Klarinet Archive - Posting 000558.txt from 2003/07

From: "Musician" <musicians@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] re: Contemporary Music
Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2003 20:48:10 -0400

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<klarinet@-----.org>
From: "Michael Norsworthy" <mnorswor@-----.net>
Subject: RE: ClarinetFest
Message-ID: <000201c34df7$9763d930$96014b43@clarinet>

Whilst everyone is entitled to their own opinion, I must say that I'm
shocked by the remark below. Shall we continue playing the same handful
of pieces at EVERY ClarinetFest? Should the art NOT move forward and
remain stuck in the 18th-19th centuries? Should composers continue to
write unintelligent Neo-Romantic crap like so many American composers
have taken to doing in the last 10-20 years or so? Or perhaps we should
ask Brittany Spears for a new clarinet concerto...

As someone who makes his living largely by doing contemporary music by
composers such as Berio, Donatoni, Boulez, Cage, Zorn, Feldman,
Sciarrino and many others, I'm usually appalled by other players'
unwillingness to learn and try new things and types of music. When
perfect authentic cadences are taken out of the mix, people's ears
usually turn off rather than on, thus perpetuating a cycle of ignorance
and backstepping in the art we profess to care about so much.

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There's good music and there's Sh*t that some composers try to pass off as
music. That to me is the demise of music.
I too have heard "compositions" at Clarfest that were the former *and* the
later.

Academic crap is what I call it. There are many Contemporary Compositions I
like a lot so don't get me wrong but there are also the exercises in sound
that are to me trash.

David Blumberg
http://www.TopTempo.com (no trash there ;)

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