# Love of Classical Music means Rejecting the Present



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

GENERALLY SPEAKING,
Love of Classical music, of the past, is equal to a rejection of the present age and its music. This seems obvious to me.
Love of Classical music is a search for Platonic perfection, of "masterpieces" of the past, which are timeless.
Love of Classical music is a search for the ultimate, and a search for genius.
Love of Classical music is an embrace of Human qualities, in contrast to the "inhuman" present, in which it seems the Human qualities are disparaged and undervalued.

Don't you think there's a grain of truth in this?


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## Biffo (Mar 7, 2016)

Not really. I have no idea why I have always preferred classical music but it has nothing to do with rejecting the modern world. The first part of my career was in science and later in IT. In both careers I met all sorts of people who enjoyed all kinds of music. Most of my socialising was done where popular music omnipresent in the background.


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## Thomyum2 (Apr 18, 2018)

Given that you're using the upper case 'C' Classical, I'd say there is some truth to what you're saying - this does seem to describe some of the sense of the composers and artists who were trying to recapture what was perceived to be the harmonious proportions and the perfection of the golden Classical age. But less so if this is applied to the broader category of 'c' classical music in that sense of the term.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

No more than love of Shakespeare, or Dickens, or Monet, or the Parthenon, or Martha Graham, or Alfred Hitchcock ...


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## St Matthew (Aug 26, 2017)

No, not there isn't


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## Prat (Jun 15, 2018)

I think that only a Cowboy would ignore the present


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

It's true that people who love classical music by and large reject music of today. Classical music is the ONLY arts arena where embracing the past is the norm. Movie theaters, Broadway, books, dance, art -- all thrive on the new. On Broadway they don't only do Show Boat, Oklahoma!, The Music Man, or West Side Story. Nope, there's Hamilton; new. The movie theaters don't play old b/w Humphrey Bogart movies. Novels tend to be new. And so on. Why is this? All art forms venerate the masterworks of the past, but classical music makes a point of it.

I would like to say that I listen to classical because it connects me to genius. But there's a lot of 2nd and 3rd rate music I listen in preference to the new. Maybe it's that composers of yesterday were better at communicating through sound than modern composers. I've long had the feeling that the more complex music gets, the less likely it is that the average brain can comprehend it. For a lot of people, the atonal, serial, aleatoric compositions of the 20th c are unknowable. They cannot understand the music no matter what. And I can't blame them. I still find Webern very difficult and I'm a very advanced listener. 

Is this a problem? Sure it is. Classical concerts have become sound museums. Our worship of the past and willful ignorance of the present could spell doom. How much longer will society want to support orchestras that only play music of dead, usually white and European composers? It doesn't matter how great it is, how much better than new music it is. Classical music has declined in popularity quite a bit over the past 50 or more years and shows no sign of recovering. We must support new music.


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## Madiel (Apr 25, 2018)

millionrainbows said:


> Don't you think there's a grain of truth in this?


Not necessarily, I guess 100 classical music listeners could give 100 different explanations for their love of classical music.
Considering that classical music (magazines, recordings et cetera) belongs to the music industry of our time I doubt that consuming it - no matter your personal reasons for doing it - may qualify as a rejection of the present age and its music, since - like it or not - classical music is part of it. 
Bach (just like every other past composer) wrote masterpieces "embracing human qualities" while living in an "inhuman" present, idealization of the past can surely be one of the 100 reasons to listen to classical music I guess.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I tend to disagree with the OP. If the old and new were the same styles, and people inexplicably prefer the old, and not just out of nostalgia, then I'd think you have a point.


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## SCSL (Apr 7, 2018)

The OP poses an interesting question, but I disagree that loving classical music must involve rejection of modernity. I see the two as unrelated. For example, I enjoy reading history on the kindle app on my iPad... And discussing classical music in an on-line forum. I would concede, however, that lovers of classical music (on average) likely share an affinity for history and the past.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

A grain of truth, yes, but not for everyone. It depends on what you consider "classical music," and what you think of what's being produced now under that heading. The ability to appreciate music's past achievements doesn't have to imply a lack of interest in the present, but it's possible to think that present-day efforts in the "classical" tradition fall short, or may not represent that tradition at all. 

Perhaps it's more likely that a musical interest focused on contemporary genres implies indifference to the past.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

To me, classical music _is_ the present. I'm not interested in it solely because of what it was in the past, I'm interested in it because of the people I share it with in the present.


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## Gordontrek (Jun 22, 2012)

mbhaub said:


> I would like to say that I listen to classical because it connects me to genius. But there's a lot of 2nd and 3rd rate music I listen in preference to the new. Maybe it's that composers of yesterday were better at communicating through sound than modern composers. I've long had the feeling that the more complex music gets, the less likely it is that the average brain can comprehend it. For a lot of people, the atonal, serial, aleatoric compositions of the 20th c are unknowable. They cannot understand the music no matter what. And I can't blame them. I still find Webern very difficult and I'm a very advanced listener.


I think you found the problem right there. The difference between the old, dead, white Europeans and today's composers is that they were able to create music that was not only within reach of average listeners and relatively unsophisticated ears, but at the same time could only have been created by a genius-level mind operating on another plane of understanding. Today's composers certainly operate on that plane, I believe, but their music is very complex, and like you said, strains even the comprehension of advanced listeners like yourself.

Audiences should definitely be more open-minded, but I will risk controversy by saying that music probably has some moving to do as well. You brought up films, broadway shows, and novels, which thrive on being new. That is true, but they also thrive on the audience receiving them favorably. And new films, novels, and shows are still received favorably, despite continuously evolving over the years. They are rarely beyond the comprehension of audiences. Why hasn't music managed to do the same thing?

I don't think the answer is that composers from the past few decades haven't tried to make their music accessible; I certainly don't think composers are obligated to please the masses or owe them an explanation. The issue, I believe, is that composers today tend, and indeed feel obligated, to compose music that _can't_ stand on its own without lengthy explanation. Their works are usually accompanied by a sheaf of program notes that may or may not increase the audience's understanding. The composers of the past didn't need that. It's a mystery to me how they were able to create such high art and still connect with the layman.

So, should today's musicians figure out how to get music back to that place where people were excited to hear the newest symphony or opera, same as the newest show or film, without compromising artistic integrity? I believe it's something they have to figure out; I certainly don't feel qualified to answer. The classical world seems to have made up its mind that some more accessible idioms, such as great orchestral film scores, are not worth their time in the concert hall. New music, then, seems bound and determined to stay highly academic and sophisticated. There is nothing at all wrong with music like that, but if most audiences haven't warmed up to it in 70+ years after it was introduced, can we admit that audiences may not have actually been the ones that moved?


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

The question arises as to just what is classical music of the present. In the past, you could expect that even a new work would, within limits, fall within certain predictable constraints. There would be something you could get your arms around and say, 'Yes, this is classical music.' But these days, it seems that anything that happens to be composed for a piano or instruments of the orchestra is called classical music no matter how bizarre.

Some of contemporary music remains accessible, some of it even excellent. However, an example of where things have gone off the rails: The Ojai Music Festival (held in California) has had a long storied history as a classical music event. But this year, it appeared to have been hijacked in an attempt to stick it to 'traditionalists'. One day featured the 'music' of one Michael Hersch.

One particular work of his was 77 minutes after which a woman stood up and shouted, 'I hated that so much, I want to fight someone.' Following was the opening movement of his Violin Concerto. What is one to make of this? Is this a treasured category of contemporary classical music? Is this what it has come to?


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

There are plenty of novels that aim for a small, elite audience. It's not like any novels reach the kind of audience that pop music reaches, but a "popular" author like Steven King is probably about the equivalent of John Williams, a composer that does enjoy a huge audience. You take someone like Cormac McCarthy, you can consider him popular but he doesn't reach nearly as many people as Steven King, and a composer like Philip Glass probably has an audience of about the same size. You take someone like Julian Barnes, his audience is probably not so much larger than that of Kancheli or Gubaidulina.

Though you can find plenty of people lamenting the difficulty of making a living as an author in the age of Amazon, the narrative of imminent doom doesn't hang over other arts to the same extent that it does classical music. I don't think it's because of the actual condition of the arts themselves - everything is constantly changing for everyone, and everyone is constantly having to adapt, and rosy nostalgia is everywhere, and someone is always figuring out a way to succeed in the new conditions.

Instead, it's because for many people "classical music" *is* inherently backward looking in the same way that the term "classical literature" is. If we used a label like "art music" our perspective would have to be more positive.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

millionrainbows said:


> GENERALLY SPEAKING,
> Love of Classical music, of the past, is equal to a rejection of the present age and its music. This seems obvious to me.
> Love of Classical music is a search for Platonic perfection, of "masterpieces" of the past, which are timeless.
> Love of Classical music is a search for the ultimate, and a search for genius.
> ...


Why the focus on the past?


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

DaveM said:


> The question arises as to just what is classical music of the present. In the past, you could expect that even a new work would, within limits, fall within certain predictable constraints. There would be something you could get your arms around and say, 'Yes, this is classical music.' But these days, it seems that anything that happens to be composed for a piano or instruments of the orchestra is called classical music no matter how bizarre.
> 
> Some of contemporary music remains accessible, some of it even excellent. However, an example of where things have gone off the rails: The Ojai Music Festival (held in California) has had a long storied history as a classical music event. But this year, it appeared to have been hijacked in an attempt to stick it to 'traditionalists'. One day featured the 'music' of one Michael Hersch.
> 
> One particular work of his was 77 minutes after which a woman stood up and shouted, 'I hated that so much, I want to fight someone.' Following was the opening movement of his Violin Concerto. What is one to make of this? Is this a treasured category of contemporary classical music? Is this what it has come to?


Hey, I find this one interesting. I generally don't like a lot of contemporary. The sonority of the instruments and the interaction is intriguing.

I'm more against this type personally


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DaveM said:


> The question arises as to just what is classical music of the present. In the past, you could expect that even a new work would, within limits, fall within certain predictable constraints. There would be something you could get your arms around and say, 'Yes, this is classical music.' But these days, it seems that anything that happens to be composed for a piano or instruments of the orchestra is called classical music no matter how bizarre.
> 
> Some of contemporary music remains accessible, some of it even excellent. However, an example of where things have gone off the rails: The Ojai Music Festival (held in California) has had a long storied history as a classical music event. But this year, it appeared to have been hijacked in an attempt to stick it to 'traditionalists'. One day featured the 'music' of one Michael Hersch.
> 
> One particular work of his was 77 minutes after which a woman stood up and shouted, 'I hated that so much, I want to fight someone.' Following was the opening movement of his Violin Concerto. What is one to make of this? Is this a treasured category of contemporary classical music? Is this what it has come to?


This may not be typical of contemporary classical music, but it certainly attests to the loss of any common vocabulary of expression and any cultural expectation that art will be an enhancement of life. The composer, in this interview, 



 says that he's inspired by poetry and visual art. The visual images shown as he speaks seem pretty consistent with the sounds he makes. I think I'm glad I don't have his dreams.

He also says that it can take years before he's satisfied that a work is finished. Do you suppose a few more years would have helped?


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

The only piece I can think of (in the rather chaotic modern style that this Hersch piece exemplifies) that is regularly programmed for the concert hall is Berg's Violin Conterto. Perhaps I am wrong?


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Anyone for an experiment? - listen to the Hersch Violin Concerto (first movement) for (say) at least 10 times and report back ones final (compared with initial) experience.


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## Guest (Jun 16, 2018)

I really love music, and so-called classical music is as diverse as the number of people working in the industry. There are a great many new things going on in 'classical music' that are relatively unnoticed, but possibly because a large part of the more _commercial_ aspects of the 'classical music' industry do not value it as a culture that constantly renews itself and explores new areas based on what has come before and what is happening currently. There are a greater number of other industries in the arts and outside of the arts that have a clearer focus on cultural renewal.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

shirime said:


> I really love music, and so-called classical music is as diverse as the number of people working in the industry. There are a great many new things going on in 'classical music' that are relatively unnoticed, but possibly because a large part of the more _commercial_ aspects of the 'classical music' industry do not value it as a culture that constantly renews itself and explores new areas based on what has come before and what is happening currently. There are a greater number of other industries in the arts and outside of the arts that have a clearer focus on cultural renewal.


You speak of _the more commercial aspects of the 'classical music' industry_ not valuing new classical music - but does this actually translate into the fact that, generally, new works don't attract audiences?


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> This may not be typical of contemporary classical music, but it certainly attests to the loss of any common vocabulary of expression and any cultural expectation that art will be an enhancement of life. The composer, in this interview,
> 
> 
> 
> ...


In all the discussions of tonal vs. atonal, 'traditional' vs. modern/contemporary wherein there has been heated interchanges from both sides, I don't think I've ever understood just what is considered to be the classical modern/contemporary music of the present (to stay within the realm of the OP) that is being defended.

From my vantage point, it seems that everything is under the CM umbrella. I don't understand how that can be when on the one extreme is recognizable tonal music and at the other extreme is 'music' such as the Hersch work above where the dissonance is so extreme that you couldn't tell if a mistake was made or a violin severely out of tune. Is it possible that what really has happened is that a couple of new categories of music outside of CM have been created and no one (well almost) seems to care? (Fwiw, I'm not including Schoenberg and the serialists in those categories; I'm not a fan, but I accept that they fall under CM.)


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

DaveM said:


> ....and at the other extreme is 'music' such as the Hersch work above where the dissonance is so extreme that you *couldn't tell if a mistake was made* or a violin severely out of tune.


I think this is perhaps _the_ reason why so many remain sceptical as to whether such works can be considered great.


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## Guest (Jun 16, 2018)

janxharris said:


> You speak of _the more commercial aspects of the 'classical music' industry_ not valuing new classical music - but does this actually translate into the fact that, generally, new works don't attract audiences?


Well, I guess it isn't just the more commercial aspects, but the music institutions, the establishment in coordination with what economically viable for the music industry. The whole idea that 'new works don't attract audiences' is extremely interesting to me in that it seems to want to blame the audience for their apathy. There is no inherent apathy in anyone, we all have the intelligence and the capacity to be interested in things we don't know. We go to movies, we read books, poetry, theatre, dance, art, we engage with things that break from established norms and we celebrate them and grow to understand them better through more and more exposure. Evidently, we have grown up with particular cultural interests based on what we have been in contact with (based on what has been best funded, what is valued in university courses and what has been made most available to a wider audience). Depending on the medium, something new will attract different people, I guess.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

shirime said:


> Well, I guess it isn't just the more commercial aspects, but the music institutions, the establishment in coordination with what economically viable for the music industry. The whole idea that 'new works don't attract audiences' is extremely interesting to me in that it seems to want to blame the audience for their apathy. There is no inherent apathy in anyone, we all have the intelligence and the capacity to be interested in things we don't know. We go to movies, we read books, poetry, theatre, dance, art, we engage with things that break from established norms and we celebrate them and grow to understand them better through more and more exposure. Evidently, we have grown up with particular cultural interests based on what we have been in contact with (based on what has been best funded, what is valued in university courses and what has been made most available to a wider audience). Depending on the medium, something new will attract different people, I guess.


Well, speaking from my experience, I do like some atonal pieces - but I wouldn't say that I adore them. I started liking Webern's Symphony only after hearing it multiple times but I don't love it enough (yet) to actually pay to hear it performed live.

Just my experience.


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## St Matthew (Aug 26, 2017)

shirime said:


> Well, I guess it isn't just the more commercial aspects, but the music institutions, the establishment in coordination with what economically viable for the music industry. The whole idea that 'new works don't attract audiences' is extremely interesting to me in that it seems to want to blame the audience for their apathy. There is no inherent apathy in anyone, we all have the intelligence and the capacity to be interested in things we don't know. We go to movies, we read books, poetry, theatre, dance, art, we engage with things that break from established norms and we celebrate them and grow to understand them better through more and more exposure. Evidently, we have grown up with particular cultural interests based on what we have been in contact with (based on what has been best funded, what is valued in university courses and what has been made most available to a wider audience). Depending on the medium, something new will attract different people, I guess.


These days there tends to be an overemphasis on over-relevance of monetary investment on one side. On the otherside, there is hyperconservativism that tends to take up concert halls (generally) - which runs blatantly contrary to a lot of the progressivism you may see within contemporary music; aka an ideology battle.

I love contemporary classical more than older classical, so I am one of the first naturally to go around spreading the word but it always seems that the majority is always where the money is; on vanity and nostalgia (same thing with pop music) 

The classical music world against the more "popular music" genres (pop and electronic stuff) is where the battle gets really interesting - as the general public aren't aware of contemporary classical music at all, it doesn't exist in their perception, but the older, nostalgic classical is - so it fills a little niche for a majority - with _"I'm listening to classical music, I can't believe I like this music that is so old!!!"_ as a common view.


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## Guest (Jun 16, 2018)

janxharris said:


> Well, speaking from my experience, I do like some atonal pieces - but I wouldn't say that I adore them. I started liking Webern's Symphony only after hearing it multiple times but I don't love it enough (yet) to actually pay to hear it performed live.
> 
> Just my experience.


If Webern was played on the radio with the same regularity and alongside the music of Mozart and Debussy since broadcasting music on radio was a _thing,_ there'd probably be wider appreciation for his music.

Another thing I would like to bring up is the relative lack of evolution in instrument build and design since the end of the nineteenth century. Build and design of instruments has helped rejuvenate so many recent popular styles in the last few decades. Composers of New Music in the 70s and 80s (for example, Pierre Boulez) pointed out that this was one of the reasons for the ever evolving, ever changing stylistic diversity of pop music, and this was one of its biggest strengths. When instrument makers were collaborating with composers in the 19th century we ended up getting composers like Liszt and Chopin, expanded orchestras and orchestration techniques in a wider array of performance locations than we do today.

Performance venues is also a problem. Traditional opera houses lend themselves best to the music that was new in the time they were also new. Concert halls are designed to work to the strengths of a particular audience-orchestra setup. Trying to accommodate these types of venues to new ideas surrounding spatialisation, relationship of orchestra and audience (and other things composers might be interested in these days), then these venues simply were not built to celebrate these new ideas. We need to build venues that can accommodate to new music as well.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

shirime said:


> If Webern was played on the radio with the same regularity and alongside the music of Mozart and Debussy...


​A lot of public classical stations would go out of business.



shirime said:


> Another thing I would like to bring up is the relative lack of evolution in instrument build and design since the end of the nineteenth century...


Plenty of new instruments (MIDI keyboards, electric guitars, drumkits etc) It's classical music that's stuck in the past.



shirime said:


> Performance venues is also a problem...


The music people really want to hear has no shortage of venues. Crowds are shouting to get in and hear their music.


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## Guest (Jun 16, 2018)

KenOC said:


> ​A lot of public classical stations would go out of business.
> 
> Plenty of new instruments (MIDI keyboards, electric guitars, drumkits etc) It's classical music that's stuck in the past.
> 
> The music people really want to hear has no shortage of venues. Crowds are shouting to get in and hear their music.


Take note: If Webern was played on the radio with the same regularity and alongside the music of Mozart and Debussy since broadcasting music on radio was a thing, there'd probably be wider appreciation for his music. I would also add that his music would probably be performed fairly regularly as well, resulting in an even wider appreciation of his music. Musical taste exists in a kind of echo chamber; the popularity of certain composers is based on how popular they are rather than any inherent preference that the audience as a whole has. There is no 'truth' to taste. If radio stations suddenly switched now to playing mainly Webern, then yeah of course they would go out of business because they are leaving the echo chamber of taste that they existed in for so long.

Yes, there are plenty of new instruments, and yes (as I did say in the post you are quoting) other genres such as pop, rock, hip hop etc tend to value the new and thrive on renewing themselves and discovering new instrumental sounds way more than institutionalised 'traditions' that classical music is hanging on to.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

shirime said:


> Take note: If Webern was played on the radio with the same regularity and alongside the music of Mozart and Debussy since broadcasting music on radio was a thing, there'd probably be wider appreciation for his music. I would also add that his music would probably be performed fairly regularly as well, resulting in an even wider appreciation of his music. Musical taste exists in a kind of echo chamber; the popularity of certain composers is based on how popular they are rather than any inherent preference that the audience as a whole has. There is no 'truth' to taste. If radio stations suddenly switched now to playing mainly Webern, then yeah of course they would go out of business because they are leaving the echo chamber of taste that they existed in for so long.
> 
> Yes, there are plenty of new instruments, and yes (as I did say in the post you are quoting) other genres such as pop, rock, hip hop etc tend to value the new and thrive on renewing themselves and discovering new instrumental sounds way more than institutionalised 'traditions' that classical music is hanging on to.


Again, it's just my experience, but it took over 30 plays before I quite liked the Webern symphony. I can't imagine that many would persist to such an extent (I wanted to see if the repeated listening thing worked).

KenOC's right isn't he? - people would just turn off. I mean - Classic FM wont even play the Rite of Spring (in the daytime) even though it's in their Hall of Fame.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

janxharris said:


> Again, it's just my experience, but it took over 30 plays before I quite liked the Webern symphony.


"Why cannot we understand that in art, as in everything else, there are some things to which we must not accustom ourselves?" --Camille Saint-Saëns

Sorry, couldn't resist that.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

I facebooked Classic FM to ask about them not playing the Rite of Spring. That was weeks ago: they didn't respond - but they read my message.


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## Guest (Jun 16, 2018)

janxharris said:


> Again, it's just my experience, but it took over 30 plays before I quite liked the Webern symphony. I can't imagine that many would persist to such an extent (I wanted to see if the repeated listening thing worked).
> 
> KenOC's right isn't he? - people would just turn off. I mean - Classic FM wont even play the Rite of Spring (in the daytime) even though it's in their Hall of Fame.


Yes, KenOC is right, and you are right too, and what you are both saying are things I haven't disputed. I don't think it is necessarily wise to assume apathy on behalf of an audience bigger and more diverse than oneself.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

KenOC said:


> "Why cannot we understand that in art, as in everything else, there are some things to which we must not accustom ourselves?" --Camille Saint-Saëns
> 
> Sorry, couldn't resist that.


Without fully grasping the piece (through multiple listens) then I wasn't clear what it was that I was being presented with. Even so, quite liking the Webern piece would probably have left the composer rather dismayed.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

shirime said:


> Yes, KenOC is right, and you are right too, and what you are both saying are things I haven't disputed. I don't think it is necessarily wise to assume apathy on behalf of an audience bigger and more diverse than oneself.


Indeed - and nobody need assume that *any* composition (even those hailed by learned critics) is necessarily meritorious.


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## Guest (Jun 16, 2018)

janxharris said:


> Indeed - and nobody need assume that *any* composition (even those hailed by learned critics) is necessarily meritorious.


Agreed, it is up to us to find our own reasons why Webern's symphony is an interesting piece of music worthy of praise. We are all highly intelligent people; dismissing something without bothering to learn about why we might dismiss something based on a lack of information or understanding is probably one of humanity's biggest flaws.


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## Madiel (Apr 25, 2018)

janxharris said:


> You speak of _the more commercial aspects of the 'classical music' industry_ not valuing new classical music - but does this actually translate into the fact that, generally, new works don't attract audiences?


the funny thing about posts like this one is that people writing them use the word audience, which poses two questions:
1 - do you consider yourself an audience?
2 - how many listeners do we need to make an audience?
When you attach to your perceived sense of reality the name of "audience" you are forgetting some facts:
*fact #1* the recording industry presents independent labels (Col Legno, Kairos) that stay in business with a catalog based on contemporary composers
*fact #2* we have radios who play only new music Q2 music (16.000 Twitter followers)
*fact #3* have you ever attended a concert of contemporary music? I guess not, otherwise you'd know that most of the time they are sold-out.
Of course Kairos sells less than Decca, Q2 Music has less listeners than Radio 3 and the Proms sell more tickets than Biennale Musica, but the difference in scale between these "two audiences" would become laughable should we compare it to the "audience" generated even by a third tier pop-star, to your eyes contemporary music has no audience, to the eyes of 99,9% of music listeners on this planet classical music has no audience: Tchaikovsky - classical music's bestseller by far - has an audience comparable to that of Hurray for the Riff Raff (tenth tier pop-star I'd say).


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Madiel said:


> the funny thing about posts like this one is that people writing them use the word audience, which poses two questions:
> 1 - do you consider yourself an audience?
> 2 - how many listeners do we need to make an audience?
> When you attach to your perceived sense of reality the name of "audience" you are forgetting some facts:
> ...


I'm not necessarily disputing anything you say here Madiel.

Might we assert that the combined audience over the generations for works that have lasted this long is pretty high? Current rock and pop gets a lot of attention but might it, in aggregation, not get as much as Mozart?

I'm just wondering.


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## Capeditiea (Feb 23, 2018)

i shall bring up a point as well... via contemporary composers. 

But first, I love contemporary composers. 

Now. 

How folk who perform a work is reflected how they see the composer... 
If an orchestra were to go on and play something from Beethoven, they are expected to play at their best. Yet, when some contemporary composer is played, like, Webern, Sorabji, Braxton, Xenakis, Even Zappa... (which i had this epiphany from watching 200 Motels... then listening to Jami Symphony... which later reminded me of the anime Nodame Cantibile. during the episode when the virtuoso conducter decided to call in sick after a night of drinking... so the protagonist is the step in conductor... however none of the orchestra was too thrilled... and started testing the protagonist... they were playing Brahms' First Symphony. Anyways, he was all noticing things they were intentionally doing... and such...) :O wait i got side tracked slightly...

But anyways, it was that part of the anime where i ended up with the epiphany after reading this and typing that... 

The fact is, most performers wouldn't put all their effort into some contemporary composer's work, because there isn't enough respect in their musical language. 

But yes, if Webern was to be performed on the radio stations... in place of Haydn or some other notible composer's work. (i mean we all probably have at least a few of the works played on any radio station, and other radio stations tend to play more recent music a bunch of times... which is particularly why they are so popular.

My point being. Micheal Jackson was played on the radio, on the television. Also had some scandals... i am sure everyone here has heard of him. Lady Gaga, Madonna, Justin Bieber, Justin Timberlake, Janet Jackson, Linkin Park... (also nearly anyone with enough public promotion, Pepsi, Super Bowl, etc. 

...a few more names... (and how do we remember these ones?) 
The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Pink Floyd, Elvis, Frank Sinatra


in the first list i can assure you that i know of one that not many have heard... Bright Eyes. (they are from my home city...) yet they are at least nation wide... (took them a decade or so just to get to this state.) How ever, the local radio station plays them a lot, yet not many others... (although he is more indie.) 

another is The Feint. (which is more electro-pop.) A lot like a 2000s Depeche Mode. 

On the second list... one that i know a few of you have heard, but they didn't get as much publicity as the five on the list above. The Moody Blues. 


(i could go back in time, with every few decades all the way back to The Hymn of Nikkal. if you would like. but i won't that would be a series of books...) 


(and to the mods, this all relates... *suspicious eyes)

*nods, however, back to the direct topic. 

Each epoch has a specific language. (publicized or unknown.) 

For instance, the Medieval Epoch was mostly vocal, with an Estampie here and there. The Renaissance was primarily 1-3 voices (instrument or voice.) Which also produced a lot of canons. The Baroque evolved the canons into Fugues, and started developing various other genres, like Concertos and such. The Classical, started making symphonies and have adapted a more structural sonata form. The Romantic (although Madrigals were around since Medieval which have evolved into the Opera.) this was more emotional music. which lead us to the Modern, which was where the symphonies evolved into bigger forms, (thanks to Mahler and others.) Chamber music was primarily Piano Trios, String Quartets, Horn Trios, and occassionally others.) 

then there was a schism impressionist and expressionist. Which school of though do you think triumphed from this? 
anyways, after this we are led to (i won't count 20th century, or 21st century...) Contemporary, where they start implimenting older techniques that not many would regularly hear since the performers tend to overlook these things. So they don't realize the amount of amazing techniques are used. 


Sorabji was addicted to fugues, Messiaen was borderline minimallist. Xenakis (in my personal opinion) was attempting to impliment a classical metal fusion. Varese was writing simply to promote electronic instruments among other reasons, also has some really amazing music. Coates is addicted to glissandi and mirror canons. 

Various others i could list like crazy... but i won't since some i have no idea on yet... 

I do know, Cage has a lot of interesting works, that i sometime want to get into. (i already heard his 4'33"... even though my copy is a second short...


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## Madiel (Apr 25, 2018)

janxharris said:


> Might we assert that the combined audience over the generations for works that have lasted this long is pretty high? Current rock and pop gets a lot of attention but might it, in aggregation, not get as much as Mozart?
> 
> I'm just wondering.


John Lennon once said The Beatles were more popular than Jesus, I guess that included Mozart too 
seriously, even forgetting that Mozart wasn't even the most performed artist of his own time (and the names of composers that outperformed him are obscure to most of us), the number of people listening to music since pop has replaced classical as mainstream musical entertainment (and include of course the technological advancements that have made possible to listen to music 24/7) make irrelevant the fact that Mozart and others have been around for so long.
But frankly, who cares? 
Popularity is overrated


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Madiel said:


> John Lennon once said The Beatles were more popular than Jesus, I guess that included Mozart too
> seriously, even forgetting that Mozart wasn't even the most performed artist of his own time (and the names of composers that outperformed him are obscure to most of us), the number of people listening to music since pop has replaced classical as mainstream musical entertainment (and include of course the technological advancements that have made possible to listen to music 24/7) make irrelevant the fact that Mozart and others have been around for so long.
> But frankly, who cares?
> Popularity is overrated


You can cite evidence to back this up - that some recent pop acts have generated more interest from the public than the entire interest that Mozart has generated in the last 250 odd years? Or the same regarding popular music compared with classical in general?

I'm not saying you are wrong.


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## Madiel (Apr 25, 2018)

janxharris said:


> You can cite evidence to back this up - that some recent pop acts have generated more interest from the public than the entire interest that Mozart has generated in the last 250 odd years? Or the same regarding popular music compared with classical in general?


I'd say it's an evidence in front of our eyes (with a little help from some general numbers)
it's an intuitive evidence 
I am unaware of statistics regarding this, but the truth is in the numbers and in the technological advancements that have made music available 24/7 - you say 250 years but if you simply look at world population and the public availability of musical sources you will simply realize that the effort of such a research would be pointless, just consider that radios became a common utility in the Fifties (and only in the developed world), audio equipment and record collections have never achieved mass appeal, while Mozart was alive world population had not even reached one billion, the second billion was reached in the roaring twenties, I mean that when it comes to popularity/interest you cannot escape the correlation between world population/means of propagate music, the numbers of years that a product has been on the market become irrelevant when in those years - for economic and technological reasons - only a small percentage (of an already smaller in overall numbers) of the population had access to music, there is no way to avoid that Beyoncé and Robbie Williams (I guess they qualify as recent pop acts) have generated more interest in a single year of their career than Mozart in 250 years combined. 
Last evidence to add perspective: in the last 40 years classical music share of the music industry business has oscillated between 3 and 5%
Once again, who cares? when it comes to the relevance of popularity here in Italy we say "trillions of flies cannot be wrong" implying: if you think popularity is relevant "go eat some ****"


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Not even a homeopathic dose of the truth! 

Each age brings new riches. The riches of the past - already fairly reliably tested and filtered - tell us much that remains true today and is also subject to continual reinvention via different performances. Of course, it is crazy if you love music to miss out on what is happening now - it is new, exciting and super-relevant - and I don't limit this to music in the so-called classical tradition (you know, Ferneyhough, Benjamin, Carter, Boulez, Stockhausen, Nono etc. as well as the more tonal composers). Jazz, folk and many forms of popular music are also genres that continue to produce really worthwhile music. And the so-called "world music" field includes much that is exciting and (/or) interesting. But how can loving all this lead you to not loving, to neglecting, our incredible inheritance? Also, aside from any other considerations, much new music is illuminated by the music of our past. 

There has perhaps never been a better time for someone who loves music to be alive!


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Madiel said:


> I'd say it's an evidence in front of our eyes (with a little help from some general numbers)
> it's an intuitive evidence
> I am unaware of statistics regarding this, but the truth is in the numbers and in the technological advancements that have made music available 24/7 - you say 250 years but if you simply look at world population and the public availability of musical sources you will simply realize that the effort of such a research would be pointless, just consider that radios became a common utility in the Fifties (and only in the developed world), audio equipment and record collections have never achieved mass appeal, while Mozart was alive world population had not even reached one billion, the second billion was reached in the roaring twenties, I mean that when it comes to popularity/interest you cannot escape the correlation between world population/means of propagate music, the numbers of years that a product has been on the market become irrelevant when in those years - for economic and technological reasons - only a small percentage (of an already smaller in overall numbers) of the population had access to music, there is no way to avoid that Beyoncé and Robbie Williams (I guess they qualify as recent pop acts) have generated more interest in a single year of their career than Mozart in 250 years combined.
> Last evidence to add perspective: in the last 40 years classical music share of the music industry business has oscillated between 3 and 5%
> Once again, who cares? when it comes to the relevance of popularity here in Italy we say "trillions of flies cannot be wrong" implying: if you think popularity is relevant "go eat some ****"


Some interesting points.

Perhaps someone might want to challenge:



> Beyoncé and Robbie Williams...have generated more interest in a single year of their career than Mozart in 250 years combined.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

KenOC said:


> "Why cannot we understand that in art, as in everything else, there are some things to which we must not accustom ourselves?" --Camille Saint-Saëns
> 
> Sorry, couldn't resist that.


Further evidence that, whatever you think and feel about his music, Saint-Saens was something of a fool! (Strangely, the site wouldn't let me use a word that means donkey, which had been my first choice).

But, again, a thread is all about whether much new music is accessible. So much new music is written that we do not get to hear. If it was pottery or paintings it would be sold in small local galleries. But there is no much market for much new music. What does reach us (and it is still more than we could ever listen to), what does get played and even recorded will have already impressed many people or will have come from a source that has a good track record. Some of it says new things in new ways - _*and isn't that the point?! *_- and we can't just sit down to it with our educated knowledge and experience of Schubert (or whoever) and expect to be in tune with this new music.

Using the example of Schubert (use a different name if it works better for you), there was a time for all of us - many of us might not have noticed because we were children - when Schubert was new to us and we had to "learn" how to get "the enjoyment" out of it. We might not have known what to expect, what to look for, but sooner or later it "got inside us" and we got it! Later, this "knowledge of how to enjoy Schubert" stood us in good stead when listening to a lot of other music and, the more we listened to, the greater our ability to hear a lot music on first hearing. But it becomes less and less of a key when you move forward in time. Getting Schubert doesn't help so much with getting Wagner!

A lot of new music - and this seems to include even quite old atonal music for many people - does very new things to us but it isn't closed to us at all. It is written the way it is written because that is the language that is needed for the things it can do. It _is worth the "work"! But it works best if the "work" is not work. You need to find a way of letting it in - sitting and concentrating is probably a bad way of doing this! - of letting it get under your skin. I often play something through and then I know when I can recognise a good time to listen again. Sometimes this goes quite quickly. I listen again. I have fragments (like jazz or rock riffs!) running through my mind and I begin to get a sense of the structure. The things I hear at first often become less important and other elements come into play. It is rather like hearing the stylistic devices of the Classical period when you first listen to Mozart and then, a little later, getting to what is important._


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

millionrainbows said:


> GENERALLY SPEAKING,
> Love of Classical music, of the past, is equal to a rejection of the present age and its music. This seems obvious to me.
> Love of Classical music is a search for Platonic perfection, of "masterpieces" of the past, which are timeless.
> Love of Classical music is a search for the ultimate, and a search for genius.
> ...


Sure, a grain. First Assertion: True for some, false for others--that seems obvious to me.

Second Assertion and Third Assertion: Essentially the same. True for Classical music lovers and also lovers of every other kind of music (at one time or another). The short version of _The Year of the Cat_ by Al Stewart, or _Sunshine of your Love_ by Cream are as close to Platonic perfection, masterpiece, the ultimate, and genius as you can get. For me. Prove I'm wrong.

Fourth Assertion: One of those vast, sweeping statements that are best left sitting there. I'll just say all of us can immediately think of a host of contemporary counterexamples that embrace Human and humane qualities and values.

Nowadays everyone's musical needs are not only met, but are met to overflowing. You want Classical?, you got Classical. Plus you have genres you never either knew or know existed, brought to you in many different ways, 24/7. The main complaint, really, that some people have is that not nearly enough other people are listening to and liking what I listen to and like. But we are in a Brave New World now where every artistic yearning can be satisfied, and every pot is filled.


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## Guest (Jun 16, 2018)

millionrainbows said:


> GENERALLY SPEAKING,
> Love of Classical music, of the past, is equal to a rejection of the present age and its music. This seems obvious to me.
> Love of Classical music is a search for Platonic perfection, of "masterpieces" of the past, which are timeless.
> [...]
> ...


No. I'm listening to it in my present...how could it be otherwise? It's also not all I listen to.

In fact, it could be a rescuing from the past that which is worth carrying forward into the future.


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## Mozart555 (Jun 17, 2018)

Yes this is true, at least a rejection of the music of the present. I have never met anyone who genuinely loved classical music (people who would listen to it every day even if there were noone around to ever share it with or talk about it with, not social or casual listeners, or intellectual posers), who listened to modern day pop music in equal amounts to classical.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Mozart555 said:


> Yes this is true, at least a rejection of the music of the present. I have never met anyone who genuinely loved classical music (people who would listen to it every day even if there were noone around to ever share it with or talk about it with, not social or casual listeners, or intellectual posers), who listened to modern day pop music in equal amounts to classical.


So, for you, there is classical music which is from the past and pop music which is "the music of the present"? I listen to a huge amount of music - I can't live without it! - what I listen to has as much music from the last 100 years as from the 200 years before that. I listen to modern and contemporary "classical" music (much of it from the last 50 years), to jazz (mostly from after 1950) and, sometimes, to a fair amount of (broadly) "popular music" (mostly in the form of rock, reggae and African music). I may not listen to very much (commercial) pop music but I certainly do listen to lots of music that was made during my lifetime. I find that the more music I know the better I am equipped to explore the new.


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## Madiel (Apr 25, 2018)

Mozart555 said:


> Yes this is true, at least a rejection of the music of the present. I have never met anyone who genuinely loved classical music (people who would listen to it every day even if there were noone around to ever share it with or talk about it with, not social or casual listeners, or intellectual posers), who listened to modern day pop music in equal amounts to classical.


may I ask how many people have you met?


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## Guest (Jun 17, 2018)

Mozart555 said:


> Yes this is true, at least a rejection of the music of the present. I have never met anyone who genuinely loved classical music (people who would listen to it every day even if there were noone around to ever share it with or talk about it with, not social or casual listeners, or intellectual posers), who listened to modern day pop music in equal amounts to classical.


"Rejecting" the music of the present is a far cry from what the OP actually posited.

Speaking as an intellectual poser myself (since I can't prove that I "listen to CM every day even if there were noone around to ever share it with or talk about it with", I'll go for that option) I will concede that I listen to less current music (let's say, produced within the last 12 months) than music of the past (of any type).

But I'm not in search of anything, nor "rejecting" anything about the present, since I'm lumbered with living in it, and would only reject the same things that all "genuine" people would reject about human failings and our damaged environment.

I'm not sure that the intellectual posers aren't the ones coming here and making public declarations about how it must be for us all.


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

millionrainbows said:


> GENERALLY SPEAKING,
> Love of Classical music, of the past, is equal to a rejection of the present age and its music. This seems obvious to me.
> Love of Classical music is a search for Platonic perfection, of "masterpieces" of the past, which are timeless.
> Love of Classical music is a search for the ultimate, and a search for genius.
> ...


I think there are certainly some grains of truth in what you say BUT on one thing I would dare say the exact opposite, namely "Love of Classical music is an embrace of *Inhuman* qualities, in contrast to the *"human"* present, in which it seems the *Inhuman* qualities are disparaged and undervalued.

There's too much humanity these times my friend.


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## San Antone (Feb 15, 2018)

millionrainbows said:


> GENERALLY SPEAKING,
> Love of Classical music, of the past, is equal to a rejection of the present age and its music. This seems obvious to me.
> Love of Classical music is a search for Platonic perfection, of "masterpieces" of the past, which are timeless.
> Love of Classical music is a search for the ultimate, and a search for genius.
> ...


Nope, not for me. IMO, music is not a zero sum game, i.e., loving classical music does not translate into a rejection of other genres. I love classical music, if that is the correct word, but I am not looking for any of the things you mention. I am certainly not looking for "masterpieces" or works of genius.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

San Antone said:


> I am certainly not looking for "masterpieces" or works of genius.


I am a little baffled. I assumed everyone is looking for works that aspire to greatness. Perhaps I have misunderstood you?


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

_Love of Classical music, of the past, is equal to a rejection of the present age and its music.

_Yes, I reject repetitive rhythm-based music designed to enhance or sell a "lifestyle" of mainly youth culture. 
Yes, I reject the present day music industry and its never-ending marketing strategies. With Classical music, I can explore history at my will._Love of Classical music is a search for Platonic perfection, of "masterpieces" of the past, which are timeless. __Love of Classical music is a search for the ultimate, and a search for genius.
_
Yes, with few exceptions, Classical music has more real musical information, and displays higher musical intelligence than popular music. Harmonic progressions, developments, themes…there is so much more information to be absorbed, not just a strong back-beat with somebody "singing" or rapping over the top of it.
_
Love of Classical music is an embrace of Human qualities, in contrast to the "inhuman" present, in which it seems the Human qualities are disparaged and undervalued.

_Yeah;no auto pitch-correction on voices, no drum machines and synthesizers with artificial sounds: just human hands and voices creating human music, which reminds us of how great human potential is.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

millionrainbows said:


> _Love of Classical music, of the past, is equal to a rejection of the present age and its music.
> 
> _Yes, I reject repetitive rhythm-based music designed to enhance or sell a "lifestyle" of mainly youth culture.
> Yes, I reject the present day music industry and its never-ending marketing strategies. With Classical music, I can explore history at my will._Love of Classical music is a search for Platonic perfection, of "masterpieces" of the past, which are timeless. __Love of Classical music is a search for the ultimate, and a search for genius.
> ...


You made no explicit reference to popular culture in the OP.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Originally Posted by *San Antone* 
_I am certainly not looking for "masterpieces" or works of genius._



janxharris said:


> I am a little baffled. I assumed everyone is looking for works that aspire to greatness. Perhaps I have misunderstood you?


Perhaps San Antone is searching for the status quo, a reflection of his times. Those Platonic masterpieces are not real to him; they represent a perfection which is unattainable, perhaps. 
May he seek and find his mediocracy in his lifetime.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

millionrainbows said:


> Originally Posted by *San Antone*
> _I am certainly not looking for "masterpieces" or works of genius._
> 
> Perhaps San Antone is searching for the status quo, a reflection of his times. Those Platonic masterpieces are not real to him; they represent a perfection which is unattainable, perhaps.
> May he seek and find his mediocracy in his lifetime.


I believe masterpieces are / have been written in this age.


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## San Antone (Feb 15, 2018)

janxharris said:


> I am a little baffled. I assumed everyone is looking for works that aspire to greatness. Perhaps I have misunderstood you?


I don't look for them because I don't judge music as great or not. I once was told by a music professor that "Mendelssohn is a second tier composer." He went on, "but there is wonderful music written by second tier composers."

I listen as intently and get as much out of the music as I can. That's what I look for, and I don't give a hoot whether someone thinks the music is great or not.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

janxharris said:


> I believe masterpieces are / have been written in this age.


Masterpieces of pornography, perhaps; or advertising; or pornographic advertising.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

I think there's a grain of truth in it in the sense that a lot of classical listeners do think this way, but I don't think that's due to any qualities of the music itself.

In the last few years I've just stopped thinking about concepts like "greatness" or "timelessness" in connection to music completely - not as a deliberate choice but because I've lost interest in it. I now realize that I never had to worry about that stuff at all. It doesn't add anything.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

San Antone said:


> I listen as intently and get as much out of the music as I can. That's what I look for, and I don't give a hoot whether someone thinks the music is great or not.


 Getting as much "out of the music" as possible seems to be the goal. That being the case, music from which you are able to "get out" more, is a better use of time than music from which you are able to "get out" less. Therefore, life being finite, it would seem prudent to engage your critical faculties in order in order to maximize what you "get out" or your prospective listening. Or you could spend time trying to squeeze stones and lemons indiscriminately.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

A lot of westerners, especially Americans, are so wrapped up in the prostrate worship of the common man, the divine Average Joe, equality, democracy etc. that they can't begin to entertain the notion that anything is better than anything else. If it were up to them Jesus and Judas would have an equal vote on the city council. In their world, all ways of speaking are equally mellifluous, all opinions equally valid, all women equally beautiful, all art equally exquisite, and most importantly everyone's money is equally fungible--the last of which being the key to the whole thing.


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## Guest (Jun 18, 2018)

Logos said:


> A lot of westerners, especially Americans, are so wrapped up in the prostrate worship of the common man, the divine Average Joe, equality, democracy etc. that they can't begin to entertain the notion that anything is better than anything else. If it were up to them Jesus and Judas would have an equal vote on the city council. In their world, all ways of speaking are equally mellifluous, all opinions equally valid, all women equally beautiful, all art equally exquisite, and most importantly everyone's money is equally fungible--the last of which being the key to the whole thing.


Good job none of them are members here!


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

The internet especially has furthered the notion that "everyone's opinion is valuable," which has led to the questioning of basic facts which used to be "givens." Note here that the very concept of "masterpiece" has been questioned.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

millionrainbows said:


> The internet especially has furthered the notion that "everyone's opinion is valuable," which has led to the questioning of basic facts which used to be "givens." Note here that the very concept of "masterpiece" has been questioned.


This concept was questioned long before the internet.

To be clear, I wasn't claiming that some works aren't better than others, only that I find no value in splitting hairs over it. The music isn't going anywhere.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> This concept was questioned long before the internet.
> 
> To be clear, I wasn't claiming that some works aren't better than others, only that I find no value in splitting hairs over it. The music isn't going anywhere.


Great criticism itself can be a work of art. Consider the writings of Ruskin, many of which are as magnificent as the pictures he wrote about. If one thinks of all criticism as a mean-spirited, worthless exercise in splitting of hairs, then I suppose we should cast Ruskin's works into the flames, along with Pater, Longinus, Friedrich Schlegel's and Goethe's critical writings, and the better part of Samuel Johnson's for good measure. So many worthless volumes filled with mere splitting of hairs!


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## San Antone (Feb 15, 2018)

Logos said:


> Getting as much "out of the music" as possible seems to be the goal. That being the case, music from which you are able to "get out" more, is a better use of time than music from which you are able to "get out" less. Therefore, life being finite, it would seem prudent to engage your critical faculties in order in order to maximize what you "get out" or your prospective listening. Or you could spend time trying to squeeze stones and lemons indiscriminately.


I get something out of everything I listen to, and each day is different, each day I am kind of a different person, so the same work will not strike the same way on different occasions. I simply am not interested in the idea of greatness in art. I have found that over my fifty years of avid involvement with music that alleged greatness is irrelevant as to what I take away from experiencing a piece of music. At this point, and for some time, the idea of greatness does not cross my mind at all, unless one of these discussions is happening.


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## Guest (Jun 18, 2018)

millionrainbows said:


> _Love of Classical music, of the past, is equal to a rejection of the present age and its music.
> 
> _Yes, I reject repetitive rhythm-based music designed to enhance or sell a "lifestyle" of mainly youth culture.
> Yes, I reject the present day music industry and its never-ending marketing strategies. With Classical music, I can explore history at my will._Love of Classical music is a search for Platonic perfection, of "masterpieces" of the past, which are timeless. __Love of Classical music is a search for the ultimate, and a search for genius.
> ...


There's a lot of skill required in creating the software and hardware, all the musical production, in any pop song. In many cases it's an extremely detailed and intricate process requiring many skilled professionals to make it sound the way it does. It requires an enormous amount of skill to make something seem effortless, as if no skill is needed at all. Boulez recognised the value that pop music has inn taking instrumentation and electronics further than any 'classical music' is willing to go aside from in a few niche areas. The commercial nature of record companies doesn't devalue the remarkable minds of people who develop the technology to produce pop songs and the people who produce them (writing the song itself is the easy part). I admire what institutions like IRCAM have done for music today, what Bell Laboratories and electroacoustic studios have done prior to that. There's nothing inhuman about the time and effort that professionals from these cutting edge institutions and studios have put into developing synthesisers, recording and editing techniques, diffusion, mixing and mastering techniques, live electronics, auto-tune, vocoder etc.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

San Antone said:


> I don't look for them because I don't judge music as great or not. I once was told by a music professor that "Mendelssohn is a second tier composer." He went on, "but there is wonderful music written by second tier composers."
> 
> I listen as intently and get as much out of the music as I can. That's what I look for, and I don't give a hoot whether someone thinks the music is great or not.


Perhaps your chief concern is avoiding any reference to any supposed _objective_ greatness?


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Logos said:


> Masterpieces of pornography, perhaps; or advertising; or pornographic advertising.


Are you serious?


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

millionrainbows said:


> The internet especially has furthered the notion that "everyone's opinion is valuable," which has led to the questioning of basic facts which used to be "givens." Note here that the very concept of "masterpiece" has been questioned.


You are the authority that decides who's opinion matter's when it comes to pronouncing a work as a masterpiece? I did mention that your OP wasn't specific. Music of the present would include Thomas Ades and Philip Glass.


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## Guest (Jun 19, 2018)

millionrainbows said:


> Note here that the very concept of "masterpiece" has been questioned.


I'm not sure that it has, actually, but if you can find where it has, I'm happy to be proved wrong.

I have no problem with the concept of 'masterpiece' in the sense of a piece by a composer that is recognised as her best work.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Logos said:


> Masterpieces of pornography, perhaps; or advertising; or pornographic advertising.


I get it - the key to your posts in this thread: you are "being" the person who the OP described as a classical music fan. You are merely illustrating for us what a bizarre position it is. Am I right?


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## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

I would have agreed with this without thinking much a few years ago, but then as I started to explore music more I realised two things...

1. There is a lot of fantastic classical music being written in the present.

2. There is a lot of fantastic music being written in many, many other genres. I've met many people on other websites who truly love classical music, from the past to the present, who find a lot of non-classical music to be equally (sometimes more) enjoyable and essential. 

It makes sense to me that this would be the case. I mean, if a genre of music is only listened to by a very small minority, how much will many great young musicians be influenced by it? I'd suggest it's more likely they'd be influenced by great music in other genres, or if they do happen to be classically influenced it would frequently be one influence of many (see, say, John Zorn, Diamanda Galas or, earlier, Frank Zappa). 

Considering this, I've actually been somewhat surprised at just how many fascinating and wonderful 'classical' composers I'm finding from the present day.


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## Madiel (Apr 25, 2018)

millionrainbows said:


> The internet especially has furthered the notion that "everyone's opinion is valuable," which has led to the questioning of basic facts which used to be "givens." Note here that the very concept of "masterpiece" has been questioned.


"givens" - are you serious? - I mean, it was not long ago that the existence on planet Earth of places called Eden or Quivira were "givens" - that the Earth was flat was a "given" - since the age of enlightenment "givens" don't receive much credit unless they are supported by evidence and in the fields where evidence is common currency - let's say science - ""givens" are questioned daily. When we come to the realm of the arts - where we have no better evidence than our taste - "givens" make no sense at all, example: what's a masterpiece? nothing more than the product of the work of an artist using the skills of his craft with an outstanding result, this is easy and it's a given I guess, but when it comes to what is art, well, the definition of the term in different times and in different cultures has varied so much that wanting to impose - like you do - what does constitute art and what doesn't has nothing to do with art, it's vulgar politics and the worst possible use of art.
do you like classical music because you like the music or what you really like is the idea that listening to it makes you feel better than people listening to other music? sorry man, even if technology now talks of liquid music, music itself has no osmotic properties, listening to the work of geniuses will not make us one of them.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Madiel said:


> what's a masterpiece? nothing more than the product of the work of an artist using the skills of his craft with an outstanding result, this is easy and it's a given I guess, but when it comes to what is art, well, the definition of the term in different times and in different cultures has varied so much that wanting to impose - like you do - what does constitute art and what doesn't has nothing to do with art, it's vulgar politics and the worst possible use of art.


Yet so many of the greatest artists have tried to do just that; that is, impose dictatorially their own standards on others as if they were law. You seem to be saying "Look, if you knew anything about art, you wouldn't try to do what you're doing." Yet Wagner, Berlioz, Beethoven, Schumann, Weber, etc. tried to do it. And of course in literature there have been countless arbiters of taste who engaged in this vulgar politics of art, many of them great literary artists in their own right. Did all these men know nothing about "the use of art"?

Your discomfort with anyone exercising objective authority is simply due to the fact that modern westerners happen to live in a demotic, egalitarian culture that is suspicious of any authority figure whatsoever; a mere accident of history that you're trying to impose unilaterally over the whole of art criticism.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Enthusiast said:


> I get it - the key to your posts in this thread: you are "being" the person who the OP described as a classical music fan. You are merely illustrating for us what a bizarre position it is. Am I right?


What could be more bizarre than characterizing the early 21th century as an age of masterpieces? Does anyone really believe that history will characterize this period as anything of the kind?


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Logos said:


> What could be more bizarre than characterizing the early 21th century as an age of masterpieces? Does anyone really believe that history will characterize this period as anything of the kind?


Well, a lot can happen in 82 years ... and only fools prejudge the history of the future. But I don't see why it shouldn't be _an_ age in which a lot of great music is composed. Certainly the 20th Century was a very fruitful period.


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## Madiel (Apr 25, 2018)

Logos said:


> Your discomfort with anyone exercising objective authority is simply due to the fact that modern westerners happen to live in a demotic, egalitarian culture that is suspicious of any authority figure whatsoever; a mere accident of history that you're trying to impose unilaterally over the whole of art criticism.


objective authority? what is it? an oxymoron?
you need to clear your head my friend, if you believe in "objective authority" you need to accept as a fact that in the 21th century composers the like of George Benjamin have produced masterpieces. What constitutes a masterpiece is not decided by your taste.


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## Guest (Jun 19, 2018)

I listen mainly to 21st century music. Many pieces I enjoy, some I enjoy less. Whether something is a masterpiece or not doesn't affect my enjoyment of music in the slightest.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Enthusiast said:


> Certainly the 20th Century was a very fruitful period.


In comparison with what other centuries? Surely not the 18th or 19th.


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## Guest (Jun 19, 2018)

Logos said:


> In comparison with what other centuries? Surely not the 18th or 19th.


By a mere matter of numbers alone (more people alive in the 20th) then statistically it was more fruitful than the 18th and 19th centuries. More people, more composers. (more '''''''''''''''''masterpieces''''''''''''''''''')

Also, more people with access to music to listen to for the joy of listening to music. More people making up their own minds about what they hear.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Madiel said:


> objective authority? what is it? an oxymoron?
> you need to clear your head my friend, if you believe in "objective authority" you need to accept as a fact that in the 21th century composers the like of George Benjamin have produced masterpieces. What constitutes a masterpiece is not decided by your taste.


Never heard of him. I suspect posterity won't either.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

shirime said:


> By a mere matter of numbers alone (more people alive in the 20th) then statistically it was more fruitful than the 18th and 19th centuries. More people, more composers. (more '''''''''''''''''masterpieces''''''''''''''''''')


You might be confusing fruit with excrescences of other kinds. Modern Vienna is vastly more populous than it was centuries ago, but no one would confuse it with the Vienna of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. Modern Boston alone has a population many times that of the entirety of colonial America, yet we aren't exactly producing new Washingtons, Hamiltons, Franklins, and Jeffersons by the bushel.


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## Madiel (Apr 25, 2018)

Logos said:


> Never heard of him. I suspect posterity won't either.


I was sure of that.
Authority is objective only when it supports your way of thinking?


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## Guest (Jun 19, 2018)

Logos said:


> You might be confusing fruit with excrescences of other kinds. Modern Vienna is vastly more populous than it was centuries ago, but no one would confuse it with the Vienna of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. Modern Boston alone has a population many times that of the entirety of colonial America, yet we aren't exactly producing new Washingtons, Hamiltons, Franklins, and Jeffersons by the bushel.


Well, I think I have some idea on what you are talking about, but the thing is, I am thinking in realist terms and doing my best to understand the world of composition today and I find myself enjoying a lot of what I hear.

Vienna today has Klangforum Wien, who are all brilliant musicians working in New Music and performing works by composers such as Beat Furrer, Olga Neuwirth, Bernhard Lang, Klaus Lang, Wolfgang Mitterer and others (you see how there are more people now?) who have written music that their audiences enjoy a lot. Mozart wrote music contemporary to his time as do these composers.

What's more, there are other contemporary styles in Vienna that there are audiences for as well.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Madiel said:


> I was sure of that.
> Authority is objective only when it supports your way of thinking?


I support authority when my thinking finds it legitimate and worthy of deference. Who doesn't believe himself to be right?


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Logos said:


> In comparison with what other centuries? Surely not the 18th or 19th.


Certainly in comparison with those times! That is exactly what I meant.

And do not imagine that I merely do not know (or do not love sufficiently) a lot of Baroque and Classical and Romantic music. There was a time - I was a mere child - when I would have found it hard to think that the music of the 20th Century was as great as the music that came before. But what a fool I was! And, strangely, it was my growing knowledge and love of so much of our heritage that helped me see that the 20th Century was an astonishingly fruitful period for music. And I do not see the trend turning.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Logos said:


> Never heard of him. I suspect posterity won't either.


You take pride in your ignorance and yet your ignorance only demonstrates that you do not know what you are talking about. Again I am thinking that you are playing a game to demonstrate how bizarre it would be to prove the OP right.


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## Madiel (Apr 25, 2018)

Logos said:


> I support authority when my thinking finds it legitimate and worthy of deference. Who doesn't believe himself to be right?


given your line of thinking, the username Logos sounds incongruous, don't you think?


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

shirime said:


> Mozart wrote music contemporary to his time as do these composers.


But the neo-classical period looked back to ancient models of beauty, simplicity, and proportion. They're "contemporary" art had a decidedly ancient ideal. Likewise, in the romantic period, artists took inspiration from the grotesque and barbaric aesthetics of the middle ages and to a certain extent the renaissance--Scott, the most popular novelist of the 19th Century by most measures, wrote "contemporary" works in the most archaic style imaginable and was rewarded handsomely for it.

So we have the art of the 18th C looking backwards to a classical ideal.

We have the art of the 19th C looking back at the art of the 18th through a dramatico-medieval lens, and reacting accordingly.

And we have modern art which looks back on--what? Modern art has no historical ideal. It reacts against the concept of history itself, or so it would appear. For this reason, it's misleading to term pre-20th C art contemporary because so much of it was explicitly retrospective, i. e. pseudo-archaic. It aspired to seem antique, timeless, perfectly poised in the manner of the old Greeks, or, in the case of the romantics, on evoking a medieval, barbaric, pious past. The difference between these two aesthetics (1. pseudo-archaic or historical and 2. modern, i. e. art alienated from history) is fundamental in my view.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Logos said:


> You might be confusing fruit with excrescences of other kinds. Modern Vienna is vastly more populous than it was centuries ago, but no one would confuse it with the Vienna of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. Modern Boston alone has a population many times that of the entirety of colonial America, yet we aren't exactly producing new Washingtons, Hamiltons, Franklins, and Jeffersons by the bushel.


I do not know enough of US history to know if the names you mention were indeed giants. Certainly, such a view of our own (British) great leaders of history is no longer tenable - a rigorous application of historical knowledge requires a much more nuanced view of them. But, anyway, our modern day politics is appallingly corrupted and I am not sure someone of great integrity would go into politics these days. It may be that in the USA of the 19th Century and before there were greater leaders than we see these days - it was, after all, a unique situation. This tells us nothing of music.

But I do certainly think that for music of the last 100 years there are works aplenty which, and very many composers who, can stand comparison (should you wish to do such a thing) with the greats of history. Most serious music lovers do these days! I'm not sure, though, what lesson to draw from the fact that they might still be a smaller proportion of the general population than was the case in the past. It may be true.

In a way I envy you: you have so much great music to discover.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Logos said:


> And we have modern art which looks back on--what? Modern art has no historical ideal. It reacts against the concept of history itself, or so it would appear. For this reason, it's misleading to term pre-20th C art contemporary because so much of it was explicitly retrospective, i. e. pseudo-archaic. It aspired to seem antique, timeless, perfectly poised in the manner of the old Greeks, or, in the case of the romantics, on evoking a medieval, barbaric, pious past. The difference between these two aesthetics (1. pseudo-archaic or historical and 2. modern, i. e. art alienated from history) is fundamental in my view.


I'm afraid you again show how little you know of modern art. In fact I think there may not have been an earlier period when artists were so interested in their forebears, in referring to them so much in their work, in quoting them, in comparing, even in dismissing. I doubt there has been a period in which artists have been so aware of standing in a long tradition.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Enthusiast said:


> In a way I envy you: you have so much great music to discover.


The very fact that I should have to discover them is in itself an illustration of my point. Who is the most famous living composer, movie music aside? Phillip Glass perhaps? And he is known to what percentage of the middle and upper classes, to say nothing of the lower classes? What composer today would cause thousands to throng the streets for his public funeral, as happened in the past? What composer's death would necessitate the closing of all theaters, or require the building of a costly monument, funereal or otherwise, in commemoration of him? That day has past. Every middle class German knew who Haydn was, and Beethoven; and later Brahms in his day. Contemporary classical composers have nothing resembling the centrality to intellectual life that composers used to have--they're unknowns, non-entities who live and die without so much a NY times obituary, or a very short one at most. I suppose we must conclude that never has such a quantity great art been so little appreciated in the history of the world.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Enthusiast said:


> I'm afraid you again show how little you know of modern art. In fact I think there may not have been an earlier period when artists were so interested in their forebears, in referring to them so much in their work, in quoting them, in comparing, even in dismissing. I doubt there has been a period in which artists have been so aware of standing in a long tradition.


Yes, aware of a long tradition for the purpose of dismissing tradition itself, which is precisely what I wrote. To be anti-historical, I grant that one must have a vague awareness that there is such a thing as history.


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## Madiel (Apr 25, 2018)

Logos said:


> Every middle class German knew who Haydn was, and Beethoven;


you don't know what you are talking about (and believe me, this is a polite reply)


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Madiel said:


> you don't know what you are talking about (and believe me, this is a polite reply)


You honestly think there were educated Germans who had never heard of Haydn and Beethoven at the time of their deaths? Haydn was certainly the most famous composer in Europe at the time of his death. By the end of the first decade of the 19th century some of Beethoven's music was known in Scotland, so I think we can safely say that by 1827 the Germans had got wind of him.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Enthusiast said:


> You take pride in your ignorance and yet your ignorance only demonstrates that you do not know what you are talking about. Again I am thinking that you are playing a game to demonstrate how bizarre it would be to prove the OP right.


To be ignorant of that not worth knowing is great wisdom. Do you fill your shelves with trashy books? I should think not. You reserve your time, space, and mental energies for those things you deem the best. Do I want my time consumed with George Benjamin? Do I want my mind occupied with George Benjamin when it might spend a sweeter hour with a better composer? If a book isn't the best book I could possibly be reading, I put it down. If a given work of music isn't the finest thing to which I could be listening, I cease to listen. Is this not the most plain, obvious, sensible course of action?


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Logos said:


> To be ignorant of that not worth knowing is great wisdom.


That's nonsense. You can't be aware that something is not worth knowing if you are ignorant of it.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Bulldog said:


> That's nonsense. You can't be aware that something is not worth knowing if you are ignorant of it.


I'm ignorant of the content of mass-market romance novels but I'm as sure of their worthlessness as I am sure of the Earth's spinning on its axis.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Logos said:


> The very fact that I should have to discover them is in itself an illustration of my point. Who is the most famous living composer, movie music aside? Phillip Glass perhaps? And he is known to what percentage of the middle and upper classes, to say nothing of the lower classes? What composer today would cause thousands to throng the streets for his public funeral, as happened in the past? What composer's death would necessitate the closing of all theaters, or require the building of a costly monument, funereal or otherwise, in commemoration of him? That day has past. Every middle class German knew who Haydn was, and Beethoven; and later Brahms in his day. Contemporary classical composers have nothing resembling the centrality to intellectual life that composers used to have--they're unknowns, non-entities who live and die without so much a NY times obituary, or a very short one at most. I suppose we must conclude that never has such a quantity great art been so little appreciated in the history of the world.


The "most famous" is a strange measure and I'm not sure what you learn from it. There has been significant diversification (or, if you prefer, fragmentation) of types and styles of music being produced and few people follow all the strands. Some might name Glass but others, with similar tastes, might prefer to name John Adams. I'm aware of both and quite like some of their music but for me the bigger names among living composers include Sophia Gubaidulina and Harrison Birtwhistle, among the younger guard Ferneyhough and Benjamin (already named above). There are many others. If you are thinking to sample them I do suggest that you go back to, say, Stravinsky, Bartok, Britten, Shostakovich and Schoenberg first. I'm guessing from your earlier posts that you are not very familiar with them but, if you are, then look into the next generation and spend some time with them before coming to the absolutely contemporary.

As for who will have heard of these names, and what their backgrounds will be, is any of that really relevant? Who knew Schubert in his lifetime? Or even Beethoven? Specialists, educated people who loved music and only some of those. But it is perhaps true that no "classical" composer today will have a funeral attended by tens of thousands. Some composers of the past were more widely loved. But only some. Today the Beatles would do better. But, again, we see the influence of the diversification (specialisation, fragmentation) that I was talking about. Is the centrality of great music to our intellectual life such a crucial aspect of evaluating the value of the music? Or is it merely an interesting phenomenon to explain?


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## Madiel (Apr 25, 2018)

Enthusiast said:


> But it is perhaps true that no "classical" composer today will have a funeral attended by tens of thousands. Some composers of the past were more widely loved. But only some.


"widely" needs to be taken with a pinch of salt when you consider how limited were in past centuries 
- education
- access to music
talking about "middle class" in those past contexts has no meaning at all, middle class as we understand it today is barely 100 years old. 
btw I can understand that some people have no interest for modern music, but when I read statements proudly showing ignorance about composers like Benjamin - who are regularly featured in classical music magazines - I am flabbergasted.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Logos said:


> To be ignorant of that not worth knowing is great wisdom. Do you fill your shelves with trashy books? I should think not. You reserve your time, space, and mental energies for those things you deem the best. Do I want my time consumed with George Benjamin? Do I want my mind occupied with George Benjamin when it might spend a sweeter hour with a better composer? If a book isn't the best book I could possibly be reading, I put it down. If a given work of music isn't the finest thing to which I could be listening, I cease to listen. Is this not the most plain, obvious, sensible course of action?


Well, there is no discussing with you is there? You have decided that what you don't know is not worth knowing. You give examples of trashy literature as something you don't know but still know that it is not worth knowing". But how do you know it is trash? Because that is the critical opinion? Because it is marketed in a trashy way? Because a page is enough to demonstrate the awfulness of the prose? You know it for reasons. To take George Benjamin, or Harrison Birtwistle for that matter, how do you know they are not worth getting to know? Critical opinion is positive. Audience appreciation is positive - both are able to fill the Royal Opera House in London with very contemporary music night after night - and I doubt you have the musical sophistication to know from listening to a few bars that you are listening to something great.

Of course, time is precious and we do not want to waste time on something less rewarding than something else. But, as you must know, there are times when you need to listen to the Well-Tempered Clavier and times when it needs to be a Brahms piano trio at another time you might want an early Schubert symphony or a Rossini overture. So, when are you ever in a situation when it is possible to choose to only listen to the greatest work? Which one is it? And what do you do when you know "the best works" so well that they offer you little when you long for something new and fresh?

And, actually, I have bad news for you. Most new music that is worth getting to know will require work on your part. You probably don't remember but there was a time when Mozart and Beethoven did. Now you have won the keys to their musical language and you want them to open contemporary doors for you! But the best they can do is help you to enjoy pastiches of the greats of the past. You are missing a lot but you will have to do work to correct that!


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Logos said:


> Yes, aware of a long tradition for the purpose of dismissing tradition itself, which is precisely what I wrote. To be anti-historical, I grant that one must have a vague awareness that there is such a thing as history.


You have lost me. Perhaps some citations or examples of the artists you are talking about. You seem to have formed a very unusual impression of the views of modern artists, perhaps by extrapolating from one or two examples.

From music, perhaps you are thinking of the young Boulez? He was certainly critical of the relevance of old music to us. But later in his life he became great interpreter of much of that music! His past did catch up with him in that towards the end of his life he was arrested at an airport because he was on a terrorist register for saying (decades earlier) that opera houses should be burned down. There may be a few other examples like Boulez - there was something of an epidemic of this sort of thing in the later 1950s through to the early 1970s (often associated with the European intellectual fad for Marxism) - but the attitudes they expressed are not exactly the norm for modern artists or even that representative of the music they produced.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Enthusiast said:


> Is the centrality of great music to our intellectual life such a crucial aspect of evaluating the value of the music? Or is it merely an interesting phenomenon to explain?


When people choose to learn a language it's important to consider how widely that language is spoken, what is the scope of its literature, and to what extent will knowing it enrich one's life. When I spend time with a central figure in the history of art, I am--in a manner of speaking--learning an artistic language that has been broadly studied by other great artists and thinkers, that has been broadly used, that will be invoked in analogy with many other objects of consideration. When I spend time with a peripheral figure, I'm learning Lithuanian: narrowly used, seldom invoked, comparatively negligible body of literature. If I do that, I find myself in the outer darkness, looking at civilization from some distance and missing out on the most fertile fields of intellectual life. The labor I've invested yields fewer dividends because it doesn't cross-pollinate with other knowledge in the way "central" artists do. This is what's so deadly about specialization. It ghettoizes, narrows, desiccates as it cuts one off from the grand Nile of culture, and we end up with slight rivulets destined to dry up. For all these reasons and mixed metaphors, total absence of centrality is a great concern.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Madiel said:


> talking about "middle class" in those past contexts has no meaning at all, middle class as we understand it today is barely 100 years old.


Exactly, and the middle classes being so very small in 19th C Germany, I fail to see what is so incredible in the statement that Haydn and Beethoven were known to them.


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## Madiel (Apr 25, 2018)

So - Logos - if you had lived in the late 18th century or early 19th century according to your last post you would have had no interest in the music of J.S. Bach, in those years I guess Lithuanian would have been more useful


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Logos said:


> When people choose to learn a language it's important to consider how widely that language is spoken, what is the scope of its literature, and to what extent will knowing it enrich one's life. When I spend time with a central figure in the history of art, I am--in a manner of speaking--learning an artistic language that has been broadly studied by other great artists and thinkers, that has been broadly used, that will be invoked in analogy with many other objects of consideration. When I spend time with a peripheral figure, I'm learning Lithuanian: narrowly used, seldom invoked, comparatively negligible body of literature. If I do that, I find myself in the outer darkness, looking at civilization from some distance and missing out on the most fertile fields of intellectual life. The labor I've invested yields fewer dividends because it doesn't cross-pollinate with other knowledge in the way "central" artists do. This is what's so deadly about specialization. It ghettoizes, narrows, desiccates as it cuts one off from the grand Nile of culture, and we end up with slight rivulets destined to dry up. For all these reasons and mixed metaphors, total absence of centrality is a great concern.


Your extended metaphor works but only if you accept the premise - that contemporary (and, I suspect, most post 1918) music is peripheral. As you know, I don't accept that premise in any way.


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## Madiel (Apr 25, 2018)

Logos said:


> Exactly, and the middle classes being so very small in 19th C Germany, I fail to see what is so incredible in the statement that Haydn and Beethoven were known to them.


you are trying to apply contemporary terms and ways of reasoning (middle class, famous et cetera) to social epochs deeply different from our own, I guess this is what you get with so many period films and tv-shows portraying past times in historically uninformed ways.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Madiel said:


> "widely" needs to be taken with a pinch of salt when you consider how limited were in past centuries
> - education
> - access to music
> talking about "middle class" in those past contexts has no meaning at all, middle class as we understand it today is barely 100 years old.
> btw I can understand that some people have no interest for modern music, but when I read statements proudly showing ignorance about composers like Benjamin - who are regularly featured in classical music magazines - I am flabbergasted.


I'm also astounded by the joy in ignorance in some of those posts but perhaps it is merely stylistic and an inevitable consequence of that ignorance. Perhaps humility is not a quality one looks for in someone who spends his (I am sure it is a male voice) time in the company of gods?

On funerals, I think that both Verdi and Puccini were deeply revered in their time in Italy. And there may have been a few other composers whose passing led to mass grief.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Enthusiast said:


> To take George Benjamin, or Harrison Birtwistle for that matter, how do you know they are not worth getting to know?
> 
> So, when are you ever in a situation when it is possible to choose to only listen to the greatest work? Which one is it? And what do you do when you know "the best works" so well that they offer you little when you long for something new and fresh?


For the first point, I use contextual, indirect knowledge to make that judgment. If I want to find the most exquisite Latin hexameters, should I look for them in Augustan Rome, or in Bristol? It's theoretically possible that some modern Englishman has outdone Vergil, but is that at all likely? Must I really investigate to make sure?

To your second point: Naturally, what is best for one to listen to will depend on personal circumstance. But it strains credulity to suggest that anyone can be so well acquainted with all of the old masters' works that they have nothing further to offer.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Madiel said:


> So - Logos - if you had lived in the late 18th century or early 19th century according to your last post you would have had no interest in the music of J.S. Bach, in those years I guess Lithuanian would have been more useful


Really this is inapplicable, because Bach lived in an age in which musicians were servants. With trivial exceptions, no musician could expect anything beyond regional fame. In that context, it was all Lithuanian. Thank goodness for figures like Mendelssohn who educated the public as to his worth.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Enthusiast said:


> Your extended metaphor works but only if you accept the premise - that contemporary (and, I suspect, most post 1918) music is peripheral. As you know, I don't accept that premise in any way.


Then take it as a comparative. Would you accept that Bach and Beethoven are closer to the center of Western cultural life than post WW I music? I find that self-evident. I might as well be asking whether Shakespeare is more important to English literature than penny dreadfuls.


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## Madiel (Apr 25, 2018)

Enthusiast said:


> On funerals, I think that both Verdi and Puccini were deeply revered in their time in Italy. And there may have been a few other composers whose passing led to mass grief.


mass grief requires mass media.
Verdi and Puccini were opera composers, even if their popularity got some help from the nascent mass media industry (Puccini way more than Verdi of course, Puccini enjoyed radio and recorded music) the fact that they operated in a hugely popular genre helped too. In our times Pierre Boulez's death - in France at least - has gathered a lot of media attention, but then France is a peculiar nation, France Musique programs contemporary music in prime time and now even offers a web channel entirely dedicated to contemporary composers.
Art isn't a popularity contest, should we accept that, then we should listen to Beyoncé


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## Madiel (Apr 25, 2018)

Logos said:


> Really this is inapplicable, because Bach lived in an age in which musicians were servants. With trivial exceptions, no musician could expect anything beyond regional fame. In that context, it was all Lithuanian. Thank goodness for figures like Mendelssohn who educated the public as to his worth.


have you ever read even a concise history of music in your life? I am just curious
you are amassing an amazing sequence of erroneous statements and I'd like to know what's the source.
in Bach's times we have the beginnings of the music business, a lot of Bach contemporaries were well known all over Europe, as an example: the fame of opera composers from the Neapolitan school was so wide that Catherine the Great wanted one of them for her court (with the result that Russian music will be forever connected to that forgotten school).

btw you have not proved my point wrong, you tend to conform to the common opinion, you have no interest to pursue knowledge of music in the first person, so no matter if you lived in 1718 or 2018: people with a similar attitude will never know if there is a Bach in the surroundings worth hearing.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Logos said:


> Then take it as a comparative. Would you accept that Bach and Beethoven are closer to the center of Western cultural life than post WW I music? I find that self-evident. I might as well be asking whether Shakespeare is more important to English literature than penny dreadfuls.


No, I would not accept that. Quite the contrary. And the comparison between Shakespeare and penny dreadfuls is so ridiculous (and so insulting to any number of great composers) as a simile that I give up after this post! Forgive me, but (although you intend the opposite) you come over as an uneducated boor. I'm sure you are not but that's how you read.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

This thread demonstrates that "historical perspective" has disappeared in this post-modern age. 

"Everything is pretty." - Andy Warhol

I'm an old throwback: I still believe in "greatness" and "genius."


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Logos said:


> To be ignorant of that not worth knowing is great wisdom. Do you fill your shelves with trashy books? I should think not. You reserve your time, space, and mental energies for those things you deem the best. Do I want my time consumed with George Benjamin? Do I want my mind occupied with George Benjamin when it might spend a sweeter hour with a better composer? If a book isn't the best book I could possibly be reading, I put it down. If a given work of music isn't the finest thing to which I could be listening, I cease to listen. Is this not the most plain, obvious, sensible course of action?


To those who, in past threads, have mocked my assertion that theories of "objective" value, worth, greatness lead inexorably to ranking art objects/experiences as "bad; blah; good; better; best", here is Logos' Stentorian affirmation of my thesis. This, logically, boils down to the finest piece of music, the best book ever, the one and only painting or sculpture or whatever worth contemplating. To involve oneself with any lesser art is to defile oneself, to stoop, to pander. This is an inescapable but perhaps unintended byproduct of the whole "objective standards" approach to aesthetics, and is its Achilles Heel.

De Gustibus non est Disputandum is, was, and will always be the correct analysis of the evaluation of aesthetic matters.


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## San Antone (Feb 15, 2018)

millionrainbows said:


> This thread demonstrates that "historical perspective" has disappeared in this post-modern age.
> 
> "Everything is pretty." - Andy Warhol
> 
> I'm an old throwback: I still believe in "greatness" and "genius."


What is more important: listening to music that is considered great or listening to music?


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Madiel said:


> have you ever read even a concise history of music in your life? I am just curious
> you are amassing an amazing sequence of erroneous statements and I'd like to know what's the source.
> in Bach's times we have the beginnings of the music business, a lot of Bach contemporaries were well known all over Europe, as an example: the fame of opera composers from the Neapolitan school was so wide that Catherine the Great wanted one of them for her court (with the result that Russian music will be forever connected to that forgotten school).


There you have the fame of a _school_, not the towering fame of a presiding individual. Courtly connoisseurs would have certainly been aware of notable composers, but this is hardly the same as the the class-transcending, broad-based fame of 19th century composers who were publicly mourned by thousands. Handel and Telemann might have approached that kind of international renown, but not many others.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Enthusiast said:


> No, I would not accept that. Quite the contrary. And the comparison between Shakespeare and penny dreadfuls is so ridiculous (and so insulting to any number of great composers) as a simile that I give up after this post! Forgive me, but (although you intend the opposite) you come over as an uneducated boor. I'm sure you are not but that's how you read.


Then you place post WW I composers and Beethoven on the same level? Is that really tenable? What would an apt comparison be? Shakespeare as compared with the lesser novels of William Dean Howells? Is that suitably respectful?


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Strange Magic said:


> To those who, in past threads, have mocked my assertion that theories of "objective" value, worth, greatness lead inexorably to ranking art objects/experiences as "bad; blah; good; better; best", here is Logos' Stentorian affirmation of my thesis. This, logically, boils down to the finest piece of music, the best book ever, the one and only painting or sculpture or whatever worth contemplating. To involve oneself with any lesser art is to defile oneself, to stoop, to pander. This is an inescapable but perhaps unintended byproduct of the whole "objective standards" approach to aesthetics, and is its Achilles Heel.


Heaven forbid we should only admire the best things! Where's the calamity in that? Artists incapable of producing anything of quality might have cause to regret such a change, but I can't imagine why anyone else should object. To seek to understand 'the best that has been thought and said' (and one might add, done) is to my mind the most natural aim in the world--who on earth willfully seeks to understand all the second and third rate that's been thought and said and done? And if we needed any other incentive to adopt a highly selective critical policy, we should always remember that life is much to short to fully appreciate even the smallest portion of the best things in art, let alone in other fields. Can we then dare to occupy ourselves with the things of the hour when the things of all time are readily available?


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Logos said:


> Heaven forbid we should only admire the best things! Where's the calamity in that? Artists incapable of producing anything of quality might have cause to regret such a change, but I can't imagine why anyone else should object. To seek to understand 'the best that has been thought and said' (and one might add, done) is to my mind the most natural aim in the world--who on earth willfully seeks to understand all the second and third rate that's been thought and said and done?


A list, please:

Best Book
Best Piece of Music
Best Painting
Best Sculpture
Best Film

Looking forward eagerly to your choices! . Feel free to add other categories and their best examples.


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## Madiel (Apr 25, 2018)

Logos said:


> There you have the fame of a _school_, not the towering fame of a presiding individual. Courtly connoisseurs would have certainly been aware of notable composers, but this is hardly the same as the the class-transcending, broad-based fame of 19th century composers who were publicly mourned by thousands. Handel and Telemann might have approached that kind of international renown, but not many others.


you are deafer than Beethoven


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Strange Magic said:


> A list, please:
> 
> Best Book
> Best Piece of Music
> ...


If I were to attempt such a list I'd carefully consult the greatest critics of those arts, far more knowledgeable than myself, and simply recite the views that predominate among them. Seems the most reasonable, levelheaded thing to do.

We both know it isn't a matter of THE ONE GREAT THING from each art. That's a very cute, yet tired reduction to absurdity. Food x may be on the whole the healthiest of foods, but would any person eat a diet of only that food? No, because even the best food imperfectly fills all nutritional needs. The best is plural, not singular in this case.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Madiel said:


> you are deafer than Beethoven


Then you think the fame of 18th C composers and that of 19th C composers were the same in kind and degree?


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Strange Magic said:


> A list, please:
> Best Book
> Best Piece of Music
> Best Painting
> ...


that is easy
Best Book - either The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevski or the Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil
Best Piece of Music - Mass in B Minor
Best Painting - The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch
Best Sculpture - the Sphinx of Egypt
Best Film - Akahige by Kurosawa


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## Mozart555 (Jun 17, 2018)

A large component of fame is historical promotion. There are great composers whose fame does not match their greatness, largely due to matters of historical promotion. It is clear that Bach would be revered, given that he is the main composer of one of the oldest schools (hence there has been lots of time to promote his music). Others, like Beethoven, have had an enormous boost in historical promotion due to extra-musical curiosities, in his case his deafness. And others, like Mahler, have had large cuts to their historical promotion due to extra-musical reasons, in his case early 20th-century antisemitism and the Nazi censorship of his music. Or Schubert, whose music was largely irrelevant until the miraculous decision by Franz Liszt to bring it to the concert halls.

Eventually I believe all great composers will be given a place in history given enough time, but it is important to note that fame has many extra-musical components. This is why I am always sceptical of people who start their lists with Bach, Beethoven or Mozart, because is it that they really love this music or are they just regurgitating popular opinion? This music is indeed great, but that question always lingers.


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## Gordontrek (Jun 22, 2012)

Strange Magic said:


> To those who, in past threads, have mocked my assertion that theories of "objective" value, worth, greatness lead inexorably to ranking art objects/experiences as "bad; blah; good; better; best", here is Logos' Stentorian affirmation of my thesis. This, logically, boils down to the finest piece of music, the best book ever, the one and only painting or sculpture or whatever worth contemplating. To involve oneself with any lesser art is to defile oneself, to stoop, to pander. This is an inescapable but perhaps unintended byproduct of the whole "objective standards" approach to aesthetics, and is its Achilles Heel.


Which would you rather watch: Citizen Kane, or Manos: The Hands of Fate?

Curious to see what choice your approach to aesthetics chooses...


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## Mozart555 (Jun 17, 2018)

Gordontrek said:


> Which would you rather watch: Citizen Kane, or Manos: The Hands of Fate?
> 
> Curious to see what choice your approach to aesthetics chooses...


One can recognize that some pieces are better than others, and still enjoy lesser pieces, all while being fully aware they are of less value. You enjoy them less, so to speak, but less enjoyment is still some enjoyment.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Mozart555 said:


> This is why I am always sceptical of people who start their lists with Bach, Beethoven or Mozart, because is it that they really love this music or are they just regurgitating popular opinion? This music is indeed great, but that question always lingers.


It isn't merely popular opinion that these composers are preeminent. It's also scholarly opinion and elite opinion. But if they are regurgitating, is this worse than being totally mistaken or contorted in their judgments? Maybe there are some that feel this to be the case--it must be part of the contemporary obsession with individual "sincerity" or personal "authenticity"; i. e., it's better for someone to hold an incorrect or bizarre judgment based on personal feeling than a perfectly reasonable judgment based on authority or received opinion.

In any case, certainly extra-musical factors do play a role in a given composer's reputation.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Mozart555 said:


> One can recognize that some pieces are better than others, and still enjoy lesser pieces, all while being fully aware they are of less value. You enjoy them less, so to speak, but less enjoyment is still some enjoyment.


I think we can all agree with that.


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## Mozart555 (Jun 17, 2018)

Logos said:


> It isn't merely popular opinion that these composers are preeminent. It's also scholarly opinion and elite opinion. But if they are regurgitating, is this worse than being totally mistaken or contorted in their judgments? Maybe there are some that feel this to be the case--it must be part of the contemporary obsession with individual "sincerity" or personal "authenticity"; i. e., it's better for someone to hold an incorrect or bizarre judgement based on personal feeling than a perfectly reasonable judgment based on authority or received opinion.


Well scholarly opinion is the same really, after all scholars study in institutions where the same opinions are preeminent and they are preeminent in those institutions because it was popular opinion before. The point is that one should take their own emotional reaction to the music as the one and only thing that determines their opinion of the music (aside from their opinion of technical matters, or historical musical development, which is an aside). It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks because popular opinion has a major historical extra-musical component.


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## Madiel (Apr 25, 2018)

Logos said:


> There you have the fame of a _school_, not the towering fame of a presiding individual.


I was talking about opera composers, opera was - beyond comparison - the most popular form of musical entertainment in the 18th century, Cimarosa and many other guys filled the theaters, they were celebrities whose work where staged all over Europe, Cimarosa was hosted by the Emperor in Vienna and by the Empress in Russia, the guy was - I don't know - the Elton John of his time.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Mozart555 said:


> Well scholarly opinion is the same really, after all scholars study in institutions where the same opinions are preeminent and they are preeminent in those institutions because it was popular opinion before.


A popular opinion before? Then are we to believe that Mozart's fame came from the bottom-up? That Viennese milkmaids and wheelwrights championed his music for some time and then the ivory tower finally deigned to take notice after a few generations? My impression is quite the opposite--that connoisseurs, elites, scholars and fellow composers championed his music, and then after a time the populace deferentially echoed their sentiments.


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## Gordontrek (Jun 22, 2012)

Mozart555 said:


> One can recognize that some pieces are better than others, and still enjoy lesser pieces, all while being fully aware they are of less value. You enjoy them less, so to speak, but less enjoyment is still some enjoyment.


But does this not imply objectivity? If someone out there thinks Manos is a better film than Citizen Kane, what right do I have to tell him he's wrong?


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## Mozart555 (Jun 17, 2018)

Logos said:


> A popular opinion before? Then are we to believe that Mozart's fame came from the bottom-up? That Viennese milk-maids and wheelwright's championed his music for some time and then the ivory tower finally deigned to take notice after a few generations? My impression is quite the opposite--that connoisseurs, elites, scholars and fellow composers championed his music, and then after a time the populace deferentially echoed their sentiments.


Yes I don't disagree. I mean that someone started championing the music and then it was chain, a contagion of popular opinion throughout the ages, also into institutions naturally. In that chain, you have the influencers and influencees, and some figures (namely those who actively championed the music), who acted as both. In that chain the first may not have been the most relevant, though in some cases it was. Liszt is largely responsible for reviving Schubert. Walter and Mengelberg kept the torch of Mahler's music dimly lit until after the Nazis, when Bernstein (through his association with Walter), was the central figure in reviving Mahler. And similar stories can be told of other composers.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Madiel said:


> I was talking about opera composers, opera was - beyond comparison - the most popular form of musical entertainment in the 18th century, Cimarosa and many other guys filled the theaters, they were celebrities whose work where staged all over Europe, Cimarosa was hosted by the Emperor in Vienna and by the Empress in Russia, the guy was - I don't know - the Elton John of his time.


They achieved a narrow fame among nobles and the intelligentsia, but there was practically no consumer public with whom one could become broadly famous. The vast majority of Italians in those days couldn't even read, let alone afford to go to the opera. Do you really think the peasants that comprised the bulk of the population were filling up those seats? England barely had a middle class, let alone continental Europe, and we need not speak of Russia where most of the population was still living in the early middle ages. Elton John performs for a massive middle class consumer base that didn't exist before the industrial revolution.

What A. J. P. Taylor wrote about early 19th century Germany could apply to any pre-industrial continental nation: "_The intellectual life of Germany was remote, suspended from reality. The writers wrote for each other or sought the patronage of some prince. There was no German 'public' and therefore there were no political movements, only the disputes of academic politicians._" Where there is no public, there can be no fame as we know it. And what was true of intellectual life was also true of the fine arts, till the middle classes began to grow as the century wore on.


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## San Antone (Feb 15, 2018)

Mozart555 said:


> One can recognize that some pieces are better than others, and still enjoy lesser pieces, all while being fully aware they are of less value. You enjoy them less, so to speak, but less enjoyment is still some enjoyment.


Yes, but the determination of which pieces are better is purely subjective. Unless you are willing to turn your aesthetic powers of discernment over to a collective authority (and then convince yourself that you are, in fact, enjoying music that you were told is great), then every listener decides which pieces he enjoys more than others.

Among the pantheon of composers considered great, there are a few I like much more than most of the rest. For example I prefer Brahms to Mahler. Both are considered great, but I don't like their music equally. And then there's the near-great, or just good composers, whose music I also like better than many "considered great" composers.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

San Antone said:


> Yes, but the determination of which pieces are better is purely subjective. Unless you are willing to turn your aesthetic powers of discernment over to a collective authority (and then convince yourself that you are, in fact, enjoying music that you were told is great), then every listener decides which pieces he enjoys more than others.


Did Brahms write music solely for the purpose of the audience's "enjoyment"? Was it a purely epicurean exercise? Do prophets or teachers speak solely for their audience's enjoyment? Might it not be the case that sometimes edification rather than the listener's enjoyment was the thing at which he aimed, with which enjoyment has little to do?


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## Madiel (Apr 25, 2018)

Logos said:


> In any case, certainly extra-musical factors do play a role in a given composer's reputation.


it is necessary to distinguish between popular reputation and academic (by musicologists and historians) reputation.
in the first case the role played by biographic accidents (the deaf composer, the child prodigy et cetera) certainly plays a part, but the proof is in the sales: Beethoven' deafness and bad character certainly make him easy to market, but the fact remains that only another composer outsells him (more on this later) so it is undeniable that Beethoven's popularity is real. At the same time to whoever thinks that biography helps: suppose Schoenberg had died victim of the Nazis in a concentration camp, do you think that would have made dodecaphony more palatable to the general public? or take Xenakis: a partisan fighting against the German-Italian occupation of Greece, then an architect who worked with Le Corbusier; you cannot find a composer with a better biography to sell to its potential public, alas last time I checked his music is far from being popular.
Then we have the reputation coming from musicologists and historians of music, just like every other academic field it is not without bias, nonetheless you will never find a book by a scholar who will question the greatness of certain names, Beethoven gets his due credit here too, he belongs to that rare kind capable of receiving accolades from the public and from the critics, not so for the guy who outsells him - Tchaikovsky - who is by far the most popular composer but fares much worse in the hands of musicologists and historians. At the same time we need to remember that what was true in musicology and history in 1918, it is not necessarily still true in 2018: the things we know about Europe's cultivated music today are far broader that what was known 100 years ago, my favorite example is Vivaldi, whose music all but disappeared after his death until early 20th century, then in 1926 manuscripts containing an unbelievable amount of works were found and nowadays thanks to the work of musicologists and committed artists we know Vivaldi as a major composer, even of operas. Historical perspective is a shifting concept, it needs to be open to new findings.
In the end I guess everyone of us has the right to find his own way to enjoy the music that he likes, but what's the point of embracing a cultural phenomenon who started in the Middle Age and is still alive today while rejecting some part of it, this is what really makes unique what we call classical music, written music, cultivated music: a musical discourse constantly renovated through invention and recycling for so many centuries. That's why imho loving classical music requires knowing the music, otherwise you will have to rely on hearsay or on critics, they can be useful but without some degree of musical learning there cannot be a real appreciation of this art form, and I firmly believe that once someone has achieved even a modest mastery of the art and of its history there is no way that he will dispense disparaging or simplistic comments. Then of course taste will always play a role and I am second to none in my pleasure to express my beliefs in a colorful way, but I will avoid the silliness of "modern music stinks" or "the three greats" and similar simplistic sayings.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Madiel said:


> That's why imho loving classical music requires knowing the music, otherwise you will have to rely on hearsay or on critics, they can be useful but without some degree of musical learning there cannot be a real appreciation of this art form, and I firmly believe that once someone has achieved even a modest mastery of the art and of its history there is no way that he will dispense disparaging or simplistic comments.


Sir Thomas Beecham constantly made dismissive remarks about great composers. Did he know nothing of music? What about Glenn Gould and all his silly remarks about Beethoven and Mozart? Or Maria Callas calling Mozart boring? Furtwaengler thought atonality a regrettable aberration in the history of music. Toscanini for the most part had little interest in modern music and programmed it less and less as his career went on. Had he failed to achieve even a modest mastery of the art? Great artists disparage artistic trends - and each other - constantly, sometimes in the most savage terms. Look at any given page of Wagner's critical writings.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

it may be that some have difficulty understanding that anyone and everyone can have (and actually does have) their very own theory of aesthetics, of what's good, what's worth spending their time experiencing, what's bad. The problem comes when this unique, idiosyncratic blend of experience, knowledge, choice, and fate is confused somehow with some "objective" universal scaffolding upon which a general theory of aesthetics is to be constructed and that all should both recognize and adhere to. Logos (and others holding similar views) is clearly uncertain of his own choices and will consult first with "experts" before deciding what will properly fulfill him. So we'll have to wait a while for those selections of The Best Art.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Strange Magic said:


> Logos (and others holding similar views) is clearly uncertain of his own choices and will consult first with "experts" before deciding what will properly fulfill him. So we'll have to wait a while for those selections of The Best Art.


Why should I, a simple, poor, common, ignorant man trust in my own views? I possess the wisdom to know that I am wholly ignorant and to respect the verdict of those far superior to me in learning. Only a cocksure wiseacre would turn to his own ill-formed, momentary impressions when a veritable king's treasury of instruction and guidance is at hand to ease his way. But today every impudent cockney thinks he knows more than an Oxford don and will lecture him at liberty with his "personal opinions". "Wot does 'e know about 'istory, eh, luv? I'll show 'im a fin' or two."


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## San Antone (Feb 15, 2018)

Logos said:


> Did Brahms write music solely for the purpose of the audience's "enjoyment"? Was it a purely epicurean exercise? Do prophets or teachers speak solely for their audience's enjoyment? Might it not be the case that sometimes edification rather than the listener's enjoyment was the thing at which he aimed, with which enjoyment has little to do?


I don't know, and can never know (nor you), why Brahms composed (unless there are letters where he left some clues). But it doesn't matter. The music is what we have, it has a life of its own, and we listen to it and get out of it what we can.


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## Mozart555 (Jun 17, 2018)

Logos said:


> Why should I, a simple, poor, common, ignorant man trust in my own views? I possess the wisdom to know that I am wholly ignorant and to respect the verdict of those far superior to me in learning. Only a cocksure wiseacre would turn to his own ill-formed, momentary impressions when a veritable king's treasury of instruction and guidance is at hand to ease his way. But today every impudent cockney thinks he knows more than an Oxford don and will lecture him at liberty with his "personal opinions". "Wot does 'e know about 'istory, eh, luv? I'll show 'im a fin' or two."


The most important thing by far is a willingness to expose yourself to a work and get to know it intimately. How can someone give any opinion on a piece he's heard less than 10 times in his life? It is ridiculous, how can you have an opinion on something you know nothing about? Get to know the work, in depth, and then you will be in a position to judge its greatness.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Logos said:


> Why should I, a simple, poor, common, ignorant man trust in my own views?


You need to trust in yourself. If you don't, nobody else will trust you either.


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## Guest (Jun 20, 2018)

Bulldog said:


> You need to trust in yourself. If you don't, nobody else will trust you either.


Wise words, Bulldog.

We can't all just rely on the 'expert opinions' of others to dictate our own taste.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Bulldog said:


> You need to trust in yourself. If you don't, nobody else will trust you either.


Do you trust yourself with performing surgeries or executing complex engineering tasks in which you have no training? Why should I trust myself in handling difficult, laborious branches of knowledge that I don't at all understand?


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## Guest (Jun 20, 2018)

Logos said:


> Do you trust yourself with performing surgeries or executing complex engineering tasks in which you have no training? Why should I trust myself in handling difficult, laborious branches of knowledge that I don't at all understand?


The difference here is that we are simply talking about our own enjoyment of music, not life-saving surgery or anything fact-based that requires expert knowledge.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Mozart555 said:


> How can someone give any opinion on a piece he's heard less than 10 times in his life? It is ridiculous, how can you have an opinion on something you know nothing about?


Exactly, and thank goodness there are those that do know about it whom I can consult when the need arises.


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## Guest (Jun 20, 2018)

Logos said:


> Exactly, and thank goodness there are those that do know about it whom I can consult when the need arises.


Then I am sure there are many people on this forum who can recommend to you some wonderful and diverse pieces of contemporary classical music.


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## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

Logos said:


> Why should I, a simple, poor, common, ignorant man trust in my own views? I possess the wisdom to know that I am wholly ignorant and to respect the verdict of those far superior to me in learning. Only a cocksure wiseacre would turn to his own ill-formed, momentary impressions when a veritable king's treasury of instruction and guidance is at hand to ease his way. But today every impudent cockney thinks he knows more than an Oxford don and will lecture him at liberty with his "personal opinions". "Wot does 'e know about 'istory, eh, luv? I'll show 'im a fin' or two."


Withdrawn: he didn't actually say what I accused him of.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

shirime said:


> The difference here is that we are simply talking about our own enjoyment of music, not life-saving surgery or anything fact-based that requires expert knowledge.


Then you think art isn't of any great importance, or that developing a geometrically-reasoned view of art is an item of small significance? How can one possibly know what to enjoy before receiving proper guidance from persons more knowledgeable than oneself?


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## laurie (Jan 12, 2017)

Logos said:


> Then you think art isn't of any great importance, or that developing a geometrically-reasoned view of art is an item of small significance? * How can one possibly know what to enjoy before receiving proper guidance from persons more knowledgeable than oneself?*




Don't you _feel_ anything when you listen to music? _That's_ how you know what you enjoy!
It really is just that simple.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

shirime said:


> Then I am sure there are many people on this forum who can recommend to you some wonderful and diverse pieces of contemporary classical music.


Yet I find authorities of greater eminence who felt that contemporary music wasn't worth the trouble. Toscanini grudgingly performed only a smattering of contemporary works. Likewise Sir Malcolm Sargent disliked having to perform even an occasional contemporary offering. They must have been hopelessly unschooled in the art of music.


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## Mozart555 (Jun 17, 2018)

Logos said:


> Yet I find authorities of greater eminence who felt that contemporary music wasn't worth the trouble. Toscanini grudgingly performed only a smattering of contemporary works. Likewise Sir Malcolm Sargent disliked having to perform even an occasional contemporary offering. They must have been hopelessly unschooled in the art of music.


Is there no work that you truly love, without the need for an expert to tell you what to like?


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Logos said:


> Do you trust yourself with performing surgeries or executing complex engineering tasks in which you have no training? Why should I trust myself in handling difficult, laborious branches of knowledge that I don't at all understand?


I have no idea why you would connect musical enjoyment with complex medical or engineering tasks.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

laurie said:


> [/B]
> 
> Don't you _feel_ anything when you listen to music? _That's_ how you know what you enjoy!
> It really is just that simple.


I do feel, but I don't accept my feelings as correct or legitimate simply because I feel them. Isn't that something that separates us from the beasts of the field?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Logos said:


> Yet I find authorities of greater eminence who felt that contemporary music wasn't worth the trouble.


"I occasionally play works by contemporary composers for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven." --Jascha Heifetz


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Mozart555 said:


> Is there no work that you truly love, without the need for an expert to tell you what to like?


Certainly, but I don't feel the need to take my first emotional impression and dash off to the bank and cash it. I feel and then I think, compare and analyze with the guidance of the knowledgeable, and then I examine again from a more perceptive viewpoint than my unaided faculties would allow. I don't legitimize the first inklings of passion with the belief that they're evidence of high aesthetic merit or as if they were rays of light on the road to Damascus.


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## Guest (Jun 20, 2018)

KenOC said:


> "I occasionally play works by contemporary composers for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven." --Jascha Heifetz


What an awful thing for a musician to say.


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## Guillet81 (Jul 4, 2016)

DaveM said:


> One particular work of his was 77 minutes after which a woman stood up and shouted, 'I hated that so much, I want to fight someone.' Following was the opening movement of his Violin Concerto. What is one to make of this? Is this a treasured category of contemporary classical music? Is this what it has come to?


My God... And they wonder why so many of us cannot stand modern "classical music"? This is awful. I don't give a damn how artistic the sheet music may look, or how well calibrated the work may all seem on paper. The sound, the _music called for by the ink is terrible. I feel bad for what are undoubtedly fine musicians having to perform this nonsense.

I find that our fascination with much of this modern claptrap, on the grounds of its "complexity", is often akin to people admiring the blue square as a great painting: Garbage that the average mediocrity could produce is deemed fantastic, and we convince ourselves of this by thinking that we just aren't sophisticated enough to understand the greatness of the art. A sad testament to what music has become, and to the widening gap between our musical intelligentsia and good taste._


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## Mozart555 (Jun 17, 2018)

Logos said:


> Certainly, but I don't feel the need to take my first emotional impression and dash off to the bank and cash it. I feel and then I think, compare and analyze with the guidance of the knowledgeable, and then I examine again from a more perceptive viewpoint than my unaided faculties would allow. I don't legitimize the first inklings of passion with the belief that they're evidence of high aesthetic merit or as if they were rays of light on the road to Damascus.


Isn't the point of art to make you feel something?


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

KenOC said:


> "I occasionally play works by contemporary composers for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven." --Jascha Heifetz


I wish he had discouraged them more, but I suppose Heifetz can make anything sound pleasant and thereby give false encouragement. Malcolm Sargent was even more blunt about it. He said modern music was "an awful lot of tripe".


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Mozart555 said:


> Isn't the point of art to make you feel something?


Yes, something. But that doesn't have to mean the _first_ thing, or even the ninety-first thing.


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## Guest (Jun 20, 2018)

Logos said:


> I wish he had discouraged them more, but I suppose Heifetz can make anything sound pleasant and thereby give false encouragement. Malcolm Sargent was even more blunt about it. He said modern music was "an awful lot of tripe".


Why would you wish that? That would be like me wishing you to get fired from your job.


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## San Antone (Feb 15, 2018)

New music written by young composers is the most exciting music I listen to. I have interviewed over 70 living composers about their music and process and have heard plenty of wonderful music. Is it great? I don't know and don't care. That's not my job; time will tell long after I'm gone.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

shirime said:


> Why would you wish that? That would be like me wishing you to get fired from your job.


If I do my job incompetently you ought to wish me fired.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

San Antone said:


> New music written by young composers is the most exciting music I listen to. I have interviewed over 70 living composers about their music and process and have heard plenty of wonderful music. Is it great? I don't know and don't care. That's not my job; time will tell long after I'm gone.


You're so peacefully even keel, San Antone. I'm sure you'd be the most pleasant dinner guest imaginable. Why, I could serve you diced table cloth with a side of pencil shavings. "I'm not sure if that was good food or bad and I don't care. My digestive tract will tell long after I'm gone."


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

A couple of years ago somebody prepared an academic thesis, quite long and detailed, about 20th-century music. Basically, he compiled two lists: one, works most often praised by critical and academic "experts" in serious music; the other, works most in demand at concerts, sales of recordings, and so forth.

What was starting was that there was almost _nothing _the two lists had in common. There was a complete divide between "expert" opinion and the choices of the broader classical music public. I don't think this situation has ever existed before.

The thesis generated quite a bit of discussion on the Amazon forum, all record of which has since disappeared. I can't find it thesis now, but I believe it had the words "Two Worlds" in the title.


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## Guest (Jun 20, 2018)

Enthusiast said:


> You have lost me. Perhaps some citations or examples of the artists you are talking about. You seem to have formed a very unusual impression of the views of modern artists, perhaps by extrapolating from one or two examples.
> 
> From music, perhaps you are thinking of the young Boulez? He was certainly critical of the relevance of old music to us. But later in his life he became great interpreter of much of that music! His past did catch up with him in that towards the end of his life he was arrested at an airport because he was on a terrorist register for saying (decades earlier) that opera houses should be burned down. There may be a few other examples like Boulez - there was something of an epidemic of this sort of thing in the later 1950s through to the early 1970s (often associated with the European intellectual fad for Marxism) - but the attitudes they expressed are not exactly the norm for modern artists or even that representative of the music they produced.


Actually, not entirely true. Boulez was not arrested at an airport from what you've misquoted, but in a hotel bed in Zürich (and it was 'blow the opera houses up' not burn them down but even that is taken entirely out of context he was addressing) but this is exceedingly nitpicky!

Boulez was never critical of the relevance of old music. He often mentioned the necessity to absorb influences in earlier repertoire in order to create something new and original, in order to take it in a different direction. He was very critical of composers like Cage and Feldman who sought to create music in a vacuum, as he saw it, despite him being influenced by Cage, himself.

Also, I don't think you are trying to say Boulez had an intellectual or academic approach to music, but I will mention that he was adamantly opposed to 'academic' or 'intellectual' approaches in favour of using knowledge in an intuitive, creative way. However, it is true that he was a raging leftie politically (he described himself as '300% Marxist-Leninist' at one stage), but his political views are of barely any importance aside from his anti-Nazi sentiments during World War II. Nono was way more influenced by left-wing politics in how he thought about composition.

His real attitudes and values towards music was directed in a very selfless way towards providing a kind of platform for younger generations that he did not easily have during his student years. He resented the academic bubbles, so he reformed it, or more accurately, he formed alternatives to it so that new music could flourish as best as it can.


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## San Antone (Feb 15, 2018)

Logos said:


> You're so peacefully even keel, San Antone. I'm sure you'd be the most pleasant dinner guest imaginable. Why, I could serve you diced table cloth with a side of pencil shavings. "I'm not sure if that was good food or bad and I don't care. My digestive tract will tell long after I'm gone."


I suppose you want me see something, but there's a pretty big strawman in the way.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Here is a characterization of modern music written by an expert of an earlier generation--Ernest Newman, probably the most famous music critic of the first half of the 20th century (in the English speaking world, at least):

"_A music as hard as nails, music as unemotionally efficient as a calculating machine, a music occupied solely with the pitilessly logical working out of certain dimly perceived new theoretic possibilities...that makes no appeal whatever to 999 out of 1000 listeners because their emotion-craving souls can find no nourishment in it. I am one of the 999 myself, by the way._"


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## San Antone (Feb 15, 2018)

Logos said:


> Here is a characterization of modern music written by an expert of an earlier generation--Ernest Newman, probably the most famous music critic of the first half of the 20th century (in the English speaking world, at least):
> "_A music as hard as nails, music as unemotionally efficient as a calculating machine, a music occupied solely with the pitilessly logical working out of certain dimly perceived new theoretic possibilities...that makes no appeal whatever to 999 out of 1000 listeners because their emotion-craving souls can find no nourishment in it. I am one of the 999 myself, by the way._"


And yet there are countless people who enjoy new music. Trying to prove your point by relying on authority is a specious argument.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

San Antone said:


> Trying to prove your point by relying on authority is a specious argument.


It's been maintained in this thread that only someone totally ignorant could possibly dislike contemporary music. In response I enlist the statements of those universally recognized to have some slight expertise in music who express precisely that impossible opinion.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

KenOC said:


> A couple of years ago somebody prepared an academic thesis, quite long and detailed, about 20th-century music. Basically, he compiled two lists: one, works most often praised by critical and academic "experts" in serious music; the other, works most in demand at concerts, sales of recordings, and so forth.
> 
> What was starting was that there was almost _nothing _the two lists had in common. There was a complete divide between "expert" opinion and the choices of the broader classical music public. I don't think this situation has ever existed before.
> 
> The thesis generated quite a bit of discussion on the Amazon forum, all record of which has since disappeared. I can't find it thesis now, but I believe it had the words "Two Worlds" in the title.


Doesn't surprise me at all. It's why there continues to be a parallel universe on the subject.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

KenOC said:


> A couple of years ago somebody prepared an academic thesis, quite long and detailed, about 20th-century music. Basically, he compiled two lists: one, works most often praised by critical and academic "experts" in serious music; the other, works most in demand at concerts, sales of recordings, and so forth.
> 
> What was starting was that there was almost _nothing _the two lists had in common. There was a complete divide between "expert" opinion and the choices of the broader classical music public. I don't think this situation has ever existed before.
> 
> The thesis generated quite a bit of discussion on the Amazon forum, all record of which has since disappeared. I can't find it thesis now, but I believe it had the words "Two Worlds" in the title.


Ken, I believe you are thinking of Herbert Pauls' thesis, _Two Centuries in One_ that we discussed in great detail in a long TC thread.

Here's a link to the thesis:

http://www.musicweb-international.com/books/Pauls_two_centuries_in_one.pdf


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Logos said:


> Why should I, a simple, poor, common, ignorant man trust in my own views? I possess the wisdom to know that I am wholly ignorant and to respect the verdict of those far superior to me in learning. Only a cocksure wiseacre would turn to his own ill-formed, momentary impressions when a veritable king's treasury of instruction and guidance is at hand to ease his way. But today every impudent cockney thinks he knows more than an Oxford don and will lecture him at liberty with his "personal opinions". "Wot does 'e know about 'istory, eh, luv? I'll show 'im a fin' or two."


An interesting confusion between areas where things are actually known quite well "objectively" (the sciences, mathematics) or approximated reasonably well from documents and artifacts (history, including art history), and things whose physical properties are known but about which only opinions can be formulated (art, the flavors of wine and ice cream, fashions of clothing, favorite colors), and statements can only be made about their popularity among defined audiences. It's perfectly OK for some to suspend judgment on what they really like (and is good to like) until an expert tells them it's permitted--I'm reminded of the old definition of a hired consultant: someone who looks at your watch and tells you what time it is.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Strange Magic said:


> An interesting confusion between areas where things are actually known quite well "objectively" (the sciences, mathematics) or approximated reasonably well from documents and artifacts (history, including art history), and things whose physical properties are known but about which only opinions can be formulated (art, the flavors of wine and ice cream, fashions of clothing, favorite colors), and statements can only be made about their popularity among defined audiences.


In fields where truths are less distinctly known or less readily perceived, one would expect the need for authoritative guides to increase in corresponding measure. The very haziness of the basis on which artistic excellence rests makes a well-informed cicerone all the more needful; one who can point out all the troublesome obstacles in the way, or direct one's attention to particular beauties otherwise passed over. Do you ask for a guide when the way is clear, the path level and marked regularly with milestones? (Natural Science, progressing via the geometric logic of its own inertia) No, you hire one when the way is difficult and obscured by fog. (Art, a mysterious and bewildering thing altogether)


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## Supersingr1 (Jun 20, 2018)

Instead of rejection of the present, I deem Classical music to bring past and present together. Many Classical composers of the Baroque, Renaissance, and Romantic periods were deemed radical due to their innovative styles of music. As Classical music evolves with each conductor and singer's own view of the piece/song/lieder/melodie/aria, the emotion and music itself becomes present. Learning from the masters, Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Faure, e.t.c. are the guides. The performers make the music come to life in the present moment.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Strange Magic said:


> Ken, I believe you are thinking of Herbert Pauls' thesis, _Two Centuries in One_ that we discussed in great detail in a long TC thread.
> 
> Here's a link to the thesis:
> 
> http://www.musicweb-international.com/books/Pauls_two_centuries_in_one.pdf


Thanks! That's the one. Interesting reading, but the pleasure palls after he makes his point and offers sufficient support for it. He goes on and on and on...


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Logos said:


> In fields where truths are less distinctly known or less readily perceived, one would expect the need for authoritative guides to increase in corresponding measure. The very haziness of the basis on which artistic excellence rests makes a well-informed cicerone all the more needful; one who can point out all the troublesome obstacles in the way, or direct one's attention to particular beauties otherwise passed over. Do you ask for a guide when the way is clear, the path level and marked regularly with milestones? (Natural Science, progressing via the geometric logic of its own inertia) No, you hire one when the way is difficult and obscured by fog. (Art, a mysterious and bewildering thing altogether)


The overall impression that emerges from these repeated statements is of an overriding fear of finding one has liked the Wrong Thing. And that the consequences will be terrible.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Strange Magic said:


> The overall impression that emerges from these repeated statements is of an overriding fear of finding one has liked the Wrong Thing. And that the consequences will be terrible.


Looked pretty terrible for the children of Israel when, after having taken a liking to that nasty golden calf, Charlton Heston threw those stone slabs down and the whole Paramount sound stage split in twain! Cecil B. DeMille must have killed at least a couple dozen extras that day. Yes, I'd say liking the wrong thing can be decidedly insalubrious. What good can come of liking the wrong thing?


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## Guest (Jun 20, 2018)

Logos said:


> Looked pretty terrible for the children of Israel when, after having taken a liking to that nasty golden calf, Charlton Heston threw those stone slabs down and the whole Paramount sound stage split in twain! Cecil B. DeMille must have killed at least a couple dozen extras that day. Yes, I'd say liking the wrong thing can be decidedly insalubrious. What good can come of liking the wrong thing?


Is it wrong or even inhumane for me to enjoy the music of Brian Ferneyhough?


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

shirime said:


> Is it wrong or even inhumane for me to enjoy the music of Brian Ferneyhough?


If a work of art encourages inhumane sentiments or behavior, then I'd say knowingly exposing oneself to those effects is wicked. But I have no knowledge of the figure you name.


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## Guest (Jun 20, 2018)

Logos said:


> If a work of art encourages inhumane sentiments or behavior, then I'd say knowingly exposing oneself to those effects is wicked. But I have no knowledge of the figure you name.


Is it right or wrong to like this piece of music?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

shirime said:


> Is it wrong or even inhumane for me to enjoy the music of Brian Ferneyhough?


Nonsense. Piffle. There's no need to be judgmental about such things. It may be a simple neurological issue and is likely covered by your health insurance.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

shirime said:


> Is it right or wrong to like this piece of music?


Trick question. No one likes it.


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## Guest (Jun 20, 2018)

Logos said:


> Trick question. No one likes it.


Can you please help to understand why I like it, if, according to your superior knowledge, no one actually does?


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## Guest (Jun 20, 2018)

Logos said:


> Do you trust yourself with performing surgeries or executing complex engineering tasks in which you have no training? Why should I trust myself in handling difficult, laborious branches of knowledge that I don't at all understand?


I think I entirely agree with you there. I wouldn't trust you either, as you're clearly the Dick Van **** of the classical appreciation world and not to be trusted with anything, not even a Cockney accent.

And as for your logic: if you can't tell the difference between performing surgery and extolling the virtues of Ludwig over Wolfgang, I wouldn't let you anywhere near me with a Groves.


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## techniquest (Aug 3, 2012)

OP:


> Don't you think there's a grain of truth in this?


Frankly, no. I think it's nonsense and ignores the concept of someone (anyone) being able to like, enjoy, create and appreciate more than one type of music.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

shirime said:


> Can you please help to understand why I like it, if, according to your superior knowledge, no one actually does?


We need a "love" button here. "Like" is not enough.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

shirime said:


> Is it right or wrong to like this piece of music?


Somehow, I don't get the feeling of an Adagissimo out of it. Perhaps, Depressimo.


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## Guest (Jun 20, 2018)

shirime said:


> Is it right or wrong to like this piece of music?


That's like asking if yellow is up or down?


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

shirime said:


> Is it right or wrong to like this piece of music?
> 
> ...





MacLeod said:


> That's like asking if yellow is up or down?





DaveM said:


> Somehow, I don't get the feeling of an Adagissimo out of it. Perhaps, Depressimo.


Apparently blue is up.


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## Oldhoosierdude (May 29, 2016)

I hate the modern world. I am viewing this thread on my stone tablet.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Oldhoosierdude said:


> I hate the modern world. I am viewing this thread on my stone tablet.


this looking backwards towards a golden past is not just a current phenomenon. Remember the Renaissance, they idolized the Antiquity world as the "golden past" and were trying to emulate their arts and everything. Classicism also looked towards the Antiquity too - all these classical and neoclassical styles are attempts to emulate the Greek art etc.


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## Guest (Jun 20, 2018)

Oldhoosierdude said:


> I hate the modern world. I am viewing this thread on my stone tablet.


Stone tablets?! Kids these days with their 'tablets' and other technology. Pah! Modern rubbish. Back in my day we didn't even have opposable thumbs!


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

shirime said:


> Actually, not entirely true. Boulez was not arrested at an airport from what you've misquoted, but in a hotel bed in Zürich (and it was 'blow the opera houses up' not burn them down but even that is taken entirely out of context he was addressing) but this is exceedingly nitpicky!
> 
> Boulez was never critical of the relevance of old music. He often mentioned the necessity to absorb influences in earlier repertoire in order to create something new and original, in order to take it in a different direction. He was very critical of composers like Cage and Feldman who sought to create music in a vacuum, as he saw it, despite him being influenced by Cage, himself.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the accurate detail on those stories. Although I am not sure my points or intentions are invalidated I do appreciate and bow to your more detailed and precise knowledge of these matters. I relied merely on memory and a not very detailed (or correct!) original knowledge of the events (which never meant that much to me - I am almost always more interested in the music than the stories behind it). My point was merely that modern artists rubbishing the tradition was not (as had been claimed) a common phenomenon let alone a defining feature of artistic developments over the last 100 years.


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## NjaP (Jun 7, 2018)

I have to disagree with this strongly. I love all types of music, from 'classical' music, to jazz, to rock, to hip-hop, to house, to pop, and so and so on. And I try to keep up with what's currently going on as well as catching up with the works of the past.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

This thread is too long for me to read now that I've finally noticed it. But I don't believe that a love of classical music means that you have to reject the present. 
The past is always viewed through the prism of the present - we can't and don't 'get it right' historically. And the past feeds into the present - the styles are there for modern composers to play off, to play with, and to use. 

My preference, generally speaking,is for the music of the past, but I cannot help but be a person of this Age. There are lots of genres of non-classical music from today that I love, and every so often I'll hear a piece of new classical music that speaks to me. 

I think an open mind is the best recipe for enjoyment of life.
Aren't we privileged to be alive and have all this huge variety of music to listen to and explore.


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## Guest (Jun 20, 2018)

Ingélou said:


> This thread is too long for me to read now that I've finally noticed it. But I don't believe that a love of classical music means that you have to reject the present.
> The past is always viewed through the prism of the present - we can't and don't 'get it right' historically. And the past feeds into the present - the styles are there for modern composers to play off, to play with, and to use.
> 
> My preference, generally speaking,is for the music of the past, but I cannot help but be a person of this Age. There are lots of genres of non-classical music from today that I love, and every so often I'll hear a piece of new classical music that speaks to me.
> ...


Actually I think there's some kind of _modern_ or _post-modern_ element to a fascination with the music of the past. In the kind of era we are living in in terms of performance practice, the musicologists and HIP fellas have really found ways to make Early Music very _current._ On some level, an appreciation of this repertoire is akin to appreciating stuff in a museum, but on another level it's an appreciation of the present time and an appreciation of modernist values no matter what time period those modernist values existed in.


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## San Antone (Feb 15, 2018)

shirime said:


> Actually I think there's some kind of _modern_ or _post-modern_ element to a fascination with the music of the past. In the kind of era we are living in in terms of performance practice, the musicologists and HIP fellas have really found ways to make Early Music very _current._ On some level, an appreciation of this repertoire is akin to appreciating stuff in a museum, but on another level it's an appreciation of the present time and an appreciation of modernist values no matter what time period those modernist values existed in.


Richard Taruskin has made a similar point for years in several books. His indictment of the idea of "authenticity" is very perceptive, and no one in the HIP camp really talks about it anymore.

While I enjoy/prefer early music played on period instruments and in a style informed as to accuracy by what we know of the period, I also realize that we have no firm idea of how the music actually sounded (existing manuscripts are open to a spectrum of interpretations, including where and when to add accidentals) and we are performing it according it to our 21st century tastes.

A group like Graindelavoix is an example.


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## Guest (Jun 20, 2018)

San Antone said:


> Richard Taruskin has made a similar point for years in several books. His indictment of the idea of "authenticity" is very perceptive, and no one in the HIP camp really talks about it anymore.
> 
> While I enjoy/prefer early music played on period instruments and in a style informed as to accuracy by what we know of the period, I also realize that we have no firm idea of how the music actually sounded (existing manuscripts are open to a spectrum of interpretations, including where and when to add accidentals) and we are performing it according it to our 21st century tastes.
> 
> A group like Graindelavoix is an example.


Yeah precisely this. Performing to our tastes is the most important thing, I think. The arrival of the HIP movement in the mainstream I think has many things in common with avant-garde backlashes against the 'establishment' in any other form of art, hence why I tend to view it as having modernist ideals. The 'authenticity' of this modern style of HIP matters very little to me, as musicians have found a bunch of new ways of performing familiar repertoire that might be questionable to some musicologists but are vastly and _properly_ different to, say, Ozawa or someone like that in the 80s.

Not to mention a renewed interest in a lot of amazing repertoire that has, in turn, inspired a lot of composers also wishing to break from traditionalist moulds pushed by the 'establishment!'


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Fashions come and go and sometimes one form of music or one way of performing it is ascendant. This keeps things fresh and helps musicians find new things in old works. A lot of great music seems to have an endless string of legitimate angles for perceptive performers to use to show us new things even in old warhorses. All well and good and I am all for revering the great things of the past. I don't care what sociologists make of this reverence. To me this art is an inheritance and a right. But contemporary art is what speaks to us now and what tells us what we might most need to know about our present condition. This is even true of music - the least literal of art forms - although I don't think we can put into words what it tells us. It is hard to imagine being without it.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

shirime said:


> Can you please help to understand why I like it, if, according to your superior knowledge, no one actually does?


The visual art world has a made a fortune convincing very wealthy Americans to like things that they don't actually like. Is that really so remarkable?


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

shirime said:


> The arrival of the HIP movement in the mainstream I think has many things in common with avant-garde backlashes against the 'establishment' in any other form of art, hence why I tend to view it as having modernist ideals.


I would strongly agree with this. I see it much more as a rebellion against institutional authority than a conservative movement.


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## Guest (Jun 20, 2018)

Logos said:


> The visual art world has a made a fortune convincing very wealthy Americans to like things that they don't actually like. Is that really so remarkable?


I have never heard of that before. I have never been to America or the US and I don't think I ever will. I've heard a few things about that place in terms of the arts in general, all of it seems a bit weird to me. I'm happy engaging with the arts scene in my own country, places nearby and other places I've visited where pretty much everyone I have seen actually enjoys whatever the heck they want to enjoy.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

MacLeod said:


> And as for your logic: if you can't tell the difference between performing surgery and extolling the virtues of Ludwig over Wolfgang, I wouldn't let you anywhere near me with a Groves.


It may be that the comparison was inapt, but only because far more people are capable of performing surgery than making delicate judgments in the fine arts. Guidance is all the more important.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

shirime said:


> I have never been to America or the US and I don't think I ever will.


Fair enough, but have you been to the United States, or the USA? I've never been to Britain, or the UK, Great Britain, or the United Kingdom, or England even.


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## Guest (Jun 20, 2018)

Logos said:


> Fair enough, but have you been to the United States, or the USA? I've never been to Britain, or the UK, Great Britain, or the United Kingdom, or England even.


Wait what? The US is part of America is it not? Probably I just should have ordered them the other way around

I have never been to the USA or anywhere else in America.

I have a feeling you're just here to be a contrarian now, and I don't know how to feel about that.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

shirime said:


> Wait what? The US is part of America is it not?


Within the realm of normal English usage, no. One might say that the US is part of the Americas, or North America, or the New World; but America in the singular, without any qualifying adjective (North, South, Latin), has solely referred to the United States for over two centuries. In the past decade or so, there have been a few artificial efforts to question this by inventing terms like "US-American" which is historically illiterate, or "United Statesian" which is simply not English. Presumably this fuss is necessary because they find it horribly imperialist that the US should have this glorious demonym all to itself--despite the historical precedent of usage and the fact that no other nation in the world has the word America in its name.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Logos said:


> It may be that the comparison was inapt, but only because far more people are capable of performing surgery than making delicate judgments in the fine arts. Guidance is all the more important.


With the fine arts, lives hang in the balance.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Logos said:


> Within the realm of normal English usage, no. One might say that the US is part of the Americas, or North America, or the New World; but America in the singular, without any qualifying adjective (North, South, Latin), has solely referred to the United States for over two centuries. In the past decade or so, there have been a few artificial efforts to question this by inventing terms like "US-American" which is historically illiterate, or "United Statesian" which is simply not English. Presumably this fuss is necessary because they find it horribly imperialist that the US should have this glorious demonym all to itself--despite the historical precedent of usage and the fact that no other nation in the world has the word America in its name.


I recognise the usage you describe from films but it is not what I was taught at school in Britain. It seems to be another of those matters where we use or spell words differently. The norm on an international forum is to be tolerant of the differences.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Logos said:


> The visual art world has a made a fortune convincing very wealthy Americans to like things that they don't actually like. Is that really so remarkable?


You talk about the value of guidance but you deny the critical consensus concerning modern art. Presumably, you have critics who you admire and give yourself up to and others who are obviously (so it seems to you) wrong. Presumably the wealthy Americans you talk of are after an investment? Or were they wanting to buy art that they would love? If the latter, they seem to have been extraordinarily careless with their money. If the former, then they have probably doubled their money? I wonder if you can cite some evidence for the claim you are making here so that we can make some sense out of it?


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Enthusiast said:


> I recognise the usage you describe from films but it is not what I was taught at school in Britain. It seems to be another of those matters where we use or spell words differently. The norm on an international forum is to be tolerant of the differences.


Curious, since the English are the ones who established the usage. There really isn't any international difference between English speaking countries on the matter, so there's nothing to tolerate. In Britain, America is used constantly to refer to the United States without any ambiguity.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Enthusiast said:


> You talk about the value of guidance but you deny the critical consensus concerning modern art.


There doesn't seem to be any consensus. Imagine if during the late 19th Century 75% of educated Germans were saying "You know, this Beethoven really wrote nothing but rubbish". That's inconceivable. One can't imagine any educated person of that period holding such an opinion. Yet today I find a multitude of educated people (conductors, historians, journalists, instrumentalists, clergymen, and yes even a few art critics) who maintain without any hesitation that the avant-garde art of the 20th century consisted of nothing but nonsense and elaborate practical jokes. Now, it would be one thing if this art had not had time to be absorbed, but modern art is by now an old, threadbare phenomenon that should have died out with the pickelhaube. It has had more than enough time to be examined and judged; and yet we find a large part of the intellectual world simply saying "no" just as firmly as Saint-Saens said "no" in 1913. Is there a self-interested clique of critics involved in the profit of these works that attempts to press them upon the public? Assuredly, but they don't represent the greater part of the intellectual community, to whom their efforts are a sad, cynical exhibition of the profit motive at work.

Has it ever been the case that Western intellectuals have been so fragmented as to their opinions of the merits of art _a century old_? That this is the case is cause for concern and skepticism with regard to the works in question


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

I would recommend everyone on this thread to read Nietzsches "The Birth of Tragedy" 

Except maybe the ones that are of the opinion that it's as simple as "If I don't like what I hear, it's not good", they shouldn't bother.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

If I don’t like what I hear, it’s not good for me.


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## Logos (Nov 3, 2012)

Strange Magic said:


> With the fine arts, lives hang in the balance.


Then unless lives are at stake you don't care if anything is done incompetently?


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

shirime said:


> Is it right or wrong to like this piece of music?


Like it or not, it is part of the "Classical" tradition mentioned in the OP. The piece's *values* lie in the past, even though it is a work of the present. It is notated, and uses traditional classical instruments, and is presented within a "Classical concert context."

So *"Classical values"* are values of another age, of the past. *Today's values* are money, profit, exploitation of markets, utilitarianism, repetition, promotion of lifestyles, etc.

"Classical" does not necessarily mean chronologically old or dated, but, rather, represents certain values.


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

millionrainbows said:


> GENERALLY SPEAKING,
> Love of Classical music, of the past, is equal to a rejection of the present age and its music. This seems obvious to me.
> Love of Classical music is a search for Platonic perfection, of "masterpieces" of the past, which are timeless.
> Love of Classical music is a search for the ultimate, and a search for genius.
> ...


No not really.

I think one can like or take pleasure in music from various ages and of various styles without limit equally.
I think Platonic perfection, like any kind of perfection, is a distraction. Perfect is the enemy of good, and there is a lot to enjoy and appreciate and love that is not perfect.
I think one can embrace human qualities and not like classical music, or like it. Or like classical music for its yearning for inhuman perfection. I think the two are unrelated, except by forced analogy.

I think every age has and has had many people who felt that human values were disparaged and undervalued, and that this feeling occurs often as a result of cultural change. By the time the individual thinker learns his or her society, and has come to appreciate its mores and values, things change. Thinkers of every age have felt abandoned by the present, and few have thought that "things are so much better now, I was so mistaken." You can't really change culture, they say. It changes one funeral at a time.


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

DaveM said:


> If I don't like what I hear, it's not good for me.


Nietzsche would totally respect that!


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

JeffD said:


> I think every age has and has had many people who felt that human values were disparaged and undervalued, and that this feeling occurs often as a result of cultural change. By the time the individual thinker learns his or her society, and has come to appreciate its mores and values, things change. Thinkers of every age have felt abandoned by the present, and few have thought that "things are so much better now, I was so mistaken." You can't really change culture, they say. It changes one funeral at a time.


So this underscores what I am saying above: it's really a question of values. There are sell-outs in every era, as well as greatness and genius.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

DaveM said:


> If I don't like what I hear, it's not good for me.


Eat Your vegetables, Dave. They're good for you. When you are older and wiser, you will see the truth in this.


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

millionrainbows said:


> So this underscores what I am saying above: it's really a question of values. There are sell-outs in every era, as well as greatness and genius.


No, I think change is perceived as others selling out our obviously superior culture. There are much fewer sell outs than we perceive. And yes, no generation has a monopoly greatness and genius.


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## JeffD (May 8, 2017)

millionrainbows said:


> Eat Your vegetables, Dave. They're good for you. When you are older and wiser, you will see the truth in this.


I think that is a bit high handed, myself. I would never say that seriously. (I assume you mean it seriously, though I admit irony is hard to detect on line.

I expect nobody to strive to adopt my tastes in music, bourbon, coffee, tobacco, or pizza. In fact I pretty much don't care what music, bourbon, coffee, tobacco, or pizza anyone else likes.

I think it is a good thing to seek new and different experiences and try and understand and appreciate them, AND it is good to enjoy what you enjoy. There is often not enough time to do both. And where someone draws the line and what they may miss by drawing it where they do is their business.

We will miss out no matter where we draw the line.

Who is better off, the wise person who accurately perceives the tragedy of life or the fool who loves the berry juice dribbling down his chin. Goodness, no one should listen to my decision on the matter.


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## Guest (Jun 20, 2018)

millionrainbows said:


> Like it or not, it is part of the "Classical" tradition mentioned in the OP. The piece's *values* lie in the past, even though it is a work of the present. It is notated, and uses traditional classical instruments, and is presented within a "Classical concert context."
> 
> So *"Classical values"* are values of another age, of the past. *Today's values* are money, profit, exploitation of markets, utilitarianism, repetition, promotion of lifestyles, etc.
> 
> "Classical" does not necessarily mean chronologically old or dated, but, rather, represents certain values.


Well, actually, I sort of agree with what you are saying here. The medium, the purpose, the notation, everything about this composition comes from a certain tradition and treats it with an individual language that is informed by the past but _of the present_. Yes, it's always going to exist in a relationship to earlier repertoire, Ferneyhough himself understood this and used the String Quartet as a medium to dissect and reconsider traditional forms, instrumental roles and textured associated with it. Yes, it's a celebration of the past, but it's looking at the past through a modern lens. That's as far as I am taking it.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Logos said:


> Then unless lives are at stake you don't care if anything is done incompetently?


Now you're being (even more) silly (than I am) .


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

shirime said:


> Well, actually, I sort of agree with what you are saying here. The medium, the purpose, the notation, everything about this composition comes from a certain tradition and treats it with an individual language that is informed by the past but _of the present_. Yes, it's always going to exist in a relationship to earlier repertoire, Ferneyhough himself understood this and used the String Quartet as a medium to dissect and reconsider traditional forms, instrumental roles and textured associated with it. Yes, it's a celebration of the past, but it's looking at the past through a modern lens. That's as far as I am taking it.


Well, that's very eloquently put, but I'm afraid the only tradition of the past this reminds me of -and which remains unchanged today- is the young kid's nails on a chalkboard. I played the violin years ago and know enough about the learning process of the instrument that one of the most difficult things is creating an in-tune, smooth tone from the bow on the strings so as not to drive one's family crazy. The screeching in that Fernhough quartet is not consistent with a healthy human condition.

Yes, there are apparently some who find it useful (I can't bring myself to say attractive), but they are so far outside of the Bell curve so as to not be of much use as a predictive example of a growing audience for this stuff in the future.


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## Guest (Jun 21, 2018)

DaveM said:


> Well, that's very eloquently put, but I'm afraid the only tradition of the past this reminds me of -and which remains unchanged today- is the young kid's nails on a chalkboard. I played the violin years ago and know enough about the learning process of the instrument that one of the most difficult things is creating an in-tune, smooth tone from the bow on the strings so as not to drive one's family crazy. The screeching in that Fernhough quartet is not consistent with a healthy human condition.
> 
> Yes, there are apparently some who find it useful (I can't bring myself to say attractive), but they are so far outside of the Bell curve so as to not be of much use as a predictive example of a growing audience for this stuff in the future.


Composers like Ferneyhough, Lachenmann and others use 'traditional mediums' as a way to find un-traditional things to do with it.

Would I be correct in assuming that your violin teacher made you do exercises to help you develop an in-tune, smooth tone from the bow? More importantly, would I be correct in assuming that your violin teacher _discouraged_ you from making sounds that now remind you of 'nails on a chalkboard?'

Quite a number of composers in the last half century have been exploring instrumental sounds in ways which have been taught as 'incorrect' and put them in a musical context. What many musicians find themselves doing is having to 'unlearn' habits in order to learn what is _correct technique_ for a Ferneyhough or Lachenmann piece, just in the same way that you would have been discouraged from making the wrong kinds of noises to play other kinds of repertoire.

Simply put: different pieces require different techniques. Some are more similar than others, but some are less.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

millionrainbows said:


> Eat Your vegetables, Dave. They're good for you. When you are older and wiser, you will see the truth in this.


This reminds me of something I read about the habit of programming "modern" pieces in the middle of concerts, where the audience is unlikely to flee. "Now swallow this medicine, even if you don't like it. And then I'll play you some nice Beethoven." :lol:


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## Guest (Jun 21, 2018)

KenOC said:


> This reminds me of something I read about the habit of programming "modern" pieces in the middle of concerts, where the audience is unlikely to flee. "Now swallow this medicine, even if you don't like it. And then I'll play you some nice Beethoven." :lol:


Typically, modern music either makes up an entire programme or festival, or is performed at the start or the end of a concert here. I think it makes a lot more sense to programme New Music at the start or the end; it allows the audience to consider the relationship the present has with the past. Last year I was in a concert where the programme was _Absolute Jest_ by John Adams followed by Beethoven's symphony no. 9. The quotations from the modern piece at the start of the concert allowed the audience to think about music and style and especially the influence the past has on the present.

One of my friends went to a brass ensemble concert where Elliott Carter's Brass Quintet was followed by some transcriptions of Renaissance pieces for modern brass instruments. He said it was _so_ effective in allowing the audience to notice similarities between them such as rhythmic independence of each line in the overall polyphonic texture.

Everything considered, you might find that audiences are an extremely intelligent bunch of people and do have the capacity to think laterally, rather than dismissively, about modern music on a concert programme featuring music from the past and present.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

shirime said:


> Everything considered, you might find that audiences are an extremely intelligent bunch of people and do have the capacity to think laterally, rather than dismissively, about modern music on a concert programme featuring music from the past and present.


I checked my databases and found zero works by Ferneyhough performed by any major US orchestra in the last three seasons. He seems firmly ensconced in the Los Angeles/San Jose axis of musical education in California, but seems to be missing from our concert halls. Wonder who he's teaching, and to do what.


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## Guest (Jun 21, 2018)

millionrainbows said:


> *Today's values* are money, profit, exploitation of markets, utilitarianism, repetition, promotion of lifestyles, etc.


In your daily experience, perhaps, and I'm sorry if that's all you see. But not in mine. And all of those "values" you list were certainly around historically, along with serfdom and slavery!


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## Guest (Jun 21, 2018)

KenOC said:


> I checked my databases and found zero works by Ferneyhough performed by any major US orchestra in the last three seasons. He seems firmly ensconced in the Los Angeles/San Jose axis of musical education in California, but seems to be missing from our concert halls. Wonder who he's teaching, and to do what.


I don't think his creative output is directed towards orchestral music to be played by major US orchestras. I wouldn't go to the LA Philharmonic and expect to see Ferneyhough just as I wouldn't go to a concert of the International Contemporary Ensemble to see a programme of Beethoven symphonies and Mozart concertos.

Ferneyhough's music gets performed that's for sure. He has had quite a presence at multiple Donaueschinger Musiktage festivals and I know that one of my local New Music ensembles (called ELISION) has performed his music fairly often. I highly recommend their recording of his music released on the Kairos label, if you're interested.

What about Aaron Cassidy? He is a remarkably American composer who has had multiple performances by ELISION and others here in Melbourne, Australia. He's American, unlike Ferneyhough, so I guess his music would at least have more performances in his country of birth, right? Let's not limit ourselves to 'major orchestras' and take a look at where New Music really flourishes.


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## Guest (Jun 21, 2018)

KenOC said:


> Wonder who he's teaching, and to do what.


If you are _really_ interested, then contact him yourself: [email protected]

My guess is that his students are learning composition from him, after all, that's what his area of expertise is, right? That's his profession isn't it?

I contacted Jennifer Higdon and we are facebook friends now. She gave me a list of bright young individuals making their name as composers in the USA, more than a few were students or recent graduates from Curtis, where she teaches.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

shirime said:


> I don't think his creative output is directed towards orchestral music to be played by major US orchestras.* I wouldn't go to the LA Philharmonic and expect to see Ferneyhough just as I wouldn't go to a concert of the International Contemporary Ensemble to see a programme of Beethoven symphonies and Mozart concertos.*


I'm detecting a conflict in reasoning:



shirime said:


> Typically, modern music either makes up an entire programme or festival, or is performed at the start or the end of a concert here. *I think it makes a lot more sense to programme New Music at the start or the end; it allows the audience to consider the relationship the present has with the past. Last year I was in a concert where the programme was Absolute Jest by John Adams followed by Beethoven's symphony no. 9. The quotations from the modern piece at the start of the concert allowed the audience to think about music and style and especially the influence the past has on the present.*
> 
> One of my friends went to a brass ensemble concert where Elliott Carter's Brass Quintet was followed by some transcriptions of Renaissance pieces for modern brass instruments. He said it was _so_ effective in allowing the audience to notice similarities between them such as rhythmic independence of each line in the overall polyphonic texture.
> 
> Everything considered, you might find that audiences are an extremely intelligent bunch of people and do have the capacity to think laterally, rather than dismissively, about modern music on a concert programme featuring music from the past and present.


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## Guest (Jun 21, 2018)

DaveM said:


> I'm detecting a conflict in reasoning:


Except for the fact that ICE _do_ play Mozart and LA Phil _does_ play New Music from time to time, it isn't part of their main repertoire. They are different ensembles with different focusses, that's all.

There is no conflict in reasoning since both posts address different issues. The one referencing LA Phil as an example addresses the fact that Ferneyhough gets performed and recorded by ensembles, musicians, orchestras who play his music, not ones who don't, and he (nor the people who don't play his music) should be criticised for that. One would be considered extremely silly to say something like 'hmmm last time I checked, Arditti quartet hasn't played any Verdi for the past three seasons,' but it's essentially the same kind of comparison.

The longer post is me talking about where I have found modern music to work best on a programme, no matter who the musicians are that are performing the music. It also defends the notion that audiences are intelligent people.

Also: Ferneyhough and Adams are two very different composers; neither of whom are indicative of what New Music _is_ or where and by whom it is performed.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

shirime said:


> ...The longer post is me talking about where I have found modern music to work best on a programme, no matter who the musicians are that are performing the music. It also defends the notion that audiences are intelligent people.
> 
> Also: Ferneyhough and Adams are two very different composers; neither of whom are indicative of what New Music _is_ or where and by whom it is performed.


Now we're getting to my issue. You posted what appeared to be a defense of Ferneyhough's stuff and yet, now you dismiss it just above. Very confusing! 'Modern/New Music' takes many forms theses days. Some of it, perhaps much of it comes from genuine, talented sources and has value. Unfortunately, some of it -Ferneyhough, Michael Hersch and the like- fits in 'the emporer has no clothes' territory and audiences are intelligent enough to recognize it even though they may politely clap when exposed to it.

The premise that people simply need to reprogram themselves and learn to enjoy music that involves screeching violins and random unsettling sounds borders on silliness. Repeating myself: apparently, there are a few people who tolerate and even find value in the most dissonant sounds, but they are not examples of the audience that is likely to effectively promote the best of the 'New Music'.

My main point being that promoters/supporters of New Music will serve their purpose better by focusing on -and informing of- the best of the new music that is most likely to grow new audiences rather than defending the most bizarre.


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## San Antone (Feb 15, 2018)

Thing is, if Ferneyhough is not your cup of tea, there are other living composers, like John Adams (both of them) who write music completely unlike Ferneyhough's - and you might like it.

One thing new music is NOT, and that is monolithic. We live at a time when there is an amazing variety of music being written by a large number of working composers - and much of this music is available on the web, a lot of it for free.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

San Antone said:


> Thing is, if Ferneyhough is not your cup of tea, there are other living composers, like John Adams (both of them) who write music completely unlike Ferneyhough's - and you might like it.
> 
> One thing new music is NOT, and that is monolithic. We live at a time when there is an amazing variety of music being written by a large number of working composers - and much of this music is available on the web, a lot of it for free.


Did you actually read and understand my post because your post seems to be responding to mine, but doesn't address the point I'm making accurately or at all.


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## Guest (Jun 21, 2018)

shirime said:


> Except for the fact that ICE _do_ play Mozart and LA Phil _does_ play New Music from time to time, it isn't part of their main repertoire. They are different ensembles with different focusses, that's all.
> 
> There is no conflict in reasoning since both posts address different issues. The one referencing LA Phil as an example addresses the fact that Ferneyhough gets performed and recorded by ensembles, musicians, orchestras who play his music, not ones who don't, and he (nor the people who don't play his music) should be criticised for that. One would be considered extremely silly to say something like 'hmmm last time I checked, Arditti quartet hasn't played any Verdi for the past three seasons,' but it's essentially the same kind of comparison.
> 
> ...


Crap I meant 'and he should NOT be criticised for that'

DaveM will now understand my post better, I think.....


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

shirime said:


> Crap I meant 'and he should NOT be criticised for that'
> 
> DaveM will now understand my post better, I think.....


Too bad you're not writing in French, where you need two words - "ne" and "pas" - to form a negative.


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## Guest (Jun 21, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> Too bad you're not writing in French, where you need two words - "ne" and "pas" - to form a negative.


:lol: too true, but I had a [bad?] habit of dropping the 'ne' anyway....


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

DaveM said:


> Now we're getting to my issue. You posted what appeared to be a defense of Ferneyhough's stuff and yet, now you dismiss it just above. Very confusing! 'Modern/New Music' takes many forms theses days. Some of it, perhaps much of it comes from genuine, talented sources and has value. Unfortunately, some of it -Ferneyhough, Michael Hersch and the like- fits in 'the emporer has no clothes' territory and audiences are intelligent enough to recognize it even though they may politely clap when exposed to it.
> 
> The premise that people simply need to reprogram themselves and learn to enjoy music that involves screeching violins and random unsettling sounds borders on silliness. Repeating myself: apparently, there are a few people who tolerate and even find value in the most dissonant sounds, but they are not examples of the audience that is likely to effectively promote the best of the 'New Music'.
> 
> My main point being that promoters/supporters of New Music will serve their purpose better by focusing on -and informing of- the best of the new music that is most likely to grow new audiences rather than defending the most bizarre.


I take issue with idea of Hersch with the emperor with no clothes. Ironically I only heard of him and his work through one of your previous posts  Hersch comes across to me not as "loaded" as Ferneyhough, Lachenmann, and Cage. His music is straight forward, in-your-face. Either you love it or hate it (I happen to find him very interesting and love it, and hear clearly how his music is organized).

With Ferneyhough, Lachenmann, and some of Cage, my view is you can't just listen to them casually and say "I like their music, the dissonance", and actually get them. I tried many times, unsuccessfully. And it is not as simple as they themselves may want to claim. You are required to listen from a completely different way, and they are each of them very different. I had to read up on what is their intent, etc.

Some people don't realize that Cage's complex sounding works were aleatoric (random) from notating from star charts, etc. and not really developed in his head how each melody and harmony would work. Ferneyhough said the real music is somewhere between the notation, the performer, the listener. The idea of making everything as complicated as possible is to get this idea across. Performers not expected to fully meet the demands of his microdetailed scores, supposedly from what the performers themselves say. The thing with Lachenmann is he wants the listener to appreciate how the sounds are produced acoustically, and his music stresses that I find.

What I found in common with these three (all categorized as postmodernists) is THEM stressing the openness and ultimate importance of the listening experience, more than figuring out what it's about. I had to insert "THEM" because in the end that is their goal, and not necessarily what we actually make of their music.

Me personally, I'm a conservative, having my own strong views, and could never quite buy into their propaganda, but find them interesting purely in what "they are trying to say with their music", which is totally against their intent as to "what I experience with that music"


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

millionrainbows said:


> GENERALLY SPEAKING,
> Love of Classical music, of the past, is equal to a rejection of the present age and its music. This seems obvious to me.


I don't think that this it's necessarily true. A lot of people who listen to classical music, even older music listen also to completely different stuff. Probably because a person could see a certain quality in a genre and another quality in a different genre or piece.
And when "the past" ends? With the grosse fuge? With Tristan and Isolde? Debussy and his Prelude to the afternoon of a faun? 
With Boulez in the mid fifties?


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## San Antone (Feb 15, 2018)

DaveM said:


> Did you actually read and understand my post because your post seems to be responding to mine, but doesn't address the point I'm making accurately or at all.


I wasn't responding directly to your post which is why I did not quote it. But Ferneyhough seemed to have been singled out by several people, as if he were representative of new music being written today.

It seems to me that some people prefer complaining about what they don't like rather than talking about what they do like - especially when it comes to new music.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Phil loves classical said:


> I take issue with idea of Hersch with the emperor with no clothes. Ironically I only heard of him and his work through one of your previous posts  Hersch comes across to me not as "loaded" as Ferneyhough, Lachenmann, and Cage. His music is straight forward, in-your-face. Either you love it or hate it (I happen to find him very interesting and love it, and hear clearly how his music is organized).
> 
> With Ferneyhough, Lachenmann, and some of Cage, my view is you can't just listen to them casually and say "I like their music, the dissonance", and actually get them. I tried many times, unsuccessfully. And it is not as simple as they themselves may want to claim. You are required to listen from a completely different way, and they are each of them very different. I had to read up on what is their intent, etc.
> 
> ...


Well, apparently not that conservative.  At least you recognize the issue with Ferneyhough et al. Michael Hersch's output is harsh, coarse, shrill and angry stuff. You find some value in it and it seems that there are always a few that do, but I'm thinking about the future of classical music. I have little patience with those who think that whatever is trotted out as CM is just fine and everything is valid under the definition.

Even many years ago back in the 1960s on, CM was not listened to by anywhere near the majority of people, but at least when people heard it they were unlikely to recoil. Now we have these bizarre fringe concoctions that while apparently finding an audience of relatively few, actually distract from modern music that has value and raises the question as to whether it's supporters have lost sight of what CM is. Maybe it's in their interest to have the gravitas of the CM definition, but it's not in the interest of growing an interest in new music that has real value.


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## Guest (Jun 22, 2018)

San Antone said:


> I wasn't responding directly to your post which is why I did not quote it. But Ferneyhough seemed to have been singled out by several people, as if he were representative of new music being written today.
> 
> It seems to me that some people prefer complaining about what they don't like rather than talking about what they do like - especially when it comes to new music.


I think Ferneyhough was only singled out because I used an example of his music to pose a few questions which still have not been completely answered.


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## San Antone (Feb 15, 2018)

shirime said:


> I think Ferneyhough was only singled out because I used an example of his music to pose a few questions which still have not been completely answered.


I don't know what were your questions about Ferneyhough, but I often wonder about the strongly negative reaction to his work (but this might be writing in style of "new complexity", writing works that he did not expect would or even could be performed exactly as written. I believe he wrote in this manner, in effect, to ask a performer to confront the limits of what is humanly possible.

I don't listen to his music often, but respect what he is doing, and have enjoyed his string quartets.


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## Guest (Jun 22, 2018)

San Antone said:


> I don't know what were your questions about Ferneyhough, but I often wonder about the strongly negative reaction to his work (but this might be writing in style of "new complexity", writing works that he did not expect would or even could be performed exactly as written. I believe he wrote in this manner, in effect, to ask a performer to confront the limits of what is humanly possible.
> 
> I don't listen to his music often, but respect what he is doing, and have enjoyed his string quartets.


Yes absolutely. One other thing I have picked up on about his approach to notating scores is his interests in spontaneity in performance when the performer is given so much information that it becomes difficult or impossible to read ahead and prepare for the next bar of information-dense music. 'Memory horizon' I think is what he calls it. When learning some of his music I do encounter this, but that's just one of the things that makes it exciting for me as a musician and others who are listening to it.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

shirime said:


> Yes absolutely. One other thing I have picked up on about his approach to notating scores is his interests in spontaneity in performance when the performer is given so much information that it becomes difficult or impossible to read ahead and prepare for the next bar of information-dense music. 'Memory horizon' I think is what he calls it. When learning some of his music I do encounter this, but that's just one of the things that makes it exciting for me as a musician and others who are listening to it.


So this means that so much information is required to play off the page that the brain reaches maximum capacity, a 'memory horizon', perhaps a sort of 'singularity' as in 'event horizon' and the player has to improvise. Right.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

DaveM said:


> Well, apparently not that conservative.  At least you recognize the issue with Ferneyhough et al. Michael Hersch's output is harsh, coarse, shrill and angry stuff. You find some value in it and it seems that there are always a few that do, but I'm thinking about the future of classical music. I have little patience with those who think that whatever is trotted out as CM is just fine and everything is valid under the definition.
> 
> Even many years ago back in the 1960s on, CM was not listened to by anywhere near the majority of people, but at least when people heard it they were unlikely to recoil. Now we have these bizarre fringe concoctions that while apparently finding an audience of relatively few, actually distract from modern music that has value and raises the question as to whether it's supporters have lost sight of what CM is. Maybe it's in their interest to have the gravitas of the CM definition, but it's not in the interest of growing an interest in new music that has real value.


Stravinsky turned some heads, but is conservative in his approach. Some of Beethoven's music is angry. Berlioz was outrageous to even Stravinsky and Boulez. Bartok's harmony is as unflinchingly disonant as any composer I ever heard, but is an ultra-conservative. I think the musical language and expression is relative. For me, it's the utility of musical systems at work in a piece that determines real value, past and present.

But there is some music which seeks to undermine those systems, by redefining music or broadening its definition, which is where some draw the line. But even if others want to see it that way, there is no harm. Music can't really go backwards.


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## Guest (Jun 22, 2018)

DaveM said:


> So this means that so much information is required to play off the page that the brain reaches maximum capacity, a 'memory horizon', perhaps a sort of 'singularity' as in 'event horizon' and the player has to improvise. Right.


In a sense, yes. It's a remarkable idea, I think, in how it values the individual musicians' interpretative judgements.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

DaveM said:


> ...Michael Hersch's output is harsh, coarse, shrill and angry stuff.


In response:



Phil loves classical said:


> ...Some of Beethoven's music is angry...


Yup, can't tell the difference: :devil:


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## Guest (Jun 23, 2018)

DaveM said:


> In response:
> 
> Yup, can't tell the difference: :devil:


Very cool stuff! Both of them..........they both certainly more than a few similarities albeit with different _pitch languages........_


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