# 'Selling out'



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

In classical music, as in other types of music, composers who change their style or 'voice' in a radical way are often labelled by some people as 'selling out.'

It can be a change for that composer of using different techniques, or having a different aesthetic or philosophical stance, or even maybe reaching out to a different (maybe broader) audience.

In recent decades, its been linked with betraying some 'cause' (real or imagined, but basically ideological). The best example is *Penderecki* who went from his earlier experimental 'texture music' phase to a style that returned to tradition in terms of more unbroken melody and things like less fragmented counterpoint, etc.

But this is not new. & often it just speaks to 'sour grapes' by certain people that a composer has become famous, rich, successful. Eg. connecting with not only the classical music cogniscenti but just the general public, or 'the great unwashed.'

There is still a hangover of this on online discussions/reviews, but not that much. Eg. that *Stravinsky's *neo-classical period is no good compared to 'The Rite of Spring.' But hang on, the innovations he wrought in rhythm with 'The Rite' did not stop with that work. He took that through his subsequent works. Same can be said of Penderecki, he did not totally abandon the innovations he had wrought before going 'tonal' or whatever.

The other thing is that if as a composer you make a change, its a 'problem.' Eg. *Samuel Barber *had a huge hit with his 'Adagio for Strings' and after that, many people where kind of asking 'where's the sequel?' The answer is that Barber, like many composers, did not look at things that way. I agree, I see no use in just going through the motions to please certain listeners, a composer has to listen to his inner voice and just give us his unique vision.

Of course there are and where composers who did not see much difference between 'high' and 'low' art, so they neutralised the issue of 'selling out.'* Leonard Bernstein *was one, he was equally comfortable writing for the concert hall, as for musical theatre, as for film, across many genres both 'high,' 'low' and in-between. Indeed, 'West Side Story' started off as a musical but at the end of this life Bernstein made a recording of it basically treating it as an opera, with Kiri Te Kanawa and Jose Carreras in the main roles.

*So what do you think of 'selling out?'* *Is it an issue for you? *

Eg. Do you hold a position that a composer should not 'pander' to the wider public, or change style (esp. in terms of going back to tradition?). Or on the reverse, what if your favourite more 'accessible' composer becomes too 'radical' for your taste? Do you blame him for making certain artistic decisions?

*I'm looking for a broad and open discussion on these issues.*


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

I work with artists in the entertainment business, and they deal with this from fans all the time. When something is a hit, fans want it to stay the same forever... So do the executives in charge. But the creative people who actually make the stuff can't do that. Repeating themselves stops their artistic growth. What fans see as selling out is actually the opposite. It's an artistic necessity, even if the change isn't as god as the way it was.

Evolve or die.


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

I don't think its a particularly common thing. I like to give any artist the benefit of the doubt, and as long as they are making art that they want to make, that its art that resonates with them, expresses something they want to get out, I can respect that.


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## Toddlertoddy (Sep 17, 2011)

I hate new Penderecki. 

However, evolution is inevitable in music (most, if not all, have matured or changed somehow). If Bartok never changed, I would have hated his music.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Sid James said:


> In classical music, as in other types of music, composers who change their style or 'voice' in a radical way are often labelled by some people as 'selling out.'
> 
> It can be a change for that composer of using different techniques, or having a different aesthetic or philosophical stance, or even maybe reaching out to a different (maybe broader) audience.
> 
> [/B]


I think your first sentence does not quite capture "sell out" but your second sentence does (blue font emphasis). To me "sell out" is not just a radical change in style on its own, but it's a deliberate change targeting a broader audience for popularity gains (possibly amongst other things). I don't necessarily have a problem with my perception of "sell out" unless it was quite obvious that the artistic merits of the "sell out" piece was done at the expense of its artistic integrity, and the work will likely suffer in the longer run. Amongst the works from the greats, I can't think of consistent examples from a particular composer. I would not consider Stravinsky's neo-classical works as "sell out" because those pieces are still of very high artistic quality. Sometimes one reads similar suspicions on Rossini operas but the man was a genius and created works to entertain, and to make each oepra production a success to fill opera theatres, which were the normal business and artisitic practice of then and now.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Some interesting responses there.

I would add that I see 'sell out' as being attached to many things, and often its not the music.

To this, I add things like what Philip Glass said in an interview I read, referring to how some (or many?) in the classical music world saw him as kind of too simple and pandering to mass public taste when he did his first minimalist works in the late 1960's and 1970's.

Glass said that he admired the works of the likes of more radical composers of that time (eg. Stockhausen and Xenakis), but he said they were doing their stuff so well, there was not much the younger generation (Glass' generation) could add to that, or could do with that. I will try to find the quote. But what he's saying is that he and others like Steve Reich wanted to take a few steps back and explore aspects of things like rock, jazz, 'World music' and 'modal' music that where still there to mine, it was still a rich resource.

& of course, Glass and Reich, their generation matured during the era of the rise of rock n'roll and also things like bebop in jazz. They were more interested in that and not so much Webern and the European avant-garde, it held little allure or relevance to their needs as composers. Esp. as Americans, I think, with its melting pot of cultures.

Reminds me of a quote also by Stravinsky, probably said when he made the switch to neo-classicism, that he saw tonality as like an endless resource that he could be inspired by, and his inspiration would never run out. Of course later on he went into serialism, but again he didn't simply discard everything from before and start from scratch. Each composer has a unique fingerprint, so to speak, that goes through their entire output, despite all the changes.

Penderecki said a similar thing to Glass when making his change. Eg. that he had felt he'd exhausted all the directions of his 'texture music' phase and it was time to turn over a new leaf. I respect that and funnily enough I like some of his earlier works, some of his later ones, and am critical of things in both of his 'periods.' I just go by what I like, regardless of whether its in one of his periods or another.


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

I can only speculate, not knowing anything about opera, but I could imagine that this was a great temptation for opera composers. People like Mozart, Rossini, Verdi, Richard Strauss. Opera being the most popular genre of classical music (or isn't it?), and probably, at least in former times, the best way to make a living as a composer. Once you've had a hit, it must have been hard to resist the temptation of writing a similar one next, hoping for a similar success.

Personally, I think that the return to tonality of composers like Penderecki, Górecki and Pärt was a matter of spirituality.

I don't think any artist should cater to any particular kind of audience, big or small, mainstream or avantgarde. The artistic expression of oneself should be as honest as possible.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Andreas said:


> I can only speculate, not knowing anything about opera, but I could imagine that this was a great temptation for opera composers. People like Mozart, Rossini, Verdi, Richard Strauss.


Yes--not only a temptation but a requirement. The whole enterprise of opera is geared towards its audience. Part of this is due to the nature of the genre itself. One may write an opera just for the fun of it, but one does not stage an opera just for the fun of it. Considering what an expense the production is, the explicit goal is to get as many people as possible into the theater. Part of it also has to do with the history of the genre as well; up until the nineteenth century the primary audience for opera was elites, aristocrats, and (from the composers' perspectives) potential or actual employers, so dismissing the tastes of the audience would have been a bad career move indeed. Even into the nineteenth century, composers like Rossini and Verdi measured success in the good ol' "commercialized" way that people in the twentieth century have come to abhor so much.

For my part, I've never had a guilty conscience about composers wanting to reach wider audiences. I don't always like the results, but I don't fault composers for trying.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I'll have to admit, I've been bothered by what looks to be selling out. But sometimes you don't know until several years later that they were actually on the right track. I'm thinking of Miles Davis' Bitches Brew, which us highbrow high school jazz students sniffed at when it first came out. It turns out he was at the crest of a new wave; we just couldn't see it at the time. 

I have a friend with a 50-year rule regarding art: he doesn't listen to anything less than 50 years old, just because he contends it takes that long for the cream to rise and the dirt to sink to the bottom. It's tempting to follow him; it keeps you from looking foolish. But the rest of us have to sift through what's riding the latest wave and see if it resonates with us, and if it does, that's enough.


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

I have no illusions about myself. When it comes to music (regardless of the fact that I do play an instrument), I am a *consumer*. Maybe if there was a shortage of "product" available, I'd concern myself with who is doing what. As it is, if I don't like a particular piece, I just move on to another. I can't see that I have any right or reason to get upset at a composer for writing whatever he/she wants to.

Judging peoples' motives is a quagmire and hardly ever worth the time or emotion invested in it.


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

Manxfeeder said:


> I'll have to admit, I've been bothered by what looks to be selling out. But sometimes you don't know until several years later that they were actually on the right track. I'm thinking of Miles Davis' Bitches Brew, which us highbrow high school jazz students sniffed at when it first came out. It turns out he was at the crest of a new wave; we just couldn't see it at the time.
> 
> I have a friend with a 50-year rule regarding art: he doesn't listen to anything less than 50 years old, just because he contends it takes that long for the cream to rise and the dirt to sink to the bottom. It's tempting to follow him; it keeps you from looking foolish. But the rest of us have to sift through what's riding the latest wave and see if it resonates with us, and if it does, that's enough.


Or you can listen and discover the good music for yourself. Besides, just because something falls into obscurity really is no guerantee of a lack of quality. Just look at JS Bach. Or Antonio Salieri. I feel bad for your friend  He's really missing out on so much.


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## Very Senior Member (Jul 16, 2009)

Sid James said:


> *So what do you think of 'selling out?'* *Is it an issue for you? *


It has never bothered me in the slightest what twists and turns individual composers whom I admire took in their careers. This is because they probably only wrote the type of music they were relatively good at writing, enjoyed writing, and which they sensed their audience wanted. If they switched styles at various points in their careers, the reasons are probably a change in any of these circumstances, and this wouldn't be something that I would think of as "sellling out" in the way you appear to envisage it.

Of course, we may have preferred it if some of our favourite composers had written music giving greater or lesser weight to some genres, but it has to be remembered that it's probable that they felt that they had exhausted their creative abilities in that particular area and that better opportunities beckoned elsewhere. For example, an extra symphony may be desired by some people but the opportunity cost may be another work that was actually written instead which is possiibly better in quality and enjoyed by more people.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Manxfeeder said:


> I'll have to admit, I've been bothered by what looks to be selling out. But sometimes you don't know until several years later that they were actually on the right track. I'm thinking of Miles Davis' Bitches Brew, which us highbrow high school jazz students sniffed at when it first came out. It turns out he was at the crest of a new wave; we just couldn't see it at the time...


Its similar with the minimalists, what you describe re Miles. In Australia, the reaction to one of our earliest minimalists in the 1970's - Anne Boyd - was that during a premiere of a work of hers, a good deal of the audience apparently laughed out loud at how childish and simple her music seemed to them. Eg. that it was not following some established trend (eg. 'total serialism' which had a thankfully short period of being in vogue here, and promptly faded away). Now Boyd is on the senior staff of Sydney Conservatorium, which may well have been the venue of that premiere. Things change, don't they? I mean as to what is 'selling out' or just a bad change, to one that becomes establishment and accepted.



> ...
> I have a friend with a 50-year rule regarding art: he doesn't listen to anything less than 50 years old, just because he contends it takes that long for the cream to rise and the dirt to sink to the bottom. It's tempting to follow him; it keeps you from looking foolish. But the rest of us have to sift through what's riding the latest wave and see if it resonates with us, and if it does, that's enough.


Well your friend would not be able to come with me for concerts here, or listen to my recordings. Because I listen to a good deal of things from the last 50 years, or more accurately from after 1945. But I think people like you would enjoy what I enjoy, and you do judging from your posts here. So I disagree with that kind of thinking that shuts things out. I don't work like that, and I don't personally know anyone who does.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

It's ironic that a lot of rap albums deal with this same theme of selling out to the record companies.

Honestly I don't mind if the goods are good .


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