# Bach's Divinity



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Here is an interpretation of some weirdness in the classical music community:

*Person 1*: Do you have a favourite composer?
*Person 2*: Hell yeah! I'm a big Brahms fan. How about you?
*Person 1*: I'd probably pick Haydn. Of course, it's all a matter of taste.
*Person 3*: Damn right it's taste! I prefer Ravel and anything post-Impressionism. I can't stand sloshy Romanticism.
*Person 1*: That's fair enough. Our favourites don't have to be great in your eyes.
*Person 4*: Hey, guys, you do know that Bach is God though, right?
*Person 1*: Oh yeah, that goes without saying.
*Person 2*: Oh of course, Person 4, I'd never question it.
*Person 3*: I can't stand Bach's music, but, yeah, I know he's the best of the best.

So, it's all a matter of taste, but Bach _is_ God. Seems like a contradiction to me. So, tell me, to a fan of Justin Bieber who, in the course of their life, will quite happily consume a lot of music, call much of it great, but never once listen to a sliver of classical music - never be affected by it, never understand references to it, never even know that a man called Bach wrote a mass - is Bach still the best composer in _their_ world?

EDIT: Personally, I can't stand Bach's music ergo he is crap.


----------



## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

I'm Person 3!, but I love Romanticism and Bach too


----------



## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

Polednice said:


> *Person 4*: Hey, guys, you do know that Bach is God though, right?


Is that supposed to represent me? Because I've been doing that a lot lately (although I mainly just joke around with it).

But in all seriousness, I'd say that Bach's divinity comes from the type of music he composed. His music is full of reverence and devotion, and, in turn, we (Bach's cult) tend to have feelings of great reverence and devotion as well (either simply towards Bach's music, or Bach's music and many other things along with it). I would describe it as this (pseudo-masochistic) feeling that there's something far greater than us and that we're all very lucky to be able to experience the existence of that greatness. Mind you, what I actually revere is the Fugue, and not Bach himself. But since Bach was the indisputable master of the Fugue, I tend to respect him more than any other composer.

Does this justify my fanaticism?


----------



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Perhaps because Bach is associated with intellectualism in a way that no other composer is. It seems to not "like" Bach is to pronounce your own stupidity to a lot of people.


----------



## Eviticus (Dec 8, 2011)

aleazk said:


> I'm Person 3!, but I love Romanticism and Bach too


I think person number 1 was based on me... :lol:

Now, now let us not be harsh on good old Bach.

I've always found his music always evokes dreamlike imagery... especially those cantatas.....ZZzzzzzZzzzz


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Near as I can determine, Bach was a working man, trying to raise a passel of kids to amount to something. A lot of them did.

And he got counterpoint pretty well worked out.


----------



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

I have always thought that the classical music community (a somewhat vague average of all listeners) believes that Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart are in a class by themselves. Some put Bach first, some Mozart, and some Beethoven. I did not think that it was a given that Bach was number 1 (especially since Mozart is actually God )

For the past several years I have tried to find some polls that my wife, a violinist, told me about many years ago. Basically, performers and conductors were polled asking them to rank composers. She remembered that Mozart always came in first with Bach and Beethoven switching off for second. She thought Mozart's opera put him "over the top". Does anyone know of such polls? I'm curious if performers have a different view than other experts.


----------



## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

Eviticus said:


> I've always found [Bach's] music always evokes dreamlike imagery... especially those cantatas.....ZZzzzzzZzzzz


I've always found Tchaikovsky's music always evokes watching-paint-dry imagery... especially those symphonies.....ZZzzzzzZzzzz


----------



## Scarpia (Jul 21, 2010)

Are we going to have threads questioning the respect given to every composer in the canon? Zzzzzzzzzz.... Wake me up when it's Brahms' turn.


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

The parodies in the OP weren't supposed to represent anyone here as I think this is a more general issue, but it doesn't surprise me that some of you identify with them. 

I think there is a lot of truth in Couchie's comment that to say you dislike Bach seems to be a declaration of your own stupidity. Even within the classical community - people who can perhaps be given some credit for not blindly following modern commercial music - people look down on those who have a greater interest in the Romantic period. However, as a truly devoted listener, I will proudly state that I dislike Bach, I generally dislike Baroque, and I'm a _huge_ lover of the melodrama of the Romantic period! Does that make me stupid? No. I just have different aesthetic ideals.

My main problem is that this whole idea of the Holy Trinity (Bach/Mozart/Beethoven) seems to be a successful meme simply by repetition. Everyone says they're the best, so everyone thinks they're the best, and everyone who's led to think they're the best in turn say they're the best _etc. etc._ So you end up with a situation where people whose favourites might be Schubert, Brahms, Schumann, Debussy, Ravel - take your pick of any non-Trinity big-name composers - are asked about the Greatest composers in polls or whatever and simply say Bach/Mozart/Beethoven by default even if they devote little time to their music and get little enjoyment from it.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

I think that where you get it wrong, Polednice, is suggesting that Bach=intellect... or the appearance thereof. Of the big 3, it seems that most of those who argue in favor of Beethoven over all others continually turn toward the issue of emotions. Beethoven speaks to the emotions... to struggle and passion and turmoil and pathos. Mozart is consequently dismissed as lightweight in comparison... but no one would think to level such an accusation toward Bach. His great passions, the cantatas, etc... are laden with as much emotion... spiritual longing, hope, fear, sadness, pathos, etc... as Beethoven. Those who champion Mozart speak of his almost innate genius... his ease at achieving or mastering the most difficult musical concepts. But few would suggest he surpasses Bach in this. Mozart is also a master of wit and elegance and sheer beauty.... but again Bach does not fall short here. I think that the strength of Bach is that his oeuvre virtually offers something for every musical taste. He can produce music that is the most intellectually challenging and rigorous... equal to Beethoven's late quartets, then he can turn about and offer up music that is the most emotionally expressive... passionate, tender, heartbreaking, even sensuous. I think that this breadth... combined with the super-human scale of his achievements... all yet found within a man of humble-background whose name slipped from recognition in his own lifetime... is what makes him attractive to so many listeners... and so many other composers.

In a way I find it difficult to understand your own dislike of Bach... considering your admiration of Brahms. The two composers shared much in common. Both were curmudgeons seen as somewhat behind the times even during their own lifetimes. Both were masterful composers for smaller ensembles... and for chorus. I personally came to appreciate Brahms more in relation to Bach's cantatas. Unlike Handel's work which remains ever theatrical... operatic... grand (in the finest manner), the individual movements of Bach's cantatas are quite often orchestrated for a various small instrumental ensembles (as opposed to always or mostly employing the full forces of the orchestra) in a chamber-music-like manner. The more I have listened to Brahms' chamber music... and his choral music... the more I can hear Bach as well as Beethoven.


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Couchie said:


> Perhaps because Bach is associated with intellectualism in a way that no other composer is. It seems to not "like" Bach is to pronounce your own stupidity to a lot of people.


If I replace 'stupidity' with 'incomprehension', I agree with the 'pronouncement'.


----------



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Polednice said:


> My main problem is that this whole idea of the Holy Trinity (Bach/Mozart/Beethoven) seems to be a successful meme simply by repetition. Everyone says they're the best, so everyone thinks they're the best, and everyone who's led to think they're the best in turn say they're the best _etc. etc._ So you end up with a situation where people whose favourites might be Schubert, Brahms, Schumann, Debussy, Ravel - take your pick of any non-Trinity big-name composers - are asked about the Greatest composers in polls or whatever and simply say Bach/Mozart/Beethoven by default even if they devote little time to their music and get little enjoyment from it.


I suppose that could be true of classical music listeners in general, but do you think that's true of those who have perhaps a stronger attachment to classical music - performers, critics, TC members, etc.? Certainly a quick look at any TC thread where people post their favorite composers shows that very few people have Bach/Beethoven/Mozart as their top 3. I wonder how many even have 2 of the 3.


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I agree with the gist of the consensus in the wider classical music community that J.S. Bach was a pivotal composer for Western music as a whole. Of course, not every composer revered him so it's alright for an individual listener not to like him or be middling about him (the latter is where I am generally with his music, though I am rediscovering lately his solo instrumental stuff).

Composers like Janacek, John Cage, Xenakis, Harry Partch had no time for Bach at all, and probably neither the other two B's either. This does not make them any the lesser composers, indeed, Janacek avoided studying even a fraction of Bach when writing his _Glagolitic Mass_, a masterpiece by an standard of the c20th choral literature. Janacek's opinion of Bach's choral music equated with eviticus' negative opinion above, eg. that it was basically a straightjacket and a kind of "death," representing the worst of church dogma, hierarchy, nothing to do with the common folk, a total anachronism, etc. This is not my opinion but the gist of Janacek's. He was not interested in Bach at all, thus Janacek's uniqueness was allowed to go into full bloom without these restrictions. & same for the other guys above.

As for people using Bach as a weapon to ram home a "point" on these forums, I've had it too often. Not only with Bach, but with other composers, esp. Wagner. & of course, you get the other extreme to these kinds of conservatives, for want of a better term, you get these rusted on Modernists whose minds are stuck in the 1960's, with various now highly questionable dogmas of "progress" and the primacy of "innovation" (their kind of innovation, of course, like all these dogmatists, it's all rather arbitary), and so on. So if you can't either listen to certain things these people value highly, but don't expose their bias (eg. that they're basically highbrows, and selective ones at that, with a distorted view of the basics of music appreciation), then you are labelled by them to be a moron.

This has happened too many times on another forum so I left. Thankfully, TC is a more moderate and balanced place overall. WE have a few, very minority, of jurassics from either extreme conservative and radical progressive sides, but they seem to me to be outnumbered here by those in the middle of the spectrum.

Anyway, the fact is that these people using any composer as a final resort or shield in an argument are like those old tribal warriors in West AFrica, involved in various tragic civil wars that engulfed the region in the decades after 1945. These guys believed in their juju cult or religion/spirituality. A part of this was using a fetish, putting around your neck a necklace made of chicken bone and feathers, something like that. They believed that this fetish or talisman or whatever would shield them against bullets, live ammunition. Well this beggars belief or logic, but they believed this, for them it was fact.

I see these people here, using Bach as their fetish, as the same as these tribesman. Using it as a shield when clearly it won't work, it's like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

So what do we in the middle do? Just ignore these people, basically. That's the best thing. EIther use the ignore function,or read what they say and ignore it.

The other thing is that NONE of these high priests of Bach or whatever have converted me to their "God." It took my own initiative to do that. & earlier in the year, at a concert here, a work by Bach put me to tears. I talked about that to the conductor after, it was a small group. I told him their performance opened up this composer who I'd thought before to be rather dry, boring, etc. And he was gracious, he didn't say something like how could I make this kind of mistake, he didn't judge, he said he was happy that their performance did that for me. Now that is the right attitude, whatever music you're trying to promote, etc...


----------



## Taneyev (Jan 19, 2009)

I'm not sure if Bach was the greatest composer. But I'm sure that no composer was greater than Bach.


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

mmsbls said:


> I suppose that could be true of classical music listeners in general, but do you think that's true of those who have perhaps a stronger attachment to classical music - performers, critics, TC members, etc.? Certainly a quick look at any TC thread where people post their favorite composers shows that very few people have Bach/Beethoven/Mozart as their top 3. I wonder how many even have 2 of the 3.


No, I agree that people don't necessarily list them in their favourites, but what I meant was that when people are asked about Great composers in a (supposedly) objective sense, people tend to disregard their subjective favourites and instead suggest Bach/Mozart/Beethoven as the undeniable Best of All Time for Eternity no matter what our tastes are.

Yes, these composers did a tremendous amount for music and influenced many composers after them, but:

1) I think a subjective appreciation for a different composer is more important than any objective appreciation of a composer you barely listen to and
2) I just dislike the fact that Bach/Mozart/Beethoven are plumped for without any questioning whatsoever.

Give us another 1000 years of music history, and I bet Bach will still be at the top. That suggests an unhealthy idolising to me rather than a proper critical appraisal.


----------



## Artemis (Dec 8, 2007)

Polednice said:


> My main problem is that this whole idea of the Holy Trinity (Bach/Mozart/Beethoven) seems to be a successful meme simply by repetition. Everyone says they're the best, so everyone thinks they're the best, and everyone who's led to think they're the best in turn say they're the best _etc. etc._ So you end up with a situation where people whose favourites might be Schubert, Brahms, Schumann, Debussy, Ravel - take your pick of any non-Trinity big-name composers - are asked about the Greatest composers in polls or whatever and simply say Bach/Mozart/Beethoven by default even if they devote little time to their music and get little enjoyment from it.


On reflection, I believe you have made a fair point here. I own up to being among those who do not question that Beethoven, Mozart, Bach constitute the god-head of classical music, on a higher level than the rest. I said so recently on another thread which you may have spotted. But I do not regard several others as being that far behind in terms of greatness.

It's probably true, as you say, that Bach does have a very hallowed status that few people seem prepared to challenge, whether or not they like him to the extent of actually playing a lot of his music compared with others. To a broadly similar extent, the same situation applies in the case of Beethoven. Very sadly Mozart tends to get all the stick, at least on this forum.

However, as I have made clear on several occasions, I place Schubert at the top of my personal top 3 composers, with Mozart and Beethoven in almost tied second and third places. In fact, although I quite like Bach, to tell the truth I do not frequently play any of his works. But unlike you, I do not dislike his work. A lot of is magnificent and ingenious but it's not really my cup of tea these days, if ever it was. In the baroque era, my main stalwarts are the earlier, lighter style of Vivaldi or Telemann, or Purcell, or even earlier than that, Monteverdi. I guess I also like Handel rather more than Bach, but I tend to blow hot and cold with regard to Handel.


----------



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Polednice said:


> 1) I think a subjective appreciation for a different composer is more important than any objective appreciation of a composer you barely listen to and
> 2) I just dislike the fact that Bach/Mozart/Beethoven are plumped for without any questioning whatsoever.
> 
> Give us another 1000 years of music history, and I bet Bach will still be at the top. That suggests an unhealthy idolising to me rather than a proper critical appraisal.


I looked at the TC thread, Your Favorite 10 Composers and found that only two people listed Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart as their top 3. Actually more people had none of them in their top 3 than any other combination. I'm not sure how many of the posters would say the Big Three are not their favorite but they're the greatest.

I was one of the two who put them in my top 3. My tastes seem to agree with the "consensus" on greatness so I don't have the problem of separating personal enjoyment from assessment of greatness.

Your last point is interesting. I have always thought it odd that the "greatest" three composers have been dead for almost 200 years. I suspect there has been more musical talent in the past 100 years than at any time before (many more people alive, much better access to training, etc.). Why would the greatest all have lived so long ago? I have seen several thoughts on that question, but none have convinced me. I suppose it could have been luck, but the odds are a bit low.


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

mmsbls said:


> Your last point is interesting. I have always thought it odd that the "greatest" three composers have been dead for almost 200 years. I suspect there has been more musical talent in the past 100 years than at any time before (many more people alive, much better access to training, etc.). Why would the greatest all have lived so long ago? I have seen several thoughts on that question, but none have convinced me. I suppose it could have been luck, but the odds are a bit low.


It seems to me that the more an artist is separated from us in time, the greater they are mythologised and so become legends. No recent composer, no matter how talented, can compete with such deification. I imagine, however, that this won't happen to today's composers in a few centuries' time - instead, because we have technology that allows us to faithfully record so much about people, that sense of mythology won't be there because we'll be reminded in many ways by many sources that these composers were just human. With figures like Bach, however, our records are far slimmer and our imaginations are left to their own accord, so, given our cultural values, we like to picture creative geniuses distinct from the rest of mankind when, in fact, these were just hard-working men.


----------



## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

Polednice said:


> It seems to me that the more an artist is separated from us in time, the greater they are mythologised and so become legends. No recent composer, no matter how talented, can compete with such deification. I imagine, however, that this won't happen to today's composers in a few centuries' time - instead, because we have technology that allows us to faithfully record so much about people, that sense of mythology won't be there because we'll be reminded in many ways by many sources that these composers were just human. With figures like Bach, however, our records are far slimmer and our imaginations are left to their own accord, so, given our cultural values, we like to picture creative geniuses distinct from the rest of mankind when, in fact, these were just hard-working men.


Polie, Polie, Polie...if some kid, like you, was posting his piano compositions week after week on youtube and then he suddenly uploads a Toccata in e minor, a Fantasy in c major and an Appasionata...I would have to be both deaf and dumb to not immediately accept this kid's stuff as some of the finest keyboard compositions ever created. Remember, I'm not the one who doesn't like pop music or almost anything new...I always keep an open and fresh mind toward music. Not only would I consider myself dumb for not recognizing such greatness, in whatever form it came!...but, it would be as closed-minded as not liking Bach as a whole.

Music that is great is great no matter when it was written. Problem is, the more people have become exposed to other people's music throughout time,...the more compromised their compositions became. Sure, the so-called big 3 were influenced by others but never quite as much as composers became influenced as time went on. And why has 'classical' compostition barely had any significant pieces outputed over the past fifty years,...well, you don't have to take a horse and carriage for weeks to reach the next town and hear some guy playing...all this technology we've created and the way you can hear just about anything you want at any given time...that detracts from a fresh, clean and untainted mind that is necessary for creating masterful works of art. Today's minds are simply much too cluttered with nonsense to be free enough to think in such ways as these 'mythologised' composers did.


----------



## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Sid James said:


> Composers like Janacek, John Cage, Xenakis, Harry Partch had no time for Bach at all ...


As much as I like Cage and Xenakis, I wouldn't even write their names in the one sentence involving JS Bach, unless of course I was intending to rank them, in which case it would be clear who was the greatest composer out of Janacek, Cage, Xenakis, Partch versus JS Bach.  I like glorifying JS Bach over many other composers. It's good fun in an internet discussion forum, and in my opinion, entirely appropriate.


----------



## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Artemis said:


> However, as I have made clear on several occasions, I place Schubert at the top of my personal top 3 composers, with Mozart and Beethoven in almost tied second and third places. In fact, although I quite like Bach, to tell the truth I do not frequently play any of his works. But unlike you, I do not dislike his work. A lot of is magnificent and ingenious but it's not really my cup of tea these days, if ever it was. In the baroque era, my main stalwarts are the earlier, lighter style of Vivaldi or Telemann, or Purcell, or even earlier than that, Monteverdi. I guess I also like Handel rather more than Bach, but I tend to blow hot and cold with regard to Handel.


Hi Artemis, I remember you had a nice collage of your personal top 10 or to that effect. It was a nice summary of your personal favourites. I like your "blow hot & cold" opinion with regard to Handel. Something I haven't read before.


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

This forum keeps instructing me that we are referring to JavaScript Bach.


----------



## Conor71 (Feb 19, 2009)

Polednice said:


> 1) I think a subjective appreciation for a different composer is more important than any objective appreciation of a composer you barely listen to and
> 2) I just dislike the fact that Bach/Mozart/Beethoven are plumped for without any questioning whatsoever.


I agree with 1. As regards 2. I've seen similar discussions on this and other boards where the assertion that Bach/Mozart/Beethoven are plumped unquestioningly have been made and I think these 3 end up at the top of many of our polls and lists simply because they wrote so much beautiful music which appeals strongly to a wide range of listeners.
I don't think there is anything wrong with not liking Bach/Mozart/Beethoven but I don't think there is anything wrong with liking them a lot either - I know speaking personally, my respect for these 3 is genuine and I don't really appreciate being told that I'm being unthinking for doing that! 
As for barely listening to a Composer you rate highly - I can only answer for myself that I have'nt listened to a whole lot of Bach the last few months despite rating him as my Number 1 Composer because other interests have taken precendense.
However, overall in my Classical Listening timespan I have listened to a whole lot of Bach including doing a 2 (almost 3) month stint last year of listening to nothing but his Music and thats why hes my Number 1 instead of, for instance, my latest interest which is Bruckner


----------



## TresPicos (Mar 21, 2009)

When I first joined TalkClassical, I was not that surprised to find that Bach was God here as well, and that Mozart wasn't. What surprised me was that Beethoven seemed to be Über-God.


----------



## Eviticus (Dec 8, 2011)

Polednice said:


> It seems to me that the more an artist is separated from us in time, the greater they are mythologised and so become legends. No recent composer, no matter how talented, can compete with such deification. I imagine, however, that this won't happen to today's composers in a few centuries' time - instead, because we have technology that allows us to faithfully record so much about people, that sense of mythology won't be there because we'll be reminded in many ways by many sources that these composers were just human. With figures like Bach, however, our records are far slimmer and our imaginations are left to their own accord, so, given our cultural values, we like to picture creative geniuses distinct from the rest of mankind when, in fact, these were just hard-working men.


I think this is great post Polednice - very true.


----------



## jalex (Aug 21, 2011)

TresPicos said:


> What surprised me was that Beethoven seemed to be Über-God.


What surprises me is that so many people put him behind Bach and Mozart. I really can't see what more anyone could have done to earn a place at the top spot than the last 5 piano sonatas, the last 5 string quartets, the Missa Solemnis, the 9th and the Diabelli Variations, in addition to all his earlier masterpieces. Maybe I'm hearing things in his late works which aren't there


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Some interesting discussion here now, reflecting more balance overall.

I think Conor put it good here, and what he says can basically apply to any composer -



Conor71 said:


> ...I don't think there is anything wrong with not liking Bach/Mozart/Beethoven but I don't think there is anything wrong with liking them a lot either...


& to add about the composers I mentioned before not caring for Bach, well it is more like they knew the rules he and others set up, but of course in the end they broke them, or more accurately, created their own rules, or even totally threw out the outdated concept of the need for rules in the first place, they gave us their own visions, not just rehash of Bach or whoever.

Eg. with Janacek, his pieces written before his fifties were not very characteristic. The early set of variations for piano dedicated to his wife Zdenka is perfectly competent and an okay listen, but pales in comparison to his piano works that came after he hit the big 5-0. His _Suite for strings _is basically Tchaikovsky and Dvorak rehash, good rehash, but still just rehash. In both these works, Janacek knew the rules, but when it came to forging his own vision, he basically had to get rid of them and do his own thing.

Same goes with other guys I mentioned, major figures of music in their time - Xenakis, Cage, Partch. Maybe I'd add Satie, I don't hear much of the three B's in him, but he was more of an anti-Wagnerite than anything. For some, he's like a lightweight or something for lampooning the pretensions of their idol. But from a musicological viewpoint, Satie was one of the few composers around in turn of the century, 1900, who basically predicted a lot of the major trends to come for the rest of the century. Another one I can think of, for American music at least, is Ives (but he had respect for the three B's, basically).

So it's not a sin to think what you want and do what you want with regards to music, that's what I'm saying...


----------



## Guest (Dec 19, 2011)

Polednice said:


> [W]hen people are asked about Great composers in a (supposedly) objective sense, people tend to disregard their subjective favourites and instead suggest Bach/Mozart/Beethoven as the undeniable Best of All Time for Eternity no matter what our tastes are.


It happens.

I would never suggest this, though.

They were all three very good, of course.

But in discussions like this I always find myself more interested in why we seem to _need_ to have a greatest.

Does thinking Bach is the greatest composer help you enjoy listening to Bach more? Does it make you a better person? Does it help you get girls (or guys) by the truckloads? Does it make food taste better and prevent cavities?

And what if it prevents you from enjoying Tchaikovsky as much as you could? That can't be good. (Unless you think Tchaikovsky causes cavities, of course.)

Others mileage may differ, but I've found the more I listen to music, and I've been at it for more than fifty years, the less inclined I am to even have favorites. I like to attend as fully and carefully to whatever it is I'm listening to right now. Some things don't repay that attention as well as others. Some repay it badly at first and very well indeed thank you later on. Some repay it very well indeed at first but then later, ah, not so much.

But even if I could put everything I know into neat piles of repays attention well, ok, not so much, not at all, I'd still be very far from wanting to pronounce on a "greatest." And I'd be constantly tinkering with the contents of each pile, too.

Much more satisfying to listen to each piece, each "set," each recording as it comes to me. Jesus Torres' _Trio_ is the greatest piece I'm listening to right now!


----------



## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

It seems to me that the more an artist is separated from us in time, the greater they are mythologised and so become legends.

Come on, Polednice... you want to convince us all that you are majoring in literature at a prestigious university and yet you can't make out why it is that an artist becomes more entrenched within the "canon" (for lack of a better term) beyond some lame notion that they have become mythologized? Surely you can do better than this. Let's take the central figure of Western literature... the single writer who holds a position almost equal to the combination of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart in music. Of course we all know I am speaking of William Shakespeare. So why is Shakespeare so entrenched? Why has he become even more central to the canon of Western literature now, 400 years after the fact than he was in his own lifetime... moreso than he was 200 years ago? Do you honestly believe his centrality is owed to the fact that he has become mythologized... worshiped without any critical question? Certainly that may be true of some... perhaps even of most casual readers of literature who lacking any real experience of other writers, fully accept the judgment of the "canon"... which ultimately represents the judgment of critics, historians, other writers, well-informed readers etc...

But is it not possible that Shakespeare's centrality has become more and more entrenched as subsequent writers of real merit... some of genius themselves... have continued to build upon his work? He and the King James Bible represent the twin giant influences upon the development of the "Modern" English language. A brief look at the authors who were deeply influenced by Shakespeare is virtually a "who's who" of literature... especially English literature (Milton, Jonson, Johnson, Blake, Shelley, Keats, Goethe, Victor Hugo, Herman Melville, Tennyson, Baudelaire, Tolstoy (although he would later seek to deny this influence), Kafka, Dostoevsky, Dickens, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, William Faulkner, J.L. Borges, Proust, Cormac McCarthy, etc...

J.L. Borges, a brilliant critic as well as poet and writer of luminous fiction, pointed out that literature (and all the arts) shall never be "exhausted" (a fear expressed by some in more recent times) for the simple reason that no single book of any real merit can ever be exhausted. The reason, he argued, is that a book or a work of art does not exist fully within itself. Rather it exists in relationships to that around it. Our reading of the Biblical book of _Job_ is profoundly marked by our experience of Kafka. Our reading of Milton's _Paradise Lost_ by Shelley and Blake. Our Shakespeare is so much more than Shakespeare was during his own life or shortly thereafter because it it profoundly marked by Milton, Blake, Proust, Joyce, etc... until it is much more than it originally was. Shakespeare cannot be removed from the "canon" without removing all those who built upon him just as Bach cannot be removed from the canon without calling into question all who built upon him. We are all free to question the aesthetic merit of Bach or Beethoven or Shakespeare and to like others more... but our opinions are not likely to undermine their place within the historical narrative.


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I don't think POlednice is questioning the significance of all those contributors to the creative arts across time.

What's he and I and others are questioning is the need to build these monuments to them and make them like a calling card to "settle" an argument online about virtually any topic. The usual things we get around here, the antics, but in the end it's just a minority who resort to these tricks on a daily basis.

So these people erect these vast edifices, and then they use them as juggernauts to get the upper hand in certain debates, etc. around here. Even if the debates have nothing to do with Bach, the other two B's, the "canon," various listener generated lists on this site or elsewhere, a slew of youtube clips to "prove" a point like "evidence" in a court, etc.

Often, I think it's a waste of time here outside the friendly threads like current listening, because it all ends up with these cliche things people throw in my face. Maybe that's more in the past then now, but we still have some ideologues here for sure, whether they hide behind Bach or another comoser is largely irrelevant.

But esp. on the other website I left, the combination of Bach plus Wagner, idolising and fetishising them, was LETHAL and TOXIC. These people came across as basically major douchebags. They'd use these battering rams in any argument against you, even if you were stating obvious facts, or avoiding bias, controversy, etc. No wonder I left that place, it was CACTUS. But I even regret going there, it was like one of those carnivorous pitchter plants the flies are drawn to, they go inside then are stuck in it like quicksand. It can be enticing at first but basically it's deadly.

So this is the gist of this thread, that's what I'm reading between Polednice's lines. People who idolise too much, esp. idolise one thing or a set of thing, a lot of them come across online as highly objectionable, partisan, polemic, ideological, etc...


----------



## jalex (Aug 21, 2011)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> x


I think Polednice has a point, one which tackles at least some of the issue at hand. I don't suggest that the Holy Three of Classical music have won their places and retained them entirely through mantra without critical judgement, but if we are to give them a 'place apart' as we often do we are left with the uncomfortable question of where all the 'greatness' floating in the air of Austro-Germany between 1685 and 1827 has gone (or 1883 if you want to stick Wagner in there as well).

As a huge Beethoven fan I am well aware that I have let myth be confused with man in my head far too much. I am sure others do the same for Bach and Mozart. Sure, there are other factors involved too, but I think this is part of the issue.


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

jalex said:


> I think Polednice has a point, one which tackles at least some of the issue at hand. I don't suggest that the Holy Three of Classical music have won their places and retained them entirely through mantra without critical judgement, but if we are to give them a 'place apart' as we often do we are left with the uncomfortable question of where all the 'greatness' floating in the air of Austro-Germany between 1685 and 1827 has gone (or 1883 if you want to stick Wagner in there as well)...


Which is similar to how after 1945, there are no dominating countries in classical music, that is countries of origin of the composers. The old Austro-German hegemony - if there ever was one - vanished. Sure there are and where major figures from that part of the world, but others came from places before not really associated with classical music - eg. a biggie was Xenakis from Greece, but born in Romania, adding yet another "layer" there to his origins, and working for most of his life outside of Greece.

So this idea of "the canon" is spurious. There are many canons, three main ones according to music scholarship. I've talked about this before - pedagogical/teaching, musicological/historical, and performance/repertoire. Of course, we all have our own personal "canons" whether we admit it or not.



> ...
> As a huge Beethoven fan I am well aware that I have let myth be confused with man in my head far too much. I am sure others do the same for Bach and Mozart. Sure, there are other factors involved too, but I think this is part of the issue.


This is as I said a fetishising of music, and a kind of fossilising, museum, shrine building process. Done by various cliques, eg. who I see as extremists. They tend to dominate the discourse. Here, the flagship orchestras literally play their tunes, same things, year in year out. Their audiences are getting older, so with this canonising attitude, it's self-defeating, what happens after these mostly over 65's die? Then what use are these shrines and monuments?

& what you say about not questioning our favourite composers. It's like the rusted on Labor and LIberal (conservative party) voters here. They've voted for the same one party all their lives. It's only the swinging voters who are non-aligned and vote on issues and policies that make a difference in this voting system here. They are like 20 per cent of the total voters. Similar in classical music. It's the non aligned people in the middle that are the future of classical music. But imo in terms of that, I think the people in the middle are in the vast majority, they are far more than 20 per cent of classical listeners, in my experience...


----------



## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Sid James said:


> & what you say about not questioning our favourite composers. It's like the rusted on Labor and LIberal (conservative party) voters here. They've voted for the same one party all their lives. It's only the swinging voters who are non-aligned and vote on issues and policies that make a difference in this voting system here. They are like 20 per cent of the total voters. Similar in classical music. It's the non aligned people in the middle that are the future of classical music. But imo in terms of that, I think the people in the middle are in the vast majority, they are far more than 20 per cent imo...


Skimming though, that's an interesting point though I cannot agree. I think the point is rather spurious because the so called middle-ground-voters here in Australia are a disenchanted bunch with very short memories, and precisely why we have a minority government bent on pleasing minor parties (to keep the minority government in power), so you end up with an inefficient carbon-tax policy for example. Middle-ground can be dangerous at times.


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Stlukes, I partly agree with you and partly disagree with you, so hopefully my response will make my claim to prestigious education more credible. 

Do I honestly believe that Shakespeare (or an 'equivalent' artist) has become mythologised without any critical question? No, I don't think it has been without question, but yes, I do think he has been disproportionately mythologised, just like Bach and others, and it is perpetuated by repetition. I fully accept that Shakespeare & co. laid great foundations that artists for centuries have built upon, and, highbrow and lowbrow, their works have permeated general culture more than anyone else.

_However_, implicit in this eternal praising of their Greatness is the idea that no successive artists can ever be as good, or, if we dare say someone is as good, they certainly won't be hallowed in the same way. We can have countless geniuses and radicals and innovators, but these ancient figures are Immovable Objects. It may well be the case that no successive artists can break as much new ground and lay as many foundations that are subsequently followed, but part of Shake's/Bach's success in this arena is a matter of convenient timing, and it is only one measure of greatness besides. Plus, as I have said elsewhere, the idea of miraculous genius is bunk. I'm sure our species has seen a large number of Bachs since his time and we will continue to do so, we just don't recognise the genius so clearly because we are more contemporary with it and because musical culture is so different.

So, I'm not trying to remove them from the canon or undermine their place within the historical narrative - I fully accept that these individuals potentially/probably hold the greatest positions in the _*historical*_ narrative because of their influence, but that says little of their actual artistic value and I think readers and listeners let it say much more than it should in their appraisals.


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

P.S. I think this potentially comes back to the old question of whether we prefer/value innovation or perfection. Shakespeare, Bach and crew are hailed as divine because they are the Ultimate Innovators - they have influenced people more than any others. But what should we value more? The people with the greatest influence, or the people who perfect and create the more aesthetically pleasing works albeit with modes established by others?


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Polednice said:


> ...
> _However_, implicit in this eternal praising of their Greatness is the idea that no successive artists can ever be as good, or, if we dare say someone is as good, they certainly won't be hallowed in the same way. We can have countless geniuses and radicals and innovators, but these ancient figures are* Immovable Objects*. It may well be the case that no successive artists can break as much new ground and lay as many foundations that are subsequently followed, but part of Shake's/Bach's success in this arena is a matter of convenient timing, and it is only one measure of greatness besides. ...


The "Immovable" aspect is key. The past is important but so is the present. Art is a living thing of today.

Selective viewing of what is "acceptable" and what is not is also limiting, imo. Turn on Classic FM here or go to a flagship symphony concert and most of the times new music is something like Arvo Part or Rautavaara. So living composers can become warhorses as well. & both of these are kind of past their use-by date, imo. To some people here, something like even John Adams, establishment in the USA, is too "lowbrow" and not good enough (eg. drawing on popular culture, tuneful, etc.). But even his stuff is more interesting, and at least something different, than Part & Rautavaara. Not to speak of relatively lesser known composers. I mean ****, people here even walk out of Mahler's 9th or leave before interval if R. Strauss' _Metamorphosen _is coming up. I avoid these flagship groups now because seeing this makes me very angry. These people are inflexible dinosaurs. Their "canon" - & I'm being generous here - stops like at 1900, or maybe even 1800. Some people even see Beethoven's late works as "suspect" and "inaccessible."

As I said, these people building monuments are digging the grave of classical music, they are not good news for the rest of us who don't have these outdated judgements of what art should and shouldn't be...


----------



## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Polednice said:


> P.S. I think this potentially comes back to the old question of whether we prefer/value innovation or perfection. Shakespeare, Bach and crew are hailed as divine because they are the Ultimate Innovators - they have influenced people more than any others. But what should we value more? The people with the greatest influence, or the people who perfect and create the more aesthetically pleasing works albeit with modes established by others?


You can say the same for your favourite, Brahms, can you not? So are you conceding Bach is greater than Brahms?  The part in blue font I sense you are hinting at Brahms, as an example? This comes down to subjective preference, once again. But many here at TC have a hard time fathoming subjective preferences, or at least how it is conveyed.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

However, implicit in this eternal praising of their Greatness is the idea that no successive artists can ever be as good, or, if we dare say someone is as good, they certainly won't be hallowed in the same way. We can have countless geniuses and radicals and innovators, but these ancient figures are Immovable Objects.

But is this true looking at history? Homer, Aeschylus, Virgil, and Dante all precede Shakespeare and had far longer to impact subsequent writers... yet Shakespeare is clearly of their rank. Milton, Tolstoy, Goethe, Cervantes are all certainly not far behind. In the last century we have Kafka, Joyce, Proust, and J.L. Borges (among others). With Proust's character development that rivals and at times surpasses Shakespeare's and his richness of language and setting and internal dialog I suspect that he may eventually enter the same ranks. What of Joyce? I question his accessibility. He seems almost too difficult even for the well-read to continue to be a major figure... although I wouldn't bet against him. But what of Kafka and Borges? Their fragmentary tales, blurring of boundaries between forms, preference for the brief tale, parable, and anecdote has made them precursors to our time in which the epic novel seems out of place. The very term "Kafkaesque" almost defines our last 100+ years... while Borges may eventually be even more influential as the importance of Latin-America and the Spanish-speaking world grows.

It may well be the case that no successive artists can break as much new ground and lay as many foundations that are subsequently followed, but part of Shake's/Bach's success in this arena is a matter of convenient timing, and it is only one measure of greatness besides.

But then are we assuming there have been no such breaks since? Remember that Shakespeare was working in an art form so denigrated that he himself never bothered to attempt to have his plays published... even after he retired and had published several of his poems. The English play, at that time, was not revered as we now revere Shakespeare or Aeschylus or Samuel Beckett. His plays were the equivalent of a screenplay or TV script in our time. Disposable. Yet is it not likely that it will not be Jackson Pollack and William DeKooning who will be seen as the major artists of the mid-20th century, but rather Alfred Hitchcock, Jean Renoir, Kurosawa, Kubrick, Bergman, etc? Is it not also possible that rather than Xenakis or Cage it may just be Ellington, Thelonius Monk, and Miles Davis who survive as the music of our time?

Plus, as I have said elsewhere, the idea of miraculous genius is bunk.

Well... I don't question the existence or occurrence of "genius". Rather than seeing the achievements of Shakespeare or Bach or Michelangelo as some threat to "lesser mortals" (which strikes me as little more than envy), I see their achievements as beacons illuminating what humanity is capable of. The achievements of Bach and Shakespeare and Michelangelo are "superhuman"... but they are also intimately human... the achievements of individual human beings who in many ways were no different than the rest of us.

I'm sure our species has seen a large number of Bachs since his time and we will continue to do so, we just don't recognise the genius so clearly because we are more contemporary with it and because musical culture is so different.

And I have long said as much. Where I have a problem is with those individuals who presume that they alone recognize who is or is not the geniuses of our time.


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> You can say the same for your favourite, Brahms, can you not? So are you conceding Bach is greater than Brahms?  The part in blue font I sense you are hinting at Brahms, as an example? This comes down to subjective preference, once again. But many here at TC have a hard time fathoming subjective preferences, or at least how it is conveyed.


The blue part can indeed apply to Brahms, but my values prefer perfection over innovation, so, to me, Brahms is greater than Bach. 

Sid James, I think you hit the nail on the head with the obvious but too often forgotten point that "art is a living thing of today." That's what I obliquely tried to hit home in my discussions about the importance of the composer. Because of our obsession with creative genius, we build these idols and, once built, it is intellectual heresy to move on. We end up stuck in a rut, and we push and push with new music but it gets harder and harder because everything _truly_ great is considered to be at least a century old. That's why I wish people cared less for the composer and recognised the importance of the _audience_. Although we find ourselves in a new dynamic because of technology allowing individual isolation and private appreciation of the sublime, art is a social phenomenon - it has satirised politics, it has supported the oppressed, it has actively changed societies, and we ought to be supporting the new art of today because, as beautiful as old music is, it is not immediately relevant to our society except in the consumption of beauty.

This is why I have two fundamentally distinct experiences with music depending on what I'm listening to. Although a piece composed in 2011 could be as beautiful as one composed in 1811, I come to them with vastly different intentions. When I listen to Brahms or one of my other beloved Romantics, I am almost indulgently seeking pure aesthetic glory, pleasure and enrichment of my 'soul'. However, when I listen to contemporary music, although I of course wish for it to sound glorious in other ways, the experience is much more focused on engaging with the culture and politics of today, staying relevant with modern art. It's a much more cerebral activity. I think that, in our desire to consume as much simple beauty as possible, we forget that art is a social and intellectual endeavour as well.

/ramble


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Polednice said:


> ...
> Sid James, I think you hit the nail on the head with the obvious but too often forgotten point that "art is a living thing of today." ...Because of our obsession with creative genius, we build these idols and, once built, it is intellectual heresy to move on. We end up stuck in a rut, and we push and push with new music but it gets harder and harder because everything _truly_ great is considered to be at least a century old. That's why I wish people cared less for the composer and recognised the importance of the _audience_...


I am reading a book on music written here (it's recent, about 5 years old) and one of the chapters talk to what you say, embracing the audience (in terms of concert programming). Talk to any musician here and they've had enough of playing the same contemporary music all the time. & same goes with old music, the "warhorses." In a private conversation years ago with a musician in one of our flagship groups, he said either what they play is either old music that's good but everyone knows it already so what's the point, or new music most of which is "dodgy." My words for the latter would be rehash. But whatever your or mine or his words, yes "the audience" as you put it is important. What I mean by that is the majority in the middle ground of the listening spectrum. I'm talking audience of the flagship groups (who I've abandoned now, but anyway).

What I'd extend is the middle ground seems to be stuck between two extremes, as the guy writing that article was alluding to in part -

- The *ultra conservatives *- eg. must have melody, they can't accept even the changes in music that happened like 100 years ago, but of course they like rehash or the "dodgy" stuff, because they've like heard it year in year out for like almost 20 years, maybe more depending where you go here. These people are stuck in about 1900, or maybe before even.

- The *radical progressives *- eg. melody or emotion is "bad," the composer cannot pander to commercial interests, the old "ivory tower" thing. These people continue the Adorno and Arnold Whittall lines of thinking, in post 1945 decades. Whittall even said that Bartok's first three string quartets were better than his last three, as the last three he went back to melody and more traditional counterpoint, etc. some argument like this, basically built on ideology.

What's in common with both these is that they are of the past, their thinking dead as a dodo. They are stuck in a rut as you say. Personally I find the "hard conservative" group more of a worry, as hardly anything more radical than early Schoenberg or things like R. Strauss' _Metamorphosen_ gets played here regularly by the flagships. Maybe a rare premiere of some established Aussie or overseas composer, some of which is good (but it's a case of too little of it), or Berg's_ Violin Concerto _coming up next year. Even this is "adventurous" programming which kind of makes me sad. I mean something from 1930's is "adventurous." Far out, where have we gotten to? Jurassic Park is where I am, basically, that's what I sometimes think, as regards to the flagship groups at least, they were doing better things when the late Stuart Challender was around, but he died in the early 1990's...


----------



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

If you've never been so moved by a composer's work that you want to sing their praises over everyone else, I genuinely feel sorry for you. Not only is being so level-headed keeping you from releasing yourself into true passion, but its just so ******* boring.


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

^^FALSE DICHOTOMY ALERT there guys...

I will not throw things in your face, suffice to say that I can easily reverse your false dichotomy, and give you another one equally dodgy in return.

But I'm trying not to play these children's games, in that case, I'd rather listen to Debussy _Golliwog's Cake Walk_ (part of his _Children's Corner Suite_, dedicated to his daughter who _was_ a child), in which he clearly takes the p*ss out of the _Tristan_ chord & all the pretension associated with it...Voila!...


----------



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

You're King Marke, betrayed by a passion you will never know or understand; you wander aimlessly from composer to composer, period to period but never experiencing the transcendence... enjoy the music of 1000 composers if you will BUT YOU'LL NEVER HAVE WHAT WAGNER AND I HAVE!


----------



## Rapide (Oct 11, 2011)

Sid James said:


> I am reading a book on music written here (it's recent, about 5 years old) and one of the chapters talk to what you say, embracing the audience (in terms of concert programming). Talk to any musician here and they've had enough of playing the same contemporary music all the time. & same goes with old music, the "warhorses." In a private conversation years ago with a musician in one of our flagship groups, he said either what they play is either old music that's good but everyone knows it already so what's the point, or new music most of which is "dodgy." My words for the latter would be rehash. But whatever your or mine or his words, yes "the audience" as you put it is important. What I mean by that is the majority in the middle ground of the listening spectrum. I'm talking audience of the flagship groups (who I've abandoned now, but anyway).
> 
> What I'd extend is the middle ground seems to be stuck between two extremes, as the guy writing that article was alluding to in part -
> 
> ...


Hi Sid James, I think you prefer to judge other people more than listening to music. Please don't take this bad, this is how many of your posts come across - judging other people.


----------



## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

This debate is essentially the same one that the New Criterion crowd is having with the Ivory Towers of today-- the question of the Canon and its merits, aesthetic relativism, the inegalitarian distribution of "greatness" geographically and temporally (I consider my top ten list, which is almost exclusively Austrian-German, not only the top ten "classical composers" but simply the top ten greatest musicians since the dawn of civilization as we know it, no supremacist traces here though, I'm Asian). What is at stake here involves the broadest things, and I doubt it will be settled here.

The order of rank, the hierarchy inherent in all things, has been disputed, attacked, 
and eventually torn down in the social consciousness.

Let me sprinkle this thread with some of the wisdom of G.K. Chesterton.

"It is only with one aspect of humility that we are here concerned. Humility was largely meant as a restraint upon the arrogance and infinity of the appetite of man. He was always outstripping his mercies with his own newly invented needs. His very power of enjoyment destroyed half his joys. By asking for pleasure, he lost the chief pleasure; for the chief pleasure is surprise. Hence it became evident that if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small. Even the haughty visions, the tall cities, and the toppling pinnacles are the creations of humility. Giants that tread down forests like grass are the creations of humility. Towers that vanish upwards above the loneliest star are the creations of humility. For towers are not tall unless we look up at them; and giants are not giants unless they are larger than we. All this gigantesque imagination, which is, perhaps, the mightiest of the pleasures of man, is at bottom entirely humble. It is impossible without humility to enjoy anything-even pride.

But what we suffer from to-day is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert-himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt-the Divine Reason. Huxley preached a humility content to learn from Nature. But the new sceptic is so humble that he doubts if he can even learn. Thus we should be wrong if we had said hastily that there is no humility typical of our time. The truth is that there is a real humility typical of our time; but it so happens that it is practically a more poisonous humility than the wildest prostrations of the ascetic. The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping; not a nail in his boot that prevented him from going on. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether."

That peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself. Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought. It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, *"Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?" The young sceptic says, "I have a right to think for myself." But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, "I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all."*

The greatness of a work of art is axiomatic; there are simply some truths that cannot be explained, not even pragmatically (as the sciences are, yes, they are only in truth pragmatically, not absolutely, read your Rorty and Kuhn and Heidegger), but should never be questioned; let this be said, if Bach's genius is mere "opinion", and my love of his music is mere "preference" and equal in metaphysical value to the love of that metalheads or punks have for their idols, then humanity has no value. If Bach and Wagner are mere "accidents", then let mere anarchy be loosened upon the world and swallow up all that is held sacred. If they are not sacred, nothing is.

I hide behind no hyperboles.

Merry Christmas folks.

People judge music, and other people by their judgments of the same music; people in turn judge those people who judge, and those people are judged by the original people who judged music as judgmental with regards to people. Then someone else plays the Neutral Representative from the UN - "it's just opinions folks", which in turn is meta-judging.

Liberalism, with its contradictions and compromises, existed for Donoso Cortés only in that short interim period *in which it was possible to answer the question "Christ or Barabbas?" with a proposal to adjourn or appoint a commission of investigation*. - Carl Schmitt

Bach or the Beatles? The eternal question.


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Ah, that's a bad interpretation, _Rapide_. _Sid_ is no more judgmental than any other member here. He is, unfortunately, more than ordinarily sensitive to what he perceives as other people's criticism of his judgement.

Opinions are opinions, _Sid_, and it may be that yours and _Rapide_'s shall never meet. This is not a big deal. _DrMike_'s opinions don't mesh with mine very often, but that doesn't keep me awake at night, and I doubt if it bothers him either. (He is comfortably wrong, and I am happily right.)


----------



## Rapide (Oct 11, 2011)

Hilltroll72 said:


> Ah, that's a bad interpretation, _Rapide_. _Sid_ is no more judgmental than any other member here. He is, unfortunately, more than ordinarily sensitive to what he perceives as other people's criticism of his judgement.
> 
> Opinions are opinions, _Sid_, and it may be that yours and _Rapide_'s shall never meet. This is not a big deal. _DrMike_'s opinions don't mesh with mine very often, but that doesn't keep me awake at night, and I doubt if it bothers him either. (He is comfortably wrong, and I am happily right.)


I see. Thanks. But you might like to know that i am new member here and so not know the history of kind members. So I only read posts recently by them to conclude my opinions. Of course, I may be wrong.


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Rapide said:


> Hi Sid James, I think you prefer to judge other people more than listening to music. Please don't take this bad, this is how many of your posts come across - judging other people.


Well I do get emotional but I'm just speaking from experience.

I'm not dredging up writers of decades ago, some of whom are dead. I refer to more recent things I've read and conversations with real people about music here. I admit my bias, which is basically for plurality and against inflexible/hardened dogmas or ideologies, new ways of thinking, more holistic, etc. I HATE false dichotomies, it's lazy thinking amongst other things, failure to address core issues in a debate, etc.

I'm not against the various canons, but I am against outdated and reductionist views of them. I think that the fossilising museum approach is not good for classical music of today or tommorrow. I think the "grand narratives" approach of looking at the history of the creative arts are only one way of looking at it, there are a number of equally valid ways. I'm not an expert on these but I am aware of the basic trends and strands of thought regarding these.

I do like strong opinions, the writers on music who I connect with the most do give strong opinions which they personally own & don't shirk back from admitting this, but at the same time they are in touch with the thinking of 2011, not just 1961 or 1911, and they have an eye on the facts or wide consensus when giving these opinions, whether they're controversial or not. So I'm not against strong opinions, but I like it if people own their opinions and give a solid argument, not just shielding themselves with their fetishes or shields, etc. The people who resort to the latter more often than not are the monument builders and worshippers at various altars & shrines, etc. So they're biased just as I am, I have various "takes" on things like the next person, but at least I admit it, or try to as most as is reasonable...


----------



## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Boys and gals. Let's just sit back and enjoy a divine piece of music by Bach, suitable for this time of the year. The opening of Bach's _Magnificat_. *This is divine music*. And folks who dislike it; well, I frankly feel sorry for them. 

Nicholas Harnoncourt with a period instrument band. Enjoy!


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Rapide said:


> I see. Thanks. But you might like to know that i am new member here and so not know the history of kind members. So I only read posts recently by them to conclude my opinions. Of course, I may be wrong.


In other words, you _rapidely_ jump to false conclusions.  Leave Sid alone!

I'll be back with some responses after breakfast! OM nom nom!


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I don't really know, but my experience in other fields leads me to suspect that there is a threshold of superlative genius beyond which comparisons are in vain. If so, I'd guess that several dozen composers exist there in addition to the big 3, who owe their unique status among the geniuses to historical factors.


----------



## Eviticus (Dec 8, 2011)

brianwalker said:


> Bach or the Beatles? The eternal question.


The Beatles all the way!! Excluding every Ringo song outside 'Yellow Submarine' of course... but then again, even with.


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

So, a little later than anticipated:

*Stlukes*, on your first point (Homer, Virgil, Kafka, Proust etc.), I think this depends on how narrow our audience is. If we start with a well-informed, literature-loving audience, then I believe that people will not only see all these authors as equals, but also actually incomparable. However, the wider you make your audience, the less this is the case. Widen it slightly and Aeschylus won't feature in the general consciousness. Widen it a little more, and no one knows who Cervantes was. Many only know of Kafka because of the term "Kafkaesque" which you used. And what we are eventually left with in the public consciousness is not far from Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE! And I'm not just picking on people with little interest in literature - this is a problem that manifests itself in our education system. Throughout school, Shakespeare is the archetypal heroic author, unrivalled by all others in our culture (of course, no authors from other cultures are even mentioned). Throw in a bit of Dickens and _Frankenstein_ to stave off the monotony and that's the young adult's picture of literary history. This is an approach that self-perpetuates and leaves us hero worshipping. I realise that my ideas are unfair for some audiences, it just depends on how narrow an audience we are considering in the first place.

I too would be suspicious of anyone who claims to know the geniuses of our time, but this is because I think the whole idea of genius is a concept we should move away from. There is a workable definition of genius that I accept, but I don't think it is necessarily genius that we should _value_. What we should value is art that engages and shapes the world, whether it is made by the hand of an ordinary or an extraordinary person.

I agree with your other points, especially about approaching artistic achievements as beacons of human capabilities.

*Brain*, I shall just take you up on your own initial paragraph as I am not in the mood for reading G. K. Chesterton. This is a peculiar claim to say the least:

"I consider my top ten list, which is almost exclusively Austrian-German, not only the top ten "classical composers" but simply the top ten greatest musicians since the dawn of civilization as we know it."

This comes back to a point I was making in another thread which you probably haven't seen. Is that statement meant to be "the best since the dawn of civilization _for me and my tastes_", or "I know so much about all music since the dawn of civilization that I feel confident in asserting somewhat objectively that these are the best musicians of all time"? I'll let you answer that before I continue.


----------



## hocket (Feb 21, 2010)

Couchie said:


> If you've never been so moved by a composer's work that you want to sing their praises over everyone else, I genuinely feel sorry for you. Not only is being so level-headed keeping you from releasing yourself into true passion, but its just so ******* boring.


You're being self indulgent here. Presuming that Sid is pusillanimous beause he knows better than to sing someone's praises to the skies doesn't mean that he doesn't feel the urge to do so. Indeed I'm sure that pretty much everyone who goes to the trouble to post on this site does so out of a genuine love for music and a desire to talk about that passion.

The error that someone like brianwalker is making here is in presuming that any attacks on the Canon are necessarily part of some post-structuralist world view. That's simply not the case. One doesn't have to reject value judgements or the belief that someone can be better at something than someone else. There are those who reject the concept of a canon entirely though I don't see how we can practically do so. There are also those who, as frank Kermode observed, wish to capture the canon and replace a list of dead white european males with one of disabled women from ethnic minorities. Personally I don't hold any truck with either approach. I do however think that the canon is a dangerous tool that can cause some of the things that Polednice has observed. I also believe that the Romantic ideology, an ideology that I would presume that all of us were raised in to a greater or lesser degree, encourages a heroized vision of the artist. The artist as hero. This is of course the opposite of how things were viewed in medieval times. In Renaissance times the idea of the 'genius' existed but meant nothing like what it meant to the Romantics -gifted craftsmen were possessed of 'a genius' rather than being viewed as some kind of superhuman. The absurdity of the Romantic view is frequently played out on these boards with the focus on the man rather than the music. A classic example is the Mozart/Beethoven bitchfests where invariably someone starts arguing that had it not been for some misfortune their favourite would've composed a whole bunch more music that's even more amazing which would've put their supremacy beyond question. The discussion has moved onto the talent ('greatness') of the individual rather than the quality of the actual music -it has become sheer idolatry. Personally I think we need to have a more balanced view of the canon.

I thought jhar26 made a very good point earlier. In the past people have tended to buy vast collections of 'the greats' on the basis that they are 'geniuses' and others aren't. As a result people have collections featuring every note Mozart or Haydn ever wrote even if it was some dreadful commission for someone they hated that they doodled whilst sitting on the crapper. By contrast other composers who were at the top of their profession in their day were totally ignored because they lack this supposed superhuman quality. People used to have literally none of their music. This was partly explained by the idea that you obtained the works in between the masterpieces by the greats in order to understand the artist -as if getting to 'know' the 'great man' were actually the object of the whole shebang rather than actually listening to good music. I can't help but feel that this is a prison created by the Romantic ideology and one that is highly questionable -is the gap between the canonical composers and their rivals really so great?

I don't deny that you can get a fuller picture of someone's music and what they were trying to do by delving deeper into their ouevre but the idea that you do so at the expense of listening to music by lesser known composers whose music may be nearly or even as good as the best of 'the greats' strikes me as folly.

Music is also the most distorted of canons. It is the artistic canon that has been most distorted by fashion and is historically very weird. Unlike the other arts music remained at the mercy of fashion until the nineteenth century and people would be influenced by the generation before them and by nothing else and older stuff would simply fade away (and even performance practices were lost). So we got a canon of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven with Handel thrown in thanks to his peculiar status in Britain and Bach largely thanks to the fame of his sons and the popularity of his keyboard works for educational purposes and that was what was built on. We got a canon that only went back to about 1710. This contrasted pretty strongly with the other arts in the western tradition where we look all the way back to Phidias and Homer and had already done so since the fifteenth century at least. So we get those who have a 'top ten' made up entirely of 'austro-germans'. Of course people are entitled to their opinions but I personally find it hard to believe that in a tradition of written music going back to at least the twelfth century that all of the best stuff could really come from within a two hundred year stretch.


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Great post, hocket.


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Polednice said:


> Great post, hocket.


I like the sense of it, but... it is of course too long.


----------



## Artemis (Dec 8, 2007)

Hilltroll72 said:


> I like the sense of it, but... it is of course too long.


A possibly useful ploy when time time is pressing is to take the text of a long post, slot it into a "Word" document, go to Tools/autosummarise, and a nice little summary is done for you.

Sometimes this procedure produces nonsense by selecting all the wrong sentences, but on the hand it's sometimes a case of "rubbish-in/rubbish-out", and the poor computer can't make head nor tail of the original.

I must say that whenever I see a post more than about half a page long I'm often dis-inclined to read it, except my own of course.


----------



## hocket (Feb 21, 2010)

Whilst I appreciate that long posts can be a bit of a drag (especially to write!), if you do have something to say a soundbite isn't always going to do the job. It's not as if reading posts on the forum is compulsory.


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

hocket said:


> Whilst I appreciate that long posts can be a bit of a drag (especially to write!), if you do have something to say a soundbite isn't always going to do the job. It's not as if reading posts on the forum is compulsory.


Yeah. And if you go back and pare the message down to the minimum that conveys the thought, it is unbearably terse. Forum posts need to be treated as sides of a conversation, in order to fit the, ah, atmosphere.


----------



## TresPicos (Mar 21, 2009)

hocket said:


> I don't deny that you can get a fuller picture of someone's music and what they were trying to do by delving deeper into their ouevre but the idea that you do so at the expense of listening to music by lesser known composers whose music may be nearly or even as good as the best of 'the greats' strikes me as folly.


But there are only so many hours in a day! 

I clearly listen to music by lesser known composers at the expense of delving deeper into the ouevres of composers I already know, even my favorite ones. And I listen again and again to my favorite classical works at the expense of listening to lesser known composers. So, maybe I will get around to some more Bach at the retirement home. And then, maybe I will realize that he was the greatest all along...


----------



## Rapide (Oct 11, 2011)

hocket said:


> Presuming that Sid is pusillanimous beause he knows better than to sing someone's praises to the skies doesn't mean that he doesn't feel the urge to do so. Indeed I'm sure that pretty much everyone who goes to the trouble to post on this site does so out of a genuine love for music and a desire to talk about that passion.
> 
> .


Of course. But i am a new member, and for example Mr Sid james' post description of "radical progressive" could be applied to casual readers who enjoy modern art music, e.g. me, which is what i prefer to listen to. Your suggestion of genuine love for music did not appear so in Mr SJames' post where he judged other people. Please read the post again - *it's about judgement of other people* (his judgement opinion). I am sorry if I might misunderstand (English is not my 1st language), and of course I might be wrong.


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Perhaps ironically, Mr. James's post was actually a description of _listeners_ who are judgemental.


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I agree with Hocket, we are all here, or most of us, because of our passion of music as well as other things.

So what Couchie said here -



Couchie said:


> You're King Marke, betrayed by a passion you will never know or understand; *you wander aimlessly from composer to composer,* period to period but never experiencing the transcendence... enjoy the music of 1000 composers if you will *BUT YOU'LL NEVER HAVE WHAT WAGNER AND I HAVE!*


What I bolded is close to the truth. I don't wander aimlessly, I plan to see the big picture. But I have told people here that I'm not systematic, if lack of a clear system or rationale is what you mean/see as being aimless. I pay tribute to those people. & it's true I will never get to the heart of Wagner, not as close as you or whatever, but it's because he doesn't interest me, basically. & I listened to his music since childhood, my parents listened to his stuff. & many others. Most rubbed off one me more or less, but Wagner not that much. Until recently, similar with J.S. Bach, but I have rectified that a bit, gone "back to Bach" as many people seem to do.

I won't go further as I've said what I've said. I also don't want to be hit by a barrage canons of all kinds, incl. people presenting their own canons, and other things I'm not exactly excited by and don't see to be that relevant to the matters at hand, at least with some deal of relevance to the opening post.

AS for listeners that I said or judged to be stuck in like 1911 or 1811 etc., there is nothing wrong with that. I have a friend who says the most he can take up to, speaking generally of the classical, is 19th century. But he just says that's where he's at, and I'm not there in terms of my taste, I'm all over the place, but mainly after 1800 till now is my area of most interest/focus. But we both understand where we're at, not try to change the other, etc. That's what I'm saying, for people to admit their preference, bias, etc. and not try to kind of build these ideologies based on that and claim it to be better or whatever than my ideology which is what I explained above, about things relevant to me now, today...


----------



## hocket (Feb 21, 2010)

Rapide said:


> Mr Sid james' post description of "radical progressive" could be applied to casual readers who enjoy modern art music, e.g. me, which is what i prefer to listen to. Your suggestion of genuine love for music did not appear so in Mr SJames' post where he judged other people. Please read the post again - *it's about judgement of other people* (his judgement opinion). I am sorry if I might misunderstand (English is not my 1st language), and of course I might be wrong.


I'm afraid that you have misunderstood. This thread is about attitudes to music so what Sid was discussing was appropriate. His description wasn't of casual lovers of modern art music but of those who use their own tastes to define what is and is not 'good'. Whilst its always hard to escape our own prejudices there is a danger that building up a theoretical dogma based solely around our own tastes will merely serve as self justification. It's basically the opposite of keeping an open mind.

BTW, my earlier post had absolutely nothing to do with your remarks about the beloved Carry On actor.


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Sid James said:


> AS for listeners that I said or judged to be stuck in like 1911 or 1811 etc., there is nothing wrong with that. I have a friend who says the most he can take up to, speaking generally of the classical, is 19th century. But he just says that's where he's at, and I'm not there in terms of my taste, I'm all over the place, but mainly after 1800 till now is my area of most interest/focus. But we both understand where we're at, not try to change the other, etc. That's what I'm saying, for people to admit their preference, bias, etc. and not try to kind of build these ideologies based on that and claim it to be better or whatever than my ideology which is what I explained above, about things relevant to me now, today...


Speaking generally, I think it would be very healthy for the listening community to accept more widely that personal tastes change. With such an intense subject as art, it's so easy to feel that your passions at any one moment are supreme and unchangeable, but they do change. I'm only 21, and my tastes - and indeed my ideals - have changed _immeasurably_ in the past few years. In some cases even taking a complete U-turn. Thankfully, the knowledge of this opens my eyes to a greater deal of uncertainty about my feelings in 1, 5, 10 years time, and so I try to keep an open mind (without letting my brains fall out  ).


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

^^You're right, I'm not listening to what I was 10 years ago. Or not exactly the same things. In past few years, I've heard a lot more unknown things (to me) than in the last say 20 years before. I've also returned to things I thought I didn't value that much (eg. J.S. Bach). But I build upon, not destroy what I had/thought in the past. I did a big cull 10 years ago, culled like most of my recordings collection, now I find I'm getting the same works on cd, that I had on tape, vinyl, etc. The past is past, I can regret that cull or move on. There was a part of that being a kind of renewal and jettisoning aspects of the/my past. Getting rid of deadwood. But of course, it's how I see things, not necessarily what they intrinsically are.

In a word we all change some ways, differently. For some it's evolution (I think I'm like that now), for others it's revolution (I was kind of attempting to do that with that big cull, but it wasn't as I thought, in some things I've come full circle). Canons and repertoires I see as the same, they change through time...


----------



## Rapide (Oct 11, 2011)

hocket said:


> I'm afraid that you have misunderstood. This thread is about attitudes to music so what Sid was discussing was appropriate. His description wasn't of casual lovers of modern art music but of those who use their own tastes to define what is and is not 'good'. Whilst its always hard to escape our own prejudices there is a danger that building up a theoretical dogma based solely around our own tastes will merely serve as self justification. It's basically the opposite of keeping an open mind.
> 
> BTW, my earlier post had absolutely nothing to do with your remarks about the beloved Carry On actor.


I read Sid James's post again. For example, this comment below still reed me as a nagative opinion of classical music listeners. actually the part that got me a little confused was his views on "radical progressive". I am on musical art group to promote modern art music in my city, so I would actually careful with words chosen because not many readers might come share an understanding with the same intention of meaning.

In any case, if I have misunderstood your quote or anyone else's quotes, my apologies. But I would only encourage a more careful choice of words in an internationale public forum. I don't think its polite to call people 'dead" (or their thinking is dead).



Sid James said:


> What's in common with both these is that they are of the past, their thinking dead as a dodo. They are stuck in a rut as you say. .


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

^^ Well apologies rapide if my English is not clear or maybe that was too strong language, etc.

But at least I am expressing an opinion and backing it up with experience. Stay long enough around here and you'll see there's quite a bit of what I see as infantile (childish) behaviour, but from a small minority of members. Eg. jokes which aim to put down certain composers in no uncertain terms and also in some rare cases, these people judging others for enjoying this type of music. Or putting down people by making assumptions about their taste, experience, attitude toward certain types of music (of course, they don't do it out in the open, they do it undercover of objectivity or whatever).

I'm not deflecting. Of course to get things down on a screen I have to do some reductionist thinking, otherwise there'd be no end to my qualifications and self-questioning, etc.

But as I said, I dislike lazy thinking and false dichotomies, etc. Maybe it's not a matter, necessarily, of such people I disagree with or whose attitude I dislike as being "dead as a dodo" as I said. But more them not being able to think beyond certain stereotypes of various things, be they composers or people who like or don't like these composers, etc...


----------



## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Polednice said:


> The parodies in the OP weren't supposed to represent anyone here as I think this is a more general issue, but it doesn't surprise me that some of you identify with them.
> 
> I think there is a lot of truth in Couchie's comment that to say you dislike Bach seems to be a declaration of your own stupidity. Even within the classical community - people who can perhaps be given some credit for not blindly following modern commercial music - people look down on those who have a greater interest in the Romantic period. However, as a truly devoted listener, I will proudly state that I dislike Bach, I generally dislike Baroque, and I'm a _huge_ lover of the melodrama of the Romantic period! Does that make me stupid? No. I just have different aesthetic ideals.
> 
> My main problem is that this whole idea of the Holy Trinity (Bach/Mozart/Beethoven) seems to be a successful meme simply by repetition. Everyone says they're the best, so everyone thinks they're the best, and everyone who's led to think they're the best in turn say they're the best _etc. etc._ So you end up with a situation where people whose favourites might be Schubert, Brahms, Schumann, Debussy, Ravel - take your pick of any non-Trinity big-name composers - are asked about the Greatest composers in polls or whatever and simply say Bach/Mozart/Beethoven by default even if they devote little time to their music and get little enjoyment from it.


It's because they want to conform you know. If they say they don'tlike Bach they will probably be cut down by a deluge of great know ledge (?) by somebody like Brian Walker.


----------



## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Polednice said:


> Speaking generally, I think it would be very healthy for the listening community to accept more widely that personal tastes change. With such an intense subject as art, it's so easy to feel that your passions at any one moment are supreme and unchangeable, but they do change. I'm only 21, and my tastes - and indeed my ideals - have changed _immeasurably_ in the past few years. In some cases even taking a complete U-turn. Thankfully, the knowledge of this opens my eyes to a greater deal of uncertainty about my feelings in 1, 5, 10 years time, and so I try to keep an open mind (without letting my brains fall out  ).


My goodness you're sounding jolly reasonable today--Don't let your standards drop !


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

moody said:


> My goodness you're sounding jolly reasonable today--Don't let your standards drop !


My musical rationality has certainly improved over time as well - I saw an old post of mine yesterday and thought: "Polednice! How could you say something so terrible?!"


----------



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Reading the posts in this thread may be influencing my reading comprehension. The last two mornings I have read the thread title as "Bach's Lividity".


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

moody said:


> It's because they want to conform you know...


I agree. Humans like conformity, which is fine to a degree, eg. there are norms and laws in each society to hold it together and make it function.

Like the rules of this forum. But there is no rule on this forum, on other online forums, or in real life for any classical listener to listen to anything, or to not to listen to anything. Everything's up for grabs, everything's up for debate, etc. If someone has a fetish or sacred cow, I'm fine with that, as long as they don't expect me to have these.

But of course there are unwritten "rules" or more accurately unexposed ways of thinking which can be highly biased but appear "objective." That's where my old hobby horse of ideology comes in...


----------



## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

Hmmm... So, this thread is basically a regurgitation of every other Bach discussion before, I guess. You try and bring up the organists from France, but this merits five pages...


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Lukecash12 said:


> Hmmm... So, this thread is basically a regurgitation of every other Bach discussion before, I guess. You try and bring up the organists from France, but this merits five pages...


If I would have made this thread myself, I would have avoided focussing on Bach, but on composer cults, fetishists in general. But Polednice made that choice, which I think is apt in light of what is my experience, esp. on another forum I left ages ago. But here to an extent as well, though it's not as prevalent now. What I talked about, eg. one person, or a group/clique of people, taking the high ground in terms of their "superior" taste or ability as listeners, etc. because they like certain composers I don't. Or more accurately, glorify and worship various composers, but I don't do that, it's fine for them if they want that though, just don't force it on others.

Believe me, there is a groundswell or backlash against this type of thing here. A few members have contacted me by PM about this, but we are not a clique. I have backlashed against another member here whose attitude I esp. find objectionable. He's not the only one. But now for me better to put this kind of person on my ignore list so I won't do a backlash and possibly be banned myself. I am very impulsive and emotional, I find it hard to hold myself back when I am insulted, even indirectly, things thrown in my face, etc...


----------

