Dead Composers Society

Dead composers are the best. I am not trying to be reactionary or macabre here, but as things are in this imperfect world the composer — as a person — often casts a shadow over his own music.

Let’s admit it — while we live we composers (as many other folks) are caught up in the race for fame, money, popularity — and commissions. This brings out our less than exalted sides.

Our music may be beautiful and captivating, but unless we are worldly successful chances are good (that is, bad) that we are struggling to be heard, suffering from not being heard and trying all kinds of media tricks for getting into the pages of history.

We might try to be interesting by talking about our weird sex life, or suffering from this or that four-letter disease. We might ask a colleague to write the liner notes to our CD, praising us as if we were a new Beethoven. Sometimes we are so mercantile that the line between “composer” and “shopkeeper” disappears.

Or we might try to gatecrash the League of Great Composers, like this.

(Picture: Wikipedia.) It is bad enough to see Philip Glass on the list, but where did Shlonsky, between Prokofiev and Shostakovitch, come from?

These are some of the imperfect aspects of composers. Not to mention that we are often odd. Beethoven or Wagner would have a slim chance of borrowing a sofa in this couch-surfing world of ours.

Let the music talk for it self, we sometimes say, but for that the composer needs to dead. After death all worldly struggle, ambitions, suffering and hardships are gone. Only the best part, the music, remains.

However, I am not dead, so expect a bit more drama from me.