# The thin line between Avant-garde music and complete noise



## MilanStevanovich

Avant-garde music is not my field of study, but I most certainly stumble upon it here and there. It's not my to say but I sometimes find it completely ridiculous.
When it comes to Penderecki, his threnody (hitting your instrument to make music, I mean,cmon...) is just a bunch of unorganized dissonances...
My opinion is: noise is not music.


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## jalex

MilanStevanovich said:


> When it comes to Penderecki, his threnody (hitting your instrument to make music, I mean,cmon...) is just a bunch of unorganized dissonances...


I believe a substantial section of it is actually a giant and hugely complex canon, so not 'unorganised', no.


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## norman bates

MilanStevanovich said:


> Avant-garde music is not my field of study, but I most certainly stumble upon it here and there. It's not my to say but I sometimes find it completely ridiculous.
> When it comes to Penderecki, his threnody (hitting your instrument to make music, I mean,cmon...) is just a bunch of unorganized dissonances...
> My opinion is: noise is not music.


you're right, it's degenerate art


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## norman bates

seriously, i can't understand what's wrong in hitting an instrument, it's just a percussive effect. Percussions are noises, you're saying that drums are not a musical instrument?


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## MilanStevanovich

you know that's not what i'm saying...


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## Ravellian

Experimenting for the sake of experimenting doesn't usually produce good music. But in the case of the _Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima_, Penderecki's new sounds ingeniously capture the effect of millions screaming in pain and agony, and that's what makes it effective as a piece of music. Cowell's _The Banshee_ isn't just scraping inside a piano for the sake of scraping inside a piano, it's meant to evoke the sound of a banshee. Titles can do so much to aid our understanding...


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## jalex

Ravellian said:


> Experimenting for the sake of experimenting doesn't usually produce good music. But in the case of the _Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima_, Penderecki's new sounds ingeniously capture the effect of millions screaming in pain and agony, and that's what makes it effective as a piece of music.


What if we take in to consideration the fact that he made the Hiroshima association only after the piece had been written and performed? It was composed as purely abstract avant-garde.


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## norman bates

MilanStevanovich said:


> you know that's not what i'm saying...


so what's the difference, if you hit a drum or an another instrument you have different effects, but we're talking in both cases of percussive sounds.


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## Jeremy Marchant

jalex said:


> What if we take in to consideration the fact that he made the Hiroshima association only after the piece had been written and performed? It was composed as purely abstract avant-garde.


That's irrelevant. Either it's organised (to a greater of lesser extent) or it isn't. Adding a title doesn't make it more organised. Whether the listener understands the context of the piece (eg Hirsohima victims) doesn't make it more organised, nor can it aid the listener in working out what the structure is.

I'm afraid, Milan, you picked on a bad example, because Penderecki's _Threnody _is as well organised as the Elgar _Introduction and allegro_, say. If you can't yet perceive the way it's organised, I think that indicates a little area of research for you. After all, a standpoint of "I don't understand how it's structured; nor am I going to bother to find out - therefore it's rubbish" would, of course, be unworthy of you.


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## Polednice

Jeremy Marchant said:


> That's irrelevant. Either it's organised (to a greater of lesser extent) or it isn't. Adding a title doesn't make it more organised. Whether the listener understands the context of the piece (eg Hirsohima victims) doesn't make it more organised, nor can it aid the listener in working out what the structure is.


I disagree with this. I don't think it makes the piece any lesser, but it _is_ important that the Hiroshima association was an after-thought. Artworks are so often assessed and valued (as demonstrated by Ravellian's appraisal of the piece) based on how they achieve what the composer set out to achieve. The piece's title gives the listener a false assumption about what the composer had in mind when writing the piece - I think it 'cheats' its way into critical acclaim in that sense, even if it can still be praised for great organisation.

To the OP, I think the distinction between music and noise is that one has human intervention and the other doesn't. It doesn't matter whether you or the world hates the music, it is considered music if the sound is a product of the human mind rather than a by-product of human activities or natural occurrences (the noise of traffic or running water, for example).


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## Guest

Why isn't avant-garde cooking as popular as avant-garde music? Or maybe it is - hmmm.

There's nothing wrong with being clever, just don't expect other people to listen to your music if it isn't pleasant or otherwise engaging.


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## Jeremy Marchant

Polednice said:


> I disagree with this. I don't think it makes the piece any lesser, but it _is_ important that the Hiroshima association was an after-thought. ...


I agree with your post! I was responding to the original poster's "When it comes to Penderecki, his threnody (hitting your instrument to make music, I mean,cmon...) is just a bunch of unorganized dissonances..." and talking about whether it was organised or not.

GIving something a title doesn't make it more organised! Or, if you think it does please explain how.

Yes, a title can aid the listener, maybe, and if the title is an afterthought, given by someone else (like Haydn's _Miracle _symphony), the aid that can be give can be counterproductive, I agree. But understanding the context isn't understanding the structure.


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## StlukesguildOhio

you're right, it's degenerate art

I believe Godwin's Law applies here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law


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## jalex

Jeremy Marchant said:


> That's irrelevant. Either it's organised (to a greater of lesser extent) or it isn't. Adding a title doesn't make it more organised. Whether the listener understands the context of the piece (eg Hirsohima victims) doesn't make it more organised, nor can it aid the listener in working out what the structure is.


What? That's not what I was saying. Did you miss my post at the top where I pointed out that Threnody _is_ organised?

I was criticising Ravellian's argument that the avant-garde elements in Threnody are only acceptable because they accurately depict the subject matter.


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## Guest

It's a fair question, though, isn't it - whether it's music or noise. I take Polednice's intelligent point about human intervention largely 'dictating' whether something is music or noise. We know that music IS also noise, but whether NOISE is ALSO music is a moot point. I tend to think it is not and I'll suggest the reasons for this: music is something which, over a period of over 1,000 years in the case of, say, WAM, people have generally agreed and accepted that it is - namely, a succession of notes which, when played together, result in a sequence of notes out of which sense may be made which appeal directly to the emotion and intelligence. These notes form melodies and harmonies and from this has derived theories of harmonic practice and various treatises. Music is a kind of language, therefore, which people may commonly understand even though they have no similar linguistic language. Ergo, the 'grammar' of music is international and mutually understood. 

Today in the conservatoire or in the 'laboratory' (on the computer) certain people have experimented with different sounds and asked that the same people (who have mutually agreed upon what music is) suspend their belief system in such a way as to incorporate the new sounds into a musical 'system'. Most people have refused the request, if voting by the feet is any guide. I do not wish to suspend disbelief, nor do I ascribe value to a series of noises as I do western classical music and its rigorous musical language. But, if somebody finds a term other than music to describe the noise which is made by the avant garde, I'm willing to discuss the proposition.


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## regressivetransphobe

MilanStevanovich said:


> When it comes to Penderecki, his threnody (hitting your instrument to make music, I mean,cmon...) is just a bunch of unorganized dissonances...
> My opinion is: noise is not music.


Agreed, nobody should ever try anything new, ever.


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## Ukko

jalex said:


> I was criticising Ravelllian's argument that the avant-garde elements in Threnody are only acceptable because they accurately depict the subject matter.


That was _Ravelian_'s argument? The avant-garde elements in "Threnody" are only acceptable - what? Acceptable to some Avant-Garde Governing Board? Whether or not there is a 'giant and hugely complex canon', the very nature of the term _avant-garde_ means that the bubble gets stretched to or beyond its popping point.

I suppose there is some sort of ethical/pseudo-ethical standard about post-defining the meaning of a piece of music - by its composer. It turns 'pure' music into 'program' music, which is a shame if nothing else.

Rachmaninoff was asked by a publisher to let the world know what the several Etudes-Tableaux were about. Whatever he had in mind during their composition was gone from memory, so he wrote down whatever possibility came to his mind while listening to them. Did that make him a bad boy?

:devil:


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## jalex

Hilltroll72 said:


> That was _Ravelian_'s argument? The avant-garde elements in "Threnody" are only acceptable - what? Acceptable to some Avant-Garde Governing Board?


Acceptable to him by the looks of his post: 'Experimenting for the sake of experimenting doesn't usually produce good music. But in the case of the Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, Penderecki's new sounds ingeniously capture the effect of millions screaming in pain and agony, *and that's what makes it effective as a piece of music*'. I was pointing out that when Penderecki wrote he he did not have any aims of translating the screams of pain and agony into music, and I don't think it makes sense to accept and even laud the piece purely on the grounds of a title added as an afterthought.



> I suppose there is some sort of ethical/pseudo-ethical standard about post-defining the meaning of a piece of music - by its composer. It turns 'pure' music into 'program' music, which is a shame if nothing else.


If this is also aimed at me then I would like to make clear that I take no issue with 'post-defining' music.


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## norman bates

StlukesguildOhio said:


> you're right, it's degenerate art
> 
> I believe Godwin's Law applies here.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law


but you have to recognize that in a discussion that starts with "hitting your instrument to make music I mean,cmon" and it's mentioned a piece called Thredony for Hiroshima, a joke about Hitler and the degenerate art is not totally out of place


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## Weston

I would propose that music is not merely the organization of sounds. If that were the case then, "Õ n2:: +μbρ ÕuKKer' b7ϐ μÞ Þσb7ϐ n+ σ::γQρg7ω Θϐ?"

I assure you that last phrase is highly organized. Does this make me a great writer?

However I would also propose that Threnody really is music for the very reason given above. It is more than the organization of sounds. It is loaded with horror and despair.


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## Klavierspieler

CountenanceAnglaise said:


> We know that music IS also noise, but whether NOISE is ALSO music is a moot point.


I would say rather that both music and noise are sound. Whether one could possibly be the other is an entirely different proposition.


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## Ukko

jalex said:


> Acceptable to him by the looks of his post: 'Experimenting for the sake of experimenting doesn't usually produce good music. But in the case of the Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, Penderecki's new sounds ingeniously capture the effect of millions screaming in pain and agony, *and that's what makes it effective as a piece of music*'. I was pointing out that when Penderecki wrote he he did not have any aims of translating the screams of pain and agony into music, and I don't think it makes sense to accept and even laud the piece purely on the grounds of a title added as an afterthought.
> 
> If this is also aimed at me then I would like to make clear that I take no issue with 'post-defining' music.


OK, got it. the post-defining thing was aimed (using a magic mirror) at _Polednice_, but your opinion ties in there sort of.


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## mmsbls

Defining art is an interesting exercise and there are several threads on TC that have attempted to do so. I used to think that art is whatever the artist creates _as art_. In other words if an artist intends something as a work of art, then the creation _is a work of art_. There are several potential problems with that definition. First, does anyone count as an artist? Is a two year old an artist? Is someone who couldn't care less about art but creates something she _calls art_ an artist? One could get around this problem by using the art community as the arbitrator of art. StLukes gave an interesting refutation of the above in this post. Essentially he argues that art is what _the audience_ believes is art. I'm not sure exactly what I believe now.

Focusing specifically on avant-garde music, I firmly believe that these works _are_ music. However, to me, they do not _seem_ like music. I have listened to many avant-garde works, but they do not appear related to what I've come to enjoy as music. _It is just not that I don't like them (I don't) but rather that they don't seem to have the same components of music that I've come to know_. I know that statement is a generalization and probably not exactly true of everything considered avant-garde music, but let's say it's true for much of avant-garde music. BUT, I know others who do enjoy them and who feel strongly that they are enjoying music; therefore, I believe these works *are* music and would strongly defend them as such.


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## StlukesguildOhio

Why isn't avant-garde cooking as popular as avant-garde music? Or maybe it is - hmmm.

There's nothing wrong with being clever, just don't expect other people to listen to your music if it isn't pleasant or otherwise engaging.

I'm not going to feed the avant garde trolls and get into a debate as to what qualifies as music vs what qualifies as "noise". I will say that ultimately BPS' question hits upon how I approach music. Perhaps I've got it all wrong, but the final measure for me is "Does the work give me a sense of pleasure?"

One of the leading contemporary visual artists, the abstract painter Sean Scully...










... also an astute critic of the arts, wrote the following (excerpted from the essay, _The Argument_):

_The famous English journalist said that Stockhausen is not as bad as it sounds. Levin was a famous wit who also, on occasion, could say something profound... The attack on painting is part of this. Exhibitions of sticks, photographs, and rough TV videos are thought automatically to be "morally superior" because they are not good to look at, therefore they are better than they look... (Such art) is adored by curators who would like to promote it as sociologically conscious because it deals with such issues as race, poverty, housing, etc... Most sociologists would find (such art) self-indulgent.

In order to find an audience at all, this kind of art has to squeeze itself into the world of the visual arts which is largely dominated by paintings. For this quasi-visual, pseudo-political, (quasi-philosophical) space to be opened up, something has to be wrong with painting. Hence the problem of visual excellence versus the issue of quality: it's not as good as it looks- or it's not good because it looks good- or if it looks good it must be decorative and therefor not good.

Those who would have us believe, for example, that Marcel Duchamp is the equal of Matisse would also ask us to believe that one is better than it looks and one is worse... Matisse and a lot of other painters ARE as good as they look; and this has nothing whatsoever to do with decoration, but has everything to do with the roundness of the visual experience.

Stockhausen has a place in history, and so therefor Bernard Levin is right when he says it's not as bad as it sounds. But neither is Mozart._

Scully hits upon an almost Puritan strain of Modernism that has been with the movement from the start: the fear of beauty (one need only look to the critical writings of Adolf Loos who spoke of ornament as crime... to say nothing of Marinetti's ramblings). Like the Puritan belief that if something is pleasurable or pleasant it can't be good for you... and the converse aphorism "No pain-no gain" there are those who embrace the notion that art can only be of real merit if it is difficult... challenging... painful... and thus the opposite must be equally true... if something is clearly pleasant... pleasurable... accessible... it must be bad.

Ultimately, I think that ease of access... the ability to bring immediate pleasure is no more a measure of artistic merit than popularity... one way or another. Again, the final measure of any art for me is does the work bring me pleasure. Just as some pleasures are hard-won (a game of chess, the New York Times Cross Word Puzzle) some artistic pleasures are hard-won: Chaucer in the original Middle-English, the Well-Tempered Clavier, etc... Penderecki's Threnody is certainly ART... and it has a place... but I cannot admit that I find it gives me much pleasure. Given the choice between it and Mozart's Don Giovanni or Stravinsky's Rite of Spring or any other number of musical works that give me immense pleasure, the Threnody will not likely show up often on my play list.

The notion that because someone dislikes a given work of music (or even a given style or period of music... how many here dislike the Baroque or Byzantine Chant, or Bluegrass, or Hip-Hop?) this amounts to close-minded ignorance... and is a gap that MUST be addressed is purely pretentious.

But again... that's just me.


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## Polednice

Weston said:


> I would propose that music is not merely the organization of sounds. If that were the case then, "Õ n2:: +μbρ ÕuKKer' b7ϐ μÞ Þσb7ϐ n+ σ::γQρg7ω Θϐ?"
> 
> I assure you that last phrase is highly organized. Does this make me a great writer?


I think this is unfair because, talking of your 'writing' example, implicit in your 'assurance' is that you're lying and, by extension, that avant-garde music that proclaims organisation which you can't hear either just isn't organised or is actually lied about.

_If_ you could demonstrate the organisation of your writing and other people could understand it, then perhaps it would be good writing. Or maybe even good as visual art if your symbols are devoid of sufficient meaning.


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## violadude

Noise that is arranged by a composer/performer in some way, is music

Problem solved


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## Guest

For you, maybe, violadude. The rest of us want something a little more demanding and emotionally and intellectually satisfying. StLukes, that quote you gave was a good one but I'm unsure about your actual position and detected some ambivalence in your response. Could you please clarify your position.

I dislike the term "avant garde trolls" as I've had enough of trolls from a previous forum, thanks!


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## violadude

CountenanceAnglaise said:


> For you, maybe, violadude. The rest of us want something a little more demanding and emotionally and intellectually satisfying. StLukes, that quote you gave was a good one but I'm unsure about your actual position and detected some ambivalence in your response. Could you please clarify your position.
> 
> I dislike the term "avant garde trolls" as I've had enough of trolls from a previous forum, thanks!


Define "the rest of us"?


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## Guest

I see how this goes - challenge the semantics of each and every word. It's the ultimate red herring!! I speak for the vast majority of serious music-lovers who don't attend avant garde music performances. Next will you ask "what is a performance"? or "what is a music-lover" - none of which has much to do with the original argument!!


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## violadude

CountenanceAnglaise said:


> I see how this goes - challenge the semantics of each and every word. It's the ultimate red herring!!


I'm just wondering who you are referring to. I know a lot of people who enjoy Avant-Garde music.


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## Guest

Define "a lot". (2 can play this game). Sorry, I don't want to get personal - I am speaking of the issue here.


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## violadude

CountenanceAnglaise said:


> Define "a lot". (2 can play this game)


People on this forum, people at my school, my Mom, others buying the music of Avant Garde composers, others that go to concerts featuring Avant Garde composers, Avant Garde composers themselves....

You still didn't answer my question.


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## Guest

I believe I did answer your question - go to Page 2, at the bottom. Also, the number of people you cite could hardly qualify as "a lot". I go to the Musikverein for music performances in Vienna and there are "a lot" of people there - usually about 1500. Would all those people you mention add up to the total number of people at ONE concert in the Musikverein? Why does the A-G complain that nobody is listening if "a lot" like it?


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## violadude

CountenanceAnglaise said:


> I believe I did answer your question - go to Page 2, at the bottom. Also, the number of people you cite could hardly qualify as "a lot". I go to the Musikverein for music performances in Vienna and there are "a lot" of people there - usually about 1500. Would all those people you mention add up to the total number of people at ONE concert in the Musikverein? Why does the A-G complain that nobody is listening if "a lot" like it?


Umm the number of people I mentioned are definitely above 1500 considering the CD sales of Avant-Garde composers. Are you saying I'm not a serious music lover? I think most people who are "serious" about music accept Avant Garde as a form of music, usually it is the casual listeners that don't.


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## HarpsichordConcerto

mmsbls said:


> ... BUT, I know others who do enjoy them and who feel strongly that they are enjoying music; therefore, I believe these works *are* music and would strongly defend them as such.


Please kindly defend these two pieces. Almost whatever crap that is written by composers these days, someone will love them. Does that really justify your automatic defence position, therefore?


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## Guest

Violadude, that is NOT what I'm saying about you - I merely asked for numbers. As to "casual" listeners only rejecting the A-G as music - what a blanket statement. Do I qualify as "casual" with post-graduate qualifications in Music and 7th Grade piano and 40 years of intense serious music addiction, collection, playing and study? Read the extract provided on the previous page by StlukesguildOhio. I think that more or less covers the issues.


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## violadude

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> Please kindly defend these two pieces. Almost whatever crap that is written by composers these days, someone will love them. Does that really justify your automatic defence position, therefore?


It justifies it's existence as a piece of music.


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## Polednice

CountenanceAnglaise said:


> I see how this goes - challenge the semantics of each and every word. It's the ultimate red herring!! I speak for the vast majority of serious music-lovers who don't attend avant garde music performances. Next will you ask "what is a performance"? or "what is a music-lover" - none of which has much to do with the original argument!!


Not that I'm accusing you of this, but, on the other hand, the opposition is often characterised by generalised prejudice and the resultant lack of desire to be specific about anything. Be kind to violadude and answer his questions - he's a nice chap. 

And I think it's also worth considering the following in your responses: are you defining music, or are you defining _good_ music?


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## Guest

Polednice, I wasn't referring to you in those comments. I think I've answered Violadude's questions. I'm defining MUSIC, neither good nor bad. Nighty night for now from Vienna, Austria - music central!!


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## violadude

CountenanceAnglaise said:


> Polednice, I wasn't referring to you in those comments. I think I've answered Violadude's questions. I'm defining MUSIC, neither good nor bad.


I and many others enjoy sitting down and listening to Avant Garde music the same way we might sit down and listen to a Mozart piece, doesn't that make it music? Are you saying it is not music because you don't like it?


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## Ukko

Polednice said:


> Not that I'm accusing you of this, but, on the other hand, the opposition is often characterised by generalised prejudice and the resultant lack of desire to be specific about anything. Be kind to violadude and answer his questions - he's a nice chap.
> 
> And I think it's also worth considering the following in your responses: are you defining music, or are you defining _good_ music?


Part of the definition of _avant-garde_ is that it isn't popular. Jeez.

_Poley_'s question is apt. If one wishes to take a conservative approach, _music_ must be definable via music theory, and capable of representation by music notation (with some minimum of extra doodads around it). Even if you buy that story, defining _good music_ is a ballbuster. I suppose you could ask me...


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## Ravellian

jalex said:


> Acceptable to him by the looks of his post: 'Experimenting for the sake of experimenting doesn't usually produce good music. But in the case of the Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, Penderecki's new sounds ingeniously capture the effect of millions screaming in pain and agony, *and that's what makes it effective as a piece of music*'. I was pointing out that when Penderecki wrote he he did not have any aims of translating the screams of pain and agony into music, and I don't think it makes sense to accept and even laud the piece purely on the grounds of a title added as an afterthought.


I don't see why it matters whether or not the title was added before or after the music was finished. When he heard it, that's what it sounded like to him, and it makes sense to the rest of us. Composing is an organic process - maybe he had something like screaming in mind when he was composing, maybe not. But the bottom line is, the title describes the piece perfectly, and it helps people understand and appreciate it.


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## myaskovsky2002

MilanStevanovich said:


> Avant-garde music is not my field of study, but I most certainly stumble upon it here and there. It's not my to say but I sometimes find it completely ridiculous.
> When it comes to Penderecki, his threnody (hitting your instrument to make music, I mean,cmon...) is just a bunch of unorganized dissonances...
> My opinion is: noise is not music.


I do not agree. Do you mind? I'm sure you don't...it is a question of taste...I think this work is better than many he composed afterwards...when he became a more traditional guy.

Martin


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## Polednice

Ravellian said:


> I don't see why it matters whether or not the title was added before or after the music was finished. When he heard it, that's what it sounded like to him, and it makes sense to the rest of us. Composing is an organic process - maybe he had something like screaming in mind when he was composing, maybe not. But the bottom line is, the title describes the piece perfectly, and it helps people understand and appreciate it.


Why it matters

*Scenario 1*: "So Pendy, my man, what do you fancy composing today?"

"I'm feeling quite affected by war and violence at the moment, so I thought - though it's a tough nut to crack - I might try my hand at memorialising the victims of the war in Hiroshima."

"That sounds ambitious! I can't wait to see how it turns out though."

--- When the piece is finished ---

"Are you ready for me to see it yet, Pendo?"

"Yeah... I'm not sure if I'm happy with it, but tell me what you think."

"Holy cow! This stuff is amazing! You've captured it so unbelievably well! This is imagination at its most powerful!"

*Scenario 2*: "So Pendy, my man, what do you fancy composing today?"

"Hell knows. I'm feeling a bit emo, though, so I thought I might try to scramble some weird noises together and see if I can maybe get it sounding like screaming or some s***."

"Oh right, that sounds kinda cool. I suppose."

--- When the piece is finished ---

"What was that, Pendo? You want me to look at your new piece? Oh right, I guess I can spare a few minutes..."

"Trust me, you'll love it. You won't be able to get it out of your head."

"Christ, Pend-meister. That's certainly unforgettable... Sounds like an atom bomb went off in your head."

"An atom bomb, eh? Now that's a clever idea..."


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## Chrythes

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> Please kindly defend these two pieces. Almost whatever crap that is written by composers these days, someone will love them. Does that really justify your automatic defence position, therefore?


I would define it more as an exposition of sounds created by "unusual" objects. 
The box seems to be truly unique in a way and the Theremin performance might be an experiment in how many different sounds it's possible to produce with such device.
I just guess that other Avant-garde artists could use these sounds in more large scale works.


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## Guest

I just got to this thread. Interesting how persistent modern-bashing is. It's almost as if modern music is attacking us, and we have to defend ourselves.

But anyway, I wonder if it's too late to go back to the original post and two of the terms that almost everyone has accepted. This is what I find continually perplexing about online threads, nearly everyone who responds accepts the terms of the OP. Those few who don't are almost always deprecated as trolls. But really, if the terms are flawed, then all the responses will be flawed as well.

Avant garde. Strictly speaking, this means advance guard. It is a military metaphor, referring to the soldiers who go ahead of the main group. Interesting that in the original, literal meaning, everyone is headed the same direction; just some get there earlier than others. In music and the other arts, avant garde (like "modern") has come to refer to a particular style or school of artists. But, like any other generalization (Mexicans are lazy; blondes are stupid; young people are rebellious) it's not very useful to argue with without specific examples. Problem there for any bigots in the room is that some examples might illustrate just the opposite. Industrious Mexicans; intelligent blondes; non-rebellious young people (or rebellious old people).

Which particular pieces have people listened to? So far in this thread, we have one piece. One piece to stand for "the avant garde," a thing that we're not even sure what it is. (I would say that as a stylistic descriptor, it should probably be trashed, along with "modern," just by the way.) But let's say, for the nonce, that "avant garde" actually describes a style of music. What things about _Threnody_ identify it as "avant garde"? What qualities does it share with other "avant garde" pieces? How many of those other pieces with similar qualities "depict" (itself a very questionable concept) the screams of people in pain and agony? Even _Threnody_ doesn't do that, I would say.

And, even more importantly, how many _non_-avant garde pieces have similar qualities?

Noise. Also tricky. Difficult to define without reference to an auditor but almost always _used_ as if the qualities the auditor perceives are intrinsic to the sounds. So by some special alchemy, "what I dislike or find ugly" turns into "the sounds themselves are ugly and unlikable." This means, of course, that if anyone reports as liking those sounds, they can be (and are) accused of either lying or being disingenuous.

The underlying premise is that no one can actually enjoy "avant garde" music for its own sake, for it is intrinsically ugly and impossible to enjoy.

Now, all that's left is the $64,000 question (that was the _Who Wants to be a Millionaire_ of my generation.): Why? That many people, some of whom regularly post to TC threads, dislike what they loosely refer to as "avant garde" music is plain. OK. Dislike it. Dislike it intensely if you please. But why the bashing? No one is forcing you to listen. And dislike is such a weak foundation for saying anything genuinely critical. That's what I would most like to see, informed and sympathetic criticism of contemporary music, criticism that comes from an extensive and generally positive experience with all the forms of contemporary music. From that position, we could talk very fruitfully, I think, about what we like and dislike, what we see as healthy and what we see as not so healthy.

We're a long ways from that. (There is an online board that is already there, so I know it's possible.)


----------



## violadude

Polednice said:


> Why it matters
> 
> *Scenario 1*: "So Pendy, my man, what do you fancy composing today?"
> 
> "I'm feeling quite affected by war and violence at the moment, so I thought - though it's a tough nut to crack - I might try my hand at memorialising the victims of the war in Hiroshima."
> 
> "That sounds ambitious! I can't wait to see how it turns out though."
> 
> --- When the piece is finished ---
> 
> "Are you ready for me to see it yet, Pendo?"
> 
> "Yeah... I'm not sure if I'm happy with it, but tell me what you think."
> 
> "Holy cow! This stuff is amazing! You've captured it so unbelievably well! This is imagination at its most powerful!"
> 
> *Scenario 2*: "So Pendy, my man, what do you fancy composing today?"
> 
> "Hell knows. I'm feeling a bit emo, though, so I thought I might try to scramble some weird noises together and see if I can maybe get it sounding like screaming or some s***."
> 
> "Oh right, that sounds kinda cool. I suppose."
> 
> --- When the piece is finished ---
> 
> "What was that, Pendo? You want me to look at your new piece? Oh right, I guess I can spare a few minutes..."
> 
> "Trust me, you'll love it. You won't be able to get it out of your head."
> 
> "Christ, Pend-meister. That's certainly unforgettable... Sounds like an atom bomb went off in your head."
> 
> "An atom bomb, eh? Now that's a clever idea..."


While I'm pretty sure Penderecki didn't just throw together some screaming noises and **** when he composed the Threnody, the "pendo" and "Pend-meister" were enough to earn that post a "like" hahaha


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## Ravellian

Whatever Poley, either way, unless you're delusional, it definitely sounds like screaming, no matter what the title is.. And to achieve that effect with novel sound organization is a fine achievement.


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## quack

I'm just a lurker here but I have to say thanks to HarpsichordConcerto, reading his posts at TC has introduced me to some fascinating modern music. I really like that woman freaking out with her theremin producing some cool effects, not so sure about the 2nd one, seems like a scene from an obscure fetish club for box fanciers. Hope you find more cool things to hate and share HC.


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## Polednice

Ravellian said:


> Whatever Poley, either way, unless you're delusional, it definitely sounds like screaming, no matter what the title is.. And to achieve that effect with novel sound organization is a fine achievement.


Yeah, whatever Ravellian [insert repetition of self]


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## myaskovsky2002

Threnody it is screaming about injustice...It is not noise for me. I love it!

Martin


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## Ravellian

Polednice said:


> Yeah, whatever Ravellian [insert repetition of self]


Admit I'm right or I'll chop off your ears with my AXE!


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## Guest

Hahaha, great post Ravellian!

I laughed my *** off. (I have to stand to type the rest of this, of course, but at least I still have my ears.):tiphat:


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## mmsbls

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> Please kindly defend these two pieces. Almost whatever crap that is written by composers these days, someone will love them. Does that really justify your automatic defence position, therefore?


First, how do you find these things? Is it easy to find so many, varied videos that include works "pushing the boundaries"?

Second, I do have a lot of sympathy for your position. As I said, these types of works do not seem like music to me. I don't enjoy them and no longer feel the desire to explore them. I sampled them over a long enough period and ultimately decided they were not for me.

Finally, I'm not sure if I would defend those two videos as music because I'm not sure if a) the composers/performers believe they have composed or performed music (they might say it was art but not music) and b) I'm not sure of the audience believes they are listening to music. The problem is that music is very difficult to define. I don't know a better definition than one involving the subjective experience of the composer and listener. If I saw a better definition, I might change my view.


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## Philip

Anyone dismissing avant-garde music as art, in this day and age, lives in a wonderful utopian world of illusions and flying monkeys, and a paradoxical one to say the least.

I won't even speak of the works once considered avant-garde, which are now widely embraced by the same people who reject today's experimental music... But here's a less talked about instance of this phenomenon:

Did you not know that the equal temperament was once considered "avant-garde", in the sense of pushing the boundaries, until its general acceptance by the western world in the early 20th century?

It is perhaps one of the most striking examples of scientific advancements applied in music: the broadening of musical range at the expense of pure, natural harmony.

In his letters, Bach himself refutes equal temperaments. For this reason he chose the well temperament as a framework for the WTC, allowing for different colored key signatures while retaining a broadened musical range.

Today, many musicians, experimental or not, are going back to these different tunings and rediscovering this palette of sound, and I find it quite ironic that some of these musicians are considered "avant-garde".


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## Igneous01

this is how Avant Garde is music:


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## Sid James

violadude said:


> Noise that is arranged by a composer/performer in some way, is music
> 
> Problem solved


That's right. Whether you like it or not, some time ago (definitely after 1945) music left the world/era of harmony and entered a "new era" of pure sound, which includes noise. I like BOTH harmonic music AND experimental music, both traditional and pushing the boundaries. I like variety, some people don't, that's fine. I've read the first two pages of this thread and some interesting comments, but overall these threads lead to nothing.

Part of the reason is that inevitably the OP of these threads, as of this one, does not like (from what I can read of this quote below), contemporary music (eg. after 1945, or certain types of music from this period) -



MilanStevanovich said:


> Avant-garde music is not my field of study, but I most certainly stumble upon it here and there. It's not my to say but I sometimes find it completely ridiculous...


You've got a right to an opinion, but I don't know what it's worth to be quite honest. I mean I find the plots of Baroque opera & a lot of operetta to be totally ridiculous. People standing around singing about the gods in the former, and various love triangles all ending with champaigne in the latter. But it's the music that counts, not these extraneous things. & I like some Baroque opera, in bite size chunks, and as for operetta, I love it. But I'm not going to provide a serious analysis of either in terms of plot especially if I think their plots are like ridiculous, cliched and not what draws me to them.

So what's the basics here. What draws you to music? Do you like some kind of post-1945 music? Have you taken time to explore and sift through it? Or are you just saying you've heard some & it's rubbish? I mean frankly, get off your backside and explore, you'll inevitably find something. Then again, it's easier to make threads like this, generalising about things, and what's the point of that? As Gordon Ramsay says "Where's the f***ing passion?" I mean less than five years ago, my exposure to post-1945 music was minimal, but now I've gotten off my backside and explored it, both live and on disc, and it's been mainly rewarding all round. Of course, I don't like everything I hear, but it's the same with the older stuff. I have strong opinions like everyone else, but I try to be commonsense. Are you doing that?...


----------



## Ukko

Interesting; it may even have been avant-garde - in 1977. Even I could connect to the music; and the female co-lead violinist was fascinating to watch. Schnittke is less of a challenge, for me anyway, than today's avant-garde.


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## Sid James

I think part of the reason why Penderecki attached a historical event to the Hiroshima piece may have been politics. Eg. he was living in Communist Poland. I don't know, I'm guessing here. Originally he wanted to call the piece something like John Cage's 4'33", Penderecki wanted to name it in minutes and seconds like that piece. But he decided at some stage to name if for the victims of Hiroshima. I remember reading about this & thought I'd put this out there, although others might have said it already...


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## Sid James

quack said:


> ... Hope you find more cool things to hate and share HC.


I don't have much time for the haters either. But even more, I hate the "youtubers" who have this habit of using a slew of youtube clips to prove some point they are making. Or pseudo-point to be more precise. I usually put a youtube clip into the context of it being useful for what I'm saying, as a back-up, not a spectacle or thing to prove a point with a ten tonne crayon. How absurd, and it's also the lazy way to do it, it just speaks of agendas and judgemental attitude, from rubbishing something by Xenakis, to trying to convert someone who doesn't like J.S. Bach to love/adulate him like the poster doing the "youtubing" by posting half a dozen youtubes of Bach. Bloody boring. So basically I hate youtubing, it's a bunch of ****...


----------



## Polednice

Sid James said:


> I think part of the reason why Penderecki attached a historical event to the Hiroshima piece may have been politics. Eg. he was living in Communist Poland. I don't know, I'm guessing here. Originally he wanted to call the piece something like John Cage's 4'33", Penderecki wanted to name it in minutes and seconds like that piece. But he decided at some stage to name if for the victims of Hiroshima. I remember reading about this & thought I'd put this out there, although others might have said it already...


No, no, it was definitely just some kind of intellectual scam.


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## NightHawk

This work, by Schnittke, is gorgeous and immediately comprehensible to me on a level I really can't explain, but just know that I like it a lot. Does that mean it's still _avant garde_? Shouldn't I be offended? Puzzled? Angry? I thought AG was supposed to be butt U G L Y and then everybody dies.



Igneous01 said:


> this is how Avant Garde is music:


----------



## HarpsichordConcerto

quack said:


> I'm just a lurker here but I have to say thanks to HarpsichordConcerto, reading his posts at TC has introduced me to some fascinating modern music. I really like that woman freaking out with her theremin producing some cool effects, not so sure about the 2nd one, seems like a scene from an obscure fetish club for box fanciers. Hope you find more cool things to hate and share HC.


My pleasure!  Welcome to TC by the way.

Edit: I like your Avatar. I had some of those birds for dinner last night.


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## regressivetransphobe

Sid James said:


> I don't have much time for the haters either. But even more, I hate the "youtubers" who have this habit of using a slew of youtube clips to prove some point they are making. Or pseudo-point to be more precise. I usually put a youtube clip into the context of it being useful for what I'm saying, as a back-up, not a spectacle or thing to prove a point with a ten tonne crayon. How absurd, and it's also the lazy way to do it, it just speaks of agendas and judgemental attitude, from rubbishing something by Xenakis, to trying to convert someone who doesn't like J.S. Bach to love/adulate him like the poster doing the "youtubing" by posting half a dozen youtubes of Bach. Bloody boring. So basically I hate youtubing, it's a bunch of ****...


Here's my opinion:


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## StlukesguildOhio

Define "a lot". (2 can play this game)

People on this forum, people at my school, my Mom, others buying the music of Avant Garde composers

Define "people" (what "people"? how many? what percentage). Define Avant Garde. Which "avant garde"? All? Some? Only those you like? What of those you don't like... are they then inherently demoted to "non-avant garde" status?


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## violadude

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Define "a lot". (2 can play this game)
> 
> People on this forum, people at my school, my Mom, others buying the music of Avant Garde composers
> 
> Define "people" (what "people"? how many? what percentage). Define Avant Garde. Which "avant garde"? All? Some? Only those you like? What of those you don't like... are they then inherently demoted to "non-avant garde" status?


There are at least 6 or 7 people who like Avant-Garde music on this forum that I can think of off the top of my head. I assumed Avant-Garde meant things that pushed musical boundaries to the extreme. No, Avant Garde music that I don't like are not demoted to non-Avant Garde status...I don't know why you would think that.


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## Sid James

Generally speaking, I'd rather have something that pushes boundaries than just repetitive rehash ad nauseum. I like some of Arvo Part's things, but even the biggest fan of his must admit that he has kind of been repeating himself for like the last 30 years. This gets a bit boring (eg. lack of artistic development? How far do you go on refining before things get old and stale? Is it too late or risky to try new things or go in new directions, flesh those out, etc.?). On the other hand, I do admit that some things don't gel with me, even though the composer is doing new and novel things. It's hard to generalise about post-1945 music just as it is to do that with older era/style musics. Every composer is different. But on the whole, I like a modicum of individuality or creativity/imagination, or whatever, not just same old same old time and time again...


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## StlukesguildOhio

There are at least 6 or 7 people who like Avant-Garde music on this forum that I can think of off the top of my head. I assumed Avant-Garde meant things that pushed musical boundaries to the extreme. No, Avant Garde music that I don't like are not demoted to non-Avant Garde status...I don't know why you would think that.

The term "avant garde" as someguy notes, was a military term denoting the lead ranks who arrived where the rest of the army was heading... but ahead of the rank and file. How do we define "avant garde" if we don't know where music is heading (except after the fact) and if (as should be obvious by now) there is no single unified goal or agreement upon where music should be headed? There must surely be lots of art that pushes the boundaries of a given art form... to little or no avail. There are also artists who strike their peers as conservatives... even reactionaries (Bach and Brahms immediately come to mind) but who prove, in the long run, to be far more innovative... far more influential on later artists. Again... I like some contemporary music and I dislike some contemporary music and I suspect the use of the term "avant garde" is used by both sides of this debate as a pejorative. Those who would dismiss a good deal of contemporary music without having given it much of a chance, use the term as an insult. Those on the other side, often employ the term as a badge of honor or bragging rights (I am able to "get" and appreciate that avant garde music that goes over the heads of the majority of you peons.") Again... I greatly suspect that even those who embrace the most experimental strains of avant garde music have areas and styles of music that they truly dislike (Bluegrass, Polka, Hip-hop, etc...). None of us can like everything... and certainly it is only human nature to mock that which we find absurd or ridiculous. So why these arguments about such broad and undefined realms of music?


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## starthrower

It's all a matter of taste. Why worry about what other people think? To pose a hypothetical for myself, if my only options for music listening included Mozart and Haydn, I'd give up listening. On the other hand, if my options were limited to the new music avant garde, I'd keep listening simply for the opportunity to hear something new and interesting to my ear.

And I agree with Ohio that the term avant garde is somewhat ambiguous when used to categorize certain musical movements. It's not necessarily synonymous with innovation or sophistication when applied to music. In many instances it's referring to a change in direction, even if the non-musician music writers and reviewers think they're dealing with new innovations.


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## Sid James

StlukesguildOhio said:


> ...why these arguments about such broad and undefined realms of music?


I think the OP would have been better to go to the Penderecki thread - which yours truly started two years ago, just about - and ask about what people think of the _Threnody for Hiroshima _ piece there. Maybe the OP doesn't even know that Penderecki has left that style now, for the last few decades he's more kind of modern tonal or neo-romantic, not really avant-garde/experimental, etc.

So you're right, generalising usually leads nowhere, it's a dead end, a lose-lose situation. I have no problem with people liking Penderecki's more traditional works over his earlier experimental ones. It's all post-1945 music, right? It's even the same composer in this case.

I applaud people who open themselves up to say some Penderecki, whatever it is, but I have little time for people who begin threads which make me think they're closed off to his music, even to more recent works where he goes back to earlier styles like Mahler, etc. Listening to ANY post-1945 music is a good thing in my book, one comes across a fair amount of people who are closed off to anything outside the hard conservative warhorse loving mob's 1800-1900 set in stone axis of what is "great" music...


----------



## Guest

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Those on the other side, often employ the term as a badge of honor or bragging rights (I am able to "get" and appreciate that avant garde music that goes over the heads of the majority of you peons.")


Well, no has done that so far on this thread, anyway. I have seen this general attitude a few times online, always about something much much earlier, like Monteverdi or Cherubini. Since I hang out with a lot of people who could be considered "avant garde" composers and performers, I can also report that I have never heard anyone offline employ the term this way, not since college, and then it was only a few, insecure college students who used it that way.

I have seen this scenario, this model, referred to quite often, however. More often referred to than actually played out in real life, and mostly by anti-modernists who use it to describe their supposed experiences with pro-modernists. I'm skeptical.

That's been my experience, anyway. Your mileage may differ.


----------



## Weston

Polednice said:


> I think this is unfair because, talking of your 'writing' example, implicit in your 'assurance' is that you're lying and, by extension, that avant-garde music that proclaims organisation which you can't hear either just isn't organised or is actually lied about.
> 
> _If_ you could demonstrate the organisation of your writing and other people could understand it, then perhaps it would be good writing. Or maybe even good as visual art if your symbols are devoid of sufficient meaning.


Remember I didn't really say it was good writing. I said it is highly organized. It wasn't really my writing, and I admit it's still kind of an unfair analogy, but here's the organization (as if anyone were really interested). I'll work my way through it backward:

*"Õ n2:: +μbρ ÕuKKer' b7ϐ μÞ Þσb7ϐ n+ σ::γQρg7ω Θϐ?"*
Every other symbol was replaced by another symbol that I found visually interesting, the exception being that *:* became *:: *because I thought that looked more like a letter. I placed quotes around the derived mess and a question mark at the end because they came up missing during the process, and these represent the human decision element to the organization. I accidentally skipped a symbol, so a couple are juxtaposed unchanged, and I allowed the word processor to replace some symbols that had been skipped over previously in the case of repetition.
*
s του ημέρα Summer' ένα με εσένα τη συγκρίνω Θα*
The words have been placed in reverse order from the derived phrase below.

*Θα συγκρίνω τη εσένα με ένα Summer' ημέρα του s; *
This is more or less a Babel Fish Greek translation of -

*"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" *

Somehow "summer" didn't translate, I suppose because of the possessive form. Babel Fish thought it was a name.

But the whole point was, music must be more than organized sounds. I do think _avant garde_ music can be more, often much more. But sometimes it's just someone seeing how clever they can be. The sad thing is most of us, myself included, can't really tell the difference.


----------



## Guest

There have been some excellent comments on this topic, especially from some guy! Avant garde, to me, is the real EXTREME of the spectrum - sounds which evoke, rather than music. I don't have the slightest problem at all with 'new music' - based as it is on written notes and played on musical instruments. It's when 'noise' is justified as music that I have a problem. Stockhausen's "Helicopter" string quartet, though 'old' by comparison these days, is preposterous. I don't want to hear a helicopter in a concert - not inside or outside. Anyway, much of what passes for 'music' and the avant garde these days will be relegated to the dust in years to come, as did 98% of all music - only the really very good music has remained imperishable, if I may put it that way. The vast majority of what has been written has disappeared in the last few hundred years. So it will be with the "advance guard" - yes, I like the war metaphor and think it very appropriate.


----------



## Guest

Weston said:


> But the whole point was, music must be more than organized sounds.


But language is not like music, nor music like language, even literary language. There's some language that approaches the condition of music, but there's really no music that approaches the condition of language. Music is its own thing. It's not articulate like "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day," and so cannot be turned into "Õ n2:: +μbρ ÕuKKer' b7ϐ μÞ Þσb7ϐ n+ σ::γQρg7ω Θϐ?" I think we're often seduced by the way we talk about music, using metaphors drawn, often enough, from language. Phrases, narrative, expression, depiction. Only if we take those metaphors literally do we get into trouble.

Anyway, I don't think music _is_ any more than organized sounds. I think that "organized sounds" captures very well exactly what music is, and if you ask "organized by whom" I would answer, by a composer, a performer, or a listener. And I wouldn't ask for anything more than the natural and largely unconscious organizing that humans do simply because they're humans, either.



Weston said:


> But sometimes it's just someone seeing how clever they can be.


Is it? This would have been a great place to have had a wee example or two. (Note that you would have to assure us that you can get inside of other people's heads and see their true motivations, though.)



Weston said:


> The sad thing is most of us, myself included, can't really tell the difference.


The way to tell differences between things, if that's what you truly desire, is to become familiar with the things you're trying to differentiate. And that's not what we're used to seeing on the bash threads. I don't know if you're doing this or not, but I suspect that most people who say they can't tell the difference between good avant garde and bad are really saying there is no good avant garde. That no one can tell the difference, because there really is no difference. There is only one category: bad.

You hint that that's not what you're saying, hence my advice to become familiar with the things you're trying to differentiate. (I would only add, having become familiar with almost everything that could be called "avant garde," that my own desire to differentiate between good and bad has dwindled to practically nothing. It's not gone entirely, but I noticed several years ago that I caring less and less about comparisons. What I really wanted to do was listen carefully to everything that came my way, on its own terms. I don't like everything I hear, by any means, but I've found that there are a lot more things that I can enjoy than I ever thought I would.)


----------



## Jeremy Marchant

Sid James said:


> I think part of the reason why Penderecki attached a historical event to the Hiroshima piece may have been politics. Eg. he was living in Communist Poland. I don't know, I'm guessing here. Originally he wanted to call the piece something like John Cage's 4'33", Penderecki wanted to name it in minutes and seconds like that piece. But he decided at some stage to name if for the victims of Hiroshima. I remember reading about this & thought I'd put this out there, although others might have said it already...


I know that Wikipedia is not _infinitely _reliable on _every _subject but, on the whole, it seems to be reasonably accurate most of the time. This is what it says about Penderecki's _Threnody_:

The piece-perhaps as a nod to John Cage originally called 8'37" (at times also 8'26")-applies the sonoristic technique and rigors of specific counterpoint to an ensemble of strings treated to unconventional scoring. Penderecki later said "It existed only in my imagination, in a somewhat abstract way." When he heard an actual performance, "I was struck by the emotional charge of the work...I searched for associations and, in the end, I decided to dedicate it to the Hiroshima victims". The piece tends to leave an impression both solemn and catastrophic, earning its classification as a threnody. On October 12, 1964, Penderecki wrote, "Let the Threnody express my firm belief that the sacrifice of Hiroshima will never be forgotten and lost."


----------



## Sid James

some guy said:


> ...
> The way to tell differences between things, if that's what you truly desire, is to become familiar with the things you're trying to differentiate. And that's not what we're used to seeing on the bash threads. I don't know if you're doing this or not, but I suspect that most people who say they can't tell the difference between good avant garde and bad are really saying there is no good avant garde. That no one can tell the difference, because there really is no difference. There is only one category: bad.
> 
> ...


I know what you mean there, but aren't you simplifying the gist of Weston's comment. Eg. I was recently reading a book written by Aaron Copland, and in passing he talks about how even he - with is ability as a composer, etc. - found the music of Boulez very very complex. So if Copland thinks that, what about us mere mortals, esp. those of us who are largely or entirely untrained in music?

I don't think it's good vs. bad (false?) dichotomy that's the issue here, necessarily - apart from intractable conservatives who think anything that came after the pyramids is a thread to order or beauty or their taste or whatever (& we all kind of know who those are here, don't we?). The issue is commonsense and balance. Also context of what the music is, what it is about. Complexity for example has to have something behind it driving it along, a big picture. Eg. that's what I find in _The Delusion of the Fury_ by Harry Partch, which I listened to last year and it grabbed me virtually from the word go.

Of course, this varies from composer to composer, piece to piece, person to person. I have a right to say that Boulez's _Sur Incises_ is too complex for my taste and like noodling, whereas his piano sonatas grab me deeply, so does his _Messagesquise_ for cello ensemble. Everyone has a right to have an opinion if they've moved off their backsides to engage with, understand the music, etc. It's not good or bad but shades of grey. But it's the same with Boulez as Bach for me, some of their works have clicked with me, some I'm middling about and working on, others I've given up trying, I'd rather focus on the things that are realistic to develop my musical explorations in a useful/constructive way...


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## Guest

Someguy, I definitely disagree with you - music is very much a language and very much like spoken and written language. That's the thing which separates it from 'sonics' or 'sound' or 'noise' of the avant garde. Let's say THAT the avant garde is NOT BASED ON A LANGUAGE. Let that be one of the disciminators. Just like German or English, music is definitely a LANGUAGE!! I can argue till the cows come home about this (oh, is that them mooing in the distance??!!).


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## Sid James

^^As I said, generally what happened after 1945 is that music moved from the era of harmony to the era of pure sound, which includes noise. I'm not interested in semantic arguments, they bore me, eg. whether it's a new language or not. In terms of what much post-1945 music sounds like, it is different from a lot of what came before. I'm not talking only of electronic or electroacoustic music, but also purely acoustic music made on traditional instruments. 

It's also generational thing, eg. compare what Shostakovich & Schnittke were doing in the 1970's. The former kind of extending & refining earlier things started before 1945, the latter using acoustic instruments to sound like electronic ones (one reason being lack of interest, support, funding in USSR for "real" electronic music, so Schnittke wrote for traditional instruments, making them sound electronic, etc.). This is what I mean, you cannot approach the musics of Shostakovich & Schnittke in entirely the same way, you have to take them on their own terms in some ways, what came post-1945 & even more the closer we get to the present, was an entirely different ballgame from what previous generations were doing...


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## Delicious Manager

Doesn't it all rather depend on
1) Your definition of 'avant garde' (some still consider Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Bartók 'avant garde', even though some of their music is now 100 years old!)
2) Your definition of 'noise' (as opposed to your definition of music)

In any case, this suggests to me yet another rant against music some people find 'difficult'' or challenging. Surely this as been done to death by now?


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## Guest

A debate is a 'rant' and we need to define (oh, not again!) the meaning of 'avant garde'? If I need to define 'noise' for you, you need to go back to square one.

Difficult or challenging music I can handle - in fact, some of Bach and much of Beethoven is much more demanding than noises made in a computer laboratory because it requires somebody to THINK and it evokes an emotional response - elation, sadness, transcendence etc. And don't use syllogisms like "hearing a crying child when it is really ill evokes an emotional response so that is music?" These kinds of red herrings don't further any debate about what constitutes music, but are typical of the A-G brigade. In order to achieve validity the definitions need to be broken down and re-made. If it ain't broke, don't fix it!!

Sooner or later we'll 'define' A-G until it suits *your* particular tastes, because I think that's what you're driving at. From my experience whenever anyone wants to argue something controversial they'll doggedly engage in semantics like this!! Instead of the issue, they'll concentrate endlessly on definitions, ad nauseum - that's how fragile and precious the arguments can become. Why not consider what a consensus, social view might be about 'noise' compared to 'music'. You know, the kind of thing which society generally agrees is a definition - the same as the goodwill and mutual understanding attached to things like the laws of the land. In other words, the hegemonic view of 'music' as an aural phenomenon - the one which has served us so well for 1,000 years.

Come on; what's wrong with your "music" that you have to contort yourself out of shape in trying to find a definition!!??


----------



## Polednice

Countenance, I think you're being extremely unfair. Some points:



CountenanceAnglaise said:


> A debate is a 'rant' and we need to define (oh, not again!) the meaning of 'avant garde'.


&


CountenanceAnglaise said:


> Would you like me to define 'music' for you?


You say these things patronisingly, but that is actually what this thread is about. That is what _art_ is about, for goodness' sake. Revolutions in form and style and purpose throughout the ages all happen because people intelligent enough to create art constantly ask themselves: what is it? What should it be? And so every composer with any value asks themselves, "what is music?" and any listener fully engaged with the art-form asks themselves the same thing.

You're extremely quick to accept some preconceived 'societal' notion of what music is, but you don't know what society thinks. You think you do, because you think you're mainstream, and so you think everyone thinks like you. That 'noise' is crap. Well, if you take one brief look at the flood of 20th century critical discourse on "what is art?" you might just come to the conclusion that you're being extremely prejudiced, and that this _is_ a valid question, and that everyone has their own answers.

Throughout all your comments, you are still confusing 'music' with 'good music'. You are saying that for something to be 'music' - the word itself being unhelpfully associated with 'sweet lyricism' in metaphorical contexts - you have to enjoy it because of X, Y and Z outdated concepts. Wrong. Quite simply, as I said earlier, music is _any_ sound that is directed by human intervention (whether compositionally or by improvisation). The fact that you don't like it, or the fact that _you_ can't distinguish it from noise doesn't mean that it can't hold a place in the grand scheme of human artistic endeavour.



CountenanceAnglaise said:


> Difficult or challenging music I can handle - in fact, some of Bach and much of Beethoven is much more demanding than noises made in a computer laboratory because it requires somebody to THINK and it evokes an emotional response (not, 'please hand me the bucket').


Ironically, all this statement proves is that the Bach and Beethoven is easier because you're obviously not willing to think hard _enough_ to understand the compositional purpose of those 'noises made in a computer laboratory'.

You keep railing against people nit-picking and focusing on semantics, but it's actually an extremely useful and important tool in any serious discussion. You need to try it more in order to analyse your opinions which can sometimes be ungrounded. But, if like with the others, you just feel the urge to tell me that I'm focussing on something too narrow, then we're beyond conversation.

Anyone used to my posts on this forum might be thinking that I don't sound very much like myself right now. I sound like what is, to me, usually 'the other side'! But prejudice is obvious when you see it, and you shouldn't let it slide. So I just hope this shows that, however conservative I can be in my tastes, _on principle_ I am not closed-minded.


----------



## Ukko

Polednice said:


> [...]
> Ironically, all this statement proves is that the Bach and Beethoven is easier because you're obviously not willing to think hard _enough_ to understand the compositional purpose of those 'noises made in a computer laboratory'.
> [...]


It may be that therein lies the rub.

IMO appreciating music should not require 'thinking hard enough to understand the compositional purpose' of the sounds. Thinking while listening to instrumental music should not only be unnecessary, it should be avoided as much as the mind will allow.

Thinking=Ratiocination=Language. Instrumental music does not employ Language. The 'compositional purpose' of the sounds is to create, um, sound effects, eh? One hopes those effects are not the equivalent of the sound effects employed back in the days of radio dramas, because those require the mind to label them - and that requires Language.


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## Polednice

Hilltroll72 said:


> It may be that therein lies the rub.
> 
> IMO appreciating music should not require 'thinking hard enough to understand the compositional purpose' of the sounds. Thinking while listening to instrumental music should not only be unnecessary, it should be avoided as much as the mind will allow.
> 
> Thinking=Ratiocination=Language. Instrumental music does not employ Language. The 'compositional purpose' of the sounds is to create, um, sound effects, eh? One hopes those effects are not the equivalent of the sound effects employed back in the days of radio dramas, because those require the mind to label them - and that requires Language.


I am actually in large agreement with you on that point. I don't think that music should require _no_ listening effort, but I think it should be minimal. This is why I think certain types of 'avant-garde' music are 'bad' - because they don't align with my beliefs about what music should be. However, regardless of my opinion, that doesn't mean that it isn't music at all, or that it's s***. They're still valuable contributions to the art-form, even if only to demonstrate which routes we shouldn't take.


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## Guest

Read what I've said more carefully will you, Polednice. I didn't say "rant" - that was Delicious Manager's expression (word). Also, I never mentioned "good" or "bad" music. I disagree with most everything you've said. 

And I especially disagree with anyone who says music doesn't use 'language'. That is the very basis of music, as it is generally understood. I'm not at all interested in semantics or patronizing comments when people don't like the argument, so I think that's about it for me.


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## Polednice

CountenanceAnglaise said:


> Read what I've said more carefully will you, Polednice. I didn't say "rant" - that was Delicious Manager's expression (word).


I didn't mention anything to do with rants.



CountenanceAnglaise said:


> Also, I never mentioned "good" or "bad" music.


I know you didn't, which is precisely why I was picking your argument apart. You were discussing 'good' and 'bad' music _with the false pretence_ that you were just discussing 'music'.


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## Guest

Don't make false suppositions, Polednice. Much of what you say is right off the planet. The false pretense is your reading and has nothing, repeat, nothing at all to do with arguments about A-G and whether or not it's noise. Again, the red herrings are turning up again. If you didn't mention "rants" then why did you highlight the extract to make your point - or 'patronizing insult'? I won't get into a battle of wits with somebody who is unarmed. Cheers.


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## Guest

Countenance, since you've announced that you cannot be persuaded, I won't try to persuade you. But I will make an observation. You cannot do to music what Weston did to language, transforming "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" into "Õ n2:: +μbρ ÕuKKer' b7ϐ μÞ Þσb7ϐ n+ σ::γQρg7ω Θϐ?" because music is already at the condition of "Õ n2:: +μbρ ÕuKKer' b7ϐ μÞ Þσb7ϐ n+ σ::γQρg7ω Θϐ?" (but probably without the question mark!).

That is, if you take a passage from a Schubert quartet and transform it somehow, either by changing pitch relations or rhythms or harmonies by hand or by running it through various filters in a sound program, what you will end up with is just more music. No matter how often you do this, the end result will just be more music. If you do it with language, you end up with gibberish. (Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, of course.)

And here's a special treat for the one or possibly two persuadable folks reading this post. (!) One thing that makes language language (and not a tree or a bicycle) is grammar. Grammar is the logic of how words hook up; it is an intrinsic part of language and changes very little on the deep level--though there are constant surface changes, the deep things remain constant. Music has no grammar. It has structure and logic, of course, but they are extrinsic. That is, they are imposed on sounds from the outside by human intervention, not intrinsic to the sounds themselves, and change from generation to generation and even from composer to composer.

A second thing that makes language language (and not a possum or a china plate) is meaning. Each word in a language means something, whether it's hooked up to another word or not. Notes don't have that. A C is just a C. It only starts to signify if it's hooked up to another note (or if it's repeated over and over again--repeat words over and over again and they _lose_ meaning). And it will mean vastly different things in different contexts. (There are many words with different meanings--dog, spring, bear and so forth--which mean different things in different contexts, but _every_ note, every sound, is like that.)

Indeed, it makes a lot more sense to say that language is like music. It has sound and cadences and modulation and moves through time in a way that paintings and sculpture do not. It can even be put, with varying degrees of success(!) into musical contexts. That language has a lot of the characteristics of music might be why some thinkers have been seduced into thinking that music is a kind of language. And the metaphors we habitually use to talk about language support that illusion. But it doesn't work in that direction, only in the language is a kind of music direction.


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## Polednice

CountenanceAnglaise said:


> Don't make false suppositions, Polednice. Much of what you say is right off the planet. The false pretense is your reading and has nothing, repeat, nothing at all to do with arguments about A-G and whether or not it's noise. Again, the red herrings are turning up again. If you didn't mention "rants" then why did you highlight the extract to make your point - or 'patronizing insult'? I won't get into a battle of wits with somebody who is unarmed. Cheers.


I obviously completely wasted my time. Next time, I won't bother to try to engage with you on specific points, and instead just tell you that your entire posts are irrelevant. The _whole purpose_ of talking about _specific_ meanings is to find common ground and further discussion. Apparently, all you're interested in is a shouting match.


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## Guest

The last thing I want is a "shouting match" with people decades younger than myself!! I've been on the receiving end of internet Trolls and won't post on a forum where people insult or patronize if they don't agree - instead of the argument. 

Also, any person who (as another contributor has) suggests that music isn't a language and has no grammar knows little about music and I wonder about these forums and their "discussions"!! Music and Mathematics - both languages with their own grammar and inextricably linked: problem-solving and 'rules' being one of those connections. This is Music 101 stuff. Read Leonard Bernstein, for starters.

You haven't 'wasted your time' Polednice, as you obviously enjoy sparring. I'm over it. Thanks.


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## Polednice

CountenanceAnglaise said:


> Also, any person who (as another contributor has) suggests that music isn't a language and has no grammar knows little about music and I wonder about these forums and their "discussions"!! Music and Mathematics - both languages with their own grammar and inextricably linked: problem-solving and 'rules' being one of those connections. This is Music 101 stuff. Read Leonard Bernstein, for starters.


Assumption 1 + Assumption 2 + Assumption 3 = 0 Argument.


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## Ukko

Using magic and infallible methods known only to me (and a few of the Illuminati) I have determined that _Countenance_ has a mental age of 119 years, and _Poley_ one of 14. Lets call that ten decades, for simplicity's sake. There is no way in this life you guys are going to communicate.

[and the way things are going, no way I can communicate with either of you, but that's another thing]

:tiphat:


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## Polednice

Hilltroll72 said:


> Using magic and infallible methods known only to me (and a few of the Illuminati) I have determined that _Countenance_ has a mental age of 119 years, and _Poley_ one of 14.


You wouldn't be saying that if you'd met me (not because I'm so unbelievably mature, but because I'm a big people-hating grump. That's not a 14-year-old's mind.  )


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## Guest

For those people who have a problem with the idea that music IS a language and that it bears no relationship to spoken and written language, try this on for size:






I'll give you a 5,000 word essay to write when you've finished watching it.


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## Polednice

I don't suppose you've taken even a beginners' course in linguistics? Maybe then you can stop parroting metaphorical cliches.


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## violadude

Eep!!  it looks like we have another flaming anti-modernist join the forum. I will quickly retreat from this one.


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## violadude

We'll I'm going to try to defend my case one more time, as calmly as I can. lol

I know "Avant-Garde" of the 20th century is generally disliked and considered bad, gimmicky, unintelligent or whatever. But even if it is all those things, fine, but I like it. 

And that's my defense, I like it. When I listen to music like this, I do actually think about it. Not in the same way I think about Beethoven or Brahms. I listen to the sounds that are being made, think about what the composer might have had in mind with these sounds, I think about what kind of atmosphere the sounds remind me of, I think about how the sounds might be made, I think about whether or not the piece is in some sort of form, or has some kind of climax and try to pinpoint where the piece is leading to, or what moment is the special moment. There are lots of things that I think about when listening to this "noise" music.

So I really dont understand when people say that composers should get rid of this type of music. Because I like it, and if it is gone I will be sad and that is a win-lose situation  but you people who don't like it can easily ignore it and keep listening to the music you like, and then we have a win-win situation. 

So why not just stick to listening to the music we like instead of mulling over music we don't. If you're the type who actually wants to appreciate this Avant-Garde stuff, please send me a PM about a certain piece and I will tell you what I like about it and hopefully it helps. But if you just want to continually make fun of it because you are mean, then please go away and stick to listening to your pretty tonal music  (which I also like quite a bit btw).


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## Iforgotmypassword

What's wrong with noise? I think John Cage and many other composers, musicians and music listeners would have a pretty strong opinion on that. Personally I love noise, though I personally am not sure that there is any such line between noise and music at all.


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## Philip

Yes, noise is good.

If we look at noise in a technical manner, say in electronics, it can be described as a generally unwanted, random signal. However, the randomness is said to be colored when its spectral content is of a certain statistical distribution, eg. white noise (flat), pink noise (-3 dB/octave), blue noise (+3 dB/octave), etc. Noise and its coloration play an important role in the way we perceive music as "natural".

For example, the difference between how a computer and a human performer play a particular piece... is in the noise. Each note played by a performer is actually off-beat by a certain interval of time, analysis of these errors (with respect to the beat) shows a very "colored" tendency, even in the most natural and seemingly perfect interpretations.

Noise is omnipresent, whether it be in the harmonic signatures of various instruments, in the way rhythm is actually interpreted, or as an intentional effect such as distortion in rock music, the randomness and character of the noise can be extremely pleasing.

If composers have experimented in every other dimension of music, why not noise?


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## Sid James

Philip said:


> ...
> If composers have experimented in every other dimension of music, why not noise?


Exactly. It's not only been going on since 1945, with the emergence of pure sound (incl. noise) as music, but centuries before. What about things like African tribal drumming? I'm sure the Europeans when they first heard that would've thought of it as pure noise.

As for the "is music like spoken language" debate, I'd say it basically is. But if you go to a foreign country, live there, is it better to expect them to learn your language (which is absurd) or simply adapt and you learn theirs.

Louis Armstrong apparently said he didn't like bebop, he thought it was "like Chinese music," eg. not like the kind of jazz music he knew & played. So he didn't move into that, he thought it was not his thing, another language too hard to learn. Contrast that with saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, who was also somewhat older than some of the then younger bebop players, he came to embrace bebop and become one of it's masters, despite having his roots firmly in the previous swing era.

So it's all about adaptability to different types of musical languages, whether you're a listener, musician, composer, or whatever...


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## Sid James

Iforgotmypassword said:


> What's wrong with noise? I think John Cage and many other composers, musicians and music listeners would have a pretty strong opinion on that. Personally I love noise, though I personally am not sure that there is any such line between noise and music at all.


Obviously it depends on context, eg. the thread about the debate re the artificiality of counter-tenors, same can be discussed in relation to electronic, electro-acoustic, amplified music, etc. Back in the Baroque era counter-tenors where seen as being a normal or natural thing. Now, we are more used to "normal" tenors, for want of a better word.

In the immediate post-1945 era, music with electronic or non-acoustic (eg. taped) elements was controversial. But now I don't see it as that, esp. it's commercial variants, eg. Vangelis' movie scores, which have heavy elements of electronic music in them. They're pretty much mainstream, I'd argue. The more avant-garde "fringe" electronic music is not mainstream like Vangelis, but in some ways, it's the context that the music resides in that matters more (or just as much) as the music itself.

So I don't know what the fuss is about pure sound &/or noise in contemporary music, some aspects of it at least are firmly mainstream...


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## Guest

It's interesting, all this talk about noise - such a boy thing really!! African drumming? Highly rhythmic and very musical and an important communication tool in those societies.The World Health Organisation has just written a paper which suggested that noise is far more harmful in the western world than previously thought. It was written in major newspapers in the last few days. The increase in noise has resulted, overall, in hugely increased stress levels for modern society. So, you can have it!!

I studied Linguistics in 1st and 2nd year university, thanks Polednice. Look at the U-Tube link: I've got my essay question ready for you. Cheers everyone!


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## regressivetransphobe

Sid James said:


> So I don't know what the fuss is about pure sound &/or noise in contemporary music, some aspects of it at least are firmly mainstream...


They'll have a heart attack when they hear this.






(video possibly NSFW)


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## Sid James

CountenanceAnglaise said:


> ...African drumming? Highly rhythmic and very musical and an important communication tool in those societies...


Not according to the conservatives, even in the 20th century. Do you know that they said Elvis' music (as well as Buddy Holly's) was corrupting youth with it's "Negro" rhythms. Of course, they were thinking about it's sexual connotations/connections, but probably it's aesthetic qualities was also on their minds (eg. that to them it sounded like noise compared to say the crooners of the previous pre-war generation like Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, etc. with their comparatively sugary songs).

I think you are painting this with a broad brush, the issue of what is "noise" and what is "music." As some have pointed out, it depends on a variety of things, incl. context. Same with the OP, what he thinks is ridiculous, eg. Penderecki's _Threnody_ piece is now firmly part of the post-1945 canon, or the pedagogical/teaching canon at least.

The video looks interesting but it's like an hour in length. I have nowhere near that time. If you can summarise it's contents briefly and how it relates to this debate/discussion, that would be best, imo. With a bit of balance of course, less bias or agendas/whatever, etc...


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## Weston

Do any of you consider the following avant garde? Maybe not. It's rhythmic, flirts with something akin to tonality, tells a story in a way, and is great fun to watch. I think it also works on the level of just listening without watching. I enjoy this more than pieces with rhythms so complex as to be unreadable as such. I also enjoy it more than some Mozart. It features some instrument hitting.


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## Polednice

CountenanceAnglaise said:


> I studied Linguistics in 1st and 2nd year university, thanks Polednice.


Well you obviously didn't pay much attention.


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## Guest

I've seen a lot of stuff about music and the brain. Everything I've seen so far has been methodologically flawed, so I'll probably give this hour long thing a listen some time, just to see. As soon as I hit a flaw, I'll stop, though.

In the meantime, how about trying this for your own little experiment? 

Pick up your phone and order a pizza with music. If music is a language, that should be easy to do. (If music is a universal language, then you could order your pizza with the same tune in any country--any country that knows about pizzas, anyway.)

That there are certain parallels between language and music is inescapable. That music IS a language (or even a type of language) is not.* You can give instructions for making a peanut butter sandwich with language. With music? Mmmmm. Not so much. You can explain quantum mechanics, write an essay on an hour long video, even have an argument about whether music is a language with language. You can't do any of those things with music.

You're welcome to try, though. I'll take a garden pizza with extra avocado and a pitcher of Bridgeport IPA, please.

*As I mentioned earlier, it makes more sense to say that language is a kind of music. Its musical qualities are much more pronounced (!) and much more literal than are music's putative linguistic qualities.

Edit: I'm five minutes into the video, and his first slide of parallels starts out with two ways in which language is musical. (The third parallel, syntax, I talked a little bit about in an earlier post: notes or pitches do not have meaning in the same way that words do.) I won't edit this any more. I'll make another post if I have another observation, OK?

Loved the Masonna clip, just by the way!!


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## norman bates

some guy said:


> I've seen a lot of stuff about music and the brain. Everything I've seen so far has been methodologically flawed, so I'll probably give this hour long thing a listen some time, just to see. As soon as I hit a flaw, I'll stop, though.
> 
> In the meantime, how about trying this for your own little experiment?
> 
> Pick up your phone and order a pizza with music. If music is a language, that should be easy to do.


music is a language, but an emotional language


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## Chrythes

norman bates said:


> music is a language, but an emotional language


So again - it must be universal in a way, but it's not.
What is the most related language to music in your opinion?


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## Guest

OK, the good news is that the speech part of the video only goes to the 48 minute mark (about 2 minutes at the beginning for the introduction); the rest of the hour is q & a (which I did not listen to).

Basically, the presentation supported the idea that language has several musical elements. The areas where music is like language are all debatable. (That's the presenter's point, by the way.) What the video shows is that there are parts of the brain where musical information and linguistic information are processed similarly. This is a long ways from the claim that music is a language, which this presentation does not do.

In fact, it is largely in accord with what I presented on page six of this thread. Despite their similarities, music and language are two distinct things. Despite their differences, music and language have certain similarities; these are mostly ways in which language is musical. What this presentation added was the conclusion that studying music and language together might help scientists understand brain disorders better and help them devise more useful therapies.

In any event, I think the pizza ordering exercise is probably sufficient.


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## Ukko

some guy said:


> In any event, I think the pizza ordering exercise is probably sufficient.


If you actually get what you ordered, is there any chance of sharing it? Sounds good.


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## norman bates

Chrythes said:


> So again - it must be universal in a way, but it's not.


this is an article of scientific american about the argument
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2010/06/17/music-and-speech-share-a-code-for-c-2010-06-17/


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## norman bates

some guy said:


> In any event, I think the pizza ordering exercise is probably sufficient.


no, it's an absolutely absurd example, because music is EMOTIONAL language 
Can you order a pizza at the telephone simply smiling?


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## HarpsichordConcerto

... and a lot of it is about perception. Let me repeat again what I wrote in other threads about a simple thought experiment. Suppose you blindfolded Joe Blogs from the street and without telling him anything about the sound he was about to hear; no prior information whatsoever about a particular piece of sound was in fact a Xenakis composed chainsaw-factory-industrial offshoot, chances are that Mr Blogs would not recognise it as music. Chances are also that many of us trained music students and fellow experienced music listeners would also not recognise it as music in a blinfolded, no prior infomration setting. This simple thought experiment shows that the fine line between avant-garde noise, the extreme crappy variety is none other than a perception, a perception of construct but the music itself has no real value and was not recognised initially as such. Statistically, I would expect a vast majority of blindfolded Joe Blogs to say "this sound is of a chainsaw". Though play him an aria, he will say "this is music".


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## Sid James

some guy said:


> ...
> 
> *As I mentioned earlier, it makes more sense to say that language is a kind of music. Its musical qualities are much more pronounced (!) and much more literal than are music's putative linguistic qualities.
> ...


Yes, I've read that when we speak, it's like we are composing, it is similar to the process of composing music. Australian musicologist Andrew Ford wrote this, and I think he also gave the example of some composers like Janacek who used the patterns and sounds of his native Moravian dialect in his music. That makes it unique. So too with Messiaen, using the "language" of the birds, who he said were the greatest composers on the planet...


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## regressivetransphobe

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> ... and a lot of it is about perception. Let me repeat again what I wrote in other threads about a simple thought experiment. Suppose you blindfolded Joe Blogs from the street and without telling him anything about the sound he was about to hear; no prior information whatsoever about a particular piece of sound was in fact a Xenakis composed chainsaw-factory-industrial offshoot, chances are that Mr Blogs would not recognise it as music. Chances are also that many of us trained music students and fellow experienced music listeners would also not recognise it as music in a blinfolded, no prior infomration setting. This simple thought experiment shows that the fine line between avant-garde noise, the extreme crappy variety is none other than a perception, a perception of construct but the music itself has no real value and was not recognised initially as such. Statistically, I would expect a vast majority of blindfolded Joe Blogs to say "this sound is of a chainsaw". Though play him an aria, he will say "this is music".


Thankfully not everyone has to depend on Joe Blogs to form an opinion.


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## Polednice

norman bates said:


> music is a language, but an emotional language


Statements like this are pretty but unhelpful. What people actually mean when they say that music is a language is that music has _structure_. But if we're going to have a rational discussion, we can't throw cute metaphors around.


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## norman bates

Polednice said:


> Statements like this are pretty but unhelpful. What people actually mean when they say that music is a language is that music has _structure_.


for me it means only that music has an emotional meaning understandable by large groups of people


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## Guest

norman bates said:


> this is an article of scientific american about the argument
> http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2010/06/17/music-and-speech-share-a-code-for-c-2010-06-17/


This is an article that oversimplifies the situation. Though at least in this one, there's some acknowledgement that they're oversimplifying.

I don't understand why it's such cause for incredulity or expostulation that people from the same culture, with similar backgrounds, should have similar responses to certain things. Here's a little finessing, though, from my own experience: There's a tune in Prokofiev's Eugene Onegin that is the accompaniment to words that express Eugene's ennui about women and love. (Yes, a pre-Tatiana song.) Prokofiev later used the same tune in his comic opera Betrothal in a Monastery, where the person (I don't remember who, and I'm too lazy to look it up) singing is telling what a privilege it is to serve a beautiful woman. Same tune, very different contexts for it. What do I feel is the tune's most dominant quality? Melancholy. But neither of its contexts are melancholic. So at least Prokofiev and I disagree about this tune's emotional content!

As for the other point, about ordering a pizza by smiling: it's absurd to call smiling a language. (But I'll bet, that if you got the right clerk, you could smile your way to a pizza, though it might not have all the toppings you wanted.)

And yes, I'll gladly share my musically ordered pizza and beer with anyone who wants some. Don't hold your breath for it, though. Just sayin'.


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## norman bates

some guy said:


> This is an article that oversimplifies the situation. Though at least in this one, there's some acknowledgement that they're oversimplifying.


it simplifies because it's clear that a scientific analysis of anything starts from simple elements. But that doesn't means that it's not true.



some guy said:


> I don't understand why it's such cause for incredulity or expostulation that people from the same culture, with similar backgrounds, should have similar responses to certain things. Here's a little finessing, though, from my own experience: There's a tune in Prokofiev's Eugene Onegin that is the accompaniment to words that express Eugene's ennui about women and love. (Yes, a pre-Tatiana song.) Prokofiev later used the same tune in his comic opera Betrothal in a Monastery, where the person (I don't remember who, and I'm too lazy to look it up) singing is telling what a privilege it is to serve a beautiful woman. Same tune, very different contexts for it. What do I feel is the tune's most dominant quality? Melancholy. But neither of its contexts are melancholic. So at least Prokofiev and I disagree about this tune's emotional content!


Not necessarily, i don't know the melody you're talking about but there's a lot of songs that use the trick of putting lyrics with a certain meaning on music that has contrasting emotional meaning (like sad lyrics on happy music)



some guy said:


> As for the other point, about ordering a pizza by smiling: it's absurd to call smiling a language.


Emotional language, not simply language. Emotional is the key word 
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_emotional_language


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## Polednice

norman bates said:


> for me it means only that music has an emotional meaning understandable by large groups of people


This is fair enough, but "something which is understandable to large groups of people" does not necessarily equal "language", and so it is unhelpful to call music a language. Music is so obviously devoid of essential linguistic features (such as meaning!), and qualifying the term 'language' with 'emotional' doesn't make it any less inappropriate a label.


----------



## norman bates

double post, sorry


----------



## Ukko

Polednice said:


> This is fair enough, but "something which is understandable to large groups of people" does not necessarily equal "language", and so it is unhelpful to call music a language. Music is so obviously devoid of essential linguistic features (such as meaning!), and qualifying the term 'language' with 'emotional' doesn't make it any less inappropriate a label.


The term 'body language' is also in common usage. The information available from it is probably more specific than music can convey, and to the experienced 'reader' it is less prone to misinterpretation than written language. Still, it's 'vocabulary' is pretty limited; God, for instance, doesn't enter into it.


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## norman bates

Polednice said:


> This is fair enough, but "something which is understandable to large groups of people" does not necessarily equal "language", and so it is unhelpful to call music a language. Music is so obviously devoid of essential linguistic features (such as meaning!), and qualifying the term 'language' with 'emotional' doesn't make it any less inappropriate a label.


why is it inappropriate? We can recognize "sad", "happy" music, "scary", "violent" etc like the expressions of a face or the positions of a body and this is certainly not a strange theory created by me, and in fact music is recognized (not only by me) as an emotional language

http://www.choosehelp.com/topics/counseling/music-therapy-2013-healing-through-the-primal-emotional-language-of-music
http://chat.jabberwacky.com/j2convbycategory-stop-G933part7
http://www.gyrix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=845

etc, we're not talking about the strange idea of "norman bates", it's a common idea supported by scientific researches


----------



## Guest

Norman, language is something that has grammar and syntax.

The other things you've mentioned have neither, that's all.

And there's no amount of scientific research that can confer grammar upon something that doesn't already have it.

You're simply taking a metaphor to be literal, which is a mistake, whether it's you making it or a member of the scientific community or a random blogger. All of these things _communicate_ something, feelings or moods, but communication does not presuppose language. Animals communicate, too, but their calls, however sophisticated, are not language (though they're closer than anything else we've talked about so far).

None of your latest three links argues that music is language, either, or explains the term "emotional language." Two of them repeat similar assertions, and one of them doesn't even come close. And none of them were "scientific researches." What were you trying to demonstrate by offering these links?

"Sad," "happy," "scary," and "violent" are all words. Words describe things that aren't language. A sad person, a happy song, a scary movie, a violent society. That's what words do, describe things, mostly things that aren't language. So the fact that you can assign words to non-linguistic reality means nothing. It's business as usual. Describing something with words doesn't turn the thing described into language. That you can find several people who will agree that the same person, song, movie, or society is sad, happy, scary, or violent contributes nothing to the current discussion, either.


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## Tapkaara

BPS said:


> Why isn't avant-garde cooking as popular as avant-garde music? Or maybe it is - hmmm.
> 
> There's nothing wrong with being clever, just don't expect other people to listen to your music if it isn't pleasant or otherwise engaging.


Avant-garde cooking? Hahaha, that's a good one! It has organization...see, here is the recipe...yet it still tastes like crap.


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## Guest

Tapkaara, you weren't supposed to take "there's nothing wrong with being clever" as an instruction!

Anyway, cooking is not analogous to music. Though surely you have tried exotic dishes that you didn't like when you were ten but couldn't get enough of when you were thirty. (Your ages may vary.) Beets tasted like crap to me for most of my life. And then they didn't. And now I can eat more foods with pleasure because beets now taste good to me. Isn't that a good thing for me?

And even more surely, you must have noticed that not everybody likes the same foods. Hmmmm. Why IS that? Why do some people like the wrong food?


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## Tapkaara

some guy said:


> Tapkaara, you weren't supposed to take "there's nothing wrong with being clever" as an instruction!
> 
> Anyway, cooking is not analogous to music. Though surely you have tried exotic dishes that you didn't like when you were ten but couldn't get enough of when you were thirty. (Your ages may vary.) Beets tasted like crap to me for most of my life. And then they didn't. And now I can eat more foods with pleasure because beets now taste good to me. Isn't that a good thing for me?
> 
> And even more surely, you must have noticed that not everybody likes the same foods. Hmmmm. Why IS that? Why do some people like the wrong food?


Well, you say it yourself...it's a matter of taste.


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## mmsbls

norman bates said:


> We can recognize "sad", "happy" music, "scary", "violent" etc like the expressions of a face or the positions of a body and this is certainly not a strange theory created by me, and in fact music is recognized (not only by me) as an emotional language


There is clear evidence that music strongly affects emotional centers in the brain. It is much less clear exactly what emotional information music can convey. I'm not sure that music conveys specific emotions such as scary or sadness. I used to believe musical emotional content could be relatively specific, but for an earlier thread I experimented with various works seeing if I really felt the emotion I expected to feel. I think music is a much blunter instrument and cannot reliably convey specific emotions.

Even if music could convey a small number of specific emotions, I agree that it is devoid of necessary features of language such as syntax.


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## Sid James

I think people are complicating things. It's just a waste of time to pull an analogy apart imo. In some ways, music is similar to language, in some ways it's different. In any case, a lot of the classical music we listen to has vocals, so it's inseperable from language. I think this thread is now in the "hot air" category, it's passed it's used by date, imo...


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## Guest

Andre, you wouldn't want to revisit this last comment of yours, would you? 

I mean, fine if you're bored by a conversation, but surely it's not quite the thing to loudly announce to everyone in the room that you're bored and why doesn't everyone just shut up, is it? 

Wouldn't it be better just to slip quietly away and let the conversation take its course? You don't have to attend to all our hot air, you know. If we were forcing you to read this, perhaps with a pointed stick*, then maybe I'd understand. But we're not.

*Haven't seen a Python reference in a while. Thought it was time for another. Is that so wrong?


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## Sid James

^^Maybe my last sentence was a bit too much, but I stand by the rest. Same with my earlier posts on this thread, I think I was talking commonsense. But you're right, I don't have to participate, I was just pointing out the obvious re this thread...


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## Guest

This suggestion that music isn't a language is a shibboleth. When I look at a group of orchestral musicians or any musician transposing written text into an action or emotion I know that person is using a "language" - the "language" of music, complete with its own 'vocabulary', grammar, syntax etc. If there were no language no two people would be able to 'interpret' a text. If you don't think music is a language, then you don't think Mathematics is one or computer programming - whereby people can 'share' information and knowledge via discrete and arcane written means, which they can decipher and thereby derive meaning.

To me it's basic common sense. It took me years of formal training to learn the 'language' of music, but I was never equipped to understand the 'language' of medieval musical texts. Good old Guido of Arezza tried to formalize the language with his "hand" until people much smarter than any of us was able to create a linguistic form which everyone could understand (who had been trained). The fact that people do not 'SPEAK' using this language is neither here nor there.

And now no further contributions from me to this forum as people shout when they disagree, or insult and attempt to belittle. This is of no interest to me whatsoever. I'm happy to agree to disagree.

And, now, if you don't mind I'm going to return to the written language so that I can interpret the subtleties and meanings contained therein.


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## Polednice

@SidJames: I think you've misinterpreted what people have been discussing here. We're not pointlessly pulling apart an analogy, because people aren't saying that music _is like_ a language, people are saying that music _is_ a language, which is so strikingly wrong (as cute a statement as it is to make) that it's important to show why.

@Countenace: the following is a very extraordinary claim:



> When I look at a group of orchestral musicians or any musician transposing written text into an action or emotion I know that person is using a "language" - the "language" of music, complete with its own 'vocabulary', grammar, syntax etc.


Rather than giving your grandiose overview of music as language because it's apparently obvious, I would be very interested to hear just _one_ example where a musician uses grammar and/or syntax in the act of performance.

[I know you said you're not going to respond, but you said that at least four or five times previously, so I'm hoping you'll be tempted to think of an actual example  ]


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## Ukko

CountenanceAnglaise said:


> [...]
> And, now, if you don't mind I'm going to return to the written language so that I can interpret the subtleties and meanings contained therein.


Probably a good idea. You seem to have pulled out all the straws there were to grasp at.


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## Iforgotmypassword

some guy said:


> I've seen a lot of stuff about music and the brain. Everything I've seen so far has been methodologically flawed, so I'll probably give this hour long thing a listen some time, just to see. As soon as I hit a flaw, I'll stop, though.
> 
> In the meantime, how about trying this for your own little experiment?
> 
> Pick up your phone and order a pizza with music. If music is a language, that should be easy to do. (If music is a universal language, then you could order your pizza with the same tune in any country--any country that knows about pizzas, anyway.)
> 
> That there are certain parallels between language and music is inescapable. That music IS a language (or even a type of language) is not.* You can give instructions for making a peanut butter sandwich with language. With music? Mmmmm. Not so much. You can explain quantum mechanics, write an essay on an hour long video, even have an argument about whether music is a language with language. You can't do any of those things with music.
> 
> You're welcome to try, though. I'll take a garden pizza with extra avocado and a pitcher of Bridgeport IPA, please.


Music is a language. However, it is a very abstract form of language which relies upon personal definition much like when language gets more deeply involved with semantics as opposed to just basic definitions. Try and describe the vastness of the universe using only basic words which can only be interpreted in one way. You can't begin to reach such a thing because at a certain point spoken language cannot describe such a thing, the human mind can't even comprehend it and this is where music begins to make more sense as a language. Albert Einstein used to play Mozart often when he was trying to understand a particular concept or idea because basic linguistic thought was too limited.



> Einstein once said that while Beethoven created his music, Mozart's "was so pure that it seemed to have been ever-present in the universe, waiting to be discovered by the master." Einstein believed much the same of physics, that beyond observations and theory lay the music of the spheres - which, he wrote, revealed a "pre-established harmony" exhibiting stunning symmetries. The laws of nature, such as those of relativity theory, were waiting to be plucked out of the cosmos by someone with a sympathetic ear.


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/31/science/31essa.html

Music is the most basic primal, and the most complex intellectual of languages. It is vibration and pattern. Energy and Mathematics. It's essentially what we are made up of as well, which is why we can empathize with it so easily.

I think I can understand what you mean by Language being a form of music though. Music came about first depending on how you define music.


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## Polednice

Iforgotmypassword said:


> Try and describe the vastness of the universe using only basic words which can only be interpreted in one way. You can't begin to reach such a thing because at a certain point spoken language cannot describe such a thing, the human mind can't even comprehend it and this is where music begins to make more sense as a language.


That is absolutely, unequivocally, simply not true. It's extremely poetic, beautiful, and tempting to think and say such things, but they have no grounding in fact. They are _metaphors_ - quaint ideas to praise music, and help us try to understand something that seems so elusive, but, as much as music has structure, and as much as music can provide the _immensely subjective_ experience of vastness and time (to nothing like the preciseness required for the communication of even basic _ideas_), music never has and never can be an actual language.

It is so important for people to be aware of what 'language' actually means. In this context, music is so often erroneously considered a language because it 'communicates'. That, however, is a uselessly loose definition. A quick flick through the OED provides the more exact: "system ... typically consisting of words used within a regular grammatical and syntactic structure." Even if you take out the part about 'words', music doesn't come anywhere close to having even a rudimentary grammar and syntax.


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## Ukko

Polednice said:


> That is absolutely, unequivocally, simply not true. It's extremely poetic, beautiful, and tempting to think and say such things, but they have no grounding in fact. They are _metaphors_ - quaint ideas to praise music, and help us try to understand something that seems so elusive, but, as much as music has structure, and as much as music can provide the _immensely subjective_ experience of vastness and time (to nothing like the preciseness required for the communication of even basic _ideas_), music never has and never can be an actual language.
> 
> It is so important for people to be aware of what 'language' actually means. In this context, music is so often erroneously considered a language because it 'communicates'. That, however, is a uselessly loose definition. A quick flick through the OED provides the more exact: "system ... typically consisting of words used within a regular grammatical and syntactic structure." Even if you take out the part about 'words', music doesn't come anywhere close to having even a rudimentary grammar and syntax.


You have restated the crux of the matter - _language_ must be defined as you say. Music - and body 'language' are in the much more general category of _communication_. Even the language concept you describe does not prevent misinterpretation. An instrumental music work of more than 'My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean' complexity mostly doesn't _have_ a 'correct' interpretation. How one interprets the 'message(s)' of a Sibelius symphony is pretty arbitrary.


----------



## violadude

I'm not saying that music IS a language. But I do want to say that one _tangible_, as opposed to metaphorical thing that music has in common with language is that a note, written on a piece of staff paper is a symbol. It is a symbol to those who understand the code, to let them know what sound they need to make. In the same way that a letter or character in any language, is a symbol for those who understand that code that tells them what sounds they need to make. That's the only thing I can think of.


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## Guest

I think we could probably learn a lot about both music and language, and about human perception, why not?, if we really thought about the metaphor "music is a language." 

If we continue to use it literally, to insist that it's literally true (and just by the way, repeating an assertion does not turn it into a fact or into the truth--it's still an assertion no matter how many times you say it), we will not learn a thing, except maybe about difficult it is to give up cherished ideas. About music or language, though? Probably nothing.

There are similarities between music and language. That's inescapable. But there are differences, too. Profound and fundamental differences. Try to escape those, and you'll wind up in cloud cuckoo land, which, if that's where you wanted to go, is great!

Edit: violadude brings up an interesting point. Written language is a system of symbols very much like the system of symbols that make up musical scores. Neither is "language" or "music," though, which is why you have to learn how to write in school. You learn language naturally, and fully, before you ever even get to school. Unless you count preschool as school. Point is, you don't learn your native language by means of pedagogical instruction. It just happens, like trees and flowers happen. Writing, however, is artificial. Along with its Siamese twin, reading, it has to be taught to you for you to learn it.


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## Ukko

violadude said:


> I'm not saying that music IS a language. But I do want to say that one _tangible_, as opposed to metaphorical thing that music has in common with language is that a note, written on a piece of staff paper is a symbol. It is a symbol to those who understand the code, to let them know what sound they need to make. In the same way that a letter or character in any language, is a symbol for those who understand that code that tells them what sounds they need to make. That's the only thing I can think of.


You are right of course. That is one of the straws _Countenance_ was grasping at.


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## Ukko

some guy said:


> [...]
> There are similarities between music and language. That's inescapable. But there are differences, too. Profound and fundamental differences. Try to escape those, and you'll wind up in cloud cuckoo land, which, if that's where you wanted to go, is great!


Hey, isn't that one of the whimsical names for Australia? _Sid_?


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## Polednice

violadude said:


> I'm not saying that music IS a language. But I do want to say that one _tangible_, as opposed to metaphorical thing that music has in common with language is that a note, written on a piece of staff paper is a symbol. It is a symbol to those who understand the code, to let them know what sound they need to make. In the same way that a letter or character in any language, is a symbol for those who understand that code that tells them what sounds they need to make. That's the only thing I can think of.


An interesting distinction between these uses of symbols is that anyone familiar with reading staff notation will know what the symbol for a middle-C held for two beats looks like. However, to speakers from different times and locations around the world, the letter 'a' signifies different sounds (dependent on accent). In that sense, language is less defined and more flexible.

As some guy suggested earlier, I think it's much more interesting to consider how language is musical. How the difference between a 'p' and a 'b' is a matter of frequency; how children learn language quicker if it is sung to them; how speech has well-defined metre and rhythm; and how certain non-linguistic voiced sounds (crying, laughing, calling out etc.) have been shown to have their intervals share features with music (the sound of sad speech featuring more minor 3rds than usual).


----------



## Sid James

Polednice said:


> @SidJames: I think you've misinterpreted what people have been discussing here. We're not pointlessly pulling apart an analogy, because people aren't saying that music _is like_ a language, people are saying that music _is_ a language, which is so strikingly wrong (as cute a statement as it is to make) that it's important to show why...


Ok well I understand now. I admit my eyes start glazing over a bit with too much theory. But I understand the distinction you make, I agree with it, and I also like what violadude is saying (eg. to the effect that we learn to read/write/etc. music - it's notation - as we do words - & I'd add similarities between say ordering music with sonata form and ordering language with grammar)...


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## Polednice

Sid James said:


> (eg. to the effect that we learn to read/write/etc. music - it's notation - as we do words - & I'd add similarities between say ordering music with sonata form and ordering language with grammar)...


Of course, while both exhibit structure, grammar is about a million times more essential to the understanding of a sentence than it is to put a piece of music in sonata form.


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## Sid James

CountenanceAnglaise said:


> ...If you don't think music is a language, then you don't think Mathematics is one or computer programming - whereby people can 'share' information and knowledge via discrete and arcane written means, which they can decipher and thereby derive meaning....


This is going above my head a bit, but I agree that music has strong elements of mathematics. Not only in terms of computers being used to compose today, as a tool or even going further than that and influencing the outcome of what we hear (eg. electronic music, electro-acoustic, with amplification/distortion/mixing, etc.), but also how composers have used mathematics in the past. Even simple things like the three or four part structure of concertos or symphonies, etc. mathematics is important to this. Of course, more recent things like serialism and minimalism made the blending of music with maths even more marked. Eg. the c20th Viennese Schools guys were obsessed with number patterns, eg. palindromes and putting names of people in "codes" into their music. Same with Shostakovich (DSCH). Anyway, that's what I want to add to this debate, for what it's worth...


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## Ravellian

As violadude pointed out, both music and the written word are conceived of as means of communication generated from written symbols on a page. However, I'm having a hard time picturing music as a language. Language has hard and fast grammatical rules, like "no split-infinitives" and "i before e except after c." Tonality has general guidelines as to hierarchy of pitch and use of key relationships. Yet as Beethoven and Wagner and Stravinsky and many others have taught us, some of the most memorable music comes from stretching these guidelines to their breaking point or even doing away with certain rules altogether. Music undoubtedly allows much more freedom than language, or even poetry.


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## Sid James

Ravellian said:


> ...Music undoubtedly allows much more freedom than language, or even poetry.


Traditional poetry or literature are more restricted, yes, but not in the highly experimental styles, eg. your own American Allan Ginsberg or the Irishman James Joyce or our own Australian "drug poet" Michael Dransfield...


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## Polednice

Perhaps another important distinguishing feature of language compared to music is that, with experimental forays into the use of language, we know if something makes _sense_ - with music, 'sense' doesn't really come into play.

On the subject of mathematics in music: I agree that it is there to an extent, but I would be wary of applying any kind of overarching mathematical principles. It reminds of those god-awful analogies of a footballer(/soccerer)-as-physicist because, when they try to score a goal, their brains calculate all kinds of complex forces, trajectories, resistances _etc._. Despite what the brain is unconsciously capable of, it's beyond doubt that _none_ of that actually goes through their mind. Similarly, while we can see the maths inherent in pieces of music, that doesn't mean that any composer (except for explicitly mathematical pieces, there probably being none before the 20th century) actually thought about the music in that way.


----------



## Guest

I just wrote to Dr. Patel, the researcher whose video about language and music Countenance shared with us.

Since I referenced this thread, I had to go back into it to check certain points. In the process, I found Weston's post where he offers a youtube clip, too, from an Icelandic music festival.

This post and its clip got entirely passed over in the heat of the discussion. But Weston's points were germane and, what's more, the video was delightful!

Thanks for that charming video, Weston. Thoroughly enjoyed the music. And I apologize for bringing it up so many pages distant from your post.


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## Itullian

if I make noise it's noise.
if Cage(or your choice) makes noise it's music.


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## Stasou

BPS said:


> Why isn't avant-garde cooking as popular as avant-garde music?


I believe this is the best I've ever heard it said.


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## violadude

Stasou said:


> I believe this is the best I've ever heard it said.


you kidding? That's one of the stupidest metaphors I've ever heard.


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## Sid James

Polednice said:


> Perhaps another important distinguishing feature of language compared to music is that, with experimental forays into the use of language, we know if something makes _sense_ - with music, 'sense' doesn't really come into play...


It's also about context. Eg. if in a normal conversation, I talked like some of the poetry of Joyce or Ginsberg, people would think I"m nuts. But if I went down to one of the pubs or cafes here that have poetry reading nights, read a poem in the style of those two guys, then it would probably be accepted as normal in that context. So in a way in one context nonsense makes no sense, in another it does.



> ...
> On the subject of mathematics in music: I agree that it is there to an extent, but I would be wary of applying any kind of overarching mathematical principles...


Well, these things are applied flexibly. An acquaintance of mine studied Xenakis' scores and she said that in the one/s she was studying, Xenakis applied his formulas wrong, eg. got the maths wrong if we are strict about how it should have been applied, etc. Artists are creative beings and not welded to mathematics like a mathematician, etc. But even high level mathematics has a more creative element, as other acquaintances who are in that have told me. But it's above my head. But look around, dig deep, and you'll find creativity everywhere, even if it looks like an arid desert, there will be life there somewhere.



> ...
> Similarly, while we can see the maths inherent in pieces of music, that doesn't mean that any composer (except for explicitly mathematical pieces, there probably being none before the 20th century) actually thought about the music in that way.


Are you sure? What about what I was talking about, putting names into music. Bach did it with his own name, and those of his wives. Schumann did it with Clara's. Not to speak of those who used the B-A-C-H motto which is now almost cliche, I know in the c19th Liszt definitely did it, he was a big fan of Bach. Of course, you're right, mathematics as part of music in a more concrete/rational way did make more of an impact, was more fleshed out in the c20th.



Itullian said:


> if I make noise it's noise.
> if Cage(or your choice) makes noise it's music.


That's right, as I said earlier, after roughly 1945, music moved from the era of harmony to that of pure sound which includes noise...


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## Polednice

Sid James said:


> It's also about context. Eg. if in a normal conversation, I talked like some of the poetry of Joyce or Ginsberg, people would think I"m nuts. But if I went down to one of the pubs or cafes here that have poetry reading nights, read a poem in the style of those two guys, then it would probably be accepted as normal in that context. So in a way in one context nonsense makes no sense, in another it does.


I was talking about grammatical and syntactic sense as opposed to some kind of interpretative sense. For example:

a) A curtain bit my leg.
b) Dog my leg bite.

(a) is an impossible idea, but the sentence works linguistically (in the context of English); subject+verb+object, with appropriate inflections and declensions. (b) on the other hand, we know makes no grammatical sense regardless of whether or not the thought being expressed is physically possible.

Sentences which are deliberately constructed incorrectly may, in various circumstances, have a 'poetic' significance, but it remains the case that we can tell when something does and does not make sense. This is not possible in music.



Sid James said:


> Are you sure? What about what I was talking about, putting names into music. Bach did it with his own name, and those of his wives. Schumann did it with Clara's. Not to speak of those who used the B-A-C-H motto which is now almost cliche, I know in the c19th Liszt definitely did it, he was a big fan of Bach. Of course, you're right, mathematics as part of music in a more concrete/rational way did make more of an impact, was more fleshed out in the c20th.


I don't see what musical cryptics have to do with maths...


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## PetrB

All you're saying is that you object to one style of organized sound where you do not object to or embrace, even, other styles of organized sound. All music, all styles, are based on a conceit, all being 'synthetic,' if you will, with not one thing 'natural' about any of them.

So you've just taken the step to merely announce your personal taste (a good thing to know your own taste(s), and tell the world 'you don't go there' at least in so far as Pendercki went

You can qualify what you call 'organization,' as per your taste(s) as well, but if you think about it, the Pendercki is scored (therefore 'organized') deals with pitch (definite or other), rhythm (metric or non) and intensity (dynamics) -- thus it has the three most fundamental elements to qualify as 'music,' whatever you think of it does not alter that fact.

The rest is personal taste, Pendericki's, yours.


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## DeepR

Electronic instruments can make all kinds of cool noises that are actually pleasant to listen to. Smashing a violin to pieces could make a nice crashing sound, but normally I prefer the violin to be played in the 'traditional' way.


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## brianwalker

BPS said:


> Why isn't avant-garde cooking as popular as avant-garde music? Or maybe it is - hmmm.


When was the last time an avant-garde music review sparked as much controversy as this single restaurant review?  It was parodied on SNL even.


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## millionrainbows

In visual art, people, places , and things which we recognize are "represented" by the art. This is "representational" art. Photography was invented, refined, and now art doesn't need to fulfill the need for representation. When visual art (painting) becomes abstract, we see its component parts: brush strokes, textures, fields of color, flatness.

Music is sound, but a very specific sort of sound, which started with singing, and was imitated and supplemented by instruments. The Greeks used music to accompany drama. The music aided and enhanced the drama, or "representation" of story and narrative. Music was always associated with drama.

When music becomes "abstract," it is divorced from drama. It can include noises and sounds not previously considered to be music. The sound can just be sound, like a brushstroke, and doesn't have to "represent" a drama like it once did.

The human voice is like a foreground figure in painting, its "subject." Instrumental music can be devoid of singing or melody, and become "background."

This is why many people do not understand modern music. It is "non-representational." Its subject is sound.


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## xuantu

millionrainbows said:


> ...
> 
> When music becomes "abstract," it is divorced from drama. It can include noises and sounds not previously considered to be music. The sound can just be sound, like a brushstroke, and doesn't have to "represent" a drama like it once did.
> 
> ...
> 
> This is why many people do not understand modern music. It is "non-representational." Its subject is sound.


You were saying that the tie between music and drama is severed in avant-garde. But can avant-garde music represent something else, for example, the final frontiers of the natural world (surely it's been done before, but why not again), the chaos/order of post-modern city life, the times when knowledge and technology evolve and propagate at the blink of an eye, or various states of human mind, to serve the ends of listeners (who complete the process of music making) and sparkle their imagination, as oppose to noise which spells annoyance and nothingness? Maybe I am mixing the concepts of what the music simply is with this listener's willful perception, but I've always thought of the capacity of being interpreted in multiple ways as the hallmark of music (or indeed any of the arts). Does avant-garde music have to be so isolated from all other elements in human existence and only be "sound"? What sparkles avant-garde composers' imagination? Older music? Mathematics & physics? Noise?

Anyway, this is not meant to be a questioning post.


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## Renaissance

millionrainbows said:


> This is why many people do not understand modern music. It is "non-representational." Its subject is sound.


You can hear sound anywhere on the street, but you won't hear a romantic symphony there, for example. That's the real difference. It astonishes me when I see comments like "music is noise". If you can listen to a random harsh noise for one hour and feel the same effect as if you listened to a romantic symphony, then you have my congratulations. But I really doubt it. Sound is not equal in our perception. Calling "music" random noise without any organisation, is like calling "food" any object you find. A separation must be made. Let's all eat insects because we must try something new. This is how I see "progress" in art. We must not forget that sound is a reality on itself, your brain is deciding what's music and what is not. Certain noises can drive you insane, I certainly don't need them. I hate noise. What's the point in "composing" such "music" if it brings no pleasure ? I wonder if avant-garde guys only listen to their own "music".

Modern music is certainly representational, it represents the skills of its composers.


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## Cnote11

A lot of people in the world do eat insects and they provide many people with great nutrition. Insects are just as much food as any other food, mate. Sorry to disappoint you, but that has to be one of the most ignorant and ethnocentric statements I've ever heard. I'm sorry that you can only see the world from your own point-of-view and can't possibly fathom that other people might experience things differently. 

You basically say that in your sentence concerning the brain deciding what is music. If ones brain decides noise is music and sees it as pleasurable, then what you're saying is completely invalid by your own argument. Certain noises drive YOU insane. The keyword is YOU; YOU are not everyone else.


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## Arsakes

Renaissance said:


> Calling "music" random noise without any organisation, is like calling "food" any object you find. A separation must be made. Let's all eat insects because we must try something new.


The better example is: to eat bricks and plastics rather food! :lol:


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## Cnote11

Yes, who doesn't love a good false analogy?


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## Renaissance

Cnote11 said:


> Yes, who doesn't love a good false analogy?


Be honest, how many hours a day do you listen to post-modern music ?


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## Renaissance

Cnote11 said:


> A lot of people in the world do eat insects and they provide many people with great nutrition. Insects are just as much food as any other food, mate. Sorry to disappoint you, but that has to be one of the most ignorant and ethnocentric statements I've ever heard. I'm sorry that you can only see the world from your own point-of-view and can't possibly fathom that other people might experience things differently.
> 
> You basically say that in your sentence concerning the brain deciding what is music. If ones brain decides noise is music and sees it as pleasurable, then what you're saying is completely invalid by your own argument. Certain noises drive YOU insane. The keyword is YOU; YOU are not everyone else.


You didn't understand, it was all about you, as a normal food consumer, to start eating insects. It has to be new for you, not for others. You observed only what you wanted to observe.

Certain noises drive affect anyone. You are not alien, we do have the same physiology.


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## Cnote11

Renaissance said:


> You didn't understand, it was all about you, as a normal food consumer, to start eating insects. It has to be new for you, not for others. You observed only what you wanted to observe.
> 
> Certain noises drive affect anyone. You are not alien, we do have the same physiology.


Yes, but the certain noises in "avant-garde" aren't these set of noises. I don't understand what point you're trying to make. I don't think most people ever tried to posit that purely nausea inducing noises due to physiological reasons are music. Rather, I've only ever seen people say that everyday noises can be music as well when contextualized. However, someone being annoyed by a noise doesn't make it NOT music. I happen to actually listen to noise music like I would a symphony. So I'm afraid that your "I doubt it" is inaccurate.

Many people do take up eating insects voluntary. Perhaps if you paid attention to such things, you would know that there is actually a growing trend in North America where people have begun to eat insects. Many people have theorized that this is the best way to sustain ourselves environmentally and financially in the future, as well as being great for us nutritionally. People around the world do eat insects out of CHOICE. I hope you do realise this. The Koreans have many mouth-watering foods, but they still do like a good silk-worm larvae sold on the side of the street.

Also, everything is new to people upon birth. I'm not sure what you mean by "new to you". What if one grows up listening to noise? Again, I don't understand the point you're trying to make; this is most likely because you do not have a point whatsoever.


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## Cnote11

Renaissance said:


> Be honest, how many hours a day do you listen to post-modern music ?


Quite a few. I'd say it is a 50 percent split between "post-modern" music and uh... "non post-modern" music. I enjoy a great deal of music, even from outside any classical spectrum whatsoever.


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## Renaissance

Whatever, I have nothing to fight for here. However, there are a multitude of studies made on "consonant-dissonant" point. Some are really well documented. If you think a child would grow up well on these things, I don't know, your choice.


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## Cnote11

Hitler grew up on consonant music. That should tell you all you need to know about it!


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## Renaissance

Cnote11 said:


> Hitler grew up on consonant music. That should tell you all you need to know about it!


And you said you love false analogies


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## Cnote11

I wasn't lying!


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## millionrainbows

xuantu said:


> You were saying that the tie between music and drama is severed in avant-garde. But can avant-garde music represent something else, for example, the final frontiers of the natural world (surely it's been done before, but why not again), the chaos/order of post-modern city life, the times when knowledge and technology evolve and propagate at the blink of an eye, or various states of human mind, to serve the ends of listeners (who complete the process of music making) and sparkle their imagination, as oppose to noise which spells annoyance and nothingness? Maybe I am mixing the concepts of what the music simply is with this listener's willful perception, but I've always thought of the capacity of being interpreted in multiple ways as the hallmark of music (or indeed any of the arts). Does avant-garde music have to be so isolated from all other elements in human existence and only be "sound"? What sparkles avant-garde composers' imagination? Older music? Mathematics & physics? Noise?
> 
> Anyway, this is not meant to be a questioning post.


Apparently, it was OK with most humans when music was divorced from illustrating drama, and became just musical sound, something groovy to listen to, as in a symphony hall. Just sit there and listen.

But when "actual sound" (like a bottle breaking) is divorced from its objects & events, and we are asked to just listen to it as "abstract sound" which the artist uses to express his inner state, the protests begin.

_Any instrumental music, heard by itself,_ is divorced from _ actual _ drama, but it still has "baggage" and commonly agreed-on conventions of being _"illustrative"_ of drama or action, or _"suggestive" _of drama.

Instrumental music still has "gestures" of drama, in the same way a brushstroke by abstract expressionist Franz Kline can be "dramatic," even though it does not represent any thing other than what it is. There is no direct reference to any specific object or event, except the artist's "inner state."

Beethoven's 6th (pastorale) is vaguely illustrative, with suggestive titles which clue us in. So, _without literally illustrating actual dramatic events, music can become "abstract" _in the same way as abstract visual art, and become non-representational.

Music still has the residue of drama on it. Music's "baggage" is dramatic gesture, which are commonly agreed-on conventions of being "illustrative" of drama or action. Conductors help us with this, supposedly. Leonard Bernstein "helped" us feel the drama, didn't he? Duhhh...

The difference between "realism" and "non-objective" art is easier to see in visual painting, because music is already halfway there.

Music is _already "abstract"_ to a degree, because it always served to _illustrate visual drama_ or tell a story verbally, as in songs. The human voice was the start of this.

Singing is artificial, in a sense. It's different than talking; some people do it well, some can't. Singing, and music, are already "special cases" of sound, which is sustained on pitch.

Sound itself, is just noise, without being "musical" in the above way, like singing. So, _"sound itself" is like realistic painting,_ in that it represents real objects, like the sound of footsteps. A "Foley artist" is a realistic sound-maker, in that he recreates "real" sounds for cinema, which represent real things.

_"Music" is artificial and abstract from the get-go,_ if we compare music to what "real" sounds are, like thunder or rain, or footsteps, or a bottle breaking.

Nobody complains about the "abstract" quality of a piano.

The trouble begins when sounds from the "non-musical realm" enter the realm of music, without reference to "real" objects. Then, sound itself becomes "non-representational," and divorced from objects or events. It becomes "just sound," like a brushstroke.

Apparently, it was OK with most humans when music was divorced from illustrating drama, and became something groovy to listen to, as in a symphony hall. Just sit there and listen.

But when "actual sound" is divorced from its objects & events, and we are asked to just listen to it as "abstract sound" which the artist uses to express his inner state, the protests begin. This is why John Cage's _Variations IV_ is considered noise, not music, by critics.


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## Wandering

*E.*xperimental *M.*usical *I*.ntelligence


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## xuantu

millionrainbows said:


> Apparently, it was OK with most humans when music was divorced from illustrating drama, and became just musical sound, something groovy to listen to, as in a symphony hall. Just sit there and listen.
> 
> But when "actual sound" (like a bottle breaking) is divorced from its objects & events, and we are asked to just listen to it as "abstract sound" which the artist uses to express his inner state, the protests begin.
> 
> _Any instrumental music, heard by itself,_ is divorced from _ actual _ drama, but it still has "baggage" and commonly agreed-on conventions of being _"illustrative"_ of drama or action, or _"suggestive" _of drama.
> 
> Instrumental music still has "gestures" of drama, in the same way a brushstroke by abstract expressionist Franz Kline can be "dramatic," even though it does not represent any thing other than what it is. There is no direct reference to any specific object or event, except the artist's "inner state."
> 
> Beethoven's 6th (pastorale) is vaguely illustrative, with suggestive titles which clue us in. So, _without literally illustrating actual dramatic events, music can become "abstract" _in the same way as abstract visual art, and become non-representational.
> 
> Music still has the residue of drama on it. Music's "baggage" is dramatic gesture, which are commonly agreed-on conventions of being "illustrative" of drama or action. Conductors help us with this, supposedly. Leonard Bernstein "helped" us feel the drama, didn't he? Duhhh...
> 
> The difference between "realism" and "non-objective" art is easier to see in visual painting, because music is already halfway there.
> 
> Music is _already "abstract"_ to a degree, because it always served to _illustrate visual drama_ or tell a story verbally, as in songs. The human voice was the start of this.
> 
> Singing is artificial, in a sense. It's different than talking; some people do it well, some can't. Singing, and music, are already "special cases" of sound, which is sustained on pitch.
> 
> Sound itself, is just noise, without being "musical" in the above way, like singing. So, _"sound itself" is like realistic painting,_ in that it represents real objects, like the sound of footsteps. A "Foley artist" is a realistic sound-maker, in that he recreates "real" sounds for cinema, which represent real things.
> 
> _"Music" is artificial and abstract from the get-go,_ if we compare music to what "real" sounds are, like thunder or rain, or footsteps, or a bottle breaking.
> 
> Nobody complains about the "abstract" quality of a piano.
> 
> The trouble begins when sounds from the "non-musical realm" enter the realm of music, without reference to "real" objects. Then, sound itself becomes "non-representational," and divorced from objects or events. It becomes "just sound," like a brushstroke.
> 
> Apparently, it was OK with most humans when music was divorced from illustrating drama, and became something groovy to listen to, as in a symphony hall. Just sit there and listen.
> 
> But when "actual sound" is divorced from its objects & events, and we are asked to just listen to it as "abstract sound" which the artist uses to express his inner state, the protests begin. This is why John Cage's _Variations IV_ is considered noise, not music, by critics.


Thanks for your explanation! I think I get what you were saying now: the critics were, of course, wrong about Cage's work in this case, because Cage presented some "actual sounds" in a musical/artistic context. And these "sounds", being striped from their real-world bearers and usual meanings (abstract), have taken on new lives as musical sound-materials, no different from the more conventionally-deemed "musical" sounds, such as the piano. And you were also saying that because instrumental/pure music still contains dramatic "gestures", even though it no longer narrates drama explicitly, it can still arouse nonmusical imageries in listeners' minds.

This all reminds me what Stravinsky has said about music - that it cannot express anything but itself, which is a genuinely "modern" concept. You can imagine, being an avid fan of Bartok and Menuhin all these years (neither believed in Stravinsky's remark), I could not accept it to be true (probably never will). But only now do I realize why Ligeti, a compatriot of Bartok, would think more highly of Stravinsky. Incessantly reinventing himself aside, he really captured the essence of modernity.


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## regressivetransphobe

OP, are you trying to be a satirical strawman version of HarpsichordConcerto et al?


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## BurningDesire

regressivetransphobe said:


> OP, are you trying to be a satirical strawman version of HarpsichordConcerto et al?


This is an ancient thread, also, if anything HC is a strawman version of the OP.


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## Wandering

BurningDesire said:


> This is an ancient thread, also, if anything HC is a strawman version of the OP.


yeah, like totally; what you said dude. So ancient! Better get that new 4G thingy, I'm so behind the times.


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## HarpsichordConcerto

regressivetransphobe said:


> OP, are you trying to be a satirical strawman version of HarpsichordConcerto et al?





BurningDesire said:


> This is an ancient thread, also, if anything HC is a strawman version of the OP.


Both posts reported to Moderators.


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## KenOC

xuantu said:


> But only now do I realize why Ligeti, a compatriot of Bartok, would think more highly of Stravinsky. Incessantly reinventing himself aside, he really captured the essence of modernity.


Careful of that one! Here's a little poem by Schoenberg, mocking Stravinsky:

"But who's this beating the drum?
It's little Modernsky!
He's had his hair 
cut in an old-fashioned queue
And it looks quite nice,
Like real false hair-
Like a wig-
Just like (at least little Modernsky thinks so)
Just like Father Bach!"


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## xuantu

KenOC said:


> ... Here's a little poem by Schoenberg, mocking Stravinsky:
> 
> "But who's this beating the drum?
> It's little Modernsky!
> He's had his hair
> cut in an old-fashioned queue
> And it looks quite nice,
> Like real false hair-
> Like a wig-
> Just like (at least little Modernsky thinks so)
> Just like Father Bach!"


I don't know how this poem reads in German. But it sounds ghastly in English.


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## PetrB

KenOC said:


> Careful of that one! Here's a little poem by Schoenberg, mocking Stravinsky:
> 
> "But who's this beating the drum?
> It's little Modernsky!
> He's had his hair
> cut in an old-fashioned queue
> And it looks quite nice,
> Like real false hair-
> Like a wig-
> Just like (at least little Modernsky thinks so)
> Just like Father Bach!"


Schoenberg was notoriously over-sensitive, imagining insults, betrayals, and loss of supposed allegiance where there were none. This verse was catalyzed by Stravinsky's published piano sonata, a sprightly and pleasant neo-classical work which deployed some two-voice counterpoint in a very tonal vocabulary. Schoenberg thought that Stravinsky had abandonded modernism, and was perhaps a little envious at this rather light and charming update of 'Bachian' 19th century counterpoint.

Schoenberg also had at least a little falling out with Alban Berg over one line in Lulu, when the economy has tanked, a number of people are in a room, and one character comments on an investor and says, "The old Jew."

Hypersensitive, imagining insults. Baby spits back... tosses toys out of pram -- end of story. Stravinsky's piano sonata is much more entertaining and well-made than Schoenberg's mean-spirited wounded infant / infantile stilted little verse [And yes, knowing this very human and unattractive aspect of Schoenberg's character does not affect at all the way I listen to, or what I think of Schoenberg's works.]


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## KenOC

Thanks for that! I had no idea of the background.


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## BurningDesire

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> Both posts reported to Moderators.


Definitely the most respectable of actions.


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## millionrainbows

Originally Posted by regressivetransphobe : (Deleted reference), are you trying to be a satirical strawman version of (deleted reference) et al?

Originally Posted by BurningDesire: This is an ancient thread, also, if anything (deleted reference) is a strawman version of the (deleted reference).



> Both posts reported to Moderators.


*WARNING!* Do not respond personally when a member has accrued a history of insulting forms of music or composers!

This is designed to provoke responses of a personal nature. A complaint is then lodged with moderators.

The forum guidelines allow one to bash and insult forms of music, public figures and great composers, but characterizations of members result in warnings and bannings.

The members who adopt these types of inflammatory personas and reputations are playing off of your love of said music or composer, and drawing you in to personal ad-hominem territory.


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## BurningDesire

millionrainbows said:


> Originally Posted by regressivetransphobe : (Deleted reference), are you trying to be a satirical strawman version of (deleted reference) et al?
> 
> Originally Posted by BurningDesire: This is an ancient thread, also, if anything (deleted reference) is a strawman version of the (deleted reference).
> 
> *WARNING!* Do not respond personally when a member has accrued a history of insulting forms of music or composers!
> 
> This is designed to provoke responses of a personal nature. A complaint is then lodged with moderators.
> 
> The forum guidelines allow one to bash and insult forms of music, public figures and great composers, but characterizations of members result in warnings and bannings.
> 
> The members who adopt these types of inflammatory personas and reputations are playing off of your love of said music or composer, and drawing you in to personal ad-hominem territory.


Such a hypothetical member as you posit would be somewhat reprehensible and childish, don't you think? Good thing there's nobody like that on this forum!


----------

