Quote:
Originally Posted by SSC
Sorry, but a professional and a responsible composer MUST research everything and anything, even if they don't like it. Education has nothing to do with taste.
If you were a film maker, you WOULD BE EXPECTED to be so thorough in your research as the example you mentioned there, because it's what you're supposed to do. IF you don't do that, you'll be clearly only limiting yourself. Education, again, has priority over taste.
I think the problem arises from the fact I expect anyone who is serious about composition to behave in a serious manner and actually tackle the subject without idiotic biases when it comes to the study of music altogether. I don't care if you don't like Jazz, or clusters, or 40s experimentalism, or baroque music, you HAVE to know about these topics enough to write goddamn essays on each of them. Not only that, but you have to know the history of each of those things, consequences, theory and application of each of those styles and aesthetics!
If not, then well, let's establish how serious you take your music studies and I won't expect so much from you.
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Oh, no. I'm certainly not saying that if you want to be a professional in the field, then it's okay for ignorance. But let's be reasonable, despite being a composition forum, most of us take ourselves a bit too serious. There are maybe 10-15 "professional" composers here and that's being generous. Most of us are just hobbyists. Most of us probably do not love music as we really think we do and very few of us will ever actually make it in the field. And besides, I was going off on a tangent by that point. The real point of my post was that Juji seemed to be saying that anyone who "properly" studies "modernist" music simply should not and can no hate it. And anyone who does is ignorant. Whether or not that was what he was really saying, I don't know yet but I hold a very firm stance against that sort of condescending, arrogant attitude (as much as I hated the brief "Baroque was the only good period of music" stance that some members took here recently). Sometimes people simply do not like things. And to call someone "uneducated" because they do not absolutely agree with you on everything is well...dumb.
If someone's reasoning for hating 4'33" is "It isn't music. Music has notes and stuff. LOL!" then I will be the first to defend Cage. If someone says "Well, I understand that he was trying to make a statement about music and while I can understand why some people might like it, I personally do not find it appealing" then that is great. I welcome differing opinions as long as they are founded.
The movie thing is just an analogy because just like most of us are only hobbyists in music, most of us are only hobbyists when it comes to movies. I do enjoy movies quite a lot myself and I try to pick up on a lot of things that real, professional critics look for but in no way would I consider my opinion on movies "informed" or "respectable".
I do tend to take people who don't claim to know much about music less seriously. Though I will argue with anyone who claims to love music yet can't explain to me why they like a single damn piece/song/track/whatever.
Anyway, no. There isn't an excuse for ignorance when you claim to hold music in such a high regard. Just, I'm starting to get sick of all this bashing of other people's opinions. Apparently, I'm not the only one *points at "Why be negative?" thread* I'm always up for a good, brain stimulating, thought provoking dedate but I just haven't seen so many of these lately. I hold Debussy in the highest regard but if someone on this forum said "Debussy sux! Mozart ftw!" then I wouldn't agree but I'd respect their opinion...provided they have heard a good deal of his work and were able to tell me why exactly they didn't.
Note: I'm not claiming to be either a serious music lover or just a hobbyist. I haven't achieved that level of self-awareness to make any such claims.