Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise

[Parsifal]

The audience, and the market, are not synonymous.

a body of existing or potential buyers for specific goods or services

Your "market" is just your potential audience, unless you are adamant that no one should pay to hear your music.

But you aren't really interested in my thoughts, are you? Your purpose is other.

You certainly are intent on attaching a hostile meaning to any coment I might make, I must say.

[Karl Henning]

Well, Sean thinks Nixon in China is the bee's knees.

Oh, but that may just underscore your point . . . .

0:)

[pjme]

I bought (and read) the book a couple of years ago and was definitely impressed and inspired. thanks to GMG I've taken it from the shelves again.

From the preface:

"...,articulating the connection between music and the outer world, remains devilishly difficult. Musical meaning is vague, mutable,and, in the end, deeply personal. Still, even if history can never tell us exactly what music means, music can tell us something about history".

and
"The rest is noise is written not just for those well versed in classical music but also - especially- for those who feel passing curiosity about this obscure pandemonium on the outskirts of culture".

Well worth investigating.

P.

[Parsifal]

A composer, or artist, or writer will "find" his audience, or more accurately, his audience will find him, if he stays the course of his intuitive aesthetic. 

He need not attempt to grab hold to a market trend (futile at best since by the time you produce something in response to a trend, in all likelihood the market has moved on), or try to exploit political or social hot button issues (also mostly a waste since most political/social issues pass on and your work will become stale at some point).

It is best to work according to your internal forces, put the work out there, and let the chips fall where they may.

It doesn't strike me that an artist should be be disconnected from the major issues of his or her day, even if he or she does not explicitly "exploit" these issues.   Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro" reflected "hot button" issues of his day.  The piece is great because he found what was universal in those topical issues.  I don't see that an artist working in our modern time who is oblivious to the world he or she lives in is likely to produce something which is truly important.

[Karl Henning]

I bought (and read) the book a couple of years ago and was definitely impressed and inspired. thanks to GMG I've taken it from the shelves again.

From the preface:

"...,articulating the connection between music and the outer world, remains devilishly difficult. musical meaning is vague, mutable,and, in the end, deeply personal. Still, even if history can never tell us exactly what music means, music can tell us something about history".

and
"The rest is noise is written not just for those well versed in classical music but also - especially- for those who feel passing curiosity about this obscure pandemonium on the outskirts of culture".

Well worth investigating.

P.

Whatever its faults, it's a good read.

As I've said before, many of the composers are musical personalities I had studied, and studied well;  but on practically every page, there was something new I learnt.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

It is best to work according to your internal forces, put the work out there, and let the chips fall where they may.

Agreed. I like how Robert Simpson put it: "I'm not interested in vogue. I think 'vogue' has ruined composers. Composers have often been in vogue and then faded out. What's in fashion is not important. What is in the substance of the music is what is important. That is what I would try to preserve or try to achieve. And, well, if people want it, that's nice. If they don't, at least I've done my best."

[jochanaan]

The audience, and the market, are not synonymous.

Indeed, especially considering how much "market research" dominates the music business these days.

I see it this way: If you create art (musical or otherwise) using the dictates of market research or mere "exploitation of issues," it's likely to be shallow art; but if you write from your own heart and experiences, it's likely to be deep and real, especially if you've had some training.  Then the thing becomes, not creating art for an audience, but finding an audience for your art.

[Karl Henning]

Build it, and they will come.

A colleague paid me a wonderful compliment Sunday.  He's one of the singers in the choir, but is also a publisher; and the choir director recently told me that I should ask him, If you were to publish a piece by Henning, what should such a piece be?

He replied, "I don't know." (That wasn't the compliment, obviously.) "It should be well made, and all your music is very well written.  Apart from that, it should be popular, and I don't know what that means."

[Parsifal]

Agreed. I like how Robert Simpson put it: "I'm not interested in vogue. I think 'vogue' has ruined composers. Composers have often been in vogue and then faded out. What's in fashion is not important. What is in the substance of the music is what is important. That is what I would try to preserve or try to achieve. And, well, if people want it, that's nice. If they don't, at least I've done my best."

Can you name a composer that was ruined by vogue? 

[Parsifal]

I see it this way: If you create art (musical or otherwise) using the dictates of market research or mere "exploitation of issues," it's likely to be shallow art; but if you write from your own heart and experiences, it's likely to be deep and real, especially if you've had some training.  Then the thing becomes, not creating art for an audience, but finding an audience for your art.

That's a fairy tale.  English departments and writing seminars are full of earnest artists who want to craft the Great American Novel, conservatories are full of earnest composers who want to create the great music of the future.  Despite their earnestness and sincerity, mostly they produce drivel that no one will ever remember.  William Faulkner, on the other hand, wrote of his novel Sanctuary, "To me it is a cheap idea, because it was deliberately conceived to make money."  That did not prevent it from being one of the great novels of the 20th century.

[Parsifal]

However, I did not write that an artist should be "disconnected from the major issues of his or her day".  An artist who is connected to the major issues of the day does not mean s/he needs to explicitly express that fact in a work of art.  But I would agree with you that to discover and express a universal aspect from the context of a social or political issue is a wonderful thing - it is also not the only way way of working, imo.

I can't imagine anyone would disagree with the statement that artists should be driven by their own strong impulses.  It is one thing to create something and be satisfied that you think it is most wonderful thing ever.  The miracle of art (in my view) comes when it stirs others as well.  When I think of all of the great artists that have made an impression on me, they have wanted to have an effect on people, to "make a dent in the universe."  That means they were aware of and interested in how their audience (or in more economic-sounding terms, their market) would respond to their work.   Even Shostakovich, who famously composed "for the drawer" was thinking of an audience.  The problem was that if the authorities found out that he was communicating with his "market" he would have found himself in the Gulag.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Can you name a composer that was ruined by vogue?

I don't know about an entire composer, but I think of certain works or periods: Rautavaara's mostly New Agey stuff since the 1980s, attempts at populism by composers like Rouse or Liebermann, many of Penderecki's neo-Romantic orchestral/choral extravaganzas, for example.

[Parsifal]

I don't know about an entire composer, but I think of certain works or periods: Rautavaara's mostly New Agey stuff since the 1980s, attempts at populism by composers like Rouse or Liebermann, many of Penderecki's neo-Romantic orchestral/choral extravaganzas, for example.

Of those examples, I am familiar with the Rautavaara, to some extent.  The Shostakovich-ish sound of the early works disappeared.  But is there really a compelling reason to assume his change of style was due to "selling out" rather than just getting interested in a different way of composing music?   Certainly I have read amazon reviews his later works with nasty ridicule of his "New Agey" stuff.  Strikes me as similar to the backlash Bob Dylan got when he dared release an album with anything other than his solitary guitar and harp. 

[CRCulver]

Of those examples, I am familiar with the Rautavaara, to some extent.  The Shostakovich-ish sound of the early works disappeared.  But is there really a compelling reason to assume his change of style was due to "selling out" rather than just getting interested in a different way of composing music?   Certainly I have read amazon reviews his later works with nasty ridicule of his "New Agey" stuff.

The problem isn't the material itself. What leads one to charge Rautavaara with selling out is that he fulfills new commissions by slightly tweaking older pieces. See Anne-Sivuoja-Gunaratnam's paper "Narcissus Musicus, or an Intertextual Perspective on the Oeuvre of Einojuhani Rautavaara". I don't have a problem with a composer exploring a vein that he's passionate about and which happens to be audience-friendly, but someone so obviously phoning it in is objectionable.

In any event, Rautavaara didn't go straight from Shostakovich to his "New Agey" works. His interest in Shostakovich was something of the 1950s, while the "New Agey" works are mainly post-1975. However, the years in between produced some of his best music, a different kind of neo-Romanticism.

[Parsifal]

I am beginning to suspect we may be talking about different things.  The post you originally responded to of mine, was something I wrote in response to the idea of an artist, or composer, creating a work in "response to the political and social climate".

What comes to my mind is a work like Klinghoffer by John Adams; this is what I do not care for.  I also do not care for chasing the ephemeral idea of what an audience wants.  For me, it is best to simply attempt to do your best work, and your best to get it heard, and if you find an audience, well then, good for you, if not, then at least you failed with your best effort.

Well, I do not know the work, although I know of it.  But you seem to be taking for granted the Adams was an opportunist who thought he would ride the tails of the Klinghoffer affair to fame and fortune.  Maybe the story hit him in the gut, and he found in it an archetype of the human condition.  If it didn't turn out to a transcendental work of art, maybe the fault is not "exploitation, but the fact that John Adams is just not up there with Mozart and Beethoven.

[jochanaan]

...English departments and writing seminars are full of earnest artists who want to craft the Great American Novel, conservatories are full of earnest composers who want to create the great music of the future.  Despite their earnestness and sincerity, mostly they produce drivel that no one will ever remember.

Which is why I included the caveat: "especially if you've had some training."  It does take practice, plus a willingness to explore the darkness in oneself, to write from the heart.

William Faulkner, on the other hand, wrote of his novel Sanctuary, "To me it is a cheap idea, because it was deliberately conceived to make money."  That did not prevent it from being one of the great novels of the 20th century.

I suspect that Faulkner was keeping his tongue in his cheek. But Faulkner, like other great artists, knew how to imbue even "cheap ideas" with his own soul.

[xochitl]

can anyone recommend other books on 20th-century music worth reading?  ive been going through taruskin's oxford history but havent gotten to the 20th century yet [and wont for a year at least]. is that one pretty good, or should i look at others?

btw im not reading anything by adorno unless somebody gives me a very good reason 

[kishnevi]

A composer, or artist, or writer will "find" his audience, or more accurately, his audience will find him, if he stays the course of his intuitive aesthetic. 

He need not attempt to grab hold to a market trend (futile at best since by the time you produce something in response to a trend, in all likelihood the market has moved on), or try to exploit political or social hot button issues (also mostly a waste since most political/social issues pass on and your work will become stale at some point).

It is best to work according to your internal forces, put the work out there, and let the chips fall where they may.

To return the thread to its putative subject (Mr. Ross), my memory of the book (it's probably been two years since I've read it, at least) is that Ross was not criticizing the musical product of what might be called 20th century modernism, but what he saw as an attitude endemic among many modernist composers, something which if true, was elitist in the extreme.  In his view,  many 20th century composers thought of popularity and/or accessibility as a serious flaw.  It's not that they produced a work, and didn't care if the general populace liked it or did not like it:  rather (according to Ross) they felt that if people liked one of their works,  then they had failed: they only wanted the cognoscenti to be interested in what they produced., and purposely produced works that people would dislike. 

This does accord with the one experience I had in the 1970s, as part of a college chorus (at Emory University in Atlanta) which participated in a "world premiere" of a composition that involved instruments, electronic tape, and chorus, by a female composer from South Africa: the title of the piece and the name of the composer is now lost in the fog of memory.  We were distinctly unimpressed by the work, despite the best efforts of our conductor (the head of the music department, Dr. Lemonds) to spark some enthusiasm.   The composer did attend rehearsals, but her communication with us, the chorus,  was minimal; she paid as much attention, and gave as much explanation of what her intentions and expectations were, to the tape recorders as she did to us.  And in fact her reliance, even emphasis, on the tapes as a component of the music, was the chief thing that turned us off: we had the feeling that we humans were merely an accessory to the tape recorder. She was rather angry that we were not enthusiastic about her music,  but seemed to think that she was under no obligation to help us become enthusiastic or at least interested: that our skepticism was the symptom of a lack of musical intelligence which released her from any obligation to try to connect us to the composition.  The piece, when performed,  was politely received by the audience; we put on our politest faces, but Dr. Lemonds made no further attempt, while I was a student, at least, to program anything in the least bit "cutting edge".    The whole episode was really a favor to Coca Cola:  the composer's husband was a Coke executive in South Africa, and was for some reason spending a year at corporate headquarters in Atlanta;  Coke being very important to the university finances (the prime donors for decades were the founding families of the company, the Candlers and Woodruffs), the composer was given facilities in our school's music department and the promise of a world premiere.  We rather felt like we were being given a task to be endured, and we endured it, and we had the impression the faculty shared our feelings but could not admit they did.

How correct Ross's criticism actually is,  I leave to others.   

[Artem]

can anyone recommend other books on 20th-century music worth reading?  ive been going through taruskin's oxford history but havent gotten to the 20th century yet [and wont for a year at least]. is that one pretty good, or should i look at others?

btw im not reading anything by adorno unless somebody gives me a very good reason 

Have you read Modern Music and After by Paul Griffiths? I don't know what's the general view of this book, but i think it is worth investigating. It has a usefeul discography section too.

[xochitl]

artem from atease?  [if u are im wintergreen  ]

and i havent read it