Composer to Composer: Conversations About Contemporary Music

Andrew Ford, well-respected Australian composer, talks to thirty colleagues about their attitudes towards audiences and performers and the business of composing. These frank and often detailed discussions range from politics to religion, from theatre to the visual arts, from feminism to Freud and from Bach to bebop. Perhaps because he is a composer himself, Ford elicits responses which are both revealing and stimulating.Why is it no longer possible to say what is modern or avant-garde in music? Why are many composers returning to traditional musical languages? Why aren't the others? Why is it so difficult for a composer today to answer the simple question: What sort of music do you compose?Composer to composer will appeal to students and contemporary music specialists as well as general music lovers who want to know more about how a composer's mind works. It is the only book available containing interviews with Australian composers, setting them in context with significant international figures.Composer to composer contains interviews with some of the most important musicians of the twentieth century.