Aresponse to David Lang's Op-Ed piece in the New York Times by Jeremy Denk on his blog left me feeling uncomfortable. In those pieces, and the debate which has ensued, I feel as though two VERY similar points of view have yet managed to leave out the most important bit. Ignoring the majority of the words written, which mostly have to do with clever metaphors*, I feel the important root cause of the issues both Mr. Lang and Mr. Denk have is with compositions themselves. Many of them aren't very good, and many audience members simply don't want to hear them. Additionally, many composers can tell you that the performers themselves are often the first hurdle, as many groups around the country (and world) are very leery of a new work. Ok, don't freak out at what I've set yet please! First of all, Mr. Lang's one of the only composers alive to have written something I consider to be a GREAT piece, his "The Little Match Girl Passon" which if you haven't heard, you should do so at once! Secondly, even as a composer, I generally agree with the assessment of the conservative audiences and performers...I can't blame them for feeling burned by bad art. But that's living art...most of it is bad, even from great artists, not everything is great, and much of it is terrible. Rather than spend some very entertaining evenings debating whom exactly is wrong, how wrong they are, and what we can do to them, let's see if we can agree that there ISN'T a problem if composers produce works that delight those same audiences and performers! If a composer writes something wonderful, and the performer loves it, and the audience loves it, then everybody gets happy, and everybody gets paid.
So you won't see me a big fan of efforts to make art music more "accessible", or efforts to "educate audiences" (Hmm, didn't an episode of Kitchen Nightmares feature a chef who when told everybody hates their food they said the diners just didn't know anything about Jamaican food? Do we need Gordon Ramsey up in this joint?)
I don't blame anyone. If the composer wants to write for their own ears, cool. If the performer wants to play only what they like, or what they think the audience likes...well of course! And stop making them feel guilty about that please...they aren't performing circus animals, and don't have some kind of artistic burden of guilt to lug our pieces around despite what they, or others think of our works. And the poor audience, called stuffy, ignorant, callow, and all other forms of biting hands otherwise containing food...stop dumbing it down, smartening it up, tarting it up, and schlepping it around. Remember the old joke that goes "I might not know much about art, but I know what I like"? There's nothing wrong with that. Now before you run for the hills screaming "Pandering!" (who knew Panda bears were so obsequious?) I'm not saying should write FOR the audience..but I AM saying you are writing TO an audience, even if that is just a subset of the people sitting in the room. Unless you're writing only to yourself, or other composers, you're writing as an act of communication to others. Think about what you're saying, and to whom you're saying it. Write for yourself..but write TO somebody.
So Mr. Lang, I agree. Mr. Denk, I also agree. I don't care about your baseball, tuxedos, reanimated corpses, or King Lear (ok, I'm lying, I do care about Lear) but it's about the music...and as a completely unknown, unplayed, and unpaid composer..those things wouldn't hurt either.
*(and metaphors about them, which is what, a meta-metaphor? A Megaphor? Megaphor sounds like a giant robot beast that destroys tangible things by destroying their less-tangible things with other more-tangible things....like destroying Tokyo by crushing their sense of carefully crafted social balance...with a rocket...but I digress)
