# Conservatives and Radicals?



## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I'm only able to visit very rarely at the moment but have been thinking about these questions a bit recently and wonder what you all think.

Some of us praise a composer for being revolutionary and perhaps we feel this is the most important quality for a composer. Beethoven and Berlioz are often praised for being revolutionaries. But for many of us it seems that our favourite composers were more conservative. I don’t mean they didn’t innovate or that they weren’t creative – they were great composers, after all – but just that they weren’t in the front line of a major change in style. Bach might have been a conservative. And some would say that often the early revolutionaries for a new style were lesser composers than those who followed them.

So my questions are how highly do you value revolutionaries in comparison with conservatives? Which are the more important in the history of music? And, when we come to more modern times, can a composer be too conservative? Or too radical?


----------



## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Depends entirely on the quality of the music.


----------



## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

It also may be a matter of individual pieces. Brahms is not usually considered a radical composer, but his first piano concerto's first movement sounded a bit different from what people were used to hearing. Same for Prokofiev's first piano concerto (and second also, for that matter).


----------



## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Most of the great composers are a little bit of both IMO. Stravinsky took some pretty radical liberties with his harmonic structures and especially rhythms yet fit it all together observing strict adherence to classical forms. Shostakovich did similarly. Beethoven's form evolved from that of Haydn, elongating the development of his motives, yet harmonically and particularly melodically he doesn't stray too too far from established tradition (for the most part). Bach was very conservative in his complete disregard for opera, the dominant popular genre of the time, and adherence to sacred forms such as cantatas as well as old models of counterpoint like fugues. Yet harmonically, he was a true radical. Look at the C major prelude from the WTC Book I for example. On the surface it's a pretty simple composition, but in it Bach utilizes harmonies that the world of music wouldn't see again for 200 years. 

I could think of dozens of other examples.


----------



## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

I prefer the terms "innovators" and "perfectionists." Innovators come up with an idea, perfectionists take that idea to other conclusions. The greatest composers are both I think.


----------



## Felix Mendelssohn (Jan 18, 2019)

Room2201974 said:


> I prefer the terms "innovators" and "perfectionists."


Innovation and perfectionism are not mutually exclusive though.


----------



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

"Radical and Conservative" could just as easily mean "Romantic and Pre-Romantic;" after all, the OP cited Berlioz and Beethoven as the best examples of "revolutionary."

I support Romanticism above all, since it is the most personally involving music for me. It was consciously designed to communicate directly to me, not for other "concurrent" purposes like the glorification of God, or a prevailing Classical aesthetic of detachment. 
Of course, there are exceptions, such as Mozart's G minor Symphony and Bach's keyboard works, which can be quite intimate, and thus, by default, exhibiting elements of "Romanticism;" but by and large, give me the irrationality and experimentation of Romanticism and Post-Romanticism.
Brahms represents the opposite of Romanticism; he did not dare to let loose and wander chromatically; everything is kept in check, nice & tidy. For me, there must be chromaticism and harmonic daring; Brahms was none of that.


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> "Radical and Conservative" could just as easily mean "Romantic and Pre-Romantic;" after all, the OP cited Berlioz and Beethoven as the best examples of "revolutionary."
> 
> I support Romanticism above all, since it is the most personally involving music for me. It was consciously designed to communicate directly to me, not for other "concurrent" purposes like the glorification of God, or a prevailing Classical aesthetic of detachment.
> Of course, there are exceptions, such as Mozart's G minor Symphony and Bach's keyboard works, which can be quite intimate, and thus, by default, exhibiting elements of "Romanticism;" but by and large, give me the irrationality and experimentation of Romanticism and Post-Romanticism.
> Brahms represents the opposite of Romanticism; he did not dare to let loose and wander chromatically; everything is kept in check, nice & tidy. For me, there must be chromaticism and harmonic daring; Brahms was none of that.


About 10 years ago you wrote something to Piso Mojado which really stuck in my mind. He was working on getting you to listen to Furtwangler do some Brahms. You said you did so and yes "it sends you up, it sends you down" Wonderful comment which IMO gets right to the heart of the matter.


----------



## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

millionrainbows said:


> Brahms represents the opposite of Romanticism; he did not dare to let loose and wander chromatically; everything is kept in check, nice & tidy. For me, there must be chromaticism and harmonic daring; Brahms was none of that.


If this is not romantic then I do not know what is


----------



## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

flamencosketches said:


> Most of the great composers are a little bit of both IMO. Stravinsky took some pretty radical liberties with his harmonic structures and especially rhythms yet fit it all together observing strict adherence to classical forms. Shostakovich did similarly. Beethoven's form evolved from that of Haydn, elongating the development of his motives, yet harmonically and particularly melodically he doesn't stray too too far from established tradition (for the most part). Bach was very conservative in his complete disregard for opera, the dominant popular genre of the time, and adherence to sacred forms such as cantatas as well as old models of counterpoint like fugues. Yet harmonically, he was a true radical. Look at the C major prelude from the WTC Book I for example. On the surface it's a pretty simple composition, but in it Bach utilizes harmonies that the world of music wouldn't see again for 200 years.
> 
> I could think of dozens of other examples.


Its a public thread now ... but I did stipulate that I was not talking about innovation. I think any composer worth anything is going to be innovative, and the more innovative they are the better they are. But what I am trying to get at here is the people who were at the forefront of music going in a whole new direction ... and those who followed and perhaps perfected it (or not - depends what you think).


----------



## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

millionrainbows said:


> "Radical and Conservative" could just as easily mean "Romantic and Pre-Romantic;" after all, the OP cited Berlioz and Beethoven as the best examples of "revolutionary."
> 
> I support Romanticism above all, since it is the most personally involving music for me. It was consciously designed to communicate directly to me, not for other "concurrent" purposes like the glorification of God, or a prevailing Classical aesthetic of detachment.
> Of course, there are exceptions, such as Mozart's G minor Symphony and Bach's keyboard works, which can be quite intimate, and thus, by default, exhibiting elements of "Romanticism;" but by and large, give me the irrationality and experimentation of Romanticism and Post-Romanticism.
> Brahms represents the opposite of Romanticism; he did not dare to let loose and wander chromatically; everything is kept in check, nice & tidy. For me, there must be chromaticism and harmonic daring; Brahms was none of that.


Nice change of subject! But, no. I am talking about the people who left the Baroque behind and started the Classical (as well as those who left the Classical behind for the Romantic and those who were no longer happy with the Romantic and plunged us into the modern .... and right up to now). So, although I used Romantic composers as examples of radicals, I really didn't intend this to be another thread with a slightly different angle about Romantics versus the rest. It is true, though, that the most famous (perhaps the most generally satisfactory) examples of radicals that I could name were both Romantics.


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Mozart is not often thought of as a radical but the fact is that he produced, in Figaro, a totally radical opera, both in its subject matter and its setting


----------



## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

What about somebody like Monteverdi who spans the Renaissance and Baroque or Soler on the cusp of the Baroque Classical divide. Or somebody like Rebel who wrote some truly unusual music in his Elements suite?


----------



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

_MR: Brahms represents the opposite of Romanticism; he did not dare to let loose and wander chromatically; everything is kept in check, nice & tidy. For me, there must be chromaticism and harmonic daring; Brahms was none of that._



Jacck said:


> If this is not romantic then I do not know what is


Brahms is known as a conservative, even though he was in the Romantic era. He certainly does not exemplify the Romantic sensibility like Schumann or Scriabin; what is your point here? Brahms is a conservative. He was almost a classicist.

I listened to the link, all nine minutes of it. Brahms seems like he is using music to express his feelings, but only for us to observe; he is not talking directly to me, for that purpose only, like I get from other Romantics. I don't feel that Brahms had a real desire to communicate with an imagined audience, like I feel Beethoven was. He doesn't make me feel like "I'm the only person in the world."

Plus, I see Brahms as harmonically conservative. His chord progressions seem calculated to wander away, create some tension and yearning, and then slowly touch-down, in a very drawn-out, arch-like manner. There are no surprises or abrupt modulations; very similar to the way Wagner draws-out his harmonic excursions. I call this conservative compared to Scriabin and other Romantics.

"How highly do you value revolutionaries in comparison with conservatives? Which are the more important in the history of music? "

When music was still developing in the Renaissance and Baroque, I think revolutionaries were more valuable because they made the formal aspects of music evolve. But there appears to be a limit to this: when atonality came into being, there was created a backlash, which to this day still defends the fort of tonality.

This reminds me of the "War of the Romantics."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Romantics

"And, when we come to more modern times, can a composer be too conservative? Or too radical?"

Yes, for many people, they drew the line at 12-tone music.


----------



## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Enthusiast said:


> So my questions are how highly do you value revolutionaries in comparison with conservatives?


I don't consider it at all.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

For Brahms and Chopin, somehow Beethoven's 'revolutionary tendencies' didn't mean to them as much as his predecessors'. So I guess 'doing new things' doesn't always lead to 'improvement' for everyone. Depending on what you value in music, a revolutionary could even be seen as being 'not really that revolutionary'. Since I personally consider music after Beethoven not as important as Beethoven's and his predecessors' in general, I don't necessarily see post-Beethoven music as an improvement from the previous eras in terms of ideology and quality etc. There's more I appreciate in Buxtehude and JC Bach than Delius and Elgar for example.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=7iwZ-qTuSkUC&pg=PA135#v=onepage&q&f=false
_"One must be able to distinguish between the charm that comes from newness and the value that is intrinsic to a work. ... Look at Idomeneo. Not only is it a marvel, but as Mozart was still quite young and brash when he wrote it, it was a completely new thing..."_ -Brahms

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1ggkDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT83#v=onepage&q&f=false
_"As Chopin said to me, 'Where Beethoven is obscure and appears to be lacking in unity, it is not, as people allege, from a rather wild originality - the quality which they admire in him - it is because he turns his back on eternal principles."_


----------



## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Enthusiast said:


> I'm only able to visit very rarely at the moment but have been thinking about these questions a bit recently and wonder what you all think.
> 
> Some of us praise a composer for being revolutionary and perhaps we feel this is the most important quality for a composer. Beethoven and Berlioz are often praised for being revolutionaries. But for many of us it seems that our favourite composers were more conservative. I don't mean they didn't innovate or that they weren't creative - they were great composers, after all - but just that they weren't in the front line of a major change in style. Bach might have been a conservative. And some would say that often the early revolutionaries for a new style were lesser composers than those who followed them.
> 
> So my questions are how highly do you value revolutionaries in comparison with conservatives? Which are the more important in the history of music? And, when we come to more modern times, can a composer be too conservative? Or too radical?


There is no revolutionary music, or conservative music. All music is simply fascist. Composers dominate us by striking us with their servile assertions of norms and rules of sound. Anyone who participates in music is a denier of liberty-- both the liberty to withdraw from accepted patterns of thinking, and the liberty to not subjugate anyone. There can only be freedom where there is no music.

John Cage was right.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Mandryka said:


> There is no revolutionary music, or conservative music. All music is simply fascist. Composers dominate us by striking us with their servile assertions of norms and rules of sound. Anyone who participates in music is a denier of liberty-- both the liberty to withdraw from accepted patterns of thinking, and the liberty to not subjugate anyone. There can only be freedom where there is no music.
> 
> John Cage was right.


If my freedom requires the absence of music, I am happily enslaved. To those unhappily enslaved: the music will end, and you'll have your 4'33" of freedom.


----------



## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Mandryka said:


> There is no revolutionary music, or conservative music. All music is simply fascist. Composers dominate us by striking us with their servile assertions of norms and rules of sound. Anyone who participates in music is a denier of liberty-- both the liberty to withdraw from accepted patterns of thinking, and the liberty to not subjugate anyone. There can only be freedom where there is no music.
> 
> John Cage was right.


Hey, using language is fascism too. And poetry, and written texts. And this even more explicitly.
Down with language.

Or maybe not. Maybe it suggests varied options, and potentials - not at least with the scope of variety available to us now.


----------



## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Music is fascism... ooh-er, there's a youth movement in waiting. Maybe the Sex Pistols already had that covered.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Whether a composer was a great innovator or not - a radical or a conservative - has no bearing on my listening experience. But I do like music that gives me satisfying surprises by avoiding the obvious. What's important isn't innovation, but creative imagination, whether that occurs in the context of an established style or forges a new one. 

Outside the context of listening, and considering music as a cultural phenomenon, we are conditioned to admire radicals more than conservatives. Other cultures, venerating tradition, have viewed the matter differently. But even in our culture there has been tension between these two perspectives. In music we see it arising in the Romantic era with the Brahms/Wagner controversy and reaching a peak of intensity with the Modernist aesthetics of the first half of the 20th century, when radicalism became almost a moral imperative.


----------



## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

I used to think innovation was the key to genius and such, but now I just see creation and the consequence in the listener of enjoying it or not.


----------



## NLAdriaan (Feb 6, 2019)

Innovative or mainstream music, it all equals out over time. Here we mainly discuss music that is very old and even recordings that are very old. That is literally conservative. Stravinsky's Sacre caused uproar and conflict in 1913, we discuss which interpretation we like most. To us, the Sacre is mainstream now. What is innovative music nowadays? I don't really know. Punk created the last shockwave. We discuss here at length if we 'allow' John Williams to be called 'Classical music':lol:. We attack each other over the status of 50 year old recordings and dead conductorsut:

In short, I don't think it matters a lot if a musical piece was conservative or radical in its day. Maybe, it is the more radical music that survives in the end. As we only listen to a very small amount of all the music that was composed in the past.


----------



## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

millionrainbows said:


> "Radical and Conservative" could just as easily mean "Romantic and Pre-Romantic;" after all, the OP cited Berlioz and Beethoven as the best examples of "revolutionary."
> 
> I support Romanticism above all, since it is the most personally involving music for me. It was consciously designed to communicate directly to me, not for other "concurrent" purposes like the glorification of God, or a prevailing Classical aesthetic of detachment.
> Of course, there are exceptions, such as Mozart's G minor Symphony and Bach's keyboard works, which can be quite intimate, and thus, by default, exhibiting elements of "Romanticism;" but by and large, give me the irrationality and experimentation of Romanticism and Post-Romanticism.
> Brahms represents the opposite of Romanticism; he did not dare to let loose and wander chromatically; everything is kept in check, nice & tidy. For me, there must be chromaticism and harmonic daring; Brahms was none of that.


I agree with you that Brahms was less of a "Romantic" than his contemporaries, and more of a classicist minded composer, though his music embodies qualities of both. However I think you are way off the mark regarding his use of harmony. Listen to the _Alto Rhapsody_ for example, or the _Symphony No. 4_, in a vertical sense Brahms was highly advanced. I notice when you use the word harmony you are often referring to its horizontal functions, I agree that modulation is an essential part of good composition, but I see the vertical aspect of harmony as of the utmost importance to my enjoyment of music, and I feel Brahms knew how to use vertical harmony more expressively than say Beethoven or Berlioz.


----------



## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Conservatism and radicalism don't mean that much to me in terms of my listening enjoyment, the quality of the music is what counts. Brahms and Bach are favorites of mine, so are Monteverdi and Debussy. Some composers come at a time when more radical approaches are necessary to keep things fresh, but there are also the kinds of geniuses that can raise past styles to unprecedented levels of perfection. Musical revolutions are usually something that can be traced through other composers working together, ie - D. Scarlatti - > CPE Bach -> Haydn -> Beethoven. Beethoven was innovative but also building a lot off the work of other composers. In this sense I see Debussy as more of an isolated radical than Beethoven, or in other words, his music was more original.


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

flamencosketches said:


> Most of the great composers are a little bit of both IMO. Stravinsky took some pretty radical liberties with his harmonic structures and especially rhythms yet fit it all together observing strict adherence to classical forms. Shostakovich did similarly. Beethoven's form evolved from that of Haydn, elongating the development of his motives, yet harmonically and particularly melodically he doesn't stray too too far from established tradition (for the most part). Bach was very conservative in his complete disregard for opera, the dominant popular genre of the time, and adherence to sacred forms such as cantatas as well as old models of counterpoint like fugues. Yet harmonically, he was a true radical. Look at the C major prelude from the WTC Book I for example. On the surface it's a pretty simple composition, but in it Bach utilizes harmonies that the world of music wouldn't see again for 200 years.
> 
> I could think of dozens of other examples.


Although Bach did write secular cantatas, including the hilarious "Coffee" cantata. As for all his sacred music, a church was paying his salary for much of his career, so you have to expect him to have written a lot of it. Bach was certainly an innovator, for example in greatly expanding on pre-existing principles of counterpoint. Generally, I think these radical v. reactionary or liberal v. conservative debates establish little. All great artists stand apart from all that came before in some unique way.

True, some artists try to cultivate the image of the revolutionary, tweak noses, upset the apple cart, or whatever image you prefer, in an attempt to grab the audience by its lapels and force it to rethink their assumptions, and see that maybe they aren't so carved in stone. Other artists are virtually the opposite, and try to make their innovations sneak up on the audience as subtly as possible. But to me, all that is just an example of how artistic personalities vary so widely, which is what makes it all so much fun.


----------



## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

millionrainbows said:


> "Radical and Conservative" could just as easily mean "Romantic and Pre-Romantic;" after all, the OP cited Berlioz and Beethoven as the best examples of "revolutionary." ...
> 
> Brahms represents the opposite of Romanticism; he did not dare to let loose and wander chromatically; everything is kept in check, nice & tidy. For me, there must be chromaticism and harmonic daring; Brahms was none of that.


*sigh* more of these stupid generalizations...


----------



## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

"All generalizations are false, including this one"


----------



## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Who sits down to listen to a composer and asks himself, “Shall I listen to a conservative or a radical composer tonight?“ Instead, one is usually far more inclined to say, “Do I want to hear Beethoven or Mozart or Stockhausen or Stravinsky?” It’s the style of each composer beyond those two choices that usually makes the choice. One could argue conservatism or radicalism for each composer if one goes work by work or by some other measure. What’s more conservative than Stravinsky’s neo-classic period when it was like he had forgotten how to write an original melody, so he stole directly from others? And yet the Rite of Spring could hardly be considered a conservative work. The words conservative and radical also carry too much political baggage associated with them. But the words ‘originality’ and ‘ innovative’ in reference to the arts makes perfect sense without the polarising confusion.


----------



## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Becca said:


> "All generalizations are false, including this one"


But we can use generalizations, more properly termed statistics and trends, to make sense of our lives and categorize for functional purposes.

But when it comes to Art Appreciation, we should really just discuss what makes us like a particular work or not.


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I believe innovation is valuable and I appreciate people who do it well. Still, if something is done well, it's done well, whether it's innovative or conservative.


----------



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

This stupid thread is too general. :lol:


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Whether a composer was a great innovator or not - a radical or a conservative - has no bearing on my listening experience. But I do like music that gives me satisfying surprises by avoiding the obvious. What's important isn't innovation, but creative imagination, whether that occurs in the context of an established style or forges a new one.
> 
> Outside the context of listening, and considering music as a cultural phenomenon, we are conditioned to admire radicals more than conservatives. Other cultures, venerating tradition, have viewed the matter differently. But even in our culture there has been tension between these two perspectives. In music we see it arising in the Romantic era with the Brahms/Wagner controversy and reaching a peak of intensity with the Modernist aesthetics of the first half of the 20th century, when radicalism became almost a moral imperative.


Yes, I like the word "creative" far more than radical or conservative. Even the most "radical" composers almost never try to start from scratch, if that's even possible, but rather build on at least some aspects of long-extant musical traditions. Even the greatest (or blackest) bete noire here at talkclassical, Arnold Schoenberg, no doubt was radical in the way he looked for alternatives to traditional harmonic progressions and scale hierarchies, but he was staunchly conservative in other ways.

I'd concede that in many of his projects, John Cage made an all-out effort to be radical and undermine nearly every tradition one can think of. But not quite every tradition. Earlier forms of many of his most radical ideas can be seen in the Dada and Theater of the Absurd movements of the early 20th century, as others here have noted.

And as for Wagner, we may consider him conservative today since we've heard his music in so many Saturday morning cartoons. He would have considered himself much more of a revolutionary, and not without justification, right? So far better, as you say, to seek out creativity that reaches beyond the obvious, rather than focus excessively on which traditions are preserved, and which are modified or jettisoned. Unless you are trying to write a PhD thesis, I suppose.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

fluteman said:


> Yes, I like the word "creative" far more than radical or conservative. Even the most "radical" composers almost never try to start from scratch, if that's even possible, but rather build on at least some aspects of long-extant musical traditions. Even the greatest (or blackest) bete noire here at talkclassical, Arnold Schoenberg, no doubt was radical in the way he looked for alternatives to traditional harmonic progressions and scale hierarchies, but he was staunchly conservative in other ways.
> 
> I'd concede that in many of his projects, John Cage made an all-out effort to be radical and undermine nearly every tradition one can think of. But not quite every tradition. Earlier forms of many of his most radical ideas can be seen in the Dada and Theater of the Absurd movements of the early 20th century, as others here have noted.
> 
> And as for Wagner, we may consider him conservative today since we've heard his music in so many Saturday morning cartoons. He would have considered himself much more of a revolutionary, and not without justification, right? So far better, as you say, to seek out creativity that reaches beyond the obvious, rather than focus excessively on which traditions are preserved, and which are modified or jettisoned. Unless you are trying to write a PhD thesis, I suppose.


Schoenberg is an interesting case in that he seemed unable to decide whether he was radical or conservative. Both his admirers and his detractors still argue about it. For the casual classical music listener his 12-tone music certainly sounds radical. For the more sophisticated listener or scholar it may depend on whether we agree with Schoenberg's contention that tonality was "used up" or already tending in the direction of atonality, making the break with tonality more of a continuation than a break, and even a historical inevitability. Millionrainbows and I have tussled over those notions.

I suppose we can see Cage as being in the "tradition" of Dada, but it would be odd to call his experiments "conservative" in any other context. By now, though, they seem pretty much old hat (but then, almost everything composers come up with nowadays seems old hat to me).

Wagner conservative? that's a head-scratcher. What we hear on cartoons is a few of his more obvious bits. They aren't going to prepare you for _Tristan_ or _Parsifal._ Nothing I know of can do that.


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Wagner conservative? that's a head-scratcher. What we hear on cartoons is a few of his more obvious bits. They aren't going to prepare you for _Tristan_ or _Parsifal._ Nothing I know of can do that.


That's a legitimate comment from the point of view of a sophisticated listener (ditto the rest of your post that I haven't quoted here). But Wagner's music is certainly conservative in the sense that all famous 19th-century European classical music would be viewed as conservative by most casual classical music listeners nowadays. And, especially in this regard, don't underestimate the significance of hearing the "obvious bits" all through one's childhood. In my opinion, things like that, though not the same as an in-depth study of Parsifal, have a profound influence on how one hears music for the rest of one's life.

Many posters here who didn't study classical music as children, in high school and in college, or at least not formally and intensively, seem to assume that they are approaching it as adults with a clean slate, and unbiased, un-preconditioned, ears. They aren't, and that leads to a lot of the confusion and debate here.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

fluteman said:


> That's a legitimate comment from the point of view of a sophisticated listener (ditto the rest of your post that I haven't quoted here). But Wagner's music is certainly conservative in the sense that all famous 19th-century European classical music would be viewed as conservative by most casual classical music listeners nowadays. And, especially in this regard, don't underestimate the significance of hearing the "obvious bits" all through one's childhood. In my opinion, things like that, though not the same as an in-depth study of Parsifal, have a profound influence on how one hears music for the rest of one's life.
> 
> Many posters here who didn't study classical music as children, in high school and in college, or at least not formally and intensively, seem to assume that they are approaching it as adults with a clean slate, and unbiased, un-preconditioned, ears. They aren't, and that leads to a lot of the confusion and debate here.


I know what you're saying. It's very much a matter of the individual's background and context. And the very same music can seem either radical or conservative at different times. We have to remind ourselves sometimes just how innovative is some of the music we've been listening to all our lives, music that had such a powerful impact on what followed that it seem almost commonplace to us now. But if we can shift our mental perspective a bit and really listen afresh, we can reexperience some of the shock of the new. Beethoven's 5th and Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique are two perhaps over-familiar works that can still spin my head around if I'm in the right frame of mind. Some music can persuade me that innovativeness is after all not such a negligible factor in my enjoyment, and is a virtue that really does lift some artists to a higher plane in my esteem (but only if the innovation is artistically successful, of course).


----------



## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

I've been reading the book _Afternoon of a Faun: How Debussy Created A New Music for the Modern World_ by Harvey Lee Snyder, it is an interesting book, reads a bit like a novel, so far it has discussed Wagner a lot. One thing I have come to admire about Wagner was his ability to keep following his goals and to move forward despite suffering many failures and setbacks. Debussy also suffered many setbacks and much criticism. Seems to be a recurring theme for many of the composers we have come to consider great innovators, and for the most part even the ones we have come to consider more "conservative". These lines are not always so clear.

I'm reminded of a quote Berlioz made to violinist Josef Joachim after first hearing Brahms perform one of his early piano pieces:

"I am grateful to you for having let me made the acquaintance of this diffident, audacious young man who has taken into his head to make a new music. He will suffer greatly."
-Berlioz


----------



## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Once the free radicals are in the bloodstream they will irritate the conservatives.


----------



## Gordontrek (Jun 22, 2012)

Being "radical" doesn't automatically elevate a composer in my view. It's not necessarily a virtue in and of itself. I much prefer a composer who is very good at writing conservative music to a composer who is very bad at writing new music.


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Gordontrek said:


> Being "radical" doesn't automatically elevate a composer in my view. It's not necessarily a virtue in and of itself. I much prefer a composer who is very good at writing conservative music to a composer who is very bad at writing new music.


Yes, and that leads to Woodduck's points that what really matters is not whether art is "radical" or "conservative", however those terms are defined, but whether it evidences a creative imagination, and also that innovation for its own sake is not worthwhile if it is not artistically successful.

In other threads, I've proposed that art is successful if it communicates its message to its audience, regardless of whether the audience is inspired, delighted, humored, awestruck, saddened, horrified, provoked into deep thought, or has any other emotional or intellectual response, so long as it has an impact that is real and significant. Both radical and conservative artists face a major challenge in achieving that success.


----------



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I'm all in favor of art that is radical, rather than conservative. That's why I like Frank Zappa; he expanded the rhythmic possibilities of music, especially in the context of the "rock" genre.

Whether or not a work "shows creative imagination" or "communicates with its audience" are aesthetic judgements, and secondary to whether or not the work is radical or conservative, because these "entertainment" aspects are not based on formal factors of the art itself and its historical evolution and language.


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

millionrainbows said:


> I'm all in favor of art that is radical, rather than conservative. That's why I like Frank Zappa; he expanded the rhythmic possibilities of music, especially in the context of the "rock" genre.
> 
> Whether or not a work "shows creative imagination" or "communicates with its audience" are aesthetic judgements, and secondary to whether or not the work is radical or conservative, because these "entertainment" aspects are not based on formal factors of the art itself and its historical evolution and language.


With respect, I don't think the communication aspect of art is secondary. Art is a language, and communication is the primary purpose of language. And Zappa wasn't just radical, he was an extraordinary talent. He even wrote 'classical' music, including orchestral and a wind quintet (!) that was remarkably good and wild enough in its way, but far more buttoned-up and formal than his other work.


----------



## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

fluteman said:


> With respect, I don't think the communication aspect of art is secondary. Art is a language, and communication is the primary purpose of language. And Zappa wasn't just radical, he was an extraordinary talent. He even wrote 'classical' music, including orchestral and a wind quintet (!) that was remarkably good and wild enough in its way, but far more buttoned-up and formal than his other work.


What is being communicated by music then? Communication implies that the composers has some message, that he encodes into the musical signal, and the musical signal is decoded by the brain of the recipient to receive the message. Is the message sent by the composers the same, or even similar to the message received by the brain of the listener?


----------



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

fluteman said:


> With respect, I don't think the communication aspect of art is secondary. Art is a language, and communication is the primary purpose of language. And Zappa wasn't just radical, he was an extraordinary talent. He even wrote 'classical' music, including orchestral and a wind quintet (!) that was remarkably good and wild enough in its way, but far more buttoned-up and formal than his other work.


This assumes, of course, that an audience is receptive. This receptivity does not determine whatever qualities that the art possessed before it was communicated. There are a lot of Americans out there who would rather be watching football.


----------



## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> This assumes, of course, that an audience is receptive. This receptivity does not determine whatever qualities that the art possessed before it was communicated. There are a lot of Americans out there who would rather be watching football.


Yes, probably at least 95% of them.


----------



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Jacck said:


> What is being communicated by music then? Communication implies that the composers has some message, that he encodes into the musical signal, and the musical signal is decoded by the brain of the recipient to receive the message. Is the message sent by the composers the same, or even similar to the message received by the brain of the listener?


Not literally the same, but the same according to convention and past history of the art, right up to the present. It's like watching a football game; we all know the rules. But music has changed its rules as it evolved, unlike football. But I thought football would make it a more understandable concept.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Jacck said:


> What is being communicated by music then? Communication implies that the composers has some message, that he encodes into the musical signal, and the musical signal is decoded by the brain of the recipient to receive the message. Is the message sent by the composers the same, or even similar to the message received by the brain of the listener?


I'd be cautious about statements such as "communication implies that the composers has some message." Musical communication is nonverbal and thus open-ended. What arises in the mind and emotions of the listener is not identical to what was in the mind and emotions of the composer, but the experience of a shared musical language can ensure a very strong correspondence. We can confirm this empirically by observing the wide areas of agreement about what works of music are felt to "mean."


----------



## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Jacck said:


> What is being communicated by music then? Communication implies that the composers have some message, that he encodes into the musical signal, and the musical signal is decoded by the brain of the recipient to receive the message. Is the message sent by the composers the same, or even similar to the message received by the brain of the listener?


If you feel this way, then please desist in trying to understand or explain something like Mahler's 3rd to others as you've done in another thread and completely misrepresented him. He's not trying to send a literal verbal telegram encoded in music in 1s and 0s, but music does have the power of mood, association, and suggestion that can be felt and sensed.

Some frustrated and skeptical listeners like to continually say that _nothing is possible_,_ nothing can be communicated in sound_, and I'm not referring to Mahler who can be quite clear in what he's doing, at least to those with imagination. Some of these great composers will also spell out what they're attempting to do in their private or public communications on the music. But one has to look for it and be receptive. It's not brain surgery. but the literal-minded, the confirmed rationalists tend to lack imagination and that's one of the problems and limitations of that dimension of the mind. It's only one dimension of reality, though it certainly has some great uses. Logic is essentially the function of the left-brain and imagination is the function of the right. Mahler's 3rd is highly suggestive of the imaginative idea of_ the creation of the world_ and, for some, for most, it's possible to hear his act of creation in the music. He's also _talked_ about his idea of what he felt a symphony should be without being too literal. In the meantime, it helps to understand the nature of object and subjective reality.

Left Hemisphere:
- one-at-a-time processing
- sequential: A to B to C
- looks at details: a wart
- splits the world into identifiable, namable bits and pieces
- is logical; sees cause and effect
- is receptive to verifiable aspects of the world: 2 x 2
- charts information aspects of thought
- produces linear thinking
- rule-governed ideation: draws on pre-existing fixed codes; 
relies heavily on previously accumulated, organized information
- has the power of syntax, the grammatical stringing together of words
- is a splitter: distinction important
- can remember complex motor sequences
- talks and talks and talks
- knows "how"

Right Hemisphere:
- all-at-once processing
- simultaneous: a complex image
- looks at the whole: a face
- connects the world into related wholes
- is analogic: sees correspondences, resemblances
- is receptive to qualitative, unbounded aspects of the world: feeling states
- charts emotional nuances of thought
- produces imagistic thinking
- transformative, open-ended ideation: draws on unbounded qualitative patterns that are not organized into sequences but that cluster around images of crystallized feelings
- has limited syntax, but responds to words as images or to sentences recalled as a single unit: words of a song, a poem, or a jingle
- is a lumper: connectedness important
- can remember complex images
- is mute - uses pictures, not words
- discovers "what"
- is receptive to words as design


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> I'd be cautious about statements such as "communication implies that the composers has some message." Musical communication is nonverbal and thus open-ended. What arises in the mind and emotions of the listener is not identical to what was in the mind and emotions of the composer, but the experience of a shared musical language can ensure a very strong correspondence. We can confirm this empirically by observing the wide areas of agreement about what works of music are felt to "mean."


And when the demolition of the Berlin wall in 1989 was celebrated with a performance of Beethoven's 9th symphony timed to coincide with the end of travel restrictions between East and West Germany, the music had a message, or added to the message, didn't it? And that message wasn't exclusively in the words of Schiller's Ode to Joy, otherwise those words could simply have been recited without the music. And that message was intended by Beethoven, though he lived long before the Berlin wall was built.

Art can have emotional (including aesthetic) or intellectual content, or both. If it has neither, what's the point of it? Even bad boy provocateur John Cage, and many like him both inside and outside the classical music world (consider the celebrity contemporary artist Jeff Koons, for example), at his baddest is making an intellectual point by trying to get the listener to re-examine his comfortable assumptions about what music is and can be.


----------



## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Literal-minded/creative-minded, left-hemisphere/right-hemisphere...and on and on and on.

Most people are not that black and white. I can both write and sew (a very complex motor skill) with right and left hands. As a tailor I have to both understand the parts in isolation, yet have a vision for the completed piece which doesn't exist unless I draft it then cut it out and make it.

Many of us can visualise entire ideas at once whilst also having a facility for building it up with pieces. This deliberate separation into such types (though a minority of people do conform for certain reasons) cheapens and simplifies human beings and is actually very much an example of the cheap rationalisation thrown as an accusation to those who refuse to deal in wishy-washy discourse.


----------



## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> I'd be cautious about statements such as "communication implies that the composers has some message." Musical communication is nonverbal and thus open-ended. What arises in the mind and emotions of the listener is not identical to what was in the mind and emotions of the composer, but the experience of a shared musical language can ensure a very strong correspondence. We can confirm this empirically by observing the wide areas of agreement about what works of music are felt to "mean."


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication
the whole misunderstanding is about the word communication. I understand it in the technical engineering sense, where to communicate something means to encode a message, transmit it over some channel (for example EM waves) and then decode it on the receiver end. But the message in music is ineffable = incomprehensible


----------



## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

eugeneonagain said:


> Literal-minded/creative-minded, left-hemisphere/right-hemisphere...and on and on and on.
> 
> Most people are not that black and white. I can both write and sew (a very complex motor skill) with right and left hands. As a tailor I have to both understand the parts in isolation, yet have a vision for the completed piece which doesn't exist unless I draft it then cut it out and make it.
> 
> Many of us can visualise entire ideas at once whilst also having a facility for building it up with pieces. This deliberate separation into such types (though a minority of people do conform for certain reasons) cheapens and simplifies human beings and is actually very much an example of the cheap rationalisation thrown as an accusation to those who refuse to deal in wishy-washy discourse.


I won't even argue about this silly simplistic hemispheric dichotomy
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/...rain-right-brain-myth-will-probably-never-die


----------



## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

eugeneonagain said:


> Literal-minded/creative-minded, left-hemisphere/right-hemisphere...and on and on and on.
> 
> Most people are not that black and white. I can both write and sew (a very complex motor skill) with right and left hands. As a tailor I have to both understand the parts in isolation, yet have a vision for the completed piece which doesn't exist unless I draft it then cut it out and make it.
> 
> Many of us can visualise entire ideas at once whilst also having a facility for building it up with pieces. This deliberate separation into such types (though a minority of people do conform for certain reasons) cheapens and simplifies human beings and is actually very much an example of the cheap rationalisation thrown as an accusation to those who refuse to deal in wishy-washy discourse.


The brain hemispheres work together but one will tend to dominate at a time. Being able to sew with your right and left hand is not the same thing, and understanding how the brain works and coordinates its responses hardly cheapens it... Rather than considering the scientific research and the possibilities of the brain, it's just another response where if somebody says 'up' you automatically say 'down' with the usual sour attitude and habitual resistance. The right side of the brain associated with symbols, imagery, metaphor, and creativity can be cultivated and it's been developed in many writers, musicians, and artists.


----------



## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Jacck said:


> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication
> the whole misunderstanding is about the word communication. I understand it in the technical engineering sense, where to communicate something means to encode a message, transmit it over some channel (for example EM waves) and then decode it on the receiver end. But the message in music is ineffable = incomprehensible


Music _is_ still able to communicate something but not necessarily in _words_. People are just trying to point this out that it's possible. Sometimes the communication can be felt and sensed like someone communicating love through the touch of the hand or a look of the eyes. Music can communicate on another level yes related to a sense, feeling, or emotion, and maybe that's what it's trying to tell you, and it helps when the mind, the intellect, is quiet rather than compulsively thinking all the time and getting in the way. The benefits of the stillness and quietude of the mind have been pointed out many times in spiritual teachings for centuries in many cultures and I'm sure you've come across them unless you've totally rejected them


----------



## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Larkenfield said:


> The brain hemispheres work together but one will tend to dominate at the time. Being able to sew with your right and left hand is not the same thing, and understanding how the brain works and coordinates its responses hardly cheapens it. Rather than learn something it's just another another response where if somebody says up you automatically say down with the usual sour attitude and habitual negativity. Sorry, but this sour resistant attitude to just about everything has been pointed out many times.


Resistant? Resistant to what? Your obvious truths?

I don't need to 'learn' basic facts about the brain and certainly not from those who are saying 'brain' but always thinking of something else.

You are no instructor for me. I too tire of people pouring out gallons of mystical claptrap and more-or-less demanding to be respected for it. No chance.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Jacck said:


> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication
> the whole misunderstanding is about the word communication. I understand it in the technical engineering sense, where to communicate something means to encode a message, transmit it over some channel (for example EM waves) and then decode it on the receiver end. But the message in music is ineffable = incomprehensible


Art is not technical engineering, is it? Certainly you knew, when fluteman spoke of music "communicating," that he wasn't using the word in that limited sense.

I don't agree that music is incomprehensible. Meaning that can't be fully expressed in words may still be meaning which can be apprehended. Music has nonverbal "languages" of feeling which people understand readily. If it didn't, we could replace the score of _Don Giovanni_ with that of _Pelleas et Melisande_ and nobody would notice anything wrong.


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Art is not technical engineering, is it?


This point actually needed to be made? Apparently so. I will point out that even human dwellings estimated by archaeologists to be over 40,000 years old include examples of visual art and even evidence of music. Art has always been important to humans, and from that I infer that it has always been meant to convey something or have some significant and generally understood meaning. I don't know what anyone who can't accept that concept is doing here. I do concede that technical engineering has also always been important.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

fluteman said:


> This point actually needed to be made? Apparently so. I will point out that even human dwellings estimated by archaeologists to be over 40,000 years old include examples of visual art and even evidence of music. Art has always been important to humans, and from that I infer that it has always been meant to convey something or have some significant and generally understood meaning. I don't know what anyone who can't accept that concept is doing here. *I do concede that technical engineering has also always been important.*


God, yes. The chair in which I sit to listen to music had better have four legs of equal length.


----------



## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

In response to the OP, I don't see Bach as a conservative in his time as some of his contemporaries were, although his music in today's standards is not radical in any sense. With Schoenberg, radical music took a new meaning from before. Composers have tried to keep raising the bar ever since with different ways to compose, or impose different ways to listen. I think we're fortunate in these times to have a wide and interesting spectrum of music readily available. 


I don't think music can get too radical. It is the natural progression for all avenues to be explored. It doesn't necessarily need to be tasteful.


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Phil loves classical said:


> In response to the OP, I don't see Bach as a conservative in his time as some of his contemporaries were, although his music in today's standards is not radical in any sense.


In Bach's later life, some saw him as pretty old-fashioned. This book, an excellent read, explores that issue using the famous meeting between JS Bach and Frederick the Great as background.


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Just as an aside, IMO, most communication is nonverbal. At least when we're conscious, our faces and bodies never stop communicating, and most of what they say would be difficult, awkward, inappropriate, or impossible to verbalize accurately. Actions really do speak louder than words, as anyone who has received a thoughtful gift, a warm hug, or an outraged smack knows quite well. Much of what we usually consider verbal communication is actually nonverbal vocalizations (sighs, grunts, growls, gasps, hisses, wails, shrieks, ahs, oohs, hmms, umms, tsks, perhaps laughter should count as well). Some other audible communication is not really "verbal": finger snaps, claps, pounding a fist on a table. And almost all human verbal communication is inflected with elements nonverbal communication (volume, emphasis, tones). 

In short, we are not computers sending bits of information with each other. Sure, we can and do communicate verbal information, but most of the time we are herd animals negotiating complex social relationships that are far more important to our wellbeing than almost any information we exchange. Restoring sociality to the central place in our self-concept implies a vulnerability, a need, that may make us less comfortable than imaging ourselves as essentially independent calculators, but it will probably pay for itself later: if so, it would be wise for us to stop reducing ourselves and our communication to what can be verbalized in mere words. 

Anyway, at least sometimes, the fundamental elements of music must be build on that, or even amount to nonverbal communication--and in fact, at least sometimes, one of the most powerful, effective forms of nonverbal communication.


----------



## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_So my questions are how highly do you value revolutionaries in comparison with conservatives? Which are the more important in the history of music? And, when we come to more modern times, can a composer be too conservative? Or too radical? _

You could ask these questions about any area of endeavor and get the same answers. People when young want what's new and often what's different. Some people when old find it hard to adapt to what's new, especially if they didn't' grow up with it.

I think everything plays a role and can tell you my music library is full of both conservatives and radicals.


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

science said:


> Just as an aside, IMO, most communication is nonverbal. At least when we're conscious, our faces and bodies never stop communicating, and most of what they say would be difficult, awkward, inappropriate, or impossible to verbalize accurately. Actions really do speak louder than words, as anyone who has received a thoughtful gift, a warm hug, or an outraged smack knows quite well. Much of what we usually consider verbal communication is actually nonverbal vocalizations (sighs, grunts, growls, gasps, hisses, wails, shrieks, ahs, oohs, hmms, umms, tsks, perhaps laughter should count as well). Some other audible communication is not really "verbal": finger snaps, claps, pounding a fist on a table. And almost all human verbal communication is inflected with elements nonverbal communication (volume, emphasis, tones).
> 
> In short, we are not computers sending bits of information with each other. Sure, we can and do communicate verbal information, but most of the time we are herd animals negotiating complex social relationships that are far more important to our wellbeing than almost any information we exchange. Restoring sociality to the central place in our self-concept implies a vulnerability, a need, that may make us less comfortable than imaging ourselves as essentially independent calculators, but it will probably pay for itself later: if so, it would be wise for us to stop reducing ourselves and our communication to what can be verbalized in mere words.
> 
> Anyway, at least sometimes, the fundamental elements of music must be build on that, or even amount to nonverbal communication--and in fact, at least sometimes, one of the most powerful, effective forms of nonverbal communication.


All very well said, and that is why their are no meaningful answers to Enthusiast's questions in post #1. Music draws on traditions, often very old and firmly entrenched traditions. Music can also offer new and unique ideas that depart from at least some of those traditions, either subtly or very obviously and dramatically. For me, the best music does both effectively, and it has always been thus. Whether the new creative ideas are subtle (conservative) or obvious and dramatic (radical) means little in itself -- the best composers understand when to take each approach.


----------



## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

science said:


> Just as an aside, IMO, most communication is nonverbal. At least when we're conscious, our faces and bodies never stop communicating, and most of what they say would be difficult, awkward, inappropriate, or impossible to verbalize accurately. Actions really do speak louder than words, as anyone who has received a thoughtful gift, a warm hug, or an outraged smack knows quite well. Much of what we usually consider verbal communication is actually nonverbal vocalizations (sighs, grunts, growls, gasps, hisses, wails, shrieks, ahs, oohs, hmms, umms, tsks, perhaps laughter should count as well). Some other audible communication is not really "verbal": finger snaps, claps, pounding a fist on a table. And almost all human verbal communication is inflected with elements nonverbal communication (volume, emphasis, tones).
> 
> In short, we are not computers sending bits of information with each other. Sure, we can and do communicate verbal information, but most of the time we are herd animals negotiating complex social relationships that are far more important to our wellbeing than almost any information we exchange. Restoring sociality to the central place in our self-concept implies a vulnerability, a need, that may make us less comfortable than imaging ourselves as essentially independent calculators, but it will probably pay for itself later: if so, it would be wise for us to stop reducing ourselves and our communication to what can be verbalized in mere words.
> 
> Anyway, at least sometimes, the fundamental elements of music must be build on that, or even amount to nonverbal communication--and in fact, at least sometimes, one of the most powerful, effective forms of nonverbal communication.


I disagree with comparing music to nonverbal communication. Nonverbal communication between the bald apes called humans is mostly about signaling social dominance, sending and receiving sexual signals and stuff like that. Music does none of that. It does not communicate anything


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Jacck said:


> I disagree with comparing music to nonverbal communication. Nonverbal communication between the bald apes called humans is mostly about signaling social dominance, sending and receiving sexual signals and stuff like that. Music does none of that. *It does not communicate anything*


By a rough estimate, 99.99 % of humanity disagrees with you.


----------



## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> By a rough estimate, 99.99 % of humanity disagrees with you.


what does a sunflower communicate to you? Or Bartok's string quartet? Isn't it just a beautiful sight/beautiful sound? Why should it communicate any meaning?


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Jacck said:


> what does a sunflower communicate to you? Or Bartok's string quartet? Isn't it just a beautiful sight/beautiful sound? Why should it communicate any meaning?


A sunflower is not a human expression. A string quartet is. Nevertheless a sunflower has aesthetic qualities which may have meanings for us if we're conscious of them. It is living, it is striving for life, it is reaching for the light, it is bright and glowing and sensuous and fresh and strong... These are attributes and qualities of a sunflower which are not communications but would be if the sunflower were an artist's creation presented for our appreciation.

A string quartet is an artist's creation and is a formal abstraction. Its forms, though dynamic, don't represent literally the functions of life, but they are evocative of them and may be read as representing them in many ways. The composer chooses the forms and combines them in such a way as to direct our reading of them in certain channels and not others, evoking a certain definite yet open field of emotional experience. That is communication.


----------



## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> A sunflower is not a human expression. A string quartet is. Nevertheless a sunflower has aesthetic qualities which may have meanings for us if we're conscious of them. It is living, it is striving for life, it is reaching for the light, it is bright and glowing and sensuous and fresh and strong... These are attributes and qualities of a sunflower which are not communications but would be if the sunflower were an artist's creation presented for our appreciation.
> 
> A string quartet is an artist's creation and is a formal abstraction. Its forms, though dynamic, don't represent literally the functions of life, but they are evocative of them and may be read as representing them in many ways. The composer chooses the forms and combines them in such a way as to direct our reading of them in certain channels and not others, evoking a certain definite yet open field of emotional experience. That is communication.


why would music need to try to evokate anything? Can I just not compose a beautiful melody and enjoy it and not think about it as representing something else beyond it or communicating any meanings beyond its beauty?


----------



## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_music
_"Kant, in his Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, dismissed music as "more enjoyment than culture" because of its lack of conceptual content, thus taking as a negative the very feature of music that others celebrated. Johann Gottfried Herder, in contrast, regarded music as the highest of the arts because of its spirituality, which Herder linked to the invisibility of sound. The ensuing arguments among musicians, composers, music historians and critics have, in effect, never stopped. "_
I am more on the Kant side of the argument.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Jacck said:


> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_music
> _"Kant, in his Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, dismissed music as "more enjoyment than culture" because of its lack of conceptual content, thus taking as a negative the very feature of music that others celebrated. Johann Gottfried Herder, in contrast, regarded music as the highest of the arts because of its spirituality, which Herder linked to the invisibility of sound. The ensuing arguments among musicians, composers, music historians and critics have, in effect, never stopped. "_
> I am more on the Kant side of the argument.


Why frame it as an argument at all? You're free to get essentially the same kind of experience from Bruckner as you get from bratwurst. Just don't insist that I'm doing the same, 'cause I'm not.


----------



## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

People will always hear music through the lens of their own experience, whether they are positive or negative, their worldview, their philosophy of life, their religious or spiritual orientation, or not hear it at all, not be seriously influenced or affected by it at all. _The mind has a way of informing or educating or opening the ears._ So it's the people who hear it who make it cultural or not. But before it's even heard, it's all that people have already put into it creatively as musicians and performers that needs to be considered too as an aspect of culture, and sometimes that side of it is never considered but only the interests of the listener and what he or she thinks, and even someone who is very famous may not be a very good listener and appreciate its full value.


----------



## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Larkenfield said:


> People will always hear music through the lens of their own experience, whether they are positive or negative, their worldview, their philosophy of life, their religious or spiritual orientation, or not hear it at all, be seriously influenced or affected by it at all. The mind has a way of informing and educating and opening the ears. So it's the people who hear it who make it cultural or not. But before it's even heard, it's all that people have already put into it that needs to be considered too as an aspect of culture, and sometimes that side of it is never considered at all but only the selfish listener and what he or she thinks, and even someone who is very famous may not be a very good listener.


so music is like a Rorschach inkblot, isn't it? I can project parts of myself onto it.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Jacck said:


> so music is like a Rorschach inkblot, isn't it? I can project parts of myself onto it.


All art is like that to an extent - every individual reacts in his own way - but an inkblot is not intended to evoke anything in particular, whereas art is intended to and so limits our options by the artist's choice of elements. Works of art differ in the specificity of their expressive goals, but unlike Rorschach inkblots they do have such goals.


----------



## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> All art is like that to an extent - every individual reacts in his own way - but an inkblot is not intended to evoke anything in particular, whereas art is intended to and so limits our options by the artist's choice of elements. Works of art differ in the specificity of their expressive goals, but unlike Rorschach inkblots they do have such goals.


Music is a very abstract art. It mostly does not represent anything concrete (of course there are exceptions), and hence does not communicate anything concrete. It functions as an inkblot. Of course there are different colors. Red music evokes violence, yellow music anxiety, green music nature and blue music peace. But that is as far as the communication goes. The colors represent different moods (which might or might not be shared), but music cannot get any more concrete than that.


----------



## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Jacck said:


> so music is like a Rorschach inkblot, isn't it? I can project parts of myself onto it.


The words "Rorschach inkblot" and "project" were never mentioned. That was your interpretation and projection, and in a way, it demonstrates what I was trying to say about how one's perceptions can color their experience of music or probably just about anything else. There's a difference between projecting something onto the music and hearing it through a particular lens. They are not the same. Perhaps life is about viewing one's experiences through a clear lens.

"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow ****** of his cavern."
-William Blake


----------



## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Larkenfield said:


> The words "Rorschach inkblot" and "project" were never mentioned. That was your interpretation and projection, and in a way, it demonstrates what I was trying to say about how one's perceptions can color their experience of music.


I just thought that I rephrased what you were saying, but maybe not. To communicate what we mean and to be mutually understood is not easy, is it? Even in language which is much more concrete and representative than music, miscommunications and misunderstandings are very common.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Jacck said:


> Music is a very abstract art. It mostly does not represent anything concrete (of course there are exceptions), and hence does not communicate anything concrete. It functions as an inkblot. Of course there are different colors. Red music evokes violence, yellow music anxiety, green music nature and blue music peace. But that is as far as the communication goes. The colors represent different moods (which might or might not be shared), but music cannot get any more concrete than that.


I think you underestimate the subtlety of music's languages (plural, as there are so many kinds of music) and the specificity they can have for listeners who share a musical language with the composer. Some composers, such as Wagner and Mahler, had an incredible imagination for the potential of music to suggest and evoke very particular states of feeling. Of course listeners must still differ in the ways their brains interpret what they're hearing.


----------



## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> I think you underestimate the subtlety of music's languages (plural, as there are so many kinds of music) and the specificity they can have for listeners who share a musical language with the composer. Some composers, such as Wagner and Mahler, had an incredible imagination for the potential of music to suggest and evoke very particular states of feeling. Of course listeners must still differ in the ways their brains interpret what they're hearing.


yes, if I share the same cultural background and the same spiritualist beliefs with Mahler, and than get verbal clues from the composer of what the music is about, then there might be something a little more concrete. But it does not exist in the music itself, it has to be communicated extramusically. Go and play Mahlers music to some aborigines from the Kalahari desert and ask them what the music is about. What would they say?


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Jacck said:


> yes, if I share the same cultural background and the same spiritualist beliefs with Mahler, and than get verbal clues from the composer of what the music is about, then there might be something a little more concrete. But it does not exist in the music itself, it has to be communicated extramusically. Go and play Mahlers music to some aborigines from the Kalahari desert and ask them what the music is about. What would they say?


"What would they say?" is the wrong question. What would _anyone_ say? How does _anyone_ express what they feel in words which others can understand - assuming that words even _exist_ for those feelings (and they mostly don't)?

No composer can tell you what his music is "about" in a way that does its meaning justice. Even in music with words there is not a one-to-one mirroring of the one art by the other, nor should there be. The music has dimensions of its own, and music and words can illuminate each other.

Meaning doesn't exist in music itself? It dosn't exist in this sentence itself either. We simply know how to respond to these words in similar ways. That's communication. Your aborigines can learn to read English too - but they might learn to respond to Mahler in less time.


----------



## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> but they might learn to respond to Mahler in less time.


I don't know...give them 25 years and they might get through a symphony or two. The Aborigines are sophisticated, I don't think they'll take him for some sort of sham(an).


----------



## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Jacck said:


> yes, if I share the same cultural background and the same spiritualist beliefs with Mahler, and than get verbal clues from the composer of what the music is about, then there might be something a little more concrete. But it does not exist in the music itself, it has to be communicated extramusically. Go and play Mahlers music to some aborigines from the Kalahari desert and ask them what the music is about. What would they say?


Well, Mahler himself would probably have said that he didn't write his symphonies for aborigines. Posing hypotheticals is not exactly helpful to how people live in western civilization. Nor does his music need an explanation to emotionally communicate something directly to the people and culture he wrote them for. There can be direct experience. People when they hear him aren't necessarily thinking in words or trying to translate him into words. His moods can be immediately felt and experienced through the ineffable qualities of the music. The power of the ineffable is that it still has the ability to engender a response, a reaction, a feeling, an emotion, a sensation in the listener that is beyond words... because it is so subtle and nonmaterial ... too subtle to ever be exactly described... It can only be felt.


----------



## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_I disagree with comparing music to nonverbal communication. Nonverbal communication between the bald apes called humans is mostly about signaling social dominance, sending and receiving sexual signals and stuff like that. Music does none of that. It does not communicate anything _

I wouldn't say it communicates nothing. Do you have a pet? Do you speak with him/her and/or do you have some idea what s/he is trying to say to you? I know what mine is trying to tell me nonverbally. I also know what my wife is trying to tell me nonverbally.

Having said that I agree music is far from nonverbal communication. I would call it the opposite, a form of verbalization … with the possible exception of Cage though I wonder if that is really music.


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Jacck said:


> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_music
> _"Kant, in his Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, dismissed music as "more enjoyment than culture" because of its lack of conceptual content, thus taking as a negative the very feature of music that others celebrated. Johann Gottfried Herder, in contrast, regarded music as the highest of the arts because of its spirituality, which Herder linked to the invisibility of sound. The ensuing arguments among musicians, composers, music historians and critics have, in effect, never stopped. "_
> I am more on the Kant side of the argument.


I am more not on Kant's side. True, he ranked the verbal arts (rhetoric and poetry) highest, then the visual arts of painting and sculpture, and finally music bringing up the rear. But he himself was a man of words, and a product of his time. At the end of his life, or shortly after his death, western secular music underwent many profoundly important developments that had only just begun during his career. Beethoven wrote his fifth symphony. Paganini amazed audiences with the sounds he could produce. Berlioz and Wagner appeared soon thereafter. The modern piano, with its great tonal and dynamic range, was perfected. Enormous opera houses and concert halls were built. Music was no longer just for church or modest entertainment, and it gained prestige as an important art form. Kant might have revised his rankings had he lived through all of that.

More significant to me is the work of another empiricist philosopher, David Hume. He wrote, "Every work of art has also a certain end or purpose, for which it is calculated; and is to be deemed more or less perfect, as it is more or less fitted to attain this end." That is Woodduck's distinction between a sunflower and a string quartet.

Edit: And equally importantly, Hume concludes: "[T]he same excellence of faculties which contributes to the improvement of reason, the same clearness of conception, the same exactness of distinction, the same vivacity of apprehension, are essential to the operations of true taste, and are its infallible concomitants. It seldom, or never happens, that a man of sense, who has experience in any art, cannot judge of its beauty; and it is no less rare to meet with a man who has a just taste without a sound understanding."

Music, no less than any other artistic expression, must be studied and understood conceptually to be fully appreciated.


----------



## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Jacck said:


> why would music need to try to evokate anything? Can I just not compose a beautiful melody and enjoy it and not think about it as representing something else beyond it or communicating any meanings beyond its beauty?


Yes, you can. It's called absolute music and Stravinsky was a great advocate. It's sound for sound's sake and it can exist in and of itself to be appreciated and enjoyed. But it's still going to evoke some type of response in the listener, some type of reaction, or there's nothing happening between the music and the listener. It's either bad music or a dead listener!


----------



## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Jacck said:


> why would music need to try to evokate anything? Can I just not compose a beautiful melody and enjoy it and not think about it as representing something else beyond it or communicating any meanings beyond its beauty?


Perhaps, but "beauty" is a much more complex and multi-faceted concept than you seem to imply here, as is apparent from the ideas of the empiricists who have thought in depth about the principles of aesthetics, such as Kant and, especially in this context, Hume. By the time you are an adult, you have accumulated a massive amount of cultural and environmental information that interacts with your natural instincts and emotions and has a profound impact on your standards of artistic "beauty". We all have a certain degree of "understanding", depending on our backgrounds, that informs our "taste", to use Hume's terms. You don't need a PhD in musicology. You don't need to be the concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic. You don't need to have studied music in school. You have ear training, like it or not.

That is why the comments here of science, Woodduck and Larkenfield, and of David Hume, are on target. And it is also why there are endless debates here that will never be resolved about things like the importance or roles of harmony and tonality, scales, progressions and resolutions, repetitive patterns and drones, dissonance and atonality, rhythm, timbre, etc., in music. We all come to these things pre-disposed with our own understanding we already have developed that is non-verbal but still very real. And while there is much that we share in our various understandings, especially those of us raised entirely within western culture, we are each of us unique in often subtle ways.


----------



## Tikoo Tuba (Oct 15, 2018)

Jacck said:


> Go and play Mahlers music to some aborigines from the Kalahari desert and ask them what the music is about. What would they say?


See Yo Yo Ma's documentary The World On A String . In the final scene from Kalahari the villagers are gathered for a cello recital . As the camera pans their faces for a response - nothing . In an earlier scene the village master musician gives a performance . He plays the fretless banjo fast and micro-tonally . Ya! fun for this audience of me . I've played banjo like that for children , and it's loved unconditionally .


----------



## StrangeHocusPocus (Mar 8, 2019)

Music is Beauty.............................


----------

