[- The (Ir)relevance of New Music?
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By petertraub, Section review-a-rama Posted on Sun May 11th, 2003 at 04:11:57 PM EURODISCORDIA TIME
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At a weekend-long new music festival at Stanford several weeks ago, I attended a couple of the concerts with two friends who really had no exposure to 'new music'. At the final concert, which was one of the centerpieces of the festival, we walked out during the intermission (they did not know that Sturgeon's Law must be taken into account at all such events :-) ). I didn't personally feel the need to leave as I have been working in this scene for several years now, but my friends just really couldn't connect to it...
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I think the problem was, to a great degree, that they couldn't deal with not having familiar musical structures like melody and rhythm as the basis of the works. This is the classic aversion that most people unfamiliar with contemporary music exhibit.
This set me to thinking about the greater question (and one that I think has always dogged new music composers), as to how to make this music relevant to an audience greater than just the composers themselves. The new music concerts I have attended in my life to date (except for a select few), have been notoriously underattended. Do visual artists also deal with such a great degree of disconnect with the public?
I'm not saying that composers should make different music in order to connect with a wider audience (unless they want to be the next britney spears), but rather asking what can be done in and out of academic new music circles to bring more of the public into the fold? Perhaps more importantly, why do most people have such a great aversion to cutting-edge/avant garde music when they generally exhibit a much greater acceptance (if not appreciation) of the visual avant garde? |
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