Death of an American composer

william osborne says:

The appreciation by Ed Harsch is a bit too polemical in my view, and very characteristic of NewMusicBox. As an example, Mr. Harsch notes Duffy’s “experience as a composer in a broad range of marketplaces gave him a tactile understanding of creators’ economic value. He was an Emmy-winning composer for TV with deep experience in music for the theater as well as the concert hall.”

That observation is used to stress that composers in the USA are now to be “entrepreneurs” and enter the “marketplace” – a philosophy that has become an almost fanatic orthodoxy for “New Music USA” and its webzine “NewMusicBox.” The larger political goal is to promote commercialization as a postmodern/neo-liberal riposte to Europe’s systems of public arts funding. In many respects, the stance is fundamentally reactionary.

Unfortunately, there is little evidence that contemporary classical composers can make a living in the marketplace – and the philosophy’s proponents notably provide none. Nevertheless, the pressures to find a place in the market have resulted in a contemporary classical world that is increasingly isomorphic with the superficial, one-dimensionality of much commercial music. This approach has also resulted in the further suppression of more complex forms of art in the USA.

There is also an irony in the claim that this entrepreneurial and commercial approach to art music makes the new music community more tolerant. In fact, as with all orthodoxies, the opposite is true. NewMusicBox has become a bully pulpit for this postmodern/neo-liberal philosophy. John Duffy was indeed a tolerant man and artist, which is exactly why his memory should not be exploited to promote the relatively narrow philosophies and neo-liberal political agendas of New Music USA and NewMusicBox.