# If you could, part 2



## mark6144 (Apr 6, 2019)

Inspired by the other currently active thread about resurrecting a composer for a conversation...

You have a time machine and can transport one composer to the present day for a couple of hours. During their visit they will be exposed to some modern music influence. Afterwards, they return to their own time, where their experience might of course change their creative trajectory, or wreak havoc with the whole course of western music history.

Who would you pick and what would you play them? Or not play them?


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## UniversalTuringMachine (Jul 4, 2020)

mark6144 said:


> Inspired by the other currently active thread about resurrecting a composer for a conversation...
> 
> You have a time machine and can transport one composer to the present day for a couple of hours. During their visit they will be exposed to some modern music influence. Afterwards, they return to their own time, where their experience might of course change their creative trajectory, or wreak havoc with the whole course of western music history.
> 
> Who would you pick and what would you play them? Or not play them?


You do realize that by doing that, you jeopardize the existence of all of us unless the multiverse hypothesis is true?

Even if the multiverse hypothesis is true, you do realize that you could contaminate other timelines for doing so, and you may well summon time cops of the galaxy to exterminate yourself before such attempt is successful?

A more reasonable scenario would be to resurrect, say Beethoven from his grave, and use genetic engineering and nanobots to repair all his cells. Or to use quantum computer-based AGI to simulate the brain of Beethoven that can produces exact copies of all his works and his known behaviors.

Under that premise, I would play Schoenberg (tonal and atonal works) to Bach, and perhaps he will like it so haters of contemporary music can all shut the hell up and get to enjoy music a bit more.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Mozart but 2 hours is not enough for him to hear a coherent sample of what came after him. There would be a need to show the history behind whatever modern pieces you played for him.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

Bach and play him Ludus Tonalis.


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

JS Bach: Expose him to Mozart, Middle and Late Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, Sibelius, Stravinsky, Bartok, Shostakovich, Schnittke, and Part!

Set him loose! He assimilated the various Baroque styles. What masterpieces could he create with later influences? 

I wonder if he'd like the Grosse Fuge aesthetic of reconciling clashing themes over time.

If I could choose one composer it would be either Stravinsky or Bartok.


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

Enthusiast said:


> Mozart but 2 hours is not enough for him to hear a coherent sample of what came after him. There would be a need to show the history behind whatever modern pieces you played for him.


Yes, Mozart had the aesthetic philosophy that music should never sound ugly. May be better to start with the Eroica, move onto Mendelssohn, Brahms, Berlioz, Mahler, and then from there to Modernism.


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

Yes, you'd certainly need more than two hours to play *Mozart* enough music to give him a sense of what came after.

You can't even get through *Beethoven*'s 3rd, 5th, 6th, and 9th Symphonies, let alone a few quartets.

Chopin's Preludes, some Rachmaninoff, some Brahms, several operas, Wagner's Ring, Rhapsody in Blue, The Rite of Spring. Eric Whitacre

Some Big Band, Elvis, The Beatles, Yes . . .

No two hours ain't enough.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

mark6144 said:


> ...
> You have a time machine and can transport one composer to the present day for a couple of hours. During their visit they will be exposed to some modern music influence. Afterwards, they return to their own time, where their experience might of course change their creative trajectory, or wreak havoc with the whole course of western music history.
> 
> ...





UniversalTuringMachine said:


> You do realize that by doing that, you jeopardize the existence of all of us unless the multiverse hypothesis is true?


Apparently, some evil genius of the future has already accomplished this time-travel meddling. And though I cannot say which composer he or she resurrected for visitation or what was played, it seems obvious enough to me that musical evolution had been going along quite well and satisfactorily until minimalism popped up its single-faceted yet repetitive head. Besides, what else can explain Philip Glass?


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

2 hours? Piece of cake!

Expose Johann Sebastian Bach to John Williams's VPO concert I just bought. There you go: late romanticism + modernism, some atonalism, jazz harmonies, superb melodic writing, and a large orchestra. All of it in the theatrical genre.

Let's see where the second greatest composer in history goes with that. 
If it doesn't work, send Haendel to me instead.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

ORigel said:


> Yes, Mozart had the aesthetic philosophy that music should never sound ugly.


I don't know what you mean by "ugly". If you mean "messiness from lack of discipline or good taste", of course he has none of that. But He has a unique way to express "controlled violence" through angularity and dissonance.






"the fact remains that the "Great Fugue" is "a controlled violence without parallel in music before the twentieth century and anticipated only by Mozart in the C minor fugue for two pianos (K.426)"
<Opera's Second Death, By Slavoj Žižek, Mladen Dolar, Page 128>






"Mozart later arranged this fugue for strings as well, adding the introductory Adagio, K. 546. The traditional Baroque idiom that is developed in this fugue for two pianos lays great stress on dissonant chromatic semitones and appoggiaturas. The intensity of the fugal writing is startling, foreshadowing the fugal textures in some of Beethoven's later works, such as the first movement of the Piano Sonata in C Minor, op.111, which exploits a variant of the same idiom. Beethoven was so taken by this piece, in fact, that he copied out the entire fugue in score." 
< Mozart's Piano Music, By William Kinderman, Page 46 >






"Schoenberg now proudly described himself as Mozart's pupil - and the final movement of the Suite, the 'Gigue', comes close to explicit homage to the G major Gigue, KV 574, in which Mozart at his most neo-Baroque and most harmonically chromatic seems almost to anticipate elements of Schoenberg's serial method."
< Arnold Schoenberg, By Mark Berry, Page 135 >



ORigel said:


> Set him loose! He assimilated the various Baroque styles.


This might give you an idea how his style developed over time:


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

hammeredklavier said:


> I don't know what you mean by "ugly". If you mean "messiness from lack of discipline or good taste", of course he has none of that. But He has a unique way to express "controlled violence" through angularity and dissonance.
> 
> "the fact remains that the "Great Fugue" is "a controlled violence without parallel in music before the twentieth century and anticipated only by Mozart in the C minor fugue for two pianos (K.426)"
> <Opera's Second Death, By Slavoj Žižek, Mladen Dolar, Page 128>


You've referred to this passage before, and I wondered if the writer had ever heard BWV 548.
Or this:


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

consuono said:


> You've referred to this passage before, and I wondered if the writer had ever heard BWV 548.
> Or this:


Well, I'm wondering if you remember what me and other people told you some time ago:

"although it (K.426/K.546) also has some hair-raising dissonances that would not have been allowed in the strict style. It was surely bound to please Swieten and may have been written especially for his concerts."
< Mozart, Haydn and Early Beethoven: 1781-1802: 1781-1802, By Daniel Heartz, Page 64 >

In another thread, you said "did those writers ever listen to Bach's BWV 542 (the g minor Fantasia and Fugue), 548 (the "Wedge" fugue), BWV 903 or contrapunctus 11 from the Art of Fugue?"
level82rat replied "Some of those examples use chromaticism and a bit of dissonance, but that is not enough to make them comparable to Mozart's fugue. Mozart pushed those elements so far that his piece almost sound atonal." 
I agree with level82rat


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

I would say level82rat is wrong. Mozart wrote some fine contrapuntal music but Bach is simply light years ahead of him.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

hammeredklavier said:


> Well, I'm wondering if you remember what me and other people told you some time ago:
> 
> "although it (K.426/K.546) also has some hair-raising dissonances that would not have been allowed in the strict style. It was surely bound to please Swieten and may have been written especially for his concerts."
> < Mozart, Haydn and Early Beethoven: 1781-1802: 1781-1802, By Daniel Heartz, Page 64 >
> ...


Here is a fugue by Bach that is way more dissonant than any of Mozart's. But dissonance and chromaticism isn't really what makes great counterpoint. All about how good the individual lines are and how they interact with each other. Take the finale of Jupiter (forget what I said before, it was never a put-down). I don't see either Bach or Mozart being clearly superior to the other.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

I am still recovering from part 1


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

hammeredklavier said:


> Well, I'm wondering if you remember what me and other people told you some time ago:
> 
> "although it (K.426/K.546) also has some hair-raising dissonances that would not have been allowed in the strict style. It was surely bound to please Swieten and may have been written especially for his concerts."
> < Mozart, Haydn and Early Beethoven: 1781-1802: 1781-1802, By Daniel Heartz, Page 64 >
> ...


Here is a fugue by Bach that is way more dissonant than any of Mozart's. But dissonance and chromaticism isn't really what makes great counterpoint. All about how good the individual lines are and how they interact with each other. Take the finale of Jupiter (forget what I said before, it was never a put-down). I don't see either Bach or Mozart being clearly superior to the other.






Personally I don't like listening to fugues that much. But this I like better than any of Mozart's or Bach's. It has more dissonance than either of them, and more emotion to me because of the less formal language. I think both Bach and Mozart would have been intrigued if Ravel went back in time and showed them this.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Phil loves classical said:


> Here is a fugue by Bach that is way more dissonant than any of Mozart's. But dissonance and chromaticism isn't really what makes great counterpoint. All about how good the individual lines are and how they interact with each other. Take the finale of Jupiter (forget what I said before, it was never a put-down). I don't see either Bach or Mozart being clearly superior to the other.


I also admire the way dissonance is used in this Bach fugue. It might be more the way dissonance is used (rather than how much dissonance is used) that gives the Mozart fugue that particular quality of being "violent" and "restless", like the first movement of his own 24th piano concerto.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

consuono said:


> I would say level82rat is wrong. Mozart wrote some fine contrapuntal music but Bach is simply light years ahead of him.


In my opinion, I should add.


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