The Place of Arts in our Society

Mr. Berger is absolutely correct in stating that much of the music of past eras isn't really worth the hearing. I also agree entirely with Mr. Ruggieri's premise that society should support the efforts of its creative members.

With all due respect to Messrs. Berger and Ruggieri, however - there is a difference between merely boring music, such as Mr. Berger refers to, and acoustical abuse of audiences, as we have observed more recently (and while Mr. Berger is also correct that an editor applied the title to Milton Babbitt's article, Babbitt himself could have but has not rejected or disavowed that title).

It is unprecedented in music history, before serialism, that composers would deliberately produce material that their ostensible audience quite sensibly and predictably doesn't consider to be music, and which so patently isn't music insofar as it lacks all of the elements and qualities that define music and separate music from mere noise. It is even more inexplicable that some of these "composers" have actually undertaken to offend their hearers, but this is undeniable.

Yes, much music of poor quality was written before serialism, but I would challenge anyone to cite examples of widely publicized composers of those earlier times who purposely set out to alienate audiences. There may have been a few cranks, but these never would have become the truly dominating presences that serialists, aleatorists and minimalists have been since 1950. In past times these cranks would never have found the financial and critical support afforded to acoustical abuse in recent times.

Therefore, I do not accept that people calling themselves "composers" who produce this sort of material are creative. On the contrary, by acting to drive audiences away from new music, they are concretely undertaking to suppress real creativity and the composers who actually are creative. The question here is simply the survival of classical music as a living art form.

If classical music is going to remain a living art, control and operation of the performing, publishing and critical establishments must be taken away from those who produce and promote material that alienates audiences, and these resources, along with the financing nedded to maintain them, must be allocated instead only to production of music that audiences want to hear - enough audiences, that is, to ensure that the production is financially viable. Until this is done, we will continue to hear about more and more orchestras and ensembles incurring financial difficulties and going out of business, and less and less public interest in classical music.

Any mentally challenged person can roll dice, pound out a simple phrase a hundred times on a piano, sit for four and a half minutes doing nothing, or make a tape recording of subway noise - no creativity required there! As for serialism, I myself once conducted a little experiment on that when I was an undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1965. I spent 6-1/2 hours in my dorm room one Saturday evening producing some 80 pages and 16 minutes' worth of absolutely correct serialism, scored simply for string orchestra. While I was writing this material, I carefully avoided hearing it in my mind's ear, so that what I wrote would not be influenced by how it sounded. I then submitted this "music" to the chairman of the music department at UCSB, a rather well-known composer named Peter Racine Fricker.

The dear professor was ecstatic. He said it was one of the most remarkable student works, no, even one of the most remarkable new serial pieces, period, that he had ever seen, the more so for one who was not even a composition or even a music major (I majored in history and took only appreciation courses in music, no theory or composition), this breaks new ground, we must get it performed and published, etc., etc. I did not respond to these entreaties from Prof. Fricker, because I had achieved my purpose of proving that how it sounded was irrelevant for serialism, and that all one actually needed to produce "good" serialism was knowledge of music notation and the rules of serial "composition" - again, no creativity required.

Once again, the question is the survival and prosperity of classical music as a living art form. Allowing practitioners of acoustical abuse to divert resources away from genuinely creative and appealing music will only hasten the death of the art. As to what is genuinely creative and appealing, the core audience has already decided that and has voted resolutely with their ticket purchases and their feet against the three modernisms.

Those who provide funding for serious music should keep their eye on that core audience and end their support of that offensive material once and for all. There are too few resources available for any of those resources to be squandered on producing and promoting abusive material.

What Mr.Wozniak fails to realize is that most of the classical music from every era has been deservedly forgotten,simply because it is not very good.True, a lot of boringly arid music has been written by serial composers,but there is plenty of tonal music from the past that is just as boring.However,some minimal music has been favorably received by audiences. Only time will tell what will last. We might be surprised if we could come back 100 years from now and see what music is popular.And Milton Babbitt did not say "who cares if you listen".That was a title made up by the editor of the article Babbitt wrote.

A diatribe against contemporary composers who disdain writing music that "pleases and entertains"is misplaced in the context of Mr. Fogel's heartfelt plea for an arts-enhanced society. Seems to me that the world Fogel envisions is one in which humanity is enriched by supporting and at least attempting to understand the efforts of its creative members, not merely dismissing their works as superficially offensive.

Music is a highly compartmentalized human activity; it's reasonable to believe that those works which ultimately form a high water mark of civilization are not the same as those which pleased and entertained.

With respect to music (and I assume we're talking "art" or "classical" music here, in contrast to popular, folk, etc.): I believe that the single most important reason that public interest has declined is that composers, or at least those composers whose material is receiving wide attention, have by and large forsaken audiences. For close to 60 years now, new "art" music has been dominated at the publishing houses, in the concert hall and among critics by material that the traditional core audience for classical music frankly does not consider to be "music."

I contend that, by and large, that core audience’s characterization of this material is spot on. Here's why: All three "modernist" schools of composition - serialism, aleatory and minimalism - seemingly strive to purge every element from their material that, to an audience's hearing, makes that material into music: melody, harmonic logic, coherent form. One should not be deceived by the fact that minimalism is usually less dissonant than serial or aleatory material; it is just as empty of musical content as those other modernisms. Indeed, dissonance itself is not the problem with modernist "music"; audiences have no problem, for instance, with improv jazz, and they have embraced much highly dissonant early 20th-century music, such as that of Bartok or (pre-serial) Stravinsky. No, it is this lack of musical content, not dissonance, that alienates audiences from modernist material.

This brings me to another thing that has worked to diminish interest in serious music: the unabashed contempt shown by modernist "composers" towards audiences. There is Milton Babbitt saying, "Who cares if you listen?" There is Charles Wuorinen saying that if you don't like serialism, it's because you're too lazy or too stupid to learn to understand it. Far from not understanding it, audiences DO understand it, and they reject serialism precisely because it is so flagrantly lacking in musical content.

This contempt on the part of exponents of modernism is also expressed in material that, in my view, appears deliberately calculated to offend audiences - material that would be more accurately described as acoustical abuse, instead of "music." Their contempt also extends to composers who do not partake of the modernist orthodoxies. Composers who write music with real audience appeal have been derided by the modernist academic, publishing and critical establishments, have seen their careers obstructed and have too often been unable to secure performance and publication of their music. Instead, we see acoustical analogues to paint thrown at random at a canvas and the crucifix submerged in urine consuming scarce performance and publishing resources and being celebrated by critics.

And so, audiences are left only with the masterpieces of past eras - and even those masterpieces wear out if heard too often, so audiences eventually stop going to hear even the great music of prior centuries. I am convinced that exactly like popular music, art music needs a continuing supply of fresh and appealing material to thrive. And when, as it has done now for some 60 years, the music establishment acts to suppress that appealing material, audiences eventually lose interest in ALL art music.

How, then, to restore public interest in art music? Stop patronizing and subsidizing the modernist material that audiences rightly find so offensive. Let the outre types who think that subway noise, four and a half minutes of silence, or notes chosen by rolling dice are "music" go find other means of financing their bizarrerie, and instead help those composers and other artists who are prepared to please and entertain, rather than offend, audiences.