“Coffee and synths. KayoDot album “Hubardo” recording, 2013-06-13″ by Daniel Means – Flickr: Coffee and synths. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/

Try to imagine a research funding application from Arnold Schoenberg. Research question: ‘can I make music in which all pitch classes are played equally often?’. In his article ‘Composition is not Research’ John Croft challenges a conception and ideal of compositional work in academia (download the PDF article).

The incongruity between the act of composition and the way we are required to portray it has not gone unremarked: the advice you’ll receive from a seasoned composer-academic is simply to make up some nonsense to get the money, and then forget the nonsense and write the piece you wanted to write in the first place. The problem with this is not just that funding goes to those most adept at writing nonsense, but that it is…