As if the composer is dead

The composer occupies a prominent position in Western classical music. In most cases the composer is dead: the music-making communities maintain their practices and identities without the composer. In this article I will examine first the characteristic features in the current discourse about music and the performer's creativity. Then I will discuss an example where the composer and performer collaborate with the performer approaching the production ‘as if the composer is dead’. This reveals the inherited practice of this music where creativity is clearly partitioned. The isolation of the composer is compared to the literary movement of ‘The Death of the Author’ to tease out similarities and differences. This is followed by an assessment of what the death of a composer might mean to the cultural practice of Western classical music.