Posts Tagged audiences
Premieres of New Music…right here!
Normally, we don’t advertise individual concerts much here on Guidonian Hand. You, dear reader, could be anywhere when you’re reading this…well, maybe not anywhere. I’d say there are at least…four…no, five different places you could be right now. Anyway, we don’t mention these events because the chances are not good that you’re going to be near enough to stop by. Now, if you are capable of reading this sentence, you are capable of seeing a live performance of new music.
That’s right, tune in here on the blog, or over at UStream.tv for a live webcast of Premieres of New Music by Michigan State composers at 7:30pm EST tonight (Tues., 20 Oct, 2009). No signing up or logging in required either here or at Ustream!
We’d also love your feedback here in the MSU Composition Channel Chat, or on in the comments field on our UStream.tv page
Enjoy!
(NOTE: To watch the webcast, you’ll have to load this page AFTER we’ve started broadcasting. If it’s getting close to showtime, and you don’t see anything, try clicking your browser’s “refresh” button.)
Program notes for tonight’s performance…
I find one of the most difficult things a composer can be asked to do—right up there with starting a new piece and coming up with a title—is to write program notes for his or her music.
My teacher is trying to convince me that what my next piece really needs is some kind of extra-musical concept to tie it all together. A program, a story, a poem, an image, a character, a game, an object. I don’t buy such things. They’re fine for other people if they want to organize their thoughts, but I’ve never listened to Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring and thought to myself, “Hey, that sounds just like the rolling hills of West Virginia and parts of twelve other states.” Have you? I just got home from the premiere of my friend Matt Schoendorff’s wind ensemble piece The Standard Model, which is a set of character pieces inspired by the standard model of particle physics. It was an incredible piece, but never did I think to myself, “Wow, so that’s what the Higgs boson would sound like if it existed!” (+5 nerd points if you got my quantum physics joke). I think of music as a complete abstraction. There are exceptions, obvious among them are songs with words. But in general, I think the only thing music is “about” is music.
I have a piece being played by the incomparable h2 quartet on their program Thursday night at 6:00 in the MSU Music Auditorium. If I had a concept like Aaron’s or Matt’s program notes would still not be easy, but at least I’d have somewhere to start. Compounding my problem is the way I come up with titles. I write most of the piece, and then I think to myself, “You know, this kind of reminds me of …” and I come up with titles like Falling Up the Down Escalator and Inner/Outer Monologue (which for about a year, my mother thought was Inner/Outer Mongolia).
The first of those titles is the piece being played this week. I can’t say, “This piece is about some guy falling on an escalator that is moving down, but somehow he’s falling up it, against gravity.” I can’t say that because 1) It’s not true, and 2) It doesn’t really make much sense. Here’s the problem: if my music is as I posit, an abstraction, how can I write meaningfully about it in a program note? It’s not impossible, but it’s very very tricky. Considerations of audience are key. No one wants to read a theory paper in their concert program, not even a theorist. Also, you don’t want to spoil any surprises. My piece has a section (which for the sake of mystery, I will not name or describe) that I like to think of as a social experiment, but it wouldn’t really work if the audience knew it was coming.
Here’s what I came up with for the note. It’s short, but I think it’s solid:
Falling Up the Down Escalator was influenced by jazz, blues, and contemporary concert music. My hope is that the piece will reorient the listener’s concepts of what is musically “comfortable.” The piece presents musical ideas that are generally considered uncomfortable (groupings of 5 notes, for example) and uses them as though they are not, in some ways, inverting the senses of consonance and dissonance.
So, how do you feel about extra-musical concepts? What do you want to read in your program? Tell us in the comments!
The Arrogance of Creation
Every Friday afternoon at 2:30, all the student composers here at Michigan State get together to discuss music. Sometimes it’s our music; sometimes it’s somebody else’s. Sometimes it’s fun; sometimes it’s excruciating; sometimes it’s both. We call it composition studio class, and it has been known to instigate some rather heated debates.
To be a composer, you have to have strong enough opinions about music (and a high enough opinion of yourself) that you think people should spend their valuable time listening to your music. Not only should they listen to you instead of your colleagues, but also instead of Beethoven, Bach, Prokofiev, Coltrane, and the Beatles. And not only should they listen to you instead of all those people, but they should listen to you instead of doing literally anything else at all!
I call this “the arrogance of creation,” because it is certainly not limited to composers. Performers are taking part in the arrogance of making music. Artists, actors, poets, filmmakers, and dancers all demand your attention for a certain amount of time to receive their art. This is not to say, however, that artists have disdain for their audience (though, of course, some do). On the contrary, the arrogance of creation is balanced by a respect for the audience. In fact, a creator’s respect for his or her audience is often directly proportional to their creative arrogance. The struggle to balance these two ideas is the cause of a great deal of insecurity and neurosis in the artistic community. If you haven’t met a neurotic, insecure singer or actor, then you probably haven’t met any singers or actors.
Composer Johannes Brahms was famously struck with a horrible bout of insecurity after having been deemed the intellectual and cultural heir of Beethoven. Robert Schumann said that he would be the next great composer, in the tradition of Beethoven. Brahms basically went crazy trying to live up to this impossible standard.* I think this was the result of his respect for his audience, who all new and loved Beethoven’s music, outgrowing his arrogance. Eventually, Brahms did, by most accounts, become the next great composer. Thankfully for all of us, though, he was not the last great composer. Since his time, musicians and artists have continued to struggle with the balance of arrogance and respect.
What do you think? Is there an inherent arrogance in the act of creation?
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* Brahms, however, had the last laugh. He was known to be quite fond of Schumann’s wife, and historians are divided as to how that all played out…
We’re all doing it wrong.
Hi. I am new here. My name is Tim and I am a fellow musician with all of the other guys who write the awesome stuff, but mostly I’m their friend. Hi.
I have another blog where I write about music too, so you might see some double posting. There I rant about how everything sucks and nobody can listen to anything anymore. It’s very emo. Occasionally, I can make a good point and hopefully some people think a little more about listening.
So here’s an original thought: I think we (as classical musicians, composers, etc.) are doing it wrong. We live in a society of soundbites, and megabytes, all of which are “on demand.” Yet we expect people to dress up fancy, rearrange their schedules, skip dinner, all to hear us hack away at some obscure composer’s greatest hits for far too long. When you say it out loud, “I’m going perform an hour-and-a-half recital comprised of music you have never herd and may not like.” it really doesn’t make any sense. Just because that is the way it has been done does not mean that is the best way to do it.
So what do we do? I think the answer is in the internet. There is no better way to reach an interested audience on their terms. Let’s face it, we are at the whim of our audience. If they can’t make it to our performance because their hamster has an irritable bowl and needs attention, they are not making it to our performance. At one time we were first on the audience’s list, but those days are past (for most of us, anyway). If we want to reach an audience comprised of more than our friends and family, I think the internet is the way to do it.
I think the best way to pull this off is to record shorter pieces of music more frequently and release them in a staggered way. Podcast style, but classier. Instead of an entire Haydn sonata, how about just the Adagio? Next week: Allegro? Maybe. It would depend on listener feedback, but we will get to that in a second. Oh while were at it, don’t even THINK about charging for downloads. In fact, monetizing it will be the least of our concerns at the beginning. OK, back to the point, listeners are then able to download your performance and listen to it at their leisure. Doorbell rings? PAUSE! I bet you have wanted to hit the pause button on a lot of recitals, I know I have. This kind of listening environment leaves the listener in control. If you don’t think that is a good thing, you should probably get used to off-brand cola and Wal-Mart socks. User control is everything in marketing these days.
OK, free and frequent releases on the internet. Got it. What next? User feedback via some sort of social network. It can be as simple as blog comments to start, but there needs to be some way for people to tell you, and each other, what they think about your performance. Think of it as the receiving line after a recital, but with less awkward fake-ness.
So, how do I eat? Please the audience enough and you will become in demand for playing live concerts. I know, right? That’s where we started! But this time, instead of a half-full hall of family and friends, people will pay to be there. They won’t be sleeping through it either. Through your frequent releases, you will play things for them they are familiar with, which will give them less opportunity to tune you out. Remember, the only reason anything is obscure is because not enough people have discovered it yet. (How Yogi Bera of me!) You can play the most dissonant stuff, if people like it and listen to it enough, they will want to hear it live.
So, what do you all think?
