When Andy Warhol was asked what is so nice being famous, he answered that when he opened a magazine or newspaper he could just look at any photo and article and it is about a friend (or enemy) or someone he knew of . Well, I think that's my reason why I wanted to be a musician : one day I suddenly found out that I am just listening only to all my friend's music (although it's not the case when I am turning on the radio and a popsong blared out). Now it goes even worse : I am only PLAYING and RECORDING my friends' music .
Can you imagine living in the 1940s, where Benjamin Britten, Alberto Ginastera and those fantastic composers were still alive and yet writing their greatest works? Of course at that time there were no internet, and you can't just write to shosty@yahoo.com (oops, I hope this email address doesn't exist) to write to your friend the great Dmitry . But then imagine if you were living in the 1960s, when you can't have any composers as your friends, otherwise you just listen to horrible music. Imagine being friends of Luigi Nono, Giacinto Scelsi or those noisy people. Well, you might not even know their names. You don't miss anything, don't worry. Well, of course you can be friends with the Beatles, whose music has made the world a better place. Hey, in fact I've made friends with Tristan Fry, the percussionist (now in LPO) who did some recordings with the Beatles in the 1960s. Very nice man. Tristan, if you read this, just to let you know that our first meeting in Barcelona earlier this year was really memorable. And very nice playing with you together.
Anyway, it's nice living in this period we are living now. The "arty" composers are again allowed to write beautiful music, and it's nice to have conversations about "Olly's (Knussen) newest piece, or Peter's (Sculthorpe) premiere of orchestral work". Who can prohibit them now to do it ? Boulez is half dead, Stockhausen has become a mad old fat guy, both are not composing contemporary music anymore (well, perhaps contemporary, yes, but is it music ?) ...what a useless life they have had eh ? Certainly they cannot claim that they have made the world a better place. One can now understand how great and BRAVE are those composers like Britten, Shosty, Tippett, Copland, Takemitsu, even people like Peter Sculthorpe. OK, ok, he lives in Aussie, and quite detached from all those intellectual European babblings about how your music should be difficult and inaccessible and to "epater les bourgeouise". But still ....
I wrote this just because I read an article by David del Puerto in the "El Rapto de Europa" magazine which I think is brilliant. Among others, he said that "a work doesn't become great just because many people like it, but if it is bad, NOBODY likes it". Well, the problem with those snobs is that they DON'T like what they hear, but are afraid to admit it. They even could sit still for hours pretending that they got a HUGE orgasm from listening to plink ...plonk.....whzzzzzzz.... blip blop .....tacatacata .... uuuiiiii ......
