who are you, and what are you doing here?

When I meet someone new, and they ask what I do, and I respond that I'm a composer, the conversation typically takes an awkward turn, if it doesn't simply go moribund at that exact moment.

The following are mentally-noted excerpts of initial conversations I have had with countless people.

Case Number 1:

I'm a composer.
Oh... So, you write music?
(taken slightly aback) Yes... Yes, I do.

[if the conversation continues here, this is usually what happens]

So, are you in a band?
No.
Then... How do you write music?

Case Number 2:

I'm a composer.
Oh, you write music?
Yes.
What sort? Classical?

[there are far too many reasons at this critical juncture to explain the semantic nuance of the word "classical" to a person, typically lay, but I generally make that mistake, anyhow]

-OR-

What sort? Classical? Like Beethoven?

[At this point, I can't fault people for what they know. Music education in this country is abysmal, at worst, and routinely undersupported and underappreciated, at best, so I cannot hold these answers against the responders, even if I feel superbly cantankerous that day and really, really want to. The responder, in most circumstances, is at least a little earnest and attempting to meet me halfway - but can't, for reasons I theorize later.]

Case Number 3:

I'm a composer.
Oh, so... What do you play?

[see bracketed statement above]

Once in a while, I've made the conversationally-fatal mistake of doing the following:

I'm a sound artist.
[suppressing a chortle, grimace, or other facial expression as a means to remain polite] (quizzically) So, you... paint... with sound?
Well... Yes and no...

[and by this point in the conversation, I've lost them forever, unless it's that one person in 982,000 who is interested]

Composers and sound artists are the only creative artists who, I believe, have this problem of nomenclatural proportions. We are the only ones whose tasks and crafts are not etched permanently within the minds of the laypeople. What I mean is this: a person will have a general idea about what an artist does. Most visual artists I know differentiate: I'm a photographer; I'm a filmmaker; I'm a painter; I'm a sculptor. (Rarest of all species is the wily videographer.) Individuals have an exact knowledge already borne in their minds from experience with visual media about them in their daily lives and from the education obtained - typically informally - over their lifespan. The same could be said for the literary arts: individuals make automatic, instantaneous connections, conscious and unconscious, and cognitive leaps to envision what it is a writer does, what a playwright does, what a poet does, what a journalist does. There is even a prompting for differentiation from the uninitiated party: they may, and frequently do, ask the "writer" if they write fiction or non-fiction, short stories or novels, biographies, or (erroneously) poems or plays. There is a kernel of truth within every reasonably-educated person's mind about what each of these occupations entail.

The biggest problem, I think, is not that composers don't reach out to audiences: I think the problem is visual, primarily. This isn't to belittle other things, but from a purely cognitive standpoint, it's major. We have etched into our brains and popular imagination via film and TV and museums the sight of Jackson Pollock painting. We have the sight of photographs themselves - we don't need to see Avedon or Ray, but we have their work. We have footage of visual artists creating, of filmmakers peering through their viewfinders, of sculptors turning pottery wheels or wielding welding torches or chiseling away at stone. Obviously, humans are much more visual animals (unfortunately) than sonic or auditory ones, but that's really subservient to the idea that we have very little footage of composers in the process of creation. The few we have are iconic but all staged: Stravinsky peering into a score, Bruno Maderna poring over a score while chain-smoking and listening to a rehearsal. The most famous portraits of Ravel, Debussy, and Ligeti, for example, may have them at the piano, but this is mere suggestion - and at least in Ligeti's case, many of his famous photographs are emblematic of the typical visual representation of composers: wholly divorced from the act of creation, clad in a cardigan or suit, in the company of other composers, or at some symposium, or in a context removed in sum from the act of composing. I know of no footage that has made it into the pantheon of artistic documentation that shows a composer actually changing pitches or trying out motives on a violin. Of course, the fact that those few (though elaborated) portraits of composers at work exhibit composers with lines of strain in their faces, hunched over score paper in what looks like dim or unforgiving conditions does us no favours, either. Admittedly, my favorite depiction of Hindemith is one of Papa Paul playing viola - not composing; it goes without saying, too, that the most remembered and easily-comprehended visual renditions of Mahler are those of his conducting - despite being the last great post-Romantic voice.

There is, too, paradoxically a visual element that completely does not work in our favor: that is to say, a printed score. Without invoking the hoary discussion of whether it's a universal language, printed music in the Western tradition is an elitist language: it's the Latin of art forms. Few can read it passibly, and fewer still can tease out all of the nuance and delicacy in an interpretive manner that commands respect. I want to make clear that I am speaking of the entire Western population as whole, and the actual reading of music - not performing or the auditory transmission of music. I want to democratize the ability to reach a literacy level in music, as do music educators everywhere, but our resources are meager and our ability to make inroads is kept constrained. So, the ability to read music beyond a very rudimentary level still belongs to only a comparative few. While I bemoan the fact that we still in 2011 do not have universal literacy, 99% or so in the United States ain't bad. And, yes, many of the same problems of subtlety and intricacy exist in written language, but there are a few sociolinguistic and developmental factors at play: there is constant speech around us; we all have a base-level literacy and, evolutionarily, are much more easily adapted to learn and relearn spoken language when confronted with a visual analog if and only if there has been adequate exposure before a certain age; words, despite the many ways can be wielded, have exact definitions that are made contextually clearer in writing; everyone is taught to read (under normal circumstances); everyone is taught to write.

There is, of course, a visual-accessibility component, as well, which is fairly obvious: transmission and mutability. I can pick up a pencil and write a poem. It will most likely be awful. Same deal as with a short story. But I have a base level knowledge of rhythm, diction, syntax. I can write. I can pick up a book and read it. I can take the book with me anywhere. I put the score for Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra in my father's hand, and he can do nothing with it until he hears the recording or performance - and even then, the score does him no good.

This lack of visual-cognitive stimulus is even more pronounced when we get into electroacoustic music - a subject too big for this blog post. (Though not for a future one!)

We also - collectively, as trained musicians in the Western tradition - lack a vernacular common to experience that will allow us to communicate succinctly and efficiently without either speaking beyond the layperson's knowledge or experience, or - worse - insulting them by toning down and diluting how we describe what we do, why we do it, and what sort of art we make. Say what you will about untrained folks discussing visual art - I count myself among these - or, even better, film: there is an accessibility level of describing some technical aspects (I will not say all) that arises organically, almost generically, from repeated contact and experience and from limited visual art education or bits and pieces learnt along the way. I see brushstrokes on a canvas and can describe them as such; I may not know the proper technical terms beyond "vanishing point" in a landscape painting, but I can remark on something approximating it. At the very basic level, the elementary particles of visual art can be discussed almost universally. We don't have that ability in music or sound art. We end up with onomatopoeia or end up discussing visceralities or emotionalities rather than the sounds or music themselves. Certainly, these reactions are valid - but if we're talking about a Miró painting, we have exact language to describe it. Exact language in the world of music happens to be argot.

Debatable to an extent, the dimension of time itself is the only plane of existence for music and sonic art. We create a representation of thought which in turn becomes a simulation of a representation in performance or on a recording; divergent as those two could be, they are essentially the second status of removal from origin; we have the listener's memory, whose variety is mathematically wild; we have the retransmission from the listener in some fragmentary manner. And it all exists within primarily the realm of time. We have the object (score or recording or...) in our hands, but it is indeed just an object-intermediary. The visual aspect has zero bearing. The auditory aspect does have bearing, but it is not frozen in dimensionality, not firmly rooted to a place or a singular moment - a painting, a sculpture (especially a mediocre one), a visual referent: this is something permanently etched and tied to a place, a moment, a history. It can exist anytime; I can recall them at will now, and now, and now. A Takemitsu chamber work? It has to unfold. It takes time. And that's all it takes.

Which leads me back to why I decided to muse over this initially. There is no set visual re-cognition of the composer, her craft, or her process, or her end result. Aside form the transmission issues, lack of more holistic education about what composers do, lack of exposure of of newer - much newer - artistic trends in art music, and lack of visual elements in the composer's art, what else am I missing?

Other than the composer himself, who may or may not be able to communicate effectively what he does, regardless the pseudo-romantic images a layperson may see, regardless the naive and hurtful stereotype that a small but vocal minority has about composers (and musicians in general) being deadbeats, the responsibility doesn't lie completely with the lay audience or everyday people: it lies within the musical community as a whole to, without exoticization, exhibit composers as often as possible¹, encourage composers to take more active roles in orchestras, schools, and the like (there is only so much composer-fostered groups of composers can do, for obvious auditory-transmission reasons), and (this is the killer) somehow place composers alongside writers and visual artists in the public eye (pun intended) (and with no intent to disparage or remove renown from artists in different media) and allow them to receive respect and due credit - first, from the musicians who perform their work (I think here of a relatively recent orchestra commission where the composer was given billing far below a featured soloist, no headshot, no introduction or pre-concert talk - way to go!); secondly, from educators (and this is not accusatory to educators, but pleading for those who shape curricula); thirdly, from an investment by listeners and the general public; and, finally, from composers ourselves. It's hard to make listeners and audiences believe us, understand us, support us, tolerate our existence, and appreciate us when we have to explain exactly what it is we do in an almost-defensive manner. It's hard to justify our existences when a wide swath of Americans don't know we exist to begin with and are then skeptical of our cultural place.

I know I leave out a lot in this discussion, but something tells me we're not done discussing this yet. I am, right here and now, but as a culture, we've got some speaking yet left in front of us.

I would like, though, in the future, to have a conversation with someone new and not have to explain what it is that I do as a defense mechanism or to clarify doubt; I'd like to explain it meaningfully, beyond eradicating uncertainty, and allow it to just be part of my identity - and not a conversational or interpersonal liability.

***

1. But not in ways that force the composer to spend down the entirety of his savings account when, without the composer, there is no performer, and there is no audience, and there is no art.