# Modern Music? Ask a Composer



## Jaime77

Hi all, 

I am a composer of some 15 years now having studied at Uni but learned as much from just listening and meeting other composers. I left a Phd cos I found it too stifling. I felt the academic thing was not for me. The rivalry was something else at that level. 

My question is as follows...

I assume you are composing what might be called contemporary classical music in the sense that is it notated for the most part and is in some way part of a tradition that includes folks like Bach and Beethoven. 

Now though it is a new century. It has been a hundred years nearly since Schonberg's first breaks into atonality and since then we have had serialism, integral serialism, chance, new complexity, minimlism etc etc. 

Where do you fit? What is you style? Do you feel you need to be a certain way considering the music that came before. Are you more new-complexity or post-minimalism for example. 

Do you accept there are many valid approaches to composing or are you convinced your way is the only legitamate way given the history of music so far? 

How do you feel about dwindling audiences for new music, do you care? 

Seems like a lot of questions but even if you answered a few it would be great. This is a very interesting topic I think that we as composers need to look at.


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## Head_case

Wow. Just how many questions have you asked there? 

Maybe finishing at university would've helped along the journey to answer some of these?

It all feels way beyond me. But then again, I'm definitely not a composer. I'm more of a listener. 

I'm going to have to take a break first ...


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## emiellucifuge

i too am a composer of some 15 years but thats in a different sense...

My style is fairly impressionistic, preferring the sphere and feeling something gives rather than depicting concrete images.
in terms of harmony, the vague conceptbof consonance-dissonance remains largely intact1 The structural aspects of tonality hwve been discarded and the harmony gravitates towards multiple tonal centres in a rather Wagnerian way.
I dont intentionally write this way, its something thats come from inside me. And i dont believe it is the only correct way for everyone.

As for dwindling audiences, it is definitely a concern.


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## Jaime77

lol no these questions were not conclusively answered for me by doing a phd... not at all and I spent 3 years doing it - 8 years studying music at Uni. I am interested anyway it what you have to say. Like I said, u dont have to answer all of them. 

thanks


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## Aramis

As for me, I am creator of completely new style. It is called elephantism. 

The idea is about composing music as heavy as elephant's bottom, yet still swift and gentle as his trumpet. 

My idealistic approach is romantic, but technical and structural approach is more like oyoyoyoyoyo. In my works you will find strange noises along with traditional melodies. Thats because elephants live in many places and eat many fruits from many trees, friends and neightbours. I can dwell in modernistic ZOO, yet still exist in my home in Africa. 

I am influenced by my sins of youth. I have an experience of banging my head with a band, using electric/bass guitar and playing metal/rock music. Therefore you often can find repetative rhythm in my music, clearly exposed. Kind of two motives - rhythmic and melodic. I'm getting rid of it. Slowly. It's not easy. I have beated my wife. Och no, what have I done!


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## StlukesguildOhio

How do you feel about dwindling audiences for new music, do you care? 

Do you really imagine that there is a dwindling audience for "new music"? Even excluding crappy pop music (which I assume is a given) I question just how the audience for composers such as Osvaldo Golijov, Arvo Part, Phillip Glass, John Adams, Thomas Adès, or such compares with the audience Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Berg... or even Mozart, Bach, and Haydn enjoyed during their own lifetime? I almost suspect that even a composer such as Toru Takemitsu, György Sándor Ligeti, or John Cage is better known... maybe even better appreciated (or rather appreciated by a larger audience) than were Bach and Haydn during their own lifetimes. Perhaps the real issue is the the relevance of "classical music" vs popular music in today's culture... and the possibility that popularity and aesthetic merit (or relevancy) are not one and the same. I say this as one who struggles with certain modernist leanings in music and ponders whether some balance between originality and accessibility must be sought.


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## Jaime77

yes a balance between originality and accessiblity is perhaps necessary. You have a fair point about audience sizes, St. Lukes, has it really changed so much. Well we do know what mozart attracts more people to the concert hall than Xenakis. There is more than one reason for this but I do believe that most people, be they musician or non-musician, do prefer a certain level of tonality and a certain level of regular meter. 

You mention Part, Glass and Adams - these three composers are like that. These three write essentially tonal and frequently consonant music with regular meters that you could tap a foot to also and in the case of Part and Glass, often very obvious structures with obvious phrases or melodies returning. 

I have found there to be many composers not writing like this and at academic institutions I know from experience some of these composers are looked down on big time, for being too tonal. There is still this enormous pull towards defining contemporary music as dissonant, atonal or microtonal, unsingable melodies, no discernable beat and extended instrumental technique. These are cliches maybe but it is still prevalent and this kind of music I find is what turns a lot of people off new music. 

I was recently reading a book on music and the brain and there are studies that suggest that not giving people what they want to some extent as regards consonance and regular pulse is not helpful to the make-up of the brain. We in fact, need these things. The brain responds best to certain things and if as composers we ignore these then it is no surprise if nobody much likes the music.


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## Jaime77

emiellucifuge said:


> i too am a composer of some 15 years but thats in a different sense...
> 
> My style is fairly impressionistic, preferring the sphere and feeling something gives rather than depicting concrete images.
> in terms of harmony, the vague conceptbof consonance-dissonance remains largely intact1 The structural aspects of tonality hwve been discarded and the harmony gravitates towards multiple tonal centres in a rather Wagnerian way.
> I dont intentionally write this way, its something thats come from inside me. And i dont believe it is the only correct way for everyone.
> 
> As for dwindling audiences, it is definitely a concern.


I'd like to hear some of your music. It seems you have gone your own way and are happy with your work. That is the best way probably.


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## StlukesguildOhio

yes a balance between originality and accessiblity is perhaps necessary. You have a fair point about audience sizes, St. Lukes, has it really changed so much. Well we do know what mozart attracts more people to the concert hall than Xenakis. 

Of course, by the same token, Shakespeare, Dickens, Poe, and Tolstoy certainly sell more books than Anne Carsen, Yves Bonnefoy, Georges Perec, and even Italo Calvino. New art is quite often challenging in that it has yet to have been absorbed by the larger culture and we lack the advantage of years of critics, historians, and subsequent artists sorting out the strongest works from the mere period pieces.

There is more than one reason for this but I do believe that most people, be they musician or non-musician, do prefer a certain level of tonality and a certain level of regular meter.

To a great extent I agree. Dissonance and atonality have not been embraced by the larger audience... even the larger audience of those who seriously love "classical" or "serious" music. On the other hand... I believe that Modernism opened up many new possibilities for the composer and that we must look at music in such a manner... that there are various possibilities... not a single right approach (something that those on both side of the argument about music have found difficult to do).

You mention Part, Glass and Adams - these three composers are like that. These three write essentially tonal and frequently consonant music with regular meters that you could tap a foot to also and in the case of Part and Glass, often very obvious structures with obvious phrases or melodies returning.

I have found there to be many composers not writing like this and at academic institutions I know from experience some of these composers are looked down on big time, for being too tonal. There is still this enormous pull towards defining contemporary music as dissonant, atonal or microtonal, unsingable melodies, no discernable beat and extended instrumental technique. These are cliches maybe but it is still prevalent and this kind of music I find is what turns a lot of people off new music.

This is what I am speaking of. There are certainly those within various camps of academia who presume an air of aesthetic superiority for that music which is atonal, dissonant, and intentionally "difficult" and who dismiss any music that employs tonality or builds upon older (especially Romantic) traditions as pandering to the masses. I find such thinking as close-minded as the opposite camp which would dismiss the whole of Modernist experimentation as an anomaly or a example of "the emperor's new clothes". I am always struck by by the friendship... and the common interests and influences... that existed between John Cage and Alan Hovhaness.

I was recently reading a book on music and the brain and there are studies that suggest that not giving people what they want to some extent as regards consonance and regular pulse is not helpful to the make-up of the brain. We in fact, need these things. The brain responds best to certain things and if as composers we ignore these then it is no surprise if nobody much likes the music.

Works of art have different intentions and are experienced in different ways from one work to the next. Paintings such as Grunwald's _Crucifixion_, Goya's views of the horrors of war, Bacon's icons to the horrors of the 20th century, or even Spielberg's Schindler's list are unquestionably powerful. They do not, however, undermine the aesthetic merit of artistic works of pure sensual pleasure: Monet, Matisse, Modigliani, or Raphael. By the same token, there are times in which I am primed for something more harrowing... or perhaps more analytical from my music: Penderecki, Schoenberg, Ligetti, etc... but ultimately I believe the goal is pleasure. The notion that a work of art which is pleasurable is inherently less intellectually rigorous, innovative, or aesthetically original is nonsense. Composing music that employs a rich tonality, harmony, beautiful melodies, or sensual orchestrations need not inherently mean that the music be cliche-ridden, sentimental, schlock.


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## Polednice

Big questions! It's difficult to be brief...

In order to try to give my answer some coherence so that I don't just go off on one and end up tracking my thought processes for an hour, I would say that there are two major influences on my music - one practical and one personal.

Practical: I think it's interesting what some people have already said with regards to accessibility and the brain's response to music. Well, the style that I would most likely be given (though it's a very simplified way of looking at it) is neo-Romanticism because I believe tremendously in the importance of tonality. I have always been fascinated by evolutionary theory (yes, that means how we developed through _macro_evolution, so people who don't accept it as a fact can stop reading now and don't debate it here!), and I have recently been utterly taken with evolutionary musicology. Due to the environments in which mankind evolved, our brains more easily handle tonal music.

However, this is where we have to be careful, because we always descend into the realm of prejudice against tonality because it's often viewed by academics or music snobs as 'simple' (or variations thereupon). You have to think of 'Darwin's inverted reasoning' (best explained by Daniel Dennett; there's undoubtedly a relevant clip on YouTube, probably from a TED talk) - for example, we don't like cake because it's sweet, cake is sweet because we like it (I won't try to explain that here, listen to Dennett!). In the same way, we don't like tonal music because it's simple and easily accessible, tonal music is simple and easily accessible because our brains like it. There's nothing inherently simple about tonal music, or anything intrinsically complex or ground-breaking about atonality, it just happens that our brains function best when represented with tonal structures, and I believe that this gives composers a _duty_ to write music that is best suited to the brain's own processes, rather than to explore realms that the brain cannot easily comprehend for the sake of academic curiosity.

Personal: It will be fairly clear why my personal impetus forces me towards the realm of neo-Romanticism. Throughout my adolescence, I suffered years of major clinical depression (I still do now, but I'm on moderately successful medication). I cannot explain to anyone but other sufferers what I felt - it's indescribable (hence my comments on the thread about 'dark' music). I harmed myself and I wanted to die, but music held me back. Nothing else, just music. If it weren't for Brahms, life would have appeared as a void of complete blackness - hence why I love him so much! Because of this, I think it is of vital importance to create music that is emotionally stirring. It is only because of the emotional excesses of Romanticism that I was able to channel my extreme feelings away from my darkest thoughts. Atonal structures and originality for originality's sake does not offer clear emotion (unless by accident!), precisely because it cannot stir our minds in the same way that tonal music can for the reasons given above. I don't believe that this is _the_ way that all people should compose, but I do believe that, above all other goals, composers should compose for _themselves_. In this sense, I choose to compose for the side of me that endured horrible emotional pain. I think to myself - what could I write that might have lifted me out of the grips of depression? The only answer to that is the emotional excess of the Romantic style.


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## Aramis

> Of course, by the same token, Shakespeare, Dickens, Poe, and Tolstoy certainly sell more books than Anne Carsen, Yves Bonnefoy, Georges Perec, and even Italo Calvino.


That's not because they are easier to dig. They are canonical writers and that's the actual reason. You can find someone who owns Shakespeare's works easily, but you won't find someone who truely reads and worship him so quick.

Same is with classical, Mozart is not more accesiable than Xenakis. He is much more visible. Both require something rare do be entirely understood.


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## Jaime77

Yes but it is hard to sing along to Xenakis. Honestly, I have tried  Actually Mozart is more accesible to the human brain. It contains a language that is also more familiar to Western ears than Xenakis. Maybe we don't comprehend it intellectually as we could but we certainly seem to enjoy it more. 

Also I agree with you Polednice, the fact that most of music history has 90 percent consonant music or tonal formulae is not an accident. People, composers, performers, the human brain indeed, gravitated towards this. 

I have no problem with experimentalism. Great I say! Try new things. Break rules but dont insist that this then must be the standard of contemporary music now. The narrow idea that bach begot mozart and mozart begot beethoven and beethoven begot wagner and wagner begot Schonberg and Schonberg begot Webern and Webern begot Birtwistle. This is a crude over-simplification but this kind of innovation-obsession is rife in new music.


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## jurianbai

If I can pretend to be a composer.....

Some ideas. One is the commercialism way. I'll found what style is the most epic today and I'll use it as a platform, to prove that I am as good as others in this style and even more. For today, I imagine I will composed a 'pop classical music', here the idea, a LIEDER for Piano and Tenor, where the pianist also a singer  . Remember the output must also confirmed by a platinum sale in market.

The other is.... Since we live in the era where music knowledge already written from Baroq to those 21st century music thingys, of course I want my composition to represent that I KNOW those knowledges. By this thinking, the eccleticism (of all styles) will probably always pop out in my mind when I am composing.


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## emiellucifuge

Hmm... my music is occasionally performed but unfortunately never been recorded. My scores cannot always adhere to conventional notation, so Finale doest do much good...

i could try and scan the score of a piece if thats any use. Thogh be warned my handwriting is quite awful.


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## Jaime77

if u have a scanner handy id like to have a peek... if that is ok. so u have 'impressionist' influence but the notation can be quite advanced? more advanced than debussy for example? 

Some great replies to this thread !! Love it.


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## emiellucifuge

well for example in the score ill try to upload theres a short bar without time signature (or rather infinite). Anyway youll see...


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## Head_case

I'm back 



jaibyrne said:


> Hi all,
> 
> I am a composer of some 15 years now having studied at Uni but learned as much from just listening and meeting other composers. I left a Phd cos I found it too stifling. I felt the academic thing was not for me. The rivalry was something else at that level.


I can grasp what you mean; adherence to 'structure', even the 'structure' of the PhD and all of its fixed associations, can repress a man. I know what you mean about the parsimonious and bizarre academic incestuousness within academia and although that is the system at fault, I wonder if a man who endures it, comes out better for it, than one who eschews it?

It's hard to say....although I respect what you've been through, and it's easier to respect others who choose not to be contaminated by such artifical environments, than those who thrive within....

Having said that much....what is freedom, if not meaningless when there are no boundaries? Freedom and development, must be constrained, otherwise it becomes unregulated, or out of control.....



> My question is as follows...
> 
> I assume you are composing what might be called contemporary classical music in the sense that is it notated for the most part and is in some way part of a tradition that includes folks like Bach and Beethoven.
> 
> Now though it is a new century. It has been a hundred years nearly since Schonberg's first breaks into atonality and since then we have had serialism, integral serialism, chance, new complexity, minimlism etc etc.
> 
> Where do you fit? What is you style? Do you feel you need to be a certain way considering the music that came before. Are you more new-complexity or post-minimalism for example.


Not being a composer, I can only draw from my experience from 'creating', in other artistic fields. Taking a bipolar view; the traditional form on one pole, and the modern idiom on the other, every composer will find his own work, in tension with both poles. There are those who assimilate into one or the other pole: from my experience as a listener, these are the least interesting of composers. The composers, who rely on traditional forms, however accent them personally, either through folklore, or non-native classical forms, create something, akin to distillation of familiar elements, within a 'dialogue' of form, with modern techniques. If this view holds, then yes, there are many approaches to composing, of which this is only one.

It would be perturbing for any artist to convince himself, that his way is the only way. I guess that kind of innate arrogance, is present in some composers; writers, or artists. I think of Nietzsche in this respect, whose oeuvre includes: "Why I write such great books"...or "Why I am so clever".

It is perturbing...maybe because artistic narcissism has little to do with creative energy and output. Equally, over-reliance on 'form', or even worse, becoming subservient to methodology (for example ~ thinking of the extremes of the neoclassicism movement), hampers 'form'. Ultimately, as a listener, what I look for in a composer, is his own voice; the distillation or 'influences' of others' modes or techniques, is aproblematic. The clarity of his own voice however, is best attained when his work offers his own person up as being embodied within his music. Perhaps this is too much to ask for, which is why, I prefer to listen to the string quartet medium, which is as intense as it is personal, and usually scripted over the life of a composer.



> How do you feel about dwindling audiences for new music, do you care?


From a sociological perspective, information saturation and technological brain-fill can be predicted to leave the average listener, clueless and lost without any signposts. Education is on the shrink: in fact, the average age of a reader on the internet, is projected to be something like 16 years old.

If a composer cares for this phenomenon, then his work is limited by his lack of vision in bothering to care at all.

Equally if a composer does not pander to the Masses, and refuses to fall down on his knees to worship the social world, his own voice may only be found posthumously. Living out this tension between the two extreme poles, is an existential one. We see this in the life of the Polish composer Szymanowski, who lost everything from his estate during the First World War, and left destitute to die of tuberculosis, and only 2 string quartets within his legacy. Yet, this is all he needed to leave, to capture the minds of the musical conscience of Poland.



> Seems like a lot of questions but even if you answered a few it would be great. This is a very interesting topic I think that we as composers need to look at.


Enjoy looking! I'll enjoy looking in on this albeit tongue in cheek


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## Jaime77

Thanks head case, 

I find it interesting about the Phd. In order for me to finish out and get the actual certificate it was asked of me to conform, I felt, with an ideology that was not right for me. Music at Phd level must be original research and analyzable. It must be able to be compared to other work. Hence the rivalry. I found it repressive and the atmosphere unsettling. 

Having a Phd in musical composition is like having a Phd in novel writing or painting - it is inherently flawed. We are artists and not technicians. If I made any error of judgment it was starting it in the first place. Having it now would only be for the slip of paper and the initials, not for anything to do with artistic achievment. However... experience was manyfold in my time there and taught me a lot about how things are in the world of contemporary music. 

So far, I see most of the people here talk about a composer needing to go their own way almost regardless of compositional fashions. Though I guess nobody here would claim it is appropriate to write Baroque music. Nobody seems to have a strong modernist at all cost ideology here. It is no surprise I guess that individuality as well as tonality have come out as dominant in this thread.


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## StlukesguildOhio

Quoted SLG- Of course, by the same token, Shakespeare, Dickens, Poe, and Tolstoy certainly sell more books than Anne Carsen, Yves Bonnefoy, Georges Perec, and even Italo Calvino.

That's not because they are easier to dig. They are canonical writers and that's the actual reason. You can find someone who owns Shakespeare's works easily, but you won't find someone who truely reads and worship him so quick.

I'm not so certain on this. I am a long-time bibliophile and have regular discussions with other book lovers (in person or through the internet) in which Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolstoy, Poe, etc... are frequently the subject of discussion. I can say with a degree of certainty that I could quite likely find any number of serious readers who are deeply passionate about Shakespeare, Tolstoy... or even more so, Dostoevsky... than I could find readers passionate about the more experimental Modernist and contemporary writers including Joyce, Faulkner, T.S. Eliot... let alone Georges Perec, Anne Carson, Thomas Pynchon, etc... What I will state, is that within the field of contemporary literature the novel is dominant (poetry readers are few and far between) and most contemporary novels continue to build upon 19th century "naturalist" forms as opposed to the more experimental directions taken by Joyce, Hesse, Faulkner, and built upon by Pynchon, Saramago, John Barth, Georges Perec, Alain Robbe-Grillet, among others. I rarely have come across the notion that the formalist experimentation of Perec or Robbe-Grillet or Pynchon is inherently more "rigorous" and of a greater aesthetic merit than those novels which build upon a more traditional base such as the works of Cormac McCarthy, Peter Carey, Saul Bellow, Tom Wolfe, etc...

By the same token in the visual arts you will find that artists such as Pollack, DeKooning, Motherwell, Duchamp, Agnes Martin, of Joseph Kosuth remain little liked... even by a public serious about art... while Matisse, Bonnard, Klee... even Rothko or Diebenkorn are far more popular. As a result, there are those within certain camps who assume that the sensuality of Matisse, Bonnard... even Rothko is something easy... something inferior to the works which reject sensuality... color... any suggestions of traditional "beauty".

Same is with classical, Mozart is not more accesiable than Xenakis. He is much more visible. Both require something rare do be entirely understood.

Again, I'm not certain I agree. I personally don't think any artist or any work of art of real merit can ever be "fully understood". I agree that Mozart is not less accessible in the sense that he is "easy" to grasp to the hilt... but he (or Beethoven, Brahms, and Bach for that matter) are certainly far more accessible in the sense that the language of their music has been absorbed enough by the larger culture so that there is something one can immediately grab upon and appreciate... a "hook", if you will... leading one to the willingness and desire to delve deeper.


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## StlukesguildOhio

The narrow idea that bach begot mozart and mozart begot beethoven and beethoven begot wagner and wagner begot Schonberg and Schonberg begot Webern and Webern begot Birtwistle. This is a crude over-simplification but this kind of innovation-obsession is rife in new music.

Agreed! History... the history of music and literature and certainly that of my own area of expertise, art history, has for quite some time followed the notion of a single linear progression. This progression, unfortunately, has little to do with reality. Bach was already considered "old fashioned" at the end of his career while composing some of his most profound works. Monet was painting some of the greatest works of Impressionism well after Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism and all come and gone. And then there are those awkward figures that never quite fit: William Blake, Lawrence Sterne, Joseph Cornell, Andrew Wyeth, Alan Hovhaness... and many others who don't easily fit within the simplistic view of this single linear progression. Of course the entire idea is but an abstraction... a construct of the historians to make sense of the fact that the history of arts is really a history of an endless array of individuals with greatly different intentions and approaches to their art.


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## Jaime77

I feel that in these times it is even harder to compose. If I were living around the year 1700 or 1800, there would be a system, a set of compositional approaches to become aquainted with and follow. Even if you just became an expert in them and not particularly interesting, as some 'lesser composers' did, you would still be stylistically relevant. You would belong to your time. If you chose opera to concentrate on, or the concerto or keyboard music, that is up to you, but little or no time is lost quizzing what the hell you are meant to be writing as regards style. 

During these times I, however, find it so difficult. What if you decide to write neo-romantic music or new complexity and the history books later deem these genres done with by 2010. Should we be trying to be in fashion? But then what is fashion? Are there not a few schools of composition? If so, do we need to closely follow one of those schools. Now I know that there are many romantic composers who are remembered and highly-rated thought composing out of fashion - rachmaninov and r. strauss for example too. I have also met composers at university level poring over Xenakis to come up with new maths in order to create music never done before. It sounds like Xenakis perhaps but the maths behind it are new. These composers in question were very sure of their place in music and the school they belonged to - or at least I think they were. 

I look on the net and in music history books and see modern composers listed as people like Birtwistle, Xenakis, Berio, Ferneyhough, Benjamin but also Adams, Part and Ades thrown in for those who want something not so complex and 'out there'. I guess we wait and see who is deemed good or bad or exceptional. Maybe I need to stop looking at history books! I am intimidated by the names of composers who concentrated on complexity. Although young composers I have spoken to seem determined to be tonal - most of them. The weight of the heavy intellect of the post-serial people is very much there. It is in their academic institutions and part of how composition is taught. The fact is that true diversity and allowing for all styles is not the case at university level. It is the atonal, ametric, stretch-the-instrument kind of music that sits at the top looking down from its high intellectual perch on the poor little tonalists who cant resist a nice melody. I hope this will change and I hope this is changing already. 

A point on books. I dont know much about the history of the novel for example but comparing Xenakis to a contemporary novel writer, a pulitzer or booker prize winner, someone very gifted, they would have to write the novel in Greek for it to be equivalent. Write it in Greek and sell it in English-speaking book stores. That is how far removed a lot of the language of contemporary music is to people. Maybe cos music is an abstract art form, there is much greater leeway of expression, whereas if novels were written in such an unfamilar language (like parts of Joyce) nobody would read them. This takes us back to why few people go to contemporary music concerts again. They don't get what the hell is going on


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## Edward Elgar

jaibyrne said:


> Where do you fit? What is you style? Do you feel you need to be a certain way considering the music that came before. Are you more new-complexity or post-minimalism for example.


The trick is to compose in your own unique style. Composers that are concerned with "fitting in" with a certain style (Goodall, Jenkins, Rutter) will fade from memory. Composers that followed their own style like Cage (no matter how silly that style felt at the time) will be remembered through their music, books and academic journals.

I'm at the stage of finding my voice. Limiting myself to certain intervals in order to create coherence and new harmonies without any thought for where the music fits in the jigsaw of time.



jaibyrne said:


> Do you accept there are many valid approaches to composing or are you convinced your way is the only legitamate way given the history of music so far?


If there is one thing the history of music has taught us, it is that those who break from convention are the ones who are remembered. The most valid method of composition is that which is the best to bring your ideas to life. (12 tone, ordering and permutation, minimalism, tonal, pentatonic, experimental etc.)



jaibyrne said:


> How do you feel about dwindling audiences for new music, do you care?


Dwindling audiences are the product of popular culture. We know from history that pop groups are forgotten after the generation that enjoyed them have passed from memory. Classical music is eternal and will therefore live on provided the next generation have instruments, manuscript and recordings. I just feel sad for those who are, and will be, missing out.


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## Edward Elgar

jaibyrne said:


> I feel that in these times it is even harder to compose. If I were living around the year 1700 or 1800, there would be a system, a set of compositional approaches to become aquainted with and follow.


Exactly.

I recently had a debate with my composition tutor regarding this problem. The trick is to make composition easy for yourself by limiting yourself to certain musical parameters because anything passes as music in this age. With limitless possibilities, it's up to you (composers) to set the limits. (...and then break them!)


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## Jaime77

Interesting that you mention a tutor too there Elgar. I have had 2 tutors who tried to teach me the language of modern music and put my own music aside to get me writing serialism in one instance and Berio-esque music, the other. Not all the tutors I met were like this but the kind I mention do exist and I think might be destroying personal/individual creativity in younger composers. 

politics - yes that is what got to me about academia - many composers biting and kissing to get noticed and be the next big thing. I sound a little bitter maybe ;-)

keep the replies coming - they all excellent


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## StlukesguildOhio

The trick is to compose in your own unique style. Composers that are concerned with "fitting in" with a certain style (Goodall, Jenkins, Rutter) will fade from memory. Composers that followed their own style like Cage (no matter how silly that style felt at the time) will be remembered through their music, books and academic journals.

I hate to tell you this but academic journals and the like are but a minuscule aspect of what decides whether a work of art survives or not. Far more important is the interest of follow generations of serious art lovers... and subsequent artists. James Joyce' _Finnegan's Wake_ is praised to the high heavens among academia... but the book is all but forgotten... little more than a reputation... even among readers of literature. Alexander Dumas' novels, on the other hand, are given but grudging acknowledgment within academia... but they continue to resonate with readers to the point that we must acknowledge a certain "classic" status... however minor. The notion that only the opinions of the "experts" matters assumes that one school of "experts" is inherently better than others and it does not gel with history and the manner in which works of art survive... or fall away.

The notion that a composer... or an artist in any discipline... who concerns him or herself with the audience (with "fitting in") will inherently fade is again an outdated Romantic notion that has little to do with historical reality. I can assure you that Raphael most certainly gave the audience what they wanted. So did Haydn, Victor Hugo, Shakespeare, Matisse, etc... Samuel Johnson declared "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money". While I would not go to such an extreme, I am more than certain that Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, etc... were not writing music in order to confuse and confound the audience. Certainly, an artist of merit must follow what he or she believes in... the art he or she values. But this does not exclude taking into consideration the needs or wants of the audience. There are artists who were highly successful ("popular") during their time (Rubens, Matisse, Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, Goethe, Rossini, Puccini, Haydn, etc...) who remain among the most respected today, and there are any number of outsiders who eventually were recognized as being of equal merit. The inverse is equally true. Popularity or accessibility has no bearing upon the merit of an artist's work... for or against. Unfortunately, there are still those who believe the Romantic myth because it feeds a certain notion of superiority.

If there is one thing the history of music has taught us, it is that those who break from convention are the ones who are remembered.

Is that so? Did Bach truly break from the traditional conventions? He certainly built upon them and took them to a level beyond what had been previously achieved... but did he really even break from the traditions to the same degree as his son, C.P.E. Bach? What of your own namesake, Elgar? Where did he break from the tradition in any manner to rival what was happening with other more experimental composers? What matters is that the artist achieves something unique to him or herself regardless of how it fits with history or not. One might also do well to recognize that what is cutting-edge or avant garde in one instance, becomes codified and assumes the position of the academic tradition in another instance. It is quite arguable that John Cage, Pierre Boulez, Phillip Glass, etc... do not represent the avant garde, but rather the voice of academia.

The most valid method of composition is that which is the best to bring your ideas to life.

Certainly. Again, I believe one can only follow one's passions... the art that one deeply believes in. There is an audience for nearly everything. History will sort out what is or is not worthy of survival.

How do you feel about dwindling audiences for new music, do you care?Dwindling audiences are the product of popular culture. We know from history that pop groups are forgotten after the generation that enjoyed them have passed from memory.

Again... this is not fully true. There are any number of examples of popular art surviving well after the generation in which it first came to be recognized: Rossini, Puccini, Johann Strauss, jazz, Frank Sinatra, etc... The line between "high" and "low" art has always been blurred. In the 18th century the novel was derided as pure, popular crap for the illiterate masses. Novels were mocked by Alexander Pope, among others... and yet the novels of Lawrence Sterne, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Jane Austen, etc... still survive... still resonate with an audience... even more so than most of the "high art" such as the poetry of Alexander Pope.

The illustrator Daumier has risen in status to the point that he is recognized along side of the great "fine artists" of his era. It is quite possible that R, Crumb may survive in a similar manner... as something of the Daumier or Bruegel of our time. There are many who would similarly argue that the best of jazz or of Broadway or film music may just survive as much if not more so than many of the more experimental strains of Modernist music. Will Phillip Glass or Pierre Boulez survive better than Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, or John Rutter? That is surely as arguable as whether Agnes Martin and Sol Lewitt have a better chance of survival than R. Crumb and Andrew Wyeth.


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## Argus

Edward Elgar said:


> Dwindling audiences are the product of popular culture. *We know from history that pop groups are forgotten after the generation that enjoyed them have passed from memory*. Classical music is eternal and will therefore live on provided the next generation have instruments, manuscript and recordings. I just feel sad for those who are, and will be, missing out.


Name me one composer from the last 50 years that is more widely known than the Beatles. The Beatles are my grandfathers generation and they are as famous now as ever. I can easily name a lot more pop groups that will be remembered for a long time as well.

Applying the trends in history to the present is pointless. There are so many differences that have to be taken into account, that what has happened before is unlikely to show what will happen in the future. Even in the last 20 years, the internet has drastically changed the nature of popular music. Globalisation, mass media, information accessibility have all changed the way people think of music.

To reword your last sentence, I feel equally sad for those missing out on great 'pop' music.


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## emiellucifuge

Here is a copy of my latest piece Jailbyrne, dont bother asking about the weird page orientations. and excuse the awful writing!


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## emiellucifuge

Also please ignore my teachers comments, and the poem is by Wilfred Owen.


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## Jaime77

*emiel*
thank u for sharing this  the writing is not that bad ! I can read it fine. U shud look at what some composers of the past wrote like. I see a freedom in the writing or a desire for it. Makes it more like Ravel or late Faure or some Vaughan Williams maybe. I not one of these people who can hear a score by looking at it but the harmonies do look shifting and very attractive.

Thanks again !

Also *Argus* you are right... these times are so different to older times. We really are in the stage where we question everything. Governments are called to task more now, religious institutions are weakening in the face of diversity of idealology and with the internet and even the mobile phone, we are all about individual expression and identity. You can even publish anything you like online now and it has value too based solo on the fact that you did it and not someone else. I think the days of saying 'these are the rules and you must follow them' are somewhat gone... we have learned to at least ask Why? to the statement.


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## emiellucifuge

Well thank you, it is much worse with letters!
you could always play it on a piano if you have one.


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## andruini

jaibyrne said:


> Hi all,
> 
> I am a composer of some 15 years now having studied at Uni but learned as much from just listening and meeting other composers. I left a Phd cos I found it too stifling. I felt the academic thing was not for me. The rivalry was something else at that level.
> 
> My question is as follows...
> 
> I assume you are composing what might be called contemporary classical music in the sense that is it notated for the most part and is in some way part of a tradition that includes folks like Bach and Beethoven.
> 
> Now though it is a new century. It has been a hundred years nearly since Schonberg's first breaks into atonality and since then we have had serialism, integral serialism, chance, new complexity, minimlism etc etc.
> 
> Where do you fit? What is you style? Do you feel you need to be a certain way considering the music that came before. Are you more new-complexity or post-minimalism for example.
> 
> Do you accept there are many valid approaches to composing or are you convinced your way is the only legitamate way given the history of music so far?
> 
> How do you feel about dwindling audiences for new music, do you care?
> 
> Seems like a lot of questions but even if you answered a few it would be great. This is a very interesting topic I think that we as composers need to look at.


I thought I'd throw in my two cents here. I'm in no way a proper composer yet, I'm barely starting to study, and I won't pretend to be one..

In answer to your first question, I think it's too early for me to know exactly where I fit.. Basically right now I go with a "whatever works" approach.. If I feel a certain technique is appropriate for a piece, I use it. However, I will say that thus far I really identify the most with the John Adams philosophy of using minimalist resources as building blocks for a more traditional composition style..

I do accept the fact that there are many valid approaches to composition, and it is my intent to study and know as many as I can.. I think in music as in life, everything goes.. I may not always agree with Schoenberg's or Berio's way of expressing themselves, but that doesn't erase the fact that they tapped into very real realms of musical expression.
I think an aspiring composer who limits himself only to "convention" and musical traditions is being very foolish and isn't bound to get too far. I think it's important to find the style that best suits you, and if someone wants to be a neo-Romantic, good for them.. Likewise, if someone wants to compose microtonal music, because they feel that's what suits them best, great.. I believe thinking about "what's fashionable" and what will have "mass appeal" isn't very relevant when talking about something as personal as music.

About dwindling audiences.. Well, I've never felt this way. It's been interesting for me to find that many, many people really don't know that there's "classical" music being written in this day and age, and when you tell them "I'm studying to be a composer", the majority of people are genuinely interested in knowing more.. This is especially true when you take into account things like the local "scenes". I mean, sure, maybe you won't get as an audience all those grey-haired Philharmonic subscribers who only go when it's an all Beethoven program, but that's really a dying breed. In my opinion, considering the classical landscape in the last few years, we're in a very exciting time now for new music..


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## Head_case

jaibyrne said:


> Thanks head case,
> 
> I find it interesting about the Phd. In order for me to finish out and get the actual certificate it was asked of me to conform, I felt, with an ideology that was not right for me. Music at Phd level must be original research and analyzable. It must be able to be compared to other work. Hence the rivalry. I found it repressive and the atmosphere unsettling.


Hi Jamie,

Educational qualifications are only the basic tenets for qualifying ourselves in life, in our choosen field. Perhaps I take the view, that a PhD programme, enables research into a specialist area; we all embrace others' ideologies before we find our own. Maybe sometimes the line of research it takes, can become a little autistic, however surviving the atmosphere in the department, is one sign of be able to recognise, what others would have us do: Myaskovsky, Shostakovich and Shebalin recognised this facet of the Composers Union: they did not conform - perhaps their own views on their own work, were reactionary to the traditionalists of their time, and sought refuge in private compositions and private life, waiting until the time was ripe for an audience of their intended work. I'm not sure if this can be any different for a PhD.



> Having a Phd in musical composition is like having a Phd in novel writing or painting - it is inherently flawed. We are artists and not technicians. If I made any error of judgment it was starting it in the first place. Having it now would only be for the slip of paper and the initials, not for anything to do with artistic achievment. However... experience was manyfold in my time there and taught me a lot about how things are in the world of contemporary music.


What I found most useful in my studies, was the self-reflective faculty -which was shaped in the company of others. The 'crits' can leave a sour taste in one's mouth, however working with others, rather than alone, it enabled development (of a sort). Granted, like you, I might have been a little too interested in my own focus, rather than in others, and the ensuing politics which this brings with 'critical analysis' of others' work, or of one's own. It does open doors though; the life of an artist is hard enough with doors which can be shut, due to not having this connection or that....or this piece of paper or that....or this belonging in that club or society or another. Well, maybe too many of us get channelled into an academic propgramme, before we develop sufficient conviction to see it through....



> So far, I see most of the people here talk about a composer needing to go their own way almost regardless of compositional fashions. Though I guess nobody here would claim it is appropriate to write Baroque music. Nobody seems to have a strong modernist at all cost ideology here. It is no surprise I guess that individuality as well as tonality have come out as dominant in this thread.


Yes.....the Age of the Individual is now. The modern relativism does away with any concrete absolutes in either methodology or constraint to musical authorities, such as the well known and trodden classics. Maybe the composers who appeal most - are the ones who are aware of what they are subjecting their audiences to, hmm? 

This is not to say, that a composer has to sell-out. Far from it. If he is writing for himself, then isn't he just falling back into the romantic ethos? If he wishes to communicate to his audience, then the power of his musical language, needs to find an expression; both individual and recognisable to the public. Rather than being far out and alien.

Btw - I don't know the Beatles music. I never listened to them but have probably been tortured by their song bites like 'she's got a ticket to ride...'. Or is that the Carpenters?  I always thought they were the 'Munkees' for some reason. I could probably identify their music by listening out for the insipid male harmonies


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## Jaime77

Head Case, I agree with everything you say except... and here the defensive side comes up on my part.. I feel a little like you are saying I should have stayed in the Phd programme and it was a failing in me to not. It may just be my interpretation of what you say. I remind you that I stayed for 3 years - the normal length of the Phd but when it came to submission I declined on the basis that the goalposts kept changing for me and my tutor, quite suddenly didn't seem to be 'on my side' as regards my work for submission. This and a growing dislike of the whole system. 

I am not knocking academia. It works for some. I learned many things about contemporary music and various approaches through workshops, seminars and research and what I learned is that it was not for me. I didn't do nothing for the duration of the Phd. Now I don't regret not having the piece of paper since it is of no value to me as a composer. Were I to pursue an academic career it would certainly have been. 

I am very pleased with all these replies and the consensus that is emerging. It sounds supportive and inclusive for this the age of the individual


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## Argus

Head_case said:


> This is not to say, that a composer has to sell-out. Far from it. If he is writing for himself, then isn't he just falling back into the romantic ethos? If he wishes to communicate to his audience, then the power of his musical language, needs to find an expression; both individual and recognisable to the public. Rather than being far out and alien.
> 
> Btw - I don't know the Beatles music. I never listened to them but have probably been tortured by their song bites like 'she's got a ticket to ride...'. Or is that the Carpenters?  I always thought they were the 'Munkees' for some reason. I could probably identify their music by listening out for the insipid male harmonies


I'm not a massive fan of the Beatles. I own none of their albums but I enjoy most of their post-Rubber Soul output. They are a truly great band. They stradled the two arenas of artistic credibility and commercial success better than most, whilst remaining true to themselves. And what's wrong with the Carpenters or the Monkees? They are better than most string quartets. By your dislike of 'insipid' male harmonies, I take it you're not a fan of the Beach Boys either. That needs rectifying.

The term 'sell out' is a real misnomer. I think an artist truly sells out when he writes any kind of music he doesn't like whether or not it appeals to a wider audience. But then whats wrong with selling out anyway?


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## Polednice

andruini said:


> I think an aspiring composer who limits himself only to "convention" and musical traditions is being very foolish and isn't bound to get too far. I think it's important to find the style that best suits you, and if someone wants to be a neo-Romantic, good for them.. Likewise, if someone wants to compose microtonal music, because they feel that's what suits them best, great.. I believe thinking about "what's fashionable" and what will have "mass appeal" isn't very relevant when talking about something as personal as music.


I think what you've said is one of the most important things to bear in mind. It also shows one of the great disadvantages of applying stylistic labels to someone's compositional style, because it comes with the implication that they are trying to be (for example) neo-Romantic. Rather, it would be better to say (if it is indeed true), that a person writes in their own style, for whatever artistic and personal reasons they may have, which _happens_ to be comparable to Romanticism.

After all, while the popularity of Beethoven and Wagner (as well as the reputation of Schoenberg, if not popular) suggests that innovation and originality are the key to 'immortality', we know that their genius is not really beyond that of other equally esteemed giants who might be called (*cringe*) 'conservative'. What seems to be the _real_ key to success is finding a unique voice - that signature in composition that says, 'Yes, this piece is by me, and it couldn't have been written by someone else'. Regardless of perceived style, it is this inimitable way of writing that will ensure success. That's not to say that critics _aren't_ biased towards originality for originality's sake, because I believe that there is an obsession with it in today's art, but, in the long-term, it's originality of _voice_ rather than technique which I think is important.


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## Jaime77

_



After all, while the popularity of Beethoven and Wagner (as well as the reputation of Schoenberg, if not popular) suggests that innovation and originality are the key to 'immortality', we know that their genius is not really beyond that of other equally esteemed giants who might be called (*cringe*) 'conservative'. What seems to be the real key to success is finding a unique voice - that signature in composition that says, 'Yes, this piece is by me, and it couldn't have been written by someone else'. Regardless of perceived style, it is this inimitable way of writing that will ensure success. That's not to say that critics aren't biased towards originality for originality's sake, because I believe that there is an obsession with it in today's art, but, in the long-term, it's originality of voice rather than technique which I think is important.

Click to expand...

_Most composers were not innovators and many were quite conservative and yet they are remembered and highly rated. These include Bach, Handel, Mozart, Brahms, Richard Strauss, Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Rachmaninov, amoung many many others. It is actually very easy to be innovative. Just stick a dead donkey into a piano  that doesn't make it a good idea though does it?


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## Edward Elgar

StlukesguildOhio said:


> I hate to tell you this but... etc.
> 
> Again... this is not fully true... etc.


You seem to have lots of opinions and time on your hands. A dangerous combination. If you gave me one concise argument I would be happy to respond (if this is your wish).

It made me giggle when you suggested Bach didn't break from tradition. Have you not heard the WTK? Listen to a wider variety of his music before making sweeping statements about a composer.


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## Edward Elgar

Argus said:


> Name me one composer from the last 50 years that is more widely known than the Beatles. The Beatles are my grandfathers generation and they are as famous now as ever. I can easily name a lot more pop groups that will be remembered for a long time as well.
> 
> Applying the trends in history to the present is pointless. There are so many differences that have to be taken into account, that what has happened before is unlikely to show what will happen in the future. Even in the last 20 years, the internet has drastically changed the nature of popular music. Globalisation, mass media, information accessibility have all changed the way people think of music.
> 
> To reword your last sentence, I feel equally sad for those missing out on great 'pop' music.


I'm sure the generation before your grandfather would have thought that Al Jolson would live forever. He hasn't because popular music has changed so much his music is no longer commercial. We live in an age were pop/rock bands still operate. Therefore the Beatles still have some commercial appeal because they were the first exponents of band music.

With regards to your first question I ask; widely known among who? If you're talking about the general public (hairdresses, management middle-men) then I can name none. If you're talking about academics I can name 50.


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## Argus

Edward Elgar said:


> I'm sure the generation before your grandfather would have thought that Al Jolson would live forever. He hasn't because popular music has changed so much his music is no longer commercial. We live in an age were pop/rock bands still operate. Therefore the Beatles still have some commercial appeal because they were the first exponents of band music.
> 
> With regards to your first question I ask; widely known among who? If you're talking about the general public (hairdresses, management middle-men) then I can name none. If you're talking about academics I can name 50.


When I said most widely known I thought that implied everyone. The general public. Why would I exclude the majority in favour of specific academics? I am not arguing about the quality of any artists, but rather the popularity and recognition amongst al people. I'd even say most if not all 'academics' would know some Beatles songs.

As for Al Jolson not being well known nowadays, what about Louis Amstrong who operated at a similar time in history. He remains popular and well respected amongst many people, and if you disagree with that, you have to admit he at least remains a huge influence on present day jazz musicians. I'd say more people know Armstrong than Ravel or RVW (even if they do think he was the first man on the moon.)

All this is besides the point. I was just saying there is 'value' in all styles of music, even if it is more prevalent in some than others.


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## Head_case

Argus said:


> I'm not a massive fan of the Beatles. I own none of their albums but I enjoy most of their post-Rubber Soul output. They are a truly great band. They stradled the two arenas of artistic credibility and commercial success better than most, whilst remaining true to themselves. And what's wrong with the Carpenters or the Monkees? They are better than most string quartets. By your dislike of 'insipid' male harmonies, I take it you're not a fan of the Beach Boys either. That needs rectifying.


I really don't know them at all. Your mention of Rubber Soul just makes me think that this thread should be relegated to the S&M column 

The Monkees were fabulous! I remember early morning Saturday breakfasts watching their antics on childrens' t.v. That was sooooo cool! Cooler than the Beatles 

Who are the Beach Boys? Are they relatives of babes on Baywatch?



> The term 'sell out' is a real misnomer. I think an artist truly sells out when he writes any kind of music he doesn't like whether or not it appeals to a wider audience. But then whats wrong with selling out anyway?


What is wrong with 'selling out' is an ethical question: aesthetics itself, is a branch of the ethical domain. The principles of aesthetic practice, are precisely that: principled. Once those principles are subordinated to another enterprise, its ethical character and aesthetic purpose is fraught with problems. If you want me to get into the rights and wrongs, or the morality of 'selling out', I'm sure we could fill up a whole thread


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## Jaime77

Did composers not care what the public wanted? Of course they cared. However we live in a different age. The public now, what with internet, is everyone ! In Haydn's time, the public were those that found their way to the Esterhazy court. They were still public though and by no means all intellectuals or musicians. 

The concert hall did not even attract everyone, cos of the price of the ticket and as the opera house can still be today, just does not figure on some people's radar at all as a place to go - unlike let's say, movie theatres.

As an aside, film is interesting cos I have seen some truly brilliant films, imo, in cinemas. Films that were or were not made in Hollywood but were out there for everyone and anyone to stroll in to. Now if I went to the local cinema and saw a totally avant garde light experiment of some kind, I might think this is just like Xenakis is to non-musicians. I would feel lost. I might show interest as an artist but I would have so little frame of reference it would unlikely move me or it is unlikely I could relate to it on any level other than a fleeting cerebral consideration (by the way, sorry to keep putting Mr. Xenakis in the firing line !) 

Comparing this age to other ages does not work as we have been saying, since this age has never happened before - the social liberalism, the material wealth, the significance of going your own way in life, global communication and so on. 

So now we live in the age where country pop music is listed in itunes along side contemporary classical, as a genre for your ipod, as is latin folk music and thrash metal. We are not seperate from anything. We as composers are a part of something bigger. The ivory tower idea is a myth now cos there is nowhere to hide! This is healthier and I hope new classical composers will learn from other genre's too and see things from another perspective through this kind of openness. To get contemporary music out of the elitist realm of the high intellectual academic world and more into the public. It can only be good for it, this new age. 



J


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## Head_case

jaibyrne said:


> Head Case, I agree with everything you say except... and here the defensive side comes up on my part.. I feel a little like you are saying I should have stayed in the Phd programme and it was a failing in me to not. It may just be my interpretation of what you say. I remind you that I stayed for 3 years - the normal length of the Phd but when it came to submission I declined on the basis that the goalposts kept changing for me and my tutor, quite suddenly didn't seem to be 'on my side' as regards my work for submission. This and a growing dislike of the whole system.
> 
> I am not knocking academia. It works for some. I learned many things about contemporary music and various approaches through workshops, seminars and research and what I learned is that it was not for me. I didn't do nothing for the duration of the Phd. Now I don't regret not having the piece of paper since it is of no value to me as a composer. Were I to pursue an academic career it would certainly have been.
> 
> I am very pleased with all these replies and the consensus that is emerging. It sounds supportive and inclusive for this the age of the individual


Hi Jamie,

My guess is that it is probably true, that anyone who does not complete a PhD programme which they originally enrolled for, will revisit the question of whether dropping out of it, was more becoming, than staying on, to become a part of the academic fabric. No criticism meant, however how others perceive 'not finishing', without knowing the ins and outs of the torture of such an academic institution, can often find one no allies.

Being involved in educating others, it seems a complete failure of the academic department, if after 3 years, a student is out of dialogue with what is required of him for his thesis. Things should never have got to that stage.

Sometimes those experiences are instructive. I gave up a degree course (my 5th), after finding it too stressful to commute 1 1/2 hours after work, to university and back, 3 times a week, on top of a full-time job. It saddened me to give it up ~ since I took it up for pleasure, rather than career. But the thought of commuting through commuter hell for another year, and collecting something like 10 parking tickets a year really did my brain in. It was just too stressful. And although it was only another year, it was just one year too much for me. The value of completing something ~ is itself, a kind of achievement. Even if it deviates from what we intended. The modern generation, channel flicks on t.v. or the internet or iTouch, looking for constant distractions. Maybe we aren't brave enough to commit ourselves, or not brave enough to understand the deeper sense of commitment. Well I never needed the degree, but I would have liked to finish the course too. That's all I'm saying really. And yes ~ experiential learning outside of academia offers a different angle on honing our theoretical positions, as well as adding to a body of knowledge which shapes us into less ignorant than before we first started off. It takes a certain 'type' to enjoy the academic institution. I guess for you in music, it must be very different than for other artists. Maybe switching universities, to a more laissez-faire type, where students have the freedom and flexibility to study and pursue their PhD as they wish would facilitate a composer's voice.


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## Jaime77

Yes indeed... oh and I have of course looked back and wondered what I could have done differently in order to stay etc. I was being checked on, if you like at regular intervals and honestly it was a surprise to me when I was told that I no longer met the criteria - that in the begining of my final year ! This puts some responsiblity on the tutors too. 
I have found that it is of no hindrance to me now not having finished the Phd. I know many people who were in the same boat with graduate degrees. It is quite common in fact. You sound to be a bit like an older academic, like a professor  someone who believes in towing the line and fitting in. You are suggesting that it will come against me? It would do in the very limited world of academia - perhaps! Fortunately I work for myself now and have my own criteria for musical composition and musicianship which I would argue is equal if not better than anything I was involved in at this institution. Also any jobs I have done since, it has never been an issue. They just see a Phd as a thing that one could come back to in ten years or whatever, which I may do. I don't dismiss these things outright at all. And quite frankly it is 6 years ago and feels like 36 years ago


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## Head_case

jaibyrne said:


> Yes indeed... oh and I have of course looked back and wondered what I could have done differently in order to stay etc. I was being checked on, if you like at regular intervals and honestly it was a surprise to me when I was told that I no longer met the criteria - that in the begining of my final year ! This puts some responsiblity on the tutors too.
> I have found that it is of no hindrance to me now not having finished the Phd. I know many people who were in the same boat with graduate degrees. It is quite common in fact. You sound to be a bit like an older academic, like a professor  someone who believes in towing the line and fitting in. You are suggesting that it will come against me? It would do in the very limited world of academia - perhaps! Fortunately I work for myself now and have my own criteria for musical composition and musicianship which I would argue is equal if not better than anything I was involved in at this institution. Also any jobs I have done since, it has never been an issue. They just see a Phd as a thing that one could come back to in ten years or whatever, which I may do. I don't dismiss these things outright at all. And quite frankly it is 6 years ago and feels like 36 years ago


Maybe there isn't anything you could have done differently .... within the structure of your university. Apart from change it by leaving or transferring, if that was possible.

You probably aren't missing much; at least, not the ivory tower experience, and the pettiness or the incestuousness that goes on within academia or any other institution. I guess you stopped enjoying doing the course, and that was enough then to stop. How then...does a composer retain his self-reflection and honesty about his own work, if not through crits and critique of his work? As valuable as self-directed learning is, I wonder if it cannot reject all forms of other-directed learning (such as through a university) if it is not to become conceited.



> You sound to be a bit like an older academic, like a professor


Owww! That hurt! 

Towing the party line, is a little like driving in the city, and there is a degree of minimal conformity required, before academic freedom arises. There isn't that much to tow, if it is recognised clearly.... that the lesser battles aren't worth the effort. Will not being a part of the academic establishment matter? Hard to say; personal development and experience can transcend such petty concerns. Take for example ~ the world of fine arts. An artist from the Slade or the RCA can churn out any kind of bovine faeces and pass it off as art. Granted, you or any other artist/composer wouldn't wish to stoop to this level. Yet if this is what is sanctioned as academic and institutionalised art....what chance does the outsider have? The last question you've posed about 'audience' is then relevant here.

PS - working self-employed is a great way of life too. It's hard to see why you would want to give it all up, particularly if it enables you the time and space to compose music together. I think of the folk-pop singer, Laura Cantrell, who worked for a bank, when she produced her first album 'Not the Trembling Kind' and 'When will the roses bloom'; two superlative albums. When she gave up her day job and released 'Humming by the vine' or something, the first thing I thought was she shouldn't have given up her day job


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## StlukesguildOhio

You seem to have lots of opinions and time on your hands. A dangerous combination.

Especially if my opinions are contrary to your own, eh?

It made me giggle when you suggested Bach didn't break from tradition. Have you not heard the WTK? Listen to a wider variety of his music before making sweeping statements about a composer.

You probably shouldn't make assumptions about the listening experience (or lack thereof) of someone you barely know through the net. J.S. Bach is undoubtedly my favorite composer. I have 5 different versions of the _Well Tempered Clavier_ and freely admit that it is among the most magnificent works of music. But does it break from the tradition in which Bach was educated in? The fact that many of his peers saw his work as outdated would suggest not. Bach's music is clearly rooted in the Baroque forms (albeit taken to an unheard of level) with little pointing toward the simplicity of the burgeoning Classical movement. The music takes the form of a series of preludes and fugues (not original to Bach). Even a site as basic as Wikipedia notes an array of precursors to the work:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Well-Tempered_Clavier

Again, any artist of merit develops a "voice" unique to themselves... but this "originality" is not one and the same with the groundbreaking innovations that some artists bring to the table... huge breaks from the tradition. Liszt, Debussy, Gluck, Beethoven, Schoenberg, Stravinsky... all make such breaks. This does not make them inherently greater than Brahms, Bach, Richard Strauss, Haydn, etc...


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## StlukesguildOhio

What is wrong with 'selling out' is an ethical question: aesthetics itself, is a branch of the ethical domain. The principles of aesthetic practice, are precisely that: principled.

Now that's some serious antiquated Romanticism.

Once those principles are subordinated to another enterprise, its ethical character and aesthetic purpose is fraught with problems. If you want me to get into the rights and wrongs, or the morality of 'selling out', I'm sure we could fill up a whole thread.

Seriously, what the hell does art and aesthetics have to do with ethics or morality? If we are going to play the game of assuming the moral high ground one might just as well suggest that perhaps the artist locked in the his ivory tower churning out products of aesthetic Onanism to entertain fellow artists and academics may just not be of greater moral worth than the artist who seeks to communicate with a broader audience. Don't get me wrong... I admire works from both sides of the spectrum: the accessible... and the rather esoteric... but I fully reject the notion that one or the other somehow holds the claim to inherent ethical... or aesthetic superiority.


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## StlukesguildOhio

So now we live in the age where country pop music is listed in itunes along side contemporary classical, as a genre for your ipod, as is latin folk music and thrash metal. We are not seperate from anything. We as composers are a part of something bigger. The ivory tower idea is a myth now cos there is nowhere to hide!

I think the biggest shift is that which resulted from possibility of mechanical reproduction. There was always folk music... the music of the peasants... the bawdy songs sung in taverns... but for the most part the composers of these songs had no means of recording the works... or having them produced properly. Nevertheless, any number of these folk songs have come down to us. With the advent of recording technology the simple "folk" songs could be recorded and distributed _en masse_... resulting in pop music. Some of this will survive to the same extent as some folk art survives or some folk ballads, poems, and tales survive. We also need to recognize that the line between "high" and "low" art has become increasingly blurred. It was already blurred when Shakespeare and the theater became recognized as serious literature... when the novel became accepted as "high art" as well... when John Clare and Robert Burns were recognized as serious poets... when photography began to assert an influence upon painting. Hermann Hesse' great novel, _The Glass Bead Game_ and Thomas Mann's _Doctor Faustus_ dealt with the very questions that we are discussing here... the role of art and the artist. Both novels suggested a similar dissatisfaction with either extreme: the notion of the Ivory Tower artist who grows increasingly irrelevant to the larger culture... or the populist who trades quality, discipline, honesty, and depth for temporal success.


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## Head_case

> Now that's some serious antiquated Romanticism.


Nope! Ethics sunk in the romantic era. That's why we have so much boulderdash 



> Seriously, what the hell does art and aesthetics have to do with ethics or morality? If we are going to play the game of assuming the moral high ground one might just as well suggest that perhaps the artist locked in the his ivory tower churning out products of aesthetic Onanism to entertain fellow artists and academics may just not be of greater moral worth than the artist who seeks to communicate with a broader audience. Don't get me wrong... I admire works from both sides of the spectrum: the accessible... and the rather esoteric... but I fully reject the notion that one or the other somehow holds the claim to inherent ethical... or aesthetic superiority.


No doubt you do; this contemporary trend for ignorance of any ethical question is more or less rife to the point of being common. The arts of the beautiful, were always considered as a modality of accessing truth; from Plato's unfolding of the beauty of truth, to the truth inherent in beauty. Aesthetics, that branch of ethics which explores the arts of the beautiful, has never been indifferent to the ethical character of what constitutes beauty. In the post-modern era, we might try and redefine 'art' as something more valuable than what is constituted through beauty.

However it is very churlish to scream out indignantly, that others are taking the moral high ground, because the arts of the beautiful, and the ethics of aesthetics, have always been intertwined 

Aesthetic 'superiority' in itself doesn't make much sense in this respect. Pop culture and entertainment, is not intrinsically an artistic endeavour. This is one reason, why folk music, is often derided in classical music, unless its form is lifted out of its folk domain, into a classical medium.


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## Jaime77

> Pop culture and entertainment, is not intrinsically an artistic endeavour. This is one reason, why folk music, is often derided in classical music, unless its form is lifted out of its folk domain, into a classical medium.


ammm oh I very strongly disagree with this. Pop culture and entertainment. Are your referring to popular music? By such do you mean, rock music, Jazz, world music etc. You are saying these are not art? Indian classical music with all its intricacies and level of skill involved in producing it, is not art? John Coltrane, one of the greatest musicians of the Twentieth Century, what he did, was not art? I could go on into rock but I don't think that would help my case any more.

There is a link between folk music and popular music of course but they are not the same thing anymore. Popular music has evolved into something far more diverse and artistically-informed than you give it credit for.

You sound so rooted in the conservative Western Art Music as the supreme entity. It is like early Twentieth Century musicology of the great canon which subordinates all other music on the planet. The poor colonials and their primitive 'music'.

Also Mozart is entertaining. At least it is to me. Also Rossini amoung many others was so popular as to merit being part of a popular culture. So should we not regard his work as art?

Derided folk music? Oh so many composers of the nationalist era and even people like Haydn would strongly disagree with you there. They glorified folk music and the traditions of the country. Bartok, for example, one of the great folk song collectors/recorders too, tried very hard to get exactly the flavour and character correct so as not to make a poor substitue for the real thing.


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## Lukecash12

jaibyrne said:


> Hi all,
> 
> I am a composer of some 15 years now having studied at Uni but learned as much from just listening and meeting other composers. I left a Phd cos I found it too stifling. I felt the academic thing was not for me. The rivalry was something else at that level.
> 
> My question is as follows...
> 
> I assume you are composing what might be called contemporary classical music in the sense that is it notated for the most part and is in some way part of a tradition that includes folks like Bach and Beethoven.
> 
> Now though it is a new century. It has been a hundred years nearly since Schonberg's first breaks into atonality and since then we have had serialism, integral serialism, chance, new complexity, minimlism etc etc.
> 
> Where do you fit? What is you style? Do you feel you need to be a certain way considering the music that came before. Are you more new-complexity or post-minimalism for example.
> 
> Do you accept there are many valid approaches to composing or are you convinced your way is the only legitamate way given the history of music so far?
> 
> How do you feel about dwindling audiences for new music, do you care?
> 
> Seems like a lot of questions but even if you answered a few it would be great. This is a very interesting topic I think that we as composers need to look at.


As for my style... I am pleased with any composition of mine that is well put together, regardless of it's category. I don't need to be a certain way, and it seems like too much effort is put into fitting in a certain role. I simply write good music.

Audiences don't seem to be dwindling at all. Maybe what you're referring to is the apparent ignorance in most people we meet. It's been this way forever, and it will stay this way forever. And who are we to complain?


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## Jaime77

Surely audiences are dwindling. Do you think the numbers for contemporary music concerts are equal to the numbers for a Beethoven concert? Even during Beethoven's time more people went to hear his music. I don't refer to all modern music either. This is the thing. Glass and Part are quite popular because they are tonal and have a discernable meter. I refer to the more esoteric music. At the uni I attended to study music, during a music festival of concerts, there was a big concert billed of all new music and considering it was one of the best uni's in the country to study composition, it makes sense. 12 people showed for that concert and... it was free !

They would rather pay and listen to a Brahms trio for example that have to sit through free but totally weird and dissonant music  It may not all have been that way but the billing of 'new contemporary music' was clearly enough to put people off. 
There is ignorance there of course too but plenty of ignorant people love Brahms. I would be disappointed if only 12 people came to my premier out of a music department of 250 plus. Music is communication, like all art, I want more people to listen of course not just a few academics who probably went purely for the politics of showing up.


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## Rasa

jaibyrne said:


> Music is communication, like all art, I want more people to listen of course not just a few academics who probably went purely for the politics of showing up.


Unfortunately most modern "intellectual music" (let's call it like that) composers, in spite of their best efforts, only manage to communicate a firm "bugger off" with their music.


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## Jaime77

lol yep rasa


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## Polednice

jaibyrne said:


> There is ignorance there of course too but plenty of ignorant people love Brahms.


I hope that's not a reference to me 

I don't think it's at all surprising that the audience for contemporary art music is much smaller than the audience for more standard repertoire. The problem is exactly to do with the esoteric direction in which a lot of art music went during the 20th century, thus building an (accurate) reputation of inaccessibility - seasoned lovers of art music might find it simple enough to appreciate such works, but the general public don't stand a chance because such music says, 'If you're not as experienced as me, tough luck.' That's why I compared the situation in another thread to the succession of Romanticism over the Augustan period (particularly in literature). All we can do is attempt to build a reputation for art music that suggests that it is both original and accessible, without resorting to the compositional style of Jenkins


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## Gangsta Tweety Bird

who cares if most people dont like contemporary music. most people dont like any classical music


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## Argus

The term 'art music' is about the most pretentious, not to mention nonsensical, phrase I have heard any kind of music described as. It reeks of elitism. You may as well say _music _music or _art _art. What music isn't art?

I'll just say I agree with pretty much everything Jaime has said in this thread thus far.


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## Aramis

Argus said:


> What music isn't art?


Factory music, created the same way as a screwdrivers are made. And there is a lot of such music.


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## Polednice

Argus said:


> The term 'art music' is about the most pretentious, not to mention nonsensical, phrase I have heard any kind of music described as. It reeks of elitism. You may as well say _music _music or _art _art. What music isn't art?
> 
> I'll just say I agree with pretty much everything Jaime has said in this thread thus far.


The whole point of saying 'art music' is that it is intended to be _more_ inclusive than saying 'classical music' which is itself much more of an elitist term.


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## Argus

Polednice said:


> The whole point of saying 'art music' is that it is intended to be _more_ inclusive than saying 'classical music' which is itself much more of an elitist term.


It implies that some music must not be art. All music is art. The question is more what is music.


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## Jaime77

Who cares if the audiences for contemporary music are small.. *Gangsta Tweety*, says. I care!  I am a composer and I dont like that every time I meet a person the chance of them knowing contemporary classical music even exists is so unlikely, let alone want to listen to it.

Those that do know it, tend to not like it cos... as *Polednice* pointed out, it has become so esoteric, much of it demands a high level of contextual understanding and analysis to get passed the lack of tonality, clear melody or noticeable meter.

Also... who cares if we dont 'understand' Chopin when it moves us with the emotion and beauty. Analysis doesn't even come into it. This I admit is a generalization and not everyone loves Chopin, but you get the idea. We don't need a Phd to appreciate Chopin but it helps a lot if you have one for Berio.

_Modern art_ also is far more well known than modern music. Funny I have also found the term _modern art_ to be of a lot more interest to those who heard of it than to those who have heard of modern music. If the art work has cool colours or is a giant fish made of rubber, this can be enough to excite and attract people - but such treatment of music, the unfamiliar and esoteric, and many people are running for the door. This could be that music holds such a place in people's hearts. It is so highly personal a love affair that 'meddling with it' too much will cause a lot of distaste.

btw.. The reference to ignorant Brahmsians was no reference to you Polednice 

*Aramis*... music that is made like as in a factory.. give me a clear example of a work of music made this way and then explain to me how this is not art - if you so wish. 

*Argus* we are on the same page - and to be honest most of the people who contributed to this thread are on the same page about modern music today. The whole debate about art, 'high and low' has caused some division tho for sure


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## Polednice

Argus said:


> It implies that some music must not be art. All music is art. The question is more what is music.


It certainly does imply that some music must not be art, but what's wrong with that? Can _all_ music really be art? Is _The Da Vinci Code_ literary art? Are 'collectors plates' with pictures of cats on them visual art? Assuming the answer is no (though by all means explain if you think the answer is yes!), why should all music be art?

EDIT --- Also, is _everything_ is art, doesn't that entirely devalue the whole thing?


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## Aramis

> Aramis... music that is made like as in a factory.. give me a clear example and then explain to me how this is not art - if you so wish.


And then he told them a parable: once there was a Jewish merchant in the city of Judea, and he had two sons, three daughters and seven nephews. One day he called one of his sons to him and said: _tonight I have dreamed a dream about a hundred of thousands cows eating a serpent with emerald eyes. When it was finished, the cows climber into the little, weak tree, but it didn't break or fall. Therefore you shall be a composer._ And the son was teached by finest musicians in the city of Judea. But the Lord saw him and said: _what a imbecile!_

Half of six multiplied by one-half years later the father died and the imbecile son wasted his properties. He became a pauper. He knew no craft and had no money. And he said: _I shall write music, for I was teached in this craft as no other man!_ And he took a walking stick and wandered barefoot, begging into the land of Hollywood. And then he wrote music. He was a imbecile and didn't like any music or any art, he didin't knew what it's all about, but he had great teachers who told him about the theory, so he knew, mathematically, how to manage a piece which, to other people (not to him) will appear as sad or joyfull. And he wrote and empty piece of music, just a random thing based on theory. And it was used in a movie. 44348726th league movie, porn-horror about ancient shark hunting horny ladies near Florida.

I say to you - this was no art.


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## Jaime77

lol horny ladies near Florida.. thats what this thread needs.

I asked you to name a song and explain to me how, by the way it is _produced_, that it is not art. A composer doens't have to be any good for something to be art. Of course not! There are tons of really rubbish symphonies too but they are still art. They were created to communicate something to someone. You are using critical subjectivity to deem if something is art or not.


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## Aramis

I think you didn't bother to put some effort in thinking about what did I mean.



> A composer doens't have to be any good for something to be art.


That is not my point.

My point is that art is when someone creates something... but wait, you said it already:



> to communicate something to someone


Yes. Communicate something to someone KNOWINGLY. That's where art comes from. From people that feel need to express something and they do it.

It's not a secret that music is business as well and there are a lot of composers "by accident" (pushed by parents to study music etc.) and they write music with no such purpose, they write a *pastiche of art for commercial usage*.


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## TresPicos

Argus said:


> The term 'art music' is about the most pretentious, not to mention nonsensical, phrase I have heard any kind of music described as. It reeks of elitism. You may as well say _music _music or _art _art. *What music isn't art?*
> 
> I'll just say I agree with pretty much everything Jaime has said in this thread thus far.


I think you gave us a perfect example in this thread...


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## Argus

> It certainly does imply that some music must not be art, but what's wrong with that? Can all music really be art? Is The Da Vinci Code literary art? Are 'collectors plates' with pictures of cats on them visual art? Assuming the answer is no (though by all means explain if you think the answer is yes!), why should all music be art?
> 
> EDIT --- Also, is everything is art, doesn't that entirely devalue the whole thing?


You assumed wrongly. The answer is yes. The Da Vinci Code is as much art as any novel written, just as those 'collectors plates' are as much art as the finest pottery created. You and Aramis seem to think quality has something to do with what is and isn't art.

It's simple. Either all music is art or no music is art. I opt for the former. If we are talking about what is music then I am unable to give a rational answer. Same again if we are talking about 'what is art?'. Duchamps already asked this question almost a hundred years ago and it remains unanswered and will do forever (or until the meaning of the word changes). Is something art as soon as someone refers to it as such?

The word _art_ does not add value to a thing nor does it have any kind of connotations. It's just a word used to describe certain things.



> I think you gave us a perfect example in this thread...


And yes that is art. It may be a steaming pile of art, but art nonetheless.


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## Aramis

> You and Aramis seem to think quality has something to do with what is and isn't art.


 Don't count me in - I have made my point quite clearly and I didn't even use the word "quality".


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## Polednice

Argus said:


> You assumed wrongly. The answer is yes. The Da Vinci Code is as much art as any novel written, just as those 'collectors plates' are as much art as the finest pottery created. You and Aramis seem to think quality has something to do with what is and isn't art.
> 
> It's simple. Either all music is art or no music is art.


I don't think Aramis and me think it's anything to do with quality; in fact, I think we've both said in various places that we believe it's to do with intention. The notion that all music is art is just as useful as saying that no music is art...


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## TresPicos

Argus said:


> And yes that is art. It may be a steaming pile of art, but art nonetheless.


Well, in some respect I guess I agree.

Bad music becomes less and less art as it gets worse and worse, and then, when it gets reeeeeeeally bad, it could suddenly qualify as art again, but in an "arty", audiovisual installation art kind of way.


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## Lukecash12

Argus said:


> It implies that some music must not be art. All music is art. The question is more what is music.


Some art is *shieza* to be thrown away. It's just impossible for you to force us to consider pure crap to be art.


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## Argus

Lukecash12 said:


> Some art is *shieza* to be thrown away. It's just impossible for you to force us to consider pure crap to be art.


I'll repeat. It doesn't matter if you consider something to be art. It's whether you consider something to be music.

To make it simple.

*Music = Art

Art= ?*

Everything is not art, but anything has the potential to be art.



> Don't count me in - I have made my point quite clearly and I didn't even use the word "quality".


OK. You were making a different point. How about an example of some music that you don't consider to be art according to your definition.


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## Lukecash12

Argus said:


> I'll repeat. It doesn't matter if you consider something to be art. It's whether you consider something to be music.
> 
> To make it simple.
> 
> *Music = Art
> 
> Art= ?*
> 
> Everything is not art, but anything has the potential to be art.


For hundreds of years, art has been a term reserved for the great and the thoughtful works. Regardless of the meaning of the word, although I doubt those who originally used the term had your perspective in mind, any of this pure crap out there hasn't earned the right to be put in such an astute category.


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## Aramis

Argus said:


> OK. You were making a different point. How about an example of some music that you don't consider to be art according to your definition.







Singer did not make art with his singing because he is dumb waffle who wants to be "the man", the composer did not make art because all authors of hits like this are washed from artistic mentality craftmans who are made to write hits, not to express anything.


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## Gangsta Tweety Bird

if this argument were resolved what would come out of it. nothing, except the winner would feel good. whether or not something is called art doesn't matter to anyone

***

jaibyrne, i do not think it is fair to blame composers of modern "inaccessible" music just like we do not blame orchestras and the composers they play (mozart and beethoven, etc) for selling less records than lady gaga


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## Argus

Lukecash12 said:


> For hundreds of years, art has been a term reserved for the great and the thoughtful works. *Regardless of the meaning of the word*, although I doubt those who originally used the term had your perspective in mind, any of this pure crap out there hasn't earned the right to be put in such an astute category.






>


I expected something more difficult to adjudicate. That is obviously art. Unequivocally.

Even according to your own personal definition how can you prove that song conforms to what you believe art to be. Only Akon or whoever wrote that song could possibly know such things.


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## Aramis

> Even according to your own personal definition how can you prove that song conforms to what you believe art to be.


This is, as you say, obvious. To me, because I can easily see what kind of guy Akon is and what he is after. I also belive what I have said about pop music composers. They wouldn't work in their industry if they would not get rid of any artism.

I can't prove this. I know that I'm right and I can explain to you the way I think about it, which is what I have done. That's all.


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## StlukesguildOhio

this contemporary trend for ignorance of any ethical question is more or less rife to the point of being common. The arts of the beautiful, were always considered as a modality of accessing truth; from Plato's unfolding of the beauty of truth, to the truth inherent in beauty.

_Beauty is truth, truth beauty,-that is all. Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know_, eh? A concept I am not completely adverse to. Walter Pater, Baudelaire, Gautier, Oscar Wilde... even William Faulkner argued in favor of the moral worth of beauty. The question then becomes what is or is not "beautiful."

Aesthetics, that branch of ethics which explores the arts of the beautiful, has never been indifferent to the ethical character of what constitutes beauty.

But then there has always been the problem of what constitutes beauty and the difficulty of works of almost unquestionable beauty which take moral positions that are diametrically opposed. We are also confronted with the reality that beauty may contain a dark under-side... not unlike nature, "red in tooth and claw".

In the post-modern era, we might try and redefine 'art' as something more valuable than what is constituted through beauty.

In the Post-Modern era far too many attempt to define "ART" as something having little to do with "beauty" and far too much with ethics. William Gass hits upon this well when he writes:

_I think it is one of the artist's obligations to create as perfectly as he or she can, not regardless of all other consequences, but in full awareness, nevertheless, that in pursuing other values -- in championing Israel or fighting for the rights of women, or defending the faith, or exposing capitalism, supporting your sexual preferences, or speaking for your race -- you may simply be putting on a saving scientific, religious, political mask to disguise your failure as an artist. Neither the world's truth nor a god's goodness will win you beauty's prize._

However it is very churlish to scream out indignantly, that others are taking the moral high ground, because the arts of the beautiful, and the ethics of aesthetics, have always been intertwined

The art historian, Robert Hughes points out the flaw in the notion that art and ethics are morality are inherently intertwined:

_Nobody has ever denied that Sigismondo de Malatesta, the Lord of Rimini, had excellent taste. He hired the most refined of quattrocento architects, Leno Battista Alberti, to design a memorial temple to his wife, and then got the sculptor Agostino de Duccio to decorate it, and retained Piero della Francesca to paint it. Yet Sigismondo was a man of such callousness and rapcity that he was known in life as Il Lupo, The Wolf, and so execrated after his death that the Catholic Church made him (for a time) the only man apart from Judas Iscariot officially listed as being in Hell-a distinction he earned by trussing up a Papal emissary, the fifteen-year-old Bishop of Fano, in his own rochet and publicly sodomizing him before his applauding army in the main square of Rimini._

Aesthetic 'superiority' in itself doesn't make much sense in this respect. Pop culture and entertainment, is not intrinsically an artistic endeavour. This is one reason, why folk music, is often derided in classical music, unless its form is lifted out of its folk domain, into a classical medium.

And here I am the one regularly chided as being the churlish conservative. I most certainly agree that there are works of art which are better or worse... but the notion that the best are only to be found within a certain context... produced by a certain type of artist with an appropriate level of education for an audience of an appropriate social class is most certainly snobbishness in the extreme... and pure BS. The great Ukiyo-e prints of Japan were mass produced for a middle class audience and tourists... and the resulting works include some of the finest works of Japanese art. The theater of the Elizabethan age was held upon the same level of aesthetic respect as television is today... and yet it produced Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, among others. Folk art/music and popular art/music are most assuredly artistic endeavors... regardless of the intentions. Quality is another question altogether. That will be decided upon over time.


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## Jaime77

*Artemis...* So when someone does something that is for money and not for communication, it suddenly doesn't become art?

earlier you said I didn't get ur point, maybe because of the fabulous way you chose to express it - that people who are too stupid to express themselves or having nothing of their own to express are not communicating anything therefore it is not art.

why are you so anti-popular music I want to know. Do you feel the same about Jazz music and where do you draw the line. Should we go to you to vet what is and is not art?? 
Why do you seem so aggressively defensive of your claims of art? some and I stress some, pop music is produced to sell records. so the guy who produces it knows that love sells as a subject. so he communicates love in the music. Therefore, he *communicates* and therefore it is art. how deeply the artist who performs it then gets in touch with the material is hardly relevant. we are not talking about interpretation, we are talking about artistic creations.

as regards Akon, how can you possibly know if he feels what he is singing... if he didn't pen the lyrics himself and really want to say these things, no matter how trivial.

I wonder if you think all folk music is not art either


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## StlukesguildOhio

Surely audiences are dwindling. Do you think the numbers for contemporary music concerts are equal to the numbers for a Beethoven concert? Even during Beethoven's time more people went to hear his music. I don't refer to all modern music either. This is the thing. Glass and Part are quite popular because they are tonal and have a discernable meter. I refer to the more esoteric music.

Again... I am not certain I agree that audiences are dwindling. Just how large was the audience for Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Handel, etc... during their lifetime? I certainly agree that the audience for the latest pop-music sensation may be larger than it is for Arvo Part or Osvaldo Golijov... but I greatly suspect that the latter composers actually have an audience that far outnumbers that which Mozart ever enjoyed. Even the more esoteric works... Ligetti, Penderecki, Murail, John Cage, etc... have an audience (when one considers merely the sales of CDs) that may rival that of Bach and Handel. One must remember that the audience for "classical" music was often limited to those of the proper social, political, and economic status. The vast majority of the population may have been exposed to "serious" music in church on Sundays... but mostly enjoyed the musical entertainment afforded by musicians in the taverns, traveling minstrels, performers at fairs and the theater, etc... Today, this audience has become the most powerful in economic terms on the basis of the sheer numbers.


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## Polednice

I think an important problem with this discussion is that we're discussing the issue with different perceptions of what 'art' is. Some people hold it to be any act of creation in an artistic medium, regardless of means or ends, while others think it is reserved for works created under certain criteria. 

Just as an example, to respond to one of Jaibyrne's most recent comments, I would not consider folk music to be art. However, I very much expect that I would assign it the same value and worth as you would, it just so happens that we are operating under different definitions of an apparently very loose word.


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## StlukesguildOhio

Modern art also is far more well known than modern music. Funny I have also found the term modern art to be of a lot more interest to those who heard of it than to those who have heard of modern music. If the art work has cool colours or is a giant fish made of rubber, this can be enough to excite and attract people - but such treatment of music, the unfamiliar and esoteric, and many people are running for the door. This could be that music holds such a place in people's hearts. It is so highly personal a love affair that 'meddling with it' too much will cause a lot of distaste.

I think, speaking as a "Modern Artist", that the visual arts have the advantage (for better or worse) in never having had to succumb to the opinions of the disinterested masses. The larger population... few of whom are truly serious about any music... let alone classical music... to have invested the time and effort into learning more about it... hold all the cards. As a result of their sheer numbers it is they who represent the largest profit to be made in music. The artist who can sell 5 million CDs is worth far more to the music industry than the classical composer who might sell 20,000 discs. The visual arts have never needed to deal with this. The art object remains a luxury item to the point that even a painting by a minor painter... perhaps a painter somewhat well-known through exhibition and teaching in mid-sized city... can easily demand $5000 on up. Art, in other words, is priced outside of the range of the masses... or the range of all but the most passionate are likely to pay. But even within the arts we find a heirarchy. We find artists such as Lucian Freud and Jasper Johns who can demand upwards of $5-million per new painting... and we have the far lower range of the college art instructor getting perhaps a couple thousand. The reality is that there are multiple art audiences and the best an artist can do is to create what he he or she believes in and then seek out the audience that supports that art.


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## Aramis

> Artemis...


She did not contribute to this thread since your last post, so I assume you're talking to me but confused nicknames.



> So when someone does something that is for money and not for communication, it suddenly doesn't become art?


Indeed. It's something that I have called pastiche of art. How can something that is ment, by it's author, just to make provisional ilussion of expressiond and meaning be considered art?



> that people who are too stupid to express themselves or having nothing of their own to express are not communicating anything therefore it is not art.


Yes. It is truth. Otherwise it would be too easy to be real artist.



> why are you so anti-popular music I want to know.


I am not. I'm not against popular music artist that are individuals, not puppets. Contrary to appearances, it is not hard to distinguis one from another.



> Why do you seem so aggressively defensive of your claims of art?


I'm talking about something important and high, and in such area there is no place for appeasement. Besides, I do not consider my posts aggressive - I say what I belive, that's all.



> pop music is produced to sell records. so the guy who produces it knows that love sells as a subject. so he communicates love in the music. Therefore, he communicates and therefore it is art.


Just because there are lyrics about love doesn't mean that the music is about it to. Face it - guy who writes songs for Akon or Rihanna doesn't approach his job as an art, he doesn't intend to express anything, he just have purpose to write catchy tune in one of basic moods. You can exchange lyrics and music between two love pop songs touching two aspects of love and people will see no difference.

It doesn't work with what we call art music - you can't rename Liszt's _Liebestraum_ with _Och, baby, shake your tigh ***_. And you could easily put such frivolous lyrics instead of sad ones in Right Now (Na Na Na).



> as regards Akon, how can you possibly know if he feels what he is singing... if he didn't pen the lyrics himself and really want to say these things, no matter how trivial


This guy is totally untrue and nothing that he does in his music is honest. Do you know that he lied about his past in interviev? He told that he spend some time in jail for robbery when he was young and poor and it was proven untrue. It is clear for anyone inteligent that this statement was ment to make him more popular among "gangsta" music listeners by making his image more gangsta. Everything what he does is obligated to make money for him and for his label.


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## Head_case

> Headcase: However it is very churlish to scream out indignantly, that others are taking the moral high ground, because the arts of the beautiful, and the ethics of aesthetics, have always been intertwined





> Stlukesguildohio:The art historian, Robert Hughes points out the flaw in the notion that art and ethics are morality are inherently intertwined:


And if you read Hughes' opinion, his flaw does no such totalising aggrandizement: he merely speciates a locus and type of work, with a type of painter, in reference to the value judgements, made by a solitary individual. This is why Hughes is respectable: he grounds his work in the concrete. However, he is not an ethicist, nor a simple-minded man, who confused the practice of 'ethics' with 'value-judgement'. This seems to be the modern and common trend for bashing 'ethics' such that relativism can triumph on false grounds. We don't need to be either extremes. Just refusing the relativistic world view, that everything is acceptable as x, y, or z (or the specious argument, that everything can pass for art), is a stance: one that can both make him precious, or unlikeable, or even worse ~ the vanguard of a passing tradition which is blinded to the innovations of the new and arising forms of art.

Robert Hughes on Hirst:










(Vomit bowl)

Germaine Greer on Hughes:



> I have known Hughes and liked him all my adult life, but I have also disapproved of him pretty consistently. I was present when he was the after-dinner speaker at the Royal Academy dinner four years ago, when he was so dismissive of any art that was not drawing, painting or carving, that I suspected him of tailoring his speech to fit what he took to be the conservatism of the academicians. I could hardly imagine that he had turned his back on all the most important movements in 20th-century art or that he was still in love with the figure of the great master whose sensibility is finer, sentiment more noble, hand more divinely driven than those of the rest of us lesser mortals. No wonder Jake and Dinos Chapman put so much energy into defacing Goya, I thought, and stumped off home.
> 
> Everybody loves it when Hughes goes off on a rant about the schlock of the new, but he is too easily seduced into blaming the wrong people. A Hughes label is crafted to stick fast to its victim.


What goes around, comes around? 

Debunking one myth with another anecdote? There is no ethical stance in this kind of 'critical analysis'. Perhaps let's try and tie up the loose ends: pop culture and entertainment: think 'Susan Boyle'; Robbie Williams, or 'Take That'. Maybe, even think about the 'Muppets' latest Christmas hit. Then think about Beethoven's symphonies. Or his string quartets. Which represents art and which represents entertainment to you? Sure there are categories which blend fluidly in between, however we do not define art nor entertainment, through ambiguity. Nor do we confound issues with syllogistic thinking. In reference to Jaime's statement to Artemis:



> Why do you seem so aggressively defensive of your claims of art? some and I stress some, pop music is produced to sell records. so the guy who produces it knows that love sells as a subject. so he communicates love in the music. Therefore, he communicates and therefore it is art.


The syllogism in the reasoning is insufficient: communication and art as a verisimilitude has been whacked to death. If a teenager in the street tells you to **** off, is that art? He is communicating to you surely? He is communicating to elicit a reaction from you, right? That he values an emotional reaction, more than money is neither here nor there: he 'communicates'. Whether this communication is classified as colloquial; banter; swearing or other forms of discourse, is less important than recognising that it is intrinsically not art. Let's wonder out aloud....why not?


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## StlukesguildOhio

I would not consider folk music to be art.

How, then, do you define "folk music" (or "folk art") so that we may differentiate it from "real art"?


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## Polednice

StlukesguildOhio said:


> I would not consider folk music to be art.
> 
> How, then, do you define "folk music" (or "folk art") so that we may differentiate it from "real art"?


Folk music is folk music... It has an obvious enough definition and I distinguish it from art because it is created for entirely different purposes which are usually founded in its social functions. This doesn't mean that I consider it less meritous than 'real art' (whatever that is supposed to mean), and it doesn't mean I would assign it any less value than what I would define 'art'. It's just _different_.


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## Head_case

That's a shame. Why don't you consider folk music to be art?

This is a very different kind of statement from below, which Jaime has got the wrong handle on:



> Aesthetic 'superiority' in itself doesn't make much sense in this respect. Pop culture and entertainment, is not intrinsically an artistic endeavour. This is one reason, why folk music, is often derided in classical music, unless its form is lifted out of its folk domain, into a classical medium.


Jaime seems to attribute to me, a dislike of folk music. I listen to way more alternative folk rock and folk music than I do classical music. In fact, most of the classical music I listen to, has either a nationalist flavour, or folk derived influences (Myaskovsky, Szymanowski, Smetana, Bartok; Shostakovich etc).

There is a distinction between recognising what others say about one's own music tasting, and stating an opinion. Maybe things are getting too confusing on this thread, and we need to take a breather and start again?


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## Jaime77

*Aramis...* apologies for the wrong nickname. You make your argument well but I am still not swayed. To steer this discussion away from what art is and to what I started this thread as would be good now again  This thread is about being a composer and style and perception of modern music.

but to finish on what I say about this.....

Perhaps we are using different words for the same thing. It seems to a couple of people here, art is only high art, if I can call it that and anything 'lower' is not art at all. I however believe all creations that are done with an intention of producing something, an object, a sound object here, for public consumption, is an art form.

Folk music I believe is art. How could it not be? Why is Bach art and a folk tune not? I would love an explanation of that. They are both intentional creations for the purpose of communication/social exchange.


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## Jaime77

I misunderstood you *head case*, it seems, sorry. I thought you meant that folk was 'below' art music and only elevated by inclusion in classical music. That otherwise it is not on the same level. Misinterpreted.


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## Polednice

It seems that this desire to call every creation of any kind 'art' is just a wish to say something roughly equivalent to: "I respect this kind of creation. It might not be to my taste, but I respect it. I'm not a snob. I promise."

I can say and feel exactly the same thing, but I can also reserve the term 'art' for something more specific, otherwise it would be pointless for the word to exist at all. This does not mean that I have concocted some kind of snobbish hierarchy about 'high art' and 'low art', forcing my prejudices about value on everything as it comes under my nose. It's an incorrect assumption to make - my use of the word 'art' has _nothing_ to do with value/quality/worth/popularity etc. etc., it is to do with _intention_, and my take on intention is slightly more stringent than 'the intention to make something of any kind, anywhere for any purpose'.


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## StlukesguildOhio

However, he is not an ethician, nor a simple-minded man, who confused the practice of 'ethics' with 'value-judgement'. This seems to be the modern and common trend for bashing 'ethics' such that relativism can triumph on false grounds.

How is the creation of a work of art an "ethical" act... as opposed to the unethical efforts of "artist" driven by desire for commercial or economic success? You can hold onto Romantic notions that the artist id driven by something higher that the mere desire to earn a living... but this would seem to go against what we know of many artists.

...the vanguard of a passing tradition which is blinded to the innovations of the new and arising forms of art. 

I actually agree with a great many of Hughes judgment calls upon the latest new art... Hirst is little more than a vomit bowl and the Chapman Bothers are deserving of one of the lower rings of Dante's _Inferno_ (Does that mean I am blurring art and ethics?).

Perhaps let's try and tie up the loose ends: pop culture and entertainment: think 'Susan Boyle'; Robbie Williams, or 'Take That'. Maybe, even think about the 'Muppets' latest Christmas hit. Then think about Beethoven's symphonies. Or his string quartets. Which represents art and which represents entertainment to you?

The problem here is that you utilize the extremes as examples. So Susan Boyle, the Muppets, and the Chapman Brothers represent the most reprehensible aspects of popular culture... popular art... and we may clearly differentiate them from Beethoven's symphonies... but what of Miles Davis _Kind of Blue_? The film _Casablanca_? Or the Ukioyo-e wood-block prints by the Japanese? These all represent the products of the popular culture of a sort... and all stand up well as ART. By the same token one might argue that Massenet, Johann Strauss, even Handel were no less driven by the desire for commercial success.


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## StlukesguildOhio

Folk music is folk music... It has an obvious enough definition and I distinguish it from art because it is created for entirely different purposes which are usually founded in its social functions....

The definition would not seem to be obvious enough to us all, otherwise I would not have asked. As for the purpose for which this or that work of art was created... how does that define what is or is not "folk art" or art to be taken seriously? Did not Bach's music or Handel's have a place within given social functions? Or do we assume that the social functions of the rich and powerful guarantees that the art created for their soirees is "ART" while that created for the rest of the peons is but cheap entertainment?


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## Lukecash12

Argus said:


> I expected something more difficult to adjudicate. That is obviously art. Unequivocally.
> 
> Even according to your own personal definition how can you prove that song conforms to what you believe art to be. Only Akon or whoever wrote that song could possibly know such things.


Once again, art has been a respected category of communication for hundreds of years. *Regardless* of what the term means to an intellectual in the fundamental context, many of us who actually produce something good will never consider such an ignorant waste of time to deserve the title. It does not matter what it means to us now, or what it was intended to mean. And if you quote that, it makes no difference. People have respected the category, and drawn conclusions about it for an awfully long time. If we were to call such utter crap art, it would send mixed signals. Therefore, I don't intend to give such things any title that can possibly be seen as a sign of respect.

For efficiency's sake, childlike pop music (more culture than music), is not art.


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## Polednice

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Folk music is folk music... It has an obvious enough definition and I distinguish it from art because it is created for entirely different purposes which are usually founded in its social functions....
> 
> The definition would not seem to be obvious enough to us all, otherwise I would not have asked. As for the purpose for which this or that work of art was created... how does that define what is or is not "folk art" or art to be taken seriously? Did not Bach's music or Handel's have a place within given social functions? Or do we assume that the social functions of the rich and powerful guarantees that the art created for their soirees is "ART" while that created for the rest of the peons is but cheap entertainment?


I feel once again misrepresented because you're suggesting that by differentiating between things that are and are not art, I'm simultaneously differentiating between things that should and should not 'be taken seriously'. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to keep rewording what I'm saying, because it's not a difficult concept! I haven't once suggested that my definition of 'art' has any kind of sincerity, value or moral worth attached to it. The music of Bach and Handel most certainly have their place in social function, which is why they're one of those difficult cross-over examples that I prefer to consider as historically interesting rather than 'art'. However, even that is a gross oversimplification because it does not take into account their craftsmanship or their belief in a divine purpose _etc._. This is all far too convoluted now, and I think I'm just going to leave this part of the discussion and wait until I see it take a different track


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## StlukesguildOhio

So Bach and Handel aren't "ART" because they produced work for a given social event as opposed to for some pure desire of self-expression? Thus Michelangelo wasn't an artist either... nor Shakespeare who wrote for entertainment?


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## Lukecash12

StlukesguildOhio said:


> So Bach and Handel aren't "ART" because they produced work for a given social event as opposed to for some pure desire of self-expression? Thus Michelangelo wasn't an artist either... nor Shakespeare who wrote for entertainment?


I guess not in his definition of the term, at least. It's a trivial expression, as I'm guessing the three of us can agree.


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## Argus

Seeing as Aramis provided a weak example of what he doesn't consider to be art, I'll offer some examples I thought he would have used.

Can music created by a machine/computer program be considered art? I remember a television show where James May from Top Gear played two short excerpts of music on the piano. The first piece was Beethoven and the second was composed by a computer programmed to create music in a style very similar to Beethoven. If you didn't know one was written by a non-sentient being, would you have considered it both art?

Similarly, what if a non-human makes a piece of music by, say banging on the keys of a piano. The noise the nn-human makes is then transcribed or recorded by a human. Is this work not art? Then there's birdsong and other natural occuring sounds, like the crashes of water falling from a waterfall.

Not to mention _4'33''_.

You can argue for and against those kinds of 'music' as not being art, but to say folk music or pop music you don't happen to like as not being art is just poor form.

(This is not centred on Aramis' argument only.)


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## Jaime77

yes *Argus*

and I would say (even though I said I would say no more on the subject)

Someone banging at the keyboard is art... it is intentional cretivity even if it is annoying  and so is 4'33'' also intentional creativity (even if Cage called it a 'non-intention')

I am stunned how many people think folk music is not art. Wow. And pop songs you personally think are "utter crap" are therefore not art either. I am also curious about the aggressive attitude towards pop music. It seems like this kind of music has personally offended you. Every time I see such acute defensiveness I wonder what is the real cause.


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## Head_case

> Every time I see such acute defensiveness I wonder what is the real cause.


Being forced to listen to Susan Boyle or Wham! at the workplace? 

PS. - 'art' or 'artifice', is not as universally inclusive as 'intentional creativity'. However if someone who 'bangs on at the keyboard' constitutes 'art', then this kind of reasoning falls into the trap, of 'bad art' versus 'good art'.

On the other hand, art, as a medium to access truth about 'beauty'; conceived in terms of 'revelation, such as works from DaVinci to Caravaggio to Giacometti, has an ethical dimension, which transcends the kind of moral judgements about Susan Boyle above; or the keyboard stabber.


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## Aramis

Argus said:


> Seeing as Aramis provided a weak example of what he doesn't consider to be art, I'll offer some examples I thought he would have used.
> 
> Can music created by a machine/computer program be considered art? I remember a television show where James May from Top Gear played two short excerpts of music on the piano. The first piece was Beethoven and the second was composed by a computer programmed to create music in a style very similar to Beethoven. If you didn't know one was written by a non-sentient being, would you have considered it both art?
> 
> Similarly, what if a non-human makes a piece of music by, say banging on the keys of a piano. The noise the nn-human makes is then transcribed or recorded by a human. Is this work not art? Then there's birdsong and other natural occuring sounds, like the crashes of water falling from a waterfall.
> 
> Not to mention _4'33''_.
> 
> You can argue for and against those kinds of 'music' as not being art, but to say folk music or pop music you don't happen to like as not being art is just poor form.
> 
> (This is not centred on Aramis' argument only.)


Matter of music created by machines was widely discussed in another thread, as far as I can remember.


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## Polednice

Argus said:


> You can argue for and against those kinds of 'music' as not being art, but to say folk music or pop music you don't happen to like as not being art is just poor form.


I don't know who this is directed at, but if it's in part directed at me, then all I can say is that I have never said such a thing, and I suggest that my responses are re-read. It seems that the people who wish to label everything in existence as a form of art have a prejudice against anyone who does not, immediately assuming that it's because it's due to their desire to place everything in a hierarchy and say what is good and what is bad. _This is not the case_ and I'm not going to reword it again. When I speak, I am clearly not being listened to in the slightest because I am constantly misrepresented, so I'm totally withdrawing from this thread until the focus changes.

If it wasn't directed at me, ignore the above


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## Argus

Polednice said:


> I don't know who this is directed at, but if it's in part directed at me, then all I can say is that I have never said such a thing, and I suggest that my responses are re-read. It seems that the people who wish to label everything in existence as a form of art have a prejudice against anyone who does not, immediately assuming that it's because it's due to their desire to place everything in a hierarchy and say what is good and what is bad. _This is not the case_ and I'm not going to reword it again. When I speak, I am clearly not being listened to in the slightest because I am constantly misrepresented, so I'm totally withdrawing from this thread until the focus changes.
> 
> If it wasn't directed at me, ignore the above


It was aimed partly at you and mostly at Lukecash12. You because of this:



> I would not consider folk music to be art





> Folk music is folk music... It has an obvious enough definition and I distinguish it from art because it is created for entirely different purposes which are usually founded in its social functions. This doesn't mean that I consider it less meritous than 'real art' (whatever that is supposed to mean), and it doesn't mean I would assign it any less value than what I would define 'art'. It's just different.


Do you not remember saying this?

Like I asked Aramis, give me an example of music that isn't art, based on your personal definition, so I can better understand your point of view.

You have given no concrete reasons why you believe some things are art and others are not.


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## Polednice

Argus said:


> Do you not remember saying this?


Yes I do remember saying it, and I wouldn't mind saying it again. Even though I tried to express myself in clear English, it apparently still goes misunderstood. As I've also already said a few times, I'm not going to further my part in this discussion. If I want to consider questions such as these, there are other places I can go for more fruitful discussion than this!


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## Argus

Polednice said:


> Yes I do remember saying it, and I wouldn't mind saying it again. Even though I tried to express myself in clear English, it apparently still goes misunderstood. As I've also already said a few times, I'm not going to further my part in this discussion. If I want to consider questions such as these, there are other places I can go for more fruitful discussion than this!


******** is often misunderstood.


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## Polednice

Argus said:


> ******** is often misunderstood.


I suppose that's why I've been failing to grasp the nonsense points you've been making!


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## Argus

Polednice said:


> I suppose that's why I've been failing to grasp the nonsense points you've been making!














I'm still waiting for that example.


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## xuantu

In my opinion, folk music *may* become art for those who perform/appreciate it in the same manner as they do with classical music (a.k.a. art music). Such cases happen when folk music is technically refined, structurally organized and played at concert halls. For the *people* who create the original, it could just be a way of living, which most likely has nothing to do with art (but that doesn't mean it is lower than art)!

I consider Bach and Handle's music to be art, because its social function wasn't their sole and only goal when they wrote. Aesthetic satisfaction and perfection of form was what they were really after. The result of this artistic exercise was the music that can be enjoyed by us who don't necessarily care about its social function any more.

To all the contemporary composers, I'd like to say that please value emotions above all but do not make your sounds cheap. I believe you will eventually join the greats if your music moves people and is still original.


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## Head_case

> xuantu: In my opinion, folk music may become art for those who perform/appreciate it in the same manner as they do with classical music (a.k.a. art music). Such cases happen when folk music is technically refined, structurally organized and played at concert halls. For the people who create the original, it could just be a way of living, which most likely has nothing to do with art _(but that doesn't mean they are lower than art)_!


Why not?

If folk music is abrogated and constrained into the rules which classical music follows, such that it is validated by the same social rules (concert hall/distinguished venues for performance), then is it indeed subjected to the rules of western classical music.

This cannot be a condition for folk music becoming art.

For example - it is easier to think think of 'folk influences' within art. Take Cézanne's Provence for example. Without the folk influences (content), his work would be impossible to conceive. On the other extreme, composers like Tan Dun, do indeed rescript chinese folk music (content) into the classical form. Bartok, on the other hand, transforms folk music, into the actual form of his music. Byzantinian singers also draw on Thracean and middle-European folk tradition as a form of art (La mystere des voix Bulgares), without ever apeing classical musical notation. Robin Holcomb, the American classical pianist, singer and composer, uses folk music of the Appalachians as an integral form of expression of the pure American folk tradition. Her album, 'Little Three' is an example of this kind of folk piano synthesis, however its rules are not inherently, derived from classical music. She makes her own, drawn equally from both disciplines: folk and classical music.

The danger of pitting 'classical music' as a defining factor for what-art-is, remains: anything trashy included within that genre, will then automatically define itself as 'art'; anything outside of that genre, excludes itself. We know this is not true, for the category of 'pop art' or even the much derided 'graffiiti art' which has made its way into museum halls.

With the visual arts, we can reach for Gombrich's massive works and writings to guide us about the history of what has constituted art in the western tradition. In the aural arts, for example - a Lieder, or an aria - there may be very little difference in discerning the difference between listening to Sviridov's Songs and, chorale music, or even between Sviridov, Pallashiavilli (sp?) and attending a Russian Orthodox Mass, or listening to the Innocence Mission's eponymous album's first 1 1/2 minutes.

I'm starting to think that if music is the way some people define 'art' here, I'd rather have nothing to do with it. It would be a blessing then, to know that the music I listen to, is definitely not art


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## Polednice

Argus said:


>


Ha! How are these for examples (the third being the height of the genre)?


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## Lukecash12

Argus said:


> You can argue for and against those kinds of 'music' as not being art, but to say folk music or pop music you don't happen to like as not being art is just poor form.
> 
> (This is not centred on Aramis' argument only.)


Once again, not poor form. It doesn't seem wise to send such mixed signals as to give terrible music the title of art. I don't just happen to not like it, I have disclosed the reasons why it is a shameful waste of time that advocates it's flaws to the world (lack of respect to authority, lack of patience, inability to examine the whole situation, etc). On those grounds, I don't wish to say anything of that music that could possibly support it. It's not healthy for people to delude themselves with such jargon.


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## xuantu

Head_case said:


> If folk music is abrogated and constrained into the rules which classical music follows, such that it is validated by the same social rules (concert hall/distinguished venues for performance), then is it indeed subjected to the rules of western classical music.
> 
> This cannot be a condition for folk music becoming art.
> 
> ...
> 
> The danger of pitting 'classical music' as a defining factor for what-art-is, remains: anything trashy included within that genre, will then automatically define itself as 'art'; anything outside of that genre, excludes itself. We know this is not true, for the category of 'pop art' or even the much derided 'graffiiti art' which has made its way into museum halls.
> 
> In the aural arts, for example - a Lieder, or an aria - there may be very little difference in discerning the difference between listening to Sviridov's Songs and, chorale music, or even between Sviridov, Pallashiavilli (sp?) and attending a Russian Orthodox Mass, or listening to the Innocence Mission's eponymous album's first 1 1/2 minutes.
> 
> I'm starting to think that if music is the way some people define 'art' here, I'd rather have nothing to do with it. It would be a blessing then, to know that the music I listen to, is definitely not art


Seems you tend to see *excellent* music of any origin as *art*. It's perfectly fine. But a quick lookup in a dictionary will tell you that "art music" is a term used to distinguish serious music making (in the western context, it mainly refers to classical music) from popular music and folk music, although certain criteria must be applied as the boundaries may be vague sometimes.


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## Head_case

xuantu said:


> Seems you tend to see *excellent* music of any origin as *art*. It's perfectly fine. But a quick lookup in a dictionary will tell you that "art music" is a term used to distinguish serious music making (in the western context, it mainly refers to classical music) from popular music and folk music, although certain criteria must be applied as the boundaries may be vague sometimes.


Not at all. Excellence is a different category (moral judgement or opinion) rather than an aesthetic category (folk, or classical music; post-modern or baroque etc).

Dictionary definitions won't help you either here: you would only run into the same problems with 'film' versus 'art films'. Or 'photographs' versus 'fine art photographs'. Defining a problem away, is no better than a Wittgensteinian word game, and although we are slaves to language, we can make use of it, better than we have here.

A DJ can be serious about music making, yet never creates an original note of his own. Similarly, there is a lot of excellent pop music out there. Check out www.samphillips.com or Grant Lee Phillips. Why do we still refer to the latter as artists, but not the former? Seriousness in music making is not a criterion for being an 'artist'. Just like seriousness in writing literature was never a criterion. Franz Kafka penned 'The Castle' whilst laughing about the meaninglessness of the existential drama; other writers, like the one of the short story - 'The wallpaper', wrote it whilst mentally unwell, yet specialists in their own discipline, have no difficulty, in recognising these works as 'art'.

The definition of art is neither as complex nor as tautological as you might think. If we consider how the function of art, is to 'inspire': this function alone, does not tell us what art is. However when it inspires us to discover something of our humanity; emotional or poetic, we discover something which we can grasp in the everyday (e.g. the 'common folk' experience), which elevates, ordinariness.....to a sublimation which reveals to us, a meaning and depth, that ordinary experiences does not.

This view of art, is less taut than the view of the snob; similarly, it is not so unboundaried that everything that squawks is considered art. There are writers, like Baudelaire's whose work 'The painter of modern life' can help draw some clarity around these categories.

At the end of the day, art is only relevant, if it forms a living relationship with you, as the listener; or you as the viewer and so on. Subjective vs Objective break down here: both absolutes are as irrelevant as the other, in making value judgements. Whether a piece of work is deigned to be 'excellent' or not, does not matter, if you cannot relate to it, and it leaves you stone cold. The descriptive 'excellent' is a social trapping of an insignificant commercialised mindset, which can neither think for itself, nor listen to its own voice.


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## Jaime77

lol this is gone outta control fellow forumers. nobody is being swade by anyone else's opinion anymore so what is the point? But how many times have I seen people say something along the lines of... this music is rubbish *in their opinion* and therefore it is not art. Is Hindustani traditional music art? I would love to know. Is gagaku art? if you hate it, is it not art. Must all art be great in order to be art? is there no such a thing as really bad art? hmmm I ponder but grow tired.

music is organised sound

organised sound is an art form

music is thus art

susan boyle is organised sound

therefore susan boyle is music

therefore susan boyle is art.    

or pick someone like Gershwin - he is half art half rubbish cos he straddles pop and classical. so his music is only half art. (probably the piano in rhapsody in blue but not the orchestral parts.) too much of the crude jazz in there.

hmmm


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## Polednice

A huge part of this miscommunication problem seems to be whether or not certain people believe the word 'art' immediately qualifies something as being 'good'. I _don't_ believe that the term carries any kind of value connotation, which is why I choose to distinguish folk/popular/art for convenience, while simultaneously not passing judgment on any of those forms, each of them being as capable of moving us as each other, and each of them housing creative works of equal quality (if they're comparable in that respect)...

*sigh*


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## Lukecash12

Polednice said:


> A huge part of this miscommunication problem seems to be whether or not certain people believe the word 'art' immediately qualifies something as being 'good'. I _don't_ believe that the term carries any kind of value connotation, which is why I choose to distinguish folk/popular/art for convenience, while simultaneously not passing judgment on any of those forms, each of them being as capable of moving us as each other, and each of them housing creative works of equal quality (if they're comparable in that respect)...
> 
> *sigh*


Right you are, but it's commonly seen that way. So for the sake of being effective in communication, it is wise to specific on what we denote as art.


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## StlukesguildOhio

It appears that we are treading dangerously close to that unanswerable question, "what is art?" With time I have come to the conclusion that "art" is whatever the audience deems to be "art". The question of what is "good" or "bad" or "great" art is also something decided upon by the audience. The intention of the "artist" is irrelevant. Whether Shakespeare had aspirations for his plays to be taken seriously as literature... as art... is irrelevant. They are art because they are recognized as such by an audience who has invested the time and effort into the exploration, study, preservation, and appreciation of the literary arts. The medieval monks embellishing a book of gospels in Lindisfarne may have had no aspiration beyond the glorification of God... and yet the resulting works are unquestionably art for the very reason that they are embraced as such by the audience of artists, art historians, art lovers, etc... By the same token, Piero Manzoni's packaged **** is art because it is accepted as such by the art audience no less than John Cage's 4:33 is by the music audience. The question of aesthetic merit... of how "good" or "bad" such art is is another question altogether. Whether intended or not the idea of limiting the term "art" to that which we value is snobbish... pretentious in the extreme. It amounts to suggesting that "what I listen to is art/music... what you listen to is not even worthy of the term art/music." Convoluted theories of aesthetic, ethics, the intentions of the artist, commercialism, and morality seem to be but little more than smoke and mirrors obfuscating the intention of suggesting that this is "good" music or "great" music (or art, literature, etc...) and this is not so good.


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## Argus

StlukesguildOhio said:


> The question of aesthetic merit... of how "good" or "bad" such art is is another question altogether. *Whether intended or not the idea of limiting the term "art" to that which we value is snobbish... pretentious in the extreme. It amounts to suggesting that "what I listen to is art/music... what you listen to is not even worthy of the term art/music." *Convoluted theories of aesthetic, ethics, the intentions of the artist, commercialism, and morality seem to be but little more than smoke and mirrors obfuscating the intention of suggesting that this is "good" music or "great" music (or art, literature, etc...) and this is not so good.


Exactly.

It's disguised prejudice on show. Everyone is entitled to their opinion on the matter of whether they like a work of art or think it is 'good' or 'bad' but to not even afford it the title of 'art', when many people would (ie. the audience), is surely passing negative judgement upon the work.

It's akin to a person saying that (_insert racial minority here_) are not human. They may be equal to a human and not intrinsically better or worse than a human, but they still aren't human. I know thats an _extreme_ analogy, but thats similar to what some people here have as a viewpoint on art. 'Different but equal'.

I personally don't _believe_ 4'33'' is music, but it is definitely art. I'd say it's more of a performance art piece than musical art. However, that is in no way a fact. If people consider it to be music, is it music?

As Stlukes has said though, this discussion is heading into the rhetoric of 'what is art?' which is just too subjective (and quite pointless) a question to bother answering. Like Head_case has said it just ends up like a Wittgenstein language game.

Oh, and those George Dawes songs are definitely art.


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## Jaime77

*Polednice* I understand you better now. You don't call folk music art not because it is lesser. You just think the term means something else. I don't necessarily agree but I understand.

However, others here have said things along the lines of *'this is rubbish therefore it is not art'* and that shows subjective value judgement for what art is and that the music or style in question does not _deserve_ the title of 'art'. A very different point which I don't agree with.

I would like to just say, as starter of this thread, that I actually got some great responses on the original questions as regards *composing contemporary music* so thanks everyone for that. It was a point of learning for me.

There is now a nice sister thread on Contemporary music I noticed to get your teeth into next


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## Lukecash12

jaibyrne said:


> *Polednice* I understand you better now. You don't call folk music art not because it is lesser. You just think the term means something else. I don't necessarily agree but I understand.
> 
> However, others here have said things along the lines of *'this is rubbish therefore it is not art'* and that shows subjective value judgement for what art is and that the music or style in question does not _deserve_ the title of 'art'. A very different point which I don't agree with.
> 
> I would like to just say, as starter of this thread, that I actually got some great responses on the original questions as regards *composing contemporary music* so thanks everyone for that. It was a point of learning for me.
> 
> There is now a nice sister thread on Contemporary music I noticed to get your teeth into next


I hope you didn't get that rubbish vibe from me  I was talking about much of modern music. Trying to draw the line between what is and isn't respectable enough for us to call art. Otherwise, we'd sound like an "I'm okay, you're okay" festival.


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## Scott Good

I'm really enjoying this conversation!



Argus said:


> Exactly.
> 
> It's disguised prejudice on show. Everyone is entitled to their opinion on the matter of whether they like a work of art or think it is 'good' or 'bad' but to not even afford it the title of 'art', when many people would (ie. the audience), is surely passing negative judgement upon the work.
> 
> It's akin to a person saying that (_insert racial minority here_) are not human. They may be equal to a human and not intrinsically better or worse than a human, but they still aren't human. I know thats an _extreme_ analogy, but thats similar to what some people here have as a viewpoint on art. 'Different but equal'.


I don't think that this is a stretch. To deny someone their culture is to deny their humanity. They become biological entities, without a "soul" (just seems like the best word to use - I hope you understand that I mean this very loosely.)



Argus said:


> I personally don't _believe_ 4'33'' is music, but it is definitely art. I'd say it's more of a performance art piece than musical art. However, that is in no way a fact. If people consider it to be music, is it music?


By the above argument, the answer would have to be yes.

On a purely semantics argument, though, I think it can be called music, as it satisfies the criterion. Organized sound through time. What else could music be defined as?



Argus said:


> As Stlukes has said though, this discussion is heading into the rhetoric of 'what is art?' which is just too subjective (and quite pointless) a question to bother answering. Like Head_case has said it just ends up like a Wittgenstein language game.


Not for me. Art is the frame. End of story. It's so easy - why do people still fight it?

And like Polendice says (and many have concurred), calling something art is not a quality identifier along the lines of good and bad. But, like the argument above, to deny someone the art of their culture (no matter what it is) is dehumanizing. So again, I say let it go - just accept this and move onto the next level - what the art is and what it is trying to say or do and how.

I'd go further and suggest that liking and not liking art is not very important. Understanding art is. It puts the onus on the listener, so, rather than being a passive liker and disliker, one becomes an active agent in the artistic process.

I'll end with 2 Cage quotes that I think speak quite a bit to these issues:

"If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all." - John Cage

So, ultimately, nothing is boring. I know this will bother people, but think of the rewards - you will never be bored knowing that it only takes effort to gain interest. Yes, there are only so many minutes in the day, but, I'm not talking about liking everything, but realizing that everything can be liked. Thus one can have their personal preferences, but does not need to feel fixed to these preferences.

"The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason. " - Cage

So ya, it is an "I'm ok, you're ok" party. But, why is this bad?

I think that there can be a morality issue aside from aesthetics, and that is intention. Although, this doesn't really have anything to do with being an artist but with being a citizen, and the responsibility that entails.

As Bill Hicks righteously posited - "what is Jay Leno doing hawking Doritos to bovine America?" and really, what is he doing? making more money? oh, poor jay, must be hard only working for millions - need some more zeros there big guy? Doritos are the manzoni can of poo, the naked emperor, the pull one over on us kind of activity - useless garbage designed to be addictive. this is where i have issues. if someone is going to promote something, they should believe it has quality and enriches society.

I think there is also "much music" that is the sonic equivalent of Doritos...but, I don't blame the Doritos, just as I don't blame manzoni, or the naked emperor. I blame the Jay Leno's - the much music's - the record hawking DJ's - the careless teachers. It isn't the object that is the problem, it is how it is used.

Manzoni's cheeky joke would be simply that, and mostly forgotten, were it not for the art collectors willing to pay lots of money for it - and it only has meaning through it's sale price (as he specifically states, it's worth it's weight in gold). This is why I can't see a clear line between him and Cage, and find the comparison inaccurate. Cage's idea is worthless in all ways except as an idea - Manzoni is all about the money (or more succinctly, that people will pay that much money for a can of turds. It is a silly joke (and kinda funny, really) turned into investment and capital.) It shouldn't be taught in art school, but in consumer studies.


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