# My secret



## Guest (Oct 25, 2012)

Not that saying this will change anything, but here's how I know that the charges leveled against modern, contemporary, experimental, avant garde music are wrong:

When I was very young, the only music I heard was what came out of Hollywood. TV and movie music, however, especially cartoons, used snippets of classical music a lot.

When I was around nine, I inherited a stack of 78s, several of which were classical music. Haydn, Rachmaninoff, Grieg, Beethoven.

Magic!

I was insatiable. By the time I was twenty, I had become familiar with most of the standard repertory and quite a good bit of the nonstandard stuff (Wiren and Arensky and such). Although I had heard a fair amount of early twentieth century music (and had even performed in a piece for brass and tape), I didn't really have a sense of the twentieth century as a thing until I heard Bartok's _Concerto for Orchestra._

Why? Because I lived a very sheltered life. There was no internet in the long, long ago, you know. In the before time. And none of my friends or relatives had even the slightest interest in classical music. Even in high school, there were only two others who were interested. So I was almost entirely on my own.

After the Bartok, I was even more insatiable, now for twentieth century music. More Bartok. Stravinsky (including a never-to-be-forgotten performance of _Les Noces_ in Stockholm one summer evening). The guy I was travelling with hated it. Gave him a headache. Gave me the most thrilling concert experience of my life up to that point.

By that fall, I was plunging into the icy waters of Elliott Carter, who baffled me. But a little bafflement never hurt me, none. No howdy!

In short order, I was immersed in the sound worlds of Varese and Stockhausen, Mumma and Ashley. More and more glorious music. And adding in the oldies, too: Janacek, Prokofiev, Nielsen and the like.

And the living people, Partch, Cage (whom I met several times), Fluxus, Galas, Reynolds, Oliveros, Childs (whom I lived near to for many years). That is, the music of the living people! Though the people themselves, as I came to know more and more of them, were lovely people, too. And electronics. I came to know that if an LP had the word "electronic" on its cover, odds are I would like it.

This was all because I loved the music. I had no idea what the philosophies were, having given up on reading program notes by the time I was ten or eleven. I was not interested in politics or in technical matters. I knew nothing of any of the critics or theoriticians who might have been engaging in brianwalker's suppositious brainwashing.

I had my ears and my brain, with very little positive input from anyone around me until very late. Lots of negative input. By 1974 I'm sure I had heard every misbegotten charge against contemporary music that anyone has ever perpetrated online. And, as my subsequent reading has shown, if I had lived in the 1840s, I would still have been able to hear every misbegotten charge against contemporary music that anyone has ever et cetera. No one would have said "atonal" or "Schoenberg" or "Cage" or "experimental," but the substance has really not changed much since the mid-1800s. The music has changed, drastically. The whining is essentially the same. There's a conclusion there somewhere just waiting to be drawn.

So anyway, here's what I know for sure--the most outrageous, extravagant, discordant, chaotic, nonmusical, nonsensical* avant garde music is perfectly likeable and accessible and delightful. I know, because I've tried it and liked it. Not influenced by Boulez, not trying to impress anyone (who was there to impress?), not brainwashed or deluded, just utterly smitten by the lovely sounds of the twentieth century, including buzz saws and cactus spines.

*These are not, by the way, my terms. These are terms I've borrowed from various friends over the years


----------



## Head_case (Feb 5, 2010)

Thanks ~ for sharing. 

I ca I suppose it's disheartening to hear that your experience of those around you has been negative. I'm probably guilty of that - I can be really scornful of people's music taste (like Take That or Britney Blah etc) unless they were born yesterday. 

It makes sense to hear what you say; although music is a vector, when appreciated, bears on man's own humanity, and frees him from the constrictions of the world he lives in. Freedom from the banality around us arises, when we listen to our favourite music. 

I've never felt any call to justify my taste. Not that I can't justify, (this would be rather tedious zzzz!). What others like, is never a measure of what I should follow (or react against). I studied philosophy at university, so I suppose, that is a different form of developing freedom (of the mind) from negativity which can paralyse us from appreciating, what is otherwise obscured from view; or opaque to the ear. 

PS - what are Dag Wiren's string quartets like. I know Arensky's works, especially his piano trios.


----------



## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Interesting autobiography. You prefer modern music. The more extreme the sound, the more enjoyable. Electrically eclectic!


----------



## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Your personal experience, although unique to you, has been shared by many others in variations on the same theme. Those of us who love and give a damn about music outside the pop/rock world are in the minority.

I wish I had inherited a nice record collection at age nine. I'd be a lot farther ahead at this point. Instead, I inherited a cheesy Reader's Digest Classical Music primer set in monophonic LPs at age 19. It was enough to get me started. And nobody else in my family gives a damn about this stuff or has a clue. I was on my own with no guidance, but somehow I've managed to learn about, acquire, and listen to thousands of recordings of great music. And I didn't have the internet at my fingertips until just eight years ago. I read every music publication I could find, hit every record store I passed by, and went to the library religiously.

As far as the resistance to modern, avant garde, or electronic music goes, I've never experienced it on a personal level. But I don't travel in musical or artsy circles. I'm just a working stiff who loves music. And not just classical music. I have a huge jazz collection.


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

It's so much easier when you grow up in a family that loves classical music! My father preferred Beethoven, my mother Debussy and other impressionists. We only had maybe five LPs, couldn't afford any more. But I remember laying in bed Saturday mornings, hearing the Pastoral coming through the wall from our console in the living room (this was the early 1950s).

I didn't learn much more until the grocery store across the street started selling a classical music series -- mono but decent recordings with extensive program notes. The first was $0.49, the others a buck more. I think there were 24 of them. The die was cast!

I never felt separated from my peers by this, it just never arose somehow. I didn't expect people to like "my" music and never learned if they did or not.


----------



## Guest (Oct 25, 2012)

starthrower said:


> Your personal experience, although unique to you, has been shared by many others in variations on the same theme.


That's what I'm hoping.



starthrower said:


> I wish I had inherited a nice record collection at age nine.


Me too. Sorry if I gave the impression that it wasn't cheesy. It was. But, as with yours, it was enough to get started!



starthrower said:


> As far as the resistance to modern, avant garde, or electronic music goes, I've never experienced it on a personal level.


Oh, it's pretty ugly!



starthrower said:


> But I don't travel in musical or artsy circles.


Oh, neither did I when I was a kid. I was just the son of a working stiff who had some Percy Faith records. I started travelling in those circles in high school, I guess. Not really until college. The resistance came from everywhere, though. Oh well.



KenOC said:


> It's so much easier when you grow up in a family that loves classical music!


Don't be makin' me jealous, now, Ken! But seriously, I think the isolation was a huge advantage. I got a lot of negative reactions to being a white trash kid who listened to Beethoven, but I was pretty much free to make my own way at my own speed and like what I genuinely liked. By the time I started listening to modern music (Bartok and Janacek, haha, even in 1972...), and getting the negative reactions to that stuff, it was too late. I already knew how to like what I liked.


----------



## Guest (Oct 25, 2012)

some guy said:


> So anyway, here's what I know for sure--the most outrageous, extravagant, discordant, chaotic, nonmusical, nonsensical* avant garde music is perfectly likeable and accessible and delightful. I know, because I've tried it and liked it.


Fair enough.


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I'm adopted. My biological family is a musical family, but my adoptive family is not. So I grew up with about as little music as a person can have - we sang in church three times a week, and occasionally my mother played southern white gospel. I heard music at my friends' houses sometimes, and persuaded my parents to let me listen to "Christian Rock." 

Late in high school I had a measure of freedom, and started exploring music. I had a brief pop phase, when I was interested in showing off the power of my car's speakers. But I loved literature and philosophy, and wanted to share the music of people who shared my interests. So I bought a bunch of Naxos cassette tapes (long lost) and listened to them in my car. I also got into Pink Floyd, CCR, the Doors, Springsteen. (In my time, that was old music.)

From then until now, although I've learned a lot about music, I think my attitude has more or less remained unchanged: I just want to learn, explore, enjoy. I'm not a critic, I'm just a tourist. I'm less interested in whether I like a work than whether I understand what it has meant to people, and usually when I do that, I find I like it.


----------



## crmoorhead (Apr 6, 2011)

Great post, some guy. I'm a little jealous of you having met Cage more than once. I haven't got to grips with his music in a big way yet (mainly just because I only have a small number of recordings), but I find his philosophies fascinating and would have loved to have seen him in the flesh. 

Playing devil's advocate, however, just because you have experienced music and liked it doesn't mean that the music is NOT "outrageous, extravagant, discordant, chaotic, nonmusical, nonsensical". Well, I don't agree with the nonsensical, but the others could very well be true. Contemporary music of the composers you name is, to me, the definition of inaccessible in terms that it does not have instinctive appeal to most people. Nonetheless, inaccessible is far from meaning the same thing as "without merit". I think that these works do have merit, certainly a lot more merit than most pop music being churned out (in any period, not just now). It's just that the qualities that they do possess are unimportant or irrelevant to some people. But that's just taste, and we will both continue to recommend pieces regardless of this.


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

some guy said:


> So anyway, here's what I know for sure--the most outrageous, extravagant, discordant, chaotic, nonmusical, nonsensical* avant garde music is perfectly likeable and accessible and delightful.


this is not good publicity if you want to persuade someone. There some great music and there's also horrible stuff, as in every kind of music or art. I've been a voracious listener of free jazz, and i know that a lot of people can't stand it. Because there's a lot of crap. So if i want to make someone reconsider his position the first thing i say is exactly that, and then i add that he could give a chance to that particular album of sun ra or albert ayler. Your considerations are something like "it's all good if you really try to listen without prejudices".


----------



## Guest (Oct 25, 2012)

norman bates said:


> Your considerations are something like "it's all good if you really try to listen without prejudices".


That's not what I read. I think he's saying quite simply that since he likes it, it must, by definition, be likeable. I don't think you should additionally infer that someguy is saying "_all _of it is likeable", or "everyone who listens to it will like it", or "if they listen to it and don't like it, they are prejudiced".


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

MacLeod said:


> That's not what I read. I think he's saying quite simply that since he likes it, it must, by definition, be likeable. I don't think you should additionally infer that someguy is saying "_all _of it is likeable", or "everyone who listens to it will like it", or "if they listen to it and don't like it, they are prejudiced".


I hope you're right. If that's what he meant, it's a wonderful message.


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

MacLeod said:


> That's not what I read. I think he's saying quite simply that since he likes it, it must, by definition, be likeable. I don't think you should additionally infer that someguy is saying "_all _of it is likeable", or "everyone who listens to it will like it", or "if they listen to it and don't like it, they are prejudiced".


well, maybe it's because i haven't seen him never saying that a piece of avantgarde music is ugly. I have read him sometimes saying that previously he didn't appreciate a certain composer but then he changed his mind. I have never seen him saying "this piece of wuorinen for me is crap" or something like that. So it seems like a giant advertisement for everything is dissonant/atonal.
In a sense, it's not only a someguy's problem. While in tonal music everyone who listen it has no problem saying that a particular piece is boring, pretentious, kitsch etc, it's much more rare that those who are fan of the avantgarde would say something against a certain piece. Maybe because they think they have not yet understood it.


----------



## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

norman bates said:


> ... it's much more rare that those who are fan of the avantgarde would say something against a certain piece. Maybe because they think they have not yet understood it.


It's against their listening "ideology".


----------



## Guest (Oct 25, 2012)

norman bates said:


> well, maybe it's because *i haven't seen him never saying* that a piece of avantgarde music is ugly.


Sorry, Norman, but you've lost me at the first sentence. Would you mind clarifying? Thanks


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

MacLeod said:


> Sorry, Norman, but you've lost me at the first sentence. Would you mind clarifying? Thanks


sorry, I do know that my english is terrible... anyway I was saying that I've read many times someguy and I know that he is an avid listener of avantgarde music, but I've never seen him something negative against a certain piece of music.


----------



## mensch (Mar 5, 2012)

Indeed, thanks for sharing. My own story is somewhat similar.

I started out actively hating modern music and art, while on the other hand idolising the 19th century and Chopin in particular. Let's just say I was one of those people who snort derisively when they hear an unresolved dissonance or claim that "my 5-year old niece can easily accomplish what Jackson Pollock did".

I thank the art education I received in high school and two inspiring teachers in particular for opening my eyes and ears. We were exposed to modern art and had to listen to stuff by Louis Andriessen and Philip Glass. I hated it at first, but the stories (not the theories, this being in high school) behind those works really resonated over time. The single record of "modern music" we had was a recording of "Le sacre du printemps" conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas and I believe this music also prepared me to appreciate the different harmonies and rhythms which sounded alien to me until that point. From there on out I got interested in composers like Reich, Riley and Glass first. Possibly because they remained in the tonal realm. The repetitiveness still managed to drive my parents, crazy though.
After that I expanded my listening into the likes of Ligeti, Messiaen, Dutilleux, Crumb, Penderecki, etc. The main thing is I did so without a background on the theory or politics behind the music (there are so many -isms in 20th century art). I know composers like Reich and Glass reacted against serialism, but that's not what attracted me to the music in the first place. Likewise with Ligeti, I didn't know what micro-polyphony entailed, but pieces like "Lontano", "Lux Aeterna" or his piano études just struck a chord. I visited a concert programme where Dutilleux, unkown to me at that time, was programmed alongside Dvořák and Rachmaninoff. The brief introduction introduced Dutilleux as a modern composer strongly influenced by Debussy and that he was known as a perfectionist, but that didn't adequately prepare me for his mysterious and sometimes deliciously violent "Cello Concerto" which was to be performed. It was the highlight of the evening, though not all the people I was with were of the same opinion.

That said there's a lot of music which I don't particularly like, from all eras. Composers like Boulez or Ferneyhough generally doesn't do much for me. I still haven't gotten into Schoenberg, but I love Alban Berg.
The process of discovering new music has remained the same for me. When something musical strucks me in some positive way, I might read up on the theory behind it all, but only after.


----------



## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

some guy said:


> So anyway, here's what I know for sure--the most outrageous, extravagant, discordant, chaotic, nonmusical, nonsensical* avant garde music is *perfectly likeable and accessible and delightful. *I know, because I've tried it and liked it. Not influenced by Boulez, not trying to impress anyone (who was there to impress?), not brainwashed or deluded, just utterly smitten by the lovely sounds of the twentieth century, including buzz saws and cactus spines.


By you. By you. By you. By you. By you. And who are you? What authority do you have? Your view is founded upon humanism, that just because a human being likes it, it's good; furthermore, just because something is liked does not mean that it should be liked, there is no virtue in liking things for the sake of liking them. Your view is grounded on the baseless fact that nothing can ever be degenerate.

Millions of people rock out to death metal. Not going to change a thing. *Lots of people like to eat all sorts of things,* *everything you can imagine cooked in every imaginable way using every imaginable ingredient;* the fact that such people exist does not prove that what they like to consume is "perfectly likeable and accessible and delightful." People like the Duke and the President in _Salo_ exists; it doesn't prove that the nature of their activity is "perfectly likeable and accessible and delightful.". The fact that these people exist and do these things sincerely does not make it delightful nor is there any virtue in finding delight in them.

Webern's music is inhumane; Boulez's even more so; Stockhausen's even more so; Merzbow's is subhuman. Doesn't matter how much you like it, it won't change that fact. There is no virtue in you liking it.


----------



## Guest (Oct 25, 2012)

brianwalker said:


> By you. By you. By you. By you. By you. And who are you? You view is founded upon humanism, that just because a human being likes it, it's good;


What do _you _mean by 'good'? If you think someguy implied that what he likes is 'good'? (he didn't say so, in terms, and I don't believe he implied so either) what do you suppose he means to assert by it?


----------



## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

MacLeod said:


> What do _you _mean by 'good'? If you think someguy implied that what he likes is 'good'? (he didn't say so, in terms, and I don't believe he implied so either) what do you suppose he means to assert by it?


Because people promote what they think is good.


----------



## Guest (Oct 25, 2012)

brianwalker said:


> Because people promote what they think is good.


That's not an answer to the question I asked. someguy states that


> _avant garde music is _*perfectly likeable and accessible and delightful.*


 He has not claimed that it is necessarily 'good' for all.

I'll ask again. What do you mean by the term 'good'?


----------



## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

MacLeod said:


> That's not an answer to the question I asked. someguy states that He has not claimed that it is necessarily 'good' for all.
> 
> I'll ask again. What do you mean by the term 'good'?


He didn't qualify the statement that it was perfectly likeable and delightful and accessible_ for him and for him only, _hence *accessible. *

The notion of *accessible* would be meaningless if he was only referring to himself. He is accusing the people who dislike this music of being blinded by an ideological predisposition and bad upbringing i.e. the being brainwashed by a "conservative musical culture". My accusation is the inverse; they like it because of an ideological predisposition, that they are brainwashed by a Hegelian musical culture.



> I'll ask again. What do you mean by the term 'good'?


I'm sure you use that word "good" in your life; you know what it means. I mean what you mean when you use the word. 


some guy said:


> And, as my subsequent reading has shown, if I had lived in the 1840s, I would still have been able to hear every misbegotten charge against contemporary music that anyone has ever et cetera.


*Prove it.* Go head, prove me wrong. I'm willing to be proven wrong, I'm wanting to be proven wrong, nay, I'm waiting to be proven wrong.

Show me where Beethoven's music, Schumann's music, Weber's music, Rossini's music, and Schubert's music are labeled with terms equivalent to the derision and scorn that the post-war modernist avant-garde compositions have often received. Go ahead, make my day.


----------



## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

Everything is likeable and equally everything is dislikable. If you doubt it, spend a few hours surfing youtube and reading the comments.
Charming though some guy's post was. It tells us nothing except what some guy likes. In this respect some guy is really any guy (or gal). As such the post may be filed in the 'no need to know' drawer alongside the many enthusiastic tributes (by others) to the music of L. Einaudi.


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

brianwalker said:


> A: By you. By you. By you. By you. By you. And who are you? What authority do you have? Your view is founded upon humanism, that just because a human being likes it, it's good;
> 
> B: furthermore, just because something is liked does not mean that it should be liked, there is no virtue in liking things for the sake of liking them. Your view is grounded on the baseless fact that nothing can ever be degenerate.
> 
> ...


I'm breaking up the first bit for convenient analysis. The word "furthermore" beginning section B appears to mean "I have a further argument."

But there wasn't an argument before that. You state that his view is founded on "humanism," and maybe so, but that alone is not a refutation of his view. So there's no argument there. "Humanism" isn't necessarily wrong.

In fact, though I don't ordinarily use the word "humanism," based on the way you seem to be using it, I think I'm a "humanist" too. I certainly don't expect any superhumans to inform us about what music is good. Reference to death metal's fans doesn't deter me. They have their opinion; you have yours; I have mine; to the best of my knowledge, none of us have God's (assuming s/he both exists and cares).

Your food example seems to work against you. I don't like whiskey, millions of people do. It's not that I'm wrong or they're wrong; it's a difference of opinion - literally, of taste. There is nothing deeper going on. Just humans with different likes and dislikes. No objective truth.

That's how it goes, and it's ok. It's ok for me to like Stockhausen and you not to. It's ok for me to like to eat asparagus and for you to think it's terrible. It's ok! It really is ok!

I don't know about the Duke or the President in Salo (never saw the film) but they seem to be intended as examples of ethically horrible people. (If I'm wrong about your intentions, ignore this paragraph, but please clarify them for me.) Now you've switched from aesthetics to ethics, and I disagree that principles in one have to apply to the other. Some analogies probably work, but some do not.

The biggest difference between aesthetics and ethics is that, no matter how awful is the music of Webern, Boulez, Stockhausen, or Merzbow, it actually doesn't hurt anyone if I like it, nor even if I regularly listen to it. (Provided I don't play the music on high powered speakers and disrupt their sleep, or whatever; but in that kind of scenario it doesn't matter whether I played Bach, it's not the music that's wrong but something else. If Stockhausen's music required chickens to be sacrificed, there could be an argument that it's immoral. But again, it's not the music, but something else that we have a problem with.)

Delving into ethics would take us away from topics that we're allowed to talk about. But for now I worry that you've really tried to create a direct analogy between liking certain music and enjoying whatever terrible things the Duke and President did. If that's really what you meant to do, you've got to get a grip, man. We're not talking about torturing people, but about, say, string quartets played in helicopters.


----------



## Guest (Oct 25, 2012)

brianwalker said:


> He didn't qualify the statement that it was perfectly likeable and delightful and accessible_ for him and for him only, _hence *accessible. *The notion of *accessible* would be meaningless if he was only referring to himself.


Er, no, it wouldn't be meaningless: Edmund Hillary proved that Everest is accessible, even though he was, at the time, the only one to have accessed it. In any case, although he is only telling us his personal story, it is patently obvious that other listeners find it accessible.



brianwalker said:


> I'm sure you use that word "good" in your life; you know what it means. I mean what you mean when you use the word.


I'm pleased to hear it. So, if I like the music, I can call it 'good' without meaning anything more than 'it sounds good to me', or 'it makes me feel good'. It doesn't have to mean, 'the entire world _must _find all the music that might be fitted into this category objectively and morally superior in every way to any other form', or 'it's so good you must be a dumb-*** not to realise it'.

Sorted!


----------



## Guest (Oct 25, 2012)

science said:


> If Stockhausen's music required chickens to be sacrificed, there could be an argument that it's immoral. But again, it's not the music, but something else that we have a problem with.)


What do you mean, 'if'?? Sorry, I'm not allowed to just write LOL! :lol:


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

some guy said:


> [...]
> Don't be makin' me jealous, now, Ken! But seriously, I think the isolation was a huge advantage. I got a lot of negative reactions to being a white trash kid who listened to Beethoven, but I was pretty much free to make my own way at my own speed and like what I genuinely liked. By the time I started listening to modern music (Bartok and Janacek, haha, even in 1972...), and getting the negative reactions to that stuff, it was too late. I already knew how to like what I liked.


Based on family income and background, I must have been a 'white trash kid' too. It wasn't really obvious I guess - everyone was white in small-town Vermont in the 40s-50s, and the Depression took a lot of folks down, so probably we made up too big a percentage of the population (_I wonder if that is happening again..._ ). Anyway, I loved classical music, but also country and bluegrass, so it was mostly a matter of what I listened to where and when. So... I wonder if you were a little bit pushy about your music preferences... eh?


----------



## Guest (Oct 25, 2012)

MacLeod said:


> That's not what I read. I think he's saying quite simply that since he likes it, it must, by definition, be likeable.


That is exactly what I meant, yes.


----------



## Guest (Oct 25, 2012)

mensch said:


> Indeed, thanks for sharing. My own story is somewhat similar.
> 
> I started out actively hating modern music and art, while on the other hand idolising the 19th century and Chopin in particular. Let's just say I was one of those people who snort derisively when they hear an unresolved dissonance or claim that "my 5-year old niece can easily accomplish what Jackson Pollock did".


Well, one big difference that I noticed, and a big reason why I finally decided to float this thread, was that I never went through a phase of actively hating modern music and art, nor was I ever one of those people who snorted derisively when they hear an unresolved dissonance or that any child could easily accomplish what Pollock did.

I know a lot of people who did not like modern music but who learned to like it eventually.

I was not one of those. I liked it immediately and kept on liking it. And, what's more, I kept on listening even to things that I didn't like right at first.

There are plenty of things I don't like, but I spend very little time talking about those. What would be the point? To assure HC or norman bates that I am able to make distinctions of quality? But I don't care about assuring anyone of that. I do enjoy talking about what I do like, and I have no desire to sully anyone else's enjoyments by bad-mouthing the things that they like just because I happen not to.


----------



## Guest (Oct 25, 2012)

Petwhac said:


> Charming though some guy's post was. It tells us nothing except what some guy likes.


Yes, there's always the possibility of that interpretation. I would never have started this thread if I had thought that that was all it did. I have held off posting this topic for some time now because I thought that this was likely how it would be taken.

But then I decided, "Oh well" and went ahead with it.

For me, the important thing about my experience is how this supposedly awful and inaccessible music first struck me. I feel sometimes that this is my biggest handicap in discussions of this sort, that I never went through a phase of initial shock and dislike.

When I first heard Haydn, I liked it. When I first heard Beethoven, I liked it. Same for Dvorak and Rachmaninoff and a host of others. The same was true for me for more recent musics as well. When I first heard Janacek, Stravinsky, Bartok. Still the same. When I first heard Varese, Mumma, Stockhausen. Still the same. You see?

What that experience _could_ tell you, if you were receptive to it, is that that initial phase of discomfort, while common, is neither necessary nor universal.

I disliked certain things at first, too. Carter, Boulez, Berio's _Visages,_ Ashley, Scelsi. But those isolated instances of dislike never led me to conclude that something was fundamentally flawed with modern music generally. And all of those dislikes turned eventually into likes. And the few things I've never liked and probably never will don't lead me to that conclusion either.

Simple fact of the matter is--and this is where some of us will possibly never agree--there is nothing fundamentally flawed with modern music generally.


----------



## lukecubed (Nov 27, 2011)

I like some atonal and avant-garde stuff, I s'pose. I'm not interested in a debate on the merits of the stuff, tonality vs. atonality, etc. But let's be honest, saying that criticism in the 1840s is the same as criticism today is oversimplifying. The musicians in 1840 at the other ends of those criticisms (who are we talking about here? Liszt?) still drew audiences, were still able to earn a living off playing for the public. It's been a hundred years for Schoenberg and he only still attracts tiny, select audiences. And his weirdest music is far more accessible than Boulez, Stockhausen, Xenakis etc. I might buy the "it takes time" argument if this stuff were new. But it's not. Much of it is well over half a century. It didn't draw then and it doesn't draw now, outside of the small circle of "new music" enthusiasts. And if it weren't for the academic structure propping it up, very few of these musicians could earn a living, at least not in America. The post WW2 composers who most successfully did something "new" while avoiding the safe haven of academia were the minimalists--who turned back to tonality. Bartok and Stravinsky have found large audiences, sure--but they never really rejected tonality, not as entirely as those that came later.

Again, I like some of this stuff. But we're not talking about brand-new shockingly weird experiments that are scaring the soccer moms and tight-jeans hipsters away. We're talking about music that's, in many cases, over fifty years old. It will always have its fans, and it may continue to influence the "mainstream" from afar. But, in general, the 20th/21st century avant-garde scene in classical music faces the same problem that so-called avant-garde approaches ran into in jazz and literature and in the fine arts (at about the same exact moment in history): its insistence on rejecting what worked from the art of the past seems to go hand in hand with its repeated and relentless rejection by audiences, reenforcing the elitism/snob dynamic so toxic to any healthy artform, mutually isolating audiences and musicians from each other, inoculating practitioners against criticism (after all, if they don't like it it could only be because they "don't get it") and encouraging conservativism in audiences that still like "the old stuff."

I think the relentless criticism that atonal/avant-garde stuff gets is pretty obnoxious and often hilariously ignorant. I'm amazed people still get so upset by sounds, especially so long after these sounds have been tossed out into the public sphere. But I find the sort of willful blindness of many of its devotees just as perplexing, as if one day a giant light bulb will blink on over Joe the Plumber's head and we'll all start hearing _Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima_ on top-40 radio. You know where that sort of stuff hit the mainstream? In horror movies. There's a reason for that.


----------



## crmoorhead (Apr 6, 2011)

some guy said:


> Yes, there's always the possibility of that interpretation. I would never have started this thread if I had thought that that was all it did. I have held off posting this topic for some time now because I thought that this was likely how it would be taken.
> 
> But then I decided, "Oh well" and went ahead with it.
> 
> ...


A similar story with me. I very rarely dislike any classical music. Some might say that I am easily pleased, but I would disagree. There are plenty of things I don't like, but life is much more enjoyable if you can see the good in everything and appreciate the intention with which it was created. I have favourites and preferences, of course, but I don't see any point in being dismissive of anything. Luckily for me, there is enough superlative art out there that my days are filled with exploring it. On discovering Webern, I was immediately intrigued. I had never before heard anything like it and the more I reseached it, the more interested I became. Same with Beethoven, Haydn, Mahler, Verdi, Mozart etc I have also just started getting into Shakespeare in a big way, so I'll borrow a few lines. 
_
O wonder! How many goodly creatures there are here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world O brave new world. O brave new world that has such people in it!" 
_


----------



## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

*I think the relentless criticism that atonal/avant-garde stuff gets is pretty obnoxious and often hilariously ignorant. I'm amazed people still get so upset by sounds, especially so long after these sounds have been tossed out into the public sphere. But I find the sort of willful blindness of many of its devotees just as perplexing, as if one day a giant light bulb will blink on over Joe the Plumber's head and we'll all start hearing Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima on top-40 radio. You know where that sort of stuff hit the mainstream? In horror movies. There's a reason for that.*

Bingo!:cheers::clap:


----------



## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

lukecubed said:


> Again, I like some of this stuff. But we're not talking about brand-new shockingly weird experiments that are scaring the soccer moms and tight-jeans hipsters away. We're talking about music that's, in many cases, over fifty years old. It will always have its fans, and it may continue to influence the "mainstream" from afar. But, in general, the 20th/21st century avant-garde scene in classical music faces the same problem that so-called avant-garde approaches ran into in jazz and_* literature and in the fine arts *_(at about the same exact moment in history): its insistence on rejecting what worked from the art of the past seems to go hand in hand with its repeated and relentless rejection by audiences, reenforcing the elitism/snob dynamic so toxic to any healthy artform, mutually isolating audiences and musicians from each other, inoculating practitioners against criticism (after all, if they don't like it it could only be because they "don't get it") and encouraging conservativism in audiences that still like "the old stuff."


Music suffers the worst from this dynamic since even the worst experimental literature/fine art will not give you physical pain/cause nausea; at worst, they produce incomprehension and indifference.


----------



## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

some guy said:


> What that experience _could_ tell you, if you were receptive to it, is that that initial phase of discomfort, while common, is neither necessary nor universal.


That is of course true. But now replace your 'initial phase of discomfort' with the phrase a 'lasting phase of indifference' and you will get nearer to the truth. The days of shock and revolt are pretty much over and have been for some time, indignation too perhaps- though less so.



some guy said:


> Simple fact of the matter is--and this is where some of us will possibly never agree--there is nothing fundamentally flawed with modern music generally.


It is a fact only in as much as it is not possible for an art form or style or method to be flawed _per se_. It is the interface between the music and people (maybe not you, but you are not typical) that has a large amount of people 'voting with their feet'. Some tastes can be acquired some never are and some you just have.


----------



## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

science said:


> Your food example seems to work against you. I don't like whiskey, millions of people do. It's not that I'm wrong or they're wrong; it's a difference of opinion - literally, of taste. There is nothing deeper going on. Just humans with different likes and dislikes. No objective truth.


Think cannibalism-voluntary of course.



> That's how it goes, and it's ok. It's ok for me to like Stockhausen and you not to. It's ok for me to like to eat asparagus and for you to think it's terrible. It's ok! It really is ok!


It's not ok. It really is not ok.



> I don't know about the Duke or the President in Salo (never saw the film) but they seem to be intended as examples of ethically horrible people. (If I'm wrong about your intentions, ignore this paragraph, but please clarify them for me.) Now you've switched from aesthetics to ethics, and I disagree that principles in one have to apply to the other. Some analogies probably work, but some do not.


I'm referring to the action as not "perfectly likeable and accessible and delightful" aesthetically, not the wrongness of performing that action. Aesthetics has an inextricable moral dimension.

You [_*note to moderators*: the "you" is an abstract second person address and is not personal in any way, e.g. the internet poster *"You wouldn't download a car"*, see *[1]**; the poster doesn't know the person reading the poster personally, it is an abstract address to a general audience.]_ wouldn't show simulated rape/snuff/bestiality films to your children even if no actors/animals were harmed in the process. If those things were part of the school curriculum wouldn't you pull your kids out of school or at least have an angry chat with the school admins? If that was on television would you let him/her/them watch that channel? If, under the influence of friends, they went to a movie depicting those things wouldn't you try to stop them and get them new friends?

Are works of simulated/animated snuff and bestiality ""perfectly likeable and accessible and delightful"? Because there are plenty of people in the world who like it, or else it wouldn't exist. Internet folklore says that there is a board on 2chan devoted to gore.

You can go the route of arguing that simulated violence causes violence; then we'd have to ban the Godfather for glorifying gangsters and homicide.

*[1]
*










MacLeod said:


> Er, no, it wouldn't be meaningless: *Edmund Hillary proved that Everest is accessible*, even though he was, at the time, the only one to have accessed it. In any case, although he is only telling us his personal story, it is patently obvious that other listeners find it accessible.


Someguy is using the word "accessible" differently from how you're using "accessible" in that sentence.


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

brianwalker said:


> Think cannibalism-voluntary of course.
> 
> It's not ok. It really is not ok.
> 
> I'm referring to the action as not "perfectly likeable and accessible and delightful" aesthetically, not the wrongness of performing that action. *Aesthetics has an inextricable moral dimension.*


I disagree, and it appears that your argument depends on it, so you'll have to make a good argument. Examples like cannibalism intentionally confuse the issue. If you're actually right, then something like tofu will be immoral. Or perhaps bacon cheeseburgers - and that is probably the best example because it is a religious one. In that case at least you can make an argument that God has forbidden "his people" to eat it, so that eating it could be immoral, and perhaps even the enjoyment of such a food would be immoral. But that's a tenuous case that I'm not going to buy.

Can you do better than Boulez = cannibalism?


----------



## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

science said:


> I disagree, and it appears that your argument depends on it, so you'll have to make a good argument. Examples like cannibalism intentionally confuse the issue. If you're actually right, then something like tofu will be immoral. Or perhaps bacon cheeseburgers - and that is probably the best example because it is a religious one. In that case at least you can make an argument that God has forbidden "his people" to eat it, so that eating it could be immoral, and perhaps even the enjoyment of such a food would be immoral. But that's a tenuous case that I'm not going to buy.
> 
> Can you do better than Boulez = cannibalism?


My point is not that it's _necessarily_ _not_ "perfectly likeable and accessible and delightful" or that "Boulez = cannibalism" but that someguy's appreciation, however sincere, is not a sufficient justification that the music is "perfectly likeable and accessible and delightful" or that it can be reasonably labeled as such. As such, however touching someguy's tale may be, it generates no moral imperative that forbids me from justifiably heaping scorn onto the post-war avant-garde and criticizing the Second Viennese School and their descendants in general; his testimony alone is no guarantee of merit.


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

brianwalker said:


> My point is not that it's necessarily not "perfectly likeable and accessible and delightful" but that someguy's appreciation, however sincere, is not a sufficient justification that the music is "perfectly likeable and accessible and delightful" or can be reasonably labeled as such.


Well, you said a lot of other things, and I can't tell if you are standing by them. Would you like to show me why humanism is self-evidently wrong, so that merely to show that a position is humanist is to show that it's wrong? And, would you like to show me that aesthetics is inevitably ethics?

If not, of course you don't have to, but it might be interesting.

As for this new point, I wonder what, in your mind, would be a "sufficient justification that" some music would be likable and accessible and delightful.


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

The most legitimate and valuable anything can be considered as of no value, and ridiculous, if one is conditioned / raised upon a limited diet.

Many, I fear, stick with the older pre-1900s music as an escape, a solice, in an imagined belief it reflects better times and a better world -- a world they would only be happy in for maybe one week, and then only insulated with more money than most had at the time and inoculated to the hilt against all the common ailments which abounded in those glorious yester-years.

I often wonder if a person were only exposed to twentieth and twenty-first century classical, how awfully dissonant, weird and rigidly formal Bach, Mozart, Brahms or Chopin, for example, might sound, or if they would perhaps find Tchaikovsky, as I do, generally 'ridiculous.'


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

PetrB said:


> The most legitimate and valuable anything can be considered as of no value, and ridiculous, if one is conditioned / raised upon a limited diet.


Is this a variant on the "blame the audience" argument?



PetrB said:


> I often wonder if a person were only exposed to twentieth and twenty-first century classical...


I suggest that a good many such would lose interest in classical music. People seem to have different preferences when getting into music.


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

some guy said:


> ...
> 
> Simple fact of the matter is--and this is where some of us will possibly never agree--there is nothing fundamentally flawed with modern music generally.


As I always say, I got not much problem with the music itself, more so with certain ideologies associated with Modernism (basically with the extreme kinds and also distortions of history, but who cares?).


----------



## Guest (Oct 26, 2012)

I would very much like to eliminate the phrase "blame the audience" from this discussion.

Blame is more likely to pop up in regards to the music itself, or its progenitors, as witness some of brianwalker's screeds. Then, once "blame" has been established as the topic, any attempt to talk about the contribution of the listeners to the situation is immediately _spun_ as "blaming the audience."

But really, blame has nothing to do with it.

Here's what I'd like to see get a little more traction: music is a situation in which each individual mind comes into contact with the same set of sounds. Some minds react positively to those sounds, some negatively, some with indifference. The sounds, however, remain the same. What that means, inevitably, is that if you're looking for the source of the differences, you won't find it in the sounds, which are identical. You will only find it in the minds, which are different.

I was at a concert recently where a woman was complaining loudly and bitterly about the modern music that had just been played. It gave her a headache, she claimed, and she was sick and tired of the symphony forcing her to sit through that dreadful stuff. Nobody likes it, she claimed, and she was going to complain to the board. Even another patron saying that she quite liked the music had no effect on her distress. She didn't like the stuff, and so it shouldn't ever be played.

(My response, which I kept to myself, was "_what_ modern music?")*

Different minds. Different reactions. Same music.

You do the math.

*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*

*If you're curious, the pieces she was complaining about were Britten's "Four Sea Interludes from _Peter Grimes_" and Janacek's _Sinfonietta._


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

So both sides are agreed that right-thinking people must like a certain sort of music, and that there is no or very little room for different preferences, tastes, opinions; they only disagree - and completely! - about which sort of music it is that right-thinking people must like. They're both objectively right; they just disagree completely. 

So, round and round we go, where we stop, nobody knows!


----------



## Guest (Oct 26, 2012)

brianwalker said:


> It's not ok. It really is not ok.


As science says, round we go.



brianwalker said:


> Aesthetics has an inextricable moral dimension.


Interesting proposition. Move it to a separate thread...

...on second thoughts, don't, I can see where it would inevitably go.



brianwalker said:


> You [...] wouldn't show simulated rape/snuff/bestiality films to your children even if no actors/animals were harmed in the process. If those things were part of the school curriculum wouldn't you pull your kids out of school or at least have an angry chat with the school admins? If that was on television would you let him/her/them watch that channel? If, under the influence of friends, they went to a movie depicting those things wouldn't you try to stop them and get them new friends?
> 
> Are works of simulated/animated snuff and bestiality ""perfectly likeable and accessible and delightful"? Because there are plenty of people in the world who like it, or else it wouldn't exist. Internet folklore says that there is a board on 2chan devoted to gore.
> 
> You can go the route of arguing that simulated violence causes violence; then we'd have to ban the Godfather for glorifying gangsters and homicide.


Nothing like excess to ruin your argument, but Hitler hasn't put in an appearance yet - [email protected]!



brianwalker said:


> My point is not that it's _necessarily_ _not_ "perfectly likeable and accessible and delightful" or that "Boulez = cannibalism" but that someguy's appreciation, however sincere, is not a sufficient justification that the music is "perfectly likeable and accessible and delightful" or that it can be reasonably labeled as such. As such, however touching someguy's tale may be, it generates no moral imperative that forbids me from justifiably heaping scorn onto the post-war avant-garde and criticizing the Second Viennese School and their descendants in general; his testimony alone is no guarantee of merit.


So, when we exchanged words over possible meanings of the term 'good', you really did mean 'morally good', but haven't yet come back to challenge me again. (sigh of relief).



science said:


> So both sides are agreed that right-thinking people must like a certain sort of music, and that there is no or very little room for different preferences, tastes, opinions; they only disagree - and completely! - about which sort of music it is that right-thinking people must like. They're both objectively right; they just disagree completely.
> 
> So, round and round we go, where we stop, nobody knows!


Come on science, it's not quite that clear cut. Well, the roundabout bit is. Someguy is merely telling us that there is nothing wrong with liking what he likes, not that we _must _ like it. Brianwalker on the other hand, is actually telling us that it is morally wrong to listen to some kinds of music: as wrong as it would be to let your children watch snuff movies in school.


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

MacLeod said:


> Come on science, it's not quite that clear cut. Well, the roundabout bit is. Someguy is merely telling us that there is nothing wrong with liking what he likes, not that we _must _ like it. Brianwalker on the other hand, is actually telling us that it is morally wrong to listen to some kinds of music: as wrong as it would be to let your children watch snuff movies in school.


Maybe that really is all someguy means. It's hard for me to keep track of who is only saying "I like this music" and who is saying "If you don't like this music it's because you're closed-minded, insecure, afraid" or something like that.

PetrB's "raised upon a limited diet" is the latest variation; he "fears" that people who don't like the music he's advocating use older music as "an escape," which he then explains is unrealistic, poorly informed - especially because it neglects all the moral problems of those ages. It's not quite an inversion of brianwalker's position, it's certainly stated more gently, but it definitely has a similar message and intent: something is wrong ("limited," poorly informed) with people who don't enjoy the music he is advocating.


----------



## Guest (Oct 26, 2012)

Well, I more than suspect that science had his tongue squarely in his cheek (though how DARE he trample on my lovely post about blame and logic).


----------



## Guest (Oct 26, 2012)

science said:


> Maybe that really is all someguy means. It's hard for me to keep track of who is only saying "I like this music" and who is saying "If you don't like this music it's because you're closed-minded, insecure, afraid" or something like that.


Me too, and it doesn't help that eating and sleeping get in the way of keeping track...

But for me, this thread has been easier to follow because someguy is the OP and made some clear unequivocal statements about what he likes and no adverse statements about what everyone else must/mustn't. I'm content to support that opinion without trying to take on all those who oppose it (just brianwalker for the moment). I guess I also haven't been on the merry-go-round as long.


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

science said:


> Maybe that really is all someguy means. It's hard for me to keep track of who is only saying "I like this music" and who is saying "If you don't like this music it's because you're closed-minded, insecure, afraid" or something like that.
> 
> PetrB's "raised upon a limited diet" is the latest variation; he "fears" that people who don't like the music he's advocating use older music as "an escape," which he then explains is unrealistic, poorly informed - especially because it neglects all the moral problems of those ages. It's not quite an inversion of brianwalker's position, it's certainly stated more gently, but it definitely has a similar message and intent: something is wrong ("limited," poorly informed) with people who don't enjoy the music he is advocating.


Science, its all just one person's ideology over the other.

I don't know, maybe people don't read about these things, but composers had opinions on music, and some of it was contradictory. I've said this before. & their opinions changed over time. Eg. Schoenberg had little time for Bartok's music (and Bartok had little time for Arnie's). Yet Bartok still used what he needed from Arnie's serialist method (in the middle movement of his _Violin Concerto #2_, Bartok used the technique in his own unique way, many composers did this type of thing, pick and choose like a smorgasbord). So can listeners. If geniuses like Schoenberg and Bartok could pick and choose, why can't we? & I mean I see it in real life all the time. I got an acquaintance who I rarely meet who has little time for the atonalists. This person studied music, incl. the latest musics, he is not ignorant by any means. But this person got me interested in things like microtonal music.

So that's what I'm saying. I don't need to agree with extreme forms of ideology, any ideology. I can just go with what I like. So what? Is it such a big deal? Nope, not in the real world, so why do some people get emotional about these things here? I used to, but now I try not to. Its hard in real life, and even harder online.


----------



## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

In response to the OP, without having read the discussion to its most recent point:

I see nothing the matter with it and how your views came to be, seeing that I also took a similar path at an early age despite similar disinterest in classical music from the rest of my family, who found it pleasant and little more(a story that is commonly told in my family is that at age two, though I was a very cranky child at times and hated being out in public and standing for long periods of time, my parents and grandparents took me to an organ concert in the heart of the nation's Capital(we lived in D.C.). They were terrified that I would complain and make a scene, but I was completely silent the moment the organ started and at the end, before the applause started I said, "That was Amazing!," much to the amusement of the audience. From that point on, my parents tried playing classical music to me when I was to take a nap, because it was the only thing that made me content to be still.). I seem to a recall a similar post you made in the winter months of this year, I think, similar in tone but perhaps not in the content it focused on, I can't remember. You know what some guy? Despite an earlier phase in my involvement on this forum, I don't believe I've been a part of disparaging your tastes. I have certainly stated my difficulties when they have arisen, and this has led to your dissenting opinions being expressed many a time, but usually I'm out to say I like a certain thing or have a certain ambition and make that the the focus of a discussion, though I admit I can be quite defensive of it. We have argued mostly when you've taken issue with me proclaiming that there would be much artistic value to composing in a...well, you know. I don't know man, you are way too contrary sometimes. Maybe that wouldn't come across if I had a face to face conversation with you though.

A dissimilarity between our early experience though, as you rightly point out, is the internet. When youtube, google, and wikipediafirst came to my aid with classical music, it was very helpful in my learning process, but I think I lost a lot of perspective from reading people's opinions, particularly in youtube comments(I make a point of trying not to read those these days). I remember, to cut a long story short, when I first heard of John Cage. It was through a wikipedia article, though not his page, but through a link from another page. I searched his music on youtube and remember seeing this video 



. I have to admit I was a bit perplexed. I took a step back from Cage, but made no definitive judgement then. My parents also got me a CD of a modern composer they had never heard of, Anthony Pateras, I think and I was quite intrigued by it, but my mom hated it(I wish I could find that CD now...). I loved to share music with people and that hurt my feelings deeply because I felt I was giving it an honest listen, and confidence issues were more prominent then. When I started composing, I could only think in terms of simple tonal counterpoint and that's where I started, and from there it got more complex but not by virtue of my own "inner aesthetic path", so to speak, but because my ear got good enough that I made various attempts at reproductions of different styles. Anyway, I felt that the music I had created was valid, and when I thought I could develop that a bit further into goals, and expressed that only to receive some hostility from modernists, an animosity developed. This is one side of the story that put me off to aspects of modernism, but perhaps more simply, I came to really really like certain music and I'm the type who likes to digest things slowly and dwell on each thing I love, perhaps you are too, but the order in which I came upon these things made me less inclined to like other things; a part of me loves hearing new kinds of musical ideas, but another part craves that deepest emotional experience, like a first love, that I first felt with late Romantic composers and late baroque early classical. Plus, I get pissed off when people berate music of the 18th century and modern music people tend to do that. Anyway, you have given an account of where you are coming from and this is essentially where I am coming from. I enjoyed reading yours and would be grateful if you read mine.


----------



## Chrythes (Oct 13, 2011)

Well, I still believe that you must have suffered some trauma forcing you to forget everything associated with the standard classical music, hence your listening to noise and modern music - a way to repress traumatic memories! Get a therapist, you might still be cured!


----------



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

clavichorder said:


> I don't know man, you are way too contrary sometimes. Maybe that wouldn't come across if I had a face to face conversation with you though.


The internet is a very difficult place to have certain discussions. Certainly most people have much more trouble saying rude, insulting, or otherwise blunt comments. The instant feedback one gets from live conversation tends to moderate one's responses. Misunderstandings can be cleared up before they become ingrained. Obviously not everyone here would converse differently in person, but I suspect that many of the exchanges would be "softened". The impersonal computer screen diminishes the other poster's humanness. A smile, a laugh, a pause, a nod from another can help form a bond that enables at least some acceptance.

One thing I really like about discussions with people with whom I disagree is that they challenge my views. If I talk to someone who agrees with me, I tend not to learn anything. When someone holds different views, I try to understand those views and must ensure that my own views still hold water in light of their critique. It's nice to be correct, but in many ways it's a wonderful feeling to realize that you may have been wrong and now have greater insight.

_some guy's_ musical tastes may differ more from mine than almost anyone else on TC, and we certainly don't always see eye to eye. But in any random crowd of 100 people (maybe many more), I highly doubt there would be anyone with whom I'd rather discuss music. The bottom line is that we, as does almost everyone on TC, both love and have a great interest in classical music.


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

mmsbls said:


> _some guy's_ musical tastes may differ more from mine than almost anyone else on TC, and we certainly don't always see eye to eye. *But in any random crowd of 100 people (maybe many more), I highly doubt there would be anyone with whom I'd rather discuss music.* The bottom line is that we, as does almost everyone on TC, both love and have a great interest in classical music.


That is a great point. It's fun to meet people you can learn from.


----------



## mensch (Mar 5, 2012)

some guy said:


> Well, one big difference that I noticed, and a big reason why I finally decided to float this thread, was that I never went through a phase of actively hating modern music and art, nor was I ever one of those people who snorted derisively when they hear an unresolved dissonance or that any child could easily accomplish what Pollock did.
> 
> I know a lot of people who did not like modern music but who learned to like it eventually.
> 
> I was not one of those. I liked it immediately and kept on liking it. And, what's more, I kept on listening even to things that I didn't like right at first.


Yes, that's one large difference with your opening post.

Although my initial foray into modern music wasn't motivated by rebelling against my parents or anything. It was just a realisation that "modern" music could just as easily struck awe in a person or otherwise emotionally move someone. Come to think of it, I believe I would have rejected other music just as easily as the despised modern variety. I considered Bach to be dull then, for example.

I think a major factor in appreciating any music is a willingness to focus on it and really listen. That's not to say people who dislike modern music are in some way lazy or unwilling to accept the complexities of that music, they might have listened carefully to it and decided it wasn't for them. But you can dismiss a piece like Reich's "Drumming" when you hear the first few bars and decide it's just a very select bunch of notes played ad nauseam or just listen and see where the sounds take you.


----------



## Guest (Oct 26, 2012)

clavichorder said:


> Anyway, you have given an account of where you are coming from and this is essentially where I am coming from. I enjoyed reading yours and would be grateful if you read mine.


I did enjoy yours. Very much so. And am happy to be on more friendly footing with you again, too.



Chrythes said:


> Well, I still believe that you must have suffered some trauma forcing you to forget everything associated with the standard classical music, hence your listening to noise and modern music - a way to repress traumatic memories! Get a therapist, you might still be cured!


Hmmm. That must be why I keep buying all those Tchaikovsky CDs. And Gluck. (And Saint-Saens and Monteverdi and Pergolesi and Liszt and Dvorak, as I just mentioned somewhere else.)

As for therapy, I did go through it. And one of the results was that I eventually could listen to Tchaikovsky again, who was the _only_ standard classical composer I ever simply could not listen to for a long stretch. Might have been because Tchaikovsky was my favorite when I was growing up.

I listened to Vivaldi and Bach and Beethoven and Berlioz and Schumann and Dvorak and Bruckner and Mahler and Debussy, for instance, before, during, and after therapy.

Still do. Along with Karkowski and Goeringer and Lopez and Merzbow and Otomo Yoshihide.

How could anyone listen to all of that different music and enjoy all of it? That's what you're struggling with, isn't it, you and HC. Well, can't help you there. I do listen to it all and enjoy it all. Sorry if that stretches your credulity. I don't listen to music in order to fit into anyone's idea of what's possible or even to rebel against anyone's idea of what's possible.

I listen to music because I enjoy it. Not sure why that's so difficult to understand, but "oh well."



mmsbls said:


> _some guy's_ musical tastes may differ more from mine than almost anyone else on TC, and we certainly don't always see eye to eye. But in any random crowd of 100 people (maybe many more), I highly doubt there would be anyone with whom I'd rather discuss music.


Wow! What a lovely thing for you to say! (And for me to read, by the way.)

Really. What a delightful remark. The feeling is mutual, I assure you.

(This goes on the list of "nicest things anyone's ever said to me" for sure!)


----------



## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Do you have this album?


----------



## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

brianwalker said:


> He didn't qualify the statement that it was perfectly likeable and delightful and accessible_ for him and for him only, _hence *accessible. *
> 
> The notion of *accessible* would be meaningless if he was only referring to himself. He is accusing the people who dislike this music of being blinded by an ideological predisposition and bad upbringing i.e. the being brainwashed by a "conservative musical culture". My accusation is the inverse; they like it because of an ideological predisposition, that they are brainwashed by a Hegelian musical culture.
> 
> ...


Check out Nicolas Slonimsky's "Lexicon of Musical Invective" which contains articles and reviews by music critiques going from Beethoven's time to 20th Century music. The same hyperbolic statements you constantly make were made about Beethoven, and Chopin, and Wagner.


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

BurningDesire said:


> Check out Nicolas Slonimsky's "Lexicon of Musical Invective" which contains articles and reviews by music critiques going from Beethoven's time to 20th Century music. The same hyperbolic statements you constantly make were made about Beethoven, and Chopin, and Wagner.


A fun book! And you're absolutely right about those "hyberbolic statements." Of course, the difference is that they were wrong then, but they're right now... :lol:


----------



## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

BurningDesire said:


> Check out Nicolas Slonimsky's "Lexicon of Musical Invective" which contains articles and reviews by music critiques going from Beethoven's time to 20th Century music. The same hyperbolic statements you constantly make were made about Beethoven, and Chopin, and Wagner.


*"Often received"* and *"equivalent to"* and *"post-war avant-garde" *are the key words here. The examples in Slonimsky's book fails to meet the two criteria and I'm refering specifically to the _post-war _avant-garde, not Schoenberg or Berg. Even Beethoven's critics acknowledge his genius; "Beethoven, this extraordinary genius" on page 47 of this book and the Eroica is described as something with "much to admire" and another critic says that he is "led away by the force of his genius" while on page 49 another critic says that ""When one is Beethoven, it is possible to do anything". These critiques never say that any of is works is not music at all, but merely somewhat extravagant. No one ever compared his piano music to cats jumping on the piano. Moreover, only a Beethodaloter would say that all of his works are perfect; it's presumptuous to assume that there is no truth whatsoever in the criticisms compiled in that book, there are certain sentiments that still survive to this day; "the much Ninth Symphony, the fourth movement of which seems to me so ugly, in such bad taste, and in the conception of Schiller's Ode so cheap that I cannot even now understand how *a genius as Beethoven* could write it down" (51).

Moreover not all criticisms of the Ninth were even contemporary. This review was from 1899.

_"We heard lately in Boston the Ninth Symphony of Beethoen. The performance was technically most admirable .. But is not worship paid this Symphony mere fetishism? Is not the famous Scherzo insufferably long-winded?* The Finale* ... is to me for the most part dull and ugly ... I admit the grandeur of the passage 'Und der Cherub steht vor Gott' and the effect of 'Seid umschlungen Millionen!" But oh, the pages of stupid and hopelessly vulgar music! The unspeakably cheapness of the chief tune, "Freude, Freude!" Do you believe way down in the bottom of your heart that if this music had been written by Mr. John L. Tarbox, now living in Sandown, N. H., any conductor here or in Europe could be persuaded to put it in a rehearsal?"_

The cheapness and relative poor merits of the ninth, especially of the fourth movement, has been noted here even during casual conversations _on this very forum_:

http://www.talkclassical.com/15097-gustav-leonhardt-beethovens-ninth.html

http://www.talkclassical.com/18043-beethovens-9th-symphony-final.html



GeneralOJB said:


> Who actually likes this? Just curious..





Vaneyes said:


> LvB 9,_* The Nutcracker, Carmina Burana,*_ and some others are now reserved for once-a-year listening in December.





Crudblud said:


> Personally I find it a bit "meh."





ksargent said:


> I actually like it - love it, in fact. But I think I love the* other three movements even more*.





trazom said:


> The only parts of the finale I don't really care for are some of the vocal lines for the soloists, _*especially the sustained high notes for the soprano that sound so labored to me no matter how good the performance is.*_





DavidMahler said:


> I have never been able to listen to the entire finale movement from beginning to end without either falling asleep or drifting really far away. _*It's harmonically so uninteresting for 20 minutes. It makes me angry in fact when I see people discuss it as the clear greatest work of music ever written. If you google questions like "greatest music ever written" you will see people cite that finale movement. They're usually people who are reciting others and based on the reasons I've seen, they typically know very little about music. *_
> 
> The only 2 symphonies I prefer less by Beethoven are his first two. Beethoven's greatest symphony in my opinion was his 8th....what a phenomenal work that is, the 1st movement is one of the most amazing things ever.
> 
> ...





DavidMahler said:


> the second time the main melody is introduced and the dozens of repetitions after that.
> 
> Had it not been written by Beethoven, and had it not been attached to 3 excellent movements, only to be the most extroverted, and had it not been the first symphonic movement to incorporate a chorus, not a single person on this forum would hold the movement in any regard. I really believe this. From the standpoint melodic invention, orchestration and variation, thematic ideas and even as a text setting, it borders on amateur. Never in classical music is work of such profundity spoiled by such a falsely profound movement.
> 
> *It's like hearing Tristan followed by Mass in B Minor followed by Don Giovanni followed by the 1812 Overture.*





violadude said:


> I'm not fond of that symphony [Beethoven's Ninth] in general really.





Art Rock said:


> Th first three movements are OK, if not his most brilliant work. *The fourth ruins it for me.*





ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> The last movement would work a lot better as a stand a lone choral/orchestral work than part of a symphony._* Just change the opening where some reused material from the rest of the symphony is edited out,*_ and it would make a fantastic setting of Schiller's poem that isn't part of a symphony. But I do love that finale though.





violadude said:


> I agree with DM that this symphony [The 9th] is Beethoven's weakest late period piece.





violadude said:


> Alright, I clearly don't get it. So how about someone explain to me and DM why Beethoven's 9th is the greatest piece ever written by anyone in the world. Explain to me without using over blown and over emotional hyperbole please.





DavidMahler said:


> The 9th Symphony is a very forceful symphony altogether. It has great ideas within it and I believe _one or two of the movements are among Beethoven's greatest symphonic creations_, but that* final movement, as impressive as it sounds, has left me as an observer.* I have never participated in that world. In that sense, I walk away feeling removed and sometimes bored because nowhere in it am I.





violadude said:


> Ok look, I don't hate the 9th and I don't think the finale is a bad piece of music. but all I am saying is that I simply can't see how it is considered *so* unmatched and unsurpassed. I just don't get it. Sorry if that makes me a "kewl" hipster that is just pretending to not like something to look "kewl."





violadude said:


> I can give you a criticism of it relative to his other late period works. Half of it is a biased musical criticism however, because I generally am not too fond of Beethoven's works when he tries to be so grand. I much prefer Beethoven when he is in a more subtle or humorous mood.
> 
> The motor like counterpoint in the context of a stickler march. I think the fugues that end the 28th, 29th and 31st piano sonatas are more interesting than any of the fugal sections in the 9th symphony, especially the one at the end of the 29th, I think of the Hammerklavier fugue as Beethoven's Well Tempered Clavier or Art of Fugue in a way. Also, the variations that end the 30th and 32nd sonatas are stellar. I feel they have much more substance than the ode to joy variations, well maybe not substance. But I feel he does a better job at varying the variations in those movements, if that makes any sense. I also love the quirky first movement of the 30th. That's one of the things I miss about the 9th symphony, its quirkiness. It's all really too serious. Even the HammerKlavier has quirkiness in the middle of its 2nd movement.
> 
> ...


_"*The fourth movement* is, in my opinion, so monstrous and tasteless and, in its grasp of Schiller's 'Ode,' so trivial that I cannot understand how a *genius* like Beethoven could have written it. I find in it another proof of what I had already noted in Vienna, that Beethoven was wanting in aesthetic feeling and in a sense of the beautiful." _-- composer Louis Spohr, a contemporary of Beethoven

_"The alpha and omega is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, marvelous in the first three movements,* very badly set in the last*. No one will ever approach the sublimity of the first movement, but it will be an easy task to write as badly for voices as in the last movement. And supported by the authority of Beethoven, they will all shout: "That's the way to do it..." _-- * Verdi,* 1878

http://blog.oregonlive.com/classicalmusic/2008/09/beethovens_ninth_kicks.html

_What are my criticisms of the Ninth? Consider the Adagio 
without prejudice- or try to. The echo-dialogue of winds and 
strings lacks variation, and the Andante moderate, with the 
pedal A and the repeated octaves, sixths, thirds, is harmoni- 
cally heavy. (The metronome markings must be at fault here, 
incidentally, for the Adagio molto is 60 and the Andante 
moderato only 63.) I find the movement rhythmically monot- 
onous, too- for Beethoven- except in its finest episode, the 
E-flat Adagio, but the effect even of that beautiful episode is 
deadened by the rhythmic inanity of the subsequent 12/8. An- 
other weakness, or miscalculation, is the repetition, after only 
six measures, of the heroics at measure 121. What has hap- 
pened to Beethoven's need for variation and development? 
The movement is the antithesis of true symphonic form.

*The failure of the last movement *must be attributed, in large 
measure, to its thumping theme. As the composer cannot de- 
velop it- who could?- he spreads it out like a military parade. 
I am ever surprised in this movement by the poverty of the 
Allegro ma non tanto, as well as by the riches of the Allegro 
energico (especially measures 76-90, which, oddly enough, an- 
ticipate the world of Verdi). I am undoubtedly wrong to talk 
this way about "The Ninth," of course, or to question "what 
everyone knows." "The Ninth" is sacred, and it was already 
sacred when I first heard it in 1897. I have often wondered 
why. Can it actually have something to do with a "message" 
or with a so-called proletarian appeal? - _ *Stravinsky 
*
http://www23.us.archive.org/stream/dialoguesanddiar00stra/dialoguesanddiar00stra_djvu.txt

_In the Ninth Symphony the last choral movement is decidedly the weakest part_ - Wagner

http://www.fullbooks.com/Correspondence-of-Wagner-and-Liszt-Volumex66812.html

Wagner has plenty of flaws, I'll be the first to admit that. There's a lot of bricklaying.

The structure of your argument is simple; Beethoven (and others) received harsh criticism, Beethoven is now accepted as great, thus the critics were all wrong. That's just not true, the criticism he received ranged from mildly reasonable to completely true. These critics paid Beethoven the compliment of "genius", no such label is affixed to anyone in the post-war avant-garde. Plus, _contemporary critics may have ulterior motivations_, perhaps paid by rival composers to trash Beethoven, but Stockhausen has been long dead and Webern even longer and the works of Boulez that are being criticized are the ones from more than five decades ago.

*The orchestras during Beethoven's time* were often really shoddy so it's likely that his symphonies were really poorly performed since symphonies of that length were unprecedented and _conducting was still in its infancy._ This likely accounts for most of the criticism of his symphonies upon their premiere.

Notice how the criticisms of Beethoven's other symphonies disappear with time but the criticism of the last movement of the 9th remains long after his death; it's that movement that is the heart of the Beethoven chapter in that book. The last movement of the ninth is tolerated for all the movements above and principally for its sentimental value, it's the last symphony movement Beethoven ever wrote, and it's popular because it's easy.

_Curious to see that *Bach *and* Mozart* are not in the book... _:tiphat:

The critics were essentially right about the last movement of Beethoven's 9th, even if their rhetoric often went overboard, and I'm right about the post-war avant-garde and the Second Viennese School. People who aren't brainwashed and aren't part of the Hegelian hive-mind all acknowledge that music degenerated with the Second Viennese school and disappeared altogether in the noise of the post-war avant garde.


----------



## Guest (Oct 27, 2012)

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> Do you have this album?


_Venereology_? Sure do. One of my favorite Merzbow CDs.


----------



## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

KenOC said:


> A fun book! And you're absolutely right about those "hyberbolic statements." Of course, the difference is that they were wrong then, but they're right now... :lol:


Not really. If anything they've gotten sillier.


----------



## Guest (Oct 27, 2012)

brianwalker said:


> _Curious to see that *Bach *and* Mozart* are not in the book... _:tiphat:


Only if you don't know about the history of ideas, particularly the ideas about greatness and genius and artistic merit that grew up around the turn of the century (1700/1800).

And even Mozart came in for some Slonimskian digs from time to time. One critic compared him unfavorably to Boccherini, Boccherini being all nice and smooth and Mozart being all rocky and rough.


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

brianwalker said:


> _But oh, the pages of stupid and hopelessly vulgar music! The unspeakably cheapness of the chief tune, "Freude, Freude!"_


And there are still plenty of people who feel the same. And (of course) plenty of people who think these pages could only have been written by a genius. Nice to know that Ludwig could stir things up, and that this is not likely to be settled soon!


----------



## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

A fun book! And you're absolutely right about those "hyberbolic statements." Of course, the difference is that they were wrong then, but they're right now...

The problem with such a book is that it cherry picks the quotes that best illustrate the hypothesis that the critics were always wrong. Some were wrong. Some were right. The same is true of the critics today. Its quite easy to presume that all the critics who like the same stuff you like know what they are talking about and all the others are idiots.


----------



## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

some guy said:


> Only if you don't know about the history of ideas, particularly the ideas about greatness and genius and artistic merit that grew up around the turn of the century (1700/1800).
> 
> And even Mozart came in for some Slonimskian digs from time to time. One critic compared him unfavorably to Boccherini, Boccherini being all nice and smooth and Mozart being all rocky and rough.


See:



brianwalker said:


> The orchestras during [Mozart's] time were often really shoddy so it's likely that his symphonies [and operas] were really poorly performed since symphonies of that length [and operas of that complexity] were unprecedented and conducting was still in its infancy. This almost certainly accounts for most of the criticism of his symphonies [and operas] upon their premiere.





BurningDesire said:


> Not really. If anything they've gotten sillier.


They've become more compliant with fashion, more supportive of what's modern and contemporary. You're right, they've gotten sillier.


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> The problem with such a book is that it cherry picks the quotes that best illustrate the hypothesis that the critics were always wrong. Some were wrong. Some were right.


Well, I'm not sure we know who was wrong and who was right even today, no matter how far back we look. We have our consensus views today of course; does that mean we're "right" compared with some very negative critic a century ago?

I found the book fascinating, not to cluck-cluck over some poor soul who dared criticize Schumann, but to get a sense of the aesthetic views of the times. None of these people were dummies. They were us!


----------



## Guest (Oct 27, 2012)

brianwalker said:


> The structure of your argument is simple; Beethoven (and others) received harsh criticism, Beethoven is now accepted as great, thus the critics were all wrong.


Well, that's not the way I read 'the argument', but I may have misunderstood. The critical word is 'wrong'. The whole point of _your _argument has been to establish that there are absolute morals involved here. The way I read someguy (and _my _argument here) the point is that such absolutes do not exist, moral or otherwise.

No-one is saying that the critics were 'wrong', just that there were listeners then (critics are only paid listeners, after all) who didn't see the merits of composers who are now generally held in high esteem. As has been argued elsewhere, whilst general consensus may be taken as an indicator of a composer's perceived value, it cannot in itself endow 'greatness' (again, as some absolute 'good').

I marvel that you quote so many snippets of comments by TCers. Just a few would have been enough to show that this is a matter of taste, not right or wrong. I mean, you're not seriously suggesting that because crudblud and vaneyes (sorry guys) offer criticism of Beethoven's 9th, they must be indisputably and morally right?


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> The problem with such a book is that it cherry picks the quotes that best illustrate the hypothesis that the critics were always wrong. Some were wrong. Some were right. The same is true of the critics today. Its quite easy to presume that all the critics who like the same stuff you like know what they are talking about and all the others are idiots.


Well I think that's a strong point. I have been reading books on criticism, I mean ancient criticism, and I am surprised to learn that Hanslick actually praised guys like Bruckner, Tchaikovsky, even Wagner. That was in the case of their big successes. Maybe Hanslick was hedging his bets. I suppose he'd look totally kind of nepotist and biased if he did not give credit where credit was due. But what I knew before coming across this info was the famous anecdotes of Hanslick's venom and doing things like walking out on music halfway and then criticising it in the press anyway. Well obviously his more biased side is not the whole picture.

So yes, when a critic gets it wrong, the whole world knows about it. When he gets it 'right' (in retrospect, or in terms of being in line with the general consensus on things) we might not hear about it, or hear about it much less.

Such is human nature, maybe. Often we like to focus on the negative rather than the positive.

The other obvious thing is that we have this image of the 'composer hero' being at odds with society, in all ways. I think many composers where indeed outsiders, but as I have demonstrated on my latest thread on warhorses, a lot of the repertoire that's popular today was popular during the composer's time (or not long after) too. This is not rocket science, but its hard to accept given the marginalised role of most 'serious' composers of classical composers living today. Its discomfiting on some level to us all into classical, but its better to face facts than live out various fantasies of the past or the present.


----------



## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

No one remembers good critics, their careful well thought out analysis doesn't travel so well in history. The bad critic with an amusingly disdainful put-down is what gets remembered. And good critics are prey to their bad criticism, why read Ruskin's theories of aesthetics when "Whistler has thrown pots of paint into the public's face" is all you need to know.


----------



## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

some guy said:


> Stravinsky (including a never-to-be-forgotten performance of _Les Noces_ in Stockholm one summer evening). The guy I was travelling with hated it. Gave him a headache. Gave me the most thrilling concert experience of my life up to that point.


I'd really be interested in knowing - Are there any other concert experiences that really stand out for you?


----------



## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

MacLeod said:


> No-one is saying that the critics were 'wrong', just that there were listeners then (critics are only paid listeners, after all) who _*didn't see the merits of composers who are now generally held in high esteem. *_As has been argued elsewhere, whilst general consensus may be taken as an indicator of a composer's perceived value, it cannot in itself endow 'greatness' (again, as some absolute 'good').


The section in bold is false; read the quotes again in my previous post and the entirety of the book BurningDesire referenced (Lexicon...), especially the comments on Beethoven; page after page they all affix the label "genius" onto him. The fourth section of the Ninth is still controversial.


----------



## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

brianwalker said:


> The section in bold is false; read the quotes again in my previous post and the entirety of the book BurningDesire referenced (Lexicon...), especially the comments on Beethoven; page after page they all affix the label "genius" onto him. The fourth section of the Ninth is still controversial.


Beethoven isn't the only composer in such a circumstance  So...


----------



## Guest (Oct 27, 2012)

brianwalker said:


> The section in bold is false; read the quotes again in my previous post and the entirety of the book BurningDesire referenced (Lexicon...), especially the comments on Beethoven; page after page they all affix the label "genius" onto him. The fourth section of the Ninth is still controversial.


Read the entire book? That's not necessary (and hardly conducive to maintaining a conversation here).

Try answering my substantive point: this is not about 'right' and 'wrong', but about the evolution of degrees of acceptance. I wouldn't say that the 4th movement of the 9th symphony is 'still controversial' either.


----------



## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

MacLeod said:


> Read the entire book? That's not necessary (and hardly conducive to maintaining a conversation here).
> 
> Try answering my substantive point: this is not about 'right' and 'wrong', but about the evolution of degrees of acceptance. I wouldn't say that the 4th movement of the 9th symphony is 'still controversial' either.


It's still controversial. Just look at the earlier threads on TC.

http://www.talkclassical.com/15097-gustav-leonhardt-beethovens-ninth.html

http://www.talkclassical.com/18043-beethovens-9th-symphony-final.html


----------



## Guest (Oct 27, 2012)

brianwalker said:


> It's still controversial. Just look at the earlier threads on TC.
> 
> http://www.talkclassical.com/15097-gustav-leonhardt-beethovens-ninth.html
> 
> http://www.talkclassical.com/18043-beethovens-9th-symphony-final.html


Since you're going to avoid my question and keep asserting your own opinion, I see little point in continuing the dialogue. The links you post to show nothing other than a range of opinions on whether people 'like' the Ninth, not whether there is genuine 'controversy' about it. There is no more genuine controversy about the Ninth than there is about the idea that Mozart and Beethoven were 'great' composers.


----------



## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

MacLeod said:


> No-one is saying that the critics were 'wrong', just that there were listeners then (critics are only paid listeners, after all) who _didn't see the merits of composers_ who are now generally held in high esteem.


Yes it can; the critics of Beethoven's time saw merit in his work or else they couldn't call him "genius" over and over again.



> As has been argued elsewhere, whilst general consensus may be taken as an indicator of a composer's perceived value, it cannot in itself endow 'greatness' (again, as some absolute 'good').


Yes it can, or else good is a meaningless term and the sound of airplane engines and gravel throw on windows is just as good as Mozart; after all, if the judgment of existing people don't matter and can't generate an absolute good why does it matter if the people who would like those things don't exist in large numbers? We can imagine an infinite number of non-existing people who like those things by simply multiplying the small number of people who do like those things.



> I marvel that you quote so many snippets of comments by TCers. Just a few would have been enough to show that this is a matter of taste, not right or wrong. I mean, you're not seriously suggesting that because crudblud and vaneyes (sorry guys) offer criticism of Beethoven's 9th, they must be indisputably and morally right?


It proves my point that the last movement of Beethoven's 9th is still controversial and that the judgment of that movement has not changed since Beethoven's time; hence the petty historicist argument that critics don't matter because acceptance is inevitable is false.



MacLeod said:


> Since you're going to avoid my question and keep asserting your own opinion, I see little point in continuing the dialogue.


That's just your opinion.



> There is no more genuine controversy about the Ninth than there is about the idea that Mozart and Beethoven were 'great' composers.


Yes there is, or else there wouldn't be a long thread about it.


----------



## Guest (Oct 27, 2012)

brianwalker said:


> Yes it can; the critics of Beethoven's time saw merit in his work or else they couldn't call him "genius" over and over again.


You are lumping all the critics together and treating them as a unit. But are they? There are ones who dislike his music, or some of it, and who acknowledge his genius. There are ones that call him genius over and over again. And there are ones who saw no merit in his work at all, or at least little merit in certain of his works. Your conclusions are way way way too categorical to be useful.



brianwalker said:


> Yes it can, or else good is a meaningless term and the sound of airplane engines and gravel throw on windows is just as good as Mozart


The point here I think is not whether "good" is meaningless or not but what it points to. You're taking good as pointing to the thing itself. Good is a quality of Mozart or a quality of airplane engines. But is that really what value words like good point to? Isn't it the experience that they point to?

If you don't like Mozart, then your experiences with his music will not be good. Says very little about either you or about Mozart. Says quite a lot about your experience. Same with the airplane engines. If that sound annoys you, your experience with it will be bad. If you like it, your experience will be good.



brianwalker said:


> after all, if the judgment of existing people don't matter and can't generate an absolute good why does it matter if the people who would like those things don't exist in large numbers?


Ultimately, it's all on you. What does it matter to you. Never mind how many other people share your experience, good or bad. Your own experiences are yours and you are the only one who matters.

The judgment of existing (?) people does matter but it cannot generate an absolute good, no.


----------



## Guest (Oct 28, 2012)

brianwalker said:


> _
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Hot air generated by pretentious TCers (I include myself in this) does not constitute controversy.


----------



## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

MacLeod said:


> Hot air generated by pretentious TCers (I include myself in this) does not constitute controversy.


Verdi and Stravinsky and Wagner and Gustav Leonhardt are not pretentious TCers.


----------



## Guest (Oct 28, 2012)

brianwalker said:


> Verdi and Stravinsky and Wagner and Gustav Leonhardt are not pretentious TCers.


No, but they are dead.


----------



## Guest (Oct 28, 2012)

If they were alive, they'd be pretentious TCers, I know they would. Well, maybe not Verdi. But the others, yeah baby!


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

some guy said:


> If they were alive, they'd be pretentious TCers, I know they would. Well, maybe not Verdi. But the others, yeah baby!


Could be; I can almost see GL's posts, my imagination based on his harpsichord playing. I think of him as 'The Dry Man', but 'The Conservative' works as well.


----------



## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

*The Barn Door Is Closed, But....*

My POV (for what it's worth):

Unlike some, I believe that there are limits to what's acceptible when it comes to "artistic" content. For me, the line is crossed when a work of art encourages or motivates people to acts of aggression and violence. The tricky part sometimes is distinguishing between a work that is _commenting_ on the human condition and one that is _advocating_ destructive behavior. Though I have observed the latter in some popular music of our time, I've seldom, if ever, heard that in the types of music to which this site is devoted, no matter how modern. (I've seen a couple of "Regie" opera productions that might fall into the category, though. )

I think some guy's OP was completely understandable, even to someone who doesn't share his enthusiasms. Why question another person's responses to music? And, the very fact that a person can have such positive responses to music would hold me back from making any kind of derrogatory comments about it, no matter how that music might strike me personally (unless I could prove categorically that it promoted destructive behavior).

Over forty years of listening to "classical" music has resulted, in my case, in at least a gradual expanding of my musical horizons. Though initially my greatest emotional responses were limited to the classical through mid-romantic periods, I found my feelings altering bit-by-bit toward more recent works. At the current time, I would say that though I can respond emotionally to music spanning a fairly wide spectrum, the pieces most likely to touch my buttons no matter what mood I'm in at the time are works of the early-to-mid 20th century.

I can appreciate some late 20th century and 21st century works on an intellectual level, though I can't say I've ever been seriously touched by them on an emotional level. I approach these works with what I can best describe as "curiosity". But, I have no problem accepting that some other listeners may get the reactions I experience from, let's say Carl Nielsen or Samuel Barber, from Ligeti, Cage, Carter or other more recent composers.

I think the problem is that we are a bit unrealistic in assuming that all of us are going to respond the same way to music composed over a period of about 600 years. Ideally, if there was enough interest in "classical" music in the world today, there would be separate forums (fora?) for many different styles that we have to, rather inconveniently, lump under the one main category. Under those circumstances, having one forum to discuss everything from Gregorian Chant to airplane propellors would seem as ludicrous as having one site to cover everything from Stephen Foster to Smashing Pumpkins.


----------



## Guest (Nov 12, 2012)

Interesting that the most passionate and diehard anti-modernists and the most enthusiastically argued threads about the self-evident awfulness of contemporary classical music should have come after this thread was first floated and even after this thread had run its natural course.

It might be that none of the new participants had ever read any of this, but still, it is curious the chronology of events, no?

Remind me never to demonstrate that contemporary music is perfectly fine ever again, OK? Jeez. If it's just gonna result in a monsoon of recycled criticisms of the modern that have been used over and over again since Mozart's time, then count me out!


----------

