Wallitner Weekly 9
Hello everyone!
A lot of productive things happened this past week.
This week was finals week for some of my college level theory students. I taught a lot of music theory, which was a blast! I am always happy after teaching a lesson because I know that I helped someone learn.
Since we are approaching the end of the school year I have been making a lot of virtual ensemble videos this week. Everything from stitching together talent show videos to putting together 50 person choir performances.
I am grateful to be busy working, but I am also very excited for summer break.
I have a lot planned for next week too!
I am still working on that song of hope. I’m compiling my list of words, so if you have suggestions please reach out. I think I have a pretty cool idea for some motifs and other thematic material, but I feel like there are more words and feelings that I could use.
The first half of next week is when the videos I am making are due, but after that I will be turning my attention to marketing and releasing as much music theory content as I can. I have been distracted by deadlines and other work as of late, but I’d really like to make progress on this theory curriculum I have written.
Do we create for the audience or do we create for ourselves?
Earlier this week I met with an old friend over zoom. We had decided to exchange stories (He writes short stories and I write poems). And then we went back and forth with our ideas and thought processes and views about art. The conversation lasted about three hours and was the most cathartic, creative, exciting conversation I have had in a while.
Through the course of our conversation we came across an age old question. Do we make art for ourselves or for an audience? This is a tough one to answer. On the one hand, if I don’t write something that appeals to you (The reader) then I don’t make money and don’t get to keep writing. On the other hand if I don’t write something appeals to myself (The author), then I don’t really want to write it. That balance between appeasing the audience and the author is a thin line for most people.
This friend of mine who writes short stories is a lover of the Avant-garde. The Avant-garde inherently does not appeal to the masses. So how does one write a story that appeals to those Avant-garde sentiments in a way that the average person would enjoy? I won’t pretend to have an answer, but I do have a story.
A not-so-long time ago, there was a boy named Chris. Chris was a college student studying music composition. He learned about many different types of music. Whether it was jazz, symphony, opera, choir, experimental, or pop he loved it all. However, Chris is the only formally trained musician in his family. This meant that when he came home and told tales of composers like Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern and how they formed the Second Viennese School of Music with their unique approach to harmony, his praise fell on deaf ears. You see, these three composers departed from “traditional harmony”. There was no longer a doe, a deer, a female deer, or a ray, a drop of golden sun. That was replaced by serialism and tone rows.
This style of music quickly gained an elitist reputation. Schoenberg even said, “If it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art.” Chris, as naive as he may have been, wanted to write a piece in this atonal/tone row style that his family would like. It became the ultimate puzzle. A true oxymoron. He wanted to write in a style that is widely regarded as an elitist music, in a way that the masses would enjoy. It came in the form of a trumpet concerto that his friend who happens to write short stories agreed to play.
That is the story of how I wrote one of my favorite pieces of music. I am not sure which part of the process I enjoyed more, the academic challenge of writing a piece using a tone row, or the practical challenge of making it listenable. I know it is not an answer to that age old question of “do I write for me or for my audience?”, but I think that that question is a losing battle. A better question is “How can I write something that both myself and my audience can enjoy?”. If we as creators and dreamers seek to learn from, educate with, and be inclusive with our creations, I think being an artist would be that much more fulfilling. Not to mention, it isn’t any fun to tell a story to an empty room.
