# Directions in modern music



## Kjetil Heggelund

Hello there! Lately I've been interested in modern art again. Used to go to exhibitions and collect art cards (cheap way of having art in the house). Then I found out that the art world has a whole lot more defined styles in modernism. Styles that are mentioned on wikipedia are: expressionism, transavantgarde, primitivism, abstract expressionism, fauvism, neo-impressionism, tachisme, post-impressionism, post minimalism, neo-dada, cubism, informalism, hyperrealism, surrealism, neo expressionism and many more. So why not define new music this way? I have to admit that I bought some books on modern music that I haven't read yet...What I know from before is we have: impressionism, expressionism, atonality, neo-classism, serialism, aleatory, minimalism, postmodernism, spectralism, polystylism.


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## MarkW

How about really noisy, noisy, slightly less noisy, medium noisy, medium, medium quiet, slightly quieter, quiet, really quiet, nigh on inaudible.


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## joen_cph

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> Hello there! Lately I've been interested in modern art again. Used to go to exhibitions and collect art cards (cheap way of having art in the house). Then I found out that the art world has a whole lot more defined styles in modernism. Styles that are mentioned on wikipedia are: expressionism, transavantgarde, primitivism, abstract expressionism, fauvism, neo-impressionism, tachisme, post-impressionism, post minimalism, neo-dada, cubism, informalism, hyperrealism, surrealism, neo expressionism and many more. So why not define new music this way? I have to admit that I bought some books on modern music that I haven't read yet...What I know from before is we have: impressionism, expressionism, atonality, neo-classism, serialism, aleatory, minimalism, postmodernism, spectralism, polystylism.


I think there are further, partly local terms too - in Denmark, we´ve had _New Simplicity _(Ib Nørholm). This term has also been used in Germany (Rihm, Trojahn). Also we´ve had _Concretism_ (Gudmundsen-Holmgreen, Henning Chrisiansen). Ferneyhough in particular has been representing a _New Complexity_ trend. And earlier in the century there was _Futurism_ (Russolo, Mossolov etc.). The USSR had trends of _Socialist Realism_ etc. I´m sure there are others.

Many of the terms have been created by critics however, and in reality a lot of composers have changed styles and ways of expression too much to represent just one -ism throughout their career. But -isms can represent something typical or a trend in a given period ...


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## arpeggio

Request to those who hate modern music. Stay out those threads about modern music.


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## arpeggio

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> .What I know from before is we have: impressionism, expressionism, atonality, neo-classism, serialism, aleatory, minimalism, postmodernism, spectralism, polystylism.


The one that I would add would be the "new complexity". I may be wrong but I thought I read that Ferneyhough hated this term.


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## arpeggio

MarkW said:


> How about really noisy, noisy, slightly less noisy, medium noisy, medium, medium quiet, slightly quieter, quiet, really quiet, nigh on inaudible.





Dan Ante said:


> Or Awful, Terrible, Ugly, Ear pain, nonsensical, Lost, etc. wftsthtf


The first time I heard jokes like this was forty years ago. At first they were amusing. They are no longer funny


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## KenOC

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> ...What I know from before is we have: impressionism, expressionism, atonality, neo-classism, serialism, aleatory, minimalism, postmodernism, spectralism, polystylism.


My impression is that people (perhaps only critics?) are thrashing about, inventing new style names, only to make themselves seem clever. When in music history have people worried so much about looking like music professors? When have _names _ever been so important?

Music has historically survived and sometimes thrived because composers figured out what people wanted to hear. My opinion: The farther we get from that, the less healthy our music scene becomes.


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## Guest

Labels like this are reductive at best (New Complexity does nothing to describe the music itself besides from how it seems on the surface), wholly inaccurate at worst (Impressionism has a more specific meaning in art but it got shoehorned into classical music in a way that really doesn't even make that much sense). But we do seem to have some general agreement on what we mean by using these terms, so I'm not going to advocate that we just stop using them....

In the last few decades there's been such a branching out of styles that it's hardly even possible to come up with terms for them. What word do we use to describe Rene Wohlhauser? What word do we use to describe Adès? I tend to enjoy just listening to their music and finding my own way to describe how they sound so that I can talk about them with others.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

I started this thread since I suddenly found out I like new-expressionism in art, like Basquiat and Schnabel. Maybe they're a bit like Penderecki and Gubaidulina in music. Also I'd like to know a good way to describe music.


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## eugeneonagain

They can only ever be pointers, but I think these general styles or 'schools' can help the listener or someone looking around for music of a similar bent. 
Avant-Garde in particular is one name that gets applied quite liberally. As Alex Ross said it can't be a style because it's supposed to be at the forefront of art, breaking new ground. There's a lot of re-hashed ideas with the label 'avant-garde', but really because it's hard to know what to call it when referring to it. Lots of music just defies labels.


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> My impression is that people (perhaps only critics?) are thrashing about, inventing new style names, only to make themselves seem clever. When in music history have people worried so much about looking like music professors? When have _names _ever been so important?


Heh, I agree with you here.



> Music has historically survived and sometimes thrived because composers figured out what people wanted to hear. My opinion: The farther we get from that, the less healthy our music scene becomes.


I tend to argue that the best possible music scene is one which reflects the diverse interests of a broad range of people. Because there is nothing that _everyone_ wants to hear it is probably best that the variety of different niches in existence should always be there, whether it's New Complexity, 1960s Minimalism or anything else. In terms of how classical music thrives, I think that has historically come down to the specifics of music publishers, patrons, impresarios et al, aka _the guys with the money._ If there's too narrow a scope of acceptance from _them,_ the less healthy our music scene becomes.


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## mbhaub

I can't stand most of the so-called modern music written from say 1950 - 1980. Those serialists, atonalists, aleatoric composers just suck. Bad music, ugly, and childish. But in recent years there have been glimmers of hope. Composers who write music that is beautiful, thought provoking, interesting, and mind-expanding. Ok, so they can't write tunes like Tchaikovsky or make a symphonic argument like Brahms. They still have something to say that speaks to the soul. My most recent acquisition is this:








Absolutely brilliant. The bassoon work is marvelous. If more orchestras, conductors, and especially audiences would give this music a chance, they'd realize that they don't have to keep offering concert after concert of music by dead, white, European males.


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## Dan Ante

arpeggio said:


> Request to those who hate modern music. Stay out those threads about modern music.





arpeggio said:


> The first time I heard jokes like this was forty years ago. At first they were amusing. They are no longer funny


It has been going on for longer than 40 years and why do you think they were jokes? 
Any way it is a sad fact that mods in general dislike any comments or even discussions that dare to question some modern works and I can understand this attitude as they are a minority bunch trying to defend their pet Hedge Hog, very few concertgoers or music lovers are ardent mods. 
Surly any form of discussion for or against is healthy to the music world and helps both sides to appreciate the others point of view, do we want to follow Russia's present regime of no dissent or even as in my country where a University banned a local ex member of government from debating his right wing views. I could go on at length but I suspect a certain moderator will either delete my post or give me a sever reprimand. I will say no more.


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## KenOC

arpeggio said:


> The first time I heard jokes like this was forty years ago. At first they were amusing. They are no longer funny


Perhaps...just perhaps...it is your sense of humor that has suffered the ravages of time.


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## KenOC

shirime said:


> ...In terms of how classical music thrives, I think that has historically come down to the specifics of music publishers, patrons, impresarios et al, aka _the guys with the money._ If there's too narrow a scope of acceptance from _them,_ the less healthy our music scene becomes.


I tend to agree with you as well. But I will point out that, historically at least, publishers and impresarios have been pass-throughs for the public. One depended on sales of sheet music, the other on performance gates. So for them,_ vox populi, vox dei_.


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## JAS

mbhaub said:


> If more orchestras, conductors, and especially audiences would give this music a chance, they'd realize that they don't have to keep offering concert after concert of music by dead, white, European males.


Most modern music is offered as a solution to something that was not really a problem in the first place.


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## arpeggio

I will repeat a lesson I have learned from over fifty years experience as a performer. No matter how bad I thought a piece of music was, there were people in the audience who loved it.


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## MarkW

arpeggio said:


> The first time I heard jokes like this was forty years ago. At first they were amusing. They are no longer funny


Yes, I was trying to be amusing -- but I don't hate modern music at all. (Just for the record.)


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## arpeggio

MarkW said:


> Yes, I was trying to be amusing -- but I don't hate modern music at all. (Just for the record.)


Sorry. My biggest failing here is sometimes I can not tell when people are joking and I overreact.


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## arpeggio

KenOC said:


> Music has historically survived and sometimes thrived because composers figured out what people wanted to hear. My opinion: The farther we get from that, the less healthy our music scene becomes.


Veterans of this forum are familiar with your views concerning music.

We are familiar with your belief that there is a correlation between popularity and greatness. Many of us do not buy into this aesthetic. Irregardless to whether or not it is popular there are many works we enjoy listening to and want to learn about. Please let us explore our interests in music without being subjected to your sermonizing. The implications of your philosophy of music is that those of us who like to learn about modern music are wasting out time. Well how we waste our time in none of your business.


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## mmsbls

Dan Ante said:


> Any way it is a sad fact that mods in general dislike any comments or even discussions that dare to question some modern works and I can understand this attitude as they are a minority bunch trying to defend their pet Hedge Hog, very few concertgoers or music lovers are ardent mods.
> Surly any form of discussion for or against is healthy to the music world and helps both sides to appreciate the others point of view, do we want to follow Russia's present regime of no dissent or even as in my country where a University banned a local ex member of government from debating his right wing views. I could go on at length but I suspect a certain moderator will either delete my post or give me a sever reprimand. I will say no more.


I think moderators enjoy discussions on many musical topics including questioning modern works. I've participated in some and even started some. I just think few people view disparaging and making fun of something as discussion. If a thread asks for a discussion on defining modern musical styles, those interested in the topic will not appreciate jokes about how terrible the music is. Similarly, someone who enters a discussion on building classic car models only to say the models are stupid, ugly, and a waste of time will likely be viewed as rude or perhaps worse.

Discussion is positive. Simple, inflammatory comments are not and can be viewed as trolling.


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## Dan Ante

mmsbls said:


> I think moderators enjoy discussions on many musical topics including questioning modern works. I've participated in some and even started some. I just think few people view disparaging and making fun of something as discussion. If a thread asks for a discussion on defining modern musical styles, those interested in the topic will not appreciate jokes about how terrible the music is. Similarly, someone who enters a discussion on building classic car models only to say the models are stupid, ugly, and a waste of time will likely be viewed as rude or perhaps worse.
> 
> Discussion is positive. Simple, inflammatory comments are not and can be viewed as trolling.


I do not agree with you but I am not going to get into an argument!


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## Kjetil Heggelund

Magic realism in music, anyone?


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## janxharris

Jonny Greenwood (Radiohead) and the London Contemporary Orchestra.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

...and so, directions in modern music are hijacked...new style is neorealism


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## janxharris

I've posted this before but it seems to have elements of the old and the new. Sounds great to me. Not sure how it's style might be described.


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## Taggart

Please concentrate on the OP.

If you dislike a particular style give reasons in a measured manner. Remember the terms of service:



> Be polite to your fellow members. If you disagree with them, please state your opinion in a »civil« and respectful manner.
> 
> »Trolling« is not welcome. A »troll« is someone who intentionally posts derogatory or inflammatory messages with the deliberate intent to bait users into responding, ranging from subtle jibes to outright personal attacks.


Some inappropriate posts have been removed and others which reference them.


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## joen_cph

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> Magic realism in music, anyone?


I´m sure several works could be described in such terms, say confronting the banal with the eerie, or in collage-like compositions, or recent music dealing with myths of men and divinities, but I don´t think the term has been generally applied ...


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## JAS

arpeggio said:


> I will repeat a lesson I have learned from over fifty years experience as a performer. No matter how bad I thought a piece of music was, there were people in the audience who loved it.


And, apparently, if far more people in the audience hated it, their opinion is of no importance. And certainly the opinion of all of the people who chose not to attend the concert when they saw the program cannot be important either.


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## eugeneonagain

Dan Ante said:


> Any way it is a sad fact that mods in general dislike any comments or even discussions that dare to question some modern works and I can understand this attitude as they are a minority bunch trying to defend their pet Hedge Hog, very few concertgoers or music lovers are ardent mods.


When you write 'mods' do you mean 'moderators' here? You can't really believe this.



Dan Ante said:


> Surly any form of discussion for or against is healthy to the music world and helps both sides to appreciate the others point of view...


Turning up to throw cabbages isn't 'discussion'. Be honest with yourself.


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## Ingélou

Dan Ante said:


> Any way it is a sad fact that mods in general dislike any comments or even discussions that dare to question some modern works and I can understand this attitude as they are a minority bunch trying to defend their pet Hedge Hog, very few concertgoers or music lovers are ardent mods.


Now - what does 'mods' mean here - 'moderators' or 'modernists'? 

There are four active mods on TC and two of them are big fans of modern music. 
There's no evidence that any of these four mods dislike discussions of modern works, and I know for a fact that one of them is very happy for people to like what they like.

But if you mean 'modernists' or 'lovers of modern music', I am not sure how you say you can 'understand' the view you ascribe to them, because 'minority bunch' and 'pet hedgehog' make it seem as if you do not regard yourself as one of them.

Personally I don't think modernists dislike discussion - what makes them modernists is their willingness to try new types of music that question the status quo, so why would they want to clamp down on people who question their own opinion?


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## Taggart

JAS said:


> arpeggio said:
> 
> 
> 
> I will repeat a lesson I have learned from over fifty years experience as a performer. No matter how bad I thought a piece of music was, there were people in the audience who loved it.
> 
> 
> 
> And, apparently, if far more people in the audience hated it, their opinion is of no importance. And certainly the opinion of all of the people who chose not to attend the concert when they saw the program cannot be important either.
Click to expand...

Um ... no. Just that people have different tastes.


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## Enthusiast

arpeggio said:


> The one that I would add would be the "new complexity". I may be wrong but I thought I read that Ferneyhough hated this term.


I didn't know that. The term had always worried me as I have never hear his music as particularly complex but had assumed this is because I just listen to it and it does what it does with my brain. I assumed the complexity must be in his compositional technique (which I know nothing about and don't feel I need to know, either).


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## Enthusiast

With regard to the OP, I think there are far too many -isms in all art and I think people - maybe especially the young - get distracted by them through thinking they like an -ism rather than a composer or a piece of music. It gets more confusing when you consider that the terms are not mutually exclusive but are often used as if they are. The broadest terms are useful, I guess, but even these can distract by making us look for only certain qualities (the ones that fit the -ism) in a piece and to ignore other qualities. We tend not to notice even classicism and romanticism in music that does not come from officially Classical or Romantic composers. Maybe we should talk of "tendencies" - like "in this piece we hear x, y and z tendencies".


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## JAS

Taggart said:


> Um ... no. Just that people have different tastes.


Yes, and all I want is for people planning programs to be cognizant of those differences and not be inclined to be too free in thinking that they can or should put just any collection of pieces together because someone will or may like it, and forget about everyone else. I think such planners need to be very careful about mixing wildly divergent styles in a single program (and for a series if it is a subscription for a run of concerts).


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## Enthusiast

JAS said:


> Yes, and all I want is for people planning programs to be cognizant of those differences and not be inclined to be too free in thinking that they can or should put just any collection of pieces together because someone will or may like it, and forget about everyone else. I think such planners need to be very careful about mixing wildly divergent styles in a single program (and for a series if it is a subscription for a run of concerts).


Concerts of wildly different styles can be difficult to plan, I guess. These days I doubt Bach would be put together with a Brahms or Beethoven symphony but it was a common thing once. The reason, though, is that we don't really go for Bach played by a symphony orchestra these days. You probably wouldn't mind Bach being programmed with Beethoven and Brahms in a piano recital?

So, for a modern orchestra we can have works from Haydn through the late Romantics to ... to where/who? It is commonplace and - these days - popular to programme these composers with Sibelius, Stravinsky, Bartok, Prokofiev, Britten, Schoenberg, Berg etc. Why not more recent orchestral works? You may wish them to be kept in a ghetto by themselves but why (aside from your own lack of enjoyment in their music) should they be? Ignoring them completely will lead to the death of orchestral music.

I do wonder if you have ever discovered a composer who you thought you didn't like? It could have happened in a concert or the first step could have been at one. I don't know how far into the 20th Century your taste ventures but there probably would have been a time when you thought of the later music in your repertoire as adventurous? I feel sure you didn't arrive as a music lover with your taste already fully formed.


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## JAS

Enthusiast said:


> Concerts of wildly different styles can be difficult to plan, I guess. These days I doubt Bach would be put together with a Brahms or Beethoven symphony but it was a common thing once. The reason, though, is that we don't really go for Bach played by a symphony orchestra these days. You probably wouldn't mind Bach being programmed with Beethoven and Brahms in a piano recital?


There are obvious practical issues in the forces and specific combinations of instruments to consider, but I am primarily concerned about trying to combine pieces that are incompatible in terms of style. Even if practical considerations were not an issue, I would probably not put a Gregorian Chant or Lamentations of Jeremiah by Thomas Tallis between a presentation of Mozart and Brahms, barring some unusual connection that might actually work on some level. (I am at a loss to come up with an actual example, but will offer only the imaginary idea that there were works by Mozart or Brahms that were based on the same musical idea of the earlier work in question.)



Enthusiast said:


> So, for a modern orchestra we can have works from Haydn through the late Romantics to ... to where/who? It is commonplace and - these days - popular to programme these composers with Sibelius, Stravinsky, Bartok, Prokofiev, Britten, Schoenberg, Berg etc.


I would not include any of the last 6 composers, generally speaking, with, for example Haydn. To do so is already violating the idea of mixing wildly divergent styles. (I like Haydn and Sibelius, but I probably would not put both on a single program, unless there were some thematic reason, and even here one must be careful about using external connections for regularly stuffing pieces together that are stylistically divergent.) I would certainly not put something by Ferneyhough on such a concert, under any circumstance that I can think of. On the other hand, although I would not be likely to attend such a concert, I would have no objection in principle to there being a concert of music by Ferneyhough and his circle, assuming that a sufficient audience can be assembled.



Enthusiast said:


> Why not more recent orchestral works?


Because they are incompatible, and the mixing of them is undesirable, and not merely to me. (I am not the extraordinary exception in this case.)



Enthusiast said:


> You may wish them to be kept in a ghetto by themselves but why (aside from your own lack of enjoyment in their music) should they be?


The use of the word "ghetto" is obviously intended to be negative for reasons that have nothing to do with the discussion, and more argumentative than helpful. Consequently, I will ignore the implication even if I can admire the rhetorical cleverness with which it is applied for effect. My point is that I acknowledge the compatibility or incompatibility of style to be a valid consideration in programming. If it were only my personal lack of enjoyment of certain works or composers, the concern would be of no great importance, as long as they are happy not having me attend or purchase tickets (or, perhaps, recordings of such performances). I am only an audience of one.



Enthusiast said:


> Ignoring them completely will lead to the death of orchestral music.


This statement is simply not true. It is fortunate that the life of orchestral music is not dependent on modern or contemporary compositions. What may well lead to the death of orchestral music is composers and musicians who insist on foisting absurd performances on the public as music, such as having a pianist press keys so lightly as not to make more than the occasional sound, or having a violinist play a piece that looks as if he is having a seizure or is, at the very least, severely impaired. (Examples of both of these have been posted here on TC quite recently.)



Enthusiast said:


> I do wonder if you have ever discovered a composer who you thought you didn't like?


I don't usually have a pre-formed opinion about a composer I have not heard. I have no problem in a planner including obscure works or composers, as long as the relative compatibility of style is the chief consideration. In fact, I encourage some intentional variety of this sort, just as when I can enjoy a full day of listening I always try to start out with a CD or two that I have not played in a long time.



Enthusiast said:


> It could have happened in a concert or the first step could have been at one. I don't know how far into the 20th Century your taste ventures but there probably would have been a time when you thought of the later music in your repertoire as adventurous? I feel sure you didn't arrive as a music lover with your taste already fully formed.


It is not a valid goal of a concert planner to be a taste-maker or to challenge an audience. In the long run, the audience will win, or leave.


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## joen_cph

I wouldn't feel entitled to condemn or prohibit a concert featuring say the Eroica Symphony, Rudolf Escher's Le Tombeau de Ravel, Kurtag's Stele and Ferneyhough's Funerailles. In fact, I'd find it unusually interesting and attractive. And if I was to succumb to a very conservative audience, one of the pieces could always be replaced say by funeral pieces or optimistic programme music by for example Nielsen or Langgaard here.


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## Crudblud

KenOC said:


> Music has historically survived and sometimes thrived because composers figured out *what people wanted to hear*. My opinion: The farther we get from that, the less healthy our music scene becomes.


Should composers then ditch the string quartets and start making hip hop beats?


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## JAS

joen_cph said:


> I wouldn't feel entitled to condemn or prohibit a concert featuring say the Eroica Symphony, Rudolf Escher's Le Tombeau de Ravel, Kurtag's Stele and Ferneyhough's Funerailles. In fact, I'd find it unusually interesting and attractive. And if I was to succumb to a very conservative audience, one of the pieces could always be replaced say by funeral pieces or optimistic programme music by for example Nielsen or Langgaard here.


I do not have the right or power to prohibit concerts. I would not attend the concert in question (although it could be argued that they are thematically linked a funerary works).


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## Enthusiast

JAS said:


> I would not include any of the last 6 composers, generally speaking, with, for example Haydn. To do so is already violating the idea of mixing wildly divergent styles. (I like Haydn and Sibelius, but I probably would not put both on a single program, unless there were some thematic reason, and even here one must be careful about using external connections for regularly stuffing pieces together that are stylistically divergent.)
> 
> Because they are incompatible, and the mixing of them is undesirable, and not merely to me. (I am not the extraordinary exception in this case.)


I edited quite a lot out - because probably most of us know you don't like "modern" music and I want to focus on pieces from different periods sharing a concert - but can see that you don't only reject more music than I had expected (some of it 100 years old) but are also unusually fussy about mixing music of different periods. It is certainly common in Britain to have works by all the composers I listed mixed up in an orchestral programme and audiences seem to like that. The problem for those who do have a problem usually starts with the more recent and less familiar composers being mixed with the more familiar. I do note, though, that you are happy to mix the very different music (and very different aesthetics) of, say, Mozart and Brahms so I am not sure what your logic is.



JAS said:


> The use of the word "ghetto" is obviously intended to be negative for reasons that have nothing to do with the discussion, and more argumentative than helpful. Consequently, I will ignore the implication even if I can admire the rhetorical cleverness with which it is applied for effect. My point is that I acknowledge the compatibility or incompatibility of style to be a valid consideration in programming. If it were only my personal lack of enjoyment of certain works or composers, the concern would be of no great importance, as long as they are happy not having me attend or purchase tickets (or, perhaps, recordings of such performances). I am only an audience of one.


I intended the word ghetto as vivid but not to provoke an argument. It would seem very strange to me (and many British audiences, I suspect) to mix the orchestral genres of Classical to late Romantic but to place everything that came after that (even popular favourites) in a special box (is that word OK?) as if it were incredibly different rather than part of the same tradition. Also, it does seem that compatibility depends for you on music that you feel belongs together. Nothing wrong with that, of course. But it isn't a rule or custom many would recognise.



JAS said:


> This statement is simply not true. It is fortunate that the life of orchestral music is not dependent on modern or contemporary compositions.
> 
> I don't usually have a pre-formed opinion about a composer I have not heard. I have no problem in a planner including obscure works or composers, as long as the relative compatibility of style is the chief consideration. In fact, I encourage some intentional variety of this sort, just as when I can enjoy a full day of listening I always try to start out with a CD or two that I have not played in a long time.
> 
> It is not a valid goal of a concert planner to be a taste-maker or to challenge an audience. In the long run, the audience will win, or leave.


Again I have edited out your suggestions that we are talking about extremes - as if Stravinsky and Bartok (who you have consigned to the box) were just the same as Cage and whatever other avant garde composers you were talking about - as that gets in the way of focusing on what you are saying about concert programming. It seems to come down to compatible styles which as far as orchestras are concerned is for you music composed in a window between 1750 and 1900 - very varied though that is.

You may think it untrue, but I am fairly sure that most composers would stop writing orchestral music if orchestras stopped programming it in their concerts. In that way orchestral music would die. We would still have the music of the past but even that would be hit by the fact that the form had died.

I guess your last sentence is where we get to the rub. I personally would like my concert programmers to challenge me, to open my ears and to educate me. There was a time when Sibelius was a risky prospect for an orchestra and conductors who programmed it were seen as brave. Luckily, they were also convincing. I find it hard to imagine anyone wanting to say to a great conductor "sorry but my ears are closed to any music I don't know but that you think I might like" but I do know there have always been some who feel like that. I can still just about remember when some people felt that including Dvorak in a concert was wrong as he was a mere peasant (I remember that word being used) compared to the masters of the tradition.

Please, if you respond, try to avoid going to extremes in your examples. It doesn't help and it doesn't surprise that those extremes don't fit. Try to express yourself with examples that are close to the boundaries that you are constructing.


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## joen_cph

JAS said:


> I do not have the right or power to prohibit concerts. I would not attend the concert in question (although it could be argued that they are thematically linked a funerary works).


Good, because one could read your post above differently.


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## JAS

joen_cph said:


> Good, because one could read your post above differently.


Only someone who simply wanted to be disagreeable. Nowhere have I claimed or suggested such a power, and an assumption that I did would be unjustified.


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## JAS

Enthusiast said:


> I edited quite a lot out - because probably most of us know you don't like "modern" music and I want to focus on pieces from different periods sharing a concert . . .


There is no need to quote a full post merely to respond to a few points, as long as one does not materially alter what was posted. Nor do I think an explanation for doing so is required as it is customary practice.



Enthusiast said:


> . . . but can see that you don't only reject more music than I had expected (some of it 100 years old) but are also unusually fussy about mixing music of different periods. It is certainly common in Britain to have works by all the composers I listed mixed up in an orchestral programme and audiences seem to like that. The problem for those who do have a problem usually starts with the more recent and less familiar composers being mixed with the more familiar. I do note, though, that you are happy to mix the very different music (and very different aesthetics) of, say, Mozart and Brahms so I am not sure what your logic is.


I am not inherently concerned about the age of the work in question, merely the stylistic choices that it embodies. And I am more concerned about clashing them together than whether or not they are performed at all. I don't think that I am unusually fussy about mixing music of different periods. Again, the emphasis is on compatibility of style. (Yes, there is very much a subjective element in such a consideration.) Mozart and Brahms can be mixed, although I would probably hesitate to program specific pieces that are starkly different. It is not merely having identical aesthetics, but a broader consideration of compatibility. It is the difference between some difference and vast difference, a matter of degree. If British audiences are happy with what they are getting, and there is a sufficient audience to support the concerts in question, that is fine. I would not attend such a concert, and it is really only my own position that I am explaining.



Enthusiast said:


> I intended the word ghetto as vivid but not to provoke an argument.


Perhaps, but it is a word with a rather loaded meaning, and commonly recognized as such. It is rarely used without the intent of being a pejorative.



Enthusiast said:


> It would seem very strange to me (and many British audiences, I suspect) to mix the orchestral genres of Classical to late Romantic but to place everything that came after that (even popular favourites) in a special box (is that word OK?) as if it were incredibly different rather than part of the same tradition. Also, it does seem that compatibility depends for you on music that you feel belongs together. Nothing wrong with that, of course. But it isn't a rule or custom many would recognise.


But late Schoenberg is _not_ part of the same tradition. That is the whole point. Schoenberg, once he shifted into his new ideas, expressly rejects all that came before, in fundamental sensibilities. That is what makes it incompatible. The idea of compatibility, as I have already stated, is admittedly mostly subjective. In a way, each of us gets to make his or her own decision, and I am chiefly speaking for myself, of course. Collectively, the decision gets made by the audience.



Enthusiast said:


> Again I have edited out your suggestions that we are talking about extremes - as if Stravinsky and Bartok (who you have consigned to the box) were just the same as Cage and whatever other avant garde composers you were talking about - as that gets in the way of focusing on what you are saying about concert programming. It seems to come down to compatible styles which as far as orchestras are concerned is for you music composed in a window between 1750 and 1900 - very varied though that is.


Here, at least, you begin to acknowledge that there are different boxes, even if we might not agree on the specific assignments. I would not put Cage in the same box as Stravinsky and Bartok, but I might put both boxes far back in the basement.



Enthusiast said:


> You may think it untrue, but I am fairly sure that most composers would stop writing orchestral music if orchestras stopped programming it in their concerts.


One would think that they would stop writing orchestral music if audiences seemed to fail to embrace them. Most of their compositions are lucky to be played once in concert, and yet they keep producing them. It is part of the curious situation in which we find that composers, concert planners and musicians seem to be offering material in search of an audience that is both willing and able to support it.



Enthusiast said:


> In that way orchestral music would die. We would still have the music of the past but even that would be hit by the fact that the form had died.


If all we would get is Ferneyhough anyway, I would consider it no loss at all. In any case, I feel no particular affinity for music merely because it was newly composed. It has often been stated that audiences need to support music of our own time, but, really, in any meaningful sense we are under no such obligation. I listen to the music that speaks to me. I avoid the music that shouts profanities in my ear and calls it music.



Enthusiast said:


> I guess your last sentence is where we get to the rub. I personally would like my concert programmers to challenge me, to open my ears and to educate me. There was a time when Sibelius was a risky prospect for an orchestra and conductors who programmed it were seen as brave. Luckily, they were also convincing. I find it hard to imagine anyone wanting to say to a great conductor "sorry but my ears are closed to any music I don't know but that you think I might like" but I do know there have always been some who feel like that. I can still just about remember when some people felt that including Dvorak in a concert was wrong as he was a mere peasant (I remember that word being used) compared to the masters of the tradition.


I have had quite enough of concert programmers trying to "open my ears and educate me." It is, of course, very unfair to state my position as "sorry but my ears are closed to any music I don't know but that you think I might like." Having heard late Schoenberg music, he goes in one of my boxes marked for disposal. Having heard several of such pieces and having quite a full box, a new one needs considerable reason to be given a chance of not merely repeating the failure of the previous ones. (And again, yes, failure is subjective.) A more reasonable summary of my position would be "sorry, but I am not particularly interested in being forced to endure music that you think I should like merely because you think I should be challenged." At the very least, I do not feel that it is appropriate to force a "new" piece to be heard by squeezing it into a concert of more accepted pieces, with which it shares no plausible connection other than the use of orchestral instruments. In the many conversations I have had with people in the music world professionally, they clearly know that they are doing this, and it does not seem unreasonable for me to merely recognize and protest the practice.



Enthusiast said:


> Please, if you respond, try to avoid going to extremes in your examples. It doesn't help and it doesn't surprise that those extremes don't fit. Try to express yourself with examples that are close to the boundaries that you are constructing.


I will use the examples that I think best illustrate my point.


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## arpeggio

JAS said:


> And, apparently, if far more people in the audience hated it, their opinion is of no importance. And certainly the opinion of all of the people who chose not to attend the concert when they saw the program cannot be important either.


This has nothing to do with the character of the work. This is a matter of respect. After a concert I frequently interact with members of the audience. When I was younger on occasion I would convey my true feelings of a work that I just performed with disastrous consequences.

Even in the reverse situation where members of the audience hated the music a performer must maintain a positive attitude concerning the music they just played. If a member of the audience approached me and stated they hate something we just performed I would tell them I was sorry they did not like the work and I hope they enjoyed the rest of the concert. I can assure the members of this forum I have played works which many of them consider to be great that many members of the audience hated..


----------



## joen_cph

JAS said:


> Only someone who simply wanted to be disagreeable. Nowhere have I claimed or suggested such a power, and an assumption that I did would be unjustified.


Well, you omitted the 'right to'-part. Your whole post was putting forward the claim that based on some sort of objective, stylistic 'incompability' in musical works, combining different pieces in concerts should be avoided, to a much larger extent than it is often done. And that programs should not seek to challenge conventions, or the established taste of members of the audience. That is an unusually strict attitude towards concert programming, which would uniform them a lot, and hinder creativity.

I guess Rochberg's "Music for the Magic Theatre", Schnittke's "Mozart a la Haydn", or Foss' "Phorion", shouldn't have been composed, since, due to their mixing of styles and quotes, they don't really belong anywhere ...? Well, no: classical music history hasn't been a sequence of monolithic, stylistic blocks, incomparable with each other; on the contrary, it has been an evolving process, where the works comment on each other, and each other's content.

Z


----------



## Enthusiast

JAS said:


> There is no need to quote a full post merely to respond to a few points, as long as one does not materially alter what was posted. Nor do I think an explanation for doing so is required as it is customary practice.
> 
> I am not inherently concerned about the age of the work in question, merely the stylistic choices that it embodies. And I am more concerned about clashing them together than whether or not they are performed at all. I don't think that I am unusually fussy about mixing music of different periods. Again, the emphasis is on compatibility of style. (Yes, there is very much a subjective element in such a consideration.) Mozart and Brahms can be mixed, although I would probably hesitate to program specific pieces that are starkly different. It is not merely having identical aesthetics, but a broader consideration of compatibility. It is the difference between some difference and vast difference, a matter of degree. If British audiences are happy with what they are getting, and there is a sufficient audience to support the concerts in question, that is fine. I would not attend such a concert, and it is really only my own position that I am explaining.
> 
> Perhaps, but it is a word with a rather loaded meaning, and commonly recognized as such. It is rarely used without the intent of being a pejorative.
> 
> But late Schoenberg is _not_ part of the same tradition. That is the whole point. Schoenberg, once he shifted into his new ideas, expressly rejects all that came before, in fundamental sensibilities. That is what makes it incompatible. The idea of compatibility, as I have already stated, is admittedly mostly subjective. In a way, each of us gets to make his or her own decision, and I am chiefly speaking for myself, of course. Collectively, the decision gets made by the audience.
> 
> Here, at least, you begin to acknowledge that there are different boxes, even if we might not agree on the specific assignments. I would not put Cage in the same box as Stravinsky and Bartok, but I might put both boxes far back in the basement.
> 
> One would think that they would stop writing orchestral music if audiences seemed to fail to embrace them. Most of their compositions are lucky to be played once in concert, and yet they keep producing them. It is part of the curious situation in which we find that composers, concert planners and musicians seem to be offering material in search of an audience that is both willing and able to support it.
> 
> If all we would get is Ferneyhough anyway, I would consider it no loss at all. In any case, I feel no particular affinity for music merely because it was newly composed. It has often been stated that audiences need to support music of our own time, but, really, in any meaningful sense we are under no such obligation. I listen to the music that speaks to me. I avoid the music that shouts profanities in my ear and calls it music.
> 
> I have had quite enough of concert programmers trying to "open my ears and educate me." It is, of course, very unfair to state my position as "sorry but my ears are closed to any music I don't know but that you think I might like." Having heard late Schoenberg music, he goes in one of my boxes marked for disposal. Having heard several of such pieces and having quite a full box, a new one needs considerable reason to be given a chance of not merely repeating the failure of the previous ones. (And again, yes, failure is subjective.) A more reasonable summary of my position would be "sorry, but I am not particularly interested in being forced to endure music that you think I should like merely because you think I should be challenged." At the very least, I do not feel that it is appropriate to force a "new" piece to be heard by squeezing it into a concert of more accepted pieces, with which it shares no plausible connection other than the use of orchestral instruments. In the many conversations I have had with people in the music world professionally, they clearly know that they are doing this, and it does not seem unreasonable for me to merely recognize and protest the practice.
> 
> I will use the examples that I think best illustrate my point.


Thank you. I don't think I will take this any further. Your position is clear enough now ... and very subjective. I guess your style makes it sound like you would want conductors and performers to make programmes that satisfied these subjective and quite unique characteristics.

On the use of the word "ghetto" I am wondering if there is a difference between Britain and the US as to how this word is understood ... or perhaps I am out of date. In Britain it has been a commonly used word for any community that is closed by circumstances that are outside of it ... but I guess you are hearing it as having antisemitic overtones?

Oh, by the way, I was only asking you to use examples that serve your point. I didn't think it was serving your case to lose the thread of your argument in rants against the very avant garde. That is a subject that you obviously feel so strongly about that you just can't live and let live. But, of course, I have no right to stop you letting us know.


----------



## JAS

joen_cph said:


> Well, you omitted the 'right to'-part. Your whole post was putting forward the claim that based on some sort of objective, stylistic 'incompability' in musical works, combining different pieces in concerts should be avoided, to a much larger extent than it is often done. And that programs should not seek to challenge conventions, or the established taste of members of the audience. That is an unusually strict attitude towards concert programming, which would uniform them a lot, and hinder creativity.


I make no claim of objectivity, at least not in an absolute sense. The only objective aspect is the degree to which others hold a similar position, their positions not being under my subjective control and mine not being under theirs. (In this sense, ours are objective relative to each other.) I do not see the creativity of which you speak as being a good thing, particular to the degree and in the way it is often applied. I think my posts are pretty clearly an opinion, stated and admitted as such. This is an online forum where we express and discuss our thoughts about music. Are you familiar with the concept?


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## eugeneonagain

JAS said:


> Yes, and all I want is for people planning programs to be cognizant of those differences and not be inclined to be too free in thinking that they can or should put just any collection of pieces together because someone will or may like it, and forget about everyone else. I think such planners need to be very careful about mixing wildly divergent styles in a single program (and for a series if it is a subscription for a run of concerts).


It's called 'hammocking' and it's used all over the place in art and media. At a gallery exhibition, for which you will have also paid entrance (or not, if you live in the UK where most galleries are FREE!) they will add a room or two with something less popular (for whatever reason) so that people get the chance to see it, even if they still choose to reject it.

In television they put new and struggling programmes in-between two popular ones so both bookend audiences might catch it.

Concert programming is tricky because you are captive in your seat and can't just wander about or switch off, though there's no chains on the chairs so anyone is free to leave at any point. Generally when I attend the concert hall (as I will in November) I'm interested to see what they will add to the two other attractions for me to sample. If I don't like it, then I'll remember and I still get to hear two other things that give me enjoyment.

Hopefully I will get something from it. What some classical listeners - and it fact all consumers of art - must realise is they do not know about everything they may appreciate. The art of the editor has been sidelined in the internet age where everyone thinks there is nothing they can be shown or taught. Commercial media's terrible habit of giving people 'what they want' has spoiled the art of content providing based upon consulting people in the know and a willingness to take risks, which can pay off.


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## JAS

arpeggio said:


> This has nothing to do with the character of the work. This is a matter of respect. After a concert I frequently interact with members of the audience. When I was younger on occasion I would convey my true feelings of a work that I just performed with disastrous consequences.
> 
> Even in the reverse situation where members of the audience hated the music a performer must maintain a positive attitude concerning the music they just played. If a member of the audience approached me and stated they hate something we just performed I would tell them I was sorry they did not like the work and I hope they enjoyed the rest of the concert. I can assure the members of this forum I have played works which many of them consider to be great that many members of the audience hated..


As a musician, performing music, it may be that you are bound by conventions that I would never apply to the audience. And as a performer, you do have a responsibility to do the best you can, and to provide as good a performance for the audience as possible. A really good actor can invest even dreadfully poor dialogue with meaning. (I think of Alec Guinness in Star Wars, for which he hated the movie and much of the attention that it garnered, but was happy with the money.) I seem to recall that Maureen O'Hara said that whenever she was in a movie where she had reservations about the material, she just tied to behave as if she loved it and was having the best time in the world, and that the audience would feel that. She saw that as her obligation, and I can see it as admirable even if, and perhaps even more, because I couldn't do it myself.

I, of course, am looking at the situation from the perspective of being a member of the audience and not a performer. (It is also true that there are instances where, as a matter of politeness, people express opinions which they do not actually hold.)


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## eugeneonagain

tatsuyadayon said:


> modrn music is cool


Spelling modern as 'modrn' is rather avant-garde I'd say.


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## JAS

eugeneonagain said:


> Concert programming is tricky because you are captive in your seat and can't just wander about or switch off, though there's no chains on the chairs so anyone is free to leave at any point. Generally when I attend the concert hall (as I will in November) I'm interested to see what they will add to the two other attractions for me to sample. If I don't like it, then I'll remember and I still get to hear two other things that give me enjoyment.


The question becomes one of measuring how much I had to invest (time, money and effort) in attending the concert, relative to the value I obtained from it. In several cases, I know that a work was added to a concert knowing full well that most of the audience was not going to like it, and not particularly caring about that reaction.



eugeneonagain said:


> Hopefully I will get something from it. What some classical listeners - and it fact all consumers of art - must realise is they do not know about everything they may appreciate. The art of the editor has been sidelined in the internet age where everyone thinks there is nothing they can be shown or taught. Commercial media's terrible habit of giving people 'what they want' has spoiled the art of content providing based upon consulting people in the know and a willingness to take risks, which can pay off.


I am only asking for some balance in the consideration. Most of what commercial media offers is not what I want either. I am fully aware that I am part of a niche, and not the most lucrative niche. What producers of any art product (and the presenters who are part of the process) have to remember is that an artist is free to create whatever he or she wants, but has no right or power to dictate how it is received.


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## JAS

Enthusiast said:


> Thank you. I don't think I will take this any further. Your position is clear enough now ... and very subjective. I guess your style makes it sound like you would want conductors and performers to make programmes that satisfied these subjective and quite unique characteristics.


And your position that this modern music has value, greater than or equal to older approaches, is just as subjective. I presume that you want conductors and performers to make programs that satisfy your interest in music. Why would it be unusual for me to have a similar position? (What I don't have is any expectation that they will do so.) There has been enough disagreement on TC to suggest that I am not really proposing a unique position.



Enthusiast said:


> On the use of the word "ghetto" I am wondering if there is a difference between Britain and the US as to how this word is understood ... or perhaps I am out of date. In Britain it has been a commonly used word for any community that is closed by circumstances that are outside of it ... but I guess you are hearing it as having antisemitic overtones?


That is certainly possible. In the US, that is a word that can get you into a literal fight, depending on the precise circumstances. In the US, it tends to have more racial overtones than specifically anti-Semitic ones. (Fortunately, I am not a violent person, and in any case, you are more than an arm's length away, so we are both safe.)



Enthusiast said:


> Oh, by the way, I was only asking you to use examples that serve your point. I didn't think it was serving your case to lose the thread of your argument in rants against the very avant garde. That is a subject that you obviously feel so strongly about that you just can't live and let live. But, of course, I have no right to stop you letting us know.


I lost no thread of my argument. I was merely replying to your concern about the death of orchestral music, and the suggested cause in the playing only of music of dead white Europeans. I think my suggested examples are far more to blame than yours. It is exactly things like the examples I provided that make "serious" music a laughing stock to most of the world, and one that I cannot reasonably defend because I agree with them on this point.

As I have said before, with some intentional humor, the children would not fight so much if they did not have to share a bathroom.

So, to provide my answer to the title of the thread, what is the direction of modern music? I predict that it is most likely going to continue heading off into the desert of irrelevance. The alternative is that it is a pendulum action rather than a continuum, and at least some portion of it begins to swing back again.


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## eugeneonagain

JAS said:


> The question becomes one of measuring how much I had to invest (time, money and effort) in attending the concert, relative to the value I obtained from it. In several cases, I know that a work was added to a concert knowing full well that most of the audience was not going to like it, and not particularly caring about that reaction.
> 
> I am only asking for some balance in the consideration. Most of what commercial media offers is not what I want either. I am fully aware that I am part of a niche, and not the most lucrative niche. What producers of any art product (and the presenters who are part of the process) have to remember is that *an artist is free to create whatever he or she wants, but has no right or power to dictate how it is received.*


Yes. It's fair to want value for money, I want that too, but I'm willing to accept the 1/3 risk; it's a 50-50 chance I may enjoy it. Anyway if the music is execrable I usually use that time to hold the hand of the person with me there in the dark.

The bolded bit above reminds me of a quote from Erik Satie:

_Artist's have no right to take up their listener's time pointlessly.
Artists are to be respected, but listeners even more so.
The public worships ennui. For them Ennui is mysterious and profound.
A curious thing: the listener is defenceless against boredom. Boredom tames him.
Why is it easier to bore people than to amuse them?_

It's always hard to tell if he's being ironic though....


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## Enthusiast

JAS said:


> And your position that this modern music has value, greater than or equal to older approaches, is just as subjective. I presume that you want conductors and performers to make programs that satisfy your interest in music. Why would it be unusual for me to have a similar position?


The examples I gave were to tease out what it was that you were saying ... and were chosen to reflect what I see orchestras programming quite regularly. I have not posted in this thread about the programming I would like to see. If I did then that would indeed be me being subjective. I would only ask that performers play some music that I may not know on the grounds that they like it and think some of us may like it too. I can respect those who choose to play only older music if that is what they like. It won't stop me from enjoying their Mozart or their Brahms.

As for your prediction about the future of modern music ... it only leads me to suspect that you really have very little idea as to the variety that it out there. Quite a few writing now - not necessarily my favourites - are real crowd-pullers. It isn't all Ferneyhough and/or Cage, you know.


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## JAS

Enthusiast said:


> As for your prediction about the future of modern music ... it only leads me to suspect that you really have very little idea as to the variety that it out there. Quite a few writing now - not necessarily my favourites - are real crowd-pullers. It isn't all Ferneyhough and/or Cage, you know.


May they find and enjoy great success, somewhere that I don't have to hear them.


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## DaveM

IMO, what has run modern classical music off the rails is the development of so-called experimental/avant-garde ‘music’. Most of it appears to be an attempt to find as many different ways to create different sounds from orchestral instruments as possible, no matter how bizarre. More recently on TC, to my dismay, numerous examples have been presented as if this is the new world of classical music. It may be an art form deserving of its own genre, but it isn’t classical music.

I am not a big fan of atonal/serial music, but my biggest gripe against it was not that it wasn’t classical music, but that it stifled traditional tonal romantic music. If the two sub-genres had been allowed to continue freely in their separate ways we would have likely had more traditional tonal classical music in the first half of the 20th century.

I bring this up because it appears to me that discussing modern music as if it’s a homogeneous whole ignores the fact that some of what is apparently being called modern music bears absolutely no relationship to any conceivable definition of classical music.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

How about those isms? I would like to change track, back to describing styles of modern music. I dont care if you like it or not


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## Art Rock

An ism you did not mention in the first post is holy minimalism, sufficiently different from the usual minimalism (Adams, Feldman, Reich et al) to warrant inclusion.


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## eugeneonagain

Did the idea of polystylism peter out? You don't get many composers described as such now and it is often those from the 20th century; used to somehow explain why they appeared to have moments of lapsing back into full-on tonal writing. In the case of someone like Shostakovich it was because he (quoted from his own words) wanted 'the laughter back into music'. Another is Bohuslav.

Are there any contemporary composers who noticeably practice this sort of polystylism?


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## JAS

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> How about those isms? I would like to change track, back to describing styles of modern music. I dont care if you like it or not


By all means, take the discussion back to being on topic. Purely as a matter of curiosity, I will be interested in seeing how long a list of isms those who are devotees can accumulate. (At this point, I will just try to lurk, quietly.)


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## eugeneonagain

Lurkism....................


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## Kjetil Heggelund

Not intended to be a simple list of isms, but a discussion can lead to a better understanding of different styles. They seem to have it better sorted out in other arts.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

eugeneonagain said:


> Lurkism....................


That is the best today!!!


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## Kjetil Heggelund

I'm a mod, man!


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## mmsbls

When I listen to contemporary music, I'm not really aware of particular styles. A composer friend of mine said he felt that, unlike earlier eras (Romantic, Classical, Baroque...), modern and contemporary music is incredibly diverse to the point where almost every composer has a unique style. Trying to place an ism on all these composers would be futile. Maybe it's not quite to that point, but the diversity is quite broad. 

Composers do not usually care about or enjoy being placed into categories, but my understanding of the New Simplicity movement is different. I looked for a website I once found awhile ago setup by New Simplicity composers, but I couldn't find it. As I understand the movement, they shared a view of moving (at least some) classical music away from detailed compositional techniques of some modern music.


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## Larkenfield

A


Kjetil Heggelund said:


> ...expressionism, transavantgarde, primitivism, abstract expressionism, fauvism, neo-impressionism, tachisme, post-impressionism, post minimalism, neo-dada, cubism, informalism, hyperrealism, surrealism, neo expressionism... impressionism, expressionism, atonality, neo-classism, serialism, aleatory, minimalism, postmodernism, spectralism, polystylism.


I like to forgo the preoccupation with labels, some of which can split hairs between their distinctions in modern or contemporary music, though sometimes they might be of help. I think too often labels and their nitpicking differences can lead listeners to prejudge something they might actually enjoy if they gave it a chance. Just reading all the labels above is a nightmare… and some of the music can be fascinating or a highly intellectually-concocted drag. I mostly gave up after reading Ferneyhough's convoluted description of the "New Complexity" that even he couldn't explain in comprehensible language.


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## Simon Moon

MarkW said:


> How about really noisy, noisy, slightly less noisy, medium noisy, medium, medium quiet, slightly quieter, quiet, really quiet, nigh on inaudible.


I really have love/HATE relationship with TC, just for posts like this.

If it serious, then it is ignorant, because it does not describe all modern classical, and therefore, a cliche (and false) criticism.

And if it is an attempt at humor, then it is still a cliche.

There is plenty of modern and contemporary music that does not fit those descriptions.

It's curious to me, that the first responses to a legitimate OP, are negative and deragatory. Do all you anti-modernist fans out there, just sit there waiting (with glee) for a chance to step in with your 'witticisms'?

When I joined TC, I had hopes that I would not see too many of these types of posts. I was hoping to make new discoveries, which I do. Too bad I have to weed through all this stuff.


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## starthrower

Right on, Simon! This is the only music forum I visit where members deride modern music.


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## arpeggio

Simon Moon said:


> I really have love/HATE relationship with TC, just for posts like this.
> 
> If it serious, then it is ignorant, because it does not describe all modern classical, and therefore, a cliche (and false) criticism.
> 
> And if it is an attempt at humor, then it is still a cliche.
> 
> There is plenty of modern and contemporary music that does not fit those descriptions.
> 
> It's curious to me, that the first responses to a legitimate OP, are negative and deragatory. Do all you anti-modernist fans out there, just sit there waiting (with glee) for a chance to step in with your 'witticisms'?
> 
> When I joined TC, I had hopes that I would not see too many of these types of posts. I was hoping to make new discoveries, which I do. Too bad I have to weed through all this stuff.


MarkW stated in an earlier post that is was meant to be a joke.


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## arpeggio

starthrower said:


> Right on, Simon! This is the only music forum I visit where members deride modern music.


In another thread I stated that this is the only music forum I participate that I have people on my ignore list. The number of friends I have here is still much, much greater.


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## Luchesi

Did Beethoven compose for everyone or for people who might appreciate his works?

What about composers of today?


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## KenOC

Luchesi said:


> Did Beethoven compose for everyone or for people who might appreciate his works?
> 
> What about composers of today?


Beethoven composed what he wanted, and ALWAYS read his reviews. Music publishers paid him the highest rates because they expected the best sales of his sheet music, sometimes for performance and sometimes for study.


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## arpeggio

Moderators, the OP wants to explore the various forms of contemporary music. This is a subject that many of the members of this forum are interested in.

Yet the usual subjects have turned up and are trying to turn this thread into another debate concerning the merits of contemporary music. How many times over the years has this same faction showed up and try to derail the discussion. Sometimes the situation gets our of hand and the thread is closed down. These individuals can easily start their own threads were they can pursue their agenda. In this particular thread most of us are not interested in getting involved in such a debate.

The only ones who can save this thread are the moderators. You need to take some sort of action.


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## Enthusiast

^^ It _is _tiresome but I am not sure what I would want to see the mods do. Some posts in this thread have apparently already been deleted by them (I didn't see them so I don't know how bad they were). A rigid enforcement of the relevance rule would probably damage threads, too, because sometimes an apparently irrelevant post sends a thread into interesting new directions.

The people who keep wrecking these threads are clearly not very considerate of other members. If you try to tackle them on it can lead to arguments and further derail the thread. I have noticed also that many of them seem only marginally to be lovers of CM!

I think they use modern music to stand in their minds for something political and that the battle they are really fighting is against the ghost of a political enemy. Otherwise I can't explain the passion that they put into their mission of stopping people who enjoy some modern music from discussing it.

Putting them on ignore may be the best option for those who are particularly annoying.


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## eugeneonagain

As is normal some of the 'hot' compositional methodologies being used now are actually things from 35-40 years ago when experimentalism was having a peak and music was meeting new computer technologies. 

So-called 'spectralism' and 'spectral harmony' is still being flogged around the music festivals. A couple of years ago I went to an evening at the conservatory and this was a feature.


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## JAS

I do note the irony that it is apparently okay to bash the music of Philip Glass in another thread as "I think he is a joke but not one in good taste" and "But the 2nd violin concerto is really horrible, I think" and "It is a good example of music that I think is deeply ugly." (I am not a fan of Glass, nor especially a detractor, and have no axe to grind there.) I am reminded of the old admonishment that "criticism is a mirror in which we see the reflection of everyone but ourselves."


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## DaveM

I posted once in this thread some time ago and had no interest in taking part in it. Then I noticed that after a relatively short period of disagreement had clearly ended and there was every opportunity for a discussion of the OP, inexplicably, there came a call for the moderators to intercede and I’m thinking, for what?


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## Luchesi

KenOC said:


> Beethoven composed what he wanted, and ALWAYS read his reviews. Music publishers paid him the highest rates because they expected the best sales of his sheet music, sometimes for performance and sometimes for study.


Ego. We all have it, to some degree. I presume the young Beethoven realized that he could make a living, maybe a good living, and maybe become famous with the skills he already had. What could a man like him do? from his station in life back then. 
A university education wasn't for him. He was the head of the household.

The world of music needed more power and that was conveniently his personality. Maybe there were some vested interests who didn't like the direction in which Beethoven was developing the music of the future. Was Beethoven pushing out the old guard, crowding out the older, pleasant music? Look at the beauty the Romantics came up with. Can we hope for a flowering like that today? I can see it at the fringes.

Does the world of music today need more power? More expressivity? More reminders of how bad things are, and at the intellectual level? More ego, less ego, more complexity, more ambiguity.. I think they've expressed the future, now it's post post post modern. People in my circle say they're just too good at it!


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## Taggart

The question of derailing the thread has been flagged for moderator discussion.

Please remember the terms of service:



> Be polite to your fellow members. If you disagree with them, *please state your opinion in a »civil« and respectful manner.*


Some inappropriate comments have been removed and others which reference them.


----------



## arpeggio

Enthusiast said:


> ^^ It _is _tiresome but I am not sure what I would want to see the mods do. Some posts in this thread have apparently already been deleted by them (I didn't see them so I don't know how bad they were). A rigid enforcement of the relevance rule would probably damage threads, too, because sometimes an apparently irrelevant post sends a thread into interesting new directions.
> 
> The people who keep wrecking these threads are clearly not very considerate of other members. If you try to tackle them on it can lead to arguments and further derail the thread. I have noticed also that many of them seem only marginally to be lovers of CM!
> 
> I think they use modern music to stand in their minds for something political and that the battle they are really fighting is against the ghost of a political enemy. Otherwise I can't explain the passion that they put into their mission of stopping people who enjoy some modern music from discussing it.
> 
> Putting them on ignore may be the best option for those who are particularly annoying.


You are right. I am really interested in this subject and I hoped I could learn some new things. In my own inept way I was trying to help. Sorry I messed up.


----------



## Luchesi

arpeggio said:


> This has nothing to do with the character of the work. This is a matter of respect. After a concert I frequently interact with members of the audience. When I was younger on occasion I would convey my true feelings of a work that I just performed with disastrous consequences.
> 
> Even in the reverse situation where members of the audience hated the music a performer must maintain a positive attitude concerning the music they just played. If a member of the audience approached me and stated they hate something we just performed I would tell them I was sorry they did not like the work and I hope they enjoyed the rest of the concert. I can assure the members of this forum I have played works which many of them consider to be great that many members of the audience hated..


When we prepare to perform a modern piece we learn about it and we rehearse and rehearse. We get to know it and we memorize what we need to memorize. By the time we perform it we usually deeply appreciate it. But the audience hears it ONE time and there's just no way that they can take in a modern complex conception with only one hearing. I know I couldn't…

If you ask the composer he can tell you all about the analysis and where his ideas came from and what he was trying to do and the meaningfulness of it in his own estimation.


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## Fredx2098

KenOC said:


> Music has historically survived and sometimes thrived because composers figured out what people wanted to hear. My opinion: The farther we get from that, the less healthy our music scene becomes.


The thing is, most people don't want _any_ kind of classical music anymore. Music that is complete non- or anti-classical is what is thriving. I'm sure they don't want classical music like the most popular pre-modern music which they know as boring, neutral background music in movies and TV shows. I would rather classical music evolve into many different styles than to just rehash and copy the "great" composers. Anyone who just wants classical music to stagnate as what it was in the "good ol' days" of Bach and Beethoven I would consider and old fogie. There's plenty of old stuff to listen to. Some people like new ideas.


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## eugeneonagain

Fredx2098 said:


> There's plenty of old stuff to listen to. Some people like new ideas.


This may be true, but so often when you read an interview with a current composer there is a talk of how they are influenced by elements of past music or how they're an enormous Bach aficionado or how contrapuntal their music is. The past presses heavily on the present and not always in a negative way.


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## haydnguy

Here is something that I've wondered. A performer on stage plays to the best of his/her ability and I assume hopes that the audience enjoys their performance.

These modern composers, on the other hand, compose music that they know full well, if played in concert, would be overwhelmingly disliked by the vast majority of people in the audience.

Do composers compose music not caring if people like it or not?


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## joen_cph

haydnguy said:


> Here is something that I've wondered. A performer on stage plays to the best of his/her ability and I assume hopes that the audience enjoys their performance.
> 
> These modern composers, on the other hand, compose music that they know full well, if played in concert, would be overwhelmingly disliked by the vast majority of people in the audience.
> 
> Do composers compose music not caring if people like it or not?


Sorry, but I can't help pointing to that by using the term 'these modern composers' you are suggesting that simply all 'modern' composers write ugly and unpopular music. On order to understand your question: You must have a line you draw, to this dark zone of ugly, unpopular classical music. Where do you draw it? Is it post-Debussy, post-Shostakovich, post-Stravinsky, or something else?


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## millionrainbows

I think Dmitri Tymoczko, in his new book "A Geometry of Music" (a book about tonality) has gone a long way in naming and defining some of the diverse music of the 20th century, and has gone a long way in clearing up some of the misconceptions and arguments about tonality. He solves the pages-long debate between me & Mahlerian in one paragraph, by giving a good definition of tonality. He also identifies practices such as deriving chords from modes and "other' scales. He goes all the way back to the first Medieval polyphony and explains Western music in fresh new terms, assuming nothing, and taking nothing for granted. There are plenty of footnote disclaimers as well, to ward-off academic historians and the like, who would no doubt bog-down the discussion if allowed to speak. He shows that tonality is alive and well, in many new forms, with many new ways of thinking. Personally, I don't have the time to debate any more about modern music; I just want to increase my enjoyment of all music, of all eras, and this book is helping me do just that.


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## millionrainbows

KenOC said:


> My impression is that people (perhaps only critics?) are thrashing about, inventing new style names, only to make themselves seem clever. When in music history have people worried so much about looking like music professors? When have _names _ever been so important?
> 
> Music has historically survived and sometimes thrived because composers figured out what people wanted to hear. My opinion: The farther we get from that, the less healthy our music scene becomes.


Are the majority of people still interested in "just music"? If so, they play it in their cars, or while running. The only high fidelity music they probably hear is in TV and movie soundtracks.

So the observation that "composers figured out what people want to hear" does not relate to the consumption of classical music as most members here listen to it and discuss it on this forum. We seem to listen to recordings, mostly.
What "music scene" is being referred to here? I listen to CDs, mostly. My "live" concert experiences are few and far between.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

That sounds like an interesting book! I already purchased Taruskins 20th century volumes (from History of Western Music) and books on Boulez, Davies, Denisov and Nono. It's a universe of it's own! I should be reading...


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## Crudblud

haydnguy said:


> Here is something that I've wondered. A performer on stage plays to the best of his/her ability and I assume hopes that the audience enjoys their performance.
> 
> These modern composers, on the other hand, compose music that they know full well, if played in concert, would be overwhelmingly disliked by the vast majority of people in the audience.
> 
> Do composers compose music not caring if people like it or not?


You're painting with a broad-and, I suspect, somewhat disingenuous-brush with this post. I'm pretty sure all composers hope that their work will be enjoyed, there would be very little point in creation if the aim was to make something just to have it sit around collecting dust. But you are talking about an apparent disdain for audience. Well, if there are composers who want to antagonise the audience, those composers are still hoping to reach the audience and communicate something to them through these antagonistic works. However, I strongly doubt that such composers do exist.

Speaking as a composer, I put a lot of effort and time into my creations and I hope that whoever hears them will be interested by them and maybe even come to enjoy them as I do, but I see no reason to avoid doing things that appeal to me on the off-chance that doing so might gain me a wider audience. When I get an idea I must be faithful to it, otherwise my work is not honest. I very strongly believe that it is more important and more valuable for a composer to be honest in their work, even if that work is met with hostility, than it is for them to write music that is not honest purely because they believe that it will appeal to lots of listeners.


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## millionrainbows

Milton Babbitt freely admitted in his infamous essay "Who Cares if You Listen?" that his music was composed for "specialists" and not for entertianment. Ironically, I find his music very entertaining. So what gives? Am I being duped?


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## Dan Ante

joen_cph said:


> Sorry, but I can't help pointing to that by using the term 'these modern composers' you are suggesting that simply all 'modern' composers write ugly and unpopular music. On order to understand your question: You must have a line you draw, to this dark zone of ugly, unpopular classical music. Where do you draw it? Is it post-Debussy, post-Shostakovich, post-Stravinsky, or something else?


I do not wish to pre empt Haydnguy but surly *you* can advise which are considered modern composers, and of course not all mod composers are ugly. So how about a little list and then we will know.


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## Crudblud

millionrainbows said:


> Milton Babbitt freely admitted in his infamous essay "Who Cares if You Listen?" that his music was composed for "specialists" and not for entertianment. Ironically, I find his music very entertaining. So what gives? Am I being duped?


Some of Babbitt's music does bear that idea out, but I always thought he said it with a little bit of a wink. In any case, he certainly didn't set out to antagonise anyone, he was, like any composer, doing what he felt was good and necessary for him to do. I'm glad he did.


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## eugeneonagain

Dan Ante said:


> I do not wish to pre empt Haydnguy but surly *you* can advise which are considered modern composers, and of course not all mod composers are ugly. So how about a little list and then we will know.


Why would you want a list of composers who compose music which in general you have declared not worth listening to?


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## KenOC

Crudblud said:


> Some of Babbitt's music does bear that idea out, but I always thought he said it with a little bit of a wink.


Any thought of a wink in Mr. Babbitt's eye will vanish upon reading his essay, prepared in the most turgid academese.

http://palestrant.com/babbitt.html

"I dare suggest that the composer would do himself and his music an immediate and eventual service by total, resolute, and voluntary withdrawal from this public world to one of private performance and electronic media, with its very real possibility of complete elimination of the public and social aspects of musical composition. By so doing, the separation between the domains would be defined beyond any possibility of confusion of categories, and the composer would be free to pursue a private life of professional achievement, as opposed to a public life of unprofessional compromise and exhibitionism."

He then asks how, having done this, can the composer put food in his belly? But never fear. He has the answer!


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## eugeneonagain

KenOC said:


> Any thought of a wink in Mr. Babbitt's eye will vanish upon reading his essay, prepared in the most turgid academese.
> 
> ....
> 
> He then asks how, having done this, can the composer put food in his belly? But never fear. He has the answer!


And he is essentially right. He's also predicting the way this music is largely performed and recorded/distributed in the present era. So where's the scoop?

In the last sentence I see a reference to your other thread about composers being given 'subsidised assistance', but that claim has already been demolished when we know that these people exchange their labour teaching largely standard music education in exchange for the facilities and some freedom to compose and have some audience for it.

So Babbit in 1958 was correct.


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## Crudblud

KenOC said:


> Any thought of a wink in Mr. Babbitt's eye will vanish upon reading his essay, prepared in the most turgid academese.


It is very easy to say things and less easy to put them into practice. Babbitt did not play with jazz and quote pop tunes for his academic colleagues, that's for sure-perhaps solely for his own entertainment, but for entertainment nonetheless.

By the way, I wonder if you have given any thought to idea that composers who want to make "what people want to hear" ought to stop writing string quartets and start making hip hop beats? I raised this question in response to your first post in this thread, but it unfortunately got lost on page three after an overwhelming flurry of back and forth between others.


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## KenOC

Crudblud said:


> ...By the way, I wonder if you have given any thought to idea that composers who want to make "what people want to hear" ought to stop writing string quartets and start making hip hop beats? I raised this question in response to your first post in this thread, but it unfortunately got lost on page three after an overwhelming flurry of back and forth between others.


In fact, I can almost guarantee that the music most widely popular today (hip-hop and pop/rock mostly) will, on the whole, be better remembered in the future than anything we call "classical" around here written contemporaneously. That's been pretty true now for half a century.


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## KenOC

eugeneonagain said:


> And he is essentially right. He's also predicting the way this music is largely performed and recorded/distributed in the present era. So where's the scoop?
> 
> In the last sentence I see a reference to your other thread about composers being given 'subsidised assistance', but that claim has already been demolished when we know that these people exchange their labour teaching largely standard music education in exchange for the facilities and some freedom to compose and have some audience for it.
> 
> So Babbit in 1958 was correct.


Babbitt raises no teaching duties in his essay. In fact, he says the role of the composer in academia is "research," not teaching. He earns his reward simply by existing and writing music incomprehensible to most. Please read the essay -- yes, I know it's not easy!


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## Crudblud

KenOC said:


> In fact, I can almost guarantee that the music most widely popular today (hip-hop and pop/rock mostly) will, on the whole, be better remembered in the future than anything we call "classical" around here written contemporaneously. That's been pretty true now for half a century.


That'll be a yes, then?

By the way-and I should have said so earlier-I am glad to see that your curious obsession with that essay is still going strong.


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## Dan Ante

eugeneonagain said:


> Why would you want a list of composers who compose music which in general you have declared not worth listening to?


Here you go again but if its alright with you, I would find a list interesting because I do like some works of composers which may or may not be classed as modern, so where does modernism start eh? Come on give some names and perhaps an example of their best works. I am willing to learn.


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## KenOC

Crudblud said:


> That'll be a yes, then?
> 
> By the way-and I should have said so earlier-I am glad to see that your curious obsession with that essay is still going strong.


Definitely not a "yes." I believe every composer will decide what they want to write, according to their own inclinations and needs. Not for me to say. I only listen -- or not.

WRT my "curious obsession," I am mostly curious why nobody seems to have ever read what Babbitt actually wrote.


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## Bulldog

Once again, this thread has degenerated into a discussion of the merit of modern music.


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## Luchesi

KenOC said:


> In fact, I can almost guarantee that the music most widely popular today (hip-hop and pop/rock mostly) will, on the whole, be better remembered in the future than anything we call "classical" around here written contemporaneously. That's been pretty true now for half a century.


So it's about popularity to you? You didn't answer the question. I assume you think composers should continue writing string quartets etc.

Added - oops, now you've said it's not for you to say

For me music appreciation is;

The listening, sensory pleasure - the intriguing patterns

The playing, having fun and/or exploiting for self expression

The intellectual, analysis and ranking the achievements


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## Luchesi

Bulldog said:


> Once again, this thread has degenerated into a discussion of the merit of modern music.


Composers should go back to writing older music. That's a quirky idea.


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## fluteman

KenOC said:


> In fact, I can almost guarantee that the music most widely popular today (hip-hop and pop/rock mostly) will, on the whole, be better remembered in the future than anything we call "classical" around here written contemporaneously. That's been pretty true now for half a century.


Wow. Does any money come with that guarantee? Because the vast majority of popular music is all but forgotten once those who grew up listening to it have passed away. According to www.popculturemadness.com, these were the top five American hit songs of 1920:

1. Swanee - Al Jolson
2. When My Baby Smiles At Me - Ted Lewis
3. Whispering - Paul Whiteman
4. I'll Be With You In Apple Blossom Time - Charles Harrison
5. Tell Me, Little Gypsy - Art Hickman
If those top 5 songs get almost no play today, imagine how unknown nos. 21-25 are.

Classical music from any era gets relatively little play, but it's pretty clear by now that music by Toru Takemitsu, Philip Glass, Arvo Part and John Corigliano will be remembered, not least because they've contributed music to hit movies. And millions have grown up to the soundtracks of John Williams.


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## KenOC

Bulldog said:


> Once again, this thread has degenerated into a discussion of the merit of modern music.


Indeed. Maybe we should talk about Wagner instead.


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## mmsbls

This thread has veered seriously off course. That's not always a problem since sometimes diversions lead to interesting results, but usually those diversions occur after the thread has been active for awhile. This thread topic has not really had a chance to be explored since the majority of posts are off-topic. Kjetil Heggelund would like the thread back on topic so let me suggest the following. Those who would like to discuss the merits of modern/contemporary music can start a new thread where all the posts can be on topic. In this thread, let's get back to discussing directions in modern music.


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## KenOC

fluteman said:


> ...According to www.popculturemadness.com, these were the top five American hit songs of 1920:


As I wrote, the last 50 years. Not the last 100! Do the math, take a look. You'll know the groups (=composers in the new world of music). Several are still more popular, in total, than all the "classical" music written during that time and thereafter as well.

Now take a look at the Pulitzer Prizes in Music awarded in the decade, about 50 years ago starting in 1966:

1966: Leslie Bassett, Variations for Orchestra
1967: Leon Kirchner, Quartet No. 3 for strings and electronic tape
1968: George Crumb, Echoes of Time and the River
1969: Karel Husa, String Quartet No. 3
1970: Charles Wuorinen, Time's Encomium
1971: Mario Davidovsky, Synchronisms No. 6 for Piano and Electronic Sound (1970)
1972: Jacob Druckman, Windows
1973: Elliott Carter, String Quartet No. 3
1974: Donald Martino, Notturno
1975: Dominick Argento, From the Diary of Virginia Woolf

How many people in the real world have ever heard _any _of these, or care to? How many ever will? Even in this forum, I've seen maybe two of them even mentioned over the past several years. Being unplayed, unheard, and undemanded, most will suffer the same fate as all such music.

*Added*: Sorry mmsbls, missed your post!

*PS:* 50 years is a long time! In 1750, old Bach died. In 1800, Prince Joseph Franz von Lobkowitz paid Ludwig van Beethoven 200 florins for the six String Quartets he had commissioned.


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## arpeggio

*Off topic*



mmsbls said:


> This thread has veered seriously off course. That's not always a problem since sometimes diversions lead to interesting results, but usually those diversions occur after the thread has been active for awhile. This thread topic has not really had a chance to be explored since the majority of posts are off-topic. Kjetil Heggelund would like the thread back on topic so let me suggest the following. Those who would like to discuss the merits of modern/contemporary music can start a new thread where all the posts can be on topic. In this thread, let's get back to discussing directions in modern music.


Thanks! This is the point many of us have been trying to make.


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## Fredx2098

It seems like most naysayers equate modern with atonal serialism, which isn't the case. Perhaps some categories could be atonal, indeterminate, minimal, and abstract.


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## janxharris

Fredx2098 said:


> ...Music that is complete non- or anti-classical is what is thriving...


Is this really the case? Thriving?


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## mmsbls

Over time classical music has changed as new instruments have been developed and added to standard ensembles. Does anyone know of a composer creating tonal electronic works (works that consist of tones)? I'm thinking of someone trying to essentially develop a new instrument (a unique timbre) but produced electronically.


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## KenOC

mmsbls said:


> Over time classical music has changed as new instruments have been developed and added to standard ensembles. Does anyone know of a composer creating tonal electronic works (works that consist of tones)? I'm thinking of someone trying to essentially develop a new instrument (a unique timbre) but produced electronically.


A good example may be Adams's _The Dharma at Big Sur_, which is a concerto for electric violin, quite tonal but making much use of just intonation. It's on YouTube.

Another is Chapela's _Magnetar_, a concerto for electric cello making a lot of use of on-the-spot waveform modifications and so forth. A great piece and pretty much a hit when it premiered in LA a few years back, but there has never been a commercial recording. PM me if you like!

Both are 21st-century works of great merit, in my book.


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## DaveM

There seems to be confusion about what this thread is supposed to be about. The title says Directions in Modern Music, but the OP itself says nothing about that. It simply says that the poster has become aware of all the various names of styles of modern art and asks the question as to why don’t we define modern music like that. To me, this makes the subject more wide open. It isn’t a pro-modern music subject -like some above want to make it- any more than it is anti-modern.

From my reading of the OP, the subject matter should be about what the categories of modern music are, are the definitions appropriate or confusing, can they be defined anything like modern art or does the fact that some of the modern music definitions sound like modern art definitions further confuse things, etc.


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## mmsbls

DaveM said:


> From my reading of the OP, the subject matter should be about what the categories of modern music are, are the definitions appropriate or confusing, can they be defined anything like modern art or does the fact that some of the modern music definitions sound like modern art definitions further confuse things, etc.


That seems like a reasonable description of the OP.


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## janxharris

KenOC said:


> Babbitt raises no teaching duties in his essay. In fact, he says the role of the composer in academia is "research," not teaching. He earns his reward simply by existing and writing music incomprehensible to most. Please read the essay -- yes, I know it's not easy!


Indeed, it isn't an easy read and the typos don't help but Babbitt is talking of his _*hope*_ ('It is only proper') that such composers would be free to concentrate on composing rather than teaching. His 'Indeed, the process has begun; and if it appears to proceed too slowly...' isn't defined.

_But how, it may be asked, will this serve to secure the means of survival or the composer and his music? One answer is that after all such a private life is what the university provides the scholar and the scientist. It is only proper that the university, which-significantly-has provided so many contemporary composers with their professional training and general education, should provide a home for the "complex," "difficult," and "problematical" in music. Indeed, the process has begun; and if it appears to proceed too slowly, I take consolation in the knowledge that in this respect, too, music seems to be in historically retarded parallel with now sacrosanct fields of endeavour. In E. T. Bell's Men of Mathematics, we read: "In the eighteenth century the universities were not the principal centres of research in Europe. hey might have become such sooner than they did but for the classical tradition and its understandable hostility to science. Mathematics was close enough to antiquity to be respectable, but physics, being more recent, was suspect. Further, a mathematician in a university of the time would have been expected to put much of his effort on elementary teaching; his research, if any, would have been an unprofitable luxury..." *A simple substitution of "musical composition" for "research," of "academic" for "classical," of "music" for "physics," and of "composer" for "mathematician," provides a strikingly accurate picture of the current situation*. And as long as the confusion I have described continues to exist, how can the university and its community assume other than that the composer welcomes and courts public competition with the historically certified products of the past, and the commercially certified products of the present?_

Babbitt's article dates from February 1958 but I don't know if the situations has changed?


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## KenOC

Categorization of music, and carefully storing each piece away in its proper file cabinet, seems an exercise in terminal dreariness. If that is what this thread is going to be about, I will bow out...


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## janxharris

Jennifer Higdon's 'Blue Cathedral' is one of the mist performed works in the US - but I don't know how to describe it's style:


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## KenOC

Indeed. How do you categorize the powerful _Elegia _from Christopher Rouse's 1993 Flute Concerto?


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## KenOC

janxharris said:


> Indeed, it isn't an easy read and the typos don't help but Babbitt is talking of his _*hope*_ ('It is only proper') that such composers would be free to concentrate on composing rather than teaching. His 'Indeed, the process has begun; and if it appears to proceed too slowly...' isn't defined.


A version with typos corrected (hopefully) is here.

https://sites.google.com/site/kenocstuff/who-cares-if-you-listen


----------



## Haydn70

fluteman said:


> Wow. Does any money come with that guarantee? Because the vast majority of popular music is all but forgotten once those who grew up listening to it have passed away. According to www.popculturemadness.com, these were the top five American hit songs of 1920:
> 
> 1. Swanee - Al Jolson
> 2. When My Baby Smiles At Me - Ted Lewis
> 3. Whispering - Paul Whiteman
> 4. I'll Be With You In Apple Blossom Time - Charles Harrison
> 5. Tell Me, Little Gypsy - Art Hickman
> If those top 5 songs get almost no play today, imagine how unknown nos. 21-25 are.
> 
> Classical music from any era gets relatively little play, but it's pretty clear by now that music by Toru Takemitsu, Philip Glass, Arvo Part and John Corigliano will be remembered, not least because they've contributed music to hit movies. And millions have grown up to the soundtracks of John Williams.


"Because the vast majority of popular music is all but forgotten once those who grew up listening to it have passed away."

*Exactly!!* I have made this precise point in several posts on this site. Here is one of those:

https://www.talkclassical.com/16464-popular-music-more-creative-6.html?highlight=#post1443237

And I smiled when I saw your list of the top 5 songs from 1920 as I did something similar when I was on the Amazon Classical board. I posted a list of some 20 or 30 songs from the late 1910's or early 1920's (can't remember the exact years), songs that were huge hits...and maybe 1 out of 20 of those songs had a title with which someone today would be familiar.


----------



## haydnguy

Fredx2098 said:


> The thing is, most people don't want _any_ kind of classical music anymore. Music that is complete non- or anti-classical is what is thriving. I'm sure they don't want classical music like the most popular pre-modern music which they know as boring, neutral background music in movies and TV shows. I would rather classical music evolve into many different styles than to just rehash and copy the "great" composers. Anyone who just wants classical music to stagnate as what it was in the "good ol' days" of Bach and Beethoven I would consider and old fogie. There's plenty of old stuff to listen to. Some people like new ideas.


I think a couple of things play into this. First, they arean't exposed to it. Unless they get it in school they very seldom hear it except by accident. (If parents play it or something like that). Second, a lot of classical music doesn't "fit" today's lifestyle. People are used to 3 or 4 minutes clips of music and for them to consider listening to a 60 minute piece would be complete foreign to them. Of course, as I've pointed out before, they think nothing of sitting and watching Netflix for 2 hours.

What *I* was surprised about when I first started listening a little over 10 years ago was that people didn't pay much attention to the newer performers like Joshua Bell, Hillary Hann, etc. (Actually, these two are older at this point but I am referring to a younger group of performers. Someone may say that another person was better in the distant past but every generation needs someone new that they can relate to. I was able to because I am retired and had time to "dig" into it. But younger people need someone that they can say, "Hey! Their my age and they play classical music." It would attract them more than hearing about Richter which is admittedly awesome but would not likely attract a younger crowd.


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## Haydn70

haydnguy said:


> But younger people need someone that they can say, "Hey! Their my age and they play classical music." It would attract them more than hearing about Richter which is admittedly awesome but would not likely attract a younger crowd.


Anyone potential listener who cares that a performer is the same age as they are and is not concerned with the *MUSIC *they are playing will rarely come to truly love classical music.

Here is what all the people who go on about we need to bring young people into the concert and recital halls and opera house don't get: the majority of audiences through the decades has always been older people...people in their 40s (if not 50s) and older. When I was a music student in the 70s and 80s I attended numerous concerts of the L.A. Philharmonic. There were very few people in their 20s and 30s...*very few*.

The idea that audiences of true classical music lovers can be built with the use of various gimmicks such as videos being shown in the background, the use of various staging ideas (such as the idiocy of using dancers during the Missa Solemnis!), and trying to package performers as hip as possible is a fallacy. The people that come to a concert for the gimmicks will not come to next concert that is gimmick-free.


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## KenOC

ArsMusica said:


> Anyone potential listener who cares that a performer is the same age as they are and is not concerned with the *MUSIC *they are playing will rarely come to truly love classical music.


However, the "greying" of CM audiences has been an issue, and some estimates have been made of the average age (increasing) of concert audiences over the years. Can't find that stuff right now.

Maybe of more concern is the greying of donors, who once represented rich boosters of local culture. About 2/3 of concert revenues US-wide come from such donations as opposed to ticket revenues. However times have changed, and some of today's mega-rich would rather build Jimmy Hendrix-inspired guitar museums than subsidize classical music (Paul Allen, are you listening?).


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## haydnguy

Fredx2098 said:


> It seems like most naysayers equate modern with atonal serialism, which isn't the case. Perhaps some categories could be atonal, indeterminate, minimal, and abstract.


Here is my problem. I'm just an average listener with no formal back ground in music. (Like William Hung) :lol: It would be easier for me if things were first broken down in time periods. I personally break down the end of Baroque with the death of Bach and the end of Romantic with the death of Mahler. Of course, Romantic was still being written and played but I think Mahler saw the writing on the wall. So that's where I break it down. After that I classify as Modern. Shostakovitch, Schoenberg, and those who wrote during that time. Of course their different in styles but it helps me to take a time period and then look at the composers during a certain time period without first having to look at their style.

EDIT: Let me just add, I still have trouble picking out atonal, etc. unless I'm truly focused on my listening (I should always be I guess). But it's difficult for me, at least.


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## joen_cph

Dan Ante said:


> I do not wish to pre empt Haydnguy but surly you can advise which are considered modern composers, and* of course not all mod composers are ugly*. So how about a little list and then we will know.


Agree.



Dan Ante said:


> I do not wish to pre empt Haydnguy but surly you can advise which are considered modern composers, and of course not all mod composers are ugly. *So how about a little list and then we will know*.


 Depends on one´s definition, which is why I asked HaydnGuy for some further specifications of what composers or periods he was thinking about, when he was talking about how the "vast majority of concert audiences" "overwhelmingly disliking" "these modern composers".

There´s a problem in definition here: since Machaut and onwards, there has been a very long series of innovative, experimenting and at times provocative composers, thus with various traits of modernity. Monteverdi, Gesualdo, Frescobaldi, Lawes, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Wagner, Grieg, Scriabin, Mahler, Debussy, Janacek, Bartok, Ives, Satie, Varese, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Schoenberg, etc. They all contributed, to mention some from past history.

There are however still concert-going people who find Debussy and Scriabin, and music from then on, difficult, modern, and ugly.

"Contemporary composers" would obviously narrow things down a good deal. Still, the term is based on chronology only, and doesn´t really tell of the vast multitude of styles in contemporary classical music and its many 1000s of composers, the realization of which is crucial for any kind of informed discussion of it. That range of course goes from neo-romanticism to hard-core serialism, from utmost simplicity to the intricately labyrinthine, delicacy to brutalism, introvert to expressively theatrical, thriving nonsense to strict logic. To this should be added the individual development of each composer, that contributes further to the overall picture of this vast variation.

Taste will differ from listener to listener, and so do the concepts of ugly or beauty. There are days, when I find Haydn ugly in his tendency to servility or self-complacency, and some concertos by Vivaldi insultingly predictable. Yet I also know that the diversity that can be found within their oeuvres makes such general judgments faulty and way too superficial.

It is also nice to be able to listen to much else than just the more popular neo-romanticism, as regards contemporary music.

Overall, the more you investigate and listen to any given musical period, the more you tend to appreciate it and its inherent variation. That variation has however multiplied in the 20th - 21st centuries. Some have more will, time or resources to be inclined to investigate contemporary music than others, of course. Like it is the case of modern art, or with the repertoire of the backroads of early 19th-century music, or Renaissance music, etc.

There is a quite thriving environment for contemporary music in my country, and audiences are coming to the concerts too, though the number is of course small compared to the concerts of pop or rock music. Denmark is a small country with a tiny cultural tradition to preserve and develope, so state support is essential for keeping the culture alive, facing the flood of US - and to a lesser extent UK - popular culture. Therefore, praising pure market ideology and mechanisms is less present here, and members of the concert public are not militant in denouncing "modern classical music" either. Traditionally, there´s more tolerance in that field, and a will to let the musical experts and enthusiasts guide the cultural policy. The market thinking is however advancing, and there is also a risk that it will impoverish the future national, cultural scene thoroughly.

I´d think that a chamber concert featuring some music by Pärt, Crumb or Silvestrov is likely to attend at least an average audience of interested and informed people here. A concert introducing say a 9th Symphony by Nørgård, one of our most celebrated composers and grand old men among contemporary composers, or Boulez´ Repons, or Gorecki´s 4th, is likely to attend a considerable audience.


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## joen_cph

mmsbls said:


> Over time classical music has changed as new instruments have been developed and added to standard ensembles. Does anyone know of a composer creating tonal electronic works (works that consist of tones)? I'm thinking of someone trying to essentially develop a new instrument (a unique timbre) but produced electronically.


My knowledge about the vast field of the electronic music genre is limited, but maybe Morton Subotnick 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morton_Subotnick
and his "_Silver Apples of the Moon_" or "_The Wild Bull_" would be a candidate, for example.




Perhaps others have better information about the most recent music.

As regards the Ondes Martenot, I´ve always found the sound a bit one-dimensional
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ondes_Martenot
but then, I don´t recall hearing works that feature several of them. Surprisingly, according to the Wiki article, the instrument hasn´t been produced since 1988 and it´s now very expensive.

Here is a very fine, vintage documentary series about the development of automatic instruments, recording devices, synthesizers etc.
"The New Sound Of Music 1979 (Part 1)" (in 4 parts, less than 1 hour)





Mentions Peter Zinovieff
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Zinovieff




and David Vorhaus
https://www.soundonsound.com/people/david-vorhaus

In the department of curiosities, the single ANS synthesizer (named after Scriabin) was a very exotic, electronic instrument developed in Russia in 1937-57 and used in works by Schnittke, Denisov, Gubaidulina and Schnittke, plus in film music. It included the option of a drawing table, where you could somehow draw musical ongoings, from a range of 720 mictrones and 10 octaves, so not very tonal ... (or too tonal  )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANS_synthesizer


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## Enthusiast

JAS said:


> I do note the irony that it is apparently okay to bash the music of Philip Glass in another thread as "I think he is a joke but not one in good taste" and "But the 2nd violin concerto is really horrible, I think" and "It is a good example of music that I think is deeply ugly." (I am not a fan of Glass, nor especially a detractor, and have no axe to grind there.) I am reminded of the old admonishment that "criticism is a mirror in which we see the reflection of everyone but ourselves."


Quote from me. But the difference is the lack of obsession. I don't go to every thread to trash Glass - who I feel disappointed by - on every possible thread. I posted my opinion because it was asked for (and did so robustly) in the OP. I am not going to go on and on about it. And I am not going to search out opportunities to trash him in response to people's enjoyment of him. I guess you can't see the difference but I can't imagine why or how you can't. 

And, BTW, given that you routinely dismiss *all *music composed during Glass's lifetime you are, in fact, a detractor of his music, too. But for you it is not about disappointment after some early hope.


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## Enthusiast

arpeggio said:


> You are right. I am really interested in this subject and I hoped I could learn some new things. In my own inept way I was trying to help. Sorry I messed up.


I never intended to say that you messed up! Your are as exasperated as I am (and many others I am sure - you see references to TC's famous anti-modern mob on other sites). I respect your suggested actions and at the end of the day I am not sure if my suggestions were better or worse.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

Here something from the homepage of an old study buddy of mine...Jeffrey Holmes composes post-spectral, teleological music incorporating elements of mysticism and lyrical expression. His creative inspiration is rooted in primitive myths, transcendent legends, and dramatic elemental landscapes in their primal and violent natural states. As a traditionalist, he composes music for acoustic orchestral instruments, using standard notational methods; as a formalist, he works within a complex and unique non-octave diatonic, chromatic, and microtonal language; as a transcendentalist, he combines the inherent abstraction of sound with a greater meaning and possibility of interpretation through the use of lyricism and overt expression...
To me, reading that is fascinating and makes me want to hear his music, which I have. There are some isms in there. I don't think categorizing music is boring at all, but I know that all composers have a personal style...


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## Enthusiast

KenOC said:


> In fact, I can almost guarantee that the music most widely popular today (hip-hop and pop/rock mostly) will, on the whole, be better remembered in the future than anything we call "classical" around here written contemporaneously. That's been pretty true now for half a century.


I think that is very debatable. And, even if true for some artists in terms of sheer number, it would still not be true (I think) for composers working in the classical tradition _*as a proportion of *_the CM audience. In general, a good (/successful) composer working in the classical tradition will grow in popularity over fifty years. If they are lucky they may see some wider success before they die. Popular musicians are usually - there are a few exceptions - at their most popular while their music is fresh.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

KenOC said:


> Indeed. How do you categorize the powerful _Elegia _from Christopher Rouse's 1993 Flute Concerto?


I would call this neoclassical. Maybe some holy minimalism too.


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## eugeneonagain

KenOC said:


> Babbitt raises no teaching duties in his essay. In fact, he says the role of the composer in academia is "research," not teaching. He earns his reward simply by existing and writing music incomprehensible to most. Please read the essay -- yes, I know it's not easy!


I suggest _you_ haven't read it properly (or have read it selectively), or my reply to you. Plus I don't find that essay at all difficult; I've seen much worse 'academese' than that.

Anyone working in a university is going to have teaching duty and the role of 'research' for music in a university is no more unusual than the example he gives of other disciplines where the chances of investigating new ideas in a productive environment, which may enter the mainstream, get a chance.


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## eugeneonagain

Dan Ante said:


> Here you go again but if its alright with you, I would find a list interesting because I do like some works of composers which may or may not be classed as modern, so where does modernism start eh? Come on give some names and perhaps an example of their best works. I am willing to learn.


You could also just do what other people have done and put the time and effort into reading and listening. It might even take a whole year, but it would be worth it to have a foundation of knowledge in order to enter a discussion on the subject with a solid opinion based upon listening experience.

At least once a week I discover a composer I'd never heard about. Then I investigate that composer and do some listening (You Tube is an easy resource for this). Some things are to my taste some aren't. I'm not waiting for someone else to furnish me with a detailed crash course.


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## Enthusiast

It is always interesting to read what composers wrote or said. But we also need to remember that they are composers of music and it is music that they are known for. What composers say in words may or may not be rationalisation, attempts to understand what their own music is about, intended as provocative, theory (that they may or may not actually follow) .... but it is by their music that we will know them. Academics do, of course, use words and we can learn about their academic position or approach by reading their words. If I want to know what Babbit, for example, is like as a teacher and researcher then I will read his essays. But if I want to know about his music I will have to make the effort to listen to it sufficiently to get an idea about it. Composers words are, IMO, most interesting when you know their music well.


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## janxharris

eugeneonagain said:


> I suggest _you_ haven't read it properly (or have read it selectively), or my reply to you. Plus I don't find that essay at all difficult; I've seen much worse 'academese' than that.
> 
> Anyone working in a university is going to have teaching duty and the role of 'research' for music in a university is no more unusual than the example he gives of other disciplines where the chances of investigating new ideas in a productive environment, which may enter the mainstream, get a chance.


To avoid derailing the OP it might be worth posting here:
A discussion of Milton Babbitt's famous article

Babbitt relates academic 'research' with actual composing - do you have examples of composers working as teachers at academies being paid to spend time composing?


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## eugeneonagain

janxharris said:


> To avoid derailing the OP it might be worth posting here:
> A discussion of Milton Babbitt's famous article
> 
> Babbitt relates academic 'research' with actual composing - do you have examples of composers working as teachers at academies being paid to spend time composing?


Do I have examples? Do you think I trek about the country asking universities who on the faculty staff is 
being paid to compose (if that even happens, which I doubt)? A person is being paid to teach and engage in research and if the research involves composition... well the answer is self-evident.

Do we say a science researcher is 'being paid to come up with cures for cancer'? And if it were the case would it even be a problem?


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## janxharris

eugeneonagain said:


> Do I have examples? Do you think I trek about the country asking universities who on the faculty staff is
> being paid to compose (if that even happens, which I doubt)? A person is being paid to teach and engage in research and if the research involves composition... well the answer is self-evident.
> 
> Do we say a science researcher is 'being paid to come up with cures for cancer'? And if it were the case would it even be a problem?


I don't want to derail the thread any more than I already have.


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## fluteman

mmsbls said:


> This thread has veered seriously off course. That's not always a problem since sometimes diversions lead to interesting results, but usually those diversions occur after the thread has been active for awhile. This thread topic has not really had a chance to be explored since the majority of posts are off-topic. Kjetil Heggelund would like the thread back on topic so let me suggest the following. Those who would like to discuss the merits of modern/contemporary music can start a new thread where all the posts can be on topic. In this thread, let's get back to discussing directions in modern music.


OK, mmsbls, fair enough. But I think there is a link between the point raised by Kjetil in his original post and the whole "the last 50 years of music are worthless" idea that some posters here seem to want to reintroduce at every opportunity.

Labels for artistic movements like impressionism, serialism, modernism, post-modernism, musique concrete, or for that matter pre-raphaelism, pontilism, cubism, abstract impressionism, dadaism, theater of the absurd, art nouveau, art deco, bauhaus, etc. often have their roots in the very period in which the movement flourished. Bauhaus, for example, was the name of an actual art school in Germany from 1919 to 1933. But it usually takes historical perspective to put an artistic movement in context and accurately pin down its key characteristics. Then a single term can be used as convenient shorthand when referring to art with those characteristics.

For me, it helps if at least 30 years if not more have passed before one bestows a title on an artistic school, though critics and -ologists are always writing books and articles trying to do it for everything that is happening at the moment. I can't really blame them. First they need to do a PhD thesis, and then comes a career of publish or perish. But that doesn't mean we have to rush to put a label on everything. The result can be more one of distortion or confusion than clarification. (When Stockhausen et al. came around, Virgil Thomson referred to them as the "far-outs". I'm sorry that one didn't stick!) And you have to get beyond the inevitable debate over whether new creative ideas are worthwhile at all, or at least wait until it largely dies down, before you can look back and draw some useful conclusions.


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## mmsbls

fluteman said:


> ...For me, it helps if at least 30 years if not more have passed before one bestows a title on an artistic school, though critics and -ologists are always writing books and articles trying to do it for everything that is happening at the moment. I can't really blame them. First they need to do a PhD thesis, and then comes a career of publish or perish. But that doesn't mean we have to rush to put a label on everything. The result can be more one of distortion or confusion than clarification. (When Stockhausen et al. came around, Virgil Thomson referred to them as the "far-outs". I'm sorry that one didn't stick!) And you have to get beyond the inevitable debate over whether new creative ideas are worthwhile at all, or at least wait until it largely dies down, before you can look back and draw some useful conclusions.


I would generally agree that some perspective is useful in naming movements or artistic schools. For example, some things may seem different in the present but, given time, fit better lumped together. I think it's interesting that popular music seems to get labeled fairly quickly, and people seem to know (and agree on) where to place a musician or song. I'm not sure why classical music seems different, but perhaps the diversity has become so wide that categories are too confusing or too numerous.

My real complaint about discussing the merits of modern music is simply that, in this thread, it has drowned out any discussion of categories making discussing the OP difficult.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

Since I've listened to Unsuk Chin's double concerto 2 times now, I was wondering if I could label it/her music in any way...I was looking for cues to if she is a spectralist, but after surfing around I finally saw someone call it lyrical modernism and also organicism. Since she has said she is concerned with sound and timbre, I thought of spectralism, but she has also said she doesn't belong to a specific culture.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

Why don't we just start again discussing the topic? The off topic "went me house past" (to use a Norwegian phrase) since I was away on a trip


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## joen_cph

mmsbls said:


> I would generally agree that some perspective is useful in naming movements or artistic schools. For example, some things may seem different in the present but, given time, fit better lumped together. *I think it's interesting that popular music seems to get labeled fairly quickly, and people seem to know (and agree on) where to place a musician or song. I'm not sure why classical music seems different, but perhaps the diversity has become so wide that categories are too confusing or too numerous. *
> 
> My real complaint about discussing the merits of modern music is simply that, in this thread, it has drowned out any discussion of categories making discussing the OP difficult.


I think this is very true.


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## Fredx2098

janxharris said:


> Is this really the case? Thriving?


Yes, how would you describe the situation? There are very many extremely successful "artists" that may not even have any artistic skill, many are even millionaires, some nearly billionaires. I would guess that there are more successful non-classical musicians and "composers" in 2018 than in the entire history of classical music.


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## JAS

eugeneonagain said:


> You could also just do what other people have done and put the time and effort into reading and listening. It might even take a whole year, but it would be worth it to have a foundation of knowledge in order to enter a discussion on the subject with a solid opinion based upon listening experience.
> 
> At least once a week I discover a composer I'd never heard about. Then I investigate that composer and do some listening (You Tube is an easy resource for this). Some things are to my taste some aren't. I'm not waiting for someone else to furnish me with a detailed crash course.


There is always a curious assumption that people have not already done this, but . . .

On my way home from running errands, the local classical radio station played a piece I have never heard of from a composer I have never heard of. It was Americana Symphony by Mark O'Connor. (As best I can tell, it was written in 2006.) What direction should we consider him taking in modern music?


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## eugeneonagain

JAS said:


> What direction should we consider him taking in modern music?


The right direction, since he is getting airplay.


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## JAS

eugeneonagain said:


> The right direction, since he is getting airplay.


And I am going to be looking for a CD, so that is two small victories. (There is apparently an earlier recording of another piece, with Yo-Yo Ma, a theme upon which I gather this symphony is based.)

Edit: And it turns out that the recording is by my own local Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, led by Marin Allsop. What a small world.

Edit2: And here is a video of the composer talking about this symphony: 



 (It makes a lot more sense that the pseudo-academic gibberish that Ferneyhough used in his Library of Congress discussion.)


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## Kjetil Heggelund

JAS said:


> There is always a curious assumption that people have not already done this, but . . .
> 
> On my way home from running errands, the local classical radio station played a piece I have never heard of from a composer I have never heard of. It was Americana Symphony by Mark O'Connor. (As best I can tell, it was written in 2006.) What direction should we consider him taking in modern music?


Maybe that is crossover?


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## KenOC

Fredx2098 said:


> Yes, how would you describe the situation? There are very many extremely successful "artists" that may not even have any artistic skill, many are even millionaires, some nearly billionaires. I would guess that there are more successful non-classical musicians and "composers" in 2018 than in the entire history of classical music.


Amazing that even without "artistic skill," they are able to produce music that large numbers of people want to hear and are willing to pay for.


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## Bluecrab

JAS said:


> On my way home from running errands, the local classical radio station played a piece I have never heard of from a composer I have never heard of. It was Americana Symphony by Mark O'Connor.


That's a nice work IMO. He's probably best known for his bluegrass playing, which is outstanding.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism_(music)
This is actually a classical music discussion


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## Luchesi

Philistines don't care about art. How could they? They're to be pitied.


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## JAS

And, of course, it turns out that the Philistines were not tasteless barbarians after all: https://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/29/...ere-cultured-after-all-say-archeologists.html and https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...ent-such-philistines-new-dig-shows-180959757/

As archeologist John Romer says, they just got particularly bad press.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

There is even post-postmodernism...


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## JAS

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> There is even post-postmodernism...


Things move quickly these days. We may be at post-post-postmodernism by the middle of next year.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

I couldn't come up with this myself, but some philosophers (or whatever) have given some thought to define our aesthetics...so here is from wikipedia:

Consensus on what constitutes an era can not be easily achieved while that era is still in its early stages. However, a common theme of current attempts to define post-postmodernism is emerging as one where faith, trust, dialogue, performance, and sincerity can work to transcend postmodern irony. The following definitions, which vary widely in depth, focus, and scope, are listed in the chronological order of their appearance.

Turner's post-postmodernism[edit]
In 1995, the landscape architect and urban planner Tom Turner issued a book-length call for a post-postmodern turn in urban planning.[12] Turner criticizes the postmodern credo of "anything goes" and suggests that "the built environment professions are witnessing the gradual dawn of a post-Postmodernism that seeks to temper reason with faith."[13] In particular, Turner argues for the use of timeless organic and geometrical patterns in urban planning. As sources of such patterns he cites, among others, the Taoist-influenced work of the American architect Christopher Alexander, gestalt psychology and the psychoanalyst Carl Jung's concept of archetypes. Regarding terminology, Turner urges us to "embrace post-Postmodernism - and pray for a better name."[14]

Epstein's trans-postmodernism[edit]
In his 1999 book on Russian postmodernism the Russian-American Slavist Mikhail Epstein suggested that postmodernism "is […] part of a much larger historical formation," which he calls "postmodernity."[15] Epstein believes that postmodernist aesthetics will eventually become entirely conventional and provide the foundation for a new, non-ironic kind of poetry, which he describes using the prefix "trans-":

In considering the names that might possibly be used to designate the new era following "postmodernism," one finds that the prefix "trans" stands out in a special way. The last third of the 20th century developed under the sign of "post," which signalled the demise of such concepts of modernity as "truth" and "objectivity," "soul" and "subjectivity," "utopia" and "ideality," "primary origin" and "originality," "sincerity" and "sentimentality." All of these concepts are now being reborn in the form of "trans-subjectivity," "trans-idealism," "trans-utopianism," "trans-originality," "trans-lyricism," "trans-sentimentality" etc.[16]

As an example Epstein cites the work of the contemporary Russian poet Timur Kibirov.[17]

Gans' post-millennialism[edit]
The term post-millennialism was introduced in 2000 by the American cultural theorist Eric Gans[18] to describe the era after postmodernism in ethical and socio-political terms. Gans associates postmodernism closely with "victimary thinking," which he defines as being based on a non-negotiable ethical opposition between perpetrators and victims arising out of the experience of Auschwitz and Hiroshima. In Gans's view, the ethics of postmodernism is derived from identifying with the peripheral victim and disdaining the utopian center occupied by the perpetrator. Postmodernism in this sense is marked by a victimary politics that is productive in its opposition to modernist utopianism and totalitarianism but unproductive in its resentment of capitalism and liberal democracy, which he sees as the long-term agents of global reconciliation. In contrast to postmodernism, post-millennialism is distinguished by the rejection of victimary thinking and a turn to "non-victimary dialogue"[19] that will "diminish […] the amount of resentment in the world."[20] Gans has developed the notion of post-millennialism further in many of his internet Chronicles of Love and Resentment[21] and the term is allied closely with his theory of generative anthropology and his scenic concept of history.[22]

Kirby's pseudo-modernism or digimodernism[edit]
In his 2006 paper The Death of Postmodernism and Beyond, the British scholar Alan Kirby formulated a socio-cultural assessment of post-postmodernism that he calls "pseudo-modernism."[23] Kirby associates pseudo-modernism with the triteness and shallowness resulting from the instantaneous, direct, and superficial participation in culture made possible by the internet, mobile phones, interactive television and similar means: "In pseudo-modernism one phones, clicks, presses, surfs, chooses, moves, downloads."[23]

Pseudo-modernism's "typical intellectual states" are furthermore described as being "ignorance, fanaticism and anxiety" and it is said to produce a "trance-like state" in those participating in it. The net result of this media-induced shallowness and instantaneous participation in trivial events is a "silent autism" superseding "the neurosis of modernism and the narcissism of postmodernism." Kirby sees no aesthetically valuable works coming out of "pseudo-modernism." As examples of its triteness he cites reality TV, interactive news programs, "the drivel found […] on some Wikipedia pages", docu-soaps, and the essayistic cinema of Michael Moore or Morgan Spurlock.[23] In a book published in September 2009 titled Digimodernism: How New Technologies Dismantle the Postmodern and Reconfigure our Culture, Kirby developed further and nuanced his views on culture and textuality in the aftermath of postmodernism.

Vermeulen and van den Akker's metamodernism[edit]
In 2010 the cultural theorists Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker introduced the term metamodernism [24] as an intervention in the post-postmodernism debate. In their article 'Notes on metamodernism' they assert that the 2000s are characterized by the emergence of a sensibility that oscillates between, and must be situated beyond, modern positions and postmodern strategies. As examples of the metamodern sensibility Vermeulen and van den Akker cite the 'informed naivety', 'pragmatic idealism' and 'moderate fanaticism' of the various cultural responses to, among others, climate change, the financial crisis, and (geo)political instability.

The prefix 'meta' here refers not to some reflective stance or repeated rumination, but to Plato's metaxy, which intends a movement between opposite poles as well as beyond.[25]


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

...I never thought about that before...


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## joen_cph

Well, in a way, this was a fun and interesting source. 
Thanks


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## fluteman

mmsbls said:


> I think it's interesting that popular music seems to get labeled fairly quickly, and people seem to know (and agree on) where to place a musician or song. I'm not sure why classical music seems different, but perhaps the diversity has become so wide that categories are too confusing or too numerous.


Maybe it's because the "serious" artist is trying to build an eternal monument to the most profound emotions and fundamental values of his or her society and of humanity as a whole, whereas the "popular" artist is trying to help the crowd in front of him get drunk and have fun on Saturday nights. Both worthy goals, but one can determine whether the latter is succeeding pretty quickly. Whether the former is succeeding or is just a temporary flash in the pan, and why, can take more time.


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## Albert Berry

fluteman said:


> Maybe it's because the "serious" artist is trying to build an eternal monument to the most profound emotions and fundamental values of his or her society and of humanity as a whole, whereas the "popular" artist is trying to help the crowd in front of him get drunk and have fun on Saturday nights. Both worthy goals, but one can determine whether the latter is succeeding pretty quickly. Whether the former is succeeding or is just a temporary flash in the pan, and why, can take more time.


I think you've got the situation in hand beautifully, flute man!


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## fluteman

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> Since I've listened to Unsuk Chin's double concerto 2 times now, I was wondering if I could label it/her music in any way...I was looking for cues to if she is a spectralist, but after surfing around I finally saw someone call it lyrical modernism and also organicism. Since she has said she is concerned with sound and timbre, I thought of spectralism, but she has also said she doesn't belong to a specific culture.


Well, her use of the prepared piano and a wide variety of percussion timbres in that piece can certainly be traced back to one of the pioneers, if not the pioneer, of the prepared piano, John Cage (1912-1992), most famously in his Sonatas and Interludes from the late 1940s. I'm no expert, but you don't have to be to see her, at least in in significant part, as a descendant of Cage and Stockhausen. This is still a very significant strand of contemporary music, to the dismay of many posters here, but far from the only one.


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## janxharris

fluteman said:


> Maybe it's because the "serious" artist is trying to build an eternal monument to the most profound emotions and fundamental values of his or her society and of humanity as a whole, *whereas the "popular" artist is trying to help the crowd in front of him get drunk and have fun on Saturday nights.* Both worthy goals, but one can determine whether the latter is succeeding pretty quickly. Whether the former is succeeding or is just a temporary flash in the pan, and why, can take more time.


Of course this does not describe every such artist so why say it?


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## Haydn70

fluteman said:


> Maybe it's because the "serious" artist is trying to build an eternal monument to the most profound emotions and fundamental values of his or her society and of humanity as a whole, whereas the "popular" artist is trying to help the crowd in front of him get drunk and have fun on Saturday nights. Both worthy goals, but one can determine whether the latter is succeeding pretty quickly. Whether the former is succeeding or is just a temporary flash in the pan, and why, can take more time.


Excellent post, fluteman!


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## Kjetil Heggelund

Regarding Unsuk Chin's double concerto...
So, Unsuk Chin's work is thus relatively accessible, even to the listener who thinks that he or she ought to be afraid of modern music. "That's my philosophy when I compose: I never write pieces for my composer-colleagues - I write pieces for many different types of listeners. There are the normal classical-music lovers. There are the professional new-music lovers. And there are the people who have never had anything to do with music. For me, a good piece of music is one in which people from all of these different groups maybe don't understand everything but can at least get something out of it. It is very important to me that my music speaks to all of these people on a certain level."


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## Blancrocher

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> Regarding Unsuk Chin's double concerto...
> So, Unsuk Chin's work is thus relatively accessible, even to the listener who thinks that he or she ought to be afraid of modern music. "That's my philosophy when I compose: I never write pieces for my composer-colleagues - I write pieces for many different types of listeners. There are the normal classical-music lovers. There are the professional new-music lovers. And there are the people who have never had anything to do with music. For me, a good piece of music is one in which people from all of these different groups maybe don't understand everything but can at least get something out of it. It is very important to me that my music speaks to all of these people on a certain level."


I love her music, but have little idea where it fits into the latest taxonomies. I understand why she's mentioned so often in conjunction with her mentor Ligeti-she seems to be one of those composers who belongs to a lineage rather than a school, though her music-including the stuff with traditional instruments-sounds very new to me. Or maybe as said upthread we just need more time to box her into a category (should we want to).


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## Dan Ante

joen_cph said:


> Agree.
> 
> Depends on one´s definition, which is why I asked HaydnGuy for some further specifications of what composers or periods he was thinking about, when he was talking about how the "vast majority of concert audiences" "overwhelmingly disliking" "these modern composers".
> 
> There´s a problem in definition here: since Machaut and onwards, there has been a very long series of innovative, experimenting and at times provocative composers, thus with various traits of modernity. Monteverdi, Gesualdo, Frescobaldi, Lawes, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Wagner, Grieg, Scriabin, Mahler, Debussy, Janacek, Bartok, Ives, Satie, Varese, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Schoenberg, etc. They all contributed, to mention some from past history.
> 
> There are however still concert-going people who find Debussy and Scriabin, and music from then on, difficult, modern, and ugly.
> 
> "Contemporary composers" would obviously narrow things down a good deal. Still, the term is based on chronology only, and doesn´t really tell of the vast multitude of styles in contemporary classical music and its many 1000s of composers, the realization of which is crucial for any kind of informed discussion of it. That range of course goes from neo-romanticism to hard-core serialism, from utmost simplicity to the intricately labyrinthine, delicacy to brutalism, introvert to expressively theatrical, thriving nonsense to strict logic. To this should be added the individual development of each composer, that contributes further to the overall picture of this vast variation.
> 
> Taste will differ from listener to listener, and so do the concepts of ugly or beauty. There are days, when I find Haydn ugly in his tendency to servility or self-complacency, and some concertos by Vivaldi insultingly predictable. Yet I also know that the diversity that can be found within their oeuvres makes such general judgments faulty and way too superficial.
> 
> It is also nice to be able to listen to much else than just the more popular neo-romanticism, as regards contemporary music.
> 
> Overall, the more you investigate and listen to any given musical period, the more you tend to appreciate it and its inherent variation. That variation has however multiplied in the 20th - 21st centuries. Some have more will, time or resources to be inclined to investigate contemporary music than others, of course. Like it is the case of modern art, or with the repertoire of the backroads of early 19th-century music, or Renaissance music, etc.
> 
> There is a quite thriving environment for contemporary music in my country, and audiences are coming to the concerts too, though the number is of course small compared to the concerts of pop or rock music. Denmark is a small country with a tiny cultural tradition to preserve and develope, so state support is essential for keeping the culture alive, facing the flood of US - and to a lesser extent UK - popular culture. Therefore, praising pure market ideology and mechanisms is less present here, and members of the concert public are not militant in denouncing "modern classical music" either. Traditionally, there´s more tolerance in that field, and a will to let the musical experts and enthusiasts guide the cultural policy. The market thinking is however advancing, and there is also a risk that it will impoverish the future national, cultural scene thoroughly.
> 
> I´d think that a chamber concert featuring some music by Pärt, Crumb or Silvestrov is likely to attend at least an average audience of interested and informed people here. A concert introducing say a 9th Symphony by Nørgård, one of our most celebrated composers and grand old men among contemporary composers, or Boulez´ Repons, or Gorecki´s 4th, is likely to attend a considerable audience.


A very interesting and informative post, thank you for taking the time to post. 
I assume John Adams is a modern composer I love his "short ride in a fast machine" Last night on our local classical radio station I heard "A new day" part of The Dharma at Big Sur, this was said to be in "Just Temperament" so where do we put John Adams. Modern baroque, Experimental?


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## KenOC

Dan Ante said:


> A very interesting and informative post, thank you for taking the time to post.
> I assume John Adams is a modern composer I love his "short ride in a fast machine" Last night on our local classical radio station I heard "A new day" part of The Dharma at Big Sur, this was said to be in "Just Temperament" so where do we put John Adams. Modern baroque, Experimental?


I read an interview with John Adams where he said he saw his position somewhat like Brahms -- "summing up" some previous directions rather than adding anything truly new. I see him as somebody who was heavily influenced by minimalism early on (Shaker Loops etc.) and moved away from that a bit, without discarding any minimalist techniques. Also, much as I like some of his more substantial music, he has a rare and convincing way with lighter stuff.

Classification? I'm not sure shoehorning him into a category does anybody any good.


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## fluteman

janxharris said:


> Of course this does not describe every such artist so why say it?


Oh, c'mon, there was obviously an element of the facetious in my post, everything doesn't have to be absolutely serious. And to the extent I was making a serious point, it wasn't meant to be disrespectful to popular musicians, certainly not all popular musicians of every time and place. But there is a distinction, even if it isn't an absolute line of demarcation, between music intended to entertain an audience right here and now, and music where an attempt is made to create something of profound and lasting, even universal, significance.
The late great Tom Petty, speaking about rock 'n' roll, once said, "It isn't supposed to be that good." Now, I think he was being a bit facetious himself putting it like that, but also I think he meant more than that it doesn't have to be perfectly in tune or with no wrong notes. I think he meant it's OK for some music just to be fun, rather than a profound message for future generations.
Of course, rockers and other popular musicians sometimes do some sophisticated and profound music. But on the whole, that's not the main idea. I don't think there is any reason to turn one's nose up at popular music or get overly defensive about its worth. It has an important place in our culture.


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## Dan Ante

KenOC said:


> I read an interview with John Adams where he said he saw his position somewhat like Brahms -- "summing up" some previous directions rather than adding anything truly new. I see him as somebody who was heavily influenced by minimalism early on (Shaker Loops etc.) and moved away from that a bit, without discarding any minimalist techniques. Also, much as I like some of his more substantial music, he has a rare and convincing way with lighter stuff.
> *
> Classification? I'm not sure shoehorning him into a category does anybody any good*.


I am sorry Ken, I was under the impression that categories and labels were the purpose of the thread, I have already been told off for going off topic and called a TROLL, anyway I was in engineering before my retirement and labels and categories were essential.


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## janxharris

fluteman said:


> Oh, c'mon, there was obviously an element of the facetious in my post, everything doesn't have to be absolutely serious. And to the extent I was making a serious point, it wasn't meant to be disrespectful to popular musicians, certainly not all popular musicians of every time and place. But there is a distinction, even if it isn't an absolute line of demarcation, between music intended to entertain an audience right here and now, and music where an attempt is made to create something of profound and lasting, even universal, significance.
> The late great Tom Petty, speaking about rock 'n' roll, once said, "It isn't supposed to be that good." Now, I think he was being a bit facetious himself putting it like that, but also I think he meant more than that it doesn't have to be perfectly in tune or with no wrong notes. I think he meant it's OK for some music just to be fun, rather than a profound message for future generations.
> Of course, rockers and other popular musicians sometimes do some sophisticated and profound music. But on the whole, that's not the main idea. I don't think there is any reason to turn one's nose up at popular music or get overly defensive about its worth. It has an important place in our culture.


Ok, but there is, of course, plenty of serious classical music that also manages to entertain...though not so much from the modern era.


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## Enthusiast

mmsbls said:


> I would generally agree that some perspective is useful in naming movements or artistic schools. For example, some things may seem different in the present but, given time, fit better lumped together. I think it's interesting that popular music seems to get labeled fairly quickly, and people seem to know (and agree on) where to place a musician or song. I'm not sure why classical music seems different, but perhaps the diversity has become so wide that categories are too confusing or too numerous.


From what I can gather from my daughter people subdivide and subdivide again categories of "popular music" (not a category they would recognise) but you may be right that they tend to agree on the where something fits. With contemporary CM there is diversity but that shouldn't be a problem. I doubt that having more than 6-8 categories for it is needed. The rest might throw some light on a tendency in the music but you could go on doing that until every composer has their own category ... or even every piece. Maybe we CM fans include in our number more people who love to categorise to the extent of being OCD about it?


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## Fredx2098

KenOC said:


> Amazing that even without "artistic skill," they are able to produce music that large numbers of people want to hear and are willing to pay for.


There are people with skill involved, but it's usually not the person whose name on the track/album (that person just sings poorly through autotune). I would bet that they would not be so popular if they were making neo-Baroque/Classical/Romantic music, if they magically gained the skill. My point is that popularity is not an argument for a style of music having less value. When things started getting "weird," jazz and blues were popular. Classical music by itself was never popular again. Then rock music was popular, electronic dance music, now pop. No connection at all to classical music except, I suppose, that it uses notes, keys, scales, rhythms, what have you. No one wants classical music anymore; they don't want Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Chopin, Debussy, Satie, Schoenberg, Babbitt, Cage, Carter, Feldman, Reich, Glass, anything. It's not becsuse "it got too weird and ""ugly""" but because there are new forms of music that appeal to a much broader audience.

It's fine to hate modern classical music, but I like it, as do others, so it has a reason to exist. It's easy to not listen to music you don't like and just pop in your favorite Bach or Beethoven CD.


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## DaveM

Fredx2098 said:


> There are people with skill involved, but it's *usually* not the person whose name on the track/album (that person just sings poorly through autotune).


Usually? Where do you get this stuff and why do you keep repeating it? By far, the popularity of the top artists correlates with a lot of talent. Since you say 'usually', name me 3 top 10 popular artists who fit your comment. Some of these artists have far more talent than some of the classical music artists you mention, especially one.



> It's easy to not listen to music you don't like and just pop in your favorite Bach or Beethoven CD.


An unusual statement. Why would I play music I don't like? Would you?


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## Luchesi

Fredx2098 said:


> There are people with skill involved, but it's usually not the person whose name on the track/album (that person just sings poorly through autotune). I would bet that they would not be so popular if they were making neo-Baroque/Classical/Romantic music, if they magically gained the skill. My point is that popularity is not an argument for a style of music having less value. When things started getting "weird," jazz and blues were popular. Classical music by itself was never popular again. Then rock music was popular, electronic dance music, now pop. No connection at all to classical music except, I suppose, that it uses notes, keys, scales, rhythms, what have you. No one wants classical music anymore; they don't want Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Chopin, Debussy, Satie, Schoenberg, Babbitt, Cage, Carter, Feldman, Reich, Glass, anything. It's not becsuse "it got too weird and ""ugly""" but because there are new forms of music that appeal to a much broader audience.
> 
> It's fine to hate modern classical music, but I like it, as do others, so it has a reason to exist. It's easy to not listen to music you don't like and just pop in your favorite Bach or Beethoven CD.


"No one wants classical music anymore; they don't want Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Chopin, Debussy, Satie, Schoenberg, Babbitt, Cage, Carter, Feldman, Reich, Glass, anything."

It makes one think.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

We can try to be diplomatic here!


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## eugeneonagain

DaveM said:


> An unusual statement. Why would I play music I don't like? Would you?


Didn't he write: it's easy to _*not*_ listen to the music you don't like?


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## Kjetil Heggelund

...so I have been reading about the beginning of modernism...
First there was Wagner, then Mahler, Debussy, Scriabin, R. Strauss, Busoni, Schoenberg, Schreker, Stravinsky...ugh, don't know this well enough. F. ex. Franz Schreker (unknown to me), made a mixture of Romanticism, Naturalism, Symbolism, Impressionism, Expressionism and New-Objectivity. Some nice isms there


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## DaveM

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> ...so I have been reading about the beginning of modernism...
> First there was Wagner, then Mahler, Debussy, Scriabin, R. Strauss, Busoni, Schoenberg, Schreker, Stravinsky...ugh, don't know this well enough. F. ex. Franz Schreker (unknown to me), made a mixture of Romanticism, Naturalism, Symbolism, Impressionism, Expressionism and New-Objectivity. Some nice isms there


Other than 'Romanticism', these terms seem contrived. None of the last 5 terms actually describe a form of music that would distinguish it from others. Virtually all of those terms appear to have come from art or literary sources and have been applied to classical music by writers rather than the composers themselves, except perhaps 'Symbolism' which when applied to classical music has referred to the structure of a given work, not a particular form of music (eg. Berlioz idee fixe in Symphonie Fantastique).


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## Dan Ante

I have always likened Debussy, Ravel as Impressionists I don’t know why perhaps because they remind me of Monet, Degas, Cezanne etc.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

I should maybe read a book by Daniel Albright...Read his wikipedia article, where he suggests that Poulenc represents surrealism in music. Why not? Albright was amongst other things, a theorist of multidisciplinary interpretation he termed "panaesthetics".


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## Kjetil Heggelund

Dan Ante said:


> I have always likened Debussy, Ravel as Impressionists I don't know why perhaps because they remind me of Monet, Degas, Cezanne etc.


Yes, also Debussy is regarded as the first modern composer, since he broke with the traditional harmony of earlier music, and also used non-western scales to make his dreamy music. Sometimes he wrote the title of the music at the end...


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## fluteman

janxharris said:


> Ok, but there is, of course, plenty of serious classical music that also manages to entertain...though not so much from the modern era.


Not so much from any era.


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## Fredx2098

DaveM said:


> Usually? Where do you get this stuff and why do you keep repeating it? By far, the popularity of the top artists correlates with a lot of talent. Since you say 'usually', name me 3 top 10 popular artists who fit your comment. Some of these artists have far more talent than some of the classical music artists you mention, especially one.


It's harder to name pop artists who are famous from their own creativity. Are you aware of the current state of music? Kanye West, Lil Pump, Nicki Minaj. Basically any famous "rapper". They have some influence on tracks, but most of the work is done by the beat makers and then the producers trying to make the artist's performance work. When I talk about popular "artists" with no talent, I'm not talk about popular rock bands from the good ol' days. I'm talking about what is popular now.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

There are great producers but also great artists these days, probably even a rapper, but this is still a classical discussion  No point in that direction here...


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## DaveM

Fredx2098 said:


> It's harder to name pop artists who are famous from their own creativity. Are you aware of the current state of music? Kanye West, Lil Pump, Nicki Minaj. Basically any famous "rapper". They have some influence on tracks, but most of the work is done by the beat makers and then the producers trying to make the artist's performance work. When I talk about popular "artists" with no talent, I'm not talk about popular rock bands from the good ol' days. I'm talking about what is popular now.


I get your point, but it's important to be more specific. Rap and hip hop are a totally separate genre from what we have known as popular music. The situation is not simply rap/hip hop and 'popular rock bands from the good old days'. There are artists in the category of Lady Gaga, Carrie Underwood, Christina Perri, Kelly Clarkson, Justin Timberlake, Antebellum, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, etc. who are enormously talented, represent the core of popular music and do not have a factory behind them creating their music.


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## Luchesi

DaveM said:


> I get your point, but it's important to be more specific. Rap and hip hop are a totally separate genre from what we have known as popular music. The situation is not simply rap/hip hop and 'popular rock bands from the good old days'. There are artists in the category of Lady Gaga, Carrie Underwood, Christina Perri, Kelly Clarkson, Justin Timberlake, Antebellum, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, etc. who are enormously talented, represent the core of popular music and do not have a factory behind them creating their music.


Song writers like Lady Gaga, Christina Perri (and Taylor Swift) can impress the people of their decades by using the tools of suspended notes etc. and sweet resolutions. It's a very interesting phenomenon how they can still find new patterns that are simple enough. You might think that the patterns have all been already used up. Of course it doesn't hurt that they're attractive and they seem to be sympathetic to their followers. <grin>

How are their approaches and techniques different than what Dylan did? or the early pop groups? or the composers of disco? It's an interesting subject. When you have the song sheets in front of you (and none of the production values), you can ponder this question endlessly. For many people it's too boring to do this with classical works.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

Eastside hiphopism?


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## Fredx2098

DaveM said:


> I get your point, but it's important to be more specific. Rap and hip hop are a totally separate genre from what we have known as popular music. The situation is not simply rap/hip hop and 'popular rock bands from the good old days'. There are artists in the category of Lady Gaga, Carrie Underwood, Christina Perri, Kelly Clarkson, Justin Timberlake, Antebellum, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, etc. who are enormously talented, represent the core of popular music and do not have a factory behind them creating their music.


It's not just hip hop, and not all hip hop is like that. The people you mentioned know the typical chord progressions and how to sing a melody somewhat, but I don't think they would be as successful without the teams of people that they do have. On any hit song (not just pop rap), the lyrics were usually written by multiple people, the instrumental music is composed and performed by people besides the title artist unless they can play block chords on a piano for a ballad like Lady Gaga. I don't really know any examples of a modern pop musician creating a song that is entirely their idea, their words, their concept, their structure, etc.


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## DaveM

Fredx2098 said:


> ..On any hit song (not just pop rap), the lyrics were usually written by multiple people, the instrumental music is composed and performed by people besides the title artist unless they can play block chords on a piano for a ballad like Lady Gaga. I don't really know any examples of a modern pop musician creating a song that is entirely their idea, their words, their concept, their structure, etc.


I could give you many examples, but I don't have time to inform someone who doesn't appear to be familiar with all the popular music artists that have written and performed their own music. But I will give you one example. Christina Perri wrote this song, music and lyrics in 3-4 days -and sang it- for the Twilight movie series. I know one of the main people in the company that hired her to write the song on short notice. It is a wonderful song: original melody, great lyrics and perfect for the movie.


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## KenOC

Fredx2098 said:


> It's not just hip hop, and not all hip hop is like that. The people you mentioned know the typical chord progressions and how to sing a melody somewhat, but I don't think they would be as successful without the teams of people that they do have. On any hit song (not just pop rap), the lyrics were usually written by multiple people, the instrumental music is composed and performed by people besides the title artist unless they can play block chords on a piano for a ballad like Lady Gaga. I don't really know any examples of a modern pop musician creating a song that is entirely their idea, their words, their concept, their structure, etc.


I think it's true that a lot of modern popular music is written by "committee." But so what? Must music be created by some profound sole genius, wild-haired, flinging notes all about like thunderbolts? The proof, as always, will be in the pudding.


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## isorhythm

There's nothing inherently wrong with "assembly line" production of music. How do you think Motown worked? Judge the result. The Western classical lone genius model isn't the only one in the world, or even in the history of Western classical music.

In response to the OP, I think of classical music splitting into four streams in the early 20th century, represented by:

-Schoenberg, Berg, Webern
-Stravinsky, Bartok
-Ravel, Debussy
-Varese

The later you go, the less knowledgeable I am, but I think you can still recognize these streams, with self-consciously cerebral composers like Ferneyhough in the first, the minimalists and their offshoots in the second, spectralists in the third and what's called electroacoustic music in the fourth. Of course there has been a lot of cross-fertilization and some composers who've aimed at a grand synthesis (e.g., Berio, Ligeti).

There is also the category of music that is primarily about extended instrumental technique, but that's totally uninteresting to me - others will probably have more to say about it.


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## Luchesi

DaveM said:


> I could give you many examples, but I don't have time to inform someone who doesn't appear to be familiar with all the popular music artists that have written and performed their own music. But I will give you one example. Christina Perri wrote this song, music and lyrics in 3-4 days -and sang it- for the Twilight movie series. I know one of the main people in the company that hired her to write the song on short notice. It is a wonderful song: original melody, great lyrics and perfect for the movie.


If you're a fan of hers you might like this video. I think she wrote most of it in her driveway after driving home.


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## Luchesi

isorhythm said:


> There's nothing inherently wrong with "assembly line" production of music. How do you think Motown worked? Judge the result. The Western classical lone genius model isn't the only one in the world, or even in the history of Western classical music.
> 
> In response to the OP, I think of classical music splitting into four streams in the early 20th century, represented by:
> 
> -Schoenberg, Berg, Webern
> -Stravinsky, Bartok
> -Ravel, Debussy
> -Varese
> 
> The later you go, the less knowledgeable I am, but I think you can still recognize these streams, with self-consciously cerebral composers like Ferneyhough in the first, the minimalists and their offshoots in the second, spectralists in the third and what's called electroacoustic music in the fourth. Of course there has been a lot of cross-fertilization and some composers who've aimed at a grand synthesis (e.g., Berio, Ligeti).
> 
> There is also the category of music that is primarily about extended instrumental technique, but that's totally uninteresting to me - others will probably have more to say about it.


They wanted to use a much bigger toolbox than the pushers of commercial music.


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## DaveM

Luchesi said:


> If you're a fan of hers you might like this video. I think she wrote most of it in her driveway after driving home.


Thanks. I'm actually familiar with all her songs. Big fan!


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## eugeneonagain

Fredx2098 said:


> I don't really know any examples of a modern pop musician creating a song that is entirely their idea, their words, their concept, their structure, etc.


What, even though one of them was mentioned in the quote to which you replied? Ed Sheeran. Adele is another.


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## JAS

Fredx2098 said:


> I don't really know any examples of a modern pop musician creating a song that is entirely their idea, their words, their concept, their structure, etc.


When was this ever a requirement or expectation for music? How often has it ever been true, and at the same time produced anything worthwhile?


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## Kjetil Heggelund

What's going on then?


----------



## Dan Ante

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> What's going on then?


Same as usual :cheers:............


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## arpeggio

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> There are great producers but also great artists these days, probably even a rapper, but this is still a classical discussion  No point in that direction here...


I agree with Kjetil that all of the pop discussions is straying away from the intent of the OP.


----------



## fluteman

isorhythm said:


> There's nothing inherently wrong with "assembly line" production of music. How do you think Motown worked? Judge the result. The Western classical lone genius model isn't the only one in the world, or even in the history of Western classical music.
> 
> In response to the OP, I think of classical music splitting into four streams in the early 20th century, represented by:
> 
> -Schoenberg, Berg, Webern
> -Stravinsky, Bartok
> -Ravel, Debussy
> -Varese
> 
> The later you go, the less knowledgeable I am, but I think you can still recognize these streams, with self-consciously cerebral composers like Ferneyhough in the first, the minimalists and their offshoots in the second, spectralists in the third and what's called electroacoustic music in the fourth. Of course there has been a lot of cross-fertilization and some composers who've aimed at a grand synthesis (e.g., Berio, Ligeti).
> 
> There is also the category of music that is primarily about extended instrumental technique, but that's totally uninteresting to me - others will probably have more to say about it.


That's a good way of looking at it. In general, I see the modern music era as one where harmony, which had steadily grown after 500 years to a dominant, even exalted, position in western music, was not eliminated entirely but was forced to share the stage a little or a lot more with timbre, rhythm, dynamics and other musical elements. Early on in the modern era, Debussy and Ravel emphasized contrasts in timbre. Stravinsky and Bartok created distinctive and propulsive rhythms. Schoenberg, Berg and Webern greatly de-emphasized and sometimes all but eliminated harmonic progressions, though otherwise often still closely observed other pre-modern ideas and conventions. Varese created jarring contrasts in dynamics and timbre, as did his successors, Cage and Stockhausen.
Later composers can take their pick from these approaches and others, and combine them. Late in the 20th and early in the 21st centuries, we see traditional western harmony, never entirely eliminated, becoming a little more prominent in a lot of contemporary music, but still not returning to its old dominant position. I think of it a bit like the Russian royal family: The immediate family executed and the survivors living in exile during the Soviet era, but in the current, post-communist era, though still nowhere near restoration to the throne, not quite so disfavored.


----------



## DaveM

I’m surprised that few of the ‘modernists’ who have such an interest in post 19th century music have responded to the OP. I would think that names for categories that are truly representative of modern music rather than the hodge-podge that exists would be of interest.


----------



## fluteman

DaveM said:


> I'm surprised that few of the 'modernists' who have such an interest in post 19th century music have responded to the OP. I would think that names for categories that are truly representative of modern music rather than the hodge-podge that exists would be of interest.


Well, it isn't all that easy. Music from the "classical" and "romantic" eras encompasses a very wide variety of styles and ideas. In other threads, I've suggested that the terms simply be attached to chronological periods to refer to styles and ideas that were prominent during that period.
And it isn't any easier today. Take "spectral music", a category mentioned above. What does tht mean, exactly? If you look at the Wikipedia entry, you'll see the following comment:

"The Istanbul Spectral Music Conference of 2003 suggested a redefinition of the term "spectral music" to encompass any music that foregrounds timbre as an important element of structure or language."

Well, score one for Wikipedia, which I admit isn't always an ideal source, and for that Istanbul conference. This is an important example of what I mentioned above -- how bringing elements other than harmony, such as timbre, to the fore is a fundamental feature of modernist movements such as spectralism. Minimalists like Steve Reich and Philip Glass emphasize thematic repetition rather than the traditional emphasis in western music on thematic development. Other approaches such as serial music, musique concrète and aleatoric music (and others) employ a variety of systems as a substitute for tonality, or tonal hierarchy.
I think the common thread in all of this is the forging of paths slightly or dramatically away from traditional western harmony and structure as it developed from circa 1400 to 1900 in a particular direction. I've studied traditional western music enough to recognize in a broad sense many of these trends as specific departures from the basic tenets of classical music with which I have familiarized myself.
Not a "hodge-podge", at least not always.


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## Enthusiast

^^ I don't think that enjoying contemporary music is about identifying the -isms that you like and pursuing them. Some broad categories are useful - and we could perhaps do with one or two more of the generality of "minimalism" and "serialism" (neither of which is contemporary) - but, beyond these, the generation of -isms seems more a way of composers discussing ideas with each other than with their audiences. I guess the broad categories get created by critics and audiences later, when they are making sense of what was done?


----------



## isorhythm

DaveM said:


> I'm surprised that few of the 'modernists' who have such an interest in post 19th century music have responded to the OP. I would think that names for categories that are truly representative of modern music rather than the hodge-podge that exists would be of interest.


I know I was put off for a long time after seeing the thread derailed almost immediately by irrelevant and poorly informed complaints about modern music, but maybe it can still be saved!


----------



## Luchesi

arpeggio said:


> I agree with Kjetil that all of the pop discussions is straying away from the intent of the OP.


It's not an easy subject. How does the general consumer of music (or even avid fan) who doesn't know a major ninth from a dominant seventh begin to start to appreciate the modern music that you do?

Another question is how fast do you mentally or emotionally glide into an appreciation of a new modern work?

Just how do you do it? I know how I do it differently on a case by case basis because I don't listen to much of the new explorations. If I did listen a lot more I would like to know from you how you approach difficult compositions with their idiosyncratic realizations?


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

Luchesi said:


> It's not an easy subject. How does the general consumer of music (or even avid fan) who doesn't know a major ninth from a dominant seventh begin to start to appreciate the modern music that you do?
> 
> Another question is how fast do you mentally or emotionally glide into an appreciation of a new modern work?
> 
> Just how do you do it? I know how I do it differently on a case by case basis because I don't listen to much of the new explorations. If I did listen a lot more I would like to know from you how you approach difficult compositions with their idiosyncratic realizations?


To me it has become natural to not expect anything usual in new music. I have also gotten more and more used to new music for 30 years. It has been an exciting journey that started with Prokofiev, who now is not a challenge at all. BUT I do have a degree in music, so it has been part of my education  I'm pretty thrilled at the sounds some composers manage to write down on paper.


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## arpeggio

Luchesi said:


> It's not an easy subject. How does the general consumer of music (or even avid fan) who doesn't know a major ninth from a dominant seventh begin to start to appreciate the modern music that you do?
> 
> Another question is how fast do you mentally or emotionally glide into an appreciation of a new modern work?
> 
> Just how do you do it? I know how I do it differently on a case by case basis because I don't listen to much of the new explorations. If I did listen a lot more I would like to know from you how you approach difficult compositions with their idiosyncratic realizations?


I have responded to this question many times before and my answer is always the same. Many members do not like it and try to pick a fight with me over my answer.

This is true with amateur musicians, like myself, as well as professional. When one is a member of an orchestra or band one plays all types of music. Even with a symphony orchestra one has to be able to play pop music as well as classical. I have performed everything from Bach to the Beach Boys. When music is put on your music stand one is obligated to play it irregardless of your personal feelings (I have given up dealing with the negative feedback that this statement has produced.) An amateur group normally rehearses once a week. One can spend several weeks learning and living with a piece of music (Another poster has already mentioned this recently in one of the threads here. I can not remember which one.) As a result of my performing experiences, not taking music theory classes, I have learned to appreciate all sorts of classical and non-classical music.

I really have no idea of the magic bullet that would make a person appreciate modern music. The reason I like it is because I have performed and lived with a lot of it over the years, including some atonal works.


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## Dan Ante

arpeggio said:


> I really have no idea of the magic bullet that would make a person appreciate modern music. The reason I like it is because I have performed and lived with a lot of it over the years, including some atonal works.


I wager not one person will say they can't stand modern music particularly when modern is not defined, most will say they like some of today's composers and dislike others.


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## Luchesi

arpeggio said:


> I have responded to this question many times before and my answer is always the same. Many members do not like it and try to pick a fight with me over my answer.
> 
> This is true with amateur musicians, like myself, as well as professional. When one is a member of an orchestra or band one plays all types of music. Even with a symphony orchestra one has to be able to play pop music as well as classical. I have performed everything from Bach to the Beach Boys. When music is put on your music stand one is obligated to play it irregardless of your personal feelings (I have given up dealing with the negative feedback that this statement has produced.) An amateur group normally rehearses once a week. One can spend several weeks learning and living with a piece of music (Another poster has already mentioned this recently in one of the threads here. I can not remember which one.) As a result of my performing experiences, not taking music theory classes, I have learned to appreciate all sorts of classical and non-classical music.
> 
> I really have no idea of the magic bullet that would make a person appreciate modern music. The reason I like it is because I have performed and lived with a lot of it over the years, including some atonal works.


It might've been my post #83.

I'm hearing that casual listeners without musical training and experience won't have an approach you can recommend.

Most musicians I know have heard all the great works. But if you had never heard the Diabelli Variations would you set to listening to it as you would a new modern work? I'm trying to find something helpful for people who don't give a hoot for what I find in modern offerings.

If I'm 'annoyed' by a musical piece or by a painting, the last thing I force myself to ask is, could I have done this better? The answer is no, and it humbles me..


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## joen_cph

For recommendations of modern music, it´s usually better to find out what music the person who is asking likes already, and then suggest something with a certain resemblance to that.

Musical taste usually evolves quite slowly, only rarely in big leaps.

It´s rather ridiculous to recommend Stockhausen´s _Gesang der Jünglinge_ to someone who listens only to Baroque concertos and Bach´s cello suites, but Pärt´s _Tabula Rasa_, Crumb´s _Solo Cello Sonata_, or Schnittke´s _Concerto Grosso no.1_ might have a chance, for example.


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## eugeneonagain

Luchesi said:


> But if you had never heard the Diabelli Variations would you set to listening to it as you would a new modern work? I'm trying to find something helpful for people who don't give a hoot for what I find in modern offerings.
> 
> If I'm 'annoyed' by a musical piece or by a painting, the last thing I force myself to ask is, could I have done this better? The answer is no, and it humbles me..


It's been said before that when listening to things like your example of the Diabelli Variations, it's not going to be as much of a challenge. The musical language (or that version of musical language) is well dispersed, well-known. It is the one that has been used for the bulk of works discussed on this forum and played in the concert halls and by listeners at home. This is for initiated listeners at any rate; I'm sure there are plenty of people who don't listen to classical music who might listen to Diabelli and think it a lot of long-winded twiddling. There is a way to explain to them of course and they can put in some of their own effort.

Is it a fair appraisal for a person to set to listening to a modern work with _exactly_ the same mindset as they would for listening to, say, Tchaikovsky? And to then expect some kind of revelation where after a while the 'noise' gets translated into the musical paradigm they prefer? They're likely to be disappointed. To learn to appreciate something different, you have to spend time in its company. Like language immersion.

Maybe we are better and more varied with visual material. I don't know of anyone who approaches new visual art with the expectation that it will fulfil the same function as art from 200 years ago. Plus so much modern visual art: painting, sculpture, film, theatre has been embraced into wider culture, whereas music hasn't. Maybe we have deep expectations about how it _ought_ to sound, and of course listening concentration is now well behind visual. Too much work.

Finally, something which has been repeated by so many members here - including myself - is that just like in the music everyone knows so well, there is some you like and some you don't. The same goes for modern music. No-one here thinks they are a failure if they don't care for Liszt's music. Likewise it's perfectly fine to not be much impressed by a piece of modern music. You just leave it and listen to something else. Something somewhere will strike a chord with you and that is where anyone trying to listen to new music should probably begin. Not butting their head against a piece of music because it has a name behind it and has been recommended and is 'the thing' everyone else says is great.


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## arpeggio

Dan Ante said:


> I wager not one person will say they can't stand modern music particularly when modern is not defined, most will say they like some of today's composers and dislike others.


Again I can only speak of my personal experiences. When I play a new piece of music I have a good feel on whether or not it is modern. I can not explain it but for me modern music sounds a certain way. Sometimes a baroque piece may sound modern to my ears. It may be that modern music does not always resolve to a tonic or it could be the way the music is orchestrated. Your guess is as good as mine.


----------



## JAS

arpeggio said:


> Again I can only speak of my personal experiences. When I play a new piece of music I have a good feel on whether or not it is modern. I can not explain it but for me modern music sounds a certain way. Sometime a baroque piece may sound modern to my ears. It may be that modern music does not always resolve to a tonic or it could be the way the music is orchestrated. Your guess is as good as mine.


This seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable statement, particularly for someone with musical training, as you appear to be. Even just listening to a new piece, I think I have a good sense as to whether or not it is "modern" (assuming, of course, that it is not a modern but faithful recreation of something in an older style). I think Luchesi has touched on that same impression in his comments.


----------



## arpeggio

*Performing Experiences*



JAS said:


> This seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable statement, particularly for someone with musical training, as you appear to be. Even just listening to a new piece, I think I have a good sense as to whether or not it is "modern" (assuming, of course, that it is not a modern but faithful recreation of something in an older style). I think Luchesi has touched on that same impression in his comments.


I want to try to clarify a misconception that may have occurred. Most of you can do a much better job of expressing your thoughts than I do. The music training gave me the skills I needed to join an ensemble. But the music training played only a small part in determining in my esthetics. The primary foundation of my esthetics comes from my actual years of experience of performing in various ensembles.

As a result I am very interested in the course of contemporary music because I have played the premiers of many works of all styles.

One of the most informative posts was by Larkenfield on October 4th. This the type of information that I am looking for.


----------



## Sid James

I think there is much sense in an approach related to streams (mentioned by isorhythm). We can restrict it to technique, but inevitably other aspects including disciplines outside music will bring forth their own connections.

I think some important streams are:

Atonality, serialism, post-serialism

Approaches drawing on old Western and non-Western music - modal, folk, pentatonic

Alternative approaches to sonority, including microtonality

Dada, aleatoric, performance-based music

Music drawing from popular sources, eg. Jazz, rock

Technological imperatives - eg. Futurism, electronic manipulation, noise

The most significant composers fit into more than one stream, some casting very long shadows over the century.

Although useful as short descriptors, the various "isms" are less important now than before. Even within their own lifetimes, influential composers where averse to forming schools (eg. Debussy, Bartok). Others formed groups which where less close knit (eg. Les Six).


----------



## DaveM

I don’t understand how there can be this myriad -almost countless number- of different kinds of modern music and yet when ‘modernists’ discuss how someone should approach it, they often talk about it as if it is a single entity. It occurs to me that the effort mentioned as often necessary to appreciate modern music is going to be considerably different for, say, atonal works as opposed to works that are attempts to create sounds from instruments that they were never intended to produce (which some have presented examples of on this forum and apparently call a form of modern classical music).


----------



## eugeneonagain

DaveM said:


> I don't understand how there can be this myriad -almost countless number- of different kinds of modern music and yet when 'modernists' discuss how someone should approach it, they often talk about it as if it is a single entity. It occurs to me that the effort mentioned as often necessary to appreciate modern music is going to be considerably different for, say, atonal works as opposed to works that are attempts to create sounds from instruments that they were never intended to produce (which some have presented examples of on this forum and apparently call a form of modern classical music).


Do you mean to say that one of them - 'atonal music' - suitably belongs under the umbrella of 'modern classical music' whereas the other does not? I've read the above quote several times and I don't quite know what you are saying.


----------



## JAS

arpeggio said:


> I want to try to clarify a misconception that may have occurred. Most of you can do a much better job of expressing your thoughts than I do. The music training gave me the skills I needed to join an ensemble. But the music training played only a small part in determining in my esthetics. The primary foundation of my esthetics comes from my actual years of experience of performing in various ensembles.
> 
> As a result I am very interested in the course of contemporary music because I have played the premiers of many works of all styles.
> 
> One of the most informative posts was by Larkenfield on October 4th. This the type of information that I am looking for.


I don't think I see the misconception implied. Is there some thought that it was suggested that you appreciated modern classical music _because_ you had formal training? If so, that was not the intended implication of my comment. All I was saying is that I don't think that formal training is required to recognize music created under a broad aesthetic that we would consider to be "modern." The human brain is inherently good at recognizing patterns, and all that is really required is personal experience or exposure (ideally with some kind of external description or history that allows the patterns to be assigned some sort of identifying context). I suspect that formal training enhances the ability to recognize the traits (by presence and absence), and may provide the terminology to describe them, but it is obviously very problematic to do so. Every attempt I see at TC to explain the differences, and in some cases even to acknowledge that there are notable differences, become fraught with disagreement. The reluctance is very perplexing, but perhaps also very revealing.

Note: For reference, posts do have identifying numbers, which is more useful than merely the name of the poster and a date. I believe by clicking on that number, one can even obtain a link. This post, for example, is post #220 of the thread, and the link is https://www.talkclassical.com/57645-directions-modern-music-15.html#post1525305 (which gives a different number but still uniquely identifies it).


----------



## JAS

DaveM said:


> I don't understand how there can be this myriad -almost countless number- of different kinds of modern music and yet when 'modernists' discuss how someone should approach it, they often talk about it as if it is a single entity. It occurs to me that the effort mentioned as often necessary to appreciate modern music is going to be considerably different for, say, atonal works as opposed to works that are attempts to create sounds from instruments that they were never intended to produce (which some have presented examples of on this forum and apparently call a form of modern classical music).


My own suspicion is that while there is a wide range of what "modern classical music" is trying to do and how it attempts to do so, all of the approaches are somewhat unified by what they are trying _not_ to do, by consciously avoiding the pre-established forms and rules that they are, by implication, rejecting in their attempts to find new fields (or their own voices). Sometimes they reject a few and sometimes all or nearly all of the rules (or perhaps better termed as conventions). To my ear, the more rules and conventions they reject, the more "modern" the results sound.


----------



## joen_cph

I think that is relevant for the term "avantgarde" in particular, much less for the broader term "modern".


----------



## isorhythm

JAS said:


> My own suspicion is that while there is a wide range of what "modern classical music" is trying to do and how it attempts to do so, all of the approaches are somewhat unified by what they are trying _not_ to do, by consciously avoiding the pre-established forms and rules that they are, by implication, rejecting in their attempts to find new fields (or their own voices). Sometimes they reject a few and sometimes all or nearly all of the rules (or perhaps better termed as conventions). To my ear, the more rules and conventions they reject, the more "modern" the results sound.


I think you could argue this was true in the mid-20th century, but I don't think it's been true for a long time now.


----------



## arpeggio

Dan Ante said:


> I wager not one person will say they can't stand modern music particularly when modern is not defined, most will say they like some of today's composers and dislike others.


I apologize for some of my recent posts. I think I misunderstood what Dan Ante was saying. I thought he was stating that part of the discussion was the result that we did not have a proper definition of modern music. In all of the years of this discussion this is a common point brought up in the debate. I was trying to explain why I thought I could identify what modern music was without getting into an esoteric technical discussion. These never resolved anything.

I know that many of the members who are non-performers have a feel of what music is modern. I am sorry for implying that a person without training could not.


----------



## JAS

isorhythm said:


> I think you could argue this was true in the mid-20th century, but I don't think it's been true for a long time now.


Really? From what I have heard, including many items posted here at TC of more recent compositions, it is still abundantly true. Has there been some rush back towards traditional concepts and approaches? I would be interested in knowing about composers who embrace older forms. (I mentioned one, and a specific composition, and it was apparently sneered at as "crossover.") I would be very happy to be wrong on this point.

Edit: I do recall that Arpeggio mentioned Samuel Jones (I think) in another thread, which seemed to be something worth looking at/listening to. I mean to track down some youtube videos, but I have been very busy lately and not necessarily close to my PC for more than a few moments at a time, which is not a fair context for listening to something I don't already know well.


----------



## millionrainbows

KenOC said:


> Any thought of a wink in Mr. Babbitt's eye will vanish upon reading his essay, prepared in the most turgid academese.
> 
> http://palestrant.com/babbitt.html
> 
> "I dare suggest that the composer would do himself and his music an immediate and eventual service by total, resolute, and voluntary withdrawal from this public world to one of private performance and electronic media, with its very real possibility of complete elimination of the public and social aspects of musical composition. By so doing, the separation between the domains would be defined beyond any possibility of confusion of categories, and the composer would be free to pursue a private life of professional achievement, as opposed to a public life of unprofessional compromise and exhibitionism."
> 
> He then asks how, having done this, can the composer put food in his belly? But never fear. He has the answer!


The composer could always record his works and release them on CD. And Zappa retired from touring and worked electronically with the Synclavier. Sounds like what Babbitt is suggesting. The only thing that he'd be withdrawing from would be the traditional concert hall, which is a rather old-fashioned way of hearing live music. Philip Glass never went that route; his ensemble was more like a touring rock band. Are you defending the old abandoned fort of classical music concerts? You can see operas at the cinema now.


----------



## joen_cph

JAS said:


> Really? From what I have heard, including many items posted here at TC of more recent compositions, it is still abundantly true. Has there been some rush back towards traditional concepts and approaches? I would be interested in knowing about composers who embrace older forms. (I mentioned one, and a specific composition, and it was apparently sneered at as "crossover.") I would be very happy to be wrong on this point.
> 
> Edit: I do recall that Arpeggio mentioned Samuel Jones (I think) in another thread, which seemed to be something worth looking at/listening to. I mean to track down some youtube videos, but I have been very busy lately and not necessarily close to my PC for more than a few moments at a time, which is not a fair context for listening to something I don't already know well.


If it has to be consistently in an older style than say a Barber, a Villa Lobos, or a Bartok, I´m sure it exists, but I´ll personally be a bit more un-informed as regards names, I don´t think such music tends to get recorded a lot. 
Well, some of the first names that pop up are _Alma Deutscher_: 
(Violin Concerto in g, 2017 



) 
and to some extent _Jean Francaix_ 
(Octet 1972, 



)

As regards music more similar to the composers mentioned, there are tons of examples.


----------



## DaveM

JAS said:


> Really? From what I have heard, including many items posted here at TC of more recent compositions, it is still abundantly true. Has there been some rush back towards traditional concepts and approaches? I would be interested in knowing about composers who embrace older forms. (I mentioned one, and a specific composition, and it was apparently sneered at as "crossover.") I would be very happy to be wrong on this point.
> 
> Edit: I do recall that Arpeggio mentioned Samuel Jones (I think) in another thread, which seemed to be something worth looking at/listening to. I mean to track down some youtube videos, but I have been very busy lately and not necessarily close to my PC for more than a few moments at a time, which is not a fair context for listening to something I don't already know well.


Speaking of Samuel Jones, I came across this: (not bad, sounds something like Prokofiev)


----------



## JAS

joen_cph said:


> If it has to be consistently in an older style than say a Barber, a Villa Lobos, or a Bartok, I´m sure it exists, but I´ll personally be a bit more un-informed as regards names, I don´t think such music tends to get recorded a lot.
> Well, some of the first names that pop up are _Alma Deutscher_:
> (Violin Concerto in g, 2017
> 
> 
> 
> )
> and to some extent _Jean Francaix_
> (Octet 1972,
> 
> 
> 
> )
> 
> As regards music more similar to the composers mentioned, there are tons of examples.


So, mostly still in rejection of traditional (older) forms, as I suspected. And if there is something else, it is being ignored as insufficiently "with it."


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## joen_cph

No, not forms, but as regards 19th century language, only little. It seems that it was that you were looking for.


----------



## JAS

joen_cph said:


> No, not forms, but as regards 19th century language, only little. It seems that it was that you were looking for.


I was mostly thinking in terms of "I think you could argue this was true in the mid-20th century, but I don't think it's been true for a long time now" being explained, which I don't think it has been. In fact, quite the opposite. (Where is Strange Magic with his standard "new stasis" comment?)


----------



## isorhythm

JAS said:


> Really? From what I have heard, including many items posted here at TC of more recent compositions, it is still abundantly true. Has there been some rush back towards traditional concepts and approaches? I would be interested in knowing about composers who embrace older forms. (I mentioned one, and a specific composition, and it was apparently sneered at as "crossover.") I would be very happy to be wrong on this point.


I was saying that they're not motivated by a desire to reject earlier forms - that's not the same as embracing earlier forms. (I do think there's been a resurgence of some older forms since the mid-20th century, but that's beside the point here.)


----------



## JAS

isorhythm said:


> I was saying that they're not motivated by a desire to reject earlier forms - that's not the same as embracing earlier forms. (I do think there's been a resurgence of some older forms since the mid-20th century, but that's beside the point here.)


Whether or not that is their motivation, it is certainly the effect, which is close enough to being the same thing.


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## millionrainbows

A lot of times "form" is determined by what the music is, so old forms don't reflect new ideas.


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## Luchesi

millionrainbows said:


> A lot of times "form" is determined by what the music is, so old forms don't reflect new ideas.


New ideas. The same old ideas. Are there 'new' ideas? What new ideas are you thinking about?

Can you put them into words? or are they only presented to you by the music? This is a fascinating phenomenon. Did the music of Beethoven present new ideas to human beings? I think it did. How could I prove it? Or even teach it? Music appreciation as an intellectual activity is so elevated above words and spoken phrases and the tiresome metaphors of speech - "this is that - or - this is not that".

Music in the old styles can still succeed in this, but we definitely need the power of the NEW and the currently relevant in all the arts.


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## isorhythm

JAS said:


> Whether or not that is their motivation, it is certainly the effect, which is close enough to being the same thing.


What music are you talking about?


----------



## JAS

isorhythm said:


> What music are you talking about?


What music are _you_ talking about?


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## isorhythm

JAS said:


> What music are _you_ talking about?


Anything in the last few pages in the "exploring contemporary music" thread works.


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## JAS

isorhythm said:


> Anything in the last few pages in the "exploring contemporary music" thread works.


Same here. ........


----------



## isorhythm

JAS said:


> Same here. ........


You understand I'm not trying to make you like those pieces, or say they're good, or anything like that, right? I'm just saying it's obvious to a minimally competent listener what they're about, and it's not rejecting earlier music for its own sake.


----------



## JAS

isorhythm said:


> You understand I'm not trying to make you like those pieces, or say they're good, or anything like that, right? I'm just saying it's obvious to a minimally competent listener what they're about, and it's not rejecting earlier music for its own sake.


That is your response. It certainly seems to be a rejection of earlier music to me. Would you put any of the Lang pieces on a concert with a Beethoven symphony or a Mendelssohn concerto?


----------



## DaveM

isorhythm said:


> ... I'm just saying it's obvious to a minimally competent listener what they're about, and it's not rejecting earlier music for its own sake.


I have no idea what that means and I claim to be a competent listener.


----------



## Luchesi

People who take exception to modern music -

1. find it annoying, sounds like nasty noise
2. have concluded it's bad for the future of music, bad feelings
3. expect that it will crowd out their preferred music, unconscious fear
4. feel let down by composers of today in general, nostalgia 
5. are searching for something but not finding it, frustration


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

Directions in new sounds...I have a book called "Modern Music and After" by Paul Griffiths, that I've only skimmed through here and there. It might have all the answers I want  Several people here have suggested that it might not be so important to put a label on composers, since they are evolving with each piece. When you're reading music history/theory though, there is always a way to describe what is going on, a label. I think it's interesting what composers are motivated by, and how they realize their vision.


----------



## millionrainbows

Luchesi said:


> New ideas. The same old ideas. Are there 'new' ideas? What new ideas are you thinking about?
> 
> Can you put them into words? or are they only presented to you by the music? This is a fascinating phenomenon. Did the music of Beethoven present new ideas to human beings? I think it did. How could I prove it? Or even teach it? Music appreciation as an intellectual activity is so elevated above words and spoken phrases and the tiresome metaphors of speech - "this is that - or - this is not that".
> 
> Music in the old styles can still succeed in this, but we definitely need the power of the NEW and the currently relevant in all the arts.


Well, I mean that if it's a fugue, we recognize it as one. Sonata form (fast-slow-fast) is recognizable, and is usually based on themes and their development. Franz Liszt went to the one-movement tone poem, for more freedom in this regard.


----------



## Luchesi

millionrainbows said:


> Well, I mean that if it's a fugue, we recognize it as one. Sonata form (fast-slow-fast) is recognizable, and is usually based on themes and their development. Franz Liszt went to the one-movement tone poem, for more freedom in this regard.


I meant ideas from our everyday reality which are difficult to put into words even if you have paragraphs of space. The sound relationships can be abstract descriptions of anything you've recently experienced at the time. It begins to be unavoidable.

Maybe music doesn't do this for everyone.


----------



## Dan Ante

Luchesi said:


> I meant ideas from our everyday reality which are difficult to put into words even if you have paragraphs of space. The sound relationships can be abstract descriptions of anything you've recently experienced at the time. It begins to be unavoidable.
> 
> Maybe music doesn't do this for everyone.


People interperet music differently a well known example is Grieg's 'morning mood' some see a misty forest clearing when it was meant to be the rising sun a desert.


----------



## Luchesi

Dan Ante said:


> People interperet music differently a well known example is Grieg's 'morning mood' some see a misty forest clearing when it was meant to be the rising sun a desert.


Thanks, I didn't know that. What about a piece that doesn't have a descriptive title? Parts of the Fugue BWV 543


----------



## aleazk

Two blocks straight and then turn left. But be careful with the Arnold boogeyman beggar at the alley.


----------



## KenOC

aleazk said:


> Two blocks straight and then turn left. But be careful with the Arnold boogeyman beggar at the alley.


He killed music...now he wants to kill you!


----------



## Dan Ante

Luchesi said:


> Thanks, I didn't know that. What about a piece that doesn't have a descriptive title? Parts of the Fugue BWV 543


To be honest I do not get any pictures in my mind I just follow and marvel at the music but I think that applies to all of his keyboard works at least for me.


----------



## Luchesi

Dan Ante said:


> To be honest I do not get any pictures in my mind I just follow and marvel at the music but I think that applies to all of his keyboard works at least for me.


That's interesting, but maybe you haven't heard this phenomenal image painter?

Bach - The Well Tempered Clavier Book 1 - HJ Lim - 임현정 바하 평균율


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

Arnold is cool! So is Pierre and that boy Karlheinz  Bach is often an inspiration to modern composers, of course. The 20th century is fantastic for all the variation in sound.


----------



## Blancrocher

The topic reminds me of a pretty good, lengthy review by Alex Ross of Tim Rutherford-Johnson's _Music After the Fall: Modern Composition and Culture Since 1989_. One theme of the review is the apparent death and transfigured life of musical "modernism," one possible way of documenting currently divergent directions in contemporary music. Along the way, Ross suggests that R-F's comprehensiveness-it took Ross 2 months to read the book as he tracked down references-offered new ways to hear familiar works through imaginative juxtaposition. So perhaps the book will offer both cogent explanations of general trends and responsibly eclectic reference as it traces the scattered soundscapes of recent decades.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/08/27/the-sounds-of-music-in-the-twenty-first-century


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

Wow! That review is compulsory reading  I even have the book. Now I found his blog...Thanks for the link!! https://johnsonsrambler.wordpress.com


----------



## Dan Ante

Luchesi said:


> That's interesting, but maybe you haven't heard this phenomenal image painter?
> 
> Bach - The Well Tempered Clavier Book 1 - HJ Lim - 임현정 바하 평균율


What picture do you get? For me it is the pianist playing bach.


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## millionrainbows

Universal: long, sustained passages remind us of landscapes, because of their horizontal nature.


----------



## Luchesi

Dan Ante said:


> What picture do you get? For me it is the pianist playing bach.


In your mind you see a person playing Bach? How long does this go on?


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

In which direction does Bach move compared with modern music?


----------



## Dan Ante

Luchesi said:


> In your mind you see a person playing Bach? How long does this go on?


I don't know I have never timed it. If a piece of music reminds me (by association) of a person or place in my past then I most probably see that person or scene for a while.


----------



## joen_cph

When I see pictures during music, they´re usually just more or less passive reproductions of scenes from record covers, including say paintings shown on them, or they are portraits, or from various general cultural history books, or related movies, texts etc.
So usually very little creative work involved in that.

There have been a few exceptions though. But they are never synesthesia.


----------



## Dan Ante

When I attend a concert I only see the performers never a picture does that make me normal or very strange?


----------



## Luchesi

Dan Ante said:


> When I attend a concert I only see the performers never a picture does that make me normal or very strange?


So you're listening not for images or abstract meanings, but for some other experience. Can you say what it is?


----------



## Dan Ante

Luchesi said:


> So you're listening not for images or abstract meanings, but for some other experience. Can you say what it is?


The pure enjoyment of the music, how constructed, the horizontal and vertical development, how well it is performed I am of course referring to orchestral, choral or chamber music and not opera or ballet.


----------



## Luchesi

Dan Ante said:


> The pure enjoyment of the music, how constructed, the horizontal and vertical development, how well it is performed I am of course referring to orchestral, choral or chamber music and not opera or ballet.


Then you quickly hear how it's constructed. I only get a vague notion without seeing the score. But that vagueness is so enjoyable as part of the mystery. 
If I'm so inclined by the work I'll study it for more mysteries. I mean HOW it achieves its success with me, all in the rather dry terms and reductions which all pieces have in common. Once I've identified the germs and the commonalities I can use them elsewhere.

Everyone knows it's amazing what Beethoven does with some simple and obvious elements. But all composers need to do this to some degree. It's like a detective story which keeps you coming back.. It's what makes modern music more approachable.


----------



## Dan Ante

Luchesi said:


> Then you quickly hear how it's constructed. I only get a vague notion without seeing the score. But that vagueness is so enjoyable as part of the mystery.
> If I'm so inclined by the work I'll study it for more mysteries. I mean HOW it achieves its success with me, all in the rather dry terms and reductions which all pieces have in common. Once I've identified the germs and the commonalities I can use them elsewhere.
> 
> Everyone knows it's amazing what Beethoven does with some simple and obvious elements. But all composers need to do this to some degree. It's like a detective story which keeps you coming back.. It's what makes modern music more approachable.


It is so easy to over complicate the listening experience, a composer may go for construction, an instrumentalist will perhaps concentrate on the role of his/her particular instrument, some will ask what is it that makes the piece resonate with themselves and some may see pictures in their mind.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

“If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.”
― John Cage
...
Anyone that know for sure if the man said so? 
This is a part of how I feel about music.


----------



## JAS

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> "If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience."
> ― John Cage
> ...
> Anyone that know for sure if the man said so?
> This is a part of how I feel about music.


It certainly sounds like the kind of complete nonsense that I would expect to hear from Cage. I stumbled across a clip not long ago that showed Cage on something like What's My Line (and maybe actually What's My Line). He introduced himself by saying "I make sounds and call them music." Surely the truest thing he ever said.


----------



## Crudblud

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> "If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience."
> ― John Cage
> ...
> Anyone that know for sure if the man said so?
> This is a part of how I feel about music.


It could be something he said, but it also sounds like a jumble of his ideas that might have been assembled by someone else.


----------



## Luchesi

Dan Ante said:


> It is so easy to over complicate the listening experience, a composer may go for construction, an instrumentalist will perhaps concentrate on the role of his/her particular instrument, some will ask what is it that makes the piece resonate with themselves and some may see pictures in their mind.


And I try to remember that we can do all four things with most pieces of music. And we can do all four things within the modern and postmodern explorations, but it's a challenge to our sensibilities (just like it was for the listeners of Beethoven and Mahler).

Of course it helps to actually participate in the activity of interpreting music, in order to experience and feel more of the freedom than you do with just listening.

What's called music today has gotten away from the pleasurable and continuously reaffirming resolutions, just when the generations of listeners have had less firsthand experience with personally expressing themselves through music.

It's interesting to read what an accomplished musician says about not playing modern works. I've talked to fellow musicians about this and it goes something like this… It's a bad feeling, every time you try to predict what will happen in the musical sequence you've just begun to recognize, you fail. You get a slight feeling of confusion which cancels out the feedback good feelings that you're used to getting with the music steeped in the older mechanisms. With the continuing mistakes and missteps that your brain is experiencing you naturally get no pleasure in making any accurate predictions. In fact it's just the opposite, you begin to hate it.

For me, I try to hear the old relationships in the new music and this becomes the large part of the old game. But it's more challenging and it takes a lot of effort. So, musicians ask me, "Why do it?? when there's so much good music available from before the 1930s or 40s? As a reflex, I just say go and talk to the composers and find out what they're trying to do. If what they're trying to do is not relevant to you then that's the way it is. It's not very helpful to most players.. (but I don't want to totally lose the argument  because I really want the new forms of expression to be available to serious listeners).


----------



## arpeggio

*Cage Quote*



Kjetil Heggelund said:


> "If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience."
> ― John Cage
> ...
> Anyone that know for sure if the man said so?
> This is a part of how I feel about music.


It appears that it is a Cage quote: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/47403.John_Cage


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## millionrainbows

arpeggio said:


> It appears that it is a Cage quote: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/47403.John_Cage


That's a good quote. And when you think about it, Man was designed as a hunter, so our "ego" or conscious mind is designed to focus and hone-in on prey in a single-minded way. That leaves us...well, "single-minded."


----------



## DaveM

It’s a silly quote and explains a lot about the Cage output. Sometimes, people accept quotes like this as being profound and yet if one looks more closely at the meaning, the response should be ‘Huh?’ Personally, I prefer music that uses sounds that are musical and ego has nothing to do with it.


----------



## KenOC

_"If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience."_
― John Cage

It _is _kind of silly. The foodie version: "If you develop a taste for good food, it's like developing an ego. You begin to refuse things like worms and pig excreta and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience." 

And in fact Cage _did _discriminate. He was an amateur mycologist after all and presumably ate mushrooms that he found. If he hadn't discriminated very carefully, we would be speaking of him today in the same breath as the unfortunate composer Johann Schobert -- and of course his unfortunate dinner guests.


----------



## JAS

If we want to be really generous in our interpretation, instead of "ego" he may mean that we develop a pattern of expectations and responses that are self-reinforcing, set and limit future expectations and are difficult to break. It would be the musical equivalent of a duckling imprinting on the first thing it sees as being its parent.


----------



## millionrainbows

DaveM said:


> It's a silly quote and explains a lot about the Cage output. Sometimes, people accept quotes like this as being profound and yet if one looks more closely at the meaning, the response should be 'Huh?' Personally, I prefer music that uses sounds that are musical and ego has nothing to do with it.


I gave you a reasonable anthropological example; you should value this information, ponder it, and use it. Instead, you are pursuing the same old rabbit. That rabbit leads to a dark hole, into which your exploratory sense will disappear, like Alice.


----------



## millionrainbows

KenOC said:


> _"If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience."_
> ― John Cage
> 
> It _is _kind of silly. The foodie version: "If you develop a taste for good food, it's like developing an ego. You begin to refuse things like worms and pig excreta and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience."


Worms and pig excreta are gross exaggerations. If you're going to use a similar metaphor, don't distort it beyond credibility, unless you are really _that _repelled by the idea of listening to sounds that are outside of your definition of music, and I don't think you are; and I don't think 99% of such sounds are as repellent as "pig excreta" to any reasonable listener. I think it's the _idea_ of anyone suggesting to you that you can expand your musical listening habits that repels you; still, I think pig excreta, even applied to this, is rather over-the-top.



> And in fact Cage _did _discriminate. He was an amateur mycologist after all and presumably ate mushrooms that he found. If he hadn't discriminated very carefully, we would be speaking him today in the same breath as the unfortunate composer Johann Schobert -- and of course his unfortunate dinner guests.


Nobody said that John Cage or anyone else had to "cease all discrimination, even at the risk of death." You can really exaggerate things right into the ground when you want to, like Neil Schon could drive a good melody into the ground.

Let's get some perspective here, people. John Cage is not a fascist. He's not trying to control you. Sheesh...


----------



## millionrainbows

JAS said:


> If we want to be really generous in our interpretation, instead of "ego" he may mean that we develop a pattern of expectations and responses that are self-reinforcing, set and limit future expectations and are difficult to break. It would be the musical equivalent of a duckling imprinting on the first thing it sees as being its parent.


That sounds like most unimaginative, conservative listeners' egos to me. Then they turn into fascists, and declare that "only what we define as music is music" and try to impose that on listeners who wish to expand their horizons into "hearing lawnmowers as drone instruments, with birds chirping for contrast, while a dog barks in the distance, slightly echoed."


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

The new direction may be new purpose . What new power of art can be imagined ? Sometimes new music inspires a riot of unreason . And then ... a couple of my piano kids once held a fancy notion of new music powering their spaceship .

hello
.
.


----------



## DaveM

millionrainbows said:


> I gave you a reasonable anthropological example; you should value this information, ponder it, and use it. Instead, you are pursuing the same old rabbit. That rabbit leads to a dark hole, into which your exploratory sense will disappear, like Alice in Blunderland.


Well, 'reasonable example' to you, irrelevant to me. As regards going down the rabbit hole, attributing substance to the Cage quote suggests that we are already at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

"But I'm an adventurer. I like invention, I like discovery." Karlheinz Stockhausen
Some more for you  Which way does this quote pull our direction of modern music. The last quote was 3:3, meaning no direction at all.


----------



## millionrainbows

DaveM said:


> Well, 'reasonable example' to you; irrelevant to me. As far as going down the rabbit hole goes, attributing substance to the Cage quote suggests that we are already at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party.


No it's not. I think you just think music is what you want it to be. That's based on your desire to have music be what you want it to be. That sounds like a controlling ego-based desire to me. In the end, you will see that desire leads nowhere. Most people realize this on their deathbed; some never do. "When you see beyond yourself you may find peace of mind is waiting there."


----------



## millionrainbows

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> "But I'm an adventurer. I like invention, I like discovery." Karlheinz Stockhausen
> Some more for you  Which way does this quote pull our direction of modern music. The last quote was 3:3, meaning no direction at all.


That's because Stockhausen was interested in sound itself, and was unattached to any "idea" of music which was fabricated by the ego of Man. To be a "scientist of sound," one must be objective.


----------



## philoctetes

millionrainbows said:


> That sounds like most unimaginative, conservative listeners' egos to me. Then they turn into fascists, and declare that "only what we define as music is music" and try to impose that on listeners who wish to expand their horizons into "hearing lawnmowers as drone instruments, with birds chirping for contrast, while a dog barks in the distance, slightly echoed."


I get a lot of air pumps around here. They can make the most horrible whine. But from far in the distance, they're like the winds of Bryce Canyon.. Birds, you guys move up front... I guess I'm just more of a Messiaen guy.


----------



## JAS

millionrainbows said:


> That sounds like most unimaginative, conservative listeners' egos to me. Then they turn into fascists, and declare that "only what we define as music is music" and try to impose that on listeners who wish to expand their horizons into "hearing lawnmowers as drone instruments, with birds chirping for contrast, while a dog barks in the distance, slightly echoed."


Well, the statement might mean a lot, if it meant anything at all, which it really doesn't. It sounds as if Cage was just lamenting that people weren't embracing what he produced, as music, and blaming the listener. It is a common problem.


----------



## DaveM

millionrainbows said:


> No it's not. I think you just think music is what you want it to be. That's based on your desire to have music be what you want it to be. That sounds like a controlling ego-based desire to me. In the end, you will see that desire leads nowhere. Most people realize this on their deathbed; some never do. "When you see beyond yourself you may find peace of mind is waiting there."


Well, nice attempt at an impression of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, but I'm not buying it. 

Classical music is what it is. And it just so happens that most of it is just what I want it to be. 'Controlling ego-based desire' is when people throw random sounds together and then try to pass it off as classical music. In my experience, desire is what drives us to accomplish positive things in life and if we work hard for them, more often than not, we will succeed. Misgivings on one's deathbed are more likely to do with not having tried harder.


----------



## JAS

Even within the broad range of what I consider music, generally, or classical music, more specifically, there are works I like and works that I don't particularly care for. The idea that I am deriding things as "not music" merely because I don't like them is absurd.


----------



## arpeggio

I have this and the only this to say to the above anti-Cageists,

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz


----------



## JAS

arpeggio said:


> I have this and the only this to say to the above anti-Cageists,
> 
> zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz


Is that another Cage work? It seems much more appealing than most of his compositions.


----------



## eugeneonagain

DaveM said:


> Misgivings on one's deathbed are more likely to do with not having tried harder.


Or having tried really hard and still coming up empty-handed. It's either an indictment against the method or an indication that the faith that just rewards always result from hard work is misguided balderdash.


----------



## arpeggio

*best strategy may be to ignore*



millionrainbows said:


> No it's not. I think you just think music is what you want it to be. That's based on your desire to have music be what you want it to be. That sounds like a controlling ego-based desire to me. In the end, you will see that desire leads nowhere. Most people realize this on their deathbed; some never do. "When you see beyond yourself you may find peace of mind is waiting there."


Millionrainbows,

You have made some excellent points but the best strategy may be to ignore these individuals and greet them with choruses of _433_. I would hate to see this thread derailed and closed down. I have learned many new things in it. Listening to some members grouse about the esthetics of Cage does not expand any of our understandings concerning the nature of music.


----------



## millionrainbows

arpeggio said:


> Millionrainbows,
> 
> You have made some excellent points but the best strategy may be to ignore these individuals and greet them with choruses of _433_. I would hate to see this thread derailed and closed down. I have learned many new things in it. Listening to some members grouse about the esthetics of Cage does not expand any of our understandings concerning the nature of music.


Okay, I'll try to be more like John Cage: detached, amused, possibly laughing.


----------



## KenOC

It's been my experience that people who accuse others of being slaves to their egos are always driven to it by their (usually outsized) egos.


----------



## millionrainbows

KenOC said:


> It's been my experience that people who accuse others of being slaves to their egos are always driven to it by their (usually outsized) egos.


I won't believe that unless I see it in a poll. 
But really, that doesn't make sense, if the people in question really are being driven by their egos, and the person accusing them of it is actually observing their egos in action. There have to be some "givens" which are assumed to be true, if this observation is to work.

Otherwise, you must mean some sort of passive-aggressive syndrome, but that still doesn't invalidate the actual effects of ego-driven activity, which in my experience is very easy to spot.


----------



## DaveM

millionrainbows said:


> ... but that still doesn't invalidate the actual effects of ego-driven activity, which in my experience is very easy to spot.


You mean things like self-esteem, self-worth, self-respect and self-confidence?


----------



## KenOC

millionrainbows said:


> I won't believe that unless I see it in a poll.
> But really, that doesn't make sense, if the people in question really are being driven by their egos, and the person accusing them of it is actually observing their egos in action. There have to be some "givens" which are assumed to be true, if this observation is to work.


By gosh, I'm sure you're right. You must feel quite proud of yourself! 

This reminds me of a strip I saw in one of those old Robert Crumb comics. Party in living room, everybody sitting around smoking weed. Guy sez, "Hey, let's all just let go of our egos for a while." Silence ensues for a minute or two. Guy sez, "Wasn't that a great idea?"


----------



## Crudblud

This modern music discussion is really riveting. Please keep it up. I'm learning so much about modern music. I can't even believe how insightful this is.


----------



## millionrainbows

DaveM said:


> You mean things like self-esteem, self-worth, self-respect and self-confidence?


No, those are things that are indicative of a healthy psyche. Also included in that would be "I don't need other people's validation" and "I can handle rejection because my self-worth does not depend on others." Those are "self-contained" examples of ego which are healthy.
The unhealthy forms of ego are those which compel people to belittle others, being over-achievers, and basically, all the things people do when they are not at peace with themselves.

Don't confuse these two kinds of ego again, just for argument's sake. I'd rather you "love the truth" more than your dislike of John Cage's ideas.


----------



## millionrainbows

KenOC said:


> By gosh, I'm sure you're right. You must feel quite proud of yourself!
> 
> This reminds me of a strip I saw in one of those old Robert Crumb comics. Party in living room, everybody sitting around smoking weed. Guy sez, "Hey, let's all just let go of our egos for a while." Silence ensues for a minute or two. Guy sez, "Wasn't that a great idea?"


Yeah, I remember that Robert Crumb comic. The guy who said it was stoned, though, and besides that, Robert Crumb is somewhat cynical. I'm rather disappointed in his latest work, a cartoon version of the Old Testament, obviously "getting back to his roots."

But that comic does nothing to invalidate what John Cage said about the ego, and how it makes people less open to all kinds of sounds. 
I'm more interested in seeing the truth of his statement than I am of making some sort of "statement" that is in itself egotistically-driven. But that would invalidate your invalidation, wouldn't it? Sorry, dude. I'm who I am, and it has little to do with impressing you or any other Cage-haters here.


----------



## millionrainbows

Crudblud said:


> This modern music discussion is really riveting. Please keep it up. I'm learning so much about modern music. I can't even believe how insightful this is.


I'm sorry to break this to you, Crud, but the "insights" just left the building, and are being replaced with Cage-bashing statements. I'm feeling rather heroic lately, and have decided to step in and defend his good name.


----------



## DaveM

arpeggio said:


> Listening to some members grouse about the esthetics of Cage does not expand any of our understandings concerning the nature of music.





millionrainbows said:


> I'd rather you "love the truth" more than your dislike of John Cage's ideas.


This is a classical music forum. I assume that the OP has to do with modern classical music. This is John Cage in 1960 at age 48 in the middle of his career. It's obvious that the people think this is a comedy routine:






The above occurred 8 years after 4'33". The wiki says 'Cage is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition 4'33"' Let's remind ourselves: this is 4'33" of silence.

And then this:






So, on the subject of 'love the truth', stop trying to promote what is an exercise in experimental sounds (and occasionally perhaps a form of experimental music) as classical music. If people prefer this kind of thing, then fine, it should be on a separate forum or sub-section of this forum for experimental music, but not in the classical section. And I am categorically not including atonal, much of which I'm not a fan, but accept as classical music.

In conclusion, I don't have a problem with people liking 'experimental sounds', just don't try to pass it off as classical music. To do so is flim-flam and I'm sick and tired of it.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

Isn't modern music experimental, and experimental music also modern? This whole topic is about modern music. I think John Cage was a true hero, a kind of musical philosopher. He belongs here! It's a drag reading many posts at how silly he was. Very many people don't think he was silly at all.


----------



## aleazk

Like it or not, Dave, the Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano are since long considered to be part of the canon by most professionals and a good portion of the audience too but the most diehard conservatives. It's, by now, one of Cage's most uncontroversial pieces and I'm surprised that some still beat the dead horse of pretending it's not even music. I can understand it in the case of Water walk (I don't really care much about that one either, to be honest), but with the sonatas?


----------



## JAS

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> Isn't modern music experimental, and experimental music also modern? This whole topic is about modern music. I think John Cage was a true hero, a kind of musical philosopher. He belongs here! It's a drag reading many posts at how silly he was. Very many people don't think he was silly at all.


Cage belongs to modern music. He does not belong to classical music, because that isn't what he did.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

...but modern music belongs to classical music...


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## JAS

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> ...but modern music belongs to classical music...


Not large parts of it. Certainly not Cage's Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

Of course they do! Look it up in history of western music.


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## JAS

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> Of course they do! Look it up in history of western music.


I do look at the history of western music. Modern music is chiefly a rejection of what came before. On its own terms, modern music is not part of the tradition that it rejects.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

In the Oxford History of Western Music, John Cage has a whole chapter on "Indeterminacy" from p.55-103. Really silly


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## Kjetil Heggelund

JAS said:


> I do look at the history of western music. Modern music is chiefly a rejection of what came before. On its own terms, modern music is not part of the tradition that it rejects.


Why do you have to say that in this thread about modern music?


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## JAS

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> Why do you have to say that in this thread about modern music?


A) because it is true

B) because it is relevant as the opposite was already suggested


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## Kjetil Heggelund

Ok, thank you very much!


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## Guest

Just a thought I had recently that made me think of this thread: how do composers and musicologists differentiate between strictly spectral music (using analyses of various overtone series to determine the overall pitch language) and other recent microtonal trends? I often see Haas lumped in with spectral composers like Grisey and Murail, but I'm pretty sure he said in an interview that his music certainly isn't based on spectral analysis.


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## eugeneonagain

JAS said:


> Modern music is chiefly a rejection of what came before. On its own terms, modern music is not part of the tradition that it rejects...
> 
> A) because it is true
> 
> B) because it is relevant as the opposite was already suggested


I don't think it's even true. Just one conversation with a handful of modern composers will tell you that that modern composers do not reject the history of music. Just like Picasso didn't "reject" art preceding his defining works.

I think you should stop asserting it because it's a falsehood.


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## Guest

JAS said:


> I do look at the history of western music. Modern music is chiefly a rejection of what came before. On its own terms, modern music is not part of the tradition that it rejects.


This is a good observation, but I believe that when modern music acknowledges a rejection of a particular tradition, it is automatically existing as a _result_ of that tradition by finding meaning and creativity in being contrary.

But, and this is a very big but, this is only true of some personalities in modern music who actively reject a specific tradition and define themselves in opposition to it. I'm yet to come across one of these composers, but many people in this forum must know of some due to how often this sentiment is brought up.


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## JAS

eugeneonagain said:


> I don't think it's even true. Just one conversation with a handful of modern composers will tell you that that modern composers do not reject the history of music. Just like Picasso didn't "reject" art preceding his defining works.
> 
> I think you should stop asserting it because it's a falsehood.


What they say is less important than what they do.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

shirime said:


> Just a thought I had recently that made me think of this thread: how do composers and musicologists differentiate between strictly spectral music (using analyses of various overtone series to determine the overall pitch language) and other recent microtonal trends? I often see Haas lumped in with spectral composers like Grisey and Murail, but I'm pretty sure he said in an interview that his music certainly isn't based on spectral analysis.


I read about Kaija Saariaho that she can be called post spectral...Maybe Haas too?
Like many of the other composers in this generation her music broadens the initial experiments into harmony/timbre the 1970's by spectral composers like Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail with various structural and more traditional melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic techniques...
I copied and pasted here...almost makes sense?


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## Kjetil Heggelund

JAS said:


> What they say is less important than what they do.


...just like you!


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## eugeneonagain

JAS said:


> What they say is less important than what they do.


Is it though? The history of art is always the same; there are some new ideas (generally only a small percentage and on the fringe) and people are up in arms claiming the entire apparatus has collapsed.

The history is also littered with now forgotten works which at the time allegedly were in the process of slaying the history of art (which didn't happen). It's boring and old hat.

What happens is people focus on the most extreme examples - probably not helped by such examples being posted here in multiples and giving the impression that this is all that is going on in the world of contemporary music.


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## DaveM

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> Isn't modern music experimental, and experimental music also modern? This whole topic is about modern music. I think John Cage was a true hero, a kind of musical philosopher. He belongs here! It's a drag reading many posts at how silly he was. Very many people don't think he was silly at all.


Modern music is not necessarily experimental and experimental music isn't classical music.


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## eugeneonagain

DaveM said:


> Modern music is not necessarily experimental *and experimental music isn't classical music*.


Oh really? The Rite of Spring was an experiment, so was Parade. Perhaps if you live another 100 years you might get to reconsider your view?


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## KenOC

I think most composers have a pretty good idea of what they’re trying to achieve with their music. Given that, to me “experimental music” means that the composer is trying to achieve something new, or to achieve their ends by new or novel means.

That definition definitely doesn’t limit experimental music to the modern era. Think about Beethoven, much of whose late output is “experimental” by either definition, and often by both at the same time.


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## DaveM

aleazk said:


> Like it or not, Dave, the Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano are since long considered to be part of the canon by most professionals and a good portion of the audience too but the most diehard conservatives...


Where's the evidence for that? And what canon? There are probably some professionals because we are in an era where institutions are churning out 'composers' such as Elena Rykova who says she is studying instrumental and electroacoustic composition. The output I've heard from her is not classical music, but is being sold as such by some even on this forum.

As for the 'good portion of the audience, but the most diehard conservatives', that is an absurdity. Just try to schedule those John Cage works at a classical music concert with regular concert-goers and I'm including large and small venues. (And, note, I said classical, not experimental, music concert.) It isn't happening now and it isn't going to. I would also note that if those 'sonatas' were scheduled, the audience would think they'd been suckered. It is not a sonata, but another one of Cage's exercises in sounds using a piano. Pinning the name 'sonata' on that work had to be a Cage joke on the unsuspecting audience.


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## DaveM

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> ...just like you!


What's with the personal slam, including the 'Like' for it?


----------



## eugeneonagain

A good portion of 'concertgoers' _are_ diehard conservatives. In that vicious circle of only attending the works that get routinely programmed because the concert promoters think that's all anyone wants to listen to.


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## DaveM

KenOC said:


> I think most composers have a pretty good idea of what they're trying to achieve with their music. Given that, to me "experimental music" means that the composer is trying to achieve something new, or to achieve their ends by new or novel means.
> 
> That definition definitely doesn't limit experimental music to the modern era. Think about Beethoven, much of whose late output is "experimental" by either definition, and often by both at the same time.


Now we're playing with semantics. There is the general term 'experimental' and then there is what appears to be an Experimental Music genre that is more recent. In 1957, Cage gave a lecture titled Experimental Music. I don't think he was talking about Beethoven.


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## KenOC

DaveM said:


> Now we're playing with semantics. There is the general term 'experimental' and then there is what appears to be an Experimental Music genre that is more recent. In 1957, Cage gave a lecture titled Experimental Music. I don't think he was talking about Beethoven.


Well, I must have missed Mr. Cage's lecture, which I'm sure some found interesting. Maybe I'll catch it next time he's in town - or maybe not! 

In any event, perhaps Mr. Cage's views on any kind of music aren't too valuable: "He was refreshing but not very bright. His freshness came from an absence of knowledge." -- Pierre Boulez, on John Cage


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## KenOC

eugeneonagain said:


> A good portion of 'concertgoers' _are_ diehard conservatives. In that vicious circle of only attending the works that get routinely programmed because the concert promoters think that's all anyone wants to listen to.


Nice pejorative there! By "diehard," I assume you mean having the strength of their convictions and a clear sense of what they prefer and dislike.

The opposite, of course, would be "die-easy," which might be difficult to see as a compliment.


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## aleazk

Experimental music being done in the context of classical music tradition and institutions is experimental classical music (or art music, if we want to avoid the silly contradiction in terms between classical and experimental due to the unfortunate name that this tradition got, i.e., "classical music"). Experimental music being done in the context of rock, is experimental rock. Cage studied with Schoenberg (which belongs to the classical tradition), thought his ideas by either reaction or continuation of certain ideas in that tradition, not as reactions to 1930s jazz, etc. So, Cage evidently belongs to experimental classical music. On the other hand, Pink Floyd was reacting or building upon previous rock influences, therefore it belongs to experimental rock. Really, it's not that complicated.


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## JAS

aleazk said:


> Cage studied with Schoenberg (which belongs to the classical tradition), thought his ideas by either reaction or continuation of certain ideas in that tradition, not as reactions to 1930s jazz, etc.


Schoenberg does not belong to the classical tradition once he proposed and adopted his revolutionary idea of 12-tone and serialism. The rift was widened by further changes, but this is the beginning of the dividing line.


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## JAS

eugeneonagain said:


> Is it though?


Of course it is true. The idea that what people do is more important than what they say is a basic element of day to day life. Otherwise, one is likely to blindly follow salespeople and politicians into very bad outcomes.


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## DaveM

aleazk said:


> Experimental music being done in the context of classical music tradition and institutions is experimental classical music (or art music, if we want to avoid the silly contradiction in terms between classical and experimental due to the unfortunate name that this tradition got, i.e., "classical music")... On the other hand, Pink Floyd was reacting or building upon previous rock influences, therefore it belongs to experimental rock. Really, it's not that complicated.


Most experimental music removes almost everything that is associated with classical music. What is left is an experiment with sounds. It is not some continuation of the classical music tradition in any way, shape or form. If experimental music is the latest thing since sliced bread and there is a large audience (by classical music standards) out there for it why don't supporters schedule concerts for it and charge accordingly. And yes, I know there are occasional concerts here and there (and I'm sure someone will mention Melbourne), but I'm talking regular, concert hall concerts with season tickets, not small venues or free or almost free in places like a church.

As for Pink Floyd and the analogy of experimental rock, there is no comparison. Pink Floyd was not known as experimental rock any more than the Beatles were when they put out the White Album or when the Moody Blues put out Days of Future Past (Nights in White Satin). The term 'progressive' has been used for PF and TMB, but only in retrospect.

But, the most important reason why the analogy doesn't work is that no matter what label you pin on different rock forms, you can always identify it as rock. The rather silly term, alternative rock, has been applied to groups such as The Killers, but it is rock, through and through, not some alternative fringe form.

All that said, I can bet you that the average person will not identify Cage's output as classical music -though they will immediately identify a Brahms piano work as such- , but they will immediately identify any rock genre as rock.


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## KenOC

Back to definitions -- in science, an experiment is a procedure intended to support or disprove a hypothesis. To be a valid experiment and not a waste of time, it must designed to do one or the other.

In music, what's an "experiment"? What's its purpose? How does anybody know whether it worked or not?


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## Guest

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> I read about Kaija Saariaho that she can be called post spectral...Maybe Haas too?
> Like many of the other composers in this generation her music broadens the initial experiments into harmony/timbre the 1970's by spectral composers like Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail with various structural and more traditional melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic techniques...
> I copied and pasted here...almost makes sense?


Possibly that is true...I haven't too much knowledge of Saariaho's use of spectral analysis of sound in her compositions, but I know she definitely used a lot of the resources provided by IRCAM, where spectralism was really taking off. I don't know how strictly her music follows the kind of things that Harvey was doing in _Mortuous Plango, Vivos Voco_ or Grisey in _Les Espaces Acoustiques_, but because spectralism is descriptive of the process of composing and the compositional tools and techniques used in that process than the actual style and sound of the music itself, I can only conclude that it would be hard to tell. One would have to ask her what stuff she did exactly whilst at IRCAM.

I do think, and perhaps I am partly blaming _Partiels_ here, that spectralism has been associated with overtone cliches in modern music. On a very superficial level, the overall sound of _Partiels_ from the massive Grisey cycle of works I mentioned earlier, has somewhat popped up in music by Haas just because he likes the sound and the microtonal out-of-tune-ness of the natural overtone series. But Haas says he used to real spectral analysis.....so.....the questions remains are these: Should we differentiate the spectral analysis-derived spectralism from the overtone-cliche 'spectralism' and use different terms to more accurately describe them? Or should we be using terms based on the _style_ of surface level _sound_ of the music that we hear?

How well-defined is the term post-spectral?


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## aleazk

shirime said:


> Possibly that is true...I haven't too much knowledge of Saariaho's use of spectral analysis of sound in her compositions, but I know she definitely used a lot of the resources provided by IRCAM, where spectralism was really taking off. I don't know how strictly her music follows the kind of things that Harvey was doing in _Mortuous Plango, Vivos Voco_ or Grisey in _Les Espaces Acoustiques_, but because spectralism is descriptive of the process of composing and the compositional tools and techniques used in that process than the actual style and sound of the music itself, I can only conclude that it would be hard to tell. One would have to ask her what stuff she did exactly whilst at IRCAM.
> 
> I do think, and perhaps I am partly blaming _Partiels_ here, that spectralism has been associated with overtone cliches in modern music. On a very superficial level, the overall sound of _Partiels_ from the massive Grisey cycle of works I mentioned earlier, has somewhat popped up in music by Haas just because he likes the sound and the microtonal out-of-tune-ness of the natural overtone series. But Haas says he used to real spectral analysis.....so.....the questions remains are these: Should we differentiate the spectral analysis-derived spectralism from the overtone-cliche 'spectralism' and use different terms to more accurately describe them? Or should we be using terms based on the _style_ of surface level _sound_ of the music that we hear?
> 
> How well-defined is the term post-spectral?


"The Istanbul Spectral Music Conference of 2003 suggested a redefinition of the term "spectral music" to encompass any music that foregrounds timbre as an important element of structure or language." That's wikipedia for you 

I guess that's why Haas is still being called 'a spectralist'...


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## Guest

aleazk said:


> "The Istanbul Spectral Music Conference of 2003 suggested a redefinition of the term "spectral music" to encompass any music that foregrounds timbre as an important element of structure or language." That's wikipedia for you
> 
> I guess that's why Haas is still being called 'a spectralist'...


Well, to me, this renders the term almost meaningless and far removed from its origin.


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## aleazk

shirime said:


> Well, to me, this renders the term almost meaningless and far removed from its origin.


Hey, I'm just the messenger from the Istanbul conference, tell that to them, not me 

Certainly it's removed from its origin. But how fertile was that origin just by itself?


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## Lisztian

JAS said:


> Schoenberg does not belong to the classical tradition once he proposed and adopted his revolutionary idea of 12-tone and serialism. The rift was widened by further changes, but this is the beginning of the dividing line.


But he devised his 12-tone system as a means of organisation for atonal music, and atonal music didn't just appear out of nowhere. Wagner, Liszt, Strauss were all heading in that direction (note I'm not saying full atonal music was the ONLY logical progression). Schoenberg not only built on this tradition, his music is also heavily influenced in other ways by Brahms, Wagner, Strauss and, if you believe his own words (you probably won't, of course), Mozart. He also pretty much only wrote in the forms established by previous classical masters.


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## Guest

aleazk said:


> Hey, I'm just the messenger from the Istanbul conference, tell that to them, not me
> 
> Certainly it's removed from its origin. But how fertile was that origin just by itself?


It did label a kind of approach to composition, some kind of tool or technique that composers used. In a sense it reminds me of the world 'serialism' in that various composers used serial techniques quite broadly, bent some rules to suit their own creative impulses and went from there. There's a point where something ain't really a serial composition no more, and that's probably when the musical language is not derived from serial procedures (like Elliott Carter's music, even if his interest in pitch collections (or what he called 'chords') and durational proportions at the macro and micro level are ideas that can be explored using serial techniques as well, which he didn't do).

I'd say that similarly with spectral music there's a point where music can be reminiscent or inspired by music where the language is actually derived from spectral analysis of sound without actually using those techniques to generate the pitch language.

Any composer with an ear for colourful orchestration can use timbre structurally and developmentally as an important element of the language of a musical work in combination with other material without the word 'spectralism' applying to their work.


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## aleazk

shirime said:


> It did label a kind of approach to composition, some kind of tool or technique that composers used. In a sense it reminds me of the world 'serialism' in that various composers used serial techniques quite broadly, bent some rules to suit their own creative impulses and went from there. There's a point where something ain't really a serial composition no more, and that's probably when the musical language is not derived from serial procedures (like Elliott Carter's music, even if his interest in pitch collections (or what he called 'chords') and durational proportions at the macro and micro level are ideas that can be explored using serial techniques as well, which he didn't do).
> 
> I'd say that similarly with spectral music there's a point where music can be reminiscent or inspired by music where the language is actually derived from spectral analysis of sound without actually using those techniques to generate the pitch language.
> 
> Any composer with an ear for colourful orchestration can use timbre structurally and developmentally as an important element of the language of a musical work in combination with other material without the word 'spectralism' applying to their work.


I think the 'spectral royal decree' from the Istanbul conference is vaguely worded. Maybe something like "music that foregrounds timbre as an important element of structure or language and where some of the tools used can at least be traced back to the original ones in the early days of the style." I actually tacitly understood that decree in this way, otherwise, as you say, even Ravel would be a spectralist.

But, on the other hand, I find the insights by Grisey here to be much more interesting than the mere techniques, since he refers there to the evident core elements of the spectralist philosophy, those which can even be directly perceived in the actual music as essential to the aesthetics (like the time and continuity thing he says). I also tacitly understood the Istanbul decree in this sense, and not just _any_ kind of colorful timbral language. And Haas certainly seems to fit into what Grisey describes.


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## Taggart

JAS said:


> I do look at the history of western music. Modern music is chiefly a rejection of what came before. On its own terms, modern music is not part of the tradition that it rejects.


All "modern" music rejects the older tradition because it want to show its own inner self. Renaissance composers rejected the older medieval style. Baroque composers rejected the old Renaissance style. Classical composers rejected the old Baroque style. Romantic composers rejected the old Classical style. After that, it gets ... complicated. We have atonalism, serialism, polytonalism, microtonalism, spectralism ... on and on. Enough isms and theories to fill the Albert Hall. We haven't got a definitive "modern" style or even a word to describe what it is. That's the whole point of this thread - to quote from Heraclitus - "Everything changes and nothing remains still ... and ... you cannot step twice into the same stream" But it *is* the same stream - the never ending river of Western Classical Music - call it how you will.


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## Guest

Taggart said:


> All "modern" music rejects the older tradition because it want to show its own inner self. Renaissance composers rejected the older medieval style. Baroque composers rejected the old Renaissance style. Classical composers rejected the old Baroque style. Romantic composers rejected the old Classical style. After that, it gets ... complicated. We have atonalism, serialism, polytonalism, microtonalism, spectralism ... on and on. Enough isms and theories to fill the Albert Hall. We haven't got a definitive "modern" style or even a word to describe what it is. That's the whole point of this thread - to quote from Heraclitus - "Everything changes and nothing remains still ... and ... you cannot step twice into the same stream" But it *is* the same stream - the never ending river of Western Classical Music - call it how you will.


You'd probably have way more to say on mediaevel to baroque music than I would, but how much is a conscious 'rejection' versus trends and personal interests of composers, publishers, patrons and musicians in this time?

I really like that quote btw.


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## Guest

aleazk said:


> I think the 'spectral royal decree' from the Istanbul conference is vaguely worded. Maybe something like "music that foregrounds timbre as an important element of structure or language and where some of the tools used can at least be traced back to the original ones in the early days of the style." I actually tacitly understood that decree in this way, otherwise, as you say, even Ravel would be a spectralist.
> 
> But, on the other hand, I find the insights by Grisey here to be much more interesting than the mere techniques, since he refers there to the evident core elements of the spectralist philosophy, those which can even be directly perceived in the actual music as essential to the aesthetics (like the time and continuity thing he says). I also tacitly understood the Istanbul decree in this sense, and not just _any_ kind of colorful timbral language. And Haas certainly seems to fit into what Grisey describes.


Okay, now having read his attitude in that interview you provided, I can't say that it's particularly useful to transform a word that encompassed the techniques I described earlier to a meaning describing an 'attitude' as he suggests. Maybe this is where _post-spectralism_ happens to be a more useful term. It sprung out of those early developments and developed in different directions.

It makes me think of the difference between Steve's Reich's early works like _Come Out_ and _Piano Phase_ as 'process music' (to use his term) or the more agreed-on term 'minimalism' versus works he wrote a little later (_Music for 18 Musicians_) and much later still (_Daniel Variations_ for example) as examples of post-minimalism branching out from minimalism. Post-minimalism itself I guess brings us to composers like Nico Muhly, whose music still hasn't clicked with me, but I look forward to one day enjoying more than I currently am. I guess in a similar way, Haas and Saariaho can be described as 'post-spectral' where Grisey's earlier music can be described more appropriately and simply as spectral music.


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## eugeneonagain

JAS said:


> Of course it is true. The idea that what people do is more important than what they say is a basic element of day to day life. Otherwise, one is likely to blindly follow salespeople and politicians into very bad outcomes.


Only if you assume that all composers are contradicting their words; which seems to be the case when comparing them to dishonest politicians.
Sometimes people really do mean what they say. I see now that Schoenberg has been removed from the definition of 'classical music', which is simply absurd.


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## Guest

It strikes me as odd that anyone would not consider Schoenberg as coming from the tradition of European Classical Music.

I would have to ask them if they have read Schoenberg's essays, articles and composition textbooks.

I would also have to ask them what tradition Schoenberg would have come from and is therefore part of if not European Classical Music.

There's really no debate here; perhaps we can move on? For those wishing to learn more about Schoenberg and his position in any sort of 'tradition' there's information all over the internet for that.


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## Jacck

shirime said:


> It strikes me as odd that anyone would not consider Schoenberg as coming from the tradition of European Classical Music..


there is a constant battle between continuity of the old (traditionalism) and the new (progressivism). Schoenberg kept some of the old traditional rules, but discarded others. He certainly belongs to the tradition of western classical music and to suggest otherwise is absurd. But Thomas Mann wrote a book about Schoenberg called Doctor Faustus where he likened Schoenberg to a composer who sold his sould to the devil. Schoenberg was very unhappy about the book


----------



## Guest

Jacck said:


> there is a constant battle between continuity of the old (traditionalism) and the new (progressivism). Schoenberg kept some of the old traditional rules, but discarded others. He certainly belongs to the tradition of western classical music and to suggest otherwise is absurd. But Thomas Mann wrote a book about Schoenberg called Doctor Faustus where he likened Schoenberg to a composer who sold his sould to the devil. Schoenberg was very unhappy about the book


Pretty sure his dissatisfaction was more to do with unauthorised publication of details about Schoenberg's own compositional techniques as well. And, more importantly, I'd say the book highlights the German descent into fascism more than anything, drawing on more parallels with German history, philosophy, art and tradition via a narrative arc that bases itself on Goethe's own retelling of the Faust legend. Leverkühn's character is definitely not based on Schoenberg, despite noting some parallels between the push towards greater freedom of dissonance that both Schoenberg and Leverkühn experienced and explored. It's such a wonderful, multilayered book....I ought to read it again. And again another time in the original language.


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## JAS

What is absurd is to dismiss what any listeners can hear and recognize by direct experience. Most people who have not been indoctrinated by academic training, and are not subject to professional pressure, are even willing to admit it. It may not be a popular position at TC, but it is the widely accepted truth in broader terms. A friend of mine who is a devotee of concerts, and a fan of far more modern music than I am, frequently laments that even in the big cities of New York, Boston and Philadelphia, the concerts that feature more modern fare usually have half-empty seats (and if he waits, he can usually get tickets at the last minute for a discount, which is a good thing in its own way). What is absurd is to keep forcing a different interpretation when reality has already made its judgement. Continue on as you will. It really won't matter.


----------



## Guest

JAS said:


> What is absurd is to dismiss what any listeners can hear and recognize by direct experience. Most people who have not been indoctrinated by academic training, and are not subject to professional pressure, are even willing to admit it. It may not be a popular position at TC, but it is the widely accepted truth in broader terms. A friend of mine who is a devotee of concerts, and a fan of far more modern music than I am, frequently laments that even in the big cities of New York, Boston and Philadelphia, the concerts that feature more modern fare usually have half-empty seats (and if he waits, he can usually get tickets at the last minute for a discount, which is a good thing in its own way). What is absurd is to keep forcing a different interpretation when reality has already made its judgement. Continue on as you will. It really won't matter.


Are you talking about popularity outside of Schoenberg's audience and fans and popularity in the context of concert hall repertoire? Or are you talking about the consensus that people have reached that Schoenberg was a composer of classical music and you disagree?

Seems like you are discussing the former to conclude the latter.


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## eugeneonagain

JAS said:


> What is absurd is to dismiss what any listeners can hear and recognize by direct experience.


Which listeners make up the 'any'? If it is comprised of people who generally don't care for music like Schoenberg's - and perhaps very little following it - it's going to be a rather biased opinion isn't it? The listeners who also hear by direct experience, and who think more highly of Schoenberg & co are doing what? Lying? Pretending? Suffering brainwashing? It seems to be the suggestion when I read the following:



JAS said:


> Most people who have not been indoctrinated by academic training, and are not subject to professional pressure, are even willing to admit it.


I can't see how that would work unless there was a foolproof method of making every single person annihilate their own sense of judgement. There are plenty academically trained musicians and composers whose tastes don't lean toward the avant-garde and who write (for want of a better word) more 'conventional' music.

I remember a year or so back I posted a piece by a contemporary composer (Adrienne Albert) which is from about three years ago, and it's in no way avant-garde or 'difficult' or 'noisy' or whatever pejorative adjectives are attached to whatever is disliked. No-one listened to it and no one commented upon it. I think it's just factual that on the whole many general classical music listeners seem to prefer to listen to dead composers, and those only up to 1900 in general. It sets some sort of standard for what 'classical music' _must_ sound like and a hailstorm of terror has to fall onto anything slightly different in approach. It's not arguments or facts or 'realities' it's merely tastes and expectations.



JAS said:


> It may not be a popular position at TC, but it is the widely accepted truth in broader terms. [...] What is absurd is to keep forcing a different interpretation when reality has already made its judgement. Continue on as you will. It really won't matter.


The suggestion is that there is a majority forcing some sort of wrong opinion. That's certainly not true. 'Reality' here seems to be the broader concert-going public not plumping for a concert of, say, Berg/Bartok over a much more comfortable programme of Tchaikovsky/Brahms. Of what is that a measure? Taste? Promoters programming safely? Should we also conclude that because many more people buy tickets to go and see blockbuster films, that less straightforward films and experimental films are all a sham and shown to be so by the lack of audience? I think not.


----------



## Luchesi

Jacck said:


> there is a constant battle between continuity of the old (traditionalism) and the new (progressivism). Schoenberg kept some of the old traditional rules, but discarded others. He certainly belongs to the tradition of western classical music and to suggest otherwise is absurd. But Thomas Mann wrote a book about Schoenberg called Doctor Faustus where he likened Schoenberg to a composer who sold his sould to the devil. Schoenberg was very unhappy about the book


The disgruntled and rebellious Frederic Gulda (he disliked having to play Chopin in the much expected manner early in his career just so that he can get his career started) said,

"Schoenberg is not really new, neither is Bartok, and the experimental composers certainly aren't. They are only trying to cast the past in concrete. Schoenberg does it dogmatically, Bartok with folklore."

Since he probably said this in the late 60s, maybe it was the prevailing view in the new music circles at the time and therefore the young composers became self-conscious about continuing that "casting the past in concrete". Personally, I wish they had carried on trying to do that, because I find it interesting when you can see the borrowing from the earlier greats in the new fresh-minded scores.


----------



## DaveM

Using irrelevant analogies does nothing to further one’s argument. First it was the non-existent category of 1970s experimental rock music, now it’s ‘less straightforward and experimental films’ which I take to mean ‘indie’ films in general. Indie films have a regular paying public following and many of those films end up on cable, HBO, Showtime, Cinemax and the like, that people pay for. These films require funding and the expectation is that they will eventually pay for themselves. 

I accept Schoenberg as part of the classical traditional insofar as, given his earlier music, that was his roots. But his 12 tone and serial music that followed was a right turn as far as audiences were concerned and IMO it resulted, eventually, in an academic environment whereby following the classical traditional was no longer a priority. In fact, when you see an example of the output of someone that is presented as a present-day classical music composer consisting of 3 surgeons surrounding an open grand piano making random sounds, one realizes how far the academic train has run off the tracks.

I don’t have a problem with those who like atonal/serial music. I accept it as classical music. If it continues to have a following, however small, that’s fine by me. But I don’t accept this more recent turn towards experimental ‘sounds’ as coming from a classical tradition and, mark my words, it is going to remain in the same broad category as the art form that considers an overturned chair, a 4-by-4 board and other random objects in an empty room as a work of art. These works will remain as outliers and never be scheduled as classical music for classical music audiences in classical music venues. If they survive as a separate category of art, that’s fine by me. Just don’t try to con me that it’s classical music.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

That is a revelation. Good for you. Bar fight. 4'33". Do not disturb.


----------



## eugeneonagain

DaveM said:


> I don't have a problem with those who like atonal/serial music. I accept it as classical music. If it continues to have a following, however small, that's fine by me. But I don't accept this more recent turn towards experimental 'sounds' as coming from a classical tradition and, mark my words, it is going to remain in the same broad category as the art form that considers an overturned chair, a 4-by-4 board and other random objects in an empty room as a work of art. These works will remain as outliers and never be scheduled as classical music for classical music audiences in classical music venues. If they survive as a separate category of art, that's fine by me. Just don't try to con me that it's classical music.


Schoenberg and his 'school' have a rather large audience as it happens. When his piano concerto played at the concert hall here close to every seat was filled. But that is not your beef, so it can be skipped.

What you are saying about the 'recent turn' and its outlier status is hardly being contradicted. In fact very much like your 'overturned chair, 4-by-4 board (wouldn't that be a block?) and other random objects' will always be outside mainstream audience appreciation, but that's not the cue for self-appointed guardians of what is and isn't classical or 'that deprecated term 'art music'. These people train in the same tradition, not some other tradition and that's the one they are working in; no matter how much you feel it has altered.

Don't try to con us that someone's private tastes are the last judgement.


----------



## Pantonal

I have listened and studied a lot of modern music in my life. I have also composed modern music and still do, but not nearly as modern as some. What I've noticed is that for anyone to notice contemporary music it has to shock or assault the senses in some way. Perhaps that's a commentary on modern society and life, perhaps it's just the reality of the marketplace. I have a hard time believing many people will buy such music, but perhaps they do. In my experience there just seems to be less interest in art music. So composers rely on gimmicks and crazy sounds, complete lack of repeating rhythm (what popular musicians would call groove), complete lack of melody to attract listeners or get attention. But most importantly the concept of music as a vehicle for the expression of emotion or beauty seems to have gotten lost along the way.

I realize this will be an unpopular opinion in a thread that's been dedicated to the latest and greatest, but the reality is that many composers have retreated from the avante garde. Many have achieved significant success. Eric Whitacre is certainly far from the bleeding edge, but has achieved success in choral and band music by writing music that's appealing not just ugly. I'm listening to Christopher Rouse's Elegia from his Flute Concerto as I type this and quite enjoying it (first post on page 9 of this thread). But some of the music referenced in this thread just struck me as the emperor's new clothes. I know taste is one thing that varies widely from person to person so diversity of opinion on the matter is to be expected, but so much music just sounds like noise.

At some point I came to the realization why modern music sounds like noise. The definition of white noise is all frequencies at equal amplitude simultaneously. Because of the equal amplitude white noise sounds like a hiss (low frequencies take more energy to propagate) and is skewed toward the high end. Pink noise is essentially the same but rolled off at 6 dB per octave and so it sounds more like a roar. When you combine many notes that are dissonant the overall combination contains too many frequencies for the ear to make sense of and it begins to sound random, like noise. When the composer is concentrating on timbre and sound effects the result may entertain for a while but the mind wants to make sense of the inputs it's receiving. If it can't do that it rejects it and seeks to end the experience. Pieces composed in this manner receive polite applause and are forgotten, except the lesson to avoid similar experiences in the future. That's when all new music gets tainted with the same poison and the result is... more Beethoven.

So let me leave you with a video of a piece I wrote, performed by a professional choir and directed by the Director Emeritus if Chanticleer, Matt Oltmann.



__ https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10156649009393279



Steve Chandler
soundcloud.com/pantonality


----------



## eugeneonagain

Here's some standard Roger Scruton shtick for the sake of balance:




(speaking to a rather small audience).


----------



## aleazk

shirime said:


> Okay, now having read his attitude in that interview you provided, I can't say that it's particularly useful to transform a word that encompassed the techniques I described earlier to a meaning describing an 'attitude' as he suggests. Maybe this is where _post-spectralism_ happens to be a more useful term. It sprung out of those early developments and developed in different directions.
> 
> It makes me think of the difference between Steve's Reich's early works like _Come Out_ and _Piano Phase_ as 'process music' (to use his term) or the more agreed-on term 'minimalism' versus works he wrote a little later (_Music for 18 Musicians_) and much later still (_Daniel Variations_ for example) as examples of post-minimalism branching out from minimalism. Post-minimalism itself I guess brings us to composers like Nico Muhly, whose music still hasn't clicked with me, but I look forward to one day enjoying more than I currently am. I guess in a similar way, Haas and Saariaho can be described as 'post-spectral' where Grisey's earlier music can be described more appropriately and simply as spectral music.


I think a more general term could be better, one that refers to music in which timbre, extended time and continuity are central. Perhaps more related to the 'sound mass' idea rather than to spectra. Then spectralism was a particular type of that music, one which used sound spectra, etc. This because, as Grisey said, those other ideas were first rather than the spectral ones. It would be similar to the more general term of chromatic music vs the specific serialism. I think spectral composers like Grisey and the ones of that conference wanted to go back to those basics ideas, that's why I don't like 'post-spectralism' and I think Grisey would evidently disagree with that term judging by that interview. Perhaps it wasn't a good idea to redefine the term spectralism for doing that, since, evidently, spectralism refers to spectrum. On the other hand, I think Grisey tries to say that the actual spectral period of this more general type of music was too short as to use that label for all of what they did, then and now, it seems.


----------



## WildThing

eugeneonagain said:


> Here's some standard Roger Scruton shtick for the sake of balance:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (speaking to a rather small audience).


An excellent, thought-provoking lecture. Thanks for posting.


----------



## eugeneonagain

I posted it mainly so people could see how little a major source for this sort of 'critique' knows about (_inter alia_) Schoenberg's serial system and how terribly prejudiced he is - and how this is passed off as 'philosophy'. He's been pulling this rope trick for years now. It mainly boils down to his proto-version of 'cultural marxism' (which he alludes to in the video).

Anyone can get this for free from a local pub bore.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

Pantonal said:


> I have listened and studied a lot of modern music in my life. I have also composed modern music and still do, but not nearly as modern as some. What I've noticed is that for anyone to notice contemporary music it has to shock or assault the senses in some way. Perhaps that's a commentary on modern society and life, perhaps it's just the reality of the marketplace. I have a hard time believing many people will buy such music, but perhaps they do. In my experience there just seems to be less interest in art music. So composers rely on gimmicks and crazy sounds, complete lack of repeating rhythm (what popular musicians would call groove), complete lack of melody to attract listeners or get attention. But most importantly the concept of music as a vehicle for the expression of emotion or beauty seems to have gotten lost along the way.
> 
> I realize this will be an unpopular opinion in a thread that's been dedicated to the latest and greatest, but the reality is that many composers have retreated from the avante garde. Many have achieved significant success. Eric Whitacre is certainly far from the bleeding edge, but has achieved success in choral and band music by writing music that's appealing not just ugly. I'm listening to Christopher Rouse's Elegia from his Flute Concerto as I type this and quite enjoying it (first post on page 9 of this thread). But some of the music referenced in this thread just struck me as the emperor's new clothes. I know taste is one thing that varies widely from person to person so diversity of opinion on the matter is to be expected, but so much music just sounds like noise.
> 
> At some point I came to the realization why modern music sounds like noise. The definition of white noise is all frequencies at equal amplitude simultaneously. Because of the equal amplitude white noise sounds like a hiss (low frequencies take more energy to propagate) and is skewed toward the high end. Pink noise is essentially the same but rolled off at 6 dB per octave and so it sounds more like a roar. When you combine many notes that are dissonant the overall combination contains too many frequencies for the ear to make sense of and it begins to sound random, like noise. When the composer is concentrating on timbre and sound effects the result may entertain for a while but the mind wants to make sense of the inputs it's receiving. If it can't do that it rejects it and seeks to end the experience. Pieces composed in this manner receive polite applause and are forgotten, except the lesson to avoid similar experiences in the future. That's when all new music gets tainted with the same poison and the result is... more Beethoven.
> 
> So let me leave you with a video of a piece I wrote, performed by a professional choir and directed by the Director Emeritus if Chanticleer, Matt Oltmann.
> 
> 
> 
> __ https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10156649009393279
> 
> 
> 
> Steve Chandler
> soundcloud.com/pantonality


May I say this reminds me of Britten? I like it, thanks for the post


----------



## eugeneonagain

1. Avant-garde = small proportion of musical output.

2. The rest of musical output with huge variety = much larger proportion.

Maybe in that simple form it will have a better effect and stop people constantly repeating the falsehood that every music college in the world is forcing 'avant-garde' composition on every last student. In the way Roger Scruton lies about it in the video posted above.


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## DaveM

eugeneonagain said:


> ... but that's not the cue for self-appointed guardians of what is and isn't classical or 'that deprecated term 'art music'. These people train in the same tradition, not some other tradition and that's the one they are working in; no matter how much you feel it has altered.


Did I make a wrong turn and post somewhere other than a forum or specifically, a classical music forum? My 'cue' as you put it, is what every other poster's is: being on a forum to have and present an opinion. And that means that it is my opinion that if you play the following as an example of contemporary classical music to almost anyone -regardless of my opinion- along with this description as posted on this forum- they will shake their heads in wonderment, if not roll their eyes:

_ 'She creates a musically rich soundscape that is still very rewarding to listen to as much as watch because of her attention to lines of counterpoint and careful balance of sounds against one another.'
_








> Don't try to con us that someone's private tastes are the last judgement.


Point to me where I tried to con anyone that my taste is the last judgement. I gave my opinion. Perhaps I did it so well that you feared that, in fact, it might be the last judgement.


----------



## eugeneonagain

DaveM said:


> Did I make a wrong turn and post somewhere other than a forum or specifically, a classical music forum? My 'cue' as you put it, is what every other poster's is: being on a forum to have and present an opinion. And that means that it is my opinion that if you play the following as an example of contemporary classical music to almost anyone -regardless of my opinion- along with this description as posted on this forum- they will shake their heads in wonderment, if not roll their eyes:
> 
> _ 'She creates a musically rich soundscape that is still very rewarding to listen to as much as watch because of her attention to lines of counterpoint and careful balance of sounds against one another.'_


You are right that what has gone through this thread it is your opinion, but it is without solid musical foundation other than a particular aesthetic desire. 
It's interesting you chose that example because it is one I didn't particularly like and I questioned the idea of its 'counterpoint' in the thread it came from. It's perhaps a better approach to ask questions concerning claims (like the one above) rather than do a Scruton and declare: 'it's just not beautiful. it's just not tonal, it's not like Mozart or Debussy..it's wrong'. That is just desire for a particular aesthetic and says very little else.

I have no problem in saying that a fair number of people who listen to classical music are not particularly, specially intelligent or creative or particularly interested in ideas. It's not a calamity, after all everyone listens for different reasons, but there is a preponderance of such people droning on about what is right/wrong, good/bad, true/false... and I don't attach any importance to their opinions because they are trivial and boring.

There is a shedload of beautiful music there for the taking and, as you said it is the music that attracts the audiences and is thus more programmed. So what's the problem exactly? Why are the musical-oxazapam majority crowd you describe not just getting on with listening to it instead of carping about the tiny minority of worthless avant-garde' music with its crowds of under 10 people?



DaveM said:


> Point to me where I tried to con anyone that my taste is the last judgement. I gave my opinion. Perhaps I did it so well that you feared that, in fact, it might be the last judgement.


Right in that post I replied to and all the other ones preceding it. I feared nothing. You are entitled to your opinion, but if it was mine I would certainly not be parading it in public out of fear people might see it.


----------



## WildThing

eugeneonagain said:


> I posted it mainly so people could see how little a major source for this sort of 'critique' knows about (_inter alia_) Schoenberg's serial system and how terribly prejudiced he is - and how this is passed off as 'philosophy'. He's been pulling this rope trick for years now. It mainly boils down to his proto-version of 'cultural marxism' (which he alludes to in the video).
> 
> Anyone can get this for free from a local pub bore.


Calling his opinions uninformed and biased is an easy way to dismiss them without actually refuting them. I don't have a "side" in this argument, I simply thought the lecture made many valid points.


----------



## Guest

I'm used to people questioning and pulling apart the language I use on this forum. I don't really see it happening too much to anyone else, and I just take that to mean that I don't have as great a command for language as most other members on here when it comes to musical terms. My use of the word 'counterpoint' here describes (as best as I can describe it) the interdependent lines of sonic and physical/theatrical activity in Rykova's interdisciplinary work.


----------



## eugeneonagain

WildThing said:


> Calling his opinions uninformed and biased is an easy way to dismiss them without actually refuting them. I don't have a "side" in this argument, I simply thought the lecture made many valid points.


I am very acquainted with Roger Scruton and his views and I have been for quite a long time. I am not basing my reading on that video alone. His same basic idea runs through everything he simply dislikes: modern architecture; pop music; modern design; urban planning...ad nauseum. Relying on his conservative traditionalism which he doesn't hide; things are merely: ugly, wrong, not continuous with tradition. Sounds familiar doesn't it in connection to this thread?

Roger Scruton himself is a very nice man in person. He came to speak at a university where I was once employed and took lunch with us (even though he could have gone to somewhere better) and had impeccable manners. His views, however, are trapped in a time-warp and dominated by his traditionalism and desire for it.

I perfectly understand the pull of tradition and its necessary role - especially in terms of physical conservation - but I don't think people like Scruton (ossified conservatives) properly understand the role of change and experimentation. They live in a world of survival bias, where the small percentage of the culture produced is held up as a total reflection of the greatness of the past. He is wrong.


----------



## regenmusic

Modern composers don't have to shock to get noticed. Many great composers have risen to the top who create beautiful work. 
Take Arvo Part for example. There is a school of very noisy composers that some like, and it's their right to like them. Just like in modern art, there are many painters who make what appears to most people as visual junk, but it's some people's right to like them. Sadly, the people that like them seem to be a big part of those who have money and they are well represented in some museums today. I know that hundreds of much better painters go unnoticed. I think music is doing a lot better than visual art.


----------



## DaveM

eugeneonagain said:


> You are right that what has gone through this thread it is your opinion, but it is without solid musical foundation other than a particular aesthetic desire...
> 
> I have no problem in saying that a fair number of people who listen to classical music are not particularly, specially intelligent or creative or particularly interested in ideas. It's not a calamity, after all everyone listens for different reasons, but there is a preponderance of such people droning on about what is right/wrong, good/bad, true/false... and I don't attach any importance to their opinions because they are trivial and boring.


When someone can't respond with anything substantive or doesn't understand the argument or just has the recurring need to be mean (which seems to be a current modus operandi) or all of the above, they dismiss the foundation (read education) of the person's opinion, question their intelligence, creativity and ideas, in general, and then declares the opinions trivial and boring.



> Right in that post I replied to and all the other ones preceding it. I feared nothing. You are entitled to your opinion, but if it was mine I would certainly not be parading it in public out of fear people might see it.


Well let's take your opinion that the experimental stuff I refer to is built on the solid musical foundation of classical music and parade it along with my opinion in public and see who has the last laugh.


----------



## Dan Ante

shirime said:


> I'm used to people questioning and pulling apart the language I use on this forum. I don't really see it happening too much to anyone else, and I just take that to mean that I don't have as great a command for language as most other members on here when it comes to musical terms. My use of the word 'counterpoint' here describes (as best as I can describe it) the interdependent lines of sonic and physical/theatrical activity in Rykova's interdisciplinary work.


I find nothing wrong with your language and I know you have a greater understanding of music than some posters in this thread. I also find DaveM puts his case very well.


----------



## DaveM

Pantonal said:


> I have listened and studied a lot of modern music in my life. I have also composed modern music and still do, but not nearly as modern as some. What I've noticed is that for anyone to notice contemporary music it has to shock or assault the senses in some way. Perhaps that's a commentary on modern society and life, perhaps it's just the reality of the marketplace. I have a hard time believing many people will buy such music, but perhaps they do. In my experience there just seems to be less interest in art music. So composers rely on gimmicks and crazy sounds, complete lack of repeating rhythm (what popular musicians would call groove), complete lack of melody to attract listeners or get attention. But most importantly the concept of music as a vehicle for the expression of emotion or beauty seems to have gotten lost along the way.
> 
> I realize this will be an unpopular opinion in a thread that's been dedicated to the latest and greatest, but the reality is that many composers have retreated from the avante garde. Many have achieved significant success. Eric Whitacre is certainly far from the bleeding edge, but has achieved success in choral and band music by writing music that's appealing not just ugly. I'm listening to Christopher Rouse's Elegia from his Flute Concerto as I type this and quite enjoying it (first post on page 9 of this thread). But some of the music referenced in this thread just struck me as the emperor's new clothes. I know taste is one thing that varies widely from person to person so diversity of opinion on the matter is to be expected, but so much music just sounds like noise.
> 
> At some point I came to the realization why modern music sounds like noise. The definition of white noise is all frequencies at equal amplitude simultaneously. Because of the equal amplitude white noise sounds like a hiss (low frequencies take more energy to propagate) and is skewed toward the high end. Pink noise is essentially the same but rolled off at 6 dB per octave and so it sounds more like a roar. When you combine many notes that are dissonant the overall combination contains too many frequencies for the ear to make sense of and it begins to sound random, like noise. When the composer is concentrating on timbre and sound effects the result may entertain for a while but the mind wants to make sense of the inputs it's receiving. If it can't do that it rejects it and seeks to end the experience. Pieces composed in this manner receive polite applause and are forgotten, except the lesson to avoid similar experiences in the future. That's when all new music gets tainted with the same poison and the result is... more Beethoven.
> 
> So let me leave you with a video of a piece I wrote, performed by a professional choir and directed by the Director Emeritus if Chanticleer, Matt Oltmann.
> 
> 
> 
> __ https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10156649009393279
> 
> 
> 
> Steve Chandler
> soundcloud.com/pantonality


Very nice! Composing something like this is not easy. I liked the piano accompaniment as well.


----------



## arpeggio

There is one aspect of these debates that complete loses me.

I understand it if a person does not get a piece of music. No matter how great a composer is there will be some who will not comprehend him. For me one of these composers is Verdi.

If a person can not relate to Cage, no problem. Most of Cage's stuff enters one of my ears, rattles around my brain and leaves the other side. But there are a few works of his that I have come to appreciate. So it does not bother me it someone actually thinks that his stuff is music.

But for reasons which I do not understand, some extremely intelligent members of this community are compelled to subject us to long winded dissertations on why they do not like whatever.


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## KenOC

arpeggio said:


> ...But for reasons which I do not understand, some extremely intelligent members of this community are compelled to subject us to long winded dissertations on why they do not like whatever.


I do not like thee, Dr. Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell;
But this I know and know full well,
I do not like thee, Dr. Fell.

--Tom Brown, ca 1680


----------



## eugeneonagain

DaveM said:


> When someone can't respond with anything substantive or doesn't understand the argument or just has the recurring need to be mean (which seems to be a current modus operandi) or all of the above, they dismiss the foundation (read education) of the person's opinion, question their intelligence, creativity and ideas, in general, and then declares the opinions trivial and boring.


Could be describing your own activity? It's clear to see that you can dish out criticism by the bucket-load, but have a very hard time taking it. Sheltering a persistent tirade against what you simply can't get to grips with behind the claim of: 'well, it's a music forum and I'm just giving my opinion of the music' (except you also want to decide what should and shouldn't be music).



DaveM said:


> Well let's take your opinion that the experimental stuff I refer to is built on the solid musical foundation of classical music and parade it along with my opinion in public and see who has the last laugh.


I'm still puzzled as to why you seem to think folk are trying to install all these modern experimentations onto the concert programme for the next century. That's not what is going on.


----------



## Guest

I certainly don't think it's viable for experimental interdisciplinary works and stuff like that to be performed in a mainstream concert hall setting. There are New Music focussed ensembles, festivals and venues where this music thrives and audiences enjoy themselves. Personally, I'm often one in the audience for those kinds of concerts. I hope I don't appear to 'install all these modern experimentations onto the concert programme' because really I just love music and I love sharing and I love hearing other people's favourite music.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

Maximalism, impressionism, symbolism, pantonality, atonality, transcendentalism, modernism!, futurism, expressionism, psychological realism?, neoclassicism, irony, social reality, surrealist classicism, neonationalism, indeterminacy, mainstream dodecaphony, academicism, fusion, minimalism, collage, polystylism, new spirituality...post-this and that...
Just skimming a book I have. One can give a composition several labels and descriptions of what you hear.


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## Guest

What's 'psychological realism' and 'academicism'?


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

shirime said:


> What's 'psychological realism' and 'academicism'?


The realism was mentioned in regard to "Erwartung" by Schoenberg...Academicism isn't worth mentioning  Should have researched some more...


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## Crudblud

All this labelling is a mess. If people already have difficulty approaching modern music, the task should not be made even more difficult by this mania of categories. In my view, nothing has been more stifling to musical exploration in the past 70 years than the record shop mentality of genre and movement labelling, the academic equivalent we see in contemporary classical music, which I can only see as busywork for the professorial class, is just as bad. However, I do think that some categorisation is necessary to separate performance art with varying degrees of sonic content from just plain music.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

I'm only trying to get the thread, which is based on labelling mania, back on track. (It has been lately concerned with other mania.)


----------



## Guest

Record shop mentality that crudblud described I also tend to think does more bad than good. 

One think like about labels is the ability they have to point out the similarities, differences and influences that different composers have in a world of stylistic 'pluralism' (there we go again with another ism!).


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## Taggart

Please stay on topic.

This is a valuable thread and does not need to be spoiled by personal controversy.

If anybody makes a purely personal comment or expresses a prejudice in strong language - *ignore it or report it.*

Some posts have been removed for moderator consideration.


----------



## Crudblud

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> I'm only trying to get the thread, which is based on labelling mania, back on track. (It has been lately concerned with other mania.)


Sorry, I wasn't shouting at you, just at the people who come up with all these terms in the first place.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

I appreciate that...when I sent this post from my mobile phone it was much longer...Anyway, my wife says I've been grumpy, not from this thread though (maybe a little).


----------



## millionrainbows

shirime said:


> Just a thought I had recently that made me think of this thread: how do composers and musicologists differentiate between strictly spectral music (using analyses of various overtone series to determine the overall pitch language) and other recent microtonal trends? I often see Haas lumped in with spectral composers like Grisey and Murail, but I'm pretty sure he said in an interview that his music certainly isn't based on spectral analysis.


The way I see it, Spectralists are concerned with sound itself, and overtones, etc, whereas a microtonalist would have to be more concerned with smaller divisions of the octave, such as equal-tempered scales with 19, 21, 31, 54 tones per octave, like Harry Partch and Ben Johnston. These composers create melodies, chords, etc, out of these microtonal scales, whereas a spectralist would be less concerned with traditional notions of melody and chords, and would be creating more like "masses" of pure sound unconnected to scale considerations. I see the Spectralism as a French aesthetic, like Varese and the sheer coloristic sounds of Boulez, which I see as being derived from electronic music, Stockhausen, and the exploration of pure sound, without all the harmonic trappings of scales, octave division, etc. In other words, "sound" with no "harmonic system" attached to it. Part of this aesthetic would also include a disregard for rhythm, per se, and music based on sonic events and 'moment time.' See my blog:

https://www.talkclassical.com/blogs/millionrainbows/1521-new-conceptions-musical-time.html


----------



## millionrainbows

Luchesi said:


> The disgruntled and rebellious Frederic Gulda (he disliked having to play Chopin in the much expected manner early in his career just so that he can get his career started) said,
> 
> "Schoenberg is not really new, neither is Bartok, and the experimental composers certainly aren't. They are only trying to cast the past in concrete. Schoenberg does it dogmatically, Bartok with folklore."
> 
> Since he probably said this in the late 60s, maybe it was the prevailing view in the new music circles at the time and therefore the young composers became self-conscious about continuing that "casting the past in concrete". Personally, I wish they had carried on trying to do that, because I find it interesting when you can see the borrowing from the earlier greats in the new fresh-minded scores.


I think he was saying that he doesn't like dogma. And the way musical thinking has progressed in the 20th-21st centuries, there is really no need for any more dogma such as serialism or whatever. There's a whole world of approaches to music now. This kind of 'open' thinking fits right in with post-modernism, too.


----------



## DaveM

eugeneonagain said:


> Could be describing your own activity? It's clear to see that you can dish out criticism by the bucket-load, but have a very hard time taking it. Sheltering a persistent tirade against what you simply can't get to grips with behind the claim of: 'well, it's a music forum and I'm just giving my opinion of the music' (except you also want to decide what should and shouldn't be music).


Criticism is not new to me in these modern music related threads. But you will never see me questioning a poster's intelligence, education or other personal alleged limitations. And no matter how much I disagree, I never, even remotely, call their opinions trivial or boring.

I understand that my opinions cause you distress, but it might be a good idea to interpret them correctly. Nowhere am I deciding what is music or not. My opinion is that much of the experimental music being put forward is not classical music, nothing more, nothing less.


----------



## millionrainbows

DaveM said:


> ...But I don't accept this more recent turn towards experimental 'sounds' as coming from a classical tradition and, mark my words, it is going to remain in the same broad category as the art form that considers an overturned chair, a 4-by-4 board and other random objects in an empty room as a work of art. These works will remain as outliers and never be scheduled as classical music for classical music audiences in classical music venues. If they survive as a separate category of art, that's fine by me. Just don't try to con me that it's classical music.


This underscores the importance of John Cage's attitudes about 'what is music' and such. To get into this newer experimental music, we have to be able to accept 'sounds' as music. Otherwise, you have reached an impasse.

Varese is a good example; he was not interested in themes or melodies or chords; he saw his music as "masses" of sound that he could manipulate. His 'Poeme Electronique' was pure sound as well. I think many listeners would have no problem accepting that piece, and most other electronic music, as a valid form of music. It's created a new genre, as well.

However, to complicate things further, Some of the latest electro-acoustic works by Henri Pousseur, and in particular, those of Luc Ferrari, use recorded sounds "not as music" but simply "for what they are." In other words, if you hear a recording of the outdoors, you don't have to think of it as "music," because the composer wants it to simply be what it is, a recording of the outdoors. In this way, Pousseur and Ferrari have created "sound photographs" which depict different scenes. Here's an example:


----------



## millionrainbows

arpeggio said:


> There is one aspect of these debates that complete loses me.
> 
> I understand it if a person does not get a piece of music. No matter how great a composer is there will be some who will not comprehend him. For me one of these composers is Verdi.
> 
> If a person can not relate to Cage, no problem. Most of Cage's stuff enters one of my ears, rattles around my brain and leaves the other side. But there are a few works of his that I have come to appreciate. So it does not bother me it someone actually thinks that his stuff is music.
> 
> But for reasons which I do not understand, some extremely intelligent members of this community are compelled to subject us to long winded dissertations on why they do not like whatever.


Good observation, and I question the term "like". It seems too simplistic. We "like" tastes of food, and sensual pleasures, but music is more complicated than that, and involves more than just "tasting" a sound like it was food. We have to process it through our brains as well, and this seems to be an area that is lacking in those who simply "spit out" music that they don't like, on the basis of merely tasting it like mustard. Mustard needs a vehicle, such as a hot dog, to be appreciated and understood as a flavor, and it is interdependent on other factors.


----------



## millionrainbows

KenOC said:


> I do not like thee, Dr. Fell,
> The reason why I cannot tell;
> But this I know and know full well,
> I do not like thee, Dr. Fell.
> 
> --Tom Brown, ca 1680


God, that is so succinct! There's no thought necessary to understand it. It just is what it is.


----------



## millionrainbows

DaveM said:


> Criticism is not new to me in these modern music related threads. But you will never see me questioning a poster's intelligence, education or other personal alleged limitations. And no matter how much I disagree, I never, even remotely, call their opinions trivial or boring.
> 
> I understand that my opinions cause you distress, but it might be a good idea to interpret them correctly. Nowhere am I deciding what is music or not. My opinion is that much of the experimental music being put forward is not classical music, nothing more, nothing less.


The Grinch Who Stole Modernism!


----------



## arpeggio

*And many of us disagree.*



DaveM said:


> Nowhere am I deciding what is music or not. My opinion is that much of the experimental music being put forward is not classical music, nothing more, nothing less.


And many of us disagree.


----------



## DaveM

millionrainbows said:


> This underscores the importance of John Cage's attitudes about 'what is music' and such. To get into this newer experimental music, we have to be able to accept 'sounds' as music. Otherwise, you have reached an impasse.
> 
> Varese is a good example; he was not interested in themes or melodies or chords; he saw his music as "masses" of sound that he could manipulate. His 'Poeme Electronique' was pure sound as well. I think many listeners would have no problem accepting that piece, and most other electronic music, as a valid form of music. It's created a new genre, as well.
> 
> However, to complicate things further, Some of the latest electro-acoustic works by Henri Pousseur, and in particular, those of Luc Ferrari, use recorded sounds "not as music" but simply "for what they are." In other words, if you hear a recording of the outdoors, you don't have to think of it as "music," because the composer wants it to simply be what it is, a recording of the outdoors. In this way, Pousseur and Ferrari have created "sound photographs" which depict different scenes.


I understand what you're saying and it's helpful to anyone trying to understand experimental music. It also makes a good case for experimental music as having its own separate music genre alongside classical, popular, country etc.


----------



## arpeggio

*Like*



millionrainbows said:


> Good observation, and I question the term "like". It seems too simplistic. We "like" tastes of food, and sensual pleasures, but music is more complicated than that, and involves more than just "tasting" a sound like it was food. We have to process it through our brains as well, and this seems to be an area that is lacking in those who simply "spit out" music that they don't like, on the basis of merely tasting it like mustard. Mustard needs a vehicle, such as a hot dog, to be appreciated and understood as a flavor, and it is interdependent on other factors.


I agree. Maybe "admire" or "enjoy" would be better terms.

I am very uncomfortable with the term "bad".

As I have stated many times I have learned that no matter how bad I may personally think a work is there are those who think it is great music. This may be because of my experiences as a performer I have associated with hundreds of other musicians or members of the audience.

The other problem I have with the term "bad" is that it frequently implies that there is something wrong with the judgement of those who enjoy what some would consider bad.


----------



## Blancrocher

millionrainbows said:


> However, to complicate things further, Some of the latest electro-acoustic works by Henri Pousseur, and in particular, those of Luc Ferrari, use recorded sounds "not as music" but simply "for what they are." In other words, if you hear a recording of the outdoors, you don't have to think of it as "music," because the composer wants it to simply be what it is, a recording of the outdoors. In this way, Pousseur and Ferrari have created "sound photographs" which depict different scenes. Here's an example:


When I listen to this kind of thing, I wish there was more collaboration between composers and radio dramatists, which seems a more obviously fruitful combo than composers and video artists, though the latter is of course much more common (for quite good reasons, I understand). I could imagine highly novel "musical narratives" emerging from such unions. All they'd need is an audience that doesn't currently exist!


----------



## Luchesi

millionrainbows said:


> God, that is so succinct! There's no thought necessary to understand it. It just is what it is.


Can you remember back through your life the points when your taste changed so that you began to 'like' music that you didn't 'like' before?

People who talk this over with friends, as they're going through the decades, have a better recollection.


----------



## arpeggio

*What would be experimental*



DaveM said:


> I understand what you're saying and it's helpful to anyone trying to understand experimental music. It also makes a good case for experimental music as having its own separate music genre alongside classical, popular, country etc.


Then how would someone categorize a work that employs what some would consider experimental techniques? I know chance is a major component of many experimental works. Yet I have performed many conventional works that employ aleatoric sections.

The following is a very conventional work I have performed that employs aleatoric sections. Can you pick them out. Technically parts of it would be consider experimental.


----------



## millionrainbows

DaveM said:


> I understand what you're saying and it's helpful to anyone trying to understand experimental music. It also makes a good case for experimental music as having its own separate music genre alongside classical, popular, country etc.


I think you need to define more thoroughly what you mean by "being related to the classical tradition," and look at this more closely.
I think composers such as Milton Babbitt (who used a soprano voice with synthesizer sounds in "Philomel" based on a classical Greek myth), and Stockhausen (works like "Song of the Youths") are definitely linked to the classical music tradition. Most of them play the piano and have been trained in music conservatories, and can read and notate music, have written music for traditional instruments, in traditional forms, etc. etc...

I think it's asking a lot of us to consider "your opinion" of what is linked to classical tradition as being the gospel. Besides, I don't think it's a definable border...like everything, it just kind of morphs into something different.

So really, the more accurate statement would be that your taste has limits, which you define by your personal preferences. I can buy that, and it's not really an arguable point if it's your taste.


----------



## DaveM

arpeggio said:


> Then how would someone categorize a work that employs what some would consider experimental techniques? I know chance is a major component of many experimental works. Yet I have performed many conventional works that employ aleatoric sections.
> 
> The following is a very conventional work I have performed that employs aleatoric sections. Can you pick them out. Technically parts of it would be consider experimental.


I don't think anyone would classify that work as experimental -certainly not in the category of experimental works that have been posted more recently- regardless of whether there are moments that you refer to. It is more in the category of movie/musical/play music where for the sake of the subject matter the nature of the music varies. Fwiw, I like that entire piece and would enjoy it in a performance such as what you probably take part in.


----------



## arpeggio

*How many examples do you want?*



DaveM said:


> I don't think anyone would classify that work as experimental -certainly not in the category of experimental works that have been posted more recently- regardless of whether there are moments that you refer to. It is more in the category of movie/musical/play music where for the sake of the subject matter the nature of the music varies. Fwiw, I like that entire piece and would enjoy it in a performance such as what you probably take part in.


How many examples do you want?


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## arpeggio

I always liked the following quote of Edgar Varese: "I do not write experimental music. My experimenting is done before I make the music. Afterwards it is the listener who must experiment."

Most of us agree with this statement. So far I have seen nothing that would change our minds. We really are not interested in defending the particular music we follow.


----------



## arpeggio

*Pro and cons of modern music*



mmsbls said:


> Those who would like to discuss the merits of modern/contemporary music can start a new thread where all the posts can be on topic.


Excellent suggestion. We already have many threads which address this. May I suggest the following:

Why isn't modern classical music popular?

What do you HATE most about contemporary music?

Music that is OK to deride

I am sure that there are many others.


----------



## DaveM

millionrainbows said:


> I think you need to define more thoroughly what you mean by "being related to the classical tradition," and look at this more closely.


I can't answer that because you are referencing a quote that that isn't in. If you reference the quote that it is in, then I can respond to it knowing the context in which I said it.



> I think it's asking a lot of us to consider "your opinion" of what is linked to classical tradition as being the gospel. Besides, I don't think it's a definable border...like everything, it just kind of morphs into something different. So really, the more accurate statement would be that your taste has limits, which you define by your personal preferences. I can buy that, and it's not really an arguable point if it's your taste.


I'm presenting my opinion. People can take or leave it. Elevating my opinion to the level of a gospel is your doing not mine. And it is not accurate that this is about my taste any more than it is accurate, as others have done, to say that just because I don't like a type of music, I want it removed. If that were true then I would be including atonal music, which I am not.

When I am talking about experimental music, I am talking about music that has been presented by others as in that category, music that consists entirely of various sounds with emphasis on things like timbre. Melody has been removed, harmony has been removed, orchestration as we've known it has been removed, virtually all elements that we have associated with classical music have been removed. This is not the tradition of Bach Beethoven and Brahms. And, for that matter, it's not the tradition of Schoenberg.

On a more general level since you mentioned 'a lot of us' vs. me, I didn't start the controversy in this thread of Directions of Modern Music. My first post was #58. Two other posters were initially involved and when I saw that the odds were 5 to 2, I chimed in. Others left and now the odds are 7 to 1. I'm still here, have at me.

Edit: Just to be clear, I do not question the value of the experimental music I've been talking about as a separate art form. Some very bright people appear to like creating and listening to it. I don't see that it can be taken as anything threatening that it should be in a genre separate from classical music. It would remove confusion from general audiences and might well be a benefit in the long run.


----------



## arpeggio

*I wish we could.*



DaveM said:


> I'm still here, have at me.


We are not allowed. I wish we could. Whenever we had the moderators deleted our posts for violating the TOS.


----------



## Blancrocher

It has always seemed a bit strange to me that music as different as what's included in, say, "Renaissance Music" and "Romanticism" belong to the same general category, Classical, whereas composers as similar (by comparison) as Bill Evans and Poulenc cannot occupy that same category—or at least the same part of our forum! Of course, it's easy enough to trouble any schematic category of this kind, but even so I still think these taxonomies can be helpful for thinking about music. It's probably not really useful to argue strenuously about them, though.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

I believe many composers did some experimenting at some time, and later were influenced from other directions to make their style evolve. I liked the quote by Varese above. I haven't listened a lot to him. I'm a bit upset still that just mentioning John Cage can cause such mayhem...Here's the introduction from his biography on oxfordmusiconline (a fantastic source of info on all aspects of music)...

John Cage!
One of the leading figures of the postwar avant garde. The influence of his compositions, writings and personality has been felt by a wide range of composers around the world. He had a greater impact on music in the 20th century than any other American composer.

If you had any doubts you better start to believe


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## Tikoo Tuba

Music can realize new purpose . Purpose ? Might as well ask what's the purpose of life . That
answer is observable - it's what life does - moves stuff around . Music moving stuff around 
might seem magical though , and that's ok . We already know the a'roundness of a circle , a 
song with no end .


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## DaveM

arpeggio said:


> We are not allowed. I wish we could. Whenever we had the moderators deleted our posts for violating the TOS.


There shouldn't be a problem if you're addressing my opinion instead of telling me I shouldn't be posting.


----------



## Blancrocher

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> I believe many composers did some experimenting at some time, and later were influenced from other directions to make their style evolve. I liked the quote by Varese above. I haven't listened a lot to him. I'm a bit upset still that just mentioning John Cage can cause such mayhem...Here's the introduction from his biography on oxfordmusiconline (a fantastic source of info on all aspects of music)...
> 
> John Cage!
> One of the leading figures of the postwar avant garde. The influence of his compositions, writings and personality has been felt by a wide range of composers around the world. He had a greater impact on music in the 20th century than any other American composer.
> 
> If you had any doubts you better start to believe


I'm still going to keep making dumb and inappropriate Cage jokes, though I agree with everything you say. I'd even agree to refer to the later 20th century as the Age of Cage, though I can see how some might find a designation of this kind to be constrictive.


----------



## fluteman

Blancrocher said:


> I'm still going to keep making dumb and inappropriate Cage jokes, though I agree with everything you say. I'd even agree to refer to the later 20th century as the Age of Cage, though I can see how some might find a designation of this kind to be constrictive.


My last post in this thread was no. 204, and there have been several good posts after that. But I suppose a return to the never ending pro-Cage v. anti-Cage, pro-Cage jokes v. anti-Cage jokes was inevitable. I'm confident of my position in the second debate: I'm pro Cage (or any other type of) good jokes, anti- bad or excessively repetitive Cage jokes. Alas, the second type dominates this and every other classical music internet forum I've seen.

But the persistence of the first debate astonishes me. Before I looked at classical music discussion forums for the first time in late 2004, I never would have suspected this subject would have so much traction. Cage has his place in 20th century music history. But off the top of my head, I can name many western composers who in my opinion were as much or more (in many cases, far more) influential than he on the music of that century: Debussy, Ravel, Bartok, Hindemith, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Webern, Copland, Varese, Stockhausen, Ligeti, Reich, Glass and Part.
The only explanation I can think of is that so often, especially later in life, he played the role of the provocateur. And he didn't mince words about that, either. He wanted to challenge to the furthest limits the listener's assumptions as to what music could be. He knew perfectly well that if he made sounds and called them music, not all listeners would agree and call those sounds music, too. But I think he felt that if he succeeded in expanding listener's ideas of what music could be, even if by just a little, he would have succeeded. And although one could point to specific ways he has influenced western music, such as in his pioneering use of the prepared piano, I think that idea of expanding the concept of what music can be is where he has had his greatest influence.
OK, now for the inevitable Cage joke:
Two John Cage fans walk into a


----------



## Luchesi

Tikoo Tuba said:


> The new direction may be new purpose . What new power of art can be imagined ? Sometimes new music inspires a riot of unreason . And then ... a couple of my piano kids once held a fancy notion of new music powering their spaceship .
> 
> hello
> .
> .


Welcome to the forum. 

Are you a piano teacher? How do you teach piano? How would you memorize a modern piece?


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

Luchesi said:


> Welcome to the forum.
> 
> Are you a piano teacher? How do you teach piano? How would you memorize a modern piece?


I like to teach reading , writing and invention with equality and from the beginning . This how I was taught from age 7 . It is loved .

Probably I would not fully memorize a modern piece , that is , I'll accept new music as inspirational . If I had to direct a new music ensemble ... ah , that'd be wild thing .


----------



## Luchesi

Tikoo Tuba said:


> I like to teach reading , writing and invention with equality and from the beginning . This how I was taught from age 7 . It is loved .
> 
> Probably I would not fully memorize a modern piece , that is , I'll accept new music as inspirational . If I had to direct a new music ensemble ... ah , that'd be wild thing .


Perhaps in the future with new powers made available by future technology everyone will be able to conduct an ensemble. This way you won't have to go through the drudgery of learning to play an instrument in the real world.

Do you think such a virtual reality experience will be as satisfying as playing an instrument? People will say no, it will be too easy, because most of the value for your life that you derive from developing your ability to play effortlessly - is actually in the long and painful process.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

Luchesi said:


> Perhaps in the future with new powers made available by future technology everyone will be able to conduct an ensemble. This way you won't have to go through the drudgery of learning to play an instrument in the real world.
> 
> Do you think such a virtual reality experience will be as satisfying as playing an instrument? People will say no, it will be too easy, because most of the value for your life that you derive from developing your ability to play effortlessly - is actually in the long and painful process.


Check this out! https://www.vsl.co.at/en
I actually purchased a small piece of this enormous virtual instruments library, hoping I could make some backing tracks (string quartet) to play my guitar along to. Handling it is a JOB! I plotted in scores in Sibelius and converted to MIDI files, that were supposed to be programmed by vsl in my Cubase sequencer. Some can make this sound very realistic and I wish I was one. In Norway, and probably elsewhere, you can now study at a music conservatory with laptop as your instrument. Most of the work I did, which was just the beginning of it, was lost when I screwed up in rebooting my mac...My motivation sank...


----------



## millionrainbows

Luchesi said:


> Perhaps in the future with new powers made available by future technology everyone will be able to conduct an ensemble. This way you won't have to go through the drudgery of learning to play an instrument in the real world.
> 
> Do you think such a virtual reality experience will be as satisfying as playing an instrument? People will say no, it will be too easy, because most of the value for your life that you derive from developing your ability to play effortlessly - is actually in the long and painful process.


I think playing an instrument is still invaluable, and will never be replaced. It's not "painful" if you approach it like crossword puzzles.


----------



## millionrainbows

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> Check this out! https://www.vsl.co.at/en
> I actually purchased a small piece of this enormous virtual instruments library, hoping I could make some backing tracks (string quartet) to play my guitar along to. Handling it is a JOB! I plotted in scores in Sibelius and converted to MIDI files, that were supposed to be programmed by vsl in my Cubase sequencer. Some can make this sound very realistic and I wish I was one. In Norway, and probably elsewhere, you can now study at a music conservatory with laptop as your instrument. Most of the work I did, which was just the beginning of it, was lost when I screwed up in rebooting my mac...My motivation sank...


Good luck with the new 'virtual orchestra,' Kjetil. I'm going to be installing a different version of Logic Studio (v.9) as soon as it arrives in the mail. I've found that a lot of this computer stuff is learning about the computer itself. In my case, with Apple computers, I have to learn more about OSX (the operating system), what versions work best with what, what changes were made in the history, what processors were discontinued, etc....in short, a whole history of changes! I finally found some websites with good info. I am also beginning to realize that "newer is not necessarily better" in terms of software and operating systems. Some of the changes Apple is making (since Steve Jobs left) are not in the right direction. The older, big "workhorse" Macs are still the best...


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

Thanks! I actually got a bit motivated, but I'm just slow in learning my software. I did buy some more samples, just to make it easier (...!), part of the percussion samples. I have all the stuff I need! A retired coworker said this sort of thing would be great in retirement, and he's right. Just now I've been at it for an hour. Time is fun when you're having flies!


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## Tikoo Tuba

Luchesi said:


> Perhaps in the future with new powers made available by future technology everyone will be able to conduct an ensemble.


I don't believe any significant direction in new music is techno . The next new direction may well be passionately anti-tech , such as music that is impossible to record .


----------



## Luchesi

millionrainbows said:


> I think playing an instrument is still invaluable, and will never be replaced. It's not "painful" if you approach it like crossword puzzles.


crossword puzzles?


----------



## Luchesi

Tikoo Tuba said:


> I don't believe any significant direction in new music is techno . The next new direction may well be passionately anti-tech , such as music that is impossible to record .


Art must bring its audience along with it. Artists don't inspire and impress if they lose or offend their audience. Of course that's a narrow statement and many in the arts would not agree with that practical opinion.


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

I do not mean to offend the record-loving audience , yet I won't be expressing enthusiastic empathy for their reality . You'll find me with a flute along a forest path , and even then I may want no more attention than does the raven . The future belongs to the mystical . If I be flying its only inches above , and so stub my toes also . Ha!


----------



## millionrainbows

Luchesi said:


> crossword puzzles?


Yes, playfully, as problems to be solved, and not as drudgery, such as "practice, practice, practice." It's still work, though, but if done in the right spirit, it becomes "play."


----------



## millionrainbows

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> Thanks! I actually got a bit motivated, but I'm just slow in learning my software. I did buy some more samples, just to make it easier (...!), part of the percussion samples. I have all the stuff I need! A retired coworker said this sort of thing would be great in retirement, and he's right. Just now I've been at it for an hour. Time is fun when you're having flies!


You might want to think about using a separate computer for all your orchestral samples, and have your main operating system on its own computer. That way you can be faster, without overloading anything. Those new solid-state drives are faster, too.


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

millionrainbows said:


> You might want to think about using a separate computer for all your orchestral samples, and have your main operating system on its own computer. That way you can be faster, without overloading anything. Those new solid-state drives are faster, too.


That sounds a bit expensive...  I have a 2TB external hard drive with samples and my old mac has got a new 500GB SSD and extra RAM. Also I have mailed my guy in Berlin, and hopefully do a skype-session soon. Soon I'll be tweaking my way through a MIDI-file...It's all the CC parameters that make my eyes and ears twerk


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## Kjetil Heggelund

Sorry people, but technology is one direction in modern music. Now I'm hearing Norwegian folk music played on homemade flutes, wait forest made...


----------



## millionrainbows

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> That sounds a bit expensive...  I have a 2TB external hard drive with samples and my old mac has got a new 500GB SSD and extra RAM. Also I have mailed my guy in Berlin, and hopefully do a skype-session soon. Soon I'll be tweaking my way through a MIDI-file...It's all the CC parameters that make my eyes and ears twerk


Yes, you could do it using separate drives, too. My new (used) Mac has ports for 5 drives!


----------



## Luchesi

Tikoo Tuba said:


> I do not mean to offend the record-loving audience , yet I won't be expressing enthusiastic empathy for their reality . You'll find me with a flute along a forest path , and even then I may want no more attention than does the raven . The future belongs to the mystical . If I be flying its only inches above , and so stub my toes also . Ha!


That sounds like the Japanese love of Nature and having no need for the artificial equal temperament tuning. The augmented fourth and flat sixth will always be off, in just intonation and equal temperament. Rameau said that we don't get used to equal tempered notes, our brains actually construe them to be 'symbols' of their unaltered forebears from the dawn of time. I don't know if that's still the consensus..


----------



## Luchesi

millionrainbows said:


> Yes, playfully, as problems to be solved, and not as drudgery, such as "practice, practice, practice." It's still work, though, but if done in the right spirit, it becomes "play."


Yes, that's the concept I use when I teach adult beginners. They need to choose THEIR 10 or 20 very best-loved songs that they will play again and again for learning every aspect of sight-reading and harmony and muscle memory for the accompaniment, on and on. They can play other things, but they need to repeat and repeat those favorites until there's an obvious breakthrough feeling, ...not memorizing, just reading.

It's like riding a bike. You 'feel' when you can do it!, and it's definitely NOT playing from memory or playing by ear.


----------



## Luchesi

When I was young I saw "Song of Norway" on the big screen in Manhattan. Franz Liszt was depicted as having so much fun sight-reading the Grieg Piano Concerto, with the younger Grieg in the room. I wanted to be able to sight-read like that someday... New music, a new soundscape describing foreign places for him (Liszt). You can imagine the clear, cold beauty of those northern nations. You can explore how Grieg did it in the harmonic choices in the score and in the orchestration. In the movie Grieg's music was too new and too modern, but Liszt praised it highly, so that lead to a happy ending, IIRC.


----------



## millionrainbows

Luchesi said:


> Yes, that's the concept I use when I teach adult beginners. They need to choose THEIR 10 or 20 very best-loved songs that they will play again and again for learning every aspect of sight-reading and harmony and muscle memory for the accompaniment, on and on. They can play other things, but they need to repeat and repeat those favorites until there's an obvious breakthrough feeling, ...not memorizing, just reading.
> 
> It's like riding a bike. You 'feel' when you can do it!, and it's definitely NOT playing from memory or playing by ear.


That sounds like an excellent approach to me. I wish they'd let me do that. Now, I do play Beatles songs, Procol Harum, etc. for my own amusement. It's FUN!


----------



## Kjetil Heggelund

Luchesi said:


> Yes, that's the concept I use when I teach adult beginners. They need to choose THEIR 10 or 20 very best-loved songs that they will play again and again for learning every aspect of sight-reading and harmony and muscle memory for the accompaniment, on and on. They can play other things, but they need to repeat and repeat those favorites until there's an obvious breakthrough feeling, ...not memorizing, just reading.
> 
> It's like riding a bike. You 'feel' when you can do it!, and it's definitely NOT playing from memory or playing by ear.


Today I asked my private guitar student to choose 10 songs after your tip. We haven't been so concerned with reading music, but now we can try a little. He loves old classics on his steel string.


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## Luchesi

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> Today I asked my private guitar student to choose 10 songs after your tip. We haven't been so concerned with reading music, but now we can try a little. He loves old classics on his steel string.


Good, let me know if it helps. I can play chord and bar chords on my guitar, but from my youngest days I've wanted to effortlessly play from a song sheet. Both melody and accompaniment like this youngster;


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## Kjetil Heggelund

Ah! He's already famous on youtube! When it comes to teaching arranging on guitar, I start out with easy triads and inversions, to have the melody on top, and fill in the chord tones that are missing underneath. No bass yet, you can of course have the melody in the bass. It is a direction in modern music too, even that's not what I had in mind, that was John Cage  , amongst many others. Also just playing melody and bass helps in discovering ways of playing non-standard chords.


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## Luchesi

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> Ah! He's already famous on youtube! When it comes to teaching arranging on guitar, I start out with easy triads and inversions, to have the melody on top, and fill in the chord tones that are missing underneath. No bass yet, you can of course have the melody in the bass. It is a direction in modern music too, even that's not what I had in mind, that was John Cage  , amongst many others. Also just playing melody and bass helps in discovering ways of playing non-standard chords.


Thanks, so maybe instead of learning the weird chord positions with the melody note above, I should play the melody note with just one important lower note with it, as a beginner?

Do people actually stick to this and learn it this way? Or do they plug away and learn/memorize all the 'jazz' chord positions and then from each song they add the melody note above?


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## Kjetil Heggelund

I would learn all the open chords first, then barré's. After that, 7ths & some inversions (slash chords) and later typical jazz chords, which chordnotes are important, and how to add color. It's important to learn some theory, so that you can find unknown chords without a chart. Knowing where you have the steps of the scale relative to the chord will help. When beginning to arrange for solo guitar, melody/bass and melody on top is how I approach it. It depends how advanced to song is. When I begin with inversions, I show my students around 20 ways to play d-minor  Once in a while I sit down with a song book and just play away.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

Did we learn something from all these posts? Yes. Very hard to stay on topic...We probably forgot that also electro-acoustic music is yet another spice, although it doesn't say so much about how it sounds. Ambient is maybe a subgenre?


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## Luchesi

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> I would learn all the open chords first, then barré's. After that, 7ths & some inversions (slash chords) and later typical jazz chords, which chordnotes are important, and how to add color. It's important to learn some theory, so that you can find unknown chords without a chart. Knowing where you have the steps of the scale relative to the chord will help. When beginning to arrange for solo guitar, melody/bass and melody on top is how I approach it. It depends how advanced to song is. When I begin with inversions, I show my students around 20 ways to play d-minor  Once in a while I sit down with a song book and just play away.


Yes, I've learned all the chords and most of the names of the notes, I can build chords from my knowledge of music theory and from playing everything in jazz but I've been thinking recently, the real work begins after you have these details in memory or can quickly access them. Musicmaking requires a higher level of merely indomitable experience. I don't want to sound too dramatic here but many people don't know this.

As you know we need to be able to play as if we were speaking our native language, We learn the words and phrases and the sentence structure of English and then we forget all that as a conscious requirement and we just talk and talk and talk. How long does it take for a child to do this? about four years? And children are like little sponges. So, becoming a musician takes at least five or six years of dedicated playing around..

Because of this I don't think I'll ever be able to play it as I've wanted for all these years. It's such slow going in the beginning.. I keep comparing it to playing the piano and that's not helpful at all. So it's probably blocking my progress.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

We should have a thread for guitar playing, methods and didactics! There's the popular trend of 10000 hours of good practice theory...I've done some more. Good practice is doing things right! Not doing your mistakes over and over...Also well-defined goals should be written down, and making a log and schedule can make you more focussed in your practice.


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## millionrainbows

Another good guitar tip is that all chords will have their lowest bass note on either the E or A string, so knowing all those note names can come first, while you're learning chords.


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## Tikoo Tuba

Darn it , Daddy . My guitar has been tuned D-A-D-A-A-D . But whY ?! And who did this ?!


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## Guest

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> Did we learn something from all these posts? Yes. Very hard to stay on topic...We probably forgot that also electro-acoustic music is yet another spice, although it doesn't say so much about how it sounds. Ambient is maybe a subgenre?


Electroacoustic music is a particular passion of mine. I think it's very interesting that in the twentieth century the continued development of instruments came not from instrument makers but from computer and sound technology laboratories. Bell Laboratories probably had a far bigger influence on music than any 20th century luthier or piano builder when it came to developing musical 'instruments'/technology. From what I understand, it took over where instrument building in the 19th century left off, however it also became very important in non-classical music production.


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## eugeneonagain

I think Dr Robert Moog had the bigger influence.


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## Guest

eugeneonagain said:


> I think Dr Robert Moog had the bigger influence.


Bell Laboratories or Robert Moog, I guess they could have had a fairly equal influence in slightly different areas. What's your reasoning that Moog had a bigger influence than Bell Laboratories whose developments ended up evolving into DAWs and digital/software synthesisers more recently?


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## Luchesi

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> We should have a thread for guitar playing, methods and didactics! There's the popular trend of 10000 hours of good practice theory...I've done some more. Good practice is doing things right! Not doing your mistakes over and over...Also well-defined goals should be written down, and making a log and schedule can make you more focussed in your practice.


I don't agree with that. It squashes enthusiasm for too many types of beginners. Not just the underachievers, the overachievers too.

So many people quit playing and then later wish they had at least kept plugging away at 'goals' and regimens.


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## philoctetes

The attraction to music that doesn't resolve depends, for me, on there being something else that has an equivalent impact to my ears. In modern CM these are sometimes called events... and I think most of my favorite music plays a "delay the resolution" game, which goes back to the Flemish polyphonists. Couperin, Zelenka and so on. For all I hear about the orgasm of resolution, it's really the buildup that's the most fun amirite? Once it's over, it's over!

Generally, for me, a large interest in music is in how the extremes, like dissonance, instability, can be "tamed" to make music out of them. Anybody who dances knows the real fun happens jamming on subdominant chords... where's that confounded bridge?


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## KenOC

philoctetes said:


> The attraction to music that doesn't resolve depends, for me, on there being something else that has an equivalent impact to my ears. In modern CM these are sometimes called events... and I think most of my favorite music plays a "delay the resolution" game, which goes back to the Flemish polyphonists. Couperin, Zelenka and so on. For all I hear about the orgasm of resolution, it's really the buildup that's the most fun amirite? Once it's over, it's over!


For a masterpiece of delayed (refused!) resolution, try the first movement of Beethoven's Op. 101 piano sonata.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

Luchesi said:


> I don't agree with that. It squashes enthusiasm for too many types of beginners. Not just the underachievers, the overachievers too.
> 
> So many people quit playing and then later wish they had at least kept plugging away at 'goals' and regimens.


What I mean is that you can't learn it all, so being aware of what you want to play is a good thing.


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## Luchesi

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> What I mean is that you can't learn it all, so being aware of what you want to play is a good thing.


What I mean is, music teachers know what's effective for the large majority of beginners, but they should be keenly aware of what sabotages the beginning student.

Look back at an instructional book that you disliked when you were a beginner, or anything you had difficulty learning because it wasn't interesting at the time, modes?, boring exercises, the fingerings for all the major and minor scales? I've done this with some old Thompson piano books, grades 1 through 5. yuck! At this point in my life, when I open them I immediately play the examples the way I would want to hear them today, but back then it was thoroughly off-putting. Maybe one out of 20 was fun and interesting to play. So the point is, those 'method' techniques for teaching each aspect of early learning are an obvious impediment to the growth of self-expression and the resulting fun and joy of making music. You need the feedbacks even more when youâ€™re starting out.

Scanning those method books is interesting in order to see the â€˜goalsâ€™, as a teacher, but they kill off many students, right when theyâ€™re the most overwhelmed and vulnerable. í ½í¸"

People always say you have to walk before you can run, but look at how a child learns to express himself in words and phrases. Not by a prescribed 'methodâ€™.

It seems to me to also have parallels for a CM listener trying to appreciate modern directions in musical expression. A prescribed â€˜methodâ€™ would only be helpful for a few people, for others it would only be barely possible to stick it out for the final grade.


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## Luchesi

millionrainbows said:


> Another good guitar tip is that all chords will have their lowest bass note on either the E or A string, so knowing all those note names can come first, while you're learning chords.


Yeah, Em is easy to play.

Buy a guitar that's twice as much as you can afford and then you'll have bragging rights and admirers, it'll sound great, it'll be easy to play, and you'll feel guilty for not practicing. lol


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## Tikoo Tuba

First create a new sound synthetically , then cleverly make an acoustic instrument that can produce it . 

It's the Alien way .


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## Kjetil Heggelund

I bump my thread! I read some interesting posts here from some years ago. Since I just read that the forum is now more open to modern and contemporary music and that some people have been banned, I wondered if that's true. I remember this thread as a bit of a turmoil and it derailed some times. Are there any current threads on new music? The banned guys are on here and I liked their posts


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## Phil loves classical

Hopped around on this thread, and came onto post #361. Found the 'score', and read the notes at 0:26. It all makes sense now, as in not to be taken seriously.


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## mmsbls

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> I bump my thread! I read some interesting posts here from some years ago. Since I just read that the forum is now more open to modern and contemporary music and that some people have been banned, I wondered if that's true. I remember this thread as a bit of a turmoil and it derailed some times. Are there any current threads on new music? The banned guys are on here and I liked their posts


It may depend on exactly how you define current, but some recent threads are:

A Contemporary Music Repertoire (a work in progress)
21st Century Chamber Music
New Orchestral Music - Works of the 21st Century
The Contemporary String Quartet: works written since 1970
Orchestral Works Written from 1970-1999


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## 59540

Phil loves classical said:


> Hopped around on this thread, and came onto post #361. Found the 'score', and read the notes at 0:26. It all makes sense now, as in not to be taken seriously.
> ...


Well, you never know. You might be having an attack of philistinism. It is some interesting sound though. Oh wait, I notice some people dressed as surgeons in there...


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