Pragmatic Rejection

A third sub-category can be termed “pragmatic rejection” which could take several forms. If a composer is living in a chronically poor country or a country which in the composer’s lifetime she predicts will never have access to much new technology (in which case she won’t have an opportunity to hone her skills) and certainly not the latest technology (in which case her work will never have the cachet of the most recent technological advances and consequently will get less of a hearing than other works) then she might well pragmatically reject the idea of working with non-traditional technologies.

Or she might find herself living in a country beset by economic sanctions and international bombings, and given the lack of electricity, she then could decide that the only sensible procedure is to compose for voice and small groups of portable acoustic instruments.

A final aspect of this pragmatic rejection has to do with age and knowledge base. A composer working at the age of 65, confronted with a new technology for making music might consider his knowledge-base and musical wisdom built up over decades of working with traditional instruments, he might consider the learning curve and time involved in mastering the new technology, consider the likely number of years he will be able to continue composing and rightfully decide it isn’t practical to get involved with the new technology. One might ask, would it have made sense for Aaron Copland at the age of 65 to begin learning to make electronic music of some type?

Ignorance and More

Another reason that some people might reject newer technologies is a simple ignorance of what the tools can and cannot do for them. This might be a kind of self-inflicted state or the result of circumstance. And finally, of course, there is also the possibility of a combination of the various reasons outlined above.

Middle Ground

A third general response is some kind of middle ground. Some composers use recent technological advances in perhaps regular, but lesser sound-making roles. Or, they might use the new tools in important ways, but not regularly, calling upon the technology only in specific situations. Again, this general category is subdivided.

Very Limited Role

One example of this type of approach of a very limited independent role for the technology would be a composer like Jacob Druckman. He noted in an interview: