trumpetmike

This is actually one of my nightmares. I have heard a huge amount of Birtwistle and have yet to hear a single one that I would class as worth listening to, let alone one that I would want to inflict upon an audience.

My biggest problem with a lot of contemtible (sorry) contemporary music is that the composers seem to be writing what they feel the audience should be listening to, rather than what the audience might actually want to listen to.
I admit that at the time, composers like Bach were not as popular, nor regarded, as they are now (he was the 3rd choice for Kappelmeister in Liepzig), but much of the music he was writing was not designed for audiences, rather he was writing for a congregation who were actually there for the mass, not the music.

Whilst at university (Huddersfield, which is a university with a great deal of contemporary music, including a three week festival every year, which I attended and performed in many times) I had the discussion that a lot of contemporary music is only popular due to recording technology. If Birtwistle hadn't made so many CDs of his stuff, would anybody have heard of it? Would any orchestra program it? If all you had to go on were the reviews of a distant performance, would that encourage you to hear these pieces?

I have listened to a huge amount of contemporary trumpet pieces (and further afield, other instrumental pieces and orchestral works) and I often find myself in the position of thinking "very clever, but what was the point, apart from writing a technical piece?" Even when the composers have been kind enough to include listening guides, so you can hear what they are attempting to recreate.
There are modern trumpet writers writing music that is playable and audience friendly (it has a tune ), yet these pieces are shunned by musical society because, God forbid, somebody might actually leave the building having enjoyed the music.
Or so it seems.

Whilst at university I had the chance to work alongside some contemporary composers (Birtwistle, Maxwell-Davies, Ligeti, James MacMillan, and others) and we often got chatting about their compositional techniques. Some said that they wanted to "shock" the audience. No question of letting an audience enjoy the experience, or having their own thoughts about the piece. The composer had a fixed idea of what they wanted to do, which was basically to be talked about. So long as they could come up with 20 minutes' worth of waffle about the deep meaning behind the piece, the contemporary music nuts were happy. If you could write a good enough meaning behind the music, you could write whatever crap you wanted in the actual piece.

This has turned into a bit of a rant - apologies all, back to the topic in hand.

How about a list of concertos that might not be known to the trumpet playing populus, but you think more players should discover?

Malcolm Arnold
Edward Gregson
Eric Ewazen
John Addison
Joseph Horovitz
Elgar Howarth
Philip Sparke
Henri Tomasi