# Composing beauty



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

http://www.metamodernism.com/2014/05/05/composing-beauty/

I'd like to read opinions on this article.
This is the beginning of it:

"What if I want to compose something that is simply beautiful? Am I allowed to do this, or will this act result in my being regarded as a composer who simply wants to please the listener, instead of one that articulates and tries to solve particular problems, musical or otherwise, through his or her music? Will people frown upon me and my music, perhaps doubt my sincere intentions, and conclude that neither me nor my music can be taken seriously?

Since the end of World War II, a serious composer is considered someone who composes according to a system, and each note that is written down in the score needs to be justified by that system. Serialism, where musical parameters are divided into series of values that are manipulated according to strict rules set by the composer, and aleatoricism, where change operations determine the compositional process, are two examples of such systems. These systems ensure that the composer is able to explain why the music is composed the way it is. There is no room for doubt; all compositional decisions are justified, determined even, by the system."


----------



## SimonNZ (Jul 12, 2012)

Groan. Take some time to listen to the works linked to on the Young Composers thread. They sound nothing like what is being (quite poorly) described in that self-promoting piece. Really: it'll cheer you up, because its most all are quite beautiful, or by my definition at least (aye, there's the rub).

As has been illustrated numerous times - in discussions you've been part of - there is a mountain of post WW2 music felt by TC members to be "beautiful", and there are now numerous recommended lists.


----------



## Guest (May 17, 2014)

By all means, let us start with a null set, "simply beautiful." Let's all agree that this meaningless term makes sense and that we all know the sense that it makes and that everyone who quibbles with it is just playing semantics. 

Sigh.

And by all means, let us present only two possibilities (being careful to hedge our bets and give a wee nod to other possibilities, which will remain nameless). Let us mislabel one of them, too, secure in the knowledge that no one is likely to call us out on it. (And if they do, we can always cry "semantics." So convenient.)

And let us by all that is holy conceal the blindingly obvious, elephantine, fact that the unnamed context for producing this mythical beauty is itself (drum roll) A SYSTEM. And it is also a system with its own taboos, a system that justifies and even determines the compositional decisions.

And, if that's not enough, why is this particular composer's personal problems of any interest to anyone? Is he really that worried about what other people will think? Come on. I don't believe it.


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

some guy said:


> And let us by all that is holy conceal the blindingly obvious, elephantine, fact that the unnamed context for producing this mythical beauty is itself (drum roll) A SYSTEM.


that's true, but the difference is a huge difference of spontaneity, illustrated by a sentence of (i'm sorry, the usual suspects) Boulez: 'I've often found the obligation to use all twelve tones to be unbearable"

Obligation.
But I'd like to quote another passage:
"According to Peter Bannister, beauty is regarded as offensive "[…] to the extent that it is at best an irrelevance, at worst an obstacle to reaching the philosopher's [and composer's] 'final destination'" (2013: 688), i.e. the discovery of truths."

I wonder what should be those musical truths.


----------



## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

norman bates said:


> that's true, but the difference is a huge difference of spontaneity, illustrated by a sentence of (i'm sorry, the usual suspects) Boulez: 'I've often found the obligation to use all twelve tones to be unbearable"


Of course, citing the context, it's clear that he's making a distinction between this and his own post-12-tone music. Regarding Pli selon pli:


Pierre Boulez said:


> When I want to relax I always think of a very simple melodic line, one which is certainly not dodecaphonic. This may surprise you, but I've often found the obligation to use all twelve tones to be unbearable, because the result is so predictable. In this melody [he's talking about the first of the three "Improvisations sur Mallarmé" that lie at the center of the work] there are repetitions, polarities are formed which interest me. The first version of "Improvisation I" essentially revolves around this phenomenon. For its articulation [in a later, revised version] I went back to sketches for my "Notations,' which I've interpolated between these melodic segments.


I've often found much of Boulez, including Pli selon pli, extraordinarily beautiful. Modernism's juxtapositions and superimpositions of unfamiliar harmonies strikes me as far more beautiful than anything by, say, Jennifer Higdon.

Finally, if you want to compose something which is _simply_ beautiful, perhaps meaning _pretty_, I'm not interested unless you actually have something to say with it. There were a number of composers who, following the lead of Wagner and Debussy, created rich, lush scores full of color. But there was so little else of interest in them that they did not survive the test of time. On the other hand, Mahler, who was considered the very height of ugliness by some in his day, has become one of the staples of the orchestral repertoire. Being _simply_ beautiful may not be enough.


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

For a moment, I thought I had stumbled into the "Childhood misconceptions of the world," thread...
http://www.talkclassical.com/32170-childhood-misconceptions-world.html

The article is so childishly slanted, with a selected to 'megadistort' opening statement quote -- which it then seems is there simply to whine and set up a context for the writer's own work, no less 
_I mean, c'mon already!_ In scanning it, I found it useless toward any point whatsoever.

And, as some guy said, _what kinda 'beauty' ya talkin' bout, anyway? _

*"Beauty, F___, Yeah!"* 
...oooooh, instant sympathy, loyalty and immediate reflex salute?

Me, I'll wait and see / hear which kind of beauty you're running up the flagpole that you (and / or the writer) expect everyone to reflexively salute.

Until then, I ain't signin' up for nuttin'.


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Mahlerian said:


> Of course, citing the context, it's clear that he's making a distinction between this and his own post-12-tone music.


But still it explains the difference of freedom of two different systems. To say that also the music in the past was composed using certain rules it's obviously true, but what's important is that they had much more freedom.



Mahlerian said:


> I've often found much of Boulez, including Pli selon pli, extraordinarily beautiful. Modernism's juxtapositions and superimpositions of unfamiliar harmonies strikes me as far more beautiful than anything by, say, Jennifer Higdon.


what do you think of that quote of Peter Bannister above?


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

PetrB said:


> The article is so childishly slanted, with a 'megadistorted' selected opening statement quote


which quote? 



PetrB said:


> -- which it seems is there simply to whine and set up a context for the writer's own work, no less _I mean, c'mon already!_ -- that in scanning it I found it useless toward any point whatsoever.


ok, but same question to you. What do you think of this:
According to Peter Bannister, beauty is regarded as offensive "[…] to the extent that it is at best an irrelevance, at worst an obstacle to reaching the philosopher's [and composer's] 'final destination'" (2013: 688), i.e. the discovery of truths."


----------



## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

I am not a composer or a music teacher, but I think that you should have a system, like the article says, but you don't have to, or necessarily even want to, stick to it unwaveringly rigidly. You want to show that you have a system, but that you are so at home in it, that you don't have to follow it's rules like a pupil, but, rather, that you can play with it like a master. There is an inherent beauty, just in accomplishing this... but if you manage to make it sound beautiful (without compromising your system) in a way that might be more easily recognized to a larger segment of your audience, why not?


----------



## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

norman bates said:


> But still it explains the difference of freedom of two different systems. To say that also the music in the past was composed using certain rules it's obviously true, but what's important is that they had much more freedom.


But that's _not_ the case. There is far more freedom available to the post-serialist composer in every single facet of their music. To say that they are not allowed to compose freely because diatonicism and repetition are frowned upon in some circles is to ignore the fact that there are simply far more resources available to the contemporary composer than could have been imagined in the Classical era, for example. Now, I have no doubt that this freedom can itself feel stifling, and that when presented with so many options, people tend to go for the same ones that others do, depending on fashion, but to say that they are inherently limited seems to me dead wrong.



norman bates said:


> what do you think of that quote of Peter Bannister above?


I think it defines beauty differently from myself. A number of people think that Karl Jenkins' music is beautiful. I don't. I think it sounds dull and lifeless. Many people find Boulez to be noise. I don't. I think it's quite often _simply beautiful_ music (although with a good deal more than its surface to offer).

Boulez, by the way, does not fit this description: "someone who composes according to a system, and each note that is written down in the score needs to be justified by that system" (much to the chagrin of people attempting to analyze his work).


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

norman bates said:


> which quote? *
> My apology, I meant the second paragraph statement in the article itself.*
> 
> ok, but same question to you. What do you think of this:
> ...


..................................................


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Mahlerian said:


> But that's _not_ the case. There is far more freedom available to the post-serialist composer in every single facet of their music. To say that they are not allowed to compose freely because diatonicism and repetition are frowned upon in some circles is to ignore the fact that there are simply far more resources available to the contemporary composer than could have been imagined in the Classical era, for example. Now, I have no doubt that this freedom can itself feel stifling, and that when presented with so many options, people tend to go for the same ones that others do, depending on fashion, but to say that they are inherently limited seems to me dead wrong.


I think that what was stifling to Boulez (and it was a consideration made also by Adorno too, certainly not someone who was against modern music) was that to adhere to that system if he wanted to use a note he had to necessarily wait to use the other eleven notes.



Mahlerian said:


> I think it defines beauty differently from myself. A number of people think that Karl Jenkins' music is beautiful. I don't. I think it sounds dull and lifeless. Many people find Boulez to be noise. I don't. I think it's quite often _simply beautiful_ music (although with a good deal more than its surface to offer).


That quote doesn't define beauty, and it doesn't say that modern music should look for a new different kind of beauty. It says that beauty is an obstacle, or to put in other terms, just "prettiness", something not important. Modern art is about other things, those "truths". So I wonder again, what are those truths.


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

http://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/4/4/687
_
As it happens, beauty has fallen into considerable disfavor in modern philosophical discourse, having all but disappeared as a term in philosophical aesthetics. In part this is attributable to the eighteenth-century infatuation with Longinus's distinction between the beautiful and the sublime, one of whose unfortunate effects was to reduce the scope of the beautiful to that of
the pretty, the merely decorative, or the inoffensively pleasant; in the climate of postmodern thought, whose humors are congenial to the sublime but generally corrosive of the beautiful, beauty's estate has diminished to one of mere negation, a spasm of illusory calm in the midst of being's sublimity, its "infinite "speed."_


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

This is an even more interesting part:
_Given this bleakreality of utter alienation, Adorno asserts the bankruptcy of all artistic images of harmony (on which the tonal system is predicated) as 'unsustainable in the face of the catastrophe toward which reality isveering' ([10], p. 101). This goes far deeper than mere issues of style: for Adorno the whole notion of finished aesthetic form itself becomes untenable, as in the face of unspeakable human suffering artistic form as a structural image of reconciliation can only be equated with false consciousness, a weapon in the hands of the oppressors. For Adorno, radical negation is the only path left open: he chillingly concludes that all music's 'happiness is in the knowledge of unhappiness; all its beauty is in the denial of the semblance of the beautiful' ([10], p. 102).
This is of course an unremittingly pessimistic outlook, in that Adorno is under no illusion that such art
can be "successful" either in terms of securing an audience or even in creating coherent artworks. Despite the title of the first essay of the Philosophy of New Music, "Schoenberg and Progress", to read Adorno as sanctioning the twelve-tone system of composition as the progressive method on which the future of music could be positively constructed is to misunderstand his dialectic. Although he became the uncontested principal theoretical reference of the avant-garde, he was simultaneously the first serious commentator to note the self-defeating tendency within the dodecaphonic compositional method. On one level, twelve-tone music represents total rational domination of the musical material, as the integrally organized work consumes everything via the row (the series of all twelve chromatic pitches) as Grundgestalt: 'twelve-tone technique approaches the ideal of mastery as domination, whose boundlessness consists in the exclusion of whatever is heteronomous, of whatever is not integrated into the continuum of this technique'_


----------



## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

norman bates said:


> That quote doesn't define beauty, and it doesn't say that modern music should look for a new different kind of beauty. It says that beauty is an obstacle, or to put in other terms, just "prettiness", something not important. Modern art is about other things, those "truths". So I wonder again, what are those truths.


Yes, yes, this is Adorno's point of view. I disagree. Music is not the same thing as philosophy (and I've studied my share of philosophy), nor is it science.



norman bates said:


> I think that what was stifling to Boulez (and it was a consideration made also by Adorno too, certainly not someone who was against modern music) was that to adhere to that system if he wanted to use a note he had to necessarily wait to use the other eleven notes.


I know. This does not in any way contradict what I said. But I wonder how well you actually understand 12-tone writing. It is far more flexible than you make it out to be here and elsewhere. In fact, I will offer myself up as a sacrificial goat to your critique.

http://musescore.com/user/84716/scores/190019

View attachment Haiku Piano.mp3


I want you to explain where I broke from my row and where my creativity was necessarily constrained by my methods (rather than by my lack of technique).


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Mahlerian said:


> Yes, yes, this is Adorno's point of view. I disagree. Music is not the same thing as philosophy (and I've studied my share of philosophy), nor is it science.
> 
> I know. This does not in any way contradict what I said. But I wonder how well you actually understand 12-tone writing. It is far more flexible than you make it out to be here and elsewhere. In fact, I will offer myself up as a sacrificial goat to your critique.
> 
> ...


At 0:46 for instance there's a repetition of a couple of notes, so I guess you weren't using a tone row there. But obviously I can't say if your creativity was constrained. If you wanted to do exactly that, you're clearly not constrained. But others feel that limit. After that, I wasn't interested in the usual tonal music vs serialism (or the possibilities of it), but more in this way of seeing beauty as just prettiness. It seems to me that Adorno says it perfectly but I guess we can't discuss it if the premise is that everybody here think that his idea was not shared by any modern composer.


----------



## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

norman bates said:


> At 0:46 for instance there's a repetition of a couple of notes, so I guess you weren't using a tone row there.


This is acceptable practice in 12-tone music, so long as the row continues after any repeated notes, which it does. Furthermore, the chord in the middle of bar 9 is an accumulation of the notes that had been previously "built up" in bar 8 (C, B, and D), plus the A which follows a few other notes in the row. Imagine that the aforementioned notes in the chord were held for that bar and a half, while the melody moves through G#-E-Ef-Bf before reaching A.

Actually, the place where I broke the row is right at the beginning, as the A# in bar 2 is a repetition of the Bf in bar 1, out of sequence. I did it because I wanted to complement the first bar's pattern, and I felt having that note would be better than not having it.



norman bates said:


> But obviously I can't say if your creativity was constrained. If you wanted to do exactly that, you're clearly not constrained. But others feel that limit.


But this is not what you've been saying here and in the past. You have said that modernist idioms (including, but not limited to the 12-tone method) are _inherently_ constrictive.


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Mahlerian said:


> But this is not what you've been saying here and in the past. You have said that modernist idioms (including, but not limited to the 12-tone method) are _inherently_ constrictive.


yes, that what it seems to my limited knowledge of it (after that, I know that George Perle does not compose as Schoenberg), but if one doesn't want to leave the prison he don't feel a lack of freedom, if I can put it like that.


----------



## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Compositional systems are not for justifying anything, they are there to serve as tools and support for the composer. In various cases it is easier to construct larger pieces with a system; many composers though, work just by 'translating' directly what their hear in ther mind into the paper and even those tend to produce 'consistent' music.


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

norman bates said:


> I think that what was stifling to Boulez (and it was a consideration made also by Adorno too, certainly not someone who was against modern music) was that to adhere to that system if he wanted to use a note he had to necessarily wait to use the other eleven notes.


No practicing composer -- even those using 'a method' -- would ever make such a contrived statement of non-understanding about a 'system' of composing.

When newly formed, the Schoenberg Quartet (Los Angeles) consulted with Schoenberg as they were working on the composer's string quartets. The 'cellist told of an incident where he pointed to his part, and noticed that 'the row' was not exact, and pointed to the note (a B-natural) which he thought out of place: 
Cellist: "Shouldn't that be a B-flat?" 
Schoenberg: "If I had wanted a B-flat there I would have written one!"

So much for 'following a system' -- and that from the inventor / first practitioner's mouth.


----------



## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

norman bates said:


> http://www.metamodernism.com/2014/05/05/composing-beauty/
> 
> I'd like to read opinions on this article.
> This is the beginning of it:
> ...


Er... this debate belongs to the 1950's and at that time it was genuine... we are in 2014 now and nobody cares about those problems because they don't exist in today's scene...

You don't like Boulez?... ok, listen to this then:






There's room for everything in today's contemporary language... even romantic pastiche...


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

norman bates said:


> At 0:46 for instance there's a repetition of a couple of notes, so I guess you weren't using a tone row there. But obviously I can't say if your creativity was constrained. If you wanted to do exactly that, you're clearly not constrained. *But others feel that limit*.


"But others feel that limit." I will tell you exactly who most feels 'limits' to any kind of music theoretical premise when they write -- those who are more prone to a petty academic mentality who somehow think that 'the rules' of theory, or tonality, or atonality, or 'a system' are actually rules to be followed. They are those who either do not have the imagination it takes, or who do not trust their imaginations and intuitions and are too timid to make decisions on their own. It is a personality type which is, ironically, antithetical to being a creative anything, and yet you find enough people of that mentality in the arts, and even more of that same mentality 'around' the arts, i.e. the Adornos and the Bannisters. They, and their work(s) may be on the present day scenes and screens, but they fade into their relative worth (or worthlessness) quickly enough.

Adorno: everyone really ought to look into the man's dates, his personal connection to a twice shattered / failed homeland, his personal sentiments and his acutely felt sense of loss over the former style -- and predominance -- of German Romanticism and all he thought that embodied: in this light, his halfhearted and grudging support of the newer German music makes more sense, as well as his strong personal bias against the Russian music -- all being part and parcel of the man, and very much coloring 'what he said.'

Adorno did say some very shrewd things in observing his contemporary world re: the arts, commercialism, etc. But to take many of his statements as wholesale gospel is to take the statements of a deeply disappointed man who was longing for a past which no longer existed, and who was more interested in re-instating past (and truly out of date) aesthetics and sentiments than he was capable of really understanding the current musical developments going on around him.

What Thomas Mann made of serialism in his novel 'Faust' is based on Mann's direct consultations with Adorno, and between the two of them they did a bang-up job of nearly completely misrepresenting serial music as inflexible, inhuman, totally predetermined, etc. Mann was of a similar sentiment about shattered Germany and lost cultural sentiments -- a perfect, embittered, matched pair.


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

PetrB said:


> No practicing composer -- even those using 'a method' -- would ever make such a contrived statement of non-understanding about a 'system' of composing.


Boulez did, I've quoted him in the previous page. Adorno too, who studied with Webern and wrote that "twelve-tone technique approaches the ideal of mastery as domination, whose boundlessness consists in the exclusion of whatever is heteronomous, of whatever is not integrated into the continuum of this technique'"



PetrB said:


> When newly formed, the Schoenberg Quartet (Los Angeles) consulted with Schoenberg as they were working on the composer's string quartets. The 'cellist told of an incident where he pointed to his part, and noticed that 'the row' was not exact, and pointed to the note (a B-natural) which he thought out of place:
> Cellist: "Shouldn't that be a B-flat?"
> Schoenberg: "If I had wanted a B-flat there I would have written one!"
> 
> So much for 'following a system' -- and that from the inventor / first practitioner's mouth.


I've already read that episode, but I don't think that it really reflects his idea or just that he hated that someone found the "wrong" note. I mean, I can be wrong but Schoenberg didn't return to tonal music at any moment. But it seems that I can't escape this tonal vs serialism thing, while my interest was another. I don't want to discuss if a twelve tone piece could be beautiful (my answer is yes, by the way), what I find interesting is that position illustrated by Adorno (and reported in that article of Peter Bannister), who considered beauty as something unbereable considering the, or the equation of beauty with prettiness. But a discussion like this could start with the agreement that many composers shared that vision with Adorno, so they weren't trying to make beautiful music. But it seems that many here think not only that the philosopher was completely wrong but also that Schoenberg and his pupils were just trying to make something different without any other implication and they disagreed too with Adorno.


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

norman bates said:


> ... what I find interesting is that position illustrated by Adorno (and reported in that article of Peter Bannister), who considered beauty as something unbeareable considering the, or the equation of beauty with prettiness.


Does it really require a clusterf___ of academics, critics and philosophers to clarify the difference between beautiful and pretty, or the relative weight or value of each?

If it does, what world of near illiterate non-thinking sheep have we created, and when, exactly, did all the people with an average intelligence give up the autonomy of their thinking in exchange for the ring in their nose and the bell hung from their collar?


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

PetrB said:


> "But others feel that limit." I will tell you exactly who most feels 'limits' to any kind of music theoretical premise when they write -- those who are more prone to a petty academic mentality who somehow think that 'the rules' of theory, or tonality, or atonality, or 'a system' are actually rules to be followed.


Schoenberg like other composers (Debussy, Scriabin, Ives, Partch) felt the limit of a certain system for instance, and they weren't certainly conservative composers.



PetrB said:


> Adorno: everyone really ought to look into the man's dates, his personal connection to a twice shattered / failed homeland, his personal sentiments and his acutely felt sense of loss over the former style -- and predominance -- of German Romanticism and all he thought that embodied: in this light, his halfhearted and grudging support of the newer German music makes more sense, as well as his strong personal bias against the Russian music -- all being part and parcel of the man, and very much coloring 'what he said.'
> 
> Adorno did say some very shrewd things in observing his contemporary world re: the arts, commercialism, etc. But to take many of his statements as wholesale gospel is to take the statements of a deeply disappointed man who was longing for a past which no longer existed, and who was more interested in re-instating past (and truly out of date) aesthetics and sentiments than he was capable of really understanding the current musical developments going on around him.


I agree that he wrote interesting things, but I certainly don't take Adorno as gospel, quite the contrary, and this very discussion should is the proof of that, considering that I disagree with his view. But was his view shared by others, or he was just someone who interpreted in a completely wrong way the intention of those modern composers?


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

PetrB said:


> Does it really require a clusterf___ of academics, critics and philosophers to clarify the difference between beautiful and pretty, or the relative weight or value of each?


Considering the fact that in this forum there continuous debates about the value of tonal music and atonal music in the twentieth century, considering also the war of composers one against the other, I'd say a resounding YES. Or at least, the answer is not as easy as you seems to think. I doubt that you and say, Ned Rorem have the same idea of what is beautiful and what is just "pretty".


----------



## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

norman bates said:


> Boulez did, I've quoted him in the previous page. Adorno too, who studied with Webern and wrote that "twelve-tone technique approaches the ideal of mastery as domination, whose boundlessness consists in the exclusion of whatever is heteronomous, of whatever is not integrated into the continuum of this technique'"


Boulez was not talking about _all_ modernist music that uses the chromatic scale as a basis. You are. Furthermore, he says that _he_ found the 12-tone method constraining, not that it's inherently more limited than traditional music.

Adorno also said that the use of tonality was inherently related to fascist tendencies, and that jazz was the creation of a business that wishes to produce mass product for easy consumption (and he meant _all_ of it, not just swing dance music). Why are you quoting him for his arguments regarding aesthetics?



norman bates said:


> I've already read that episode, but I don't think that it really reflects his idea or just that he hated that someone found the "wrong" note. I mean, I can be wrong but Schoenberg didn't return to tonal music at any moment.


He continued to compose both tonal and non-tonal music to the end of his life.

Suite for Strings in G: 



Theme and Variations for band, op. 43a: 



Christmas Music: 




All of these postdate his creation of the 12-tone method.


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Please look at my post #24. It is with a bit of polite regret that I say I find the entire premise of the OP vacuous and of no interest, having no bearing on anything. 

"beauty as unbearable:" Is this meant to be taken in that ancient and religious regard, i.e. look upon the face of the deity and die -- or is it announcing a negative academic trend of rejecting beauty for something else? The former is an ancient cliché and the latter is basically a contemporary cliché falsehood.

I can not figure out what the point or concern of the post really is.

What the hell is one supposed to do with whatever "The equation of Beauty with Prettiness," is supposed to mean.... 
Is it a cry about the downgrading of what people now accept as beautiful (like this is some hugely new issue)? 

The ambiguity of the writing of whatever the topic is supposed to be is remarkable. I have no idea what the point is, but as presented, find it 0 of interest, let alone any thing like something real about which to be concerned. The article goes on and on about 'systems' for composing. If and when the composers using a system felt hemmed in by the system, they broke with the method, or adapted it in other ways for their use -- so what is the big deal there? Besides, when 'systems' of composing are used by the best, they are not nearly as systematic as people might like to think -- ergo, another non-issue.

"Composing beauty" sounds simultaneous sophomoric and, well, meh.

ADD P.s. I do think many people mistake 'pretty' for 'beautiful,' but wonder if any thread on that would bear fruit beyond being a semantic argument between various camps tweaking each word.


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Mahlerian said:


> Boulez was not talking about _all_ modernist music that uses the chromatic scale as a basis. You are.


The one who found unbereable to wrote with the obligations of the twelve tone method, wasn't me 



Mahlerian said:


> Adorno also said that the use of tonality was inherently related to fascist tendencies, and that jazz was the creation of a business that wishes to produce mass product for easy consumption (and he meant _all_ of it, not just swing dance music). Why are you quoting him for his arguments regarding aesthetics?


Because I think that his ideas are thought provoking, not because I agree completely with him or disagree completely with him. 
I think (it seems that here I'm the only one) that right or wrong he was, many shared his idea of beauty as something "false" in modern times, considering the tragedies in the world (it should be said that the tragedy wasn't certainly a novelty of the twentieth century). I can understand this point of view, but at the same time I can't accept the notion that music should denied beauty on those premises.
I obviously know that today there's a lot of musicians who simply don't give a f... or simply ignore these ideas.



Mahlerian said:


> He continued to compose both tonal and non-tonal music to the end of his life.
> 
> Suite for Strings in G:
> 
> ...


Ok, I was completely wrong on this.


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

PetrB said:


> Please look at my post #24. It is with a bit of polite regret that I say I find the entire premise of the OP vacuous and of no interest, having no bearing on anything.
> 
> "beauty as unbearable:" Is this meant to be taken in that ancient and religious regard, i.e. look upon the face of the deity and die -- or is it announcing a negative academic trend of rejecting beauty for something else? The former is an ancient cliché and the latter is basically a contemporary cliché falsehood.
> 
> *I can not figure out what the point or concern of the post really is.*


Let me tell you that the fact that you are missing the point of the article was clear from your first comment.



PetrB said:


> What the hell is one supposed to do with whatever "The equation of Beauty with Prettiness," is supposed to mean....
> Is it a cry about the downgrading of what people now accept as beautiful (like this is some hugely new issue)?


Today some of the most revered artists are people like Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst, so what a lot of people accept as beautiful for me doesn't certainly mean necessarily a progress of taste, but instead just another ring on the nose, using your words.


----------



## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst are hacks; con-artists. They're laughing all the way to the bank, I am sure.


----------



## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

norman bates said:


> The one who found unbereable to wrote with the obligations of the twelve tone method, wasn't me


Yes, which is why very few of Boulez's works use said method. None of his later works are strictly 12-tone. In other words, the techniques he is referring to relate perhaps to the Notations (in their piano form), Visage Nuptial, and the Second Sonata (from the standpoint of a composer who has changed significantly since he wrote those works), but not Le marteau sans maitre, Pli selon pli, Repons, or Rituel.

And it still does nothing for your point that 12-tone music is inherently more constricting.



norman bates said:


> Because I think that his ideas are thought provoking, not because I agree completely with him or disagree completely with him.
> I think (it seems that here I'm the only one) that right or wrong he was, many shared his idea of beauty as something "false" in modern times, considering the tragedies in the world (it should be said that the tragedy wasn't certainly a novelty of the twentieth century). I can understand this point of view, but at the same time I can't accept the notion that music should denied beauty on those premises.
> I obviously know that today there's a lot of musicians who simply don't give a f... or simply ignore these ideas.


Adorno wrote well on some topics (one of the earliest perceptive writers on Mahler, in fact), but a lot of his ideas about music seem strange if you don't look at them from his extremely black and white, truth and falsehood point of view.


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

norman bates said:


> Let me tell you that the fact that you are missing the point of the article was clear from your first comment.
> 
> Today some of the most revered artists are people like Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst, so what a lot of people accept as beautiful for me doesn't certainly mean necessarily a progress of taste, but instead just another ring on the nose, using your words.


No, I am missing _your point_ which it seems you think is backed up by the texts you cited.
I still do not know what your point is. Jeff Koons and Damian Hirst wouldn't be the first, and won't be the last, to get by work which is a sort of one-note trend and become popular, and I have more than a hunch other than one or two of either artist's work will 'be speaking much of anything' to later generations. They are also just two of probably one hundred thousand or more artists currently working.

You have to sort out the wheat for the chaff of your own time, not doing so is a kind of laziness, i.e. no matter how difficult the personal quandary, it is yours. I think the OP would have been both better and clearer if you had just said what you wanted to say. And that seems to be very much an issue for you about 'what is beautiful,' and your personal definition of it. That would have been something of greater interest to discuss, I think, or at least it would have made for some lively debate.

So be brave, and really, without citing others, just say what you intend to say and mean, please. I am not being coy in that I can find "no point and no you" in the OP as it stands, i.e. you haven't taken any stand at all.


----------



## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

Lope de Aguirre said:


> Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst are hacks; con-artists. They're laughing all the way to the bank, I am sure.


Take something that clowns have been doing for decades... aaand make it out of steel. A visionary.


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

PetrB said:


> No, I am missing _your point_ which it seems you think is backed up by the texts you cited.
> I still do not know what your point is. Jeff Koons and Damian Hirst wouldn't be the first, and won't be the last, to get by work which is a sort of one-note trend and become popular, and I have more than a hunch other than one or two of either artist's work will 'be speaking much of anything' to later generations. They are also just two of probably one hundred thousand or more artists currently working.
> 
> You have to sort out the wheat for the chaff of your own time, not doing so is a kind of laziness, i.e. no matter how difficult the personal quandary, it is yours. I think the OP would have been both better and clearer if you had just said what you wanted to say. And that seems to be very much an issue for you about 'what is beautiful,' and your personal definition of it. That would have been something of greater interest to discuss, I think, or at least it would have made for some lively debate.
> ...


The fact that I've quoted an article (and other writers) are simply because of my limits with the english. So it's useful to use quotes when I see a thought that is stated in a way more clear than what I can. After that, it's clear enough from your usual attitude (like "For a moment, I thought I had stumbled into the "Childhood misconceptions of the world") that you're not really interested in understanding what my point or the point of the article are (which is basically the same).


----------



## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Adorno wrote a famous article criticizing Sibelius which clearly shows that he found it incomprehensible (I don't blame him for that) and, like his criticisms of Stravinsky, the article was prompted by the rise in popularity of the composer. (Adorno being a disgusting German nationalist had to react)

The reality being that Sibelius wasn't just an amateurish 'scribbler', he studied under Wegelius, Goldmark, Becker* (a renowned counterpoint teacher, you can find some of his works in spotify and his influence in Sibelius own choral works), Fuchs ('theBrahmsguySerenadeFugueFuchs'), producing innumerable counterpoint exercises, chorale settings, fugues...

*and related to the topic of the thread
Sibelius supposedly said "I worked very hard under the supervision of (Albert) Becker [in Berlin 1889-1890] and I wrote a great number of both vocal and instrumental fugues. But I could not help feeling that I was dealing with things that belonged to the past and my patience was sometimes exhausted. However, I steadfastly endured it to the end and I have no regrets."
(Karl Ekman's biography of JS, 1935)


----------



## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> Yes, which is why very few of Boulez's works use said method. None of his later works are strictly 12-tone. In other words, the techniques he is referring to relate perhaps to the Notations (in their piano form), Visage Nuptial, and the Second Sonata (from the standpoint of a composer who has changed significantly since he wrote those works), but not Le marteau sans maitre, Pli selon pli, Repons, or Rituel.
> 
> And it still does nothing for your point that 12-tone music is inherently more constricting.


I don't have much to add, but I thought I'd post this recent interview with Boulez:






His preoccupation with constraint and freedom, structuralism and improvisation, is evident throughout (as it is in many of his essays). As an aside, I was very interested the first time I heard Boulez talk: I'd received a very inaccurate conception of his temperament from a few of his more notorious comments, which are endlessly repeated.

My favorite moments in the interview are when he admits to his "sentimental" attitudes toward his own compositions, and when he mentions the experience of reviewing a score he penned as many as 60 years ago. It's also quite moving to hear him speak of the ideas he has in his head and hopes he can complete--I hope so too!


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Thanks for the article, norman bates.

The big issue here is freedom. All along in the arts there have been these bunfights about style, but the issue is that its hypocrisy in the extreme to say something like _you can do it any way, as long as its my way_.

Or _do as I say, not do as I do_.

My argument is that most of Modernist ideology is very flawed and kind of dug itself into a grave. So what do composers do? Do they go on with the old attitudes and ways or do they change and follow their inner voice?

Systems are okay but not dogma that imposes one thing, or a set of values, over all things. Artistic expression must be about freedom to express oneself. I don't mind if someone does things in whatever way they want, but I'm not in control, they are as composers ultimately. Its their choice, their creative process, they own it.

Maybe we need a figurehead for contemporary music. If so, he or she must be one that embraces pluralism, not do often repeated the mistake of trying to impose a dogma or a certain set of them. If music is to survive, I think that's the most important thing. Just accept plurality, even celebrate it.

Brotagonist put it well, composers juggle different considerations, they always have. If they feel they're forced to do something, I think that's sad, and a loss for listeners who want to really hear what they want to compose not some clique or other.



brotagonist said:


> I am not a composer or a music teacher, but I think that you should have a system, like the article says, but you don't have to, or necessarily even want to, stick to it unwaveringly rigidly. You want to show that you have a system, but that you are so at home in it, that you don't have to follow it's rules like a pupil, but, rather, that you can play with it like a master. There is an inherent beauty, just in accomplishing this... but if you manage to make it sound beautiful (without compromising your system) in a way that might be more easily recognized to a larger segment of your audience, why not?


And I'd add that we don't need someone telling listeners what to think either. Just like composers, we make our choices, all equally valid according to our own needs. Criticism of some sort will happen, so too will controversy and debate, but that sense of freedom is paramount. It underpins everything, it lets people be creative in the first place.


----------

