# Does classical music still have anything to say?



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Sometimes it seems to me that people in prior times were concerned about "classical" music because it spoke to them about things that seemed important to them. Is that still the case? Abstract or not, tonal or atonal, do any significant number of people still really care about new compositions? Do they make any "difference"?


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Did it ever had anything to say?


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Isn't the idea that music has something to 'say' essentially a Romantic one that has lasted into modern times? Baroque music was often composed as 'table music'. I wonder if, before the nineteenth century, if you wanted to say something, you would write a song?

The subject is an interesting one. When older pieces 'speak' to me - such as Rebel's Chaos in the Elements - they don't necessarily say to me what they said to the first listeners. And maybe what some of Bach's pieces have to say is about the possibilities of composition rather than anything personal or philosophical.

Actually, the few modern compositions that I've listened to *do* seem to be trying to say something, maybe _more_ than early or baroque musics do.

But I don't know anything much - that's why I joined this forum - and I shall be interested to read other opinions.


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## kartikeys (Mar 16, 2013)

Philosophy and music coincide. If you have 
second rate philosophy, you will have such music. 
Lack of values, rather, belief in the value system, 
stops us from questioning life, observing its colours. 
Hence the music too doesn't ask these questions.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Music has never "said" things to me - it makes me feel things that can't be put into words.

And there's plenty of new and recent music that does that for me, just as well if not more so than music of the past.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

I listened to an amateur pianist yesterday. She was playing Schubert's Impromptu No. 3. It was fantastic - it spoke to me of love and hope and sadness and despair and joy and longing and sensuality and ... ... ... and it was fantastically beautiful

Does classical music have anything to say in 2016? Yes - yes it does - yes, most emphatically


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## dieter (Feb 26, 2016)

Headphone Hermit said:


> I listened to an amateur pianist yesterday. She was playing Schubert's Impromptu No. 3. It was fantastic - it spoke to me of love and hope and sadness and despair and joy and longing and sensuality and ... ... ... and it was fantastically beautiful
> 
> Does classical music have anything to say in 2016? Yes - yes it does - yes, most emphatically


In the end, it's music, something that 'afflicts' us all: classical music is one aspect of it. For me, it's the highest form of music and there will always be people like me who hopefully will keep it alive. That's what classical music has to say, I guess, that it will continue to mean something to some of us all of the time.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

Presumably John Adams would be the current living classical composer with the greatest chance of reaching the widest audience. His music is serious, but still makes a strong connection to triadic/diatonic harmony.

A good amount of his music, even instrumental music, is programmatic or semi-programmatic about relatively current generation sorts of things. Therefore, at least on paper, his music should speak to a lot of people, or at least a lot of people who would be interested in classical music.

And yet, does it? He's not played nearly as much in orchestral halls as the three B's. Of course, Helmut Lachenmann and Ana-Maria Avram fare a whole lot worse (I don't need to be reminded of this, considering this point is brought up like every week on TC), but yet, even the most likely to capture the 21st century core audience don't fare as well: Adams, Ades, Saariaho, Gubaidulina, Lindberg, Chin, Norgard, Abrahamsen...

Why? And if these composers, and perhaps 100 other select composers/performers/critics were put into a temporal stasis for, say, one or two decades to produce the best music they possibly could, would this music be performed as much as the three B's?

I'd say probably not. Why? Because even with their busy university, teaching, and conducting schedule these guys generally have enough time to be solidly prolific and be at their best level of craft, or almost best, for their major serious compositions.

The days of peasants (literally) cheering during the premiere of Beethoven's 9th are long gone. I don't think the reason is because of the quality of the music composed by living composers. Of course, I'm an "avant-gardist bully in a bubble with taste that doesn't match the real world who only seeks to hunt down people who get facts about Schoenberg wrong like a wolf" so my opinion is wrong, but consider this: I don't see why Thomas Ades's violin concerto wouldn't be as popular as Stravinsky's. Really, it has lovely orchestral color and an organic synthesis between solo violin and orchestra, a kind of infinite, flowering melody, and it's harmony is reasonably diatonically grounded and therefore "listenable". And yet the Ades, or other "reasonably accessible" and still very high quality post-1950 concertos from Dutilleux, Lutoslawski, Ligeti aren't performed as much as the three B's.

I don't know why. Even my mom likes the Ligeti (please don't interpret the word "even" as a pejorative to lay audiences). On the other hand, I once went to a live performance of the Dutilleux string quartet and there was coughing all the way through with only modest applause, as opposed to the Schubert string quintet afterward which, while played out of tune and with bad balance amongst the lower strings, was thunderously applauded. I don't understand. If one is familiar with the Debussy, Ravel, and Bartok quartets, then the Dutilleux quartet isn't really that much more dissonant, and I really mean it. It has beautiful chord color, highly melodic writing, and great use of the string quartet... definitely better use of the string quartet than the Debussy and Ravel.

Maybe listeners just haven't been encouraged enough. Dutilleux, Ligeti, Varese, Chin... by God if people are fine with Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and Bartok's 4th quartet I don't see why these would be too dissonant, and the quality of their writing, and their friendly (yes, friendly!) modern musical personalities and sensibilities, should make them both accessible and enriching. Screw whether my favorites like Stockhausen and Ferneyhough ever grow beyond the avant-garde community, there are post-1950 people that really could, in principle, be liked by the average classical listener.

I don't get it. People (not on TC, but elsewhere from what I've heard from friends and acquaintances in real life) sometimes complain that Mozart is to "aristocratic" or "formulaic", and by God, his music is late 18th century so it therefore will have a late 18th century personality and sensibility. Duh. Post-1950 music has a certain musical personality that's very modern and friendly: it feels like the writing of a well-educated, smart, strong, and charismatic 40-60 year old, even one that you might know in real life. Take Messiaen: his Christian sensibility reflects a so much more late 20th/21st century fusion of religion and spirituality. His music, at least to me, hits that contemporary fusion of religion and spirituality in a way that the common practice composers could never, ever, have imagined because it wasn't a part of their era and ethos. I could easily see a contemporary Christian interested in classical music loving some of Messiaen's works, like the deeply inspired programmatic orchestral work Eclairs sur la dela.

So even if 2nd Viennese and Darmstadt music objectively ******* sucks, there's a whole lot out their with quality and something to say, and by God I may be a patronizing elitist intellectual demon for saying this, but I think that audiences need to put more investment, more faith, more courage that there is good post-1950 music out there, and I think that concert programmers need to be braver, and I think that performers need to be braver, and I think that critics and authors should be braver and more encouraging. I also think that the holy trinity of "Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven" needs to stop being so worshipped. With people like Ockeghem, Monteverdi, Chopin, Wagner, Mahler, Debussy, Stravinsky, Webern, etc. being great for such different, and not only different, but absolutely incommensurate reasons it makes no sense to have an implied hierarchy of greatness. This implied hierarchy can only put people off from exploring really good quality and accessible post-1950 music.


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## Xenakiboy (May 8, 2016)

SeptimalTritone said:


> Presumably John Adams would be the current living classical composer with the greatest chance of reaching the widest audience. His music is serious, but still makes a strong connection to triadic/diatonic harmony.
> 
> A good amount of his music, even instrumental music, is programmatic or semi-programmatic about relatively current generation sorts of things. Therefore, at least on paper, his music should speak to a lot of people, or at least a lot of people who would be interested in classical music.
> 
> ...


Even though that went slightly off topic from the OP.
AMEN to this!! :cheers::tiphat:


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

As far as I'm concerned, Classical Music still easily beats out any of its competition by a wide margin.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

I guess a related question is, does contemporary popular music still have something to say (if it ever did)?


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Take a break from music for one day - two if you can stand it, then listen to a piece you know you're going to like, contemporary or otherwise. It will have plenty to say. I think this "saying," this feeling of communication or just communing takes place within us, not within the music. I know that sounds all new age and woo-woo, but it's demonstrable.


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## Guest (Jun 7, 2016)

The OP's question (s) cannot be answered so simply, since it seems to imply both a common (across all listeners) and coherent (in some sense organised and even sequential) experience of classical music. In other words, that we have all encountered music old and new in some kind of progression enabling us to determine what has been 'said' to us, if anything. But this is obviously not the case. I listen to the music that still has something to say to me, but I doubt that my experience is exactly shared by anyone else. You might as well ask if Shakespeare still has anything to say; of course he does, to many of his audience, and maybe his modern counterparts much less so, but if you've never read or seen the Bard and only experienced David Hare, you might say that theatre has nothing to say anymore.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Perhaps the apparent lack of importance of classical music today is more a consequence of its more diffuse status within society rather than anything in the music itself. I don't think any of us can really appreciate how different the world was in the 19th century and before. Anyone in the developed world can, over the course of a day, hear a wider variety of music than anyone in the historical past could possibly have heard in their entire lives - and, moreover, they can do it without coming into contact with anyone who shares their interest in music. Music still "says something", but whereas in the past such music was akin to the big fish in the small pond, now it's a big fish in a vast ocean. Here on TC, for instance, two people could both say that new classical music is as fresh and exciting as it has ever been, but there might be little or no overlap in their musical interests


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

MarkW said:


> I guess a related question is, does contemporary popular music still have something to say (if it ever did)?


Yes, it does and did, assuming you don't just mean the more frivolous pop performers. It's much easier to figure out what they are trying to say, which doesn't mean they are better or deeper.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

violadude said:


> As far as I'm concerned, Classical Music still easily beats out any of its competition by a wide margin.


Except that it's not a competition.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

DeepR said:


> Except that it's not a competition.


I'm saying if music still matters at all, then Classical Music most certainly does, imo.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

The vast majority of modern music has nothing substantial to communicate. What can a hedonist, godless society possibly say other than boast about its degeneracy and corruption? The abyss is dark, my friends.


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## Marinera (May 13, 2016)

DeepR said:


> Except that it's not a competition.


Semantics.

Most garden variety 'competition' just can't take it that it was beat by the finely tuned musical hedonistic decadence of the highest order they would never achieve.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

It seems as if we have been down this path before.

I keep thinking of all of the music festivals I have attended where there have been very enthusiastic, appreciative audiences: Stanton, Shenandoah Bach Festival (which features everything including contemporary), Santa Fe Opera and others. I keep thinking of the time I attended Tanglewood when Carter was the guest composer and the large audience treated him like a rock star.

My wife and I will be leaving tomorrow to attend Ojai again. I will try to remember to ask all of the wonderful people I meet if classical music says anything to them. I assume that it does because why would they be there if it did not.


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## Marinera (May 13, 2016)

Morimur said:


> The vast majority of modern music has nothing substantial to communicate. What can a hedonist, godless society possibly say other than boast about its degeneracy and corruption? The abyss is dark, my friends.


 Well, classical music does that too in some secular works only with much more imagination, taste and skill.


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

Morimur said:


> The vast majority of modern music has nothing substantial to communicate. What can a hedonist, godless society possibly say other than boast about its degeneracy and corruption? The abyss is dark, my friends.


Most Classical music was created in corrupt societies whose "godliness" was nominal.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

GreenMamba said:


> Most Classical music was created in corrupt societies whose "godliness" was nominal.


There _were_ and there _are_ exceptions.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Classical really never said anything to me. But it sure feels good to listen to it. It's like a drug. Get high on classical music.


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## Alydon (May 16, 2012)

Classical music says everything there needs to be said about our very existence, emotions, feelings, aspirations and faith, but the incredible thing is that music reinvents itself each time we hear the same piece for the umpteenth time. Of course the same piece of music can mean different things to different people and that's what makes it such an abstract and fascinating subject. I believe the core classical repertoire is what speaks most as against music being written now - but beauty is in the eye of the beholder


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## Guest (Jun 7, 2016)

Morimur said:


> The vast majority of modern music has nothing substantial to communicate. What can a hedonist, godless society possibly say other than boast about its degeneracy and corruption? The abyss is dark, my friends.


Your particular brand of pessimism sheds little light on the OP's question. You might at least offer an insight into the basic question of whether any music of any period has ever had anything 'substantial to communicate', before we get into countering your gloom which takes us all off-topic.


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## PlaySalieri (Jun 3, 2012)

*I don't get it. People (not on TC, but elsewhere from what I've heard from friends and acquaintances in real life) sometimes complain that Mozart is to "aristocratic" or "formulaic", and by God, his music is late 18th century so it therefore will have a late 18th century personality and sensibility. Duh. Post-1950 music has a certain musical personality that's very modern and friendly: it feels like the writing of a well-educated, smart, strong, and charismatic 40-60 year old, even one that you might know in real life. Take Messiaen: his Christian sensibility reflects a so much more late 20th/21st century fusion of religion and spirituality. His music, at least to me, hits that contemporary fusion of religion and spirituality in a way that the common practice composers could never, ever, have imagined because it wasn't a part of their era and ethos. I could easily see a contemporary Christian interested in classical music loving some of Messiaen's works, like the deeply inspired programmatic orchestral work Eclairs sur la dela.*

I have yet to meet a Christian who would rather listen to Messiaen than Bach or Mozart.


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## Guest (Jun 7, 2016)

Morimur said:


> The vast majority of modern music has nothing substantial to communicate. What can a hedonist, godless society possibly say other than boast about its degeneracy and corruption? The abyss is dark, my friends.


Well here's the topic that's not allowed. If we are godless now, it was always so. IMO.


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## Hildadam Bingor (May 7, 2016)

stomanek said:


> I have yet to meet a Christian who would rather listen to Messiaen than Bach or Mozart.


On the other hand, credit where it's due, there probably are some Christians who would rather listen to Arvo Pärt.


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## Hildadam Bingor (May 7, 2016)

The more pressing question is: does music, of any kind, still have anything to say? (And if it doesn't now, does that mean retroactively it never actually did?)

That said, I find it interesting that La Monte Young's work with the Theater of Eternal Music in the early '60s and Terry Riley's work through the end of the decade had a nearly instantaneous influence on the popular music of the time, by way of the Velvet Underground, Can, the Who, Brian Eno, and so on, but ideas that came only slightly later still remain unassimilated by popular music (spectralism, Young's and Riley's own work with just intonation). I'm not sure if that proves the stagnation of classical music, the stagnation of popular music, both, or neither.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

Morimur said:


> The vast majority of modern music has nothing substantial to communicate. What can a hedonist, godless society possibly say other than boast about its degeneracy and corruption? The abyss is dark, my friends.


Oddball: "Always with the negative waves Moriarty, always with the negative waves."


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## Hildadam Bingor (May 7, 2016)

Hildadam Bingor said:


> That said, I find it interesting that La Monte Young's work with the Theater of Eternal Music in the early '60s and Terry Riley's work through the end of the decade had a nearly instantaneous influence on the popular music of the time, by way of the Velvet Underground, Can, the Who, Brian Eno, and so on, but ideas that came only slightly later still remain unassimilated by popular music (spectralism, Young's and Riley's own work with just intonation). I'm not sure if that proves the stagnation of classical music, the stagnation of popular music, both, or neither.


Though on the other hand - just remembered this - Paul Simon uses Harry Partch's instruments on his new album, so maybe that's a sign that the time has come.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

dogen said:


> Well here's the topic that's not allowed. If we are godless now, it was always so. IMO.


Not only 'IMO', also the apostle Paul writes that.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

TxllxT said:


> Not only 'IMO', also the apostle Paul writes that.


lol....

For those who say that contemporary Classical Music must now say something _more _than what it has already been said, or that the past is done talking to us, call yourself a pragmatist! Pragmatism is to believe that objects only have value if they speak to the here and now, or if say something _new_. But I myself am not convinced to follow pragmatism. To me, there is nothing new under the sun. Newness is an illusion. We circle around the same ~100 themes for millennia.

_And that's okay. Embrace it._


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## Xenakiboy (May 8, 2016)

I think the bigger question might be: Does music really have anything to say at all?

Do you really think that music means anything outside of itself? And if you do, are those meanings implied or forced onto by the listener interpreting this collection of notes?
Comparing pop/popular music to classical, if it does have something to say, if so what is it and how important is it? 

This starts to get quite philosophical because then the question springs up: Do (or will) we ever have anything to say that hasn't already been said?


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Sometimes it seems to me that people in prior times were concerned about "classical" music because it spoke to them about things that seemed important to them. Is that still the case? Abstract or not, tonal or atonal, do any significant number of people still really care about new compositions? Do they make any "difference"?


Yes, only the truly good ones do. Most of the experimentalism pieces from half a century ago have nothing to say today. Nothing.


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## Guest (Jun 7, 2016)

ArtMusic said:


> Yes, only the truly good ones do. Most of the experimentalism pieces from half a century ago have nothing to say today. Nothing.


I'm glad to see that you've given up pretending that you might be interested.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Nereffid said:


> Music has never "said" things to me - it makes me feel things that can't be put into words.
> 
> And there's plenty of *new and recent music* that does that for me, [/B]just as well if not more so[/B] than music of the past.


Can you post one-three things for me that does this for you? I want to hear something that I may not necessarily understand immediately but that you believe can offer something as the part of your post I underlined says. If it helps, you aren't dealing with a skeptic in me right now, I'm ready to hear something.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Of course classical music has something to say. If it didn't, we wouldn't be here and there would be no classical music.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

I suspect that even old pieces can keep saying what they say and continue to work their elusive magic(?). Live performances create rich experiences every time for the right people at the right time. You don't hear some works that often either. 

As for new pieces, I'll get back to you when I've really done the 'research.'


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

stomanek said:


> I have yet to meet a Christian who would rather listen to Messiaen than Bach or Mozart.


That is not the point I was trying to make. You misrepresented my point.

KenOC asked: does the music written post-1950 have anything relevant to modern audiences. I said: yes, the music inherently does and could provide people with great experiences in principle, but social factors, the mythical status of Bach+Mozart+Beethoven (even though I know both highly educated and not very educated people who think of Mozart as too formulaic), and the lack of a clear great superhero in the 20th or 21st century (there are probably 10 guys i.e. Sibelius, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky... between 1900 and 1950 who are the core of what's performed in concerts and who are all great, but none of them have the cultural mythical status of Bach+Mozart+Beethoven).

How in the world do the tonic and dominant of Mozart "speak" more to average audiences than the chord colors and wonderful sound structures of Debussy and Ravel or the eclecticism and variety of Stravinsky, or the complex and fully mature late romanticism of Sibelius and Rachmaninoff? I think that it is merely hype, cultural mythical hype, that has... freaking Brahms at number 3 beating a whole lot of 20th century composers. Yes, the freaking Brahms that TC has declared too dense, well-crafted, turgid, and unnatural is number 3 in concert programming. https://www.bsomusic.org/stories/what-data-tells-us-about-the-2015-16-orchestra-season.aspx Why in the world does the highly turgid and axe-grinding (yes, this is what I thought when I listened to it for the first few times) Brahms's 1st symphony speak more to people than Stravinsky's Petrushka and Rite or Debussy's Nocturnes and Images? The latter, intrinsically, have so much more to say for our current world. They relate to us so much better. Is it perhaps the safety and familiarity of classical sonata form + romantic harmony that causes Brahms to beat Stravinsky by a multiplicative factor of over 2? A desire by people to marvel at the miracles of the past while ignoring the complexities and realities of the present day?

Don't take my statement to mean that Mozart and Brahms suck. Both lay audiences and critics love them, I love them too. But the same is true for a lot of early 20th century people, and yet they are not programmed quite as much. John Adams, the best chance for a living composer, doesn't even reach a fifth of Brahms's programming, but is it really because his music, which deals with 9-11 of the beaches of California, inherently doesn't speak or is as relevant to living people?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Just to clarify, my question was not meant to ask if music composed now is "good" or "bad." The intent was to ask if music composed now is as "important" to people now as (it seems to me) music of some earlier times was "important" to listeners of those times.

Obviously the question of "how many people" immediately arises, and that's fine.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

Intrinsically, the music could be as culturally relevant to our ethos. The programmatic or musical personality content is irreducibly that of our own era, and not that of the intellectuals of our own era, but really that of our own era.

But... it doesn't compare to how much Beethoven's living fans cared about him, and it doesn't even compare to how much we listen to Beethoven now.

So it isn't as important, but I don't think that's because of the inherent properties of the music.


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## dieter (Feb 26, 2016)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> lol....
> 
> For those who say that contemporary Classical Music must now say something _more _than what it has already been said, or that the past is done talking to us, call yourself a pragmatist! Pragmatism is to believe that objects only have value if they speak to the here and now, or if say something _new_. But I myself am not convinced to follow pragmatism. To me, there is nothing new under the sun. Newness is an illusion. We circle around the same ~100 themes for millennia.
> 
> _And that's okay. Embrace it._


all is vanity and a striving after wind...


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## Marinera (May 13, 2016)

It's curious how society's expectations change with time. Contemporary society thrives on novelty like no other before, thanks to technological progress, world 'shrinking' and so on. This affects music and culture, and fosters the same sort of expectations from them too. Many branches of classical music developed within half a century, minimalistic, various avangarde branches I don't know the name of, some of them sound to me like an accident waiting to happen, but that's a new 'say', developement as well, not to mention the whole new application, like movie soundtracks. And accross the culture, both art and music, people are worried about novelty. To tell the truth i believe music always have the same to say, same themes I mean, only outward expression - the form changes, how it's said. And what people worry about is this outward expression I think. And contemporary person has high expectations where novelty's concerned, same as from technology. The change of that musical expression should be almost on the yearly basis if not more frequent.
Traditional music of many cultures was left unchanged for centuries. Medieval music and music before it had a much longer lifespan(and nobody cared if it had anything new to say or the how of it).
I think it's funny how in ancient Egypt and other older societies it was quite the opposite than how it is today. There were very strict iconoclastic rules how subjects and what subjects should be depicted, that's in art and change to those rules happend either very slowly and gradually, because rule changing was not exactly encouraged, or different scenarios - wars, feuding etc etc.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Xenakiboy said:


> I think the bigger question might be: Does music really have anything to say at all?
> 
> Do you really think that music means anything outside of itself? And if you do, are those meanings implied or forced onto by the listener interpreting this collection of notes?
> Comparing pop/popular music to classical, if it does have something to say, if so what is it and how important is it?
> ...


Perhaps then you are of the nihilist philosophical persuasion. "There is no meaning in sound." Is it no meaning period, or no _universal _meaning? And why must it be universal to have something _important _to say? Not sure why I cry so many times then. Maybe tears are meaningless too! I think about that a lot, that physical manifestations of emotions resulting from physical constructs are meaningless. Though I'm not sure why we must put down physical manifestations so much. I question that too. Body bad, spirit good?

But another party says there is meaning in people, and music was created by people so therefore music has meaning. I am of that party. Just as one listens to a foreign language and listens to it with awe without understanding, so one can listen to music without understanding what it's "saying" but still have some sort of reaction of "awe." But like learning a language, and learning a _person_, we learn music too. Music I think is called the "universal language" in that perhaps the concepts that composers create can be so complex that once you "tap into it," you are distancing yourself from others who haven't tapped into it yet. To understand what's so provocative about the Shostakovich 8th String Quartet CAN be evaluated without outside information. You could listen to _all _his music, and related music, and come to a conclusion that he would have agreed to, is my strong guess. For one, the DSCH theme was used before, and you wouldn't have to know that it represented himself to see that it was still an important group of 4 notes to Shostakovich, and why he may have used it again in such a mood. AND the fact he alludes to his first major piece, the 1st symphony, in this quartet can be recognized without someone telling you, and one can use their own faculties to guess why he would put it in there without reading why (to articulate my own theory into words, he was alluding to his musical "birth" in contrast of what he wanted to be his musical "death," this quartet). Things can be implied without words. That's how language works. We pick up a word here and there to get the gist of a sentence, a paragraph, an essay. We pick up a motif to get the gist of a phrase, a movement, a symphony. The composer knows their own musical "language" better than anyone else, but we can learn bits and pieces too. Therefore music is the study of people just as much as it's the study of sounds in time. Therefore I do believe music has something to say, but it takes _empathy _for another individual to see it.


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## Torkelburger (Jan 14, 2014)

Morimur said:


> The vast majority of modern music has nothing substantial to communicate. What can a hedonist, godless society possibly say other than boast about its degeneracy and corruption? The abyss is dark, my friends.


There are exceptions. Not every godless society is a North Korea. The "abyss" only exists as a figment of your imagination. Don't expect your Christian propaganda and fear-mongering to spread fear into others as easily as they spread into you.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

SeptimalTritone said:


> Why in the world does the highly turgid and axe-grinding (yes, this is what I thought when I listened to it for the first few times) Brahms's 1st symphony speak more to people than Stravinsky's Petrushka and Rite or Debussy's Nocturnes and Images? The latter, intrinsically, have so much more to say for our current world. They relate to us so much better.


I don't agree. Human nature has not changed; great music, regardless of the time period, taps into that nature and creates a bond with people.


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## Xenakiboy (May 8, 2016)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Perhaps then you are of the nihilist philosophical persuasion. "There is no meaning in sound." Is it no meaning period, or no _universal _meaning? And why must it be universal to have something _important _to say? Not sure why I cry so many times then. Maybe tears are meaningless too! I think about that a lot, that physical manifestations of emotions resulting from physical constructs are meaningless. Though I'm not sure why we must put down physical manifestations so much. I question that too. Body bad, spirit good?
> 
> But another party says there is meaning in people, and music was created by people so therefore music has meaning. I am of that party. Just as one listens to a foreign language and listens to it with awe without understanding, so one can listen to music without understanding what it's "saying" but still have some sort of reaction of "awe." But like learning a language, and learning a _person_, we learn music too. Music I think is called the "universal language" in that perhaps the concepts that composers create can be so complex that once you "tap into it," you are distancing yourself from others who haven't tapped into it yet. To understand what's so provocative about the Shostakovich 8th String Quartet CAN be evaluated without outside information. You could listen to _all _his music, and related music, and come to a conclusion that he would have agreed to, is my strong guess. For one, the DSCH theme was used before, and you wouldn't have to know that it represented himself to see that it was still an important group of 4 notes to Shostakovich, and why he may have used it again in such a mood. AND the fact he alludes to his first major piece, the 1st symphony, in this quartet can be recognized without someone telling you, and one can use their own faculties to guess why he would put it in there without reading why (to articulate my own theory into words, he was alluding to his musical "birth" in contrast of what he wanted to be his musical "death," this quartet). Things can be implied without words. That's how language works. We pick up a word here and there to get the gist of a sentence, a paragraph, an essay. We pick up a motif to get the gist of a phrase, a movement, a symphony. The composer knows their own musical "language" better than anyone else, but we can learn bits and pieces too. Therefore music is the study of people just as much as it's the study of sounds in time. Therefore I do believe music has something to say, but it takes _empathy _for another individual to see it.


Firstly I was just posing some questions to think about the way we perceive music, I'm not a nihilist. I don't think there is an objective meaning of sounds, particularly musical sounds; eg. a group of notes on an instrument. I believe we have reactions to music (and sounds) because we come to associate them with feelings, places, experiences, which give us either a positive or a negative emotional response. 
I'm not saying that you may not have legitimate feelings for music or pieces of music but it doesn't objectively mean anything concrete outside of your perception of it (even if it makes other people feel the same). 
I have had tears to pieces of music but that doesn't make the music mean anything *in and of itself*.

I'll give you an example of what I'm trying to get at.
Tell me what this means and how it makes you feel?








Now for the common analogy of calling music a "language". Language implies a meaning and context of its phrases and symbols. I would agree that music _notation_ is a language that we, over time have developed to be able to replicate sounds. But you cant say that a A minor chord followed by a F major chord means anything outside of music theory, which would explain different levels of dissonance resolved to consonance etc.
I'm not sure if I'm making 100% sense in typing this, because there is a lot to cover in this but lets carry on.

The way I see music has been quite accurately described by Iannis Xenakis in this quote:
"Music is not a language. Any musical piece is akin to a boulder with complex forms, with striations and engraved designs atop and within, which men can decipher in a thousand different ways without ever finding the right answer or the best one..."
And in his book _Formalized Music_, he describes that music is an interdisciplinary art-form which relates directly to painting, mathematics, architecture, science and of course verbal/written language (in this case English). But this doesn't imply meaning, it implies connections to those other forms (which have been demonstrated).

From this I make the conclusion that music is not a language in itself, a bunch of notes in any combination will never mean anything in and of itself *but* music is related and uses language in different ways. Interpretation of sounds of 100% subjective.

Music means a *lot* to me but I think its a huge stretch to call music and sound something that has an objective meaning. Does this make sense?


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## Xenakiboy (May 8, 2016)

There are things that I will have missed in this few paragraphs but first realize that its a HUGE topic to cover that could cover a whole philosophy/science book series.

When you consider the subjective nature of music (and art), it is impossible to have a concrete agreement of anything concerning interpretation and emotional responses. 
Consider that the way you may or may not feel about Beethoven or Mozart, someone will feel the same passion or dislike for a composer like Schoenberg or Stockhausen.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

clavichorder said:


> Can you post one-three things for me that does this for you? I want to hear something that I may not necessarily understand immediately but that you believe can offer something as the part of your post I underlined says. If it helps, you aren't dealing with a skeptic in me right now, I'm ready to hear something.


Rather than simply give you a list of my favourite new music, instead I'll give some context to my thinking by pairing some contemporary works with older works that have a similar emotional effect on me. They might be musicologically very different but their musical impacts are comparable.

Mahler: Symphony no.3 / JL Adams: Become Ocean
Strauss: Four Last Songs / Abrahamsen: Let Me Tell You
Britten: The Turn of the Screw / Lang: The Difficulty of Crossing a Field
any Renaissance mass or motet / respectively, Feldman: Rothko Chapel and Cage: Five
Bach: St Matthew Passion / Wolfe: Steel Hammer (this comparison might raise the most eyebrows, but of course both are narrative vocal reflections on men who died proving a point!)

To be clear, I'm not saying "if you like X, you'll like Y"; this is entirely personal taste - which obviously is a minimalist one in my case. Readers of the above list may be amused or horrified as they see fit, but to dismiss it is to support the suggestion that music no longer says something.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

^^^Smart! Thank you. I happen to be pretty familiar with all the old ones.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Morimur said:


> The vast majority of modern music has nothing substantial to communicate. What can a hedonist, godless society possibly say other than boast about its degeneracy and corruption? The abyss is dark, my friends.


Societies have always been degenerate and corrupt compared to earlier societies. Just ask anybody over 50 (me, for instance)! Degeneracy and corruption change their forms. But our particular corruption is more dangerous mainly because there are so many more of us burdening the fragile planet with our limitless desires and our devastating power to fulfill them, which creates in us the illusion that whatever we want can be ours, and is ours by right. When life on earth is horrible people crave the riches of heaven. When they can have riches on earth they figure, "Why wait?"

Has the vast majority of music ever communicated anything substantial? I'm not saying that it can't, but the fact is that music is the most hedonistic of the arts. People dancing themselves into trances to the beat of drums may be called "spiritual," but basically they're just getting high, and Augustine feared the hedonistic pleasure of the music made by monkish choirs. There is no essential difference between the music Bach wrote to celebrate the resurrection of Christ and the concertos he presented to the Margrave of Brandenburg; one merely has words telling us what it's "about."


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Xenakiboy said:


> From this I make the conclusion that music is not a language in itself, a bunch of notes in any combination will never mean anything in and of itself *but* music is related and uses language in different ways. Interpretation of sounds of 100% subjective.
> 
> Music means a *lot* to me but I think its a huge stretch to call music and sound something that has an objective meaning. Does this make sense?


Instrumental music has meaning. Musical meaning - not objective in the standard sense, of course, but meaning with a great degree of intersubjective agreement - derives from (1) shared conventions (2) isomorphism with human gesture, posture and utterance (3) systematic patterns of binary opposition, and probably a couple other categories I am just not thinking of at the moment. If the subject interests you there is plenty of writing about how music means various things in the literature of musical aesthetics.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

EdwardBast said:


> Instrumental music has meaning. Musical meaning - not objective in the standard sense, of course, but meaning with a great degree of intersubjective agreement...


Absolutely agree, Toscanini notwithstanding. Some music can haul a pretty heavy freight of moral and ethical meaning, which can be widely recognized not only in our Western cultures but also among others that become familiar with the Western classical music idiom of a certain age. I refrain from mentioning composers' names.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Florestan said:


> Classical really never said anything to me. But it sure feels good to listen to it. It's like a drug. Get high on classical music.


Really? It really has 'never said anything to you'? So you never get the political and social messages that Beethoven is conveying in _Fidelio?_ I find this really hard to understand - the values and principles, the attitude to life that Beethoven presents in a highly 'message-filled' work such as _Fidelio_ just passes you by even though you have dozens of copies of the work and have listened to them many times?

Well, that surprises me a lot


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Headphone Hermit said:


> Really? It really has 'never said anything to you'? So you never get the political message that Beethoven is conveying in _Fidelio?_ I find this really hard to understand - the values and principles, the attitude to life that Beethoven presents in a highly 'message-filled' work such as _Fidelio_ just passes you by even though you have dozens of copies of the work and have listened to them many times?
> 
> Well, that surprises me a lot


But surely most of what _Fidelio_ - or any opera or other vocal work - "says" is in the text rather than the music per se? Music itself can't communicate values, principles, or attitudes without them being explained or hinted at by the composer, or us imposing an interpretation on the music. I grant that, where musical language is widely shared, there are many ways that composers can deliberately plant ideas in the listener's mind, but these can only be broad-strokes impressions such as "happiness", "grief", "release", and so forth; they can be strung together to make a general vague narrative, but any more complex thought will require a text.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Nereffid said:


> But surely most of what _Fidelio_ - or any opera or other vocal work - "says" is in the text rather than the music per se? Music itself can't communicate values, principles, or attitudes without them being explained or hinted at by the composer, or us imposing an interpretation on the music. I grant that, where musical language is widely shared, there are many ways that composers can deliberately plant ideas in the listener's mind, but these can only be broad-strokes impressions such as "happiness", "grief", "release", and so forth; they can be strung together to make a general vague narrative, but any more complex thought will require a text.


Very brief answer (sorry - work is 'in the way') ... There is a nice mini-series on BBC4 at the moment - catch it on I-Player if you can http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...f-the-19th-century-2-talkin-bout-a-revolution

Of course, not everyone will agree with the premises put forward


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Nereffid said:


> I grant that, where musical language is widely shared, there are many ways that composers can deliberately plant ideas in the listener's mind, but these can only be broad-strokes impressions such as "happiness", "grief", "release", and so forth


I hold with Mendelssohn, who said that music communicates emotion with incomparable precision, and that it's words that are usually reduced to communicating them with vague approximations--though because of the imprecision of language I'm afraid I can't provide you with a defense of the claim :lol:


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## sloth (Jul 12, 2013)

We live in a post-modern society. the old parameters can't describe it anymore. so, yes classical music is proper XXI century music. not all the people will like it, but that's ok. the musical scenario is fragmenting day-to-day into sub-genres (I know many people who just listen to sixteenth century polyphony, or just opera and so on...) so no-one can say what music is representative of the contemporary age.
Let's consider that there has never been so much baroque (or for instance other periods) music as today (I've surely listened to more baroque composers than J. S. Bach could have listened in his times, to say the least...) and what about a 19th century Austrian farmer? did he really know what classical music was, apart for some waltzes?). just my 2 cents.


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## Guest (Jun 11, 2016)

Headphone Hermit said:


> Very brief answer (sorry - work is 'in the way') ... There is a nice mini-series on BBC4 at the moment - catch it on I-Player if you can http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...f-the-19th-century-2-talkin-bout-a-revolution


Watched the first one last night. Very good I thought.

I've also been enjoying Sir John Eliot Gardner's exploration of Beethoven's 5th, and what it says. Also the complete performance preceded by some rehearsal extracts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5HKIfvyD3A

[url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07dprl0/playing-beethovens-fifth
[/URL]


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

^^^ Yes, the Gardner's Beethoven programme is also very enjoyable and very informative - the claims that the music in the 5th is political and expresses Beethoven's views in a clear manner are convincingly put.

The BBC produces some mighty fine programmes on classical music at the moment - the _Perfect Pianists_ and _Virtuoso Violinists_ programmes were also very good IMHO


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> Societies have always been degenerate and corrupt compared to earlier societies. Just ask anybody over 50 (me, for instance)! Degeneracy and corruption change their forms. But our particular corruption is more dangerous mainly because there are so many more of us burdening the fragile planet with our limitless desires and our devastating power to fulfill them, which creates in us the illusion that whatever we want can be ours, and is ours by right. When life on earth is horrible people crave the riches of heaven. When they can have riches on earth they figure, "Why wait?"
> 
> Has the vast majority of music ever communicated anything substantial? I'm not saying that it can't, but the fact is that music is the most hedonistic of the arts. People dancing themselves into trances to the beat of drums may be called "spiritual," but basically they're just getting high, and Augustine feared the hedonistic pleasure of the music made by monkish choirs. There is no essential difference between the music Bach wrote to celebrate the resurrection of Christ and the concertos he presented to the Margrave of Brandenburg; one merely has words telling us what it's "about."


I think Woodduck raises an interesting point here, although he clothes it in hedonism: music is to be "used" by listeners for various purposes.
The rise and popularity of Minimalism (Philip Glass symphonies, etc.) is a testament to what is needed in music in today's world: a place to focus, and reconnect with our center of being. This is a form of spirituality, for sure.

Instead of presenting this as a 'battle' between good and evil, in the form of organized religion vs. hedonism, I would state it as the dichotomy between our personal and public roles as human in a complex society. The message of media seems to be that either you are "famous, beautiful, and worthy" or you are irrelevant, uncelebrated, and obscure.

When we begin to focus in on our selves, without worrying about success/failure, beauty/desire, then we can be in touch with reality that is free of this distortion.

Besides, we question celebrity, and rarely agree. Take Mohammed Ali, revered by many, but a controversial figure who was hated by others, or at least did not represent their valures. He was a conscientious objector, a Muslim, friend of Malcolm X, and in general a troublemaker in the eyes of many. What made him "great" was the personal choices he made, many of them not in keeping with the accepted notions of what a "good citizen" is. Yet, he continued to cultivate and reinforce his own spirit and being, in ways that often contradicted the idea of what a 'good American" was; yet he never left the U.S, and did not defect to Canada or elsewhere.


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## Hildadam Bingor (May 7, 2016)

millionrainbows said:


> Instead of presenting this as a 'battle' between good and evil, in the form of organized religion vs. hedonism, I would state it as the dichotomy between our personal and public roles as human in a complex society. The message of media seems to be that either you are "famous, beautiful, and worthy" or you are irrelevant, uncelebrated, and obscure.
> 
> When we begin to focus in on our selves, without worrying about success/failure, beauty/desire, then we can be in touch with reality that is free of this distortion.


I'd say we could use less of that, and more music that says "You probably are irrelevant, uncelebrated, and obscure, and that's horrible, and it's the bosses' fault, now go get them."


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Has the vast majority of music ever communicated anything substantial? I'm not saying that it can't, but the fact is that music is the most hedonistic of the arts. People dancing themselves into trances to the beat of drums may be called "spiritual," but basically they're just getting high, and Augustine feared the hedonistic pleasure of the music made by monkish choirs. There is no essential difference between the music Bach wrote to celebrate the resurrection of Christ and the concertos he presented to the Margrave of Brandenburg; one merely has words telling us what it's "about."


But Bach surely regarded both as primarily "about" praising God, as he regarded all of his music, however it was used.

This post is interesting to me because I often agree with your thinking but this seems to be an essential difference. To me "getting high" is the point of music, while "communicating something substantial" is a lesser aim that almost always fails anyway.

This is why the original question in this thread is hard for me to answer. Certainly I would say classical music remains important to many listeners, and always will.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

isorhythm said:


> But Bach surely regarded both as primarily "about" praising God, as he regarded all of his music, however it was used.
> 
> This post is interesting to me because I often agree with your thinking but this seems to be an essential difference. To me "getting high" is the point of music, while "communicating something substantial" is a lesser aim that almost always fails anyway.
> 
> This is why the original question in this thread is hard for me to answer. Certainly I would say classical music remains important to many listeners, and always will.


I'm not sure where or whether we differ here, iso. Maybe you can clarify?


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> I'm not sure where or whether we differ here, iso. Maybe you can clarify?


Ah, I probably misread. I've had a lot less time lately to keep up with discussions here so I miss things.

Between this and the Beethoven thread I get the sense that you have a more "humanist" approach to or vision of music than I do. Though the more I think about this, the less sure I am you can draw any kind of sharp line between humanist and spiritual values in music.

I would say that the spiritual/"high" experiences people get from music are in fact communicating something substantial, but that something is ineffable.


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