Diverse audiences require a diversity of composers
Believing in ourselves need not depend upon discrediting others.

by Peter Gilbert

A. Paul Johnson wrote a spirited article for the September/October issue of SCI "Why so many smart people write so much terrible music." Johnson’s central point was that composing and performing music that is easily appreciated is a worthy pursuit but that, by and large, such pursuits are demeaned by the ‘professional’ compositional community. Johnson, I gather, has been professionally and personally insulted enough to develop a fermenting resentment for this community and perhaps especially to academia. I have no doubt that his ill-feelings are founded and fostered in a reality of discrimination and prejudice based upon style. People’s dignity and humanity deserve respect and violations of these boundary-lines elicit a backlash. But I think his article has overreached by quite a lot (beyond rhetorical flair), and I feel several of his statements justify a response. 

Music awakens our emotional energies–witness the passion with which people write about it! People assume that music is "universal" because they are "stirred" by music from distant times and lands. So why are we stirred by one music while our neighbor is stirred by another? Where does the universality come in? Johnson hypothesizes, if I gather correctly, that music is a connecting device, linking us to an emotional inner core that is innately human (i.e. universal). Presumably, compositional success is achieved by helping some person or persons make this connection. Also I presume that any one piece is not obligated to connect every person, since all music would fall short of this mark. But for how many must music make a connection to justify itself, or to justify esteem? Johnson lauds composers who have connected "millions with their deeper souls." He lists Bernstein, Barber, Glass and John Williams as examples of composers who "have articulated for a large part of our intelligent population … some of the universal feelings and insights that we share across boundaries of time and language, and that we need the talents of artists to bring to the surface of our attention and richen our lives." 

It's wonderful that their music is so widely loved, but despite their successes, they cannot compete in a numbers game with the popular mainstream. As a measure of value, popularity marginalizes art music (i.e. music distinct from popular music). Corporate studios churn out music that is valued for its sales potential and disseminated by million-dollar (billion-dollar?) icons. Relevant? Pithy? Passionate? I think it is safe to say that creating mass-market popularity is itself a science distinct from musical transcendence. Of course, artfulness in performance can be appreciated on any instrument and artfulness in composition can be appreciated through whatever vehicle, and, I would add, I have nothing against being liked by millions. But I believe that requiring art to have a broad appeal is an artificial handicap to put upon the explorations of our souls. Branford Marsalis said the way to make jazz more popular was to write popular music and call it jazz. He writes his music his way and lets the chips fall where they may.

Johnson dislikes his intellect being discounted by academia, but his alternative to the academics’ elitism is simply to discount their music in return. He dislikes being shut out of the musical intelligentsia, and yet feels no compunction in segmenting off "our intelligent population." One might well ask whether or not Bernstein and Barber appeal to the unintelligent--whoever they are. He compares his chosen intellectual elite with the philistines who hold and attend new-music festivals, where the music is "irrelevant, of generally poor or mechanical content, and all too often uninspired." I feel unqualified to deal with anyone else’s inspiration and disinclined to launch a debate about mechanical content, but I would like to now make the case that relevance is relative.

People, smart or not, like the music they like. Some people take it a step further due to insatiable lust and/or curiosity that causes them to endlessly pursue beyond convenience the beautiful, the graceful, the powerful and mysterious in music. The culture of contemporary music (which Johnson implies is a sham) is a niche market of people who perhaps love Debussy, but find some newer music to be even more sensuous. Or perhaps they grew up loving Mahler, only to find upon further exploration that Berio is actually the music they’ve always yearned for.  There are thousands upon thousands of niches in musical life in this world. I grant that the classical niche is portrayed far too often in terms resembling Manifest Destiny, but that is partly because classical music lovers take great pride in their heritage. Music is, after all, a critical part of most people’s sense of identity, at least in my experience. People who declare other people irrelevant (here Boulez is joined by Mr. Johnson) are confusing their identity with aesthetic value. I am glad to issue my apology for ever devaluing the work of others. I make no apologies for believing in the value of my own. Opinions, educated opinions too, are still only such. People will like music and they don’t have to like ours. 

Johnson’s biggest gripe, I suppose, comes with people in charge of higher-level music education who assert their own aesthetic agendas. He will be glad to know, I’m sure, that the cultural climate in today’s university is far from authoritarian. If anything, stylistic agendas are so dreaded that style goes almost completely undiscussed. I will add that universities certainly do not espouse atonality at the expense of tonality. I’ve not been around academia long, but if we "brainwash" our students with anything it is, in fact, tonality. Common practice tonality is not an innate part of humanness. It is a learned skill. I’m far from qualified to go into the scientific studies which focus on this area of inquiry, but anyone who has tried to teach tonality to people who have grown up with it will know that, in spite of broader cultural inundation, students still have to wrestle with tonality quite a bit to internalize it’s procedures–sometimes, quite surprisingly, even to "hear" its most rudimentary phenomena. My experience is that academic programs spend a great deal of effort pounding tonality’s complex rules home first and foremost. Classes in non-tonal music are then perhaps electives or extras, which are available for curious students once they’ve completed their tonal regimen. I have no argument with this. A composer’s understanding of tonality connects them to history (and no, such an understanding certainly does not hinge upon a university education). But an understanding of non-common-practice music opens doors of musical loves and passions too. 

But the bottom line is this: asserting that people are frauds because they believe in music that you don’t is small-minded at best. I take Charles Rosen to heart when he says that a piece will ultimately survive because 100 people love it, not because 100,000 don’t mind it. Classical music does occasionally make the hit charts. I’m glad that people like the music they like, but I myself do not wake up in the morning dreaming of the day when I’ll make it on to Billboard. I dream of writing great music — a.k.a. music that I like. Of course I believe appreciation of the arts is linked to education. But music that skates at the edge of what people are comfortable with will always appeal to a small niche. The more mainstream you are, the bigger your audience. Let’s improve education, spread the word, and then write what we want. 

Johnson rightly applauds music that enriches his life. It is strange only that he derides other music even when his experience tells him that detractors cannot destroy a music’s power. People writing fashionable music (whatever that is) may end up with careers on a fast track, but fashion is whimsical and has no bearing on artistic achievement in the long run. Fashions can hold sway over opportunities, but not the art itself. For myself I believe that composers’ opportunities are precious, but not a birthright. It is an uphill battle trying to express our uniqueness in a world that, in the end, will go on quite well enough without us. No one asked me to become a composer, but I continue to write because there is a music that does not exist, which it is not my obligation, but my opportunity to compose. I give my works of my own free will for the world’s perusal. Frankly the world can (and will) do what it wants with my offering. Give it prizes. Reject it outright. Give it performances. Tell me it’s mindless and it stinks. So what. I was going to write it anyway. 

- Cambridge,MA (9/02)