# Where Are We TODAY With New Classical Music?



## Rapide (Oct 11, 2011)

This will be difficult to answer but let's scope out some thoughts nonetheless.

I came across this, and I think it is perhaps the shortest and most succint answer to the question of this thread: " [Modernism] is a "linguistic plurality", which is to say that no one musical language ever assumed a dominant position (Morgan 1984).

When one looks up "easy sources" like Wikipedia, you get a resonable opening paragraph:

"Modernism in music began around the turn of the 20th century, a period of diverse reactions in challenging and reinterpreting older categories of music, innovations that lead to new ways of organizing and approaching harmonic, melodic, sonic, and rhythmic aspects of music, and changes in aesthetic worldviews in close relation to the larger identifiable period of modernism in the arts of the time. The operative word most associated with it is "innovation" (Metzer, 2009). ..."

Do you also think this diversity is healthy for modernism as a whole? Can all its children survive into centuries to come, or will only some of the more "innovative" survive while others do not? I for one would think serialism would survive at least, while some others might not; in particular, the experimental music that corrupted itself from the mid-1950s that ended up directionless and futile.


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## Head_case (Feb 5, 2010)

Err.....

47?


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## Renaissance (Jul 10, 2012)

Rapide said:


> I for one would think serialism would survive at least, while some others might not; in particular, the *experimental music that corrupted itself from the mid-1950s that ended up directionless and futile*.


I agree. They don't have anything "new" to try these days, I am really curious what will they do  No way, they are too smart and advanced to write "traditional" music... Contemporary classical composers are so dogmatic, almost religious in their fanatical approaches.


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

Renaissance said:


> I agree. They don't have anything "new" to try these days, I am really curious what will they do  No way, they are too smart and advanced to write "traditional" music... Contemporary classical composers are so dogmatic, almost religious in their fanatical approaches.


That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Not every Contemporary classical composer even produces experimental music.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Renaissance said:


> I agree. They don't have anything "new" to try these days, I am really curious what will they do  No way, they are too smart and advanced to write "traditional" music... Contemporary classical composers are so dogmatic, almost religious in their fanatical approaches.


 

zxdtyjerjyhfdfshgj


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Rapide said:


> ...in particular, the experimental music that corrupted itself from the mid-1950s that ended up directionless and futile.


Ooh, I won't want to hear that! But I'm puzzled about what it is. Some examples, perhaps?


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Rapide said:


> I came across this, and I think it is perhaps the shortest and most succint answer to the question of this thread: " [Modernism] is a "linguistic plurality", which is to say that no one musical language ever assumed a dominant position (Morgan 1984).


I personally find the present state, where many more styles or genres exist within a given period of time than during earlier eras fascinating. Without the rapid development of the technology of sound recording and production, I think this state would be impossible. I would love to see how it plays out.



Rapide said:


> "...The operative word most associated with it is "innovation" (Metzer, 2009). ..."


I started a thread on the innovation (I called it "novelty") of modern music here. I hope the discussion in this thread is more amiable than what ultimately developed in the other.



Rapide said:


> Do you also think this diversity is healthy for modernism as a whole? Can all its children survive into centuries to come, or will only some of the more "innovative" survive while others do not?


In some sense modernism in many eras seems to thrive on diversity. Change begets change. I'm curios about your last question. When you ask about surviving into centuries to some, I assume you mean, "Will people continue to listen to that music?" rather than "Will composers continue to compose in that style?" My guess is that the popularity of the various styles will generally not decrease (i.e. people will continue to listen to the perceived major composers with at least the same frequency as now).


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

KenOC said:


> Ooh, I won't want to hear that! But I'm puzzled about what it is. Some examples, perhaps?


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## Renaissance (Jul 10, 2012)

Cnote11 said:


> That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Not every Contemporary classical composer even produces experimental music.


I though that wasn't the case to mention the obvious.  I was referring to post-serialism. These are contemporary in style, because it is evident that not all composers write music in contemporary idioms.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

The major movements in "experimental music" exist almost entirely outside of academic music anyway; free improvisation, sound poetry, lowercase and many _sui generis_ works of the past 50 years exist in the "lay" music world. It seems to me that the academic avant garde is either approaching or has reached a level of entropy where it is starting to collapse in on itself. At this point a revolution in the manner of Beethoven or Schoenberg seems highly unlikely to me, but I have a feeling that if this inward collapse of the avant garde occurs we might see a "neotonal" movement at the fore of contemporary academic music in the next 50 years.

@KenOC: I don't know if this is what Rapide is referring to, but I have a hunch that you might want to look up Brian Ferneyhough.


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## Rapide (Oct 11, 2011)

mmsbls said:


> ...
> In some sense modernism in many eras seems to thrive on diversity. Change begets change. I'm curios about your last question. When you ask about surviving into centuries to some, I assume you mean, "Will people continue to listen to that music?" rather than "Will composers continue to compose in that style?" My guess is that the popularity of the various styles will generally not decrease (i.e. people will continue to listen to the perceived major composers with at least the same frequency as now).


Yes, I should have been clearer. I meant will today's prevailing styles of modernism serve as the foundation (in some way or another, directly or not) from which classical music will continue to grow, or have we reached a dead end? Hence my contrast with the experimental music of the 1950's, which in my opinion was just that - experimental without progress at all, whereas say, serialism continues to flower and remain relevant. Yesterday, I posted a clip of Boulez' piece _Notations_ from 1945 ("Current Listening" thread) and evidently some members were fascinated by it. This is the direction of modern classical music that I have hopes for the future, or even Boulez' _Piano Sonata No. 2 - I. *Extrêmement Rapide* _ to some sounded "jazzy" (or at least when I attempted to play it).


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## Rapide (Oct 11, 2011)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


>


Ha!! You posted the same example as me, independently!!


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


>


So heavy


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Crudblud said:


> @KenOC: I don't know if this is what Rapide is referring to, but I have a hunch that you might want to look up Brian Ferneyhough.


Thanks Crudblud. I have some Ferneyhough but don't care much for what I've heard. Or, as others here might say, I'm unable to "appreciate" it, which is probably the case.

But Ferneyhough did utter one of my favorite quotes, because it's about my own geographic area: "Certainly being in California has encouraged a sustained commitment to rethinking the nature, purposes, and relevance of the contemporary arts, specifically music, for a society which by and large seems to manage quite well without them."


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

Rapide said:


> This will be difficult to answer but let's scope out some thoughts nonetheless.
> 
> I came across this, and I think it is perhaps the shortest and most succint answer to the question of this thread: " [Modernism] is a "linguistic plurality", which is to say that no one musical language ever assumed a dominant position (Morgan 1984).
> 
> ...


And what experimental music do you refer to? Quite alot of very different experimental approaches were developed in the mid-20th Century, and pretty much all of them seem to continue in some form to this day, many have become big parts of musical culture (musique concrete and electronic music especially).


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

The only experimental approach that seems to have died down from its heyday is open form/aleatoricism, which was huge among composers for a little bit (Cage, of course, but also Boulez, Takemitsu, and others), and then subsided significantly. Of course it's not dead, though, and I'm sure that Some Guy could come up with examples of contemporary composers using those techniques.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I think this famous quote by John Cage put it well, he speaks of diversity in music:

“We live in a time I think not of mainstream, but of many streams, or even, if you insist upon a river of time, that we have come to a delta, maybe even beyond delta to an ocean which is going back to the skies.”

We got a lot of things in classical past 50-60 years or so:
- reactions to serialism/atonality
- Minimalism (& Post-Minimalism)
- Musique Concrete & other types of electronic musics
- Microtonal music (innovations in sonority)
- Chance based music and indeterminacy
- Music with mathematical component

As well as more traditional practices:
- Neo Romanticism
- The influence of world music traditions

& less highbrow
- Incorporation of non classical (eg. rock & Jazz)
- Film, musical theatre
- Crossover stuff

So I think Cage was correct, its really like an open ocean, and what part of that ocean you travel to go back up which river or delta is up to the individual listener/traveller.

As for exactly predicting the future I got no idea. But plenty of people, including expert musicians, got that wrong in the past, didn't they?


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

Renaissance said:


> I though that wasn't the case to mention the obvious.  I was referring to post-serialism. These are contemporary in style, because it is evident that not all composers write music in contemporary idioms.


You never know with some of the stuff people say around here, Renaissance.

Don't be irrational!


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## Rapide (Oct 11, 2011)

Sid James said:


> & less highbrow
> - Incorporation of non classical (eg. rock & Jazz)
> - Film, musical theatre
> - Crossover stuff


I would not include those in this discussion because I do not think they are modern classical for the purpose of this thread. Film music is film music, as is theatre music for example - these have their own roots and their own course of development. By and large, they do not influence modernism. That we can say for sure, absolutely.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Rapide said:


> I would not include those in this discussion because I do not think they are modern classical for the purpose of this thread. Film music is film music, as is theatre music for example - these have their own roots and their own course of development. By and large, they do not influence modernism. That we can say for sure, absolutely.


Well I included those because they are linked to the highbrow stuff. Eg. Jazz in classical goes way back (to eg. Gershwin & Milhaud, etc.). Rock & jazz had huge influence on minimalism. You also got Philip Glass doing film scores. Even musical theatre is linked to developments in classical (eg. Kander & Ebb's 'Cabaret' obviously influenced by German Expressionism). I can go on. But its not an influence on more 'hard core' things, I would not really dispute that point, but more of a link worth nothing eg. for things like MInimalism, etc.


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## Rapide (Oct 11, 2011)

Sid James said:


> Well I included those because they are linked to the highbrow stuff. Eg. Jazz in classical goes way back (to eg. Gershwin & Milhaud, etc.). Rock & jazz had huge influence on minimalism. You also got Philip Glass doing film scores. Even musical theatre is linked to developments in classical (eg. Kander & Ebb's 'Cabaret' obviously influenced by German Expressionism). I can go on. But its not an influence on more 'hard core' things, I would not really dispute that point, but more of a link worth nothing eg. for things like MInimalism, etc.


Yes, a link but so are a lot of other musical types serving a link throughout history. Hungarian Gypsy themes for Joseph Haydn to American jazz for Gershwin. As for the trust of this thread however, I do not see these insignificant links as pointing the future direction of modernism. That's my much broader question for this thread.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Time is fleeting. Is Schnittke "old school" yet?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Rapide, the first movement of the Boulez sonata always sounds to me like four or five Weberns, totally stoked on amphetamines and all playing at the same time. I confess this image helps me enjoy the music. :lol:


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

I can't show you where we are TODAY in classical music because the pieces that have been written today haven't been performed, recorded and put on youtube yet. And by the time they do it won't be today anymore.


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## Rapide (Oct 11, 2011)

KenOC said:


> Rapide, the first movement of the Boulez sonata always sounds to me like four or five Weberns, totally stoked on amphetamines and all playing at the same time. I confess this image helps me enjoy the music. :lol:


Pleasure! (Boulez is a successful artist who does not rely on funding!!)


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Rapide said:


> Yes, a link but so are a lot of other musical types serving a link throughout history. Hungarian Gypsy themes for Joseph Haydn to American jazz for Gershwin. As for the trust of this thread however, I do not see these insignificant links as pointing the future direction of modernism. That's my much broader question for this thread.


Well okay.

BTW do you think Modernism is still going on now? Or do you think we're kind of over it, we're into Post Modernism? I see things coming post-1945 as different from Modernism. I'm in two minds about Modernism. Its like an end point of one thing and a beginning of another. The other thing, the many deltas Cage speaks of, comes across as being too many things to pin down. Hence, too difficult to make any predictions worth making. I mean you look at what people said mid 20th century about the inevitability of certain things in music as 'the future' and they have been proved to be totally off the mark to say the least. We may as well stare into a crystal ball or something.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Rapide said:


> Pleasure! (Boulez is a successful artist who does not rely on funding!!)


Well, he probably did at one time. Thinking France?

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/07/style/07iht-ben.html


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Rapide said:


> Pleasure! (Boulez is a successful artist who does not rely on funding!!)


He wouldn't make much money from his music, more from his conducting (mainly of dead composers?). He's not got that big output as a composer either.

& what about IRCAM? It was publicly funded by French (left wing?) government, was it not?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Rapide said:


> Yes, I should have been clearer. I meant will today's prevailing styles of modernism serve as the foundation (in some way or another, directly or not) from which classical music will continue to grow, or have we reached a dead end? Hence my contrast with the experimental music of the 1950's, which in my opinion was just that - experimental without progress at all, whereas say, serialism continues to flower and remain relevant. Yesterday, I posted a clip of Boulez' piece _Notations_ from 1945 ("Current Listening" thread) and evidently some members were fascinated by it. This is the direction of modern classical music that I have hopes for the future, or even Boulez' _Piano Sonata No. 2 - I. *Extrêmement Rapide* _ to some sounded "jazzy" (or at least when I attempted to play it).


Please, specifically "What" Which" 'experimental music of the fifties - and sixties, and seventies, etc.

People who are as interested in fiendish technical difficulty will continue to perform the Boulez Sonatas, Jean Barraque's sonata, etc. just as Hamelin, the (to me, weirdly non-musical) playing machine, has made a career of Alkan, Sorabji, Godowsy, et alia -- if for no other reason than because, as a sort of circus trick, they seem inhumanly impossible. A lot of what Hamelin performs now is of almost no other interest to a great deal of his audience - the technique being the star, the music a far second.

Underneath all Boulez is a not so hidden and very French Debussy and equally French Messiaen - the more you listen the more you hear that context.

Neither tonality or atonality as we know it will go away. I rather hope the hyper graphic and pretentiously not nearly so complex as it is made out to be Fernyhough will be seen or heard of as far less interesting or important as some trending 'in house' and academics make it out to be, but I see / hear that as the slightest of updates of similar music done forty years previous, so I don't hear anything so terribly new, more interesting, important, etc. there, leaving me wondering exactly, 'What the big deal is.'

If the global economy and societies are both flush and stable, there will be plenty of room and interest in consuming the most modern of moderns, and an appeal for a very current more. If it goes the other way, the normal tendency is to 'go conservative' and for the more conservative, ergo familiar, ergo 'comfortable.'

A lot then does not depend upon 'art' but upon the global economy and both governmental and social stability.

But 'dead end' - well, I found that meaningless and fatuous at the same time. There has yet to be a 'dead end' other than as a verbal phrase of an imagined conceit penned by a petty academic with an axe to grind, or a precious and none-too well informed journalist writing on music.

I also truly think all such conjecture is completely useless, and know it is not 'my kind of fun.' I'd much rather people compose the next piece than speculate on any kind of music!


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Vaneyes said:


> Well, he probably did at one time. Thinking France?
> 
> http://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/07/style/07iht-ben.html


An interesting article indeed. "This means that the French government, through its subsidies to Ircam and other Boulez-inspired organizations, is funding music that not only has no audience, despite all of French radio's attempts to force-feed it to people (with "world premieres" never followed by performances elsewhere), but also is fighting the last war."

Of very direct relevance to another active thread!


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

It would be rather nice, considering the TC members are polyglot as per various levels of informed training, to agree on some already agreed upon terminology. Perhaps as per Groves, which is quite universally used in unis and conservatories throughout the English speaking countries?

Modern: 1890, starts with Debussy, to 1975. 
Contemporary: 1975 to present

As unimaginative as it is, it works.


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## Rapide (Oct 11, 2011)

Well, of course it is difficult to speculate, even Schoenberg's school "got it wrong" now that we are in 2013. But its seeds were in the ground and branches of it survived whereas others did not. Post modernism is not going to get any easier from a smaller school. How many composers born even say after 1970 who are now in mid-career can / are leading a new "school" compared even as not that long ago as the Second Viennese? That is why I think composers belonging to the generation born before 1950 that have expanded on the ideas during and before the decades then will have any chance, whereas the radical experimentalists most likely won't.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

KenOC said:


> An interesting article indeed. "This means that the French government, through its subsidies to Ircam and other Boulez-inspired organizations, is funding music that not only has no audience, despite all of French radio's attempts to force-feed it to people (with "world premieres" never followed by performances elsewhere), but also is fighting the last war."
> 
> Of very direct relevance to another active thread!


Part of the intent was to get away from nationalism, and define a style virtually non-adaptable / adoptable by politicians for their own ends. That part, I think you might agree, was an intention very successfully met 

Left or right, I admire the mentality of a government that will fund music of which it can take no direct political advantage....

[Q: Do you know the difference between a Jewish mother, a Catholic mother, and a Pit Bull?
A: Between the first two, no difference at all: the Pit Bull, though, will eventually let go.]


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