# Musicians Views of Contemporary and Modern Music



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

We've had several threads on modern/contemporary music recently so I asked my wife (violinist) and daughter (cellist) their views on how often they'd like to see contemporary music played in concert. My wife is less interested in modern/contemporary music while my daughter suggested 1 contemporary work, 1 modern work, and 1 older "great" work per concert. More interesting was my daughter's response to how her music major classmates in college would answer the question. She said roughly 95% of performance majors (maybe excepting the winds) have relatively little interest in modern/contemporary works whereas all the composer/conducting majors have a strong interest.

So I have 2 questions:

1) For those music majors (or former music majors) on TC - _In general_ do performance majors that you know have relatively little interest in modern/contemporary music performances?

2) Assuming my daughter's experience is truly indicative of performance majors in general, is that a serious problem for the future of classical music?


----------



## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*All Kinds of Music*

I enjoy all kinds if music. There is even some country and western that I enjoy listening to and performing. A few years ago I performed with the City of Fairfax band a great arrangement of a medley of Reba McEntire songs with a soloist from the United States Army Band.

As far a classical is concerned my favorite concerts are those that have a little of everything.

One of the nice thing about living is Washington is there are plenty events to attend. This past weekend my wife and I attended the Shakespeare Theater's production of Oscar Wilde's _The Importance of Being Earnest_. And on Sunday we attended a concert of the United States Marine Corps Band.

The Marine Band Concert was a good blend of the old and new:

FLETCHER/trans. Karrick: Vanity Fair
PERSICHETTI: "O Cool Is the Valley," Opus 118
PUCKETT: Short Stories (2013)
WILLIAMS/arr. Lavender: Suite from The Reivers
LISZT/trans. Hindsley: Symphonic Poem, Les Préludes

Joel Puckett's Short Stories is an unique concerto grosso for string quartet and wind orchestra.

John Williams' concert suite is for narrator and band from the 1969 film The Reivers. The text features selections from William Faulkner's novel.

The concert finished up with a grand old warhorse.

Joel Puckett was in attendance. His work was very well received by the audience and many requested his autograph after the concert. :clap: Dr. Puckett is only thirty-five and teaches at Peabody Conservatory. I had the opportunity to meet with him after the concert and he is nothing like the stereotypical nonsense that some of our more astute members harbor against academic, living composers.

Check out his website: http://joelpuckett.com/home.html

Note: For the record I am an amateur bassoonist and I currently perform as a regular member and an alternant with two orchestras and two concert bands.


----------



## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

I don't think that your daughter's view is correct. I just to be a music major (jazz) but my impression is that while both contemporary and HIP are a minority, they are both doing fine.


----------



## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

One of the interesting things for up and coming musicians is contemporary music places demands on them that they're often not up to (most music does actually, but it' more pronounced for contemporary). So while they can hack their way through Bach, Mozart and Beethoven and gentle C20 scores and some of it sounds OK and there was a sense of interpretation and structure, the technical challenges of more "modernist" music can make it harder to have those encouraging moments of seeing how it should/could be done. 

By the time you get quite good, you can begin to have satisfying experiences with modernist scores whether you seek these out yourself, are set them or they are programmed as part of an ensemble you are in. This will occur for people to varying degrees as performers will like different stuff (not all musicians are the same!!) - but basically the creme of the crop want to play good music well and are highly likely to be open to modernist music as part of a healthy variety of musical experiences. Often, they are disappointed by the poor programming of contemporary music - could be more, needs to be better!

Remember that playing music for the most part is a craft. So, of course, there are plenty of performers who get very technically proficient yet remain incurious about music - like PetrB's chum who's impressed by anything with "a great horn part". I know people with big sounds and secure technique on a variety of instruments who don't listen to music much - maybe a bit of light jazz or gentle singer-songwriter nonsense every now and again. 

There's also the (mainly) piano, violin and singing heroes who enter the conservatory with high hopes for a solo and recital career - and modern music isn't going to be part of that! They usually flare out pretty quick


----------



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

dgee said:


> One of the interesting things for up and coming musicians is contemporary music places demands on them that they're often not up to (most music does actually, but it' more pronounced for contemporary). So while they can hack their way through Bach, Mozart and Beethoven and gentle C20 scores and some of it sounds OK and there was a sense of interpretation and structure, the technical challenges of more "modernist" music can make it harder to have those encouraging moments of seeing how it should/could be done.


I agree with the technical difficulty for younger performers. They may prefer to _play_ older, easier music, but I'm not sure how this might affect their desire to hear older versus newer music.


----------



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Piwikiwi said:


> I don't think that your daughter's view is correct. I just to be a music major (jazz) but my impression is that while both contemporary and HIP are a minority, they are both doing fine.


My daughter knows how _her_ classmates feel about contemporary music. I'm not sure whether her school is representative of music schools around the country or the world. It may be that other performance majors in other schools (conservatories perhaps) do have a more open view of contemporary music).


----------



## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

I think the problem with musicians having little interest in playing new music/the music of their peers is partly the fault of the teachers. There is no encouragement for the musicians to really explore modern music, outside of maybe 1 semester spent studying it a little for a class. There is no encouragement for student performers to seek out collaborating with the composition students.


----------



## violadude (May 2, 2011)

I think it's only natural for composition majors to be more drawn to contemporary music than performance majors, for a very simple reason. The way performance majors "prove themselves" is by being able to play and master the classics of the repertoire. Composition majors "prove themselves" by adding new classics to the repertoire (i.e. contemporary compositions).


----------



## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

BurningDesire said:


> I think the problem with musicians having little interest in playing new music/the music of their peers is partly the fault of the teachers. There is no encouragement for the musicians to really explore modern music, outside of maybe 1 semester spent studying it a little for a class. There is no encouragement for student performers to seek out collaborating with the composition students.


At the school that I attended it was compulsory to play one baroque, one classical/romantic and one modern piece for your yearly recital.


----------



## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

See http://www.talkclassical.com/31059-what-audiences-want-19.html#post625786. I notice the academy is putting on an all Martinu concert by its students; or this with some George Crumb. I would think it is down to the local conservatory.


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

I was first exposed to Prokofiev, Janacek (along with Bach and Rimsky-Korsakov) at around age four and a half -- via a gift of a small phonograph player and that handful of LP's -- then my first piano lessons at age six began with pieces from the Schirmer "beginner's Bach" collection and the Bartok _Microkosmos_, along with some mildly contemporary single bits of repertoire (Octavio Pinto ~ _Scenas Infantis_), and Schumann's Album,_für die Jugend_. Those first few years I worked from nothing else.

Later, in middle-school (fifth and sixth grade) I spent two summers at a high-caliber music camp, and then later attended their prep school academy (high-school level). I would say far more than 5% of the performance majors were also interested in modern and contemporary music, and ditto for the conservatory I later attended as a piano performance major, though there if recall is correct, the interest of the performance majors in contemporary was not as strong as my early beginnings or what I had found present at the arts camp or academy.

I returned, after conservatory and working in music, to a college then university for a second training. That was the 1970's, the music departments I studied in (as a comp major) were in a west coast general schools (with fine and very demanding music departments), but the times in general then _were_ more more generally comfortable and secure in all sorts of people investigating modern and newer works in all the arts.

A number of the performance majors then and there were rather conservative, as your daughter reports. I would not at all agree that the conservatism of those majors was around 95% resistant to much of anything past Debussy or Prokofiev. One should keep in mind that performance majors at that age are still quite rightly very busy with learning and the learning about all the common era repertoires (that is a vast bundle of material with which to become familiar) which are part and parcel of 'what is expected of them,' so their affections for that will be, naturally pretty strong, and as well as to that age group, up to that life-phase, anyway, it is habituated.

There was a contemporary music ensemble requirement, just one semester for performance majors (you could take it more than one time, I signed up each semester), and the music their was truly contemporary, vs. 'already established early 20th century modern.' There, many a performance major as yet unfamiliar with the newer music met it full on, and a good number of them came away from that with a newly found understanding and strong interest in newer music as well as their already in-place passion for the older rep.

Of course all the comp majors were into music of the present, even those who were what might be called a bit conservative. (You don't get admitted as a composition major based upon submitting pastiches of 19th century or earlier style, after all 

Since that 95% conservative is not only relative to, say, a location or school which may be a pocket of a kind of conservatism, and especially because you are mentioning a group of young musicians _who are yet very young_ as far as newer music goes, I don't think that is _at all_ "a problem for contemporary music." (It is a far greater problem for a performance major aiming for a soloist's career to have only 'the old stuff' under their belt


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Piwikiwi said:


> At the school that I attended it was compulsory to play one baroque, one classical/romantic and one modern piece for your yearly recital.


Standard requirement, with the qualification for 'modern' sometimes more rigorous than 'just something modern vocabulary past 1890 <g> Some requirements are specifically for the more contemporary, i.e. music in a syntax found in works from ca. 1975 or later.

The reason for the requirement is both musical and technical, since techniques and syntax of the more contemporary require a very different approach and skill set to execute and 'make sense' of the newer pieces.


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Taggart said:


> See http://www.talkclassical.com/31059-what-audiences-want-19.html#post625786. I notice the academy is putting on an all Martinu concert by its students; or this with some George Crumb. I would think it is down to the local conservatory.


Again, conservatories are filled, natch, with younger musicians _in training._ Consider that in Mozart's time almost no piano student, or other performer, had to learn how to play Bach well and in appropriate style.

Contemporary musicians are routinely expected to learn the music of, and have a stylistic command, of _all of it,_ from Bach to Ligeti. If it seems there is more than a titch of conservatism among performance majors, I would chalk it off to their necessary attentions to getting some command of a huge amount of common practice repertoire, the contemporary often coming in slight in the undergraduate program, with more in depth study and working with it happening in the graduate level.

That said, it is now common for undergrads to be more readily conversant and in command of earlier 20th century modern works, since, about fifty to one hundred years after the fact of those being in existence, that rep is more and more 'the older relatively new music,' i.e. it is becoming more a staple on recital and concert programs.

Ergo, no conservatory in its right mind will present an all-contemporary concert to a general public if they do not have enough students able to execute such a program convincingly -- a bad political / reputation choice. There will be, certainly, a handful of undergraduates already up on and into the newer music; there might not be enough to make other than a chamber concert program, but those students are there, nonetheless.


----------



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

At my daughter's school there is no requirement to perform contemporary music on one's recital. She is playing Shostakovich's cello sonata on her recital but nothing newer.


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Certainly some rather famous musicians are conservative.

"I occasionally play works by contemporary composers for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven." --Jascha Heifetz


----------



## Whistler Fred (Feb 6, 2014)

My college experience is many years removed (I graduated in 1978), but we have a music professor who was an enthusiastic fan of both jazz and contemporary music, and taught classes of both to the music majors. Interestingly, the modern music class (which wasn't very large, but then neither was the college itself) found composers like George Crumb and even Iannis Xenakis to be fascinating, once they had a chance to learn the ideas that went behind the music. I don’t know if the class made a long term difference on the students’ listening habits, but certainly having a teacher that loved modern music and could share his enthusiasm was an asset for us music majors.

Oddly, he had worse luck with his jazz class. It was the disco age, and to most of the class thought that anything that wasn’t The Commodores or Spyro Gyra was “middle of the road” music (as it was still called then) and hopelessly old-fashioned. Most of the class had no idea who Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington were! How I hated the disco years (but that’s another topic)…


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

mmsbls said:


> At my daughter's school there is no requirement to perform contemporary music on one's recital. She is playing Shostakovich's cello sonata on her recital but nothing newer.


Sorry, I consider that school then to be seriously lacking in what they are doing in successfully training a young musician to be prepared to handle. Modern and contemporary are with us, it may be (often is) the first open door to performing for younger professionals (you may be good at Beethoven, but with so many historic and living senior musicians _really -- and "authoritavely," and regularly_ performing Beethoven, the likelihood you will be straight out of school hired to perform it is excessively low.) Modern and contemporary music is frequently the freshly out of school young performer's debut niche, at least temporarily until the career further takes off!

No contemporary performance ensemble would also be an indicator of a school I would steer people away from.

This is not saying there are not good instrumental teachers at the school your daughter attends, but as an _overall music school with a program to best prepare young musicians, not just in performing but in theory and generally knowing 'the rep,'_ those particular lacks have plummeted that school's caliber in my estimation.


----------



## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

Whistler Fred said:


> My college experience is many years removed (I graduated in 1978), but we have a music professor who was an enthusiastic fan of both jazz and contemporary music, and taught classes of both to the music majors. Interestingly, the modern music class (which wasn't very large, but then neither was the college itself) found composers like George Crumb and even Iannis Xenakis to be fascinating, once they had a chance to learn the ideas that went behind the music. I don't know if the class made a long term difference on the students' listening habits, but certainly having a teacher that loved modern music and could share his enthusiasm was an asset for us music majors.
> 
> Oddly, he had worse luck with his jazz class. It was the disco age, and to most of the class thought that anything that wasn't The Commodores or Spyro Gyra was "middle of the road" music (as it was still called then) and hopelessly old-fashioned. Most of the class had no idea who Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington were! How I hated the disco years (but that's another topic)…


Benny Goodman wasn't taken seriously in our jazz history class, they spend some time on his music but basically dismissed it as big band pop music.


----------



## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

KenOC said:


> "I occasionally play works by contemporary composers for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven." --Jascha Heifetz


These sound like the words of a highly moronic individual.


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

tdc said:


> These sound like the words of a highly moronic individual.


Opinionated certainly, but I'm not sure that Jascha Heifetz has ever been described in exactly that way. :lol:


----------



## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

decided to withdraw this - fulfilled no useful purpose - apologies!


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Headphone Hermit said:


> decided to withdraw this - fulfilled no useful purpose - apologies!


Well, I admire your integrity, because fora are at least half-filled with irrelevant and 'no useful purpose' comments in threads, including a number by me


----------



## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I once wrote "I'm Leaving!!" I got 13 "likes".


----------



## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

hpowders said:


> I once wrote "I'm Leaving!!" I got 13 "likes".


Are you fishing for more likes? :devil:


----------



## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Nooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!


----------



## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

I find it agreeable.


----------



## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

hpowders said:


> I once wrote "I'm Leaving!!" I got 13 "likes".


I could probably get more, but tough luck!


----------



## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

tdc said:


> These sound like the words of a highly moronic individual.


Or, arguably, of the best violinist that ever was. But of course he knew very little about music!


----------



## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

I don't learn much I'm afraid from contemporary music, technically and aesthetically. The former is best through older music, not contemporary, and as for aesthetically, well you know my views on those types of music .


----------



## Guest (Mar 21, 2014)

I learn a lot from contemporary music, technically and aesthetically. The former because it uses all of an instrument, not just the small and very circumscribed set of sounds considered "musical." This is another area where teachers are to blame. Mostly they teach certain sounds only. Then when a contemporary composer asks for something else, they have to then learn things that they used to do naturally but were forbidden (or "forbidden") to do. Now those things are desirable (or "desirable"). It's frustrating.

The latter because it's constantly reminding me how limited and circumscribed my personal desires are. It's constantly stretching my ears and my heart and my mind. Where's the downside to _that?_

I was at the Mormon Rocks recently. Several train lines wind through the rocks. One long freight train had stopped to wait for another to cross. When it started up again, the wheels on each car started up a chorus of metallic squeals and screeches. It was magical.


----------



## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

ArtMusic said:


> I don't learn much I'm afraid from contemporary music, technically and aesthetically. The former is best through older music, not contemporary, and as for aesthetically, well you know my views on those types of music .


I don't think you understand how technically demanding some modern pieces are.


----------



## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

some guy said:


> I was at the Mormon Rocks recently. Several train lines wind through the rocks. One long freight train had stopped to wait for another to cross. When it started up again, the wheels on each car started up a chorus of metallic squeals and screeches. It was magical.


Yeah, I hear stuff like that all the time. Often as mundane as a running engine. The big question is, is it music though?

+ edit:

My point being, that maybe we should define music as something that somebody actually puts an effort into to compose?


----------



## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

Ha, *some guy*, you are jus like that "lady who's sure that all that glitters is gold"... (Made myself crack.)


----------



## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

My overall impression of most of the Contemporary Art music would be that its composers listened way too much to some squealing wheels.


----------



## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

I guess what I'm sayin' is: There must be rules here, this is not Nam!






+ edit:

Hahaha Got to love that humble Nine Inch Nails music in the background after that!


----------



## Guest (Mar 21, 2014)

Listeners beware.

If you appreciate anything that someone else does not, you will be mocked.

Best to keep your love locked up inside, where it won't set anyone off.

Because TC is not for sharing positive experiences, it's for the unmoderated expression of snark. (Well, for some people it is. For others, the ones who respond to snark, it is very strongly and persistently moderated.)


----------



## Serge (Mar 25, 2010)

Oh, that's your take? Mr. Open Mind can't hear a sound of it. Fine, suit yourself!


----------



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

The thread has veered off topic (which by itself is OK), but the direction has included comments focused on posters rather than music related topics.

As the OP, I was really just interested in how much or little desire those trained in performance have in playing modern/contemporary works.


----------



## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

some guy said:


> Listeners beware.
> 
> If you appreciate anything that someone else does not, you will be mocked.
> 
> ...


Yea, I've seen a bit of this. It's okay to get bashed, but it's not okay to have a defense. Not always, but more frequently than I'd like to see.


----------



## rrudolph (Sep 15, 2011)

mmsbls said:


> 1) For those music majors (or former music majors) on TC - _In general_ do performance majors that you know have relatively little interest in modern/contemporary music performances?


As a percussionist receiving his conservatory training in the late 1970's-early 1980's, I found that I had a perspective that was nearly opposite to that of most of the other instrumentalists at my school. Whereas the violinists (for instance) had hundreds of years of technical developments (of both instrument and technique) and repertoire to draw upon, the instruments, techniques and repertoire that I was steeped in came of age mostly during the 20th century (with orchestral timpani being the primary exception). Consequently, the musical styles and artistic/philosophical ideas of that time became my musical "first language" (still are, to some extent) while I was surrounded by students who were primarily absorbing the music and aesthetics of the 18th-19th centuries. The music I was playing looked different on the printed page (sometimes radically so) and sounded different (also sometimes radically so). Although what I was doing was well within the mainstream of the contemporary music scene of the time, I was viewed by some as a bit of an iconoclast and I got into plenty of arguments. I was always surprised by the fact that so many students my age were more comfortable with musical ideas from the world of a hundred or more years previous than they were with the ideas of their own time. (I should point out that the foregoing is a bit of an oversimplification; although the polarization described did exist, there actually were a few non-percussionists who were supportive of new music and for my part, I enthusiastically studied the music of the past-I wasn't exclusively obsessed with contemporary music).



mmsbls said:


> 2) Assuming my daughter's experience is truly indicative of performance majors in general, is that a serious problem for the future of classical music?


No, although music from the past generally draws larger audiences than the more modern stuff, contemporary music does have an audience and there are plenty of composers around. Humans aren't done composing and listening to new music yet.


----------



## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

some guy said:


> It's constantly stretching my ears and my heart and my mind. Where's the downside to _that?_


There could be a downside: becoming less sensitive to things like tonal tension and the differences between harmony and discord. I believe Mozart heard his music rather differently than people who grew up on atonal stuff.

Of course, while there may be this downside that you no longer enjoy older composers as strongly or in the same manner, there is also the positive effect that you can enjoy a wider set of experiences.

Without taking sides, I think that's pretty much how it is and looked at in this way, it makes some amount of sense to set limits to your listening habits.


----------



## Guest (Mar 21, 2014)

There are more and more performers who are specializing in new music. At least it seems that way to me. I'm of course going by the people I meet at new music festivals, where you would expect to see just that.

I have talked with composers who also have teaching jobs at universities, too. One of them thinks that if kids, who can make all sorts of noises on their instruments, could be encouraged to explore that way instead of being trained to do only a few things, avoiding all the rest, that there would be a lot more interest among performers to play new music.

I know that when I was a kid, learning trumpet, I did all sorts of things with that instrument. But there was zero encouragement from parents and teachers, and I learned to bend all my efforts toward playing only what was necessary to do Haydn's trumpet concerto well. (Which I never managed to do, by the way.) Recently, I was at a concert that featured a new music trumpet virtuouso--half the things she did were things I had done as a kid just dinking around. The other half made me wish I still played trumpet, 'cause I'd really like to try those things out!!

Oh well.

I was in an African drumming class several years ago. One of our teachers, a Nigerian born on the same date as I (and also a couple of famous classical composers), that date being today, just by the way, asked us once why we didn't play our instruments? That is, why did we only do five or six particular things? Well, we had been taught certain strokes and blows and such, so.... Sure, he said. But that's not all that's possible, and he went off on this amazing virtuosic display of pyrotechnics on his djembe. It was incredible. He was the only teacher I have ever had who encouraged me to explore, to play my instrument. The only teacher I had ever had who did not discourage certain "techniques" because those were not things suitable for playing Mahler or Sousa or whomever. 

It was a great moment, though. Think about it. Getting confirmation for your whole life philosophy, suddenly, unexpectedly. Cool beans.


----------



## QuietGuy (Mar 1, 2014)

I graduated in 1987. Musicians at our school weren't into contemporary music because 20th Century harmonic techniques were not taught in any of the core harmony classes. Their recitals ended up being mostly standard repertoire.

As a comp major, I was expected to compose in a 20th century "classical" idiom, and couldn't, because my comp professors wouldn't explain them to me, or point me to any books that could. (Prior to college, I had immersed myself in traditional harmony: Piston's Harmony, Counterpoint and Orchestration.) For a while I even considered suing the School of Music. (If they insisted on 20th century harmony, fine, teach me -- it is, after all, a music school, is it not? Otherwise, they shouldn't have insisted on any such thing.)

I had to go outside the school to find someone who gave me an overview of 20th century harmonic practices. (I finally settled on Messiaen's Modes of Limited Transposition, and I was able to find my way from there. I was able to produce a few works that pleased the professors and myself, and graduate.)


----------



## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

What do you think of the Persichetti book on Twentieth Century Harmony?


----------



## rrudolph (Sep 15, 2011)

Chordalrock said:


> There could be a downside: becoming less sensitive to things like tonal tension and the differences between harmony and discord.


With respect, I must disagree. For over 40 years I have listened to and played every kind of music from Hildegard to Cage and I have noticed no negative difference in my sensitivity to the nuances of tonal harmony. If anything, I would say my ears are more trained and sharper than ever.


----------



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

rrudolph said:


> As a percussionist receiving his conservatory training in the late 1970's-early 1980's, I found that I had a perspective that was nearly opposite to that of most of the other instrumentalists at my school. Whereas the violinists (for instance) had hundreds of years of technical developments (of both instrument and technique) and repertoire to draw upon, the instruments, techniques and repertoire that I was steeped in came of age mostly during the 20th century (with orchestral timpani being the primary exception).


Yes, that is still true at my daughter's school, and it certainly makes sense for percussionists. They have a lot of very cool new music to play.


----------



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

All the composition majors at my daughter's school must compose various works as part of their education, and some of those works must be performed in recitals. Of course the performance majors must perform them. My daughter generally loves to play these works and finds them wonderful, but I don't know if other performance majors find this just a chore.


----------



## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

rrudolph said:


> With respect, I must disagree. For over 40 years I have listened to and played every kind of music from Hildegard to Cage and I have noticed no negative difference in my sensitivity to the nuances of tonal harmony. If anything, I would say my ears are more trained and sharper than ever.


If you started out by listening to everything, and you still listen to everything, then I wouldn't assume anything to have changed. But what if you had listened to only pre-1860 post-1700 stuff? Would your sensibilities be different? There are some people who react much more strongly to dissonant music, so it would seem that sensibilities differ. It's only a hypothesis, but I'd say they differ due to differences in musical growing up environments and listening habits.


----------



## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Chordalrock said:


> If you started out by listening to everything, and you still listen to everything, then I wouldn't assume anything to have changed. But what if you had listened to only pre-1860 post-1700 stuff? Would your sensibilities be different? There are some people who react much more strongly to dissonant music, so it would seem that sensibilities differ. It's only a hypothesis, but I'd say they differ due to differences in musical growing up environments and listening habits.


First of all, this is next to impossible. We live in a culture inundated with contemporary pop and rock music that flagrantly flouts the conventions of voice leading and harmonization that common practice music of that era depended on. To think that this will not affect a listener's forming habits, that they are a _tabula rasa_ that _only_ takes in what it consciously decides to, is naive in the extreme.

Secondly, it ignores the point that rrudolph made (and that I agree with), that a sensitivity to modern music can, far from dulling us to the effects of pre-20th century music, actually sharpen our awareness of them. I know from personal experience that as I came to know Stravinsky and Schoenberg, I came to love Mozart and Beethoven all the more, and became that much more sensitive to their sudden flights of fancy and deviations from expected harmonic/melodic conventions. The things we are least able to see clearly are the ones that surround us and that we take for granted.


----------



## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

Mahlerian said:


> First of all, this is next to impossible.


It was a thought experiment, not a prescription.

And anyway, I didn't listen to pop or rock as a child. I didn't listen to anything as a child. I'm sure there are people who listened to Common Practice Period stuff pretty much exclusively.


----------



## rrudolph (Sep 15, 2011)

Chordalrock said:


> If you started out by listening to everything, and you still listen to everything, then I wouldn't assume anything to have changed. But what if you had listened to only pre-1860 post-1700 stuff? Would your sensibilities be different? There are some people who react much more strongly to dissonant music, so it would seem that sensibilities differ. It's only a hypothesis, but I'd say they differ due to differences in musical growing up environments and listening habits.


Hmmm...the last thing I want to do is hijack this thread with my personal biography, but it may be relevant to mention that my my initial entry into the classical music world was through 20th century music, specifically Stravinsky's Rite of Spring when I was about 11 or 12 years old. Much like Some Guy, I quickly branched out into Varese, Schoenberg, electronic music (particularly Subotnick), etc. I lived within 10 miles of George Crumb, so became aware of his music very early on, including opportunities to walk to Swarthmore College and attend premieres of a couple of his works (along with many new works composed by others) performed by the Penn Contemporary Players. Although my father regularly listened to Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and the like and I of course heard it at home, I had little real interest in music of earlier eras until high school, when I began to play that type of repertoire in school and youth orchestras. It wasn't until I was well out of college that I bought baroque timpani and began to work regularly in HIP orchestras. So my whole classical experience has been kind of ***-backwards from a historical sequence standpoint. I'm not sure if that confirms, refutes or is irrelevant to your hypotheses--I can only say that at this stage of my ongoing musical development (may it never end) I can hear, analyze and understand musical materials (be they tonal, serial, without pitch or whatever) as least as well or maybe better than at any previous time. Contact with a wide variety of musical types has not dulled this ability at all.


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Chordalrock said:


> It was a thought experiment, not a prescription.
> 
> And anyway, I didn't listen to pop or rock as a child. I didn't listen to anything as a child. I'm sure there are people who listened to Common Practice Period stuff pretty much exclusively.


With a background of exposure to nothing but older traditional art, whether it is music or visual art, there is no guessing which individuals will immediately find the unfamiliar exciting, beautiful, etc. I've seen it happen too many times that it refutes "the background of what one is accustomed to in the way of art" theory.

People do have personal psychologies, developed via many influences far apart from 'art,' which will then make them more or less disposed to finding newer works startling, confusing or discomfort-making because they are out of established and known patterns.

If a person has become expectant of 'things running pretty much the same as they have known them' up to the point of being exposed to something different, they may be confounded, disturbed or upset by the new. Others don't have those expectations, or are at least are not upset by the 'surprise' of anything newer and more different than they have known from the realms of their existence so far.

One cannot account for the difference between those two personalities based simply upon their exposure to one kind of music, one kind of art. That part of the individual's make-up is from other long term influences from infancy forward. It ain't the "I'm only used to common practice music or traditional representational art" factor, that's for sure


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

rrudolph said:


> Hmmm...the last thing I want to do is hijack this thread with my personal biography, but it may be relevant to mention that my my initial entry into the classical music world was through 20th century music, specifically Stravinsky's Rite of Spring when I was about 11 or 12 years old. Much like Some Guy, I quickly branched out into Varese, Schoenberg, electronic music (particularly Subotnick), etc. I lived within 10 miles of George Crumb, so became aware of his music very early on, including opportunies to walk to Swarthmore College and attend premieres of a couple of his works (along with many new works composed by others) performed by the Penn Contemporary Players. Although my father regularly listened to Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and the like and I of course heard it at home, I had little real interest in music of earlier eras until high school, when I began to play that type of repertoire in school and youth orchestras. It wasn't until I was well out of college that I bought baroque timpani and began to work regularly in HIP orchestras. So my whole classical experience has been kind of ***-backwards from a historical sequence standpoint. I'm not sure if that confirms, refutes or is irrelevant to your hypotheses--I can only say that at this stage of my ongoing musical development (may it never end) I can hear, analyze and understand musical materials (be they tonal, serial, without pitch or whatever) as least as well or maybe better than at any previous time. Contact with a wide variety of musical types has not dulled this ability at all.


Exactly! A full-spectrum awareness (and in your case actual study) only has any one part of the repertoire or techniques adding dimension to the others. Bach may have not known of Messiaen, but as a contemporary composer he was more than aware of Buxtehude and a heap of the music which came before him and was going on around him, as was Messiaen aware of Buxtehude, etc.

I'm pretty sure that anyone wishing to call themselves a classical musician needs to more than just knowing they existed. One not only informs the other, but even amplifies and helps clarify what distinguishes each of them.


----------



## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

mmsbls said:


> I agree with the technical difficulty for younger performers. They may prefer to _play_ *older, easier music*, but I'm not sure how this might affect their desire to hear older versus newer music.


Why is older music presumed to be easier? That's quite the generalization. There are some easy old pieces and some very, very hard ones. Just like I'm sure is the case with modern music.


----------



## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

PetrB said:


> With a background of exposure to nothing but older traditional art, whether it is music or visual art, there is no guessing which individuals will immediately find the unfamiliar exciting, beautiful, etc. I've seen it happen too many times that it refutes "the background of what one is accustomed to in the way of art" theory.
> 
> People do have personal psychologies, developed via many influences far apart from 'art,' which will then make them more or less disposed to finding newer works startling, confusing or discomfort-making because they are out of established and known patterns.
> 
> ...


Could be, but I don't think the issue is settled. See, I remember information such as your saying you find most of Bach boring. And when I hear stuff like that, I remember hearing similar stuff from other contemporary music buffs, and then I have to wonder if it's some lack of sensitivity to Bach, Mozart and the rest from listening to so much contemporary music.

The whole who likes what and why thing is rather mysterious, I admit. All I really did intend to say is that developing your taste takes effort and what we know about the brain would seem to indicate that yes, indeed, for adults it must take a lot of effort unless, I suppose, they are already very musical or somehow sensitive to music to begin with.


----------



## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

ArtMusic said:


> I don't learn much I'm afraid from contemporary music, technically and aesthetically. The former is best through older music, not contemporary, and as for aesthetically, well you know my views on those types of music .


This is a little case study in how the emerging player can treat contemporary music, consistent with my previous comments. That underlined bit will have to change if there's sufficient technical progress for any realistic hope of making a serious living playing music. Of course, if you want a nice hobby then by all means...

Edit: Maybe we have a viola da gamba player here, or some such. In which case that's probably fine


----------



## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Chordalrock said:


> Could be, but I don't think the issue is settled. See, I remember information such as your saying you find most of Bach boring. And when I hear stuff like that, I remember hearing similar stuff from other contemporary music buffs, and then I have to wonder if it's some lack of sensitivity to Bach, Mozart and the rest from listening to so much contemporary music.


Personal taste affects us all, even those six-fingered among us who hear contemporary music as music rather than as noise...


----------



## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*Give Me a Break Part I Give Up*



Chordalrock said:


> Could be, but I don't think the issue is settled. See, I remember information such as your saying you find most of Bach boring. And when I hear stuff like that, I remember hearing similar stuff from other contemporary music buffs, and then I have to wonder if it's some lack of sensitivity to Bach, Mozart and the rest from listening to so much contemporary music.
> 
> The whole who likes what and why thing is rather mysterious, I admit. All I really did intend to say is that developing your taste takes effort and what we know about the brain would seem to indicate that yes, indeed, for adults it must take a lot of effort unless, I suppose, they are already very musical or somehow sensitive to music to begin with.


I know many people who find Bach's music boring. I know conservative listeners who find Bach's music boring. When it is badly played, I find Bach's music boring. Bach is still Bach irregardless of who finds him boring. One of the stereotypes that is constantly being disseminated is that people who like contemporary music have a contempt for old music. I had an exchange with another member about this in another thread. I realize that there are probably pro-modern people who think the current music is better, but I have never personally met a person who liked contemporary music who also disliked 19th or 18th or 17th century or even older music. Yet no matter how much we profess our admiration for the great masters there are people, whether they are newbies or old timers, who beat us over the head with this nonsense.


----------

