Dear Jason Lewis,
My name is Chris Neiner, and I am a constituent of the second congressional district of Minnesota. My permanent residence is in central Burnsville, but I am temporally living in Bloomington, Indiana to obtain a Bachelor of Music (BM) in composition from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. I am writing to you because of a concern regarding our federal government’s interest in eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts. I strongly believe this action would disrupt the artistic legacy of our state. Growing up, I was very fortunate to live a state blessed with many artistic organizations, several of which receive funding through grants from the National Endowment for Arts. I had compositions of mine performed by the Minnesota Sinfonia and the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra, performed in chamber music groups coached by musicians of the St. Paul Orchestra, studied composition for free with Minnesota-composer Edie Hill through the Schubert Club composition mentorship program, heard the Minnesota Orchestra perform in their Inside the Classics series and Future Classics concert where they performed new music by up-and-coming young composers. Even with music aside, many students and I had school field trips to the Guthrie Theater for literature classes in high school. I could not be where I am today without the art opportunities and education available in our state. Today, these organizations and their programs continue to contribute to the educations of young Minnesota citizens and enrich the greater Minnesota community. Since 1998, over one thousand grants from the National Endowment for the Arts have been provided for art organizations in Minnesota. Twenty of these grants were for our congressional district. Beyond the organizations I have mentioned, grant recipients include, but are not limited to, Bloomington Theatre and Art Center, Carleton College, Northfield Arts Guild, Rural America Arts Partnership, Anderson Center and Sheldon Theater in Red Wing, Rochester Symphony Orchestra and Chorale, Rochester Art Center, St. Cloud Civic Orchestra, Chamber Music Society of St. Cloud, Mankato Symphony Orchestra, Bemidji Symphony, Children's Theater Company and School, Riverland Community College, St. Catherine University, Regents of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts, Minneapolis Pops Orchestra Association, Minnesota Chorale, Minnesota Opera, Minnesota Orchestra, Minnesota Public Radio, and the American Composers Forum. These grants provided by the National Endowment for the Arts have supported a variety of programs: a concert series featuring international performers, workshops brining elementary students to artistic professionals, productions of new plays by local artists, an educational music series of new compositions by significant American composers for middle school and high school bands, visiting guest lectures series, music festivals brining talented faculty to students, outreach activities for senior citizens and people with disabilities, the creation and distribution of historical, educational DVD materials, and financial support to preserve jobs endangered by declines in philanthropic funding in economic crisis, and more. You can find more information about grant recipients at the National Endowment for the arts website: https://www.arts.gov/grants/recent-grants Minnesota has an artistic legacy, one of the best in the nation. Please tell Washington to keep it that way. Arts programs and organizations in society have shown to increase civic participation and community engagement, and cutting funding for the arts goes against the goal of uniting America in this heated time. The National Endowment for the Arts poses almost no financial burden for the United States government. The total appropriation for the endowment was $147,949,000 in 2016. Comparatively, 0.0002% of the USA military budget (approximately $600,000,000,000). Very respectfully, Chris Neiner
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I hear of composers being criticized for not being “new” enough, but what does that actually mean?
A piece of new music, as I am concerned, is a composition composed no more than fifty years ago that has not developed a documented history/tradition or performance practice analogous to pieces of the Western Musical Canon (Brahms, Beethoven, Bach, Bartok, etc.) By that standard, any piece composed since 1966 is, to me, automatically new music. So what is this “new” enough critique? I don’t think it pertains so closely to music, but to sound. There is an expectation that newly composed pieces should incorporate new sounds, or sounds that are not exactly new, but have been neglected over time and gradually gained prominence into contemporary composers’ sonic vocabularies (i.e. sul ponticello, flutter tongue, inside-piano techniques, extreme instrumental registers, minor ninths, tone cluster, etc.) It seems dangerous to make new sound a mandatory requirement for music composed today. Making music pass a checklist for new sound would cause damage to artistic freedom, make new music less diverse, and encourage style favoritism. It might even make listening to new music boring; if each new piece must have prerequisite sounds for validity, we might have pieces that sound more and more alike. Now are these sounds alone a problem? No! I love these sounds! They’re just as unique as any other sound that Brahms or Bach could have used. Each sound has its own identity. If past composers were required to feature enough new sounds (new for their time) in compositions, much of Mozart and Brahms could have been discarded (save their taste for dissonances.) An entire tradition of sound would be lost. I think a composer should be more at fault than their sounds. With the unlimited possibilities of music, an original voice can be developed without requiring persistent new sound. I’d suggest criticizing a composer’s handling of material and not the material itself. Still, don’t think it’s wrong to encourage young composers to experiment with new sound. It is s a part of being well rounded in this century, to be knowledgeable of the diversity of sounds ready for you. Above all, sound has no motivation but to express vibrations. "Leave sound alone!" - Chris Crocker/Morton Feldman It’s inevitable that a composer’s music is going to be judged by many people. But when composers discusses whose opinion really matters, the conversation gets messy quickly. Should we care about the opinions of our colleagues? Should we care what are audiences think? What about the performers? Does any opinion beyond the composer’s deserve attention?
Ultimately, the answer is murky as the question: it depends. It’s up to composers to prioritize whose ears they care about, and much of that comes from one’s own values and personal experiences. As someone who has studied both horn performance and composition, I find that I rank the importance of judgement, from highest to lowest: Myself Performers Composers Audience members If I’m not satisfied by my music, how do I expect anyone else to be? If performers have to practice, rehearse, and present my music, shouldn't I consider their input meaningful? When my composer colleagues face similar challenges in writing high-quality, shouldn't I trust them? If an audience member takes the time to come to a performance of one of my pieces, shouldn't I inspire to make a piece worth his or her time? By Sister Corita Kent and John Cage
Rule 1: Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for awhile. Rule 2: General duties as a student - pull everything out of your teacher; pull everything out of your fellow students. Rule 3: General duties as a teacher - pull everything out of your students. Rule 4: Consider everything an experiment. Rule 5: Be Self Disciplined - this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way. Rule 6: Nothing is a mistake. There is no win and no fail. There is only make. Rule 7: The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It is the people who do all the work all the time who eventually catch onto things. Rule 8: Do not try to create and analyze at the same time. They're different processes. Rule 9: Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It is lighter than you think. Rule 10: “We are breaking all the rules, even our own rules and how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X qualities.” (John Cage) Helpful Hints: Always Be Around. Come or go to everything. Always go to classes. Read everything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully and often. Save everything - it may come in handy later. I’ve always been a big supporter of collaboration. When people come together, combing their talents and knowledge, the result can be spectacular. In this line of thinking, I organized a collaborative project, New Music for Horn, at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. The horn studio of Richard Seraphinoff performed a concert of music entirely by IU composers and recorded new music for horn ensemble, involving students of the composition, horn, wind conducting, and recording arts departments. Multidisciplinary creation! The highlight of the concert was a hot off the press set of horn octets composed by Marcus Redden, Paul Mortilla, Ábel Esbenshade, and Nic Chuaqui. For these pieces, the horn players were spaced around the audience, making a real surround sound experience. Other composers featured on the program were Will Rowe, Ari Fisher, Rob Esrock, Luke Acerra, and myself. Take a listen to our pieces at our channel: NewMusicforHorn2016 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2OC-6Gm-9SWux0SDA1BN-Q Thanks! :D Special thanks to: - Eleni Georgiadis (horn) for stepping in as a last minute substitute four our concert - Tiffany Galus (conducting) for her appreciation and enthusiasm for new music. I came to Feldman by way of academic research on his attraction to painting. Few composers could probably match Feldman’s enthusiasm for visual art. He was a huge supporter of abstract expressionism, a NYC group of painters that took the artistic world by storm in the mid-twentieth century. Their artistic values in individuality, experimentation, and non-traditional aesthetics aligned with Feldman who was introduced to several painters by John Cage. To Feldman, painting wasn’t only a source of fascination, it was an incredible inspiration behind his maturing musical creations. Feldman desired to emulate painting and painters in his compositions and in his own compositional processes. It was emulation to such an extent that Feldman would refer to his compositions as not just as music, but part painting. (Somewhere he believed between painting and music.) Reading though collections of his essays, lectures, an interviews, his approach to composition appeared in in my research. The more I read, the more I felt Feldman had been a composition teacher of mine; he captivated me with his approach to music. I love the way Feldman referred to form and technique as strategy. Strategy, as if composing was a game or puzzle waiting to be solved. Composition as game surely aligns with Feldman’s core belief in experimentation. Both games and experimentation require risk taking, a possibility of failure, and the development of creative methods to reach greater objectives. I’m loving Feldman’s viewpoint because he didn’t stick to the ages-old framing of composition as a meticulous pursuit of perfection. Individuality and exploration take greater value. As someone who has often struggled with perfectionism, I find this point to be a helpful reminder. Philip Guston - Zone c. 1953
Philip Guston was one of the major painters of abstract expressionism and Feldman's closest friend. |
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