# BBC4's The Sound and the Fury: A Century of Music



## Guest

With apologies to those who can't access BBC4...

Just watched the 1st episode in this 3 part series (first broadcast in February). I thought it was excellent (at least for the non-specialist enthusiast).

It aims to explain and exemplify how 'modern' music evolved at the end of the 19th and into the 20th century. It features interviews (some presumably extracts from earlier programmes) with some of the usual commentators, but also with Boulez, Reich, Schoenberg's daughter and Michael Tilson-Thomas. The composers whose contribution to modernism were included:

Debussy
Strauss (R)
Schoenberg
Stravinsky
Webern
Ives
Gershwin

The piece I found most affecting was the Ives Piano Sonata (didn't catch which one; it has quotes from Beethoven's 5th in it)

Whilst, like much compressed TV, it resorted to some shorthand that would have the purists grinding their teeth, I thought it sketched things out pretty well, and made some good connections with the culture and arts of the time (but then would you trust the opinion of someone who didn't know Schoenberg was also a painter!)

If you have BBC iplayer, it's available to watch til Oct 6.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01qqrqm


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## Mahlerian

I got fed up with how loaded the presentation is in less than a minute (but kept watching anyway).

Edit: It's available on Youtube for non-UK users, but don't tell the BBC!


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## DavidA

It was a really good programme. I saw it in its previous incarnation. Actually showed how wide a spectrum 'modern' music is.


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## DavidA

Mahlerian said:


> I got fed up with how loaded the presentation is in less than a minute (but kept watching anyway).
> 
> Edit: It's available on Youtube for non-UK users, but don't tell the BBC!


Loaded? How? It's a genuine question.


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## Mahlerian

DavidA said:


> Loaded? How? It's a genuine question.


It begins by saying roughly "Classical music was once beautiful and logical, and then all of a sudden Schoenberg came and destroyed that by replacing it with ugliness and chaos". That's just silly on the surface, and false underneath, because it posits first that classical music was once objectively beautiful, and secondly, that it is now objectively ugly.

It makes it sound like Schoenberg came out of nowhere. Their emphasis on his being mostly self-taught is also part of this. His music evolved directly out of that of his predecessors, Brahms, Strauss, and Mahler. They don't even mention any possible reasons for the rejection of his music and not other "atonal music" like, say, Varese's. In my view it's the motivic and contrapuntal density of these works, not the harmony, that prevents many from finding a way in. Proof? People who don't like Schoenberg's post-1908 works tend not to like the works that immediately preceded them, either, such as the String Quartet No. 1 in D minor, the Chamber Symphony in E, and the first three movements of the String Quartet No. 2 (the first except they played was the scherzo from this work, which is very clearly in D minor). Why have Eric Whitacre tell people about the "beautiful early works" if we don't have the chance to hear any of them (and why rely on Whitacre's opinion of Schoenberg at all)?

I also take issue with the characterization of Webern's music as "intellectualized". This is certainly the way it was represented when Adams was at school, and the way it may have been looked at by the Darmstadt group, but not the way the composer or those around him saw it. Expressionism was, as stated elsewhere in the documentary, an art of the subconscious above all.

Timelines are manipulated so that it seems as if Schoenberg was rejected by Strauss and only then began gathering followers, which is wrong. He was respected, not only by Gershwin, but by Stravinsky, whose Petrushka he absolutely loved (it was the later Neoclassical works that he criticized), Mahler, Holst (who bought the score to Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces and took in its influence for the popular Planets suite), Busoni (who made a concert paraphrase of one of the piano pieces played in the documentary), and many others. It also makes it sound as if Ives was aware of musical developments in Europe, which he may or may not have been. We don't know.

The passing reference to Debussy is odd, because we aren't shown how it connects with the rest of what we're hearing. Stravinsky's Rite depends as much on Debussy's influence as on folk music or Rimsky-Korsakov. Webern loved Debussy, especially the opera Pelleas et Mellisande.

Overall, it serves to reinforce prejudices and fails to offer anything to explain _how_ most of these developments came about.


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## Winterreisender

Thanks for the heads-up, I'll be sure to check this program out.


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## Guest

Mahlerian said:


> It begins by saying roughly "Classical music was once beautiful and logical, and then all of a sudden Schoenberg came and destroyed that by replacing it with ugliness and chaos". That's just silly on the surface, and false underneath, because it posits first that classical music was once objectively beautiful, and secondly, that it is now objectively ugly.
> 
> It makes it sound like Schoenberg came out of nowhere. Their emphasis on his being mostly self-taught is also part of this. His music evolved directly out of that of his predecessors, Brahms, Strauss, and Mahler. They don't even mention any possible reasons for the rejection of his music and not other "atonal music" like, say, Varese's. In my view it's the motivic and contrapuntal density of these works, not the harmony, that prevents many from finding a way in. Proof? People who don't like Schoenberg's post-1908 works tend not to like the works that immediately preceded them, either, such as the String Quartet No. 1 in D minor, the Chamber Symphony in E, and the first three movements of the String Quartet No. 2 (the first except they played was the scherzo from this work, which is very clearly in D minor). Why have Eric Whitacre tell people about the "beautiful early works" if we don't have the chance to hear any of them (and why rely on Whitacre's opinion of Schoenberg at all)?
> 
> I also take issue with the characterization of Webern's music as "intellectualized". This is certainly the way it was represented when Adams was at school, and the way it may have been looked at by the Darmstadt group, but not the way the composer or those around him saw it. Expressionism was, as stated elsewhere in the documentary, an art of the subconscious above all.
> 
> Timelines are manipulated so that it seems as if Schoenberg was rejected by Strauss and only then began gathering followers, which is wrong. He was respected, not only by Gershwin, but by Stravinsky, whose Petrushka he absolutely loved (it was the later Neoclassical works that he criticized), Mahler, Holst (who bought the score to Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces and took in its influence for the popular Planets suite), Busoni (who made a concert paraphrase of one of the piano pieces played in the documentary), and many others. It also makes it sound as if Ives was aware of musical developments in Europe, which he may or may not have been. We don't know.
> 
> The passing reference to Debussy is odd, because we aren't shown how it connects with the rest of what we're hearing. Stravinsky's Rite depends as much on Debussy's influence as on folk music or Rimsky-Korsakov. Webern loved Debussy, especially the opera Pelleas et Mellisande.
> 
> Overall, it serves to reinforce prejudices and fails to offer anything to explain _how_ most of these developments came about.


I don't often disagree with you Mahlerian, but I do so here, quite significantly.

Pre-prepared by endless battles here about trad v mod, I listened carefully to the language being used to describe the emergence of 'mod'. I think the script took care to use the language of commenters old and new, and quotes from composers themselves to construct a legitimate argument: that what was already moving away from trad rhythms and melodies - eg the passing reference to Debussy - was significantly fractured by those, like Schoenberg, who wanted to make a complete break. Whilst there was inevitably an element of simplification - 30 critical years condensed into 1 hour - I don't think there was a bias towards the conventionally beautiful. It's simply true to say that the break with the past was a deliberate attempt to represent 'the underbelly' of human experience through manipulation of the very forms of expression, instead of within the conventions.

It seems quite obvious to me that you might choose to represent the ugly in life with the ugly in art. The fact that many since have embraced the ugly and found it beautiful does not negate what the mods were aiming at, and what they were successful at - as far as their reception by the conservatives was.


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## Mahlerian

MacLeod said:


> I don't often disagree with you Mahlerian, but I do so here, quite significantly.
> 
> Pre-prepared by endless battles here about trad v mod, I listened carefully to the language being used to describe the emergence of 'mod'. I think the script took care to use the language of commenters old and new, and quotes from composers themselves to construct a legitimate argument: that what was already moving away from trad rhythms and melodies - eg the passing reference to Debussy - was significantly fractured by *those, like Schoenberg, who wanted to make a complete break.*


But you see, that's the problem. There was no such intent involved. Schoenberg wanted to intensify the language which he had already created out of the past, not divorce himself from it.

Debussy was the one who is on record as wanting to make a clean break from the past.



MacLeod said:


> Whilst there was inevitably an element of simplification - 30 critical years condensed into 1 hour - I don't think there was a bias towards the conventionally beautiful. It's simply true to say that the break with the past was a deliberate attempt to represent 'the underbelly' of human experience through manipulation of the very forms of expression, instead of within the conventions.
> 
> It seems quite obvious to me that you might choose to represent the ugly in life with the ugly in art. The fact that many since have embraced the ugly and found it beautiful does not negate what the mods were aiming at, and what they were successful at - as far as their reception by the conservatives was.


Of course there is ugliness in the music of Schoenberg, as there is in Beethoven. In both cases it is used for expressive and dramatic effect. There is beauty as well, and intentionally so.

I find that chord in Salome, the one that they mention in particular, exceedingly ugly. I find the emergence of the soprano in Schoenberg's second quartet exceptionally beautiful, as if the angst and storm of the preceding movements had given way to a calm above the clouds (although the tumult returns in a new form in the central part of the movement).

Edit: I will admit that before I saw this documentary, I was already conditioned against it by this review.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...-Century-of-Modern-Music-BBC-Four-review.html

It appears that the documentary reinforced his opinion for the reasons I gave. If one can come away with the idea that Schoenberg "discarded every rule of composition" after watching a program on modern music, then that program is misleading at best.


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## Guest

Mahlerian said:


> But you see, that's the problem. There was no such intent involved. Schoenberg wanted to intensify the language which he had already created out of the past, not divorce himself from it.
> 
> Debussy was the one who is on record as wanting to make a clean break from the past.
> 
> Of course there is ugliness in the music of Schoenberg, as there is in Beethoven. In both cases it is used for expressive and dramatic effect. There is beauty as well, and intentionally so.
> 
> I find that chord in Salome, the one that they mention in particular, exceedingly ugly. I find the emergence of the soprano in Schoenberg's second quartet exceptionally beautiful, as if the angst and storm of the preceding movements had given way to a calm above the clouds (although the tumult returns in a new form in the central part of the movement).
> 
> Edit: I will admit that before I saw this documentary, I was already conditioned against it by this review.
> 
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...-Century-of-Modern-Music-BBC-Four-review.html
> 
> It appears that the documentary reinforced his opinion for the reasons I gave. If one can come away with the idea that Schoenberg "discarded every rule of composition" after watching a program on modern music, then that program is misleading at best.


I've just started to watch the programme again. First, I can see that Farndale is not to be trusted. It's as if he's heard only Whitacre's and Adam's words and taken them as the writer's voice, declaring that Schoenberg is ugly. He is wrong. The programme is more skilful than that. Even Alex Ross's own commentary (the series consultant, there seems to be no specific writer) is undercut. For example, he says, of the 8-note dissonance in Salome, something like, "No-one had thought of it before". We then cut back to Debussy, with the narrator telling us, "But the wind of change had been stirring since the end of the 19th C." Benjamin and Moore quite clearly tell us that Debussy wanted to create music for the "century of the motor car". Actually, the sequence is not a passing reference, but a fairly substantial one, I thought, but you're right to correct my interpretation that Debussy wanted evolution and Schoenberg, the clean break. The programme clearly tells us that, citing AS's daughter who repeated that he did not want to break from the past, but evolve, as he must, in reaction to the present.

The point is that the programme establishes a range of views, from Whitacre and Adams on the one side to Moore and Benjamin on the other. The listener is allowed to piece together what is intended as a history, viewed from different perspectives, not a subjective appreciation of 'atonality' or 'Schoenberg'.

The disadvantage to the viewer, is that we have to take on trust the biographical and historical detail that is relied upon to explain that Schoenberg was an angry man, and its all too easy to attach motives - his wife's infidelity, his Jewishness in the face of anti-semitism - to his music: that he wrote "ugly music" to express his "ugly society". Yet what this does is to point out, if rather sketchily, that the artists of the modern period were just as prone to expressing personal emotion as they are grand political statement.

By the way, the narrator points out in the 2nd violin concerto that the atonality comes _after _the female vocal. (I'd need to listen to hear whether that is a correct analysis). That means you can certainly find her part 'beautiful' without the analysis of the piece being undermined.

On the appreciation of Schoenberg by Strauss - Strauss had produced an opera whose main focus was the "scandalous" story and its 'outrageous' author, Wilde and with, apparently, much less controversial musical content - is it really just the one 8 note dissonance? If so, you can see that Strauss was not interested in the intellectual approach to musical evolution espoused by AS, just in the shock of that moment. Ross quotes a letter which clearly suggests that Strauss did not approve of what AS was doing. Is Ross wrong?


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## Guest

MacLeod said:


> If you have BBC iplayer, it's available to watch til Oct 6.
> 
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01qqrqm


Sorry, my error - only available to Oct 4, though if you can download it, you can have until Oct 29th!


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## Mahlerian

MacLeod said:


> The point is that the programme establishes a range of views, from Whitacre and Adams on the one side to Moore and Benjamin on the other. The listener is allowed to piece together what is intended as a history, viewed from different perspectives, not a subjective appreciation of 'atonality' or 'Schoenberg'.


True, and we have Boulez as well saying that the music of the 20th century would not have happened the way it did without him. But all the same, the narrator is presenting us with a particular interpretation that seems to agree with the former rather than the latter, that this music is inherently alienating its audience and intentionally devoid of everything anyone who likes music would recognize. In the context of the program, Boulez's comment almost seems to have a negative tint on it.



MacLeod said:


> The disadvantage to the viewer, is that we have to take on trust the biographical and historical detail that is relied upon to explain that Schoenberg was an angry man, and its all too easy to attach motives - his wife's infidelity, his Jewishness in the face of anti-semitism - to his music: that he wrote "ugly music" to express his "ugly society". Yet what this does is to point out, if rather sketchily, that the artists of the modern period were just as prone to expressing personal emotion as they are grand political statement.


Well, it's easy enough to attribute his movement from his early style to his later to a combination of self-confidence, assured technique, and mounting rejection. He had already begun to compose more or less in the "freely atonal" style before marital difficulties arose at all, although the songs in question were not performed or published until later.

And I agree that much of the angularity of his style (one of the commentators, probably Benjamin, referred to his "brittle" sound, and I agree with that) is motivated by defiance and anger. I just don't agree that the intent or result in all cases was ugly. I really believe that Beethoven makes a good analogue here.



MacLeod said:


> By the way, the narrator points out in the 2nd violin concerto that the atonality comes _after _the female vocal. (I'd need to listen to hear whether that is a correct analysis). That means you can certainly find her part 'beautiful' without the analysis of the piece being undermined.


There are 4 movements in the Second String Quartet. The first is in F# minor, the second in D minor (the first music we hear by Schoenberg, accompanied by that silly zooming in and out on his self-portrait), the third in E-flat minor, and the fourth is written without a key signature, but ends on an F# major triad. The latter two both include the soprano voice. What we hear is the moment the soprano enters in the final movement, which has already been "floating" in a vague tonal space for a minute or so.



MacLeod said:


> On the appreciation of Schoenberg by Strauss - Strauss had produced an opera whose main focus was the "scandalous" story and its 'outrageous' author, Wilde and with, apparently, much less controversial musical content - is it really just the one 8 note dissonance? If so, you can see that Strauss was not interested in the intellectual approach to musical evolution espoused by AS, just in the shock of that moment. Ross quotes a letter which clearly suggests that Strauss did not approve of what AS was doing. Is Ross wrong?


No, Ross is right, it's just in this documentary, the viewer is presented with this information, and then immediately afterwards the information that Schoenberg gathered his own followers, making it seem like a cause and effect. In reality, the letter was over 5 or 6 years after the "Second Viennese School" had begun.

Salome's "modernity" is certainly not restricted to a single chord. The whole thing is full of roving, unresolved harmonies that rarely seem to settle down. I actually think that chord's particular ugliness arises from its being used in an extremely simple chord progression (I-*IV*-I), but with the middle chord made into a bitonal jumble. Actually, Strauss's next opera, Elektra, goes even further towards atonality, but didn't make the same kind of impact.

And Strauss had initially supported Schoenberg's work. He was instrumental in getting his then friend a publishing deal with Universal Edition, and he may have kept supporting him in public (for at least a time), but that letter was sent privately to Alma Mahler, and she of course promptly passed on its contents.

Next, why no mention of Alban Berg, whose opera Wozzeck and Violin Concerto were immediate and lasting public successes? He was heavily influential on Gershwin's Porgy and Bess as well as Britten's Peter Grimes (which could not exist without Wozzeck). To not mention his music in a documentary on the 20th century seems bizarre, especially as the producers seem to want to express a populist view.

The final thing that irritated me was the insertion of Julian Webber's comment that the composers thought they had made a mistake is audiences enjoyed it. Yes, Schoenberg did say "if it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, then it is not art", but he also desperately wanted audiences to understand him and was disappointed when they did not, time and time again.

I may seem overly negative or nit-picky here, but this kind of thing really bothers me. Overall, if the documentary leads people to listen to more 20th century music or gives them an idea of the variety of it, then that's definitely a good thing. I'm glad that you enjoyed it. I'm a little less harsh on the other two episodes, actually, although I think the third episode has some definite problems with the narrator and the interviewed guests flat-out contradicting each other.


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## Guest

Mahlerian said:


> But all the same, the narrator is presenting us with a particular interpretation that seems to agree with the former rather than the latter, that this music is inherently alienating its audience and intentionally devoid of everything anyone who likes music would recognize.


Except, as I pointed out before, the thrust of the documentary is historical: is it not true that contemporary (as opposed to all, including modern) audiences found the music difficult? Is it not true that Schoenberg wanted to write a music that he knew the conservative bourgeoisie would find unappealing?



Mahlerian said:


> I just don't agree that the intent or result in all cases was ugly.


I don't think that was argued 'in all cases'. Whilst some of the comments made reference to ugliness, not all of them did, but they did want to emphasise that the move away from tonal centres created a degree of unfamiliarity that audiences at the time - and one or two commentators even today - found very discomfiting. But this is one of the 'shorthands' I refer to - 'ugly' is a term of convenience. [edit] Of course, with some of the music playing in the background, the viewer is able to at least sample what he is being told is problematic. I didn't have a problem with it, and I'm no fan of AS.



Mahlerian said:


> Next, why no mention of Alban Berg, [...] To not mention his music in a documentary on the 20th century seems bizarre, especially as the producers seem to want to express a populist view.


I wondered the same. He had a name check, nothing else. I guess the editor would argue that something had to give to make room for other composers, and two out of three in reasonable depth seemed a fair coverage. However, I don't see the 'populist' view in what the producers presented.



Mahlerian said:


> The final thing that irritated me was the insertion of Julian Webber's comment that the composers thought they had made a mistake is audiences enjoyed it.


But why? Who cares what JLW thinks? Or are you arguing that what he thinks is what the producers think? His comment, as I recall, was in the brief introduction to the whole series of three programmes - was it repeated later? I don't recall his being given very much time to say anything worthwhile.



Mahlerian said:


> I may seem overly negative or nit-picky here, but this kind of thing really bothers me. Overall, if the documentary leads people to listen to more 20th century music or gives them an idea of the variety of it, then that's definitely a good thing. I'm glad that you enjoyed it. I'm a little less harsh on the other two episodes, actually, although I think the third episode has some definite problems with the narrator and the interviewed guests flat-out contradicting each other.


Haven't seen the other two yet, so can't comment. But again, what if the interviewed guests do contradict each other? Doesn't that force the discerning viewer to form their own opinion, do their own investigation, rather than just take sides.

The narrator is, of course, just an actor. It's not clear whether the "authorial voice" of the narration is that of the consultant - Alex Ross - or the producers, who do not appear in the first programme at all.

[btw, thanks for the subtle correction of 2nd string 'concerto' to 'quartet! :lol:


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## Mahlerian

MacLeod said:


> Except, as I pointed out before, the thrust of the documentary is historical: is it not true that contemporary (as opposed to all, including modern) audiences found the music difficult? Is it not true that Schoenberg wanted to write a music that he knew the conservative bourgeoisie would find unappealing?


Yes to the first question, a mixed yes and no to the second. He wanted to write his music _in spite of the knowledge that_ conservative bourgeoisie, especially those in Vienna, would find it unappealing. He wasn't specifically writing it in order to shock his audiences, which is a separate thing entirely, not necessarily what you were arguing, but it sometimes comes up in these discussions.



MacLeod said:


> I don't think that was argued 'in all cases'. Whilst some of the comments made reference to ugliness, not all of them did, but they did want to emphasise that *the move away from tonal centres created a degree of unfamiliarity that audiences at the time - and one or two commentators even today - found very discomfiting*. But this is one of the 'shorthands' I refer to - 'ugly' is a term of convenience. [edit] Of course, with some of the music playing in the background, the viewer is able to at least sample what he is being told is problematic. I didn't have a problem with it, and I'm no fan of AS.


I also take issue with this statement. The problem audiences have with Schoenberg has far more to do with the density of the music than the harmony, as I said before. There are examples of unclear tonality (sustained for entire pieces, rather than sections of pieces) outside of Schoenberg, say Debussy, that bother almost no audiences today. On the other hand, I've seen everything by Schoenberg called "atonal" or "12-tone", even when the pieces are very clearly tonal, and I'm sick this being used as an excuse for denying the music any validity.

And as for not being a fan, don't worry, I don't mind. I'm not a fan of a lot of music myself. Nobody likes everything.



MacLeod said:


> But why? Who cares what JLW thinks? Or are you arguing that what he thinks is what the producers think? His comment, as I recall, was in the brief introduction to the whole series of three programmes - was it repeated later? I don't recall his being given very much time to say anything worthwhile.


The comment in question is placed during the section on Schoenberg. I'm not even necessarily criticizing Julian Lloyd Webber here. It could be the editors or producers who put the quote there rather than elsewhere, and it was likely just a general remark.



MacLeod said:


> Haven't seen the other two yet, so can't comment. But again, what if the interviewed guests do contradict each other? Doesn't that force the discerning viewer to form their own opinion, do their own investigation, rather than just take sides.
> 
> The narrator is, of course, just an actor. It's not clear whether the "authorial voice" of the narration is that of the consultant - Alex Ross - or the producers, who do not appear in the first programme at all.


True, but the "disembodied voiceover" tends to have a patina of objectivity around it that the interviewees don't necessarily have.



MacLeod said:


> [btw, thanks for the subtle correction of 2nd string 'concerto' to 'quartet! :lol:


I kind of feel like a jerk making corrections like that, but I'd actually be a jerk (and a hypocrite!) if I criticized anyone for making a mistake.


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## Winterreisender

I have just watched the first episode. Thanks MacLeod for pointing it out 

Overall I thought the program was not necessarily anti-moderinsm but rather anti-Schoenberg. The conclusion seemed to be that Schoenberg and Webern are cold, ugly and soulless but that these characteristics do not necessarily apply to other atonal (or at least largely discordant) composers such as Ives and Varese. Even Eric Whitacre had nice things to say about these two.

To an extent I share this opinion. Ives and Varese are quite appealing to me because their music has a programmatic element, to which images and emotions can easily be attached. I find this harder to do with serialism because the music is so abstract and, in the case of Webern, so empty-sounding (in contrast to the more colourful instrumentation of Varese). But that's just my opinion. 

Will definitely watch the rest of the series.


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## Mahlerian

Winterreisender said:


> Overall I thought the program was not necessarily anti-moderinsm but rather anti-Schoenberg. The conclusion seemed to be that Schoenberg and Webern are cold, ugly and soulness but that these characteristics do not necessarily apply to other atonal (or at least largely discordant) composers such as Ives and Varese. Even Eric Whitacre had nice things to say about these two.


I don't find Schoenberg (or Webern) to be any of those things. To me, his music is so often passionate, beautiful, and lyrical. That's why I think that programs that purport to have objectivity should stay away from such value judgments.



Winterreisender said:


> To an extent I share this opinion. Ives and Varese are quite appealing to me because their music has a programmatic element, to which images and emotions can easily be attached. I find this harder to do with serialism because the music is so abstract and, in the case of Webern, so empty-sounding (in contrast to the more colourful instrumentation of Varese). But that's just my opinion.
> 
> Will definitely watch the rest of the series.


Not a single note of serial music was heard in that entire first episode (beyond perhaps something or other in the intro...maybe?). There wasn't any 12-tone music written until the 1920s.

Just for a bit of balance, I'll leave off with one of those early Schoenberg works that no one has a problem with today.





I can honestly tell you that I can hear the mature Schoenberg in this music.


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## DavidA

Mahlerian said:


> I don't find Schoenberg (or Webern) to be any of those things. To me, his music is so often passionate, beautiful, and lyrical. That's why I think that programs that purport to have objectivity should stay away from such value judgments.
> 
> .


Just to surprise you. As I was on this thread this afternoon I listened to Schonberg's Variations for Orchestra with Karajan and the BPO. I don't think I'll ever be a real fan but I agree they have a weird beauty all of their own. Mind you, the BPO at the time could make anything sound beautiful! The performances are astonishing orchestrally.


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## Guest

Mahlerian said:


> True, but the "disembodied voiceover" tends to have a patina of objectivity around it that the interviewees don't necessarily have.


I think we've probably exhausted our exchange on this episode. We'll have to agree to differ on the overall effect of the voiceover and the various opinions of the interviewees. I don't see the programme as either pro or anti AS or modernism, but as attempting to show that what emerged at the beginning of the 20th C was increasingly 'difficult' for the mainstream (and conservative) audience and that, along with other emerging trends such as jazz, together with the social upheaval of the time, had a profound impact on "classical" music.

I'm looking forward to the next episode.


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## Guest

Having now listened to Episode 2, I've tried again to navigate the website linked to the series.

http://www.open.edu/openlearn/histo...20th-century-composers-making-the-connections

This is quite a useful tool for those looking to broaden (if not deepen) their knowledge of the 20thC.

The second programme again offers social contexts for the music of Shostakovich, Messiae, Boulez, Ligeti, Xenakis and others. In amongst the interminable, facile debates about the validity of 'modern' music, there is rarely found a reminder of possible reasons why composers in the 20thC composed as they did. Whilst it is all too easy to say "The horrors of Auschwitz prompted a new approach to composition which favoured a move away from the poetic", it offers a more reasoned thesis than the equally simplistic, "They deliberately chose to write music to turn away the audience."

It was the Ligeti and the Messiaen that I was most prompted to listen to further, perhaps because they have a spiritual colour that is missing from the 'total serialists'.


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## Mahlerian

MacLeod said:


> It was the Ligeti and the Messiaen that I was most prompted to listen to further, perhaps because they have a spiritual colour that is missing from the 'total serialists'.


I don't remember how accurately this is portrayed in the episode, but "total serialism" was a _very_ short phase in the early 1950s. All of the composers who dabbled in it moved away from it just as quickly, because, in my opinion, there's not very much you could do with it.

By the time Boulez wrote _Le marteau_, a piece which I find utterly beautiful and captivating, he had ditched the idea altogether. Very little of the music heard in the episode is "total serialist": I think only an excerpt of Boulez's Structures or something.


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## Garlic

I'm going to see Le marteau tonight, along with two electronic works by Stockhausen. Hope I'm not disappointed.


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## Winterreisender

I enjoyed this episode, except for when RVW's Lark Ascending was dismissed as cowpat music!! 

But seriously, I agree with MacLeod that Messiaen and Ligeti came across the best because of the more spiritual element. 

I was also interested to learn about the Americans' involvement in encouraging avant-garde music for their own political ends. (I suppose a comparison could be made with the American government championing abstract expressionism in painting as the polar opposite of the restricting Soviet realist style). But the fact that so many famous composers emerged from a single school (Darmstadt) does seem to imply that something of a mutual admiration society was in place to ensure their continuing reputation.


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## Guest

Winterreisender said:


> I enjoyed this episode, except for when RVW's Lark Ascending was dismissed as cowpat music!!


In fairness, the programme _reported _that the pastoral music of Delius, Vaughan Williams and Elgar was disparaged as cowpat music. I didn't think that the programme makers actually agreed with the criticism.

[edit] The term was used by Elisabeth Lutyens, apparently.


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## Winterreisender

MacLeod said:


> In fairness, the programme _reported _that the pastoral music of Delius, Vaughan Williams and Elgar was disparaged as cowpat music. I didn't think that the programme makers actually agreed with the criticism.


Well ok, fair point. But at the same time, I do think "nationalism" in music is a genre worthy of attention, even in a show about the avant-garde. When others are trying to be so forward-looking, there is something quite refreshing about RVW and others writing music that deliberately sounds old-fashioned, perhaps even timeless. I suppose these topics were addressed during the segment on Copland.


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## Guest

Winterreisender said:


> I do think "nationalism" in music is a genre worthy of attention, [...] I suppose these topics were addressed during the segment on Copland.


There were several references to composers - Ives, Copland, Shostakovich - who used the traditional and folk music of their home country as a source for their compositions, but the programme argues that they did not use them uncritically. Here, Elgar offered (still offers) music that contributes to one version of our national identity (something that is not a universal).


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## Winterreisender

I just thought it a little strange that they implied no music of any importance came out of Britain until Harrison Birtwhistle and Peter Maxwell Davies. I am not sure if these composers are more important than, say, Benjamin Britten. I realise the show wanted to maintain a coherent narrative of avant-garde music becoming increasingly alienating to the general public, but that seems to be a very prescriptive idea of what musical "innovation" should look like.


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## Guest

Winterreisender said:


> I just thought it a little strange that they implied no music of any importance came out of Britain until Harrison Birtwhistle and Peter Maxwell Davies. I am not sure if these composers are more important than, say, Benjamin Britten. I realise the show wanted to maintain a coherent narrative of avant-garde music becoming increasingly alienating to the general public, but that seems to be a very prescriptive idea of what musical "innovation" should look like.


I think you've answered your own 'question': the aim of the programme is to show that there was a musical development during the 20thC that, deliberately intended or not, turned off those audiences used to, and happy with, the more conventional music of the 19thC. I don't know how many other composers were working in the UK post 1945, and I know next to nothing about Britten, but what I've heard suggests that he was continuing a relatively conventional course.


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## PetrB

Mahlerian said:


> It begins by saying roughly "Classical music was once beautiful and logical, and then all of a sudden Schoenberg came and destroyed that by replacing it with ugliness and chaos". That's just silly on the surface, and false underneath, because it posits first that classical music was once objectively beautiful, and secondly, that it is now objectively ugly.
> 
> It makes it sound like Schoenberg came out of nowhere. Their emphasis on his being mostly self-taught is also part of this. His music evolved directly out of that of his predecessors, Brahms, Strauss, and Mahler. They don't even mention any possible reasons for the rejection of his music and not other "atonal music" like, say, Varese's. In my view it's the motivic and contrapuntal density of these works, not the harmony, that prevents many from finding a way in. Proof? People who don't like Schoenberg's post-1908 works tend not to like the works that immediately preceded them, either, such as the String Quartet No. 1 in D minor, the Chamber Symphony in E, and the first three movements of the String Quartet No. 2 (the first except they played was the scherzo from this work, which is very clearly in D minor). Why have Eric Whitacre tell people about the "beautiful early works" if we don't have the chance to hear any of them (and why rely on Whitacre's opinion of Schoenberg at all)?
> 
> I also take issue with the characterization of Webern's music as "intellectualized". This is certainly the way it was represented when Adams was at school, and the way it may have been looked at by the Darmstadt group, but not the way the composer or those around him saw it. Expressionism was, as stated elsewhere in the documentary, an art of the subconscious above all.
> 
> Timelines are manipulated so that it seems as if Schoenberg was rejected by Strauss and only then began gathering followers, which is wrong. He was respected, not only by Gershwin, but by Stravinsky, whose Petrushka he absolutely loved (it was the later Neoclassical works that he criticized), Mahler, Holst (who bought the score to Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces and took in its influence for the popular Planets suite), Busoni (who made a concert paraphrase of one of the piano pieces played in the documentary), and many others. It also makes it sound as if Ives was aware of musical developments in Europe, which he may or may not have been. We don't know.
> 
> The passing reference to Debussy is odd, because we aren't shown how it connects with the rest of what we're hearing. Stravinsky's Rite depends as much on Debussy's influence as on folk music or Rimsky-Korsakov. Webern loved Debussy, especially the opera Pelleas et Mellisande.
> 
> Overall, it serves to reinforce prejudices and fails to offer anything to explain _how_ most of these developments came about.


In brief, then, the also seemingly inevitable tone of condescension of the announcer, as if the audience were mentally challenged or just plain stupid, or they were speaking to an audience for whom English was a second language. Why they do that, go figure -- whether it was Walter Cronkite introducing a live broadcast of Adams' Nixon in China, or yet another Beeb Presenter talking on and around the arts, it is nearly as inevitable as death and taxes.

But I will watch it if I can bear it -- to know what "they" are "feeding the masses."


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## Mahlerian

MacLeod said:


> I think you've answered your own 'question': *the aim of the programme is to show that there was a musical development during the 20thC that, deliberately intended or not, turned off those audiences used to, and happy with, the more conventional music of the 19thC*.


Which is an egregious oversimplification on multiple counts. The truly "more conventional" music of the 19th century has largely fallen by the wayside. There were numerous developments in the 20th century, all of which were met with some measure of resistance, and all of which have gained significantly in acceptance since.

Much ultra-conservative music of the early 20th century has been consigned to history, and for every person who laments its fate (supposedly because of a nasty cabal of academics who hate anything enjoyable), there are thousands of classical music lovers who can't bring themselves to be interested at all, which accounts for the majority of these works having only one or two recordings.



MacLeod said:


> I don't know how many other composers were working in the UK post 1945, and I know next to nothing about Britten, but what I've heard suggests that he was continuing a relatively conventional course.


Britten wrote in a style that reflected modernist developments, but with an innate conservatism that seemed to be everywhere in Britain at the time. Peter Grimes reflects the influence of Berg's Wozzeck, while Turn of the Screw uses a 12-note theme as its primary subject. His main contemporary influence, though, was Shostakovich.


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## PetrB

MacLeod said:


> I think we've probably exhausted our exchange on this episode. We'll have to agree to differ on the overall effect of the voiceover and the various opinions of the interviewees. I don't see the programme as either pro or anti AS or modernism, but as attempting to show that what emerged at the beginning of the 20th C was increasingly 'difficult' for the mainstream (and conservative) audience and that, along with other emerging trends such as jazz, together with the social upheaval of the time, had a profound impact on "classical" music.
> 
> I'm looking forward to the next episode.


All quibbles apart, any compressed one hundred years of history is not going to have it all. What it does give is a nutshell sketch, filling in a time line and makes, it is to be hoped, connections for those less familiar with the history, the music, the era, and some of the social atmospheres which were part of what impelled things into being.

None of them get it right: no one who wants to know it better, in depth, or with more than one point of view would stop there, having relied upon an hour or three _of television_ to do "all that."

Without having yet seen it (bookmarked, TYVM) I can readily believe there could be an underlying dislike for the repertoire itself from either writers and or presenters. Television does not, really, go about trying to be impartial and clinical, which may be closer to a cleaner sort of truth, but that just does not sell well to a broad public


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## Guest

Mahlerian said:


> Which is *an egregious oversimplification* on multiple counts. The truly "more conventional" music of the 19th century has largely fallen by the wayside. There were numerous developments in the 20th century, all of which were met with some measure of resistance, and all of which have gained significantly in acceptance since.


My summary of the programme, or the aim of the programme??



PetrB said:


> All quibbles apart, any compressed one hundred years of history is not going to have it all. What it does give is a nutshell sketch, filling in a time line and makes, it is to be hoped, connections for those less familiar with the history, the music, the era, and some of the social atmospheres which were part of what impelled things into being.
> 
> None of them get it right: no one who wants to know it better, in depth, or with more than one point of view would stop there, having relied upon an hour or three _of television_ to do "all that."


Exactly .


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## Mahlerian

MacLeod said:


> My summary of the programme, or the aim of the programme??


The aim of the program itself. They are attempting to "show" something that is at best misleading. It is true that each development (no positive or negative connotation intended) in music in the 20th century was greeted with derision, contempt, and incomprehension before gaining acceptance. It is true that some of these developments have proven divisive even today. It is also true that some cannot tolerate any modernist music whatsoever, from Debussy to Stravinsky to Varese to Shostakovich.

I do not believe that this justifies a loaded presentation that contains such willful distortions as asserting that Schoenberg wanted to create music that was "tune-less, rather than tuneful". *(An exact quote.)* That is false, no two ways about it. You can say that audiences and/or critics found it tune-less, as they did Debussy, Brahms, Stravinsky, Varese, and others, but you cannot say with any validity that Schoenberg _intended_ to compose tuneless music, because he did not.


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## PetrB

Mahlerian said:


> I do not believe that this justifies a loaded presentation that contains such willful distortions as asserting that Schoenberg wanted to create music that was "tune-less, rather than tuneful". *(An exact quote.)*


Now I'm really looking forward to it, talking at an inanimate object, wishing I had my handy vaporizing death ray nearby, etc.

That quote is again, either from a real and kinda nasty bias, or comes via a massively condescending writer or host who thought that was the best way to explain it to the lowly plebes who of course have such a diminished capacity of understanding than the writer, or from flat out plain unvarnished ignorance. Just another writer or host talking about that which they know little, fed lines through the mechanism of "making a program."

I think from the point of view of someone who already knows most or all of this music and its history, it is inevitable that any such program will be irritating, seem wildly shallow, off, funny, etc.

Though my general nervous energy adrenaline levels are way up as a natural effect of moving house, I can maybe use some stimuli later, after I'm resettled


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## DavidA

I did find the program very informative but I realise it was probably a somewhat simplistic introduction, especially to someone well informed. I think this is the problem with programs that seat to cover an enormous stretch in a short space. They will certainly not satisfy everyone. In seeking to inform a non-specialist they will certainly irritate the specialist by making sweeping generalisations. I find the same in certain history programs where I am well informed of the particular period. There are too many generalisations for my taste. However someone who does not know the period might find it highly informative as indeed it is.


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## PetrB

DavidA said:


> I did find the program very informative but I realise it was probably a somewhat simplistic introduction, especially to someone well informed. I think this is the problem with programs that seat to cover an enormous stretch in a short space. They will certainly not satisfy everyone. In seeking to inform a non-specialist they will certainly irritate the specialist by making sweeping generalisations. I find the same in certain history programs where I am well informed of the particular period. There are too many generalisations for my taste. However someone who does not know the period might find it highly informative as indeed it is.


No argument there. I think that what Maherian and I most dislike is when such a program is colored by inept word choices, or an actual slant. The less aware viewer may be thereby turned off or away, which I would hope is the opposite intention of any such program. When the subject is something so foreign or 'esoteric' to the wide general public as is 20th century music to many and the fear factor or general dislike is high, the care taken should be that much greater.

Sounds like they put their foot in it on this one....


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## Mahlerian

DavidA said:


> I did find the program very informative but I realise it was probably a somewhat simplistic introduction, especially to someone well informed. I think this is the problem with programs that seat to cover an enormous stretch in a short space. They will certainly not satisfy everyone. In seeking to inform a non-specialist they will certainly irritate the specialist by making sweeping generalisations. I find the same in certain history programs where I am well informed of the particular period. There are too many generalisations for my taste. However someone who does not know the period might find it highly informative as indeed it is.


I agree, and I'll go one further by saying that the actual performances featured (many of which were recorded specially for the occasion) are uniformly excellent and the editing/visual presentation is of a very high quality. That's why I'm disappointed with the bias put on display, because the the rest of it is that much more convincing.

I'm also glad that Ives was included, although his actual influence wasn't felt until far later in the century (via Carter, for example, who is not featured at all).


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## Guest

Mahlerian said:


> I do not believe that this justifies a loaded presentation that contains such willful distortions as asserting that Schoenberg wanted to create music that was "tune-less, rather than tuneful". *(An exact quote.)* That is false, no two ways about it. You can say that audiences and/or critics found it tune-less, as they did Debussy, Brahms, Stravinsky, Varese, and others, but you cannot say with any validity that Schoenberg _intended_ to compose tuneless music, because he did not.


This may be the crux of your disagreement with the programme's aims. 'Intent' is a hard thing to determine. Even if we had documentary evidence that Schoenberg himself had said, "I want to write tuneless music", it might not be a guarantee of his real purpose, or, more importantly, what he actually achieved. You may not like others' estimation of the results of his work; you may find his work 'tuneful'; but I find it difficult to argue that someone who wrote music that he knew would be criticised as it was, and continued to write it in the face of continuing criticism, did not have such an intent. It may be simplistic of the programme to present it this way (I think the programme is more subtle than that) but I don't agree that it is misleading, bearing in mind that the programme wanted to present a history not an aesthetic analysis: the point is not, 'Is Schoenberg's music tuneful or tuneless?' but 'Did the music of Schoenberg contribute to a radical development of music that represented a break with the classical-romantic past?'

[edit] Just to elaborate a little on why I think the programme is more subtle than Mahlerian asserts, the quote "tune-less, rather than tuneful" would be misleading if that was literally _all _the programme had to say about Schoenberg's music. But it is only part of a sentence which is part of a long narrative about the composer and his music. Given that excerpts of the music is playing in the background, the viewer can make up his own mind to what extent he finds it tuneless.


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## Guest

Only just come across this website...Alex Ross was one of the main contributors to the programme and the series consultant.

http://www.therestisnoise.com/noise/

The FAQs are quite interesting.


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## Mahlerian

Did you watch the third episode at any point? What were your impressions?


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## Guest

Mahlerian said:


> Did you watch the third episode at any point? What were your impressions?


Yes, I did. I enjoyed the series overall. I think perhaps I was the ideal audience for Alex Ross! However, it's a while since I watched it and I can't remember the specifics very well...

...just watching pieces again on Youtube, I think the programme pays due respects to a range of selected composers, with comments that are both pro and anti, though I think, on balance, the pro is stronger. For example, John Adams comes across as curmudgeonly - as he does throughout the series - when talking about Cage.

I guess I was slightly disappointed by the apparent conclusion that 'music had to go through hell and back', as if the insanity of much 20th C music was replaced by traditional tonality, and we all heaved a sigh of relief. The fact is that we're too close to 21st C music to be able to discern current trends, though I also thought it might have been useful to look at current composers and exemplify the range.

Given the long list of works that I've added to my list to listen to - Schoenberg, Ives, Messiaen, Feldman, Reich, Riley, Part...I'll have to get back to you to let you know whether I've increased my enjoyment of 'modern' music!


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## Mahlerian

MacLeod said:


> I guess I was slightly disappointed by *the apparent conclusion that 'music had to go through hell and back', as if the insanity of much 20th C music was replaced by traditional tonality, and we all heaved a sigh of relief*. The fact is that we're too close to 21st C music to be able to discern current trends, though I also thought it might have been useful to look at current composers and exemplify the range.


This was my main problem with the third episode. I have nothing against minimalism as such, and I enjoy pieces by Adams, Reich, and others that are in or influenced by the style, but I agree with George Benjamin's comments. It doesn't follow traditional tonality's rules any more than the music that preceded it, so claims like those made by some of its proponents bug me.



MacLeod said:


> Given the long list of works that I've added to my list to listen to - Schoenberg, Ives, Messiaen, Feldman, Reich, Riley, Part...I'll have to get back to you to let you know whether I've increased my enjoyment of 'modern' music!


For all my criticisms, if this is the result of the program, I'm happy that people watched it.


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