Thirty
five years ago composer Milton Babbitt wrote an article in High Fidelity/Musical
America describing the state of composition that began with the end of World War
ll and is still continuing to be a problem for composers today. His article, "Who
Cares if You Listen?" not only described the modern condition of the composer
but attempts to justify why a composer no longer has a need for an audience. Before
the end of this century it is imperative to finally answer Milton Babbit and ask
our audience to come back. I want the "who cares" generation of composers
to set this philosophy aside and join a new group of composers who are reaching out
to their audience. I CARE IF YOU LISTEN!It is true that the modern composer is a specialist, and is isolated from the public at large. It is necessary to affix blame and the composer's isolation from the audience has not been proven to be a desirable condition. Since WWll this has been the case. The composers isolationism has not been an advantage and it was not an inevitable consequence of a composer being a specialist.
The composer and the audience have parted company not because the modern composer is a revolutionary but an experimenter. As with most experiments when it has been proven to have failed then it is discarded. Instead the composer's failure has not been discarded but has been justified by claiming that the audience can not understand the greatness of the work. This is not similar to revolutions in mathematics and theoretical physics because they discard their failures, they would not be taken seriously if the continued to claim that wrong is right and right is wrong.
The claim that the composer has fallen from musical innocence because of the complexity of the music - this is absurd! Who wants to take the blame that in Adam's fall we sinned all? I would not want the title of Adam of the compositional world. As with Adam's fall, we sinned all. It is not Milton Babbitt, but the philosophy about the role of the modern composer and his audience; that is the problem. Milton was only courageous enough to state in writing the fallen condition of composers. I credit him for the courage of his conviction but I want all the other cowards who have been claiming to be composers/specialists to come out of hiding and confess-YOU ARE THE PROBLEM!
I do not agree that this condition is irreversible. The problem is not one about the revolution in music, its about a loss of trust. The audience can not trust composers. Its not about writing popular music, its about writing serious classical music that can survive the critics and still maintain musical value. The modern composer has been claiming that their music has value. The truth is that most music in the last half of this century has had little value, the real description of the music is that it is mediocre. The audience knows its mediocre and they will not trust us to deliver on high quality music because of the composers unwillingness to throw away the mind set that created this monster. As we want to trust a thorastic surgeon who is a specialist, the audience wants a composer who can deliver on quality music. I am surprised that lawyers haven't found a way to capitalize on all the musical mal practice. We wouldn't trust a surgeon with a history of killing of his patients as we should not wonder why we have killed off our audience.