# What does contemporary music achieve?



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

WARNING: There is to be no contemporary music bashing in this thread, you hear?! Good! 

The musical language of the 21st century is vastly different to that of the 19th; even parts of the 20th. In turn, the musical language of the 19th century was vastly different to that of the 17th, and also much of the 18th.

Regardless of whether or not these changes and the directions they have taken us in are good, _are they necessary_? By that, I mean to ask whether or not you think that composers nowadays could achieve the things they do if they used an earlier musical language.

In answering, _ignore_ the concept of pastiche. If it helps, look at it the other way round: are there things that Beethoven could _never_ have possibly achieved in his music because such things are only capable with contemporary idioms? Or is music always evolving just to find different ways of saying the same things?


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

If Beethoven was alive today he'd be in some band most of you would hate.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

The one thing I can think of that's possible today but not in Beethoven's time is the invention of automatic instruments (such as the player piano) this allowed composers who wanted to write something for piano to not have to worry about if the player can play it. On the (perhaps) downside of that, it IS going to sound more mechanical than an actual human player. 

Another thing is that with the creation of electronic instruments we aren't limited to the sounds man made instruments can make anymore. Composers literally have nearly every sound imaginable at their usage. 

I don't know if this is what you were looking for. Is it?


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

violadude said:


> The one thing I can think of that's possible today but not in Beethoven's time is the invention of automatic instruments (such as the player piano) this allowed composers who wanted to write something for piano to not have to worry about if the player can play it. On the (perhaps) downside of that, it IS going to sound more mechanical than an actual human player.
> 
> Another thing is that with the creation of electronic instruments we aren't limited to the sounds man made instruments can make anymore. Composers literally have nearly every sound imaginable at their usage.
> 
> I don't know if this is what you were looking for. Is it?


It's a useful thing I didn't thing about, yes.  However, what about Beethoven vs. Elliot Carter, each with a string quartet at their disposal. Can Carter achieve things Beethoven wouldn't have even had the capability to dream of?


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

I think of music as the 'language' of the emotions, expressed formally in sound. Much of contemporary music seems to be addressing something else. I don't know what that 'something else' is, and I choose to pass.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

I think one of the major achievements of modern music is excitement. 'To boldly go where no one has gone before' etc. As its been said there is nothing quite like the feel of _something new_...I think music is much richer for the crazy experiments in modern music...some fall flat on their face, but others are very inspiring, intriguing and can lead to new directions not even imagined by many before. Who knows, in 100 years, the older music we are mostly listening to now, may be thought of in similar ways as we think of Gregorian Chants today? I think its good to keep an open mind about new music, to keep art evolving in new and exciting ways.

At the same time, I also value conservatives. Paradoxically, I actually think both types of composers are essential for the healthy continuity of the art form.


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

I often see reviews in music magazines of compositions by composers most noted for their film scores. Some of these discs are actual suites from the film music they've created, and others are separate and distinct compositions for the concert hall, but utilizing the same basic languages.

These composers are often tapping in to some of the best and most enduring discoveries of the "serious" composers of the 19th and 20th centuries and still modelling their work on those older "languages" (with, probably, a lot more popular success than those of the current avant-garde). That music is still speaking to people, whether devotees of the more modern view these people as unsophisticated, or the "great unwashed" or not.

And, a lot of these film composers are clearly tapped into the modern avant-garde as well. But, I think that they realize that it's a _mix_ of musical languages that reaches more people today than any one language of any kind. Rather than turning their back on the past, they are taking what they can use from it, because they know those older languages still have the power to speak to people today.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

> What does contemporary music achieve?


1) It provides intellectual pleasure and entertaiment for cold-blooded geezers who either are professional musicians or received basic (or higher) musical training.

2) It attempts to achieve things that were commonly achieved in previous periods but with modern language which results mostly in works that provide intellectual pleasure and entertaiment for cold-blooded geezers who either are professional musicians or received basic (or higher) musical training + couple of people who don't really dig it but they think it's quite cool.

Well, I'm not bashing anything, after all it is some achievement, isn't it?


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I didn't really mean to ask about the ability of different types of music to speak to people; continuing with that analogy, it's more about whether or not different types of music have the ability to say different things.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Aramis said:


> 1) It provides intellectual pleasure and entertaiment for cold-blooded geezers who either are professional musicians or received basic (or higher) musical training.
> 
> 2) It attempts to achieve things that were commonly achieved in previous periods but with modern language which results mostly in works that provide intellectual pleasure and entertaiment for cold-blooded geezers who either are professional musicians or received basic (or higher) musical training + couple of people who don't really dig it but they think it's quite cool.
> 
> Well, I'm not bashing anything, after all it is some achievement, isn't it?


Uhh why the animosity towards people who study music?


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

Polednice said:


> I didn't really mean to ask about the ability of different types of music to speak to people; continuing with that analogy, it's more about whether or not different types of music have the ability to say different things.


About the outside world, I'd say yes. About the human condition and humanity itself, I don't think so.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

violadude said:


> Uhh why the animosity towards people who study music?


It is not animosity towards them, rather towards composers who write music which serves the purpose of discussing it with music students better than listening to it in search of some truely artistic qualities.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Polednice said:


> It's a useful thing I didn't thing about, yes.  However, what about Beethoven vs. Elliot Carter, each with a string quartet at their disposal. Can Carter achieve things Beethoven wouldn't have even had the capability to dream of?


I think the answer to that is yes. Possibly due to globalization. In the 20th century we gained access to many new cultures and what not because travel became a lot easier. Some cultures were very advanced in some areas of music. For example, African drumming had a complexity that composers hadn't dreamed about until that time. This was largely due to the fact that africans weren't restricted by the church to only compose vocal music for 100s of years, so their rhythms had a head start on ours as far as musical evolution goes.

But anyway, I don't know if any of Carters string quartets are specifically influenced by another culture per se, but still, the musical scene as a whole was loaded with an influx of new sounds and new inspirations to draw from in the 20th century due to the ease of travel and the world pretty much getting smaller.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Aramis said:


> It is not animosity towards them, rather towards composers who write music which serves the purpose of discussing it with music students better than listening to it in search of some truely artistic qualities.


How would you defined truly artistic qualities?


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

violadude said:


> How would you defined truly artistic qualities?


I would define them as rather abstract values referring to spiritual/aesthetic aspects of intercourse with art THROUGH the technical and intellectual aspects, that is: if digging the technical and intellectual aspects of the work serve the purpose of leading into those higher aspects, then the work is valueable from artistic point of view but if one finishes his digging of given work at the point of technical and intellectual aspects which do not lead into abstract spheres then the work has more of craft than artistic qualities.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Aramis said:


> I would define them as rather abstract values referring to spiritual/aesthetic aspects of intercourse with art THROUGH the technical and intellectual aspects, that is: if digging the technical and intellectual aspects of the work serve the purpose of leading into those higher aspects, then the work is valueable from artistic point of view but if one finishes his digging of given work at the point of technical and intellectual aspects which do not lead into abstract spheres then the work has more of craft than artistic qualities.


uumm ok........I'm just going to let this one go.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Without deviation from the norm, progress is impossible. -Frank Zappa

I'm sure modern composers trying to create something fresh and original would appreciate some support rather than animosity. This kind of thinking and reactionary attitude nearly drove Varese to commit suicide. 

If it weren't for modern music, I wouldn't be listening to much orchestral/chamber music. It's the modern harmonies and rhythms that keep me interested as a listener. There's also something about abstract music that keeps me coming back for more. With the more concrete approach, I already know every note that's coming after the previous one and I get bored easily.


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## Guest (Oct 17, 2011)

Polednice said:


> The musical language of the 21st century is vastly different to that of the 19th; even parts of the 20th. In turn, the musical language of the 19th century was vastly different to that of the 17th, and also much of the 18th.


I'm sure that for most listeners, the vastness of the difference gets vaster the closer one gets to the present. Which is only to be expected. Does anyone really sense the vastness of past vastnesses?



Polednice said:


> Regardless of whether or not these changes and the directions they have taken us in are good, _are they necessary_? By that, I mean to ask whether or not you think that composers nowadays could achieve the things they do if they used an earlier musical language.


Well, necessary or not, they did happen. As for the rest, I don't think the second question makes any sense. If composers could achieve whatever they're achieving with an earlier language, then they'd have just used the earlier language, no? (The ones using earlier languages are not trying to achieve the same things that the other ones are.)



Polednice said:


> In answering, _ignore_ the concept of pastiche.


This is a very strange stricture given the topic.



Polednice said:


> If it helps, look at it the other way round: are there things that Beethoven could _never_ have possibly achieved in his music because such things are only capable with contemporary idioms?


There are things that Beethoven did not achieve, we know that. Things that Berlioz did achieve. And Schumann and Bizet and Wagner and Debussy. There are things that earlier composers achieved that Beethoven never did, either. (I'm having a hard time getting past "could _never_ have possibly achieved." We already have "did not actually achieve or even consider;" isn't that enough?



Polednice said:


> Or is music always evolving just to find different ways of saying the same things?


Well, it seems you've been at some pains up to this point to establish that composers are NOT saying the same things in different eras. So this last question of yours, where did _it_ come from?

Otherwise, I don't see how any of your questions will elicit answers to the ur-question, which was "what does contemporary music accomplish?", a very thinly disguised version of "What is the point of atonal music?" it seems to me, so I'll answer your question like I would have answered the other one if I had been clever enough: "What does any music of any sort accomplish?"

And I think the answer to that one is "nothing--music is not about accomplishing anything." Or, that is, most music is not. Maybe religious music or commercial music? Those have pretty specific goals. I'm not at all sure I'm right about that, though. But it does seem to me that the arts are their own excuse (a thinly disguised version of "art for arts sake"). That is, each work of art creates its own validity.

In any case, music goes wherever it goes because composers in any age make decisions about what they want to do. Some of those decisions catch on with other composers and you have what looks like a trend. Sometimes like-minded composers work closely with each other and you have a "school." And sometimes you have people doing work that looks unconnected to anything anyone else is doing. In all cases, however, you can sense (or extrapolate) a feeling, a something "in the air," a similarity of goals or sounds that the word zeitgeist has been used to describe.

Not all the decisions are good. Not all the decisions that look bad at first are actually bad. But to demonstrate that assertion would take many thousands of words! So I'm going to wimp out now and go put some music on. Maybe some of that first great destroyer of all that is good and worthy about music, Claude Monteverdi. Rebel! Troublemaker!


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

This is a very interesting question. I like Vesteralen's response.



Vesteralen said:


> About the outside world, I'd say yes. About the human condition and humanity itself, I don't think so.


I would say that composers today and earlier both sometimes wanted to say things about the outside world, but the specific things composers today speak to are different (and sometimes very different).

Perhaps another way to ask the OP question focuses on the tools of composers. Tools include both instruments and compositional styles (Classical, Romantic, Avant-garde, atonal, minimalism, etc.). By the mid-20th century, the number of tools were significantly larger than previously. Speaking specifically about compositional styles I would ask the following questions. Does a composer decide on what to say and then decide on which tools to use? Or do composers decide on the tools and then decide what they can say with them? In my relative ignorance it appears to me that composers decide on the tools first (i.e. composers generally use the same tools over a significant period of time and only then move on assuming they ever do).

I guess my question to composers here is: do you ever feel that you must change compositional styles to say different things? Is the thought of starting a work in one style (say atonal) and then deciding it's better in another style (say minimalist) absurd or realistic?


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Oh Jesus ****ing Christ!

I cannot ask a simple, honest, unloaded question without some morons interpreting it to be hostile when there is genuinely no hostility there because I AM NOT PETTY LIKE THAT (RARGH!!) and others using it as an opportunity to criticise modern music, putting everyone else in a bad mood in the process.

Well screw it. And screw this thread. My opinion of this forum is going down quite considerably - especially in the past few weeks. Thankfully, there _are_ a handful of members here that I respect and admire a great deal. From now on, if I have a question that requires a lack of prejudice and some brains, I'll just send them a PM. The rest of you can stick to your damn lists.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Polednice said:


> Oh Jesus ****ing Christ!
> 
> I cannot ask a simple, honest, unloaded question without some morons interpreting it to be hostile when there is genuinely no hostility there because I AM NOT PETTY LIKE THAT (RARGH!!) and others using it as an opportunity to criticise modern music, putting everyone else in a bad mood in the process.
> 
> Well screw it. And screw this thread. My opinion of this forum is going down quite considerably - especially in the past few weeks. Thankfully, there _are_ a handful of members here that I respect and admire a great deal. From now on, if I have a question that requires a lack of prejudice and some brains, I'll just send them a PM. The rest of you can stick to your damn lists.


I answered your question about Beethoven's quartet verses Elliot Carter's quartet. I don't know if you saw it though because you didn't "like" it  ... :lol:


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## Nix (Feb 20, 2010)

I think contemporary music more a less achieves exactly what people want it to- that is musical documentation that people existed at this time. As we all know, music speaks volumes about the individual who wrote it, and when we take a wide range of those individuals contemporaries, this music speaks volumes about the time they were living in. I think after all this time, what we learn from it is that people are all the same, while the times we live in are not. 

Since the founding of Western Music as we know it (around the Baroque period), we have created idiom that has consistently displayed the same emotions but in a different manner of doing so. So what does this tell us historically? Well some easier answers might be that in Mozart's time, it wasn't proper to be forthright with your emotions, and that things must be dealt with in a civilized manner. That doesn't mean that the people of Mozart's time didn't get overcome by strong feelings, but they were expected to act a certain way depending on their class. When Beethoven started writing music that to our ears sounds rebellious, individual, and empowered, it should come as no surprise to learn that at the same time social change was sweeping Europe, aristocracy was falling apart, and the idea of an 'individual self' was becoming prominent in literature and the arts. 

I think you can trace the personal with the historical in just about every piece of music, and that ultimately is why music becomes immortalized. Reading about history can be interesting. Feeling how a person 150 years ago actually felt, well that's incredible. And what's more, to learn that we all feel the same things, no matter our era. 

There were a lot of mediocre composers of Mozart's time, and Brahms' time and Stravinsky's time. The world only gets bigger, so the amount of mediocre music (and good music) only increases. While right now it may not be clear to us what exactly the trends are in music, capable listeners will likely figure them out in years to come, and pick the best examples to be added to the repertoire. In the end, you, me and most everyone living, will get musical representation for generations to come about what exactly it was like to live in the 21st century. And I think that's an achievement. Sorry for the rant.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

violadude said:


> I answered your question about Beethoven's quartet verses Elliot Carter's quartet. I don't know if you saw it though because you didn't "like" it  ... :lol:


Awwww, I did, and I liked it, I just forgot to 'like' like it!  Thank you viola buddy!


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## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

Aramis said:


> It is not animosity towards them, rather towards composers who write music which serves the purpose of discussing it with music students better than listening to it in search of some truely artistic qualities.


It's really good to see you around again, buddy!

'no puedo tocar estudio de Chopin'


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

kv466 said:


> It's really good to see you around again, buddy!


I don't know man, I see myself around all the time wherever I am and I never saw myself back, it's all so boring continious, I mean my co-existence with myself when I got seriously drunk for the first time in my life I claimed that I have two minds but they didn't spread so I'm not sure if it counts as seeing myself back around after everything went back to normal, you probably think it's very kind of you to write it's nice to see me back around but did you think how it will make me feel when I realize that this pleasure if unreachable for me, the pleasure I cause is unreachable to me, what kind of justice is that? At least I'm glad that I can provide other people with it, I suffered a lot but I always try to bring other people good that's why I should be named Kordian, it means HE WHO GIVES HIS HEART, yes, I gave all of my heart to art, great ideas and other people and how they pay me for it OOOO anyway thanks for warm welcome


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Aramis said:


> 1) It provides intellectual pleasure and entertaiment for cold-blooded geezers who either are professional musicians or received basic (or higher) musical training.
> 
> 2) It attempts to achieve things that were commonly achieved in previous periods but with modern language which results mostly in works that provide intellectual pleasure and entertaiment for cold-blooded geezers who either are professional musicians or received basic (or higher) musical training + couple of people who don't really dig it but they think it's quite cool.
> 
> Well, I'm not bashing anything, after all it is some achievement, isn't it?


I can agree to that. To a casual listener like me, it also opens up the complete soundscapes possible: any sounds or the complete lack of, can be defined as music. This is what sets apart contemporary music from earlier periods. Whatever floats the boat of the contemporary composer.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Polednice said:


> Well screw it. And screw this thread. My opinion of this forum is going down quite considerably - especially in the past few weeks. Thankfully, there _are_ a handful of members here that I respect and admire a great deal. From now on, if I have a question that requires a lack of prejudice and some brains, I'll just send them a PM. The rest of you can stick to your damn lists.


Wow Polenice, that definitely struck me as bitter. Kind of hurts, not that I'm taking it personally, its just that I don't think the forum is going downhill. I'm sorry that it makes you mad though, I've been pissed off by this site before too, and some of the threads.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

^^^^^^
He didn't really mean that. It was just a temporary tantrum, or a petulant frenzy if you prefer! 

"This is a petulant frenzy. I'm petulant, and I'm having a frenzy!"


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

clavichorder said:


> Wow Polenice, that definitely struck me as bitter. Kind of hurts, not that I'm taking it personally, its just that I don't think the forum is going downhill. I'm sorry that it makes you mad though, I've been pissed off by this site before too, and some of the threads.


It was certainly very bitter, but people really ****ing annoy me at times.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Polednice said:


> It was certainly very bitter, but people really ****ing annoy me at times.


Of course, I didnt "like" because I liked that you were pissed off. But because I empathize.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

violadude said:


> Of course, I didnt "like" because I liked that you were pissed off. But because I empathize.


Hahahaha, it's a shame! It would have made me laugh! 

I'm sure we might all get along a little better in person (then again, some of us might despise each other a little more), but having no tone in writing as complex as it can get on here is very confusing at times. Especially as people are prone to resorting to repetitions of certain agendas if they don't entirely understand what someone is saying/asking. A little more openness in all respects would be a good thing.


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## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

Polednice said:


> Hahahaha, it's a shame! It would have made me laugh!
> 
> I'm sure we might all get along a little better in person (then again, some of us might despise each other a little more), but having no tone in writing as complex as it can get on here is very confusing at times. Especially as people are prone to resorting to repetitions of certain agendas if they don't entirely understand what someone is saying/asking. A little more openness in all respects would be a good thing.


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

On one level, all music says the exact same thing: a reflection of the composer's experiences. In that way, yes, contemporary techniques are just another way of saying the same thing. However, they're also saying something completely different, since each composer's experiences are different. Musical technique evolved to reflect how society evolved. It would be absurd to say that Beethoven could say _all_ the same things with music as Schoenberg or Cage because Beethoven didn't live in the 20th century. If Beethoven lived in the 20th century, he would have had completely different experiences and would have written completely different music.

A much better question would be: Can anything that can be said with modern musical technique also be said with older musical techniques? That is, are older musical techniques still a valid form of expression? I say yes. We see it all the time in film. Instead of capturing the Zeitgeist of our world, though, the film composer captures the Zeitgeist of the world the film is set in. In many cases, the techniques used to capture the Zeitgeist of a particular time and place in the real world differ enormously from the techniques used to capture that time and place's representation on film.

I'm going to stop right here because I'm not sure if I'm actually making any sense.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

You were making much more sense than me, Kopa, and helpfully rewording my question into the form that I actually meant.


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## Nix (Feb 20, 2010)

Kopachris said:


> A much better question would be: Can anything that can be said with modern musical technique also be said with older musical techniques? That is, are older musical techniques still a valid form of expression?


Yes, but then you're drawing a fine line between imitation and expression. Certainly old music teaches us and informs us, and we can learn and even steal ideas from that music. But I don't think it's likely for an experienced composer to approach a piece of music and say 'I'm going to write like Mozart,' because he is not Mozart, so why the hell should he try to be like him? Whereas a film composer might be paid to write music like Mozart, but the emotional content is not the emotional experience of the composer, but an emotional reaction... and a reaction that's getting paid, has ghost writers, and is on a time crunch.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Polednice said:


> ...
> The musical language of the 21st century is vastly different to that of the 19th; even parts of the 20th. In turn, the musical language of the 19th century was vastly different to that of the 17th, and also much of the 18th.
> 
> Regardless of whether or not these changes and the directions they have taken us in are good, _are they necessary_? By that, I mean to ask whether or not you think that composers nowadays could achieve the things they do if they used an earlier musical language.
> ...


What you are asking is something like the debate whether "Modernism" has ended & are we now into "Post-Modernism?" What about after "Post-Modernism," will we go into a phase of "Post-Post-Modernism?" This was said by a lecturer of my ages ago, it's like a half serious joke.

Last night I was listening to the _Suite #1 for double bass _by a contemporary Italian composer called Fernando Grillo (born 1945). There was a lot of Bachian counterpoint in it, and the notes said that it is written not by traditional notation but by a graphic score (but mainly controlled, not much room for improvisation). The movements were similar to Bach's, eg. gavotte, courrante, allemande, gigue, etc. So what is this? How can we define it? Is it a hangover from "Neo-Classicism" or "Neo-Baroque" styles of over half a century ago? But what about the more contemporary notation? & how about how the whole suite lasts for 70 minutes? Would an audience in Bach's time have liked that?

This brings up the fact that these kinds of things, a lot of contemporary music is like a hybrid of old and new. Like it's always been, even with J.S. Bach himself. Of course, the more experimental composers push things more. There is a spectrum from conservative to experimental. Many composers music varies with the needs of the piece/commission/genre, etc. as people have suggested above. There's a whole lot of factors as to what a piece achieves.

The only advice I'd give for someone new to contemporary music, however you'd like to describe it (eg. post-1900? Post-1945? Last 20-30 years?) is to listen to as wide a variety of it as you can, in line with your tastes/preferences, read about it, if you can play an instrument, maybe try to play a new/newer piece or two, study the score, etc. There's more than one way to skin a cat, as they say. As a lay listener my strategy to get into new/newer music has been to listen to it and read about it, esp. in books that I can understand, & discuss it here on TC and if you can with people around you.

& I can't help respond to this, reflecting on how (indeed) many of these kinds of threads end up going, which is pear-shaped -



> ...WARNING: There is to be no contemporary music bashing in this thread, you hear?! Good! ...


I don't mind bashing of any type of music, I just don't like bashing of the people who listen to some things or don't listen to other things. I hate the absurd ramming of personal canons down other's throats that goes on in these forums (but funnily enough, almost never goes on in real life discussions of music). I have a colleague who doesn't like Mendelssohn but prefers J.S. Bach (basically opposite to myself). We don't spend any time trying to convince eachother otherwise & I actually like Bach's keyboard works (she was trained as a keyboard player, & that explains how she likes Bach over Mendelssohn, the former's contribution to the solo keyboard literature is definitely stronger). This is just to explain how I stand on your "warning." I defend my own right to listen to the composers I like & not be abused, as much as I defend anyone else's right to listen to things that I may not like, etc...


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

Nix said:


> Yes, but then you're drawing a fine line between imitation and expression. Certainly old music teaches us and informs us, and we can learn and even steal ideas from that music. But I don't think it's likely for an experienced composer to approach a piece of music and say 'I'm going to write like Mozart,' because he is not Mozart, so why the hell should he try to be like him? Whereas a film composer might be paid to write music like Mozart, but the emotional content is not the emotional experience of the composer, but an emotional reaction... and a reaction that's getting paid, has ghost writers, and is on a time crunch.


Who said anything about writing like Mozart? Of course a composer isn't going to compose like Mozart to express himself; he doesn't have Mozart's life experiences! Only Mozart can compose like Mozart. In most cases, a film composer isn't paid to write like Beethoven or Mozart, but to write like himself. The emotional content of film music is not the reaction of the composer, but the composer placing himself in the world of the film--in the world of the characters--as though he were actually experiencing it. Film music is the result of the composer empathizing with the characters' experiences and combining that with his own life experiences. The emotional content of film music _is_ the emotional experience of the composer.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Sid James said:


> What you are asking is something like the debate whether "Modernism" has ended & are we now into "Post-Modernism?" What about after "Post-Modernism," will we go into a phase of "Post-Post-Modernism?" This was said by a lecturer of my ages ago, it's like a half serious joke.


"Post-post-modernism".  Probably best left for the academics to define. It's their jobs. Sometimes I feel kind of sorry for these avant-garde music professors.


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## Nix (Feb 20, 2010)

Kopachris said:


> In most cases, a film composer isn't paid to write like Beethoven or Mozart, but to write like himself.


Quite the opposite. If we're talking main stream, most films have 'temp tracks'... the composers are seldom there to create a new vision, they're there to fill the vision of the director, and the director usually has a musical sound in mind- thus the use of a temp track. Only big name composers like Danny Elfman and Hans Zimmer are paid to write like themselves, and even then they're paid to write carbon copies of themselves, not the actual music they might want to. Producers and directors have more of a say in the musical language of a film then the composer does (most times).



> The emotional content of film music is not the reaction of the composer, but the composer placing himself in the world of the film--in the world of the characters--as though he were actually experiencing it. Film music is the result of the composer empathizing with the characters' experiences and combining that with his own life experiences. The emotional content of film music _is_ the emotional experience of the composer.


The last sentence is almost entirely false... the rest is a stretch. Again, film composers don't have much control over their material (they don't even own it). A producer/director tells them what they want and they concede because there's plenty of others who'd be happy to take their job. Not only that but usually multiple composers are assigned to a film, so it isn't even an individual journey. Film scoring is a competitive, brutal, field run by large corporations whose job it is to sell. A film score is merely part of a product, and very few composers get the kind of artistic license that John Williams or Bernard Hermann received.

I know it's easy to want to romanticize what may _seem_ like the last bastion of romantic classical music. But I promise you that taking the time to explore contemporary classical music will be for more satisfying then discovering what really goes on in Hollywood.


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

Okay, let me rephrase that, then. The emotional content of _good_ film music is the emotional experience of the composer. The writer brings us his experience through the script. The director helps bring us that experience through the film. The composer(s) work(s) together with the director to make that experience more apparent through the score. So the composer's experience is going to get a bit muddied up because so many other people have influence on the creative decisions--it's still there. A composer can't write anything but technical pieces without showing his own experience. And, yes, it's easy to romanticize it, since they romanticize it for us. Despite knowing what goes on in Hollywood, I still think I prefer it over the modern academic music community. (I have nothing against the music itself, mind you.)


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## jdavid (Oct 4, 2011)

Polednice said:


> WARNING: There is to be no contemporary music bashing in this thread, you hear?! Good!
> 
> The musical language of the 21st century is vastly different to that of the 19th; even parts of the 20th. In turn, the musical language of the 19th century was vastly different to that of the 17th, and also much of the 18th.
> 
> ...


I believe the changes are necessary for I soundly believe that great art must be relevant to its own time. Well....this has become increasingly difficult - the 'relevancy' thing, I mean. Personally, I love Elliott Carter and am listening to Berg 'Three Pieces' from his _Lyric Suite_ arranged for string orchestra right now and am wondering 'can we take it further?' and these pieces were written c75 years ago. I do think your comment '_to find different ways of saying the same thing_' very interesting. Aren't' the questions '_those questions_' the same as they always have been? Maybe if we could find a way to translate the poetry of Wallace Stevens into pure instrumental music we could move on. Sorry, I didn't sleep well. Provocative post.


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