# Complexity and Simplicity in Music



## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

This thread is intended to discuss various aspects of complexity and simplicity in music, and how they relate to listening experiences.

What do those terms mean to you in the context of music?

What composers do you consider the most complex musically? What composers are the most simple?

Do either of these general approaches appeal to you more than the other? Or is it more about balance?

I just came back from a concert in which Ravel was performed and pianist Bill Eddins made an interesting comment, he said that the composers that intimidated him the most in performance were Mozart and Ravel, Mozart because he was so simple yet so complex and Ravel because he was so complex, yet so simple.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

I find it a non-issue, some works are more dense, others not, some of the denser works may be actually 'simpler music' than works which look or sound 'deceptively simple.' Bruckner is complex, and so is Boulez, for example.

Some of the 'simplest' music by Debussy is complex, some of the busier music of, say, Saint-saens might me mistaken for complex where it is just busy with a very full orchestration.

But you have two words as topic of the OP which are proverbial buzzwords, those surely understood differently by different listeners.


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## Guest (Jan 25, 2014)

Debussy's _Maid with the Flaxen Hair_ is an example of 'simplicity' that I find appealing, and Prokofiev's 5th Symphony appeals because of its complexity.

Doubtless there is more simple and more complex.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Understanding the words in an everyday sense, I am fonder of simplicity than complexity. For that reason, I prefer French Baroque to standard Baroque - it seems less clogged up with notes. 
But any sort of Baroque is good, imo.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Simplicity is often underrated. All that matters to me is that the style fits the music. A bigger problem could be composers over-elaborating, putting in weaker material to fill something out more. This could be a more frequent problem from the romantics onwards.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Satie's Trois Gymnopedies are a poster boy for deceptively simple sounding music which is nonetheless complex: theoretic analysis of these still has various arguments as to several ways to 'properly' analyze them, each of those taking a different viewpoint than the other, each following one tack of theoretic point of view, each quite 'correct' within its own theoretic logic.

That makes these pieces a sort of _Rashomon_ of music, i.e. three different tellings of the same story, three highly varied yet legitimate truths about the same event. These pieces are simple sounding, while theoretically complex in their calculated ambiguities.


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## The nose (Jan 14, 2014)

I think the point it's that simple/complex is diffrent from easy/hard. 
the simplicity/complexity of a musical piece derives from the number of elements in it,
but the understanding of the piece is not necessary connected to that. 
An exemple of what i'm saying:
John Cage's _4'33''_ it's a simpler piece than a pop song that you can hear at the radio, but it's truely harder to understand.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

The nose said:


> I think the point it's that simple/complex is diffrent from easy/hard.
> the simplicity/complexity of a musical piece derives from the number of elements in it,
> but the understanding of the piece is not necessary connected to that.


Not necessarily yes, but sometimes it isn't different from easy/hard as well. It depends.


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## The nose (Jan 14, 2014)

starry said:


> Not necessarily yes, but sometimes it isn't different from easy/hard as well. It depends.


Sure, my point was only to be careful when we spoke about that because these terms are commonly used as synonyms but they aren't.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Yeh PetrB made that point too, I just wanted to rebalance things on that point.


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

The nose said:


> John Cage's _4'33''_ it's a simpler piece than a pop song that you can hear at the radio, but it's truely harder to understand.


I think 'difficulty of understanding' is tangential to 'complexity'. (And frankly, John, if people don't understand your little experiment, that's on you. Write some programme notes or something.)

The audience's perception of complexity changes quite a lot with time. Mozart's contemporaries sometimes complained that his music was too learned to be understood by the lay audience (hmm, where have I heard that recently?)


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## Guest (Jan 25, 2014)

PetrB said:


> some of the busier music of, say, Saint-saens might me mistaken for complex where it is just busy with a very full orchestration.


Does complex orchestration not make music complex?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

arcaneholocaust said:


> Does complex orchestration not make music complex?


Not in the way the term is usually used, unless the orchestration itself becomes part and parcel of the substance of the piece rather than simply a way of conveying it (as in Impressionism, some Modernism, Spectralism, and such).


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

Complexity and simplicity in music I believe are pretty much impossible to qualify in any standardized way. What makes something simple in music? What makes a piece complex? Is a total serialist piece more complex than a minimalist piece? Is a Beethoven piano piece more or less complex than a Satie piano piece? Is Bach's highly contrapuntal writing more complex than the primary melody-accompaniment of composers like Haydn?


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Mozart wrote some of the simplest sounding music for many of the slow movements of his piano concertos, horn concertos and clarinet concerto. So if it's so simple, how come he was the only one who could compose like that in his time? "Sneaky simple", eh?

Other composers of the time wrote "pretty" slow music, but for the most part, it all sounds like note-spinning.

Mozart made profound slow movements sound simple. Haydn? Also some profound slow movements in his London and Paris symphonies, but he sounds like he's working hard at it.
Mozart didn't.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Taking simplicity and complexity as Ingélou does, I prefer German Baroque to French, as the density of notes is like needle lace of the most exquisite manufacture set to music. Simplicity wears out quickly, while complexity is like forever zooming in on a fractal image. However, simplicity, such as Scelsi's, yearns for the infinities of the cosmos.


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## lupinix (Jan 9, 2014)

I think it can be subjective in a way and also has to do with what you are used to. Some people for instance think tonal harmonic based music is more simple than modal melodic/contrapunctal based music and have arguments for it but others might think its more complex. Also what do you mean with simple? easy to listen to (emotionally or technically?), easy to play, easy to write, music that is less "full" or rather music in which is only a lot of the same, music in which doesn't happen much, music that is easy to analyse, music that is sober and straight to the point, music which is just for entertainment or rather music that is only meant purely to express oneself, music which is less technically based and more intuitively or rather music that is less intuitive and less creative because its very technical?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

arcaneholocaust said:


> Does complex orchestration not make music complex?


Uh, no, not if the overall motivic / melodic / harmonic material is fairly straightforward and not coming at us at some rate of fast change in minutes.

Respighi ~ _Pines of Rome IV; the Appian Way_
_*(LOVE THE SIZE OF THAT BASS DRUM MALLET, 04'27'' !!!)*_




(...and kudos for the orchestra and Maestro Prêtre)
Huge orchestra, extra large woodwind section, full brass sections plus large off-stage brass section, piano, organ, percussion, lots of string body as effect, straight-ahead music, non-rapid changing harmony, i.e. 'simple,' but phenomenally busy and full.

All that is a lot of dressing,(from a master of his craft), to fill out some fairly basic musical material.

Compare the Respighi to the third movement of Debussy's _La Mer_. _La Mer_ uses a full orchestra no where near as large as that used for the Resphigi.
_La Mer_; iii -- start @ 16'15''





Here, there is much more musical material, sequentially presented, presented over a short period of time, played together, new varied motifs enter, all are tossed about the orchestra in mixed ensembles, and a breathtaking finale made up of of a number of polyrhythmic repeated figures of different length make a spectacular display. Much _more_ going on, more and more varied 'musical data' in not much more space of time than the Respighi, and it uses a far more limited orchestral means.


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

hpowders said:


> Mozart wrote some of the simplest sounding music for many of the slow movements of his piano concertos, horn concertos and clarinet concerto. So if it's so simple, how come he was the only one who could compose like that? "Sneaky simple", eh?


The only one who could compose like that? Like what? In that generic classical style that literally pretty much every composer from that period was writing in? That isn't to say that he didn't have his own stylistic leanings, but he was far from the only composer to write that simply "pretty" music.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

BurningDesire said:


> The only one who could compose like that? Like what? In that generic classical style that literally pretty much every composer from that period was writing in? That isn't to say that he didn't have his own stylistic leanings, but he was far from the only composer to write that simply "pretty" music.


Simply pretty music? My point is the deceptively simple-sounding slow movement music by Mozart is profound; sounds simple, yet he was the only one who could write what sounded like simple music in his slow movements- piano concertos, clarinet concerto and horn concertos and make the music into masterpieces. Nobody else writing in similar style did this on this level, with the exception of Haydn in his Paris and London Symphonies.


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## Guest (Jan 25, 2014)

BurningDesire said:


> The only one who could compose like that? Like what? In that generic classical style that literally pretty much every composer from that period was writing in? That isn't to say that he didn't have his own stylistic leanings, but he was far from the only composer to write that simply "pretty" music.


I would have thought it obvious that the vast majority of classical music fans rate Mozart to be head and shoulders above most of the competition that he faced up to that time who were writing in a broadly similar style. Leaving Haydn aside, I have tons of stuff by dozens of "classical" composers, and whilst some of it is very good and well worth listening to, it doesn't compare with the higher quality of Mozart's best works. Haydn wasn't far behind, and in some areas could be argued to be Mozart's equal, but generally is not held in quite as high esteem. I realise that this doesn't chime in with your well-rehearsed, and oft-repeated, criticism of Mozart but I'm afraid to say that you are out on a limb with this one.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

I think music that has a beautiful inevitable simplicity can go beyond Mozart, beyond the classical style and beyond classical music.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Who said it can't and doesn't? I didn't.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Good. I just wanted to make that point, because I'm not sure it has been made.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

If you re-read what I wrote I was comparing Mozart to composers of his own time. Plenty of "pretty" slow music at that time. Only Mozart and Haydn could make it profound.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

I wasn't really just addressing it to you. But I'm not sure how we can say what is profound or not, I just mean what sounds powerful to me and Mozart was definitely exceptional in the _amount_ of powerful music he did within using relatively simple sounding means, but obviously others could sometimes do that too and arguably still can in all kinds of music. And I do mean even in the classical style potentially beyond Mozart and Haydn, not as frequently as them obviously but sometimes.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

starry said:


> I wasn't really just addressing it to you. But I'm not sure how we can say what is profound or not, I just mean what sounds powerful to me and Mozart was definitely exceptional in the _amount_ of powerful music he did within using relatively simple sounding means, but obviously others could sometimes do that too and arguably still can in all kinds of music. And I do mean even in the classical style potentially beyond Mozart and Haydn, not as frequently as them obviously but sometimes.


I was specific. I indicated the piano concertos (actually from #9 on up), horn concertos and clarinet concerto.
Very few folks would argue against those slow movements not being on a higher plane than that of just about everyone at his time.

I disagree. Yes we CAN say what is profound and what is not.


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

BurningDesire said:


> Complexity and simplicity in music I believe are pretty much impossible to qualify in any standardized way.


I don't know about this, actually. I wonder if the standard information-theoretic measures of complexity would correspond well to the audience's perception of complex vs simple music.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

hpowders said:


> Very few folks would argue against those slow movements not being on a higher plane than that of just about everyone at his time.


Most composers are definitely pretty average and probably couldn't approach a powerful (a word I'm preferring more over profound right now) sound, I suppose that's the case in every period. But I wouldn't say 'nobody else' apart from Mozart and Haydn, that sounds too limiting to me even if they were by far the most consistent at this (which I already said).


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

starry said:


> Most composers are definitely pretty average[...]


Almost by definition.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

hahaha, yeh but you get what I mean, average being forgettable. Though the craft in classical music can be at a relatively high average quality the inspiration isn't at such a high average inevitably.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

starry said:


> Most composers are definitely pretty average and probably couldn't approach a powerful (a word I'm preferring more over profound right now) sound, I suppose that's the case in every period. But I wouldn't say 'nobody else' apart from Mozart and Haydn, that sounds too limiting to me even if they were by far the most consistent at this (which I already said).


I prefer not to continue this discussion. A case of 2 immovable objects with completely different points of view.


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## Guest (Jan 25, 2014)

A few ad hoc thoughts:

- J S Bach wrote some complex fugues, which I don't believe have been surpassed by any other composer. I used to think that some of his writing was over-complex and I generally preferred Handel's offerings, but I've gradually changed my mind over time. 

- For me, Mozart's supremacy amongst the Gods of classical music resides primarily in his ability to write (in his non-juvenile works) meticulously crafted compositions across a broad sphere, that sound distinctive and which contain few or no rough edges, whilst incorporating an amazing variety of melodies. Joseph Haydn was very able too in some areas, with the two of them leaving all the others from that era some way behind in the running.

- Beethoven's painstaking diligence and skill in extracting every worthwhile nuance from his music is highly admirable.

- Schubert's ability to write often quite complex, mood-shifting music whilst blending all those gorgeous melodies together seamlessly, also deserves mention. For me, the ability to create good melody is of prime importance, and here Schubert is at the top of the tree, along with just a few other others. Other types of complexity in music are of secondary importance to me.

- Several of Chopin's piano works exhibit an extraordinary degree of complexity, like for example Opus 66 "Faintaisie-Impromptu". Lots of beautiful melody and invention too in a lot of Chopin's music.

- Schumann's Opus 13 "Symphonic Etudes" is a very difficult work and of outstanding quality. His ability to infuse poetry and imagery into much of his music is outstanding. For example, listening to his Symphony No 3, "Rhenish", one can almost sense the Rhine and the city of Cologne's Cathedral that inspired the work. 

- Liszt wrote a good deal of complex material of high quality, e.g. "Sonata in B minor". 

- Brahms was among the main masters of variation, and achieved lots of good results. 

- Ravel's "Gaspard de la nuit" is a marvellous work, which also contains a good deal of complexity but not in any kind of "showy" manner. 

- Rachmaninov's PC No 3 is self-evidently a difficult work that is very popular and deservedly so.

Overall, I tend to prefer music that is above average in complexity but only insofar that it is combined with good melody and generally produces good results that appeal to my ear. I don't like complexity for its own sake, and hence that's one reason why I've never been very impressed with composers like Alkan who wrote lots of complex music much of which is generally quite stark, not much melody, and generally lacking in appeal to me.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

hpowders said:


> I prefer not to continue this discussion. A case of 2 immovable objects with completely different points of view.


Oh, they're moveable... you just need a sharp enough edge to get through the neck bone.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

starry said:


> I think music that has a beautiful inevitable simplicity can go beyond Mozart, beyond the classical style and beyond classical music.


Calm down  It may or may not "go beyond," but certainly exists in abundance "outside of" classical music -- ten thousands of folk ballades from many lands and cultures and a good handful of pop songs, ballades from musical theater and the great popular songbooks attest to that!


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

On the subject of complexity, I've read various journals on Indian Classical Music in which it's authors push the idea that the sophistication and complexity of Bach is "mere child's play" in comparison to what Indian music has achieved. Now, I am an avid music fan but I am not a composer/musician by any stretch of the imagination. Could some of the more musically educated members share their opinions on the subject?


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I'm no expert, but I've heard Ravi Shankar play some riffs and it can be harmonically and rhythmically complex.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

PetrB said:


> Calm down  It may or may not "go beyond," but certainly exists in abundance "outside of" classical music -- ten thousands of folk ballades from many lands and cultures and a good handful of pop songs, ballades from musical theater and the great popular songbooks attest to that!


Well yeh, I was certainly thinking along those lines partly. I love great popular music ballads and they can have a pure simplicity which is, somehow, long lasting in appeal.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

Yeah, I mean it's no secret that the Indians developed one of the most (or, THE most?) complex musical systems in the world, but as a mere listener and fan of both Western and Indian art musics, I can't really see how or why Shankar's music, as an example, is anymore sophisticated or complex than Bach's. Anyway, I am curious because I find it rather annoying that a sizable portion of ethnomusicologists and musicians who've studied Indian music proclaim its superiority over Bach's 'child's play' which just happens to be one of the greatest treasures of the western world.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

It's an ethnocentric thing. You know. Being proud and nationalistic. It's only human to stick up for your own, even though it seems irrational to the rest of us outsiders.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Lope de Aguirre said:


> On the subject of complexity, I've read various journals on Indian Classical Music in which it's authors push the idea that the sophistication and complexity of Bach is "mere child's play" in comparison to what Indian music has achieved. Now, I am an avid music fan but I am not a composer/musician by any stretch of the imagination. Could some of the more musically educated members share their opinions on the subject?


The complexity lies within different arenas, and a hard cold fact that the eastern and western aesthetics are utterly different.

Indian classical music is *monophonic*, a single melodic line based on various scales and modes, and is always improvisatory. There is an extensive hierarchy of those scales and modes easily excelling the extensive catalogue of same as found, say, in Jazz.

The rythmic complexity, poly rhythms of some scope of length, asymmetry are also very much a part of the Indian classical music lexicon, those just begun to be looked at and deployed in 20th century classical music, some early 20th century American composers investigating those and markedly, and perhaps best known, Olivier Messiaen made great use of them and those became the basis to further develop his rhythmic complexity.

Western classical music has the aesthetic of 'fixed' (set) pieces most frequently depending upon development of an idea, variation, and of course once past the unison modal chants of the early middle ages, polyphony which led directly to harmony, the two continuing in an expanding universe of highly refined harmony and counterpoint. Harmonic development is very much part and parcel of western music, coming from its origins in counterpoint. Indian music takes no interest in harmony, but the horizontal elaboration of the melodic line.

At their most refined, it can easily be said without need of defensive or divisive counter argument, that both are highly refined and complex musics.


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

PetrB said:


> Uh, no, not if the overall motivic / melodic / harmonic material is fairly straightforward and not coming at us at some rate of fast change in minutes.
> 
> Respighi ~ _Pines of Rome IV; the Appian Way_
> _*(LOVE THE SIZE OF THAT BASS DRUM MALLET, 04'27'' !!!)*_
> ...


But its a different element. You could say the texture isn't so complex, or maybe the harmonies aren't, but the instrumentation, the timbres are more complex. And what qualifies harmonies as being complex? Is a perfect 5th more or less complex than a minor triad? Is a chromatic tone cluster more complex than a half-diminished chord?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

BurningDesire said:


> But its a different element. You could say the texture isn't so complex, or maybe the harmonies aren't, but the instrumentation, the timbres are more complex. And what qualifies harmonies as being complex? Is a perfect 5th more or less complex than a minor triad? Is a chromatic tone cluster more complex than a half-diminished chord?


Please, I spoke of a 'busy' orchestration all around a single idea or harmony (coloration, thickening to add body) vs. a more complex basic musical activity using the same resources. Of course some of those elements overlap.

Perhaps you should clarify and then make your own point, whatever that is?


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

BurningDesire said:


> But its a different element. You could say the texture isn't so complex, or maybe the harmonies aren't, but the instrumentation, the timbres are more complex. And what qualifies harmonies as being complex? Is a perfect 5th more or less complex than a minor triad? Is a chromatic tone cluster more complex than a half-diminished chord?


A complicated harmony is one that is difficult to predict, I would think.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

How significant/important would you say that rhythmic complexity has become in modern western art music since the early 20th century? Has rhythmic sophistication become a core component of western art music?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

hpowders said:


> It's an ethnocentric thing. You know. Being proud and nationalistic. It's only human to stick up for your own, even though it seems irrational to the rest of us outsiders.


Amen to that about as many times as their are nations, counties, sub-divisions of ethnicity within one culture, etc.

Poe said it well, 
"To the tintinnabulation that so musically swells from the Jingoism Jingoism Jingoism Jingoism 
Jingoism Jingoism Jingoism..."

etc.


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

PetrB said:


> Poe said it well,
> "To the tintinnabulation that so musically swells from the Jingoism Jingoism Jingoism Jingoism
> Jingoism Jingoism Jingoism


Is that the version that Rachmaninoff ran through Google translate a few times?


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Lope de Aguirre said:


> How significant/important would you say that rhythmic complexity has become in modern western art music since the early 20th century? Has rhythmic sophistication become a core component of western art music?


Yes, complex rhythm has been a much more prominent component of Western Classical music starting around the early 20th century.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

PetrB said:


> Amen to that about as many times as their are nations, counties, sub-divisions of ethnicity within one culture, etc.
> 
> Poe said it well,
> "To the tintinnabulation that so musically swells from the Jingoism Jingoism Jingoism Jingoism
> ...


Yes! Rolls write off the tongue!


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

hpowders said:


> Yes! Rolls write off the tongue!


Bother that! Try saying "_Toy Boat_" three times in rapid succession.

Nyah, nyah


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

ahammel said:


> Is that the version that Rachmaninoff ran through Google translate a few times?


As much as he was born to the nobility / gentry, Sergei was a technopeasant, in his youth, he stole a cheap wonky edition from Tolstoy's library when he and Prokofiev had both gone to meet with and get the man's approval of their music. Granted, Sergei might have nicked it out of spite, Tolstoy having listened to a piece by each composer and then said only, 
"Does anyone want this kind of music?"


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## mtmailey (Oct 21, 2011)

I like complexed music by SCHUBERT,BEETHOVEN,DVORAK,TCHAIKOVSKY & SCHUMANN.COMPLEXED music is quite interesting to hear.SIMPLE music i fine less interesting.Complexed music is not BORING.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

^^^^Who said complex music is boring? can you show me the post?


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## Guest (Jan 26, 2014)

hpowders said:


> I was specific. I indicated the piano concertos (actually from #9 on up), horn concertos and clarinet concerto.
> Very few folks would argue against those slow movements not being on a higher plane than that of just about everyone at his time.
> 
> I disagree. Yes we CAN say what is profound and what is not.


'Profound' and 'higher plane' are, I would argue, much more difficult attributes to establish than 'simplicity' and 'complexity'. That doesn't prevent such terms being used regularly to assert the value of one piece over another, but I can't agree that just because 'Very few folks would argue against those slow movements not being on a higher plane' that the remainder are accurate to argue that these slow movements _are_.



ahammel said:


> A complicated harmony is one that is difficult to predict, I would think.


Until, presumably, one is familiar with it. Without transporting myself to the 1790s, it would be difficult to know whether the small audience that had the pleasure of attending concerts by Mr Haydn, Mr Mozart and Mr Beethoven always knew what to expect.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

ahammel said:


> A complicated harmony is one that is difficult to predict, I would think.


There are chords that produce more and less vibrations, have more or fewer notes in them, but I think when people talk about complexity of harmony, they're referring more to the way it's used than simply the sounds involved. After all, a piece made up entirely of repetitions of a tone cluster is hardly as complex as Mozart's use of tonality...


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

MacLeod said:


> Until, presumably, one is familiar with it.


Well, quite. I'm thinking of 'difficulty to predict' in an information theoretic sense, which is similar to 'information content' or 'complexity'. This is, I think, a measurable quantity of a piece of music.

I was imagining an experiment like the one described in this blog post about how many English language tweets are possible. Take some test subjects, play them some music, cut it off at a randomly-chosen point and ask "what's the next chord?"

Obviously, finding the right pool of test subjects is going to be difficult, since people who aren't musically literate won't be able to do this at all, in the same way that people who speak only Swahili won't be able to predict the next letter in English texts. Even musically literate people can't, in general, tell B from B-flat without at least access to a keyboard, so maybe we'll have to give them the scores as well, or perhaps just ask them for the Roman numeral of the next chord. And then we run into the problem that our musically-literate study group will probably know a good fraction of the works we might be interested in measuring the complexity of, which means they'll be able to predict chords from memory rather than from the structure of the piece.

Fortunately, there's an easier way: encode the score in a computer-friendly format[sup]1[/sup] and see how much it can be compressed. If there's any harmonic structure to a piece, a good compression algorithm will find it and take advantage of it to store the music in less space.

"But!", I hear you objecting, "computers don't understand music! How can a dumb compression algorithm possibly take advantage of the rules of tonality if it doesn't know them?" To which I respond that computers don't understand English either, but they can compress English language text to about 1.2 bits per character, which is about how information dense it is according to Claude Shannon's experiments.

1. I have no idea how to do this, but I know that it's possible because computer programs like Sibelius exist.


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## jlaw (Jan 25, 2014)

Not sure what simple and complex really mean. Philip Glass works for me and most of Mahlers work except Sym. No 8 works for me too. Instead of making it sound louder and more powerful, so many singers used by Mahler in Sym. No. 8 renders the music chaotic and confusing to listen to.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Lope de Aguirre said:


> Anyway, I am curious because I find it rather annoying that a sizable portion of ethnomusicologists and musicians who've studied Indian music proclaim its superiority over Bach's 'child's play' which just happens to be one of the greatest treasures of the western world.


I don't think there has to be jingoistic nationalism with art, and really in the global world we are now in with the rapid transfer of information with the internet it could become somewhat outdated. There are plenty of cross cultural collaborations now which suggest some at least have put a narrow cultural bias aside.

Also I'm not sure people have to understand all the complexities of some types of music to enjoy and appreciate it. Most music is definitely meant to be appreciated by the listener on a broader level rather than understanding all the intricate details. That's why we can understand and appreciate classical music without following it with a score.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Examples to back that up, jlaw?

Perhaps it's Mahler's writing for those voices?


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## jlaw (Jan 25, 2014)

As I said, No 8 doesn't work for me. It may work for Maher and everyone else. 

If you go to a concert hall and listen to these singers, you find the voices are not perfectly synchronized. The reason is very simple, the formation of the choir is so large that sound from one part of the choir arrives at a slightly different time than from the other. Of course I don't think all these people can sing in perfect unison anyway. The end result is the very annoying sound mixing. Mahler needs a lesson in physics I think.


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

jlaw said:


> AThe reason is very simple, the formation of the choir is so large that sound from one part of the choir arrives at a slightly different time than from the other.


If the choirs are relying on hearing one another singing for synchronicity, they are in very dire straits indeed. That's why a person is generally employed to stand at the front of the orchestra and wave his or her arms about like a lunatic in the hope of getting everybody to sing at the same time.

This is not a problem unique to Mahler's 8th. Thomas Tallis's _Spem in Alium_ is also, I am told, more or less impossible to perform without a skilled conductor, and that was written way back in 1570.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

ahammel said:


> Well, quite. I'm thinking of 'difficulty to predict' in an information theoretic sense, which is similar to 'information content' or 'complexity'. This is, I think, a measurable quantity of a piece of music.
> 
> I was imagining an experiment like the one described in this blog post about how many English language tweets are possible. Take some test subjects, play them some music, cut it off at a randomly-chosen point and ask "what's the next chord?"
> 
> ...


So much simpler than that,_* "Sing the next note."*_

Even within a problem of "harmony" that note is the one the most listeners will expect to hear next, and often, 'most' will come up with the same pitch... unless the composer has done something which is musically very well-engineered to be ambiguous. 
(I'm excluding atonal in its many varieties because it is clear massive chunks of the population cannot specifically follow it, and many an undergrad music student coming from other musical habits struggles with it as well.)

In harmony class, the Prof played a brief Bartok piece from the Microkosmos. The piece dealt with two hexachords, groups of pitches, each with its own mode and 'polarity' of a tonic. They were at an interval of a perfect fourth apart, this small polyphonic piece, the interplay of both sets of pitches, also ended on that interval.

At the finish of the piece, the prof. asked the class to sing the tonic: the class sang out a fourth, those taking the lower pitch and those the other higher pitch divided about 50 / 50. The Professor clapped his hands and laughed in delight at the result.


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

PetrB said:


> So much simpler than that,_* "Sing the next note."*_


I had thought of that, but I thought it would probably tell you more about the information content of the melody than the harmony (not that these are entirely independent).


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

ahammel said:


> If the choirs are relying on hearing one another singing for synchronicity, they are in very dire straits indeed. That's why a person is generally employed to stand at the front of the orchestra and wave his or her arms about like a lunatic in the hope of getting everybody to sing at the same time.


Most of the time in Mahler's Eighth, the choirs are used antiphonally. Mahler was very interested in the spatial possibilities of such an ensemble (note that the work also calls for off-stage brass as well as one off-stage soloist who sings for a single 25-bar section.


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## jlaw (Jan 25, 2014)

ahammel said:


> If the choirs are relying on hearing one another singing for synchronicity, they are in very dire straits indeed. That's why a person is generally employed to stand at the front of the orchestra and wave his or her arms about like a lunatic in the hope of getting everybody to sing at the same time.


The problem persists even if all the singers can sing in perfect unison, because sound travels at 350m/s, a rather low speed. You get far more sound mixing than you get from a normal sized choir. The signature sound of such a large choir is exactly the same as that of a large crowd of fools chanting in a political rally. Personally I don't find that kind of sound very pleasing.


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## Guest (Jan 27, 2014)

ahammel said:


> Well, quite. I'm thinking of 'difficulty to predict' in an information theoretic sense, which is similar to 'information content' or 'complexity'. This is, I think, a measurable quantity of a piece of music. [etc etc etc]


Thanks Ahammel. The maths involved here loses me slightly!

Currently reading _The Story of Music_ by Howard Goodall. In his piece about Monteverdi, he says,



> What Monteverdi did in his madrigals was to take the idea of triads and chords, and start to mess with their chemistry. [...] Monteverdi knew that blending [...] related chords in one piece of music would create something tranquil, reassuring and ethereal. [but] in his madrigals, Monteverdi dips in and out of all kinds of chords, many of them startlignly unrelated, ir order to create ear-catching effects. He wants his listener to feel disorientated, or surprised, or intrigued. [...] These discords , though relatively tame by modern standards, would have sounded shocking to Monteverdi's contemporaries.


I post this because it touches on the idea of predictability and familiarity, as well as composer intent. (Goodall ascribes motives to Monteverdi that may not be true - does anyone know?) What this suggests is that whilst 'complexity' or 'simplicity' may be in the ears of the hearer, it may nevertheless be the result of a composer working on some other dimension - comfort/surprise, for example (rather like the idea of safety and security I raised in some guy's 'other musics' thread... http://www.talkclassical.com/30242-other-musics-post594683.html#post594683)


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## Roi N (Oct 22, 2013)

It is the composers job to write music which is not simple (otherwise anybody could be a composer) but not too complicated, otherwise the music is lost within itself. This balance reached its peak with Haydn and Mozart in the Classical period, and was destroyed as time went by, with the help of modernists like Shoenberg and Shostakovich.


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## Piwikiwi (Apr 1, 2011)

Roi N said:


> It is the composers job to write music which is not simple (otherwise anybody could be a composer) but not too complicated, otherwise the music is lost within itself. This balance reached its peak with Haydn and Mozart in the Classical period, and was destroyed as time went by, with the help of modernists like Shoenberg and Shostakovich.


Shostakovich his music is pretty conservative


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

"Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art."
- Chopin

I think Mozart and Chopin are prime examples of composers who wrote some complex pieces that are relatively very accessible (not all of their music), even for people who don't generally listen to classical music.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

As for the composer I've listened to the most, Scriabin obviously wrote increasingly complex music, yet I find it fascinating that at the very end he composed some pieces that are much easier to get into than some of the music he had composed before... I couldn't explain it in technical terms, but I'd say pieces like Vers La Flamme and Prelude Op. 74 No. 2 are still complex, yet also have a striking simplicity to them.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Yeah. Wasn't Mozart told by the Emperor Joseph the Second that the music he wrote for The Abduction from the Seraglio contained "too many notes, my dear Mozart".


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

I admire complexity and clarity together — The stretto in Bach fugues, the first movement of Schittke's Concerto Grosso 4, or Bartok's counterpoint at the end of the second piano concerto. Another favorite example is Shostakovich's Fifth Quartet, first movement; the recapitulation of the second theme comprises four perfectly crafted and independent lines, each with life and urgency of its own. Miraculously beautiful. 

I also like hidden and veiled complexity. Rachmaninoff's thematic processes and handling of inner lines are tremendously complex and systematic but almost never noticed. Hidden canonic writing in Netherlandish Renaissance music. That sort of thing. The stuff only God knows about (if you believe in that sort of entity).


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

EdwardBast said:


> I admire complexity and clarity together - The stretto in Bach fugues, the first movement of Schittke's Concerto Grosso 4, or Bartok's counterpoint at the end of the second piano concerto. Another favorite example is Shostakovich's Fifth Quartet, first movement; the recapitulation of the second theme comprises four perfectly crafted and independent lines, each with life and urgency of its own. Miraculously beautiful.
> 
> I also like hidden and veiled complexity. Rachmaninoff's thematic processes and handling of inner lines are tremendously complex and systematic but almost never noticed. Hidden canonic writing in Netherlandish Renaissance music. That sort of thing. The stuff only God knows about (if you believe in that sort of entity).


This really is a way which many do appreciate and where they find much of what to them is 'beautiful' in so much art -- the opposite of the blazing flashes of the obvious. But I began to laugh when I thought, to the general consumer, "How do you explain admiring the quiet elegance of the placement of the rivets which are a part of the entire part and parcel of the Eiffel Tower?"

I do so admire things deftly done without fuss or outward display, which belie the level of skill which it took to make them... and laugh because from another point of view it could appear that is like lavishing the attention on the glue which holds together the piece of furniture 

But clear? ~ Clear is good, and not knocking me over the head with how you went about doing it ~ really good, too.


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## Mister Man (Feb 3, 2014)

I don't care much, as long as I feel something.


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