Who cares if you write music?

[some guy]

A good companion question to that awful title the High Fidelity editors foisted onto Mr. Babbitt's article about treating serious composers like other academic specialists, an article that was entitled "Off the Cuff" when it was a lecture and "The Composer as Specialist," when he sent a print version to High Fidelity.

But before we get to that, we should remind ourselves of the only possible, the only logical answer to the HF question: Who cares if you listen? Which is "Every single composer, ever, now and forever."

The answer to the question "Who cares if you write music?" is not as simple or as straightforward. Judging from some of the conversations I've been in since the early seventies (before that I was pretty much on my own with music--no one around me was interested in it, anyway), one very prominent contender would be "Nobody." At best, it might be "a few people who already like what you're doing, maybe."

After I quit my job, I spent from 2005 to 2015 almost travelling around the world, attending new music festivals and concerts and then writing about them. Money where your mouth is kinda thing, I guess. Anyway, remember when new music and new composers was something to be jazzed about? Of course you don't! With a few isolated exceptions, classical fans only get jazzed about old music and dead composers.

I probably don't need to mention that the retort that "well, maybe it's the quality of new music that's at fault" is not something I agree with, at all. I supported (financially, yes) composers whose music I didn't really like myself. Seemed only fair to me. They're not in this for me. They're all glad if I listen, though. Don't think for a minute that that's not true. But they are doing it because they have to.

And I support that.

Anyway, I'm not here to guilt anyone into supporting new music (though, of course, I'll be glad if I do, ha ha!). I am here to report, in a thread of its own, that listening to new music is terrifically exciting, that meeting people who write new music is every bit as exciting as you might imagine it would have been like to meet Beethoven or Debussy, who, just by the way, were not as famous when they were alive as they are now.

That's all. 

[Karl Henning]

Daunting, indeed.  Why do I write? It may be technically a refinement of Michael's "because they have to" ... I find it intensely gratifying, in part because it reinforces my gut conviction that composing music is what I was built for.  And I write partly because I am part of a small community of artists-plus-laity (present company included) who have an appreciation for my work, and who do want to hear more Henningmusick in the world.

[Crudblud]

Approximately five people. For better or worse I feel compelled, and usually get around to finishing something sooner or later.

[Mandryka]

But before we get to that, we should remind ourselves of the only possible, the only logical answer to the HF question: Who cares if you listen? Which is "Every single composer, ever, now and forever."

Maybe. Some composers may be more interested in creating exciting challenges for performers than for listeners. Listeners may respond well to it, they may not - that's a kind of afterthought for the composer. Examples may be Time and Morion Study II (Ferneyhough), Stones (Christian Wolff), The Great Learning (Cardew)

Where the music is really underdetermined by the composition - graphic scores or scores which are just bits of poetry like Stockhausen's Aus den Sieben Tagen, or scores which are a way of seeding improvisation (Richard Barrett's Blattwerk, Tednril . . ) or pieces very vaguely specified like those New York Fluxus things and Cage Number pieces, or Variations II,  well the composer can have so little idea of what the thing will sound like that it's hard to see how he can be caring much about listeners' responses.

[Mahlerian]

Maybe. Some composers may be more interested in creating exciting challenges for performers than for listeners. Listeners may respond well to it, they may not - that's a kind of afterthought for the composer. Examples may be Time and Morion Study II (Ferneyhough), Stones (Christian Wolff), The Great Learning (Tilbury)

Where the music is really underdetermined by the composition - graphic scores or scores which are just bits of poetry like Stockhausen's Aus den Sieben Tagen, or scores which just provide a framework for improvisation (Richard Barrett's Blattwerk) or pieces very vaguely specified like those New York Fluxus things and Cage Number pieces - well the composer can have so little idea of what the thing will sound like that it's hard to see how he can be caring much about listeners' responses.

I think there's a bit of a disconnect between the way audiences think about what composers do and what composers actually do. Much of the joy in composition is found in the process of crafting something, of allowing yourself to make new associations and connections and discover something beautiful (or sublime, if that's your inclination), and I think that's as true of Cage and Ferneyhough as it is of Copland and Vaughan Williams.

I started creating music because I wanted to make the music I wanted to hear, but also because the process of composition itself is rewarding. If it weren't, no composer would bother, because it takes a long time and a great deal of effort to even build your craft up to the point where anyone else would really want to listen.

[Mandryka]

I think there's a bit of a disconnect between the way audiences think about what composers do and what composers actually do. Much of the joy in composition is found in the process of crafting something, of allowing yourself to make new associations and connections and discover something beautiful (or sublime, if that's your inclination), and I think that's as true of Cage and Ferneyhough as it is of Copland and Vaughan Williams.

I started creating music because I wanted to make the music I wanted to hear, but also because the process of composition itself is rewarding. If it weren't, no composer would bother, because it takes a long time and a great deal of effort to even build your craft up to the point where anyone else would really want to listen.

Well my essential point is that in some musical works, the sound of performance is so underdetermined by the composition that it's just not possible to say that the composer has any clear conception of the sounds in mind, let alone a vision of sublime ones. All the pieces I mentioned are more or less like this, I think, apart from the Ferneyhough. I stick to what I say about the Ferneyhough, but it's a different phenomenon and I'll happy discuss it further if anyone's  interested. Put it like this, it's not called Time and Motion study (à la  Frederick Winslow Taylor) for nothing!

A friend of mine, a composer, talks about how the first step to writing music is deciding what matters and what doesn't. My theory is this: some (many) composers have decided that what the thing sounds like doesn't matter for them (it may matter for the performers of course.) And so they can hardly be said to be prioritising listeners - they're prioritising performers (who may be in turn prioritising listeners - or they may not.)

[some guy]

Probably be a good thing to interject explicitly here that caring if anyone listens is not the same as writing something you're sure people will like.

I think probably the best work anyone does is done for its own sake. I had written almost all of my first novel before anyone besides myself even knew that I was doing that. And if I thought about it at all, it was that I was writing for graduate students in English, something I had been for a number of years. (Oh, it's fun!) Who ended up liking it the most? An avant garde film maker in Paris, a psychology/sociology grad student in New York, a checker for Whole Foods (oh, OK, she also was an English teacher at the local community college), an English teacher in Southern California, and a person with a high school diploma who had never liked reading and who worked at a local pizzeria. Later, with the next novel, also written for some ideal grad student in English, I added two composers, another film maker, a graphics artist in Minneapolis, and a statistician in Bulgaria. The people who did not like my stuff, even to the extent of dropping me as their friend, were all of them former classmates of mine in graduate school. 

Short version, I really had no idea who would like my stuff. I think it may be, for me anyway, inevitable to think about who will be liking what one does, but I know that what really gets me going is sitting down and playing with words and sentences, making them do cool things that I've never seen before.

Art for art's sake does not exclude wanting people to like your stuff. And performers are most definitely listeners themselves, so if you write exclusively for performers, so to speak, you are already writing for listeners. And they are likely to be good listeners as well, so....

[flyingdutchman]

Same question re: Who cares if you do a PhD? Pretty much a vanity project really.

[Karl Henning]

Same question re: Who cares if you do a PhD? Pretty much a vanity project really.

Qua Ph.D., perhaps. Myself, I went on for the doctorate because I wanted more instruction in composition.

[some guy]

Same question re: Who cares if you do a PhD? Pretty much a vanity project really.

I can only speak for myself, but I do suspect that this is true for other people: when I'm working, "I" vanish. Only the work exists.

So as much the opposite of vanity as one can imagine.

Once the work is done, of course, or during breaks, I think that I would like to be famous, yeah. But even there. I want as many people to read and enjoy my stuff as much as I read and enjoy other people's stuff. That's what I think of as fame, known enough so that people are enjoying the work. So even there, the focus is on the work.

[Mandryka]

Same question re: Who cares if you do a PhD? Pretty much a vanity project really.

A Ph.D, in UK universities at least, is supposed to be a new contribution to knowledge in the field. A new composition isn't about knowledge.

A new piece of music is supposed to be . . .

Fill in the dots.

[flyingdutchman]

Qua Ph.D., perhaps. Myself, I went on for the doctorate because I wanted more instruction in composition.

I'm probably just being cynical. I just finished my dissertation and while I feel it's important, I'm sure not too many others do.

[Crudblud]

A new piece of music is supposed to be . . .

Fill in the dots.

Putting pretty and/or interesting sounds aside, the mystery is a large part of what makes music so compelling for me.

[Mandryka]

Putting pretty and/or interesting sounds aside, the mystery is a large part of what makes music so compelling for me.

That's like what I said about risk. That there are some people who seek the comfortable security of predictability (I call them pipe and slippers people)  and there are some bold adventurers like me who relish the taste of mystery. To use a french expression which recently came into the fore politically - the premiers de cordée.

[relm1]

But before we get to that, we should remind ourselves of the only possible, the only logical answer to the HF question: Who cares if you listen? Which is "Every single composer, ever, now and forever."

Oh that's not true.  There are many composers who write and don't share the music because it doesn't meet their standard or is too personal for example.  Some composers write to express themselves and don't care if it is heard.  Some write because it is an academic exercise or challenge or to create something new like a new technique.  Some write for a specific performer.  In each of these cases the audience is part of the equation but you overstate the importance of the audience to the composer if you believe "every single composer ever now and forever". 

Sometimes a composer gets a commission, completes it, then withdraws it because they didn't feel the performer(s) were suitable or understand the work so those are examples where no performance was better than just any performance.