Random pretensiousness
"Maestro" John Doe
At what point does someone feel that they should have the title 'maestro' applied to them?
Generally we only see this term used for proven, revered conductors who have spent years at the top of their game. Being dead certainly doesn't hurt either.
Imagine my shock when I was recently reading a copy of the Choral Journal only to see this label applied to a person who is under 40, and hasn't ever been the regular conductor of ANY ensemble other than a few things he did in grad school. This person (his anonymity preserved in the photo above) is a composer. Of course Bernstein wore both hats Conductor and Composer, and maestro might apply here.
I've wracked my brain trying to find any sort of precedent here.
Maestro Beethoven..........no
Maestro Mozart...............no
Maestro Bernstein.........perhaps
Maestro Kirby Shaw.......no ( I feel cheap and tawdry for even bringing this one up)
So I'm thinking that the only thing more pretensious that my post today, is this 'composer' who doesn't conduct being called "Maestro".
Oh.......remember I'm the guy who gets creeped out reaching inside a potato chip bag.
posted by Jaques Cartier at 8:17 PM
3 Comments:
Gee, I wonder who it is.
Perhaps the only thing Godzilla didn't eat was the composer's ego. It's also too bad that Leonardo's Magnificent Flying Machine didn't carry away the composer's sense of self-importance.
This is what happens when you're hailed as the Second Coming of choral and wind music at the age of 24.
That's priceless.
Now we all know how cults get started!!!!!
Perhaps the Holy Apostolic Church of the Sacred Tone Clusters? They come knocking at your door handing out ethnic percussion and humming enharmonic major 2nds.
Oh yeah, I've conducted some in college, including an ad hoc new music ensemble while taking my master's degree. Does that mean I can call myself maestro?
All joking aside, I think his early work is incredible and much of the rest of it redundant. Afterall, his first work for band has had over 50,000 performances since it's being published in '94. That's just sick! The problem is that several years later, after my own compositional language had seriously begun to advance, I discovered that he merely took techniques that were already somewhat commonplace in the orchestral world and managed to successfully translate them to the wind band world. In that sense he opened the door for greater talents to utilise the same kinds of techniques in a better way.
Also, after a somewhat lengthy discussion with him several years ago in which we were able to talk about point-of-view and attitudes about contemporary music (and discover what he was really like in person), I don't think he'll ever recapture the same success as his early works.
Oh yeah. He's also really, really bloody lazy.
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