# Copland Defends Modernist Music



## Mahlerian

A bit of background. At the time this article was written, Copland had already written both his early, more difficult works, inspired by Stravinsky, and also his New Deal-era populist works (also inspired by Stravinsky, just more diatonic). A few years later the critic Henry Pleasants was to write _The Agony of Modern Music_, a book which declared that classical music was dead, that the only serious music left was Jazz (and he ended up disliking the turns that took too before long), and that Wagner was the last serious composer to write for his time and his audience.

https://www.nytimes.com/books/99/03/14/specials/copland-modernist.html

The list of accessibility levels of the various composers (all still living at the time, I believe?) is interesting. I wonder how closely it aligns with the profiles of those who feel reticence towards 20th century music. (Note that when he says "late" Stravinsky, this does not mean the serial works, which had not yet been written in 1949.)

From my perspective, this music is very much a part of my aesthetic, and I find it difficult, as did Copland, to understand how others find it incomprehensible, unmelodic, chaotic, and so forth. It is just as difficult for me to imagine that by listening to the music as it is for me to recover my initial impressions of Debussy or Mahler as noisy and unlikable.

I think there are signs that what is considered difficult has continued to gradually shift over time, and even the music in his top category of difficulty has moved down the ladder to make way for newer music that presents more problems.

What are your reactions to the article and the list in particular?


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## brotagonist

Nice find :tiphat: I will have to read the article later, but I would rate the composers somewhat like this (without trying to break them up too much into early and late, etc.—and remember that I haven't heard as many pieces by the majority of the composers listed as Copland had):

Very easy: Shostakovich, Khachaturian, Satie, Vaughan Williams, Honegger, Britten, Varèse, Ives

Quite approachable: Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Bartók, Hindemith, Berg, Webern

Fairly difficult:

Very tough:

I simply left out the ones I know too little of to say.


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## MarkW

An extremely well written and thoughtful article that states its case succinctly. I would take his list, and from today's perspective, divide it into only two categories: quite approachable -- comprising the first three lists -- and fairly difficult -- the final list with the possible exception of Ives, who occupies a category of his own (which I would call "Quirky").


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## brotagonist

I will postulate a continuation...

Fairly difficult: Schnittke, Xenakis, Stockhausen

Very tough: Ferneyhough

Without poring over my album collection to ferret out further names


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## mmsbls

Pretty much everything Copland wrote I gradually learned over my first year and a half at TC. Modern music was a mystery, and I had to learn how to listen differently. In some sense it was an epiphony when I started to realize that I could truly like this bizarre music. He asks, "Why is it that the musical public is seemingly so reluctant to consider a musical composition as, possibly, a challenging experience?" There's nothing wrong with wanting music to immediately please. On the other hand, I think many listeners would be surprized at what they could learn to like. 

Copland's list of composers by degree of difficulty seemed roughly right to me. However, when I first started, I found Shostakovich, early Stravinsky, and Prokofiev mostly unpleasant. I probably would not have placed Ives in the very tough group, but I agree that Varese could be the most difficult


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## violadude

I recognize at least part of this article as being taken directly from Copland's own book "What to Listen for in Music". Or maybe he took part of this article for the book.

Either way, ever since I read that book I've felt that Copland was a great writer and an amazing communicator to the layman about Classical Music. Him and Bernstein excelled in this area, imo. I hope to be a similar kind of figure someday.


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## haydnfan

I think that he is right about the lack of exposure. No joke, when I first heard Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata I found it strange and unsettling. It takes time and exposure to not only that piece or composer but similar music. This is not just about modern music but any music.


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## Weston

I understand the article now as I too no longer find any of these composers an impossible challenge -- only a rewarding one. But it hasn't been that long since I found many of these works inscrutable and therefor just annoying. It was like overhearing an animated conversation in an unknown foreign language in public. My conscious mind tries not to focus on it, but I can't help half unconsciously trying to pick out words or phrases that make sense. It then becomes more of a distraction than an (often equally meaningless) conversation in my own language would be.

I'm glad now most modern and contemporary music no longer has that effect on me

As to Copland's list, I would add his own music to the Quite Approachable category though I've scarcely heard more than the popular pieces.

Also, Britten as fairly difficult? I don't get that. Scriabin is difficult maybe, not Britten.

[Tip for reading the article: If you have Firefox click on the Reader View book icon at the top in the address bar. That gets rid of the atrocious font that is so hard on the eyes.]


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## SONNET CLV

I still remember when I found several of the works on Copland's "Fairly difficult" and "Very tough" lists as being ... well, difficult and/or tough.

But I was a teenager.

I've heard a lot of music since then, much of it contemporary experimental and avant-garde music. I rethink what I consider difficult and tough music, nowadays.

I wonder what Copland would have made of Schnittke's First Symphony, or Peter Maxwell Davies' _Eight Songs for a Mad King _, or Penderecki's _Threnody_, Xenakis's _Synaphai_, or Stockhausen's _Momente_ ... or the piece I'm currently listening to via headphones: the eleven movement chamber work _Emma_ (for viola, cello, piano) written in the late 1980s by Christian Wolff.

And note -- I haven't even mentioned anything written in the 21st century!

I suspect that Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven were once considered difficult. I suspect that (from a dedicated performer's point of view) they still are.

Some of Copland's listings under "Very easy" (Shostakovich, early Schoenberg and Stravinsky) and "Quite approachable" (Prokofieff, especially) can prove rather thorny and dense at times. I've never found Roy Harris, Villa-Lobos, Ernest Bloch, or William Walton to sound challenging in any significant manner, but each presents his own challenges, I'm sure.

One of the things I most treasure about hearing experimental, new, avant-garde, challenging, difficult, tough contemporary music, is that it awakens a spirit of surprise and wonder and awe that I suspect all audiences in all times have felt to some degree for works of their own age. Since I can no longer experience this same kind of wonder and awe from "tonal" music of past masters (though I can experience wonder and awe for different reasons from sublime tonal music of past masters), I seek it out in new music, which remains my primary listening area.

The same may explain my foray into punk rock and experimental/noise pop music and free jazz or what the late Gunther Schuller terms "third stream", to which I turn much more often than do I to the "top 40 hit lists" of the rock and jazz arenas. Recent acquisitions to my music library (say, 90 of the last 100 CDs and LPS I've purchased) are almost all in the area of "very new" music and include such things as the box sets of the remastered Black Saint/Soul Note jazz catalog, several Merzbow discs, quite a few discs from col legno and NEOS labels which specialize in contemporary serious music, and three of the maga box sets of music conducted by Pierre Boulez.

I will not dispense with my vast Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven collections; nor turn away from my beloved Brahms and Tchaikovsky, Mahler and Vaughn Williams .... But I welcome the new -- earful adventures in sound, everywhere. It's one of the few real areas of life where I can be a full fledged adventurer, out on the edge, facing the brink! Ah! Exhiliarating!


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## KenOC

"The literary world does not expect Gide or Mann or T.S. Eliot to emote with the accents of Victor Hugo or Walter Scott. Why, then, should Bartok or Milhaud be expected to sing with the voice of Schumann or Tchaikovsky?"

To suppose that people _should _like a certain style of music, and to bemoan the fact that they don't, seems a pretty useless exercise all around.


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## Dim7

It's strange how he calls it a misconception that contemporary music is cold, intellectual and without sentiment, and then he goes affirming it


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## Mahlerian

Weston said:


> As to Copland's list, I would add his own music to the Quite Approachable category though I've scarcely heard more than the popular pieces.


Here are some of Copland's non-populist works:

Written before the article's publication
Piano Variations
Piano Concerto (Might not strike you as "difficult" now, but this piece led critics to call Copland the "American Schoenberg," believe it or not)

Written after the article's publication
Piano Fantasy
Inscape

These two use Copland's personal adaptation of the 12-tone method.


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## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> "The literary world does not expect Gide or Mann or T.S. Eliot to emote with the accents of Victor Hugo or Walter Scott. Why, then, should Bartok or Milhaud be expected to sing with the voice of Schumann or Tchaikovsky?"
> 
> To suppose that people _should _like a certain style of music, and to bemoan the fact that they don't, seems a pretty useless exercise all around.


Of course that has absolutely nothing to do with what Copland is saying.

He is saying that composers write the way they will, and people expect them to write otherwise, in spite of the fact that it's an unreasonable demand.


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## ArtMusic

A good read because although it was written sixty years ago, it could be dated today and I would find it entirely agreeable. It shows how little has changed in terms of the general listening public's perception and understanding of modern music. "Ultra-modern" music written in 1925 almost one hundred years ago from today are still challenging to the majority of classical music listeners *today*. This is in stark contrast to say when the Bach revival was well and truly in its heyday during Romanticism when Mendelssohn to Brahms revived music composed a century before them by say Bach and Handel. I think this all says a lot.


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## brotagonist

Copland says that a composer expresses musical thoughts "in the musical language of his own time," yet, when I listen to contemporary composers, they frequently sound so much like Xenakis, Nono, Stockhausen, Ligeti, Boulez and others that they sound like the 1960s and 1970s. While I like much contemporary music, the fact that it seems to be repeating the sound of 30-70 years ago makes me want to compare it with the great music of the recent past which it so strongly resembles, and I often find myself thinking that Nono, Boulez, Stockhausen etc. did 'it' better. This isn't a rejection of the younger composers, per se, but I often ask myself if I need to hear/buy more of the same/similar.


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## Avey

First, Copland uses the word "variegated." I absolutely love this word and use it in my everyday speech, but people always think it sounds stupid, or don't readily know it, but can kind of guess what it means, or think it is inappropriately applied. Anyways, reading it here highlights that the word may be out of date. Makes me feel _simpatico_ with Copland nonetheless.

Second, I enjoyed the article, but I find his position a little confusing, or really, quite unwelcoming. Let me explain.

He spends a great deal explaining _why_ people make music:



> _The objective is not necessarily to make beautiful sounds like Chopin or Mozart. Much as one should like to do just that, it isn't possible, because one doesn't write the music of one's choice but a necessity.
> 
> If forced to explain the creative musician's basic objective in elementary terms, I would say that a composer writes music to express and communicate and put down in permanent form certain thoughts, emotions and states of being. These thoughts and emotions are gradually formed by the contact of the composer's personality with the world in which he lives. He expresses these thoughts . . . in the musical language of his own time. The resultant work of art should speak to the men and women of the artist's own time with a directness and immediacy of communicative power that no previous art expression can give...._
> 
> _When approaching a present-day musical work of serious pretensions, one must first realize what the objective of the composer is and then expect to hear a different treatment of the elements of music -- harmony, melody, timbre, texture -- than what was customary in the past._


How should one _realize_ the objective of a composer? Maybe he means an objective that comes out in the sound -- that is, just listen to the music, and do not expect it to sound like some other previous composer or era.

But this could also mean that the listener must consider context -- i.e., we need to know the circumstances in which the composer is writing, who he is writing it for, what is going on his life, who came before him, who are his peers. It is like program music; know the _person_ you are listening to, the intentions of the music.

I despise this type of musical analysis. Sure, in some cases, artists make clear what their _objectives_ are, but in the vast majority of others, the interpretation is left to the listener, or a critic, or some apocryphal anecdote built from rumor to memory to story to biographer footnote to Wikipedia. When I hear, let's say, Svoboda or Glass, I am not considering what is going on in today's world. I am considering what I am hearing. The same thing? Maybe, but I do not wish to delve into speculation.

The second time reading through, I think he is making the former point (i.e., _objectives _need not be to emulate the past) and not this latter point, which is good.

Also, the Mozart thing confuses me. Is he saying:

(1) That the objective of Chopin and Mozart was to make "beautiful sounds," and that contemporary composers have different objectives; or

(2) That Chopin and Mozart's objectives just happened to create "beautiful sounds," as many people think, and contemporary composers have their own objectives, but because they do not sound the same, does not mean they are not valid forms of music?

I think it is the latter, because (1) is a totally unfair characterization/assumption, and in my opinion, would really devastate his entire argument.

Regardless (of all that above), I agree that Copland is a great writer of music, and I wish he had someone like him alive today.


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## KenOC

Mahlerian said:


> He is saying that composers write the way they will, and people expect them to write otherwise, in spite of the fact that it's an unreasonable demand.


I don't think people "expect" composers to write in any way whatever. They like the music or they don't, that's all.


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## Guest

There's plenty to chew on in the article...and TC members have masticated some of it to death already! Get past the comparative list near the beginning, and there are gems to be mined such as


"music that has proved its worth" (the 'test of time' argument, which he cautions against)
"When a contemporary piece seems dry and cerebral to you, when it seems to be giving off little feeling or sentiment, there is a good chance that you are not willing to live in your own epoch, musically speaking"
"If you find yourself rejecting music because it is too dissonant, it probably indicates that your ear is insufficiently accustomed to contemporary musical vocabulary and needs more training -- that is, listening." (try listening properly!)
"the human ear is limited in absorbent capacity" (what kind of ears have you got?)

Finally, was Copland being optimistic or pessimistic when he said,

""contemporary music is likely to remain peculiar, unless audiences demand that the music producers let them hear more of it. From where I sit that sounds like the millennium."


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## Guest

Avey said:


> How should one _realize_ the objective of a composer? Maybe he means an objective that comes out in the sound -- that is, just listen to the music, and do not expect it to sound like some other previous composer or era.
> 
> But this could also mean that the listener must consider context -- i.e., we need to know the circumstances in which the composer is writing, who he is writing it for, what is going on his life, who came before him, who are his peers. It is like program music; know the _person_ you are listening to, the intentions of the music.


No, I don't think he's saying that. I think when he refers to 'objective', he's actually describing what it is that drives him to make music



> to express and communicate and put down in permanent form certain thoughts, emotions and states of being. These thoughts and emotions are gradually formed by the contact of the composer's personality with the world in which he lives.


I don't think he is referring at this point to the notion of specific objectives for each composition.



Avey said:


> Also, the Mozart thing confuses me. Is he saying [etc]:


He's saying that it is his objective to live in his own time and write music for his own time. He doesn't (can't) write music as Mozart and Chopin did. It has nothing to do with whether Mozart or Chopin wrote great or beautiful music. He's just rejecting the expectation that he should write music like they did, because he's living in the 20th C, not the 18th or 19th.


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## KenOC

MacLeod said:


> He's saying that it is his objective to live in his own time and write music for his own time. He doesn't (can't) write music as Mozart and Chopin did. It has nothing to do with whether Mozart or Chopin wrote great or beautiful music. He's just rejecting the expectation that he should write music like they did, because he's living in the 20th C, not the 18th or 19th.


Excellent. The let him write music that 20th and 21st-century audiences will like. Problem solved!


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## SeptimalTritone

I still find the below work absolutely shocking, dizzying, head-splitting, nauseating, dissonant and yet at the same time terrific, soulful, and viscerally emotional beyond my capacities:






And I think that anyone who _doesn't_ find it this to be so... is simply not listening carefully.

In a sense, the below works are less jarring than the above because once you get into their sound, one realizes that they're more smooth, streamlined, elegant, and actually... _beautiful_. And when I say beautiful, I'm not being obtuse: I mean it.










Seriously, Stockhausen's Gruppen and Messiaen's Sept Haikai are more streamlined, smooth, and flowing than Beethoven's Hammerklavier (and including his Grosse Fugue, Serioso Quartet, 8th and 9th symphony finales). Not that I'm dissing Beethoven (I love Beethoven, especially the works I've quoted, and he's always been one of my top 5) but I think that people exaggerate the ugliness of modern music and are not listening carefully enough. Once you get used to the harmonic world, you can only realize that it's more streamlined and smooth and down to earth. Although of course sometimes it gets to be jarring like the Grosse Fugue and Hammerklavier. Maybe this classic recent work is a great example:






I think one just needs time and willingness to acclimate to the vocabulary and sensitivity of post-1930 modern music.


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## Nereffid

A very good read; change the dates and add some withering contempt and it could pass for a TC post! 

The passage that stood out for me:


> *Most music lovers do not appreciate to what an extent they are under the spell of the romantic approach to music. Our audiences have come to identify nineteenth-century musical romanticism as analogous to the art itself.* Because it was, and still remains, so powerful an expression they tend to forget that great music was written for hundreds of years before the romantics flourished.
> 
> It so happens that a considerable proportion of present-day music has closer ties with that earlier music than it has with the romantics. *The way of the uninhibited and personalized warmth and surge of the best of the romanticists is not our way. That may be regrettable from your angle, but it remains a fact nevertheless* -- unavoidable fact very probably, for the romantic movement had reached its apogee by the end of last century, in any case, and nothing fresh was to be extracted from it.


Of course, the fact that audiences (of 1949 and 2015) regard 19th-century romanticism as "analogous to the art itself" is regrettable from the composer's point of view, but it remains a fact nevertheless!


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## isorhythm

The thing that really jumps out at me is "late Stravinsky" under "fairly difficult." As Mahlerian points out, this was before Stravinsky's serial period. Some of his recent pieces then were the Symphony in Three Movements, Violin Concerto, and Mass.

These are supposed to be "fairly difficult"? Really?

I kind of get how Hindemith could be called "fairly difficult," though I never found him so. But neoclassical Stravinsky?


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## Mahlerian

isorhythm said:


> The thing that really jumps out at me is "late Stravinsky" under "fairly difficult." As Mahlerian points out, this was before Stravinsky's serial period. Some of his recent pieces then were the Symphony in Three Movements, Violin Concerto, and Mass.
> 
> These are supposed to be "fairly difficult"? Really?
> 
> I kind of get how Hindemith could be called "fairly difficult," though I never found him so. But neoclassical Stravinsky?


Anecdotally, I did come out of a Boston Symphony concert where Stravinsky's Concerto for Piano and Winds was played, and overheard a young woman opining about how difficult it was.

Movement 1

Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements is also one of the few works mentioned by name in Pleasants' _Agony_, wherein someone (Milhaud??) is quoted to the effect that the rhythmic intricacies are meaningless because the players are too busy counting notes.


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## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> I don't think people "expect" composers to write in any way whatever. They like the music or they don't, that's all.


First of all, that's obviously not "all," unless you expect that people are able to approach music completely devoid of presuppositions and expectations, which is impossible.

Second, you're changing the terms of the discussion away from what Copland said and you were ostensibly criticizing to what your own characterization that is not based on what he said.


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## Guest

Tactics like changing the terms of the discussion used to really rile me, but I've found something good about them, something that allows me to continue to recognize their unfairness AND to keep blood pressure levels low--and that is to see them for what they are, admissions of failure--failure to have any reasonable counter-argument to the issue at hand, so a substitute argument has to be constructed, which is a thing that can be countered, easily, principally because it's made up expressly to be successfully (or "successfully") countered.


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> Excellent. The let him write music that 20th and 21st-century audiences will like. Problem solved!


You are aware, are you not, that "he" here has been referring to Aaron Copland, who was, during his lifetime (he died in 1990), probably the most revered composer of the USA. He certainly wrote a lot of music that a lot of people reported as liking, yes. Yes he did.


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## KenOC

Mahlerian said:


> ...Second, you're changing the terms of the discussion away from what Copland said and you were ostensibly criticizing to what your own characterization that is not based on what he said.


That's likely because I was responding to what you wrote (which I duly quoted) and not to Copland.


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## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> That's likely because I was responding to what you wrote (which I duly quoted) and not to Copland.


So you admit that the view you attributed to Copland and criticized was not his?

Anyway, you didn't respond to what I said, because I was criticizing your non sequitur of a remark. Any response would have to defend your own remark as pertinent. You used the words of my remark as a springboard for another irrelevant comment.

I'd prefer if you _did_ make a comment on the actual text of the article at some point in this conversation.


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## Gaspard de la Nuit

I disagree with Copland on many levels here, and I'm someone who doesn't really like to listen to Mozart and Chopin and has no special adulation for the WCM Austro-German pre-20th century masters.

I really hope people realize that people with analogous opinions to Copland's DO NOT speak for all modern-day composers or all 20th century composers, they certainly don't speak for all serious, dedicated musicians, and it's fairly presumptuous of them to say that people whose enthusiasm for their music hasn't been roused are intellectually lazy and addicted to romantic music. In my case, I just don't like it that much (the same way I don't really like Chopin).


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## KenOC

[sigh] You wrote: "He [Copland evidently] is saying that composers write the way they will, and people expect them to write otherwise, in spite of the fact that it's an unreasonable demand."

I responded: "I don't think people "expect" composers to write in any way whatever. They like the music or they don't, that's all."

Now you write, "So you admit that the view you attributed to Copland and criticized was not his?"

I am totally lost. I attributed nothing to Copland. I responded only to your remark, as should be obvious.


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## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> [sigh] You wrote: "He [Copland evidently] is saying that composers write the way they will, and people expect them to write otherwise, in spite of the fact that it's an unreasonable demand."
> 
> I responded: "I don't think people "expect" composers to write in any way whatever. They like the music or they don't, that's all."
> 
> Now you write, "So you admit that the view you attributed to Copland and criticized was not his?"
> 
> I am totally lost. I attributed nothing to Copland. I responded only to your remark, as should be obvious.


Refer to your first post.


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## KenOC

My first point was, "To suppose that people _should _like a certain style of music, and to bemoan the fact that they don't, seems a pretty useless exercise all around."

That was in response to Copland's "The literary world does not expect Gide or Mann or T.S. Eliot to emote with the accents of Victor Hugo or Walter Scott. Why, then, should Bartok or Milhaud be expected to sing with the voice of Schumann or Tchaikovsky?"

Seems fair enough to me. Again, most people don't "expect" composers to do anything in particular. They just like the music or they don't, that's all. Some, including around here, might wish it were otherwise. But it isn't.


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## Mahlerian

Gaspard de la Nuit said:


> I disagree with Copland on many levels here, and I'm someone who doesn't really like to listen to Mozart and Chopin and has no special adulation for the WCM Austro-German pre-20th century masters.
> 
> I really hope people realize that people with analogous opinions to Copland's DO NOT speak for all modern-day composers or all 20th century composers, they certainly don't speak for all serious, dedicated musicians, and it's fairly presumptuous of them to say that people whose enthusiasm for their music hasn't been roused are intellectually lazy and addicted to romantic music. In my case, I just don't like it that much (the same way I don't really like Chopin).


I don't think Copland is calling those who lack enthusiasm "intellectually lazy." He says that this discomfort is present even in "well-intentioned" listeners and seems to imply that the main reason for the misconceptions regarding modern music are due in large part to lack of exposure.

Also, it is a mischaracterization to say that he is saying that listeners are "addicted" to Romantic music; he is saying that their expectations of what constitutes emotion and feeling as regards music stem in large part from the way emotion was handled in the 19th century.

One has to remember that at the time of writing, the Baroque revival (to say nothing of the early music movement) had yet to get underway and centuries of music _were_ largely ignored in favor of the works of the 19th century.


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## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> My first point was, "To suppose that people _should _like a certain style of music, and to bemoan the fact that they don't, seems a pretty useless exercise all around."
> 
> That was in response to Copland's "The literary world does not expect Gide or Mann or T.S. Eliot to emote with the accents of Victor Hugo or Walter Scott. Why, then, should Bartok or Milhaud be expected to sing with the voice of Schumann or Tchaikovsky?"
> 
> Seems fair enough to me. Again, most people don't "expect" composers to do anything in particular. They just like the music or they don't, that's all. Some, including around here, might wish it were otherwise. But it isn't.


No, it's not fair, because Copland is not saying "should" at all. Nor is he speaking of "liking" as such. In context, he is referring to the persistent (so persistent that it survives to this day in somewhat altered form) misconception that composers of today write unemotionally and intellectually as opposed to composers of earlier times.

His argument is that people feel this way in spite of the fact that composers today (and in 1949) are just as emotionally inspired as those of earlier times because they are confusing the style in which something is expressed with the thing that is expressed.

Also, again, people do have expectations. To claim otherwise flies in the face of all that we know about human psychology and the processing of unfamiliar stimuli.


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## KenOC

Well, I'd like to take this a step further. If people are conditioned, through their expectations, to prefer older rather than newer music, what do you propose to do about that? To bemoan the problem without suggesting any solution verges on simply whining.


So I ask: Is a learned preference for older music at the expense of newer really a "problem"? Who's it a problem for? How should the problem be solved? Also, why?


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## ArtMusic

Mahlerian said:


> No, it's not fair, because Copland is not saying "should" at all. Nor is he speaking of "liking" as such. In context, he is referring to the persistent (so persistent that it survives to this day in somewhat altered form) misconception that composers of today write unemotionally and intellectually as opposed to composers of earlier times.
> ...


That was Copland's opinion but the historical reality was great composers like Mozart and Beethoven *not only* wrote music of their own times (a necessary but not sufficient condition), moreover they wrote music that they dearly hoped their audiences would like (a necessary *and sufficient condition*). The difference is critical. Pure and simple.

It is not artistically difficult to write any music belonging to one's own time. I think this point was not addressed well enough by Copland's article.


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## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> Well, I'd like to take this a step further. If people are conditioned, through their expectations, to prefer older rather than newer music, what do you propose to do about that? To bemoan the problem without suggesting any solution verges on simply whining.
> 
> So I ask: Is a learned preference for older music at the expense of newer really a "problem"? Who's it a problem for? How should the problem be solved? Also, why?


He does propose a solution. Increased openness to new experiences and taking seemingly incomprehensible music as a challenge rather than an insult, along with an understanding that the new music doesn't have to be the same as the old in order to provide pleasure.


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## KenOC

Copland's solution is for the audience to change? Just like that? Somehow that's not the kind of "solution" I had in mind.


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## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> Copland's solution is for the audience to change? Just like that? Somehow that's not the kind of "solution" I had in mind.


The solution to misconceptions is education and understanding, yes.

The context for these remarks is, again, the misconceptions surrounding the music, rather than the liking or disliking of it as such.


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## Adam Weber

ArtMusic said:


> ]...but the historical reality was great composers like Mozart and Beethoven *not only* wrote music of their own times (a necessary but not sufficient condition), moreover they wrote music that they dearly hoped their audiences would like (a necessary *and sufficient condition*). The difference is critical. Pure and simple.]


Don't mistake our present comfort for historical fact. Read through Slonimsky's Lexicon of Musical Invective, and you will see that, in their day, even Beethoven and Brahms were considered difficult. If I remember correctly, even Tchaikovsky had trouble with late Beethoven. Yes, you can argue that one-hundred years later people were used to Beethoven and today people are not used to Schoenberg - but we _are_ used to Stravinsky, Bartok, Prokofiev, and even Berg's Violin Concerto has found a place in the repertoire. Maybe the Second Viennese School will take a little longer to catch on. Maybe it never will. That does not mean, ipso facto, that this music is unemotional and intellectual as opposed to passionate and emotional - only, perhaps, that most listeners today are not comfortable with such strong emotions and such strange passions.


----------



## KenOC

Mahlerian said:


> The solution to misconceptions is education and understanding, yes.
> 
> The context for these remarks is, again, the misconceptions surrounding the music, rather than the liking or disliking of it as such.


So people who prefer older music to newer have "misconceptions" and require "education"? I find that kind of thinking a bit distasteful. It suggest chains of re-education camps to "straighten people out."

In fact, I asked earlier, who is this a problem for? For Copland? For your fine self? Certainly not for those ignorant and uneducated music lovers who love the music of the past more than that of the present.

My suggestion is that we let people like what they like and let the composers worry about the rest.


----------



## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> So people who prefer older music to newer have "misconceptions" and require "education"? I find that kind of thinking a bit distasteful. It suggest chains of re-education camps to "straighten people out."
> 
> In fact, I asked earlier, who is this a problem for? For Copland? For your fine self? Certainly not for those ignorant and uneducated music lovers who love the music of the past more than that of the present.
> 
> My suggestion is that we let people like what they like and let the composers worry about the rest.


You're changing the subject. He is referring to _specific_ misconceptions, which are clearly stated in the article. Once again, preference is not the issue here.

If audiences want to know why composers compose the music they do, they will have to learn to approach the unfamiliar. That seems self-evident to me.


----------



## Adam Weber

KenOC said:


> So people who prefer older music to newer have "misconceptions" and require "education"? I find that kind of thinking a bit distasteful. It suggest chains of re-education camps to "straighten people out."


Liking and disliking is separate from conception or misconception.

Some examples:

1. I like the moon and believe it is made out of cheese.

2. I like the moon and believe it is made out of rock.

3. I dislike the moon and believe it is made out of cheese.

4. I dislike the moon and believe it is made out of rock.

5. I dislike the moon _because_ I believe it is made out of rock.

6. I dislike the moon _because_ I believe it is made out of cheese.

Opinion #6, I imagine, is the type Mahlerian finds issue with. One is free to like or dislike something, of course, but to dislike something for imagined reasons is simply ignorant. And if a competent astronomer told me the moon was _not _ made of cheese, I would very likely change my opinion. This would be good if I, for example, constantly posted on TalkMoon that I disliked the moon because it was made of cheese. And if I still didn't like the moon after learning it was made of igneous rock, that would then be my right as an informed individual.


----------



## KenOC

I'm not going to pursue this farther. But I certainly wish you and Mr Copland all the best luck in your re-education plans. Hope you're not tripped up by the likelihood that audiences really don't care "why composers compose the music they do." But that's possibly an unimportant detail.


----------



## ArtMusic

Adam Weber said:


> Don't mistake our present comfort for historical fact. Read through Slonimsky's Lexicon of Musical Invective, and you will see that, in their day, even Beethoven and Brahms were considered difficult. If I remember correctly, even Tchaikovsky had trouble with late Beethoven. Yes, you can argue that one-hundred years later people were used to Beethoven and today people are not used to Schoenberg - but we _are_ used to Stravinsky, Bartok, Prokofiev, and even Berg's Violin Concerto has found a place in the repertoire. Maybe the Second Viennese School will take a little longer to catch on. Maybe it never will. That does not mean, ipso facto, that this music is unemotional and intellectual as opposed to passionate and emotional - only, perhaps, that most listeners today are not comfortable with such strong emotions and such strange passions.


I'm not mistaken, not at all. Historical facts also show more than what we and Copland may be prepared to accept. Beethoven did write the Grosse Fugue to the outrage rejection of his audiences. But he did write numerous other works that he was hoping to be the center piece of successful concerts. His symphonies, his chamber music and his only opera for example. Likewise with Mozart. Copland's paper seems to ignore the dual purpose objective of writing new music in one's own times.


----------



## violadude

To those who think education is not a good way to clear up misunderstandings and misconceptions about 20th century music, what about Classical Music as a whole? Plenty of people misunderstand the entire spectrum of classical music, would you not say education is a good way to fix that? Why is that not a good way when it comes to 20th century music then?

Was Bernstein just being a pretentious, snobby "re-education camp" advocate when he put on his "Concerts for Young People"?


----------



## Autocrat

For those that have commented but not read the article, it's embedded in the post at the top of the first page.


----------



## isorhythm

It's pretty clear that Copland is writing to people who are potentially open to modern music, even if they don't like it yet - otherwise they wouldn't be reading his article! For such people, his advice is good.


----------



## KenOC

violadude said:


> Was Bernstein just being a pretentious, snobby "re-education camp" advocate when he put on his "Concerts for Young People"?


Hardly. Unlike Copland and some others here, Bernstein had a _real _plan and went ahead with it. There have been zero practical proposals in this thread. Well, aside from my modest proposal for re-education camps!


----------



## violadude

KenOC said:


> Hardly. Unlike Copland and some others here, Bernstein had a _real _plan and went ahead with it. There have been zero practical proposals in this thread. Well, aside from my modest proposal for re-education camps!


What's the difference between what you call "re-ecucation camps" and educational concerts?


----------



## Adam Weber

ArtMusic said:


> I'm not mistaken, not at all. Historical facts also show more than what we and Copland may be prepared to accept. Beethoven did write the Grosse Fugue to the outrage rejection of his audiences. But he did write numerous other works that he was hoping to be the center piece of successful concerts. His symphonies, his chamber music and his only opera for example. Likewise with Mozart. Copland's paper seems to ignore the dual purpose objective of writing new music in one's own times.


Most modern composers _do_ want audiences to enjoy their work! What do you propose instead? Should we reinstate the old mores and political tyranny that required composers to write "nice" music? That worked so well in the Soviet Union! I think things are better now. There are plenty of tonal composers if you look, and plenty of atonal composers for those who like that kind of thing. Personally, I would be very unhappy if someone took away the music of Schoenberg or Boulez and replaced it with ten more Mozart concertos, or more Bach cantatas, or what-have-you. Does my enjoyment not count? Do a certain number of people have to enjoy something before it becomes _truly_ enjoyable? Or is that question just as ridiculous as it sounds?


----------



## KenOC

violadude said:


> What's the difference between what you call "re-ecucation camps" and educational concerts?


Are you suggesting "educational concerts" to increase appreciation of newer music? Do you realize that's the first even quasi-practical suggestion put forward in this thread?


----------



## violadude

KenOC said:


> Are you suggesting "educational concerts" to increase appreciation of newer music? Do you realize that's the first even quasi-practical suggestion put forward in this thread?


What's the difference between educational concerts to increase appreciation of newer classical music and educational concerts to increase appreciation of Classical Music in general?

Bernsteins Young People's Concerts covered both, btw.


----------



## KenOC

Just that this thread (and Copland's complaints) are about the former.


----------



## violadude

KenOC said:


> Just that this thread (and Copland's complaints) are about the former.


And what's the problem with that?


----------



## Adam Weber

KenOC said:


> Are you suggesting "educational concerts" to increase appreciation of newer music? Do you realize that's the first even quasi-practical suggestion put forward in this thread?


Some practical suggestions:

Educational TV shows

Educational concerts

Music classes in schools

Playing more contemporary music on the radio

And last (but not least), Hiterlesque Concentration Camps

Clearly all reasonable options put forth without bias or agenda.


----------



## KenOC

Adam Weber said:


> Some practical suggestions:
> 
> Educational TV shows
> 
> Educational concerts
> 
> Music classes in schools
> 
> Playing more contemporary music on the radio
> 
> And last (but not least), Hiterlesque Concentration Camps
> 
> Clearly all reasonable options put forth without bias or agenda.


An ambitious program but one entailing a considerable expense. Who will foot the bill? Is there support among a public that shows little sign of wanting re-education and mostly doesn't give a rip about "modernistic music" (or any other kind of classical music for that matter)?

It would be SO much easier if composers would write music that people wanted. That's mostly how it worked in years past. Outside of our beloved "classical music," that's still how it works.


----------



## violadude

KenOC said:


> An ambitious program but one entailing a considerable expense. Who will foot the bill? Is there support among a public that shows little sign of wanting re-education and mostly doesn't give a rip about "modernistic music" (or any other kind of classical music for that matter)?
> 
> It would be SO much easier *if composers would write music that people wanted. That's mostly how it worked in years past*. Outside of our beloved "classical music," that's still how it works.


So...every Ades, Rihm and Reich in the world should just give up and become Katy Perry clones? Jeezus that sounds like a nightmare. And in any case, you are wrong about the bolded sentence. The majority of Classical Music was written with support from the upper class, not the general public.


----------



## ArtMusic

Adam Weber said:


> Most modern composers _do_ want audiences to enjoy their work! What do you propose instead? Should we reinstate the old mores and political tyranny that required composers to write "nice" music? That worked so well in the Soviet Union! I think things are better now. There are plenty of tonal composers if you look, and plenty of atonal composers for those who like that kind of thing. Personally, I would be very unhappy if someone took away the music of Schoenberg or Boulez and replaced it with ten more Mozart concertos, or more Bach cantatas, or what-have-you. Does my enjoyment not count? Do a certain number of people have to enjoy something before it becomes _truly_ enjoyable? Or is that question just as ridiculous as it sounds?


I was referring to Copland's paper. I did not appear to me to address that point.


----------



## isorhythm

violadude said:


> So...every Ades, Rihm and Reich in the world should just give up and become Katy Perry clones? Jeezus that sounds like a nightmare. And in any case, you are wrong about the bolded sentence. The majority of Classical Music was written with support from the upper class, not the general public.


To be fair, Reich and Ades are fairly popular in the classical world.

Rihm...uh...well, _I_ like him, anyway.


----------



## Adam Weber

What I find so hilarious about all this is that purely atonal music seems to be on the decline. Composers like Gubaidulina, Rautavaara, Adams, etc. are composing music that is both rigorous and "enjoyable," freely mixing tonal and atonal elements to glorious effect. If listeners could get over their Schoenberg paranoia and Boulez fixations, and actually just _listen_ to modern music, they might find the serialism of the past has mostly been subsumed into a more generally "listenable" fabric.


----------



## KenOC

Not totally true. Composers like Bach wrote music as part of their jobs, and it was expected to be acceptable to his congregations (it wasn't, in some cases). Other baroque composers wrote music for sheet music sales, reams and reams of it. Popular success was an absolute requirement.

Haydn in the later part of his life was a freelancer, as was Mozart for a good deal of his. Beethoven, likewise, after his initial few years in Vienna, made his living mostly from publishers of his sheet music (the payments depending on popularity of course) and from the occasional concert.

Aristocratic support lives on, of course. For instance, commissions from orchestras are covered an average of 70% by donations, largely from the upper crust. I suspect these donors hope the music they help pay for will be popular.

As for Ades, Rihm and Reich, I have no idea how they put meat on their tables and send their kids to college. But I'd love to hear about it!


----------



## Adam Weber

ArtMusic said:


> I was referring to Copland's paper. I did not appear to me to address that point.


No, I addressed you properly. You claimed that modern composers ignore the "dual purpose objective of writing new music in one's own times" - that is, music must be new _and_ enjoyable, correct? You claimed that composers of the past considered this and that modern composers do not. I rebutted that point.


----------



## ArtMusic

Adam Weber said:


> No, I addressed you properly. You claimed that modern composers ignore the "dual purpose objective of writing new music in one's own times" - that is, music must be new _and_ enjoyable, correct? You claimed that composers of the past considered this and that modern composers do not. I rebutted that point.


Yes because Copland's paper did not address that important point, hence my discussion. I have no doubt at all there are contemporary composers who *do write* music wanting to please but there are idioms of contemporary music who are less concerned about it too. It would seem reasonable to suggest based on Copland's paper's lack of address that his motive would be less so.


----------



## violadude

ArtMusic said:


> Yes because Copland's paper did not address that important point, hence my discussion. I have no doubt at all there are contemporary composers who *do write* music wanting to please but there are idioms of contemporary music who are less concerned about it too. It would seem reasonable to suggest based on Copland's paper's lack of address that his motive would be less so.


Yes, nearly every composer writes music to please others. No, not every composer writes music to please you.


----------



## Adam Weber

KenOC said:


> Not totally true. Composers like Bach wrote music as part of their jobs, and it was expected to be acceptable to his congregations (it wasn't, in some cases). Other baroque composers wrote music for sheet music sales, reams and reams of it. Popular success was an absolute requirement.
> 
> Haydn in the later part of his life was a freelancer, as was Mozart for a good deal of his. Beethoven, likewise, after his initial few years in Vienna, made his living mostly from publishers of his sheet music (the payments depending on popularity of course) and from the occasional concert.
> 
> Aristocratic support lives on, of course. For instance, commissions from orchestras are covered an average of 70% by donations, largely from the upper crust. I suspect these donors hope the music they help pay for will be popular.
> 
> As for Ades, Rihm and Reich, I have no idea how they put meat on their tables and send their kids to college. But I'd love to hear about it!


Okay, so you want contemporary composers to write music that will be popular. What will that sound like?


----------



## violadude

Adam Weber said:


> Okay, so you want contemporary composers to write music that will be popular. What will that sound like?


This:


----------



## KenOC

Adam Weber said:


> Okay, so you want contemporary composers to write music that will be popular. What will that sound like?


I don't "want" contemporary composers to write any particular kind of music. I have no expectations of what they will write, or not. And I hope music lovers will listen to exactly what they want to listen to. Do you feel differently?


----------



## Adam Weber

KenOC said:


> I don't "want" contemporary composers to write any particular kind of music. I have no expectations of what they will write, or not. And I hope music lovers will listen to exactly what they want to listen to. Do you feel differently?


I don't, but this comment seems diametrically opposed to your previous posts.


----------



## KenOC

Adam Weber said:


> I don't, but this comment seems diametrically opposed to your previous posts.


Really? Example? I suggest you have misread my previous comments. Scribble away, says I, scribble away, and I wish ye the joy of it!


----------



## Adam Weber

KenOC said:


> Really? Example? I suggest you have misread my previous comments. Scribble away, says I, scribble away, and I wish ye the joy of it!


Sorry, you're right. I made an assumption based on comments like:



KenOC said:


> It would be SO much easier if composers would write music that people wanted.


And your bandying about phrases like "re-education camps."

Then you began talking about popularity, and it seemed like you wanted composers to write with that in mind. But you never quite did.

My bad.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> Really? Example?


"It would be SO much easier if composers would write music that people wanted."(Post 58)

"I don't "want" contemporary composers to write any particular kind of music." (Post 69).

These don't appear consistent.


----------



## KenOC

No problem. I do get weary of the whining that the great music of these composers is neglected due to the stupidity, or unsophistication, or backwardness, or sheer obstinate ignorance of audiences. It's always that d****d audience! Without it, things would be so much simpler, so beautifully and unendingly progressive...

Nonetheless, I propose that if composers want their music to be popular, they consider writing music that is likely to be popular. Probably easier than re-educating the masses.


----------



## ArtMusic

violadude said:


> Yes, nearly every composer writes music to please others. No, not every composer writes music to please you.


Let me kindly put it this way then. From Copland's paper (as per the topic of this thread), what do you think was Copland's view on this topic I raised? I have written my view of Copland's view as per his paper.


----------



## violadude

KenOC said:


> No problem. I do get weary of the whining that the great music of these composers is neglected due to the stupidity, or unsophistication, or backwardness, or sheer obstinate ignorance of audiences. It's always that d****d audience! Without it, things would be so much simpler, so beautifully and unendingly progressive...
> 
> Nonetheless, I propose that if composers want their music to be popular, they consider writing music that is likely to be popular. Probably easier than re-educating the masses.


I love getting compared to some dictatorial figure for wanting to share my passions and wanting others to experience what I experience in the music I love.

But anyway, everything you say could be said about any composer, and I know you've heard that before. "Beethoven is always blaming the audience! If he wants his music to be liked he should quit writing crap like the Grosse Fugue and write things that are likely to be popular"


----------



## violadude

ArtMusic said:


> Let me kindly put it this way then. From Copland's paper (as per the topic of this thread), what do you think was Copland's view on this topic I raised? I have written my view of Copland's view as per his paper.


Sounds to me like he's trying to bridge the gap between what composers of that day thought of their music and what the average person thought of it.


----------



## KenOC

violadude said:


> But anyway, everything you say could be said about any composer, and I know you've heard that before. "Beethoven is always blaming the audience! If he wants his music to be liked he should quit writing crap like the Grosse Fugue and write things that are likely to be popular"


Beethoven, like everybody else, wrote what he wrote and took his chances. But he had a knack of loading the dice!

BTW, the Grosse Fuge sold quite well, thank you. Beethoven even authorized a 4-hand reduction because his publisher thought there was sufficient demand for a "study score." So long as people didn't have to _listen _to the d****d thing, I guess.


----------



## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> Beethoven, like everybody else, wrote what he wrote and took his chances. But he had a knack of loading the dice!
> 
> BTW, the Grosse Fuge sold quite well, thank you. Beethoven even authorized a 4-hand reduction because his publisher thought there was sufficient demand for a "study score." So long as people didn't have to _listen _to the d****d thing, I guess.


Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 4, reluctantly taken up by Shirmer, ended up outselling all of their other study scores combined. What's your point?


----------



## KenOC

Mahlerian said:


> Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 4, reluctantly taken up by Shirmer, ended up outselling all of their other study scores combined. What's your point?


Happy for Schoenberg and happy for Shirmer! But unsure, in fact, what _your _point is.


----------



## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> Happy for Schoenberg and happy for Shirmer! But unsure, in fact, what your point is.


Well, either your point that Beethoven can be considered popular because his study scores sold well can be transferred over to Schoenberg, at which time it becomes questionable why you are implying that modern music is different from older music in contemporary popularity, or you can deny that the sales of study scores truly reflect on popularity, at which time it becomes questionable why you brought up those sales in this discussion in the first place as a defense of Beethoven's popularity.


----------



## KenOC

I was commenting on a prior suggestion that the Grosse Fuge was unpopular. I never said anything about Schoenberg's 4th, and you may have your own opinion about that.

My comments have generally been about others claiming that "modernist" works are unpopular, and their suggestions that audiences need some kind of re-education. I state this clearly in hopes it may be communicated more effectively than it evidently has to this point.

Also, I hope my comments do not come across as aggressive or discourteous, which sometimes seems to happen here when people reply to posts that apparently threaten their values.


----------



## Piwikiwi

Adam Weber said:


> What I find so hilarious about all this is that purely atonal music seems to be on the decline. Composers like Gubaidulina, Rautavaara, Adams, etc. are composing music that is both rigorous and "enjoyable," freely mixing tonal and atonal elements to glorious effect. If listeners could get over their Schoenberg paranoia and Boulez fixations, and actually just _listen_ to modern music, they might find the serialism of the past has mostly been subsumed into a more generally "listenable" fabric.


It is the same in jazz. Atonality has simply become one of the tools to use when composing and improvising. In jazz it is called "playing outside"


----------



## Piwikiwi

violadude said:


> This:


First things first I'm the realest


----------



## Guest

Latest headline from TC - wholly unremarkable article from 1949 making wholly unexceptional observations about audience (mis)understanding of 'modern' music causes minor controversy in small (ahem, sorry, biggest in the world) classical coterie in 2015.

Ken, I see no 'bemoaning' by Copland. I also don't see that Copland frames his observations as a 'problem' to be solved, but mere ruminations on why contemporary audiences found 'modern' music peculiar. If the article fails at all, it is that he gives no context or specific example of audiences - or critics - finding music peculiar, or explaining what actually prompted him to write thus in the NY Times, but I guess we can take it as read that he was responding to actual public expressions - not inventing them.

Unlike you, I do think audiences have expectations that go beyond mere 'liking' or 'not liking'. (I daresay some concert planners only care about 'liking' as manifest in ticket sales, but they are not the whole audience.) But there are critics who take it upon themselves to tell us all what we should listen to, like and dislike, admire and reject (Mahlerian cites one such in his OP, though the book he references came out after the Copland article). To the extent that a critic represents the views of the audiences of the time, it's hardly surprising that composers might feel complelled to defend their work.

We all know that, in fact, the critics do not represent the totality of audiences' views.


----------



## Nereffid

dogen said:


> "It would be SO much easier if composers would write music that people wanted."(Post 58)
> 
> "I don't "want" contemporary composers to write any particular kind of music." (Post 69).
> 
> These don't appear consistent.


I don't see inconsistency here.
Post 58 is saying it would be "easier" (i.e. for composers), not "preferable" (i.e. for Ken).

Put the two together simply by adding the word "but", and that seems like a summation of Ken's overall point as I understand it.

A point I agree with, although it must be said that the range of music being composed nowadays is much wider than that covered by Copland's list of "easy/difficult" composers, and moreover we can't talk about "the audience" as if it's a single thing; so there are plenty of composers who are writing music that people want - for a given value of "people".


----------



## Guest

violadude said:


> Yes, nearly every composer writes music to please others. No, not every composer writes music to please you.


This is the crux of it, I think. The real crux. The crux continually and consistently hidden with (what I see as faux) concerns about bad attitudes about audiences and with rampant projection of current impressions of earlier music onto the past.

This is truly the one and only thing that matters, that composers aren't writing music to please "me." That the "me" in this construct is almost always someone who fancies older, more familiar music means that the people who _are_ pleased by Boulez or Karkowski or Parkins get to see themselves consistently left out of the (re)definition of what "audience" or even "people" includes.

How charming.


----------



## KenOC

Nereffid said:


> ...it must be said that the range of music being composed nowadays is much wider than that covered by Copland's list of "easy/difficult" composers, and moreover we can't talk about "the audience" as if it's a single thing; so there are plenty of composers who are writing music that people want - for a given value of "people".


Absolutely agree. BTW re "popularity" -- per the latest figures I have, classical is a whopping 2.8 percent of music sales. And technology change isn't helping -- classical is 0.5% of paying streams.

To what extent is that due to the (apparent) fact that new "classical music" of any interest to a broad audience is just about non-existent, and has been for half a century? Am I the only one to notice that?

C'mon somebody, tell me I'm wrong, I'd love to be convinced!


----------



## Guest

You're wrong.

As to convincing you? Nah. That'll never happen.


----------



## Guest

KenOC said:


> To what extent is that due to the (apparent) fact that new "classical music" of any interest to a broad audience is just about non-existent


You're wrong, to the extent that you offer a single reason for the pitifully small percentage of music sales. I'm no expert on current trends or listening habits, and I certainly don't know enough about 'new classical music' to judge its impact on sales, but I would have thought the decline in sales was due to a complex interrelation of historical factors, not least the rise of popular music and the availability of music to a new audience that wasn't buying music before at all.

Considering the longer history, from before Mr Edison's helpful inventions, Joe Bloggs, who now buys Kanye West, didn't previously buy Mozart or Tchaikovsky. He bought nothing. He's not rejecting Emily Howard or Colin Matthews in favour of something else classical. Consequently, the shrinking percentage is as much to do with maths as it is to do with music. Even if all the intelligentsia that has always bought classical all switched to 'modern' music, the percentage would still be very small, because Kanye and Gaga and 1D now sell to masses that didn't buy anything before.


----------



## KenOC

Appreciate your reasoned response!


----------



## Nereffid

KenOC said:


> Absolutely agree. BTW re "popularity" -- per the latest figures I have, classical is a whopping 2.8 percent of music sales. And technology change isn't helping -- classical is 0.5% of paying streams.
> 
> To what extent is that due to the (apparent) fact that new "classical music" of any interest to a broad audience is just about non-existent, and has been for half a century? Am I the only one to notice that?
> 
> C'mon somebody, tell me I'm wrong, I'd love to be convinced!


I don't dispute the accuracy of that 2.8 percent, and I'm sure the nature of the music being composed is some sort of factor, but we need to have better context. If classical constitutes 2.8 percent of the music audience now, what was the equivalent figure for 50 years ago, or 100, or 200? And of course how do we define a "broad audience"? Without some sort of comparative data all conjecturing is meaningless.


----------



## Guest

Nereffid said:


> I don't see inconsistency here.
> Post 58 is saying it would be "easier" (i.e. for composers), not "preferable" (i.e. for Ken).
> 
> Put the two together simply by adding the word "but", and that seems like a summation of Ken's overall point as I understand it.


Fair enough if that's the case; but when I read them it seemed a bit of a turnaround.


----------



## Gaspard de la Nuit

Mahlerian said:


> I don't think Copland is calling those who lack enthusiasm "intellectually lazy." He says that this discomfort is present even in "well-intentioned" listeners and seems to imply that the main reason for the misconceptions regarding modern music are due in large part to lack of exposure.
> 
> Also, it is a mischaracterization to say that he is saying that listeners are "addicted" to Romantic music; he is saying that their expectations of what constitutes emotion and feeling as regards music stem in large part from the way emotion was handled in the 19th century.
> 
> One has to remember that at the time of writing, the Baroque revival (to say nothing of the early music movement) had yet to get underway and centuries of music _were_ largely ignored in favor of the works of the 19th century.


Alright then. But I still think there is an attitude by some self-aggrandizing composers as well as the Ivory Tower that they are artistic nutritionists who are so attuned that they are able to define what is of their time and what isn't, and therefore what merits exposure to listeners....listeners can and do decide that for themselves and each for their own reasons.

They also seem to not consider alternative hypotheses for why some music has not caught on. They assume that it must be the common-practice attachment, since music history shows some examples of sounds that were previously difficult for some eventually becoming regarded as beautiful by most.

What if there is some genetic imprint for what draws people's attention or enamors them, and some musical innovations do not take advantage of it the way others have? Exposure to something doesn't necessarily mean people will grow to consider it great - they might merely tolerate it (as many do now) or even consider it annoying after too much (which is how I am with a lot of common practice).


----------



## Headphone Hermit

Gaspard de la Nuit said:


> I still think there is an attitude by some self-aggrandizing composers as well as the Ivory Tower that they are *artistic nutritionists * who are so attuned that they are able to define what is of their time and what isn't, and therefore what merits exposure to listeners


artistic nutritionists - That's an excellent phrase! I love it - its almost as good as 'oxygen thief' that a colleague used to describe those she regarded as poor managers.

Ok - so, please provide some specific examples of these 'self-aggrandizing composers' and the 'Ivory Tower'


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## mmsbls

some guy said:


> This is truly the one and only thing that matters, that composers aren't writing music to please "me." That the "me" in this construct is almost always someone who fancies older, more familiar music means that the people who _are_ pleased by Boulez or Karkowski or Parkins get to see themselves consistently left out of the (re)definition of what "audience" or even "people" includes.


I think the issue of pleasing "me" is only half the point. It's true that generally those who complain about the path of modern classical music vastly prefer older music, but I believe those people are enbolded to make their "complaints" because of the perception that the (vast?) majority of listeners agree with them at least in disliking modern music. I think their view is something along the lines of, "I dislike modern music and so do the vast majority of other classical music listeners. Therefore, composers have veered off the "right" track and are writing music that people do not enjoy. Why not try a bit harder to include the rest of us?"

I do believe that the majority of classical music listeners dislike much of the modern music thay have heard. I also beliebe that if it were clear that the vast majority of listeners enjoyed modern music, they might "complain" less.


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## mmsbls

KenOC said:


> Absolutely agree. BTW re "popularity" -- per the latest figures I have, classical is a whopping 2.8 percent of music sales. And technology change isn't helping -- classical is 0.5% of paying streams.
> 
> To what extent is that due to the (apparent) fact that new "classical music" of any interest to a broad audience is just about non-existent, and has been for half a century? Am I the only one to notice that?


I've searched a bit in the past trying to understand whether and to what extent classical music is declining in popularity (over the past 50 years or so). As best I can tell it seems to be slightly. The big problem is that people consume classical music and music in general differently today than they did in the past. The studies I have read only consider concert attendence. I would be thrilled to get a better sense of the overall decline if one actually exists and the demographics of listeners.

My perception (and others) is that classical audiences at concerts are clearly dominated by older people. But I also know that younger people listen to classical on youtube and other sources that we know much less about. Also people here modern music at other venues besides concert hall (smaller ensembles, for example).

So I don't know how newer classical music actually effects classical music listening in general.


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## Guest

Gaspard de la Nuit said:


> Alright then. But *I still think there is an attitude by some self-aggrandizing composers as well as the Ivory Tower* that they are artistic nutritionists who are so attuned that they are able to define what is of their time and what isn't, and therefore what merits exposure to listeners....listeners can and do decide that for themselves and each for their own reasons.
> 
> *They also seem to not consider alternative hypotheses for why some music has not caught on.* They assume that it must be the common-practice attachment, since music history shows some examples of sounds that were previously difficult for some eventually becoming regarded as beautiful by most.
> 
> *What if there is some genetic imprint for what draws people's attention or enamors them*, and some musical innovations do not take advantage of it the way others have? *Exposure to something doesn't necessarily mean people will grow to consider it great - they might merely tolerate it* (as many do now) or even consider it annoying after too much (which is how I am with a lot of common practice).


(Taking each of the pieces I've emboldened in turn...)

But not evidenced in the Copland article - which is the subject in hand.

Maybe 'they' don't. But, as Headphone Hermit requests, without some specific examples, this is mere speculation.

I'm sure there *is *some genetic imprint that draws some people to music - of all kinds. Perhaps when we've had 200-300 years to become as accustomed to 'modern' music as we have the music of Mozart, we will see that our genetic inheritance is not immutable.

Not 'necessarily', no. But they _might _grow to like it as well as merely tolerate or consider it annoying, mightn't they?


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## Guest

Gaspard de la Nuit said:


> I still think there is an attitude by some self-aggrandizing composers as well as the Ivory Tower that they are artistic nutritionists who are so attuned that they are able to define what is of their time and what isn't, and therefore what merits exposure to listeners....


Why do you think there is this attitude? Have you actually seen it/heard it? You've been asked for some names. I don't think you have any names. You have only the attitude.

As far as the "able to define what is of their time and what isn't," anyone can do this. Well, anyone who has listened to a lot of music from the past can tell what isn't, anyway. If you hear something written today that sounds like things you've heard from 1715, then that thing is not of its time. It's easy. You know it, because you know things from 1715.



Gaspard de la Nuit said:


> listeners can and do decide that for themselves and each for their own reasons.


No one disputes this. No one. Ever. This is a non-point.



Gaspard de la Nuit said:


> ...why some music has not caught on.


With whom?

Any type of music you can imagine, plus a ton of stuff you've never even heard of has "caught on" with someone, somewhere. Only by privileging one part of "people" or one part of "audience" and substituting that part for the whole can one make this kind of statement.


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## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> I was commenting on a prior suggestion that the Grosse Fuge was unpopular. I never said anything about Schoenberg's 4th, and you may have your own opinion about that.


Well, then, if your point was that we can judge something's relative popularity by sales of study scores, you must accept that Schoenberg's Fourth String Quartet is more popular than Barber's String Quartet, also published by Schirmer.


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## SeptimalTritone

A big point Ken is bringing up is that fewer people enjoy Schoenberg, Cage, etc. because the music is just not as good to most people.

But what if fewer people enjoy it because concert halls are so afraid to program it? It's like a negative feedback loop in physics: enjoyment requires acclimation and exposure, but they aren't given it.

I remember when starting classical listening that I loved Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms's symphonies, but I had a really hard time with the complexity, dissonance, and large scale of Mahler's symphonies. If Mahler were labeled as an oh-so-spooky "modern" composer, then I would have probably raged at Mahler for being too intellectual and comprehensible by only the select few, rather than trying to put my best effort into seeing what worthwhile things he has to say in his music.

So we just need to program these works more. This could be practical if orchestras altered the percentages gradually, that is, the percentages of older vs. modern programming. They could play Feldman's Coptic Light and Boulez's Derive 2 and Wolff's Exercises. I think that gradual acceptance and, eventually, love of this music would come through a courage to program it.

And yes, there will be people who will never like modern music... but I believe that a large amount of people will enjoy it, if only acclimated to it. And because the artistry in these pieces are so worthwhile, wouldn't we want this?

It would be such a shame to merely go back to common practice tonality (as I suspect Ken might be proposing) or even to go back to Debussy, Stravinsky, and Bartok's styles, for we cannot rewrite Dostoevsky over and over again, and it wouldn't be the best use of the artists' communicative abilities either. Do you really think that these artists, in their best abilities to create and express, are simply writing bad music that nobody likes because it's bad?

We shouldn't stagnate our art just so the (current) public would like it more.


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## KenOC

Mahlerian said:


> Well, then, if your point was that we can judge something's relative popularity by sales of study scores, *you must accept *that Schoenberg's Fourth String Quartet is more popular than Barber's String Quartet, also published by Schirmer.


Actually no, I don't. On the subject of Schoenberg I can offer no official statement, neither confirm nor deny, etc. As Francis Urquhart says, "You might think that, I couldn't possibly comment."

But of course I wish Herr Schoenberg nothing but the best in his composing career.


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## Mahlerian

KenOC said:


> Actually no, I don't. On the subject of Schoenberg I can offer no official statement, neither confirm nor deny, etc. As Francis Urquhart says, "You might think that, I couldn't possibly comment."
> 
> But of course I wish Herr Schoenberg nothing but the best in his composing career.


Because you doubt my citation or because you doubt the validity of deductive logic?


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## Woodduck

SeptimalTritone said:


> A big point Ken is bringing up is that fewer people enjoy Schoenberg, Cage, etc. because the music is just not as good to most people.
> 
> But what if fewer people enjoy it because concert halls are so afraid to program it? It's like a negative feedback loop in physics: enjoyment requires acclimation and exposure, but they aren't given it.
> 
> So we just need to program these works more. This could be practical if orchestras altered the percentages gradually, that is, the percentages of older vs. modern programming. They could play Feldman's Coptic Light and Boulez's Derive 2 and Wolff's Exercises. I think that gradual acceptance and, eventually, love of this music would come through a courage to program it.
> 
> And yes, there will be people who will never like modern music... but I believe that a large amount of people will enjoy it, if only acclimated to it.


You're talking as if this were 1875, not 2015. How many people now derive most of their exposure to and knowledge of classical music from concerts? Even 50-some years ago, in the place where I grew up, and given my individual circumstances, a classical concert was a rare treat, and I learned about music in other ways - records and scores checked out at libraries, singing in school and church choirs, playing the piano. There wasn't a hell of a lot of Stockhausen in the air - although, to their credit, the New Jersey All-State Chorus in 1967 programmed Schoenberg's _Survivor From Warsaw_ and we learned to sing it, interval by interval, quite convincingly.

I'm all for exposing young people to the whole range of serious music, but I would not have been at all pleased to be "exposed" to Nono on those rare special occasions of hearing the Philadelphia Orchestra, and nowadays anybody curious about Nono can have all they want of him in the convenience of their own homes, and virtually free. I don't think most people who explore classical music are guided in their tastes by something they heard at a concert. The music you want people to hear and appreciate is there in abundance at the click of a mouse, and if they're the slightest bit curious their days can be flooded with it.


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## Guest

The thing about abundance is that it takes a bit of knowledge, too, to be able to access it. That this music is "there in abundance at the click of a mouse" means exactly nothing if you don't know it's there or don't know how to find it. Curiousity is all well and good, but you really need to know. You can't be curious about something you don't even know exists.

The thing about concerts is that you don't need to know a thing. It's all there for you. That's why concert programming is still important. Because that's what provides you with knowledge. "Anyone curious about Nono" presupposes knowledge. But if you don't know about Nono at all, how can you be curious about him. This all sounds very much like a shell game, to me.

And it's not at all "the music you want people to hear and appreciate." That may be a true thing, but it's really "the music that no one has a chance to hear or even know about MIGHT be music that someone will find really exciting and delightful." That's the real thing that's going on.


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## Woodduck

some guy said:


> The thing about abundance is that it takes a bit of knowledge, too, to be able to access it. That this music is "there in abundance at the click of a mouse" means exactly nothing if you don't know it's there or don't know how to find it. Curiousity is all well and good, but you really need to know. You can't be curious about something you don't even know exists.
> 
> The thing about concerts is that you don't need to know a thing. It's all there for you. That's why concert programming is still important. Because that's what provides you with knowledge. "Anyone curious about Nono" presupposes knowledge. But if you don't know about Nono at all, how can you be curious about him. This all sounds very much like a shell game, to me.
> 
> And it's not at all "the music you want people to hear and appreciate." That may be a true thing, but it's really "the music that no one has a chance to hear or even know about MIGHT be music that someone will find really exciting and delightful." That's the real thing that's going on.


I'm not arguing against programming new (or unfamiliar old) music at concerts, but I have to maintain that that is not where most people who have an interest in serious music nowadays are getting their information about what music exists. If you live in a large urban center and have the cash to spend on concerts, you'll probably encounter some unfamiliar music, and the Boston Symphony or the Haas Quartet should of course try to be diverse in their programming, within the bounds of what they think will actually persuade people to spend their hard-earned money. But if you _are_ spending your money on classical concerts you're probably not ignorant of the fact that there's a world of music beyond Mozart and Vivaldi; you're probably aware of what the media and the internet have to offer, and if you're below a certain age you're probably spending a good portion of your time in cyberspace. I may be misperceiving the general population, but even among my music-loving friends, who are of my own generation and didn't grow up with the internet, I can say that they've learned about music because they are intelligent people who love music and are curious about it, and not because they chanced to be ambushed by Dutilleux when they thought they were going to hear a Beethoven concerto.

It isn't a question of being curious about something you don't know exists. You may not know exactly _what_ exists, but you don't have to be exceptionally perceptive to suspect that _something_ - something possibly quite interesting - does. Even a modicum of curiosity is nowadays easily satisfied, and most of us have learned that in the world of YouTube and Spotify one thing leads to another until suddenly it's 2:00 AM and we have to be up at 5:30 next morning.


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## violadude

I don't see anything wrong, snobby or stuck up about wanting to help people learn what to listen for in 20th century classical music anymore than I see anything wrong with books like "Guide to Mozart's music" or whatever kind of writing like that. The people complaining about Copland's article might have a point if everyone was just born liking 20th century classical or not liking it. But I have seen so many cases where someone who previously didn't like modernist music now loves it and are happy that the world of that music opened up to them. 

It's fine if you never end up liking 20th century music. But you can't discourage me or anyone else from educating people about it or say that it's snobby when I've seen it work for the better so many times.

It's not like we're trying to indoctrinate people into a harmful cult, we're opening doors to new kinds of music. What's wrong with that?


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## Gaspard de la Nuit

For those who replied to my post, I know about attitudes toward music composition in academia because I studied music composition at the university level (I've been to college though I never received a degree). I would say most people have a fairly relaxed attitude while still thinking that today's music should not sound like Beethoven (I wouldn't keep the 'should' part but I agree that it's more interesting to hear things that aren't already played ad nauseam). There do exist people who think that a newly composed work that betrays the influence of repertory composers is not to be taken seriously, and I was told by one individual something to the effect that my work was worthless and I would be ignored artistically (though this was by someone of a different institution and via online communication). However, I've heard much worse things from other composition students who weren't as fortunate as I was to have a very relaxed/ tolerant atmosphere.

In addition, the WCM canon, which is not the same as the repertory, is an academic invention - Schoenberg is a very prominent composer in the canon, his work is discussed a great deal. Rachmaninov is a beloved repertory composer but barely receives attention from academics. So there is obviously an idea in academia that historical significance is of great importance when considering a work's overall worth, that music which shows too little progression from its predecessors does not have historical significance - and from here the whole can of worms is opened up.

Who is anyone to say that a work is not 'of the times' when it was felt in the heart and conceived by someone today, and then turn around and accuse its popularity as being the result of undereducated, plebeian listeners? Maybe _they_ are the ones who are out of touch with their own time to be so powerfully ignorant of what the other humans around them are craving. Yet this is what is done.


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## Mahlerian

I understand that you've encountered resistance and feel frustrated, but how is Copland's essay indicative of any of the attitudes you've described? Can't we have a repertory that includes both Schoenberg and Rachmaninoff? Are they somehow mutually exclusive?

I know that my taste leans towards the former rather than the latter, but it's not on the basis of innovation, but rather the beauty and elegance and intensity of Schoenberg's work strikes a chord in my soul that Rachmaninoff's does not.


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## Avey

Gaspard de la Nuit said:


> So there is obviously an idea in academia that historical significance is of great importance when considering a work's overall worth, that music which shows too little progression from its predecessors does not have historical significance - and from here the whole can of worms is opened up.
> 
> Who is anyone to say that a work is not 'of the times' when it was felt in the heart and conceived by someone today, and then turn around and accuse its popularity as being the result of undereducated, plebeian listeners? Maybe _they_ are the ones who are out of touch with their own time to be so powerfully ignorant of what the other humans around them are craving. Yet this is what is done.





Mahlerian said:


> ...how is Copland's essay indicative of any of the attitudes you've described? Can't we have a repertory that includes both Schoenberg and Rachmaninoff? Are they somehow mutually exclusive?
> 
> I know that my taste leans towards the former rather than the latter, but it's not on the basis of innovation, but rather the beauty and elegance and intensity of Schoenberg's work strikes a chord in my soul that Rachmaninoff's does not.


I agree with all the sorts of positions stated herein. That is, I can understand all positions. Maybe I am just straddling the line.

These posts made me think of *Brahms*, that when I first got into classical music, JB was my ingress, and when I started reading about him, all I read was that he was pretty much a _non-innovator_, a composer that just stuck to the formula. Critics never said his music was worthless, but that he never contributed to the progression of the form.

But at the same time, I was listening to Reich and Debussy -- yes, what spontaneous picks! -- and when I read about them, it was all about their innovative methods, unique style, progression, evolution, etc. Anyways, with this contrast, I can recall distinctly, that one my preeminent questions re classical music was "So, _certain_ instrumental music sounds different than others?"

Yes, quite the naive sentiment, but that was how I felt. And how does it apply here? I look back on my previous self, a person who *Copland was speaking to*, really, and figure that had I read editorial, I would have been interested -- no, _dared_ to seek out and listen to 21st Century compositions, explore the current "classical" scene if you will. So, in that sense, given his audience, I think the essay is effective.

But now, when I read this piece, his points are sort of moot. That is, enjoying this genre for some time now, I know what I like. I listen to a lot of different things. I am never scared to hear something new, or reject something because ------- is on the publication page.

The essay was written for the masses, people that attended the concerts that brought in the $$$. And I think his opinion is totally warranted, given his audience. I dunno, just my thoughts after reading through all this discussion -- some on-point, lots off.


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## Gaspard de la Nuit

Mahlerian said:


> I understand that you've encountered resistance and feel frustrated, but how is Copland's essay indicative of any of the attitudes you've described? Can't we have a repertory that includes both Schoenberg and Rachmaninoff? Are they somehow mutually exclusive?
> 
> I know that my taste leans towards the former rather than the latter, but it's not on the basis of innovation, but rather the beauty and elegance and intensity of Schoenberg's work strikes a chord in my soul that Rachmaninoff's does not.


Even though i feel I revealed too much personal detail in the previous post, I will say that I'm not frustrated because I was not particularly affected by it, i did the same exact things I would have done either way, people really enjoyed it, and I have other things to do besides write music.

My feeling about your idea is that there might be separate repertories rather than one over-arching 'classical music', even though much of the music has some historical link with one another, they are so wildly different that only a minority of listeners will have the temperament to be attentive to each repertory. So we might be better off with a poly-repertory


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## arpeggio

^^^^^
I studied composition with Jack Jarrett as a graduate student the University of North Carolina Greensboro.
Link to his website: http://www.jackmjarrett.com/Jarrett_Bio.html

He was the product of Eastman and Indiana University. Very tonal composer.

I stopped composing because my music stunk.


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## Mahlerian

Gaspard de la Nuit said:


> Even though i feel I revealed too much personal detail in the previous post, I will say that I'm not frustrated because I was not particularly affected by it, i did the same exact things I would have done either way, people really enjoyed it, and I have other things to do besides write music.
> 
> My feeling about your idea is that there might be separate repertories rather than one over-arching 'classical music', even though much of the music has some historical link with one another, they are so wildly different that only a minority of listeners will have the temperament to be attentive to each repertory. So we might be better off with a poly-repertory


I don't feel that the 20th century repertoire is very different from that of other eras. All of it comes from the same sources and all of the composers responded to their own milieu in their own way.

I certainly don't feel that there's any advantage in defining separate repertories, and I don't think it can be said that most audiences like this or most academics like that. There are plenty of non-academics who can't read a score but love Schoenberg and there have are probably plenty of University professors who adore Rachmaninoff above all else.


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## Dim7

Gaspard de la Nuit said:


> Who is anyone to say that a work is not 'of the times' when it was felt in the heart and conceived by someone today, and then turn around and accuse its popularity as being the result of undereducated, plebeian listeners? Maybe _they_ are the ones who are out of touch with their own time to be so powerfully ignorant of what the other humans around them are craving. Yet this is what is done.


This! Exactly what irked me about the article.


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## Guest

Gaspard de la Nuit said:


> Who is anyone to say that a work is not 'of the times' when it was felt in the heart and conceived by someone today, and then turn around and accuse its popularity as being the result of undereducated, plebeian listeners?


Let's be clear. Copland didn't say that. He was trying to explain why his music, and that of his contemporaries, was of its time, and not of a previous era. Hence his,



> My love of the music of Chopin and Mozart is as strong as that of the next fellow, but it does me little good when I sit down to write my own, because their world is not mine and their language not mine.


and



> Why, then, should Bartok or Milhaud be expected to sing with the voice of Schumann or Tchaikovsky?


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## Woodduck

Copland, in his article, identifies himself as a "modernist," and advocates for what was considered "modern" music during his lifetime. He suggests reasons why people don't like this music, and his diagnosis of the problem is familiar: the music is complex and different, it says things - modern things - that people aren't used to music saying, and people want music to be comfortable rather than challenging. His solution to the problem is also familiar: perform the music more often, and people will get used to the sound of it and like it more.

All of this is to some degree sensible and plausible. But note: Copland wrote that essay in 1949, sixty-six years ago. And the plight of modern music is not only being described in exactly the same way today, but it concerns, in addition to music being written now, much of the same music Copland designated as "modern" in his own time - much of which was, in turn, no longer really contemporary at the time he was writing.

"Modern," to Copland, clearly did not mean simply "whatever is being written today." The word meant something more specific back then. He makes this clear when he says _"Formerly -- up to about 1925 -- the kind of music I have in mind was called 'ultra-modern'...However one calls it, almost anyone can identify it as music that falls strangely on the ear; music that is different. Such a listener would probably tell you that, whereas the older music -- the classics -- seems designed to caress and invite the soul, the newer music is disconcerting in effect, the idea being apparently to upset and disturb one's equanimity of soul. Otherwise, how is one to explain the cacophonous harmonies, the tuneless melodies, the head-spitting sonorities, the confusing rhythms and cerebral forms?"_ Copland is talking about specific qualities that distinguish "modern" music from music which is not "modern," though he doesn't go into these in a technical way. The implication is that music written in his time (or before or since) which does not exhibit these qualities is not really "modern music" - and, accordingly, his list of "modern" composers of the early 20th century notably omits some great composers, including Ravel, Puccini, Sibelius, and Rachmaninoff, who, though not at all obscure in the world of classical music of that time, did not pose for listeners the problem of acceptance he was discussing. These people, many of whose finest works were written after WW I, did not even rate mention under the category of modern composers "very easy" to understand.

It's clear from the continuing discussion here that many people feel that the problem has not gone away, and that although a fair amount of "modern" music has deservedly gained an appreciative audience, Copland's "modernist" descendants are still feeling the need to advocate for it. Is it really true that, by and large, this music is still unjustly ignored and disliked? If so, it seems to me perfectly reasonable and realistic to ask whether, half-a-century to a century after much of this problematic music was composed, and sixty-five years after Copland wrote his essay, there is any reason to think that its audience will grow substantially larger. Even Copland seemed to have had his doubts, and wrote in another context:_ "It is rather difficult to foresee what the future has in store for most music written in the atonal idiom. Already it begins to sound surprisingly dated, hopelessly bound to the period of the twenties when it was first played extensively. No doubt we are badly placed to judge it at present...one can even now see certain inherent weaknesses; for whatever reasons, atonal music resembles itself too much. It creates a certain monotony of effect that severely limits its variety of expression. It has been said that the atonal system cannot produce folk songs or lullabies. But more serious is the fact that, being the expression of a highly refined and subtle musical culture, it has very little for a naive but expanding musical culture such as is characteristic today of the United States...This is not to deny its historical significance...But for along time to come it is likely to be of interest principally to specialists and connoisseurs rather than to the generality of music lovers."_ (_Our New Music,_ 1941)

Whether or not we agree with Copland's description of a certain type of music or his tentative prediction for the future reception of that music, this is interesting as the statement of a self-described "modernist" capable of looking at an iconic segment of the modernist movement with a critical, even a skeptical, eye. Copland was writing in the 1940s, at a time when it was simply impossible for most people to hear "atonal" music, either in concert or on the clumsy, short-sided 78rpm record. Most people had little opportunity to adjust their ears, or their brains, to unfamiliar sounds. But this is no longer the case. Music is everywhere now, almost any kind of music you want, almost any time you want it. We would logically expect the status of half-century-old "modern" music to have changed. And certainly it has, to some extent. Yet here we are, on a popular internet forum, debating its status, diagnosing its ills, bemoaning its neglect, quoting Copland from sixty and seventy years ago on music which had already been around for decades when he wrote, and saying, as he and generations of modernists have said, "If only people had more exposure..."

Isn't this odd? How much exposure is required? From what some here have indicated about their own musical experiences, not very much - if one is disposed to like the music one hears. Clearly some are disposed to like it, others not so much, others not at all. Some like it immediately, some learn to like it, some never do. Exposure has something to do with it, for some people. But the assumption that Varese and Wuorinen and any number of other "modern" composers would be as popular as Bach and Brahms - or Sibelius and Rachmaninoff - if we were all sufficiently "exposed" to them is based, as far as I can see, on little more than wishful thinking - and, among the more intellectually inclined, on the equally unsupported assumptions that all musical preferences are arbitrary impositions of culture and that the reception of new "classical" music has always been as grudging as it has been in recent times. But that appeal to historical precedent crumbles before the obvious fact that the serious music of no era before the 20th century has resisted popular acceptance and widespread approbation for anything like so long a time - and this despite the fact that music of every sort is now readily available to "expose" ourselves to at virtually no cost, at every moment of every day, in forms of which earlier eras could not even dream. Great quantities of by now rather old music, ambitious music by ambitious composers whom the history and theory books tell us are important and influential, are still spoken of as "modern," and still loved - not "accepted," but loved - by a tiny minority of the minority of people who love - actually love - classical music.

I note this as a strange cultural anomaly, and, having been born in the very year Copland wrote his essay, I've been noting it for a long, long time. As a student, I would have perplexed discussions about "where music is going from here," noting music's grand line of descent through the centuries and what appeared to be the breakup and scattering of that line in the bewildering experimentalism of the 20th century. I couldn't imagine what "classical" music would be in 2000, and I found that troubling, always concluding such conversations with a shrug. But at a certain point it dawned on me that there wasn't going to be an answer to the question, or not an answer of the usual sort. It dawned on me that the "grand line" actually _had_ come to an end, that the breakup was a breakup of more than a musical tradition, and that all the "isms" of modern music - including "modernism" itself - were attempts to come to grips with a genuinely new world: a world in which "high" culture would be not geographically rooted and indigenous but global and elective.

I would suggest that this way of understanding the contemporary arts puts "modernism," both in its basic nature and in its problems, into perspective. Modernism has always tried to assert simultaneously that it is both an inevitable, "progressive" _development_ of the past and a necessary, "progressive" _break_ with the past, and various modernists have chosen to emphasize one side or the other of that apparent dichotomy, depending on which view best serves their particular agenda. There are debates right here as to whether, for example, Schoenberg's innovative "atonal" music is more of a continuation of tradition or a break from it, and the debate goes right back to the rhetoric he and his followers used to explain and justify what they were doing. The answer, of course, is that it is both, and if we view it in the perspective of musical history there is really no need to argue the point. It's just a matter of the context in which we choose to talk about it. And as people living in a global "elective" culture, we can adopt any number of contexts.

I think "modernism" was a transitional phase in western culture, and that the transition has been away from culture as local tradition to culture as global smorgasbord. The culture - the music - "of our time" is no longer a definable thing. I'm therefore skeptical of the vaguely (or clearly) moralistic exhortations to musicians to program new music because it's new - but only if it _sounds_ new - and exhortations to music lovers to listen to new music whether its new sounds appeal to them or not. Assumptions that any music is the "right" kind of music for "our time" and therefore "should" be played are outmoded. I hold the simple view that whatever music people find meaningful and want to listen to is the music suitable for, and expressive of, those people in their time and place, even if it is music composed in an earlier time and a different place. It just won't do to try to confine art by sheer chronicity or geographical origin, for the simple and obvious reason that human nature - which is the source and substance of art - cannot be so confined. The art of every culture and era does, no doubt, speak most precisely to the time and place where it arises. But it's the experience of all of us that the art of other times and places can speak to us too, and do so with a power that never ceases to amaze us. The reason it can is simply that we are human, and that that the art of all times and places has something to say to and about our humanity. Moreover, art of other times and places is quite capable of saying things to us, important and necessary things - _contemporary_ things - that our own local society's "modern" art is not saying, or saying as well. Every culture and every time has its own insights, its own biases, and its own paradigms. We would be arrogant to think that ours are the "right" ones, or that they have superseded or rendered obsolete or irrelevant those of the past.

When I see people getting vexed over the tastes of people within the relatively small audience for classical music, and puzzling over or lamenting the fact that so many among that audience have not "kept up with the times" and learned to embrace music which they deem properly "modern" or "of our time," I want to sweep my arm in a wide arc and say "Look at the vast universe of mankind's music in all the centuries of human history, look at how much of it is available to be enjoyed at this moment in history, consider how easy is our access to virtually all of it, and explain to me how it is that you think that the tiny slice of that universe of music you call 'modern classical music' ought be of greater importance to the human race than it is."

I regard Copland's statement that "modern" music _"should speak to the men and women of the artist's own time with a directness and immediacy of communicative power that no previous art expression can give"_ as an ideological relic of the past. We don't live in the world of "modernism" any longer, and it's probably safe to say - and to hope - that we never will again.


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## Guest

Woodduck said:


> I regard Copland's statement that "modern" music _"should speak to the men and women of the artist's own time with a directness and immediacy of communicative power that no previous art expression can give"_ as an ideological relic of the past. We don't live in the world of "modernism" any longer, and it's probably safe to say - and to hope - that we never will again.


That's curious. I don't read Copland the way you do at all. It seems to me to make perfect sense, and is not 'ideological'. To begin with, you attach 'modern music' to the statement, which doesn't really belong here. Given that it belongs in a paragraph about the purpose of the composer, not about 'modern music', it seems to me he is simply explaining that any composer - of the past as well as the present - is a product of his time and communicates to the people of his time.

Let's allow the now old-fashioned usage of the term 'contemporary' here. That is, 'with the time' (as opposed to a mere synonym for 'modern'). Copland is saying that his purpose is to communicate with contemporary audiences, as was the purpose of previous composers. In fact, not just his purpose: he argues that he cannot communicate to any other in any other way, because he is a product of his time, writing for people of his time. Now, an argument could be made that he seems to be rejecting the value of past composers, but I think he is rejecting not the composers of the past, but, narrowly, the idea that past composers could communicate about his present time.

It may strike some readers that he is being patronising about audiences who want to wrap themselves in comfort and don't want music to be a challenging experience. I suspect that he is rejecting the critics' arguments that contemporary composers shouldn't make it difficult for their audiences. I see (hear) no patronising tone. He is defending the composer's right to write what he will and rejecting the critics' demand (allegedly on behalf of 'the audience') that he write what audiences are most comfortable listening to.


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## ArtMusic

A striking essay there, Mr Woodduck. It made me think again about Copland's paper and realized it was actually more outdated than it was on my first reading. The problem now seems to me is with the term "modernism". Over sixty years on since Copland's paper, just what then is "modernism"? We today seem to throw that word around like it is still the cutting edge of music like Copland's concept sixty years ago. Music written in 1740 sounded very different to that in 1800 sixty year hence, and also 1860, and also 1920. It seems the word Copland's defense of "modernism" is now a historical paper worthy of any in the past to reflect *past aesthetics about modernism*.


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## Guest

ArtMusic said:


> A striking essay there, Mr Woodduck. It made me think again about Copland's paper and realized it was actually more outdated than it was on my first reading. The problem now seems to me is with the term "modernism". Over sixty years on since Copland's paper, just what then is "modernism"? We today seem to throw that word around like it is still the cutting edge of music like Copland's concept sixty years ago. Music written in 1740 sounded very different to that in 1800 sixty year hence, and also 1860, and also 1920. It seems the word Copland's defense of "modernism" is now a historical paper worthy of any in the past to reflect *past aesthetics about modernism*.


Copland wasn't writing about 'modernism', just about 'modern music'. His paper is, of course, historical - it was written in 1949 - but still seems to have implications for composers now almost as much as then.


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## Woodduck

MacLeod said:


> That's curious. I don't read Copland the way you do at all. It seems to me to make perfect sense, and is not 'ideological'. To begin with, you attach 'modern music' to the statement, which doesn't really belong here. Given that it belongs in a paragraph about the purpose of the composer, not about 'modern music', it seems to me he is simply explaining that any composer - of the past as well as the present - is a product of his time and communicates to the people of his time.
> 
> Let's allow the now old-fashioned usage of the term 'contemporary' here. That is, 'with the time' (as opposed to a mere synonym for 'modern'). Copland is saying that his purpose is to communicate with contemporary audiences, as was the purpose of previous composers. In fact, not just his purpose: he argues that he cannot communicate to any other in any other way, because he is a product of his time, writing for people of his time. Now, an argument could be made that he seems to be rejecting the value of past composers, but I think he is rejecting not the composers of the past, but, narrowly, the idea that past composers could communicate about his present time.


Here is the complete quote: "If forced to explain the creative musician's basic objective in elementary terms, I would say that a composer writes music to express and communicate and put down in permanent form certain thoughts, emotions and states of being. These thoughts and emotions are gradually formed by the contact of the composer's personality with the world in which he lives. He expresses these thoughts (musical thoughts, which are not to be confused with literary ones) in the musical language of his own time. *The resultant work of art should speak to the men and women of the artist's own time with a directness and immediacy of communicative power that no previous art expression can give.*"

To which I would respond: "Why should it?" The fact is that a work of art may do this or it may not, but the idea that this is any sort of imperative, or that it is even likely, is an assumption about music (or art in general) which I was directly interested in countering. It most certainly is an ideological assumption, one of the commonest assumptions of modernism.

Speaking from my own experience - and I'm certain that I don't speak only for myself - there are certain art works of past eras that speak to me and for me with "a directness and immediacy of communicative power" that no work of my own time can equal. And there is no reason why this cannot, or should not, be so.


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## ArtMusic

MacLeod said:


> Copland wasn't writing about 'modernism', just about 'modern music'. His paper is, of course, historical - it was written in 1949 - but still seems to have implications for composers now almost as much as then.


Yes some implications, as do Mozart's letters about say concert performance. Whether it is a semantics argument about "modernism" in the context of "modern music" or not, I think the terms "modern music" seem outdated now given that has been used and still being used, for more than half a century, as per my example of contrasting music between 1740 and 1920 in steps of sixty years.


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## KenOC

Woodduck said:


> ...Speaking from my own experience - and I'm certain that I don't speak only for myself - there are certain art works of past eras that speak to me and for me with "a directness and immediacy of communicative power" that no work of my own time can equal. And there is no reason why this cannot, or should not, be so.


Indeed. Copland seems to be saying that people's needs in music change with the times, and that "old" music can never adequately fulfill contemporary needs. I wonder if that's true. Beethoven's music, after all, is 200 years old, but most CM listeners find it quite fitting to their needs. Ditto Mozart and Bach, even older. One reason we love CM is that its truths seem immutable and ever-valid, and that keeps the music from growing old for us.

Composers of past ages seemed quite able to pull audiences along with them. They were subject to criticism of course, but I can think of few cases of special pleading on their behalf to compare with what we've been subjected to by fans of "modernist" music. My belief is that composers can reach audiences or they can't, and no degree of non-musical justification of their work will change that. Of course, many 20th-century composers have made their own way without special pleading, which is as it should be. Others have not been so successful, which is also as it should be.


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## Dim7

Several times in this thread it has again been implied that a lot of people have a problem with "20th century music". I don't that's true at TC at least. It's only some kinds of 20th century music. Overall, 20th century has been the most popular century in polls!


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## Guest

Woodduck said:


> *The resultant work of art should speak to the men and women of the artist's own time with a directness and immediacy of communicative power that no previous art expression can give.*"
> 
> To which I would respond: "Why should it?" The fact is that a work of art may do this or it may not, but the idea that this is any sort of imperative, or that it is even likely, is an assumption about music (or art in general) which I was directly interested in countering. It most certainly is an ideological assumption, one of the commonest assumptions of modernism.


The word 'should' carries different strengths for different readers. For me, it implies what Copland feels is the compulsion for _him _as a composer - not a diktat for _all._ Whether it is an 'assumption' is another matter. I don't know enough about Modernism to know what its assumptions were, but I agree with Copland - if that makes me a Modernist, so be it. Given that my listening habits are stuck in the early Modernist period, and don't venture far into the 20th C, perhaps that's right.



ArtMusic said:


> Yes some implications, as do Mozart's letters about say concert performance. Whether it is a semantics argument about "modernism" in the context of "modern music" or not, I think the terms "modern music" seem outdated now given that has been used and still being used, for more than half a century, as per my example of contrasting music between 1740 and 1920 in steps of sixty years.


It's not semantics to differentiate properly between the term 'modern' - merely 'of the present time' (which for him was 1949) and 'modernism' which describes (roughly) an approach or sensibility or collection of values relating to a particular period (say 1890-1930) which may well have been perpetuated for much longer, but is, obviously, not the same as merely 'modern'.



KenOC said:


> Indeed. Copland seems to be saying that people's needs in music change with the times, and that "old" music can never adequately fulfill contemporary needs.


I don't think he is saying that at all. He's writing about the composer's present needs and purpose, and reflecting on why some audiences do not wish to keep up.


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## SeptimalTritone

KenOC said:


> Indeed. Copland seems to be saying that people's needs in music change with the times, and that "old" music can never adequately fulfill contemporary needs. I wonder if that's true. Beethoven's music, after all, is 200 years old, but most CM listeners find it quite fitting to their needs. Ditto Mozart and Bach, even older. One reason we love CM is that its truths seem immutable and ever-valid, and that keeps the music from growing old for us.
> 
> Composers of past ages seemed quite able to pull audiences along with them. They were subject to criticism of course, but I can think of few cases of special pleading on their behalf to compare with what we've been subjected to by fans of "modernist" music. My belief is that composers can reach audiences or they can't, and no degree of non-musical justification of their work will change that. Of course, many 20th-century composers have made their own way without special pleading, which is as it should be. Others have not been so successful, which is also as it should be.


Hmm... on a slightly unrelated topic, it just occurred to me: what do you and Woodduck think of living composers not like Brian Ferneyhough and Michael Pisaro and Iancu Dumitrescu or whatever but like John Adams or Magnus Lindberg or Esa-Pekka Salonen? I think there's a lot out there for the more tonally minded which is fresh, new, and worthwhile. They would, I think, be writing how you would want... and I think they are reasonably popular. Do they fulfill your argument?

But maybe you don't think they live up to Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms even if they are doing their best? In that case, I don't know what to say... my opinion is that nobody today would be able to write good common practice classical sonata form works that equal Mozart because it's a sort of lost art and sensibility. We've seen only not-so-great completions of Bach's Art of Fugue or Beethoven's 10th symphony etc.


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## Nereffid

This isn't the first time I've thought about something overnight and then come to TC to find Woodduck has put it far more eloquently and comprehensively than I could ever hope. :tiphat:

Woodduck says this:


> It's clear from the continuing discussion here that many people feel that the problem has not gone away... it seems to me perfectly reasonable and realistic to ask whether, half-a-century to a century after much of this problematic music was composed, and sixty-five years after Copland wrote his essay, there is any reason to think that its audience will grow substantially larger.


I think that by now "the problem" (i.e., that "not enough" people appreciate this music) has gone from being a bug to being a feature. The audience may have reached its natural level, or at best may be on a natural trajectory of steady but slow growth. Perhaps it's time for the _problem_ of "not enough people are listening" to be downgraded to the _reality_ of "not a lot of people are listening".


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## Crudblud

We're not in the 1890s any more, classical music is fringe today not just because the music changed but because the world, its cultures, technologies, ideologies, attitudes all changed. I've said many times before how the decline in the popularity of classical music can be correlated over time with the development of new content delivery systems. First we have the phonograph record, no score or piano necessary, just drop the needle to the disc and it'll sort itself out. Then we get cassette tapes, a lot smaller, can hold more music, and you can play them on the move in the car or in your Walkman. Then MTV comes along, and hey, now you have something to look at while you're listening to music at home, like that girl's buttocks or this guy's hair - we personally guarantee that you will never again become bored while listening to the hot new tunes.

Let's break that down in the abstract. These technological developments did the following: removed a huge chunk of effort from the activity, took the activity outside into areas full of distractions, and finally made the distractions normative by incorporating them into standard practice. Classical music, or indeed any kind of music that demands focus and patience to appreciate, saw a gradual decline in popularity because of this, and that's why people had to jazz it up a little to remain popular in mainstream terms. This climate gives us performers like Liberace and Victor Borge, who took up the challenge of reinventing classical music performance to appeal to a wider audience, they attempted and somewhat achieved this by slashing piece durations, adding flashy visual elements, humour, and a lot of talking points to live concerts. Meanwhile, in the home market, people saw how they could not exactly revitalise classical music but at least make a quick buck off the back of its withered corpus. We got Mozart for Baby, we got Chilled-Out Bach Adagios, we got Classic FM...

The pseudoscientific cachet and/or ease of listening attached to a handful of pieces, and often mere excerpts of pieces, which could be easily and rapidly digested in a number of environments like piped Muzak, Satie's _musique d'ameublemente_ on a little plastic disc that goes wherever you go, meant that classical music was not only commoditised, taking on in the public consciousness the form of an amorphous blob of pretty tunes, but that it also became entirely relateable via advertising copy. Simple, short blurbs that tell you what the thing is, what it does, and why you should have it, this in turn removes any particular cultural necessity to discuss the thing, because everybody already knows what it is. If there is no culturally valid reason to explore, listen to, think about, or discuss something, then generally the thing in question will not be explored, listened to, thought about, or discussed - it becomes by default the jurisdiction of an elite, in this case a pop-culturally underprivileged elite.

I don't know about you, but I don't think "modern music," either in the time of Copland's writing or in ours, gets or should get the blame for all of this, it's just what happened. Serialism didn't create MTV, although this is interesting to consider: if we could go back and tally the total number of videos in rotation over a given time period and how often they repeated, perhaps we could establish some interesting Babbittesque patterns there. The major inevitability of technology is streamlining, making more efficient tomorrow the most common processes of today, for better or worse. This one simple, truly immutable truth, means that we would be having this discussion whether or not composers had desperately clung to a romantic idiom throughout the 20th century. In fact, if that had happened, I think we would probably be arguing the other way, that what classical music needs now is something new and exciting. Hmmm. Those still looking for witches to burn may wish to take up the alleged cause of Ned Ludd, a man whose reputation they will find to be even more coloured by dense and longevitous proliferations of nonsense than that of Schoenberg himself.


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## Guest

Woodduck said:


> "Modern," to Copland, clearly did not mean simply "whatever is being written today." The word meant something more specific back then. He makes this clear when he says _"Formerly -- up to about 1925 -- the kind of music I have in mind was called 'ultra-modern'...However one calls it, almost anyone can identify it as music that falls strangely on the ear; music that is different. Such a listener would probably tell you that, whereas the older music -- the classics -- seems designed to caress and invite the soul, the newer music is disconcerting in effect, the idea being apparently to upset and disturb one's equanimity of soul. Otherwise, how is one to explain the cacophonous harmonies, the tuneless melodies, the head-spitting sonorities, the confusing rhythms and cerebral forms?"_ Copland is talking about specific qualities that distinguish "modern" music from music which is not "modern," though he doesn't go into these in a technical way.


I had overlooked this part of your post Woodduck, and you are right that his use of the term 'modern' does not refer simply to anything and everything written at that time, but to a strand of music which has particular features. On the way, he recognises that there are different strands of music that comprise 'modern' and that's one of the reasons why he creates the lists that he does, though generally using only one criteria (accessibility). However, while his focus is on the strand that prefers not to work in the traditional and comfortable vein, he is not rejecting the traditional and comfortable.

I'd like to add that the back and forth on this subject (as I said in my first post on this topic, TC has addressed several of the issues Copland raises and so it seems right to say that the issues continue) has a habit of defaulting to polar positions typified by the sense of expectations and compulsions.

"Why must the audience/composer...?"

Of course, neither '_must_' if that means, 'compelled by the other'. If audiences are 'allowed' to do what they will, then so must composers. If composers feel driven to write in a particular vein by their muse, that's up to them; audiences will do what they will and are not obliged to embrace what they don't like. But this kind of debate is sterile. Few people, composers or audience, are under any kind of compulsion at all, so why waste time debating it?

What Copland is hoping for, vainly, it seems to me, (as I think he refers to the Millennium as a long-distant future, not a specific timescale) is some accommodation by the programmers so that audiences can become increasingly familiar with the unfamiliar. Evidence suggests that this is true - audiences do become more accepting of what they once found less acceptable, and there will be a variety of reasons for this, only one of which is increasing familiarity.


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## Guest

Well, a lot of activity* since I last signed in.

And it's very tempting to want to get out the old sword (inherited from an old Spanish gentleman name of Quixote) and slash away at these things, so it was quite satisfying and calming to see that Crudblud had already done the one thing that needed to be done, namely to mention the things that other posters consistently and persistently refuse to mention or even consider, probably simply because what Crudblud just mentioned doesn't support their view of what the issues are.

I will only add one thing for myself, and that is that the whole "not enough listeners" thing is not a legitimate part of the converssation. It is yet another side-issue substituted for the real issues in order to avoid dealing with the real issues. It is not and has never been about numbers. Of course, every composer wants as many people to hear his or her music as possible. It was written to be listened to, after all. By people. But the point Copland made is still a valid point, which is that there is a disconnect and that connecting is, generally speaking, a good thing. So how to connect? Not "how to get more and more people to like contemporary music," though naturally if the connection is made there will be more--but as that would be a natural result, it doesn't need to be the focus. But "how to get people to dispense with their prejudices so that they can start enjoying what's there for their enjoyment."

All this silliness about music became this or that unpalatable thing and that composers stubbornly and unaccountably continue to write things that "people" don't like should (_should_) really stop. I read stuff like that and think "come on! Really? 'People'?"

I go to new music concerts all the time. I'm constantly listening to things that would not even be recognized as music by the majority of TC members, even the "modernist" ones.** And at all of those concerts there are people. Yes! And quite a nice spread, too. All ages, all nationalities, both genders, students, hair dressers, truck drivers, novelists. And all having quite a nice time, too, apparently. And seats are often at a premium. Lots of standing at concerts like this. But even more important, since numbers are a side-issue, remember?, is the enthusiasm, enthusiasm coming from people of all ages and all levels of education. It's not an odd thing. It's just a thing. It's not a thing that happens in symphony halls very often, so if you're only looking at symphony hall audiences, you're likely not seeing it at all, youtube notwithstanding. But it's there. It happens. I see it all the time, everywhere I go.

*Euphemism

**Exaggeration


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## Rapide

some guy said:


> ....It's not an odd thing. It's just a thing. It's not a thing that happens in symphony halls very often, so if you're only looking at symphony hall audiences, you're likely not seeing it at all, youtube notwithstanding. But it's there. It happens. I see it all the time, everywhere I go.


... and so where might those places be then if it ain't likely to be in symphony halls? Alley ways, underground taverns off the side street? Do these music-sound makers play new music with sheets or it just happens all the time they don't? Copland's modern music times have certainly changed. Time for a new version of Copland's article, but one he probably won't even think to accept.


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## Guest

Rapide said:


> ... and so where might those places be then if it ain't likely to be in symphony halls?


There is a paucity of venues where I live for any kind of music (certainly not a 'symphony hall'), but I daresay that there are many towns with a whole variety of venues that put on all kinds of music. If we came to rely on 'symphony hall' alone to supply our needs, we'd all be worse off.


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## arpeggio

Good grief.

Do I have to mention the Ojai, California; Staunton, Virginia; Tanglewood Music Festivals again.

Or the time I heard the United States Army Band perform Karol Husa's _Prague 1968_. This is a serial work. I remember after this concert members of the audience raving that it was one of the finest classical work they have ever heard.

Link to a performance of the Husa:


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## Guest

arpeggio said:


> Good grief.
> 
> Do I have to mention the Ojai, California; Staunton, Virginia; Tanglewood Music Festivals again.
> 
> Or the time I heard the United States Army Band perform Karol Husa's _Prague 1968_. This is a serial work. I remember after this concert members of the audience raving that it was one of the finest classical work they have ever heard.
> 
> Link to a performance of the Husa:


Yes, apparently you do. 

And please, do keep doing it, too, even though it may seem futile. You're never going to convince the more vocal of the aunties (as I put it), but they're not the only ones reading these posts.

:tiphat:


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## Gaspard de la Nuit

Mahlerian said:


> I don't feel that the 20th century repertoire is very different from that of other eras. All of it comes from the same sources and all of the composers responded to their own milieu in their own way.
> 
> I certainly don't feel that there's any advantage in defining separate repertories, and I don't think it can be said that most audiences like this or most academics like that. There are plenty of non-academics who can't read a score but love Schoenberg and there have are probably plenty of University professors who adore Rachmaninoff above all else.


If what you mean by that the music comes from the same sources is that there's a historical lineage.....I just have never seen fit to define or evaluate it that way, which seems a kin to listening to WCM for a historical excursion, which only some listeners are disposed for.



MacLeod said:


> Let's be clear. Copland didn't say that. He was trying to explain why his music, and that of his contemporaries, was of its time, and not of a previous era.


He did say that "the way of the uninhibited and the personalized warmth and surge of the best romanticists is not our way", and he probably meant that more like 'we should be given the license to compose differently and still have our works be heard."

But some people think of it more as a mandate, clearly, and not only that, but give themselves quite the privilege in being able to have approximate idea of what the way of modern composers is or should be.

And sorry for not responding entirely to what Copland himself said with the posts I made here, I was more responding to what things he said were modestly reminiscent of in my experience.


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## mmsbls

Dim7 said:


> Several times in this thread it has again been implied that a lot of people have a problem with "20th century music". I don't that's true at TC at least. It's only some kinds of 20th century music. Overall, 20th century has been the most popular century in polls!


Individuals might "have a problem with 20th century music" in the sense that they wish composers had written "more accessible" music. When people talk about listeners having "a problem with 20th century music", I think they mean that in general the process of coming to enjoy much of that music takes longer and expends considerably more energy than a similar process did in past centuries.

I believe that TC members are enormously different than the general classical music listenership, and in large part, that is why I joined TC. I know few people outside of TC that enjoy modern music, but there are many here who do.

There are many active members on TC (though many fewer very active members), but relatively few post about or take part in polls focused on modern music. I do wonder what percentage of the membership actually appreciates modern music.


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## mmsbls

Woodduck said:


> Speaking from my own experience - and I'm certain that I don't speak only for myself - there are certain art works of past eras that speak to me and for me with "a directness and immediacy of communicative power" that no work of my own time can equal. And there is no reason why this cannot, or should not, be so.


Personally I would say there is no music of my time that speaks to me with "a directness and immediacy of communicative power" greater than any earlier music does. I'm not exactly certain what Copland means by that phrase. I believe music is extremely poor at communicating any meaning. It can provide aesthetic pleasure and may provide those with an understanding of the theory with other pleasures, but to me music does not communicate much of anything.

Literature, on the other hand, can communicate because words convey meaning. I do believe that today's literature could, in many cases, speak to readers of its time with "a directness and immediacy of communicative power" that no earlier literary work could equal. So I think Copland's words are appropriate for literature but much less so for music.


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## Nereffid

mmsbls said:


> There are many active members on TC (though many fewer very active members), but relatively few post about or take part in polls focused on modern music. I do wonder what percentage of the membership actually appreciates modern music.


Inasmuch as my polls can provide some illumination:
A small number of modern pieces (defined as "post-1950" as per the ongoing list) have received the support of more than 50% of voters, and about one-quarter of the modern pieces have been supported by at least one-third of voters.
In the Second Viennese School poll, only 1 of 49 voters claimed not to like any of the pieces, and 3 others didn't know any; and in fact Berg's violin concerto seems to be one of the most popular works across all my polls. 
In the Grawemeyer Award polls, about 60% of voters liked at least one of the works (which is a higher percentage than for the medieval poll).

So a general conclusion might be that modern music isn't as popular on TC as, say, 19th-century music, but that it certainly has a strong level of appreciation - probably at least one-third of members, and perhaps quite a bit more than that.


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## Dim7

Nereffid said:


> Inasmuch as my polls can provide some illumination:
> A small number of modern pieces (defined as "post-1950" as per the ongoing list) have received the support of more than 50% of voters.


We were talking about 20th century music, not just post-1950 though.


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## Woodduck

mmsbls said:


> Personally I would say there is no music of my time that speaks to me with "a directness and immediacy of communicative power" greater than any earlier music does. I'm not exactly certain what Copland means by that phrase. I believe music is extremely poor at communicating any meaning. It can provide aesthetic pleasure and may provide those with an understanding of the theory with other pleasures, but to me music does not communicate much of anything.
> 
> Literature, on the other hand, can communicate because words convey meaning. I do believe that today's literature could, in many cases, speak to readers of its time with "a directness and immediacy of communicative power" that no earlier literary work could equal. So I think Copland's words are appropriate for literature but much less so for music.


My most concise reply to this would be that the "meaning" a particular piece of music has for us consists in the way it makes us feel. "Meaning" does not have to be conceptually explicit or to be expressible in words. "You mean the world to me" is not a philosophical treatise, a psychiatric profile, or a resume, but an expression of feeling for someone that needn't be discussed, but could be. Feelings can be talked about; they have causes, consequences, and implications. They aren't intellectual, but neither are they "anti-intellectual." Emotions contain unstated ideas which we may or may not grasp consciously; what music makes us feel can be talked about, difficult and inexact though our talk may be.

Different works of music may provide similar amounts of "aesthetic" pleasure, but hold radically different meanings for us. A Bach concerto and a Sibelius symphony can both move me profoundly, but mean radically different things, whether or not I try to understand and express those meanings in words. I don't need to do that in order to experience the meaning, but doing so may illuminate the meaning and, by illuminating it, add still another layer of meaning. Meaning expands with time and life experience, and certain works of art which struck deep into my being at an early age have acquired complex conceptual meanings. That doesn't necessarily mean I enjoy them more, but it does make them old friends.


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## mmsbls

Woodduck said:


> ...it seems to me perfectly reasonable and realistic to ask whether, half-a-century to a century after much of this problematic music was composed, and sixty-five years after Copland wrote his essay, there is any reason to think that its audience will grow substantially larger. ...
> 
> Copland was writing in the 1940s, at a time when it was simply impossible for most people to hear "atonal" music, either in concert or on the clumsy, short-sided 78rpm record. Most people had little opportunity to adjust their ears, or their brains, to unfamiliar sounds. But this is no longer the case. Music is everywhere now, almost any kind of music you want, almost any time you want it. We would logically expect the status of half-century-old "modern" music to have changed. And certainly it has, to some extent. Yet here we are, on a popular internet forum, debating its status, diagnosing its ills, bemoaning its neglect, quoting Copland from sixty and seventy years ago on music which had already been around for decades when he wrote, and saying, as he and generations of modernists have said, "If only people had more exposure..."
> 
> Isn't this odd? How much exposure is required?


This question fascinates me. What percentage of classical music listeners around 1915 found music by Schubert, Weber, Hummel, or any early Romantic bizarre or unpleasant? How long did it take those listeners in 1915 to become familiar with the language of Wagner, Dvorak, or Liszt? I think most of us recognize that all new music, whether composed today or 100-200 years ago can pose a challenge to listeners of that time, but I believe that 50-100 years allowed listeners of the early 1900s to come to grips with the above composers' music.

I think we all agree that repeated listening increases the likelihood that we will appreciate/enjoy/feel comfortable with unfamiliar music. I personally believe the repeated listening can allow many of us to enjoy much of new music. But why after 50-100 years does some modern music completely elude so many listeners? Why does modern music seem to require significantly more listening than earlier music to overcome the unfamiliar sounds and enjoy the music?

Woodduck talked a bit about the difference between now and 100 years ago, and naively those differences ought to make modern music quicker to enjoy. In 1900 people could only listen to what was played at concerts they attended. Presumably frequent concert goers might hear unfamiliar music maybe once or twice a month. Today people can hear 20th century music several times a day, and they can play exactly what they wish. In two years I likely heard more unfamiliar music than most people in 1900 heard in a lifetime.

A composer friend of mine suggested that modern music differs from earlier music in that many fewer composers share the same "language". One almost needs to hear each composer enough to become familiar with her language and "learn" to enjoy her music. Romantic composers used a much similar language that may have required vastly less listening to become familiar with much of the music.

Assuming 1900 era listeners truly assimilated 1800-1850 music vastly quicker than 2000 era listeners assimilated music of 50-100 years prior, what is different about 20th century music and 20th century society that leads to this situation?

Obviously none of this means that there is anything wrong with 20th century music or that modern music should be blamed for anything.


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## Woodduck

^^^ What percentage of classical music listeners around 1915 found music by Schubert, Weber, Hummel, or any early Romantic bizarre or unpleasant? 

Approximately zero percent, give or take.

How long did it take those listeners in 1915 to become familiar with the language of Wagner, Dvorak, or Liszt? 

Most of the music of these composers was acclaimed and enjoyed very quickly, often immediately.

I think most of us recognize that all new music, whether composed today or 100-200 years ago can pose a challenge to listeners of that time... 

Most of it didn't pose much more of a challenge (wasn't much harder to enjoy) to its immediate contemporaries than it did to the next generation, or does now. No doubt Schubert's brand new and innovative songs moved and delighted the people at his Schubertiads even more than they do those of us for whom they're "old shoe."

...but I believe that 50-100 years allowed listeners of the early 1900s to come to grips with the above composers' music. 

That greatly overstates the time needed. And "coming to grips" suggests effort. How many people had to make an "effort" to enjoy Schubert or Dvorak? Even the premiere of _Tristan und Isolde_ was a success - and, from all reports during the early years of that radical work's performance history, the major effort people had to exert was not to "understand baffling new music" but to keep from having emotional breakdowns while listening to it. I don't think that's the same sort of "coming to grips"! :lol:

I think we all agree that repeated listening increases the likelihood that we will appreciate/enjoy/feel comfortable with unfamiliar music. I personally believe the repeated listening can allow many of us to enjoy much of new music. 

I agree.

But why after 50-100 years does some modern music completely elude so many listeners? Why does modern music seem to require significantly more listening than earlier music to overcome the unfamiliar sounds and enjoy the music?

A composer friend of mine suggested that modern music differs from earlier music in that many fewer composers share the same "language". One almost needs to hear each composer enough to become familiar with her language and "learn" to enjoy her music. Romantic composers used a much similar language that may have required vastly less listening to become familiar with much of the music.


I have a friend who is not a musician but who, in his process of getting to know classical music, decided to listen and study the subject chronologically, beginning with medieval music and working his way forward. He was able to enjoy greatly, and have considerable insight into, music of every period, and he was particularly struck with what he called the "dialogue" between composers and styles, the way they influenced each other but found personal inflections of an underlying "common language." He felt that that language seemed to evolve in a natural way up to the 20th century, but then disintegrated. "The dialogue broke down," was the way he put it.

In 1900 people could only listen to what was played at concerts they attended. Presumably frequent concert goers might hear unfamiliar music maybe once or twice a month. Today people can hear 20th century music several times a day, and they can play exactly what they wish. In two years I likely heard more unfamiliar music than most people in 1900 heard in a lifetime.Assuming 1900 era listeners truly assimilated 1800-1850 music vastly quicker than 2000 era listeners assimilated music of 50-100 years prior, what is different about 20th century music and 20th century society that leads to this situation? 


Continuing the metaphor, composers began to speak in personal "languages" people couldn't relate to the musical "language" they spoke. Composers used strange sounds and organized them in new ways - not superficially new, but new at a deep structural level - that didn't convey to listeners the kinds of meanings they had previously heard and sought in music.

Obviously none of this means that there is anything wrong with 20th century music or that modern music should be blamed for anything.

"Blame" is a loaded word, but if composers write music that most people don't find meaningful or pleasing after a century has passed, it seems just as wrong to blame listeners as to blame the music. So who or what is to blame?


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## arpeggio

^^^

Oh my. A Woodduck post I understand.

Your response is extremely one sided and unfair.

mmsbls: "What percentage of classical music listeners around 1915 found music by Schubert, Weber, Hummel, or any early Romantic bizarre or unpleasant?"

Your response to mmsbls is very unfair. He was not making a declarative statement of fact. He was just asking a question. Yet your response is a declarative statement without any documentation to support your observation. Have you studied what music was programmed back in concerts back in 1900? Do you have a library of music reviews written back then to support your hypothesis? I admit that I do not know the answer to that question.

You mentioned your friend. Do I have to mention again my friend who was not a classical music fan who developed an affinity for atonal music? I know of people who think country and western is more natural than Mozart.

So what if the music composed after 1900 is garbage? So we are not suppose to advocate and listen to music composed after 1900 that we enjoy? What about those obscure contemporaries of Beethoven that we enjoy listening to? When I am performing with a VOLUNTARY group we can only perform audience music? We can not perform any music that the musicians find interesting? I realize that for every Schoenberg we have to perform a hundred Mozart's. The dilemma is that most of the audiences I have played for prefer Mancini to Mozart. Sometimes when the arrangements are good playing Mancini is not so bad.

Of course 20th century music is more difficult understand. It took many of us decades before we could understand Schoenberg or Carter. I still do not get Xenakis. So what? I have no problem with people who dislike Carter.

And please do no accuse me of thinking that my aesthetics are superior to everyone else's. They are not. The fact is 90% of the music you enjoy I also like. My big interest is in performing and listening to classical concert band music. The stature of that around here is even lower than _433_. Heck. In the post 1950 hall of fame thread I nominated a few concert band works and none of them have a chance of making it.

Now I understand your position I have no idea how to respond to it. If as a result of your experiences you think whatever is invalid I do not know how to respond.

I am currently listening to a Bax Symphony. After that I think I will listen to some Danzi. Of course he is no Beethoven.


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## ArtMusic

mmsbls said:


> This question fascinates me. What percentage of classical music listeners around 1915 found music by Schubert, Weber, Hummel, or any early Romantic bizarre or unpleasant? How long did it take those listeners in 1915 to become familiar with the language of Wagner, Dvorak, or Liszt? ...


Not long more or less because the overwhelming historical fact is the greatest composers stayed continuously in the public performing repertoire.


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## SeptimalTritone

SeptimalTritone said:


> Hmm... on a slightly unrelated topic, it just occurred to me: what do you and Woodduck think of living composers not like Brian Ferneyhough and Michael Pisaro and Iancu Dumitrescu or whatever but like John Adams or Magnus Lindberg or Esa-Pekka Salonen? I think there's a lot out there for the more tonally minded which is fresh, new, and worthwhile. They would, I think, be writing how you would want... and I think they are reasonably popular. Do they fulfill your argument?
> 
> But maybe you don't think they live up to Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms even if they are doing their best? In that case, I don't know what to say... my opinion is that nobody today would be able to write good common practice classical sonata form works that equal Mozart because it's a sort of lost art and sensibility. We've seen only not-so-great completions of Bach's Art of Fugue or Beethoven's 10th symphony etc.


I still would like to have a response to this query, if possible. There are a fair amount of composers writing in a tonal basis today. Wouldn't you guys [Ken and Wooduck] say that they fairly respond to their audience's needs and write good music? So... shouldn't you guys be satisfied with a reasonably large branch of 21st century music? Couldn't we be happy with both Valentin Silvestrov (neoromantic, symphonic) and Francisco Lopez (concrete, natural electronic)?

Again, if you feel that they still don't live up to the classical/romantic greats, does that mean you wish for us to go back to a directly common practice form of writing (which is a valid opinion, not my opinion, but I just wondered if that was your opinion)?

If that's so... I really think it would be too difficult to produce something as good that way. I don't think we can write Chopin nocturne-like works or Haydn quartet-like works or Wagner opera-like works as good as they did. But maybe you guys disagree, which, if so, that's okay! Just wanting to have you guys clarify... I'm not entirely clear on your stance.

I remember Ken brought up the example (long long time ago in another thread) of Mozart's "37th symphony" where before it was realized it wasn't by Mozart, it was thought to be as good as the 36th and 38th, but as soon as it was discovered otherwise critics said, perhaps not so honestly, "oh yeah of course it wasn't Mozart". So maybe you think we can do as good of a job.

I'm not sure about this because we have orchestrations of Mahler's 10th which don't seem to be as good as the symphonies that Mahler actually did fully write and orchestrate (Mahler's 10th's orchestration by Derrick Cooke seems to me somewhat bare and uninspired...) Or, as I was mentioning above, take Bach's Art of Fugue final contrapunctus and Beethoven's 10th symphony... there are probably other examples as well that are not immediately in my mind.... oh yeah Schubert's Unfinished 8th symphony with scherzo and finale completion I heard on youtube is another example.

But if it could be done as well, then yeah, why not have people write like that. I simply don't think people could do a very good job writing an original work in Beethoven style. Only Beethoven could have the sensibility, as demonstrated by not-as-great attempts to complete these great masters' unfinished final works.

So in conclusion... do you think the current tonally-oriented composers are enough to fufill your request for good classical music written in the 21st century, or that we really should go back to a more common-practice era style of writing? Just wanting to know what you think with more clarity, that's all.

Best,
-ST


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## KenOC

My reading suggests that most of the 19th-century works we recognize today as "standards" entered the repertoire quite quickly. The 50-100 year wait endured by some 20th-century works written in thornier idioms is something new. To me, it suggests that some of the directions taken may not be attractive to broad audiences, in the near future or ever.

However, as some have noted, today's audience is segmented. A broad appeal may not be necessary. But waiting for these works to be regularly programmed at Symphony Hall may be frustrating.


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## KenOC

SeptimalTritone said:


> ...Wouldn't you guys [Ken and Wooduck] say that they fairly respond to their audience's needs and write good music? So... shouldn't you guys be satisfied with a reasonably large branch of 21st century music? Couldn't we be happy with both Valentin Silvestrov (neoromantic, symphonic) and Francisco Lopez (concrete, natural electronic)?


As before, I expect nothing from current composers but instead just choose what I like. There's a lot of music being written up to the current year that I enjoy, and I'd hardly ask any composer to write especially for me!

Some people (especially some "modernist" fans) seem to think that if people don't prefer the music they do, then those people must hate it and wish it didn't exist. What would a psychologist say about that?


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## Woodduck

arpeggio said:


> ^^^
> 
> Oh my. *A Woodduck post I understand.*
> 
> Your response is extremely one sided and unfair.
> 
> mmsbls: "What percentage of classical music listeners around 1915 found music by Schubert, Weber, Hummel, or any early Romantic bizarre or unpleasant?"
> 
> Your response to mmsbls is very unfair. He was not make a declarative statement of fact. He was just asking a question. Yet your response is a declarative statement without any documentation to support your observation. Have you studied what music was programmed back in concerts back in 1900? Do you have a library of music reviews written back then to support your hypothesis? I admit that I do not know the answer to that question.
> 
> You mentioned your friend. Do I have to mention again my friend who was not a classical music fan who developed an affinity for atonal music? I know of people who think country and western is more natural than Mozart.
> 
> *So what if the music composed after 1900 is garbage?* So we are not suppose to advocate and listen to music composed after 1900 that we enjoy? What about those obscure contemporaries of Beethoven that we enjoy listening to? When I am performing with a VOLUNTARY group we can only perform audience music? We can not perform any music that the musicians find interesting. I realize that for every Schoenberg we have to perform a hundred Mozart's. The dilemma is that most of the audiences I have played for prefer Mancini to Mozart. Sometimes when the arrangements are good playing Mancini is not so bad.
> 
> Of course 20th century music is more difficult understand. It took many of us decades before we could understand Schoenberg or Carter. I still do not get Xenakis. So what? I have no problem with people who dislike Carter.
> 
> *And please do no accuse me of thinking that my aesthetics are superior to everyone else's.* They are not. The fact is 90% of the music you enjoy I also like. My big interest is in performing and listening to classical concert band music. The stature of that around here is even lower than _433_. Heck. In the post 1950 hall of fame thread I nominated a few concert band works and none of them have a chance of making it.
> 
> *Now I understand your position *I have no idea how to respond to it. If as a result of your experiences you think whatever is invalid I do not know how to respond.
> 
> I am currently listening to a Bax Symphony. After that I think I will listen to some Danzi. Of course he is no Beethoven.


I'm sorry, arpeggio, but I'm not persuaded that you do understand my post, or that you've correctly identified any "position" I have.

I haven't offered a judgment on any particular work of music, much less called anything "garbage."

I don't accuse anyone of having inferior artistic tastes, or imagine that you think yours are superior. We like whatever music we like, and no one needs to justify their preferences.

Mmsbls expressed an interest in the question of why 20th century music has not caught on with listeners as quickly as music of earlier times. I noticed that the time frames he was suggesting for public acceptance of earlier music were much longer than I believe they actually were. That was all I was addressing in the above post.

If it reassures you, I will say that I don't believe that all good music should be rapidly comprehensible. But there are different reasons why it might or might not be. Whether anyone thinks the music is "good" or "bad" may not be relevant at all, and I'm not pronouncing judgments, regardless of my personal tastes (which do, by the way, include quite a lot of 20th-century music).


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## Guest

Woodduck said:


> I have a friend who is not a musician but who, in his process of getting to know classical music, decided to listen and study the subject chronologically, beginning with medieval music and working his way forward.... He felt that that language seemed to evolve in a natural way up to the 20th century, but then disintegrated. "The dialogue broke down," was the way he put it.


Yeah, I'm sure he did. How about changing the metaphor, see what happens then? If you study a flowering plant starting with the roots, and without any idea of flowers, and you start your study before the flowering season, think of how startled you could be when the flowers start opening up. They're not like anything else on the plant. The roots, the stem or trunk, the branches, even the leaves. All these things are comprehensible and in sober browns and greens. The whole branching thing might be a bit off-putting at first, but it's easily understandable as the mirror image of the roots.

But those flowers. Gaudy, colorful, completely different texture from anything else on the plant.

Flowers must be unnatural, eh?

Or take another, more familiar metaphor, the water one. Here are all these streams running down from the mountain, winding, twisting, merging into eventually one main stream, which makes its majestic way to... a delta, which is a kind of mirror image of the origin streams, and then? The ocean. The ocean is a very different kind of thing from a river, have you noticed? Yeah. No banks to it, for one. How can you expect anyone to comprehend a thing that has no banks? All the water up to that point has had some kind of bank that gives it shape and form and coherence.

I suggest we all go onto some ecology threads and complain about oceans.

Or maybe review the whole of this thread, paying particular attention to Crudblud's post, so far the only one to consider certain significant aspects of the situation, aspects that just aren't getting any traction at all on this thread, aspects that are absolutely critical to understanding the issues that have been raised, aspects which go a long ways to answering the questions that keep being responded to with false answers.



Woodduck said:


> ...composers began to speak in personal "languages" people couldn't relate to the musical "language" they spoke. Composers used strange sounds and organized them in new ways - not superficially new, but new at a deep structural level - that didn't convey to listeners the kinds of meanings they had previously heard and sought in music.


Damn those flowers, anyway? They're all wrong!!

But seriously, this particular synecdoche game has really got to stop. "...didn't convey to listeners...." Come on, Woodduck. Seriously? Listeners? So all the enthusiastic and passionate new music fans of the entire twentieth century are of absolutely no account? Why, they probably don't even exist.

Take a portion of the whole, privilege it, treat it in all ways and at all times as if it were the whole, thus excluding all the rest of the whole from all subsequent discussions now and forever.

Nope.

Nope nope nope nope nope.

And another thing, if anyone's still reading this. What about that whole "previously heard and sought" business. So expectations are very much back on the table, eh? Very much part of the conversation? That's good. Because for awhile there expectations were distinctly _de trop_ to this discussion. Or at least some of the aunties made a concerted effort to make them so.



Woodduck said:


> ...if composers write music that most people don't find meaningful or pleasing after a century has passed, it seems just as wrong to blame listeners as to blame the music. So who or what is to blame?


Ah. It's "most people" now, is it? I suppose that's an improvement over "people." At least it allows the previously excluded people back into the conversation. But at what cost? They're still marginalized.

Well guess what? (And why why why why why does this same simple observation have to be made over and over and over again? Jeepers.) Most people don't find ANY classical music of any kind from any age meaningful or pleasing.


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## Guest

It's clear that even in 1949, 'modern' music was getting a hard time and the debate about it is not going to go away - at least, there will always be a small number of regulars along with some newcomers who will be willing to revisit this with surprising frequency.

It occurs to me, however, that what seems often to be implied is that all music prior to the 'modern' period is equally loved, and it's only the modern (and post-modern?) that has a very small appreciative audience. It's only the modern that is given a hard time for being 'difficult' or even 'ugly' with no objective criteria on offer - and only a smattering of research - to confirm that it is so.

Yet for me - and I'm sure for others - there is music of different periods which holds no attraction or meaning, though it may be easy and beautiful to others. In terms of listening habits, it is more likely that I will extend my listening further into the 20th and 21st Cs than extend it backwards before Bach. I may get round to listening to more Tchaikovsky, but not more Wagner.

Of course, my habits may change altogether, and I'm not ruling out ever listening to things not currently on my list - but that's not the point. The point is that I fail to see why modern music should be given such a hard time, when there are other reasons for avoiding other periods.


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> As before, I expect nothing from current composers but instead just choose what I like. There's a lot of music being written up to the current year that I enjoy, and I'd hardly ask any composer to write especially for me!
> 
> Some people (especially some "modernist" fans) seem to think that if people don't prefer the music they do, then those people must hate it and wish it didn't exist. What would a psychologist say about that?


Some here at TC? How many? Can you point to threads where they've posted such views?

I can certainly see that in among all the toing and froing on this subject, a few members - some with only fleeting membership - have posted provocatively or carelessly, drawn false conclusions about others on both 'sides', made knowingly hyperbolic statements about their own position and the positions of their opponents, misattributed ulterior motives and hidden agendas...

Yet I can't actually think of any regular member here who has set out unequivocally and unambiguously, the position you attribute to 'some members'.


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## KenOC

MacLeod said:


> ...The point is that I fail to see why modern music should be given such a hard time, when there are other reasons for avoiding other periods.


Who's giving modern music a "hard time"? I'll listen to what I wish, and you will too. Speculating on the popularity or general acceptance of various periods or idioms is far different from condemning anybody's music.


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## Tedski

KenOC said:


> To what extent is that due to the (apparent) fact that new "classical music" of any interest to a broad audience is just about non-existent . ..


There is quite a bit of popular new "classical music." It's just being written by composers with names like John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, and Hans Zimmer.


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> Who's giving modern music a "hard time"? I'll listen to what I wish, and you will to. Speculating on the popularity or general acceptance of various periods or idioms is far different from condemning anybody's music.


You did read the Copland article?

And how about this, from one of our esteemed and more reasonable members...



> Copland's list of composers by degree of difficulty seemed roughly right to me. However, when I first started, I found Shostakovich, early Stravinsky, and Prokofiev mostly unpleasant.


http://www.talkclassical.com/39663-copland-defends-modernist-music-post932560.html#post932560

Or this one...

http://www.talkclassical.com/39663-copland-defends-modernist-music-post932605.html#post932605



> But it hasn't been that long since I found many of these works inscrutable and therefor just annoying. It was like overhearing an animated conversation in an unknown foreign language in public.


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## Guest

Not only that, MacLeod, but the historical fact that the entire nineteenth century was taken up with the struggle between new music and old, a struggle that continued into the twentieth century (that continues this second, on this thread).

Before that, by and large, there was only new music. By and large. There were indications of the attitude that would come to dominate the conversation: there was an antient musick organization or two before 1800. There were some complaints about how clumsy and awkward Mozart's music was. But those were along the lines of preliminary firing before the battle actually starts.

And the new attitude grew very fast and was very persistent. So much so--and again, a point that simply gets no traction because it doesn't fit the popular model of twentieth century music being suddenly ugly and incomprehensible--that a critic writing in 1843 says "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 this tidbit from twenty years later, "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.'" (From a review by Alex Ross of William Weber's _The Great Transformation of Musical Taste._)

So yeah. Music of the past was all accepted very quickly. Sure it was. Kinda hard to account for comments like the above if it was, though. Kinda like that whole Beethoven was universally admired almost immediately thing we get from time to time. Hard to reconcile that with the immense and decades-long efforts by Berlioz and Liszt to promote his music. Why promote if it's already popular? And with a famous pianist being counseled not to bring any Beethoven to London with him (in mid-century) because it will empty the hall.

Yeah. Isolated exceptions, I'm sure. And if they can't be dealt with that way, you can always continue to ignore them. Most of what happened in the nineteenth century is consistently and persistently ignored. That way, the twentieth century can get all the credit for grit and violence and horror. Not sure why we ("we") want so badly to bad-mouth our own century so much, but there it is. The twentieth century is a wrap for all that is wrong with the world. If you do happen, by accident, I'm sure, to read anything about the nineteenth century, you may find that all the things that made the twentieth century exceptional (exceptionally bad, of course) were already present in the nineteenth. So much so, that it's tempting to see the twentieth century as not only a continuation of the nineteenth but as distinctly a redo (having learned none of the lessons, you see) of that tortured and tattered century.


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## KenOC

MacLeod said:


> You did read the Copland article?


Top to bottom. I found it special pleading, of little interest. People will like the music they like, and neither you nor I nor Mr. Copland is likely to change that. Certainly people can (and do) come to like music they disliked at first. But the examples you give (Shostakovich, early Stravinsky, Prokofiev) were pretty big news right out of the gate.

In any event, if people come to have a broader appreciation of "modernist music" over time, that's certainly just fine.


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## SeptimalTritone

Ahh... I see. You mostly take issue at the notion of a composer who "should" be liked more than he currently is, and that we shouldn't bemoan the "inadequacy" of the audience.

OK then. I merely wish for better and more accurate knowledge of Schoenberg et. al. (for example in Classical Music for Dummies it says that Schoenberg repeated the same 12 notes over and over again which obviously leads to misunderstanding and suspicion in the audience), and better concert programming. If people don't like it even then, that's okay, but I bet that the increase in understanding would be worth it and would enrich a lot of others' lives. I just think that the modern forefront could potentially be accepted with better information and programming. I do think that prejudices and misinformation and unfamiliarity play a much larger role than you imagine. I used to be prejudiced against serial music, musique concrete, etc... (due to my own preconceptions and lack of knowledge and thinking that Mahler was the last great composer) that inhibited my fully engaging it with a fair mind. It's true. Prejudice, misinformation, and unfamiliarity deny a lot of people a true, fair, experience.

And even then, if Schoenberg remains unpopular, that's really okay. It's just that the misinformation denies a lot of people a potentially great experience. But in the end, nobody's inadequate, whatever their tastes and sensibility. I mean it: we need both John Adams and Lionel Marchetti, and it's okay to be a fan of either, both, or neither.


----------



## Woodduck

SeptimalTritone said:


> I still would like to have a response to this query, if possible. There are a fair amount of composers writing in a tonal basis today. Wouldn't you guys [Ken and Wooduck] say that they fairly respond to their audience's needs and write good music? So... shouldn't you guys be satisfied with a reasonably large branch of 21st century music? Couldn't we be happy with both Valentin Silvestrov (neoromantic, symphonic) and Francisco Lopez (concrete, natural electronic)?
> 
> Again, if you feel that they still don't live up to the classical/romantic greats, does that mean you wish for us to go back to a directly common practice form of writing (which is a valid opinion, not my opinion, but I just wondered if that was your opinion)?
> 
> If that's so... I really think it would be too difficult to produce something as good that way. I don't think we can write Chopin nocturne-like works or Haydn quartet-like works or Wagner opera-like works as good as they did. But maybe you guys disagree, which, if so, that's okay! Just wanting to have you guys clarify... I'm not entirely clear on your stance.
> 
> I remember Ken brought up the example (long long time ago in another thread) of Mozart's "37th symphony" where before it was realized it wasn't by Mozart, it was thought to be as good as the 36th and 38th, but as soon as it was discovered otherwise critics said, perhaps not so honestly, "oh yeah of course it wasn't Mozart". So maybe you think we can do as good of a job.
> 
> I'm not sure about this because we have orchestrations of Mahler's 10th which don't seem to be as good as the symphonies that Mahler actually did fully write and orchestrate (Mahler's 10th's orchestration by Derrick Cooke seems to me somewhat bare and uninspired...) Or, as I was mentioning above, take Bach's Art of Fugue final contrapunctus and Beethoven's 10th symphony... there are probably other examples as well that are not immediately in my mind.... oh yeah Schubert's Unfinished 8th symphony with scherzo and finale completion I heard on youtube is another example.
> 
> But if it could be done as well, then yeah, why not have people write like that. I simply don't think people could do a very good job writing an original work in Beethoven style. Only Beethoven could have the sensibility, as demonstrated by not-as-great attempts to complete these great masters' unfinished final works.
> 
> So in conclusion... do you think the current tonally-oriented composers are enough to fufill your request for good classical music written in the 21st century, or that we really should go back to a more common-practice era style of writing? Just wanting to know what you think with more clarity, that's all.
> 
> Best,
> -ST


Really, Septimal, I want composers to do whatever they want to do! I might only suggest to them that, like everyone else, they need to put food on the table.

More seriously, I don't think music can go back (though it can make fruitful use of the past), and I don't want it to. What's already been written in the styles of the past is more than enough for a lifetime of good listening, and I'm always interested in hearing something new and fresh that will excite and move me. I want to believe that the contemporary world and the world of the future have the capacity to meet mankind's spiritual needs with great art. I also think that the 20th century, whatever its dislocations, breakdowns and upheavals, gave us plenty of fascinating and nourishing art to chew on.

But here's where I have doubts: Classical music, as we tend to define it, is in essence an indigenous musical tradition of European origin. It's basic vocabulary, including the harmonic system we know as common practice tonality, arose out of and developed in close contact with the music of ordinary people. As an art form associated with the church, then the aristocracy, and finally the urban bourgeoisie, it became more complex in form than popular songs and dances, but not alien in its basic language. For centuries, most people of no particular musical erudition were quite capable of enjoying it, European composers continued to be nourished by the music of their native roots, and classical music was, in a real sense, popular. The melodies of Weber and Verdi were pounded out on pianos in parlors and sung and whistled by people in the streets, and composers were national heroes.

This changed, I think, for reasons both intrinsic to the development of music and having to do with changes in the structure of society on both a local and a global scale. Suffice to say that I think the vital link between classical music - in fact "high" culture in general - and the society from which it grew has been largely severed, that high culture ceased a long time ago to draw nourishment from popular culture or to have much in common with it at all, that in this state of affairs "classical music" as we have long thought of it has largely ceased to be a tradition nourished at its roots, and that over the course of the 20th century and into our day it has become something of a hothouse plant which has lost vital contact with the sensibilities of most people in our society. When I hear people say that modern music should speak to modern people (as Copland and other modernists like to say), I always think "What modern people?" Who is classical music today being written for? For that matter, who was Schoenberg writing for a century ago? He fantasized that he was writing for Everyman, just like Bach and Brahms. But time has begged to differ, as Copland predicted back in 1941.

What I'm saying here is that I think "classical music" as a phenomenon has been for the last century and more suffering from an identity crisis, one which concerns its very meaning and cultural significance, and not just its sounds and styles. But certainly those sounds and styles have been symptomatic of the problem. I've found it an interesting problem to contemplate all my life, and when I was very young it really troubled me. Decades later, I see that classical music, however we want to define it, is trying to hang on and that some composers now seem a bit more interested in writing music that someone besides their fellow academics will find interesting and enjoyable. As an old codger I can say that I find that very nice, but I haven't been too excited about much of the product. Recent composers seem to me to be creating a lot of "special effects," focusing on sounds as such, or creating a lot of busy textures and irregular rhythms and complex orchestration, maybe thinking that that's how they'll keep listeners interested. A lot of it seems to me gimmicky and rather desperate, and frankly I'd rather listen to some good jazz or some sitar music from India than most contemporary classical music. It seems more like something genuine from the real world. But maybe a lot of younger people feel differently.


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## KenOC

SeptimalTritone said:


> ...And even then, if Schoenberg remains unpopular, that's really okay. It's just that the misinformation denies a lot of people a potentially great experience. But in the end, nobody's inadequate, whatever their tastes and sensibility.


It's OK by me, certainly. I'm only responsible for my own preferences. If you think Schoenberg is undervalued, I wish you the best in remedying that. Otherwise, I'm not at all sure what you expect from me! I'm not terribly concerned whether other people like Schoenberg, or Beethoven, or Yanni...

I'll promote my favorites, certainly, and suppose you will as well.


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## Guest

BTW, I had thought that I had made clear what I meant by 'giving a hard time' - that is, telling us how difficult it is (I didn't even have 'unpleasant' or 'annoying' in mind) - and that in the context of this whole thread being about the article in the OP, I'd need to point to it and its contents to establish that point.

In any case, that dwells on the wrong issue.

I don't listen to Baroque. I don't listen to Gregorian Chant. I don't listen to opera. None of them is, I think, 'difficult'. I have other criteria for not listening to them - just as personally valid as 'difficult' - yet 'difficult' is somehow the criterion that dominates the debate about music that we listen to and music that we don't.

Can we give 'difficult' a rest?


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## Nereffid

SeptimalTritone said:


> It's just that the misinformation denies a lot of people a potentially great experience.


Having just seen the "incest episode" of _Community_ I can't help finding that statement hilarious.

"I'm not trying to tell you how to feel about incest, I'm just letting you know there's more to it than you've been told".

:devil:


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## Woodduck

MacLeod said:


> BTW, I had thought that I had made clear what I meant by 'giving a hard time' - that is, telling us how difficult it is (I didn't even have 'unpleasant' or 'annoying' in mind) - and that in the context of this whole thread being about the article in the OP, I'd need to point to it and its contents to establish that point.
> 
> In any case, that dwells on the wrong issue.
> 
> I don't listen to Baroque. I don't listen to Gregorian Chant. I don't listen to opera. None of them is, I think, 'difficult'. I have other criteria for not listening to them - just as personally valid as 'difficult' - yet 'difficult' is somehow the criterion that dominates the debate about music that we listen to and music that we don't.
> 
> Can we give 'difficult' a rest?


I'm with you. The "difficulty" of music has nothing to do with how much I like it - unless, of course, I just find it difficult to like!


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## Woodduck

some guy said:


> Yeah, I'm sure he did. How about changing the metaphor, see what happens then? If you study a flowering plant starting with the roots, and without any idea of flowers, and you start your study before the flowering season, think of how startled you could be when the flowers start opening up. They're not like anything else on the plant. The roots, the stem or trunk, the branches, even the leaves. All these things are comprehensible and in sober browns and greens. The whole branching thing might be a bit off-putting at first, but it's easily understandable as the mirror image of the roots.
> 
> But those flowers. Gaudy, colorful, completely different texture from anything else on the plant.
> 
> Flowers must be unnatural, eh?
> 
> Or take another, more familiar metaphor, the water one. Here are all these streams running down from the mountain, winding, twisting, merging into eventually one main stream, which makes its majestic way to... a delta, which is a kind of mirror image of the origin streams, and then? The ocean. The ocean is a very different kind of thing from a river, have you noticed? Yeah. No banks to it, for one. How can you expect anyone to comprehend a thing that has no banks? All the water up to that point has had some kind of bank that gives it shape and form and coherence.
> 
> I suggest we all go onto some ecology threads and complain about oceans.
> 
> Or maybe review the whole of this thread, paying particular attention to Crudblud's post, so far the only one to consider certain significant aspects of the situation, aspects that just aren't getting any traction at all on this thread, aspects that are absolutely critical to understanding the issues that have been raised, aspects which go a long ways to answering the questions that keep being responded to with false answers.
> 
> Damn those flowers, anyway? They're all wrong!!
> 
> But seriously, this particular synecdoche game has really got to stop. "...didn't convey to listeners...." Come on, Woodduck. Seriously? Listeners? So all the enthusiastic and passionate new music fans of the entire twentieth century are of absolutely no account? Why, they probably don't even exist.
> 
> Take a portion of the whole, privilege it, treat it in all ways and at all times as if it were the whole, thus excluding all the rest of the whole from all subsequent discussions now and forever.
> 
> Nope.
> 
> Nope nope nope nope nope.
> 
> And another thing, if anyone's still reading this. What about that whole "previously heard and sought" business. So expectations are very much back on the table, eh? Very much part of the conversation? That's good. Because for awhile there expectations were distinctly _de trop_ to this discussion. Or at least some of the aunties made a concerted effort to make them so.
> 
> Ah. It's "most people" now, is it? I suppose that's an improvement over "people." At least it allows the previously excluded people back into the conversation. But at what cost? They're still marginalized.
> 
> Well guess what? (And why why why why why does this same simple observation have to be made over and over and over again? Jeepers.) Most people don't find ANY classical music of any kind from any age meaningful or pleasing.


If you could put what you're saying into only as many words as you actually need to say it, I might be tempted to respond to it.


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## Richannes Wrahms

no comment


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## Guest

Woodduck said:


> I see that classical music, however we want to define it, is trying to hang on and that some composers now seem a bit more interested in writing music that someone besides their fellow academics will find interesting and enjoyable.


Because Lord knows those damned academics aren't worth writing for. Their tastes in music can and should be ignored because they're not really people. Not common people, anyway. Common people rule!!



Woodduck said:


> As an old codger I can say that... I haven't been too excited about much of the product. Recent composers seem to me to be creating a lot of "special effects," focusing on sounds as such, or creating a lot of busy textures and irregular rhythms and complex orchestration, maybe thinking that that's how they'll keep listeners interested. A lot of it seems to me gimmicky and rather desperate, ...*ut maybe a lot of younger people feel differently.*


*And maybe age has nothing to do with it. We're of an age, and I disagree about everything you've said. I've been excited by much of "the product," and have been for forty years or more.

You mention "recent composers," but without naming any. And from your shortlist of their qualities, you don't seem to know what any of them are really doing and why. The focus on "sound" dates from early in the twentieth century. I would date irregular rhythms and complex orchestration from the early nineteenth century. "Busy textures" seems to be simple complaining, as does "gimmicky and rather desperate," so I won't deal with those, except to point out that they're judgments not descriptions. They're masquerading as descriptions, however, and that makes them pernicious.

Maybe stay away from thinking about what other people are thinking, too. I happen to know a lot of contemporary composers personally. And so I know what they say they're thinking anyway. Maybe they're all lying to me, eh? But none of them ever sound anything like your characterization of "recent composers."

And it's also true that very little if any of their music sounds gimmicky to me, either. And very little if any of it sounds desperate, either. Exciting, invigorating, fascinating, and just generally enjoyable, sure. I see that you and Ken have really been pushing the line that you neither of you are interested in anything but that people be free to listen to whatever they want. And then you both do your best to make sure that the music you don't like and the listening experiences of people who listen to the music that you don't like are marginalized and trivialized as persistently and consistently as possible (after the inevitable distortions, of course).

Well, everyone needs a hobby, I guess.*


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## Nereffid

some guy said:


> I see that you and Ken have really been pushing the line that you neither of you are interested in anything but that people be free to listen to whatever they want. And then you both do your best to make sure that the music you don't like and the listening experiences of people who listen to the music that you don't like are marginalized and trivialized as persistently and consistently as possible (after the inevitable distortions, of course).
> 
> Well, everyone needs a hobby, I guess.


For what it's worth, they seem to be talking about music _I_ like, too, and I don't think they're marginalizing or trivializing it or my listening experiences.


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## Woodduck

some guy said:


> Not only that, MacLeod, but the historical fact that the entire nineteenth century was taken up with the struggle between new music and old, a struggle that continued into the twentieth century (that continues this second, on this thread).
> 
> Before that, by and large, there was only new music. By and large. There were indications of the attitude that would come to dominate the conversation: there was an antient musick organization or two before 1800. There were some complaints about how clumsy and awkward Mozart's music was. But those were along the lines of preliminary firing before the battle actually starts.
> 
> And the new attitude grew very fast and was very persistent. So much so--and again, a point that simply gets no traction because it doesn't fit the popular model of twentieth century music being suddenly ugly and incomprehensible--that a critic writing in 1843 says "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 this tidbit from twenty years later, "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.'" (From a review by Alex Ross of William Weber's _The Great Transformation of Musical Taste._)
> 
> So yeah. Music of the past was all accepted very quickly. Sure it was. Kinda hard to account for comments like the above if it was, though. Kinda like that whole Beethoven was universally admired almost immediately thing we get from time to time. Hard to reconcile that with the immense and decades-long efforts by Berlioz and Liszt to promote his music. Why promote if it's already popular? And with a famous pianist being counseled not to bring any Beethoven to London with him (in mid-century) because it will empty the hall.
> 
> Yeah. Isolated exceptions, I'm sure. And if they can't be dealt with that way, you can always continue to ignore them. Most of what happened in the nineteenth century is consistently and persistently ignored. That way, the twentieth century can get all the credit for grit and violence and horror. Not sure why we ("we") want so badly to bad-mouth our own century so much, but there it is. The twentieth century is a wrap for all that is wrong with the world. If you do happen, by accident, I'm sure, to read anything about the nineteenth century, you may find that all the things that made the twentieth century exceptional (exceptionally bad, of course) were already present in the nineteenth. So much so, that it's tempting to see the twentieth century as not only a continuation of the nineteenth but as distinctly a redo (having learned none of the lessons, you see) of that tortured and tattered century.


Tendencies that characterize one century often begin in the previous one. No argument. But the idea that new music in the nineteenth century was widely misunderstood and disliked by its audiences is mythology.

Everything new will be criticized, especially by people paid to criticize. We remember the critical _bons mots_, and quote them to support our point of view, but don't hear how all the people who were not critics, people who just paid the admission price and sat listening to the music, felt about it. But the evidence is that most of them liked it pretty well most of the time, well enough to disprove the idea that even the innovative composers like Berlioz and Wagner were asking too much of their powers of comprehension. Even an astonishing piece like the _Symphonie Fantastique_ was a popular success and apparently much played in Paris, and many other works of Berlioz premiered to enthusiatic applause.

Premieres of some works in the 19th century were great successes, some were moderate successes, some were failures, some were scandals. Just what we would expect from a vital art form in which contemporary people had strong investments of various sorts, both practical and emotional. The failure of _Carmen_ - to cite a famous example which you've used in the past to make your point - can't be taken to prove that Bizet's music was incomprehensible to people in the 1870s. Success of a premiere depends on many other factors, and virtually all the famous works which had problems first time out were soon playing to enthusiastic audiences. _Carmen_ was soon one of the most popular operas in the world. Were audiences suddenly able to understand music that baffled them just a few years before? Of course not.

No one has said that all Beethoven's music, or all the great music of the past, was "universally admired" right away. That's silly. Nothing is ever universally admired. The point is simply that composers were writing in a musical language that people understood - however original may have been their employment of it - and when they did fine work they were generally soon recognized for it and applauded by audiences of their time. Public taste may be finicky, but people interested in music tend to recognize great music when they hear it, and the great composers didn't want for popular recognition of their skills, whatever life and career problems some of them may have had.


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## Guest

Woodduck said:


> people interested in music tend to recognize great music when they hear it.


Apparently not.

But we will never agree.

Actually, people interested in music tend to.... Oh right. We're never gonna agree.

OK, then. Never mind what I was gonna say.


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## Nereffid

Dim7 said:


> We were talking about 20th century music, not just post-1950 though.


OK, here's a graph (yes, I _am_ a nerd).

I've grouped the music by decade of composition, then worked out the average vote for all the works in that decade (total number of votes for all the works, divided by total number of voters in polls containing those works).









The usual provisos about the reliability of the data apply; the bumps in the 1800s and 1900s and the drop in the 1950s are anomalies with an obvious explanation. (Respectively: few works voted for, and most of them popular Beethoven works; a conjunction of beloved Mahler and Sibelius symphonies; and a skew caused by a poll with very high voter numbers but no popular works)
Otherwise, the most basic trend apparent in the graph is that music composed between the 1720s and 1940s gets an average vote between 30 and 45% (ie, 30-45% of voters say they like it), and after the 1940s the popularity of the music declines.

So to answer your point, the data suggest that early-20th-century music is almost but not quite as popular as 19th-century music, while mid-to-late-20th-century music is significantly less popular.


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## Headphone Hermit

Woodduck said:


> people interested in music tend to recognize great music when they hear it, and the great composers didn't want for popular recognition of their skills, .


Great!

Great?

Great 

When we know and agree with 'great' we might be able to use this point to add to the discussion


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## violadude

Gee I'm glad I work for months on my music just to have it called gimmicky and desperate. 

And then you turn around and whine about how composers are hostile toward audiences. Give me a break.

You want to say the audience is a victim of crappy music? I say that composers are the victims of willfully ignorant audiences, AS EVIDENCED BY THIS THREAD, where just the mere mention of learning something about modernist music so that it clears up some confusion or misconception is met with vague comparisons to Hitler or someone similar.

Well, if some punk-*** teenager was talking about Beethoven the same ignorant way some of you talk about modernist music, you'd want to educate them too. But I guess it's okay when guys do it. Because it's okay if you're snobs when it comes to the rest of classical music, but suddenly you're the big every man populist when it comes to modernist classical music. 

In one breath you guys say "Well classical music takes time to listen to and to learn about in order to fully appreciate it" but in the next you say "Don't teach me anything about modernist music or I'll go on a tirade about how pretentious you are. I'm not going to put any time into listening to that if I don't like it right away".

The double standards are truly amazing.


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## Guest

Mahlerian said:


> What are your reactions to the article and the list in particular?


Mahlerian, I think this thread has proceeded far enough now to come back and ask what your reactions are now - to the article and to others' reactions to it. If you didn't set out to generate yet another opportunity for the kind of exchanges on an old theme, (and I'm sure you didn't) you might nudge us back on track.


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## Dim7

Nereffid said:


> OK, here's a graph (yes, I _am_ a nerd).
> 
> I've grouped the music by decade of composition, then worked out the average vote for all the works in that decade (total number of votes for all the works, divided by total number of voters in polls containing those works).
> 
> View attachment 74349
> 
> 
> The usual provisos about the reliability of the data apply; the bumps in the 1800s and 1900s and the drop in the 1950s are anomalies with an obvious explanation. (Respectively: few works voted for, and most of them popular Beethoven works; a conjunction of beloved Mahler and Sibelius symphonies; and a skew caused by a poll with very high voter numbers but no popular works)
> Otherwise, the most basic trend apparent in the graph is that music composed between the 1720s and 1940s gets an average vote between 30 and 45% (ie, 30-45% of voters say they like it), and after the 1940s the popularity of the music declines.
> 
> So to answer your point, the data suggest that early-20th-century music is almost but not quite as popular as 19th-century music, while mid-to-late-20th-century music is significantly less popular.


http://www.talkclassical.com/39201-what-periods-music-do-3.html
http://www.talkclassical.com/37795-favourite-century-music-9.html


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## Guest

Woodduck said:


> ...the idea that new music in the nineteenth century was widely misunderstood and disliked by its audiences is mythology.


What the record shows is that the attitude towards music changed in the nineteenth century from, simply put, "new is better" to "old is better." What concert programs show is an increasing trend throughout the century to perform old music. The ratios shifted from 9 to 1 (new music to old) in the 18th century to 1 to 9 (and in some cases 0 to 10) by 1870. The trend is clear, the interpretation maybe not so much. But put the trend together with letters from friends about the difficulties and uglinesses of new music, with critical screeds in books and papers, with subscribers threatening to cancel if any (any) music by a living composer were featured on a concert, and with the testimonies of this or that composer about the difficulties of getting any concert time for new music, and I think maybe you've got yourself a pretty coherent picture, an ugly one, of the kinds of things that supposedly didn't really get going until Schoenberg effed everything up in 1908.

I understand that you very much want all that evidence to be mythological, but the documents will still exist and will continue to tell the same story. It's not the story you want to tell or even to have told, but it's the story that the documents tell. It's not the whole story, obviously. There was constant and persistent resistence to the idea that old music was better. That new music had to prove itself against the old masters (the whole idea of "old masters" is pretty much a new idea of the nineteenth century), that probably it wasn't worth it and was best ignored. In spite of that, as you and Ken are fond of pointing out, new music in the nineteenth century flourished and even became the default "classical music" for most twentieth century listeners. That is as much, however (and however much you do not want to acknowledge this part of the situation), attributable to the persistence of composers and performers pushing new music as it is to the so-called characteristics of the music or the ability of listeners to comprehend and even enjoy.

The attitude was not monolithic. It was not as strong at the beginning of the century as it was by the end. It was always being fought, by composers (naturally), by performers, and by the audience members who enjoyed that kind of thing.

Why, if there were no trend away from new music in the nineteenth century was there the rise--for the first time _in_ that century--of new music ensembles. You only need ensembles dedicated to new music if something has broken down in the ordinary concert programming. And you only get ensembles dedicated to new music in the nineteenth century. If your ordinary concert program is already 9 to 1 for new music to old, you hardly need new music ensembles. In effect, all your ensembles are "new music ensembles." Or, as it would have seemed to them, "music ensembles." Only when "old" becomes a thing, and then a thing to reckon with, and then the only thing worthwhile, do you need to have special ensembles for new music. And that's what happened in the nineteenth century.


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## mmsbls

KenOC said:


> Some people (especially some "modernist" fans) seem to think that if people don't prefer the music they do, then those people must hate it and wish it didn't exist.





MacLeod said:


> Yet I can't actually think of any regular member here who has set out unequivocally and unambiguously, the position you attribute to 'some members'.


I agree that regular members do not "set out unequivocally and unambiguously, the position" Ken attributes. But statements along those lines certainly exist. There really are reasons some feel that TC modernists* attack statements about modern music that simply show a preference for older music, point out features of modern music that are different from earlier music, or ask questions that are perceived as attacks. I have been accused of "attacking" modern music on several occassions even though I am a strong advocate. I will give one example, but I have been told not to ask questions about things I don't understand, accused of lying about my true intentions, called a musical racist, and accused of wishing today's music were written in older styles. I have seen many similar comments directed at others as well.

Now, I honestly understand why modernists can be defensive about the music they love. After all I'm a modernist as well. Some of those referred to as anti-modernists (I'm unhappy with both terms) are hardly free of disparaging comments, and sometimes a negative comment about music one likes feels like a negative comment about oneself.

So, yes, modernists are sometimes accused of being more extreme than they are, and anti-modernists are sometimes attacked for having views they do not hold. I wish it were different, and maybe TC can move to a place where everyone's views are treated a bit more kindly.

* Simply those who enjoy and defend modern music


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## Nereffid

Dim7 said:


> http://www.talkclassical.com/39201-what-periods-music-do-3.html
> http://www.talkclassical.com/37795-favourite-century-music-9.html


Interesting - a little over half of people in both polls chose the 20th century as their favourite century, and about one-third chose the 19th. That suggests the opposite to what I've found. Of course the big difference is that the polls you mention focus on entire centuries, whereas I look at individual works. So the results don't conflict per se, they're describing different things.

One explanation for the disparity might be a reflection of my own thoughts: I went with the 20th century in both polls as my favourite, but it's also the case that _pretty much all of the music I truly dislike_ was written in the 20th century, too. And the newer the music, the less well-known it is, so the fewer the people who say they like it, even among those who like "modern" music generally.


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## Mahlerian

MacLeod said:


> Mahlerian, I think this thread has proceeded far enough now to come back and ask what your reactions are now - to the article and to others' reactions to it. If you didn't set out to generate yet another opportunity for the kind of exchanges on an old theme, (and I'm sure you didn't) you might nudge us back on track.


Well, so little of this thread has really done much to respond to the article. I feel that many of the responses are directed towards an idea of what the article supposedly represents more than what is actually said in it.

There are many aspects of it that are less applicable today: all of the music he lists has found its way to acceptance (or semi-oblivion), generally at the speed he points out with his difficulty ratings. (I was wrong, before, when I said that all of the composers mentioned were then living. My mistake.) My sense is that people today don't find Schoenberg, Varese, and Ives to be the height of difficulty anymore. Their place has been completely usurped by Boulez, Cage, and Carter. Bartok, Neoclassical Stravinsky, and Hindemith, on the second tier, have moved down as composers whom some find thorny but few find incomprehensible. As for anything lower, I feel that it is only those for whom common practice music is the only classical music who have much difficulty with most of it.

My reaction to the list was not too dissimilar from Isorhythm's, in that I was slightly surprised by the elevation of Neoclassical Stravinsky and Britten. I would add the placement of Berg on the top tier, as many tend to find Berg's music quite approachable compared to his fellow composers of the Second Viennese School, but this may be only the modern perspective speaking.

What is, unfortunately, all too prevalent today is the persistence of the misconceptions Copland identifies. Unfamiliar harmony is labeled "cacophony" and the melodies present in Carter and Boulez are thought to be not melodies at all. The music is still called "cerebral" and "academic" and "unnatural," even though much of the music earlier called by these epithets (like Mahler!) has since ceased to be such.

If I had to propose a list of music difficulty for the post-WWII era as someone may encounter it today in the concert hall (excepting those composers already mentioned by Copland), it might be as follows:

_Very easy_: Silvestrov, Glass, Pärt, Golijov
_Quite approachable_: late Takemitsu (post-1972), Adams, Gubaidulina, Messiaen, Reich, Harrison
_Fairly difficult_: early Takemitsu (pre-1972), Berio, Dutilleux, Ligeti, Birtwistle
_Very tough_: Boulez, Nono, Carter, Babbitt, Cage, Feldman, Lachenmann, Ferneyhough, Stockhausen

This is just kind of off-the cuff, so others, feel free to disagree!


----------



## Dim7

Boulez, Schoenberg etc. may be "celebral" and "academic". Maybe "more" celebral and academic than most 19th century music, I don't know. Mahler may be celebral and academic compared to Tchaikovsky. But what is certain that Mozart, Bach and Beethoven are academic and celebral compared to anything on the pop charts - and we do not hold that against them.


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## Skilmarilion

Mahlerian said:


> _Very easy_: Silvestrov, Glass, Pärt, Golijov
> _Quite approachable_: late Takemitsu (post-1972), Adams, Gubaidulina, Messiaen, Reich, Harrison
> _Fairly difficult_: early Takemitsu (pre-1972), Berio, Dutilleux, Ligeti, Birtwistle
> _Very tough_: Boulez, Nono, Carter, Babbitt, Cage, Feldman, Lachenmann, Ferneyhough, Stockhausen
> 
> This is just kind of off-the cuff, so others, feel free to disagree!


One issue I have with the Copland article is that placing composers into such categories ends up 'pigeon-holing' the entirety of their music, and it just isn't that simple. Shostakovich was labelled Easy, but then that's not a label that would seem appropriate for say the 4th symphony.

In your listing, Glass and Reich are also Easy / Approchable, but then I would have thought works like Music in 12 Parts or Piano Phase are among the more difficult works to listen to by anyone.


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## violadude

Dim7 said:


> Boulez, Schoenberg etc. may be "celebral" and "academic". Maybe "more" celebral and academic than most 19th century music, I don't know. Mahler may be celebral and academic compared to Tchaikovsky. But what is certain that Mozart, Bach and Beethoven are academic and celebral compared to anything on the pop charts - and we do not hold that against them.


What does that mean though? What does it mean for a composer's music to be cerebral? I don't think it's any particular quality of the music itself, but what the listener reads into it. You can choose to listen for the more cerebral aspect of any composer, or you can choose to listen for the expressive aspect of any composer. Or you can try and pay attention to both at once.


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## Dim7

There's certainly more and less celebral ways of composing. A tune that just comes to you head from nowhere, vs. some highly logical scalar pattern for instance. Though it's not necessarily something a listener can hear and something very "celebrally" composed can be very emotionally expressive at the same time.


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## violadude

Dim7 said:


> There's certainly more and less celebral ways of composing. *A tune that just comes to you head from nowhere, vs. some highly logical scalar pattern for instance*. Though it's not necessarily something a listener can hear and something very "celebrally" composed can be very emotionally expressive at the same time.


I'm not so sure those things are mutually exclusive...

What's a highly logical scalar pattern, anyway?


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## Mahlerian

Dim7 said:


> There's certainly more and less celebral ways of composing. A tune that just comes to you head from nowhere, vs. some highly logical scalar pattern for instance. Though it's not necessarily something a listener can hear and something very "celebrally" composed can be very emotionally expressive at the same time.


Schoenberg was fond of pointing out that many of the things that listeners might expect to be "cerebrally" composed in his music were the result of spontaneous inspiration (some dense contrapuntal passages, for instance), while other melodies took much effort to get just right.


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## Mahlerian

Skilmarilion said:


> One issue I have with the Copland article is that placing composers into such categories ends up 'pigeon-holing' the entirety of their music, and it just isn't that simple. Shostakovich was labelled Easy, but then that's not a label that would seem appropriate for say the 4th symphony.
> 
> In your listing, Glass and Reich are also Easy / Approchable, but then I would have thought works like Music in 12 Parts or Piano Phase are among the more difficult works to listen to by anyone.


I guess I could have mentioned that earlier Glass and Reich would be considered more difficult than their later pieces.

Your other point is also something I agree with, and I think Copland would have as well. In context, he was trying to explain that not all modern music presents the same kinds of challenges, so taking that one step further, it's clear that not all pieces by the same composer are equally challenging as well.

(I'd also note that in 1949, no one in the West had had a chance to see or hear Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony, so Copland could not have been referring to it.)

The other wrinkle, which some have mentioned here, is that challenge is not an intrinsic quality of the music so much as dependent on listener experience.


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## violadude

I think it's an odd distinction to make. A highly logical melody to me would be one that sounded as though every part of the melody lead perfectly into the next part, as if it were driving us in an inevitable direction. But that description also fits melodies that seem the most spontaneous, such as a melody by Mozart.

Is this subject from a Bach Fugue a spontaneous idea that sprang from his head? or a very logically constructed melody?






To me it sounds like it could be both, or either. So the distinction between a cerebral and "artful" melody seems not so stark to me.


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## Nereffid

Skilmarilion said:


> I would have thought works like Music in 12 Parts or Piano Phase are among the more difficult works to listen to by anyone.




There's never going to be anything even remotely close to a consensus on modern music, is there?


----------



## Dim7

violadude said:


> I think it's an odd distinction to make. A highly logical melody to me would be one that sounded as though every part of the melody lead perfectly into the next part, as if it were driving us in an inevitable direction. But that description also fits melodies that seem the most spontaneous, such as a melody by Mozart.
> 
> Is this subject from a Bach Fugue a spontaneous idea that sprang from his head? or a very logically constructed melody?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> To me it sounds like it could be both, or either. So the distinction between a cerebral and "artful" melody seems not so stark to me.


Well as I said it's not something a listener can necessarly hear. Though I'm not a real "composer", I know that in my various musical dabbles I compose sometimes more instinctually and sometimes more intellectually, and also that at other times, these two categories can blur.


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## Woodduck

some guy said:


> *What the record shows is that the attitude towards music changed in the nineteenth century from, simply put, "new is better" to "old is better." What concert programs show is an increasing trend throughout the century to perform old music.* The ratios shifted from 9 to 1 (new music to old) in the 18th century to 1 to 9 (and in some cases 0 to 10) by 1870. The trend is clear, the interpretation maybe not so much. But put the trend together with letters from friends about the difficulties and uglinesses of new music, with critical screeds in books and papers, with subscribers threatening to cancel if any (any) music by a living composer were featured on a concert, and with the testimonies of this or that composer about the difficulties of getting any concert time for new music, and I think maybe you've got yourself a pretty coherent picture, an ugly one, of the kinds of things that supposedly didn't really get going until Schoenberg effed everything up in 1908.
> 
> *I understand that you very much want all that evidence to be mythological*, but the documents will still exist and will continue to tell the same story. It's not the story you want to tell or even to have told, but it's the story that the documents tell. It's not the whole story, obviously. There was constant and persistent resistence to the idea that old music was better. That new music had to prove itself against the old masters (*the whole idea of "old masters" is pretty much a new idea of the nineteenth century*), that probably it wasn't worth it and was best ignored. In spite of that, as you and Ken are fond of pointing out, new music in the nineteenth century flourished and even became the default "classical music" for most twentieth century listeners. That is as much, however (and however much you do not want to acknowledge this part of the situation), attributable to the persistence of composers and performers pushing new music as it is to the so-called characteristics of the music or the ability of listeners to comprehend and even enjoy.
> 
> *The attitude was not monolithic. It was not as strong at the beginning of the century as it was by the end.* It was always being fought, by composers (naturally), by performers, and by the audience members who enjoyed that kind of thing.
> 
> Why, if there were no trend away from new music in the nineteenth century was there the rise--for the first time _in_ that century--of new music ensembles. You only need ensembles dedicated to new music if something has broken down in the ordinary concert programming. And you only get ensembles dedicated to new music in the nineteenth century. If your ordinary concert program is already 9 to 1 for new music to old, you hardly need new music ensembles. In effect, all your ensembles are "new music ensembles." Or, as it would have seemed to them, "music ensembles." Only when "old" becomes a thing, and then a thing to reckon with, and then the only thing worthwhile, do you need to have special ensembles for new music. And that's what happened in the nineteenth century.


You're speaking of "trends," and I (at least) have never denied the existence of the trends you mention. An increased interest in older music in the 19th century was to be expected in light of the fact that older music was for the first time widely known and available for people to be interested in, and of the changes in the constitution of society which gave people the chance to express their interest. The shift in the location and sponsorship of "classical" music activity was evidenced by the growth of public performance ensembles and venues and of music publishing, due to the democratization of society, the shrinking of the aristocracy, and the growth of the middle class. Classical music became, like everything else, a market commodity - and, for better and for worse, Joe Blow got to say what he wanted to listen to and Joe Green (Giuseppe Verdi) had to pay attention.

Music of the past had always been known to musicians, who appreciated and even venerated it. The great composers were aware of what their predecessors had been up to: Mozart and Haydn studied the music of Bach, but until someone like Mendelssohn came along Joe Blow knew only his name, attached to some old hymns he sang in church. Of course Mozart and Haydn knew what they were looking at and were profoundly inspired by the "old music": when Haydn heard a (then rare) performance of the B-minor Mass he said something to the effect that no music he knew could equal it in sublime greatness (Haydn wasn't afraid to use words like "greatness," but I gather that I shouldn't do so here on TC, so I'll just blame Haydn for that quaint value judgment and express no opinion).

The 19th century was therefore the first time when large numbers of people interested in the matter were actually able to hear, and purchase, both new and older music and express their preferences with their pocketbooks (of course there had been public performances, mainly of theatrical works, in the 18th century; we aren't talking about a sudden change in the year 1800). It was the first time when composers did not work within parameters established by the more or less rigid and predictable institutions of the church and the state. And so both composers and public found themselves with a new freedom, but with a mutually dependent and highly ambivalent relationship to one another. Free societies are inherently dynamic; change, innovation and competition become facts of daily life; people are inevitably beset by new options, challenges, uncertainties, insecurities, and restlessness; and conflict and disputation emerge into the public arena, making for a lively public life, and a public cultural life, which couldn't exist under rigid, caste-structured political regimes. We would expect to see a great deal of excited contention breaking out over the merits of this or that new music, including plenty of comparisons to the "old masters." And that's what we do see.

You do acknowledge that the trend toward a preference for older music was a gradual one. I similarly acknowledge that such a trend existed. I'm aware of the heatedness of the debates which characterized the Romantic era, but I'm not sure that you're aware, or willing to concede, that in spite of the trend we both acknowledge, the leading composers of even the late 19th century were highly regarded and had a great deal deal of popular success with their works. The famous failures and scandals which attended the premieres of certain works, even up to and including Stravinsky's _Sacre_ in 1913, were most often due not to the audience's basic incomprehension of the music itself but to transient factors which, no longer pertinent in subsequent performances, did not prevent the music from entering the repertoire soon thereafter.

To sum up, if older music became more and more predominant in orchestra programs and other public performances during the 19th century, that is perfectly predictable given the simple fact that, for the first time, people had a chance to hear it, play it, and enjoy it. This competition may have made it more difficult for new music to get programmed, but in fact new music did get performed and, within a short period of time, most of the Romantic composers whose works we consider basic repertoire had joined the ranks of the "old masters," alongside the 18th-century Classicists who were already there.

Plenty of 20th-century composers are now "old masters" too, their music very popular and much-loved. Plenty of others are not so widely enjoyed, and many inspire bafflement or distaste even in musically experienced listeners, whose feeling that the music is incomprehensible and unsympathetic seems impervious, decade after decade, to assurances that these composers are just carrying forward the classical tradition and that their wide-ranging experiments only need more exposure and more work on the part of listeners to attain the popularity of Mendelssohn or Tchaikovsky. There may be different reasons for this state of affairs, and, not liking such glib and superficial explanations such as "lack of exposure," I think it's worth considering what those reasons might be.

You say in a previous post: _"If you do happen, by accident, I'm sure, to read anything about the nineteenth century, you may find that all the things that made the twentieth century exceptional (exceptionally bad, of course) were already present in the nineteenth. So much so, that it's tempting to see the twentieth century as not only a continuation of the nineteenth but as distinctly a redo (having learned none of the lessons, you see) of that tortured and tattered century."_ I, on the contrary, while seeing the continuities between the periods, see great changes taking place and significant differences between the societies and cultures Robert Schumann and William Schuman grew up in. I don't know what worthwhile objective is achieved by denying and obscuring those differences.


----------



## Woodduck

violadude said:


> Gee I'm glad I work for months on my music just to have it called gimmicky and desperate.
> 
> And then you turn around and whine about how composers are hostile toward audiences. Give me a break.
> 
> You want to say the audience is a victim of crappy music? I say that composers are the victims of willfully ignorant audiences, AS EVIDENCED BY THIS THREAD, where just the mere mention of learning something about modernist music so that it clears up some confusion or misconception is met with vague comparisons to Hitler or someone similar.
> 
> Well, if some punk-*** teenager was talking about Beethoven the same ignorant way some of you talk about modernist music, you'd want to educate them too. But I guess it's okay when guys do it. Because it's okay if you're snobs when it comes to the rest of classical music, but suddenly you're the big every man populist when it comes to modernist classical music.
> 
> In one breath you guys say "Well classical music takes time to listen to and to learn about in order to fully appreciate it" but in the next you say "Don't teach me anything about modernist music or I'll go on a tirade about how pretentious you are. I'm not going to put any time into listening to that if I don't like it right away".
> 
> The double standards are truly amazing.


To whom is this post addressed? Who here is saying these things? Who has called your music gimmicky and desperate? Who here even knows your music? Who has said that audiences are victims of crappy music, or victims of any music? Who has mentioned Hitler or anyone similar? Who cares about educating punk teenagers? Who are you calling snobs or populists? Who's refusing to learn anything about modernist music? Double standards? Might not double vision be in the eyes of the seer and not in the thing seen?

If you can't answer these questions, maybe some of the modernist claque who "like" such wild accusations can.


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## KenOC

I think the mention of Hitler was due to my modest proposal for musical re-education camps. But Hitler had no re-education camps that I know of; the reference was to Chairman Mao.

And of course I never suggested that violadude was anything like Hitler or Mao. But I didn't deny it either! :lol:


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## SeptimalTritone

Last post from me.

I really do think that prejudice and misinformation and faulty expectations deny the possibility of a fair listening experience. It denied me the chance to hear Schoenberg the first time I heard it, where I mindlessly trashed it as too dissonant to express anything soulful. It denied me to experience the more freer forms of Boulez, where I trashed it as iceman, stoic, and static. It denied me Webern, where I trashed it as so perfect, crystalline, and zen that a commoner like me could never enjoy it. It denied me Cage, where I thought Water Walk was a joke. It denied me Varese, where I trashed Ameriques and Poeme Electronique as pointlessly disjunct.

But through patient listening and guidance from folks at TC, I now view Schoenberg as extremely singing and colorfully poetic, Boulez as the synthesis of the energetic mind and the spiritual mind, Webern as highly personal, Cage as friendly and sometimes wittily communicative (like in water walk), and Varese, best of all, as intimate and sensitive to the most human degree of thought.

It's true: misinformation, prejudice, preconceptions, and ideas like "Darmstadt school music is primarily for academicians" will draw any listener away from the music, and so we need to tell the beginner, "no, that isn't right!"

So please do not say that us modernists are trying to re-educate the commoner plebians into appreciating what they should be appreciating, for it's not my position (and highly, highly, highly unfair to claim that it is, in fact, my position). I just think that music appreciation classes, concert programming, internet resources, and introductory books really need to look more critically into modern music in order not to turn people off what could potentially be a great experience for them. And what happens to the popularity of Lachenmann afterwards is a mere by-product. I suspect it would increase greatly, you suspect it wouldn't increase much, but I really don't think that's a major point regardless.


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## violadude

Woodduck said:


> To whom is this post addressed? Who here is saying these things? Who has called your music gimmicky and desperate? Who here even knows your music? Who has said that audiences are victims of crappy music, or victims of any music? Who has mentioned Hitler or anyone similar? Who cares about educating punk teenagers? Who are you calling snobs or populists? Who's refusing to learn anything about modernist music? Double standards? Might not double vision be in the eyes of the seer and not in the thing seen?
> 
> If you can't answer these questions, maybe some of the modernist claque who "like" such wild accusations can.


I didn't address it to anyone in particular. I'm yelling into the anti-modernist ether.


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## millionrainbows

The "elephant in the room" that goes unrecognized, unsmelled, is that the general audience of humanity is largely rabble. They would rather sit their behinds down in football stadiums. Classical music was originally written for the power structure: the Church, then royalty and the upper class.

Then with the rise of a middle class of merchants with money, a larger popular audience was created which wanted to see art and opera and musicals and be entertained. There was still the aspiring pretense of having a piano in your home, and aspiring to be educated and erudite, and there still is.

The masses need to be educated; promoting good quality music will always be a struggle, because stupidity and ignorance will always seek their own level. Instead of blaming this disparity on the music, or on the composer, blame it on humanity itself, which will always seek the lowest possible comfort level: a ham sandwich, a beer, a football game, and for females, watching the Kardashians on reality TV.


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## KenOC

millionrainbows said:


> ...the general audience of humanity is largely rabble.


Current company excepted, one sincerely hopes.

BTW when I was young we had a piano in our home because my mother liked to play it, and so did some friends and relatives when they visited. But I'm glad you set me straight that it was just "aspiring pretense."


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## millionrainbows

KenOC said:


> Current company excepted, one sincerely hopes.
> 
> BTW when I was young we had a piano in our home because my mother liked to play it, and so did some friends and relatives when they visited. But I'm glad you set me straight that it was just "aspiring pretense."


I'm glad my mother played Beethoven on the piano, too, and exposed me to it, but the original motivation was an effort to educate herself and become cultured, and aspire to something higher. Otherwise, we are rabble. That's what all art and good music is supposed to do, to make us better, more civilized beings.

That includes Beethoven as well as Boulez. It's all part of the same tendency. Music, or composers, are not the point. Our human motivations are much more illuminating.

Crudblud is closest to seeing what's really going on. He did not mention, though, that we have access to opera on DVD! That is amazing! We are exposed to so much banality, and at the same time, have chances like this!

We can be "royalty" and kings, or we can succuumb to the banality of reality TV. I dislike sports, as well.

The "problem" is not "out there," but the problem is us.

Who ever likes any kind of music that manages to rise above the lowest levels of mediocrity, fine. We should be grateful.


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## tdc

millionrainbows said:


> The "elephant in the room" that goes unrecognized, unsmelled, is that the general audience of humanity is largely rabble. They would rather sit their behinds down in football stadiums. Classical music was originally written for the power structure: the Church, then royalty and the upper class.
> 
> Then with the rise of a middle class of merchants with money, a larger popular audience was created which wanted to see art and opera and musicals and be entertained. There was still the aspiring pretense of having a piano in your home, and aspiring to be educated and erudite, and there still is.
> 
> The masses need to be educated; promoting good quality music will always be a struggle, because stupidity and ignorance will always seek their own level. Instead of blaming this disparity on the music, or on the composer, blame it on humanity itself, which will always seek the lowest possible comfort level: a ham sandwich, a beer, a football game, and for females, watching the Kardashians on reality TV.


While there is some truth to this, the "elites" of society must take a certain amount of blame for doing their best to encourage such behavior. How much money by the wealthy is pumped into promoting things like football, and reality shows? A lot.

So to a certain extent if an idiotic society occurs it is indicative of an idiotic "elite".


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## millionrainbows

tdc said:


> While there is some truth to this, the "elites" of society must take a certain amount of blame for doing their best to encourage such behavior. How much money by the wealthy is pumped into promoting things like football, and reality shows? A lot.
> 
> So to a certain extent if an idiotic society occurs it is indicative of an idiotic "elite".


That is a distortion. Pure power does not make an elite. These are power merchants.

To truly aspire was once at the top of the power structure: the Church wanted, and could afford, the best artists and music; then the kings could. Education was valued. Art was valued.

Now, money is valued above all, and money and power go hand in hand.

_*WE*_ are the elite, ladies and gentlemen! _We_ are the ones who aspire, who listen to Beethoven and Schoenberg, the greatest music of Western civilization.

We are monks; we are religious adherents. We are a cloistered elite, the "Holy Two Percent." We are the outsiders. And we will aspire.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> The masses need to be educated; promoting good quality music will always be a struggle, because stupidity and ignorance will always seek their own level. Instead of blaming this disparity on the music, or on the composer, blame it on humanity itself, which will always seek the lowest possible comfort level: a ham sandwich, a beer, a football game, and for females, watching the Kardashians on reality TV.
> 
> To truly aspire was once at the top of the power structure: the Church wanted, and could afford, the best artists and music; then the kings could. Education was valued. Art was valued.
> 
> Now, money is valued above all, and money and power go hand in hand.
> 
> _*WE*_* are the elite, ladies and gentlemen! *_*We*_* are the ones who aspire, who listen to Beethoven and Schoenberg, the greatest music of Western civilization.*
> 
> We are monks; we are religious adherents. We are a cloistered elite, the "Holy Two Percent." We are the outsiders. And we will aspire.


At last, a thought to which we all, modernists and antimodernists alike, can assent.

*We are the elite!*

Let that be our ham sandwich, beer, and football game (but, please, not the Kardashians).


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## Bulldog

It looks like the 'blame game' is in full force - listeners, concert goers, composers, the rabble and even the whole of humanity. I think it's all bull. There's nobody to blame for anything. I have a pretty good life, and most of you appear to be in the same category. 

You want traditional classical music? It's all around you. Modernist music is your thing? As someguy has often said, it's easy to find that also. What isn't in abundance on TC is a full respect for the musical preferences of others, but maybe I'm wrong on this one. Seems that the only members not showing full respect are the most vocal members.


----------



## Woodduck

Bulldog said:


> It looks like the 'blame game' is in full force - listeners, concert goers, composers, the rabble and even the whole of humanity. I think it's all bull. There's nobody to blame for anything. I have a pretty good life, and most of you appear to be in the same category.
> 
> You want traditional classical music? It's all around you. Modernist music is your thing? As someguy has often said, it's easy to find that also. What isn't in abundance on TC is a full respect for the musical preferences of others, but maybe I'm wrong on this one. Seems that the only members not showing full respect are the most vocal members.


You do know you're doing some blaming here...? 

I don't think that pointing out problems in culture, seeking the causes in human thought and behavior, and suggesting ways in which changes in thought and behavior might change the outlook on those problems, is necessarily about "blame" - a word with a distinctly moralistic connotation. Those are the things Mr. Copland does in his essay, and the rest of us have been responding to what we think he's saying, and expressing our own takes on the things he's talking about. I think that's a fine thing to do, and I don't think the attempt to determine who has done or said or what to contribute to the way things are is bull.

As for not respecting other people's preferences in music, what does that mean exactly? If no one has said "you have lousy taste in music" or "that composer you like wrote trash" or "modern music is a fraud" (and no one has said any of those things on this thread), where is the disrespect? And who are the vocal members who are supposed to be showing it?

I have seen (may I say received?) some disrespectfully worded posts, but the disrespect seems directed not at tastes in music but at the expression of ideas and opinions deemed uncomfortable or disagreeable. Now that's something that may actually be worthy of blame.

But best not to get too worked up about it. Yes, my life is pretty good too.


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## KenOC

This whole thread is just wrangling over a first-world problem.


----------



## Guest

mmsbls said:


> I agree that regular members do not "set out unequivocally and unambiguously, the position" Ken attributes. But statements along those lines certainly exist.


I haven't seen them in this thread and it becomes an almost impossible task to focus on discussing the Copland article if every opinion ever expressed pro or con is dragged into the discussion.

If there is to be any move forward to "a place where everyone's views are treated a bit more kindly", then accumulated baggage needs to be left behind. If, for example, the exchanges between Woodduck and I, or Ken and I are to have any impact on our differing positions, then any earlier disputes would need to be set aside.


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## Nereffid

KenOC said:


> This whole thread is just wrangling over a first-world problem.


And most of the first world isn't even aware of the "problem", either.
Hell, I'm in this thread, and I say there's no problem!


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## Headphone Hermit

Mahlerian said:


> The other wrinkle, which some have mentioned here, is that challenge is not an intrinsic quality of the music so much as dependent on listener experience.


... but above all, it seems dependent on the attitude of the listener, perhaps?


----------



## Headphone Hermit

millionrainbows said:


> The "elephant in the room" .....
> 
> .... promoting good quality music will always be a struggle, because stupidity and ignorance will always seek their own level.


I know plenty of intelligent people who dislike classical music .... and I have come across a fair number of people who like classical music who have the intellect of a hamster


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## Headphone Hermit

Woodduck said:


> As for not respecting other people's preferences in music, what does that mean exactly? If no one has said "you have lousy taste in music" or "*that composer you like wrote trash*" or "modern music is a fraud" (and no one has said any of those things on this thread), where is the disrespect? And who are the vocal members who are supposed to be showing it?


I've just responded to two active TC members who seem to jump at every chance to say Berlioz' music is boring (and who seem to have nothing to contribute to a real discussion of his music). There seem too be plenty who throw insults at other members' tastes and preferences


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## millionrainbows

Headphone Hermit said:


> I know plenty of intelligent people who dislike classical music .... and I have come across a fair number of people who like classical music who have the intellect of a hamster


There's always an exception, isn't there. It's a good thing I'm just generalizing, and not creating axioms.
My point to take away from this whole debacle would be that "we are all on the same side here." But that's no fun, is it?


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## Woodduck

Headphone Hermit said:


> I've just responded to two active TC members who seem to jump at every chance to say Berlioz' music is boring (and who seem to have nothing to contribute to a real discussion of his music). There seem too be plenty who throw insults at other members' tastes and preferences


I think "plenty" overstates the case. There's no doubt that there are a few who can't tell the difference between offering an opinion to make a point and taking gratuitous aim at others' pleasures. Fortunately they tend not to be capable of participating in deeper discussion and do little harm.

Of course there are also those who seem to relish feeling attacked.


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## Mahlerian

Headphone Hermit said:


> ... but above all, it seems dependent on the attitude of the listener, perhaps?


I'd say that plays a role, but it's certainly not a factor above experience.


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## Headphone Hermit

Woodduck said:


> I think "plenty" overstates the case.


Yes, on reflection, their garrulousness can give the impression of greater abundance :tiphat:


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> I think "plenty" overstates the case. There's no doubt that there are a few who can't tell the difference between offering an opinion to make a point and taking gratuitous aim at others' pleasures. Fortunately they tend not to be capable of participating in deeper discussion and do little harm (though one of your two members has occasionally proved an exception to that - but we won't say who it is ).
> 
> Of course there are also those who seem to relish feeling attacked.


That pretty much neutralizes that issue. The ones who attack are stupid but harmless (there is one smart one), and the rest are masochists.


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## Marschallin Blair

millionrainbows said:


> The "elephant in the room" that goes unrecognized, unsmelled, is that the general audience of humanity is largely rabble. They would rather sit their behinds down in football stadiums. Classical music was originally written for the power structure: the Church, then royalty and the upper class.
> 
> Then with the rise of a middle class of merchants with money, a larger popular audience was created which wanted to see art and opera and musicals and be entertained. There was still the aspiring pretense of having a piano in your home, and aspiring to be educated and erudite, and there still is.
> 
> The masses need to be educated; promoting good quality music will always be a struggle, because stupidity and ignorance will always seek their own level. Instead of blaming this disparity on the music, or on the composer, blame it on humanity itself, which will always seek the lowest possible comfort level: a ham sandwich, a beer, a football game, and for females, watching the Kardashians on reality TV.


"The masses need to be educated?" -according to whose reason? By which rationality? Professor Robert Greenberg's? Lenin's? Yours?

Market and Internet freedom always provide an elegant reply to such authoritarian assumptions.

Individuals can think, see, hear, choose, learn, and spend for themselves.

That is to say, unless of course the 'soon-to-be-recently-deceased' Moses 'Pierre Boulez' gets his way and burns down all the opera houses. . .










. . . or ""Cultural Revolutionaries"" get their way and outlaw all beauty.










- But don't worry, 'million.' It won't happen on the Marsch's watch. _;D_


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## Piwikiwi

KenOC said:


> This whole thread is just wrangling over a first-world problem.


I live in the first world; all my problems are first world problems.


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## Guest

Marschallin Blair said:


> the 'soon-to-be-recently-deceased' Moses 'Pierre Boulez'


Well, I gotta say, I have not missed comments like this.


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## Guest

millionrainbows said:


> and for females, watching the Kardashians on reality TV.


An 'interesting' take on the needs/habits of females.


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## Nereffid

MacLeod said:


> An 'interesting' take on the needs/habits of females.


Oh, great, more of your "attitude" about women.


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## Guest

Nereffid said:


> Oh, great, more of your "attitude" about women.


I know....I'm sorry...I just can't help myself.

I did wonder whether it also said something about attitudes to men: Kardashians are not for them (nor is the ball game for the females).

But I'm sure that, like the 'elephant in the room', the 'tongue was in the cheek'.


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## Marschallin Blair

some guy said:


> Well, I gotta say, I have not missed comments like this.


But did you miss the one about Boulez saying that he'd like to burn down opera houses?

_;D_


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## Nereffid

Marschallin Blair said:


> But did you miss the one about Boulez saying that he'd like to burn down opera houses?
> 
> _;D_


SPIEGEL: M. Boulez, do you think you would be able to realize your modern musical theatre in our highly conventional opera houses? 
BOULEZ: Quite certainly not. That brings us to another reason why there is no modern opera today. The new German opera houses certainly look very modern - from outside ; inside they have remained extremely oldfashioned. Only with the greatest difficulty can one present modern operas in a theatre in which, predominantly, repertory pieces are played. It is really unthinkable. The most expensive solution would be to blow the opera houses up. But don't you think that would also be the most elegant? 
SPIEGEL: But, since no administrator is going to follow your suggestion ... 
BOULEZ: Then one can play the usual repertory in the existing opera houses, Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, up to about Berg. For new operas, experimental stages absolutely need to be incorporated. This apparently senseless demand has already been widely realized in other branches of the theatre.
SPIEGEL: This would also diminish the financial risk which every opera administrator has to run when he puts on a contemporary opera. 
BOULEZ: Yes, the burden of having to present a 'successful' opera in every case - one which attracts the public - would happily be removed. And on a small stage of that kind one could risk all kinds of things, whilst the big opera houses continue to exist as museums.

http://opera.archive.netcopy.co.uk/article/june-1968/10/opera-houses-blow-them-up-


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## Guest

Nereffid said:


> SPIEGEL: M. Boulez, do you think you would be able to realize your modern musical theatre in our highly conventional opera houses?
> BOULEZ: Quite certainly not. That brings us to another reason why there is no modern opera today. The new German opera houses certainly look very modern - from outside ; inside they have remained extremely oldfashioned. Only with the greatest difficulty can one present modern operas in a theatre in which, predominantly, repertory pieces are played. It is really unthinkable. The most expensive solution would be to blow the opera houses up. But don't you think that would also be the most elegant?
> SPIEGEL: But, since no administrator is going to follow your suggestion ...
> BOULEZ: Then one can play the usual repertory in the existing opera houses, Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, up to about Berg. For new operas, experimental stages absolutely need to be incorporated. This apparently senseless demand has already been widely realized in other branches of the theatre.
> SPIEGEL: This would also diminish the financial risk which every opera administrator has to run when he puts on a contemporary opera.
> BOULEZ: Yes, the burden of having to present a 'successful' opera in every case - one which attracts the public - would happily be removed. And on a small stage of that kind one could risk all kinds of things, whilst the big opera houses continue to exist as museums.
> 
> http://opera.archive.netcopy.co.uk/article/june-1968/10/opera-houses-blow-them-up-


I'm reminded of Banksy's comment that a museum is a bad place to look at art.


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## Guest

KenOC said:


> Are you suggesting "*educational concerts*" *to increase appreciation of newer music*? Do you realize that's the first even quasi-practical suggestion put forward in this thread?


Well, Boulez has being doing that for years. Here's one:


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## Guest

Nereffid said:


> Oh, great, more of your "attitude" about women.


Wait a tick. Wasn't it "oh, great, more of million's attitude about women," first?

First things first.


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## Nereffid

some guy said:


> Wait a tick. Wasn't it "oh, great, more of million's attitude about women," first?
> 
> First things first.


It's an in-joke whose origins you must have missed; don't worry about it.


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## Richannes Wrahms

TalkingHead said:


> Well, Boulez has being doing that for years. Here's one:


He also did very successful 'rug concerts' for young people. who apparently find Webern very erotic


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## GreenMamba

KenOC said:


> This whole thread is just wrangling over a first-world problem.





Piwikiwi said:


> I live in the first world; all my problems are first world problems.


Indeed, griping about hearing first world problems is the ultimate first world problem.


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