Who Cares If People Listen?

[j_menz]

There was an article published in 1958 by the music academic and composer  Milton Babbitt which was somewhat infamous in its day and raises a number of matters that have been the subject of recent discussion/debate/mudslinging here.

As performers, educators and/or members of a possible "elite" audience we all play a role in this just as much as actual composers.

I have attached the complete article below and encourage you to read in full, but for those with ADHD or a low boredom threshhold, here is the Cliffs Notes version (from Wikipedia):

Babbitt describes "serious", "advanced music" as "a commodity which has little, no, or negative commodity value", and the composer of such music as, "in essence, a 'vanity' composer". It is music of which the general public is largely unaware, and in which it takes no interest. "After all, the public does have its own music, its ubiquitous music: music to eat by, to read by, to dance by..." Performers, too, are seldom interested in "advanced" music, so that it is rarely performed at all and the exceptional occasions are mainly "poorly attended concerts before an audience consisting in the main of fellow 'professionals'. At best, the music would appear to be for, of, and by specialists". Babbitt goes on to maintain, however, that music cannot "evolve" if it only attempts to appeal to "the public". "And so, I dare suggest that the composer would do himself and his music an immediate and eventual service by total, resolute, and voluntary withdrawal from this public world to one of private performance and electronic media, with its very real possibility of complete elimination of the public and social aspects of musical composition." He recognizes the practical problems for the composer of "advanced" music not patronized by the concert-going public: "But how, it may be asked, will this serve to secure the means of survival for the composer and his music? One answer is that after all such a private life is what the university provides the scholar and the scientist." He concludes: "if this [advanced] music is not supported, the whistling repertory of the man in the street will be little affected... But music will cease to evolve, and, in that important sense, will cease to live."

Do you agree with Babbitt's argument?

EDIT - Corrected spellings of Babbitt.  For the life of me, that last "t" seems just wrong!

[chopin2015]

Chopin didnt believe in performances. He stated, you cant expect to hear the most beautiful moments of music in concerts.
Yes, I think someone said that on piano street, that if we dont reach for the stars with an open heart and give it our everything, no holding back, the main result will suffer. Long term, music...someone also said, the 17th and 19th centuries were so great...we will never have another one like these. Could this be a result of music becoming main stream? All about performance and dazzle...how bout fun? Practice isnt always fun! Have some self-discipline! Music isnt so interesting if it doesnt have a high tension point...and then resolves most perfectly due to its unique structure, the divine mystery. Musicians are taught this, and maybe some are taught to love and appreciate it while others settle for filtered emotions. Thats what i think music that is simplified for the sake of good communication is. What would that even mean? The music with the most subtle of messages. However, even simple, main stream music makes someone feel. It does not teach them as much, but it could be a start! You never know what someone can discover. Maybe people just dont have the opportunities anymore. My mom is dissapointed with theatre and ballet. There are no more giants left there! Extinct!

[p2u_]

Do you agree with Babbit's argument?

First off, I'd like to note that Babbit did not authorize the title; it was based on a lecture Babbit had given earlier on the subject called "Off the Cuff". The title intended for the article was "The Composer as Specialist", but this was changed by an editor of the magazine "High Fidelity" into "Who cares...?".

I think that as a prediction made in 1958, it is quite accurate, the more so since financists rule the world now, and they have a tendency to destroy/boycott just about anything of potential cultural value that doesn't "sell" right away.

Paul

[j_menz]

First off, I'd like to note that Babbit did not authorize the title; it was based on a lecture Babbit had given earlier on the subject called "Off the Cuff". The title intended for the article was "The Composer as Specialist", but this was changed by an editor of the magazine "High Fidelity" into "Who cares...?".

Babbitt did claim that, though I do not believe the magazine ever accepted the claim. It does make the first sentence of the article most peculiar if Babbitt is correct.

I think that as a prediction made in 1958, it is quite accurate, the more so since financists rule the world now, and they have a tendency to destroy/boycot just about anything of potential cultural value that doesn't "sell" right away.

Paul

Who pays the piper calls the tune, perhaps.  Composers (and performers) have to eat. Publisghers are not charitaies, so if the music a composer writes won't sell, the composer is left with three options: public funding (through grants or institutional tenure); a private benefactor; or a real job with composing as a sideline.

Babbitt himself was an academic (both as a musician and as a mathematician), so falls mostly into the third category. Many composers do, or wish to, fall into category 1 (private benefactors not being what they once were). That means that they are ultimately taxpayer funded (or subsidised). Is that reasonable if they do not write music that is, if not loved by, at least intelligible to a reasonable cross section of those paying?

[brendan765]

Yes I do feel this way, I always play better when I'm alone, and I love playing music of the greats, but I love composing far more...Just as a great would have said about his past great influences.

I'm highly under the influence of Chopin, Liszt. Our minds think alike in a sense.  But I love many other composers. From many eras.

[p2u_]

@ j_menz

Traditionally, private benefactors has been the main road for composers. Most of the ones we know now might have been forgotten if they hadn't had that privilege. My problem with PUBLIC funding is that it is again not about quality; it's mostly pushing of policies by a mighty few with an agenda. If you have clout among the members who decide everything, you have a future. Otherwise...

As to your other question: I think that if our life consisted solely of "reasonable" stuff, we would all die very soon. Besides, even with public funding, the public (= tax payers) rarely has a choice even to decide whether they may like something or not. It's those with money who determine "good taste" and it's they who boycott or push, not the general public. Is that more "reasonable"?

Paul

[p2u_]

Is that reasonable if they do not write music that is, if not loved by, at least intelligible to a reasonable cross section of those paying?

Separate post to show how money works and how it may NOT be directly related to the pleasure and/or quality of certain "comodities":

I like watching the sun come up and go down. Many others may just not care about it and may even suggest that there are far more reasonable ways to spend your time. This means that I'm no longer in the reasonable cross section of society. Does that make the activity itself inferior? I highly doubt it.

Suppose that, all of a sudden, some financist starts charging money for the pleasure of doing that. Am I going to pay for it? If I have lots of money, I could easily do that. If I'm on a minimum wage, though, with three or four mouths to feed, I may be forced to think more than twice, because it is just not... reasonable.

The latter may also relate to concert going, wich has become an almost exorbitant luxury for many. Am I ready to pay for a concert by an established musician with established repertoire? Yes, I may be ready to make a sacrifice because there is reason to believe in advance that I will get value for my money. Am I ready to pay for a concert by an unknown musician with EXPERIMENTAL music I've never heard of? Most probably not. Does that make the unknown musician and/or the experimental music itself inferior? Personally, I don't think so, but financists will say: yes...

Paul

[jogoeshome]

Do you agree with Babbitt's argument?

I think he is completely forgeting an important factor here. Whatever the composer's intentions are, they may not correspond to reality. He might be thinking about a public and end up being loved by a different group of people. Or he might be thinking about his own pleasure while writing and end up being extremely popular. You do not need to "produce" with a particular purpose, in fact even in pop music, you find that the most enduring acts come from the most creative song and show productions, even popular ones such as Bob Dylan, Queen, U2, Bjork, even Lady Gaga success was down to her personal creativity, not to a standard established by the industry.
I guess they all had the public in mind, nobody is a sociopath, none of us is isolated, but, you know, the public whatever that is, is also there to hear and see somethnig that is unique and personal, especially true in arts.

[jogoeshome]

Sorry, I thought I would mention the "money" part now.

To be a bit more practical, classical music has been for a long time on the sidelines of music and exclusive to a restricted audience which basically doesn't pay musicians enough. This is due to a lot of reasons: tastes have changed, but also in my town there is a lobby associated with the mayor that brings important orchestras and musicians to town and then advertise different locations so that nobody will know where the concert is, LOL, yeah its completely ridiculous.

Anyway, extremely fine and labor intensive arts always had rich sponsors (Michaelangelo, Da Viinci) because they are usually expensive and not fully appreciated by the masses. On the other hand, and as a result of that, I once tried to book a ticket for Placido Domingo, about 90% of tickets had been allocated to corporate sponsors. It was on the news the next day, only half of the audience showed up!! Me and hundreds of desperate people in the queue couldn't get a ticket.

For beginner composers, the only way to get paid is being well known in academia and then go from there. If your name starts appearing in top competitions (which are basically run by few experts) then you might get paid first by government grants or by rich sponsors. Then might have some deals in orchestras etc which in turn are run by sponsors and record labels. So yeah, the wider masses have nothing to do with it, with exception of Valentina Lisitsa. Some performers/ composers are starting to get their break on youtube, but there are so many people competing that its more probable you get hit by lightening or win the lotery.

[kujiraya]

What an artist might really appreciate, are people who fulfil the following 4 criteria:
1) Should have plenty of money (so that the modernist artist can earn a decent and rewarding income)
2) Should have plenty of time (it's no good for the artist's authentic creative process if you have a bank account full of money to give to him/her, but you do not have the time to devote to any of his/her art works, because you are too busy flying off to Shanghai tonight for multi-billion dollar trade negotiations tomorrow morning)
3) Should have good aesthetic senses (you don't really have good taste if you think, like some recent nouveau over-rich Chinese, that adding gold beads to your boiled rice makes your boiled rice more expensive and therefore more gastronomically impressive)
4) Should have specialized education in the historical development of that artistic medium (so that you can fully understand and appreciate what the artist has wrestled with, and achieved)

In the past, there was a class of people who were known as "the idle rich", some of whom were able to fulfil these 4 criteria.

The problem, nowadays, is with our modern societies. where the most highly educated people in a particular artistic medium may often be very, very far from being very rich, or a segment of the rich may be more interested in using their time to become even richer, or to climb up the social ladder, or some of the rich may have hideously appalling tastes, or maybe the rich spent their educational years learning skills on how to be successful and rich, instead of getting a proper education in historical artistic developments.

[iansinclair]

Kujiraya has some very very good points.  Thank you!  I might just point out, however, that the modern approach at least in all "western" countries, is to tax the idle rich out of their minds, do that they can't support the arts even if they want to...

However, on a slightly different road here:  I have not performed piano for concerts; I was a church organist, which is a very different critter.  However, I have been associated for many years with ballet, and I suspect the same thing is true for the piano soloist as it is for a ballet company: the audience makes a difference.  It can make a huge difference.  They are out there beyond the lights; you can't see them at all -- but you can feel them, and if you have a responsive audience on a night which started out merely decent, the end result can be a performance which pulls things from you you never knew were there; which passes all expectations.  It is a thrilling feeling.  On the other hand, if you have a dead audience -- the dreaded corporate sponsor night for instance -- it can kill even the most inspired performance.  I've been in symphonic and opera performances where the same thing happened -- and it is glaringly obvious in folk and popular music.

So you may not care who listens -- but it will make a difference in your performance.

[ahinton]

I really do think - and I am fortunately not alone here in doing so - that the long-held and irritatingly persistent myth that Milton Babbitt ever wrote or said "who cares if you listen?" be killed and buried - and be seen to be killed and buried - once and for all.

Best,

Alistair

[chopin2015]

Ok, but the content still presents many issues which need to be discussed, and should not be forgotten. There is philosophical reasoning to be done here, people!

[soitainly]

 I think for the most part the system works. If you think of art as a reflection of culture, then conversely the art must resonate within that culture. It really isn't usually the case of the mad genius making music so far ahead of time that no one gets it in the present time. It's usually because no one gets it because there is nothing to get.

 A composer should write and perform music because he is compelled to do so, not just for self aggrandizing. I see too many "artists" who's only art is being different, and are missing any relevance. It seems anyone that has a gift for gab can pass just about anything off as "art", and there are people who are drawn to this "art" because they like to be a part of something just because it is different.

 I am conflicted somewhat by the public patronage of artists. It would be a shame to not have world class orchestras and museums because they can't really survive on their own financially, but taxing someone to fund this is always going to cause concern. But ultimately, unless an artist can convince private patrons to fund him, he should either make it as a working artist, or just be an amateur. If a composer must work at a menial job to support himself, and is still compelled to compose, then I feel that is more sincere than someone who lives off a government grant.

[chopin2015]

I think for the most part the system works. If you think of art as a reflection of culture, then conversely the art must resonate within that culture. It really isn't usually the case of the mad genius making music so far ahead of time that no one gets it in the present time. It's usually because no one gets it because there is nothing to get.

 A composer should write and perform music because he is compelled to do so, not just for self aggrandizing. I see too many "artists" who's only art is being different, and are missing any relevance. It seems anyone that has a gift for gab can pass just about anything off as "art", and there are people who are drawn to this "art" because they like to be a part of something just because it is different.

 I am conflicted somewhat by the public patronage of artists. It would be a shame to not have world class orchestras and museums because they can't really survive on their own financially, but taxing someone to fund this is always going to cause concern. But ultimately, unless an artist can convince private patrons to fund him, he should either make it as a working artist, or just be an amateur. If a composer must work at a menial job to support himself, and is still compelled to compose, then I feel that is more sincere than someone who lives off a government grant.

 The artist who is successful just because they are different, he still has other mediums of communicating, such as sex appeal and connections to people who own a part of public media.  Convincing a patron to fund you relies greatly on how well you can sell your self. Seriously. Show up well dressed and have a sales pitch ready. Its not about classical music being undesired and forgettable, its about our culture buying cheap products. Im not disagreeing with anyone. I think peopke dont have the time and money for quality any more. How does a ballet commercial fit in with 3 toyota commercials? Toyota could buy thousands of ballet commercials all at the price of 1 factory, i bet. Get used to having 50 slutty pop stars 100 times more famous than 1 professional pianist. Its much easier to walk into wal mart and buy a 90s hit cd but the classical section is small. Maybe its the output. Small funding and little avenue for quality work divided by constantly decreasing time equals nothing, eventually. No funding for schools, orchestras, instruments. 

[j_menz]

I really do think - and I am fortunately not alone here in doing so - that the long-held and irritatingly persistent myth that Milton Babbitt ever wrote or said "who cares if you listen?" be killed and buried - and be seen to be killed and buried - once and for all.

Best,

Alistair

I am happy to accept that he never used those words, but is it not, after all, a fair summary of his article - at least insofar as anything other than a professional/elite audience is concerned?

[soitainly]

The artist who is successful just because they are different, he still has other mediums of communicating, such as sex appeal and connections to people who own a part of public media.  Convincing a patron to fund you relies greatly on how well you can sell your self. Seriously. Show up well dressed and have a sales pitch ready. Its not about classical music being undesired and forgettable, its about our culture buying cheap products. Im not disagreeing with anyone. I think peopke dont have the time and money for quality any more. How does a ballet commercial fit in with 3 toyota commercials? Toyota could buy thousands of ballet commercials all at the price of 1 factory, i bet. Get used to having 50 slutty pop stars 100 times more famous than 1 professional pianist. Its much easier to walk into wal mart and buy a 90s hit cd but the classical section is small. Maybe its the output. Small funding and little avenue for quality work divided by constantly decreasing time equals nothing, eventually. No funding for schools, orchestras, instruments. 

 I am not trying to be belligerent but I don't think that Bach, Beethoven, or Mozart succeeded or endured based on their sex appeal or ability to talk a good game. Most accounts show them to be unappealing physically and arrogant towards their patrons.

 I understand what you may be saying is that classical music and new artistic music is a hard sell these days, and that you have to be savvy playing the game to have a chance. I guess my concern is that there are some artists that are really good at the game, but their product, the end result of there talent, still doesn't resonate with the public and at some times is pretentious and just not very good.

[hfmadopter]

[quote ]
 
 I understand what you may be saying is that classical music and new artistic music is a hard sell these days, and that you have to be savvy playing the game to have a chance.
[/quote]

It's easy enough to figure out where the general public's reality is regarding music selection. Just listen to the radio, something I rarely do incidentally. You will find one classical station for maybe 200 pop, western, elevator music stations. On top of that probably 6 talk stations to one classical. If you are lucky you might find two classical stations in all but probably more like one across the entire button selection. Even so, a decent classical oriented piano artist will still fill a music hall. So who is attending ? I see people from all walks of life but they may indeed be classical snobs, I don't know !

[kujiraya]

Even so, a decent classical oriented piano artist will still fill a music hall. So who is attending ? I see people from all walks of life but they may indeed be classical snobs, I don't know !

I suspect a 200-seat music hall would possibly have generated an audience of 40, if the pianist was performing an all-Messiaen programme. And 30 of these people would probably have been acquaintances of the pianist. How old are Messiaen's most outstanding piano-only works, eg, Visions de l'Amen, Vingt Regards and Catalogue d'Oiseaux? It is now 2013, and these works are ALL more than 50 years old.

Grab any high school student, even the ones getting A+ in music, and you might find 8 in the entire country whose musical history education extends past the 1950's. Maybe 2 of these 8 students would have heard of the Darmstadt school, and their parents are probably professional Classical musicians. It is most likely that 0 out of these 8 people would be from a filthy rich background, with enough financial capability (even after they've grown up and worked hard for 40+ years), to be able to provide financially for the career of even one Classical modernist composer.

19th century Classical music was taught in schools during the 20th century. Why is it, that in the 21st cenrury (it is now 2013), that 20th century Classical music is taught, with any seriousness, only up until "The Rite Of Spring", with perhaps a cursory mention of Schoenberg's serialism and a derisive giggle at John Cage's 4'33"?

[ahinton]

I suspect a 200-seat music hall would possibly have generated an audience of 40, if the pianist was performing an all-Messiaen programme. And 30 of these people would probably have been acquaintances of the pianist. How old are Messiaen's most outstanding piano-only works, eg, Visions de l'Amen, Vingt Regards and Catalogue d'Oiseaux? It is now 2013, and these works are ALL more than 50 years old.

Grab any high school student, even the ones getting A+ in music, and you might find 8 in the entire country whose musical history education extends past the 1950's. Maybe 2 of these 8 students would have heard of the Darmstadt school, and their parents are probably professional Classical musicians. It is most likely that 0 out of these 8 people would be from a filthy rich background, with enough financial capability (even after they've grown up and worked hard for 40+ years), to be able to provide financially for the career of even one Classical modernist composer.

19th century Classical music was taught in schools during the 20th century. Why is it, that in the 21st cenrury (it is now 2013), that 20th century Classical music is taught, with any seriousness, only up until "The Rite Of Spring", with perhaps a cursory mention of Schoenberg's serialism and a derisive giggle at John Cage's 4'33"?

Whatever the credible answers to any of your questions might be (and Visions de l'Amen is a work for two pianos, incidentally not just one, as I'm sure you know); there is massive evidence of 20th century music of all kinds out there on disc, so even if teaching is inadequate in some places, the material not being properly taught about is still there for all and sundry to encounter and it's still coming at us thick and fast!

Best,

Alistair

[kujiraya]

Thanks for clarifying that Visions de l'Amen is for 2 pianos. I actually picked it up after posting the original message; that's why my post now reads "piano-only works" instead of what it said at first, which was "piano solo works".  

I would love an ideal world where there is a sizeable popular audience for modernist classical music as you suggest, but why then is there this accusation, the crux of which is that people who like modern classical music are elitist snobs?

One of my points is that, the people who like modernist classical music seem to be elitist, because the school system has failed to bring the general population up to date in terms of their musical history education. An analogy would be: if schools failed to teach students adequate arithmetic beyond counting fingers, then anyone who can mentally calculate the number of Big Macs required for a football team after a game, if every hungry player wants 2 Big Macs and the coach wants 3 (because he has a big belly)...would be at risk of being considered a "show-off know-it-all" as well.

[j_menz]

people who like modern classical music are elitist snobs?

Not even close. Modernism is so old hat. Pseudo-snobs have moved on to post-modernism. The real, genuine snobs are now into hypermodernism/altermodernism/digimodernism.