# How should music be like?



## hlolli

I know thad today's composers have started to compose particulary on nothing, like anti-expressionists, Serialism, Avant-Garde and second viennese school. I don't get this kind of art, well it's not enjoyable but easy to compose, I have been litsening to Morton Feldman lately and he said he was proud to announce himself as a music mass-productor. I am starting to give thease men no respect, they think thad new generation of music had to come out becouse they felt to. So the 20th century serial music(Debussy-today) is on my opinion one big screw up, but ofcourse men like Shostakovich, Ligeti, Mahler, R.Strauss, Jon Leifs and may others thad gave this new style the finger. Live long the expressionism!

question to reader: what's your opinion on the 20th century serial music.


----------



## 4/4player

Hmm...I have to quite agree with you there, hlolli
though I am only 14 years old...my opinion might change...hehe

But I believe that music will never die....But I do also believe that music will have to someday conform to the world's view of things..and eventually be bad music in the future. I hope this didn't offend anybody...just a thought coming from a young paranoid classical music teenager...=)
4/4player


----------



## IAmKing

I love 12-tone music. Theoretically and compositionally, its a fascinating genre.


----------



## toughcritic

I think melody is what makes the music. Also harmonic language is important. I will never warm up to atonal music because it is not music. You may call it whatever, but I agree it is one big screw up that requires no talent, skill or any sort of qualification. It's so easy a caveman can do it


----------



## Topaz

toughcritic said:


> I think melody is what makes the music. Also harmonic language is important. I will never warm up to atonal music because it is not music. You may call it whatever, but I agree it is one big screw up that requires no talent, skill or any sort of qualification. It's so easy a caveman can do it


My views exactly. The greatest gift of a composer is good melodic ability. In my opinion, the best are Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, and Mozart. Orchestration ability is also vital (right blend of instruments correctly weighted, linking up melodies) and here Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert and Wagner are tops. Agreed too that atonal music is atrocious, and here we are not alone as I reckon 95% of the classical music public agree with us. In fact, I have never met any atonal fans face to face. They all seem to linger under stones or high up in trees on Forums like this, come out occasionally, make a few comments and then disappear.


----------



## Daniel

Hello,

One should differ between personal taste, philosophy and technical ability. Actually the composers of those works have often seriously studied composition containing all the facettes of techniques, harmony, counterpoint, old styles, orchestration and so on. And this music is definately not that easy that "everybody just can write it". So far besides of an aesthetics-discussion.

Greetings,
Daniel


----------



## hlolli

Topaz said:


> In fact, I have never met any atonal fans face to face. They all seem to linger under stones or high up in trees on Forums like this, come out occasionally, make a few comments and then disappear.


Remember my name if I'll become a great composer, if I don't then I haven't tried hard enough.

p.s it's Hlöðver Sigurðsson


----------



## Edward Elgar

I think that in the good hands - Berg and the like, 12 tone music can be an enlightening experience. However it needs to be well thought out and composed with care for the composition to work. I disagree with composers rattling off a load of atonal ******** and then proffessing to be great composers. I also dislike the use of computers in composing. Music should come from the heart, not the hard drive!


----------



## R.Zhao

4/4player said:


> Hmm...I have to quite agree with you there, hlolli
> though I am only 14 years old...my opinion might change...hehe
> 
> But I believe that music will never die....But I do also believe that music will have to someday conform to the world's view of things..and eventually be bad music in the future. I hope this didn't offend anybody...just a thought coming from a young paranoid classical music teenager...=)
> 4/4player


Interestingly enough I'm also 14 (off topic).

I simply can't understand serialism, possibly it's due to the feeling after listening to it but it all sounds same in style and has the same meaning. There could be another possibility that we're heading for a second renaissance and eras all travel in cycles, the development of music will once again speed up.


----------



## Manuel

hlolli said:


> I know thad today's composers have started to compose particulary on nothing, like anti-expressionists, Serialism (...)


I think that took place in the 50's... through 1970.

We recently buried the last _enfant terrible_ with Ligeti. Composers nowadays have less of that experimentalist apetite. Check Saariaho, Gubaidulina, Danielpour, Kancheli, Panufnik...



> I will never warm up to atonal music because it is not music. You may call it whatever, but I agree it is one big screw up that requires no talent, skill or any sort of qualification. It's so easy a caveman can do it


That's just your opinion... as you can see here, many of us here do not agree with you:



> Actually the composers of those works have often seriously studied composition containing all the facettes of techniques, harmony, counterpoint, old styles, orchestration and so on. And this music is definately not that easy that "everybody just can write it".


----------



## IAmKing

Topaz said:


> My views exactly. The greatest gift of a composer is good melodic ability. In my opinion, the best are Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, and Mozart. Orchestration ability is also vital (right blend of instruments correctly weighted, linking up melodies) and here Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert and Wagner are tops. Agreed too that atonal music is atrocious, and here we are not alone as I reckon 95% of the classical music public agree with us. In fact, I have never met any atonal fans face to face. They all seem to linger under stones or high up in trees on Forums like this, come out occasionally, make a few comments and then disappear.


Some of Stravinsky's 12-tone compositions are fiercely melodic.

I see 12-tone composition in the same light as traditional classical composition. If you follow the rules rigidly you're going to churn out crap, for the most part. If you are guided by creativity, inspiration, etc. and break/use the rules accordingly then its all good.


----------



## Danny Piano

I've always thought there's a strong analogy between atonality/avant-gard and low-carb

Low-carn refers to a diet where the amount of carbohydrates go down and the amount of fat go up. Carbohydrates (like protein) are transported within the cells by a transporter called insulin which opern the cell doors. The amount of doors your have on the cell is your insulin sensitivity. Low-carb works for certain people because they have low insulin sensitivity hence the diet helps keep steady blood sugar levels by slowing gastrict emptying (more fat) and decreasing glycemic load (less carb)

Very simple. Low-carb is nothing by a mean which works for a simple banal reason
However low-carb diets authors love to claim their diets work because of the strangest and most physiologically flawed reasons. And they have such a level of presumption aggressivity that to the uneducated person it seems like they know what they're talking about with all the physiological and chemical talking, but the fact is that they're just making PHYSIOLOGY up
Low-carb is the perfect example of a simple mean that work for some people which is unfortunately not promoted as just one valuable mean but it's always accompanied by tons of sci-fi and pseudoscience to that its superiority and supremacy can be claimed. 

Modernist/avant-gard/atonality work in the exact same way
They're nothing more than musical means. They're nothing more than further tools we have to express our musical ideas and emotions. Unfortunately so many manneristic individuals love to promote the most absurd and wild claims as to why they're indeed special, they're indeed the "musical evolution", they're indeed what any educated person should use, they're indeed the antithesis of the watered-down melody/tonality, they're the only innovative expression and all kind of nonsense. Since many of them too have a predisposition for arrogance and aggressivity people often think in all their lecture, books, claims, disserction is hidden a profound truth ... that they've information and knowledge that allow them to claim all of that (the well-known jargon trick)
Unfortunately that's not the truth, it's just that people when they have the power and the chances to be "dishonest" they just do it. There's nothing magical, mystical, intellectual, evolutionary and rivolutionary in modernist, atonal, aleatory and avant-gard styles. They're nothing more than simple, little, normal MEANS

Seen from the diet mongers perspective the low-carb diet seems like a psychotic lunacy but once put into a more moderate and physiologically correct perspective it's just an useful mean like many. Seen from the composers perspective contemporary music too seems like a psychotic mannerism but again put it in the correct perspective and it's nothing more than a music tool available to us. Atonality has my respect as a tool ans musical mean but it gets no respect from me as the mumbo-jumbo and spiritual enlightenment so many claim it to be

The wild physiologically nonsense claims of low-carb diet mongers include wild fact about insulin, eicosanoid synthesis, hormonal control, faster weight loss, lectins and what not

The wild (human intelligence insulting) claims of modernist art revolves around naive and arrogantly biased assumptions about: innovation, listeners knowledge, evolution, banality vs semplicity, means vs. goals


----------



## IAmKing

Such ignorance. :/


----------



## Guest

For me Music should have at least one of the following:
Melody, Harmony, Rhythm, it should sound acceptable to the ear not make one shudder, did not Schonberg say that “Newspaper boys will be whistling my music one day” well I’ve not heard them.
I have no doubt that it is technically clever, perhaps in a hundred years. Who knows?


----------



## Danny Piano

IAmKing said:


> Such ignorance. :/


Wrong
maybe you've haven't heard the various claims, attacks, ignorant remarks of psychotic modernist composers. I've discussed this with the composer Elisabetta Brusa
She said to me that when she was young the modernist establishment was a sort of dogmatic fascism, that composers like her was not at all allowed to compose what they wanted to compose and that unlike what we believe, there was a strong lobby between the modernist composers, composition teachers and recording labels

Atonality and serialism are nothing but "musical means" there's nothing special, magical or intellectual about them. They're like the screwdriver on my tools-box which doesn't make the hammer or all the other tools inferior, less intelectual or less important

I have respect for composers that use aleatory, atonal, serial music means to compose what they have in mind. I have less then zero respect for modernist composers trying to justify with absurb hallucinations as to why their musical means are superior, intellectual elightened, the only future and everything else is inferior

The most fundamental and yet naive trait of modernism/avat-gard (and I'm not talking about just music but poetry, painting, sculpture ...) is mistaking the mean for the end/goal, ignoring the end/goal and focusing on the mean or worse yet judging the end/goal by the mean that has been used to reach it.

That's like as if writers would not focus on the content of what they write but the means they use to write hence caiming the banality of any book that use the same letters, the same words to convey certain emotions and concepts and doesn't invent new meaningless words or new letters or combine the letter in new "innovative" ways


----------



## robert newman

When music does not speak to us, or when composers take pleasure in writing works which have minimal emotional content, it's then that we realise the greatness of romanticism. It's not a coincidence that when composers such as Stravinsky and Ligetti were hugely popular in Paris during the 1920's Medtner (living and composing in Paris also) described atonal music and modernism (so-called) as virtual heresy. What he really meant was that we, the listener, are part of what music is all about and must be the target of what composers do, or else music becomes irrelevant. Medtner wrote a sonata 'Romantica' as a direct response to Stravinsky. I do not believe that Medtner was wrong. He had a good point. 

Romanticism is not really a 19th century movement at all. It describes any music which allows melody to grow. The nuts and bolts of technique, tonalism etc. etc. can of course be changed from generation to generation. But the basic link between romanticism and true music remains. It is entirely possible to have atonal music that is 'romantic' by such a definition. 

Too many composers think of themselves as scientists who wear rubber gloves and who do not want to contaminate specimens by human contact. They believe that emotion is no part of music for that reason. And they say that emotion should never feature in science. 

I think they are right. But only if music is a science and nothing else. Music is of course Art. And that is the difference. To me, music is that science of tones which an artist uses to speak to his audience and to contact them with melody, harmony and rythm. 

Music will always try to escape from the box in which we first learned it. This is natural. New harmonies, new orchestration, new rythms etc, are all very welcome. But musical art remains a romantic business. I believe its whole history is understood within that context. 

Bach (to me) was a romanticist. So was Prokofiev, Debussy, Richard Strauss and others. But musicians who sneer at romanticism (because they want to be 'modern') hardly know what they are sneering at and are like modern theologians who know lots about theology but nothing of God.


----------



## Guest

*Robert*, I think music has a lot more to do with science than we may realise!
There is a rhythm to nature, a rhythm to life and I suspect a rhythm to the Universe/Multiverse. 
What is it that makes music so addictive? 
The art or craft of a Composer taps into this universal rhythm, it stimulates our brain, I am not saying that it is all about rhythm, structure also is scientific eg sonata form, also the actual sound produced by the musician/instrument provides a stimulation to our brain.


----------



## IAmKing

robert newman said:


> When music does not speak to us, or when composers take pleasure in writing works which have minimal emotional content, it's then that we realise the greatness of romanticism. It's not a coincidence that when composers such as Stravinsky and Ligetti were hugely popular in Paris during the 1920's Medtner (living and composing in Paris also) described atonal music and modernism (so-called) as virtual heresy. What he really meant was that we, the listener, are part of what music is all about and must be the target of what composers do, or else music becomes irrelevant. Medtner wrote a sonata 'Romantica' as a direct response to Stravinsky. I do not believe that Medtner was wrong. He had a good point.
> 
> Romanticism is not really a 19th century movement at all. It describes any music which allows melody to grow. The nuts and bolts of technique, tonalism etc. etc. can of course be changed from generation to generation. But the basic link between romanticism and true music remains. It is entirely possible to have atonal music that is 'romantic' by such a definition.
> 
> Too many composers think of themselves as scientists who wear rubber gloves and who do not want to contaminate specimens by human contact. They believe that emotion is no part of music for that reason. And they say that emotion should never feature in science.
> 
> I think they are right. But only if music is a science and nothing else. Music is of course Art. And that is the difference. To me, music is that science of tones which an artist uses to speak to his audience and to contact them with melody, harmony and rythm.
> 
> Music will always try to escape from the box in which we first learned it. This is natural. New harmonies, new orchestration, new rythms etc, are all very welcome. But musical art remains a romantic business. I believe its whole history is understood within that context.
> 
> Bach (to me) was a romanticist. So was Prokofiev, Debussy, Richard Strauss and others. But musicians who sneer at romanticism (because they want to be 'modern') hardly know what they are sneering at and are like modern theologians who know lots about theology but nothing of God.


I would tend to disagree.

I listen to a lot of music, ranging from the most romantic of composers to the most "sterile" (Pierre Boulez et al... PB is directly quoted as saying something along the lines of "the final product isn't what matters, its how you get there") ... and I find much of this "scientific" music almost as emotionally stimulating as anything, say, Sibelius wrote. The emotions are just vastly different. I don't see how one can criticise these "scientific" composers as creating inferior music for "lack of emotion" and at the same time claim "romantic" music is superior because of its "abundance of emotion".

I just find that much of the emotion present in the "scientific" pieces is much more difficult to access, so to speak, than the emotion that flows through "romantic" pieces...


----------



## Manuel

> *I don't see how* one can criticise these "scientific" composers as creating inferior music for "lack of emotion" and at the same time claim "romantic" music is superior because of its "abundance of emotion".


I do se WHY... they don't like it, so they criticise and despise it.



> I just find that much of the emotion present in the "scientific" pieces is much more difficult to access, so to speak, than the emotion that flows through "romantic" pieces...


I fully agree with this. Romantic music is great, and ear-friendly also. The so called _scientific _music may need more like a cognitive process to be understood (or liked); as doesn't come up with fancy tunes you can whistle in your way to work.

The problem here is that many listeners are not affraid to say things like "Berio and Lutoslawski were talentless ******** devoting their lifes to write crap", instead of "I don't understand what they communicate, it doesn't appeal to me... I don't like it". It's a huge and frequent mistake, as they are not able to differenciate their own inability to comprehend music, and so they suppose stupidity is in the side of the composer (and don't see where it actually is)


----------



## Danny Piano

Manuel said:


> It's a huge and frequent mistake, as they are not able to differenciate their own inability to comprehend music, and so they suppose stupidity is in the side of the composer (and don't see where it actually is)


This is such a nonsense
There's nothing to understand in music
Art has always been the "suspension of disbelief and judgement"
The true meaning of art is using complex means to create something accessible to anyone
The artists is not someone who requires others to understand the means and technique of his art to be understood, but someone so skilled in those means and techniques to be able to communicate with everyone (which doesn't mean that what he communicates is something that everyone must necessarily like)

Having to study and be knowledgeable in harmony and rhythm, perspective and colors technique, dancing movements and kinethestetic and what not in order to be able to appreaciate a work of art if the antithesis of what art has always been and will always be

You're such an hypocrite as you're doing what you criticize in others
You say people just criticize the composers instead of just saying that "they don't like it that kind of music doesn't convey anything to them and doesn't resonates to them" (which is not true as this is what most people have been saying, it's the modernists not accepting this honest truth)

And yet what you're doing is criticizing people instead of just admitting that "they don't like, that music doesn't convey anything to them and doesn't resonate to them"

Music is a language. What you express is for like-minded people. It's like with novels
Acknowledging the technical writing qualities of a novel and liking it or getting emotions from it are two completely different concepts. That's why we're individuals and we have people we get along with and people we can't stand or why agre with certain thoughts and worldviews and disagree with others

No one is stupid for not understanding art because there's nothing to understand since it communicates at a very subconscious and instinctive level
And being able to appreciate and aknowledge the technical qualities of a piece of music and sincerely liking it or relating to it are independent and different situations , you can have one without the other.

There's nothing magical in what Boulez or Xenakis write, nothing superior, intellectually higher or more important. The content is what's important the mean you use is irrelevant: A mean is something irrelevant and neutral .. just a lifeless tool



> PB is directly quoted as saying something along the lines of "the final product isn't what matters, its how you get therw"


This shows who the stupid really is
Aside from the fact that PB is known for being an unpleasant undividual (maniacal, egocentric, presumptuos, unkind, aggressive ...) this sentence is really naive. PB may believe there's nothing superior of elightened in this way of thinking but it's not only very naive and simplistic ... it's antithetic to what art really is

I have no problem with any lifeless tool used to make music
I have no problem with expressing ugly emotions other than positive ones (Schomberg is quoted for saying that his music was UGLY on purpose because he wanted to represent an UGLY reality)
I have no problem with all of this as everyone has the right to express whatever he or she wants too, the language you choose is IRRELEVANT

I have problem when a simpleton with a native egocentric mind tries to make up idiotic and hallucinatory reasons as to why the means he or she wants to use to make music is superior to others inventing pseudoscientific and pseudointellectual nonsensical motivations related to evolution, society, acoustic, innovation and other things he/she have no knowledge of (not to mention that knowledge in these topic is something very relative as there's no absolutes in these "fields")

I have also a problem when egocentric mannerists accuse the listeners of being ignorant just for not liking their work. I would never accuse someone of being stupid for not liking my music, ideas, thoughts ... I would just acknowledge that what I'm communicating is not something this person can relate to and he or she has all the rights to ignore me and find something that he or she can relate with

We're individuals not robots


----------



## Manuel

> There's nothing to understand in music


It doesn't matter how long or elaborated your post continues; after this sentence I quote(second line) we should be aware what follows is most likely to be nonsense.



> The true meaning of art is using complex means to create something accessible to anyone


And yes... you manage to not dissapoint us.

*So I can say you missed my point*. I didn't say Ligeti or Schnittke write superior music, neither it is more important than others'. I didn't say someone is an idiot for not liking/understanding a Ferneyhough string quartet.

You have 60 seconds to spot the difference between this two:



> I am starting to give thease men no respect, they think thad new generation of music had to come out becouse they felt to. So the 20th century serial music(Debussy-today) is on my opinion *one big screw up *(...)


And



> I don't like the Hellikopter Quartet


5, 4, 3, 2, 1

Ready?

In the second you accept it's you who doesn't like it. In the first you dare to say you don't like it because it's trash. The kind of preponderous sentences that allow us to detect jerks.



> I have problem when a simpleton with a native egocentric mind tries to make up idiotic and hallucinatory reasons as to why the means he or she wants to use to make music is superior to others inventing pseudoscientific and pseudointellectual nonsensical motivations related to evolution, society, acoustic, innovation and other things he/she have no knowledge of (not to mention that knowledge in these topic is something very relative as there's no absolutes in these "fields")


That's how music evolves. It doesn't come from a sterile enviroment. There's a composer with a social life, interacting with other people and the outside world, that grows and changes.

If Tchaikovsky used cannons in his 1812 to depict a battle (from the real world), why won't you use magnet tapes with the violins (Schnittke and Henze); or even helicopters with your string quartet?

My point is that nobody says just "I don't like it"; everybody is justifying their appreciation by pointing out new music doesn't have appealing tunes, easy rythmical constructions and traditional instrumention.


----------



## Danny Piano

Manuel said:


> It doesn't matter how long or elaborated your post continues; after this sentence I quote(second line) we should be aware what follows is most likely to be nonsense.


I rest by my case while musical analysis has its accademical merits no one should need to know anything about music in order to appreciate it. In fact asking the listener to be knowledgeable in harmonical, rhythmical and serial rules and so on in order to being able to appreciate a work of art is antithethic to art and would make the artist useless since the artist is the one who mediate between the mean and the end result. There's nothing to understand about music because music, even from a neurophysiological point of view, is perceived subconsciously and analysing the technique behind the music or absorbing the communicative content are two different and independent aspects. Just like when you listen to a person you focus, instictively, on the content of his or her arguments and not on the face muscles and tongue movements utilized to produce those sounds



> *So I can say you missed my point*. I didn't say Ligeti or Schnittke write superior music, neither it is more important than others'. I didn't say someone is an idiot for not liking/understanding a Ferneyhough string quartet.


My comment was not direct at you personally



> You have 60 seconds to spot the difference between this two:
> 
> I am starting to give thease men no respect, they think thad new generation of music had to come out becouse they felt to. So the 20th century serial music(Debussy-today) is on my opinion one big screw up (...)
> 
> And
> 
> 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
> 
> Ready


It's you that missed the point!
Can't you see how the first comment is a reaction not to avant-gard language per se but to its dogmatic fascist establishment and arrogant, presumptuos claims
You don't really seem to know anything about modernism and its effect of accademical quarters. Why don't you ask composers that were studying or composing 40/50 years ago
and just wanted to have freedom in language how they have been treated, not to mention threatened, ridiculed, ignored and brainwashed to give anything that wasn't the naive modernist dogma?

Why do you think a manifenstation like the masterprize exists? Why so many teachers, composers, students, musicians are reacting against the modernist dogma by claiming their freedom in whatever circumstantial musical language they choose to write in in each situation? Why do you think thousands of people from teachers to composers are feeling this need if modernism just allowed freedom and considered itself nothing but a simple, banal not more or less important than others artistical mean? What about the new boheme movement? The kind of reactions you see are just natural given what people subconsciously react to ... if it was just about music per se and everyone agree it's an individual matter not of taste but of relating to what is being communicated these kind of controversies would not be taking places



> That's how music evolves. It doesn't come from a sterile enviroment. There's a composer with a social life, interacting with other people and the outside world, that grows and changes.


That's the nonsense I'm talking about
modernism is not a music evolution. In fact it was a self/conscious and far-fetched attempt to build innovation for the sake of it. (and if you read something about language evolution you'll see it's never self-conscious but slow, spontaneous and unchoosen) In fact it was a political dogma before contaminating the arts and modernist avant/gard composers have almost always claimed to considered themselves more politicians and phylosophers than artists. If there's a problem with modernism, as a general phylosophy, is it's being sterile, out of the world and entrapped in an ivory tower without any link with the real world.
Even ethnomusicologists and acoustic experts have commented on what kind of nonsense are the justifications used by modernists to claim an evolutionary higher gerarchic place

As I said modernism and avant-gard would regain most respect if they just suddenly grow the humbleness to admit aleatory music styles are nothing more than another neutral tool to use as you please. I think composers are lucky to have many means with whom to express themselves .... but they're nothing but means, they have no gerarchical or intellectual value; only the content has and this despite of the language used to convey it

To claim that the new music composition tools are a sort of evolution is not like claiming that pdf files are an evolution from paper books but that sci-fi is an evolution of drama or that thriller are an evolution of fables. In other words we're not talking about more accessible versions of something (like horses-cart vs car) but of completely different musical means and language all of which have the same gerarchical place and value: i.e. they're nothing more than lifeless tools used by an artist to convey what he or she wants to convey. Real evolution is on the content not on making up far-fetched means for the sake of it and claiming like PB that the mean is what matters not important than the end result. That's no art but naive mannerism at its worst



> If Tchaikovsky used cannons in his 1812 to depict a battle (from the real world), why won't you use magnet tapes with the violins (Schnittke and Henze); or even helicopters with your string quartet?
> 
> My point is that nobody says just "I don't like it"; everybody is justifying their appreciation by pointing out new music doesn't have appealing tunes, easy rythmical constructions and traditional instrumention.


They can use the wc flushing sound if they want to ... I have no problem with it
I have a problem with wild pseudointellentual, pseudoscientific, pseudopolitical and pseudoacoustic not to mention arrogant and presumptuos claims by people who don't seem to understand for an artist the mean is nothing the end result is what matters and that don't want to accept the natural equality between all languages that are nothing more than tools available to the composers

That's why I used the low-carb example. Nutritionist are not reacting to the idea of lowering carb and increasing fat to delay gastrict emptying per se, they're reacting to the pseudoscientific claims of the hallucinated diet mongers out there

The same applies to this board. I don't think people really react to modernist and avant-gard sounds per se but they're reacting to the dogma and establishment of these individuals and their arrogant claims. Eventually it's a just a matter of conveying something and whether the person in front of you can relate to it or not. Nothing more and nothing less. The problem is that you can't accuse people here of not acknowledging this simple fact when it comes to modernism, since it's modernists themselves not acknowledging it and refuting any argument involving individuality of communication and relating to what is being communicated in favour of absurd claims of evolutionary superiority of their preferred language


----------



## Saturnus

robert newman said:


> Music will always try to escape from the box in which we first learned it. This is natural. New harmonies, new orchestration, new rythms etc, are all very welcome. But musical art remains a romantic business. I believe its whole history is understood within that context.


Some people view music in much the same way as architecture: Making music is simply designing sounds you want to have in your surroundings. 
I think there is nothing wrong with that. Music doesn't have to be related to emotions at all.


----------



## Danny Piano

Saturnus said:


> Some people view music in much the same way as architecture: Making music is simply designing sounds you want to have in your surroundings.
> I think there is nothing wrong with that. Music doesn't have to be related to emotions at all.


Kind of flawed analogy
Wanting something, unlike physiologically needing something (i.e. fuel vs. good tasting food) is related to EMOTIONS. In fact very few things are as emotional as "wanting" 
Besides music unlike buildings, clothes, cooking lack the survival functionality and while it is a language it is a relative language not an absolute one as such it can't be used to share information but only relative content; hence emotional not empirical (and again even "wanting to have something" is deep emotional content)


----------



## IAmKing

> I have problem when a simpleton with a native egocentric mind tries to make up idiotic and hallucinatory reasons as to why the means he or she wants to use to make music is superior to others inventing pseudoscientific and pseudointellectual nonsensical motivations related to evolution, society, acoustic, innovation and other things he/she have no knowledge of (not to mention that knowledge in these topic is something very relative as there's no absolutes in these "fields")
> 
> I have also a problem when egocentric mannerists accuse the listeners of being ignorant just for not liking their work. I would never accuse someone of being stupid for not liking my music, ideas, thoughts ... I would just acknowledge that what I'm communicating is not something this person can relate to and he or she has all the rights to ignore me and find something that he or she can relate with


Danny Piano... You keep saying that these modernists claim their music to be superior than others because its so mathematical and complex. Do you have sources?

Pierre Boulez does not believe that his music is superior to others. Pierre Boulez is a big fan of Frank Zappa's classical music. FZ created music based on what he heard in his head (aka, the final product is what matters most). PB does not consider his own music (where the method is more important to him than the final product) superior to that of FZ's...

Also, which composers accuse listeners that don't like their music as being "ignorant"? Also, how is there any difference between composers calling listeners ignorant for not liking their work, and you calling the composers ignorant for composing their music as they want to?



> Wanting something, unlike physiologically needing something (i.e. fuel vs. good tasting food) is related to EMOTIONS. In fact very few things are as emotional as "wanting"
> Besides music unlike buildings, clothes, cooking lack the survival functionality and while it is a language it is a relative language not an absolute one as such it can't be used to share information but only relative content; hence emotional not empirical (and again even "wanting to have something" is deep emotional content)


You really need to think more deeply before you start typing.

What is architecture?

Sure, some MAY argue that buildings are necessary, but buildings that possess a high life of artistic merit are not necessary.

Some buildings that come to mind:







































> The artists is not someone who requires others to understand the means and technique of his art to be understood, but someone so skilled in those means and techniques to be able to communicate with everyone (which doesn't mean that what he communicates is something that everyone must necessarily like)


Pierre Boulez has composed many pieces of music that I really really enjoy for their auditory AND EMOTIONAL content. I have absolutely no understanding of the methods he used.

The same goes for a lot of other serial composer's music...


----------



## Guest

Danny Piano said:


> Music is a language. What you express is for like-minded people.
> It's like with novels


Music is not a language, it does not convey a precise or even understandable idea to the listener, each listener will have his own mental picture of what the music means and that, means different things to different people.


----------



## Saturnus

> Wanting something, unlike physiologically needing something (i.e. fuel vs. good tasting food) is related to EMOTIONS. In fact very few things are as emotional as "wanting"


To think that something is interesting or beautiful, is that emotion? I'd say not. For me, wanting something is nothing emotional, it's more like some sort of a plan of what you are going to do.
And tonight I am going to see Stravinsky's neo-classical opera The Rake's Progress because it is beautiful and interesting and sensing beautiful and interesting things are the meaning of my life, the goal of my function. Period.


----------



## IAmKing

Andante said:


> Music is not a language, it does not convey a precise or even understandable idea to the listener, each listener will have his own mental picture of what the music means and that, means different things to different people.


Interesting topic you've brought up.

Surely, music can be used to convey a specific message? Therefore it is (or can) be a language?


----------



## Guest

*IAmKing*

I know I was being pedantic, and we allow for artistic licence however:

An emotion or mood can be approximated, but these will be coloured by the listeners preconceived knowledge of the music and association, if any, with their own life and experiences, 
Language is made up from words, * music *cannot construct even a simple sentence, EG, you cannot make music say to an audience, "This mound of earth is where my love lies and will for ever be sacred to me"
You can say that this is what the music is meant to say and then the listener will associate the meaning with the music whenever it is heard.


----------



## robert newman

If it was ever possible to say in music, “This mound of earth is where my love lies and will for ever be sacred to me”, such music would by definition transcend spoken language and yet it would be understandable to all peoples and nations. 

I do not rule out the possibility of a music which CAN say ' “This mound of earth is where my love lies and will for ever be sacred to me”. Or of a music which can convey to a listener a picture of a scene so vividly that it would be like a painting or a photograph of that scene, yet made in tones. 

How such a music could ever be imagined, or written, or performed cannot be answered at this time. Still, I instinctively believe that such a music may, one day, exist.


----------



## Guest

OK *Robert* but lets deal with what we have at the present, I know of no music that can do what I stated, even to portray a mood can mean different things to different people.


----------



## robert newman

Yes, and I can't speak for others, but it seems to me that if a composer writes great music part of its greatness IS its ability to transcend language. I entirely agree that to date much music honours words in a particular language. It graces words. 

So I agree with you.


----------



## Guest

At present the way we inflect words with a raise or lowering of tone, could be the beginning of a more expressive development of language?


----------



## Frasier

It depends on what you expect to communicate, the audience you want to present to and how much work you expect of them. There's something hard-wired in human beings that recognises concord and progressions based around the harmonic series of a keynote. They are content with a concord; know something sounds a bit weird/sad/nasty with minor keys, mostly without knowledge as to why, and so on. 

But music taken out of this "natural" context needs the listener to appreciate at least the elements of the composer's language - it may take work that the listener is not ready to give. To me it's hardly different from someone giving a lecture in a language they made up or some obscure foreign language. The very least the listener needs is a translator or it will just be perceived as random sounds. 

However, there are those who 'get' something from listening to a stream of random sounds as long as they don't get too painful. There are more whose senses will be fired by wadges of sound presented coherently.

I stand somewhere between, happier with shorter works based around motifs (rather than extended melody) and with an amount of dissoance without being noisy, painful discord the whole way. It is perfectly possible to write atonal music that coheres, providing the listener is given time to absorb events before they change.

So there's no real answer to this.

Frasier.


----------



## IAmKing

Andante said:


> *IAmKing*
> 
> I know I was being pedantic, and we allow for artistic licence however:
> 
> An emotion or mood can be approximated, but these will be coloured by the listeners preconceived knowledge of the music and association, if any, with their own life and experiences,
> Language is made up from words, * music *cannot construct even a simple sentence, EG, you cannot make music say to an audience, "This mound of earth is where my love lies and will for ever be sacred to me"
> You can say that this is what the music is meant to say and then the listener will associate the meaning with the music whenever it is heard.


Granted music is perhaps more subjective than written or spoken language, but I would still consider it to be a language unto itself.

And I didn't think you were being pedantic.


----------



## World Violist

I really dislike today's take on music on almost all fronts, but when I tell that to my viola teacher, he says that I'm too young. I'm 15.


----------



## zlya

Music theory goes back thousands of years. Let's think about that, for a moment. For the past five thousand years, at least, people have thought that there IS something to understand about music, that it IS important to study it, analyze it, and discuss it. Not all music was for everyone. From the Renaissance through the Classical period, composers wrote music for the educated, with the idea that ONLY those who had studied music would understand their compositions. This is the primary division between art music and popular music, and always has been. Serialism is not popular music.


----------



## AndreasvanHaren

I don't believe atonal music will ever be popular like the tonal music is. For me atonal music is to made up, lives too much in the mind instead of in the emotions. I never got moved by a 12 tone piece, I wrote them myself sometimes when I just started composition but never found it interesting to do. And the idea that they where ahead of their times with their atonal music and their time will still come... I don't believe it. No one goes to such a concert and says afterwards, "wow, so beautiful..." maybe they will say; "very interesting music..." but llistening to music because it is interesting is not for me, I want to me emotional moved and touched by it.

just my opionion

André


----------

