good point. although we might be making music in the ‘ars nova’, I’m glad I was trained in the ‘ars antigua’

i was recently approached to submit some music for a possible orchestral commission and i declined. sure i could use the money, but the bottom line is that the access and opportunities available to write for an orchestra are extremely limited and not worth my time (compared to what i can create and perform with my own groups or the digital music i am creating and posting online.

overall our idea of an “audience” and “performance” is going be expanding quite a bit, and in the next few years its not only going to be much easier to watch live performances, we are also going to be able to collaborate and perform live with musicians from anywhere in the world.

Glenn Gould had the same attitude about live performance in the 1960s, claiming that concerts would disappear as the main avenue for presenting music by 2000. Well, it’s been ten years since 2000 and concerts are still a reality. The spread of digital technology and the ease with which musicians can share their work on the internet has certainly changed the field, but, ironically, musicians (particularly in the pop and rock arena) are giving up on recordings as a source of income (Prince released an album not too long ago that he simply gave away as an insert in the Sunday Times of London) returning to live performance as their main source of income as musicians.

Also, I have to disagree, as someone working both as a composer AND a performer of new music, about the lack of avenues for presenting new music and the audience thereof. Certainly the audience is small, even by classical music standards, but it is not non-existent. In some places it seems to actually be growing. I’d say that, if anything, the opportunities for presenting live new music have increased with the opening up of “alternative” concert venues such as clubs, galleries and even abandoned buildings and highway overpasses.

In my own experience (and the main reason for my writing the above post) it has been the passion of committed performers that has led to increased performances of and commisions for my work. It takes an inordinate amount of work to be a composer, a lot of which works out to simple networking (something else that the internet has made much easier). While this often gets in the way of the actual work of composing, it is as important a skill to develop in order to make it as a composer.

Well I agree about the value a player brings to the performance of a piece. When I write for performance I usually write to the skill level of the those who will perform the work – and the performers always add something extra that is valued and worthwhile.

But I think there is another factor at work here: performance of a new music composition in front of an audience is a rarity and performances of all types of serious music are declining in number. The attendance figures for classical music perfromances are trending down and the demographics are discouraging.

At the same time most people are listening to the music they just downloaded from the Internet through earbuds. The 21st century composer has a potential audience that is historically unprecedented – so why not write for this? Live preformance in a concert hall has become something like creating an illustrated manuscript in the age of Gutenberg.

I write for performance – our little church choir – and I love doing it. But a lot of what I am writing now will never be performed live – just heard. The lack of performance opportunities for new music will allow it to evolve in the direction that gains it the most listeners.

Sadly, this will not be in the concert hall.

Actually, I don’t know about Zimmer’s brass section. Would you elaborate, please? Thanks!

For the level of performacne available to my compositions… My real problem is getting an ensemble as diverse and big as my comps need. Using too many samples and instruments is a real problem on the contemporary music infra side.

Cheers.