sevenhelz

Asking people to listen to a piece of music takes some of their time, some of their life: the composer is stealing a little bit from the life of each listener. Is this the reason why contemporary music is so much less popular than the contemporary visual arts, which are certainly no easier to comprehend? While watching an exposition, the public maintains control of their time. If they don't like it, they can leave at any point. While with music, the composer's time is necessarily imposed upon the listener. This creates an enormous responsibility on the part of the composer.

This responsibility means that music can neither be purely experimental nor can it eliminate all elements of research. It should always provide interesting, and even new (daring though the word seems to us today) propositions, while remaining perceptible so that it can be received by the listener. This must be true even when the composer is looking for extreme novelty or complexity: somewhere there must exist a common ground where the composer and his audience can share an angle of approach.


 ~ Tristan Murail, After-thoughts