"Where have the great composers gone?"

[MrGongGong]

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jul/22/composers-greatness-in-digital-age-susanna-eastburn

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

https://www.theguardian.com/music/20...sanna-eastburn

I like the reflection on "Great Music always seems to have ended forty years ago"! - the original article mentioned Tippett as one of the "last" Great Composers, taking it (quite rightly) for granted that this would be read as an uncontroversial assessment of the value of Tippett's work. I remember reading - and getting quite indignant about - an article that appeared (in the Musical Times, IIRC) in 1988 which made the same sort of lazy comments about the "decayed" state of contemporary Music as it was then, and which described Tippett as "a passable imitation of a great composer".

I forget who wrote the article and listen to Tippett these days - in thirty years' time, the author of the first Guardian article will be similarly forgotten; and I will be revelling in the Music of Frey (and Ferneyhough, Barrett, Sciarrino, Saunders - both of 'em - Denyer, Cassidy, Lang, Schubert - both of 'em - Dench, Czernowin, Ullmann, Finnissy, Granberg, Clarke, Lim, Furrer, Dillon, Harrison, Hinton, Werder, Iddon, Beurger ... ) and the dozens of creative individuals and collectives creating Music now whose work I haven't encountered yet and those just being born.


Again, in the light of the myriad panoply of Musical creativity going on at this exact moment across the world, the real question is "Where have all the Music journalists gone who are competent to know about these activities and able to present it to the wider reading public?"

[MrGongGong]

Again, in the light of the myriad panoply of Musical creativity going on at this exact moment across the world, the real question is "Where have all the Music journalists gone who are competent to know about these activities and able to present it to the wider reading public?"

I would suggest that they aren't writing things for the mainstream media.
Some people need to get out more (and out of London)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I would suggest that they aren't writing things for the mainstream media.

Good point - I suppose that that leads to the question of why the mainstream media aren't as connected with these types of Music as they had been up til about 1980. The movement away from the Byronic and limited paradigms of what constitutes "greatness" doesn't make for "good copy" - and they have other things to sell; things which don't offer opportunities to readers to experience alternative and more enriching ways of living than mere spending.

Some people need to get out more (and out of London)

- although the once-benighted Capital has had a bit of a renaissance over the last five - ten years or so: Café Oto, the Ear Festival, Ambika P3 ... with work that makes a smug Hudderschampion think "but ... that's our Music!"

[ahinton]

Good point - I suppose that that leads to the question of why the mainstream media aren't as connected with these types of Music as they had been up til about 1980. The movement away from the Byronic and limited paradigms of what constitutes "greatness" doesn't make for "good copy" - and they have other things to sell; things which don't offer opportunities to readers to experience alternative and more enriching ways of living than mere spending.


- although the once-benighted Capital has had a bit of a renaissance over the last five - ten years or so: Café Oto, the Ear Festival, Ambika P3 ... with work that makes a smug Hudderschampion think "but ... that's our Music!"

Like one of its residents might say "but ... that's our Yorkshire!"

Whilst Clark's piece has some reasonable points that come across as rather better than some of what I've seen from him, both it and the response to it are flawed.

Addressing the whole question of what might nowadays constitute "greatness" in a composer - along with that of how important or otherwise such assessment might be - has surely to take on board
1. that a far wider spead of music is far more easily available in many parts of the world than it was in Beethoven's or Wagner's day
2. that there are far more composers out there today than there were in Beethoven's or Wagner's day and, because of 1. and 2.
3. there's way more music and avstly greater musical diversity than was the case in Beethoven's or Wagner's day.
These being the case, can anyone seriously wonder at why the question marks being raised as to "where have the great composers gone" are not giving rise to definitive answers because there aren't any?

Moreover, as we know, some music is more widely regarded by one generation than it is by another and this can go both ways; also, some music "travels" better than others (indeed, one might argue that, just as Elgar's, for example, has often travelled somewhat uneasily outside his home turf, Carter's has tended to travel almost to the exclusion of his home turf - these examples are over-simplistic, of course, but not without some truth).

I wasn't going to mention any more individual examples of any aspect of this but, since Tippett has been mentioned, one might perhaps try to forgive people for questioning whether he's a great composer when one thinks of how few performances his music gets compared to the numbers that it so well deserves!

[Stanfordian]

Is the arch-conservative Shchedrin the Stanford of our times, Stanfordian?

I'm not quite sure about the connection. Shchedrin is an inventive composer who writes in a reasonably accessible style. I can't see the point in writing music that only a small group of people can or want to understand.

[Bryn]

... I can't see the point in writing music that only a small group of people can or want to understand.

What, like Beethoven's Op. 95, eh?

"The Quartet [Op. 95] is written for a small circle of connoisseurs and is never to be performed in public."

[edashtav]

I'm not quite sure about the connection. Shchedrin is an inventive composer who writes in a reasonably accessible style. I can't see the point in writing music that only a small group of people can or want to understand.

Both Shchedrin and Stanford wrote very competently in the style of the past, making their music immediately accessible. Neither had much that was new to say but both wrote music of great service: the one to ballet, the other to choirs and places where they sing.

Neither are negligible, but neither rises above the journeyman level. I've heard a lot of Rodion and sung a great deal of Charles Villiers. On the latter front, now I'm a bass, I find CVS's lines interesting but when I was press-ganged into singing tenor, I felt dirty and abused: I was singing inchoate lines assembled from the harmonic notes that didn't fit into the treble and bass lines. Great composers do better than that!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I can't see the point in writing music that only a small group of people can or want to understand.

What do you mean by "understand", Stanf?

I (and many others) love the Music of the composers I mentioned, and respond to it with tremendous enthusiasm and excitement, but I'm not at all sure that I "understand" it - nor even if I understand what I mean by "understand" in that statement. (I feel the same way about the Hammerklavier and most religious Music.)

And there is a "Noel Edmonds" aspect behind the idea that "if it's only for a few people, it's not valid": that is precisely how he "justifies" the abolition of Radio3 - why should so much money be wasted on a station that "nobody" listens to.

[MrGongGong]

I can't see the point in writing music that only a small group of people can or want to understand.

I can
I don't know many composers who would equate value with the number of people who listen to what they make?
and anyway we aren't really talking about "small numbers" of people at all... the La Monte Young at HCMF last year was heaving
and Oto is often full when the Wigmore Hall can be almost empty at times.

I think many folks who make music simply can't be bothered with trying to get their stuff into the "mainstream" (if such a thing still exists?) and have gone off to create much more interesting things in other places and in other ways.

[ahinton]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/what-to-listen-to/why-is-new-classical-music-left-to-wither-and-die/

[edashtav]

Thanks for pointing out that thoughtful and thought-provoking piece by Ivan Hewett, ahinton.

[ahinton]

you espoused the merely meretricious

Did you not mean meritorious?

[Stanfordian]

Why not say more about what you meant instead of assuming that people are disagreeing with everything you say?

I'm so sorry that I really can't express myself as well as you so clearly can. I'm finding it sooooooo hard being in such exalted company that I'm almost shaking with awe and feel that I'm in a state of disgrace.

[french frank]

I thought it best to delete the recent exchanges. They've been said, they've been read. I see no point in bothering with them further.

(PS I'm responding to a complaint).