# Tradition and the 20th Century



## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

There are, of course, a number of strongly divisive issues here on Talk Classical (and, by extension, the classical music community at large). Romanticism vs. Classicism, chamber music as opposed to orchestral, Wagnerites vs. anti-Wagnerites, but the most divisive seems to be 20th century music as a whole. Some people seem to think everything went downhill at some point (differing significantly by person), others that it was a rich period of unparalleled diversity, still others that it had both strongly positive and strongly negative tendencies. I think it's clear where my sympathies lie.

One thing that interests me, though, is the way arguments are often conducted, in terms of conservatives vs. modernists. This is, of course, the same battle line that was drawn by contemporary commentators, but I think it's very significant that the line has moved. Most importantly, it was moved to accommodate more people into the "conservative" side who would previously have been thought of as being "modernists". Debussy, Mahler, Stravinsky during his Neoclassical period, Shostakovich, Bartok, (early) Copland, sometimes even Berg, and others, who used a distinctively 20th century language but have found acceptance to one degree or another have been moved over in opposition to Schoenberg, Webern, Varese, and others who have not. This is, I feel, partially due to the polarizing influence of Boulez and his view of the canon, which emphasized the traditional aspects of these composers' methods.

Here and elsewhere on the internet, however, the situation is somewhat different, although it is usually drawn up along similar lines. Usually, those who prefer composers they feel are conservative like to emphasize how their favorites depart from tradition, thus bringing their music into the 20th century, and at the same time criticize the favorites of "the other side" for departing "too far" from those same traditions. Those who feel they belong to the other camp, however, can tend to emphasize the traditional aspects of their favorites in contradistinction to those arguments, while criticizing the "overly traditional" aspects of their conservative "opponents".

I think it is clear that both sides have a point. The composers commonly thought of as radical have plenty of important ties to the classical tradition, and those thought of as conservative had the freedom to break from it in a number of ways. What do all of you think?


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## Head_case (Feb 5, 2010)

My brain is full. 

What was the question?


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## perduto (Aug 28, 2012)

Adorno once said: "Modernity is a qualitative, not a chronological, category", and I agree with that. Battle lines in music never made much sense to me anyway, especially not if they were drawn many years ago. Webern's contemporaries may have had trouble hearing tradition in his music, but that shouldn't be too difficult for us today. Also, some fine 20th century composers that may sound "traditionless" actually draw from traditions of earlier eras.


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## Head_case (Feb 5, 2010)

perduto said:


> Adorno once said: "Modernity is a qualitative, not a chronological, category", and I agree with that. Battle lines in music never made much sense to me anyway, especially not if they were drawn many years ago. Webern's contemporaries may have had trouble hearing tradition in his music, but that shouldn't be too difficult for us today. Also, some fine 20th century composers that may sound "traditionless" actually draw from traditions of earlier eras.


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## perduto (Aug 28, 2012)

What happened to his/her ears?


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## Head_case (Feb 5, 2010)

He can't hear....his brain is full :/


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Omega Point is needed.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

I just listen to music I like 

and the people who don't like it are stupid muahaha


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

20th century art movement explained in kitten friendly terms:

Music = wool

_<wiggles the wool>_

conservative music = chewed wool

_<taps kitty's nose with soggy chewed wool end>_

modernist music = wool with 25% rayon

_<dangles easy-wash no stretch wool>_

avant garde music = steel wool

_<wakes kitty up>_

current state of music = dangles chewed and new separately

_<confused kitty doesn't know which way to jump>_

desired state = twists threads together

_<kitty tries to pull them apart, gets tangled>_

actual state = explains wool is only used these days to keep grandmas off the street and entertains kitties

_<kitty absent, mewing at kitchen cupboards waiting for tuna>_


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

I don't see that there is a boundary anywhere. History and music have moved in a clear smooth and continuous fashion for all eternity.

Even the Cretaceous meteorite took millions of years to enact its mass extinction, it's only from the far distance of time that things seem small enough to place them before and after a certain point. The same applies to music.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> I just listen to music I like


Oh, so it's YOUR fault!


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## Guest (Dec 27, 2012)

I think that the divisiveness precedes the issues. That is, the issues are not the cause of the divisiveness but the result.

And that for the most part, discussions of twentieth century music are couched in terms that guarantee that the discussion will travel along the same well cut grooves.

I've tried several strategems over the years to jump the grooves, to present the situation differently than the usual antagonisms. They've all failed. The grooves are too deep.

Around the beginning of 2012, the program director of my local symphony saw that I was reading William Weber's _The Great Transformation of Musical Taste._ He had to go off and do his directorial things, so we only had time for him to ask about the book and to express his belief that audiences began rejecting new music when composers began presenting them with atonal music. Weber's book, I said, shows that the rejection had begun much earlier. He grimaced and went on his way, end of colloquy. Of course, it was not his personal, experiential belief but simply a restating of a common canard. But that canard has worn such a deep groove, that he and many like him, experience it as a deeply held belief of their own, as a self-evident and unquestionable truth.

Cause and effect. Composers wrote hideous music. Audiences rejected it. Done.

The record shows something quite different. But pointing to historical facts has never been nearly as persuasive or compelling as a good canard.

And how convenient that a fairly prominent composer, Boulez, made some inflammatory remarks in his youth. And of course, it's not convenient at all. It's part of a design, which goes something like this: "I have a strong belief. Since it is prejudice, I sense at some level that it's not got any logical or argumentative heft. But I believe it strongly. It helps that the enemy, as I see it, has said some uncomplimentary things about me and my beliefs. This strengthens my case." Such a strong design is this that even a document that is nothing at all like anything Boulez said, namely Babbitt's article "Off the Cuff," which was notoriously retitled as "Who Cares if You Listen?" by the magazine that published it, has been drummed into service as evidence that modern composers not only alienated audiences but that they did it with malice aforethought.

Nothing could be farther from the truth, but then canards are not true things.

And, speaking of convenience, this particular canard puts all the blame for the situation squarely on the composers' shoulders. The audiences are the consistently innocent victims of a peculiarly twentieth century malice, a malice that has, fortunately, been much ameliorated by the brave efforts of more traditionalist composers.

And so it goes.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

KenOC said:


> Oh, so it's YOUR fault!


What is my fault?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> What is my fault?


Sorry, a carryover from another related thread. The idea that people should listen to music they like (as opposed to music somebody else likes) spawns quite a few threads by people who apparently disagree. Thus, your fault! :cheers:


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## Head_case (Feb 5, 2010)

some guy said:


> I think that the divisiveness precedes the issues. That is, the issues are not the cause of the divisiveness but the result.
> 
> And that for the most part, discussions of twentieth century music are couched in terms that guarantee that the discussion will travel along the same well cut grooves.
> 
> ...


What about your new year's resolution to keep it brief? 

(or is that in 4 days time  )


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Mahlerian said:


> ...
> 
> One thing that interests me, though, is the way arguments are often conducted, in terms of conservatives vs. modernists. This is, of course, the same battle line that was drawn by contemporary commentators, but I think it's very significant that the line has moved. Most importantly, it was moved to accommodate more people into the "conservative" side who would previously have been thought of as being "modernists". Debussy, Mahler, Stravinsky during his Neoclassical period, Shostakovich, Bartok, (early) Copland, sometimes even Berg, and others, who used a distinctively 20th century language but have found acceptance to one degree or another have been moved over in opposition to Schoenberg, Webern, Varese, and others who have not. This is, I feel, partially due to the polarizing influence of Boulez and his view of the canon, which emphasized the traditional aspects of these composers' methods.
> 
> ...


This makes sense in terms of my own experience, I enjoy many types of classical music (& a good deal of other music). I think its less a case of fences being put up or lines being drawn in the sand and more a case of some wanting control (eg. Boulez in his younger years). The other thing is that many aspects of Modernist thinking go back to Marxism. Eg. the idea that composers writing for the broader public (basically the middle classes) are lower on the totem pole of artistic value or taste or whatever rationalisation than say composers who write more for academia or fellow musicians and such cliques. The more recent and in my opinion more balanced and inclusive view is that different types of music cater for different purposes. All are basically equally valid if they fulfil the needs of their audience, indeed of many audiences at the same time.

The other thing is that the majority of 'warhorse' repertoire from about 1750-1950 was popular either at its first performance (or not long after that) and has been since. I was listening to Holst's Planets yesterday and its been popular since it was first performed in full in the 1920's. Its one of the most popular of British works, actually. There's many examples like this, and of course in the post-1950 world you still have classical music that's popular and been so for ages. That Holst cd also had John Williams' Star Wars suite which has been popular since the 1970's. & he's still going. So the success with which Holst and Williams catered to the needs of their audiences is comparable.

BTW I have no problem with music geared more at specialists/fellow musos/academia. I like that type of music. Universities and intellectuals (not only fellow musicians but also those in other fields like law and science) have been active in commissioning new works by living composers. Good for them. I'm just saying that that type of more 'highbrow' stuff is not better (or worse) than the more popular stuff. If we apply such an outdated kind of Marxist standard, then the warhorses of the past many of us love - esp. from the 19th century, when classical music reached out to a broader public as never before - then that by definition must be lowbrow populist junk too (which is not!).


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*Futility*

I have debated the pros and cons of contemporary music for more than forty years. Many individuals hate much of this music. There are musicians who are much smarter that I am who have done an excellent job of defending the aesthetics of contemporary music. No matter what they say the opponents of contemporary music will come up with rationalizations to support there positions. I really do not know what to say anymore. Even when I acknowledge that no one is forcing them to listen to or like the music of John Crate, they still want to fight about it.


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## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

So is it because of changing of philosophies and understanding of Artists that creates a new style (and school) of music or is it affected mostly by this more influential art: Painting; And the changing in its styles?


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

arpeggio said:


> I have debated the pros and cons of contemporary music for more than forty years. Many individuals hate much of this music. There are musicians who are much smarter that I am who have done an excellent job of defending the aesthetics of contemporary music. No matter what they say the opponents of contemporary music will come up with rationalizations to support there positions. I really do not know what to say anymore. Even when I acknowledge that no one is forcing them to listen to or like the music of John Crate, they still want to fight about it.


I don't know what to say either. I have come across musicians here who like some types of contemporary music and not others. I think its okay to do that, but if I say I don't like the Helicopter Quartet or 4'33" for example on a forum like this, I am liable to e labelled as conservative or worse. Even if I say I like other works by Stockhausen or Cage, its not good enough, I have to have total allegiance to the credo of Modern ideology otherwise I'm out in the cold. Well so be it. These people like to draw lines in the sand. Good for them.

Once in recent months I mentioned that I thought that things like Picasso's bulls head made out of bicycle parts was not to my taste (basically that I think its silly) and then got a reply implying that I don't know anything about modern/contemporary visual art. Well that's not true, but people have to hang on to their stereotypes maybe to comfort them.

Basically I think that its not necessarily modern or contemporary classical music that went off the rails after 1945 or whenever. Its the ideologies that came with it that I see as kind of making music into some religion. Many sacred cows there and many unchallengeable dogmas and taboos. So you got high priests of this religion, you got people who will be very defensive of it. I respect people's passion but I think people should be realistic. Its not a crime to have preferences in any type of music, including more recent classical musics. I think its better to try and avoid attaching ideologies to everything.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Bless them, for they know not what they do. 

I reap from the actions of Contemporary-haters. 

Cheaper CDs.


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

The way that many modern composers from Schoenberg onwards seem to have clung to tradition is very interesting. Historians, starting from people like them and their supporters, have felt it necessary to show that the transition from Romantic to Modern music was inevitable. Various members here often articulate this view. Perhaps they need the anchor of tradition to feel validated in some way - not just a tradition of composers, but a tradition of _great_ composers. This was a new idea probably beginning approximately with Beethoven, though I'm sure someone can correct me. Brahms seems to have been very conscious of it.

The idea of some inexorable march of musical progress is an odd one really, when considered in depth. It goes beyond the natural changing of the times and their spirit, and a kind of scientific progress, and merges the two together. Has music always progressed? Perhaps a music historian will correct me, but before the year 1,000 at least I don't think there was much 'progress' in music at all. There has been, of course, at various different societal stages, varying levels of 'progress' in music composition. Some of this due to technological advances. This surely means that this line of progress must have started somewhere. Where? What's more, does this imply it has an end? Who knows.

I have been considering the following: Mozart did not influence Beethoven: Beethoven was influenced by Mozart. 'Progress' is not a process of marching forwards, but a process of looking backwards. Beethoven looked at Mozart's music and copied what he liked, or adapted it. The sacred flame is a myth invented, to my knowledge, by one of our usual culprits, Hoffman. What's more, for all the march of music history, few will claim that 20th century music is innately superior to 19th, 19th to 18th, 18th to 17th and so on. What is the use of innovation if it does not lead to a higher standard of music? It can only be because it is something new. And what is so very exciting about something new? Many composers have been more original than Mozart, who are not considered on the same level of quality.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Ramako said:


> The way that many modern composers from Schoenberg onwards seem to have clung to tradition is very interesting. Historians, starting from people like them and their supporters, have felt it necessary to show that the transition from Romantic to Modern music was inevitable. Various members here often articulate this view. Perhaps they need the anchor of tradition to feel validated in some way - not just a tradition of composers, but a tradition of _great_ composers. This was a new idea probably beginning approximately with Beethoven, though I'm sure someone can correct me. Brahms seems to have been very conscious of it.


The focus on tradition is generally in response to those, such as mud from a month and a bit ago, who see little or none of it in 20th century music (or atonal music, or "dissonant" music, or electroacoustic music, or any other category you may name). If the links with tradition were commonly recognized by all, then the same focus would likely not appear in discussion.

In my opinion, it is not right to look at it as a matter of inevitability, but certainly as a possible and logically derived outcome, based on the direction music was, and has been, heading.



Ramako said:


> And what is so very exciting about something new?


The possibility of new kinds of expression, and an expansion of means. That has been the reason for pretty much any widespread change in music for the past 500 or so years.


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> Ramako said:
> 
> 
> > And what is so very exciting about something new?
> ...


This is me again using poor expression... Still, the emphasis on innovation seems to me very strange. What I mean is that something new does not necessarily mean something improved. Various composers have proved that it is possible to write things in an out-dated style of the very highest quality, from Bach to Sibelius. This is an argument oft used, but actually Sibelius is very interesting. He really stretched concepts of form in extremely innovative ways, but is still largely considered conservative because of his tonal style. The question is did his innovations change the direction of music history in a major way? I don't know the answer.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Ramako said:


> This is me again using poor expression... Still, the emphasis on innovation seems to me very strange. What I mean is that something new does not necessarily mean something improved. Various composers have proved that it is possible to write things in an out-dated style of the very highest quality, from Bach to Sibelius.


Of course. It is far more important what one does with the materials and resources one has than what those materials and resources are.



Ramako said:


> This is an argument oft used, but actually Sibelius is very interesting. He really stretched concepts of form in extremely innovative ways, but is still largely considered conservative because of his tonal style. The question is did his innovations change the direction of music history in a major way? I don't know the answer.


I think that Sibelius has been influential in Finland on successive generations of composers there. But you have to realize that Sibelius is not considered conservative because of the fact he composed tonal music. It was the exact type of traditionally-built tonal music he composed that, like Strauss and Rachmaninoff, garnered him criticisms of conservatism.


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## Guest (Dec 29, 2012)

Sid James said:


> I have come across musicians here who like some types of contemporary music and not others. I think its okay to do that, but if I say I don't like the Helicopter Quartet or 4'33" for example on a forum like this, I am liable to e labelled as conservative or worse.


No, you are not. If you go onto a thread about Cage to attempt to convince people (according to your own ideology) that 4'33" is not music, however, your claim will certainly be reacted to. Only if you take disagreement with what you've said as a personal attack of yourself are you able to make up this persecution. And really, Andre, it's not much of a persecution, is it? Does it really hurt if someone calls you conservative? Does it really matter?



Sid James said:


> Even if I say I like other works by Stockhausen or Cage, its not good enough, I have to have total allegiance to the credo of Modern ideology otherwise I'm out in the cold. Well so be it. These people like to draw lines in the sand. Good for them.


This is all my grandmother's eye. For one, there's no "cold" to be out in. (Why are you so obsessed with being "warm," anyway?) For two, there's no "credo of Modern ideology" to have any sort of allegiance to, total or not. For the ten billionth time (I know--I get some sort of prize for making this point for the ten billionth time), it's not what you like or dislike, it's how you express your dislikes. If you express them as facts about the things you dislike, if you express them as fair judgments about the things you dislike, if you express them as somehow having normative value for anyone other than yourself, then there will possibly (hopefully) be someone in the room who will point out the folly if not the error of the ideologies you express. It's called "discussion." There will always be rebuttal and correction and disagreement in discussion. If someone attacks you personally, that's wrong, of course. But if someone disagrees with something you've said and you take it as a personal attack, then it's all on you at that point. Your misapprehension. Your obsession.



Sid James said:


> Once in recent months I mentioned that I thought that things like Picasso's bulls head made out of bicycle parts was not to my taste (basically that I think its silly) and then got a reply implying that I don't know anything about modern/contemporary visual art. Well that's not true, but people have to hang on to their stereotypes maybe to comfort them.


Ad populum. It of course could never be that maybe your articulation about Picasso's bull head revealed something about the limits of your knowledge. Must be the other guys' fault. Confusing. Who is it who needs comfort here?



Sid James said:


> Its the ideologies that came with it that I see as kind of making music into some religion. Many sacred cows there and many unchallengeable dogmas and taboos.


Well, near as I can tell, your vision that there are modern ideologies that make music into some kind of religion is a dogma of yours that you consider to be unchallengable.

Consider it challenged.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

As long as there are people not versed in the conventions of speech used when discussing music, those without the training or experience will use 'the people's cliches' and other rather creative terms when talking of the aspects and qualities of music.

For the rest, I rather wish you had chosen a word other than 'traditional.'

_"Traditional" here is the semantic trap, the cage, the "you are bound by" factor best put at the foreground of all such discussions of old / older vs. new / newer. I propose for 'traditional' its more truthful replacement, 'habitual.' i.e. what an individual habitually expects of music, or if you will, an individual's cumulative set of semiotic associations._

I'm of the post WWII 'Baby Boomer' generation. First exposure to music around the age of four years or so was to Prokofiev, Janacek, and Bach: at age six formal piano lessons commenced with Bartok and Bach with very soon added Schumann's _Album fur der Jugend_ and Octavio Pinto's _Szenas Infantis_. -- I'm completely 'set up' in finding the 20th century repertoire as 'normal,' i.e. "traditional" classical music along with all the previous earlier repertoire.

At age 12, 14, 16, I was sitting in Symphony Halls specifically to hear some 'music of my own times' as a matter of course, truly and youthfully eager and enthusiastic for 'the stuff.' Already familiar from recordings of Prokofiev, Varese and many others, I would go to those concerts where Prokofiev's _Scythian Suite_; Varese's _Ameriques_; Britten's _Curlew River_; Barber's _Piano Concerto_; Lukas Foss' _Baroque Variations_, etc. were on the program. I was one very thrilled teenager 

In my youth, along with the old I also pointedly sought out the relatively 'new.' _Scythian Suite_ was 48 years old; I first heard Hovhaness' Symphony _Mysterious Mountain_ (1955) when it was 'just' seven years old; the Barber _Piano Concerto_ and Lukas Foss' _Baroque Variations_ were each hot off the press. (_Le Sacre du Printemps_ will be 100 in 2013. Ives' _Unanswered Question_ is now age 106!) Such is my experience, all the 'old' but regularly including the not so old and the newer /newest -- were all generally consumed.

Because of that context: when I listen to Stravinsky's _Le sacre_, (having decades of familarity with it) I hear as much 'Debussyian' impressionism as I do 'radical music from 1913;' the Berg _Violin Concerto_ is heard as it really is, a capstone ultra chromatic and ultra romantic piece.... Likewise, the newer music of the 1970's and after is a continuation of 'tradition.' Too, I hear older music, Rameau, Beethoven and Chopin, in context as 'sharper' and as 'radical' sounding as new might be now, knowing they were busting their contemporary 'traditions' with sledge hammers and pile drivers: they each strike me as 'outrageous' that way, even now. [Hear them that way, the 'leap' to the present day is not at all very great, but more the one simple step it is.]

Many people's associations have it that Beethoven and Chopin are 'traditional,' while they were anything but. _*[People have decided something is traditional which was / is not!]*_ Accustomed to those earlier classical musics as part of most people's semiotic data banks, it is those associations which give many difficulty with music from later eras, to the point where, as stated, many believe there is really something 'polarized' from one era to another.

All classical music is an unbroken thread, a seamless continuum with no 'traditions' being truly broken. That is not at all a 'unique' take on music literature and its history, but mine was a rare enough formative circumstance: many were not 'exposed' to music this way.

To ask for a moratorium of usage of those less than ideal phrases and terms is to require of all avid listeners a sequence of several courses in music literature and history which usually span nearly two years in undergraduate school... accompanied by additional hours of assigned repeat listening, written graded papers, etc.

Until then, those who do grapple with obtaining a basic understanding of 'it all,' and in finding / learning a vocabulary to discuss it, do and will make less than good guesses, or 'make' stuff up, or be in error on 'how to properly say' what is on their mind. They only lack a more formal education, i.e. a decent and thorough pedagogic progression of 'all it is' in the big picture.
Until then, you will get people saying there is some "modern music which is trying / not trying to be difficult," and things like 'they think,' Faure is modern; Beethoven romantic; Debussy late romantic; John Williams classical, and all the rest.... (If those mistakes were written as exam answers, each and all would be 'wrong.') However, those with 'the training' usually get what is meant, despite how awkwardly or wrongly expressed it might be.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Ramako said:


> ....
> I have been considering the following: Mozart did not influence Beethoven: Beethoven was influenced by Mozart. 'Progress' is not a process of marching forwards, but a process of looking backwards. Beethoven looked at Mozart's music and copied what he liked, or adapted it. The sacred flame is a myth invented, to my knowledge, by one of our usual culprits, Hoffman. What's more, for all the march of music history, few will claim that 20th century music is innately superior to 19th, 19th to 18th, 18th to 17th and so on. What is the use of innovation if it does not lead to a higher standard of music? It can only be because it is something new. And what is so very exciting about something new? Many composers have been more original than Mozart, who are not considered on the same level of quality.


Basically I see you as saying that art builds upon art and I agree with that. It can of course go back or composers can be influenced by their contemporaries. I think the thing about progress being marching forwards is again attached to aspects of Modernist ideology. Eg. avant garde means fighting at the forefront, at the front line so to speak of change. Now I don't really see a point in fighting. Not many people care about the fight. 100 years ago, even more recently (eg. the premiere of Steve Reich's Four Organs in the 1970's) new classical music caused riots and scandals that where widely reported in the press. They became notorious (Rite of Spring being a big one there of course, and so too music by the 2nd Viennese School). Today, rock concerts are more likely to cause riots if anything. Times have changed and I wonder why some people stick to the seige mentality with modern music. Its like shadow boxing, there's not much to fight against. All we're doing is fighting amongst ourselves in these online discussions of new/newer music. Its kind of fruitless and in some ways sad.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Arsakes said:


> So is it because of changing of philosophies and understanding of Artists that creates a new style (and school) of music or is it affected mostly by this more influential art: Painting; And the changing in its styles?


If you trace the history of the arts, you will find a rather odd phenomenon: they do not all move 'forward' at the same pace or time, though generally, within several decades, they do. There are decades where there is nothing really great or new, stimulating happening in stage drama, where in the arena of literature, all hell is busting loose. Classical music may be vaunting ahead while painting is in some phase of idle lack of direction, or it can all be the other way around.

Not one of the arts can be called more important than the other, nor can one medium be singled out as the 'Spearhead' leader of all the stylistic changes.

They all do seem to run parallel in the larger scope of historic and real time. But in the shorter increments, they can be decades apart in various stages of 'innovation' or style-change.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Sid James said:


> I don't know what to say either. I have come across musicians here who like some types of contemporary music and not others. I think its okay to do that, but if I say I don't like the Helicopter Quartet or 4'33" for example on a forum like this, I am liable to e labelled as conservative or worse. Even if I say I like other works by Stockhausen or Cage, its not good enough, I have to have total allegiance to the credo of Modern ideology otherwise I'm out in the cold. Well so be it. These people like to draw lines in the sand. Good for them.
> 
> Once in recent months I mentioned that I thought that things like Picasso's bulls head made out of bicycle parts was not to my taste (basically that I think its silly) and then got a reply implying that I don't know anything about modern/contemporary visual art. Well that's not true, but people have to hang on to their stereotypes maybe to comfort them.
> 
> Basically I think that its not necessarily modern or contemporary classical music that went off the rails after 1945 or whenever. Its the ideologies that came with it that I see as kind of making music into some religion. Many sacred cows there and many unchallengeable dogmas and taboos. So you got high priests of this religion, you got people who will be very defensive of it. I respect people's passion but I think people should be realistic. Its not a crime to have preferences in any type of music, including more recent classical musics. I think its better to try and avoid attaching ideologies to everything.


Dear Sid: from my perspective, you find ideologies where there are none, and ditto 'conspiracy.' You are also wasting your time arguing with less than intelligent people if they are the sort to come up with only 'it is new' as a point of value 

Everyone has every right, and should, delineate their taste. It saves the individual time in selecting what they want to spend time with, and helps in discussions. When one somehow adds a tone as if their taste should be everyone's taste -- or just as bad, that others should adjust their tastes, including in what they make, for that individual or for 'everyman' -- then they are asking to be taken down. Simples.

Again, with my background, I consider anyone who first and lastly names 4'33'' to discuss John Cage as barely conversant on John Cage. Often, compounding their foolishness, they hold up this wholly exceptional piece, an anomaly in all of music literature, to 'prove' that the 'ideology' of contemporary music is another version of "The Emperor's New Clothes." That pretty much puts a very large and bright proverbial dunce cap on their credibility.

People do something similar in arguing for or against an era, when someone points out the "usual suspects" works of any other major composer. We're talking dilettante music lovers - about which I can have no fundamental criticism, but strongly criticize when they know next to nothing but want to seem to appear they know much.

Internet fora lay a fertile -- too fertile -- ground of manure in which many mushrooms can, in the dark, grow. People adapt a self-conceit that their personal opinion has more weight than the personal opinion of another individual, etc. They are begging for a drubbing from those who really do know better, those who have more extensive knowledge and experience.

Fact is, I have never, EVER, heard the kind of dribble of bad or mistaken argument over the same topics, modern music, avant-garde music, populist music, etc. among disparate professional musicians and other professional artists crossing all genre boundaries. (Of course, that collective crew are a true 'elite' - and a non-populist elite at that, about which you almost constantly seem to have some very hair-trigger personal issues with and or about.)

There are far too many very much sophomoric "I've learned some of music" sort of argument also found amongst the self-taught layman crowd. I blame the internet, really, for providing a platform where, even unconsciously, people get a thrill to a self-conceit of importance when their 'top ten piano concertos of all time' list is "published" on Amazon (recalling one which had two Beethoven, One Mozart, two Rachmaninoff, and the Grieg on it - a completely whack hack job, and a bad joke -- people who agree, or know no better the source is one person with little real knowledge or experience, take it as 'valid.')
.
The 50's was a political environment of ideologies - political ideologies, to which a few pedestrian bureaucrats decided to graft on the arts, and a few lesser, mainly, artists thought an ideology might just bring their work more to the fore of commercial success because that would make controversy. The arts have never ever had such big or widespread - or long lasting, 'ideologies.' It is the fact you think there are so many real ideologies in the arts I find weirdly fascinating - they usually come about after the fact of the innovators, as made up by a bunch of lesser able johnny come lately's -- who have more time to hang around together forming ideologies because they are not too busy actually producing music, paintings, novels, etc. There was a small spate of them from the time of the Russian Revolution through the 1970's - each and every one of them pretty much a minor footnote in music history. To dwell on them is really to dwell in a topical place other than one centered upon music itself.

"Conspiracy theories are an irresistible labor-saving device in the face of complexity." ~ "Skip" Gates of Harvard University.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Ramako said:


> The way that many modern composers from Schoenberg onwards seem to have clung to tradition is very interesting. Historians, starting from people like them and their supporters, have felt it necessary to show that the transition from Romantic to Modern music was inevitable. Various members here often articulate this view. Perhaps they need the anchor of tradition to feel validated in some way - not just a tradition of composers, but a tradition of _great_ composers. This was a new idea probably beginning approximately with Beethoven, though I'm sure someone can correct me. Brahms seems to have been very conscious of it.
> 
> The idea of some inexorable march of musical progress is an odd one really, when considered in depth. It goes beyond the natural changing of the times and their spirit, and a kind of scientific progress, and merges the two together. Has music always progressed? Perhaps a music historian will correct me, but before the year 1,000 at least I don't think there was much 'progress' in music at all. There has been, of course, at various different societal stages, varying levels of 'progress' in music composition. Some of this due to technological advances. This surely means that this line of progress must have started somewhere. Where? What's more, does this imply it has an end? Who knows.
> 
> I have been considering the following: Mozart did not influence Beethoven: Beethoven was influenced by Mozart. 'Progress' is not a process of marching forwards, but a process of looking backwards. Beethoven looked at Mozart's music and copied what he liked, or adapted it. The sacred flame is a myth invented, to my knowledge, by one of our usual culprits, Hoffman. What's more, for all the march of music history, few will claim that 20th century music is innately superior to 19th, 19th to 18th, 18th to 17th and so on. What is the use of innovation if it does not lead to a higher standard of music? It can only be because it is something new. And what is so very exciting about something new? Many composers have been more original than Mozart, who are not considered on the same level of quality.


Before the year 1000, nothing 'progressed' at all rapidly. Longer shifts of mores and ways were that much more gradual, generations living and dying without sensing much change. With more technological inventions, in war and applied to peaceful means, especially with the onset of the printing press, that is when you start to see more rapid change.

Music, letters, science, art and the other plastic arts all follow the same 'tempo' line, from slower to faster from that time to our own. Something new now can circle the globe to an audience of millions within one 24-hour period. Mail from one point to another in medieval Europe could take months, if it got there at all.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Ramako said:


> The way that many modern composers from Schoenberg onwards seem to have clung to tradition is very interesting. Historians, starting from people like them and their supporters, have felt it necessary to show that the transition from Romantic to Modern music was inevitable. Various members here often articulate this view. Perhaps they need the anchor of tradition to feel validated in some way - not just a tradition of composers, but a tradition of _great_ composers. This was a new idea probably beginning approximately with Beethoven, though I'm sure someone can correct me. Brahms seems to have been very conscious of it.
> 
> The idea of some inexorable march of musical progress is an odd one really, when considered in depth. It goes beyond the natural changing of the times and their spirit, and a kind of scientific progress, and merges the two together. Has music always progressed? Perhaps a music historian will correct me, but before the year 1,000 at least I don't think there was much 'progress' in music at all. There has been, of course, at various different societal stages, varying levels of 'progress' in music composition. Some of this due to technological advances. This surely means that this line of progress must have started somewhere. Where? What's more, does this imply it has an end? Who knows.
> 
> I have been considering the following: Mozart did not influence Beethoven: Beethoven was influenced by Mozart. 'Progress' is not a process of marching forwards, but a process of looking backwards. Beethoven looked at Mozart's music and copied what he liked, or adapted it. The sacred flame is a myth invented, to my knowledge, by one of our usual culprits, Hoffman. What's more, for all the march of music history, few will claim that 20th century music is innately superior to 19th, 19th to 18th, 18th to 17th and so on. What is the use of innovation if it does not lead to a higher standard of music? It can only be because it is something new. And what is so very exciting about something new? Many composers have been more original than Mozart, who are not considered on the same level of quality.


Over the recent history, there have been "changes" in music, certainly. I would not compare those changes with scientific progress, though. Art, or more precisely, the mechanisms for producing art (e.g., atonal after tonal) or even the way we contemplate art (e.g., a more open minded attitude, or even the contrary), can change because of the following things: i) new ways for expressing the same emotions of always ("emotions" in a very broad sense here, not only sadness, joy, melancholy, etc., but also the subjective imaginary); ii) ways for expressing things never expressed before with art. In either case, this "progress" always bifurcates and diverges, it grows and forms a non organized whole (for example, although atonalism is theoretically linked with tonalism, we can't say that replacing tonality with atonality is a "progress", it's just a change). On the other hand, scientific changes are an authentic "progress", because they are convergent, they have a clear direction forward, towards the scientific truth, the new verified theories are always more refined, contain the results of the previous theories. So, if we view new developments in music as isolated things, certainly there's no progress (for example, integral serialism wants to avoid precisely all traces of previous music, as Boulez said, he wanted an "international music", a "cosmopolitan music", the "music from the present", which must be devoid of references to the past and to geographical boundaries). But, if we consider music's or art's goal as the search for the maximum and diverse ways of expression, then there's a progress, since we have now to our disposal a much wide variety of ways of expression. So, unlike science, whose most recent theory represents the most refined form of knowledge, in art, the most recent development only represents one more way of expression, it's the full body of ways discovered through history what constitutes progress in art (so, I would not say that atonalism is a "superior" way for expression when compared to tonalism in the same sense that I _do_ say that general relativity is a superior theory of gravity when compared to the newtonian one; also, I would say that now we are more "advanced" since we have tonalism _and_ atonalism to our disposal).
Also, the same thing that drives us to new scientific research, drives us to finding new ways of artistic expression: because we are curious, because it is interesting, because it is intellectually stimulating, because it is exciting, and, most importantly, because human intelligence is inquisitive and nonconformist by nature. 
Conservative attitudes when there are still new things to discover are a negation of the human intelligence and of a "petit bourgeois" type.
So, I consider this progress, advance, change, or whatever as one of the most interesting things about art, jointly with its intrinsic capability for exciting the subjectivity of the mind, which, I think, is the defining property of all arts.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> ... but I think it's very significant that the line has moved. Most importantly, it was *moved to accommodate more people into the "conservative" side who would previously have been thought of as being "modernists". Debussy, Mahler, Stravinsky during his Neoclassical period, Shostakovich, Bartok, (early) Copland, sometimes even Berg, and others, who used a distinctively 20th century language but have found acceptance to one degree or another have been moved over *in opposition to Schoenberg, Webern, Varese, and others who have not. This is, I feel, partially due to the polarizing influence of Boulez and his view of the canon, which emphasized the traditional aspects of these composers' methods.


Those named whom you see as 'moved over' are not 'moved over' as much as they have attained, after about 80 years or so, enough of an accepted in-place status as 'normal' music. That was a matter of generations of the general public coming to that music, many of them in earlier generations shunning the most conservative of that entire lot on that list. In other words, the normally conservative 'non-cognoscenti' public taking their natural amount of time to come around to something newer in the way of the arts. (It has been extremely exaggerated that Beethoven, etc. had 'instant hits' which have stayed in the repertoire ever since. If you call nine performances before closing down of 'Cosi fan Tutte' an 'instant' hit -- and Beethoven had similar runs with certain pieces -- that is to me a new definition of the word 'instant

Even today, it is not uncommon to not see the works of any of those composers show up in the course of one year's subscription series of a major symphonic organization. They show up now, then, here and there -- enough throughout the classical scene we can consider them near-regulars without their being actually so. They are far from yet being 'mainstream,'

You give far too much credit to Boulez, who like any young composer had a mouth which I'm sure he would prefer to deny in his later years  Every artist on 'their path' is prone to making extreme pronouncements, as an advocate for what they believe in (their work) and to simply reinforce their own (uncertain or not fully formed) beliefs. Youthful phenom, just happens to have come from someone who later proved to 'count.' Lately, the Maestro is rather fascinated with Zemlinsky, as a 'transitional' composer.... not radical, but really somewhat conservative. Those composers left who have not gained 'conservative' status? It is not a matter of conservatism, but general acceptance which make them, by your usage, 'conservative.' That broader general acceptance has not yet happened, Schoenberg's works just now coming into more regular performance (and yes, he was one of the most backward looking tradition bound and sentimental about it composers of that entire lot; so that is more than ironic, but the irony is the public not getting it, not the musical institutions making things 'devisive.'

You must understand that 'Tradition' is very often loaded for bear with negative association.

So much supposedly 'traditional' is hung onto without any lingering context as to what it meant in the first place that made it a commonly accepted tradition. When it comes to art, I think the application of 'traditional' is a completely mistaken usage -- a very bad choice, as a matter of fact, which further exacerbates the lack of understanding or acceptance, at least, of newer art. More or less conservative degrees of taste is more like it, for both composer and audience.

The supposition that Sibelius had 'an agenda' to write ultra-conservative romantic style music using already established forms, and furthermore to 'serve the public and be popular,' would be I hope recognized as 'patently absurd.' Sibelius wrote as was his wont, and as per his ability. That is what he heard, how he thought music was... and the most 'extreme' of moderns did the same.

Holst's the planets has been elsewhere mentioned with the view that Holst was 'writing to the populist taste,' where nothing could be further from the truth. Holst wrote The Planets because he wrote The Planets: it became so popular that he rued the day he drew the double bar, feeling it far out-shadowed what he thought was his better works.

What composers write, and why, is almost all of it really that unsophisticated, and that much without any 'agenda' or concern for the audience or 'popular taste.'

I'm constantly astonished there is anyway such flap over this wholly elitist craft as an entertainment:
Far less than a fraction of one percent of the population create the stuff in the first place. 
Next, if stats are accurate, only about two percent of the entire population consume said goods with any regularity.

Put that way, why anyone would think the composers would even think to 'write with the masses in mind' becomes a specious near comedic thesis.

Composers, rather, are part of their times, and some are lucky enough to write in such a way that their contemporaries find pleasure and or meaning in what they make. Others are not, and write what they can and what they feel they must. Some of it gains later acceptance (Ives, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern) and some does not. Some newer music is still tentatively in waiting to see if the general public develops a taste for it or not.

"My symphony is finished. I hope to God they like it because it is how I can write."

The arguments, the thorny and mistaken and bludgeoning ones, are almost always from people quite officially 'not sanctioned' as professionals in the field. The academics can rant and rave, but their contumely usually has more barb and wit in it, and there is a format of disagreeing - 'collegial' which is entirely absent from the no-holds-barred sort of online 'discussion' you will find, even on forums such as this one, which supposedly has monitors (because there is only so much they can attend to).

Such is ze internetz.


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

@Ramako, music could not progress before it became a literate tradition!


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

PetrB said:


> Those named whom you see as 'moved over' are not 'moved over' as much as they have attained, after about 80 years or so, enough of an accepted in-place status as 'normal' music. That was a matter of generations of the general public coming to that music, many of them in earlier generations shunning the most conservative of that entire lot on that list. In other words, the normally conservative 'non-cognoscenti' public taking their natural amount of time to come around to something newer in the way of the arts. (It has been extremely exaggerated that Beethoven, etc. had 'instant hits' which have stayed in the repertoire ever since. If you call nine performances before closing down of 'Cosi fan Tutte' an 'instant' hit -- and Beethoven had similar runs with certain pieces -- that is to me a new definition of the word 'instant


Well, my point in the first place was that the line was an audience-derived construct anyway. And you're certainly right about the disparity between popularity then and now. Mahler's 2nd and 8th had relatively successful (with the public, at least) concerts during his lifetime, but the fact is that his symphonies really were not much performed between his death and the 1960s. Somewhere on the fringes of the repertoire.



PetrB said:


> You give far too much credit to Boulez, who like any young composer had a mouth which I'm sure he would prefer to deny in his later years


Probably. There's a much higher awareness of Boulez pre-1970 on the internet than there is in the wider classical music world, where he's primarily known as a conductor of late romantic and modern repertoire, as opposed to the radical young composer he once was circa 1950.



PetrB said:


> Lately, the Maestro is rather fascinated with Zemlinsky, as a 'transitional' composer.... not radical, but really somewhat conservative.


Really? That's news to me. I'd be interested in hearing him program the Lyric Symphony together with the 3 pieces for string orchestra from Berg's Lyric Suite. Perhaps rounded off with the Tristan prelude.



PetrB said:


> Those composers left who have not gained 'conservative' status? It is not a matter of conservatism, but general acceptance which make them, by your usage, 'conservative.'


That was my point. Obviously the composers' music didn't change so much as the public's taste/acceptance.



PetrB said:


> Holst's the planets has been elsewhere mentioned with the view that Holst was 'writing to the populist taste,' where nothing could be further from the truth. Holst wrote The Planets because he wrote The Planets: it became so popular that he rued the day he drew the double bar, feeling it far out-shadowed what he thought was his better works.


Not to mention that it's been a free idea bucket for film scores since his death. I suppose it's not too surprising that the public latched on to a piece associated with something concrete and visible (and I know that Holst had astrology in mind rather than astronomy, but still) over the more esoteric subjects he usually favored.



PetrB said:


> Schoenberg's works just now coming into more regular performance (and yes, he was one of the most backward looking tradition bound and sentimental about it composers of that entire lot; so that is more than ironic, but the irony is the public not getting it, not the musical institutions making things 'devisive.'


Which is why it baffles me that people are still trying to argue that what he and his followers did was a fad or a misguided trend that was (thankfully) quickly over and done with. Serialism lasted longer as a compositional method than the gallant style did, and its effects are still felt today, some 90 years after the first 12-tone pieces were written. People don't call the style of Haydn and Mozart a fad, a misguided trend that was (thankfully) quickly over and done with, so why serial composition?


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

What I'd say in brief to some guy and PetrB is that there are plenty of critiques of ideologies to do with all types of music out there, including of Modernist ideologies. I read books on this. I have studied art history & theory and aesthetics, history and other things. I had lecturers who had different views on ideology and other things related. Its really not a big deal in this world, its basically useless information. I'm not putting myself on a pedestal above other members of this forum. But what I'm saying is for example with John Cage, I attended an anniversary concert of his music this year. They played one of my favourite works by him, as well as other works I didn't know before and I enjoyed it overall. But they played his actual music, not conceptual art pieces like 4'33". That's how I see that type of stuff, as conceptual art and not music. & people here know my opinion of conceptual art which is not a positive opinion. But I had lecturers like that, who didn't like it either. I had others who liked it. Such is life, such is diversity. Put a bunch of academics in a room in a debate about their field (eg. modern art or modern music) and you will have a plethora of different opinions. & the same person can change their ideology over time. Thomas Mann was early on an admirer of Wagner for example, and later he became much less of a fan. There are writings by him detailing this change of taste/opinion. Same with composers like Debussy.

What I'm saying is that all these attempts on this forum to invalidate diversity of opinion - which admittedly where in the past, esp. with polarised debates between some guy and stlukes - I see them as examples of people clinging on to various remnants of ideology, fetishes even of ideology.

& not surprised to see someone above refer to the 'petit bourgeoise' - kind of proving what I said. Musical thinking has kind of been affected (infected?) by various political ideologies over the decades. People on this forum make what I see as vain attempts to separate politics and ideology from music, but I think if we are honest, its hard to separate them.

So the best thing is not to take the high moral ground and invalidate what others say but just put on the table what you think, admit our biases openly and go from there. Its happening more on this forum now as far as I can tell. & I see this thread as a sign of that, people overall are not being condescending or nasty which easily happened with issues like this on this forum in the past.

I don't need credentials to just say my opinion on Picasso or Cage or Stockhausen or anything. But I'm not a dunce just because I am critical of aspects of their music. Doesn't mean I don't know their music, just because I don't accept any ideology - be it Modernist, Romantic, Post-Modernist, whatever - as some kind of gospel.


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## Guest (Dec 30, 2012)

Sid James said:


> I don't need credentials to just say my opinion on Picasso or Cage or Stockhausen or anything. But I'm not a dunce just because I am critical of aspects of their music. Doesn't mean I don't know their music, just because I don't accept any ideology - be it Modernist, Romantic, Post-Modernist, whatever - as some kind of gospel.


This is a red herring. The issue is not whether you have credentials or not, it's whether your opinions are justified, whether they can be supported or not.

Same goes for the persistent accusations that anyone who disagrees with you is doing so out of some allegiance to an ideology of some sort or other. Again, the point is not whether PetrB or I or StLukes or even you (the latter two the most ideological people I know) is motivated ideologically or not, but whether or not what we say is justifiable or not, whether we support our assertions or not.

Spend less energy on fingerpointing, spend less energy on searching out the hidden motives in your interlocutors, spend less energy on accusing us, falsely, of calling you a dunce, and more energy on supporting your own points, why not?

Odd that you should have chosen me as your poster boy for extreme modernist ideology. I'm the guy who listened to music in a pretty fair approximation of isolation. Who was captivated by classical music the first time he heard it and spent the next dozen years listening to everything he could get his hands on. Who was captivated by modern music the first time he heard it and has spent the past forty years listening to everything he could get his hands on. Not reading about it, not studying it in university. In love with it. Of course I've met people who also listen to music. Of course I've read some books. Of course I've talked to composers about their craft. But all that came _after_ the falling in love.

You're not just barking up the wrong tree, in my case. You're mistaken in thinking of me as being in a tree at all. I'm standing over here, in the meadow, watching you bark at an empty tree. It's humorous but also a little unsettling.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

quack said:


> 20th century art movement explained in kitten friendly terms:
> 
> Music = wool
> 
> ...


My fellow felines, cat comrades:

It is only with the deepest of regret that I announce we must concede that the aeons long battle with string is lost.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

^^Well some guy if I am one of the most ideological people here, it might just be that I say my ideologies and biases out loud. I try hard not to hide them and am ready to question my own ideologies. I am also interested in opinions on music and music history, different interpretations of that, and this is invariably connected to ideology. But of course ultimately I have to form my own opinion, and you or others are entitled not to agree with it.

I was also captivated by modern music early on, and continue to be. But I am not arguing so much about the music but more about the ideologies and dogmas associated with it. All of these arguments we've all had over various things on this forum over the years basically boil down to ideological differences. I bet you and I, and stlukes or PetrB for that matter, all share things in common in terms of pieces of music or composers we like. We had that huge bunfight over who I thought was an innocuous composer, Mozart a few months back. Then we had comparisons between him and Frank Zappa of all people. I don't remember much of it, all I remember is I thought it was absurd, and I said that then. Its the same with many 'debates' here, such as when in the past I have initiated a thread some found controversial and then they accused me of bias or being a liar or whatever. I think its a bit like the pot calling the kettle black. We're all biased whether we like it or not. The issue is whether we want to question these biases, or at least be aware of them. Or accept other's opinions as equally valid but just different. In that light, I have changed the way I've seen things while on this forum, and I see that kind of change as healthy but more importantly necessary for me to expand my horizons as a listener as much as I can. But I am wary of judging others who don't do it, its up to them if they want to do that or not.


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## Rapide (Oct 11, 2011)

Sometimes it makes me wonder whether TC is about the music or about people's opinion of other people's preference in the music. The amount of fingerpointing by some is astounding.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*Civility and TC*



Rapide said:


> Sometimes it makes me wonder whether TC is about the music or about people's opinion of other people's preference in the music. The amount of fingerpointing by some is astounding.


Actually compared to some of the other forums I have participated in the 'fingerpointing' in TC is rather mild.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Im mo re traditional guy but i dont bash modern stuff there are great talents there ofcourse m usic evolves...


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