# Listening Intelligently to Atonal Music



## millionrainbows

For the example, this CD is a good overview of three degrees:



The Roger Sessions quartet, from 1951, is an example of chromatic thinking in a thematic way. There is an opening theme stated in the beginning, which is repeated in fugue-like fashion. The lines are melodic, and have a long enough flow to them to be recognized as melodic themes. The music holds together and has long-form unity due to these linear themes. Don't listen for tonality, though; there is none. The harmonic aggregates we hear are not derived harmonically, and serve only to color and embellish the thematic elements. Rhythmically, the quartet is rather 'normal,' and there are no surprises.

The next, Stephan Wolpe's String Quartet from 1969, is an example of 'pseudo-thematic' writing. The lines are more angular, and contain greater leaps. This demonstrates more of a a 'disregard' for melodic unity and flow, and shows more allegiance to pitch as a more abstract idea. The lines are drawn from a tone-row, and are less 'thematic' than Sessions. It's a harder-edged approach, which shows a desire to be more objective about the material.

With Babbitt's String Quartet No. 4, we have entered a world of fragmentation. No longer are there thematic considerations; the material seems fragmented, and only 2 to 4-note 'entities' are perceived. This makes it seem more motivic, as if we are microscopically zooming-in on the separate elements of the row. It is further fragmented by the way Babbitt uses sustained bowed notes mixed with pizzicato notes. If there are long lines, they still seem fragmented by this technique. The rhythm is more random, less flowing, less recognizable as phrasing.

As in all atonal and chromatic music, don't listen for tonality. We take for granted how much of our listening is assuming this tonal reference. With this music, you have to consciously and willfully let all of that go. The net result is that, instead of the built-in tonal unity one is used to hearing is replaced by a moment-to-moment acceptance of whatever harmonic consequences are presented to us. Sounds are just sounds, except these are pitched and harmonic, not simply 'sound' as such. Thus, more than electronic music, we have to listen 'musically' to this, and appreciate its reference, however tenuous, to our normal tonal fare. The experience is worthwhile, with many rewards, once you master this way of listening.


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## Barbebleu

Good luck with the crusade Million. You're determined to make us like atonal music by hook or by crook aren't you. Well it's not going to work. You can't persuade people by continually throwing up posts like this. You either hear it or you don't and no amount of so-called "intelligent" - BTW a bit patronising I think - listening is going to change that. I have heard all three of the pieces you refer to and my critical opinion is 1. Ho hum, 2. Ho ho, 3 Ha Ha, you're having a laugh.


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## millionrainbows

Barbebleu said:


> Good luck with the crusade Million. You're determined to make us like atonal music by hook or by crook aren't you. Well it's not going to work. You can't persuade people by continually throwing up posts like this.


No, I don't want anyone to like or dislike it, but simply listen to it correctly.



Barbebleu said:


> You either hear it or you don't and no amount of so-called "intelligent" - BTW a bit patronising I think - listening is going to change that.


One either "hears it" and comprehends it, or one is not listening correctly.

Tonality is 'easy listening' because it is sensually based: it uses harmony, and sonance of vibrations, which is apprehended directly via the ears. Listeners of serial music must give up this way of crass, physical, sensual listening, and use the mind and intelligence moreso (but not exclusively) than simply visceral listening. This is what I mean by "intelligent" listening.

The linear mode must be brought to the fore, in order to have a continuous, long-range experience of large form. The "sensual" harmonic realm no longer serves this function, and becomes short-term color experience.



Barbebleu said:


> I have heard all three of the pieces you refer to and my critical opinion is 1. Ho hum, 2. Ho ho, 3 Ha Ha, you're having a laugh.


These men (Sessions, Wolpe, and Babbitt) are all established and respected composers.


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## Johnnie Burgess

Just because they are respected does not mean I can not dislike their music and no amount of insulting for not like them will change my views. And if you do not like my views I do not care.


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## Barbebleu

Million. Can I assume then that by listening "intelligently" or "correctly" to all music one then "hears" it and "comprehends" it? So by your own logic then there is no music you don't like. I really have a hard time "comprehending" that. What I find condescending is your continual assumption that because a lot of us don't like the music you like, our minds are clearly inferior to yours because we don't listen correctly. Time to wake up friend. I'll put my intellect against anyone's any day of the week and I don't appreciate being told otherwise. Music is, or should be, an emotional experience and doesn't always need intelligent or correct listening. You pursue your goals musically Million, and leave us lesser mortals to our less rarified way of listening.


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## KenOC

MR, I greatly appreciate your efforts. But I am only capable of listening stupidly. It's an evolutionary sort of thing, I'm told.


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## millionrainbows

Johnnie Burgess said:


> Just because they are respected does not mean I can not dislike their music and no amount of insulting for not like them will change my views. And if you do not like my views I do not care.


That's fine, you are entitled to an opinion. It's a two-way street, though, and you can just walk away. My OP was just a demonstration of what I do, not a sermon.


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## millionrainbows

Barbebleu said:


> Million. Can I assume then that by listening "intelligently" or "correctly" to all music one then "hears" it and "comprehends" it? So by your own logic then there is no music you don't like. I really have a hard time "comprehending" that.


No, there is definitely music I do not like, but I usually don't talk about that. It's not fun to talk about those things I don't like.



Barbebleu said:


> What I find condescending is your continual assumption that because a lot of us don't like the music you like, our minds are clearly inferior to yours because we don't listen correctly.


That is in part due to the fact that serial music is usually stereotyped as "that music."
It is also due, I think, to being under-informed as to the nature of the music, and bringing old, outdated paradigms to a new music which demands more. It's not that your minds are "inferior," but that your knowledge is lacking.



Barbebleu said:


> Time to wake up friend. I'll put my intellect against anyone's any day of the week and I don't appreciate being told otherwise.


OK, but you either develop a productive, meaningful engagement with modern music, or you don't. You either listen "correctly" or not. This has nothing to do with intellect, but with engagement on a substantial level. Like anything that is complex, this must be learned.



Barbebleu said:


> Music is, or should be, an emotional experience and doesn't always need intelligent or correct listening. You pursue your goals musically Million, and leave us lesser mortals to our less rarified way of listening.


Music doesn't have to be emotional. Who said it did?


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## millionrainbows

KenOC said:


> MR, I greatly appreciate your efforts. But I am only capable of listening stupidly. It's an evolutionary sort of thing, I'm told.


You either develop a productive, meaningful engagement with modern music, or you don't. You either listen "correctly" or not. This has nothing to do with intellect, but with engagement on a substantial level. Like anything that is complex, this must be learned. This is similar to "doing your homework."

But if I did imply stupidity, then by all means, milk it for all it's worth, and make it seem like arrogance. :lol:


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## Vox Gabrieli

Theodore W. Adorno once said that the radical openness of atonality was "expression of unmitigated suffering,
bound by no convention whatsoever" and as such "often hostile to culture" and "containing
elements of barbarism." 

You cannot approach listening to it as you would a tonal piece, you need to make an attempt to understand the message the composer is bringing across.

Schoenberg's abandonment of tonality coincides with the abandonment of perspective in painting by Picasso
and Kandinsky a year later, beginning with the fourth movement String Quartet in F# Minor ( fittingly a soprano singing ' I breathe air from new planets ' ) But with such a negative gesture in our contemporary culture, Schoenberg found himself cast into a public void. It was too much of a threat and a challenge to find any acceptance in today's culture.

Schoenberg's THEORY OF HARMONY summed up the old system well: "It has always been the referring of all results to a center, to an emanating point..... Tonality does not serve. On the contrary, it demands to be served." 

Adorno referred to Schoenberg's music as the reflection of a broken and empty world, evoking a reply from Milan Rankovic that "Such a reflection cannot be loved because it reproduces the same emptiness in the spirit of the listener." 

What we should all take from this is not to flinch whenever we may hear 'modern music'. I'm not really taking anybodies side here, just trying to add something to the discussion.


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## millionrainbows

Gabriel Ortiz said:


> Theodore W. Adorno once said that the radical openness of atonality was "expression of unmitigated suffering,
> bound by no convention whatsoever" and as such "often hostile to culture" and "containing
> elements of barbarism."
> 
> You cannot approach listening to it as you would a tonal piece, you need to make an attempt to understand the message the composer is bringing across.
> 
> Schoenberg's abandonment of tonality coincides with the abandonment of perspective in painting by Picasso
> and Kandinsky a year later, beginning with the fourth movement String Quartet in F# Minor ( fittingly a soprano singing ' I breathe air from new planets ' ) But with such a negative gesture in our contemporary culture, Schoenberg found himself cast into a public void. It was too much of a threat and a challenge to find any acceptance in today's culture.
> 
> Schoenberg's THEORY OF HARMONY summed up the old system well: "It has always been the referring of all results to a center, to an emanating point..... Tonality does not serve. On the contrary, it demands to be served."
> 
> Adorno referred to Schoenberg's music as the reflection of a broken and empty world, evoking a reply from Milan Rankovic that "Such a reflection cannot be loved because it reproduces the same emptiness in the spirit of the listener."
> 
> What we should all take from this is not to flinch whenever we may hear 'modern music'. I'm not really taking anybodies side here, just trying to add something to the discussion.


Those are some interesting and valid points, Gabriel, and I will respond.

The abandonment of perspective is a formal element, like the abandonment of tonality. Whatever other meanings, social or philosophical, we wish to place on that is purely conjecture, but this is art, not science, so let's continue.

I have often made the claim that "tonality is God," meaning that tonality represents the Western paradigm of Christianity, with God "emanating" at the center of gravity, and all things relate to him.

Perhaps with the unfolding of the 20th century, with the technological horrors of WWI, and perhaps Schoenberg's increasing awareness of "who he was" in the scheme of things (after seeing Mahler ousted from Germany), perhaps he saw the whole thing as a scam. Yes, perhaps it was an indictment of the Western paradigm of tonality and all the rest of it.

My little demonstration of how I listen was an attempt to remain objective, and not bring in any extra-musical elements or musings, most of which would be rejected or discounted as ramblings.

Perhaps my "way in" to this music was indeed based initially on a more primary emotional and philosophical perspective; "hostile to culture", born of "suffering" and trauma, "emptiness," and a "refusal to serve" the big agenda.

I am reminded of Barraque.


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## arpeggio

MR, I commend your efforts but you are wasting your time. There are members who do not want to be told that music they hate may have merit.


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## millionrainbows

arpeggio said:


> Above are more examples of people who think that if they do not like something it must be bad.


But surely you must see, Bassoon, how hard it is to be objective. If food tastes bitter, we spit it out. That's hard-wired into us as animals. It is only later on, after we have suffered, that we gain an appreciation for the bitter.

 arugula

Hops


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## arpeggio

millionrainbows said:


> But surely you must see, Bassoon, how hard it is to be objective. If food tastes bitter, we spit it out. That's hard-wired into us as animals. It is only later on, after we have suffered, that we gain an appreciation for the bitter.
> 
> arugula
> 
> Hops


After reading it I had problems with my original so I changed it.


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## Vox Gabrieli

Barbebleu said:


> Good luck with the crusade Million. You're determined to make us like atonal music by hook or by crook aren't you. Well it's not going to work. You can't persuade people by continually throwing up posts like this. You either hear it or you don't and no amount of so-called "intelligent" - BTW a bit patronising I think - listening is going to change that. I have heard all three of the pieces you refer to and my critical opinion is 1. Ho hum, 2. Ho ho, 3 Ha Ha, you're having a laugh.


Unfortunetly I cannot agree with any of the points you are making in this post.



Barbebleu said:


> You're determined to make us like atonal music by hook or by crook aren't you.


A funny line, but irrelevant to this thread. MR is trying to spread awareness to people who are ignorant of the fact that other music exists, and in being ignorant, you don't do much justice to anybody.



Barbebleu said:


> You either hear it or you don't and no amount of so-called "intelligent" listening is going to change that.


This is blatently false, and you have no evidence to support this, therefore it cannot be a respected point of view. As people of the Twenty-First Century, the layman develops an ear for listening to music. One cannot start his repertoire with the _1812 Overture_, and then immediately to _Victims Of Hiroshima_. Aaron Copland stresses this point strongly in his unambigously named _How To listen To Music_.

The general audience that demands we do not change our music is the reason that will kill music. The evidence for pessimistic evaluation exists all around us. Performer themselves will subject to lessening enthusiasm from the audience, and can make careers only by concentration on the old and avoiding the new.

Levarie and Levy's MUSIC MORPHOLOGY (1983), proceeded from the philosophical thesis that "Chaos is 
non-being" to the political stance that "The revolt against tonality... is an egalitarian revolution."

Is it so absurd to think that the change of music is essential to the development of classical music? Why would we kill what we love? Would you disown your child if he were not to follow the same career that you currently follow? Of course not! You love and support it. In your ignorance, you will let music slowly dilapidate and wither before you listen to a piece that isn't your fancy.

People often flinch when hearing a piece is 'modern'. Why don't we all be smarter listeners and do some justice to music?


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## Vox Gabrieli

arpeggio said:


> MR, I commend your efforts but you are wasting your time. There are members who do not want to be told that music they hate may have merit.


I agree with this, but I do think that this is something worth arguing about. Perhaps - even if it is just a few of us - some of us can learn something from this discussion.


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## JAS

Please do continue these kinds of threads, in spite of the inevitable arguing. The fact that I don't appreciate the music itself does not mean that I have no interest in it as a cultural phenomenon.


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## Vox Gabrieli

millionrainbows said:


> I have often made the claim that "tonality is God," meaning that tonality represents the Western paradigm of Christianity, with God "emanating" at the center of gravity, and all things relate to him.


In a world of religion and ideology, music is seldom seen as a religion in itself, especially as of the late 20th and early 21st Century. But why not? It was Schopenhauser who wrote in _The World as Will and Idea_:

"Music...since it passes over the ideas, is entirely independent of the phenomenal world, ignores it altogether, could to a certain extent exist if there were no world at all, which cannot be said of the other arts... music is thus by no means like the other arts, the copy of the Ideas, but the _copy of the Will itself_ This is why the effect of music is so much more powerful and penetrating than the other arts, for they speak only of shadows, but it speaks of the thing itself.

I'm going to begin an anecdote related to my claim as music being a religion.

in 1875, Cosima, the most recent wife of composer Richard Wagner, wrote: " The only possible church nowadays, Richard says today, is music, with Beethoven as the high priest". Wagner was a great admirer of Beethoven and considered him his only equal. It was not just that Wagner felt, as he said when announcing his descision to write_ Parsifal_, that "At makes religion eternal." Rather it seemed to Wagner that he in himself has superseded dogmatic religion, which is now disdained as a sop to the ignorant.

Of course, i'm not saying he is right, there is an obvious sense of megalomania, and his wife literally regarded him as a god.

Wagner wrote in a proud boast: "When I write my treatise on the philosophy of music, chirch and state will be abolished."

Wagner's family was dubbed "_ The Holy Family of Bayreuth_ " unsuprisingly.


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## Vox Gabrieli

To add to my previous point, the world has of course changed. Music, which succeeded religion for many as the cultivated medium of self-transcendence and salcation had itself been replaced, first by science and perhaps now by popular culture. Now it is merely considered a pleasure justified by its contrubution to the quality of our leisure.

From Samuel Lipman's _Music After Modernism_:

" _The decline in the public image of serious music can only reinforce our present tendency to see the Romantic century as a sacred era... All were engaged in a higher religious enterprise; a very few as prophets and saviours, and a vast cultivated multitude of followrs. The results were, by common consent, immortal. So the problem for musicians in out time is both simple and difficult: after the old testament, what room is there for new? _"


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## Vox Gabrieli

JAS said:


> Please do continue these kinds of threads, in spite of the inevitable arguing. The fact that I don't appreciate the music itself does not mean that I have no interest in it as a cultural phenomenon.


Why can we not have the pleasure to argue? We should be celebrating our different opinions! I don't want to live in a world where everyone gets along pretty well, and generally likes eachother! :tiphat:


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## Barbebleu

Gabriel Ortiz said:


> I don't want to live in a world where everyone gets along pretty well, and generally likes eachother! :tiphat:


I doubt that those who live in war zones have the same thought.


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## millionrainbows

Excellent posts, Gabriel Ortiz! Apparently you have done some reading…and have an artistic sensibility as well. This is nice, to have an apparently European sensibility in the forum, as opposed to what I assume are mainly crude Americans. Americans like to blow stuff up, it seems. :lol:


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## Barbebleu

Gabriel Ortiz said:


> Unfortunetly I cannot agree with any of the points you are making in this post.
> 
> A funny line, but irrelevant to this thread. MR is trying to spread awareness to people who are ignorant of the fact that other music exists, and in being ignorant, you don't do much justice to anybody.
> 
> This is blatently false, and you have no evidence to support this, therefore it cannot be a respected point of view. As people of the Twenty-First Century, the layman develops an ear for listening to music. One cannot start his repertoire with the _1812 Overture_, and then immediately to _Victims Of Hiroshima_. Aaron Copland stresses this point strongly in his unambigously named _How To listen To Music_.
> 
> The general audience that demands we do not change our music is the reason that will kill music. The evidence for pessimistic evaluation exists all around us. Performer themselves will subject to lessening enthusiasm from the audience, and can make careers only by concentration on the old and avoiding the new.
> 
> Levarie and Levy's MUSIC MORPHOLOGY (1983), proceeded from the philosophical thesis that "Chaos is
> non-being" to the political stance that "The revolt against tonality... is an egalitarian revolution."
> 
> Is it so absurd to think that the change of music is essential to the development of classical music? Why would we kill what we love? Would you disown your child if he were not to follow the same career that you currently follow? Of course not! You love and support it. In your ignorance, you will let music slowly dilapidate and wither before you listen to a piece that isn't your fancy.
> 
> People often flinch when hearing a piece is 'modern'. Why don't we all be smarter listeners and do some justice to music?


Ah, Gabriel, I think you are confusing me with someone who cares about what other people think. I know exactly what MR is saying and I merely disagree with what he postulates. I'm perfectly happy to listen to modern, a strange term in itself, music but I am not compelled to like it all. All that music has to do for me is to make me notice it and enjoy it. Sometimes I notice it but, goodness me, I don't enjoy it, but more often than not it fulfills both of my meagre criteria and I'm a happy bunny. I never flinch when I hear "modern" music but nor do I go overboard and think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread and tell those who who can't hear what I am hearing that they are musical dunces and aren't trying hard enough to understand what they are listening to. And to top it all off you have made me end a sentence with a preposition. Aargh! A plague on all music written after 2000!


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## Vox Gabrieli

millionrainbows said:


> Excellent posts, Gabriel Ortiz! Apparently you have done some reading…and have an artistic sensibility as well. This is nice, to have an apparently European sensibility in the forum, as opposed to what I assume are mainly crude Americans. Americans like to blow stuff up, it seems. :lol:


Hey, appreciate the good vibes! I'm actually American. :tiphat:


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## Vox Gabrieli

Gabriel Ortiz said:


> Why can we not have the pleasure to argue? We should be celebrating our different opinions! I don't want to live in a world where everyone gets along pretty well, and generally likes eachother! :tiphat:


Edit: After re-reading your post, I realized my response wasn't properly thought out. I apologize.


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## Vox Gabrieli

Barbebleu said:


> Ah, Gabriel, I think you are confusing me with someone who cares about what other people think. I know exactly what MR is saying and I merely disagree with what he postulates.


This is not the same as your previous opinion.



Barbebleu said:


> Sometimes I notice it but, goodness me, I don't enjoy it, but more often than not it fulfills both of my meager criteria and I'm a happy bunny.


This is perfectly plausible, but your earlier opinion was less thought out than this!

I think i've argued my point enough, so i'll take my leave of this thread, unless a new discussion malforms the previous one.. :tiphat:


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## Phil loves classical

millionrainbows said:


> For the example, this CD is a good overview of three degrees:
> 
> 
> 
> The Roger Sessions quartet, from 1951, is an example of chromatic thinking in a thematic way. There is an opening theme stated in the beginning, which is repeated in fugue-like fashion. The lines are melodic, and have a long enough flow to them to be recognized as melodic themes. The music holds together and has long-form unity due to these linear themes. Don't listen for tonality, though; there is none. The harmonic aggregates we hear are not derived harmonically, and serve only to color and embellish the thematic elements. Rhythmically, the quartet is rather 'normal,' and there are no surprises.
> 
> The next, Stephan Wolpe's String Quartet from 1969, is an example of 'pseudo-thematic' writing. The lines are more angular, and contain greater leaps. This demonstrates more of a a 'disregard' for melodic unity and flow, and shows more allegiance to pitch as a more abstract idea. The lines are drawn from a tone-row, and are less 'thematic' than Sessions. It's a harder-edged approach, which shows a desire to be more objective about the material.
> 
> With Babbitt's String Quartet No. 4, we have entered a world of fragmentation. No longer are there thematic considerations; the material seems fragmented, and only 2 to 4-note 'entities' are perceived. This makes it seem more motivic, as if we are microscopically zooming-in on the separate elements of the row. It is further fragmented by the way Babbitt uses sustained bowed notes mixed with pizzicato notes. If there are long lines, they still seem fragmented by this technique. The rhythm is more random, less flowing, less recognizable as phrasing.
> 
> As in all atonal and chromatic music, don't listen for tonality. We take for granted how much of our listening is assuming this tonal reference. With this music, you have to consciously and willfully let all of that go. The net result is that, instead of the built-in tonal unity one is used to hearing is replaced by a moment-to-moment acceptance of whatever harmonic consequences are presented to us. Sounds are just sounds, except these are pitched and harmonic, not simply 'sound' as such. Thus, more than electronic music, we have to listen 'musically' to this, and appreciate its reference, however tenuous, to our normal tonal fare. The experience is worthwhile, with many rewards, once you master this way of listening.


I think you did a brilliant job of describing the Sessions. With Stefan Wolpe's (any relation to the group Steppanwolf? ), I would say there is still a strong melody that is carried over different parts, with the others accompanying check out this video:






With the Babbitt's it is the most free of the 3. But I wouldn't say it is fragmented. The whole flow of the music have irregular rhythms with bumps along the way, and spans over all the parts, but still keeps moving forward. I might describe it like the interplay of different currents flowing in a river that widens and narrows. I would say the Wolpe's is more fragmented, and the melody stops, and a new one starts.

BTW, I do agree with you there is a right way to listen to atonal, at least as the composer intended. Liking it is a different matter. For someone who says they don't like atonal, there are 2 possibilities: that they are just not listening to it the "right" way, or that they are, but just don't like it .


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## Guest

arpeggio said:


> MR, I commend your efforts but you are wasting your time. There are members who do not want to be told that music they hate may have merit.


What I see in those who have replied to MR's OP is not 'hate', merely a rejection of MR's position that if you don't get it, you can't be listening intelligently or correctly.


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## eugeneonagain

I'm a frequent listener of modern/atonal/serial music, but the Sessions quartet is one of the pieces I really cannot abide. It's appallingly repetitive and completely insipid. His quintet from 1958 is also a miserable, squealing affair. I think he is just not to my taste.

The Wolpe quartet is much more rewarding and interesting. The textures are good, though the harmonies are a bit thin in the first movement. The second is better (though they sound rather alike being in the same key!).

To be honest I don't really try and talk about listening to this sort of music. It's better just to listen. It has an unfortunate tendency to cause people to start talking in a pseudo-philosophical way in an attempt to express what is felt. Anyone claiming not to _feel_ this music and to just be approaching it 'objectively' is totally failing to listen to it and is most likely a charlatan.


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## EdwardBast

millionrainbows said:


> *As in all atonal and chromatic music, don't listen for tonality.* We take for granted how much of our listening is assuming this tonal reference. With this music, you have to consciously and willfully let all of that go. The net result is that, instead of the built-in tonal unity one is used to hearing is replaced by a moment-to-moment acceptance of whatever harmonic consequences are presented to us. Sounds are just sounds, except these are pitched and harmonic, not simply 'sound' as such. Thus, more than electronic music, we have to listen 'musically' to this, and appreciate its reference, however tenuous, to our normal tonal fare. The experience is worthwhile, with many rewards, once you master this way of listening.


As respondents to your threads have pointed out numerous times, this is just wrong. Much tonal music is highly chromatic. As for the rest, you've told us we shouldn't expect tonality when we listen to atonal music , sounds are just sounds except when they aren't , and when listening to music it helps to listen musically. And somehow these revelations are supposed to make mediocre works by mediocre composers more palatable? Good luck with that.


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## BabyGiraffe

Let the music speak for itself.
Pseudophilosophical ramblings about the qualities of modern art music can't convince anyone.
It is sad when reading about certain kind of music is more interesting than listening to it.


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## JAS

EdwardBast said:


> As respondents to your threads have pointed out numerous times, this is just wrong. Much tonal music is highly chromatic. As for the rest, you've told us we shouldn't expect tonality when we listen to atonal music , sounds are just sounds except when they aren't , and when listening to music it helps to listen musically. And somehow these revelations are supposed to make mediocre works by mediocre composers more palatable? Good luck with that.


And I would be interested in knowing what exactly are these many worthwhile rewards that have been promised.


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## EdwardBast

JAS said:


> And I would be interested in knowing what exactly are these many worthwhile rewards that have been promised.


For the record, when I wrote "mediocre works by mediocre composers, " I was referring to the specific examples in the OP, not to atonal music generally. The rewards of different works, tonal and atonal, are various and varied and can't really be addressed as a homogeneous class.


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## JAS

EdwardBast said:


> For the record, when I wrote "mediocre works by mediocre composers, " I was referring to the specific examples in the OP, not to atonal music generally. The rewards of different works, tonal and atonal, are various and varied and can't really be addressed as a homogeneous class.


I actually assumed that, especially based on your posts elsewhere that suggested that you like some/much of that kind of thing. Really, my question about the rewards would not require an exhaustive reply, but at least something more tangible than what was stated, and at least one or two examples of anything more than what I am getting now without having to turn my world upside down and expend the concentrated effort to "listen properly" that is apparently being demanded. (And, of course, although I quoted your response, it is a question better directed at MR.)


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## StlukesguildOhio

MR- You either listen "correctly" or not.

What exactly is the "correct" way to listen to music? 

Tonality is 'easy listening' because it is sensually based: it uses harmony, and sonance of vibrations, which is apprehended directly via the ears. Listeners of serial music must give up this way of crass, physical, sensual listening, and use the mind and intelligence...

And one wonders why some might take your post as being just a slight bit pretentious. :lol:


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## fluteman

millionrainbows said:


> No, I don't want anyone to like or dislike it, but simply listen to it correctly.
> 
> One either "hears it" and comprehends it, or one is not listening correctly.
> 
> Tonality is 'easy listening' because it is sensually based: it uses harmony, and sonance of vibrations, which is apprehended directly via the ears. Listeners of serial music must give up this way of crass, physical, sensual listening, and use the mind and intelligence moreso (but not exclusively) than simply visceral listening. This is what I mean by "intelligent" listening.
> 
> The linear mode must be brought to the fore, in order to have a continuous, long-range experience of large form. The "sensual" harmonic realm no longer serves this function, and becomes short-term color experience.
> 
> These men (Sessions, Wolpe, and Babbitt) are all established and respected composers.


This post saddens me, and not because it is so far off the mark (in my opinion). I have long very much been an enthusiast of the music of the Second Viennese School, Edgard Varese, Elliott Carter, Pierre Boulez, Gyorgy Ligeti, certain works of Cage, Stockhausen, Feldman, etc., and other members of the 20th-century avant-garde. But despite your tireless efforts, a post like this can only harden hostile attitudes about all of this music and a disinclination to investigate it to the extent you and I think it deserves. In other words, you are doing the opposite of what you claim to be trying to do.

Music has, or can have, a number of elements other than harmony, however that term is defined, all of which can appeal to us on a basic emotional or visceral level. And even where it is very much present, "harmony" need not mean traditional western harmony as it developed and existed from 1400 to 1900. True, any form of music that abandons or even just makes lesser use of traditional western harmony takes getting used to, maybe a lot of getting used to. But that does not mean it requires more "intelligent" or "correct" listening than traditional western music.

Traditional Japanese koto or Indian sitar music will sound strange and wrong to our western ears, in large part because they use non-western systems of harmony, and there are other basic and important differences as well. It sounds right to audiences in Japan or India, not because they are listening intellectually or correctly, but simply because their ears are accustomed to it.

And that is all that is needed with avant-garde music.


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## millionrainbows

*As in all atonal and chromatic music, don't listen for tonality.*



EdwardBast said:


> As respondents to your threads have pointed out numerous times, this is just wrong. *Much tonal music is highly chromatic.*


By "chromatic" in these pieces, I mean the constant circulation of all 12 notes, and overall macro-structure derived from this.


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## millionrainbows

fluteman said:


> ...even where it is very much present, "harmony" need not mean traditional western harmony as it developed and existed from 1400 to 1900 (roughly). True, any form of music that abandons or even just makes lesser use of traditional western harmony takes some getting used to, maybe a lot of getting used to. But that does not mean it requires more "intelligent" or "correct" listening as a rule than traditional western music.


If harmony is not used as a large-form reference to tonality, as in chord qualities, functions, and progressions leading to a tonal goal, then it is "free" or "atonal" in nature (I hesitate to call it 'harmony' for clarity's sake). If "clusters" of notes are non-functional, then this takes a different way of listening, like listening to the "chords" in a Schoenberg 12-tone piece, or more easily, the "chord happenings" in Messiaen which have no function or goal, but just "stand" there as aural objects.



fluteman said:


> Traditional Japanese koto or Indian sitar music will sound strange and wrong to our western ears, in large part because they use non-western systems of harmony, and there are other basic and important differences as well. It sounds right to audiences in Japan or India, not because they are listening intellectually or correctly, but simply because their ears are accustomed to it.


I disagree; these are basic forms of general tonality. Just because they have no "harmony," as in chord function or progression, does not mean they are not tone-centric musics.



fluteman said:


> And that is all that is happening with avant-garde music. It sounds wrong at first because it profoundly changes some of the longtime basic assumptions or foundations underlying western music, and we aren't used to that. But there is nothing inevitable about those assumptions or foundations. Of course, not all experiments in abandoning those basic foundations will be entirely or even partly successful. But the process itself is hugely liberating and refreshing, and opens up all manner of new possibilities to explore. All it takes is getting your ears accustomed to new sounds, which is not an intellectual exercise.


I disagree with this as being incorrect. When avant-garde music is not harmonically structured, then it takes a new way of listening.

Since serial and set-based music is based on ordered as well as unordered sets of pitches, it can create "cells" of motives and harmonic cells, but these do not have the overall macro-relations built in, as tonality does. It is very difficult to derive a set-based "tonality" from this kind of material, and even when this is achieved (as in George Perle), it is still difficult to hear.


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## BabyGiraffe

If you check the tuning and scales of the koto and sitar music, you will notice that it's using the same basic intervals as Western music, but even purer up to 5-limit just intonation. If you find anything wrong with them, the problem is in you. Music based on higher harmonics like the traditional African and Middle Eastern can sound wrong to the untrained ear, because the higher you go, the more distorted the intervals become. But even these warped sounds make more sense than the "atonal" system. You can can't escape from C. Each other note is generated as a ratio from it and the different tonalities are just harmonics of the harmonics. The whole premise for atonality is impossible, so these composers try to hide the tonal quality of their work by constantly changing the timbre, tempo, pitch sets, rhythm, form...


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## fluteman

I'm sorry but not surprised I couldn't convince you, millionrainbows. I'm curious: Have you ever stepped on stage in a concert hall and performed music by any of these composers? Not that it makes me superior in any way, but I have. That may account for some of the difference in our attitudes about listening to music and ear training.


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## millionrainbows

BabyGiraffe said:


> Let the music speak for itself.
> Pseudophilosophical ramblings about the qualities of modern art music can't convince anyone.
> It is sad when reading about certain kind of music is more interesting than listening to it.


I wasn't "Pseudophilosphical" in my opening post. I was objective.


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## millionrainbows

BabyGiraffe said:


> If you check the tuning and scales of the koto and sitar music, you will notice that it's using the same basic intervals as Western music, but even purer up to 5-limit just intonation. If you find anything wrong with them, the problem is in you. Music based on higher harmonics like the traditional African and Middle Eastern can sound wrong to the untrained ear, because the higher you go, the more distorted the intervals become. But even these warped sounds make more sense than the "atonal" system. You can can't escape from C. Each other note is generated as a ratio from it and the different tonalities are just harmonics of the harmonics. *The whole premise for atonality is impossible, so these composers try to hide the tonal quality of their work by constantly changing the timbre, tempo, pitch sets, rhythm, form...*


I largely agree, to the extent that most folk music is tonal. Tonality is just a "model" of harmonics relating to a fundamental tone.

I disagree when you say "The whole premise for atonality is impossible, so these composers try to hide the tonal quality of their work by constantly changing the timbre, tempo, pitch sets, rhythm, form…"

Atonality, serialism, and set theory just use _different means_ of deriving structure and unity. Admittedly, it is not as "integrated" as tonality is, and is not as apparent to the ear.


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## fluteman

BabyGiraffe said:


> The whole premise for atonality is impossible, so these composers try to hide the tonal quality of their work by constantly changing the timbre, tempo, pitch sets, rhythm, form...


I like that articulate post, but you refute your own premise at the very end. Timbre, tempo, pitch sets, rhythm and form (and some others) are precisely the basic musical elements that atonal composers force one to listen to much more directly and intimately once conventional harmony is removed, although many modern composers do not abandon tonality entirely, just deemphasize it a bit in relation to these other elements. 
And your comment that our western ears have grown used to less "pure" equal tempered scales, only supports my point. There is nothing natural or inevitable about that, and getting used to and accepting other scales is not an intellectual exercise..


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## Phil loves classical

millionrainbows said:


> If harmony is not used as a large-form reference to tonality, as in chord qualities, functions, and progressions leading to a tonal goal, then it is "free" or "atonal" in nature (I hesitate to call it 'harmony' for clarity's sake). If "clusters" of notes are non-functional, then this takes a different way of listening, like listening to the "chords" in a Schoenberg 12-tone piece, or more easily, the "chord happenings" in Messiaen which have no function or goal, but just "stand" there as aural objects.
> 
> I disagree; these are basic forms of general tonality. Just because they have no "harmony," as in chord function or progression, does not mean they are not tone-centric musics.
> 
> I disagree with this as being incorrect. When avant-garde music is not harmonically structured, then it takes a new way of listening.
> 
> Since serial and set-based music is based on ordered as well as unordered sets of pitches, it can create "cells" of motives and harmonic cells, but these do not have the overall macro-relations built in, as tonality does. It is very difficult to derive a set-based "tonality" from this kind of material, and even when this is achieved (as in George Perle), it is still difficult to hear.


I believe you're on the right track MR. You are trying to explain the differences, and going from listening with tonality to atonality. I think the use of your words "listening intelligently" is the sticking point. Maybe using "listening in a more meaningful way" is better.


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## BabyGiraffe

fluteman said:


> I like that articulate post, but you refute your own premise at the very end. Timbre, tempo, pitch sets, rhythm and form (and some others) are precisely the basic musical elements that atonal composers force one to listen to much more directly and intimately once conventional harmony is removed, although many modern composers do not abandon tonality entirely, just deemphasize it a bit in relation to these other elements.
> And your comment that our western ears have grown used to less "pure" equal tempered scales, only supports my point. There is nothing natural or inevitable about that, and getting used to and accepting other scales is not an intellectual exercise..


Well, 12 tone equal tempered is pretty useful for the composers. Performers don't actually play in equal temperament just like they don't play quantized beats. (The only exception is the pop/electronic music, but this is because of technological limitations).
I think that the whole atonal movement was pretty useful for the theoretical side of the music and analysis. The music itself sounds stillborn and is detrimental for the future of Western art music. Most of the young generation is alienated from the serious concert music and is more inclined to listen to orchestral instruments only in the movie halls (these days it's usually some kind of ostinato trance based sound pioneered by H. Zimmer).
I'm not against atonal music, it's pretty useful, if you are into composing dark or horror music, I've studied some scores from Penderecki, Lutoslawski, Varese and some others to learn more about creatinging certain sound effects, but in no way the whole combined oeuvre of the 21st century artsy noise makers comes close to the Baroque and Classical genius.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_Constraints_on_Compositional_Systems


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## fluteman

BabyGiraffe said:


> Well, 12 tone equal tempered is pretty useful for the composers. Performers don't actually play in equal temperament just like they don't play quantized beats. (The only exception is the pop/electronic music, but this is because of technological limitations).
> I think that the whole atonal movement was pretty useful for the theoretical side of the music and analysis. The music itself sounds stillborn and is detrimental for the future of Western art music. Most of the young generation is alienated from the serious concert music and is more inclined to listen to orchestral instruments only in the movie halls (these days it's usually some kind of ostinato trance based sound pioneered by H. Zimmer).
> I'm not against atonal music, it's pretty useful, if you are into composing dark or horror music, I've studied some scores from Penderecki, Lutoslawski, Varese and some others to learn more about creatinging certain sound effects, but in no way the whole combined oeuvre of the 21st century artsy noise makers comes close to the Baroque and Classical genius.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_Constraints_on_Compositional_Systems


Some interesting observations there, but again you refute yourself. "Deterimental for the future of Western art music"? That's quite a sweeping generalization, as well as quite a presumption of your ability to predict the future. You then quickly refute yourself with your comment about "movie halls" and your interesting observation, "it's pretty useful, if you are composing dark or horror music ...." So although you think yourself quaified to decide what is "serious" music and what isn't, you concede that modern music, including music with atonal elements, has had a major impact on popular culture, at least with the "young generation."
Where do you think our cultural development comes from, BabyGiraffe? Not from academics and intellectuals who study Edgard Varese, John Cage or Philip Glass, but from young generations who champion the Beatles, or Frank Zappa, or Radiohead, or TV and Movies, all of which have been greatly influenced by the modernists. Including the dark and horror movies you mention. Modern angst, don't you know.


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## millionrainbows

Atonal music is just music. Like art, look at it, listen to it, accept it for what it is.


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## Guest

I view atonality the same way I view dada. Dada was anti-art in that it rejected formal conceptions and the very idea of a"masterpiece." Consequently, although rejected as silly and pretentious by "art lovers" it had far more impact on modern society than art ever could. Dada's rejections of norms covered not only painting but music, film, sculpture and politics. It gave birth to surrealism, abstract expressionism and performance art. When you see people in the streets protesting and carrying signs you may not know that came out of dadaism but it did. Horror movies and scores are in part the result of dadaism (also the Grand Guignol Theater where they put on bloody Victorian snuff plays). Metal, punk, noise and related music all came out of dada (punk was really a continuation of it). Music and noise acts as Bauhaus, Merzbow, Cabaret Voltaire, and Zurich 1916 all hark back to dada or one its direct outgrowths.

Atonalism has kind of done the same to music. By freeing us from the formal conceptions of music theory and harmony, we are able to approach the very concept of music in a new way. The idea that music can only be listened to in a traditional way is--quite frankly--silly and stupid and if anyone feels insulted by that, sorry, but I don't care. That's the very death of music when you can't get anything new out of it. Beethoven is great but Beethoven isn't everything.

Art has to be reborn every 20 years or so. It's inevitable and must be accepted. While I do love Bach, for example, he is dated. his music belongs to a certain era. Really, you can't understand Bach at all if you don't understand the milieu he sprang from. But atonal music is timeless because it can't be dated. It's always there to wipe the slate clean so something new can happen. It's the lightning that strikes the old growth forest and burns it away so new growth occurs. We need that. You don't hate the lightning, you celebrate it and the ecosphere has evolved to depend on it. The musical ecosphere has evolved to accept atonality. It's only a few who understand it and celebrate it and it is they from whom the new ideas hatch and grow and these change the culture very profoundly. Everyone else is a burned out husk whose only purpose is to be consumed by the flames of innovation. So even they serve a purpose so I suppose they can take satisfaction in that.


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## fluteman

What a well-written and thoughtful post, Victor Redseal. I've tried to say many of those things, but you put it beautifully. While one can assign a blanket "I don't like it" to Dadaism, cubism, abstract expressionism, serialism, minimalism, theater of the absurd, "stream of consciousness" prose a la James Joyce, etc., etc., those movements have had a direct, persistent, long term impact on our art and culture. Like some wild and wacky ancestor in the family tree, they're in our blood, and there's no purging them.


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## JAS

Victor Redseal said:


> Art has to be reborn every 20 years or so. It's inevitable and must be accepted.


Would you really suggest that post-romanticism "rejected" romanticism, or romanticism "rejected" the classical era, or the classical era "rejected" baroque? Atonality seems to me a _far_ more radical change than in previous periods, even if you compare the beginning and ending points without considering the intermediary forms. And there is a strange contradiction in which atonality wants to define its own rules but also claim itself as the rightful heir to the established legacy. That seems to me highly problematic.


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## fluteman

JAS said:


> Would you really suggest that post-romanticism "rejected" romanticism, or romanticism "rejected" the classical era, or the classical era "rejected" baroque? Atonality seems to me a _far_ more radical change than in previous periods, even if you compare the beginning and ending points without considering the intermediary forms. And there is a strange contradiction in which atonality wants to define its own rules but also claim itself as the rightful heir to the established legacy. That seems to me highly problematic.


At the risk of oversimplifying, I would respond to each of your statements in your first two sentences: Yes; Yes; Yes; No. In every era, people think their own artistic subversives and revolutionaries are far more outrageous, dangerous and wrong-minded than the subversives and revolutionaries of past eras. But I agree with you that in art as in politics, revolutionaries often claim they are the rightful heirs to the throne, and there is something contradictory about that.


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## Woodduck

Victor Redseal said:


> *Art has to be reborn every 20 years or so.* It's inevitable and must be accepted. While I do love *Bach,* for example, *he is dated.* his music belongs to a certain era. Really, *you can't understand Bach at all if you don't understand the milieu he sprang from.* *But atonal music is timeless because it can't be dated.* *It's always there to wipe the slate clean so something new can happen. * We need that. *It's only a few who understand it* and celebrate it and it is they from whom the new ideas hatch and grow and *these change the culture very profoundly.* *Everyone else is a burned out husk* whose only purpose is to be consumed by the flames of innovation.


Berlioz's opium-eater can't compare with these wild fantasies.

Support them, please.


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## fluteman

Woodduck said:


> Berlioz's opium-eater can't compare with these wild fantasies.
> 
> Support them, please.


Funny! You're right, of course. Pretty much every trend in western music, and western art movements generally since at least the Renaissance, can be dated. Dadaism, cubism, abstract expressionism, serialism, minimalism, theater of the absurd, "stream of consciousness" prose a la James Joyce, etc., etc., are not timeless at all, in fact they are all dated as can be. these artistic movements are now fodder for the cultural historians and museums. They can't be "rejected" any more than the light bulb of Edison, the elevator of Otis or the air conditioner of Carrier. They happened, and are now part of our heritage.


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## Guest

JAS said:


> Would you really suggest that post-romanticism "rejected" romanticism, or romanticism "rejected" the classical era, or the classical era "rejected" baroque?


I would say yes. The music was changing and the old expression wasn't adequate anymore. For instance, when motets were popular you had these voices singing that contrasted harmonically at points. It's very cool sounding. But then orchestras started to get larger and that kind of contrast didn't work so they went to blocks of chords--tutti, I guess it's called. The contrasts, as nice as they sounded, were rejected because there was no place for them in larger orchestras.



> Atonality seems to me a _far_ more radical change than in previous periods, even if you compare the beginning and ending points without considering the intermediary forms.


Yes, but that happened in stages too. The piano sounds beautiful to us today but maybe not so beautiful to the people of Bach's time who were used to hearing beautiful major third intervals or truly perfect fifths. The old harpsichords have wolves hidden in them because certain intervals were tuned exactly. The piano has no wolf because every note is detuned exactly the same. To Bach, perhaps, this might have sounded terribly out of tune, noise. But we're used to it now. So to sound atonal, it obviously has to be more extreme than a piano. In Bach's day, the piano may not have sounded pretty to those people but look at the cultural impact it left on the world. Far more pervasive than the harpsichord. And I LOVE harpsichord music!



> And there is a strange contradiction in which atonality wants to define its own rules but also claim itself as the rightful heir to the established legacy. That seems to me highly problematic.


Maybe not. Someday it WILL be the heir and a new hitherto unknown form of atonalism is going to rise up to challenge and eventually overthrow it. That's the beauty of music--unknown but precious gift lie ahead at every turn and we'll never guess what they are until we get there.


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## isorhythm

This thread makes me miss the days when we weren't allowed to say "atonal."


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## Guest

Woodduck said:


> Berlioz's opium-eater can't compare with these wild fantasies.
> 
> Support them, please.


As far as I am concerned, I don't need to support them because they are self-evident. Others may disagree but, frankly, I don't care if they do.


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## BabyGiraffe

Dada and the other -ism movements have grand ideas and poor execution. The end result is parody.
Do you know how many people can compose semi-decent atonal music? Probably most of the media composers working commercially.
Do you know how many people can write melodies in the league of Mozart or counterpoint in the league of Bach? I suspect that they are not that many.
12 tone melodies don't have to horrible. There is a decent one in the Harry Potter movies - John William's Hedwig's theme.


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## Bettina

BabyGiraffe said:


> Dada and the other -ism movements have grand ideas and poor execution. The end result is parody.
> Do you know how many people can compose semi-decent atonal music? Probably most of the media composers working commercially.
> Do you know how many people can write melodies in the league of Mozart or counterpoint in the league of Bach? I suspect that they are not that many.
> 12 tone melodies don't have to horrible. *There is a decent one in the Harry Potter movies - John William's Hedwig's theme.*


Huh? How is Hedwig's Theme a 12-tone piece? It's not particularly chromatic, and it doesn't seem to use any tone rows. In the beginning of the theme, the second note is the tonic pitch, and then that same note returns a few beats later. That kind of repetition would never occur in a 12-tone melody!


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## Guest

BabyGiraffe said:


> Dada and the other -ism movements have grand ideas and poor execution. The end result is parody.
> Do you know how many people can compose semi-decent atonal music? Probably most of the media composers working commercially.
> Do you know how many people can write melodies in the league of Mozart or counterpoint in the league of Bach? I suspect that they are not that many.
> 12 tone melodies don't have to horrible. There is a decent one in the Harry Potter movies - John William's Hedwig's theme.


You're also missing the point that wasn't about talent, it was about the ability to affect change. As I said, dada did away with concepts as "masterpiece" and perhaps the same is true of atonalism. I can't use a lot of the ideas of Beethoven or Mozart because I'm not musically astute enough to be frank. But I can hear things in atonalism that I can make use of and these may, in turn, inspire someone else. I wouldn't want my music put on a shelf to be admired as the summit of what be achieved. There is no summit or, more properly, make your own summit. Who cares what someone is doing?


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## BabyGiraffe

All 12 pitches are used in the melody. 12 pitches = 12 tone melody. I didn't say atonal. It actually has two tonics, if my analysis is correct. Why don't you transcribe or check the score? The melodic voice leading is so smooth that it doesn't feel like a chromatic melody.
The whole never repeat the row rule I won't comment - I think that Webern is the only composer consistently sticks to it.


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## fluteman

BabyGiraffe said:


> Dada and the other -ism movements have grand ideas and poor execution.


Yet another interesting comment from you, thanks for it. I agree, major new ideas and mediocre execution often go together. But the ideas are what count in the long run.


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## fluteman

BabyGiraffe said:


> All 12 pitches are used in the melody. 12 pitches = 12 tone melody. I didn't say atonal. It actually has two tonics, if my analysis is correct. Why don't you transcribe or check the score? The melodic voice leading is so smooth that it doesn't feel like a chromatic melody.
> The whole never repeat the row rule I won't comment - I think that Webern is the only composer consistently sticks to it.


My daughter, still a big Harry Potter fan to this day, loved Hedwig's theme and would play it over and over on the piano. Of course, John Williams knows a thing or two about modern music. His theme from Jaws is an adaptation of the Sacrificial Dance from Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, as I suspect you know very well.


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## Woodduck

fluteman said:


> Funny! You're right, of course. Pretty much every trend in western music, and western art movements generally since at least the Renaissance, can be dated. Dadaism, cubism, abstract expressionism, serialism, minimalism, theater of the absurd, "stream of consciousness" prose a la James Joyce, etc., etc., are not timeless at all, in fact they are all dated as can be. these artistic movements are now fodder for the cultural historians and museums. They can't be "rejected" any more than the light bulb of Edison, the elevator of Otis or the air conditioner of Carrier. They happened, and are now part of our heritage.


"Dated" isn't the same thing as "can be dated." "Dated" is a term of disparagement: "dated" means "outmoded" or "old-fashioned," and we apply it to art of earlier times, or art in old styles, which has lost some of its its power because its sensibility is now alien to us. Our sense of "datedness" is subjective; what's dated to you may not be dated to me. The degree of datedness we attribute to music is one of the markers we use in judging its quality: great art goes on speaking to us through time, while mediocre art makes us wonder what all the fuss was about.


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## Woodduck

Victor Redseal said:


> *Art has to be reborn every 20 years or so.
> *
> While I do love Bach, for example, *he is dated*. His music *belongs to a certain era.* Really, *you can't understand Bach at all if you don't understand the milieu he sprang from.
> *
> But atonal music is *timeless because it can't be dated. *
> 
> By freeing us from the formal conceptions of music theory and harmony, *we are able to approach the very concept of music in a new way.* The idea that music can only be listened to in a traditional way is--quite frankly--silly and stupid...
> 
> *It's only a few who understand it* and celebrate it and it is they from whom the new ideas hatch and grow and *these change the culture very profoundly.* *Everyone else is a burned out husk *whose only purpose is to be consumed by the flames of innovation.
> 
> As far as I am concerned, *I don't need to support [these statements] because they are self-evident.* Others may disagree but, frankly, I don't care if they do.


None of these statements is self-evident. In fact, none of them is true.

Art changes continuously and unpredictably. 20 is not a magic number.

Bach is not "dated" unless you feel he is. "Datedness" does not mean "of a certain era" (see my last post here). There is much - probably everything important - that can be understood about Bach's music whether or not we know anything about his life and times. That's why we still listen to him.

"Atonal music" is no more "timeless" than any other music. There is no such thing as "atonal music" as such, but only individual works of music without tonality. Some atonal works may strike us as "dated," while others may not. There are reams of atonal compositions cranked out by mid-20th-century composers which positively reek of a musical subculture which fancied itself important in its time but now feels relevant to virtually no one.

Atonality is not unique in asking us to hear and understand new things (assuming that's what you mean by "listening in a new way"). There's great, and challenging, diversity within music identifiable as tonal.

Your portrait of the "few who understand" atonal music yet "change the culture profoundly" is vivid and heroic, but in the larger scheme of things and the greater span of time, tonality (broadly defined) appears to have retained its hold. If we really want to examine what is "profound," we might try to understand why so much tonal music from ages past has been so enthusiastically revived and recorded in our time. It appears that "burned-out husks" have a limitless appetite for it.


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## fluteman

Woodduck said:


> "Dated" isn't the same thing as "can be dated." "Dated" is a term of disparagement: "dated" means "outmoded" or "old-fashioned," and we apply it to art of earlier times, or art in old styles, which has lost some of its its power because its sensibility is now alien to us. Our sense of "datedness" is subjective; what's dated to you may not be dated to me. The degree of datedness we attribute to music is one of the markers we use in judging its quality: great art goes on speaking to us through time, while mediocre art makes us wonder what all the fuss was about.


Ahh, but all art, even the greatest art, loses some of its power over time because its sensibility becomes more alien to us, unless we make the effort to familiarize ourselves with the sensibility of the earlier time. In college I took a course on Chaucer, and we were taught not only to read Middle English but to hear it and speak it ourselves. We also learned about Chaucer's cultural, social and political world (he was an important English politician). All of that was essential in appreciating the scope of his achievement, especially but not solely in the Canterbury Tales. If you were Irish and lived in Dublin in 1904, a lot of the material in James Joyce's encyclopedic Ulysses wouldn't require explanation, but it does for most of us now. The same principle applies to Dante's Divine Comedy. (I took courses in Joyce and Dante too.) 
In the case of revolutionaries like Joyce, or Beckett, or Picasso, or Kandinsky, or Webern, or Varese, I would argue that calling them "dated" isn't being disparaging. Shakespeare is dated. Leonardo da Vinci is dated. John Dunstable is dated. These are all historical figures who were very much a product of a specific time and place that in many ways is alien to us now, but who have had a significant, lasting impact on western culture. It is really too late to disparage them, their contemporaries would have had to do that (and did, in many cases). Their place in our cultural history and the impact of their historic revolutions is established and undeniable.


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## millionrainbows

Instead of picking someone's statements apart, I would just let it be and realize the they are just a vigorous exponent of modernism, or traditionalism, or whatever. Now we are sliding into generalism.

Instead, listen to this short, two-minute clip of the music of American master Harvey Sollberger:






Consisting of flute, piano, and cello, listen to the texture as it is "handed off" from instrument to instrument. Note the varied techniques in the flute. The music is mostly isolated events, with much harmonic density, so the effect is open and airy. The instruments seem to be engaging in a playful dialogue, like birds playing.

Go ahead and listen to the rest of it; it is delightful music.

Sollberger is a flutist. When he relocated to New York, he formed The Group for Contemporary Music with pianist/composer Charles Wuorinen.


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## Woodduck

fluteman said:


> Ahh, but all art, even the greatest art, loses some of its power over time because its sensibility becomes more alien to us, unless we make the effort to familiarize ourselves with the sensibility of the earlier time. In college I took a course on Chaucer, and we were taught not only to read Middle English but to hear it and speak it ourselves. We also learned about Chaucer's cultural, social and political world (he was an important English politician). All of that was essential in appreciating the scope of his achievement, especially but not solely in the Canterbury Tales. If you were Irish and lived in Dublin in 1904, a lot of the material in James Joyce's encyclopedic Ulysses wouldn't require explanation, but it does for most of us now. The same principle applies to Dante's Divine Comedy. (I took courses in Joyce and Dante too.)
> In the case of revolutionaries like Joyce, or Beckett, or Picasso, or Kandinsky, or Webern, or Varese, I would argue that calling them "dated" isn't being disparaging. Shakespeare is dated. Leonardo da Vinci is dated. John Dunstable is dated. These are all historical figures who were very much a product of a specific time and place that in many ways is alien to us now, but who have had a significant, lasting impact on western culture. It is really too late to disparage them, their contemporaries would have had to do that (and did, in many cases). Their place in our cultural history and the impact of their historic revolutions is established and undeniable.


Sure, art is unlikely to be perceived or understood by later generations in just the way it is by its contemporaries. But that fact doesn't ordinarily give rise to a judgment of "datedness.". I note that you don't discuss music here. Maybe its worth considering what makes Bach or Wagner different from Chaucer or Shakespeare; music, after all, communicates without using words or references to politics or modes of dress. In any case I would never call Shakespeare "dated." What is essential in art must be separated from what is incidental, and I dare say that what matters about _Hamlet_ is as clear to you and me as it was to Elizabeth the First - and maybe clearer. Arguably, art can be even more significant to later generations than it was to its own time, with subsequent cultural developments adding layers of meaning hardly suspected by those first experiencing it, or even by its creators. Did the widening appreciation of Mahler's music in the late 20th century make it "dated"? A lot of people would argue that it did just the opposite.

I think your use of the word "dated" makes it pretty useless. When I'm hearing Bach, the last thing I'm thinking is that he's "dated." I'm more likely to be thinking it miraculous that he could leave behind music that speaks with such clarity, power, and relevance to the human spirit, while Lutheran pietism, dukes and margraves, and powdered wigs have been swept away in the dust of time.


----------



## fluteman

Woodduck said:


> If we really want to examine what is "profound," we might try to understand why so much tonal music from ages past has been so enthusiastically revived and recorded in our time. It appears that "burned-out husks" have a limitless appetite for it.


You had me until there. That simply isn't true in my experience. There is not significantly more enthusiasm for music from ages past than there is for literature, theater or visual art from ages past. If anything, the opposite is true. A Picasso recently sold at auction for a record $179 million. Art museums do better than struggling symphony orchestras or opera companies in many cities. Shakespeare and Ibsen are still regularly staged. Hollywood still routinely adapts classic plays and novels for the movies. There isn't nearly the mainstream interest in classical music recordings or concerts as there was in the "golden era" of the 1930s to the 1960s. The major networks used to be have two weekly classical music radio and then TV shows: The Bell Telephone Hour and the Voice of Firestone, both canceled in the 1960s. Classical music radio stations have disappeared from many cities. So the appetite for classical music is, alas, far from limitless.


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## millionrainbows

Bach, Wagner, Chaucer, Shakespeare: all part of the "great" paradigm of "history," when such a thing still viably existed. Enter modernism, with a new idiomatic orientation which was truly new and different. This changed the very form of music, down to its idiomatic essentials. All that remained was sound.

The "content" of "great" music & art, as expressions of the human condition, are really more relegated to history and its old paradigm.

There are two sides to the coin that "music communicates without using words or references to politics or modes of dress," because it is abstract. "What is essential in art must be separated from what is incidental" is also a two-edged sword; these persisting "universals" are part of the old paradigm, when Man's historical identity was being "handed down" to succeeding generations via these universal templates.

Art is a sharing of experience, concerning "Man's soul" and such matters, and it can also be a more abstract thing, which communicates more objectively what it simply is: vision and sound.

Modern music, from about Webern onwards, begins to shed the old concerns of the old paradigms of "Man's identity" and begins to take us into a new realm of constant renewal, free from questions of pseudo-religious philosophical notions of Man.

Boulez' _Structures_ sought to be a self-generating system; Cage removed as much of his ego as was possible to remove. Likewise, other modern and post-modern art and music seeks to create a more objectively neutral, less narcissistic picture, and take Man out of the picture; it creates an environment for you to experience, and offers no "models" or paradigms of a "brave new ubermensch" that we are suppose to revel in.

If you are lucky, you might get to see your old paradigm of "Man" ironically commented on by some post-modernist; or see it transformed into an animated movie, replete with all the old archetypes.

Meanwhile, the "pseudo-religious" paradigm of Man's greatness, derived from the rejection of conventional faith-based religious dogmatic systems, is what is truly "dated."


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## Barbebleu

millionrainbows said:


> Instead of picking someone's statements apart, I would just let it be and realize the they are just a vigorous exponent of modernism, or traditionalism, or whatever. Now we are sliding into generalism.
> 
> Instead, listen to this short, two-minute clip of the music of American master Harvey Sollberger:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Consisting of flute, piano, and cello, listen to the texture as it is "handed off" from instrument to instrument. Note the varied techniques in the flute. The music is mostly isolated events, with much harmonic density, so the effect is open and airy. The instruments seem to be engaging in a playful dialogue, like birds playing.
> 
> Go ahead and listen to the rest of it; it is delightful music.
> 
> Sollberger is a flutist. When he relocated to New York, he formed The Group for Contemporary Music with pianist/composer Charles Wuorinen.


Unfortunately can't play this in U.K. Can you recommend anything else by Sollberger?


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## Woodduck

fluteman said:


> You had me until there. That simply isn't true in my experience. There is not significantly more enthusiasm for music from ages past than there is for literature, theater or visual art from ages past. If anything, the opposite is true. A Picasso recently sold at auction for a record $179 million. Art museums do better than struggling symphony orchestras or opera companies in many cities. Shakespeare and Ibsen are still regularly staged. Hollywood still routinely adapts classic plays and novels for the movies. There isn't nearly the mainstream interest in classical music recordings or concerts as there was in the "golden era" of the 1930s to the 1960s. The major networks used to be have two weekly classical music radio and then TV shows: The Bell Telephone Hour and the Voice of Firestone, both canceled in the 1960s. Classical music radio stations have disappeared from many cities. So the appetite for classical music is, alas, far from limitless.


I wasn't talking about the appetite for classical music as such, but the appetite for "dated" music among the "burned out husks" (classical music lovers who aren't among the exalted few who imagine that atonality is the voice of our time). I think you'll have to agree that the recorded repertoire, exploring music of all eras, is astonishing in its depth and variety. The recordings wouldn't be made if no one was buying them.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> Bach, Wagner, Chaucer, Shakespeare: all part of *the "great" paradigm of "history," when such a thing still viably existed.* Enter modernism, with a new idiomatic orientation which was truly new and different. This changed the very form of music, down to its idiomatic essentials. All that remained was sound.
> 
> *The "content" of "great" music & art, as expressions of the human condition, are really more relegated to history and its old paradigm.*
> 
> There are two sides to the coin that "music communicates without using words or references to politics or modes of dress," because it is abstract. "What is essential in art must be separated from what is incidental" is also a two-edged sword; these persisting "universals" are part of *the old paradigm, when Man's historical identity was being "handed down" to succeeding generations via these universal templates.*
> 
> Art is a sharing of experience, concerning "Man's soul" and such matters, and it can also be a more abstract thing, which communicates more objectively what it simply is: vision and sound.
> 
> *Modern music, from about Webern onwards, begins to shed the old concerns of the old paradigms of "Man's identity" and begins to take us into a new realm of constant **renewal, free from questions of pseudo-religious philosophical notions of Man.*
> 
> Boulez' _Structures_ sought to be a self-generating system; Cage removed as much of his ego as was possible to remove. Likewise, other modern and post-modern art and music seeks to create *a more objectively neutral, less narcissistic picture, and take Man out of the picture; it creates an environment for you to experience, and offers no "models" or paradigms of a "brave new ubermensch" that we are suppose to revel in.*
> 
> If you are lucky, you might get to see your old paradigm of "Man" ironically commented on by some post-modernist; or see it transformed into an animated movie, replete with all the old archetypes.
> 
> Meanwhile, *the "pseudo-religious" paradigm of Man's greatness, derived from the rejection of conventional faith-based religious dogmatic systems, is what is truly "dated."*


I doubt very much that music in the Western tonal tradition continues to speak profoundly to people worldwide because they are all stuck in some "pseudo-religious paradigm of Man's greatness, derived from the rejection of conventional faith-based religious dogmatic systems." In fact, your ideology of atonality "freeing" mankind from ego-identity and relegating humanism to the past strikes me as based on exactly the sort of "pseudo-religious philosophical notion of Man" you imagine yourself to be refuting.

Isn't it better just to look at facts - such as the fact that different kinds of music are different in the aspects of human experience they speak to, aspects co-existent and not mutually exclusive - and give up the game of "my pseudo-religious philosophy is better than your pseudo-religious philosophy"?

Art that "takes Man out of the picture" hasn't had much of a shelf life, or rather, occupies but a tiny space on the shelf, despite Webern and Cage. Call it "narcissism" if you like (although it isn't), Man has always been and will always be his greatest subject. Just as you, with your "pseudo-religious philosophical paradigms," are yours.


----------



## fluteman

millionrainbows said:


> Instead of picking someone's statements apart, I would just let it be and realize the they are just a vigorous exponent of modernism, or traditionalism, or whatever. Now we are sliding into generalism.
> 
> Instead, listen to this short, two-minute clip of the music of American master Harvey Sollberger:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Consisting of flute, piano, and cello, listen to the texture as it is "handed off" from instrument to instrument. Note the varied techniques in the flute. The music is mostly isolated events, with much harmonic density, so the effect is open and airy. The instruments seem to be engaging in a playful dialogue, like birds playing.
> 
> Go ahead and listen to the rest of it; it is delightful music.
> 
> Sollberger is a flutist. When he relocated to New York, he formed The Group for Contemporary Music with pianist/composer Charles Wuorinen.


That's a great piece, good for you for knowing it and appreciating it, millionrainbows. Sollberger also did a classic 2-LP set for Nonesuch in the 70s called Twentieth Century Flute Music, and Charles Wourinen performs on that too. A must have.


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## Barbebleu

Interestingly enough I purchased a similar album by Severino Gazzelloni in the early seventies and it was, and remains, rather good.


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## fluteman

Woodduck said:


> I think your use of the word "dated" makes it pretty useless. When I'm hearing Bach, the last thing I'm thinking is that he's "dated." I'm more likely to be thinking it miraculous that he could leave behind music that speaks with such clarity, power, and relevance to the human spirit, while Lutheran pietism, dukes and margraves, and powdered wigs have been swept away in the dust of time.


Well, I feel the same about Bach. But I've been studying and playing his music since I was seven, and listening to it since even earlier. I've performed Brandenburg concerti, cantatas, and chamber pieces. And his music comes the closest to transcending time and place of all baroque music. Nevertheless, it took Walter/Wendy Carlos and his/her moog synthesizer, the Swingle Singers and Jacques Loussier to bring that music back to the modern public consciousness. Heck, a lot of his music was almost forgotten and unperformed after he died until the mid-19th century. 
Of course, the fact that the greatness of his music shines through even when played on a moog synthesizer says a lot about the enduring greatness of his music. Anyway, for me "dated" means, more or less, "characteristic of a specific past era". And that certainly applies to Bach's music.


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## Bulldog

fluteman said:


> Well, I feel the same about Bach. But I've been studying and playing his music since I was seven, and listening to it since even earlier. I've performed Brandenburg concerti, cantatas, and chamber pieces. And his music comes the closest to transcending time and place of all baroque music. Nevertheless, it took Walter/Wendy Carlos and his/her moog synthesizer, the Swingle Singers and Jacques Loussier to bring that music back to the modern public consciousness.


I have my doubts, but what I really wanted to note is that I detest those abortions of Bach's music.


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## millionrainbows

Man has always been and will always be his greatest subject.

No; I think the "content" of art can be more objectified, to the point that it is not "about" Man in its direct content, and that this is the new paradigm of what modernism does.

Of course, on some after-the-fact meta-philosphical level, art is "about " Man to an outside observer or history's telescope, but as far as the content of the art itself, it can be freed from the old paradigm. 
I also think it's precisely for this reason that many listeners are unequipped to handle art which somehow seems to exist "for itself" only, and they feel left out.

For example, there was a time when music was composed for strictly religious purposes, and composers remained anonymous. The "greatness/genius" content was not there as it later was in, say, Wagner or Beethoven, and it referred to something "outside" or greater than itself.


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## millionrainbows

Barbebleu said:


> Unfortunately can't play this in U.K. Can you recommend anything else by Sollberger?


I'd look for players. When I got this on CD, it was because Sollberger himself played on parts of it, and another flutist I recognized. Gunther Schuller conducted part of it, whom I know of & respect. Also, Fred Sherry plays cello on it; I recognize him from some string quartet, I forget which, and of course Charles Wourinen on piano, who is a good pianist/composer, and founded the Group for Contemporary Music with Sollberger in New york.

There used to be music from that group on KOCH, and then it got licensed to NAXOS.


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> Man has always been and will always be his greatest subject.
> 
> No; I think the "content" of art can be more objectified, to the point that it is not "about" Man in its direct content, and that this is the new paradigm of what modernism does.
> 
> Of course, on some after-the-fact meta-philosphical level, art is "about " Man to an outside observer or history's telescope, but as far as the content of the art itself, it can be freed from the old paradigm.
> I also think it's precisely for this reason that many listeners are unequipped to handle art which somehow seems to exist "for itself" only, and they feel left out.
> 
> For example, there was a time when music was composed for strictly religious purposes, and composers remained anonymous. The "greatness/genius" content was not there as it later was in, say, Wagner or Beethoven, and it referred to something "outside" or greater than itself.


You aren't really refuting my contention that "man has always been and will always be his greatest subject." No, art doesn't have to have man as "direct content"; it may aim to depict other things, or nothing at all. I merely question whether it can attain its highest level when it aims for a purely aesthetic effect, devoid of any affective aim. Music can very well play with "just sound" for the cerebral pleasure that affords, but that isn't what most music is, was, or is likely to be, across human cultures. And art "for itself only" certainly isn't any kind of "modern paradigm" destined to sweep away art as an expression of human feelings and values, whether those be metaphysical , psychological, physical (as in dance music), or some combination thereof.

Music has proven capable of conveying an immense range of human experience, from the trivial and sentimental to the sublime and and transcendental, and it's done so in widely different ways in widely different cultures. The focus on specific, intense, and personal emotions in music, such as characterized certain varieties of late Romanticism, shouldn't define for us what Western tonal music is about, and needn't be viewed as the culmination or archetype of some grand but worn-out paradigm that needs to be supplanted by an impersonal atonality. Certain strains of Modernism (e.g. Stravinsky, Satie, Boulez, Cage) reacted against Romantic subjectivity; others grew directly from it and even intensified it (Schoenberg, Berg, Shostakovich, Britten). More recently, the old paradigm seems to have taken on new life - but then, it had never actually died in the culture as a whole, despite the efforts of a self-ordained avant-garde to pretend (or hope) otherwise.

The humanist idea - the idea that Man's mind, feelings, and will are intrinsically important and worthy of care, and need no sanction from without - is still alive, Modernism's vandalism and Postmodernism's cynicism notwithstanding, and it's alive because the understanding of its necessity, once attained, is not easily given up or forgotten. The notion that some mid-20th-century experiments in banishing the "ego" represent even music's present, much less its future, seems to me fanciful and presumptuous. My mind rejects, and the music (good and bad) which enters my ears refutes, such an idea every single day.


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## fluteman

Barbebleu said:


> Unfortunately can't play this in U.K. Can you recommend anything else by Sollberger?


See my post above about Sollberger's classic album The 20th Century Flute.


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## fluteman

Bulldog said:


> I have my doubts, but what I really wanted to note is that I detest those abortions of Bach's music.


You may detest them, but they put Bach's music in many ears where it hadn't been, and no doubt many of the owners of those ears ultimately sought out less, shall we say, modernized performances. And that's a good thing.


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## Bulldog

fluteman said:


> You may detest them, but they put Bach's music in many ears where it hadn't been, and no doubt many of the owners of those ears ultimately sought out less, shall we say, modernized performances. And that's a good thing.


Just out of curiosity, did they put Bach's music in your ears?


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## KenOC

I was unaware of Bach before seeing Fantasia as a child. Some might consider Stokowski's performance meretricious, but it did the job for me!


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## fluteman

Woodduck said:


> Certain strains of Modernism (e.g. Stravinsky, Satie, Boulez, Cage) reacted against Romantic subjectivity; others grew directly from it and even intensified it (Schoenberg, Berg, Shostakovich, Britten). More recently, the old paradigm seems to have taken on new life - but then, it had never actually died in the culture as a whole, despite the efforts of a self-ordained avant-garde to pretend (or hope) otherwise.
> 
> The humanist idea - the idea that Man's mind, feelings, and will are intrinsically important and worthy of care, and need no sanction from without - is still alive, Modernism's vandalism and Postmodernism's cynicism notwithstanding, and it's alive because the understanding of its necessity, once attained, is not easily given up or forgotten. The notion that some mid-20th-century experiments in banishing the "ego" represent even music's present, much less its future, seems to me fanciful and presumptuous. My mind rejects, and the music (good and bad) which enters my ears refutes, such an idea every single day.


Except the composers you cite were in many cases extraordinarily successful in expressing important aspects of the human condition and experience in the mid-20th century world, when a lot of "vandalism" was taking place, and many people were responding to it with detachment and cynicism. A little later in the century, when our lives became more high-tech, electronic and computer-driven, music reflected that too. The bottom line is, humanism took a hit in the 20th century. Not that it won't recover, but don't call composers "presumptuous" for accurately and compellingly portraying the human condition of their time. (You can call them presumptuous for having an inflated view of their own importance, but that's nothing new in the art world. Have you read the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini?)


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## Woodduck

fluteman said:


> Except the composers you cite were in many cases extraordinarily successful in expressing important aspects of the human condition and experience in the mid-20th century world, when a lot of "vandalism" was taking place, and many people were responding to it with detachment and cynicism. A little later in the century, when our lives became more high-tech, electronic and computer-driven, music reflected that too. The bottom line is, humanism took a hit in the 20th century. Not that it won't recover, but don't call composers "presumptuous" for accurately and compellingly portraying the human condition of their time. (You can call them presumptuous for having an inflated view of their own importance, but that's nothing new in the art world. Have you read the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini?)


Read me again. I didn't call any composers presumptuous. I called millionrainbows' thesis - or what I think is the implication of his thesis - presumptuous. I also didn't deny that the composers I mentioned expressed aspects of the human condition. Indeed, the fact that they did so seems to me pretty good evidence that the dichotomy being set up between "paradigms" is flawed. Hardly any art, in the larger scheme of things, is created "for itself only," and there are very good human reasons for that. Apparently elephants and chimps like to paint just because it's fun. We aren't elephants or chimps. Their "paradigm" is not ours.


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## Guest

Whenever I hear the word 'paradigm', I reach for my culture.


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## KenOC

When I was working at an engineering firm, we hired a new VP of design. He introduced himself in a group session with a tiresome talk about new "paradijsms," pronounced in just that way. We listened with great pain and embarrassment as he used the word over and over…


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## fluteman

Bulldog said:


> Just out of curiosity, did they put Bach's music in your ears?


Walter Carlos and the Swingle Singers didn't do much for me, though looking back I now respect their work and the impact it has had on our culture. I did enjoy Jacques Loussier. His free-form, improvisational jazz style nicely contrasts with the strict, intricate structures of the original. But as I said, Bach was already in my ears at a young age.


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## fluteman

Woodduck said:


> Read me again. I didn't call any composers presumptuous. I called millionrainbows' thesis - or what I think is the implication of his thesis - presumptuous. I also didn't deny that the composers I mentioned expressed aspects of the human condition. Indeed, the fact that they did so seems to me pretty good evidence that the dichotomy being set up between "paradigms" is flawed. Hardly any art, in the larger scheme of things, is created "for itself only," and there are very good human reasons for that. Apparently elephants and chimps like to paint just because it's fun. We aren't elephants or chimps. Their "paradigm" is not ours.


It was your reference to the 20th century's "self-ordained avant-garde" that I primarily had in mind. Many if not most of every artistic avant-garde of every era believe in themselves and their movement a little too deeply and overestimate its long-term importance and relevance. But that fanatical belief is what gives them the strength to swim against the tide and reach new shores. For similar reasons, in general one must read with caution and skepticism the comments of composers, even great ones, about their own music and the music of others.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> You aren't really refuting my contention that "man has always been and will always be his greatest subject." No, art doesn't have to have man as "direct content"; it may aim to depict other things, or nothing at all. I merely question whether it can attain its highest level when it aims for a purely aesthetic effect, devoid of any affective aim. Music can very well play with "just sound" for the cerebral pleasure that affords, but that isn't what most music is, was, or is likely to be, across human cultures. And art "for itself only" certainly isn't any kind of "modern paradigm" destined to sweep away art as an expression of human feelings and values, whether those be metaphysical , psychological, physical (as in dance music), or some combination thereof.


This seems like an artificial distinction to me. We are all human, and experience things, to that degree, similarly, so all art has a "universal" significance in this regard. What I'm discarding is the old paradigm which most art has rested on historically, and which became fragmented in meaning as historical perspective lost its impetus on the modern age.



Woodduck said:


> Music has proven capable of conveying an immense range of human experience, from the trivial and sentimental to the sublime and and transcendental, and it's done so in widely different ways in widely different cultures. The focus on specific, intense, and personal emotions in music, such as characterized certain varieties of late Romanticism, shouldn't define for us what Western tonal music is about, and needn't be viewed as the culmination or archetype of some grand but worn-out paradigm that needs to be supplanted by an impersonal atonality.


Well, that's the net result of what I'm saying. Modern music has moved away from "conveying experience" to a more impersonal interaction. In other words, the composer is not really "mapping out" and sharing his experience, but creating a labyrinth environment in which he is as much an observer as we are. In this sense, I disagree with the earlier assertion by another poster that James Joyce is "dated."



Woodduck said:


> Certain strains of Modernism (e.g. Stravinsky, Satie, Boulez, Cage) reacted against Romantic subjectivity; others grew directly from it and even intensified it (Schoenberg, Berg, Shostakovich, Britten). More recently, the old paradigm seems to have taken on new life - but then, it had never actually died in the culture as a whole, despite the efforts of a self-ordained avant-garde to pretend (or hope) otherwise.


I wouldn't place Cage or Boulez in that category, as reacting "against" subjectivity. In their cases, the old paradigm was no longer part of a dialectic, nor was their music a 'reaction' in relation to that old paradigm; it started from a new and different place (unless their work is seen through the lens of that old paradigm).



Woodduck said:


> The humanist idea - the idea that Man's mind, feelings, and will are intrinsically important and worthy of care, and need no sanction from without - is still alive…


The humanist idea is part of the old paradigm of religion, simply inverted, as in Nietzsche, existentialism, and other forms of humanist atheism. Sound and vision need no sanction; they are what they are.



Woodduck said:


> Modernism's vandalism and Postmodernism's cynicism notwithstanding...it's alive because the understanding of its necessity, once attained, is not easily given up or forgotten. The notion that some mid-20th-century experiments in banishing the "ego" represent even music's present, much less its future, seems to me fanciful and presumptuous. My mind rejects, and the music (good and bad) which enters my ears refutes, such an idea every single day.


Modern art has become less dependent on "content" and as a "conveyor" of information which is other than what it really is as a formal object.


----------



## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> Read me again. I didn't call any composers presumptuous. I called millionrainbows' thesis - or what I think is the implication of his thesis - presumptuous. I also didn't deny that the composers I mentioned expressed aspects of the human condition. Indeed, the fact that they did so seems to me pretty good evidence that the dichotomy being set up between "paradigms" is flawed. Hardly any art, in the larger scheme of things, is created "for itself only," and there are very good human reasons for that. Apparently elephants and chimps like to paint just because it's fun. We aren't elephants or chimps. Their "paradigm" is not ours.


But being is being, as Cage has showed us. We have no exclusive rights to that. We share that with elephants and chimps.

The implication of this is that our "ego" is what distinguishes us from animals, and this has been long reflected in our art, and in everything we have created as a species…and how's that working out?
Our "egos" are what is destroying our planet. Our "egos" created WWI and WWII, nearly destroying the Europe. Our "egos" created the hydrogen bomb. I rest my case.


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## JAS

Welcome to the Philosophy thread. Please check your ego at the door. You have may it back, if you still want it, when you leave. (Just keep your claim ticket, and present it at the service desk on your way out. It wouldn't do for you to leave with some else's ego.)


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## millionrainbows

If you will recall, I opened this thread with objectivity, not philosophy. All the philosophizing came in later, when a modernist began celebrating the superiority of modernism (Victor Redseal post #48). How dare he! I thought Gasbriel Ortiz' philosophizing before that was more innocent, not trying to incite reaction.

Really, this should not be a question of philosophy, but of how to listen correctly, through the proper "mindset" lens.


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## fluteman

millionrainbows said:


> If you will recall, I opened this thread with objectivity, not philosophy. All the philosophizing came in later, when a modernist began celebrating the superiority of modernism (Victor Redseal post #48). How dare he! I thought Gasbriel Ortiz' philosophizing before that was more innocent, not trying to incite reaction.
> 
> Really, this should not be a question of philosophy, but of how to listen correctly, through the proper "mindset" lens.


So, you instruct people who never asked for your instruction "how to listen [to music] correctly". Yet, you see nothing presumptuous in that, and you are not trying to incite a reaction. I'm glad we got that straightened out.


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## Razumovskymas

Victor Redseal said:


> I view atonality the same way I view dada. Dada was anti-art in that it rejected formal conceptions and the very idea of a"masterpiece." Consequently, although rejected as silly and pretentious by "art lovers" it had far more impact on modern society than art ever could. Dada's rejections of norms covered not only painting but music, film, sculpture and politics. It gave birth to surrealism, abstract expressionism and performance art. When you see people in the streets protesting and carrying signs you may not know that came out of dadaism but it did. Horror movies and scores are in part the result of dadaism (also the Grand Guignol Theater where they put on bloody Victorian snuff plays). Metal, punk, noise and related music all came out of dada (punk was really a continuation of it). Music and noise acts as Bauhaus, Merzbow, Cabaret Voltaire, and Zurich 1916 all hark back to dada or one its direct outgrowths.
> 
> Atonalism has kind of done the same to music. By freeing us from the formal conceptions of music theory and harmony, we are able to approach the very concept of music in a new way. The idea that music can only be listened to in a traditional way is--quite frankly--silly and stupid and if anyone feels insulted by that, sorry, but I don't care. That's the very death of music when you can't get anything new out of it. *Beethoven is great but Beethoven isn't everything.
> *
> Art has to be reborn every 20 years or so. It's inevitable and must be accepted. While I do love Bach, for example, he is dated. his music belongs to a certain era. Really, you can't understand Bach at all if you don't understand the milieu he sprang from. But atonal music is timeless because it can't be dated. It's always there to wipe the slate clean so something new can happen. It's the lightning that strikes the old growth forest and burns it away so new growth occurs. We need that. You don't hate the lightning, you celebrate it and the ecosphere has evolved to depend on it. The musical ecosphere has evolved to accept atonality. It's only a few who understand it and celebrate it and it is they from whom the new ideas hatch and grow and these change the culture very profoundly. Everyone else is a burned out husk whose only purpose is to be consumed by the flames of innovation. So even they serve a purpose so I suppose they can take satisfaction in that.


yes he is!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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## Razumovskymas

Victor Redseal said:


> .
> The piano has no wolf because every note is detuned exactly the same. To Bach, perhaps, this might have sounded terribly out of tune, noise.


Ever heard of his mildly famous work "Das wohltemperierte Klavier"? While not exactly the same as equal temperament the purpose of "wohltemperiert" is the same. Namely being able to modulate to every key without having wolf tones or whatever. The work itself consisting of 24 pieces each in a different key so in fact demonstrating every minor and major key. Real equal temperament tuning in those days was spreading already (from 1681). So my guess is Bach would think a Steinway just sounds fine.

Apart from that I think the evolution of the tunings is a very interesting subject but has less to do with the evolution of music itself then some people think. Apart from some purists with absolute pitch hearing I don't think many people find any music from any period played on equal temperament instruments awful sounding (testimonies of the opposite are welcome)



Victor Redseal said:


> .
> The music was changing and the old expression wasn't adequate anymore


You put it is as if atonality is just one of the evolutions music has to undergo. But I think it's far more radical than that, it questions ALL music before that. That's why its a source of such fiery discussions like you see here. Myself I'm constantly thrown from one "camp" to the other. I think the discussion of atonality is THE discussion


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## BabyGiraffe

Razumovskymas said:


> Ever heard of his mildly famous work "Das wohltemperierte Klavier"? While not exactly the same as equal temperament the purpose of "wohltemperiert" is the same. Namely being able to modulate to every key without having wolf tones or whatever. The work itself consisting of 24 pieces each in a different key so in fact demonstrating every minor and major key. Real equal temperament tuning in those days was spreading already (from 1681). So my guess is Bach would think a Steinway just sounds fine.
> 
> Apart from that I think the evolution of the tunings is a very interesting subject but has less to do with the evolution of music itself then some people think. Apart from some purists with absolute pitch hearing I don't think many people find any music from any period played on equal temperament instruments awful sounding (testimonies of the opposite are welcome)
> 
> You put it is as if atonality is just one of the evolutions music has to undergo. But I think it's far more radical than that, it questions ALL music before that. That's why its a source of such fiery discussions like you see here. Myself I'm constantly thrown from one "camp" to the other. I think the discussion of atonality is THE discussion


You are very wrong. It's easy to check the tunings that Bach, Mozart and company used (Scala is free and in the archive you can find and play with a midi keyboard hundreds of historical tunings - from ancient Greek and Arabic up to modernized version of meantone or well temperament). They are all pretty soft compared to 12et. And the music reflects it. The biggest problem is that some tonalities and tunings were chosen only for the resonance and the emotional effect, This can't be heard now, if you don't detune your piano.
And if you decide to use just intonation, you can clearly hear the vibration of some of the harmonics and the combinatorial tones. It can be pretty uncanny, if you are not used to it or you have some bad acoustics in the room.


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## millionrainbows

Some music might sound better if it's in a more consonant temperament, or if it was composed that way, using Vallotti or some form of mean tone tuning. It would probably be older music, from the late middle ages or early Baroque, and it would be very tonal, in that it would not modulate much. The mean-tone temperaments worked within a range of keys, but not the entire circle of keys. For instance, certain mean-tone tunings would sound good in C-G-D-A-E, and B, but not F#-C#-G#-D#.

You can read about Bach's "well" tempered tuning at larips.com


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## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> The implication of this is that our "ego" is what distinguishes us from animals, and this has been long reflected in our art, and in everything we have created as a species…and how's that working out?
> Our "egos" are what is destroying our planet. Our "egos" created WWI and WWII, nearly destroying the Europe. Our "egos" created the hydrogen bomb. I rest my case.


I have not said or implied that our "ego" (which you haven't bothered to define) is "what distinguishes us from animals." We humans do possess a self-awareness and self-reflection, and a capacity for intellectual and emotional self-cultivation, which does not exist, or exists in lesser degree, in other animals. Is that what you regard as "destroying the planet" and starting wars, and which you seek to purge from such a fundamentally human endeavor as art?

Methinks you need to define your psychoanalysis of human nature a bit better.


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## BabyGiraffe

millionrainbows said:


> Some music might sound better if it's in a more consonant temperament, or if it was composed that way, using Vallotti or some form of mean tone tuning. It would probably be older music, from the late middle ages or early Baroque, and it would be very tonal, in that it would not modulate much. The mean-tone temperaments worked within a range of keys, but not the entire circle of keys. For instance, certain mean-tone tunings would sound good in C-G-D-A-E, and B, but not F#-C#-G#-D#.
> 
> You can read about Bach's "well" tempered tuning at larips.com


Playing a scale like C major on a instrument tuned to Gb can give interesting results, if someone is interested in atonal or weird sounds.


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## JAS

millionrainbows said:


> If you will recall, I opened this thread with objectivity, not philosophy. All the philosophizing came in later, when a modernist began celebrating the superiority of modernism (Victor Redseal post #48). How dare he! I thought Gasbriel Ortiz' philosophizing before that was more innocent, not trying to incite reaction.
> 
> Really, this should not be a question of philosophy, but of how to listen correctly, through the proper "mindset" lens.


How is any of this inherently not philosophy? Objectivity is a philosophical concept, and in the "real world" mostly an illusion.


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## fluteman

Woodduck said:


> I have not said or implied that our "ego" (which you haven't bothered to define) is "what distinguishes us from animals." We humans do possess a self-awareness and self-reflection, and a capacity for intellectual and emotional self-cultivation, which does not exist, or exists in lesser degree, in other animals. Is that what you regard as "destroying the planet" and starting wars, and which you seek to purge from such a fundamentally human endeavor as art?
> 
> Methinks you need to define your psychoanalysis of human nature a bit better.


Alas, war is a fundamentally human endeavor, too. As is building cultural traditions for centuries, and then suddenly, and savagely, tearing them down over a handful of years, though those traditions often aren't as utterly gone as it might seem at first.


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## millionrainbows

fluteman said:


> So, you instruct people who never asked for your instruction "how to listen [to music] correctly". Yet, you see nothing presumptuous in that, and you are not trying to incite a reaction. I'm glad we got that straightened out.


All I did was "demonstrate" and describe how I listen. If you want to call that "instruction," I think you are assuming a lot.
If you call me "presumptuous," then you are criticizing my posting style, and you could be reported.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> I have not said or implied that our "ego" (which you haven't bothered to define) is "what distinguishes us from animals." We humans do possess self-awareness and self-reflection, and a capacity for intellectual and emotional self-cultivation, which does not exist, or exists in lesser degree, in other animals.


Ego can be defined as self-awareness and self-reflection, and a capacity for intellectual and emotional self-cultivation, which does not exist, or exists in lesser degree, in other animals, as you said.


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## JAS

millionrainbows said:


> All I did was "demonstrate" and describe how I listen. If you want to call that "instruction," I think you are assuming a lot.


"Assuming a lot," which is somehow _totally_ different from calling someone "presumptuous." This thread has been extremely illuminating, although not much about Atonal music.


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## fluteman

millionrainbows said:


> All I did was "demonstrate" and describe how I listen. If you want to call that "instruction," I think you are assuming a lot.
> If you call me "presumptuous," then you are criticizing my posting style, and you could be reported.


No. The truth is, you are presuming people here want to be told how to listen to modern music "correctly". It may well be that some want and appreciate your advice. But clearly, others think that it is presumptuous on your part, not least because learning how to listen to music, even modern music, is best done by listening to a lot of music, not by reading books or articles, and certainly not your posts (most of which I enjoy reading, by the way).
You will not win over that latter class of people. Personally, my approach is listen to music first, play music second, and read about it third, but do all three. But that's just me, it wouldn't occur to me to insist others do that, or that I listen to music correctly. I listen to music correctly for me.


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## JAS

I think that this would be a very different thread if it had been "This is how I listen to Atonal music," or "This is what I hear or feel when I listen to Atonal music." (The latter would presumably require more specific examples, although the former would probably also be more informative with specific examples tied to relevant comments.) It might or might not be any more persuasive, but it would certainly be a more defensible approach and might not inspire quite so much scorn. (There might also be, heaven forbid, actual sharing by others with a similar regard, if not precisely similar approaches or reactions, to the examples. We might even get multiple points of view.)

Even more problematic, I think, that the current tone of telling everyone how they are to listen to Atonal music is also the implication of how everyone is to respond as well (assuming they "listen correctly"). Surely that is crossing a line, and asking for trouble.


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## millionrainbows

JAS said:


> "Assuming a lot," which is somehow _totally_ different from calling someone "presumptuous." This thread has been extremely illuminating, although not much about Atonal music.


You're not really interested in this thread idea, are you?


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## millionrainbows

All I did was "demonstrate" and describe how I listen. If you want to call that "instruction," I think you are assuming a lot.



> No. The truth is, you are presuming people here want to be told how to listen to modern music "correctly".


No, I'm not.



> Yes, you are.


No, I am not!



> Yes, you are!


No I'm not!



> Yes, you are!


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## JAS

millionrainbows said:


> You're not really interested in this thread idea, are you?


A thread discussing Atonal music might be of genuine interest. Maybe it would be a good idea to try one. (Again, just because I am probably irredeemably unsympathetic with what composers in that general class offer does not mean that I am not interested in the topic from a different perspective.)


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## millionrainbows

JAS said:


> I think that this would be a very different thread if it had been "This is how I listen to Atonal music," or "This is what I hear or feel when I listen to Atonal music." (The latter would presumably require more specific examples, although the former would probably also be more informative with specific examples tied to relevant comments.) It might or might not be any more persuasive, but it would certainly be a more defensible approach and might not inspire quite so much scorn.


"Listening Intelligently to Atonal Music" is a very neutral title.



JAS said:


> Even more problematic, I think, that the current tone of telling everyone how they are to listen to Atonal music is also the implication of how everyone is to respond as well (assuming they "listen correctly"). Surely that is crossing a line, and asking for trouble.


Once again, I've not told anyone "how to listen" or "how to respond" to music. I simply demonstrated my process. _If _you regress into ad hominems, then _that_ will be "crossing a line and asking for trouble" when I report to the moderators.


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## JAS

One should probably show a little more introspection before being so quick to accuse others of ad hominem attacks. What is the old saying about glass houses?


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## millionrainbows

JAS said:


> One should probably show a little more introspection before being so quick to accuse others of ad hominem attacks. What is the old saying about glass houses?


_If you regress into ad hominems, then that will be "crossing a line and asking for trouble" when I report to the moderators._

I did not accuse you of anything; that was simply a warning. As long as "no lines are crossed."


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## mmsbls

Let's focus on the thread topic rather than other member's intent.


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## fluteman

Anyway, I've enjoyed this thread. As I said earlier, I enjoy millionrainbows' posts, and especially liked his "an appreciation of bitterness must be learned" arugula and hops post above. He wins the vegetable analogy prize, always an impressive feat. And I apologize if anything I said was misconstrued as a personal attack. I only meant that he said he wanted an argument (in post no. 16), and, not surprisingly, he got one. But if he can put up with the bickering, so can I. Keep fighting the good fight for modern music, millionrainbows!


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## millionrainbows

It's been wonderful, thank you all! And remember, listen intelligently and correctly!


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## Minor Sixthist

Here's my approach. I like tonal music because it makes me _feel emotions_. Oftentimes, potent emotions like sadness, nostalgia, pride, and regret. I don't need to familiarize myself with the nitty-gritty to enjoy the music I do. I don't care how the hair cells in my ears are vibrating in a certain way to release this hormone and trigger that cortex in the brain. I just FEEL, and that has always been and will always be the means by which I appreciate music.

I don't need to micro-analyze music to enjoy it. I don't need to dissect music to have a worthy opinion of it.

I accept you for whatever way you approach music. I believe you're entitled to thinking any particular way about it.

But I am not listening to music less 'correctly' or 'intelligently' than you. I'm listening to it on terms that cause me to feel something emotional. Considering I know how to listen to music in a way that will allow me to gain the most emotional enjoyment, I'm undoubtedly listening to it correctly. And intelligently. Regardless of what you say.


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## millionrainbows

Minor Sixthist said:


> Here's my approach. I like tonal music because it makes me _feel emotions_. Oftentimes, potent emotions like sadness, nostalgia, pride, and regret. I don't need to familiarize myself with the nitty-gritty to enjoy the music I do. I don't care how the hair cells in my ears are vibrating in a certain way to release this hormone and trigger that cortex in the brain. I just FEEL, and that has always been and will always be the means by which I appreciate music.
> 
> I don't need to micro-analyze music to enjoy it. I don't need to dissect music to have a worthy opinion of it.
> 
> I accept you for whatever way you approach music. I believe you're entitled to thinking any particular way about it.
> 
> But I am not listening to music less 'correctly' or 'intelligently' than you. I'm listening to it on terms that cause me to feel something emotional. Considering I know how to listen to music in a way that will allow me to gain the most emotional enjoyment, I'm undoubtedly listening to it correctly. And intelligently. Regardless of what you say.


Whatever way you want to listen is fine. I think this newer music demands more intelligent listening, that's all. I'm not going to apologize for seeming "intellectual" or "arrogant."


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