A Study In Contrasts

Talented people still suck. A composer and he’s hilarious? Fuck YOUUUUUUUUU!

I don’t remember if I’ve heard anything written by Dudley Moore. Seems he would have had a hand in some familiar film or pop music, but I’m not sure. I knew he was a good pianist, but don’t recall how I learned that. Judging from this clip, he was probably the more interesting composer.

Peter Maxwell Davies was a colossal bore. He wrote a few wacky avant garde works that earned him an international reputation as a bad boy. They had high shock value at the time, but shock value devalues pretty quickly, and he became a more academic composer. What I’ve heard is boring. He talks of “logical outcomes,” which is his problem. Who cares about logical outcomes if you haven’t put forth a musical idea that someone actually wants to hear? In that, he was typical of 20th century academic composers, all of them writing in a very dry, cerebral, atonal idiom fashionable in “serious” music circles back then. The music was forgettable, respected by a few, loved by none. That’s why such composers, then and now, depend on grants, stipends, and fellowships from arts organizations, governments, and universities: no one pays to listen. This is a bit of a simplification, but generally the great composers of the past, however challenging, could earn a living from their music. They had devotees among the general public. Beethoven’s later music was beyond most people at the time, but much of his music was well-loved and made him rich. If a composer’s entire output can only please himself and a few snobs, you can be sure his music will vanish. There was plenty of great 20th century music, and much has entered the repertoire, but all of it offers more than logic.

By the way, Beethoven’s work room was like Dudley Moore’s, not Davies’. Which generally doesn’t say much, as usually a slob is just a slob, but in this case it might.

It’s interesting to compare Davies with another composer who was all head and no heart: Frank Zappa. Frank had a couple of important advantages over Davies: a sense of humor and a sense of melody. The first few Mothers albums proved that he could write great pop songs, even if the whole point was to mock pop songs. He might have written more popular music if he were not obsessed with Edgard Varese. I’m not knocking that, some of his more avant garde stuff is good, and funny as well. My point is that he was far more talented than Davies and his ilk. Still, Frank was all prefrontal cortex.

If you like Dudley Moore and haven’t seen his early movie, Bedazzled, check it out. It’s a funny take on the Faust legend. Moore’s “Faust” is a love-struck short-order cook at Wimpy’s. The Mephistopheles who comes to “help” him is the great Peter Cook. Of course every scheme to get the girl goes hilariously wrong. Some highlights (as I recall years later) are bees set on hippies; an absolutely brilliant pop music segment where Cook prefigures the cold, aloof, androgynous pop stars of the glam era (and MTV era to boot); and nuns on trampolines. What’s not to love?

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