# The Musical Squares



## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

They're the reactionary composers, the traditionalists, the "academicians." Some were firmly opposed to musical revolution, others were silent and let it come. Still, they represented a particular voice in the music world: "Music isn't all about progress." Brahms, Saint-Saens, Tchaikovsky, Elgar, and Glazunov were among whom I call The Musical Squares, just to name a few.

But you have to admit you like some of them!

What do you think about the _conservative_ composers? How do you feel about their music?


----------



## Meaghan (Jul 31, 2010)

Poor Sibelius got a lot of criticism for not being forward-looking enough, didn't he? "Avant-garde" composers and the critics who loved them had some rather nasty things to say about him in the first half of the 20th century. But then there's this (from Alex Ross' _The Rest Is Noise_):

_In 1984, the great American avant-garde composer Morton Feldman gave a lecture at the relentlessly up-to-date Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt, Germany. "The people who you think are radicals might really be conservatives," Feldman said on that occasion. "The people you think are conservative might really be radical." And he began to hum the Sibelius Fifth._

Not sure what to make of this (I'm usually not sure what to make of stuff Feldman says), but it's at least interesting.


----------



## Alrapo (Mar 18, 2011)

I do not know much about music history, but I do enjoy the music of the composers you mentioned.
Whenever I discover a new piece from composers such as Tchaikovsky or Saint-Saens I might feel a sense of freshness and inspiration. If so many years after these pieces were first composed, even after so many changes in music, they can still have such an effect, I do not see why they would not have had a greater impact during their time. Revolutionary or not, they certainly made important contributions to the development of their own styles.


----------



## Pieck (Jan 12, 2011)

Love the conservatives. I'll add Dvorak to your list, and maybe Bruch. And I love everyone you mentioned except Glazunov. I dont know why the 20th century guys had to write so avant garde.


----------



## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

All art has to have a dialectic between the old and the new, I think. Without the emergence of the new, it calcifies; without craftsmanship and wisdom of the old, it dissipates into the air.

I have no sympathy for either wannabe geniuses or conservative reactionaries, but the "squares" you mentioned are all right - although they are in the "old" end of the spectrum, they're not at the very bottom! They display an understanding of the old forms, without getting enslaved by them.


----------



## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

It doesn't get much more conservative than Bach. He was considered old fashioned in his own time, yet he is at the very apex of that fashion to most people these days.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Weston said:


> It doesn't get much more conservative than Bach. He was considered old fashioned in his own time, yet he is at the very apex of that fashion to most people these days.


Yes, that's true.

I should also mention Mendelssohn. He was quite a square, he disliked Berlioz very much, but was a great advocate of JS Bach.


----------



## notesetter (Mar 31, 2011)

One of my favorite "squares" is Kurt Atterberg (1887-1974), sort of a "Swedish Glazunov". His music reminds me a lot of Grieg and Alfven, with lots of Swedish folk-inspired melodies. Occasionally, he uses more "modern" sounding effects, but his music generally is very conservative. Atterberg helped found Sweden's STIM, the equivalent of ASCAP here in the US.

CPO has recorded all 9 of the symphonies. Worth checking out!


----------



## World Violist (May 31, 2007)

Music _can't_ be for progress' sake. It goes against the whole nature of music. Music is supposed to communicate with people and be a personal experience. Therefore, while I like some progressive composers' music, I'm not much at all in sympathy with their aims and motives (Boulez here springs to mind).

That being said, there are several "square" composers I just can't bring myself to like: Schumann, Mendelssohn, Dvorak, Rachmaninoff (for the most part) and such. But there are tons of not-so-square composers I don't care for either: Beethoven immediately springs to mind.

I don't care whether or not they're square. We're at a point in musical history that the immediate context can at least be partially divorced from the music. I don't care whether Beethoven's 9th was revolutionary because it uses a choir, and I don't care whether Mozart or Mendelssohn were prodigies. We can afford to take each composer by his own terms, and for me that's remarkably exciting.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

World Violist said:


> Music _can't_ be for progress' sake. It goes against the whole nature of music. Music is supposed to communicate with people and be a personal experience. Therefore, while I like some progressive composers' music, I'm not much at all in sympathy with their aims and motives (Boulez here springs to mind).
> 
> That being said, there are several "square" composers I just can't bring myself to like: Schumann, Mendelssohn, Dvorak, Rachmaninoff (for the most part) and such. But there are tons of not-so-square composers I don't care for either: Beethoven immediately springs to mind.
> 
> I don't care whether or not they're square. We're at a point in musical history that the immediate context can at least be partially divorced from the music. I don't care whether Beethoven's 9th was revolutionary because it uses a choir, and I don't care whether Mozart or Mendelssohn were prodigies. We can afford to take each composer by his own terms, and for me that's remarkably exciting.


I like your answer. That's my point as well. There are several composers I love who were considered Revolutionaries of their time, but that's not _why_ I like them. They just happened to be revolutionary and please me at the same time. I like both the squares and the _concave nonagons_, each have their merits (and demerits).


----------



## Conor71 (Feb 19, 2009)

Some of the composers already mentioned are among my favourites!  - there is certainly a sizable audience out there for conservative musicians. This is not a slight to the more progressive composers, they surely have their place too! .


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

These kind of conversations sadden me 

I really dislike the premise that, to declare a preference for a 'conservative' composer has to be some kind of admission, as though it's a guilty pleasure. I can and do enjoy music that didn't push and bend contemporary boundaries; I can and do enjoy music that pushed and bent contemporary boundaries, _though usually only if that was not its primary purpose_. But this doesn't affect my assessment of the value of the music - I couldn't care less whether they're progressive or not, because, in discussions about art where people so willingly say that nothing is objective, I just can't understand why there is a consensus that obsessive originality and progression is always good.


----------



## dmg (Sep 13, 2009)

Saint-Saens was really only a 'Musical Square' later in life. He became a grump in his old age - I guess losing your entire family tragically can do that to you.


----------



## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

I find it strangely annoying that these composers are being referred to as musical squares, even if it is a gimmick for a post. Like another poster said, its irritating that music is even being measured as progressive or reactionary. Its not all about "progress", and new ideas can come about through old material. This is coming from a fanatic of the classical period, where composers were still thought of more as craftsmen and ideas were regularly recycled but in new and interesting ways. I'm glad that you italicized conservative, it is a loaded term. I mean, Bizet wrote a fantastic symphony in the classical style in the 1850s and although it used forms that had been used half a century ago, it was still an original piece, same with the Gounod symphonies. Now that's conservative and still good. Tchaikovsky is radical by comparison.

And just so my viewpoint isn't totally discredited as "conservative", I do like radical composers for their times, the innovative ones like Beethoven, Wagner, Mahler, Richard Strauss, Debussy, Stravinsky, ect. It just stops being interesting to me when it becomes too formless and dissonant, which to me is Schoenberg, Webern, and many of those guys. A part of me thinks its contains a lot of rubbish, and the other part of me gives it the benefit of the doubt in that it is a "new musical grammar" that simply requires more getting used to, and in reality its probably a combination of the two.

I apologize in advance for the rant.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

clavichorder said:


> I find it strangely annoying that these composers are being referred to as musical squares, even if it is a gimmick for a post. Like another poster said, its irritating that music is even being measured as progressive or reactionary. Its not all about "progress", and new ideas can come about through old material. This is coming from a fanatic of the classical period, where composers were still thought of more as craftsmen and ideas were regularly recycled but in new and interesting ways. I'm glad that you italicized conservative, it is a loaded term. I mean, Bizet wrote a fantastic symphony in the classical style in the 1850s and although it used forms that had been used half a century ago, it was still an original piece, same with the Gounod symphonies. Now that's conservative and still good. Tchaikovsky is radical by comparison.
> 
> And just so my viewpoint isn't totally discredited as "conservative", I do like radical composers for their times, the innovative ones like Beethoven, Wagner, Mahler, Richard Strauss, Debussy, Stravinsky, ect. It just stops being interesting to me when it becomes too formless and dissonant, which to me is Schoenberg, Webern, and many of those guys. A part of me thinks its contains a lot of rubbish, and the other part of me gives it the benefit of the doubt in that it is a "new musical grammar" that simply requires more getting used to, and in reality its probably a combination of the two.
> 
> I apologize in advance for the rant.


It's no rant, it's interesting for me to hear such opinions, especially when I can agree.  Personally, the titles "revolutionary" and "reactionary" for composers don't bother me, it's just a way of analyzing those composers' mentality toward music. This is the realm of Music Philosophy, which is always a lively debate, it's one of my favorite things to discuss. If I could, I would do some study on this topic in college, _"the Squares vs. the Concave Nonagons."_


----------

