# The Future Of Music



## 1996D

I stumbled upon this video and watched in both great surprise that I hadn't watched it before, and as the great conductor went on, with amazement at his prophetic ability, and willingness to voice what at that time would have been an unpopular opinion. Here he described with complete accuracy what I've come to discover about music and its possibilities, as well as its limitations, and how important it is that it remain grounded in a reality which people can comprehend.

Music is a language, even more rooted in the soul than any other, and it narrates very concrete and identifiable emotions which every human being can feel, and with practice and experience, learn to love within themselves. Atonality is simply not a human language.

These Bernstein lectures given at Harvard in 1973 are a true gem which every composer and musician should study - and only one conclusion can be taken from them.

Hopefully our new movement can begin and may the words 'contemporary music' bring about completely new emotions and excitement.


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## janxharris

1996D said:


> I stumbled upon this video and watched in both great surprise that I hadn't watched it before, and as the great conductor went on, with amazement at his prophetic ability, and willingness to voice what at that time would have been an unpopular opinion. Here he described with complete accuracy what I've come to discover about music and its possibilities, as well as its limitations, and how important it is that it remain grounded in a reality which people can comprehend.
> 
> Music is a language, even more rooted in the soul than any other, and it narrates very concrete and identifiable emotions which every human being can feel, and with practice and experience, learn to love within themselves. Atonality is simply not a human language.
> 
> These Bernstein lectures given at Harvard in 1973 are a true gem which every composer and musician should study - and only one conclusion can be taken from them.
> 
> Hopefully our new movement can begin and may the words 'contemporary music' bring about completely new emotions and excitement.


Bernstein spoke of Schoenberg as a 'master' and described the violin concerto as 'great' and said 'the five pieces for orchestra...may well be his orchestral masterpiece'.


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## Nereffid

If you don't like atonal music, there's a _vast_ amount of contemporary music left for you to listen to.


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## mrdoc

Nereffid said:


> If you don't like atonal music, there's a _vast_ amount of contemporary music left for you to listen to.


You are spot on and I do just that, music for me must have melody, it must have some sort of beat/meter or rhythm and it must have order or form, some guy playing his ipad in a deserted factory or abandoned slaughter house is just not music IMO.


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## Mandryka

1996D said:


>


Don't you think he's a bit pompous?


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## 1996D




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## 1996D

Here are the first two lectures in which he explains how music is indeed a language. The only possible conclusion once this is understood is that atonality is illogical and something that perhaps needed to be explored but today has no further use.


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## janxharris

1996D said:


> Here are the first two lectures in which he explains how music is indeed a language. The only possible conclusion once this is understood is that atonality is illogical and something that perhaps needed to be explored but today has no further use.


Does Bernstein explicitly say that atonality is illogical?


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## 1996D

janxharris said:


> Does Bernstein explicitly say that atonality is illogical?


Watch the lectures, they are fantastic. I watched the first two yesterday but there are still four left, something like 10 hours; the video in the original post is an excerpt from one of these.

Bernstein uses linguistics as a method of comparison and this is something everyone can understand.


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## MarkW

Long term, the future of human music will likely not outlast humanity-- and at this point I don't give it more than a few centuries, if that.


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## Phil loves classical

I don't get a sense of Bernstein knocking atonality at all. He only stated the origins in music is tonal. He said other languages like serialism can be expressive as long as they are "rooted on earth", and it doesn't "preclude other languages". He was respectful of Schoenberg in his other videos I've seen.


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## 1996D

Phil loves classical said:


> I don't get a sense of Bernstein knocking atonality at all. He only stated the origins in music is tonal. He said other languages like serialism can be expressive as long as they are "rooted on earth", and it doesn't "preclude other languages". He was respectful of Schoenberg in his other videos I've seen.


He said that the future of music is eclectic but tonal, and I couldn't agree more. 'Rooted on earth' means that it's rooted in the human experience and what a human being can comprehend and love. Earth is nature and we are part of the latter.


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## hammeredklavier

I haven't watched all the lectures, so I'm not sure if you're right, but I remember one instance he mentioned atonality:

_"Do you realize that, that wild, atonal-sounding passage contains every one of the twelve chromatic tones except the tonic note G? What an inspired idea.. all the notes except the tonic. It could easily pass for twentieth-century music, if we didn't already know it was Mozart."_

[ 1:06:45 ]


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## SONNET CLV

Language only communicates when one understands it. Otherwise, it remains merely sounds. Such sounds may prove interesting; they will certainly seem different from what one normally perceives as language. But the important thing is that the speakers of a language hear meaning while the non-speakers hear only sound.

I enjoy Hungarian opera because I know none of the language, so the vocals become part of the music rather than part of the theatrical story. I cannot listen to, say, an English opera in the same way I listen to an Hungarian opera.

If music is indeed a language and can communicate truths (and I certainly believe this), it will only communicate if one has an understanding of the language. We all seem to have some sense of agreement about tonal music and that it can communicate truths or ideas, such as mystery (the opening of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata"), pathos (Grieg's "The Death Of Asa"), or jollity (Holst's "Jupiter"). And such tonal music can communicate many more and much deeper truths, which we all know, and which remains one of the great reasons we all listen to music.

But if the music itself is composed of a language we have no familiarity with (and many would cite atonality as such a one) then the music cannot spill its secrets. The way one tends to learn a language is through immersion. Most of us are immersed from birth in one or two languages, which become part of our being. We don't even think of them any longer as "sounds" or "utterances". As we gain language understanding and add to our proficiencies, we begin to understand at a deeper level the great truths of life. The more languages we know, the better our grasp on those truths, the deeper our understanding. Because languages differ in their communicative values. Just as multiple colors will allow one to paint with more accurate presentation a landscape or portrait, so will the use of multiple languages allow one to communicate and understand with greater accuracy. So will one who works to comprehend the variety of "languages" that makes up music better understand what he or she hears at a concert, on a recording, via video media, or even at the local bar on band night.

Like anything else, especially the learning of languages, music demands some study, some effort to learn. But the paybacks are profound.

Imagine standing in the crowd on a New York City street and knowing every word of every language spoken around you. Now imagine having that same experience in a concert hall or where-ever. _That's_ the goal, I think, for those of us who truly love music and believe it has something to say.


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## Enthusiast

Whenever one of these threads comes along these days I almost have to laugh. People can rail against atonal music but we have had it for nearly 100 years and many of its masterpieces are secure in our repertoire. You can come up with "proofs" (and the present one seems a particularly spurious example of a "proof") that it is incomprehensible and will never catch on but the fact is that it is widely comprehended and has caught on. Yes, there are many who don't like it, although they sound increasingly dinosaur-like, but there have always been differences in taste. There are many who don't like much music that came from Beethoven and the Romantics who followed him. I have known people who think that music stopped with Handel. The fools among them advance theories and proofs that their taste is the only correct and logical one.


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## janxharris

Enthusiast said:


> Whenever one of these threads comes along these days I almost have to laugh. People can rail against atonal music but we have had it for nearly 100 years and many of its masterpieces are secure in our repertoire. You can come up with "proofs" (and the present one seems a particularly spurious example of a "proof") that it is incomprehensible and will never catch on but the fact is that it is widely comprehended and has caught on. Yes, there are many who don't like it, although they sound increasingly dinosaur-like, but there have always been differences in taste. There are many who don't like much music that came from Beethoven and the Romantics who followed him. I have known people who think that music stopped with Handel. The fools among them advance theories and proofs that their taste is the only correct and logical one.


Surely the real test of the security of such 'masterpieces' is if they could survive if we took away what many see as their safety net - the war horses that have proved their worth over the years. I do like some more modern pieces though I haven't enjoyed a serial piece all the way through yet. I think Massiaen's _Quartet for the end of time_ is more attractive - perhaps because it isn't atonal (though much of it does seem to be without any real sense of key).


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## Enthusiast

^ I'm not sure I get your point. Do you mean that audiences mainly go to concerts to hear the warhorses? I am not sure that is true but certainly the warhorse audience will be the last one to warm to anything atonal.


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## Jacck

Future of music? You mean before or after the nuclear war?


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## rice

All the things music may brings to us, excitement, satisfaction or whatever.
When science comes to a point that our brains can be stimulated directly to achieve these but in a much larger degree, we won't need music anymore.


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## Strange Magic

I could post that the future of music is the present of music--the New Stasis where every music is heard and available to be heard in greater and greater abundance. This will change only when the New Stasis is ended (if it is) by an all-powerful and dominant New Society where uniformity of thought is "encouraged",

But I won't.


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## janxharris

Enthusiast said:


> ^ I'm not sure I get your point. *Do you mean that audiences mainly go to concerts to hear the warhorses?* I am not sure that is true but certainly the warhorse audience will be the last one to warm to anything atonal.


I believe so. Orchestras are struggling and I can't imagine that atonal works would keep them going.

Don't get me wrong - I am all for the promotion of new music - and think there is much of value in works that avoid well-trodden paths.


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## Enthusiast

^ I don't know but I think it is variety that will keep orchestras afloat - catering to different audiences on different days. And when I look at the programming of British orchestras I see quite a lot that would have been very rare 25 years ago - new works and composers are entering the realm of those works for which there is a public. And I don't see a sign that the atonal is not to be set before us.


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## Phil loves classical

hammeredklavier said:


> I haven't watched all the lectures, so I'm not sure if you're right, but I remember one instance he mentioned atonality:
> 
> _"Do you realize that, that wild, atonal-sounding passage contains every one of the twelve chromatic tones except the tonic note G? What an inspired idea.. all the notes except the tonic. It could easily pass for twentieth-century music, if we didn't already know it was Mozart."_
> 
> [ 1:06:45 ]


Mozart was a risk taker. People that try to copy or judge his style usually leave that part out. They judge the more familiar sort of sounding parts. I cringe whenever I remember Gary Oldman in the Professional saying he is too light.


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## flamencosketches

OP, wait til you get to episode 5. You will see that he is not knocking atonality at all, and that he is as fascinated with it as the best of us. Anyway, it's a phenomenal lecture series. Hopefully it will open your mind a little bit.


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## HenryPenfold

Mandryka said:


> Don't you think he's a bit pompous?


Kinda goes with the territory ..............


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## Fabulin

I don't know about future, but TwoSetViolin just played Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto arranged for two violins to a livestream audience equal to 7 full Sidney Opera Houses, and over just a couple hours an additional quarter million people have already tuned in to listen.

It's not exactly the Golden Age of Radio, but the present doesn't sound bad.


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## pianozach

I'm betting that there's a *Tonal vs. Atonal* thread somewheres around here already . . . . but . . .

Sometimes I find atonal music fascinating, but I always return to tonal music. I can hum or sing it, or plunk it out on a piano or guitar, but I've never been inspired to start singing any atonal masterpiece in the shower.

Tonal music is here to stay, and will likely always win out in the minds of the listeners vs. Atonal music.


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## larold

_Whenever one of these threads comes along these days I almost have to laugh. People can rail against atonal music but we have had it for nearly 100 years and many of its masterpieces are secure in our repertoire._

Bernstein's comments were further back than when Shostakovich died. Atonality was still a rage then and electronic music even more so. The banality of minimalism was yet to come. So was period practice in terms of its affect on the music-buying public.

The comments here seem to be about atonality yet when was the last significant atonal composition written? And what is significant being written now tonally?

Atonality is essentially the past, just as is baroque. I have no idea what the music of our age will be called 50 years from now but it isn't likely it will be atonality or post-atonality.


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## SONNET CLV

janxharris said:


> Surely the real test of the security of such 'masterpieces' is if they could survive if we took away what many see as their safety net - the war horses that have proved their worth over the years. ...


One may ponder what the contemporary audiences of Ockeghem, Praetorius, or Monteverdi may have thought upon hearing the Beethoven Third Symphony, or other such warhorses.


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## janxharris

SONNET CLV said:


> One may ponder what the contemporary audiences of Ockeghem, Praetorius, or Monteverdi may have thought upon hearing the Beethoven Third Symphony, or other such warhorses.


Ok - but the point I was making wasn't this.


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## EdwardBast

What do you mean by atonal? Is Prokofiev's Eighth Piano Sonata atonal? What works by Bartok, if any, do you consider atonal? Without some clarification it's impossible for me to know what you are talking about.


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## Tikoo Tuba

On my last wide-ranging camping tour I looked for local schools who had eliminated their 
music programs . Of those I found , I wondered if I would possibly live there and energize 
the future of music . And if so , how ? One town I found was literally much too stinky and
drunken . Forgivable ? But then came the forest fire ... no good for camping .


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## 1996D

janxharris said:


> I believe so. Orchestras are struggling and I can't imagine that atonal works would keep them going.
> 
> Don't get me wrong - I am all for the promotion of new music - and think there is much of value in works that avoid well-trodden paths.


Orchestras have government support, they won't ever struggle as long that money keeps coming in. There's a lot of wealth today, so much that most office workers do nothing for 3/4 of their 'workday'.


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## 1996D

EdwardBast said:


> What do you mean by atonal? Is Prokofiev's Eighth Piano Sonata atonal? What works by Bartok, if any, do you consider atonal? Without some clarification it's impossible for me to know what you are talking about.


I'd put it as simply as music that speaks to people vs music that doesn't; the former can have atonal moments but it must make sense as a whole, namely the moments must be minimal and used to depict something.

The age of exploration is over, we must now construct clear ideas, with clear motivations. Just as Bernstein said: eclectic but tonal and rooted in the earth.


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## starthrower

SONNET CLV said:


> Language only communicates when one understands it. Otherwise, it remains merely sounds. Such sounds may prove interesting; they will certainly seem different from what one normally perceives as language. But the important thing is that the speakers of a language hear meaning while the non-speakers hear only sound.
> 
> I enjoy Hungarian opera because I know none of the language, so the vocals become part of the music rather than part of the theatrical story. I cannot listen to, say, an English opera in the same way I listen to an Hungarian opera.
> 
> If music is indeed a language and can communicate truths (and I certainly believe this), it will only communicate if one has an understanding of the language. We all seem to have some sense of agreement about tonal music and that it can communicate truths or ideas, such as mystery (the opening of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata"), pathos (Grieg's "The Death Of Asa"), or jollity (Holst's "Jupiter"). And such tonal music can communicate many more and much deeper truths, which we all know, and which remains one of the great reasons we all listen to music.


It seems to me that you are describing two different things. Spoken languages, and music. Not exactly the same thing. Music moved me as a child before I ever understood anything about it. I don't need to understand the technical language of music for it to communicate thoughts and feelings to me. The sound of music in the air is totally abstract and our brains react and create feelings or images which are unique to each listener. It's not the same with spoken language. Every culture, country or tribe has their own language of words and phrases that have specific meanings. Things can be interpreted to a point, but there is a specific meaning being communicated. Music is different. The composer may have one thing in mind while writing a piece but the listener can interpret it any way they see fit. So I would say music is more abstract and more difficult to pin down with specific meanings. And if the listener chooses, no meaning at all. The beauty of musical sounds alone can be enjoyed without any thought of association or meaning. "It's just music." As Bernstein said in one of his Young Persons' Concerts.


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## Red Terror

Mandryka said:


> Don't you think he's a bit pompous?


Perhaps, but I'd much rather hear Bernstein speak intelligently about a subject than have my brain defecated upon by the following...


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## Red Terror

1996D said:


> He said that the future of music is eclectic but tonal, and I couldn't agree more. 'Rooted on earth' means that it's rooted in the human experience and what a human being can comprehend and love. Earth is nature and we are part of the latter.


Well, he was right. Who listen to Schoenberg nowadays? Answer: me and few other guys. :lol:


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## Mandryka

What is the connection he tries to make with Keats? He talks about Keats and “rooted in earth” but I don’t know what he’s getting at.


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## Room2201974

The first thing that came to my mind when I saw this LB clip was, "Wow, that was quite a journey LB took to find the "answer". He could have just walked up a few steps on a ladder in a museum to find the same."


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## Xisten267

I believe in _Bernstein: the conductor_ and perhaps in _Bernstein: the composer_, but _Bernstein: the teacher_ usually says things that doesn't seem to be valid to me. I understand music as an universal language that can instills sensorial perceptions (that may go beyond emotions) in individuals (that do not even need to be humans - zoomusicology has already been invented), and that there's no reason for any technique available for creating it (including those invented in the 20th century) to be discarded. Diversity _is_ good in my opinion. If there's some composer making bad use of a technique, blame it on him/her, not on it.


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## pianozach

Red Terror said:


> Perhaps, but I'd much rather hear Bernstein speak intelligently about a subject than have my brain defecated upon by the following...


LOL

Mr. Trump sat there and had to pretend to be listening, and even to pretend to understand. He nods, waits a bit, then nods again, then tilts his head this way, then that way.

He likes to pretend that he knows everything. He thinks he's connecting with and relating to "his blacks". He'll slip in a 'hip' word, and likely get it wrong, words like "Homelies" instead of "Homies", stuff like that.

He finds a good word, like "respect" or "like" or "special", and uses it several times in a row.

And that _hair_ . . .


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## Tikoo Tuba

Sometimes the 'music' of an orchestra tuning-up is more honest and relational than what follows . Music 
that is dishonest = music as illusion . A universal language must always resonate as true .


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## EdwardBast

Tikoo Tuba said:


> Sometimes the 'music' of an orchestra tuning-up is more honest and relational than what follows . Music
> that is dishonest = music as illusion . A universal language must always resonate as true .


How about a couple examples of dishonest music so we have a clue what you mean?


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## Euler

EdwardBast said:


> How about a couple examples of dishonest music so we have a clue what you mean?


Lyres, crooks, euphonyums....


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## EdwardBast

Euler said:


> Lyres, crooks, euphonyums....


Deceptive cadences, false recapitulations …


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## superhorn

Music, particularly western art music, does not exist in a vacuum . You cannot separate it from the extra musical . It can be highly descriptive and evocative of non musical things such as the weather, 
stories, legends etc . 
But one has to have a context . If you play Debussy's La Mer to someone who knows nothing about classical music , that person would not understand it at all or know what it represents . But if you know the program, one can appreciate how evocative this work is .


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## 1996D

starthrower said:


> It seems to me that you are describing two different things. Spoken languages, and music. Not exactly the same thing. Music moved me as a child before I ever understood anything about it. I don't need to understand the technical language of music for it to communicate thoughts and feelings to me. The sound of music in the air is totally abstract and our brains react and create feelings or images which are unique to each listener. It's not the same with spoken language. Every culture, country or tribe has their own language of words and phrases that have specific meanings. Things can be interpreted to a point, but there is a specific meaning being communicated. Music is different. The composer may have one thing in mind while writing a piece but the listener can interpret it any way they see fit. So I would say music is more abstract and more difficult to pin down with specific meanings. And if the listener chooses, no meaning at all. The beauty of musical sounds alone can be enjoyed without any thought of association or meaning. "It's just music." As Bernstein said in one of his Young Persons' Concerts.


You need to watch the first lecture, Bernstein talks about this in detail. Language comes naturally to us as well.


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## 1996D

superhorn said:


> Music, particularly western art music, does not exist in a vacuum . You cannot separate it from the extra musical . It can be highly descriptive and evocative of non musical things such as the weather,
> stories, legends etc .
> But one has to have a context . If you play Debussy's La Mer to someone who knows nothing about classical music , that person would not understand it at all or know what it represents . But if you know the program, one can appreciate how evocative this work is .


Music is like poetry, all art inevitably carries message. Atonal music isn't gibberish, it's an exploration of what is not human; of what is dying and decaying; what is deviant and degenerating.

I recently saw a contemporary art exhibition, and that's what it was. It was full of depictions of horror from these artists that live in a bubble of despair and can't see beyond the current trappings of the world. They do see awful things and they live around people addicted to a lot of things, but that's their choice. Only those that are doing these types of things actually appreciate art that depicts them.

Instead as an artist you should be able see the positive future that is coming and depict that, let people see it through your art, and this will naturally reach a much larger audience.


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## starthrower

1996D said:


> Music is like poetry, all art inevitably carries message. Atonal music isn't gibberish, it's an exploration of what is not human; of what is dying and decaying; what is deviant and degenerating.


Huh? An exploration of what is not human? Please elaborate.


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## Room2201974

1996D said:


> Music is like poetry, all art inevitably carries message. Atonal music isn't gibberish, it's an exploration of what is not human; of what is dying and decaying; what is deviant and degenerating.


Interesting! I think I'm historically correct in saying that "deviant" and "degenerating" were words Schoenberg heard in 1932.

Couldn't find those terms in Piston, Seigmeister, Persichetti, the Harvard Dict. of Music, Tovey or Grout. I'm going to take it on their good authority that these terms are not "compositional techniques."


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## 1996D

starthrower said:


> Huh? An exploration of what is not human? Please elaborate.


Watch Bernstein's first 1973 lecture, the comparison to linguistics and how language is born is what you need. Music like language is something intrinsic to being human, and there are rules in both.

Atonality is breaking all the rules, it represents death.


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## SONNET CLV

starthrower said:


> It seems to me that you are describing two different things. Spoken languages, and music. Not exactly the same thing. *Music moved me as a child before I ever understood anything about it.* I don't need to understand the technical language of music for it to communicate thoughts and feelings to me. The sound of music in the air is totally abstract and our brains react and create feelings or images which are unique to each listener. It's not the same with spoken language. ...


I suspect that language also moved you as a child before you ever understood anything about it. When a mother or nurse comforts a child, the words she says may not even be in the language the child understands, yet the child will likely understand the "music" of the words, the sound of the phrases, the way the words are spoken.

I have little experience with Hungarian, as noted above, yet if a group of Hungarians were to yell angry oaths in my direction, I would likely understand that I might have a reason for concern or consternation. In some sense, emotional content can be communicated rather clearly to us even if we don't understand the language. The content of that emotion will of course be richer and fuller for us if we _do_ comprehend the words. The same with music. Some of us hear more than do others. Some of us comprehend the composers' intentions in a piece better than will others. A lot has to do with experience, learning and knowledge, and our own personal sensitivity to what we hear.

We speak of music as a language. And, yes, I know it is not the same as English, or German, or Korean ... or Hungarian ... but it "speaks" to us and we hear meanings in the sounds. If we don't, we're likely wasting time listening to it. In which case I'd do just as well reading Imre Kertész's _Fatelessness_ (_Sorstalanság_) in its original language. And that would be not well at all.

(Kertész, by the way, came to my attention a couple of years ago when I learned that he had died on the day I celebrate Haydn's birthday. I generally pay some attention to Nobel Prize winners, especially in literature -- Kertész was his country's first and, I think, only literary winner; Hungary has had a number of science and math winners. And I've long had an interest in Holocaust literature. I would relish reading _Sorstalanság_ in Hungarian, but I haven't invested the time to learn that language … yet.)

One must realize that Helen Keller comprehended the world in some meaningful fashion before she ever had a grasp of what language was. Painters might speak about color as being their language; the more competent their understanding of color and its uses, the more communicative can they be with their art. Dancers might speak of movement as a language, and indeed I've watched dancers who communicated to me things that I would have had difficulty putting into only a few words. I've never formally studied either painting or dance, yet I somehow comprehend some of the "words" of the language used by those disciplines' artists.

And, if music_ isn't_ a language, what do we expect to gain by listening to it? The most fascinating thing about music is that no matter what our spoken language, we can all in some sense (shallowly or deeply, with all grades in between) understand something of what is being said, even if that is simply a "like" or "dislike" of the piece. Were you to mutter to me something in Hungarian, I would not be able to make that much of a judgement -- whether I liked what you said or didn't.

Thanks for reading my posts. I appreciate it.


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## Red Terror

pianozach said:


> LOL
> 
> Mr. Trump sat there and had to pretend to be listening, and even to pretend to understand. He nods, waits a bit, then nods again, then tilts his head this way, then that way.
> 
> He likes to pretend that he knows everything. He thinks he's connecting with and relating to "his blacks". He'll slip in a 'hip' word, and likely get it wrong, words like "Homelies" instead of "Homies", stuff like that.
> 
> He finds a good word, like "respect" or "like" or "special", and uses it several times in a row.
> 
> And that _hair_ . . .


Well, this clip isn't so much about the President as it is about the perennial "genius" of Kanye West. And to think that this dunce serves as a role model for many young people-let the meteor strike us sooner rather than later.


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## starthrower

1996D said:


> Watch Bernstein's first 1973 lecture, the comparison to linguistics and how language is born is what you need. Music like language is something intrinsic to being human, and there are rules in both.
> 
> Atonality is breaking all the rules, it represents death.


Not to me it doesn't. I've listened to some of the Norton Lectures. Bernstein talking on Schoenberg and serial music. I don't recall him using the term, death. But I'll revisit his talk.


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## starthrower

> And, if music isn't a language, what do we expect to gain by listening to it?


As I stated, music is more abstract than spoken language. It's a different kind of language. I don't need to receive any specific message from it or gain anything but aural pleasure. It is an expressive art form natural to humans but open to myriad interpretations. A dog can decipher an agitated or pleasurable feeling in the tone of voice of the Hungarian speaker you cited as an example. So the language doesn't matter. Or for that matter from another animal.


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## 1996D

starthrower said:


> Not to me it doesn't. I've listened to some of the Norton Lectures. Bernstein talking on Schoenberg and serial music. I don't recall him using the term, death. But I'll revisit his talk.


Schoenberg was actually not trying to do that, he thought that we'd eventually get used to atonal music, that we'd eventually see it no different than tonal music.

But atonal music has failed in every way that it could, the experiment is long over - artists have been very slow to move on though.


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## pianozach

Red Terror said:


> Well, this clip isn't so much about the President as it is about the perennial "genius" of Kanye West. And to think that this dunce serves as a role model for many young people-let the meteor strike us sooner rather than later.


I've not liked Kanye West ever since he ruined Taylor Swift's Award in 1999 at the MTV Music Awards Ceremony. He was a colossal jerkface.

Prior to that he was a barely noticeable blip in my life, and I likely had never even heard any Kanye music. Since then I have not listened to any of his music (like he would care . . . ), with the exception of watching some of the video of his first "opera" (his tag, not mine . . . His 'work' is more of an oratorio in format).

I guess you could say I don't know what I'm missing


----------



## Mandryka

1996D said:


> - artists have been very slow to move on though.


Any thoughts about why that should be?


----------



## 1996D

Mandryka said:


> Any thoughts about why that should be?


I think it's a lack of courage, or simply will to challenge the greats of the past and take off where they left music. It did take me quite a bit of time to get to this level so I understand it; to make new music today that is tonal one must go through every past composer and come up with something better, and that's very difficult.

Engaging in mental ************ through composition is much easier, and admittingly that's much of what I did in my teen years, but in a way it was necessary to discover the banality of atonality and of wild experiments in general.

It's intimidating to write serious music because of the weight of the giants of the past--it's like being the son of a very successful father--but through patience it's possible.


----------



## Enthusiast

Room2201974 said:


> Interesting! I think I'm historically correct in saying that "deviant" and "degenerating" were words Schoenberg heard in 1932.
> 
> Couldn't find those terms in Piston, Seigmeister, Persichetti, the Harvard Dict. of Music, Tovey or Grout. I'm going to take it on their good authority that these terms are not "compositional techniques."


Try the Stalinist critical directories. These were words used to describe much modern art in Stalin's Russia and Hitler's Germany. They are words that usually need to be resisted when they are applied to serious art.


----------



## Mandryka

1996D said:


> I think it's a lack of courage, or simply will to challenge the greats of the past and take off where they left music. It did take me quite a bit of time to get to this level so I understand it; to make new music today that is tonal one must go through every past composer and come up with something better, and that's very difficult.
> 
> Engaging in mental ************ through composition is much easier, and admittingly that's much of what I did in my teen years, but in a way it was necessary to discover the banality of atonality and of wild experiments in general.
> 
> It's intimidating to write serious music because of the weight of the giants of the past--it's like being the son of a very successful father--but through patience it's possible.


All those atonal composers must be really lazy and cowardly.


----------



## millionrainbows

I think "tonality" will be just one more tool to use. There can be "other tonalities." The 12-note division of the octave is itself arbitrary. There can be "other serialisms" too.

A lot of the serial idea is based on the 12-note division of the octave, not just a "tonal hierarchy" that models the harmonic series.


----------



## Phil loves classical

millionrainbows said:


> I think "tonality" will be just one more tool to use. There can be "other tonalities." The 12-note division of the octave is itself arbitrary. There can be "other serialisms" too.
> 
> A lot of the serial idea is based on the 12-note division of the octave, not just a "tonal hierarchy" that models the harmonic series.


Johnston already took tonality to the microtonal level. Stockhausen already took serialism beyond the 12 notes.


----------



## Phil loves classical

1996D said:


> I think it's a lack of courage, or simply will to challenge the greats of the past and take off where they left music. It did take me quite a bit of time to get to this level so I understand it; to make new music today that is tonal one must go through every past composer and come up with something better, and that's very difficult.
> 
> Engaging in mental ************ through composition is much easier, and admittingly that's much of what I did in my teen years, but in a way it was necessary to discover the banality of atonality and of wild experiments in general.
> 
> It's intimidating to write serious music because of the weight of the giants of the past--it's like being the son of a very successful father--but through patience it's possible.


You keep talking about it. Come on, show us how it's to be done. Just a sample.


----------



## starthrower

1996D said:


> Schoenberg was actually not trying to do that, he thought that we'd eventually get used to atonal music, that we'd eventually see it no different than tonal music.
> 
> But atonal music has failed in every way that it could, the experiment is long over - artists have been very slow to move on though.


The ear does become accustomed to it after enough listening. But there's the personal taste aspect as well. Some listeners enjoy this kind of music and others don't. It's not a failure to my ears. You are making generalized statements. No, it's not for everybody. But the same can be said for any unpopular music. Many jazz listeners hate free jazz but that doesn't make it a failure. Ornette Coleman and Archie Shepp are not failures in the history of improvised music.


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## DavidA

starthrower said:


> *The ear does become accustomed to it after enough listening. *But there's the personal taste aspect as well. Some listeners enjoy this kind of music and others don't. It's not a failure to my ears. You are making generalized statements. No, it's not for everybody. But the same can be said for any unpopular music. Many jazz listeners hate free jazz but that doesn't make it a failure. Ornette Coleman and Archie Shepp are not failures in the history of improvised music.


I'm afraid after visiting the cinema to hear the broadcast of Wozzek I had had quite enough. I gave it a go but as you say it's not for everybody.


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## Mandryka

DavidA said:


> I'm afraid after visiting the cinema to hear the broadcast of Wozzek I had had quite enough. I gave it a go but as you say it's not for everybody.


That reminds me of the story of the critic who went to the first night of Strauss's Electra and wrote in his review that it wasn't music, just noise, and that when he went home he played a C major chord three times very loudly to remind himself what music is.

Electra ends with a C major chord played three times very loudly.

Peter Grimes is a bit like Wozzek light. Maybe you could limber up to Berg via Britten. And after Wozzek, there's the delights of Lulu!


----------



## Mandryka

millionrainbows said:


> I think "tonality" will be just one more tool to use. There can be "other tonalities." The 12-note division of the octave is itself arbitrary. There can be "other serialisms" too.
> 
> A lot of the serial idea is based on the 12-note division of the octave, not just a "tonal hierarchy" that models the harmonic series.


Pearls before swine. I think that when these people talk about atonality, they just mean music which makes them feel uncomfortable, probably including Machaut and Gesualdo and Busoni and Jürg Frey and Bernhard Lang.


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## millionrainbows

Mandryka said:


> Pearls before swine. I think that when these people talk about atonality, they just mean music which makes them feel uncomfortable, probably including Machaut and Gesualdo and Busoni and Jürg Frey and Bernhard Lang.


I give Bernstein a little more credit than that. I wouldn't characterize him as a swine, although I'll bet he could squeal like a little girl.


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## 20centrfuge

I enjoy music on the fringes of tonality but that still has a connection to it. The harmonic series is part of nature and music must connect to that nature somehow. I'm a trumpeter after all. The entire instrument is based on the use of the harmonic series. 

When music does not connect in any way to the harmonic series (tonality), for me it becomes purely intellectual. I do think, however, that it is possible for some 12 tone music to relate to or come close to relating to the harmonic series and I believe that that is when it is most successful.


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## 20centrfuge

IMHO, Wolfgang Rihm is a someone who can make exquisite music in that gray area between tonality and atonality. This is a prime example for me:


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## 20centrfuge

SONNET CLV said:


> Language only communicates when one understands it. Otherwise, it remains merely sounds. Such sounds may prove interesting; they will certainly seem different from what one normally perceives as language. But the important thing is that the speakers of a language hear meaning while the non-speakers hear only sound.
> 
> I enjoy Hungarian opera because I know none of the language, so the vocals become part of the music rather than part of the theatrical story. I cannot listen to, say, an English opera in the same way I listen to an Hungarian opera.
> 
> If music is indeed a language and can communicate truths (and I certainly believe this), it will only communicate if one has an understanding of the language. We all seem to have some sense of agreement about tonal music and that it can communicate truths or ideas, such as mystery (the opening of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata"), pathos (Grieg's "The Death Of Asa"), or jollity (Holst's "Jupiter"). And such tonal music can communicate many more and much deeper truths, which we all know, and which remains one of the great reasons we all listen to music.
> 
> But if the music itself is composed of a language we have no familiarity with (and many would cite atonality as such a one) then the music cannot spill its secrets. The way one tends to learn a language is through immersion. Most of us are immersed from birth in one or two languages, which become part of our being. We don't even think of them any longer as "sounds" or "utterances". As we gain language understanding and add to our proficiencies, we begin to understand at a deeper level the great truths of life. The more languages we know, the better our grasp on those truths, the deeper our understanding. Because languages differ in their communicative values. Just as multiple colors will allow one to paint with more accurate presentation a landscape or portrait, so will the use of multiple languages allow one to communicate and understand with greater accuracy. So will one who works to comprehend the variety of "languages" that makes up music better understand what he or she hears at a concert, on a recording, via video media, or even at the local bar on band night.
> 
> Like anything else, especially the learning of languages, music demands some study, some effort to learn. But the paybacks are profound.
> 
> Imagine standing in the crowd on a New York City street and knowing every word of every language spoken around you. Now imagine having that same experience in a concert hall or where-ever. _That's_ the goal, I think, for those of us who truly love music and believe it has something to say.


:tiphat: One of the most beautiful posts I've read on TC


----------



## Mandryka

20centrfuge said:


> When music does not connect in any way to the harmonic series (tonality), for me it becomes purely intellectual..


Keep trying., I don't believe that eventually you won't hear the beautiful rich expressiveness of Richard Barrett's The Empire of Lights, or Babbitt's 6th string quartet.

If you give it time a whole world of fabulous music will open up for you.


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## mmsbls

Perhaps in the mid-20th century there was significant pressure for composers to write non-tonal music or even explicitly serial music. As far as I can tell, contemporary composers seem to write just about anyway they wish - tonally, non-tonally, or not even using standard instrument sounds. They seem driven by exploring the music they wish to write. Personally, when I hear contemporary (or even modern) music, I generally don't think about whether the music is tonal or not. It doesn't seem to matter to me. 

I can think of 3 general reasons why someone would suggest that contemporary composers ought to write differently than they do.

1) That person does not enjoy much contemporary music and would prefer hearing music they enjoy.

2) That person believes contemporary music does not sell as well, and believes that the lower revenue will hurt classical music overall (e.g. more orchestras will go out of business, fewer CDs will be made, fewer people will choose to play instruments, etc.).

3) That person believes there is something inappropriate about contemporary music (e.g. non-tonal music). The music is in some sense bad for society.

Reason 1 is fine for an individual but obviously not relevant to society overall. People have been complaining about various types of music for awhile now - rock corrupts young people's morals, heavy metal leads to all sorts of negative behaviors, Schoenberg destroyed music. I've never heard an argument about the negative effects of a type of music (not just words) that made much sense to me. Berg said it best, "Music is music." You like it or you don't.

Contemporary music likely does not sell as well as CPT music. I'm still not convinced that there is a large decrease in listening to contemporary music compared to earlier music. Perhaps, but I've never seen a serious analysis of streaming for classical music. Atonal music has been around for over a century, and I don't see a decrease in young people learning to play instruments. Maybe there will be an negative effect on large ensembles, but I'm not sure classical music performances will decrease. Maybe the biggest effect will be the way people listen - streaming, smaller ensembles, more varied performance locations. 

Anyway, it's hard for me to believe that anyone besides contemporary composers should decide what music to write. It's up to them. They create the music. We can only expect them to write what moves them.


----------



## SONNET CLV

starthrower said:


> The ear does become accustomed to [atonal music] after enough listening. But there's the personal taste aspect as well. Some listeners enjoy this kind of music and others don't. It's not a failure to my ears. You are making generalized statements. No, it's not for everybody. But the same can be said for any unpopular music. Many jazz listeners hate free jazz but that doesn't make it a failure. Ornette Coleman and Archie Shepp are not failures in the history of improvised music.


This is a fine example of why starthrower's posts are well worth reading.

Nicely said.

Of course, the same might be said of any popular music as well. Not everyone enjoys what is popular. I, for instance, don't enjoy popular Hip Hop so much. I'll opt for free jazz instead.


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## DaveM

20centrfuge said:


> IMHO, Wolfgang Rihm is a someone who can make exquisite music in that gray area between tonality and atonality. This is a prime example for me:


In my book, that is far more atonal than not.


----------



## DaveM

mmsbls said:


> Anyway, it's hard for me to believe that anyone besides contemporary composers should decide what music to write. It's up to them. They create the music. We can only expect them to write what moves them.


IMO, the farther away modern or contemporary music moves from tonal music, the less the composer cares about what the listener thinks. I'm surprised by the statement (or maybe not) '_We can only expect them to write what moves them.'_ It implies that whether it moves the listener or not is irrelevant.

But then, in fact, that's why I think some of the more bizarre music that, by some is actually called CM (not referring to atonal music), appeals to so relatively few: The cacophony going on in the head of the composer happens to resonate with listeners by happenstance rather than by any attempt to attract them.


----------



## Mandryka

DaveM said:


> IMO, the farther away modern or contemporary music moves from tonal music, the less the composer cares about what the listener thinks. I'm surprised by the statement (or maybe not) '_We can only expect them to write what moves them.'_ It implies that whether it moves the listener or not is irrelevant.
> 
> But then, in fact, that's why I think some of the more bizarre music that, by some is actually called CM (not referring to atonal music) appeals to so relatively few: The cacophony going on in the head of the composer happens to resonate with listeners by happenstance rather than by any attempt to attract them.


In my limited experience this is true of some composers, but none of the composers I know have a significant audience.

However, it probably isn't true of successful composers. Pierre Boulez was very concerned about listeners' perceptions, as was Julius Eastman. Among living prcactising composers, we know that Richard Barrett aims to attract and effect an audience.

So no, I think you're wrong.


----------



## starthrower

The quality of the music is what matters. A scratch and screech atonal string quartet with no enchanting or beautiful qualities is going to appeal to me about as much as some new consonance rehash that sounds like I've heard it all before.


----------



## mmsbls

DaveM said:


> IMO, the farther away modern or contemporary music moves from tonal music, the less the composer cares about what the listener thinks. I'm surprised by the statement (or maybe not) '_We can only expect them to write what moves them.'_ It implies that whether it moves the listener or not is irrelevant.
> 
> But then, in fact, that's why I think some of the more bizarre music that, by some is actually called CM (not referring to atonal music) appeals to so relatively few: The cacophony going on in the head of the composer happens to resonate with listeners by happenstance rather than by any attempt to attract them.


I suspect that contemporary composers roughly know their audience. For some, their audience is the "average" classical music listener. Maybe those composers write predominantly tonal works with clear melodies. Certainly many contemporary composers write tonal works. For others, their audience is a different set of listeners who are less interested in new, purely tonal works and who are looking for music that's not in a traditional style or even close to that.

I'm not an artist so I have little feeling for how to create new music. All I've ever heard is how important it is to create one's personal art. Something different from others. Maybe not completely different but different. There's been hundreds of years of compositions written in the CPT style. I suspect it's very hard to find new ways of writing in that style.

The bottom line is that there are an enormous number of listeners and their tastes vary considerably. There's lots of contemporary music written in a style you would enjoy. There's also lots of contemporary music written in styles I enjoy (including tonal works). I think the diversity of styles is actually a wonderful part of contemporary music.


----------



## DaveM

Mandryka said:


> In my limited experience this is true of some composers, but none of the composers I know have a significant audience.
> 
> However, it probably isn't true of successful composers. Pierre Boulez was very concerned about listeners' perceptions, as was Julius Eastman. Among living prcactising composers, we know that Richard Barrett aims to attract and effect an audience.
> 
> So no, I think you're wrong.


I don't know what to make of a response that starts with 'this is true of some composers' and ends with 'you're wrong.' Sounds like I was right about something. 

I have never found any evidence that Boulez cared much about what his listeners liked or not. In fact, IMO he seemed aware that much of the traditional CM listeners didn't like his music. Typical of Boulez can be found in his quote, '_More and more I find that in order to create effectively one has to consider delirium and, yes, organize it.._'

From my reading of Eastman or Barrett, they may have been concerned about listeners' perceptions, but not because they were trying to compose music that resonated with those perceptions, but more because their music wasn't rising to those perceptions. Eastman and Barrett wasn't/hasn't been drawing much of an audience.

From the Eastman Wiki: 'Despondent about what he saw as a dearth of worthy professional opportunities, Eastman grew increasingly dependent on drugs after 1983.... As Eastman's notational methods were loose and open to interpretation, revival of his music has been a difficult task, dependent on people who worked with him.'

From the Barrett Wiki: 'Barrett's compositional techniques, which derive equally and indistinguishably from serial, stochastic and intuitive methods, have since the mid-1980s made extensive use of computer programs he has developed himself (Warnaby 2001). He regards free improvisation as a method of composition rather than as a different or opposed kind of musical activity.'


----------



## flamencosketches

> 'More and more I find that in order to create effectively one has to consider delirium and, yes, organize it..'


What does this have anything to do with Boulez and whether he cared about the perception of his music? Boulez is a composer (and conductor) who spent a lifetime carefully cultivating an "avant-garde" persona to inform the way that listeners would think about his music. He was a great composer, in my book, but very self-conscious, not unlike a Bruckner in that way.


----------



## 1996D

starthrower said:


> The ear does become accustomed to it after enough listening. But there's the personal taste aspect as well. Some listeners enjoy this kind of music and others don't. It's not a failure to my ears. You are making generalized statements. No, it's not for everybody. But the same can be said for any unpopular music. Many jazz listeners hate free jazz but that doesn't make it a failure. Ornette Coleman and Archie Shepp are not failures in the history of improvised music.


It failed in what Schoenberg expected of it. I'm certain that if he knew people wouldn't get used to it he would've continued to write in the style of Verklarte Nacht instead.

His ambition was always to change the world, not to appeal to 0,001% of the population, so yes it was a failure. He wouldn't have dedicated his life to serialism, putting great effort into it no less (using classical forms) if he didn't think that the whole world would appreciate it one day.

The experiment was a miscalculation, he fell in love with the blank slate theory.


----------



## flamencosketches

1996D said:


> It failed in what Schoenberg expected of it. I'm certain that if he knew people wouldn't get used to it he would've continued to write in the style of Verklarte Nacht instead.
> 
> His ambition was always to change the world, not to appeal to 0,001% of the population, so yes it was a failure. He wouldn't have dedicated his life to serialism, putting great effort into it no less (using classical forms) if he didn't think that the whole world would appreciate it one day.
> 
> The experiment was a miscalculation, he fell in love with the blank slate theory.


You clearly do not understand Schoenberg's work. Moreover, it appears you do not understand the concept of artistic development at all. Finally, it scarcely needs noting that you continue to prove, as you have done time and time again, that your understanding and comprehension of the music of the 20th century is next to zero. Your inability to understand and willingness to ignore an entire century and change worth of music makes clear to me, at least, that whatever music you will produce in this lifetime will be insignificant.


----------



## 1996D

mmsbls said:


> 3) That person believes there is something inappropriate about contemporary music (e.g. non-tonal music). The music is in some sense bad for society.


Even if you revel in what is bad for society true despair can't exist without hope, and there certainly is a lack of the latter in contemporary music. Whichever way you look at it music today is lacking.

Composers today are self absorbed navel-gazers with no understanding of the world and that's a crime: it's absolutely essential for the artist to understand his surroundings and be able to put them in historical context, to then be able to project a positive future.


----------



## 1996D

flamencosketches said:


> You clearly do not understand Schoenberg's work. Moreover, it appears you do not understand the concept of artistic development at all. Finally, it scarcely needs noting that you continue to prove, as you have done time and time again, that your understanding and comprehension of the music of the 20th century is next to zero. Your inability to understand and willingness to ignore an entire century and change worth of music makes clear to me, at least, that whatever music you will produce in this lifetime will be insignificant.


You should really watch the 1973 Bernstein lectures.


----------



## DaveM

flamencosketches said:


> What does this have anything to do with Boulez and whether he cared about the perception of his music? Boulez is a composer (and conductor) who spent a lifetime carefully cultivating an "avant-garde" persona to inform the way that listeners would think about his music. He was a great composer, in my book, but very self-conscious, not unlike a Bruckner in that way.


That was one of a number of obscure quotes by Boulez that make it hard to figure out who he regarded his audience to be or whether he cared. Personally, I don't regard someone composing music emanating from organized delirium as caring much about how it is perceived.


----------



## DaveM

mmsbls said:


> I suspect that contemporary composers roughly know their audience. For some, their audience is the "average" classical music listener. Maybe those composers write predominantly tonal works with clear melodies. Certainly many contemporary composers write tonal works. For others, their audience is a different set of listeners who are less interested in new, purely tonal works and who are looking for music that's not in a traditional style or even close to that.
> 
> I'm not an artist so I have little feeling for how to create new music. All I've ever heard is how important it is to create one's personal art. Something different from others. Maybe not completely different but different. There's been hundreds of years of compositions written in the CPT style. I suspect it's very hard to find new ways of writing in that style.
> 
> The bottom line is that there are an enormous number of listeners and their tastes vary considerably. There's lots of contemporary music written in a style you would enjoy. There's also lots of contemporary music written in styles I enjoy (including tonal works). I think the diversity of styles is actually a wonderful part of contemporary music.


Fwiw, I am posting with the OP in mind, not with the purpose of a contemporary music diatribe. That said, are there really 'an enormous number of listeners' now? Classical music has fallen in the collective music interest from everything I can see.

There used to be classical music movies: Katherine Hepburn playing Clara Schumann, Elizabeth Taylor playing a woman crazy about a CM pianist and violinist in Rhapsody (major portions of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto and Rachmaninoff #2 piano concerto played) and Oscar-winning Amadeus. There used to be classical music performances on evening TV shows. There used to be CM recordings selling well enough that many new recordings could be expected every month. Not so much or nothing like this is happening now.

There is probably more than one reason for this, but it isn't helped by the fact that too many modern/contemporary composers are composing music that is not designed to attract new CM listeners. On the contrary, it appears aimed at a small demographic consisting of those who apparently like a lot of dissonance, timbre and various forms of noise. All the more power to those who like that stuff, but that isn't going to grow CM ongoing.


----------



## mmsbls

1996D said:


> Even if you revel in what is bad for society true despair can't exist without hope, and there certainly is a lack of the latter in contemporary music. Whichever way you look at it music today is lacking.


We understand that _you_ feel contemporary music is lacking, but I assume you realize that many on TC do not feel that way. So no, it's not "whichever way you look at it music today is lacking."



1996D said:


> Composers today are self absorbed navel-gazers with no understanding of the world and that's a crime: ...


In all honesty, do you know many contemporary composers? Do you know _any_ well enough to make such a extreme statement?


----------



## starthrower

Schoenberg was such a failure that his compositions are still being performed and recorded a hundred years later. And that includes both serial and tonal compositions. Not to mention his disciples Berg, and Webern. And you can't stop talking about him in this thread. But your right, he must be a failure who made no impact on the world of music. He should have kept cranking out late romantic music until 1950 so he could be dismissed as old fashioned like Vaughan Williams, and Rachmaninov. There's room for both in the world whether you like it or not.


----------



## 1996D

mmsbls said:


> We understand that _you_ feel contemporary music is lacking, but I assume you realize that many on TC do not feel that way. So no, it's not "whichever way you look at it music today is lacking."


The world feels it's lacking, it's culturally insignificant in every stratum - you have Harvard students listening to rap instead.



> In all honesty, do you know many contemporary composers? Do you know _any_ well enough to make such a extreme statement?


I know they're making no impact on the world, DaveM put it perfectly #88.

A change is desperately needed.


----------



## mmsbls

DaveM said:


> Fwiw, I am posting with the OP in mind, not with the purpose of a contemporary music diatribe. That said, are there really 'an enormous number of listeners' now? Classical music has fallen in the collective music interest from everything I can see.


Well, not enormous from a percentage standpoint, but many 10s of millions. In fact, given increases in population and access to music online, I'm not sure if fewer people listen to classical music now compared to 50 or 100 years ago.



DaveM said:


> There is probably more than one reason for this, but it isn't helped by the fact that too many modern/contemporary composers are composing music that is not designed to attract new CM listeners. On the contrary, it appears aimed at a small demographic consisting of those who apparently like a lot of dissonance, timbre and various forms of noise. All the more power to those who like that stuff, but that isn't going to grow CM ongoing.


TC has had many discussions on how to increase classical music listeners. No one seems to know. Some feel composers should compose music more in line with Romantic music. Others think concerts should feature much more modern and contemporary music. I have no idea.

If you met with a number of contemporary composers who composer music you dislike and you talked to them about what they compose, what would you say to them and how do you think they would respond?


----------



## 1996D

mmsbls said:


> If you met with a number of contemporary composers who composer music you dislike and you talked to them about what they compose, what would you say to them and how do you think they would respond?


You can't change them, there needs to be a new wave.


----------



## mmsbls

1996D said:


> The world feels it's lacking, it's culturally insignificant in every stratum - you have Harvard students listening to rap instead.


I don't enjoy rap, but I think it's much more relevant today than any classical music (contemporary or CPT) so I can understand lots of people listening to rap over classical music.



1996D said:


> I know they're making no impact on the world, DaveM put it perfectly #88.
> 
> A change is desperately needed.


OK, you want contemporary music to change. Perhaps some day you'll have some idea of how you wish it to change.


----------



## mmsbls

1996D said:


> You can't change them, there needs to be a new wave.


Again, I assume you know none of the contemporary composers discussed on TC so perhaps your certainty is not well founded.


----------



## mrdoc

1996D said:


> You can't change them, there needs to be a new wave.


Yeh a wave of goodbye :wave:


----------



## 1996D

mmsbls said:


> Again, I assume you know none of the contemporary composers discussed on TC so perhaps your certainty is not well founded.


What would you say is their median age, and how accessible to the general public is their music?



mrdoc said:


> Yeh a wave of goodbye :wave:


Goodbye to them, yes.


----------



## Strange Magic

With the advent of modern communication, music streaming, radio (still around), concerts, and the phenomenon of YouTube, the possibilities to hear every conceivable kind of music are literally near-infinite in today's world. A gigantic pie, growing ever larger, and constantly being divided up into more and more slices, makes it almost certain that any particular enthusiast for any particular musical genre may or will feel more and more isolated as they sense others in the expanding universe of possible musics are moving away from them in other directions. But that is a myopic view--the lovers of CM are there and always will be there, somewhere; one can find some of them right here at TC. It's just that things are so much different now, and will remain so.


----------



## 1996D

Strange Magic said:


> With the advent of modern communication, music streaming, radio (still around), concerts, and the phenomenon of YouTube, the possibilities to hear every conceivable kind of music are literally near-infinite in today's world. A gigantic pie, growing ever larger, and constantly being divided up into more and more slices, makes it almost certain that any particular enthusiast for any particular musical genre may or will feel more and more isolated as they sense others in the expanding universe of possible musics are moving away from them in other directions. But that is a myopic view--the lovers of CM are there and always will be there, somewhere; one can find some of them right here at TC. It's just that things are so much different now, and will remain so.


I think we all understand that. However, every genre has new music being created that is comparable to the quality of the original source of the genre, except for classical music.

The latter has fallen in the bubble of atonality and experimentation; it has been corrupted.


----------



## Strange Magic

1996D said:


> I think we all understand that. However, every genre has new music being created that is comparable to the quality of the original source of the genre, except for classical music.
> 
> The latter has fallen in the bubble of atonality and experimentation; it has been corrupted.


You might find solace in Art Rock's past and current threads now on obscure music, some of it fairly recent. I'm hearing nice things--they're relatively short, selected for that reason, and thus not vast, portentous utterances, but quite pleasing--many of them--to the ear.

Sharing obscure favourites 2 (READ FIRST POST)


----------



## 1996D

Strange Magic said:


> You might find solace in Art Rock's past and current threads now on obscure music, some of it fairly recent. I'm hearing nice things--they're relatively short, selected for that reason, and thus not vast, portentous utterances, but quite pleasing--many of them--to the ear.
> 
> Sharing obscure favourites 2 (READ FIRST POST)


They're all dead or very near to being. There is also nothing new about their music, about its intentions.

I'm really trying to imagine what it would take to create a new movement, one that would grasp the world's complete attention. Music alone isn't enough, there needs to be something that inspires the right minds, some sort of cause, or perhaps an artistic ideology, probably both.

I know that it needs to be rooted in the world, in tangible reality.


----------



## mmsbls

1996D said:


> What would you say is their median age, and how accessible to the general public is their music?


I'm not sure how to answer your first question. Contemporary composers are all those still alive and still composing. Some are in their 20s while others are over 80. Both the average and median age of the composers in the Exploring Contemporary Composers thread is 66. Likely the median of all contemporary composers would be less.

Some contemporary composers write very accessible music (John Williams) while other write remarkably inaccessible music (Elena Rykova). The variation in music is quite large. I once spent some time simply working through the composers listed on the Naxos Music Library. The vast majority are contemporary, and of those, the majority are rather accessible.


----------



## 1996D

mmsbls said:


> I'm not sure how to answer your first question. Contemporary composers are all those still alive and still composing. Some are in their 20s while others are over 80. Both the average and median age of the composers in the Exploring Contemporary Composers thread is 66. Likely the median of all contemporary composers would be less.
> 
> Some contemporary composers write very accessible music (John Williams) while other write remarkably inaccessible music (Elena Rykova). The variation in music is quite large. I once spent some time simply working through the composers listed on the Naxos Music Library. The vast majority are contemporary, and of those, the majority are rather accessible.


I'd put contemporary music in two categories; music that is made to make money; and experimental/mirroring society/atonal music.

There is no music that looks to the future positively, that seeks to inspire something greater out of us.


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## DaveM

1996D said:


> I think we all understand that. However, every genre has new music being created that is comparable to the quality of the original source of the genre, except for classical music...


IMO, popular music has deteriorated over the last 2 decades. Less melody, more rhythm and beat and music that sounds much the same. I understand the attraction of rap, but while the words/poetry changes, the music, what there is of it, sounds derivative.


----------



## Red Terror

DaveM said:


> IMO, popular music has deteriorated over the last 2 decades. Less melody, more rhythm and beat and music that sounds much the same. I understand the attraction of rap, but while the words/poetry changes, the music, what there is of it, sounds derivative.


I like interesting rhythms and beats, but most popular music doesn't provide that. As you say, much of it sounds the same-BORING.


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## Woodduck

"Classical" is a cultural concept, not a musical one. We don't have a classical culture. Classical culture aspires to truth and permanence. Ours aspires to impact, disposability, and above all profitability. The hope that classical music will have a future is based on nostalgia, mostly for a time before we were even born. Fifty years ago, I used to commiserate with music-loving friends about the wretched state of music and wonder what the future would hold. The future is here, and we now understand that the classical world was dying even as we wondered. The works being commissioned now from our so-called "classical" composers will not last their own generation unless they are recorded, and those recordings will be bought by very few and loved by fewer. There will never be another Bach, Mozart, Verdi or Sibelius. The feast is over, and we are the dogs haggling over the crumbs under the table.

Well, everything dies eventually. It was great while it lasted, and I have my CDs.


----------



## Nereffid

1996D said:


> What would you say is their median age, and how accessible to the general public is their music?





1996D said:


> Even if you revel in what is bad for society true despair can't exist without hope, and there certainly is a lack of the latter in contemporary music. Whichever way you look at it music today is lacking.
> 
> Composers today are self absorbed navel-gazers with no understanding of the world and that's a crime: it's absolutely essential for the artist to understand his surroundings and be able to put them in historical context, to then be able to project a positive future.


Of the living composers I listen to regularly:
Philip Glass, Steve Reich and Arvo Pärt are in their 80s
John Adams, Peteris Vasks and Gavin Bryars are in their 70s
James MacMillan, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Michael Gordon, Jonathan Dove, John Luther Adams, Paul Moravec and Michael Daugherty are in their 60s
Max Richter, Osvaldo Golijov, Aaron Jay Kernis and Derek Bermel are in their 50s
Donnacha Dennehy, Mason Bates, Fazil Say, Anna Thorvaldsdottir and Eric Whitacre are in their 40s
Caroline Shaw, Nico Muhly, Mohammed Fairouz and Dobrinka Tabakova are in their 30s

Their music is as accessible to "the general public" as anyone else's is. The idea that their music lacks hope and that the composers have no understanding of the world is just laughable. I absolutely support your right not to like any of this music; your right to talk b***ocks about it, not so much.


----------



## HerbertNorman

DaveM said:


> IMO, popular music has deteriorated over the last 2 decades. Less melody, more rhythm and beat and music that sounds much the same. I understand the attraction of rap, but while the words/poetry changes, the music, what there is of it, sounds derivative.


This hits the nail on the head. I am still young (early thirties) and I am still exploring a lot of composers. I fell in love with the music of the early Romantic era when I was 12-14 years old. I was predominantly listening to rock and metal back then. I still like all three styles...yet I find the music of the last say 10 - 15 years (for each of the mentioned styles along with other popular music) mostly boring too...
Thanks to tips on TC I am exploring other composers, yet those of the romantic era and classical era remain my favourites... I think one has to be open for new music, broadminded that is . I listened to some of Arvo Pärt's music yesterday and I am motivated to listen to more...


----------



## Enthusiast

DaveM said:


> IMO, the farther away modern or contemporary music moves from tonal music, the less the composer cares about what the listener thinks. I'm surprised by the statement (or maybe not) '_We can only expect them to write what moves them.'_ It implies that whether it moves the listener or not is irrelevant.
> 
> But then, in fact, that's why I think some of the more bizarre music that, by some is actually called CM (not referring to atonal music), appeals to so relatively few: The cacophony going on in the head of the composer happens to resonate with listeners by happenstance rather than by any attempt to attract them.





> I have never found any evidence that Boulez cared much about what his listeners liked or not. In fact, IMO he seemed aware that much of the traditional CM listeners didn't like his music. Typical of Boulez can be found in his quote, 'More and more I find that in order to create effectively one has to consider delirium and, yes, organize it..'


I hadn't thought it of Boulez before but the quotes and attitudes attributed to him (and about him in your quoting of mmsbls) in these quotes makes him seem to possess a rather old fashioned Romantic sensibility.

Perhaps a more modern music would be more democratic - and that seems to be what you are arguing for - but I don't suppose we would like the result of that either.

For myself I have been reading threads like this one, or arguments of a similar nature, much longer than I have been listening to Boulez. I was pleasantly surprised when I did pluck up the courage to listen to him that his music is actually very open and accessible with much of it seeming a small and recognisable step on from music I already knew. Admittedly, being inspired by it took a little longer and came with familiarity and delving into the different layers of his music: the enjoyable part was somehow not where I initially searched for it (if that makes sense).


----------



## Enthusiast

DaveM said:


> IMO, popular music has deteriorated over the last 2 decades. Less melody, more rhythm and beat and music that sounds much the same. I understand the attraction of rap, but while the words/poetry changes, the music, what there is of it, sounds derivative.


I don't know. I lost track of most popular music and its various branches a long time ago and it is a while since I heard anything popular that I liked. I am not sure how I would have heard it, though. I often found the mainstream of popular music boring. But what I wonder is whether there is _*anything *_in our world today that you like as much or more than what we had in the past?


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## Mandryka

Re Boulez's attitude to accessibility, just read his Collège de France lectures. He felt that the key thing was to ensure that the music contains a theme which the listener could be aware of, that's exactly what you find in his music after 1970.


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## flamencosketches

1996D said:


> You should really watch the 1973 Bernstein lectures.


I have seen the whole thing, as I've written already in this thread. It's a great series. There is nothing in the lectures that contradicts what I've told you. You're gonna have to find a better answer than that.


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## starthrower

As Woodduck stated, we have the recordings. As far as the future is concerned I'm more worried about clean water and an inhabitable planet.


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## Strange Magic

Woodduck said:


> "Classical" is a cultural concept, not a musical one. We don't have a classical culture. Classical culture aspires to truth and permanence. Ours aspires to impact, disposability, and above all profitability. The hope that classical music will have a future is based on nostalgia, mostly for a time before we were even born. Fifty years ago, I used to commiserate with music-loving friends about the wretched state of music and wonder what the future would hold. The future is here, and we now understand that the classical world was dying even as we wondered. The works being commissioned now from our so-called "classical" composers will not last their own generation unless they are recorded, and those recordings will be bought by very few and loved by fewer. There will never be another Bach, Mozart, Verdi or Sibelius. The feast is over, and we are the dogs haggling over the crumbs under the table.
> 
> Well, everything dies eventually. It was great while it lasted, and I have my CDs.


Several things can be true at the same time. The slice of the pie called "Classical Music" is not being refreshed at the rate perhaps of other slices, but there are a myriad of other pie slices now and it is difficult (to put it mildly) to sample--let alone become familiar with--a now seemingly infinite array of other slices. YouTube now exposes us to musics we (I) never heard of before--just since joining TC, I've discovered Gharnati, Malhun, various other African and Asian genres, Sacred Harp singing, assorted musical hybrids marrying cultures, instruments, rhythms, etc. The advent of the New Stasis, as Leonard Meyer pointed out, has both negative (see above quote) and positive aspects. Many musics regarded as "classic", including Classic Rock, are currently moribund--frozen in time--and the now ubiquitous, instantaneous nature of information transfer makes the gestation period required to fully develop a mature new music or art very difficult to realize. But buried in the white noise of today's music and art scene are gems, new gems, waiting for each to discover. And I dread the day when some new cohering force of sufficient power reimposes a New Order upon global culture such that a new Unity arises in the arts; it will be like nothing we have seen before.


----------



## DaveM

Enthusiast said:


> I don't know. I lost track of most popular music and its various branches a long time ago and it is a while since I heard anything popular that I liked. I am not sure how I would have heard it, though. I often found the mainstream of popular music boring. But what I wonder is whether there is _*anything *_in our world today that you like as much or more than what we had in the past?


Well, Fantasy Football, streaming services such as Netflix, listening to music with True Wireless Earbuds and an iPhone XR, Audible books where best sellers on Audible come out the same day as the written book, Amazon...

But if you're talking music:
Popular music: like relatively little now, but I hung in there until a decade ago: big fan of The Killers, their 2009 Royal Albert Hall concert in London (on DVD) was one of the great rock concerts of all time, fan of Cold Play, but they peaked in 2004, big fan of Keane, but they peaked circa 2012, love Christina Perri, like Lady Gaga.

Classical music: like very little now. But have found contemporary composers such as the American composer George Frederick Bristow: his Symphony #2 is IMO better than almost anything being composed now:






But no, that work was composed in 1856. Bristow worked for decades in Baltimore, Maryland in the U.S. So, I spend my time finding treasures from the early 20th and mid-late 19th century of which there are many and they are IMO so much better than that from most contemporary composers who wouldn't know a melody if it rose up and slapped them in the face.


----------



## Room2201974

I'm not one to bemoan the supposed downward spiral of modern music either CM or pop/rock. I believe that Sturgeon's Law holds true for all time periods. But with previous time periods we have had sufficient time to sift through to find that 10%. With the explosion of eclecticism in modern music mentioned by LB in the threadstart there are more and different musics to be considered now. It makes the sifting harder...but the 10% is still out there.

I mean gee, I wish there was a modern "opera" out there that appealed to the masses like _The Magic Flute_, where it wasn't just a collection of songs, but used true compositional techniques in which several themes underwent thematic transformation. And the composer's skill was so strong as to manipulate the audience's emotions so that there were no dry eyes in the house at curtain time. Surely no composer of such rank is known to us today.


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## Fabulin

Room2201974 said:


> I mean gee, I wish there was a modern "opera" out there that appealed to the masses like _The Magic Flute_, where it wasn't just a collection of songs, but used true compositional techniques in which several themes underwent thematic transformation. And the composer's skill was so strong as to manipulate the audience's emotions so that there were no dry eyes in the house at curtain time. Surely no composer of such rank is known to us today.


Looks like a part of a dictionary definition under the picture of John Williams to me.


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## Enthusiast

DaveM said:


> But no, that work was composed in 1856. Bristow worked for decades in Baltimore, Maryland in the U.S. So, I spend my time finding treasures from the early 20th and mid-late 19th century of which there are many and they are IMO so much better than that from most contemporary composers who wouldn't know a melody if it rose up and slapped them in the face.


I am the opposite. Faced with a prospect of exploring byroads from the past or trying to find the odd towering genius among the contemporary I go for the latter every time. At least the music that may one day turn out to have been minor is written for us now and quite a lot is turning out to be at least as meaningful and rewarding to me as, say, Saint-Saens. Some goes a long way beyond that for me. I did try to explore Baroque, Classical and Romantic byroads and had some enjoyable experiences but think my time is more rewardingly spent with the contemporary. I do also listen to quite a lot of pre-Baroque music these days and have found some of it marvelous ... but I am a long way from having a feeling for how this music developed. Now that _is _a challenge.


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## millionrainbows

I am so happy to be a part of the modern world, and to have the privilege to watch the old paradigms and warhorses die, finally. That old classical crap held on for a long time, didn't it, like a struggling cockroach. Well, it's finally dead, and we can usher in a new world in which tonality is_ dead_, 4'33" is finally recognized as the great masterpiece it is, Elliott Carter is the new norm, and exciting new vistas open up on the electronic/computer front. Bring it on, and throw another Wagner score on the fire!
Who needs all that religious baggage from the past, anyway? We're enlightened, we're rational, we don't need some antiquated concept of "God" anyway, and especially not of Christ! We are marching to a brave new world, with our banner of secular humanism leading the way! All things relate to Man, and Man only!


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## DaveM

millionrainbows said:


> I am so happy to be a part of the modern world, and to have the privilege to watch the old paradigms and warhorses die, finally. That old classical crap held on for a long time, didn't it, like a struggling cockroach. Well, it's finally dead, and we can usher in a new world in which tonality is_ dead_, 4'33" is finally recognized as the great masterpiece it is, Elliott Carter is the new norm, and exciting new vistas open up on the electronic/computer front. Bring it on, and throw another Wagner score on the fire!
> Who needs all that religious baggage from the past, anyway? We're enlightened, we're rational, we don't need some antiquated concept of "God" anyway, and especially not of Christ! We are marching to a brave new world, with our banner of secular humanism leading the way! All things relate to Man, and Man only!


These days, I never know whether you're serious or just someone wandering around with a lit match looking for some gasoline.


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## Strange Magic

That wretched secular humanism! Let's bring back bastinado, the knout, the stake, the wheel, the rack, and restore the Old Order when people believed what was good for them--or else.


----------



## 1996D

flamencosketches said:


> You clearly do not understand Schoenberg's work. Moreover, it appears you do not understand the concept of artistic development at all. Finally, it scarcely needs noting that you continue to prove, as you have done time and time again, that your understanding and comprehension of the music of the 20th century is next to zero. Your inability to understand and willingness to ignore an entire century and change worth of music makes clear to me, at least, that whatever music you will produce in this lifetime will be insignificant.


I don't get what you're staying, artistic development into what? It's a degradation, how can it be called development?

The development happens when it comes full circle, not in its period of decline. Schoenberg's music deteriorated, and he didn't intend for it to, he genuinely thought that people were born blank slates and that the human ear would completely adapt to atonal music -- otherwise he wouldn't have written what he knew sounded bad to him.

He made a bet, took a risk, and it failed.


----------



## 1996D

Woodduck said:


> "Classical" is a cultural concept, not a musical one. We don't have a classical culture. Classical culture aspires to truth and permanence. Ours aspires to impact, disposability, and above all profitability. The hope that classical music will have a future is based on nostalgia, mostly for a time before we were even born. Fifty years ago, I used to commiserate with music-loving friends about the wretched state of music and wonder what the future would hold. The future is here, and we now understand that the classical world was dying even as we wondered. The works being commissioned now from our so-called "classical" composers will not last their own generation unless they are recorded, and those recordings will be bought by very few and loved by fewer. There will never be another Bach, Mozart, Verdi or Sibelius. The feast is over, and we are the dogs haggling over the crumbs under the table.
> 
> Well, everything dies eventually. It was great while it lasted, and I have my CDs.


Things change, study history and you'll see the cycles. There are classical eras, periods of cultural decline, and periods of buildup into what will eventually become a classical era, I believe we're in one of those or very near one.

Things might get worse before they get better, but I see great things ahead.


----------



## 1996D

DaveM said:


> IMO, popular music has deteriorated over the last 2 decades. Less melody, more rhythm and beat and music that sounds much the same. I understand the attraction of rap, but while the words/poetry changes, the music, what there is of it, sounds derivative.


I disagree, pop music is as good now as it's ever been, in a way it's better, it does its purpose faster and more effectively. Songs are shorter and there are no longer albums filled with bad songs and one hit, every song now is made with several hooks and meant to sell on its own. The genre has been refined and perfected to make as much money as possible.


----------



## DaveM

1996D said:


> I disagree, pop music is as good now as it's ever been, in a way it's better, it does its purpose faster and more effectively. Songs are shorter and there are no longer albums filled with bad songs and one hit, every song now is made with several hooks and meant to sell on its own. The genre has been refined and perfected to make as much money as possible.


My guess is that you haven't been on the planet long enough to compare past pop music with the present.


----------



## hammeredklavier

Woodduck said:


> we are the dogs haggling over the crumbs under the table.


I'm suddenly reminded of this image


----------



## pianozach

Enthusiast said:


> I don't know. I lost track of most popular music and its various branches a long time ago and it is a while since I heard anything popular that I liked. I am not sure how I would have heard it, though. I often found the mainstream of popular music boring. But what I wonder is whether there is _*anything *_in our world today that you like as much or more than what we had in the past?


I'll go with the 10% rule on this one. I don't pay attention to pop music the way I did when I was a teen, so, for the most part, today's pop music sounds mostly like crap: Generic, derivative, dull, boring, repetitive.

BUT . . . every once in a while I stumble across something new which I actually like. This month it was Billie Eilish. Of course, she captured a New Artist of the Year at the Grammies, and the hype intrigued me, so I sat down and gave it a listen, and discovered I loved the songs, the arrangements, the mixing, the production, the backing tracks, the concepts the vibe. Probably not so impressed with her singing voice, but that's OK.

I take the time occasionally to actually listen to something new now and again, and occasionally it pays off.



1996D said:


> I disagree, pop music is as good now as it's ever been, in a way it's better, it does its purpose faster and more effectively. Songs are shorter and there are no longer albums filled with bad songs and one hit, every song now is made with several hooks and meant to sell on its own. The genre has been refined and perfected to make as much money as possible.





DaveM said:


> My guess is that you haven't been on the planet long enough to compare past pop music with the present.


While producers have distilled the formula for "hit" records down to a science to maximize airplay and profits, few of those albums and singles have staying power. Now that I think about it, a lot of songs are released as singles or EPs.

I can name several albums from the past that seem to be filled with great songs, with very little in the way of filler - perfect or near-perfect never-skip-a-track albums:

Band on the Run
All Things Must Pass
Rumours
In the Eye of the Storm
Tapestry
The Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
Graceland
Please Please Me
Revolver
Boston
Wish You Were Here
Fantasia soundtrack
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
The Byrds Greatest Hits
Crosby, Stills & Nash
Frampton Comes Alive!
Electric Ladyland
Magical Mystery Tour
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Bridge Over Troubled Water
Abbey Road 
John Barleycorn Must Die
The Six Wives of Henry VIII
A Wizard, a True Star
Bohemian Rhapsody

And I could go on . . .


----------



## 1996D

DaveM said:


> My guess is that you haven't been on the planet long enough to compare past pop music with the present.


If you grew up with certain music you'll obviously have an emotional connection to it, but as far as pure musical analysis goes, pop music has not gotten worse. Honestly it's always been commercial.


----------



## 1996D

pianozach said:


> While producers have distilled the formula for "hit" records down to a science to maximize airplay and profits, few of those albums and singles have staying power. Now that I think about it, a lot of songs are released as singles or EPs.


This is a pointless discussion, it's been well documented how old timers always think current music is bad or worse than that of their time. I'm unbiased in this because I dislike both old and new pop - there is no significant difference musically.

It's money oriented.


----------



## janxharris

1996D said:


> This is a pointless discussion, it's been well documented how old timers always think current music is bad or worse than that of their time. I'm unbiased in this because I dislike both old and new pop - there is no significant difference musically.
> 
> It's money oriented.


Is your opinion a demonstrable objective fact?


----------



## 1996D

janxharris said:


> Is your opinion a demonstrable objective fact?


You deny that pop music is money oriented? It's called the music _industry_.

The whole point of our society for the last hundred years (more actually) has been to accumulate money, that's what everything was designed for. If anything now that we're getting closer to having enough money for everyone, music and art as a whole will again be able to flourish.

That's what a classical age is, all the past accumulation of wealth can finally give birth to something more.


----------



## janxharris

1996D said:


> You deny that pop music is money oriented? It's called the music _industry_.
> 
> The whole point of our society for the last hundred years has been to accumulate money, that's what's everything was designed for. If anything now that we're getting closer to having enough money for everyone, music and art as a whole will again be able to flourish.
> 
> That's what a classical age is, all the past accumulation of wealth can finally give birth to something more.


How do you define pop music?

There is nothing wrong with making music that people find interesting enough to pay for.


----------



## 1996D

janxharris said:


> How do you define pop music?
> 
> There is nothing wrong with making music that people find interesting enough to pay for.


Of course there is nothing wrong with it, society needed the wealth it generated. As far as artistically, it's very lacking, but you grew up with it so you like it.

He have a lot of money now, and things are looking very good.


----------



## janxharris

1996D said:


> Of course there is nothing wrong with it, society needed the wealth it generated. As far as artistically, it's very lacking, but you grew up with up with so you like it.
> 
> He have a lot of money now, and things are looking very good.


Without a definition of 'pop' then it's difficult to say if I like 'it'. Certainly though, I consider there is a lot of modern 'popular' music that is excellent. I'd say that Sturgeon's law applies to all genre's.

Personally - all my favourite music is of the classical sort - but I do value some 'popular' music as pretty close behind.


----------



## 1996D

janxharris said:


> Without a definition of 'pop' then it's difficult to say if I like 'it'. Certainly though, I consider there is a lot of modern 'popular' music that is excellent. I'd say that Sturgeon's law applies to all genre's.
> 
> Personally - all my favourite music is of the classical sort - but I do value some 'popular' music as pretty close behind.


I mostly agree, although it compares very poorly to classical music, it has its place.

The more I think about it the more I understand why classical music went on the path it did in the last hundred years. There simply wasn't opportunity for composers, it's not what society needed; it needed fast music that could quickly become popular and make money; encourage capitalism.

But things are different now, the chance is there for a strong classical music revival because of the fact that many of us don't lack money.


----------



## Enthusiast

1996D said:


> I don't get what you're staying, artistic development into what? It's a degradation, how can it be called development?
> 
> The development happens when it comes full circle, not in its period of decline. Schoenberg's music deteriorated, and he didn't intend for it to, he genuinely thought that people were born blank slates and that the human ear would completely adapt to atonal music -- otherwise he wouldn't have written what he knew sounded bad to him.
> 
> He made a bet, took a risk, and it failed.


I would be more inclined to take you seriously if you acknowledged - it is beyond any doubt - that Schoenberg's serial works have quite a substantial following these days. You can't just ignore that and parrot "he failed, he failed". You also need to tackle his influence on other first rank composers. If he failed, why does it seem that his music is the key to so much great music that followed?

Then you say



> Things change, study history and you'll see the cycles. There are classical eras, periods of cultural decline, and periods of buildup into what will eventually become a classical era, I believe we're in one of those or very near one.
> 
> Things might get worse before they get better, but I see great things ahead.


which is almost bizarre! Do you think we been in transition for the last 100 years and are now about to emerge into a world where composers suddenly produce something you like? What does that music sound like, I wonder? Is this about your appreciation of pop?

I wonder if you could tell us when precisely and how music went off the rails. Did it all go to pot or did some composers - Mahler? Strauss? Sibelius? Stravinsky? Bartok? Prokofiev? Shostakovich? Britten? - keep the lamp burning while others got lost?


----------



## 1996D

Enthusiast said:


> I would be more inclined to take you seriously if you acknowledged - it is beyond any doubt - that Schoenberg's serial works have quite a substantial following these days. You can't just ignore that and parrot "he failed, he failed". You also need to tackle his influence on other first rank composers. If he failed, why does it seem that his music is the key to so much great music that followed?


Well if he had succeeded he would be seen today as an equal to Bach and we'd all be listening to serial music. He did fail in what he sought to do.



> which is almost bizarre! Do you think we been in transition for the last 100 years and are now about to emerge into a world where composers suddenly produce something you like? What does that music sound like, I wonder? Is this about your appreciation of pop?
> 
> I wonder if you could tell us when precisely and how music went off the rails. Did it all go to pot or did some composers - Mahler? Strauss? Sibelius? Stravinsky? Bartok? Prokofiev? Shostakovich? Britten? - keep the lamp burning while others got lost?


I'm talking in general as far as societies or civilizations go. We're about to emerge into a great era and you bet the art will be fantastic.


----------



## Enthusiast

Thanks for not answering my main question (the one concerning where/when it all went wrong for you). I guess it refers to a period and music that you just have no interest in and therefore no properly considered judgment. 

Meanwhile, "Bach or bust" seems a barmy way of assessing the value of a composer. It leads to a view that very few of the composers since Bach (and most before him) are a waste of time for us. I feel sure that Schoenberg can reasonably be said to have equalled, or more, the achievement of many household names who composed between Bach and, say, 1920. 

Your optimism about the future of art is fascinating ... but where does this new great art come from? All art is built on what came before it. If you bulldoze all music in the last 100 years who will the new greats follow and respond to?


----------



## 1996D

Enthusiast said:


> Thanks for not answering my main question (the one concerning where/when it all went wrong for you). I guess it refers to a period and music that you just have no interest in and therefore no properly considered judgment.
> 
> Meanwhile, "Bach or bust" seems a barmy way of assessing the value of a composer. It leads to a view that very few of the composers since Bach (and most before him) are a waste of time for us. I feel sure that Schoenberg can reasonably be said to have equalled, or more, the achievement of many household names who composed between Bach and, say, 1920.
> 
> Your optimism about the future of art is fascinating ... but where does this new great art come from? All art is built on what came before it. If you bulldoze all music in the last 100 years who will the new greats follow and respond to?


By your logic all new art would take from pop music. This is not how it works, artists take off from where greatness is.

The Russian school from which Tchaikovsky emerged ignored all Romantic music--made it forbidden during formative years--and instead took off from Mozart. Today we don't have an obligation to take anything from the last hundred years, serialism can largely be ignored.

From the last classical age will a new classical age take off from, just as the Renaissance took off from classical antiquity.


----------



## janxharris

1996D said:


> By your logic all new art would take from pop music. This is not how it works, artists take off from where greatness is.
> 
> T*he Russian school from which Tchaikovsky emerged ignored all Romantic music*--made it forbidden during formative years--and instead took off from Mozart. *Today we don't have an obligation to take anything from the last hundred years, serialism can largely be ignored.*
> 
> *From the last classical age will a new classical age take off from, just as the Renaissance took off from classical antiquity*.


I am not following your argument at all 1996D (see higlighted). Perhaps you could make a case for what you are asserting - but where is it?


----------



## 1996D

janxharris said:


> I am not following your argument at all 1996D (see higlighted). Perhaps you could make a case for what you are asserting - but where is it?


The BS can be ignored, we can forge our society from what we want to, and equally our art. You'll see that the values from ages of excellence are similar, and this is why we've been accumulating all this money for, so that we can have our classical age.

What complaining artists during this time of wealth accumulation thought and produced can be ignored, this has no relevance to the future.


----------



## Enthusiast

1996D said:


> By your logic all new art would take from pop music. This is not how it works, artists take off from where greatness is.
> 
> The Russian school from which Tchaikovsky emerged ignored all Romantic music--made it forbidden during formative years--and instead took off from Mozart. Today we don't have an obligation to take anything from the last hundred years, serialism can largely be ignored.
> 
> From the last classical age will a new classical age take off from, just as the Renaissance took off from classical antiquity.


The word logic takes on a new meaning if you think it follows from what I have said that new art needs to take from pop music.

As for the rest - Tchaikovsky ignored and was ignorant of Romantic music? Is that what you are saying? Or are you merely suggesting that some aspects of his aesthetic led further back as a reaction against some aspects of Romanticism? Reacting against something is also a form of influence. Many composers felt they were reacting against what came immediately before them.

The reference to classicism taking off during the Renaissance by reference to classical antiquity is another example of your confusion: admiring and seeking to emulate are not the only forms of being influenced by. The fact is that noted composers have always had a detailed knowledge of what came before them and even the music they rejected as mistaken formed part of the platform that they built upon. Serious composers have never been able to ignore what came before them or to carry on in ignorance of it.

As you probably know, the return to the Classical was quite a feature of 20th Century music (Stravinsky etc.) and was partly a reaction against the excesses of the late Romantics. But it learned lessons from what the Romantics had done as well as reacting against it.


----------



## 1996D

Enthusiast said:


> As you probably know, the return to the Classical was quite a feature of 20th Century music (Stravinsky etc.) and was partly a reaction against the excesses of the late Romantics. But it learned lessons from what the Romantics had done as well as reacting against it.


I'll return to what Bernstein said of the music of the future "Eclectic but tonal".

The structure of course will be of the highest quality - take the best from the past and improve it.


----------



## janxharris

1996D said:


> The BS can be ignored, we can forge our society from what we want to, and equally our art. You'll see that the values from ages of excellence are similar, and this is why we've been accumulating all this money for, so that we can have our classical age.
> 
> What complaining artists during this time of wealth accumulation thought and produced can be ignored, this has no relevance to the future.


I am still not clear what you are saying. What are the ages of excellence? What is the BS? What artists are complaining?


----------



## Phil loves classical

I still say Bernstein wasn't against atonality at all, but more against music not rooted on Earth. I do believe we are hearing more of that these days. Call it variety. Some so-called avant garde works have strong logic in the past, like Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Now the avant garde is moving away from logic into the irrational. I blame Cage for that. 

I don't buy the argument that in 100 years, it will sound to the future generations as the Rite of Spring or Varese sounds to us now. I was able to appreciate those in a short period of time in my own lifetime. I opened up and challenged myself and went into the twisted minds of some of these contemporary composers and I don't find the beauty or sense of purpose I do with Stravinsky and Varese, even having spent (wasted) more time on them than the older composers in figuring them out. With Ligeti I still get a strong sense of purpose, even though the beauty is gone. They've went beyond sense of purpose now.

Like in business and in fashion, musicians who want to be somebody conform to the prevalent system or trend. I haven't been impressed by much of the music nowadays, both tonal and atonal.


----------



## 1996D

janxharris said:


> I am still not clear what you are saying. What are the ages of excellence? What is the BS? What artists are complaining?


Classical ages.

Anything that seeks to portray a deteriorating society will have no place once that society improves, if it indeed does, there is always the chance of collapse. The last hundred years were a complete focus on wealth accumulation and society suffered in many places because of that, and this is what is represented in art of the period.

We can safely ignore it if indeed we move on to something better.


----------



## Enthusiast

1996D said:


> I'll return to what Bernstein said of the music of the future "Eclectic but tonal".
> 
> The structure of course will be of the highest quality - take the best from the past and improve it.


I give up! Your reply has no relation to the words of mine you are replying to. I have accepted that you don't enjoy atonal music. You are not alone in that. In the passage quoted I only mentioned a tonal composer and had been hoping that you would respond in favour or against Stravinsky and the neoclassicists who followed him, as well as Bartok, Britten and Prokofiev (with a parallel with 20th century figurative painters - Picasso etc. - vs. the abstract painters). But as usual you duck the question.

I haven't listened to the Bernstein lectures but there are those here who have and say that Bernstein comes down in favour of atonal music. Have you listened to the whole set and is it correct that his final verdict is rather different to the one you claim for him? He certainly played and recorded some atonal music - including the radical Carter Concerto for Orchestra - and was anyway not really noted for his criticism. Like many creative artists he was known to be opinionated. So, what he said should be quoted correctly and should then be put in perspective.

Your second sentence makes no sense to me. It sounds almost religious.


----------



## 1996D

Enthusiast said:


> I give up! Your reply has no relation to the words of mine you are replying to. I have accepted that you don't enjoy atonal music. You are not alone in that. In the passage quoted I only mentioned a tonal composer and had been hoping that you would respond in favour or against Stravinsky and the neoclassicists who followed him, as well as Bartok, Britten and Prokofiev (with a parallel with 20th century figurative painters - Picasso etc. - vs. the abstract painters). But as usual you duck the question.
> 
> I haven't listened to the Bernstein lectures but there are those here who have and say that Bernstein comes down in favour of atonal music. Have you listened to the whole set and is it correct that his final verdict is rather different to the one you claim for him? He certainly played and recorded some atonal music - including the radical Carter Concerto for Orchestra - and was anyway not really noted for his criticism. Like many creative artists he was known to be opinionated. So, what he said should be quoted correctly and should then be put in perspective.
> 
> Your second sentence makes no sense to me. It sounds almost religious.


My God it's not about enjoying it or not, I'm arguing about its relevance to the future.

Encouraging artists to ignore it and look forward, the future will not have anything in common with the last hundred years.


----------



## Mandryka

Phil loves classical said:


> rooted on Earth.


What is that?



Phil loves classical said:


> I don't buy the argument that in 100 years, *it will sound to the future generations* as the Rite of Spring or Varese sounds to us now.* I* was able to appreciate those in a short period of time in my own lifetime. *I* opened up and challenged myself and went into the twisted minds of some of these contemporary composers and *I* don't find the beauty or sense of purpose *I* do with Stravinsky and Varese, even having spent (wasted) more time on them than the older composers in figuring them out. With Ligeti *I *still get a strong sense of purpose, even though the beauty is gone. They've went beyond sense of purpose now.


Can you see the logic fault here? The move from your particular instance to a generalisation. As if your case is a model for everyone elses, which is obviously nonsense.


----------



## Enthusiast

^ Exactly. Even though you don't enjoy it you should still recognise its importance. For that you can rely on objective information ... . Is it really possibly to deny that the various forms of "atonalism" - along with other strands, it is true - have been influential? No, you make a subjective swerve (towards your enjoyment!) and say it is of no value ... no value to you, presumably.


----------



## 1996D

Enthusiast said:


> ^ Exactly. Even though you don't enjoy it you should still recognise its importance. For that you can rely on objective information ... . Is it really possibly to deny that the various forms of "atonalism" - along with other strands, it is true - have been influential? No, you make a subjective swerve (towards your enjoyment!) and say it is of no value ... no value to you, presumably.


Its importance was helping certain musicians and intellectuals get through capitalism.


----------



## pianozach

1996D said:


> This is a pointless discussion, it's been well documented how old timers always think current music is bad or worse than that of their time. I'm unbiased in this because I dislike both old and new pop - there is no significant difference musically.
> 
> It's money oriented.


I think you missed my point, or are simply ignoring it.

I could review that "great" period of Pop music and find a great many patently awful albums, or albums with one great song and a wealth of garbage.

By the same token, I'd likely find a 10/90 split of great/not-so-great Pop music no matter the decade, even the 2010-2019 (or, for that matter, 2011-2020).

Yes, the music industry is about making money. We all know that. Simply because it's based in capitalism doesn't mean it ALL sucks.


----------



## Phil loves classical

Mandryka said:


> What is that?
> 
> Can you see the logic fault here? The move from your particular instance to a generalisation. As if your case is a model for everyone elses, which is obviously nonsense.


I believe Bernstein made that concession because he's already heard music that is not rooted on Earth. As for my own argument, there is music that adds nothing objective to the music in the past in terms of harmony, rhythm, etc. Take this for example. What is there that separates it from chaff? Just some obscure compositional process or technique. What good is it if there is little gained than from something random? Any trained monkey can make a complex score of something random. With the old serialism masters there are more strict discernible patterns and intelligibility. Complete freedom only led to less or no organization.

With tonal composers I like that they're keeping it grounded. There's just nothing I would want to go out and buy or listen to in concert, all the great innovations have already been done in the past.


----------



## Mandryka

Phil loves classical said:


> Complete freedom only led to less or no organization.


I agree that it's important that there's perceivable organisation.

What I'm starting to get interested in is in the phenomenology of listening. Let me tell you something. Over the past couple of weeks I've become completely captivated by a performance of Babbitt's 6th quartet, I'll attatatch a picture of the CD since it seems to be particularly lyrical. It has hardly any narrative, it has hardly any sense of cadences or resolutions. But I can assure you that it has become really enjoyable, captivating.

But I'm unable to explain why, I can't explain what's going on when I listen, what the intellectual componant of the experience is . . . and that intrigues me.

This is the CD


----------



## Phil loves classical

Mandryka said:


> I agree that it's important that there's perceivable organisation.
> 
> What I'm starting to get interested in is in the phenomenology of listening. Let me tell you something. Over the past couple of weeks I've become completely captivated by a performance of Babbitt's 6th quartet, I'll attatatch a picture of the CD since it seems to be particularly lyrical. It has hardly any narrative, it has hardly any sense of cadences or resolutions. But I can assure you that it has become really enjoyable, captivating.
> 
> But I'm unable to explain why, I can't explain what's going on when I listen, what the intellectual componant of the experience is . . . and that intrigues me.
> 
> This is the CD
> 
> View attachment 130168


Ya, Babbitt is great. I suspect there is a lot in how he sustains certain notes and how they overlap.


----------



## millionrainbows

DaveM said:


> These days, I never know whether you're serious or just someone wandering around with a lit match looking for some gasoline.


Actually, I'm being very sarcastic.

It seems somewhat of a contradiction to lament the passing of "classical" music such as Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, all from an era based on the orthodox belief in God, while rejecting that whole religious paradigm. That seems like "having your cake and eating it too."
"Modern" music and The Enlightenment have broken down that hierarchy, or at least stretched it beyond recognition. As I've said before, the idea of "hierarchies" derives from and reflects authority concepts and power structures which are similar and ultimately derived from religion. In other words, tonality refers all notes to "1" the tonic, which is the same as referring all ideas to the "1" God.
If an hierarchy is _self_-referential, with all the contrivances of religion, without any external reference except oneself, that's not a "new era", but a retreat into narcissicism.

A "new era" has to _transcend_ individual identity, ego, and the notion of "genius." It needs to be totally "enlightened," scientific, rational, and objective, like Boulez and Stockhausen. It can't be somebody's idea of a "perfect individual" or uberman.


----------



## Strange Magic

Mandryka said:


> I agree that it's important that there's perceivable organisation.
> 
> What I'm starting to get interested in is in the phenomenology of listening. Let me tell you something. Over the past couple of weeks I've become completely captivated by a performance of Babbitt's 6th quartet, I'll attatatch a picture of the CD since it seems to be particularly lyrical. It has hardly any narrative, it has hardly any sense of cadences or resolutions. But I can assure you that it has become really enjoyable, captivating.
> 
> But I'm unable to explain why, I can't explain what's going on when I listen, what the intellectual componant of the experience is . . . and that intrigues me.
> 
> This is the CD
> 
> View attachment 130168





millionrainbows said:


> Actually, I'm being very sarcastic.
> 
> It seems somewhat of a contradiction to lament the passing of "classical" music such as Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, all from an era based on the orthodox belief in God, while rejecting that whole religious paradigm. That seems like "having your cake and eating it too."
> "Modern" music and The Enlightenment have broken down that hierarchy, or at least stretched it beyond recognition. As I've said before, the idea of "hierarchies" derives from and reflects authority concepts and power structures which are similar and ultimately derived from religion. In other words, tonality refers all notes to "1" the tonic, which is the same as referring all ideas to the "1" God.
> If an hierarchy is _self_-referential, with all the contrivances of religion, without any external reference except oneself, that's not a "new era", but a retreat into narcissicism.
> 
> A "new era" has to _transcend_ individual identity, ego, and the notion of "genius." It needs to be totally "enlightened," scientific, rational, and objective, like Boulez and Stockhausen. It can't be somebody's idea of a "perfect individual" or uberman.


A broad definition of The Enlightenment places it between the years 1685 and 1815, but certainly its heart was in the 18th century. So the world of music and humane thought went to hell during that perverse period, I take your thesis to convey. I am prepared to be so instructed, though it will shatter most of what I have been led to believe.

Regarding narcissism, the poet Robinson Jeffers strongly inveighed against the incessant narcissism of humankind and its belief that a god was so focused upon the species that an entire universe was created just to enfold and coddle it. He believed humans spent far too much thought upon themselves and their perceived special relationship to that god while ignoring the 99.99999% of the rest of "creation".


----------



## DaveM

millionrainbows said:


> Actually, I'm being very sarcastic.
> 
> It seems somewhat of a contradiction to lament the passing of "classical" music such as Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, all from an era based on the orthodox belief in God, while rejecting that whole religious paradigm. That seems like "having your cake and eating it too."
> "Modern" music and The Enlightenment have broken down that hierarchy, or at least stretched it beyond recognition. As I've said before, the idea of "hierarchies" derives from and reflects authority concepts and power structures which are similar and ultimately derived from religion. In other words, tonality refers all notes to "1" the tonic, which is the same as referring all ideas to the "1" God.
> If an hierarchy is _self_-referential, with all the contrivances of religion, without any external reference except oneself, that's not a "new era", but a retreat into narcissicism.


You are far more concerned with an alleged relationship between traditional classical music and an orthodox belief in God than the old composers ever were unless they were composing a specific religious-based work. The elevation of tonality to a point of having something to do with the "1" God will be a surprise to not only tonal CM composers, but also creators of popular and western music who all write in tonal.



> A "new era" has to _transcend_ individual identity, ego, and the notion of "genius." It needs to be totally "enlightened," scientific, rational, and objective, like Boulez and Stockhausen. It can't be somebody's idea of a "perfect individual" or uberman.


IMO, the more one removes melody, harmony and structure from music, the less (to use your words) enlightened, rational and objective it is. Narrowing and reducing the parameters of what classical music is supposed to be to justify the questionable result with the consequence that it resonates with relatively few is far closer to what I consider to be creative narcissism. The premise that music, presumably in the category of a Boulez or Stockhausen, relates to a _"new era" [that] transcends individual identity, ego, and the notion of "genius."'_ is a remarkable attempt to elevate the status of music that has been dumbed down.

Oh yes, I did get the sarcasm. That doesn't change the fact that your post was meant to be a provocation.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> It seems somewhat of a contradiction to lament the passing of "classical" music *such as* Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, all from *an era based on the orthodox belief in God,* while rejecting *that whole religious paradigm.* That seems like "having your cake and eating it too."


"An era based on the orthodox belief in God" might describe some part of the Middle Ages. It certainly doesn't describe the 18th and 19th centuries. "That whole religious paradigm" is a fiction. "Such as" only obscures things further. What other music composed between antiquity and the present is included in "such as"?



> "Modern" music and The Enlightenment have broken down *that hierarchy,* or at least stretched it beyond recognition. As I've said before, *the idea of "hierarchies" derives from and reflects authority concepts and power structures which are similar and ultimately derived from religion.* In other words, *tonality refers all notes to "1" the tonic, which is the same as referring all ideas to the "1" God.*


The existence of hierarchy PRECEDES ideas of authority, social power structures, and religious systems. The derivation is in the opposite direction from your proposed model. Physical and biological systems (e.g. solar systems, organisms), cognitive functions (the structure of perception, thought and language), and value systems are hierarchical. The universe and human life are BY NATURE replete with hierarchical relationships. It would be shocking if music were not.

As for tonality referring to God, it might have that connotation in some cases, but it need not, since the facts of stability amid flux, of points of origin, of directional action, of destinations, and of resolutions of uncertainty and conflict are all implied by tonality and are all basic to our experience of life without any need for "authority," "power structures," and "religion."



> If an hierarchy is _self_-referential, with all the contrivances of religion, without any external reference except oneself, that's not a "new era", but a retreat into narcissicism.


What is a "self-referential hierarchy"? What are the "contrivances of religion"? Tonal music as a "retreat into narcissism"? Yikes.



> A "new era" has to _transcend_ individual identity, ego, and the notion of "genius." It needs to be totally "enlightened," scientific, rational, and objective, like Boulez and Stockhausen. It can't be somebody's idea of a "perfect individual" or uberman.


So the genius of Beethoven is merely a "notion" we must transcend? What does the acknowledgement of artistic greatness have to do with "perfect individuals"? Isn't it common knowledge that great artists are not perfect individuals? How are Boulez and Stockhausen scientific, rational, and objective, much less "totally enlightened"? Do they represent a "new era" - or might they be merely representatives of their own era, which we left behind some time ago?

You're offering quite a collection of odds and ends here. They don't appear to me to have much to do with reality.


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## starthrower

Million, you ought to give up pseudo philosophizing and become a preacher. That way you'll have an audience of sheep who will gladly swallow your spurious arguments.


----------



## starthrower

Woodduck's question to millionrainows:



> How are Boulez and Stockhausen scientific, rational, and objective, much less "totally enlightened"?


According to Millionrainbows they "can't be somebody's idea of a perfect individual or uberman." And yet he stated this right after offering them as an example. So can they or can't they?


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## mark6144

It always irritates me a little when I read criticism of modern popular music on the grounds that it's all about making money. Were the composers of the past not also trying to make a living by catering to the audience and industry of the time, whether it was the churches, courts, patrons, publishers, salons, or concert-going public? Music has always been derivative and commercial to a large extent, with a smattering of innovation to try to differentiate from the competition. Those with most talent win.

The modern music industry is of course about making money, but at a more fundamental level it has the same driver as it always has - it's about giving the audience something that moves them. Consumer tastes have massively changed, as has technology, media, etc., so of course the resulting music is different. I don't think there's any less art or innovation in popular music today, it's just swamped by mediocrity. If I'd lived in the 1800s, I expect I also would have heard an awful lot of rubbish as well as the gems destined to last the test of time.

Personally I don't much care if contemporary "classical" music is unsuccessful. I'm happy enough with the beautiful music from past centuries. The history and legacy of it adds to my appreciation and I don't feel any need to seek out contemporary examples, nor to know that the genre is still being actively composed as if it's something that needs to be "kept alive". What history has given us is enough for me.


----------



## Woodduck

mark6144 said:


> It always irritates me a little when I read criticism of modern popular music on the grounds that it's all about making money. Were the composers of the past not also trying to make a living by catering to the audience and industry of the time, whether it was the churches, courts, patrons, publishers, salons, or concert-going public? Music has always been derivative and commercial to a large extent, with a smattering of innovation to try to differentiate from the competition. Those with most talent win.
> 
> The modern music industry is of course about making money, but at a more fundamental level it has the same driver as it always has - it's about giving the audience something that moves them. Consumer tastes have massively changed, as has technology, media, etc., so of course the resulting music is different. I don't think there's any less art or innovation in popular music today, it's just swamped by mediocrity. If I'd lived in the 1800s, I expect I also would have heard an awful lot of rubbish as well as the gems destined to last the test of time.


I think your point is well taken. Where commercial opportunities existed, composers of all eras took advantage of them. Opera in 19th-century Paris was a popular genre and big business, and Meyerbeer, whatever his talents (and they're debated to this day), was as much a commercial hack as Andrew Lloyd Webber. From the 1880s to the 1920s, "tin pan alley" didn't refer to a society of poetic souls with their misty eyes on posterity.


----------



## hammeredklavier

mark6144 said:


> It always irritates me a little when I read criticism of modern popular music on the grounds that it's all about making money. Were the composers of the past not also trying to make a living by catering to the audience and industry of the time, whether it was the churches, courts, patrons, publishers, salons, or concert-going public? Music has always been derivative and commercial to a large extent, with a smattering of innovation to try to differentiate from the competition. *Those with most talent win.*







"today promoting a new band is more expensive than ever.
Over time the cost of breaking in a new artist onto the global music scene has sky-rocketed.
In fact the IFPI reports that today it costs any where between $500,000 and $3,000,000 TO sign a new act and break them into the music scene; that's a hell of a lot of money.
Would you want to gamble with three million dollars? No? Neither do music producers.
So the industry has reacted by removing the risk.
Instead of trying to find genuine musical talent they simply take a pretty young face, usually from a TV talent show and then simply force the public to like them, by brainwashing them.
Instead of allowing the public to grow to like an artist and make their own mind up about the quality of their music, the industry now simply makes you like the music, thus removing all the financial risk.
Brainwash you say? How on earth do they do that? Have you ever noticed how "that" popular new song seems to follow you around, everywhere you go.
It's on every radio station, it's played in your favourite stores, the supermarket, online and its even in the latest Hollywood movies and popular TV shows? This is no coincidence.
What that is in fact, is the record label's$3 million making sure that that new single is quite literally everywhere, completely unescapable.
Remember I was talking about the power of familiarity? It's called the Mere-exposure effect, a physiological phenomenon by which people develop a preference for things they see and hear often.
Our brain releases dopamine when we hear a song we've heard a few times before and the effect only gets stronger with each listen.
Can you remember the very first time you heard your favourite pop songs from the past ten years? Whether it be Gangnam Style, Happy, All About That Bass, Blurred Lines, Hotline Bling, did you truly like it the first time you heard it? Or where you kind of repulsed? Did you have this brief moment where you thought,what the hell is this? But then you heard it a few more times and you began to think, well I guess it's kinda catchy.
And they your friends are all listening to it and you hear it a few times and boom, it's your favourite song and you can't stop listening to it.
If this has happened to you then I'm afraid,you have been brainwashed.
The mere-exposure effect has gotten to you."


----------



## janxharris

hammeredklavier said:


> "today promoting a new band is more expensive than ever.
> Over time the cost of breaking in a new artist onto the global music scene has sky-rocketed.
> In fact the IFPI reports that today it costs any where between $500,000 and $3,000,000 TO sign a new act and break them into the music scene; that's a hell of a lot of money.
> Would you want to gamble with three million dollars? No? Neither do music producers.
> So the industry has reacted by removing the risk.
> Instead of trying to find genuine musical talent they simply take a pretty young face, usually from a TV talent show and then simply force the public to like them, by brainwashing them.
> Instead of allowing the public to grow to like an artist and make their own mind up about the quality of their music, the industry now simply makes you like the music, thus removing all the financial risk.
> Brainwash you say? How on earth do they do that? Have you ever noticed how "that" popular new song seems to follow you around, everywhere you go.
> It's on every radio station, it's played in your favourite stores, the supermarket, online and its even in the latest Hollywood movies and popular TV shows? This is no coincidence.
> What that is in fact, is the record label's$3 million making sure that that new single is quite literally everywhere, completely unescapable.
> Remember I was talking about the power of familiarity? It's called the Mere-exposure effect, a physiological phenomenon by which people develop a preference for things they see and hear often.
> Our brain releases dopamine when we hear a song we've heard a few times before and the effect only gets stronger with each listen.
> Can you remember the very first time you heard your favourite pop songs from the past ten years? Whether it be Gangnam Style, Happy, All About That Bass, Blurred Lines, Hotline Bling, did you truly like it the first time you heard it? Or where you kind of repulsed? Did you have this brief moment where you thought,what the hell is this? But then you heard it a few more times and you began to think, well I guess it's kinda catchy.
> And they your friends are all listening to it and you hear it a few times and boom, it's your favourite song and you can't stop listening to it.
> If this has happened to you then I'm afraid,you have been brainwashed.
> The mere-exposure effect has gotten to you."[/COLOR]


If we assume that the sort of music you are talking about includes _all_ 'popular' (ie non-classical) music then how are you in a position to compare - you don't listen to it (you voted 'No, I only listen to classical music').


----------



## jaypee65

1996D said:


> Schoenberg was actually not trying to do that, he thought that we'd eventually get used to atonal music, that we'd eventually see it no different than tonal music.
> 
> But atonal music has failed in every way that it could, the experiment is long over - artists have been very slow to move on though.


Interestingly, there's atonal music everywhere. Most notably in film music.
So much for "failing in every way that it could".
And btw, atonal music has existed for over a hundred years. If you think this is still "an experiment", it's about time that you join the 20th century.

Why do people who don't care for atonal music can't just leave at that "I don't like/understand it" instead of pontificating and trying to get some pseudo-artistic and pseudo-philosophical arguments to justify their lack of interest? It is not a sin not to like something. And not liking something doesn't prove anything about the value (or lack of) of the said thing.

I couldn't care less for Verdi or Puccini. I think Tchaikovsky's music should be banned. I think Shostakovitch is the most excruciatingly boring composer that ever existed. I also think that most of Chopin is sentimental drivel. These are not facts, or statements. They are just reflections of my musical taste (or "lack of" would say some...) Do I try to make philosophical statements about my dislikes? No. I understand and admit -modestly- that they are purely and solely not part of my musical cosmos. Better: I can understand why people like these composers. The same way I don't like marmite but I can understand why Brits do like it.

I too often get the feeling that a lot of people here believe that they have such good taste in music that *they* alone should decide for the others what should be listened to or not. How about a little modesty?


----------



## jaypee65

1996D said:


> Composers today are self absorbed navel-gazers with no understanding of the world and that's a crime: it's absolutely essential for the artist to understand his surroundings and be able to put them in historical context, to then be able to project a positive future.


OK, my turn. People who reject all of 20th century music are intellectually lazy and dishonest with no understanding of the world and that's a crime. On top of that, they have totalitarian tendencies as they believe that their ignorance gives them the right to pontificate and condemn hundred of hard-working composers.

Hey, that was fun!


----------



## jaypee65

Red Terror said:


> I like interesting rhythms and beats, but most popular music doesn't provide that. As you say, much of it sounds the same-BORING.


Could it just be that popular music isn't aimed at people your (and my) age?
What do you think your granddad thought of the Beatles? Dylan? You dad of The Clash?


----------



## mrdoc

jaypee65 said:


> OK, my turn. People who reject all of 20th century music are intellectually lazy and dishonest with no understanding of the world and that's a crime. On top of that, they have totalitarian tendencies as they believe that their ignorance gives them the right to pontificate and condemn hundred of hard-working composers.
> 
> Hey, that was fun!


Whooo there mate just who is pontificating? 20th cent music?? who were/are these hard working jokers???


----------



## jaypee65

millionrainbows said:


> 4'33" is finally recognized as the great masterpiece it is,


4'33' isn't recognized "as the great masterpiece it is". It is considered an important gesture. But it's importance is more philosophical than musical. Let's not go over the top here.
Musically speaking, Cage's Interludes and Sonatas for prepared piano are far more musically "interesting".
But I don't deny the importance of 4'33'. But "a masterpiece", it isn't.


----------



## jaypee65

mrdoc said:


> Whooo there mate just who is pontificating? 20th cent music?? who were/are these hard working jokers???


I was making fun of 1996D by imitating his "arguments".


----------



## 1996D

jaypee65 said:


> OK, my turn. People who reject all of 20th century music are intellectually lazy and dishonest with no understanding of the world and that's a crime. On top of that, they have totalitarian tendencies as they believe that their ignorance gives them the right to pontificate and condemn hundred of hard-working composers.
> 
> Hey, that was fun!


Who said I rejected it without properly studying it first?

Read post #59 in this thread.


----------



## janxharris

1996D said:


> Classical ages.


Classical music is still being written - so you mean music composed before the 12 tone technique?



> Anything that seeks to portray a deteriorating society will have no place once that society improves, if it indeed does, there is always the chance of collapse.


Where does this assertion spring from exactly?



> The last hundred years were a complete focus on wealth accumulation and society suffered in many places because of that, and this is what is represented in art of the period.


So you can prove this - and that it's any different to past ages? What of the 18th / 19th century industrial revolution?



> We can safely ignore it if indeed we move on to something better.


20th century music topped the poll here:

Classical 15.38%
Romantic 28.21%
*20th Century 33.33%*


----------



## 1996D

janxharris said:


> 20th century music topped the poll here:
> 
> Classical 15.38%
> Romantic 28.21%
> *20th Century 33.33%*


That's a misleading poll, the 20th century of music really begins after the great war and it's then considered 20th/21st century music since there is really nothing differentiating them.

Mahler doesn't count as a 20th century composer, he's a Romantic.



> So you can prove this - and that it's any different to past ages? What of the 18th / 19th century industrial revolution?


It's extremely different, study history.


----------



## Enthusiast

1996D said:


> That's a misleading poll, the 20th century of music really begins after the great war and *it's then considered 20th/21st century music since there is really nothing differentiating them*.
> 
> Mahler doesn't count as a 20th century composer, he's a Romantic.


While I agree that Mahler shouldn't be included under the terms modern music or 20th century music, I am shocked by your assertion that everything after WW1 should be considered aesthetically as having nothing to differentiate it. Your ignorance of a period that you have endless views about astounds me. You even claim your ignorant opinion to be a generally held view! Quite apart from the enormous variation in the aesthetics of composers born and writing during any part of this period - there was a huge flowering of different approaches to the arts after WW1 - there is also an obvious difference between the composers we refer to as modernists (Bartok, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Prokofiev etc.) and those who became prominent after 1950 or so. I suspect there is another fault line falling around 1990. Things are speeding up and you are still dreaming of a return of the dinosaurs (I mean no disrespect to the greats of earlier times by using this term - dinosaurs were superb creatures supremely adapted .... to a very different time) .... or is it The Rapture?

(I'm now trying to guess which throw away phrase you will choose to respond to - if any - and certainly no longer expect a response to the substance of my short post.)


----------



## janxharris

1996D said:


> That's a misleading poll, the 20th century of music really begins after the great war and it's then considered 20th/21st century music since there is really nothing differentiating them.


You say it is misleading but it remains a fact that folk here voted for music written between 1900 and the end of 1999.

And the 21st century was a separate voting choice.



> Mahler doesn't count as a 20th century composer, he's a Romantic.


You are speculating about voter's understanding of that poll.



> t's extremely different, study history.


I don't have to because I did not assert as you did. I questioned your assertion because you didn't back it up with fact.


----------



## 1996D

Enthusiast said:


> While I agree that Mahler shouldn't be included under the terms modern music or 20th century music, I am shocked by your assertion that everything after WW1 should be considered aesthetically as having nothing to differentiate it. Your ignorance of a period that you have endless views about astounds me. You even claim your ignorant opinion to be a generally held view! Quite apart from the enormous variation in the aesthetics of composers born and writing during any part of this period - there was a huge flowering of different approaches to the arts after WW1 - there is also an obvious difference between the composers we refer to as modernists (Bartok, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Prokofiev etc.) and those who became prominent after 1950 or so. I suspect there is another fault line falling around 1990. Things are speeding up and you are still dreaming of a return of the dinosaurs (I mean no disrespect to the greats of earlier times by using this term - dinosaurs were superb creatures supremely adapted .... to a very different time) .... or is it The Rapture?
> 
> (I'm now trying to guess which throw away phrase you will choose to respond to - if any - and certainly no longer expect a response to the substance of my short post.)


The two wars had their effect, and the music that followed them has a lot in common aesthetically and emotionally. 21st century music is a derivative of that or completely breaks off and becomes money oriented.

You tend to favor complication but it's really simple, politics and art are tied together, and the 20th century was a pretty horrible one.


----------



## starthrower

1996D said:


> The two wars had their effect, and the music that followed them has a lot in common aesthetically and emotionally. 21st century music is a derivative of that or completely breaks off and becomes money oriented.
> 
> You tend to favor complication but it's really simple, politics and art are tied together, and the 20th century was a pretty horrible one.


It sounds like most of what your saying is learned from books, videos, essays, etcetera as a substitute for actually listening to the music. Is 1996 your birth year? It sounds like it from the arbitrary and generalized views you are pushing here. Maybe you ought to spend a few years doing some listening. If I'm wrong about this then you have my apologies. But that's the way it sounds to me.


----------



## 1996D

janxharris said:


> You say it is misleading but it remains a fact that folk here voted for music written between 1900 and the end of 1999.
> 
> And the 21st century was a separate voting choice.
> 
> You are speculating about voter's understanding of that poll.
> 
> I don't have to because I did not assert as you did. I questioned your assertion because you didn't back it up with fact.


The poll makes no sense, we're now at the beginning of the 21st century, it shouldn't be a category if that's the way we're looking at things, furthermore the Romantic era didn't end in 1900; Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Strauss, Scriabin etc. still dominated until the 20s when all art became a reaction to the horrors that happened in Europe. After WW2 things got even worse and music hasn't recovered since.

It simply had no incentive to; artists were mad at capitalism, there was a loss of faith, music became money oriented. All the ills of a society are reflected in its art.

But things are different now, that's my whole point - I believe we can look to the future with greater optimism because things are changing. There is no need for screeching music, and I believe the public's reaction to it proves me right: there is simply no interest in it and it's thus culturally irrelevant.

A big change is needed to make serious music relevant again.



starthrower said:


> It sounds like most of what your saying is learned from books, videos, essays, etcetera as a substitute for actually listening to the music. Is 1996 your birth year? It sounds like it from the arbitrary and generalized views you are pushing here. Maybe you ought to spend a few years doing some listening. If I'm wrong about this then you have my apologies. But that's the way it sounds to me.


I've not only listened to the music but composed in that style as well.


----------



## mark6144

hammeredklavier said:


> "today promoting a new band is more expensive than ever.
> Over time the cost of breaking in a new artist onto the global music scene has sky-rocketed.
> In fact the IFPI reports that today it costs any where between $500,000 and $3,000,000 TO sign a new act and break them into the music scene; that's a hell of a lot of money.
> Would you want to gamble with three million dollars? No? Neither do music producers.
> So the industry has reacted by removing the risk.
> Instead of trying to find genuine musical talent they simply take a pretty young face, usually from a TV talent show and then simply force the public to like them, by brainwashing them.
> Instead of allowing the public to grow to like an artist and make their own mind up about the quality of their music, the industry now simply makes you like the music, thus removing all the financial risk.
> Brainwash you say? How on earth do they do that? Have you ever noticed how "that" popular new song seems to follow you around, everywhere you go.
> It's on every radio station, it's played in your favourite stores, the supermarket, online and its even in the latest Hollywood movies and popular TV shows? This is no coincidence.
> What that is in fact, is the record label's$3 million making sure that that new single is quite literally everywhere, completely unescapable.
> Remember I was talking about the power of familiarity? It's called the Mere-exposure effect, a physiological phenomenon by which people develop a preference for things they see and hear often.
> Our brain releases dopamine when we hear a song we've heard a few times before and the effect only gets stronger with each listen.
> Can you remember the very first time you heard your favourite pop songs from the past ten years? Whether it be Gangnam Style, Happy, All About That Bass, Blurred Lines, Hotline Bling, did you truly like it the first time you heard it? Or where you kind of repulsed? Did you have this brief moment where you thought,what the hell is this? But then you heard it a few more times and you began to think, well I guess it's kinda catchy.
> And they your friends are all listening to it and you hear it a few times and boom, it's your favourite song and you can't stop listening to it.
> If this has happened to you then I'm afraid,you have been brainwashed.
> The mere-exposure effect has gotten to you."


Picking a few of the worst examples proves nothing, and if you're claiming that the above characterises the entire modern popular music scene, I do think that's a bit cynical.

I'm currently sat in a Pret-a-Manger where they are playing some pop rock overhead. I haven't heard it before, and don't recognise it either as the kind of sub-genre that "they" try to brainwash us with, nor as something so astounding that it's destined to be still played in 50 years' time. It's not ground-breaking, but I quite like it. It has nostalgic aspects that remind me of other music, people and times; it has some passages that are quite effective at evoking feelings; it has some nice little melodic hooks that sound original, although they're probably not. It creates an warm and relaxing atmosphere in the store (and was obviously selected as appropriate). I like to think that at a point when the music evokes a feeling, the artist is communicating something to me at an emotional level, and it's not just by accident.

All in all, I'm glad that music was on. It enhanced my enjoyment of my lunch. Somebody made some money out of it, but that's OK; they did a competent job and probably have kids to feed. It is perfectly OK that it wasn't innovative or ground-breaking. I don't feel that I was brainwashed into enjoying my lunch more.


----------



## EdwardBast

1996D said:


> The poll makes no sense, we're now at the beginning of the 21st century, it shouldn't be a category if that's the way we're looking at things, furthermore the Romantic era didn't end in 1900; Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Strauss, Scriabin etc. still dominated until the 20s when all art became a reaction to the horrors that happened in Europe. After WW2 things got even worse and music hasn't recovered since.
> 
> I've not only listened to the music but composed in that style as well.


You are saying Strauss's Elektra is Romantic? Scriabin's late sonatas? Mahler is generally described as post-Romantic. Popular composers post WWI include Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Bartok, Ravel, Vaughan-Wlliams, Britten, and Myaskovsky. There was no decline.

Your reputation as a composer is as yet like Donald Trump's reputation as a billionaire: self proclaimed and conspicuously unsupported.


----------



## 1996D

mark6144 said:


> All in all, I'm glad that music was on. It enhanced my enjoyment of my lunch. Somebody made some money out of it, but that's OK; they did a competent job and probably have kids to feed. It is perfectly OK that it wasn't innovative or ground-breaking. I don't feel that I was brainwashed into enjoying my lunch more.


Nobody's saying it's not okay, a little brainwashing is fine anyway, we need to make everyone fit in, and it keeps some social harmony. The accumulation of wealth is also good in the long term.

Yet this music offers very little artistically, it's hollow, it's fast food - that was his point.



EdwardBast said:


> You are saying Strauss's Elektra is Romantic? Scriabin's late sonatas? Mahler is generally described as post-Romantic. Popular composers post WWI include Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Bartok, Ravel, Vaughan-Wlliams, Britten, and Myaskovsky. There was no decline.
> 
> Your reputation as a composer is as yet like Donald Trump's reputation as a billionaire: self proclaimed and conspicuously unsupported.


Let's not get into pedantry, I think you got my point. My music will do the talking when the time comes but I'm hoping for some competition.

If I'm correct the wealth of Western nations today should be enough that there are more individuals who can focus on composing without pressure. This should lead to good things.

There are a lot of psychological obstacles though and I'm hoping to help others in that regard.


----------



## Enthusiast

1996D said:


> The two wars had their effect, and the music that followed them has a lot in common aesthetically and emotionally. 21st century music is a derivative of that or completely breaks off and becomes money oriented.
> 
> You tend to favor complication but it's really simple, politics and art are tied together, and the 20th century was a pretty horrible one.


That _is _a simplification - but also a misleading one. Classical music is possibly less money oriented than it previously was (although composition has become more viable as a career for the talented poor). Certainly what has happened in music over the last 100 years cannot usefully be boiled down to the simplicity you favour (which adds up to "it's all rubbish").

The two wars had very different impacts on both arts and politics and the art that followed each had clearly come out of the trends that were evident before the wars (although the wars clearly did have an influence on much of it). As for the 20th century (I'm glad you have dropped the 21st as your knowledge of it seems even less than your knowledge of the 20th), was it really so much more grim than many earlier times? I doubt it.


----------



## Enthusiast

EdwardBast said:


> You are saying Strauss's Elektra is Romantic? Scriabin's late sonatas? Mahler is generally described as post-Romantic.


While I agree with much of your post I am not sure the sentences selected above are true. I accept that Strauss was a Modern figure and that Scriabin was moving towards Modernism. But I do not think Mahler is generally viewed as a post-romantic, is he? He is surely best thought of as a late Romantic - and I don't think his music exhibits any decisive break with the past. The more romantically inclined modern composers (Strauss, Schoenberg, Shostakovich etc.) certainly do exhibit such a break. Even those who reacted against Romanticism (Stravinsky, Bartok, etc.) might still be logically considered as post-Romantic even if Modernist is a more common term for their music.


----------



## 1996D

Enthusiast said:


> That _is _a simplification - but also a misleading one. Classical music is possibly less money oriented than it previously was (although composition has become more viable as a career for the talented poor). Certainly what has happened in music over the last 100 years cannot usefully be boiled down to the simplicity you favour (which adds up to "it's all rubbish").
> 
> The two wars had very different impacts on both arts and politics and the art that followed each had clearly come out of the trends that were evident before the wars (although the wars clearly did have an influence on much of it). As for the 20th century (I'm glad you have dropped the 21st as your knowledge of it seems even less than your knowledge of the 20th), was it really so much more grim than many earlier times? I doubt it.


Why are you still hurt about it? I've given you examples: composers, and all artists, look to the source--the classical source--to then develop their own styles, this happens whenever artistry is the ultimate goal, and not some projection of despair or complains about the ills of the world. The derivatives from modernism are exhausted, there is little left in that mentality.

To conclude, because you've mentioned it - the 20th century was absolutely the worst in human history, there is no debating it. From Mao to Stalin to Hitler, a lot happened that we didn't think was possible.

This destroyed faith in humanity and it's reflected very obviously in art. We're still recovering to this day.


----------



## millionrainbows

Strange Magic said:


> A broad definition of The Enlightenment places it between the years 1685 and 1815, but certainly its heart was in the 18th century. So the world of music and humane thought went to hell during that perverse period, I take your thesis to convey. I am prepared to be so instructed, though it will shatter most of what I have been led to believe.
> 
> Regarding narcissism, the poet Robinson Jeffers strongly inveighed against the incessant narcissism of humankind and its belief that a god was so focused upon the species that an entire universe was created just to enfold and coddle it. He believed humans spent far too much thought upon themselves and their perceived special relationship to that god while ignoring the 99.99999% of the rest of "creation".


That's backwards. Ideally, the existence of God should prevent narcissism, if things are in order. The removal of God, with Man at the center, would create narcissism. That seems simple enough, yet you managed to get it backwards.


----------



## millionrainbows

DaveM said:


> You are far more concerned with an alleged relationship between traditional classical music and an orthodox belief in God than the old composers ever were unless they were composing a specific religious-based work. The elevation of tonality to a point of having something to do with the "1" God will be a surprise to not only tonal CM composers, but also creators of popular and western music who all write in tonal.


Religion and culture reflect the organization of a society. The development of an hierarchical society (as opposed to tribal, with no central authority) is modeled after the religious hierarchy which puts God at the center of all things. You can quibble about "the earth at the center" beliefs, but that was just a mistaken notion derived from that, not narcissism. Also, the idea that God has a special connection to Man is not true narcissism, either. God is a focus outward, beyond Man. Whatever mistakes, misconceptions and foibles resulted from this are aberrations.



> IMO, the more one removes melody, harmony and structure from music, the less (to use your words) enlightened, rational and objective it is. Narrowing and reducing the parameters of what classical music is supposed to be to justify the questionable result with the consequence that it resonates with relatively few is far closer to what I consider to be creative narcissism.


No, you're conflating musical structure with artistic intent and approach. The idea is to remove one's identity from the art.



> The premise that music, presumably in the category of a Boulez or Stockhausen, relates to a _"new era" [that] transcends individual identity, ego, and the notion of "genius."'_ is a remarkable attempt to elevate the status of music that has been dumbed down.


You are completely missing the point. The music has simply been 'sanitized' from the ego of "genius" and hubris which almost destroyed the world.


----------



## millionrainbows

It doesn't really matter if thought was changing in the 18th and 19th centuries, or if Bach and Beethoven really believed in God or not. The religious hierarchy in place transcends those details. It's a mode of thought, not specific.

The existence of hierarchy is arbitrary; just because one sees it in nature does not make it so. This is a result of that mindset. To think in terms of "precedes" is mechanical, and assumes that things are uniform, continuous, and connected. This whole way of looking at the universe is an old paradigm.

Authority, power structures, and religion are symptoms, not causes. When the attempt is made to "do away" with these symptoms, then Man becomes the symptom. Thus, a "self referential system is created, but it's the same old hierarchical model. Yikes!

Beethoven, and the notion of "genius" is a Man-centered hubris. "Perfection" has nothing to do with it. These artifacts of this way of thinking seem to permeate the responses, and are irrelevant.

The thinking here is very focussed and myopic. Reality? I see stumbling in the dark. Reminds me of the Firesign Theatre's hymn parody: "Oh blinding light, Oh light that blinds, I cannot see, Watch out for me."


----------



## millionrainbows

starthrower said:


> Million, you ought to give up pseudo philosophizing and become a preacher. That way you'll have an audience of sheep who will gladly swallow your spurious arguments.


starthrower, you should come up with some new CDs to buy at lower prices. That way you will have served your purpose for me, which is of the greater value to me than what you assume I think.


----------



## millionrainbows

starthrower said:


> According to Millionrainbows they (Boulez and Stockhausen)"can't be somebody's idea of a perfect individual or uberman." And yet he stated this right after offering them as an example. So can they or can't they?


You have completely missed the core of the serial aesthetic of these men. I didn't posit them as "geniuses," yet you are still playing the "genius" game because you are still of that mindset. Boulez' intent was to create music in which the content was "self generating," so he could remove his intent from it. Is that too paradoxical for you?


----------



## millionrainbows

jaypee65 said:


> Interestingly, there's atonal music everywhere. Most notably in film music.
> So much for "failing in every way that it could".
> And btw, atonal music has existed for over a hundred years. If you think this is still "an experiment", it's about time that you join the 20th century.
> 
> Why do people who don't care for atonal music can't just leave at that "I don't like/understand it" instead of pontificating and trying to get some pseudo-artistic and pseudo-philosophical arguments to justify their lack of interest? It is not a sin not to like something. And not liking something doesn't prove anything about the value (or lack of) of the said thing.
> 
> I couldn't care less for Verdi or Puccini. I think Tchaikovsky's music should be banned. I think Shostakovitch is the most excruciatingly boring composer that ever existed. I also think that most of Chopin is sentimental drivel. These are not facts, or statements. They are just reflections of my musical taste (or "lack of" would say some...) Do I try to make philosophical statements about my dislikes? No. I understand and admit -modestly- that they are purely and solely not part of my musical cosmos. Better: I can understand why people like these composers. The same way I don't like marmite but I can understand why Brits do like it.
> 
> I too often get the feeling that a lot of people here believe that they have such good taste in music that *they* alone should decide for the others what should be listened to or not. How about a little modesty?


More to the point, people (including your well-intentioned post) need to get a better, more specific idea of how serial thinking has affected music, not just in terms of atonality/tonality. Atonality is just one form of possibilities of "modern" serial thought.

New tonalities exist which are not CP tonality; it's old news. "Serialism" should be thought of as 'modern thought' which goes way beyond tonal hierarchies. See book Serialism.


----------



## starthrower

millionrainbows said:


> You have completely missed the core of the serial aesthetic of these men. I didn't posit them as "geniuses," yet you are still playing the "genius" game because you are still of that mindset. Boulez' intent was to create music in which the content was "self generating," so he could remove his intent from it. Is that too paradoxical for you?


I'm not playing any genius game. And as far as the rest of your post, I can't concern myself with your deliberate abstruseness and gobbledygook.


----------



## starthrower

millionrainbows said:


> starthrower, you should come up with some new CDs to buy at lower prices. That way you will have served your purpose for me, which is of the greater value to me than what you assume I think.


I just read your posts and try to make whatever sense I can out of their lack of straightforwardness, misreading of history, and pseudo intellectualism.


----------



## EdwardBast

Enthusiast said:


> While I agree with much of your post I am not sure the sentences selected above are true. I accept that Strauss was a Modern figure and that Scriabin was moving towards Modernism. But I do not think Mahler is generally viewed as a post-romantic, is he? He is surely best thought of as a late Romantic - and I don't think his music exhibits any decisive break with the past. The more romantically inclined modern composers (Strauss, Schoenberg, Shostakovich etc.) certainly do exhibit such a break. Even those who reacted against Romanticism (Stravinsky, Bartok, etc.) might still be logically considered as post-Romantic even if Modernist is a more common term for their music.


Mahler, Strauss, and early-Schoenberg as post-Romantic is pretty standard among historians. It's just a neutral period designation between the end of the Romantic era (1890-1900) and modernism and expressionism.


----------



## Bulldog

1996D said:


> Let's not get into pedantry, I think you got my point. My music will do the talking when the time comes but I'm hoping for some competition.
> 
> If I'm correct the wealth of Western nations today should be enough that there are more individuals who can focus on composing without pressure. This should lead to good things.
> 
> There are a lot of psychological obstacles though and I'm hoping to help others in that regard.


So you're a composer-therapist. Your resume keeps growing.


----------



## Strange Magic

millionrainbows said:


> That's backwards. Ideally, the existence of God should prevent narcissism, if things are in order. The removal of God, with Man at the center, would create narcissism. That seems simple enough, yet you managed to get it backwards.


Ideally, everything should be just the way we want it to be. One can suggest that the god of the Abrahamic religions was invented in order to impute special (and surely undeserved) qualities and values to the naked apes such that they might strut about, preening and also worrying about whether they are sufficiently loved by their creator/creation. You should read Jeffers' poetry for another perspective.

And try some Walt Whitman also:

"I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth."


----------



## starthrower

The Whitman reminds me of some writings by the naturalist Loren Eiseley who is the author of the poem, Star Thrower.

From the introductory essay to the Star Thrower compilation by W.H. Auden:

*It was not a time for human dignity. It was a time only for the careful observance of amenities written behind the stars. Gravely I arranged my forepaws while the puppy whimpered with ill-concealed excitement. I drew the breath of a fox's den into my nostrils. On impulse, I picked up clumsily a whiter bone and shook it in teeth that had not entirely forgotten their original purpose. Round and round we tumbled for one ecstatic moment. . . . For just a moment I had held the universe at bay by the simple expedient of sitting on my haunches before a fox den and tumbling about with a chicken bone. It is the gravest, most meaningful act I shall ever accomplish, but, as Thoreau once remarked of some peculiar errand of his own, there is no use reporting it to the Royal Society."*

Bernstein did mention the importance of being rooted in the earth which brings us back to the original post.


----------



## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> More to the point, people (including your well-intentioned post) need to get a better, more specific idea of how serial thinking has affected music, not just in terms of atonality/tonality. Atonality is just one form of possibilities of "modern" serial thought.
> 
> New tonalities exist which are not CP tonality; it's old news. *"Serialism" should be thought of as 'modern thought' *which goes way beyond tonal hierarchies.


Atonality and serialism are now a century old. They were products of specific musical developments and circumstances. They are not "modern thought," but only appear to be because they didn't turn out to be as world-changing as Schoenberg, Boulez and company predicted they would, and some people who style themselves "progressive" are apparently still waiting for the "new paradigm" to take hold. These stylistic developments have had their say, they haven't superseded other forms or styles of music, and it's absurd to weigh them down with elaborate and fallacious teleologies, as if they were especially relevant to the future of music and society.


----------



## SONNET CLV

1996D said:


> … a little brainwashing is fine anyway, we need to make everyone fit in, and it keeps some social harmony. ...
> 
> Let's not get into pedantry, I think you got my point. My music will do the talking when the time comes but I'm hoping for some competition.
> 
> If I'm correct the wealth of Western nations today should be enough that there are more individuals who can focus on composing without pressure. This should lead to good things.
> 
> There are a lot of psychological obstacles though and I'm hoping to help others in that regard.


Some things are not worth arguing with.

View attachment 130236


Just simply not worth it.


----------



## DaveM

millionrainbows said:


> Religion and culture reflect the organization of a society. The development of an hierarchical society (as opposed to tribal, with no central authority) is modeled after the religious hierarchy which puts God at the center of all things. You can quibble about "the earth at the center" beliefs, but that was just a mistaken notion derived from that, not narcissism. Also, the idea that God has a special connection to Man is not true narcissism, either. God is a focus outward, beyond Man. Whatever mistakes, misconceptions and foibles resulted from this are aberrations.
> 
> No, you're conflating musical structure with artistic intent and approach. The idea is to remove one's identity from the art.
> 
> You are completely missing the point. The music has simply been 'sanitized' from the ego of "genius" and hubris which almost destroyed the world.






-------------


----------



## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> Religion and culture reflect the organization of a society. The development of an hierarchical society (as opposed to tribal, with no central authority) is modeled after the religious hierarchy which puts God at the center of all things.


These two sentences appear to contradict each other. Which are you claiming to be prior, and the cause of the other: the structure of society, or the structure of religion? Do hierarchical societies conceive the universe as hierarchical and so develop hierarchically structured religions, or are hierarchical societies "modeled after" hierarchical religious conceptions?

In either case, this is anthropology, not music. As anthropological theory, it needs to be supported with anthropological data. Then, if you want to show some relationship to the structure of music, you need further data pertaining to the kinds of music developed by societies with different structures, and you need to show correspondences and causality, controlling for other factors that might influence the way music develops.

Can you name some non-hierarchical societies which have non-hierarchical religions - or no religion - and have correspondingly developed music with no hierarchical structure? Are there non-hierarchical societies that "put God at the center of all things," or hierarchical societies without a central deity? Could societies have music whose structure reflected the hierarchies of their religion, but not of their social arrangements? What combinations of these factors are possible? And how would we establish causal relationships in such cases?

Without such empirical evidence there's no reason to give credence to the theories you appear to be propagating.


----------



## hammeredklavier

janxharris said:


> If we assume that the sort of music you are talking about includes _all_ 'popular' (ie non-classical) music then how are you in a position to compare - you don't listen to it (you voted 'No, I only listen to classical music').


"No, I only listen to classical music" is not the same thing as "I've never listened to non-classical music." 
Here are some of Jon Lajoie's songs that I consider to be timeless masterpieces.


----------



## Room2201974

I remain skeptical about this concept called "God." But I'm convinced that this thread is heading toward one of the nine circles in Dante's hell. Proper circle to be identified at the point of thread closing. 

I'm 100% positive that the music of the future will not be created by words.:guitar::trp::cheers:


----------



## 1996D

Bulldog said:


> So you're a composer-therapist. Your resume keeps growing.


Therapy? Composing is mental, and there are roadblocks, the biggest one probably being modernism. Clarifying its unimportance to the future will help composers focus on what matters - this has nothing to do with therapy.


----------



## starthrower

The future is here and so is the music of Debussy, Bartok, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Berg, etc...


----------



## 1996D

starthrower said:


> The future is here and so is the music of Debussy, Bartok, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Berg, etc...


There is nothing constructive that can be developed out of them, they are dead ends. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven are the future.


----------



## janxharris

hammeredklavier said:


> "No, I only listen to classical music" is not the same thing as "I've never listened to non-classical music."
> Here are some of Jon Lajoie's songs that I consider to be timeless masterpieces.


That you don't listen to non-classical but have listened to some would imply, perhaps, that you aren't in a position to make a fair judgement about popular music's worth. Repeatedly citing the same stereotypical examples of 'pop' isn't going to substantiate your position.


----------



## starthrower

1996D said:


> There is nothing constructive that can be developed out of them, they are dead ends. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven are the future.


Dead ends or not is a matter of the imagination.


----------



## Enthusiast

^ Or, for an aspiring composer, you might say ignorance. Reacting against something is one thing. Pretending it never happened sounds like laziness.


----------



## 1996D

starthrower said:


> Dead ends or not is a matter of the imagination.


I spent almost 10 years writing that sort of music, thank goodness it was during what ended up being unimportant formative years, but I've seen the limits of it. It's tremendously ugly music that comes from going deeper into that realm, it has shock value, but little else.

In a way it made me really appreciate high art, because it's so much harder to achieve than wild imagination. You actually need order and containment of creativity, you need to become a balanced and reason loving human being.

What do you feel when you listen to Beethoven's best pieces? You feel like doing the right thing and being virtuous. What do you feel when listening to modern music? You feel like there are no rules, you feel destructive and hopeless.


----------



## starthrower

1996D said:


> I spent almost 10 years writing that sort of music, thank goodness it was during what ended up being unimportant formative years, but I've seen the limits of it. It's tremendously ugly music that comes from going deeper into that realm, it has shock value, but little else.


Nonsense! It's only your opinion. You have conservative taste. That's fine. It's not ugly to many other listeners.


----------



## Enthusiast

I spent almost 10 years writing that sort of music, thank goodness it was during what ended up being unimportant formative years, but I've seen the limits of it. It's tremendously ugly music that comes from going deeper into that realm, it has shock value, but little else.


^ Then you must have a deep knowledge of "that sort of music"? Do tell us more. Which composers did you aspire to follow? There has been a considerable variety - there were already many very different approaches in 1925 and by 1950 the variety was huge. I guess if you once aspired to write like some of it you can tell us a lot more about which models you sought to build on and which you rejected ... .

But forgive me for not holding my breath. Your reference to nothing but shock value suggests your knowledge of music since WW1 is very slight indeed.


----------



## 1996D

starthrower said:


> Nonsense! It's only your opinion.* You have conservative taste.* That's fine. It's not ugly to many other listeners.


I don't, wouldn't have done it for so long had I conservative taste - obviously enjoyed it at the time.

Order is just better--the difference is huge--it's love and strength and everything that's good.


----------



## 1996D

Enthusiast said:


> I spent almost 10 years writing that sort of music, thank goodness it was during what ended up being unimportant formative years, but I've seen the limits of it. It's tremendously ugly music that comes from going deeper into that realm, it has shock value, but little else.
> 
> 
> ^ Then you must have a deep knowledge of "that sort of music"? Do tell us more. Which composers did you aspire to follow? There has been a considerable variety - there were already many very different approaches in 1925 and by 1950 the variety was huge. I guess if you once aspired to write like some of it you can tell us a lot more about which models you sought to build on and which you rejected ... .
> 
> But forgive me for not holding my breath. Your reference to nothing but shock value suggests your knowledge of music since WW1 is very slight indeed.


I tend to simplify everything, the shock value was in the end all I saw that had any value, if at all. The music you mention had its purpose at the time, but not today - writing in that style is redundant.


----------



## mrdoc

1996D said:


> What do you feel when you listen to Beethoven's best pieces? You feel like doing the right thing and being virtuous. What do you feel when listening to modern music? You feel like there are no rules, you feel destructive and hopeless.


I do tend to agree with you, so does that make me old fashioned, boring? you must have rules or at least guide lines and that is there in the music of some living composers, so long live form, rhythm, melody and beauty.


----------



## starthrower

Well, we're all waiting for someone to write Beethoven's 10th. And as far as shock value goes, it didn't start with 20th century composers. The shock is on the part of the listener. You can read old reviews of classical music going back 200 years. People, and mostly critics were shocked by music back then. Shocked by your God, Beethoven.


----------



## janxharris

starthrower said:


> Well, we're all waiting for someone to write Beethoven's 10th.


Why do you say so?


----------



## 1996D

starthrower said:


> Well, we're all waiting for someone to write Beethoven's 10th. And as far as shock value goes, it didn't start with 20th century composers. The shock is on the part of the listener. You can read old reviews of classical music going back 200 years. People, and mostly critics were shocked by music back then. Shocked by your God, Beethoven.


I'm pretty sure my music will shock also, 10 years don't just go away; the first serious piece is very aggressive despite all the efforts to contain it. I'm really trying to remove all the modernity in any future work and reach the balance that Beethoven did.

It really is so much easier to just let your creativity go untamed, it's always a big temptation.


----------



## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist

1996D said:


> What do you feel when you listen to Beethoven's best pieces? You feel like doing the right thing and being virtuous. What do you feel when listening to modern music? You feel like there are no rules, you feel destructive and hopeless.


Every instance of the word "you" in this paragraph should be replaced with "I".


----------



## Dimace

starthrower said:


> Nonsense! It's only your opinion. *You have conservative taste.* That's fine. It's not ugly to many other listeners.





Enthusiast said:


> I spent almost 10 years writing that sort of music, thank goodness it was during what ended up being unimportant formative years, but I've seen the limits of it. It's tremendously ugly music that comes from going deeper into that realm, it has shock value, but little else.
> 
> 
> ^ Then you must have a deep knowledge of "that sort of music"? Do tell us more. Which composers did you aspire to follow? There has been a considerable variety - there were already many very different approaches in 1925 and by 1950 the variety was huge. I guess if you once aspired to write like some of it you can tell us a lot more about which models you sought to build on and which you rejected ... .
> 
> But forgive me for not holding my breath. Your reference to nothing but *shock value suggests* your *knowledge* of music since WW1 is* very slight* indeed.


Conservative taste: Describes me perfectly. 
Schock value suggests+ very slight knowledge (of the modern music) : Describes me perfectly!

We MUST accept facts. There is nothing bad to ignorance. The acceptance of our knowledge vulnerabilities or weaknesses can drive us to true knowledge. Keep the good conversation on, my friends. I can not participate, but I can learn some good stuf from you.


----------



## 1996D

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> Every instance of the word "you" in this paragraph should be replaced with "I".


No, 'you' is the great majority. Have you forgotten the public? Go to a concert and feel the energy in the room, we're all human and react similarly.

Music has to be able to reach everyone that has the intelligence and attention span, that has to be the goal. Even if they don't understand it the will has to be awakened for them to go do that, to listen until they do.

Why is it that older people gravitate towards classical music? Because they're mature human beings and are ready to receive what they already know to be true through their life experience.


----------



## Room2201974

Having already explained this "behavior" in a previous thread I was unfortunately unable to come up with a proper name that describes its essence at that time. However, reading through this thread has given me the correct perspective. Feel free to use this term in the future for threads that wander into this kind of obsession:

*Compositional Jerusalem Syndrome*


----------



## Enthusiast

^ You lost me. Beethoven is true? He existed. He wrote great music. Many people even today recognise this. These things are true. But how can music be true? And to the extent that it can be how does that lead to the position you have adopted wrt more recent composers? BTW we know that great music doesn't make great or good listeners. All sorts of hateful people have enjoyed Beethoven and many very wonderful people have had no time for a note of his music.


----------



## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist

1996D said:


> No, 'you' is the great majority. Have you forgotten the public? Go to a concert and feel the energy in the room, we're all human and react similarly.
> 
> Music has to be able to reach everyone that has the intelligence and attention span, that has to be the goal. Even if they don't understand it the will has to be awakened for them to go do that, to listen until they do.
> 
> Why is it that older people gravitate towards classical music? Because they're mature human beings and are ready to receive what they already know to be true through their life experience.


I'm sorry, 1996D. I started to write a reply, but I just don't have the patience or willpower to get involved in this discussion. Besides, many of the points I'd like to make have already been articulated by other posters. This thread was entertaining for a while, but I think it's just about run its course.

I look forward to hearing your music, and I'd be happy to discuss its aesthetic and stylistic merits or relevance with you after listening.


----------



## Enthusiast

I'm also done with this discussion. It goes nowhere.


----------



## flamencosketches

......................


----------



## janxharris

flamencosketches said:


> Your music will amount to nothing. You are so laughably out of touch with the times you live in that anything you create will be mere pastiche. I would recommend finding a different line of work.


Harsh words flamencosketches.


----------



## flamencosketches

janxharris said:


> Harsh words flamencosketches.


You're right, maybe that was a little too mean spirited. I'm a little hung over. I only meant it in a "tough love" kind of way. Maybe 1996D will surprise us all and make great music after all. In any case, he has some growing up to do first.


----------



## millionrainbows

Wanting something to be "prior" implies 'before and after' reasoning to what has already left that fold. 

Atonality and serialism, as it was used here, is just a small part of serial thought ("serial" in the larger sense like Whittall uses it). It sounds ridiculous to act as if "tonal" or "atonal" could be separated from modern musical thought. What planet is this from? One in which music ended with Wagner?


----------



## millionrainbows

starthrower said:


> I'm not playing any genius game. And as far as the rest of your post, I can't concern myself with your deliberate abstruseness and gobbledygook. I just read your posts and try to make whatever sense I can out of their lack of straightforwardness, misreading of history, and pseudo intellectualism.


I'm just probing for meaning. Do you demand that your poetry be "straightforward and easily understood"? As for the other insults, I will remain silent.


----------



## millionrainbows

flamencosketches said:


> You're right, maybe that was a little too mean spirited. I'm a little hung over. I only meant it in a "tough love" kind of way. Maybe 1996D will surprise us all and make great music after all. In any case, he has some growing up to do first.


That's perfectly understandable.


----------



## Enthusiast

flamencosketches said:


> You're right, maybe that was a little too mean spirited. I'm a little hung over. I only meant it in a "tough love" kind of way. Maybe 1996D will surprise us all and make great music after all. In any case, he has some growing up to do first.


He is almost as opinionated as Boulez ... but then, of course, Boulez delivered.


----------



## DaveM

starthrower said:


> Well, we're all waiting for someone to write Beethoven's 10th. And as far as shock value goes, it didn't start with 20th century composers. The shock is on the part of the listener. You can read old reviews of classical music going back 200 years. People, and mostly critics were shocked by music back then...


Apparently, the shock wore off.


----------



## rice

I'm very conservative in taste and I dislike modernism/serialism. But I do not oppose the existence of such music, I just ignore them.
Let's have a think about it. Even if there is someone as brilliant as Beethoven today, I doubt he or she going to revolutionize the music world. Beethoven and other greats were there and their music is more accessible than ever. On the internet just a few clicks away. Besides the niche group of enthusiasts (us), how many people actually listened to a Beethoven symphony from start to end even once? Yes some really popular tunes can be found everywhere but the public interest stops at "I recognize that melody" and nothing more. At least that's what I can observe from my surroundings. I'd be excited to see a comeback of romanticism as a CM lover. But it's really hard to imagine someone who like viral pop songs and the attractive singers, would suddenly dive into an hour-long symphony.

Classical music is a dying art and I accept the fact. Fortunately with the help from modern technology this art can be preserved for hundreds or thousands of years to come. (If mankind and the society would survive that long) That future is none of my business so I'm happy with the CDs I have!


----------



## mmsbls

DaveM said:


> Apparently, the shock wore off.


Yes, and generally in a relatively modest amount of time. Years ago I was very much struck with this difference in how new music is perceived. New musical styles were assimilated by listeners during the Classical and Romantic eras even though people could only hear music that was played live so they couldn't listen to many new works or listen to those works often. New Modern music generally has not been assimilated by listeners. I have been able to acquire a taste for much of it only through extended listening (i.e. repeated listening to particular works or to a wide range of works over many years). Without the ability to listen to unfamiliar music over and over, I would not enjoy the vast majority of the Modern/Contemporary music I presently do.

I believe there are 2 reasons Modern/Contemporary music requires more extended listening for many (most or even the vast majority?) of us. First, Modern/Contemporary music is much less familiar to us than the "new" music of early periods was to listeners back then. The change in musical language from the past was greater. Further, as Classical or Romantic era composers pushed music forward they generally composed in a musical language that was similar to each other. A listener only needed to become familiar with modest changes to learn to like the vast amount of new music. Since the Modern era, composers have developed languages that differ significantly from each other. In some sense one must learn each composer's new language rather than becoming familiar with The One new language.

It's also possible, as many have suggested on TC and elsewhere, that the new languages of Modern/Contemporary music are innately less accessible to people who have grown up listening to CPT classical music.

Incidentally, there are some who have said they found Modern music easier to enjoy than earlier classical music. I believe those often first enjoyed progressive rock and felt that the transition to Modern music was fairly natural. Clearly one's musical development strongly influences ones ability to enjoy differing types of music.


----------



## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> Wanting something to be "prior" implies 'before and after' reasoning


Yes, "prior" means "before."



> to what has already left that fold.


What fold? What has left it? Where has it gone?



> Atonality and serialism, as it was used here, is just a small part of serial thought ("serial" in the larger sense like Whittall uses it).


How is the "larger sense" of serial thought different from the smaller sense?



> It sounds ridiculous to act as if "tonal" or "atonal" could be separated from modern musical thought.


Whose modern musical thought? Who's acting?



> What planet is this from?


What are the options?



> One in which music ended with Wagner?


Oh. _That_ planet. 

This cryptic utterance looks vaguely like an attempt to answer my objections to your theories. The reference to Wagner may be a sneaky clue. Of course not actually quoting my arguments makes misrepresenting them easy and gives you plausible deniability. But, all of that aside...



> "Serialism" should be thought of as 'modern thought' which goes way beyond tonal hierarchies


What's modern about it? Serialism is a hundred years old. "Total serialism" - the application of the concept of serialism to elements of music besides pitch - dates back to the 1940s. What else in any art form, having attained such a ripe old age, has ever been touted as pointing the way to the future of the art? Was sonata form the way of the future in 1850? Is art deco modern? Abstract painting? How many composers of any importance to the culture of the present-day world are thinking that serial techniques are needed to move music forward? What audiences are waiting eagerly to see how serial composition will evolve? Serialism is a technique, not a style of music. Why isn't serialism just another technique in a composer's bag of tricks?

These are not flippant questions. They raise the larger question of what we mean by "modern" in a time when change in most aspects of life occurs at an accelerating rate. Obviously, not everything changes at the same rate. Is it plausible that the development of what we call "classical music" has not kept pace with other changes in the culture? Is music "running in place," slow to move on in any important way, so that some people can still fixate on a technique such as serialism as representative of "modernness"? If serialism is indeed important at the age of one hundred, might it not better be seen as one ingredient in postmodernism rather than touted as modern, much less futurist? Are we looking at Leonard B. Meyer's "new stasis," a state of general eclecticism and bustling diversity in which major changes in cultural paradigms are no longer to be expected? Is ANYTHING in music really modern any more? How many sounds are still unsounded, and how many ways of putting them together are really new, and can say anything new to us? Is the idea of "progress" in music finally dead? Does classical music have a future - or all possible futures?


----------



## pianozach

starthrower said:


> Well, we're all waiting for someone to write Beethoven's 10th.


Too late: Symphony No. 10 in E♭ major is a hypothetical work, assembled in 1988 by Barry Cooper from Beethoven's fragmentary sketches for the first movement.

Cooper's score was first performed at a concert given in 1988 by the Royal Philharmonic Society, London, to whom Beethoven himself had offered the new symphony in 1827. The score is published by Universal Edition, Vienna, and appeared in a new edition in 2013.

Two recordings of Cooper's reconstruction of the first movement of the "Symphony No. 10" were released in 1988, one conducted by Wyn Morris[2] and the other by Walter Weller.

On the other hand, Johannes Brahms's First Symphony is sometimes referred to as "Beethoven's Tenth Symphony".

.



rice said:


> Classical music is a dying art and I accept the fact. Fortunately with the help from modern technology this art can be preserved for hundreds or thousands of years to come. (If mankind and the society would survive that long) That future is none of my business so I'm happy with the CDs I have!


I doubt that Classical Music is dying. People have been announcing the end of Classical Music for over a hundred years.

The electric guitar isn't going away anytime soon either.


----------



## Mandryka

mmsbls said:


> , Modern/Contemporary music is much less familiar to us than the "new" music of early periods was to listeners back then.


My feeling is that what happens is this: in kindergarden we learn songs with cadences, and we listen to stories with a narrative that you can make sense of easily. Most music and literature is essentially the same as what we learned at 6 years old, just more complicated. Modernist music and literature does not let the listener regress back into childhood. You have to have a certain maturity to appreciate it.



mmsbls said:


> I believe those often first enjoyed progressive rock and felt that the transition to Modern music was fairly natural.


I wonder why that should be. Do they have anything in common?


----------



## Woodduck

Mandryka said:


> in kindergarden we learn songs with cadences, and we listen to stories with a narrative that you can make sense of easily. Most music and literature is essentially the same as what we learned at 6 years old, just more complicated. *Modernist music and literature does not let the listener regress back into childhood. You have to have a certain maturity to appreciate it. *


Right. They didn't have mature people in olden times.


----------



## hammeredklavier

Mandryka said:


> Modernist music and literature does not let the listener regress back into childhood. You have to have a certain maturity to appreciate it.


It's interesting that advocates of modern art (visual) say the same kind of things:


----------



## Mandryka

Woodduck said:


> Right. They didn't have mature people in olden times.


Well Machaut, Ockeghem, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner may have appreciated Lachenmann, Schoenberg, Cage and Ferneyhough. Who can say?


----------



## DaveM

---



mmsbls said:


> Yes, and generally in a relatively modest amount of time. Years ago I was very much struck with this difference in how new music is perceived. New musical styles were assimilated by listeners during the Classical and Romantic eras even though people could only hear music that was played live so they couldn't listen to many new works or listen to those works often. New Modern music generally has not been assimilated by listeners. I have been able to acquire a taste for much of it only through extended listening (i.e. repeated listening to particular works or to a wide range of works over many years). Without the ability to listen to unfamiliar music over and over, I would not enjoy the vast majority of the Modern/Contemporary music I presently do.
> 
> I believe there are 2 reasons Modern/Contemporary music requires more extended listening for many (most or even the vast majority?) of us. First, Modern/Contemporary music is much less familiar to us than the "new" music of early periods was to listeners back then. The change in musical language from the past was greater. Further, as Classical or Romantic era composers pushed music forward they generally composed in a musical language that was similar to each other. A listener only needed to become familiar with modest changes to learn to like the vast amount of new music. Since the Modern era, composers have developed languages that differ significantly from each other. In some sense one must learn each composer's new language rather than becoming familiar with The One new language.
> 
> It's also possible, as many have suggested on TC and elsewhere, that the new languages of Modern/Contemporary music are innately less accessible to people who have grown up listening to CPT classical music.
> 
> Incidentally, there are some who have said they found Modern music easier to enjoy than earlier classical music. I believe those often first enjoyed progressive rock and felt that the transition to Modern music was fairly natural. Clearly one's musical development strongly influences ones ability to enjoy differing types of music.


Is it not possible that one can change a language to the point that it is another language? And wouldn't that account for the fact that one has to dedicate oneself to prolonged listening to understand and appreciate it?

What inspired you to dedicate yourself to learning to appreciate some of these more extreme works (think avant-garde)? There had to be something initially that sparked your interest enough to go on that journey. My guess is that those who like this music have varying degrees of how much it resonated early on. Some take to it quickly, others have to work somewhat more, but they all have in common something that connects with this kind of sound initially, however little.

I don't consider myself to be a music-related Luddite. I love classical music of the 300 years plus starting with Baroque. I love a lot of popular music including much of what is called progressive rock. I'm fairly familiar with other music genres that I may not like quite so much. Whenever I listen to most avant-garde works that are recommended here, I come to the same conclusion: It is not classical music.

That conclusion changed my perspective. Originally, I railed against it as almost an obscenity, but once I accepted it as not meeting any definition of CM as I know it, I could better understand why others might enjoy it as just another genre of music, just as there are other genres of music I don't like so much (think rap ).

Also, IMO it does not help that there are those who like/love more extreme forms of modern music, especially avant-garde, but are not realistic, perhaps even not honest about how far from traditional CM it is. (You are one of the few exceptions though I know you see it as CM). They imply that those who have rejected it have a problem. (Personally, I don't think people who like it have a problem; they like a genre that has moved far away from CM.) An example:



Mandryka said:


> My feeling is that what happens is this: in kindergarden we learn songs with cadences, and we listen to stories with a narrative that you can make sense of easily. Most music and literature is essentially the same as what we learned at 6 years old, just more complicated. Modernist music and literature does not let the listener regress back into childhood. You have to have a certain maturity to appreciate it.


Just so there is no misunderstanding, this is an example of the music I'm talking about:


----------



## Woodduck

Mandryka said:


> Well Machaut, Ockeghem, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner may have appreciated Lachenmann, Schoenberg, Cage and Ferneyhough. Who can say?


They may have, if they were not who they were.


----------



## Mandryka

DaveM said:


> ---
> 
> Is it not possible that one can change a language to the point that it is another language? And wouldn't that account for the fact that one has to dedicate oneself to prolonged listening to understand and appreciate it?
> 
> What inspired you to dedicate yourself to learning to appreciate some of these more extreme works (think avant-garde)? There had to be something initially that sparked your interest enough to go on that journey. My guess is that those who like this music have various degrees of how much it resonated early on. Some take to it quickly, others have to work somewhat more, but they all have in common something that connects with this kind of sound initially, however little.
> 
> I don't consider myself to be a music-related Luddite. I love classical music of the 300 years plus starting with Baroque. I love a lot of popular music including much of what is called progressive rock. I'm fairly familiar with other music genres that I may not like quite so much. Whenever I listen to most avant-garde works that are recommended here, I come to the same conclusion: It is not classical music.
> 
> That conclusion changed my perspective. Originally, I railed against it as almost an obscenity, but once I accepted it as not meeting any definition of CM as I know it, I could better understand why others might enjoy it as just another genre of music, just as there are other genres of music I don't like so much (think rap ).
> 
> Also, IMO it does not help that there are those who like/love more extreme forms of modern music, especially avant-garde, but are not realistic, perhaps even not honest about how far from traditional CM it is. (You are one of the few exceptions though I know you see it as CM). They imply that those who have rejected it have a problem. (Personally, I don't think people who like it have a problem; they like a genre that has moved far away from CM.) An example:
> 
> Just so there is no misunderstanding, this is an example of the music I'm talking about:


I think you raise some really valuable points David, and I don't have answers. I don't know how much the CM label matters any more, to be honest. I don't know whether people really see themselves as composing CM. I don't think of myself as exploring contemporary CM when I try to make sense of what, for example, Richard Barrett is doing.

The people we talk about here - Lachenmann, Cage, Nono etc - have some things in common with CM. They write for ensembles which play Bach and Mozart, they may even have written down a set of performance instructions. Their work is sometimes even programmed with traditional compositions and reviewed in CM magazines. I know these things sound inessential, but they shouldn't be discounted completely I think.

Sometimes it's very hard to know whether to apply an existing concept to a new phenomenon. We have to wait to see how the use of the concept "CM" will pan out.


----------



## Room2201974

Mandryka said:


> Well Machaut, Ockeghem, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner may have appreciated Lachenmann, Schoenberg, Cage and Ferneyhough. Who can say?


I have no horse in this particular race, but I'm thrilled to see Guillaume's name mentioned in with the category of composers of his same weight.


----------



## mmsbls

Mandryka said:


> My feeling is that what happens is this: in kindergarden we learn songs with cadences, and we listen to stories with a narrative that you can make sense of easily. Most music and literature is essentially the same as what we learned at 6 years old, just more complicated. Modernist music and literature does not let the listener regress back into childhood. You have to have a certain maturity to appreciate it.


I'm not sure one needs maturity to appreciate Modern music. One just needs to "learn" or become familiar with the new language. That doesn't mean one will like the music, but without becoming familiar with the new language, one has much less of a chance to appreciate the music.



Mandryka said:


> I wonder why that should be. Do they have anything in common?


I don't know. I'm not even sure what popular music is progressive rock. I believe Simon Moon has talked about moving from progressive rock to modern classical.


----------



## mmsbls

rice said:


> ... Classical music is a dying art and I accept the fact. Fortunately with the help from modern technology this art can be preserved for hundreds or thousands of years to come. (If mankind and the society would survive that long) That future is none of my business so I'm happy with the CDs I have!


Yes, it's wonderful to have recordings of so much extraordinary music. I have enough that I could listen to works that I adore for a couple of hours a day and never have to repeat a work for a long time.

I do wonder, however, if classical music is truly dying. By some metrics people may be listening less. I think it's been documented that the percentage of people attending orchestral concerts has gone down over the past several decades. It may also be true that the percentage of people listening to classical music in a given week has gone down as well. But by other metrics, I'd be surprised if classical music is not more popular now than ever.

Due to increases in population and technology, I suspect that more people in absolute numbers listen to classical music than ever before. In fact, I believe more people today listen to contemporary classical music than ever have before (i.e. contemporary classical music being the classical music created in one's lifetime).

So perhaps the percentage of the population enjoying classical music has decreased, but I think the absolute numbers of those enjoying classical music has increased.


----------



## mmsbls

DaveM said:


> Is it not possible that one can change a language to the point that it is another language? And wouldn't that account for the fact that one has to dedicate oneself to prolonged listening to understand and appreciate it?


Of course. That can be true for music just as one must work hard to learn another spoken language.



DaveM said:


> What inspired you to dedicate yourself to learning to appreciate some of these more extreme works (think avant-garde)? There had to be something initially that sparked your interest enough to go on that journey. My guess is that those who like this music have varying degrees of how much it resonated early on. Some take to it quickly, others have to work somewhat more, but they all have in common something that connects with this kind of sound initially, however little.


First, I think you have taken pains to separate Modern/Contemporary avant-garde from Modern/Contemporary music _that you still consider classical_. Often in these discussions I'm not sure if you are talking only about avant-garde or more generally Modern/Contemporary music. I'm not sure I would draw a clear line between the two. So I don't know if, in this thread, you are separating out the avant-garde from the more general Modern/Contemporary that I believe 1996D is discussing.

When I first came to TC, I struggled with (i.e. did not easily enjoy) much Modern music including Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich. Over time I learned to like those composers, and with continued listening, I learned to enjoy many others. My motivation was simply that I had experienced some staggeringly beautiful and engaging music from 1600-1900 or so. I did not find much that I liked after that period. I simply assumed that composers of the last 100 years wanted to produce wonderful new music just as composers of the period 1600-1900, and I wanted to experience that new music as I had experienced the music of earlier. I wanted to lose myself in sounds that I found profoundly compelling, beautiful, or moving. I knew others were able to enjoy the new music, and I wanted that capability as well.



DaveM said:


> I don't consider myself to be a music-related Luddite. I love classical music of the 300 years plus starting with Baroque. I love a lot of popular music including much of what is called progressive rock. I'm fairly familiar with other music genres that I may not like quite so much. Whenever I listen to most avant-garde works that are recommended here, I come to the same conclusion: It is not classical music.
> 
> That conclusion changed my perspective. Originally, I railed against it as almost an obscenity, but once I accepted it as not meeting any definition of CM as I know it, I could better understand why others might enjoy it as just another genre of music, just as there are other genres of music I don't like so much (think rap ).


Again, are you just referring to avant-garde or more generally difficult Modern/Contemporary music?



DaveM said:


> Also, IMO it does not help that there are those who like/love more extreme forms of modern music, especially avant-garde, but are not realistic, perhaps even not honest about how far from traditional CM it is. (You are one of the few exceptions though I know you see it as CM). They imply that those who have rejected it have a problem.


Perhaps those people do not believe the more "extreme" forms are truly so far from traditional music. I doubt they are being dishonest about their views. Would you have thought that Shostakovich was quite different from traditional classical music? I originally felt that much of his music was hard to like.

Without question, no one should imply that anyone who rejects any music has a problem.

NOTE: I don't like the Cage piece, but it sounds like classical music to me. I guess I can understand calling it avant-garde, but there are much more "extreme" works that sound further removed from traditional music.


----------



## Woodduck

mmsbls said:


> I believe there are 2 reasons Modern/Contemporary music requires more extended listening for many (most or even the vast majority?) of us. First, *Modern/Contemporary music is much less familiar* to us than the "new" music of early periods was to listeners back then. The change in musical language from the past was greater. Further, as Classical or Romantic era composers pushed music forward they generally composed in a musical language that was similar to each other. A listener only needed to become familiar with modest changes to learn to like the vast amount of new music.* Since the Modern era, composers have developed languages that differ significantly from each other. *In some sense one must learn each composer's new language rather than becoming familiar with The One new language.
> 
> It's also possible, as many have suggested on TC and elsewhere, that the *new languages of Modern/Contemporary music are innately less accessible to people who have grown up listening to CPT classical music. *


It appears to me that all three of these reasons are essentially the same reason: the unfamiliarity of the musical idiom/language/vocabulary. People more easily enjoy things their past experience has equipped them to understand.



> Incidentally, there are some who have said they found Modern music easier to enjoy than earlier classical music. I believe those often first enjoyed progressive rock and felt that the transition to Modern music was fairly natural.


This isn't surprising, and it exemplifies an important factor in the increased difficulty presented by classical music in the 20th century. It isn't just that modern music was very different from older music, but that the distance between "art music" and "popular music" had been widening for some time and continued to widen to the point that the genres had nothing in common. There isn't much in the melodies, harmonies or rhythms of Beethoven's "Pastoral" symphony that would have baffled the country folk he depicted in it. The difference between his music and theirs was mainly a matter of formal and instrumental complexity. Composers in the Romantic era moved music farther from popular idioms, but as late as the early 20th century opera singers toured the provinces, frontiers and battle fronts, and were cheered by farmers, cowpokes and soldiers who would never set foot in a opera house or concert hall. Working class families in my grandparents' generation may have known little or nothing about classical music, but they had pianos in the parlor and piano benches full of Grieg and Scharwenka as well as Irving Berlin and Hoagie Carmichael. By then, of course, avant-garde classical composers were doing things they wouldn't have understood or liked, and the gulf between "high" and "low" art could only be partially bridged by a genius like Gershwin. Only in recent years have their been some interesting attempts at "crossover," and these certainly get little airplay, whatever their merits. Modern classical music became, and remains, a niche interest. It seems silly to look to it for "the future of music."


----------



## DaveM

mmsbls said:


> Again, are you just referring to avant-garde or more generally difficult Modern/Contemporary music?
> 
> NOTE: I don't like the Cage piece, but it sounds like classical music to me. I guess I can understand calling it avant-garde, but there are much more "extreme" works that sound further removed from traditional music.


I prefaced the Cage work by saying it was the music I was referring to. By the definition as I understand it, it is avant-garde. When you say it sounds like classical music to you, I can't help but wonder why.


----------



## mmsbls

Woodduck said:


> It appears to me that all three of these reasons are essentially the same reason: the unfamiliarity of the musical idiom/language/vocabulary. People more easily enjoy things their past experience has equipped them to understand.


Yes, I agree. Maybe my first reason is, as you say, The Reason. The second is an extension of the first showing why it may be even harder to like Modern music since each composer may require a similar exposure period. The third comment is a simplistic and incomplete statement about the physical (neuronal) basis of the difficulty with unfamiliar sounds.


----------



## Phil loves classical

I think a substantial argument over some types of contemporary classical music is whether there is a certain line that has been crossed, as in being totally disconnected to music of the past. There's a wide spectrum of views on how connected some ultramodern music is to the past. Those who love the music draw strong connections, while those who hate the music insist on a large chasm between the new and old. I've heard, say, Henze is pretty much a Bach of the modern age, while Ligeti is not, and has no business being called Classical, or belong in some kind of separate category. Some view anything atonal, as in the OP, as having crossed the line. While another view I didn't hear until this thread, is that tonality is dead, and a thing of the past.

As I posted earlier in this or some other thread, it's hard to figure out what makes this music tick.






The difference between this and established modern greats, is there is a lot more recognizable patterns or intelligibility with those old modern masters. I think if atonality is still not really that widely appreciated since Schoenberg, this even more eclectic music will be even less.


----------



## mmsbls

DaveM said:


> I prefaced the Cage work by saying it was the music I was referring to. By the definition as I understand it, it is avant-garde. When you say it sounds like classical music to you, I can't help but wonder why.


Medieval music sounds very little like Stravinsky, Boulez, or Varese to me, but pretty much everyone I know considers all of them as classical music. I think whether one considers the Cage as classical depends more on one's definition and less on what the music sounds like. The Cage work is written music for string quartet - both attributes of classical music. Cage is considered classical by people or groups I consider authorities. David Dubal's The Essential Canon of Classical Music includes Cage. Music departments consider him classical.

Here's a definition of classical music: Classical music is a very general term which normally refers to the standard music of countries in the Western world. It is music that has been composed by musicians who are trained in the art of writing music (composing) and written down in music notation so that other musicians can play it.

That includes Cage's quartet music.

As far as I can tell, you do not consider that work classical because it sounds quite different from music you consider classical. My understanding is that those who study and play classical music use a different definition that would include much music you would not.

I suspect that classical music listeners vary in their thinking about what music they would include. I simply accept what I believe is the thinking of professionals (composers, musicologists, performers).


----------



## Woodduck

Even more fundamental than the question of whether some avant grade music should be called "classical" is the question of whether some things offered as "music" should be called music at all. I bring this up not to start an argument (we can refer back to discussions of 4'33" for that) but to say that what anyone wants to call a thing is no longer considered a matter for objective thought in the realm of "high" culture, and hasn't been since Duchamp's "Urinal" was installed in an art museum. It has to suffice now that we understand that "found art" is in a certain basic way unlike what had traditionally been considered art, and that "indeterminate" music is in a basic way different from what had previously been considered music. 

As far as defining contemporary classical music is concerned, it seems to be defined more by what it isn't than by what it is. If it isn't rock, rap, reggae, jazz, soul, folk, country, world, new age or any other recognized genre of popular or ethnic origin, it's probably classical. No one has to remove the bust of Schubert from the piano, or tie screws and paper clips to the strings.


----------



## DaveM

I’ve always looked on classical music, at its best, as requiring a certain amount of sophistication on the part of the composer and listener. All of the traditional composers had to have education in harmony, orchestration, counterpoint, notation and the creation and development of melody. I sometimes wonder what happens when young persons declare themselves to be CM composers when the music created is avant-garde. Did they simply skip a lot of classes?


----------



## AeolianStrains

Mandryka said:


> They write for ensembles which play Bach and Mozart, they may even have written down a set of performance instructions.


So are plenty of rock, jazz, and pop pieces. Metallica's S&M performed with the San Francisco Symphony. Orchestration does not automatically make it in the same "language" as Bach and/or Mozart any more than the King Cole Trio is rock and roll because there's a guitar and drums.



> Their work is sometimes even programmed with traditional compositions and reviewed in CM magazines. I know these things sound inessential, but they shouldn't be discounted completely I think.


It's entirely artificial though. Pop, rock, and jazz albums were also reviewed in the same rags back in the 50s, and that was when their commonalities were more pronounced.



> Sometimes it's very hard to know whether to apply an existing concept to a new phenomenon. We have to wait to see how the use of the concept "CM" will pan out.


There's far, far greater variation between say Puccini and John Cage's "Thirty Pieces" then Henry Purcell and Puccini.


----------



## AeolianStrains

mmsbls said:


> Here's a definition of classical music: Classical music is a very general term which normally refers to the standard music of countries in the Western world. It is music that has been composed by musicians who are trained in the art of writing music (composing) and written down in music notation so that other musicians can play it.
> 
> That includes Cage's quartet music.


And Irving Berlin and Lady Gaga.


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## millionrainbows

Classical music and writing scores evolved before sound recording, so that changed popular music quite a bit, elevated it to a 'precise' status like classical music/ideas were when they dominated. Now "sound" is recorded, it can be as precise as a "score," and the playing field is leveled.

The question then becomes, "What do you want to capture with the recording, an abstract musical idea or a performance?"

Irving Berlin and Lady Gaga are two different cases. Irving Berlin composed "songs" which exist as abstract ideas; Lady Gaga captures "performances in sound," and has not gained a historic reputation as a songwriter; therefore she is "less classical" on the scale than Irving Berlin.

A "demo" tape is a song idea, not really a performance. It acts as a score to convey a musical idea.


----------



## mmsbls

DaveM said:


> I've always looked on classical music, at its best, as requiring a certain amount of sophistication on the part of the composer and listener. All of the traditional composers had to have education in harmony, orchestration, counterpoint, notation and the creation and development of melody. I sometimes wonder what happens when young persons declare themselves to be CM composers when the music created is avant-garde. Did they simply skip a lot of classes?


I'm not very knowledgeable about what it takes to create good avant-garde music. My definition would be music that many other avant-garde composers hold in high regard. Some of the avante-garde composers I know seem to have extensive composition training.

Rebecca Saunders, who composed the work in post #252 received a doctorate in composition at the University of Edinburgh. She also studied under Wolfgang Rihm. Elena Rykova is a PhD candidate at Harvard and teaches composition there. Panayiotis Kokoras received a PhD in composition at the University of York.

I don't know what experience others have had, but it would seem that these composers have serious training in compositional techniques. It's too bad that _some guy_ no longer posts here because he would have much more knowledge about the training and thinking of these type of composers.


----------



## Phil loves classical

mmsbls said:


> I'm not very knowledgeable about what it takes to create good avant-garde music. My definition would be music that many other avant-garde composers hold in high regard. Some of the avante-garde composers I know seem to have extensive composition training.
> 
> Rebecca Saunders, who composed the work in post #252 received a doctorate in composition at the University of Edinburgh. She also studied under Wolfgang Rihm. Elena Rykova is a PhD candidate at Harvard and teaches composition there. Panayiotis Kokoras received a PhD in composition at the University of York.
> 
> I don't know what experience others have had, but it would seem that these composers have serious training in compositional techniques. It's too bad that _some guy_ no longer posts here because he would have much more knowledge about the training and thinking of these type of composers.


Mike H who's pretty active in the forum has a lot of training and is a serious composer. He mentioned there are composers who graduate without fully understanding common practice harmony, and some atonal composers are encouraged to avoid contamination from traditional harmony from what I recall. I got a sense it was a whole different stream. Maybe he can chime in.


----------



## mmsbls

Phil loves classical said:


> Mike H who's pretty active in the forum has a lot of training and is a serious composer. He mentioned there are composers who graduate without fully understanding common practice harmony, and some atonal composers are encouraged to avoid contamination from traditional harmony from what I recall. I got a sense it was a whole different stream. Maybe he can chime in.


Obviously, we can't know whether some students graduated without a comprehensive understanding of harmonic principles. The question is whether it's unusual for a well known avant-garde contemporary composer to have a poor understanding of these principles. I assume the answer is "yes." The ones I mentioned didn't just graduate but received PhDs (or are PhD students). I have a PhD (in physics), and the difference between an undergraduate degree and a PhD is enormous.

It may be the case that expertise in harmony is simply unnecessary for much avant-garde composition. I don't know. I still think it would be odd for a serious composer to not have a basic competency in harmony. I could easily be mistaken since I know fairly little about composition and composers.


----------



## EdwardBast

Phil loves classical said:


> Mike H who's pretty active in the forum has a lot of training and is a serious composer. He mentioned there are composers who graduate without fully understanding common practice harmony, and some atonal composers are encouraged to avoid contamination from traditional harmony from what I recall. I got a sense it was a whole different stream. Maybe he can chime in.


I too have lots of training in theory and composition. In seeking composition instruction as an undergrad at a respectable state university I was put into a Composition One class where the first assignment was to write a piece with no triadic implications, that is, no traditional harmonic language. The aesthetic goals were defined only by proscription, by what one could not do. Tonality was out and it should be avoided at all costs.

I can attest that when I was earning my Ph.D. in musicology, there were doctoral level composition students at my school who had very little skill in common practice harmony, counterpoint, or analysis. I had classes with them and could readily gauge their comprehension of and proficiency with common practice language. I imagine this is not true of the distinguished composers mmsbls cites above.


----------



## EdwardBast

---------------------------


----------



## Fabulin

I've read somewhere an amusing expression that many [modern composers] couldn't tell species of counterpoint from species of an ape.


----------



## Mandryka

I know a couple of composers here in London who regularly make fun of Fuxian counterpoint, their thought is that it's just a load of stupid pointless rules. I know someone else who teaches it to quite an advancded level, she says her students, none of which are professional composers, love it! Her manager, who's a medieval music scholar in practice and training, had to observe her teaching and was genuainely surprised at how much pleasure the class was getting from these arcane arbitrary rules.


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## mrdoc

Experts in music and those that are producing music that 95% of classical lovers have no time for should remember that the "Titanic" was built by expert and 'The Ark"was built by amateurs.


----------



## janxharris

mrdoc said:


> Experts in music and those that are producing music that 95% of classical lovers have no time for should remember that the "Titanic" was built by expert and 'The Ark"was built by amateurs.


?.................................................


----------



## Fabulin

janxharris said:


> ?.................................................


Ark of the Covenant. I am pretty sure.


----------



## janxharris

Fabulin said:


> Ark of the Covenant. I am pretty sure.


Sure of what?......................


----------



## Fabulin

janxharris said:


> Sure of what?......................


that was a joke...

"Dr. Schneider: [encountering a painting of the Ark of the Covenant] What's this?
Dr. Jones: Ark of the Covenant.
Dr. Schneider: Are you sure?
Dr. Jones: Pretty sure".


----------



## 1996D

EdwardBast said:


> I too have lots of training in theory and composition. In seeking composition instruction as an undergrad at a respectable state university I was put into a Composition One class where the first assignment was to write a piece with no triadic implications, that is, no traditional harmonic language. The aesthetic goals were defined only by proscription, by what one could not do. Tonality was out and it should be avoided at all costs.
> 
> I can attest that when I was earning my Ph.D. in musicology, there were doctoral level composition students at my school who had very little skill in common practice harmony, counterpoint, or analysis. I had classes with them and could readily gauge their comprehension of and proficiency with common practice language. I imagine this is not true of the distinguished composers mmsbls cites above.


It makes perfect sense, really explains why music is where it is today.


----------



## 1996D

flamencosketches said:


> Your music will amount to nothing. You are so laughably out of touch with the times you live in that anything you create will be mere pastiche. I would recommend finding a different line of work.


It's not pastiche because I take nothing, it's just the expectation. The greatness of having idea after idea, of making a piece that flows like they used to. Maybe it is talent and extraordinary circumstance, and they'll be no movement; the state of academia is certainly grim.



Enthusiast said:


> He is almost as opinionated as Boulez ... but then, of course, Boulez delivered.





> You are so laughably out of touch with the times you live in


Out of touch with your artistic world, yes, but I've already done, and the concern is that the world is so detached there will be no stage to receive it. The avant-garde dragon might be too strong to slay.

It's happened before where music takes quite a bit of time to get recognized, and if there is no larger movement I fear this is what will happen. So you see the situation; the music has to be able to reach a large audience; it has to have the ability to impact - and you think I'm opinionated? If there is no change we're looking at the same experimental music scene and nothing will ever change it, instead it'll continue on its current path to degrade further into complete anti-reason.



flamencosketches said:


> You're right, maybe that was a little too mean spirited. I'm a little hung over. I only meant it in a "tough love" kind of way. Maybe 1996D will surprise us all and make great music after all. In any case, he has some growing up to do first.


It's as important as my ideas are stubborn, we either bring back reason in art or see music die until something drastic happens politically. Growing up doesn't involve abandoning convictions, they should instead strengthen, and the stage has to be set for my music. Hopefully a movement will happen - everyone hates contemporary music, it's unbelievable that we continue on that path.


----------



## Room2201974

Phil loves classical said:


> Mike H who's pretty active in the forum has a lot of training and is a serious composer. He mentioned there are composers who graduate without fully understanding common practice harmony, and some atonal composers are encouraged to avoid contamination from traditional harmony from what I recall. I got a sense it was a whole different stream. Maybe he can chime in.


I can't speak for Mike H, nor can I speak to his experiences. My experiences were different. After sitting through theory classes at two institutions of higher learning, I can tell you that the composers in those classes almost always made the best grades, had the quickest answers and in general led those classes in understanding concepts. In addition, counting both student and work experience, I've known about a dozen composers in my life. People I drank coffee with or shared a lunch table with (or a beer) in a very informal setting where we talked about everything. It has been my experience that "common practice harmony" was child's play for most of them.

And I have never, ever seen this: 


> encouraged to avoid contamination from traditional harmony


Once again, I can't speak to the experiences of others, but I didn't see this.

In the practical real world, if you're a comp teacher and you're telling your students what to write and what music to avoid......you probably are not going to have students after a while once the word gets out.


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## Nereffid

1996D said:


> everyone hates contemporary music


I'm sorry, but anyone who believes this cannot be taken seriously.


----------



## Enthusiast

Oh dear. So that is where this thread has come to. Exchanging anecdotes and hearsay about the terrible things that happen in the music departments of some universities, doing so without any context or even fact checking, _then _taking it as the new norm ("all universities everywhere in the world are like this") and then using all this to explain what is wrong with those composers who have risen to some sort of prominence ... . The forum is better than this. 

I am old enough to grumble with the best of them about how terrible things are in the modern world - and I probably do some of the time. But I do hope I maintain some rigour and standards in my thinking when I do so. You can't venerate a perfect past without using any of the rigour you claim for it!


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## 1996D

Nereffid said:


> I'm sorry, but anyone who believes this cannot be taken seriously.


You know what I mean; it's culturally irrelevant.



Enthusiast said:


> Oh dear. So that is where this thread has come to. Exchanging anecdotes and hearsay about the terrible things that happen in the music departments of some universities, doing so without any context or even fact checking, _then _taking it as the new norm ("all universities everywhere in the world are like this") and then using all this to explain what is wrong with those composers who have risen to some sort of prominence ... . The forum is better than this.
> 
> I am old enough to grumble with the best of them about how terrible things are in the modern world - and I probably do some of the time. But I do hope I maintain some rigour and standards in my thinking when I do so. You can't venerate a perfect past without using any of the rigour you claim for it!


I'm still very optimistic.

It would be very fun to kill modernism and its derivatives just like they killed romanticism 100 years ago, and right on time too, a very nice round number.


----------



## Nereffid

1996D said:


> You know what I mean; it's culturally irrelevant.


"Everyone hates it" and "it's culturally irrelevant" are two very different ideas. Seems like you meant the former but have shifted your goalposts to the latter.


----------



## 1996D

Nereffid said:


> "Everyone hates it" and "it's culturally irrelevant" are two very different ideas. Seems like you meant the former but have shifted your goalposts to the latter.


What I meant was that every time I would mention it people would chuckle or dismiss it with an air of disgust. Nobody takes it seriously, it's done.

Romanticism: 1820-1920. 
Modernism: 1920-2020.

That looks good.


----------



## EdwardBast

------------------------


----------



## EdwardBast

Enthusiast said:


> Oh dear. So that is where this thread has come to. Exchanging anecdotes and hearsay about the terrible things that happen in the music departments of some universities, doing so without any context or even fact checking, _then _taking it as the new norm ("all universities everywhere in the world are like this") and then using all this to explain what is wrong with those composers who have risen to some sort of prominence ... . The forum is better than this.
> 
> I am old enough to grumble with the best of them about how terrible things are in the modern world - and I probably do some of the time. But I do hope I maintain some rigour and standards in my thinking when I do so. You can't venerate a perfect past without using any of the rigour you claim for it!


For the record, my comments in #222 above weren't a critique of modern music or of composers who have recently risen to prominence, nor was I suggesting that highly developed skills in common practice and modern tonal harmony and counterpoint are necessary prerequisites for composing today. My points were that ideologues don't make good composition teachers and that assuming prominent composers of the recent past and present necessarily possess such traditional skills is probably naive.

I would hope that aspiring composers of 1996D's age would want to study and profit from the language of great 20thc composers, although there is so much music in such diverse styles in this era that one would need to be selective. As I've stated in response to 1996D, there was, IMO, no aesthetic decline in 20thc music, reactionary mythology to the contrary notwithstanding.


----------



## Fabulin

1996D said:


> What I meant was that every time I would mention it people would chuckle or dismiss it with an air of disgust. Nobody takes it seriously, it's done.
> 
> Romanticism: 1820-1920.
> Modernism: 1920-2020.
> 
> That looks good.


So you are saying you are going to slay it until the end of this year?


----------



## 1996D

Fabulin said:


> So you are saying you are going to slay it until the end of this year?


This is the year.


----------



## Enthusiast

EdwardBast said:


> For the record, my comments in #222 above weren't a critique of modern music or of composers who have recently risen to prominence, nor was I suggesting that highly developed skills in common practice and modern tonal harmony and counterpoint are necessary prerequisites for composing today. My points were that ideologues don't make good composition teachers and that assuming prominent composers of the recent past and present necessarily possess such traditional skills is probably naive.
> 
> I would hope that aspiring composers of 1996D's age would want to study and profit from the language of great 20thc composers, although there is so much music in such diverse styles in this era that one would need to be selective. As I've stated in response to 1996D, there was, IMO, no aesthetic decline in 20thc music, reactionary mythology to the contrary notwithstanding.


I don't think I was aiming at your post. But #222 was not a post by you at all. Probably you were referring to #262? I have no problem at all with that post. I didn't like the lesson that was extracted from it in #271 and there were a few other posts that veered towards explaining how awful contemporary music is by anecdotes about how awful university music departments are.


----------



## EdwardBast

Enthusiast said:


> I don't think I was aiming at your post. But #222 was not a post by you at all. Probably you were referring to #262? I have no problem at all with that post. I didn't like the lesson that was extracted from it in #271 and there were a few other posts that veered towards explaining how awful contemporary music is by anecdotes about how awful university music departments are.


Yeah, I must have read the number incorrectly. And I agree that the conclusion drawn from my post was unwarranted. But my anecdote about narrow minded ideologues in music departments of the mid-20thc U.S. isn't isolated or unsupported. The coverage of Prokofiev and Shostakovich, to cite the most obvious examples, in any contemporary music history text current in the 1960s and 70s would suggest they were insignificant throw backs rather than two of the most important composers of their era.


----------



## DaveM

Enthusiast said:


> I don't think I was aiming at your post. But #222 was not a post by you at all. Probably you were referring to #262? I have no problem at all with that post. I didn't like the lesson that was extracted from it in #271 and there were a few other posts that veered towards explaining how awful contemporary music is by anecdotes about how awful university music departments are.


You're the one who wrote that all the comments on present musical education was anecdotal. EdwardBast gave more direct information and you are conveniently ignoring it. Of course, it suggests why young composers are coming out of the hopper composing totally atonally and often avant-garde. We've had at least two of them on this forum. It also suggests that things like harmony, counterpoint and melody are not being emphasized or even being taught at all in, at least, some programs. If this is not dumbing down musical composition then I don't know what is. At least, you can respond to what have been the experience of 2 posters with musical education who have indicated their reality rather than dismissing everything as anecdotal.


----------



## pianozach

mrdoc said:


> Experts in music and those that are producing music that 95% of classical lovers have no time for should remember that the "Titanic" was built by expert and 'The Ark"was built by amateurs.


The Titanic was an actual ocean liner.

The "ark" of Noah seems to be a fictional story telling device to bring home a point.

The story of the Great Flood, as described in the Bible, is not supported by science; one must take it on "faith".

However, if it *is* a true story, this is a Deity I want nothing to do with. This god named "God" supposedly created the human race, as well as all the animals, fish, fowl, plants, trees, and earth, and sky, and light. But in this story, he is seemingly upset that his 'humans' are not to his liking, even though as an omniscient being he should have seen that coming and altered how he made them. So, instead of killing the humans that displeased him, he unmercifully drowns every man, woman, child, infant, and animal, including kittens and puppies and baby hamsters in an unparalleled act of violence, dooming every living animal on earth to an agonizing, horrid, lingering death.

But He loves you.

Thanos would have been proud of this God.



janxharris said:


> ?.................................................





Fabulin said:


> Ark of the Covenant. I am pretty sure.





janxharris said:


> Sure of what?......................


The fictional "Ark of the Covenant" was probably made by the fictional Moses. Was Moses an amateur? Well, he built the Ark on God's command, so I imagine it should have been top quality.

_At that time the LORD said to me, "Cut out for yourself two tablets of stone like the former ones, and come up to Me on the mountain, and make an ark of wood for yourself. I will write on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets which you shattered, and you shall put them in the ark." So I made an ark of acacia wood and cut out two tablets of stone like the former ones, and went up on the mountain with the two tablets in my hand . . . Then I turned and came down from the mountain and put the tablets in the ark which I had made; and there they are, as the LORD commanded me. (NASB) *Deuteronomy 10:1-3, 5*_

Of course, Exodus has a different version, just another of the many inconsistencies in the Bible.

I digress. No one really cares who built the Ark of the Covenant.


----------



## Euler

Well, I'd sooner believe in hamster-slaying sky spirits than in 1996D being a composer of masterpieces


----------



## Enthusiast

DaveM said:


> You're the one who wrote that all the comments on present musical education was anecdotal. EdwardBast gave more direct information and you are conveniently ignoring it. Of course, it suggests why young composers are coming out of the hopper composing totally atonally and often avant-garde. We've had at least two of them on this forum. It also suggests that things like harmony, counterpoint and melody are not being emphasized or even being taught at all in, at least, some programs. If this is not dumbing down musical composition then I don't know what is. At least, you can respond to what have been the experience of 2 posters with musical education who have indicated their reality rather than dismissing everything as anecdotal.


Did I say "all"? I didn't think so. I was aiming at a couple of posts - neither by EdwardBast - and the way they were welcomed by some as a universal explanation for "why modern music is rubbish" when (a) without a lot more evidence it would seem they apply to a few universities or at best (Edward's post refers to previously given - but not in this thread - evidence for this during a particular period, now past) most/all US universities; (b) the fact that so many composers (many of them American) write tonal music and (c) I feel we need to know more about whether exploring whether old disciplines are or are not important in composing good classical music (a subject I have no knowledge of but can't just take as a given) - education methods in most subjects have changed a lot since I was young. I see a lack of evidence that these anecdotes (which at most apply to an apparently blanket situation for a while in US institutions) explain the alleged dominance of avant garde composers across the classical-music-loving parts of the world.

You put the theory out there but so far the evidence in its favour is thin. If you want to prove this point - I am open to listening but may lack the technical knowledge to assess some of the evidence - it will require a lot more that what we have had so far. Anecdotal evidence is rarely of much value unless supported by something more rigorous .... but it is regularly deployed with some success in rabble rousing.


----------



## 1996D

Euler said:


> Well, I'd sooner believe in hamster-slaying sky spirits than in 1996D being a composer of masterpieces


You'll be able to see soon enough, this winter has been a very productive one.


----------



## janxharris

1996D said:


> You'll be able to see soon enough, this winter has been a very productive one.


May we hear your work?


----------



## Room2201974

janxharris said:


> May we hear your work?


Aye, a fools errand me buckoos. The most this forum will ever hear is a reprise of 4'33".

I've tried to imagine what this music must sound like and the only thing that makes sense based on the comments 'is musica ficta on steroids in sonata form.' An anti "deviant" and anti "degenerate" tonal music to "change the world" is to be devoutly wished for....the world has a full diaper, our young composers will change it!!!


----------



## EdwardBast

DaveM said:


> You're the one who wrote that all the comments on present musical education was anecdotal. EdwardBast gave more direct information and you are conveniently ignoring it. Of course, it suggests why young composers are coming out of the hopper composing totally atonally and often avant-garde. We've had at least two of them on this forum. *It also suggests that things like harmony, counterpoint and melody are not being emphasized or even being taught at all in, at least, some programs*. If this is not dumbing down musical composition then I don't know what is. At least, you can respond to what have been the experience of 2 posters with musical education who have indicated their reality rather than dismissing everything as anecdotal.


This isn't an accurate reflection of the concerns I was expressing. At the undergrad level most prospective composers will have been advised or required to take at least a semester of 16thc counterpoint and one of 18thc counterpoint, in addition to the standard four semesters of harmony. IMO, this is not enough to ensure mastery or even basic competence in traditional counterpoint. And I noted interacting with composers at the grad level who seemed to have little competence in these traditional disciplines. But as I have also noted, the question of whether such requirements are particularly relevant to contemporary composition is an open one, and as new styles sprout and ramify it becomes increasingly unlikely that anyone will have time or the mental space for everything. Personally, I find great value in building from a basic competence in common practice music, but I wouldn't use this as general measure of ones readiness to compose contemporary music.

I got into this discussion only in response to a statement expressing confidence that (a specific list of) distinguished contemporary composers were surely competent in common practice harmony and counterpoint. I expressed skepticism that this was necessarily the case, but without attaching any particular value judgment.


----------



## 1996D

janxharris said:


> May we hear your work?


It's not ready, but you will hear it.



Room2201974 said:


> Aye, a fools errand me buckoos. The most this forum will ever hear is a reprise of 4'33".
> 
> I've tried to imagine what this music must sound like and the only thing that makes sense based on the comments 'is musica ficta on steroids in sonata form.' An anti "deviant" and anti "degenerate" tonal music to "change the world" is to be devoutly wished for....the world has a full diaper, our young composers will change it!!!


It's not in sonata form, actually innovation in form has been a great focus. The music is whatever it needs to be to fit the theme of the work.

Storytelling has been the focus and I believe I chose a great story.


----------



## DaveM

EdwardBast said:


> This isn't an accurate reflection of the concerns I was expressing. At the undergrad level most prospective composers will have been advised or required to take at least a semester of 16thc counterpoint and one of 18thc counterpoint, in addition to the standard four semesters of harmony. IMO, this is not enough to ensure mastery or even basic competence in traditional counterpoint. And I noted interacting with composers at the grad level who seemed to have little competence in these traditional disciplines. But as I have also noted, the question of whether such requirements are particularly relevant to contemporary composition is an open one, and as new styles sprout and ramify it becomes increasingly unlikely that anyone will have time or the mental space for everything. Personally, I find great value in building from a basic competence in common practice music, but I wouldn't use this as general measure of ones readiness to compose contemporary music.
> 
> I got into this discussion only in response to a statement expressing confidence that (a specific list of) distinguished contemporary composers were surely competent in common practice harmony and counterpoint. I expressed skepticism that this was necessarily the case, but without attaching any particular value judgment.


Appreciate the clarification. From my reading of the musical education of the 19th century composers, their education finals often required the composition of an orchestrated work, Symphony or Concerto, some of which have been recorded. (eg. Goetz Concerto #1). What would be the requirements these days? Sounds like whatever it is would be atonal or even avant-garde-like.


----------



## DaveM

Enthusiast said:


> Did I say "all"? I didn't think so. I was aiming at a couple of posts - neither by EdwardBast - and the way they were welcomed by some as a universal explanation for "why modern music is rubbish" when (a) without a lot more evidence it would seem they apply to a few universities or at best (Edward's post refers to previously given - but not in this thread - evidence for this during a particular period, now past) most/all US universities; (b) the fact that so many composers (many of them American) write tonal music and (c) I feel we need to know more about whether exploring whether old disciplines are or are not important in composing good classical music (a subject I have no knowledge of but can't just take as a given) - education methods in most subjects have changed a lot since I was young. I see a lack of evidence that these anecdotes (which at most apply to an apparently blanket situation for a while in US institutions) explain the alleged dominance of avant garde composers across the classical-music-loving parts of the world.
> 
> You put the theory out there but so far the evidence in its favour is thin. If you want to prove this point - I am open to listening but may lack the technical knowledge to assess some of the evidence - it will require a lot more that what we have had so far. Anecdotal evidence is rarely of much value unless supported by something more rigorous .... but it is regularly deployed with some success in rabble rousing.


My post could have been phrased better, but it was in response to yours which could have been also. Pretty broad statements and what's with the final one?



Enthusiast said:


> Oh dear. So that is where this thread has come to. Exchanging anecdotes and hearsay about the terrible things that happen in the music departments of some universities, doing so without any context or even fact checking, _then _taking it as the new norm ("all universities everywhere in the world are like this") and then using all this to explain what is wrong with those composers who have risen to some sort of prominence ... . The forum is better than this.


----------



## mmsbls

DaveM said:


> Appreciate the clarification. From my reading of the musical education of the 19th century composers, their education finals often required the composition of an orchestrated work, Symphony or Concerto, some of which have been recorded. (eg. Goetz Concerto #1). What would be the requirements these days? Sounds like whatever it is would be atonal or even avant-garde-like.


I don't know general requirements, but I asked my daughter her experience hearing and playing graduate student compositions at her schools. She thought that generally undergrad composition majors must produce about 30 minutes of music, Masters students maybe 45 minutes, and PhD students at least an hour. She said she never played nor heard what she would consider an avant-garde composition. Also maybe half of the compositions were clearly tonal.

Several years ago I stepped through the composer listings on the Naxos Music Library website listening to random works of a large number of composers. The vast majority are Contemporary or late Modern. Back then, most atonal and all avant-garde works would have sounded unpleasant to me, but my recollection is that the majority were fine. I believe a high percentage of Contemporary classical recorded music is roughly or clearly tonal.


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

It's been proposed a synth artist could invent a new wave-form , and that an acoustic instrument could
be designed to produce it .


----------



## 1996D

mmsbls said:


> I don't know general requirements, but I asked my daughter her experience hearing and playing graduate student compositions at her schools. She thought that generally undergrad composition majors must produce about 30 minutes of music, Masters students maybe 45 minutes, and PhD students at least an hour. She said she never played nor heard what she would consider an avant-garde composition. Also maybe half of the compositions were clearly tonal.
> 
> Several years ago I stepped through the composer listings on the Naxos Music Library website listening to random works of a large number of composers. The vast majority are Contemporary or late Modern. Back then, most atonal and all avant-garde works would have sounded unpleasant to me, but my recollection is that the majority were fine. I believe a high percentage of Contemporary classical recorded music is roughly or clearly tonal.


But there is no originality, no vision, they are simply copying past composers.


----------



## millionrainbows

mmsbls said:


> Several years ago I stepped through the composer listings on the Naxos Music Library website listening to random works of a large number of composers. The vast majority are Contemporary or late Modern. Back then, most atonal and all avant-garde works would have sounded unpleasant to me, but my recollection is that the majority were fine. I believe a high percentage of Contemporary classical recorded music is roughly or clearly tonal.


Just because music is "tonal" doesn't mean anything in itself; it just means it's based on a harmonic model. It probably sounds more consonant than music based on ordered tone rows, i.e., music that is_ not _harmonically based.


----------



## DaveM

millionrainbows said:


> Just because music is "tonal" doesn't mean anything in itself; it just means it's based on a harmonic model. It *probably* sounds more consonant than music based on ordered tone rows, i.e., music that is_ not _harmonically based.


Ya think?????????


----------



## EdwardBast

DaveM said:


> Appreciate the clarification. From my reading of the musical education of the 19th century composers, their education finals often required the composition of an orchestrated work, Symphony or Concerto, some of which have been recorded. (eg. Goetz Concerto #1). What would be the requirements these days? Sounds like whatever it is would be atonal or even avant-garde-like.


I don't think things have changed that much as far as requirements. At least a couple of decades ago, in institutions whose policies I was familiar with, student composers at the highest levels had to produce a major work in the manner you describe, usually with an accompanying written document. I doubt there is anyone out there insisting on some kind of avant-garde stylistic purity today - but it would be nice to hear from those who have been through composition programs in the recent past.



1996D said:


> But there is no originality, no vision, they are simply copying past composers.


How do you claim to know this?


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

Tikoo Tuba said:


> It's been proposed a synth artist could invent a new wave-form , and that an acoustic instrument could be designed to produce it .


A vocal composer may design a new human voice .


----------



## Strange Magic

Tikoo Tuba said:


> A vocal composer may design a new human voice .


It might sound just like a violin. Or something else.


----------



## Woodduck

Tikoo Tuba said:


> A vocal composer may design a new human voice .


I think Bob Dylan did that.


----------



## Mandryka

Woodduck said:


> I think Bob Dylan did that.


Even more so Le Petomane du Moulin Rouge


----------



## 1996D

EdwardBast said:


> How do you claim to know this?


Because otherwise it would have made waves.


----------



## Minor Sixthist

1996D said:


> Because otherwise it would have made waves.


Like yours will make when we finally get to hear them, right?


----------



## 1996D

Minor Sixthist said:


> Like yours will make when we finally get to hear them, right?


God willing.

.......


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

For me , the future of music is to create a flute quartet - 3 flutes and a buffalo drum . I will make the 
flutes . I will make the drum . And I will give this to children .


----------



## DaveM

Tikoo Tuba said:


> For me , the future of music is to create a flute quartet - 3 flutes and a buffalo drum . I will make the
> flutes . I will make the drum . And I will give this to children .


What, no tuba???


----------



## BabyGiraffe

Future of instrumental timbre will be "singing" instruments (I have read a little on this in one academic books on electronic music, published in the 90s; I don't know, if it is lack of interest or computation power for such realtime synthesis).
Future of "autotune" type processors - quantized harmonics and spectral morphing (this can be used the create opposite of "singing/talking instruments" effect - a singer can sound like a piano or whatever )


----------



## mrdoc

Whatever direction music takes I pray it is acoustic and not electronic to the devil with I.T and electronic noise... :devil:


----------



## millionrainbows

I think that new tunings and divisions of the octave is the future.


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

I had a new experience last week . Curious . I would sense two relatively pure tones within my left ear , and , well they would oscillate ... E-C#... E-C# ... on and on . This is an organic interval ? And there was rhythm also - interestingly random , spacey . Such minimalism . I listened for a few minutes , thought about it , and as I arose from laying down it seemed I would make D the last note of this sequence appearing just that once . I thought all this very odd like as a new way for new music to come to
be . And I'm glad it was simple .


----------



## Strange Magic

The Music of the Future will be Semuta Music, as briefly described in _Dune_: 
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=223

Or it may be that experienced as an audience of the playing of the Visi-Sonor (_Foundation_ Trilogy):
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=28

Either music will be a real toe-tapper!


----------



## Selby

Oh TalkClassical, you lovely maiden, you.  I often take extended breaks from this forum. When I return I generally experience feelings of warmth and nostalgia. There is something specifically satisfying about consistency, things staying the same. An OP decrying modernism (always poorly-defined), backed-up by endless subjective assertions and an Olympic series of generalizations.

Ironically, TalkClassical may be the place where Schoenberg is most alive. With how these threads progress, one would be deceived to believe that the Second-Viennese school remains not only alive - but urgent - in it's cultural relevance. Part of me wishes it was true, most of me is happy it is not.

A few points for clarification:
1. Your subjective opinion is not objective truth.
2. Anecdotal evidence is not sufficient as proof.
3. Generalizations are always wrong (including this one).
4. Intellectual dishonesty, let alone naiveté, will rarely allow for correction; not by the perfectly worded response, not by a preponderance of evidence, not by popular opinion, not by pleas for reason, not by an absence of "like this post."


EDIT: punctuation, because I'm a little neurotic.


----------



## 1996D

Opinion becomes more once a wave emerges that takes others with it, to the point where they are inspired and can see possibilities they didn’t before.


----------



## Selby

1996D said:


> Opinion becomes more once a wave emerges that takes others with it, to the point where they are inspired and can see possibilities they didn't before.


Thank you for assisting with this example! See numbers 1, 3, and 4 above.


----------



## 1996D

Selby said:


> Thank you for assisting with this example! See numbers 1, 3, and 4 above.


I understand what you're saying, but if many people have the same opinion and if some are in position to explain it as gracefully as Bernstein did, then that opinion has priority and will influence not only a greater amount, but also people who have the capacity to mould their surroundings.

That's how a wave starts, by influencing people who have it in them to in turn produce. I already knew everything Bernstein said in his lectures, but his way of wording things left me convinced of the responsibility to share this innate musical ability, and be true to what we believe - to bring it out upon the world so it may see things as we do.


----------



## 1996D

This weekend comes the first glimpse into what the future holds musically. On Friday there will be a post on the premise of the works coming this year, with a prelude coming this weekend as a preface to them.

All works are connected to a work by Plato.


----------



## Ariasexta

Music is power, the most powerful one before attaining the sacred redemption, in the world or universe that is palpable in any way, music is the most powerful energy.


----------



## hammeredklavier




----------



## composingmusic

EdwardBast said:


> This isn't an accurate reflection of the concerns I was expressing. At the undergrad level most prospective composers will have been advised or required to take at least a semester of 16thc counterpoint and one of 18thc counterpoint, in addition to the standard four semesters of harmony. IMO, this is not enough to ensure mastery or even basic competence in traditional counterpoint. And I noted interacting with composers at the grad level who seemed to have little competence in these traditional disciplines. But as I have also noted, the question of whether such requirements are particularly relevant to contemporary composition is an open one, and as new styles sprout and ramify it becomes increasingly unlikely that anyone will have time or the mental space for everything. Personally, I find great value in building from a basic competence in common practice music, but I wouldn't use this as general measure of ones readiness to compose contemporary music.
> 
> I got into this discussion only in response to a statement expressing confidence that (a specific list of) distinguished contemporary composers were surely competent in common practice harmony and counterpoint. I expressed skepticism that this was necessarily the case, but without attaching any particular value judgment.


I've also studied music at a couple of different schools, both in the US and in the UK. It is true that a lot of composers don't seem to have a ton of experience in these disciplines, but I've also met a number who find these areas really stimulating and are quite good in these areas. Although my own music isn't common practice tonal, I do find ideas of traditional voice leading to be really useful in my work, as they can be applied in a way that helps with coherence within harmonic passages - granted, I'm not applying these rules in any strict sense, but having a firm grounding in the subject really does help. That's just my personal experience, and it will be different for every composer.


----------



## mikeh375

^^ My experience tallies with yours CM. I remember a composer one year above me at my Alma Mater who revealed that he didn't know the first thing about writing a fugue when he saw me with a textbook on the subject. At the time and being young, I was quite shocked but came to realise that depending on one's aesthetics and influences, it is not necessary to know about common practice, certainly to the level of mastery. Having said that, I believe that mastery of CPT and its subsequent developments is very beneficial and have often argued here that the foundation of support a thourough grounding gives to one's efforts can be extremely valuable and important. Not least in the way it develops a composers proclivities.


----------



## composingmusic

mikeh375 said:


> ^^ My experience tallies with yours CM. I remember a composer one year above me at my Alma Mater who revealed that he didn't know the first thing about writing a fugue when he saw me with a textbook on the subject. At the time and being young, I was quite shocked but came to realise that depending on one's aesthetics and influences, it is not necessary to know about common practice, certainly to the level of mastery. Having said that, I believe that mastery of CPT and its subsequent developments is very beneficial and have often argued here that the foundation of support a thourough grounding gives to one's efforts can be extremely valuable and important. Not least in the way it develops a composers proclivities.


I've had a similar experience. My own background is unusual in that I went to a conservatoire junior department (or preparatory school as they're known in the states) on weekends, and I had a composition teacher who taught harmony by making his students sight read figured bass at the piano. This wasn't necessarily sight reading up to speed, we'd look through it figure by figure, and he'd present several options for each chord, explaining why some options worked better than others. I can attribute a lot of what I know about harmony to this, and I think a practical approach is ideal, although I do realize this is not practical in a classroom setting sadly.

This leads to another issue that I see a lot of the time, which is that people take theoretical rules very literally, without allowing for flexibility that one would learn in a practice-based environment. Theory has to link to how things are heard for it to make sense, at least for me. This flexibility, however, comes from understanding and practice - otherwise it would be very difficult to find a sense of consistency in using these rules, I think.


----------



## mikeh375

composingmusic said:


> I've had a similar experience. My own background is unusual in that I went to a conservatoire junior department (or preparatory school as they're known in the states) on weekends, and I had a composition teacher who taught harmony by making his students sight read figured bass at the piano. This wasn't necessarily sight reading up to speed, we'd look through it figure by figure, and he'd present several options for each chord, explaining why some options worked better than others. I can attribute a lot of what I know about harmony to this, and I think a practical approach is ideal, although I do realize this is not practical in a classroom setting sadly.
> 
> *This leads to another issue that I see a lot of the time, which is that people take theoretical rules very literally, without allowing for flexibility that one would learn in a practice-based environment. Theory has to link to how things are heard for it to make sense, at least for me. This flexibility, however, comes from understanding and practice - otherwise it would be very difficult to find a sense of consistency in using these rules, I think*.


I couldn't agree more. I continually come across composers who do not understand or who have a misconception of, the link between technique and creativity. Some amateurs even believe that their inner voice would be stifled by learning such methods (to be fair, there may be a truth in that for a more contemporary minded composer, whose immediate concern and legacy is the 20th and 21stC).

I've mentioned several times before that one can use technical processes as a search engine for material, but how many composers do this, or even understand the power of lateral thinking re technique one wonders, especially amongst amateurs, not so much at the pro level? And yes, I mean even CP techniques, for as you'll know, they too are totally malleable to the whims and imagination of a composer with the right attitude to them.


----------



## Torkelburger

composingmusic said:


> I've also studied music at a couple of different schools, both in the US and in the UK. It is true that a lot of composers don't seem to have a ton of experience in these disciplines, but I've also met a number who find these areas really stimulating and are quite good in these areas. Although my own music isn't common practice tonal, I do find ideas of traditional voice leading to be really useful in my work, as they can be applied in a way that helps with coherence within harmonic passages - granted, I'm not applying these rules in any strict sense, but having a firm grounding in the subject really does help. That's just my personal experience, and it will be different for every composer.


Yes, I agree. Composers especially in the Romantic era showed future composers that audiences are more open to accepting non-traditional harmonies in a coherent voice-leading context.

Not only that, but voice-leading rules and logic is extremely important in modern composition for use in transitioning smoothly from one technique to another within the same movement/section. Like if you're going from using pitch class set theory to polychords and then going to quartal harmony, all within a large single form, the audience will accept it and it can sound inevitable if you keep common tones and voice-lead through the changes.

Knowledge of the past is paramount in writing modern music in other ways as well. Even knowledge of fugue. But NOT in the event you are writing a fugue. For other reasons too. For example, if you are writing in two different areas that are either centric or tonal or modal or synthetic scale, etc. and you need to modulate somewhere else that has a specific set of accidentals like a "key", you don't have the luxury of tonal secondary dominants, common chord or common tone modulations, that won't work as well or at all as in tonal music.

What you have to do is use your knowledge of fugues and introduce the new accidentals gradually, exactly as you would in the link between first and second statements in the exposition and the transitions between episodes after the exposition (especially when the keys are distant) in a traditional fugue.

And those are just examples with pitches. Knowledge of orchestration is also paramount as well, among many other things.


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