Composing for a Living?

Philip Glass was Avant Garde. He didn't suffer through the plight of the "concert music composer."

America, land of the free! "In God we trust." That god is the almighty dollar, nothing is free. Why can't we all just live in Vienna or Paris?

BTW, the letter was very deep. I'm gonna pass that along.

Yeah my grandpa plays accordion (and is REALLY amazing at it, he just never wanted to introduce himself to the world) and he took a trip to Russia, he said there you have to have a college degree (like a major) in accordions or you aren't allowed to play on the streets.. Here in america we just treat the accordion as a toy (i mean, you can buy one for $20 at cracker barrel) when it's really a very beautiful sounding instrument.
I think that music in the rest of the world means a whole lot more than to those in America, no person on the street knows what a bassoon is.. even some band kids don't even know what a bassoon is, or an oboe, much less an english horn!
I want to move to france when I can, that's my heritage and I love france (even though I've never been there)

Originally Posted by Justin Tokke

Philip Glass was Avant Garde. He didn't suffer through the plight of the "concert music composer."

are you sure? On my computer when I ripped the cd on it put him under the genre "Minimalism"
or is that just a sub genre?

Avant Garde was an overall concept of music basically hapening in the mid-20th century, from about the 1930s to 1980s. Minimalism is a genre within the concept of avant garde music. Musicologists should feel free to correct me.

"avant garde" is an ever changing thing... it is not limited to a specific time period. the "avant garde" is the "pushing the limits of art" at any single time.

Some people have tied to set a certain period as being "the avant garde era", however, it's a misnomer, and not widely accepted. Any composer can have been avant garde for his era. For example, Strawinski was part of the avant garde when he wrote Sacre. Debussy with Péleas et Mélisande. Beethoven with the 9th symphony. and so on.

Right. It is an operative term not bound to any time period. My point is that Philip Glass was doing things that no one else was doing at the time. He was an inovater.

Justin -

Phillip Glass was driving a cab into his early 40's in New York City (so, imagine the rides he got in NYC around mid/late 60's to mid 70's, not the best time to be doing this in NYC). He basically formed his own group to play his compositions and has very slow to release his scores into publication. Also, Phillip Glass wrote for many films starting in the late 70's and early 80's (which you probably know many of them from "life Out of Balance (sorry cannot recall the original title), "The Thin Blue Line" and a rare gem Four Scenes from Mishima). So Glass circumvented the concert stage (as did Reich and Terry Reilly and La Monte Young). Phillip Glass and Steve Reich may have had the most success of this group of composers.

So, Glass is a rather weak model of the concert composer. He had a totally non-musical dayjob until mid adulthood and the concert performance and works came much later. To tell you the truth, if I write an opera and the Met does do it great and wants more great. However, that is not really an attractive LONG-TERM goal.

PS. I disagree Glass was that much of an innovator, Reilly's "In C" and Reich's It's Gonna Rain came out before Glass's mininmalist works (correct me if wrong). Unless he did something quite different from Riley and Reich.

Originally Posted by Justin Tokke

BTW, the letter was very deep. I'm gonna pass that along.

That letter is VERY cool. It restored my confidence. I'm going to go teach English in China for a year or two after my master's degree, come back to the states and get my doctorate in composition.

Here come the ASIAN BOYS!!!

Originally Posted by Accordian Kid

Here in america we just treat the accordion as a toy (i mean, you can buy one for $20 at cracker barrel) when it's really a very beautiful sounding instrument.

YouTube - Esra Pehlivanli (viola) & Marko Kassl (accordion), Britten

MUCH better than the piano or string orchestra version...

VERY beautiful indeed.

Originally Posted by Corbin The Violist

YouTube - Esra Pehlivanli (viola) & Marko Kassl (accordion), Britten

MUCH better than the piano or string orchestra version...

VERY beautiful indeed.

lol quoted by "The Accordion Kid"???
and you spelled Accordian wrong, it's Accordion. Sorry I just get OCD about grammar and spelling and such

and yes, you should see my grandpa play, the way he has everything memorized, like the whole Rhapsody in Blue, plays it flawlessly and says "Well that's not nearly as good as I was 20 years ago when I could actually move these darn fingers"
Hmmm i should record him, he promised to play for us tomorrow

I didn't mean to start teh whole minimalist debate.

The point was that you will need money and you will need a job. This job hardly needs to be a musical based job.