Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote:
At 08:41 AM 2/4/05 -0500, dhbailey wrote:
they look for that good old mix of dissonance and consonance where the composer builds the tension masterfully and controls the release, so that the audience feels good at the end.
Let's mix it up some more! :)
There have been some pretty intense commentaries about this tension-release technique being sexually analogous and gender-specific, and that in recent years, women composers have emancipated their writing from the build-to-climax model implicit in harmonic and architectural tension-release, and that women listeners are drawn to the sound of the newer paradigm.
This viewpoint was expressed to me by a younger composer (mid-20s) who was, how can I phrase this, 'sad but understanding' about her talented older colleagues' capitulation to the male compositional model, and was happy to see her contemporaries had set it aside.
You mean to tell me that men are the only participants in a sexual encounter who enjoy it? Come on, now, Dennis. That's not been my experience! Why does the sexual analogy of the tension-release have to be from a male point of view? I know of several women composers, one of whom I know is older than me (I'm 52) and I'm not sure about the others, who write music in the tension/release mode and their music is quite well received by the audience, not just the male half of the audience.
I'm delighted that composers feel they can write using dissonances anyway they want to -- it really is no skin off my nose, as long as they know why their audiences have abandoned them.
It's got nothing to do with gender (maleness or femaleness of the composer) and everything to do with providing the audiences with experiences they enjoy.
When I have tried to program music with my community band and before that with my community orchestra, the resistance has come equally from males and females, old and young. Those who have wanted to continue working on the music have equally come from both males and females, old and young.
Gender's got nothing to do with it, at least in my experience. Schoenberg was a male and he pioneered (or was pivotal, anyway) in the abandoning of the tension/release model of composition, and hatred of his music seems to come equally from males and females, so I don't see how you can say it's a gender issue.
But if you wish to look at it that way, feel free. You have had more of your compositions performed in far more important places than I have, so you obviously are more in tune with what's important.
But there's got to be a reason that so many people flock to country and pop/rock, with their heavy reliance on the old tension/release model of composition (both male and female composers in those genres use that model to great advantage and financial success and audience acclaim) instead of non-pop, where it has gotten increasingly difficult to find that tension/release model in newer compositions. And those who do flock to the non-pop world are always looking to hear the older compositions written in the tension/release model.
Nature or nurture? Nobody knows for sure.
-- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
