I’m not sure that comparing the work of Susan McLary to phrenology is a sustainable discursive strategy, or that such a comparison is valid in the first place. The writing of histories really doesn’t operate in the same way as medical research, so to say that ‘research’ disputes McLary’s writing is to assume her work is presented as fact rather than as a challenge to the dominant narratives of the 70s and 80s.

Susan McClary’s wonderful article “Terminal Prestige” explains new music’s resistance (I like your way of putting it) to the audience. She says that for American composers after World War II, prestige depended on writing music that an ordinary person couldn’t understand. There was a time when a composer couldn’t get a teaching job without writing serial music. This connection between “difficulty” and prestige is no longer dominant (look at how popular and prestigious Glass, Reich, and Adams are), but it casts a long shadow over the field.

Thank goodness lots of musicians have escaped the shadow. I like your description of the way forward.

I haven’t bothered to keep count of the number of young avant garde composers/students who have proudly proclaimed, “Singers hate me!” when they talk about their music. I often think that the tendency to hostility toward singers both in contemporary classical music circles and related genres (70s progressive rock comes to mind back when they shared the “who cares if you listen” attitude) are related to their hostility toward the body. A singer’s instrument is after all, their body.

A couple of quick points:

*My* favourite kind of contemporary dance is work that is polyphonic (possibly more accurately, fugal) in its construction, and usually in ways that is not at all mimetic as regards the music (or really anything else) – more like a counterpoint of bodies. The dance doesn’t have to be *about* the music to be acting as a frame or illustration and so forth. And I would never consider that a single choreography was anything like the only possible framing of a work! Mimetic choreography, in my opinion, is the epitome of tedium. On a related note, I think your ideas and mine about illustration might have nuanced differences in this regard (good illustration does stuff that the text does not demand or reveal – again, in my opinion).

The lack of eye contact I was describing in the blog was the failure of the performers to look at *each other*. The fourth wall can be just as effective in a music performance as in a theatre performance. But if there’s no musical reason for the performers to *avoid* eye contact then it’s just weird (and, in fact, will tend to communicate social dislocation). In most new music concerts the performers have given absolutely no thought to physical considerations other than those relevant to sound production; if their performance is austere or flamboyant it’s more likely than not an accident of personality or time of day.

And regarding ontological privilege: I’d like to see an instrument play itself. No, wait, I didn’t mean I’d *really* like to see an instrument play itself… Um, well….

But yes, this does come down to philosophy. Music is a way of being human, not a way of escaping being human. Disagree with this proposition and you’ll probably be wanting translucence in your instrumentalists.

As for bodies, just because musicians are focussed on performing doesn’t mean they one need enter a discourse of the denial of bodily presence (they body’s still there, right?). One of the most riveting performances I have been to was one where the performers was completely focussed – and as it happens focussed on their printed parts – and gave the most intense performance of a 30 minute soprano+ensemble work. No audience eye contact. Everything was going into making an amazing sound, and crafting wonderful phrases etc… And that focus was incredibly exciting. (It was also finely honed and incredibly well rehearsed!) The radio broadcast lacked much of the excitement, because I couldn’t see the performers so engrossed in what they were doing.
But I’ve also experienced concerts were the performer tries to be as unobtrusive as possible, just there, playing what’s necessary, austere and bare. And that can also be a joy, since sometimes that’s all that’s needed. No histrionics, no trying to connect, just some sound. That’s how I want my Kondo, for example.

What I’m trying to get at is that I’m all for the approach that you favour, but not all the time. Sometimes it’s not appropriate. Sometimes a performer being illustrative, or talking to an audience seems wrong, distracting, and unnecessary. Sometimes it’s at odds with why the composition was written, and what the composition tries to do. Sometimes I just want my performers to get on with it; sometimes performers are really bad at speaking to an audience, and incredibly persuasive with their instrument/voice. And my questions are: what happens with them? How do they get an audience? (If I were feeling philosophically frisky, I’d ask about the ontological privileging of the performer over their ‘instrument’ and wonder how ‘instrumental’ instruments really are, and I might wonder what that means for a singer, for example.)