Nobody gives a damn about your music.

Have you ever told someone directly what you think of their music?

Me too. Sometimes, without even being asked - it's instinctive - but not always a good idea. You don't want to hurt someone's feelings but something compels you to tell the truth. Then, you get into that thing where you want to be honest without sounding rude. However it comes across, it's better they know...

Like a lot of composers eager for greater success, I try to gather helpful feedback. My friends and family often bear the brunt of my insecurities. When they're sick of the sight of me, I pester 'like-minded' people on music forums and social media platforms. One person gave me a response that I found totally astonishing:

Music isn't anything special anymore, just a commodity...

No, I can't agree. It's something that gets inside you and can change you completely. It can re-route your brain waves, affect every emotion in your body and speak to you in ways that words find inadequate. Commodities can't do that! If you listen to music and find it has the same effect as a simple raw material like "coffee beans", you need to sit yourself down in a darkened room and ask yourself why that is. It says more about you than the music you listen to.

I can't help thinking about the state of serious music making today. No wonder there is a tendency for blandness - a kind of prepackaged, fast-food taste in music - a kind of music that makes an immediate impact but is instantly forgotten. It leaves me feeling cold.

But am I being naive? Competition is frightening. The greatest composers of all time have their music readily available on the internet. How can someone carve a name for themselves when they have to compete against the very best with no reward in sight?

So therefore, I ask only this of you:

If you hear any of my music, please be honest with me. Leave comments that reflect your true feelings. Whatever you say, it's better I know.
But give my music a chance; don't disregard it instantly. Listen to it a number of times before you make a judgement.

And if you are like me and someone tells you in some way or another that 'nobody gives a damn about your music', remember that it's only their opinion; not a very enlightened one either.

What is Stockhausen's legacy?

Karlheinz Stockhausen is one of the most important composers of the post war era. He is partially responsible for the creation of the post war modernist music. But what is his true legacy? Was he the leading composer in his field? Did he invent the 'timbralist' idea of generating music from a single sound? Well, he did accomplish that concept with "Stimmung'' (Voice) which is completely designed around the single chord of a B flat ninth . But he wasn't the first. Giacinto Scelsi wrote "Quatro pezzi per orchestre" which is based a single note per movement and that work was written in 1959. Quatro pezzi per orchestre - Scelsi I seriously doubt whether Stockhausen knew about Scelsi's achievement when he wrote Stimmung in 1977. Perhaps one of his greatest works is " Gruppen'' (Groups) composed for three orchestras. Did it change the way we use the orchestra? He was a pioneer, especially in the early stages of hi...

In the shadow of a genius.

Recently, I have discovered a fascinating revelation about the composers we admire so much. That behind many geniuses, there usually is a predecessor lurking in the background. It reminds of that often quoted phrase by Picasso A good artist borrows and great artist steals Now, I am not suggesting that the composers who I mention are stealing peoples' ideas - there is no evidence to support that fact. However, I am suggesting that the idea of a genius who came from nowhere may not be accurate. Let's take the case of Ernest Fanelli. Who? You might ask. He is a significant but unknown person in the development of impressionism. He is an Italian born composer living in Paris. He composed a good deal of 'new' music at the end of the nineteenth century. His ideas were quite radical; his instrumentation included harmonics, sul pont., he used wordless choruses. Unfortunately, he wasn't as talen...

Helmut Lachenmann

H elmut Lachen mann is relatively unknown outside of Germany. Nevertheless , h e is a figure wh o is growing in significan ce in modern music circles. Despite his wide experience, h is lack of broad appeal is, in my opinion, largely d ue to the individuality o f his music. He is not easy to categori se in an era which is dominated by trends and cliches. A simple way of describing his music is... *"musique concrète instrumentale". The notion is the creation of a subtlety of transformation of timbre, a manipulation of a continuum from sound to noise, from pitched notes to pitchless textural exploration, and all that in the sphere of (mostly) purely instrumental music. That means that in Lachenmann's music, there's a world of sound that rivals and even surpasses what electronic and electro-acoustic composers can achieve. -Guardian. Essentially , he is a acoustic composer writing electronic sounding music. He is somewhere...

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