A Composer’s Complaint

Stephen Jablonsky

Being a composer, especially a classical composer, is like being a mother. For a protracted period of time you carry within you the seed of a compositional idea and one day it gestates. After much travail, often filled with conflict, pain and anxiety, you give birth to a new offspring. But this is where the similarity ends. The mother then spends the ensuing years rearing and enjoying the fruits of her labor, but for the composer it is entirely different. The moment the piece is completed it usually spends the next few months or years--that is, if the composer is lucky and it happens at all--waiting to be adopted by a performer, much like the unwanted child of a pregnant teenager who, at the moment of birth, is taken away with the expectation that it will be given to others to raise.

Like the composer, the young girl may meet her progeny sometime in the future only to discover that the child was not raised in a fashion she would have chosen. Often, when the composer finally gets to hear the work in question the performance either does not conform to a preconceived interpretation or it is badly played (composition abuse?). Usually, even the best of performances does not measure up to the state of perfection in which the piece was originally conceived in the composer’s imagination.

That was in the old days when, with pen or pencil in hand, the composer spent weeks or months bent over the composition table trying to imagine the tonal possibilities for an imaginary ensemble.

Today things are different. We have MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) which means that, with a synthesizer and a computer, we composers need no longer dream of hypothetical ensembles-- they are at our fingertips. In the past ten years, the pencil has been replaced by the mouse. Now, however, we are no longer like that pregnant teenager, we are more like Pinocchio’s Papa Geppetto. We can create a living being, but it is mechanical, almost wooden. No matter how hard we try, it is not “real.” MIDI does allow us to immediately test our compositional theories but still we dream that someday a group of great musicians will bring our wooden puppet to life before a thunderously applauding Carnegie Hall audience. The review in The New York Times the next morning proclaims our genius to the world (O.K., time to stop dreaming).

It is fortunate that we compose classical music to satisfy some inner need, for, if we depended upon our craft to earn us a decent living, it might be eons before we could put enough bread on the table to feed a family of four. Meanwhile, we carry on, creating beauty for beauty’s sake, realizing that, even for the most successful of us, the rewards of recognition and appreciation are meager at best when compared with the adulation awarded to stars of popular music. Did you know, for example, that while a gold album in popular music represents the sale of a million disks, in the classical genre is represents only 50,000? Think hard! How many classical musicians do you remember seeing at the Grammys? Maybe it’s time to change the term Classical Music to Unpopular Music. Some suggest that this unpopularity is deserved because our musical language has become too difficult to understand on first hearing, which is generally the only chance a classical composer gets. Viewed in perspective, it is hard to imagine that the musical monuments of the past were ever easy to appreciate in their own time.

Maybe Unpopular Music really isn’t for everyone. After all, the Big Mac and the ham and cheese sandwich are much more popular than Sole Meuniere, Peking Duck and Beef Wellington. And it may be more than just a matter of taste or budget. If everyone had the cash, would they spend it on haute cuisine on a daily basis? Maybe yes, probably no. It does seem that our recent obsession with Lite cuisine has carried over to our listening preferences.

Should, then, the music of Bach, Mozart and Wagner, like rich food, be enjoyed only rarely, on special occasions? While each of us must decide what our daily diet of culture will be, most would agree that Unpopular Music should play at least some small part. But if that is so, why must that small part consist, mostly, of the contributions of deceased Unpopular composers? Are we living composers doomed to receive our just desserts only in heaven?

When we look at the array of Unpopular music being played in concert halls and the media, we realize that only a handful of talent is represented. What about the forgotten ones, those untold thousands of composers whose music is virtually lost to us on dusty library shelves, in lonesome archives, and even refuse dumps? Are they like minor league ball players hoping to be discovered? Must they always dream of next season? Maybe even the minor leagues are a dream--for most of them are like Sunday afternoon softballers. Often, they are not even footnotes to hardball history. Does the fact that WNCN (FM) and WQXR (AM) dumped their classical formats indicate that, even for the few well-known Unpopular composers, the playing field is getting smaller all the time?

Ultimately, we must ask ourselves if there is there a place, or even a need, for the output of the myriad forgotten composers, those who have no difficulty quantifying their obscurity. It is possible that their contribution is purely statistical-- that, in order to produce its Beethovens, a society must have a significantly large number of composers toiling away so that, from among this vast number, a few may rise to the top and represent the efforts of their generation. If it sounds like ants or bees, maybe there is a parallel. It may seem strange to think of composers, those lofty artists, as cultural drones, but the description may be very appropriate.

Of course, this complaint should not be limited to the creation of music. It pertains to all the arts and, by extension, to every human endeavor. This means that most everyone, even many of the “stars,” suffers the same malady. What, then, is the cure we all seek? Is it love, recognition, appreciation, pride? How about all four, and more? That’s what makes us human. Wait a minute...

Composers are human?