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putting modernism behind/ kyle gann

Yesterday was a good day.

Since creating my blog I have been looking for some other people that have similar experiences. In los angeles it seems that the art music world is so far away. We do have a new music scene here, but it is easy to feel that art music is irrelevant. I can’t remember the last time I met a composer who wasn’t trying to get into film scoring. So when I found the site ArtsJournal: Daily Arts News, I felt like I found a new home. There are a number of great blogs on every artistic subject matter, but kyle gann’s ArtsJournal: putting modernism behind is a real treat. He nails the problem right on the head with the statement:

“That there are still uncharted musical universes left to explore strikes me as unquestionable. But there is only so far you can meaningfully go in terms of left-brain analytical complexity, greater dissonance, more rarefied abstraction, and by pursuing only that one direction as if it were some god-given historical mandate, the Carterites, the Ferneyhoughites, and even the Zornites had left the musical needs of the human race behind. Music, as Lewis says, can also be lyric, epic – and I would also add poetic, meditative, sensitizing, physical, participatory, communal.”

Overall the modernists “leaving the human race behind” has put us younger composers in an interesting position. Its like they dropped the atomic bomb on art music and killed off themselves and most everything around them.

Lloyd Rodgers told me a story that he thought the change was finally here in 1976 when Philip Glass made the cover of Time. He thought it was an exciting time artistically, funding was pretty good and a new audience was developing. But almost 30 years later, what? Where is the next generation of composers?

Have they all gone on to a steady job in hollywood?

I also wonder about the college system. I knew a few students as tonal/hip young composers change completely on the way to their DMA. It’s like I don’t know them anymore once they get once they start grant writing, attending artists colonies and chasing commissions.

So where does that leave us?

I think that while we have been fighting the modernism/postmodern wars the public got sick of conceptual concerts, posturing and elitism, and decided to go elsewhere for their art.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, July 4th, 2004 at 3:49 pm. It is filed under Uncategorized and tagged with art music, composing, kyle gann, los angeles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.