To be really pedantic here: for a composer to 'write for the masses' (in the sense of writing for what they imagine the 'masses' to be, and what their tastes are) does not necessarily imply a belief in the concept of 'the masses' on the part of one who invokes the possibility or otherwise of such a compositional phenomenon.

Do you think that's really important?   I take a more simplistic attitude to this, that if the audience enjoyed the performance on the day it was given, this is really the only criterion.   Otherwise we get into this hypothetical pantheon of the "Great Composers" and who is anointed to this elite club.  For example, Halevy & Meyerbeer (who are all but shunned today, and if they are played at all it's on the "only modern performance" ticket) were the undisputed titans of their era. Today their scores aren't even good enough to wrap chips in.  Is that because their music pandered to tastes of their day and thus fails to appeal to ours?  Or was it in fact fine music for which we have lost the enthusiasm?  (viz in the way that Lully's music lay unplayed for the whole of the C19th)  Was it a very slow-burn case of the Emperor's New Clothes?  Or have subsequent events poisoned us against a fair assessment of their music? (Especially Wagner's numerous diatribes against Meyerbeer).

Do you think there really is a "stasis" in which we hold composer's works in due high regard,  or isn't there in reality a continuous ebb and flow in these matters?   I remember as a kid that Beethoven was the Alpha & Omega of all composition, but sometime in the early 1980s a Mozart-mania swept him aside (and thus the trail of Haydn that led to him)... as a result Haydn's fortunes have really waned severely.  Elgar is out-of-fashion at the moment,  but probably he'll come back soon. 

Isn't it quite normal, therefore, that some modern composers will be immediately appreciated, and others later?  For example, Harry Partch is enjoying something of a revival at the moment (due in no small part to being championed by Kronos etc),  and he's probably more popular now than in his own lifetime.  Conversely Walter Piston and Elliott Carter have slipped off the visibility gauge entirely, along with poor ol' Menotti, for whom I seem to be a one-man fan-club... at least here in Russia.

Well, maybe. I thought I was allowing composers to be as petty and human around the water-cooler as the rest of us. But you may well be right. I'll visit the Happy Room and sit in the Wilhelm Reich Memorial Orgone Box for a while and see if it perks me up a bit .

I want to believe that argument, but would find it more convincing if a wider spectrum of class, gender, ethnicity was represented within the group of composers. Otherwise it becomes dangerously close to white middle class males making claims of universality for their own particular form of consciousness.

Yes, that's very much what I had in mind when I mischievously picked Meyerbeer and Halevy as examples   I think that alongside the financial imperatives that drove the "showmanship" aspect, there was a real striving for the "fantastical" and even grotesque in their works,  and depicting these scenes in music was all part of the aesthetic....   and as you rightly say, the modern audience is somewhat tuned-out to such scenes.  We will probably have Syd Grew chipping in shortly about "abstract music",  but my own feeling is that one cannot strip-out the stage setting and consider this music in isolation from its context.  If it's really true that it's the audiences own misgivings about the grand-guignol plot material that's the main barrier...  this implies that the music itself might be rather good at portraying the scene... and it's the scene, not the music, that's the problem.

This is really what I had in mind when I suggested that it was not that the music's bloom had faded, or that the paucity of the writing had finally been twigged - but that a different aesthetic prevailed at the time.

Where's Opilec when we need him...? He's actually conducted ROBERT LE DIABLE, so he would be in a position to speak from having really done the piece in front of a modern audience.

Do you think, then, that it's wrong to extrapolate that if audiences can cool to works that were once popular...  that they might not also warm to those which didn't initially meet warm approval?   CARMEN is the obvious case, but TOSCA was a flop at the premiere too, and TABARRO was booed.   In a different way, LADY MAC has been a real slow-burn...  it's really only been in the last 30 years that it's entered the repertoire as a "standard", rather than a curiosity.   

Sorry, I'm butting in here on an extremely interesting line of discussion: but it occurs to me that, given we have 300+ members on this board, 100 of which are posting at all, and about 10 of which are contributing to this thread, there must be a LOT more interested parties out there who have something to say about the topic. Chip in, everyone!

Sorry. As you were. 

Hmm well yes, I've been a bit daunted by the speed with which this thread has grown and lost my way in the arguments a bit (in other words I gave up reading them all... ) but since you are "throwing the floor open" as it were...

I'm about to start a piece for SO at the moment so all of these questions are of course very much on my mind - and that's what they usually are, aren't they? Questions, not necessarily answers...

One of the things that strikes me is the general feeling among composers (of a certain persuasion, at least) of a need to change the SO in some way - whether it be through rearrangement of the performers, regroupings, divisions, omissions, additions, or deliberate subversions of "traditionial" symphonic forms.

I was once at a packed-out pre-concert talk given by Stockhausen before a performance (or rather two performances) of Gruppen, at which he was asked (I think) whether he now wished he hadn't written for so many percussionists or for such a specific platform layout. His reply was that he had really believed at the time (1957) that the new music would call for new concert halls to be built with flexible platform layouts and acoustic designs - and that they would be built; that his fairly exotic and exacting percussion specifications would become commonplace; that the orchestra would become a flexible, adaptable, specialised ensemble capable of absorbing several different conceptions within one programme. I think Boulez has also written about this.

Of course such halls have been conceived and in some cases built (although most new concert halls that I have seen are very much designed to accommodate the core repertoire and precious little else); and percussion certainly has come a long way since the 50s; but the orchestra has, it seems, remained immovably inflexible and resistant to change, redistribution and innovation. Mohammed did not come to the mountain, and therefore, in the case of most composers writing in the medium now, the mountain has come to Mohammed. (I do not exempt myself from this indictment.)

The BBC SSO, with whom I was fortunate to have a working relationship for a few years, have had a fairly flexible approach to some of their programming, particularly where new music is concerned. I've been to a few concerts of theirs in which several pieces used completely different ensembles from within the orchestra, and perhaps one piece for a "typical" SO. Of course the steadying hand of BBC funding gives them increased opportunity to do this. And even the SSO programming decisions (I believe) sometimes came down to the following consideration: OK, so we'd really like to do "X", what shall we programme it with? Well, "Y" would be great...but for "X" we need to hire a [second tuba/second harp/fourth percussionist/sax/fill in the blank...] and we'd have to use it for another piece in the programme too...so that's "Y" out then. Accounting seems to get in the way more than anyone would like - imagine how much worse that must seem from the perspective of a non-BBC orchestra!

I think Richard has mentioned it somewhere before, but I've always thought of how amazing it would be if orchestras had a new-ish piece (say from the last 50-60 years) in every concert (as opposed to, say, a concerto in every concert.....). I've often heard the excuse that if you put a new piece in a programme it dents the audience figure by at least 20% - but surely that has something to do with the fact that most orchestras only programme one or two modern works a year, and the regulars who think they might have to miss a concert or two in the season will invariably pick that one (unless it has a particularly famous soloist propping up the evening, which it won't, as programmers often like to put all their eggs in one basket and go for a blockbuster programme now and again). If an orchestra decided on the new-piece policy for an entire season they might experience an initial drop-off in audience figures but I think that when it became clear that the new piece was part of the package, things would pick up to normal pretty quickly. In fact, regular audience members might start deciding which new pieces they wanted to hear and which they'd rather miss to go and visit the grandkids....

Where all this leaves me with writing a piece I don't know - but I think it's important to try to write the piece you want to and let other people worry abou the programming. The most innovative orchestral music is usually not innovative for the sake of it, but finds new solutions through the new questions that are asked - demanded - by its material. I'm thinking of Le Sacre, Janacek Sinfonietta, Tapiola, Gruppen, Pli Selon Pli, Carter Concerto for Orchestra, Kontrakadenz, Formazione, Jonchaies...to take the last of these as an example, the standard orchestral groupings are preserved, but the types of material that these groups are involved in, and the ways in which they interact, create an almost entirely novel use of the orchestra...

Oh dear, I seem to have gone on rather a lot without actually saying much about music. Sorry, I'll stop now!
Best,
Stuart

Quite. It must be about time orchestras in general took this idea seriously if they don't want Lebrecht's sensationalist prophecies to become reality. I heard recently from a colleague (maybe someone here has a more precise grasp of the details than I have) that the LSO had recently commissioned a bunch of new pieces which aren't getting played because places can't be found for them in the programmes, or because star conductors didn't want to bother learning them, or both.

You won't find me disagreeing with that. Another thing though: because the amount of new orchestral music being commissioned is so small, and because most of that small amount of music is written by composers who don't engage with such issues, there are hardly any opportunities for composers to learn from experience how they might carry that engagement into practice. Which of course feeds into the conservatism already endemic in commissioning policy because so many pieces are perceived not to "work" - and thanks for the kind words about Vanity but both orchestras which have played it have hated it, and sometimes for reasons I ought to have anticipated and avoided (without compromising the musical results) were it not for my total lack of practical experience in the medium.