What If They Went Deaf?

I'm still a little uncertain as to how the proposed description of 'academic' music might actually manifest itself? I mean, it's extremely subjective and based on how much experience you have with contemporary/experimental music. A lot of this 'anti-academic' attitude seems to be propelled by a number of suppositions, that composers write music through certain means and they're somehow self-aware of being allegedly uninspired and have the intentions of bewildering listeners for praise. As well as this, the persistent caricature of a mad scientist composer punching numbers into equations with the intention of bewildering the masses is a portrayal of what composers stopped doing for at least 30-40 years.

Personally, I'm just as skeptical of many of those composers highly regarded in academic circles, but perhaps being an 'academic' composer (though I guess whether I am or not depends on if you're prejudiced against improvised music that isn't triadic and whether or not you're willing to listen to my music more than once before speaking with conviction on whether it's 'meaningful') means that I am a bit more perceptive of what much of this music is about.

I fear this thread is heading (again) into the "tonal vs. atonal" (or "popular vs. academic" in this case) territory.... 

The cartoon robin posted actually describes my experience with a lot of new music concerts. There is a lot of cheap music out there and I happen to live in a city where the 'scene' often praises this kind of stuff. I just wanted to emphasize that there is a lot of good stuff to be found, if willing. There is nothing to gain from a 'tonal vs atonal' debate because these labels don't really serve to define camps anymore. 

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Really sorry guys...I guess this is the second one of these threads I've started. I should really just stop going on this website...

Lol, no need to apologize, and you shouldn't leave! Your original question was sound, but I guess we have a habit of steering things into that particular topic.

How does one learn without debate?  Don't worry about it.  No one has called anyone bad words yet or anything.  (:

Yikes, pate don't jinx it!

Anyway in an unprecedented move, I will reach waaayyyyyy back in the thread to the original question and simply answer that I think for people who compose music that's more "out there" (as you put it), it probably is much more clear to them how it should sound than you might think. This is just speculation since I'm not one of those guys, but here is what I think. Even though it may sound like it would be really difficult to decipher from paper and even more difficult just to get it from brain to paper in the first place, that may not be the case for the composer since they are more familiar with the mode of thinking (in whatever harmonic, timbral, or rhythmic terms that may be) that led to them composing as they do. I know it is more difficult for me to look at other people's work on paper and realize it in my head than it is to put down my own thoughts accurately. The same should hold true no matter what style one composes in.

I may be just running my mouth and not actually know what today's 'complicated' composers are thinking, so be prepared to disregard my thoughts when one of them strolls in and sets the record straight. Yet that is my answer, such as it is.

The origin question was predicated on the offensive, tired old argument that modern composers are not concerned with how their music sounds. That leads very naturally to modernist being offended and feeling the need to defend their artform yet again. In essence this thread is inherently another tonal vs atonal thread. If that is the sort of ignorance and dismissal of my culture you will continue to perpetuate I wholeheartedly support your proposed exodus.

"Why do we hate modern classical music?" http://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/nov/28/alex-ross-modern-classical-music

Really? I can't find anything offensive in the original post, so I don't know where you got that from. I'll admit that later posts were not so neutral, but boulez said nothing to earn your antagonism so you should not be so eager to see him leave. If you want to encourage anyone to leave (not that they would) it should be the others who actually spoke against your modernism. Or even me, since I did laugh at the cartoon. Whatever. Just take care to lay thine axe to the right tree.

I have no desire to lay an axe into anything. The OP seemed to be based on an assumption that was expanded upon in future posts. If my derision is unjust or derived from misunderstanding then obviously it is misplaced or invalid. I am tired of being dismissed as less of an artist and a musician by people who don't understand my taste.

Perhaps, with so many burdens, as far musical genres, that society has on it today, many people have become accustomed to styles and music that sound completely different from each other. Sure, many composers compose in "out-of-the-box" styles to differentiate themselves from others in order to spark unique creation. Many composers that compose music using the same "out-of-the-box" methods do it simply because they like it. I think we (and this is all of us), as composers care too much about what people think of our music in terms of taste, 'energy,' uniqueness, and just how it sounds. We forget that we're artists and sometimes artists have to say "screw it" to what others think, and just do what they do, if not for their own self-satisfaction, then for their art. I don't mean simply that we don't care, because we should care, at least somewhat, in order to gain an audience, but caring too much can lead us down a path of artistic self-destruction. Claude Debussy said, "Some people wish, above all, to conform to the rules; I wish to only render what I can hear. There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law." Just something to think about.

I'm not generalizing or whatever, but I've known a few cases in which a composer is more concerned about how the score LOOKS than how it SOUNDS. That is, his true artwork is visual rather than musical, even if such a work can still be performed.

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I just have a hard time grasping how these composers can write such complex, intricately beautiful orchestral music (music that nobody could dream of playing at the piano in order to give themselves an impression of how it might sound) 

A lot of dense passages in new music is probably conceived as a 'big picture'. Precisely identifying how musical lines interact with each from a rhythmic and harmonic standpoint becomes less important than how everything comes together as a whole.