I am absolutely not suggesting that there is not a large, meaningful and potent research component among today's composers — only that today's research-junkie has acquired licence to impose this agenda, which underpins much good work, upon a diverse practice that may involve no such strong role for research processes. If composers are to be forced by their environment to reveal ever more ankle in their working process — as opposed to following their natural course of work, whether or not research-led — the result will only undermine the credibility of all components, engendering ever more pragmatic survival strategies.
I have no idea how such an inflexible status quo, increasingly intolerant of the diversities I set out above, has achieved this state of hegemony. I am not aware of any plausible intellectual or artistic rationale to support it, though some may exist. John Godfrey has pointed out that the orientation of composition to research rests on a massive institutional reluctance to trust and recognise new work as art: from that core lack of belief in an autonomous new music follow our plethora of commentaries, "supporting statements" and other precautionary back-up systems. If this were an arts-driven tendency it would be a tolerant one, allowing that some of us are clearly researchers into our own processes, some are occasionally so and some may never be — and under no pressure to be so.
The rigid mould of this research-eats-composition culture, however, far from embracing artistic diversity, reeks of lust for "accountable" systems of merit, since apparently the music itself, minus any ambassadorial credentials, cannot be reliably assessed qua art — good, bad or indifferent. Given the major role played by composition in current institutional research profiles, it feels very much as if composers face a stiff interview — in what for some is a foreign language — before they may sit down to the dinner, despite being encouraged nonetheless to empty their pockets once the bill arrives.
One wonders what the great men of Victorian English music, cloistered around our cathedrals and colleges, would have thought of a demand to explicate the "research content" of their works. They might have agreed with many composers today that anyone truly qualified to assess our music in important contexts will not need the new priorities of the "research agenda" in order to establish the merits of autonomous art works.
I have no idea how such an inflexible status quo, increasingly intolerant of the diversities I set out above, has achieved this state of hegemony. I am not aware of any plausible intellectual or artistic rationale to support it, though some may exist. John Godfrey has pointed out that the orientation of composition to research rests on a massive institutional reluctance to trust and recognise new work as art: from that core lack of belief in an autonomous new music follow our plethora of commentaries, "supporting statements" and other precautionary back-up systems. If this were an arts-driven tendency it would be a tolerant one, allowing that some of us are clearly researchers into our own processes, some are occasionally so and some may never be — and under no pressure to be so.
The rigid mould of this research-eats-composition culture, however, far from embracing artistic diversity, reeks of lust for "accountable" systems of merit, since apparently the music itself, minus any ambassadorial credentials, cannot be reliably assessed qua art — good, bad or indifferent. Given the major role played by composition in current institutional research profiles, it feels very much as if composers face a stiff interview — in what for some is a foreign language — before they may sit down to the dinner, despite being encouraged nonetheless to empty their pockets once the bill arrives.
One wonders what the great men of Victorian English music, cloistered around our cathedrals and colleges, would have thought of a demand to explicate the "research content" of their works. They might have agreed with many composers today that anyone truly qualified to assess our music in important contexts will not need the new priorities of the "research agenda" in order to establish the merits of autonomous art works.
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