Composer’s Input Outputs Music

It is one thing to search for events that will produce the sound one wants, and quite another to discover the sound of the events one wants. In the first case the wanted sound renders desirable the necessary events; in the second the wanted events are the standard for the desirability of the resulting sound. These are not only two different approaches to the composition of music, but also two different political attitudes. Even if it should be true that the great masters of the past only rarely considered political and social issues as criteria influencing their musical decision taking in composition, this truth should not simply be trusted. The actual concern of composers for their contemporary environment is usually less known than suspected. By now, many phenomena that until recently had been attributed to human frailty, to fate, or even to the laws of nature, have been recognized as issues of political and social rather than individual and natural significance. Certainly no reliable documentation exists proving that composers remained uninfluenced by these issues, as they appeared to the composers in their day, whether the composers knew it or not. All one is allowed to conjecture is that the less composers knew of the influence, and the less they considered it, the more they became unconsciously dependent upon it. The recent wave of growing awareness among artists and young people of the intrinsic unpleasantness which the systems we are caught in pour out over us with increasing generosity, is an augmented version of the similar wave 150 years ago. It should delight the protesting intellect to contemplate the possibility of an amalgamation of a twentieth century romanticism with the functional changes brought about by the existence of high speed electronic computers. For it would look promising, almost reassuring, if for once in history an attempt were underway to couple the newest ideas for a better world with the latest knowledge about its potentials. Not surprising then that a few composers are beginning to look for answers to the following two questions: