In true Nietzshean fashion I am here to proclaim The Audience Is Dead...or at the very least it does not exist. Obviously this is a bit dramatic, but not entirely untrue. I decided to write this post after reading a recent article run by RTE (Ireland’s National Television and Broadcast media outlet) titled “Is Experimental Music Killing Classical Music?” by Dave Flynn. The following is not specifically in reference to Flynn’s article (which for the record I find to be unbelievable off-base), but more in response to the many discussions that ensued in online forums and across social media. A conversation I often found myself in with other composers, performers, theorists, musicologists and even casual listeners of contemporary music focused on whether or not Flynn is right in reference to writing music “for the audience,” and the general “accessibility” of said music. I have always found both of those sentiments frustrating for a number of reasons, all of which I will discuss (and vent about) below.
Before getting into any kind of nuanced discussion of why the concept of writing for “the audience” is problematic I would like to revisit my opening statement - the audience does not exist. This might seem a grandiose and even polemical statement of Boulezian proportions (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but there is a great deal of truth to it. The problem is not the idea of audience, but with the definite article used to describe the noun. It would be easy to refer to “an” audience of listeners, but “the” carries an implication of a definable audience. On the one hand this could be ignored as a nit-picky prescriptivist complaint, but I don’t see it that way. Differentiating between definite and indefinite articles is a key element here because “an” audience could denote any group of people encompassing a wide range of ideas, cultures, aesthetics, approaches, and values. However, “the” audience implies a single monolithic group of shared ideas, cultures, aesthetics, values, and, above all, shared expectations. To me it goes without saying (even though I already said it) that in order to different levels of specificity in any capacity one can easily do that through the use of definite and indefinite articles. I could say the sentence “please go get me a soda” implying that any hypothetical soda will adequately quench my thirst. However, if I were to say “please go get me the soda” that then implies I’m asking for a specific type of soda. Again, this is all straight-forward. However, this concept is often not applied when discussing art and music, specifically when discussing contemporary concert music. I find that lack of distinction quite disconcerting, though, because of the implications and restrictions it places on artists, as well as listeners. My soda example might not be the best analog to the situation of discerning between audiences, mainly because with the soda the idea is that a single person is drawing from a wide range of possible choices or from a single specified choice. When composers and performers write and program music they are creating a single entity (the piece of the concert program) that is meant to satisfy, entertain or engage a wide collection of people with varying ideas and sensibilities; the input/output is reversed so the paradigm must shift. There is quite literally no way to refer to any listening body as “the” audience in relation to aesthetic tastes and sensibilities. If you were to say “the audience will leave immediately following the last piece” well then that definite article is entirely necessary. However, the phrase “I wrote this piece with the audience in consideration” is immediately rendered meaningless because there is no way to define what “the audience” is, or who it encompasses. There is no single group of listeners/appreciators that all artists can or even should strive to please. The audience for one avenue of art could be the polar opposite of the audience that is attracted to a different type of art. To try to please both is an exercise in futility. An audience of listeners who responds positively to Post-Minimalism could potentially (and likely) have the opposite reaction to New Complexity. Does that mean that a Post-Minimalist is writing for the audience and the New Complexity composer is not? That would be a hard no. Each is writing for their own audience of listeners with a general set of expectations in mind. This leads me to my next point, which is how and why the concept of “the audience” is damaging to composers, performers, and even to any listener of any type of music. This goes back to my point above that the concept of “the” audience is a reductive concept that lumps all listeners and appreciators of art into a single category wherein its members have shared interests and expectations. How could any composer write music to please such an audience? How could a performer craft a program to engage the entire audience? Above all, as an audience member I would be a bit offended (for a fleeting moment) if a composer with diametrically opposed aesthetics told me that they were writing music for “the” audience, because they are clearly not taking my interests and tastes into account. On the same token, as a member of “the” hypothetical audience of shared interests, that audience is not taking into account the vast number of voices and styles that are available. There are a myriad of reasons that listeners might latch onto this viewpoint, specifically in the interest of maintaining what certain members might deem universal interests. However, those interests are destined in any situation to remain murky and undefined. The artist cannot expect to please everyone. The audience cannot expect to establish a single set of expectations to which the creator and curator must adhere. Furthermore, writing to the tastes of “the” audience also implies that there is a limited amount of musical material, complexity, variation and experimentation that listeners are willing to and/or capable of digesting. This simply isn’t true. As a composer of what some might deem “challenging” music, I have found that my highest compliments have come from non-musicians and from audience members who did not know what to expect from my music. In fact, in some cases where my music was an aesthetic outlier on a program, it was the lack of adhering to expectations that drew listeners in and gave them some level of pleasure in hearing my work. Does this mean you as a composer, performer or concert curator should have no consideration of who is listening to the music and what a specific group of listeners with shared interests will like? Absolutely not. All genres and styles of music have an audience to some degree, and those audiences generally want to hear what they like, not what a hypothetical body of tastemakers has approved. It’s important to know which musical elements and components make up a certain style that appeals to any given audience, but it is my personal belief that compositional decisions should not teeter on the opinions and sensibilities of an undefined group of listeners. For me, it is important to know who is primarily listening to my music, but I don’t always approach composing pieces in the same way, nor do I expect the same group of people to enjoy all of my music. Some pieces will appeal to one group of people while simultaneously boring or even irritating another. Above all, it is the duty of a composer and performer to create art, and it is the duty of listeners to seek out the music they enjoy. At the risk of possibly offending some readers, it is not my job to cater to your tastes. My final point in relation to this topic is that referring to any rigid idea of what “the” audience is really only establishes aesthetic battlegrounds and in-fighting among artists and creative minds. Composer A writes for “the audience” whereas Composer B does not, or at least not overtly. In some circles of New Music, Composer A might be seen as a paragon of contemporary music, bridging the gap between esoteric modern music and “the” audience who doesn’t want to stray far from the tried and true chestnuts of the canon. Composer B might be creating art that they truly believe in and which is creative, colorful, engaging and thought-provoking...if only they had considered “the” audience. But who determines which composer writes for “the audience” and what metrics are used to determine that? Obviously there is no answer to that question if you agree with any of what I have said above, because if the premise of the existence of “the audience” is untrue then why bother trying to determine the characteristics that define said audience. Additionally, Writing for the audience is a dog whistle term with a subtext that implies music for “the” audience is accessible, digestible, and worthy of praise or at the very least of multiple performances. This kind of idea has been used for decades to deride the art of experimental musicians (composers and performers) and of atonal, spectral, electroacoustic and all musics not deemed accessible enough. This was a constant point of discussion when I was in graduate and doctoral school, and would inevitably lead to some of the most heated and contentious discussions during composition seminars and among friends over drinks. So often I found myself explaining to friends and colleagues “I am writing for the audience...just not yours. You are writing for the audience too...just not mine.” It should be mentioned that this perceived accessibility is often (at least in my experience) viewed through the lens of orchestral programming which is historically ultra-conservative, further pointing to the dog whistle tactic of disparaging the experimental music that Flynn’s article claims is killing the canon, and Classical music altogether. In summation, it is my overall goal that we as a community of New Music makers abandon this preposterous idea of the existence of “the” audience. It really doesn’t even make sense from a linguistic standpoint - a definite article implies a definable noun or entity, which is impossible when considering subjective taste - and it definitely makes absolutely no sense from a creative or application standpoint. The concept of “the audience” rejects outside ideas, condemns experimentation and limits prospects for growth and change within an art form by limiting creativity to some imagined rubric of ideas, aesthetics and sound worlds. Beyond that, a perceived lack of audience consideration is used to level criticism against composers and performers, and to justify the exclusion of their music and art. It’s my hope that we can start to move away from this damaging and unattainable goal, and perhaps focus more on writing and programming music geared toward your own audience, whatever and whoever that might be, with the goal of simultaneously trying to reach listeners outside of your own. If you’re successful in doing that, please tell me how. In the meantime, create what you love, perform what you love, and those with shared interests will appreciate it. Those without will surely find something that appeals to them as well.
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