On Tuesday, I’ll be speaking at one of the regular composers’ forums organised by University of Toronto composition profs Christos Hatzis and Norbert Palej for their students.

I thought it would be interesting to discuss who they think their true audience is going to be when they have to make a living at writing music.

Will it be performers — who commission new works — or concertgoers — the people who buy tickets to hear new music?

And how do arts council granting guidelines and the quirks of moneyed patrons and foundations skew the equation?

This is a very complex dynamic — one that’s different for each commission. As a character in a Stephen Sondheim musical sings, “Art isn’t easy.”

I’d love to know how you see this balance in advance of my rendezvous. Please add your 2.75 cents to the discussion.

Update: An Eloquent Answer

Canadian composer Andrew Staniland pointed me in the direction of a very recent post by American composer Dan Visconti in New Music Box that elegantly tackles this thorny little question.

My favourite paragraph:

Alfred Hitchcock used to say that he wanted to play the audience of his films “like a piano.” He did not compose his great works in a vacuum, but rather with a careful and shrewd understanding of how each creative decision helped to shape a different experience for the viewer. To update this idea to a mantra that composers can call their own, it’s worth remembering that the most worthy and challenging instrument of all to master is the inner experience of the listeners themselves: of all the tools in the composer’s arsenal, the audience is the most important instrument.

You’ll find the whole essay here.

John Terauds