Re: [microsound] How essential is your music?

["hans w. koch" <kochhw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

which in turn reminds me of another story about the composer morton  
feldman (who used to tell this story himself). in his youth he studied  
with stefan wolpe, a german-jewish immigrant. one day, wolpe turned to  
feldman and asked him, if he never spent a thought on the man on the  
street. feldman looks out of the window and there walk rauschenberg  
and de kooning. "yes, i do" was the reply given.

the point i am trying to make is: never ever make any presumptions  
about your audience. i have had the most astounding conversations with  
a 70 year old lady after a heavily minimalistic performance of mine,  
who just happend to be around by mistake (it was in a community  
center), while the younger audience of "experience listeners" happily  
chatted thru the whole piece.

best
h

www.hans-w-koch.net

Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:52:51 -0700
To: microsound <microsound@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: <scott@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [microsound] How essential is your =?UTF-8?Q?music=3F?=
Message-ID: <b7ac4e889e62cef27170333bb20f9a2c@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

The Beethoven story, and the discussion at large, remind me of another
story that approaches these questions. (It's third hand, I probably got
lots of details wrong about this story, but what actually happened isn't
really important).

When Andrei Tarkovsky finished his film Mirror, one of his more  
challenging
and personal films (also possibly his best), he was presenting it to  
some
sort of Soviet film board for approval. This being the Soviet Union,  
they
were very concerned about the film being elitist in its inaccessibility,
not open to the common citizen (to the "public" that some others were
talking about in this thread). Throughout the screening of the film  
and the
discussion, a janitor was present in the room cleaning. Someone  
(Tarkovsky
or his opponents) called over this presumably undereducated and
archetypical member of the citizenry, and asked what they thought the  
film
was about. The janitor, surprisingly, replied that she wasn't sure but  
she
thought it could be about an old man looking back on events from his  
life,
wondering if he made the right decisions, etc, and that she found it  
very
beautiful. This is, of course, a very appropriate account of the film.
After the film was released, it received a good share of strikingly
positive responses from the "public", even while being roundly  
criticized
by Soviet institutions.

This is why I mention the story: clearly we can agree that the  
approach of
the Soviet authorities was wrong. While it's an extreme example (the  
Soviet
Union in the 70's), it represents the extension of a common way of  
thinking
about art (in relation to the public), one that we're all very familiar
with and probably employ from time to time.

And yet, it's also clear that the janitor's apprehension of the film is
something to cheer for, not just because it "scores points" in the  
game the
soviet authorities were playing, but because it scores other sorts of
points, ones that we're more interested in - it's an artistic victory.  
It
would be an /entirely/ different story if the janitor (and the rest of  
the
public) responded with "I don't know what the fuck that was, and I
certainly didn't get anything out of it".

When thinking about "public", I think we have to keep both of these  
things
in our head. There is no putting your foot down, no saying "this work is
intended for all humans", or conversely "this work is for you and you  
(or,
for no one)".

- Scott Carver



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