# Why is 20th/21st century music written the way it is?



## kanishknishar (Aug 10, 2015)

I used to hate most 20th/21st century music (not the late-Romantics/early modernists [1]). The music had no melodies, it was cacophonous.

Eventually I grew to enjoy it. Revelling in the chaos and explosive noises that existed. I speak of orchestral/concertante music of course. Vocal music is of no interest to me.

I still want to ask though: Why does all the music _feel_ dark, heavy and unsettling? Why _is_ there no melody to speak of? Why does it challenge you? Why is the music a product of complex computations and mathematical models? There's nothing wrong with it but then aren't you simply creating intellectual exercises than "music"? [2]

Were all composers consciously writing music that one cannot simply enjoy relaxingly while taking a bath? [Not for me at least.]

Or is that our grandchildren will find them no more challenging or ear-imposing than Schubert is for us? I don't see how as the music is so fundamentally differently written.

Of course, I suspect some people might write that, "Honestly, I just sit down for some tea in my garden while listening to Penderecki and have a jolly good time!" and to them, I differ greatly.

[1] I mean composers like Shostakovich and Stravinsky which are commonly liked as well. What's the proper terms for such composers?
[2] Not going to argue with what's "music".


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I love Schoenberg, Debussy, Stravinksy, Varese, Bartok, and what they call the earlier modernists. It's my favourite era in music by far. Shostakovich, Arnold and others were still conservative and clung to these older styles in the 70's and 80's. 

Total serialism and emphasis in timbral sounds is by far my least favourite sort of music, what i call Postmodernism. They wanted to open up more avenues of interpretation, or ways of communication. From a listener's perspective, I can take it as saying a lot, or nothing. If you look at their scores, they are very detailed, which gives the impression they are meticulously composed, but change some notes around, the effect will not change drastically. Stockhausen calls those that compose this sort of music in their heads lazy, if there is no grand concept design in the compositional process behind it. I can hear some of it in Stockahausen, but some also sound arbitrary to me.


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## Portamento (Dec 8, 2016)

_If you look at their scores, they are very detailed, which gives the impression they are meticulously composed, but change some notes around, the effect will not change drastically._

Yes, after Shostakovich composers stopped caring about their craft and spent their whole lives mass-producing music for money (when they could have become a lawyer and been much better off financially). To ask how meticulous Baroque composers that generated 1,000+ works were would be to open a can of worms.

I've seen the "change a few notes around and you won't hear a difference" argument used against post-1950 music so often that I'm beginning to get a bit bored by it. Sure, the difference may not be as noticable compared to if you swap random notes from a Mozart work, but the impact is the same structurally. Especially in timbre-based works, you are altering sonorities and thus the narrative cohesion of the piece: as spectral music is centered around the harmonic series, there are obvious implications associated with swapping notes. To quote Stockhausen, "you are looking for a chicken in an abstract painting".


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

^ Any composer can generate 100,000+ works in his/her lifetime based on the spectrogram of different sounds. The point is if you substitute a note, you create a different composite, no worse than the original. Like musique concrete, the best are the first ones done, which demonstrate its concepts most clearly, before it loses it ingenuity. Why do we need to hear more being done today?


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

At what point in his ouvre, for instance, did Schoenberg cross the line from being "late Romantic/early Modernist" to crappy? Just curious.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

MarkW said:


> At what point in his ouvre, for instance, did Schoenberg cross the line from being "late Romantic/early Modernist" to crappy? Just curious.


Schoenberg went from just an ok late Romantic composer to a great Neo-Romantic composer.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Phil loves classical said:


> Schoenberg went from just an ok late Romantic composer to a great Neo-Romantic composer.


_Gurrelieder_ is considerably better than OK.


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## Portamento (Dec 8, 2016)

Phil loves classical said:


> ^ Any composer can generate 100,000+ works in his/her lifetime based on the spectrogram of different sounds. The point is if you substitute a note, you create a different composite, no worse than the original. Like musique concrete, the best are the first ones done, which demonstrate its concepts most clearly. Why do we need to hear more being done today?


There's the sticking point. Composers _don't_ generate 100,000+ works because they want to write 'good' music. I'll agree with you that "if you substitute a note, you create a different composite, no worse than the original." If you insert an F# minor chord at the beginning of Mozart's _Jupiter_ symphony, is the minor chord somehow inferior to the C major chord that succeeds it? No -- it just doesn't fit in the tonal context of the piece; the same applies to Grisey.

Your _Why do we need to hear more being done today?_ seems to imply that contemporary composers are for the most part 'copy-and-pasting' past compositions and dashing them off as their own. That's simply not true. Spectralism is just one part of the vast collage that we see in classical music today: this also includes post-minimalism, New Complexity/Simplicity, polystylism, neo-romanticism (which draws on tonality), etc.


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## Red Terror (Dec 10, 2018)

Phil loves classical said:


> Schoenberg went from just an ok late Romantic composer to a great Neo-Romantic composer.


You're wrong, Phil. WRONG!

Schoenberg will you show up at your place tonight.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

Oh no, not another all contemporary music is dark thread. This is the second one that has cropped here over the past few weeks.

One of the unique features of contemporary music is there is all types and styles of classical music out there. Some are dark and atonal. Some are happy and tonal. Some are both.

Want some happy tonal contemporary music? Check out Phillip Sparke, Mark Camphouse and Eric Ewazen. I have more suggestions if you want any.

One of the best explanations about composing I have heard was from the contemporary composer David Holsinger. He was a guest conductor with the City of Fairfax Band. He stated that he liked to think of his music as sound paintings. He uses atonality or tonality or whatever timbres he wants based on the type of music he wants to compose.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

My son makes his living in the Hollywood music industry, which ranges wide. His idea of music starts in the 30s and 40s with the Dorsey brothers and moves forward from there. He is pretty much oblivious to the music we value on this forum, although “traditional” classical music is brought to him by John Williams and others and is of some interest. Stravinsky and earlier? Not relevant to him since nobody really wants that.

His fiancée writes songs in the current style, pretty much entirely by ear. They’re good, but not anything we here would recognize as “classical music.”

My overall impression is that for them, music has moved on. For us, perhaps not.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Schoenberg could also compose well in more of an impressionistic vein ie - the _Chamber Symphony No. 2_. He was certainly an exceptional talent though his pieces in the 12-tone/serial/atonal direction I don't enjoy.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

_"I still want to ask though: Why does all the music feel dark, heavy and unsettling? Why is there no melody to speak of? Why does it challenge you? Why is the music a product of complex computations and mathematical models? There's nothing wrong with it but then aren't you simply creating intellectual exercises than "music"?"_

Perhaps because there are composers with a dark and heavy and unsettling view of life. Or it may be a reflection of their own life projected out onto the world. I do not see composers who write like this as comfortable in the universe. They may not see it as a friendly place or they may be deeply conflicted within themselves, so they write music like that. If you write a melody you might be accused of sentiment or sentimentality. If you write something with light in it, then maybe you won't be viewed as a realist. If you write something that might be uplifting in nature, you might be considered naïve. If you write something that's mostly consonant, then maybe you'll be considered old-fashioned and out-of-date. The problem is that approach to music may not necessarily be satisfying or go deep because it seems to be mostly about avoiding what came before in a previous musical era. It sounds more surface with a focus on effects. I find that some of it is interesting, but if you're looking for more than 'interesting' you might have to hunt around because not everyone writes this way. But you have to search it out. Not everyone looks to music as a challenge though sometimes it can be very stimulating and motivating. Others look to it more as a force to harmonize and balance their inner nature and they don't need music as a stimulant.


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## BabyGiraffe (Feb 24, 2017)

20th/21st century music explores new territories and techniques. Much of the more experimental work sounds like garbage, because it doesn't work from acoustic (dissonant clusters/polychords) or psychological standpoint (I can't see in what world a texture of semi-random noises will be considered good music).

"Why does all the music feel dark, heavy and unsettling?" - The emotional response to complex and dissonant sounds is negative. 
The emotional response to sounds that synchonise with the overtones of acoustic instruments is positive - the tuning systems of Renaissance and Classical eras are closer to pure intonation than modern 12ET (which is very close to the Medieval tuning system! - known for "unusable" thirds - quantal/quartal sonorities were used back then and that's one of Debussy's inspirations ). (If you play something like C-C(octave up)-G-C(octave up)-E-G chord in just intonations on a string, the upper notes are basically synced to partials of the lowest C and this type of chord sounds very smooth and peaceful. Our ear or brain can't also distinguish between frequencies that are very close to each other - this depends on the register, so good luck with cluster or very complex chords... )

"Why is the music a product of complex computations and mathematical models? " - The separation between music and mathematics is something recent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrivium = "The quadrivium consisted of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy". Music is pretty much a mathematical game - from the tuning system to the melodic and harmonic gestures - everything can be modelled precisely with mathematical techniques. And while something like serial music may be considered a fair game, it's impercetible for the normal human being.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_


KenOc said:



My son makes his living in the Hollywood music industry, which ranges wide. His idea of music starts in the 30s and 40s with the Dorsey brothers and moves forward from there. He is pretty much oblivious to the music we value on this forum, although "traditional" classical music is brought to him by John Williams and others and is of some interest. Stravinsky and earlier? Not relevant to him since nobody really wants that. His fiancée writes songs in the current style, pretty much entirely by ear. They're good, but not anything we here would recognize as "classical music." My overall impression is that for them, music has moved on. For us, perhaps not.

Click to expand...

_I think this is typical of the disconnect between creative artists and audiences not just in classical music but in many art forms. A lot of audiences, especially older people, are connected to the past in some way. Young audience members in the main want what is contemporary, not yesterday's stuff.

Artists generally construct and perform in styles that are contemporary, not 20, 50, 100 or 200 years old. You won't find any popular musicians writing songs like those performed during World War II. Similarly, classical music composers aren't going to compose music like Samuel Barber composed a half-century or longer ago; they certainly aren't going to recreate Beethoven or Bach -- just as Beethoven didn't recreate Bach in his way and Wagner didn't recreate Mozart in his day.

They are going to take their cues from what other composers are writing now and, occasionally, someone daring will come along and change it a little. What I think of as a relevance factor is always pre-eminent for composers. Those that do go backward or fight against current trends are rarely successful and often endure the scorn of critics and modern leaders.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I'm not sure I belong in this thread and I don't want to ruin it for people. But, hey, not all post-1945 (or all serial) music is dark (whatever that means). In fact only a small proportion might properly be described as dark. One example, for my listening over the last few days: there is a lovely record of Maderna's three oboe concertos. There are each of a similar length and use similar forces (so far as my ear can tell) and are each recognisably Maderna. But they are each as different from the other two as could be. None of them is dark. That record might be a good one to study for those who think all modern music sounds the same.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

kanishknishar said:


> Or is that our grandchildren will find them no more challenging or ear-imposing than Schubert is for us? I don't see how as the music is so fundamentally differently written.


I sympathize with the OP on some points though, besides, we live in an era where 'poop' is considered 'art'.




I won't argue what's music either. But I'll say this though - classical music is 'music that inspires through generations'. In hundreds of years from now, not all artists will continue to be remembered and played. They'll be forgotten like how Vicente Martin y Soler is now. Even Beatles lost 70% of the popularity online in the last decade. http://ultimateclassicrock.com/beatles-popularity-decline/
The classical 'big names' get the attention they do today because they established a whole tradition. http://blogs.springeropen.com/sprin...ata-reveals-classical-music-creation-secrets/ Now it's today's contemporary composers' turn to build their own and prove their work is actually 'innovation' and not 'failed experiments.'
And 'blaming on the big names for getting too much attention' (which I often see some doing on TC) is not the proper way to go about it.


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## Krummhorn (Feb 18, 2007)

This thread has been closed at the request of the OP.


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