What Chefs Can Teach Composers

It's not a show I usually watch, but I happened across something called Hell's Kitchen on television the other night. For the uninitiated, it's a reality TV show in which a celebrity chef, Gordon Ramsey, (pictured here) tutors several apprentice chefs. Troubles ensue: the risotto gets burned, the pork is raw, the pasta is ready but the sauce isn't. This results in purportedly amusing tirades by Gordon Ramsey, who yells and screams at his charges. A fun feature of the show is the constant *bleeping* out of shouted obscenities.

I thought, "Who are these people sitting here waiting for food? Who would ever want to eat in this restaurant??" Certainly we would not sit still in a restaurant that couldn't get its act together. We would move on to some different dining establishment.

Yet, classical music audiences are expected to sit still through all manner of swill. And audiences have become fed up with it and moved on. You've certainly been to a restaurant where the food was bad, or the service was bad, and you left vowing never to eat there again. This has certainly happened in classical music.

Of course, taste is in the mouth of the beholder--or the ears of the listener. Yet we must acknowledge there's a reason why chocolate cake is more popular than broccoli.

"Ah," the avant-garde will say, "but broccoli is good for you! Cake is nothing more than sweet, empty calories; we can't live on only chocolate." True. But the finer dining options out there --the Michelin three-star restaurants-- are able to serve up complex menu items that are good for you and appeal to an audience. There's a difference between The Four Seasons and Burger King.

The philosopher Theodor Adorno stipulated that composers are free to compose with no need to satisfy an audience's hunger. That's okay as far as it goes, but I, for one, do want my music to be consumed by audiences. So I aim to create in that same arena that a chef does: Something enjoyably nutritious and palatable, but complex, too.