Sunday, March 6, 2016

The Composers, the Audiences

      "WHY DOES ANY ONE WRITE A PIECE OF MUSIC?" This is the beginning of the article "Composers' Whys Affect The Whats" by Bernard Holland published on New York Times in 1996. Sometimes, I like questions, they make me think a lot, thus acquire a lot. Back to this question after I tried to ask myself the same thing, I realized that, turns out, for such a long time, some the pieces that I have done and some that are still working on are somehow just only for meeting my requirements for school. I am not saying that I was not passionate during created these music. To the contrary, I do loved the pieces no matter I have done already or still during the process, each pieces could stand for me as a significant step of my career of compose. The thing I am trying to point out is that I often start with a piece because the requirements from school or competitions. Is that a good thing to keep doing with? Honestly, I do not know.
        From my perspective, composer is the one who used musical language to sharing the truth of his/her own artistic voice. Yet, in some ways composer is also the one who is try to engage with people by used musical language. In this way, the composers sometimes are pandering to try to guess what people want to hear. This brings another question. Should audiences necessarily come first? When I started to learn composition, there are numerous kinds of books are talk about how to compose music. Moreover, I took different classes since middle school for learn to compose music. However, None of those books or the classes I took have told me which one should come first, the audiences or the composers themselves. 
         The article has mentioned that "Earlier in this century a lot of listeners felt intimidated for not "understanding" a lot of contemporary music. Now they are beginning to understand that they just don't like it." So, why are we still making the music that unacceptable for most of audiences? Because the wheel of music history needs us to push towards a brighter future? I doubt it. One thing, however, I never doubt about is everything is exists for a reason. As same as music, each time period of a musical style is exists for a reason. Actually, I am kind of believe that good music is always the controversial one. Also, the most successful concert, to some minds, might be the one that is not attended by anyone.


See article, click here