If you don't get feedback from your performers and your audience, you're going to be working in a vacuum.
From Peter Maxwell Davies
The present government is very insistent that business sponsorship should replace government sponsorship of the arts. Business sponsorship won't happen unless you make tax concessions, which they won't.
I'm obviously very keen on the theater and I think it's inevitable that some of the orchestral and chamber pieces have got dramatic elements which might even suggest an unspecified dramatic plot of some kind or other, even though it's not in my mind at the time.
If you're writing a piece for the Boston Pops, the balance is towards one end. If you're writing a piece for a chamber music society, then it's towards another point. I won't make a final answer on that. I think it changes with every piece.
If you aim at anything lower that is expecting your audience to be really alert and aware, then you're going to be caught out sooner or later as a composer.
You can't pander to your audience. You might in the short term, but ultimately you can't hoodwink them, either.
I recently did a piece for the Boston Pops and John Williams, and I hope that it's as well a composed piece as I've ever done for any other medium or occasion.
The demands are related to their questing of the best possible out of the people concerned. It's this going for the highest possible factor that I'm very concerned about.
You don't underestimate either players or audience in any circumstances.
What they can expect always is that they're going to be made to think.
3 perspectives
2 perspectives
1 perspectives