The Prestige Market of Contemporary Classical Music
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- Опубліковано 8 лют 2025
- This is the second iteration of the "what's Wrong with Contemporary Classical Music?" video. This video is a bit more "bottom-line" and less abstract than the previous one. Not "progress" but "prestige" is the real culprit!
Let me know in the comments if you have any thoughts.
Previous video;
• What's Wrong with Cont...
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/ michelez - Фільми й анімація
Thank you for this keenly perceptive and spot-on analysis of the contemporary classical music "marketplace." In this twelve+ minute talk you have managed to demystify the inner workings of institutions (academic and otherwise) that lend their support to Lachenmann and Ferneyhough wannabes. You have managed to explain and clarify a great deal regarding this phenomenon in a nutshell. Looking forward to seeing more talks on this topic. Thank you again!
Thank you. Like the first video, I think you are correct and any honest person, or any person with ears, must agree with you. Another aspect of the situation is that composers seek to maintain their prestige by promoting their students who compose in the same style. It reminds me of the story of the Emperor's New Clothes, a lot of talk, high words, etc. and at the end, there's usually nothing there.
yes, clientelism is a big aspect of it all, if subterranean
So true!
Video coraggioso, Michele! -It's great to start speaking up publicly about some unfair mechanics. It would be great if you could share a mirror perspective about how computer music research institutions usually operate under similar procedures.. that would be super interesting, I think. Cheers!
Thank you! A bit suicidal of a career move ehehe. I would like to hear your thoughts about the computer music research field (I have limited experience in that, not zero but not enough to claim broad knowledge). In general any academic field that is not a hard science is subject to clientelism: powerful institutions have an incentive to form a closed circle and reinforce each others positions, closing the entrance to new actors. Feel free to reach out to me on FB if you want to discuss this
@@MicheleZaccagnini I wish I could make such an articulated description of the music research as you did for composition as a whole, but I ain't that constant when I open that door, usually I go away for few years every time I get too close, and that is mainly because the implicit and explicit conditions of association that are, somehow, similar to what you described on classical contemporary composition. My perception of how one gets prestige on both scenes is based on associations that are not necessarily link to artistic merits, progress or new ideas of how to develop tools that can improve the way we relate to music or what it actually sounds, really. But buzzwords and inter institutional ways to get funding, I have witness many times enormous funds for projects that end up in a paper with 0 impact into practical use, or others with potential ending up as a private company that was founded with public money… there are of course exceptions.
When I start composing 25 years ago, I felt there was a genuine interest from young and older composers to dive into technology and explore the possibilities from an educated musical perspective (with all the biases and ideological filters that a composer can have), this has change within the last years around the places I work, where composers have become more conservative, more attach to even older central european traditions of music, and conducting their profession like there is nothing interesting outside their microenvironment.
This open the door for Researchers/musicians to fill out the space left by composers, which I think it’s a dead end for both scenes.. Many times we can find researchers at conferences referred as composers with a few years of piano lessons during childhood, making the output sometimes innocent or flood with common places and plagio … But again, this is a long topic and my perception its condition to my environment.
I really hope more than a suicidal move for you or anyone who is willing to express sincere concerns around professional topics can address them publicly, and not only after concert with colleagues… Best wishes!
I totally agree with your considerations. Thanks for enlight this.
Insightful and well-articulated observations! All of what you say resonates as true with my own particular experience as a composer subsisting outside of the institutional prestige.
As you mention, the term 'progress' in music is problematic. It is not helpful in advocating for contemporary classical music or to bringing it out beyond the institution in a meaningful way (and maybe the institutional baggage of the term 'classical' doesn't help us either). I see music as always changing to reflect and adapt to new technologies, new economic recessions and booms, and other non-musical factors--as it always has. So, instead of 'progress,' what we may really have in CCM is 'change'--whatever the reasons in prompting change and however connected or disconnected the change is from the past. Does this seem to be the case to you?
As for a CCM marketplace, this has always seemed complicated and a bit confusing to me as to what it really means. In the middle-years of my career I was an academic music librarian. I often felt that the CCM scores and recordings I purchased for my institution were just like the academic journal articles and monographs purchased--created from the research and work of the institution and bought back through a 3rd party publisher. In the case of music this seemed to be perpetuating the "prestige" culture.
CCM retreating to academia seems to have been a 20th century phenomenon. So now, do we need to ask ourselves how to move CCM back out of its academic entrechment? And, what needs to be done to nurture a return to music just being music where most everyone engages in making music--professional and amateur alike? I think you are right that prestige is the real problem. It has been evolving in academia for more than a century. So, how can we begin moving away from this dynamic?
I am glad to see you taking on this complicated topic and I look forward to hearing more of your analyses. --Thank you.
Thank you for your nice comment. I don't see institutions changing themselves to reflect cultural and social changes, their incentive system is skewed. There is life after academia though and avenues for creation are as many as ever. We might lament the current situation in the institutions but I am quite excited by anything outside of them. We should just stop paying too much attention to what comes out of academia
Interesting! I'd also like to hear if you think the CCM market is changing away from a prestige market, and if there is a divide being made between older generations of composers and newer generations in relation to the prestige market.
Thanks! Maybe with some form of crowdfounfing which is the new patronage system. We are already seeing some of this. The problem is that institutions decide who gets performed, they are in charge of many of the ensembles, orchestras etc. Maybe that can change but it's hard since these ensembles are usually money losing enterprises which need lots of funds to exist in the first place.
Yes to all of this
Intetesting. I note you don't give examples of particular institutions, but you might have very good reasons for that!
As to trickle-down influence in last 50 years: minimalism has influenced pop music esp. EDM, as has aspects of Stockhausen 's music, if not his serialism.
I didn't give examples to avoid small cherry picked counter-examples to the mentioned institutions. It's not supposed to be ad hominem but a general analysis.. I wanted to mention minimalism which is I believe outside of the circle of prestige. In fact if you wanted to have a career in CCM minimalism would be a bad choice. The influence of Stockhausen is not really evident unless you are really looking for it
I don't think so. maybe Curved Air, Mike Oldfield, but EDM? No - it's sound is due to the tools used to create it, mainly the TR808. I don't don't see any correlation frankly.
I’d like to know how do you see the academic institutions behavior inside this market.
I do talk about institutions quite a bit, those include academic institutions