Hurricane Sandy and New Amsterdam

This is a bit of a delayed response (school, teaching, and fall madness have gotten in the way of my blogging in general...), but in case you haven't read or heard about this, Hurricane Sandy devastated New Amsterdam's brand new headquarters.

New Amsterdam has done wonderful things for the new music community and if there is any way that you can give back to them, it would be a huge help.

You can read about their situation and donate by clicking here. Much of New York is still recovering from the destruction of this storm. Please help if you can afford to do so!

Posted by Natalie

Wedding Music for Composers/New Music Performers

I have an idea about a new market segment that I bet most composers (and new music performers) have not thought to tap (or maybe you have, maybe I'm just late to the party): WEDDING MUSIC. I know, it sounds crazy, but hear me out. I actually think it might not be a terrible idea.

Here is the scene: You are a composer (and/or someone who performs new music a lot). You are getting married. You realize you need to think about music for the ceremony. Suddenly, you have a panic attack: "I'm a composer! Everyone is going to expect me to have SUPER AWESOME MUSIC AT THIS WEDDING!!!" Or at least that's what I did. You're probably all wondering why I didn't just write a ton of new music for my own wedding, since that would have (probably) been the most meaningful music to have- but wedding planning can be very stressful. Add to that the stress of writing the music for your own wedding- clearly whatever you write has to be absolutely perfect and meaningful, while still being "you"- and maybe you can understand why I didn't go down that path. I know people who do, and I admire them. But for those of us who decide we can't write our own music but still want something a little more true to us than Pachelbel's Canon (no matter how lovely a piece it is), what do we do?

What Makes Good Music?

When we initially started this blog, we aimed to discuss, among other things, what exactly constitutes "good music." This idea has always seemed highly elusive to me, perhaps because what I think of as "good music" is itself elusive.

Really fantastic music doesn't fit a recipe or mold, and although it often meets certain expectations and most likely feels inevitable, it also surprises its audience with freshness. The day after the concert, usually you can still hear "good music" in your head--not because it's repetitive or catchy necessarily, but because the sounds have left a tangible impression. This is my best effort at offering some sort of definitive classification. Perhaps its vagueness is appropriate, as the definition can be applicable to all kinds of music, not just "art music."

Stereotype Threat: As Applied to Music

Every time I read articles about the gender disparity in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math), I immediately apply everything I'm reading to music, particularly our little field of composition. This story from NPR about "stereotype threat" seemed very relevant to me and I couldn't help thinking it goes on in music all the time. The gist of it is that when women think about the stereotype of women not being as good as men in the STEM fields (or composition), they actually sound less competent when talking about their work because they're using brainpower worrying about the stereotype. But you should read (or listen to) the full article to get the whole (very interesting) explanation about the study. The conclusion of the scientists who conducted the study: "In order to boost the numbers of women who choose to go into those fields, you have to boost the number of women who are in those fields."

The Ethical Elephant

During my junior year of college, one of the full-time faculty members sat all four(!) music majors down and advised us about the future. Of course, we were all nervous about our prospects for continuing on, finding a job, making a living (unfortunately finding a job is not synonymous with making a living), etc. His advice certainly did not mitigate this fear. Instead, he warned, "Don't go to grad school unless you absolutely have to. It's just not worth it. It's a lot of money and it's almost impossible to get a professorship these days." I remember that at the time, in my youthful innocence and idealism, I felt slightly resentful of this comment. What did he mean there weren't jobs?! Surely if I worked really hard and wrote good music I would be able to get a job somewhere!

Looking back, I'm impressed that my professor was actually willing to talk about something that so many others in academia tend to avoid. I now realize exactly what motivated my professor to give this speech and I'm much more appreciative of his honesty and integrity. What motivated him was a deep sense of moral obligation--not to his field, but to his students. The academic job market is pretty brutal (especially in this economy) and in many ways his assessment of the situation is accurate. Occasionally you will hear someone refer to the academic job market as a Ponzi scheme. To be fair, this is an exaggeration and an oversimplification. Many graduate students do know what they are getting into (in terms of student loans, job prospects, etc.). Many are happy just to further their education in the hope that they will be able to make it work one way or another, and graduate schools should not be blamed for accepting these students. That said, the number of graduating doctoral students far outstrips the number of available academic teaching jobs. It is a shame to see so many individuals--individuals who may be unaware of all of the details--leaving school potentially with mountains of debt and few financial opportunities.

Keeping the Programming Fresh: NOI's "New Lights"

Last week, I attended the National Orchestral Institute's "New Lights" concert at the University of Maryland. The concert featured works by Bach, Cage, Pärt, and Moravec, as well as improvisational interludes—improvisations that were performed both by the performers and by the audience members. The concert was seamless with each piece fading into the next and ran for a manageable 45-minute stretch. It was, without a doubt, one of the most effective ways of freshening up programming that I've witnessed in a long time.

Orchestra Readings as Antithetical to Risk-Taking

Too often we tend to play it safe when we compose. Sometimes we do this accidentally--we may have discovered several techniques or strategies that we know will "work" and we rely on these while expanding our ideas somewhat conservatively. Alexandra Gardner recently wrote an excellent article for NewMusicBox in which she called on all of us to be willing to take greater risks and to accept greater challenges, with the idea that our compositional skills will grow in leaps and bounds if we do so.

I absolutely agree with the importance of risk-taking--it is, I think, one of the most necessary aspects of compositional education and growth. Sometimes I worry, however, that our institutions, ensembles, and pedagogical tactics operate in ways that are actually antithetical to risk-taking.

Summer Hiatus

We just wanted to write a quick note letting you all know that we are going on a bit of a blogging hiatus this summer. Both Sarah and I have had a lot going on in our respective lives recently and have been somewhat overwhelmed with deadlines, projects, life events, etc. We may post from time to time over the summer, but we want to apologize in advance for the infrequent nature of the posts. We will be back soon with some new posts! Enjoy your summer!

Best wishes,

Sarah & Natalie

March/April Birthdays!

Due to our crazy schedules as of late (not to mention being distracted by all the gender-related hoopla!), Sarah and I neglected to get the March birthdays posted. Sorry!

Happy Belated Birthday to Pierre Boulez and Tristan Murail and Happy Birthday to two composers born in April--Chen Yi and Augusta Read Thomas! As always, these birthday posts offer only a small sample of living composers, but we hope it will provide some new listening experiences for everyone.

An excerpt from Boulez's Rituel:

An excerpt from Murail's Desintegrations:

Chen's Duo Ye


Thomas's Rush

The "Woman Composer" Revisited

In response to all the discussion on NewMusicBox recently about women composers, Natalie wrote a great post about affirmative action, women composers, and the new music scene in general. I'd like to focus on some of the points brought up in Amy Beth Kirsten's article. (I'd recommend reading the comments too- some of them are quite illuminating and make really interesting arguments, both agreeing and disagreeing with what I'm about to say.)

Kirsten's main argument is that we are living in a post-gender world. I respectfully disagree. As we've talked about many, many times on this blog before, until there are equal numbers of men and women studying composition, graduating from composition programs, being programmed on concerts, obtaining jobs in the field (whether in academia or not, including residencies, commissions, etc), we are certainly not living in a post-gender world. The new music world is absolutely getting better with regard to the number of female composers, but we are making progress at a snail's pace. Just because we're moving toward a goal does not mean we are anywhere near it. And I don't think anyone can argue that there are equal numbers of male and female composers doing all these thing-- so why are people continuing to argue that gender doesn't matter?

"Affirmative Action" from a Different Angle

There has been a lot of chatter recently on NewMusicBox regarding the programming of female composers and whether or not an "affirmative action" approach is necessary. Amy Beth Kirsten's thoughtful and optimistic article on the state of gender in the composition world sparked an interesting debate about the subject of programming (with Kirsten making the argument that an affirmative action approach is no longer necessary). I disagree with this, but at first I did agree with Kirsten's idea that programming more new music in general would solve the gender disparity. On second thought, however, I just don't think this is true, especially since there are new music ensembles that don't program female composers in proportion to the demographic. Now, please bear with me because I admit this may be a bit of a kooky metaphorical argument for affirmative action, but here goes...

New music is underrepresented, right? I think we all can get behind that. We all can agree that orchestras and other traditional ensembles, for the most part, do not program nearly enough new music to satisfy the needs and talents of the contemporary composition scene. Furthermore, nobody in our community would say that the lack of representation of new music is due to a lack of quality compositions. We all know that the programming needs of orchestras and other groups are more complex than that. Presumably, therefore, new music is under-programmed for other reasons. Perhaps it would help to imagine "new music" as its own minority group in terms of general "classical" programming.

More Discussion About Women Composers (or the Lack Thereof)

I am very excited to share this fantastic article (and comments) from NewMusicBox by David Smooke. I really don't have anything to add to it because it eloquently discusses many of the issues that we've talked about on this blog in the past: about the appalling lack of women in the field of composition, both in sheer numbers and in performances and programming, and why, the gender make-up of competition winners, confidence issues in the world of composition as they relate to gender, etc. It even has statistics... and pie charts!!

It's really nice to know that people are talking about this important issue. Let's keep it up!

- Posted by Sarah

Happy February Birthdays!

Happy birthday to John Adams, John Corigliano, and Christopher Rouse!

John Adams's Chamber Symphony (Mvt. 1)


John Corigliano's Circus Maximus


Christopher Rouse's Gorgon 

Goodbye, New Music in the Media

Dear Alphabet Soup Readers,

We have decided to take down our page "New Music in the Media." While we feel it is very important to discuss new music issues raised in the news, we have decided that if we feel an article or event is noteworthy enough to post and/or discuss on this blog, we will do so on the main page so we can actually have a discussion about it. 

Thanks for your continued readership!

- Natalie & Sarah

I Have Confidence in Sunshine, I Have Confidence in Rain

A year ago I asked the question "Where Are the Female Composers?" and attempted to answer it by briefly touching on the issue of an institutionalized gender gap, among other topics. Sarah addressed the frustrating discrepancies between the male/female demographics in the composition world and the winners of awards in "Competitions and Gender: What's Up with That?" I still feel mostly the same way as I did last year regarding these topics. However, one highly important aspect of the gender gap was left out of our discussion last year: the issue of confidence.



For the most part, I find (in my limited experience) that women are generally unwilling to discuss confidence issues when addressing the gender gap, especially in mixed-gender company. I think we all feel, to a certain extent, that admitting to a lack of confidence or having any kind of self-doubt displays a weakness that can only be harmful to us in this brash, networking, market-driven world.

Cutting Arts Funding... Again

While politicians are almost always cutting or threatening to cut funding for the arts, and already have to a large extent, this article seemed even more extreme to me than what is usually discussed. The suggestion to cut national arts funding in half when the budget is so small already seems like hitting artists when they're already down. The article is a little old but certainly relevant in light of the Republican primaries and upcoming (ish) election.

Posted by Sarah

Our Compositional Core

I recently participated in the Atlanta Opera's 24 Hour Opera Project- a crazy adventure in which mini-operas were written, rehearsed, and performed in- yes, you guessed it- 24 hours. The lyricist (who I had never met before) and I had twelve hours, from 6pm to 6am, to come up with an idea and write both the libretto and music for an entire 10 minute opera. It was exhausting and exhilarating. While many people think these types of 24 hour composing challenges are pretty neat, I would hazard a guess that the projects (and compositions) are generally looked upon as fun and frivolous- never as serious works of art. For the most part, yes, this is a fun event (although very stressful at times!) and a composer is generally not going to write her magnum opus. But I don't think these challenges are frivolous. I actually think they're quite useful to participate in as composers for a variety of reasons, besides the obvious wonderful outcome of having an almost instantaneous performance of your music.

Happy January Birthdays!

Happy Birthday to John Luther Adams, David Lang, and Philip Glass!

Adams's "The Light Within"



An excerpt from Lang's Pulitzer-winning "The Little Match Girl Passion"



An excerpt from Glass's "Koyaanisqatsi"

Karl Paulnack's Welcome Address

A friend of mine recently passed this link on to me. I'm not sure when it's from, but it's a wonderful welcome address from Karl Paulnack, piano instructor at Boston Conservatory.

This address offers many compelling reminders of why music is a fundamental and necessary aspect of the human experience. Too often all of us (musicians included) fail to fully consider the importance of music in our lives.

One of my favorite quotes from the article is below:

"I have come to understand that music is not part of 'arts and entertainment' as the newspaper section would have us believe. It's not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement... Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can't with our minds."

To read the full address, click here. If you are a musician (and maybe even if you aren't) you will find it to be a therapeutic and empowering read!

Posted by Natalie

Melodramatic Musings

I'm currently working on a 10-15 minute chamber opera for a class at school. It's meant to be a learning experience, having the composer workshop an idea with the opera department over a period of only about six months (with the bulk of the writing happening in two to three months....ouch!). I can already say that I am learning a ton and am hugely enjoying the process, even if it is a bit stressful. But here's what I don't like: telling people about it.