Music as Politics

The connections between music and politics are making waves. In a time of much turmoil in the world, there are those in the music world that demand musicians take political stances. There are also those that believe music stands apart, as a message of peace, love, and hope, and should not enter specifically into politics.

Recently, this has come to the fore with the conflicts in Venezuela. A concert was given by the Youth Orchestra of Lara on February 12th, the same day that violent protests erupted. Gustavo Dudamel conducted the ensemble, and his decision to do so has caused heavy discussions in musical circles. Dudamel has been asked in an open letter by Gabriela Montero to stand with the Venezuelan people against the current regime. Dudamel responded that the concert was about "peace, love, and unity," and that the commemoration of February 12th as the beginning of the National Network of Youth and Children's Orchestras was not about supporting a regime, but about supporting those ideas.

I leave the debate on the political implications to those with a finer knowledge of political science than myself. There are those that would say not protesting means tacit agreement, that silence is the same as agreeing. I have a feeling certain artists, including those that have lived through major persecution, would disagree. My thoughts turn to Shostakovich and Prokofiev, who lived in a time when Stalin threatened their very lives if they wrote pieces deemed improper. In Alex Ross' The Rest is Noise, Ross spends an entire chapter on discussing the difficulties in creating music behind the iron curtain, and discusses how Prokofiev had friends in the theater and music world disappearing around him, and he feared for his very life. And yet Gabriel Prokofiev, in his incredibly skewed look at contemporary music, seemed to ignore those constraints placed upon his grandfather, and focused on all the beautiful, "traditional" music that Sergei Prokofiev created. Gabriel also ignored the amount of innovation that Sergei attempted to put in his compositions while working under serious constraints. 

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 Many different examples of the coincidence of music and politics are available throughout history. Jennie Wood wrote a brief article outlining three different examples following the imprisonment of members of Pussy Riot--Verdi's Nabucco, the rise of punk music in politics in America and the creation of Rock the Vote, and the group Rage Against the Machine. These are just three examples, one from the Romantic period, and two from modern perspectives, of musicians using their art for political ends. Matthew Shaftel makes strong arguments throughout his paper on Stephen Foster, showing the changes Foster made over time as he became more aware of the horrors of slavery. His style changed from one of Irish/Anglo influenced songs performed in black-face, to more traditional minstrelsy songs, to more culturally aware music, and finally to the later period of anti-slavery songs. Another great American folk musician, sadly recently deceased, Pete Seeger, wrote many political songs, starting with his involvement with the Young Communist League, to anti-WWII songs, Vietnam protest songs, and continued activism through his entire life.

As art music musicians, there's sometimes a Romantic ideal that we should hold ourselves aloof from these conflicts, that somehow our music serves a higher purpose above such base political leanings. However, this ignores important aspects of who we are as humans. All our actions are defined by our experiences, past, present, and future. Our experiences are in part dictated by the society and environment in which we are a direct part. For me to claim my music has nothing to do with society is to say that I have nothing to do with society. At Opera Veritatis, Joseph Jones talks about the effects of musical snobbery. He points to the usual suspects, including conventions like concert halls, clapping, talking, etc. To me these arguments are base, nothing more than symptoms of Jones' first statements--classical musicians holding themselves aloof from society. Jones goes on to defend some ideas of snobbery, and shows the double edged sword that is the attack on the establishment--ideas I agree with. The concert hall isn't the problem. Neither is the idea of quiet during the music. The problem is instead linked to a perception, a preconception about classical music. It's an idea, held generally by society, that classical musician are not a part of society, but held above it. Some classical musicians believe this. Some believe that this is caused directly by the music, specifically by difficult, complex, atonal works. I could not disagree more. It's about this poisonous perception held by society, and perpetuated by the fear mongers. "Classical music is dying!" is the rallying cry for changing the music, but not the perception.

We are all linked to society, which is linked to political ideas and our environment. When Valery Gergiev and Anna Netrebko spoke on being Putin supporters, connections were made to specific policies of Putin's regime. Writer's asked Netrebko and co. to publicly state their ideas on those various policies, in particular Putin's deplorable positions on homosexuality. Gidon Kremer, Daniel Barenboim, and Martha Agerich performed a concert in protest of Putin, and those that showed support for him. There was a call to boycott the Metropolitan Opera's production of Eugene Onegin because of the participation of Gergiev and Netrebko. There was an online petition to dedicate the opening to the LGBT community. The Met of course stated that because their ideals are artistic, they wouldn't make political statements. Never mind the connections between the plot of Eugene Onegin and Tchaikovsky's own life, especially his homosexuality and all the possible dire repercussions his personal life could have had on his public life. Tatyana, a young woman, meets Eugene Onegin and falls madly in love. She writes a letter to him, and he comes to her and tells her he's a man that cannot easily love, he can only offer brotherly affection in return, and that Tatyana should not be so open about her feelings. Is Tchaikovsky Tatyana, wanting to scream his love only to be admonished? Or is he Onegin, pressing his male lovers that they cannot be together because of societal constraints?

So never mind that, when the opera is taken in context of the composer and the time it was written, that it has political ideals attached to it. Never mind that Tchaikovsky was a homosexual and could not even begin to have even fulfilling private relationships for fear of the repercussions. By keeping to this Romantic ideal, holding classical music aloof, we lose possible interpretations of a work that can add depth.

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My own music is marked by the influence of society and my views of the world around me. Whether or not I am seeking to make a direct political statement, which I often do, or whether I am writing a piece of "absolute music," from a completely formalist approach, my experiences influence the work. Every piece of music I hear, every article, scholarly journal, book, or blog I read, and every movie, tv show, cartoon, or live stream influences me, and therefore my music.

Yesterday, Independence Square in Kyiv was attacked by police and pro-government forces. There had been a long standing protest in the square, led by Euromnaida, formed by the minority coalition of the government. The original conflict was between a pro-EU stance vs. a pro-Russia stance, an economic fight over which trade union to join. However, as time went on, it became more apparent that the fight had become about general rights, freedom, and a group of people feeling their voices and views were not being heard. What started as peaceful protests grew in size. The Ukrainian government's ties to Russia were strengthened, and the actions of the government and police are undoubtedly being, at the very least, influenced by Putin's ideas, if not Putin's regime. Police cracked down on the protests, leading to violence from the protesters (though there is, of course, debate on who started the violence). All this exploded yesterday as the protesters refused to leave the square, military forces began throwing incendiaries into the tents, lighting many on fire, and police and pro-government thugs moved into the square. There have been multiple deaths, mainly in the protesters, and also major targeting of journalists, even those outside the direct conflict. Security operations have begun cracking down all over the Ukraine (in Ukrainian, so you'll have to translate). I watched the live feed as the crackdown happened, horrified by what I saw. Just before the crackdown began, Ukrainian clergy sung a chant of peace. There are various songs written for, adapted, and used by the Euromaidan movement.

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies stated

A composer’s job is to bear witness...their contact with music has made them react, think, and development them with a potential which is something much much greater than becoming a mere consumer. In this respect serious music of all kinds is dangerous. It persuades people to not be a mere consumer. And therefore under present circumstances, it must be castrated, it if isn’t already tending that way.-- LINK

This is a view I hold to as well. Music, as all art, exists not in isolation, but as a series of mirrors. The quote adapted from Shakespeare is that "Art holds a mirror to nature." The real quote is from Hamlet, spoken by Hamlet to the troupe about to perform the play in front of his step-father. The purpose of the play was to get his uncle/step-father to react, to prove that he had, in fact, killed his father and usurped the throne:

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this

special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature:

for any thing so o'erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose

end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twere the

mirror up to nature: to show virtue her feature, scorn her own

image, and the very age and body of the time his form and

pressure.--Hamlet 

Joseph Campbell expounds on the quote in his book The Power of Myth:

Shakespeare said that art is a mirror held up to nature. And that’s what it is. The nature is your nature, and all of these wonderful poetic images of mythology are referring to something in you. When your mind is trapped by the image out there so that you never make the reference to yourself, you have misread the image.

The inner world is the world of your requirements and your energies and your structure and your possibilities that meets the outer world. And the outer world is the field of your incarnation. That’s where you are. You’ve got to keep both going. As Novalis said, 'The seat of the soul is there where the inner and outer worlds meet.--Power of Myth, pg. 68

And that  is the truth of the matter. Art exists as not a single mirror to nature, but as a series of mirrors, reflecting the creator, society, the observer, the observers view of society, and on and on through various repetitions, recursions, refraction, and rarefaction.

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies stated in the above linked talk that his Third String Quartet (in the Naxos Series) directly shows his rage toward the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He himself was in the forefront of protests in London, leading the march. A political stance by a sometimes controversial composer, a man who anecdotes say was eating a swan when the messengers from the Queen came to tell him he had been placed as The Queen's Composer (eating swan is illegal in England, as they are owned by the crown).

Are these political and social actions those of a man sitting in an Ivory Tower, working on music that is apart from society? Or is the music just what Davies proposes at the end of his talk: dangerous. Dangerous to the established commercial enterprises, dangerous because difficult music requires thought, and thought is exactly what some people do not want from the masses.

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In Seth Godin's manifesto on education in America, Stop Stealing Dreams, he breaks down the history of the American school system well, dating from Horace Mann going to Prussia and adapting the system, and the idea that commercial enterprises were all for the common school because it taught (teaches) students to listen and respond to orders. The same can be said in the hierarchical structures of the large performing bodies--orchestras, bands, and choirs essentially must work together and under a unified artistic vision, normally the conductor's, to create a piece. As such musicians are taught to follow orders in those situations. At the same time, musicians are constantly asked to flex their muscles, make creative interpretations, and pursue their own artistic merits. This manifests itself particularly in chamber and solo performance. Music all at once serves the grand purpose--teaching students to follow orders--and fights against it, giving autonomy and creativity to the students. Because instrumental music is not as straight-forward as a pop song in its interpretation, it also does the same for the audience--following directions in the formal aspects of the experience in the concert hall, but stimulating the brain to make its own cognitive and artistic leaps, sometimes with guidance provided by a talk or program notes, sometimes without it.

Therefore, the very creation of classical music is, in some fashion, political. It functions outside commercial norms, and can be seen as dangerous to some schools of thought on the purpose of education, and the freedom of society. It also functions within the framework, particularly in the 6th-12th grade setting in America where the majority of music education is in large groups led by a single conductor. Students learn to work together and function as a societal subgroup, but ownership of the interpretation is normally reserved for the conductor--thus a struggle between an idealized socialistic interpretation (workers joining together for a common goal) vs. the capitalistic ideal of ownership (only one person can "own" the interpretation for the group--the "workers," in this case the musicians, do not define the interpretation). Even in solo and chamber interpretations, young students can fall into the habit of copying a recording, taking someone else's interpretation of the music rather than their own. How many young trombonists grow up thinking the proper interpretation of the Grondahl Concerto is the one performed by Christian Lindberg? Fights erupt over the definitive recording of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas--is it Schnabel, Barenboim, or Brendel?

Or, is the best interpretation your own?

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Popular music and politics can be traced through so many avenues. Some have been mentioned above--minstrelsy and folk movements in Stephen Foster and Pete Seeger; the punk movement; and Pussy Riot. The metal genres of Scandinavia also have a rich political history, most famously coming to the fore in the black metal scene in Norway. There are numerous documentaries of the groups involved--specifically Burzum and Mayhem. This documentary on Burzum is one of my favourites as it shows how the music itself, which was grounded basically in a youth culture, lashing out against societal norms by using the most shocking lyrics and imagery possible, got turned into a mass media frenzy on Satanism and destruction. It also documents the influence of one person, Varge Vikernes, and how he was able to influence fans, and even cause a string of copy-cat church burnings by people that were not truly Satanists, and only fans of Burzum because of the anti-establishment stances.

When I pitched by Fulbright, I went in knowing these facts, but I had a major question--was it really the influence of just a couple people that changed the history of metal in Norway? Sweden didn't have the same outbreak of violence. Remember, first, that this happened before the internet information age--bands became well known in their small scene through the trading of demo tapes, fanzines, and local music stores and clubs. Burzum was known in Sweden, but not embraced the same way, while Swedish groups such as At The Gates, In Flames, and Meshuggah were formed in the late 80s and early 90s, and had more popularity in Sweden. Norwegian and Swedish groups could trace common ancestry, to the English group Venom, the Swedish group Bathory, and of course to early metal group such as Black Sabbath. The lyric characteristics are similar, focusing on occult and Satanic imagery, death, pestilence, and metaphors for what the groups saw as corrupt groups (often Christianity, the government, and commercial society).

Yet Sweden kept it all in their music. My interview with Anders Björler was particularly enlightening. As a member of At The Gates, an early Swedish Death Metal group, he had been a part of the scene from the beginning. He spoke with some disdain about Varge Vikernes, and viewed the outward show of violence toward society as deplorable. As I've gone to shows, and met more death metal musicians here in Stockholm, I see the same ideas. There's an angst, an anti-establishment feeling, and yet the shows are full of happiness, head banging, and some of the best mosh-pit etiquette I've ever seen. There's a respect for each other, a communal experience of an obvious niche crowd, somewhat alienated from society, that warms my heart. The concerts remind me so much of classical concerts, with their specific traditions, rules, behaviors, and even dress. Metal musicians are also snobs, able to rattle off band after band, since songs from local groups I've never encountered, and even give the oddly dressed fellow a bit of a sideways glance--I don't own the standard accoutrement of metal, the leather jacket with band patches, the chains, or the the tight pants, so I go to concerts in my standard dress of jeans, a tshirt, and a plain hoody. I do, however, have the obligatory long hair and beard.

And yet, after just a couple concerts, I started having conversations with audience members. They're a welcoming group, understanding that if you've wandered into the club, and you're obviously paying attention to the music, drinking, and enjoying yourself, than you are one of them. There is, after all, nothing wrong with a bit of elitism. When I ask questions about metal, they assume I know the history, that if they reference Bathory, I will know the reference. Or when various audience members in the know start calling for covers of obscure songs by bands I've never heard of, that I'll accept that cover as readily as I'd accept a new song. The traditions can be a barrier, but only to those that are afraid of different traditions, refuse traditions, refuse change, and generally refuse to be met on any ground but their own.

The music is politically charged, the musicians have their own opinions, spouting what commercial companies and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies would both term as "dangerous" music; music that doesn't fit within the societal norms. Even if the lyrics weren't anti-establishment, it'd be inherently political by standing musically apart from what is deemed acceptable by society. Even through inaction, a group is political, just by creating music that is individualistic.

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By now, I hope all of you reading this post have seen my viewpoint on music and politics as being linked, in the same way that all people are included in society, even if that inclusion is by exclusion. A stance is a stance; for, against, abstaining, redirecting, true, or false.

And, perhaps one of the biggest problems we're having in classical music today is that we try, try ever so hard, to not have a stance, to remain aloof, to take this Romantic ideal that we are somehow above society. This is not reflected in the music. It is only somewhat reflected in the traditions--I do not hold to beliefs that a raised stage is a physical symbol of a separation between performers and audience. It is a practical matter of sight lines. I do not believe that the idea of having a traditional garb to go to the symphony is the issue, though the social contexts of that garb being of the upper class is a problem. I do take issue with the perception that one must dress a certain way to attend any event--I've been to the NY Phil in a tux, and to the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra in a t-shirt. I still don't own a band t-shirt nor a leather jacket, yet still go to metal shows.

Are we going to let common (mis)conceptions rule our decisions to change tradition? Or, perhaps, we could instead fight against the (mis)conception? Or is it just easier to change ourselves to what society thinks it wants, than to provide society what we believe it needs?

I asked the same question in regards to post-secondary education. The troubles I see in academia--bloating of administration; loss of full-time positions; the push for low-paid, part-time, unprotected workers (adjuncts) to take over teaching--as symptoms of a fundamental switch in the philosophy of post-secondary education. The students are now consumers, which means they dictate what is being provided. A student survey can get an adjunct fired, even if the student lied on the survey. University sanctioned social events demand more money the expanding classrooms. Larger classes are ok, as long as there is more study space for students to socialize.

What is the purpose, then, of post-secondary education?

And do the consumers know what they're buying?

Curators serve a valuable purpose in examining not just what the target group may want, but also providing what the curator believes needs to be included. Professors and administrators are curators in academia--but, to my mind, only one of those two groups is actively curating; the other is pandering, hoping to stay relevant with the new, hip generation, by giving them what they want. It's a symptom of another deep issue; the commercialization of education. When education becomes not about the mission, but about money, the where does the mission fall?

So, two questions: what is the mission?; and how does the mission related to the current commercialized environment?

These two questions are also important in classical musical establishments.

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Those two questions are inherently political. As soon as we delve into the domain of human values, we move directly into politics. Political parties are manifestations of the ideals of various groups. In a democracy, these groups vie for power based on popular opinion. In the American two party system, we see groups moving back and forth, pandering to different bases, changing their views, and telling people what they want to here. In Kansas, a recent bill was pushed that would have enabled discrimination of public and private services to homosexual couples by people who held a religious belief against homosexuality. The bill, of course, stalled and was thrown out. It was not written by anyone in Kansas, but by a think-tank group that is proposing similar bills all over the US. Even if the bill would have been enacted, it never would have stood against an appeal, as similar cases have lost throughout the US. But, by proposing the vote, certain politicians from conservative areas have solidified their standing with their conservative constituents. They fought the good fight, and lost. This is the essence of pandering--the officials didn't know what was in it before sending it off, they didn't really care, all they cared about was the fact that they knew it would please a base group, which would lead to re-election, and continuing to have their place of power.

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Classical music, and its representative organizations, are inherently political. This is because the music is tied to society, affects specific individuals, who place the music within their own frame of context, influenced by their knowledge and past experiences, and then experience the music as a personal event based upon their own ideas, ideals, and morals. The same is true of groups--whether or not the Met dedicated their opening to the LGBT community or not, or even if they had refused to answer, their reaction would have been political in nature. Their answer as it stands, is political in nature--by saying you're not political, you're taking a political stance.

Saying you're outside society, does not mean that you are.

And, perhaps, that leads to some of the deepest issues some classical music groups are having. I've said often and repeatedly that I write music based in society. I've stated that my audience, the final critic of my piece, is me. That is 100% true. As I write music, I can only hope to show myself in my music, my place in society, and the ideas I wish to expound upon. By focusing on the Other, an outside personage, I can only hope to portray a partial picture--complete understanding of another person is something that is nearly impossible.

But even though my work is mediated always through myself, it does not mean that I somehow hold it outside society. My music is inherently a part of society because I am a part of society. My music is inherently political because I have specific ideals and morals that can enter my work either consciously or subconsciously. I am not the titular anti-protaganist in [Untitled] at the beginning, saying my music is about nothing. I'm the composer who, by the end, has realized that even by striving to be absolute, he is influenced by his environment, surroundings, and society. Just because I do not set out to write a piece of music that has a distinct story, does not mean the music will not tell a story.

Because, for each individual, the music will have a slightly different meaning, as understood through their experiences and knowledge.

That is my ultimate philosophy on music-there is no inherent story in instrumental music, but something constructed through experiences, some shared throughout societies (local and global), traditions, and personal ideals. All music can be political, all arts groups are political, and the greatest transgression we're making isn't in the music itself, but in the preconception that, somehow, the arts are outside society. It's not the concert that alienates people, it's our own minds.

 

I Am Classical

Ok, enough of the anger and vinegar. How about a more productive response to all this "Classical Music is dead!" Let's show everyone all the wonderful things happening in groups and individually, large and small.

One of the issues that's happening is the label "classical music." What does it mean? In some conversations, people make it mean "orchestras classical series concert." At other times, it's the entire area of instrumental music.

"People" outside our "clique" don't seem to know what it is, or so claim certain pundits. So, let's be progressive and productive!

If you participate in something you consider "classical music," be it experimental, fusions with lots of different genres, romantic flavoured, anything at all, hop on twitter (or facebook, since they take # now), put a tag to something you're a part of, as a performer, composers, improviser, engineer, whatever.

Put up a link and use the hashtag #IAmClassical

Let's fight all these accusations and silliness by showing the breadth of what this idea encompasses! There are so many wonderful things happening, so many groups large and small doing GREAT! Let's show the world!

#IAmClassical

In honour of MLK Day

Martin Luther King Jr. was a visionary, a great leader, and a hard fighter for one of the greatest causes--equality for all people. His dream is worth fighting for, a dream worth sharing with all people.

When I look at America today, I still see the dream being fought over. Large swaths of Americans still feel disenfranchised, are disenfranchised. I see voting laws repealed, gerrymandering of congressional lines, and attacks against every minority there is, from citing that masculinity is the same thing as thuggish, misogynistic behaviour, and that feminists are destroying America. Young black men still have to fear for their lives based on racial stereotyping. And even within groups that fight for freedom, there is often division caused along racial, social, and political differences.

Several months ago, Phillip Kennicott wrote a scathing article attacking various initiatives in orchestras, in particular outreach. One of his points was that even with outreach, he didn't see any more minorities, especially African Americans and Latinos, in the St. Louis Youth Symphony. He cites this as an example of how it's not working.

I pose a different viewpoint.

In America today, African Americans and Latinos on average make less money. They work lower income jobs, and, by percentage, far fewer make it to management positions than Caucasians or people of Asian descent. Unemployment is also higher in these groups. Education is also a premium, with fewer African Americans and Latinos getting bachelor's degrees, and even fewer getting advanced degrees. (All information from Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Labor).

What does this translate to in terms of my own field?

There are those pushing music as a hobby pursuit. With less funding for schools, "hobbies" are being cut, namely music programs. Schools struggle to afford instruments for underprivileged students, so they call for local donations. Initiatives like "Play it Forward" exist to try and fill the gap, as do instrument lending programs in youth symphonies. But they're plagued by bad names (it took me a while to find "play it forward" via Google search. There are companies and other initiatives with that name), lack of funds, lack of direction, or they fail because they come too late (a donation of a quality instrument from a youth symphony is great, but first they have to get there). There was even a report in the UK that roughly 1/3 of families in the country don't have children playing instruments just because they can't afford them. I imagine numbers are similar in the US, though I couldn't find a report.

Education funding is cut, especially in urban areas. Opportunities don't exist for instruction in music making or in appreciation. As I've wandered through conservatories and schools, gone to festivals and conferences, and attended conferences, I see the same demographic in composers--Caucasian male. I see a bit more spread in performers, with more females and performers of Asian descent.

To me, the reason is simple. Outreach exists to fill those gaps, to bring music and opportunities to families that don't normally have them. When you're an African American family, and you make far less a week than a Caucasian family, are you going to spend your extra money on an expensive instrument, lessons, or outside activities? People bring up sports, but the sports most often dominated by lower income students are those where they aren't buying their own equipment, such as football (beyond the cleats, and maybe a football for home), basketball (a pair of shoes and a basketball, though in some schools even those are provided), and sometimes baseball (a mitt and cleats, both of which can be found used and cheap). I haven't seen a study, but I could see cost of equipment being a major factor for hockey (even used skates aren't cheap, let alone the two sticks you'll need, extra blades for the sticks, and all the padding...it adds up to a lot of money).

In my own field, I see the inequality, from the treatment of musicians, to their inclusion in the entire process. If the opportunities aren't there at a young age, how can they be expected to "appear" at an older age? If they're never exposed to different types of music at a young age, how can they expect to appreciate them later? Buried in the middle of this NY Times op-ed is a tidbit stating that 14 is a "magical year for cultural tastes." I've only scratched the surface of this book (found online), but it starts out working through a sociological basis of building cultural taste, and the effects during youth (I apologize to the authors if this is not for public consumption. I will take it down immediately if that is so--it just popped up on the first page of my search for "youth and the development of musical taste" and I started reading. It's a doctoral dissertation, I believe, but those are published for real sometimes).

There's much and more than can be said on these topics. Most notably, I mention no specifics on how to fix any of these issues. They are, to me at least, symptoms of a larger problem. But we can start by starting initiatives to make sure music is taught in school, and not just as a performance medium, but as a part of arts and cultural appreciation. More ways need to be found to provide services to young students that want to learn the arts, from programs like Play it Forward, to expanding the opportunities and affordability of private lessons. There's much and more to be done, and is being done by many groups.

This is just a small part of MLK's dream, I know. It's more a symptom showing how inequality still affects our "post-everything" world. If opportunities were equal, wages the similar, social mobility the same, I do believe we'd see a completely different outlook for music. In my five years of teaching, I've had the chance to work with students in Brooklyn, college and high school aged, as well as community college students in Kansas City, state university students in KC, and students of all ages in rural Indiana. I've tried, at each stop and each level, to show every student a somewhat wider view of music, give opportunities to grow and expand, doing whatever I could to offer help and guidance regardless of any background, be it social, gender, sexual, racial, economic, or other disabilities. But there's so much more than can and should be done.

The fight for MLK's dream is not over. This is not a post-anything world, as there may never truly be a post-world. And so I ask each reader of this blog to think about your place in this society, and how you can make a difference. I'd like to think that my words, my music, and my actions together can help in some small way, at least on a personal level. It's not much, but it's within each of our powers to do that little thing.

Who is my audience?

Yet again, this topic rears it's ugly little head. Dan Visconti over at NewMusicBox posted an op-ed advising composers to always keep the audience in mind. He's far from the first voice is this back and forth fight. The topic was discussed heavily in the comments of a blog posted by Jeffrey Nytch hosted by Greg Sandow. And I've covered all this before, ad nauseum, after Phillip Kennicott's attack on new music was posted in the New Republic. Basically, go through my blog and you'll see this topic rehashed repeatedly.

So, why do I keep going over it? Why do any composers keep going on and on about it?

It's a bit of a complex issue. First off, there are those that say the audience defines what is in vogue, important, and is the main financial backing for music. This is an idea taken from various businesses--that the end user defines the product. Products must be created so that the end users want to pay for them. And, to do this, you must know your audience and create a product catered to them. This means that cheap hotels, like Super 8, will offer free wifi and some sort of "continental breakfast," clean linens, and beds all at a discount price. The wifi and breakfast are perks, the linens and beds are the basics. Without providing incentives, people would just as willing stay at other cheap hotels with those incentives, whether or not they actually use them.

As classical musicians begin to take stances taken from the pop music world, the idea that writing music for a specific audience, based on their tastes and predilections starts to make sense. The musician is creating a "product." This "product" has to be bought by a large sum of individuals to be able to make a living from said product. Thusly, the music must be tailored to the chosen audience so that the musicians can sell tickets, CDs, downloads, or get streams on YouTube or other streaming formats. But even this doesn't hold true, as many pop artists write music they love and enjoy (would Miley Cyrus use the same beats behind "Wrecking Ball" if she hated them? Perhaps, if her producers forced her to...but I have a feeling it wouldn't have been as big of a hit.)

This business acumen, however, is false. First off, many cultural enterprises are non-profit. I've harped on this repeatedly, as have others, and it continues to befuddle me as to why organizations, especially large ones, allow themselves to be run like a for-profit business. They misplace their understand on what the product is and what it provides.

Basically put, a cultural non-profit's product is culture. Culture itself cannot be priced in the same way as a manufactured product. The mission of a non-profit is why the organization exists, not to make money. That means it is up to those that run it to provide a cultural service to people, often times a service that society deems as important, but one that cannot be self-sufficient. Classical and folk music are included in this.

Now we come to the idea of who is the audience and how best to serve them. How does one service the audience of a symphony? Does one produce concerts of the same music, over and over again? Do we rely on "old-favourites" in the hopes of attracting more people? Do we branch out and try new works and new ideas?

Musical directors curate these experiences. They're job isn't just to play the pieces they love, but pieces they find to be important for an audience. This means that, sometimes you see sharp inclines in performances. For instance, Benjamin Britten and Stravinsky have gotten huge boosts the last two years due to anniversaries. Why? Because musical directors felt their work is important for an audience to know.

But who is this nebulous audience? That's quite the trick, isn't it? You see, the audience for a symphony in Indianapolis will be different than the audience for a chamber group in Duluth. The audience for the Society of Electronic Music in the United States Conference concerts is going to be different than the audience for a joint Fylkingen and EMS presentation in Stockholm. The audience for The Project H, a great jazz/funk group based mainly out of KC, is going to be different than if the Curiosity Cabinet, a chamber group in NYC, plays my piece All Things Are Not Equal, even though that piece is, at its heart, a funk/jazz chart that's been slightly gussied up.

There will be overlap, of course. Studies show that the audiences will often be made up of older individuals. Education is also high in the groups. Of course, as people look to these studies, they see a problem--too much of one demographic, not enough of another. We need to branch out while holding the base. That means programming works the base knows and finding ways to draw younger audiences. This includes more pops selections, cheaper ticket prices, venue changes, talks, and more. Of course, this talk of bringing new audiences ignores the fact that the people with the most buying power are not the young. There's also ageism in America--it's all about the shiny new product, being hip to the young generation, and using the idea that kids will get their parents to buy their goods for them. The arts, however, are not that sort of business (though some chiefs of organizations make them seem so).

But look at those stats again and see something else: there's a sharp drop in the 35-54 audience from 2008-2012...almost like there was a financial crisis and many people in that age group lost their jobs, struggled to survive, and generally spent less. And like there was some sort of austerity push in America, with politicians screaming at us to "pull-up our bootstraps" and be wary of the future. A drop in spending. And then see how as numbers trickle in from last year how symphonies and operas are recovering, even as the economy recovers. No...there's no correlation here. It's time to find a new audience! That's what I hear being screamed...

And, yet, still, the question remains unanswered--who is this audience for whom I am supposed to be creating art?

That statement rubs me the wrong way, even now. I see it and think that what I'm doing is some product meant to be traded. That I am out to produce something to get 100,000,000 hits on YouTube. The rebellious person in me gets up in arms.

Then I take a deep breath, center myself, and say again "who is my audience?"

I write contemporary classical music. This was a choice I made. I also dabble in jazz, more on the experimental side, sometimes bridging the gap. I've written two chamber operas, both were well liked by the audiences at the time. Audiences that were a fair mix of individuals, from theater professionals (some of which I invited), to learned musicians, to artists aligned with the arts group helping to put on the production, to friends who smile and support me (which I am beyond grateful for). What the theater professionals got out of the productions was different than the professional musicians, which was most definitely different than the art crowd.

So, who do I write for? Do I write for my peers, academics with doctorates in music? Those camps are split heavily--do I write in a modernist style then? Or a post-minimalist style with obvious influences of pop and jazz? Do I focus on academic electroacoustic music? Or soundscapes?

A myriad of styles, each with their own audiences which mix and separate on a whim.

Do I write IDM tracks? What about standard fare "producer" tracks to be background for a wrapper? I could write pop music as well, following a nice song form and get an attractive young lady to sing. Or maybe I'll drift into experimental death metal, and team up with an older generation of metal artists that enjoy classical music, Anders Bjorler told me in our interview.

I look at this problem and throw up my hands. Who do I try to please? What will this piece be?

My answer is simple: this piece will be written for two people, and only two people. I will do my best to strike the balance between them, but, inevitably, one side wins out.

Performers and myself.

And I usually win.

Some will see this as selfish. That I'm putting myself on a pedestal and saying "Look ye world, and love my work, for I am a genius!" Oh, far from it. I don't like most of my work. They're decent pieces, but there are few that I honestly pull up and listen to. But I strive to write music I like, that I would want to listen to repeatedly. I often don't succeed, but sometimes I do.

And for performers. I don't mean that I let performers tell me exactly what to write, even in a commission. I mean I write music that as a performer, I wouldn't look at and throw out a window. And I change things when performers look at my music and throw it out a window. That hasn't happened too often, but sometimes it does.

There's a more serious rationale behind this, and it comes from a professional place. If I do not like what I am working on, the piece will fail. It will not live up to its fullest potential, I'll put less care into specifics, and what will come out will, at best, be 80% done. This is true for most people working in any situation. It's even more perilous in a creative endeavor. There's no hard and fast "this is wrong" when you're looking at a score (well, beyond collisions and illegibly small notes). There are few hard and fast "you can't use that sound there" moments when you're mixing a new electronic piece. You can listen to the mix and shrug, knowing that it's "good enough," that the performers and audience probably won't notice any of the lack of care.

But they do...they can see it in your eyes as you try to lie to them about how it's a perfect piece. The performers can see the slightly out of aligned dynamics and start to wonder if there are wrong notes. They'll play a passage and wince, wondering if that crunchy harmony is meant to be that way or it was a transposition error. And they'll ask. And they'll be able to tell quickly from your sheepish look whether or not you succeeded.

If you love what you are writing, then these mistakes will still happen. But your reactions will change. It will be "Oh, I didn't realize that!" and you're taking huge amounts of notes on your own score, cursing yourself under your breath. It'll be "Well, I'm a fucking idiot! What should I put?" and a laugh and a smile as everyone knows you really care about this work, that you've poured your heart and soul into it...and that we all goof every so often.

And the performers will take that into performance. If you write a piece that performers enjoy playing, they perform it well. They perform it better than the other pieces on their concerts, even other pieces they may like. They'll play it more than once. They'll show it to their friends.

If a musical director for a symphony likes your work, it's worth more in this world than any "audience." Because the audience will never hear it unless the musical director likes it. And he'll like it if you love it, spent the hard time creating a work that you truly believe in, and can show that off. S/he may beg off time, say they don't have the resources, that it can't be programmed this year, but you will have made the impression.

More "audiences" hear works and enjoy them because an ensemble or musical director enjoyed them than works that have been written "for the audience."

There will always been an audience. As a composer, there will always been someone that will listen to your music. As an ensemble, there will always be people who want to see you live or buy your recordings. Finding that audience can sometimes be a trial, but they are there.

And, even more than that, if you set out to write music for other people, throwing away your own preferences for some mysterious other, then your real audience, the people that listen to your music, will know. You can adopt styles, ideas, forms, and instruments all you want, but you can't create that which you do not like.

Now, here comes my defense before anyone comes and says "that's not what we mean when we say 'write for an audience.' We don't mean ignore your own principles and sell out. We're not saying pander to a group! We're saying take the audience into account!"

And I'm not saying taking the audience into account is pandering. The long discussion with Jeffrey Nytch resolved a fair bit of that--Nytch wrote a piece concerning a subject he loved. He used that to market it to a local audience based around a natural phenomena that is a major part of their landscape. But, Nytch wrote his own piece, in his style, with his ideas.

The rest was marketing--sitting down with a musical director who liked his work (a fan, an audience member, and the most important one...), fleshing out an idea that he was excited about (or else, could he have convinced the musical director?), and writing a piece he loved, marketed perfectly for the local audience.

But there's a danger there as well--that marketing will not resonate with a group in California. Or New York.

The music very well may though, because it was written from a genuine place. Other musical directors may also see the value of the work, outside of its marketing.

Or...if we take the attitude of "the audience being most important," a musical director will look at it and say "we don't live near mountains. My audience won't care about this..."

And then marketing has become the power behind music, not music itself.

So, the TL:DR version:

The mythical audience does not exist. There is no one monolithic perfect classical audience, just as this isn't one audience for all of popular music. Using that idea as a basis of programming is a disservice to the very people you wish to serve. Basing large scale classical music ventures on for-profit models will lead to disaster.

Write the music you want to write, hear, and play. Write music that other people want to play, and it will get played, and played well. And the audience, that specific audience for what you do, will emerge and support your work.

Reflection and progression

2013 is coming to a close.

It has been quite the year. Back in March, I had a post go viral. For a blog that's been around for 5 years at that point and garnered no more than a few hits, it was astounding. That post got me linked and quoted on several sites, including an NPR station and several bloggers. I was also able to email some people in the San Francisco Orchestra, and learned more about what was happening.

From there, my readership has stayed somewhat steady, small, but steady. The year was spent more in cultural commentary and reactions, from what happened to opera to a long series of posts about "entrepreneurship" and the arts.

I jumped headlong into those conversations, had a length discussion with Jeffrey Nytch and others over at Greg Sandow's blog. It was a good conversation, and Nytch and I further sent off a few emails to each other, started mainly because his audio players weren't working well on his site, and I wanted to listen to his music!

April was a crazy month that saw my first 10 minute play, The Story: Alec and Grugh, get performances during InTENsity 2.0, produced by Frank Higgins and Tony Bernal at the Fishtank in Kansas City. It played to packed audiences (though a couple seats short of a sold-out run. SO CLOSE!) and I got to work with some of the best actors in Kansas City.

At the same time, Black House and KCEMA was ramping up rehearsals for Rites of Being. Rites was an evening of brand new short operas, all having some sort of electronic component. It was an incredibly varied night of entertainment, from the more abstract stories to fun satires, and music going from post-minimalist to improvisational to more modernist. My opera, Till Death Do Us Part, was given a great premiere by Stacey Stofferahn and Nathan Granner. Special thanks to Eli Hougland, Simon Fink, and Stamos Martin for their string work, and Brad Van Wick for hitting play on samples.

That production also saw me return to the podium as a conductor. It's something that I seem to do once every couple years, tackling projects that just happen to fall in my lap. Conducting is a fantastic challenge, and something I'd like to do more often. Some may not know, but I was originally going the route of a conductor, many moons ago, before deciding on composition. First a high school director, then wanting to go professional. The first visit for my masters was to University of Washington, to go in conducting.

The Spring stayed busy--I had scores to prepare and send for June in Buffalo and a presentation to prepare for Electroacoustic Music Studies Conference 2013 in Lisbon, Portugal. But it was the email I received at the end of April that changed my 2013 more than anything else.

I was sitting in my medieval music history course when my phone went off. I was beyond annoyed; usually I'm a good student and have my phone off or on silent during class, but my brain was foggy from too many late nights. I pulled it out to silence it and say the sender was "Fulbright." So much for classroom etiquette. I opened the email.

I got as far as "we are happy to inform you..."

Then I threw my phone. Yes, I threw my phone, in class. Everyone stopped and stared at me, so I did the only thing I could do--I quickly added to the conversation happening in the class. I have no memory of what was said, or even the topic for the day. I do remember my friend Joey coming up to me afterwards and giving me a look of "what the fuck was that?" So I told him.

Then went outside and started screaming and laughing. I fell over in the damp morning grass laughing louder than I had ever laughed in my life. And I called everyone.

April was a crazy month.

Rites of Being went splendidly. In June, I traveled to Buffalo for JiB and had a fantastic time. And I wrote a series of posts describing the experience and the various insights from the festival. I returned for a short while, the I flew off to Lisbon, Portugal for EMS 2013. I love EMS, made some new friends, and loved Lisbon.

July passed quietly. August saw me move back to Indiana for a few weeks, staying with my brothers. Most of my possessions were stowed in the empty basement of some dear friends in Kansas City (shout out to Justin and Jamie!), while various music books, my electric piano, and my recording equipment were loaded into my Jeep to go to Indiana.

It marked the last major trip for my 1995 Jeep Cherokee.

August was a wash--I was broke, living with my brothers, and just biding my time till I left for Stockholm. I did get one last trip in--my bff took me to a Cincinnati Reds game. Nothing like the American past-time right before I left the country for 10 months.

The day before I left, I was still broke. I had borrowed money from my brother to pay for my apartment. For food money...

I sold my Jeep. I had owned it since 2002, a graduation gift, partially paid for by me, and partially paid for by my parents. I put my old car down, plus another $1200 from my pocket...so about $3K down. My parents covered the rest on the car payments. It had driven all over the US, to Denver, Kansas City, Lawrence, Milwaukee, Chicago, Traverse City, Cincinnati, Columbus (OH), Dayton, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Atlantic City, Princeton, NYC, Boston, Syracuse, Rochester (NY), Wilmington, Baltimore, Morgantown, Paducah, and many more. I put roughly 175,000 miles on it myself. I never did get to all 48 contiguous states, nor to Canada like I had hoped. Still...to have a car for 11 years. It was sad to sell it for $350. I was happy for the money. I could eat. And it wasn't worth much more than that, honestly...

The first month in Stockholm I was sick and adjusting. I also wrote a great many posts about outreach, symphonies (and why I don't write them), and lots of cultural critiques, most interestingly on why I don't care that a famous person dissed a young artist. And it goes on to explain why historical context is so important.

My time in Stockholm has been amazing. I've written one 10 minute piece, wrote a piece of software for algorithmic composition (a skeleton of what I plan to use in my opera, hopefully...), got a commission from the Ghettoblaster project, which is nearly finished. And wrote a bit about what noise means to me. I've been to a ton of concerts, both metal and classical. I've finally started befriending people in the metal scene, and hopefully will get more interviews as time goes on.

But I've already gotten one HUGE interview--Anders Bjorler! Such a big deal. Anders is a great guy, and I had tons of fun in Gothenberg. Hopefully this will spell more interviews in the spring!

In the meantime, I've done a lot of anecdotal research, looked at crowds, made comparisons, and did tons of research. I found tons of songs using folk material, from various settings of Bellman's Epistles of Fredman No. 81, to less distinct influences. I found references to folk tales here and there. And started looking more into the political usage of the music. This has really stepped up after talking to Anders and hearing about the different ways that the people he knows deals with music.

The opera is going swimmingly. I did NaNoWriMo, more or less, and wrote the entire libretto. And then revised it. And revised it. And then five more times. I've written a bunch of melodic material, and come January 3rd, the blitz is on...every day in a studio working as many hours as I can...no excuses.

So, 2013 has been a year to remember. Hopefully, it's just the beginning of even more grand adventures.

Ruminations on Noise

I was recently contacted by an associate who's working on quite the interesting project. I'll keep things on the DL until everything is announced, but here's the basic premise: use recycled "noise pollution" to create pieces to be played through recycled boomboxes creating a striking sonic and visual image. The boombox setup is not a boombox, but instead two large walls of boomboxes wired together.

Two things struck me as interesting--first off, I was working my way through R. Murray Schafer's The Soundscape, so the idea of "noise" and our sonic world was already keenly on my mind. It's a must read for anyone working in the electronic medium. While some of the research is a bit dated, the ideas are fun, the prose is interesting, and it is informing my listening.

The second was the use of boomboxes as the playback system. We're talking lo-fi systems, cobbled together, not matching at all. Something about that just tugs at my mind and says screams "YES!" It shows the power of nostalgia and my wish to make something beautiful a bit dirty. This from the guy that sheds a tear every time he sees someone pull out a pair of stock Apple in-ears.

I decided, very quickly, that the piece would be a soundwalk, of sorts. I've also grown more and more intrigued with how sound and music is perceived between people. Coupled with some of the ear cleansing and soundwalk assignments from Schafer, and a form started to coalesce in my brain.

I recorded some of the areas in Stockholm I frequent--a local galleria where I shop; the subway; a pedestrian tunnel underneath the pendeltag, or above-ground commuter rail; the construction outside KMH; a hallway outside the studios of KMH; and one incredibly unique recording of several people playing a hammer song on a cast bronze canon! This canon to be exact.

I chose the locations because of they all incorporated different ideas of "noise pollution." I had a long conversation with my brother Marty about what exactly noise pollution is. I had said I wanted to steer away, at least slightly, from the sounds that most think of as pollution in urban environments. I live near an airport in Stockholm, the smaller Bromma airport, and so the sound of engines, autotraffic, and planes overhead are "keystone" noises in my life--a phrase used by Schafer to describe sounds that are more or less always in your life and make up the majority of the sound we hear. The same can be said of subway travel--after living in Brooklyn and now in Stockholm, the sound of the metal wheels grinding on the rails don't bother me like they did the first time I jumped on a subway.

Marty brought up public playing of music by stores and by people with bad headphones pushing the sound to 11. That is also an irritation for me, as the cacophony of mixed music because a blur and a distraction. We also talked about voices--the roar of a crowd can be quite loud, either in the streets or at an overpopulated restaurant or bar. In the US, the sound of people didn't bother me. My ears would flit between conversations, pick up interesting bits here and there, or ignore the conversations entirely, letting them drift into the background noise. In a coffeeshop, like I use at the beginning of this new piece, conversations would either be attended or fall into a background and forgotten. It's like the phenomena discussed by Schafer in regards to airplanes: people in Vancouver were normally describing far fewer airplanes being heard than were actually flying overhead. They weren't attending to the sounds, so it fell far back and joined the landscape.

In Sweden, the human voice is a bit different. There's no flitting between conversations. My Swedish is incredibly poor, especially in understanding it when spoken. Attending to any conversation takes all of my focus, and even then it's picking up one or two words. Worse than that is the general frustration. I practice with Rosetta Stone, read Swedish whenever I can, and practicing pronouncing words constantly, and yet I feel as though my grasp of the language doesn't improve. When I'm in dense situations, such as the subway, hearing many independent conversations (more here than in NYC, as the cellphones work just fine in the tunnels), I feel that frustration keenly. Instead of choosing to attend or ignore, I'm forced to ignore and feel incredibly frustrated by my inability to understand the language.

Swedish, in most contexts, has become noise.

I feel the separation between myself and people here. I feel more alone in a crowd because I wonder if I can even communicate with them if I want to.

Then, I hear English.

No matter what I'm doing (often times reading), I immediately stop and attend to the conversation. You can call it eavesdropping, I call it spiritual release. Here are people that, if I want to, I can connect to without barrier.

This is one example of what one person (myself) considers noise. It's specific to my current location and understanding. Another example comes from living in the country as a kid.

How many of you have been able to sleep when several crickets have decided to go crazy on the music, repeatedly, right outside your open window? What about with mice scratching in the walls? And in the summer with cicadas and other loud insects it's almost unbearable, especially when combined with the heat and humidity. What some see as unique experiences, full of life and interest, became an annoyance to me as a child.

Now that I hear those noises much more rarely, they've become nostalgic.

Even over time, sounds can move from noisy annoyance to sweet nostalgia.

As I sit in my apartment during the day, I'm realizing just how much air traffic there is. I had told a friend that it seemed like the traffic from the airport was light, only a couple airplanes an hour. But now, as I'm taking more time to sit and concentrate on the sounds, I realize that's not true. The roar of the engines is pretty constant, drowning out the sound of cars. The only sound more present, constantly, is my fan, which runs ceaselessly even in the winter. The Swedes know exactly how to build a home for the cold, but it feels too heavily sealed for me, a man that's spent more time in old, drafty home and apartments than in new, thick walled Northern cities.

I've learned a lot about my own listening habits and the sounds of my environment. I try to do a lot of these activities at least once a year, just to acclimate myself. I've also incorporated some into my teaching (any students remember going outside the PAC at UMKC, closing your eyes, and drawing a picture of sounds around you? And me walking around beeping my phone...).

This piece was an exploration into what I consider noise to be, and, interestingly to me, I think I produced something that turns "noise" into something I consider to be quite beautiful. Some reactions right now are "eerie" and "creepy" thus proving just how different we can perceive music. I guess some people really love closely packed sine-wave drones while others equate them to their use in horror films. I'm gonna blame Jerry Goldsmith and his score to Alien. Great score...

I digress. I strongly encourage everyone to check out R. Murray Schafer's book, as well as try some of his listening assignments. Some of my favourites listening exercises (not distinctly all Schafer's):

• If you live in a city, pay attention to and note every time you hear a bird. How many did you hear? What types?
• While sitting in your room, concentrate on the sound around you, and try to sing all the pitches you hear. Is it just 60Hz? Are there other pitches and drones in your life beyond the florescent flicker? Improvise with the sounds.
• If you have a phone that transmits data, put it up to the cable of your headphones and start surfing the web, or downloading something. Listen to the rhythm of the data transfer. You can also do this in some cases with an external hard-drive (but not always). 
• Listen to and write down every sound you hear outside your window for 30 minutes. 

These are a few I like to do on a regular basis. The second one I did almost every day working at Earl Girls--the air compressor was tuned roughly to an E, with harmonies that sounded more minor than major. I'd often hum or whistle tunes to it while filling confetti canons tanks with air. The only music I sketched during that time was something for oboe and piano...which ended up with a whole lot of E minor work in it

13 Really Awesome Facts About Music That You Never Dreamed Were True!!!! (NSFW!!!)

1) Did you know that this is the first time the music business was D.I.Y.? Before then, everyone either went through a record label, a major organisation, or a king!

Of course, that's not true at all, and it's a claim that I just continue to not understand...First off, almost all chamber groups have been D.I.Y. for as long as I can remember. The idea that a group like Eighth Blackbird was formed, immediately had representation, and were world-wide superstars is a myth, just like it was a myth that Liszt just burst on the scene as an international superstar. We make it sound that way, but it's not true...And don't get me started on the Troubadours. Some were a part of specific courts, yes, others were not, traveling during the summer months, and playing at minor courts and fairs. Nothing more D.I.Y. than that.

Perhaps, a better phrase should be "The first generation in America since 1980 that has been raised in economically depressed times, and lack the financial backers that existed during the 80s and 90s." That's not nearly as sexy though.

2) Playing music in rock venues, bars, and clubs is the only way to save classical music!

First off, it's far from the only way to save classical music. Secondly, when this conversation comes up, it quickly devolves into a fight of elitism vs. the common man, snobbery, the tyranny of the recital hall (from the dress to the heightened stage), the Ivory tower, and on and on and on.

Why not ask some practical questions? First off, how loud is a rock concert? How compressed is the dynamic level? Does it matter if people are talking when a band is pounding out 135 dB of sound in a small club? Does it matter if people sing along? Do classical performers have any idea how to perform in that situation, with stage monitors instead of hearing each other acoustically, or a live engineer that can handle translating a cello into a decent sounding instrument? Do the venues even want to book the bands?

Small story: I had a chance to set-up a concert with Eighth Blackbird. UMKC was bringing them in, and I pitched a "side-by-side" concert with members of 8bb and students sharing the stage playing works by UMKC students. 8bb chose the pieces to play (after a quick check from a panel to make sure everything was up to a professional standard). One of my jobs was finding a venue. I contacted several venues with about 3 months of head time, asking about dates to book in the club. Before even asking the venues, I checked to make sure dates were open. I either got no reply or "we don't book that kind of music."

That was Grammy award winning, world-renowned eighth blackbird. Tell me again how your newly formed string quartet is going to get gigs at the same venues as bands. Sorry, there isn't an LPR style club in every city.

One note: I would like to see audiences be a little less uptight. I'm tired of getting the stink-eye when I laugh at lines or staging in operas, tap my foot a bit too vigorously, or move a bit too much in my seat. You can bet I'm enjoying the music, perhaps more than all of you around me. And yes, I "get" the music. If I didn't love it and understand, I shouldn't be ABD and on a research scholarship in music.

3) Research in music no longer requires facts!

You'll notice I made no links above. They are no longer necessary. Generally speaking, journalism has taken over as the main mode of understanding classical music. Blogs and small zines are the trusted sources, just as aggregate sites and sensationalist journalists are where we get all our news. This means, I no longer have to fact check, pour through intense amount of journal articles and books, find previous research, or really do any academic work. Since it's printed on the internet, it is now true.

This saves me so much time. I used to spend time researching a topic and going analysis on it. I'm guessing my blog now counts as active publications as well. That's awesome--getting into conferences is difficult, and I was tired of actively researching "the analysis of interactive multimedia" and "definitions of a score in electronic media" and all sorts of other scholarly pursuits I had, presented on, and had published. Now I can just toss it out my facts in all their glory, Buzzfeed style!

Thank you Buzzfeed!!!!

4) Orchestras are archaic, no one loves them!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again--the biggest issue in classical music is marketing. The basic scheme for marketing is to keep the base happy with little or no push to expand. Another anecdote that is obviously a perfect illustration.

During the past week, I have convinced several people to go see Salome at the Royal Opera in Stockholm. How did I convince these people? I summarized the plot, told them the composer, and compared it to music they knew--easy with Strauss: "The opening of 2001: a Space Odyssey." Salome is NOT a hard show to sell! The story is awesome, the music is Romantic, and it's on the shorter side. People were interested in Parsifal as well, but the over four hour time is rough for a first (or rare) opera appearance.

The Royal Opera here does TV spots. It's always Papageno and Papagena's song from Die Zauberflute. Also a good opera to go to, if a bit on the hokey side. But it's just brief audio, and "Come see the show!" That's a nice reminder, but it's not going to generate much interest. Sorry marketing departments for operas and symphonies--the best way to get people excited is contact. Maybe more flashmobs. Flashmobs are still popular right?

5) Large opera and orchestra non-profits must always make money!

Oy...yeah...sure. All non-profits must always make a profit. Continuously.

In actuality, many businesses don't operate at a continuous profit. There are fluctuations between years, poor product releases, etc. But non-profits don't exist to make profit, they exist to to fulfill their mission. This should be done in a "fiscally responsible" way, but that doesn't mean making a tidy profit every year. That's actually against the law, and it means you're not spending enough on your mission.

Just like the US government cries over having a balanced budget and having lower taxes without understanding the trade-off (a smaller private sector), non-profit boards are operating under the same ideas. I just can't fathom an orchestra with a permanent home and little to no rent doing fewer concerts, and most of them poor excuses for pops. How does this serve the mission? And how does it generate revenue? I'm just a lowly rural raised poor musician who don't understand none of them big city words or ideas, but it just seems a bit off to me...

6) Money is the only measure of success in music!

I'd love to be rich. I'd love to get rich playing music. But it wouldn't make me all that successful.

I've made a living in the music business before, as an engineer, a lighting guy, and other tech type stuff. I've made money performing (not much). I've made money from my compositions (even less).

I've also traveled to multiple countries, all over the US, presented papers, had music performed, gone to festivals, workshops, and conferences, made many friends, and helped more than a few young musicians start their own lives in music.

I almost typed careers, but that's not what this is.

Perhaps, as musicians, that's all we need to do--stop saying "I want a career in music" and start saying "I want a life in music."

7) Fusion with popular music is the only way to save classical music! It's so original and exciting!

L'homme arme. That's all I should have to say, right?

L'homme arme is a secular song dating from Renaissance France. By secular, I mean, more or less, a pop song, a tavern song, a minstrel's song. It was a song, more or less, about a man taking arms (not ripping them off, but getting a sword) and how all men should be finding a sword and mail (as in the armor). It was written during a time when there was a Crusade happening, so it could allude to that, or it could allude specifically to St. Michael the Archangel.

It was incredibly popular to use in Masses. In fact, popular tunes were often used in Masses as the cantus firmus, Josquin des Prez and Dufay are two of my favourites. And don't get me started on dance suites, which of course were stylized versions of popular dance music, done in a soloistic fashion.

Yep, fusion, it's brand spanking new

8) I just invented this awesome thing: I CALL IT THE WHEEL!!!

You might have noticed a bit of theme evolving here. A central issue I have with almost all the current writings about the current crisis in music and how classical music must evolve is that it lacks any sort of historical context. Everyone is reinventing the wheel.

Listen, we've all been there. How many times have I sat down to write a piece of music and said "No one has ever done this before! I'm awesome!" Then, because I'm some sort of masochist, I decided to do this novel thing called "research."

After 45 minutes or so, I'm in tears tearing up all my manuscript paper. Woe is me, it's been done!

Then I realize that this is fantastic. If it's been done, they can tell me how to do these hard parts. Then I can build off of it, tweak it, perfect it, add my own twists, give characters different voices, duck tape a kazoo to the trombone, or possibly put wax paper over the bell to make it a META-KAZOO!!! Shit, someone did that too? Well, did they do it while playing multiphonics and dancing a jig? Thought not...

Maybe because it's a horrible idea. But I'm totally going to make David Whitwell do that in my next piece. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA

9) Music is completely subjective, cannot be judged in any way...except for music sales! What sells is obviously the best!

I don't even think I have the strength of snark left in me to go into this. Suffice it to say music can objectively be broken down--you can tell when a band plays well and when they don't. If a piece of music is boring, there's probably an objective reason why.

Now, people do have different tastes, and what is boring to one may be transcendental to another. This is true. But there's still better created music.

For instance, I have a friend whose music I just don't fancy. Whenever I hear it, it just doesn't get me going. However, I can tell that it's crafted wonderfully and deserves praise. I can also tell when performers nail it and when they don't nail it. I've listened to pieces that, conceptually, just did not work well--they sounded arbitrary, lacking in organisation, thought, or care, and seemed to just didn't fell flat. And that they could easily be done better.

And if we take the idea that tastes are different, and that objectively good music exists in many forms, then all sales show is what is currently popular with a group of people with the means to purchase the music. And if we only champion that which is most popular, well...Let's just say if this was civil rights, we'd be in trouble...

10) To be a musician and have a career, one must go to college.

In classical music, to have a career, yes. Your pedigree matters as much (or more) than your skills. For a pop musician...Bob Dylan didn't. Neither did the Beatles. Miley Cyrus has been a child star and took voice and acting lessons, but not "proper" conservatory training. Same with Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake. Timbaland started DJing at around 15 (thanks to being in the hospital from a stupid coworker).

What you need for success in popular music is drive, marketing, time, and lessons (if you're a singer or instrumentalist). Just like most pursuits, you can do this without going to college. The trick with other pursuits, such as classical music, or chemistry, is that there are social hurdles and resources available in university. For instance, if you want to start a rock group, you can find some friends, purchase some used instruments, and start practicing. You can sign up for guitar/bass/drum/vocal lessons, get better, and by the time you're 18, be very proficient (if you put in the time and have the drive). Numerous groups have done this.

If you want to be a classical musician, say, a cellist and play in a symphony, you need to practice in symphonies. Your middle school and high school may have these, but the jump from HS to pro is like the jump from HS to pro in sports--a few people can pull it off, extreme talents that have been training for a long time, but most need more training. And stepping up a level in orchestra after HS isn't easy to do outside academia.

So, don't get tied to the idea that you have to go to college if you want to do pop music. And don't get tied to the idea you have to go to college in music. Rivers Cuomo, of Weezer fame, has a degree in English.

For a fun comparison, Dolph Lundgren (Rocky IV, Johnny Mnemonic, and many others) has a masters in chemical engineering and turned down a Fulbright to MIT. Which, now being in Sweden, I understand--the Fulbright isn't as well known here by the students. Still, mind-blowing considering I'm on a Fulbright.

I don't think he regrets his decision, considering his success...

11) Opera is in English!

One of the first questions I'm asked about my opera is "What language is it in?" Everyone seems surprised that it's in English. Granted, English wasn't the most popular language for music for a long stretch of time, but it's far from a new idea. There are English art songs dating back a long way, to folks like Dowland. And Henry Purcell wrote opera in English during the Baroque. Thomas Arne and Handel did it later, and, skipping forward quite far, there's of course Benjamin Britten.

We can just forget about Elgar, can't we?

Why is this still not a known fact? There are undoubtedly many reasons, and even though I've done more than my fair share of finger pointing during this, I'm actually not going to do so now. OK, maybe I will--popularity. If it's not Verdi, Puccini, Wagner, Rossini, or any of those other super well known opera composers that singers and audiences adore, then it's not done. And if it's not performed, then how would anyone know about it?

12) Music and musicians aren't political, ever!

Well...guess I should quit? And we can toss out Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner, Britten, Elgar, all the nationalist type composers in the 19th century (Grieg, Dvorak, Sibelius, and into the 20th century with guys like Bartok and Vaughan Williams).

Sorry, but music as political thought is as old as...

Well, you remember those troubadours I brought up earlier? Yeah, there was a whole bunch of that going on. One of my favourites is the epic song The Song of the Albigensian Crusade. It's an epic poem written by two separate authors who both had distinct personal views. It was meant to be performed to music, in the same way The Song of Roland and other epics were. And, well, it's about as political as you can get. I wrote a paper on it once. But research papers don't matter much, so just take my word for it.

And, of course, since I'm here in Sweden researching political musicians in the death metal scene, I can say with a little authority that, yeah, they might have had some political agendas. Maybe. I mean, they said they did, but that doesn't mean they actually did...

13) No one brought classical music to the masses until the 90s.

Well, I mean, other than all the examples above. Those don't count though. I need more examples, new and fresh examples.

The Town Hall in New York City. It was founded in 1921 by the League for Political Education, who were main fighters for the 19th amendment. They wanted to create a place where people of all social ranks and stations, and has a long history of being an open type of place. The seating is open, no box seats, and no obstructed views. This was meant to show the ideals of democracy (socialist commies. Also, normally, I would have cited this as it's pretty much verbatim from Wikipedia, but, ya know, that's not needed anymore).

There have been numerous classical and pop concerts given here, from Rachmaninoff to Dizzy Gillespie to John Cage's 25 year retrospective, to Whitney Houston. It's also known for it's poetry readings (I didn't need Wikipedia for those facts).

NYC Opera, now defunct, was created as the "people's opera," bringing mostly light productions to NYC at reasonable prices.

Singspiel houses in Vienna premiered many of Mozart's works. These houses were not the high brow Royal Vienna Opera House, but more relaxed places where the style of singspiel (more like an English ballade opera, the precursor to the music) were performed. They were cheaper, had drinks, and many shows were presented as parodies, often of the higher class. Hence why if you search through Mozart's operas, you see a lot of jokes at the expense of nobles.

*********************************************************************************

My snark is finished. I was actually tired of it a while ago, but decided to press on to get to that last point.

This is, obviously, parody, satire, and snark. It's also a scathing critique.

What really differs from what I've done above and what we've been seeing in other places? Are my arguments all that different?

One difference is I'm not presenting the "popular" opinions. I'm reminded of Howard Zinn's "A People's History of America." I am not Zinn, not making that claim at all. But Zinn presented views of events that were from "the losers" in the fights.

History is often told from the winners point of view. It's also often told by the loudest individual, or the person telling the majority of people what they want to hear. It's how presidents win elections and HuffPo gives millions of clicks a day.

I'm going to lay my hand on the table and throw away what little subtlety was in this post, that tiny shred that was nearly there: Everyone reading this should have questioned every single statement I made. Many of you probably did. A fair portion of you should scoff at my opinions because they are unfounded.

You are correct.

And so are many of the articles you've read in the past week that you've liked. A study of five people is not a study. Asking 100 people nationwide about your local arts organisation proves nothing.

And the unfounded opinions of one man are just unfounded opinions.

Perhaps, we should all be demanding more from our pseudo-philosophers and demand some real proof, action, and ideas, rather than taking things at face value.