[Question posed to several composers in this issue:]
What'll it take for a Canadian Composer to make it internationally?
Oskar Morawetz: To be quite frank, it would take something that doesn't
directly have to do with music. It would help if a Karajan or a Bernstein would
conduct one of your works, but so what? It would be in the news for a week and
then people would forget. The only way for people not to forget is if you
do something crazy, like John Cage, that everybody will talk about.
Some composers are extremely good businessmen, who spend more time getting
publicity about themselves than composing. They've become internationally famous
without really delivering the goods! Nowadays, the media are so important, that
you have to decide either to develop your gift as a composer or to spend 80
percent of your time publicizing yourself. Publicity was always important, but
never as much as today. If somebody has an article about himself appear in
Time magazine or Newsweek, suddenly the numbers of performances and
recordings multiplies tenfold.
But what does it mean in the long run? When I first came to Canada, Roy Harris
was the big American celebrity. Who talks about him today? Then for a while,
Luigi Nono was a big name. It's a matter of fashion. Today, everybody knows who
Xenakis is, but maybe he'll be forgotten soon, too.
In contrast, who knew about Schubert when he was alive? Nobody. So what's so
important about being famous?
[...]
