# Is Film Music a reaction against modernism ? And in essence, Western Art Music from 1940 onward ?



## jojoju2000 (Jan 5, 2021)

So an important question to ask is not if Film Music is classical, but is our understanding of Western Art music warped by the massive cultural changes that Western society went through in the last 100 years ?

Did Film Music become a refuge for those people who were affected negatively by the rise of " modern " culture that influenced the wider classical world ? If so, what does this mean for " Film Music " as a section of art music ? If it is at all ?


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## Prodromides (Mar 18, 2012)

jojoju2000 said:


> Did Film Music become a refuge for those people who were affected negatively by the rise of " modern " culture that influenced the wider classical world ?


Not a refuge, I'd say - especially when Leonard Rosenman was writing 12-tone film scores since the mid-1950s (*The Cobweb*).
Film music is not only Hollywood summer blockbusters from the past 45 years.

Consider *Lady in a Cage* by Paul Glass ... or Pierre Jansen's *Le Boucher* ... or Takemitsu's *Woman in the Dunes* ... or Ennio Morricone's _giallo_ flicks, etc.


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

Prodromides said:


> Consider *Lady in a Cage* by Paul Glass ... or Pierre Jansen's *Le Boucher* ... or Takemitsu's *Woman in the Dunes* ... or Ennio Morricone's _giallo_ flicks, etc.


Not to mention Stanley Kubrick's use of Ligeti's work!


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## jojoju2000 (Jan 5, 2021)

Prodromides said:


> Not a refuge, I'd say - especially when Leonard Rosenman was writing 12-tone film scores since the mid-1950s (*The Cobweb*).
> Film music is not only Hollywood summer blockbusters from the past 45 years.
> 
> Consider *Lady in a Cage* by Paul Glass ... or Pierre Jansen's *Le Boucher* ... or Takemitsu's *Woman in the Dunes* ... or Ennio Morricone's _giallo_ flicks, etc.


Or this ?


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## Prodromides (Mar 18, 2012)

Yes, *Images* is my favorite soundtrack by John Williams ... but I don't imagine audiences who watch Robert Altman films do so as a refuge.
I daresay most cinema goers are not much aware of what is current in concert music.
Film buffs who own 1,000s of movies on home video might not ever go to a classical music concert.
They may know about Antonioni films, for example, but this does not infer that they also know about Luigi Nono.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Possibly the other way around but popular music is not a reaction against obscure fields such as modern symphonic partition.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Film music has been from its beginning anachronistic. The guys who really started it, Steiner and Korngold and Waxman, were mostly writing in a style that was already 30 to 50 years or more out of date. They were smart enough to realize that music must be recognizable and understandable to an audience, and the modernistic trends in the '30s would not resonate with people. As time when on, the music didn't really change much until studios got the idea of using pop music soundtracks; and film music suffered severely That's why John Williams was such an important figure; he understood the Korngold idiom and why it worked. Even at his most modern, like Close Encounters, it was still anchored enough in 19th c formulas that audiences could understand it. Film music wasn't a refuge anyway. It was a job and the composer's job was to make people happy. BTW, some of the worst film soundtracks I know of used jazz. Jazz was appropriate in some films, like Taxi Driver, but way out of place in sci-fi or horror like those godawful American International films with music by Les Baxter. The big orchestral scores have proven their value in movies for close to 100 years now and they're not going away any time soon.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

Prodromides said:


> Not a refuge, I'd say - especially when Leonard Rosenman was writing 12-tone film scores since the mid-1950s (*The Cobweb*).
> Film music is not only Hollywood summer blockbusters from the past 45 years.
> 
> Consider *Lady in a Cage* by Paul Glass ... or Pierre Jansen's *Le Boucher* ... or Takemitsu's *Woman in the Dunes* ... or Ennio Morricone's _giallo_ flicks, etc.


or John Corigliano's *Altered States*--Second Hallucination


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

Or Takemitsu's *Ran*


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## Dmitriyevich (Dec 3, 2021)

It seems to me that the majority of "modern" classical works are quite accessible and the avant-garde ones were never that popular, so I don't see a reason for the listeners to seek refuge.


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## oldpete (9 mo ago)

Film music will be whatever sells the scene, regardless of the music's source.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

"Film music" is a broad category but I don't think it is a reaction against anything: it is work that must fulfil its purpose. But I do think that our fetishisation of film music as music for listening to is often a reaction against the directions that true classical music has taken. And I do also think that this fetishisation also insults or belittles the classical music tradition.


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## Chat Noir (4 mo ago)

Except that from the late 40s onwards, especially among those films not made on big studio money, the use of the modernist idiom was widespread (also using electronic instruments like the Theremin and not just for sci-fi). Soon enough you see this music in more mainstream films as it passes into the early 60s through to the 70s. The use of 'pop music' doesn't really come into its own until the 80s. 
Film music has always been a hotch-potch, or rather it has been whatever the director and associated creatives have thought was best-suited to the film.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Film music began in the silent film era with piano accompaniment in the theater. The young Shostakovich made money doing this; he later made money and scored political points for Soviet realism by writing film scores such as *The Fall Of Berlin*.

In the earliest days of film traditional classical music scores were used to supplement the on-screen action. D.W. Griffiths' *Birth Of A Nation* used, among other things, selections from Dvorak"s New World symphony. The art of movie music scoring came later.

Romantic film scores led by the likes of Alfred Newman, Miklos Rosza and others of that ilk were the rage through World War II. After that scoring began to change as film tended to reflect reality and not just fantasy.

The great Bernard Herrmann, whose scores ranged from neo-Baroque (*Three Worlds of Gulliver*) to neo-romantic (*Mysterious Island*) to modernity (*Psycho*, *Taxi Driver*) followed the war. Some say he is the greatest writer of film music.

Some contemporary composers like Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams began movement back to neo-romanticism but most composers followed trends.

One of the first great 12 tone film scores was* Planet Of The Apes* from 1971. At the end of that decade the score to *Alien* was another atonal masterpiece.

Today most film scores are a mishmash of minimalism and sound worlds.

Ergo film music has never been a refuge or an escape or anything of the like. It is another way of supplementing the on-screen action via sound and its creators more often than not followed trends, did not create them.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Enthusiast said:


> But I do think that our fetishisation of film music as music for listening to is often a reaction against the directions that true classical music has taken. And I do also think that this fetishisation also insults or belittles the classical music tradition.


Appreciation of any music can be seen as "fetishisation". (eg. the idolization of artist figures). What's this "tradition" you're talking about (does it have any real meaning) when the heir of Wagner (Wolfgang) declared "if my grandfather were alive today, he would undoubtedly be working in Hollywood."


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## Aries (Nov 29, 2012)

I think modernism or the avant-garde is a reaction to traditional classical music. Modernism tries obsessivly to be different, traditional classical music and typical film music does not try to be different but to be natural.


Enthusiast said:


> "Film music" is a broad category but I don't think it is a reaction against anything: it is work that must fulfil its purpose. But I do think that our fetishisation of film music as music for listening to is often a reaction against the directions that true classical music has taken. And I do also think that this fetishisation also insults or belittles the classical music tradition.


Sound like a marxist analysis. People just hear the music they like. Overthinking it and constructing complications like this is the driving force of the avant-garde. Pretty nonsensical imo.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

Aries said:


> I think modernism or the avant-garde is a reaction to traditional classical music. Modernism tries obsessivly to be different, traditional classical music and typical film music does not try to be different but to be natural.
> 
> Sound like a marxist analysis. People just hear the music they like. Overthinking it and constructing complications like this is the driving force of the avant-garde. Pretty nonsensical imo.


Great post, Aries!


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I think film music might have helped modernism become mainstream, or somehow absorbed into wider culture. In terms of original scores, _Psycho, Planet of the Apes_, and _Bladerunner_ where a few landmarks. Other films which extensively used existing music would have only helped make modern music more known (Kubrick's movies are often cited with regards to this point).

It could be that since the performance canon is virtually fossilised, film music is forming it's own canon, if that makes sense. The canon was a product of modernism. Before its formation, new music formed the bulk of live performances and there was little expectation that such music had to be played repeatedly. Given this, it may be that film music can in some way contribute to the renewal of contemporary repertoire as part of live performance.



larold said:


> Film music began in the silent film era with piano accompaniment in the theater. The young Shostakovich made money doing this; he later made money and scored political points for Soviet realism by writing film scores such as *The Fall Of Berlin*.


Shostakovich was reluctant to work in film. Initially he played in the theatres because his father died and he needed to earn income to support his family. Later on, composing for film was a way to supplement his income, and during times of political upheaval it was his main source of income (e.g. the Zhdanov Decree of 1948, when commissions dried up and he lost his job at the university).

He had no shortage of contacts in the film industry who where eager to give him work during his dry spells. Generally, he didn't like the constraints of the genre, but he considered his scores done for Grigori Kozintsev (e.g. _Hamlet, King Lear_) to be among his best because he felt more of an equal in the creative process when working with this director.


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## Chat Noir (4 mo ago)

Haydn70 said:


> Great post, Aries!


Really? I thought it was a ridiculous post which completely failed to comprehend the person being answered. Especially the bit quoted below.


Aries said:


> Sound like a marxist analysis. People just hear the music they like. Overthinking it and constructing complications like this is the driving force of the avant-garde. Pretty nonsensical imo.


A 'Marxist analysis' by saying that film music has been elevated to concert music because (some) people are unhappy with contemporary output? The fellow is wholly agreeing with you! Was it the word 'fetishise' you homed-in on then decided it must be 'Marxist'? Why?


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## Aries (Nov 29, 2012)

Chat Noir said:


> A 'Marxist analysis' by saying that film music has been elevated to concert music because (some) people are unhappy with contemporary output? The fellow is wholly agreeing with you! Was it the word 'fetishise' you homed-in on then decided it must be 'Marxist'? Why?


He did not talk about elevating film music to concert music but about fetishisation of it, what could mean anything like simply liking it or hearing it. And this is allegedly an insult or a belittling of avant-garde music and wrong. "Fetishisation" is marxist language usage. Before that he talked about a "purpose" without specifying it, and what he could mean is that such fetishisation is even the purpose of film music. According to marxist and avant-garde theorists like Adorno all non-avant-garde art is something wrong and roughly an instrument of capitalists. I just said that his post sound like that, the post is to short to conclusively prove it. I suggest to explain thoughts more accurately so that non-insiders can understand it, instead of using unspecified or unclear terms like "purpose" and "fetishisation".


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## Chat Noir (4 mo ago)

Aries said:


> He did not talk about elevating film music to concert music but about fetishisation of it, what could mean anything like simply liking it or hearing it. And this is allegedly an insult or a belittling of avant-garde music and wrong. "Fetishisation" is marxist language usage. Before that he talked about a "purpose" without specifying it, and what he could mean is that such fetishisation is even the purpose of film music. According to marxist and avant-garde theorists like Adorno all non-avant-garde art is something wrong and roughly an instrument of capitalists. I just said that his post sound like that, the post is to short to conclusively prove it. I suggest to explain thoughts more accurately so that non-insiders can understand it, instead of using unspecified or unclear terms like "purpose" and "fetishisation".


Then you didn't read it properly. He said this:


> But I do think that our fetishisation of film music as music for listening to is often a reaction against the directions that true classical music has taken. And I do also think that this fetishisation also insults or belittles the classical music tradition.


Which means: people have gone the route of putting film music into the concert hall to replace what they feel as the loss of similar music from that sphere.

'Fetishising' is not 'Marxist language' it is ordinary language and a word in the dictionary for what he described. The word already exists and is used in the way Enthusiast used it. There's really no need to be on that hair-trigger of imagining Marxist plots against your ultra-conservatism.


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## Aries (Nov 29, 2012)

Chat Noir said:


> Then you didn't read it properly. He said this:
> 
> Which means: people have gone the route of putting film music into the concert hall to replace what they feel as the loss of similar music from that sphere.


Listening can happen outside the concert hall, via speakers or headphones and via discs or internet. But this is not an important point here.

He implicates that film music is not music for listening. And that we insult or belittle the "music tradition" by using film music for listening. The latter is rather judgmental and implicates an ideology behind.



Chat Noir said:


> 'Fetishising' is not 'Marxist language' it is ordinary language and a word in the dictionary for what he described.


It is both. It is a normal term on the one hand, but it is very frequently used by marxists on the other hand. Therefore, we should consider both possibilities. "Fetish" is used most often in a sexual or marxist context.



Chat Noir said:


> The word already exists and is used in the way Enthusiast used it.


I think you have no clue. 🤭


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## Chat Noir (4 mo ago)

Aries said:


> Listening can happen outside the concert hall, via speakers or headphones and via discs or internet. But this is not an important point here.


Then why did you invoke it?


Aries said:


> He implicates that film music is not music for listening. And that we insult or belittle the "music tradition" by using film music for listening. The latter is rather judgmental and implicates an ideology behind.


Implies, not 'implicates'. However, it doesn't imply it at all; it's merely something you see through your own coloured judgement.
In general I agree with the point Enthusiast makes, though not that it's an indictment upon contemporary music. Film music has been shoved into the concert hall as an easy way to attract people to performances. It could just as well be advertising jingles which would also work. This is not even debatable. Personally I don't think film music is specifically for listening to as stand-alone work.


Aries said:


> It is both. It is a normal term on the one hand, but it is very frequently used by marxists on the other hand. Therefore, we should consider both possibilities. "Fetish" is used most often in a sexual or marxist context.


And of course you defaulted to the most unlikely usage. Why not the sexual connotation, it would be equally as random. Specifically because you're obsessed with the idea that a bunch of avant-gardists (who, in your mind, are all 'Marxists' or some kind of opposition to conservatism) are trying to undermine your view of what you think should be in a concert hall. _Fetish_ is actually just a regular synonym for 'worship' and to imbue things with qualities and powers.


Aries said:


> I think you have no clue. 🤭


That's because you think you're cleverer than you really are.


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## Aries (Nov 29, 2012)

Chat Noir said:


> Then why did you invoke it?


I find it a bit strange that you come up with "concert music" when Enthusiast didn't mentioned it at all. And maybe it is actually not that unimportant just regarding your understanding of his post. Playing film music in a concert is a much bigger step than just listening to it alone. But the latter already falls under Enthusiast's mentioned fetishisation.



Chat Noir said:


> Implies, not 'implicates'. However, it doesn't imply it at all; it's merely something you see through your own coloured judgement.
> In general I agree with the point Enthusiast makes, though not that it's an indictment upon contemporary music. Film music has been shoved into the concert hall as an easy way to attract people to performances. It could just as well be advertising jingles which would also work. This is not even debatable. Personally I don't think film music is specifically for listening to as stand-alone work.


You just see low value in film music. Enthusiast sees an insult against the "music tradition" in simply listening to it too much without even any fuss like a concert. So you should ask yourself if there is actually less agreement between you and Enthusiast than you think.



Chat Noir said:


> And of course you defaulted to the most unlikely usage. Why not the sexual connotation, it would be equally as random.


A sexual meaning makes absolutly no sense here.



Chat Noir said:


> Specifically because you're obsessed with the idea that a bunch of avant-gardists (who, in your mind, are all 'Marxists' or some kind of opposition to conservatism) are trying to undermine your view of what you think should be in a concert hall.


You have some kind of fetish with concert halls right, lol? I am more a fan of listening to recorded film music. I prefer concert works for the concert hall.



Chat Noir said:


> That's because you think you're cleverer than you really are.


I think you believe in the core of what you say (not necessarily regarding all the made up storys about the views of others which seem to be more anger driven to me). That you don't even consider the possibility of a marxist implications is something I see in the context of the slow marxist infiltration of the mainstream. You and many others just don't see it. It is hard to see, expecially if you don't want to see it.


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

Aries said:


> I think you believe in the core of what you say (not necessarily regarding all the made up storys about the views of others which seem to be more anger driven to me), and I see it in the context of a slow marxist infiltration of the mainstream. You and many others just don't see it. It is hard to see, expecially if you don't want to see it.


I find it strange that you keep invoking “Marxism” as some sort of infiltrating evil, both here in the modernism thread. It sounds like you keep talking about some sort of Marxist conspiracy to infiltrate modern music and art, without providing any real evidence of such a thing existing.

And, correct me if I’m wrong, but it appears to me as though you’re using this justification of “Marxism” to invalidate the views of other posters.


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## Aries (Nov 29, 2012)

composingmusic said:


> I find it strange that you keep invoking “Marxism” as some sort of infiltrating evil, both here in the modernism thread. It sounds like you keep talking about some sort of Marxist conspiracy to infiltrate modern music and art, without providing any real evidence of such a thing existing.


I think there is a lot of influence of marxism and especially the marxist critical theory. I don't know if it is a "conspiracy". A lot of people just think and act in this way. What kind of evidence do you want?

I just asked ChatGPT for some examples:

Hanns Eisler: Eisler was a German composer and political activist who was heavily influenced by Marxist thought. He is perhaps best known for his work on film scores and his collaboration with Bertolt Brecht.
Luigi Nono: Nono was an Italian composer who was active in the 20th century. He was influenced by Marxist theory and often used his music to critique capitalism and other social and political issues.
George Gershwin: Gershwin was an American composer and pianist who is best known for his work in the jazz and Broadway genres. However, he was also influenced by Marxist theory and used his music to comment on issues related to race and class.
Frederic Rzewski: Rzewski is a contemporary American composer who has been influenced by Marxist and critical theory. His music often addresses social and political issues, and he has been an active member of various progressive political movements throughout his career.
Pauline Oliveros: Oliveros was an American composer and accordionist who was active in the 20th and 21st centuries. She was influenced by Marxist theory and used her music to critique issues related to capitalism and inequality.
Cornelius Cardew: Cardew was a British composer and pianist who was active in the 20th century. He was influenced by Marxist theory and used his music to critique capitalism and other social and political issues.
Allan Kaprow: Kaprow was an American artist and composer who was active in the 20th century. He was influenced by Marxist theory and used his art and music to critique capitalism and other social and political issues.
Julius Eastman: Eastman was an American composer and pianist who was active in the 20th century. He was influenced by Marxist theory and used his music to critique issues related to race, gender, and sexuality.
John Cage: Cage was an American composer who was active in the 20th century. He was heavily influenced by the theories of the Frankfurt School and used his music to challenge dominant narratives and power structures.
Pierre Boulez: Boulez was a French composer and conductor who was active in the 20th and 21st centuries. He was influenced by the ideas of critical theory and often used his music to critique issues related to capitalism and inequality.
Luciano Berio: Berio was an Italian composer who was active in the 20th and 21st centuries. He was influenced by critical theory and used his music to challenge dominant narratives and power structures.
Helmut Lachenmann: Lachenmann is a contemporary German composer who has been influenced by critical theory in his work. His music often addresses social and political issues, and he has been an active member of various progressive political movements throughout his career.
David Lang: Lang is a contemporary American composer who has been influenced by critical theory in his work. His music often addresses social and political issues, and he has been an active member of various progressive political movements throughout his career.



composingmusic said:


> And, correct me if I’m wrong, but it appears to me as though you’re using this justification of “Marxism” to invalidate the views of other posters.


No, I desribe it with marxist. An invalidation is something else obviously.


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## cybernaut (Feb 6, 2021)

Where would horror films be if Stravinsky and Schoenberg hadn't shown the way with atonalism and dissonance?

But aside from the horror genre, I would agree with the OP that film music was a refuge for composers who wanted to work in tonal music.

It's interesting that minimalism, especially Glass-style minimalism, so readily found a welcome in the world of film and advertising. I worked in advertising in NYC as a video editor for 21 years, and used Glass-style compositions in countless edits. But then, minimalism offered a way to re-embrace tonalism and still be "avant-garde" or "post-modern" or "post-whatever".


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

mbhaub said:


> Film music wasn't a refuge anyway. It was a job and the composer's job was to make people happy.


I looked carefully through your post for something I could agree with, and came up with this, although I think it's more accurate to say that the movie composers' job was, and still is, to help make the movies they compose for popular, if not monster hits. In fact, this is the reason movie music is almost entirely a popular music genre, although a varied one. The "Korngold idiom", as you call it, was successful in its day, mainly the 1930s to the 1960s, and the influence of that tradition can be detected in later scores such as those by John Corigliano for The Red Violin, Tan Dun for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Michael Nyman for The Piano. However, those later scores and many others also show the clear and strong influence of serialism, minimalism, and other modern innovations. 

Directors today increasingly use a long playlist of both popular and classical selections from all eras as a soundtrack rather than commission a specially composed score. This in many ways is a complete departure from the Korngold idiom, and imo reflects the eclecticism of modern culture and the ready availability of music of all genres and periods.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Aries said:


> According to marxist and avant-garde theorists like Adorno all non-avant-garde art is something wrong and roughly an instrument of capitalists.


In a historical sense, Marxist thought had some impact during the 19th century, and that impact only increased during the 20th century. It's no surprise that this impact filtered through to the arts. Adorno was a man of his time, but he had important things to say about the impact of capitalism on music. The issues he raised are still with us, albeit not so strongly cast in a way to divide high and low art, which was a feature of modernism.

I think that an obvious implication of the Marxist sort of analysis is that music as mass entertainment exposes the division between art that is popular and that which isn't. In the past, you had noblesse oblige, which was how high art music was supported by the nobility. There was also the practice of composers writing functional music, later salon music and lollipops, to earn their keep while they put time aside for more serious music that didn't sell well.

I think Adorno's interest lay in how the mass market will support high art music since it's priorities was to sell popular music. I think a lot has changed since, and unlike his generation, those coming since have less investment in the struggle between capitalism and socialism which of course was prominent in the era of two world wars and the Cold War. As I said, many of the issues he raised are still relevant.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Sid James said:


> I think Adorno's interest lay in how the mass market will support high art music since it's priorities was to sell popular music. I think a lot has changed since, and unlike his generation, those coming since have less investment in the struggle between capitalism and socialism which of course was prominent in the era of two world wars and the Cold War. As I said, many of the issues he raised are still relevant.


I agree with you, in fact this has been discussed here numerous times, that popular culture of any era reflects the political, social and economic climate, and sometimes specific issues, of that particular era, directly or indirectly. And as I said, movies and their music are very much popular culture things. A popular music discussion forum likely would quickly turn to political debates. Here we sometimes have that issue too, but as classical music is more an historical subject, it is usually less contentious.


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## Aries (Nov 29, 2012)

Sid James said:


> I think Adorno's interest lay in how the mass market will support high art music since it's priorities was to sell popular music. I think a lot has changed since, and unlike his generation, those coming since have less investment in the struggle between capitalism and socialism which of course was prominent in the era of two world wars and the Cold War. As I said, many of the issues he raised are still relevant.


Adorno was active during the cold war but his views were different to the eastern marxists. The USSR enforced a more traditional style in classical music, music that was more likeable for the working class compared to "decadent" western avant-garde music. In general, Adorno on the other hand had a negative view of classical music that was not avant-garde. He believed that traditional classical music was a product of the capitalist system and that it served to reinforce the status quo. Adorno argued that traditional classical music was "dead" and that it was incapable of truly expressing the experiences and struggles of the working class. He believed that only avant-garde music could truly challenge the dominant ideology and offer a true critique of society. I think Adorno and his cultural marxism is more perfidious and more relevant today than soviet marxism. It is basically an attack against our entire culture and identity. But we can't discuss politics like this here.


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## Highwayman (Jul 16, 2018)

Aries said:


> Hanns Eisler: Eisler was a German composer and political activist who was heavily influenced by Marxist thought. He is perhaps best known for his work on film scores and his collaboration with Bertolt Brecht.
> Luigi Nono: Nono was an Italian composer who was active in the 20th century. He was influenced by Marxist theory and often used his music to critique capitalism and other social and political issues.
> George Gershwin: Gershwin was an American composer and pianist who is best known for his work in the jazz and Broadway genres. However, he was also influenced by Marxist theory and used his music to comment on issues related to race and class.
> Frederic Rzewski: Rzewski is a contemporary American composer who has been influenced by Marxist and critical theory. His music often addresses social and political issues, and he has been an active member of various progressive political movements throughout his career.
> ...


Those damn commies and their degenerate music! It`s unnatural I tell ya! Play me some Bruckner and Alma Deutscher instead!


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Aries said:


> Adorno was active during the cold war but his views were different to the eastern marxists. The USSR enforced a more traditional style in classical music, music that was more likeable for the working class compared to "decadent" western avant-garde music. In general, Adorno on the other hand had a negative view of classical music that was not avant-garde. He believed that traditional classical music was a product of the capitalist system and that it served to reinforce the status quo. Adorno argued that traditional classical music was "dead" and that it was incapable of truly expressing the experiences and struggles of the working class. He believed that only avant-garde music could truly challenge the dominant ideology and offer a true critique of society. I think Adorno and his cultural marxism is more perfidious and more relevant today than soviet marxism. It is basically an attack against our entire culture and identity. But we can't discuss politics like this here.


What I read about Adorno was in secondary sources, and what I said was my main takeaway from that reading. No doubt he had other things to say about stagnation and progress in music. That's interesting, but on the whole I see it as less relevant than what he said in terms of the impacts of capitalism on art music. I've talked about why I think that now, for many decades with the emergence of postmodernism, the preoccupation with progress is largely a thing of the past. We had that conversation already, no use in repeating it (links to that below).

I think that things did fundamentally change during the mid 20th century, and not only for music. Even back then, before any of this was noted in the arts, people working in other areas noted this shift beyond the dichotomies of modernism. I don't know who coined the term postmodern, but the sociologist C. Wright Mills was already using it then in trying to make sense of the post WWII landscape.

I think it's okay to talk about things like this in relation to music but the question is how exactly it relates to the realities on the ground now. To my way of thinking, classical music will never be the same as it was prior to that time, let alone the 19th century or earlier. This is normal, and given that the first public concerts happened during the 18th century, around 250 years of the traditional concert format isn't a bad innings. That long history might explain why the core performance canon has long been built out.

While the traditional format won't go away soon, it's clear that it's unsustainable as it is, and will inevitably need to adapt to change. I think that film music will continue to be part of this change.









My views about the future of classical music


No one is saying that the composers must only create Mozart's pastiches. They should simply create music that it's not perceived as "horrible" by the average human ears, otherwise classical music will die. For what it's worth, I agree with you. I grew up listening to and performing tonal...




www.talkclassical.com













My views about the future of classical music


I think it’s fair to say that the numbers are probably a lot higher than 500 in reality, and there are many, many more composers out there. Defining a composer as someone who solely makes their money from commissions is quite a narrow definition, as most composers I know do make money from...




www.talkclassical.com


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Highwayman said:


> Those damn commies and their degenerate music! It`s unnatural I tell ya! Play me some Bruckner and Alma Deutscher instead!


Very tongue in cheek. You're almost as good as Alf Garnett:


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## Andrew Kenneth (Feb 17, 2018)

Aries said:


> (...) I think Adorno and his cultural marxism is more perfidious and more relevant today than soviet marxism. It is basically an attack against our entire culture and identity. (...)


A perfidious attack by the 0.029 % of the population that listen to avant-garde music on the 2.4 % of the population that listen to classical music.


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## Aries (Nov 29, 2012)

Andrew Kenneth said:


> A perfidious attack by the 0.029 % of the population that listen to avant-garde music on the 2.4 % of the population that listen to classical music.


Classical music is just a side aspect in this regard. But it is the topic of this forum, and further political discussion is not allowed.


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## Andrew Kenneth (Feb 17, 2018)

Aries said:


> Classical music is just a side aspect in this regard. But it is the topic of this forum, and further political discussion is not allowed.


WWQD?
(What would Q do ?)


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## That Guy Mick (May 31, 2020)

"Is Film Music a reaction against modernism ? And in essence, Western Art Music from 1940 onward ?" 

Sure, if that is the director's intent.

"Did Film Music become a refuge for those people who were affected negatively by the rise of " modern " culture that influenced the wider classical world ? If so, what does this mean for " Film Music " as a section of art music ? If it is at all ?"

Great questions. Music composed exclusively for the art of film is a component of the film-making art, and properly viewed on its own merit as the art of composing for film. Use of the Classical tradition is merely one utilitarian approach to convey meaning to the visual story and script, not unlike Opera and Ballet pieces. 

Film music is not a warped Classical approach in the mind of the composer who understands the film director's intent, and writes accordingly. There is nothing reactionary on the part of the composer, unless defying the director's intent.... Which is not a likely reality. The only refuge is in pleasing the film makers.


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## That Guy Mick (May 31, 2020)

Aries said:


> I think modernism or the avant-garde is a reaction to traditional classical music. Modernism tries obsessivly to be different, traditional classical music and typical film music does not try to be different but to be natural.


This seems like a pretty accurate observation of avante-garde (ater 1940) with focus on the term "obsessive." Though, I prefer to view the changes in traditional Classical composing as writing music in their own voice, not necessarily in a "natural" way. Composers such as Bach and Beethoven were avante-garde to an extent, but their works balanced heavily on music tradition; not with the goal of turning things upside down and inside out. Film composers are tempered by desires of the film directors and producers.


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## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

To the OP, in short, no. I'm tempted to add that it's an absurd suggestion, not worth any kind of serious analysis.


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## MichaelRoberts (10 d ago)

jojoju2000 said:


> So an important question to ask is not if Film Music is classical, but is our understanding of Western Art music warped by the massive cultural changes that Western society went through in the last 100 years ?
> 
> Did Film Music become a refuge for those people who were affected negatively by the rise of " modern " culture that influenced the wider classical world ? If so, what does this mean for " Film Music " as a section of art music ? If it is at all ?



It is challenging to generalise about the entire field of Western art music after 1940 and how it may or may not be a response to modernism. A variety of styles and trends can be found in the genre of Western art music, which is eclectic and multifaceted.
Modernism may have been resisted by certain composers and musicians, while it may have been embraced by others or that they were pursuing quite distinct aesthetic trajectories.


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## Aries (Nov 29, 2012)

That Guy Mick said:


> This seems like a pretty accurate observation of avante-garde (ater 1940) with focus on the term "obsessive." Though, I prefer to view the changes in traditional Classical composing as writing music in their own voice, not necessarily in a "natural" way.


But how do you achive to write in your own voice? Imo you simply try your best. And you focus on yourself. You don't copy others and you don't try to do it explicitly different than other. This results naturally in your own voice. You don't have to force it.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

Aries said:


> But how do you achive to write in your own voice? Imo you simply try your best. And you focus on yourself. You don't copy others and you don't try to do it explicitly different than other. This results naturally in your own voice. You don't have to force it.


....you're not a composer are you.


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## RandallPeterListens (Feb 9, 2012)

I will throw in my two cents, if I may. Listeners, whether they actively listen to classical music or not, are still familiar with the emotional "cues" of traditional tonal Western classical music. If a portion of a film depicts a sad or unhappy action, musical selections in a minor key are still associated with that in most people's minds/ears. There are many such emotional associations in classical music - heroic, celebratory, sad, powerful, complexity (say, use of a fugue), bucolic which film music composers could draw on to supplement the action on the screen. 

As someone said above, many film scores these days are electronic compositions: some use blips and bleeps and deep rumbling bass tones; some use the basic principles of traditional classical music. The reason is easy to understand - cost. Electronic scores need a composer, but not a bona fide score which requires many musicians, rehearsal time, performance etc. 
That said, there are emotional associations in avant-garde, serial, twelve tone music (call it what you will) but probably not what the composer really had in mind. Snippets of such music do show up in some films but usually the cinematic action association is with darkness, complexity, a fractured, disordered or dystopian scenario.(e.g., use of Ligeti in "2001: A Space Odyssey"). Again, this may not be what the composer had in mind when writing his/her music but that's the effect it is perceived as having on the average movie goer who is not really a close follower of "art" music.

In my opinion, the further we go into a non-traditional tonal Western classical music world, film scores will increasingly be one of two things: 1) electronic blips and bleeps and ominous rumblings ("sound worlds" as larold above says or 2) the use of popular songs. I don't think anyone can deny that popular music songs (especially those popular from one's youth) can provide the same emotional "cues" or associations as classical music. If you hear the opening bars of the Beach Boys "Good Vibrations" you know already you are in for something fun and light-hearted unless the clip is being used in an ironic sense to contrast with some dark action in the film. Use of pop music has the advantage to the film producer/director that it doesn't need to be specially composed for the film - all they have to pay is rights usage costs. Probably a lot cheaper and takes a lot less time to coordinate.


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

Aries said:


> But how do you achive to write in your own voice? Imo you simply try your best. And you focus on yourself. You don't copy others and you don't try to do it explicitly different than other. This results naturally in your own voice. You don't have to force it.


This is a very interesting question. Figuring out what kind of music one wants to write is not a straightforward process. It takes time, and cannot be forced. 

There’s a lot of score studying and lots of copying stuff from other people to see how things work. You have to try out all sorts of things. Sometimes you’ll have a really strong gut reaction to something and then you try to figure out what’s causing it. Gradually you learn about yourself, what you like, what you don’t like, what sorts of instinctual reactions you have to particular types of timbres, lines, other musical objects, and so on. 

There’s also the consideration of knowing one’s own strengths and weaknesses. As one of my teachers wisely said, basically everyone he’s ever taught has a clear set of strengths and a clear set of weaknesses. What he aims to do, as a teacher, is to help the student see what these strengths are, and then help them figure out the best way to deal with the weaknesses. Some people, like Xenakis, can turn these weaknesses into strengths. Others can either learn to train some aspects of the weaknesses to compensate, or somehow avoid them altogether.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

RandallPeterListens said:


> I will throw in my two cents, if I may. Listeners, whether they actively listen to classical music or not, are still familiar with the emotional "cues" of traditional tonal Western classical music. If a portion of a film depicts a sad or unhappy action, musical selections in a minor key are still associated with that in most people's minds/ears. There are many such emotional associations in classical music - heroic, celebratory, sad, powerful, complexity (say, use of a fugue), bucolic which film music composers could draw on to supplement the action on the screen.
> 
> As someone said above, many film scores these days are electronic compositions: some use blips and bleeps and deep rumbling bass tones; some use the basic principles of traditional classical music. The reason is easy to understand - cost. Electronic scores need a composer, but not a bona fide score which requires many musicians, rehearsal time, performance etc.
> That said, there are emotional associations in avant-garde, serial, twelve tone music (call it what you will) but probably not what the composer really had in mind. Snippets of such music do show up in some films but usually the cinematic action association is with darkness, complexity, a fractured, disordered or dystopian scenario.(e.g., use of Ligeti in "2001: A Space Odyssey"). Again, this may not be what the composer had in mind when writing his/her music but that's the effect it is perceived as having on the average movie goer who is not really a close follower of "art" music.
> ...


Well, no to all of that. First, very few movie scores these days are blips and bleeps and deep electronic rumbling if you prefer historical drama or romantic comedy to science fiction or violent action or espionage movies. Second, movies that use pre-existing music, which is becoming increasingly typical, use classical music standard repertoire as well as popular music hits from every era. In fact, most music listeners today, who mainly are not classical music enthusiasts, are more likely to hear Mozart and Rossini at the movies than anywhere else, unless they like old Tom and Jerry cartoons.
Finally, what you call blips and bleeps and rumblings provide the fans of the sort of movies that use them with powerful emotional cues, every bit as important as those of the Beach Boys and Tchaikovsky, in the sort of movies that uses those kinds of music.
The movie business, including movie music of all kinds, is 99.9 percent about producing popular hits and making money. It is not about making political statements, reactionary or otherwise.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

fluteman said:


> Well, no to all of that. First, very few movie scores these days are blips and bleeps and deep electronic rumbling if you prefer historical drama or romantic comedy to science fiction or violent action or espionage movies. Second, movies that use pre-existing music, which is becoming increasingly typical, use classical music standard repertoire as well as popular music hits from every era. In fact, most music listeners today, who mainly are not classical music enthusiasts, are more likely to hear Mozart and Rossini at the movies than anywhere else, unless they like old Tom and Jerry cartoons.
> Finally, what you call blips and bleeps and rumblings provide the fans of the sort of movies that use them with powerful emotional cues, every bit as important as those of the Beach Boys and Tchaikovsky, in the sort of movies that uses those kinds of music.
> The movie business, including movie music of all kinds, is 99.9 percent about producing popular hits and making money. It is not about making political statements, reactionary or otherwise.


Well yes to most of that @fluteman. Just a slight quibble. I don't think FM's main purpose is to make money and hits although its a nice bonus if circumstances allow. The decisions and collaborations that dominate the creation of FM concentrate on artistic and dramatic appropriateness first and foremost. Of course you are right in that FM can and does make money too - lots of it. (I heard that Horner made tens of millions from his score to Titanic, especially from _that_ song).


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

mikeh375 said:


> Well yes to most of that @fluteman. Just a slight quibble. I don't think FM's main purpose is to make money and hits although its a nice bonus if circumstances allow. The decisions and collaborations that dominate the creation of FM concentrate on artistic and dramatic appropriateness first and foremost. Of course you are right in that FM can and does make money too - lots of it. (I heard that Horner made tens of millions from his score to Titanic, especially from _that_ song).


OK, fair enough, and perhaps you have inside experience. But I don't see a lot of movies made to high artistic standards that are expected to lose money, but that will be considered classics and artistic successes 30 or 40 years from now. The Hollywood movie industry traditionally is one of the prime examples of a business where the product must be profitable immediately, as in the first week or even day of release. That has changed slightly in recent years, as the studios have figured out ways to extract additional revenue a little bit down the line. And hit TV shows can go into syndication and still be making big money a decade or more later. (My wife has a relative in the business, not the artistic side, but the business / revenue producing side, so I know about the relatively long-term payout hit movies can produce.) But the first priority is still immediate profit, from what I hear. Of course, it still helps to please the critics, and the music often does a lot to help or hinder that. It certainly is a serious and sophisticated art form, though a popular one.


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## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

^ I see no reason to castigate the film business for wanting to make money. I dont see other art fields attracting the same degree of opprobrium being heaped on the movie industry. All artists have bills to pay and are dependent upon the gallery/concert hall/theatre/cinema businesses for their income.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Forster said:


> ^ I see no reason to castigate the film business for wanting to make money. I dont see other art fields attracting the same degree of opprobrium being heaped on the movie industry. All artists have bills to pay and are dependent upon the gallery/concert hall/theatre/cinema businesses for their income.


Well, then we disagree. The modern movie industry is completely different from other art fields, in my opinion. Investments are vastly greater, as are the risks and potential rewards. The top actors can make tens of millions of dollars per movie, and they are not the ones who make the biggest profits, not even Tom Cruise. Flops can be disastrous and lose tens of millions. The huge economic stakes involved have a profound effect on the art form. Yes, there are smaller "independent" film makers, but they are a smaller part of the business.
I can't imagine how you can't see the difference between that and even conventional mainstream classical music, never mind the latest "avant-garde" genres.


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## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

fluteman said:


> Investments are vastly greater, as are the risks and potential rewards


Indeed. The amount of money changing hands is much larger than in other fields, but we're then talking about a question of degree. Movie-making is a much more expensive business, partly because of its collaborative nature and partly because of the time it takes to bring films to the screen. But that doesn't alter the fact that the artists working within the business may have as much integrity in their work as a concert pianist, sculptor, composer, painter working within a less money-rich environment.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Forster said:


> Indeed. The amount of money changing hands is much larger than in other fields, but we're then talking about a question of degree. Movie-making is a much more expensive business, partly because of its collaborative nature and partly because of the time it takes to bring films to the screen. But that doesn't alter the fact that the artists working within the business may have as much integrity in their work as a concert pianist, sculptor, composer, painter working within a less money-rich environment.


Let's not forget that film music also gives composers opportunity to be more "adventurous" in a way.

PG "Actually, my harmonic language usually is more adventurous in my film scores than in my concert music. It's much more dissonant. I'm more liable to sound like other people who write modern music."
JD "Is that because most people accept dissonance more readily in a cinematic context? Listeners who couldn't sit through Schoenberg's Second Chamber Symphony in concert wouldn't have trouble if it was the soundtrack to Attack of the Killer Tone Rows?"
PG "Absolutely. After all, wasn't it John Williams who made Stravinsky a popular idiom?" (Debate: When is film music ‘classical’?)


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

Film music is omnivorous. It'll take from anything, from early music all the way to modern popular music. As a medium it isn't reactionary to anything. The idea of it being a "the real 20th century music" for people who think everything after Shostakovich is junk is mostly an online thing.

You _could_ potentially ask if minimalism was a reaction to modernist music, but I think most minimalists and scholars these days tend to reject a simple analysis like that.


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## Luchesi (Mar 15, 2013)

fbjim said:


> Film music is omnivorous. It'll take from anything, from early music all the way to modern popular music. As a medium it isn't reactionary to anything. The idea of it being a "the real 20th century music" for people who think everything after Shostakovich is junk is mostly an online thing.
> 
> You _could_ potentially ask if minimalism was a reaction to modernist music, but I think most minimalists and scholars these days tend to reject a simple analysis like that.


After decades of Rock music - Grunge came about very naturally as a minimalist answer (retort) to the older sounds? Is that how you see it?


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Forster said:


> Indeed. The amount of money changing hands is much larger than in other fields, but we're then talking about a question of degree. Movie-making is a much more expensive business, partly because of its collaborative nature and partly because of the time it takes to bring films to the screen. But that doesn't alter the fact that the artists working within the business may have as much integrity in their work as a concert pianist, sculptor, composer, painter working within a less money-rich environment.


I'm afraid you misunderstood my comment. I wasn't attacking the "integrity" of artists in the movie business, though there have always been plenty of dirty tricks and backstabbing in all of the arts. I meant that the enormous stakes and high risks of the movie business have a profound impact on what makes it to the screen and into global distribution. For example, the incentive to reuse previously successful formulas and avoid anything new and experimental is often a major factor, even the controlling factor, but even there I don't want to oversimplify or generalize. It is just a very different business, even as compared to the major orchestras and opera companies.


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## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

fluteman said:


> I'm afraid you misunderstood my comment. I wasn't attacking the "integrity" of artists in the movie business, though there have always been plenty of dirty tricks and backstabbing in all of the arts. I meant that the enormous stakes and high risks of the movie business have a profound impact on what makes it to the screen and into global distribution. For example, the incentive to reuse previously successful formulas and avoid anything new and experimental is often a major factor, even the controlling factor, but even there I don't want to oversimplify or generalize. It is just a very different business, even as compared to the major orchestras and opera companies.


You're right, I may have misunderstood your comment. Whilst it is true that the financial imperative does have an impact on what makes it to the screen, isn't this also true of the concert hall? "the incentive to reuse previously successful formulas and avoid anything new and experimental" is the same as the constant replaying of Beethoven's 9th rather than the latest from Magnus Lindberg. Just as there are studios that specialise in niche film-making, so there are venues where you will hear the new and experimental.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Forster said:


> You're right, I may have misunderstood your comment. Whilst it is true that the financial imperative does have an impact on what makes it to the screen, isn't this also true of the concert hall?


Yes, but I've learned, including from my own experience in business, that once you enter the realm of high-risk gambles involving tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars (pounds, euros, etc.) you are in a different world. Decisions are made differently. For example, often in classical music, larger productions especially are done on a low-risk, modest expected return basis. The standard repertoire late 18th and 19th century grand operas have a fairly stable audience. The largest, best-funded opera companies will occasionally mount a production of something more unusual, but even they will do the standard operas to make sure the majority of ticket purchasers, subscribers, and large donors stay happy.

With movies, every new production is a gamble, and a big one. Even the most mainstream, non-experimental movie, inspired by previous successful ones, and with the biggest-name stars, can and occasionally will bomb. The studios and the investors behind them know they will have to suffer a large loss at some point, and that is the price of being in the game. Only the biggest, wealthiest players can play. Simply doing a production of La bohème with the biggest-name stars, and counting on at least a decent level of success, doesn't work. A big part of the difference is that movies are mainly a vehicle for current popular art, while opera is a classical art tradition.


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

,Financial imperatives of course do have an impact on the concert hall, it's mostly just that artists think they really, really shouldn't. 

I always thought one of the main differences between what we consider "elevated" art is a belief that it should not be subjected to market pressures of financial success, which is not very easy to do in practice. 

Opera was the big bucks stuff of classical music in the 19th century, and most of the stories I've seen of composers having their works cut, forcibly edited, or revised due to financial pressure happened in opera. It's a different game when you have a ton of people expecting to make money off your work.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

fbjim said:


> ,Financial imperatives of course do have an impact on the concert hall, it's mostly just that artists think they really, really shouldn't.
> 
> I always thought one of the main differences between what we consider "elevated" art is a belief that it should not be subjected to market pressures of financial success, which is not very easy to do in practice.
> 
> Opera was the big bucks stuff of classical music in the 19th century, and most of the stories I've seen of composers having their works cut, forcibly edited, or revised due to financial pressure happened in opera. It's a different game when you have a ton of people expecting to make money off your work.


Exactly. People in the "elevated" arts try to make enough money to earn a living, of course, and at the very top, with Damien Hirst, for example, there is money involved that would seem big indeed to most ordinary people, including me. But even that is pocket change compared to the movie industry. And the most celebrated contemporary "serious" artists, though they may earn a nice living, seldom make the kind of money Hirst has made. In fact, he is nearly a one-off with a reported net worth of over $300 million. Philip Glass has a reported net worth of $35 million. In contrast, movie magnate Sumner Redstone is reportedly worth $5.1 billion. Author J.K. Rowling, thanks to her success with movies based on her Harry Potter novels, is worth $1 billion.

It would be naive to think that these business realities do not have a major impact on the artistic aspects of the industry.


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

Is film music a reaction against modernism and art music in general? The short answer: no. The long answer: no.


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## Chat Noir (4 mo ago)

Aries said:


> I think you believe in the core of what you say (not necessarily regarding all the made up storys about the views of others which seem to be more anger driven to me). That you don't even consider the possibility of a marxist implications is something I see in the context of the slow marxist infiltration of the mainstream. You and many others just don't see it. It is hard to see, expecially if you don't want to see it.


This bit is only worth noting. Clear evidence of a poisoned and plodding mind flogging the old 'cultural Marxism' drivel meme vomited out by the likes of that pseudo-intellectual Jordan Peterson and his lesser fellow-travellers (see that! I used a loaded phrase!).

As I said you're not as clever as you think you are. Its rather cringy to even look at.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

I don't agree with the OP. The question stated about the influence of film music is far too broad. It seems to assume that film music can drive public taste, whereas it is actually only one of several potential influences. Because film music is _functional _and can be in such diverse _genres as _pop, classical, jazz, experimental, world music, and on and on, it is particularly difficult to categorize.

Unless the film is a musical, music is seldom its central focus. Even considering only the traditional sound hierarchy of earlier years (1st - dialogue, 2nd - sound, 3rd - music), it was the dialogue and sound that carried the dramatic presentation, while music "underscored" it by creating mood. And the visual dimension was more important than any of the preceding. Later on (beginning with Robert Altmann's _Nashville _in the early 1970's I believe) the traditional sound hierarchy was broken up and replaced by "sound design." With digital technology fully integrated multimedia are possible. Film music is still important, yet heterogeneous (often selected from various sources by a "music supervisor") and in a supporting role. I don't think the hypothesis about film music is supported.

It seems to me, rather, that this is yet another post that seeks to diminish the importance of modern and contemporary classical music by roundabout means.


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## Aries (Nov 29, 2012)

Chat Noir said:


> This bit is only worth noting. Clear evidence of a poisoned and plodding mind flogging the old 'cultural Marxism' drivel meme vomited out by the likes of that pseudo-intellectual Jordan Peterson and his lesser fellow-travellers (see that! I used a loaded phrase!).
> 
> As I said you're not as clever as you think you are. Its rather cringy to even look at.


 See: https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2019/01/cultural-marxism-is-real

Luckily my mother language isn't english so I am immune to your loaded phrase. I understand english more literally and I didn't even notice your language manipulation.

When you say I am not as clever you think I think I am, is that supposed to insult me? And when you say it is cringy to look at my posts, I think you have a problem with other opinions. When you see a opinion you don't like you either make up stories or you try to insult. This is no confident handling. This is bad manners. I think you feel like you have no other way to protect your ideology, that may be influenced by marxism.


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## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

I see that disparaging Marxism doesn't seem to count as discussing politics: in some communities in the world, it's apparently just a normal part of conversation.

But not everywhere. Please stop.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Roger Knox said:


> I don't agree with the OP. The question stated about the influence of film music is far too broad. It seems to assume that film music can drive public taste, whereas it is actually only one of several potential influences. Because film music is _functional _and can be in such diverse _genres as _pop, classical, jazz, experimental, world music, and on and on, it is particularly difficult to categorize.
> 
> Unless the film is a musical, music is seldom its central focus. Even considering only the traditional sound hierarchy of earlier years (1st - dialogue, 2nd - sound, 3rd - music), it was the dialogue and sound that carried the dramatic presentation, while music "underscored" it by creating mood. And the visual dimension was more important than any of the preceding. Later on (beginning with Robert Altmann's _Nashville _in the early 1970's I believe) the traditional sound hierarchy was broken up and replaced by "sound design." With digital technology fully integrated multimedia are possible. Film music is still important, yet heterogeneous (often selected from various sources by a "music supervisor") and in a supporting role. I don't think the hypothesis about film music is supported.
> 
> It seems to me, rather, that this is yet another post that seeks to diminish the importance of modern and contemporary classical music by roundabout means.


Yes to all of that. And the diversity and rapid evolution of movie scores is a fundamental aspect of the movie's role as a popular culture medium, perhaps the leading American popular culture medium until recent years, when the internet began to take over with You Tube, Tik Tok and so forth. Future pop culture historians may look on the current era as one in which the formerly dominant full-length Hollywood movie began to become cumbersome, inflexible and obsolete as a pop culture medium. 

None of that diminishes the skills, artistic integrity and achievements of movie makers, and movie score composers from Erich Korngold to Mica Levi. I don't see the reason to explain them away with ridiculous political theories any more than demanding John Williams be acknowledged as the new Beethoven. Popular art is there to reflect the zeitgeist of the moment and its potential forms are almost limitless. It can't be compartmentalized any more than lightening can be put in a bottle.


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

Aries said:


> See: https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2019/01/cultural-marxism-is-real
> 
> Luckily my mother language isn't english so I am immune to your loaded phrase. I understand english more literally and I didn't even notice your language manipulation.
> 
> When you say I am not as clever you think I think I am, is that supposed to insult me? And when you say it is cringy to look at my posts, I think you have a problem with other opinions. When you see a opinion you don't like you either make up stories or you try to insult. This is no confident handling. This is bad manners. I think you feel like you have no other way to protect your ideology, that may be influenced by marxism.


It's important to realize the biases of sources you're citing. See this: James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal - SourceWatch
_The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, formerly the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, is a right-wing 501(c)3 nonprofit and associate member of the State Policy Network (SPN). [...] The organization along with the John William Pope Foundation, a 501(c)3 organization that provides funding to many SPN and other right wing organizations, is underwritten by Art Pope. The James Martin Center was founded by the John Locke Foundation in 2003 as the Pope Center, changing its name at the beginning of 2017. The organization aims to add conservatives to the faculty of public universities. [...] SPN is a web of right-wing “think tanks” and tax-exempt organizations in 50 states, Washington, D.C., Canada, and the United Kingdom. As of January 2022, SPN's membership totals 166. Today's SPN is the tip of the spear of far-right, nationally funded policy agenda in the states that undergirds extremists in the Republican Party. SPN Executive Director Tracie Sharp told the Wall Street Journal in 2017 that the revenue of the combined groups was some $80 million, but a 2019 analysis of SPN's main members IRS filings by the Center for Media and Democracy shows that the combined revenue is over $120 million.[3] Although SPN's member organizations claim to be nonpartisan and independent, the Center for Media and Democracy's in-depth investigation, "EXPOSED: The State Policy Network -- The Powerful Right-Wing Network Helping to Hijack State Politics and Government," reveals that SPN and its member think tanks are major drivers of the right-wing, American Legislative Exchange Council(ALEC)-backed corporate agenda in state houses nationwide, with deep ties to the Koch brothers and the national right-wing network of funders. 

In 2009 the Charles G. Koch Foundation gave $10,000 to the James Martin Center in 2014 and $21,107 in 2009.

Jenna A. Robinson, president of the James Martin Center is a graduate of the Koch Associate Program sponsored by the Charles G. Koch Foundation.[7]

Board member David W. Riggs previously served as an environmental program officer at the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation in Washington, D.C. He has also worked at a number of other right-wing SPN organizations._

This is clearly a very biased source and it's important to acknowledge that when citing it, imo.


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

fluteman said:


> Yes to all of that. And the diversity and rapid evolution of movie scores is a fundamental aspect of the movie's role as a popular culture medium, perhaps the leading American popular culture medium until recent years, when the internet began to take over with You Tube, Tik Tok and so forth. Future pop culture historians make look on the current era as one in which the formerly dominant full-length Hollywood movie began to become cumbersome, inflexible and obsolete as a pop culture medium.
> 
> None of that diminishes the skills, artistic integrity and achievements of movie makers, and movie score composers from Erich Korngold to Mica Levi. I don't see the reason to explain them away with ridiculous political theories any more than demanding John Williams be acknowledged as the new Beethoven. Popular art is there to reflect the zeitgeist of the moment and its potential forms are almost limitless. It can't be compartmentalized any more than lightening can be put in a bottle.


Exactly, both contemporary classical music and film music are very diverse stylistically.


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## Chat Noir (4 mo ago)

Aries said:


> See: https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2019/01/cultural-marxism-is-real
> 
> Luckily my mother language isn't english so I am immune to your loaded phrase. I understand english more literally and I didn't even notice your language manipulation.
> 
> When you say I am not as clever you think I think I am, is that supposed to insult me? And when you say it is cringy to look at my posts, I think you have a problem with other opinions. When you see a opinion you don't like you either make up stories or you try to insult. This is no confident handling. This is bad manners. I think you feel like you have no other way to protect your ideology, that may be influenced by marxism.


Well obviously I have 'a problem' with your opinion. Mainly that you want people to take it seriously, when it can't possibly be taken seriously except by crazed conspiracy people.

It's amusing you think I or anyone else tries to insult you. Rudeness and insults seem to be a basic position for you. I don't have an 'ideology', if you recall it was you who put forward dubious theories and leapt on someone's use of _fetishism_ (a normal vocabulary item) and framed it within your own crackpot world where "Marxists" (not real ones, but bogeyman-type ones who are a synonym for "woke") are chasing after you and destroying your conservative ideology.

Like I said, you're not as clever as you think and quite cringy.

No point replying to me. I have no interest in conspiracy theories; new-age conservatism; millennial waffle; pseudo-intellectual blather... none of that. Try and stick to music talk and not wandering off into schoolboy-level 'philosophy' and I won't have to keep putting you straight.


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

Chat Noir said:


> "Marxists" (not real ones, but bogeyman-type ones who are synonym for "woke")


Yes, important here to make a distinction between "Cultural Marxism" and the various types of philosophy that have in various ways been influenced by Marx's thoughts on society. It's also important to note that social commentary on class and race does not necessarily imply marxism: look at the history of, say, the French Revolution, or the English Civil War that lead to the execution of Charles I in 1649. Both of these historical time periods predate Marx by hundreds of years.


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## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

The English Civil War was not about class but about an upper class revolt against the power of the monarch. The lower/peasant/working classes had no say in the matter. It bears no relation to any of the later revolutions which were allegedly about the rise of the proletariat.


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

Forster said:


> The English Civil War was not about class but about an upper class revolt against the power of the monarch. The lower/peasant/working classes had no say in the matter. It bears no relation to any of the later revolutions which were allegedly about the rise of the proletariat.


While it's true that the English Civil War wasn't a struggle between the proletariat classes and the upper classes, it's still a struggle between the upper classes and ruling class. There is still an issue of who has the power to change things in a society. Granted, the power struggle is very different and you are correct, the English Civil War doesn't acknowledge the working classes. 

However, the French Revolution is a different matter, and this does predate marxism as well. My point was that social commentary on class and hierarchies isn't something unique to marxism.


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## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

composingmusic said:


> it's still a struggle between the upper classes and ruling class.


It was a struggle _among_ the ruling classes.

I take your point about social commentary on class.


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## Chat Noir (4 mo ago)

French revolution was also a bourgeois revolution. It might be best to bury this tangent, though I do think it is worth exploring if only to counter the manufactured view that 'modernism' - in either music or general culture - is a synonym for 'decline', or 'corruption of western aesthetic values' and all the other drivel that routinely gets wheeled-out in this sort of discussion.
Post-Wagner must be simply accepted as a fact. Equal acceptance is required for understanding that it isn't just a crazy minority trying to hijack soaring Tchaikovsky melodies and destroy 'classical music'.

Film music is not of one style. Film music is 'music for films' and has so many approaches that the core of this ever-returning question is fraudulent. I.e. the notion that 'film music' is the refuge of 'golden era' classical after they were hijacked by noisemakers.


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

Chat Noir said:


> French revolution was also a bourgeois revolution. It might be best to bury this tangent, though I do think it is worth exploring if only to counter the manufactured view that 'modernism' - in either music or general culture - is a synonym for 'decline', or 'corruption of western aesthetic values' and all the other drivel that routinely gets wheeled-out in this sort of discussion.


Fair enough regarding burying this tangent. I brought it up as a response that social commentary predates marxism by quite a long time, so it's not fair to say social commentary = marxism (which is what some users and ChatGPT replies other people brought up seemed to imply). 



Chat Noir said:


> Post-Wagner must be simply accepted as a fact. Equal acceptance is required for understanding that it isn't just a crazy minority trying to hijack soaring Tchaikovsky melodies and destroy 'classical music'.


Agreed, it's certainly not a crazy minority trying to hijack Tchaikovsky melodies. I think the idea of trying to destroy classical music is something most composers today would find horrifying – most composers I know greatly admire and enjoy music of the past eras. Honestly most of the composers I know are quite omnivorous in their listening habits and listen to a wide variety of music. 



Chat Noir said:


> Film music is not of one style. Film music is 'music for films' and has so many approaches that the core of this ever-returning question is fraudulent. I.e. the notion that 'film music' is the refuge of 'golden era' classical after they were hijacked by noisemakers.


Indeed, it's far from monolithic. Quite a lot of it has been influenced by contemporary classical music, and there are directors like Stanley Kubrick and Walt Disney who used quite a lot of both older and more recent classical music in films. There are also composers like Toru Takemitsu who worked in both fields.


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

Michael Nyman even did a video game soundtrack!






definitely not a "refuge of tonal romantic music" thing, unless post-minimalism counts as romantic music somehow


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## Chat Noir (4 mo ago)

His finest work!

(I'm joking).


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

I think he ended up reusing it for another project. 

The story of how that happened was really funny. The game's creator heard he was in town and more or less cornered him in his hotel room for like six hours begging him to work on his game's soundtrack until he relented.


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## Aries (Nov 29, 2012)

Chat Noir said:


> Well obviously I have 'a problem' with your opinion. Mainly that you want people to take it seriously, when it can't possibly be taken seriously except by crazed conspiracy people.
> 
> It's amusing you think I or anyone else tries to insult you. Rudeness and insults seem to be a basic position for you. I don't have an 'ideology', if you recall it was you who put forward dubious theories and leapt on someone's use of _fetishism_ (a normal vocabulary item) and framed it within your own crackpot world where "Marxists" (not real ones, but bogeyman-type ones who are a synonym for "woke") are chasing after you and destroying your conservative ideology.
> 
> ...


When it can't be taken seriously, the why do you reply to it in a serious way?

I don't call others "cringy" or "not as clever as you think" what appears to be a synonym for stupid. Where do I insult others? At least I don't do it systematically like you.

Why you think is there no point in replying to you? I don't think I can convince you of something, but that is not the point. I think your replies are quite innappropriate and that is an interssting thing for itself. You are allergic to different opinions, and it is interessting to investigate and to point out. Avoiding you would be easy.

I made the experienced that for a meaningful conversation a minimum level of agreement is necessary though. So more than pointing out your wrongdoing is maybe not possible here.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Chat Noir said:


> French revolution was also a bourgeois revolution. It might be best to bury this tangent, though I do think it is worth exploring if only to counter the manufactured view that 'modernism' - in either music or general culture - is a synonym for 'decline', or 'corruption of western aesthetic values' and all the other drivel that routinely gets wheeled-out in this sort of discussion.
> Post-Wagner must be simply accepted as a fact. Equal acceptance is required for understanding that it isn't just a crazy minority trying to hijack soaring Tchaikovsky melodies and destroy 'classical music'.
> 
> Film music is not of one style. Film music is 'music for films' and has so many approaches that the core of this ever-returning question is fraudulent. I.e. the notion that 'film music' is the refuge of 'golden era' classical after they were hijacked by noisemakers.


In all of my posts here and in general I take all of that for granted. I can't imagine how anyone with a decent music education, or a decent education of any kind, could possibly think otherwise. 

Musicians and artists generally are all over the political map, though they tend to look upon the individuals or institutions who pay them with respect. Beethoven is said to have believed in democratic principles, but he knew full well that kings, princes, archdukes and wealthy publishers paid his bills and gave him status by associating with him, and he fully bought into that socioeconomic system. But for his deafness and his perhaps understandable inability to accept and deal with it, he might have lived the high life of a wealthy celebrity. My own theory (supported by certain things he said) is that a deep--seated resentment that his intellectual inferiors could lord it over him (literally) merely because of their inherited titles and wealth fueled his supposed democratic ideals.

But let's drop the crackpot political theories.


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

fluteman said:


> Musicians and artists generally are all over the political map, though they tend to look upon the individuals or institutions who pay them with respect. Beethoven is said to have believed in democratic principles, but he knew full well that kings, princes, archdukes and wealthy publishers paid his bills and gave him status by associating with him, and he fully bought into that socioeconomic system. But for his deafness and his perhaps understandable inability to accept and deal with it, he might have lived the high life of a wealthy celebrity. My own theory (supported by certain things he said) is that a deep--seated resentment that his intellectual inferiors could lord it over him (literally) merely because of their inherited titles and wealth fueled his supposed democratic ideals.
> 
> But let's drop the crackpot political theories.


Sofia Gubaidulina, Galina Ustvolskaya, and Dmitri Shostakovich are all examples of how artists adapt when the political climate is tough. Gubaidulina moved when things got too tough. Shostakovich stayed in the Soviet Union, but as we know that was far from a simple dynamic. Ustvolskaya’s music basically didn’t receive support from the regime for many decades, and much of her music has a brutal, uncompromising quality to it.


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## Chat Noir (4 mo ago)

It's unfortunate that such broader social circumstances also affect art, and in a way later, or even at the time, seen as 'positive'. Struggle is really the fuel of art. Without struggle there is not much to do. Though personally I like a rest now and again.

It's one of the things that bothers me about the push for technological 'ease' in the modern world. In the old days cars breaking down and having to find a telephone box in a storm were exciting, romantic plot devices in novels/films. Nowadays your smart-car sends a message to the HQ for a repair SOS and you have a smartphone; though it might fall in a ravine.

I digress.


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

Chat Noir said:


> It's unfortunate that such broader social circumstances also affect art, and in a way later, or even at the time, seen as 'positive'. Struggle is really the fuel of art. Without struggle there is not much to do. Though personally I like a rest now and again.
> 
> It's one of the things that bothers me about the push for technological 'ease' in the modern world. In the old days cars breaking down and having to find a telephone box in a storm were exciting, romantic plot devices in novels/films. Nowadays your smart-car sends a message to the HQ for a repair SOS and you have a smartphone; though it might fall in a ravine.
> 
> I digress.


This actually does link back to the film topic in some rather interesting ways. As I remarked in the other thread, technology has affected both film composition and concert composition, although in different ways. A lot of film music is written straight into a DAW such as Logic, ProTools, or Ableton, with virtual instruments and sample libraries. This bypasses the need to write out the music in notation. Granted, some film composers do work in score first, and work with live instruments. With some film composers, you also see the composer just writing the main thematic material and main lines out, and assistant composers do a lot of the actual nitty gritty orchestration. 

With concert composers, you also see different ways technology affects the working process. From around the 1950s onwards, computer music and various types of electronic and electroacoustic music have evolved in many different directions. A lot of composers still prefer to work with pencil or pen and paper, but engraving software does make creating parts and editing much easier. Some composers do prefer to write straight into engraving software (I personally prefer paper for a number of reasons, but that's my own preferences). It's interesting to see how the rise of 20th and 21st century technology has affected the composing process in both of these fields.


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

Composition software being widely available affects the barrier to entry as well. On the one end, I see a few people who go to music schools using software to show off their own piano compositions and the like. On the other hand, people with no training are composing using electronic music software. Where once kids would get together to jam after school, now you make some ambient or dance tracks and publish them to your friends on Bandcamp.

The more things change, and all that.


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

Yes, for sure. Access to study material and listening material has also changed things drastically. To hear a new piece, you don't need to go to a concert. You can wait until it gets uploaded somewhere like YouTube or Spotify. One can also listen to a piece multiple times to really get to know it well, rather than having to rely on the memory of that single concert.


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

I wonder how many kids even do "jam" sessions anymore. I still see some kids playing guitar so it obviously happens, but online, most of the music I see being released is stuff like dance/ambient/noise.


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## Chat Noir (4 mo ago)

composingmusic said:


> It's interesting to see how the rise of 20th and 21st century technology has affected the composing process in both of these fields.


I only quoted this bit, but I refer to all the post. I say it tentatively, but the use of technology in that way might well have affected the entire aesthetic, by the use of 'cut and paste' and a sort of non-linear working which has also become true perhaps of writing (on computer, rather typewriter) and non-linear film editing. That it might affect the overall outcome; in positive and/or negative ways.

Not that I'm claiming lower-tech approaches totally avoided it.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

fbjim said:


> Film music is omnivorous. It'll take from anything, from early music all the way to modern popular music. As a medium it isn't reactionary to anything. The idea of it being a "the real 20th century music" for people who think everything after Shostakovich is junk is mostly an online thing.
> 
> You _could_ potentially ask if minimalism was a reaction to modernist music, but I think most minimalists and scholars these days tend to reject a simple analysis like that.


It's interesting to look at post-serialism as bringing developments in music since equal temperament to the end, rather than as a beginning of something new. In any case, you're right. Minimalism came out of various influences, including trends in popular music, increasing interest in world music and also modal music.

The same sorts of changes where happening in popular music during the 1950's, for example, Miles Davis' _Kind of Blue_ remains the biggest selling jazz album. The impact of modal jazz, where Miles and others radically departed from the chord patterns which dominated bebop, was nothing short of revolutionary. He's just one example, there where others who made similar impacts at that time. These couldn't fail to be noticed by classical musicians.

I think that it's pretty obvious how as regards the concert hall, listeners didn't wholly reject modernism. By the late 1950's, several modern composers where pretty much part of the repertoire, some of them still living. Of course, the scene becomes more fragmented as we get into the 1960's and beyond into postmodernism. I guess the minimalists (from both sides of the Atlantic) remain the most welcomed in the concert hall, and probably some what can be called neo-romantic composers as well.

This, along with the increasing inclusion of film music, doesn't necessarily mean a victory for tonality. My opinion is that it's more a reflection of the diversity of music post-1950's, which conventional concepts of the canon can't sustain. They don't really need to either, things aren't straightforward as they once where, but they're fine as they are.



composingmusic said:


> Yes, important here to make a distinction between "Cultural Marxism" and the various types of philosophy that have in various ways been influenced by Marx's thoughts on society.


I agree, however unfortunately Marx is like a red rag to a bull on this forum. A lot of things are like that, too. I guess if we stick to Marx, it's too old - or in the case of Adorno, probably too boring - to ignite any major war here.



> It's also important to note that social commentary on class and race does not necessarily imply marxism: look at the history of, say, the French Revolution, or the English Civil War that lead to the execution of Charles I in 1649. Both of these historical time periods predate Marx by hundreds of years.


The philosophies which fed into the French Revolution came from the Enlightenment. Marx was influenced by these but took a step further by looking at how capitalism, as it was then developing with the industrial revolution, would impact on society. Obviously, there hadn't been a working class before the industrial revolution.

The 1848 revolutions where a flashpoint, but they failed and the elements of the ancien regime clinged to power. So too after events like the Paris Commune of 1871, when the working class started to mobilise. That's one of the reasons why Marx's theories ended up having more impact in the 20th century, as the last remnants of the ancien regime where being obliterated by two world wars. Changes in politics and the economy couldn't sustain the old order.

After 1945, theories of the Enlightenment looked pretty exposed and dare I say irrelevant, particularly as colonies gained independence and rejected Western patronage. Marx's theories where of more relevant application to them, of course these countries ended up being forced to choose sides in the two way bet known as the Cold War.


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

Chat Noir said:


> I only quoted this bit, but I refer to all the post. I say it tentatively, but the use of technology in that way might well have affected the entire aesthetic, by the use of 'cut and paste' and a sort of non-linear working which has also become true perhaps of writing (on computer, rather typewriter) and non-linear film editing. That it might affect the overall outcome; in positive and/or negative ways.
> 
> Not that I'm claiming lower-tech approaches totally avoided it.


Yes, and I think this has affected different aesthetics in different ways. Minimalism, for instance, was certainly affected by these developments. Spectralism was affected by technology in a different way – the type of analysis necessary for this music did not exist previously.


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## Chat Noir (4 mo ago)

Sid James said:


> The same sorts of changes where happening in popular music during the 1950's, for example, Miles Davis' _Kind of Blue_ remains the biggest selling jazz album. The impact of modal jazz, where Miles and others radically departed from the chord patterns which dominated bebop, was nothing short of revolutionary. He's just one example, there where others who made similar impacts at that time. These couldn't fail to be noticed by classical musicians.


There's a term, which I can't bring to mind, which is recognised as describing the convergence of classical and jazz as jazz started to attain the position of 'artform'. Or rather that the 'art' mouthpieces decided as such and caught up with everyone else. Anyone recall this term? It was commonly used to describe Davis's tilt into classical-like forms (Sketches of Spain etc) and people like Jacques Loussier.

I think at that point so-called 'popular' music and the older 'classical' canon really did meet. And moreover people could see that they weren't 'the twain' who can never meet. but different views of the same art form.


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## Aries (Nov 29, 2012)

composingmusic said:


> Yes, important here to make a distinction between "Cultural Marxism" and the various types of philosophy that have in various ways been influenced by Marx's thoughts on society.


First of all I notice that you acknowledge the existence of these things what is apparently very controversial. Do you have naming suggestions? "Cultural marxism" is not really self-explanatory, but what would be good alternatives? Apparently the term also makes some blush with anger, and I am not sure if that is a good or bad thing. If Marx had an influence on various types of philospohy, it doesn't seem wrong to see marxism in these cases. But for a sober disussion it might be useful to use less controversial terms.


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

Aries said:


> First of all I notice that you acknowledge the existence of these things what is apparently very controversial. Do you have naming suggestions? "Cultural marxism" is not really self-explanatory, but what would be good alternatives? Apparently the term also makes some blush with anger, and I am not sure if that is a good or bad thing. If Marx had an influence on various types of philospohy, it doesn't seem wrong to see marxism in these cases. But for a sober disussion it might be useful to use less controversial terms.


Let's not delve deeper into the politics here. Art Rock already asked if it was possible to keep politics out of the other related thread – I think it would make sense to move this to the politics subforum too.


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Chat Noir said:


> There's a term, which I can't bring to mind, which is recognised as describing the convergence of classical and jazz as jazz started to attain the position of 'artform'.


Sounds like Third Stream music to me.


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## Chat Noir (4 mo ago)

Roger Knox said:


> Sounds like Third Stream music to me.


That's it! I just followed your reminder to Wikipedia and Sketches of Spain is name-checked as an example. So I'm not going mad and imagining things.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Chat Noir said:


> There's a term, which I can't bring to mind, which is recognised as describing the convergence of classical and jazz as jazz started to attain the position of 'artform'. Or rather that the 'art' mouthpieces decided as such and caught up with everyone else. Anyone recall this term? It was commonly used to describe Davis's tilt into classical-like forms (Sketches of Spain etc) and people like Jacques Loussier.
> 
> I think at that point so-called 'popular' music and the older 'classical' canon really did meet. And moreover people could see that they weren't 'the twain' who can never meet. but different views of the same art form.


Sounds a bit like Third Stream. Davis has been lumped in with that trend since. Gunther Schuller was one of its early exponents. Ironically, Davis didn't like it. He said that it was too dry, and didn't swing, adding with his usual candour that it was like "looking at a naked woman who you don't like." 

Incidentally I do like some of that sort of thing coming out of the '50's, particularly from France (including Loussier, and also Andre Hodeir, Raymond Fol and Claude Bolling). Miles' associate Bill Evans was exploring similar directions, at least indirectly, since one of his big influences was Debussy. I think that Dave Brubeck's album_ Time Out_, another landmark release of 1959, also made a big impact on these sorts of trends.


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## Chat Noir (4 mo ago)

And of course it was running the other way from the 20s...Gershwin and composers like Erwin Schulhof (or two ffs) who was a jazz fan and incorporator.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Sid James said:


> Sounds a bit like Third Stream. Davis has been lumped in with that trend since. Gunther Schuller was one of its early exponents. Ironically, Davis didn't like it. He said that it was too dry, and didn't swing, adding with his usual candour that it was like "looking at a naked woman who you don't like."
> 
> Incidentally I do like some of that sort of thing coming out of the '50's, particularly from France (including Loussier, and also Andre Hodeir, Raymond Fol and Claude Bolling). Miles' associate Bill Evans was exploring similar directions, at least indirectly, since one of his big influences was Debussy. I think that Dave Brubeck's album_ Time Out_, another landmark release of 1959, also made a big impact on these sorts of trends.


To me, Loussier is much underrated, though now that he has passed away, his reputation no doubt will grow. Some have even said he is merely a more elaborate version of the Swingle Singers. SMH. And by the way, the Swingle Singers are underrated too, imo.


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## Chat Noir (4 mo ago)

Unfortunately in the UK his popular profile was limited to the soundtrack for cigars, which is not terrible, but probably not his intention. I wonder how much cash he made off that?


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## Roger Knox (Jul 19, 2017)

Chat Noir said:


> And of course it was running the other way from the 20s...Gershwin and composers like Erwin Schulhof (or two ffs) who was a jazz fan and incorporator.


They may have paved the way but to me Third Stream belongs with post-WW2 "cool jazz." Another name that comes to mind is John Lewis and the Modern Jazz Quartet -- very cerebral and maybe the kind of music that Miles Davis was criticizing. To me jazz and classical music are each rich and challenging enough in themselves. But the idea of combining them has never gone away. Third Stream was one of the most sophisticated attempts.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Aries said:


> First of all I notice that you acknowledge the existence of these things what is apparently very controversial. Do you have naming suggestions? "Cultural marxism" is not really self-explanatory, but what would be good alternatives? Apparently the term also makes some blush with anger, and I am not sure if that is a good or bad thing. If Marx had an influence on various types of philospohy, it doesn't seem wrong to see marxism in these cases. But for a sober disussion it might be useful to use less controversial terms.





composingmusic said:


> Let's not delve deeper into the politics here. Art Rock already asked if it was possible to keep politics out of the other related thread – I think it would make sense to move this to the politics subforum too.


I think it's less a matter of politics and more a matter of history. I think Adorno's Marxist analysis was looking at trends as they where unfolding after 1945. Those trends have happened. People purchased their vinyl records and had their own library of the classical canon, so they wanted to hear it live. The biggest sellers of course where elsewhere (in classical, the lollipops and Mantovani, not to speak of popular music like jazz and later rock). So this brought pressure on orchestras to play what people owned at home. Consequently, you get a sort of fossilisation, or at least entropy, setting in the canon. Growth after the 1950's is at a glacial pace, if at all.

If anything, it's capitalism that brings about this situation. So you get alternative scenes developing, including around contemporary classical, much of which no longer fits into the core repertoire. This is of course not limited to music. Alternative scenes for film developed (e.g. the French new wave, Italian neo realism, John Cassavetes in the USA) as well as journals and festivals for their propagation.

Whatever way we look at it, this is all history. Things look better now in terms of diversity than they did before. There are many sources now for music and culture beyond the big venues and organisations.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Roger Knox said:


> They may have paved the way but to me Third Stream belongs with post-WW2 "cool jazz." Another name that comes to mind is John Lewis and the Modern Jazz Quartet -- very cerebral and maybe the kind of music that Miles Davis was criticizing. To me jazz and classical music are each rich and challenging enough in themselves. But the idea of combining them has never gone away. Third Stream was one of the most sophisticated attempts.


John Lewis did a jazz/classical version of the Goldberg Variations with his wife, a classical harpsichordist. Really pretty remarkable. And the late Lee Konitz recorded a series of pieces based on Koechlin, Chausson, Debussy and Satie with a string quartet, partly improvised. Those are two of the best efforts in that genre that I'm familiar with.


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