Lifeolga

There is very often the question of existence for today's music. How can contemporary music exist at all when lots of concerts/festivals/projects were closed down, because "there is no money", which is a sad repetitive "song"?

Here is the story of a group and their manifesto which shows to me that something should be changed, and musicians should find new solutions:

Please, feel free to write your comments or to share your story too...

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COMPOSERS' MANIFESTO
GERARD PAPE
CIRCLE FOR THE LIBERATION OF SOUND AND IMAGE (C.L.S.I.)

re: Project TEMPUS FUGIT CONCERT on ULULE website

Contemporary music composers of the world unite ! You have nothing to lose but your government subventions !! For the longest time, you have been treated like rats, that is, fighting for the little crumbs that the government has thrown you. This competition amongst composers for direct government, and/or government sponsored festivals, funding for commissions or performances, always sought in a spirit of cut throat competition, has created a hierarchy among the rat composers: some higher, some lower, but, nonetheless, all in the same boat, that is, when push comes to shove, it's every rat for himself, and if the funding boat is sinking, the rats will all abandon the sinking government/festival ship, trying to find another to replace it.

Having been one such rat myself in the past, reasonably well fed for some 16 years as director of Les Ateliers UPIC/ CCMIX (1991-2007), I would say that, in the best case scenario, while the government support lasts, the composer(s), myself included, are a bit like pigs all eating at the public pig trough. In the end, you pay for this pig money with a loss of freedom. If you don't play the political game correctly, or if you have enemies that are stronger than you, then you are out. You become, once again, another isolated starving rat, for there is no one who is going to offer you any more crumbs, and certainly, never again, will you eat at the public funding trough of pig composers!

For some years now, in France, but elsewhere as well (Germany, Italy, U.K. etc.), the government has been threatening to take away all public funding for the arts. Contemporary music funding, even if its support is miniscule, is similarly threatened. No one can deny this trend. For the largest institutions, as well as the very smallest, the writing is on the wall. There will come a time, most likely in the next 20 years, when there will be little or no government funding left, and ,very likely, only the very largest, most venerable institutions will be funded at all. The trend towards a limited, very centralized type of government funding is clear and already taking place.

What is the solution ? Is there anyway for composers of contemporary music to survive at all given this devastating trend ?

Since 2008, I have founded a group called the C.L.S.I. These intials stand for CIRCLE FOR THE LIBERATION OF SOUND AND IMAGE. Why did I choose this name ? For two reasons: 1) It was Varèse who called for the liberation of sound itself as the new material for contemporary music composition. He was the one that called for an end to the predominance of equal tempered music and asked for new instruments to be built: the very ones that have become the basic tools of live electronic and computer generated musics of our time. 2) Varèse also said something else that had more political overtones: that the composers of his generation refused to die, that they would continue to fight for their right to have their music performed and heard.

The C.L.S.I. is a collective of composers each working with the others in symbiosis. Their is no "head composer", even if I am, nominally, the artistic director. Each composer proposes a work for laptop ensemble alone, or some combination of voices, instruments and live electronics, which is to be played by the whole or some part of the ensemble, including the composer, him or herself. Each composer writes in their own individual style, in their own individual notation. Each is free to propose his/her music to the group, but each also takes their responsability to play in the works of the other composers. There is no monetary remuneration for playing in the group as such. The majority of our concerts since 2008 have been played without the members of the group being paid with only a few exceptions.

This way of doing things has worked to some degree, though, it has its limitations. Since we are not paid, all of us have other "jobs", other ways to "earn our living" (It was Marcel Duchamp who pointed out the idiotic nature of an artist "having to earn his living" !). So, what is the alternative to this sad state of affairs which permits us to only rehearse when we use our very limited vacation days, "days off" earned by "working" at our "day jobs" ?

In the last few years, the concept of "crowd funding" has developed. Sites such as "KickStarter" in the U.S.A. and "ULULE" in Europe have been successful in raising money for music, arts, theater, cinema, etc. Contemporary music funding is still quite new. There has been announced on ULULE, for example, a fund raising drive for my 60th birthday concert in Rome on March 1st, 2015. This concert is being produced by an Italian association called "ORPHEE". Like many others in Italy, they have no government support and can only produce very limited projects, such as my concert, which is why they attempt to raise the small sum of 2000 euros, none of which, by the way, is going to me, only to pay small musician fees, transportation and hotel.

I am writing to all of you who love contemporary music to not only support this project for my 60th birthday, but a whole host of projects that C.L.S.I. will be producing in 2015 and beyond: a concert in April 2015 in collaboration with the composer/pianist Thollem McDonas and the composer/saxophonist Yochk'o Seffer; a summer festival that will include the world premier of an opera by Olga Krashenko; a concert of music for vocal ensemble and electronics with works by Rodolphe Bourotte and Lissa Meridan; a concert plus CD recording of C.L.S.I.'s unique "computer" versions of Stockhausen's PROZESSION and KURZWELLEN; a concert with the theme of Action Painting uniting sound and image proposed by Martin Phelps; a concert of works for 8 laptop computers by Jean-Baptiste Favory and Michael Kinney...

The future of contemporary music is with composer collectives such as the C.L.S.I. Indeed, the C.L.S.I.
want to liberate sound and image, but we also want to liberate composers from the humiliating position of either being starving rats or well fed pigs.

Composers need to be free to compose their best music. Government funding, as long as it has lasted, has always come with strings attached. Writing commercial music for film, television or advertisement has always hopelessly divided the composer between his "music to earn a living" and his "real" music. Having a "day job" leaves the composer with little time or energy to compose. The sad example of Charles Ives teaches us that the composer who takes this route risks to have to choose impossibly between his music or his life.

In brief, we at C.L.S.I. will be asking you the fans of contemporary music, not so few when the whole world is counted, to join us in our series of fund raising drives that will help our composers to realize their right to not only survive, but also to have their music heard under dignified conditions.

Fans of contemporary music unite in funding the music you love ! You have all to gain in helping this music you adore survive and even flourish as, even a modest amount given by each of you, with rewards given to you for each contribution that you make, will add up to the "modest" sums necessary for the C.L.S.I. composers to accomplish their musical and political missions, that is, to not only create their musics, but to give a good ethical example to other composers and artists. Sharing and helping one another for the sake of a cause greater than oneself (in this case Music) is always the best way to obtain a "real" and lasting success !!!
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Key

Who gives a fuck?

Zhanteimi

tl;dr

Machine

Yup

__________________
boost my ego

listen to me stroke my delay pedal

ever wanted to hear death grips songs... but they're acoustic? me neither.

Rexx Shredd

It was also Marcel Duchamp who put a men's urinal on a pedestal and called it "art"........

__________________
OK :)

URBAN SHOKKER -- Old School P-Funk Style FUNK -- out NOW on Carbon 12 Records

Trollheart

How else is an artist supposed to live? Why should they not work for a living? Or am I misunderstanding here (your initial post was indeed tl;dr)? What do they want to do, sit on their arses and get money for nothing? If so, let them become government ministers....

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Zhanteimi

Even back in the days of yore, artists had patrons.

Oriphiel

Hey man, piracy (and other factors) have made things very hard for musicians. These are tough times; only the really innovative and the really generic manage to survive long enough to make a name for themselves. But trying to create a magical utopia where money doesn't exist is like... Well, like doing just that. It doesn't work. Who's going to pay the upkeep for this place? You? And where will you get the money? From us ordinary people. And to get our money, you'll have to give us something we want, which creates refinement of product and competition (because if this catches on, you can bet someone else is going to copy you and compete with you). Basically, you'll pull a Communist China; start off as a communism, but begrudgingly morph into a capitalism in order to survive.

And what happens when a band walks into your studio and starts singing about rape and murder, playing hour-long jams, and refusing to let anyone else in the studio? You'll kick them out and set rules. And when other problems arise, you'll set more rules. And when the bills get higher and higher, you'll find more ways of making money. And then pow! You're a record company.

This is the sort of thing you should have learned shortly after leaving high school. Money isn't evil, it's a placeholder for the herds of cattle we used to spend entire lifetimes tending to, the fields of crops we broke our backs keeping alive. It created the comfortable life-style that now allows you to sit on your comfy chair in front of your comfy computer and complain about stuff in front of an audience of potentially millions of people, all in an instant. The fact that you can now create whatever you want to create, being able to use the knowledge of every artist that has come before you with the click of a button, instead of spending all of your time running away from saber-toothed tigers, and sometimes being safe enough from predators to make cave-paintings and carved idols, is something you should be beyond grateful for.

Now stop complaining and work hard, even live in a bus and flip burgers if you have to, like every other successful band in the past sixty years has had to do at some point in their careers. And be glad that you weren't born in Medieval times, when unskilled Bards were just killed and forgotten about.

Lifeolga

Thank you so far for all your comments - I know that the topic is not easy at all, but it is why we try to discuss it.

You ask the question if the money should come for doing nothing. The reality is the opposite - composer does a lot (months and months of work for writing the music, especially if there are lots of instruments/voices, finding the concert hall, publishing his own scores, lots of rehearsals with musicians, etc...) and then many people expect that after all of this work it is the composer who should pay for everything - to rent the hall, to pay each musician 500 euros minimum, to pay all musician's transportation, lodging, to give technical equipment, to pay for work of technicians, all kinds of things.

So, we don't speak about "0" budget with sleeping in the camping tent. We say that in order to have a possibility for the music to be composed and to be played even one time, it costs lots of money even in the case if composer doesn't ask to be payed himself. So, should we say that this is impossible at the beginning or there should be solutions for it? (crowdfunding is one of the solutions).

Oriphiel

When did I say that? When did anyone say that "money should come from doing nothing"? I know you're all idealistic about music, but in reality being a musician is either a passion you sustain yourself, or a job that is sustained by others. No amount of "manifestos" will change that. You keep talking like it's next to impossible for musicians to find an audience because of a lack of money. I disagree. It's cheaper than ever to make music. Hell, you can buy a $50 microphone/voice recorder and use generic mixing software to make music that used to take thousands of dollars to create and fine-tune. Not only that, but there are literally thousands of websites dedicated to hooking up musicians from literally any genre to eager listeners.

Yeah, like I said before, "times are tough", but that only applies for bands trying to hit the top of the charts, which is closely controlled by Record Companies, and for people whose sole flow of income comes from playing music, which as any musician will tell you is really not a wise thing to do until you have a fanbase. Indie bands are flourishing, and are able to make great music on their own, without being indentured slaves to the Record Labels. In short, things aren't "better" or "worse" than they used to be. They are simply different, and honestly, they are different in your favor.

Now stop whining and start building a fanbase. Or did you expect people to just pay you for the sake of being "artists"?