Most new works these days come with evocative titles and explicit extra-musical programs. Why?
Giving pieces evocative titles and programs — writing tone poems — is a way of meeting the listener halfway. Individual composers can’t singlehandedly address the structural issues facing the entire arts ecosystem, but they can throw out a buoy all the same: This is how this music means for me; perhaps it will mean that way for you, too. In this way, a title is a generous act, an expression of hope that someone out there is not only listening, but trying to understand.
latest $10+ newsletter is now live! thinking thru some questions about the present-day preponderance of tone poems on the US contemporary music scene. click on over and give it a read if that sounds of interest!
