# What are your opinions on pluralism in music?



## Edward Elgar (Mar 22, 2006)

We seem to be in a new era in music where everything has become acceptable as a way of musical expression. Pluralism seems to be a reaction against post-modernism in an attempt to give music a highly academic status. Pluralist composers profess to explore the various parameters of music in individualistic, yet highly academic ways, taking inspiration from notable modernists and post-modernists such as Cage and Feldman.

Before this point, composers were praised for pushing the boundaries of music, but what is there to praise if there are no more boundaries to conquer? How can we discern genius when everything that can be done has been done? Where will music go next? How do we know who is pushing music forward and who is pulling it back? All these interesting questions are raised by pluralism which I find facinating. I have not yet developed fully-formed opinions on these matters yet, but wish to present them to the members of this forum to find out what you think will come of music.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

> How can we discern genius when everything that can be done has been done?


You're wrong, Jerry.

Everything to free music from boundaries, yes, that's where everything has been done.

Passing generation is generation that choked up with this freedom. If you tell people that were living in celibacy for a long time that they can have sex with each other all the time, they will do it like animals for many days, but after that the will get used to it and do it only when they will really feel such need.

So is with music. Someone shouted "hey, we finally can fart and tell it's music!", so people started to use this freedom as much as they could. But this generation is over.

Now we can take a cold look at the situation and realise that something like Cage's silent music won't be so exciting anymore. Music is full of such experiments, the revolution is over.

You still can come forth with something new, your own idea of musical expression.

And you will still have to fight for it, because it's fashion and trends that change, not people in general. It was fashionable to wag one's head and pretend to understand all this "free" music, but it doesn't mean that humans are now ready to face anything new and accept it. Nothing more wrong, my little, green friend.


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## Guest (Jan 24, 2010)

I am by no means a music scholar. I judge what is good based on what sounds good. I have never appreciated the concept that art, or music, is simply whatever the composer or the artist says it is. I have seen canvasses with a few spots of paint splattered on them, and been told it is art. I compare that to a Rembrandt, or a van Gogh, or a Monet, or a Picasso (even some of his more bizarre works), and I ask how? Where else can such a lack of rules reign and it still be considered as something? If I hand you a metal box connected to a monitor and tell you it is a computer, does that make it a computer?


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

There's always been a more conservative strain of classical music but it's tended to get ignored by critics if it wasn't considered innovative enough, even if the music itself might be of high quality. I'm not sure that this has been good for classical music and it's reception so it's probably a good thing if there is more of an acceptance for some established styles of music and the deeper exploration of them.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I've always thought of this situation as having a poignant literary analogy.

If we go back a few centuries and take a look at the end of the literary movement spawned by the age of enlightenment (Augustan literature - cf. Alexander Pope and John Swift), it began to be replaced by literary Romanticism. This latter movement was essentially reactionary; the Augustan period represented literary ideals that the Romantics found dubious to say the least.

Chief among these is a question of accessibility. Poetry of the Augustan period was largely a leisure open only to the educated (and, therefore, upper-classes). It was riddled with references to classical civilisation and mythology, making it incomprehensible to people without tutelage in Latin and Greek. If you take a look at Wordsworth's and Coleridge's _Lyrical Ballads_ (accredited by some to be the start of Romanticism), their preface explains _at great length_ the language they use.

To us, their language no doubt seems archaic, but their preface contained strong arguments saying that people who read their poetry should not be put off by its vulgarity - they steered clear of references only open to the upper-classes and, essentially, wrote poetry in the vernacular language of the period. Although it still wasn't a past-time universally open, they made poetry accessible to a wider audience.

At the moment, I see the world of art-music sitting on the edge of this shift between Augustan and Romantic ideals. Indeed, the music of our current period seems highly academic - it is an exploration of originality to the extreme. Everything must be innovative or it is worthless. Because of this, it ends up straying into warped and distorted realms of music that the majority of people (outside the art-music world) cannot understand and won't immediately enjoy. Because of this, the current musical language has become elitist; it is open only to those who can understand it.

Thus, I imagine that we'll see more and more reactionary music, trying to make art-music accessible again. This doesn't necessarily mean returning to methods or styles that were practised in the past, but it means creating _beautiful_ music above _original_ music (though success would come with achievement in both!). It will mean making music that people can enjoy on a first listen, and music that people would return to.

After all, like it or not, our brains' evolution resulted in our ability to appreciate certain types of music more than others. The music of the Romantic period is not beautiful because it is _inherently_ lyrical - it has no such intrinsic qualities - it is lyrical because it most closely exploits how our brains construct and react to sound. Thus, though it may take a long time because critics are so entrenched in praising only music that is nothing like anything they've heard before, new music may begin to be written so that it is 'easier on the brain'.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Polednice said:


> I've always thought of this situation as having a poignant literary analogy.
> 
> If we go back a few centuries and take a look at the end of the literary movement spawned by the age of enlightenment (Augustan literature - cf. Alexander Pope and John Swift), it began to be replaced by literary Romanticism. This latter movement was essentially reactionary; the Augustan period represented literary ideals that the Romantics found dubious to say the least.
> 
> ...


But maybe there are different kinds of beauty and different kinds of lyricism. I think the main thing is to accept that different styles can exist simulataneously and to judge music on it's own merit and not just the style it is written in. Music critics tend to be too caught up in creating their musical history in which one style must supplant another and in which some composers are innovators and others not original enough.


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## Edward Elgar (Mar 22, 2006)

If art-music were to become more instantly appealing, wouldn't it just melt into the destructive force of popular culture?

Saying that, I appreciate what you have to say and do believe we are heading for a "neo-romantic/a-bit-more-popular" style. The post-modernists are looking at band instruments and diatonic harmonies, so who knows, maybe music will come full circle. Maybe we'll fight through the aural pain of this era to come out on the other side with a new, but different way of music-making.

Thanks for the great response.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

starry said:


> But maybe there are different kinds of beauty and different kinds of lyricism. I think the main thing is to accept that different styles can exist simulataneously and to judge music on it's own merit and not just the style it is written in.


I don't doubt that at all.

Elgar - whenever I've thought about it, there does seem to be this lingering issue about whether or not more accessible music would feel 'popularised'. However, I think this demonstrates the severe situation of music criticism at the moment - what we're being told is that the _less_ popular it is, then the more artistic it must be because it's more elite. Popularity is good; we need to steer clear of _commercialism_. That could still be a problem, but I would have thought that any serious composer would go about their career in such a manner that they wouldn't sell out like that. :/


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I have mixed feelings about this. I_ don't _think everything has already been done. Has anyone ever really explored voice leading in a 24 tone (microtonal) scale for instance? That could be very academic, yet very innovative, while remaining somewhat understandable like the common practice we are more accustomed to.

I for one am looking forward to new music that goes at least part way back to the common practice. If composers invent a new musical language then no one is going to appreciate it. If I were to write a story or poetry, it should be in some language we all agree upon to use. I then may fabrivent a word or two to (as Shakespeare did) to make it more interesting or colorful, but if_ every _word is unknown you will pixmanis galf tranmen blidis.

As applied to music, if every note is a surprise then none of them are. There is nothing wrong with clarity and I think we will recognize musical genius by the combination of clarity and innovation.


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