# Why does serial music feel dark, heavy and unsettling?



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Ignoring the cliche for the moment, I can easily see why serial music feels dark, heavy, and unsettling to many listeners.
The short answer is because it is not based on a harmonic model.

What is a harmonic model?

Harmonic models are simply "models" of the harmonic series, not to be taken literally as the harmonic series, but as a series of _similar_ relationships of a fundamental tone to its lesser constituents, i.e. the other notes of the scale to its tonic or starting note.

Harmonic models are "tonalities" which are created by having every note in its scale relate to a tonic note in a series of degrees of consonance/dissonance to "1" or the tonic pitch.

In serial music, there is no "1" which every other note relates to; the relationships are constantly changing ratios.

Now, if we make a metaphorical leap, and consider the "1" of a tonality as the "fundamental" condition of "being," then the tonic pitch represents the most harmonious, stable state of identity or being of the listener.

The closer one is "tuned in" to a fundamental pitch, then the closer one is to "being," which now becomes a connected relationship among all elements; not unlike being "part of everything."

In this system, everything leads back to "1", which is the basic tenet of tonality.

With serialism, this is all gone. All pitches are fragmented and unrelated, harmonically speaking. The pitches may be related in _other _ways, non-harmonic ways such as in being part of the same row of notes.

With listeners who listen to music with the intention of "tuning in" to the harmonic phenomena of sound, that phenomena which is always audible and on the surface, it's no wonder that serial music unsettles them, since they equate harmony with identity and connectedness in a psychological sense.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Atonal music is unsettling because there is no settee for it to settle on, and some people just won't settle for that.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Maybe because of a work like _Erwartung_ and its darkly disturbing story set in a forest about coming across a dead body at night. What's not disturbing about a melodrama like that? The music gets associated with the abnormal, the disturbing, the creepy with its lack of a key center and its focus on atonality. At least in this instance, Schoenberg was a master in exploring the deeply unconscious, one's hidden tears and fears, and the music seems perfectly suited for that. I tend not to find detailed technical explanations of atonality emotionally satisfying despite at times they can still be illuminating. I think something like serialism or atonality was the result of what Schoenberg wanted to express about life and not the other way around where the technique came first and was considered more important. It may have been, but I don't think that was the main reason for why he was using those techniques of sound. I view such music as something like the equivalent of cubism in painting. There had to be the breaking up of tonality as a way of unleashing the power of the unconscious in the psychological climate of the 20th century and its turbulence. But perhaps these new ways of producing sound were mentally or emotionally healing in some way in the long run after human beings started coming to terms with the repressed side of their nature and what some imagined as the threatening forces of life that appeared to be beyond anyone's control.

[Repost from another thread:]


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

As you probably know I don't find darkness or a tendency to unsettle to be traits of serial music (as a category). Of course, there are serial works that might be described in that way but there is such a variety - between different composers (most well known serial composers had very distinctive styles) and between works - that the idea that all can be described in the same way seems almost laughable. So, the OP may understand why people think otherwise (if they really do) but I just think they should go back and listen again to an assortment of serial works.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Enthusiast said:


> As you probably know I don't find darkness or a tendency to unsettle to be traits of serial music (as a category). Of course, there are serial works that might be described in that way but there is such a variety - between different composers (most well known serial composers had very distinctive styles) and between works - that the idea that all can be described in the same way seems almost laughable. So, the OP may understand why people think otherwise (if they really do) but I just think they should go back and listen again to an assortment of serial works.


I still cannot think of one serial work that does not lead me into imagining a dark world of mental instability; if a composition is saturated with harmonic clashes then that would seem to be inevitable. Sibelius's fourth symphony has much that is dark and unsettling because of it's dissonance, but it's not saturated - the second movement begins quite light-heartedly.

Is there anything dark or unsettling about Vivaldi's Spring Concerto (1st movement)?

Compare Stockhausen's Gruppen.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

^^^ Are you really saying more than that you don't like or get it or see what others find in it? In another thread I thought a simple demonstration of some of the variety in atonal music could be Holliger's CD of Maderna's oboe concertos. Each of these three works is of a similar length and for similar forces. Each one sounds typical of Maderna. But they are each very different and not one of them sounds dark to me! They are not at all like those wind concertos of "second rank" Classical or Romantic composers (the Weber or Crussell clarinet concertos etc) that - lovely as they are - all sound so similar and tend towards being mere entertainment. Take a listen to the whole disc: you may not warm to the works but you will certainly hear that they are very different and substantial pieces and those differences may come to represent a crack which you can widen by listening again and thereby get closer to this sort of music. 

As for Gruppen, do you really hear it as dark? In comparison to Vivaldi's Spring (or even Winter) it is of course much more complex and attempts something infinitely more ambitious. What a strange comparison! And in doing that it is a more wide ranging and varied work. But if it and all the serial music you have heard make you feel drawn into "a dark world of mental instability" then it sounds to me (have I said this to you before?) like it is acting as a Rorschach test for you and that the music really does threaten you in some way. I had a similar experience with Sartre's Nausea when I was young and it was years before I could read it. Possibly it will be best for you to avoid serial music until you feel ready to face it. Until then it might be best, even, to avoid thinking (or posting!) about it.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Enthusiast said:


> ^^^ Are you really saying more than that you don't like or get it or see what others find in it?


I don't dislike a piece because it's dark.



> In another thread I thought a simple demonstration of some of the variety in atonal music could be Holliger's CD of Maderna's oboe concertos. Each of these three works is of a similar length and for similar forces. Each one sounds typical of Maderna. But they are each very different and not one of them sounds dark to me!


Listening to the 1st Maderna concerto - it sounds very dark to me.



> They are not at all like those wind concertos of "second rank" Classical or Romantic composers (the Weber or Crussell clarinet concertos etc) that - lovely as they are - all sound so similar and tend towards being mere entertainment. Take a listen to the whole disc: you may not warm to the works but you will certainly hear that they are very different and substantial pieces and those differences may come to represent a crack which you can widen by listening again and thereby get closer to this sort of music.
> 
> As for Gruppen, do you really hear it as dark? In comparison to Vivaldi's Spring (or even Winter) it is of course much more complex and attempts something infinitely more ambitious. What a strange comparison! And in doing that it is a more wide ranging and varied work. But if it and all the serial music you have heard make you feel drawn into "a dark world of mental instability" then it sounds to me (have I said this to you before?) like it is acting as a Rorschach test for you and that the music really does threaten you in some way. I had a similar experience with Sartre's Nausea when I was young and it was years before I could read it. Possibly it will be best for you to avoid serial music until you feel ready to face it. Until then it might be best, even, to avoid thinking (or posting!) about it.


Saying such music is dark isn't necessarily a negative judgement on the aesthetic value of the music. Sibelius's Tapiola is dark and unsettling, but IMO very satisfying. I will admit that of all the modern challenging music I have heard so far, I have found none of it to be as satisfying.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

you mean this Maderna concerto? It is not that I hate the music. I can even enjoy it to some degree when in a certain mindset. But it sounds like 90% of this music does, not really memorable, and a little pointless. If you played this to me blindly, I would not be able to tell if it comes from Schoenberg, Berg, Berio, Nono, Ligeti, Stockahausen, Xenakis, Ferneyhough and countless other less famous composers of this type. I always start listening to this music with good intention, but have to stop it after 10-15 minutes because it does not seem to move anywhere and I get bored/annoyed with it. There seems to be no development, no idea, and the emotion/atmophere that it evokes is uniform and stereotypical and as a result, the work seems to lack any real feeling of depth. But there are some atonal composers who seem to have some personal character - Henze, Lutoslawski, possibly even Boulez.

you can contrast the Maderna oboe concerto with Martinů oboe concerto if you want something modern but tonal. The latter seems to me to be much more meaningful and evoking of much more colorful palette of feelings/atmospheres


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

janxharris said:


> Listening to the 1st Maderna concerto - it sounds very dark to me.


You have followed my "prescription". The point is to listen to all three, recognise that they are very different and use that recognition to edge beyond "dark and unsettling".



janxharris said:


> Saying such music is dark isn't necessarily a negative judgement on the aesthetic value of the music. Sibelius's Tapiola is dark and unsettling, but IMO very satisfying. I will admit that of all the modern challenging music I have heard so far, I have found none of it to be as satisfying.


I agree. It is not a negative judgement and, yes, Tapiola is a work with the darkness of the forest at its heart. But it would be quite wrong (or unhelpful and unperceptive) to say that all Sibelius is dark. My point is that to find all music of a particular genre - especially one with so many prolific composers - all dark and unsettling suggests to me that something is stopping you from getting to the music. As I suggested, give it a rest. Perhaps sample it occasionally. One day it may start to speak to you.

The debate we always have about music that we don't like even though it is widely admired is always about whether the fault is in the music or within those who don't get it. We find this in discussions about Schubert (allegedly too simple) and Mozart as well as about more modern music.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Jacck said:


> you mean this Maderna concerto? It is not that I hate the music. I can even enjoy it to some degree when in a certain mindset. But it sounds like 90% of this music does, not really memorable, and a little pointless. If you played this to me blindly, I would not be able to tell if it comes from Schoenberg, Berg, Berio, Nono, Ligeti, Stockahausen, Xenakis, Ferneyhough and countless other less famous composers of this type. I always start listening to this music with good intention, but have to stop it after 10-15 minutes because it does not seem to move anywhere and I get bored/annoyed with it. There seems to be no development, no idea, and the emotion/atmophere that it evokes is uniform and stereotypical and as a result, the work seems to lack any real feeling of depth.


This is generally my experience. I always thought that repeated listens would unlock such pieces and I would enjoy them as much as tonal works but this hasn't happened. I see serialism as an interesting potential that has thus far (in my listening experience) failed.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Enthusiast said:


> You have followed my "prescription". The point is to listen to all three, recognise that they are very different and use that recognition to edge beyond "dark and unsettling".
> 
> I agree. It is not a negative judgement and, yes, Tapiola is a work with the darkness of the forest at its heart. But it would be quite wrong (or unhelpful and unperceptive) to say that all Sibelius is dark. My point is that to find all music of a particular genre - especially one with so many prolific composers - all dark and unsettling suggests to me that something is stopping you from getting to the music. As I suggested, give it a rest. Perhaps sample it occasionally. One day it may start to speak to you.
> 
> The debate we always have about music that we don't like even though it is widely admired is always about whether the fault is in the music or within those who don't get it. We find this in discussions about Schubert (allegedly too simple) and Mozart as well as about more modern music.


Ok - I will listen to all three concertos.
I won't be resting from listening to difficult modern works as I want to educate myself and explore.

You suggest that something is stopping my appreciation and mention that I find all such music (ie serial) as dark, but I would be very surprised if this isn't the norm. Please note that I am NOT trying to belittle your opinion. Your take on this is as valuable as anyone else's.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Enthusiast said:


> The debate we always have about music that we don't like even though it is widely admired is always about whether the fault is in the music or within those who don't get it. We find this in discussions about Schubert (allegedly too simple) and Mozart as well as about more modern music.


Modern classical is not widely admired.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

janxharris said:


> Modern classical is not widely admired.


https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/sc...l-music-because-their-brains-cannot-cope.html
a possible explanation why it might be so


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Jacck said:


> you mean this Maderna concerto? It is not that I hate the music. I can even enjoy it to some degree when in a certain mindset. But it sounds like 90% of this music does, not really memorable, and a little pointless. If you played this to me blindly, I would not be able to tell if it comes from Schoenberg, Berg, Berio, Nono, Ligeti, Stockahausen, Xenakis, Ferneyhough and countless other less famous composers of this type. I always start listening to this music with good intention, but have to stop it after 10-15 minutes because it does not seem to move anywhere and I get bored/annoyed with it. There seems to be no development, no idea, and the emotion/atmophere that it evokes is uniform and stereotypical and as a result, the work seems to lack any real feeling of depth. But there are some atonal composers who seem to have some personal character - Henze, Lutoslawski, possibly even Boulez.
> 
> you can contrast the Maderna oboe concerto with Martinů oboe concerto if you want something modern but tonal. The latter seems to me to be much more meaningful and evoking of much more colorful palette of feelings/atmospheres


There are three Maderna concertos - not one - and that was the point of my suggestion. If you start to hear the huge differences between three very comparable works then you should start to appreciate that generalities are not helpful or meaningful. My suggestion was not that janxharris or you would actually get and enjoy Maderna's music. That would clearly take a lot more! But I think you would recognise that the three works are very different ... so could they all be "dark and unsettling"?

I do wonder, though, Jacck, whether you would have suggested a year ago that "Henze, Lutoslawski, possibly even Boulez" had something going for them? Are you beginning to recognise the different voices? That's how it starts.

As for the comparison of one of the Maderna concertos with Martinu's concerto - why compare? They are so obviously very different - from different times and with different aesthetic philosophies. The Maderna also sounds very different to the Mozart concerto or the Bach (violin and oboe)! Can't I like both composers?


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

janxharris said:


> Modern classical is not widely admired.


Oh yes it is! Of course, compared with Beethoven it is unpopular. But Beethoven is unpopular compared to Beyonce. So what?


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Jacck said:


> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/sc...l-music-because-their-brains-cannot-cope.html
> a possible explanation why it might be so


Your taste for fairly extreme (right wing) journals has always alarmed me, Jacck! This one - the UK Daily Telegraph - is beloved by well-to-do people of fairly advanced age! It is hardly surprising that it offers "explanations" for why what its readers think is correct. Indeed that is its main purpose. Those conservatives with a slightly more adventurous spirit read The Times.

By the by - I don't want to dominate this thread so by all means respond but I will withdraw from this discussion for a while.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Jacck said:


> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/sc...l-music-because-their-brains-cannot-cope.html
> a possible explanation why it might be so


Even when one is able to recognise certain patterns (for example, elements of the tone row), it still can be lacking.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Enthusiast said:


> Your taste for fairly extreme (right wing) journals has always alarmed me, Jacck! This one - the UK Daily Telegraph - is beloved by well-to-do people of fairly advanced age! It is hardly surprising that it offers "explanations" for why what its readers think is correct. Indeed that is its main purpose. Those conservatives with a slightly more adventurous spirit read The Times.
> 
> By the by - I don't want to dominate this thread so by all means respond but I will withdraw from this discussion for a while.


Seriously? - it speaks about Philip Ball's 'The Music Instinct'.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Enthusiast said:


> Oh yes it is! Of course, compared with Beethoven it is unpopular. But Beethoven is unpopular compared to Beyonce. So what?


Two-hundred years of success is probably difficult to compare with 5 minutes of fame.

John Williams is widely admired; Schoenberg isn't.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Williams is a light classical pop star, not to be compared with an uncompromising artist such as Schoenberg. And Schoenberg's music never strikes me as dark or heavy. Nor unsettling. It's just different.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Enthusiast said:


> Your taste for fairly extreme (right wing) journals has always alarmed me, Jacck! This one - the UK Daily Telegraph - is beloved by well-to-do people of fairly advanced age! It is hardly surprising that it offers "explanations" for why what its readers think is correct. Indeed that is its main purpose. Those conservatives with a slightly more adventurous spirit read The Times.
> 
> By the by - I don't want to dominate this thread so by all means respond but I will withdraw from this discussion for a while.


TBH, I am not reading any Brittish journals with any regularity. I most often read BBC or CNN among the English speaking news. All these journals such a telegraph etc. are random google searches that come up when I search a certain topic, such as "why is modern classical music so hated".


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

starthrower said:


> Williams is a light classical pop star, not to be compared with an uncompromising artist such as Schoenberg. And Schoenberg's music never strikes me as dark or heavy. Nor unsettling. It's just different.


well someone posted, Erwantung, that is about this

"A woman is in an apprehensive state as she searches for her lover. In the darkness, she comes across what she first thinks is a body, but then realises is a tree-trunk. She is frightened and becomes more anxious as she cannot find the man she is looking for. She then finds a dead body, and sees that it is her lover. She calls out for assistance, but there is no response. She tries to revive him, and addresses him as if he were still alive, angrily charging him with being unfaithful to her. She then asks herself what she is to do with her life, as her lover is now dead. Finally, she wanders off alone into the night."

or works like A survivor from Warsaw about the experience of a survivor of a concentration camp.
To me that's pretty dark stuff.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Enthusiast said:


> As you probably know I don't find darkness or a tendency to unsettle to be traits of serial music (as a category). Of course, there are serial works that might be described in that way but there is such a variety - between different composers (most well known serial composers had very distinctive styles) and between works - that the idea that all can be described in the same way seems almost laughable. So, the OP may understand why people think otherwise (if they really do) but I just think they should go back and listen again to an assortment of serial works.


It's not about the music, though; it's about the listener, and how he/she is affected the music. Since you obviously do not hear serial music to be "unsettling," this simply means that you do not equate tonality with 'connectedness' and 'being,' and serialism as its opposite.

Congratulations; you are not psychologically dependent on tonality for your secure sense of being, nor does serial music "unsettle" this security.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

norman bates said:


> well someone posted, Erwantung, that is about this
> 
> "A woman is in an apprehensive state as she searches for her lover. In the darkness, she comes across what she first thinks is a body, but then realises is a tree-trunk. She is frightened and becomes more anxious as she cannot find the man she is looking for. She then finds a dead body, and sees that it is her lover. She calls out for assistance, but there is no response. She tries to revive him, and addresses him as if he were still alive, angrily charging him with being unfaithful to her. She then asks herself what she is to do with her life, as her lover is now dead. Finally, she wanders off alone into the night."
> 
> ...


I don't understand German, so I don't pay attention to the text. Just the sound of the music.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

starthrower said:


> I don't understand German, so I don't pay attention to the text. Just the sound of the music.


...and how you hear that music reflects what kind of psychological forces compel you to like it or not. Some people become unsettled by repetitious or droney music which does not change a lot; others are drawn to it. This is why many listeners are repelled by minimalism; the way it seems to make time stand still is very scary for many, because it draws us inward to our being, where time seems to stop. If one lives in the time-world of the ego, then this confrontation with one's 'being' is quite unsettling, and even irritating or scary. 
One's perception of time is very tied to one's consciousness; the thought-narrative of the ego needs a sense of time passing to exist; 'being' does not.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

The problem with endless repetition is that it's boring, not scary. I don't think about time passing or not.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

The shifts away from diatonic composition pioneered by Schoenberg where radical, and I agree that they changed the way people listen to music too. Free atonality gave way to a new system, serialism. New conventions where created by composers at the turn of the 20th century.

The issue of psychology already raised by Larkenfield and Norman bates is pivotal to music of the period. The impact of Freud on the arts, including music, can't be overestimated.

Expression moving towards the undercurrents of the mind involved rejection of conventions which had become rigid and superficial. I'm reading the lost interviews with Henri Matisse and some of what he said applies to music:

_Moreau didn't lead his students down any one particular road; on the contrary, he led them off the beaten track. He gave them a sense of disquiet...With Moreau, you could acquire a technique to match your temperament._

When Matisse said this in 1941, what he calls disquiet was an established part of art. He was reflecting on the ateliers of the late 19th century when that and Moreau's idea of teaching where going against the grain of the establishment.

I think parallels can be drawn between this and Schoenberg's views on music and his practice of teaching. In 1941 he was still alive, as where the other two figureheads of modern music, Stravinsky and Bartok. If anything, the acknowledgement of the psychology behind creative thinking would continue after 1945. So too would explorations of technique set down by Schoenberg and the others.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

starthrower said:


> The problem with endless repetition is that it's boring, not scary. I don't think about time passing or not.


That's because you are not scared, but bored, when the endless ticker-tape of your thoughts is drowned out by repetition. You do not depend on "thoughts" for your sense of being, but are comfortable with the world of being which lies beyond thought. Time does not concern you the way it concerns some other people.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Several remarks usually pop up when this topic is raised, notably: that it all sounds the same (can't distinguish Schoenberg from Berg from Ligeti...) and suggestions that it all points to a steep decline into cultural decadence. 

I don't think the similarity claim is any more forceful (or meaningful) than the fact that so much baroque music, galant music, or later 18th century music, or 19th century music for that matter, sounds the same. Why wouldn't it have some similarities. 

I assume that many composers who adopted serial techniques imagined that they sounded nothing like the other people using similar techniques; but then clearly most composers working in 18th/19th century idioms also thought they were highly distinguishable from Mozart and Beethoven. I'd like to see a blind test of snippets of this music played to those who self-identify as having discerning palates.

I'm less won over by clever, overcomplicated psychological exegeses of why serial music sounds dark and unsettling. The base facts are that dissonances deliberately play a heightened role and are stacked and multiplied. Schoenberg talks about it at length in his writings. It also pretty much stems from embracing the heavy chromatic dissonances of Wagner as a starting point rather than a partial feature. 

We know that dissonances unsettle and unresolved dissonances even more so. We know that we have been conditioned to think of music as containing more consonance than dissonance, the latter playing the role of a tension-creator. 

As Sid James noted the birth of serial music also coincided with the height of Freudian psychoanalysis (which turns out to have been quackery) and also with other rather seismic shifts in cultural and social life - many pessimistic and hopeless. In this sense serialism, despite its radical stance, turns out to be a sort of nihilism (that's a provisional label) which merely turns on its head the dominant and accepted notion of music as largely consonant. Maybe not so philosophically radical after all, but just an emotional/cultural reflection.

Yet despite this it has a life of its own. A beauty of its own. There is much of worth and beauty to be found in serial music, often because the composers were sincere and believed in their work. It's not all great, but the rest of music isn't either.

It's not an evaluation immune to rebuttal, but I think I can leave it at that.


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## Alfacharger (Dec 6, 2013)

starthrower said:


> Williams is a light classical pop star, not to be compared with an uncompromising artist such as Schoenberg. And Schoenberg's music never strikes me as dark or heavy. Nor unsettling. It's just different.


Oh really!


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

janxharris said:


> Modern classical is not widely admired.


It is widely admired, but not necessarily well-liked.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> That's because you are not scared, but bored, when the endless ticker-tape of your thoughts is drowned out by repetition. You do not depend on "thoughts" for your sense of being, but are comfortable with the world of being which lies beyond thought. Time does not concern you the way it concerns some other people.
> 
> Some people become unsettled by repetitious or droney music which does not change a lot; others are drawn to it. This is why many listeners are repelled by minimalism; the way it seems to make time stand still is very scary for many, because it draws us inward to our being, where time seems to stop. If one lives in the time-world of the ego, then this confrontation with one's 'being' is quite unsettling, and even irritating or scary.


You must be joking. What do you really know about the person you're presuming to describe with this pseudo-Buddhist psychobabble? How do you know in what manner time "concerns" him? Or how this relates to his feelings about repetition in music?

Who are these people who find repetition "unsettling," "irritating" and "scary"? Given the nature of a large percentage of popular music nowadays, it would seem that most people like repetition very much. Are they all being happily "drawn into their being" - or are they, conceivably, just not interested in music that engages anything but their laziest, most superficial and visceral responses? Most people's lives are full of repetition. It's comfy.

Being repelled by repetitiousness and being bored by it are not the opposites you're identifying to your psychiatric patient above. Personally, I'm somewhat repelled by minimalism precisely because I find prolonged repetition boring and want music I'm going to spend time with to exhibit a certain amount of creative invention and life energy and to engage more of my faculties. I don't perceive it as "making time stand still" but merely as wasting my time, and it certainly doesn't "draw me inward to my being" ( or whatever).

Repetition - drones, ostinati, repeated grounds, etc. - can be a powerful resource in music, and repetition can express all sorts of things, entrancing or unsettling. You can't attach one particular meaning to it. But it's most meaningful when it underlies variety and change. It has no fixed value in itself. The most "repetitious" sound is a single tone, the occurrence of which in the hospital is called "flatlining."

I can only imagine what psychological category you would apply to my thoughts. But whatever it is, know that I can bear the awful truth.


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## Red Terror (Dec 10, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> You must be joking. What do you really know about the person you're presuming to describe with this pseudo-Buddhist psychobabble? How do you know in what manner time "concerns" him? Or how this relates to his feelings about repetition in music?
> 
> Who are these people who find repetition "unsettling," "irritating" and "scary"? Given the nature of a large percentage of popular music nowadays, it would seem that most people like repetition very much. Are they all being happily "drawn into their being" - or are they, conceivably, just not interested in music that engages anything but their laziest, most superficial and visceral responses? Most people's lives are full of repetition. It's comfy.
> 
> ...


Wooduck worships satan-haven't you figured this out yet, million?

:tiphat:


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> You must be joking. What do you really know about the person you're presuming to describe with this pseudo-Buddhist psychobabble?


Have a care with your criticism! MR moves in the astral plane, while creatures like thee and me must creep about in the muck of Samsara.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

KenOC said:


> Have a care with your criticism! MR moves in the astral plane, while creatures like thee and me must creep about in the muck of Samsara.


Don't I know it! The muck of Samsara is especially hard to remove from under your fingernails.


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

Babbitt’s music is light, elegant and often humorous


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

eugeneonagain said:


> ...
> As Sid James noted the birth of serial music also coincided with the height of Freudian psychoanalysis (which turns out to have been quackery) and also with other rather seismic shifts in cultural and social life - many pessimistic and hopeless. ...


While there are very few practitioners of psychoanalysis today, there are plenty of psychologists. We can still give credit to Freud for being the founder of what would become modern psychology. Others where involved too, such as Jung who later departed from Freud's methods.

Perhaps we can view Schoenberg's serial method in a similar way? While not many composers can be called serialist today, the method was one of the important innovations which has made impacts on music since. In the notes to her recording of Schoenberg's Violin Concerto, Hilary Hahn compared him to an explorer opening up hitherto uncharted territories. I think it's a pretty good comparison.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

eugeneonagain said:


> As Sid James noted the birth of serial music also coincided with the height of Freudian psychoanalysis (which turns out to have been quackery) and also with other rather seismic shifts in cultural and social life - many pessimistic and hopeless. In this sense serialism, despite its radical stance, turns out to be a sort of nihilism (that's a provisional label) which merely turns on its head the dominant and accepted notion of music as largely consonant. Maybe not so philosophically radical after all, but just an emotional/cultural reflection.


I am involved in some schizophrenia research and am currently writing a paper about it that I hope to publish in a really good journal (because the results are really very good and novel). It looks like the disorder is immune-mediated (akin to multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, IBD etc). It is almost comical to read the Freudian theories about schizophrenia from the 1950's published in the psychoanalytical journals of that time, how the "the patient had regressed to the autoerotic narcissistic stage of development". Haha  And a large portion of academia and elites were taking this seriously at that time and it good published in reputable journals such as the Schizophrenia Bulletin. But in science, the truth always comes out at the end. Sometimes it takes time, but the false theories are always exposed for what they are in the end. This does not happen in arts. I understand that the music of Schoenberg (we can liken him to Freud) was fashinable during the war times or after the war. But I do not understand, why this mostly failed atonal experiment has not been abandoned until the present day and the current composers still keep continuing composing this nonsense. Maybe because the arts establlishment has regressed into the autoerotic narcissistic stage of development


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Jacck said:


> I am involved in some schizophrenia research and am currently writing a paper about it that I hope to publish in a really good journal (because the results are really very good and novel). It looks like the disorder is immune-mediated (akin to multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, IBD etc). It is almost comical to read the Freudian theories about schizophrenia from the 1950's published in the psychoanalytical journals of that time, how the "the patient had regressed to the autoerotic narcissistic stage of development". Haha  And a large portion of academia and elites were taking this seriously at that time and it good published in reputable journals such as the Schizophrenia Bulletin. But in science, the truth always comes out at the end. Sometimes it takes time, but the false theories are always exposed for what they are in the end. This does not happen in arts. I understand that the music of Schoenberg (we can liken him to Freud) was fashinable during the war times or after the war. But I do not understand, why this mostly failed atonal experiment has not been abandoned until the present day and the current composers still keep continuing composing this nonsense. Maybe because the arts establlishment has regressed into the autoerotic narcissistic stage of development


Would you agree that works like Messiaen's 'Quartet for the end of time' provides a more interesting model for composers? Messiaen didn't employ the 12 tone technique and this piece displays great melodic interest.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

janxharris said:


> Would you agree that works like Messiaen's 'Quartet for the end of time' provides a more interesting model for composers? Messiaen didn't employ the 12 tone technique and this piece displays great melodic interest.


I am not against all of modern music and I believe that some of it (even among the atonal/serial movement) is of high value and quality. I like Messiaen (although initially I did not) and think that his music has high quality. I like the quartet for the end of time, I like the Turangalila symphony and Oiseaux Exotiques and Catalogue d'Oiseaux. Similarly, I started to like some Boulez. I like Henze. I like some Schoenberg, Berg, Webern. I like the Polish school of composers (Lutoslawski, Penderecki, Baczewicz etc). I even like some Xenakis, and some spectralism, some Carter.

My problem is probably with the fact, that this music became dominant and pushed out all other music, at least from academia. Some people - notably Boulez, Babbit - were really arrogant and derided other composers as backwards and uttered sentences like "who care if you listen"? So the answer from the public was "who cares if you compose". I have no doubt that this atonal fad will be abandoned at some point in the future, 99% of this music will be forgotten and 1% of the best/most interesting music will survive for future generations to enjoy. The biggest problem from my point of view is that the composers became alienated from the listening public. Most of these atonal composers get financed from universities as teachers, they have their salary and are not dependent on the sales of their music, hence they feel not obliged to compose music that the majority of the public wants to hear. But to be fair, today's composers have a hard time, because they have to compete against all of the canonic repertoire and it is hard to compete against Beethoven. But the same was true for Brahms and Shostakovich, at yet they managed to produce original music of similar stature.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

but the modern music I enjoy the most is something like this




written in 1975. This seems to communicate something to me, it conjures images and landscapes and oozes athmosphere.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

I_gnoring the cliche for the moment, I can easily see why serial music feels dark, heavy, and unsettling to many listeners. The short answer is because it is not based on a harmonic model. _

I understand your point but disagree to some extent. I think the answer is that it is not harmonic, not necessarily that it is not built on a harmonic model. Harmony requires music to use the same or almost same notes in close repetition which some of the "rules" of serialism don't allow.

Yet there is plenty of music builit on harmony that is equally as dark and unsettling. I would argue much of the output of Jean Sibelius, a tonal 20th century composer, is loaded with darkness and unsettled feelings. This isn't from his model of choice; it is because he was alcoholic, unhappy with Russia's takeover of his homeland, and did not care for the lush orchestrations of late romantics such as Richard Strauss.

I listened to two of my favorite Sibelius works last night -- the Third Symphony and Lemminkainen Suite. Both are dark, heavy, sometimes overbearing works that allow little light on dark canvasses. I followed that listening to Berg's 12 tone Chamber Concerto for Piano, Violin and 10 Winds; it seemed like a breath of fresh air after the heaviness of the Finn.

But that's just me, not the music. People's interpretations of music is what made Cage's music famous. He knew everyone graded music themselves, that there is no base for such things.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

janxharris said:


> Two-hundred years of success is probably difficult to compare with 5 minutes of fame.
> 
> John Williams is widely admired; Schoenberg isn't.


John Williams is not a classical composer and is not as popular as Beyonce either. It is "easy" to compose a few stirring orchestral sounds and passages. But classical music is all about the whole and how it is put together. To suggest Williams is a classical composer is a real insult to those who are, even the third rate ones.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Jacck said:


> TBH, I am not reading any Brittish journals with any regularity. I most often read BBC or CNN among the English speaking news. All these journals such a telegraph etc. are random google searches that come up when I search a certain topic, such as "why is modern classical music so hated".


Doesn't Google use your previous search history to choose for you? And anyway you can find anything on the web. There is also that awful rubbish video of some pompous idiot telling us why modern art is rubbish that gets posted on this site every couple of weeks. I think in general it is often best with art to look at reasons why something is good, rather than bad, ideally by someone you know about and trust. You don't have to believe it but if someone you trust comes up with good reasons for liking something that may be reliable. And if their reasons seem dubious then you know that the best recommendation is still not convincing.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Enthusiast said:


> John Williams is not a classical composer and is not as popular as Beyonce either. It is "easy" to compose a few stirring orchestral sounds and passages. But classical music is all about the whole and how it is put together. To suggest Williams is a classical composer is a real insult to those who are, even the third rate ones.


Well I didn't actually affirm that Williams is a classical composer, but even if he is nobody need feel insulted. I don't understand your offence on behalf of others.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Bwv 1080 said:


> Babbitt's music is light, elegant and often humorous


But mostly humorous.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

eugeneonagain said:


> I'm less won over by clever, overcomplicated psychological exegeses of why serial music sounds dark and unsettling...We know that dissonances unsettle and unresolved dissonances even more so. We know that we have been conditioned to think of music as containing more consonance than dissonance, the latter playing the role of a tension-creator.


You're on the right track here; the effects of music have more to do with the listener's psychology, conditioning, and hundreds of years of tradition than with the actual music.



eugeneonagain said:


> ...As Sid James noted the birth of serial music also coincided with the height of Freudian psychoanalysis (which turns out to have been quackery) and also with other rather seismic shifts in cultural and social life - many pessimistic and hopeless. In this sense serialism, despite its radical stance, turns out to be a sort of nihilism (that's a provisional label) which merely turns on its head the dominant and accepted notion of music as largely consonant. Maybe not so philosophically radical after all, but just an emotional/cultural reflection.


In defense of Freud, the psychology of today has been replaced with Pavlov's dogs, and B.F. Skinner's behaviorism. This provides the corporate overmind with what it needs for control: hard data.
Psychiatrists prescribe meds after shallow diagnosis, and rarely engage in "cognitive" pursuits. This is left up to the dental-assistants called "psychotherapists." You know, like those 'pharmacy helpers' who wait on you, the way insurance companies save money by sending you to a 'medical assistant'.

But Freud had some good ideas. He knew about Nietszche's theory of the "unconscious," and "drives" which are beyond the control of Man's ego. His theories about hypnogogic dreams in adolescence are right on the money, which I know from experience. His book "Civilization and Its Discontents" is still a classic. Although he did not understand or solve the problems associated with modern civilization, he described it well; a form of mass-insanity which still controls Man today, and the insanity which the post-war serialists rejected outright. Good for them.



Jacck said:


> I am involved in some schizophrenia research and am currently writing a paper about it that I hope to publish in a really good journal (because the results are really very good and novel). It looks like the disorder is immune-mediated (akin to multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, IBD etc). It is almost comical to read the Freudian theories about schizophrenia from the 1950's published in the psychoanalytical journals of that time, how the "the patient had regressed to the autoerotic narcissistic stage of development". Haha


What is "quackery" is B.F. Skinner's "Skinner Box" which he raised his daughter in, who resents him to this day (she became an artist). The best theories of schizophrenia (which means "broken heart") are by Ronald D. Laing.



Jacck said:


> ...And a large portion of academia and elites were taking this seriously at that time and it good published in reputable journals such as the Schizophrenia Bulletin. But in science, the truth always comes out at the end. Sometimes it takes time, but the false theories are always exposed for what they are in the end.


Apparently so, because you're in good company with "Doctor" Phil McGraw and his "tough love" philosophy.



Jacck said:


> ...This does not happen in arts. I understand that the music of Schoenberg (we can liken him to Freud) was fashinable during the war times or after the war. But I do not understand, why this mostly failed atonal experiment has not been abandoned until the present day and the current composers still keep continuing composing this nonsense. Maybe because the arts establlishment has regressed into the autoerotic narcissistic stage of development


Human psychology, and the human spirit, will never be fully understood. In that sense, it is exactly like the arts.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Atonal music is unsettling because there is no settee for it to settle on, and some people just won't settle for that.


Game, set and match.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

millionrainbows said:


> You're on the right track here; the effects of music have more to do with the listener's psychology, conditioning, and hundreds of years of tradition than with the actual music.
> 
> In defense of Freud, the psychology of today has been replaced with Pavlov's dogs, and B.F. Skinner's behaviorism. This provides the corporate overmind with what it needs for control: hard data.
> Psychiatrists prescribe meds after shallow diagnosis, and rarely engage in "cognitive" pursuits. This is left up to the dental-assistants called "psychotherapists." You know, like those 'pharmacy helpers' who wait on you, the way insurance companies save money by sending you to a 'medical assistant'.
> ...


you write so much nonsense that it is probably pointless to even try to argue with you. I am not a big fan of psychology as a discipline, because of its lack of scientific rigor and tencency for being ideologic. I am interested in neither psychoanalysis, nor behaviorism nor psychoterapy. I am interested in brain research and have been involved in it for some 10 years. Dr Ronald D. Laing was obviously a crackpot similar to the crackpots who fight against vaccination. He was completely disregarding the thousands of studies that like schizophrenia with brain/biological abnormalities. Unfortunately such crackpots become very active with the public and spread their antiscientific poison


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Originally Posted by *millionrainbows* 
_That's because you are not scared, but bored, when the endless ticker-tape of your thoughts is drowned out by repetition. You do not depend on "thoughts" for your sense of being, but are comfortable with the world of being which lies beyond thought. Time does not concern you the way it concerns some other people.

Some people become unsettled by repetitious or droney music which does not change a lot; others are drawn to it. This is why many listeners are repelled by minimalism; the way it seems to make time stand still is very scary for many, because it draws us inward to our being, where time seems to stop. If one lives in the time-world of the ego, then this confrontation with one's 'being' is quite unsettling, and even irritating or scary._



Woodduck said:


> You must be joking. What do you really know about the person you're presuming to describe with this pseudo-Buddhist psychobabble? How do you know in what manner time "concerns" him? Or how this relates to his feelings about repetition in music?


My, my, who got out on the wrong side of the bed this morning, after a presumably rough night? I know these generalities because these are the common complaints about minimalism and "static" music. I'm talking generally, and I didn't target anyone specifically.



Woodduck said:


> Who are these people who find repetition "unsettling," "irritating" and "scary"? Given the nature of a large percentage of popular music nowadays, it would seem that most people like repetition very much.


I was referring to minimalism and hard-core drone music, but there is some truth in what you say: many people are using "trance" and repetitious electronica music in combination with psychedelic drugs like ecstacy, to achieve "communion" with their beings, and somewhat obliterate and escape from their egos and time. Of course, this is only a temporary reprieve.



Woodduck said:


> Are they all being happily "drawn into their being" - or are they, conceivably, just not interested in music that engages anything but their laziest, most superficial and visceral responses? Most people's lives are full of repetition. It's comfy.


As I commented above, most of them seem to need to escape from the stultifying effects of society, and their boring jobs. Most of them are not "comfy" but are desperately seeking some sort of spiritual communion.



Woodduck said:


> Being repelled by repetitiousness and being bored by it are not the opposites you're identifying to your psychiatric patient above. Personally, I'm somewhat repelled by minimalism precisely because I find prolonged repetition boring and want music I'm going to spend time with to exhibit a certain amount of creative invention and life energy and to engage more of my faculties. I don't perceive it as "making time stand still" but merely as wasting my time, and it certainly doesn't "draw me inward to my being" ( or whatever).


Well, this says more about you than any effect music has. Apparently you have found a modicum of contentment with the music you prefer to listen to.



Woodduck said:


> Repetition - drones, ostinati, repeated grounds, etc. - can be a powerful resource in music, and repetition can express all sorts of things, entrancing or unsettling. You can't attach one particular meaning to it. But it's most meaningful when it underlies variety and change. It has no fixed value in itself. The most "repetitious" sound is a single tone, the occurrence of which in the hospital is called "flatlining."


I agree. However, these overly-literal interpretations of my observations seem to be designed for argumentation, and I find that to be boring.



Woodduck said:


> I can only imagine what psychological category you would apply to my thoughts. But whatever it is, know that I can bear the awful truth.


You seem to me to be fairly content to be where you are, but your attraction to conflict and argumentation gives me pause. If yousimply ignored me, I would be more convinced.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Well, if anyone would like to prove that the unconscious or the subconscious doesn't exist, then please go ahead. Schoenberg talked about his music and its relationship to the unconscious, and there's more than brain biology going on with human beings and their behavior. The unconscious exists and Freud explored it in what was considered an advance in human understanding at the time. That's one of the relationships between psychology, the unconscious, and Schoenberg's atonality.



> As Jonathan Cross reiterates in reference to the Five Orchestral Pieces (1909), "Schoenberg appears to be guided principally by the requirements of direct expression, by the logic of the unconscious". The fact that it is such an unconscious logic as opposed to a more straightforwardly logical, structured expression which dominates opus 16, places the work at the helm of artistic freedom. [unquote]
> 
> Regardless of whether one enjoys what the composer was expressing, I believe the above statement is very true and that helps explain why some people still find it disturbing because you're never going to know exactly what's going to come from the deep unconscious and there are factors related to it that have not always been brought to light.
> 
> ...


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Jacck said:


> you write so much nonsense that it is probably pointless to even try to argue with you. I am not a big fan of psychology as a discipline, because of its lack of scientific rigor and tencency for being ideologic. I am interested in neither psychoanalysis, nor behaviorism nor psychoterapy. I am interested in brain research and have been involved in it for some 10 years. Dr Ronald D. Laing was obviously a crackpot similar to the crackpots who fight against vaccination. He was completely disregarding the thousands of studies that like schizophrenia with brain/biological abnormalities. Unfortunately such crackpots become very active with the public and spread their antiscientific poison


When you cut a brain open, and find that there is no soul in there, then I suppose you will have solved the dilemma. :lol:

R.D. Laing was a brilliant man, and a "real person." I highly suggest his books.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

I also have time for R.D. Laing. He was no crackpot. He perhaps "fell in" a bit too much with countercultural tomfoolery, but he was an honest and brave psychiatrist who genuinely sought to help people, rather than drug them or lock them away. The (recently) late David Smail was his natural heir and a psychotherapist worth reading for his analysis of the social origins of much mental distress.

I wouldn't let Freud off the hook regarding the shaping of the 'corporate mind'. Wasn't it his nephew Edward Bernays who founded public relations theory using Freud's ideas? It sits behind marketing and advertising. Much worse than anything cooked up by B.F. Skinner.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

millionrainbows said:


> His book [Freud's] "Civilization and Its Discontents" is still a classic. Although he did not understand or solve the problems associated with modern civilization, he described it well; a form of mass-insanity which still controls Man today, and the insanity which the post-war serialists rejected outright. Good for them.


What did post-war serialists have to do with post-war insanity?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Millionrainbows wrote: I know these generalities because these are the common complaints about minimalism and "static" music. I'm talking generally, and I didn't target anyone specifically.

Yes, you did target someone. You told starthrower, "That's because you are not scared, but bored, when the endless ticker-tape of your thoughts is drowned out by repetition. You do not depend on 'thoughts' for your sense of being, but are comfortable with the world of being which lies beyond thought. Time does not concern you the way it concerns some other people."

Maybe this describes starthrower, or maybe it doesn't, but how the heck would you know? (I'll bet it doesn't.)

I was referring to minimalism and hard-core drone music, but there is some truth in what you say: many people are using "trance" and repetitious electronica music in combination with psychedelic drugs like ecstacy, to achieve "communion" with their beings, and somewhat obliterate and escape from their egos and time. Of course, this is only a temporary reprieve.

I referred to popular music, with its (to me) mindless repetition of melodic, harmonic and rhythmic figures, in order to show that repetitiveness in music, or the enjoyment or dislike of it, doesn't have to mean what you claim it does. People's responses to it, in popular music, ethnic music, minimalism, or any other sort of music in which repetitiveness is prominent, may mean a number of things.

As I commented above, most of them seem to need to escape from the stultifying effects of society, and their boring jobs. Most of them are not "comfy" but are desperately seeking some sort of spiritual communion.

That's not why repetitive popular music is popular. It is indeed, for the most part, "comfy" - i.e. undemanding, obvious and easy - and that's why it's popular. This has nothing to do with escaping or the search for spiritual communion.

Apparently you have found a modicum of contentment with the music you prefer to listen to.

Is that British understatement?

These overly-literal interpretations of my observations seem to be designed for argumentation, and I find that to be boring.

I find overly-self-assured attempts to psychoanalyze music lovers based on their musical tastes worse than boring.

You seem to me to be fairly content to be where you are, but your attraction to conflict and argumentation gives me pause. *If you
simply ignored me, I would be more convinced.*

Pshaw. If I simply ignored you, you would be no more convinced of anything than if I didn't.

My objective is not to convince you to abandon your fantastic and simplistic theories about the psychology of music and listeners, but to be a sensible voice in a wilderness blossoming with exotic flowers planted by an admirably active but tendentious and self-satisfied imagination.

Reasons for composing, or for liking and disliking, music of particular kinds are quite varied, as responses here to the idea that serial music is "dark, heavy and unsettling" illustrate. People really shouldn't be sliced and diced to fit the Procrustean bed of some peripatetic music guru's pet "spiritual" agenda.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

DaveM said:


> What did post-war serialists have to do with post-war insanity?


You must not have been keeping up with the Boulez discussion...


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> Yes, you did target someone. You told starthrower, "That's because you are not scared, but bored, when the endless ticker-tape of your thoughts is drowned out by repetition. You do not depend on 'thoughts' for your sense of being, but are comfortable with the world of being which lies beyond thought. Time does not concern you the way it concerns some other people." Maybe this describes starthrower, or maybe it doesn't, but how the heck would you know? (I'll bet it doesn't.)


 What difference does it make? Still, I'm speaking generally.



Woodduck said:


> I referred to popular music, with its (to me) mindless repetition of melodic, harmonic and rhythmic figures, in order to show that repetitiveness in music, or the enjoyment or dislike of it, doesn't have to mean what you claim it does. People's responses to it, in popular music, ethnic music, minimalism, or any other sort of music in which repetitiveness is prominent, may mean a number of things.


Ok, so you disagree. You're entitled to an opinion.



Woodduck said:


> That's not why repetitive popular music is popular. It is indeed, for the most part, "comfy" - i.e. undemanding, obvious and easy - and that's why it's popular. This has nothing to do with escaping or the search for spiritual communion.


That may be true for some popular music, but the kind of repetitive music I cited reinforces my position, and weakens yours.



Woodduck said:


> I find overly-self-assured attempts to psychoanalyze music lovers based on their musical tastes worse than boring.


I guess my attempts do not reinforce your mindset.



Woodduck said:


> Pshaw. If I simply ignored you, you would be no more convinced of anything than if I didn't.


If you stopped seeking conflict with these replies, I'd be more convinced that you were at peace with yourself.



Woodduck said:


> My objective is not to convince you to abandon your fantastic and simplistic theories about the psychology of music and listeners, but to be a sensible voice in a wilderness blossoming with exotic flowers planted by an admirably active but tendentious and self-satisfied imagination.


Well, it's too late for that now.



Woodduck said:


> Reasons for composing, or for liking and disliking, music of particular kinds are quite varied, as responses here to the idea that serial music is "dark, heavy and unsettling" illustrate. People really shouldn't be sliced and diced to fit the Procrustean bed of some peripatetic music guru's pet "spiritual" agenda.


I got that thread idea from a thread that got shut down; you know, one of those threads that states its dislike for serial music. It's all surface generalities. I doubt that anyone spewing the critical clichés about serial music is going to get their feelings hurt. It _is_ sweet of you to be so concerned about their welfare, though.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

eugeneonagain said:


> I also have time for R.D. Laing. He was no crackpot. He perhaps "fell in" a bit too much with countercultural tomfoolery, but he was an honest and brave psychiatrist who genuinely sought to help people, rather than drug them or lock them away. The (recently) late David Smail was his natural heir and a psychotherapist worth reading for his analysis of the social origins of much mental distress.
> 
> I wouldn't let Freud off the hook regarding the shaping of the 'corporate mind'. Wasn't it his nephew Edward Bernays who founded public relations theory using Freud's ideas? It sits behind marketing and advertising. Much worse than anything cooked up by B.F. Skinner.


That's a stretch, using some other author's (mis)use of Freud's ideas. In many ways, Freud helped usher in the ideas of modernism; the unconscious, and the falsity of persona.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> What difference does it make? Still, I'm speaking generally.
> 
> Ok, so you disagree. You're entitled to an opinion.
> 
> ...


Thanks for proving - as if further proof were needed - that your ideas are phantasmagoric posturing by failing to meet one single objection to them.

Posture away. Just don't expect a red carpet. This is a forum, and a forum is where bad ideas get blasted to smithereens.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> and a forum is where bad ideas get blasted to smithereens.


You're an eternal optimist Mr. Woodduck sir!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

eugeneonagain said:


> You're an eternal optimist Mr. Woodduck sir!


You mean the ideas are even worse than bad?


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## Guest (Jan 25, 2019)

[groan] Isn't this at least the 100th iteration of this topic?

No, serial music does not always sound dark, heavy and unsettling, to me anyway.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Maybe not, it's not always dark. But it's often _used _that way rather than being associated with something more neutral, positive, or less ambiguous. Even in a successful work like Pierrot Lunaire, it's a mixture of light and dark poetic images (example verses):

5. Valse de Chopin
As a lingering drop of blood
Stains the lip of a consumptive,
So this music is pervaded
By a morbid deathly charm.
Wild ecstatic harmonies
Disguise the icy touch of doom, 
Ardent, joyful, sweet and yearning, 
Melancholic sombre waltzes, 
Coursing ever through my senses 
Like a lingering drop of blood!

6. Madonna
Rise, O mother of all sorrows,
From the altar of my verses!
Blood pours forth from thy lean bosom 
Where the sword of frenzy pierced it. 
Thy forever gaping gashes
Are like eyelids, red and open.
Rise, O mother of all sorrows,
From the altar of my verses.
In the lacerated arms
Holdst thou thy Son's holy body, 
Manifesting Him to mankind-
Yet the eyes of men avert themselves, 
O mother of all sorrows.

Those verses are not an expression of feelings that are all sweetness and light, but the music has a way of perfectly expressing their whimsical and intense complexity. It's perhaps the only kind of music that can touch upon such different worlds and what's intended to be constructively portrayed. The problem is, Schoenberg didn't seem to have that much of a sense of humor. So his music could sometimes have more of a serious intent as an expression of the unconscious, not to mention some of his other melodramas... and P.L. has been described as a melodrama. It was Schoenberg himself who associated it with a series of images, some of which have a darkness or at least a sense of complexity about them. It's the composers themselves who are associating their music with what could be described as the darker side of life.

Sounds with its elements of charm, whimsey, and wonder... because Pierrot is not living in ordinary reality and Schoenberg wrote the soundtrack, hence there's some suggestive of the abnormal:


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

eugeneonagain said:


> I also have time for R.D. Laing. He was no crackpot. He perhaps "fell in" a bit too much with countercultural tomfoolery, but he was an honest and brave psychiatrist who genuinely sought to help people, rather than drug them or lock them away. The (recently) late David Smail was his natural heir and a psychotherapist worth reading for his analysis of the social origins of much mental distress.
> 
> I wouldn't let Freud off the hook regarding the shaping of the 'corporate mind'. Wasn't it his nephew Edward Bernays who founded public relations theory using Freud's ideas? It sits behind marketing and advertising. Much worse than anything cooked up by B.F. Skinner.


I do not want to derail the discussion to completely unrelated topics. I am not familiar with Laing. He might have been an honest man who had the best interest of his patients on his heart, but he was simply (very) wrong on schizophrenia. I also really like Gregory Bateson, despite the fact that I know that his "double bind" theory of schizophrenia is completely wrong, although the double bind no doubt exists in communication and can cause mental disturbances in childred exposed to it (just not schizophrenia). And Laing was inspired by Bateson.

But the comparison of psychoanalysis to atonal music is quite fitting. The psychoanalysis was fashionable during much of 20th century and it explored forbidden topics such as sexuality, perversion, agression and unconsiousness. The atonal musical reflects that. The unconscious mind no doubt exists, the psychoanalysts were wrong however in their beliefs what it contains. If anyone wants a more scientifically informed account of the unconscious mind, I can recommend this book
https://www.amazon.com/Subliminal-Your-Unconscious-Rules-Behavior/dp/0307472256
The psychoanalysis is overcome/out of fashion nowaways. I wonder what the current composers try to do by composing their music. They explore "extended tibral palettes" a lot, they just do not seem to compose music that has much interesting to say to anyone except the musicologists themselves.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> Thanks for proving - as if further proof were needed - that your ideas are phantasmagoric posturing by failing to meet one single objection to them.
> 
> Posture away. Just don't expect a red carpet. This is a forum, and a forum is where bad ideas get blasted to smithereens.


This sounds suspiciously like arrogance on your part. From the looks of it, I've already successfully defended R.D. Laing and Freud, and now the discussion has expanded into psychology and the unconscious, several members here appearing to agree with the obvious connection. To me, a forum is for the exchange of ideas, and the exploration of new ideas, not your "bad ideas getting blasted to smithereens." 
It sounds to me like you want to _blow something up,_ not discuss. :lol:


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Baron Scarpia said:


> [groan] Isn't this at least the 100th iteration of this topic?
> 
> No, serial music does not always sound dark, heavy and unsettling, to me anyway.


Yes, but I wanted to put a psychological spin on it. I think it's been fun, so far...


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Jacck said:


> ...the comparison of psychoanalysis to atonal music is quite fitting. The psychoanalysis was fashionable during much of 20th century and it explored forbidden topics such as sexuality, perversion, aggression and unconsciousness. The atonal musical reflects that. The unconscious mind no doubt exists, the psychoanalysts were wrong however in their beliefs what it contains.
> The psychoanalysis is overcome/out of fashion nowadays. I wonder what the current composers try to do by composing their music. They explore "extended timbral palettes" a lot, they just do not seem to compose music that has much interesting to say to anyone except the musicologists themselves.


I do admit that the association of "the unconscious" and all its accompanying emotional baggage is a rather romanticized view when applied to atonal music. Schoenberg was, after all, an Expressionist.

There_ are_ more objective ways to hear this music, and Stockhausen, Babbitt, and Boulez are good starting places.

Perhaps the only lasting, valid "residual effect" of the unconscious which could be applied to atonal music is the sense of the "fantastic" which could be equated with such states of mind.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> I do admit that the association of "the unconscious" and all its accompanying emotional baggage is a rather romanticized view when applied to atonal music. Schoenberg was, after all, an Expressionist.


You're implying that Romanticism is more concerned with "the unconscious" than is Expressionism, and that Expressionism is somehow more "objective" (carries less "emotional baggage") than Romanticism. I don't think that's true, or that Schoenberg can be cited to make a case for it.

Expressionism in music might be said to have begun with Mahler, after Wagner had pushed Romanticism's expressive vocabulary to an extreme but contained it through the objectivity of drama, never breaking out of the frame of ideal representation and falling into Mahlerian self-examination and consequent neuroticism and morbidity. Schoenberg was intensely ambitious (to the point of grandiosity) and wanted somehow to go beyond Wagner, but could not be comfortable with Mahler's subjective road; a more cerebral artist than Mahler - more so than Berg as well - he found a way out of Wagnerian Romanticism which avoided Mahlerian hypersubjectivity and could be thoroughly rationalized.

I would call Schoenberg "Expressionist" only in part, and would apply the term mainly to those "free atonal" works of his middle period in which he tried consciously to express extreme psychic states, but in a manner neither Mahlerian nor Wagnerian: by working within a dramatic or literary frame he objectivizes expressive extremes and avoids subjectivism, but by choosing subjects which focus on psychological phenomena for their own sake, eschewing philosophical, moral or religious frameworks which bestow transcendent meaning on them, he leaves Wagner's Romanticism behind and enters the 20th century. Ultimately his intellectualism, embodied in his "method of composing with 12 tones," led him out of Expressionism as well. _Erwartung_ and _Pierrot_ are Expressionist works, but _Moses und Aron_ is not.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

On the subject of Schoenberg and serial music being 'dark and unsettling', the premise of the thread is taken as a given fact, when it's not really so.

When I think of certain Schoenberg works I don't think of them as dark and unsettling at all. It's prior to his actual serial music, but his _Sechs Kleine Klavierstücke_ (op.19, or is it 16?) are like fine pieces of gossamer, light and airy. The sixth one just feels like something from the pen of Satie in his _Ogives_ or_ Le Fils des étoiles _period, but much less heavy.

_Verklärte Nacht _and_ Gurreleider_ are always mentioned when Schoenberg crops up, but they are really quite boring works compared to the rest of his oeuvre.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Jacck said:


> But the comparison of psychoanalysis to atonal music is quite fitting. The psychoanalysis was fashionable during much of 20th century and it explored forbidden topics such as sexuality, perversion, agression and unconsiousness. The atonal musical reflects that. The unconscious mind no doubt exists, the psychoanalysts were wrong however in their beliefs what it contains. If anyone wants a more scientifically informed account of the unconscious mind, I can recommend this book
> https://www.amazon.com/Subliminal-Your-Unconscious-Rules-Behavior/dp/0307472256
> The psychoanalysis is overcome/out of fashion nowaways. I wonder what the current composers try to do by composing their music. They explore "extended tibral palettes" a lot, they just do not seem to compose music that has much interesting to say to anyone except the musicologists themselves.


I don't want to get into theories of what schizophrenia is and what causes it. The suggestion that we actually know the answers is misleading so the discussion could be a long one. But what does it mean to suggest a parallel between Freud and Schoenberg? One was a scientist (or more correctly a proto-scientist) studying how things are and what we can do about them. The other was an artist who did more than many to develop new ways to create rewarding and apparently meaningful music.

So Freud was wrong? I don't think even scientific psychologists think that exactly (even if some physicists seem to). I think most would acknowledge that he was a pioneer who opened the way to where we are now in understanding personality and mental illness. Many of his insights are still respected as valid. And if you move on to people who practice psychotherapy I think you would find an even stronger reverence for his achievement, even though not so many these days practice Freudian analysis. Anyway, pioneering is about as great as you can get as a scientist. There is always going to be better, more true and more insightful, knowledge. We have moved on, it is true, but Freud has left his mark and was a giant of his age.

I don't think many would claim that over the centuries artists have become more and more able to tell us "the truth". So, already a comparison between the revolutions of Schoenberg and Freud is looking shaky. But, even so, can it really be doubted that Schoenberg opened the way for so much of what has followed? You may or may not like the influence he has had but I don't think it is easy to dismiss it. So many of our best composers have chosen to follow his insights.


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## Guest (Jan 27, 2019)

millionrainbows said:


> Why does serial music feel dark, heavy and unsettling?


Because that's the effect it can have on the anatomy of the brain. In just the same way that when I'm listening to tonal music and certain chord or key changes induce a chemical reaction, I can actually feel it in my head! ("Can you feel it, Dave?")

There's no mystery, nothing spiritual, nothing positive or negative about it - it just happens that way - and differently for different people.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

> Why does serial music feel dark, heavy and unsettling?


For the same reason that all Baroque music sounds jolly and dance-like.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Enthusiast said:


> I don't want to get into theories of what schizophrenia is and what causes it. The suggestion that we actually know the answers is misleading so the discussion could be a long one. But what does it mean to suggest a parallel between Freud and Schoenberg? One was a scientist (or more correctly a proto-scientist) studying how things are and what we can do about them. The other was an artist who did more than many to develop new ways to create rewarding and apparently meaningful music.
> 
> So Freud was wrong? I don't think even scientific psychologists think that exactly (even if some physicists seem to). I think most would acknowledge that he was a pioneer who opened the way to where we are now in understanding personality and mental illness. Many of his insights are still respected as valid. And if you move on to people who practice psychotherapy I think you would find an even stronger reverence for his achievement, even though not so many these days practice Freudian analysis. Anyway, pioneering is about as great as you can get as a scientist. There is always going to be better, more true and more insightful, knowledge. We have moved on, it is true, but Freud has left his mark and was a giant of his age.
> 
> I don't think many would claim that over the centuries artists have become more and more able to tell us "the truth". So, already a comparison between the revolutions of Schoenberg and Freud is looking shaky. But, even so, can it really be doubted that Schoenberg opened the way for so much of what has followed? You may or may not like the influence he has had but I don't think it is easy to dismiss it. So many of our best composers have chosen to follow his insights.


1) After more than 100 years of research, we are finally approaching the unraveling the mystery of the ilness. The most probable answer is that a genetic defect in some genes responsible for immunity
https://giving.broadinstitute.org/research-breakthrough-schizophrenia
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/...enia-psychiatric-disorders-immune-system.html

2) Freud was not much of a scientist, because he never really used the scientific method. There are even some reports that he fabricated data to fit into his theories. He was no doubt very clever and had a great fantasy and had charisma, but I have some doubts about his personal integrity as a scientist. He fabricated data, he slept with his patients, despite analysing everyone, he never let himself to be analysed by anyone. He was more like a cult leader and had a jealous and intolerant personality, that is why all his pupils have broken away from him (Jung, Adler etc.). And his theories of psychosexual development are just plain ridiculous. I agree that he had some good insights and helped to start of whole movement, but you could equally say that he misled the whole field of psychology and psychiatry to a wrong track
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/freud-was-a-fraud-a-triumph-of-pseudoscience/

3) I think the comparison of Schoenberg to Freud is fitting exactly for the reason you mention. They both opened the door to a whole new direction. And they both are the product of their time - the decadent Fin de siècle. A huge cultural shift appeared in Europe and many breakthroughs happened in almost every area of science/art/society. Relativity theory/quantum mechanics. Socialism, communism, nazism. Expressionism, cubism, atonal music etc.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Jacck said:


> 3) I think the comparison of Schoenberg to Freud is fitting exactly for the reason you mention. They both opened the door to a whole new direction. And they both are the product of their time - the decadent Fin de siècle. A huge cultural shift appeared in Europe and many breakthroughs happened in almost every area of science/art/society. Relativity theory/quantum mechanics. Socialism, communism, nazism. Expressionism, cubism, atonal music etc.


Then why go into how mistaken Freud was and how wrong his method? If the parallel you want to make is no more than that then there was no need for the lengthy discourse on the development of our understanding of abnormal psychology.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Enthusiast said:


> Then why go into how mistaken Freud was and how wrong his method? If the parallel you want to make is no more than that then there was no need for the lengthy discourse on the development of our understanding of abnormal psychology.


I think there is more to the parallel. Freud's theory was deeply perverse and contained vivid sexual imagery, libido, incest, ****** dentata, unconscious repressed sexual fantasies, Oidipus complex, the ****-sadistic stage etc. Freud saw the manifestations of these perversions everywhere around himself. The writing pen was a phallic symbol, any hole was vaginal symbol, every dream was full of hidden sexual symbols etc. My guess is that Freud himself was an old pervert and his whole theory is one massive psychological projection. But I guess that it was exactly these forbidden sexual topics that made his theory so popular and fascinating to artists, or even to intellectuals. It was the attraction of the forbidden. It was shocking.

Atonal music was also shocking at its time. And it was exactly this shocking effect which helped it to spread and become popular and dominant. At first, it was something new, something never seen before, something breaking away from all conventiions. It also seemed to explore something dark, something forbidden, it seemed to tap into some deep hidden aspects of the human consciousness (such as the wild pervert sexual drive, agression death, insanity). I think that was its main appeal.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

I think it is best to take all opportunities to point out how misguided Freud was. Unfortunately his enormous influence has only really recently been challenged and he still has a reputation in the popular mind as a towering genius, rather than a misguided man with a selective approach to evidence.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Freud is long gone, but his legacy lives and evolved. And some of these modern psychodynamic theories are not that bad or pseudoscientific. The psychoanalysis evolved into object-relations theory and the object-relations theory is being combined with cognitive behavioral approches and social cognition theories etc. This will get combined with neuroscientific evidence and in another 100 years or so, we will have an integrative understanding of the human mind. 
I actually did PhD in "clinical neuroscience" at the same institution that Freud was active - Medical University of Vienna, not far from the Narrenturm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrenturm_(hospital)


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

eugeneonagain said:


> I think it is best to take all opportunities to point out how misguided Freud was. Unfortunately his enormous influence has only really recently been challenged and he still has a reputation in the popular mind as a towering genius, rather than a misguided man with a selective approach to evidence.


Only recently been challenged? He was certainly considered simply wrong in the 1970s (when I first studied psychology). If anything, now that his wrongness is clear, we are freer now to recognise how great his (wrong) insights were. He was on the right track in that our conscious experience bears little relationship to what actually makes us tick.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Jacck said:


> I think there is more to the parallel. Freud's theory was deeply perverse and contained vivid sexual imagery, libido, incest, ****** dentata, unconscious repressed sexual fantasies, Oidipus complex, the ****-sadistic stage etc. Freud saw the manifestations of these perversions everywhere around himself. The writing pen was a phallic symbol, any hole was vaginal symbol, every dream was full of hidden sexual symbols etc. My guess is that Freud himself was an old pervert and his whole theory is one massive psychological projection. But I guess that it was exactly these forbidden sexual topics that made his theory so popular and fascinating to artists, or even to intellectuals. It was the attraction of the forbidden. It was shocking.
> 
> Atonal music was also shocking at its time. And it was exactly this shocking effect which helped it to spread and become popular and dominant. At first, it was something new, something never seen before, something breaking away from all conventiions. *It also seemed to explore something dark, something forbidden, it seemed to tap into some deep hidden aspects of the human consciousness (such as the wild pervert sexual drive, agression death, insanity). I think that was its main appeal.*


So, the similarity between Schoenberg and Freud is "shocking" - which was a relatively common feature of that time and place. If you want shock do you need to go further than Salome? But Strauss wouldn't fit your argument.

As for your last sentence (I have highlighted it) - you just shoehorned that in to support the postulate put forward in the OP. I don't hear perverted sex in Schoenberg! In fact, the challenge with his serialism was a sort of dryness. Not so dark and certainly not salacious. And, incidentally, the tendency to shock that was one feature of Fin de Siecle Europe did not last long. Stravinsky went on to compose neo-classical music, Bartok could be somewhat percussive but was always a restrained composer and Prokofiev's gift was melody!


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

It doesn't matter whether Freud has been superseded or proven wrong by today's standards. The relationship between Schoenberg and the unconscious still exists according to the composer himself.

https://emilyantoniades.wordpress.com/2015/11/10/schoenberg-and-the-logic-of-the-unconscious/

Also:



> Arnold Schoenberg's 1909 monodrama Erwartung, op. 17, is commonly characterized as a "psychoanalytic" work, for several reasons: first, because of a putative family connection between the monodrama's librettist, Dr. Marie Pappenheim, and Bertha Pappenheim, better known as "Anna O.," the first patient to undergo "the talking cure"; second, because of Theodor Adorno's suggestion that _Erwartung_, a recondite exercise in atonality and athematicism, may be understood as a kind of psychoanalytic case history in its own right; and lastly, because the monodrama is roughly contemporaneous with Schoenberg's own writings on the relationship between art and the unconscious, which appear to directly reflect a Freudian milieu and a familiarity with psychoanalytic literature and theory. [unquote]
> 
> It is not illuminating to evaluate some of Schoenberg's works from the standpoint of today. It's what they believed at the time that matters.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

^^ But Schoenberg was not alone in much of that. And, although Erwartung is a powerful work I am not sure the features you draw out in it are common to much of Schoenberg's music.



> It does not work to evaluate Schoenberg's from the standpoint of today.


I'm not sure what you mean by that. Do we need a different sort of knowledge to "evaluate" Schoenberg today than we do to evaluate Beethoven or Shostakovich? I don't think so. It is music and can be approached on its own terms. It is true that our understanding of the time a composer was working in can illuminate the music for us but if the music is working it is not necessary. Also, some knowledge of historical context can mislead us if we are not careful (witness some of the more dubious claims about Shostakovich's motivation). And the period is question - pre-WW1 - was a short and intense one in a fairly small area that was a cultural hub. Freud had a whole career and his influence reverberated widely for the first half of the 20th Century. I don't think that the Freud-Schoenberg link is particularly important to understanding Schoenberg's music although Freud's influence on western culture was one important factor in the period up to (and perhaps beyond) WW2. Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle is another work that probably would not have been possible without Freud's influence. The "discovery" of the unconscious was one important feature in the cultural history of the 20th Century. We learned a lot about how our conscious experience is not "reliable". Meanwhile, of course, there were many other developments going on including terrible wars and the discovery of nuclear weapons.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Enthusiast said:


> Freud had a whole career and his influence reverberated widely for the first half of the 20th Century. I don't think that the Freud-Schoenberg link is particularly important to understanding Schoenberg's music although Freud's influence on western culture was one important factor in the period up to (and perhaps beyond) WW2. Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle is another work that probably would not have been possible without Freud's influence. The "discovery" of the unconscious was one important feature in the cultural history of the 20th Century. We learned a lot about how our conscious experience is not "reliable".


The unconscious was not discovered in the 20th century but by Romanticism, as manifested in the fascination of 19th-century artists with myth, folklore, the diabolical, the sublime, and dreams. Anyone who really knows and understands the mature operas of Wagner - composed between 1840 and 1882 - might be more inclined to speculate about the influence of the arts on Freud than about Freud's influence on the arts. The psycho-sexual, quasi-religious dream-world of _Parsifal,_ in which things are decidedly not what they seem, is more disruptive of our everyday conscious reality and our convictions about what things mean than the more self-consciously "psychological" _Erwartung_ or even the heavily symbolic _Bluebeard,_ and far more than the titillating perversity of _Salome._ The imagery that proceeded from Wagner's own unconscious - and he was quite conscious that that was where it came from - seems to have taken Freud for granted and leapt ahead, deep into Jung's world of archetypes.

Psychological thought in the early 20th century seems to a large extent merely to have provided theoretical structures to "explain" what sensitive, perceptive people already sensed about the unexplored depths of the human psyche but could express only through art.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

^^^ Yes, I agree with most of that. My purpose, though, was merely to argue that there was no particularly unique Freud-Schoenberg link. And, yes, Freud did not discover the unconscious.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Enthusiast said:


> Only recently been challenged? He was certainly considered simply wrong in the 1970s (when I first studied psychology). If anything, now that his wrongness is clear, *we are freer now to recognise how great his (wrong) insights were*. He was on the right track in that our conscious experience bears little relationship to what actually makes us tick.


The thing is it was hardly _his_ great insight. The idea floated around in philosophy, and among literary essayists, for at least 200 years before Freud got hold of it.

When I say 'recently' I mean popularly. Academic criticism started early, but his position in mainstream culture remained fairly intact into the late 20th century. Psychology students are obviously privy to more information.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> Psychological thought in the early 20th century seems to a large extent merely to have provided theoretical structures to "explain" what sensitive, perceptive people already sensed about the unexplored depths of the human psyche but could express only through art.


Already Schoppenhauer and then Nitzsche talked about the unconsciousness. Schoppenhauers's "Wille" (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung) was an unconscious drive. Dostoyevsky's brilliant novels are full of unconsciousness. 
Artist's are artists and they are allowed to live on dreams, symbols, intuitiions. But not scientists. It is easy to postulate some unconsciousness and then speculate what it contains. According to Freud, it was full of repressed sexual fantasies. According to Jung, if was full of archetypes. According to Adler, der Minderwertigkeitsgefühl and the unconscious efforts to compansate for it. It became something of mystical object where you could place all the irrational or whatever you wanted. And all those psychoanalysts created bizzare theories of what the unconsiousness contains. Of all the psychologists, Jung was probably the biggest crackpot. He was brilliant and intelligent, but was also a graphomaniac who suffered from strong thanatophobia, hence his constant preoocupation with self-transcendence, and developed some really bizzare ideas such as synchronicities. Freud was also a crackpot. I would probably go for Adler myself as the most rational of those 3 big early psychoanalysts. But none of it was actual science, ie theories firmy supported by experimental evidence.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Jacck said:


> Already Schoppenhauer and then Nitzsche talked about the unconsciousness. Schoppenhauers's "Wille" (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung) was an unconscious drive. Dostoyevsky's brilliant novels are full of unconsciousness.
> Artist's are artists and they are allowed to live on dreams, symbols, intuitiions. But not scientists. It is easy to postulate some unconsciousness and then speculate what it contains. According to Freud, it was full of repressed sexual fantasies. According to Jung, if was full of archetypes. According to Adler, der Minderwertigkeitsgefühl and the unconscious efforts to compansate for it. It became something of mystical object where you could place all the irrational or whatever you wanted. And all those psychoanalysts created bizzare theories of what the unconsiousness contains. Of all the psychologists, Jung was probably the biggest crackpot. He was brilliant and intelligent, but was also a graphomaniac who suffered from strong thanatophobia, hence his constant preoocupation with self-transcendence, and developed some really bizzare ideas such as synchronicities. Freud was also a crackpot. I would probably go for Adler myself as the most rational of those 3 big early psychoanalysts. But none of it was actual science, ie theories firmy supported by experimental evidence.


Isn't it a little extreme to characterize all these people as crackpots? Surely their contributions to human thought have value, whatever their errors, prejudices, and personal hangups. That's the way knowledge tends to progress; an insight gives birth to a hypothesis, evidence is sought in support of the hypothesis, and a theory gets formulated which is asked to explain more than it actually can until its limitations are exposed. It's enough that Freud, Jung, Adler et al. made us aware of things in ourselves we hadn't noticed or preferred not to notice. They may have ended up being more artists than scientists, but we could say the same of philosophers. Perhaps by regarding them as such we'll find them more deserving of respect.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> You're implying that Romanticism is more concerned with "the unconscious" than is Expressionism, and that Expressionism is somehow more "objective" (carries less "emotional baggage") than Romanticism. I don't think that's true, or that Schoenberg can be cited to make a case for it.


No, that's not what I intended to say. I'm saying that the "unconscious" is a romantic notion and can be applied to Schoenberg and company, the earlier the better, but not credibly to later serial music like Stockhausen, Boulez, and Babbitt; so we appear to agree.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> No, that's not what I intended to say. I'm saying that the "unconscious" is a romantic notion and can be applied to Schoenberg and company, the earlier the better, but not credibly to later serial music like Stockhausen, Boulez, and Babbitt; so we appear to agree.


Maybe we do. I'm a little uncomfortable, though, talking about atonal music as relating to "the unconscious" at all. Maybe it does, in the sense that, like dreams and other mental phenomena which emerge without guidance and have a life of their own, we perceive atonal harmony as without a rational basis and inexplicable, frustrating to our normal expectations and therefore disturbing. But that would apply just as well to Schoenberg's post-Expressionist works and to the work of later serialists.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

I think music speaks to the unconscious, perhaps speaks the language of the unconscious. Saying this or that music is more related to the subconscious than other music, doesn't really make a lot of sense to me. If we are strongly affected by sound I think it relates to our subconscious. When someone is _consciously_ trying to make music more related to the unconscious, does that make it so? I don't find that idea convincing.

A composer may state their intention to draw attention to the subconscious through their music, however I don't think that statement will make the sounds themselves any more or less related to the subconscious. A composer may consciously be inspired by the idea of the subconscious, I still don't think it will give them more or less access or control of their subconscious when composing music.

The whole idea of the subconscious is we are not consciously aware of it, so saying it is a Romantic notion also doesn't ring true to me. It always existed and had its impact whether or not we are attempting to understand it or portray it in a certain way or not.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

tdc said:


> I think music speaks to the unconscious, perhaps speaks the language of the unconscious. Saying this or that music is more related to the subconscious than other music, doesn't really make a lot of sense to me. If we are strongly affected by sound I think it relates to our subconscious. When someone is _consciously_ trying to make music more related to the unconscious, does that make it so? I don't find that idea convincing.
> 
> A composer may state their intention to draw attention to the subconscious through their music, however I don't think that statement will make the sounds themselves any more or less related to the subconscious. A composer may consciously be inspired by the idea of the subconscious, I still don't think it will give them more or less access or control of their subconscious when composing music.
> 
> The whole idea of the subconscious is we are not consciously aware of it, so saying it is a Romantic notion also doesn't ring true to me. It always existed and had its impact whether or not we are attempting to understand it or portray it in a certain way or not.


Maybe this needs to be broken down a bit. The "subconscious" or "unconscious" mind refers to two distinct aspects of cognition: _processes_ which occur without the possibility of our being aware of them, and ideational and emotional _content_ of which we are unaware most of the time. Most of the processes of cognition take place outside of conscious awareness, and that certainly includes what the brain does when we listen to music. This would apply to any sort of music, and so with respect to process it doesn't make sense to say that atonal music or any other kind of music shows any special relationship to "the unconscious." All music must be apprehended through processes of which we are largely unconscious.

With respect to the _content_ of the unconscious mind, however, the story is different. So long as we concede that music is capable of expressing psychological states, it makes perfect sense that some music may express feelings normally forgotten or more or less closed off from conscious awareness. Such feelings drew the interest of the Romantic movement, and the attempt to "dig deep" into images, emotions and sensations not previously open to, or considered appropriate for, public scrutiny and communal participation are part of the very definition of Romanticism, not only in music but in all the arts. Romanticism really began with literature, in which the exploration of the hidden, and even (or especially!) the forbidden contents of the mind can be identified explicitly, and this is why the musical Romantics turned to literature for inspiration, resulting in the proliferation of character pieces with picturesque titles for the keyboard, the creation of the narrative or impressionistic "tone poem," and the flowering of song and opera in Germany.

The desire to express previously unexplored, subtler, more specific, more personal and more extreme emotions led Romantic composers to exploit the possibilities of harmony and timbre in particular to an unprecedented extent, and to create new forms which allowed a more moment-by-moment probing of feelings and sensations. The very process of composition had to become less technical and systematic, more intuitive; Wagner described it as a sort of dream-state, a notion which it's impossible to imagine ever occurring to Bach or Haydn. Dreams are the ultimate language of the unconscious, and much Romantic art and music has dreamlike qualities, utilizing symbols and archetypes which may not even be comprehensible at the level of rational consciousness, to the end - intended or not - of making the unconscious conscious.

Atonal music may be "unsettling" to a lot of people, but the artistic project of unsettling our minds and opening us to feelings forgotten or repressed began over a century earlier.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> Maybe this needs to be broken down a bit. The "subconscious" or "unconscious" mind refers to two distinct aspects of cognition: _processes_ which occur without the possibility of our being aware of them, and ideational and emotional _content_ of which we are unaware most of the time. Most of the processes of cognition take place outside of conscious awareness, and that certainly includes what the brain does when we listen to music. This would apply to any sort of music, and so with respect to process it doesn't make sense to say that atonal music or any other kind of music shows any special relationship to "the unconscious." All music must be apprehended through processes of which we are largely unconscious.
> 
> With respect to the _content_ of the unconscious mind, however, the story is different. So long as we concede that music is capable of expressing psychological states, it makes perfect sense that some music may express feelings normally forgotten or more or less closed off from conscious awareness. Such feelings drew the interest of the Romantic movement, and the attempt to "dig deep" into images, emotions and sensations not previously open to, or considered appropriate for, public scrutiny and communal participation are part of the very definition of Romanticism, not only in music but in all the arts. Romanticism really began with literature, in which the exploration of the hidden, and even (or especially!) the forbidden contents of the mind can be identified explicitly, and this is why the musical Romantics turned to literature for inspiration, resulting in the proliferation of character pieces with picturesque titles for the keyboard, the creation of the narrative or impressionistic "tone poem," and the flowering of song and opera in Germany.
> 
> ...


Yes, this makes some sense. I agree there are some 'gateways' to better understanding the unconscious, dreams being one, possibly hypnosis. I think it was during the Romantic era that many across the arts (as you say particularly in literature) became interested in the subconscious, exploring techniques like automatic writing, or purposely inducing sleep deprived states and then attempting to write in the attempt to make a stronger connection with the unconscious. Some psychedelic drugs have been experimented with for this purpose as well.

So on reflection perhaps the progress made into this area has impacted the arts in a way that truly is reflective to an extent of the subconscious. The music I most closely associate with a 'dream like' quality is probably Impressionism, and obviously Wagner was a key figure in the development of that harmonic language.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

tdc said:


> Yes, this makes some sense. I agree there are some 'gateways' to better understanding the unconscious, dreams being one, possibly hypnosis. I think it was during the Romantic era that many across the arts (as you say particularly in literature) became interested in the subconscious, exploring techniques like automatic writing, or purposely inducing sleep deprived states and then attempting to write in the attempt to make a stronger connection with the unconscious. Some psychedelic drugs have been experimented with for this purpose as well.
> 
> So on reflection perhaps the progress made into this area has impacted the arts in a way that truly is reflective to an extent of the subconscious. *The music I most closely associate with a 'dream like' quality is probably Impressionism, and obviously Wagner was a key figure in the development of that harmonic language.*


I wouldn't say that impressionism takes us very deeply into the unconscious, at least not if you mean Debussy. Impressionism may have a "dreamlike" quality, but the world of dreams is not, for the dreamer, necessarily dreamlike. It may be vividly, and sometimes terrifyingly, real; it may confront us with the forbidden and the frightening, with which the evocative art of Debussy has little to do.

It's my feeling that we have to look at the German Romantic tradition, especially in its later phases and its crisis in Expressionism, for the fullest expression of the unconscious in music. Freud may have overemphasized repressed sexual feelings in his analysis of the unconscious, but that aspect of the forbidden had fascinated artists before he created his theories. Wagner, back in 1959, took a shockingly deep dive into the unspeakable with _Tristan und Isolde,_ a work radical in form and substance which not only recognizes music as an explicit language of erotic ecstasy and rethinks tragedy as a sensual and philosophical coitus interruptus, but gives us in its third act a man's self-evisceration through music that leaps boldly over Dr. Freud's couch into something like primal therapy. Clara Schumann, after seeing the opera, called it "the most disgusting thing I have ever seen or heard in my entire life." She knew what she had experienced, and "disgusting" was her rational mind closing a door through which the idea of a good woman like herself stepping was unthinkable.

Wagner made of opera a powerful vehicle for representing symbolically, both visually and musically, the farther reaches of human experience and consciousness, and I think he attained in _Parsifal_ the highest expression of this Romantic concept in a work which can't be understood except at the level of archetypes, but which, once understood, "cuts through the soul like a knife" (in the words of Nietzsche). After Wagner, Strauss turned to stories of sexual perversion (_Salome_) and murder (_Elektra_) in music of increasing dissonance, and Debussy tackled symbolist drama in setting Maeterlinck's _Pelleas et Melisande,_ (Maeterlinck and the other French symbolist poets had been inspired by Wagner), pushing his musical language beyond impressionism into something more humanistic, while Berg and Schoenberg continued in their literature-inspired operas and other works to explore the darker recesses of human nature in music that abandoned even Wagner's already stretched tonal moorings.

Schoenberg, I think, realized that he'd reached a point beyond which the Apollonian side of his character didn't want to go, but I wonder what the more Romantic Berg would have done had he lived to finish _Lulu_ and write more operas. in any event, music was changing, and the cutting edge of Modernism was leaving the hyperexpressive and subjective German Romantic tradition behind.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> I wouldn't say that impressionism takes us very deeply into the unconscious, at least not if you mean Debussy. Impressionism may have a "dreamlike" quality, but the world of dreams is not, for the dreamer, necessarily dreamlike. It may be vividly, and sometimes terrifyingly, real; it may confront us with the forbidden and the frightening, with which the evocative art of Debussy has little to do.
> 
> It's my feeling that we have to look at the German Romantic tradition, especially in its later phases and its crisis in Expressionism, for the fullest expression of the unconscious in music. Freud may have overemphasized repressed sexual feelings in his analysis of the unconscious, but that aspect of the forbidden had fascinated artists before he created his theories. Wagner, back in 1959, took a shockingly deep dive into the unspeakable with _Tristan und Isolde,_ a work radical in form and substance which not only recognizes music as an explicit language of erotic ecstasy and rethinks tragedy as a sensual and philosophical coitus interruptus, but gives us in its third act a man's self-evisceration through music that leaps boldly over Dr. Freud's couch into something like primal therapy. Clara Schumann, after seeing the opera, called it "the most disgusting thing I have ever seen or heard in my entire life." She knew what she had experienced, and "disgusting" was her rational mind closing a door through which the idea of a good woman like herself stepping was unthinkable.
> 
> ...


Frankly I find this topic mind bending, I still think there is some truth to both of my previous posts, but also to what you're saying. It seems to me in the works you are describing heavy emphasis is placed on the 'dark' aspects of the subconscious relating to unfulfilled desires, psychosis etc. but I don't see the subconscious as strictly a repository for those dark aspects of self. I think it relates to concepts I would call spiritual as well, the archetypes and is also related to human expression and creativity. I feel like a balanced view of the subconscious need not lean towards the dark and disturbing.

Beyond that all I can say is its a fascinating topic and one I'd like to do more research on.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> Isn't it a little extreme to characterize all these people as crackpots? Surely their contributions to human thought have value, whatever their errors, prejudices, and personal hangups. That's the way knowledge tends to progress; an insight gives birth to a hypothesis, evidence is sought in support of the hypothesis, and a theory gets formulated which is asked to explain more than it actually can until its limitations are exposed. It's enough that Freud, Jung, Adler et al. made us aware of things in ourselves we hadn't noticed or preferred not to notice. They may have ended up being more artists than scientists, but we could say the same of philosophers. Perhaps by regarding them as such we'll find them more deserving of respect.


I am not sure how bad the word crackpot in English sounds. I lack of feeling for these find differentiations. I am OK with them being categorized as artists/stimulating and provoking thinkers. They were just no scientists and they did not bother with scientific proofs. They sure were charismatic personalities of great intelligence, fantasy and creativity, but it is also important to view them critically
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3609506/He-believed-in-ghosts-and-aliens.html
the conservative newspaper again 
I have something of a soft spot for Krishnamurti, for which Eugene criticized me often, but I am the first one to admit that he should be taken critically, ie take what he says as literature/poetry etc. that either is stimulating your thought or it isnt (then leave it alone)


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> I wouldn't say that impressionism takes us very deeply into the unconscious, at least not if you mean Debussy. Impressionism may have a "dreamlike" quality, but the world of dreams is not, for the dreamer, necessarily dreamlike. It may be vividly, and sometimes terrifyingly, real; it may confront us with the forbidden and the frightening, with which the evocative art of Debussy has little to do.
> 
> It's my feeling that we have to look at the German Romantic tradition, especially in its later phases and its crisis in Expressionism, for the fullest expression of the unconscious in music. Freud may have overemphasized repressed sexual feelings in his analysis of the unconscious, but that aspect of the forbidden had fascinated artists before he created his theories. Wagner, back in 1959, took a shockingly deep dive into the unspeakable with _Tristan und Isolde,_ a work radical in form and substance which not only recognizes music as an explicit language of erotic ecstasy and rethinks tragedy as a sensual and philosophical coitus interruptus, but gives us in its third act a man's self-evisceration through music that leaps boldly over Dr. Freud's couch into something like primal therapy. Clara Schumann, after seeing the opera, called it "the most disgusting thing I have ever seen or heard in my entire life." She knew what she had experienced, and "disgusting" was her rational mind closing a door through which the idea of a good woman like herself stepping was unthinkable.
> 
> ...


you write so well about Wagner that have an instant desire to go a play his operas. If only they weren't so time consuming and demanding.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

tdc said:


> Frankly I find this topic mind bending, I still think there is some truth to both of my previous posts, but also to what you're saying. It seems to me in the works you are describing heavy emphasis is placed on the 'dark' aspects of the subconscious relating to unfulfilled desires, psychosis etc. but I don't see the subconscious as strictly a repository for those dark aspects of self. I think it relates to concepts I would call spiritual as well, the archetypes and is also related to human expression and creativity. I feel like a balanced view of the subconscious need not lean towards the dark and disturbing.
> 
> Beyond that all I can say is its a fascinating topic and one I'd like to do more research on.


I absolutely agree that the contents of the subconscious harbor both darkness and light - _all_ dimensions of our being, in fact - which is why psychotherapy can have a transformative effect by tapping into our hidden places and bringing repressed and forgotten experiences and feelings into consciousness where we can deal with them at a conscious level. The reason the darker contents of our minds get all the attention is simply that it's those parts of our experience that we don't like to feel or deal with and so we bury them, or we simply forget them as we grow older. I think the fascination with them is at bottom a desire to resolve the unresolved aspects of our lives and find the light beyond the darkness.

Not to get stuck on my favorite subject or become obnoxious talking about it, but this is what makes Wagner such a crucial figure in the arts, and so fascinating to me. He was more than a composer; he was a dramatic poet and prophet of depth psychology. His operas describe the journeys of deeply suffering characters who struggle through the dark unconscious in search of the light, inhabiting imaginary but truthful worlds consisting of archetypes of the most primal kind. He set himself the unprecedented task of adapting stories from the central myths of the West, presenting them in the most pared down, concentrated symbolic form, and expressing them through an original kind of music in which musical ideas function as symbols of psychological states and tell us of the changing inner lives of his characters. His technique of thematic transformation directly inspired Proust, Woolf, Joyce and the "stream of consciousness" novel, and in a different way the French symbolist poets Mallarme, Baudelaire and Maeterlinck. All these writers were Wagner enthusiasts who found in him ideas and techniques for expressing the inexpressible, the hidden realms of the unconscious. I think his impact on the art, thought and sensibility of European culture can hardly be overstated and may exceed that of any other artist in history, with the possible exception of Shakespeare.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> I absolutely agree that the contents of the subconscious harbor both darkness and light - _all_ dimensions of our being, in fact - which is why psychotherapy can have a transformative effect by tapping into our hidden places and bringing repressed and forgotten experiences and feelings into consciousness where we can deal with them at a conscious level. The reason the darker contents of our minds get all the attention is simply that it's those parts of our experience that we don't like to feel or deal with and so we bury them, or we simply forget them as we grow older. I think the fascination with them is at bottom a desire to resolve the unresolved aspects of our lives and find the light beyond the darkness.
> 
> Not to get stuck on my favorite subject or become obnoxious talking about it, but this is what makes Wagner such a crucial figure in the arts, and so fascinating to me. He was more than a composer; he was a dramatic poet and prophet of depth psychology. His operas describe the journeys of deeply suffering characters who struggle through the dark unconscious in search of the light, inhabiting imaginary but truthful worlds consisting of archetypes of the most primal kind. He set himself the unprecedented task of adapting stories from the central myths of the West, presenting them in the most pared down, concentrated symbolic form, and expressing them through an original kind of music in which musical ideas function as symbols of psychological states and tell us of the changing inner lives of his characters. His technique of thematic transformation directly inspired Proust, Woolf, Joyce and the "stream of consciousness" novel, and in a different way the French symbolist poets Mallarme, Baudelaire and Maeterlinck. All these writers were Wagner enthusiasts who found in him ideas and techniques for expressing the inexpressible, the hidden realms of the unconscious. I think his impact on the art, thought and sensibility of European culture can hardly be overstated and may exceed that of any other artist in history, with the possible exception of Shakespeare.


My experience with Wagner is that I once listened through the whole Ring and that is it. But you are right. Even after the first listening I saw some mythological themes and archetypes. The gold stolen from the river nymphs and its corrupting effect on everyone who touches it, including the gods themselves. The tragic and corrupt characters of Mime and Alberich. It is full of symbolism and can be quite deep if you delve into it. But the German used in the Ring is quite obscure and tough, which makes it into a real effort to go through his operas (reading the libretto and using a dictionary to search for unfamiliar words)
Unfortunatelly, Hitler loved Wagner and his operas became associated with nazism and reduced to some form of Germanic nationalism, which is unfortunate.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

More forces of the unconscious at play that are not necessarily dark and heavy. I feel that Gould plays these pieces with brilliance and understanding, but the more abstract and indirect nature of the music still strikes me as something that the conscious mind cannot consciously understand. If one doesn't expect one's conscious mind to understand it, it's like entering another world of sound that has its own unexpected freedom of movement and unfathomable logic. What Schoenberg did was unprecedented in music that went beyond the strictly rational. Tonality is something that the conscious mind can understand, but atonality is more an expression of the unpredictable unconscious mind at play and it doesn't care whether it's understood or not:


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

^^^ Interesting. But what are you meaning by consciously understanding? Is it a question of musical logic or is it something more impressionistic? There does come a time when I am listening to a work that was recently new to me when I feel it talking to me but it is just a sensation. I call it understanding but I am not sure that is the right word. I guess the musically trained among us can follow musical logic (the key changes and transformations of thematic material and so on - _am I talking rubbish, here?_) rather than merely sensing something meaningful in what is essentially abstract? Is that what you mean? That the logic is removed?

I, with my mere impressions, do not find the difference between the tonal and atonal to be so large. But then I never could follow the logic in tonal music either.


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## BabyGiraffe (Feb 24, 2017)

Larkenfield said:


> What Schoenberg did was unprecedented in music that went beyond the strictly rational. Tonality is something that the conscious mind can understand, but atonality is more an expression of the unpredictable unconscious mind at play and it doesn't care whether it's understood or not


Schoenberg was the guy that became really famous - there were other atonal/12tone composers and theorists back then - see the article on 12 tone technique in Cambridge's history of Western music theory.

I don't care what is supposed to represent in psychological sense, but if it sounds like random sounds that anyone can produce - including un-trained pianists, well... this is not real art music. Music is about the sound, noone cares how complex is the system behind it. You can invent something like equal division of pi^e and some weird scales and chords based on the golden ratio or whatever, but who cares, if it sounds like garbage? Noone.
Trying to brainwash the public didn't work out. (We all know Andersen's "Emperor's new clothes" tale, right?)


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

BabyGiraffe said:


> Schoenberg was the guy that became really famous - there were other atonal/12tone composers and theorists back then - see the article on 12 tone technique in Cambridge's history of Western music theory.
> 
> I don't care what is supposed to represent in psychological sense, but if it sounds like random sounds that anyone can produce - including un-trained pianists, well... this is not real art music. Music is about the sound, noone cares how complex is the system behind it. You can invent something like equal division of pi^e and some weird scales and chords based on the golden ratio or whatever, but who cares, if it sounds like garbage? Noone.
> Trying to brainwash the public didn't work out. (We all know Andersen's "Emperor's new clothes" tale, right?)


Schoenberg's music is no garbage and his music is not random. I actually quite like his music, from the tonal pieces such as Pelleas und Melisande, over the expressionistic masterpieces Verklärte Nacht, Erwartung, to his fully atonal 12-tone works - piano concerto, Die Jakobsleiter etc. It actually really reminds me of psychoanalysis, of some dark hidden corners of the human mind, of some unfathomable and irrational and dark forces and motives. And if it is able to induce such feelings in me, it is art. The only art that I consider bad is art that I have no reaction to, ie some completely uninspired boring music. And that is not Schoenberg.

My favorite american composer is Jerry Goldsmith - I only wish he composed classical instead of film music. But listen to his soundtrack to the movie Freud. I think it is ingenious




I mention it to draw attention to the way Goldsmith potrays psychoanalysis - listen to the random irrational tones, similar to Schoenberg. The music makes me think of some dark hidden unconsciousness


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

BabyGiraffe said:


> Trying to brainwash the public didn't work out. (We all know Andersen's "Emperor's new clothes" tale, right?)


Didn't work out? It resulted in a large number of widely recognised masterpieces. But then, by "the public", I take I take you to be referring to the relatively "ignorant and uncultured" masses? And by saying "brainwash" it seems you believe Schoenberg (and all his followers, I suppose) to be a charlatan. OK. That's your opinion stated. Thank you. But really it has been long enough that _*all *_of us who come here should be able to master the slight difficulty of enjoying Schoenberg's serial compositions.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Rap Battle :: Freud vs Piaget 





and I discovered a new Goldsmith music. And I thought I heard them all !


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## Ziggabea (Apr 5, 2017)

millionrainbows said:


> Ignoring the cliche for the moment, I can easily see why serial music feels dark, heavy, and unsettling to many listeners.


It is interesting you say this because it is not what I hear when I listen to music labeled as such. This forum introduced me to a few controversial composers like Schoenberg, when I joined and I fell in love with his work since. 
All art is subjective but I think that most people who go around complaining about it just do it because someone else complained to them about it.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> I wouldn't say that impressionism takes us very deeply into the unconscious, at least not if you mean Debussy. Impressionism may have a "dreamlike" quality, but the world of dreams is not, for the dreamer, necessarily dreamlike. It may be vividly, and sometimes terrifyingly, real; it may confront us with the forbidden and the frightening, with which the evocative art of Debussy has little to do.
> 
> It's my feeling that we have to look at the German Romantic tradition, especially in its later phases and its crisis in Expressionism, for the fullest expression of the unconscious in music. Freud may have overemphasized repressed sexual feelings in his analysis of the unconscious, but that aspect of the forbidden had fascinated artists before he created his theories. Wagner, back in 1959, took a shockingly deep dive into the unspeakable with _Tristan und Isolde,_ a work radical in form and substance which not only recognizes music as an explicit language of erotic ecstasy and rethinks tragedy as a sensual and philosophical coitus interruptus, but gives us in its third act a man's self-evisceration through music that leaps boldly over Dr. Freud's couch into something like primal therapy. Clara Schumann, after seeing the opera, called it "the most disgusting thing I have ever seen or heard in my entire life." She knew what she had experienced, and "disgusting" was her rational mind closing a door through which the idea of a good woman like herself stepping was unthinkable.


I have doubts as to whether Wagner's forays into the unconscious would have worked _purely musically,_ either, without all the narrative content, characters, and story lines of the operas. 
Sure, the characters are identified by using leitmotifs (see Derek Cooke's "The Guide to the Ring" CD), but this seems like a rather simple one-to-one correspondence, using the motif as a simple identifier. I don't think that Wagner's tonal language had the innate capacity to really evoke "the unconscious" and sexual repression without all of the accompanying operatic baggage.

Debussy's music works on a purely musical level, with no story line, etc., so I thinks it's being discounted for its ability to evoke moods and scenarios (the sea, fog, mystery, etc).

Schoenberg's "Transfigured Night" (a tonal work) works in a similar way to Wagner, but the music is not more than an accompaniment to the plot (two figures walking an the woods, etc., she's pregnant with another man's child), which illuminates it and enhances it dramatically, but not more than that; on its own, the music does not explicitly tell us what's going on; it depends on the "operatic" story line.



Woodduck said:


> Wagner made of opera a powerful vehicle for representing symbolically, both visually and musically, the farther reaches of human experience and consciousness, and I think he attained in _Parsifal_ the highest expression of this Romantic concept in a work which can't be understood except at the level of archetypes, but which, once understood, "cuts through the soul like a knife" (in the words of Nietzsche).


There is no demonstration of how this 'evocation of archetypes' is done _purely musically, _because the music could only enhance this _idea_ of archetypes. Nietzsche and the other nineteenth-century audiences who were so transported by Wagner's operas were still immersed in a narrative, literary mode of thought. Wagner may have reunited the old Greek idea of music as a dramatic experience, but this was done using all the trappings of a stage-play, which is basically drama, and using music to enhance this experience.



Woodduck said:


> After Wagner, Strauss turned to stories of sexual perversion (_Salome_) and murder (_Elektra_) in music of increasing dissonance, and Debussy tackled symbolist drama in setting Maeterlinck's _Pelleas et Melisande,_ (Maeterlinck and the other French symbolist poets had been inspired by Wagner), pushing his musical language beyond impressionism into something more humanistic, while Berg and Schoenberg continued in their literature-inspired operas and other works to explore the darker recesses of human nature in music that abandoned even Wagner's already stretched tonal moorings.
> 
> Schoenberg, I think, realized that he'd reached a point beyond which the Apollonian side of his character didn't want to go, but I wonder what the more Romantic Berg would have done had he lived to finish _Lulu_ and write more operas. in any event, music was changing, and the cutting edge of Modernism was leaving the hyperexpressive and subjective German Romantic tradition behind.


While Strauss and the Second Viennese school were definitely using the same sort of dramatic methods as Wagner, the "evocation of the subconscious" did not end with these quasi-Romantic narratives; it must be recognized that atonality itself evokes the unconscious in a more direct musical way, even in the absence of 'plot.' Schoenberg's concertos, the 'Five Pieces for Orchestra' and instrumental and chamber works by Berg, as well as Webern's evocative 'Five Pieces for Orchestra' op. 10 and 'Six Pieces for Orchestra' op. 6 are all able to completely evoke the same fantastic world as Wagner, and more. The 'unconscious' does not always have to be pinned-down to a specific set of characters and plots as a literary entity.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Ziggabea said:


> It is interesting you say this because it is not what I hear when I listen to music labeled as such. This forum introduced me to a few controversial composers like Schoenberg, when I joined and I fell in love with his work since.
> All art is subjective but I think that most people who go around complaining about it just do it because someone else complained to them about it.


Oh, okay, you must be one of those people who doesn't have a 'shadow,' or thinks they don't. Believe me, if you are a solid human being, you have a shadow; you just don't see it yet.

This is a commonly misunderstood aspect of the 'unconscious' part of the human psyche that is hard for a lot of people to swallow: that they have a 'shadow' side to their personality. This is because we tend to avoid looking into such mirrors to our own souls, where we have deposited all the repressed, rejected, and unpleasant aspects of our own psyches (which we can easily see in others). Jung explains all of this very well, and was responsible for this idea of the shadow.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

millionrainbows said:


> Oh, okay, you must be one of those people who doesn't have a 'shadow,' or thinks they don't. Believe me, if you are a solid human being, you have a shadow; you just don't see it yet.
> 
> This is a commonly misunderstood aspect of the 'unconscious' part of the human psyche that is hard for a lot of people to swallow: that they have a 'shadow' side to their personality. This is because we tend to avoid looking into such mirrors to our own souls, where we have deposited all the repressed, rejected, and unpleasant aspects of our own psyches (which we can easily see in others). Jung explains all of this very well, and was responsible for this idea of the shadow.


yes, each of one us has his dark side, which we try to supress, hide, sometimes even from our selves. Jung rediscovered America and wrote lenghty books about this triviality, no doubt adding a lot of crackpottery about archetypes into the mix. I read like two of his books, so I know what he writes about and also how. Each of those books is very lengthy and wordy, yet unclear even in its basic definitions. For example I read his book "Die Archetypen und das kollektive Unbewusste" (Archetypes and the Collective Unconsciousness) and within the whole work there was not a single clear definition of what the archetypes and the collective unscionsiousness acutally are and most importantly, what is its ontological status. Is is just some kind of metaphor? Or patheism where Jung believes that we are fundamentally one? Is it some form of idealism, where Jung believes that only consiousness exists and matter is illusion? Based on his other writings, I actually believe he had some bizzare religious ideas which he collected from all the world's religions - Hinduism, Christianity etc - and compiled them into one of the most bizzare theories. He has more in common with Helena Blavatsky than with scientific psychology.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

What is 'bizarre' to me is the idea of 'the Devil' in Christianity. It seems to have been the projection of all this 'shadow' stuff into one exterior entity. This way, it's not us; it's him, it's them etc. BTW, Christ never spoke much about the Devil, did he?


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

millionrainbows said:


> What is 'bizarre' to me is the idea of 'the Devil' in Christianity. It seems to have been the projection of all this 'shadow' stuff into one exterior entity. This way, it's not us; it's him, it's them etc. BTW, Christ never spoke much about the Devil, did he?


no, the Devil is the scarecrow that the Church invented to keep its sheep in line 
The History Of The Devil





one of the most enlightening passages of the whole Christian scripters comes from the Gospel of Thomas
_Jesus said, "Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all. [And after they have reigned they will rest.]" Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father's) kingdom is within you and it is outside you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty." 
_


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## st Omer (Sep 23, 2015)

Serial music is like a bowl of Wheaties. It's pretty unsatisfying unless you pour some milk on it, top it with berries (preferably ripe and not too tart, and put lots of sugar on it. Then cereal is pretty ok but still not as good as about 4 pancakes slathered in butter and drowning in syrup with a couple of fried eggs and some bacon. The problem with serial music is not that it is dark but it is light weight compared to some high cholesterol Tchaikovsky or Dvorak. That romantic stuff is really fat and sweet and thus very heavy and can even be dark at times and still be satisfying to the music consumer. The problem with Schoenberg is that it is like eating a bowl of kale drowning in vinegar. It doesn't even rise to the level of plain oatmeal. It is pretty dark but no fat, carbs, or sugar in it. 

I think the premise that serial music is dark and heavy is only half correct.


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## Guest (Jan 31, 2019)

millionrainbows said:


> What is 'bizarre' to me is the idea of 'the Devil' in Christianity. It seems to have been the projection of all this 'shadow' stuff into one exterior entity. This way, it's not us; it's him, it's them etc. BTW, Christ never spoke much about the Devil, did he?


He spent 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness being tempted by him. He said to Peter, "Get thee behind me Satan!"

Doubtless others will point out where he mentioned him on other occasions.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> *I have doubts as to whether Wagner's forays into the unconscious would have worked purely musically, either, without all the narrative content, characters, and story lines of the operas. *
> Sure, the characters are identified by using leitmotifs (see Derek Cooke's "The Guide to the Ring" CD), but this seems like *a rather simple one-to-one correspondence, using the motif as a simple identifier. **I don't think that Wagner's tonal language had the innate capacity to really evoke "the unconscious" and sexual repression without all of the accompanying operatic baggage.*
> 
> Debussy's music works on a purely musical level, with no story line, etc., so I thinks it's being discounted for its ability to evoke moods and scenarios (the sea, fog, mystery, etc).
> ...


The phrase "evocation of the unconscious" really needs defining here. Are you talking about specific contents of the unconscious - repressed or forgotten ideas and feelings - or are you just referring to some vague sense of unease, disturbance, strangeness, or "mood"? If the latter, the discussion seems trivial. I grant that atonal music is a natural for evoking such things, but if that's all you're saying, I have to shrug. There's also an apparent assumption that the "subconscious" contains nothing but vague, uncomfortable, unresolved ideas and emotional states. But that is far from true.

When I speak of Wagner's art as probing the unconscious, I am of course referring to its literary as well as its musical content. It's opera. We hear its music in a poetic, dramatic context (which for some reason you refer to as "baggage"). Would the music of _Parsifal_ mean exactly the same things to us if we didn't know what dramatic ideas it was intended to illuminate? No, although it might come close to doing so at many points. Would it nevertheless be evocative of a wide range of powerful and subtle emotions? Most people would say yes. Would those emotions be less "evocative of the subconscious," whatever that means, than, say, the music of "Pierrot Lunaire"? Maybe that would depend on whose subconscious we're talking about, and what's in it to be evoked. The only thing I know for sure is that the experience I have with the music of _Parsifal,_ with or without reference to its plot and characters, cuts a lot deeper, and seems to touch upon things of greater consequence - and, yes, more disturbing and uncomfortable things - than any I've ever had with anything by Schoenberg or Webern. And let's not even talk about the harrowing emotional journey of the third act of _Tristan!_ (I find greater psychological depth in Berg than in Schoenberg or Webern, but would note his greater tonal allusiveness - and the fact that he was the opera composer among them.)

I see no justification for saying that "Schoenberg's concertos, the 'Five Pieces for Orchestra' and instrumental and chamber works by Berg, as well as Webern's evocative 'Five Pieces for Orchestra' op. 10 and 'Six Pieces for Orchestra' op. 6 are all able to completely evoke the same fantastic world as Wagner, and more." Those composers evoke their own world, not Wagner's. Your statement that "I don't think that Wagner's tonal language had the innate capacity to really evoke 'the unconscious' and sexual repression without all of the accompanying operatic baggage" represents your impression of these composers; other listeners may have a different impression (what does sexual repression sound like in music, anyway?). And your conception of Wagner's use of leitmotifs as "rather simple identifiers" and "one-to-one correspondences" shows no acquaintance with his musico-dramatic methods; by the time he wrote _Parsifal_ his ability to adapt and transform his thematic material, and mine it for fresh emotional nuances, was virtually limitless. Proust and Joyce took notes.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> This is a commonly misunderstood aspect of the 'unconscious' part of the human psyche that is hard for a lot of people to swallow: that they have a 'shadow' side to their personality. This is because we tend to avoid looking into such mirrors to our own souls, where we have deposited all the repressed, rejected, and unpleasant aspects of our own psyches (which we can easily see in others). *Jung explains all of this very well, and was responsible for this idea of the shadow.*


Jung was responsible for the term "shadow," but I'd like to point out (to your possible annoyance, but I'll risk it) that Wagner (ta-daaaah!) dramatized the concept brilliantly in the _Ring,_ where Alberich is not only the "shadow" of Wotan, but is acknowledged as such when Wotan, having realized that Alberich is the pure expression of his own darker motives, calls himself "Licht-Alberich" and the dwarf "Schwarz-Alberich" in language uncannily Jungian. The idea is expressed musically when, in the transition from scene one to scene two of _Das Rheingold_, the insinuating, unstable leitmotif of Alberich's lethal ring transforms itself gradually into the majestic motif of Wotan's radiant Valhalla.

Wagner recapitulates the idea of the "shadow" and our efforts to disown it in an even more explicit and disturbing way in _Parsifal,_ where Titurel, guardian of the Holy Grail along with his chaste order of knights, casts out the evil sorcerer Klingsor for trying to become chaste through self-castration, and Klingsor, symbolizing the disowned parts of the personality, proceeds to destroy the knights of the Grail precisely through the forbidden thing, sex.

Freud and his id, Jung and his shadow... All they had to do was attend the opera. :lol:


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Tristan and Isolde — too Jung to go steady.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Larkenfield said:


> Tristan and Isolde - too Jung to go steady.


That came from your unconscious, didn't it?


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## Ziggabea (Apr 5, 2017)

millionrainbows said:


> Oh, okay, you must be one of those people who doesn't have a 'shadow,' or thinks they don't. Believe me, if you are a solid human being, you have a shadow; you just don't see it yet.
> 
> This is a commonly misunderstood aspect of the 'unconscious' part of the human psyche that is hard for a lot of people to swallow: that they have a 'shadow' side to their personality. This is because we tend to avoid looking into such mirrors to our own souls, where we have deposited all the repressed, rejected, and unpleasant aspects of our own psyches (which we can easily see in others). Jung explains all of this very well, and was responsible for this idea of the shadow.


Sure, you may see it that way but who are you to call it objectively "dark" or "shadow", music doesn't conform to psychology the way you want it to do.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Larkenfield said:


> Tristan and Isolde - too Jung to go steady.


By the way, were you aware of Freud's secret gender identity? Schiller and Beethoven even predicted it:

"Freud, schoener goetterfunken, tochter aus Elysium..."


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Please refrain from expanding the discussion beyond simple yes/no answers, with a minimum of extra information in general terms so that no-one is defamed/criticised/trolled.

Since the thread title only mentions 'serial music' discussions of music (particularly Wagner) only tangentially related are not allowed. Unless any of the figures from the history of psychology mentioned in this thread are also composers or have large CD collections, or they play/played an instrument, they do not belong in this discussion.

Several posts have been puzzled over during the moderators' morning coffee.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

Yes. 



(Minimum of extra information)


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Enthusiast said:


> ^^^ Are you really saying more than that you don't like or get it or see what others find in it? In another thread I thought a simple demonstration of some of the variety in atonal music could be Holliger's CD of Maderna's oboe concertos. Each of these three works is of a similar length and for similar forces. Each one sounds typical of Maderna. But they are each very different and not one of them sounds dark to me! They are not at all like those wind concertos of "second rank" Classical or Romantic composers (the Weber or Crussell clarinet concertos etc) that - lovely as they are - all sound so similar and tend towards being mere entertainment. Take a listen to the whole disc: you may not warm to the works but you will certainly hear that they are very different and substantial pieces and those differences may come to represent a crack which you can widen by listening again and thereby get closer to this sort of music.
> 
> As for Gruppen, do you really hear it as dark? In comparison to Vivaldi's Spring (or even Winter) it is of course much more complex and attempts something infinitely more ambitious. What a strange comparison! And in doing that it is a more wide ranging and varied work. But if it and all the serial music you have heard make you feel drawn into "a dark world of mental instability" then it sounds to me (have I said this to you before?) like it is acting as a Rorschach test for you and that the music really does threaten you in some way. I had a similar experience with Sartre's Nausea when I was young and it was years before I could read it. Possibly it will be best for you to avoid serial music until you feel ready to face it. Until then it might be best, even, to avoid thinking (or posting!) about it.


I've listened to the Maderna oboe concertos 1 and 2. I found them very similar, expressing essentially the same dark, twilight world. No. 1 begins very much like Webern's Symphony and then appears to momentarily go into Stockhausen's Gruppen.

I am at a loss how anyone finds this music rewarding; clearly, though, some folk do.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

janxharris said:


> I've listened to the Maderna oboe concertos 1 and 2. I found them very similar, expressing essentially the same dark, twilight world. No. 1 begins very much like Webern's Symphony and then appears to momentarily go into Stockhausen's Gruppen.
> 
> I am at a loss how anyone finds this music rewarding; clearly, though, some folk do.


this music is like spice. I like to have it occasionaly, but cannot image listening exclusively to this music.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

eugeneonagain said:


> Please refrain from expanding the discussion beyond simple yes/no answers, with a minimum of extra information in general terms so that no-one is defamed/criticised/trolled.


No. ......................


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Okay.................


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

janxharris said:


> I've listened to the Maderna oboe concertos 1 and 2. I found them very similar, expressing essentially the same dark, twilight world. No. 1 begins very much like Webern's Symphony and then appears to momentarily go into Stockhausen's Gruppen.
> 
> I am at a loss how anyone finds this music rewarding; clearly, though, some folk do.


Well, if you find 1 and 2 similar (let along similar to other pieces written some fifty years earlier) then you are redefining the word "listen". They are very different pieces - nor are they dark or depicting a twilight world. Seriously, this is beyond those who listening to CM for the first time find all Mozart to be the same. I wasn't expecting you to like them - that would be a much bigger ask - but to recognise that very different things are going on in each of them seemed like an easy ask. Anyway, thank you for trying!


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Enthusiast said:


> Well, if you find 1 and 2 similar (let along similar to other pieces written some fifty years earlier) then you are redefining the word "listen". They are very different pieces - nor are they dark or depicting a twilight world. Seriously, this is beyond those who listening to CM for the first time find all Mozart to be the same. I wasn't expecting you to like them - that would be a much bigger ask - but to recognise that very different things are going on in each of them seemed like an easy ask. Anyway, thank you for trying!


Ok, I'll have another listen. You do realise this is torture don't you?


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Enthusiast said:


> Well, if you find 1 and 2 similar (let along similar to other pieces written some fifty years earlier) then you are redefining the word "listen". They are very different pieces - nor are they dark or depicting a twilight world. Seriously, this is beyond those who listening to CM for the first time find all Mozart to be the same. I wasn't expecting you to like them - that would be a much bigger ask - but to recognise that very different things are going on in each of them seemed like an easy ask. Anyway, thank you for trying!


FWIW, having listened again, my response would be the same.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

^^^ Well, as I say, thanks for trying. One of the most intriguing and yet frustrating aspects of a forum like this one is to be confronted by differences not only in taste but also in simple perception!


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Enthusiast said:


> ^^^ Well, as I say, thanks for trying. One of the most intriguing and yet frustrating aspects of a forum like this one is to be confronted by differences not only in taste but also in simple perception!


In terms of the overall image I perceive whilst listening, they are, for me, the same. I recognised some difference in terms of the material and it's arrangement.

It doesn't have to be frustrating.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

"There's the blues, and then there's _Zip-Ah-Dee-Doo-Dah._" -Townes Van Zandt

That sums it up; some people like all lightness, others have experienced the blues. This is really about us, and who we are, not the music.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

millionrainbows said:


> Ignoring the cliche for the moment, I can easily see why serial music feels dark, heavy, and unsettling to many listeners.
> The short answer is because it is not based on a harmonic model.
> 
> What is a harmonic model?
> ...


Because that is what is it supposed to be. If a composer confines himself to an atonal palette, he can't express joy, uplift, light, lightness, ebullience, hope....


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

ArsMusica said:


> Because that is what is it supposed to be. If a composer confines himself to an atonal palette, he can't express joy, uplift, light, lightness, ebullience, hope....


Morton Feldman John Cage, and Stockhausen have all produced music that is either atonal or 'not tonal,' yet there are many moments in their music that I feel transported, light, ebullient, hopeful, joyful...


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

==================


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

It’s helpful if people wouldn’t mind posting specific works by name to illustrate their points, otherwise it leads to the stalemate of conjecture and hard to know if the music fits the crime or the sublime.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Larkenfield said:


> It's helpful if people wouldn't mind posting specific works by name to illustrate their points, otherwise it leads to the stalemate of conjecture and hard to know if the music fits the crime or the sublime.


Could you give some examples of posts which don't do this?


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

Larkenfield said:


> Tristan and Isolde - too Jung to go steady.


Brangäne knew her psychotherapists, too:

"Von _Adlers_ Art und mildem Mut,
wer gliche dem Mann an Macht und Glanz?"


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

Not dark and heavy


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Why does serial music feel dark, heavy and unsettling, as if it's covered in dark molé sauce, cheese, and jalapeño peppers? Burrp!


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## Torkelburger (Jan 14, 2014)

ArsMusica said:


> Because that is what is it supposed to be. If a composer confines himself to an atonal palette, he can't express joy, uplift, light, lightness, ebullience, hope....


Hindemith confined himself to an atonal palette, and expressed all of those things, except maybe hope. _Ludus Tonalis_ is a good example. He even has expression marks such as "Gay", etc.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

Torkelburger said:


> Hindemith confined himself to an atonal palette, and expressed all of those things, except maybe hope. _Ludus Tonalis_ is a good example. He even has expression marks such as "Gay", etc.


This is not atonal music...none of Hindemith's music is atonal.


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## Torkelburger (Jan 14, 2014)

It most certainly is atonal music. There is no key, no hierarchy of pitches or chords, no tonic, no diatonic tonality, no functional tonality, etc. The vast majority of Hindemith's writing is *highly chromatic* music based on the hierarchy of *intervals* alone based on vertical and horizontal consonance and dissonance. It is atonal thinking, not tonal.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

No, actually. All you have to do is read Hindemith's composition book (which is based upon his own practise) and you'll see he is not a practitioner of strict atonal music. It is evident in his music. He was a sort of polystylist.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

Torkelburger said:


> It most certainly is atonal music. There is no key, no hierarchy of pitches or chords, no tonic, no diatonic tonality, no functional tonality, etc. The vast majority of Hindemith's writing is *highly chromatic* music based on the hierarchy of *intervals* alone based on vertical and horizontal consonance and dissonance. It is atonal thinking, not tonal.


Wrong.

As eugeneonagain stated all you have to do is read Hindemith's _Craft of Musical Composition, Volumes I and II._ to get the truth.

And here is an excerpt from his book _A Composer's World_:

"*Have we not heard many times of tendencies in modern music to avoid these tonal effects? It seems to me that attempts at avoiding them are as promising as attempts at avoiding the effects of gravitation*. Of course, we can use airplanes to fly away from the center of gravitation, but is not an airplane the best evidence for our incapacity to escape gravitation? Tonality doubtless is a very subtle form of gravitation, and in order to feel it in action we do not even need to take our usual musical detour from actual experience via the image of it, released by music. It suffices to sing in a chorus or a madrigal group to experience the strength of tonal gravitation: to sense how a synoptic tonal order has a healthy, refreshing effect on our moods and how structures that in their obscurity reach the point of impracticability lead to real physical pain.

Certainly, there is a way to escape the effects of earthly gravitation, by using a powerful rocket that overshoots the critical point of terrestrial attraction, but I cannot see how music's less harmful projectiles could ever reach this point or its imaginary equivalent. *And yet, some composers who have the ambition to eliminate tonality, succeed to a certain degree in depriving the listener of the benefits of gravitation. To be sure they do not, contrary to their conviction, eliminate tonality: they rather avail themselves of the same trick as those sickeningly wonderful merry-go-rounds on fair grounds and in amusement parks, in which the pleasure-seeking visitor is tossed around simultaneously in circles, and up and down, and sideways, in such fashion that even the innocent onlooker feels his inside turned into a pretzel-shaped distortion. The idea is, of course, to disturb the customer's feeling of gravitational attraction by combining at any given moment so many different forms of attraction that his sense of location cannot adjust itself fast enough. So-called atonal music, music which pretends to work without acknowledging the relationships of harmonies to tonics, acts just the same as those devilish gadgets; harmonies both in vertical and in horizontal form are arranged so that the tonics to which they refer change too rapidly. Thus we cannot adjust ourselves, cannot satisfy our desire for gravitational orientation. Again spatial dizziness is the result, time in the sublimated realm of spatial images in our mind.*

What Hindemith wrote is more than enough proof--as if actually being able to hear that his music is not atonal is not enough proof in itself--but here is the view of another excellent musician:

"When Hindemith's music was first beginning to be heard in this country, there were outraged cries of "ugly, shocking, dissonant, Bolshevik, unmelodic, heavy, brutal, bitter, atonal" - especially atonal. That word was very loosely used in the old days, to mean almost anything uncomplimentary about modern music, but *Hindemith was never atonal; all his music depends in one way or another on a sense of key, or what is called tonality.*" Leonard Bernstein.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

Bwv 1080 said:


> Not dark and heavy


Maybe not overly heavy as many atonal works, but certainly there is no lightness, joy, or ebullience. Dark? Maybe not as dark as most atonal works but plenty of grey...different shades thereof, but grey nonetheless.

Like the grey described by Ligeti:

"When I think of the avant-garde I have this image in my head: I am sitting in an airplane, the sky is blue and I see a landscape. And the plane flies into a cloud: everything is grey-white. At first the grey seems interesting if you compare it to the earlier landscape, but it soon becomes monotonous. I then fly out of the cloud and again see the landscape, which has completely changed in the meantime.

I believe that we have flown into such a cloud of high entropy and great disorder, particularly because of Schoenberg and the Viennese school but also due to the post-war generation in Darmstadt and Cologne - to which I more or less belonged. The instant I emerge out of the cloud I see, and this being very critical, that the music we wrote was in fact rather ugly. With 'we' I mean my generation, myself included. This ugly music was a consequence of twelve-tone music, of total chromaticism."

In sum, there is nothing beautiful or sonically attractive about that music in any way.


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

ArsMusica said:


> Maybe not overly heavy as many atonal works, but certainly there is no lightness, joy, or ebullience. Dark? Maybe not as dark as most atonal works but plenty of grey...different shades thereof, but grey nonetheless.
> 
> Like the grey described by Ligeti:
> 
> ...


If one examines capitalist discourse, one is faced with a choice: either
accept Foucaultist power relations or conclude that discourse is created by
communication. Ligeti obviously failed in that regard, showing himself still under the sway of bourgeois aesthetics. The premise of
subtextual constructive theory states that music is capable of significant form, but only if consciousness is equal to language; otherwise, we can assume that the goal of any worthwhile composer is deconstruction of the capitalist heirarchial worldview which is embedded in tonal relations. Obviously, it is only by liberating the tones so that none oppresses the others in a tonal power structure can real music be created.


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## Torkelburger (Jan 14, 2014)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atonality

"Late 19th- and early 20th-century composers such as Alexander Scriabin, Claude Debussy, Béla Bartók, Paul Hindemith, Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, and Edgard Varèse have written music that has been described, in full or in part, as atonal (Baker 1980; Baker 1986; Bertram 2000; Griffiths 2001; Kohlhase 1983; Lansky and Perle 2001; Obert 2004; Orvis 1974; Parks 1985; Rülke 2000; Teboul & 1995-96; Zimmerman 2002)."


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## Torkelburger (Jan 14, 2014)

> Wrong.


If that's the case then you should have no trouble providing a tonal analysis for the 3 bars at 1:18 at "Gehalten" here:






And provide the tonal analysis for what is going on at 2:10 letter C,

the chords at 2:40, and the music at letter D.

That's just the first couple of minutes of the piece, but I can go through the whole thing if need be.


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## Torkelburger (Jan 14, 2014)

eugeneonagain said:


> No, actually. All you have to do is read Hindemith's composition book (which is based upon his own practise) and you'll see he is not a practitioner of strict atonal music. It is evident in his music. He was a sort of polystylist.


_Wozzeck_ has quartal harmony, chords by thirds, whole tone scales, etc. and can also be described as polystylist. Yet, we refer to it and Berg as atonal.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Torkelburger said:


> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atonality
> 
> "Late 19th- and early 20th-century composers such as Alexander Scriabin, Claude Debussy, Béla Bartók, Paul Hindemith, Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, and Edgard Varèse have written music that has been described, in full or in part, as atonal (Baker 1980; Baker 1986; Bertram 2000; Griffiths 2001; Kohlhase 1983; Lansky and Perle 2001; Obert 2004; Orvis 1974; Parks 1985; Rülke 2000; Teboul & 1995-96; Zimmerman 2002)."


I feel those composers have a clear "gravitational" pull, though often not conventional major-minor tonality. Modal jazz is also not conventionally tonal, but it is not "atonal". They lack the total chromaticism of Webern, Babbitt, etc. which is normally defines "atonality".

This is not serial music, and downright pop-catchy.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Bwv 1080 said:


> If one examines capitalist discourse, one is faced with a choice: either
> accept Foucaultist power relations or conclude that discourse is created by
> communication. Ligeti obviously failed in that regard, showing himself still under the sway of bourgeois aesthetics. The premise of
> subtextual constructive theory states that music is capable of significant form, but only if consciousness is equal to language; otherwise, we can assume that the goal of any worthwhile composer is deconstruction of the capitalist heirarchial worldview which is embedded in tonal relations. Obviously, it is only by liberating the tones so that none oppresses the others in a tonal power structure can real music be created.


Unquestionably a salubrious corrective to the phallocentric, logocentric, omnicentric, hyperratiocinated narratives of colonially embedded pre-critical vocalities.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Bwv 1080 said:


> If one examines capitalist discourse, one is faced with a choice: either accept Foucaultist power relations or conclude that discourse is created by communication. Ligeti obviously failed in that regard, showing himself still under the sway of bourgeois aesthetics. The premise of subtextual constructive theory states that music is capable of significant form, but only if consciousness is equal to language; otherwise, we can assume that the goal of any worthwhile composer is deconstruction of the capitalist heirarchial worldview which is embedded in tonal relations. Obviously, it is only by liberating the tones so that none oppresses the others in a tonal power structure can real music be created.


I am truly a better person for reading that.

However, not all tones serve the music equally. A-flat, in particular, rebels against its appointed role and often demands superiority. This cannot be allowed! The center demands that we struggle against A-flat and consign it to the ash-heap of history! Those that support A-flat, of course, must undergo re-education. The camps await.

There will be enough tones to carry on. A-flat will not be missed. In a pinch, call it G-sharp.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Torkelburger said:


> It most certainly is atonal music. *There is no key, no hierarchy of pitches or chords, no tonic, no diatonic tonality, no functional tonality, etc*. The vast majority of Hindemith's writing is *highly chromatic* music based on the *hierarchy of *intervals** alone based on vertical and horizontal consonance and dissonance. It is atonal thinking, not tonal.


I would not call Hindemith "atonal" because it is misleading; this might confuse him with 12-tone music. I reserve the term "atonal" for music based on set theory, such as tone rows.

Because Hindemith uses "sonance" as one of his main tools, and since these sonances are based on degrees of consonance/dissonance as heard by the ear, I would call his music "harmonic tonality," since, like tonal harmonic models, he is creating an hierarchy of greater/lesser dissonances. It's a form of "free tonality."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
According to WIK:
Most of Hindemith's music employs *a unique system that is tonal* but non-diatonic. *Like most tonal music, it is centred on a tonic and modulates from one tonal centre to another, *but it uses all 12 notes freely rather than relying on a scale picked as a subset of these notes. Hindemith even rewrote some of his music after developing this system. One of the key features of his system is that he ranks all musical intervals of the 12-tone equally tempered scale from the most consonant to the most dissonant.* He classifies chords in six categories, on the basis of how dissonant they are, whether or not they contain a tritone, and whether or not they clearly suggest a root or tonal centre.* Hindemith's philosophy also encompassed melody-he strove for melodies that do not clearly outline major or minor triads.
In the late 1930s, Hindemith wrote a theoretical book The Craft of Musical Composition (vol. 1, Hindemith 1937), which lays out this system in great detail. He also advocated this system as a means of understanding and analyzing the harmonic structure of other music, claiming that it has a broader reach than the traditional Roman numeral approach to chords (an approach that is strongly tied to the diatonic scales). In the final chapter of Book I, Hindemith seeks to illustrate the wide-ranging relevance and applicability of his system in analysis of music examples ranging from the early origins of European music to the contemporary.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So we see from the above that Hindemith did use an hierarchy of chords, and tonic centers.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

ArsMusica said:


> Maybe not overly heavy as many atonal works, but certainly there is no lightness, joy, or ebullience. Dark? Maybe not as dark as most atonal works but plenty of grey...different shades thereof, but grey nonetheless.
> 
> Like the grey described by Ligeti:
> 
> ...


I have been here too long. This is what always happens with this particular debate: someone asks for examples of atonal music that is light or bright or happy or joyful; someone else provides examples; the first person rubbishes the example as dark or not properly joyful etc. It seems clear that if you haven't got into the atonal music being discussed you will see it as all the same (and ugly with it). There seems little point debating it.

The Ligeti quote is interesting. I don't know when he said it or how you account for it but it seems clear that he is talking about quite a short period of time and quite a particular set of music rather than all atonal music. Can we have the context of his words, please. And a reference.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

This later piece by Webern I don't find to be dark or unsettling at all. The first movement to me sounds boisterous in the more active parts and quite warm and calming in the more subtle parts. The second movement just sounds very soothing, and the 3rd movement is downright jaunty. I'd say this one is in very good spirits all around:






I also think of compositions like Explosante Fixe by Boulez. For me this piece is so colorful and active that it seems to express something more like fascination, excitement, or ecstasy. A feeling you might get when discovering a world of new and incredible senses.






Then there's Stravinsky's brand of serialism, which is muscular, athletic, playful and much too detached from any emotional over indulgences to be called dark.






Now listen to the above three examples, and think about what "dark" and "unsettling" really means to you. Can you really say that any of those pieces are dark compared to this:






Or even this:






I'd say the latter too examples are much darker in their mood and expression, even though they're (mostly) completely tonal. I'd even be as bold as to say that Mozart wrote music that is aesthetically darker than anything Boulez ever wrote.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

There was a brief thread recently about Franco Donatoni: the main point of the thread was the fun and amusement that can be found in his music. A few examples were posted. https://www.talkclassical.com/59862-why-donatoni-not-considered.html?highlight=donatoni


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## Bwv 1080 (Dec 31, 2018)

KenOC said:


> I am truly a better person for reading that.
> 
> However, not all tones serve the music equally. A-flat, in particular, rebels against its appointed role and often demands superiority. This cannot be allowed! The center demands that we struggle against A-flat and consign it to the ash-heap of history! Those that support A-flat, of course, must undergo re-education. The camps await.
> 
> There will be enough tones to carry on. A-flat will not be missed. In a pinch, call it G-sharp.


Yes, death to the A-flatcist pigs. Of course true equality of tones can only be achieved through duodecimalality (and re-education camps for atonophobes)


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Bwv 1080 said:


> If one examines capitalist discourse, one is faced with a choice: either
> accept Foucaultist power relations or conclude that discourse is created by
> communication. Ligeti obviously failed in that regard, showing himself still under the sway of bourgeois aesthetics. The premise of
> subtextual constructive theory states that music is capable of significant form, but only if consciousness is equal to language; otherwise, we can assume that the goal of any worthwhile composer is deconstruction of the capitalist heirarchial worldview which is embedded in tonal relations. Obviously, it is only by liberating the tones so that none oppresses the others in a tonal power structure can real music be created.


are you serious? "Capitalist hierarchial worldwiew embedded in tonal relations"?
"Ligeti obviously failed in that regard, showing himself still under the sway of bourgeois aesthetics"?


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