# Why does music always have to move "forward"?



## Stargazer (Nov 9, 2011)

This may be a naive question, but it's something that I am curious about and would like to hear different opinions on. Basically what I am wondering is why music always has to "progress". It isn't the progress that I question because I agree that it is good and almost necessary, but it's more the fact that people always seem to be looking constantly forward rather than backward. I'll try to explain what I mean by this below.

Towards the end of the Baroque era, everyone stopped composing in the Baroque style and started taking up Classical. Soon it was out with classical and on with romanticism and so on. Even in terms of popular music, if you look at music from the 60s to today it has undergone a huge shift in style. But why, as music evolves, does no one really continue to produce music from the previous eras? For example, why don't any composers today continue to write music in the Baroque or Classical styles? Of course I'm sure there are a few who do but they certainly aren't in any majority. It seems to me personally that each new era of music would be additive (in other words, it would just add an extra style of music to all of the existing ones), but it seems that in reality when a new era or style comes along it largely replaces all of the previous ones.

I always hear the argument that "Everything has already been done in such-and-such style, so you have to move on". But it seems to me that with such a huge amount of possibilities in music that it'd be pretty hard to completely run out of things to write! I don't know a ton about music theory though so I could be wrong. So what do you all think?

I hope I was able to get my point across clearly, I couldn't think of how best to word it lol.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

See this old thread of mine. Apparently I am considered by experts, at best, to be an aspiring writer of "models." To others, it is a pointless exercise, but at best it is an exercise to work on "technique." I wholeheartedly disagree. I think the Romantic Era of individuality is long and gone. Now its about writing what sounds good to you. People write things that sound like Shostakovich, but don't have the balls to say that an earlier style is just as possible and write that. I have written two short pieces, one that I'm finishing the touches on that do not "imitate," and use good voice leading and rhythmic tricks. They show a developing competency of compositional skills and are enjoyable to listen to when played properly, enjoyable in the sense of interest, not of ear candy because I use common practice techniques.


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

Movement can jump backwards and repeat itself.


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

Think about stories and films. They're not always linear, but they always move forward. 

Non-linear films don't go backwards, nor do stories, they jump backwards and then moves forward still; even Memento, Nolan's rebellion against linear narration, has to move forward in each of its 5 minute snips. 

Nothing goes "backwards". If it moves backwards we wouldn't understand it.

edit: nvm.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

brianwalker said:


> Movement can jump backwards and repeat itself.


Lets make an analogy to evolution. Consider the fact that the world teems with species of various levels of evolutionary advancement. Bacteria continued to evolve into other species of successful bacteria. Simple eukaryotes did the same. What's the parallel? Damned if I know(John Cage is not "Modern Human" music if we are going to go there), but considering the analogy on the whole, all these species are alive and coexist and progress and continue to variate in their various independent levels. Same could be true of music. People just have weird western ideals that I am always thinking about.


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## Operadowney (Apr 4, 2012)

I'm a big proponent of the idea that the pendulum always must swing backwards. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Eventually we go backwards to go forwards. We develop new styles by first looking at what we've already done. There is a classic example from the opera world, the Baroque pastiche that was played at the Met, the Enchanted Island. Common Baroque pieces and techniques. Audiences completely ate it up, opening the door to more productions like that.


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

clavichorder said:


> Lets make an analogy to evolution. Consider the fact that the world teems with species of various levels of evolutionary advancement.


Everything alive today is equally evolved as everything else, or it would be extinct. To be alive means to have adapted successfully to your environment. 
If one writes pastiche of music from a bygone era one can be said to have not adapted to one's environment in as much as the world doesn't want to hear music that is mere imitation of past masters.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Petwhac said:


> Everything alive today is equally evolved as everything else, or it would be extinct. To be alive means to have adapted successfully to your environment.
> If one writes pastiche of music from a bygone era one can be said to have not adapted to one's environment in as much as the world doesn't want to hear music that is mere imitation of past masters.


You didn't pick up on the nuance of my post did you?


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## Stargazer (Nov 9, 2011)

Petwhac said:


> Everything alive today is equally evolved as everything else, or it would be extinct. To be alive means to have adapted successfully to your environment.
> If one writes pastiche of music from a bygone era one can be said to have not adapted to one's environment in as much as the world doesn't want to hear music that is mere imitation of past masters.


So they'd prefer to hear music that is an imitation of current masters instead? Because let's face it...for every one idea that's original there's a thousand more that aren't. And just because the music may be in a style of the past doesn't mean it has to forgo all elements of originality. I guess in my opinion, music is written and listened to purely for enjoyment...why should a certain style of music become less enjoyable because of a few more years under your belt? And I really don't see it only with music either...I've noticed it with movies, art, writing...really all of those sorts of things...once something new comes along the old is pushed aside. One area I can think of (off the top of my head) that has in many ways had a parallel development is architecture...while architectural styles are constantly being modified and modernized, many past styles such as Roman and Victorian are still widely prominent.

You do make a good point though, and I can understand it from the perspective of popularity...if your goal is to make a living writing music then you do need for it to be able to turn a profit and gain a listening base. So even if someone liked composing , say, impressionistic music if not many people are listening to it he may stop. There was actually an interesting thread I saw on here recently about the pros/cons of weighing popularity with introspection in terms of music.


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## jalex (Aug 21, 2011)

Because new styles arise as the results of the creation of new sound worlds and new musical possibilities, and it is generally seen as irresponsible for a serious artist to ignore these. http://www.classicalmusicisboring.com/archive/2011/04/cmib00130.html

Though the idea of an overall musical 'progress' does not make any sense to me. It seems to imply teleological thinking - what are we 'progressing' towards? What is our goal?


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## martijn (May 4, 2011)

Completely agree with you, Stargazer. I even read lately Charles Rosen stating that music has to move forward. Then I think: "Dear mr Rosen, why do composers have to change all the time, and are you still writing books about composers who lived centuries ago, and playing old music on your concerts"? There seems to be a double standard: composers have to be new all the time, but the performers, the audience and the critics are almost entirely occupied with old music.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

Stargazer said:


> This may be a naive question, but it's something that I am curious about and would like to hear different opinions on. Basically what I am wondering is why music always has to "progress". It isn't the progress that I question because I agree that it is good and almost necessary, but it's more the fact that people always seem to be looking constantly forward rather than backward. I'll try to explain what I mean by this below.
> 
> Towards the end of the Baroque era, everyone stopped composing in the Baroque style and started taking up Classical. Soon it was out with classical and on with romanticism and so on. Even in terms of popular music, if you look at music from the 60s to today it has undergone a huge shift in style. But why, as music evolves, does no one really continue to produce music from the previous eras? For example, why don't any composers today continue to write music in the Baroque or Classical styles? Of course I'm sure there are a few who do but they certainly aren't in any majority. It seems to me personally that each new era of music would be additive (in other words, it would just add an extra style of music to all of the existing ones), but it seems that in reality when a new era or style comes along it largely replaces all of the previous ones.
> 
> ...


For professional composers today I think it would be rather silly of them to compose music that sounds like it was written 200 years ago if they want to be recognised.

Following post from thread Clavichorder mentioned:



ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> I haven't read this whole thread yet, but I think the question of the OP is rather silly. Professional contemporary composers are recognised by listeners as contemporary composers because their music would hardly be confused with music by Mozart. Beginner composers of this day and age would often start off writing in styles of composers who died at least 150 years ago to get a feel of what it would be like to compose music that they like to listen to quite often. I know in my early works I tried to imitate composers such as Mozart and Vivaldi (even Tchaikovsky once) but then I felt the need to compose music that doesn't imitate other styles because I realised that all composers should have their own way of doing things and their own way of thinking, and that is how they come up with their own original music.
> 
> When I talk to young teenage composers I would usually ask them to describe their music in their own words. They would often proudly say things like "My music is late classical in style" or "This composition is in the style of Bach" and I am happy that they can imitate music of those old, dead composers because that is how they learn. People learn from imitation. Even sometimes I imitate other composers as an exercise to learn new things and it really works. But I always go back to my own voice, use my knowledge of other composers' styles and draw on their counterpoint and melodic writing but always incorporating these techniques in music that (I hope) doesn't sound like it could be written by anyone who lived 250 years ago.
> 
> Having said that, I'm only 14 and I know I still have a long way to go with composition and I do imitate other composers sometimes but always using my own voice. Composing music that imitates the past is very relevant and shows who and where we are as part of musical history as well as teaching us about music history etc., but in the end if all composers wrote in the style of Bach we'd get bored of the same old stuff even if every piece sounds different. *Human beings evolve, change and adapt and that's what happens to our music too.*


Key point in last sentence.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

martijn said:


> Completely agree with you, Stargazer. I even read lately Charles Rosen stating that music has to move forward. Then I think: "Dear mr Rosen, why do composers have to change all the time, and are you still writing books about composers who lived centuries ago, and playing old music on your concerts"? There seems to be a double standard: composers have to be new all the time, but the performers, the audience and the critics are almost entirely occupied with old music.


Maybe because we know more about older music...

I don't understand your sentiment though, are you against composers and music changing? By that logic we would all just be beating on rocks with sticks still.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

martijn said:


> Completely agree with you, Stargazer. I even read lately Charles Rosen stating that music has to move forward. Then I think: "Dear mr Rosen, why do composers have to change all the time, and are you still writing books about composers who lived centuries ago, and playing old music on your concerts"? There seems to be a double standard: composers have to be new all the time, *but the performers, the audience and the critics are almost entirely occupied with old music*.


They are the conservatives of modern society.


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## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

Music doesn't _have _to move forward and people often mistake mere change for progress.

However, you _could _argue that, for example, western European art music of the late nineteenth century represents a progression form that written in the early part of that century in the sense that works from the 1800s could have been written in the 1890s, but some works written in the 1890s would have been inconceivable in the 1800s.

You _could _argue that Beethoven was able to write string quartets of the calibre he did because of the models shown him by Haydn and Mozart. You might even argue that Beethoven had to have written his op18 quartets in order to write the Rasumovskys which he had to write before he could have written the late quartets. A composer whose first quartet was Beethoven's op135 and last was his op18/2 would be intuitively thought by most people to be rather odd. There is a perfectly acceptable psychological concept of personal maturation and we instinctively want to see an artist's body of work as reflecting their personal maturation. In that sense there is personal progress. We then project the personal onto the collective (which is not necessarily or entirely a valid thing to do).


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

martijn said:


> Completely agree with you, Stargazer. I even read lately Charles Rosen stating that music has to move forward. Then I think: "Dear mr Rosen, why do composers have to change all the time, and are you still writing books about composers who lived centuries ago, and playing old music on your concerts"? There seems to be a double standard: composers have to be new all the time, but the performers, the audience and the critics are almost entirely occupied with old music.


This is an odd way of looking at things.
Many actors and directors spend a great deal of their lives being occupied with Shakespeare but you wouldn't expect a play written recently to use the language and metre of the Bard would you?
What would be the point of a poet today writing in Chaucerian english. Or a painter painting like Rembrandt?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Western culture has its long-term traditions, and classical music is one of them: but those traditions do shift and change. 

Part of that western tradition, at one tempo or another, is innovation, which is valued. One has to look to the arch-conservative eastern cultures, China, India, to find a culture where the society itself, and its arts and crafts, are maintained and kept to a manner of being done exactly as they have been done for several hundreds of years or longer.

Within that conservative tradition, there is little inherent interest to a replicate carving in one style which, two hundred years previous, has once been 'animated' and 'new.' The later replications, even with slight twists and later variants, are not fresh inventions, and they look, sound, feel like it -- they are less literally 'vital.' 

Within the western tradition, 18th century British furniture has less presence and vitality because it is a continued replication of 17th Century British furniture, the 17th century being the style when it was new, vital and fresh. Holding to tradition, vogue or politic, can make things stale.

Both aspects, valuing innovation and the opposite of adhering strictly to tradition, have value, the latter more in a kind of stability and comfort found in that stability for its people. 

If you look at the roster of great composers, I think you will find there are about an equal amount of 'conservatives' as there are those held in esteem as the innovators. Bach was not so much an innovator as a summarizer, where Monteverdi was much more an innovator, for example. Schubert was 'conservatively progressive' but never a radical innovator. Brahms was a near retro-reactionary composer in his own time, as was later, Rachmaninov -- both had, nonetheless, some of the modernity of the harmony of their time. Shostakovitch was not so much an innovator as a contemporary with a strong taste for past conventions. Stravinsky was both an immense innovator and a backward-looking composer. 

I maintain Stravinsky's neoclassical works never would have existed, or have come out as they did, unless he had first written Petrushka and Le Sacre du Printemps, and only then turned to 'renovating' older musical practice and procedures.

The clearly 'A la manière de' style of writing is also a great tradition; those 'A la manière de' always being tributes where a composer who admires another tries his hand in the others style, using his harmonic language, motor habits, orchestrations, etc. Nothing wrong with it. But I think you would find no good reception to getting people to adhere to writing still and only in the style and manner of, say, Mendelssohn. As much as we can listen to, visit, and enjoy works from earlier eras, the sound, the style, the sensibility within it are 'just not ours.' Ditto in writing in a manner of Shostakovitch, etc.

If you can compose a work of worth in a vein similar to the earlier neoclassical composers, a new take, with a rich understanding of the past while writing freshly enough no one could rightfully call it pastiche, well, then congratulations.

Things move forward, then there is retrospection of the innovations, something gets collected and understood from that, clarifies thought and a new mode and 'new style' is born. This is a common and repeated cycle.

As to actually trying to 'directly keep an old style going,' that old style is as it is because it IS a point of development along a line. Try getting everyone to agree to write only like Mendelssohn, or others of that period. The modern soul is just not going to come up with that music.

Many a brilliant hoax is ultimately detected because it is nigh to impossible to 'slip into' the complete ethos and mentality of another era and another culture. The famous Belgian painter, Joseph van der Veken, a forger, is a sort of anti-hero in the Netherlands. Like all good forgers, he created 'original' works in the style of ..... He scraped down a badly damaged truly antique panel, used all the right period materials, and pawned off a 'Mary Magdalen' -- attributed to the Flemish artist Hans Memling -- and here is why he is an anti-hero; he sold it to Hermann Goering! LOL.

What caught van der Veken out was examination of one of his fake Vermeers. Most Vermeers are small and some have very small renderings of people where the expressions are merely tiny dots for eyes and a few strokes. Nonetheless, apart from his expertise and having used all the right materials, it was those facial expressions which finally tipped that Vermeer off as a forgery -- the people had a look of 'knowing things outside the era,' i.e. they had an ethos, an awareness, just not possible in a 17th century European. 

Similarly, that is why 'writing exactly like some composer of the past' is not going to be wholly convincing - the exercise, because that is what it will forever be -- will be unavoidably 'tainted' by your contemporary self. Writing very much in the manner of Shostakovitch is more likely to give the listener a reaction wherein they are reminded of Shostakovitch and they then would prefer hearing Shostakovitch....

If you are a consumer, you have every choice to just listen to what you want. If you are a performer you can specialize in a period. If you are a composer, you are stuck with being of your own time, and ultimately coming up with a fresh voice and a new contribution to the art. That can be a fresh and wonderful tonal neoclassical piece. A wholesale 'in the style of' may pass as an hommage, an 'A la manière de,' but to write that way as your main aesthetic, like borrowing the persona of another -- just not considered worth much.

I recall a program on a young math prodigy, a girl of eight or ten years old, who had finished her Doctorate at Oxford (or Cambridge, I've forgotten which.) The child's tutor told the student, "Now you have reached this level, you are nothing important until you have until you have made a significant new contribution in the field.' A fresh neoclassical piece, or any fresh piece can then be outstanding. I think a near replication of what was, after all, the invention of another is nothing one could expect to gain much recognition for, past 'showing you can write, or write like that.'

In that regard, the expectation of "Individuality" is even more upon us than it was on the romantic era composers.


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## martijn (May 4, 2011)

I find it very odd that people regard my view as odd. I'm not against change per sé, however in Western culture, change often has become in recent times a goal on itself, and I'm fiercely against that. It's strange that people maintain a double standard: composers should be new, performers and audiences can deal with old stuff. If you point at Shakespeare, Petwhac, you are missing a point about our modern times. It's a fairly recent phenomenon that we started to treat old art that way. Before that mankind had a completely different attitude to it. They would find an old piece of art which they liked, and without being scrupulous in the least, they would transform that piece of art till it fitted their modern taste. Of course more modern interpretations of Shakespeare exist, but the conservative interpretation, especially in performing old music, is dominant. If one adds one little note to a work by Mozart or Beethoven, people will be appalled.

Furthermore, the need for change is contradicted by the fact, that we still enjoy music that is written centuries ago. Apparently music is more of an internal system than some think. The case of forgeries is a good one. If we discovered a lost Passion of Bach, everyone would be amazed, and it would become part of the standard repertoire. If a modern composer would write the exact same work, we would duly praise it as an admirable imitation, and then no one would care about it anymore. It's ridicolous! Our modern time overestimates innovation and underestimates craftmanship. The need for change shows our obsession with individuality and our uncertainty about our position in life. Oscar Wilde wrote about fashion: it's a from of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. It points at something deeper.


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

martijn said:


> I find it very odd that people regard my view as odd. I'm not against change per sé, however in Western culture, change often has become in recent times a goal on itself, and I'm fiercely against that.


I agree that confusing novelty with originality is wrong and that the best composers are original without trying. They can't help it.



> Before that mankind had a completely different attitude to it. They would find an old piece of art which they liked, and without being scrupulous in the least, they would transform that piece of art till it fitted their modern taste.


Example?


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## martijn (May 4, 2011)

Example? You can find it all over the place. The way how Rome incorporated Greece culture, the way how religions borrowed stories from each other (you can find it everywhere), the way how Greek and Roman culture was used in the Renaissance.


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## martijn (May 4, 2011)

Ah, this elitist attitude just drives me furious. It seems to be forgotten that what greatly admired composers like Bach and Mozart largely did, was writing "a la manière de". Yes, they did new things as well, but in that admirable 18th century copying wasn't being regarded as a second-rate art as it is now. I don't think we realize nowadays how many ideas the famous composers from that time stole from their contemporaries. They didn't care, their contemporaries would be flattered - what a healthy age it was!
Then romanticism came - and it destroyed it. It's nonsense that we can't go back to old times anymore, some people seem to confuse physics with music. The music a composer writes is nothing more and nothing less than the result of what he has heard. Let's say we would lock up a modern prodigy and only expose him to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven. You think he would end up writing something like Stravinsky or Stockhausen? Of course not. Someone's music reflects someone's listenings, and of course, when one is exposed to new music, it will change one's own music as well. But it's NO necessity. One can choose to listen to Bach exclusively. The reason why modern works in an old style most often sound stale are very different. They are generally written by composers who have difficulties grasping more modern styles, and stick to older, simpler music. In short, they are incompetent. That's the main reason why imitations don't sound fresh.

I believe PetrB confuses some things: Jef (not Joseph) Vanderveken was not the one who was the famous copycat of Vermeer, I believe he was meaning Han van Meegeren.


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

martijn said:


> Example? You can find it all over the place. The way how Rome incorporated Greece culture, the way how religions borrowed stories from each other (you can find it everywhere), the way how Greek and Roman culture was used in the Renaissance.


I mean a _specific_ example from music of someone transforming the style to fit their modern taste.
And besides, the act transforming it means one is not just imitating a style but making something new using elements of things one may have heard from older styles.


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## martijn (May 4, 2011)

... Well, that was exactly my point, that they weren't imitating it, whereas when we perform a work by Bach or Mozart we (almost) completely imitate the original. 

And come on, don't be so lazy, I gave you sufficient point of references to check out some things yourself. Regard for example the way Rome "transformed" Zeus in Jupiter (only the name change is already an act of transforming) and gave him some characteristics Zeus hadn't had before.


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

martijn said:


> ... Well, that was exactly my point, that they weren't imitating it, whereas when we perform a work by Bach or Mozart we (almost) completely imitate the original.
> 
> And come on, don't be so lazy, I gave you sufficient point of references to check out some things yourself. Regard for example the way Rome "transformed" Zeus in Jupiter (only the name change is already an act of transforming) and gave him some characteristics Zeus hadn't had before.


You made the claim, you provide the example. And as I requested a _musical _example. Or perhaps laziness is one of your faults too.
You are confusing composing with performing. Of course when we perform a piece of Mozart or Shakespeare we stick to the text. That is not _imitating._
When a composer or writer creates a new work it may borrow elements from the past, or from the present. But the goal is to make something new. This is obvious.

You also said..._"If we discovered a lost Passion of Bach, everyone would be amazed, and it would become part of the standard repertoire. If a modern composer would write the exact same work, we would duly praise it as an admirable imitation, and then no one would care about it anymore. It's ridicolous!"_

I have often wondered about this and I agree that would be the case. However, people might still enjoy the music but the composer would not be considered serious because an artist must find their _own_ voice. Consequently, concert promoters and record companies will be unwilling to invest money in such imitations. In the same way that an art collector doesn't want to pay X million for a fake Van Gogh.
Any half decent composer should be able to write in the style of any previous era. It goes with the training. I am deeply suspicious of 'avant garde' composers who can _only_ write 'conceptual' music and have to break some 'new ground' with every work.


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## martijn (May 4, 2011)

If you excuse me, I don't know much music of 2000 years old. It's just that it was common practice to do so in any domain, whether it was religion, literature, and I'm pretty sure, music.

I still believe you are not getting my point. To the standards of these ancient people, our "sticking to the text" would be quite bizarre. It's _accepted_ nowadays that performers stick to the text. But you confuse the common practice with how it has to be. That we got used to something, doesn't mean it's logical. There's no reason why a modern performer faced with a work of Mozart couldn't say: "Hey, here is an interesting work, but I find the rhythm rather dated, I perform it with rhythms of Stravinsky". Why does a composer who gets inspired by Mozart have to transform it in something modern, and not the performer?
And as I already implied, this "own" voice is a modern invention, a sign of our vain times. In the old days composer's didn't care so much for their own voice as we do, and rightly so. It's very easy to prove the unnecessity of this: what if you listen to this imaginery Bach passion I just mentioned. First I tell you it's by Bach. You love it, play it over and over. Then after some months I tell you it's by a modern composer. Is it suddenly a lesser work? Does it suddenly lack a voice of its own? That would be just bizarre to state. Even more so, probably it wouldn't sound like Bach, but something a bit similar to Bach. But should we accuse Bach if he sounds a bit similar to one of his contemporaries in one of his compositions? Of course not. The idea of individuality of an artwork that's dominant nowadays has become completely foolish.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

martijn said:


> F*urthermore, the need for change is contradicted by the fact, that we still enjoy music that is written centuries ago. *Apparently music is more of an internal system than some think. The case of forgeries is a good one. If we discovered a lost Passion of Bach, everyone would be amazed, and it would become part of the standard repertoire. If a modern composer would write the exact same work, we would duly praise it as an admirable imitation, and then no one would care about it anymore. It's ridicolous! Our modern time overestimates innovation and underestimates craftmanship. The need for change shows our obsession with individuality and our uncertainty about our position in life. Oscar Wilde wrote about fashion: it's a from of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. It points at something deeper.


How on earth is that a contradiction?....

If the classical period never transitioned into the Romantic period, we would just have the classical and prior periods to listen to. But since composers _changed_ their style now we have the classical *and* Romantic period (and prior periods) to listen to. New styles don't replace, they expand.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Is there a mandate written into law that says music has to evolve or remain static? I agree with Jeremy's post. Certain innovative composers come along each generation or era that inspire others to move in a similar direction and it becomes a collective force to the delight of some, and to the chagrin of others.


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## Stargazer (Nov 9, 2011)

violadude said:


> If the classical period never transitioned into the Romantic period, we would just have the classical and prior periods to listen to. But since composers _changed_ their style now we have the classical *and* Romantic period (and prior periods) to listen to. New styles don't replace, they expand.


That was actually what I was trying to get at with my post...that it seems to me that in effect the styles do replace the old ones, simply because people stop producing new works in the older styles. So while you do end up with all of these different styles and periods to listen to...you only have a handful that are being supplied with new and original works. I thought that martijn's point was really good...about how if we discovered a lost Bach work we might venerate it as a masterpiece, but if a new composer happened to write something that was identical it wouldn't be considered relevant and may be called a cheap imitation (which still doesn't make sense to me).

It's really interesting to hear everyone's different inputs and arguments, I think everyone's brought up some really great points ! I feel like my understanding of the issue is much better now than it was a few days ago. But of course, please try to keep it civil and not get too mad at each other lol.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

jalex said:


> it is generally seen as irresponsible for a serious artist to ignore these.


I have a a theory on this. In Mozart's time, there was no recording technology. He did not have nearly as much immersion in older styles as we do now. Recording technology has changed it all.

This crap about the "responsibility of the serious artist" is always a red flag for me. I don't find it so valid.


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

A masterpiece is a masterpiece is a masterpiece is a masterpiece in my opinion.

Quality music is quality music is quality music is quality music.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

violadude said:


> If the classical period never transitioned into the Romantic period, we would just have the classical and prior periods to listen to. But since composers _changed_ their style now we have the classical *and* Romantic period (and prior periods) to listen to. New styles don't replace, they expand.


I think that just because the Romantic style evolved, doesn't mean the classical style had to die. And its not a fossil, its a dialect that can be revived since we have so many written and performed examples, there is no reason we can't build on it.

My own compositional goals are nebulous. My current classical era pieces are rather quirky. I may not be able to help at first sounding closer to neoclassicism. Wouldn't bother me. My intention is not to imitate, but to do what pleases me.


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## martijn (May 4, 2011)

Cnote11 said:


> A masterpiece is a masterpiece is a masterpiece is a masterpiece in my opinion.
> 
> Quality music is quality music is quality music is quality music.


Repetition is repetition is repetition is repetition.


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## Praeludium (Oct 9, 2011)

Yeah, but the fact that Romans changed Greek culture into Roman culture doesn't prove anything. Because they just lived in a different world than us. 
Artists didn't sign their works back then. Actually, they weren't artist, the concept itself didn't exist, yet. And so on. There have been so many cultural and philosophical revolutions, that you can't go back. You can't either compare Roman civilization with the XXth century in occident.


The "what if someone wrote a forged Bach Passion" argument is non-sense to me. You CAN'T write like Bach. As PetrB said, it'll be a pastiche, almost an insult to Bach's music. I don't think anyone could do that. 
Moreover, what matters isn't only the result. Bach's Passions have an history, an origin, etc. they're not just dots on a sheet. And I don't enjoy them just as dots on a sheet.






About the "moving forward" thing, what tells you it worked this way ? This sounds like a retrospective perception of history of music to me. What tells you that moving forward in music is not just a consequence of something else ?
It's more complex than that (Schonberg and Liszt were consciously moving forward. I'm not sure Gesualdo and Beethoven did.), but generally my opinion is that :

You can't take "classical era" or "romantic era" as solid entities, you can't take them as a support for reflexion. They're mere etiquettes, only here as a convention to permit us to immediately think of the late XVIIth century music of European courts and more particularly Moazrt, Haydn and such when we use it.
You can't really use the term "moving forward" for history because this is really too much simplistic, linear and one dimensional. How can you say it moves forward ? To me what we call Romanticism is in some aspects closer to Baroque than Classical. But in the same time, Classical is closer to Baroque in many other aspects. If it moved, it probably moved very slowly and in all the directions at the same time q:
You can't use your subjectivity and way you perceive things to really explain what happened (I'm not sure we can explain it anyway). Because the world and the human was back then different, and you've no way to prove that how you perceive things nowadays was how they perceived things back then.

How could we use simple labels (such as classical) and images (moving forward) as well as our perception of individual of the XXIth century in Occident to describe and explain the sum of so many individualities, so many hazards, so many social, intellectual and historical determinations ?
To put it simply I just think that the way you're questioning yourself and us, from the start, doesn't really work (even if we all do that). 

Anyway, you can think music in this way if you want, but I don't think it works this way. I guess it's my skeptical side, but I can't accept that objectively what was happening is that eras of music moved forward. And there are just so many ways it could move, I just don't know.

Now, that some individuals have constructed something after those perceptions is possible (for instance, I guess Stravinsky made neo-classical music after what he thought of "classical". But it was his own world (which might be taken again and modified by others), it's not an objective truth.


And I think that if people like a pastiche of Baroque opera, it's maybe at least partly because they're in "known territory". No effort to be made. No mystery. Everything is clear, understandable. It uses a language that we hear everyday everywhere since we're child. How wonderful ! Well... for them.


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## martijn (May 4, 2011)

_The "what if someone wrote a forged Bach Passion" argument is non-sense to me. You CAN'T write like Bach. As PetrB said, it'll be a pastiche, almost an insult to Bach's music. I don't think anyone could do that. 
Moreover, what matters isn't only the result. Bach's Passions have an history, an origin, etc. they're not just dots on a sheet. And I don't enjoy them just as dots on a sheet.

And I think that if people like a pastiche of Baroque opera, it's maybe at least partly because they're in "known territory". No effort to be made. No mystery. Everything is clear, understandable. It uses a language that we hear everyday everywhere since we're child. How wonderful ! Well... for them._

I have been shaking my head so long during reading this thread, that it hurts my head. And that last snobbish paragraph. I quit this thread, I will leave this thread to the people who love a work deeply till they find out it's a "pastiche", and then dismiss it.


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

Some individuals were known for their work back then. Exekias in Archaic Greece? That predates the Romans. Polykleitos in Classical Greece? The idea of being an artist did exist back then.


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## Very Senior Member (Jul 16, 2009)

Stargazer said:


> This may be a naive question, but it's something that I am curious about and would like to hear different opinions on. Basically what I am wondering is why music always has to "progress".


 Might it have something to do with the fact that as new generations of composers (or rather would-be composers) come along they have to invent something new in order to attract attention and customers for their offerings? If they merely wrote music in the same fashion as their predecessors, with no innovation, they would presumably risk flooding the maket with basically unwanted material. Obviously, in some cases the market may not have been fully saturated, and there was scope for more of the same, but eventually a point of satiety is reached and the market can take no more, and hence innovation is necessary. I would guess that the vast majority of classical music ever written was unwanted rubbish because the same thing had already been done previously more succesfully by far better composers.


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## Praeludium (Oct 9, 2011)

Cnote11 said:


> Some individuals were known for their work back then. Exekias in Archaic Greece? That predates the Romans. Polykleitos in Classical Greece? The idea of being an artist did exist back then.


I wasn't aware some people did sign their work back then (poor culture, very big gapes in some places).
But maybe it's about the way we define artist and art ?

I'd be curious to know why I've been told/taught that Art as we know it began as the Renaissance, be people certainly aware of Exekias and Polykleitos (philosophy teacher actually. I wouldn't be surprised if there were many little wars between art philosopher and art historian. Let alone between philosophers and historians themselves lol).
It probably is about how we define art (would a painting on a pottery be considered as an work of art ? I guess it's controversial).

Anyway, thanks for making me interesting myself a bit in antique Greek art 



martijn said:


> I have been shaking my head so long during reading this thread, that it hurts my head. And that last snobbish paragraph. I quit this thread, I will leave this thread to the people who love a work deeply till they find out it's a "pastiche", and then dismiss it.


But the fact is that no one ever wrote a pastiche Passion who has been thought to be from the hand of Bach, am I right ? Is it even achievable ? I'd be curious to know if there's one work, even a four part setting of choral, which could sound truly like Bach, and not like something à la manière de.
I'm aware of the cases of the Vitali's Chaconne, Marcello's and Albinoni's Adagios that weren't in fact of them. 
But I'd be curious to know his after listening to their actual work, one could really confound the forged pieces with the original.

Also, I don't understand the snobbery thing. I'm not a snob, and even if I wanted to, with my background, I'd have hard times to be one.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Cnote11 said:


> Some individuals were known for their work back then. Exekias in Archaic Greece? That predates the Romans. Polykleitos in Classical Greece? The idea of being an artist did exist back then.


Geeze I'm blanking on the name so much. Who was that famous Greek guy that discovered the basic ratio system of sound wave lengths?


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

I consider sculpture and pottery to be art. The idea of signing painted works began largely in the Renaissance, but you had many famous artists prior to that who were concerned with aesthetics, technique, and the like. Don't forget that they also did fresco painting. These things were documented by scholars of the era who wrote about art and artists.

Edit: When I say "pottery is art", I do mean pottery itself, but in this context I was referring to pottery that is painted with art intent in mind, such as the Exekias' pottery.


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

violadude said:


> Geeze I'm blanking on the name so much. Who was that famous Greek guy that discovered the basic ratio system of sound wave lengths?


I take it you're talking about Pythagoras. Also, for an example of what martitaingggnaaj was talking about when it comes to music, one only has to look towards the folk music tradition to see examples of what he was referring to.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Cnote11 said:


> I take it you're talking about Pythagoras. Also, for an example of what martitaingggnaaj was talking about when it comes to music, one only has to look towards the folk music tradition to see examples of what he was referring to.


YA that's it! I can't believe I forgot that name.


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## Petwhac (Jun 9, 2010)

Read this book if you want a very lucid and thought provoking look at progress in music.
Particularly chapter 7 onwards but it's best to read the whole thing which you can do online for free.
It helps if you can read music.
Go here and then click on the tab that says 'read my book'.
http://www.john-winsor.com/

This book has nothing to do with me and I've never met the author who is a composer but if you read the whole thing you will learn a great deal. It has some interesting angles on the evolution of styles.


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## martijn (May 4, 2011)

_But the fact is that no one ever wrote a pastiche Passion who has been thought to be from the hand of Bach, am I right ? Is it even achievable ? I'd be curious to know if there's one work, even a four part setting of choral, which could sound truly like Bach, and not like something à la manière de.
I'm aware of the cases of the Vitali's Chaconne, Marcello's and Albinoni's Adagios that weren't in fact of them.
But I'd be curious to know his after listening to their actual work, one could really confound the forged pieces with the original.

Also, I don't understand the snobbery thing. I'm not a snob, and even if I wanted to, with my background, I'd have hard times to be one._

Sorry, I got pretty pissed off. I think the reason no good forgery on Bach has been made yet is twofold. First, no one has mentioned the fact yet that Bach was an incredible genius, many here consider him to be the greatest genius ever, so only for this reason it wouldn't be easy to make a copy of the same quality. Second, the few great geniuses who would be able to do so, let's say a Stravinsky, had absorbed so many different influences that they automatically would sound different. But theoretically Stravinsky could only have been exposed to Baroque music, and then he would have written Baroque music too. Would it have been a pastiche then? Of course not. That's the part that I disliked: that it would be easy to write in a familiar style. Bach wrote in a familiar style too, the musical fashion of his day. But no one would say it was easy what he did. To be "mysterious" doesn't depend on the style one chooses.


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

I don't really care about mystery in my music anyhow... I just care about the music. Ravel is better than Bach.


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## martijn (May 4, 2011)

You will have all of TC against you from now on, till your bitter end. Curious what your 1000th post will be, we should celebrate it.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

martijn said:


> You will have all of TC against you from now on, till your bitter end. Curious what your 1000th post will be, we should celebrate it.


Who will have all of TC against them?


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

He was referring to what I said about Bach. 

1,000th POST POUR MOI (in the regular sections). Feel free to celebrate martingjana.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Cnote11 said:


> He was referring to what I said about Bach.
> 
> 1,000th POST POUR MOI (in the regular sections). Feel free to celebrate martingjana.


I'm not against Cnote...


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## neoshredder (Nov 7, 2011)

martijn said:


> You will have all of TC against you from now on, till your bitter end. Curious what your 1000th post will be, we should celebrate it.


Vivaldi > Brahms.


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

neoshredder said:


> Vivaldi > Brahms.


Whoa, whoa, whoa.... Vivaldi equals Brahms maybe... with Ravel beating them both out and all three being better than Bach.


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

violadude said:


> I'm not against Cnote...


I don't think he was being serious, violadude 

Thanks for the 77 likes, martinaja


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## neoshredder (Nov 7, 2011)

I'm not a big fan of Brahms as you can see. The early Romantic in general seems boring to me. Tchaikovsky and Dvorak are way more interesting than anything from early years assuming Beethoven is considered late classical.


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## Iforgotmypassword (May 16, 2011)

Personally when I write I try and completely disregard style of any kind and attempt to allow for it all to influence me in one way or another. Whether that is actually reflected within my music... I'm not certain.


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

neoshredder said:


> I'm not a big fan of Brahms as you can see. The early Romantic in general seems boring to me. Tchaikovsky and Dvorak are way more interesting than anything from early years assuming Beethoven is considered late classical.


A lot of Beethove's celebrated works definitely fall under early-romantic. Tchaikovsky and Dvorak are great as well and I would put them up there with Brahms as well.


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## neoshredder (Nov 7, 2011)

Some of it sounds like late Mozart as well. Schubert being an example of that. Not saying it was a bad era. It just doesn't have the excitement of early classical or the late romantic. It seems like a transitional period to what the late romantic would become.


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

Well that is because it was


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Brahms sounds more late-romantic than early romantic to me.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

martijn said:


> I find it very odd that people regard my view as odd. I'm not against change per sé, however in Western culture, change often has become in recent times a goal on itself, and I'm fiercely against that. It's strange that people maintain a double standard: composers should be new, performers and audiences can deal with old stuff. If you point at Shakespeare, Petwhac, you are missing a point about our modern times. It's a fairly recent phenomenon that we started to treat old art that way. Before that mankind had a completely different attitude to it. They would find an old piece of art which they liked, and without being scrupulous in the least, they would transform that piece of art till it fitted their modern taste. Of course more modern interpretations of Shakespeare exist, but the conservative interpretation, especially in performing old music, is dominant. If one adds one little note to a work by Mozart or Beethoven, people will be appalled.
> 
> Furthermore, the need for change is contradicted by the fact, that we still enjoy music that is written centuries ago. Apparently music is more of an internal system than some think. The case of forgeries is a good one. If we discovered a lost Passion of Bach, everyone would be amazed, and it would become part of the standard repertoire. If a modern composer would write the exact same work, we would duly praise it as an admirable imitation, and then no one would care about it anymore. It's ridicolous! Our modern time overestimates innovation and underestimates craftmanship. The need for change shows our obsession with individuality and our uncertainty about our position in life. Oscar Wilde wrote about fashion: it's a from of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. It points at something deeper.


I think just about anyone understands the pursuit of novelty for novelty's sake is about as shallow as it gets. You cannot turn back the clock on our contemporary global society and advertising, and all its shallow marketing techniques - which is where you get an audience who, not knowing better, think Josh Grobin and Sara Brightman are OPERA singers - even saw some article on the web, a zine, where the 'top opera singers' this highly esteemed (LOL) Zine reviewer had listed were all the Marketed Popera singers, none of whom had ever sung an opera, without a microphone, in their life. It is marketing, too, and caving in to pop opinion, that has Valentina Lisitsa or Marc-Andre Hamelin so extraordinarily and unreasonably admired and adored. If anything, I would be more alarmed at what now passes for 'great' in the crop of performers who perform the older repertoire than worry about why people no longer write in the manner of Dietrich Buxtehude

I think you vastly overestimate craft as a merit alone: as Bach had it, so did dozens and dozens of other composers about him in the same era: the distinction - his music, Rameau's Music, are, perhaps, deeper beyond "JUST CRAFT" and that is why they are still speaking to us. Sorry, yes, another B-minor mass close enough to Bach's is Not Bach Inventing That Piece In That Language In That Era - I don't know how much plainer it can get. Perhaps you have not been in conservatory, where you could have seen and heard the otherwise later never-to-heard-again very clever baroque counterpoint exercises many of us there made, learning a craft, certainly, and maybe one or two of those per class 'sound expressive,' but 'Clever Musical Monkey' they were / are, more than anything else.

The fact there are somewhat academic tonal composers or modernist academic composers all whining about why the world is not beating a path to their door is Not a matter of some exclusive power ring of a global establishment keeping their 'talent' out and under wraps. What they write is BORING. Better has been said before, and often years earlier.

Love it or hate it, it is truly unfathomable to me why anyone would want or advocate more 'Bach-like / Mendelssohn-like / Rachmaninoff-like music.

The fact John Adams, a populist composer almost like Puccini is a populist / popular composer, has not stayed in one mold and still attracts audiences is some sort of proof that popular audiences will open that door for a composer 'outside' the current circles of academic trends.

The fact the past is with us, daily performed, recorded and consumed is just proof that some (emphasis, only SOME) of the old work is still valid, it is not any logical argument that later modern or contemporary work is not valid.

I'm afraid I sense that sentimental wish for time to freeze to the limits of the taste of the one calling out for time to reverse. That has nothing to do with any good argument or proof the past was better, any more than one calling out for all old music to sit on a back shelf because Modern and contemporary are the only 'legitimate' and 'relevant' music for our own time.

Basically, not much of a real point or discussion here, IMO.


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## neoshredder (Nov 7, 2011)

violadude said:


> Brahms sounds more late-romantic than early romantic to me.


I don't think Brahms sounds like Tchaikovsky or Dvorak. He sounds more like Beethoven and Mendelssohn to me.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Praeludium said:


> Yeah, but the fact that Romans changed Greek culture into Roman culture doesn't prove anything. Because they just lived in a different world than us.
> Artists didn't sign their works back then. Actually, they weren't artist, the concept itself didn't exist, yet. And so on. There have been so many cultural and philosophical revolutions, that you can't go back. You can't either compare Roman civilization with the XXth century in occident.
> 
> The "what if someone wrote a forged Bach Passion" argument is non-sense to me. You CAN'T write like Bach. As PetrB said, it'll be a pastiche, almost an insult to Bach's music. I don't think anyone could do that.
> ...


Carl Maria von Weber / Ludwig von Beethoven = chronological peers with very near the same birth - death dates. von Weber? = Romantic from the get go. Beethoven = Classicist, beginning to the bitter end. Parallel within the same era, which later 'historians' slapped a date and a label upon.

as you say, this shows they are even less than 'mere etiquettes.' There they are, both going on simultaneously in on period, under one period label. One should never take those history periods so literally


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

martijn said:


> _The "what if someone wrote a forged Bach Passion" argument is non-sense to me. You CAN'T write like Bach. As PetrB said, it'll be a pastiche, almost an insult to Bach's music. I don't think anyone could do that.
> Moreover, what matters isn't only the result. Bach's Passions have an history, an origin, etc. they're not just dots on a sheet. And I don't enjoy them just as dots on a sheet.
> 
> And I think that if people like a pastiche of Baroque opera, it's maybe at least partly because they're in "known territory". No effort to be made. No mystery. Everything is clear, understandable. It uses a language that we hear everyday everywhere since we're child. How wonderful ! Well... for them._
> ...


That last paragraph is redolent of punkish snottery, gotta say, dismissing a wholly original work that way makes you wonder what they do hear when they listen


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

clavichorder said:


> Lets make an analogy to evolution. Consider the fact that the world teems with species of various levels of evolutionary advancement. Bacteria continued to evolve into other species of successful bacteria. Simple eukaryotes did the same. What's the parallel? Damned if I know(John Cage is not "Modern Human" music if we are going to go there), but considering the analogy on the whole, all these species are alive and coexist and progress and continue to variate in their various independent levels. Same could be true of music. People just have weird western ideals that I am always thinking about.


"(John Cage is not "Modern Human" music if we are going to go there)..."
Are we really take your youthful opinions and reactionary statements earnestly? That statement is, imo, without needing to argue for/against or defend Cage, pretty ridiculous - since Cage is both 'Modern' and Very Human, Very human indeed as opposed to the synthetic constructs of any era we normally call 'music.' So, I'm calling you on that one


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

martijn said:


> Completely agree with you, Stargazer. I even read lately Charles Rosen stating that music has to move forward. Then I think: "Dear mr Rosen, why do composers have to change all the time, and are you still writing books about composers who lived centuries ago, and playing old music on your concerts"? There seems to be a double standard: composers have to be new all the time, but the performers, the audience and the critics are almost entirely occupied with old music.


The active artist doese not have the luxury of the consumer, who can pick and choose from which era's bin they wish to listen. The contemporary artist is from their time and must represent it: the consumer can, for whatever reason, indulge in time-travel, including the nostalgia and trappings of costume of the era, if they wish to go that far. *The contemporary artist, like his predecessors were, must remain a contemporary artist.*

*All those past composers some seem to be advocating we should still be writing in the manner of ? -- they were all contemporary composers in their own time, writing Nothing But Contemporary Music For Contemporary Audiences. *

That, regarding this somewhat plea for a retro-reaction from our own time, _says oceans about contemporary listeners and audiences, and evidently some contemporary citizens cum aritist as well_....

*All those composers loved and admired from the past: contemporary modernists - some a bit more conservative than others, but all were making contemporary art. That, I advocate, is the only thing one can deduce from the past having any validity to a living person's role in the same craft in their own time. *


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

neoshredder said:


> I don't think Brahms sounds like Tchaikovsky or Dvorak. He sounds more like Beethoven and Mendelssohn to me.


Hm well would you say that Tchaikovsky or Dvorak sounded like Wagner or Bruckner?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

clavichorder said:


> You didn't pick up on the nuance of my post did you?


I haven't really discerned any _nuances_ from any of your posts in this thread.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

violadude said:


> Brahms sounds more late-romantic than early romantic to me.


Brahms is mid-romantic mush. But he's alright.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

If it is not growing, IT IS DEAD.

I think 90% of the posts here that agree that music should have just stayed in 'the old style.' are ridiculous.

If you want a virtual blood-bath, assemble those who agree to that and then ask them in which period, exactly, should music have stayed??? Ehh?

*The posts from those hopping on the bandwagon for 'no change' may as well read,
"Music of today would be better if I could understand it." *there it is, in a nutshell, basically - LOL.


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## neoshredder (Nov 7, 2011)

PetrB said:


> If it is not growing, IT IS DEAD.
> 
> I think 90% of the posts here that agree that music should have just stayed in 'the old style.' are ridiculous.
> 
> ...


Whatever style the composer wants to use is the style of Classical Music he should do. That means if he wants to do Baroque, let him do Baroque. If he wants to be on the cutting edge of something new, let him do that.


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

I don't think people are saying new styles shouldn't evolve... just that we don't have to stigmatize new music that is made in the old style as well.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Cnote11 said:


> I don't think people are saying new styles shouldn't evolve... just that we don't have to stigmatize new music that is made in the old style as well.


I agree with this, but I also agree that the pieces that are written in newer styles are the ones that history is going to pick out from this era (as with any era). It's those pieces that the world will remember.


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

As a historical trend, most definitely. Each era has always had some defining characteristic, even if that defining characteristic was borrowing certain characteristics and putting them into modern language. I love Modern classical more than any other era... so I'm definitely not one wanting to keep in the styles of others necessarily. I think the neoclassical works are great, and those also fall under modern times. I also enjoy a lot of the "retro" stuff on the "pop music" side. Again, it doesn't mean it has to be a blatant rip off. Too many people want to attach something greater to music than it just being sounds... If a certain melody strikes you and it sounds more Romantic than Modern, why wouldn't you pen it? It just makes no sense to me to have to self-limit yourself.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

neoshredder said:


> Whatever style the composer wants to use is the style of Classical Music he should do. That means if he wants to do Baroque, let him do Baroque. If he wants to be on the cutting edge of something new, let him do that.


If he wants to do Baroque he will be laughed off the stage. When Stravinsky premièred his opera "The Rake's Progress" the audience was expecting some really modern sounding music. But what did they get? Bi-tonal Mozart. They were a little unimpressed.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Cnote11 said:


> As a historical trend, most definitely. Each era has always had some defining characteristic, even if that defining characteristic was borrowing certain characteristics and putting them into modern language. I love Modern classical more than any other era... so I'm definitely not one wanting to keep in the styles of others necessarily. I think the neoclassical works are great, and those also fall under modern times. I also enjoy a lot of the "retro" stuff on the "pop music" side. Again, it doesn't mean it has to be a blatant rip off. Too many people want to attach something greater to music than it just being sounds... *If a certain melody strikes you and it sounds more Romantic than Modern, why wouldn't you pen it? It just makes no sense to me to have to self-limit yourself*.


I agree with this too. I agree with the bolded part, but personally as a composer myself, if I was struck by a romantic melody I would definitely be compelled to do something more contemporary with it, maybe even further into the piece after already being presented in a romantic style. A lot of people here are speaking from a listening point of view, but I think for most composers finding a truly unique voice that doesn't sound like something in the past is one of the funnest things about composition. It's like a personal, spiritual journey almost.


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

Well, knowing me I would probably put a more modern, or at least different, spin on it. Why is this? Because I'm greatly influenced by music from all around the world and modern musics, so I wouldn't just compose in the style of the Romantic, but that would never keep me from introducing a Romaticesque phrase or section if the mood did take me.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Cnote11 said:


> Well, knowing me I would probably put a more modern, or at least different, spin on it. Why is this? Because I'm greatly influenced by music from all around the world and modern musics, so I wouldn't just compose in the style of the Romantic, but that would never keep me from introducing a Romaticesque phrase or section if the mood did take me.


Neither would it I.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

I generally agree that over time music will move "forward" (I would probably simply say that music will move). But in one sense the vast majority of music does not move. During the various periods, most music that was created sounds rather similar to other music of its time. It's rather hard to tell most Baroque composers apart unless one has some expertise or significant listening in that era. Classical era symphonies sound quite similar, and Haydn's symphonies changed _relatively_ little over many years.

In this sense musical style is similar to evolution (clavichorder's analogy). Evolution involves change over time, but what really happens is lengthy stasis interrupted by short periods of significant change. I would suggest that music remains in one style for relatively long periods, and then some events or persons introduce abrupt change. New composers then utilize that style until a new one comes along.

In another thread I mentioned that the _rate of change_ in music has accelerated in the modern era. There are distinctly different styles in parallel, whereas in the past, generally composers wrote in one style except during transitions to the next style. The number of distinct styles in the past 100 years is certainly larger than in the past. I think it's interesting to speculate on why that change has accelerated.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> If he wants to do Baroque he will be laughed off the stage. When Stravinsky premièred his opera "The Rake's Progress" the audience was expecting some really modern sounding music. But what did they get? Bi-tonal Mozart. They were a little unimpressed.


People aren't laughing at it now, it's being staged and produced quite regularly.... If you pander to the audiences expectations of your next work as based upon some earlier work, you will more than risk being a hack. There were also plenty of neoclassical Stravinsky works which came after Le Sacre and kept on coming: that must have been a really non-informed and out of touch audience.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

PetrB said:


> People aren't laughing at it now, it's being staged and produced quite regularly.... If you pander to the audiences expectations of your next work as based upon some earlier work, you will more than risk being a hack. There were also plenty of neoclassical Stravinsky works which came after Le Sacre and kept on coming: that must have been a really non-informed and out of touch audience.


I saw a production of The Rake's Progress earlier this year and I do think of it as being a modern work even though it draws its inspiration from 18th century music and 18th century paintings.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Sometimes I feel like people think of music as being created in a vacuum, with no other influences except a bunch of composers who got together at a meeting one day and said "Hey guys, we're all going to write twelve tone music now, it might **** some people off, but we feel it's the way forward." 

But music doesn't exist in a vacuum, it is influenced by everything around it. It is part of the culture in which it was created. Do you think Beethoven just decided to write "heroic" revolutionary music only because he felt like it? It might be part of the reason, but it was also because he was influenced by the spirit of the French Revolution and the time he lived in. 

Composers didn't start writing micro-tonal music just for the heck of it. They started writing it because science gave them a better understanding of sound waves and transportation technology made the world smaller, allowing them to witness how other more distant cultures used tones that weren't a part of the well tempered system they were used to and this influenced them. It didn't just come out of no where cause some guy just wanted to be new for the heck of it as some people seem to think.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

I still think, Violadude, that the greatest influence, is what you hear. Since I listen to certain music, I'm probably going to begin my compositions with a sound inspired and or derived from that which makes the most sense to me. 

I don't know what any young composer will ultimately end up sounding like. But I do think that one should not try to force themselves to be modern, especially when they are enjoying themselves in learning the techniques of composition.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

clavichorder said:


> I still think, Violadude, that the greatest influence, is what you hear. Since I listen to certain music, I'm probably going to begin my compositions with a sound inspired and or derived from that which makes the most sense to me.
> 
> I don't know what any young composer will ultimately end up sounding like. But I do think that one should not try to force themselves to be modern, especially when they are enjoying themselves in learning the techniques of composition.


I think I've lost track of what this thread is about actually. The OP asked why music has to always move "forward." I wouldn't say that it moves forward either, just moves and changes. But as times change, it is inevitable that the music of the times will change. It's almost a law of nature.

That has nothing to do with what any individual composer should or shouldn't compose but it does mean that if they choose to ignore current trends they probably wont have much influence on anything. If that's not a problem to them then that is their choice.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

clavichorder said:


> I still think, Violadude, that the greatest influence, is what you hear. Since I listen to certain music, I'm probably going to begin my compositions with a sound inspired and or derived from that which makes the most sense to me.
> 
> I don't know what any young composer will ultimately end up sounding like. But I do think that one should not try to force themselves to be modern, especially when they are enjoying themselves in learning the techniques of composition.


That is THE most straightforward and sensible way you have put it yet. It is pragmatic, to write what you can.

The other aspect of academia, well, there is a schedule and you will have to write other ways with which you are less comfortable. If you stayed within the limits of what you now 'can here' there will be no growth, that growth having to do with a fluent and flexible vocabulary, which might include what you are writing like now, only at least 100% better and more interesting than it might already be.

Like going to the gym to rip and build some muscle, that is at least one part of the benefit doing that.

Do not be the protesting student campaigning for writing 'your way' because at the moment it is what you can write and are comfortable with.

We all have to make 'what we can.' I recall a 'lesser' German composer's letter to his nephew, "My symphony no _ is at last finished. I hope to God they like it, because it is how I can write." -- good to keep in mind


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

The problem with pastiches is that it make banal what is original and takes an oversimplistic view of music as deductions from a set of axioms, a "style" that can be endlessly replicated. Pastiche writing is cybernetic manipulation. Consider the following..

"The Surprising Prowess of an Automated Music Composer," by Douglas Hofstadter, in The Invisible Future: The Seamless Integration of Technology into Everyday Life



> In the spring of 1995, I came across the book Computers and Musical Style by a professor of music at the University of California at Santa Cruz named David Cope, who built a music composition system called Experiments in Musical Intelligence (EMI). In its pages I noticed an EMI mazurka supposedly in the Chopin style. This strongly drew my attention because, having revered Chopin my whole life long, I felt certain that no one could pull the wool over my eyes in this department. Moreover, I knew all 50 or 60 of the Chopin mazurkas very well, having played them dozens of times on the piano and heard them even more often on recordings. So I went straight to my piano and sight-read through the EMI mazurka--once, twice, three times, and more--each time with mounting confusion and surprise. Though I felt there were a few little glitches here and there, I was impressed, for the piece seemed to express something. If I had been told a human had written it, I would have had no doubts about its expressiveness. I don't know that I would have accepted the claim that it was a newly uncovered mazurka by Chopin himself, but I would easily have believed it was by a graduate student in music who loved Chopin. It was slightly nostalgic, had a bit of Polish feeling in it, and it did not seem in any way plagiarized. It was new, it was unmistakably Chopin-like in spirit, and it was not emotionally empty.
> 
> I was truly shaken. How could emotional music be coming out of a program that had never heard a note, never lived a moment of life, never had any emotions whatsoever?
> 
> The more I grappled with this, the more disturbed I became--but also fascinated. There was a highly counterintuitive paradox here, something that obviously had caught me enormously off guard, and it was not my style to merely deny it an denounce EMI as trivial or nonmusical. To do so would have been cowardly and dishonest. I was going to face this paradox straight on, and it seemed to me that the best thing to do was to look the monster right in the face. And thus I picked up my telephone and phoned David Cope in Santa Cruz. I reached him with ease, and as he was very friendly and open, I asked him about aspects of EMI's architecture that I had not been able to glean from his book. After a lengthy and informative conversation, we made a point of agreeing to meet next time I was in California. In the meantime, I continued to grapple with this strange program that was threatening to upset the applecart that held many of my oldest and most deeply cherished beliefs about the sacredness of music, about music being the ultimate inner sanctum of the human spirit, the last thing that would tumble in AI's headlong rush toward thought, insight, and creativity.


A computer program can write pastiches. I'm not concerned that a computer program writing music takes the "soul" out of music because any skilled graduate student can write pastiches.

Had Wagner died in 1850, no amount of pastiche writing of his hitherto music could produce Rheingold. Had Wagner died in 1854 no amount of pastiche writing could produce Die Walkure. Had Wagner died in 1859, a pastiche of his previous works will not produce Meistersinger. Throw Meistersinger, Tristan, and Gotterdammerung in a blender and no matter how you blend it you will not produce Parsifal, you'll produce a grotesque monster instead.

Progress is not a rectilinear teleology. Some would say that music has been steadily regression since the turn of the 20th century. But music can't stay still.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

Bach proved well enough on his own that we don't need to just go forwards. We can take stock of what we've got, too. Pretty much all of the composers who kept with the Baroque standards for ensembles and forms, continued to do so into the 19th century and frequently wrote masterworks. Synthesis can be just as good as "progress".


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

In my desire to write Romantic music, it is not to imitate or copy Romantic composers of the past, or to reference them or their era. It is to write my own Romantic music, because it is the aesthetic that speaks most to me. I find it insulting for people to say "we don't write that kind of music any more". Maybe you don't, but I will. I do not agree with fads, or this sort of artistic hive-mind that thinks everybody should be doing something alike. I thought the point of modernism was to give all of us artists freedom, to open up the vast world of possibilities in musical composition, not to open up some doors and then close and lock others. I do believe in progress in music, but the progress I believe in is the expansion of artistic freedom. Freedom to write more dissonant and complex things, and also freedom to write consonant or simple things. Freedom to write in contemporary aesthetic styles or to adopt elements or an entire style from the past, or to come up with something new, whatever is necessary for the artist to really express herself or himself as they choose.

So I reject the notion that one can't write a Romantic piece in 2012, a piece in G-Major for an ensemble format that's several hundred years old, with programmatic content too.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

clavichorder said:


> You didn't pick up on the nuance of my post did you?


Nerither did I, but i really admire you and think you're jolly clever!!


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

neoshredder said:


> I don't think Brahms sounds like Tchaikovsky or Dvorak. He sounds more like Beethoven and Mendelssohn to me.


Brahms and Dvorak had a huge amount in common and Dvorak was a great admirer of Brahms.


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

Is just intonation progress or the ultimate regression?


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## neoshredder (Nov 7, 2011)

moody said:


> Brahms and Dvorak had a huge amount in common and Dvorak was a great admirer of Brahms.


And yet they sound so much different. Having things in common doesn't mean similar Composing style. Dvorak is more similar to Tchaikovsky. Melody being a high priority.


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## mud (May 17, 2012)

I think it goes in circles, like fashion. Other than that, people just keep throwing things out there and whoever happens to be successful gets copied...


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Well it was inevitable. Eventually I had to find myself agreeing with something that BurningDesire had to say.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Music changes, but it doesn't necessarily "move forward." The changes are due to shifts in listener demand, either being satisfied or being anticipated. Marketing 101 (yer gonna hate me for this!)

Even serial music had its demand, though evidently within academia for the most part. After all, serial compositions can be graded! Market segmentation and market differentiation, the way of the world.

Sometimes the market is very narrow but may be quite influential -- as Stalin said, "Le marché, c'est moi." Well, he may have said it in Russian.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Stargazer said:


> I always hear the argument that "Everything has already been done in such-and-such style, so you have to move on". But it seems to me that with such a huge amount of possibilities in music that it'd be pretty hard to completely run out of things to write! I don't know a ton about music theory though so I could be wrong. So what do you all think?


I think we need to look at what "style" means. If I hear a harpsichord, I think Baroque. That's obvious to our ears.

But also, there is a stylistic knowledge of the craft itself, meaning harmony and harmonic mechanisms, a "hamonic vocabulary," which goes along with every era. You have to "hear" these things musically.

When I hear Frank Zappa's "Orchestral Favorites," I notice that he is very tonal, in many ways, But suddenly, a rhythmically complex passage will appear, or a series of meter changes, or strange chord formations, even sections of what sounds like Varése-ian 12-tone writing, non-tonal.

For me, Frank Zappa's music answers all of the questions of style, and idea. I'll list some of Zappa's stylistic innovations:

Use of "irrational" rhythmic divisions, as Boulez and Stockhausen used, such as 7:4, 7:5, 5:4, those bracketed things which say "5 beats happen here where 4 would normally be." See "The Black Page" for best examples of this.

New timbres and textures from new instruments, electronic ones, as well as the use of the recording studio itself to create combinations not known before. See "Peaches en Regalia" and "The Uncle Meat Variations."

New miking and recording techniques: Zappa's use of Crown PZM (pressure zone microphones), weird flat mikes which have no phase errors; he miked the entire orchestra in a dry London soundstage, then added digital reverb later. See Frank Zappa/London Symphony Orchestra.

The rest of classical music is a museum, performed by brilliant musicians. This is a good time for performers, not composers.

Composers? Who needs 'em? Nobody seems to really need composed music, except the movie industry. Now computers, pre-recorded oldies, and "sound designers" seem to be emerging. These latter are like artists who can't draw, and use clip-art to make compositions.
Frank Zappa had to very willfully define himself as a modern-day composer, mostly at his own monetary expense.

Now, with file sharing, even recorded artifacts like CDs are un-sellable. Groups make more money off of live shows, T-shirts and concessions, and give the CDs away for free.


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## mud (May 17, 2012)

Did you know that the Tarzan yodel sounds exactly the same backwards? They say this proves it was an engineered sound effect.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

neoshredder said:


> And yet they sound so much different. Having things in common doesn't mean similar Composing style. Dvorak is more similar to Tchaikovsky. Melody being a high priority.


I'm surprised you say this as there are many reflections of both in one anothers music.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

mud said:


> Did you know that the Tarzan yodel sounds exactly the same backwards? They say this proves it was an engineered sound effect.


Well, it proves at least that the yodel was influenced by Haydn's 47th Symphony, "The Palindrome." It predates Simpson, of course.


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## mud (May 17, 2012)

That's interesting (not that I can hear it), but I mean the Tarzan recording sounds no different when reversed. If you reverse the Haydn recording, it sounds different.


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

millionrainbows said:


> The rest of classical music is a museum, performed by brilliant musicians. This is a good time for performers, not composers.


That it's a good time for performers and not composers is not some arbitrary thing decided by an ideologically motivated nostalgic audience. There was only one Dante in Italy. It's absurd to accuse audiences of being irrational when they want to read Dante and other 15th, 16th century Italian poets that came after him. How many Italian poets after Dante can you name? Great art follows the strong law of small numbers. 

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/10/sacred-music-sacred-time

Western music sprang into life in full armor, like Athena from the head of Zeus, once the musicians of the fifteenth century learned to integrate rhythmic and tonal emphasis on a broader scale than note-by-note setting. Tinctoris remarked in 1470 *that all the music worth listening to had been written in the preceding forty years*-at the only moment in music history when a leading musician would have made that remark, and when it would have been true. This uniquely Western art came into full flower in the last third of the fifteenth century in the Flemish school of Dufay, Ockeghem, and Josquin and was adopted by the Catholic Church in the middle of the sixteenth century during the generation of Palestrina and Victoria. 

Does Tinctoris' pronouncement damn all the musicians before his time to oblivion? Is his progressivism not the mirror image of the conservatism you accuse the audiences of today harbor? But what is the difference, after all? For we could imagine that all things happening in reverse, and a* musician 50 years before Tinctoris' saying that no music worth listening to has been composed in the past ten years. * And that would mean the same thing as Tinctoris' judgment, and yet we would applaud Tinctoris' judgment but not that of the musician 50 years before his time.

Things begin; they end. They begin again.



martijn said:


> Completely agree with you, Stargazer. I even read lately Charles Rosen stating that music has to move forward. Then I think: "Dear mr Rosen, why do composers have to change all the time, and are you still writing books about composers who lived centuries ago, and playing old music on your concerts"? There seems to be a double standard: composers have to be new all the time, but the performers, the audience and the critics are almost entirely occupied with old music.


There is progress, and there is decline. Greek Tragedy ended with Euripides. No one complains that Euripides successors are rarely studied, that on the curriculum it's Aeschylus, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Sophocles, and more Sophocles.

Are you fond of 17th century English theater, sir?


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## neoshredder (Nov 7, 2011)

moody said:


> I'm surprised you say this as there are many reflections of both in one anothers music.


WRONG! One music is melodic and the other music is dense.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I think two things go on. 

1. Fashions change. This is in no way progress, though it always seems like progress to the people at the time. 

2. Technologies change. This is generally real progress. Composers/musicians become able to do things their predecessors literally couldn't do. Someone - I can't remember who - argued that the history of pop music is essentially the history of recording technology: every time a new thing was invented (such as stereo sound, for instance), the musicians figured out how to exploit it to create new sounds/experiences. I think there's something to that. 

Things have happened particularly quickly in the 20th century, but were I ever to write a history of music - even of classical music - and this is never going to happen because I'll never be qualified - I would put a great deal of emphasis on how technological features affected the music.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

neoshredder said:


> WRONG! One music is melodic and the other music is dense.


 So you are still doing the WRONG thing then! It may have escaped your notice but this is supposed to be a discussion forum.
RICHARD FREED:

Dvorak was very much aware of his indebtedness to Brahms (who remained a close friend the rest of his life)and it is thought that in the piano concerto he was as eager to please Brahms as he was to please the Czech pianist who had asked for the work,

Not surprisingly in the light of Dvorak's newly developed but sincere friendship and admiration for Brahms the latter's influence is as prominent in the violin concerto as the flavour of Czech folk music.
While the finale surely has the last movement of the Brahms concerto as its model ,it is in this movement that the Czech folk element is most strongly felt.


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## BurningDesire (Jul 15, 2012)

brianwalker said:


> That it's a good time for performers and not composers is not some arbitrary thing decided by an ideologically motivated nostalgic audience. There was only one Dante in Italy. It's absurd to accuse audiences of being irrational when they want to read Dante and other 15th, 16th century Italian poets that came after him. How many Italian poets after Dante can you name? Great art follows the strong law of small numbers.
> 
> http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/10/sacred-music-sacred-time
> 
> ...


Actually I would not applaud Tinctoris for such a statement. I would consider it a very stupid statement.


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## Stargazer (Nov 9, 2011)

Hey who necroed my thread lol! PS: BurningDesire pretty much summed up what I was trying to get to in my first post


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## neoshredder (Nov 7, 2011)

moody said:


> So you are still doing the WRONG thing then! It may have escaped your notice but this is supposed to be a discussion forum.
> RICHARD FREED:
> 
> Dvorak was very much aware of his indebtedness to Brahms (who remained a close friend the rest of his life)and it is thought that in the piano concerto he was as eager to please Brahms as he was to please the Czech pianist who had asked for the work,
> ...


If you gave me an obscure piece, I could easily identify if it was Dvorak or Brahms. Brahms couldn't make anything like a "New World Symphony". His Symphonies are quite different.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

moody said:


> Dvorak was very much aware of his indebtedness to Brahms...


And maybe the other way a bit. When Brahms heard Dvorak's Cello Concerto, he said something like "OMG if I'd realized you could do that, I'd have written one myself!"


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

BurningDesire said:


> ... I thought the point of modernism was to give all of us artists freedom, to open up the vast world of possibilities in musical composition, not to open up some doors and then close and lock others. I do believe in progress in music, but the progress I believe in is the expansion of artistic freedom. Freedom to write more dissonant and complex things, and also freedom to write consonant or simple things. Freedom to write in contemporary aesthetic styles or to adopt elements or an entire style from the past, or to come up with something new, whatever is necessary for the artist to really express herself or himself as they choose.
> 
> ....


That makes sense to me. Actually, I was reading an interview by the late Australian composer Richard Meale, and he said the same thing, basically. For him, music as a form of artistic expression was about freedom. Meale guarded against shackling the composer with dogma of any sort, he actually gave the example of East Europe as an example of how that kind of thing went horribly wrong. It's like the ending of Shostakovich's Sym.#5 - the composer is saying I'm free, I'm happy even though you're making my life hell and beating me with a stick. Or in other words, not happy at all. Same can be said of some very harmful dogmas proseletyzed by Boulez and others in the two decades or so after 1945.

But Meale said that because certain ideologues pulled him down for changing his style various times. Making about faces, quite like Stravinsky. So when you change, go one way or the other, you will inevitably have some critics who are not happy with that and they will be very vocal about it. The art world can get very b*tchy indeed. If I were a composer, I wouldn't like that sort of **** quite honestly, its hard enough to compose and get music performed today as it is. Better to look at the quality of the music, the actual music, not some dogma as if music was a religion.

But what I would add of my own, and this is what I've said often, is that not all innovators move music forward light years. Not everyone is a Beethoven, or a Schoenberg, or a Wagner or whatever. There are composers who innovate in more subtle ways, and maybe do a whole heap of innovations which are not noticed until long after. I mean, the debates on whether J.S. Bach is a conservative or radical feed into this quite a bit. Similar with Haydn or Mozart, who innovated a lot in their own way, in many ways anticipating Beethoven and beyond, but not always seen as such. I've even been listening to Andrew Lloyd Webber, and his early musicals like_ Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat _and _Jesus Christ Superstar _where very innovative in the genre, extremely, and they actually come off as fresh sounding today as they must have been 40 years ago when they appeared on the scene.

So its not just about innovations that may sound in your face and very obvious, but also ones that might take longer to notice.


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## Guest (Oct 23, 2012)

Stargazer said:


> Why does music always have to move "forward"?


It doesn't have to, nor, some would say, does it!


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

BurningDesire said:


> In my desire to write Romantic music, it is not to imitate or copy Romantic composers of the past, or to reference them or their era. It is to write my own Romantic music, because it is the aesthetic that speaks most to me. I find it insulting for people to say "we don't write that kind of music any more". Maybe you don't, but I will. I do not agree with fads, or this sort of artistic hive-mind that thinks everybody should be doing something alike. I thought the point of modernism was to give all of us artists freedom, to open up the vast world of possibilities in musical composition, not to open up some doors and then close and lock others. I do believe in progress in music, but the progress I believe in is the expansion of artistic freedom. Freedom to write more dissonant and complex things, and also freedom to write consonant or simple things. Freedom to write in contemporary aesthetic styles or to adopt elements or an entire style from the past, or to come up with something new, whatever is necessary for the artist to really express herself or himself as they choose.
> 
> So I reject the notion that one can't write a Romantic piece in 2012, a piece in G-Major for an ensemble format that's several hundred years old, with programmatic content too.


Good. Agreeable words. We shall all hope that the music you intend to compose are also at least as agreeable.


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

Question to millionsrainbow; does Meistersinger make Wagner a reactionary, a regressive composer? Is it a _*step*_ forward?

Beethoven studied Bach and counterpoint more closely towards the later parts of his life and made his style more classical; is that a step forward or back? His middle period works are far more "romantic".

Johann Christian Bach's innovations which influenced Mozart's form; is that a step forward or a step backwards relative to Bach, JS? Was the step from Bach to Haydn and Mozart a huge regression?

Brahm's motive development made an advancement on Beethoven's but did not make steps towards chromaticism; is that progress or regress? Who moved music forward more, Liszt or Brahms?

Wagner's music doesn't follow the principle of developing variation that Schoenberg found to be the essence of great music. So in that dimension, was his work a giant step back? Or is it a giant step forward *only because* his modulations were appropriated by the Second Viennese School?

Was Brahms a regressive for not appropriating Wagner's modulations like Bruckner and Mahler, e.g. "adaptations of chromatic harmony, tonal ambiguities deliberately exploited, juxtaposition of unrelated gestures" (Abbate 1989).


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## Jaws (Jun 4, 2011)

Stargazer said:


> This may be a naive question, but it's something that I am curious about and would like to hear different opinions on. Basically what I am wondering is why music always has to "progress". It isn't the progress that I question because I agree that it is good and almost necessary, but it's more the fact that people always seem to be looking constantly forward rather than backward. I'll try to explain what I mean by this below.
> 
> Towards the end of the Baroque era, everyone stopped composing in the Baroque style and started taking up Classical. Soon it was out with classical and on with romanticism and so on. Even in terms of popular music, if you look at music from the 60s to today it has undergone a huge shift in style. But why, as music evolves, does no one really continue to produce music from the previous eras? For example, why don't any composers today continue to write music in the Baroque or Classical styles? Of course I'm sure there are a few who do but they certainly aren't in any majority. It seems to me personally that each new era of music would be additive (in other words, it would just add an extra style of music to all of the existing ones), but it seems that in reality when a new era or style comes along it largely replaces all of the previous ones.
> 
> ...


You could ask yourself the same question about fine art. The music styles tended to follow the art styles. What about architecture?


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

brianwalker said:


> Question to millionsrainbow; does Meistersinger make Wagner a reactionary, a regressive composer? Is it a _*step*_ forward?
> 
> Beethoven studied Bach and counterpoint more closely towards the later parts of his life and made his style more classical; is that a step forward or back? His middle period works are far more "romantic".
> 
> ...


It all looks like progress to me, regardless of the direction.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

I'm not sure I would use the term "forward" or even "progress". I would say music changes. That's a good thing; otherwise, we would have hundreds of years of similar music and probably be sick of it by now. 

"Movement" in music seems to me to have changed in a fundamental way in the modern era. Previously, music seemed to be either in relative stasis (not much change) or in transitional periods. The eras (Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic) were periods where much music sounded similar; whereas, during the transition periods between periods, music was changing. That's a bit simplistic especially during the Romantic period, but one could represent music linearly (not maybe a straight line but a line) as it moved. 

The modern era seems less a line than a bush (this metaphor comes from evolution). During the modern era, there were many branches of music going off in different directions (impressionism, serial, minimalism, neo-classical, avant-garde, etc.). So music is not so much moving forward but every which way.


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

Lukecash12 said:


> It all looks like progress to me, regardless of the direction.


That post is a rhetorical answer to this post.



millionrainbows said:


> Also, this "tonal food" tastes good; it sits on the ears like a sweet bread pudding, with no skill except that of swallowing. _You can swallow, can't you?_
> 
> *The further tonality is stretched, the better.*


Tonality isn't stretched very much in Meistersinger yet it's one of Wagner's best works; the prelude to Meistersinger as a standalone is better than the prelude to Tristan even though there's little "tonality stretching" in it. Salome stretches tonality far more than Meistersinger; is Salome the better work?


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