The Importance of New Music - Tower

Joan Tower talks about the place of living composers in classical music, especially as compared to the pop-music field. She also relates a story about asking friends of hers who are musicians to compose their own music as a way of getting performers and composers to better understand one another.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• orchestra
• commission
• composer
• Joan
• Tower

[origamimadness]

@KhagarBalugrak There have always been more bad composers than good ones. The problem is that academic posts are awarded based on credentials and work ethic, not musical ability, and over the past 100 years academic posts have become the only reasonable way for a composer to support themselves. There are good composers out there, we just rarely hear their work. Listen to work by Toby Twining, Thomas Ades, Eduard Tubin, Ellen Taafe Zwilich.

[KhagarBalugrak]

Beethoven isn't great cause he's great cause many musicologists say so. There has to be a well-developed, analytical argument in his favor if I'm to take such statements seriously. Musicologists love writing in a bland, depersonalized style in order to make their claims sound like they have superhuman validity. Wikipedia does the same thing. This insidious, deadening crap is ruining classical music.

[KhagarBalugrak]

So essentially, the degradation of contemporary composers is inherent within the ideology of "revering" the composers of earlier ages in that twisted way that claims that people nowadays cannot hope to ever match their genius. I say this is nonsense - a rigid, insane ideology promoted by people with a vested interest in maintaining the intellectual status quo - conservatory professors, performers, and, especially, musicologists, the bane of free and independent thought about classical music.

[KhagarBalugrak]

Most of what Joan Tower is saying is absolutely true. We have encased Beethoven and all the rest of them in gold, and decided that human beings no longer have the ability to write music of that quality. While this may seem like reverence and devotion on the surface, it's actually an expression of the deep resignation and pessimism that suffocates the modern world and the classical music world. But I assure you, there is no law of nature that says we can't write great music now.

[miklosjoey1]

She's amazing!

[lovesGenet]

I like what she says about learning to enjoy criticism from people who are not usually versed in modern idioms . Visual ,literary every other art enjoys a vogue in contemporary affairs but music ,even film music has a real problem with American ears. I hope she writes some books what she says about performers creating is GREAT!

[ZachHale8]

I think that the people who would like atonal music (Schoenberg, Carter, etc) usually don't know about it because they get scared away by the term "Classical" music. There are plenty of metal bands that people listen to that are "atonal" but because its a medium that uses "cool" instruments like electric guitars and drumset it is looked at differently. Also, there is garbage atonal music and good atonal music, just like good tonal music and garbage tonal music.

[yanapalik]

the difference between the pop world and the classical world is due everything BUT the reason adduced by this woman. Lots of best selling pop singers dont write their songs (you are lucky if they acutally sing them ahaha). the major factor at work is simply the market target being silly kids (girls especially, but boys also) who have no notion of past things simply being repeated and their desperate need to find idols. can you imagine a kid humming Bach? as everyone else listens to lady gaga?

[KhagarBalugrak]

Yes, it's important to be able to criticize Beethoven or anyone else. Nobody is beyond reproach. But Joan Tower fails to realize that classical music is dying, not because of some gender bias in the classical music word, but because living composers mostly write abominable atonal garbage, and that THAT is why nobody wants to pay attention to living composers or play their music.

[superjules]

4 cowbells?