| Brought to you this hour by |  | Advertising and Web Hosting on Woodwind.Org! |
Doublereed Archive - Posting 000054.txt from 2003/11
From: "jennifer devey" <sjdev@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [DR-L] Composers and their problems
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 15:46:27 -0500
Jennifer, you're absolutely right that composers today have a difficult
and often thankless job. I also agree that there are many talented compos
ers whose recent works are under-performed and under-appreciated.
However, I have little sympathy for composers who vent purposefully ins
ulting and inflammatory tirades about other writers/performers, while admit
ting little knowledge about the others' music.
----- Original Message -----
From: Jennifer Paull
To: doublereed-l@-----.edu
Cc: Basil Ramsey ; Keith Bramich ; Henry Luo
Sent: Monday, November 10, 2003 11:32 PM
Subject: [DR-L] Composers and their problems
Dear List,
Being a composer is the hardest job in music. Being a composer today vers
us
the apathy of a world wishing for repetition of all things comfortable an
d known,
is even more so. At the time of Telemann, one played music written at the
moment, not music written several hundred years before. Today, one must d
o
the latter to fill the hall.
Today's interpreter often prefers what has gone before, yet today's compo
ser
rarely has the supporting job to help him whilst he struggles to let his
voice
be heard. There are also many more of them around. Populations figures
are many times greater than they were a few centuries ago.
(S)He is also obliged to find his/her own fingerprint, his/her own trade
mark.
(S)He cannot write in the style of another because communication has made
the world such that everyone hears and knows what everyone else is produc
ing.
Telemann did not know what everyone of his contemporaries wrote any more
than did Purcell or others restricted by horse, quill and candlewax. Half
the
population in Western society - those with an X chromosome - were not
allowed to enter into the question. How much of Felix' music was really
composed by Fanny Mendelssohn, obliged to hide her identity by the same
injustices still perpetuated against so many women today?
We take so much for granted. My heart goes out to Bear and other
composers who are struggling within a system that is axed against them.
As someone who believes in contemporary music and has performed it all her
life upon an instrument initially considered unworthy, then considered to
be
baroque only in amplitude, I know how difficult it is for the innovator t
o cross
the barrier of audience and performer conformity.
Bear, take heart. According to the teaching of Cathy Berberian - one of t
he
greatest musicians of the 20th Century and also one of the greatest innov
ators
- there are but 2 types of music; the good and the bad. She sang Montever
di
and Purcell as well as the Beatles, Cage, Berio, Weil, Gershwin and jazz
songs
(and a Macedoine of everything between).
There is place for everyone; but everyone does not give all music its pla
ce. I
think that we should bear in mind (no pun intended!) the frustrations and
endless
obstacles in the pathway of a composer living today and ask - "do I play
enough
contemporary music? If not, why not?"
Music is not meant to be shrouded in a mist of naphthaline. It is made of
contrasts;
light and shade, forte and piano, yesterday and today. There will also be
tomorrow.
Our concerts and recitals should reflect this proportionately. Do they?
Seventy odd years after Schoenberg's 'Pierrot Lunaire' - how many people
can
honestly say that they have studied and followed the process of creativit
y through
its transformations, mutations and development?
Every composer cries from the heart. (S)He is MUTE without the performer.
To
paraphrase John Lennon, "Give contemporary music a chance!"
Jennifer
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------
Jennifer Paull,
Amoris International
http://www.amoris.com
Rare music at the press of an oboe and a computer key
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------
