What are the most annoying things about modern composers?

[Anonden]

@ahinton: I meant the second one. That was long, and arguably a little verbose, which fitted in with the discussion you were having about [over-]explaining a work. Which didn't bother me, I just didn't read the whole thing through, instead skimming it.

((First post on page five - Law of Fives!))

[Toby Esterhase]

IMHO some works seem horror movies's soundtracks

That's what you know, versus knowing what you see. As in, the other came before one, and it's time to pay the piper in understanding authority. Else, your listening is.....irrelevant.

Surely it meant nothing to me—but as it apparently meant a lot to a lot of other people I daresay it is all my own fault

Best

[Jolly Roger]

These is always an issue of semantics when discussing such vague topics, but there is generally one type of modern music that I cannot endure.
This is what I would describe as "bang on a can" esoteric music which makes a fetish of sounds and timbres. Clever titles and manipulated audio cannot disguise a lack of talent and I refuse to waste my time trying to detect a meaningful message. I feel as though these composers are actually making fun of their listeners.

[ahinton]

@ahinton: I meant the second one. That was long, and arguably a little verbose, which fit with the discussion you were having about [over-]explaining a work. Which didn't bother me, I just didn't read the whole thing through, instead skimming it.

The second is hardly longer than the first. I think that you must have meant the third (which suggests that your skim-reading extends to entire threads rather than merely to individual posts) - but where are the specific exhortations therein?

[Gauk]

I think there should be an embargo on composers employing breathing sounds. It. Has. Been. Done.

My wife is against anything where the composer writes of it, "The music describes an arch".

[Anonden]

@Toby Esterhase: there's a lot of cool stuff in popcul from the thirties through the seventies, many of them Art Music composers - like Leonard Rosenman, who did things like Twilight Zone. So some of it was alongside the real stuff.

@ahinton: I meant the second one. That was long, and arguably a little verbose, which fit with the discussion you were having about [over-]explaining a work. Which didn't bother me, I just didn't read the whole thing through, instead skimming it.

The second is hardly longer than the first. I think that you must have meant the third (which suggests that your skim-reading extends to entire threads rather than merely to individual posts) - but where are the specific exhortations therein?

Yes. And wrong word. Hmmmmmm.......exclamations isn't right.......well, enough of that.

I think there should be an embargo on composers employing breathing sounds. It. Has. Been. Done.

My wife is against anything where the composer writes of it, "The music describes an arch".

They are just not using the right breathing. Of course, most are not, so whether it be physical training, or bedroom theatrics, they are just not doing it correctly. And there is music to be had.

And what's wrong with arches?

[Gauk]

It's a cliche, that's what's wrong with it.

Talking of arches, a friend of mine is an academic in a university music department. One day a student brought him a composition exercise. The piece was called "Parabolas", and sure enough, if you looked at the score, all the notes traced out parabolas everywhere across the paper.

Friend: Yes, but what is this actually going to sound like?

Student: Ummm ...

[Neil McGowan]

I feel a lot of the remarks above need to be read in some kind of context.

It's true that a great deal of "new music" written and performed in Britain presents challenges to audiences that are - in my view - unreasonable, ill-considered, and frankly ill-mannered. Regrettably a number of young composers in W Europe believe that the only route to fame lies through infamy.  They become (in some ways, understandably) so angry with being ignored by audiences, that they write music that is more and more confrontational, in an attempt to rile the audience into some kind of reaction.  They have, frankly, lost touch with audiences. (Most of these composers never go to concerts).

The situation is not the same everywhere. Not only where I live, but throughout Central and Eastern Europe, audiences look forward to new works from composers. Look at the following new music has in Estonia, for example?  But then listen to that repertoire - and you will not find the infantile gestures and practiced hostility to be heard in much music being written in the UK currently.  Nor should we throw the baby out with the bathwater - there is a lot of worthwhile, well-crafted music being written in the UK... but it often disappears amid a torrent of intentionally unpleasant look-at-me pish.

[ahinton]

I feel a lot of the remarks above need to be read in some kind of context.

It's true that a great deal of "new music" written and performed in Britain presents challenges to audiences that are - in my view - unreasonable, ill-considered, and frankly ill-mannered. Regrettably a number of young composers in W Europe believe that the only route to fame lies through infamy.  They become (in some ways, understandably) so angry with being ignored by audiences, that they write music that is more and more confrontational, in an attempt to rile the audience into some kind of reaction.  They have, frankly, lost touch with audiences. (Most of these composers never go to concerts).

The situation is not the same everywhere. Not only where I live, but throughout Central and Eastern Europe, audiences look forward to new works from composers. Look at the following new music has in Estonia, for example?  But then listen to that repertoire - and you will not find the infantile gestures and practiced hostility to be heard in much music being written in the UK currently.  Nor should we throw the baby out with the bathwater - there is a lot of worthwhile, well-crafted music being written in the UK... but it often disappears amid a torrent of intentionally unpleasant look-at-me pish.

Being a composer from UK (well, Scotland, anyway!) myself, it behoves me to exercise due discretion and refrain within reason from making judgements on this, but there is no doubting the value of the points that you make.

One has only to consider, for example, the work of the Boston Symphony Orchestra between the two world wars to appreciate that audiences for new music were largely enthusiastic and revealed a genuine appetite for it. I confess to being less than aware that the situation is palpably different in Central and Eastern Europe to that which pertains in Western Europe, but I suppose that this is largely because I've not really given focused thought to that subject. I'm reminded of the expression "never apologise, never explain" (sometimes attributed to the scholar and translator Benjamin Jowett but rather more frequently to a more famous Benjamin, Disraeli, though I'm not sure who thought of it first!) in the context of having adapted it (in the guise of a kind of unconscious homily) to "never ingratiate, never alienate", to which I've tried to adhere as far as possible in my own work.

A number of very different composers - for example Sorabji, Carter, Birtwistle - have expressed at various times and in various ways sentiments about not considering their audiences when writing (although this might be a useful point at which to remind anyone who might need reminding that Babbitt did not say/write "who cares if you listen?"!), but this has often been mistaken for a composerly arrogance manifesting itself in the kind of "confrontational" attitude and "practiced hostility" to which you refer; it in no wise undermines your point to seek to correct that misunderstanding by pointing out that what truly lies behind such a stance are the practical considerations that composers

(a) need primarily to consider their performers, those vital intermediaries between them and their audiences and

(b) can never know in any case of whom their audiences might consist at any time or how individual members thereof might respond to their work,

which arguably explains why composers cannot expect in practice to be able to think meaningfully and usefully about pleasing their audiences, but that's a quite different phenomenon to that of wilfully attempted alienation of such audiences for the intended purpose of attention-seeking of the kind about which you write.

Carter pointed out that those who deliberately motivate themselves to try to write primarily with a view to pleasing their audiences are on a hiding to nothing much of ultimate value; much the same could be said - and for the same reasons - of the opposite modus operandi that you deprecate here. What matters above all is to be honest with oneself and one's work, respond only to whatever is necessary to produce that work (rather than to external pressures extraneous to the creative process) and then leave it to the performers to put it across as best they can (the only exception to the last of those three being when the composer performs his/her own work, although that is obviously a far rarer occurrence than was once the case).

The "look-at-me" thing is especially deplorable to the extent that, in principle, it appears to seek to draw attention away from what should matter first and foremost - the music - and towards its composer and what passes for his/her avowed (and sometimes verbosely expressed) rationale for composing this, that or the other piece in the way that he/she has done so; one British composer in particular (who shall of course remain nameless) is especially well known for indulging in the habit of expounding at length about the processes that lay behind the music, but then if people will invite that composer to hold forth on such things, the resultant abstrusely obfuscational self-absorbed verbalising is no more to be wondered at than it is to be understood.

That said, the prospect of composers never attending concerts (to which I confess I have likewise given little thought until you mentioned it) is one that must surely raise the hackles of suspicion, rather as does a certain composer's expressed lack of interest in listening to performances of works once they've been written and premièred (and I'll leave you and anyone else to decide whether or not that composer might be identical to the similarly nameless one referred to above!); such apparent disinterest seems to me to emerge from a similar arrogance, to the extent thzt if one appears not especially to enjoy listening to one's own music, why and how should one expect others to do the same?!...

In the above paragraph I wrote "verbosely expressed", so I should end with due apology (albeit without explanation!) for having fallen foul of verbosity of expression myself!

[Neil McGowan]

so I should end with due apology

No apology is needed - indeed thanks are due for the thoughtful and detailed posting. 

[ahinton]

so I should end with due apology

No apology is needed - indeed thanks are due for the thoughtful and detailed posting.

That's most kind; you're welcome, of course. These are certainly issues well worthy of attentive consideration but which are often cast to one side as though they may instead be either ignored or simply taken for granted.

[Anonden]

It's a cliche, that's what's wrong with it.

Talking of arches, a friend of mine is an academic in a university music department. One day a student brought him a composition exercise. The piece was called "Parabolas", and sure enough, if you looked at the score, all the notes traced out parabolas everywhere across the paper.

Friend: Yes, but what is this actually going to sound like?

Student: Ummm ...

If someone hasn't at least properly sounded it out on the keyboard or via sequencer - I would've asked, and my instructor knew by looking at it, and would ask merely wondering if the b[a]uffoon knew what on earth they'd written on the paper (sometimes it was I, I knew it and didn't argue wth the fellow) - then it isn't valid. But that's about the music, rather than what it signifies, the latter being what you at least to me intoned in your first on that.

I feel a lot of the remarks above need to be read in some kind of context.

It's true that a great deal of "new music" written and performed in Britain presents challenges to audiences that are - in my view - unreasonable, ill-considered, and frankly ill-mannered. Regrettably a number of young composers in W Europe believe that the only route to fame lies through infamy.  They become (in some ways, understandably) so angry with being ignored by audiences, that they write music that is more and more confrontational, in an attempt to rile the audience into some kind of reaction.  They have, frankly, lost touch with audiences. (Most of these composers never go to concerts).

The situation is not the same everywhere. Not only where I live, but throughout Central and Eastern Europe, audiences look forward to new works from composers. Look at the following new music has in Estonia, for example?  But then listen to that repertoire - and you will not find the infantile gestures and practiced hostility to be heard in much music being written in the UK currently.  Nor should we throw the baby out with the bathwater - there is a lot of worthwhile, well-crafted music being written in the UK... but it often disappears amid a torrent of intentionally unpleasant look-at-me pish.

People should write what they feel they need to write - and [the rest is incomprehensible] And academically-speaking, merely posit the....reality....that they're being infantile in their efforts. Even if you understand them, you probably don't understand these youths - why they're so confounded - it's because their culture in general, IS infantile. I have been saying it for years. It turns out I'm right.

[Neil McGowan]

all the notes traced out parabolas everywhere across the paper.

Friend: Yes, but what is this actually going to sound like?

There is little new under the sun these days   :)



[Baude Cordier - approx 1380-1440 - 'Belle, Bonne, Sage', the so-called Ars Subtilior school ]
[It sounds like this http://iplayer.fm/song/95061966/Ensemble_PAN_-_Belle_Bonne_Sage_-_Baude_Cordier_Instrumental_Lute_2_Vielles/ ]

[Neil McGowan]

Or indeed, more recently too.


[PMD, Eight Songs For A Mad King]

[autoharp]

Many thanks for Belle, Bonne, Sage!