I’ve been thor­oughly enjoy­ing Hans Abbing’s Why Are Artists Poor?, which formed an impor­tant source in my last two arti­cles. Abbing is an econ­o­mist and a visual artist, and he tack­les the broad ques­tion of artist poverty from the per­spec­tive of both dis­ci­plines, try­ing to fil­ter out the biases and myths that color tra­di­tional interpretations.

As a part of his dis­cus­sion, Abbing brings up the ques­tion of what con­sti­tutes a pro­fes­sional artist. Accord­ing to econ­o­mists, pro­fes­sion­als are peo­ple who earn some non-negligible por­tion of their liv­ing via their pro­fes­sional activ­i­ties. This def­i­n­i­tion works for a lot of the activ­i­ties humans do, but it’s prob­lem­atic in the arts. Con­tinue read­ing “Is There Such Thing As A Pro­fes­sional Composer?” »

A self-help guide to becom­ing a composer

In the first part of this arti­cle, I talked about some of the prob­lems with study­ing com­po­si­tion in acad­e­mia, and I offered some alter­na­tive ways that com­posers might cul­ti­vate their craft more effec­tively (and prob­a­bly less expen­sively too). Here, I’m pro­vid­ing a sort of Top 10 list of life lessons for com­posers. Real­iz­ing that you have no rea­son what­so­ever to lis­ten to my advice, I’m try­ing to couch this in terms of wis­dom I have received from oth­ers or that I can back up some­how, with attri­bu­tion when pos­si­ble. This is by no means com­pre­hen­sive, but these are def­i­nitely issues that I think every com­poser needs to inter­nal­ize for them­selves in one way or the other. Con­tinue read­ing “Why Com­posers Should Drop Out of Uni­ver­sity (and What They Should Be Learn­ing), Part 2” »

The chal­lenges of learn­ing com­po­si­tion in academia

I’ve always said that I learned despite my edu­ca­tion and not because of it, and after my master’s degree I decided to put my money where my mouth was and not pur­sue a PhD—much to my relief, the com­mis­sions and com­pos­ing con­tin­ued any­way. A few months ago I read a great arti­cle in Slate by William Pan­na­packer that really struck home for me. The basic premise was not that new: uni­ver­si­ties are mak­ing them­selves irrel­e­vant in the human­i­ties, arts, and sci­ences. What was refresh­ing, how­ever, was that this wasn’t an anti-intellectual rant, it was just an hon­est exam­i­na­tion of what higher edu­ca­tion as an insti­tu­tion is try­ing to do and how it thinks it should fit into soci­ety. So what if your goal is to be the best com­poser pos­si­ble and to have your music heard by other peo­ple who are inter­ested in sim­i­lar types of music? Should you get a degree in com­po­si­tion? Con­tinue read­ing “Why Com­posers Should Drop Out of Uni­ver­sity (and What They Should Be Learn­ing), Part 1” »

Like most com­posers, I absorbed cer­tain widely accepted musi­cal axioms from my uni­ver­sity stud­ies, but they’ve never been entirely sat­is­fy­ing. As a con­se­quence, I con­stantly search for bet­ter expla­na­tions, in the process hope­fully becom­ing a bet­ter artist. One of the issues I’m increas­ingly focus­ing on is how music his­tory is inter­preted. Although I have pre­vi­ously argued for an enhanced role for music his­tory in com­poser edu­ca­tion, I also think we need to re-examine how we use (and abuse) that his­tory. In my own prac­tice, let­ting go of false history-based causative asso­ci­a­tions, what I see as a kind of com­po­si­tional his­tori­cism, has paid cre­ative div­i­dends. Con­tinue read­ing “Let­ting Go of 20th-Century Historicism” »

I recently decided to try to encap­su­late major lessons I learned from other com­posers’ music over the years into short one-liners. Sort of like the per­son­al­ity sur­veys that go around Face­book, but more about the musi­cal per­son­al­ity of com­posers (per­haps my per­son­al­ity more than the peo­ple listed here). Any­way, this is what I came up with, in no par­tic­u­lar order: Con­tinue read­ing “What Com­posers Taught Me” »

In early Feb­ru­ary, I inter­viewed Donato Cabr­era, Res­i­dent Con­duc­tor at the SF Sym­phony and guest con­duc­tor for the Feb­ru­ary 28 SFCMP con­cert. In the inter­view, Cabr­era dis­cusses the dif­fer­ences between the Amer­i­can and Euro­pean con­duct­ing tra­di­tions, the dan­gers of over­spe­cial­iza­tion, chal­lenges fac­ing the new music com­mu­nity in the United States, and how he thinks works by liv­ing com­posers should be pro­grammed. You can read the inter­view on SFCMP’s blog.

Recently I dis­cov­ered the amaz­ingly addic­tive new web­site Quora, where peo­ple ask ques­tions on cer­tain themes. After a basic setup, I was instantly directed to a very intrigu­ing ques­tion for me: Why do peo­ple study music the­ory? I argued that music the­ory helped per­form­ers make more informed inter­pre­ta­tions. I also argued that com­posers were gen­er­ally hin­dered by music the­ory, because it’s a ret­ro­spec­tive dis­ci­pline and com­pos­ing is inher­ently forward-looking. Lots of peo­ple dis­agreed with me of course… Still, I’m going to advance the idea that if we want to cre­ate bet­ter com­posers (though I’m not sure we really do—the com­pe­ti­tion is already pretty fierce), we need to reduce the empha­sis on music the­ory, increase the empha­sis on gen­eral analy­sis skills and crit­i­cal think­ing, and make music his­tory the cor­ner­stone of musi­cal edu­ca­tion. Con­tinue read­ing “Improv­ing Com­poser Edu­ca­tion: Less The­ory, More History” »

Like vir­tu­ally all San Fran­cisco Sym­phony con­certs, I attended because there was a new work being played, in this case Israeli-American com­poser Avner Dor­man’s Uriah: The Man The King Wanted Dead. A pro­gram­matic work based on a grue­some Old Tes­ta­ment story, Uriah com­ple­mented the other pro­gram­matic work of the evening, Dukas’s The Sorcerer’s Appren­tice, made famous by the Dis­ney animation—but which I had never heard per­formed live, maybe also because of Disney.

Despite my inher­ent dis­like of late Roman­tic music, hands down the Dukas was a bet­ter piece than the Dor­man. Con­tinue read­ing “Review: Pro­gram­matic works at <span class=“caps”>SF</span> Sym­phony: Avner Dor­man (2010) vs. Paul Dukas (1897)” »

Rat­ing: 4 out of 5 stars

SFCMP kicked off its 40th sea­son with a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally eclec­tic pro­gram that reminded me why the con­cert pro­ducer has been able to draw loyal sub­scribers for decades. The pieces on the pro­gram showed an appre­ci­a­tion for the phe­nom­e­non of the con­cert as a social event belong­ing to a spe­cific com­mu­nity, and the con­cert reflected the eclec­tic spirit of Amer­i­can new music. Con­tinue read­ing “Review: <span class=“caps”>SFCMP</span> 40th Anniver­sary Open­ing Con­cert: Points in Recent History” »

This is a reprint of the first edi­tion of my e-mail newslet­ter.

For some time I’ve had a newslet­ter signup form on my web­site but this is the first time I’m actu­ally send­ing a newslet­ter out!

I plan on doing this 2–3 times per year. For more fre­quent info, see my web­site or Twit­ter. Unsub­scribe link at the bottom.

Con­tents

• Upcom­ing Con­cert: Halo Bal­let Pre­mière – 24 Oct 2010 – Toronto
• Upcom­ing Con­cert: Hockey Story – 20 Jan 2011 – San Diego
• Oksana G. Opera Devel­op­ment Workshop
• Results of Exper­i­ment: Can I Avoid Choos­ing the Music I Lis­ten to?
• Help Me Help You: Col­lab­o­ra­tive Audi­ence Building

Con­tinue read­ing “Newslet­ter: News, Con­certs, Events, <span class=“amp”>&</span> Crit­i­cal Thought” »

In a pre­vi­ous post, I dis­cussed the dif­fer­ence in our reac­tions to music when we choose it (active selec­tion) ver­sus when some­one else chooses it for us (pas­sive selec­tion). I claimed that the end­less choice we expe­ri­ence thanks to Inter­net tech­nol­ogy was mak­ing it harder to enjoy pas­sive musi­cal selection.

Upon fur­ther reflec­tion, how­ever, I see that I am actu­ally mak­ing less active music choices nowa­days than I used to, and tech­nol­ogy is part of the rea­son why. So I’ve decided to con­duct an exper­i­ment: How long can I avoid mak­ing active lis­ten­ing choices, and what will that do to the way I hear music? Con­tinue read­ing “Exper­i­ment: Can I Com­pletely Stop Choos­ing What Music I Lis­ten To?” »

A recent arti­cle in Slate by Jan Swaf­ford got me think­ing about one of the major dis­tinc­tions between infor­ma­tion on the Inter­net and off the Inter­net. As I’ve been argu­ing for years, the way we inter­act with art has fun­da­men­tally changed. Swaf­ford looks at this from the per­spec­tive of a writer to argue “Why e-books will never replace real books”.

Basi­cally, it comes down to directed or active activ­ity ver­sus non-directed or pas­sive activ­ity. When you turn on the radio, the selec­tion is pas­sive. You can choose the sta­tion, but you can’t choose the pro­gram­ming. When you search for music on YouTube, how­ever, the selec­tion is always active. Con­tinue read­ing “Search­ing vs. Finding” »

A few weeks ago, a friend’s link to a rant about a rant about the Hype Machine, a music blog aggre­ga­tor, got me think­ing about the issue of whether it’s bet­ter to do art full time or part time. The short answer to that ques­tion, of course, has to do with what bet­ter means to you. But I still think there are mean­ing­ful dis­tinc­tions that can be made between the kinds of art that get made in either situation.

The ques­tion of bet­ter can be addressed to a large extent using eco­nomic sce­nar­ios, though not by rely­ing on clas­si­cal eco­nom­ics. Basic eco­nomic the­ory would say that the more reward you get for your work, the more devoted you will be to it, hence ensur­ing value. Also, we would expect the best artists to receive the most money because their work is in the high­est demand. So full-time artists, by this def­i­n­i­tion, should always be bet­ter artists. Con­tinue read­ing “The Starv­ing Artist: Full Time ver­sus Part Time” »

Rat­ing: 4.5 out of 5 stars

The San Fran­cisco Con­tem­po­rary Music Play­ers pre­sented their final con­cert of the 2009/2010 sea­son tonight, 26 Apr 2010, at the Herbst The­ater in down­town San Fran­cisco. On the pro­gram were pieces by Greek com­poser Mano­lis Manousakis, Amer­i­can Tan Dun, Chi­nese Guo Wen­jing, and French­man Philippe Hurel. This pro­gram was pre­sented coher­ently and engag­ingly, because proper atten­tion was paid not only to select­ing and prepar­ing the music, but also to light­ing, stag­ing, and tech­no­log­i­cal aspects—a rare achieve­ment. Con­tinue read­ing “Con­cert Review: <span class=“caps”>SFCMP</span>’s His Own Space of Freedom—Theatrically Engag­ing and Musi­cally Diverse” »

Recently, I inter­viewed conductor/composer Chris­t­ian Bal­dini for the San Fran­cisco Con­tem­po­rary Music Play­ers. Chris­t­ian is con­duct­ing a piece by French com­poser, Philippe Hurel for SFCMP’s upcom­ing con­cert on April 26. Bal­dini is an Argen­tine musi­cian by birth, cur­rently teach­ing con­duct­ing at UC Davis near San Francisco.

Inter­est­ingly enough, in the process of the inter­view, we dis­cov­ered we have some things in com­mon, includ­ing a love of con­tem­po­rary music and new opera!

The eco­nom­ics of art is a peren­nial source of debate. Pro­po­nents of fund­ing for the arts usu­ally fol­low one of two argu­ments. The first is that art con­tributes intan­gi­bly to soci­ety by con­tribut­ing a rea­son to live, as opposed to a way to live. The sec­ond is that art actu­ally con­tributes tan­gi­bly to the greater econ­omy through the hard work that many artists do for rel­a­tively lit­tle pay. In con­trast, those who oppose fund­ing for the arts argue that fund­ing is waste of money, because valu­able art will be able to sur­vive eco­nom­i­cally on its own any­way: good artists will be in high demand, cre­at­ing scarcity for their work, and hence ensur­ing them a com­men­su­rate level of income.

But art has never been a good fit to any mon­e­tary econ­omy, because money was not really designed to han­dle art. Con­tinue read­ing “Eco­nom­ics vs. Art: Why a good fit has never existed” »

Rat­ing: 3 stars out of 5

sfSound’s lat­est con­cert on Sat­ur­day 23 Jan 2010 was head­lined by Ligeti’s well-known Cham­ber Con­certo, which closed the con­cert, and was pre­ceded by 10 shorter pre­mières by up-and-comping Bay Area com­posers, mainly stu­dents, but also includ­ing some inter­est­ing other per­spec­tives, like Deer­hoof drum­mer Greg Saunier. This con­cept has some def­i­nite advan­tages. It affords oppor­tu­ni­ties to a lot of less expe­ri­enced com­posers in a rel­a­tively eco­nom­i­cally way, while at the same time ensur­ing an audi­ence for them by pro­gram­ming a new music “hit” like Ligeti’s Cham­ber Con­certo.

How­ever, the for­mat also presents some chal­lenges to audi­ence and ensem­ble, because a lot of rel­a­tively diverse music is pre­sented in the course of an evening. Con­tinue read­ing “Review: sfSound’s Small Pack­ages: Ligeti’s Cham­ber Con­certo and lots and lots of Shorter Works” »

Rat­ing: 3.5 stars out of 5

George Ben­jamin was the San Fran­cisco Sym­phony’s composer-in-residence this month for this year’s instal­la­tion of their Project San Fran­cisco. Truth­fully, I was not famil­iar with Benjamin’s work, but it came highly rec­om­mended by many of my col­leagues, and so I looked for­ward to hear­ing it. I attended the SFS’s final con­cert with Ben­jamin on Sat­ur­day night (16 Jan 2010), where he con­ducted two of his pieces: Ringed by the Flat Hori­zon (1980), the piece that brought him to inter­na­tional atten­tion, and a more recent piece, Duet (2008; see YouTube video below). In gen­eral, while I found Benjamin’s pieces highly com­pe­tent works, I don’t think he lives up to the (per­haps unfairly) high stan­dard peo­ple attribute to him. Con­tinue read­ing “Review: George Benjamin’s <em>Duet</em> with the San Fran­cisco Symphony” »

I was intrigued last month when I received a mes­sage from web­site AudioMi​cro​.com ask­ing if I was inter­ested in a link exchange. They seem to be an inter­est­ing mix of a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent musi­cal “ser­vices” rolled into one, and I thought they might serve as a good model for com­posers who, like myself, are inter­ested in cre­at­ing musi­cal value online. Con­tinue read­ing “AudioMi­cro: Musi­cal Value Online” »

I just wanted to draw atten­tion to col­league and friend Lisa Bielawa’s new blog, which I think is a good exam­ple of the kinds of things com­posers should be doing more to stay in the pub­lic eye. Lisa won the Amer­i­can Academy’s Rome Prize this year and has taken the oppor­tu­nity to write about some of her expe­ri­ences in Italy and else­where. Con­tinue read­ing “Lend Me Your Ears” »

Jason Caslor has a post on his blog today ref­er­enc­ing a New York Times arti­cle that muses about whether “glitz” or other mar­ket­ing gim­micks are use­ful or hurt­ful for clas­si­cal music. The mus­ing is in ref­er­ence to the effect that con­duc­tor Gus­tavo Dudamel’s flam­boy­ant hair has had on clas­si­cal music (in con­junc­tion with his musi­cal tal­ents). Is it good for the vital­ity of orches­tras and opera com­pa­nies on the long run? Con­tinue read­ing “Dudamel, Glitz—and the impor­tance of ask­ing the right question” »

For a genre that claims to be part of the cut­ting edge, the avant-garde/new clas­si­cal music has been rel­a­tively slow to adopt online tools. I won­der about some of the ways we might improve the sit­u­a­tion. As I’ve writ­ten about before, the major issue of art today is orga­ni­za­tion, not con­tent, so if we assume there is some­thing in what we do that oth­ers might be inter­ested in, we need to find ways to reach them. Con­tinue read­ing “New Music and Online Tools” »

Recently I went to a con­cert of new clas­si­cal works, pre­sented by an orga­ni­za­tion that typ­i­cally spe­cial­izes in the 18th– and 19th-century Euro­pean clas­sics. The host of the evening dis­cussed the con­text of the new works, pre­sum­ably to win over the more reluc­tant of their series sub­scribers. His argu­ment was along these lines: We can enjoy the great clas­sic works of the past because they were heard in their time; peo­ple learned to love them when they were new, the works became well known, and they entered the stan­dard reper­toire. We need to pro­gram new works, regard­less of if we like them or not, because this is how we cre­ate the clas­sics of the future.

As much as I wish this were a sound argu­ment, I think it is prob­lem­atic. Con­tinue read­ing “The Fal­lacy of the Classics-of-the-Future Argument” »

Recently I read both Goethe’s and Marlowe’s Faust plays–the Faust leg­end has been a major influ­ence on many gen­er­a­tions of com­posers and authors. I found them exceed­ingly dull, except that the Mar­lowe made me think about chang­ing Eng­lish syn­tax in rela­tion to the other ger­manic lan­guages. And in the case of Goethe, I was curi­ous about the psy­chol­ogy that would lead some­one to tor­ment over this story for one’s entire career.

What they made me real­ize though, is that ideas of the value and endurance of art are tied to our world views. Con­tinue read­ing “Faust and Sub-Prime Mortgages” »

Recently I had a dis­cus­sion with some­one at a con­cert, about whether or not it was good to fall asleep dur­ing a per­for­mance. She said that, although she enjoyed the piece that had just been played, she was dis­ap­pointed that it had been pro­grammed so late in the con­cert, because it made her feel sleepy. So I asked her why that was a bad thing. Con­tinue read­ing “Is sleep­ing through a con­cert bad?” »

So today I read in the Globe and Mail that sci­en­tists are increas­ingly find­ing bio­log­i­cal and genetic sup­port for the age-old adages of love (Siri Agrell, “Sluts and Ver­min”, The Globe and Mail, 26 Apr 2007, http://​www​.the​globe​and​mail​.com/​s​e​r​v​l​e​t​/​s​t​o​r​y​/​R​T​G​A​M​.​2​0​0​7​0​4​2​6​.​w​x​l​s​e​x​s​t​u​d​i​e​s​2​6​/​B​N​S​t​o​r​y​/​l​i​f​e​F​a​m​i​l​y​/​h​ome).

For exam­ple, female mice who play hard to get tend to inspire faith­ful­ness in their mates, as opposed to those who put out right away. There seems to be a bio­log­i­cal rea­son why women that are unavail­able are more desir­able, and this builds faith­ful­ness in men. Inter­est­ing. Con­tinue read­ing “Love, Free Will, and the Use­less­ness of Art” »

I’ve thought a lot lately about the effect that sound, and par­tic­u­larly music, has on our envi­ron­ment. This is what peo­ple fre­quently call Eco­mu­si­col­ogy, though I’m not crazy about that term.

Basi­cally, do we have a right to make noise? How must it feel for a bird liv­ing on my street? Does it enjoy (or notice) the sounds of cars, air­planes, peo­ple play­ing soc­cer in the park across the street? Maybe the bird doesn’t but the squir­rel might. Con­tinue read­ing “Eco­mu­si­col­ogy, the Energy Cri­sis, and Chang­ing Music” »

This is an issue I’ve been think­ing about for a long time. Can we actu­ally jus­tify say­ing one kind of music is bet­ter than any other, or that one piece is bet­ter than another? Con­tinue read­ing “Music Has No Value” »