Hi Peter,

I see that youre an Anglican and own a Burmese cat (if cat ownership is even a possibility!). Both of these
things are applicable to me too though Im not your typical Sydney Anglican Calvinist or Anglo-Catholic
(being more a somewhat feisty Anabaptist!); and my younger cat Bozo is mixed-breed with a significant
amount of Burmese in him.

You have also written quite a bit for marimba, Peter. Are five-octave instruments readily available in South
Africa? (They are increasingly so in Australia or at least here in Sydney.) The country best endowed with
marimbas seems to be Japan: when I was there in 1990, I saw a contrabass marimba, possessing bars
pitched down to the pianos lowest A. Amazing!

Out of curiosity, a few years back I had a composition student at the University of Sydney, around about your
age, originating from South Africa, named Murray Robertson (a.k.a. Robertson Fox). Do you know of him?
Alas, hes not on Facebook.

Anyway, Id like to respond detailedly point-by-point to a couple of things on the Reflections page from your
website:

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1. New music every piece of music is new, unless the actual notes were stolen. ... So every piece is
original, although probably not every style is. There is no problem with that.

This is true, of course but only trivially so. There is a problem, an ETHICAL problem, when out-and-out
pastiche (devoid of any personality or individuality beyond those of its basis-musics) is being foisted on the
public as new. Why? Besides ripping the public off and misleading it with counterfeit art, such work
consumes valuable resources that might otherwise be spent on the music of real composers who possess
talent and imagination; such emperors-new-clothes new music adds NOTHING to culture, and is indeed a
negative, a distraction, just more crap for the junk-heap of history.

2a. So what is passed off as new music probably means the inevitable added gimmicks, trinkets of
trendiness, trivial distractions, and poverty of real imagination that characterise so much of what passes for
the new.

Maybe; maybe not. History shows us that at any given time, 90% or so of the music being penned then is
crap, fit for a well-deserved oblivion. Throughout the 20th-21st centuries, this is complicated by (a) the
museum culture, archiving everything (scores and recordings), and (b) the hitherto-unprecented vast gamut
of musical styles and contexts.

2b. ... All it takes to believe that it is really new is a poor knowledge of history or a faulty memory probably
both.

Or the very polar opposite: a truly broad and deep repertorial knowledge in conjunction with a good memory.
It all depends upon who is making the pronouncement of novelty...

3. ... Every Haydn minuet is original, but the great man didnt change his language and style for each
minuet.

Sure. And, even though many composers evolve at various rates throughout their working lives (look at the
protean Stravinsky!), I see no reason why any composer possessing an authentic composerly voice should
be obliged to change style in lockstep with prevailing fashions. I sure as hell havent (for starters, that would
involve lowering my IQ by about 100 points); fashion can kiss my arse if anything, Ill drive it! Indeed, I am
deeply suspicious of chameleonic composers, who change styles like clothing. Real composers whose
music reflects the way they tick have no choice but to forge a music that is THEM.
4a. The problem with the so-called new music is that it is usually so denuded of any real content that it can
only survive in its own ghetto, alongside others of its ilk.

See my response to 2a above (i.e. maybe; maybe not). On the subject of ghettos, although I cant speak for
South Africa, these days ALL art-music perhaps, indeed, ALL music lives in a ghetto throughout much of
the world. And this art-music ghetto is getting ever smaller and shabbier on account of the toxic flood of
brain-dead, soulless demotic aural sewage, much of it spewing forth from the U.S.A. (en passant, I am not
thinking of jazz in this regard, which these days is hardly demotic, and has its very own ghetto). That there
are sub-ghettos within the art-music ghetto cannot be denied; jazz is really one of these; the early-music
scene another; Classical, Romantic, and pre-1945 musics yet three more. World culture is nowadays
infinitely fractured: I dont much like ghettos either, but one must accept the present-day cultural reality of
near-universal, almost-mutually-exclusive ghettoization. Therefore, it is unfair to stigmatize new music
alone as being a ghetto-dweller.

4b. ... So let the GOOD new music come out of the ghetto and take its place in the common repertoire on
the concert platform.

Given whats just been said, this is increasingly a pipe-dream albeit an aspiration that I share with you.

4c. ... Has anything really worthwhile come out of IRCAM?

Yes: besides computer software, at least Boulezs Repons, and the electroacoustic music that Harrison
Birtwistle has incorporated into his opera The Mask of Orpheus. Both of these works have been widely
hailed as masterpieces, and I unreservedly concur with that sentiment.

4d. ... In that particular environment its poverty is not immediately apparent, but place it alongside
Beethoven, Mahler, Stravinsky, Messiaen, Berg, and its worthlessness is cruelly exposed.

Not so for the two abovementioned compositions in my opinion.

5a. [New music performers] And so we come to the specialists of new music. They have their mission no
doubt, but I am deeply suspicious of it.

Are there really that many new music specialist performers, proportionally speaking? Without exception, all
of the numerous performers I personally know who play new music including myself, plus quite a few
prominent international figures play earlier repertoire as well, and/or music from other genres (this being
thoroughly commonplace in the recorder world). Youve made a straw man here, Peter. But lets for the
moment assume otherwise. I say: SO WHAT? Do you expect all early-music specialists to be able to play
Brian Ferneyhoughs music (I can think of one or two who do, actually, but they really are a tiny minority), or
Messiaens? Its reasonable to expect good musicians to be capable of crossing some stylistic and/or genre
boundaries, but total eclecticism is a bridge too far: high quality is what counts.

5b. ... I know the Kronos Quartet have commissioned and presented a great deal of new music. But I am
not going to rush out to buy their recording of a late Beethoven String Quartet for two reasons: they have not
(will not/cannot) do it, and probably every other recording would be better.

Though Im no great fan of the Kronos Quartet (who I dont think are truly top-flight musicians), this is not a
reasonable presumption, Peter. Seek and ye might find. A better candidate for your (I contend erroneous)
point would have been the Arditti Quartet, really marvellous musicians who have played and recorded
extremely hard-core new music the Ferneyhough and Carter string-quartet oeuvres, for instance; but Im
fairly certain their repertoire is not restricted to just this sort of thing. Ditto the LaSalle Quartet, who
commissioned and premiered the Ligeti String Quartet No.2 (1968).

5c. ... And we have quite a few new music specialists around, even in South Africa. They hide under
prepared or otherwise mutilated pianos and cower behind electrified cellos.
Now youre really being an old fogie, Peter! Prepared pianos and electrified / amplified cellos? These things
have been around for decades (centuries in the case of the prepared piano, actually [check that fact out for
yourself!]). Whats in the slightest problematic about these fertile sound-resources, particularly given that the
former has quite a large repertoire of beautiful music written for it? And please forgive my bluntness to
insinuate that preparation of a piano is some type of mutilation is SHEER IGNORANCE on your part: read
Richard Bungers book The Well-Prepared Piano and youll LEARN otherwise; this text shows you how to
prepare a piano properly without even detuning it! Additionally, its a well-known fact that John Cage often left
pianos hed prepared in better condition than when he found them!

Of course its your right to dislike these instrumental resources, to find them contrary to your own composerly
palette. But its another thing entirely to condemn them outright!

* A footnote to my response to 5c which I accidentally left out: If youve ever written for muted strings or
muted brass (these go right back to Monteverdi) and undoubtedly you have then it has to be
acknowledged that these instruments too are prepared (my recorder preparation is somewhat analogous to
such muting). Do you therefore regard such stringed or brass instruments as being mutilated thereby
and not fit for usage (despite others doing so for centuries)?

5d. ... The ghetto is secure. They let no one in or out except of course the composers that they love (and
who love them).

The falsehoods herein have been exposed above.

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Thanks for you patience, Peter. I hope you are not stung by what I have imparted here; it isnt my intention to
upset you but, rather, to proffer thought-provoking counterarguments.

If youre interested in acquiring any of my music, just ask! Youll need to tell me your e-mail address so that I
can forward scores and recordings to you electronically.

Kind regards,

(Dr) Ian Shanahan.

PS: I largely agree with you about software like Finale and Sibelius. Many particularly younger
composers seem to forget that these are score engraving programs primarily, and compositional tools a
distant second!

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Peter Klatzow 21 March at 04:21 Report

Youll forgive me, but I really dont think we inhabit the same planet, so I am not responding. Good luck.

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Ian Shanahan 21 March at 13:38

Well Peter, we are on the same planet actually, but just inhabiting different eras (not merely distinct
timezones!). I do hope you catch up to mine sometime. Good luck to you too.

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Peter Klatzow 21 March at 14:29 Report

A little arrogant dont you think? I doubt if any further interaction would be beneficial to either of us.

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Ian Shanahan 21 March at 15:29

No and, ... I disagree!

Frank Lloyd Wright: One mans arrogance is anothers realism.

Well, I do know that my intentions towards you were and are friendly, Peter... You are indeed a brother in
Christ. But Im no diplomat. Reciprocally, I could accuse you of arrogance in ignoring my initial, neutral
questions (marimbas, former University of Sydney student from South Africa) and my responses to your own
home-page pontificating; but I wont. Id rather that you ponder my remarks (most particularly about prepared
pianos etc.). Anyway, Im still prepared (no pun intended!) to e-mail you some of my work starting with a 1
mp3 file of my Lingua Silens Florum study. You might be pleasantly surprised... What have you got to lose?
And consider it a test of your open-mindedness... (But I will need your e-mail address. Dont fret, Im not
some nutter or cyber-stalker...).

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