# Why creators create



## Guest (Nov 4, 2015)

It has seemed to me from time to time that there is one assumption underneath many of the conversations on TC, and that is the largely unstated--and perhaps even unthought about--answer to the question of why creators create.

I can't help wondering--though something's telling me to stop--if making that assumption explicit might clarify some persistent muddles in our conversations. Hey, it could happen.

Mostly, I suspect, creators are not thinking about you at all when they make something. Now, before you get sniffy, I would also say that most creators do start thinking about you (in the abstract) once the thing is made.

I'll give you an example. When I'm taking a photograph, I'm not thinking about which magazine might want it or which contest it would be likely to win or even how many "Likes" it would get on Farcebook. (An honest typo, which I find I just can't shake myself of.) I'm thinking of light and shade--what my camera is capable of capturing--of balance or of just the right amount of imbalance, of aperture and shutter speed, of how far in to zoom, of what exactly to include in the shot. That is, I am completely focused (!) on the situation at hand and the materials I'm working with. If you have disappeared from my ken, take comfort that I too have equally disappeared. Only light and time and edges exist in that moment.

Afterwards, sure. I want all my friends to "like" my work. I want perfect strangers to be strangely touched by the cool-*** thing I just did. But that's afterwards. It's not what motivates me to take pictures, nor is it what determines what or how I shoot. 

But that's just me.

I can't speak for other creators. I paint because I love watching colors merge and clash. I write because I love making words and phrases merge and clash. I photograph because I love finding where the world has created something cool by happenstance, and I just have to see it and capture it.

It seems to me that a lot of discomfort with creators, with living creators, that is, as they're basically the only annoying ones, comes not from what they're making but from what we expect them to make, what we want them to be making. If you think that creators should be thinking of you before they make something, to be thinking of you while they're making whatever they're making, then you're going to have certain very specific antipathies towards creators who don't seem to be following your program.

Perhaps thinking a little about what they're actually doing while in the act might ameliorate the ill will and distrust of contemporary artists that one sees quite a bit on internet forums. And hopefully, thinking about the ones who are ostensibly thinking about you and your needs from the very get go does not alienate you against the ones who aren't. Remember, the "great masters" of the past were very much not thinking about you. Not even a little. If they were thinking of anyone, while working, it was someone very different from you. That people generally have gotten communally used to this or that pattern from the past is as may be. That's us (collectively) adjusting to creators, you see, not them adjusting to us, which is what a lot a lot of people seem to want.

What we can do collectively, we can also do individually.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

^ That's all fine.

However, to _bemoan_ that the general audience doesn't like the 21st century avant garde as if they _should_... that's the problem. This "we should be adjusting to creators" stuff is like... the ultimate Emperor's New Clothes. Never again will I lie to myself and pretend to like what I legitimately do not like. I will never again "adjust" to the composer.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

This cranky buddhist monk once told me that he discovered his appreciation of poetry was entirely related to a brain disease, and he linked all creative activity to that...


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

SeptimalTritone said:


> ^ That's all fine.
> 
> However, to _bemoan_ that the general audience doesn't like the 21st century avant garde as if they _should_... that's the problem. This "we should be adjusting to creators" stuff is like... the ultimate Emperor's New Clothes. Never again will I lie to myself and pretend to like what I legitimately do not like. I will never again "adjust" to the composer.


Telling someone their stated reasons for disliking something are inconsistent or nonsense is not the same as telling them they have to like it.

I'm sorry that you felt pressured to pretend to enjoy things you didn't. I really am. But the analogy of "The Emperor's New Clothes" is only apt if there actually is nothing there. Are you really suggesting that modern artists are, by and large, charlatans? This would in fact contradict what Some Guy is saying. A charlatan always thinks about the audience when creating something, because their entire aim is to hoodwink the audience into believing in an illusion.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

Mahlerian said:


> Telling someone their stated reasons for disliking something are inconsistent or nonsense is not the same as telling them they have to like it.
> 
> I'm sorry that you felt pressured to pretend to enjoy things you didn't. I really am. But the analogy of "The Emperor's New Clothes" is only apt if there actually is nothing there. Are you really suggesting that modern artists are, by and large, charlatans? This would in fact contradict what Some Guy is saying. A charlatan always thinks about the audience when creating something, because their entire aim is to hoodwink the audience into believing in an illusion.


No, they definitely are not charlatans. I think that depending on your personality and artistic interests and tastes, you might find certain music valuable, and you might find the most avant-garde 21st century composers valuable too.


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Some of the charlatans are so skilled deceivers that the their music actually sounds good. But that doesn't mean it actually IS good. It is merely illusory.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Dim7 said:


> Some of the charlatans are so skilled deceivers that the their music actually sounds good. But that doesn't mean it actually IS good. It is merely illusory.


Yeah, Scarlatti was just a _stylized_ composer(dismissive wave of the hand).


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Creators, except maybe the most cynical hacks, create stuff they like themselves. How could they do otherwise? And since they are human beings, not space aliens, it follows that some other human beings will like what they create, as well.

I think the OP presents a totally false dichotomy.

Another way of saying this: when I utter a sentence to another person, am I expressing my own thought, or communicating a thought to the other person? Clearly this is a nonsense question. They're the same thing.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Let's switch "creator" and "receiver" in your reasoning. Your point: the creator doesn't think about future receiver while creating and shouldn't be expected to do so. At this time, only the substance of his creation exists. Very well. But then, why do you proceed to suggest the receiver should do the exact opposite, that is: "think a little about what the creator was actually doing while in the act"? If I'm not the creator's affair, then the creator isn't mine. Then we meet exclusively on the ground of his work: he created it for itself, and I perceive it for itself only. We do not think of each other, he of my perception, I - of his creating process. That is only natural. Instead, you suggest that I should do him the favour that he can't afford for me - to make consideration for his persona a major part of my relation with the artwork. In order to see it properly. No, my friend, either we put equal effort to meet within your work of art or both of us don't put any effort at all. In case of the latter, if we fail to meet on these terms, then it can't be blamed entirely on me, the receiver.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

some guy said:


> Mostly, I suspect, creators are not thinking about you at all when they make something. Now, before you get sniffy, I would also say that most creators do start thinking about you (in the abstract) once the thing is made.


As someone who is not an artist and who is rather ignorant about this issue, I'd love to get more direct information about the true intent of artists when creating. I'm sure some artists are not thinking about specific audiences while others clearly are thinking of audiences. A film composer must direct her work towards the expected audience for the film, but that probably isn't the focus of some guy's comments.

I wonder to what extent a composer who has a commission for producing a work to be performed by a particular ensemble considers the audience. An academic composer without a commission is not beholden to anyone and can create as they please. So I realize that I simply don't know the answer beyond some do and some don't. Maybe if our young composers could talk a bit about their process as it involves an audience or if those with direct experience with composers (some guy is clearly one) could give us their thoughts, we could have more evidence.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Dim7 said:


> Some of the charlatans are so skilled deceivers that the their music actually sounds good. But that doesn't mean it actually IS good. It is merely illusory.


If it sounds good it is good.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

I agree with OPie, that the initial thrust is usually for self. Then, it's only human nature to wanna be loved by more than self.
Create what you will, then it's marketing, marketing, marketing. You will soon find out if your stuff is marketable. The fork in the road. Continue onward, back to the drawing board, or forgetaboutit.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Mahlerian said:


> Telling someone their stated reasons for disliking something are inconsistent or nonsense is not the same as telling them they have to like it.


That's certainly true, but do we really want to tell someone who clearly dislikes something that their reasons are wrong? Their reasons may be inconsistent or involve misunderstandings, but telling them that simply makes them defensive and less likely to engage in that something. Maybe it's better to try to understand, with their help, other reasons they might dislike that something and determining if there may be ways to overcome those reasons.



SeptimalTritone said:


> However, to _bemoan_ that the general audience doesn't like the 21st century avant garde as if they _should_... that's the problem. This "we should be adjusting to creators" stuff is like... the ultimate Emperor's New Clothes. Never again will I lie to myself and pretend to like what I legitimately do not like. I will never again "adjust" to the composer.


No one _ought_ to like any particular thing. One does or one doesn't. And no one _ought_ to adjust to creators outputs. But some people actually benefit if they recognize that simply because they don't like something now does not mean they will never like that thing. Additional exposure to and learning about the thing can modify one's reaction and sometimes change a dislike into a like or even a love.

The real trick for any person is to understand better what art is worth their additional exposure such that they may add to what they like.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

I think the role of the creator has basically changed over the years. Certainly as far as music is concerned. The early composers wrote music to please their patrons whether religious or secular. As some were undoubted geniuses the music was of a very high order - e.g. Bach, Haydn. Mozart partially broke with this tradition and Beethoven certainly did, writing music that came from his own soul whether the public liked it or not. Just so happened that such was his genius that the public adored him. So the creator's role changed significantly from trying to please others to expressing himself. Now I don't doubt what I've said is a vast over-simplification and there are many exceptions. But the thing ended with people like Schoenberg almost implying that true art was writing something no-one would like. Hence the gap growing between creator and receivers.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

mmsbls said:


> That's certainly true, but do we really want to tell someone who clearly dislikes something that their reasons are wrong? Their reasons may be inconsistent or involve misunderstandings, but telling them that simply makes them defensive and less likely to engage in that something. Maybe it's better to try to understand, with their help, other reasons they might dislike that something and determining if there may be ways to overcome those reasons.


I very much agree with this. Thanks mmsbls.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

DavidA said:


> But the thing ended with people like Schoenberg almost implying that true art was writing something no-one would like. Hence the gap growing between creator and receivers.


I would modify that thought a bit.

Music evolved with composers writing music that almost everyone found different and many disliked the different music.

I do agree that the gap between creators of music and receivers has grown. I have not seen any reason that I fully believe explains that growth.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

mmsbls said:


> That's certainly true, but do we really want to tell someone who clearly dislikes something that their reasons are wrong? Their reasons may be inconsistent or involve misunderstandings, but telling them that simply makes them defensive and less likely to engage in that something. Maybe it's better to try to understand, with their help, other reasons they might dislike that something and determining if there may be ways to overcome those reasons.


As a rule, people are resistant to the idea that the reasons they think they dislike or like something are not the actual cause of their reaction, even though our thought process is always hidden from us.

As you know, I think that bias and prejudice against modern music play something of a role in the enmity towards it and indeed the desire that it did not exist at all. The first step in overcoming prejudice is breaking down the pseudo-logical basis which is erected to justify it.



DavidA said:


> But the thing ended with people like *Schoenberg almost implying that true art was writing something no-one would like*.


No, that is not anything like what he said. In fact, he was sure that one day the music then condemned by so many would find widespread acceptance. It's not there, but it's certainly far closer than it was then!


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Mahlerian said:


> No, that is not anything like what he said. In fact, he was sure that one day the music then condemned by so many would find widespread acceptance. It's not there, but it's certainly far closer than it was then!


He probably would have been right by now, but he didn't predict the rise of pop music and pop culture.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Mahlerian said:


> The first step in overcoming prejudice is breaking down the pseudo-logical basis which is erected to justify it.


I don't think this is true. I've never seen it happen in real life, not once. What overcomes the prejudice is the infectious enthusiasm of others.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

As usual, some guy puts a burden on the listener. I reject that position. Composers will create what they like, and listeners will respond however they wish. That's just how it goes.


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## Guest (Nov 4, 2015)

Bulldog said:


> As usual, some guy puts a burden on the listener. I reject that position. Composers will create what they like, and listeners will respond however they wish. That's just how it goes.


As usual, Bulldog misses the point. Yes, composers will create what they like, and listeners will respond however they wish. That's not at issue. What's at issue is that that's just not how it goes. There's another step, which Bulldog leaves off, which is that there's quite a lot of whinging about how composers aren't thinking about me and my needs (of the moment) and why are they so mean and how did it happen that for several generations now composers and audiences have been growing farther and farther apart?

Anyway, go back and read the OP. Only do it carefully, this time. And without thinking, as usual, that "some guy has just written something. Must reject it."

Once you do, you will find that there is no "position" that puts any burdens on anyone. There is a description of a situation and a possible solution to getting out of that situation. In the process, there may be things that listeners could do that are different from what they are now doing. But those are mostly to do with expectations. If you expect A, B, or C from your composers, who are giving you J, Q, and X, then you're going to be disappointed. If you accept that J, Q, and X can also give pleasure--and there is no lack of evidence from other listeners that they can--then you have found a way to get over your disappointment. And the Y, Z, and D that come from the next generation of creators probably won't ruffle your feathers, either.

Up to you, really. Composers--creators generally--are going to do whatever they do, regardless. Some of them may spend some time trying to figure out what you like and then giving that to you. Mostly, they're not going to do that. They're too focussed on their materials and what can be done with those materials to be engaged in guessing games about what people they don't even know might be in the mood for tonight. And getting it wrong, often as not. Once the work is done, once there are objects to be received, then there's a different context. That's why Aramis' call for parity misses the point. The situations in which a creator creates and a receiver receives are different situations. They're not comparable. To ask creators to play guessing games is to distract them from their proper task, which is making things. To ask receivers to receive is, well, obviously to ask them to do what they're supposed to be doing. Not whinging about having received the wrong thing. Receiving what's been offered. It's not always going to work out. But it's going to work out a lot better, a lot more often, if receivers are receptive than if they're not. Simple.

But there is no pressure on anyone to do anything. There are only some suggestions. Come on. Seriously? I had no power to compel SeptimalTritone to do anything, for instance. Nor would I if I did. Septimal did everything he's now complaining about to himself. OK. What he tried didn't work. But I would submit that he listened to things he didn't like for the wrong reason. That that's what was wrong with his situation. I listen to things I don't like all the time. I do it, one because I like listening to music generally, and two because I have learned to like all sorts of things over the years that I started out disliking, and three because I want to like things. Not to be like anyone else. Not to compete. Not to run with the "cool kids," but in order to like and understand music, even music that I don't like or don't get right away. The payoff is obvious, isn't it?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Creators of art create because they enjoy giving form to their ideas - ideas musical, visual, verbal, dramatic, or kinetic, depending on the art form in which they work. Those ideas, however, may not be entirely their own; plenty of artists work on commission, to specifications desired by others. There is nothing new, nor is there anything odd or the least bit inappropriate, for audiences for art to desire works which please their tastes. The idea that such desires are an insult or a contamination of the purity and integrity of the creative spirit is a Romantic notion which may be valid in some cases and not in others. Artists assuredly do not find it productive to obsess about the tastes of their audience while in the throes of creation, but those tastes can play a guiding role in determining, to some degree, what directions and options an artist chooses to pursue out of the many possibilities before him. It is not necessarily right to call an artist's choice to appeal to a particular audience "selling out"; however we rate, for example, Copland's "populist" works against his efforts in serialism, we surely do not have a right to say that his conscious decision to pursue a less "modernist" style in order to appeal to his audience showed a lack of integrity or a misunderstanding of what creators "should" do.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

As Mozart said of his music in one of his often quoted letters to his father:

"There are passages here and there from which only the connoisseur can derive satisfaction; but these passages are written in such a way that the less learned cannot fail to be pleased, though without knowing why."

Of course many composers didn't and don't think this way at all, but it's clearly not incompatible with being a great artist.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Do because must, must because can.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

As I'm married to a professional artist, maybe I can chip in with my observations. Before we met, my wife spent about half of her time painting "accessible" sceneries and portraits to make a living. For her, that was a craft, picked up as part of her fine art university training, but not art. Of course, she made sure that these creations were appreciated by the intended target audience - after all, the next bowl of rice depended on it.

After we got together she dedicated all her painting time to create works that she wanted to create, not thinking one moment of whether they would sell or not, or whether they would be appreciated or not. After a work is finished though, she loves it if people see it and comment on it (the main reason why we have a gallery - there's really no money in it for us).


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Art Rock said:


> As I'm married to a professional artist, maybe I can chip in with my observations. Before we met, my wife spent about half of her time painting "accessible" sceneries and portraits to make a living. For her, that was a craft, picked up as part of her fine art university training, but not art. Of course, she made sure that these creations were appreciated by the intended target audience - after all, the next bowl of rice depended on it.
> 
> After we got together *she dedicated all her painting time to create works that she wanted to create, not thinking one moment of whether they would sell or not, or whether they would be appreciated or not. *After a work is finished though, she loves it if people see it and comment on it (the main reason why we have a gallery - there's really no money in it for us).


Int4eresting my late father in law was one of the top commercial artists in Europe, an incredibly talented man producing a certain line that gave him a very good living. I once asked him why he never pursued pure art. His reply? "Out of 100 pure artists only one has something to really say. I don't want to be one of the ninety-nine!"


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## Guest (Nov 5, 2015)

some guy said:


> Perhaps thinking a little about what they're actually doing while in the act might ameliorate the ill will and distrust of contemporary artists that one sees quite a bit on internet forums. And hopefully, thinking about the ones who are ostensibly thinking about you and your needs from the very get go does not alienate you against the ones who aren't.


It seems people's response to your observation about the creator depend on their reading of this piece.

I read it as a perfectly reasonable suggestion. Others seem to read it is a tyrannical injunction.


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## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

Now the discussion is turning into a direction of " Who can be called a real/pure artist?" :lol and only after answering that people can continue debating). 

anyway being an artist means to express ideas, express oneself. It's his ultimate goal. It's the same about true writers, they write, because there is no other way for them to live, namely for them it's trough expressing their thoughts on paper, they can't live without it, seriously, it's not a matter of making a living, it's like an air for them to create with words. The same about musicians, expressing themselves through music, about visual artists, expressing themselves through symbols, lines and colors, dancers expressing themselves with a language of movements. They all express themselves and their ideas by using different "languages". if one can live without his " art" exchanging it for some other activity in life, it wasn't really an artists. One who can't live without being fully dedicated ( to be extremely passionate about what one does) to his art is a true artist. So, by this definition a true artist cares only about expression of his concepts and ideas completely, and not about pleasing others/public. How can it be otherwise?


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## Guest (Nov 5, 2015)

mmsbls said:


> Music evolved with composers writing music that almost everyone found different and many disliked the different music.
> 
> I do agree that the gap between creators of music and receivers has grown. I have not seen any reason that I fully believe explains that growth.


Please don't make us go through this again. We have gone round and round on this music history business over and over again, with people posting along party lines and "history" being found to serve either party, regardless of what the actual documents from the past may say.

And do you have any basis for agreeing that "the gap" between creators of music and receivers "has grown"? If you do, why not state it? If you don't, then you have no reason for agreeing. Or for stating your agreement.

I have spent over forty of my over sixty years listening to and enjoying contemporary music. Even as a poor graduate student, I went to dozens of new music concerts a year. You should have seen the crowds at the Monday Evening Concerts and at the Green Umbrella concerts. They were maybe a bit smaller than the crowds at the Dorothy Chandler for Beethoven night, but they were passionate and involved. At it was always a lot of the same people each time. They were genuine fans, that is. So much for your "gap." And you always saw performers and audience members and composers hobnobbing in the lobby during the break and after the show. This was a real community. In religious terms, these were the faithful, who attend church every week, not just on Christmas and Easter.

As you know, I have spent the past ten years attending not dozens but hundreds of concerts a year, sometimes dozens a week. Not just in Los Angeles, where I no longer live, but all over the world. Again, small but dedicated audiences. And sometimes quite large and dedicated audiences. And, often as not, some of the same people, too, whether the concert's in Oslo or in Barcelona or in Vilnius. That is, I'm not the only one who travels around to different countries to hear new music. How much can I get for your putative "gap" now, Marshall? Plus, I have noticed that the audiences for new music are growing, too. And the venues have changed. Coffee shops used to be pretty common. Not any more. Abandoned factories are all the rage now. Why? Because the audiences are growing. There's not enough space in coffee shops to put all the people who want to hear this music for which there's a growing gap between creator and receiver. When I went to the Donaueschinger Musiktage a few years ago, the opening concerts were sold out. Had been for some time. And the first show I was able to get into was so packed you could hardly move. (This was not a sitting concert. The "orchestra" was scattered throughout the enormous space and you were supposed to walk around as the music played.)

Only if you very carefully select the right creators and match those people with receivers who have never been interested in that kind of thing and never will be can you artificially create any sort of "gap." But that makes about as much sense, and is about as intellectually honest, as matching up classical concerts and pop fans and wondering why there's this gap and why is it growing? But these are two things that have never had anything to do with each other. All the "different" music you refer to has always had its audience. And it continues to have its audience. Symphony audiences never turned away from it. Symphony audiences never even knew it existed. They know a few tepid pieces that timid managers occasionally program for them. And some of them go ballistic over them. Why, some of them go ballistic over Janacek and Britten, too. I've seen it. Real, red-faced, shouting rage.

But this growing gap nonsense is only possible by putting together two unrelated things and pretending that they used to be related and now they're growing apart.

They've always been apart.


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

I guess the thing that makes it hardest for me to formulate an opinion on this whole topic is that I don't really understand the practical side of composing today. Somehow, the idea of an artist starving in a garret seems so nineteenth century that it's hard to imagine the equivalent being commonplace today.

But, I don't really know. So I guess my question is, assuming that a particular composer is not independently wealthy, just how do they "make a living" from their work? Or do they?

Some Guy, you would appear to be in the best position to enlighten me on this, attending as you do so many concerts around the world (amazing...I wonder how you can do that? - but I'm not looking for an answer on that ). So, what are the most common ways these contemporary composers are funded? Commissions by ensembles? Perhaps their real work is something else - like teaching maybe? Or, do they really live on doing work on spec and hoping someone will be willing to pay for it?


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

some guy said:


> I have spent over forty of my over sixty years listening to and enjoying contemporary music. Even as a poor graduate student, I went to dozens of new music concerts a year. You should have seen the crowds at the Monday Evening Concerts and at the Green Umbrella concerts. They were maybe a bit smaller than the crowds at the Dorothy Chandler for Beethoven night, but they were passionate and involved. At it was always a lot of the same people each time. They were genuine fans, that is. So much for your "gap."


No. These are anecdotes, not data.


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

isorhythm said:


> No. These are anecdotes, not data.


Awww. You're not aware that on internet forums statistics is the plural of anecdote, I see.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

isorhythm said:


> No. These are anecdotes, not data.


anecdotal evidence *can* be data in a qualitative paradigm

...erm, let's adjust that .... anecdotal evidence *is* data in a qualitative paradigm


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Vesteralen said:


> I guess the thing that makes it hardest for me to formulate an opinion on this whole topic is that I don't really understand the practical side of composing today. Somehow, the idea of an artist starving in a garret seems so nineteenth century that it's hard to imagine the equivalent being commonplace today.


Was the idea of the draughty garrett and the pale-faced, wild-haired loner of a composer gradually fading away with hunger, neglect and angst *ever* more than a fanciful myth?


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

Headphone Hermit said:


> Was the idea of the draughty garrett and the pale-faced, wild-haired loner of a composer gradually fading away with hunger, neglect and angst *ever* more than a fanciful myth?


Probably not, but this was just a sentence used in passing - having little to do with the real question I was asking.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Headphone Hermit said:


> anecdotal evidence *can* be data in a qualitative paradigm
> 
> ...erm, let's adjust that .... anecdotal evidence *is* data in a qualitative paradigm


I wouldn't use the word "data" in a qualitative paradigm at all.

In any case, if all some guy wants to show is that lots of people still enjoy new composed music, he'll get no argument from anyone. That's a trivially true claim.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

I don't know any composers myself, but as it happens I know three people who this year had their first book published, and each had a different reason for producing the book - one intends to make a career from writing fiction and is with a major publisher, one self-published a novel as a sideline to his day-job, and one wrote a popular-science book with the aim of filling a gap in the published literature. 
That the quality of the three books is proportional to the amount of editorial (ie, audience-based) pressure on the writers is of course just my opinion and anecdotal. But my main point is that although all three were certainly initially motivated simply by the desire to create, two of them were thinking of an audience pretty much as soon as they (figuratively) put pen to paper.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

some guy said:


> Please don't make us go through this again. We have gone round and round on this music history business over and over again, with people posting along party lines and "history" being found to serve either party, regardless of what the actual documents from the past may say.


I do believe we are talking about two different things, but please correct me if I'm wrong. I think you are saying that new music has an audience today as it has in the past as well, and further, that audience is not insignificant. I agree. I'm part of the audience as are many TC members, and of course, I know your work at festivals where that audience comes out in full force.

I'm talking about the overall acceptance, for example in concert halls, by an audience for older music. It is my belief that audiences in 1900 would find Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Weber, etc. generally enjoyable and not objectionable. Audiences in 1950 would react similarly to Dvorak, Saint Saens, Brahms, etc.. I believe audiences in 2015 react differently to music of early modern composers. They don't reject it completely, but I think there is not the same acceptance as in earlier times to music 50-100 years old.

I don't know exactly to what extent my view is true. The reason I believe it is based on many statements I've heard from a variety of people. Some on TC show a distinct dislike of music 100 years ago. Your post included these comments.



some guy said:


> All the "different" music you refer to has always had its audience. And it continues to have its audience. Symphony audiences never turned away from it. Symphony audiences never even knew it existed. They know a few tepid pieces that timid managers occasionally program for them. And some of them go ballistic over them. Why, some of them go ballistic over Janacek and Britten, too. I've seen it. Real, red-faced, shouting rage.


You have also posted about the change in programmed orchestral works from mostly contemporary to rarely contemporary.

I have known many professional performers who strongly dislike playing modern music. Were there nearly as many orchestral players in 1900 or 1950 who strongly disliked 50-100 year old music? Everyone I know personally went through a period of significantly disliking modern music before a minority of them learned to like it. I know new music of the past was not necessarily immediately enjoyed, but I've always believed that 50 to 100 years later neither professional orchestral performers nor orchestral audiences would hate much of that music.

So it appears to me that the reception of 50-100 year old music today is different from that reception in times past (i.e. for music 50-100 years old). In that sense I think there is a growing gap in acceptance of modern music compared to earlier music.

This issue has come up before, and I have posted similar comments usually asking if this view is mostly correct. I have not seen any statistically significant evidence specifically related to audience acceptance of 50-100 year old music. But everything I have seen seems to indicate that the acceptance is declining, hence, the growing gap.

My view focuses on the acceptance of 50-100 year old music and has nothing to do with thinking that music is good, bad, difficult, or otherwise.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

some guy said:


> As usual, Bulldog misses the point. Yes, composers will create what they like, and listeners will respond however they wish. That's not at issue. What's at issue is that that's just not how it goes. There's another step, which Bulldog leaves off, which is that there's quite a lot of whinging about how composers aren't thinking about me and my needs (of the moment) and why are they so mean and how did it happen that for several generations now composers and audiences have been growing farther and farther apart?


That's not another step; it's part of listeners responding however they wish.


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## Guest (Nov 5, 2015)

mms, you need to specify "for whom." A growing gap for whom? There's never been any sort of gap for me, and I'm not alone in that. Indeed, if we're going by personal experience (and I noticed that isorhythm failed to jump down your throat for saying "Everyone I know personally went through a period of significantly disliking modern music before a minority of them learned to like it." I wonder why?), my experience has been that most of the people I know who enjoy modern music have liked it from the get go. 

Anyway, we're not talking about two different things, but we are talking about two different audiences. And for the audience you identify, the gap has always been there. It's not something that happened because of some historical event, like a notorious world premiere, say. In fact, as I tried to point out, it's something that exists almost in a vacuum, as the audience for whom modern/avant garde/contemporary music is anathema is largely not exposed to it--at all--and so the anathema is kind of self-generated and self-perpetuated, with occasional fleeting encounters with newish things (usually quite mild and benign) simply serving to provide an excuse for an attitude held without experience.

I used to know a number of music students who, when first confronted in classes with the musics of their own time, did royally flip out. One of them wrote a scathing review of their composition teacher for subjecting them to all that avant garde crap. Hmmm. You're in school. School is a place to learn things. Further, you're in a composition class. A composition class is a place to learn about current compositional practices, among other things.

So yeah, if you hang out with musicians who generally perform old music, who were specifically trained to play that music, and if you hang out with students, you will get quite a different perspective from mine. I know, because I used to hang out with those people, too. Some of them are still friends. But mostly, nowadays, I hang out either with people for whom "art music" generally is terra incognita or with people for whom contemporary music is an ongoing pleasure. 

On to another matter. Vesteralen, probably the majority of people I know are teachers. Some are married to other people with money-making jobs. Some of them are the ones with other jobs besides teaching. Very few people can support themselves with composition, not even with composing "nice" music for "the masses." Yes, there are grants, but no one relies on grants. Yes, there are commissions, but no one relies on commissions. There are awards, too. But no one relies on awards. Teaching or other jobs or supportive spouses.


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

some guy said:


> On to another matter. Vesteralen, probably the majority of people I know are teachers. Some are married to other people with money-making jobs. Some of them are the ones with other jobs besides teaching. Very few people can support themselves with composition, not even with composing "nice" music for "the masses." Yes, there are grants, but no one relies on grants. Yes, there are commissions, but no one relies on commissions. There are awards, too. But no one relies on awards. Teaching or other jobs or supportive spouses.


Thanks, some guy. Given that state of affairs, I can more clearly see the points in your OP. Thanks for clarifying.


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

some guy said:


> So yeah, if you hang out with musicians who generally perform old music, who were specifically trained to play that music, and if you hang out with students, you will get quite a different perspective from mine. I know, because I used to hang out with those people, too. Some of them are still friends. But mostly, nowadays, I hang out either with people for whom "art music" generally is terra incognita or with people for whom contemporary music is an ongoing pleasure.


Except here, of course.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

some guy said:


> mms, you need to specify "for whom." A growing gap for whom?


Audiences of orchestral music. Humans who attend performances of orchestras playing classical music. Today and in 1900 and 1950.



some guy said:


> I noticed that isorhythm failed to jump down your throat for saying "Everyone I know personally went through a period of significantly disliking modern music before a minority of them learned to like it." I wonder why?)...


Simple. You asked.



some guy said:


> And do you have any basis for agreeing that "the gap" between creators of music and receivers "has grown"? If you do, why not state it? If you don't, then you have no reason for agreeing. Or for stating your agreement.


I gave a list of information that makes me think my view might be true. Certainly some of the evidence is not great because it involves small numbers of people. Still it's the evidence I have. That's why I've asked for better evidence. I don't know whether audiences in the past reacted the same way.



some guy said:


> Anyway, we're not talking about two different things, but we are talking about two different audiences. And for the audience you identify, the gap has always been there.


So we are talking about different things (i.e. different audiences). The big question, the one that really would solve my problem, is...Has the gap really _always been there_ for the audiences I have identified?

Did significant numbers of orchestra performers and audience members really strongly dislike the music of 50-100 years ago _back in 1900 or 1950_? Do we know? If yes, then I'm wrong and there is no growing gap. If no, then I'm right. Maybe the gap is not presently growing larger, but it has grown between 1900 and now.

Finally, let me be clear about what I mean by growing gap. I do not mean that no people back in 1900 or 1950 disliked the music of 50-100 years ago. I do not mean that all people today dislike the music of 50-100 years ago. I simply am asking whether _a greater percentage of people_ in orchestral audiences today dislike orchestral music of 50-100 years ago than the percentage of people in orchestral audiences of 1900 or 1950 disliked orchestral music of 50-100 years earlier.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

some guy said:


> I used to know a number of music students who, when first confronted in classes with the musics of their own time, did royally flip out. One of them wrote a scathing review of their composition teacher for subjecting them to all that avant garde crap. Hmmm. You're in school. School is a place to learn things. Further, you're in a composition class. A composition class is a place to learn about current compositional practices, among other things.
> 
> So yeah, if you hang out with musicians who generally perform old music, who were specifically trained to play that music, and if you hang out with students, you will get quite a different perspective from mine. I know, because I used to hang out with those people, too. Some of them are still friends. But mostly, nowadays, I hang out either with people for whom "art music" generally is terra incognita or with people for whom contemporary music is an ongoing pleasure.


Ugh.

I've tried to "try" and "not try", and to "pay close attention" and to "relax and let the music flow over me", and "drop expectations" and "enjoy it on its own terms", and to "not struggle, yet pay attention" etc.

I still don't like most noise music. I do still like musique concrete and most instrumental anything, even Lachenmann, but noise music, like I said, I don't like.

I'm not a music student. I'm merely a listener. I don't really want to spend to much time listening to stuff I don't like for the learning experience, and then maybe (just maybe) liking it later. This sort of challenge stresses me out. Some guy sees the building, and sees a golden palace, and that's legitimate. I see the building, and I see a wooden shack. I really don't want to try, then not try, then try, then not try to see a place by squinting my eyes, or not squinting my eyes. I really hate this sort of "doing by not doing" or "relaxed focus" or "being in the present moment" or "right effort" or "zen mind, beginners mind" stuff. It has always stressed me out. I hate having to calibrate my efforts by precisely decreasing them in order to see that "obviously" it's a golden palace and not a wooden shack.

And why in the world do you hang out with us? To convert us? To show us the light like a saintly zen master? To show us that if you just "relax" or "open your mind" you'll see a palace?

I do not see a palace in Karkowski and Merzbow and Yoshihide. And I probably won't ever forgive myself for this failure. I'm a plebian and a failure, just like those old ladies whining about Janeck or those closed minded music students or those old orchestral music performers. What a bunch of closed minded fools.

And plus PetrB and Mahlerian don't even like Karkowski et. al. PetrB once called your (some guy's) tastes "vulgar", and Mahlerian has personally told me he isn't into experimental electronic improvisation. PetrB even once told me that Ferneyhough "had no emotional sensibility", which commits the same error that the Schoenberg plebeians commit! Well, I think Ferneyhough is beautifully emotionally expressive, so take that PetrB!


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## Guest (Nov 5, 2015)

isorhythm said:


> No. These are anecdotes, not data.


Oh, by the way, y'all, since no one else has taken this up, I guess I will. Too bad. It would more convincing if someone else were to notice this. Oh well. Blame my impatience.

Ahem.

Those things you are calling anecdotes, those are actually data. As in first hand observations, over time. I was there, in person. I could see that there were 500 to 750 people in the halls for many of the Green Umbrella concerts I attended. That's pretty respectable attendence, given that Disney Hall, where the usual concert fare is played, seats about 2500. (The Dorothy Chandler seats a little over 3000.) Passionate and involved are both conclusions, but they're fair conclusions, based on seeing many of the same people at new music concerts over several years and on getting to know a few of them and so getting a sense from them of how much they liked this stuff.

The point of that data was to show that audiences for new music have been active and engaged and sometimes even respectable in numbers for at least as long ago as 1980, which is when I began collecting data, apparently, from the Los Angeles area. And those observations (first hand, recall) were corroborated by the observations I made in Paris and Bourges and Vilnius and Berlin and Oslo and Barcelona and Prague and Dublin and Belfast and Stockholm and Wrocław and San Francisco and Portland, OR and New York and Boston and Crest and Chalon-sur-Saône and Donaueschingen and Lisboa and maybe one or two other places, including some trips back to L.A. for an all Cage weekend and an all Xenakis weekend.

Perhaps what that data shows is something you don't want to see.

Too bad.


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## Guest (Nov 5, 2015)

Hey Septimal,

We've had some good conversations in the past. Maybe we can continue.

If you don't like new music, you don't like new music. The end. No one's forcing you to like it. No one's expecting you to like it. No one, I hope, will think any less of you if you don't like it. One of my closer friends never misses an opportunity to diss modern music. It gets a little tiresome, but "oh well." We have similar tastes in women. And we both like good beer and basketball. And Italian food, served by a very pretty woman who's become a pretty good friend of ours, in spite of our thinking her boyfriend's a loser, haha. Many of my other friends don't know anything about new music. And some of my other friends know as much about it as I do or more. (I like the "or more" ones best, of course.)

We listen to music because we like listening to music. The end.

As for hanging out with y'all, I'm not altogether sure, either. But one thing I am sure about, you don't have to like the same things I like or even agree with me about things to be friends with me. At least in the real world that's true.

I've always liked you, anyway, and PetrB (with whom I correspond regularly), and Mahlerian (whose knowledge and intelligence are indisputable). The rest of you, who SeptimalTritone did not mention, are not going to be shovelled into this discussion by me. You know who you are. You know who hates me and who likes me. You know who despises me at all costs, and you know who sometimes agrees with what I say and sometimes not. (PetrB and Mahlerian are both also in that latter group, by the way.)


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

But this serves to remind me of something that in my head is called the "Pauline Kael effect" - though apparently that isn't a phrase, and anyway it's based on a quote that's attributed to Pauline Kael but that she never actually said, which is that she couldn't see how Nixon could win the 1972 election because she didn't know a single person who was voting for him.

Meaning a report of your own personal experience, no matter how much it might suggest a conclusion, is still only your own personal experience. It's not great data because its context is specific to you. I don't think anyone doubts that audiences at these concerts have been active and engaged - why wouldn't they be, they're there because they want to be. But in the absence of other information (for instance, seeing as it was mentioned, what proportion of the audience is people who travel all over to attend new-music concerts versus a local catchment population, and how this compares with "old-music" concerts), it's hard to extrapolate convincingly.

Still though, anecdotal information is nevertheless information and is valuable in its own right.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

I'm not sure *great data* is possible then, as it's likely gleaned from at best, anecdotes, or at worst, fairy tales.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

I doubt many people on this forum expect composers to be considerate of them and their tastes. Composers can do what they like and there's probably an audience for just about anything they come up with. Listeners can do what they like as well and the majority of them doesn't seem to like the way "new music" sounds. So be it. Even if you could change people's attitude and perspective towards (composers of) new music, it will probably not change their tastes. Fortunately, there's enough for everyone to enjoy, past and present. Time will tell if there are current composers of new music who will be regarded as "great masters" in the future. Why not accept things the way they are?


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

isorhythm said:


> I wouldn't use the word "data" in a qualitative paradigm at all.


that suggests you understand very little about qualitative research methodologies


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

DeepR said:


> I doubt many people on this forum expect composers to be considerate of them and their tastes. Composers can do what they like and there's probably an audience for just about anything they come up with. Listeners can do what they like as well and the majority of them doesn't seem to like the way "new music" sounds. So be it. Even if you could change people's attitude and perspective towards (composers of) new music, it will probably not change their tastes. Fortunately, there's enough for everyone to enjoy, past and present. Time will tell if there are current composers of new music who will be regarded as "great masters" in the future. Why not accept things the way they are?


But why should we assume that people's tastes are a fixed thing? "Evangelizing" for our favorite composers, modern or not, has proven successful over and over again, on this very forum even.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Nereffid said:


> Meaning a report of your own personal experience, no matter how much it might suggest a conclusion, is still only your own personal experience. It's not great data because its context is specific to you.
> 
> it's hard to extrapolate convincingly.


Of course it is hard to extrapolate from such data - but the point of qualitative data such as that used by Some Guy in this context is to gain deeper insights rather than to generalise from the particular


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Peers gotta pee, creators ought to create.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Headphone Hermit said:


> that suggests you understand very little about qualitative research methodologies


This is true. I'll read up on it.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Headphone Hermit said:


> Of course it is hard to extrapolate from such data - but the point of qualitative data such as that used by Some Guy in this context is to gain deeper insights rather than to generalise from the particular


You'll get no argument from me there, as evidenced from the last sentence of the post you're responding to.


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

Headphone Hermit said:


> Of course it is hard to extrapolate from such data - but the point of qualitative data such as that used by Some Guy in this context is to gain deeper insights rather than to generalise from the particular


So, it just cannot be used as sufficient evidence that the infamous gap has decreased.
I think that this was isorhythm's point from the beginnig.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Stavrogin said:


> So, it just cannot be used as sufficient evidence that the infamous gap has decreased.
> I think that this was isorhythm's point from the beginnig.


As far as I can tell, there has been no evidence presented that the gap has *increased*

Some Guy has presented some evidence to challenge the assertion that "the gap" between creators of music and receivers "has grown" and his experiences are valid.

I don't see that he is claiming that the gap has 'decreased' - he appears to be questioning the assertion that the gap has increased (and that is not the same as saying it has 'decreased')


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

violadude said:


> But why should we assume that people's tastes are a fixed thing? "Evangelizing" for our favorite composers, modern or not, has proven successful over and over again, on this very forum even.


I don't assume people's tastes are fixed, but I do think they don't change easily or at all when it comes to a type of music that can be very alien and different from what most people consider enjoyable (classical) music. 
In fact I think promotion and informing people about our favorite music and composers is the one thing that can help expand people's tastes and which can be beneficial to the music, any music. Positive promotion. But that's not what's happening in these discussions, which are often about the attitude and perspective of the listener. The point that (non-commercial) composers usually don't compose with their audience in mind is clear and obvious, but that realization alone is not going to change anything. While its intentions are noble, sometimes I think these kind of discussions cause more harm than they do good.


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

Headphone Hermit said:


> As far as I can tell, there has been no evidence presented that the gap has *increased*
> 
> Some Guy has presented some evidence to challenge the assertion that "the gap" between creators of music and receivers "has grown" and his experiences are valid.
> 
> I don't see that he is claiming that the gap has 'decreased' - he appears to be questioning the assertion that the gap has increased (and that is not the same as saying it has 'decreased')


I see Someguy's post as a clear attempt to convince readers (by means of rethorical devices, e.g. irony, as usual) that the gap has decreased (or not increased - which is definitely equivalent).
... _"There's not enough space in coffee shops to put all the people who want to hear this music for which there's a growing gap between creator and receiver"_ ...

Now, I don't actually care about this gap. I have no idea how it is even defined or whether it increased or not - compared to when?

I just wanted to make clear that a single person's experience cannot be considered as a proxy of the whole (actual and potential) concert-going community in Western world.

If A says "It seems to me that attendance at football matches has decreased" and B says "I've been to matches every week of my life and I saw it hasn't decreased", the fact that B provides personal experience (however broad) while A provides no evidence whatsoever does not say a thing about whose opinion is correct.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Stavrogin said:


> I see Someguy's post as a clear attempt to convince readers (by means of rethorical devices, e.g. irony, as usual) that the gap has decreased (or not increased - which is definitely equivalent)..


With respect - 'decreased' is *not* the same (in English) as 'not increased'

'decreased' 'stayed the same' (ie not increased and not decreased) and 'increased' are three different states


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

Headphone Hermit said:


> With respect - 'decreased' is *not* the same (in English) as 'not increased'
> 
> 'decreased' 'stayed the same' (ie not increased and not decreased) and 'increased' are three different states


Sure - I was just taking for granted that - however we pretend to measure such gap - we can assume that it hasn't stayed at exactly the same level. (The example of the attendance at stadiums may be useful again).


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Headphone Hermit said:


> As far as I can tell, there has been no evidence presented that the gap has *increased*
> 
> Some Guy has presented some evidence to challenge the assertion that "the gap" between creators of music and receivers "has grown" and his experiences are valid.


The evidence shown so far only indicates that a gap exists at present. Both some guy and myself discussed experiences showing that some people in today's audiences find modern music unpleasant. Because our experiences involve small numbers of people, we can only guess the true percentage of audiences who dislike modern music. Since neither of us have evidence about the feelings of earlier audience members towards the music of 50-100 years before them, we have neither shown that the gap has increased nor challenged that possibility.

In order to establish that this gap has grown from say 1900 or 1950 one would have to show that audiences essentially fully embraced works from 50-100 years earlier. I have never seen that evidence, and I'm not sure any exists. For me it _seems_ very unlikely that audience members in 1900 would find Schumann, Schubert, Mendelssohn or any early composers from the 1800s as unpleasant as some people on TC (or people I've known) find some early modern composers. But who knows, I suppose it's possible.


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## Guest (Nov 6, 2015)

mmsbls said:


> The evidence shown so far only indicates that a gap exists at present.


But what does this gap consist of? There's also a gap between fans of death metal and creators of Broadway shows, too, but what of it?

Well, I'm pretty tired. It's been a long week, recovering from an illness and trying to catch up in my Spanish class. I missed three days; not good! But I'd like to disentangle some threads that have gotten snarled here.

One, there is not a single audience. Maybe in Haydn's time, but since the beginning of the 19th century, "the" audience splintered into many different audiences, one for chamber music, one for opera, one for symphonic music, one for new music, and so forth. (Yes, the "new music" ensemble and "new music" concert devoted to the most recent compositions is a 19th century invention.)

Two, aside from going back in time and presenting concert-goers with questionnaires about their attitudes, there's little direct evidence of what people thought about new music in the 19th century, which is when suspicion and rejection of modern music began. There are some letters and some articles in journals and some reports of people threatening to cancel their subscriptions if any living composers were featured in concerts, and there are printed concert programs. The latter show a clear trend to favor dead composers over live ones as the century went on. The ratio of dead to living in Haydn's time, for instance, was one to nine. By 1870, the ratio was nine to one and in some instances ten to zero. As far as printed programs show, the peak was in the mid-sixties, after which more and more living composers began creeping back into concert programming. There was a sharp spike in 1900, which is still some time before either Stravinsky's or Schoenberg's modernist pieces, which were what was supposed to have caused "the gap" in the first place.

This is all in William Weber's _The Great Transformation of Musical Taste._ No one to date has done a similar study of post-1900 attitudes. And there's still a paucity of questionnaires to provide direct evidence.

Three, there have been some books, however, by more or less angry musicologists in which "the gap" is attributed to "atonality" and other modernist horrors. But one thing is sure, the symphonic audience, which is increasingly what has become known as "the" audience, has never had much of a chance to hear new music and so has had little or no experience upon which to base any sort of alienation. Even recordings and radio have contributed very little to this situation. To hear new music on a record, you have to have the record. And how did you find this thing and why did you buy it, sound unheard? Not bloody likely. And radio? Radio stations don't program new music. That is, the radio station that a classical listener, one who hears Beethoven and Brahms when attending a live concert, would tune into does not program new music.

Four, my anecdotes were presented simply to show that if you choose the right audience for whatever music you decide to consider, what you find is that there are no gaps at all. It's only if you choose the wrong audience that you run into trouble, or into what can be made to look troublesome. New music composers don't usually try to woo members of audiences for smooth jazz or for adult contemporary (irony) or for teen pop. However, there is this idea that they should be trying to woo members of audiences for 18th and 19th century symphonic music. Maybe that would make a bit more sense than trying for a country/western fan or a death metal fan, but not much. Occasionally people from different groups do cross the lines and find that there's enjoyment in other types of music, it's true. And everyone is happy when that happens. But pretty much you have to wait for it. You can't force it. It will either happen or it won't.

Now there's a trend for ya, the splitting of the audience for music into smaller and smaller niche audiences, a trend that popular music has done nothing to except to encourage. It should be clear that that splitting up is not a consequence of people reacting to music that they probably haven't heard. And a gap between a fan of Tchaikovsky ballets and a composer of turntable music is probably not a matter of serious concern any more that a gap between a fan of house music and a creator of songs for Taylor Swift.

Unless you believe that people who listen to Tchaikovsky should be listening to Karkowski, too (and the fact that I do does at least suggest that it is possible) or that people like Gibello should be writing like Ravel so that they can please the Ravel lovers, the fact of a gap or not will be of supreme indifference to you. People like Gibello already have an audience, a faithful, engaged, and growing audience. If someone who loves Ravel hears a Gibello concert and is bowled over, that's great. But they're going to be bowled over by Gibello not by faux-Ravel. Audiences can have both if they want. There's no room in any picture for the faux.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Michael, first I agree that there is no clear evidence that orchestral audiences dislike 50-100 year old music today more than those same audiences did 100 years ago. If I had to bet, I would bet that today's audience's do dislike the music more. That comes from various bits of information that are useful in constructing that hypothesis but not useful in demonstrating it. That's where this all started in that I agreed with a casual comment. So I might very well be wrong, but I wouldn't bet on it .



some guy said:


> But what does this gap consist of? There's also a gap between fans of death metal and creators of Broadway shows, too, but what of it?


Well the phenomenon I'm interested in seems completely different from the gap between death metal and Broadway show fans. Classical orchestral audiences in general love orchestral music of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, but then _some_ intensely dislike Schoenberg, Varese, Lutoslawski, and Stockhausen. Death metal and Broadway shows enthusiasts never enjoyed the other music (presumably).



some guy said:


> One, there is not a single audience.


Yes, the classical orchestral audience. That's what we're discussing.



some guy said:


> This is all in William Weber's _The Great Transformation of Musical Taste._


You've discussed that book often, and it indicates what might be called a growing gap between orchestral audiences and contemporary music in the 19th century. That gap was different than the possible one we're discussing because it focused on a preference for music older than say 30-50 years while we're talking about a preference for music older than 100 years. But it's interesting that audiences did seem to prefer older music.



some guy said:


> But one thing is sure, the symphonic audience, which is increasingly what has become known as "the" audience, has never had much of a chance to hear new music and so has had little or no experience upon which to base any sort of alienation. Even recordings and radio have contributed very little to this situation.


And this might be one reason helping to explain the gap. You and I both find this unfortunate and would love to see a change.



some guy said:


> Four, my anecdotes were presented simply to show that if you choose the right audience for whatever music you decide to consider, what you find is that there are no gaps at all. It's only if you choose the wrong audience that you run into trouble, or into what can be made to look troublesome.


We don't have this problem because we're only considering one audience (or at least I am) so we can't choose the wrong one.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

There's no inconsistency here.

The gap started growing in the 19th century. There was a sharp acceleration of the trend starting around 1910. Both statements are true.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Yes, we recall the riot of '13. Not sure when/where "Music of the Devil" originated, but I've always enjoyed that term.


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## Guest (Nov 7, 2015)

isorhythm said:


> The gap started growing in the 19th century. There was a sharp acceleration of the trend starting around 1910. Both statements are true.


Evidence for the second claim?

There's plenty for the first. Where's the evidence for the second?

There are plenty of claims for it, of course, but so far as I've ever been able to find out, "a sharp acceleration of the trend starting around 1910" is totally made up. And for why? Retroactively, to fit the idea (Pleasants' mid-fifties book, anyone?) that Schoenberg's and Stravinsky's modernistic explorations were responsible for turning audiences away from classical music.

On the face of it, that's a pretty absurd claim, since no one would stop listening to Schumann because of the addition of Webern. Nor would anyone in 2015 stop listening to Bartok because there's now Lachenmann. And irrational whinging from Britten haters notwithstanding, no one is really going to pass on the next opportunity to hear [famous pianist] play Rachmaninoff's third piano concerto, even if there's a five minute piece by Anna Clyne on the program, too.

I think the real crux of the matter is not whether or not there's a gap. If there weren't a gap, it would have to be invented to support the made-up story that modern music turned audiences away, that modern composers alienated their audiences. The real issue is not whether but why. And the story that's been handed down for generations is demonstrably false.

Logically false as well. Anyone who has read criticisms of modern music has noticed that the criticisms from 1815 don't look all that much different from the criticisms of 2015. Two hundred years of the same half dozen or so slams of contemporary music--surely it's not too difficult to see that if Chopin or Bizet can be criticized in the same tone if not the almost the identical language as criticisms of Boulez or Xenakis--and they can be and are--then it's not the music that's generating the criticism. In no regard do Chopin and Xenakis resemble each other--except in producing frequencies that vibrate eardrums. But the criticisms of them sound very similar--difficult, alienating, not music, and easy to reject because it's not really music but random noise. You know the drill; I don't really need to review it for you, do I?

It seems absurd to me that Chopin and Xenakis could generate the same criticisms. Much easier to conclude that the criticisms are irrational and self-perpetuating myths that have no real contact with any real music. It's an attitude, and whatever music happens along, however tame or innocuous, can be used to justify the attitude. On another music forum, Birtwistle's _Night's Black Bird_ generated the most rabid anti-modernist rants I've ever seen. Give it a listen some time, if you've got a spare fifteen minutes.






There. That's what generated a firestorm of vituperation. It was quite literally breathtaking. Can you imagine? Well, if you can, I'm not directing these remarks to you. If, like me, you find that difficult to believe, then here's my conclusion: the vitriol was already in existence in this person. It only needed a trigger. That Birtwistle's quite lovely piece was the trigger was certainly risible, but that's just it--the trigger could be almost anything. One more Birtwistle anecdote: a friend of mine who loves bashing modern music had this to say when I told him about this incident: "Birtwistle? That atonal crap?"

Fortunately, my friend, while prejudiced, is also honest, so when I asked him if he'd ever heard any Birtwistle, he sheepishly admitted that he hadn't. The attitude was there, though, all ready for a trigger, any trigger. Plus, as you all also already know, the modernist bashing often as not happens anonymously. That is, people don't often name specific composers or specific pieces, preferring to hide behind vague atonal generalizations. Not surprisingly. When people do name a specific piece, they run the risk of opening themselves up to some well-deserved ridicule. Best to stay vague, eh? Why, it appears that I've just argued that it doesn't even need any sort of trigger at all!!:lol:


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

This has been discussed before, but I don't see any reason to change my basic answer: Who cares why creators create? They can create for any reason whatsoever; unless I'm involved somehow, it's none of my business. 

And I'll listen to whatever I want to.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

*Why There Is No Gap*

In other threads, I have noted the contributions of Leonard Meyer, former chair of the music department at the U. Of Chicago, to our understanding of how music works, and also his observation that we are currently in a period of stasis in the arts in general, and certainly in music in particular. Meyer spelled out this latter assertion definitively in his 1967 book, _Music, the Arts, and Ideas_. I here attempt to summarize Meyer's thesis, but urge those interested in both of Meyer's contributions to read the book.

Meyer notes that the history of the arts is marked by long periods of very little change-- periods of stasis. The art history of Ancient Egypt, much of Chinese history, Persia, many other examples, show that stasis typifies much the greater part of cultural history. This pattern was broken in the West with the advent of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the rise of science, the simultaneous weakening and multiplicity of religious doctrine, new philosophies, etc., such that for several centuries now, we think of successive movements in the arts-- let's say baroque, classicism, romanticism, modernism for example--as the normal paradigm; the New replacing the Old every 15 or 20 years. So stasis was replaced by change, growth, movement, "progress".

Meyer postulated, though, a return to stasis, but stasis of a completely different kind from the glacially slow reworking of a few themes that typified past cultures over centuries and even millennia. The new stasis is instead the cumulative result of a vast multiplicity of trends, movements, artists, styles, materials in constant creation and dissolution, but on a small scale and a short timeframe. The cultural signal-to-noise ratio drops to the point where no dominant artistic impulse can expand and mature enough to generate a viable tradition or school of large or lasting proportion. Here I quote:

".....change and variety are not incompatible with stasis. For stasis, as I intend the term, is not an absence of novelty and change-- a total quiescence--but rather the absence of ordered sequential change. Like molecules rushing about haphazardly in a Brownian movement, a culture bustling with activity and change may nevertheless be static. Indeed, insofar as an active, conscious search for new techniques, new forms and materials, and new modes of sensibility.....precludes the gradual accumulation of changes capable of producing a trend or a series of connected mutations, it tends to create a steady-state....."

So, Brownian motion. Or the snow on the screen of an old TV; the stasis of continuous, small-scale change. The arguments for Meyer's thesis are drawn from a wide range of disciplines, sources, authors, and cannot be summarized here, but they are cogent and fascinating, and I again encourage those interested enough in the subject to read Meyer for themselves. And Meyer's insight is given more credence by the advent of technology only dimly foreseen in 1967; technology that serves, via instant, global communication, to further particularize and yet homogenize any and all artistic experience.

So what we have today is a greatly fragmented and particularized plethora of audiences for every sort of music, and almost all of those audiences' needs for music of their choice are being swiftly and completely met. There are no gaps between consumers and creators of the myriad musics. But the size of the audience for "traditional" classical music continues to shrink as a percentage of the consumers of music overall. There are reasons beyond this new stasis for postulating whether non-melodious "new" musics will ever engage more than a tiny handful of auditors, some of which are discussed by Meyer--the notion of pleasure in music being the result of the delicate balance between fulfillment of expectation and thwarting of expectation, but that is another discussion.


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## hagridindminor (Nov 5, 2015)

I don't think its true that 'creators' entirely create for themselves. I mean I'd think that almost musicians try to percieve their work in someone elses ear, but that doesn't mean they entirely write for the purpose of pleasing. What I mean is often you might hear music which is repulsive or might not be able to relate but you still understand the musical elements behind it, or simply understand it in general. I think thats what every musician strives for, to play a note and have the listener feel the note exactly the way its intended. The biggest fear I'm sure even mozart or beethoven had would be to be playing notes which come off differently than the way it was intended.


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## Guest (Nov 7, 2015)

some guy said:


> "a sharp acceleration of the trend starting around 1910" is totally made up. And for why? Retroactively, to fit the idea (Pleasants' mid-fifties book, anyone?) that Schoenberg's and Stravinsky's modernistic explorations were responsible for turning audiences away from classical music.
> 
> On the face of it, that's a pretty absurd claim, since no one would stop listening to Schumann because of the addition of Webern.


They might (though we have to think about who "they" are). I understand the point you're making - that if you don't like Stravinsky, you get 'turned away' from Stravinsky, not from the Schumann you already know and love, and that makes sense to me. However there's more to this than meets the eye.

First, it might be claimed that it is not the Schumann listeners that are turned away from Schumann, but anyone who decides that they won't go to a concert because Stravinsky is on the programme, even if Schumann is as well.

Second, it might be argued that individual listeners' habits do change as a result of something deemed to be unpleasant arriving on the scene. I began to reject prog as I began to embrace the punk/new wave in the late 70s that I first hated (and I can't believe I am a unique example of such rejection). To suggest that the classical audience is any different needs a separate analysis that it is in some way uniquely loyal to what it loves.

But that highlights the third problem: the analysis of 'audience' that it treats us all as a single, fickle-like-the-sea mass. It's so much easier to determine trends and make grand claims if we're treated that way, even if we occasionally divide in our mass opinions into the lovers and the haters of X. But the listeners who pile into symphony hall to listen to Xenakis are not the same demographic as those running in the opposite direction.

Lastly, I would add that it is not only the social drive of music that impacts on what music this audience accepts and that audience rejects, but at certain times, the political too. I've no evidence that I can reference for this, but the polemic that infects cultural debate at times becomes more visible in the population generally . My earlier example of the rise of punk (in the UK at least) qualifies; and I suspect that the political milieu of the 30s to the 50s - rise of fascism, fear of communism, rise of mass media, decline of empire and church etc etc - inevitably impacted on artists and their work and, consequently, their followers' attitudes. So Boulez and Cage become associated among traditionalists with the decline of civilisation as we know it, even without having to actually listen to the music. (I've just encapsulated in 40 words what would actually take a book to properly hypothesise, but I hope there's a recognisable germ in there.)


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

some guy said:


> Anyone who has read criticisms of modern music has noticed that the criticisms from 1815 don't look all that much different from the criticisms of 2015. Two hundred years of the same half dozen or so slams of contemporary music--surely it's not too difficult to see that if Chopin or Bizet can be criticized in the same tone if not the almost the identical language as criticisms of Boulez or Xenakis--and they can be and are--then it's not the music that's generating the criticism. In no regard do Chopin and Xenakis resemble each other--except in producing frequencies that vibrate eardrums. But the criticisms of them sound very similar--difficult, alienating, not music, and easy to reject because it's not really music but random noise.


I agree that contemporary music is new and different and has often caused people to react negatively. But I find it more interesting that criticisms in 2015 actually can look very different from earlier ones in the sense we have been discussing (or at least I have). Did criticisms in 1900 accuse Beethoven or Schubert of destroying classical music? Did they rail against Mendelssohn for writing garbage that isn't music?

There really is something new and different about some of today's attitudes towards old modern music. To me it does not appear to be the same attitudes that we've seen for centuries but rather a new and unfortunate view among many classical listeners. At some level I understand the feeling because I experienced the shock and distaste myself, but I don't fully understand exactly what changed or why. I find it truly fascinating and very much not business as usual.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Vaneyes said:


> Yes, we recall the riot of '13. Not sure when/where "Music of the Devil" originated, but I've always enjoyed that term.


I think you'll find it originated with the advent of jazz which was played by black musicians. The racist lobby in America coined the phrase.


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## Fugue Meister (Jul 5, 2014)

I believe a large part of why creators create is to somehow leave a piece of themselves behind for others to share somehow. Especially if an artist is or becomes hugely popular (like the Beethoven's and Shakespeare's of the world), it's possible to achieve a sort of immortality in that, what you created lives on in the minds of others so it stays in the present (and in this, people become interested in the creator of the art so they learn or study more about the artist {or in other words worship at the alter of said artist}). 

I think anyone who makes art know's this and even if it isn't a primary motivation it certainly is there and to some extent does shape how an artist makes art or how they think about how they make art. The idea that art is a way for man to be immortal.


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## Skilmarilion (Apr 6, 2013)

I don't see how we can generalise about why creators create. Each creator is different from another, creating in different circumstances and thus with different intentions. There is "art for art's sake", and often not, such as art created primarily for financial incentives. And there are all kinds of other possibilities. 

Regarding the lure of $, Philip Glass has been noted as saying that he withheld composing his Double Concerto (for Violin, Cello and Orchestra) until he had come across someone who was willing to commission it, since in his own words: "I like to get paid for what I do".


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

mmsbls said:


> I agree that contemporary music is new and different and has often caused people to react negatively. But I find it more interesting that criticisms in 2015 actually can look very different from earlier ones in the sense we have been discussing (or at least I have). Did criticisms in 1900 accuse Beethoven or Schubert of destroying classical music? Did they rail against Mendelssohn for writing garbage that isn't music?
> 
> There really is something new and different about some of today's attitudes towards old modern music. To me it does not appear to be the same attitudes that we've seen for centuries but rather a new and unfortunate view among many classical listeners. At some level I understand the feeling because I experienced the shock and distaste myself, but I don't fully understand exactly what changed or why. I find it truly fascinating and very much not business as usual.


To me, one significant point is that very similar things happened in other arts as well. The eras of Debussy and Schoenberg and Cage were also the eras of the Impressionists and Surrealists and Dada and Pop Art, of Bauhaus and Art Deco and brutalism, of Joyce and Eliot and Becket and the Beats.

Whatever happened or might have happened between "audiences" and "artists" is not limited to the realm of compositions for performance in concert halls.


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## Guest (Nov 7, 2015)

Skilmarilion said:


> I don't see how we can generalise why creators create.


I tried to avoid generalizing by sticking pretty closely to what goes on inside myself when I'm making something. And what I recall, when I think about it, about my own processes has, as I've stated before very little to do with me. It's all about the materials. Sure, I have my own, special, idiosyncratic tastes and predilections which determine which materials I choose and how I chose to work with them. But that's not what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about the materials, about words or syntax or pigments or shutter speeds, whatever. I'm thinking about shapes and balance and tension.

I also don't think it's much of a stretch to imagine that even the most pandering hack of a commercial artist probably gets caught up in the pleasure of working the materials, too. If he didn't, he'd probably not be all that successful as a pandering commercial hack, even. He'd simply be a failure.

Regardless, my intent was to see if thinking about what it is that creators do, about what sort of thing creation is, would increase understanding about the logic and inevitability of modern art and modern artists, who despite how they're often depicted are just doing what creators have always done, deriving pleasure from making something and then, possibly, deriving a different pleasure from seeing their creations please other people.



mmsbls said:


> Did criticisms in 1900 accuse Beethoven or Schubert of destroying classical music?


No, of course not. That was Tchaikovsky and Wagner and Mahler who were doing that. In 1900, anyway. Beethoven and Schubert were destroying music much earlier than that.



mmsbls said:


> Did they rail against Mendelssohn for writing garbage that isn't music?


Not against Mendelssohn, no. That was for Chopin and Bizet.



mmsbls said:


> There really is something new and different about some of today's attitudes towards old modern music.


It would be more helpful if you would have detailed what, exactly is new and different, but in the absence of that, I'm still going to go ahead and say that no, there really isn't anything new or different. The music is radically different. The criticisms are still being cut from the same old piece of cloth. And that's because, as I tried to explain, the reactions to modern music are not really reactions. They are self-generated and self-perpetuating attitudes that get triggered by this or that piece. It looks like they're reactions to this or that piece. But if "reactions" to Cage or Boulez are by and large the same as "reactions" to Chopin or Bizet, then I can only conclude that looks are deceptive.

Yes, of course you remember your own bewilderment and your own sense of distaste and rejection. But I think you are mistaken in thinking that that was qualitatively different from the bewilderment and distaste of some other people in the past to the crude harmonies and nonsensical modulations of Chopin. You are also forgetting what you and I have also talked about before, that I never went through a phase of bewilderment and distaste. Going through that phase, in other words, is neither universal nor necessary. I came at all music, from Haydn to Hodgkinson, from a stance of relative isolation. I had, in other words, no idea--conscious or unconscious either one--that certain things were universally distasteful and had to be struggled with before being liked, if they could ever really be liked. No, I just liked them, that's all. It was only when I tried to share my discoveries with others, that I was ever aware that any of what I liked could be not only disliked but excoriated.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

some guy said:


> No, of course not. That was Tchaikovsky and Wagner and Mahler who were doing that. In 1900, anyway. *Beethoven and Schubert were destroying music much earlier than that.
> *


Well if you can make such a statement you are obviously beyond the realms of reasonable argument!


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## Guest (Nov 7, 2015)

You realize, don't you, that I'm not giving _my_ opinions about Beethoven and Schubert, right? Just reporting on other people's opinions and when those opinions would have been given. There were some pretty harsh negative opinions still being made about Beethoven in the 1870s. By 1900, however, it was pretty much smooth sailing for the German kid's reputation.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

some guy said:


> I think the real crux of the matter is not whether or not there's a gap. If there weren't a gap, it would have to be invented to support the made-up story that modern music turned audiences away, that modern composers alienated their audiences. The real issue is not whether but why.


This is the source of the problem you're having.

The question I'm asking is whether. Once we answer that question (the answer is yes), we can turn to why. I agree with you that a lot of people are wrong about why. What I don't understand is the impulse to deny facts because some people might get the wrong idea from them. They are what they are.


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## Skilmarilion (Apr 6, 2013)

some guy said:


> ...Regardless, my intent was to see if thinking about what it is that creators do, about what sort of thing creation is, would increase understanding about the logic and inevitability of modern art and modern artists, who despite how they're often depicted are just doing what creators have always done, deriving pleasure from making something and then, possibly, deriving a different pleasure from seeing their creations please other people.


Again, difficult to answer such questions with generalising ...

In any case, artistic creation kind of strikes me as a means of expression. The Mahler quote which is in Mahlerian's signature, conveys this idea quite nicely, that there is something that a creator can say through artistic means that is otherwise not possible to say. But even if Mahler felt this way, it doesn't mean that Handel or Berlioz or Elgar or Messiaen or Carter felt this way. Which again brings about the issue of generalising.

Of course, even if art is a means of expression, creators can treat this means as merely a means to an end, e.g. "pleasing other people", as you put it. Tchaikovsky seems to have been on record as saying that he consciously considered affecting the potential reactions of the audience at various stages in a piece, as he was composing it. But then Gorecki kind of looked at it completely differently: "If I were thinking of my audience and one likes this, one likes that, one likes another thing, I would never know what to write."

So is creation a means of expression that can please people? Is it a means of trying to please people through this means of expression we call art? These might be just two possibilities, out of probably too many ...


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

some guy said:


> On another music forum, Birtwistle's _Night's Black Bird_ generated the most rabid anti-modernist rants I've ever seen. Give it a listen some time, if you've got a spare fifteen minutes.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Unfortunately I can´t hear it but if it sounds like Birthwistle´s other music I wonder what that was to go on a rage about.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Michael, You and I are talking about different things. You are talking about the reaction of listeners to _*contemporary*_ music. We _both_ agree that for centuries people have found new, contemporary music strange and some people find it unpleasant or much worse. I am talking about the reaction of listeners to _*much older*_ music - music 100 years old (i.e. not remotely contemporary).

I asked, "Did criticisms in 1900 accuse Beethoven or Schubert of destroying classical music?", and you replied:



some guy said:


> _No, of course not._ That was Tchaikovsky and Wagner and Mahler who were doing that. In 1900, anyway. Beethoven and Schubert were destroying music much earlier than that.


So you agree that people in 1900 did not accuse 100 year old music of destroying classical music. But some people _do accuse_ 100 year old music of destroying classical music _today_. Today is much different from 1900 in that respect. You went on to say that people in 1900 did react that way to music of contemporary composers (Tchaikovsky and Mahler). And we both agree about that, but I'm not talking about reactions to contemporary music.

I asked, "Did they (people in 1900) rail against Mendelssohn for writing garbage that isn't music?", and you replied:



some guy said:


> Not against Mendelssohn, no. That was for Chopin and Bizet.


But did people _in 1900_ rail against Chopin for writing garbage? They may have when Chopin's music was _contemporary_ but not in 1900.



some guy said:


> It would be more helpful if you would have detailed what, exactly is new and different, but in the absence of that, I'm still going to go ahead and say that no, there really isn't anything new or different.


I have tried to be very explicit that there are two different phenomena. One is people reacting to contemporary music. We both agree that people often find contemporary music "difficult" and unpleasant. The other phenomenon is people reacting to old music (100 year old music) in the same manner people often react to contemporary music. As far as I know, that never happened until very recently (for orchestral music). That is what is new and different. I find it surprising enough that I'd love to better understand it.

Hopefully you can see that we have not been talking about the same phenomenon.


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## Guest (Nov 7, 2015)

Sloe, 

Hahaha, you're right.

And the answer, of course, is "nothing, not a damned thing."


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Sloe said:


> Unfortunately I can´t hear it but if it sounds like Birthwistle´s other music I wonder what that was to go on a rage about.


I don't go into a rage about Birtwistle's music. I just turn it off!


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## Guest (Nov 7, 2015)

Marshall,

You are correct. There is a time lag. And that lag does appear to have grown.

I don't think that there's any more to it than simply an increasing acceptance of an attitude, an attitude, what's more, that has been repeated over and over and over again.

It would be odd if that situation did NOT create a time lag.

People who have managed to listen to Schoenberg's century old music almost uniformly report that it sounds pretty and kind of old-fashioned. People who continue to hear Schoenberg's pretty and old-fashioned music as harsh and anti-musical are able to do so only because they continue, perhaps unconsciously, to interpose the false image of Schoenberg between themselves and the actual sounds. Anyone in 2015 who can hear Schoenberg as chaotic or as unrelieved dissonance is clearly not hearing the actual sounds. It may seem to them that they are. They are not. It's impossible. Too many people from Schoenberg's time to now have heard carefully and obviously structured music which is also beautiful and engaging. 

Now, what is not impossible, I hasten to add before someone else beats me to it, is that at any time any given person could listen to Schoenberg's music and simply not like it. I simply do not like Davidovsky's music, for instance, but not because it exhibits elements that it clearly does not have. I just don't like the elements that everyone would agree are actually there. OK. I lose.

What is impossible is hearing chaos in Schoenberg's music, because chaos is simply not something present in the music. No one studying it for any length of time could fail to notice how tightly it is constructed and how logically its ideas develop through time.

So yeah. The lag is larger. But, again, I don't think that's a function of the music. It's not even a function of any individual listener. It's a function of the attitude. And, as a listener, if you can identify that you have that attitude, and if you can jettison it, then you too will find the same kinds of pleasure in new music that some other people already do. As I've said before, I never had that attitude, so I might be presenting things here as being easier than they actually are. I've never smoked, so I don't know how difficult it is to stop. But I can still say with some confidence that if you do smoke and you can stop, for good, there will be certain consequences, almost all of them good. Same with that pesky attitude. I don't know how hard that is to give up. But I do know that successfully doing so will be all good.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

I don't know... if you take my mom, whenever I'm at home and play anything post-1930, she sometimes wonders out loud why I listen to "weird music" (her words), which presumably means "chaotic, jarring music".

She doesn't know much about music history, and certainly doesn't know what a triad is, much less tonality or atonality, or common-practice vs. non-common-practice. Although she likes Bach and Beethoven. But she doesn't really know enough to even consider a "modernist break".

I have played Schoenberg to a few other close friends and they have enjoyed it. Others thought it was chaotic and weird. Both times, I didn't talk about "atonality" or "non common practice". I just played the music on my laptop while studying or hanging out with them and asked them what they thought of this classical music (I wouldn't use the word modern or atonal).

Hearing absolute chaos in Schoenberg is totally legitimate. Hearing stress and anxiety in Schoenberg (as Marschallin Blair and a few others have reported) is totally legitimate. It doesn't come from a "bad attitude". It comes from taste and personality.

And BTW I do agree that for me, Schoenberg is really beautiful, emotive, and a bit old-fashioned, especially in its treatment of structure. And perhaps that's a more informed opinion. But still, hearing absolute chaos in Schoenberg is totally legitimate. After all, PetrB thought that Bach was un-emotive, mathematical puzzle-ish, emotionally dead counterpoint!


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

I hear some (but nearly all) Schoenberg, and almost all Webern's music as chaotic.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

SeptimalTritone said:


> Hearing absolute chaos in Schoenberg is totally legitimate. Hearing stress and anxiety in Schoenberg (as Marschallin Blair and a few others have reported) is totally legitimate. It doesn't come from a "bad attitude". It comes from taste and personality.


Taste has something to do with it, but not much.

We are not talking about like and dislike here. We are talking about unreceptivity to the point where nothing whatsoever about the music is taken in.

Saying it sounds chaotic or ugly _to you_ is one thing, and of course legitimate.
Saying it _is_ chaotic and ugly and nihilistic and tuneless is another, because there you're just making false statements.

Putting it another way:

Saying that Tchaikovsky sounds chaotic, ugly, and tuneless to you is *equally as valid*, no more and no less, than saying the same thing about Schoenberg.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

SeptimalTritone said:


> I have played Schoenberg to a few other close friends and they have enjoyed it. Others thought it was chaotic and weird.


It is possible to consider music as chaotic and weird and like it.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

Mahlerian said:


> Taste has something to do with it, but not much.
> 
> We are not talking about like and dislike here. We are talking about unreceptivity to the point where nothing whatsoever about the music is taken in.
> 
> ...


Sure, I have thought in my days as a beginner listener that Tchaikovsky was austere, random, unstructured, and actually too experimental. It's a valid reaction. I remember in particular thinking this about his (more complicated) 2nd and 3rd string quartets, and actually my first listen of the 6th symphony. I remember thinking they weren't so melodic.

I remember even thinking the Eroica was too turgid.

I agree that the people who say Schoenberg _is_ chaotic are wrong factually (because it would be making a statement about every possible listener), but I think they really mean to say that it's ugly to them but make the unfortunate error of saying "actually is chaotic". A lot of times people unfortunately say "is" when they really mean "is to me", but everyone makes this error.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

I still don't know why people enjoy thoroughly forceful and violent Beethoven but not Schoenberg (who I think clearly got better skills). But then I remember how stupid, for example, the BBC is, and why people hate Wagner and I start thinking something else.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Richannes Wrahms said:


> I still don't know why people enjoy thoroughly forceful and violent Beethoven but not Schoenberg (who I think clearly got better skills). But then I remember how stupid, for example, the BBC is, and why people hate Wagner and I start thinking something else.


So you are implying that people who don't share your tastes are stupid?


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

some guy said:


> So yeah. The lag is larger. But, again, I don't think that's a function of the music. It's not even a function of any individual listener. It's a function of the attitude.


OK, so you agree with our factual premise here. Now we can move on: why do you think the attitude came about?


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

DavidA said:


> So you are implying that people who don't share your tastes are stupid?


I'm implying people have reasons outside the actual musical content, most of those reasons make no sense or are severely misinformed.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

isorhythm said:


> OK, so you agree with our factual premise here. Now we can move on: why do you think the attitude came about?


I'm inclined to think the attitude has always been there. But the relative significance (for want of a better word) of the people holding that attitude has changed.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

some guy said:


> It seems to me that a lot of discomfort with creators, with living creators, that is, as they're basically the only annoying ones, comes not from what they're making but from what we expect them to make, what we want them to be making. If you think that creators should be thinking of you before they make something, to be thinking of you while they're making whatever they're making, then you're going to have certain very specific antipathies towards creators who don't seem to be following your program.


Why the hell should someone with superior creative intelligence worry about meeting the musical expectations of squares and other lame individuals? We've got plenty of craftsmen and women in Nashville cranking out that garbage. Creators create because they have a natural inclination to do so. And they should be encouraged and supported to do so in any healthy, enlightened society. There's plenty of popular and familiar music available for those who aren't up for the challenge.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Richannes Wrahms said:


> I'm implying people have reasons outside the actual musical content, most of those reasons make no sense or are severely misinformed.


Oh, because they don't agree with you?


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

I hold no truths. If they want to believe certain composers produced arhythmic cacophony in a prophetic vision of the horrors of the great wars, the decadent breakdown of society and later made up a system that is like writing with every letter of the alphabet without repeating and worked out everything in mathematical formulas only the erudite can appreciate despite non of that being true, let them believe that before they have a chance to hear a performance of quality. Let them believe that criticising the actual content of Beethoven is, in contrast, an unforgivable sin. Further, let them think any kind of formal speech or technical reference, not even a proper analysis, is suspicious snobbery that would take decades to decode, always means nothing... Etc and that only that which arrest their feelings at first hearing is good music.

I got bored of writing this


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

Richannes Wrahms said:


> I hold no truths. If they want to believe certain composers produced arhythmic cacophony in a prophetic vision of the horrors of the great wars, the decadent breakdown of society and later made up a system that is like writing with every letter of the alphabet without repeating and worked out everything in mathematical formulas only the erudite can appreciate despite non of that being true, let them believe that before they have a chance to hear a performance of quality. Let them believe that criticising the actual content of Beethoven is, in contrast, an unforgivable sin. Further, let them think any kind of formal speech or technical reference, not even a proper analysis, is suspicious snobbery that would take decades to decode, always means nothing... Etc and that only that which arrest their feelings at first hearing is good music.
> 
> I got bored of writing this


I agree with you.

However, remember that you've told me you don't like Luc Ferrari et. al. because "nothing is happening" and "I could listen to the birds and wind and human chatter outside and it would be indistinguishable", which are relatively shallow responses that display only a superficial understanding of the content, and totally don't agree with books written about musique concrete etc.

Everyone has things they don't understand due to shallow reasons like "Schoenberg didn't care about the sound", "Ferrari is no different from listening to the rain", "Math is a logical activity, not a creative activity"...


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

When people point out that criticisms of contemporary music sound much the same as criticisms offered when century-old, or two- or three-century-old music was contemporary, no one ever remarks that this is largely a function of the limited vocabulary with which people, especially non-musicians, can criticize music they don't like, or can't grasp. What _else_ is there to say except that it's formless, that it lacks melody, or that it's ugly or sounds like noise? These are emotional reactions to something nonverbal, reactions seeking verbal articulation. They are not, or are generally not, aesthetic judgments, and we can't read too much into them. I suppose I had similar thoughts (fledgling thoughts, as I was quite young) about _Le Sacre du Printemps_ and the "Liebestod" from _Tristan_ when I first heard them, but until I understood the music better there was hardly a more accurate or meaningful vocabulary available to me.

That some people said _Carmen_ lacked melody and was "Wagnerian" tells us nothing whatever except that some people are unperceptive and musically uninformed. That _Carmen_ very quickly became the most popular opera in the world after not making an initial hit tells us much more, but the seekers after historical precedent would rather we not mention that.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

SeptimalTritone said:


> I agree with you.
> 
> However, remember that you've told me you don't like Luc Ferrari et. al. because "nothing is happening" and "I could listen to the birds and wind and human chatter outside and it would be indistinguishable", which are relatively shallow responses that display only a superficial understanding of the content, and totally don't agree with books written about musique concrete etc.
> 
> Everyone has things they don't understand due to shallow reasons like "Schoenberg didn't care about the sound", "Ferrari is no different from listening to the rain", "Math is a logical activity, not a creative activity"...


You know I have more fundamental criticisms of musique concrete, specially if sold as classical.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

Richannes Wrahms said:


> You know I have more fundamental criticisms of musique concrete, specially if sold as classical.


This will become too off topic, but...

If you look at the similarities in style in Varese's Poeme Electronique and Nocturnal, or the seamless electronic interpolations of Deserts... or Xenakis's similar mindset of gradually changing walls of sound in both his orchestral works (for example, Kraanerg) and electronic works (for example, Persepolis)... or Stockhausen, Lachenmann, Dumitrescu, etc.

It would be a mistake to view it as separate from classical.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Would you call Takemitsu's film music classical? It's still Takemitsu... (I would not.)


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

Richannes Wrahms said:


> Would you call Takemitsu's film music classical? It's still Takemitsu... (I would not.)


Right.

But the similarities I've described are not superficial gestures with a Varese signature but similar ways in organizing their entire pieces at both small scale and large scale.

Anyways, the point is that we really should stop trying to "police" people for saying "is" rather than "is to me", or "Schoenberg didn't care about the sound" rather than "I don't like Schoenberg's sound". Does such policing really educate anyone or help anyone enjoy music more? Has it ever been of help? When I was a beginner, it would fill me with feelings of fear of being stupid... And also, we should also not be so critical of people's shallow reactions to Schoenberg when we have things we don't understand about, say, late 20th or 21st century avant garde.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Schoenberg is old!


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Richannes Wrahms said:


> I hold no truths. If they want to believe certain composers produced arhythmic cacophony in a prophetic vision of the horrors of the great wars, the decadent breakdown of society and later made up a system that is like writing with every letter of the alphabet without repeating and worked out everything in mathematical formulas only the erudite can appreciate despite non of that being true, let them believe that before they have a chance to hear a performance of quality. Let them believe that criticising the actual content of Beethoven is, in contrast, an unforgivable sin. Further, let them think any kind of formal speech or technical reference, not even a proper analysis, is suspicious snobbery that would take decades to decode, always means nothing... Etc and that only that which arrest their feelings at first hearing is good music.
> 
> I got bored of writing this


The whole tone of your posts comes across to me at least that your tastes are right and everyne else's are wrong if they disagree. Sorry ur that's how it comes across,


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

The whole tone is a beautiful interval.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

The discussion about the boundaries or definition of classical music reminds me of one reason some creators create: because they find those boundaries regrettable. I firmly believe that if we could find anything that is objectively, certainly true with regards to boundaries between genres of art, a thousand musicians and artists of all sorts would immediate begin striving to violate those boundaries, and of course they would succeed.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

SeptimalTritone said:


> we should also not be so critical of people's shallow reactions to ....


Why?

I respect and value well-informed opinion (even if I disagree with it). The corollary is that I am critical of 'shallow reactions'


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

SeptimalTritone said:


> Everyone has things they don't understand due to shallow reasons like "Schoenberg didn't care about the sound", "Ferrari is no different from listening to the rain", "Math is a logical activity, not a creative activity"...


I agree however to say Schönberg didn´t care about the sound is just stupid to say since he was a composer and it says it self that he did care about the sound. Schönberg´s music sounds ugly (to me) is a better way to say it. Then it is up to everyone to agree or not agree.


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## Guest (Nov 9, 2015)

"Ferrari is no different from listening to the rain."

You know, if I had known this 35 years ago, I could have saved a bunch of money. Not just the CDs, either, but travel to Berkeley and to Linz for live shows. Airfare and hotels really add up.

Course, I must say I'm glad to have both, both Ferrari and the rain. I can honestly say I wouldn't want to be without either. Listening to electroacoustic music that uses thunder sounds during a thunder storm is pretty fun. Wait? Was that from my speakers or from outside?

Doesn't matter.:lol:


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

Back to the topic, what do you think, Someguy, of this sentence on Britten?

Britten defined his mission as a composer in very simple terms: composers should aim at "pleasing people today as seriously as we can".

(from Wiki, citing Michael Oliver, "Benjamin Britten", 1996, London.)


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

some guy said:


> "Ferrari is no different from listening to the rain."
> 
> You know, if I had known this 35 years ago, I could have saved a bunch of money. Not just the CDs, either, but travel to Berkeley and to Linz for live shows. Airfare and hotels really add up.
> 
> ...


I know what you're saying. I've had the experience where after listening to Merzbow I've found a lot of beauty in everyday sound. I once listened to Merzbow until 6am, then went to bed and as I heard the birds chirping, the cars driving, the bikers biking, and the lawnmowers whirring it felt like a deep sonic painting.

However, you can't fault most of us for vastly preferring the (relatively speaking) egoic bombastic Mozart, where there's like a chord change, cadence, or rhythymic/texture change like every half second. I'm a freaking bored internet addict who absolutely needs a modulation to the dominant after no more than a minute of music or else I will get SO BORED!

I'm serious: most of us don't have the meditative patience to listen to Merzbow (much less Feldman) and sink into its slowly evolving world of non-syntactical sound. Most of us need our whiny existential angst displayed heart on sleeve i.e. our common practice or early 20th century music. So forgive us for not being up to the task.  It's seriously awesome you can enjoy listening to Ferrari, and listening to the rain, wind, trains, and airplanes. I enjoy this sort of thing from time to time also when I'm in a more meditative state. But remember that the typical listener on TalkClassical (or the typical orchestral/instrumental sort of person) would tend _not_ to like this sort of music. Keep this in mind. Most of us need our quickly changing chords and dramatic anthropomorphic narratives and singing melodies (aside: Schoenberg has all of these, and yes, it is really sad there is prejudice against him, but again, people have their right to not like Schoenberg even if it's due to prejudice, as with Ferrari).


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

SeptimalTritone said:


> I know what you're saying. I've had the experience where after listening to Merzbow I've found a lot of beauty in everyday sound. I once listened to Merzbow until 6am, then went to bed and as I heard the birds chirping, the cars driving, the bikers biking, and the lawnmowers whirring it felt like a deep sonic painting.
> 
> However, you can't fault most of us for vastly preferring the (relatively speaking) egoic bombastic Mozart, where there's like a chord change, cadence, or rhythymic/texture change like every half second. I'm a freaking bored internet addict who absolutely needs a modulation to the dominant after no more than a minute of music or else I will get SO BORED!
> 
> I'm serious: most of us don't have the meditative patience to listen to Merzbow (much less Feldman) and sink into its slowly evolving world of non-syntactical sound. Most of us need our whiny existential angst displayed heart on sleeve i.e. our common practice or early 20th century music. So forgive us for not being up to the task.  It's seriously awesome you can enjoy listening to Ferrari, and listening to the rain, wind, trains, and airplanes. I enjoy this sort of thing from time to time also when I'm in a more meditative state. But remember that the typical listener on TalkClassical (or the typical orchestral/instrumental sort of person) would tend _not_ to like this sort of music. Keep this in mind. Most of us need our quickly changing chords and dramatic anthropomorphic narratives and singing melodies (aside: Schoenberg has all of these, and yes, it is really sad there is prejudice against him, but again, people have their right to not like Schoenberg even if it's due to prejudice, as with Ferrari).


I'm sure this post is more about you than anything else, but to the extent that it generalizes about "most of us" it surprises me. You speak of the widespread preference for music consisting of syntactically arranged notes - as opposed to loosely structured, or unstructured, sequences or collages of sounds - as if it were some sort of regrettable human foible. I think it's simply a recognition of what makes music different from inhuman nature. Nature, after all, gives us an endless and ubiquitous collage of sounds, alone and in combination, which we can listen to, enjoy, and appreciate whenever and however we will. But nature speaks only _to_ us, not _for_ us. That's what music is for: somewhere in the depths of time humans figured out that arranging tones syntactically enabled them to say all sorts of things about existing as a thinking, feeling creature that nature's sounds couldn't say. This seems no cause for regret or reproach, and it's explanation enough for the thrill and love those syntactically organized tones inspire.

It isn't the threat of boredom, for me, but the pleasure of hearing and feeling, through concentrated representation, the varied energies of living as a person, that makes me want that next modulation or melodic sequence. And that applies to the slowly evolving and repetitive movements of Feldman - surely they give us an aspect of the experience of being human - as well as to the rapid-fire structural play of Haydn or the roiling chromatics of Wagner.

Then again, I'll bet you're showing off your talent for speaking with your tongue in your cheek.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> I'm sure this post is more about you than anything else, but to the extent that it generalizes about "most of us" it surprises me. You speak of the widespread preference for music consisting of syntactically arranged notes - as opposed to loosely structured, or unstructured, sequences or collages of sounds - as if it were some sort of regrettable human foible. I think it's simply a recognition of what makes music different from inhuman nature. Nature, after all, gives us an endless and ubiquitous collage of sounds, alone and in combination, which we can listen to, enjoy, and appreciate whenever and however we will. But nature speaks only _to_ us, not _for_ us. That's what music is for: somewhere in the depths of time humans figured out that arranging tones syntactically enabled them to say all sorts of things about existing as a thinking, feeling creature that nature's sounds couldn't say. This seems no cause for regret or reproach, and it's explanation enough for the thrill and love those syntactically organized tones inspire.
> 
> It isn't the threat of boredom, for me, but the pleasure of hearing and feeling, through concentrated representation, the varied energies of living as a person, that makes me want that next modulation or melodic sequence. And that applies to the slowly evolving and repetitive movements of Feldman - surely they give us an aspect of the experience of being human - as well as to the rapid-fire structural play of Haydn or the roiling chromatics of Wagner.
> 
> Then again, I'll bet you're showing off your talent for speaking with your tongue in your cheek.


Very well said.

I do think that musique concrete (in my opinion) is sort of on the border between speaking for us and to us. There's a human element of ego still in musique concrete that I think is a necessary and good part of it. It's, of course, much less of a "human speaking" than common practice or even 1900-1950 music. That's all I was trying to say: that the much lessened human/speaking/ego/drama/representation/syntax/etc. in post-1970 avant garde electronic makes it a challenge for most classical music audiences, and for some, makes it even not that interesting to even bother pursuing.

I pursue it a small amount, but I really can see traditional classical audiences not like it. Then, going back to some guy's original post on this thread, no wonder audiences complain about these avant-garde composers, because they just don't care about this sort of music in the first place! And that's fine.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

SeptimalTritone said:


> Very well said.
> 
> I do think that musique concrete (in my opinion) is sort of on the border between speaking for us and to us. There's a human element of ego still in musique concrete that I think is a necessary and good part of it. It's, of course, much less of a "human speaking" than common practice or even 1900-1950 music. That's all I was trying to say: that the much lessened human/speaking/ego/drama/representation/syntax/etc. in post-1970 avant garde electronic makes it a challenge for most classical music audiences, and for some, makes it even not that interesting to even bother pursuing.
> 
> I pursue it a small amount, but I really can see traditional classical audiences not like it. Then, going back to some guy's original post on this thread, no wonder audiences complain about these avant-garde composers, because they just don't care about this sort of music in the first place! And that's fine.


There's also the presence of electricity itself, which the "classical music world" has historically had a pretty big problem adapting to. It's interesting to reflect that the history of musical technology, the history of European knowledge of other musical traditions, and the history of classical music were all strongly tied together until the advent of electric sound. Everything could be incorporated into the tradition... until electricity. Wonderful to contemplate. Of course there have always been people working with electric media - electric instruments, tape, etc. - but it has never been accepted as ordinary "classical" music.

That might, finally, be breaking down _just now_. We'll see.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

science said:


> There's also the presence of electricity itself, which the "classical music world" has historically had a pretty big problem adapting to. It's interesting to reflect that the history of musical technology, the history of European knowledge of other musical traditions, and the history of classical music were all strongly tied together until the advent of electric sound. Everything could be incorporated into the tradition... until electricity. Wonderful to contemplate. Of course there have always been people working with electric media - electric instruments, tape, etc. - but it has never been accepted as ordinary "classical" music.
> 
> That might, finally, be breaking down _just now_. We'll see.


Why that hesitancy to accept electronic sounds into the "tradition"? Is it just tradition? Is it because electronic sounds are less "personal" in the way they're articulated than acoustically produced sounds? Has it required less "personal" styles of music to accommodate that difference?


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## Guest (Nov 11, 2015)

SeptimalTritone said:


> There's a *human *element of ego still in musique concrete that I think is a necessary and good part of it. It's, of course, much less of a "*human *speaking" than common practice or even 1900-1950 music. That's all I was trying to say: that the much lessened *human*/speaking/ego/drama/representation/syntax/etc. in post-1970 avant garde electronic makes it a challenge for most classical music audiences, and for some, makes it even not that interesting to even bother pursuing


I'm not sure I get this. Before I bark up the wrong tree, can I just check that what you're saying is that some music is 'more human' and some less?


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## Guest (Nov 11, 2015)

Stavrogin said:


> Back to the topic, what do you think, Someguy, of this sentence on Britten?
> 
> Britten defined his mission as a composer in very simple terms: composers should aim at "pleasing people today as seriously as we can".
> 
> (from Wiki, citing Michael Oliver, "Benjamin Britten", 1996, London.)


As you probably already know, I think Britten was mistaken in this.



SeptimalTritone said:


> I'm serious: most of us don't have the meditative patience to listen to Merzbow (much less Feldman) and sink into its slowly evolving world of non-syntactical sound.


I will only speak for myself. I listen to Merzbow and Feldman because I like what I hear. I didn't like either of them at first. I didn't like Scotch at first, either. But I also like exploring and discovering new beauties.



SeptimalTritone said:


> So forgive us for not being up to the task.  It's seriously awesome you can enjoy listening to Ferrari, and listening to the rain, wind, trains, and airplanes. I enjoy this sort of thing from time to time also when I'm in a more meditative state. But remember that the typical listener on TalkClassical (or the typical orchestral/instrumental sort of person) would tend _not_ to like this sort of music. Keep this in mind.


Why? That is, why are you reminding me of something that is shoved in my face every time I go online? And also, for what reason would I keep this in mind if it weren't already in there? What purpose would it serve? Otherwise, two things: it does not take any state of any kind, meditative or not, for me to listen to what I enjoy. Or even to explore what I don't like yet. It takes a desire to actively engage with life, with all of it. And two, and the one that apparently cannot be emphasized too much, there is nothing to forgive about tastes. (There are no tasks.) Tastes are whatever they are.

You might need forgiveness for bad-mouthing things you don't like or don't understand. You might need forgiveness for asking for forgiveness in inappropriate contexts. But forgiveness for not liking Merzbow or Feldman? Nah. Nothing to forgive there.



SeptimalTritone said:


> people have their right to not like Schoenberg even if it's due to prejudice, as with Ferrari).


Yes to the not liking, no to the prejudice. No one has a right to prejudice. Prejudice is simply wrong.



Woodduck said:


> [SeptimalTritone speaks] of the widespread preference for music consisting of syntactically arranged notes - as opposed to loosely structured, or unstructured, sequences or collages of sounds - as if it were some sort of regrettable human foible. I think it's simply a recognition of what makes music different from inhuman nature.


Humans can be viewed as part of nature, or nature can be viewed as separate from humans. But whichever view you favor, it is inarguable (well, there may be some who would argue it) that whatever we know and, consequently, whatever we think about nature has come to us through our human senses and has been processed by our human minds.



SeptimalTritone said:


> I do think that musique concrete (in my opinion) is sort of on the border between speaking for us and to us. There's a human element of ego still in musique concrete that I think is a necessary and good part of it. It's, of course, much less of a "human speaking" than common practice or even 1900-1950 music.


This view--or rather these views--is puzzling to me. For one, I don't find the speaking metaphor useful. In any way. Hence the distinction between speaking for and speaking to is also useless. I certainly don't follow that nature speaks to us but not for us, or that syntactical music speaks for us. Go back to my previous utterance )): everything we know has come to us through our human senses and has been processed by our human minds. Everything. The end.

Otherwise, musique concrete, which is a particular type of electroacoustic music, is no more or less human than a symphony by Mozart. It is a construction by a human. The real difference between musiqe concrete and a symphony by Mozart is that the former is not filtered through performers. It is the direct voice of the composer, if you like, speaking directly, which no intermediary. Hmmm. So I found a use for that "speaking" metaphor. Still not a big fan. But if it makes the point....



SeptimalTritone said:


> ...much lessened human/speaking/ego/drama/representation/syntax/etc. in post-1970 avant garde electronic makes it a challenge for most classical music audiences, and for some, makes it even not that interesting to even bother pursuing.


Well, if I'm right about the "direct voice" business, and I am, then the human/speaking part of it is actually increased, not lessened.



SeptimalTritone said:


> traditional classical audiences [do] not like it.


And that raises the question--that is, aside from the standard question of who are these people and do they really all think exactly alike?--of why do the opinions of this particular group of people get such privileged status in this conversation? And the corollary, why are the opinions of people who do like it so frequently (so persistently, so ferociously) discounted?

Seems backwards to me.


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

some guy said:


> As you probably already know, I think Britten was mistaken in this.


Wait, Britten was a creator. You think he was mistaken about his own intentions and motivations?


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

^^^
are you suggesting:

Britten said composers should react to what the public want - he must be right

Composer x says composers should do what they want, not what the public want - he/she must be wrong

or .... are you saying we can't disagree with what Britten said about what he thought composers should do simply because he was a 'creator'?


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Thou shalt not hurt others. All the other shoulds are rotten.


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

Headphone Hermit said:


> ^^^
> are you suggesting:
> 
> Britten said composers should react to what the public want - he must be right
> ...


Neither 

I am saying:
"Britten said what his motivations were as a creator. Do you, Someguy, think that he was mistaken about his own motivations? I.e. do you think his motivations were actually the ones you stated in the OP but he just didn't realize?".


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Stavrogin said:


> Neither
> 
> I am saying:
> "Britten said what his motivations were as a creator. Do you, Someguy, think that he was mistaken about his own motivations? I.e. do you think his motivations were actually the ones you stated in the OP but he just didn't realize?".


I hope Britten and every other composer created or creates what they think is good and think other people too likes it everything else would be sad.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

some guy said:


> And that raises the question--that is, aside from the standard question of who are these people and do they really all think exactly alike?--of why do the opinions of this particular group of people [the pre-1950 symphonic music fans] get such privileged status in this conversation? And the corollary, why are the opinions of people who do like it so frequently (so persistently, so ferociously) discounted?
> 
> Seems backwards to me.


Because you often imply that the pre-1950 fans _should_ be listening to the 21st century avant-garde. I.e. post 1: we shouldn't be complaining about the 21st century avant-garde for not suiting our initial tastes, we should be listening to it with an open mind and presumably liking it. Didn't you tell me I should be listening to the Merzbow I didn't initially like more and more to see what it had to offer, and then eventually like it?

I'm sorry (heh heh) but it seems that you really want all of us on TC, who are mostly conservative people, to start happily listening to Gibello. Why would you post his videos all the time? It seems as if you think our group of people on TC should be listening to it, and therefore liking it, in order to be modern. Why would you bemoan how tastes became more and more conservative over the last few centuries?

And the ego/speaking/human thing was just a metaphor for my experience with modern music. Maybe I should have been more technical and said that modern music doesn't really use hierarchies of chordal dissonance to drive a melodic phrase. And this lack of "traditional" composing makes it really really hard to acclimate to. Its non-traditionalness makes it hard for the conservative base on TC.


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## Guest (Nov 11, 2015)

Gibello's a woman. If you'd watched any of her videos, you'd know that.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

some guy said:


> Gibello's a woman. If you'd watched any of her videos, you'd know that.


Pfft. The video has two dudes with a chick in the middle playing with tops. I went with the 2/3 chance, rather than the 1/3 chance.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

I have not read the whole thread or even the OP because I'm lazy and opinionated. 

I have always been under the impression that creators create things that they themselves like and understand fully. If they don't like or understand it, what's the chance that anyone else will?


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## Guest (Nov 12, 2015)

SeptimalTritone said:


> Pfft. The video has two dudes with a chick in the middle playing with tops. I went with the 2/3 chance, rather than the 1/3 chance.


Videos, plural, have now turned into "the" video, singular.

OK.

But Emmanuelle is still a girl's name.


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## Gaspard de la Nuit (Oct 20, 2014)

My answer to the title of this thread is basically frustration - maybe this is an old paradigm that will be phased out as human history goes on, but as far as I can tell right now, creative acts happen as a result of not being satisfied with something, and this applies very sweepingly and with little exception.

I once had to read about/ watch part of a film called the Stalker by Tarkovsky, and the central character says something like, "let them have a laugh at their passions, for what we call passion is not some emotional energy, but merely the friction between one's soul and the outside world".


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## Guest (Nov 12, 2015)

Well, I agree, but I would phrase it positively, that is, creative acts happen as a result of perceiving a lack, a deficiency, an absence that needs to be filled. Creation fills a void.

So I think I basically agree with the content of what Gaspard just said but without the negative spin that words like "frustration" and "dissatisfaction" give it.


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

some guy said:


> Well, I agree, but I would phrase it positively, that is, creative acts happen as a result of perceiving a lack, a deficiency, an absence that needs to be filled. Creation fills a void.
> 
> So I think I basically agree with the content of what Gaspard just said but without the negative spin that words like "frustration" and "dissatisfaction" give it.


Sorry to bother you. I had posted a question for you, not sure if you missed it or just dismissed it as irrelevant.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

. .


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## Guest (Nov 12, 2015)

Stavrogin said:


> Sorry to bother you. I had posted a question for you, not sure if you missed it or just dismissed it as irrelevant.


I had already answered one question. The second one, not that much different, I interpreted as being possibly one in a string of questions until you got the answer you wanted--that or until you got an answer that you could use to slam me. I'm not interested in the latter, and I don't think that any answer I could give to any of your questions would satisfy you. Given those conclusions, which of course could be completely mistaken, I just decided to give the whole thing a miss. I disagree with Britten that the aim of composers should be to please people.

I think that if that is seriously taken as a goal that the results will be rather um anomalous. Some people will be pleased, sure, but some people are pleased by Yasunao Tone and by Randy Yau. And some people are pleased with Lady Gaga and with Rihanna. And, of course, many people are not and were not in Britten's time pleased with Britten's music. So did he fail? Well, to the extent that he didn't please everyone, I guess so. But if his goal were to write music as well as he could, then his success would be if someone other than himself liked what he did. And that of course has happened, one or twice.

The aim of any artist should be to do good work. The aim of any serious listener/reader/viewer should be to understand.

Pleasure will inevitably be a byproduct. I just think that putting it as a goal is questionable. And fraught with peril. I also think that a lot of art consumers have decided that understanding is not nearly as much fun as judgment. So now we've got two paradigms that are perilous--artists who have pleasure as a goal and consumers who have judgment as a goal. It's a lose/lose situation, far as I can tell.

Of course every artist wants people to like what he or she has done. That should go without saying. The popular idea that a whole group of composers in the twentieth century decided that they were going to write ugly, tuneless, unlistenable crap and then criticize stupid audiences for being insufferable boors is an idea that matches nothing that has ever happened in the real world. That idea can only seem to be current if one insists that pleasing people should be a goal, not a welcome (and actually, as I believe, inevitable) side effect. A serious artist will be focussed on working the materials. Any artist, serious or not, will want people to like their work.

I think the problem arises only when goals and side effects are mixed up.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Composers create, as evident by *overwhelming* historical evidence, to please their audience - public audience, private audience and scholar/professional audience (think Bach's great didactic works). Those with a smaller mindset of pleasing no one else intentionally but purely as means of self-artistic expression run their own risk of self-artistic demise over time, to which they have every right to choose whether to pursue that path. I do however think, *it is good* that we see a mix of both types of composers here so that listeners can choose.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

some guy said:


> The popular idea that a whole group of composers in the twentieth century decided that they were going to write ugly, tuneless, unlistenable crap and then criticize stupid audiences for being insufferable boors is an idea that matches nothing that has ever happened in the real world.


When I read this, I laughed because of how absurd it sounds - almost something out of Monty Python.



some guy said:


> The aim of any artist should be to do good work. The aim of any serious listener/reader/viewer should be to understand.
> 
> Pleasure will inevitably be a byproduct. I just think that putting it as a goal is questionable.


Understanding and pleasure can be defined in many ways. I wouldn't say I listen to music in order to understand it. My daughter (music student) does, but I do not. At least not in the normal way I view understanding. I do listen to music to gain pleasure. Now, I often listen repeatedly to music that I do not enjoy in order to eventually enjoy it. But I don't feel that I understand the music better when I do eventually enjoy it. I just feel I'm more comfortable with the "language". Maybe you would consider this process understanding, or maybe you would not consider me a serious listener (and I would have no problem with that label).



some guy said:


> I also think that a lot of art consumers have decided that understanding is not nearly as much fun as judgment. So now we've got two paradigms that are perilous--artists who have pleasure as a goal and consumers who have judgment as a goal.


I wonder if anyone could truly be accurately viewed as a consumer who has judgment as a goal. I think it is sometimes a side effect of searching for works to enjoy but not a goal.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

some guy said:


> I disagree with Britten that the aim of composers should be to please people.
> 
> I think that if that is seriously taken as a goal that the results will be rather um anomalous. Some people will be pleased, sure, but some people are pleased by Yasunao Tone and by Randy Yau. And some people are pleased with Lady Gaga and with Rihanna. And, of course, many people are not and were not in Britten's time pleased with Britten's music. So did he fail? Well, to the extent that he didn't please everyone, I guess so. But if his goal were to write music as well as he could, then his success would be if someone other than himself liked what he did. And that of course has happened, one or twice.
> 
> ...


I think you have presented your argument here very well, and I salute you for it. But some questions yet arise. You postulate that the goal of the composer is to do "good work"; to write music "as well as he could". But who decides whether this has occurred? To help us understand your position, can you name a composition that you "know" is "good work" but that you do not like? If there exists such a piece, do you dislike it because you do not understand it, and is that the only legitimate reason to dislike something that is "good work"? Also, do you actually know this disliked piece to be good work, or do you believe it to be so because a large group of your peers or betters think it good?

I certainly can offer no light here myself, other than to conclude that it really isn't any business of either composer or listener to concern themselves overmuch with notions of obligation, but rather to just each stick to his/her trade, and let the marketplace of ideas and tastes sort out the sheep from the goats.


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## Guest (Nov 13, 2015)

I'm not surprised that questions arise. That was a very sketchy precis of a position that probably needs a couple hundred pages to be fully expressed.

In your post, you seem to have shifted what I said to something that I didn't say. I was referring to an action "do good work"; you are referring to things, to works (compositions) that are good. So I can't really address most of your query. I can however answer your first question quite easily, the composer. As for what constitutes "a good work," I have no idea. I know what I like. I can sometimes even make tentative stabs at speculating why I like this or that thing. But then I don't think of my task as a listener as judgment but rather as understanding. Or perhaps "understanding" is the wrong word. Perhaps it's "sympathy" or "perception" or "recognition" or something along those lines. Whatever leads to pleasure. I should add that I think that the goal of a listener is certainly pleasure. 

In a way, a composer's goal is pleasure, too, come to think of it, the pleasure of doing good work.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

some guy said:


> I'm not surprised that questions arise. That was a very sketchy precis of a position that probably needs a couple hundred pages to be fully expressed.
> 
> In your post, you seem to have shifted what I said to something that I didn't say. I was referring to an action "do good work"; you are referring to things, to works (compositions) that are good. So I can't really address most of your query. I can however answer your first question quite easily, the composer. As for what constitutes "a good work," I have no idea. I know what I like. I can sometimes even make tentative stabs at speculating why I like this or that thing. But then I don't think of my task as a listener as judgment but rather as understanding. Or perhaps "understanding" is the wrong word. Perhaps it's "sympathy" or "perception" or "recognition" or something along those lines. Whatever leads to pleasure. I should add that I think that the goal of a listener is certainly pleasure.
> 
> In a way, a composer's goal is pleasure, too, come to think of it, the pleasure of doing good work.


As I absorb your response, I see that I have leapt to the implicit assumption that the result of good work (action) will be good work (result). From this distinction that you draw, we can conclude then that it is possible for the composer to produce work that is not good (result) though his work be good (action); is this not so? You are firm, though, that it is the composer who decides that his work (action) is good. I'll have to think more about this, being a bear of little brain myself. I am glad to see that we can both assert that we have no idea as to what constitutes a good work (result); we can know only whether we like it or not.


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## Guest (Nov 13, 2015)

we winnies need to stick together.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

WOL would like to know whether good work (result) could be produced by not-so-good work (action). Ravel also wonders about this, as he reportedly didn't think much of his _Bolero_. I vaguely recall that he dismissed it as orchestration without music, or similar. It seems to have caught on, however.

I make it a point to re-read WTP and THAPC every couple of years. Such great characters and plots.


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## SimonNZ (Jul 12, 2012)

Strange Magic said:


> WOL would like to know whether good work (result) could be produced by not-so-good work (action). Ravel also wonders about this, as he reportedly didn't think much of his _Bolero_. I vaguely recall that he dismissed it as orchestration without music, or similar. It seems to have caught on, however.
> 
> I make it a point to re-read WTP and THAPC every couple of years. Such great characters and plots.


What are WOL, WTP and THAPC?


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

WOL is how Owl spelled his name in Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corners. These two books by A.A. Milne, plus Now We Are Six, Milne's book of poetry for children of all ages, formed the backbone of my earliest reading. If one tires of Winnie the Pooh, one tires of life. I ain't tired.

The House at Pooh Corners is not to be confused with The House at Pooneil Corners by Jefferson Airplane--that's a whole other subject.


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## Guest (Nov 14, 2015)

Strange Magic said:


> I make it a point to re-read WTP and THAPC every couple of years. Such great characters and plots.


Two of my favorites as well.

Milne also wrote one of my favorite mysteries, _The Red House Mystery._


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

some guy - 

What exactly is it that the listener is supposed to understand? Of what does this understanding consist?

Also, what do you mean by pleasure, exactly? I'm comfortable saying that the "point" of music is pleasure, but I suspect that encompasses much more for me than it does for you.

I'm trying to get a handle on what you're saying but I suspect we might be using words in really different ways, so I want to clear up the confusion.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Isn't music, on one level at least, just entertainment? For many people that is true, and for me music is entertainment as well as something which I study and hope for a degree in and also a profession down the line....but that all comes about from looking at music in different ways. 

Different people are entertained by different things. Some people like to be entertained by classical music which gives them pleasure, as to which music that is I don't think anyone really should question.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> Isn't music, on one level at least, just entertainment? For many people that is true, and for me music is entertainment as well as something which I study and hope for a degree in and also a profession down the line....but that all comes about from looking at music in different ways.
> 
> Different people are entertained by different things. Some people like to be entertained by classical music which gives them pleasure, as to which music that is I don't think anyone really should question.


Maybe music is just entertainment - I don't intend to agree with that but to say that even if it is so: Even entertainment is usually not "just" entertainment. There's always, or almost always, some identity issue involved: what sort of person is entertained by this?


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## Guest (Nov 15, 2015)

isorhythm said:


> some guy -
> 
> What exactly is it that the listener is supposed to understand? Of what does this understanding consist?
> 
> ...


isorhythm, in my last post about this, I finessed the "understanding" idea, substituting other words that point in other directions.

Anyway, for the moment, you first: why do you suspect that your idea of "pleasure" encompasses more than mine?

Also, why do you suspect that we are using words in really different ways? Explain. (I'm starting to suspect that there is really no confusion, though there might be some disagreement. Your answers will confirm or deny that.)


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

I think one of the reasons creators create is because it is fun, an exalted form of play. (Kendall Walton seems to have thought something like this too and he developed a whole theory of art based on this premise. In a book called _Mimesis as Make-Believe_, he argued that "works of art are props in games of make-believe.") Like a child waking up to a really good set of blocks, a composer can look at all of the materials of music and all of the instruments of the orchestra (or all of the sounds that can be synthesized, whatever) and find the impulse to play with them irresistible, saying: I want to build something really cool with this stuff, something so fascinating that I can get lost in it, drawn into a sonic labyrinth that takes on a life of its own and begins to dictate its own rules of construction-an imaginary world that others will want to play in too. And sometimes the composer will find that after coming out the other side, the world looks indefinably different and deeper and more joyous and terrifying. What could be better?


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## Stavrogin (Apr 20, 2014)

some guy said:


> I had already answered one question. The second one, not that much different, I interpreted as being possibly one in a string of questions until you got the answer you wanted--that or until you got an answer that you could use to slam me. I'm not interested in the latter, and I don't think that any answer I could give to any of your questions would satisfy you. Given those conclusions, which of course could be completely mistaken, I just decided to give the whole thing a miss.


Damn, I had missed this gem. 
Well, you were completely wrong and that was definitely unkind of you.
It happens.


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## Rapide (Oct 11, 2011)

Composers compose because that's their chosen vocation. What else?


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

@some guy, a late response....

On reflection I think we may have both different definitions and a substantive disagreement.

What tipped me off to how far apart we are - much further apart than I had realized - was this:



some guy said:


> The aim of any artist should be to do good work. The aim of any serious listener/reader/viewer should be to understand.
> 
> Pleasure will inevitably be a byproduct.
> 
> ...


I see you subsequently posited "sympathy," "perception" or "recognition" instead of "understanding," which I'd missed the first time around, but I'm not sure it makes a difference. It still seems to me that you're talking about some kind of higher-order process happening to which the listener's pleasure is a separate, lower-order response ("side effect"). I don't think it makes sense to make such a distinction; to me the listener's reaction to music can't be parsed into different parts like this. Pleasure _is_ understanding, or whatever other word you choose.

This reminds me of an article I once read by Richard Taruskin (whom as a rule I can't stand) in which he complained that too much contemporary composition spoke either to "the cerebral cortex" or "the autonomic nervous system" but not to the "entire person," or words to that effect. I just don't accept this kind of mind/body split, whatever form it may take.

I think this is also related to how you're able to talk about the composer's pleasure being "the pleasure of doing good work," which sounds very Protestant-Capitalist Work Ethic to me.

But I may have misunderstood you.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> I think one of the reasons creators create is because it is fun, an exalted form of play. (Kendall Walton seems to have thought something like this too and he developed a whole theory of art based on this premise. In a book called _Mimesis as Make-Believe_, he argued that "works of art are props in games of make-believe.") Like a child waking up to a really good set of blocks, a composer can look at all of the materials of music and all of the instruments of the orchestra (or all of the sounds that can be synthesized, whatever) and find the impulse to play with them irresistible, saying: I want to build something really cool with this stuff, something so fascinating that I can get lost in it, drawn into a sonic labyrinth that takes on a life of its own and begins to dictate its own rules of construction-an imaginary world that others will want to play in too. And sometimes the composer will find that after coming out the other side, the world looks indefinably different and deeper and more joyous and terrifying. What could be better?


I like your analogies in this post. Thank you for posting.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

isorhythm said:


> This reminds me of an article I once read by Richard Taruskin (whom as a rule I can't stand) in which he complained that too much contemporary composition spoke either to "the cerebral cortex" or "the autonomic nervous system" but not to the "entire person," or words to that effect. I just don't accept this kind of mind/body split, whatever form it may take.


I think I agree with your critique quite closely. However, I'm not clear on whether you agree with the notion that our reaction to music can be broken down for discussion into components such as those that trigger events in the cerebral cortex or in the autonomic nervous system or in whatever additional zones or areas one might suggest, or whether our reaction should be so discussed. My question stems from your statement that you "just don't accept this kind of mind/body split, whatever form it may take". Are you saying that our reaction to music must be examined only holistically, and cannot or should not be further analyzed? I think that Taruskin may be correct in his diagnosis that much contemporary music does suffer from being too much of one thing or another, but we can only determine this if we subject our reactions to analysis, and look at discrete factors. Then, having analyzed discrete factors, we can return to a holistic overview and make a judgment about our overall reaction to a piece of music, based on the blended results of these discrete analyses.

Sorry if the above is not terribly clear!


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## Stirling (Nov 18, 2015)

Create, let others worry about other things. The is a difference between creating and dreaming about being famous for having created.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

@Strange Magic

I think it's possible to analyze our responses to music but I think we have to be careful, and I think on a deep level the distinctions between "cerebral," "emotional," "visceral" etc responses is illusory and they're all facets of the same thing. The problem is that the experience of hearing music is not really possible to describe in words.


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## Guest (Nov 18, 2015)

isorhythm said:


> I see you subsequently posited "sympathy," "perception" or "recognition" instead of "understanding," which I'd missed the first time around, but I'm not sure it makes a difference. It still seems to me that you're talking about some kind of higher-order process happening to which the listener's pleasure is a separate, lower-order response ("side effect"). I don't think it makes sense to make such a distinction; to me the listener's reaction to music can't be parsed into different parts like this. Pleasure _is_ understanding, or whatever other word you choose.


Yeah, it did seem that you'd missed that. And what I was trying to do was find words that don't imply judgment but acceptance. My point there was simply to differentiate what I see as a too common view (not always stated, but clearly underneath most comments about music) that music is for being judged.

Music is for being enjoyed. And I think I substantially agree with you about pleasure and understanding. Where we differ, I think, is that I see understanding or sympathy or perception or recognition as non-judgmental preconditions for pleasure. The things that make pleasure possible. For us, for listeners, pleasure is indeed a goal. But that's all on us. It requires an attitude and an aesthetic capability. The problem with pleasure being a goal for creators, that is, for making others pleased, is that one doesn't really know others. One can guess and sometimes guess pretty well, but that process is distracting from the proper, that is the accomplishable, goals of creation, which have to do largely if not solely with the materials the artist is working with.



isorhythm said:


> This reminds me of an article I once read by Richard Taruskin (whom as a rule I can't stand) in which he complained that too much contemporary composition spoke either to "the cerebral cortex" or "the autonomic nervous system" but not to the "entire person," or words to that effect. I just don't accept this kind of mind/body split, whatever form it may take.


Well, some of the things that have arisen in the course of this conversation have been philosophically difficult of expression, but this one is simple. Taruskin is simply wrong. It may be in fact true that for Taruskin--and for certain others--that his inability to comprehend, accept, recognize, sympathize with how certain contemporary compositions sound may make it seem to him that his entire person is not being addressed. But I don't have that feeling at all. And never have. Contemporary music has always engaged with my entire person. Sometimes I feel that earlier music slights certain aspects of my being, but I'd never think to complain about it. What I would think is that maybe I should be listening to something else.

Yesterday, for example, I felt rather let down by Fibich's _Twilight._ The same motifs passed around with little or no change. So I went next to his second symphony. Much better! But then I turned to Noetinger and eRikm's _What a Wonderful World_ and that was completely satisfying, in every way. But that's just me. I would never occur to me to complain the Fibich isn't a good composer. What he has to offer is not ever going to seem all that interesting to me. But what he has to offer is very possibly going to seem extremely interesting to other people. And those people might find Noetinger leaves them completely cold. Fine. The problem arises only when "Noetinger leaves me cold" transmutes into "Noetinger speaks only to 'the' cerebral cortex." Or when "Fibich doesn't seem interesting to me" transmutes into "Fibich is a boring, second-rate hack." In both cases, the second comment is patently wrong and wrong-headed. And all one has to do is find one exception, one person who doesn't hear it like that, to recognize the wrongness.

Otherwise, what I mean by "the pleasure of doing good work" is pretty much what I think Edward is referring to by "exalted play." Work is pleasure. If it's not pleasurable, then something has gone hideously wrong. I think the Protestant-Capitalist work ethic is hideously wrong.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

isorhythm said:


> @Strange Magic
> 
> I think it's possible to analyze our responses to music but I think we have to be careful, and I think on a deep level the distinctions between "cerebral," "emotional," "visceral" etc responses is illusory and they're all facets of the same thing. The problem is that the experience of hearing music is not really possible to describe in words.


That is a nice way of putting it. I agree.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

some guy said:


> Contemporary music has always engaged with my entire person. Sometimes I feel that earlier music slights certain aspects of my being, but I'd never think to complain about it. What I would think is that maybe I should be listening to something else.
> 
> Yesterday, for example, I felt rather let down by Fibich's Twilight. The same motifs passed around with little or no change. So I went next to his second symphony. Much better! But then I turned to Noetinger and eRikm's What a Wonderful World and that was completely satisfying, in every way.


But this is all judgment! The fact that you refrain from using certain words and phrases doesn't make it not judgment.

It's worth noting that your stated "no judgment" position puts you at odds with virtually all composers, performers and writers on music, everywhere, all the time. Doesn't that make you question it a little? An attitude of judgment is not the right one to have when encountering a new piece for the first time, I agree. But eventually judgment becomes inevitable and there's nothing wrong with that.


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## Guest (Nov 18, 2015)

Yes, you have correctly identified certain aspects of judgment in my post.

What you have missed, however, in your pleasure )) at catching me out, is what my attitude is towards the judgments I indulge in or the actions that I take, or don't take, on the basis of them.

As for being at odds, no, generally that condition would not worry me. Besides, I don't know that virtually all composers, performers, and writers on music are at odds with me. I've talked to and read texts by one or two from each of these categories who similarly do not find that the attitude of judgment is necessary or even desirable.

In any event, I think that you are perhaps trying too hard to work "judgment" as a fairly neutral and inevitable thing in order to make the apparently more important point that my idea is wrong.

Well, while I don't think it impossible to define judgment as either neutral or inevitable, that's not how I've been using it. I've been using the idea of judgment as something closer to the original, literal meaning of the metaphor. That is, I've been focussing on the attitude of superiority that "judgment" implies, the setting up of oneself in an artistic circumstance as a judge with the creators of the artifacts or with the artifacts themselves as malefactors at worst or as needing validation from one's superior self at best. 

All I'm trying to promote is the idea that there are other ways of engaging with the arts and that those other ways might turn out to be more productive of sympathy and understanding and hence of more enjoyment than the judgmental way, which could easily, and frequently does, produce only antipathy and opprobrium.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

@isorhythm et al: I see no harm, and the possibility of enlightenment, in attempting to analyze--tease out--various factors at play in our responses to music. Even if they are seen as facets of the same thing, they are not illusory, and an attempt can be made to isolate and identify and study and understand them. I sense here a fear that somehow knowing too much about how and why we enjoy our several musics will somehow lift the veil, expose the secret, destroy the magic: "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" Scientists are often accused of stripping away a sense of wonder and awe in the face of natural phenomena, but always the answer from articulate scientists is that their aesthetic appreciation of such phenomena is enhanced and augmented by knowing (or thinking they know) how the machine works. I think the same holds true for art and music--while it may be that within our brains and bodies the various individual factors become quite intertwined to result in a final "opinion" about a work, it is still perfectly valid, "safe", and perhaps even enhances our ability to enjoy music if we learn as much as we can about how it works.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

@some guy

I agree that people can often come enjoy things that they at first disliked by making themselves more open.

I disagree that such openness requires adopting an ultra-sanitized discourse that never admits any hint of judgment, or that there is any value in browbeating people with arguments about why they listen to music wrong.

I would be interested to read more positive posts from you about your favorite music.


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## Stirling (Nov 18, 2015)

This is not why creators create, why listener listen.


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## Guest (Nov 18, 2015)

Well, you're going to have to accept that I'm going to post about whatever I think is worth posting about. 

Still, good to know that you favor positive posts about favorite music. I too favor positive posts. But I get kinda stuck on the "favorite music" part of it. What I find interesting to promote is the idea that exploring music necessarily means that one will spend a fair amount of time with music one doesn't like. And that opening up to that music means that one ends up liking more and more.

So we are at a place, however temporarily, of pretty fair agreement.

That's OK, but let's welcome that it's temporary, I'd say. If we agreed about everything all the time, that would mean that one of us were redundant. I'd hate for it to be me.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

some guy said:


> What I find interesting to promote is the idea that exploring music necessarily means that one will spend a fair amount of time with music one doesn't like. And that opening up to that music means that one ends up liking more and more.


I've been on TC for awhile now, and I've often seen posts describing the lack of value/beauty/likeability of modern/atonal/contemporary music. Those comments are met with a wide array of responses including enthusiastic agreement, condescension, outright anger, dispassionate disagreement, sarcastic putdowns, and other varied replies.

I believe responses similar to that quoted above would have the greatest effect on 1) diffusing potential unpleasant conflicts by substituting a positive statement about interacting with such music for a negative statement aimed at the original poster, 2) communicating why many of us do listen to music that sounds odd/unpleasant/different/worse, 3) helping others see a practical path to enjoying unfamiliar or unpleasant music, and 4) perhaps replacing a false pessimistic conception of modern music with a more optimistic one showing the potential such music has.

The one part I'd add is that the term, "opening up", would need some fleshing out with examples to help those better understand the process.


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## SeptimalTritone (Jul 7, 2014)

I think that, for the layman, becoming familiar with individual modern works or composers is enough. This familiarity = understanding for most laypeople. And familiarity doesn't necessarily mean just a bunch of repeated listening, but trying to pay attention to the various threads going on in a piece, and gradually getting used to a different style by becoming familiar with what's going on.


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