{"id":20210,"date":"2014-08-27T07:00:25","date_gmt":"2014-08-27T11:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=20210"},"modified":"2019-01-04T11:34:26","modified_gmt":"2019-01-04T16:34:26","slug":"what-is-a-composer-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2014\/08\/27\/what-is-a-composer-today\/","title":{"rendered":"COMMENTARY | What is a composer, today?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Canadian<\/a>
Canadian Composer and Arcade Fire band member, Richard Reed Perry, 2014.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s fascinating to me that while staring down the apparent collapse<\/a> of the publicly funded industry of commissioning and academia, there has been a surfeit of articles that recognize how the purpose and role of the composer has evolved, with some doing very well. Perhaps this is cause to reexamine our scope of definitional validity, and recognize the ways that the idea of the composer is currently going through a period of upheaval and renewal?<\/p>\n

I believe the question of what a composer is today rests on what basis a composer \u2013 a practitioner of sound-art \u2013 is capable of accurately reflecting our contemporary rituals and life experiences. With this in mind, I will share three examples of who I think is renewing the idea of the composer for the public, and leading a way forward for this particular kind of artistic profession to find better appreciation.<\/p>\n

I find the examples to follow share a few key traits: \u2013 centrality of the recording over the written score as the central text; \u2013 the liberation of instruments (over \u2018the emancipation of dissonance\u2019); \u2013 technological innovations across every aspect of the creative process.<\/p>\n

Consider, in this context, the idea that the contemporary composer most resembles what one thinks of today as a designer.<\/p>\n

The sound product the composer produces is the \u201cspecification of an object, manifested by an agent, intended to accomplish goals, in a particular environment, using a set of primitive components, satisfying a set of requirements, subject to constraints.\u201d[1] In other words, thinking of the composer as a designer exposes certain elements that have led the old paradigm of the professional composer into apparent irrelevance. The public does not understand why it is important to commission composers, especially when the common tools of their trade often involve instruments, rituals, and other cultural constraints that seem antediluvian in the context of current technologies, left unleveraged \u2013 for the sake of nothing, it seems.<\/p>\n

The term designer might seem a strange term to apply to the composer at first, thanks to our visual culture. However, the failure to recognize that the same constraints and particulars ought to be kept in mind by the composer as a designer is perhaps a reason for the failure of the average composer of our time \u2013 obedient and faithful to certain conventions of the past for the sake of arcane, academic approval \u2013 to be recognized by the average listener. Meaning is obscured.<\/p>\n

Some composers have used a technology to influence the substance of the message \u2013 though the origin point is very human. Consider the recent record release by Ottawa-native composer Richard Reed Parry, \u201cMusic for Heart and Breath\u201d on the Deutsche Grammophon label. This collection of music, marketed under a \u201cclassical\u201d label, was all created with the assistance of stethoscopes. The album represents an instance where a high-concept idea, assisted by a supposedly extra-musical technology, coalesces in a uniquely human record, side-stepping the effects of non-live performance that are adverse to an artistic suspension of disbelief through the listener\u2019s constant awareness of the semi-aleatoric means of its creation (the individual performers\u2019 heartbeats).<\/p>\n