Degrees of Separation (Composer Edition)

How cool is this? For those of you too blasé to click the link, NMC Records has a wild web app to navigate the composers in their catalogue, allowing you to flit from Lennox Berkeley to Bryn Harrison in a matter of seconds while idioms and periods orbit their names. It’s a fun and information-age way to explore NMC’s offerings; could a similar interface be fruitfully developed by the AMC, the ACF, or another repository of information about American composers? There are more of us, of course—and NMC’s map doesn’t even purport to show all British composers, mostly just those on its own imprint. But it might not be so gigantic a task if NMC could be persuaded to share its template; information about student-teacher relationships, aesthetic kinships, etc. could even be added on a volunteer basis by the composers themselves.

I suspect that the “historical categories” and “compositional techniques” satellites that float around composers’ names, however, would cause much wringing of hands. I don’t know a single American composer who’s champing at the bit to ally herself with a particular school or style of music; that said, I also don’t know many British composers who’d willingly label themselves in such a manner, so I wonder how NMC decided on whom to shelve where. Moreover, some of their descriptions are a little broad-brush; for instance, the allegation that “Complexity” (all the British composers thusly stamped who enjoy being lumped into this category, please raise your hands) involves “non-musical theoretical structures” is sure to silence the visored ivory-tickler and turn all heads toward the swinging saloon doors.

Still, I think the idea is a sound one: A slick application for getting to know and hear composers that also groups them into constellations and allows the user to fritter away his time on the internet? Sounds like solid gold to me. Is anyone willing to take up the torch from our colleagues on the sceptered isle?