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roachboy · 01-05-2006, 09:26 AM

i never really understand this question--where are the "great" x of today?--one version i heard once was "where is today's james joyce?"---which i thought about at the time--chances are that "today's james joyce" (whatever that means) is out there working in obscurity, struggling to get over and continue to operate in an environment that offers minimal support. remember that joyce would perhaps have remained obscure longer had it not been for ezra pound (the little review) and others whose activism and support...

where are "today's great composers?"---the question assumes that cultural markets are rational and that, if someone who met your criteria were out there, you would know--well, cultural markets are not rational---particularly not in the states, and even more so if you are dealing--as i suspect you would be--with experimental music. for example philip glass--i dislike his music intensely myself--i do not find his use of repetition to generate phase effects to be interesting, and if you do not find that interesting there is precious little to bother with--but folk know about him. glass has become the posterboy for minimalism-lite--along with john adams---if you compare his work to that of, say la monte young or james tenney, its shortcomings become evident---depending of course on what you are looking for when you approach repetition or phase effects or long sustained pitches etc....glass/adams stay well within the set of conventions that have dominated western classical music since its inception in the late 18th-early 19th century-young, tenney, etc. do not.

other variables: la monte young for example has a very particular relation to recorded versions of his music--he does not seem to want to submit to the loss of control over his music that an extensive engagement with commecial recordings would entail--so he tightly controls how his music is released, how it is performed, etc.--my impression is that this control follows from aesthetic, political and personal objections to the current state of the american culture industry.
the point is that you cant control for varying relations to the media that gives you access to what is being produced out there in the world.

where are today's "great composers"? probably working shitty day jobs and producing a fraction of what they might otherwise have been able to---many are not able to hear their own music performed with any regularity, which means that development as ensemble writers becomes really difficult.

the other question was raised earlier and is quite important: what is composition anyway?
1. since world war 2, with the development of magnetic tape, people have been able to manipulate sound directly without having to pass through a score or any of the processes related to generating scores---musique concrete (pierre schaeffer, pierre henry initially--michel chion, bernard parmegiani, luc ferrari et al of a second generation), tape music, digital processing--all these media admit of this.

2. one of the most influential ideas put into the public sphere by john cage was that of non-intent, of "letting sounds be sounds"---from the first, an emphasis on procedures (chance operations in cage's case)--from the second a view of the relation between pitches which argues that the complexity of a given sound is only accessible to listeners if that pitch is presented as discrete---that is not as part of a series.

1 and 2 are linked---they push you past serial techniques, which already move well outside the patterns of tonal organization of the 19th century (which you still have operational in nearly every popular form of music btw)---the emphasis on complexity of pitches/sounds requires it--which would raise the question of whether folk would recognize what a "great composer" at this point is doing (that is is an appalling state of affairs, to my mind--but so it goes)

another matter--still related, believe it or not----that has become a big deal since ww2 is the gradual blurring of the lines that once separated composer and performer and improvisation from composition---all of which is an effect of recordings (which fix improvisations and thereby completely break down any meaningful line between the two types of activity)--for example: modular compositions (stockhausen's kalvierstucke 11 being the most famous the performer arranges elements in sequence and determines the apporach to each)---graphic scores that stipulate parameters for improvised performances (earle brown)---the often very complex systems worked out for linking composed and improvised elements by folk like anthony braxton (braxton here as a way of indicating many other folk as well who, working out of the tradition that folk still call jazz for some reason, try to address this relation--roscoe mitchell, anthony davis, ornette coleman, cecil taylor--the list goes on and on and on)---the rise of the free improvisation movement in the early 1960s around folk like derek bailey, amm, mev, etc---these folk (and many others since) have been working to subordinate compositional strategies to improvised performance. if you are looking for "great composers" in this kind of context, what are you looking for? there is much excellent msic being produced today in any number of genres---why would you look exclusively to the imploded field that is western classical music for access to it?

there is more too:
what defines composition in electronic music? circuit bending is a compositional form, not just the creation of compositional tools--how do you evaluate such performances?
many folk who work in this area exercize compositional controls over pieces by shaping algorhythms that makes selections from repertoires of sounds---performance is letting the algorhythm run--the results would not be the same twice----how would you evluate such procedures?
or you could think about the vast range of folk who make music using audio platforms on computers, whose work gets stuck into all kinds of strange categories, who draw on a wide range of genre/histories to shape what they are doing--what do you do with these musics?

composition in its more traditional form has become but one option for the generation of music.
the situation now is fundamentall other than it was a hundred years ago---everything about how music is accessed and processed has changed, mostly as a function of shifts in technology and the various ways in which these technological shifts have been processed.
so it could be that you cannot find "great composers" today because your mode of thinking about what the term might entail is wholly outdated.
for that matter, who determines what is and is not "great"?
what does the category mean?

01-05-2006, 09:26 AM	#13 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i never really understand this question--where are the "great" x of today?--one version i heard once was "where is today's james joyce?"---which i thought about at the time--chances are that "today's james joyce" (whatever that means) is out there working in obscurity, struggling to get over and continue to operate in an environment that offers minimal support. remember that joyce would perhaps have remained obscure longer had it not been for ezra pound (the little review) and others whose activism and support... where are "today's great composers?"---the question assumes that cultural markets are rational and that, if someone who met your criteria were out there, you would know--well, cultural markets are not rational---particularly not in the states, and even more so if you are dealing--as i suspect you would be--with experimental music. for example philip glass--i dislike his music intensely myself--i do not find his use of repetition to generate phase effects to be interesting, and if you do not find that interesting there is precious little to bother with--but folk know about him. glass has become the posterboy for minimalism-lite--along with john adams---if you compare his work to that of, say la monte young or james tenney, its shortcomings become evident---depending of course on what you are looking for when you approach repetition or phase effects or long sustained pitches etc....glass/adams stay well within the set of conventions that have dominated western classical music since its inception in the late 18th-early 19th century-young, tenney, etc. do not. other variables: la monte young for example has a very particular relation to recorded versions of his music--he does not seem to want to submit to the loss of control over his music that an extensive engagement with commecial recordings would entail--so he tightly controls how his music is released, how it is performed, etc.--my impression is that this control follows from aesthetic, political and personal objections to the current state of the american culture industry. the point is that you cant control for varying relations to the media that gives you access to what is being produced out there in the world. where are today's "great composers"? probably working shitty day jobs and producing a fraction of what they might otherwise have been able to---many are not able to hear their own music performed with any regularity, which means that development as ensemble writers becomes really difficult. the other question was raised earlier and is quite important: what is composition anyway? 1. since world war 2, with the development of magnetic tape, people have been able to manipulate sound directly without having to pass through a score or any of the processes related to generating scores---musique concrete (pierre schaeffer, pierre henry initially--michel chion, bernard parmegiani, luc ferrari et al of a second generation), tape music, digital processing--all these media admit of this. 2. one of the most influential ideas put into the public sphere by john cage was that of non-intent, of "letting sounds be sounds"---from the first, an emphasis on procedures (chance operations in cage's case)--from the second a view of the relation between pitches which argues that the complexity of a given sound is only accessible to listeners if that pitch is presented as discrete---that is not as part of a series. 1 and 2 are linked---they push you past serial techniques, which already move well outside the patterns of tonal organization of the 19th century (which you still have operational in nearly every popular form of music btw)---the emphasis on complexity of pitches/sounds requires it--which would raise the question of whether folk would recognize what a "great composer" at this point is doing (that is is an appalling state of affairs, to my mind--but so it goes) another matter--still related, believe it or not----that has become a big deal since ww2 is the gradual blurring of the lines that once separated composer and performer and improvisation from composition---all of which is an effect of recordings (which fix improvisations and thereby completely break down any meaningful line between the two types of activity)--for example: modular compositions (stockhausen's kalvierstucke 11 being the most famous the performer arranges elements in sequence and determines the apporach to each)---graphic scores that stipulate parameters for improvised performances (earle brown)---the often very complex systems worked out for linking composed and improvised elements by folk like anthony braxton (braxton here as a way of indicating many other folk as well who, working out of the tradition that folk still call jazz for some reason, try to address this relation--roscoe mitchell, anthony davis, ornette coleman, cecil taylor--the list goes on and on and on)---the rise of the free improvisation movement in the early 1960s around folk like derek bailey, amm, mev, etc---these folk (and many others since) have been working to subordinate compositional strategies to improvised performance. if you are looking for "great composers" in this kind of context, what are you looking for? there is much excellent msic being produced today in any number of genres---why would you look exclusively to the imploded field that is western classical music for access to it? there is more too: what defines composition in electronic music? circuit bending is a compositional form, not just the creation of compositional tools--how do you evaluate such performances? many folk who work in this area exercize compositional controls over pieces by shaping algorhythms that makes selections from repertoires of sounds---performance is letting the algorhythm run--the results would not be the same twice----how would you evluate such procedures? or you could think about the vast range of folk who make music using audio platforms on computers, whose work gets stuck into all kinds of strange categories, who draw on a wide range of genre/histories to shape what they are doing--what do you do with these musics? composition in its more traditional form has become but one option for the generation of music. the situation now is fundamentall other than it was a hundred years ago---everything about how music is accessed and processed has changed, mostly as a function of shifts in technology and the various ways in which these technological shifts have been processed. so it could be that you cannot find "great composers" today because your mode of thinking about what the term might entail is wholly outdated. for that matter, who determines what is and is not "great"? what does the category mean? __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 01-05-2006 at 09:34 AM..