# "All old music was modern once"...discussion...



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

*"All old music was modern once, and much more of the music of yesterday already sounds more old-fashioned than works which were written three centuries ago."*

Discuss this quote, maybe giving examples of music to support your thoughts & opinions?

This was said by Peter Warlock (real name: Philip Heseltine), British composer, critic, musicologist (1894-1930).

[Source: article on Peter Warlock by Calum MacDonald in BBC Music Magazine, December 2011.]


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## Rasa (Apr 23, 2009)

Difference is that old music used to be composed per contract.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

The thing is, the huge population of grey-haired conservative listeners that don't even want to understand the compositions being written today are listening to more Schubert than Stockhausen. In Schubert's day (in his "Schubertiads") there would have been people listening to more Schubert than Schutz. What my point is, the amount of music that people can get their heads around is more accessible (gosh I hate that word) than music people _can't_ get their heads around. Go back 200 or 300 years and people would warmly welcome new music, but now, when my compositions are performed for example, people say "Yeah ... it was ... interesting ..." when I ask for their opinion. People need to get their brains to appreciate modern art. They certainly could 300 years ago so why not learn how to now?


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

All old music was once _contemporary_, but there are obviously certain judgements buried in that use of the word "modern". Is it supposed to mean unfamiliarly new? If so, then I don't think old music was _as_ "modern" as much new music is today. People wrote under the influence of patrons and seemingly stringent compositional rules. It allowed them to develop their craftsmanship, but within a narrow band of style. Not many composers, from birth to death, exhibited the kind of change that Beethoven did. Instead, many composers essentially sounded the same throughout their lives, they just increasingly became more compact, coherent, more to the point, more ingenious generally. But within this sameness means that they weren't pushing for new sounds.

I think the quote, given its context, must be getting at early 20th century Romanticism sounding pastiche? Maybe it does, but then I would move onto the more fundamental question of whether we should value endless newness.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Polednice said:


> All old music was once _contemporary_, but there are obviously certain judgements buried in that use of the word "modern". Is it supposed to mean unfamiliarly new? If so, then I don't think old music was _as_ "modern" as much new music is today. People wrote under the influence of patrons and seemingly stringent compositional rules. It allowed them to develop their craftsmanship, but within a narrow band of style. Not many composers, from birth to death, exhibited the kind of change that Beethoven did. Instead, many composers essentially sounded the same throughout their lives, they just increasingly became more compact, coherent, more to the point, more ingenious generally. But within this sameness means that they weren't pushing for new sounds.
> 
> I think the quote, given its context, must be getting at early 20th century Romanticism sounding pastiche? *Maybe it does, but then I would move onto the more fundamental question of whether we should value endless newness.*


Answer to the question: yes we should. As long as we manage to fit in all that old stuff now and again.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Polednice said:


> I think the quote, given its context, must be getting at early 20th century Romanticism sounding pastiche? Maybe it does, but then I would move onto the more fundamental question of whether we should value endless newness.


the quote simply means that beauty does not depends on how much music in a certain time is considered modern. Often composers and listeners of avantgarde are obsessioned by modernity as a concept more than in the beauty of a piece.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> The thing is, the huge population of grey-haired conservative listeners that don't even want to understand the compositions being written today are listening to more Schubert than Stockhausen. In Schubert's day (in his "Schubertiads") there would have been people listening to more Schubert than Schutz. What my point is, the amount of music that people can get their heads around is more accessible (gosh I hate that word) than music people _can't_ get their heads around. Go back 200 or 300 years and people would warmly welcome new music, but now, when my compositions are performed for example, people say "Yeah ... it was ... interesting ..." when I ask for their opinion. People need to get their brains to appreciate modern art. They certainly could 300 years ago so why not learn how to now?


Because this is a wrong idea; if after a century certain things are still considered ugly maybe it's not just a problem of conservative listeners, maybe is a problem of a composition that is not musically successful.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> The thing is, the huge population of grey-haired conservative listeners that don't even want to understand the compositions being written today are listening to more Schubert than Stockhausen. In Schubert's day (in his "Schubertiads") there would have been people listening to more Schubert than Schutz. What my point is, the amount of music that people can get their heads around is more accessible (gosh I hate that word) than music people _can't_ get their heads around. Go back 200 or 300 years and people would warmly welcome new music, but now, when my compositions are performed for example, people say "Yeah ... it was ... interesting ..." when I ask for their opinion. People need to get their brains to appreciate modern art. They certainly could 300 years ago so why not learn how to now?


Because all possible styles are not equally appreciable.



ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Answer to the question: yes we should. As long as we manage to fit in all that old stuff now and again.


Wrong.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

by the way, Warlock wasn't a conservative. He was in the twenties an admirer of composers like Bela Bartok and Bernard Van Dieren (who now is not well known but he was a modernist and considered a genius by Warlock and other musicians of the time), but also of the elizabethan music. Just to put things in the right perspective.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

The problem I have with a lot of older music is that it was written to entertain a conservative audience of aristocratic types, and royalty. Thankfully Beethoven came along and got a bit more daring. But for my ears much of the 18th-19th century music is too polite and consonant. Of course there's a lot of great stuff too. 

"All old music was modern once" is most likely untrue. Every era has its composers of derivative music.


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## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

There's some music which just doesn't age. To me, the are moments in the Beethoven string quartets and piano sonatas which will never sound less than modern. I find that fascinating.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

DavidMahler said:


> There's some music which just doesn't age. To me, the are moments in the Beethoven string quartets and piano sonatas which will never sound less than modern. I find that fascinating.


That's the only Beethoven I can get interested in anymore.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

starthrower said:


> The problem I have with a lot of older music is that it was written to entertain a conservative audience of aristocratic types, and royalty. Thankfully Beethoven came along and got a bit more daring. But for my ears much of the 18th-19th century music is too polite and consonant. Of course there's a lot of great stuff too.
> 
> "All old music was modern once" is most likely untrue. Every era has its composers of derivative music.


If by 'polite' you mean music neither startling nor disturbing, I agree that there was more of that in those centuries than nowadays. Of course some of that non-startling/disturbing music was very pleasant on the ear, and - regardless of the 'quality' of the intended audience - that consideration was apparently more important during those centuries than it is now.

The target of being 'pleasing on the ear' might be aimed for by more modern composers if their efforts were not likely to be termed 'derivative' (or worse) by their critics. There is a place in my music collection for POTE music, modern or otherwise.

[Another 'of course' - some music that is POTE for me wouldn't be for a Mozartean audience.]


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

starthrower said:


> The problem I have with a lot of older music is that it was written to entertain a conservative audience of aristocratic types, and royalty. Thankfully Beethoven came along and got a bit more daring. But for my ears much of the 18th-19th century music is too polite and consonant. Of course there's a lot of great stuff too.
> 
> "All old music was modern once" is most likely untrue. Every era has its composers of derivative music.


I think the first part of your post is kind of an assumption and a generalization, and a bit of a judgement on the social classes of people producing the music - more so than a judgement on the quality of the music itself - almost as if you are trying to not like this music based on the circumstances you assume all of it was written under. For example I feel Bach wrote music to glorify something greater than any one person first and foremost. I feel there were many composers expressing incredibly deep concepts back then musically and to just pigeon hole all music pre-Beethoven in such a way just isn't really fair or accurate. Secondly, I think Bach's music was criticized as perhaps being derivative in its time - yet I don't think many (if any) later composers have matched the quality of his artistic statements to this day. Ultimately I really don't think everything about being a great composer is about being novel as many are starting to feel nowadays - its just one aspect of music but in of itself says nothing about the quality of the actual music. I think one could twist it around and point out that Beethoven was one of the pioneers of a more selfish kind of music in a way - more about expressing whatever it is _he was personally feeling at the time_. Western society places a lot of importance on the individual, so its not surprising that Beethoven has become a heroic figure of sorts. Yet some could point out that a lot of people's attitudes towards music may have lost something important post-Beethoven - as it seemed to start a trend towards less importance being placed on the composer expressing things greater than individualistic emotions.


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## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

starthrower said:


> That's the only Beethoven I can get interested in anymore.


I pretty much agree. It's the final chamber and piano works that are rewarding even after the 50th time you've heard them. It's as if they were their own genre. I would add the Archduke Trio maybe to the very small list.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

tdc said:


> [...]
> Yet some could point out that a lot of people's attitudes towards music may have lost something important post-Beethoven - as it seemed to start a trend towards less importance being placed on the composer expressing things greater than individualistic emotions.


What 'things greater' do you have in mind? Not saying there aren't any... but with a few nationalistic or patently religious exceptions, I don't know what they are.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I agree with what you are saying here, and just to be clear, I didn't say all music of that era. And I do enjoy Bach's music. The small amount that I've actually listened to I've always enjoyed. I'm not disputing the invention and creativity of composers such as Mozart, Hadyn, Schubert, but the sound of it never appealed to me.

Call it selfish if you like, but I'm glad Beethoven chose to go his own way and not be a conformist and appeaser. You can look at this issue from a modern perspective concerning the 20th century when artists who appeased tyrannical regimes like the Nazis were heavily criticized.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

starthrower said:


> "All old music was modern once" is most likely untrue. Every era has its composers of derivative music.


but the sense is that even what once was modern in the long time is no more modern. Bach was considered surpassed in his time, and still we listen his music after centuries. So innovation is important only in a relative way (i don't mean that is not important).


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Hilltroll72 said:


> What 'things greater' do you have in mind? Not saying there aren't any... but with a few nationalistic or patently religious exceptions, I don't know what they are.


Hehe. This is a good question that I think to save us all time I can make these disclaimers - my response to starthrower's post was a generalization that was a twist on the generalization that was brought up in their post. I think saying much beyond this is opening a can of worms and risks derailing this thread into a drawn out debate about the nature of spirituality and/or the Bach vs. Beethoven thread both of which seem equally pointless to me right now.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

An interesting discussion, guys. Thanks for your insights. All above board and done politely, which is an added bonus.

I will come back and give my two cent's worth.

But as regards to norman's point here -



norman bates said:


> by the way, Warlock wasn't a conservative. He was in the twenties an admirer of composers like Bela Bartok and Bernard Van Dieren (who now is not well known but he was a modernist and considered a genius by Warlock and other musicians of the time), but also of the elizabethan music. Just to put things in the right perspective.


It is true, Peter Warlock did support new music of his time. The article says he was the first to write an analysis in English on Schoenberg's music. Warlock also knew and admired Frederick Delius, who was viewed with some suspicion from various "establishment" quarters in the UK music industry of the time. One of his other few supporters then was the conductor Thomas Beecham. Warlock also edited old English music and encouraged it's performance. He also lived in the country with the composer ERnest J. Moeran for three years, but most of what they got up to was getting drunk!

Anyway, Warlock was a man of many facets. That's why I put that quote. It comes across as kind of being in the middle and not being too partisan or ideological.

I'll be back later to give my thoughts on this topic...


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## Guest (Jan 12, 2012)

Couple of things.

1) Music that sounds nice and pretty to us today did not necessarily sound either nice or pretty to the people who first heard it. (At least one person observed that since everything of real beauty had already been done in music, only the barren and rocky wastes were left for Mozart to cultivate.)*

2) Two perspectives often get confused in this kind of conversation, the artist's and the audience's. For the artist, to continue doing things that have already been done is not terribly satisfying. Creators want to create, to make things, not to remake what's already been made. Auditors, however, can of course continue to be nourished by older music. Bach does continue to give pleasure to listeners (some of whom are also composers, some of whom are composers of the veriest fringe of avant garde experimentation). But a creator won't want to write music that sounds like Bach. Bach's already done that. Time to move on.

3) Listeners, en masse, will always lag behind. There's nothing particularly vicious or perverse about that. A new thing is, by definition, an unknown thing. Takes a bit of time for the majority of listeners to get up to speed. And in the current atmosphere of fear and loathing, it does seem to be taking many listeners forever to get up to speed. But many is not all. And as long as even some people are able to find Schoenberg and Cage and Lachenmann beautiful and inspiring, then one is bound to conclude that Schoenberg and Cage and Lachenmann are indeed beautiful and inspiring.

*Later, that same metaphor was used about Beethoven, Haydn and Mozart having done all the beautiful stuff.

And still later, that same metaphor was used about Berlioz, Beethoven and et cetera the et cetera beautiful and so on.

And so it goes....


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

some guy said:


> Creators want to create, to make things, not to remake what's already been made.


What a delightful false dichotomy.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

tdc said:


> I think the first part of your post is kind of an assumption and a generalization, and a bit of a judgement on the social classes of people producing the music - more so than a judgement on the quality of the music itself - almost as if you are trying to not like this music based on the circumstances you assume all of it was written under. For example I feel Bach wrote music to glorify something greater than any one person first and foremost. I feel there were many composers expressing incredibly deep concepts back then musically and to just pigeon hole all music pre-Beethoven in such a way just isn't really fair or accurate. Secondly, I think Bach's music was criticized as perhaps being derivative in its time - yet I don't think many (if any) later composers have matched the quality of his artistic statements to this day. Ultimately I really don't think everything about being a great composer is about being novel as many are starting to feel nowadays - its just one aspect of music but in of itself says nothing about the quality of the actual music. I think one could twist it around and point out that Beethoven was one of the pioneers of a more selfish kind of music in a way - more about expressing whatever it is _he was personally feeling at the time_. Western society places a lot of importance on the individual, so its not surprising that Beethoven has become a heroic figure of sorts. Yet some could point out that a lot of people's attitudes towards music may have lost something important post-Beethoven - as it seemed to start a trend towards less importance being placed on the composer expressing things greater than individualistic emotions.


Interesting point about Bach, one of the greatest composers of all time. His music music was certainly considered rather old fashioned during his time to some (but not all) of his audiences, especially to his Lepizig employers. However Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen thought very highly that Bach's music was new then, and indeed it was, when Bach summarised all the prevailing Italian-Vivaldian models and dazzled his employed with the best instrumental music written in Germany at the time.

The original quote above (by Sid James) of Warlock showed much confusion when generalising across all times. I doubt it is true at all. Mozart, Mendelssohn, Brahms all wrote "old" styled music, for example fugue pieces because they were impressed by old Bach's music. Monteverdi, as ancient as his pieces are, continue to strike us modern auidences today as very "new" sounding, yet the experimental junk noises from the 50's and 60's now sound ridiculously worn out now and chidlishly gimmickry.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Money and time are spread too thin these days. They have been for a long time. No e-devices three hundred years ago. Prior to 1950, not many had TV. 

Too many distractions. Classical Music (and all its subsections) is just one victim of many. I say enjoy your niche, and don't worry too much about how many are "following".


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I'm on the run now, but I'll respond to the gist of some guy and HC.

I am in between these.

Some music, even difficult music, was accepted quickly after it's premiere. Eg. Stravinsky's_ Rite of Spring _(as a purely concert work, not the ballet), Schoenberg's _Pierrot Lunaire _(was taken on a Europe wide tour which proved quite successful), Tchaikovsky's _Piano Concerto #1_, Beethoven's _Symphony #9_ & so on. The public loved Monteverdi's _Vespers of 1610_, it filled the churches. Some hard dogmatists said it wasn't like "real" church music, eg. too much like opera, chamber music, concerto, etc. But the public's will prevailed, it has been popular in Italy since, and now peformed everywhere.

Some things the public was not ready for, or the composer judged it to be that. Liszt never performed his_ Sonata in B minor _in public for example. I think he wouldn't have gotten far with that, they all wanted to hear his transcriptions, or for him to play Beethoven or Schubert, etc.

Some composers we think of now as "conservative" were not thought of as being exactly that in the past. In Australia as recent in the 1950's, the music academies only taught up to Beethoven's middle period. Everything beyond was seen as beyond the pale. Incl. Brahms, let alone Wagner and Liszt. _Pierrot Lunaire _was only premiered here in the 1960's, _The Rite of Spring _in the 1950's, _Turangalila Symphonie _as late as the 1980's (I'm talking of Australian premieres). Yet most people here now accept these as "real" and genuine music, great pieces of music, same with a lot of other music coming after Beethoven's middle period. We are no longer stuck in a timewarp, and that is good I say.

Also ideology. On it's ballet premiere, the hard conservatives in the audience were up in arms about Stravinsky's _Rite_. Fast forward to around the 1980's, the premiere of John Adams'_ Grand Pianola Music_, and the radical progressives - who were against any melody or repetition in music, or a big tune at the end, that kind of Adorno-like 'composers sitting in ivory towers' Marxist type dogma - were not happy, I think a number of them walked out and did not applaud at the end.

Of course both extremes are wrong, or seen as wrong now. What Warlock says, I only meant it as a stimulus to discussion, not as hard dogma. I don't think he meant it like that either...


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Vaneyes said:


> Money and time are spread too thin these days. They have been for a long time. No e-devices three hundred years ago. Prior to 1950, not many had TV.
> 
> Too many distractions. Classical Music (and all its subsections) is just one victim of many. I say enjoy your niche, and don't worry too much about how many are "following".


Yep, enjoy. Fine dining at fancy restaurants and dwelling in penthouse suites are a bit beyond my financial reach, but I have access to fine music at the same price I'd pay for 'Golden Oldies'.


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## Guest (Jan 13, 2012)

Polednice said:


> What a delightful false dichotomy.


One liners? Not so delightful.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

starthrower said:


> ...Call it selfish if you like, but I'm glad Beethoven chose to go his own way and not be a conformist and appeaser...


It's true what you're saying in terms of Beethoven was against the _ancien regime_. But that didn't mean he was necessarily against the enlightened bluestockings who commissioned his works. The big difference between him and most of the earlier generation was that he was working on a freelance kind of basis. Not tied to any court like Haydn or Mozart were (but even they, by the end of their careers, became more or less freelance). In any case, as far as I know, our concrete knowledge of Beethoven's _actual_ politics, rather than the various legends built around them which abound, are quite slim.

So I'm not quite sure if, in general, the "music made to order" thing had great impact on this debate. I mean music is still being commissioned today, but not by aristocrats of course...


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

LvB's Septet, Op. 20 pandered to that day's "hit parade".


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

In my music theory class in college, I was shocked to learn something about medieval music from my teacher. The _harmonic major 3rd _was not always known. It had to be discovered too, many years before 1000 AD. And not only that, it had to be _accepted_ because harmonic octaves and fifths were considered the only consonances, and it probably took a few hundred years for it to become tolerated by the larger public. That's a bizarre idea! So, I do believe that every musical breakthrough that has ever happened could be called "modern" in the sense of once unfamiliar becoming tolerated. But the word "new" as referring to something recently discovered is probably a better word.

So, a better wording for that quote, "Old Music was modern once," should be "Old Music was _new _once."


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> ...
> So, a better wording for that quote, "Old Music was modern once," should be "Old Music was _new _once."


Yes, "modern" is a value-laden word, esp. in terms of styles in music and the other arts. So your paraphrase of Warlock's quote does make sense, it does kind of make it sound more neutral & open...


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

During as late as 1822, which was Beethoven's _late period_ (he died in 1827), he composed an overture to and parts of _Consecration of the House_ op.124. The piece clearly and deliberately was under the influence of Bach and Handel. I think his friend and biographer Anton Schindler even described the piece as having intentional Handelian contrapunctal features, written proof that one as innovative as Beethoven deliberately wrote new music with full awareness of old styles. The point is the most innovative composers would deliberately write music in older styles; in other words, not "modern" in its respective time. Does this make their music "old" and of lesser merit?

Today, I listen to operas composed within the last decade or two, sometimes find such newly composed music "older sounding" than I expect in the sense that the forms used in the pieces don't sound too dissimilar to works composed within the first decades of the 20th century.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

I think the problem is that avant grade, atonality, electronic, and whatever soundless contemporary mumbo jumbo being written now just as "done" as writing Haydnesque string quartets. You composed a piece that sounds like crap. That's _soooo_ 1930s.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Couchie said:


> I think the problem is that avant grade, atonality, electronic, and whatever soundless contemporary mumbo jumbo being written now just as "done" as writing Haydnesque string quartets. You composed a piece that sounds like crap. That's _soooo_ 1930s.


Please don't open up the Pandora's Box of the so called "objective" versus "subjective" debate. I've opened a number of threads like this only to have them ruined with this boring "debate." Remember the Black Sabbath versus Beethoven "comparisons?" That kind of thing. I'm sick of it.

If you want to do that, go ahead, make your own SEPARATE thread for that cr*p. I like the way this thread is going now without these kinds of childish things, which one can find out about on a more professional level if consulting any good recent book on music.

I won't get personal but I'm just paranoid of this repetitive and boring, predictable, round in circles **** that constantly rears it's ugly head when I try to open up some form of intelligent debate not at the level of the apes...


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Hey Couchie, it's avant garde.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Where did I invoke subjectivity vs. objectivity? I'm making a point that "Avant-garde" is essentially a decades-old musical conception as tired and worn out as writing in the classical style.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

starthrower said:


> Hey Couchie, it's avant garde.


Mine is the avant-grade spelling.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I'll say this. Your avatar suits you to a tee. Goofy!


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

The thing is, the huge population of grey-haired conservative listeners that don't even want to understand the compositions being written today are listening to more Schubert than Stockhausen. 

Of course there's always the possibility that in spite of the innovations wrought by Bach or Beethoven or Schubert there music rarely ever broke away from the wants of the audience to such an extent that it could not even be recognized as music by many.

In Schubert's day (in his "Schubertiads") there would have been people listening to more Schubert than Schutz.

Let's work a bit on your history. The "Schubertiads" were attended by what? A half-dozen of the composer's closest admirers? And what were the alternatives? How many large professional symphony orchestras were there that were offering any alternative to the music commissioned by the church, the aristocracy, and the few major musical societies? Prior to sound recordings, how well versed was the average person in music beyond the here and now?

What my point is, the amount of music that people can get their heads around is more accessible (gosh I hate that word) than music people can't get their heads around. Go back 200 or 300 years and people would warmly welcome new music, but now, when my compositions are performed for example, people say "Yeah ... it was ... interesting ..." when I ask for their opinion. People need to get their brains to appreciate modern art. They certainly could 300 years ago so why not learn how to now?

Why do you presume the audience "needs" to appreciate something that they don't like? Is art to be seen as something like medicine in that if it tastes like crap it must be good for you? Modernism did much to shatter the relationship between the audience and the artists across the board. The reality, whether we like it or not, is that contemporary classical music... and classical music as a whole has become increasingly irrelevant to the audience of today. We can moan all we will about the illiterate and ignorant public all we wish, but the reality is that the audience can survive without Stockhausen and Xenakis and the great majority of the avant garde extremes of 'classical music'... but can they survive without the audience?


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

I would move onto the more fundamental question of whether we should value endless newness.

Answer to the question: yes we should. As long as we manage to fit in all that old stuff now and again. 

Why? What makes mere novelty worthy of being so valued?


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Couchie said:


> Where did I invoke subjectivity vs. objectivity? I'm making a point that "Avant-garde" is essentially a decades-old musical conception as tired and worn out as writing in the classical style.


I'm just paranoid about the old "debate" as I said.

I agree the term avant-garde has kind of lost it's meaning or relevance. It was borrowed from a military term. I think of fighting units at the front. The vanguard is a related term, a movement in art at the forefront of change. I think now it's kind of like a cliche of the 1960's, this term. It's just as outdated as what I was alluding to, Theodore Adorno's kind of Marxist attitude that anything with a tune or potential to be broadly popular is suspect. It's selling out and pandering to commercialism.

But I still think that we can take good things from the "avant garde" or experimental composers of decades past. Indeed, it doesn't matter now what composer's influences a composer is working under today, as long as they develop their own voice and speak something to the audience. John Cage's innovations have moved into the mainstream. Or become more mainstream at least. Eg. concertos and other works are being written again now with cadenzas, or at least some elements of chance, wherease before composers wanted complete control. Cage influenced composers like Lutoslawski and many others.

It's like Sammartini was the "inventor" of the symphony and concerto, but not much people care for him now. Haydn and Mozart took on board those innovations and made them popular and mainstream. Similar with Cage, although there are a number of his works that are now "modern classics," eg. _In A Landscape, _the _Imaginary Landscapes_ series, the _Concert for piano and orchestra_, the sonatas and interludes for prepared piano, and so on. No record collection of 20th century music is complete without them, they are seminal works of their time. But speaking personally, I tend to favour composers who took his ideas on board and refined them, bought them more into the centre so to speak...


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Of course there's always the possibility that in spite of the innovations wrought by Bach or Beethoven or Schubert there music rarely ever broke away from the wants of the audience to such an extent that it could not even be recognized as music by many.
> 
> Let's work a bit on your history. The "Schubertiads" were attended by what? A half-dozen of the composer's closest admirers? And what were the alternatives? How many large professional symphony orchestras were there that were offering any alternative to the music commissioned by the church, the aristocracy, and the few major musical societies? Prior to sound recordings, how well versed was the average person in music beyond the here and now?
> 
> Why do you presume the audience "needs" to appreciate something that they don't like? Is art to be seen as something like medicine in that if it tastes like crap it must be good for you? *Modernism did much to shatter the relationship between the audience and the artists across the board. The reality, whether we like it or not, is that contemporary classical music... and classical music as a whole has become increasingly irrelevant to the audience of today.* We can moan all we will about the illiterate and ignorant public all we wish, but the reality is that the audience can survive without Stockhausen and Xenakis and the great majority of the avant garde extremes of 'classical music'... but can they survive without the audience?


I don't think this is true. It's part of the "decline of western civilization" narrative, so it is seductive; but in reality, classical music was always for an elite minority. Most of the people were either too rural or too poor to have access to it. The patrons were a wealthy minority, whether they were aristocratic patrons or the few who paid their way into the 19th century concert halls.

What was true then that is no longer true is that at that time the wealthy minority were assumed by everyone, including the rural and the urban poor, to have superior tastes, so that the music they heard (what we call "classical") was assumed to be as superior as its audience. Now we live in societies with democratic ideology, and that assumption is no longer true.

That's the only sense in which classical music has declined. Its superiority is no longer taken for granted.

This change was gradual and a long time developing, but in the 1960s it hit.


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## Guest (Jan 13, 2012)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Modernism did much to shatter the relationship between the audience and the artists across the board.


No it didn't. Or, it did, but only if you privilege a particular audience.



StlukesguildOhio said:


> [T]he reality is that the audience can survive without Stockhausen and Xenakis and the great majority of the avant garde extremes of 'classical music'... but can they survive without the audience?


No art can survive without _an_ audience, of course. (Or will perhaps die and be revived, like Vivaldi.) But Stockhausen and Xenakis and the rest _do_ have an audience.

Why is this fact such a hard sell? All of the musics that have been variously maligned by folks like Couchie and St and HC and the like have their audiences and always have had. But part of the basic calumniation strategy is to pretend that these musics have no audience, no audience that counts.

Someone reports as actually liking this stuff? Doesn't matter. That person isn't part of the "real" audience, the only audience that matters, the audience the vilifier is a part of.

One cannot help thinking that the crock is full of excrement.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

science said:


> What was true then that is no longer true is that at that time the wealthy minority were assumed by everyone, including the rural and the urban poor, to have superior tastes, so that the music they heard (what we call "classical") was assumed to be as superior as its audience. Now we live in societies with democratic ideology, and that assumption is no longer true.
> 
> That's the only sense in which classical music has declined. Its superiority is no longer taken for granted.
> 
> This change was gradual and a long time developing, but in the 1960s it hit.


This is utter nonsense. Classical music declined because of the rise of democratic ideology? The French Revolution took place in 1789, not 1960.

Nope, classical composers abandoned tonality. Humans overwhelming favour tonality. Popular music picked up with tonality right where classical music left off.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

some guy said:


> No it didn't. Or, it did, but only if you privilege a particular audience.


A hall filled to more than 5% of seating capacity?


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Sid James said:


> It's like Sammartini was the "inventor" of the symphony and concerto, but not much people care for him now. Haydn and Mozart took on board those innovations and made them popular and mainstream. ...


Interesting you mention Sammartini, Giovanni Battista Sammartini (1700-1775) to be precise (his older brother, Giuseppe Sammartini (1695-1750) was also a very capable composer). He was certainly one of the very first composers to begin to establish the orchestral sinfonia of operas as a stand alone concert piece, hence the classical symphony. Relating this to your thread, his symphonies would therefore be "modern" in our sense of the word "modern", at least in terms of how the symphony was presented to first audiences (i.e. not as openings to operas, and of much longer duration) and eventually becoming an established "norm". Composers then continued to write "new" symphonic music (Haydn, Mozart etc.) and eventually, by the time Mozart wrote his late symphonies, the classical symphony was no longer "modern", and was considered an older genre. Mozart was not particularly interested in it - he was then much more interested in his "modern" genre, which was the piano concerto.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

some guy said:


> ...
> 
> One cannot help thinking that the crock is full of excrement.


I would appreciate you and others avoiding this as well. I am for colourful language, but not in this way. AS I said to Couchie re the boring and repetitive "objective" versus "subjective" debate, do it elsewhere, not here. Set up your own threads for that, fine by me...


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> ... The point is the most innovative composers would deliberately write music in older styles; in other words, not "modern" in its respective time. Does this make their music "old" and of lesser merit?...


WEll I think if such composers add something to the big picture of music, they don't have to be the most innovative on the planet at the time, they don't have to be pushing music forward to the nth degree, so to speak.

With Warlock, in terms of composers he respected and studied, some where high end innovators, some were just unique and "modern" in their own way. Eg. as I said, he did a study on Schoenberg, and he was also supporter and friends with Delius & Moeran.

It's not only the "revolutionaries" that move music forward, or add something to it. It's also the "evolutionaries" who work more or less within established traditions. One such evolutionary was Busoni, who taught one of the great revolutionaries of the century, Varese. They were friends and respected eachother, Busoni dedicated his _Berceuse Elegaique _to his student.

So I think composers like these are not about ideology but about freshness and directness of expression. Music being "real," which is partly what the second part of Warlock's quote says to me, eg. in terms of how he thought that music that's hundreds of years old can still sound like it was penned yesterday. The vibe of it, the emotion, the artistry, the innovation, uniqueness, all this kind of stuff...


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Couchie said:


> This is utter nonsense. Classical music declined because of the rise of democratic ideology? The French Revolution took place in 1789, not 1960.
> 
> Nope, classical composers abandoned tonality. Humans overwhelming favour tonality. Popular music picked up with tonality right where classical music left off.


Well, not wanting to throw things in your face, but a certain composer you love was one of the big movers and shakers re innovations of tonality, eg. going right to the edge. Not quite over like other guys later - Schoenberg was "the fall guy" but there were others as well - but Wagner was instrumental in what you suggest was a big minus. I disagree but the atonal versus tonal thing, another old circular (circus?) debate that bores the hell out of me, is irrelevant to me, well I don't know the use of raking over that set of "old coals." Except for entertainment purposes of various members of this forum, but I am not amused, to be honest. Let's avoid these old cliches. Did Wagner start "the rot?" or was it Beethoven with his late quartets? Or Gesualdo? How far back do we need to go, to lay blame at various composers feet who are just being creative?...


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Sid James said:


> It's not only the "revolutionaries" that move music forward, or add something to it. It's also the "evolutionaries" who work more or less within established traditions.


i totally agree with that.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

I don't think this is true. It's part of the "decline of western civilization" narrative, so it is seductive; but in reality, classical music was always for an elite minority. Most of the people were either too rural or too poor to have access to it. The patrons were a wealthy minority, whether they were aristocratic patrons or the few who paid their way into the 19th century concert halls. 

Yes, classical music... indeed any musical genre... can be said to have had a limited, elite audience. I agree that this elite audience was largely made up of the social and economic elite as well... at least prior to the Enlightenment. The audience for music and art and literature broadens and opens up to a variety of social classes at this time. In our time, the audience for classical music still remains limited... an elite, if you will... but an elite by choice... by elective affinity. In other words, the audience for classical music is not limited to the rich and powerful, but to anyone for whom such music is of merit and is willing to put forth the time and effort.

But let us get real, here. How many of those who were serious about classical music in 1880 or in 1930... who put forth the effort to understand and appreciate it... were left completely baffled by Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, etc...? And how long did it take for them to eventually come around? In contrast, how many of those who are serious about classical music today... who have put forth the effort to understand and appreciate it are left wholly baffled if not repulsed by something like this:






or this:


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

No art can survive without an audience, of course. (Or will perhaps die and be revived, like Vivaldi.) But Stockhausen and Xenakis and the rest do have an audience.

Why is this fact such a hard sell? All of the musics that have been variously maligned by folks like Couchie and St and HC and the like have their audiences and always have had. But part of the basic calumniation strategy is to pretend that these musics have no audience, no audience that counts.

Someone reports as actually liking this stuff? Doesn't matter. That person isn't part of the "real" audience, the only audience that matters, the audience the vilifier is a part of.

One cannot help thinking that the crock is full of excrement.

If there is any excrement to be found, it is in your usual attempts to defend any and all aspects of Modernism on the grounds of cultural relativism... the notion that there is no good nor bad, but thinking makes it so. And if but one person... even only the composer's mother... likes a work of art it must be good.

It is comic that the spectre of elitism should be raised in relationship to my own or HC's or Couchie's questions concerning the extremes of the avant garde by those who have such little respect of concern for the audience. After all... they are but the ignorant masses, no?

As an artist I am fully in favor of allowing the artist to create without censorship and even without concerns for the opinions of others. As a member of the audience, however, I reserve the right to call "crap" as I see it, and to take offence at those who presume an air of superiority because they understand and recognize the "genius" in said "crap", and to take an even greater offence from those who presume that their "crap" is entitled to government/taxpayer support in perpetuity.


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## jalex (Aug 21, 2011)

some guy said:


> No it didn't. Or, it did, but only if you privilege a particular audience.


Wasn't it Henze who complained that the compositional philosophy he experienced at the Boulez-dominated Darmstadt course was 'any concession to the audience is treason'?


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## Guest (Jan 14, 2012)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> your usual attempts to defend any and all aspects of Modernism on the grounds of cultural relativism...


I have never done this.



StlukesguildOhio said:


> the notion that there is no good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.


Thinking is a good thing, yes. More thought would be good.



StlukesguildOhio said:


> And if but one person... even only the composer's mother... likes a work of art it must be good.


If only one person likes a thing, then that one person has had a positive experience. That's all I've ever maintained. (I don't buy into your world view, so to express my philosophical position in your terms is to necessarily falsify my position.)



StlukesguildOhio said:


> It is comic that the spectre of elitism should be raised in relationship to my own or HC's or Couchie's questions concerning the extremes of the avant garde by those who have such little respect of concern for the audience. After all... they are but the ignorant masses, no?


Work the concept of "the audience." Work it for all it's worth. Work it, baby, work it!!



StlukesguildOhio said:


> As an artist I am fully in favor of allowing the artist to create without censorship and even without concerns for the opinions of others.


How magnanimous of you. I'm sure artists everywhere breathe a sigh of relief when they hear this.



StlukesguildOhio said:


> As a member of the audience, however, I reserve the right to call "crap" as I see it,


Yes, we know.



StlukesguildOhio said:


> and to take offence at those who presume an air of superiority because they understand and recognize the "genius" in said "crap",


No one but you is entitled to be right. Yes, we know that, too.



StlukesguildOhio said:


> and to take an even greater offence from those who presume that their "crap" is entitled to government/taxpayer support in perpetuity.


I know no one in the real world who thinks this.

Thanks for the two clips, though. I hadn't seen the eRikm one before. He's a favorite of mine (and a great guy, too). And I had never seen one of those scores made with the graphic interface of CCMIX before, either. (I've enjoyed _Mycenae Alpha_ for many years, in spite of my enjoyment of it and my very natural, human, social desire to share that enjoyment with others being a target for the opprobrium of StlukesguildOhio and colleagues. I must be a very brave person to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous posters.:lol


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

jalex said:


> Wasn't it Henze who complained that the compositional philosophy he experienced at the Boulez-dominated Darmstadt course was 'any concession to the audience is treason'?


Yes, I was just reading about that. You come across that in many sources. The weight of the "total serialist" dogma that enveloped parts, or cliques, of the classical music industry in the couple of decades following 1945.

I think even Stockhausen, who was initially on his "side," fell out with Boulez, basically saying you can't mandate what an artist does, eg. how he chooses to express himself.

But Boulez has largely retracted his earlier ideological rantings, which is natural, it happened like half a century ago.

Schoenberg himself was not dogmatic, or largely not that. When a student at the university in Los Angeles that he was teaching at said to him (in class) that Shostakovich's 5th symphony was already old hat basically because it was tonal (even though it was brand new then), Schoenberg defended Shostakovich to the hilt. According to Alex Ross (in The REst is Noise) Schoenberg said that Shostakovich was a great composer, or born to be that, "he is a composer born" was the quote I recall.

Schoenberg himself did not always go by the rules of Serialism he himself set down. He treated them more like loose guidelines if anything. He also did basically fully "tonal" works for the American market, but they didn't earn him the money he'd wished. He wasn't an ivory tower composer by no means. He even approached Hollywood to do film scores, but it never happened (due to various reasons, one being funding, he wanted a big budget, the executives didn't see this as realistic).

We can do what some above are doing, push various agendas, but when it comes down to it, I like to analyse the history of what went on, not push various ideological barrows and trot out the usual cliches.

This discussion had some good opinions shared earlier, in the first 1-2 pages, after that it seems to have deteriorated to the usual "us versus them" stuff, which I'm tired of, but anyway...


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Sid James said:


> Well, not wanting to throw things in your face, but a certain composer you love was one of the big movers and shakers re innovations of tonality, eg. going right to the edge. Not quite over like other guys later - Schoenberg was "the fall guy" but there were others as well - but Wagner was instrumental in what you suggest was a big minus. I disagree but the atonal versus tonal thing, another old circular (circus?) debate that bores the hell out of me, is irrelevant to me, well I don't know the use of raking over that set of "old coals." Except for entertainment purposes of various members of this forum, but I am not amused, to be honest. Let's avoid these old cliches. Did Wagner start "the rot?" or was it Beethoven with his late quartets? Or Gesualdo? How far back do we need to go, to lay blame at various composers feet who are just being creative?...


I don't think we should blame the people who filled the tub, but the ones who threw the baby out with the bathwater. As Prokofiev related, dissonance is a "spice" to be added to music. Just because a sprinkle of paprika enhances the flavour of your chilli, doesn't mean it will be great in spoonfuls on its own.

Wagner et al. discovered that adding the right amounts of atonality and dissonance can greatly add to the emotional impact of the piece, ie. the neighbour tones rampant in Romantic music. The appetite for dissonance certainly increased through the years and forward-looking pieces were often met with scorn initially, but they were eventually taken up into the "canon" within a time period that modernist pieces have not met. People not only do not like it, but they apparently _can't_ like it, and there is probably a physiological basis for this, given that video posted on another thread about how the ear resolves pitch. The evidence is that dissonance is effective within a tonal framework, and the emotionality comes from the sensation of suspension and resolution of deviating into atonality and returning to tonality. Without this tonal "base", it just sounds like noise. Atonal music is excellent for giving an impression of cold uneasiness. It struggles with joy and happiness. Enough said.

Again, not trying to strike up the old debate again, but to argue that you can't draw direct parallels between the advances of Beethoven and Boulez when the entire framework from which they understood what music even is and what is should achieve is completely different.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

^^THis is what some conservative members said here about three years ago when I joined. Eg. dissonance is just for use as a highlight, as "spice," etc. It's basically the same old same old conservative dogma I've read hundreds of times. Sorry.

As I said, but nobody responded, as this cuts through all these barrows being pushed. Go back to Australia in the 1950's. "The establishment" only accepted music up to Beethoven's middle period as acceptable. That was the end of music history, so called proper or acceptable music history, as far as they were concerned.

Forget Beethoven's late period, or Brahms. & if you mentioned your dear Wagner to these people, or Liszt or Berlioz, God forbid, they'd have an apopleptic fit!

So I see people who protest against changes that have happened 100 years ago as being hangovers from those conservatives of the 1950's. Sorry again. I'm not going to mince my words like some people around here and throw "Smart" one-liners. 

These people are bad news for classical music. Eg. the fools who walked out en-masse at a performance in Sydney of Mahler's 9th symphony last year. To add insult to injury, it was exactly 100 years to the day that he had died. These people are rubbish.

Of course, this is probably as far as this thread will go. Just like most threads I open up for general debate about these kinds of topics. People play the usual false dichotomy game. The zealots and extremists, not the majority in the middle.

I had some ideas for other threads, similar discussions based on a quote or two which I think can be stimulating. But not for ideologues, but for people who can think straight. WEll I won't bother setting up those threads, as this is what it deteroirates to. The scapegoats of music that people basically don't like...


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Couchie said:


> ...Without this tonal "base", it just sounds like noise...


No, without conforming to your ideology, "it just sounds like noise." Just like the people who railed against the _Rite of Spring _in 1913, which wasn't really atonal. Or the serial/atonal cliquists who walked out on John Adams' _Grand Pianola Music _on it's premiere in about the 1980's. It all comes down to ideology.



> ...Atonal music is excellent for giving an impression of cold uneasiness. It struggles with joy and happiness....


Wagner is all about overweight blonde Germanic maidens with the horned hats, screaming for half an hour and throwing herself into the flames.

Two can play the stereotype and cliche game.

Anyway, I won't waste my time. As I said, I had ideas for other threads like this, but it's useless. If I'd put something like "atonal music is junk" as a thread title, it'd run up dozens of pages in no time. Most of it ideological drivel. Just like my thread about the "Goodness survey" he in Australia. Well enjoy your negativity, folks, eat it, go to bed with it, marry it! Have fun in not having fun, if that's your "fun"...


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

Makes me sorry to be a silent moderate middle.

My own thoughts are: why is does a so obvious truism of a quote strike us as notable. But I think the timeless nature of music, more than any other medium, makes us forget that simple fact. We find it hard to believe that there was a time before our favorite tunes existed even if it is a modern pop song created in living memory. Great music that really speaks to us can seem so obvious, it reminds me of what the architect Gaudi said "man does not create...he discovers" as if the music is woven into the fabric of the universe and it just takes the composer's genius to hear it. This is not really meant to sound mystical it is just that music seems to bypass critical faculties and effects us in ways it is difficult to be rational about.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

I'm looking forward this year to Carl Vine's (born 1954) piano concerto number 2, to be premiered this year and performed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. There is simply just a sense of excitement attending a premiere in a concert hall, performed by a top (local) orchestra of new music of an old genre, that might actually be modern judging by Vine's music. Composed for pianist Piers Lane, premiere in August! Vine's music can be described as "modern tonal".


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Sid James said:


> ^^THis is what some conservative members said here about three years ago when I joined. Eg. dissonance is just for use as a highlight, as "spice," etc. It's basically the same old same old conservative dogma I've read hundreds of times. Sorry.
> 
> As I said, but nobody responded, as this cuts through all these barrows being pushed. Go back to Australia in the 1950's. "The establishment" only accepted music up to Beethoven's middle period as acceptable. That was the end of music history, so called proper or acceptable music history, as far as they were concerned.
> 
> ...


People have the right to reject a piece of art as much as you have to love it. We've reached the point in musical composition where a "composer" can serve up ANYTHING and call it art and when people dislike it he just has to say "well Beethoven's late quartets weren't liked at first either" and we're all conservative fogeys. UTTER. NONSENSE. Good day sir.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> I'm looking forward this year to Carl Vine's (born 1954) piano concerto number 2, to be premiered this year and performed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. There is simply just a sense of excitement attending a premiere in a concert hall, performed by a top (local) orchestra of new music of an old genre, that might actually be modern judging by Vine's music. Composed for pianist Piers Lane, premiere in August! Vine's music can be described as "modern tonal".


Last year Vine premiered a violin concerto that I still have not heard. I'll probably not hear the piano concerto for years as well . One of the problems with contemporary classical is that, unlike with popular music, new works can remain unheard by fans for a long time.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

quack said:


> Makes me sorry to be a silent moderate middle...


Don't be sorry, be vocal! "Maintain your rage and enthusiasm" as my signature below says!



> ...This is not really meant to sound mystical it is just that music seems to bypass critical faculties and effects us in ways it is difficult to be rational about.


That's right, and although we may be able to recognise the "vibe" or "feel" of the style of our favourite composers, it is likely that people hearing their music for the first time way back were excited by the newness and difference of it. It can apply to probably any composer, dead or living. & as you say, it's certain qualities of a composer or group of composers that make me react to them in a certain way. Can be love, hate or in-between. Sometimes we can put words to it, approximate what we feel, in other cases, words are simply not adequate. & esp. as a non-musician. I can "feel" the unique vibe of a Schumann piece straight away, even if I hadn't heard that work before, I connect it with works by him I do know. It may be cliche to some now, but I am always excited to hear works new to me for this reason, even by the "big names" in the classical music world...


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

mmsbls said:


> Last year Vine premiered a violin concerto that I still have not heard. I'll probably not hear the piano concerto for years as well . One of the problems with contemporary classical is that, unlike with popular music, new works can remain unheard by fans for a long time.


It's true, even works by major "established" Australian composers - eg. Peter Sculthorpe - some of them have only been recorded once, many out of print. There's also not a huge deal by these guys, eg. Sculthorpe, on youtube. But it is good that at least their music is being played, incl. their new music, and not only here but in major music centres of the world...


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> I'm looking forward this year to Carl Vine's (born 1954) piano concerto number 2, to be premiered this year and performed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. There is simply just a sense of excitement attending a premiere in a concert hall, performed by a top (local) orchestra of new music of an old genre, that might actually be modern judging by Vine's music. Composed for pianist Piers Lane, premiere in August! Vine's music can be described as "modern tonal".


The SSO is doing quite a few contemporary composers in their 2012 season (I'm especially thrilled about the Adès work) and I hope they broadcast those concerts on the radio so I could hear them. Carl Vine is one of my favourite Australian composers and I hope to hear some more of his works. One thing I _haven't_ heard by him is his seventh symphony written a few years ago. Do you know if there are any recordings made of it yet?


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> The SSO is doing quite a few contemporary composers in their 2012 season (I'm especially thrilled about the Adès work) and I hope they broadcast those concerts on the radio so I could hear them. ...


Same here and I think it looks like a big improvement on previous seasons of theirs, maybe this is a bit of a shift in their thinking, a "quanum leap" or "leap of faith?" - call it what you will...


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> The SSO is doing quite a few contemporary composers in their 2012 season (I'm especially thrilled about the Adès work) and I hope they broadcast those concerts on the radio so I could hear them. Carl Vine is one of my favourite Australian composers and I hope to hear some more of his works. One thing I _haven't_ heard by him is his seventh symphony written a few years ago. Do you know if there are any recordings made of it yet?


I think there is a high likelihood there will be a recording of symphony #7. It's a question of when (and economics). Symphonies #1 to #6 are all recorded, so there is no reason why #7 would not. (ABC Classics)


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> I think there is a high likelihood there will be a recording of symphony #7. It's a question of when (and economics). Symphonies #1 to #6 are all recorded, so there is no reason why #7 would not. (ABC Classics)


I've got that recording. Once Carl Vine writes some more they'll hopefully get them recorded in a "Carl Vine Complete Symphonies 7-12" (if he makes it past his ninth)


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Sid James- ...the atonal versus tonal thing, another old circular (circus?) debate that bores the hell out of me, is irrelevant to me, well I don't know the use of raking over that set of "old coals." Except for entertainment purposes of various members of this forum, but I am not amused, to be honest. Let's avoid these old cliches. Did Wagner start "the rot?" or was it Beethoven with his late quartets? Or Gesualdo? How far back do we need to go, to lay blame at various composers feet who are just being creative?...

The dichotomy may be false to those who appreciate atonal as well as tonal works... but obviously the dichotomy is not wholly false in that there remain a great many who love classical music and yet cannot appreciate it. The same debates continue to confront the question of abstraction, which might be seen as the equivalent of atonality in the visual arts, as well as the extremes of fragmentation wrought by writers such as Joyce. Such debate in the arts has always existed and cannot be simply assigned to close-minded conservatism. Brahms rejected the innovations of Wagner. Are we to paint him as a stick-in-the-mud, conservative fuddy-duddy? Neo-classical painters such as Ingres and J.L. David rejected the art of the immediate past (the Rococo) and turned to the Renaissance and Greco-Roman classicism to construct the art of their time. Hell, the Baroque resulted from a rejection of the extreme artifice and abstraction of Mannerism and a return to earlier Renaissance naturalism. The narrative of art and music is not so clear and simple and linear. There are many bumps and many digressions and u-turns along the way. To me, the constant need to paint anyone as a close-minded fool or fossil for even thinking to ask questions or raise doubts about any of the developments of music/art amounts to nothing less than a form of veiled censorship.

I see people who protest against changes that have happened 100 years ago as being hangovers from those conservatives of the 1950's. Sorry again. I'm not going to mince my words like some people around here... These people are bad news for classical music... These people are rubbish.

The problem is that the "changes" of which you speak do not represent the whole of the development of music of the last 100 years. Not long ago while attending art school I was force-fed the traditional narrative of the triumph of Modernism. In the late 1980s, however, there was a huge shift among contemporary painters with many of them rejecting the Modernist dogma, the supremacy of abstraction, and dichotomy of "high" and "low" art. At the same time, the Musée d'Orsay opened in Paris (accompanied by a thick, scholarly tome) with vastly expanded exhibition space that allowed for the display of many artists long confined to deep storage. The entire enterprise... an attempt to broaden our grasp of the variety of art and to allow the audience to discern what was or was not "good" was viciously attacked by Modernists in the press. Again... those who merely asked questions about the accepted narrative (or raised doubts) were dismissed as "hangovers"... "conservatives"... even "Nazis".

Just like the people who railed against the Rite of Spring in 1913, which wasn't really atonal.

But I don't think the analogy is apt. A degree of incomprehension is to be expected when one confronts a truly "new" work of art... but this incomprehension rapidly fades. The Rite was quickly embraced... to the point that by 1940 Disney was employing it in his animated film, _Fantasia_. Impressionism, Matisse, Picasso... were all rapidly absorbed into the artistic language. But here we are not talking about some nascent art, but rather an art form that has become the academy for nearly a century. But did this art go too far? Is such possible? Looking back on the history of the visual arts, the period known as Mannerism is largely seen as something of an anomaly... a period of extreme artifice and abstraction that produced a few great artists... but was eventually rejected. Is it not possible for music lovers and for musicians and composers to question the directions of academic Modernism without being seen as Romanticist hold-overs?

HarpsichordConcerto- I'm looking forward this year to Carl Vine's (born 1954) piano concerto number 2, to be premiered this year and performed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. There is simply just a sense of excitement attending a premiere in a concert hall, performed by a top (local) orchestra of new music of an old genre, that might actually be modern judging by Vine's music. Composed for pianist Piers Lane, premiere in August! Vine's music can be described as "modern tonal".

Yes... I greatly enjoyed the live performance of music by David Lang, including a premiered chamber work. I can think of any number of living composers whose latest efforts I keep an eye... and ear out for. I don't imagine that questioning certain directions taken in music needs to be thought of in any way as questioning the whole of Modern/Contemporary music or the future of music.

mmsbls- Last year Vine premiered a violin concerto that I still have not heard. I'll probably not hear the piano concerto for years as well . One of the problems with contemporary classical is that, unlike with popular music, new works can remain unheard by fans for a long time.

This is unfortunate, but true. I have read of several operas by Jake Heggie and the recently deceased, Daniel Catan that I truly wish to hear... but alas! But then again, we surely have it much better than the audience of centuries ago. How many living in Beethoven's or Mozart's lifetime ever got to actually hear their works performed at all?


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> ...
> 
> The problem is that the "changes" of which you speak do not represent the whole of the development of music of the last 100 years.


What? You mean Mahler? Or R. Strauss'_ Metamorphosen_? Or a Shostakovich or Prokofiev symphony rounding off a concert of music by Romantics and wigs? People leaving at interval at Sydney Symphony or even the Australian Chamber Orchestra happens all the time. I've seen it and have had friends, acquaintances see it. Up to a third of the hall is emptied. This is who I'm talking of. These people, thier attitudes are rubbish. They make me angry. The only time one tends not to see it if it's an all Beethoven or all Mozart program. Funny, aint it?

Most people I know would embrace at least some "atonal" music. Berg's violin concerto is an example. The Second Viennese School, most of their output, may well never enter the repertoire the way some other things have. But some of their music are 20th century classics. Eg. Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire has been performed here regularly over the decades, and it was started by people now in their eighties, who went against the grain of conservative Australia in the 1950's. I know a few of these guys, but a number of them are no longer with us. I admire them as pioneers of opening up this country and countering the PHilistines. Fancy word for people who can't appreciate art if it hit them in the face. Unless it's say 150 years or more old. Something like that. That's how it was in the 1950's. But people now, they forget the work of these guys. They made things happen. They don't come across as ideological to me. They don't put Schoenberg on a pedestal, they just say his music had to be performed. So too with Cage and others they bought here.



> ...
> Just like the people who railed against the Rite of Spring in 1913, which wasn't really atonal.
> 
> But I don't think the analogy is apt. A degree of incomprehension is to be expected when one confronts a truly "new" work of art... but this incomprehension rapidly fades. The Rite was quickly embraced... to the point that by 1940 Disney was employing it in his animated film, _Fantasia_.


Pierrot Lunaire was also successful. Schoenberg immediately took it on a Europe wide tour. I guess the audiences would have been aware of Modern trends. But italso spoke to the popular music of the time, eg. the cafe-cabarets. It connected high and low art.

Not all atonal music is like that but some has by now entered the "canon" of 20th century music. Bear in mind there are three main types of canon - performing (repertoire), musicological/scholarly/historical, and pedagogical (teaching). In the last two, atonal music is definitely in there. In the first, some works are getting or have gotten in there. They will never be as popular as some things, but for some very ignorant people here, guys like Mahler, R. Strauss, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, they are all beyond the pale. Well, some of their more challenging works at least.

So it depends who you talk to, what is so called accessible, understandable, acceptable. I am not a musician, yet I can enjoy complex music of whatever time. Or simple music, or in-between.

I try not to judge others, I actually went too far with Couchie maybe, I was very emotional. BUt I'm sick of generalistions and plain theory. I talk from experience and give a perspective where I am on the ground. That's better than stereotyping anything, be it atonal music or Wagner or whoever.

That's part of what Warlock's quote tells me. The qualities of music that can move us and engage us, those qualities that just do that, regardless for example what technique is used...


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

_SLG (quoted)-The problem is that the "changes" of which you speak do not represent the whole of the development of music of the last 100 years._

Sid James-What? You mean Mahler? Or R. Strauss' Metamorphosen? Or a Shostakovich or Prokofiev symphony rounding off a concert of music by Romantics and wigs? People leaving at interval at Sydney Symphony or even the Australian Chamber Orchestra happens all the time. I've seen it and have had friends, acquaintances see it. Up to a third of the hall is emptied. This is who I'm talking of. These people, thier attitudes are rubbish. They make me angry. The only time one tends not to see it if it's an all Beethoven or all Mozart program. Funny, aint it?

Seriously, I have have never seen anything like this at all. The most recent concert I attended featured Beethoven's 9th. It was preceded by a contemporary concerto for percussion (marimba, etc...). There were the few stragglers who arrived late... but the majority not only arrived in time for this unknown work, but also showed a great deal of enthusiasm for it... calling the conductor, composer, and performers back for repeated encore. The orchestra here proudly advertises performances of Mahler, Strauss, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovitch, and Bartok. The only time I witnessed a less-than-enthusiastic response was following a Berio variation on Bach (which I quite liked).

The reality, however, is that the audience for atonal music... post Schoenberg, Morton Feldman, George Crumb, Elliott Carter is far more limited than it is for the orchestral music of Bach through Bartok. I don't see anything as inherently "wrong" with this. The audience for "lieder" and French melodies, Renaissance madrigals and most music prior to the Baroque also has a somewhat limited audience.

What I question is the desire to force feed the audience the sort of post-Schoenbergian music that they clearly dislike and to subsidize this music through the institution of the orchestra. If I were attending an evening of Miles Davis or Duke Ellington, the inclusion of Johnny Cash would certainly leave me baffled at the least (in spite of the fact that I quite like Johnny). Indeed, I question the very message that is being sent when we must couple Schoenberg or Berg or Carter with Mozart and Schubert. It's like the old Mary Poppins number, "A Spoonful of sugar..."

Lovers of "Early Music" have developed their own institutions and venues and performing groups rather than depend upon the traditional classical orchestras. The result has been an increased appreciation and popularity for the music of this period. It seems to me that those who appreciate the more avant garde aspects of Modern and Contemporary music might learn from their example, as opposed to railing against the institutions and individuals who don't share their enthusiasm or their values.

Most people I know would embrace at least some "atonal" music. Berg's violin concerto is an example. The Second Viennese School, most of their output, may well never enter the repertoire the way some other things have. But some of their music are 20th century classics.

Oh, I fully agree. I quite like Berg's _Lyric Suite_ and his songs... although I sometimes wonder... like Theodor Adorno (I believe it was)... what Berg might have done if it hadn't been for Schoenberg... what might he have achieved as a tonal composer? By way of analogy, I quite like such jarring Expressionist paintings as this:










or this:










but I'm not certain that I want to see them right along side this:










or this:










And I'll admit that I'm not quite willing to accept this as being Art at all... in any way that I think of Art:










Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire has been performed here regularly over the decades, and it was started by people now in their eighties, who went against the grain of conservative Australia in the 1950's. I know a few of these guys, but a number of them are no longer with us. I admire them as pioneers of opening up this country and countering the PHilistines. Fancy word for people who can't appreciate art if it hit them in the face. Unless it's say 150 years or more old. Something like that. That's how it was in the 1950's. But people now, they forget the work of these guys. They made things happen. They don't come across as ideological to me. They don't put Schoenberg on a pedestal, they just say his music had to be performed. So too with Cage and others they bought here.

There are those who would have a problem with not only the Beckmann and the Bacon paintings, but even the Monet (to say nothing of Joseph Kosuth). There are others who appreciate the Bacon and the Beckmann but suspect that Modernism eventually went too far... left far too much of the audience behind. The same is certainly equally true of music. A good many who cannot fathom Xenakis or Cage are equally dismissive of Bartok and Shostakovitch. But some may actually appreciate a good deal of Modernist innovation... but suspect it has gone too far... or rather that it is time for a change.

So it depends who you talk to, what is so called accessible, understandable, acceptable. I am not a musician, yet I can enjoy complex music of whatever time. Or simple music, or in-between.

Accessibility is certainly a tricky issue. How big must the audience for a work of art be before we recognize that art as having real merit? How small can the audience be before we question the art's relevance or worth? Do we accept what has been posted here repeatedly... the idea if a work of art has but a single admirer it is a success? And should we really expect that everyone should like everything and that it is some great failing if they don't? Am I to be branded a Philistine because I really don't like Schoenberg or Xenakis? Are you then a Philistine because you don't love Wagner, Strauss' operas... or opera in general?


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> ...
> Sid James-What? You mean Mahler? Or R. Strauss' Metamorphosen? Or a Shostakovich or Prokofiev symphony rounding off a concert of music by Romantics and wigs? People leaving at interval at Sydney Symphony or even the Australian Chamber Orchestra happens all the time. I've seen it and have had friends, acquaintances see it. Up to a third of the hall is emptied. This is who I'm talking of. These people, thier attitudes are rubbish. They make me angry. The only time one tends not to see it if it's an all Beethoven or all Mozart program. Funny, aint it?
> 
> Seriously, I have have never seen anything like this at all...


I think in the USA and Europe, it is possible that what I described doesn't happen (or not as much as here), for various factors to do with the differences between yours and our audiences.

I must emphasise that I don't see the people leaving the concert before these works are played is not the majority. Even if a third leave, two thirds stay.

I have only seen or heard it happen with the flagship groups. Not in more grassroots groups, not in concerts done in the suburbs or at the universites, not in family concerts, or in youth orchestra concerts, etc. I won't speculate on why but that's how my experience is.

I don't like these people who avoid newer music that say beyond their narrow stereotype of what music should or can be. Even children at family concerts stay for the whole concert, which is difficult if you're a kid. But these people are not children, but they could possibly learn a few things from a 10 year old, which to me is a sad fact.



> ...
> What I question is the desire to force feed the audience the sort of post-Schoenbergian music that they clearly dislike and to subsidize this music through the institution of the orchestra.... Indeed, I question the very message that is being sent when we must couple Schoenberg or Berg or Carter with Mozart and Schubert. It's like the old Mary Poppins number, "A Spoonful of sugar..."


Well as a chamber music fan, and going to a lot of those here, audiences there like variety. I once was leaving a venue, and an older guy with his wife told the usher to tell the musicians that they both loved the Berg piece. The other works were by Mozart and a new piece by an Aussie composer (which was modern tonal, btw, why do you assume that new music means automatically atonal?). I don't know who that guy was but his attitude matches chamber music fans in my experience. They are "the real deal" classical music lovers, not just limited and myopic.

Maybe orchestral music fans are different, but I don't think so (as I said above, most people stay in the hall, even thought those ignorant people leave).



> Lovers of "Early Music" have developed their own institutions and venues and performing groups rather than depend upon the traditional classical orchestras. The result has been an increased appreciation and popularity for the music of this period. It seems to me that those who appreciate the more avant garde aspects of Modern and Contemporary music might learn from their example, as opposed to railing against the institutions and individuals who don't share their enthusiasm or their values.


I agree mixing ideology and music, judging people in a rude or exclusionary way is not on. Whatever style or era we're talking about. I'm all for inclusion and most musicians I have come across are like that as well, whatever musics they play, new, old or in between.



> ...
> Most people I know would embrace at least some "atonal" music. Berg's violin concerto is an example. The Second Viennese School, most of their output, may well never enter the repertoire the way some other things have. But some of their music are 20th century classics.
> 
> Oh, I fully agree. I quite like Berg's _Lyric Suite_ and his songs... although I sometimes wonder... like Theodor Adorno (I believe it was)... what Berg might have done if it hadn't been for Schoenberg... what might he have achieved as a tonal composer? By way of analogy, I quite like such jarring Expressionist paintings as this...


Schoenberg was not against tonal music, not once he got to the USA, anyway. Berg actually wanted to learn the new techniques, study with Schoenberg. I don't think Berg wanted to be tonal like more "conservative" composers of the time where. He wanted to push things. Of course all of the guys in the c20th Viennese School applied and developed the techniques differently. It was not seen as a dogma by them, only later after 1945 by guys like Adorno (who Schoenberg did not like, in terms of his attitude, he saw him as more alienating the public with ideology, etc.)...


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> ...
> So it depends who you talk to, what is so called accessible, understandable, acceptable. I am not a musician, yet I can enjoy complex music of whatever time. Or simple music, or in-between.
> 
> Accessibility is certainly a tricky issue. How big must the audience for a work of art be before we recognize that art as having real merit? How small can the audience be before we question the art's relevance or worth? Do we accept what has been posted here repeatedly... the idea if a work of art has but a single admirer it is a success? And should we really expect that everyone should like everything and that it is some great failing if they don't? Am I to be branded a Philistine because I really don't like Schoenberg or Xenakis? Are you then a Philistine because you don't love Wagner, Strauss' operas... or opera in general?


It's not about taste or preference but about wideness of vision of a listener. Nobody has to like everything. To be open to as much things as possible is the best thing, that's what I'm saying.

I was at a concert years ago of _Metamorphosen_ by R. Strauss. At the end of it, a guy said to his wife "there was no point in that piece." Something like that is what he said. I don't agree with him but I'm inclined not to judge him too much. At least the guy had the integrity and openess to sit through the work and hear it. That's what I'm saying, certain people shut themselves off automatically. That's what I'm against, prejudging things.

I know what I like and what I don't. Some things I'm "in between" with, kind of on the fence with. But I've closed the gap with a few composers like that recently, eg. J.S. Bach and R. Strauss. But I'm toying now to go to or not to a concert they'll do here this year. It will be one of my favourite composers in the first half, whose music is rarely played, Frank Martin. I would go for the first half but I absolutely detest the music of the composer of the second half. I don't like rehash, I don't care by whom, I have no time for composers rehashing others or themselves. My view is that I either go to the whole concert, or not at all. I don't want to be disrespectful to the musicians of that group by leaving at interval before the rehash composer's music comes up.

This is what I mean. I try to give respect. As it is now, I'm sad to say I'll probably avoid that concert. Sad as I love music of Frank Martin. I am bemused how they can pair up a masterpiece by him with what I see is rehash not worthy to clean his feet with, so to speak. But again, it's to appeal to certain listeners who will go for the rehash, not the real deal - the Martin...


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Sid James said:


> ... It will be one of my favourite composers in the first half, whose music is rarely played, Frank Martin. I would go for the first half but I absolutely detest the music of the composer of the second half. I don't like rehash, I don't care by whom, I have no time for composers rehashing others or themselves. My view is that I either go to the whole concert, or not at all. I don't want to be disrespectful to the musicians of that group by leaving at interval before the rehash composer's music comes up.
> 
> This is what I mean. I try to give respect. As it is now, I'm sad to say I'll probably avoid that concert. Sad as I love music of Frank Martin. I am bemused how they can pair up a masterpiece by him with what I see is rehash not worthy to clean his feet with, so to speak. But again, it's to appeal to certain listeners who will go for the rehash, not the real deal - the Martin...


Are you talking about the Frank Martin _Mass for Double Choir_ and Einojuhani Rautavaara _Missa a Cappella_ concerto later in the year with the Sydney Philharmonia Choir? I get many flyers for 2012 seasons and this concert got my attention for the unusual combination of these two composers, who certainly don't get much performances around here. I've never listened to both pieces. It sounds interesting enough.

I think if you really enjoy Martin's music, why forgo the whole concert because it's got Rautavaara (assuming you are referring to this)? You could find out which of the two gets played first and if it's Martin's, then you could leave at the interval. Frankly, I don't think anyone would notice/care.

I've never left any concerts that I have attended, whatever my preferences are. I don't often notice those walkouts at say, Sydney Symphony, or Australian Chamber Orchestra who tend to play a mix of repertoire. I'm always/usually at the premium seats near the front and so seldom see what "mischief" the plebians at the back get up to or not anyway. If more folks do walkouts because of programme dislikes, then that's more acoustics of the music bouncing off the walls to my ears.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

I must emphasise that I don't see the people leaving the concert before these works are played is not the majority. Even if a third leave, two thirds stay.

I have only seen or heard it happen with the flagship groups. Not in more grassroots groups, not in concerts done in the suburbs or at the universites, not in family concerts, or in youth orchestra concerts, etc. I won't speculate on why but that's how my experience is.

Music has always had a social aspect to it... provided an excuse for a gathering of certain social classes. This is as true of blues gig in a seedy Chicago bar, a jazz performance in a New York nightclub, a hoedown in some dive in Appalachia, of opening night at the Met. I suspect that many of those attending classical concerts in the grassroots small towns are more respectful of the music and less likely to be there to make appearances and socialize. But I don't think class or age has anything to do with it. A good number of those who left early or didn't return after intermission at the performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion that I attended at Oberlin College last summer were younger students. While many elderly patrons were clearly passionate about the work, following along with the score in hand and engaged in discussions of the performance during intermission and at the end of the concert. Again, generalities seldom play out in real life.


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## cowbell (Feb 8, 2012)

It's a fine line between unpredictability and honesty....between pattern repetition/variation and autopilot...between a fresh voice and senility


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