Happy December Birthdays!

Happy birthday to Julia Wolfe, Elliott Carter (wow... 103!!!!), and Jennifer Higdon!

Julia Wolfe: Tell Me Everything

Elliott Carter: A Mirror on Which to Dwell

Jennifer Higdon: Violin Concerto No. 1 (1st movement)

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays from Alphabet Soup!

Whatever you're celebrating, we hope you have a wonderful holiday season. We will be taking a brief blogging break and will be back in January. Even though this clip has nothing to do with the holidays, or new music, it's musical and fun (and sorry about having to watch an ad first... this is the best quality video we could find). Enjoy!

Introducing our New Music Ensembles list!

Several months ago (partly inspired by feelings documented in Natalie's recent post about the New York music scene bubble) we began a project of trying to create a comprehensive list of American new music ensembles by state. This was a much larger project than we thought it would be, mainly because we realized that there are actually tons of new music ensembles out there of all shapes and sizes: large, small, established, unestablished, run by composers, run by performers, etc. (yay!).

Here's where we'd like your help. We have dedicated a page of our blog to listing these new music ensembles, festivals, and concert series by state, or at least the ones of which we are currently aware. Please check it out here. This will be an ongoing project, much like our Frugal Composer page, and we would certainly appreciate any additions that you can think of. Our goal is to someday have a comprehensive list of American new music ensembles. For now, it's a reminder that there are great new music ensembles all over the country and the national new music scene continues to grow!

Please don't hesitate to send us any information you have. The page that's up right now is very much a work-in-progress, so check it out (again, here) and if you see things to add, please send us an email or leave a comment!

Art Versus Entertainment

In the new music world we hear lots of chatter about how things are constantly improving in terms of musical open-mindedness. Generally, I think this is true, which is a wonderfully positive thing. To take the oft-cited example, as students we usually don’t feel forced to write in a specific style the way many of our teachers once did. Unfortunately, though, academia is academia and the art-music world is the art-music world, which tends to mean that many prejudices still remain.

One of the most common elitist statements that I hear on a regular basis is an insistent delineation between “art” music and “entertainment” music. This distinction persists, despite the rampant amount of crossover music, the skill and artistry that may go into a Broadway show (not to mention the lack of craft that can sometimes be apparent in a new music piece…), etc. I guess what I’m trying to say is that good music is good music and just because something is labeled as falling more into the “entertainment” category shouldn’t preclude it from being called “art.” Likewise, music labeled as “art” can still be entertaining.

Why New Music? A Performer Speaks

Please give a warm welcome to Alphabet Soup’s first guest blogger, saxophonist Jack Kinsey. Please see below for his bio!

Hello everyone. First off, I would like to thank Sarah and Natalie for inviting me to write for their blog. I am a performer, and have gotten to see new music from a different angle than their backgrounds as composers generally allow, so hopefully I will be able to add some new perspectives on new music, what it is, how it’s generated, etc.

For starters, I am going to ask a very simple question with a very complex answer: Why new music? Performers get asked this a lot (especially by their families. A few weeks ago my grandmother asked me when I was going to start playing music people like. Sorry Gram, don’t hold your breath on that one).

It's Our Anniversary!

Last year we had a whacky idea to start a new music blog and now Alphabet Soup is a year old!

If you're new to Alphabet Soup or just want to reminisce, read our first introductory post here, where we talked about our dreams and goals for this blog. 

Thank you for your readership!

This blog project has been and continues to be a central aspect of our lives as composers and we have been so grateful to all of you for your readership, feedback, suggestions, contributions, and encouragement. For us, Alphabet Soup is a way to explore musical ideas, share an appreciation and awareness of new music, and, at times, commiserate about the difficulties of pursuing such a challenging career path. It has been really fantastic to read your comments and opinions!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving from Alphabet Soup!

 

We will be taking a short break for the holiday in order to gobble up some turkey, but we'll be back as soon as we recover from the food coma... Stay tuned as we celebrate Alphabet Soup's first birthday next week!

 

Happy November Birthdays!

Continuing with our birthday posts (yes, a little late this month, we know), we'd like to wish a happy birthday to Krzysztof Penderecki and Tom Johnson!

Penderecki's Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima:

Johnson's Failing:

Yes, There IS Music Outside of the New York Bubble

After finishing my master's in Ohio, I was pretty excited to get back to the D.C. area where I grew up. Despite attempts to convince myself otherwise, the East Coast (or at least the Mid-Atlantic) will always run through my blood for better or worse. However, because I spent six years of my life living in the Midwest I do have enough perspective to realize that the East Coast is not all that there is in the U.S. in terms of life, culture, music, etc. Therefore, I have been somewhat stunned and disappointed upon my return to realize how much New York City seems to cast a shadow over East Coast new music culture. 

Even a couple of weeks ago we had a guest speaker at Peabody who told us that he had been slightly appalled by a joke that he heard recently at a new music party in Brooklyn. Someone said something along the lines of, "Wow, if a bomb were to go off in this building right now, what would that mean for the future of American music?" Obviously this is incredibly anecdotal and is also just your typical elite party talk, but it still ticked me off because of its arrogance and ignorance.

Time in the Real World

Last week I was reminded why it’s so important, both as a composer and as a human being, to have a real life. All I did was go to a great exhibit at an art museum. I know this isn’t earth-shattering, but I hadn’t done something like that in a long time. I’ve been extremely busy lately with various projects (both musical and non-musical), and have been feeling the pressure of these projects so much so that I haven’t actually been doing anything that isn’t related to them. Re-reading that last sentence, it doesn’t seem all that odd that I haven’t been doing anything else, since isn’t that what most people’s lives are like? Go to your job, come home, go about your routine, et cetera.

And then I read some old comments on our blog, and I found this one (which is a comment on this post), thanks to our commenter HKL:

“… experiencing life outside the studio, even when we aren't producing art, also contributes to our artistic life (is this a little bit of a cop-out? maybe, but I also think it's true...)."

I don’t think it’s a cop-out at all. Every time I experience “life outside the studio” (which, I suppose, should be every day but sadly, isn’t always), I am reminded how great it is to get outside (both literally and figuratively).  My emotional, physical, and yes, artistic well-being depends on it.

Demystifying the Composer

Our culture has a long tradition of having a deep love/hate relationship with artists of all types. It often seems that the composer, be him idolized or scorned, is very rarely taken seriously as a normal human. Moreover, people will sometimes create a compositional mystique by encouraging stereotypes, being Romantic or evasive about the creative process, etc. Unfortunately, none of these behaviors do any of us any favors. I think it’s incredibly important for all of us to remember, if we don’t already, that the composer is—gasp—a working human who has flaws.

I'm going to share two anecdotes of ways in which composers and/or authority figures unnecessarily create some sort of composer “mystique.” I will then explain why I think these anecdotes offer examples of why such a mystique is fundamentally detrimental to the compositional process.

Happy October Birthdays!

What's more fun than celebrating your own birthday? Celebrating other people's birthdays! Well, maybe not really... but we've decided to start highlighting composers during their birth months. Many cool composers were born in October- way too many to list in one blog post, so we're starting off our inaugural birthday month with three of our favorite composers: George Crumb, Steve Reich, and Kaija Saariaho. We hope you'll take a minute to discover these living composers if you haven't already or to enjoy listening to their music again if you're already familiar with them.

George Crumb's Makrokosmos I:

Kaija Saariaho's Petals:

The beginning of Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians:

More News about Women and Doctorates

This article is from 2010, but we just discovered it (Thanks, HK!) and felt it deserved an extra highlight (even though it's not actually news anymore I suppose).

There has been much discussion on this blog (see related articles here) about gender in the composition world (and outside of it), including why fewer women end up with tenure track jobs or don't advance as often or as quickly as men. The findings in the article don't surprise me at all, but I have mixed feelings about it- I think it's important research that needs to be out there and is a very real concern for many women (and I'm surprised that this is the first time the phenomenon has been formally studied). However, I worry that it could potentially have a negative effect as well, by drawing attention to only one aspect of the reason women seem to land fewer tenure track jobs. I think many people assume that the only reason women don't advance is because they drop out of tenure track to pursue the "mommy track," as I've heard it scathingly referred to, which is not only incredibly insulting but ignores the fact that women also drop out for reasons such as discrimination, harassment, and lack of support from colleagues and/or administration (and the article does briefly touch on these factors as well, which I was glad to see). Either way, it seems like an important contribution to the field and I hope that this and future studies might eventually effect some change in the way academia works.

Posted by Sarah

Conquering Writer's Block

Whenever I start a new phase of my life I often have some trouble relaxing, which invariably leads to an irksome (yes, I just used “irksome” in this blog post) spat of writer’s block. Good news…I’ve conquered it at the moment! But it got me thinking about writing and all the little tricks we can develop to get ourselves out of these ruts.

If I wasn’t a composer or such a weirdo nerd, I probably would think these were entirely ridiculous, but I kind of love Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies and I highly recommend them to anybody who is looking for some new angles for thinking about their musical sketching. I had an interesting discussion with my teacher recently about how the pressure of creating the “piece” itself can be completely stifling sometimes. He talked about how we can try to trick ourselves into not composing a piece and just working on sketches, exercises, compositional “games,” or any other kind of project that will allow us to separate our creative juices from the worry of performance, overall aesthetic, and all kinds of other potentially unhelpful external concerns and static.

The Artist's Career Path

Recently I was looking at the staff profiles for a nonprofit arts organization, and it should not surprise anyone that everyone on the staff was also an artist. What got me thinking, though, was one of the questions that each staff member answered on their profiles: “If you weren’t working here, what would you be doing?” Almost everyone answered with some sort of art career (running an art gallery, being a professional actor, singing, etc.). Even though I know I’m not really one to talk, I wanted to ask these people, if that artistic pursuit is really your passion, why aren’t you out there pursuing it? Not in a judgmental way-- just because I’m curious.

To be an artist or an arts administrator, that is the question. I suppose it’s not strange at all that these people wanted to be artists- after all, who goes into arts administration, if not people who care about the arts? Clearly these are not high-paying jobs, and like being an artist, you only work in the nonprofit sector if you love it or feel very strongly about a particular cause. The big difference is that unlike being an artist (probably), you will get paid every other week.

Happy Birthday, Clara Schumann!

I know that we're a new music blog, but Sarah and I both want to recognize Clara Schumann (b. September 13, 1819; d. May 20, 1896) on her birthday today. She is someone who is often pigeonholed as a performer and marginalized as a composer. Her music stands up well to the other music being written at the time by her more well-known male peers, but history as it is written and remembered tends to warp our sense of who wrote "good" music and thus affects what music becomes canonized. Thankfully, there are performers these days who perform and study her music, but I still strongly feel that she and other female composers (such as Fanny Mendelssohn, Alma Mahler, Amy Beach, and countless others) are painfully under-programmed and relatively unappreciated.

So let's take a moment today to remember and celebrate Clara Schumann as an important and skilled composer.

Alphabet Soup Takes a Well-Deserved Vacation!

Some of you may have noticed we haven't been posting too much recently- sorry about that! We are going on a short summer vacation (although neither of us is actually going anywhere exciting, don't be jealous) but will be back with some exciting alphabet souping in the fall, including posts from surprise guest bloggers! 

Come back and visit us again soon!

Leaving Something Up to Interpretation

I certainly am no expert on this subject (perhaps a musicologist can add their thoughts below?), but it is my general understanding that notation was much less specific in the 19th century (and earlier) than it has been in the 20th and 21st centuries, undoubtedly for practical reasons. Since so much music was written in the tonal system and since so many people were trained to understand and interpret tonal harmonies in a relatively consistent fashion, it wasn't as necessary to indicate a decrescendo at the end of a phrase or a crescendo into a section where the harmonic rhythm would begin to accelerate. 

Today we have composers writing in an infinite variety of styles and idioms, some of which have implicit interpretive traditions and others of which do not. I have encountered composers (teachers and peers) who deal with this potential interpretive black hole by erring on the side of notating every parameter of each musical gesture. Being the diligent student that I usually am, I typically follow suit. But recently I performed a piano piece of mine in a masterclass run by a composer and a pianist and the pianist suggested to me that my notation was almost too specific...that a lot of the implicit aims of my gestures could be understood by the performer, without having my explanations cluttering the page. So how should we, as composers, handle notation? 

NPR Behaving Badly?

It pains me to write that, because I love NPR and I really don't want to bash them. But every Tuesday night (well, they probably do it every night but I only have direct knowledge of it on Tuesday nights), I get annoyed all over again about this thing that happens around 8pm. First of all, before I say what it is and everyone thinks I'm a horrible person, I'm very glad they do this. It's important to acknowledge that we're still actively at war and losing soldiers all the time. So here's the thing: the announcer comes on and says something like, "We are now going to have a moment of silence for our fallen American soldiers serving their country overseas." And I think, yes, of course, I'd be happy to honor these brave soldiers with a moment of silence. But then... THE MUSIC STARTS.

Composers Behaving Badly

We've talked a fair amount about institutionalized bad behavior, but composers are also guilty of many bad behaviors ourselves, especially when it comes to how we present ourselves in our professional bios. I think we can all agree that writing a bio is pretty overwhelming. I can remember the first time I sat down and really thought about constructing mine for my website. What a horrible process! You don't want to sound too modest, because then nobody will take you seriously. But you also don't want to sound too overblown (although, unfortunately overblown bios are sometimes--often?--taken more seriously than modest ones). So how do you find a happy middle ground that makes you sound like a professional and not a braggart? I think the answer lies in avoiding flowery language and ambiguity, as both of these writing styles often lead to misleading and exaggerated claims.

Leaving a Legacy

Natalie's last post really got me thinking about legacy and why we compose. I can't speak for all composers, but I think most of us got our start in composing because we loved music and were curious and excited about creating it ourselves. I know a lot of composers who, like me, started out as performers and got bored of practicing what someone else wrote. I thought it was more fun to write my own music than to play someone else's (and it was a really good procrastination technique, which is probably why I'm not such a great performer anymore...). Luckily, not everyone feels this way, otherwise we'd have no one performing our music.

But back to the topic at hand- why we continue to compose. Most of us began doing it in the first place because we enjoyed it, but I doubt many of us at the young age when we first became composers thought about what kind of legacy we'd leave. I still don't, or at least not in so many words, and that's why I was so fascinated by the composer Natalie mentioned in her post who seemed to be more concerned about recognition than the music s/he was writing. Of course I am somewhat concerned about recognition, otherwise I wouldn't bother entering contests or ever having my music performed, and I'd be lying if I said I had never daydreamed about being famous or winning a huge composition award. But to answer Natalie's question: No, I had never before thought about it in terms of leaving a musical "legacy."

Connections, Legacy, and Other Non-Musical Distractions

I know I’ve been spoiled by having several down-to-earth composition teachers, including my first teacher, who made a huge impression on me. This particular composer was neither interested in schmoozing nor in shamelessly promoting himself. In fact, he often saw through the schmoozers and wouldn’t take their schmoozing seriously (a truly valuable and rare trait in an authority figure!). During lessons he was relentlessly focused on the music. He never suggested to me that it would be savvy to embrace a specific style or idiom or to try to compose in a certain way in order to win the respect of persons (or groups) x, y, or z. He was only interested in helping me to write the best kind of music that I was trying to write. I left my studies with him assuming that this was how every composer was (or at least how every composer was striving to be).

More and more, as time goes on, I’ve felt somewhat disillusioned by the reality of what drives composers, how composers choose to market themselves and network, and the effect that this has on what our culture thinks of as good music (both in the larger cultural sense and within the music community culture).

Competitions Behaving Badly

One of my pet peeves, as someone who fairly frequently enters composition contests, is the professionalism and respect that some of these competition organizers seem to lack.

I recently was made aware of the results of two competitions I had entered over the last few months, and the stark contrast between the two made me mad. I even sent an email praising the application process to the organizers of the first competition after I entered because they tried so hard to have each applicant remain anonymous (they even wanted the bios to be anonymous, which is somewhat impossible but a valiant effort nonetheless, as it makes it more likely that compositions will be selected based on merit alone). Some other great competitions email you to inform you that they have received your application and sometimes even include the date of when they will make decisions (and these are usually the same ones that send timely notifications of the results). The best competitions send semi-personalized rejection (or acceptance) emails in addition to the larger announcement, as opposed to the ones that merely send a mass email with the winners to inform you that you haven’t won, although that is far better than no notification whatsoever.

Some Thoughts on the Gender Narrative

I constantly go back and forth on whether or not I like exhibits, concerts, etc. devoted to female artists (see my post on the specialty concert for my usual opinion). Although I am highly critical of things that are gender-specific because I worry about inherent issues of marginalization, I do think good arguments can be made either way for their existence, and this weekend I stumbled upon a museum that made an excellent case for why gender-specific spaces are important.

Women in Science... and Music

I came across this article in the New York Times a few days ago, and while it's interesting for several reasons, I immediately started thinking about how it relates to music. I have a personal interest as the daughter of two scientists (who are also wonderful parents) but I think pretty much everything these women said about a life in science applies to a life in music, and probably many other fields that at one point were (and perhaps still are, in some circumstances) hostile to women.

How Do We Encourage Audiences to Listen?

After considering Sarah’s last post on the curiosity of art demographics, I spent much of this week speculating about why it often seems to be considered cool to "consume" culture in the form of films, plays, gallery exhibits, etc., but not to seek out new music. 

Is this because we are such a visual culture? Music is contextualized for us on an everyday basis as providing an emotional backdrop in movies, TV shows, commercials, etc. People are becoming more and more programmed to understand the visual as the foreground and the auditory as the background, no matter how important and vital that “background” may be in shaping aesthetic, tone, and meaning. Perhaps this commercial reality bleeds over into the artistic realms?

Enticing the Artsy Audience

In our recent discussions about the orchestra, we've been spending a lot of time talking about the audience, and how to get new demographics to the orchestra (and to new music concerts). I have a new question: why does it seem that it's cool to like new art, film, theater and dance, but not necessarily new music?

Real Life Orchestras Playing New Music

I know that many major American orchestras do play new music, but especially with all our recent discussion about the orchestra, I thought this article about the Detroit Symphony Orchestra was particularly interesting. An orchestra with so many problems (striking musicians, huge deficits) might want to play it safe, but instead, they're trying new things, which I definitely applaud.  While 20% isn't that high a percentage for programming new music, it's certainly a start- and for major American orchestras, I think it's a pretty good number.  And they seem to have taken some of Natalie's advice about reaching out to local audiences!

Posted by Sarah

Composing a Better World, Part III: Articles

In our ongoing discussion of new music and politics, I want to add these two articles to the table:

The Atlantic, D.B. Grady:  Can Classical Music Save the World?

The New York Times (The Score), David T. Little:  Until the Next Revolution

David T. Little's distinction between "revolutionary music" and "critical music" is particularly interesting.

Posted by Natalie

Divide & Conquer: Rethinking Orchestral Programming and Structure

Sarah’s post in defense of the orchestra as an established ensemble is very timely, especially considering how many recent articles have been addressing the financial situation of the modern orchestra and possible solutions (for example, see Anne Midgette’s blog post on the inherent difficulty of standardizing an operational design for the orchestra). It’s not surprising that the orchestra is on our cultural mind, especially with the news that the Philadelphia Orchestra recently filed for bankrupty protection.

The orchestra, as an institution, is suffering from several problems and I will not be able to adequately address them all in this post. However, here are some topics to start with: 1) The classical audience is a fractured audience, 2) The community is a changing concept, 3) Conductors, music directors, and top level administrators don’t need exorbitant salaries.

Don't Blame the Orchestra!

I read a New York Times article recently that made a few conjectures that annoyed me, including this one:

“Some have argued too that there is nothing wrong with orchestras serving — in part — the function of museums, keeping the classics on view.”

I’m not the first, nor will I be the last, to discuss whether the orchestra is “dead” as an institution. I’m not really in the mood to debate that, but I think it’s really sad that people are ready to give up on the orchestra- it’s not the orchestra’s fault, as an ensemble, that it is constantly forced to play the same pieces over and over. (Another quote from the above article: “…you get performances which inspire the phrase: ‘Once you’ve heard one major American symphony orchestra’s Beethoven 5 these days, you’ve pretty much heard them all!’”) It is the conductors, administrators, music directors, programmers, etc.- all the people involved in making repertoire decisions. These are the people who are killing the orchestra, but there is nothing wrong with the orchestra itself. People write new music for orchestra all the time- it just hardly ever gets programmed.

Composing a Better World, Part II: Why do we need new music?

Natalie:  Our most recent discussion in this series addressed the topic of whether or not music has the ability to influence political or social change. Although we concluded that music can have an important political and social role, it was harder for us to determine to what extent art music can really make a concrete difference in creating change. As composers who are interested in what’s going on in the world outside of the music sphere, this disconnect can be frustrating, which brings me to our current topic: Is new music vital to our cultural health (I think it is) and, if so, how and why is it vital? I feel strongly that new music is important, but sometimes it’s hard to believe, especially when art music is largely an esoteric unknown for the average American. Sarah, what do you think?  

Composing a Better World, Part I: Oh no... We discuss politics.

Introducing part one of our new debate series: How can we, as composers, make the world a better place?

Sarah: Since I wrote about Nicholas D. Kristof in my introduction post, let's start out with politics. Can we write political music that might actually make a difference, and if so, how? Considering most music is fairly abstract, without a text or some other representational indicator, I find it difficult to label a piece as advocating for something or promoting a cause. Personally, I've never really tried to write anything overtly political, although I did once write a feminist piece- but it had a text. Natalie, what do you think?

Composing a Better World?

When Natalie and I started this blog about five months ago, one of the questions we asked was what we, as composers, are doing to make the world a better place. I've been thinking indirectly about this question a lot lately, as I ponder (with so far, not many results) what I'm going to do next in terms of my career. I tend to be a bit dramatic with this whole, "what should I do with my life" question, but I do feel strongly that whatever I end up doing, I'd like to at least try to somehow make the world a better place, even if it's in a really small way. 

As a demographic, do composers make the world a better place? And if so, what do we do? Individually, I hope many (if not all) composers do things to make the world better in some facet of their lives. But are these things, whatever they are, accomplished through composing? I'm sure some of us volunteer at animal shelters or soup kitchens, donate our time to Habitat for Humanity, mentor at-risk youth, or merely spend time with our families and friends, which (almost) always makes the world better. But those activities, while extremely important, don't have much to do with our careers as composers. What can we do through composing that makes the world better? Should we even be worrying about this? (Answer: Absolutely, I think we should worry about it, but that's just my opinion.)

The Frugal Composer, Part Deux

Several weeks ago, Natalie posted about The Frugal Composer. Recognizing the difficulties inherent in actively pursuing a career as a composer in our current economic climate, we have put together a list of resources for the frugal composer. We will continually add to this list, and if you have suggestions or know of resources that aren't listed, please let us know! Our goal is to make this a comprehensive resource for anyone in the arts who is trying to save money.

Enjoy!

Avoiding the Compositional Vacuum

Sarah’s last post had me reflecting for a long time about the balancing act that composers have to pull off on a regular basis. Somehow we have to compartmentalize parts of our life in order to be productive and energized for the moments (insert the Hallelujah chorus here) when we actually find the time and space to sit down and work on our music. 

For me, though, it’s not just about finding the time, it’s also about the people involved. I used to compose music on a regular basis without much feedback or without anybody particularly in mind. However, since going to school for composition and experiencing the dramatic increase in learning that happens when you actually hear your music realized, I now have trouble getting excited about projects that aren’t going to be performed. There is possibly nothing worse for a composer than composing in a vacuum. 

The 40 Hour a Week Composer

As I lay on my bed this afternoon after I got home from work, exhausted as usual, I thought about what it would be like if my full-time, 40 hour a week job was actually composing. Think about how much work I’d get done!  Does anyone actually compose as if it’s their full time job? 

Status Update: Getting Consumed by the Marketing Monster

*Note:  Don’t worry, the irony of posting on this subject is not lost on the author.

As somebody who uses Facebook and has both a website and a blog (albeit a blog that is meant for shared artistic ruminations rather than self-promotion), I'm often grappling with the positive and negative aspects of social media and marketing.

On Selling Out

Last year, a student came up to me after class one day and told me that she thought it was "kind of wrong" to get paid to write a piece, that it was so much more "pure" to do it for free. I was never sure exactly what she meant by that, but to me it sounded like she was implying that when you create art for money it is almost like prostitution. That it can't be as meaningful if you're getting paid for it, or that it's somehow dirty, commercialized, and cheap.

Here are some questions to ponder: is it dirty when a surgeon is paid for removing a dangerous tumor from a loved one's diseased body? Is it wrong to pay teachers for instilling knowledge in our children? Is it cheap when you pay a mechanic to figure out why your car is making that terrible noise? All of these people provide valuable services to us, and arguably, to the community. Why is it somehow impure to pay artists for providing valuable services to us and to the community, through art, music, dance, theater, etc.? Why is there a stigma surrounding artists who earn income?

The Oxymoronic "Frugal Composer"

I have gone through most of my compositional education with teachers and mentors advising me to always put my best face forward in terms of presentation, networking, and marketing. Their advice is well-meant and probably realistic given the extremely competitive and networked nature of the composition field. However, often the advice translates in practicality to a number of details that cost a lot of money, ranging from binding scores for competitions (as I mentioned in my earlier post) to attending music festivals in another state or country in order to broaden your contacts and exposure. Overall, composers are advised to spend a lot of time and money trying to build not only a portfolio, but also a CV.

To Pay or Not to Pay

I recently had an interesting discussion with a student, who has been paying performers to record some of her pieces. She is not in school at the moment, and I think it makes sense that she pay these performers for their time, since they would not otherwise be rehearsing or recording her music. However, I feel very differently about paying performers who are fellow students. When I was a student, trying to find performers for my first concert in graduate school, I didn't even think to pay the performers because we were all students. I assumed that if they were interested in pursuing graduate (or undergraduate) study in performance then they would jump at the opportunity to play new music, to work with a living composer, and that I wouldn't have to pay them to do what I thought was already their "job" (being a student). Perhaps that was a naive assumption.

Women Make Music Initiative: An Interesting Article

As just a brief hiatus from our economics topic, I recommend checking out this interesting article regarding the status of women in music in the U.K.  The author reiterates a lot of what Sarah and I have been describing in our discussion of various aspects of gender in the world of composition.  Not an easy topic, but it's reassuring to know that others are willing to discuss it, as well:

Economic Woes of the Young Composer

If there were three money-related things you could change about the current status quo in the world of new music what would they be?  Here are three of mine, in no particular order, followed by comments and possible solutions:

Money Makes the World Go Round

Introducing the topic of our next set of posts... money!

We'll probably post the first one tomorrow, but here are two songs to ponder in the meantime:

Well, we can't embed the first one, but click here.

And here's the second:

Enjoy!

Why I Dislike Program Notes

Last year, the night before a big deadline, I was frantically trying to come up with a title for an important piece of which I was particularly proud. I wanted the title to be perfect, but I had been thinking about it for days, had pages and pages of notes, and didn't like anything I had come up with. I also had to write program notes, which was a whole other source of misery. I was desperate. Finally I just decided to go with something, tied it into the music, and dashed out some program notes.

What Does Your Music Represent?

Sarah's last post addresses the difficulty of creating a title for a piece of music.  Since titles often illuminate what music is about, I'm going to discuss a somewhat related topic: the issue of whether or not music can represent extra-musical ideas and/or evoke emotion.  My answer, in a nut-shell, is that it can...just don't expect specifics!

Title of this Post*

If you’re a composer out there who has ever had trouble thinking of a good title (or any title) for a recently finished piece, raise your hand.  If you’re not raising your hand, please contact me immediately and tell me your secrets.

Is the Specialty Concert a Necessary Evil?

In continuing our discussion of gender in the composition world, I want to address the specialty concert.  You probably know what I'm talking about--the concert that specifically features the music of one demographic.  For example, recently I went to a choral concert that was programmed as a celebration of female composers and poets.  There are concerts that feature the music of other minority groups in composition, but for now I'm going to focus on the gendered concert, since it fits in well with our current discussion.

The Sexist Elephant

Author’s Note: This post contains excerpts from a study I conducted in 2009. While some of the data is several years old, I believe it is still relevant to our current situation. I must apologize, though, because many of my data sources are no longer available on the Internet. If you are interested in learning more about the study or reading the full paper (with complete bibliography), please contact me here.

In her last post, Natalie asked where all the women composers are. I'm going to address the question of why there seem to be so few of us.

In discussing issues of gender and composers, we tend to dance around the issue of sexism. Instead, I'm just going to come out and say it: I believe there is sexism in the world of composition.

Where Are the Female Composers?

Author's Note:  Too often we shy away from discussing gender bias in the field of composition.  We are silent for many reasons, including the fact that we don’t want to upset the countless teachers and peers who have been supportive to us and who have never displayed any sort of prejudice.  Please know that this discussion is about an ingrained culture and we are forever grateful to those who support us and treat us fairly. 

As female composers, none of us want to come off as “whiners,” “victims,” etc.  Nor do we want to feel that our achievements are due to affirmative action or, even worse, sexuality.  In her last post, Sarah shared an important quote by Jill Halstead that addresses a fallacy that composers, male and female alike, reference far too often: the idea that if a female composer’s music is really strong it will speak for itself. 

Competition Winners and Gender: What's Up with That?

Like most young composers I know, I apply to composition competitions, awards, festivals, etc. all the time.  I have a lot to say on the subject of these competitions, but today I want to talk about the gender breakdown of the winners. Specifically, that time and again, it seems that a disproportionate number of winners are male.

RIP, Milton Babbitt

A few articles on the great composer Milton Babbitt:

January 31, 2011:
The Baltimore Sun, Tim Smith:  On the Death of Milton Babbitt at 94 

January 29, 2011:
Sequenza21:  Milton Babbitt, RIP

January 29, 2011:
The New York Times, Allan Kozinn: Milton Babbitt, a Composer Who Gloried in Complexity, Dies at 94

January 29, 2011:
NewMusicBox.org: Milton Babbitt (1916-2011)

Writing with a Purpose

In the past couple weeks, Sarah and I have been discussing harmony, specifically trying to defend the use of tonality (in its broad definition) and melodies (both “tonal” and abstract) in new music.  In adding to this, I want to discuss the idea of harmonically purposeful composing.

Why is Melody a Dirty Word?

I was sitting in a composition seminar one day when a fellow composer presented a piece that was fairly atonal (meaning there was no tonal center, or key- see Natalie's previous post on tonality for a brief explanation). The discussion after the piece was presented focused largely on whether or not there was a melody at one point, which clearly outraged several of my colleagues. Part of the problem was that they felt a melody didn't fit in the piece based on the rest of its contents, which may have been a perfectly valid point. But a few disparaging comments about melody were made, and that bothered me. What's wrong with a good melody? And what have melodies done to deserve our wrath?

The “Tonal” Composer

I know we’re long past the days of the mid-20th century, when serialism and high modernism reigned in the American academy. Yet, despite the academy’s relatively more recent embracing of minimalism and post-modernism, you still run into people here and there who suggest that there’s no place for tonality in the art music of today.

Happy New Year!

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