MUSIC WORKS SUMMER 09

getting on with it: three visions of musics future.

this has little to do with ol' karl or richard but something about this article really irked me. ive read about it once in a while before, and it was brought up during the newfound music festival a few years ago. it has to do with classical music alienating its audience. and how it is not culturally relevant. times were very differnent post WWII, and its effects on adademia has more or less faded before my time as a student, so what i may say could very well be completely wrong. but it was not composers who isolated audiences. it was the audiences who isolated themselves. i believe the desire to have a widespread audience is equally vulgar as an audience member who doesnt "make the effort" to really understand contemporary music. the desire for an audience is one of exibitionism (while not entirely innocent of this offence, i would indeed be quite happy having my music only heard by a small group of peers, or even not at all as long as i was still able to write and study composition) and if one wants to fulfill that desire, then one must strongly consider what is being compromised in the process? i could never understand, and perhaps i never will, why appeal, or an audience, or having some popular value. or even tangible value at all. not to say that it isnt art if it does have that, but it certainly loses no merit if it does not.