# You call that music???



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Thinking of my long-departed father tonight, who was a traditionalist. When confronted with music of a modernist bent, he would often say, “You call that music?” I admire and respect his position, although he actually grew to like some Stravinsky late in life. A weakness perhaps.

How about you? Are there specific pieces or composers that lead you to risk the scorn of experts and cry out, “You call that music”? Let us know – if you dare!


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## arnerich (Aug 19, 2016)

I don't really have a line in the sand. If a composer, modern or otherwise, is inspired you can hear it in the music he/she composes. I find Ligeti's music to be interesting and inspired but not Hindemith's music.

Perhaps Xenakis would be my answer though... from what I've listened to I find it kind of disturbing. People are free to listen to and like whatever they want. But it's not my cup of tea.


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## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

You've got your popcorn ready for this one yet, Ken?


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## James Mann (Sep 6, 2016)

I believe it is a fully egotistical thing to claim something isn't music just because you don't like it, in my 50 years I've come across too many people with such a condescending attitude to both the music and those who like it. 
To Kenoc, just keep it to yourself


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Chronochromie said:


> You've got your popcorn ready for this one yet, Ken?


I give the popcorn a skip, at least in theaters. I only eat buttered popcorn, and what they use is non-hydrogenated soybean oil that's been colored and flavored. Each tablespoon contains about 130 calories. You call that popcorn? Be warned!


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

James Mann said:


> To Kenoc, just keep it to yourself


Ah, then there are some questions that must not be asked! Do I have that right?


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## geralmar (Feb 15, 2013)

Decades ago when I was in high school I bought the LP of Steve Reich's "Four Organs". I played it over and over in my bedroom until one day my mother pounded on the door demanding that I stop. By that time I was ready to join her.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Cage Etudes - Freeman and Australis


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

At a certain point (when critiquing modern music) I'm afraid the objection becomes a manifestation that one is lacking in comprehensive proficiency.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Klassic said:


> At a certain point (when critiquing modern music) I'm afraid the objection becomes a manifestation that one is lacking in comprehensive proficiency.


perhaps you would like to explain to me how to listen to Cage's etudes in a way which will help me hear them as music rather than random sounds. Here's one


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

"random sounds..." there's your mistake. However, Cage is certainly not my cup of tea. In music he's important, but his music is not important.


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## bz3 (Oct 15, 2015)

James Mann said:


> I believe it is a fully egotistical thing to claim something isn't music just because you don't like it, in my 50 years I've come across too many people with such a condescending attitude to both the music and those who like it.
> To Kenoc, just keep it to yourself


Maybe the people who declare what is and isn't music are just being nice! For instance, McDonald's is a dining experience but nobody calls it that because it would invite comparisons of their greyish fried sludge that's placed on a chemically created bread-like oil and flour substance with real food. It just sounds silly.

I take this view with a lot of pop and rap music*. It's more designed for a mood or purpose like dancing or to drown out your children's screeching than it is to be listened to as art - just like Taco Bell is made to evacuate the bowels rather than to provide nutrition. In fact maybe the bowel movement metaphor is better for this "non-music" music. And that's me being nice but maybe you disagree.

As for composers I'll just dodge that landmine to a large degree by just stating that a lot of classical music becomes too avante-garde for my personal musical standards.

*Read: not _all_ pop or rap, merely a lot.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Klassic said:


> "random sounds..." there's your mistake.


Are you sure?

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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

As far as I'm concerned anything that the creator wants to call music is music. I've never found it possible to draw a theoretical line between music and non-music, nor do I believe it would be useful to do so.

The question isn't whether it's music but whether it's any good.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

isorhythm said:


> As far as I'm concerned anything that the creator wants to call music is music. I've never found it possible to draw a theoretical line between music and non-music, nor do I believe it would be useful to do so.
> 
> The question isn't whether it's music but whether it's any good.


So do you think that the concept of "music" is meaningless?


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Klassic said:


> At a certain point (when critiquing modern music) I'm afraid the objection becomes a manifestation that one is lacking in comprehensive proficiency.


So those who like modern music are the anointed few who have 'comprehensive proficiency'. They just don't have that sophistication to be part of the elite. I don't like sushi, most super-hero movies and I don't like most (not all, but most) 'modern music'. If it takes comprehensive proficiency to appreciate modern music, maybe that's the reason it is, today, a niche within a niche.

People wouldn't worry so much about what people think about modern music if they realized how rarely they do.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> So do you think that the concept of "music" is meaningless?


No, but I think any kind of bright-line definition is impossible and ultimately not useful, as is true of many concepts.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

DaveM said:


> So those who like modern music are the anointed few who have 'comprehensive proficiency'.


Yes indeed, 'at a certain point' this is correct.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

I try to avoid saying "you call that music?", no matter what the music, because I know the answer will always be that _somebody_ calls it music, and I don't necessarily get to trump them. I suppose, if we're talking about the avant-garde, I will descend to the occasional theatrical sigh and an "oh, well, I guess that's music".


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## Magnum Miserium (Aug 15, 2016)

KenOC said:


> How about you? Are there specific pieces or composers that lead you to risk the scorn of experts and cry out, "You call that music"? Let us know - if you dare!


Albinoni. Quantz. Zelenka.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

isorhythm said:


> No, but I think any kind of bright-line definition is impossible and ultimately not useful, as is true of many concepts.


Yes but there's a difference between saying that a "bright-line definition is impossible" and that "anything that the creator wants to call music is music" There's a community of speakers, users of the concept, not just the creator, and they'll all play a role in determining whether to extend the concept to hard cases like the Cage Etudes of Ferrari's Presque Rien. How the hard cases get decided is a big question of course . .


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> Yes but there's a difference between saying that a "bright-line definition is impossible" and that "anything that the creator wants to call music is music" There's a community of speakers, users of the concept, not just the creator, and they'll all play a role in determining whether to extend the concept to hard cases like the Cage Etudes of Ferrari's Presque Rien. How the hard cases get decided is a big question of course . .


Right, exactly. There's a common community of speakers, and that's what we can make statements about. E.g., virtually everyone will use the word music to describe Beethoven's 5th; some smaller number will use it to describe Xenakis' Legende d'eer; and a still smaller number will use it to describe 4'33". (And no one will use it to describe novels or paintings.) We can then talk about what it is about these pieces and how people react to them that causes these differences.

We could also come up with some strict definition that would include some things and exclude others without ambiguity, but I'm not sure where that gets us.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Isorhythm's views in several posts above speak for me too. I too see no point in declaring "That's not music!" about anything others are listening to as music. Likewise, the issue for me is always whether I find it to be interesting music that is worth my time and intention.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

EdwardBast said:


> Isorhythm's views in several posts above speak for me too. I too see no point in declaring "That's not music!" about anything others are listening to as music. Likewise, the issue for me is always whether I find it to be interesting music that is worth my time and intention.


EB my friend, you make an important point. Do some works not have high value in themselves even if the listener does not fancy the music? Some work is great by nature. There are many pieces "worth our time" that will probably never be given the attention they deserve. From time to time genius does impose upon music. I say this is when we ought to pay the most attention.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> perhaps you would like to explain to me how to listen to Cage's etudes in a way which will help me hear them as music rather than random sounds. Here's one


Interesting. This is not music that I knew anything about, nor music that I would choose to listen to again, probably.
However, I certainly didn't hear it as 'random sounds'.

I think everyone has their own way of listening. Because, I suppose, I was born that way, from a very early age I have been 'into' words, stories, songs, and dances - I am essentially a linear & literary listener. So I heard this piece as if it was someone holding a conversation with himself or trying to make a statement about the universe. My brain related every sound to the one before & it became a sigh or a wry comment or a 'let's try again'.

And as a matter of fact, I listen to 'traditional' classical music in the same way - I remember when I broke my leg at the age of six and was left downstairs in the lounge with classical music on 'the wireless' and I listened by imagining a ballet to the music which was enacting a story, usually a romance.

You, however, hear it as random sounds. We all listen in our own way.

Even though it's not my usual cup of tea, in a short burst it had a certain 'je ne sais quoi', and I would definitely call it music.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

The Cage piece posted above doesn't sound at all random to me, in fact to my ear it has a great sense of gesture and flow. I was not familiar with the series before now, but a cursory glance shows that in fact the work is deliberately, almost excessively detailed and precise, pointing towards New Complexity with its density of performance information.

I think with Cage, people tend to see the word "chance" and assume this means "random," which I think is an understandable error. The piece posted above was apparently composed using controlled chance processes, but the performance itself does not involve chance. Chance in performance is something he used extensively in many of his major works, but it is still entirely prescriptive, because Cage uses systems which limit possible outcomes to a determined set, whether large or small. How exactly one composes using the I Ching, I don't know, but that is a mystery to which I do not personally seek answers.


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## Gordontrek (Jun 22, 2012)

Almost the entirety of Stockhausen's oeuvre. I call it "noise" rather than music. Of course, when I say this the usual counter is that I simply "don't have the listening skills" to appreciate it. Pretentious, nonsensical cop-out. I've given it multiple opportunities to grow on me but I normally end up regretting the experience. I feel the same way for much of John Cage as well, who seemed to write stuff just for attention. 
There is a lot of modern pop music that seems to just BARELY qualify as music, but I won't really go there.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Gordontrek said:


> Almost the entirety of Stockhausen's oeuvre. I call it "noise" rather than music.


Why don't you just call it bad music? Put aside the merits of Stockhausen for a moment. What is the distinction between "not music" and "bad music," for you?


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

Gordontrek said:


> Almost the entirety of Stockhausen's oeuvre. I call it "noise" rather than music. Of course, when I say this the usual counter is that I simply "don't have the listening skills" to appreciate it. Pretentious, nonsensical cop-out. I've given it multiple opportunities to grow on me but I normally end up regretting the experience. I feel the same way for much of John Cage as well, who seemed to write stuff just for attention.
> There is a lot of modern pop music that seems to just BARELY qualify as music, but I won't really go there.


Stockhausen was a genius, but this does not mean I like his music.


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## Gordontrek (Jun 22, 2012)

isorhythm said:


> Why don't you just call it bad music? Put aside the merits of Stockhausen for a moment. What is the distinction between "not music" and "bad music," for you?


See, that's a realm I don't particularly want to visit, because it's too subjective. But you asked what it means for me, so I'll do my best to explain. 
When I hear an orchestra warming up I hear a very loud hodgepodge of sound. I can barely distinguish anything individual in the sounds I'm hearing. It's mostly random, though it is usually made up of every member of the ensemble playing an excerpt from a piece on the program, or an instrument-specific warmup. Could one call this music? The answer could be yes, depending on who you ask (there's the subjectivity again). But as to whether it is _good_ music, you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who could call it that. Personally, I wouldn't consider it music.
Now take Stockhausen's Gruppen. What I hear I find hardly different from an orchestra warming up. I tell myself that this is NOT an orchestra warming up and that a person actually took the time to write out this piece, and that it uses a symmetrical twelve-tone row, and all the supposed hallmarks of the piece. I can hear this when I listen. But it seems to serve practically no purpose among the "very loud hodgepodge of sound." See where I'm going with this? When an orchestra warms up, perhaps you have a Beethoven excerpt here, a Tchaikovsky melody here, and so forth. By themselves, those things might be works of genius. But played all at the same time? Not what I would venture to call "music." This is my biggest hurdle in swallowing Stockhausen, even though I understand the man was brilliant. 
Yes, I've heard a lot more Stockhause than just Gruppen- the Klavierstucke, the electronic works like Sirius, Kontakte and so forth. I would classify the vast majority of it as "sound effects" rather than music.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I only have a "you call that music?" reaction to rap. 

There are other music genres I dislike, but I acknowledge most of them as music. Rap is a different critter though. For me it seems to be more about attitude than about organized sound and I am singularly underwhelmed, though I confess to only hearing snippets of it against my will when some trunk rattling testosterone poisoned juvenile drives around with his windows down in the dead of winter trying to force me to listen, trying to shock me, but failing.

Modern music never really gives me such a reaction. If I don't like it or don't quite get it, it merely bores me or mildly annoys me. This happens less and less these days.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Good point. "Music" isn't limited to classical! For some people, classical music doesn't even enter into their musical universes, except maybe at movies (where they may not recognize the genres as such).


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Klassic said:


> Do some works not have high value in themselves even if the listener does not fancy the music? Some work is great by nature.


I disagree with this. Greatness is a value we place on a work, it doesn't exist "by nature". If something can still be great despite my not liking it, or your not liking it, or anyone we know liking it, then is it also great if _literally no one_ likes it? If it's great "by nature" then the answer is yes, which strikes me as absurd.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Ingélou said:


> Interesting. This is not music that I knew anything about, nor music that I would choose to listen to again, probably.
> However, I certainly didn't hear it as 'random sounds'.
> 
> I think everyone has their own way of listening. Because, I suppose, I was born that way, from a very early age I have been 'into' words, stories, songs, and dances - I am essentially a linear & literary listener. So I heard this piece as if it was someone holding a conversation with himself or trying to make a statement about the universe. My brain related every sound to the one before & it became a sigh or a wry comment or a 'let's try again'.
> ...


As a matter of fact it is random. There was some process of randomly throwing the I Ching over a map and that led to the music.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Nereffid said:


> I disagree with this. Greatness is a value we place on a work, it doesn't exist "by nature". If something can still be great despite my not liking it, or your not liking it, or anyone we know liking it, then is it also great if _literally no one_ likes it? If it's great "by nature" then the answer is yes, which strikes me as absurd.


I have to agree with this. If nobody thinks the WTC is "great", well...it isn't.


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## Adam Weber (Apr 9, 2015)

Gordontrek said:


> See, that's a realm I don't particularly want to visit, because it's too subjective. But you asked what it means for me, so I'll do my best to explain.
> When I hear an orchestra warming up I hear a very loud hodgepodge of sound. I can barely distinguish anything individual in the sounds I'm hearing. It's mostly random, though it is usually made up of every member of the ensemble playing an excerpt from a piece on the program, or an instrument-specific warmup. Could one call this music? The answer could be yes, depending on who you ask (there's the subjectivity again). But as to whether it is _good_ music, you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who could call it that. Personally, I wouldn't consider it music.
> Now take Stockhausen's Gruppen. What I hear I find hardly different from an orchestra warming up. I tell myself that this is NOT an orchestra warming up and that a person actually took the time to write out this piece, and that it uses a symmetrical twelve-tone row, and all the supposed hallmarks of the piece. I can hear this when I listen. But it seems to serve practically no purpose among the "very loud hodgepodge of sound." See where I'm going with this? When an orchestra warms up, perhaps you have a Beethoven excerpt here, a Tchaikovsky melody here, and so forth. By themselves, those things might be works of genius. But played all at the same time? Not what I would venture to call "music." This is my biggest hurdle in swallowing Stockhausen, even though I understand the man was brilliant.
> Yes, I've heard a lot more Stockhause than just Gruppen- the Klavierstucke, the electronic works like Sirius, Kontakte and so forth. I would classify the vast majority of it as "sound effects" rather than music.


Oddly, I can't hear Stockhausen's "noise" as anything _but_ music. My brain, quite without any effort on my part, decides "Gruppen = Music."

I have no idea what kind of order I'm perceiving in this music (no training whatsoever), but I definitely _feel_ as though I'm perceiving order. It doesn't sound random.

This isn't intellectual, it's just... something.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> As a matter of fact it is random. There was some process of randomly throwing the I Ching over a map and that led to the music.


Thanks. But I don't see that it matters if it was made by using random methods.

How often I will look at the panel on a door and see a face or a mountain scene among the knot-holes. That isn't art because it's accidental - but if an artist chose some slices of a tree trunk at random, then polished them & put them in a huge frame, and invited us to look at them - then most of us would perceive pattern and think of it as art.

You were asking others to describe a way in which they could listen to your video and see it as music, and that is what I did. It sounds like 'random sounds' to you, but it sounds like 'a conversation with the universe' to me.

It might be put together using random methods, but the mind of the composer has devised the method, used it meaningfully, and selected the result. So it's music.

We judge art - music - literature by the end result, not by the author's intentions. To me it sounds like music, albeit of a strange sort. To you it sounds random. :tiphat:


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Ingélou said:


> It might be put together using random methods, but the mind of the composer has . . . selected the result [of his method.] So it's music.


I'm not sure about that.

A couple of general questions with the Cage etudes. There are a hell of a lot of them. What was the reason for making so many? And in the case of the piano etudes at least they're organised into books -- what is the basis of the organisation?

Thanks for engaging with the problem, by the way. I think it's interesting, a real challenge for me.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

KenOC said:


> I have to agree with this. If nobody thinks the WTC is "great", well...it isn't.


So, to take a real example, The St Matthew Passion _became_ great after Mendelssohn promoted it, it wasn't great before, even though nothing about the music had changed.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> I'm not sure about that.
> 
> A couple of general questions with the Cage etudes. There are a hell of a lot of them. What was the reason for making so many. And in the case of the piano etudes at least they're organised into books -- what is the basis of the organisation.
> 
> Thanks for engaing with the problem, by the way. I think it's interesting, a real challenge for me.


 Oh dear - I'm afraid I can't help you with the Cage etudes. I know little about 'modern music' - my preferred musics are early music & baroque, though I try to keep an open mind.

I listened to the video you posted out of sheer curiosity. As you'll have gathered by now, I'm a very subjective listener.

Thanks are due to *you* for posting the video, giving me the opportunity for a good chewing-over.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Mandryka said:


> So, to take a real example, The St Matthew Passion _became_ great after Mendelssohn promoted it, it wasn't great before, even though nothing about the music had changed.


These discussions as usual lead nowhere, because "great" is undefined.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Art Rock said:


> These discussions as usual lead nowhere, because "great" is undefined.


Well I'm playing at being Socrates, Ken's Thrasymachus.


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## Azol (Jan 25, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> A couple of general questions with the Cage etudes. There are a hell of a lot of them. What was the reason for making so many?


To help you learn how to prepare a piano. Wasn't covered by Czerny so Cage had to step in.


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## Magnum Miserium (Aug 15, 2016)

Mandryka said:


> Well I'm playing at being Socrates, Ken's Thrasymachus.


Okay, maybe, but Socrates and Thrasymachus are characters invented by Plato - surrogate and strawman respectively - to facilitate his attempted takedown of Homer, so in a sense, when you call somebody Thrasymachus, you're calling them Homer.


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## Magnum Miserium (Aug 15, 2016)

Nereffid said:


> I disagree with this. Greatness is a value we place on a work, it doesn't exist "by nature". If something can still be great despite my not liking it, or your not liking it, or anyone we know liking it, then is it also great if _literally no one_ likes it?


Yes. For example, it may do everything well that the music you like does well, by the same standards, except even better, and you may dislike it only because it also happens to do some other things that you dislike.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Nereffid said:


> I disagree with this. Greatness is a value we place on a work, it doesn't exist "by nature". If something can still be great despite my not liking it, or your not liking it, or anyone we know liking it, then is it also great if _literally no one_ likes it? If it's great "by nature" then the answer is yes, which strikes me as absurd.


What a fascinating question! Generally, yes, anything 'great' usually wins the acclaim either of a great number of people in different time periods, or of the cognoscenti.

Let's suppose now - if a cosmic disaster turned everyone on the planet tone-deaf, & then someone unearthed a lost magnum opus by a formerly acclaimed composer, but nobody now could appreciate its clever patterning, pleasing tonal qualities, striking themes & melodies - well then, would it still be 'great' to the Universal Listener - shades of Bishop Berkeley...

...or maybe it would be appreciated by some passing aliens, only their ship was hit by an asteroid on the way here? They would have thought it 'great'.

So would that newly-discovered music be 'great', or what?

Answers on a postcard, please.
First prize - a trip to a wind concert on Ultima Thule.


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## JamieHoldham (May 13, 2016)

Personally, and putting it simply;

I don't consider rap / dubstep ect not music, just inferior to classical in technical terms, most modern music is way too simple and dumbed down, not that people can't like it, and not that I care.


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## Gordontrek (Jun 22, 2012)

Adam Weber said:


> Oddly, I can't hear Stockhausen's "noise" as anything _but_ music. My brain, quite without any effort on my part, decides "Gruppen = Music."
> 
> I have no idea what kind of order I'm perceiving in this music (no training whatsoever), but I definitely _feel_ as though I'm perceiving order. It doesn't sound random.
> 
> This isn't intellectual, it's just... something.


To me it's order _within_ disorder. Just like the orchestra warming up with bunches of different "ordered" things played at once.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> So, to take a real example, The St Matthew Passion _became_ great after Mendelssohn promoted it, it wasn't great before, even though nothing about the music had changed.


I would say that a phrase like "became great" still hints at the idea of greatness being an external thing, so I don't agree with the example as phrased. How I would phrase what you said is "The St Matthew Passion became _considered_ great after Mendelssohn promoted it, it wasn't _considered_ great before" (well, that second part is arguable anyway, but for the purposes of this discussion let's let it go). Hopefully you don't see this as a distinction without a difference.

Not sure if I can word this so that I'm being unambiguous, but I'll try: to me, the idea of "great" is completely reliant on people being able to make an assessment; if no assessment has been, or can be, made, then it makes no real sense to talk about greatness. If, to take Ingélou's example, there was nobody left on Earth to hear music, then it's not that all the great music suddenly stops being great, it's that the very idea of great music ceases to have any meaning.

_Additional comments, to make it clear that I don't want to get the usual tarring of extreme subjectivist:_
Back to the St Matthew Passion - there's certainly enough tacit agreement (and has been since before it was composed) among interested parties (experts and the discerning audience) about what might get to be called a great piece of music that it's reasonable to say for practical purposes that as soon as Bach wrote the St Matthew Passion it was a great piece of music, even if no one had heard it, but at bottom this presupposes such agreement. 
But what about a completely novel work that doesn't conform to what have been agreed as the general parameters for what's expected from a "great" work? This will rely on the judgement of history; it depends on whether the novelty prompts an expansion of what those parameters are. Some novel ideas get accepted and some don't, and I don't think it's because the former have some inherent greatness in them that the latter lack.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Saying to a teenager "You call that _music???_" is equivalent to saying to a Chihuahua owner "You call that a _dog???_"

It _is_ music, and it _is_ a dog. Dinky music, dinky dog.


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## Magnum Miserium (Aug 15, 2016)

Kanye West may be a small dog, but then Rachmaninov is a hamster.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Nereffid said:


> I would say that a phrase like "became great" still hints at the idea of greatness being an external thing, so I don't agree with the example as phrased. How I would phrase what you said is "The St Matthew Passion became _considered_ great after Mendelssohn promoted it, it wasn't _considered_ great before" (well, that second part is arguable anyway, but for the purposes of this discussion let's let it go). Hopefully you don't see this as a distinction without a difference.
> 
> Not sure if I can word this so that I'm being unambiguous, but I'll try: to me, the idea of "great" is completely reliant on people being able to make an assessment; if no assessment has been, or can be, made, then it makes no real sense to talk about greatness. If, to take Ingélou's example, there was nobody left on Earth to hear music, then it's not that all the great music suddenly stops being great, it's that the very idea of great music ceases to have any meaning.
> 
> ...


There is only one _St. Matthew Passion_ - and one _Eroica_, and one _Tristan_, and one Sistine Chapel ceiling, and one _King Lear_, etc. etc. There's a good reason for it. That reason is that most human beings can't produce these things, or even imagine them. These are great achievements. Great. Period. It doesn't matter how many people know it.

I do not understand the point of removing the entire context of human existence in which the concept of greatness arises and has meaning, and then saying that without that context nothing is "really" great. Well, gosh and golly! _Nothing_ is _anything_ out of context!

In this universe - the only universe we know - we are human beings, music is always produced by human beings, and some music is produced by extraordinary human beings with extraordinary faculties operating at an extraordinary level of competence, and that music is perceived to be extraordinary by other human beings capable of so perceiving it. We call such music _great music_.


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## Magnum Miserium (Aug 15, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> There is only one... Sistine Chapel ceiling


Until it burns down, at which point there will be zero, as there are now zero Athena Parthenoses. The point of course is that there can never be two.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Saying to a teenager "You call that _music???_" is equivalent to saying to a Chihuahua owner "You call that a _dog???_"
> 
> It _is_ music, and it _is_ a dog. Dinky music, dinky dog.


Hey, I adore my dinky chihuahua, Lulu,


----------



## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> There is only one _St. Matthew Passion_ - and one _Eroica_, and one _Tristan_, and one Sistine Chapel ceiling, and one _King Lear_, etc. etc. There's a good reason for it. That reason is that most human beings can't produce these things, or even imagine them. These are great achievements. Great. Period. It doesn't matter how many people know it.
> 
> I do not understand the point of removing the entire context of human existence in which the concept of greatness arises and has meaning, and then saying that without that context nothing is "really" great. Well, gosh and golly! _Nothing_ is _anything_ out of context!
> 
> In this universe - the only universe we know - we are human beings, music is always produced by human beings, and some music is produced by extraordinary human beings with extraordinary faculties operating at an extraordinary level of competence, and that music is perceived to be extraordinary by other human beings capable of so perceiving it. We call such music _great music_.


Well, I pretty much conceded that in my second-last paragraph, so I'm not sure what exactly you're protesting over.


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

Gordontrek said:


> Now take Stockhausen's Gruppen. What I hear I find hardly different from an orchestra warming up. I tell myself that this is NOT an orchestra warming up...


And you'd be correct. It's three orchestras warming up


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## Genoveva (Nov 9, 2010)

"Greatness in music" is a topic that keeps turning up in slightly different guises. Whether or not it is a meaningful concept, let alone whether it can be measured, has never been resolved. 

In my humble opinion, it is for each person to make these decisions, and no one should try to foist them on other people.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

geralmar said:


> Decades ago when I was in high school I bought the LP of Steve Reich's "Four Organs". I played it over and over in my bedroom until one day my mother pounded on the door demanding that I stop. By that time I was ready to join her.


geramar's mother: "Not only do I not call that music, but I call it a dangerous invitation into the void! The void is counter-productive! Our sons and daughters will be sitting in the lotus position instead of vigorously preparing themselves to be assimilated into the mechanism of productive society! As I said years earlier, _Don't listen to the Beatles! Don't do the twist!_"


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Mandryka said:


> Cage Etudes - Freeman and Australis


Oh, but I just got Etudes Australes, and it is such beautiful music! So much space for my mind to relax in, and be entertained and occupied. It's crystalline….


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Mandryka said:


> perhaps you would like to explain to me how to listen to Cage's etudes in a way which will help me hear them as music rather than random sounds. Here's one


Listen to them on piano. The violin is such an inherently noisy instrument!


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> Oh, but I just got Etudes Australes, and it is such beautiful music! So much space for my mind to relax in, and be entertained and occupied. It's crystalline….


Who's playin' 'em?


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

KenOC said:


> I have to agree with this. If nobody thinks the WTC is "great", well...it isn't.


Music is a two-way process of mapping and sharing experience, not a one-way determination by an assumed audience or "status quo" consensus reality.

The chance that absolutely no one would like a particular piece of music is impossible, taking into account the diversity of human taste.

Reality, or history, is not an accumulated consensus which becomes objective fact; it is an inference, and has many pockets of contradiction. But it is not an "objective fact."


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Mandryka said:


> I'm not sure about that.
> 
> A couple of general questions with the Cage etudes. There are a hell of a lot of them. What was the reason for making so many? And in the case of the piano etudes at least they're organised into books -- what is the basis of the organisation?
> 
> Thanks for engaging with the problem, by the way. I think it's interesting, a real challenge for me.


There is a First Part and a Second Part. Each has 16 Etudes. It probably has something to do with the I Ching, which has 64 hexagrams. 16 is a factor of 64.

Crudblud gave the best response; the exquisite beauty of Etudes Australes is that it is precisely notated down to the last detail, although it sounds random. I love that! Also, the harmonic dimension of the piano is extensively employed, with the sustain pedal, holding down certain notes, and placing rubber weights on certain keys. The result is spacious, resonating, and beautiful. This really titillates my intellect and sensory apparatus like no other music can.

Also, instead of being baffled by how many of them there are, bear in mind that the I Ching has 64 hexagrams, all slightly different. Notice how some of the Etudes are loud and explosive, while others are very calm. Each has its own sonority as well, once you really start listening.

The I Ching represents all kinds of ideas, and how things "transition" subtly, like changing cloud formations. You look at it a minute later, and "the horsey" is gone. But I can still see the ducky, and he's pulling a big fat traditionalist by a string. Oh, it's changing now, into a big fuddy-duddy.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> There is a First Part and a Second Part. Each has 16 Etudes. It probably has something to do with the I Ching, which has 64 hexagrams. 16 is a factor of 64.
> 
> Crudblud gave the best response; the exquisite beauty of Etudes Australes is that it is precisely notated down to the last detail, although it sounds random. I love that! Also, the harmonic dimension of the piano is extensively employed, with the sustain pedal, holding down certain notes, and placing rubber weights on certain keys. The result is spacious, resonating, and beautiful. This really titillates my intellect and sensory apparatus like no other music can.
> 
> ...


I'm not sure they precisely notated down to the last detail. There are huge variations in performances. Liebner seems to think there are 4 books of 8 each. I'm not sure that the music relates to ideas in the i ching though you could be right. I've always thought that the experience of listening to them was supposed to be like the experience of watching the stars at night.

For what it's worth, Crismani has made the Etudes Australis more interesting to me than Liebner or Sultan did. The Freeman Etudes or the other ones for cello (I forget what they're called now) I have made less headway with.

These things may not be designed to be listened to at all. They may have been designed as a sort of (spiritual) practice for performers, to decipher the notation and develop the technique.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Nereffid said:


> I disagree with this. Greatness is a value we place on a work, it doesn't exist "by nature". If something can still be great despite my not liking it, or your not liking it, or anyone we know liking it, then is it also great if _literally no one_ likes it? If it's great "by nature" then the answer is yes, which strikes me as absurd.


This seems like a logical fallacy, as Woodduck pointed out. A flawed metaphor, at the least. It's that old literal Western mind trying to put everything in strict terms of "subject" and "object," as if the two did not intermingle conceptually, and in reality.

"Greatness" cannot exist objectively in a work except to the degree that we have successfully "deciphered" those qualities which make it so.

Some listeners may not understand what makes a Ravi Shankar or Ali Akbar Khan performance great, but the greatness is there, in the context of those elements of that music,_ if _we can decipher it, and it gives us meaning.

This is once again what I call "internet subjectivity," which is a "defiant ignorance" and disregard of historically accepted and consensus-confirmed perceptions of pockets of "greatness" of various sizes.



Strange Magic said:


> The anti-intellectualism of the U.S. was noted long ago by Alexis de Tocqueville. To him, it appeared to spring from the _anti-aristocratic, all-are-equal (except the usual minorities), my notions are as valid as your notions mindset of the "average" Americans _he met in his travels here. This accounts in large measure for the American Exceptionalism widely discussed by Seymour Martin Lipset in his book of that name. Its positive qualities are much discussed and praised by various folk, and there can be much good said of it. But _it often lapses into what I call Defiant Ignorance,_ giving us widespread refusals to understand many findings of the sciences, and, most tellingly, to be only one of perhaps two nations to not be on the metric system.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Ingélou said:


> What a fascinating question! Generally, yes, anything 'great' usually wins the acclaim either of a great number of people in different time periods, or of the cognoscenti.
> 
> Let's suppose now - if a cosmic disaster turned everyone on the planet tone-deaf, & then someone unearthed a lost magnum opus by a formerly acclaimed composer, but nobody now could appreciate its clever patterning, pleasing tonal qualities, striking themes & melodies - well then, would it still be 'great' to the Universal Listener - shades of Bishop Berkeley...
> 
> ...


Once again, a flawed analogy. (The meaning of) a work of art has to exist metaphysically, as a sharing of experience in a shared field of meaning. There is no "objective" quality of a work of art, except as it enters our experience of it. Those elements require interpretation by our experience to gain meaning. And since it is metaphysical, either you experience it, or you don't.

If the work is deemed great, then chances are it is great in that particular way because those elements which make it so exist in the "field of meaning" of shared human experience, as inferred by art.

I don't think this kind of experience is cumulative by nature at its essence; but "history" is formed by accumulations of similarities of inferred experience, which can only persuasively suggest an "objective" outcome, but by no means can "prove" anything at all. In the end, it's "believe it or not."


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> "Greatness" cannot exist objectively in a work except to the degree that we have successfully "deciphered" those qualities which make it so.


That is basically what I said, so again I'm not sure what you're objecting to.


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## Magnum Miserium (Aug 15, 2016)

millionrainbows said:


> It's that old literal Western mind trying to put everything in strict terms of "subject" and "object," as if the two did not intermingle conceptually, and in reality.


Ah yes, those literal-minded Westerners - Euripides, Shakespeare, Rousseau, Coleridge, Nietzsche, J. M. W. Turner, C. D. Friedrich, Schumann, Debussy... nothing like that great Eastern intuitive, Confucius...



millionrainbows said:


> Some listeners may not understand what makes a Ravi Shankar or Ali Akbar Khan performance great, but the greatness is there, in the context of those elements of that music.


Well said.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Mandryka said:


> Who's playin' 'em?


The Italian pianist Claudio Crismani.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Mandryka said:


> I'm not sure they precisely notated down to the last detail. There are huge variations in performances. Liebner seems to think there are 4 books of 8 each. I'm not sure that the music relates to ideas in the i ching though you could be right. I've always thought that the experience of listening to them was supposed to be like the experience of watching the stars at night.


Ok, but why the insistence on "being right" when the important thing is to approach this art and see that it is valid and beautiful? Just pleading. If you dislike it, you have an airtight case.



> For what it's worth, Crismani has made the Etudes Australis more interesting to me than Liebner or Sultan did. The Freeman Etudes or the other ones for cello (I forget what they're called now) I have made less headway with.


That sounds like you are really listening. Also, in light of your rejection of this work, your degree of understanding is puzzling, as if there were an informed, intelligent intellect standing in the way of simply embracing the music. Maybe this goes to a political or philosophical rejection of the work, based on the facts of it being random and having no real intent which shapes it down to the details. I've known intellectuals like this, who can't accept the idea of randomness.

I see it like this: Cage has "gone out" of the relationship of "author" or "composer," and yet has created a "field" of meaning for us to experience as art. This is akin to creating a "nature" or environment which is uncontrolled by him, but is just "set up" so that it works in a similar way. He has removed himself, so it's like we are all looking at a waterfall, or some phenomena of nature which is "outside the purview" of human intention. In this sense, it is metaphysical and spiritual in nature.



> These things may not be designed to be listened to at all. They may have been designed as a sort of (spiritual) practice for performers, to decipher the notation and develop the technique.


I think he wanted us to all share in the beauty of these sounds. The performer is very important, though. Cage once said after a bad performance, "I give performers freedom, and they end up making fools of themselves."


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> The Italian pianist Claudio Crismani.


I am sure you will enjoy them. How faithful he's being to Cage's score and intentions is unclear to me. Sometimes what he does sounds so different from the others that I have a hard time hearing that they're playing the same music. If there's anything interesting in the booklet, I hope you'll let me know.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> Ok, but why the insistence on "being right" when the important thing is to approach this art and see that it is valid and beautiful? Just pleading. If you dislike it, you have an airtight case.
> 
> That sounds like you are really listening. Also, in light of your rejection of this work, your degree of understanding is puzzling, as if there were an informed, intelligent intellect standing in the way of simply embracing the music. Maybe this goes to a political or philosophical rejection of the work, based on the facts of it being random and having no real intent which shapes it down to the details. I've known intellectuals like this, who can't accept the idea of randomness.
> 
> ...


I'm in a similar relationship with Pound's Cantos and Finnegan's Wake. I love the challenge!


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> In this universe - the only universe we know - we are human beings, music is always produced by human beings, and some music is produced by extraordinary human beings with extraordinary faculties operating at an extraordinary level of competence, and that music is perceived to be extraordinary by other human beings capable of so perceiving it. We call such music _great music_.


I'd leave the universe out of it and stick to our solar system, especially since exoplanets are now being discovered at a prodigious and ever accelerating rate. We are in the multiple thousands at this point. Intelligent life is probably as common as dirt out there. It seems not unlikely, therefore, that highly intelligent species with the capacity and desire to create music could number in the thousands or millions in our galaxy alone, let alone in the universe as a whole. So, the question I would ask is: When, one hundred million years from now, alien beings sift through the great archives preserving the record of our long dead cultures' achievements, will they manage to reconstruct the significance of the WTC and affirm the eternal greatness of Bach? Is the well-tempered or equal tempered system easily-enough extrapolated from the physical and mathematical bases of sound that it will have been discovered by millions of different cultures across the universe? I think that would be a great topic for a thread - which is why I never start threads.


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

EdwardBast said:


> Intelligent life is probably as common as dirt out there.


It certainly is on earth


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Mandryka said:


> How faithful he's being to Cage's score and intentions is unclear to me. Sometimes what he does sounds so different from the others that I have a hard time hearing that they're playing the same music. If there's anything interesting in the booklet, I hope you'll let me know.


If he were more "accurate," would that appease your desire that the music be a "gospel" transcription of some "divine intent" on John Cage's part? Forget all that, and just accept the performance if you like it. You can't control things like this. It is not a work that was ever meant to be totally determined and accurate. I'd have to see the score to tell you to what degree it is precisely notated, but I have a feeling that there is an element of indeterminacy.

We could cite Milton Babbitt's electronic works on the RCA synthesizer as being "totally accurate," because it is a machine producing the sounds.

Cage seems to undermine the classical idea of authorship, and the composer, which may be why many listeners like classical. It is a "gospel" which demands accurate and faithful interpretation.

"John Cage has left the building."


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

EdwardBast said:


> When, one hundred million years from now, alien beings sift through the great archives preserving the record of our long dead cultures' achievements, will they manage to reconstruct the significance of the WTC and affirm the eternal greatness of Bach? Is the well-tempered or equal tempered system easily-enough extrapolated from the physical and mathematical bases of sound that it will have been discovered by millions of different cultures across the universe?


If the beings are intelligent, yes…the music requires an audience. I think that having ears which hear in our audible range would help. But the electromagnetic spectrum is wide. If all consciousness is operating in the same field, we should already know this, and are starting to, such as recognizing that animals have emotions.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

KenOC said:


> How about you? Are there specific pieces or composers that lead you to risk the scorn of experts and cry out, "You call that music"? Let us know - if you dare!


The first time I saw a clip from a some guy link I had that reaction.
But his links were fun anyway just to see what it would turn up to be.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Nereffid said:


> Well, I pretty much conceded that in my second-last paragraph, so I'm not sure what exactly you're protesting over.


I may have been confused as to your actual meaning because of this:

_Not sure if I can word this so that I'm being unambiguous, but I'll try: to me, the idea of "great" is completely reliant on people being able to make an assessment; if no assessment has been, or can be, made, then it makes no real sense to talk about greatness. If, to take Ingélou's example, there was nobody left on Earth to hear music, then it's not that all the great music suddenly stops being great, it's that the very idea of great music ceases to have any meaning._

_All_ ideas are completely reliant on people's assessments, since that's what ideas are. If no assessments can be made, then not only does it not make sense to talk about a concept, but there can be no concepts and no talking. So it's odd to postulate a world without people, but with a lot of music sitting around on paper, and speculate on whether that music is still great or not. For the same reason that the idea of greatness would have no meaning, the idea of music would have no meaning, the reason being that ideas, and meaning itself, would not exist.

I think it's this realm of epistemological dark matter (so to speak) that led me to affirm the significance of context in thinking about these things. As you say, we may not disagree at all.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> geramar's mother: "Not only do I not call that music, but I call it a dangerous invitation into the void! The void is counter-productive! Our sons and daughters will be sitting in the lotus position instead of vigorously preparing themselves to be assimilated into the mechanism of productive society! As I said years earlier, _Don't listen to the Beatles! Don't do the twist!_"


Oh, _now_ you tell me. It's the _twist_ that prevented my assimilation! Damn Chubby Checker.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

EdwardBast said:


> I'd leave the universe out of it and stick to our solar system, especially since exoplanets are now being discovered at a prodigious and ever accelerating rate. We are in the multiple thousands at this point. Intelligent life is probably as common as dirt out there. It seems not unlikely, therefore, that highly intelligent species with the capacity and desire to create music could number in the thousands or millions in our galaxy alone, let alone in the universe as a whole. So, the question I would ask is: When, one hundred million years from now, alien beings sift through the great archives preserving the record of our long dead cultures' achievements, will they manage to reconstruct the significance of the WTC and affirm the eternal greatness of Bach? Is the well-tempered or equal tempered system easily-enough extrapolated from the physical and mathematical bases of sound that it will have been discovered by millions of different cultures across the universe? I think that would be a great topic for a thread - which is why I never start threads.


The eternal greatness of Bach exists for humans, but to a more advanced species Bach's fugues might be the equivalent of species one counterpoint.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> The eternal greatness of Bach exists for humans, but to a more advanced species Bach's fugues might be the equivalent of species one counterpoint.


Or perhaps to an alien species, Bach's music might be amusingly similar to the excretory sounds of some domestic animal. You never know.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

I want to believe, however, when you realize the extremely unlikely/random chain of events and numerous conditions that were needed for intelligent life to arise here on earth, (earth-like) life and especially intelligent life, may not be so common at all. The exoplanets show there's potential, but we will need to learn a lot more before we can assume intelligent life is as common as dirt. It's possible that "our" composers are the only ones in the universe, which would make them (even more) special.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

I find it hard to associate aliens with classical music. Pop culture ruined me. I only can imagine a bunch of weird aliens in some shady bar tripping out to weird disco music.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

KenOC said:


> Or perhaps to an alien species, Bach's music might be amusingly similar to the excretory sounds of some domestic animal. You never know.


If a herd of cattle can produce Ives' Universe Symphony, I want to take a farm vacation.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DeepR said:


> I find it hard to associate aliens with classical music. Pop culture ruined me. I only can imagine a bunch of weird aliens in some shady bar tripping out to weird disco music.


I see it the other way around. People who like classical music are aliens in a world where humans listen to...  What do you call that stuff?


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> I see it the other way around. People who like classical music are aliens in a world where humans listen to...  What do you call that stuff?


It's their world and we're living in it.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

I can never quite shake the idea that David Lang's "The Passing Measures" is a long, repetitive, boring, and cheesy piece of garbage:






But I love listening to it, so what the hell.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

DeepR said:


> I want to believe, however, when you realize the extremely unlikely/random chain of events and numerous conditions that were needed for intelligent life to arise here on earth, (earth-like) life and especially intelligent life, may not be so common at all. The exoplanets show there's potential, but we will need to learn a lot more before we can assume intelligent life is as common as dirt. It's possible that "our" composers are the only ones in the universe, which would make them (even more) special.


Why extremely unlikely? Just based on the number of planets we've already discovered in the Goldilocks zones in other systems, it seems likely there are millions if not billions of planets in the universe capable of sustaining life. Moreover, I take the fact that fairly advanced intelligence has developed in multiple evolutionary lines in numerous species on our one planet as a suggestion that the evolution of advanced intelligence might be almost inevitable on worlds similar to ours. Consider the fact that eyes evolved independently over 40 times on this planet. I think it staggeringly unlikely that advanced intelligence is not a commonplace development.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Blancrocher said:


> I can never quite shake the idea that David Lang's "The Passing Measures" is a long, repetitive, boring, and cheesy piece of garbage:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


What strikes me about that piece is the profligate waste of labor.  One can get a similar effect with a single electric guitar and a looper, as Robert Fripp often did in the introductory soundscapes of King Crimson concerts.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> What strikes me about that piece is the profligate waste of labor.  One can get a similar effect with a single electric guitar and a looper, as Robert Fripp often did in the introductory soundscapes of King Crimson concerts.


I've enjoyed King Crimson as well, for that matter--and as a TC regular I can hardly criticize someone for wasting their labor.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Thinking of my long-departed father tonight, who was a traditionalist. When confronted with music of a modernist bent, he would often say, "You call that music?" I admire and respect his position, although he actually grew to like some Stravinsky late in life. A weakness perhaps.
> 
> How about you? Are there specific pieces or composers that lead you to risk the scorn of experts and cry out, "You call that music"? Let us know - if you dare!


Pretty much the "raw" experimentalism music that perpetuated in the 1950s and 1960s, which by now sixty years later, is clearly outdated in spirit. I really don't see much lasting value in their idiom but I do value their boldness and invention to charter well beyond traditional models. It was worthy as an exploratory journey but that's about it.


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## Magnum Miserium (Aug 15, 2016)

ArtMusic said:


> Pretty much the "raw" experimentalism music that perpetuated in the 1950s and 1960s, which by now sixty years later, is clearly outdated in spirit.


Well maybe, but then, in the 1950s, Romanticism was "clearly outdated in spirit," and we now know who got the last laugh there.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Magnum Miserium said:


> Well maybe, but then, in the 1950s, Romanticism was "clearly outdated in spirit," and we now know who got the last laugh there.


Romanticism never died out in the hearts of listeners.


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## Magnum Miserium (Aug 15, 2016)

ArtMusic said:


> Romanticism never died out in the hearts of listeners.


Well Modernism never died out in the brains of connoisseurs.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Magnum Miserium said:


> Well Modernism never died out in the brains of connoisseurs.


Sure, any music never does. Getting back to the topic of the thread, and in good context, I would say that the value of raw experimentalism has undisputedly diminished since the 1950s.


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## Magnum Miserium (Aug 15, 2016)

ArtMusic said:


> Sure, any music never does.


Not true. For example, a lot of mediocre 18th century music now lives on classical radio without ever having BEEN alive for connoisseurs.



ArtMusic said:


> Getting back to the topic of the thread, and in good context, I would say that the value of raw experimentalism has undisputedly diminished since the 1950s.


That's impossible. Raw experimentalism always has exactly the same value ("maybe this'll work and maybe it won't").


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Magnum Miserium said:


> Not true. For example, a lot of mediocre 18th century music now lives on classical radio without ever having BEEN alive for connoisseurs.
> 
> That's impossible. Raw experimentalism always has exactly the same value ("maybe this'll work and maybe it won't").


I meant in that idiom of the 1950's and 1960's school.


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## Magnum Miserium (Aug 15, 2016)

ArtMusic said:


> I meant in that idiom of the 1950's and 1960's school.


Well obviously, but writing in the idiom of Beethoven today is worthless too, so what does that prove?


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Magnum Miserium said:


> Well obviously, but writing in the idiom of Beethoven today is worthless too, so what does that prove?


No, I meant the idiom and the resulting works from those decades have faded into historical insignificance.


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## Magnum Miserium (Aug 15, 2016)

ArtMusic said:


> No, I meant the idiom and the resulting works from those decades have faded into historical insignificance.


Yeah, that's what Virgil Thomson said about Wagner. See first reply.


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## Johnnie Burgess (Aug 30, 2015)

Magnum Miserium said:


> Well obviously, but writing in the idiom of Beethoven today is worthless too, so what does that prove?


Beethoven's idiom influenced music for over a century. It might not be used today. But the composers that were inspired by Beethoven have their music still played.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Magnum Miserium said:


> Yeah, that's what Virgil Thomson said about Wagner. See first reply.


There is not question about the value of Wagner sixty years later when the finished Parsifal. His music remains core, at the very heart of modernism and classical music in general.


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## Magnum Miserium (Aug 15, 2016)

ArtMusic said:


> There is not question about the value of Wagner sixty years later when the finished Parsifal. His music remains core, at the very heart of modernism and classical music in general.


There is no question about the value of Stockhausen. His music remains core, at the very heart of post-modernism.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Magnum Miserium said:


> There is no question about the value of Stockhausen. His music remains core, at the very heart of post-modernism.


Well then I disagree. Other composers today have taken over to point towards a new direction.


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## Magnum Miserium (Aug 15, 2016)

ArtMusic said:


> Well then I disagree. Other composers today have taken over to point towards a new direction.


Yeah, that's what the Modernists said. We've gone in a new direction, left Wagner behind... cut to the parable of Buddha and the monkey king.


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## Guest (Sep 10, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> There is only one _St. Matthew Passion_ - and one _Eroica_, and one _Tristan_, and one Sistine Chapel ceiling, and one _King Lear_, etc. etc. There's a good reason for it. That reason is that most human beings can't produce these things, or even imagine them. These are great achievements. Great. Period. It doesn't matter how many people know it.


There is only one Gruppen - and one Eroica, and one Tristan, and one Sistine Chapel ceiling, and one King Lear, etc. etc. There's a good reason for it. That reason is that most human beings can't produce these things, or even imagine them. These are great achievements. Great. Period. It doesn't matter how many people know it.


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## Magnum Miserium (Aug 15, 2016)

dogen said:


> There is only one Gruppen -


Or three, depending on how you count.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

EdwardBast said:


> Why extremely unlikely? Just based on the number of planets we've already discovered in the Goldilocks zones in other systems, it seems likely there are millions if not billions of planets in the universe capable of sustaining life. Moreover, I take the fact that fairly advanced intelligence has developed in multiple evolutionary lines in numerous species on our one planet as a suggestion that the evolution of advanced intelligence might be almost inevitable on worlds similar to ours. Consider the fact that eyes evolved independently over 40 times on this planet. I think it staggeringly unlikely that advanced intelligence is not a commonplace development.


I agree that it looks good from this point of view, but the other side of the story is that earth still seems like a rare, precious jewel where the conditions are just right for more complex carbon-based, water-reliant life to develop. We're finding planets within the habitable zone of other stars, but we don't know yet how much of those could actually support earth-like life (the only kind we know). There are all kinds of specific conditions that make it work here on earth, but how common are those elsewhere?


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

EdwardBast said:


> Why extremely unlikely?


Indeed. As Monty Python quite brilliantly (and largely accurately) put it:

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars -
It's a hundred thousand light-years, side to side;
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light-years thick,
But out by us it's just three thousand light-years wide.
We're thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point,
We go round every two hundred million years;
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding Universe.

... plenty of scope for inhabited planets there, even assuming that all "Goldilocks Zones" need to be like our own - which is not necessarily the case.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

DeepR said:


> I agree that it looks good from this point of view, but the other side of the story is that earth still seems like a rare, precious jewel where the conditions are just right for more complex carbon-based, water-reliant life to develop. We're finding planets within the habitable zone of other stars, but we don't know yet how much of those could actually support earth-like life (the only kind we know). *There are all kinds of specific conditions that make it work here on earth, but how common are those elsewhere?*


I believe the conditions did not exist on earth either, right? Didn't the first organisms that began to photosynthesize actually transform and oxygenate the atmosphere, thus making it possible for higher organisms to develop - a kind of cascading effect? Perhaps life creates "all kinds of specific conditions" for further life? Anyway, I'm afraid we might have drifted off topic …


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

dogen said:


> There is only one Gruppen - and one Eroica, and one Tristan, and one Sistine Chapel ceiling, and one King Lear, etc. etc. There's a good reason for it. That reason is that most human beings can't produce these things, or even imagine them. These are great achievements. Great. Period. It doesn't matter how many people know it.


There's only one Yanni too. How many of everything there is is not the point of the post to which you're responding. But it's nice that you like Gruppen.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

isorhythm said:


> No, but I think any kind of bright-line definition is impossible and ultimately not useful, as is true of many concepts.


I offered a definition (of music) in an earlier thread: A structured set of sounds that communicates through at least partly non-verbal means. The most controversial part of my definition is probably my use of "that communicates", rather than "intended to communicate", requiring the existence of an actual audience rather than merely an intended one. A more narrow definition could require the presence of a beat or rhythm, which some argue is the most fundamental element of music. More narrow still would be a requirement of a distinct pitch or pitches. More narrow still would be a requirement of a systematic hierarchical organization of pitches.


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## Magnum Miserium (Aug 15, 2016)

EdwardBast said:


> What strikes me about that piece is the profligate waste of labor.  One can get a similar effect with a single electric guitar and a looper, as Robert Fripp often did in the introductory soundscapes of King Crimson concerts.


Or a ****ing SAXOPHONE, as done by Terry Riley, Fripp's model by way of Brian Eno.


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## Magnum Miserium (Aug 15, 2016)

fluteman said:


> I offered a definition (of music) in an earlier thread: A structured set of sounds that communicates through at least partly non-verbal means. The most controversial part of my definition is probably my use of "that communicates", rather than "intended to communicate", requiring the existence of an actual audience rather than merely an intended one.


Kind of necessarily hypothetical, that - if somebody's arguing about whether or not it communicates, then it already has an audience.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Magnum Miserium said:


> Or a ****ing SAXOPHONE, as done by Terry Riley, Fripp's model by way of Brian Eno.


I wasn't talking about the technique, but the actual texture and sound.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

Nereffid said:


> I disagree with this. Greatness is a value we place on a work, it doesn't exist "by nature". If something can still be great despite my not liking it, or your not liking it, or anyone we know liking it, then is it also great if _literally no one_ likes it? If it's great "by nature" then the answer is yes, which strikes me as absurd.


This is refutable, but I have no interest in refuting it.


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## kartikeys (Mar 16, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> perhaps you would like to explain to me how to listen to Cage's etudes in a way which will help me hear them as music rather than random sounds. Here's one


He missed a squeak here and a nail there. But great otherwise.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Magnum Miserium said:


> Kind of necessarily hypothetical, that - if somebody's arguing about whether or not it communicates, then it already has an audience.


Yes, that is true. Moreover, there's a tradition of what one might call "subversive art", where one of the central ideas is to be provocative, i.e., make people argue about it. Funny how disturbing music or paintings are somehow considered outrageous by some, whereas disturbing movies are pretty routine. My guess is it's because movies are a newer art form with less of a history to subvert.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Klassic said:


> This is refutable, but I have no interest in refuting it.


Fair enough! Neither of us is obliged to have this discussion. :cheers:


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

Is it possible to dislike Mahler because one doesn't understand Mahler?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Klassic said:


> Is it possible to dislike Mahler because one doesn't understand Mahler?


Of course. It's also possible to dislike Mahler's music because one _does _understand him.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

KenOC said:


> Of course. It's also possible to dislike Mahler's music because one _does _understand him.


The we have established something here. There is such a thing as disliking music because one cannot understand it.


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## Balthazar (Aug 30, 2014)

Klassic said:


> Is it possible to dislike Mahler because one doesn't understand Mahler?


Of course! Tale as old as time...

Man/woman mocks and demonizes what s/he does not understand.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

Klassic said:


> The we have established something here. There is such a thing as disliking music because one cannot understand it.


Seems pretty self-apparent to me. It's the reason the vast majority of people don't like classical music.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Seems pretty self-apparent to me. It's the reason the vast majority of people don't like classical music.


I wonder how much modern music is disliked because it's not understood.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

Klassic said:


> I wonder how much modern music is disliked because it's not understood.


Modern classical or modern in general?


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

KenOC said:


> Of course. It's also possible to dislike Mahler's music because one _does _understand him.


It's also possible to dislike Mahler's music because your rear end goes numb.  :lol:


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Klassic said:


> Is it possible to dislike Mahler because one doesn't understand Mahler?


I'm not sure what "understand" is supposed to mean in this context. I like some Mahler and find other works atrociously bad. Pretty sure I understand the music in both categories.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Klassic said:


> I wonder how much modern music is disliked because it's not understood.


Once again: What does understanding mean?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

EdwardBast said:


> Once again: What does understanding mean?


I was just about to ask that, but I refuse to let your getting there first deter me. Hence:

What does it mean, in relation to liking or disliking, to understand music?

(Koan: When does one who understands nothing understand everything?)


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

Could you truly appreciate the Eroica if you do not know what sonata form is and have no listening experience to follow theme development? Do you understand the music if you have no knowledge of the form in which it is written and have not the necessary background and experience to follow its musical ideas?


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Could you truly appreciate the Eroica if you do not know what sonata form is and have no listening experience to follow theme development? Do you understand the music if you have no knowledge of the form in which it is written and have not the necessary background and experience to follow its musical ideas?


So then you are saying that understanding consists, at least in part, in understanding elements of form and familiarity with conventions for the same? That sounds like a pretty reasonable place to start.

I'm not sure it takes any particular experience to follow thematic development. Pattern recognition and matching pretty much covers it - perceptually salient without a whole lot of thought? At least it seems that way to me.


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## Magnum Miserium (Aug 15, 2016)

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Could you truly appreciate the Eroica if you do not know what sonata form is and have no listening experience to follow theme development?


If you listen to it and are entertained, moved, and/or inspired by the expience, you appreciate it. "Sonata form" and "theme development" are combinations of words that we invent to describe what we're appreciating.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

EdwardBast said:


> So then you are saying that understanding consists, at least in part, in understanding elements of form and familiarity with conventions for the same? That sounds like a pretty reasonable place to start.


Yes, that's what I'm saying.



EdwardBast said:


> I'm not sure it takes any particular experience to follow thematic development. Pattern recognition and matching pretty much covers it - perceptually salient without a whole lot of thought? At least it seems that way to me.


I think it does. At least if you're coming from music that does not do much thematic development (as I did), it takes many listening sessions and very close attention to follow thematic development, especially the cleverly disguised parts.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

Magnum Miserium said:


> If you listen to it and are entertained, moved, and/or inspired by the expience, you appreciate it. "Sonata form" and "theme development" are combinations of words that we invent to describe what we're appreciating.


I disagree. My argument is that you need to first understand "the rules" of the game before you can appreciate it. From personal experience, I was the more entertained and moved by the Eroica the move I listened to it and the more I learned about the form and the techniques used to create it. My appreciation deepened the more I understood it.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Magnum Miserium said:


> If you listen to it and are entertained, moved, and/or inspired by the expience, you appreciate it. "Sonata form" and "theme development" are combinations of words that we invent to describe what we're appreciating.


Yes. And one of those terms, "sonata form," didn't exist for anyone in the first twenty-five years of the Eroica's public life. When the concept was first codified by Antoine Reicha (around 1830?), it was as a stripped down schema, simplified, abstracted, and narrowed in scope and variety from the actual formal diversity that was practiced in opening movements of the Classical Era. This schema, what we now call textbook sonata form, was not part of anyone's vocabulary in the first decade of the 19thc. And yet many listeners and critics seemed to appreciate the work and to understand it in the absence of the formal concepts many now think are essential.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

EdwardBast said:


> Yes. And one of those terms, "sonata form," didn't exist for anyone in the first twenty-five years of the Eroica's public life. When the concept was first codified by Antoine Reicha (around 1830?), it was as a stripped down schema, simplified, abstracted, and narrowed in scope and variety from the actual formal diversity that was practiced in opening movements of the Classical Era. This schema, what we now call textbook sonata form, was not part of anyone's vocabulary in the first decade of the 19thc. And yet many listeners and critics seemed to appreciate the work and to understand it in the absence of the formal concepts many now think are essential.


Surely the concept of sonata form existed in Beethoven's time. Just because someone gave it the official name later, it doesn't mean the idea itself did not exist. Beethoven himself created the Eroica following the form.

Complex music doesn't come naturally to everyone and learning and prior exposure to the music are often needed to appreciate it.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

My impression is that Vienna was full of musical “experts” around the turn of the 19th century, and not all among the higher classes. People knew pretty well what to expect from the first movements of symphonies and concertos, even without naming the form, and this was reinforced by the patterns of repeats indulged in by composers (some today would say, excessively).


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## Omnimusic (Jun 11, 2016)

This is a difficult question. A particular sequence of sound(s) may be defined as music by some people, while other people will just call it "noise". If some people are happy to enjoy this "noise", well fine! I could not care less. But I would never say "you call that music". I would just say that I do not like it.

There are a lot of pieces/composers which I do not like. The music (noise??) of John Cage for example.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> I disagree. My argument is that you need to first understand "the rules" of the game before you can appreciate it. From personal experience, I was the more entertained and moved by the Eroica the move I listened to it and the more I learned about the form and the techniques used to create it. My appreciation deepened the more I understood it.


I certainly agree that one's appreciation can (not necessarily _will_) deepen the more one understands about what's going on in the music, but surely one can also appreciate the music to some degree without understanding?
My own personal example is that I loved Beethoven's 5th symphony before I even knew something as basic as the fact that the transition from 3rd to 4th movements is a switch from minor to major. I would say I _appreciated_ the symphony, but I guess by your definition I didn't.

ETA: This also reminds me, slightly tangentially, of something I read the other day about William Mann and the Beatles. From the Wikipedia article on their song "Not a Second Time":
This song inspired a musical analysis from William Mann of _The Times_, citing the "Aeolian cadence" (Aeolian harmony) of Lennon's vocals as the song draws to a close, and noting that the same chord progression appears at the end of the final movement of Mahler's "Das Lied von der Erde." Lennon, years later, remarked: "To this day, I have no idea what [Aeolian cadences] are. They sound like exotic birds."


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Seems pretty self-apparent to me. It's the reason the vast majority of people don't like classical music.


The reasons:
Not exposed to it.
Too unfamiliar.
Too high-falutin'.
Too long.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Surely the concept of sonata form existed in Beethoven's time. Just because someone gave it the official name later, it doesn't mean the idea itself did not exist. Beethoven himself created the Eroica following the form.


Yes and no. Textbook sonata form, (P theme, transition, S theme, closing etc.) as it is understood now didn't exist as a concept and it didn't fit anyone's specific expectations. The textbook form was abstracted and codified from iconic works of Beethoven (and a few by Mozart), many of which did not exist at the time of the Eroica. Of course there were general expectations for first movement form, but they were much looser and less standardized than in the mid-19thc. The first movement of the Eroica itself was way outside the norms of first movement form, as were most of Beethoven's revolutionary works. The proportions of the development and coda would have been (and were) heard as bizarre bordering on incomprehensible, which is probably why it took two years before the symphony was widely accepted. Beethoven didn't follow the form in the Eroica, he exploded it while, ironically, participating in its invention.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

Strange Magic said:


> The reasons:
> Not exposed to it.
> Too unfamiliar.
> Too high-falutin'.
> Too long.


Thanks for amending my simplistic answer; yes, there certainly is more than one reason for disliking classical music.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

Nereffid said:


> I certainly agree that one's appreciation can (not necessarily _will_) deepen the more one understands about what's going on in the music, but surely one can also appreciate the music to some degree without understanding?
> My own personal example is that I loved Beethoven's 5th symphony before I even knew something as basic as the fact that the transition from 3rd to 4th movements is a switch from minor to major. I would say I _appreciated_ the symphony, *but I guess by your definition I didn't.*
> 
> ETA: This also reminds me, slightly tangentially, of something I read the other day about William Mann and the Beatles. From the Wikipedia article on their song "Not a Second Time":
> This song inspired a musical analysis from William Mann of _The Times_, citing the "Aeolian cadence" (Aeolian harmony) of Lennon's vocals as the song draws to a close, and noting that the same chord progression appears at the end of the final movement of Mahler's "Das Lied von der Erde." Lennon, years later, remarked: "To this day, I have no idea what [Aeolian cadences] are. They sound like exotic birds."


I can see how my definition implies a binary state of appreciation but in fact appreciation is of course a continuous state. Yes, you can appreciation something before fully understanding it but appreciation grows as you understand better.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

EdwardBast said:


> Yes and no. Textbook sonata form, (P theme, transition, S theme, closing etc.) as it is understood now didn't exist as a concept and it didn't fit anyone's specific expectations. The textbook form was abstracted and codified from iconic works of Beethoven (and a few by Mozart), many of which did not exist at the time of the Eroica. Of course there were general expectations for first movement form, but they were much looser and less standardized than in the mid-19thc. The first movement of the Eroica itself was way outside the norms of first movement form, as were most of Beethoven's revolutionary works. The proportions of the development and coda would have been (and were) heard as bizarre bordering on incomprehensible, which is probably why it took two years before the symphony was widely accepted. Beethoven didn't follow the form in the Eroica, he exploded it while, ironically, participating in its invention.


I was aware of that but my argument wasn't centered on the specific technical evolution of sonata form but rather on their being a form, a template, a pattern that a composer uses to create their music and that as a listener if you don't know it, you're unlikely to understand and therefore fully appreciate the music.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Omnimusic said:


> This is a difficult question. A particular sequence of sound(s) may be defined as music by some people, while other people will just call it "noise". If some people are happy to enjoy this "noise", well fine! I could not care less. But I would never say "you call that music". I would just say that I do not like it.
> 
> There are a lot of pieces/composers which I do not like. The music (noise??) of John Cage for example.


Yes. Sometimes the main idea of an artwork is to anger, or even disgust, the audience. As I said above, this seems to be accepted without question when it comes to a recent medium like movies, but more controversial for media with a longer history like painting or music. I find it funny that some try to distinguish "music" from "sound effects", the latter term usually used to describe sound (usually) produced with modern technology first used to accompany live theater and later radio, movies and TV. Are sound effects to be considered music when traditional acoustic instruments are used, as they occasionally are?


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Klassic said:


> Is it possible to dislike Mahler because one doesn't understand Mahler?


Yes, there are parts of Mahler's symphonies that I find bombastic but then, that's Mahler's idiom - large scale. The slow movements are his finest.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Magnum Miserium said:


> Yeah, that's what the Modernists said. We've gone in a new direction, left Wagner behind... cut to the parable of Buddha and the monkey king.


I'm scratching my head about the "Buddha and the monkey king" part. Not sure how that's related to the great Wagner and his originality in music and towering influence, in comparison to the 1950's and 1960's experimentalism.


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## Magnum Miserium (Aug 15, 2016)

ArtMusic said:


> I'm scratching my head about the "Buddha and the monkey king" part. Not sure how that's related to the great Wagner and his originality in music and towering influence


Like, you don't know the story I'm referring to? (Monkey king jumps from the palm of Buddha's hand to the pillars that mark the border of heaven and back - only to discover that he actually never left Buddha's hand and the pillars were Buddha's fingers.) Or something else?



ArtMusic said:


> in comparison to the 1950's and 1960's experimentalism.


Look, you can love or hate or be personally indifferent to "the 1950's and 1960's experimentalism," but if you deny that it's an important influence on today's music - on La Monte Young and Terry Riley and everybody who followed them; on the spectral composers; on the later Beatles records and everybody who picked up from those; on Morton Feldman - that just means you're in denial.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Morton Feldman and indeterminate music was the product of the 1960s, similar time frame to what I was pointing out earlier. Minimalism in my view today had already reached its peak. In fact, today, composers as we write are also aspiring to older values of tonal construction and harmonic progression, while being aware of the last half century.

Edit: I am not aware of the Buddha and monkey story but thanks for sharing.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

ArtMusic said:


> In fact, today, composers as we write are also aspiring to older values [...], while being aware of the last half century.


True, but you could say the same about Igor Stravinsky's Pulcinella, influenced by and even directly quoting Pergolesi, or George Crumb's Makrokosmos II, influenced by and directly quoting Debussy. Harmonic progression was never abandoned by western music, just forced to share the stage with a variety of new ideas, thanks in part to a crusading avant garde. The everlasting tension between traditional schools and revolutionaries is a major impetus for great new art, and I think always will be.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

I like some Glass...


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## Ariasexta (Jul 3, 2010)

Liking something does not mean accepting something, most of the time people say liking is just a complacence, a neutral position out of politeness or simply indifference. For me I would just cut the bull and out-speak that I do not tolerate soviet classical music and modernist compositions, politeness is not even necessary.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Flamme said:


> I like some Glass...


I have no Glass in my collection.


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## Ariasexta (Jul 3, 2010)

Early music is unsurpassable, enough said.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Ariasexta said:


> Early music is unsurpassable, *enough said.*


What happens if someone says something more?


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## FDR (Oct 19, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> What happens if someone says something more?


Then it's obviously more than enough.


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## jailhouse (Sep 2, 2016)

nope. I'll give any music a chance.


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## LOLWUT (Oct 12, 2016)

Mahler was the last truly great composer. There were a few good ones after him, Ravel, Debussy, Strauss, Shostakovich... But they were not truly "great" composers that you would dare mentioning in the same sentence as Beethoven or Bach.


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## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

Appropriate username.


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## LOLWUT (Oct 12, 2016)

Chronochromie said:


> Appropriate username.


Stop following me around the forum if you don't like what I have to say bro.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

LOLWUT said:


> Mahler was the last truly great composer.


Please check my authoritative guide to the great composers, titled "Authoritative Guide to the Great Composers," and you'll find that the last great composer was Shostakovich. My authoritative guide will be available soon on Amazon. Buy it and you, too, can be authoritative!


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## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

LOLWUT said:


> Stop following me around the forum if you don't like what I have to say bro.


So if I'm randomly reading a thread and want to comment on something you said I can't? Yeah, no.


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## Chronochromie (May 17, 2014)

KenOC said:


> Please check my authoritative guide to the great composers, titled "Authoritative Guide to the Great Composers," and you'll find that the last great composer was Shostakovich. My authoritative guide will be available soon on Amazon. Buy it and you, too, can be authoritative!


Be careful, Ken, writing a book about it sounds like something an academic would do!


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Chronochromie said:


> Be careful, Ken, writing a book about it sounds like something an academic would do!


Yeah, I know, but it's hard to resist the big bucks.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)




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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Flamme said:


> I like some Glass...


Like it half full or half empty.


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