23 - Robert Morris (b. 1943)

Summary

Robert Morris has spent most of his active life teaching composition at a number of universities in the United States, including Yale University (where he was also director of the Electronic Music Studio), University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music. He really knows what he is talking about when portraying the situation of composers in America who are anxious to make a living by joining the staff of a university music department. In recent years, he has created situations in which student composers write pieces to be played outdoors in parks and forests, the sounds of nature blending with pitches generated by the players.

As an active composer himself, over the past several decades, he has experienced the difficulties that confront creative people in their effort to negotiate the obstacles represented by the musical establishment and to get a hearing for their music. Robert Morris's survey of the music scene since the 1960s is revelatory for someone coming from Europe. But so is his detailed analysis of what he means by the notion of freedom—an analysis that was inspired by the request for him to contribute to this book.

July 27, 2015

Dear Bálint,

I have been thinking about your idea of the “tyranny of taste,” and your ample illustrations of this phenomenon. I have rather complex responses to the issue, which is a reality for all creative artists (perhaps related to John Stuart Mill's “tyranny of the majority”). I have tried to condense my ideas in the short paragraphs below, but this is only the tip of the iceberg.

First, I should say that composers in music institutions in the United States have a rather different social, economic, and historical situation from composers in most of Europe, especially those in the old Soviet Bloc. The way censorship works here involves getting a job in academia and keeping it (i.e., tenure); this often forces composers to compromise. And it was true that “experimental” composers like Cage, Oliveros, Wolff, Feldman, Mumma, Lucier, and so on originally found academic employment impossible, even if they had reputations in the press and many performances.