Posted by Guy Shahar on January 16, 2025 at 3:19pm
What is your experience of receiving criticism as a composer and how has it changed over time.I’m still near the start of my journey, and have had some amazingly valuable pointers and advice from posting my music on forums and asking for feedback. But I’ve also had a load of abuse from a few people, who feel that if you post something you’ve created, you’re fair game for vitriol. This can have a very negative effect.How have you managed to get the feedback you need while avoiding the abuse? Or do you just choose to either keep your music to yourself or to put up with the abuse?It would be really interesting to hear your experiences for my own benefit, but also, I want to make a video about dealing with criticism as a composer soon, and this conversation could help with that too.
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In some works, by some people, I have received useful criticism and certainly in the case of what was practically performable, I had the odd bit of advice (in one case octave leaps in the clarinet were too hard as it involved a change of register). But equally in some cases the theorists have completely failed to understand the music because they had certain expectations according to how they thought the music should develop, not what I was actually trying to write. Overall, though, my main problem is getting enough people with some vague sympathy and understanding of my idiom to listen in the first place, though i do have a few fans to whom I am grateful. Actual abuse I have only really had when I dared to express reservations about the work of another composer which simply resulted in ad hominem attacks. I'm not really a critic by nature and these days rarely bother to comment on works unless they speak to me in some way.
Well done for at least having a few fans. That's already a great achievement. I don't think I have any (someone approached me on Soundcloud saying she was my greatestt fan, but it turned out she wanted to sell some promotion service to me....). You're also lucky to have posted and not received abuse that simply says how terrible the music is with nothing to build on.
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In some works, by some people, I have received useful criticism and certainly in the case of what was practically performable, I had the odd bit of advice (in one case octave leaps in the clarinet were too hard as it involved a change of register). But equally in some cases the theorists have completely failed to understand the music because they had certain expectations according to how they thought the music should develop, not what I was actually trying to write. Overall, though, my main problem is getting enough people with some vague sympathy and understanding of my idiom to listen in the first place, though i do have a few fans to whom I am grateful. Actual abuse I have only really had when I dared to express reservations about the work of another composer which simply resulted in ad hominem attacks. I'm not really a critic by nature and these days rarely bother to comment on works unless they speak to me in some way.
Well done for at least having a few fans. That's already a great achievement. I don't think I have any (someone approached me on Soundcloud saying she was my greatestt fan, but it turned out she wanted to sell some promotion service to me....). You're also lucky to have posted and not received abuse that simply says how terrible the music is with nothing to build on.