THE AUDIENCE
MUST
BE AN AMORPHOUS BLOB!
Brenton
Broadstock 1984
(Published in the Australian Music Centre's Magazine)
It is early writing and a bit of fun!
The
time has come the walrus said to speak of many things, of
shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and
AUDIENCES.
I do not write music for an audience!
What an uncompromising statement, but one which, for me, is
essentially true. Or is it?
I am a listener. I listen to my own music, so I must be
part of the audience (an audience being defined as an
'assembly of listeners'). Therefore I do write music for an
audience. I do consider an audience when I compose - an
audience of ONE - me!
It's impossible for me to take any other course. I am not a
salesperson. I flatly refuse to make my music a marketable
and malleable commodity, to be sold to the highest bidder
or shaped for a particular audience. To treat the audience
as a bottom-line measure of the quality and acceptability
of a piece of music is a foolish mistake. To treat an
audience as a collection of consumers is also a mistake.
Consumers, not surprisingly, consume! Then they dispose of
the waste. I do not want my music to be a waste product; it
is too important to me, I have poured too much of myself
into it. Therefore I try to aim for qualities beyond those
of mere short-term gratification and consumerism; the
essential quality being honesty, honesty of
self-expression.
I consider myself to be an artist, someone who attempts,
and often fails, to create something of durable value, of
intrinsic quality, expounding universal truths - as I see
them. Perhaps this is altruistic, noble, possibly naive -
so be it!
As a composer, as an artist, I MUST consider the audience
to be an amorphous blob - a receptacle for the sound world
that I am creating. Sometimes the receptacle leaks, the
audience is unresponsive, the music literally goes in one
ear and out the other! Sometimes - and when this happens
it's very rewarding - the receptacle retains the sound
world and even appreciates it. It is easy to be seduced by
the 'popularity', by the 'success' of the work, or the
performance, or the occasion. It is also easy to equate
this shimmering, ephemeral oasis of felicitation with
artistic quality, with worth, and to sit back in the easy
chair of creative complacency and accept the hearty slap on
the back and 'well done!'.
In spite of retention or leakage, I will still write the
same music - the music that I feel I must write.
The audience is an unknown quantity. If I knew who the
audience would be at a given place or time, such as the
premiere of a new work, do I phone them all, or send them a
questionnaire eliciting their responses to questions such
as: Do you like melody? Do you prefer A major or atonality?
How long do you think the work should last? What does it
matter what they think anyway!
What of later performances? Who will those people be? How
can I communicate with them all to find out what the
'average' likes and dislikes are? How do I consider an
audience for a national radio broadcast? Do I write for the
sailors of Snug, the Kooris of Kalgoorlie or the
dilettantes of Double Bay? How do I consider an audience of
Finns in Tampere or the Japanese of Sendai? It's absurd! I
don't, because I do not consider the reactions, the
preferences or the cultural context of an audience when I
am planning a work or when I am composing.
I do not write music FOR, but ABOUT my fellow human beings.
I want my music to be reflection of the way we live
together. To reflect struggle, disappointment, triumph and
my own concerns about the way we live. A reflection based
upon genuine humanitarian ideals and not middle class
political tokenism. This inevitably makes my music
emotional, intellectual, dramatic and eclectic and possibly
at times inconsistent - a true reflection of human nature!
It is sometimes palatable, sometimes eschewed, sometimes
ridiculed, sometimes loved - I wouldn't have it any other
way.
My music is not written to be deliberately perverse,
intellectually esoteric or because of feelings of social or
artistic superiority. I do not set out to alienate, as
composers did in the 1950s and 1960s, nor do I wish to woo
an audience with 'whizz-bang' music that instantly appeals.
I am not interested in being an evangelist for the cause of
contemporary music, feeling duty bound to undertake an
educational crusade to drag the audience screaming into the
1990s. There are already enough bigots, self-opinionated
zealots and myopic musical fascists to do this - if they
can.
If my music is 'audience friendly', that is not a cause for
wrist slashing or the gnashing of artistic teeth, it is
simply a happy coincidence and an artistic cross that I
will have to endure. What I write is me, an honest
reflection of me as a composer, as an artist, as a human
being. It is, unashamedly, my view of the world, full of
biases, prejudices and errors, as any view will be. It may
be that no one cares about my view, and I am not that
presumptuous to think that my view has any relevance or
validity to anyone, but that won't deter me from wanting to
write music, the way I want to write it - unpolluted,
unimpaired and undiluted.
To the amorphous blob, I say sorry that I do not consider
you when I compose. Here is my music, warts and all, take
it or leave it!
©1984 Brenton Broadstock