Like Boulez, then?


If that was the content what was the context? Contributed to what? I've been googling like mad for something even vaguely like it but no luck. You'd expect the press to like that one...

If I recall correctly, Turnage said something like 'my generation didn't listen to Boulez, Stockhausen and all that stuff, we listened to jazz' (or he might have just said 'serial music' or 'modernist stuff' or whatever, rather than naming particular composers). But there may be several comments along these lines. All around the time of the  'prophet of urban alienation' stuff. Actually, I would reckon that a huge number of people involved in the modernist work he derides also listened to, and appreciated, jazz, and wouldn't wish to assign it any lesser value than post-war modernist traditions, just that some of their engagements with it go rather deeper than just pastiche of a very limited type of jazz. Kind of Blue and Gruppen date from just a few years apart from each other; I'd be happy to assign each an equal value.

Those that I've come across (especially in Germany) who have been least impressed by Blood on the Floor have tended to be those who know a fair bit about jazz. I might argue that Barrett, Finnissy, Hespos, Heyn, Spahlinger, Dusapin and others all relate to aspects of jazz (including free jazz) on a much deeper level, even though their music doesn't tend to obviously sound like it.

And Miles Davis became interested in Stockhausen and Xenakis in the 70s. He even professed a certain influence during his experimental fusion phase.

Aren't those groups of listeners often quite separate in many countries (though I'd reckon that on the whole new music listeners are more interested in older music as well (including much older, pre-baroque music) than vice versa)?

Looking for a positive comment from you on anything at all here. This is not at all an irrelevant point as I see it - if you post negative comments about the entire spectrum of musical endeavour it become very difficult to see any of your comments as meaningful.

Oh, here's one.


Good, you 'rather like' Poppe's Holz. That's some progress. But do you have anything at all positive to say about British music in Germany? Otherwise you do rather come across as an irrelevant whinger - and as a composer yourself you can hardly claim unbiased observer status...

Ah, that's a nice little addendum you edited in. I don't claim unbiased status at all. And I'm sure you've worked with enough composers to know that they're often more acerbic about some of their colleagues than performers, who have to learn to adapt to many aesthetics, are about composers.

Yes,I;ve often found composers' views on other composers to be notoriously unreliable. Britten on Beethoven, Stravinsky on Richard Strauss, Vaughan Williams on Mahler.

Performers,I have found,tend to be cagey about saying anything but polite compliments about other living performers. It might come back to haunt you. One instance where living compesers said unflattering things about one another (Harry and Max) led to many years of resentment.