# Whither Music?



## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

Now that serialism has been around for about a century now, where next can classical music go? there's only so much revivification of the old styles that can go on before people get sick of 'neo-classicism' and 'neo-romanticism' and want something radically new. 

Is serialism really the answer? Or will it never quite enter the mainstream, and what happens when even serialism becomes old and stale?


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

How about neo-serialism? Serialism but in a modern style.


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

do you think they felt the same way in the baroque period, for example; That they had no idea where music would go next? Or is it a real problem of our time. this is the kind of stuff that keeps me up at night and makes me worried that human art and music has peaked in the golden age. (I still love the modern composers but I can't see them being topped any time soon).


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

I think if we let music happen naturally then it should evolve somehow. These days there is no "one style" like baroque music etc. everyone has very different styles and ideas etc. I reckon that these different styles would branch out and evolve in different ways so we have more of a hugely rich and diverse musical culture. It's like the evolution of any living things really, the animal kingdom started off as single cell organisms and not very diverse, but they started to evolve and branch out as you can see in diagrams, and look at how many different species there are today!


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## ProudSquire (Nov 30, 2011)

Is that you Lenny?


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

TheProudSquire said:


> Is that you Lenny?


Those lectures did cause me to make this thread. they were inspiring but there was no real answer (surprise surprise)


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## Guest (Jun 19, 2013)

Jobis said:


> Now that serialism has been around for about a century now, where next can classical music go?


Serialism has never been the only thing. Even when it was a thing, it was only one of many. And "classical music" has gone in many different directions, since 1910, since 1952, since 1979, whatever year you chose, music has gone somewhere.

There are still some serialists hanging around, but there are many more of the other people doing vastly other things and always have been.

Serialism has gotten hold in the cyber world as a chat topic, but seriously (serially), it's only one thing.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Jobis said:


> Now that serialism has been around for about a century now, where next can classical music go? there's only so much revivification of the old styles that can go on before people get sick of 'neo-classicism' and 'neo-romanticism' and want something radically new.
> 
> Is serialism really the answer? Or will it never quite enter the mainstream, and what happens when even serialism becomes old and stale?


These are all interesting questions, and I think about them sometimes too.

I suppose music just goes on and evolves, as it always has. Hard to imagine what will happen (crystal ball stuff) but its clear that since the late 18th century, classical music has been getting more and more diverse. Around 1900 was a turning point in many ways, a big thing there was American composers really making an impact, esp. after the First World War. So you got that increasing globalisation, that geopolitical aspect too. After 1945, more diversity. Serialism was only part of the picture, and not the so called future of music as Boulez and others claimed it would be, definitely not in its more rigid forms. You also got rock n'roll emerging, pop, jazz becoming more like classical (eg. bebop), classical innovations feeding into non classical (eg. electronic music paved the way for things like techno), and many non classical (eg. world music) feeding back into classical.

So straight answer is dunno but its interesting to look back over the past 100, 200 years, and more to see how things went. I wonder if I was back 100 years ago, in 1913 when you already had some milestones laid down (eg. Stravinsky and Schoenberg producing some iconic milestone type works). But you can't have foresight when you already have hindsight, can you?

On the whole though I think that 'straight' classical will become very niche, and the things that mix with other things might redefine classial. An example being Americanminimalism like Glass and Reich, started in the late 1960's (which has blended and been influenced by world music, jazz, rock and so on). Many classical composers today are doing similar things that they did, I basically think a lot of classical will take on more hybrid features like this. A number of those in rock and jazz are classically trained, and this has been going on for a while too. So music is all coming together (internet and the ease of world travel and communication being a huge part of this as well).

But thats just my take on things, and as they say, time will tell!


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

xenharmonic music is the answer





Seriously, maybe I'm wrong but I think that microtonality has not been still explored as it deserves.


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## pluhagr (Jan 2, 2012)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> How about neo-serialism? Serialism but in a modern style.


I think Stravinsky's serialist music did that. He had a nice mix of neo-classicism and serialism with the typical Stravinsky flair.


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## pluhagr (Jan 2, 2012)

I think that classical music is headed down a few new paths. When we look at the current state of choral music there is a lot of music written which is homophonic and has quite a few cluster chords. Some of these composers are Lauridson, Whitacre, Ola Gjeillo, and Gabriel Jackson. I also see a lot of crossover electronic/classical artists as well who successfully combine electronic music with instrumental. Max Richter comes to mind for that category. Then there are others like Thomas Ades who is going about doing his own thing. I think he is paving the way for a new sound in classical music. Then there are still "minimalists" though they shouldn't be called that because they have moved away from that style. These include: David Lang, Steve Reich, John Adams, and Philip Glass (though Glass has turned to neo-romanticism). 

All in all I think that serialism is pretty dead. I think that it has run its course and composers have reverted to other musical writing methods to compose their pieces. Elliot Carter, while not a serialist, had his own system of composition where it lead to very angular and atonal music. There are not too many living composers who still use serialism. But the effects of serialism are pretty apparent in the way in which composers compose today.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

pluhagr said:


> ...
> All in all I think that serialism is pretty dead. I think that it has run its course and composers have reverted to other musical writing methods to compose their pieces. Elliot Carter, while not a serialist, had his own system of composition where it lead to very angular and atonal music. There are not too many living composers who still use serialism. But the effects of serialism are pretty apparent in the way in which composers compose today.


I agree. I see serialism is something that led to other things, but not a thing in itself, so to speak. Not only Carter, but others like Dutilleux, Birtwhistle, Stockhausen - to name some other big names - took it on and used it how according to their needs. Even Boulez himself didn't produce many total or rigidly serial type works himself (and I quite like his more free serialist things, some of them). It was a case of do as I say, not as I do. & sadly the more dogmatic opinions opened a bit of a schism in contemporary music post 1945, but overall those kinds of sectarianism are over now.

Another thing is serialism was used before. One example of a kind of serialism in embryo was used by Liszt in A Faust Symphony. Of course he did the bagatelle without tonality as well. Others did this, even those we don't call serialists before 1945. Mexican Carlos Chavez based one of his symphonies on a very long tone row sequence - I think its something like 20+ or 30+ notes. Can't remember how long or what symphony it was of his 6, but it was a very long tone row.

I think composers have access to the rich traditions of classical, which now includes things like serialism and atonality (going back 100 years now, more or less), and of course hundreds of years prior to that. So I see it as being very diverse and about a plurality of things, not just one or even a few directions, but a multiplicity of directions and currents.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Jobis said:


> Now that serialism has been around for about a century now, where next can classical music go? there's only so much revivification of the old styles that can go on before people get sick of 'neo-classicism' and 'neo-romanticism' and want something radically new.


We don't seem to be anywhere near this point yet. I'll worry about it when we get there.


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## hreichgott (Dec 31, 2012)

brianvds said:


> We don't seem to be anywhere near this point yet. I'll worry about it when we get there.


Yeah, same here. I haven't yet got tired of what composers are doing these days. I don't think I will.


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## Guest (Jun 20, 2013)

Yeah, hard to argue with Natasha Barrett and Beatriz Ferreyra and Jerome Noetinger and Yasunao Tone and Sachiko M and Phill Niblock and Simon Steen-Andersen and Emmanuelle Gibello.... Et cetera, et cetera.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Whither it goeth, is about the most accurate answer anyone can give.


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

norman bates said:


> xenharmonic music is the answer
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Microtonal music could be the future, if we begin to rethink hundreds of years of music theory and equal temperament.






it would cause a huge upheaval in classical music which is why I think it has not really caught on yet.


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## Guest (Jun 20, 2013)

Jobis said:


> Microtonal music could be the future


Maybe. One thing is for sure, 1952 is in the past.



Jobis said:


> if we begin to rethink hundreds of years of music theory and equal temperament.


Begin? "We" have been rethinking hundreds of years of music theory and equal temperament for over a hundred years, at least. (Perhaps "we" have been doing this ever since there were such things as "music theory" and "equal temperament.")



Jobis said:


> it would cause a huge upheaval in classical music which is why I think it has not really caught on yet.


Say what? Only things that cause _small_ upheavals catch on? What about monody? What about equal temperament? What about string quartet concerts? (Oh, OK. Maybe having all string quartet concerts was a small upheaval. Made everyone worried at the time, though.)

In any event, have you not noticed all the huge upheavals in classical music that have happened in the past hundred years? The past two hundred years? The past three hundred years? ...?

Classical music is a whole, wonderful world of huge upheavals.


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

some guy said:


> Maybe. One thing is for sure, 1952 is in the past.
> 
> Begin? "We" have been rethinking hundreds of years of music theory and equal temperament for over a hundred years, at least. (Perhaps "we" have been doing this ever since there were such things as "music theory" and "equal temperament.")
> 
> ...


I mean that music, no matter how weird or out there has mostly followed the 12 tone scale of equal temperament. Its just funny that people can grasp something like serialism much easier than say, a 43 notes-per-octave tuning. (not that microtones haven't been used widely, but the 12 tone scale is generally accepted as the most reasonable and best, when it isn't all that logical)


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## Guest (Jun 20, 2013)

How many composers still write in a strictly serial style these days?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Kontrapunctus said:


> How many composers still write in a strictly serial style these days?


12, all of them students writing exercises in early 20th century techniques


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

some guy said:


> Maybe. One thing is for sure, 1952 is in the past.


I don't know what happened in 1952, but I know that the equal temperament used by many contemporary composers was used by Bach. While in microtonal music a lot of divisions of the octave (and a lot of divisions outside the octave, like the piece I've posted) have to be still explored.


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## Guest (Jun 20, 2013)

What happened in 1952, norman, was that Partch wrote the piece Jobis posted to illustrate "the future."

Among other things.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

norman bates said:


> xenharmonic music is the answer
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Voice, Strings, electronics are all 'set to go.' Next, Brass instruments who do as much pitch control by use of embouchure could possibly join the microtonal players.. For keyed winds, tuned percussion and keyboards you would need a massive technological revamp to accommodate any kind of reliable accurate intonation as well as allowing for an expected speed of playing.

The instruments are not here yet, those few keyboards adapted or built to accommodate it rare freaks.

The progression of harmony and harmonic vocabulary through history to date has run right through the overtone series, the upper microtonal partials then, the next logical step. If there is a demand, first developmental instruments, custom made, will appear more regularly, then become standardized.

Technology, what instruments are capable of, has radically changed what composers do, and conversely, composers and musicians demanding further capability have urged, and been the motivation for the further technological development of instruments.

If it will happen that way, it will be for quite a while both a slow development and with a minority participating. Some has been done already, of course, but it remains, generally, rare and esoteric from all other trends.

If you recall the enormous resistance still, to the late romantic high chromatic music (from the general public) as well as the greater resistance to fully chromatic music, tonal or otherwise, acceptance will take that much longer as well.


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## Guest (Jun 21, 2013)

Pitch has really got a stranglehold on online discussions of music.

I doubt if anyone's gonna go to that much effort to reconfigure instruments to be able to make smaller intervals than half tones in order to continue organizing musical situations around pitch.

Pitch is all well and good. And the harmonies--functional and otherwise--that you can make with pitches. But it's not all there is. And so much has already happened. More than sixty years of pitchless electroacoustic music for one. Or, if not pitchless, at least not ostentatiously married to pitch as the only way to organize musical events.

And speaking of organize. Remember indeterminacy? Of course you don't. That's because once Boulez had coined "aleatoric," which describes those brief moments of un-notated music in a notated piece (_pace_ Lutosławski), no one had any brain cells left to think about indeterminacy, which describes a situation in which the composer is not in control of results. I.e., more than a temporary loosening of control (cadenzas had already done that). A composer can make situations in which sounds will happen, for instance, without knowing ahead of time _which_ particular sounds those will be.

And whatever happened to noise? In a musique concrete piece, for instance, a recording of a dog barking (is it barking in c# or was that a tone row it just made?) can segue into a recording of train brakes, all over the sound of thunder and rain. Lots of computer music is made from manipulating wave files. There's music made with "everyday items." (If I see this phrase on a CD, I will buy it.) There's music made with homemade circuitry. There's music made with turntables, CD players, PA equipment, cassette players--all the variety of sound *re*production equipment used to produce sound.

Just a little taste, one more time, of some possibilities for music that do not rely on pitch. In the fond hope (how foolish our hopes are!) of getting away from this pitchy tyranny. (Pitch is pretty sticky stuff, it's true....)


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Whither music, indeed? It seems that music is doing well. Everybody loves their music. It continues to change and develop, with various genres having wide popularity. There's good news all around. Well, "our" kind of music, perhaps less so.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

some guy said:


> What happened in 1952, norman, was that Partch wrote the piece Jobis posted to illustrate "the future."
> 
> Among other things.


So what? There were examples of microtonalism well before Partch and even in the renaissance, it means that because of that it's something that doesn't deserves to be further explored? It's like to say that there are paintings in the Lascaux Caves, so who cares of Picasso, he was not modern at all. So old. Actually, it seems to me that while the possibilities of the equal temperament are arrived to an end, microtonalism is still in his "stone age".


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## pluhagr (Jan 2, 2012)

I really think microtonal music isn't where music is going either. What makes me believe this is the fact that microtonal music came and left and the fact that people generally don't like music which is not tonal. Music is headed down a homophonic sometimes triadic path. 

I really don't think it is too much of a concern about what will come next in music, or even if there is some place to go in music. Composers will find a place to go with their music. I think there is a pretty clear path that contemporary composers are headed down right now and I think it is fresh and ingenious.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

pluhagr said:


> I really think microtonal music isn't where music is going either. What makes me believe this is the fact that microtonal music came and left and the fact that people generally don't like music which is not tonal.


what about the blues notes? Or the maqam? Indian music? 
Anyway, I wasn't predicting microtonality as the next big thing, but just that the potential of it it's still largely unexplored.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

some guy said:


> Pitch has really got a stranglehold on online discussions of music.
> 
> I doubt if anyone's gonna go to that much effort to reconfigure instruments to be able to make smaller intervals than half tones in order to continue organizing musical situations around pitch.
> 
> ...


Microtonality: its a pitch, ain't it?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

norman bates said:


> what about the blues notes? Or the maqam? Indian music?
> Anyway, I wasn't predicting microtonality as the next big thing, but just that the potential of it it's still largely unexplored.


Those are all very much in set scales, modal or diatonic, of less than the full 12 chromatic notes. It is pretty certain -- educated looking back -- that modes and scales came from the far East, Indian classical music being a tradition developed over thousands of years, which traveled west. It is not like the ancient or classical Greeks invented modes and scales out of thin air, as it were.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

PetrB said:


> Microtonality: its a pitch, ain't it?


yes, but still it could be used in new ways, while noise is so old, it was used by Russolo at the beginning of the twentieth century.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

norman bates said:


> yes, but still it could be used in new ways, while noise is so old, it was used by Russolo at the beginning of the twentieth century.


"YesBut" -- the same resistance to using those in non-traditional ways would probably arise... not that the usually expected said resistance should surprise, but you know it would arise  Not an argument against, but if you think of something more traditional which has not been tampered with, or developed along further lines, as much, the resistance in the usual audience for same would be massive.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

PetrB said:


> "YesBut" -- the same resistance to using those in non-traditional ways would probably arise... not that the usually expected said resistance should surprise, but you know it would arise  Not an argument against, but if you think of something more traditional which has not been tampered with, or developed along further lines, as much, the resistance in the usual audience for same would be massive.


ADD: It almost sounds like you are on a campaign. Urging creative artists to do something, or do it in a manner you would think to find interesting is usually almost entirely futile. Those active and making the music, art, already having thought of it, incorporated the idea, working with it, or not.

What the next step is, if yours is not the luxury of an armchair observer wish, is to become a composer and write the way you would like music to go.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

PetrB said:


> ADD: It almost sounds like you are on a campaign.


I'm not, and even if I was I agree that it would be absolutely futile. it's just that I'm fascinated by the possibility of new harmonies.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

I thought about this before and thought there had to be a new style with a new break in music but what it will be is probably impossible to say.

ancient - medieval
renaissance - baroque
classical - romantic
modern - postmodern
??


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

starry said:


> I thought about this before and thought there had to be a new style with a new break in music but what it will be is probably impossible to say.
> 
> ancient - medieval
> renaissance - baroque
> ...


I was reading a book today about the late romantic era in music, and apparently in Germany at the time some music scholars thought that classical music had no where left to go, that it would die out. This was just some years before Tristan und Isolde was finished.

This is somewhat reassuring for me.


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## pluhagr (Jan 2, 2012)

starry said:


> I thought about this before and thought there had to be a new style with a new break in music but what it will be is probably impossible to say.
> 
> ancient - medieval
> renaissance - baroque
> ...


There is a new movement in art and philosophy which is the new sincerity or meta postmodernism. It's basically a movement back to being earnest in art. None of that postmodern silliness where the creator tries to be tricky and sly.


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

pluhagr said:


> There is a new movement in art and philosophy which is the new sincerity or meta postmodernism. It's basically a movement back to being earnest in art. None of that postmodern silliness where the creator tries to be tricky and sly.


Does classical music (as we know it) have a place in that?

I don't want the orchestra to die out and be replaced by synthesisers.


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## pluhagr (Jan 2, 2012)

Jobis said:


> Does classical music (as we know it) have a place in that?
> 
> I don't want the orchestra to die out and be replaced by synthesisers.


I do believe that classical music has a place in the movement away from postmodernity. No one is suggesting synthesizers being used instead of an orchestra, although this is already done in most popular music.


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## Guest (Jun 26, 2013)

pluhagr said:


> postmodern silliness where the creator tries to be tricky and sly.


Par exemple?...


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## pluhagr (Jan 2, 2012)

some guy said:


> Par exemple?...


The Fountain- Duchamp
Any Derrida essay

There are many examples in film as well. Anything Charlie Kaufman film has it's clever deceptive bits.

I mean postmodernism is pretty much based on trying to blur boundaries which modernism put in place. Much of this is done through irony and deception.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

pluhagr said:


> I mean postmodernism is pretty much based on trying to blur boundaries which modernism put in place. Much of this is done through irony and deception.


An amusing quote: "There are certain chameleons among present-day composers -- they call themselves post-modernists -- and they mix everything they can steal, and paint the stolen elements with different colors so that you cannot identify them immediately. They are enormous garbage containers of pre-existing sound figures and clichés..."

-- Karlheinz Stockhausen


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## Guest (Jun 27, 2013)

I'm not following your reasoning, pluhagr.

In what way is Duchamp's _Fountain_ at all tricky or sly? I could understand it's being called silly, though I would disagree. But I don't see tricky or sly. More like obvious and aboveboard.

I've read a fair amount of Derrida. It was pretty rough going for me. But, again, I don't see tricky or sly being apt. Or silly, either, not for Derrida.

Otherwise, I guess I haven't ever experienced "postmodern" as a real -ism. The term seems more like a bit of journalistic cleverness. And not really very clever, either. I mean, be fair, you just put "post" in front of "modern" and voila, you have yourself a new -ism.

In any case, I think every new generation defines itself in part by the generation that preceded it and finds its own direction in part by reacting in some way against the previous generation. I don't see anything particularly troublesome about that general trend. It is what it is. I'm having a hard time seeing any of that as being deceptive in any way.


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

I believe that it is likely there will be considerably more and more polystylism and eclecticism in composers. We are exposed to considerably more music than people even 100 years ago ever were. We can delve into music from over a thousand years of musical history, from all over the planet, with ease, and many music lovers nowadays do this. Composers are exposed to a multitude of idioms and styles, and many different ways of musical thinking and musical ideas, so I think its pretty safe to say you'll hear more and more of that kind of thing, especially as barriers of prejudice towards certain kinds of music die out in centers of musical education.


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## pluhagr (Jan 2, 2012)

some guy said:


> I'm not following your reasoning, pluhagr.
> 
> In what way is Duchamp's _Fountain_ at all tricky or sly? I could understand it's being called silly, though I would disagree. But I don't see tricky or sly. More like obvious and aboveboard.
> 
> ...


Duchamp is tricky in the way that he puts a name (not his) on a urinal. The viewer is meant to be confused and the piece is quite ironic. I've done a fair amount of reading on post-modernism and irony, deception, and indefinite. Postmodernism is a reaction against the objective standards of modernism. So, what postmodernism does is strip away these objective standards. What is left is art that needs and audience or requires thought i.e. conceptual art.

Here's a short exerpt from David Foster Wallace which addresses the issues that we are talking about in postmodernism. 
"Irony and cynicism were just what the U.S. hypocrisy of the fifties and sixties called for. That's what made the early postmodernists great artists. The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates. The virtuous always triumph? Ward Cleaver is the prototypical fifties father? "Sure." Sarcasm, parody, absurdism and irony are great ways to strip off stuff's mask and show the unpleasant reality behind it. The problem is that once the rules of art are debunked, and once the unpleasant realities the irony diagnoses are revealed and diagnosed, "then" what do we do? Irony's useful for debunking illusions, but most of the illusion-debunking in the U.S. has now been done and redone. Once everybody knows that equality of opportunity is bunk and Mike Brady's bunk and Just Say No is bunk, now what do we do?"

You most definitely have experienced postmodernism as an ism. It just seems like it is not there because most art created today is postmodern.

I don't think you are following what I am saying about postmodernism either. 
"In any case, I think every new generation defines itself in part by the generation that preceded it and finds its own direction in part by reacting in some way against the previous generation. I don't see anything particularly troublesome about that general trend. It is what it is. I'm having a hard time seeing any of that as being deceptive in any way." 
I am not saying that it is troublesome when one movement in art reacts against another. This thread is about what the next movement will be or what kind of music can still be made. I am also not saying that going from one artistic movement to another is deceptive. I am saying that postmodernism tries to be deceptive.

I also don't understand why you feel the need question the smallest claim that I made about postmodernism. A quick google search on the subject could have answered it for you...


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## pluhagr (Jan 2, 2012)

Here is a wonderful chart explaining the differences between postmodernism and modernism.
http://www19.homepage.villanova.edu...urses/2043_pop/modernism_vs_postmodernism.htm


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Jobis said:


> I mean that music, no matter how weird or out there has mostly followed the 12 tone scale of equal temperament. Its just funny that people can grasp something like serialism much easier than say, a 43 notes-per-octave tuning. (not that microtones haven't been used widely, but the 12 tone scale is generally accepted as the most reasonable and best, when it isn't all that logical)


The reason a 43-tone scale is used is not because it has 43 microtonal pitches which sound horrible when played adjacently, but in order to approximate "just" intervals. The 43-tone scale is an equal temperament, meaning that it divides the octave into 43 equal steps.


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## Guest (Jun 27, 2013)

pluhagr said:


> Here is a wonderful chart explaining the differences between postmodernism and modernism.
> http://www19.homepage.villanova.edu...urses/2043_pop/modernism_vs_postmodernism.htm


Yes, I'm familiar with all that. I'm also familiar with all sorts of other things that aren't called postmodern and which predate the coinage of that term that accomplish the same things. Or that were seen, in their time, as accomplishing those goals.

Just one very prominent example would be the Romantic movement of the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century. That was full of all sorts of the qualities identified in the chart as being postmodern.

I recall when I first heard of that term, and first read the qualities that term supposedly described. Those qualities sounded, then, and continue to sound quite a lot like Mahler. Or, at least like contemporaneous reactions to Mahler.

Anyway, thanks for the long post. I was hoping you wouldn't think that I was just questioning your claims about postmodernism. Well, you did, but you made the long post, anyway. So that's all good, eh?

And now I know a little better not only that we do indeed disagree, but I also have a better idea where we disagree. I don't, for instance, agree that "postmodernism is a reaction against the objective standards of modernism," principally because I don't think that modernism had objective standards. We are talking about the same modernism, aren't we? The one that broke with the past? The one that so thoroughly overturned the objective standards of Romanticism that there are people in 2013 who still report difficulty in understanding or appreciating the lush and luxurious sonorities of the late-Romantic composer Arnold Schoenberg.

I already knew I didn't believe in postmodernism. That is, that it doesn't exist. And not because it is ubiquitous (good call, though--ubiquity is indeed often equivalent to invisibility) but because the supposed values (qualities) of postmodernism can be found all over the time, not just in the time that came after modernism. A quick glance at the wiki article--the section on the history of the term--shows some stuff I was not aware of, like the earliest use of the term (1870) and various uses of the term within the so-called modern era. So I was wrong about its being simply "clever" journalism. But at least I seem to have been right in seeing "postmodern" qualities earlier than the actual "postmodern" era.

And, just so you know, I don't think the wiki article gets everything right, by any means. This, for instance,

"The postmodern impulse in classical music arose in the 1960s with the advent of musical minimalism. Composers such as Terry Riley, Krzysztof Penderecki, György Ligeti, Henryk Górecki, Bradley Joseph, John Adams, George Crumb, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Michael Nyman, and Lou Harrison reacted to the perceived elitism and dissonant sound of atonal academic modernism by producing music with simple textures and relatively consonant harmonies, whilst others, most notably John Cage challenged the prevailing Narratives of beauty and objectivity common to Modernism. Some composers have been openly influenced by popular music and world ethnic musical traditions,"

is mostly wrong. You can see one huge gaffe, I think, even without knowing anything about postmodern thought or even very much music history: the "elitism and dissonant sound of atonal academic modernism" in one sentence turns, by magic, into the "prevailing Narratives of beauty and objectivity common to Modernism." Wow. The things you can do with language, eh? Now you see it; now you don't. Step right up, Ladies and Gentlemen. See dissonant sound become beauty in the blink of an eye.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

some guy said:


> ...is mostly wrong. You can see one huge gaffe, I think, even without knowing anything about postmodern thought or even very much music history: the "elitism and dissonant sound of atonal academic modernism" in one sentence turns, by magic, into the "prevailing Narratives of beauty and objectivity common to Modernism." Wow. The things you can do with language, eh? Now you see it; now you don't. Step right up, Ladies and Gentlemen. See dissonant sound become beauty in the blink of an eye.


I think you're being too literal in interpreting "dissonance" as a negative. A "prevailing narrative of beauty" can include dissonance as an acceptable quality.

I'm rather embarrassed to see modernists constantly defending modernism without really needing to, and in the process of opposition, "buy into" the misrepresentations of the critics.

There is no conflict; it is what it is.


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## Guest (Jun 27, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> I think you're being too literal in interpreting "dissonance" as a negative. A "prevailing narrative of beauty" can include dissonance as an acceptable quality.


Yes, it can. But in the passage I quoted, there's nothing of that. That it can be done, that dissonance can be an acceptable quality, is beside the point.

In that passage, the postmodernists are presented as reacting against something that is ugly and bad. And then they are presented as reacting against something that is beautiful and good. It takes a bit of unpacking, but it is possible to see that the perspective has shifted. But it's been shifted quietly and perhaps unconsciously and creates a bit of a muddle there.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

some guy said:


> Yes, it can. But in the passage I quoted, there's nothing of that. That it can be done, that dissonance can be an acceptable quality, is beside the point.
> 
> In that passage, the postmodernists are presented as reacting against something that is ugly and bad. And then they are presented as reacting against something that is beautiful and good. It takes a bit of unpacking, but it is possible to see that the perspective has shifted. But it's been shifted quietly and perhaps unconsciously and creates a bit of a muddle there.


Ok, I'll see if Stlukesguild will issue you a reprieve.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

some guy said:


> Yes, it can. But in the passage I quoted, there's nothing of that. That it can be done, that dissonance can be an acceptable quality, is beside the point.
> 
> In that passage, the postmodernists are presented as reacting against something that is ugly and bad. And then they are presented as reacting against something that is beautiful and good. It takes a bit of unpacking, but it is possible to see that the perspective has shifted. But it's been shifted quietly and perhaps unconsciously and creates a bit of a muddle there.


Ok, I'll see if StlukesguildOhio will issue you a reprieve.


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