I was listening to the radio last night on a long car ride home and I came across a Parisian group called Something A La Mode, a VERY poppy group featuring a violin and cello. SALM (they call themselves) is when a big time pop studio meets classical instrumentalists. Maybe there is something to be said for the love of old instruments rather than the great composers. Or! Great composers with new instruments! ie Switched on Bach

Iungisman and Joo have also done great things to stir up the traditional classical world.

Thanks for the reaffirmation of my instincts to go my own way searching for what works since all the good ideas of the past have already been used up!

Hey where’s the delete button anyway

“labelling flimflammery with new names such as sonic art and creative practice – that’s his agenda. And it is a disturbing one.” Samar

Unless I’m misinterpreting the above quote, it strikes me as reactionary. The above poster also invoked Goodwin’s law really early into the discussion, which is a red flag to exit outta here. Thanks again for some good paraphrased reading and nicely thought out replies.

On topic, I agree that Service is way late to the party–unless the UK situation really is that retrogressive.

I think, as Garret and Rob point out, that we over here in the U.S. have been ahead of the curve on this matter for some time (notice that Service, at least in the passage quoted by Rob, doesn’t mention Steve Martland, Louis Andriessen, Michael Nyman, Cornelius Cardew or other Europeans who gained their “fortune and glory” by forming their own ensembles). It is essential to survival in the contemporary field to be able to navigate these waters on one’s own, either through recording (I’m still uncertain about where the dust will settle on commercial recordings myself) or composers performing themselves, or creating their own ensembles.

As to history: I think Mr. Service doth protest too much. History will take care of itself. Francis Fukuyama declaimed “the end of history” in 1989 (and again in 1992) when the Soviet Union fell and the Cold War ended. The last 21 years have certainly proven him wrong. Music history is no different (and doesn’t exist in a vacuum. I’m loathe to write about it as a separate entity, but it will have to do for our purposes) and it will get sorted out. The challenges to a life in art are too big for artists to lose too much sleep about their place and role in “history.” Composers of concert music are too peripheral in contemporary SOCIETY for us to worry about HISTORY. History will not remember the place where we fell, let alone our music, if we don’t start (re-)carving our place in SOCIETY (whatever that place might mean. I’m open to various possibilities).

No one can say where recording technology, the increasing ease at which high-quality recordings can be achieved and the infinite distribution potential of digital media will take contemporary music. Web sites, for example, allow anyone to access your music effortlessly, something that was not possible 15 years ago. Steve is totally right; the way to grow our audience is twofold: write great music and then give it to them. CDs and web sites make that easier then ever before.

I’ve even thought the enhanced connectivity of the internet age may disband the idea of traditional “cultural centers”, insofar as new communication technologies eliminate the need to “be” somewhere in order to make your presence known. This is a more radical and inchoate concept than the others I’ve proffered, but not totally unfounded. After all, we’ve all just debated the same text and its ancillary issues without interacting face-to-face. That’s cool, and along the lines of what I’m getting at.

I am beginning to think that making albums by oneself and releasing them via a website is going to be an unpleasant necessity.

The situation in England, particularly with BBC commissions – such as the proms – is completely corrupt.

And if performances in any venue are becoming more difficult to stage, perhaps the real question is whether new music can continue to wait for a shrinking number of opportunities to be heard live in an age where millions download what they hear from the Internet.