Composer Elitism

In her last post, Natalie asked: 

How do we, as economic and cultural outsiders, reengage ourselves with society, while writing the kind of music that we are inspired to write?

I think one thing we can do is try to start engaging individually with audiences before trying to tackle society as a whole.  Now don’t be offended… but I’m going to address the age-old argument about composer elitism.

I don’t think my composer friends, individually, are elitist.  As a group, however, I think many of us are obliviously elitist.  We have forgotten what we were like before we discovered new music and became accustomed to listening to it.  I was upset when my music theory students had never heard of Milton Babbitt, until I was gently reminded that when I was a freshman in college I hadn’t either.

We assume that if people just tried, really tried, to be open minded, they’d come to one concert or listen to one great piece and instantly fall in love with new music.  And that might happen, for some people. But the majority of people living in western societies have been exposed, for years, to music with satisfying endings, singable melodies and rhythms, and harmonies that “sound good.”  We could argue all day about whether new music is singable or sounds good, but I think we can all agree that what it is not is traditional western art music.  Many people are uncomfortable with unfamiliar things—a different food, the wrong brand of toilet paper, and definitely strange sounds—so a lot of audiences will probably be uncomfortable with new music at first.  

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but think about sitting through a two-hour concert not only feeling uncomfortable, but also feeling as if you don’t understand what’s going on.  Our brains are wired to make sense of our surroundings, so it’s only natural that people want to try to understand what they’re listening to and may be annoyed when they don’t feel that they do.

We are asking audiences to jump into new music without any sort of introduction to help them make sense of something that is probably completely foreign to them.  That probably doesn’t help people feel very welcome at new music concerts, but we’re still surprised when they don’t embrace the music.

I’m not trying to imply that everyone would love new music if they just understood it. I’m also not saying that audiences need to have music explained to them in order to understand it, or that they have to understand it in order to enjoy it.  But I have noticed that some people connect with a piece much more if they are told something about it beforehand, whether it’s to listen for certain elements of the piece or if the compositional process is described.  

Getting people who are unfamiliar with new music to come to concerts and maybe even appreciate the music may be as simple as giving them a way to listen, guiding them through each piece, that will help them “get it”—whatever that means.  That suggestion may taste bitter to some of us who feel that our music doesn’t need explanation (and I’m looking at myself here too), but we can’t ask for society to love us and appreciate us without giving them something to hang onto when we invite them into our concert halls.  

Posted by Sarah