# Contemporary classical music



## Whistlerguy

I have a lot of questions about contemporary classical music and find this topic extremely interesting, even though I am not very knowledgeable about it.

1. Does one have to be very familiar with music from all the previous periods in order to appreciate contemporary classical music?

2. Does it make any sense to dedicate one's time to contemporary classical music if you haven't listened to the most important works from the past centuries?

3. If you really have to be familiar with all the preceding classical music in order to understand contemporary, does it means that the public for contemporary classical music is EXTREMELY small. I mean, public for classical music in general is very small - but still FAR MORE people listen to Bach, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Brahms, etc - than to contemporary composers.

4. Knowing all that we face another question - Is there any social or any other purpose of contemporary classical music outside academic circles?

5. Are contemporary composers "allowed" to compose in traditional styles such as styles of Baroque, Classicism and Romanticism OR this is a deadly sin which automatically gives them reputation of being backward, imitators and unoriginal?

6. A thought experiment. Let's say Beethoven NEVER composed the Third symphony - Eroica. He still composed all of the 8 other symphonies, but not the Third.
And, now, in 2010 - some contemporary composer composes Eroica. Exactly the same thing. Would Eroica, if composed in 2010 still be held in so high regard and would it still be considered a masterpiece OR would all the critics jump on the poor guy and say "this is so unoriginal" "this is backwards" - "too old fashioned", "it is good for what it is, but this is not art music" and similar comments.

7. Is there any way to make contemporary classical music more popular? Or it seems that the art music is dying and that all the things that had to be composed are already composed?

8. How many of you are familiar with the works of living composers, and what are the most important musical compositions of our time?

9. Do you actually LIKE contemporary classical music?


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## Earthling

> 1. Does one have to be very familiar with music from all the previous periods in order to appreciate contemporary classical music?


No, though certainly it adds to one's appreciation of it. Do you have to listen to rock and roll from the 50s and 60s to appreciate rock music today?



> 2. Does it make any sense to dedicate one's time to contemporary classical music if you haven't listened to the most important works from the past centuries?


Again, would this apply to any other arts? Should I forgo reading Camus' The Plague because I have only read one Dicken's novel?



> 3. If you really have to be familiar with all the preceding classical music in order to understand contemporary, does it means that the public for contemporary classical music is EXTREMELY small. I mean, public for classical music in general is very small - but still FAR MORE people listen to Bach, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Brahms, etc - than to contemporary composers.


I don't think familiarity with earlier classical music is *necessary* and besides, there is a relative number of young people who, since the early 70s who have become attracted to contemporary composers and even have festivals focused on them.



> 4. Knowing all that we face another question - Is there any social or any other purpose of contemporary classical music outside academic circles?


When you say "contemporary" do you mean more specifically atonal? There is much contemporary music that is not modelled on Schoenberg in this day and age, and there is quite a lot of diversity out there (Adams, Scelsi, Silvestrov, Part, Rautavaara, Gorecki)-- "contemporary" is not synonymous with "atonal."



> 5. Are contemporary composers "allowed" to compose in traditional styles such as styles of Baroque, Classicism and Romanticism OR this is a deadly sin which automatically gives them reputation of being backward, imitators and unoriginal?


I would say yes, unless you can put an interesting spin on things. It would be just as unoriginal as a band trying to sound just like the Beatles. Why, in the year 2010, would anyone want to sound like the Beatles?



> 6. A thought experiment. Let's say Beethoven NEVER composed the Third symphony - Eroica. He still composed all of the 8 other symphonies, but not the Third.
> And, now, in 2010 - some contemporary composer composes Eroica. Exactly the same thing. Would Eroica, if composed in 2010 still be held in so high regard and would it still be considered a masterpiece OR would all the critics jump on the poor guy and say "this is so unoriginal" "this is backwards" - "too old fashioned", "it is good for what it is, but this is not art music" and similar comments.


Music doesn't exist in a vacuum, nor is it eternal. It arises out of a specific historical and cultural context. If the Beatles never recorded Revolver or Sgt. Pepper, but someone came along today, it wouldn't make sense.



> 7. Is there any way to make contemporary classical music more popular? Or it seems that the art music is dying and that all the things that had to be composed are already composed?


Thankfully there are still composers, performers, and record companies who are willing to put out new material. There will always be much greater competition from other avenues of the music *business* because they are out to make a quick buck. But I think this has largely always been the case.



> 8. How many of you are familiar with the works of living composers, and what are the most important musical compositions of our time?


I don't think I could say in any definitive sense what are the important musical compositions of the past 25 years. At best, all I can say is there are a good deal of contemporary pieces that I do enjoy and love.



> 9. Do you actually LIKE contemporary classical music?


What is there not to like? I think some people make appreciating modern and contemporary music a lot more difficult than it really is.


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## Boccherini

Whistlerguy said:


> I have a lot of questions about contemporary classical music and find this topic extremely interesting, even though I am not very knowledgeable about it.
> 
> 1. Does one have to be very familiar with music from all the previous periods in order to appreciate contemporary classical music?
> 
> 2. Does it make any sense to dedicate one's time to contemporary classical music if you haven't listened to the most important works from the past centuries?
> 
> 3. If you really have to be familiar with all the preceding classical music in order to understand contemporary, does it means that the public for contemporary classical music is EXTREMELY small. I mean, public for classical music in general is very small - but still FAR MORE people listen to Bach, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Brahms, etc - than to contemporary composers.
> 
> 4. Knowing all that we face another question - Is there any social or any other purpose of contemporary classical music outside academic circles?
> 
> 5. Are contemporary composers "allowed" to compose in traditional styles such as styles of Baroque, Classicism and Romanticism OR this is a deadly sin which automatically gives them reputation of being backward, imitators and unoriginal?
> 
> 6. A thought experiment. Let's say Beethoven NEVER composed the Third symphony - Eroica. He still composed all of the 8 other symphonies, but not the Third.
> And, now, in 2010 - some contemporary composer composes Eroica. Exactly the same thing. Would Eroica, if composed in 2010 still be held in so high regard and would it still be considered a masterpiece OR would all the critics jump on the poor guy and say "this is so unoriginal" "this is backwards" - "too old fashioned", "it is good for what it is, but this is not art music" and similar comments.
> 
> 7. Is there any way to make contemporary classical music more popular? Or it seems that the art music is dying and that all the things that had to be composed are already composed?
> 
> 8. How many of you are familiar with the works of living composers, and what are the most important musical compositions of our time?
> 
> 9. Do you actually LIKE contemporary classical music?


1. Certainly.
2. look number 1.
3. Silly question.
4. Welcome to TalkClassical!
5. Allowed? Why wouldn't they? But yes, composing Classical/Baroque music nowadays is nice but very pathetic.
6. I refuse to answer that specific question.
7. Why should it be more popular? One of the greatest qulaities of contemporary music is its unpopularity.
8. You might want to ask Andre.
9. I don't intend to generalize all modern music since I don't intend to/haven't researched all contemporary music, but speaking of one kind which I'm more familiar with, I cordially abhor Atonality in all its manifestations.


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## Fsharpmajor

Read this, I think it will answer some of your questions. Avner Dorman is a contemporary
American composer:

*http://www.classicstoday.com/review.asp?ReviewNum=12623*


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## HarpsichordConcerto

I assume contemporary means music written from say, 1950 up to today.

1. Does one have to be very familiar with music from all the previous periods in order to appreciate contemporary classical music? Have to be very familiar? It can probably help a lot but I don't think it is a prerequisite. Much contemporary music can be rather difficult to appreciate, as I have found myself, despite having listened to a lot of late baroque, Classical and early Romantic in particular.

2. Does it make any sense to dedicate one's time to contemporary classical music if you haven't listened to the most important works from the past centuries? It depends on the individual. But if I went straight into contemporary, I doubt I would have more chance to appreciate it than coming from my comfort zones mentioned above. I stress this is an individual thing. Some would love contemporary and dislike music of old.

3. If you really have to be familiar with all the preceding classical music in order to understand contemporary, does it means that the public for contemporary classical music is EXTREMELY small. I mean, public for classical music in general is very small - but still FAR MORE people listen to Bach, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Brahms, etc - than to contemporary composers.Difficult to generalise. Again, you can find folks here who like contemporary only. But why does it matter to you if the population is extremely small? So what if it is? 

4. Knowing all that we face another question - Is there any social or any other purpose of contemporary classical music outside academic circles? If you appreciate it, then that music has found its entertainment purpose.

5. Are contemporary composers "allowed" to compose in traditional styles such as styles of Baroque, Classicism and Romanticism OR this is a deadly sin which automatically gives them reputation of being backward, imitators and unoriginal? Why not? They don't get arrested by the police, do they? But it would be artistically anachronistic, obviously. Not sure what the point of this question really is.

6. A thought experiment. Let's say Beethoven NEVER composed the Third symphony - Eroica. He still composed all of the 8 other symphonies, but not the Third.
And, now, in 2010 - some contemporary composer composes Eroica. Exactly the same thing. Would Eroica, if composed in 2010 still be held in so high regard and would it still be considered a masterpiece OR would all the critics jump on the poor guy and say "this is so unoriginal" "this is backwards" - "too old fashioned", "it is good for what it is, but this is not art music" and similar comments.Why don't you dress up in early 19th century clothing today, and go to your local shopping centre?

7. Is there any way to make contemporary classical music more popular? Or it seems that the art music is dying and that all the things that had to be composed are already composed? People will choose to listen to what they find accessible. Contemporary classical music is not as popular as old music, but I doubt it will die out. Some composers today will be composing something. Compulsory contemporary classical music education for all primary and secondary school children? That would be outrageous.

8. How many of you are familiar with the works of living composers, and what are the most important musical compositions of our time? Several members here, I think. Fellow Australian member Andre, for example.

9. Do you actually LIKE contemporary classical music? Yes or no answer? I would say no. Atonal music is not my cup of tea. You can put me through it, but at the end of the piece, it would probably do nothing/little at all relative to old music. Of course, atonal is not the only contemporary classical music. Just an example to answer this question.

I would like to ask you some questions, now that you have asked us so many.

(A) Why do you find these questions important to you?

(B) Are you considering whether to spend time getting into contemporary classcal music?

(C) Why don't you just listen to several pieces and not think so much about your familiarity with old music?

(D) Have you listened to any contemporary classical music? From your previous posts and threads, you have mentioned you are new even to old/regular classical music.


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## Jeremy Marchant

Whistlerguy said:


> I have a lot of questions about contemporary classical music and find this topic extremely interesting, even though I am not very knowledgeable about it.
> 
> 1. Does one have to be very familiar with music from all the previous periods in order to appreciate contemporary classical music?


 No.



> 2. Does it make any sense to dedicate one's time to contemporary classical music if you haven't listened to the most important works from the past centuries?


 Yes.



> 3. If you really have to be familiar with all the preceding classical music in order to understand contemporary,


 False premise



> does it means that the public for contemporary classical music is EXTREMELY small.


 It _is_ small but not for that reason



> 4. Knowing all that we face another question - Is there any social or any other purpose of contemporary classical music outside academic circles?


 The "purpose" of contemporary classical music is precisely the same as that of uncontemporary classical music



> 5. Are contemporary composers "allowed" to compose in traditional styles such as styles of Baroque, Classicism and Romanticism


 It's got nothing to do with being "allowed" to do anything. Composers are free to write in which ever idiom they like.



> OR this is a deadly sin which automatically gives them reputation of being backward, imitators and unoriginal?


 There's no moral assessment needed here. However, writing in archaic styles is by definition imitation and lacking in originality.



> 6. A thought experiment. Let's say Beethoven NEVER composed the Third symphony - Eroica. He still composed all of the 8 other symphonies, but not the Third.
> And, now, in 2010 - some contemporary composer composes Eroica. Exactly the same thing. Would Eroica, if composed in 2010 still be held in so high regard and would it still be considered a masterpiece OR would all the critics jump on the poor guy and say "this is so unoriginal" "this is backwards" - "too old fashioned", "it is good for what it is, but this is not art music" and similar comments.


 Any piece of music has intrinsic merits in and of itself, and contextual merits derived from its position in the development of music. In the thought experiment the _Eroica _would be as much a masterpiece as it actually is on the former grounds, and not at all on the latter.



> 7. Is there any way to make contemporary classical music more popular?


 Teach children to appreciate music, and to play or sing music.



> Or it seems that the art music is dying


 That's a perception - do you have evidence?



> and that all the things that had to be composed are already composed?


 As soon as anyone writes a piece of music of even just a little expertise and originality, that statement is disproved.



> 8. How many of you are familiar with the works of living composers


 Don't know the answer to the question, but I am personally very familiar with a wide range of contemporary classical music. I review CDs of it for Fanfare.



> and what are the most important musical compositions of our time?


 If you mean by "of our time" "written in the past five years", it's too early to say. If you'll allow fifty years, I would include _Gruppen _and _Pli selon pli_, by bearing in mind your particular adjective "important".



> 9. Do you actually LIKE contemporary classical music?


 Yes. All of it, in principle; some of it, in practice. Which is the same answer I'd give for most music genres.


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## Jeremy Marchant

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> 9. Do you actually LIKE contemporary classical music? Yes or no answer? I would say no. Atonal music is not my cup of tea. You can put me through it, but at the end of the piece, it would probably do nothing/little at all relative to old music. Of course, atonal is not the only contemporary classical music. Just an example to answer this question.


Very, very little contemporary classical musical is atonal, if only for the reason that that style is too difficult to write in. In the last thirty years or so, there has been an awful lot that is only too tonal: vacuous and simplistic.


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## Aramis

> Very, very little contemporary classical musical is atonal, if only for the reason that that style is too difficult to write in. In the last thirty years or so, there has been an awful lot that is only too tonal: vacuous and simplistic.


Indeed - it is quite uneducated to say that contemporary music is atonal. Schoenberg and his fellows died long time ago, and though they are considered modern we should distinguish modern in sense of after-romantic periods from contemporary in sense of being composed by living composers in last decade or two.


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## Fsharpmajor

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> 8. How many of you are familiar with the works of living composers


I am. I have music by James MacMillan, John Adams, Arvo Part, Avner Dorman, Judith Zaimont, Paul Moravec, Philip Glass, Michael Daugherty, John Corigliano and Thomas Ades, to name a few. Naturally I like some composers more than others.

As to what is the most important composition of our time, it's really too early to tell, but I would put forward _Nixon in China_, by John Adams.


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## Guest

"Contemporary classical music" is no more a descriptive term than "classical music" is. It's a broad categorization of all sorts of things.

Fsharpmajor's list consists of people who are alive, for instance, but it's only one small slice of the total world covered by the term "contemporary classical," which, if we take as referring to music written after WW II, includes Eimert and Dhomont and Cage and Mumma and Oliveros and Radigue and Stockhausen and a host of others.

Here are a few representative names from some of the other slices:

Cage, Woolf, Haubenstock-Ramati
Niblock, Radigue, Oliveros
eRikm, Yoshihide, Tetreault
Nordheim, Ligeti, Maderna
Lachenmann, Moe (Ole-Henrik, not Eric), Estrada (Julio, not Erik!!)
Karkowski, Menche, Meirino
Bokanowski, Groult, Ferreyra
Truax, Lockwood, Machida
Mattin, Sachiko M, Müller
Stucky, Romitelli, Zych
Kagel, Aperghis, Steen-Andersen
Kutavicius, Ten Holt, Mazulis

And when I say "few," I mean "a ridiculously small amount."

Looking at these lists, I'm appalled at who's been left off. And _what._ (These are by no means all the trends since 1945. A dozen only.)

And several of these people could be in several different lists.

But it's a start. Even if these thirty-six were the only ones you knew, you'd have a pretty decent sense of the past fifty or sixty years. (These thirty-six plus the ones from Fsharpmajor's list, which arguably divide into two slices.)


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## Petwhac

*1. Does one have to be very familiar with music from all the previous periods in order to appreciate contemporary classical music?*
Some sort of historical perspective can be useful but ultimately so much of what is called 'contemporary classical' bears little relation to the 'classical' cannon.

*2. Does it make any sense to dedicate one's time to contemporary classical music if you haven't listened to the most important works from the past centuries?*
It is possible to work your way backwards. Sometimes the sound world of contemporary music or at least more modern composers is more familiar to modern ears.
If you like Jazz for example, you would probably prefer Bartok and Stravinsky to Schubert. But if you make the effort (keep listening) you will begin to appreciate the music of all periods.

*3. If you really have to be familiar with all the preceding classical music in order to understand contemporary, does it means that the public for contemporary classical music is EXTREMELY small. I mean, public for classical music in general is very small - but still FAR MORE people listen to Bach, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Brahms, etc - than to contemporary composers.*
Sadly, instrumental music in general, including Jazz, is a minority interest as far as the general public goes. I'm afraid most people don't _understand_ classical music even if they like the sound it makes. The audience for contemporary classical music will always be tiny especially as even those who love and understand the masterpieces of the past find it hard stomach

*4. Knowing all that we face another question - Is there any social or any other purpose of contemporary classical music outside academic circles?
*
People write stuff and other people listen. If it enriches someones life, thats purpose enough.
*5 Are contemporary composers "allowed" to compose in traditional styles such as styles of Baroque, Classicism and Romanticism OR this is a deadly sin which automatically gives them reputation of being backward, imitators and unoriginal?*
They won't be taken seriously as artists by their peers, critics and educated audiences even though many people may enjoy it.

*6. A thought experiment. Let's say Beethoven NEVER composed the Third symphony - Eroica. He still composed all of the 8 other symphonies, but not the Third.
And, now, in 2010 - some contemporary composer composes Eroica. Exactly the same thing. Would Eroica, if composed in 2010 still be held in so high regard and would it still be considered a masterpiece OR would all the critics jump on the poor guy and say "this is so unoriginal" "this is backwards" - "too old fashioned", "it is good for what it is, but this is not art music" and similar comments.*
It would sound like Beethoven, a pastiche. The unmistakable stamp of the Master runs through every page.
There is a painter called Keating, I think, who can paint in the style of the great masters so well that art experts, dealers and critics have all been fooled. The paintings may be beautiful but Keating would not be taken seriously as an artist. (although his fakes can fetch a tidy sum)
If a playwright wrote today in the style of Shakespeare people would think it silly.

*7. Is there any way to make contemporary classical music more popular? Or it seems that the art music is dying and that all the things that had to be composed are already composed?*
No. I'm afraid that we have reached the cut-off point somewhere in the 20th century.
We live in a fragmented and niche driven culture now ( art wise). There will never be a general consensus among a large section of music lovers as there is for the great works from Bach to Shostakovich.

*8. How many of you are familiar with the works of living composers, and what are the most important musical compositions of our time?
*
Ask me again in 100 years.
*9. Do you actually LIKE contemporary classical music?*
I've yet to hear very much that I would rush to hear again. This will annoy some members and _'some-guy'_ if you are reading this post I am working my way through some of the composers on your list. By and large most of what I've heard is not impressive though some people just love the stuff. Some people love techno-trance and bagpipes.


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## Guest

I don't care for techno-trance.

Love bagpipes, though!

(If you played techno-trance on bagpipes....)


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## Edward Elgar

Whistlerguy said:


> 1. Does one have to be very familiar with music from all the previous periods in order to appreciate contemporary classical music?


It helps to know where music has come from and where it is going. If all you listened to was Mozart and you then moved on to Stockhausen you're in for a shock!



Whistlerguy said:


> 2. Does it make any sense to dedicate one's time to contemporary classical music if you haven't listened to the most important works from the past centuries?


It's good to hear the important works of the past centuries. However, the important works of our own times are being written today. I think that's exiting which is why I dedicate a significant portion of my time to contemporary music.



Whistlerguy said:


> 3. If you really have to be familiar with all the preceding classical music in order to understand contemporary, does it means that the public for contemporary classical music is EXTREMELY small. I mean, public for classical music in general is very small - but still FAR MORE people listen to Bach, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Brahms, etc - than to contemporary composers.


That's because classical composers have become the popular culture of people who don't like pop or rock. Today's contemporary scene is a resistance to consumer values. I don't think audience size equates to good music. Most people don't like music on its fundamental level.



Whistlerguy said:


> 4. Knowing all that we face another question - Is there any social or any other purpose of contemporary classical music outside academic circles?


Human expression and social commentary. These have been, and will be the goals of art music. Academia is a resistance to anti-intellectualism that has flourished in recent decades.



Whistlerguy said:


> 5. Are contemporary composers "allowed" to compose in traditional styles such as styles of Baroque, Classicism and Romanticism OR this is a deadly sin which automatically gives them reputation of being backward, imitators and unoriginal?


Composers can do what the hell they want. Whether they are listened to or not depends on whether they have anything new or meaningful to say.



Whistlerguy said:


> 6. A thought experiment. Let's say Beethoven NEVER composed the Third symphony - Eroica. He still composed all of the 8 other symphonies, but not the Third.
> And, now, in 2010 - some contemporary composer composes Eroica. Exactly the same thing. Would Eroica, if composed in 2010 still be held in so high regard and would it still be considered a masterpiece OR would all the critics jump on the poor guy and say "this is so unoriginal" "this is backwards" - "too old fashioned", "it is good for what it is, but this is not art music" and similar comments.


An Eroica written today would simply be a very clever copy. An imitation of what is the unique voice of Beethoven. Beethoven strived towards originality in his life time and he would do the same had he been born today.



Whistlerguy said:


> 7. Is there any way to make contemporary classical music more popular? Or it seems that the art music is dying and that all the things that had to be composed are already composed?


If you have 12 notes and infinite rhythmical possibilities, there will always be new ideas. A way to make contemporary music more popular would be for the "Pussycat Dolls" to dance while the music is being played. IMO Popularity = Shallowness



Whistlerguy said:


> 8. How many of you are familiar with the works of living composers, and what are the most important musical compositions of our time?


Harrison Birtwistle's operas

Salvatore Sciarrino's solo pieces

Jonathan Harvey's string quartets



Whistlerguy said:


> 9. Do you actually LIKE contemporary classical music?


Some yes. Some no.


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## HarpsichordConcerto

Jeremy Marchant said:


> Very, very little contemporary classical musical is atonal, if only for the reason that that style is too difficult to write in. In the last thirty years or so, there has been an awful lot that is only too tonal: vacuous and simplistic.





Aramis said:


> Indeed - it is quite uneducated to say that contemporary music is atonal. Schoenberg and his fellows died long time ago, and though they are considered modern we should distinguish modern in sense of after-romantic periods from contemporary in sense of being composed by living composers in last decade or two.


That's quite a concern then, isn't it? Sounds ike contemporary classical music (tonal works; majority) ain't up to it. Yet, they get given the term "classical". Future years will come by where they might be forgotton, failing to transcend both time and future cultures? Does that mean these pieces will not become classical in the sense we describe Mozart as classical, but yet still call them contemporary "classical" today?

I'll let you (musically) educated folks figure that one out, then.

P.S.
Aramis, do you have a website where we can listen to your works? Would you call your works contemporary classical, too?


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## Guest

It's probably too much to ask for, but I'd like to see the word "atonal" disappear from conversations about music, if only because it's been used over the years to mean so many different things. I think it was on another Talk Classical thread that I laid out six different meanings that I'd seen on various online boards, from the very vague "whatever it is that I don't like" to "whatever doesn't have a tonal center."

And it wasn't even "and everything in between," because there was no sort of continuum. One meaning was just "ugly," another was "serial," and yet another was "music with lots of dissonance." (A customer came into the store where I work part-time and asked for some twentieth century music, but not atonal. "I don't want any like Ravel or Bartok music with atonal parts.")

Even with all the different meanings taken together, there's a lot of music that doesn't fit any of the categories. (That is, any of the real categories--"ugly" and "whatever it is that I don't like" aren't really categories. More like grunts or perhaps moans.) Electroacoustic music. Soundscape. Any kind of minimal that I've ever heard. (That is, even the consonant stuff doesn't do development or modulation like you'd do with keys.) Laptop improv. Turntable. Experimental (the older meaning--works which consist of results out of the composer's direct control). And, even though one of the usages I've seen is just this, serial.

Tonality rather faded out in the twentieth century, for several compelling reasons, to be replaced generally (except for maybe serialism) by a serious (and various) preoccupation with sound for its own sake. For better or for worse, that's just simply what happened.

Also for better or for worse, many people in the twentieth century continued to use tonality to create their pieces. (The current crop of neo-tonalists have nothing neo about them. They have rediscovered what dozens, hundreds, of composers have rediscovered over the past hundred years, that in spite of all the other things that have happened in that century, tonality still has an allure for many listeners.)


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## Earthling

some guy said:


> Also for better or for worse, many people in the twentieth century continued to use tonality to create their pieces. (The current crop of neo-tonalists have nothing neo about them. They have rediscovered what dozens, hundreds, of composers have rediscovered over the past hundred years, that in spite of all the other things that have happened in that century, tonality still has an allure for many listeners.)


As Schoenberg himself said, there's plenty more music to be written in the key of C (and in fact, he did!-- some works for strings written in the 1930s)

There's a lot more diversity in modern & contemporary music than some listeners allow, but it often all gets lumped into one big "atonal" bin (meaning: not a lot of nice stable triads), as if everyone from 1910 onward were all serial composers. I have to agree with *Some Guy *that the word _atonal _is bandied about all too often and easily.


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## triangle solo

> 1. Does one have to be very familiar with music from all the previous periods in order to appreciate contemporary classical music?


No. I certainly wasn't. I was interested in 20th Century music well before I got into 19th Century stuff. But, being raised in Western society, one can't help but have _some_ exposure to older music, I suppose.



> 4. Knowing all that we face another question - Is there any social or any other purpose of contemporary classical music outside academic circles?


I'm not an academic, and I seem to like listening to the stuff. That's enough of a purpose for me.



> 5. Are contemporary composers "allowed" to compose in traditional styles such as styles of Baroque, Classicism and Romanticism OR this is a deadly sin which automatically gives them reputation of being backward, imitators and unoriginal?


They can (and do) do whatever they want. Most composers are well aware of the fact that nothing they write is going to please everybody.



> 7. Is there any way to make contemporary classical music more popular? Or it seems that the art music is dying and that all the things that had to be composed are already composed?


I hear incredible, exciting, _new_ things all the time. There's no limit to human creativity, but it seems there _are_ limits to the development of people's tastes. Most people reach a point in their lives when they stop being interested in seeking out new works, or new styles of work. Hence, you have people listening forever to whatever sort of music they liked in high school, and nothing else, and, to them, it may seem as though nothing more needs to be composed. But, there are plenty of people who don't suffer from this affliction, and so, music is doing fine in that respect. I feel like we have a quorum for keeping things going.



> 8. How many of you are familiar with the works of living composers, and what are the most important musical compositions of our time?


I'm very familiar with a lot of living composers, but importance is a difficult thing to judge here if the eventual influence of a piece is to be given consideration. I can only say that I like certain pieces.



> 9. Do you actually LIKE contemporary classical music?


Yes.


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## StlukesguildOhio

I have a lot of questions about contemporary classical music and find this topic extremely interesting, even though I am not very knowledgeable about it.

1. Does one have to be very familiar with music from all the previous periods in order to appreciate contemporary classical music?

Well... it lends a greater degree of understanding if one has a firm foundation in the history of any art form... but in no way is it a necessity any more than its a necessity to have a grasp of medieval music before one can appreciate Bach or Vivaldi.

2. Does it make any sense to dedicate one's time to contemporary classical music if you haven't listened to the most important works from the past centuries?

What makes sense is to simply listen to what interests you... what you like. I like to listen to music across the spectrum. Others like to specialize with one era or one genre. Personally, I think its important to have some idea of what is happening in music today... even if you don't like everything you hear.

3. If you really have to be familiar with all the preceding classical music in order to understand contemporary, does it means that the public for contemporary classical music is EXTREMELY small. I mean, public for classical music in general is very small - but still FAR MORE people listen to Bach, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Brahms, etc - than to contemporary composers.

I think there are multiple reasons that contemporary music has a smaller audience than Beethoven or Mozart, for example. You might do well to note that Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill, and Yves Bonnefoy all have a smaller audience than Wordsworth, Keats, and Blake and Anselm Kiefer, Sean Scully and Lee Bontecou all have a smaller following than Monet, Degas, or Matisse. Yet at the same time I suspect that Heinrich Biber, Josquin Desprez, and Jan Dismas Zelenka have an audience no greater than that for Arvo Part, Steve Reich, and Krzysztof Penderecki. Most of the classical composers whose names are well-known are certainly deserving of the recognition... but at the same time we must acknowledge a sort of bias in support of the music of Romanticism through early Modernism where many worthy composers of the "Classical era" (how few composers of this era beyond Mozart, Haydn, and early Beethoven can you name?), the Baroque, the Renaissance, Medieval music, and late Modern/Contemporary music garners far less recognition than they deserve.

4. Knowing all that we face another question - Is there any social or any other purpose of contemporary classical music outside academic circles?

I would assume that the "purposes" of contemporary music are as far-ranging as they were at any time. There is opera, music for the theater, music for the church, music with a pedagogical aim, music as an expression of joy... or of pain, etc... etc...

5. Are contemporary composers "allowed" to compose in traditional styles such as styles of Baroque, Classicism and Romanticism OR this is a deadly sin which automatically gives them reputation of being backward, imitators and unoriginal?


I think contemporary composers have the freedom to draw upon elements from any era or genre in the history of music. Of course a imitation of the music of a bygone era which brings nothing unique to bear would seem to have little merit.

6. A thought experiment. Let's say Beethoven NEVER composed the Third symphony - Eroica. He still composed all of the 8 other symphonies, but not the Third. And, now, in 2010 - some contemporary composer composes Eroica. Exactly the same thing. Would Eroica, if composed in 2010 still be held in so high regard and would it still be considered a masterpiece OR would all the critics jump on the poor guy and say "this is so unoriginal" "this is backwards" - "too old fashioned", "it is good for what it is, but this is not art music" and similar comments.

The question is difficult. As a visual artist, I can think of equivalents. The Victorian era was particularly fond of building cathedrals, palaces, and other structures in the manner of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance (etc...) buildings. Nearly every major city in the West has such "Revival Style" pseudo-Gothic cathedrals. Certainly these bildings pale before the true Gothic cathedrals of Chartres, Rheims, Amiens, etc... yet they are not without aesthetic merit. I suspect the same would be true if someone were to compose a symphony today in the manner of Beethoven. It might be admired to a certain extent... but never to the level of the work of Beethoven which had the added merit of originality... not to be confused with mere "novelty."

7. Is there any way to make contemporary classical music more popular? Or it seems that the art music is dying and that all the things that had to be composed are already composed?

Is it dying? Perhaps certain approaches to music have a far smaller audience than others... but this has always been true. But then again... contemporary art always faces the challenge of impressing an audience who may not be ready for a work of art that does not fit within the accepted standards of what one knows from the music of the past, that has already been absorbed into the larger culture... and in which history... and subsequent musicians and music lovers have led to the survival and continued performance of only the strongest works... while the rest has fallen away. We lack such advantages with contemporary music... but again, I believe we owe it to ourselves to explore what is happening in music here and now.

8. How many of you are familiar with the works of living composers, and what are the most important musical compositions of our time?

I listen to a great many late Modern and Contemporary composers. Among some of those I have found the most pleasure in I would include Henryck Gorecki, Krzysztof Penderecki, György Ligeti, Osvaldo Golijov, David Lang, Tristan Murail, Kaija Saariaho, Gérard Grisey, Daniel Catan, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, John Harbisos, Peter Lieberson, John Tavener, Michael Nyman, Julian Anderson, Jonathan Harvey, Pascal Dusapin, William Bolcom, John Corigliano, David Diamond, Ned Rorem, Morten Lauridsen, Joseph Schwantner, James MacMillan, Tarik O'Regan, Sofia Gubaidulina, Giacinto Scelsi, Akira Ifukube, Gyorgy Kurtag, Toru Takemitsu, Per Nørgård, Erkki-Sven Tuur, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Peteris Vasks, George Crumb, Iannis Xenakis, Elliot Carter, Terry Riley, John Cage, Alfred Schnittke, Kalevi Aho, Hans Werner Henze, etc...

9. Do you actually LIKE contemporary classical music?

I like a lot of it. Some of it I don't like... pretty much the same with any era.


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## Petwhac

The disconnect between the majority of the music loving public and a lot (not all) late modern, post modern, avant garde music is simply explained.

Until, the early 20th century, 'classical' or 'art' music used the same vocabulary as popular and folk music.

It was written in the common tongue. 

The marching band, the folk song, the parlour song, the hymn, the carol, though not as complex or or on such a scale as say music by Wagner or Ravel or Bach, still shared a common element - tonality.
That is all the music was based around the scales and arpeggios of 12 keys.

When composers broke that bond they left the public behind.

That public will listen to pop, jazz, folk, rock, film music, music from earlier periods etc, because it is in a language they understand.


That is the fact of it. It is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. It just is.
Phillip Glass and James MacMillan are no more 'important' than Elton John or Pat Metheny.

What troubles me is, as in conceptual art, how do you know when you are being sold a piece of shallow tat- pile of bricks, unmade bed.


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## Huilunsoittaja

I think it rather sad that today, composers aren't really _allowed_ to sound like anything other than modern. What if someone is into neo-classicism or neo-romanticism? Will people tell them "We already had that era!" ? I would support a revival to go back a little to the past, personally...

How will _our _era be defined by people in the future? That will be interesting to see...


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## StlukesguildOhio

I think it rather sad that today, composers aren't really allowed to sound like anything other than modern.

A composer is free to build upon any element of past music... but it would seem a bit absurd to simply mimic a past style. The composes of the Classical Era don't sound like Baroque composers and somehow I doubt they wish they could write Baroque music. Again... this does not mean that only the most cutting edge or avant garde innovations are valid. Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, Alan Hovhaness, etc... all composed music that was clearly rooted in Romanticism... and yet it was also of its time... it did not sound like a mere pastiche of Mahler or Bruckner.

Composers aren't allowed to sound like anything but "modern"? Define "modern?" I can think of any number of composers of real merit who write anything but the extremely esoteric experimental work that I assume you are referring to. And then I can think of a goodly amount of esoteric, experimental music I quite like. The contemporary music scene is so broad that sweeping statements from any direction fail to hit the mark.


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## StlukesguildOhio

The disconnect between the majority of the music loving public and a lot (not all) late modern, post modern, avant garde music is simply explained.

So are you assuming there was a great connection in the past between composers and the masses? Were the masses listening to Beethoven's late quartets, Bach's _Well Tempered Clavier_, or even Wagner's operas? It would seem that what we call classical music has always had a limited audience... some times more limited than others. I imagine that Mozart's_ Magic Flute_ and Offenbach's operettas were far more popular in their appeal than Guillaume Dufay's isorhythmic motets... which may have been no less esoteric than anything by Ligeti.


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## Petwhac

StlukesguildOhio said:


> The disconnect between the majority of the music loving public and a lot (not all) late modern, post modern, avant garde music is simply explained.
> 
> So are you assuming there was a great connection in the past between composers and the masses? Were the masses listening to Beethoven's late quartets, Bach's _Well Tempered Clavier_, or even Wagner's operas? It would seem that what we call classical music has always had a limited audience... some times more limited than others. I imagine that Mozart's_ Magic Flute_ and Offenbach's operettas were far more popular in their appeal than Guillaume Dufay's isorhythmic motets... which may have been no less esoteric than anything by Ligeti.


 The masses may not have had the opportunity to hear Beethoven et al, but if they had, they would have recognized the language he was speaking.
There was a common musical vocabulary. The music may have been complex or complicated to their ears but a the 'Ode to Joy' or the 'Liebestod' or Petrushka or the Magnificat or The Sea Symphony or Palestrina..... they would all be recognizable as speaking the same language more or less.

Your comparison is a false one I believe.


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## Guest

Petwhac said:


> The disconnect between the majority of the music loving public and a lot (not all) late modern, post modern, avant garde music is simply explained.
> 
> Until, the early 20th century, 'classical' or 'art' music used the same vocabulary as popular and folk music.
> 
> It was written in the common tongue.
> 
> The marching band, the folk song, the parlour song, the hymn, the carol, though not as complex or or on such a scale as say music by Wagner or Ravel or Bach, still shared a common element - tonality.
> That is all the music was based around the scales and arpeggios of 12 keys.
> 
> *When composers broke that bond they left the public behind.*


(Emphasis mine.)

This sounds logical, but the historical record simply does not bear it out. There was a disconnect between audience and composers, but it happened around 1810, not 1910. You can read about it in detail in William Weber's _The Great Transformation of Musical Taste: Concert Programming from Haydn to Brahms._* Around 1810 (which was also the year the term "classical music" first started to be used), the ratio of dead composers to living composers was changing from around 1 to 10 (in the late 18th century) to around 10 to zero by the 1870s. The biggest difference between audiences then and now was that in the 19th century, audiences were suspicious of all new music, rejecting even those few composers who tried to write in older styles to woo them. Now composers who do that get big recording contracts and even win Pulitzer prizes!



Petwhac said:


> That public will listen to pop, jazz, folk, rock, film music, music from earlier periods etc, because it is in a language they understand.


That is not, I think you'll find, how actual people perceive things when they listen to music. If you read about music, you can find out how some people have heard only lasciviousness in jazz or noise in rock or just random squeeks and grunts in classical music (any of it, from any era). If you talk to people about music, you can find out the same things.



Petwhac said:


> What troubles me is, as in conceptual art, how do you know when you are being sold a piece of shallow tat- pile of bricks, unmade bed.


I'm going to guess that this doesn't really bother you at all. When was the last time you actually purchased a piece of conceptual art, for instance! [Don't explain the figurative meaning of "sold" that you were using.]

*Alex Ross reviewed this book when it came out. Here's a little snippet from his review: "Matters progressed to the point where a Viennese critic complained that 'the public has got to stay in touch with the music of its time . . . for otherwise people will gradually come to mistrust music claimed to be the best,' and organizers of a Paris series observed that some of their subscribers 'get upset when they see the name of a single contemporary composer on the programs.' These quotations come from 1843 and 1864. *Anyone who believes that twentieth-century composers, with their harsh chords and rhythms, betrayed some sacred contract with the public should spend a few moments absorbing Weber's data. In fact, the composers were betrayed first.*"
(Emphasis mine.)


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## Head_case

> Anyone who believes that twentieth-century composers, with their harsh chords and rhythms, betrayed some sacred contract with the public should spend a few moments absorbing Weber's data. In fact, the composers were betrayed first.


That's a rather nice quote.

Even if he doesn't really mean 'sacred' contract, we know what he means.

Anyway, bricks and unmade beds are a form of minimalism - minimal conceptual thinking. Or just minimal thinking going into it


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## Petwhac

_Originally Posted by Petwhac 
That public will listen to pop, jazz, folk, rock, film music, music from earlier periods etc, because it is in a language they understand._
You said* "That is not, I think you'll find, how actual people perceive things when they listen to music. If you read about music, you can find out how some people have heard only lasciviousness in jazz or noise in rock or just random squeeks and grunts in classical music (any of it, from any era). If you talk to people about music, you can find out the same things."*

And I say...

Being an actual person myself who not only reads_ about_ music but reads music, composes, arranges and performs music, I can tell you that people may and do come round to Jazz, Rock or contemporary 'classical' styles that shares the common musical vocabulary at least to a fair extent.

I'm afraid squeeks and grunts will remain just that for (I believe) the vast majority of music lovers.

I am making the point that whatever happened pre Schoenberg (for example) as far as the public's acceptance of new music is concerned, has no relevance to a discussion of the so called avant garde today. There is a fundamental difference .

That quote from Weber may show when in history the concert goer started to want to hear pieces of previous generations. That is why the 'classical' period is so called.

If, from that you think that in 50 or 100 years the public will want to listen to Berio, Babbit, Birtwhistle in any greater numbers than they do now, I'm afraid you'll be in for a shock.

In 1990 the BBC used Nesun Dorma as a theme for the World Cup coverage. The beer swilling, tattooed
football fan who you would have had to drag kicking and screaming to the Opera, who thought Puccini was a type of pasta- well they love it now. It _says_ something to them and not just by association. 
They recognise that although it is different from Michael Jackson it is more like MJ than it is like squeeks and grunts.
Now substitute Nessun Dorma for Gruppen or anything by Boulez or Oliver Knussen or Arne Nordheim......it'll never happen.


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## Guest

Petwhac said:


> I'm afraid squeeks and grunts will remain just that for (I believe) the vast majority of music lovers.


And my point was that people can describe any old thing that they don't like, regardless of its being in what you term "a language that they understand," as "squeeks and grunts." (Squeeks and grunts in my post being a value judgment, not a description.) And I was just trying to point out that for people I've had conversations with, online and live, the common "language" is _not_ understandable or at least not recognized as common. Or perhaps the people I hang out with are just more stubborn than your crowd.



Petwhac said:


> I am making the point that whatever happened pre Schoenberg (for example) as far as the public's acceptance of new music is concerned, has no relevance to a discussion of the so called avant garde today. There is a fundamental difference.


If you're going to claim that composers broke some bond in the early twentieth century, and the historical record shows that whatever bond was broken was broken in the early nineteenth century, and broken by the audience, not the composers, then I'd say it has a clear relevance to your claim. And its relevance is that your claim is not supported by the facts. Now that may be displeasing to you. You may not want to give up your beliefs just on my say so (even if supported by Weber's meticulous research). But your not wanting to accept evidence is different from whether the evidence is relevant or not. Distasteful, sure. Unwelcome, obviously. But not relevant? No. It's relevant.



Petwhac said:


> If...you think that in 50 or 100 years the public will want to listen to Berio, Babbit, Birtwhistle in any greater numbers than they do now, I'm afraid you'll be in for a shock.


Um, I'm not planning to be around in 50 or 100 years from now, so I won't be in for anything, shocking or not. But even if I were, I wouldn't be shocked. I don't enjoy music or value it according to how many other people want to listen to it. I don't enjoy or value it according to whether beer swilling, tattooed football fans can enjoy it. I certainly don't enjoy it for how many people _might_ be listening to it long after I'm dead. I'm alive now. I listen to music now. I enjoy Berio, Babbitt, and Birtwistle now.

Why, I enjoy beer and football,* too, come to think of it, though I don't have any tattooes. Not sure about that there "swilling" part, neither. But then the beer I drink costs between eight and ten dollars a six pack, so you'll have to forgive me for protecting my investment by eschewing swillery.

*Not the U.S. kind, though.


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## StlukesguildOhio

The masses may not have had the opportunity to hear Beethoven et al, but if they had, they would have recognized the language he was speaking.

Are you certain of that? Somehow I doubt that the majority of the working classes would have the least concept of the classical forms that Beethoven was working in... expanding... and shattering. I somewhat imagine that his late quartets would have completely baffled them... as they baffled many who had a background in classical music.

There was a common musical vocabulary.

Really? That seems as much of a stretch as to suggest that there was a common vocabulary shared by such poets as John Donne and John Milton and the largely illiterate masses who probably knew a few bawdy songs and ballads.

The music may have been complex or complicated to their ears but a the 'Ode to Joy' or the 'Liebestod' or Petrushka or the Magnificat or The Sea Symphony or Palestrina..... they would all be recognizable as speaking the same language more or less.

Your comparison is a false one I believe.


You are suggesting that my comparisons are false based upon mere assumptions that there has always been a shared vocabulary between "high art" and the masses... and this is quite untrue. Perhaps you might wish to look into the complexity of Guillaume Dufay's isorhythmic motets to see just how complex they are... how they employ a specialized language that few would have understood. If we consider that Dufay's music... and much of classical music... would baffle a good portion of the masses today (think of how popular opera is with the masses) how can you assume that an audience with even less exposure to music (no radio, TV, CDs, i-pods, etc...) would recognize a common language in a musical form quite foreign to them?


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## StlukesguildOhio

I don't fully buy into some guy's theory (which undoubtedly won't surprise him). I think the growing distance between certain approaches to contemporary music, and the audience has been a two sided "dispute". There is enough blame to throw around at either side. The same thing happened in the visual arts. Some artists produced increasingly challenging works... the audience turned their back upon these artists... these artists then turned their back even more upon the audience producing even more esoteric work. Personally I have mixed feelings about who to blame... and whether anyone is at fault. Are we to assume that all art is for everyone?... That it should seek out the largest possible audience? Hell, John Cage and Ligeti probably have a larger audience thanks to recordings than Mozart ever knew in his lifetime.


This brings me to another thought: is it not probable that the recording industry has had a major impact upon current listening habits? I have the ability today to plop down on my couch after work and listen to the Berlin Philharmonic perform Wagner... or the Tallis Scholars sing William Byrd. Surely, this is an access to the whole of the history of music unlike that which any other era enjoyed. Is it then at all surprising that a good portion of the audience decides that they would rather listen to Mozart or Bach than contemporary music...? Especially so much contemporary music strikes many listeners initially as "difficult"... if not painful? Especially when no one is really certain as to what contemporary music is really of the greatest merit and will survive? Especially when there is always some guy willing to suggest that the Modern or Contemporary music that we like is kitsch while the stuff he or she likes is the real ****.

Having said that much, I still personally think there is real value in exploring the music of one's time... some of which you will love... and some of which you may hate. I probably listen as much of more to the music of the last 100 years than I do to any other era. Again, I don't believe sweeping statements about "Modern or Contemporary music achieve much of anything... the field is so broad and there is much good and much bad. Perhaps it might be better to discuss specific composers or works.


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## StlukesguildOhio

In 1990 the BBC used Nesun Dorma as a theme for the World Cup coverage. The beer swilling, tattooed
football fan who you would have had to drag kicking and screaming to the Opera, who thought Puccini was a type of pasta- well they love it now. It says something to them and not just by association.
They recognise that although it is different from Michael Jackson it is more like MJ than it is like squeeks and grunts.
Now substitute Nessun Dorma for Gruppen or anything by Boulez or Oliver Knussen or Arne Nordheim......it'll never happen.

And yet Ligeti can hold an equally large audience enthralled when employed by Stanley Kubrick in _2001: A Space Odyssey_.


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## Guest

StlukesguildOhio said:


> I don't fully buy into some guy's theory (which undoubtedly won't surprise him).


It also does not surprise me that you called my reference to historical records a theory.

Of course a lot of things have happened and continue to happen, with misunderstandings and disdain from both creators and audience. I'm not as interested in assigning blame as I am in trying to promote understanding and eliminating disdain. And in that regard, I'd like to interject a trifling bit of logic: doesn't it seem likelier that a creator, who is someone who is in the business of making things for the enjoyment of others, is less likely to be the one breaking any bonds than an auditor, who is often someone (who has become someone) who wants only what's familiar and safe? (Of course, it is equally likely that a composer can react to those members of the audience who reject his or her music. And once that happens, the vicious cycle can start viciously rotating. But there will always be members of the audience who enjoy the music, so I vote for ignoring the viciousness and concentrate on the enjoying.



StlukesguildOhio said:


> ...is it not probable that the recording industry has had a major impact upon current listening habits?


Almost certainly true. Indeed, this was my theory (this time we really ARE talking about a theory) for how we'd gotten to where we are today until I read Weber's book. Certainly recording technology has encouraged the trend of increasing conservatism. Fortunately, it has also served the adventurous well. I'm conflicted, but I've decided not to complain!



StlukesguildOhio said:


> ...no one is really certain as to what contemporary music is really of the greatest merit and will survive?


This insecurity is something I'd like to see disappear. I think new music would fare better and listeners too, if we could stop worrying about what other people are thinking ("greatest merit") or what people not yet born will be thinking long after we're dead ("will survive"). I hate to keep playing the same little tune at this point in these conversations, but I'm alive now. I enjoy things. If others enjoy the same things, fine. We can hang out, maybe, and enjoy them together. If not, though, it's probably still fine. We can hang out, maybe, and do something else. Have a beer, watch some basketball, argue about politics, ride bikes around the park. Plenty of other stuff to do.



StlukesguildOhio said:


> Especially when there is always some guy willing to suggest that the Modern or Contemporary music that we like is kitsch while the stuff he or she likes is the real ****.


I'm sure you'll never get tired of knocking down this straw man. I'm going to go on record as being officially tired of pointing out that this is all you. I'm starting to get the idea that you yourself maybe suspect that the contemporary music you prefer is inferior. Maybe? Anyway, maybe some _other_ guy in your past has wounded your ego with pronouncements about your tastes. I've not.

I've asked you before to supply a wee quote, maybe, to back up this empty assertion of yours. But no. Much easier, and apparently endlessly amusing, to make straw men and knock those suckers down! "DIE YOU UGLY STRAWMAN!! DIE!! Hahahahaha!!!"

Um, OK, then. Have at it.



StlukesguildOhio said:


> Having said that much, I still personally think there is real value in exploring the music of one's time... some of which you will love... and some of which you may hate. I probably listen as much of more to the music of the last 100 years than I do to any other era. Again, I don't believe sweeping statements about "Modern or Contemporary music achieve much of anything... the field is so broad and there is much good and much bad. *Perhaps it might be better to discuss specific composers or works.*


Ah, amity. Sweet sweet amity at last. St and I are in _perfect_ accord on this point.


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## StlukesguildOhio

I'd like to interject a trifling bit of logic: doesn't it seem likelier that a creator, who is someone who is in the business of making things for the enjoyment of others, is less likely to be the one breaking any bonds than an auditor, who is often someone (who has become someone) who wants only what's familiar and safe? (Of course, it is equally likely that a composer can react to those members of the audience who reject his or her music. And once that happens, the vicious cycle can start viciously rotating. But there will always be members of the audience who enjoy the music, so I vote for ignoring the viciousness and concentrate on the enjoying.

In theory this would seem to be true. One would think that the artist in any genre (unless we are speaking of some outsider artist obsessively creating for his or her own reasons) would be aware that there is a two-way relationship between the artist and audience. And of course so every artist has the same audience in mind. On the other hand, I have known a few too many latent Romantics in the arts who hold on to the tired notion that the audience or public are all a bunch or morons and whose attitude is perhaps best expressed by "F*** the audience. I'll do what I want... and anyone who has gained a degree of audience recognition is clearly a 'sell out' ".

SLG-...no one is really certain as to what contemporary music is really of the greatest merit and will survive?

SG- This insecurity is something I'd like to see disappear. I think new music would fare better and listeners too, if we could stop worrying about what other people are thinking ("greatest merit") or what people not yet born will be thinking long after we're dead ("will survive"). 

Certainly we love what we love... but then again... that ugly argument always rears its head as to which music of here and now is really of merit. While you may call it a "strawman" there are always those proclamations about the superiority of one direction in music over another... coming, it must be admitted... from every side of the dispute. Many composers themselves have revealed their personal experiences having needed to struggle against the dominant trend and prejudices of professors, mentors, critics, etc... (how many times have I read here suggestions that Penderecki "sold out" because his later works were not as abrasive?) Many of the same composers are good at dishing out the prejudice with a self-certain air of superiority (Boulez is a fine example). I've always admired the fact that John Cage could appreciate (and be friends with) Alan Hovhaness... in spite of the world of difference between their musical paths. It suggested a possibility that something of great merit might be found both in the most experimental approaches to music... and in the more traditional... and that perhaps the former is not just noise (or some grandiose joke), but perhaps the former is not always some step back or some cowardly act of pandering to the audience.


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## Earthling

StlukesguildOhio said:


> On the other hand, I have known a few too many latent Romantics in the arts who hold on to the tired notion that the audience or public are all a bunch or morons and whose attitude is perhaps best expressed by "F*** the audience. I'll do what I want...




Actually, if one were going to point fingers at the source of this "original sin," then the first culprit was Beethoven.


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## Petwhac

Dear StlukesguildOhio and some_guy,
There are so many points to address in your posts that I hardly know where to begin. So in no particular order……

Let me make one thing clear. It is not not not the responsibility of the artist to tailor his/her work to the public taste. Artists must be true to themselves, if what they make is appreciated by many then they are fortunate. I wouldn't presume to dictate how a composer should write, each must find their own voice. All that I ask is that what they make is sincere, considered, coherent and well executed.

Anyway… 
Stluke - _ "And yet Ligeti can hold an equally large audience enthralled when employed by Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey."
_
O dear, this is the big problem. The fact you can say that means you are confusing film 'soundtrack' with 'concert' 'art' or 'classical' music.
Also Sprach Zarathustra and the Blue Danube are used to equally enthralling effect in the movie. Barber's Adagio in Platoon, Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries in Apocalypse Now. This means nothing. Take the music out of the movie and into the concert hall or opera house for which it was intended before making any judgement about the music.

Stluke -_ Somehow I doubt that the majority of the working classes would have the least concept of the classical forms that Beethoven was working in... expanding... and shattering. I somewhat imagine that his late quartets would have completely baffled them... as they baffled many who had a background in classical music. 
_
Yes, late Beethoven was, and for many, still is, quite baffling. However, it is not the 'language' which baffles but the 'style' 'form' 'expression' the use of the language. The A minor Quartet Op 132 is still in the same A minor that Bach, Mozart, Cherubini used. There is not one chord in that quartet that is not a major or minor triad ( perhaps 'coloured' with a 7th or a suspension or an appoggiatura)

Milton and Donne wrote in English, the same English that an episode of 'Friends' uses ( more or less) The same 26 letters and many of the same words. 
An illiterate 17th century peasant or farmworker may have struggled with Paradise Lost's *'Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit  Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast  Brought Death into the World, and all our woe, ….'*

That may be a bit florid or highfaultin but I think you'll agree it is coherent and comprehensible to an English speaker.

Now perhaps, because I'm an avant-garde / post modern poet I'll apply a serial technique to the use of letters or perhaps I'll just explore the vowel sounds and shapes and come up with
*'nof sma Dis Dis Dis Fruuuiit fo of fo of moortall ,,,,, *

mmm, I wonder why the public don't really 'get' my poetry, I'm sure if they have an open mind and make an effort they'll understand. Or maybe they'll just get off on the sound it makes.

Again, don't misunderstand me. There's nothing wrong with producing scratchy noises on open strings of a violin and sliding around on harmonics col legno ( that's a reference to Radulescu- Lux Animae Op.97) And there's nothing wrong with enjoying it, each to their own.

I said originally that composers left the public behind when they abandoned too large a part of the vocabulary of tonality, harmonic progression, melody, pulse

I revise that statement. They didn't leave the public behind, they just went off on a tangent that the vast majority don't and never will follow.

some_guy said, "_If you're going to claim that composers broke some bond in the early twentieth century, and the historical record shows that whatever bond was broken was broken in the early nineteenth century, and broken by the audience, not the composers, then I'd say it has a clear relevance to your claim. And its relevance is that your claim is not supported by the facts. Now that may be displeasing to you. You may not want to give up your beliefs just on my say so (even if supported by Weber's meticulous research). But your not wanting to accept evidence is different from whether the evidence is relevant or not. Distasteful, sure. Unwelcome, obviously. But not relevant? No. It's relevant."
_
I say, I don't need historical evidence. I have my ears. Bach through 
Sibelius, Duke Ellington, Lady Ga Ga, Radio Head, they are part of a system of tonality that can accommodate all their styles. They are not to be compared with each other as far as the aims of their music but they are distant cousins where as Berio, Babbit, etc are a different species.

That's all I'm saying.

It's good to have variety in the world.

The public will definitely _not_ 'come round' eventually as they did with late Beethoven, Debussy, The Rite of Spring, Jazz, Rock and Roll.

And by the way the recording industry has a lot to answer for but that's another discussion.


----------



## StlukesguildOhio

Stluke - "And yet Ligeti can hold an equally large audience enthralled when employed by Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey."

"O dear, this is the big problem. The fact you can say that means you are confusing film 'soundtrack' with 'concert' 'art' or 'classical' music.
Also Sprach Zarathustra and the Blue Danube are used to equally enthralling effect in the movie. Barber's Adagio in Platoon, Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries in Apocalypse Now. This means nothing. Take the music out of the movie and into the concert hall or opera house for which it was intended before making any judgement about the music.

And how is that different from your beer swilling footballers embracing _Nesun Dorma_? Or perhaps they are now likely to run off a purchase a subscription to the opera where the audience who hears Barber's Adagio or Ligeti's _Lux Æterna_ is only being seduced by the context? And yet the reality is that a great many classical music lovers first came across classical music thanks to Disney's _Fantasia_ or Loony Tunes.

Stluke - Somehow I doubt that the majority of the working classes would have the least concept of the classical forms that Beethoven was working in... expanding... and shattering. I somewhat imagine that his late quartets would have completely baffled them... as they baffled many who had a background in classical music.

Yes, late Beethoven was, and for many, still is, quite baffling. However, it is not the 'language' which baffles but the 'style' 'form' 'expression' the use of the language. The A minor Quartet Op 132 is still in the same A minor that Bach, Mozart, Cherubini used. There is not one chord in that quartet that is not a major or minor triad ( perhaps 'coloured' with a 7th or a suspension or an appoggiatura)

The point remains that Beethoven's quartets would be no more baffling than Cherubini, Mozart, or Bach... none of whom would have been any more familiar to the masses of their day than Philip Glass or Arvo Part are to the masses today.

Milton and Donne wrote in English, the same English that an episode of 'Friends' uses ( more or less) The same 26 letters and many of the same words.
An illiterate 17th century peasant or farmworker may have struggled with Paradise Lost's 'Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit  Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast  Brought Death into the World, and all our woe, ….'

That may be a bit florid or highfaultin but I think you'll agree it is coherent and comprehensible to an English speaker.

And yet how comprehensible would the whole be to the illiterate or barely literate audience of the time? Hell, Milton and even Shakespeare leave the majority of today's audience as baffled, bored, or disinterested as anything by Anne Carson or John Barth. By the same token, a great deal of classical music... beyond those "greatest hits"... the tunes familiar from film and TV... leaves the majority of today's audiences equally baffled, bored, and disinterested.

Now perhaps, because I'm an avant-garde / post modern poet I'll apply a serial technique to the use of letters or perhaps I'll just explore the vowel sounds and shapes and come up with
'nof sma Dis Dis Dis Fruuuiit fo of fo of moortall ,,,,,

mmm, I wonder why the public don't really 'get' my poetry, I'm sure if they have an open mind and make an effort they'll understand. Or maybe they'll just get off on the sound it makes.

And is this really what any of the really strong among the latest contemporary poets do? Have you actually read Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill, Seamus Heaney, Charles Wright, Yves Bonnefoy? Again you are making blanket statements and avoiding the specifics. Who are the poets who have so shattered language as to be indecipherable? Who are the composers who have so shattered music as to make it unlistenable even for the majority of those with experience in classical music? Certainly, there me be examples... but there is still more than a little music today that is capable of resonating with and moving an audience.

Again, don't misunderstand me. There's nothing wrong with producing scratchy noises on open strings of a violin and sliding around on harmonics col legno ( that's a reference to Radulescu- Lux Animae Op.97) And there's nothing wrong with enjoying it, each to their own.

I said originally that composers left the public behind when they abandoned too large a part of the vocabulary of tonality, harmonic progression, melody, pulse

I revise that statement. They didn't leave the public behind, they just went off on a tangent that the vast majority don't and never will follow.

And did the majority follow Bach or Beethoven or Wagner on their "tangents"? Is the majority even relevant? Is the size of the audience somehow meant revealing of the merits of the music?

The public will definitely not 'come round' eventually as they did with late Beethoven, Debussy, The Rite of Spring, Jazz, Rock and Roll.

But has the public "come around" to late Beethoven or Schubert's lieder, or Bach's cantatas, etc...? I don't hear Beethoven's late quartets... or his early ones... or even Haydn's or Mozart's played out of booming car stereos, in films, on TV, etc... The greatest new recordings of the most iconic works of classical music sell but a fraction of what the least pop hit sells. A good deal of the best to be found in fine art, literature, and music has always had a limited audience. In Bach's time this was owed to the lack of access and to the division of classes. In our time it is owed more to other diversions that strike the individual as preferable. Art is still "elitist"... but its an "elitism" of choice... an elective affinity. Some individual decide that classical music is worth the effort... others decide that it is not.


----------



## Toccata

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> I would like to ask you some questions, now that you have asked us so many.
> 
> (A) Why do you find these questions important to you?
> 
> (B) Are you considering whether to spend time getting into contemporary classcal music?
> 
> (C) Why don't you just listen to several pieces and not think so much about your familiarity with old music?
> 
> (D) Have you listened to any contemporary classical music? From your previous posts and threads, you have mentioned you are new even to old/regular classical music.


Because these are obviously homework questions, like everything else posed by the same character.


----------



## Whistlerguy

I will answer to these questions. It's not for my homework. This thread just became too big, so I have to think before posting. I am sorry for being late in answering them.

So



> (A) Why do you find these questions important to you?


Because I am interested in how do people relate to contemporary classical music and also I am interested in current trends in classical music. I appreciate old masters, but I also want to be informed about what is going on in the world of classical music right now, and I want to be able to appreciate new music as well as old.



> (B) Are you considering whether to spend time getting into contemporary classcal music?


Yes. I already listened to some works of Philip Glass (Koyaanisqatsi, Wichita Vortex Sutra, Glassworks) and Arnold Schoenberg (A Survivor From Warsaw). I do intend to listen to more modern and contemporary composers.



> (C) Why don't you just listen to several pieces and not think so much about your familiarity with old music?


I have already done this.



> (D) Have you listened to any contemporary classical music? From your previous posts and threads, you have mentioned you are new even to old/regular classical music.


Yes. And I have listened to quite a lot of old music too.


----------



## Whistlerguy

> Quote:
> 5. Are contemporary composers "allowed" to compose in traditional styles such as styles of Baroque, Classicism and Romanticism OR this is a deadly sin which automatically gives them reputation of being backward, imitators and unoriginal?
> 
> I would say yes, unless you can put an interesting spin on things. It would be just as unoriginal as a band trying to sound just like the Beatles. Why, in the year 2010, would anyone want to sound like the Beatles?


I agree that the _style_ would be unoriginal. But what about the piece itself. If someone composed a symphony in the style of Beethoven, but still totally different from any of his nine symphonies and also original (as all of his symphonies were also original) would it still face harsh criticism today?

What would happen if we changed the question and instead of Eroica, I asked about 5th symphony? Even if it is in Beethoven's style 5th symphony is completely unique and totally original work and can't be derived from his other symphonies?

So, if someone composed today, something like Beethoven's 5th symphony - would it still face harsh criticism just because it is in Beethoven's style, even if the piece itself is highly original?


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## Whistlerguy

> 7. Why should it be more popular? One of the greatest qulaities of contemporary music is its unpopularity.


I think that in order to have impact on people and on society music must be at least somewhat popular. If good music has beneficial effect on people, why should it be reserved to few millions aficionados in the world? Out of 7 billion people how many are familiar with the work of contemporary composers?


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## Earthling

Whistlerguy said:


> I think that in order to have impact on people and on society music must be at least somewhat popular. If good music has beneficial effect on people, why should it be reserved to few millions aficionados in the world? Out of 7 billion people how many are familiar with the work of contemporary composers?


Right, because we all know that Homer, Goethe, Augustine, Heidegger, Dante, Plotinus, Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Proust, Beckett, Wittgenstein and Milton are _popular_.

Classical music is not popular. Literature is not popular. Philosophy is not popular. Arts that engage humans on not only on the emotional and sensual planes, but also on the intellectual plane (in terms of construction) have _always _been a minority endeavour and it always will. And it is the people that seriously engage in those fields (as in any field) are the ones who call the shots.

And it is quite apparent that there are indeed enough people involved in music that are familiar with the works of contemporary composers (who compose, who perform, who write criticism, who listen, who sign on record contracts, etc. etc. etc.). They exist. What the numbers are is irrelevant. What the sales are is irrelevant. If you don't like it, don't listen to it. Others will, and they do.


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## Guest

Whistlerguy said:


> If someone composed a symphony in the style of Beethoven, but still totally different from any of his nine symphonies and also original (as all of his symphonies were also original) would it still face harsh criticism today?


This is a non-starter. As is the first version of this, the "thought experiment" of speculating both that Beethoven hadn't written Eroica and that someone today had.

The sounds of Eroica, those notes in that unique and distinctive order, could only have been written by Beethoven, and could only have been written when it was written. What does "Beethoven" mean? Beethoven was a particular guy in a particular place at a particular time. He had particular talents which developed in a particular way. With that in mind, here's another "thought experiment," one that's perhaps slightly less impossible (does impossible have degrees?)--if the exact genetic makeup of "Beethoven" had appeared in 1870, would that child have grown up to develop pantonality and serialism?

Everything about a particular time, everything about a particular place, molds the everything of a particular mind, giving us Bach and Stravinsky. Would Bach have written _Le Sacre_ if he had been born in 1882 is a null question. Bach would not be Bach if born in Russia in 1882. In short, there are too many variables.

Does that mean that genius is a slave to time and place? No. But time and place are two of the things, along with genes and parents and schooling and friends and food and so forth, that enter into the picture. That define what's possible and impossible. That's why Berlioz, for all his talent, wrote _Benvenuto Cellini_ and not _Arcana._ It was for another Frenchman, in a different time and places, with different genes and parents and et cetera to do that.

People CAN, however, mimic things from the past. Once something has happened, anyone can mimic that thing. Berlioz could never have written _Arcana,_ but Varèse, if he had been so inclined, could have made a Berlioz pastiche. But what would have been the point? Berlioz had already done genuine Berlioz pieces. Of course we want more than he what he wrote, but we cannot have them. Anything done later by someone else will be mere imitations. They won't sound right, somehow, because however clever, the pasticher (sorry!) is another person, incapable of completely and thoroughly ignoring his or her time and place and individuality, incapable of completely and thoroughly becoming someone else.

That's probably the core of my unease with post- or neo- composers and trends. Jennifer Higdon, for all her talent, never sounds like anything but Copland and Harris and Piston and such, stripped of everything that makes them individual and unique. Watered down, tepid, imitative. A sort of vague, generalized "Americana" sound. And not the America of 2010, with Varèse and Cage and the Sonic Arts Union and minimalism and the Columbia-Princeton electronic music studios in its past, but another America entirely. Not Jennifer's real America. Not, I venture to guess, anything real. A fantasy America of truly no time.

A criticism that could even be leveled at Copland, Harris, and Piston, for that matter, though with perhaps slightly less force. But still. Higdon as an imitator of something that was itself an imitation? Not a pleasant thought, however "pretty" we might think the sounds are. (And isn't much of what goes into many people's listening habits simply nostalgia? No wonder so many people find so much pleasure in the fakes. The fakes are feeding the fancies.)

Well, as Ives once said (I hope I'm not being too nostalgic bringing this up!), it's time to stand up and use your ears like a man!!


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## Whistlerguy

I will try to make my point by analogy. Let's say that evolutionary changes in people are extremely slow and throughout all ages the nature created us in same style. Today's women are created in exactly the same style as women in Ancient Greece and Egypt. Yet every single woman is unique. Helen of Troy is created in the same style as modern day beautiful woman.

I am not talking about fashion. I am talking about natural beauty.

Are today's women imitations and pastiches of billions of women that lived before them?
Yes. Stylistically they are imitations and pastiches. Does it make them any less beautiful? No!
Does it make their beauty any less transcendental? No.

Some principles are universal and timeless. Aesthetic principles of the beauty of the female body are pretty much the same in all ages.

Why something similar can't be possible in art?

If a certain style in art is PROVEN as aesthetically highly pleasing, harmonious, expressive etc, why stop making new works of art in the same style?

Why poets still write sonnets, even though this form is invented in time of Petrarch?

Isn't it possible to write a new symphony in the style of Beethoven, but with totally NEW motives, new emotions expressed, new inspiration etc.

Even if every sonnet has the same form, every sonnet is unique and has different content.

Why the same thing wouldn't be possible for symphonies?


----------



## Aramis

> Aesthetic principles of the beauty of the female body are pretty much the same in all ages.


Yeah, that's why I'm gazing at Rubens paintings all the time instead of buying Playboy.


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## Whistlerguy

> Quote:
> Aesthetic principles of the beauty of the female body are pretty much the same in all ages.
> Yeah, that's why I'm gazing at Rubens paintings all the time instead of buying Playboy.


I am not talking about public preference for thin instead of voluptuous women.
I am talking about natural aesthetic principles.

A beautiful woman can gain weight or lose weight, but if she is naturally beautiful, it won't change much about her natural beauty.

Ugly woman will be ugly no matter how thin or fat she is.

Beautiful woman will be beautiful no matter how thin or fat she is (of course extremes of obesity and emaciation must be avoided in order to preserve natural beauty, but some variability in weight will not influence her natural beauty very much, if she indeed is beautiful)


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## Whistlerguy

Also I am not talking about artistic depiction of female beauty - I am talking only about natural female beauty itself. In different ages women may strive for different aesthetic ideals, but what is given to them by nature does not change.

Nature sculpts women in the same style throughout history. Only they are able to modify themselves according to current fashion, but they can't influence natural base of their physique.


----------



## Argus

Whistlerguy said:


> I will try to make my point by analogy. Let's say that evolutionary changes in people are extremely slow and throughout all ages the nature created us in same style. Today's women are created in exactly the same style as women in Ancient Greece and Egypt. Yet every single woman is unique. Helen of Troy is created in the same style as modern day beautiful woman.
> 
> I am not talking about fashion. I am talking about natural beauty.
> 
> Are today's women imitations and pastiches of billions of women that lived before them?
> Yes. Stylistically they are imitations and pastiches. Does it make them any less beautiful? No!
> Does it make their beauty any less transcendental? No.
> 
> Some principles are universal and timeless. Aesthetic principles of the beauty of the female body are pretty much the same in all ages.
> 
> Why something similar can't be possible in art?
> 
> If a certain style in art is PROVEN as aesthetically highly pleasing, harmonious, expressive etc, why stop making new works of art in the same style?
> 
> Why poets still write sonnets, even though this form is invented in time of Petrarch?
> 
> Isn't it possible to write a new symphony in the style of Beethoven, but with totally NEW motives, new emotions expressed, new inspiration etc.
> 
> Even if every sonnet has the same form, every sonnet is unique and has different content.
> 
> Why the same thing wouldn't be possible for symphonies?


You've just re-worded the same point. All the answers to it are still the same.

I'll let everyone else pick apart your post.

Questions for you.

Do you hate originality and innovation? Do you want restrictions placed upon the artist? Do you not think there are many styles that are 'aesthetically highly pleasing'? Do you eat sandwiches everyday? Do you count in Roman numerals? Do Beethoven's symphonies not satisfy you enough? Do you know what beauty is? Do you believe that beauty is? Do you think any artist has ever been truly innovative? Do you prefer the journey or the arrival? Do you think the first suitable option is always the best?


----------



## Whistlerguy

> Do you hate originality and innovation?


No, but I hate if they are forced to adhere to a certain style - for example forcing them to be pastiches of Schoenberg instead of pastiches of Beethoven.



> Do you want restrictions placed upon the artist?


No, I want them to be absolutely free to be as innovative and original as they like and I also like them to be free to chose to make new works in old style if this is the style in which they can express themselves the best. Being in old style doesn't make it automatically an imitation. For example someone can write a novel in style of Dostoevsky which is psychological realism, but write about problems of modern 21st century society.



> Do you not think there are many styles that are 'aesthetically highly pleasing'?


Of course. Even some atonal works can be aesthetically highly pleasing.



> Do you eat sandwiches everyday?


No.



> Do you count in Roman numerals?


No.



> Do Beethoven's symphonies not satisfy you enough?


No, but why not try make something new in the same or similar style?


> Do you know what beauty is?


I know what I find beautiful. In theory there are numerous definitions.



> Do you think any artist has ever been truly innovative?


Yes.



> Do you prefer the journey or the arrival?


It depends, in general I prefer journey, but arrival also has its own merits.



> Do you think the first suitable option is always the best?


No.


----------



## Guest

Whistlerguy said:


> Isn't it possible to write a new symphony in the style of Beethoven, but with totally NEW motives, new emotions expressed, new inspiration etc.


You've just answered your own question. "In the style of" and "totally new" are mutually exclusive categories. Indeed, I propose that what you're positing is much along the lines of the conundrum "If God can create anything, can He create a boulder so heavy that even He cannot pick it up?" The question is meaningless because the terms are contradictory. I.e., it's not really a conundrum, it's just illogical.

Similarly with your comparison of women and art. That's not a valid comparison because humans and works of art are two very different _kinds_ of things. Your sonnet comparison, however, is valid. And one can point to numerous examples of long-standing forms (symphony, say) being used over hundreds of years to say new things. Yes. That already happens. But in happening, you'll notice that the content of "symphony" changes. Dhomont's Frankenstein Symphony is not "in the style of" anything except other Dhomont pieces. Same for Z'ev's symphony no. 2.

Just a little side note, every sonnet does _not_ have the same form. There are several ways to divide up the fourteen lines. There are several things that their makers have called "sonnets" that have fewer than fourteen lines. Or more than.



Whistlerguy said:


> Even if every sonnet has the same form, every sonnet is unique and has different content.
> 
> Why the same thing wouldn't be possible for symphonies?


I think we may differ in our interpretation of "same thing." A sonnet by Auden is in the style of Auden, not of Petrarch. It's at "in the style of" where we part company.



Whistlerguy said:


> If a certain style in art is PROVEN as aesthetically highly pleasing, harmonious, expressive etc, why stop making new works of art in the same style?


This pattern is common in these discussions. It is easily dealt with by pointing out that audiences and creators have different needs. We auditors can enjoy art in any style from any age. But _creating_ art brings up a whole complex of other things, which I alluded to in my previous post. For a creator, it's not a simple matter of "I like this style, so I'll do all my works in it." Well, it's not simple for genuine creators, anyway! And it's not a matter of stopping so much as it's a matter of moving on. Composers in the twentieth century didn't _stop_ using tonality or stop using traditional instruments so much as they _started_ to use other ordering systems and other means to produce sounds. As for "proven," well. That's a whole 'nother matter, eh?


----------



## Petwhac

StlukesguildOhio said:


> And how is that different from your beer swilling footballers embracing _Nesun Dorma_? Or perhaps they are now likely to run off a purchase a subscription to the opera where the audience who hears Barber's Adagio or Ligeti's _Lux Æterna_ is only being seduced by the context? And yet the reality is that a great many classical music lovers first came across classical music thanks to Disney's _Fantasia_ or Loony Tunes.


Can't argue about that! But I'll say this. They will fork out £100 plus to go and hear Pavarotti sing it in the park ( sadly no more). Where as the Ligeti and Penderecki in 2001 was chosen by Kubrick precisely because it is an unnerving 'psychedelic' noise. Any bunch of sustained note clusters and glissandi would do the job.



StlukesguildOhio said:


> The point remains that Beethoven's quartets would be no more baffling than Cherubini, Mozart, or Bach... none of whom would have been any more familiar to the masses of their day than Philip Glass or Arvo Part are to the masses today.


Yes they would. They would have spent their lives listening to and singing folk tunes etc. Late Beethoven is a unique case but still full of simple chords and melodies. The Arietta from the last Sonata and the Diabelli Variations being, in my opinion, two of the profoundest musical utterances I know and they are built largely on chords I IV and V.

I notice that the two composers you mention also have not entirely abandoned tonality.



StlukesguildOhio said:


> And is this really what any of the really strong among the latest contemporary poets do? Have you actually read Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill, Seamus Heaney, Charles Wright, Yves Bonnefoy? Again you are making blanket statements and avoiding the specifics. Who are the poets who have so shattered language as to be indecipherable? Who are the composers who have so shattered music as to make it unlistenable even for the majority of those with experience in classical music? Certainly, there me be examples... but there is still more than a little music today that is capable of resonating with and moving an audience.


You have just made my point for me. My knowledge of poetry is limited but it is precisely because the poets you mention _don't_ do that, that people read/listen to them
If they serialised letters or words, made retrograde inversions etc etc. If they abandoned any audible link to the everyday experience of language how could people 'understand'.
Also, could you please explain what you mean by ' really strong' among contemporary poets. And to which contemporary classical composers you would apply that description?



StlukesguildOhio said:


> But has the public "come around" to late Beethoven or Schubert's lieder, or Bach's cantatas, etc...? I don't hear Beethoven's late quartets... or his early ones... or even Haydn's or Mozart's played out of booming car stereos, in films, on TV, etc... The greatest new recordings of the most iconic works of classical music sell but a fraction of what the least pop hit sells. A good deal of the best to be found in fine art, literature, and music has always had a limited audience. In Bach's time this was owed to the lack of access and to the division of classes. In our time it is owed more to other diversions that strike the individual as preferable. Art is still "elitist"... but its an "elitism" of choice... an elective affinity. Some individual decide that classical music is worth the effort... others decide that it is not.


I agree with most of that. Indeed the 'masses' have no time for fine art.We should leave them out of it.

But how about the conservatoire trained, highly skilled, educated, professional orchestral player who thinks that Birtwhistle and Berio are absolute crap? Can _you_ say they are wrong?

My point remains. That is, a very large proportion of the contemporary classical I've heard ( and I've made a point of trying to listen to more) by the nature of it's non-use of any recognisable musical sign-posts ( eg, harmonic progression, pulse, melody ) is incapable of the same range of expression that music from Machaut to Gershwin or Prokofiev is.

These are generalisations but I've yet to be persuaded either by example or argument that it is not the case.


----------



## Earthling

Here's a simple solution: If one does not like contemporary music (of whatever stripe or colour) *then don't listen to it*. There are listeners who have found enjoyment in it, otherwise contemporary music _would not exist_ ("contemporary music" meaning musicians who write, study, perform, record, play on the radio, sign onto record labels, etc.).


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## Whistlerguy

I do like some contemporary music, I asked my question just for the sake of theory.
My question could be rephrased as "Is creative anachronism allowed in contemporary music?"
From your answers so far, I guess, no, or if yes, it's mostly frowned upon.


----------



## Earthling

No, if one wants to incorporate aspects of other styles of music, great-- as long as they do it in an original way. Stravinsky, for example didn't merely imitate earlier models-- he re-fashioned it in his own unique way. There's a huge difference.

Here's another intriguing example:



Fsharpmajor said:


> Avner Dorman is a contemporary American composer:
> 
> *http://www.classicstoday.com/review.asp?ReviewNum=12623*


Obviously Dorman has borrowed some baroque mannerisms, but you couldn't mistake this for Telemann. So yes, anachronism is allowed, but not in the form of strict imitation, but in re-working the material in one's own original way.


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## Earthling

I forgot to add this link to that Avner Dorman CD (to listen to the samples): Dorman: Concertos for Mandolin, Piccolo, Piano and Concerto Grosso


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## Whistlerguy

OK, I think we found some common ground. The question that will always be there when someone tries composing in earlier styles is where to draw the line between _creative_ anachronism and pure imitation. And this can also be answered very subjectively. Some people will judge a new work as original even if it is composed with a lot of borrowing from earlier styles, other will say it's imitation.


----------



## Earthling

Whistlerguy said:


> OK, I think we found some common ground. The question that will always be there when someone tries composing in earlier styles is where to draw the line between _creative_ anachronism and pure imitation. And this can also be answered very subjectively. Some people will judge a new work as original even if it is composed with a lot of borrowing from earlier styles, other will say it's imitation.


No, one could cite objective stylistic reasons why Dorman (even just listening to the samples of say, his _Concerto Grosso_) was _obviously _not composed in the 18th century: phrasings, harmonies, uses of harmonics in the violins, rhythmic figures. I'm sure looking at the score, someone with an even more musical knowledge and experience would spot all sorts of clues. This could be done quite objectively. It is all there in the score.

What is subjective however, is the question of the larger aesthetic value in doing such a thing ("neo-classical," "neo-baroque," "neo-tonal" etc.). Personally, I have no problem with Stravinsky's neo-classical works, while there are other listeners, musicians and critics who don't rate those particular works so highly.


----------



## Petwhac

Earthling said:


> What is subjective however, is the question of the larger aesthetic value in doing such a thing ("neo-classical," "neo-baroque," "neo-tonal" etc.). Personally, I have no problem with Stravinsky's neo-classical works, while there are other listeners, musicians and critics who don't rate those particular works so highly.


Who are these listeners, musicians and critics?
Fools.
Stravinsky once said, " I had a dream about critics, they were rodent like with padlocked ears"


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## Sid James

I think we have to remember that even composers change their styles (often radically), so it's even unsafe to talk about "Beethoven's style" or "Stravinsky's style" etc. I recently read a quote by Shostakovich to the effect that whenever he/she starts on a new works, he/she wants to improve upon (or surpass) the previous one. In a way, they are composing because they were not fully satisfied with the previous work. So I think that many composers try to do this and not just regurgitate their previous works. I can name names as to who does or doesn't do this IMO, but that's not the point. I will say that the composers I like the most seem to have this variety, each work of theirs seems to not only encapsulate what had gone on previously, but point to new directions...


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## EzraDonner

Whistlerguy said:


> 1. Does one have to be very familiar with music from all the previous periods in order to appreciate contemporary classical music?


I would echo previous sentiments that this is helpful, if not absolutely necessary. But I would also propose that a deep understanding of contemporary classical music can lead to a richer appreciation for the composers of the past, just as knowing Wagner or Mahler's music can help a listener to more completely understand Beethoven. You're allowed to like whatever you want, but I believe it's always good to expose yourself to new things.


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## millionrainbows

I think that "fresh ears" might be more receptive to contemporary sounds, but the problem is a conceptual one. I finally started "getting" the more gnarly aspects of Ives when I realized he was using "dissonance for dissonance's sake," not any super-complicated scheme. With Bartok, I started understanding the music when I realized he was being non-Western, using localized tone-centers, the diminished scale, the axis system, and folk music. It's still harmonically-based music, too. The ear will know, just trust it and train it; follow it with your mind, not the other way around.

Most Western classical music requires a cerebral detachment, of following chord progressions, beyond its immediate visceral appeal. It's just as arbitrary as contemporary music, to me. It takes as much concentration to get through a Haydn symphony for me as it does to listen to a Bartok piece.

With Shoenberg's Wind Quintet (1924), when I realized it was "thematic," and that the themes were these gangly, leaping, ugly "themes," I realized what was happening. I heard the "themes" after that. I just didn't realize they were "ugly," and were supposed to sound like that. Duhhh...

A lot of these obstacles against contemporary music are ones of attitude (bad), and an inability or unwillingness to "accept" the modern aesthetic, in whatever form it is manifesting. If this requires that you read the liner notes, then, by all means, do so.

TO me, these inabilities to "get" contemporary music are like Zen: just do it. It's like denial, as well: what should be so obvious to a person is seemingly invisible, non-existent. Why? I don't know. Maybe "tough love" will do the trick. Try scowling at them in disgust, maybe that'll work. Shun them, don't answer their posts. They are rejected by* US,* the_ cogniscenti._


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## millionrainbows

Whistlerguy said:


> I have a lot of questions about contemporary classical music and find this topic extremely interesting, even though I am not very knowledgeable about it.
> 
> 1. Does one have to be very familiar with music from all the previous periods in order to appreciate contemporary classical music?


*No, but most listeners of contemporary are familiar with older classical music; it's in the same genre, tradition, and is mixed-in with all the other classical CDs in the buying section.*



> 2. Does it make any sense to dedicate one's time to contemporary classical music if you haven't listened to the most important works from the past centuries?


*You imply that one has to do one's "homework" before they can be "worthy" to go further afield. I don't think so; any way in is OK with me.
*


> 3. If you really have to be familiar with all the preceding classical music in order to understand contemporary, does it means that the public for contemporary classical music is EXTREMELY small. I mean, public for classical music in general is very small - but still FAR MORE people listen to Bach, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Brahms, etc - than to contemporary composers.


*Size doesn't matter. And the internet might be bringing us out of the woodwork.
*


> 4. Knowing all that we face another question - Is there any social or any other purpose of contemporary classical music outside academic circles?


*That depends. But why not ask that of Haydn, Rameau, Rossini, Wagner, Mozart, or Beethoven? You could probably find extra-musical forces at play there, too. What are you implying, that there is an ideological agenda underlying new music? Is it a Communist plot? Is Obama behind it?
*


> 5. Are contemporary composers "allowed" to compose in traditional styles such as styles of Baroque, Classicism and Romanticism OR this is a deadly sin which automatically gives them reputation of being backward, imitators and unoriginal?


*You make it sound like contemporary approaches to music are an ideological yoke, designed to enslave modern composers. Read a book on Elliott Carter, and you will find that he, like most composers, searched for their own voice within this modern framework. What you seem to not grasp, is that modern approaches to music are a way of thinking and composing, which are based on the materials and structures of music itself (pitch, rhthm, timbre, etc.), not an arbitrary ideology which must be adhered to.
*


> 6. A thought experiment. Let's say Beethoven NEVER composed the Third symphony - Eroica. He still composed all of the 8 other symphonies, but not the Third.
> And, now, in 2010 - some contemporary composer composes Eroica. Exactly the same thing. Would Eroica, if composed in 2010 still be held in so high regard and would it still be considered a masterpiece OR would all the critics jump on the poor guy and say "this is so unoriginal" "this is backwards" - "too old fashioned", "it is good for what it is, but this is not art music" and similar comments.


*This scenario is so unlikely, that it seems to be a movie script you have written, in order to justify your resentment against the imaginary "critics" you have conjured. 
*


> 7. Is there any way to make contemporary classical music more popular? Or it seems that the art music is dying and that all the things that had to be composed are already composed?


*Art is art, popular is popular. And, no, there is still music to be composed. Even tonal music. For that movie you're making.
*


> 8. How many of you are familiar with the works of living composers, and what are the most important musical compositions of our time?


*Well, you could always check & see which composers have won the Pulitzer Prize in music for the past 50 years.
*


> 9. Do you actually LIKE contemporary classical music?


*Yes; if it's good. If I don't like it, it's probably bad. Just my opinion, though.*


----------



## hpowders

It took me many months to attune my 18-19th century ears to the symphonies of William Schuman, but it was well worth the effort. Those critics specializing in 20th century music know what they are talking about when they say he is the greatest American symphonist. Well worth the effort!


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## Guest

OK.

But give some Sessions a try now, too.

And then the two Reynolds symphonies.

And then....


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## science

Whistlerguy said:


> OK, I think we found some common ground. The question that will always be there when someone tries composing in earlier styles is where to draw the line between _creative_ anachronism and pure imitation. And this can also be answered very subjectively. Some people will judge a new work as original even if it is composed with a lot of borrowing from earlier styles, other will say it's imitation.


I think this is a fairly complex issue in all the arts, actually. For a long time, perhaps especially in the 19th century, the model for the arts was science/technology, so that there had to be "progress." That idea has been attacked repeatedly, and since about 1945 or so it's rarely been defended (even less since about 1968), but it just doesn't seem to go away.

One reason is that no matter what intellectual weaknesses it suffers, the ideal of progress offered a teleological justification for novelty, and one that _felt really important_. Perhaps nothing can replace that. If the arts are just one darned thing after another, is there a point? And how are young artists supposed to make a name for themselves? Will we be ok - will we be _funded?_ - if the arts reduce to all of us just having a good time doing stuff we enjoy? Or do our projects need to have greater intellectual/political/social aspirations?

Hard questions to answer, and if we don't find a way we can always revert to the ideal of progress with the knowledge that we'll find a sympathetic audience.

Just speaking personally, I'm ok without believing in artistic progress, because to me the concept of "art" has broken down irreparably. In this condition there can be no more truly "classical" music. Like all other types of post-modern music, it's now a niche-market thing rather than the music of a/the cultural elite (despite our common pretensions). Some new music can be "better" in some ways - though purely objective description could not make such value-judgements, purely objective description is a thing none of us could achieve in the first place, and in all the other places we generally share at least some values (though perhaps for rhetorical reasons some of us would deny that). So that's what I think remains to us: a sliding scale of intra-subjective (and so necessarily contested) experiences of quality rather than a firm art/folk or art/pop dichotomy. (Those dichotomies were always illusory anyway.) Granted that, among 7 billion people (with more wealth than most previous generations could have imagined - even "art" is not free) we're bound to manage a lot of great new music (and everything else). In this latter sense there will always be "great new music." And some of it will probably turn out to be somehow influential. Later generations (if they exist and have the necessary information) will have their own diversity of opinions about which music of our own time is/was "great," but the fact that they might use metaphors of progress doesn't legitimize those metaphors. "Progress in art" is intellectually bankrupt and, since quality legitimises itself, unnecessary: It really is just one darned thing after another; the important thing isn't that the chronologically later stuff is better than everything that came before, but that some of it is "better" (to some group of people) than the other stuff of its own time.

But that last paragraph is just my own opinion (even more so than all the other nonsense I post here) and plenty of knowledgeable people (including some here) judge new music (at least implicitly) in terms of progress-novelty. (They even retroactively judge old music in those terms.) Anything that does not at least arguably demonstrate progress-novelty cannot be "great." They have a right to their opinion, and at least their values probably help create a more creative, interesting world for us. If we don't like the stuff they come up with in pursuit of that value, we can ignore it; but if we do like it, perhaps we can overlook an unwarranted assumption or two, and maybe even a little bit of social prejudice, in their underlying thought process.


----------



## violadude

The problem with trying to compare artistic progress with scientific and technological progress is that the latter actually has objective measurable standards by which you can judge whether or not you've made progress. For example, less people die of tuberculosis now than in the 18th century, that's measurable scientific progress in the field of medicine and health. There isn't anything like that in the arts.


----------



## science

violadude said:


> The problem with trying to compare artistic progress with scientific and technological progress is that the latter actually has objective measurable standards by which you can judge whether or not you've made progress. For example, less people die of tuberculosis now than in the 18th century, that's measurable scientific progress in the field of medicine and health. There isn't anything like that in the arts.


I agree with you but I try to express it a bit more carefully, because technology does affect music, so there can be a sort of progress. For example, a piano can do things a harpsichord couldn't, and an electric keyboard can do even more, and so on for all kinds of instruments. It might also matter that as long as wealth grows (GDP growth ~ progress), more expensive projects (such as larger orchestras) become possible.

Those kinds of things complicate the statement a bit, but in the end I agree that the later music, even if it relies on previously unavailable technology, isn't necessarily thereby inherently superior to the former music.


----------



## hpowders

In addition to William Schuman, I've been concentrating on the Peter Mennin 7th symphony (Variation Symphony). 

Those Juilliard guys really wrote some thorny works!


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## millionrainbows

Music has always been intimately concerned with number, and our 12-note scale was developed by Pythagoras. He certainly had ideas about number as related to music. The quadrivium of the Greeks was astronomy, geometry, arithmetic, and music.
Tonality is based on physics, as chord progression is based on harmonics of a single note, which is the "1" or key note. all chord functions are based on fractions of this "1" or key note. Likewise, all consonance and dissonance can be expressed as ratios between notes, or "intervals," which are relationships of vibration. Again, these are not abstract numbers: they represent actual vibrations. Mathematics is just the model which expresses these vibratory realities.
How can music *not* be involved with mathematics? How can music *not* be involved with physics? 
I see this aversion to science in music, or to "objectifying" music in any way, as being the same old argument against serialism and guys in lab coats (Milton Babbitt pictured in front of the behemoth, intimidating Princeton/RCA synthesizer) who are making music in new ways.


----------



## gabe

Whistlerguy said:


> I have a lot of questions about contemporary classical music and find this topic extremely interesting, even though I am not very knowledgeable about it.
> 
> 1. Does one have to be very familiar with music from all the previous periods in order to appreciate contemporary classical music?
> 
> 2. Does it make any sense to dedicate one's time to contemporary classical music if you haven't listened to the most important works from the past centuries?
> 
> 3. If you really have to be familiar with all the preceding classical music in order to understand contemporary, does it means that the public for contemporary classical music is EXTREMELY small. I mean, public for classical music in general is very small - but still FAR MORE people listen to Bach, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Brahms, etc - than to contemporary composers.
> 
> 4. Knowing all that we face another question - Is there any social or any other purpose of contemporary classical music outside academic circles?
> 
> 5. Are contemporary composers "allowed" to compose in traditional styles such as styles of Baroque, Classicism and Romanticism OR this is a deadly sin which automatically gives them reputation of being backward, imitators and unoriginal?
> 
> 6. A thought experiment. Let's say Beethoven NEVER composed the Third symphony - Eroica. He still composed all of the 8 other symphonies, but not the Third.
> And, now, in 2010 - some contemporary composer composes Eroica. Exactly the same thing. Would Eroica, if composed in 2010 still be held in so high regard and would it still be considered a masterpiece OR would all the critics jump on the poor guy and say "this is so unoriginal" "this is backwards" - "too old fashioned", "it is good for what it is, but this is not art music" and similar comments.
> 
> 7. Is there any way to make contemporary classical music more popular? Or it seems that the art music is dying and that all the things that had to be composed are already composed?
> 
> 8. How many of you are familiar with the works of living composers, and what are the most important musical compositions of our time?
> 
> 9. Do you actually LIKE contemporary classical music?


7: That's what people who promote contemporary classical say- that writing atonal crap was the only way to be original. By the end of the 19th century, it seems to me like classical composers were basically making a refined version of the folk music in Europe (and to some extent, north america). Let's see what other kinds of unique, relatively-untouched-by-classical-composers music people had to work with: southeastern European music, klezmer, central Asian music, middle-eastern music, American music... and probably a whole bunch of other stuff that I'm totally unaware of. I bet that early/mid 20th century composers had at least some knowledge of this 'other' tonal music, and they could have used it. But no, instead they all chose to write music that sounds like route 128 during rush hour.


----------



## gabe

some guy said:


> This is a non-starter. As is the first version of this, the "thought experiment" of speculating both that Beethoven hadn't written Eroica and that someone today had.
> 
> The sounds of Eroica, those notes in that unique and distinctive order, could only have been written by Beethoven, and could only have been written when it was written. What does "Beethoven" mean? Beethoven was a particular guy in a particular place at a particular time. He had particular talents which developed in a particular way. With that in mind, here's another "thought experiment," one that's perhaps slightly less impossible (does impossible have degrees?)--if the exact genetic makeup of "Beethoven" had appeared in 1870, would that child have grown up to develop pantonality and serialism?
> 
> Everything about a particular time, everything about a particular place, molds the everything of a particular mind, giving us Bach and Stravinsky. Would Bach have written _Le Sacre_ if he had been born in 1882 is a null question. Bach would not be Bach if born in Russia in 1882. In short, there are too many variables.
> 
> Does that mean that genius is a slave to time and place? No. But time and place are two of the things, along with genes and parents and schooling and friends and food and so forth, that enter into the picture. That define what's possible and impossible. That's why Berlioz, for all his talent, wrote _Benvenuto Cellini_ and not _Arcana._ It was for another Frenchman, in a different time and places, with different genes and parents and et cetera to do that.
> 
> People CAN, however, mimic things from the past. Once something has happened, anyone can mimic that thing. Berlioz could never have written _Arcana,_ but Varèse, if he had been so inclined, could have made a Berlioz pastiche. But what would have been the point? Berlioz had already done genuine Berlioz pieces. Of course we want more than he what he wrote, but we cannot have them. Anything done later by someone else will be mere imitations. They won't sound right, somehow, because however clever, the pasticher (sorry!) is another person, incapable of completely and thoroughly ignoring his or her time and place and individuality, incapable of completely and thoroughly becoming someone else.
> 
> That's probably the core of my unease with post- or neo- composers and trends. Jennifer Higdon, for all her talent, never sounds like anything but Copland and Harris and Piston and such, stripped of everything that makes them individual and unique. Watered down, tepid, imitative. A sort of vague, generalized "Americana" sound. And not the America of 2010, with Varèse and Cage and the Sonic Arts Union and minimalism and the Columbia-Princeton electronic music studios in its past, but another America entirely. Not Jennifer's real America. Not, I venture to guess, anything real. A fantasy America of truly no time.
> 
> A criticism that could even be leveled at Copland, Harris, and Piston, for that matter, though with perhaps slightly less force. But still. Higdon as an imitator of something that was itself an imitation? Not a pleasant thought, however "pretty" we might think the sounds are. (And isn't much of what goes into many people's listening habits simply nostalgia? No wonder so many people find so much pleasure in the fakes. The fakes are feeding the fancies.)
> 
> Well, as Ives once said (I hope I'm not being too nostalgic bringing this up!), it's time to stand up and use your ears like a man!!


I suspect that this only applies in the circles of classical music, where I'll bet that there's some kind of hooded order of snobs waiting to shut-down anybody that wants to revive the sound of the classical or romantic eras. All the varied successful folk music revivals prove my point. Folk music revival musicians often write about both trying to get better knowledge of what X folk music used to sound like, and playing that music in a way that resembles the traditional style but can also be new and different. Like the rest of history, the history of music took some turns that are pretty unfortunate, and some very good music got abandoned, both in classical and with some types of folk music. If people what to hear music that sounds like a style that was abandoned or rejected, why in the world should composers NOT write that kind of music?


----------



## Guest

gabe said:


> 7: That's what people who promote contemporary classical say- that writing atonal crap was the only way to be original.


Oh jeez, not again.

No one who promotes contemporary classical says this, or ever would say it. It is, however, an example of other people putting words in our mouths. We spit those words out. Gross!!



gabe said:


> music that sounds like route 128 during rush hour.


 You say that as if that were a _bad_ thing.



gabe said:


> I'll bet that there's some kind of hooded order of snobs waiting to shut-down anybody that wants to revive the sound of the classical or romantic eras.


Sigh. I'm sure you do. Never mind that the authentic sounds of the classical and romantic eras are revived on a regular basis every symphony concert in the world and every minute of every classical radio station.



gabe said:


> If people what to hear music that sounds like a style that was abandoned or rejected, why in the world should composers NOT write that kind of music?


Um, this has been answered before, many times, but since you're new (or "new"), I guess I can come down from my tower (made of ivory, yes) for a second and give the answer again: *because it's already been done.* (Did you even read that long post of mine that you quoted, or did you just click "Reply With Quote"?

Read it, too. At least.


----------



## PetrB

gabe said:


> I suspect that this only applies in the circles of classical music, where I'll bet that there's some kind of hooded order of snobs waiting to shut-down anybody that wants to revive the sound of the classical or romantic eras. All the varied successful folk music revivals prove my point. Folk music revival musicians often write about both trying to get better knowledge of what X folk music used to sound like, and playing that music in a way that resembles the traditional style but can also be new and different. Like the rest of history, the history of music took some turns that are pretty unfortunate, and some very good music got abandoned, both in classical and with some types of folk music. If people what to hear music that sounds like a style that was abandoned or rejected, why in the world should composers NOT write that kind of music?


You've actually either glossed over or missed each salient point in SG's post.

1.) "I'll bet that there's some kind of hooded order of snobs waiting to shut-down anybody that wants to revive the sound of the classical or romantic eras."
Every admired composer of the past was expected to and did 'break' from the traditions and forms of the previous era, even mini-era. Thus, that is the classical tradition, to move on, and not write in the old style.

2.) "All the varied successful folk music revivals prove my point. "
The folk tradition is antithetical to the classical tradition: its very nature is conservative to a near Nth degree, and for good reason, readily and easily transmitted music in simple forms which are instantly grasped, remembered and understood by the listening audience in one take is what is sought, a very different audience and type of listening which both classical and folk musicians are aware of.

Writing in near exactly the _now familiar_ vocabulary and forms of yesteryear (that was all 'contemporary music' when it was written) is a futile exercise, in that what we have from those composers and those eras is genuinely of the time.... well, SG covered this to death, and clearly. No one can so fully fit their soul and mind into the place and time that music came from, so too close an attempted 'fresh replication' always ends up shallow pastiche.

IF you can visit an old era and put more than a mere novelty spin on it (maybe SG and I disagree here) I think then if it can be sensed as more Fresh than "Pastiche" then that is a kind of genuine contemporary expression.
Igor Stravinsky ~ Concerto in E flat; Dumbarton Oaks (modeled after the Bach Brandenburg Concerti)




Revisiting older music directly is another sort of genre, variations on, and can bring nice results, but at least is a new comment using older material
Bach / Stravinsky ~ Von Himmel Hoch variations





...another fresh(er) take using old material, perhaps new invented to sound like the old, but a current voice throughout.
Lukas Foss ~ Renaissance Concerto





Writing music which sounds most 'generically like' another composer's music also has a place in classical tradition, the _hommage_ or the _à la manière de_ (in the manner of) pieces.

Fine. Compose one symphony in romantic style, sounding as near as possible to Tchaikovsky as an _à la manière de_ piece, and maybe that generates interest and has some success. Do it again, another original work, and you are as good as dead to both the composing community AND the general audience of listeners.. Trouble is, writing 'romantic era style' has the pitfalls now of sounding, even if original, like twenty others who went before you, and who did it so well that their works are now iconic, and a 'final say' about all that. There is plenty of great music which already 'sounds like that' and 'expresses' the emotions that sort of vocabulary expresses.

No one, to date, has made nothing but _à la manière de_ pieces as the basis for an entire career (Exception, some film composers, while not as deliberately), which is getting close to I think your question of 'why not.'


----------



## gabe

some guy said:


> Oh jeez, not again.
> 
> No one who promotes contemporary classical says this, or ever would say it. It is, however, an example of other people putting words in our mouths. We spit those words out. Gross.


Someone that likes modern classical music said this to me on a date.


----------



## gabe

PetrB said:


> You've actually either glossed over or missed each salient point in SG's post.
> 
> 1.) "I'll bet that there's some kind of hooded order of snobs waiting to shut-down anybody that wants to revive the sound of the classical or romantic eras."
> Every admired composer of the past was expected to and did 'break' from the traditions and forms of the previous era, even mini-era. Thus, that is the classical tradition, to move on, and not write in the old style.
> 
> 2.) "All the varied successful folk music revivals prove my point. "
> The folk tradition is antithetical to the classical tradition: its very nature is conservative to a near Nth degree, and for good reason, readily and easily transmitted music in simple forms which are instantly grasped, remembered and understood by the listening audience in one take is what is sought, a very different audience and type of listening which both classical and folk musicians are aware of.
> 
> Writing in near exactly the _now familiar_ vocabulary and forms of yesteryear (that was all 'contemporary music' when it was written) is a futile exercise, in that what we have from those composers and those eras is genuinely of the time.... well, SG covered this to death, and clearly. No one can so fully fit their soul and mind into the place and time that music came from, so too close an attempted 'fresh replication' always ends up shallow pastiche.
> 
> IF you can visit an old era and put more than a mere novelty spin on it (maybe SG and I disagree here) I think then if it can be sensed as more Fresh than "Pastiche" then that is a kind of genuine contemporary expression.
> Igor Stravinsky ~ Concerto in E flat; Dumbarton Oaks (modeled after the Bach Brandenburg Concerti)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Revisiting older music directly is another sort of genre, variations on, and can bring nice results, but at least is a new comment using older material
> Bach / Stravinsky ~ Von Himmel Hoch variations
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ...another fresh(er) take using old material, perhaps new invented to sound like the old, but a current voice throughout.
> Lukas Foss ~ Renaissance Concerto
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Writing music which sounds most 'generically like' another composer's music also has a place in classical tradition, the _hommage_ or the _à la manière de_ (in the manner of) pieces.
> 
> Fine. Compose one symphony in romantic style, sounding as near as possible to Tchaikovsky as an _à la manière de_ piece, and maybe that generates interest and has some success. Do it again, another original work, and your are as good as dead to both composing community AND LISTENERS. Trouble is, writing 'romantic era style' has the pitfalls now of sounding, even if original, like twenty others who went before you. There is plenty of great music which already 'sounds like that' and 'expresses' the emotions that sort of vocabulary expresses.
> 
> No one, to date, has made nothing but _à la manière de_ pieces as the basis for an entire career (Exception, some film composers, while not as deliberately), which is getting close to I think your question of 'why not.'


You and "Some Guy" are missing _my_ point. I think we are misunderstanding each other because of how the OP framed the topic with a thought experiment about Beethoven's symphony. That kind of thing is _not_ what I'm thinking of. What I'm thinking of is, what if Poulenc never existed, but somebody else wrote his "Gloria" in the year 1900. Would that piece be wildly popular and greatly admired by whoever makes the programs for symphony concerts? What I'm talking about is, why don't some composers start where classical music left off at the turn of the 20th century and take it in a different direction? As I mentioned, there's still plenty of musical options left other than leaving melody and tonality behind. The modern classical composers "experimented" in the way they chose. For example, why did barely any composers incorporate elements of the middle-eastern "Maqam" scale system (Saint-Saens is the only example I know of)?

Back to folk music: Whether or not the folk music tradition is more conservative, folk music changes dramatically over pretty short periods of time. And if there's a cultural demand for it, it will get played. The absurd thing about classical music is, there's a demand (negative audience reactions to contemporary 'classical' music indicate to me that there definitely is a demand) for classical-sounding classical music, but that's not the kind of new music that gets written or performed. Please enlighten me on who decides what gets funded/written and performed, but the fact is, classical music is clearly NOT being driven by customer demand; that's why I make up crap about a hooded order of snobs. Whatever is really going on is probably almost as lame.


----------



## aleazk

But there's wonderful "atonal" music influenced by folk/traditional music (particularly asiatic):

Boulez's Rituel: 



; 



 (documentary)


----------



## Yardrax

gabe said:


> Please enlighten me on who decides what gets funded/written and performed, but the fact is, classical music is clearly NOT being driven by customer demand; that's why I make up crap about a hooded order of snobs. Whatever is really going on is probably almost as lame.


I think you're looking at this from the wrong angle.

Can you think of the name of a 'classical-sounding' (As you put it) classical composer of the 20th or 21st centuries who has been unjustly maligned by concert programmers?


----------



## gabe

Yardrax said:


> I think you're looking at this from the wrong angle.
> 
> Can you think of the name of a 'classical-sounding' (As you put it) classical composer of the 20th or 21st centuries who has been unjustly maligned by concert programmers?


I don't know. Honestly, I don't know. But if there are a million other Poulencs out there, why isn't their stuff showing up in concerts?

Note: Benjamin Britten doesn't count.


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## PetrB

gabe said:


> Someone that likes modern classical music said this to me on a date.


If twenty four of the twenty five people in a room call that object on the floor in the middle of the room a table, it is most probably a table.


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## PetrB

gabe said:


> I don't know. Honestly, I don't know. But if there are a million other Poulencs out there, why isn't their stuff showing up in concerts?
> 
> Note: Benjamin Britten doesn't count.[/QUOTET
> 
> Poulenc imho is a great composer, his style fairly retro-conservative, yet of its time, i.e. a lot of free-wheeling non traditional harmonic use, mild to brisk bi-tonality.
> 
> There are fairly retro-conservative contemporary composers whose styles, in similar ratio / proportion to the most current contemporary developments, sit in a similar position.
> 
> To repeat it until it sinks in with those who expect really more of the near same as Poulenc, etc. -- that has been done, as far as Poulenc, so superbly by Poulenc that no one in their right mind would bother to literally regenerate "more Poulenc."
> 
> For that current niche similarly held by Poulenc over his lifespan, John Corigliano, whose works are fairly consistently commissioned, recorded, and performed, comes instantly to my mind. Jennifer Higdon may 'hit that spot' for you, though I agree with one general consensus that her writing is more a bland newly spun amalgam of Copland, Barber, etc.


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## SimonNZ

deleted..................


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## PetrB

gabe said:


> You and "Some Guy" are missing _my_ point. I think we are misunderstanding each other because of how the OP framed the topic with a thought experiment about Beethoven's symphony. That kind of thing is _not_ what I'm thinking of. What I'm thinking of is, what if Poulenc never existed, but somebody else wrote his "Gloria" in the year 1900. Would that piece be wildly popular and greatly admired by whoever makes the programs for symphony concerts? What I'm talking about is, why don't some composers start where classical music left off at the turn of the 20th century and take it in a different direction? As I mentioned, there's still plenty of musical options left other than leaving melody and tonality behind. The modern classical composers "experimented" in the way they chose. For example, why did barely any composers incorporate elements of the middle-eastern "Maqam" scale system (Saint-Saens is the only example I know of)?
> 
> Back to folk music: Whether or not the folk music tradition is more conservative, folk music changes dramatically over pretty short periods of time. And if there's a cultural demand for it, it will get played. The absurd thing about classical music is, there's a demand (negative audience reactions to contemporary 'classical' music indicate to me that there definitely is a demand) for classical-sounding classical music, but that's not the kind of new music that gets written or performed. Please enlighten me on who decides what gets funded/written and performed, but the fact is, classical music is clearly NOT being driven by customer demand; that's why I make up crap about a hooded order of snobs. Whatever is really going on is probably almost as lame.


Essentially, you are begging a question like this one: *"Why didn't Beethoven continue to compose like Mozart?" or, "Why did not Mahler continue to compose like Beethoven?"* Feel free to start anywhere AT ALL in the time-line of music history and ask the same question using two composers from near the same era.

Then have a real look and listen to the many pieces from the truly broad and diverse repertoire of the 20th century, Stravinsky loaded with folk or folk like melodies, others later, Berio's fantastic arrangement of folk songs "Folk Songs", Fasil Say's _Universe Symphony_.

That Magam scale system deployed by Saint-Saens, as done, is something now thought of as rather quaint, and which Nicholas Slonimsky dubbed 'musical exoticism.' Much of it, unless truly freshly re-used, is also a sort of pops / carnival kind of act called "musical tourism." This is akin to the painting or snapshot on a postcard which fits a western stereotype of the culture while not getting anywhere near anything genuine about that culture. Me, I think that particular manner of usage is well past its freshness date, and by contemporary perspectives, is now sometimes inadvertently comic -- (Ex: the 'orientalism' of Kettelby's _In A Persian Market._)

We have Arvo Part currently composing in a style many call neomedieval, modes and all, to a particular aesthetic goal.

A profusion of Classical East Indian rhythms, native African traditional rhythmic practices are embedded and part of the entire working principles in music as diverse as Messiaen to Philip Glass and Steve Reich.

The profusion of tonal, atonal, simple harmonic usage, the most aggressively complex, influences from different classical and traditional folk musics from various ethnic cultures from around the globe are simultaneously present, performed on concert programs, recorded, performed live.

I think, pardon if am am incorrect, you are still in a rather direct manner hoping for music from the present to sound very much or too much like musics from the past.


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## KenOC

PetrB said:


> If twenty four of the twenty five people in a room call that object on the floor in the middle of the room a table, it is most probably a table.


A long view of history suggests...otherwise.


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## PetrB

KenOC said:


> A long view of history suggests...otherwise.


"History is bunk." ~ Henry Ford

"Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it."

The table not only has nothing to say, it does not care


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## guy

Whistlerguy said:


> I have a lot of questions about contemporary classical music and find this topic extremely interesting, even though I am not very knowledgeable about it.
> 
> 1. Does one have to be very familiar with music from all the previous periods in order to appreciate contemporary classical music?
> 
> 2. Does it make any sense to dedicate one's time to contemporary classical music if you haven't listened to the most important works from the past centuries?
> 
> 3. If you really have to be familiar with all the preceding classical music in order to understand contemporary, does it means that the public for contemporary classical music is EXTREMELY small. I mean, public for classical music in general is very small - but still FAR MORE people listen to Bach, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Brahms, etc - than to contemporary composers.
> 
> 4. Knowing all that we face another question - Is there any social or any other purpose of contemporary classical music outside academic circles?
> 
> 5. Are contemporary composers "allowed" to compose in traditional styles such as styles of Baroque, Classicism and Romanticism OR this is a deadly sin which automatically gives them reputation of being backward, imitators and unoriginal?
> 
> 6. A thought experiment. Let's say Beethoven NEVER composed the Third symphony - Eroica. He still composed all of the 8 other symphonies, but not the Third.
> And, now, in 2010 - some contemporary composer composes Eroica. Exactly the same thing. Would Eroica, if composed in 2010 still be held in so high regard and would it still be considered a masterpiece OR would all the critics jump on the poor guy and say "this is so unoriginal" "this is backwards" - "too old fashioned", "it is good for what it is, but this is not art music" and similar comments.
> 
> 7. Is there any way to make contemporary classical music more popular? Or it seems that the art music is dying and that all the things that had to be composed are already composed?
> 
> 8. How many of you are familiar with the works of living composers, and what are the most important musical compositions of our time?
> 
> 9. Do you actually LIKE contemporary classical music?


My question: Why should that kind of criticism matter?


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## KenOC

PetrB said:


> "History is bunk." ~ Henry Ford


The history of thought is hardly bunk, since people have been recording their thoughts for well over two millennia. The ancients generally believed that we could see things because our eyes emitted invisible rays that were reflected from objects before us. (They were evidently unbothered that this didn't explain why we could see by day but not by night). I suspect that 24 of 25 people interested in the topic might have agreed with this, and the 25th would have probably been stumped. Don't get me started on the luminiferous aether, which had an almost total scientific following!

So if 24 of 25 people say that thing is a table, it's suggestive but hardly proof. The other guy just might be right. :tiphat:


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## PetrB

KenOC said:


> The history of thought is hardly bunk, since people have been recording their thoughts for well over two millennia. The ancients generally believed that we could see things because our eyes emitted invisible rays that were reflected from objects before us. (They were evidently unbothered that this didn't explain why we could see by day but not by night). I suspect that 24 of 25 people interested in the topic might have agreed with this, and the 25th would have probably been stumped. Don't get me started on the luminiferous aether, which had an almost total scientific following!
> 
> So if 24 of 25 people say that thing is a table, it's suggestive but hardly proof. The other guy just might be right. :tiphat:


I think you have far over-extended any thoughts about something as mundane as a table. 
Nonetheless, Luminiferous Aether as lovely and poetic a concept as I've heard of in a while.
Bioluminescence:













Ooooh, it's magic. Nope, just bioluminescence.


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## PetrB

KenOC said:


> The history of thought is hardly bunk....
> Don't get me started on the luminiferous aether, which had an almost total scientific following!


Hey, with little to go on but guess at it theorems, this,



























and Lunimiferous Aether, is something for which I give those ancients good marks, and an E for effort


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## KenOC

PetrB said:


> ...and Lunimiferous Aether, is something for which I give those ancients good marks, and an E for effort


You may want to look this one up, as your poetic impressions are not totally accurate. And the adherents of this theory were hardly "ancients." :lol:


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## ahammel

KenOC said:


> Don't get me started on the luminiferous aether, which had an almost total scientific following!


Not, I think you'll find, without reason. The theory fit the facts quite nicely until some inconvenient facts turned up.

I believe one of the buildings at Harvard was built without iron nails, on the theory that the properties of the aether could be measured more easily without magnetic interference. They forgot about the iron in the red bricks that the building is made out of, though.


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## aleazk

Nineteenth century is ancient enough... maybe you need to catch up with more modern science developments, Ken, that one is rather cliché by now.


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## KenOC

ahammel said:


> I believe one of the buildings at Harvard was built without iron nails, on the theory that the properties of the aether could be measured more easily without magnetic interference. They forgot about the iron in the red bricks that the building is made out of, though.


You have totally bizarred me out!


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## KenOC

aleazk said:


> Nineteenth century is ancient enough... maybe you need to catch up with more modern science developments, Ken, that one is rather cliché by now.


The history of science ended in 1904, just before the obscurantists took over. I mean, really! A particle that has to be rotated 270 degrees before you see the same face again? C'mon now.

Maybe a parallel with classical music? :lol:


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## aleazk

KenOC said:


> The history of science ended in 1904, just before the obscurantists took over. I mean, really! A particle that has to be rotated 270 degrees before you see the same face again? C'mon now.
> 
> Maybe a parallel with classical music? :lol:


It's a conspiracy!:


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## PetrB

aleazk said:


> It's a conspiracy!:


They sure don't make'em like the used to, and I'm not talkin' 'bout the conspiracy, either. Though I don't know if I'd want to go back to all black and white....


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## hpowders

aleazk said:


> It's a conspiracy!:


Since when did Larry Fine grow a mustache?


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## gabe

PetrB said:


> Essentially, you are begging a question like this one: *"Why didn't Beethoven continue to compose like Mozart?" or, "Why did not Mahler continue to compose like Beethoven?"* Feel free to start anywhere AT ALL in the time-line of music history and ask the same question using two composers from near the same era.


No, that's not what I'm saying. I just explained why that's not what I'm saying. There are other directions that people could have taken classical music and had it still be evolving and interesting.



PetrB said:


> Then have a real look and listen to the many pieces from the truly broad and diverse repertoire of the 20th century, Stravinsky loaded with folk or folk like melodies, others later, Berio's fantastic arrangement of folk songs "Folk Songs", Fasil Say's _Universe Symphony_.
> 
> That Magam scale system deployed by Saint-Saens, as done, is something now thought of as rather quaint, and which Nicholas Slonimsky dubbed 'musical exoticism.' Much of it, unless truly freshly re-used, is also a sort of pops / carnival kind of act called "musical tourism." This is akin to the painting or snapshot on a postcard which fits a western stereotype of the culture while not getting anywhere near anything genuine about that culture. Me, I think that particular manner of usage is well past its freshness date, and by contemporary perspectives, is now sometimes inadvertently comic -- (Ex: the 'orientalism' of Kettelby's _In A Persian Market._)


The use of folk music and the maqam are just two examples of ways that composers could make tonal music with a melody and much less dissonance _if they wanted to_. And whether or not Saint Saens was a musical tourist, my point is still correct: there's plenty of styles of folk music out there that could be incorporated in a non-exoticizing way and still sound classical and harmonious (Dvorak, for example, used harmony in a way that was different from both German and Russian classical composers). I've listened to a lot of eastern-european and balkan folk music, and it may be a lot rougher on the edges than classical, but a lot of it it (all of what I've heard so far, with the possible exception of Romanian music from Oas) is NOT intentionally dissonant in the way that Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was. Use of quarter-tones or not changing the chords with an accompanying instrument is quite different from the Orchestra-wide dissonance in Stravinsky or Himdemith music.

A plate of raw ground beef with corn syrup poured over it is not a "deconstructed hamburger and coke", and chucking walnuts at a beehive won't make Baklava. Making something that's more like a hamburger won't make it a mere "pastiche of a hamburger", it will make it decent food, which is what the customer has been asking for _the whole darn time._













PetrB said:


> We have Arvo Part currently composing in a style many call neomedieval, modes and all, to a particular aesthetic goal.
> 
> A profusion of Classical East Indian rhythms, native African traditional rhythmic practices are embedded and part of the entire working principles in music as diverse as Messiaen to Philip Glass and Steve Reich.
> 
> The profusion of tonal, atonal, simple harmonic usage, the most aggressively complex, influences from different classical and traditional folk musics from various ethnic cultures from around the globe are simultaneously present, performed on concert programs, recorded, performed live.
> 
> I think, pardon if am am incorrect, you are still in a rather direct manner hoping for music from the present to sound very much or too much like musics from the past.


Now that I have re-explained my viewpoint, I'd like someone to address the other question I raised: Why is classical music failing to respond to audience demand? (This isn't a rhetorical question, I really would like someone who knows more about the modern classical world and/or who decides what goes on the program has to say about this).


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## Matsps

Whistlerguy said:


> 1. Does one have to be very familiar with music from all the previous periods in order to appreciate contemporary classical music?


Absolutely not!



> 4. Knowing all that we face another question - Is there any social or any other purpose of contemporary classical music outside academic circles?


Yes! Some of it is a joy to listen to and play.


> 5. Are contemporary composers "allowed" to compose in traditional styles such as styles of Baroque, Classicism and Romanticism OR this is a deadly sin which automatically gives them reputation of being backward, imitators and unoriginal?


"First rule of music, there are no rules. Second rule of music, see rule #1. " - Armin Van Buuren



> 7. Is there any way to make contemporary classical music more popular? Or it seems that the art music is dying and that all the things that had to be composed are already composed?


You could make it more popular with more marketing. The question is, would you get back the money plus more from the increased sales and performance attendances etc... And the answer to that question is almost certainly no. Also, ask yourself this, why do you want it to be more popular? 


> 8. How many of you are familiar with the works of living composers, and what are the most important musical compositions of our time?


I hope here you're not suggesting composers can only do classical music?! Anyways, you could fill volumes with important musical compositions of our time. 


> 9. Do you actually LIKE contemporary classical music?


As with most musical genres, the answer is, yes, but only the (imo) good stuff.


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## Guest

gabe said:


> There are other directions that people could have taken classical music and had it still be evolving and interesting.


They took the directions that they took. And classical music was evolving and interesting.



gabe said:


> Why is classical music failing to respond to audience demand?


This is not a valid question. Its two major terms are not defined, it posits an oversimplified situation, leaving out practically everything that is important about being a creative artist, and it assumes something that (far as can be determined without that definition) is simply not true.

There are classical composers who are not trying to write what you've said you want to hear. That is certainly true. Not surprisingly, as none of them know you. And even if they did, do you suppose that they would suddenly change how they do things just to make you happy?

There are classical composers, probably, whose work will please you very much. Just by the way. (They don't know you, either, but then neither did Bach or Beethoven or Brahms. So....)

Here's some questions that may help you refine your own query: first, is classical music (whatever that is) failing to respond to audience demand? second, why does "audience demand" get to be the driver for artistic endeavor? (Even pop musicians--who definitely are in a market-driven business--complain when their audiences demand the same old favorites from them.)


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## mmsbls

gabe said:


> No, that's not what I'm saying.


I believe I understand what you are asking in general over the past several posts, and I also believe that some people here have given reasonable answers. The bottom line is that many modern composers have continued from the Romantic tradition and written in a style that is not what we would call Avant-Garde or what you would call atonal. Minimalism is an example. Many composers wrote in the neo-Romantic or neo-Classical style. So some composers did do what you are suggesting. Many did not. They felt compelled to use a new "vocabulary." Maybe composers in general have not written enough of what you want or exactly what you would prefer, but they have explored quite a few varied styles that could appeal to many different people.



gabe said:


> That's what people who promote contemporary classical say- that writing atonal crap was the only way to be original.





gabe said:


> Someone that likes modern classical music said this to me on a date.


Can I ask, did your friend actually use the word "crap" when describing atonal music? I find it very hard to believe that someone that likes something would refer to it as "crap." Or maybe your friend likes other modern music and not "atonal."


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## hpowders

^^^^Well then put me down as loving this "crap"!!! I'll put William Schuman's atonal symphonies up against anyone. They are profound musical statements.


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## Jjmilton

Hi everyone, I'm new in this forum. I find it very interesting. I've been locking for a good Spotify playlist but I've found nothing really good. Does any body know of any?
The problem is that people understand "contemporary classical" as New age, just minimalistic, modenr instrumental, electronic, relaxing and meditative music, etc.


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## Phil loves classical

Jjmilton said:


> Hi everyone, I'm new in this forum. I find it very interesting. I've been locking for a good Spotify playlist but I've found nothing really good. Does any body know of any?
> The problem is that people understand "contemporary classical" as New age, just minimalistic, modenr instrumental, electronic, relaxing and meditative music, etc.


Here is a link to a contemporary music thread, that has plenty of recommendations.

http://www.talkclassical.com/49825-21st-century-listening-chain.html


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## hpowders

hpowders said:


> ^^^^Well then put me down as loving this "crap"!!! I'll put* William Schuman's atonal symphonies* up against anyone. They are profound musical statements.


Actually, I erred. William Schuman's symphonies are NOT atonal. They happen to all be tonal works peppered with dissonance


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