# Has serialism had its day?



## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Recently whilst composing a serial piece of music (with a really real 12 note row! Shock horror!) I began to wonder why I have heard from many people and sources that "serialism has had its day," or "there's nowhere to go with serialism any more" and so on. Milton Babbitt is the last well known serialist who had been composing well after people established that serialism had met a "dead end." After Schoenberg's death, composers sought to slightly alter his 12-note rules; rows began being applied to rhythms, dynamics, tone colours etc. and rows with more or less than 12 pitches were employed in many later works of Stravinsky. But with what was seemingly a step forward in musical language, this way of composing grew to a halt. Integral serialism: the concept of the 12-note row was applied to everything! Where was it supposed to go next? So, it faded out, serialism became yesterday's news. New things were happening in music. 

Now here's a slightly different story. 

Ever since the Middle Ages, music has grown in it's harmonic complexity. Plainchant began being doubled at the fourth or fifth instead being sung in unison, harmony was born. And with harmony came the concept of consonance and dissonance. Dissonance was always relative to consonance and always had to resolve according rules which were, as usual, bent to the limit and further. It is taught in species counterpoint, for example, that a dissonance must always resolve downwards (eg a C and an F, a perfect fourth which was considered dissonant in two part writing, is supposed to resolve down to a C and an E, a major third which was consisted a consonance in two part writing). Gradually, new chords became prominent, harmonic vocabulary became increasingly complex and dissonance was bent to the limit in Wagner and Liszt and their more immediate predecessors in the early 20th century. Now there came two ideas about keeping the progress up: (1) create an emancipation of the dissonance by constantly using harmonies that change through many keys (either at a time, or simultaneously in polytonal music) and never stay in one place long enough to truly have the functional harmony of the past. (2) create an emancipation of the dissonance by abandoning all functional harmony, ditching the chord hierarchy completely and creating non-tonal music. 

But consonance in its usual sense did not die. Tonality itself did not reach a dead end, didn't go out of fashion, may have been "yesterday's news" to some but it still became an important and useful way of composing to this very day. Just take a look at music by Pärt, Glass, Marquez, Nyman (and so many others) who use tonality (including consonance and dissonance) to create new music.

Could this be the same with serialism? Have we made a mistake by dismissing it for the past half a century? It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it is a composition technique which is as legitimate and relevant to music history as the western tonal system (still proudly in use to this day) even if it is much younger. Or is it actually dead? Should it remain only as a device for composition exercises for students? Is it merely a piece of history? With the advent of so many new styles of composition, serialism is not a technique that can fit into any style easily. Is it something that can be pursued? I'm thinking something like...neo-serialism! Or will that just never work?


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## ptr

I'm sure there will be a nostalgic serialist revival in the future! 

/ptr


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## Crudblud

Back in 2012 I was interested somewhat in using 12 tone rows, I was working on a pretty large scale narrative (talk about shock horror...) piece for 11 instruments in which, at certain points, each instrument referred to its own row. I was not using the rows sensitively, and consequently the music was a bit rubbish. I had a few more flirtations with serialism, including an attempt at total serialism which fell completely flat within about two weeks, and some other rubbish that never took off, I also used a row from the old 11 instrument piece for a very brief part of the harpsichord solo in _Frozen Bob's Estranged Wife_.

After some time away working on other things, I came back to the idea of 12-tone rows (or rather matrices, the row plus all transpositions ordered by the inverse row), but I found that, instead of following them strictly, I was applying patterns, shapes and other constrictions to generate material that was not serial in the true sense, yet serially derived all the same. I then went a step further and began to use them in conjunction with totally free writing, and the result has been my longest single work yet which will soon be complete. Normally I don't talk about things I'm working on, indeed I probably wouldn't have brought it up at all were it not for this thread, but, based on my experience working on this particular piece, I feel confident in saying there is plenty of interesting music still to be made with serial techniques.


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## Winterreisender

I’m not sure if Serialism ever really had its day. Whereas most of the other “great” musical innovations were eventually accepted by the concert-going public, whether that be the dissonance of Liszt and Wagner or the doubled 5ths of plainsong, it seems to me that serialism has always remained on the fringes, a style accepted by an elite few (e.g. Second Viennese School or Darmstadt School) but rejected by the majority of listeners/composers. 

If it is true that Schoenberg’s intention was to have people in the street eventually whistling his tunes, it is clear that the man in the street hasn’t quite “caught up” with him yet. If on the other hand, Schoenberg was aiming at a music which would be shocking to the public, then that hasn’t been entirely successful either, because the majority of the public is still sort of indifferent to serialism, almost bored by it. It rarely provokes a reaction, in the same way that modern visual art does. It is as if nothing in music is shocking or even surprising anymore. 

Therefore I’m not sure what neo-serialism could achieve that serialism-version-1 couldn’t, and therefore I see no need for a revival. By all means modern composers should use aspects of the theory in other forms of atonal composition, if they so choose, but personally I find serialism in itself too restrictive.


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## DrKilroy

Crudblud said:


> there is plenty of interesting music still to be made with serial techniques.


Period. :tiphat:

Best regards, Dr


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## ahammel

It seems to me that, rather like species counterpoint and sonata form, it's part of the language now. It's there for composers to incorporate or ignore as they wish, and I rather think it still will be there in 200 years. 

I was just reading that Schumann declared sonata form dead when it was about as old as serialism now.


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## Morimur

Difficult question to answer. I am not a musician and couldn't even manage the Recorder in grade school. I do love music though and I think that Serialism, while much derided by the masses, is still very influential among serious Composers. Very few have a strict adherence to total Serialism but it still seems to inform a lot of modern compositions. Anyway, that's my perception.


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## PetrB

No, anymore than modal music, tonal music, highly chromatic music are completely worn out. Then you overlooked (tsk tsk) the serial music which is neither atonal or using all twelve pitches, leaving that many more possibilities to go before 'it runs out.'

The 'method' is no more limited than 'the tonal method,' lol. In Fact, I think it a pity it was ever called 'a method' at all because that is enough to put wool in some listeners' ears even before they listen.

As you've pointed out, generations study all of the past after the fact and use what of it suits their purposes, which only parallels my opinion above, top.

Always worth repeating, so I do, _the technical means or harmonic language or system are only as good as the composer who holds the pen._

Exactly like 
"It is the people, not the place."
this
"It is the composer, not the method."


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## Ukko

Serialism must (and will) be 'refreshed'. I eagerly await the onset of the Partch Period in serialism (not to be confused with the 48 tone row).


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## PetrB

Ukko said:


> Serialism must (and will) be 'refreshed'. I eagerly await the onset of the Partch Period in serialism (not to be confused with the 48 tone row).


Historically, as is only apposite, that will follow an era wherein that eras' historians claim all forms of serialism had completely died and dried, _The Parched Period_, as contrasted with that later near renaissance of the _Partch Period_, when the technique was resurrected and revitalized with that more humanitariian-virtual-conceptual sensibility (also heavily informed by improvisatory sound art as practiced in urban centers of that later era) of that time.


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## Mahlerian

Wuorinen still composes in a more or less 12-tone idiom, doesn't he? Babbitt wasn't the last one.


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## arpeggio

*Serial band music*

Serialism never became a major force in American Concert Band Music. I really do not know why.

The only major serial composers that I am familiar with that made significant contributions to the band literature were Karol Husa and Gunther Schuller.

I am familiar with a few composers that wrote educational twelve tone works for student groups: Frank Erickson, Herbert Hazelman and Hale Smith. I do not have any recordings of these works and I do not recall their names. I remember reading the Erickson and Hazelman works in college.

Some twelve tone composers wrote one or two works for concert band. George Rochberg's only work for band, _Apocalyptica_ (1964), was a twelve tone work.

Ironically Schoenberg's only work for band, the _Theme and Variations, Op. 43a_ (1943), was a tonal work.

Some may consider some of Persichetti's many works to be atonal: _i. e. The Parable for Band, op. 121_ (1972).

Since I have graduated from college, I have only performed one twelve tone work for band: _The Hound of Heaven_ (1988) by James Syler, a six movement program symphony. The fifth movement was composed using a tone row. I remember that the band had a lot of fun playing it.


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## millionrainbows

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> But consonance in its usual sense did not die. Tonality itself did not reach a dead end, didn't go out of fashion, may have been "yesterday's news" to some but it still became an important and useful way of composing to this very day. Just take a look at music by Pärt, Glass, Marquez, Nyman (and so many others) who use tonality (including consonance and dissonance) to create new music.


I'll couch this dialectic in different terms. "Tone-centric" music will never die, because it is part and parcel of the way our ears hear sound. Tonality is based largely (but not exclusively) on the harmonic model, that of a fundamental tone with its higher-pitched, more subservient harmonics. In this sense, the fundamental "1" will always be what our ears gravitate toward; therefore, "tone-centric" music will always be a fundamental part of the way we hear music and sound (that guy's lawnmower is producing a tri-tone; it must need oil).

At the same time, Western music will never be totally "tone-centric," unless Harry Partch, Lamont Young, and Terry Riley's ideas take over; or unless North Korea bombs the Western world into oblivion, while simultaneously being destroyed by already-launched ICBMs, then India emerges as the world power, with its never-modulating ragas which use perfect, "just" intervals.

Western (tonal) music will always want to modulate. Therein lies the dilemma; our 12-note ET system is arbitrary, has always been arbitrary, and will continue to provide the means for its own destruction; to be "debauched" from the innocence of the fundamental, the "root," the "1," into a modulatory excursion further and further away from "momma root," into distant areas of chromatic underbrush, lost, wandering, like the character in Milton's _Paradise Lost.

_Western music has struggled, and will continue to struggle with the desire for "natural" resonance, versus geometric division of the octave and inherent symmetries of "twelve-ness." It's all Pythagoras' fault, for selling his soul to the "devil" of geometry in his flawed quest to divide "1" by other prime numbers. An impossibility, to be sure. Just as John Cage pledged to "devote his life to beating his head against that wall" that Schoenberg said would always be there, we will continue to "beat our heads" against the wall of natural resonance vs. geometry...

I'm feeling quite philosophical these days. I think I shall begin writing poetry. What better occupation for a philosopher?



> Could this be the same with serialism? Have we made a mistake by dismissing it for the past half a century? It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it is a composition technique which is as legitimate and relevant to music history as the western tonal system (still proudly in use to this day) even if it is much younger. Or is it actually dead? Should it remain only as a device for composition exercises for students? Is it merely a piece of history? With the advent of so many new styles of composition, serialism is not a technique that can fit into any style easily. Is it something that can be pursued? I'm thinking something like...neo-serialism! Or will that just never work?


I'm thinking of* 200 Motels;* but Zappa was such an eclectic. I've been accused of this same eclecticism; I'm a man who does not recognize his own limitations. My dear COAG, you sell "serialism" short. It's not just a style, it's a way of life, of thinking, of being. "Serialism" will never die, nor will tonality. As long as there's a guy left on earth with a loin-cloth playing a bamboo flute, there'll be another guy trying to figure out how to make a different-keyed flute, and how to space the holes...

For me, serialism is just the symptom of a larger "problem." Thus, to pose "serialism" against tonality, as if it were the opposite, dark counterpoint of tonality, is flawed. We need to apply the same modicum of "tough love" to tonality as we do to the rest of it; if Dr. Phil were a music theorist, he would have us closely examine the imperfections of tonality, and not let it "get away" with a thing.


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## Eschbeg

Winterreisender said:


> it seems to me that serialism has always remained on the fringes, a style accepted by an elite few (e.g. Second Viennese School or Darmstadt School) but rejected by the majority of listeners/composers.


It depends on how you define the "fringes." It's is definitely true that among the general listening public, serial music has never been dominant. But among those elite few you mentioned--e.g. academia--there was a time when serialism was definitely dominant, at least in America. You had to be a serialist in order to be taken seriously as an academic composer. That's why it was such a controversy and betrayal when George Rochberg, who had a cushy Ivy League job, renounced serialism in the 1970s and started writing _some_ tonal pieces.

These days, of course, it's different. American academia is now more accepting of different styles and techniques. Serialism no longer guarantees clout. So in terms of prestige and institutional power within the very limited confines of academia, yes, serialism has had its day. It is no longer a prerequisite for membership in the academic elite.

But in any broader sense of the term, no, it has not had its day. About a decade ago I attended a concert at Alice Tully Hall that featured a serialist piece by a composer who could not have been older than 25. I cannot remember his name at the moment, but if his age was any indication, serialism as a compositional technique still attracts young contemporary composers. The fact that it _is_ just a compositional technique now, for the most part unburdened by institutional politics, is surely a factor that is helping it to continue into the present.


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## Jobis

Ukko said:


> Serialism must (and will) be 'refreshed'. I eagerly await the onset of the Partch Period in serialism (not to be confused with the 48 tone row).


I've been thinking about Partch recently, and I'm beginning to view him as something of a 'one of a kind'. I don't know if he ever intended his system to outlive him, since he knew the whole twelve tone system was really dominant (no puns intended) and I don't think that's a bad thing. I've considered trying to write something in his 11-limit system but it would feel cheap to me, like I was just copying a great master.

I think we live in a time where individual artists define their own eras, rather than the era defining the artist. Just look at Stravinsky for example, with the Russian period, the neo-classical and the serial/late works. Obviously you have artistic maturity and development in all the older artists, but it seems to have accelerated in the 20th century. There is a demand for innovation, and a composer finding their own unique voice. Its exciting!


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## KenOC

................................. (things that should not be said!)


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## Crudblud

KenOC said:


> ................................. (things that should not be said!)


I thought it was funny... oh well.


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## KenOC

Crudblud said:


> I thought it was funny... oh well.


Your comment reminded me of that famous "There's still plenty of good music to write in C major" quote!


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> Your comment reminded me of that famous "There's still plenty of good music to write in C major" quote!


Well, it is famous. Not sure it qualifies as a quote, though. It remains unverified.

And it's been attributed to both Schoenberg and Stravinsky.

It smells like an urban legend.

Anyway, if it was Schoenberg who said that, it could not have been said any later than 1951.

60 years on and that observation is still supposed to hold water? To carry weight?

Hmmmm.


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## Winterreisender

Eschbeg said:


> It depends on how you define the "fringes." It's is definitely true that among the general listening public, serial music has never been dominant. But among those elite few you mentioned--e.g. academia--there was a time when serialism was definitely dominant, at least in America. You had to be a serialist in order to be taken seriously as an academic composer. That's why it was such a controversy and betrayal when George Rochberg, who had a cushy Ivy League job, renounced serialism in the 1970s and started writing _some_ tonal pieces.


I suppose I'm just slightly suspicious of a movement which gains prominence as a result of a sort of self-propagating mutual appreciation club, whether that be these American academics whom you mention here or the Darmstadt school itself. I find it slightly alarming that many of the 20th century's most revered composers (revered by academics, at least) felt the need to compose within the confines of such a rigid manifesto in order to earn the respect of their academic peers.


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## Piwikiwi

I think it has, I likenit for what it is but it is somehow quite restrictive.


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## Aramis

some guy said:


> 60 years on and that observation is still supposed to hold water? To carry weight?


There many people over 60 who still hold water (over 70% of their mass) and carry some weights, like when they are going back home after shopping. And I think sentences tend to be more vital than people.


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## Vasks

From what I've read Wuorinen says yes to "12-tone" but no to serialism.

Here's WIKI: _"Wuorinen has been described as totally committed to twelve-tone composition,[25] with Schoenberg, late Stravinsky, and Babbitt as primary influences.[1] However, in later years he has come to disparage the term serialism as being "almost without meaning".[2]"_

and here's Q & A with CW from 2007

http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/charles-wuorinen-art-and-entertainment/4/:

_"FJO: I know all of these words are so charged with associative meanings, but are terms like "serial" or "twelve-tone" accurate to describe your music at this point?_

*CW: I've never accepted the word "serial" because, for me, it's like the word "atonal," which should be only used historically to describe a certain repertoire: the pre-twelve-tone chromatic music of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern, and maybe Schreker or somebody else, but that's it. It's used, again, as a pejorative adjective. "Serial" likewise, to me, means the sort of automatic program music written by Europeans, mostly in the '50s and a little bit into the '60s-stuff which, if you take one look at how they put it together, couldn't possibly survive. It was completely arbitrary, and they had basically no control over the outcome-that too was made into a special, new kind of virtue! "You don't know what's going to come out, isn't that marvelous?" I don't think it's marvelous. The phrase "twelve-tone," on the other hand, is accurate in the sense that it assumes the use of the total chromatic (maybe segregated into collections of less every once in a while), and that it is based on ordered sets (usually involving all of the twelve elements, sometimes more, and sometimes less). Whatever nasty connotations it has had slathered onto it by mean-spirited critics and insecure composers, that is a designation I'm happy to accept. Although, as I said for many years, if you went hunting in any of my works for the last, at least quarter century, looking for the row, you're going to have a very hard time.*

_FJO: You've even described pitch hierarchy in your music, and there are discernable major and minor triads in a lot of your pieces._

*CW: Yes, of course, and I usually put those things in the beginning of my fundamental works. Often the actual sets I use are, in some sense, scalar, or interpretable in a scalar fashion, so when I want that kind of thing, it's at my disposal. I also often use what essentially are rings, rather than sets, that is to say, orderings that, at the most fundamental level, return to the beginning, which is perfectly in keeping with everything else I've said. So, I don't know how helpful any of these designations or descriptions are, in a broader notion of music, let's say, that uses the total chromatic.*


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## Blake

Winterreisender said:


> I suppose I'm just slightly suspicious of a movement which gains prominence as a result of a sort of self-propagating mutual appreciation club, whether that be these American academics whom you mention here or the Darmstadt school itself. I find it slightly alarming that many of the 20th century's most revered composers (revered by academics, at least) felt the need to compose within the confines of such a rigid manifesto in order to earn the respect of their academic peers.


It's been said that sometimes the sweetest things can be discovered through the greatest restrictions. It requires a more direct focus to dive as deeply as one can down a more specific point. It's often more difficult to do this with broader structures as one's attention risks becoming ultra-fragmented. This observation varies, of course... but I have seen it play out this way.


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## arpeggio

I have mentioned this before but it appears to me that the influence of the serial academics classical American music is grossly exagerated.

Eastman School of music was the center of American Romanticism. The head of our composition department at the University of North Carolina Greensboro was a product of Eastman and a tonalist. There were many fine Schools of Music in the United States that were not dominated by serialists. To the best of my recollection serialist composition schools were concentrated in the northeast. There were a few outside the NE like the composition department at the University of Michigan. Ironically Michigan State, which has a fine music department, had H. Owen Reed. Although at times he would compose aleotoric music, he was primarily a tonal composer.

I have no doubt that there are people here who know more that I do and can provide a list of many fine music departments in the US that were dominated by tonal composers.

I find it ironic that those members who thumb their noses at atonal composers also treat contempory tonal composers with complete disdain.

Note: While I was preparing this I discovered the Reed just passed away. He was 103: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/lsj/obituary.aspx?pid=168984521


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## Mahlerian

Winterreisender said:


> I suppose I'm just slightly suspicious of a movement which gains prominence as a result of a sort of self-propagating mutual appreciation club, whether that be these American academics whom you mention here or the Darmstadt school itself. I find it slightly alarming that many of the 20th century's most revered composers (revered by academics, at least) felt the need to compose within the confines of such a rigid manifesto in order to earn the respect of their academic peers.


Total or multiple serialism may be extremely limiting (which is why no one composes that way anymore), but 12-tone writing in general, or serialism taken in its broadest sense, is not.

12-tone writing, if anything, offers too few pointers for a composer for how to proceed with a piece that he or she has begun, as opposed to common practice tonality which by itself helps to structure a work.


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## Guest

A controlling narrative doesn't have to align with historical fact.

It just has to be stated. And repeated. And repeated. Do this often enough, and it will acquire a status of sorts.

Is this, for instance, a fair or accurate account of the situation? "...many of the 20th century's most revered composers (revered by academics, at least) felt the need to compose within the confines of such a rigid manifesto in order to earn the respect of their academic peers." 

Probably not. In fact, as arpeggio points out, certainly not. But it coincides with a particular world view (not surprisingly, as it was manufactured by people who held that view), so passes for current among that group of people. Unfortunately, notions of this sort do not stay confined to a particular group but begin to infect discourse generally. Look at the truism about avant garde music of the early twentieth century turning off audiences. It's not true, but it's been repeated so often that it's taken as given, even by some proponents of modern music. Same with the idea that some composers, even an entire group of composers, have lost touch with their audience. Never mind if it's actually true or not. The claim is made. And repeated. And repeated. And then becomes something solid enough to have to be reckoned with, infecting the discourse.

Same with "restrictive." Never mind that what Vesuvius just said is absolutely true, and that every creator knows it. Never mind that "tonality" is also restrictive. Any system is a collection of does and of don'ts. Restrictive is just a ploy to deflect attention from any genuine issues, I suspect. It's simple. "Restrictive" is bad, so if you don't like serialism, you call it restrictive. Never mind that in other discussions, under other circumstances, unrestricted experimentation is portrayed as a bad thing. So is restrictive good or bad? Well, it depends. It's bad if you use it to describe something you don't like. But if something else that you don't like is clearly unrestricted, then restrictive is suddenly desirable.

Nothing to do with restrictions, really. As Mahlerian points out, tonality is more restrictive.

Everything to do with personal likes and dislikes. And since personal likes and dislikes don't really cut it on their own, one has to rationalize them with false narratives. 

Delightful.


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## DavidA

Has serialism had its day?

I do hope so!


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## Eschbeg

Winterreisender said:


> I I find it slightly alarming that many of the 20th century's most revered composers (revered by academics, at least) felt the need to compose within the confines of such a rigid manifesto in order to earn the respect of their academic peers.


It can be disheartening, I agree. On the other hand, music has always been subject, albeit in varying degrees, to the whims of people holding institutional power. In that sense, serialists can't be accused of doing anything that past composers didn't also do. There was a time when writing operas that were transparent metaphors for their (aristocratic) audiences was the way to "buy" success, and as a result the genre of opera seria was born. There was a different time when writing epic-sized operas with fantastical plots and a massive orchestra plus chorus was the way to "buy" success with audiences, and as a result the genre of grand opera was born. The stakes may have changed over time but the game hasn't.

More disheartening in my opinion is that midcentury serialists didn't always own up to this. Composers of opera seria or grand opera never pretended they were independent of the institutions that helped them thrive. There was no guilty conscience about it. By contrast, one of the reasons serialism became so prestigious in the first place is that tone row analysis seems like such an objective, disinterested endeavor. Adequate knowledge of serial technique seems to be all you need in order to "understand" a serial piece; you never have to deal with messy things outside the music like emotions, extramusical content, etc. In retrospect it seems almost inevitable that serialism would be viewed as a totally insulated from, and therefore unaffected by, the whims of the outside world. Hans Werner Henze, one of the first Darmstadt alums, once said "we were assured by senior composers that music is abstract, not to be connected with everyday life." The irony is that disinterestedness and objectivity became the way to buy success within the inside world of academia. It's taken a while for anyone to acknowledge that serialism can be just as institutionally motivated as any other form of art.


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## Winterreisender

I’m reluctant to criticise serialism itself, whether that be “total or multiple serialism” or “serialism taken in its broadest sense,” because as Some Guy rightly points out, it is a matter of taste. I like the rules and regulations which govern a lot of renaissance music, for instance, but I’m not so keen on the rules governing serialism. Just my opinion.

But I’m also being accused of constructing a false narrative. One the one hand, you are suggesting that the “modern-composers-are-out-of-touch-with-the-people” narrative is based on false assumptions, an ungrounded claim invented by the enemies of modernism, a narrative which has practically become a truism as a result of constant repetition. But given that this is a claim constantly repeated by the people about the tastes of the people, surely it holds at least some truth? (Unless of course the general public can’t be trusted to know what’s best for them?). In other words, I’m not sure why people would keep saying that they find modern music out of touch, if they actually enjoy listening to it.

I do feel a bit uncomfortable relying solely on the tastes of the masses as an indicator for quality, but I would much sooner do that than rely on the tastes of academics. It is surely a favourite activity of academics to create convenient narratives when writing the music history books; and many academics like to go down the “emancipation from tonality” route when constructing their narratives, i.e. the gradual move away from conventional tonality from Liszt and Wagner to Schoenberg and beyond, and from there they might deduce that Schoenberg is somehow the successor to the great Romantics. Ok, it is a nice narrative, at least as far as the technical aspects of composition are concerned. But it is also surely a false narrative, not only because it ignores the fact that serialism was just one of many styles prominent in the early 20th century, but also because the great composers of the past generally achieved their revered status through lasting popularity with the public. It is surely the tendency of academics insisting upon such a rigid narrative which has led to composers like Britten being looked down upon in academic circles because of his conservatism, decide being far more popular composer than any of the serialists. 

I am puzzled by the suggestion that the academic narrative should take precedent over the narrative of the man in the street.


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## Winterreisender

Eschbeg said:


> It can be disheartening, I agree. On the other hand, music has always been subject, albeit in varying degrees, to the whims of people holding institutional power. In that sense, serialists can't be accused of doing anything that past composers didn't also do. There was a time when writing operas that were transparent metaphors for their (aristocratic) audiences was the way to "buy" success, and as a result the genre of opera seria was born. There was a different time when writing epic-sized operas with fantastical plots and a massive orchestra plus chorus was the way to "buy" success with audiences, and as a result the genre of grand opera was born. The stakes may have changed over time but the game hasn't.
> 
> More disheartening in my opinion is that midcentury serialists didn't always own up to this. Composers of opera seria or grand opera never pretended they were independent of the institutions that helped them thrive. There was no guilty conscience about it. By contrast, one of the reasons serialism became so prestigious in the first place is that tone row analysis seems like such an objective, disinterested endeavor. Adequate knowledge of serial technique seems to be all you need in order to "understand" a serial piece; you never have to deal with messy things outside the music like emotions, extramusical content, etc. In retrospect it seems almost inevitable that serialism would be viewed as a totally insulated from, and therefore unaffected by, the whims of the outside world. Hans Werner Henze, one of the first Darmstadt alums, once said "we were assured by senior composers that music is abstract, not to be connected with everyday life." The irony is that disinterestedness and objectivity became the way to buy success within the inside world of academia.* It's taken a while for anyone to acknowledge that serialism can be just as institutionally motivated as any other form of art.*


I agree, especially with the point you make at the end.

It's also interesting that you mention that writing opera seria and grand opera were ways to quick success. Momentary fleeting success, one might add. Perhaps the fact that very few pieces from these genres are still in the repertoire shows that writing to fulfill the terms of a restrictive program or manifesto isn't the best way to achieve lasting popularity.


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## Eschbeg

Winterreisender said:


> It's also interesting that you mention that writing opera seria and grand opera were ways to quick success. Momentary fleeting success, one might add. Perhaps the fact that very few pieces from these genres are still in the repertoire shows that writing to fulfill the terms of a restrictive program or manifesto isn't the best way to achieve lasting popularity.


Maybe, but there's probably more to it than that. There are plenty of pieces still in the canon today that were equally the result of composers doing what was expected of them: Vivaldi concertos, Haydn symphonies, Rossini operas, etc. There is no necessary conflict between following a template and writing a lasting artwork. It's just that we allow the latter to absolve the former for composers like Vivaldi, Haydn, and Rossini, but not for composers like A. Scarlatti or Halévy.


----------



## Mahlerian

Winterreisender said:


> I'm reluctant to criticise serialism itself, whether that be "total or multiple serialism" or "serialism taken in its broadest sense," because as Some Guy rightly points out, it is a matter of taste. I like the rules and regulations which govern a lot of renaissance music, for instance, but I'm not so keen on the rules governing serialism. Just my opinion.


I've never been convinced that people without specific training and a good deal of familiarity with the idiom can identify whether or not music is serial by listening. Serial procedures are notorious for being very difficult to follow aurally, and composers usually went out of their way to place the focus on things other than the methods involved.

In other words, I think that while people do indeed dislike works and composers associated with serial techniques, they are unable to recognize whether in fact they are being employed in a given work. Take, for example, Carter, who never used serial or 12-tone techniques in any of his work, but who is regularly lumped in as a serialist with the Darmstadt Avant-garde.



Winterreisender said:


> many academics like to go down the "emancipation from tonality" route when constructing their narratives, i.e. the gradual move away from conventional tonality from Liszt and Wagner to Schoenberg and beyond, and from there they might deduce that Schoenberg is somehow the successor to the great Romantics.


Schoenberg is not the successor to the great Romantics because he wrote music in a post-tonal idiom (many others did that). Schoenberg is the successor to the great German Romantics because he wrote excellent music that extends the aesthetic trends predominant in Germanic late Romanticism.


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## brotagonist

Mahlerian said:


> I've never been convinced that people without specific training and a good deal of familiarity with the idiom can identify whether or not music is serial by listening. ...Carter, who never used serial or 12-tone techniques in any of his work... is regularly lumped in as a serialist...


I second that. I am quite familiar with and enamoured of the idiom, so when I hear music that appears to follow the kind of rhythmic pattern that Schoenberg's works have, then I presume it to be serial. I perceive Carter to be serialist, since he sounds like it. Feldman, too, in a very minimalist, pared down sort of way, would be easy to think of as serialist. Berg, however, often being so lush and lyrical, could stump me.

For those of us who are not formally trained in music, adjectives such as tonal and atonal become rather meaningless. Anything that sounds _schräg_ (literally slanted, oblique; figuratively offbeat, curious, bizarre) will be thought of as atonal. Considering that composers today view atonality, serialism and other styles as techniques to be employed as appropriate, this division into poles is meaningless to the listener. What is meaningful is whether I like what a composer composes.


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## ahammel

brotagonist said:


> I second that. I am quite familiar with and enamoured of the idiom, so when I hear music that appears to follow the kind of rhythmic pattern that Schoenberg's works have, then I presume it to be serial. I perceive Carter to be serialist, since he sounds like it. Feldman, too, in a very minimalist, pared down sort of way, would be easy to think of as serialist. Berg, however, often being so lush and lyrical, could stump me.


For my part, I thought _Le Marteau Sans Maître_ was 12-tone until I was otherwise informed. I know that Lutosławski used 12-tone procedures that aren't serial because I read it on Wikipedia, but I'm damned if I know in what, exactly, the difference lies.

I often bring up Rautavaara's 3rd in this context. I certainly couldn't identify that as 12-tone on a blind listening.


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## brotagonist

^ There you go. I always thought _Marteau_ was 12-tone, too. I read something about Lutosławski, that he was atonal, I think. I never realized it even though I have been listening to him since the '70s. I guess he sounded too melodic. And Rautavaara? I would never have guessed. He's just too smooth 

One can have a deep appreciation for music without understanding the technical aspects (but I would like to learn).


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## ahammel

brotagonist said:


> ^ There you go. I always thought _Marteau_ was 12-tone, too. I read something about Lutoslawski, that he was atonal, I think. I never realized it even though I have been listening to him since the '70s. I guess he sounded to melodic. And Rautavaara? I would never have guessed. He's just too smooth
> 
> One can have a deep appreciation for music without understanding the technical aspects (but I would like to learn).


Lutosławski's early work is neo-classical. His later stuff is 12-tone and sounds it (to my ears, anyway).


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## Guest

Winterreisender said:


> I'm not sure why people would keep saying that they find modern music out of touch, if they actually enjoy listening to it.


But that's just it.

The sentiment precedes experience. You go into if, if at all you do, with the expectation that it will be awful. And voila, it's awful. (Or, very rarely, you're surprised by how "accessible" this or that modern work it. Why the surprise? Others have found modern music to be delightful from the get go. The surprise comes because of the expectations.)

As you will have seen, if you've followed especially the recent threads on TC about modernism, you don't even have to have heard any of the actual music to have an opinion about how awful it is.



Winterreisender said:


> I do feel a bit uncomfortable relying solely on the tastes of the masses as an indicator for quality, but I would much sooner do that than rely on the tastes of academics.


Why would you do either? Listen to music.



Winterreisender said:


> It is surely a favourite activity of academics to create convenient narratives when writing the music history books....


Is it?



Winterreisender said:


> It is surely the tendency of academics insisting upon such a rigid narrative which has led to composers like Britten being looked down upon in academic circles because of his conservatism, decide being far more popular composer than any of the serialists.


Is it? I've never heard anyone who has a job teaching in a university say anything but nice things about Britten.



Winterreisender said:


> I am puzzled by the suggestion that the academic narrative should take precedent over the narrative of the man in the street.


I would be, too, if such a suggestion had been made.


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## Winterreisender

some guy said:


> But that's just it.
> 
> The sentiment precedes experience. You go into if, if at all you do, with the expectation that it will be awful. And voila, it's awful. (Or, very rarely, you're surprised by how "accessible" this or that modern work it. Why the surprise? Others have found modern music to be delightful from the get go. The surprise comes because of the expectations.)
> 
> As you will have seen, if you've followed especially the recent threads on TC about modernism, you don't even have to have heard any of the actual music to have an opinion about how awful it is.


It's surely all too easy to say that the unwashed masses don't enjoy modern music, simply because they're not putting enough effort in or they're not listening properly.

I also think it would be a mistake to assume that the listening habits of TC members are in anyway reflective of the public as a whole. Yes, there are people on TC who have strong opinions about modern music, but the wider public doesn't really care for it, not because they haven't heard much of it (because many of them have, e.g. when a Boulez piece is sandwiched between two Beethoven pieces at the BBC proms) but because the music doesn't connect with them emotionally. Maybe some people might go away from such a performance slightly curious; they might tell themselves they liked it because the "academic narrative" tells them to do so. But I wonder how many of them would then listen to more of this music when it isn't sandwiched between Beethoven?

But I digress. My original point was simply that serialism cannot make a "comeback" until it actually scores an initial breakthrough, and that has yet to happen. The academics can keep telling us that _these_ are the great composers of the 20th century, _these_ are the successors to Beethoven and Wagner, and maybe this claim has been repeated so often that it's taken as given. But until I see concert halls across the country filling up with programs of Schoenberg and Webern, I will not be convinced that serialism is anything more than academic niche.


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## DavidA

Winterreisender said:


> It's surely all too easy to say that the unwashed masses don't enjoy modern music, simply because they're not putting enough effort in or they're not listening properly.
> 
> I also think it would be a mistake to assume that the listening habits of TC members are in anyway reflective of the public as a whole. Yes, there are people on TC who have strong opinions about modern music, but the wider public doesn't really care for it, not because they haven't heard much of it (because many of them have, e.g. when a Boulez piece is sandwiched between two Beethoven pieces at the BBC proms) but because the music doesn't connect with them emotionally. Maybe some people might go away from such a performance slightly curious; they might tell themselves they liked it because the "academic narrative" tells them to do so. But I wonder how many of them would then listen to more of this music when it isn't sandwiched between Beethoven?
> 
> But I digress. My original point was simply that serialism cannot make a "comeback" until it actually scores an initial breakthrough, and that has yet to happen. The academics can keep telling us that _these_ are the great composers of the 20th century, _these_ are the successors to Beethoven and Wagner, and maybe this claim has been repeated so often that it's taken as given. But until I see concert halls across the country filling up with programs of Schoenberg and Webern, I will not be convinced that serialism is anything more than academic niche.


I remember some years ago, Hans Vonk the conductor saying that there was never a time like the present when composers had so lost touch with their audience. There has to be something that a general audience likes and connects with, not just a small number of people find interesting


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## hpowders

Winterreisender said:


> It's surely all too easy to say that the unwashed masses don't enjoy modern music, simply because they're not putting enough effort in or they're not listening properly.
> 
> I also think it would be a mistake to assume that the listening habits of TC members are in anyway reflective of the public as a whole. Yes, there are people on TC who have strong opinions about modern music, but the wider public doesn't really care for it, not because they haven't heard much of it (because many of them have, e.g. when a Boulez piece is sandwiched between two Beethoven pieces at the BBC proms) but because the music doesn't connect with them emotionally. Maybe some people might go away from such a performance slightly curious; they might tell themselves they liked it because the "academic narrative" tells them to do so. But I wonder how many of them would then listen to more of this music when it isn't sandwiched between Beethoven?
> 
> But I digress. My original point was simply that serialism cannot make a "comeback" until it actually scores an initial breakthrough, and that has yet to happen. The academics can keep telling us that _these_ are the great composers of the 20th century, _these_ are the successors to Beethoven and Wagner, and maybe this claim has been repeated so often that it's taken as given. *But until I see concert halls across the country filling up with programs of Schoenberg and Webern, I will not be convinced that serialism is anything more than academic niche.*




I will stick my neck out and make a bold prediction: concert halls across the country and the world will NEVER fill up with programs of Schoenberg and Webern on the menu.


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## Winterreisender

hpowders said:


> I will stick my neck out and make a bold prediction: concert halls across the country and the world will NEVER fill up with programs of Schoenberg and Webern on the menu.


You're most probably right. The only time I see Schoenberg on the menu is when he is the side dish to Beethoven, or other established composers. I find it a rather odd juxtaposition to be honest.


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## Andreas

hpowders said:


> [/B]
> 
> I will stick my neck out and make a bold prediction: concert halls across the country and the world will NEVER fill up with programs of Schoenberg and Webern on the menu.


Well, Hilary Hahn has sold out concerts with Schoenberg's Violin Concerto. But then again, perhaps she has sold them out with Herself rather than Schoenberg.


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## hpowders

Andreas said:


> Well, Hilary Hahn has sold out concerts with Schoenberg's Violin Concerto. But then again, perhaps she has sold them out with Herself rather than Schoenberg.


I bet if you took a survey of the audience, they would have preferred the Brahms, Beethoven or a Mozart concerto instead. 

If it helps, I would have definitely attended for the Schoenberg!


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## hpowders

Winterreisender said:


> You're most probably right. The only time I see Schoenberg on the menu is when he is the side dish to Beethoven, or other established composers. I find it a rather odd juxtaposition to be honest.


I've gone to concerts when Schoenberg, Berg or Webern are on the menu; the intensive coughing practically makes it impossible to concentrate on the music.


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## JohnnyRotten

Winterreisender said:


> But until I see concert halls across the country filling up with programs of Schoenberg and Webern, I will not be convinced that serialism is anything more than academic niche.


In my country I do indeed see concert halls filling up with programs dedicated to contemporary music, sometimes including Schönberg, Berg and Webern, but more often composers of later periods. These are of course dedicated contemporary music festivals, but the point is they are well attended, highly appreaciated and well funded. For the moment.


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## hpowders

Winterreisender said:


> You're most probably right. The only time I see Schoenberg on the menu is when he is the side dish to Beethoven, or other established composers. I find it a rather odd juxtaposition to be honest.


I don't find it odd at all. The Beethoven is the "hook" to get the folks in the seats. Program instead, Schoenberg, Webern and Boulez, you won't see many.


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## ahammel

Winterreisender said:


> But I digress. My original point was simply that serialism cannot make a "comeback" until it actually scores an initial breakthrough, and that has yet to happen.


It can make a comeback if a future generation of reasonably prominent composers adopt its techniques, put some new twist on it and start calling themselves "neo-serialists". Whether or not they sell out concert halls with it is surely neither here nor there.


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## arpeggio

I was at a concert at Tanglewood that featured the music of Carter that played to a full house. Does that count?


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## hpowders

arpeggio said:


> I was at a concert at Tanglewood that featured the music of Carter that played to a full house. Does that count?


Probably filled with a lot of Tanglewood students and their teachers. Not surprised.
I could put on a Carter concert in NYC or Boston and I could sell it out. Try the same thing in Tennessee.


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## Mahlerian

arpeggio said:


> I was at a concert at Tanglewood that featured the music of Carter that played to a full house. Does that count?


No, because it's not actually serial, but yes, because the people who would stay away at all costs probably think it is...


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## arpeggio

In Tennessee one would probably have trouble selling out an all Mendelsohn concert.


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## hpowders

arpeggio said:


> In Tennessee one would probably have trouble selling out an all Mendelsohn concert.


Let's give them some credit. To even spell Tennessee ain't easy!


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## Eschbeg

Winterreisender said:


> My original point was simply that serialism cannot make a "comeback" until it actually scores an initial breakthrough, and that has yet to happen... until I see concert halls across the country filling up with programs of Schoenberg and Webern, I will not be convinced that serialism is anything more than academic niche.


Is "filling up a concert hall" really the benchmark for "breaking through"? If so, I'm not sure we can even claim that Palestrina, Monteverdi, Mendelssohn, Sibelius, Vaughan Williams, or Bartók has "broken through." All of those composers are indisputably part of the repertoire (and I'll take most of them over Beethoven any day), but I'm not convinced any of them can sell out a concert on their own. It seems like we're conflating simply "breaking through" and "reaching the absolute pinnacle of music," and though I can't prove it I suspect that conflation is more likely to happen for modernist composers, like we're secretly setting the bar a little higher for them.


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## hpowders

Eschbeg said:


> Is "filling up a concert hall" really the benchmark for "breaking through"? If so, I'm not sure we can even claim that Palestrina, Monteverdi, Mendelssohn, Sibelius, Vaughan Williams, or Bartók has "broken through." All of those composers are indisputably part of the repertoire (and I'll take most of them over Beethoven any day), but I'm not convinced any of them can sell out a concert on their own. It seems like we're conflating simply "breaking through" and "reaching the absolute pinnacle of music," and though I can't prove it I suspect that conflation is more likely to happen for modernist composers, like we're secretly setting the bar a little higher for them.


I was with you until "I'll take most of them over Beethoven any day." Seriously?


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## Mahlerian

Eschbeg said:


> Is "filling up a concert hall" really the benchmark for "breaking through"? If so, I'm not sure we can even claim that Palestrina, Monteverdi, Mendelssohn, Sibelius, Vaughan Williams, or Bartók has "broken through." All of those composers are indisputably part of the repertoire (and I'll take most of them over Beethoven any day), but I'm not convinced any of them can sell out a concert on their own. It seems like we're conflating simply "breaking through" and "reaching the absolute pinnacle of music," and though I can't prove it I suspect that conflation is more likely to happen for modernist composers, like we're secretly setting the bar a little higher for them.


I'm also baffled by the persistent idea that the music of X composer may still be around Y years after their death, but their music isn't part of the canon and will never be accepted. Don't people realize that this argument becomes more and more ridiculous as Y gets bigger and bigger and X continues to hang on?


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## hpowders

"Secretly setting the bar a little higher for them" regarding modernist composers. The music hasn't been accepted because mainstream folks hearing it prefer not to ever hear it again. Atonal, serial, 12 tone, whatever; most likely always be the domain of the intellectually select few.


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## brotagonist

Mahlerian said:


> I'm also baffled by the persistent idea that the music of X composer may still be around Y years after their death, but their music isn't part of the canon and will never be accepted. Don't people realize that this argument becomes more and more ridiculous as Y gets bigger and bigger and X continues to hang on?


I think that's what the "threshing room floor" is for, as Ukko called it a while back. If it's not part of the canon, then, aside from academics and historians, the rest of us don't need to bother with it.



hpowders said:


> Atonal, serial, 12 tone, whatever; most likely always be the domain of the intellectually select few.


That is flattering, but I love that music and I am not one of the "intellectually select" music cognoscenti.


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## ahammel

brotagonist said:


> I think that's what the "threshing room floor" is for, as Ukko called it a while back. If it's not part of the canon, then, aside from academics and historians, the rest of us don't need to bother with it.


What is this music that the rest of us "need" to bother with?


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## hpowders

brotagonist said:


> I think that's what the "threshing room floor" is for, as Ukko called it a while back. If it's not part of the canon, then, aside from academics and historians, the rest of us don't need to bother with it.
> 
> That is flattering, but I love that music and I am not one of the "intellectually select" music cognoscenti.


You are being modest, I'm sure. Probably do 3 dimensional crossword puzzles in your spare time.


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## brotagonist

ahammel said:


> What is this music that the rest of us "need" to bother with?


Your guess is as good as mine. I don't have a list of the canon.


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## JohnnyRotten

To answer the original poster's question, I do not believe so. I also do not think that you will ever catch me whistling any air from Schoenberg's works after Transfigured Night. I am also confident I will not be caught whistling airs from many late Romantic end of 19th century composers, for many of their melodies, whilst melodic, are nor easily sung or whistled.
I also think that serialism has not yet exhausted itself, and I believe this to be a good thing. I admit it's not a "get down and boogy to the groove" type, of music, but it is a sort of rarified poetry that I appreciate. I do prefer Bach though, on the whole. Schoenberg (and all who follow) are here to stay. Put on the salt and eat up, or leave the plate and go elsewhere if the taste displeases you. Who needs moaners at the stammtisch?


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## Guest

It is ultimately rather unrewarding to have to keep addressing references to things that don't exist before we can talk about things that actually do.



Winterreisender said:


> It's surely all too easy to say that the unwashed masses don't enjoy modern music, simply because they're not putting enough effort in or they're not listening properly.


I'm sure it is. But who is defining a group of people as "unwashed masses"? Is anyone actually doing this? And if you're referring to the post that you quoted, there's nothing in that about not putting in enough effort or not listen properly. In fact, there's nothing in there about listening habits at all.



Winterreisender said:


> I also think it would be a mistake to assume that the listening habits of TC members are in anyway reflective of the public as a whole.


I would, too, if I ever saw anyone doing this.



Winterreisender said:


> ...the wider public doesn't really care for it, not because they haven't heard much of it (because many of them have, e.g. when a Boulez piece is sandwiched between two Beethoven pieces at the BBC proms) but because the music doesn't connect with them emotionally.


Sigh. The public you're referring to as "wide" here is in the whole scheme of things (2, 3 percent?) impossibly narrow. And the people who make up the symphony audience have not heard very much modern music, no. Perhaps more in Europe and UK, but then attitudes toward modern music in Europe and the UK are ever so slightly less hostile than in the US. Generally.



Winterreisender said:


> ...they might tell themselves they liked it because the "academic narrative" tells them to do so.


You're gonna work this "narrative" thing to death, aren't you? Well do me a favor and at least get it right. There is no narrative, academic or otherwise, that is telling anyone anywhere what to like. (And what is it you have against schools? Did you have a bad experience as a student? I'm sorry if you did, but that is hardly a basis for using the academy as a whipping boy.



Winterreisender said:


> But I wonder how many of them would then listen to more of this music when it isn't sandwiched between Beethoven?


I was going to concerts in the seventies and eighties in which Erickson and Xenakis were being sandwiched between Schoenberg pieces, which, in the context, sounded quite tame and old-fashioned. And, be fair, music from the twenties is almost a hundred years old already.



Winterreisender said:


> The academics can keep telling us that _these_ are the great composers of the 20th century, _these_ are the successors to Beethoven and Wagner....


Yes, people who study things, who are scholars, come to conclusions about what they study. What a terrible thing! Who does that? Buncha knowitalls!!

Who, just by the way, are you referring to as "these"? Any names. Or would naming names undercut the heavenly forth* of the bashing?



DavidA said:


> I remember some years ago, Hans Vonk the conductor saying that there was never a time like the present when composers had so lost touch with their audience. There has to be something that a general audience likes and connects with, not just a small number of people find interesting


That's nice. Any reason to think that Hans had got it right?

In fact, it is very rare for a composer to lose touch with her audience. Her audience, not yours. She never even tried to connect with your audience, so of course she couldn't _lose_ any connection. And her connection with her audience, whatever its size, is perfectly fine. Get used to it.

And why the worship of "general" over "small"? Is bigger, as the AT&T commercial claims, better? Maybe it's because classical listeners recognize how small they are compared to the total population, how marginal, how insignificant. Hey, I've got an idea!! Let's find a group even smaller than we are and bash them for being small, yay!!!

Yeah. Great idea.

*Reference to a very underrated movie of 1983.


----------



## Eschbeg

hpowders said:


> I was with you until "I'll take most of them over Beethoven any day." Seriously?


Yes, seriously. Pretty much the only one I would not include of the composers I mentioned is Vaughan Williams.


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## PetrB

hpowders said:


> "Secretly setting the bar a little higher for them" regarding modernist composers. The music hasn't been accepted because mainstream folks hearing it prefer not to ever hear it again. Atonal, serial, 12 tone, whatever; most likely always be the domain of the intellectually select few.


Rather like many of the later works of Mozart, Beethoven, etc. If that is the kind of thing I suppose you mean, then I suppose that is correct. There is now of course a very wide acknowledgment of Beethoven's Grosse Fuge, while I'm sure many of those who are raving about Beethoven in general do not put it at the top of their "Love to Listen to this" list 

Schoenberg, in the same historic pattern of rejection / ignored for about seventy years after his death as Bach and Mahler, is now getting more and more play and a wider audience who enjoy / appreciate the music. It is more than likely that the music of Guillaume de Machaut, in the 1300's and this present time, is still _in the domain of "the intellectually select few."_ (That term, I wonder and laugh at, especially the 'select' part of it.)

This is nothing new in music, the history of music, and seems to me a common and repeated split / division within that 3% who consume classical music re: "contemporary" anything -- and contemporary as in every era is contemporary when it is up and running.

Some of Mozart's greatest operas had a one and only run in his lifetime of a handful of nights, yet somehow history gets re-written that he was a populist composer, with an eye and ear to the common man concert-goer. Beethoven sometimes fared not much better.


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## hpowders

Folks who superficially "like" classical music most likely don't want to work at music listening. It's like TV-give them a harmless sitcom. Not Death of A Salesman on the Drama Channel. They don't want the Hammerklavier Sonata or the c# minor quartet or the WTC and certainly nothing by Boulez or Webern. It's like my brother. He always tells me how "relaxing" it is. No matter what the piece is-Beethoven, Mahler, Verdi. End of conversation. I find music immensely stimulating. Two immovable objects. Same parents. One of life's mysteries. I use him as an example of the typical person who says he likes classical music. He's not a fanatic about it and won't get emotionally involved listening to it and surely won't devote the time required to listen to involved pieces.


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## matsoljare

Its greatest day is yet to come!


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## hreichgott

So far, several specific examples of modernist and more recent composers selling out concert halls...
and no specific examples where they fail to do so.... hmm.


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## PetrB

Winterreisender said:


> The academics can keep telling us that _these_ are the great composers of the 20th century, _these_ are the successors to Beethoven and Wagner...


LOL, just like the academics told a generation of the great unwashed that Beethoven and Wagner were the successors to the great composers just before them?

You know, there have been a few who suffered through a mono-obsessed composition teacher whose only interest was, basically, their own, and who would teach it and preach it to all students. John Adams had such a one in Leon Kirchner, but it did not seem to cramp his style or creativity one jot. Just sayin.'

The student who is easily discouraged by such a circumstance was more than likely without the wherewithal to withstand the arrows and misfortunes which are an ordinary part of life in any field, and those are the ones who tend to fold, then once out of school are wont to attribute their later thwarted destinies on those damned draconian professors.

That is an oft-told tale, and a bunch of hooey from those unfortunate enough to not have had some prior formative circumstances which had them walking in to the doors of academia with a stronger sense of self and their own self-esteem.

Nobody can prevent or cure an audience wallowing in old-fashioned emotions and sentiments if they do not of their own volition care to visit the contemporary emotions and sentiments of their own time, or expect similar sentiment they get from older works from newer works.

If listeners can only "emotionally" relate to music primarily from prior 1890, I'm fine with that while thinking it more a matter of those individuals being -- at least in good part -- musical / emotional tourists of a past they only think existed (rather like those all-friendly and safe small towns with all the cute houses and white picket fences as depicted in Frank Capra films; those never actually existed, either) while if those listeners choose to stay there and are happy with it, "no problem." [[ADD: Does 'emotionally relate' equate to "tonal music"? If that is about the nut of it, it is not a generally valid statement. ]]

I, other listeners and composers of later music do have a very big problem when the desire for old-fashioned emotion and sentiment is what is expected as evoked by newer repertoire, that 'complaint,' often at the top of a list of wants sounding more like a demand delivered in a whine.

All musicians 'out of school' are quite free to work however they can and want, including those who compose. Your attribution to serialism as spawned by some Machiavellian Cabal of Illuminati-like Academics is getting out there in the arena of mild to strong paranoia in believing there was / is some sort of conspiracy.

Serialism is not over as much as it has undergone major transformations via its exploration by numerous composers over time -- just as modality and tonality underwent exactly the same sort of developments all the way through their several hundreds of years of predominance. It is old enough it is safe to say that a serial work of today is "no longer your grandma's serialism."


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## Morimur

Well said, dear boy, well said.


----------



## Mahlerian

Adding to what PetrB said, some listeners might find it instructive that the Neoclassicists, Stravinsky and Copland coming to mind via their writings, were the ones who were outspoken _against_ Romantic emotionality, while the pre-Darmstadt serialists (although including some of them as well) were very adamant that music should be personally expressive.


----------



## Winterreisender

hpowders said:


> Folks who superficially "like" classical music *most likely don't want to work at music listening*. It's like TV-give them a harmless sitcom. Not Death of A Salesman on the Drama Channel. They don't want the Hammerklavier Sonata or the c# minor quartet or the WTC *and certainly nothing by Boulez or Webern*.


I'm a bit suspicious of the implicit snobbery in statements like this, as if the only reason people don't like atonal music is because they're somehow not listening properly.



PetrB said:


> LOL, just like the academics told a generation of the great unwashed that Beethoven and Wagner were the successors to the great composers just before them?


The point I am making is that the public doesn't/didn't need to be told about Beethoven's and Wagner's greatness. Yes, their music was shocking at first, but the concert-going public "caught up" with them soon enough and by the end of their lives, both composers enjoyed great popularity. I would be surprised if the wider public ever "catches up" with Webern and Boulez.



PetrB said:


> Nobody can prevent or cure an audience wallowing in old-fashioned emotions and sentiments if they do not of their own volition care to visit the contemporary emotions and sentiments of their own time, or expect similar sentiment they get from older works from newer works.
> 
> If listeners can only "emotionally" relate to music primarily from prior 1890, I'm fine with that…


But the point isn't that the public hates all new music. They don't hate every single piece composed after the year 1900. The apparent problem is simply that the public dislikes the academically approved modern music. Because the contemporary classical world seems to have lost touch with its audiences, contemporary listeners are getting in touch with the "sentiments of their own time" through other forms of non-academic music. I don't really see anything wrong with that, unless you a priori assume that all academic music is more artistically valuable than popular music.



some guy said:


> You're gonna work this "narrative" thing to death, aren't you? Well do me a favor and at least get it right. There is no narrative, academic or otherwise, that is telling anyone anywhere what to like…
> 
> Yes, people who study things, who are scholars, come to conclusions about what they study. What a terrible thing! Who does that? Buncha knowitalls!!


I find it puzzling that on the one hand, music academics are studying things and making conclusions about what they study, but on the other hand have no interest in producing narratives of any kind, nor in influencing the tastes of the public. In that case, what on earth are they doing with their time? Surely the point of studying any form of art at an academic level is ultimately to enhance the public's enjoyment/appreciation for that art… or at least that's how it should be, but given the detachment of many academics from the real world, it seems to be more about finding any old niche to study in order to justify their continued existence.


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## Morimur

For the most part, the 'public' has always had horrible taste. Most people are merely existing and don't care for art that requires full immersion. Most only seek to be 'entertained' at the most banal level. There's more to music than 'entertainment'. Justin Bieber and Timberlake are deemed musical geniuses by the masses. Need I continue?


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## PetrB

Winterreisender said:


> The apparent problem is simply that the public dislikes the academically approved modern music.


I need names and specifics: What is "academically approved modern music?" Who are the academics, what are they approving / advocating, and who are the composers writing in compliance with all those approved of dictums? SPECIFICS, mind you, names of the academics, the artists, and works which represent this nadir / nemesis of the arts you are on about 



Winterreisender said:


> Surely the point of studying any form of art at an academic level is ultimately to enhance the public's enjoyment/appreciation for that art… or at least that's how it should be


You could not be more patently incorrect: that is a wildly misconceived and near to absurd notion!

You study art at an academy to learn all the technical aspects of the art you need in your skill set to make art as you see fit or need to do, period.

Academies are not schools to teach anyone how to please the public, never were -- and if all is right with the world -- they never will be. They are places where you learn the craft.

Positive public reception of works of art is up to the public, and perhaps the artist if that is of a primary concern. Most artists make what they can, and work on that which interests them, only hoping after the fact the thing made will somewhere have a few or many respond to it.

While it must be said most artists are very aware of and do think that the form or format of what they make will communicate to people, individual or collective audience taste is usually not any part of what an artist thinks of in the middle of making anything,

An artist working in the more surely popular / populist vein may very well first think of 'what the popular audience wants.'

Music need not be a narrative. If you want stories, turn to literature, where even then not all is any longer 'narrative.' You do not have to 'get with the times' if you do not wish to, or find you can not, but this is again a complaint that 'they are not doing things like they used to' -- duly noted, slightly -- and then you are on your own with whatever does satisfy you.

You don't tell the composers how to write, they probably won't snap back at you with a lecture on how to listen


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## PetrB

....................................................drat....another...dupe.................................


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## Mahlerian

Here's a post I made from a thread on a different forum. It's completely relevant here as well.

________

I looked through the Amazon.com reviews of the Schoenberg/Sibelius disc, a whopping 40 of them, which is high for a classical release, even one by a major artist. If Hahn's fans (who I am sure represent a broad spectrum of the general classical music audience) were adamantly against the Schoenberg concerto and couldn't stand it, having bought the disc for the Sibelius and ONLY for the Sibelius, then one would expect the reviews to ignore or denigrate the Schoenberg concerto. But this is not the case.

My tally for mentions of the concerto:
Positive: 34
Negative: 2
Neutral/Unmentioned: 4

Now, for an interesting comparison, look at the Amazon.com reviews of Hahn's recording of Higdon's Neoromantic, non-12-tone Violin Concerto, here paired with the even more venerable warhorse of the Tchaikovsky concerto.

Positive: 23
Negative: 5
Neutral/Unmentioned: 13

Here we have 41 reviews. The majority of them are still positive regarding the more recent concerto, but there are more reviews that simply don't mention the Higdon concerto or give ambivalent reactions (I don't think it has much staying power, etc.). Negative reactions are still in the minority but there are a few more of them (including one who says Higdon sounds like Mahler...?).

___________

My conclusion there and here is that people on Classical music forums are more outspokenly against "atonal" and 12-tone music than the public at large.


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## PetrB

I saw a filmed reportage expose of a Psychic Hotline telephone business (you know, dollars per minute phone businesses.)

A reporter posing as a potential worker interviewed with the owner. The owner gave the young lady the full dope on the business, and its clients.

She told the reporter that people calling in had some typical commonly recurring questions: "Is my boyfriend cheating on me?" "Will he marry me." and many of a similar sort. The owner told the reporter to, first and foremost, draw the callers in so they spent as much time on the phone as possible (ka-ching, ka-ching $$$) but also, to not feel at all badly about having them take that time because "they have these questions, endlessly repeated no matter what you tell them, and they have already worn out all their friends and acquaintances with these very same questions."

I sometimes think those who are constant with the general complaints / worries -- which seem to be interchangeable one person to the next, no melody, no harmony, no emotion, etc. -- about 12 tone / atonal music are rather like those repeated things people do bring to the psychic hotlines.

May be TC could easily subsidize itself with the revenues gained if it set up a pay-per-minute telephone hot-line for all those with their near identical complaints and worries about modern / contemporary / atonal classical music?

[There might be such a surplus revenue that the excess could fund commissions for 'listenable, narrative oriented' contemporary classical music to which those complainants could 'emotionally relate,' as well as commission other works of "just contemporary" classical music.]


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## Guest

Winterreisender said:


> The point I am making is that the public doesn't/didn't need to be told about Beethoven's and Wagner's greatness.


Hmmm. Berlioz and Liszt would be very surprised to hear this. Their persistent, indefatigable efforts to convince music directors to program Beethoven, to convince orchestras to play Beethoven, to convince audiences that Beethoven was worth their attention were all unnecessary? They didn't need to spend decades of their lives, time away from their creative endeavors, to promote the music of Beethoven? Because it was already popular? Yes, they would have been very surprised.

As for Wagner, he was the first marketing composer, and he marketed the music of the future for all it was worth, and did that for awhile before any of this music had even been written. But he didn't need to put any of that effort in, you're saying? All those years of preparing a receptive audience for music that was still unwritten was so much wasted effort? Wagner would be very surprised to hear that.

Your view of past events does not seem to be informed by any historicity.



Winterreisender said:


> I would be surprised if the wider public ever "catches up" with Webern and Boulez.


Yeah, like the guy who said, about Brahms as I recall, "if this is the music of the future, then count me out."



Winterreisender said:


> Because the contemporary classical world seems to have lost touch with its audiences...


Preach it, brother!!

But seriously, there is a difference between "historical fact" and "canard." Persistently presenting a canard as if it were a historical fact is not only morally wrong but kinda creepy, too. Let's just take one composer--Natasha Barrett. She has never to my knowledge ever tried to present her music to the symphony audience. Logically, she cannot have lost touch with this audience. To lose touch, one must have first done the touching part. This seems so basic. But it keeps being said. As if I would keep telling people that I've lost my Lamborghini. Where is it? I've lost it!! But a Lamborghini is something I have never had. Impossible for me to have lost it.

As for her audience, um, she hasn't lost touch with that at all. Just because some members of the symphony audience do not want to acknowledge an audience for other kinds of music doesn't mean those audience don't exist. They do. And they go to concerts, and to all appearances seem to be enjoying themselves. I know I am.



Winterreisender said:


> the detachment of many academics from the real world


Yeah. The world outside of school is real. The world inside of school is not real. But the people inside the not real world are obliged to validate their... their what? their reality?? ... by trying to manipulate people in the real world. What a congeries of chimerical chaff.

I'm wondering if you know any teachers? You know, to hang out with. Maybe play some cards with some evening. Or go to a football game with. You might be surprised at how "real" and how "normal" these people are.


----------



## Aramis

some guy said:


> Hmmm. Berlioz and Liszt would be very surprised to hear this


They would be equally surprised to hear you mentioning them as examples of academics, because weren't you talking about academics influencing the listeners? Liszt was noted to have more disregard for these people than Winterreisender is displaying and when he made all these efforts to promote his own music and that by other composers, academics were often among his major opponents. It won't be too risky to say that sometimes audiences were quicker to understand than the uptight bunch, not only in Liszt's case but every now and then through the history of music.


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## PetrB

Aramis said:


> They would be equally surprised to hear you mentioning them as examples of academics, because weren't you talking about academics influencing the listeners? Liszt was noted to have more disregard for these people than Winterreisender is displaying and when he made all these efforts to promote his own music and that by other composers, academics were often among his major opponents. It won't be too risky to say that sometimes audiences were quicker to understand than the uptight bunch, not only in Liszt's case but every now and then through the history of music.


Maybe not academy born trained and bred, but Liszt certainly had a series of teachers, and was himself a piano teacher, to loosely consider him legitimately 'an academic at large.'

Academia is a famed retreat for the smaller of mind, sure. The schools I went to, piano teacher, harmony and composition teachers, all had exterior and successful careers as performers and composers whose works were published and performed. This was generally the case with my first piano teacher and most of the music teachers I studied with from childhood until I was 'done studying.' They are the same sort I consult with today if I have a question about music.

"Better schools" are set up with a teaching faculty with exactly such qualifications. A professional musician colleague of mine told me of his piano audition for entry into the Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag in the late sixties. 
*He walked into the room of about six jurors, and in his words, "Each of them was an active concert pianist whose recordings I had at home."*

I think lumping 'Academe' and 'Academia' as being one pool of nothing but universally frustrated and miserable failures resentful of success is beyond cartoonish. I'm beginning to think all those who consistently dis it as a dumping ground for talentless disgruntled failures are somewhat in that same category.


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## Mahlerian

Schoenberg and his school weren't academically trained composers either. Schoenberg only turned to teaching because he needed a way to make a living (and he didn't like banking very much), and he only wrote his first theoretical works in response to his teaching and his critics, who would make a habit early on of claiming he just didn't know what he was doing. The academic composers of the early 20th century in Germany were churning out third-rate Brahms imitation rehash. So-called academic serialism was a post-WWII American phenomenon.


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## Aramis

PetrB said:


> I think lumping 'Academe' and 'Academia' as being one pool of nothing but universally frustrated and miserable failures resentful of success is beyond cartoonish.


I don't know about academics being frustrated, but you must be to some extent if you tend to make so far-fetched assumptions of what quoted person actually said, in order to defend from attack that wasn't made. What I quoted above could easily make it to the "TC's top 10 straw-man replies" list.


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## PetrB

Aramis said:


> I don't know about academics being frustrated, but you must be to some extent if you tend to make so far-fetched assumptions of what quoted person actually said, in order to defend from attack that wasn't made. What I quoted above could easily make it to the "TC's top 10 straw-man replies" list.


Lol. one bit of personal opinion cherry-picked from the complete body of text, and your personal lash back (did I address you personally in that post? I think not.) are barely worth the effort of typing _this_ response.

Students blame their teachers for their own faults or lacks all the time, yet we have so many great artists who had "lesser" caliber teachers, as well as many great artist / teachers whose students fell far short of their teachers' caliber.

There are critics who underwent the same training as their successful composer counterparts, and critics who have learned but only a part of music from the technical end who still make a career from criticizing music. How DOES one explain all that, Hmmm?

ADD: P.s. My post did not controvert anything you said. 
It is a well-known fact that every era is littered with short-sighted academics and critics who were slower than other academics, critics, and the public to recognize their contemporary composers as of merit, those less imaginative personages now mostly mere forgettable footnotes of music history. There is nothing to refute or debate about that.


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## ArtMusic

Winterreisender said:


> I'm not sure if Serialism ever really had its day. Whereas most of the other "great" musical innovations were eventually accepted by the concert-going public, whether that be the dissonance of Liszt and Wagner or the doubled 5ths of plainsong, it seems to me that serialism has always remained on the fringes, a style accepted by an elite few (e.g. Second Viennese School or Darmstadt School) but rejected by the majority of listeners/composers.
> 
> If it is true that Schoenberg's intention was to have people in the street eventually whistling his tunes, it is clear that the man in the street hasn't quite "caught up" with him yet. If on the other hand, Schoenberg was aiming at a music which would be shocking to the public, then that hasn't been entirely successful either, because the majority of the public is still sort of indifferent to serialism, almost bored by it. It rarely provokes a reaction, in the same way that modern visual art does. It is as if nothing in music is shocking or even surprising anymore.
> 
> Therefore I'm not sure what neo-serialism could achieve that serialism-version-1 couldn't, and therefore I see no need for a revival. By all means modern composers should use aspects of the theory in other forms of atonal composition, if they so choose, but personally I find serialism in itself too restrictive.


I largely agree. But modern "classical music" is quite a fringe development on its own and listeners alike as well, even amongst the broader "3% of listeners who listen to classical in general". So it's difficult to generalise whether serialism or indeed any modern branch of contemporary music has had it heyday or never did.


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## Aramis

PetrB said:


> (did I address you personally in that post? I think not.)


I tend to think it's adressed to me when written under my quote and especially in case when the only posts between your last post in this thread and the new one include mine and one other, which could not induce reply such as yours. I'll make sure, though, to remember from now on that it can be misleading in your case.


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## ArtMusic

PetrB said:


> ....Some of Mozart's greatest operas had a one and only run in his lifetime of a handful of nights, yet somehow history gets re-written that he was a populist composer, with an eye and ear to the common man concert-goer. Beethoven sometimes fared not much better.


You might like to qualify that with additional historical facts; and that is, many of Mozart's later operas were political sabotaged with intrigue especially in Vienna. Even Joseph Haydn's last opera, written and commissioned for London was never performed there because of intrigue. So there is more to it than to infer, as commonly done, that opera XYZ was unpopular etc. during its premiere.


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## ArtMusic

PetrB said:


> ...
> Students blame their teachers for their own faults or lacks all the time, yet we have so many great artists who had "lesser" caliber teachers, as well as many great artist / teachers whose students fell far short of their teachers' caliber.
> .....


I don't. I analyse the music and criticise it for its strengths and weaknesses.


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## PetrB

Aramis said:


> I tend to think it's adressed to me when written under my quote and especially in case when the only posts between your last post in this thread and the new one include mine and one other, which could not induce reply such as yours. I'll make sure, though, to remember from now on that it can be misleading in your case.


In my experience, unless a letter or post is personally addressed to you, you can most safely assume the letter is for someone else, and that following post general.

You have imagined personal attention toward you or your post which was non-existent. Any post may trigger a tangential thought in a reader, and then they may post about that tangential thought: that was the case here.


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## ahammel

ArtMusic said:


> I largely agree. But modern "classical music" is quite a fringe development on its own and listeners alike as well, even amongst the broader "3% of listeners who listen to classical in general".


That is simply not true:



(Thanks to Crudblood for posting that enlightening survey a while back.)

I do so wish that people would stop taking it as read that 'the concert going public' or 'people in general' or 'the masses' hate 20th century music in general and serialism in particular without providing any sort of evidence of it.


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## Aramis

I wonder though, ahammel, if/how much of that gray area is covered by Rachmaninoff, Sibelius etc.


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## ArtMusic

ahammel said:


> That is simply not true:
> 
> 
> 
> (Thanks to Crudblood for posting that enlightening survey a while back.)
> 
> I do so wish that people would stop taking it as read that 'the concert going public' or 'people in general' or 'the masses' hate 20th century music in general and serialism in particular without providing any sort of evidence of it.


I don't believe that graph. 20th century is not the most spent on live concerts.


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## ahammel

Aramis said:


> I wonder though, ahammel, if/how much of that gray area is covered by Rachmaninoff, Sibelius etc.


I don't know. Call it half and that still makes the rest about as popular as the Baroque. Call it three quarters and it's about as popular as the Classical period (except in continental Europe).


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## ahammel

ArtMusic said:


> I don't believe that graph.


And I don't believe your unsupported assertions.


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## Winterreisender

It's interesting also that, according to these statistics, the public's three favourite contemporary composers are Arvo Pärt, James MacMillan and John Williams, none of whom are particularly renowned as favourites of academia.


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## ArtMusic

ahammel said:


> And I don't believe your unsupported assertions.


Take a look at concerts played by leading orchestras in your capital cities whether they are professional groups or not. While 20th C music do feature significantly, standard repertoire, *by definition*; yes the old warhorse stuff, make up what folks pay to go listen. And I wonder how much of the 20th C is of Rachaninioff, Bartok, Shostakovich etc.


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## ahammel

Winterreisender said:


> It's interesting also that, according to these statistics, the public's three favourite contemporary composers are Arvo Pärt, James MacMillan and John Williams, none of whom are particularly renowned as favourites of academia.


Says who, exactly? Which academics in particular hate Arvo Pärt? Certainly not Paul Hillier, the world's foremost scholar of Pärt, who has held a variety of academic posts over the past 30-odd years.


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## Mahlerian

Winterreisender said:


> It's interesting also that, according to these statistics, the public's three favourite contemporary composers are Arvo Pärt, James MacMillan and John Williams, none of whom are particularly renowned as favourites of academia.


Perennial academic favorite composers include Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven.


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## ahammel

ArtMusic said:


> Take a look at concerts palyed by leading orchestras in your capital cities[...]


I have done. There was even a graph.


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## Mahlerian

ArtMusic said:


> And I wonder how much of the 20th C is of Rachaninioff, Bartok, Shostakovich etc.


According to the data, Britten was the most performed 20th century composer (in part because of the anniversary). Bartok, Britten, and Shostakovich are all still modernists, though. They would find being lumped in with Rachmaninoff absolutely baffling, I'm sure.


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## Winterreisender

Mahlerian said:


> Perennial academic favorite composers include Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven.


I don't doubt that. But the point I have been making in this thread is that it is only when dealing with 20th century and contemporary music that the tastes of the public and the tastes of academia begin to diverge. It is therefore interesting that Pärt, MacMillian and Williams are among the public's favourite contemporary composers. (I realise Pärt enjoys more academic attention than the other two, but I would still say that he (and "spiritual minimalism" as a whole) is largely on the fringes).


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## Mahlerian

Winterreisender said:


> I don't doubt that. But the point I have been making in this thread is that it is only when dealing with 20th century and contemporary music that the tastes of the public and the tastes of academia begin to diverge. It is therefore interesting that Pärt, MacMillian and Williams are among the public's favourite contemporary composers. (I realise Pärt enjoys more academic attention than the other two, but I would still say that he (and "spiritual minimalism" as a whole) is largely on the fringes).


Schoenberg is, in the upcoming months, programmed about as often as Part, according to the site those statistics came from, and more than MacMillan or Williams.


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## ahammel

Mahlerian said:


> According to the data, Britten was the most performed 20th century composer (in part because of the anniversary). Bartok, Britten, and Shostakovich are all still modernists, though. They would find being lumped in with Rachmaninoff absolutely baffling, I'm sure.


Britten was 22nd most performed overall in 2012, which is not too shabby. Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky (17, 18, and 19 in 2013) all beat both Rachmaninoff and Sibelius



Winterreisender said:


> I don't doubt that. But the point I have been making in this thread is that it is only when dealing with 20th century and contemporary music that the tastes of the public and the tastes of academia begin to diverge.


The public seem to be more than willing to go to concerts featuring 20th century music.



Winterreisender said:


> It is therefore interesting that Pärt, MacMillian and Williams are among the public's favourite contemporary composers. (I realise Pärt enjoys more academic attention than the other two, but I would still say that he (and "spiritual minimalism" as a whole) is largely on the fringes).


I don't think "spiritual minimalism" is really a thing, frankly, but I would be very surprised indeed to learn that there are no scholars of Górecki or Tavener. What evidence do you have of this?


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## millionrainbows

This discussion underscores a problem that I've resolved within myself, by my conception of "harmonic music" and "non-harmonic" music.

Wourinen's "insider" rejection of terms like "serial," to Mahlerian's hair-splitting observation that Elliott Carter did not write "serial" music, shows how fragmented and specialized music has become. It's like the sub-genres of metal music: thrash, hard core, death metal, etc...

We'll never reach the "convenience" and security of generalizations at this rate.

BTW, I'm a cross-dressing trans-gender metro-sexual, not simply a transvestite; and I'm wearing men's underwear, to complicate the situation.

Let's get real, and cut through the distraction of detail. Traditional tonal music is harmonic, that is, it is based on a harmonic resonance model of a fundamental and its overtones.

Music can be made using non-harmonic means, and is not based exclusively on a harmonic model, but is derived from the geometric divisions of the octave into 12 chromatic tones, and all the divisions and mechanisms which come out of that.

These two ways of conceiving music have always been struggling, ever since the time of Pythagoras.

Elliott Carter is not a "serialist," but he uses the same index of possible sets as Rahn or Forte; he uses "sets," as does Wuorinen.

In fact, it's difficult to separate the two approaches, at this point in history. By dismissing "serialism" as the culprit, whether it be ideological or musical, is a simplistic strategy designed to put music back in a tonal history of Mozart and Beethoven, and it is essentially a flawed, forlorn strategy, which will never erase the reality that music is now a multi-faceted discipline, not simply a _divertissment _for royals.


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## PetrB

ahammel said:


> Says who, exactly? Which academics in particular hate Arvo Pärt? Certainly not Paul Hillier, the worlds foremost scholar of Pärt, who has held a variety of academic posts over the past 30-odd years.


One does not have to be 'an academic' to find little to like of Arvo Part.


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## Winterreisender

Mahlerian said:


> Schoenberg is, in the upcoming months, programmed about as often as Part, according to the site those statistics came from, and more than MacMillan or Williams.


But scrolling down the list of Schoenberg, the majority of them are concerts where Schoenberg is the sideshow ("Verklärte Nacht," I might add) to Beethoven or Brahms. Not sure how popular Schoenberg would be if he were the headline act.


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## ahammel

Winterreisender said:


> But scrolling down the list of Schoenberg, the majority of them are concerts where Schoenberg is the sideshow ("Verklärte Nacht," I might add) to Beethoven or Brahms. Not sure how popular Schoenberg would be if he were the headline act.


Pärt is also usually scheduled alongside other, more popular composers. What of it?


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## Mahlerian

Winterreisender said:


> But scrolling down the list of Schoenberg, the majority of them are concerts where Schoenberg is the sideshow ("Verklärte Nacht," I might add) to Beethoven or Brahms. Not sure how popular Schoenberg would be if he were the headline act.


Well, the Welsh National Opera is mounting a production of Moses und Aron, which will run for several performances (which would, if individually counted, put him above Part in numbers).

I also fail to see how Verklarte Nacht is anything but a characteristic work. No one else could have written it. It sounds like Schoenberg. (Also, 16 performances is hardly an overwhelming majority...)

Furthermore, did you look at my stats for the reviews of the Hahn Schoenberg/Sibelius disc? Many of the reviewers may have come for the Sibelius, but they left thoroughly impressed by the Schoenberg.


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## arpeggio

*To Schoenberg or not to Schoenberg.*

Irregardless of the some of the above rhetoric, now that I get Schoenberg, I have seen nothing that convinces me that I should stop listening to Schoenberg.


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## Mahlerian

Also, Verklarte Nacht is a substantial piece of approximately half an hour, while 23 of the Arvo Part listings are of a two-minute piece included in a Julian Lloyd-Webber cello concert.

I'd say Schoenberg comes out as a far more popular composer than Arvo Part.


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## KenOC

Schoenberg vs. Williams: There are indeed more performances listed that include works by Schoenberg. As noted, most of the performances seem to be Transfigured Night, and many of the remainder are for piano or small group, much cheaper to stage. Williams, of course, generally requires the full orchestra, an expensive proposition with performances limited to full-scale concerts. Also, many Schoenberg works, certainly all those from before 1923, are out of copyright and in the public domain. I would guess the performance rights to Williams's scores are quite costly.


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## ahammel

KenOC said:


> Schoenberg vs. Williams: There are indeed more performances listed that include works by Schoenberg. As noted, most of the performances seem to be Transfigured Night, and many of the remainder are for piano or small group, much cheaper to stage. Williams, of course, generally requires the full orchestra, an expensive proposition. Also, many Schoenberg works, certainly all those from before 1923, are out of copyright and in the public domain. I would guess the performance rights to Williams's scores are quite costly.


True as that may be, it does not add up to the picture of an Arnold Schoenberg who is beloved of academics but sends audiences of regular folk running, screaming, for the hills.


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## Mahlerian

ahammel said:


> True as that may be, it does not add up to the picture of an Arnold Schoenberg who is beloved of academics but sends audiences of regular folk running, screaming, for the hills.


There's also the concert that includes both Williams' Star Wars suite and a ten-minute 12-tone piece by Schoenberg...


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## Winterreisender

ahammel said:


> The public seem to be more than willing to go to concerts featuring 20th century music.


 I haven't denied this.



ahammel said:


> I don't think "spiritual minimalism" is really a thing, frankly, but I would be very surprised indeed to learn that there are no scholars of Górecki or Tavener. What evidence do you have of this?


I probably agree, which is why I tentatively used the term in quote marks. Having looked on Groves Online, there seems to have been one monograph written about Tavener (G. Haydon), one about Pärt (P. Hillier) and one about Gorecki (A. Thomas). Schoenberg and Boulez on the other hand are the subject of at least 20 each. In my opinion, the level of academic attention is disproportionate to the popularity of the composer.



Mahlerian said:


> Furthermore, did you look at my stats for the reviews of the Hahn Schoenberg/Sibelius disc? Many of the reviewers may have come for the Sibelius, but they left thoroughly impressed by the Schoenberg.


Yes it is an interesting range of views, although I'm not sure if I'd jump to too many conclusions. It does seem as if a lot of the reviewers already had an interest in Schoenberg's music, in which case I wouldn't be surprised that Schoenberg fans are leaving Schoenberg good reviews.


----------



## millionrainbows

What it is that happens to tonality when it becomes more and more chromatic, and all 12 notes are in circulation? The _"mechanisms" generated by the division of the octave into twelve _begin to naturally take over, in the absense of a clear tonal hierarchy. From this, a valuable insight is gained: a sense of tonality is created by its notes, but also _just as much by what notes are left out. _As chromaticism increases, "redundancy" of notes increases, and tonality becomes less focussed and defined.With 12 notes, it is obvious that "the serial idea" will never go away, but has, indeed, always been there, lurking within the chromatic scale.

For the hard-core tonalists out there, serialism and its offshoots are like a virus; with no host, the virus will not survive, since it is essentially "non-living" itself.


----------



## KenOC

ahammel said:


> True as that may be, it does not add up to the picture of an Arnold Schoenberg who is beloved of academics but sends audiences of regular folk running, screaming, for the hills.


Don't believe I said it did...


----------



## Mahlerian

Winterreisender said:


> Yes it is an interesting range of views, although I'm not sure if I'd jump to too many conclusions. It does seem as if a lot of the reviewers already had an interest in Schoenberg's music, in which case I wouldn't be surprised that Schoenberg fans are leaving Schoenberg good reviews.


Except that this disc is a special exception. Most Schoenberg discs only have a few reviews. None aside from this one have more than 20, even ones featuring exceptional performers like Gould, Pollini, and Uchida. On the other hand, anything Hahn releases tends to get dozens of reviews.


----------



## arpeggio

*Everyone hates Schoenberg*



ahammel said:


> True as that may be, it does not add up to the picture of an Arnold Schoenberg who is beloved of academics but sends audiences of regular folk running, screaming, for the hills.


KenOC,

You may not have said this but there are many, not only here but in other forums, who advocate this very inaccurate observation.


----------



## ahammel

KenOC said:


> Don't believe I said it did...


I know, merely a point of clarification.


----------



## KenOC

arpeggio said:


> KenOC, You may not have said this but there are many, not only here but in other forums, who advocate this very inaccurate observation.


Of course, neither did I say the observation was inaccurate! :lol:


----------



## PetrB

KenOC said:


> Schoenberg vs. Williams: There are indeed more performances listed that include works by Schoenberg. As noted, most of the performances seem to be Transfigured Night, and many of the remainder are for piano or small group, much cheaper to stage. Williams, of course, generally requires the full orchestra, an expensive proposition with performances limited to full-scale concerts. Also, many Schoenberg works, certainly all those from before 1923, are out of copyright and in the public domain. I would guess the performance rights to Williams's scores are quite costly.


Not to mention, LOL, all but the few concert works of 'abstract classical music' by Williams are (near) inevitably played on programs along with other light or pops classical music, because that is what they are.


----------



## PetrB

Winterreisender said:


> Having looked on Groves Online, there seems to have been one monograph written about Tavener (G. Haydon), one about Pärt (P. Hillier) and one about Gorecki (A. Thomas). Schoenberg and Boulez on the other hand are the subject of at least 20 each. In my opinion, the level of academic attention is disproportionate to the popularity of the composer.


While I'm sure there may be much to say about Part or Gorecki, or the "spiritual minimalists" (what a dreadful and pretentious label, imo) most academic papers are expected to delve into a composer whose musical language is a tougher nut to crack. Simple harmonies, elegantly handled, don't push the student very far in learning anything, and they offer little, really, to discuss. It is more about the intention of a paper as exercise and to demonstrate creative analytic thinking as applied to a score.

When I first heard Parts' Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten, by the time I had listened a second time I had most all of the technical devices in play in that score completely sussed out - without seeing the score. It is elegant, simple, and wholly effective in what it set out to do -- that assessment done with the equipment left me via a good, but commonplace, music training up through grad level.

While anyone wishing to learn about elegant simplicity would certainly benefit from a look at the Part, a paper on it would be brief, not very revelatory, and within the academic context, show little or nothing of my exercising more thought to crack the nugget of a larger work of greater complexity, or the subtle constant ambiguities, of say, Debussy's _Jeux._

A paper on that Part work would be a low-wattage display of what I knew, my exploration of the piece, or what kind of premise I could establish and then show. Because there just isn't that much going on in the Part to unravel 

Monographs from erudite musicians and scholars no longer concerned with meeting those criteria, but instead a voluntary effort to put forth a good word, as it were, for a composer, are something else. They are rarely 'academic' at that point, but a labor of love from a writer with a full set of academic creds and tools.


----------



## Morimur

It's rather sad that so many people cannot (or will not) give Schoenberg a chance. His music is so incredibly rich and beautiful. I fail to see what the public finds so jarring about it. Their loss.


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## Mahlerian

Lope de Aguirre said:


> It's rather sad that so many people cannot (or will not) give Schoenberg a chance. His music is so incredibly rich and beautiful. I fail to see what the public finds so jarring about it. Their loss.


Perhaps you have read Alban Berg's essay "Why is Schoenberg's Music so Difficult to Understand?" I think the same conclusions apply more or less to this day.


----------



## PetrB

Lope de Aguirre said:


> It's rather sad that so many people cannot (or will not) give Schoenberg a chance. His music is so incredibly rich and beautiful. I fail to see what the public finds so jarring about it. Their loss.


Tens upon tens of thousands of listeners, trapped within their listening habits acquired by constant exposure and repetition of common practice harmony, and expectations therefrom... my snide hunch is they might, upon a first exposure to hearing Musica Ficta, be tempted to call that "atonal."


----------



## Guest

Aramis said:


> They would be equally surprised to hear you mentioning them as examples of academics....


Say _what?_ Wherever are you getting this? Mentioning them as examples of academics?

Nope.


----------



## Guest

Aramis said:


> far-fetched assumptions of what quoted person actually said


:lol::lol::lol:

I'm reading through in order, catching up. I read this after I'd responded to your own completely made up assertion that I had presented Berlioz and Liszt as academics.

Now that's pure comedy.


----------



## hpowders

Lope de Aguirre said:


> It's rather sad that so many people cannot (or will not) give Schoenberg a chance. His music is so incredibly rich and beautiful. I fail to see what the public finds so jarring about it. Their loss.


Liking you more every day!


----------



## ahammel

Winterreisender said:


> In my opinion, the level of academic attention is disproportionate to the popularity of the composer.


This may be so, but I don't expect that there are many fields in which academic attention is invariably, or even roughly, proportional to popularity. The things that interest fans are not necessarily the same things that interest scholars, as PetrB points out, nor do I see any particular reason why they should be.



PetrB said:


> While I'm sure there may be much to say about Part or Gorecki, or the "spiritual minimalists" (what a dreadful and pretentious label, imo)[...]


The "spiritual minimalists" themselves do not use it.


----------



## Morimur

Have not read it. Thanks for the link!


----------



## PetrB

Mahlerian said:


> Perhaps you have read Alban Berg's essay "Why is Schoenberg's Music so Difficult to Understand?" I think the same conclusions apply more or less to this day.


*...that essay, N.B. written ninety years ago!*


----------



## Mahlerian

Lope de Aguirre said:


> Have not read it. Thanks for the link!


I find the dumbed-down version of Schoenberg's Quartet theme particularly hilarious.


----------



## PetrB

ArtMusic said:


> I don't believe that graph. 20th century is not the most spent on live concerts.


I do believe that graph, because I have lived in several large Metropolitan centers, each with major symphony orchestras with the fullest length of seasons (many less well-off locations have comparatively short seasons) and in each of those places, a good deal of modern and contemporary music was regularly programmed (having the additional budget to cover performance royalty costs is another thing, smaller and more budget strained orchestras play nearly all 'common domain' fare.) If not the newest, it was not "Rachmaninoff as 20ths century," for example, but Stravinsky, Takemitsu (he was still alive) and many others, and enough newer music as well as 'the latest' was all part of that programming.

I think you dont _want_ to believe it, and it is likely you live at a further remove than a handy bus trip to the local Symphony orchestra in Chicago, Manhattan, San Francisco, Los Angeles, London, Amsterdam, etc.

But I believe it by way of personal experience, because "I haven't been in Kansas anymore," by default, the majority of my life.


----------



## PetrB

ahammel said:


> The "spiritual minimalists" themselves do not use it. [the term]


Well thank the great spirit for that! Insufferable term, cloying with vanity.

Wiki lumps Hovhaness in there --a wildly inappropriate assignation as per anything he wrote -- by yet another, one could presume, who decided to categorize music by the emotional seat of their pants.

If Hovhaness was fortunate, he did not live long enough to realize he was a 'spiritual minimalist'


----------



## ahammel

PetrB said:


> Well thank the great spirit for that! Insufferable term, cloying with vanity.
> 
> Wiki lumps Hovhaness in there --a wildly inappropriate assignation as per anything he wrote -- by yet another, one could presume, who decided to categorize music by the emotional seat of their pants.
> 
> If Hovhaness was fortunate, he did not live long enough to realize he was a 'spiritual minimalist'


I'm frankly not sure what the three canonical examples (Pärt, Tavener, and Górecki) are supposed to have to do with one another, never mind with the New York school of minimalism.


----------



## PetrB

Winterreisender said:


> In my opinion, the level of academic attention is disproportionate to the popularity of the composer.


Let me get this straight. First you somewhat revile academia as being the dictators of what gets performed and the draconian dictators of taste, and then you complain they do not write papers on the more popular composers? Unless I have misunderstood what seems a quick about face... Conflict, much?


----------



## KenOC

PetrB said:


> If Hovhaness was fortunate, he did not live long enough to realize he was a 'spiritual minimalist'


Well, he was kinda spiritual and generally had minimal ideas. Does that count?


----------



## PetrB

Winterreisender said:


> But scrolling down the list of Schoenberg, the majority of them are concerts where Schoenberg is the sideshow ("Verklärte Nacht," I might add) to Beethoven or Brahms. Not sure how popular Schoenberg would be if he were the headline act.


"But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But" "But"

as many as you like, please, _*but*_ at some point, you're going to have to stop _*But-ting*_ your head against the mounting evidence that at least within the demographic of TC, more people actually like this music than you would care to think.


----------



## hpowders

Winterreisender said:


> But scrolling down the list of Schoenberg, the majority of them are concerts where Schoenberg is the sideshow ("Verklärte Nacht," I might add) to Beethoven or Brahms. Not sure how popular Schoenberg would be if he were the headline act.


 You are correct of course. The Beethoven and Brahms are the "hook" to get the folks in the seats. Then they lock the exit doors from the outside and play the Schoenberg or Webern or Berg or Boulez.

An all Schoenberg concert would sell out in NYC or Boston or Chicago where a lot of folks are up to date with contemporary trends, like the folks posting here.

Don't try that in Tampa where they have trouble selling out an all Beethoven concert.


----------



## Guest

Not sure whether the preceding is sarcastic or not, but this might be a good time to remind everyone that concert attendance is entirely voluntary. And whether to stay or not, for whatever reason, is also entirely voluntary.

Back in the seventies, when the L.A. Philharmonic was routinely hosting the likes of Berio, Lutoslawski, and Ligeti, I chose which concerts I would go to by how much new music was being offered. I heard the west coast premiere of _Renga,_ with _Apartment House 1776_ there. This was coupled with Mozart and Beethoven. I left after the Cage. I like Mozart and Beethoven alright, but after a half an hour or so of Cage in concert after having spent the afternoon playing chess with him....

Also, it is 2014 now. People who are up to date with contemporary trends might go to a Schoenberg concert, but that would have nothing to do with being up to date with contemporary trends. (Imagine this claim being made about people up to date with contemporary trends in 1814. That because they are up to date, they will obviously sell out concerts of music by Vivaldi.)

Schoenberg is very nice, but you don't go to an all Schoenberg concert to hear new music any more than you go to an all Bruckner concert to hear new music. Or to an all Beethoven concert. I can easily imagine someone up to date with contemporary trends attending any or all of these with great pleasure. (Well, since it would be me, it didn't take much imagining.) But not because they're up to date with contemporary trends. Certainly not in order to hear examples of contemporary music.


----------



## arpeggio

*Avner Dorman, Martin Grubinger & Frozen in Time*



some guy said:


> Not sure whether the preceding is sarcastic or not, but this might be a good time to remind everyone that concert attendance is entirely voluntary. And whether to stay or not, for whatever reason, is also entirely voluntary.
> 
> Back in the seventies, when the L.A. Philharmonic was routinely hosting the likes of Berio, Lutoslawski, and Ligeti, I chose which concerts I would go to by how much new music was being offered. I heard the west coast premiere of _Renga,_ with _Apartment House 1776_ there. This was coupled with Mozart and Beethoven. I left after the Cage. I like Mozart and Beethoven alright, but after a half an hour or so of Cage in concert after having spent the afternoon playing chess with him....
> 
> Also, it is 2014 now. People who are up to date with contemporary trends might go to a Schoenberg concert, but that would have nothing to do with being up to date with contemporary trends. (Imagine this claim being made about people up to date with contemporary trends in 1814. That because they are up to date, they will obviously sell out concerts of music by Vivaldi.)
> 
> Schoenberg is very nice, but you don't go to an all Schoenberg concert to hear new music any more than you go to an all Bruckner concert to hear new music. Or to an all Beethoven concert. I can easily imagine someone up to date with contemporary trends attending any or all of these with great pleasure. (Well, since it would be me, it didn't take much imagining.) But not because they're up to date with contemporary trends. Certainly not in order to hear examples of contemporary music.


I submitted the following post to the "Follow up to 'Let Classical Music Die Already'" thread which is related to the point that "some guy" is making: http://www.talkclassical.com/30228-follow-up-let-classical-5.html#post596448


----------



## millionrainbows

Oh, come on! Just like Einstein, Schoenberg was a _kook, an outsider, a fringe, half-neurotic artistic-type _who emerged from poverty.

He wanted to be a part of Vienna's music scene, which was a very high aspiration. His early works show a possibility of the fantasy being realized, but by the time he was developed enough to try it, the turn of the century modern era was already burying that gilded age as prosaic history of another era.

Then, through his first tumultuous marriage and the Gerstl affair, he emerged with freely atonal works which went further and further towards the fringe area of "outsider art," a bizarre Expressionist body of dark, atonal, ugly distortions of tradition.

Why should anyone be attracted to this music, or question it if people are repelled? *I like it personally,* but I myself am somewhat of an "outsider," so I can understand it...but, after watching* the Grammies *last night, I am convinced that there will always be a status quo, a "norm," that will be successful, because it reflects those psychically safe, normal well-adjusted attitudes of the successful drones and workers who have complied with the norm; those who knew how to play the game to win, and who eventually transformed themselves into clones of safe normalcy.

Nobody wants to hear about the darkness of the human soul; we want normal songs which will not rock the boat, which will sustain and project an image of normalcy.


----------



## ahammel

millionrainbows said:


> Oh, come on! Just like Einstein, Schoenberg was a _kook, an outsider, a fringe, half-neurotic artistic-type _who emerged from poverty.


Neither the Einsteins nor the Schönbergs were particularly poor, I don't think.

The personal kookiness of both men is probably exaggerated.


----------



## Winterreisender

hpowders said:


> You are correct of course. The Beethoven and Brahms are the "hook" to get the folks in the seats. Then they lock the exit doors from the outside and play the Schoenberg or Webern or Berg or Boulez.
> 
> An all Schoenberg concert would sell out in NYC or Boston or Chicago where a lot of folks are up to date with contemporary trends, like the folks posting here.


I find that quite a strange practice to be honest. When I go to a heavy concert of Renaissance music, I'd be quite surprised if a piece from the Romantic era was plonked in the middle. Or when I go to a folk concert, I'd be most upset if they broke out into heavy metal.



millionrainbows said:


> Why should anyone be attracted to this music, or question it if people are repelled? *I like it personally,* but I myself am somewhat of an "outsider," so I can understand it...but, after watching* the Grammies *last night, I am convinced that there will always be a status quo, a "norm," that will be successful, because it reflects those psychically safe, normal well-adjusted attitudes of the successful drones and workers who have complied with the norm; those who knew how to play the game to win, and who eventually transformed themselves into clones of safe normalcy.


Well done, you've managed to slag off most of the population.

But surely conformism can work the other way? "I don't want to associate with hoi polloi. How unthinkable! Whatever they like, I'll just like the opposite. That way I might be accepted by the academic establishment."


----------



## PetrB

Winterreisender said:


> But surely conformism can work the other way? "I don't want to associate with hoi polloi. How unthinkable! Whatever they like, I'll just like the opposite. That way I might be accepted by the academic establishment."


I'm a thinkin' it is is, in all fairness, time to ask you just what your personal experience is with academia that has you so consistently generalizing against and a very loud detractor of it?

At some point, not long in the thread the comeback responses all start with "But...."

It seems that you have some personal ax to grind with academics and academe to a degree where the cumulative effect has me thinking, "The lady doth protest too much."

Any beans you care to spill so the general readers of the thread can better understand this particular and constant stance you take against academe and "the academics?"


----------



## aleazk

ahammel said:


> The personal kookiness of both men is probably exaggerated.












..."I'll be the judge of that"...


----------



## ptr

aleazk said:


> ..."I will judge that"...


I'd love a pair of those footmuffs!

(Sorry for deraillin'!)

/ptr


----------



## ahammel

aleazk said:


> [snip]
> 
> ..."I will judge that"...


Who among us can honestly say "I have never worn fuzzy slippers"?


----------



## aleazk

ahammel said:


> Who among us can honestly say "I have never worn fuzzy slippers"?


Indeed... and nothing like these lovely sandals* (?) for the hot sand in the beach!.

*Disclaimer: careful!, extremely sexy material, watch under your own risk!.


----------



## Mahlerian

Winterreisender said:


> I find that quite a strange practice to be honest. When I go to a heavy concert of Renaissance music, I'd be quite surprised if a piece from the Romantic era was plonked in the middle. Or when I go to a folk concert, I'd be most upset if they broke out into heavy metal.


But Beethoven and Schoenberg, unlike Renaissance composers and Romantic composers or folk musicians and heavy metal musicians: 1) wrote for the same kind of musical forces, ie orchestra/piano/string quartet, 2) wrote with a similar mentality as regards tradition and with an eye towards becoming a part of that still growing tradition, and 3) used similar formal and expressive techniques.

And I'm sure choral concerts featuring Bruckner and Palestrina aren't unheard of, for that matter.

Edit: This one, for example.


----------



## dgee

Mahlerian said:


> I find the dumbed-down version of Schoenberg's Quartet theme particularly hilarious.


Awesome - check this sick burn by Berg!

"This really removes the asymmetry of the original and provides a two-bar structure that will satisfy even the densest listener. The motivic and rhythmic development moves easily and slowly, evading every possibility of variation. Semiquavers, which might represent a stumbling block in the framework of an animated Alla Breve movement, are dispensed with entirely, and this removes the last impediment (namely the difficulty of hearing out those sequences of chromatic leaps of a seventh), since here too we do not overstep quaver movement, and even this is harmonized in half-bars. But in case this mangled theme should still be in danger of not being understood, the immediate and literal repetition in the tonic key offers a degree of general comprehensibility that verges on the popular, and to cap it all, all polyphony is avoided and the simplest imaginable accompaniment is put in its place."

And then Wellesz dispels some myths

The sketchbooks he used while composing this String Quartet are of enormous importance for anyone interested in penetrating the psychology of his work. No one who has glanced at them will be able to say that Schönberg's music is constructed, intellectual or any other of the current catchwords with which people try to protect themselves from the superiority of his over-rich imagination." "Every thematic idea is invented together with all its counterpoints."

Lovely!!!!


----------



## PetrB

dgee said:


> Wellesz dispels some myths
> 
> The sketchbooks he used while composing this String Quartet are of enormous importance for anyone interested in penetrating the psychology of his work. No one who has glanced at them will be able to say that Schönberg's music is constructed, intellectual or any other of the current catchwords with which people try to protect themselves from the superiority of his over-rich imagination." "Every thematic idea is invented together with all its counterpoints."
> 
> Lovely!!!!


zOMG, you mean, like all the others who, once they had the theory and some writing experience under their belts, Schoenberg Just Wrote? Plumbing the depths of his psyche while flying by the seat of his intuition pants? That is Just Shocking! How dare he? That is just so, so veritably Classical, Romantic.

:lol:.....:lol:.....:lol:.....

P.s. Some folks just refuse to believe it is people, not music theory, that composes the music.


----------



## Blake

aleazk said:


> Indeed... and nothing like these lovely sandals* (?) for the hot sand in the beach!.
> 
> *Disclaimer: careful!, extremely sexy material, watch under your own risk!.


I like Einstein more and more. That sense of quirkiness that sprouts from a deeper understanding of how silly the superficial layer of existence is.


----------



## PetrB

Winterreisender said:


> But scrolling down the list of Schoenberg, the majority of them are concerts where Schoenberg is the sideshow ("Verklärte Nacht," I might add) to Beethoven or Brahms. Not sure how popular Schoenberg would be if he were the headline act.


That is terrible old-school programming:
1.) familiar old piece
2.) the new(er) piece
3.) capped by a very solid chestnut old work. 
That has been for some decades now called _The Modern Sandwich_ --
two slices of bread with modern in it.

Boulez, and others, bettered that by programming the newest work first, which allows a thinking member of the audience to put that newer piece in a chronological and historic perspective, also making room for the listener to really hear it with less brought-along expectations.


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## Nagging Grasshopper

Interesting post, thank you!


----------



## violadude

PetrB said:


> That is terrible old-school programming:
> 1.) familiar old piece
> 2.) the new(er) piece
> 3.) capped by a very solid chestnut old work.
> That has been for some decades now called _The Modern Sandwich_ --
> two slices of bread with modern in it.


I wonder how long we'll be calling Verklarte Nacht modern?


----------



## Mahlerian

violadude said:


> I wonder how long we'll be calling Verklarte Nacht modern?


As long as people still think it's a 12-tone work, I suppose...

It's unmodern enough to show up on our local classical station's programming pretty regularly, though.


----------



## KenOC

.............................................


----------



## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> Seldom heard here before midnight, "the desperate hours."


They'll play it midday over here.


----------



## hpowders

Mahlerian said:


> As long as people still think it's a 12-tone work, I suppose...
> 
> It's unmodern enough to show up on our local classical station's programming pretty regularly, though.


They don't wish to lose their sponsors. Safer to simply play the Four Seasons.


----------



## Mahlerian

hpowders said:


> They don't wish to lose their sponsors. Safer to simply play the Four Seasons.


Well, I haven't heard it in the last few months, but every so often it shows up in the programming. It's the only thing by Schoenberg they'll play of course, but they do a decent job overall of not programming the same thing too often, unlike most stations. I just wish that they played more full works midday.

But most radio stations would shy away from even something so tame as this, and ours doesn't, at least occasionally:


----------



## Larkenfield

As fashion, fad or king, Serialism has had its day. But don't whisper that to somebody like Harrison Birtwistle, who believes that he's carrying on that tradition. There's nothing wrong with that. But from my vantage point, it's no longer considered to be unfashionable or a stigma _not_ to write that way because of academic fascism. It's now over 100 years old and might even be considered old-fashioned, and the public has had its fair share of exposure to it to highly mixed reviews. But I believe it greatly helped liberate or expand music in a necessary way with a new vocabulary of sound that is part of the expression of the deeply unconscious, including its darker side of fear, uncertainty, negative or repressed emotions, the cerebral, especially in the writing of film scores that demand more of an immediate acceptance but are not necessarily Serial compositions. I believe that the expanded palette of sound to express the full range of human emotion would be unthinkable without its influence.


----------



## Enthusiast

I had only vaguely realised that these discussions had been going on for years here with many of the same people posting many of the same views.



Larkenfield said:


> As fashion, fad or king, Serialism has had its day. But don't whisper that to somebody like Harrison Birtwistle, who believes that he's carrying on that tradition. There's nothing wrong with that. But from my vantage point, it's no longer considered to be unfashionable or a stigma _not_ to write that way because of academic fascism. It's now over 100 years old and might even be considered old-fashioned, and the public has had its fair share of exposure to it to highly mixed reviews. But I believe it greatly helped liberate or expand music in a necessary way with a new vocabulary of sound that is part of the expression of the deeply unconscious, including its darker side of fear, uncertainty, negative or repressed emotions, the cerebral, especially in the writing of film scores that demand more of an immediate acceptance but are not necessarily Serial compositions. I believe that the expanded palette of sound to express the full range of human emotion would be unthinkable without its influence.


I wonder what your problem with Birtwistle is? I love what I know of his music (after years of thinking him boring and dry) - which is quite a lot - and am convinced that many here who think they dislike him would (will) find that they don't dislike him at all in a few years. His music is actually fairly accessible. As you may know (I've posted the view enough times), I don't care if a work is a serial work or not and am not sure I could even say whether a piece of music actually is a serial composition. Maybe we need to drop the category in our discussions and just focus on which composers and pieces and whether we like _them _or not? Discussion of genres and categories of music tend to get dry and dull and to go nowhere.


----------



## Larkenfield

In music, it comes down to one composer and one work at a time - there's no other way - not only for him but for anyone.

My post was on general comments about Serialism and not specifically on Birtwistle, who can continue to write any way he wants in the current eclectic field of music even if he still highly identifies with the 2nd Vienesse School (mentioned in one of his interviews) that's more than 100 years old and is hardly new or groundbreaking. It's been done!

But Birtwistle's Violin Concerto is quite something and well worth hearing. There's space & air in it.






Then there's Panic, which for me is a complete a mess, but other listeners may happen to like.


----------



## JeffD

PetrB said:


> Boulez, and others, bettered that by programming the newest work first, which allows a thinking member of the audience to put that newer piece in a chronological and historic perspective, also making room for the listener to really hear it with less brought-along expectations.


It also keeps the audience in their seats for the whole concert. :lol:


----------



## EdwardBast

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Could this be the same with serialism? Have we made a mistake by dismissing it for the past half a century? It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but *it is a composition technique which is as legitimate and relevant to music history as the western tonal system* (still proudly in use to this day) even if it is much younger. Or is it actually dead? Should it remain only as a device for composition exercises for students? Is it merely a piece of history? With the advent of so many new styles of composition, *serialism is not a technique that can fit into any style easily.Is it something that can be pursued? I'm thinking something like...neo-serialism! Or will that just never work?*


CoAG is no longer active on TC, I believe, but: 
IMO, it was a big mistake for anyone to have believed that serialism would be the wave of the future and become the mainstream of western art music - it was just too narrow and fetishistic a style in theory, and too proscriptive and defined by negatives in pedagogical practice for that ever to have come to pass. I think it's now one useful resource among many upon which composers, atonal, tonal or anywhere on the spectrum, might fruitfully draw, but I suspect its pure and systematic application as a prime organizing force will in future be an odd, niche activity. I really enjoy the way serial techniques have been used in works like Schnittke's Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra and Shostkovich's 12th quartet.



JeffD said:


> It also keeps the audience in their seats for the whole concert. :lol:


I don't think so. In my experience, programming the new work first often results in a large number of late arrivals. That's why the sandwich pattern dominated in the first place; It takes a greater effort of will to get up after the first work and inconvenience ones neighbors by crawling over them than to either arrive late or leave at intermission.


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## JAS

JeffD said:


> It also keeps the audience in their seats for the whole concert.


Or they have a little more time to find a parking space.


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## DaveM

EdwardBast said:


> ...I don't think so. In my experience, programming the new work first often results in a large number of late arrivals. That's why the sandwich pattern dominated in the first place; It takes a greater effort of will to get up after the first work and inconvenience ones neighbors by crawling over them than to either arrive late or leave at intermission.


What does this say about a form of classical music that has a 100 year history? I know of no other genre of music where one has to program in a way to make it harder, or less likely, that significant numbers of the audience will walk out.


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## EdwardBast

DaveM said:


> What does this say about a form of classical music that has a 100 year history? I know of no other genre of music where one has to program in a way to make it harder, or less likely, that significant numbers of the audience will walk out.


It says that a significant number of people don't like serial music. Did that actually need to be clarified?


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## millionrainbows

The notion that music is entertainment for an audience should not affect the fact that "music is music" and can be crafted in many different ways, not just traditionally. Once we get over that obstacle, I find myself thinking: who cares if it lasts or not, or if it's popular? Apparently it has enough appeal be recorded, and to sustain a small group of people who buy the CDs. That's enough for it to survive.


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## arpeggio

Enthusiast said:


> I had only vaguely realised that these discussions had been going on for years here with many of the same people posting many of the same views.


And one sees the same snide remarks about how audiences have an adverse reaction to this music without any documentation to support their positions other than their biases.

And all I can do is to repeat the examples I have provided of concerts where the audience like the non-music music.

Like the time at the Staunton Music Festival a work by Cage received a standing ovation.


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## JAS

arpeggio said:


> And all I can do is to repeat the examples I have provided of concerts where the audience like the non-music music.


I have absolutely no problem with this . . . program them as separate entities.


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## DavidA

JeffD said:


> It also keeps the audience in their seats for the whole concert. :lol:


A guy I knew wenta along to a London Prom on spec and to his horror it was entirely serial music. By the end half the audience had walked out.


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## arpeggio

DavidA said:


> A guy I knew wenta along to a London Prom on spec and to his horror it was entirely serial music. By the end half the audience had walked out.


My only response is to repost a list all of all of the concerts I have attended where the audience gave the serial works standing ovations.

Or I can repost a list of all of the concerts I have attended where many of the audience walked out. But after the concert there was a discussion about the work and most of the audience stayed behind and expressed how much they liked the music.


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## aleazk

EdwardBast said:


> CoAG is no longer active on TC, I believe, but:
> IMO, it was a big mistake for anyone to have believed that serialism would be the wave of the future and become the mainstream of western art music - it was just too narrow and fetishistic a style in theory, and too proscriptive and defined by negatives in pedagogical practice for that ever to have come to pass. I think it's now one useful resource among many upon which composers, atonal, tonal or anywhere on the spectrum, might fruitfully draw, but I suspect its pure and systematic application as a prime organizing force will in future be an odd, niche activity. I really enjoy the way serial techniques have been used in works like Schnittke's Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra and Shostkovich's 12th quartet.


I wouldn't be so sure of that...........

-----------------------------------

I don't think any composer today is writing serialism (I mean, of those in the scene that are considered interesting, that win prizes, etc.), so, yes, it seems it had its day. Like any other style, but also perhaps by the reasons mentioned by EdwardBast too.

But I also think that it leaves certain legacy that is deeply ingrained in the music of most modern composers. I think Ravel got it quite right, which is kind of crazy considering that he said the following thing at the very early start of serialism: "I_n fact, the influence of Schoenberg may be overwhelming on his followers, but the significance of his art is to be identified with influences of a more subtle kind-not the system, but the aesthetic, of his art. I am quite conscious of the fact that my Chansons madécasses are in no way Schoenbergian, but I do not know whether I ever should have been able to write them had Schoenberg never written._"

He understood better the possible legacy of Schoenberg for future composers than Schoenberg himself, who thought that his system would mean the 'supremacy' of german music for the next 100 years.


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## millionrainbows

aleazk said:


> I wouldn't be so sure of that...........
> 
> -----------------------------------
> 
> I don't think any composer today is writing serialism (I mean, of those in the scene that are considered interesting, that win prizes, etc.), so, yes, its seems it had its day. Like any other style, but also perhaps by the reasons mentioned by EdwardBast too.
> 
> But I also think that it leaves certain legacy that is deeply ingrained in the music of most modern composers. I think Ravel got it quite right, which is kind of crazy considering that he said the following thing at the very early start of serialism: "I_n fact, the influence of Schoenberg may be overwhelming on his followers, but the significance of his art is to be identified with influences of a more subtle kind-not the system, but the aesthetic, of his art. I am quite conscious of the fact that my Chansons madécasses are in no way Schoenbergian, but I do not know whether I ever should have been able to write them had Schoenberg never written._"
> 
> He understood better the possible legacy of Schoenberg for future composers than Schoenberg himself, who thought that his system would mean the 'supremacy' of german music for the next 100 years.


Yes, I agree entirely; Serialism's influence was more of an influence on musical thinking, and what is possible in music. This book confirms this idea over and over; in fact it's the main premise:


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## David Phillips

In this month's 'Gramophone' magazine there is a review of 'Desert Island Discs in Context' (OUP) a collection of academic essays on the popular BBC radio show, 'Desert Island Discs'. The programme has been running since 1942 and from the over 3000 film stars, business tycoons, scientists, musicians, poets, comedians, pop stars, clergymen, politicians, novelists, artists, philosophers etc who have been guests on the show, not one of them has yet chosen a piece of music by Webern.


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## JAS

David Phillips said:


> In this month's 'Gramophone' magazine there is a review of 'Desert Island Discs in Context' (OUP) a collection of academic essays on the popular BBC radio show, 'Desert Island Discs'. The programme has been running since 1942 and from the over 3000 film stars, business tycoons, scientists, musicians, poets, comedians, pop stars, clergymen, politicians, novelists, artists, philosophers etc who have been guests on the show, not one of them has yet chosen a piece of music by Webern.


Awwww. Now you've gone and hurt Webern's feelings.


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## Larkenfield

...............


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## David Phillips

I'd have thought a desert island would be the ideal place to get to grips with Webern's music.


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## JAS

David Phillips said:


> I'd have thought a desert island would be the ideal place to get to grips with Webern's music.


Only if I also have no CD player, or power source for one.


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## arpeggio

David Phillips said:


> In this month's 'Gramophone' magazine there is a review of 'Desert Island Discs in Context' (OUP) a collection of academic essays on the popular BBC radio show, 'Desert Island Discs'. The programme has been running since 1942 and from the over 3000 film stars, business tycoons, scientists, musicians, poets, comedians, pop stars, clergymen, politicians, novelists, artists, philosophers etc who have been guests on the show, not one of them has yet chosen a piece of music by Webern.


So what. I am sure there are other important classical composers who may be missing (see below).

The number one track that has been selected is Vaughn Williams' _Lark Ascending_. This a nice piece of music but even it is not the best one in Vaughn Williams' body of works.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3XDSGTL68YJbXMPVbrmH92q/your-desert-island-discs-results

I tried to find a link to the review but I could not. I think it may be a review of the book _Defining the Discographic Self: Desert Island Discs in Context_ : https://www.britac.ac.uk/publications/defining-discographic-self-desert-island-discs-context

I did find the essay from the book that Mr. Phillips is referring to: https://medium.com/@TheBritishAcademy/what-does-it-mean-to-be-cultured-dea4914a78d2

"The majority of tracks listed in the archive were chosen by a small number of castaways and it is also interesting to note who has not yet been chosen. For example, Arctic Monkeys, James MacMillan, Anton Webern, Bert Jansch, P.J. Harvey, and the Buzzcocks *seem* (My emphasis. Implies that there are other significant ommisions.) not to have been chosen by anyone at all, while Blur, Fairport Convention, Iannis Xenakis, Fats Domino, Beyoncé, Cream, and Woody Guthrie have each been chosen only once."

The whole essay is much more interesting.

Expensive book. $58.88 from Amazon.


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## Enthusiast

Larkenfield said:


> In music, it comes down to one composer and one work at a time - there's no other way - not only for him but for anyone.
> 
> My post was on general comments about Serialism and not specifically on Birtwistle, who can continue to write any way he wants in the current eclectic field of music even if he still highly identifies with the 2nd Vienesse School (mentioned in one of his interviews) that's more than 100 years old and is hardly new or groundbreaking. It's been done!
> 
> But Birtwistle's Violin Concerto is quite something and well worth hearing. There's space & air in it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Then there's Panic, which for me is a complete a mess, but other listeners may happen to like.


Belated thanks for these links. The violin concerto was new to me and I also enjoyed it. Panic seemed to fit its title and I didn't react against it as you have. It's a short piece that makes quite an impression. I am a sucker for the use of a saxophone in classical music!


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## elgar's ghost

David Phillips said:


> In this month's 'Gramophone' magazine there is a review of 'Desert Island Discs in Context' (OUP) a collection of academic essays on the popular BBC radio show, 'Desert Island Discs'. The programme has been running since 1942 and from the over 3000 film stars, business tycoons, scientists, musicians, poets, comedians, pop stars, clergymen, politicians, novelists, artists, philosophers etc who have been guests on the show, not one of them has yet chosen a piece of music by Webern.


Nothing wrong with picking Webern, but as most of his works are so short how could any one of them sustain for an indeterminate length of time?


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## Larkenfield

Has serialism had its today? Probably so. Even Cheerios aren't as popular a cereal as they used to be.


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## MarkW

As E.B. White said, likening writers to bean plants: "They have their little day, and then get stringy."


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## Richannes Wrahms

The answer depends on the strictness of the term serialism. I think one can still compose using a series of (any number of) tones or rhythms as a basis to which operations are applied so that material is generated. This can be a very complex process that ends up producing something that doesn't even resemble the series it is based on or be very direct laying down series as lines in different combinations to produce specific textures.


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## Sun Junqing

As a composing technique yes..very interesting..But as a style(meaning the whole work using only this technique)..I don't like it at all.


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