# Contemporary avant-garde can be "easier" than Beethoven



## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

I was watching this wonderful short portrait of the composer and current musical director of Ensemble InterContemporain Matthias Pintscher. At about 14:30 in the video he speaks of a fascinating experience he had when meeting a 17/18 year old African boy who was having a first experience with Western music.






A fascinating anecdote which shows that it may very well be the impact of _culture_ and how that has conditioned the concert-going audience to think, that makes Beethoven a lot more popular than someone like Pintscher. The easy access of music by Beethoven, the large number of recordings and publications of his music as compared to music by Pintscher may very well be the defining factor of his music being more popular with classical music audiences.

For someone who has come to classical music without any experience of it beforehand and it presented with completely random examples of music from the Middle ages, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and romantic eras alongside several serialist pieces, aleatoric music, musique concrète, micropolyphony, stochastic music etc. no one has absolutely any knowledge or can accurately predict which one they will enjoy the most. I have constantly read strange articles entitled "why do we not like modern music?" which argues that our brains look for "patterns" or sometimes their overblown hypotheses are backed up by proclaiming that in modern music it's the uneven Pythagorean ratios of dissonances which cause us to dislike this music etc. etc. etc. I simply can't agree with the notion that "people don't like modern classical music" because there is an audience for it, that just me stating what's blatantly obvious. By presenting a broader and more diverse range of music to the public through access to recordings, concert programming, use in the media and so on, more diverse tastes in music would eventually be recognised.

Whenever someone registers as a new member on Talk Classical to ask for recommendations for music because they have just begun to get into classical music and wish to learn more about it and now more pieces, I always give a selection of pieces I know with the intent of making it as diverse a selection as possible in terms of styles and composers presented, becuase, who knows? Pintscher may very well be easier on the ears to them than Beethoven!


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

When I started listening to classical I made the not very clever choice of doing it chronologically from the Baroque up. This resulted in me feeling the clash inbetween the eras so I can relate to some degree with people who can't stand a certain type/era/mannerism of music. We humans are governed by expectations built from custom and yet the best advice I can give is don't expect anything, just listen.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> I was watching this wonderful short portrait of the composer and current musical director of Ensemble InterContemporain Matthias Pintscher. At about 14:30 in the video he speaks of a fascinating experience he had when meeting a 17/18 year old African boy who was having a first experience with Western music.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


The African guy was "totally intrigued" by the "colors" in Pintscher's music but "shocked and terrified" by Beethoven's 5th symphony. Pintscher finds this remarkable because he thinks of the Beethoven as one of the most "consumable" pieces of Western classical music.

_Consumable?_

Honestly, if I get anything from this anecdote it's that the African guy got the point of the Beethoven and quite understandably didn't know how to "consume" it - neither did Goethe, who was also unprepared for such fierce music and called it "a threat to civilization" - and that Pintscher, who's heard it a gazillion times, has merely become blase about it and _forgotten_ the point.

It's also worth considering that the complex syntax of Western tonal music, both intellectually and in its expressive possibilities, may be more of a challenge to one who hasn't experienced it than "colors," which can be fascinating for their own intrinsic qualities. Beethoven's music is nothing if not syntactical, and Pintscher's is nothing if not colorful.






Fascinating stuff, no question. "Easier on the ears" than Beethoven? Maybe. But less taxing to the mind? Definitely - unless you've become as immune to Beethoven as Pintscher.

I'm sure your suggestion that more exposure to contemporary music would win it more fans is correct. I just don't think this little story, as told, should make us expect old Louie to be slipping in the popularity polls. His being a great composer - not just one with a great reputation who gets a lot of exposure - may have something to do with that.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> I was watching this wonderful short portrait of the composer and current musical director of Ensemble InterContemporain Matthias Pintscher. At about 14:30 in the video he speaks of a fascinating experience he had when meeting a 17/18 year old African boy who was having a first experience with Western music.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


This just confirms to me that those who are already fans of classical but who find 20th century "Modern" or the later "Contemporary" fare "problematic listening" are just pre-conditioned and having a set definitions within a boundary they just cannot see or to which they can not / will not admit (very possible because so much conditioning is unconscious while strongly present.)

Often, even western culture folk who really 'haven't paid much attention' to the influx of snippets of older classical as tossed their way via adverts or in other various media _have little or no problems with any of it,_ whether the most current of contemporary or from any of the earlier eras -- because they have not developed those sets of expectations of 'what is classical,' or 'how music should be.'

I too, often recommend 20th century (early and the latest) when such a request for recommends is a general one, to just that purpose of _getting it all_ vs. feeding recommends of naught but the old stuff, because even just one month of a steady diet of common era rep is enough to condition a listener so that they just might then have 'trouble' with the more modern.

Assume the neophyte asking is open to all and any. Ergo: _"Keep the gates wide open, don't skip over any era when recommending rep" _might be a good tenet when responding to those "I'm pretty new to it all; recommend me some classical" posts.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Whenever someone registers as a new member on Talk Classical to ask for recommendations for music because they have just begun to get into classical music and wish to learn more about it and now more pieces, I always give a selection of pieces I know with the intent of making it as diverse a selection as possible in terms of styles and composers presented, becuase, who knows? Pintscher may very well be easier on the ears to them than Beethoven!


On the other hand, many of us have mainly our own experiences as classical music tyros when quite young to draw upon. For some (most?) Beethoven was the first and most obvious entry into classical music. Or perhaps Bach or Tchaikovsky. I'd guess not Pintscher...


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Whenever someone registers as a new member on Talk Classical to ask for recommendations for music because they have just begun to get into classical music and wish to learn more about it and now more pieces, I always give a selection of pieces I know with the intent of making it as diverse a selection as possible in terms of styles and composers presented, becuase, who knows?


Unfortunately in most cases we never know. I wish more people would post updates about what, if anything, held their interest. In real life, where I spend so comparatively little of my time, I only rarely get to recommend music to old or new friends, but I love doing it. The more unexpected their musical loves and hatreds, the more interesting they are to me.

Interesting video, btw, even if it's basically just a commercial. I'm always most interested in professional musicians' and especially composers' likes and dislikes, the more extreme and unfair the better. I'm glad that there are more and more composer/conductors emerging, even if they usually only have control of smallish, chamber-sized orchestras. A personal repertoire can be fascinating. I love hearing the works of Boulez, Salonen, Pintscher, etc. alongside the works they chose to perform.

In sum: it probably doesn't really matter what one listens to. To each his/her own! Just don't forget to say what it is!


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

KenOC said:


> On the other hand, many of us have mainly our own experiences as classical music tyros when quite young to draw upon. For some (most?) Beethoven was the first and most obvious entry into classical music. Or perhaps Bach or Tchaikovsky. I'd guess not Pintscher...


So?

That first introduction _*could have just as readily been Pintscher,*_* and an interest / passion in music could have come exactly from that type of introductory stimulus as it did with you via Beethoven.*

My first intro was Prokofiev and Janacek, then Bartok and Bach -- didn't stop me from getting further in, and later into early music, common practice era, romantic or any of the rest, nor does that mean I'm locked into only recommending 'what first worked for me' -- *that's where a lot of teaching, I think, goes wrong, i.e. not including what is of and from the current times and instead -- rather unthinkingly -- relying more or only upon what worked on people generations ago *


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## Guest (Dec 27, 2014)

_What _you first heard is perhaps less important than the context in which it was heard and the associations first created. That may also be more important than what you first listened to.

I didn't sit down and listen to my first classical (Holst and Grieg) until I was about 12. By that time, I _know _I had heard (via TV, films and what my family listened to) Saint-Saens, Bach, Prokofiev, Holst, Dvorak, Ligeti, Strauss; and I'm sure I must have also heard others which I can't name. By that time I had already been 'educated' in what was regarded as the usual and the unusual. In other words, the social expectations about music had influenced my attitudes - though not necessarily in ways that I can consciously articulate.


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## SottoVoce (Jul 29, 2011)

Surely. I had to listen to K452 about six times to begin to appreciate it. I still have trouble following the fugue in K546 (but still love it). But Carter's 2nd String Quartet struck me immediately with its force. I always thought this was quite obvious, at least to my own experiences.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> The African guy was "totally intrigued" by the "colors" in Pintscher's music but "shocked and terrified" by Beethoven's 5th symphony.


Sounds to me like the young African lad 'got' both pieces, and each of those "in one" 

Wonder if that might have happened if his first intro and subsequent exposures had only been common practice era classical?

Hmmmm.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> The African guy was "totally intrigued" by the "colors" in Pintscher's music but "shocked and terrified" by Beethoven's 5th symphony. Pintscher finds this remarkable because he thinks of the Beethoven as one of the most "consumable" pieces of Western classical music.
> 
> _Consumable?_
> 
> ...


Well, you've basically drawn a parallel between Goethe and the young African, both of whom experienced that music for the first time, and both in live performances. Neither would have known what to expect, but the African had less expectation than Goethe, him being new to western music entirely. Now, considering the amount of musical knowledge an adult, (certainly with somewhat an interest in music) would have from the information available, I think it's safe to say that Beethoven would be more "consumable" than Pintscher if his music was brought back in time to an early 19th century audience.

Beethoven's 5th has been given unmusical, romanticised descriptions such as "fate knocking at the door," it's been given treatment in film scores, popularised in the media, often re-composed/re-arranged over and over and it _is_ one of the most widely recorded pieces of music. I think, for a consumer in this day and age, it's much easier to "consume" it and just treat it as "another (very good) piece of music." If it was recorded and given performance _much less often,_ it would probably elicit the same awe-inspiring or perhaps even shocking reactions as a piece like Langgaard's _Music of the Spheres,_ or Rebel's _Les Elemens_ might do to an unsuspecting concert goer today.


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

I'm not at all surprised by this story, because I have had similar experiences. For many people around the world, not nurtured with Western Classical music (that in our own culture, it's omnipresent, so much so that many times is almost invisible to us), it's much easier to relate to music based on rhythm, on percussion, on "colors" than to a big and complex pholiphonic structure like a Beethoven's symphony or a Strauss's tone-poem. 

Discussing this recently in Chennai with Tamil classical musicians, that were educated in their own, very rich and very beautiful, musical culture, but were also, to a certain point, familiar with Western classical music, their feelings were not that different from the African boy's described above, in terms of their likes and dislikes. A Beethoven symphony was an acquired taste (as Carnatic music is to me), in best case scenario, but most of them were much more attracted by vocal music, and early music, and much less by Classical, Romantic or Post-Romantic instrumental music (I'm afraid we didn't discuss at the time contemporary Western music).


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

If a person has grown up in African musical culture, especially in the musical culture of a relatively isolated sub-Saharan village, they will likely:

1. Find the majority of Western Classical music very rhythmically constrained.
2. Not be able to connect much with harmony of most kinds (at first, at least)

To give everyone an idea of where an African person may be coming from musically, this is a great mini-mini-documentary about the music of just one tribe in Eastern-Central Guinea. There's no guarantee though that this kind of music is exactly what an African person would have experienced growing up because...ya know, Africa is huge and diverse. But it gives one a pretty good general idea.


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

Stravinsky is more accessible than Bach, unless you've grown accustomed to classical music.

Rhythm has greater immediacy than dense polyphony or complex harmony.

Melody to most people has to be memorable, since most people are not musically literate; which is why the melodies that are popular are catchy and concise.


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## Guest (Dec 27, 2014)

I have given the OP a like. I would like to give him additional likes, perhaps one for every veiled modern-music-sucks pollster poll we've ever endured, but I am afraid the forum constrains me to one like per post.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Well, you've basically drawn a parallel between Goethe and the young African, both of whom experienced that music for the first time, and both in live performances. Neither would have known what to expect, but the African had less expectation than Goethe, him being new to western music entirely. Now, considering the amount of musical knowledge an adult, (certainly with somewhat an interest in music) would have from the information available, I think it's safe to say that Beethoven would be more "consumable" than Pintscher if his music was brought back in time to an early 19th century audience.
> 
> *Beethoven's 5th has been given unmusical, romanticised descriptions such as "fate knocking at the door," it's been given treatment in film scores, popularised in the media, often re-composed/re-arranged over and over and it is one of the most widely recorded pieces of music. I think, for a consumer in this day and age, it's much easier to "consume" it and just treat it as "another (very good) piece of music." If it was recorded and given performance much less often, it would probably elicit the same awe-inspiring or perhaps even shocking reactions as a piece like Langgaard's Music of the Spheres, or Rebel's Les Elemens might do to an unsuspecting concert goer today.*


*
*

You reinforce my point. I have to wonder if Pintscher would, on reflection, really think that to a person unfamiliar with Western music, Beethoven's music should be more accessible - "consumable" - than his own. We're used to Beethoven's idiom, and to the 5th Symphony in particular. We have to scrub our minds of a certain amount of accumulated experience to find the piece "shocking" or "terrifying." But, by God, it is! I suspect this may have come home again to some of us with the advent of period-instrument performances and renewed attention to B's metronome markings: listening to a fierce, driving performance of the piece, with a reduced cushion of string sound, natural horns, and so on, and imagining ourselves accustomed to Haydn and Mozart, the damned thing is plain scary. A "threat to civilization" indeed. And if we'd just come over from Africa? So many notes hitting us all at once! All that shifting harmony! All those themes being tossed around! Those hammering, metrical rhythms! That relentless barrage of sound, with no place to come up for air!

Our minds saturated with the vocabulary and syntax of tonal-harmonic music from an early age, we do - some of us more than others - find much of it rather comfortable and "consumable," easy to take in in a superficial way or simply to let wash over us. And when works like the 5th are played to death, it takes a lot of imagining to hear them "objectively," as the extra-ordinary things they are. But, coming at it as objectively as I can - and I had never heard Pintscher's music until this discussion prompted me to sample some of it - I don't find it difficult at all to hear music like Pintscher's, which focuses on the diverse qualities of sounds rather than the severe structuring of a limited range of sounds, as more accessible, more "consumable," than Beethoven's. It's "easier on the ear" in the sense that it's easier on the _brain:_ provided we don't come to it expecting organized harmony, as that African man did not, all we have to do to "get" it is to let the sounds strike us, and if the composer has paced his effects well so that we are not bored (which that man was unlikely to be in any case) we will have substantially grasped what the work is offering us, or at least enough of what it can offer us to find it interesting and effective. "Getting" Beethoven - or Bach, or Wagner, or Schoenberg - is a more complex process, which many of us have learned to perform more or less easily, to the point where we might take it for granted. We shouldn't.

It would be interesting to follow up on that African man, if he continues to listen to Western music, to see how his perceptions of its diverse styles develop over time, even though I don't think we could generalize much from his individual case, or learn much about musical perception that we don't already know. But it would be at least amusing to see how long it took him to be able to swallow a fifth of Beethoven. I would hope that it would never become so "consumable" for him that he'd no longer be able to feel the shock and the terror.


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## Guest (Dec 27, 2014)

OK. You think Beethoven is much cooler than Pintscher.

And that "severe structuring of a limited range of sounds" is cooler than "diverse qualities of sounds."

Not sure that that really contributes to the discussion as presented by Coag, though.

The point of the OP was not that easier means less valuable or less intellectually satisfying, for one. That's a special spin that you've put on the topic. As someone who has listened to Pintscher a fair amount, who is conversant with that idiom, I'm rather put off by having the topic pushed in this direction. Not that you don't have every "right" to do so, but also not that I don't have every right to be repulsed by it, either. Fair's fair.

Beethoven's fifth, for worse, is readily consumable. And I agree with you wholeheartedly that that is a great pity. It is a powerful and magnificant piece whose power and magnificence has been much diluted by so much play time. Which is exactly Pintcher's point as well, just by the way. But that's as may be. It is, for us, familiar and comfortable. For the African kid, not so much so. But for him (and he's only one kid), Pintscher is probably not altogether familiar, either, eh? That he preferred Pintscher to Beethoven only means that the canard about contemporary music's putative difficulties is no more than that, a canard.

Personally, I would like to see "difficulty" (or "ease") vanish from the conversation. Anyone at any time can find any old thing to be difficult or easy for any number of reasons. And I see the main value of both the Pintscher video and of Coag's thread about it as pushing us away from difficulty as a useful concept for talking about music. Familiar or unfamiliar. Those are useful concepts.


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## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

Excuse the slight departure from the topic. I just wanted to say that I do understand how LvB's Fifth has been made too commonplace, too comfortable, its power has been diminished for many people; my personal experience is I find myself immune to this effect. Only the first four notes have been made commonplace, and even then, I don't find it to be as ubiquitous as it's been made out to be sometimes. Listening to the entire 1st movement (and symphony, of course) still shocks me. I still find it terrifying. Indeed, that 1st movement "_sets in motion the machinery of awe, of fear, of terror, of pain_". Like Woodduck said, after being accustomed to not only Mozart and Haydn, but also Beethoven's previous music, what a radical shift in sound.

Please excuse the digression.


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

some guy said:


> OK. You think Beethoven is much cooler than Pintscher.
> 
> And that "severe structuring of a limited range of sounds" is cooler than "diverse qualities of sounds."
> 
> ...


There is something more than just familiar and unfamiliar though, useful though they are. The music that really means something to us does not outstay its welcome by over-familiarity; if we are to truly love a piece it will freshly resonate with us on each listen.

Forgive me for perhaps accusing you of viewing 'familiarity' as something bad, and even using the term as a veiled insult for certain kinds of musics.


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Versatile old Beethoven! Sometimes the most natural music that conforms to all the in-built sensibilities of the human ear, at other times the most terribly jarring and complex thing imaginable! Is there no service the fifth symphony can't be pressed into?


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

This is pretty simple. Classical music means much older music, and obviously people who go into classical music look to listen to music that are old, at least over one hundred years if not more. Contemporary composed music to me don't fit the bill of classical music per se from a time perspective. So if someone prefers contemporary composed music, and (s)he prefers it to classical music, then that's fine, it's like some one preferring Justin Bieber to Elvis Presley.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

some guy said:


> OK.* You think Beethoven is much cooler than Pintscher.*
> 
> *And that "severe structuring of a limited range of sounds" is cooler than "diverse qualities of sounds."*
> 
> ...


I'm sorry that my reflections on the question asked in the OP don't seem to you to contribute to the discussion and "repulse" you.

Contrary to your impressions, I didnt spin anything. I didn't say anything was more valuable than anything else. I didn't say anything was more intellectually satisfying (difficult, maybe; "satisfying" is your spin). I didn't try to push the topic anywhere. It's still there, right where it was. All I did was to suggest that there might be reasons why the African guy found Pintscher easier to grasp than Beethoven. Pretty reasonable reasons, I thought, having to to with the way music is put together and the way our minds deal with that.

The idea of "ease versus difficulty," which you say you want to see vanish from the conversation, wasn't my idea. It was asked in the OP. It was the whole point of Pintscher's remark. Hey, that African guy sitting next to me found my music easier to enjoy than Beethoven! Wow! I wonder why, since Beethoven is so very "consumable." Familiarity? No, both works were unfamiliar. So what made the difference?

The question was whether,_ given greater familiarity_, avant garde music might be "easier on the ear," or on some people's ears - which really means, on some people's minds - than Beethoven. Well, yeah. I think some of it can be, and I merely gave some reasons why I think so. I'm sure there are other reasons. Perhaps you can suggest some. You'd just rather keep the focus on "familiarity or unfamiliarity"? Okay. I agree it's an important factor in understanding musical perception and taste. But if we all agree on that, and that's assumed to be the apha and omega of the discussion, then the OP's question is just rhetorical - which may be what it was intended to be.

I just took it as a real question. Bad me.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

dgee said:


> Versatile old Beethoven! Sometimes the most natural music that conforms to all the in-built sensibilities of the human ear, at other times the most terribly jarring and complex thing imaginable! Is there no service the fifth symphony can't be pressed into?


All of the above.

None of the above.

No, there is not no service.



Satori!


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## Guest (Dec 28, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> the way *our* minds deal with that.


There's the crux right there, Woodduck. What you're talking about, really, is the way *your* mind deals with things. But that's not necessarily the way that *our* minds deal with things. If you could have gotten anything from our conversations, it could have been that different minds deal with things differently, and there is nothing that privileges your dealings over mine except your say so.

And that is simply not enough.

The thing is, we are about the same age, and have been listening to music about the same length of time, and we have come to different conclusions about things. All I've ever done in any of my responses to your posts is remind you of that. Different, not necessarily better. Different, not necessarily worse. Different, and nothing to make either one normative for anyone else.

Not *our* minds, that is. Your mind.



Woodduck said:


> But if we all agree on that, and that's assumed to be the apha and omega of the discussion, then the OP's question is just rhetorical - which may be what it was intended to be.
> 
> I just took it as a real question. Bad me.


I am a literary scholar and a rhetorician, so I take rhetorical questions as being real. And I do not, as Jobis has also taken it, see "familiar and unfamiliar" as any sort of alpha and omega for this discussion, just as a pair that is more useful than "difficult and easy." There are very probably dozens of other things, pairs or singles or triples or whatever, that are also more useful than difficult and easy. I just mentioned familiar and unfamiliar as an example.

Experience would be another. Quite useful. Openess or closedness. Accepting or unaccepting. Curious. Adventurous. Delight in sounds for themselves without necessarily needing them to have been put into some sort of shape or form.

Those things are all things I would consider more useful than difficult and easy.

Contemporary music is often presented as difficult, as needing effort to enjoy. Contradictorily enough, classical music generally is often presented as difficult, as needing effort to enjoy. In one case, difficulty is a cool thing--Beethoven and so forth are worthwhile because they take some effort to enjoy, in the other it is a bad thing--Carter and Ferneyhough and so forth are not "natural" (i.e., worthwhile) because they take some effort to enjoy. That's why I don't see difficulty as useful; it can be made to serve any point of view. And it pretends to describe universals while in reality only describing individual responses. I don't find Carter and Ferneyhough at all difficult to enjoy. I am pretty sure that they are fiendishly difficult to perform. They are not difficult to listen to. Neither is Beethoven. Neither is Bach. Neither is Karkowski.

Difficulty doesn't enter into it. Listening to music, for me, is a great pleasure. Perhaps I am putting some effort into it, perhaps quite a lot. Perhaps I am perpetually rising to the challenges of music and continually overcoming the handicaps in order to appreciate the complexities of the most valuable music. Perhaps.

But what it feels like to me is simply pleasure. Pleasure and joy in sound.

That's not your way. OK. But who's to decide which way is best? Well, I would say that "best" is as impertinent to the real experience of listening to music as "difficult" is. At least to my experience of music. I really don't want to "win." I want to listen to music, to enjoy it, and to share with like-minded people my pleasure in it. Weird, huh?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

some guy said:


> Familiar or unfamiliar. Those are useful concepts.


and those are, at the core, the source of 'the issues' about the unfamiliar.

Your entire above post, Some Guy, _is completely on the money._ Very well said. :tiphat:


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

some guy said:


> There's the crux right there, Woodduck. What you're talking about, really, is the way *your* mind deals with things. But that's not necessarily the way that *our* minds deal with things. *If you could have gotten anything from our conversations, it could have been that different minds deal with things differently, and there is nothing that privileges your dealings over mine except your say so.*
> 
> And that is simply not enough.
> 
> ...


I knew it! I knew when I left the word "our" in my post that you'd jump on it with both feet! I confess that I was tempted to change it, but I thought it had enough truth value (music does have definite structures the comprehension of which does require similar mental processes from different listeners) to poke back at what I felt to be a gratuitous attack on - well, I'm not sure on what. Which is why it felt gratuitous. Am I naughty?

Truthfully, there's hardly any point you make here that I disagree with - unless you're attributing to me that stuff about "difficult" music being supposedly better. I never said that it is. I do think that the ability to _create_ complex music is a mark of a great composer, but that just speaks to the difficulty of writing it, not to any individual's difficulty in hearing it, or to any presumed virtue derived therefrom. My listening can be as simple-minded as the next man's, no excuses needed!

I can't see where you've said anything that invalidates any of my observations in response to the original question. So what is this exchange about? Why are you, or why do I think you are, defending against a nonexistent attack? I didn't attack Pintscher. I didn't attack you. I didn't try to make anything "normative" for anyone else. So what is it?

That's a real, nonrhetorical question.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

It is a plain fact that amongst classical music listeners, that most tend to find contemporary composed music more difficult than Beethoven. But then it is challenging for composers today to be competing amongst so very many different types of music, anything from classical (old) music to Justin Bieber. It's not easy to be a composer today.


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## Guest (Dec 28, 2014)

May I ask you to elaborate on why exactly you are hellbent on comparing Pintscher with Bieber?


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

arcaneholocaust said:


> May I ask you to elaborate on why exactly you are hellbent on comparing Pintscher with Bieber?


I am not at all. I am saying that there is a huge variety of music today such that any listener in the world could be coming from any culture (word already used) so that (s)he finds it difficult to listen to anything else remarkably different to (s)he is already used to (hence why I wrote "anything from classical (old) to Justin Bieber).


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

ArtMusic said:


> This is pretty simple. *Classical music means much older music, and obviously people who go into classical music look to listen to music that are old, at least over one hundred years if not more.*


*Just so fundamentally wrong it makes me think this is a private wish, i.e. wanting to transform a world-wide accepted definition and reality.* -- sorry, that just ain't gonna happen.



ArtMusic said:


> *Contemporary composed music to me don't fit the bill of classical music per se from a time perspective.*


You're a big boy, we all know that, so the striking disingenuity in not accepting _classical_ with a lower case 'c' as encompassing all of earnest 'non-pop' art music including the modern and contemporary is more than a little stunning. Even if power of denial is quite strong, it must be near exhausting to keep holding that blocking screen up.


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## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

ArtMusic said:


> *It is a plain fact that amongst classical music listeners, that most tend to find contemporary composed music more difficult than Beethoven*. But then it is challenging for composers today to be competing amongst so very many different types of music, anything from classical (old) music to Justin Bieber. It's not easy to be a composer today.


That is because because we have been listening, either consciously or unconsciously, to "tonal" music all our lives. Every tv show, radio station, movie, store, bar etc uses tonal background music, and learning to appreciate atonal music is therefore more like learning to comprehend a new language; you have been saturated by your native language just like you have been saturated by your native music.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Piwikiwi said:


> That is because because we have been listening, either consciously or unconsciously, to "tonal" music all our lives. Every tv show, radio station, movie, store, bar etc uses tonal background music, and learning to appreciate atonal music is therefore more like learning to comprehend a new language; you have been saturated by your native language just like you have been saturated by your native music.


I'm certain the above phenomenon is why I tend to harp on preconditioning when it comes to people having expectations of a style in the arts, though I'm near certain that their preconditioning is unconscious, and that is why many have such a hard time accepting they have been preconditioned.

I am a bit of an exception by date of birth (1948) and some family habits.

---There was not a television in my home until I was age six. There were really not but one or two programs for children at that time, so Television was maybe a one or two hours a week affair!
---No radio or record player was in the house; no one listened to music, and my folks got their news from newspapers and journals. 
---Ergo, in early childhood, I was not subliminally swamped with tidbits of classical as used in backgrounds of film scores, television programs, adverts, or even music played via a radio.

I got the gift of a record player and a few more contemporary classical LP's somewhere around the age of late or middle four years old, maybe closer to age five. Ergo: classical music was Janacek, Prokofiev, Rimsky-Korsakov and Bach on harpsichord as played by Landowska, all as prime exposure and first really strong impression.

Next, piano lessons began at age five and a half or six, with music by Bartok, Bach, Schumann, and a gently modernist piece here and there, followed probably by the next exposure via a performance of The Nutcracker, followed by attending a straight-ahead 'adults' general subscription concert program at the symphony.

Avoided completely or well bypassed as first exposures: 
Film scores, pop music, generic first exposure to common practice music only.

I feel blessed and exceptionally well set-up, while that background makes it much easier to understand _that was my early "conditioning,"_ and that the later they were born, many others get conditioned that much more via the media blitz surrounding and intruding in to their lives. _*Because for so many that exposure was subliminal, if they think about it later they can readily begin to believe that to which they were exposed is the norm, or 'normal,' and too, many can not recognize at all that they were heavily conditioned, a conditioning which very much affects their tastes and preferences, and that conditioning makes for a sort of strongly influenced and preformed filter of listening habits -- and an accompanying set of expectations -- prior the person becoming conscious of seeking out classical music.*_

With our native spoken language, it is first picked up via osmosis, and then through family first, and from kindergarten through high school. _We are then systematically trained for the next twelve years_ in our language, learning more grammar and and an ever-expanding vocabulary. I doubt if anyone who has learned words and linguistic constructs post their kindergarten years thinks of the later learned vocabulary or constructs as 'unnatural,' yet many who are exposed to classical music are, veritably, still in a virtual musical kindergarten, and from that base they come up with all sorts of fallacious rationales as to why music post the common practice era "is not natural / breaks with natural harmonic laws, yadayadayah.

That early exposure, without further exploration, and without any subsequent formal progressive pedagogic training, leaves many thinking that earlier classical music is in the realm of the semiotic, which is still something generally understood, but also comes about by a general conditioning.

There ^ are the circumstances where someone is able to think it perfectly reasonable to say music past such and such an era is "no longer real classical music," has no melody or harmony, for example, or that music past a particular date and style is an artificial, unnatural and forced construct: well -- so is music from the classical era a completely artificial and forced construct, and there is nothing 'natural,' or 'working within a natural law, scale, harmonic realm', in the older music than their is about the new.

... and who, thinking they have free will, a decent intellect and good taste, wants to cop to being conditioned in any manner that actually has them in a state of a sort of arrested development? LOL.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I think that, since all humans have ears, then tonal music is the most immediately perceivable as "music," in terms of sustained tones. Rhythm is perhaps even more primal, since it is "felt" in time.

I think the African kid probably "liked" the modern Western music for the same reasons, since sustained tones, tone centricity, and rhythm are already "givens" in all musical experience and cultures (never underestimate the intelligence of your audience).

Maybe he liked it because it was new and different. He is obviously a modernist.


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> "why do we not like modern music?"


because ''modern music'' is way too ideologised, compared to music of the past, today composers are preoccupied with whether they comply with today's policies.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

sharik said:


> because ''modern music'' is way too ideologised, compared to music of the past, today composers are preoccupied with whether they comply with today's policies.


No, that's ideology and style, not nuts and bolts. There is good reason that music evolved in the direction it did, away from tonality into symmetry and functions of the 12-division of our ET octave. No time for details; must go listen to more Webern Cantatas. Ta Tah!


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> No, that's ideology and style, not nuts and bolts.


well, ideology and style do prevail over music these days.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

sharik said:


> well, ideology and style do prevail over music these days.


Well, no they don't

Maybe in a place where ideology loomed large from the head of a centrist government that 'assigned' literal content to the most abstract bits of concert music, one could have been led to believe that. Hell, maybe that kind of topic is still of real concern in the same place now under a different government. But, thank goodness, no one nation, its sensibilities and involvements is the whole world -- at least not yet, LOL.


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## Guest (Dec 29, 2014)

I'd like to jump in with a comment about "these days."

If you read any history at all, you will find very quickly, even in the slimmest volume of highlights, that ideology has always been quite prominent in any art. In any thing. 

Just because "we" forget the ideologies of the past, just because we are only aware of the ideologies of the present, doesn't mean that there were no ideologies in the past, or even that the ideologies of the past were not just as prevalent. There is always more to see than what is visible looking down that tunnel there.


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

PetrB said:


> Well, no they don't


yes they do.



PetrB said:


> Maybe in a place where ideology loomed large from the head of a centrist government


that is in the West, centrist or not.


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

some guy said:


> If you read any history at all, you will find very quickly, even in the slimmest volume of highlights, that ideology has always been quite prominent in any art.


yet art came first and only then ideology, unlike it is today where there's only ideology left.


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## MagneticGhost (Apr 7, 2013)

sharik said:


> well, ideology and style do prevail over music these days.


Strongly disagree with this too.
Maybe that was true in parts of the 20th Century. 
But I see no evidence of this in recent years.


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

MagneticGhost said:


> But I see no evidence of this in recent years.


the evidence is that there's no chance for a composer who writes normal music to get promotion and media coverage today.


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## MagneticGhost (Apr 7, 2013)

sharik said:


> the evidence is that there's no chance for a composer who writes normal music to get promotion and media coverage today.


First define 'Normal' music.

I would say 'Normal' music doesn't exist. We have a massive tangle of different styles and approaches. Each valid and each with an audience. 
Promotion and Media coverage is limited within the arts - at least in the UK. 
But the odd thing slips through - Last year Benjamin's Opera 'Written in Skin' was shown on the BBC. Would you count that as 'Normal' music.


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

MagneticGhost said:


> First define 'Normal' music.


academic, professional, melodic, humane, spiritual.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

sharik said:


> the evidence is that there's no chance for a composer who writes normal music to get promotion and media coverage today.


Ummm composers aren't looking for media coverage. :| 
Composers write to commision, and write whatever they want purely for the artistic value of their intentions as a composer.


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Ummm composers aren't looking for media coverage. :|
> Composers write to commision, and write whatever they want purely for the artistic value of their intentions as a composer.


and those of them who are that way remain obscure as result.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

sharik said:


> the evidence is that there's no chance for a composer who writes normal music to get promotion and media coverage today.


Oh, Zeus and Apollo! For goodness sake, there is absolutely no existing music in any genre which could be called in any way normal. I would love for any who think to say so to just fess up that they have a particular personal taste reinforced by their listening habits, and admit that *when they say "normal," they mean "normal to me as per my personal taste."*

I mean really, how self unaware does it get?


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

sharik said:


> and those of them who are that way remain obscure as result.


Oh you mean like Bach then?


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

PetrB said:


> there is absolutely no existing music in any genre which could be called in any way normal.


by academic standards - Shostakovitch, Prokofiev and Starvinsky wrote normal music.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

sharik said:


> and those of them who are that way remain obscure as result.


Wrong! Those composers writing as they can and will whose works are commissioned include about every composer -- past to present -- known to you and beloved by you. The vast majority of the works of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, etc. were written on commission.

Really, this 'inspired fine art' once it is someone's profession, sees but an extremely few pieces not written on commission, especially most works larger than, say, a solo piano sonata or works involving say, no more than four players... and even then....


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Oh you mean like Bach then?


he was obscure until later, but for a different reason.


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

PetrB said:


> The vast majority of the works of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, etc.


my reply to that post did not concern writing music to order.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

sharik said:


> he was obscure until later, but for a different reason.


Mozart, Beethoven etc. etc. etc. I really can't understand the point you're trying to make! Maybe becuase there is absolutely no point at all in your posts. :lol:


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

sharik said:


> by academic standards - Shostakovitch, Prokofiev and Starvinsky wrote normal music.


Oh good! At least that actually makes sense. 
Stravisnky's later works too? Becuase then I suppose you would agree to the notion that Webern and Boulez also wrote normal music.


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Mozart, Beethoven etc. etc. etc. I really can't understand the point you're trying to make!


can you name the Mozart or Beethoven of todays?


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Stravisnky's later works too?


no, only his early works, those three ballets, you know.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

sharik said:


> he was obscure until later, but for a different reason.


He was pretty obscure throughout his active lifetime as well. Good try, though.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

sharik said:


> can you name the Mozart or Beethoven of todays?


Mozart and Beethoven from what perspective? Popularity amongst listeners? Output? Genres composed in? The financial aspects of their work? I'm afraid thay would be impossible but I can tell you that there are composers alive today who are as much as a composer as Mozart or Beethoven ever were. :tiphat:


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

PetrB said:


> He was pretty obscure throughout his active lifetime as well.


- a well known fact. that's what i meant to say.


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Mozart and Beethoven from what perspective?


music quality, composing skills, professionalism.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

sharik said:


> music quality, composing skills, professionalism.


All three are entirely subjective, what am I supposed to do if I have a different idea of "quality, skills and professionalism" compared to you?


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> All three are entirely subjective


are they?.. certainly not in classical music.


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## Guest (Dec 29, 2014)

sharik, you keep tossing out these adjectives, these categories, that could easily apply to just about any serious composer.

Academic. This is a tricky one. You don't seem aware that much of the music of the avant-garde has been described as "academic," with the academy being a hot-bed of radicalism, of course. On the other hand, academic has also been used to describe uninspired music, music written to rule without any interest. In any event, many composers hold down teaching jobs, you know. And of those who do, there is absolutely nothing similar among them stylistically. There are conservative composers who teach. There are radical composers who teach. And every variety in between.

Professional. You seem to be using this as a term of approbation. Strictly speaking, anyone who makes money composing is a professional. Any other meaning is going to be hopelessly fuzzy--making it very useful for holding whatever meaning you want, I guess. 

Melodic. Hmmm. Pitches go up. Pitches go down. Some are long. Some are short. Some occur on the beat (if there is one). Some do not. 

Humane. This one I can't make any sense of at all. Humane usually refers to humans being nice to each other or to other animals. 

Spiritual. As in all music, everywhere.

Music quality. A category made to order to be filled with whatever it is that the maker wants to fill it with.

Composing skills. Not sure how useful this one is. Everyone who has been to school and taken composition courses has "composing skills."

Anyway, time to come out from behind the adjectives and other generalities and get specific. You've offered us some conclusions. Now we'd (I'd) like to know what led you to draw those conclusions.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

some guy said:


> sharik, you keep tossing out these adjectives, these categories, that could easily apply to just about any serious composer.
> 
> Academic. This is a tricky one. You don't seem aware that much of the music of the avant-garde has been described as "academic," with the academy being a hot-bed of radicalism, of course. On the other hand, academic has also been used to describe uninspired music, music written to rule without any interest. In any event, many composers hold down teaching jobs, you know. And of those who do, there is absolutely nothing similar among them stylistically. There are conservative composers who teach. There are radical composers who teach. And every variety in between.
> 
> ...


I smell a very large and legitimate challenge there


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## Guest (Dec 29, 2014)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> All three are entirely subjective, what am I supposed to do if I have a different idea of "quality, skills and professionalism" compared to you?


Concede, maybe?

For people for whom there is a clear right and therefore also a clear wrong, only concession will satisfy. Too bad. We do not agree. And that is partly (largely), because Coag, PetrB, and myself, among others, have quite a wide and intimate experience with recent musics, and have found that there is just as much of that that is good and valuable as there ever was in any previous century. It doesn't sound the same, but then Brahms sounds very little like Machaut, and Tchaikovsky doesn't sound anything like Mozart, even when he's writing his fourth suite.


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

some guy said:


> Academic. This is a tricky one.


no, actually it goes by how often the piece is recorded and performed.



some guy said:


> anyone who makes money composing is a professional


for example Mussorgsky did not make money out of composing.



some guy said:


> Melodic. Hmmm. Pitches go up. Pitches go down.


melodic in terms of a melody being capable to send your feel soaring, like Mozart's 40th symphony 1st part is.



some guy said:


> Humane. This one I can't make any sense of at all. Humane usually refers to humans being nice to each other


explanation: the music should be written with certain respect for future listeners.



some guy said:


> Spiritual. As in all music, everywhere.


spiritual in terms of sublime ideas.



some guy said:


> Music quality.


that is, Cage wouldn't have qualified.



some guy said:


> Everyone who has been to school and taken composition courses has "composing skills."


yeah its like every football player has skills of Messi's.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

PetrB said:


> Wrong! Those composers writing as they can and will whose works are commissioned include about every composer -- past to present -- known to you and beloved by you. The vast majority of the works of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, etc. were written on commission.
> 
> Really, this 'inspired fine art' once it is someone's profession, sees but an extremely few pieces not written on commission, especially most works larger than, say, a solo piano sonata or works involving say, no more than four players... and even then....


This is an interesting subject in its own right. I'm always curious to find out who commissioned a composer's works and for what purpose, whether it's a composer from the past or the present. I'm not sure I'd draw such a hard line between works written for money and for the love of art, though maybe you don't really mean to yourself. Often the one paying a commission--whether today or in the classical period--was an accomplished musician that desired a work of the highest craftsmanship and could tell the difference. Underlying many of these financial transactions is a mutual love of art for art's sake.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

sharik said:


> no, actually it goes by how often the piece is recorded and performed.


Nope, that's either about marketing or simply a result of how easily accessible sheet music is to musicians or simply just coincidence. I argued earlier in this thread about the cultural factors which influence this....



> for example Mussorgsky did not make money out of composing.


Van Gogh didn't make [much, if any] money out of painting I don't think. If someone is a professional in an any non-performance art (I call composing non-performance because performance is not involved in most cases until the premier of the work when the musicians play it) that doesn't necessarily make them any better or worse than anyone else who knows and understands what they're doing in the same art form.



> melodic in terms of a melody being capable to send your feel soaring, like Mozart's 40th symphony 1st part is.


In other words, melodies that are capable of doing this to you. Music can never make everyone feel the same way, but it has an astonishing power to evoke different things in different people.



> explanation: the music should be written with certain respect for future listeners.


This isn't what composers do, actually, they are there getting paid in their own time for their own concerns about how their music should sound to them. They are trying to achieve something artistic, not a product to be patented, marketed and consumed.



> spiritual in terms of sublime ideas.


Sublime is another subjective description. Different things are sublime to different people depending on what ideas or pieces they associate with the word "sublime"



> that is, Cage wouldn't have qualified.


John Cage is a composer and I suppose also a music philosopher. Quality is in the ears of the beholder. Maybe you should read some things John Cage proposed, he's an expert on this topic.



> yeah its like every football player has skills of Messi's.


Football has a definable set of rules, it's a game in which certain very specific skills are used to follow the rules of the game with the intent on winning. It isn't composition in which the rules of theory are second to intention and aesthetic of the composer.


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## neoshredder (Nov 7, 2011)

Many people come to Classical Music looking for comfort music. I know I did. Thus Modernism wasn't for me. I do like a little exploration but in a organized way. I got a very stressful life. Thus I need a way to relax.


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Nope, that's either about marketing or simply a result of how easily accessible sheet music is to musicians or simply just coincidence.


marketing? are we talking pop music?.. classical isn't about money making, rather the promotion of cultural views that every country's Culture Department has and which is rarely staked on a wrong music piece or composer.



ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Van Gogh didn't make [much, if any] money out of painting I don't think.


in that you corroborate my point or debunk it?



ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Music can never make everyone feel the same way, but it has an astonishing power to evoke different things in different people.


in classical, pretty much everyone of the same opinion concerning Mozart and his 40th symph, so where's the difference?



ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> This isn't what composers do


well, seems like you want to deny the obvious and insist that most composers would deliberately write bad music.



ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Sublime is another subjective description.


nope, sublime is something that you have to grow up to, in order to appreciate it.



ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Maybe you should read some things John Cage proposed, he's an expert on this topic.


so his a writer, not a composer?



ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Football has a definable set of rules, it's a game in which certain very specific skills are used to follow the rules of the game with the intent on winning. It isn't composition in which the rules of theory are second to intention and aesthetic of the composer.


in classical music, neither intentions or aesthetics may break the rules that can only be extended and deepened so that intentions and aesthetics could show through as result.


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

neoshredder said:


> Many people come to Classical Music looking for comfort music. I know I did.


i for one know i did not because it was strong emotions that i sought with classical.


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## Guest (Dec 30, 2014)

sharik, you have been invited, several times, to go beyond mere assertion.

In a discussion of ideas, it is easier to simply assert, but it is not satisfying to any intelligent interlocutors.

These people want to know how you got to your conclusions. What is the evidence that led to the conclusions?

It's the conversational equivalent of the old rule in math classes to show your work.

In any event, what about people who have come to different conclusions from yours? People who have equal and perhaps superior experience in music to yours. How does one choose between the different conclusions? Without support for the conclusions, without backing up the conclusions with the facts/ideas/opinions that preceded the conclusions, there is nothiing to chose between them.

Validity, in a nutshell, is in the support, not in the conclusion.

That is, in a nutshell, validity is in the support, not in the conclusion.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Blancrocher said:


> This is an interesting subject in its own right. I'm always curious to find out who commissioned a composer's works and for what purpose, whether it's a composer from the past or the present. I'm not sure I'd draw such a hard line between works written for money and for the love of art, though maybe you don't really mean to yourself. Often the one paying a commission--whether today or in the classical period--was an accomplished musician that desired a work of the highest craftsmanship and could tell the difference. Underlying many of these financial transactions is a mutual love of art for art's sake.


In the contemporary realm, there are less and less commissions from individual patrons, and more and more coming via institutes, musical and otherwise. Many a large orchestral work is commissioned by an orchestra, and regularly enough, for the sake of economy, two orchestras will "bi-commission" a work, both funding half of the commission fee.

I believe most of Puccini's commissions were from his publisher, Ricordi, and like any author, he and the librettist were given an advance to live on while working, with another lump payment (plus certainly at least a percent of the royalties as part of the deal -- this possibly allowed for the full royalties paid to both composer and librettist, since the score and parts were often on rental basis, i.e. the publisher still making out quite well from those revenues alone.) paid when the score was delivered on an agreed-upon due date. Simile, if I am not mistaken, Debussy's publisher, Durand, was behind both his two books of _Preludes_ as well as his _Études_.

Ballet companies also commission scores:
A good number of Stravinsky's ballets were commissioned by Diaghilev's Ballet Russe, (L'oiseaux de feu / Petrushka / Le sacre du printemps / Pulcinella / Les Noces) as were Satie's _Parade_, Debussy's _Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune_ / _Jeux_, and Resphigi's orchestrations of Rossini's short pieces, _Sins of my old Age_ for the ballet _La Boutique fantasque._

The Koussevitzky Foundation was responsible for commissioning a host of works from American composers as well as a few non-nationals through the mid-20th century. They are still active as The Koussevitsky Music Foundations, and still commission, or endow grants, to musicians. 
http://www.koussevitzky.org/

Paul Sacher, of the the Basler Kammerorchester (Switzerland), was responsible for many a commission of what are now thought of as 20th century masterworks for chamber orchestra, I imagine the funds coming from both the orchestra's revenues as well as (this is a guess) some state funding and / or private party contributions.

The Louisville Orchestra has been another responsible for a great number of commissions of contemporary music, having received a Rockefeller grant (in 1953) of $500,000 "to commission, record and premiere 20th century music by living composers."

The San Francisco Symphony, like many another like ensemble, has a composer in residence program, a paying job where the in-resident composer is often both adviser to the music directors and conductor on contemporary music and whose job it is also to produce one or more new works for that ensemble. Most notably, John Adams, in the early part of his career, was fairly well 'launched' to a global audience and status while holding that position.

Grants from foundations are another major source of revenue for composers who receive them, still a 'virtual' commission, but in reverse, the composer applying for funds in order to produce a particular work.

Individual solo performers are still quite active in commissioning, soliciting new works from composers. Sometimes the composer will approach the soloist, wanting to compose something specifically for that performer, and then both performer and composer will hunt out various prospects of patronage, institutional or private. If a performer is very well-off financially, they will use their own money to commission a work. A proviso quite usual with commissions has part of the agreement that the 'commissionee' has exclusive performing rights for a period of from one to several years, of being the only one allowed to perform the work, with another proviso on being the first to record it; after that period expires, the work, published or not, can be made available to any and all performers, and recorded by whomever chooses to do so.

Ditto for string quartets, trios, and many another small (conductorless) independent chamber ensemble, who have sometimes foundation funds, or will directly approach composers and commission works from them.


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

some guy said:


> sharik, you have been invited, several times, to go beyond mere assertion.


what prevents you personally from substantiating your own claims?


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## Guest (Dec 30, 2014)

Evasion is also considered unsatisfactory in conversations.

Besides, if you look back over my posts, you will see all sorts of substantiations of my claims. But that's as may be.

You have made assertions. You have been invited to support them. You have not.

That tactic, in and of itself, invites your interlocutors to question their validity. That is, by your manner of presentation, you are doing a very good job of discrediting yourself. Is that really your goal? I'm guessing not. You obviously think your assertions are valid. OK. Then support them. We are not you. We do not have your confidence in your assertions. You know what led you to your conclusions; we do not. For us to be able to accept or even to seriously consider your assertions, we have to know how you arrived at them.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

sharik said:


> what prevents you personally from substantiating your own claims?


I see that waffling is not only an American political sport!

The list of vague and non-specific qualities you keep naming and listing have become like a heavy ground fog amounting to virtual 0 visibility conditions.

Please, you were the one first called into question 'on all that' by more than a few members here, so really, the right thing to do is come up with it and go first.

In everyday parlance, it is time to man up


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

some guy said:


> You have made assertions. You have been invited to support them. You have not.


yes i have. go prove i haven't.


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

PetrB said:


> The list of vague and non-specific qualities you keep naming and listing have become like a heavy ground fog amounting to virtual 0 visibility conditions.


save your rhetorics for someone else, like, kids etc.



PetrB said:


> you were the one first called into question 'on all that' by more than a few members here, so really, the right thing to do is come up with it and go first.


and what you think i'm doing here right now?


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

sharik said:


> save your rhetorics for someone else, like, kids etc.
> 
> and what you think i'm doing here right now?


I think TC discussion are better if we can talk about specific music rather than in broad generalities. Maybe the discussion could be steered by the of specific example of so-identified avant-garde music rather than generalisations that could be made by anyone regardless of the facts of actual music


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

sharik said:


> save your rhetorics for someone else, like, kids etc.
> and what you think i'm doing here right now?


I dunno -- seeking attention for... "Just sitting there and saying nothing?"

But I don't think but rather I know what you are doing, and not doing.

You are being evasive, avoiding the issue, and being more than coy rather than coming up with _anything at all concrete in the way of a response._ It is easy to deduce that you don't wish to take any real responsibility for what you've so vaguely claimed.

Which of course, is a kind of answer unto itself, since no answer is a kind of answer.

At least, that is the way I see it. Maybe I am the only one who views it that way.

See you around the campus, guy.

Later, and...

Best regards.


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

PetrB said:


> You are being evasive


me - evasive?.. rather you are.

so far you haven't posed a question for me to answer.

ask an on topic question and i will answer it.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

sharik said:


> marketing? are we talking pop music?.. classical isn't about money making, rather the promotion of cultural views that every country's Culture Department has and which is rarely staked on a wrong music piece or composer.


 In my country the government isn't involved with making commisions for a new piece of music. There is propaganda, but down under we are a cultural void! Parliament cares nothing for classical music :lol:
As for marketing, no I'm talking about record labels, companies such as DG or Decca or EMI getting particular musicians who specialise in particular music. It keeps the money going but it wouldn't really concern any composer today very much at all.



> in that you corroborate my point or debunk it?


 Corroborating, but debunking your earlier claim about professionalism, and debunking your consistency.



> in classical, pretty much everyone of the same opinion concerning Mozart and his 40th symph, so where's the difference?


What's my opinion on the piece then? Do tell me, I would be very interested to know. 



> well, seems like you want to deny the obvious and insist that most composers would deliberately write bad music.


You're putting words I never said into my mouth. I haven't insisted that, I have merely insisted that composers are primarily concerned about their own music, their own intentions to create and their own artistry. Composers write music for people, yes, but the people they write for are musicians. It is only _after_ the two steps (the composer composes and the musicians learns the composition) that any curious audience member will come to check out this new piece of art. The audience is the just a thing that _happens to turn up_ out of their own human curiosity. Audiences aren't _entitled_ to music, and believing that is really quite a disrespectful attitude to have! I don't know what you mean by "bad" music, but from what I know of you, the music you are referring to as "bad" would be in a few cases very different to what I think is "bad," and this mere fact that you can't deny already disproves any argument you have to make about how wonderfully objective you are 



> nope, sublime is something that you have to grow up to, in order to appreciate it.


Sublime, according to my dictionary, has a different definition. Before I show you mine, can you show me your dictionary's definition? it would be interesting to compare.



> so his a writer, not a composer?


He is a composer, best knows for being one as a matter of fact. He has also written a few books which are published and available for you to buy at the click of a button. Look it up. 



> in classical music, neither intentions or aesthetics may break the rules that can only be extended and deepened so that intentions and aesthetics could show through as result.


That's also a good way of putting it actually! Extending and deepening rules for the sake of creating individual aesthetics for any individual composer's intention to compose is really what I've been on about all along. Some aesthetics are not enjoyable to you, whereas they may be enjoyable for other people and vice versa. No matter what, there is always an audience for something.


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> In my country the government isn't involved with making commisions for a new piece of music.


who then funds the Austarlian Opera?



ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Corroborating, but debunking your earlier claim about professionalism


and what was my claim?.. i stated that being a professional not always means being in the money.



ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> What's my opinion on the piece then?


i'm not a clairvoyant to guess.



ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Composers write music for people, yes, but the people they write for are musicians.


now you are talking... classical music audience are mostly those who do know how to play music.



ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Sublime, according to my dictionary, has a different definition.


hmm - http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Sublime



ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> He is a composer, best knows for being one as a matter of fact. He has also written a few books


might be better if he stuck to writing books and leave music alone.



ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Some aesthetics are not enjoyable to you, whereas they may be enjoyable for other people and vice versa.


i don't mind as long as the aesthetics of a music piece stem from traditions established before.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

sharik said:


> me - evasive?.. rather you are.
> so far you haven't posed a question for me to answer.
> ask an on topic question and i will answer it.


You can look back through the thread without asking anyone to repeat themselves.

More to the point: Like I said, see you around campus, and later.

(That is a tactful conceit generally understood that I would visually recognize you in the environs, but will likely not stop to converse or otherwise engage in any future dialogue. This is akin to the famous / infamous "don't call us, we'll call you.")

again... best regards.


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