<p>The Boston Globe had an article on composer Lowell Liebermann today, which contained some interesting observations about contemporary composition.</p>
<p>Classical</a> communicator Liebermann strikes a chord - The Boston Globe</p>
<p>Liebermann studied at Juilliard in the early 1980's, the "heyday" of "the academic avant-garde," proponents of serialism and "biting atonality." He has always gone his own way, writing "melodic" works with strong "tonal bases", though not entirely lacking atonality.</p>
<p>He says in the interview that he writes music that he would like to hear himself, if he were sitting in the audience, but that that does not mean pandering</p>
<p>Some critics have criticized him for his lyricism, calling him a "neo-Romantic" or "new tonalist" (such as Richard Danielpour, Paul Moravec, Aaron Jay Kernis, and I would add Robert Beaser and Jennifer Higdon), a group described as "caring little about the modernist obsession with originality," but Liebermann sees himself as more of a neo-classicist and says that labels prevent a "real valid look at the music itself</p>
<p>Here is the most interesting paragraph:</p>
<p>"Much has changed in the music world since Liebermann first entered it. The boundaries that divided modernists and traditionalists have become more porous, styles have become hybridized, and composers who confine themselves to a largely tonal vocabulary are no longer rare."</p>
<p>He is performing his own Second Piano Trio on Cape Cod, and also mentions that there was a time when composers were almost always active performers.</p>
<p>I thought this article was a nice review of the last 30 years of trends in composition, and was a nice addition to the discussion some of us had a couple of weeks ago about trends in contemporary composition.</p>
<p>Many academic environments are still holding on to that "academic avant-garde" and there may also be a time lag in what is played at major venues, as "new music" contributions, but the paragraph on "porous" boundaries echoes the hope many of us have for the future of contemporary composition, and the diversity of "voices" now on the scene.</p>