# Level of Complexity/Difficulty in Classical Music



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Recently several threads have included discussions of difficulty in understanding music. Those discussions led me to the questions in this thread. Basically I'd like people to discuss whether complexity (related to difficulty in understanding) inevitably increases in classical music over time and to what extent complexity increases one's enjoyment of the music.

Music has clearly increased in complexity from its early stages. Perhaps the Classical era was a time in which simpler music was favored. My sense is that some modern music includes the most complexity found in music (please correct me if you disagree). So one could view music as having a long term trend toward more complexity. The question is whether the continued increase in complexity and future possible increases are inevitable given the general desires of composers. 

We all enjoy music for various reasons. I think most or all of us would say that music that is too simple (e.g. Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star) is not as enjoyable as the classical music we love. But given a certain minimal level of complexity (say that exhibited by major works from the Baroque on), does added complexity increase your enjoyment? Obviously simply adding complexity won't work, but thinking of works that you both enjoy and find complex, does that added complexity add to the enjoyment? Or is it simply another characteristic of the music (like adding vocals, full orchestration, new instruments, etc.)? This question is actually not trivial to answer since it can be hard to determine exactly what does contribute to one's pleasure. Still, I'd appreciate people giving it a try.

So:

1) Is increased complexity past a certain stage (say Romantic music) inevitable?

2) Does increased complexity past a certain stage add to your musical enjoyment?


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## Johann Sebastian Bach (Dec 18, 2015)

I suggest the answer lies in the state of entropy, where a system becomes increasingly complex over time. Using this model, someone somewhere will write a piece where every possible note is played throughout a piece, using every possible rhythm.

We will then know that there is little point in anything any more.......


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

1. No, it is basically cyclic although, over time, new techniques and styles become an accepted part of the toolbox for a composer. Other styles/techniques are dropped as uninteresting and a few remain on the fringes.
2. For me, complexity is just one of the characteristics but I care most about the sum of the parts. Complexity can be a positive factor in many cases, but not necessarily so. And, of course, there is much music that can be enjoyable without it being complex. There is so much music out there to get to know and enjoy and a limited amount of time in which to do it, so there comes a point of diminishing returns in trying to figure out some of it.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

One of the trends over the centuries has been the compulsion among many composers--especially those of the German-speaking and thinking world--toward taking longer and longer amounts of time to say what they wish to say, to the point where an outside observer begins to suspect that excess in length becomes, for such composers (and their auditors) a virtue unto itself. The previous sentence itself illustrates the case, which I attribute to my 25% German ancestry. To certain extent, some (only some) of the Russian composers fell into the same pattern, also thereby churning out seemingly endless symphonies of enormous mass and number. The French, the Italians, the Spaniards, and many others, though, seem to still value an assured brevity, a crispness, a conciseness, a precision in musical utterance, for which I am exceedingly grateful. So, while I value a certain complexity that one might associate with duration, I regard in equal or perhaps greater esteem the necessary brilliance it takes to write the near-perfect shorter piece; this just one reason I prefer concertos to symphonies, for instance-- so much can be said in so many different ways within a manageable time frame.


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## Guest (Jan 12, 2016)

Post deleted. Sorry, I can't be bothered for the moment. I'll wait until I'm retired.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

I don't think difficulty is an absolute.

Perceived difficulty in music is entirely relative to one's own experiences and expectations. Most of us today do not hear Wagner's music as endless noise and torturous dissonance, but this is not due to our being better listeners so much as accustomed to his harmonic/melodic idiom. We might very well find Renaissance polyphony, with its non-tonal palette, to be more difficult than the early works of the Baroque, but for those schooled in the styles of the 16th century, the seconda prattica was tantamount to a violation of all known rules.

In regards to your questions:

1) Is increased complexity past a certain stage (say Romantic music) inevitable?

No, nor do I acknowledge the idea that complexity has increased in a linear way. Certain harmonic complexities were added to the tradition within the Romantic era, and several more in the modern, but much of Modernism consisted in stripping away the more overt complexities of Late Romanticism. That this simplification caused and causes some difficulties for hearers belies the idea that complexity is directly correlated to difficulty.

2) Does increased complexity past a certain stage add to your musical enjoyment?

No. Complexity is completely value neutral.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Strange Magic said:


> One of the trends over the centuries has been the compulsion among many composers--especially those of the German-speaking and thinking world--toward taking longer and longer amounts of time to say what they wish to say, to the point where an outside observer begins to suspect that excess in length becomes, for such composers (and their auditors) a virtue unto itself.


Berg seemed to buck that trend

and Webern

and (dare I suggest it?) Schoenberg?


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

There is a certain approach to listening I've seen advocated on this forum, which we might call a Zen-lite approach, in which we cultivate a kind of passive receptivity and non-attachment, taking the music "as it is."

The advocates of this approach tend to reject the whole idea of music being more or less difficult or even profess bafflement as to what that means. They likely reject the concept of difficulty as an impediment to enjoyment. From their perspective, I'm sure they're right.

This is not how I listen, however. I think Wagner is more difficult listening than Mozart, and Stockhausen more difficult than Wagner. I don't see a problem with this.


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

^^^ (to isorythm) .... I don't reject that _some_ people find _some_ music more difficult to listen to than others ... but as I posted on a related thread, I find some 'easy' music difficult to enjoy (and difficult to listen to as well) whilst I find some 'difficult' music easy to enjoy (and easy to listen to as well)

Just because I don't agree with what someone else sees as 'difficult' or 'easy' to listen to doesn't mean that I reject your view .... or is that the way it seems to you?


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## Guest (Jan 12, 2016)

isorhythm said:


> [H]owever. I think Wagner is more difficult listening than Mozart, and Stockhausen more difficult than Wagner. I don't see a problem with this.


I don't see it as a problem, either; nor do I hear it as one. However, I disagree entirely that Stockhausen is "more difficult" to listen to than Wagner, at least depending on the work(s) in question. I would much rather listen to (and find more readily digestible) Stockhausen's early *Kreuzspiel* than a buttock-straining Wagner calvary.


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## Guest (Jan 12, 2016)

Mahlerian said:


> 2) Does increased complexity past a certain stage add to your musical enjoyment?
> 
> No. Complexity is completely value neutral.


This is all I care to think or say on the matter.

I've been listening to the "New Complexity" school of contemporary composers a lot lately, but I believe, somewhere out there, there are a couple of posts about how I didn't care for the name. And I still believe it to be a somewhat misleading name. Some people seem to think that the movement is touting its complexity for its own sake; careful listening (and reading), however, will reveal that the complexity exists only as a tool to yield marvelous polyphonies and colors.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*Retired and Tired*



TalkingHead said:


> Post deleted. Sorry, I can't be bothered for the moment. I'll wait until I'm retired.


I am retired and I am tired of this debate.

The problem is that there is a small group of classical music types who just plain hate 90% of the music composed after 1900. They create all sorts of bogus rhetoric to validate their aesthetics and discredit any aesthetics that is incompatible with theirs.

The simple answer is that a person has the right to like and dislike whatever they want.

The simple answer to the OP is that there are complicated works I like and there are complicated works that I dislike. So what?


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

I really can only give an anecdotal explanation based on my experiences. I have no idea if what I am about to say is correct.

I recently read a study from the Journal of Consumer Psychology (I told mmsbls about it and he has read it) concerning popular music. According to this study the most popular, popular music tends to be simple and repetitive songs.

Even Mozart, who may be one of the more accessible classical composers, would be too complicated for most people.

I used to have a private office and work. I could listen to any music I like. I recall many times when I would be listening to a Mozart Symphony when someone would come in and comment that they could not understand how I could listen to that racket. I remember one guy who liked an atonal work because it sounded like the Soundtrack to _Planet of the Apes_.

Now I realize that someone is going to come back with some remark that should have told that co-worker to shove it. That would be difficult to do if that person is one of your superiors.

The point is that it appears that most people have trouble understanding Mozart. The structure of a Mozart symphony, sonata or concerto is really complicated when compared to "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy I've Got Love in My Tummy".


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Does anyone know why Ferneyhough writes complicated music, with rhythms which are so difficult to execute?

As a listener I'm pretty oblivious to the complexity - his quartets don't come across as more complicated than Beethoven's to me, op 131. I never listen analytically to anything, I just lie back and let it all wash over me, or more or less. But I've read that under the bonnet there are some pretty complicated things going on, and he deliberately writes very challenging scores for musicians to play. But I don't know why (I haven't managed to get hold of his collected writings.) 

Ferneyhough isn't the only composer who's interested in complicated music. There was also Cicconia, and the music in the Chatilly codex.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

Mandryka said:


> Does anyone know why Ferneyhough writes complicated music, with rhythms which are so difficult to execut?
> 
> As a listener I'm pretty oblivious to the complexity - his quartets don't come across as more complicated than Beethoven's to me. I never listen analytically to anything, I just lie back and let it all wash over me! or more or less. But I've read that under the bonnet there are some pretty complicated things going on, and he deliberately writes very challenging scores for musicians to play. But I don't know why (I haven't manages to get hold of his collected writings.)
> 
> Ferneyhough isn't the only composer who's interesting in complicated music. There was also Cicconia, and the music in the Chatilly codex.


If you get Ferneyhough that is great. I do not get Ferneyhough, so far. My ears should not be an impediment for those who enjoy his music.


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> Does anyone know why Ferneyhough writes complicated music, with rhythms which are so difficult to execut?
> 
> As a listener I'm pretty oblivious to the complexity - his quartets don't come across as more complicated than Beethoven's to me, op 131. I never listen analytically to anything, I just lie back and let it all wash over me, or more or less. But I've read that under the bonnet there are some pretty complicated things going on, and he deliberately writes very challenging scores for musicians to play. But I don't know why (I haven't managed to get hold of his collected writings.)
> 
> Ferneyhough isn't the only composer who's interested in complicated music. There was also Cicconia, and the music in the Chatilly codex.


There's a nice video on youtube I think of him talking about Time and Motion Study II and working with the cellist where they both talk about complexity and what it achieves. Very interesting - hope you can find it/are interested!


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## Guest (Jan 12, 2016)

^ Gotta say, Dgee, that I haven't got my mind/ear around Ferneyhough for the moment. Can't quite work out if the guy is a total pseud or not, but I'm working on it.


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Got it - a great video. Just musicians being excited about music


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Well, compare David Bowie to Stephen Foster.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> Does anyone know why Ferneyhough writes complicated music, with rhythms which are so difficult to execute?


Actually impossible for a human to execute. I don't get the point of that either. I've heard it described as some kind of postmodern comment on the relationship between composer, score and performer.

His music does nothing for me, also. Finnissy is a different story....


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

A lot of the modern music I like is labelled complex by many, but I like so much more besides. I think I'm a broad spectrum listener. Both complexity and simplicity have their merits: it depends on how they're done.

Thanks for asking, as it made me think about complexity versus simplicity. Is Ferneyhough more complex than Scelsi, for example? Do more notes and quicker action make a work more complex than less notes and slower tempo?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

In Ferneyhough's music, the complexity seems to me as listener to be completely irrelevant - in The 6th quartet and Transit, I just hear melodies, harmonies and voices all arranged in a stable and unifying structure.

My informal impression, as a naive listener, is that a Mahlerian type these may well be right for these pieces at least: Ferneyhough's music is _essentially_ just like old music even though some of the technicalities are new inventions.

In The Natural History of Photography (Finnissy) the complexity is slightly different, because it has to do with intertextual references. The sense of the music comes from the citations. But even this sort of practice is quite common in older music. The sense of Bach's German Organ Mass comes from the references to liturgical music, and to Lutherian exegesis, and to numerology and iconography embedded in the score. The same may be true about Josquin, whose masses are full of numerology, and mystical symbolism.

But in the case of the Bach and the Finnissy, I think a listener's pleasure is really transformed by understanding the complexity. In the Ferneyhough, as in Beethoven, the complexity's just a nerdy thing.

I'll just add that one thing I'm interested in is how this British post-modern music seems to have some interesting things in common with Irish modern literature - I mean Finnegan's Wake and Ulysses.


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

1) No need to debate the merits of recent controversial music here. Debussy established that the answer is "No" (if that needed establishing).

2) Probably not. For example, many of Verdi's greatest moments aren't clearly more complex than "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" (which is itself a lovely tune, though better as "Ah vous dirai-je maman" because then the words aren't so dumb).


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## Guest (Jan 13, 2016)

My starting point would be to say that "complexity" and "difficulty" are not the same, and care should be taken to distinguish between them. I would add that without a definition and exemplification of either, it's difficult to say what role they play in enjoyment.

A couple of posters have recently referred to the idea that some composers take too long to say what they want to say, and they should really learn to be economical. Doesn't that presume that we can infer what they "want to say", and can tell them how to say it more economically? I would not be so presumptuous, except in really really obvious cases where we would all agree that, for example, Mahler didn't really need the repeat in the first movement of his 6th Symphony and Beethoven's Pastoral takes too long to explore the variations in its first movement. 

And why must everyone take it out on _Twinkle Twinkle_? "Music that is too simple" says mmsbls. Too simple for what? If it was intended as a lullaby, it was perhaps perfectly fit for its purpose. (Let's ignore that the tune I assume we're alluding to was not composed for the poem written by Jane Taylor.)

Having said all that, I enjoy long melodic lines, but also short ones; simple driving rhythms as well as more complex polyrhythms; plain instrumentations as well as ornate ones. I do like the challenge of trying to find the patterns in music that at first hearing doesn't seem to have any; as well as being relieved at hearing the obvious and the predictable.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

mmsbls said:


> Music has clearly increased in complexity from its early stages. Perhaps the Classical era was a time in which simpler music was favored. My sense is that some modern music includes the most complexity found in music (please correct me if you disagree). So one could view music as having a long term trend toward more complexity. The question is whether the continued increase in complexity and future possible increases are inevitable given the general desires of composers.


Given that a lot of modern music _doesn't_ contain the most complexity found in music, by quite a long distance, then I'd say there's nothing inevitable about an increase in complexity.

As to the second question, "Does increased complexity past a certain stage add to your musical enjoyment?":
My first instinct is to steal from Arthur C Clarke and say that "any sufficiently complex music is indistinguishable from random noise", but on second thoughts there's also simple music that literally _is_ random noise. More generally speaking I suppose if we were to plot a graph of my enjoyment vs complexity it would resemble some sort of bell curve, but how tall or symmetrical I couldn't say.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

new complexity seems to me a a sort of modern rococò


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

Beethoven's Große Fuge was considered incomprehensible by critics in 1826. 




It's not jolting today because it's influence has been so widespread for nearly two centuries. The critics may have thought it was too complex but I get it, as do many others. I think it's Beethoven's best work. It certainly wasn't too complex for the composer but we all might have struggled in 1826.

I think people are just reluctant to accept great change too quickly (classical or otherwise). The critics were listening to this 




 only months prior, probably expecting more of the same.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Couac Addict said:


> Beethoven's Große Fuge was considered incomprehensible by critics in 1826.


In fairness, I doubt they'd have found it as incomprehensible if the Takács Quartet had been around to play it.


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

Blancrocher said:


> In fairness, I doubt they'd have found it as incomprehensible if the Takács Quartet had been around to play it.


I think Mahlerian has made a similar observation about musicians and conductors learning to play and interpret e.g. Schoenberg and Webern better over time, and I guess it can take a while for performance traditions to get established.


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

MacLeod said:


> And why must everyone take it out on _Twinkle Twinkle_? "Music that is too simple" says mmsbls. Too simple for what? If it was intended as a lullaby, it was perhaps perfectly fit for its purpose. (Let's ignore that the tune I assume we're alluding to was not composed for the poem written by Jane Taylor.)


Best setting? 






norman bates said:


> new complexity seems to me a a sort of modern rococò


This is interesting, but shouldn't an analog to the rococo be pretty?



TurnaboutVox said:


> I think Mahlerian has made a similar observation about musicians and conductors learning to play and interpret e.g. Schoenberg and Webern better over time, and I guess it can take a while for performance traditions to get established.


To me it seems more the other way around. Quoth Mahler: "Tradition is sloppiness." For example, the best played recording of Schönberg's Pierrot lunaire is easily the first one, supervised by the composer in 1951 (



) (unfortunately, vocalist Stiedry-Wagner seems to be mostly just holding on for dear life, but as far as the accompaniment, the competition isn't even _close_) (and Greg Sandow just did a piece on how the recording of Webern conducting his arrangement of Schubert shows that everybody else does Webern wrong - well, he'd say differently from the composer's intentions; I'd say wrong).

As for Mozart and Beethoven, I suspect that one reason why they sound less difficult to us than they evidently did to their contemporaries is because over time we've settled into performance habits that smooth over some of the difficulty of their music (including x-treme HIP groups like the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, who can start an allegro ridiculously fast, scrape and smack their instruments to an effect like a cross between Iannis Xenakis and the Pogues, and _still_ maunder so much over the soft parts that the whole thing comes out sounding like an attenuated andante; or perform a comic number so Lightly and Playfully that the result probably has more kinship with Michel Legrand than with the music that Stendhal found so melancholy compared to Paisiello and Cimarosa).


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

That ellusive something transcending the notes, structure, harmonies, perceived melodies, is all that matters to me as a listener.
Why am I moved by the music of Ligeti and Rihm, but not by much of Xenakis or Ferneyhough? There's plenty of complexity in all of this.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

starthrower said:


> Why am I moved by the music of Ligeti and Rihm, but not by much of Xenakis or Ferneyhough? There's plenty of complexity in all of this.


I feel the opposite, though I probably should get to know Rihm better (I remember quite enjoying a trio last year.) Because of this discussion I've bien listening to Ferneyhough quartet 5, and i kept thinking of nature imagery - gossamer textures like spiders' webs and rigged textures like the ocean. It all seems really very beautiful to me, and to flow in a very organic way - I can't explain it any better than that.

And as I suspected, if there is complexity there it's just lost on me: I don't feel as though I'm listening to anything difficult or challenging at all.

I was listening to a Xenakis quartet a couple of weeks ago, the late one called Tetora played by Jacks. Such peaceful, comforting, shimmering, simple music!


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Mandryka said:


> I've bien listening to Ferneyhough quartet 5, and i kept thinking of nature imagery - gossamer textures like spiders' webs and rigged textures like the ocean. It all seems really very beautiful to me, and to flow in a very organic way - I can't explain it any better than that.


Funny what moves us and the imagery that it invokes. When I listen to Ferneyhough quartets I think of wild beasts scratching and clawing at each other over a fresh kill.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Well, it seems many people don't really think modern music is more complex. My impression came from some things I read and talking with students, but Mahlerian's comment about adding complexities while stripping others away may better describe the music. My comments were not about modern music in general but rather on the most complex music. I was under the impression that certain music created in the 20th century would be considered more complex than anything from earlier times. Perhaps that's not true.

As for (2), I think very complex music would probably be over my head in terms of hearing the details. That's not to say I wouldn't enjoy the music. My thoughts were that I definitely enjoy the added complexity of much Baroque and Romantic music over very early music. I also enjoy the music in a purely aesthetic sense. I also find that I enjoy the added complexity of modern music that has more complicated rhythms. That music may not be considered more complex than earlier music, but I often find the particular rhythmic characteristics interesting and fun.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

TurnaboutVox said:


> I think Mahlerian has made a similar observation about musicians and conductors learning to play and interpret e.g. Schoenberg and Webern better over time, and I guess it can take a while for performance traditions to get established.


When the Grosse Fuge was written, the musicians were probably just playing the notes, because they couldn't understand what Beethoven was trying to do with them.

The meaning of the music has to be understood before interpretation can truly begin.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

The most technically complex music ever written was written in the modern period, to be sure. But not all modern music is complex, and when it is, its complexity is sometimes superficial and thus irrelevant to the listener.


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