Contemporany music.... an utophy or really a new cultural approach?

[carolina estrada]

ive heard many times, we just been educated in other epoque, so to speak for many musicians it is an extra personal effort to get closer to new music.
my question :.... is it worth trying, is this bringing us somewhere? 

 I feel very interesting to know your point of view, folks.

[iumonito]

A post-modernist would note that Bach in the 21st century is not Bach in the 18th.  In that sense, all music we have access to is contemporary music.  I would say the most striking exemplification of this is to compare Bach as perfomed in the 50s and 60s with Bach perfomed in the past 10 years.  Entirely different aesthetics.

Now, for music being composed at the time, it is only classical music that presents the divide ("tragic" to Glenn Gould but in fact great for the massification and socialization of music-making) between performer and composer.   Gould entirely ignored the fact that there is no such divorce in jazz and the divide, when present, is entirely irrelevant in pop music.  Who cares if Madonna didn't write Vogue?

Then, for classical music being written now, there is lots worth learning, and you never know when something really cool is just being written.  There has never been such a thing as avant gard for the masses, but with the Internet we surely now have the tools.

Maybe we should have a composers' lounge in the forum and have new music disseminated by pdf should the composer feel that such exercise of copyright rights is appropriate.

Carolina, do you know any composers?

[pianistimo]

i think it keeps one on top of new technologies in music.  i have to admit i'm of the 'old guard' and don't change unless i take a class or something.  but, others being more hip and creative, just go buy some up-to-date software and get using the technology that's out there.  making a few cd's.  really, it's probably not that hard.  people think composing is SOOO difficult.  it's just writing down what you play when noone's around.  from the mournful dirge when you don't want to do anything but feel sorry for yourself - to the happy tune that comes to your mind - or a repeat and fugal variation on a popular tune or ringtone.  i think the greatest happiness comes from a composer playing his/her OWN music first - so others can listen and say 'oh, i see.  that's the way it's meant to sound.'  and - o f course, coming up with new ways to write down music and finding new sounds and perhaps new instruments.  i've often wondered what a piano would be like if the long strings were on the right side and we played the music written what it would sound like?  ok. bizarre.

to me, music is the wave of the future in terms of healing and psychological help (if one is open to it, whether in combination with spiritual healing or not).  to me, music IS spiritual - an expression of the soul.  if you can express feelings in music better than in life - you can do a lot to heal by playing, composing, practicing, listening, reading.  whatever you want.  you can listen to music and paint or do mathematics or writing, but ultimately it seems that focused playing and/or listening provokes the most results from the brain waves.  relaxing a tense person, or hyping up someone who is perhaps comatose?  i think there's many uses of music and we haven't discovered them all.

[carolina estrada]

Indeed, I know many of them.... but I feel a bit sorry for them, actually.
they are a bit like a porks (with no understimate,but as example), as pork thet lives whole life in a dark , smelly and dirty pig´s farm and whose only get to be appreciate as soon they die. Then everyone makes profit of the whole poor animal!

... not very fair.

why not to have a corner for new composers in this forum!?
 good idea,mate... (hope the programmer of this web can arrange something?)

[pianistimo]

porks?!  that's a sad but funny saying.  guess it does remind me of the composition teachers i've known.  they put their heart and soul into a 'commissioned' work, and after it's introduced, is unplayed for many years - and then, voila - rediscovered after their death.  never knowing what it would be like to be famous (unless they write for films).  that's where it's at.