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endsemester_rant
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unhinged
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so i admit, i study a rather useless topic. i have been going to college for the sixth year to study music. not of a practical general use to society. but it's been around long enough that some percentage of the population sees a viable use for it.
this semester the topic of my theory class was 'eletronic music in performance' and covered electronic 'art' music from the late 1930s to now. a lot of the aesthetic principles involved in this kind of music i don't agree with. making noise for the sake of it's novelty, experimenting with technology does not necessarily to me music make, but i wasn't the professor of the course so i listened and read what the prof told me to.
the class was mostly inhabited by composers. in the strange subculture of a music school, composers tend to be the most arrogant of all. in the 21st century, you aren't considered a composer in this environment unless you are coming up with the new and avant-garde even if no one can play it and no one wants to listen to it. what's the point of writing music for it to sit on a shelf? what ever happened to the enjoyment factor? do these people ever think of preservation through the years when they write this crap? do they actually want people to play the shit they put on a page and call 'new' and 'avant-garde' ? and they all justify themselves by drawing correlations between music and visual art history making comparisons to picasso and whatnot but there is such an obvious distinction between those two mediums and their perception that i don't even need to state it. and any one that can say john cage is anything like picasso is stretching it just a little too far.
and i guess that when it comes to aesthetics we all have our preferences. part of the reason why i took the class is because i had to, but i also wanted to take the opportunity to learn about something that i have virtually no exposure to as a violinist. quite honestly, even studying at this level, 90% of music students know nothing about eletronic music. which brings me to another point: all art has to have some point of accessiblity for it to be viable to a wide audience and for it to have some kind of lasting impact. we can get all existentialist and say that if we create a piece of art it exists, yeah, yeah, yeah, yada, yada, but i personally am not into creation for creation's sake as an artist. i want to share art with others. i want to make art to instill some kind of emotional reaction in others. what kind of reaction does computer/electronic music instill in even the educated public? i'll tell you what: a big fucking 'EEEWWW'
so we had a little tif in class today between the composers and the noncomposers. the tif arose because our prof posed the statement that composers are increasingly becoming concurrent composers of their own works and he asked us why we thought this was so. i personally think the guy likes to incite riotous arguments among his students especially because when things got particularly nasty he just sat in the front of the class with nothing to say (but i like the guy...whole nother matter entirely) . one of my fellow noncomposers posed the statement somewhere along the lines that the reason this is happening is because composers are writing in an increasingly unintelligble style for more classically trained musicians. i mean it's a pretty common fact that 90% of the performers in a music school won't touch 'new' music with a ten foot pole because the common consensus among the noncomposers is it sounds like crap. the human ear has a penchant for melody. the western ear has a penchant for more or less standard harmony. all the composers in the world can't change that and they haven't been able to for the past century. the matter of technical vocabulary on any given instrument came up and such and i made a comment in support of the early noncomposer's comment that what good is an idea if it's not accessable to the performers that are supposed to be playing it?
then some composer in the back of the class said 'well who's responsibility is it learn the vocabulary? it's yours as a performer' and then my fellow performer said 'well honestly, i can make the money with a much more standard and easy vocabulary than that' and the argument turned for a bit and then the question of accessibility came up again and our prof brought up radiohead's use of electronics that we have been studying in class. i said 'well that's the bridge between the idea and accessibility' another composer was like 'well honestly accessbility is....' and the other one chimed in 'bullshit'
and these people wonder why they can't get anyone to play their music.
so they sit up in their ivory towers writing 'music' that's 'new' and 'avant-garde' that no one has the technique to play or has the desire to learn the technique to play it because their technical vocabulary affords them many other possiblities for performance and cash and they look down on that like they are some purer form of artist because their art is incommunicable. what is the point of art if you can't share it with anyone else? what is the point of writing music that no one wants to play or hear? so that you can have the satisfaction of belonging to some small select group of people that validates what you are doing? how do you live/survive as an artist when you are making art along those lines?
and finally, what makes you think you are better than me on an artistic level? (probably the same thing that makes me think most 'new' music is crap) is it so much to ask for composers to write new and interesting music that is playable and enjoyable to listen to? in the academic world composers like john williams and horner and all those guys are clowns because they write 'cheesy' movie music that people actually can hum and that they actually want to listen to. what is so fucking wrong with that? what is this damn obsession with doing what has never been done to the point of gross absurdity?
and finally to that bitch that told me my opinion is bullshit:
when you can't find anyone to play your music or listen to it come back to me and tell me that accessibility is bullshit.
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041213
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unhinged
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correction:
composers are increasingly becoming concurrent *performers*
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041213
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Syrope
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that sucks, but i think it could be worse. at least people care, and know enough to say things...or think they know enough at least...
no one ever says anything in my classes. there's no way we could. the professor's speaking a foot and a half over our heads so he can show off how smart he is, and we know then he's gonna test us on a completely DIFFERENT set of incomprehensible topics. so we just keep our mouths shut. and we're always behind, so no time for questions.
we just all stare. and i imagine that if i were to go to the front of the room and look out over the faces, approximately half the people would be asleep, either from staying up late the night before to finish whatever was due...and something's always due...or from exhaustion of trying to understand the nerdy drone from the front of the room. these people either make As or fail so that the next semester they can make As. an additonal quarter would be on their laptops playing games or watching a movie. these people are the D or C range. the remaining 25% would have hopeless looks of despair on their faces. we are the B+/A- slice of the pie.
it's all quite discouraging, actually. i don't know why i'm still here. why i'm still alive or sane or a social creature. it's ridiculous
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041214
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unhinged
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i guess that's the nice thing about studying music. there is more or less of a dialectic in most classes. and my theory prof this semester was very interested in what we had to say on the topic of this stuff cause it's a less studied genre and it's his main focus in life.
but it's always dangerous to talk aesthetics in a music school; it's the politics and religion of what we do as musicians. i was a little miffed by the fact that my prof just sat there silent after that girl basically said my opinion was bullshit. i think it was more a matter of shock than anything; my prof has always been at the very least tolerant to us noncomposers in the class and being around a little longer i think he understands the issues that come up with 'new' music and the gap between the composers and the performers and listeners.
i've become increasingly practical and communist in my old age and i just don't see the point of academic intellectual masturbation when it comes to music. when you go to school for something, it means that someone somewhere had to intellectualize/justify what you are studying and that becomes even more of an issue with fine arts. we have to justify what we do to the rest of society on a daily basis especially here in america; it's all fine and good to be an ivory tower academic idealist but you have to at least consider reality. and the reality is that the paying public wants to hear something pretty and enjoyable for their money. if i was a composer, i would feel that my time and efforts were wasted if i composed something that only got played once to an audience of academics. but i'm not a composer *shrugs*
the bullshit superiority complex of music school subculture is wearing thin on me. i would love to find a community where the only thing that brought us together was our love of music and the need and want to make music for the music's sake. but alas, that's not possible.
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041214
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unhinged
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i think i failed my theory class
*sigh* *sniffle*
yeah...don't what much to do about that; don't know if i can graduate in the spring. yeah...*sniffle*
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041222
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unhinged
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(aaahhh, damn i hated that class. barely passed, but didn't get my degree anyways. and now i get to change the lives of small children instead of arguing with stuck_up bitches that matter of fact could not find people to play their ridiculous and uninformed music. ironically, i find myself more of a composer now albeit for voice and piano)
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090214
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