I am now feeling as though I was a bit hasty in yesterday’s criticism of Kyle Gann’s post, “Almost all is Vanity”. I was angry when I read it because it seemed to me that here was Kyle Gann, a successful composer, author, and educator – someone who’s shoes I’d love to be in – complaining about barriers to success. It came across to me a bit like someone who wants for nothing complaining about what he has, or complaining that such and such composer has more. And it’s true, to an extent, that Gann’s frustration essentially has to do with various lines of recognition (which he calls “markets”), as opposed to various lines of accomplishment, a fact that I still do find distasteful. His remarks about spending the rest of his time drinking scotch and smoking cigars particularly got to me. Pretty nice circumstances in which to throw your hands up in the air in disgust, I thought. Seems a bit more like resting on one’s laurels.

I was too quick, though, in dismissing the more essential point of the post, namely that composers of new music work really hard for very little recognition. Widespread public recognition is essentially off the table from the get-go, but recognition from critics and even one’s peers is hard to come by as well. Given the essentially non-commercial nature of the work a lot of us do, what keeps us going is the chance to have great ensembles play our music, to collaborate with (for example) a video artist we admire, even just putting out a record (leaving aside profiting from it), taking part in interesting festivals, getting to a point where we’re taking the gigs we want to take, not just every gig that comes along. I am at a point in my career where some of these things are just starting to happen for me. I have an amazing 22-month-old son, an incredible wife who does work that just blows my mind, and for the first time since starting a family, things are beginning to pick up for me, compositionally. From my perspective, in other words, the new music scene (and life, generally) is full of exciting potentialities, some of which are beginning to be realized. Gann’s perspective, though, which he fleshes out a bit in his responses to several commenters (I encourage you to read the whole thread), is totally valid, and is based on decades of experience I don’t have, so I should not have dismissed it. He writes in the comments, “I thought that with enough work, what Malcolm Gladwell calls a tipping point was going to arrive, at which time everything would be no longer uphill.” I can certainly identify with the upward-looking nature of being a composer in this environment. It is unbelievably oppressive, and I would imagine the higher one climbs, the harder that next rung is to reach.

One thing I consciously strive for (and it’s a different kind of striving – more inward – than striving for recognition) is to get to a point where I can compose entirely for myself. I of course don’t mean no longer interfacing with the rest of the music world, but writing the music I want to write because I want to write it, without thinking so much about what anyone else (audience or critic) will think about it. I’m convinced that whether the recognition comes or not, I’ll be happier if I’m able to do that.

In short, I do think Gann was painting with a bit of a broad brush, and that there is a lot that is gratifying in composing new music, but I wanted to offer a small mea culpa for painting his post with an equally broad brush.

[PS Thinking about all of this, it strikes me that maybe what we need when we get down about the tough lot we've chosen for ourselves as new music composers is Alec Baldwin's character from Glengarry Glen Ross, berating us: "Money's out there. You pick it up, it's yours. You don't, I got no sympathy for you. You wanna go out on those commissions tonight and compose, COMPOSE. It's yours. If not you're gonna be shining my shoes. And you know what you'll be saying - a bunch of losers sittin' around in a bar. 'Oh yeah. I used to be a composer. It's a tough racket.'"]