Mahler Symphony no. 2 with the BSO

This past Thursday, I went to see the BSO play a live performance of Mahler's Symphony no. 2, and it was an absolutely amazing performance. If you have a chance to see it this weekend, all of you should make an effort to see this monumental work.

When I'm usually listening to Mahler symphonies at home, I usually take breaks between movements because his symphonies are extremely long. There wasn't an intermission when I went to see the BSO, and I'm not used to listening for a prolonged period of time without a break. Usually when you go to a recital or any classical music concert, a performance half usually does not go for more than 30-45 minutes. I don't want to say that I have a low attention span, but for a large piece like this, there needs to be breaks. Dave from out Futures of Classical Music class may speak from experience as a french horn player, but I believe a taxing brass piece of music should have breaks. I know they are professionals, but I think the audience and the players themselves would like to have breaks. What do you (members of the class and blog readers) think about having breaks between movements of a large piece?

Clapping in between movements is considered impolite, improper, and incorrect during any classical music concert. During the BSO concert, there was an applause between movements when the soloists (vocalists) came onto the stage. I think it is kind of funny when someone plays a terrific 1st movement anywhere, and no one claps after a virtuosic piece of music. I also attended the Pacifica Quartet concert this past Tuesday, and I noticed after they played a terrific first virtuosic movement of Shostakovich's String Quartet no. 3, you heard an overall approval with no clapping. I would describe it as a light polite "ahhhhhhhhh" from the audience. Why not just clap for the performers? Is it so ingrained in ourselves not to make exceptions every once in a while? Referring back to Levine, you would obviously not do a thunderous, boisterous, bombastic applause after a nocturne is played, but I think after an awesome 1st movement, you should give a polite applause.

One other thing I found interesting about the Mahler symphony was the chorus. The chorus sings in the last movement only, but they came on stage, and literally sat down the whole time and stood up for the last movement. I guess it may take a while for them to come on stage together as a group, but I thought that would be the most opportune time to take a break while the chorus comes on stage for the last movement. I guess you could say the same thing about the harp or organ player who just have one solo through the whole piece, but this is a large chorus that you could have an exception for.

A Short(ish) Post About Schenker

I think I'm becoming known for notoriously long posts. :-) I'll limit myself to one thought-provoking quote from the "Cook book" and a few follow-up questions this time:

"Music theory emerged from the ferment of ideas that surrounded the reception of Beethoven's music. Heinrich Schenker did a kind of reverse engineering job; this model wasn't intended to represent the chronology of composition. Schenkerian analysis assumed the music of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms was of value, and tried to demonstrate this by showing how the music really was coherent. It was an apologetic discipline, in the sense of being designed to defend a valued repertory, to underwrite its canonic status. In the decades after the Second World War, intuition and emotionally loaded language were ruthlessly eliminated. Theory and analysis became increasingly technical, increasingly incomprehensible to anyone except specialists. In this way, then, theorists were guilty of refusing to engage critically with the music. Instead of just deferring such engagement, like the musicologists, the theorists proclaimed it unnecessary or even philosophically suspect."

1. Does Schenkarian analysis occupy the same role in today's musical world that it did in Beethoven's? Should it? Has the focus on increasing technicality widened the gap between classical musicians and their audiences?

2. What does Cook mean when he speaks of "engaging critically" with music? Why do we support a theory that carries with it the baggage of so many built-in assumptions? What purposes might other forms of criticism serve, and what elements of critique are frequently absent in a contemporary academic setting? What can we, as musicians, do to foster the sort of "balance" that Cook describes in our own critical engagement with music?

Cross-polinating

I do not have a lot to comment on this week, but after the "New Approaches to Teaching" Class yesterday, I would like to pose a question for us to munch on. As artists in the 21-st century, do we need to band together with other creative artists (authors, dancers, philosophers) to help more clearly define the necessity of our arts to a population who may deem them frivolous? And if so, should we be spending more time learning about each others creative processes?

Follow-up on cultural work

Hi all,

Per Professor Jackson's request, I did some research into the meaning of the word "cultural work." Unfortunately, I still wasn't able to come up with much information. Most music textbooks make no mention of the term, and a Google search does not prove to be any more enlightening.

I did locate one essay called "The Cultural Work of Music Education: Nietzsche and Heidigger," by David Lines. In the essay, Lines never explicitly defines cultural work, though he states, "From the perspective of the cultural work paradigm, the music educator is attuned to the wider dimension of plurality and multiplicity, and is simultaneously a generator or energiser of new values and forms of cultural music-expression." (p. 16).

Though there is no entry for "cultural work" in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, I did find the following definitions useful:

work (n) = sustained physical or mental effort to overcome obstacles and achieve an objective or result.

For culture, there were several intriguing definitions:

culture (n) = the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations.

culture (n) = acquaintance with and taste in fine arts, humanities, and broad aspects of science as distinguished from vocational and technical skills.

culture (n) = the act of developing the intellectual and moral faculties especially by education.

(I feel like there are some transparent assumptions contained within these definitions!)

Based on the context of the term, snippets of information I have gleaned from the Lines essay, the Merriam Webster definitions and on Levine's use of the word in Highbrow/Lowbrow, I propose the following definition for cultural work:

cultural work (n) = any act or effort which attempts to either reinforce and uphold existing cultural values, or seeks to create new cultural genres to be either lauded or derided.

Please feel free to add on, modify, or subtract from this definition - I'm sure it's far from perfect!

Stealing Music?

I was reading John's post on concert ticket prices, and I thought to myself about mp3 technology, and the great amount of people that steal music off the internet. Artists that are alive today definitely deserve money for what they create. There are certain artists, like Michael Jackson when he was alive, who buy the rights to artist's songs and earn a profit off the artists who may not even be alive, like the Beatles (I'm speaking just of John Lennon and George Harrison of course). In a Nike's sneaker commercial, Michael Jackson used "Revolution 9" (article in this link), and this action really upset ex-Beatles member Paul McCartney.

What exactly are you stealing when you download an mp3 you haven't purchased? Are you stealing a sound or are you truly stealing an artist's creation? I understand many artists are making a living off selling music, but there are record companies out there that own the rights to certain songs, and they just want to make a profit off a sound clip. Or how about Tupac who passed away in the mid 1990s, and the fact that he is making a profit for Death Row Records?

The other thought that came up was about hip hop artists that sample. One of the biggest controversies was when Vanilla Ice was accused of stealing the bass line from "Under Pressure" from the rock band Queen. He changed a few notes in the bass line, and it wasn't stealing. Is this really being an artist when you sample other artist's works? Does this make it music and are you an artist when you do this? I don't know how I feel about this, so I'm leaving this open to suggestions in the blog.

Miri Ben-Ari & Cameron Carpenter

I highly suggest that all of you hop on the Internet and check out both of these artists. Mari is an incredible violinist who primarily works within the fields of Hip-Hop and R&B. Cameron is an outstanding organist which provides a different setting for his recitals. I don't want to ruin the surprise but these are two individuals who are indeed trying to fill the gap of old and new. Whether you like them or not, you can at least admire there passion and determination to change. Enjoy!

Complaints...

Just to level the ground when it comes to the stereotype that all classical concerts are expensive, or at least far more expensive than the average concert today...I thought some of you might find this interesting.

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Tuesday and Thursday Evenings: $29.00-108.00
Friday Afternoons: $29.00-103.00
Friday & Saturday Evenings: $31.00-118.00
Open Rehearsals: $20.00

Handel & Haydn Society: $18.00-87.00 (depending on performance)

New York Philharmonic: $44.00-127.00

The Silk Road Ensemble with Y0-Y0 Ma: $45-00-175.00

Dave Matthews Band: $82.00-238.00

Roger Waters (Pink Floyd): $51.00-1,648.00 :-)

Half Full or Half Empty?

I'm aware that the world does contain pessimists--those "when I was a kid" types who reminisce about the happy past and moan about an impending Armageddon. But why does classical music seem to attract doom-and-gloomers to an extent that few other art forms do? Sometimes I feel like the trump of doom is sounding at full force both from within and from without. Pop culture calls classical music a dying genre for a dying generation, and even music critics--so-called "supporters" of the art--forecast decline. (Example: "A new dark age [may be] descending upon humanity that could wipe out even the memory of classical music. Will this future come to pass? It’s impossible to say, however, the current direction the orchestral side of classical music is heading seems to be one of near extinction. . ." The Partial Observer) Such an outlook certainly isn't new, but membership in these self-destructive ranks is now widening to include classical musicians and composers themselves.

I'll never forget an assembly at Arizona State University where a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer delivered a speech to the student body that began like this: "We all know that classical music is dying--that cheap entertainment is desensitizing audiences and killing art. Nobody wants new classical music. Nobody needs new classical musicians. This is the world in which your generation must learn to live." Is it really? I do feel like most classical musicians (even the brightest, most ambitiously optimistic!) see their art form as an "endangered species." Why? And based on what--antiquated, 19th-century assumptions? It was so refreshing to read Cook's statement in Chapter 3 of his short introduction to music: "There is no reason for saying that classical music as a whole is in a state of crisis. Classical music is not dead, probably not even dying. But what has kept it alive is a dramatic transformation of its role--a transformation [that] has been barely acknowledged in academic writing. In other words, if there is a crisis in classical music, is not in the music, but in our ways of thinking about it."

The time is ripe for discussion, and the better able we are to deconstruct our 19th-century assumptions, the better able we will be to see the future of classical music in an optimistic light. I did some sleuthing around on the internet, and although I ran into a lot of doom-and-gloomers, I also found a heartening number of classical music optimists out there! (You can click on the links below to read the full articles or just glance over the excerpts I've posted.) Fellow idealists: Enjoy!

Hope for the Future of Classical Records

"As a major record label, I believe we have an obligation to make recordings that are relevant. And to me relevance means that people actually listen to our recordings. If the public does not respond, that is an indication that we have done something wrong. When we release that rare standard repertoire recording that is truly brilliant and extraordinarily different from what is already available, we find that the public does respond. Evgeny Kissin's first recordings ever of the Beethoven Piano Concertos, which we just recently released, is already making an enormous impression. So, even though we haven't completely given up on standard repertoire recordings, we've been obliged to broaden our artistic horizons dramatically. And I think that ultimately this is the good news that has come out of the crisis facing the classical record industry. Because rather than drift towards commercial oblivion with new recordings of old music that don't sell, we have started doing something about it. The effort is paying off with a surge of compositional creativity that I believe will benefit the entire classical musical world and audiences, in particular, for many years to come."

Education is the Future of Classical Music

"During the past decade, reports about the impending death of classical music have arrived with such regularity that doom-saying is practically a full-time activity for several arts journalists. Today's pop culture, they say, combined with the serious decline of music education in many school districts — has built a society in which classical music is terra incognita to most people. While debates go on about the future of classical music, there are encouraging signs of life in this art form all over the globe. Some of the optimism is generated by classical-music downloads, which have taken off like a rocket as symphony orchestras launch their own private music labels and offer both downloads and live streaming on the Internet. Never has so much classical music been so widely accessible: a trip to YouTube will let you see and hear great performers of the past and present singing arias, playing piano preludes and conducting orchestras."

"Here at home, Seattle Opera did a demonstration of the opera segment they're taking to the kids: a scaled-down, colloquial-English version of the first act of Wagner's mighty "Ring." The presentation had everyone riveted, as the three young "Rhinemaidens" teased and taunted the ugly dwarf who was later to take a revenge that corrupted and ultimately ended the world. The parallels to contemporary playground bullying were scarily clear. Аs long as music education — that is, education about all music, playing all instruments — can be brought back to thrive in our schools, kids will have the right to choose what they love to hear and play, and the means to do both with intelligence and good training."

Gangs of New York

I was watching Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York yesterday on Netflix and, while the movie doesn't have anything specifically to do with the arts, it nonetheless provides a glimpse into the class conflicts and divisions in mid-19th century New York City.

For those who haven't seen the movie, it opens in 1846 and shows a battle over the Five Points area of NYC between Irish immigrants and the "nativists" - Americans who were born on U.S. soil and believe that immigrants should have no right to live in America. I won't give away the plot, but it is basically a tale of revenge and justice between the son of one of the Irish immigrants (Leonardo di Caprio) and "Bill the Butcher" (Daniel Day-Lewis) the nativist leader.

Some interesting things I got out of the first part of the movie:
1. Scorsese's portrayal of NYC is shocking, even for someone familiar with history. The complete squalor that the immigrants live in is stunning. This squalor is also sharply contrasted with the decadent lives of the rich in another part of town.
2. The Irish, most of whom are very recent immigrants, have a starkly different culture from other Americans. They have strange rituals and dances, and some in particular "come from a deep part of the old country, and no one knows what they're saying, but they love to fight the police."
3. Bill and his nativists, rather than simply wiping out the immigrants, do their best to assimilate them. When the movie jumps forward to 1862, Di Caprio's character finds that many of his father's most loyal followers have become acolytes of Bill. They now wear the clothes of the nativists, suppress and exploit more recent Irish immigrants, and do their best to eliminate their own Irish accents and origins. This seems in line with mid to late 19th century thinking about "educating" audiences and essentially, "making them like us."

So, I'm not saying that Gangs is a great film or entirely historically accurate (though it did win some awards for production design and period accuracy), but it is worth seeing at least the first 45 minutes if you haven't seen it before.

Possibilities for the Future

In the time that I have been attending this class I have redirected my thoughts towards the future of classical music more so than I first believed I would. Upon finishing the book Highbrow Lowbrow I felt a personal responsibility to react to what I had learn of the world past and create a brighter future for the world of classical music. I ruminated on the possibilities of contribution I could make toward this goal and found the answer is very hard to come by. After further reading with Music: A Very Short Introduction I realize that one of points Nicholas Cook resonate with me strongly.

The point Nicholas Cook makes that caught my eye more than the rest is the hierarchy of roles that come into play when attending a classical concert. The idea that Music itself as an entity is the top of the pyramid followed by the composer, that is only the genius composer, who merely writes Music's will on paper. Next is the conductor who reenacts the composers intentions leading its sheep (the performers) down the correct path. At the bottom of this pyramid lie the audience whom if deemed worthy may receive this blessing from the quasi-god known as "Music" (Capital M intentional).

While I do believe music is a very influential part of culture and life, I am skeptical to very it in such godly terms in which the tradition might lead us to. That is, for the planets themselves to revolve around a system that is clearly man made and not universal to the world, but one kind of culture alone seems a bit far fetched. Allowing myself to understand that this concept is quite possibly out of date also allows me to feel it possible for our generation to come up with a more innovate one that might resonate with the public and perhaps even ourselves greater than the one in place now.

I have never thought about music outside of performance as deeply as I have since entering this class and I believe that says something about our culture today. I suspect that many of my fellow students, rather they be longing to perform, compose, or conduct have thought much outside of how they can make their dream come true in such a shirking world. In other words how to make their dream come true with so few jobs available to them.

I personally have not thought much outside of this because I have in a sense been told that this is just the way it is and all I can do is try my hardest and say my prayers that something works out. This to me is a very bleak and depressing world to approach. Until now in attending this class have I realized that this world does not necessarily have to be the world I accept if I choose to do something about it. While I have my ideas as to what may have expand our world others may have different ones, but I would like to hope that everyone has something in mind other than just accepting the fates and hoping for the best.

A Testimonial

Hello friends, I have more of a testimonial today, and less a continuation of a line of our conversation. It has been a rough couple of days in my family world, and it is in these really hard times that I remember how much music means to me. In the last few days, I have had bits and pieces of so many comforting compositions float through my head, and provide a comfort I really need. Some of this music I have not listened to for years, yet, there it is, fresh as the day I first heard it.
Removing myself from my current situation, I find this fact really encouraging for the long-term engagement of new music-lovers. If we can get just one person to have a powerful connection to a piece of music, it will really stick with them for life. The music we love is both powerful and eternal, and that is a real light in darkness.

My website

I will follow the previous trend and post the link to my website as well:

www.davidbalandrin.com

Cheers,
Dave

Cultural work entry on Wikipedia?

Hi all,

I have to admit, I'm still struggling a bit with the definition of "cultural work." Perhaps we can discuss it again tomorrow?

Nevertheless, I noticed that there is not an entry for "cultural work" in Wikipedia, though the term is mentioned in several biographies as sections (for example, John Doe: Early Life, Education, Cultural Work). Perhaps we can, as a class, contribute a new "cultural work" entry to Wikipedia?

Please let me know what you think.
Dave

While reading this weekend...

Hello Everyone,


While I was reading "Music: A Very Short Introduction" by Nicholas Cook, and it really made me think about pop music's and classical music's lasting qualities. Thinking about most popular music, a song will be listened to and spoken about for certain amount of time, but all of a sudden, no one will ever speak about it after a few months or a year at best. If you think about Bach, Beethoven, Vivaldi, Mozart, and any of these "classical" geniuses, you realize we are still talking about their music almost 300 years later. Even if you think about certain jazz musicians such as John Coltrane, people might say that he is a "legend" or a "genius," and he died over 40 years ago.

I don't want to say in this post that classical music or jazz music is "real" music and all others have no lasting qualities, but I just want ones reading this post to think about how we treat music. Do we listen to something like we are reading a book, and never read it again? Do we treat it like a movie, where we watch it once, might watch it again because it was so deep that we missed a few things so we rewind and replay the scenes? Do we treat music like text books, to sort of "show" that we are educated - like certain pieces we have heard or studied show a right of passage in a way? Sometimes if I'm learning a piece of music or studying/transcribing a solo - another fellow colleague or one of my teachers will be impressed by this "work" that I did, almost showing an accomplishment instead of just an enjoyment of diving deeper into the music by just understanding. Also the way we may play a concert, we may never look at the piece/sonata/symphony again after a one time performance - either because we are sick of the piece, or because the audience that listens to us doesn't demand of it.

The common listener who might not know much about music does not have to necessarily hear a piece and think about all these things, but I just want everyone to realize and be aware of the evolution of music, of how we think about it and how we treat music and their musicians. Look at our public schools for instance, it is not important I guess to have music or art in a child's life because the schools don't want to spend the money because they can't afford it, and it is the first program to cut because it is considered the least important and just an extracurricular activity. There are many talented musicians out there, but they don't receive the great recognition they deserve, many musicians out there are poor, and part of the reason for this is because our society places it as a low point to other things in the world. Music has been an important part of my life, and I want others to experience this joy that I have received through music.

Is it a big deal that we think of music differently today and we treat music as a "one-hit wonder" or talk about an artist's music hundreds of years after they die because we realize how important these composers are to music history? I also want to pose the question of how we will think of the popular artists today 50 or 100 years later, and will certain history books speak about how Eminem, Lady Gaga, or Jessica Simpson were powerful figures in the early 2000s and late 1990s. I was listening to Jamin' 9.45 one early afternoon, and heard "Back in the day Buffet," and they played a Ludicris song from 2000, and said that this was "old school." I feel definitely feel old, and when I think of old school I think of Mozart symphonies or even John Coltrane's Giant Steps not Ludicris' "What's your Fantasy."

These are just some things I thought about when reading about popular music and classical music in this week's reading. I hope some of you guys can build upon this thought or agree/disagree with what I am saying.

Matthew's Link from the Previous Post

Matt

Alex Ross Op-Ed

Hello All!
Saw this in the paper this morning, and I thought that I would post it as food for our on-going conversation. Enjoy!

~Kyle

Alex Ross on the MET's new Ring Cycle.

From a Composer's Viewpoint

I recently spoke with a fellow composer about his compositional process. Evaluating our dialogue from within the framework of Nicholas Cook's ideas about 19th-century constructs opened my eyes to just how readily we (the supposedly "educated") accept the validity of those constructs. "When I wrote in the 80's," he said, "I avoided 3rds and 5ths like the plague. Of course, we all know about that era; composers couldn't use even remotely triadic materials." Couldn't? Or wouldn't? And why? Why are we so influenced by what the academic masses tell us we can or cannot do? (And yes, there are elitist "masses"--masses cultivated by critics who exploit herd mentality just as shamelessly as the purveyors of popular culture do!)

The composer continued: "This is one of my favorite compositions. It's essentially abstract in nature." He handed me the score. "I had been writing a lot of rhythm-and-blues numbers at the time, and I wanted to return to my greatest love: contemporary classical music." Two things immediately struck me as interesting in these statements: 1) This composer saw his rhythm-and-blues and his classical contemporary composing as two entirely separate entities, each with an affixed hierarchal value (he had to "return" to the exalted form after dabbling in the lower), and both immoveable within separate spheres, unable to overlap. 2) This piece that he labeled "essentially abstract in nature" was accompanied by a page-long program note.

"This contains no programmatic elements," he wrote in the program note. And yet a piece lacking programmatic elements was somehow enhanced by a program note?

I love what Nicholas Cook says about this in his typically clear and astute way: "Within the concert hall, 'pure' [instrumental] music reigns supreme. But the victory of music against the word [in the 19th century] was a flawed one. For as word was eliminated from music it began to fill the space around music. The paradox lies in the fact that if music needs to be explained through words, then it must stand in need of explanation, it must be in some sense incomplete without it."

When I was applying for grad schools, I very nearly removed the following statement from the biography on my website (for the very reason that the academic world seems to look down on programmatic music): "Words, to me, are music. I can't read a well-crafted poem or listen to a theatrical performance without musical voices threading their way through the spoken narrative. When setting a text, my own voice joins with the writer's in a unique way to form a new, or rather, renewed creation. Almost every piece I compose is inspired somehow by a poem, a theatrical idea or even just a word or phrase. Tonal music originally developed from vocal models, and my style tends to be governed by the lyricism and melodic phrasing associated with vocal writing, no matter my medium." Now I'm proud of myself for leaving it be.

My website

Here is a link to my website.

Jaunter Sears Website

Personal Website

Dr. Jackson asked that I post the link to my personal homepage:

Erica's Website

I haven't listed or uploaded samples of any of my most recent compositions, and my biography is outdated as well. Maybe posting a public link will motivate me to update! :-)

Placido Domingo and the L.A. Opera - creating music of the future?

Hi all,

I found these articles in the LA Times.

L.A. Opera to deliver 'Il Postino' premiere on Thursday

Placido Domingo Says L.A. Opera's 'The Postman' Is Special Delivery for Latinos

Placido Domingo renew contract with L.A. Opera through 2013

The most fascinating thing is the opera premiere, though. It is a new work with a Spanish libretto that draws on popular culture (it is based on the 1994 film "The Postman"), and it is no accident that Domingo (like Gustavo Dudamel with the LA Phil) is trying to appeal to the heavily Latino population of L.A. I would also guess that this target community is not prone to listening to lots of classical music.

Daniel Catán, the composer of "Il Postino," has a fascinating history:
"An almost preternaturally amiable chap, Catán is the product of a mixed Anglo-Latin cultural upbringing. Descended from Russian-Turkish-Jewish immigrants, he was born and raised in Mexico City and later studied philosophy at the University of Sussex in England and music at Princeton University with Milton Babbitt. Among his influences he cites Stravinsky, Ravel and Alban Berg. He and his wife, a professional harpist, have two grown children and make their home in South Pasadena."

This sounds like the future of classical music to me: music that is rooted in the tradition of Western art music, but is nevertheless forging out in new directions and trying to reach new audiences in exciting ways!

Explorers and Couch Potatoes

Minnesota State University currently offers a course entitled, "Explorers and Couch Potatoes: Active and Passive Media." The class seems to be geared towards media writing majors, and it provides an in-depth analysis of the two major types of audiences in the world of contemporary media: the active audience and the passive (the explorers and the couch potatoes). The course description makes it clear that modern media writers must approach these two audiences in very different ways, and it defines the gulf that separates the two audiences in very clear terms (see the chart below).

For me, one of the most provocative points that Levine makes in Chapter 3 of Highbrow/Lowbrow deals with classical music's shift from cultivating an active audience to demanding a passive one. Levine writes: "To make art possible, performers and audiences had to submit to creators and become mere instruments of the will, mere auditors of the productions of the artist." He goes on to explain that, by the turn of the century, classical music no longer belonged to the performers and their audiences; instead, it belonged to an immortalized classical canon. Symphonies and operas had become gallery artworks, meant to be accepted according to a set of criteria established by music critics. Audiences no longer attended concerts of classical music with the idea that they themselves would be expected to pass judgement. They no longer threw tomatoes when disgruntled or shouted raucously for encores. Instead, they came with the proper attire (no three-foot hats allowed!) and the proper mindset, sitting passively and accepting whatever type of "art" was offered. Classical music had become a mode of one-way, rather than two-way, communication.

The gulf between explorers and couch potatoes was widened even further by the advent of film. In a movie theater, audiences were removed from the performers by much more than just a curtain and a spotlight. In fact, nothing at all was required of such an audience; nothing spectators could say or do would alter the performance to any degree.

Read the description of active and passive audiences below, and tell me what you think about 21st-century music and the type of audience it demands. Does contemporary classical music cater to an active or a passive audience? What about aleatoric music? Popular forms? Should we be trying (as modern composers and performers) to reach out to an active audience, a passive one, or both? Is there a way to approach passive audiences on their own terms and re-teach them to be active listeners? (If the text below gets cut off for some reason, you can visit the original site here: http://www.mnstate.edu/hanson/MC210/MC210_active&passive_media.htm)

Active (Newspapers, Magazines & the Internet)	Passive (Television & Radio)
About half of all American adults read a newspaper daily (readership is weighted toward greater age, education and affluence; somewhat stronger in suburban and rural settings)	About two-thirds of all American adults watch TV news (consistent across all ages, education levels, incomes and other demographic data)
Active audience seeks out information of interest ("pull" strategy)	Passive audience receives information with little focused effort
Newspapers reach mass audience limited by geography. Magazines may appeal to general or specialized interests. Internet sites may serve either.	Generally broadcast to mass audiences, limited by extent of signal. Cable TV has introduced more specialized targeting. Radio formats also permit some degree of "narrowcasting."
Readers are usually fully engaged in the act of reading	Viewers/listeners are often distracted ... their attention must be captured first
Readers must be literate in English	Literacy isn't a factor — commonly used by children, non-native English speakers and others who get little from the printed word
Substantial cost factor (subscriptions, newsstand purchase, computer & Internet access) — though library users can access at no personal cost	Little cost for access to local stations beyond buying the TV or radio — though cost is a factor in access to cable or satellite services
Audience has greater interest in public affairs — usually well-versed in our culture	Broader audience whose interest in public affairs can't be assumed. Often serves as introduction to our culture
Nonlinear or "random access" format — reader can easily pick and choose material of personal interest	Linear (sequential) presentation of information — audience can’t skip around or go back
Time element is wide open, depending on reader's needs	Broadcast and viewed in "real time" (though TV programs can be taped for later viewing or references)
Text media are well-suited to provide in-depth material including details and background information	Broadcasts provide generally weak format for providing details and background; usually focus on summaries and overviews
Relies mostly on words to portray emotion, action, drama, humor.	Strong format for presenting emotional, dramatic and humorous content (visuals and sounds)
Audience is primarily seeking information	Audience is seeking a combination of entertainment, relaxation and information