I started writing this post about a month and a half ago (18 June) and it's taken me an age to get my thoughts even vaguely in order, but at last I've managed it... sort of... erm... but be warned: gross generalisations up ahead and a fair bit of stream-of-consciousness waffle too!

I've been reading an article in frieze magazine about criticism, which has really made me think about the place of music in the world today. The article looks at literary, music (classical and pop - nice to see a distinction made!) and film criticism. Of course, the bit I was most interested in was the music, but it was good to read about the issues facing other arts too.

I suspect that, as an artist working in an economically and socially beleagured artform, I am often inadvertently resentful and envious of artists in other artforms who seem to have it easier - more interest, more chance of being paid for their work, etc. - so it was good to be reminded that all artists, regardless of their medium, have problems. I was horrified to discover that the film industry, for example, has taken to releasing films to the public without showing them to the media first - that they are actively discouraging film criticism. What a sad state of affairs. To me, to take such an approach suggests that the studios are well aware that much that they are producing is absolute crud and that they just don't want critics to show it up for the rubbish it is. Of course the films still get reviewed - but not until after that first flush of profits at the box-office.

Some would say that this is just protecting their economic interests - and this is true - film studios are commercial enterprises, after all. Yet somehow I find this totally repellant. Film studios seem to be in a permanent competition to hit the highest number of box-office takings in an opening weekend ever, and the question of art goes entirely out the window. It also means that discerning cinema-goers who don't want to pay good money to watch over-hyped tripe, have to wait several days to either get hold of a review or for other over-eager and possibly gullible souls who've rushed out to the opening screenings to give their opinion. I rarely read cinema reviews myself, I don't go to films much and hate going in the first few days because of the crowds - so why am I so angry about this? I guess because it takes any incentive to produce quality work away - instead studios focus on producing quality marketing, which in my book is largely about hype and to a certain extent deception (as a single example which really annoyed me, posters here for TransAmerica hailed it as "hilarious", but in my view - and djelibeybi agreed with me - it shouldn't even have been billed as a comedy).

Moving on to more specifically musical issues, the author of the classical music criticism section of the article, Paul Kildea, raises an issue noted by Daniel Barenboim in his recent Reith lectures, "In the beginning was sound", which is: why is it that cultured, educated people freely discuss books, art and theatre (and, I would add, film), but rarely of music?

So I was having a think about this, because it's something which has regularly struck me - how so many of my friends who are otherwise civilised and cultured people have bugger-all knowledge of or real interest in music as an artform, and I wonder whether it's because music has become just so much background noise. Pretty much everywhere you go these days, somebody has to fill up the silence with some sort of sound, whether music, muzak or sound effects (e.g. bird calls) - and that's before even considering the din of a hundred iPods on every form of public transport... but that's something I won't go into here for fear of never leaving off!

I can think of very few artforms where great works of art have become nothing but a background to everyday life. Perhaps in the visual arts, where posters of poor old Gustav Klimt's The Kiss proliferate without much thought to the curatorial possibilities of living-room decoration - but even then, many many more people visit art galleries on at least a semi-regular basis - even if it's just the major gallery in their city, or when they travel - than attend concerts of classical music. Perhaps great art has the bonus of frequently being free to view, whereas great performances of great music have a tendency to come with a fairly hefty price tag. Anyway, back to my main argument - we go out to see a film, or sit down to watch it on the telly, we read books as a foreground activity - after all, it's not something that can carry on without us. But of all these, really only music is the only thing that people will start up... and then do the vacuuming.

Classical music is suffering from an appalling lack of understanding among the general populace these days. The frieze article had a great quote along the lines that complimenting a conductor on the accuracy of his ensemble work is like complimenting a bear on his ears - it may be quite correct, but it's not where the focus should be - and this is exactly how the popular approach to classical music strikes me. Classical music is described as "relaxing", "soothing", it's marketed as being ideal music for weddings, something to get your baby to sleep, to seduce that special someone too (in this context I say there should be more Barry White :-). This approach just makes me want to jump up and down to hit somebody - this is art you're talking about, not some manufactured product. Music - even pop music which has a much greater overall audience - is almost never treated like an intellectual exercise the way other artforms are (I'm talking about the general public here, not musicologists, composers, etc. whose job it is to look at it like this) - it's something to make us feel better, not to challenge us, which puts the contemporary composer in a rather awkward position of wanting to make great art, but finding that only pap reaches any sort of audience (notable exceptions do apply, Gorecki's superb Third Symphony being one of them, but I do wonder how many people bought that because they thought it was "relaxing"). Certainly there are pieces of classical music which can be relaxing, but generally these attributes are secondary to what the piece actually is. Gavin Bryars' wonderful The Sinking of the Titanic is a classic example - yes, it is superficially relaxing and soothing, but it's way more than that - it is an exploration in music of the conflicting stories surrounding the sinking of the Titanic, the sacrifice of the ship's orchestra and the music that was played on that night. It is highly evocative of that terrible event, and raises questions - certainly in my mind - about the arrogance of mankind in building an "unsinkable" ship, the terrible loss of life resulting from that arrogance, and the amazing qualities which disaster can bring forth in people. That'a a lot for what could easily be taken - with brain disengaged, as most people's seem to be when dealing with classical music - as a "chillout" piece of music.

The other problem classical music faces, which no doubt contributes to its position as background noise, is that it requires both time and concentration to appreciate. Films and books require these, but you need to follow a plot to "get" a film, and literature by its very nature requires us to focus on it as a foreground activity. You don't have to invest too much time to know whether you're interested in a work of art - you can pass by in a couple of seconds if the (superficial) content or form does not appeal to you - but with music, you need to sit and listen and focus even to find out that much. And contrary to the old chestnut that music is an international language, I would say that classical music is a foreign language to most people. And I'm not just talking about Berio and Schoenberg and other boundary-stretchers. It's like putting on, say, a Russian film and just enjoying the flow of the language, of the cadences and motion, without actually understanding a word that's being said - it takes study to truly comprehend.

Art galleries have three advantages over concert halls: (1) they are generally free (2) you can wander in and out as you like, spend as much or as little time as you like and (3) once you've bought your masterpiece for the gallery, you shove it on the wall and can leave it there as long as you like without incurring any ongoing specific costs for it. I wonder if it would ever be possible to produce a working music gallery. Recordings - and particularly digital recordings - are a certain blessing in that they equate to point (3) which might allow for something like this to become a functioning enterprise. I'm all in favour of live music - I think it can't be beaten - but the problem is that it's expensive as well as time-consuming, and if you don't like it, it feels really really rude to just leave in the middle - it's rude to the performers and disturbs others who may be enjoying it, and of course that lingering feeling that you're not getting your money's worth :-) Buying CDs is similarly not cheap (and not really environmentally sound - all that plastic) if you're not fairly sure you're going to like it. So what about a music gallery, eh? A space equipped with headphones (really good ones which provide sound-proofing both for the person in them and those outside them, none of your iPod earbud rubbish) and comfy chairs, like an enormous lounge. A limited selection of pieces could be made available at any given time, based around a curatorial theme, just like an art gallery, with maybe a few different rooms offering different selections - maybe one room focused on a visiting ensemble's recordings, another on a composer's anniversary, presenting their works in context with other compositions of the era, another looking at a compositional school or style and focusing on its development. Tied in to forthcoming performances, and offering onsite both booking facilities for those performances and sale of MP3s and/or CDs, something like that could have a real impact - could expose people to new sounds and make them take chances with their listening too. Royalty payments could be a bit of a bugger, but with changing "exhibitions" perhaps one-off payments for composers and performers could be negotiated based on the duration of the exhibition. Hmm. It could be cool though - it could be really cool - or it could be a huge flop, music not having the benefit of art's potential appeal to the 10-second attention span. Um.

But that's plenty of food for thought which has been raised for me by this article, although not much that I can see in the way of solutions to current problems. But I guess I should try to pull myself together and not think so much on how music is so hard done by in terms of audiences and funding but just accept that it's different from other artforms and maybe needs to have a new approach thought out. Maybe better just to focus on making it for now: "if you write it they will come"?

# posted by minim @ 6:11 PM