Are there any 'Great Composers' left?

[dyn]

If one takes the USA as a particular national example, over the period from 1980 onwards we have lost Barber(1981), Hanson(1981), Mennin(1983), Thompson(1984), Creston(1985), Sessions(1985), Persichetti(1987), Thomson(1989), Copland(1990), Bernstein(1990), Siegmeister(1991), Schuman(1992), Flagello(1994), Gould(1996), Hovhaness(2000), Diamond(2005), Rochberg(2005), Dello Joio(2008), Foss(2009), Lees(2010), Carter(2012).

over the period from 1880 to 1912 the world lost
- Brahms
- Verdi
- Liszt
- Wagner
- Bruckner
- Mahler
- Franck
- Saint-Saëns
- Tchaikovsky
- Balakirev
- Borodin
- Rimsky-Korsakov
- Dvořák
- Smetana
- Chabrier
- Gounod
- Raff
- Wolf
- Rheinberger
- etc.
undoubtedly people in 1912 would find it difficult to name more than a few living composers who could compare to those recently-deceased greats on their own merits. yet music evolved, and we weren't starved for great composers through the 20th century. i see no reason why the 21st will be any different.

i agree that it's unlikely the orchestra will survive as an instrument of new music—financial circumstances seem to be turning against orchestras, & tastes among young composers run increasingly towards music that can be easily distributed & performed (e.g. for 1 or 2 performers; electronic music; improvised music, etc)—but as long as people want to hear the music of the past orchestras (in whatever compromised form) will survive, & have a great amount of repertoire to explore even if every living composer were to simply stop writing orchestral music tomorrow.

[ahinton]

Not that it gives me any pleasure to provide this particular link.......but it's a start :)

http://www.wrightmusic.net/pdfs/what-makes-a-great-composer.pdf

If that's indeed a "start", I shudder to imagine what a finish might be! It's amazing what some people can get a doctorate for these days...

[Dundonnell]

Not that it gives me any pleasure to provide this particular link.......but it's a start :)

http://www.wrightmusic.net/pdfs/what-makes-a-great-composer.pdf

If that's indeed a "start", I shudder to imagine what a finish might be! It's amazing what some people can get a doctorate for these days...

I can but agree ;D

[Amphissa]

I can't help but stick my nose into this discussion.

First, I'll pick up on a couple of comments and go from there. Indeed, as Caostotale notes, "The talent is certainly there. The only problem is that the individualism necessary for that talent to flourish is subjected to unprecedented degrees of socioeconomic and cultural 'leveling' that completely devalues their work." And the other has to do with the increasing marginalization of the symphony orchestra.

I think both of these points have merit, but I would put a sightly different spin on them, and they are interrelated.

How many concerts have you attended in recent years that have featured a new symphony by a living composer? I can speak only for my own experience, but for me, it has been close to none.

Orchestras used to commission symphonies from living composers and used to play symphonies by living composers (Copland, Hanson, RVW, etc). Now they commission only short works that can be wedged into a concert program that features two warhorses. It is rare to encounter any extended piece, even a concerto, by a living composer.

Why?

Well, I think three reasons.

1. Modernism. Critics and composers liked it, but audiences hate it  and stay away in droves. The insistence of playing modernist music in concert created among audiences a deep distrust in music by composers whose names they did not recognize. This led to ...
2. The shrunken core repertoire that orchestras play ad nauseum, which offers no platform for grand works by living composers. (With very rare exceptions.)
3. The continuation of this self-destructive cycle by playinmg only music by living composers that is heavily modernist or minimalist, rather than reinvigorating concert programming with music that the audience is unfamiliar with but is tryuly accessible for them.

So, the question is, where would a composer find a path to greatness today?

Or maybe the question should be, must we redefine "great" in order to accommodate the limitations of today's art music scene? Are we looking in the wrong place for great composers? Might they be, by necessity, directing their talent elsewhere?

[Dundonnell]

I agree with you.

I cannot recall how many times I have listened to a piece of modern but "accessible" music and thought "that would go down a storm at a Proms concert or indeed any concert.....if only it was given the chance!"

And...yes, of course I need to add the usual qualifications to my comment ::) What do I mean by "accessible" ??? "Accessible" to whom ??? Why should "only accessible" music get a look in ???

I was attacked (I may say on another forum but in a quite vicious private message ::)) for "promoting tonal music" and "systematically seeking to denigrate" atonality and the most modern and complex music. I can only show enthusiasm for the music I like and, continually, express my regret at not understanding or appreciating the music I do not like.

If audiences are to be encouraged to listen to music outside their familiar "comfort zone" of the romantic warhorses then I am not sure that including a short piece of ultra-modern music will do any good at all. Audiences have to be educated to accept the unfamiliar but that process would be better served by encouraging them to listen to "big pieces" which do not scare them away. It was-at least-encouraging that a large number turned up earlier this year for a London Proms concert which consisted of three Vaughan Williams symphonies back to back (which would have been considered "box-office death" not so long ago). Why on earth American orchestras no longer play music by composers like Piston, Schuman and Mennin(to name but three extraordinarily fine American composers) is beyond me. Well....actually, it isn't :( The conductors of the big American orchestras (now that Gerard Schwarz has left Seattle) just don't seem interested in the rich heritage of American symphonic music :( :(

Instead, we get death by Mahler ::) Now..don't get me wrong ;D Mahler was a great composer and his symphonies ARE towering masterpieces BUT the current obsession with including a Mahler symphony has become the standard test by which young conductors feel that they have to prove their credentials. (I have this second-hand from a young conductor ;D) If, say, a Franz Schmidt symphony was included in a concert for every tenth time a Mahler symphony was performed then maybe audiences would realise that there is great music around apart from the more familiar names.

So....having, as usual, rambled ;D Programme a concert in-let's say, New York. Get a famous pianist to play the Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No.2 (let's say), but put the Rachmaninov AFTER the interval and programme an Ellen Taaffe Zwilich symphony (to pick a living American composer) BEFORE the interval so that the audience cannot leave before the concerto.

Just an idea...... :)

[Caostotale]

Well, I think three reasons.

1. Modernism. Critics and composers liked it, but audiences hate it  and stay away in droves. The insistence of playing modernist music in concert created among audiences a deep distrust in music by composers whose names they did not recognize. This led to
2. The shrunken core repertoire that orchestras play ad nauseum, which offers no platform for grand works by living composers. (With very rare exceptions.)
3. The continuation of this self-destructive cycle by playinmg only music by living composers that is heavily modernist or minimalist, rather than reinvigorating concert programming with music that the audience is unfamiliar with but is tryuly accessible for them.

So, the question is, where would a composer find a path to greatness today?

Or maybe the question should be, must we redefine "great" in order to accommodate the limitations of today's art music scene? Are we looking in the wrong place for great composers? Might they be, by necessity, directing their talent elsewhere?

Though I don't think it's really possible to win back audiences to an art form that requires attentiveness and spiritual/intellectual depths exceeding those of a frisbee, I think it could only be useful to find ways to pull classical music out of the academic world's clutches. Akin to the outermost realms of particle physics research, the most advanced avant-garde music intellectuals have long since had anything useful to offer back to the public and only serve to blow through the latter's tax dollars and erode away the educative qualities of the institutions they occupy. I'm not asking that music become populist, but I'm fairly certain that nothing else good can come from giving scholarship money to some privileged musicologist who's hard at work on the next post-structuralist analyses of the works of Cage, Wolff, and Stockhausen.

[Dundonnell]

Wasn't it Morton Feldman who stated that he had absolutely no interest in whether his listeners understood his music or not ???

On the one hand I can understand the artist/composer's desire to create something which reflects his own intentions/motivations/purpose and therefore embodies an individual aesthetic but-in my humble opinion-any work of art (whether painting or piece of music) needs to communicate something meaningful to the viewer or listener if it is to have an existence outside of the individual world of the creator.

That does not mean that the composer has an obligation to pander to the lowest common denominator of popular taste. He can-and should-challenge the listener but he cannot effectively challenge if he alienates and repels. There has to be a middle-ground of initial engagement and-to my mind-the ultra-modernist composers singularly failed to engage the sympathies of the overwhelming majority of the music-loving public. The result was to drive that majority away from most modern music into a 19th and early 20th century bunker of Romanticism and to shut their ears to those 20th century composers who were writing music which could and would appeal to them if they were given a chance to hear it. There is nothing impossibly difficult in the work of so many 20th century composers whose music can and does communicate effectively. The indictment of the ultra-modernists-and I am thinking of people like Pierre Boulez and the other Darmstadt composers (though Boulez has now recanted)-is that they refused to accept the music of a composer like Hans Werner Henze who tried to combine a modern approach but built on the foundations of past tradition.

Throw away the past and the listener is left adrift on an alien sea and seeks the security and safety of dry land.

[Caostotale]

I don't think that composers should be subject to any compositional standards whatsoever. I just don't think that the public should be subsidizing the insular work of the ivory tower, which to me is representative of a perverse 'feudalism' that has no place in contemporary life.

Sometimes I feel like well-run record labels do a better job of promoting good music and fostering good music appreciation habits than music schools do. Following labels like Naxos and Albany Records for a few years could teach a curious musician tons more than listening to some tenured a-hole professor ramble on about just about anything. Similarly, I feel like most composition programs don't do nearly enough to emphasize the need for musicians to become decent musical historians before they become wretched self-promoters of the esoteric or otherwise 'unique little snowflakes.'

I'm not trying to offend anybody who happens to work in academia, but these are problems that exist in almost every field of advanced thought, ranging from the sciences to the arts and humanities. A lot of this has been fresh on my mind, having come off another semester where I have to listen to my man-brat professors complain about the fact that America doesn't invest truckloads of cash on things like the space program like they used to.

[dyn]

How many concerts have you attended in recent years that have featured a new symphony by a living composer? I can speak only for my own experience, but for me, it has been close to none.

well, again, that raises the question: how many living composers care to write symphonies any more? not that many, and i imagine most of them are of an older generation....

Well, I think three reasons.

1. Modernism. Critics and composers liked it, but audiences hate it  and stay away in droves. The insistence of playing modernist music in concert created among audiences a deep distrust in music by composers whose names they did not recognize. This led to ...

in fairness, the "classical music" audience basically fractured. Xenakis, Cage and Stockhausen are a bigger audience draw than e.g. Creston or Vaughan Williams or Ginastera (all of whom i admire just as much) but it's a different audience going to see the former than the latter. people who go to hear Boulez and Ligeti don't care to hear Beethoven and Brahms, either.

2. The shrunken core repertoire that orchestras play ad nauseum, which offers no platform for grand works by living composers. (With very rare exceptions.)

the modern symphony orchestra offers a platform for grand works by living composers to be played once and subsequently forgotten. what's needed is some way of ensuring second performances of premieres >.>

Or maybe the question should be, must we redefine "great" in order to accommodate the limitations of today's art music scene? Are we looking in the wrong place for great composers? Might they be, by necessity, directing their talent elsewhere?

due to the limitations of the orchestra—financial & social rather than artistic—many of the composers whose music i've found the most beautiful have turned away from it and write mainly for smaller groups of instruments, and/or electronics. but then each person's criteria of beauty are different. for instance, i find that Luigi Nono wrote some of the most beautiful and immediate music of the past hundred years, but others might find in his work only ugliness and disinterest.

Similarly, I feel like most composition programs don't do nearly enough to emphasize the need for musicians to become decent musical historians before they become wretched self-promoters of the esoteric or otherwise 'unique little snowflakes.'

as a graduate of a composition programme i should mention that "academic" music is essentially a thing of the past. in my year a composer who wrote in a style highly redolent of Delius and Vaughan Williams coexisted peacefully with a composer interested in the most up-to-date experimentalism of Peter Ablinger and Aaron Cassidy. the whole notion that one must write in an esoteric or "modern" style has fallen by the wayside of late.

[dyn]

I agree with you.

I cannot recall how many times I have listened to a piece of modern but "accessible" music and thought "that would go down a storm at a Proms concert or indeed any concert.....if only it was given the chance!"

the Proms at least do regularly feature modern "accessible" music by the likes of Judith Weir, Robin Holloway, James MacMillan, John Tavener, Huw Watkins, Arvo Pärt etc... i mean, whether you think it's any good is another matter, but it's hard to dismiss it as "modernist" :P

[Caostotale]

Composers like Arvo Pärt and the like sound closer to new age or film music composers and, as such, are largely riding through their careers due to the same public appeal that made Vangelis and Philip Glass successful. Alongside that shallow market success, the critical validation of the 'holy minimalist' thing in eastern Europe is somewhat troubling to me because it kind of feels like the West is only interested in hearing those countries constantly assuring us that they are 'rediscovering' religion and still in mourning over the tragedies of WWII and communism.

It's been somewhat reassuring to see new releases from composers like Heino Eller and Grazyna Bacewicz these past few years. I'd much rather see either of them in concert than another rendition of Part's 'Fratres' or 'Spiegel im Spiegel' or pretty much any of Gorecki's latter-day utterances.

[kyjo]

Composers like Arvo Pärt and the like sound closer to new age or film music composers and, as such, are largely riding through their careers due to the same public appeal that made Vangelis and Philip Glass successful. Alongside that shallow market success, the critical validation of the 'holy minimalist' thing in eastern Europe is somewhat troubling to me because it kind of feels like the West is only interested in hearing those countries constantly assuring us that they are 'rediscovering' religion and still in mourning over the tragedies of WWII and communism.

It's been somewhat reassuring to see new releases from composers like Heino Eller and Grazyna Bacewicz these past few years. I'd much rather see either of them in concert than another rendition of Part's 'Fratres' or 'Spiegel im Spiegel' or pretty much any of Gorecki's latter-day utterances.

Hear, hear :)