The Elusive Mystery of Jazz Music

Yesterday pleasantly I was surprised by the radio station WCPE's playing of Shostakovich's "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk."   I listen to this local station often, and while their headquarters are located in Wake Forest, NC they have subsidiary stations that broadcast their classical format of music throughout the state.  I believe the station I pick up at 95.3 is being broadcast by a transmitter slightly east of Raleigh.  The programming is hit and miss, but it is a tall affair to program classically-oriented music around the clock.  Every once in a while they hit my personal G spot.  Now I have realized that this occurs when they play music by composers of diverse nationalities.  Occasionally they will feature American composers, and other than the currently recognized "greatest living American composer" John Adams, sometimes they will feature American composers specifically of African-American heritage.  I remember astutely the first time I discovered this body of composed music while attending The Ohio State University working on the D.M.A. degree in Composition.  It in short was a revelation.  For the first time in my life other than hearing George Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" I was hearing composed orchestral and chamber music with the soul of American slavery.  One particular thing I do not enjoy in WCPE's programming is heavy emphasis on Classic Period.  While the word "classic" commonly is used to describe orchestral and chamber music from all of the periods of music history, the classic period itself was a distinct series of decades culminating around 1770-1780.  This is referred to as the "High Classic" Period.  I'm not sure if I agree with these two chosen decades, because the history of music which evolves cannot be categorized like American popular radio music.  Learned composed music tends to evolve, which can be heard in the differing stylistic periods of many of the great composers including Beethoven, Schoenberg, and Aaron Copland.  Often simply these changing stylistic periods are an attempt to achieve notoriety seeing as the music business is a fickle bitch.  Arnold Schoenberg wrote some of the most beautiful Romantic-oriented music ever as represented by his cantata Gurre-Lieder.  As a composer I can learn a lesson from this realizing beautifully composed expressive music will not necessarily be successful in being heard by the masses.  Schoenberg learned this and possibly consequently pioneered his Twelve Tone Technique, Dodecaphony, or Serialism.  While I myself enjoy and listen to both Pierrot Lunaire and Verklarte Nacht, Schoenberg's fame supposedly comes from his invention of the Twelve Tone Technique.  Politically speaking it is probable that this acclaim simply is from the sheer controversial nature of this new music composition technique.  Tonally speaking this technique broke the stem whence music previously had come.  While his earlier Romantic-orientied works were influenced by Wagner, it was Alban Berg and Anton Webern who adopted and championed Schoenberg's new method.  My hearing of "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" yesterday on WCPE's live feed from the Metropolitan Opera piqued my interest.  A few day's earlier I learned from this station that Modest Mussorgsky's "A Night on Bald Mountain" saw no performances while he was alive. It was Rimsky-Korsakov who discovered and presented the work along with what later was described as an inaccurate "Pictures at an Exhibition."  So it seems in the field of music that the original composer often does not reap his spoils.  I am getting used to this idea, although I am beginning to worry that my stockpile of original piano music, which will influence the gamut of American composition, may be lost.  This really should be an absurd notion, but it is not.  The last classical music shop in New York City closed its doors recently, and with the advent of internet commerce sheet music no longer commands its worthy value.  This is true of all music today.  The internet and computer programs somehow have convinced the powers at be that music should have no value.  This is an absurd notion.  How can a classical music radio station like WCPE keeps its doors open without funding?  It doesn't, but its process is based on fund raising from private donors.  This really cannot be considered a free market system.  It is common in the arts for them to be subsidized, because they have been a core component of our educational system for centuries.  With this in mind it is easy to accommodate the idea that classical music is not meant to be commoditized.  Completely I am okay with that idea.  I do not desire to become wealthy from my composed music, but I do desire that its influence and worth are recognized and accommodated in our history of composed music.  How do I go about this?  I do not know.  I have been trained as a musician and a composer, not a businessman.  While I do know that today a website is necessary, artistic items often are not appreciated until decades after their creation.  Intuitively I know that if my work is not placed in the correct spot, it will go unnoticed.  If it is placed in the correct spot(s) it will have a marked effect on American society and the world.  Completely I understand that this sentiment will be considered a delusion of grandeur, vanity, and egotism.  It should not, because every great artist in America including playwrites, authors, and film makers must know the value of their work.  They know the value of their work, because in America's competitive marketplace there is no chance for your product's success unless it is great.  I have known this my entire life, and consequently I have aspired to write great music.  Early in my life during high school I succeeded in music.  In ninth grade I was not the best trumpeter, but by sheer will progressed until I was first trumpeter under the direction of Eastman's Frederick Fennell at the Pembroke Band Clinic.  It is difficult for me to remember what musical success is.  When I attended OSU I had worthy compositions performed, but our Composer's Workshop concert poorly was attended.  I have recordings of my pieces, and they are as worthy as any in the recorded repertoire, but they sit idle in my file cabinet in our garage.  It is difficult for me to muster the energy to promote their performance.  I believe it is because I am at a period in my life where a different philosophy is needed.  A friend from high school posted this philosophy yesterday, and it applies to me.  It states, "Sometimes the best thing you can do is not think, not wonder, not imagine, and not obsess.  Just breath and have faith everything will work out for the best."  These upon reflection seems like a copout.  I have been taught to work hard my entire life, and I have.  I never had to think about it.  You excel because it is the right thing to do.  Continually you challenge your mind and soul.  Now it is not working.  Now everything I have worked for in the field of music seems not to apply.  Its pursuance produces great pain, thus I have curtailed its activity.  I am not sure why artistic music, which derives its integrity from the stem of music history, is not working.  It is not working for the same reason Schoenberg's early Romantic works brought him no acclaim.  Sometimes people just want something about which to complain, not something that is beautiful.