# How do I get to like Modernism?



## UnTalBilly (Apr 24, 2017)

Hi. I've been listening to classical for about a year and explored its various periods. One which I haven't listened to much is Modernism. What I've heard I haven't liked or better put, enjoyed. Now, I don't want to just pick a work from the top recommended lists, as I fear it may make me dislike it even more. Rather, I would appreciate it if someone could guide me through a couple of modernist works that aren't as "daring" as some of the others, and which might provide a more gentle introduction to the genre. I'm looking also for your own stories, how you got to love or at least appreciate Modernism.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

When I first came to TalkClassical, I had essentially the same issue. In fact I specifically joined the forum to learn to enjoy modern and contemporary music. You may wish to look at this thread I started for that purpose. I'm not sure which modern composers you enjoy, but I had some trouble with Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, and others considered comparatively tame. Perhaps you could give us some sense of what modern music you enjoy (if any) and what music you've tried.

Since I started that thread, I have spent many, many hours listening to modern and contemporary music. I made lists of works I saw frequently recommended and listened to them. I did gradually begin to enjoy some works. Over time I learned to like more and more styles and now enjoy or love quite a few modern/contemporary composers' works.

I think simply listening is necessary but not sufficient. Modern music is a decidedly different style from earlier eras. If you look for what you enjoy from the Baroque, Classical, or Romantic eras, you will not find that in much modern music. Instead, you have to listen for what much modern music contains - less focus on melody and more focus on things such as timbre, rhythm, motifs, unusual sound patterns, etc.. Essentially one must learn the new "language" of modern classical sounds.

It may take a long time before some works (or even any works) open up for you. I often tell the story of Berg's Violin Concerto. Many TC members raved about that work, and given that I generally love violin concertos, I felt I could learn to like it. I listened and listened always finding it random sounding and unpleasant. I simply could not understand how a work by an acknowledged master adored by so many here could leave me so absolutely cold. Eventually I listened to an audio file that discussed the work slowly working through it. I listened to that file several times and listened to the concerto several more times. Eventually I found myself humming it in the shower. I realized there were parts that I found remarkably beautiful. It is now perhaps my favorite 20th century violin concerto and one of my favorites overall.

So I think you have to be able to do several things.

1) Believe that modern music is truly enjoyed by many people who have similar tastes as you do with earlier music, and therefore, you likely can also learn to enjoy these works.
2) Listen repeatedly to modern composers and works.
3) Listen without "wanting" to hear what you love in earlier works. Learn the new language.


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## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

UnTalBilly said:


> Hi. I've been listening to classical for about a year and explored its various periods. One which I haven't listened to much is Modernism. What I've heard I haven't liked or better put, enjoyed. Now, I don't want to just pick a work from the top recommended lists, as I fear it may make me dislike it even more. Rather, I would appreciate it if someone could guide me through a couple of modernist works that aren't as "daring" as some of the others, and which might provide a more gentle introduction to the genre. I'm looking also for your own stories, how you got to love or at least appreciate Modernism.


It would be helpful for me to first know what classical music you like.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

I would first ask you this: Why do think you need to like it? 

It might seem non-constructive, but would you, or anyone, expend effort trying to like other things you don't like? As a rule I don't really like sci-fi films; there are some I happen to like and often it's due to encountering them and having been interested enough to keep watching because of an interesting story, or great performances. It's on a case-by-case basis. 

From what I can tell there are two reactions to 'modern' art for people not particularly attracted to it: the first is to dismiss it as trash and the second is to persist in trying to find something in it, but with great difficulty. Both are a reaction to the discomfort of change and perhaps a feeling of being 'out of the loop'. The first group don't interest me because they rarely change their views which have other origins than actually assessing the music/art on its own terms. The second group can ask itself why they think they need to appreciate something from which they feel alienated. They at least have a curiosity as to why others seem to enjoy it. 

I would suggest a few things to keep in mind: that you don't have to like everything on offer; that building an understanding and relationship to music will take time and some effort of both listening and finding out about why and how the works were created. Modern music does not have the luxury of resting on a deeply-ingrained aesthetic tradition, so it will always be a challenge.

I don't doubt that a long list of (good and useful) recommendations will follow, but they will be diverse and other people's tastes which you may never be able to share. 

I like modern music, but I don't like all of it. This is important to remember, so that if you really find that you can't get anything out of e.g. Schoenberg when so many others are lauding him, you can stick to your judgement and say, after giving him a fair hearing, 'he's just not for me'. 

I don't know where you are up to right now, but there are ways into modern music that aren't just being thrown in at the deep end. If you've only listened to music up to about 1900, try neo-classical with one foot still firmly in the realm if standard tonal music, like Jacques Ibert and Jean Francaix, maybe Darius Milhaud. The French composers of the modernist era are lot easier to navigate than the Viennese school of Schoenberg, Berg etc.

Personally, I was exposed to modernist music when I was a teen, through Erik Satie's late music. I did not like composers such as Schoenberg, let alone anyone even more contemporary. It takes time and listening, sometimes it just clicks.


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## UnTalBilly (Apr 24, 2017)

mmsbls said:


> When I first came to TalkClassical, I had essentially the same issue. In fact I specifically joined the forum to learn to enjoy modern and contemporary music. You may wish to look at this thread I started for that purpose. I'm not sure which modern composers you enjoy, but I had some trouble with Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, and others considered comparatively tame. Perhaps you could give us some sense of what modern music you enjoy (if any) and what music you've tried.


Thanks, I'll definitely be reading that thread, it has a lot of the answers I need. With respect to the works I enjoy, I'm quite fond of Poulenc's clarinet sonata (especially that 2nd movement), a lot of Shostakovich (symphonies nos. 5 & 10, piano and trumpet concerto, cello concerto..., and Stravinsky's firebird. I've also listened to some lovely organ music by Messiaen although I don't know if he counts as a "true" "modernist" in the sense of Stravinsky and Schoenberg.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

European classical music is one thing, modernism is another, with several dimensions.

Serialism and 12-tone music is basically European in conception.

There is _early_ (non-12 tone) European and American modernism, like Debussy, Stravinsky, Varese, Hindemith, Cowell, Ives, Copland, and others.

_Later_ American modernism, like John Cage and things that came out of New York, is probably the most difficult to grasp for a Euro-centric classicist (which you appear to be), but to really understand it and get into it, you might need to be informed about visual art, and ways of thinking about visual art.

Philip Glass says this:

_"What I wanted was a high-concept music that was aligned with a high-concept theater, art, dance, and painting. My generation of people - Terry Riley, Steve Reich, La Monte Young, Meredith Monk, Jon Gibson, and another dozen or so composers - were writing and playing music for the dance and theatre world. It seemed to us that for the first time, a music world that was equivalent to the world of painting, theater, and dance began to emerge. The music world now could say, "This is the music that goes with the art."_


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

millionrainbows said:


> Philip Glass says this:
> 
> _"What I wanted was a high-concept music that was aligned with a high-concept theater, art, dance, and painting. My generation of people - Terry Riley, Steve Reich, La Monte Young, Meredith Monk, Jon Gibson, and another dozen or so composers - were writing and playing music for the dance and theatre world. *It seemed to us that for the first time, a music world that was equivalent to the world of painting, theater, and dance began to emerge.* The music world now could say, "This is the music that goes with the art."_


The quote above is baffling in the sense that this was already achieved in Paris between c.1912-1925; on its own _and_ in collaboration with the other arts. In this respect Glass & co were re-inventing the wheel - whilst also fully aware that it had already been invented!


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

By modernism do you mean specifically early 20th century, or stuff after that as well?

I would think if you like _The Firebird_, you would also like the _Rite of Spring_.


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## Portamento (Dec 8, 2016)

I've found Schnittke to be a fairly accessible 'modern' composer (especially in his middle-period polystylistic works). Try the 1st Concerto Grosso.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

What separates a lot of Modern works from previous eras is the disonnance and different conventions, so I think the best way to start going in that direction is with less dissonant works but still with less traditional harmony. Following certain composers on their own progress from more consonant to dissonant works like Scriabin is also a great guide. The way some works are free in their expression can be harsh unless you are initiated. What happened to me is I struggled with a lot of the disonance, and couldn’t hear the expression beyond it. After giving up, I returned to it just for completeness sake, and all of a sudden I seemed to get that kind of language. Your brain will automatically try to make sense of the sounds you heard even when you don’t consciously. The work that really got me converted was Bartok Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. He also wrote some pieces on piano to attune beginners to modern music and disonnance.

Some “easier” pieces I would rank are:
Prokofiev Symphony 1 and 5
Bartok Mikrokosmos Vol. 3 or 4
Ravel String Quartet, Tzigane
Stravinsky Firebird, Petrushka
Shostakovich String Quartet 8, Symphony 8
Scriabin Op33 and 35 preludes
Toch Symphony 3 (which I was introduced by Portamento), String Quartet 12
Bax Symphony 6


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

UnTalBilly said:


> Hi. I've been listening to classical for about a year and explored its various periods. One which I haven't listened to much is Modernism. *What I've heard I haven't liked or better put, enjoyed*.


The problem is that modernism means exactly what someone wants it to mean ... the real question is here is - what does it mean to you? Does it mean Stravinsky? Schoenbeg? Boulez? Varese? Where does it start? Perhaps the most useful thing that you can do if you want others to help is to tell us what you haven't liked/enjoyed.


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## Pyotr (Feb 26, 2013)

I feel the genre you’re referring to is similar to jazz as it relates to the popular music world. It’s much easier to appreciate it if you are a musician. Just my opinion. Not trying to discourage you. Good luck in your quest. Let us know how it works out.


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## Ziggabea (Apr 5, 2017)

Simple, just listen to lots of it and get familiar. That's all I did! 

Before this year I mainly liked Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin and other romantics. Thanks to a few recommendations I found much pleasure in Schoenberg, Webern, Stravinsky, Messiaen, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Salonen and so on, which led me to start really liking Stockhausen and Boulez in the past few months. Try it, it's very much worth exploring :kiss:


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

I would first echo eugeneonagain and ask why you think you _should_ like it, or any other kind of music for that matter. Then echo Becca's point about what is meant by "modernism".

My own approach has been a gradual one - the more variety I've listened to, the more I've found that what once appeared difficult or unlikeable is now much more accessible (and this doesn't just apply to modern music). I still don't_ like_ a lot of music, but at least I don't necessarily need to reach for the off switch when I hear it.

One thing I'll say is that although certain works or composers do represent a sudden shift in music, 20th century music overall is part of the general continuum of gradually evolving music. I think for many listeners there's a daunting notion of some sort of dividing line between "regular" classical music and "modern" classical music, so there's a psychological barrier to accepting the modern. If you have the time and patience I recommend exploring the repertoire in chronological order; it becomes clearer then that there have been a relatively small number of composers who really pushed the boundaries, and lots of other not-so avant-garde-minded composers who just took what they liked from those boundary-pushers but otherwise remained part of that gradual evolution. (But, as above, this of course doesn't mean you're obliged to like the direction of that evolution!)


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## UnTalBilly (Apr 24, 2017)

I should I clarify what I mean by Modernism. I'm not referring to the whole of 20th century composers, as some of them I love (see Rachmaninoff, Ravel, de Falla, Gershwin). I'm referring to the dissonant, the 12-tone, the rhythmically free music of such composers as Schoenberg or Prokofiev, the former the most unpleasant composer I've ever listened to. Thanks everyone for the recommendations, I'll be checking them as soon as I've got time to listen to them.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Well I have something for you. Its virtues are that it is short (very), is both tonal, yet dissonant, modernist and delightful. It is melodic, but not in the way people expect classical music to be 'melodious'.

See also the provocative gibe Satie added to the choral: 


> "My chorales equal those of Bach, with this difference: there are not so many of them, and they are less pretentious."


The video-maker justly added a troll face over Satie's in recognition of this.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

UnTalBilly said:


> I should I clarify what I mean by Modernism. I'm not referring to the whole of 20th century composers, as some of them I love (see Rachmaninoff, Ravel, de Falla, Gershwin). I'm referring to the dissonant, the 12-tone, the rhythmically free music of such composers as Schoenberg or Prokofiev, the former the most unpleasant composer I've ever listened to. Thanks everyone for the recommendations, I'll be checking them as soon as I've got time to listen to them.


You might try listening to all of Stravinsky: from his early "Russian" phase, to his Neoclassicism, to his late serial music. Lots of different approaches to music, though it's all recognizably by the same guy.

Anyway, here's a chronological list of works in case you want to cultivate this (sick) habit of completist listening. In this case, it wouldn't take _that_ long-lots of Stravinsky's works are short. Have fun, in any case!

https://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/hhowe/music784/Stravinsky_Works.html


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## Timothy (Jul 19, 2017)

UnTalBilly said:


> the former the most unpleasant composer I've ever listened to.


Maybe classical music just isn't cut out for you then?


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## Johnnie Burgess (Aug 30, 2015)

Timothy said:


> Maybe classical music just isn't cut out for you then?


Just because someone does not like the music of Schoenberg does not mean that all classical music is not for someone. Or does someone have to like the music of Schoenberg in order to like classical music in your mind?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Timothy said:


> Maybe classical music just isn't cut out for you then?


Maybe Schoenberg just isn't cut out for him then. Imagine that.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Timothy said:


> Maybe classical music just isn't cut out for you then?


I don't think it's specifically cut out for anyone. It's just there in all its variety.

There's no job opening for an ambassador for 'correct' listening. It's not required. Stand down Tim.


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## Botschaft (Aug 4, 2017)

Timothy said:


> Maybe classical music just isn't cut out for you then?


Would you care to elaborate? Your response makes no sense. :lol:


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## Samael420 (Nov 8, 2017)

Timothy said:


> Maybe classical music just isn't cut out for you then?


So if you don't enjoy Schoenberg, then classical music just isn't for you?
Good to know, will inform my friends and family about that.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Timothy said:


> Maybe classical music just isn't cut out for you then?


No. Just maybe some of us like music which is pleasant to listen to!


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## Daniel Atkinson (Dec 31, 2016)

DavidA said:


> No. Just maybe some of us like music which is pleasant to listen to!


Schoenberg IS pleasant

Daniel


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## Guest (Nov 19, 2017)

UnTalBilly said:


> I should I clarify what I mean by Modernism. I'm not referring to the whole of 20th century composers, as some of them I love (see Rachmaninoff, Ravel, de Falla, Gershwin). I'm referring to the dissonant, the 12-tone, the rhythmically free music of such composers as Schoenberg or Prokofiev, the former the most unpleasant composer I've ever listened to. Thanks everyone for the recommendations, I'll be checking them as soon as I've got time to listen to them.


Interesting response to Schoenberg (which I once shared - Pierrot Lunaire is ghastly to _my _ears) and to Prokofiev. Because Prokofiev has done both the easily accessible (Lieutenant Kije and Symphony No 1, not modernist) and the less accessible (Symphony No 2 more obviously modernist) he's easier to come to like, I think.

I've yet to fall in love with Schoenberg, but some of the pieces I've heard, I no longer find unpleasant - Piano Concerto, Verklarte Nacht, String Quartet No 1 (I think). But I know if I "reset" my ears, I can come to love the new and the unfamiliar - Messiaen's _Turangalila _for example.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

I've been listening to Arditti's interpretation of the Lachenmann's second quartet today, the one called Reigen seliger geister, I wonder if the OP would like that, I mean for me it's some of the most beautiful music ever written.

I think it's quite common for people to feel disoriented when they first meet something like Schoenberg's Variations for Orchestra or his 3rd quartet. Arditti's Lachenmann second quartet seems much more sensual, and (hence) accessible. Maybe that's the way in to modernism - through music which is more sensual than intellectual (Nono, late Nono, would have other examples I think.)


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Ziggabea said:


> Simple, just listen to lots of it and get familiar. That's all I did!
> 
> Before this year I mainly liked Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin and other romantics. Thanks to a few recommendations I found much pleasure in Schoenberg, Webern, Stravinsky, Messiaen, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Salonen and so on, which led me to start really liking Stockhausen and Boulez in the past few months. Try it, it's very much worth exploring :kiss:


This is the best advice. Just keep listening to more of the stuff. After awhile, Schoenberg won't sound so strange. And if you're looking for dissonant music that is more "pleasant" and less jarring, I recommend exploring some of Takemitsu's works. The 2-CD set Spirit Garden, on the Brilliant Classics label is a good place to start. And it's a budget priced release, as are most of the CDs on that label.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> I've been listening to Arditti's interpretation of the Lachenmann's second quartet today, the one called Reigen seliger geister, I wonder if the OP would like that, I mean for me it's some of the most beautiful music ever written.
> 
> I think it's quite common for people to feel disoriented when they first meet something like Schoenberg's Variations for Orchestra or his 3rd quartet. Arditti's Lachenmann second quartet seems much more sensual, and (hence) accessible. Maybe that's the way in to modernism - through music which is more sensual than intellectual (Nono, late Nono, would have other examples I think.)


Lachenmann more accessible than Schoenberg?  Lachenmann is beyond disonnant. His string quartet No. 2 hardly uses notes at all. Check out the score here and the music


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## Guest (Nov 19, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> Maybe Schoenberg just isn't cut out for him then. Imagine that.


Schoenberg and likely a very formidable percentage of subsequent historically acclaimed modernists, that is. But that's all, yeah.


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## Johnnie Burgess (Aug 30, 2015)

Daniel Atkinson said:


> Schoenberg IS pleasant
> 
> Daniel


You think he is pleasant. Everybody does not have to agree with you.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

A suggestion: The OP asks how one might get to like modern music. Obviously people can differ in what they recommend, but it doesn't seem so useful to argue over whether some music is enjoyable or not or to simply state that certain music is not enjoyable. Maybe the focus could be more on how one could move from disliking the majority (vast majority?) of modern music to liking some or much of it.


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## Guest (Nov 19, 2017)

Johnnie Burgess said:


> You think he is pleasant. Everybody does not have to agree with you.


If we're going to be picky, I was taught, "Everybody does not have to..." = "Nobody has to..."

So, I assume you mean "Not everybody has to..." which would allow some of us to agree, and some of us to disagree: a much more agreeable state of affairs!


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Try Rzewski's "The People United Can Never Be Defeated!" It's a series of variations on a memorable folk theme, but it uses "modernist" keyboard techniques. Might be a fun gateway piece for you.


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## Humboldt (Feb 18, 2016)

To me Baroque music is pleasurable, while classical moderne refers to a certain subject or processing of emotions and events like war, see Shostakovich or Prokofiev.


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## Humboldt (Feb 18, 2016)

Blancrocher said:


> Try Rzewski's "The People United Can Never Be Defeated!" It's a series of variations on a memorable folk theme, but it uses "modernist" keyboard techniques. Might be a fun gateway piece for you.


You can easily apply the message to European and American politics. It has a populist background.


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## UnTalBilly (Apr 24, 2017)

mmsbls said:


> A suggestion: The OP asks how one might get to like modern music. Obviously people can differ in what they recommend, but it doesn't seem so useful to argue over whether some music is enjoyable or not or to simply state that certain music is not enjoyable. Maybe the focus could be more on how one could move from disliking the majority (vast majority?) of modern music to liking some or much of it.


Thank you, you get it. I'm not trying to lessen the importance or even the artistic merit of such composers as Schoenberg. To me that would be stupid, as would be disregarding a painting by Basquiat or Pollock. What I'm trying to do is to learn to appreciate this music, because I know there's art in it, but I still can't see it clearly. I guess that I'm asking you to help me dissipate the fog that's keeping me from doing so.


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## UnTalBilly (Apr 24, 2017)

Blancrocher said:


> Try Rzewski's "The People United Can Never Be Defeated!" It's a series of variations on a memorable folk theme, but it uses "modernist" keyboard techniques. Might be a fun gateway piece for you.


Quite fun to hear as the theme is used in my country. Thanks!


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## arnerich (Aug 19, 2016)

Just skip to the last chapter and listen to 4'33''


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## David OByrne (Dec 1, 2016)

Phil loves classical said:


> Lachenmann is beyond disonnant.


How? and if so, how is that a bad thing?


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Daniel Atkinson said:


> Schoenberg IS pleasant
> 
> Daniel


Not to my ears.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

You might try the Hilary Hahn / Esa-Pekka Salonen recording of the Schoenberg Violin Concerto. It takes a Romantic approach where many others seem scratchy and frenetic by comparison.


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

Actually, I'm not sure I'd use the word 'pleasant' to describe much of Schoenberg's music either - but interesting, challenging, sometimes unexpectedly beautiful, expressive of things which earlier music couldn't - etc. - are words I'd use.

And as DavidA points out, we each hear something different.

I've been trying to think of some works I liked back at the beginning, which helped me to get used to and then like modernism:

Hindemith - Violin concerto, String quartet no. 4
Honegger - Pacific 231, String quartet no. 2
Shostakovich - Symphony no. 7, Piano trio 2, String quartet no. 11
Prokofiev - Violin sonatas, cello sonata
Bartok - Violin concerto 2, Concerto for orchestra
Britten - Simple symphony, Symphony for cello and orchestra
Webern - 5 pieces for string quartet
Berg - Lyric Suite, Piano sonata
Nielsen - Symphony No. 4, Wind quintet
Poulenc, Debussy, Ravel, Satie - virtually anything


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## Guest (Nov 19, 2017)

The bizarre thing about Schoenberg is... well, when I have a composer whose music I find unpleasant, I don't seek out every single mention of him on this forum in hopes of re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-iterating that I think his or her music is unpleasant. With Schoenberg, Cage, Boulez, Xenakis, and Stockhausen... this is not the case. I find it very odd and very annoying but I've been on this forum long enough to fully accept that it isn't going to change. There are simply posters that REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY want you to know that, in their singular opinion, those composers are utter trash. Oh. Well.


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

nathanb said:


> The bizarre thing about Schoenberg is... well, when I have a composer whose music I find unpleasant, I don't seek out every single mention of him on this forum in hopes of [...] re-iterating that I think his or her music is unpleasant. With Schoenberg, Cage, Boulez, Xenakis, and Stockhausen... this is not the case. I find it very odd and very annoying but I've been on this forum long enough to fully accept that it isn't going to change. There are simply posters that [...] REALLY want you to know that, in their singular opinion, those composers are utter trash. Oh. Well.


I think there is truth in that, nathanb, but that's the way it is. For those of us who do, it needn't diminish our love of modern or contemporary music at all.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

UnTalBilly said:


> Thank you, you get it. I'm not trying to lessen the importance or even the artistic merit of such composers as Schoenberg. To me that would be stupid, as would be disregarding a painting by Basquiat or Pollock. What I'm trying to do is to learn to appreciate this music, because I know there's art in it, but I still can't see it clearly. I guess that I'm asking you to help me dissipate the fog that's keeping me from doing so.


Charles Rosen might help dissipate some fog. His Book, _Arnold Schoenberg_, is typically lucid and well written. It might not change your mind about any particular music (I'm not sure written arguments often accomplish that for anyone), but it might make approaching an admittedly difficult composer easier and more intellectually stimulating than it otherwise might be.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

The Asasello Quartett CD of the Schoenberg quartets makes me love Arnie even more! I've seen the Asasello's performing in their underwear on YouTube, so I'm sure this will inspire the haters to hate even more! They can go on gnashing their teeth, and I'll keep smiling!


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

I don't know the Asasello quartet's versions, but the Quatuor Diotima also offer a softer, more lyrical than has been typical account of Schoenberg's string quartets. This opened my eyes to a different side of that composer's later works.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

starthrower said:


> The Asasello Quartett CD of the Schoenberg quartets makes me love Arnie even more! I've seen the Asasello's performing in their underwear on YouTube, so I'm sure this will inspire the haters to hate even more! They can go on gnashing their teeth, and I'll keep smiling!


Underwear Quartet:






Now we're really getting somewhere--thanks for this, starthrower!


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

^^^
BTW, it's a beautiful piece!


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## arnerich (Aug 19, 2016)

Blancrocher said:


> Underwear Quartet:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I thought their performance was too brief for my taste...


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

TurnaboutVox said:


> Actually, I'm not sure I'd use the word 'pleasant' to describe much of Schoenberg's music either - but interesting, challenging, sometimes unexpectedly beautiful, expressive of things which earlier music couldn't - etc. - are words I'd use.
> 
> And as DavidA points out, we each hear something different.
> 
> ...


I haven't looked through the rest of this thread, but that is an outstanding list of early and mid-20th century music, all great choices without exception. Bravo. I don't want to say such a list needs an American work, but Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring wouldn't be a bad addition if you want one, and I might even add Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, and unless there is some reason you omit Stravinsky, The Firebird. But you don't need my help. Anyone who listens to anything on your list for the first time as a result of your post got a lot out of this thread. I hope the OP noticed it.


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

fluteman said:


> I haven't looked through the rest of this thread, but that is an outstanding list of early and mid-20th century music, all great choices without exception. Bravo. I don't want to say such a list needs an American work, but Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring wouldn't be a bad addition if you want one, and I might even add Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time. But you don't need my help. Anyone who listens to anything on your list for the first time as a result of your post got a lot out of this thread. I hope the OP noticed it.


I quite forgot the Messiaen 'Quartet for the End of Time' which is very beautiful indeed, and which was also a work I encountered early on in my journey - thanks, fluteman.

PS these are quite literally the works that helped me 'get' modernism 30+ years ago - I didn't come to Copland or Stravinsky until much later. I don't object to them at all.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Just recently I have purchased the famous book by Alex Ross "The Rest is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century". It is going to lead me on my way of exploring modern music. By the time I am done, I expect to get to understand modern classical much better than I do now.


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

arnerich said:


> I thought their performance was too brief for my taste...


You can't fault their singlet-mindedness, though...


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## tortkis (Jul 13, 2013)

Phil loves classical said:


> Lachenmann more accessible than Schoenberg?  Lachenmann is beyond disonnant. His string quartet No. 2 hardly uses notes at all. Check out the score here and the music


Lachenmann's music is more about concrete sounds of instrument than traditional note/melody/harmony. It is not surprising to me that one can prefer his sensuous soundscape to rigorous compositions of Schoenberg or other modernists. If one likes immersing oneself in intriguing, beautiful sounds, it seems a feasible way of approaching modernism music to try Lachenmann first, who I think united modernism tradition and sound experimentalism.


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## arnerich (Aug 19, 2016)

TurnaboutVox said:


> You can't fault their singlet-mindedness, though...


Let's just say it was quite revealing.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

arnerich said:


> Let's just say it was quite revealing.


Some may have thought it was pants.

(could be a UK term...)


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

David OByrne said:


> How? and if so, how is that a bad thing?


I'm just surprised Lachenmann could be heard as more accessible than Schoenberg. The portamentos were interesting in some ways to me.


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## Guest (Nov 20, 2017)

SiegendesLicht said:


> Just recently I have purchased the famous book by Alex Ross "The Rest is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century". It is going to lead me on my way of exploring modern music. By the time I am done, I expect to get to understand modern classical much better than I do now.


It was the TV documentary based on his book that helped me as it was backed by decent snippets of the music being studied. Previously available on Youtube...not any longer, apparently.

http://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=The_Sound_and_the_Fury:_A_Century_of_Modern_Music


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Phil loves classical said:


> I'm just surprised Lachenmann could be heard as more accessible than Schoenberg. The portamentos were interesting in some ways to me.


Well clearly the sounds he gets the musicians to make aren't the same as in a 19th century string quartet. And it's not going to interest the sort of person who needs foot tapping rhythms and catchy tunes. Lachenmann is no Shostakovich.


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## David OByrne (Dec 1, 2016)

TurnaboutVox said:


> I think there is truth in that, nathanb, but that's the way it is. For those of us who do, it needn't diminish our love of modern or contemporary music at all.


Well I sure can see how an ad nauseam of people persistent to keep bashing music that means something to you, can be kind of depressing to keep putting up with. This has been my experience from day one and ever since I joined this forum last December.

People seem to get pleasure on this site (and other sites too) from bullying people who like music that they themselves don't like, pretending to wave a magic wand to say "that isn't music" isn't going to make it so either, I know people love doing that.

"I don't like what you like and because I don't, now I proclaim your (favorite) music has no value"

I get sick of it too


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## Ziggabea (Apr 5, 2017)

^^

Wise words David, it is true too that Modern music is an easy target for our more conservative listeners. 
Maybe it's due to how my parents raised me (with a lack of judgmental pretension towards different genres) but I lack empathy with people like we have been talking about.

A music listener can have Mozart and Stockhausen (or your avant-garde of choice), as I love them both the same in different ways. Similarly, a listener might only like one of them and not be bitter or hostile towards people who do like it (same with the preaching against it)

It's something to think about


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

I wouldn't say 'easy target', more that it's perceived as such. A good deal of those who trash it have trivial opinions about it based partly upon ignorance and a determined stubbornness mistaken for 'superior taste'.

For some people rubbishing modern music it seems not to be entirely a matter of music, but a near-hatred of whatever cultural changes are seen to have altered not just contemporary music, but also contemporary society.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Ziggabea said:


> ^^
> 
> Wise words David, it is true too that Modern music is an easy target for our more conservative listeners.
> Maybe it's due to how my parents raised me (with a lack of judgmental pretension towards different genres) but I lack empathy with people like we have been talking about.
> ...


Yes, well said. Alas, music and art in general inevitably reflects the society as well as culture in which it is created. Even music that contains no direct or specific social or political message can reflect social and political values or movements of its time and even come to symbolize them. For these reasons it doesn't surprise me that political debates arise here. But I am more like you in this regard. I have the attitude of the historian or journalist, and even if the political opinions of, say, Ezra Pound or Edgar Degas, or the personal mores and actions of, say, Pablo Picasso or Woody Allen (I should say alleged, especially with respect to Mr. Allen, I haven't thoroughly investigated those things) disturb me, I don't factor those things into my attitude about their art. 
John Cage was very much an admitted artistic subversive and provocateur who wanted to disturb his audience, not because he was a bad guy, but because strongly felt he had legitimate reasons to do so. In this era of increased terrorism and mass killings, I think it does him and our culture a profound disservice to treat him and his ilk with a hostility that should be reserved for violent subversives, as a few here seem to do. When I think of a present day John Cage, I think of people like Spencer Tunick, the photographer who stages photos of hundreds of people lying nude in the streets of major cities, or Jeff Koons, the artist who creates those giant hedges in the shape of bunnies. There will always be subversive art, that is one of its purposes, and I see no reason to be mad about it.


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## Johnnie Burgess (Aug 30, 2015)

fluteman said:


> Yes, well said. Alas, music and art in general inevitably reflects the society as well as culture in which it is created. Even music that contains no direct or specific social or political message can reflect social and political values or movements of its time and even come to symbolize them. For these reasons it doesn't surprise me that political debates arise here. But I am more like you in this regard. I have the attitude of the historian or journalist, and even if the political opinions of, say, Ezra Pound or Edgar Degas, or the personal mores and actions of, say, Pablo Picasso or Woody Allen (I should say alleged, especially with respect to Mr. Allen, I haven't thoroughly investigated those things) disturb me, I don't factor those things into my attitude about their art.
> John Cage was very much an admitted artistic subversive and provocateur who wanted to disturb his audience, not because he was a bad guy, but because strongly felt he had legitimate reasons to do so. In this era of increased terrorism and mass killings, I think it does him and our culture a profound disservice to treat him and his ilk with a hostility that should be reserved for violent subversives, as a few here seem to do. When I think of a present day John Cage, I think of people like Spencer Tunick, the photographer who stages photos of hundreds of people lying nude in the streets of major cities, or Jeff Koons, the artist who creates those giant hedges in the shape of bunnies. There will always be subversive art, that is one of its purposes, and I see no reason to be mad about it.


So Cage should be praised for wanting to disturb his audience but his audience should just shut up if they do not like his music. And of course they should shower Cage and others like him with money.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Johnnie Burgess said:


> So Cage should be praised for wanting to disturb his audience but his audience should just shut up if they do not like his music. And of course they should shower Cage and others like him with money.


It's not that people who don't care for his music should be praising him, but not doing that doesn't mean they have to be denouncing him at every turn either. Those who find it interesting are going to be his audience, no more and no less. He was hardly 'showered with money'.

However... I wonder if Cage was aware of the advice of his idol Satie who said: "The artist does not have the right to dispose uselessly of his audience's time". Maybe Cage thought he wasn't wasting their time at all?

On the other hand, that advice comes from someone who wrote _Vexations_, but whose fault is it if the audience takes seriously a jest to repeat it 840 times then complains about it?


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## Johnnie Burgess (Aug 30, 2015)

eugeneonagain said:


> It's not that people who don't care for his music should be praising him, but not doing that doesn't mean they have to be denouncing him at every turn either. Those who find it interesting are going to be his audience, no more and no less. He was hardly 'showered with money'.
> 
> However... I wonder if Cage was aware of the advice of his idol Satie who said: "The artist does not have the right to dispose uselessly of his audience's time". Maybe Cage thought he wasn't wasting their time at all?
> 
> On the other hand, that advice comes from someone who wrote _Vexations_, but whose fault is it if the audience takes seriously a jest to repeat it 840 times then complains about it?


They have as much freedom of speech as Cage or should people not be allowed to complain about music they do not like. There are people who go on and on about how they hate the music of Mozart should they be told to stop talking about how they hate the music of Mozart?


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Johnnie Burgess said:


> They have as much freedom of speech as Cage or should people not be allowed to complain about music they do not like. *There are people who go on and on about how they hate the music of Mozart should they be told to stop talking about how they hate the music of Mozart?*


Yes, they should, because they are adding nothing of value. Mozart is widely acknowledged as a great composer, if people don't like him they don't need to go on about it. The same is true for people who don't like Cage.

'Freedom of speech' is irrelevant; having it does not mean it has to be squandered saying nothing of value.


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

Please remember that the thread title is "How do I get to like Modernism?" and the OP wrote:



> "I would appreciate it if someone could guide me through a couple of modernist works that aren't as "daring" as some of the others, and which might provide a more gentle introduction to the genre. I'm looking also for your own stories, how you got to love or at least appreciate Modernism.


I think that any further posts in this thread on people's freedom to object to or defend modernism - points having been made - will have to be treated as "off topic" posting and will therefore be removed.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

TurnaboutVox said:


> Please remember that the thread title is "How do I get to like Modernism?" and the OP wrote:
> 
> 
> I think that any further posts in this thread on people's freedom to object to or defend modernism - points having been made - will have to be treated as "off topic" posting and will therefore be removed.


Well yes, it would be nice to just be able to do that without the booing and hissing from the traditional gallery. I do wish the moderators would specify this instead of pretending.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Johnnie Burgess said:


> So Cage should be praised for wanting to disturb his audience but his audience should just shut up if they do not like his music. And of course they should shower Cage and others like him with money.


Cage lived in near total poverty for a good portion of his life, and to my knowledge was never "showered with money", except perhaps once when he used his prodigious memory and knowledge of mushroom species to win a lot of money in a European game show, or so I read. If you want to get mad at a modern conceptual artist for cashing in, stick with Yoko Ono, who certainly used her marriage to John Lennon and resulting celebrity to promote her own projects, including musical ones, though she was hardly a musician, imho. 
Edit: I wouldn't dream of telling anyone to "shut up" about anything. I was just talking about why perfectly legitimate debates about the merits of art, whether modern music or otherwise, become political, and how they are really very separate things involving very different issues most of the time. 
Here is one of the most succinct and best characterizations of the place of Cage, Stockhausen and other modernists in western music, and if this doesn't help you enjoy it, I don't know what will:


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

UnTalBilly, if you're still there, and interested in Schoenberg, I would recommend his second string quartet as the best possible introduction. The last movement is the first thing Schoenberg wrote that's "atonal" (that is to say, without a key signature), but I don't think you'll find it difficult to listen to if you enjoy the first three movements (which are tonal).

If you don't like that I'd put Schoenberg aside for a while and maybe try:

-Poulenc's Litanies a la Vierge noire
-Hindemith's Mathis der Maler symphony and Nobilissima Visione
-Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, Symphony of Psalms, and Mass
-Debussy's La Mer

And then, jumping ahead in time a little:

-Ligeti's Lux Aeterna, Clocks and Clouds, violin concerto, and piano etudes
-Messiaen's Visions de l'Amen and Quartet for the End of Time
-Dutilleux's L'arbre des songes
-Takemitsu's From me flows what you call Time


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

I think one of the hardest questions for someone in UnTalBilly's position (or mine before joining TC) is to know how much listening is necessary to "learn" to enjoy modern music or specific modern works. Some people may require relatively little while others, such as myself, may require a significant amount. Some at TC have suggested that one should enjoy _the process_ of learning to enjoy new music even if one does not like the new music at that time. That certainly helps.

I gradually enjoyed more and more modern music over the past 5-6 years or so. There are still composers and works that I not only don't enjoy but that I dislike. Maybe I'll never enjoy them. What's remarkable is that there are many works and composers I used to hate (almost not consider them music) but now enjoy or even love. Atonal Schoenberg was awful, but now I especially like quite a few of his works. Boulez's music seemed ridiculous, but now I love works such as Sur Incises and Anthemes II. Schnittke's Violin Concerto No. 4 contained the most unpleasant sound imaginable, but now I quite like the work. I had listened to both Schnittke and Abrahamsen strongly disliking them, but now they are among my favorite 20th century composers.

I suppose everyone must decide how often they should listen to new music before deciding it might not be for you. So far, I have not decided that any particular music is not for me. Ferneyhough has eluded my attempts thus far, but I still occasionally give his music a try. I think I'm probably not listening in the "right way" (i.e. hearing what's wonderful about his music according to those who like it).


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

UnTalBilly said:


> What I'm trying to do is to learn to appreciate this music, because I know there's art in it, but I still can't see it clearly. I guess that I'm asking you to help me dissipate the fog that's keeping me from doing so.


I don't think anybody here expects you to "appreciate" the music; you have to be moved by it, emotionally or intellectually. Otherwise, what's the point?


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

TurnaboutVox said:


> Please remember that the thread title is "How do I get to like Modernism?" and the OP wrote:
> 
> I think that any further posts in this thread on people's freedom to object to or defend modernism - points having been made - will have to be treated as "off topic" posting and will therefore be removed.


I've never heard of moderators removing posts because they were "off topic;" I thought that was something that the participants dealt with. That seems overly strict. 
Certain topics are going to create vigorous discussion, and that's inevitable.

Plus, there is an "implied" thrust to the opening query, which may not be as innocent as is presumed. These sorts of questions seem to invite explanations, defenses, and so on.

So who is "off-topic" when a situation like this seems to _create_ and _invite _the opportunity to defend modernism to a supposedly "uncomprehending" or "befuddled" questioner?


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

fluteman said:


> ...If you want to get mad at a modern conceptual artist for cashing in, stick with Yoko Ono, who certainly used her marriage to John Lennon and resulting celebrity to promote her own projects, including musical ones, though she was hardly a musician, imho.


While she may have had the later advantage of Lennon's wealth and fame, Yoko Ono was a full-fledged conceptual artist some years before she ever met Lennon. I respect her, and her art.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

millionrainbows said:


> I've never heard of moderators removing posts because they were "off topic;" I thought that was something that the participants dealt with. That seems overly strict.
> Certain topics are going to create vigorous discussion, and that's inevitable.
> 
> 
> ...


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

millionrainbows said:


> While she may have had the later advantage of Lennon's wealth and fame, Yoko Ono was a full-fledged conceptual artist some years before she ever met Lennon. I respect her, and her art.


Exactly right, I agree 100 percent. But though she may have been an imaginative conceptual artist, she really wasn't a musician by training, background or talent, despite associating herself with actual, formally trained, famous musicians like La Monte Young and John Cage. And she did use her marriage to John Lennon to bolster her own celebrity, for example by becoming involved with the Beatles (which was not appreciated by the other three Beatles), and later by forming the "Plastic Ono Band" with Lennon. She is a much bigger celebrity and a whole lot richer than she ever would have been based solely on her own artistic merit, though I readily admit she is a genuine conceptual artist.
Charlotte Moorman, on the other hand, famed as she became for performing nude and/or with a TV on her head, was a genuinely talented and Juilliard-trained cellist. So for me anyway, she is on a higher level from a musical standpoint.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

mmsbls said:


> One can assume whatever one wishes, but I think UnTalBilly's posts (especially this response to my post) indicate a desire to learn to enjoy modern music. UnTalBilly clearly doesn't need anyone to defend modern music; he already knows it has great value. He just wants to appreciate (enjoy) it.
> 
> As far as I can tell, UnTalBilly is in a similar position to me when I first joined TC. I started a similar thread which I mentioned in my early response on this thread. Based on discussions with friends and TC members, many people (everyone I know personally) find much modern music unpleasant at first and need repeated listening to learn to enjoy it.


Ok, I see your point in wanting to "keep it positive."

But as you also said, there are inherent challenges in modernism which must be dealt with, and your solutions are (quote) "needs repeated listening" (in other words, try to approach new music instead of expecting it to come to you on your terms), and "learn to enjoy it," (which implies a deficiency which must be overcome).

Woe be unto the "modernist defender" who dares to imply any sort of lack or deficiency on the part of the listener.

Alas, if only _all_ modern "novices" and queries were so innocent and eager to learn.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Modernism doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It has its own context just like the previous Romantic and Classical eras had. The early 20th century went through a compulsive revolution in art, primarily in Paris and Vienna, and some of the strident modernism and the breaking up of tonality in music was a response to that, including a new musical vocabulary that was able to express the darker side of the unconscious as a parallel development to what Freud was doing.

It wasn’t a pretty century, evident by reading history, particularly in relationship to two awful World Wars. So anyone without a deep appreciation of the turbulence that existed in that century’s history is probably not going to make much headway in appreciating the modern and its wide diversity where music really fragmented in many different directions that included Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Prokofiev, and many others finding their way in an explosion of creative energy. Then the music is free to fly on its own. But don’t expect some of it to be soothing and comforting. The strident is often about waking people up and expressing hidden aspects of human nature that could never have been brought into the light of day or expressed in previous eras.


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

My way into more modern music was first with Prokofiev "Romeo & Julie" and Stravinsky "Symphony of Psalmes" in my teens, then lots of different music followed: Shostakovich 5th symphony, Messiaen "Turangalila", Schnittke "Piano concerto". I've always been a Mozart-loving metalhead  Now anything goes (almost)...

did I forget Bartok??


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Larkenfield said:


> It wasn't a pretty century, evident by reading history, particularly in relationship to two awful World Wars. So anyone without a deep appreciation of the turbulence that existed in that century's history is probably not going to make much headway in appreciating the modern and its wide diversity


While that makes sense, it's perhaps worth pointing out that (for example) the 17th century wasn't exactly beer and skittles, yet we're not expected to take the turbulence of that era into account when listening to its music.


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## arnerich (Aug 19, 2016)

Larkenfield said:


> It wasn't a pretty century, evident by reading history, particularly in relationship to two awful World Wars. So anyone without a deep appreciation of the turbulence that existed in that century's history is probably not going to make much headway in appreciating the modern and its wide diversity where music really fragmented in many different directions that included Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Prokofiev, and many others finding their way in an explosion of creative energy. Then the music is free to fly on its own, but don't expect much of it to be soothing and comforting. It is often about waking people up and expressing hidden aspects of human nature that could never have been brought into the light of day or expressed in previous eras.


The way I try to rely that point is like this; when Chopin composed a piece that was sad there is still a beauty and enjoyment in it, when Mahler composes something that is sad it actually makes me sad...


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

fluteman said:


> Exactly right, I agree 100 percent. But though she may have been an imaginative conceptual artist, she really wasn't a musician by training, background or talent, despite associating herself with actual, formally trained, famous musicians like La Monte Young and John Cage. And she did use her marriage to John Lennon to bolster her own celebrity, for example by becoming involved with the Beatles (which was not appreciated by the other three Beatles), and later by forming the "Plastic Ono Band" with Lennon. She is a much bigger celebrity and a whole lot richer than she ever would have been based solely on her own artistic merit, though I readily admit she is a genuine conceptual artist.
> Charlotte Moorman, on the other hand, famed as she became for performing nude and/or with a TV on her head, was a genuinely talented and Juilliard-trained cellist. So for me anyway, she is on a higher level from a musical standpoint.


Consider also that Lennon was highly interested in modern art forms, but wasn't taken seriously; nor did he have a real conduit for his outlet apart from - at that point - one humoristic 'book'. He was likely drawn to Ono, apart from his obvious reasons, because she offered him this outlet and an insight into the working life of a contemporary artist. She was already exhibiting.

The common assumption is that of what they did together the ideas would have been Lennon's, but we don't know that and it's not strange to assume that she influenced him quite as much as he influenced her.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> Well clearly the sounds he gets the musicians to make aren't the same as in a 19th century string quartet. And it's not going to interest the sort of person who needs foot tapping rhythms and catchy tunes. Lachenmann is no Shostakovich.


The OP was talking about Modernism, While Lachenmann is clearly Postmodern. I think UTBilly needs to be aware these are quite different in approach.


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

millionrainbows said:


> Woe be unto the "modernist defender" who dares to imply any sort of lack or deficiency on the part of the listener.


As it should be.

I don't know if woe is the way to go about it. But yea, regardless of my level of competence, I am not encouraged to pursue anything new if it is pointed out that my lack of competence, lack of experience, lack of curiosity, ingrained prejudice, are the problem. (Is the music ever the problem? Ever?) Truth is, shaming me into listening _is too close to telling me I am not worthy, and the joy of the new thing is only bestowed on the worthy._

Just not an effective way to encourage. Regardless of the truth of the statements.

I get the worthiness thing thrown at me at my wine tasting club, where I have been told more than once that the problem is I have accustomed my pallet to cheaper wine. (I joked that that was a cost saving measure.)

No.. the problem could be that you have alienated me and I am not to going show you or share with you any interest I develop in these things, as you will further insult me (I fear) by explaining that I have "made progress", or "matured", when, in fact, all I have done is started to see it your way.

Its not the facts its the presentation. People skills.

Luckily for me, I have the experience, education, and good breeding to overlook these seeming provocations, and take what information is available for future reference as I pursue my own path. It takes a bit of sophistication to overcome weak teaching.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

eugeneonagain said:


> Consider also that Lennon was highly interested in modern art forms, but wasn't taken seriously; nor did he have a real conduit for his outlet apart from - at that point - one humoristic 'book'. He was likely drawn to Ono, apart from his obvious reasons, because she offered him this outlet and an insight into the working life of a contemporary artist. She was already exhibiting.
> 
> The common assumption is that of what they did together the ideas would have been Lennon's, but we don't know that and it's not strange to assume that she influenced him quite as much as he influenced her.


Yes, I agree, and I don't think what I said is inconsistent with your or millionrainbow's comments. I see her as a legitimate artist, not simply a fraudulent celebrity groupie. But calling her a significant _musician_, in either the traditional or the avant-garde context, would be pushing it, in my humble opinion, even though we'll never know exactly what influence she had on John Lennon. John Cage's work no doubt was influenced by his long-time lover, the choreographer Merce Cunningham, and vice versa, but we probably wouldn't give Cunningham a composing credit, or Cage a choreography credit.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

UnTalBilly said:


> Thanks, I'll definitely be reading that thread, it has a lot of the answers I need. With respect to the works I enjoy, *I'm quite fond of Poulenc's clarinet sonata *(especially that 2nd movement), a lot of Shostakovich (symphonies nos. 5 & 10, piano and trumpet concerto, cello concerto..., and Stravinsky's firebird. I've also listened to some lovely organ music by Messiaen although I don't know if he counts as a "true" "modernist" in the sense of Stravinsky and Schoenberg.


Well then, how about trying Aaron Copland's Clarinet Concerto-as gentle a nudge into Modernism as one could wish-melodic, approachable, nostalgic, jazzy, etc. As non-intimidating as could possibly be, despite the appearance of some "dissonance" near the end.

I grew up with the piece and still love it some 50 years later. (I used to perform it on a good day).

Listen to the recording made by Stanley Drucker, former principal clarinet of the New York Philharmonic, with said orchestra directed by Leonard Bernstein, if you can. However, there are many other fine recorded performances available of this terrific work.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

arnerich said:


> The way I try to rely that point is like this; when Chopin composed a piece that was sad there is still a beauty and enjoyment in it, when Mahler composes something that is sad it actually makes me sad...


 Yes, that's very true and I still seek it out myself. It's still to be found in the modern but one may have to search it out. I consider Gorecki's 3rd Symphony very deeply moving and it was written in the mid-'70s. Those sentiments of human nature have never been entirely forgotten or unexpressed, though I believe it was mostly unfashionable during the early part of 20th century, such as some of Prokofiev's steely, industrial and unsentimental writing. However, I think the pendulum of modernism has swung back to a greater balance between stridency and beauty, and composers can write anything they want now without having to worry about being fashionable.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Nereffid said:


> While that makes sense, it's perhaps worth pointing out that (for example) the 17th century wasn't exactly beer and skittles, yet we're not expected to take the turbulence of that era into account when listening to its music.


It's never been a bed of roses for humanity. That's a given. But surely it's evident that each century has its particular challenges and events. How would Mozart have responded to the Atom bomb and 50 million dead in only a handful of years during World War II? It wasn't for him to know but for the artists of the 20th century to live through and respond to. The carnage of World War I was just as senseless and affected how art and music was created and the world was viewed, leading into today.

What some listeners seem to want, and I can commiserate with them, is art as if those events never happened-and it's too late now. One can only ignore it and not really be interested in how so many lives in the world were affected by such catastrophic events in art and music-and I personally don't recommend it-though I believe one should hear it more out of a healthy sense of curiosity than forcing it upon oneself like a dose of castor oil. It's never been a bed of roses for humanity-and it isn't now. What Mozart composed can certainly be viewed within the context of his times, even when he did so indirectly. Understanding the context can be an entrance point into the appreciation of the music, and then it can fall away and is really no longer needed, as the music will either stand or fall on its own at that point in time.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

millionrainbows said:


> But as you also said, there are inherent challenges in modernism which must be dealt with, and your solutions are (quote) "needs repeated listening" (in other words, try to approach new music instead of expecting it to come to you on your terms), and "learn to enjoy it," (which implies a deficiency which must be overcome).
> 
> Woe be unto the "modernist defender" who dares to imply any sort of lack or deficiency on the part of the listener.


In some sense learning always implies a lack or deficiency or some sort. In that sense we were all deficient when we learned multiplication, how to walk, how to talk, or a new language. Since deficiency has a negative connotation, maybe a different term is more useful.

The fact that learning to enjoy modern classical music requires effort on the part of many listeners is not the fault of the listener, the composer, the music, or anything else. It's apparently the result of neural processing in human brains that are conditioned by earlier classical music (or maybe some other music).

I would simply say that those who wish to enjoy such music should listen repeatedly and try to learn the new "languages" and that those who don't have that desire should listen to other music.


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## David OByrne (Dec 1, 2016)

mmsbls said:


> I would simply say that those who wish to enjoy such music should listen repeatedly and try to learn the new "languages" and that those who don't have that desire should listen to other music.


In a figurative way, I see modern classical to older classical being like what metal is to older rock music. They are both part of the same overarching tradition but that tradition takes new and more expansive developments over time.

Metal is a sub-genre of rock music (though it has it's own separate cultural implications) and it didn't appear out of nowhere. It is as legitimate as rock but doesn't have the same mainstream appeal (even though it had a huge spotlight in the 80s, which creates it's own version of the old vs new conundrum again that we are talking about), which is based around the pop culture enforcement of "norms", which sadly is still a thing in our diversified world, however this is not a hindrance.

Other note:
The difference here (comparing modern classical to metal in this analogy) that I will highlight in case anybody brings it up is: yes, rock music itself is still developing in it's own directions independent of metal. This is where the comparison ends but hopefully it might give someone more insight into working out for themselves the "why's" and"how's" etc.


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

As someone who only listens to 20th century and contemporary classical, I am not sure how to tell the OP to get into it. Other than, maybe starting with composers that had a bit more connection to earlier classical, like: Stravinsky (The Firebird, Rite of Spring), Bartok (Music for strings, percussion and celeste, 2nd piano concerto), Samuel Barber (piano concerto, violin concerto), before jumping into Berg, Carter, Schoenberg, etc. 

Seems like it may be a good transition between common practice, and modernism. 

For me, I was listening to avant garde prog-rock bands (Henry Cow, Thinking Plague, Univers Zero, etc), that are heavily influenced by the modernist composers, so I had no problem listening to modern and contemporary classical right away. Pre 20th century classical never did a thing for me.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

hpowders said:


> Well then, how about trying Aaron Copland's Clarinet Concerto-as gentle a nudge into Modernism as one could wish-melodic, approachable, nostalgic, jazzy, etc. As non-intimidating as could possibly be, despite the appearance of some "dissonance" near the end.
> 
> I grew up with the piece and still love it some 50 years later. (I used to perform it on a good day).
> 
> Listen to the recording made by Stanley Drucker, former principal clarinet of the New York Philharmonic, with said orchestra directed by Leonard Bernstein, if you can. However, there are many other fine recorded performances available of this terrific work.


Or even Leonard Bernstein's own Prelude, Fugue and Riffs.


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## Guest (Nov 21, 2017)

Larkenfield said:


> What some listeners seem to want, and I can commiserate with them, is art as if those events never happened


An interesting idea, but isn't music composed in spite of, as well as because of what is going on around the composer? How can we tell which is which, unless a composer tells us?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

MacLeod said:


> An interesting idea, but isn't music composed in spite of, as well as because of what is going on around the composer? How can we tell which is which, unless a composer tells us?


I doubt we can tell. We should always be cautious about attempting to find correspondences between art and the events of the times. And the belief that art gains any special legitimacy by somehow referring to the times - or, more accurately, what we think "the times" consist of - is fallacious. Events will affect people variably, and the sort of art they produce will vary accordingly. Besides, how can we judge what people in past eras felt about the events of their world? I suspect that the prospect of having your village looted and burned by Viking raiders was quite as traumatizing as the threat of nuclear war (maybe more so, since it would have been easier to imagine, if not indeed to remember), and I don't see composers generally preoccupied with the peculiar disasters that haunted their world. Life goes on, after all, and art is for the living.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

"How do I get to like Modernism?"

Well, Saint-Saens asks, "Why cannot we understand that in art, as in everything else, there are some things to which we must not accustom ourselves?"


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## Guest (Nov 21, 2017)

KenOC said:


> Well, Saint-Saens asks, "Why cannot we understand that in art, as in everything else, there are some things to which we must not accustom ourselves?"


Have you a source for this? I'm interested in the context.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

MacLeod said:


> Have you a source for this? I'm interested in the context.


Just an isolated quote, like Arnold Bax: "You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk dancing."


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## David OByrne (Dec 1, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> I doubt we can tell. We should always be cautious about attempting to find correspondences between art and the events of the times. And the belief that art gains any special legitimacy by somehow referring to the times - or, more accurately, what we think "the times" consist of - is fallacious. Events will affect people variably, and the sort of art they produce will vary accordingly. Besides, how can we judge what people in past eras felt about the events of their world? I suspect that the prospect of having your village looted and burned by Viking raiders was quite as traumatizing as the threat of nuclear war (maybe more so, since it would have been easier to imagine, if not indeed to remember), and I don't see composers generally preoccupied with the peculiar disasters that haunted their world. Life goes on, after all, and art is for the living.


I actually agree with all of that! 
But I'll add too, whether you agree with me or not, that some of the social/historical ideas around modern music that is for whatever reason "controversial" on this site, such as that "it is trying to relive sounds of war" or "is reflective of the terror of the world wars" (which could be argued in some isolated cases that have the intention of doing so), contrary to that many of these "controversial" composers are doing the exact opposite (as in finding an artistic escape and in some ways a sense of freedom from the terror that had happened previously adversely affecting them) and taking a much more positive approach to it. Of course it has nothing to do with the way you perceive the music in itself but they are not reveling in the darkness that they have come out of culturally


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## Guest (Nov 21, 2017)

I do not relate to the idea of _learning to like_ modern and contemporary music. Learning isn't required. All one needs to do is sit quietly with a cup of tea and listen to the music. Also, it is good to get out of the habit of thinking in terms of like / dislike. It is more a question of accepting that the composer and the performers are highly talented and just empty one's mind and experience the sounds being created.

So for the OP, it is not a question of learning to appreciate the music, but more just to relax and experience it. With such an attitude, the problem goes away.


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## David OByrne (Dec 1, 2016)

Tulse said:


> I do not relate to the idea of _learning to like_ modern and contemporary music. Learning isn't required. All one needs to do is sit quietly with a cup of tea and listen to the music. Also, it is good to get out of the habit of thinking in terms of like / dislike. It is more a question of accepting that the composer and the performers are highly talented and just empty one's mind and experience the sounds being created.
> 
> So for the OP, it is not a question of learning to appreciate the music, but more just to relax and experience it. With such an attitude, the problem goes away.


As a fan of modern music I wholeheartedly agree


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

KenOC said:


> "How do I get to like Modernism?"
> 
> Well, Saint-Saens asks, "Why cannot we understand that in art, as in everything else, there are some things to which we must not accustom ourselves?"


S-S died in 1921. As an arch-conservative, he didn't like much of 20th-century music, including the relatively benign Ravel. ("If he'd been making shell cases during the war it would have been better for music.") Had he lived longer, I imagine he would have preferred that something like Shostakovich 's strident Leningrad Symphony never had been written, likely an affront to his 18th century Mozartian ideal cultivated over a lifetime-a work that meant so much to the Russian people during the terrible war years. And despite whatever shortcomings it may have as a symphony, it was his response to his times and still often played. But there are still the armchair critics untouched by the devastation of war who would prefer that Shostakovich had written a nice little entertaining symphony for their listening pleasure as if the war had never happened. Had S-S lived, he probably would have been one of them.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Tulse said:


> I do not relate to the idea of _learning to like_ modern and contemporary music. Learning isn't required. All one needs to do is sit quietly with a cup of tea and listen to the music. Also, it is good to get out of the habit of thinking in terms of like / dislike. It is more a question of accepting that the composer and the performers are highly talented and just empty one's mind and experience the sounds being created.
> 
> So for the OP, it is not a question of learning to appreciate the music, but more just to relax and experience it. With such an attitude, the problem goes away.


With postmodern I agree. There is no narrative. But with modern, there's often (always, from my experience) an idea or orgainizational concept behind the music.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Larkenfield said:


> S-S died in 1921. As an arch-conservative, he didn't like much of 20th-century music, including the relatively benign Ravel. ("If he'd been making shell cases during the war it would have been better for music.") Had he lived longer, I imagine he would have preferred that something like Shostakovich 's strident Leningrad Symphony never had been written as a likely affront to his 18th century Mozartian ideal cultivated over a lifetime-a work that meant so much to the Russian people during the terrible war years. And despite whatever shortcomings it may have as a symphony, it was his response to his times and still often played. But there are still the armchair critics untouched by the devastation of war who would prefer that Shostakovich had written a nice entertaining symphony for their listening pleasure as if the war had never happened. Had S-S lived, he probably would have been one of them.


But on the other hand, there's Shostakovich's _ninth_ symphony.
I'm not denying that the events and the zeitgeist of the 20th symphony have had an influence on the music of the time. I'm more interested in how the "the 20th century was full of horrible things" explanation gives a kind of "out" to those who then wish to say that 20th century _music_ is full of horrible things. Seeing the former as the "cause" of the latter is a handy excuse to not bother judging the music on its musical merits. And of course it misses out all the music that _isn't_ a response to the upheavals of the time.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Tulse said:


> I do not relate to the idea of _learning to like_ modern and contemporary music. Learning isn't required. All one needs to do is sit quietly with a cup of tea and listen to the music. Also, it is good to get out of the habit of thinking in terms of like / dislike. It is more a question of accepting that the composer and the performers are highly talented and just empty one's mind and experience the sounds being created.
> 
> So for the OP, it is not a question of learning to appreciate the music, but more just to relax and experience it. With such an attitude, the problem goes away.


Maybe I don't understand the point you are making, but I think the vast majority of people listen to music because they enjoy it. They don't listen simply to experience sounds. The question the OP raised, which has been raised by many others including myself, is how does one move from the state of generally disliking modern music to enjoying it. Obviously many have made that transition, and some of those who have not are interested in the process. I don't know a better term than learning to describe the changes in the brain that occur during this transition.


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## Guest (Nov 21, 2017)

mmsbls said:


> Maybe I don't understand the point you are making, but I think the vast majority of people listen to music because they enjoy it. They don't listen simply to experience sounds. The question the OP raised, which has been raised by many others including myself, is* how does one move from the state of generally disliking modern music to enjoying it*. Obviously many have made that transition, and some of those who have not are interested in the process. *I don't know a better term than learning* to describe the changes in the brain that occur during this transition.


My original post was a direct answer to the question in the first bolded bit, so unfortunately I haven't made my point very well.

I do not think that it is necessary to go through a learning process in order to appreciate this music. For example, I don't agree with the advice to take baby steps so as to incrementally understand the new sounds, or to listen to certain works first which are easier, then upgrade to intermediate after some time etc. Others take it further and argue that you need to be an intellectual or a mathematician to understand modern and contemporary music. So that is the context of 'learning' with which I do not agree.

My angle is that the music should be enjoyed passively, educating ourselves to enjoy it is not going to work.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Tulse said:


> My angle is that the music should be enjoyed passively, educating ourselves to enjoy it is not going to work.


I actually somewhat agree with your point - I did this with free jazz 20 years ago. In this sense it is more like 'becoming accustomed', but there has to be a reason for a person to actually actively begin that listening process, something has to motivate it or it won't even happen: physically or mentally.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Tulse said:


> My original post was a direct answer to the question in the first bolded bit, so unfortunately I haven't made my point very well.
> 
> I do not think that it is necessary to go through a learning process in order to appreciate this music. For example, I don't agree with the advice to take baby steps so as to incrementally understand the new sounds, or to listen to certain works first which are easier, then upgrade to intermediate after some time etc. Others take it further and argue that you need to be an intellectual or a mathematician to understand modern and contemporary music. So that is the context of 'learning' with which I do not agree.
> 
> My angle is that the music should be enjoyed passively, educating ourselves to enjoy it is not going to work.


"Learning" or "educating" may not be the right words, but listening isn't perfectly passive, either.

I think what people mean when they talk about "learning to enjoy" something really just means listening more.

I've many times encountered a piece of music that I don't immediately enjoy very much, but that leaves me with the feeling that I'm not fully comprehending it, and that I might eventually grow to enjoy it. Usually that turns out to be true, with repeated listening. It is a kind of learning process, though not "learning" in the sense of reading about the piece or analyzing its structure.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Tulse said:


> I do not think that it is necessary to go through a learning process in order to appreciate this music. For example, I don't agree with the advice to take baby steps so as to incrementally understand the new sounds, or to listen to certain works first which are easier, then upgrade to intermediate after some time etc.
> 
> My angle is that the music should be enjoyed passively, educating ourselves to enjoy it is not going to work.


Wouldn't it be better to consult with people whose tastes in music have expanded over time with repeated exposure and an increase in general musical literacy, rather than generalize from your own experience of listening to modern music, which seems to have appealed to you immediately? Most of us, I'm guessing, enjoy music we didn't care for initially. How do you suppose that happens? You suggest just sitting down with a cup of tea and listening. Is there a particular tea you'd recommend for Ferneyhough? Do I have to drink it black, or are milk and sugar permitted?


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## Melvin (Mar 25, 2011)

The fact that you have the will or want to understand modern music is the most important factor! So that means you are half-way there!

Webern. And Bartok's piano concertos and string quartets.
Sit down and listen. If you want to enjoy them, you can. it took me 3-5 years to be able to fully enjoy and understand everything they offer, but at first I would take occasional listens, every few days, and see how long I could last.
Just make many attempts and it will begin to make sense, that is my advice.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

I started off listening to Xenakis when I was ready for my guests to leave, but eventually to my surprise I started to like it.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Everyone has certainly heard a composer or work that they didn’t enjoy or understand at first hearing. Sometimes the understanding and appreciation comes in increments, in a gradual unfolding, like finally entering a new world. But that doesn’t always happen, because a liking just can’t be forced, and then there’s a wisdom in letting something go and perhaps coming back to it later after one has matured or changed. 

Plus I doubt if there’s one person here who has not greatly profited in their understanding about a composer, any composer, by reading what he or she has said about their music. The value in that is that it can temper or condition or change one’s expectations about hearing the unfamiliar as a portal into the music—then later it can be forgotten.

On the other hand, some listeners seem to have no preconceived ideas about anything and they have little or no problems with anyone, no matter how radical, mysterious or unknown. They might be the lucky ones or at least the most adventurous.

Perhaps the trick, if there is one, is to know thyself and take one composer, one work, one performance at a time, because among the historically notable there are always peaks and valleys in their work, a wide variety after devoting an entire lifetime to it, and no one is deserving of being written off with an angry dismissal or being accepted wholesale—and yet no listener is obligated to be interested in everyone. That’s the beauty of it: the listener gets to decide.


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## Guest (Nov 21, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> Wouldn't it be better to consult with people whose tastes in music have expanded over time with repeated exposure and an increase in general musical literacy, rather than generalize from your own experience of listening to modern music, which seems to have appealed to you immediately?


I don't need 'to consult with people whose tastes in music have expanded over time with repeated exposure and an increase in general musical literacy' I am one of those.

There is no problem in my discussing my own experience. It is what the OP asked for.

Modern music did not appeal to me immediately, I didn't say that.



> Most of us, I'm guessing, enjoy music we didn't care for initially. How do you suppose that happens? You suggest just sitting down with a cup of tea and listening.


Yes, thank you.



> Is there a particular tea you'd recommend for Ferneyhough? Do I have to drink it black, or are milk and sugar permitted?


How do you listen to Ferneyhough?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Tulse said:


> I do not relate to the idea of _learning to like_ modern and contemporary music. Learning isn't required. All one needs to do is sit quietly with a cup of tea and listen to the music. Also, it is good to get out of the habit of thinking in terms of like / dislike. It is more a question of accepting that the composer and the performers are highly talented and just empty one's mind and experience the sounds being created.
> 
> So for the OP, it is not a question of learning to appreciate the music, but more just to relax and experience it. With such an attitude, the problem goes away.


This is quite consistent with my own experience I think. Well put!


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Wouldn't it be better to consult with people whose tastes in music have expanded over time with repeated exposure and an increase in general musical literacy,


Possibly, I mean I'm open to the idea that it _may_ be helpful _sometimes_.

When I first listened to Art of Fugue I was totally bored, I really couldn't see the point. Anyway I had a friend who loved it and so I consulted with him, and he started to explain stuff about strettos and inversions etc etc. I was even more bored and I abandoned the music.

Then a few years after I heard some of it on the radio, I just listened, and let it the affect me. From then on I was hooked.

A very similar thing happened with Ludus Tonalis and with Schoenberg's Variations for Orchestra.

My point is, consultation may be better sometimes, but not all the time.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

I wouldn't say that I exactly "like" Webern's Symphonie as the proper word to describe it, but I've long been fascinated by it. Listen to how he paints with sound and colors-a subtle dab here and a subtle dab there. Performances of these kinds of works can vary greatly, and most of them I don't care for. This one I like because it's not performed with a detached, impersonal edge. If the performance somehow doesn't grab the listener at the beginning, it might not be good. Part of this one is as delicate as a spiderweb and I'm glad to have heard it as an expression of fascinating artistry and ethereal sound.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Blancrocher said:


> I started off listening to Xenakis when I was ready for my guests to leave, but eventually to my surprise I started to like it.


And then your guests get to like it and they stay. Talk about backfiring.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Tulse said:


> I don't need 'to consult with people whose tastes in music have expanded over time with repeated exposure and an increase in general musical literacy' I am one of those.
> 
> There is no problem in my discussing my own experience. It is what the OP asked for.
> 
> ...


My point is that people do, in fact, _learn_ to like music they didn't like before. That can take time. It can take repeated listening. It can require broadening one's repertoire and one's musical understanding. It can require general life experience. The ways in which people's minds work and prefer to work, and the factors, internal and external, that need to come together in order for people to be ready to receive and understand something, differ. Sitting in zazen and expecting that pure being will inscribe itself on our tabula rasa brains and lead to musical satori may be just the ticket for 4'33", but may not make Xenakis a whit more likely to find his way back to the CD player.

Receptive listening is always necessary and works better than saying to oneself "this is awful, music has been in decline since 1791," but receptive listening isn't a passive activity. To listen is to learn, and learning generally results in some degree of change.


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## Janspe (Nov 10, 2012)

All I can do is share my own experience:

When I was 15, I heard a late Scriabin sonata (might have been the 8th, but I can't be sure) and thought that this is music I can never understand - it was too wildly dissonant, it really made no sense to me. The same happened with my first dabbling into the 2nd Viennese school and the like. I was certain that the modern and contemporary music world was a pretentious land not worthy of any attention.

At some point, who knows why, I decided to listen, listen and listen. Endlessly explore. And that led, slowly but steadily, to some wonderful discoveries. I began to connect with 'modernist' idioms more and more, and stuff that I once found impossible to understand started to make all the sense in the world - suddenly stuff like _Le sacre du printemps_ and late Scriabin felt like second nature to me. That led fairly soon to a discovery of the language of Schoenberg, and my life has never been the same since.

I love a lot of 20th century music as much as I love the music from earlier eras - Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Lutosławski, Dutilleux, Messiaen, Ligeti, Carter, Boulez... And a lot of contemporary music excites me beyond description, my current obsession being the work of György Kurtág. Kaija Saariaho stuns me with her sonic landscapes, Sofia Gubaidulina cripples me with her elemental force, Hans Abrahamsen's icy sounds take me to another world, and Unsuk Chin's playful style makes me as happy as the jokes of Haydn. Wolfgang Rihm and Jörg Widmann, Georg Friedrich Haas, Magnus Lindberg... There's really so much to enjoy, so much to explore and to discover! Not everything opens up to me - I still need to find a Ferneyhough score that I can connect with, but I keep returning to his work out of interest every now and then - but that's only normal, we all have our own subjective tastes after all.

I'm not telling anyone what they should or shouldn't do. But I will say that listening with patience can open up worlds that you didn't know existed before!


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I’m wondering how many people can tell the difference between Modern and Postmodern music, seeing they keep getting lumped together. They both used to sound very similar to me, and I took them as the same thing, generally dissonant. But there is a lot of deliberate organization and narrative in Modern, I’ve come to hear over time, while postmodern is more free or less determined. So there is a learning process at least for Modern, even if you already learned to like dissonant music, there is more to it. Listening to some postmodern composers explain their goals, their aim is, as some have pointed out, to just chill and listen to the sounds, rather than searching for meaning and principles behind the music.


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## Guest (Nov 22, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> My point is that people do, in fact, _learn_ to like music they didn't like before. That can take time. It can take repeated listening. It can require broadening one's repertoire and one's musical understanding. It can require general life experience. The ways in which people's minds work and prefer to work, and the factors, internal and external, that need to come together in order for people to be ready to receive and understand something, differ. Sitting in zazen and expecting that pure being will inscribe itself on our tabula rasa brains and lead to musical satori may be just the ticket for 4'33", but may not make Xenakis a whit more likely to find his way back to the CD player.
> 
> Receptive listening is always necessary and works better than saying to oneself "this is awful, music has been in decline since 1791," but receptive listening isn't a passive activity. To listen is to learn, and learning generally results in some degree of change.


Okay, but I'm curious. How do you listen to Ferneyhough?


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

isorhythm said:


> "Learning" or "educating" may not be the right words, but listening isn't perfectly passive, either.
> 
> I think what people mean when they talk about "learning to enjoy" something really just means listening more.
> 
> I've many times encountered a piece of music that I don't immediately enjoy very much, but that leaves me with the feeling that I'm not fully comprehending it, and that I might eventually grow to enjoy it. Usually that turns out to be true, with repeated listening. It is a kind of learning process, though not "learning" in the sense of reading about the piece or analyzing its structure.


There is a thread that discusses a particular study on dissonance. The researchers talk about training people to hear certain chords as less dissonant by exposing them repeatedly to the sounds such that they become more familiar. I would say that those people learned to hear the chords as less dissonant,


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Tulse said:


> Okay, but I'm curious. How do you listen to Ferneyhough?


With well-fitting earplugs?

Okay, that's a joke. In truth though Ferneyhough has never captured me. I don't think it's because I'm not listening and certainly not because Ferneyhough is bad, but the time probably isn't right. There are many composers, old and new, which I previously thought were hopeless cases for me, but then several years later they just slot right into place.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Tulse said:


> Okay, but I'm curious. How do you listen to Ferneyhough?


The same way I listen to everything, though less often.


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## Daniel Atkinson (Dec 31, 2016)

Tulse said:


> Okay, but I'm curious. How do you listen to Ferneyhough?


With your ears like anything else. Analytically think of it as a fugue, as the polyphony is very much like this. 
He goes from "fugal" passages into syncopated passages into more adagio-texture passages.

Still he seems to be awfully fond of romantic gestures in his writing.

Lastly, don't be intimidated by the notation (if you are a score reader)


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## Daniel Atkinson (Dec 31, 2016)

Phil loves classical said:


> I'm wondering how many people can tell the difference between Modern and Postmodern music, seeing they keep getting lumped together. They both used to sound very similar to me, and I took them as the same thing, generally dissonant. But there is a lot of deliberate organization and narrative in Modern, I've come to hear over time, while postmodern is more free or less determined. So there is a learning process at least for Modern, even if you already learned to like dissonant music, there is more to it. Listening to some postmodern composers explain their goals, their aim is, as some have pointed out, to just chill and listen to the sounds, rather than searching for meaning and principles behind the music.


Modernism is still largely based in the techniques of the late romantics, however far the results differentiated from it. The post-modernists created new techniques and methods to pull things truly into "the new". Ultimately new aesthetics to express require new approaches.

Unless your talking about irony and music that references other music, as this is another aspect that is less definable.

Daniel


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Tulse said:


> Okay, but I'm curious. How do you listen to Ferneyhough?


Ferneyhough's String Quartets are brilliant with the interplay between voices. Everything is of the moment, nothing lingers, and no themes that would stick in your mind, kinda like some Jazz. Spontaneity is the key.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Phil loves classical said:


> I'm wondering how many people can tell the difference between Modern and Postmodern music, seeing they keep getting lumped together. They both used to sound very similar to me, and I took them as the same thing, generally dissonant. But there is a lot of deliberate organization and narrative in Modern, I've come to hear over time, while postmodern is more free or less determined. So there is a learning process at least for Modern, even if you already learned to like dissonant music, there is more to it. Listening to some postmodern composers explain their goals, their aim is, as some have pointed out, to just chill and listen to the sounds, rather than searching for meaning and principles behind the music.


The diversity of styles within both Modernism and Post Modernism is so vast that I can see why this happens, some Modern composers sound more cutting edge than some composers working today. Do you think you can even lump together much within "Post Modern"? Can we look at minimalism, spectralism, new complexity, electronic, conceptual etc. and suggest they are all 'more free and less determined'? Or does that statement only apply to a certain section of what can vaguely be referred to as 'Post Modern'?


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

tdc said:


> The diversity of styles within both Modernism and Post Modernism is so vast that I can see why this happens, some Modern composers sound more cutting edge than some composers working today. Do you think you can even lump together much within "Post Modern"? Can we look at minimalism, spectralism, new complexity, electronic, conceptual etc. and suggest they are all 'more free and less determined'? Or does that statement only apply to a certain section of what can vaguely be referred to as 'Post Modern'?


I think there are actually some Modernists around like Rihm, Penderecki, J. Adams, and less recently with Henze and Boulez. So there is overlap. It seems to me all eras in music were irreversable except with Postmodern, since it is apocalyptic and contradictoy in nature, and there is no where else to go but "backwards".


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## Pyotr (Feb 26, 2013)

David OByrne said:


> In a figurative way, I see modern classical to older classical being like what metal is to older rock music. They are both part of the same overarching tradition but that tradition takes new and more expansive developments over time.
> 
> Metal is a sub-genre of rock music (though it has it's own separate cultural implications) and it didn't appear out of nowhere. It is as legitimate as rock but doesn't have the same mainstream appeal (even though it had a huge spotlight in the 80s, which creates it's own version of the old vs new conundrum again that we are talking about), which is based around the pop culture enforcement of "norms", which sadly is still a thing in our diversified world, however this is not a hindrance.
> 
> ...


I think I like my Jazz(which I mentioned earlier in this thread) to modern classical analogy better than your metal to modern classical. Let's just say someone was raised on rock music, which I was. Let's just say one of my favorite rock songs is Paint It Black by the Rolling Stones, now, IMO I'd be more apt to "like" say, Hallowed Be Thy Name by Iron Maiden, than I would be to "like" Watermelon Man by Herbie Hancock or Summertime by John Coltrane, the latter two having more random and atonal sounds (to the untrained ear).


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Daniel Atkinson said:


> Lastly, don't be intimidated by the notation (if you are a score reader)


The notation is what's stopped me from taking Ferneyhough entirely seriously, which is probably not fair.


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## Johnnie Burgess (Aug 30, 2015)

Daniel Atkinson said:


> Modernism is still largely based in the techniques of the late romantics, however far the results differentiated from it. The post-modernists created new techniques and methods to pull things truly into "the new". Ultimately new aesthetics to express require new approaches.
> 
> Unless your talking about irony and music that references other music, as this is another aspect that is less definable.
> 
> Daniel


But why was new aesthetics needed? Are we in such a new world that old ways are not needed?

And if you want to make new aesthetics do not come to me crying about how your new stuff is not making money or ask for tax money to support yourself.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Johnnie Burgess said:


> But why was new aesthetics needed? Are we in such a new world that old ways are not needed?
> 
> And if you want to make new aesthetics do not come to me crying about how your new stuff is not making money or ask for tax money to support yourself.


New aesthetics are not _needed_, but rather they are strongly desired by some. Music over the past 400+ years has changed enormously because some composers wished to find new ways to write. I think everyone at TC and everyone I know personally is thankful that music has evolved.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Reminder: the thread is called "How do I get to like Modernism?" and not "How can I repeat the same tired clichés about music I don't like?"


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## Johnnie Burgess (Aug 30, 2015)

Nereffid said:


> Reminder: the thread is called "How do I get to like Modernism?" and not "How can I repeat the same tired clichés about music I don't like?"


Modernism and post modernism is not the same or that is what I believe the supporters of post modernism have said.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Phil loves classical said:


> Ferneyhough's String Quartets are brilliant with the interplay between voices. Everything is of the moment, nothing lingers, .


Not true for the 6th at least, which is the one I know the best,


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## Botschaft (Aug 4, 2017)

Nereffid said:


> Reminder: the thread is called "How do I get to like Modernism?" and not "How can I repeat the same tired clichés about music I don't like?"


I believe the trashcan metaphor was a new one. Usually you get to hear about swamps, naked emperors and animals walking across keyboards.


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

I guess most people recommend modernist pieces that are not very atonal and wierd, so one can slowly get used to the modernist sound (like one teaches to drink beer by giving shandy), but I think that's is not the right method because the risk is big that one likes the aspects of the works that are not modernist but still old-fashioned so it would be self-deceiving. I think it's better to take the dive into the deep, i.e. to listen to music that is 100% modernist so you can not cling to the old charms but you've got to learn what is interesting about this new music if you don't want to drown (which of course requires an open mind). E.g.:


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Improbus said:


> I believe the trashcan metaphor was a new one. Usually you get to hear about swamps, naked emperors and animals walking across keyboards.


Yes no one has ever called something "trash" before.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Agamemnon said:


> I guess most people recommend modernist pieces that are not very atonal and wierd, so one can slowly get used to the modernist sound (like one teaches to drink beer by giving shandy), but I think that's is not the right method because the risk is big that one likes the aspects of the works that are not modernist but still old-fashioned so it would be self-deceiving. I think it's better to take the dive into the deep, i.e. to listen to music that is 100% modernist so you can not cling to the old charms but you've got to learn what is interesting about this new music if you don't want to drown (which of course requires an open mind). E.g.:


I suspect that people respond differently to varying methods. Some have said that they took to modern music very quickly and easily. I listened to a wide variety of modern music, but I'm pretty sure that if I had only heard Xenakis, Ferneyhough, Stockhausen, Berio's Sequenzas and other similar works, I would not like modern music today. My acclimation (learning) was clearly a gradual process where I slowly learned to enjoy certain works and composers. Over time I began to expand what I enjoyed. I don't see a problem with this approach except perhaps that not everyone needs to move at that pace.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Daniel Atkinson said:


> Modernism is still largely based in the techniques of the late romantics, however far the results differentiated from it. The post-modernists created new techniques and methods to pull things truly into "the new". Ultimately new aesthetics to express require new approaches.
> 
> Unless your talking about irony and music that references other music, as this is another aspect that is less definable.
> 
> Daniel


Modernism is a break from the techniques of Romanticism and earlier, exploring new scales, harmonizations, rhythms. Postmodern does away with scales altogether, and any type of system.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Phil loves classical said:


> . Postmodern does away with . . . any type of system.


Can someone confirm whether this is true? Especially in the context of the Lachenmann quartets, which I think is where the discussion about postmodernism started.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

I don't think the term "postmodernism" has an agreed-upon meaning when it comes to music, or that it's used much by music historians or theorists.


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## David OByrne (Dec 1, 2016)

Pyotr said:


> I think I like my Jazz(which I mentioned earlier in this thread) to modern classical analogy better than your metal to modern classical. Let's just say someone was raised on rock music, which I was. Let's just say one of my favorite rock songs is Paint It Black by the Rolling Stones, now, IMO I'd be more apt to "like" say, Hallowed Be Thy Name by Iron Maiden, than I would be to "like" Watermelon Man by Herbie Hancock or Summertime by John Coltrane, the latter two having more random and atonal sounds (to the untrained ear).


No, I mean Fear Factory or Meshuggah.......to a rock fan who likes The Beatles or the Rolling Stones, completely different worlds part of the same evolving tradition 

For the note, Iron Maiden are among the most "accessible" or commercially successful of all metal and their style is still relatively related to the 70s in many ways, compared to more recent trends in metal.


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## David OByrne (Dec 1, 2016)

Phil loves classical said:


> Modernism is a break from the techniques of Romanticism and earlier, exploring new scales, harmonizations, rhythms. Postmodern does away with scales altogether, and any type of system.


How? Do you mean this as a huge generalization or to mean that as a norm, it is not compulsorily expected?


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## David OByrne (Dec 1, 2016)

mmsbls said:


> but I'm pretty sure that if I had only heard Xenakis, Ferneyhough, Stockhausen, Berio's Sequenzas and other similar works, I would not like modern music today.


And yet the complete opposite is true for many fans of modern music, myself included (with Stockhausen, Varese, Boulez) 

(if I hadn't, I wouldn't be interested in classical at all and explored older music too)


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

David OByrne said:


> And yet the complete opposite is true for many fans of modern music, myself included (with Stockhausen, Varese, Boulez)
> 
> (if I hadn't, I wouldn't be interested in classical at all and explored older music too)


That probably just demonstrates that different people approach it from different directions. Both could be tried. I suspect that jumping in at the deep end (and it _is_ the deep end for the majority of listeners) won't always succeed.

There are no prizes for being part of the few who started off from the 'hard stuff'.


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## David OByrne (Dec 1, 2016)

eugeneonagain said:


> That probably just demonstrates that different people approach it from different directions. Both could be tried. I suspect that jumping in at the deep end (and it _is_ the deep end for the majority of listeners) won't always succeed.
> 
> There are no prizes for being part of the few who started off from the 'hard stuff'.


Well I don't know about calling it the "deep end" (as in implying that you are supposed to struggle with it) but your comment in the first paragraph is correct. 

As for the other comment, there are no prizes for anyone anyway, it's not a competition :lol:

I think a lot of the struggle is due to preconceptions of what classical music both is and can be, outside just personal tastes. Some people only think of classical music as being only pieces like "eine kleine nachtmusik" and see it as an elitist "high class" genre.


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## David OByrne (Dec 1, 2016)

...so they grow a comfort zone around what they think it is, without growing an understanding about the extent of variety in classical music which makes it very hard for them to deal with when they hear a modern work for the first time. 
This is another aspect


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

David OByrne said:


> And yet the complete opposite is true for many fans of modern music, myself included (with Stockhausen, Varese, Boulez)
> 
> (if I hadn't, I wouldn't be interested in classical at all and explored older music too)


I don't know how many people who enjoy modern music liked it immediately. Everyone I know personally disliked modern music at first (and that includes some who now compose modern music). But yes, there is a large spread in how people respond to such music. That makes it difficult to give suggestions on how to learn to like modern music.


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## Ziggabea (Apr 5, 2017)

mmsbls said:


> That makes it difficult to give suggestions on how to learn to like modern music.


It's not something you "learn" as much as something you feel, experience and/or are changed by it.

I'm in a similar situation in how modern music appealed to me, even though I started off with romanticism.

Also, when I first heard Webern (which was some piano pieces, songs and ensemble pieces) I actually cried because of how beautiful it was, it really moved me. Similar with Schoenberg.

Stockhausen was more of an aesthetic adjustment for me, seeing how vast his range of techniques and timbres are (plus his early music is highly contrapunctal) but I soon found myself attached to certain pieces and feeling the profound, inspiring emotional dimension of his music.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Ziggabea said:


> It's not something you "learn" as much as something you feel, experience and/or are changed by it.
> 
> I'm in a similar situation in how modern music appealed to me, even though I started off with romanticism.
> 
> ...


I'm probably using the term "learn" differently than you are. When you talk about an aesthetic adjustment or being changed, you are learning. If you enjoyed Webern the first time you heard his music, you didn't need to learn to enjoy him.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

David OByrne said:


> How? Do you mean this as a huge generalization or to mean that as a norm, it is not compulsorily expected?


There is a book on Ferneyhough and Lachenmann, called Resistant Strains of Postmodern, where there are a few definitions of Postmodernism thrown around. One was the deconstruction of modernism, another was to rethink everything in the past. These 2 composers in their scores gave minute instructions on how to play the instruments, making full use of the timbres, as in the score I posted on Lachenmanns 2nd quartet. There is little emphasis on harmony, the emphasis is on bare noise/sound.

Regarding Cage, his indeterminate music is from completely random sources, and the timing notes are not based on any scale or music system. And of course there is 4'33" nuff said about that piece 

Most interesting is Cardew, whose Treatise is just a series of illustrations, and no instructions on how to play at all, and is left completely up to the performers on how interpret the illustrations. These are prime examples of postmodern art, the most radical and unadulterated from the use of previous music systems. That is not to say there is no compositional technique or method.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

On the other hand, modernism are very systematic such as Schoenberg and company’s tone rows, Scriabin’s Mystic chord and stacked fourths, Messaean’s modes, Bartok’s combined scales, etc. 

Bartok, Schoenberg and Scriabin all have found different ways to utilize all 12 notes, but not organized the same way. While postmodern also uses any of the 12 notes, and may sound similar at a most basic level (DISONNANT), but are organized very differently and not to any previous system (at its most purest form ie. total divorce from past)


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## Dan Ante (May 4, 2016)

*How do I get to like Modernism?*

I just can't answer that after a lifetime of classical and other genres I still don't like the majority of modern music, but I don't care there is still plenty of music to hear and some by living composers.


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## Guest (Nov 23, 2017)

It's not only 'modernism' that one might have to "learn" to like, and there's obviously more to this 'learning' than just repeated listening.

I had no difficulty liking Ligeti - I'd only seen _2001: A Space Odyssey _once and wanted to buy the sountrack album (and not for the Strauss!). It didn't take multiple listens. On the other hand, when I set out to listen to the rest of Beethoven's symphonies (I only knew the 6th from my teen years) it took multiple listens to come to get full value and understanding from the 3rd and the 9th. What it didn't require was sitting down and concentrating. Mostly, I was walking the dog, or driving.

I can't say exactly what helped or hindered this process, but having been exposed to music from an early age - it was always on in one room or another - I can only assume that over time, I absorbed an understanding of certain sounds that meant I was unconsciously familiar with some more than others when later I set out to actively listen.

That still doesn't account for why we all have preferences within genres and periods. I suppose a musicologist might tell me that (speaking of symphonies) Mozart and Haydn are more different than I allow, which explains why I prefer one over the other; but not why I prefer Sibelius over both.

What ought to be acknowledged is that at TC, the full range of liking and preferring is present (as well as the full range of exhorting and disparaging) so it's about time that we were able to accept that there is something to like about modernism which may be more readily acquired by some than others and there is no formula to that process of acquisition.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

mmsbls said:


> I don't know how many people who enjoy modern music liked it immediately. Everyone I know personally disliked modern music at first (and that includes some who now compose modern music). But yes, there is a large spread in how people respond to such music. That makes it difficult to give suggestions on how to learn to like modern music.


Well, you know me, at least on the internet, and I loved modern music right from the start. When I was four years old I was brought to the movie theater and saw Disney's Fantasia, and was overwhelmed by the experience. I was hooked on Debussy and Stravinsky from that moment on. I started on the piano at the age of seven with Bartok's Mikrokosmos (my teacher was the wife of composer Ernst Levy) and again was entranced. I also had a steady diet of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven from the time I was a toddler. My music teachers had to force me to focus on the music of the late 19th century romantics, warning me that I needed a complete music education. It took me until I was in college to fully appreciate that music.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

After listening to a steady stream of baroque music, I'm sometimes in the mood for something that seems insane. Beat Furrer often does the trick.


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## Daniel Atkinson (Dec 31, 2016)

Johnnie Burgess said:


> But why was new aesthetics needed?


Yes, it was needed in the baroque era and it was needed in the 20th century. It's part of how music evolves over time. Styles change, techniques change, contexts change.



Johnnie Burgess said:


> Are we in such a new world that old ways are not needed?


Of course not, if this forum wasn't enough proof.

Daniel


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## Gradeaundera (Jun 30, 2016)

Post-modernism is what modernism would've been if it was actually innovative


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Gradeaundera said:


> Post-modernism is what modernism would've been if it was actually innovative


Is that a koan?


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Gradeaundera said:


> Post-modernism is what modernism would've been if it was actually innovative


what are the actual innovations of postmodern music? I see it more as the reverse. By reinventing the wheel as square, you can only get so far


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## Ziggabea (Apr 5, 2017)

Phil loves classical said:


> I see it more as the reverse. By reinventing the wheel as square, you can only get so far


Sounds like you are saying this from convenience or comfort, rather than anything else.


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## Dan Ante (May 4, 2016)

Ziggabea said:


> Sounds like you are saying this from convenience or comfort, rather than anything else.


Believe me square wheels are not comfortable.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Ziggabea said:


> Sounds like you are saying this from convenience or comfort, rather than anything else.


What are the innovations in postmodern music that hadn't existed before? It is contradictory for postmodern music to be progressive in musical concepts and organization, since that is what they are trying to get away from. Timbre is a big emphasis, but previous music also explored this quality. The goal may be just to see the new using the old.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Please concentrate on "How to like modernism" and not any personal comments or comments about attitudes to modern music.

Some posts have been removed.


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## Guest (Nov 24, 2017)

Taggart said:


> Please concentrate on "How to like modernism" and not any personal comments or comments about attitudes to modern music.
> 
> Some posts have been removed.


I humbly accept my surely imminent infraction over my deleted post.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

nathanb, a serious suggestion for you. Perhaps you could only visit the threads that deal with modern/contemporary music without negative comments. I have never seen (that I remember) negative comments on the following threads:

21st Century Listening Chain
Exploring Modern and Contemporary Music
Contemporary Music - Current Listening


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## Dan Ante (May 4, 2016)

Here we go again Modern music is the holy cow, criticise at you peril.
Another post for removal I guess...


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Dan Ante said:


> Here we go again Modern music is the holy cow, criticise at you peril.
> Another post for removal I guess...


Just to be clear - The issue is how one criticizes not whether one criticizes.

I dislike modern music.
I think Mozart is boring.

Modern music is garbage.
Mozart sounds like **** cheeks slapping together.

The first set are fine. The second set raises the question of trolling.


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## Guest (Nov 24, 2017)

mmsbls said:


> nathanb, a serious suggestion for you. Perhaps you could only visit the threads that deal with modern/contemporary music without negative comments. I have never seen (that I remember) negative comments on the following threads:
> 
> ...


But this is a thread about modern / contemporary music without negative comments. The title is 'How do I get to like modernism' not 'How do I get to dislike modernism'. It ought to be a safe space for nathanb. Nearly all of these threads get derailed by people who do not like contemporary classical music. It is a shame.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Tulse said:


> But this is a thread about modern / contemporary music without negative comments. The title is 'How do I get to like modernism' not 'How do I get to dislike modernism'. It ought to be a safe space for nathanb. Nearly all of these threads get derailed by people who do not like contemporary classical music. It is a shame.


The question is a very difficult one. There are many views represented by TC members, and the decisions of where to draw the line on allowable posts is rather complicated (i.e. impossible to do perfectly). Personally, I don't believe that safe spaces can be created without overly constricting others' inputs. Further discussion of this issue should probably be started in Area 51 in a separate thread so as not to further derail the thread.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Taggart said:


> Please concentrate on "How to like modernism" and not any personal comments or comments about attitudes to modern music.
> 
> Some posts have been removed.


I would answer, as respectfully as possible, there is no answer to that question, and even to pose that question is being intellectually dishonest. The term "modernism", when used in that way, lumps together an enormous number of widely disparate things, created for widely different reasons by widely different artists and designers. It is almost like asking, "How to I get to like" (to quote the OP's original question exactly, which you do not) European food? Or, "How to I get to like Europeans?" Or even, "How do I get to like black (or white) people?" Many would regard these last questions as ignorant at best and jingoist and racist at worst. Yet framing this question this way in thread after thread here is every bit as disingenuous.
Posters who (perhaps innocently) suggest one doesn't naturally like modern music or art, but must learn to do through painstaking study, eerily echo a famous speech given by Adolph Hitler in 1937 in which he proclaims, "'Works of art'" which cannot be comprehended and are validated only through bombastic instructions for use [ . . . ] from now on will no longer be foisted upon the German people!" I mention that not to make any political point, and certainly not to equate anyone here with Hitler or the Nazis, but to illustrate how intellectually dishonest such arguments can be, and used for propaganda and other dishonest purposes. 
A better question for the OP to pose might be, "How do I get to like the music of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern?" since those are the composers most commonly associated with "Modernism" in this forum, even though I would argue that Debussy and Stravinsky had a greater impact on 20th century western music than any of them. My answer to that question would be:
You don't. By reading the books, looking at paintings and sculpture, and seeing the movies and theater of that time and place, brushing up on its history, and maybe even visiting Vienna today and meeting its people, eating its food and seeing its architecture, or at doing at least some of those things, you might gain a greater understanding and appreciation of that music, but understanding and appreciation is not the same as liking. There is no definitive answer to the question of what makes anyone else like anything. I could explain in great detail why I like certain modern music, but that wouldn't do the OP any good. Those who veer the discussion slightly away from that question are thus entirely justified, to my mind. 
My only other comment was an attempt to illustrate why veering the discussion towards contemporary politics, and somehow associate music with good or bad political or social policy, is generally not useful or enlightening, for Beethoven's music any more than for modern music. I'm not sure why that was inappropriate. Perhaps you disagree.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

The best way to take in modern music, I believe, is by compulsively listening to everything ever recorded, all day every day, just like all the other hopeless degenerates that live on this forum.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

fluteman said:


> I would answer, as respectfully as possible, there is no answer to that question, and even to pose that question is being intellectually dishonest. The term "modernism", when used in that way, lumps together an enormous number of widely disparate things, created for widely different reasons by widely different artists and designers.


I believe there is an answer to the OP's question, and having asked essentially the same question, I know the question is not intellectually dishonest. But possibly, you are thinking of a different question than the one I asked and the one I assume the OP is asking. The OP, now, and I, before, found ourselves disliking most modern music we heard. I loved pre-20th century classical music and hated the thought of being unable to enjoy more than a century of classical music including the music being written today.

I basically wanted to know what others in my situation had done that allowed them to transition to a point where they enjoyed modern music. Did they listen repeatedly to one work? Did the transition take them 1 month, 1 year, years? Was there a different way they listened to modern music compared with earlier music? The responses I received were enormously helpful in crafting my "strategies" to learn to like the music. One incredibly important thing I learned was that many others also required a long time period to learn to like much of the music. That gave me hope in moving forward.



fluteman said:


> A better question for the OP to pose might be, "How do I get to like the music of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern?" since those are the composers most commonly associated with "Modernism" in this forum, even though I would argue that Debussy and Stravinsky had a greater impact on 20th century western music than any of them. My answer to that question would be: You don't.


That question was not what I wanted to ask. Yes, I did want to learn to like those composers, but I also wanted to like Varese, Messiaen, Stockhausen, Dutilleux, Stravinsky, and many others. So really I wanted to learn to like modern music - as much as I could. You say, "you don't" get to like those composers. Many people I know personally and some on this forum actually did get to like modern composers. My message is that those who presently do not enjoy modern music can look to those of us who made this transition and realize that they can learn to like the music. As daunting as it may seem after listening to much of this "shocking" music, _one really can learn to enjoy it_.



fluteman said:


> There is no definitive answer to the question of what makes anyone else like anything. I could explain in great detail why I like certain modern music, but that wouldn't do the OP any good.


I would agree, but those of us who asked this question are really just asking those who made the transition to tell us what, in practice, they did. There are plenty of people who never had difficulty liking modern music. That's wonderful, but those people are probably not in a great position to answer the OP's question since they have no experience with the process.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Staying strictly with modernism, the way I got interested in some modern music which I hadn’t liked originally by only listening was coming across and reading up on certain features of the music, like a different scale, interval, or other concept first, and wanted to know how it would sound. Relistening you get make sense of the music based on the underlying concepts, and follow it in a much more fruitful way, than just winging it and trying to hear what the composer is trying to tell you.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

mmsbls said:


> I would agree, but those of us who asked this question are really just asking those who made the transition to tell us what, in practice, they did. There are plenty of people who never had difficulty liking modern music. That's wonderful, but those people are probably not in a great position to answer the OP's question since they have no experience with the process.


Exactly what do you mean by "the transition"? Possibly, you dislike some things as a child but come to like them in your adult years, or vice versa. But for the most part, either you like something or you don't. There is no transition. Don't feel badly if you want to like Varese, Dutilleux, Messiaen, Stravinsky et al., but don't. It may be controversial or sound elitist to say so, but great classical art is not the same as smash hit popular art, though once in a while they coincide. The great classical works prove their greatness through their cultural impact over time, often in subtle ways, not through their popularity with the masses. You may just not have a good ear for music, nothing wrong with that, most don't.

But consider this: The movie Jaws was a huge hit, much bigger than the Peter Benchley novel on which it was based (justifiably, in my opinion, I didn't find the novel very compelling), in no small part due to John Williams' brilliant score. The famous Jaws theme that everyone knew and loved was closely modeled after the Sacrificial Dance from Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. That isn't even a very subtle example, yet how many of the millions of fans of that movie would think of themselves as lovers of modern music or Stravinsky? More recently, one of the Pixar Ice Age movies used Arvo Part's Spiegel im Spiegel quite effectively, yet how many of the kids watching that movie considered themselves connoisseurs of modernism, or post-modernism, or minimalism? Maybe you were a fan of Jaws as a kid, and enjoyed bringing your own kids to the Ice Age movies, yet somehow you are still searching for a way to make "the transition". Forget it, there's no such thing as the transition, you're already there.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

fluteman said:


> Exactly what do you mean by "the transition"? Possibly, you dislike some things as a child but come to like them in your adult years, or vice versa. But for the most part, either you like something or you don't. There is no transition. Don't feel badly if you want to like Varese, Dutilleux, Messiaen, Stravinsky et al., but don't. It may be controversial or sound elitist to say so, but great classical art is not the same as smash hit popular art, though once in a while they coincide. The great classical works prove their greatness through their cultural impact over time, often in subtle ways, not through their popularity with the masses. You may just not have a good ear for music, nothing wrong with that, most don't.


I agree that either one likes something or one doesn't, but I think one's taste is time dependent. By transition I mean that at time, t0 (say 6 years ago), I disliked most or almost all of Stravinsky, Dutilleux, Messiaen, Schnittke, and many other modern composers. At time, t1 (now), I like much of Stravinsky, Dutilleux, Messiaen, Schnittke, and many other modern composers. So over the period from t0 to t1, I learned to enjoy much modern music that I did not enjoy earlier. I came to TC precisely to learn to make this transition, and I am thrilled by the results.

For others who wish to make a similar transition, it may be useful to ask for advice from those who have made the transition.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

mmsbls said:


> I agree that either one likes something or one doesn't, but I think one's taste is time dependent. By transition I mean that at time, t0 (say 6 years ago), I disliked most or almost all of Stravinsky, Dutilleux, Messiaen, Schnittke, and many other modern composers. At time, t1 (now), I like much of Stravinsky, Dutilleux, Messiaen, Schnittke, and many other modern composers. So over the period from t0 to t1, I learned to enjoy much modern music that I did not enjoy earlier. I came to TC precisely to learn to make this transition, and I am thrilled by the results.
> 
> For others who wish to make a similar transition, it may be useful to ask for advice from those who have made the transition.


Well, OK, as many others have already said, becoming familiar with something is key for appreciating it, and potentially liking it. And the more you hear, the more sophisticated a listener you may become. You may find the same with wines and fine foods. But I stand by my premise that there is no such thing as "the transition". Maybe some day you will hear a particular recent piece of music, or see a painting or sculpture, and it will just "click". You certainly have plenty of good suggestions in this forum. But that won't make you like modernism as a whole, however you define that vague term. I would urge you to abandon this idea of "the transition".


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## Balthazar (Aug 30, 2014)

Today I Learned... 


I'm a cis-modernist.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

sounds like a good idea for a poll


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

fluteman said:


> Well, OK, as many others have already said, becoming familiar with something is key for appreciating it, and potentially liking it. And the more you hear, the more sophisticated a listener you may become. You may find the same with wines and fine foods. But I stand by my premise that there is no such thing as "the transition". Maybe some day you will hear a particular recent piece of music, or see a painting or sculpture, and it will just "click". You certainly have plenty of good suggestions in this forum. But that won't make you like modernism as a whole, however you define that vague term. I would urge you to abandon this idea of "the transition".


If you are saying that there is no transition where one goes from disliking most modern music to suddenly (instantaneously) liking most modern music, I agree. My experience is that the learning process is rather gradual. I learned to like some works or composers, later learned to like others, and later still learned to like others. That process is ongoing.

I have a friend who composes music. He believes that modern music is different from other eras in that each composer (almost) has an individual language. One has to learn each composer's language. For example, I found myself enjoying Messiaen but still disliking atonal Schoenberg. I had to listen to Schoenberg's late quartets and piano concerto over and over before I began to like them, but I still didn't like Boulez. Again I listened to Boulez over and over before I began to hear his music in an enjoyable way. I have yet to learn to like Ferneyhough. I do feel that transition is a reasonable term since there seems to be a process where one gradually learns to enjoy a work or composer.

Incidentally, the term language used for music is not my favorite. eugeneonagain (I think) used another term that I like much more, but unfortunately I can't find it.


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## Guest (Nov 25, 2017)

fluteman said:


> Exactly what do you mean by "the transition"? Possibly, you dislike some things as a child but come to like them in your adult years, or vice versa. But for the most part, *either you like something or you don't*. There is no transition.





mmsbls said:


> I agree that *either one likes something or one doesn't*


This is plainly not true - if one takes it to imply that the dis/liking will never change. It may be true that at any one point in time, the listener has decided their liking position, but "liking" is a curious thing, which can be a combination of the attitudes of the liker and the attributes of the liked. Whilst the attributes of the thing liked can't change, the attitudes of the liker most certainly can. Anyone who asserts the determination that they don't like something and never will is not allowing for the perfectly reasonable event that their attitudes might change.



mmsbls said:


> but I think one's taste is time dependent. By transition I mean that at time, t0 (say 6 years ago), I disliked most or almost all of Stravinsky, Dutilleux, Messiaen, Schnittke, and many other modern composers. At time, t1 (now), I like much of Stravinsky, Dutilleux, Messiaen, Schnittke, and many other modern composers. So over the period from t0 to t1, I learned to enjoy much modern music that I did not enjoy earlier. I came to TC precisely to learn to make this transition, and I am thrilled by the results.
> 
> For others who wish to make a similar transition, it may be useful to ask for advice from those who have made the transition.


So, you've shifted from the determined "you either like or dislike" (setting aside the possibility of mild indifference) to the position that this is not so, since a transition can take place.

In my case, the transition from disliking to liking was entirely a matter of attitude. I hated the part of Mahler's 5th Symphony used in _Death in Venice_. I loved the part of the same symphony used in _Fall of Eagles_. I didn't realise they were from the same symphony until I watched a performance on the Proms. My attitude changed, and I now like (though I don't love) the symphony, and have explored other of his works since. The 'transition' took no time at all, because my attitude changed.

I'm reminded of the scene in Lawrence of Arabia where Lawrence astounds some of the company of soldiers when he puts his hand in a flame. One of the privates asks, "Doesn't it hurt?" to which Lawrence replies, "Of course it hurts, Private...the secret is not minding that it hurts." Getting to like music that one doesn't like might well be taking the attitude that despite its sounding awful, listening and not minding can help the transition.

I note that my earlier post on this - illustrating that this applies to all music, not only to modernist music - has not prompted any comment. I wonder if it's because it doesn't fit the agenda of the small number of pro- and anti- modernists who wish to perpetuate an argument rather than resolve it?


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

MacLeod said:


> So, you've shifted from the determined "you either like or dislike" (setting aside the possibility of mild indifference) to the position that this is not so, since a transition can take place.


At any moment in time, one either likes or dislikes something (or is indifferent), but tastes are time dependent and can change with time (slowly or quickly). I think you and I share the same view.



MacLeod said:


> I note that my earlier post on this - illustrating that this applies to all music, not only to modernist music - has not prompted any comment. I wonder if it's because it doesn't fit the agenda of the small number of pro- and anti- modernists who wish to perpetuate an argument rather than resolve it?


I suspect that people generally agree with you, but since the thread focuses on modern music, no one has commented on the issue of other music.


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## Guest (Nov 25, 2017)

mmsbls said:


> since the thread focuses on modern music, no one has commented on the issue of other music.


Perhaps so, but it does also focus on the business of getting to like!


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

MacLeod said:


> I'm reminded of the scene in Lawrence of Arabia where Lawrence astounds some of the company of soldiers when he puts his hand in a flame. One of the privates asks, "Doesn't it hurt?" to which Lawrence replies, "Of course it hurts, Private...the secret is not minding that it hurts." Getting to like music that one doesn't like might well be taking the attitude that despite its sounding awful, listening and not minding can help the transition.


This was entirely true of my transition. I subjected myself to it. I couldn't get it even after forcing myself to get past the sound. Gave up, and returned and it clicked. Then it became something I liked better than the more traditional stuff I liked before. I have an insatiable hunger for disonnance now (as you can hear on Today's Composers). My like went from -100% to 100% and it took time listening and time for my brain to organize what I heard, and become familar with the conventions

going back into postmodern, if I try to look for an overall theme or message I get dissapointed, but if I just chill and listen to the immediate effects, then I can find it enjoyable.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

You might start by listening to Shostakovich. When that makes sense to you, move onto Schnittke. If that starts to make sense to you, you may already have lost your mind and might as well begin exploring Stockhausen.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

MacLeod said:


> This is plainly not true - if one takes it to imply that the dis/liking will never change.


Very good post. If you read what I said carefully, I do acknowledge that one's tastes can change (obviously!), and one can like something one formerly disliked, especially if one was originally less familiar with the thing in question but later becomes much more familiar, for example. One can also grow tired or grow to dislike a piece or entire genre of music after hearing it too much. But in my experience, significant changes in taste are the exception rather than the rule, especially as one grows older. And there is no magic rule about how that "transition" occurs. For many people, it never does. 
And there is most definitely no such thing as "the transition" to liking modern music, not least because "modern music" encompasses so many wildly different things, and one can hardly be expected to like all or even most of them under any circumstances. You could say the same for modern art in general. The situation is different for music of much earlier eras, since only the best and most important music from those earlier eras is routinely performed and heard today. And as many here rightly point out, there is a much greater variety of things happening in the world of art today, not surprisingly as there are so many more people nearly all of whom are instantaneously connected through modern technology.
All of which means questions like the OP's, i.e., how to get to like modernism, are not useful, nor are repeated requests about how to make "the transition" to liking it. I mean, these days I love goat vindaloo, but I didn't like it as a kid. How did I make "the transition"?


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## Dan Ante (May 4, 2016)

fluteman said:


> Well, OK, as many others have already said, becoming familiar with something is key for appreciating it, and potentially liking it. And the more you hear, the more sophisticated a listener you may become. You may find the same with wines and fine foods. But I stand by my premise that there is no such thing as "the transition". Maybe some day you will hear a particular recent piece of music, or see a painting or sculpture, and it will just "click". You certainly have plenty of good suggestions in this forum. But that won't make you like modernism as a whole, however you define that vague term. I would urge you to abandon this idea of "the transition".


I agree and it is true in my personal experience, there are some composers that I enjoy, there are certain works by a composer that I enjoy and there are composers that do not interest me at all, it was interesting to see that mmsbls came to TC in 2011 to get to grips with "modern music" that sure explains your fervent enthusiasm and it only took under 6 years in that case there is no hope for me 
It has also been suggested that if you are negative to modern music that you should keep out of modern music threads??? If that is the case make it group forum by invitation only.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Dan Ante said:


> It has also been suggested that if you are negative to modern music that you should keep out of modern music threads??? If that is the case make it group forum by invitation only.


It sounds like overkill or over-sensitiveness, but there's some history: in the past the majority of discussions about specific modern music were derailed by aggressive denunciations of the general topic. There was a lot of trolling and some people are too easily trolled. Even Guestbooks were occasionally railroaded. It got hard to carry on non-polemical conversations about avant-garde and contemporary music without constant irrelevant interruptions.

I don't think the forum is like that anymore, but that's the reason people might caution members about spreading negativity within a thread that doesn't seem to invite it.


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

Dan Ante said:


> I agree and it is true in my personal experience, there are some composers that I enjoy, there are certain works by a composer that I enjoy and there are composers that do not interest me at all, it was interesting to see that mmsbls came to TC in 2011 to get to grips with "modern music" that sure explains your fervent enthusiasm and it only took under 6 years in that case there is no hope for me
> It has also been suggested that if you are negative to modern music that you should keep out of modern music threads??? If that is the case make it group forum by invitation only.


I think that the issue is not one of expressing negative opinions about modern music, but rather one of how this is expressed. In particular many members, myself included, rather dislike concrete statements such as "X is awful" but can find reason and the possibility for discussion in "X sounds awful to my ears, but I recognise that others find something valuable in it".

And - there are certain 19th century composers that I find rather stodgy and conservative, but I have confined myself to exploring this in the small number of threads in which members are invited to explore their dislike of a composer's work. Such posts may be welcome there, but I see no reason to disrupt threads in which lovers of B discuss his works.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Dan Ante said:


> I agree and it is true in my personal experience, there are some composers that I enjoy, there are certain works by a composer that I enjoy and there are composers that do not interest me at all, it was interesting to see that mmsbls came to TC in 2011 to get to grips with "modern music" that sure explains your fervent enthusiasm and it only took under 6 years in that case there is no hope for me
> It has also been suggested that if you are negative to modern music that you should keep out of modern music threads??? If that is the case make it group forum by invitation only.


The only caveat I would make regarding your sensible comment is that it is a whole lot more useful and interesting to post about the music you like and why you like it, than it is to announce that you don't like some piece or composer, entitled as you are to your opinion. So I'll say I like George Crumb's ethereal Ancient Voices of Children, set to the poetry of Pablo Neruda, which is pretty far from Stockhausen or Boulez, if you don't care for their work. And then I'll say good night.


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## Botschaft (Aug 4, 2017)

TurnaboutVox said:


> And - there are certain 19th century composers that I find rather stodgy and conservative, but I have confined myself to exploring this in the small number of threads in which members are invited to explore their dislike of a composer's work. Such posts may be welcome there, but I see no reason to disrupt threads in which lovers of B discuss his works.


A stodgy, conservative B... I know of no such composer. Perhaps you could spell out his full name, that I may become acquainted with his works.


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

I had no one particular in mind...abstract examples, X, Y, A and B... 

I'm sure some of you are aware of my prejudices!


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## Botschaft (Aug 4, 2017)

TurnaboutVox said:


> I had no one particular in mind...abstract examples, X, Y, A and B...
> 
> I'm sure some of you are aware of my prejudices!


I have my suspicions...


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## Dan Ante (May 4, 2016)

TurnaboutVox said:


> I think that the issue is not one of expressing negative opinions about modern music, but rather one of how this is expressed


I think we all agree with that.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

When I read UnTalBilly's opening post, he (suspiciously, a junior member) seems to be the "perfectly innocent" listener who wants sincerely to learn about modern music. Rather convenient. 

...And mmsbls' sensitive and understanding reply, post #2("I was just like you") seems perfectly timed and convenient as well.

Later, another moderator steps in and monitors the discussion closely, forbidding any defensive replies which seem to interpret this inquiry and the subject of modern music as conflict, even removing posts.

This seems to me to be an example of "housecleaning," indicative of the "new way" on this forum; a desire to "clean up" the forum and dispense with all conflict. It sounds to me like the dawning of a "brave new forum" in which any sort of conflict or contention is verboten: a sanitized, safe environment in which everyone is transformed into a smiley-faced emogee.

If this is so, it seems that the discussion has been "taken away" from those who have strong feelings about modern music, pro or con.

I'll be checking back in to see if this post gets removed. This is what I sincerely believe is happening. The OP seems too staged, too innocent, too agreeable with the possible aims of the mods. I have my doubts as to whether UnTalBilly is a real member, or if he was created as a convenience, one which fits too neatly into the agenda of "the new way."

At the same time, some perhaps incorrect notions are being perpetuated; the idea that "at first we don't like modernism, then we learn to like it" and so on. This comes across as a fence-sitting attitude, which is equally unfair to both pro and con opinions of modernism. You either like it or not, and that's everyone's right, pro or con.

The notion that modernism is not simply and immediately "likable" is contrary to my experience (and so, too, to Mandryka's and others, judging from the responses). I liked Stockhausen's "Zietmasse" the first moment I heard it, just for the pure sound of it, knowing nothing at all about him or the music.

Yet, the general assumption that modernism might sound "unpleasant" is accepted as a given, as an impersonal generality, without any consideration of that notion as a valid, individual response. What's going on here?

Is this use of impersonal generalizations supposed to end all contention in this matter? Is this the new "McRib" version of a "discussion," in which every peak and valley has been smoothed-out into a processed hunk of "discussion"?

Welcome to McForum! Have a nice day. Would you like some fries with that McRib?


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

^^ If it was staged, it actually seemed to be in favour of appreciating modernism, in that if you don't like it right away to stick with it. If your view is that one either likes it or not, now and forever, then there is no point of staging this thread.

Gimme some of that McRib!


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Some might dismiss the above as a paranoid rant, but on the other hand I'm pretty sure I'm a Russian bot.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Phil loves classical said:


> ^^ If it was staged, it actually seemed to be in favour of appreciating modernism, in that if you don't like it right away to stick with it.


Well, of course it would be positive, in keeping with a new "positive, no-conflict" environment.



> If your view is that one either likes it or not, now and forever, then there is no point of staging this thread.


Exactly! Then there is no need for conflict in discussions like this! See how it works?


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

millionrainbows said:


> When I read UnTalBilly's opening post, he (suspiciously, a junior member) seems to be the "perfectly innocent" listener who wants sincerely to learn about modern music. Rather convenient.
> 
> ...And mmsbls' sensitive and understanding reply, post #2("I was just like you") seems perfectly timed and convenient as well.
> 
> ...


On the other hand, Mr. Rainbows, in post 175 above, I responded to an announcement by a moderator that some posts had been removed, including one of mine, by calling him intellectually dishonest (a polite way of calling him a troll) and drawing an analogy to his comment and a famous one by Adolph Hitler. Ouch! And yet, that post remains. Yes, the original post is just a polite way of introducing, yet again, the tired "I don't like modern music" theme. And the moderators here seem to want to encourage that oft-repeated theme to be reintroduced as much as possible. But they have also allowed the obvious response, posted by me and others, "Well, then don't like it, nothing wrong with that", to stand, though one of them chooses to argue with it (!) That, I'm afraid, is as far as we will get on this topic in this forum. I hope that you don't worry too much about that, and maybe return to building your treatise on western harmony. I was enjoying that.


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## Dan Ante (May 4, 2016)

millionrainbows said:


> When I read UnTalBilly's opening post, he (suspiciously, a junior member) seems to be the "perfectly innocent" listener who wants sincerely to learn about modern music. Rather convenient.
> 
> ...And mmsbls' sensitive and understanding reply, post #2("I was just like you") seems perfectly timed and convenient as well.
> 
> ...


Rather than just like your post I would like to go one step further and say I have the same feeling, but I will like as well


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

There is no unified "Modernism", other than there have been a vast number of works written during the 20th and 21st century. There is only one composer at a time out of many. There is only one work at a time out of many. There is only one performance at a time out of many. One cannot take in all the composers and all that they wrote at one time and talk about it as if it's the same, if one is to get anything out of it. There is no unified "Modernism', and it cannot all be lumped together as being the same as far as Dissonance, Tonality, or Consonance are concerned. It's only worth talking about specific composers and works one at a the time to experience the great diversity that has been taking place within this era, and it looks like there's a stubborn refusal to do so, as if every composer born during this period had the same mother and father. There's tremendous diversity, including the greatly harmonious and deeply spiritual.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Larkenfield said:


> There is no unified "Modernism", other than there have been a vast number of works written during the 20th and 21st century. There is only one composer at a time out of many. There is only one work at a time out of many. There is only one performance at a time out of many. One cannot take in all the composers and all that they wrote at one time and talk about it as if it's the same, if one is to get anything out of it. There is no unified "Modernism', and it cannot all be lumped together as being the same as far as Dissonance, Tonality, or Consonance are concerned. It's only worth talking about specific composers and works one at a the time to experience the great diversity that has been taking place within this era, and it looks like there's a stubborn refusal to do so, as if every composer born during this period had the same mother and father. There's tremendous diversity, including the greatly harmonious and deeply spiritual.


That was a completely reasonable, accurate and intelligent post. So it probably doesn't belong in this discussion. ;-)


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

millionrainbows said:


> At the same time, some perhaps incorrect notions are being perpetuated; the idea that "at first we don't like modernism, then we learn to like it" and so on. This comes across as a fence-sitting attitude, which is equally unfair to both pro and con opinions of modernism. You either like it or not...


How do you know? Others have said it grew on them with experience and time. What proof do you have that that is not likely or possible?



> The notion that modernism is not simply and immediately "likable" is contrary to my experience (and so, too, to Mandryka's and others, judging from the responses). I liked Stockhausen's "Zietmasse" the first moment I heard it, just for the pure sound of it, knowing nothing at all about him or the music.


Several people have posted of the same experience. I've seen no collective position on TC that that is not possible.



> Yet, the general assumption that modernism might sound "unpleasant" is accepted as a given, as an impersonal generality, without any consideration of that notion as a valid, individual response. What's going on here?


I have no idea what that means.


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## Guest (Nov 29, 2017)

Larkenfield said:


> There is no unified "Modernism",


I'm not sure that was quite the conclusion of this discussion...

Was there a single "modernism"?


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Saying that Modernism is not a unified whole, but many worlds, is just another way of pointing out the diversity in Modernism and that it’s not just one monolithic whole in style and content. But 20th century music is often discussed as being just one thing: dissonance. And that kind of an expectation can stand in the way of the OP experiencing its rewards and “liking it”. As for liking the greatly dissonant, one may need to be in the mood for its challenges rather than looking for it to necessarily be soothing and comforting—and I’ve mentioned this previously.


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## Guest (Nov 29, 2017)

Yet another modern music hate thread on TC couched in terms of a multi-page discussion on the definition of a word. 

Yawn.


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> [...]
> 
> Later, another moderator steps in and monitors the discussion closely, forbidding any defensive replies which seem to interpret this inquiry and the subject of modern music as conflict, even removing posts.
> 
> ...


Since it was I who 'blinked first' and posted a moderation warning in the thread, then I feel obliged to reply. I did so because I feared that the thread would go the way of other threads on modern music before it, and become too conflictual to support an enlightening argument. There will be those amongst us who will feel that I over-reacted (I may be one of them) and you may be right.

I think your points about us over-sanitising the forum are valid, MR. On the other hand there are also valid arguments on the other side: it's possible to under-sanitise it too so that the resulting thread stinks and has to be cleaned!

Anyway, apologies to those for whom I got it wrong on this occasion.


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

Larkenfield said:


> Saying that Modernism is not a unified whole, but many worlds, is just another way of pointing out the diversity in Modernism and that it's not just one monolithic whole in style and content. But 20th century music is often discussed as being just one thing: dissonance. And that kind of an expectation can sometimes stand in the way of the OP experiencing its rewards and "liking it".


This has been my experience since coming to TC. All modern (20th century and contemporary) classical seems to get painted with the same broad brush of 'dissonance'. Those that dislike modern classical always seem to go to the most extreme examples in order to make their point.

As far as the negative attitudes us modern classical fans have to put up with here, I give you an example from a thread titled "Your favorite 12 tone pieces" from a couple of weeks ago. The thread was going along fine, with some great recommendations, then there was this post:



> What's the shortest 12 tone piece? That's my favorite.


I can understand if someone does not like 12 tone music, but why the need to be condescending and snarky?



> As for liking the greatly dissonant, one may need to be in the mood for its challenges rather than looking for it to necessarily be soothing and comforting-and I've mentioned this previously.


I agree.

There can be a certain feeling of catharsis when listening to some pieces. Beauty does not always have to be instantly obvious.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Larkenfield said:


> Saying that Modernism is not a unified whole, but many worlds, is just another way of pointing out the diversity in Modernism and that it's not just one monolithic whole in style and content. But 20th century music is often discussed as being just one thing: dissonance. And that kind of an expectation can sometimes stand in the way of the OP experiencing its rewards and "liking it". As for liking the greatly dissonant, one may need to be in the mood for its challenges rather than looking for it to necessarily be soothing and comforting-and I've mentioned this previously.


Yes, well said. Of course, dissonance has been around a long time, in western music and everywhere else. I had a string quartet play Mozart's "Dissonant" quartet at my wedding ceremony. The musicians were surprised I didn't want Eine Kleine Nachtmusik or Vivaldi's Four Seasons. I liked the symbolism -- dissonance and its ultimate resolution are an important part of marriage or any significant long term relationship, I think. It goes to your very important point -- is the listener seeking only to be soothed and comforted by music? Amused? Relaxed? Diverted from the worries and cares of the world? Or does he/she want an intellectual challenge? To have to rethink ones values or assumptions about the world? To learn new languages and conventions? To find deeper meaning? Not that all modern music necessarily provides all or even any of those things, or that pre-20th century music doesn't. But a willingness, or ideally a desire, to leap into the unfamiliar has rewards that can be won no other way, at the cost, I admit, of some unrewarding adventures. So I guess the most I can suggest to the OP and others with his question is to look inside yourself and ask if you have that desire.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

fluteman said:


> ... But a willingness, or ideally a desire, to leap into the unfamiliar has rewards that can be won no other way, at the cost, I admit, of some unrewarding adventures. So I guess the most I can suggest to the OP and others with his question is to look inside yourself and ask if you have that desire.


I think this willingness is critical. One must realize that this new music can be beautiful, compelling, and exciting just as older music is. One must also be willing to listen for new aspects of music rather than just the same things one loved from older music. That last part caused me some difficulty, but eventually the new "languages" began to sound natural and expected.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Of course new music can be all that are beautiful and compelling. I agree to that. More often than not however, it is not so to me. But I do listen to new music that are beautiful and compelling. By "new", I mean music composed within twenty years ago say since the late 1990's.


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