What is music? For me, it has to do with emotions, and intellect married to emotion.

For a composer music is what the composer wants it to be. But if it is to reach an audience there should be at least some element of common language. So, for example, a great piece of Indian music, using different scales and concepts would not have the same impact on a Western audience as music based on some common experience of the music in Western countries.

Personally, I think great new music needs to be stubbornly independent of any prescribed style, and that includes the prescriptions of atonal music! The composer should chose to relate to a style for a specific reason, not because it happens to be fashionable in universities. A composer should study and analyze what makes great music great. This is the composer’s tool box. However, the composer then uses these tools to create something different from what has gone before.

Good luck with everything and i check out your site for performances.

I’m not going to disregard the post. Hastily written or not, it brings up some good points that deserve answering. So, here goes:

“Music of the present:” my point with that term, such as it is, is precisely what you’ve done above (and in your earlier post). To question what music “of the present” means. You ask if my group’s mission is to present music of the present, if that means Beyonce, Lang, Glass, Alice Coltrane, Ferneyhough or Messiaen and Tchaikovsky (I suppose that, if we’re talking about a “specious present,” as my 11th grade history teacher put it, Tchaikovsky could be considered to be “the present”). My group itself has only one parameter set on paper but in our performance practice over the past five years we’ve developed a taste for a certain kind of repertoire. That’s the way it works in performance and not really the point of what I meant. What I meant by urging composers to write the “music of the present” is twofold:
first, QUESTION what exactly MUSIC is. That’s certainly nothing new. Cage and
Fluxus already had us doing that decades ago. What I’m more interested in questioning, however, is the very notion of “classical” music. What makes Beyonce different from Phil Glass? Why should we perform Nicco Muhly in the concert hall or the opera house and not in the dance hall (a distinction he certainly doesn’t make, at least not too strictly)? “New Music” is many things for many people. “New music” in 2010 is very different than what “new music” was in 1955, or 1965, or 1988.
Which brings me to my second intention: for years modernism (or Modernmism) was concerned with ONLY looking forward. History moves in a straight line and progress must be made. This is an attitude that goes back to the New German School in the 19th century and Wagner’s notion of the “music of the future” stems from it (and is in direct line with Boulez’ dictum that composers who have not embraced the inevitability of the 12 tone system are “useless”). This attitude about history and progress has been changing over the past two or three decades but this has brought, at times, a kind of reactionary rapprochement that has more to do with engaging the music of the PAST than engaging the music and culture its composers are living in. This kind of attitude, an attitude that “music need not be of its own time” (to quote a prominent composer a few years ago), is terribly unhealthy to the survival of our art as a vibrant, relevant art form (if it’s even possible. How can art NOT be of its own time?).

As to advertising, social media, etc. look, I’m not implying that these are substitutes for craft, training and talent. Too many composers with plenty of talent who were lucky enough to be given the opportunity to properly develop that talent (and I’m honestly sorry that you weren’t, apparently, able to, although it’s never too late if you have the resources) lose any chance at a career because of their inability at getting their music out there. It used to be tricky to network, but with today’s tools it is possible to do a lot of the networking that would have taken years and fortunes before through online contact. These tools have certainly benefited me in my modest career and I certainly expect to be able to be able to make that career less modest through the use of social media tools.

Ultimately, the goal of a composer is to get his/her music played. It should, ideally, be about the music and nothing else. But the music needs to be played in order for it to exist. If a composer is to have his/her music played, s/he has plenty of tools at his/her disposal these days to make it happen. The days where one could sit in a corner and mope at how unnoticed their music is and be justified in that attitude are drawing to a close.

At least, I hope they are.

Please disregard the above post. I posted it too hastily. My apologies.

Well, I do know what music of the present is. As we have a great diversity of styles and approaches to composing music and your initial post extends beyond Eurocentric classical music into musics which aims to preserve and accurately past practices as well explore new amalgamations, I am challenging the term music of the PRESENT. I apologize that my first post was far too broad in its criticism. I simply disagree with your term. There is no present music but looking backward while having a dim view of the horizons some of us meander towards.

My critique of social marketingfocused too much on what is not a serious drawback. Let me clarify, I think social marketing can become too easily a tool which has the composer/performer expend too much time determing where to focus and to present their promotions of their music to the detriment of learning to perform new rep and types of music.

As for my musical training – I have dealt with a realty many musicians who do it as an avocation due to poor or lack of guidance, social milieu and financial resources. In my case I went to a liberal arts school with a great music school. In my hometown, I was told I was a very good musician and I thought I was getting a good education. My family were ghenrous wityhing their lower middle class means. Nevertheless at college I learned the truth – I was poorly trained and only told I should get instruction from a music student. I never could get much counseling on mapping my courses and study – just enough to meet the requirements for an undergrad degree.

I was disillusioned for quite some time. Only these past few years as I approached the middle of adulthood have I thionk I found good instruction and producing quality music as a composer. For performance, I have found much better instruction for classical music yet given up ever finding a consensus on what makes one a “great performer”. It really seems the performer finds their own way in lieu of their training.

Finally composition remains now an avocation and as I have posted in another thread, there is limited time. And I know many professional musicioans when they build a family, take care of property and family … such a manifesto as yours is not feasible if it were to do it all well.

So, I don’t offer any hard facts, rather my experience and share the experience of other musicians. From these experiences I found what you wrote a nice manifesto which requires much clarification and better scope. Heck, even from an advertiser’s view, it is difficult to offer a memorable, convincing brand (which is one of the things needed to be done to elicit good results from social marketing) if your group’s mission is to perform music of the PRESENT – again, is that Beyonce tunes redonje (a la Turnage), is it Bernhard Lang chamber operatic literature, Phillip Glass or Ferneyhough string quartets, remakings of Alice Coltrane’s 1970′s work along with an ocassional performance of Messaien and Tchaikovsky???

C – It is common but those that look at social media simply as a marketing tool severely misunderstand and underestimate it. Social media can function as a tool but most powerfully it provides a platform for dialogue or a sharing of information and ideas. Engagement is key, if you are simply broadcasting a static message it has very little value. stats and followers dont reflect influence or reach and arguably they mean nothing to me if the end goal is not met. So, those that buy followers and pad stats gain nothing because at the end of the day they can’t produce results. Like anything else, you get out what you put in and smart efficient use of social media can be very powerful.

I cannot predict how long social media will remain cheaply available to the general public, nor can I help it if there are those among us who pad their statistics. Ultimately, what does that matter? How does padding blog and web site hits affect the music? How does THAT get anyone to listen to anything?

As to my musical training, I will answer that question with a question (and please indulge me an assumption here): has your musical training ended merely because you’re no longer in school?

How was your musical training paid for to be able to play such a wide diverse repertoire convincingly?

How long do you think social media will remain ridiculously cheap? What happens to social media when all it becomes is a marketing tool? For example, one of the blogs mentioned in a short article at New Music Box (I believe Beth’s blog) I know from marketing folks can be bought to have the stats padded? Why not the same happen to access to social media?

What is music of the present when the future is simply one damn thing happening after another? For example – the action of typing the text above is now part of my past. So the start of a performance quickly becomes the past, the initial drafts of a composition are the past upon further revisions or destruction.

So, a nice start to a manifesto which needs a good deal of clarification and pragmaticism.

Fotis