Who-Cares Music

After graduating from college I needed a creative window.  I wasn't getting any more formal instruction in music, and not having that environment to push me I felt my musical core starting to atrophy.  So I decided to take composition lessons from a former prof. of mine.  Back in college we had been required to write a few small pieces for a counterpoint class.  Those assignments may have been my absolute favorite experiences in college.  The act of composition and the sense of permanence writing down my own work made me feel euphoric.  There is something weighty in the written page- holding your creation in your hand.  Someone asked me how I liked writing music, and I said, "It makes me feel like God."  I was creating something from nothing.  Not that my assignment was anything special or original, but I can slightly understand why after writing a movement in creation God said it was good.  Of course His creation was good, and the only edit he had to make was more of an addition and a really good one at that... 

My composition lessons seemed to go well.  I finally learned the proper way to notate music and to think of writing down music critically.  My teacher (we'll call WJR) was steeped deeply in the teachings of our university.  The composition department from our school focused heavily on 20th Century composition technique and philosophy.  I love extended harmonies and some intelligent atonalism, but works like Reich's composition involving swinging microphones and feedbacking amplifiers loses me.  John Cage's idea of using the I Ching to form his random compositions or someone else's idea of splattering black ink on a page and calling that music is in my mind ridiculous.  Heaven forbid a composer actually tries to fashion something intelligent on his or her own, but maybe that's just old-fashioned thinking.  WJR used to call certain kinds of music "Who-Cares Music," and he warned me about writing anything that ventures into the "Who-Cares" realm.  That label for somebody's body of work scared me to death.  That's the kind of phrase that could cause a creator to never create again out of pure fear.  No one wants to make who-cares art or who-cares architecture or who-cares landscaping for that matter... 

It seems my teacher had a couple meanings for what he would consider who-cares music, but I didn't figure this out until later.  After much reflection I understood his two meanings as it pertained to music. The first deals with tonal, regular music: why write a fugue or sonata in an older tonal style since it's been done?  Plus greater minds than mine have attempted and mastered it already.  Writing an old form or style would be Who-Cares music because it isn't original.  The second meaning for his little phrase applied to the general public: if a composer's music is played in the woods with no one to hear it did it really make a sound?  What percentage of the Classical-Music-listening public actually listens to Serialism or experimental performance art music?  How many people would hear what you have to write if this was your style?  Well, I can tell you as an amateur composer I want people to care, and I want my work to be original without being original for originality's sake.  I'm still scared of Who-Cares music, so if you hear any coming from my pen please let me know!