Prom of 2011, Audience choice program

[t-p]

I am listening to  this strange program. I think it is very interesting .

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b018ntn1

It will be available on listen again if anyone is interested.

The audience selected to hear Kodaly music.

I thought it was very interesting idea .

[Neil McGowan]

The audience selected to hear Kodaly music.

Well, it's a Hungarian orchestra :)

[t-p]

I liked the idea that audience selects what they want to listen to.
People have to be able to express themselves. Orchestras are playing for people.

Today there was interesting view by Heffer on Music Matter. I agree with what he says and the need to take the audience into account while writing music.

After Stephen Heffer there was interview with composer Goehr. It was also interesting to hear what he says about times of his youth and aspirations of composers then.

[guest54]

. . . there was interview with composer Goehr. It was also interesting to hear what he says about times of his youth and aspirations of composers then.

Ooh thank you Madame P! I have long been one of his admirers; I will fire up the "listen again" contraption and hear what he has to say.

[t-p]

Goehr mentioned BBC controler Glock and how much he did for young composers etc. 
I found something on the net about Glock.  He is not as black and white as I thought. Here is an article about him. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/petroctrelawny/100047644/sir-william-glock-of-the-bbc-hero-or-villain-of-british-music/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81JD1dSGCog&feature=endscreen&NR=1

[ahinton]

I liked the idea that audience selects what they want to listen to.
People have to be able to express themselves. Orchestras are playing for people.

Today there was interesting view by Heffer on Music Matter. I agree with what he says and the need to take the audience into account while writing music.

After Stephen Heffer there was interview with composer Goehr. It was also interesting to hear what he says about times of his youth and aspirations of composers then.

Don't you mean Simon Heffer? He writes quite a lote of sense in various places but his idea of taking the audience into account while writing music is a no-no; it simply cannot be done. Who IS the audience? How many different things can THEY want? What do THEY expect of the composer (I write this as a composer myself). The logic here begins with the obvious fact that an "audience" inevitably comprises a goup of people with almost as many expectations as there are people within it. None of this is, of course, to say that a composer needn't care about what an audience might think of his/her work, but that the time to concern him/herself with such matters is after they've listened to his/her music, not before or during the writing of it. And, even then, one has also to take into consideration whether or not and to what extent the performance has represented it well enough to ensure that an audience is at least able to respond to what the composer intended.

[Neil McGowan]

Don't you mean Simon Heffer? He writes quite a lote of sense in various places

But not in the Daily Telegraph - from which he was fired for pursuing an agenda on behalf of the UKIP. Heffer is a particular ignorant kind of man who has never written a "lote" of sense anywhere.  His published views about Valery Gergiev have earned him my lifelong damnation.

but his idea of taking the audience into account while writing music is a no-no; it simply cannot be done.

According to you.  It's an issue which has rumbled away in the background for centuries. Medtner and Rachmaninov famously disagreed about it.  Medtner said you can't take the audience into account.  Rachmaninov said you must take the audience into account.

Probably it's why Medtner was ignored for such a long time.

[ahinton]

According to you.  It's an issue which has rumbled away in the background for centuries. Medtner and Rachmaninov famously disagreed about it.  Medtner said you can't take the audience into account.  Rachmaninov said you must take the audience into account.

Probably it's why Medtner was ignored for such a long time.

No, not only according to me - nor even only to those composers who happen to have said similar things on the subject - but according to logic. If you don't know of whom any audience at any given time will comprise, how can you possibly "consider" them en masse in advance when writing? It just isn't possible. As I said, but you apparently saw fit to overlook), most audiences consist of people with different expectations, so we're already in the world of "you can't please all of the audience all of the time". You're right about Medtner and Rachmaninov, of course - yet how was it that the latter "considered" his audiences when writing? And what does it say about those audiences that, in the past quarter century or so of his life, he saw fit to produce but a handful of works (most unfortunately - and wonderful as those works are). Medtner, howver, didn't seek to alienate his audience; he wrote in a way that he felt best represented his own personal thoughts - and to take your final salvo here, why is it that Medtner is no longer ignored?! His music hasn't changed, after all - so have audiences done so instead, in your view?

By the way, I do not by any means seek to sugest that Heffer writes sense ALL of the time; in fact, having since had a brief glance at some of it, I do wonder if indeed I ought to retract that statement for the sake of balance!...

[Neil McGowan]

If you don't know of whom any audience at any given time will comprise, how can you possibly "consider" them en masse in advance when writing? It just isn't possible.

How strange!  Because in my somewhat extensive experience of attending contemporary music concerts, the audience usually comprises the composer's mates.

In cases where the work is a commission, then the metrics of the audience for the commissioning performer, ensemble, orchestra, concert-hall or opera-house are usually extremely well-known.  I went to a concert at Schott's recently, and the audience was predominantly white British males over 50 with university education.

I do wonder if indeed I ought to retract that statement for the sake of balance!...

I would do so, in your position.  Endorsing the views of a revanchist loony like Heffer - whose opinions are so intolerant as to cause even the Daily Torygraph to dispense with his services - is hardly likely to win you many friends. 



Except perhaps amongst this lot.

[ahinton]

If you don't know of whom any audience at any given time will comprise, how can you possibly "consider" them en masse in advance when writing? It just isn't possible.

How strange!  Because in my somewhat extensive experience of attending contemporary music concerts, the audience usually comprises the composer's mates.

But even if that happens to be true and even if your experience is shared by some others, this admission tells us nothing about how anyone can write music that is going to appeal to large audiences comprising of people with widely differing expectations. Perhaps if you can explain that to me, I might learn something.

I think that a lot of the problem with what you write about here is down to the sidelining of music as an allegedly élitist preoccupation, written by élitists to be performed by élitists before élitist audiences - and I'd be the first to admit that this situation does indeed constitute a massive problem today. But what to do? Take, for example, two relatively recent and very different orchestral works by British composers born within weeks of one another in 1943 - Plötzlichkeit and Symphony No. 6, respectively by Brian Ferneyhough and David Matthews; each has been well received by audiences that have not been especially small and certainly not comprised only of their respective composers' mates, yet how many more performances will they get and how soon? I somehow suspect that neither composdr gave overmuch thought to how their audiences would respond to them while they were engaged on writing them.

In cases where the work is a commission, then the metrics of the audience for the commissioning performer, ensemble, orchestra, concert-hall or opera-house are usually extremely well-known.  I went to a concert at Schott's recently, and the audience was predominantly white British males over 50 with university education.

That may well be the case in certain instances but what might this tell us, if anything, about the prospects for future performances? - and, having attended several performances at Schotts including those with works of my own and one in which all the sonatas by Scriabin were performed as a single cycle with one interval, I can say from experience that it's very hard to get more than a couple of dozen listeners into that performance space in any case so, worthy as it is, I'm not so sure that it's an especially good example here.

No, I think that there are more fundamental problems at work here than those that can so easily and complacently be written off by this world's Heffers by merely implying - rather absurdly about an art which is predicated on communication - that composers do it solely for themselves and their mates these days and couldn't care less about anyone else.

I do wonder if indeed I ought to retract that statement for the sake of balance!...

I would do so, in your position.  Endorsing the views of a revanchist loony like Heffer - whose opinions are so intolerant as to cause even the Daily Torygraph to dispense with his services - is hardly likely to win you many friends.

Whilst I'm not into winning friends as a principal motivation in making newsgroup posts, I thought that I'd just made my doubts clear in this instance, given that it would sem that the proportion of good sense in his writing is evidently smaller than I had previously thought! so - point taken nevertheless...

[Neil McGowan]

I can say from experience that it's very hard to get more than a couple of dozen listeners into that performance space in any case so, worthy as it is, I'm not so sure that it's an especially good example here.

I believe there are 30 seats. Whether they are filled by those personally known to the performers/composers, or by a more general public, is not at issue.  So the example stands.

[ahinton]

I can say from experience that it's very hard to get more than a couple of dozen listeners into that performance space in any case so, worthy as it is, I'm not so sure that it's an especially good example here.

I believe there are 30 seats. Whether they are filled by those personally known to the performers/composers, or by a more general public, is not at issue.  So the example stands.

As an example to endorse what you wrote, it's a very poor one; for one thing, as the place cannot accommodate more than that number, it wouldn't matter how many non-composer's-mates might come along or even how many mates the composer might have who'd want to do so and, for another, I've attended performances there including enough works by deceased composers to accept that the same inevitably applies to audience numbers for their works there.