of this point of view or even of Beethoven, this constitutes a most 'anti-social' approach to composition (this is Richard Taruskin's term for it). Taruskin is particularly relevant in this context as one ofthe most articulate critics of this aesthetic, which he identifies going further back in history, at least to Josquin, possibly even to the Troubadours. Adorno's renowned essay 'Bach Defended Against His Devotees', written in response to the adulation of the 'timeless' conception of Bach that accompanied the bicentennial of Bach's death in 1950 in both West and East Germany, can be read as a counter-portrayal of Bach as writing music which exists in a critical relationship to the conventions he inhabited (and actually effecting a synthesis of Enlightenment principles together with an inhabitation of what in his time to many seemed archaic forms). Adorno portrays Bach as at odds with both the more 'conservative' and 'progressive' tendencies of his time, following some higher convictions rather than assimilating his work within existing aesthetic norms and expectations. This again entails a certain estrangement of the composer from their audience, precisely the thing Taruskin decries (he criticises Josquin's notorious prickliness and refusal to simply write what was asked of him by his patrons, in similar terms, and contrasts him unfavourably with the more compliant Isaac). The construction of Josquin as a type of 'Beethoven of the Renaissance' is a quintessential by-product of advanced romantic individualistic thinking, which Taruskin attacks from beginning to end of his Oxford History (as have various other New Musicologists).

Where was a progressive artist to go when they no longer felt at one with the ideals of the class from which they came, especially when that class becomes drawn to a form of mass culture whose characteristics are markedly at odds with their own aesthetic ideals? Flaubert or Baudelaire (I feel the latter case is rather complex, though) would make something of a virtue of their palpable distance from their bourgeois audiences (Flaubert wrote, I think to George Sand, that 'to hate the bourgeoisie is a moral imperative' or words to that effect) and some would argue that their own early modernism was predicated upon a deliberate desire to cultivate exclusivity and disdainful contempt for the audience. I find it hard to think of any major composers in quite this way, perhaps because of the inevitably more public nature of musical performance. Brahms's response is quite unique, a mixture of an intense historicism coupled with an askew relationship to the very traditions that he had absorbed as well as anyone, which is nothing if not Bachian (much though many other Bach admirers would not have seen Bach in the same way); Wagner, on the other hand, tried not so much to pander to his audience as to dominate it, a mixture of quasi-aristocratic disdain with cynical populism (rather like the mentality of one who produces adverts, trying on one hand to seduce their audience, whilst treating them with contempt) that probably is not found again until in the radically different work of Stravinsky. But modernism of one form or another does, in my view, take the crisis in early romanticism as its starting point, to such an extent that a continuity is perceivable.

And from there onwards it is possible to perceive in a significant amount of 'art' music an estranged relationship between the work and the aesthetic desires of the existing audience. And to some (including myself) it's not just important, but vital, that it is possible for an art which exceeds or places itself at odds with existing tastes and expectations to be able to exist and develop. Therein lies a certain 19th century conception of 'art', as distinct from 'entertainment' (which to all intents and purposes fulfils, or at least nurtures, those expectations - though this can take various forms); this conception still has much going for it, in my view. But Adorno identified, as acutely as anyone (and I've yet to see a convincing response to this issue), the paradox, when discussing Schoenberg in the Philosophy of New Music (I don't have my copy here, or else I would give the exact quote) - basically that in order for music to be able to comment with some critical perspective upon the very society it inhabits, as sedimented in aesthetic norms, it must distance itself from those norms; but in the process of so doing, it also estranges itself from an audience, and thus forfeits the possibility of being able to have a significant impact.

The relationship of this issue to that of public subsidy depends to some extent upon one's perspective of the workings of market capitalism. From a broadly pro-capitalist view (such as that in Pollard's article), music which has to prove itself in the marketplace is forced to win audience's and thus somehow connect with a wider public. Music that is bolstered by state subsidy, according to this view, has no such need, and can continue to pursue some purely elitist ends oblivious of public wishes. I wouldn't disagree with this model in all respects, but would valorise it very differently. State subsidy allows for the possibility of the type of music that opens up different realms of experience, individualised perspectives upon aesthetic norms, critical responses to society in its aesthetic manifestation. Adorno's concept of aesthetic 'autonomy' is somewhat different to this, and doesn't really entail the same sort of consciously 'critical' relationship; his 'critique' can be manifested even through a sort of naivete or obliviousness to such norms (in this sense, if no other, Adorno maintains a utopian streak; and for these types of reasons he could never accept the type of knowing critique to be found in Brecht; and I doubt he would have had much time for the later, arguably rather calculated, Kagel, either).

The problem, as I see it, comes from the fact that a subsidised musical world also allows for, possibly even encourages, rather less exalted ideals. Simply being 'unpopular' has no intrinsic value of its own - I doubt there are many who would say it does - but it's not so far from this to a position which certainly does exist (and has done since the late 19th century), that of snobbish aestheticism. I see this as adherence (even rigidly) to certain absolutist notions of 'taste', with the essential proviso that these are only perceptible or accessible to a cultivated minority. And that to me amounts to nothing more than populism restricted to an elite, which is a type of neo-feudalist attitude (just as many defensive responses to capitalist mass culture hearkened back to pre-bourgeois-democratic societies in which certain types of artists maintained a certain status). A broader extension of this can be found in a lot of music that, as I see it, takes a populist view in the knowledge that only a particular minority audience (or, worse, the administrators of a musical infrastructure - hence pieces designed to go down well amongst those who run the 'festival circuit') are likely to partake of it. But what is there in such music that gives it a special status over and above more obviously populist music (popular music that aims for the widest audience), other than the fact that its own target audience tends to come from a social elite (in terms of class, gender, etc.)? Why does it deserve subsidy more so than, say, various types of minority interest popular music - some of which have died out when they have no longer been able to maintain a large enough audience; arguably the same fate would befall a good deal of contemporary 'classical' music if it had to exist under the same conditions. But why then is the latter assumed to have a greater claim to be propped up than the former?

[This is getting long, I know, and may be internally self-contradictory - this is in part because I don't have any easy solutions to these very complex issues]. But back to the issue of perceptions of the workings of capitalism. Is music that has to gain audiences, through selling tickets or recordings, more responsive (through necessity) to the wishes of its audience? Are consumers' purchasing habits (in the sense of what music they are most prepared to buy) a mirror of their tastes and desires (the view of those who buy the 'marketplace as a democracy' argument, still intrinsic to much American ideology in particular, and certainly underlying the arguments of many of the New Musicologists), or, to take the opposite extreme, are the two things essentially unconnected? And if the latter, why do they buy them? Are they simply duped by marketing and promotion into buying things they don't really want, whereas an enlightened few know better what they really want, or ought to want (despite portraying it in this manner, I don't dismiss this argument completely)? And even without the last proviso (or if one takes a middleground position by which market behaviour doesn't simply mirror consumers' desires but nor is it independent of them), what is a better way of gauging what music listeners want to hear?

One way out from this that some propagate is the 'long term' argument, itself also a legacy of a particular type of romantic ideology. This argument maintains that whilst certain music may be unpopular at first, eventually audiences will come round to it (the 'unrecognised in their lifetime' ideology of the artist). Whilst, say, audiences for Schoenberg or Stockhausen are a little bigger now than they once were, I really don't buy this argument at all: the majority of 'difficult' music at least from the 20th century (and a good deal of that from earlier centuries as well) has never gained anything more than the support of a very small minority. The difference between having 1000 or 10000 enthusiasts (or even simply those who are prepared to give it any sort of hearing) pales into insignificance when there is much other ('popular') music which can easily count audiences of many millions. Concert programmers are well aware that programming Schoenberg or Webern will lead to an instant decrease in audience that is not true for various earlier composers, a long time after their deaths.

So the argument I come back to for the support of minority music is the 'critical composition' one. To pretend that such music could actually effect significant social change would be hopelessly utopian, but on the other hand I'd say that a society that has no place for such music (or culture in general) is one which correspondingly diminishes the possibility of such change (which does not necessarily have to be of a revolutionary nature) through the boundaries it places upon consciousness. But even this argument becomes problematic when one asks whether in reality subsidised music enables this any better than other forms of musical production. Many New Musicologists would argue that popular music, that existing according to market conditions alone (McClary is most explicit about this) has demonstrated an openness to the participation of women, African-Americans and other 'other' groups to a much greater extent than has contemporary classical music, which remains overwhelmingly a white male preserve. And I would be hard pressed to refute this argument, though would qualify it by suggesting that very often (thought not always) such groups can only participate to the extent that they, through their work, conform to pre-existing reified expectations of what they are supposed to represent. But does Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz represent any less of a 'critical' form of composition than Stockhausen's Carré or Nono's Intollerenza 1960, to take two works written at the same time, despite the fact that the latter two were produced in subsidised conditions whereas the former wasn't? And if not (and extending those comparisons further in time), does the argument that subsidy is more likely to produce such a result hold up? And when all of these figures have been canonised in their own way, so that their social meanings become less about a critical relationship to existing norms so much as being part of a hallowed exaltation of canonical 'great men', are such critical possibilities any longer meaningful?

I do still believe, deep down, that subsidised music might be more likely to enable such a possibility, but it should by no means be taken for granted that it will do so. Much perhaps has to do with the ways in which it is organised and distributed, also to do with a greater degree of genuine democratic accountability which does not fight shy of making the case for the 'unpopular' if it can be shown to have some wider critical possibilities (I do not believe it is impossible to convince a wider public of the value of such an approach). But we seem to be a long way from that at present.

Well, all subsidy decisions require some sort of criteria (or, if they don't, they are likely to be mostly about simply whether the individuals applying for the subsidy have the right connections with those distributing it, a situation I fear is far too common today). If judging the 'criticality' of certain work in order to gauge its eligibility for subsidy is Stalinist, how is it any more so than any other criteria? Is it worse than a criteria of audience figures?

I'm not so sure whether government is at the heart of the issue here, so much as a wider type of collective consciousness that exists in society. I don't buy the 'people vs. state' argument at all, at least in the West (if that were the case, wouldn't the people be likely to lend much more support to parties outside of the mainstream)?

No, it's a characteristic of the work these composers produce. I'm not really interested in them in individuals, any more than anyone else.

That in itself is a very different argument from denying (or at least being sceptical of) whether the extent to which a work (which can include a performance or recording rather than a notated composition) or body of work can serve a critical function is somehow related to properties of the work itself. As I said before, I can see why at least at one point in time punk could have a critical function, whereas I can never see that being true of Knussen.

If critical function is something essentially brought from outside and unrelated to the work produced, then there's probably no point in anyone even bothering to try (and indeed, most composers in the UK do not and are happy to produce entertainment with snobbery).

But I don't see this sort of argument as being anything more than nit-picking and pedantry. Tell me something I haven't heard many times before?


No, I just don't see how the middlebrow music that constitutes the mainstream demonstrates anything else that would differentiate it from entertainment other than its snob value. That's a very different situation from the inevitable social estrangement whilst possibly entailing some wider social meaning that Adorno identified in Schoenberg.

I'm still not quite sure about this whole 'critical' thing (I need to re-read Ian's post, and then all of Adorno... ), but I do think that music (and, by extension, any other art) deserving of public subsidy has an obligation to be 'interrogative'. The subject(s) of interrogation in this instance is not necessarily predefined, or limited in number for a given work, but speaking for myself I can't imagine working with a mindset that wasn't interrogative of both the human experience, and the last thousand years of music history and its associated received concepts of musicality. Music with 'merely reiterates reified norm' is light-years away from the ideals of most (all?) funding bodies and, I would hope, most artists.

But I suspect that most 'artists' who are merely 'reiterating reified norm' are unaware that they are doing so. In Australia (and elsewhere?), there is a certain brand of composer that loudly proclaims their allegiance to some over-arching 'Postmodernist Project', while writing jazz-fusion for orchestra. Such a literal replication of extant musical style (albeit in a non-standard medium) smacks to me of a retreat from the questioning of received wisdom that forms such an important part of postmodern thought. But then, in my experience, very few of these composers know much about modernism/postmodernism at all (except in a kind of music-history-for-dummies, 'Shoenberg-invented-modernism-and-it-sounded-bad-so-then-we-had-postmodernism' kind of way  ). And I'm hardly an expert myself.

I wonder what the effect is of the (seemingly ever-increasing) chasm between 'culture' and experiential norm? If it's possible for the majority of the population to exist one's entire life reducing music to the role of a kind of 'soundtrack' to their lives, rather than as 'art', then what implications does that have for the possibility of music articulating anything at all? I suspect that this sense of 'entrapment' by popular culture is reflecting itself in the work of an increasing number of (particularly American) composers of my generation - Aaron Cassidy, Evan Johnson, Timothy McCormack, myself - but is a trend that's been manifesting since the mid-to-late 1980's.

Just some ill-considered ruminations... 

This is implicitly a reply to what has followed richard's post, but his responses to me seemed the best context to place them in.

"Threshold"? "Set of criteria to fulfill"? This is far too bureaucratic. The notion of a critical composition is an open, complex process that can only avoid calcification if it is debated and shaped by the perspectives of musicians of many stripes, ones who have a personal, existential stake in the state of contemporary music.

The 'someone' in your first sentence cannot really be a functionary of the government. His or her mandate is not answerable to a governmental message. This is all outlined in the foundational laws of the German öffentliches Recht. I don't know if it's the same in the UK. If it's a ministry who is answerable to one Great Leader, then yes, it's bound to evolve into something distinctly Stalinistic.

All of these problems are wonderfully complex. But the fact that they are debated with much heat among people who are connected by a shared enthusiasm for music as a whole is I think a good sign and point of departure. But each person involved has to be ready to turn a critical eye on their own work and their own position.

One problem with subsidy is that rather than upgrading the invisible to the merely visible the otherwise invisible becomes the only show in town.

This might be moving things into a different area, though, IRF: a hard working "pop" band may be to be able to be able to keep going in some form or another without a subsidy (playing in pubs and for functions for example), whilst a contemporary music group would just cease to exist. The "pop" band would be likely to be writing and performing its own music, too: with contemporary music, the creators and performers are less likely to be one and the same: take away the subsidies from either, let alone both, and the chance of survival is very considerably diminished.

Perhaps it should also be posited that contemporary music doesn't really exist in a vacuum: its time-line extends forward, and as it does, what is seen as outlandish and of minority interest at a work or movement's inception may later feed into the mainstream. Historically, the providers of subsidies were the rich and the church, with an implicit belief that the human race might be 'bettered' in some way were it to be provided with High Art: what may have been the preserve of the few then tends to become trickled-down to a wider acceptance with the passage of time. Without those past subsidies, huge swaths of what many hold to be exceptional in many fields - not just music, but the plastic arts including architecture would just never have come to be. As has been pointed out already, the present world situation sees increasing wealth being amassed by a diminishing percentage whose main aim appears to be amassing even more. The sense of philanthropy shown by the wealthy in the past is of no interest to many of the present super-rich: the snapping up of existing art as an investment is of far more importance to them.

Whilst protecting minority interests with subsidies could be seen as merely pandering to elitism, what has happened to British broadcasting over the past twenty years or so suggests to me that it also helps to establish a type of protection boundary for much else: that without a will to maintain at least vestigial support for product aimed at a minority audience, the whole structure erodes and implodes, and all that's left is an amorphous mass of harmless material that will appeal to all without offering any value or challenge: lowest common denominator dreck, with 'classical music' reduced to crossover and synthesiser-realised film scores.

Once the tradition is lost, it can't be reconstructed.  I fear we're near enough that already.