# Has Classical Music become too popular?



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Most discussions center around how we can increase the Classical music fanbase among the general public. 

This thread takes the opposite thesis. Classical Music has historically and most naturally been a patrician interest intended for elite audiences. The plebeians had their folk music, as today the unwashed masses trash themselves with ever increasingly decadent pop and rock music. 

The fear is that by pandering to the masses, we must lower the podium down to them, destroying the art of classical music in the process. See the proliferation of the same war pieces that are required to be heard in virtually every concert. Concerts have become something that true connoisseurs must suffer, at the chance of getting to hear a more novel aural experience. 

This is the reverse of the natural order. Instead of attempting to eradicate the elitist label, it should be embraced and enshrined. Instead of lowering the podium down to the masses, let us elevate it, so that they may look up at it in fear and wonder, pronouncing to them unmistakably their inferiority. Let us give them something for the ambitious to climb up to, and the higher the Everest, the better. Let concerts be programmed to dissuade the uninitiated from ever attending. Only then can Classical music again thrive.


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

Orchestras are already struggling for money. Making concert programmes pander to "elites" would make the issue worse and cause orchestras to go bankrupt.

Now I would like avant-garde pieces to be sandwiched between warhorses. If a concert programmes *1812 Overture*, Schoenberg Piano Concerto, and *Beethoven's Emperor*-- I suspect that the plebs would suffer through Schoenberg to hear the warhorses.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_Classical Music has historically and most naturally been a patrician interest intended for elite audiences. _

I don't think that's necessarily true and I know it is not "too popular" where I live in USA.

In the 1950s in the early days of television there was lots of classical music on American TV. Firestone and other companies sponsored hourlong programs that typically featured classical music. Through the 1990s cable channels such as Arts & Entertainment and Bravo! regularly broadcast programming featuring classical music.

None of this is true today even though these channels are still there and hundreds upon hundreds more. Even the streaming services don't program anything with classical music in it except for the free Lloyd Rigler Foundation-provided Classic Arts Showcase which shows snippets of arts programs, many of which contain classical music.

They no longer provide this free outlet via broadcast, however. Your only chance of seeing classical music on broadcast TV in 2020 is through the Public Broadcasting System or PBS.

Also, public radio stations (NPR) have gone bust by the droves in this century and the late 20th century. These were the primary outlets for free classical music in over the air broadcasting. There are far less of these than there were in the 20th century and the number of private radio stations that broadcast classical music might be counted on one hand for the entire United States.

Classical music sales as a percentage of all sales of downloads, streams and CDs continues to decline. I just don't know what evidence there is that classical music is even as popular as it was in 1950, 1970 or 1990, much less today.

I think there is a "too" problem in classical music, however: the warhorses written in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries that make up most CM broadcasts or concerts have been played "too" many times and contemporary classical music hasn't created new fans.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

It is broadcast TV itself which had declined by pandering to the masses, not Classical music. It is a warning what happens when you attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator. TV today is an absolute wasteland.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

ORigel said:


> Orchestras are already struggling for money. Making concert programmes pander to "elites" would make the issue worse and cause orchestras to go bankrupt.
> 
> Now I would like avant-garde pieces to be sandwiched between warhorses. If a concert programmes *1812 Overture*, Schoenberg Piano Concerto, and *Beethoven's Emperor*-- I suspect that the plebs would suffer through Schoenberg to hear the warhorses.


Orchestras should not be dependent on ticket sales from the general public. Depending on the declining tastes of the public is indeed a sure recipe for death. All money should come from elite donations with the shortfall made up by the government.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

ORigel said:


> Orchestras are already struggling for money. Making concert programmes pander to "elites" would make the issue worse and cause orchestras to go bankrupt.
> 
> Now I would like avant-garde pieces to be sandwiched between warhorses. If a concert programmes *1812 Overture*, Schoenberg Piano Concerto, and *Beethoven's Emperor*-- I suspect that the plebs would suffer through Schoenberg to hear the warhorses.


Not this pleb. This is exactly why I stopped going to concerts.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_It is broadcast TV itself which had declined by pandering to the masses, not Classical music. It is a warning what happens when you attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator. TV today is an absolute wasteland._

That's not true; classical music interest has declined. If it had not Bravo! and A&E would still be programming it. The reason they don't, and the reason none of the other 300 channels I receive don't broadcast it, is because there is no market for it.

The average broadcast and streamed station in 2020 is looking for a 3 share or about 2 percent of the market. That's what they need to attract advertising. So any program that can attract 3 percent of the people watching at any given time exceeds this standard.

There are TV shows that appeal to every possible thing under the sun -- except classical music. Interest in it has declined to such extent even PBS cut back their broadcasts of it.

TV may or may not be a wasteland but there is no market in American TV for classical music and that is a big departure from the past.

The more damning things is public radio has declined too. It was the bell cow for classical music in USA.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_Now I would like avant-garde pieces to be sandwiched between warhorses. If a concert programmes 1812 Overture, Schoenberg Piano Concerto, and Beethoven's Emperor-- I suspect that the plebs would suffer through Schoenberg to hear the warhorses._

I think we already know there's no market for avant-garde music in subscription concerts. I have heard countless music directors and conductors say they have to schedule Beethoven, Brahms or Mahler to bring in audiences. They are not interested in scheduling music that drives away audiences.

I'm not sure there ever was any market for it. I attended the Chicago Symphony's Ravinia Festival July 4, 1976, the American bicentennial, and they led the concert with a piece of modern atonal music. It was booed by the paying audience. I don't even see avant-garde stuff scheduled at university concerts.

What orchestras have tried is world premieres of new music and paying house composers to write music specifically for premier with the orchestra. They keep trying this though no new music has made much impact the past 50 years.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Is this thread referring to Classical composition? Because one could argue that there is no strong tradition of 'Classical music' today, but a smattering of new symphonic and instrumental creations. The predominant, overarching source of Classical music is from Baroque to Romantic. However, our forum voted the Contemporary period as their favorite period because of how much output there is. If I were to tell someone I like Classical music, they wouldn't be thinking of the Contemporary period. Yet for many of us, that's what we still call it


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

I think that the loss of NPR stations playing classical music is moot. Why would anyone need to listen to classical music on the radio and have to endure the DJ's selections? It's so much easier to just go to YouTube. Instead of one version of Brahms Fourth, you have dozens at your fingertips. Not only that, but YouTube versions also include scores.....you can't get that on the radio. And I say this as a former NPR classical music radio announcer. I have a hard time mourning the loss of the medium when I have more than ever before to choose from.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

larold said:


> I think we already know there's no market for avant-garde music in subscription concerts. I have heard countless music directors and conductors say they have to schedule Beethoven, Brahms or Mahler to bring in audiences. They are not interested in scheduling music that drives away audiences.


This phrasing is a bit trickier, but I think they are very much interested in scheduling music that drives away audiences. It is not their _intent_ to drive away the audiences, but that is the _effect_ of the music that they want to be able to schedule more of. (Why they want it schedule it is a matter of opinion and conjecture.) So, I would say that they would _love_ to schedule more contemporary music _if they could do so without losing audience_, but they can't. The idea that you could mix some less familiar but still very suitable music between the bigger offerings seems not to occur to them.



larold said:


> What orchestras have tried is world premieres of new music and paying house composers to write music specifically for premier with the orchestra. They keep trying this though no new music has made much impact the past 50 years.


And most of those works are lucky to get a second performance. The problem seems to be, in large part, the disconnect between what composers and musicians want to offer, and what an audience sufficient to support it wants to hear. (Tradesmen are still not whistling Schonenberg, and likely never will.) That has been true now for about a century. The problem is made worse by the cost of tickets, parking, baby-sitters and whatever other expenses are incurred to attend a concert, versus just listening to the radio or CDs. I don't really know what, if anything, would bring back the audience attendance that they once enjoyed, but I am pretty sure what will produce the opposite effect, and that is exactly what Origel has recommended.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Most obnoxious and stupid thread of the year?


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## Varick (Apr 30, 2014)

Couchie said:


> Orchestras should not be dependent on ticket sales from the general public. Depending on the declining tastes of the public is indeed a sure recipe for death.


You are most certainly correct that it is a recipe for death.



Couchie said:


> All money should come from elite donations with the shortfall made up by the government.


Most of the money that keeps orchestras and classical concert halls alive already come from elite donations (wealthy people, businesses, & organizations who give grants). Why should the shortfall be made up by government? Why should the public fund something that the VAST VAST VAST majority couldn't care less about and is certainly no essential service?

V


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_I think that the loss of NPR stations playing classical music is moot. Why would anyone need to listen to classical music on the radio and have to endure the DJ's selections? It's so much easier to just go to YouTube._

I couldn't agree more. However, the loss of NPR stations happened in the 20th century before the invention of YouTube. If it was a recent phenomena it could be ascribed to more options online. But these stations disappeared in the 1980s and 1990s. That's how far back is the drought.

The comment raises the other issue that is killing classical music: free or nothing. For better or worse 21st century people won't pay the same for music as 20th century people. That's another reason for declining financial health in the industry.


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## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

Couchie said:


> Concerts have become something that true connoisseurs must suffer, at the chance of getting to hear a more novel aural experience.


I have to admit that in Salt Lake City, I often feel this way. I have heard Beethoven's Emperor Concerto and Dvorak 9 enough times. I want something new.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

From my experience the average subscriber to a concert season is not a collector or person that partakes in Internet blogs. It's a person that likes classical music and wants to attend a concert once a month or so. Many of the people I've met at concerts didn't know much about music or composers. In my opinion that the market for concerts.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Varick said:


> You are most certainly correct that it is a recipe for death.
> 
> Most of the money that keeps orchestras and classical concert halls alive already come from elite donations (wealthy people, businesses, & organizations who give grants). Why should the shortfall be made up by government? Why should the public fund something that the VAST VAST VAST majority couldn't care less about and is certainly no essential service?
> 
> V


Classical music has intrinsic worth. The public should fund it, even if they do not appreciate it because they are ignorant, uncultured swine. Why should inferior interests trump superior interests just because they have a great multitude behind them?


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Couchie said:


> Classical music has intrinsic worth. The public should fund it, even if they do not appreciate it because they are ignorant, uncultured swine.


A society primarily focused on education? Too soon.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

larold said:


> From my experience the average subscriber to a concert season is not a collector or person that partakes in Internet blogs. It's a person that likes classical music and wants to attend a concert once a month or so. Many of the people I've met at concerts didn't know much about music or composers. In my opinion that the market for concerts.


And that is the issue. We don't let the great multitude become doctors because they take a mild interest in medicine. That field is reserved for experts. So it should be with classical music concerts.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Anytime you want to start I'm sure your local orchestra will be happy to take your money.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Ethereality said:


> A society primarily focused on education? Too soon.


Education requires a desire to improve yourself, which first necessitates a feeling of inferiority. And that is why telling people classical music is no better than any other music does people a disservice. Not only is it a flagrant lie (classical music being wildly superior), but it discourages drive and ambition in people. If Lady Gaga is said to be as valid a taste as Beethoven, then people will never strive to improve their music tastes.


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## DaddyGeorge (Mar 16, 2020)

I think that the approach of concept of concerts should be balanced in some way. I believe it works very well in my town. There are several series of classical concerts (solo/chamber/orchestral) with mostly older famous repertoire, sometimes supplemented by contemporary music (frequently visited at a reasonable price). Then there are a number of "popular" concerts for a wider audience (in another concert hall), mostly with the participation of celebrities from the field of popular music - quite expensive, sold out, they generate financial gain and perhaps expand the range of listeners who will visit other classical concerts in the future. There is also a festival of Religious (Baroque / Classical / early music) widely attended. And there are the Days of new music - festival focused on contemporary music (there are rather few visitors and I'm not surprised). 
I personally visit almost everything except the "popular" ones. I quite like contemporary music, but it's not my most favorite period. I definitely don't want to listen less Brahms, Beethoven, Mahler...


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Classical music has become too popular, that I had to start pretending to like music I actually don't, just to appear elite and get ahead of the curve.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Couchie said:


> Classical music has intrinsic worth. The public should fund it, even if they do not appreciate it because they are ignorant, uncultured swine. Why should inferior interests trump superior interests just because they have a great multitude behind them?


I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt in assuming you're just blowing smoke.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Im not sure about main thesis of the OP but I can tell with certainty that I sometimes cannot enjoy even the pieces I that I normally adore if they are shown or played in a profane or mundane or stupefying conterxt or background or when they are played on State tv...I can enjoy in classical music, mostly alone, in my house in piece and quiet...


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

ORigel said:


> Now I would like avant-garde pieces to be sandwiched between warhorses. If a concert programmes *1812 Overture*, Schoenberg Piano Concerto, and *Beethoven's Emperor*-- I suspect that the plebs would suffer through Schoenberg to hear the warhorses.


You mean "the familiar spectacle of the contemporary work sandwiched between Beethoven and Brahms," where "there is Beethoven on one side to make sure the audience comes in," and "Brahms on the other side to make sure that it does not get out until after the gate-crasher has been heard"?

This comes from Henry Pleasants' _The Agony of Modern Music_--published in 1955. So your suggestion is not exactly new.


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## MatthewWeflen (Jan 24, 2019)

I like Beethoven _and _Lady Gaga.

I wonder where that puts me in this grand ubermenschen/untermenschen framework.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

1 thing is certain...U can count on ''anarchist'' couchie 2 stir up the pot!!!:lol:


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## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

norman bates said:


> Most obnoxious and stupid thread of the year?


Trying on other points of view, if even only as an exercise, can be helpful in understanding a problem. Even if you disagree, I wouldn't be so insensitive as to label someone else's thoughts that way.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Phil loves classical said:


> Classical music has become too popular, that I had to start pretending to like music I actually don't, just to appear elite and get ahead of the curve.


But that's just the nature of acquired tastes. Fake it until you make it. That is not a character flaw, but something admirable: you are stepping outside your comfort zone to grow.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

20centrfuge said:


> Trying on other points of view, if even only as an exercise, can be helpful in understanding a problem. Even if you disagree, I wouldn't be so insensitive as to label someone else's thoughts that way.


Some people are so drunk on egalitarianism that the knee-jerk reaction is all they have. But for more open-minded people, I invite them to this thought exercise!


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

MatthewWeflen said:


> I like Beethoven _and _Lady Gaga.
> 
> I wonder where that puts me in this grand ubermenschen/untermenschen framework.


There's nothing wrong with enjoying both. The issue arises when you evaluate them to be equals.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

I don't think that classical music has ever been that popular, unless you're talking about "light" classics and "pops" music. I'd theorize the struggles that orchestras face regarding the concert hall is more a result of changes in technology. As one poster here already indicated, why spend money and be logistically inconvenienced when I could enjoy all the classical music I could ever want online? Even before that LPs and CDs were a preferred alternative to lots of people.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

MatthewWeflen said:


> I like Beethoven _and _Lady Gaga.
> 
> I wonder where that puts me in this grand ubermenschen/untermenschen framework.


You're on the right track, baby. You were born this way.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Coach G said:


> I don't think that classical music has ever been that popular, unless you're talking about "light" classics and "pops" music. I'd theorize the struggles that orchestras face regarding the concert hall is more a result of changes in technology. As one poster here already indicated, why spend money and be logistically inconvenienced when I could enjoy all the classical music I could ever want online? Even before that LPs and CDs were a preferred alternative to lots of people.


There was a time when orchestras were primarily in the service of debuting new works rather than beating to death old ones. That is the sort of revival concerning orchestras that I would like to see. If you just want to hear the Ninth for the 1000th time, I agree, why do we need orchestras when conductors today don't even reach the heights of conductors on record?


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

Rich people and refined people are not the same target group. Most individuals of good taste and intellect can only ever hope to be middle class, and shelling dozens or hundreds of whatever the local currency on concerts can come close to a consummerist waste from their perspective of making savings for future unfortunate events or (seldomly) for fortunate chances.

The solution to this thread would be molding the rich into an actual aristocratic elite, which is not going to happen.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Fabulin said:


> Rich people and refined people are not the same target group. Most individuals of good taste and intellect can only ever hope to be middle class, and shelling dozens or hundreds of whatever the local currency on concerts can come close to a consummerist waste from their perspective of making savings for future unfortunate events or (seldomly) for fortunate chances.
> 
> The solution to this thread would be molding the rich into an actual aristocratic elite, which is not going to happen.


That's a good point on a much broader issue. Rich people today are often very tacky. Personally I am in favor of founding a sort of meritocracy elite where the brightest regardless of background are selected and groomed for great things and not dumped into the rat race. Under the current system, the most greedy and power-hungry climb the corporate and political ladders, to society's demise.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Fabulin said:


> The solution to this thread would be molding the rich into an actual aristocratic elite, which is not going to happen.


Maybe start with baby steps, molding just one rich person--perhaps a prominent, powerful political figure.

Then again . . .


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

I haven't been to a concert in years but I do listen from time to time to concerts on local classical radio and they do seem to premier new works quite often. It's almost as if there's a concert formula: somthing old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. It may be an easier task to debut new works than during the 1950s and 1960s, as contemporary composers are creating music that is eclectic but basically tonal and much easier to follow than when new works by composers such as Babbit, Sessions, or Carter, were much more abstract.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

Couchie said:


> That's a good point on a much broader issue. Rich people today are often very tacky. Personally I am in favor of founding a sort of meritocracy elite where the brightest regardless of background are selected and groomed for great things and not dumped into the rat race. Under the current system, the most greedy and power-hungry climb the corporate and political ladders, to society's demise.


As someone currently writing a book on meritocracy, I have to say that stratifying society is not a good idea. There must be plenty of mobility and a rather free market of talent. Otherwise whoever gets groomed will become lazy and complacent, and anyone who is not will become power hungry _and _willing to take the system down. It wouldn't take many mislabeled smart people leading the masses of "deservedly" labeled low strata dwellers, for such a system to fall. There is a rare (in English) sci-fi book on the topic, titled _Limes Inferior_, about the exploits of a smart man in a so stratified society, who pretends to be dumber on purpose to work as a counterfeiter of ability tests for the dumb but rich, and not to bear any significant responsibility. If you can find it, it's an entertaining read.


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## Luchesi (Mar 15, 2013)

20centrfuge said:


> I have to admit that in Salt Lake City, I often feel this way. I have heard Beethoven's Emperor Concerto and Dvorak 9 enough times. I want something new.


You can study the Emperor as two studies in 3 flats and a study in 5 sharps coming out of the basic elements (surprisingly differently).


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Couchie said:


> Some people are so drunk on egalitarianism that the knee-jerk reaction is all they have. But for more open-minded people, I invite them to this thought exercise!


This has nothing to do with egalitarianism.

First, aren't you the one who thinks that classical music ends with Wagner (or at least, that's what you said in other threads)? That would mean that you don't understand anything about modern classical music. That means also that your elitist views are hardly justified if you're not able to get the music of a whole century in that same genre you say you love. How could you consider yourself a better listener if you can't understand the value of a century of that genre?

Second, the idea that "so that they may look up at it in fear and wonder, pronouncing to them unmistakably their inferiority": I don't even know where to begin. The idea that those who don't listen to classical music should "look up at it in fear and wonder" is just so incredibly laughable and it just says more about your delusion of being "superior" just because you've spent your time listening to classical music. What if someone has spent his live becoming surgeons, or writers, or scientists... should everybody who knows something about a field be so entitled?
And actually the truth is that especially with younger generations those who listen classical music are more likely seen as weirdos. Go figure if someone is going to watch you like "I'm not worth, I'm inferior" just because you listen to Wagner and they don't.

And talking of having a open mentality: believe it or not, a lot of non classical music has great value (sure, a lot of it is terrible but that's not the point). You think that being a snob is something positive, but being a snob doesn't mean being someone who has a superior understanding of the world (or the music), but just being someone who has prejudices and thinks that those prejudices are truths, and therefore actually isn't able to understand the value of many things.

And lastly: classical music is already a dusty museum instead of a living force. It would not benefit at all from being an even more exclusive club. Encouraging people to listen to it, showing the value, showing that it's something that can says something to people even now, that would be useful and not just to the ego of some listener that wants to feel like it's a superior human being just because of his music tastes.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Couchie said:


> There was a time when orchestras were primarily in the service of debuting new works rather than beating to death old ones. That is the sort of revival concerning orchestras that I would like to see. If you just want to hear the Ninth for the 1000th time, I agree, why do we need orchestras when conductors today don't even reach the heights of conductors on record?


It seems that humans thrive on the familiar. The Nashville Symphony had a series where they did second performances of world premiered pieces. I was at a couple of them. I have to admit, I didn't go to the concerts to hear those pieces, I don't remember either of them, and I haven't sought either of them out.

When it comes to new pieces, it seems better to release a recording to let people get familiar with them, then perform live the ones that people connect with. For example, the Nashville Symphony had a local hit with Conni Ellisor's Blackberry Winter, and that's been performed more than once out here. Come to think about it, even more than twice.

Having said that, from what I recall, the Nashville Symphony has been pretty consistent in adding new pieces to their concerts. But the warhorses are what puts people in the seats to either experience or endure the new pieces.


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## Swosh (Feb 25, 2018)

Yea I wish it was 100 times more popular than it is now haha


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Couchie said:


> But that's just the nature of acquired tastes. Fake it until you make it. That is not a character flaw, but something admirable: you are stepping outside your comfort zone to grow.


No, just joking. I do consider that kind of insincerity a character flaw, especially when they use it to belittle others.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

norman bates said:


> First, aren't you the one who thinks that classical music ends with Wagner (or at least, that's what you said in other threads)? That would mean that you don't understand anything about modern classical music. That means also that your elitist views are hardly justified if you're not able to get the music of a whole century in that same genre you say you love. How could you consider yourself a better listener if you can't understand the value of a century of that genre?
> And lastly: classical music is already a dusty museum instead of a living force. It would not benefit at all from being an even more exclusive club. Encouraging people to listen to it, showing the value, showing that it's something that can says something to people even now, that would be useful and not just to the ego of some listener that wants to feel like it's a superior human being just because of his music tastes. And lastly: classical music is already a dusty museum instead of a living force. It would not benefit at all from being an even more exclusive club. Encouraging people to listen to it, showing the value, showing that it's something that can says something to people even now, that would be useful and not just to the ego of some listener that wants to feel like it's a superior human being just because of his music tastes.


You have a lot of good points. I also think that music is subjective to a large degree, classical music isn't necessarily superior to other non-classical genres. But I still think there has to be a clear line dividing classical music from non-classical genres. My contempt/indifference for non-classical genres stems from the feeling/thought "ewww they are too alien in style", rather than "ewww they are too inferior in quality".


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

norman bates said:


> This has nothing to do with egalitarianism.
> 
> First, aren't you the one who thinks that classical music ends with Wagner (or at least, that's what you said in other threads)? That would mean that you don't understand anything about modern classical music. That means also that your elitist views are hardly justified if you're not able to get the music of a whole century in that same genre you say you love. How could you consider yourself a better listener if you can't understand the value of a century of that genre?


A fair question! I do stand by my belief that Classical music reached its zenith with Parsifal, and not with John Cage flicking cactuses. If people want to damn me as an uncultured swine for that opinion, then I am prepared to live with that.



norman bates said:


> Second, the idea that "so that they may look up at it in fear and wonder, pronouncing to them unmistakably their inferiority": I don't even know where to begin. The idea that those who don't listen to classical music should "look up at it in fear and wonder" is just so incredibly laughable and it just says more about your delusion of being "superior" just because you've spent your time listening to classical music. What if someone has spent his live becoming surgeons, or writers, or scientists... should everybody who knows something about a field be so entitled?


All the good surgeons are egomaniacs, and I wouldn't trust one who wasn't. Same goes for scientists and writers. Why should people not be proud at reaching the peak of an interest. Why do you use such esteemed professions to make your point? If we are going to be egalitarians, ought a prostitute not to be as proud at her work? And the prostitute who drives to her work listening to the Goldberg Variations is yes, vastly superior to the surgeon who listens to One Direction, as far as aesthetic sensibilities are concerned.



norman bates said:


> And actually the truth is that especially with younger generations those who listen classical music are more likely seen as weirdos. Go figure if someone is going to watch you like "I'm not worth, I'm inferior" just because you listen to Wagner and they don't.


Just as the intelligent and talented kids are likely to be seen as "weirdos". It's almost as if we have a fallen culture that glorifies the lowest common denominator so they don't have to feel "inferior" to anybody else. Ah, mediocrity! Let us sing its praises!



norman bates said:


> And talking of having a open mentality: believe it or not, a lot of non classical music has great value (sure, a lot of it is terrible but that's not the point). You think that being a snob is something positive, but being a snob doesn't mean being someone who has a superior understanding of the world (or the music), but just being someone who has prejudices and thinks that those prejudices are truths, and therefore actually isn't able to understand the value of many things.


 No there is clearly a rank to the value of things (given this site's obsession with ranking), and Classical music is at the top. I do not shy away from that position.



norman bates said:


> And lastly: classical music is already a dusty museum instead of a living force. It would not benefit at all from being an even more exclusive club. Encouraging people to listen to it, showing the value, showing that it's something that can says something to people even now, that would be useful and not just to the ego of some listener that wants to feel like it's a superior human being just because of his music tastes.


We've been trying to bring down Classical music to the masses for decades, and it hasn't improved it one iota, quite the opposite. Let us elevate Classical music and encourage the masses to come up to it, that is the thrust of this thread!


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Fabulin said:


> As someone currently writing a book on meritocracy, I have to say that stratifying society is not a good idea. There must be plenty of mobility and a rather free market of talent. Otherwise whoever gets groomed will become lazy and complacent, and anyone who is not will become power hungry _and _willing to take the system down. It wouldn't take many mislabeled smart people leading the masses of "deservedly" labeled low strata dwellers, for such a system to fall. There is a rare (in English) sci-fi book on the topic, titled _Limes Inferior_, about the exploits of a smart man in a so stratified society, who pretends to be dumber on purpose to work as a counterfeiter of ability tests for the dumb but rich, and not to bear any significant responsibility. If you can find it, it's an entertaining read.


We owe much to the lazy and complacent aristocrats who wanted the likes of Haydn to write them amusements. Hard busywork is rather overvalued as a cultural commodity, we as a society require much more laziness and time to collect our thoughts!


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

Room2201974 said:


> I think that the loss of NPR stations playing classical music is moot. Why would anyone need to listen to classical music on the radio and have to endure the DJ's selections? It's so much easier to just go to YouTube. Instead of one version of Brahms Fourth, you have dozens at your fingertips. Not only that, but YouTube versions also include scores.....you can't get that on the radio. And I say this as a former NPR classical music radio announcer. I have a hard time mourning the loss of the medium when I have more than ever before to choose from.


That's true, and that 24/7/365 availability may be what's killing not only live performances in the classical world, but pop music too (although in pop music the quality of the product and demographics play a role too). I remember when I was a kid and on into my teens a big-name pop album release was a big event. I can remember people standing in line waiting for the record store to open so they could get Springsteen's just-released Born in the USA album. Those days and that kind of enthusiasm seem be over. Maybe it was drowned in the oversaturated atmosphere.


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## Simplicissimus (Feb 3, 2020)

Room2201974 said:


> I think that the loss of NPR stations playing classical music is moot. Why would anyone need to listen to classical music on the radio and have to endure the DJ's selections? It's so much easier to just go to YouTube. Instead of one version of Brahms Fourth, you have dozens at your fingertips. Not only that, but YouTube versions also include scores.....you can't get that on the radio. And I say this as a former NPR classical music radio announcer. I have a hard time mourning the loss of the medium when I have more than ever before to choose from.


There is much more to CM radio than curated CD playlists. There are live and recently recorded concerts by various orchestras, live opera, music analysis and appreciation shows like Bill McGlaughlin's "Exploring Music," arts calendars, specialized period shows like Bob Davis's "Millenium of Music," Candice Agree's "Baroque&Before," and lots of others; shows featuring new CD/Blu-ray releases, shows dedicated to film music, to avant-garde music, shows with studio guest performers who also give interviews... So that one can be pretty well informed about the classical music scene by listening regularly to CM radio. CM radio's live broadcasts of concerts, which do include some new and non-warhorse pieces, serve as a surrogate to me, as I cannot attend as many concerts in person as I would like due to financial constraints. Somehow, some commercial CM stations are managing to hang on if not thrive through voluntary membership and selling advertising. That said, until 20 years ago there were two commercial CM stations in Chicago and now there's one. But I believe it will live on because there are fully enough CM enthusiasts around here to support it. And apropos of the topic of this thread, I don't think the station panders to debased popular tastes. If anyone is worried about the demise of classical music in today's society, maybe this can give them some reason to be sanguine.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Agree. Last time I was at a string quartet concert in Giants Stadium, those thousands of screaming fans drove me crazy.


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## Varick (Apr 30, 2014)

Couchie, I can't tell if you're serious or just a master fisherman bored by being locked down for 2-1/2 months.

Either way, your posts are rather amusing.

V


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Couchie said:


> A fair question! I do stand by my belief that Classical music reached its zenith with Parsifal, and not with John Cage flicking cactuses. If people want to damn me as an uncultured swine for that opinion, then I am prepared to live with that.


that's exactly the attitude that people who don't like classical music have. They don't think "oh look at that superior human being". They think, look at that snob who think he's better than me because he finds value in that meaningless stuff.



Couchie said:


> All the good surgeons are egomaniacs, and I wouldn't trust one who wasn't. Same goes for scientists and writers. Why should people not be proud at reaching the peak of an interest. Why do you use such esteemed professions to make your point? If we are going to be egalitarians, ought a prostitute not to be as proud at her work? And the prostitute who drives to her work listening to the Goldberg Variations is yes, vastly superior to the surgeon who listens to One Direction, as far as aesthetic sensibilities are concerned.


sure a lot of extremely talented persons are egomaniacs. But we like them IN SPITE of them being egomaniacs, not because they are like that. Being an egomaniac is not a positive thing, doesn't make that person more approachable or nicer.
And fortunately it's not a equation as you're saying, there are also extremely talented and knowleadgeable persons that even perfectly knowing their value are humble and nice and they live by the "I know that I don't know" motto.
I want to put an example I've posted other times that I think you can understand considering what he's doing in the video. Ted Greene, who was a jazz (and rock!) guitarist here giving a music lesson and improvising:






His knowledge of music was immense and still he was an incredibly humble person too.
And he was someone who regularly played pop songs by the way.



Couchie said:


> Just as the intelligent and talented kids are likely to be seen as "weirdos". It's almost as if we have a fallen culture that glorifies the lowest common denominator so they don't have to feel "inferior" to anybody else. Ah, mediocrity! Let us sing its praises!


I'm certainly not for singing the praise of mediocrity, I'm just stating as the world is. The idea that someone would watch persons who listen to classical music as superior is just a deluded dream. And 
one should listen to the music because he likes the music, not to be seen as superior.



Couchie said:


> No there is clearly a rank to the value of things (given this site's obsession with ranking), and Classical music is at the top. I do not shy away from that position.


does ranking genres have any importance? At the end of the day, genres are made by more or less talented persons. There are geniuses in popular music (as well in other non western musical traditions) and there's classical music that isn't that great and sometimes is just awful.
The idea of putting a genre on the top seems to imply that just to listen to everything else is like wasting time, forgetting about the work of very talented persons in other genres.



Couchie said:


> We've been trying to bring down Classical music to the masses for decades, and it hasn't improved it one iota, quite the opposite.


The funny things is that the only classical music enjoyed by the masses is the music that has been played again and again (repetita juvant), that means the most popular composers: Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Wagner, Puccini, using their music in concerts, radio, movies, commercials.
When a opera is represented at La Scala you see all the celebrities going there to be seen.
And for what I know that's exactly the kind of music you like too. Maybe the exposition and familiarity (instead of your idea of exclusion) has a positive role in making the music accepted and understood after all.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I'm not comfortable that art - "highbrow art" - should be subject to market forces. It is OK for classical ensembles and orchestras to play more popular music on an economic basis but we should not lose the cutting edge and composers should not be denied the opportunity to explore and invent. I believe the result of this endeavour - including the results from the past (going back centuries) - should be available to all as a right. It will always be a minority interest but it doesn't need to be an elite one. State subsidies could ensure this although that idea may be hard for the holders of some political ideologies to swallow.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Lots of people are chasing the same source of income. If there is sufficient interest to support the financial considerations, composers and performers can do as they please. If there isn't, it will be hard to justify public money to support the creation of what will sound to most taxpayers like little more than noise. (I would be willing to allow a small portion of my tax dollars to go to creating "music" that I don't like and would prefer never to listen to myself, but it would only be a very small portion, and I may be alone in that willingness.)


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I am not sure about the argument that state money (aka our taxes) needs to support the stuff that has a large audience. That is the stuff that doesn't need support. But I strongly believe that we all benefit when our governments support cutting edge and high brow art - including lots of art from the past. Even if we don't like the results I think we stand to gain much from living in a country where minority interests are valued and catered for. Countries where the ignorant and the philistines get to control what gets government support end up more miserable and high brow art becomes an elite taste because only elites can afford it.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Enthusiast said:


> . . . Countries where the ignorant and the philistines get to control what gets government support end up more miserable and high brow art becomes an elite taste because only elites can afford it.


In the end, that is going to be all countries, if it isn't already.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

^ Perhaps. For now. But we British do still have some state sponsorship for the arts. It is under constant attack.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

As resources get tighter everywhere, cutting edge art will be one of the first things to go. More mainstream art will be second. It matters very little whether or not any of us like that outcome. (The military, of course, will pretty much always get whatever it asks for.)


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Semi-related: I have a son who studied to be, and is, a theatrical set designer. I was joking once that you rarely hear a parent say "I'm so glad my child is in theatre," but I assured him that I was really proud of him that he had chosen a profession that was integral to the transmission of civilization.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

JAS said:


> As resources get tighter everywhere, cutting edge art will be one of the first things to go. More mainstream art will be second. It matters very little whether or not any of us like that outcome. (The military, of course, will pretty much always get whatever it asks for.)


You may or may not be right. But are you arguing that this is how it should be? Or is your point merely that "this is how it will be so don't bother asking for anything different"? If the latter, why accept it? Why not argue against it? You may not win but even then the idea is kept alive and might one day be accepted.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

I think that the state should support the fine arts especially in America where our culture of consumerism makes it so that the fine arts can't really be supported very much by the market. In that America has such a rich musical history, not only with our own home-grown genres such as Jazz, Blues, Gospel, Folk, Country, Broadway, etc., but also with our very prolific and varied galaxy of American classical composers (Ives, Gershwin, Copland, Barber, Hovhaness, and many, many, others); this music ought to be preserved and promoted. Every nation needs a culture and a tradition of sorts, and I think that our American culture should have more to showcase than _Keeping Up With The Kardashians_, _90 Day Fiance_, _Dr. Phil_, etc.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Enthusiast said:


> You may or may not be right. But are you arguing that this is how it should be? Or is your point merely that "this is how it will be so don't bother asking for anything different"? If the latter, why accept it? Why not argue against it? You may not win but even then the idea is kept alive and might one day be accepted.


I am arguing only that it matters very little what you or I might want, unless we can fully fund it ourselves. Fight against it all you like, but be prepared for disappointment in the end.

To some extent, artists have themselves to blame. It is hard to justify a lot of what has been foisted on the public in the name of art.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

On second thought I removed my post.

Why aren't we allowed to delete our posts?


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

Enthusiast said:


> ...Countries where the ignorant and the philistines get to control what gets government support end up more miserable and high brow art becomes an elite taste because only elites can afford it.


"High brow art" is already an elite taste because there's a yawning gulf between composer and audience. The composers put down their little blobs of sound for the delectation not of the peon in the seats, but university faculty and professional critics. But then the peon is expected to fund it anyway because art, you rube.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

consuono said:


> "High brow art" is already an elite taste because there's a yawning gulf between composer and audience. The composers put down their little blobs of sound for the delectation not of the peon in the seats, but university faculty and professional critics. But then the peon is expected to fund it anyway because art, you rube.


I don't know to what extent classical music is "high brow" or "elite". Even while composers such as Babbit, Carter, Sessions, Dallapiccola, Boulez, Berio, Xanakis, and Cage, were going off into outer space; there remained in that same generation, Shostakovich, Britten, Barber, Hovhaness, Lou Harrison, and George Rochberg, whose music can be quite sophiticated but also very listenable. Others such as Aaron Copland and Igor Stravinsky were abstract when they wanted to be abstract and listenable when they wanted to be listenable.

It seems to me that most of the new pieces I hear today by composers who are alive and well and actively composing, are leaning towards a more tonal and accessable style as opposed to the former generations post-World War II.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

Coach G said:


> ...
> It seems to me that most of the new pieces I hear today by composers who are alive and well and actively composing, are leaning towards a more tonal and accessable style as opposed to the former generations post-World War II.


The only composers/pieces I can think of off the top of my head that might fit that description are from places other than the US and Western Europe. The "modern artists" for the most part purposefully rubbed out the general audience from the equation. It's a matter of artistic attitude and philosophy. If you're going to produce "works" that intentionally defy the audience I don't think it should come as an alarming shock when the audience dries up. I think it's a reason Alma Deutscher became such a phenom. Yes, her stuff is "youthful" and sometimes treacly and derivative, but it isn't really "look how cosmopolitan I am and listen to this aural political pamphlet".
(edit)...aside from film composers. That's no accident.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Varick said:


> Couchie, I can't tell if you're serious or just a master fisherman bored by being locked down for 2-1/2 months.
> 
> Either way, your posts are rather amusing.
> 
> V


Cauchie is the FINAL BOSS of TalkClassical.


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## annaw (May 4, 2019)

consuono said:


> The only composers/pieces I can think of off the top of my head that might fit that description are from places other than the US and Western Europe. *The "modern artists" for the most part purposefully rubbed out the general audience from the equation. It's a matter of artistic attitude and philosophy.* If you're going to produce "works" that intentionally defy the audience I don't think it should come as an alarming shock when the audience dries up. I think it's a reason Alma Deutscher became such a phenom. Yes, her stuff is "youthful" and sometimes treacly and derivative, but it isn't really "look how cosmopolitan I am and listen to this aural political pamphlet".
> (edit)...aside from film composers. That's no accident.


None of the contemporary composers is also nearly as famous as Bach, Mozart, Haydn, the great Romantics... someone must realise at one moment that being erudite just for the sake of it isn't actually rewarding or doesn't get you overly far. Many great composers composed because they couldn't do without. I would even say that in some cases it might not be a difference in philosophy but rather the lack of it - when was the last time we had a composer who'd have such a philosophy behind his compositions as Wagner had? Who'd be able to convey social criticism through the music as Shostakovich did? Who'd build a mathematical system for composing as Schoenberg managed to do?


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

"Who cares if you listen?"
http://www.palestrant.com/babbitt.html


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

consuono said:


> "Who cares if you listen?"
> http://www.palestrant.com/babbitt.html


I have often wondered if Babbitt really meant that, or if he was just trying to say something so outrageous and wrong-headed that no one could entirely forget it. Better a remembered villain than a forgotten hero?


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

consuono said:


> "Who cares if you listen?"
> http://www.palestrant.com/babbitt.html


The problem with the Schoenberg wave of the moment is not that it's not listened to today but that it'll be gone completely 50 years from now, perhaps even before, never to be listened to again. It's therefore not classical music because what has defined this music is its ability to last through the ages.

It is beyond a waste of time: it's destructive to the individual - and while the composer would hope that it would be destructive for society also, it will not have that effect because not nearly enough people listen to it.


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## annaw (May 4, 2019)

1996D said:


> The problem with the Schoenberg wave of the moment is not that it's not listened to today but that it'll be gone completely 50 years from now, perhaps even before, never to be listened to again. It's therefore not classical music because what has defined this music is its ability to last through the ages.
> 
> It is beyond a waste of time: it's destructive to the individual - and while the composer would hope that it would be destructive for society also, it will not have that effect because not nearly enough people listen to it.


I'm quite sure that Schoenberg, Webern and Berg themselves will be played 50 years later as well. I'm young enough to hopefully be alive 50 years later, I certainly plan to enjoy their music as well as I can. It's questionable whether their imitators will be played as well though. Maybe my whole understanding is wrong but I don't think that classical music is or even could be defined through its long-lasting appeal. That would mean that those composers during Baroque, Classical and Romantic era whose names you haven't ever heard and whose works have never been recorded, wouldn't be classical music composers at all. The main problem with such "definition" is that it makes the essence of classical music entirely subjective and dependent of human society. Had things gone a bit differently, Beethoven's 9th Symphony might not be classical music at all...


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

JAS said:


> I have often wondered if Babbitt really meant that, or if he was just trying to say something so outrageous and wrong-headed that no one could entirely forget it. Better a remembered villain than a forgotten hero?


How is it different from that attitude of most "serious composers" over the past 60 years?


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## caracalla (Feb 19, 2020)

JAS said:


> I have often wondered if Babbitt really meant that


Babbitt frequently protested that the title 'Who Cares if you Listen?' was not his own, and misrepresented his article. I'm not convinced that it does.

What he seems to be arguing is that I have no more business listening to his music than I do trying to understand higher mathematics. If that's the deal, and I think it is, then it's one I've always been willing to accept. You ignore me, I ignore you, everyone's happy. Except, perhaps, others competing for academic resources.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

1996D said:


> The problem with the Schoenberg wave of the moment is not that it's not listened to today but that it'll be gone completely 50 years from now, perhaps even before, never to be listened to again. It's therefore not classical music because what has defined this music is its ability to last through the ages.
> 
> It is beyond a waste of time: it's destructive to the individual - and while the composer would hope that it would be destructive for society also, it will not have that effect because not nearly enough people listen to it.


 the ability to last is (mainly I'd dare to say) due also to commercial reasons and not just artistic value. Orchestras have to been paid. So it's an easy choice to play again and again familiar things (increasing in the audiences the sense of familiarity) in order to make money. And difficult music (or perceived as such) or simply forgotten music it's easily avoided for the same reason. That doesn't mean that forgotten music is necessarily worse than super popular music.
It's like when children are playing: if one has a toy, everybody wants that toy, because it's a promise of happiness. Sometimes adults are like children.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

consuono said:


> How is it different from that attitude of most "serious composers" over the past 60 years?


Other than the overt willfulness of the statement, I don't think it is. I have had similar discussions over the years with artists in various areas (some as composers, but more as visual artists), and the mixed attitude of "I want to make the art I want to make" and "why is what I make not more appreciated" is often confounding. Some reach Babbitt's point of not caring, or at least saying that they don't care, but they also seem to eagerly lap up any hint of favorable attention. (Most of the people who say that they don't care how their work is accepted just seem to be trying to embrace what is likely to be their fate anyway, turning whine into wine, as one old friend of mine used to say.) There is, of course, something of a divide of audience. There is an audience of their peers and professionals in the field, and then there is the audience of the masses. The attitude towards both can be very schizophrenic. It must be maddening. And in the end, most people have to make a living of some sort, unless one is fortunate enough to have been born into money sufficient to sustain your earthly needs.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

caracalla said:


> Babbitt frequently protested that the title 'Who Cares if you Listen?' was not his own, and misrepresented his article. I'm not convinced that it does.


The only better title that occurs to me might be "I don't care if you listen," the same idea as a statement rather than a question (because he really does not seem to be asking any questions in the text). Perhaps he was upset that the title lets the cat out of the bag before any of his position is stated in his own words. It would be interesting to know what title he would have preferred.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Couchie said:


> If Lady Gaga is said to be as valid a taste as Beethoven, then people will never strive to improve their music tastes.






98,510,617 views





101,367,276 views

Everyone in the video comment sections thinks Justin Bieber and Skrillex lost.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Couchie said:


> . . . If Lady Gaga is said to be as valid a taste as Beethoven, then people will never strive to improve their music tastes.


The problem here might be "as valid a taste." Please define "valid" in this context. In my view, Lady Gaga is as valid for people who like her music, as mine is for me. (And mine does NOT include Lady Gaga.) I doubt that their views will hold up as well over time, but as someone once observed, in the future we will all be dead anyway.


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

The more popular classical music is, the better as far as I'm concerned. It's been a while since I went to a live concert but there's nothing like it.


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## caracalla (Feb 19, 2020)

JAS said:


> It would be interesting to know what title he would have preferred.


Apparently Babbitt's original title was 'The Composer as Specialist'. I can well understand why a magazine editor would ditch that (as is his prerogative), regardless of content. The actual headline used was deliberately provocative (and, as it turned out, extremely effective), though imo it was also fair. Babbitt protested that he'd been misrepresented (as people often do in these circumstances), but anyone can follow the link and make up their own mind about that.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

When we have a global population of almost 8 billion, of whom a large percentage are connected via the Internet, we have an entirely new world order when it comes to art and culture. This means the simultaneous ability to both share cultural tastes and "values" but also to carve out a near-infinity of different wedges of the cultural pie. When everyone can sit home and sample all and/or indulge themselves with whatever they choose, whenever they choose, then the old order wherein CM was what it was then is gone. It is now just another slice of the pie. Imagine at any given time all the people playing on-line games; this did not exist 50 years ago. Andy Warhol: "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes."


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Strange Magic said:


> When we have a global population of almost 8 billion, of whom a large percentage are connected via the Internet, we have an entirely new world order when it comes to art and culture. This means the simultaneous ability to both share cultural tastes and "values" but also to carve out a near-infinity of different wedges of the cultural pie. When everyone can sit home and sample all and/or indulge themselves with whatever they choose, whenever they choose, then the old order wherein CM was what it was then is gone. It is now just another slice of the pie. Imagine at any given time all the people playing on-line games; this did not exist 50 years ago. Andy Warhol: "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes."


it is information and art overload. There is so much of everything out there in the world - music, books, games, photographs, opinions, theories etc - that it seems almost pointless to produce anything novel, because it gets drowned in the ocean. It has to compete for attention and attention is the real scarce resource. And pearls are drowned in the swamp of mediocricity


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Jacck said:


> it is information and art overload. There is so much of everything out there in the world - music, books, games, photographs, opinions, theories etc - that it seems almost pointless to produce anything novel, because it gets drowned in the ocean. It has to compete for attention and attention is the real scarce resource. And pearls are drowned in the swamp of mediocricity


All true. And in the interest of truth and facts, there is testimony that Andy Warhol never said his 15-minutes of fame quote:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...the future, everyone will,will almost always


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

JAS said:


> The only better title that occurs to me might be "I don't care if you listen," the same idea as a statement rather than a question (because he really does not seem to be asking any questions in the text). Perhaps he was upset that the title lets the cat out of the bag before any of his position is stated in his own words. It would be interesting to know what title he would have preferred.


Reminds me of a lesson the physicist Richard Feynmann allegedly learned from his father, which he claimed to have adopted (and titled one of his memoirs): "Who _cares _what others think?"


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

Jacck said:


> it is information and art overload. There is so much of everything out there in the world - music, books, games, photographs, opinions, theories etc - that it seems almost pointless to produce anything novel, because it gets drowned in the ocean. It has to compete for attention and attention is the real scarce resource. And pearls are drowned in the swamp of mediocricity


"[E]very man, while digging his potatoes, will breathe his own Epics, his own Symphonies (Opera if he likes); and as he sits of an evening in his own backyard in shirt sleeves, sucking his pipe and watching his children in their fun of building _their_ themes for _their_ sonatas of _their_ life, he will look over the mountains and see visions in their reality." -Charles Ives


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

annaw said:


> I'm quite sure that Schoenberg, Webern and Berg themselves will be played 50 years later as well. I'm young enough to hopefully be alive 50 years later, I certainly plan to enjoy their music as well as I can. It's questionable whether their imitators will be played as well though. Maybe my whole understanding is wrong but I don't think that classical music is or even could be defined through its long-lasting appeal. That would mean that those composers during Baroque, Classical and Romantic era whose names you haven't ever heard and whose works have never been recorded, wouldn't be classical music composers at all. The main problem with such "definition" is that it makes the essence of classical music entirely subjective and dependent of human society. Had things gone a bit differently, Beethoven's 9th Symphony might not be classical music at all...


Good music survives, that's the constant. As long as one competent musician is deeply impressed by a composer he will make it his life goal to perform his pieces, provided he has an audience, which virtuosos always do.

Schoenberg might be remembered as a historical figure but his music will not be played if society changes its values, which is certain to happen, and if his music is not played then it is certain to say that the music of the last 50 years will be entirely forgotten.

It barely survives today.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

1996D said:


> Good music survives, that's the constant. As long as one competent musician is deeply impressed by a composer he will make it his life goal to perform his pieces, provided he has an audience, which virtuosos always do.
> 
> Schoenberg might be remembered as a historical figure but his music will not be played if society changes its values, which is certain to happen, and if his music is not played then it is certain to say that the music of the last 50 years will be entirely forgotten.
> 
> It barely survives today.


It's been over 100 years and Schoenberg is still be played, and if anything I think his standing has improved. I find it odd that you are certain that Schoenberg will disappear in the next 50 years. It is obvious you are biased against his music, but many others do not share your opinion and I see no evidence of that changing in the next 50 years.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

SanAntone said:


> It's been over 100 years and Schoenberg is still be played, and if anything I think his standing has improved. I find it odd that you are certain that Schoenberg will disappear in the next 50 years. It is obvious you are biased against his music, but many others do not share your opinion and I see no evidence of that changing in the next 50 years.


The only piece of his regularly performed is his string sextet.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I'd be encouraged to attend more concerts if the "destructive" music of Schoenberg, Varese or Ligeti was on the program. In fact I really wish concerts were programmed to specific tastes. They can have their Mozart, Haydn, Schubert concerts so I can stay home. And I'll pay to go listen to the modern stuff with an audience who wants to hear it. This way I won't have to listen to old ladies grumbling about that horrible piece messing up their oldies concert.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

1996D said:


> The only piece of his regularly performed is his string sextet.


Are you ignoring recordings? Because this year there has been a recording of Erwartung and Pelleas und Melisande, as well as his Violin Concerto (Isabelle Faust). Last year there was another recording of his piano music as well as Von heurte auf morgen - there are recordings of his music appearing regularly.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

SanAntone said:


> Are you ignoring recordings? Because this year there has been a recording of Erwartung and Pelleas und Melisande, as well as his Violin Concerto (Isabelle Faust). Last year there was another recording of his piano music as well as Von heurte auf morgen - there are recordings of his music appearing regularly.


That's only because his music fits the times.

The top composers are still performed even as their music contradicts everything this society stands for because of the timeless nature of their music. For Schoenberg this will not work, when the day comes that society completely shuns atonal music, he will disappear.


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## annaw (May 4, 2019)

1996D said:


> That's only because his music fits the times.
> 
> The top composers are still performed even as their music contradicts everything this society stands for because of the timeless nature of their music. For Schoenberg this will not work, *when the day comes that society completely shuns atonal music, he will disappear.*


I don't know, why should such day even come? The second Viennese school is so crazy that if it hasn't disappeared yet, I doubt it will ever go, or at least not in the near future. Society's values have changed immensely since Baroque but Bach is still going strong, counterpoint hasn't disappeared anywhere although a few use it as much as he did.

How exactly do you define "timeless nature"? If you define it through their long-lasting appeal, as you seem to do in the case of "great composers", then it doesn't work with 20th century composers who yet haven't had an opportunity to even stand the test of time. I would be much more worried about composers like Shostakovich, if we start thinking about values. If it's all about values, then will his political works, including his symphonies, be played in 50 years when people cannot relate with the 20th century world and cannot understand its struggles? If I understand your views correctly then Shostakovich's music will disappear as well because social and politcal criticism is strictly cultural and certainly not of timeless nature. It's quite the opposite of timeless, in fact, because society and politics are in constant change themselves.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I don't know to what extent the OP was tongue-in-cheek, but I agree that the perceived elitism of classical music is one of the main things we've got going for us. I don't know whether we should embrace it or not. But I feel that the tradition is actually flourishing and we have little to worry about. Maybe small towns with fewer than 10 million or so people can't support a professional orchestra anymore, and that's too bad for the people in those towns, but that doesn't particularly worry me. We have something like 2% of the people, we'll always have something like 2% of the people, and 2% is still a lot in today's world and economy.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

starthrower said:


> I'd be encouraged to attend more concerts if the "destructive" music of Schoenberg, Varese or Ligeti was on the program. In fact I really wish concerts were programmed to specific tastes. They can have their Mozart, Haydn, Schubert concerts so I can stay home. And I'll pay to go listen to the modern stuff with an audience who wants to hear it. This way I won't have to listen to old ladies grumbling about that horrible piece messing up their oldies concert.


I could be wrong, but I doubt such concerts would turn any kind of self-sustaining income even to the degree of the troubled orchestras right now. I would say the reason orchestral programs have (at least in my memory) some "modern" pieces tucked in among the Mozart, Haydn and Schubert is so that more than a couple dozen will hear it.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

1996D said:


> Good music survives, that's the constant.


no it's not unfortunately. The fact that sometimes we rediscover certain gems of the past is not a proof that there aren't great things that are forgotten or lost.
As I said in another discussion, it happens often to me that reading the thought of composers I like I read them saying marvelous things of works or composers that sometimes haven't been recorded even once.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

annaw said:


> I don't know, why should such day even come? The second Viennese school is so crazy that if it hasn't disappeared yet, I doubt it will ever go, or at least not in the near future. Society's values have changed immensely since Baroque but Bach is still going strong, counterpoint hasn't disappeared anywhere although a few use it as much as he did.


There seems to be at least a small audience for almost everything. (For goodness sake, there are actually people who identify as Druids, although their practices are more an invention of the 18th century than the ancient past.) The question is whether or not there is sufficient audience to sustain continuing interest, and the finances necessary for it to survive in some form. I have no problem with people who love the second Viennese school any more than I do for people who love Justin Bieber or people who love musical saws or washboards. I just want to be able to avoid it to the greatest extent possible.

Edit: ungarbled the last sentence to correct from too much moving around and leaving some behind.


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## annaw (May 4, 2019)

JAS said:


> There seems to be at least a small audience for almost everything. (For goodness sake, there are actually people who identify as Druids, although their practices are more an invention of the 18th century than the ancient past.) The question is whether or not there is sufficient audience to sustain continuing interest, and the finances necessary for it to survive in some form. I have no problem with people who love the second Viennese school any more than I do for people who love Justin Bieber or people who love musical saws or washboards. I just don't want to be able to be able to avoid it to the greatest extent possible.


I'm actually not an overly huge fan of the second Viennese school myself - I haven't been able to really enjoy it although I'd love to. I'm rather saying, as you are, that there are certainly some people who do enjoy it. I'm rather saying that among modern and contemporary composers, some of whom who put atonality into practice, Schoenberg was the one who actually had a some sort of system and who did something new. I admit that at least in my opinion his compositions certainly are very complex. I quite recently listened to his _Ode to Napoleon_ - his use of human voice is absolutely genius! Then I read a Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/"Ode-to-Napoleon"_hexachord. Not everyone can come up with such things.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

_Maybe small towns with fewer than 10 million or so people can't support a professional orchestra anymore, and that's too bad for the people in those towns, but that doesn't particularly worry me. _

It's difficult to find words to comment on thinking like this.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

consuono said:


> I could be wrong, but I doubt such concerts would turn any kind of self-sustaining income even to the degree of the troubled orchestras right now. I would say the reason orchestral programs have (at least in my memory) some "modern" pieces tucked in among the Mozart, Haydn and Schubert is so that more than a couple dozen will hear it.


Yes, I understand. But a balance of old music concerts and new could be attempted. And I would bet that a lot more than a few dozen people would show up in any major metropolitan area. And I have nothing against the old composers. I own recordings by many of them. But when I go out to hear a live concert I don't want to listen to polite 18th century music. I want to listen to something bold and exciting. Music that feels like it's part of my world, not the world of Napoleon or King George.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

larold said:


> _Maybe small towns with fewer than 10 million or so people can't support a professional orchestra anymore, and that's too bad for the people in those towns, but that doesn't particularly worry me. _
> 
> It's difficult to find words to comment on thinking like this.


I think _science_ was celebrating the (his) view that classical music is flourishing rather than seemingly sounding unsympathetic.



science said:


> Maybe small towns with fewer than 10 million or so people can't support a professional orchestra anymore, and that's too bad for the people in those towns, but that doesn't particularly worry me.


 please do correct me if not...


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

starthrower said:


> Yes, I understand. But a balance of old music concerts and new could be attempted. And I would bet that a lot more than a few dozen people would show up in any major metropolitan area. And I have nothing against the old composers. I own recordings by many of them. But when I go out to hear a live concert I don't want to listen to polite 18th century music. I want to listen to something bold and exciting. Music that feels like it's part of my world, not the world of Napoleon or King George.


There is little in most "modern" music that feels like it is part of my world, in any meaningful sense, or that I would even want to be part of my world. The problem of doing what you suggest is that much of the music you want actively alienates an already tenuous audience for live performance.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

JAS said:


> There is little in most "modern" music that feels like it is part of my world, in any meaningful sense, or that I would even want to be part of my world.


JAS - have you tried Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time?


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

janxharris said:


> JAS - have you tried Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time?


I have listened to quite a bit of Messiaen, but offhand I do not know if that particular piece was among them. If it is on youtube, I will give it a try. (A friend of mine is a huge Messiaen fan, and met him at some point, I believe. I have not warmed to any of his suggested works.)

Edit: would you consider this a fair representation of the work?: 



 (It is nearly an hour long!)


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

JAS said:


> I have listened to quite a bit of Messiaen, but offhand I do not know if that particular piece was among them. If it is on youtube, I will give it a try. (A friend of mine is a huge Messiaen fan, and met him at some point, I believe. I have not warmed to any of his suggested works.)


If you don't have much time:

V. Louange à l'Éternité de Jésus (Praise to the eternity of Jesus)

Else the whole work:


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

Praise to the eternity of Jesus, a 2000 years old theological topic, expressed via defeated fiddles, is the furthest away it can get from the modern times.

I'd very much prefer this as a representation of the beginning of this century. Praise life! Glory to science and civilization!


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Fabulin said:


> Praise to the eternity of Jesus, a 2000 years old theological topic, expressed via defeated fiddles, is the furthest away it can get from the modern times.
> 
> I'd very much prefer this as a representation of the beginning of this century. Praise life! Glory to science and civilization!


Defeated fiddles? .


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

janxharris said:


> Defeated fiddles? .


_defeated fiddles_


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Fabulin said:


> Praise to the eternity of Jesus, a 2000 years old theological topic, expressed via defeated fiddles, is the furthest away it can get from the modern times.
> 
> I'd very much prefer this as a representation of the beginning of this century. Praise life! Glory to science and civilization!


I didn't say that it represented anything by the way.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Fabulin said:


> _defeated fiddles_


Ok - I'm asking you what that means.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

janxharris said:


> Ok - I'm asking you what that means.


fiddles that sound defeated


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

fabulin said:


> fiddles that sound defeated


ok. .


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Fabulin said:


> fiddles that sound defeated


It is the end of the world, after all.

I am formulating my thoughts, interrupted by a series of meetings since I am teleworking.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

annaw said:


> I don't know, why should such day even come? The second Viennese school is so crazy that if it hasn't disappeared yet, I doubt it will ever go, or at least not in the near future. Society's values have changed immensely since Baroque but Bach is still going strong, counterpoint hasn't disappeared anywhere although a few use it as much as he did.
> 
> How exactly do you define "timeless nature"? If you define it through their long-lasting appeal, as you seem to do in the case of "great composers", then it doesn't work with 20th century composers who yet haven't had an opportunity to even stand the test of time. I would be much more worried about composers like Shostakovich, if we start thinking about values. If it's all about values, then will his political works, including his symphonies, be played in 50 years when people cannot relate with the 20th century world and cannot understand its struggles? If I understand your views correctly then Shostakovich's music will disappear as well because social and politcal criticism is strictly cultural and certainly not of timeless nature. It's quite the opposite of timeless, in fact, because society and politics are in constant change themselves.


Atonal music is inherently corrupt because it has no rules. It represents an inversion of what the world is, because nature always has order.

If you don't understand what I'm saying I encourage you to watch _Moses und Aron_, if you can bear it. Schoenberg was a very sick man.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Okay, even I am bowing out of the argument at this point.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

janxharris said:


> If you don't have much time:
> 
> V. Louange à l'Éternité de Jésus (Praise to the eternity of Jesus)
> 
> Else the whole work:


So, I first listened to the link I found (and included in my post). I noted the section that began just before the 20 minute mark (about the 18 minute mark in yours), which lasts about 6 minutes, and then the ending (in my link, beginning about the 41 minute mark and running to the end). I then listened to your links, quickly realizing that they are to the same performance, just started at a point in the first, and at the beginning for the second. Thus, I listened to it all the way through twice.

Those sections are the least offensive in the fuller work, and presumably the first is what you wanted me to pay especial attention to. If not for the intrusive piano part, and with no prompting, I might have said that it sounded like Avo Part in his holy minimalism mode. I do not care for any portion of the work, although those parts are the least bothersome. Most of the rest is a fine example of exactly what people who don't like about modern music find objectionable. There isn't a moment in the whole work that I would call a melody. To me, melody is the soul of music, and is pointless without it, except, perhaps, as a purely intellectual exercise (and one that does not interest me in the least).

Assuming that I remember the name of this work, if I were to see it on a concert, it would be sufficient cause for me not to attend, even if the other pieces were things I really wanted to hear live. (I can think of worse pieces, much worse, but that hardly helps.)


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## Luchesi (Mar 15, 2013)

1996D said:


> Atonal music is inherently corrupt because it has no rules. It represents an inversion of what the world is, because nature always has order.
> 
> If you don't understand what I'm saying I encourage you to watch _Moses und Aron_, if you can bear it. Schoenberg was a very sick man.


As you know, apparently he loved to compose tonal pieces. Do you think he should have only written tonal works?


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

Luchesi said:


> As you know, apparently he loved to compose tonal pieces. Do you think he should have only written tonal works?


I know Schoenberg's history well, he composed no tonal works after his wife's betrayal. His goal was essentially to destroy music after that point.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

Fabulin said:


> Praise to the eternity of Jesus, a 2000 years old theological topic, expressed via defeated fiddles, is the furthest away it can get from the modern times. I'd very much prefer this as a representation of the beginning of this century. Praise life! Glory to science and civilalization!


 Let's see. A John Williams soundtrack vs the works of JS Bach. The ersatz religion of science hasn't produced anything quite as artistically significant. The fiddles here don't sound too "defeated", by the way:


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

What does Bach have to do with Messiaen?


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

Fabulin said:


> What does Bach have to do with Messiaen?


They were both Christians, for one thing. What does a Hollywood soundtrack have to do with science and civilization?


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## annaw (May 4, 2019)

1996D said:


> I know Schoenberg's history well, he composed no tonal works after his wife's betrayal. *His goal was essentially to destroy music after that point.*


Where did he indicate such an intention? This claim has to be proved by his own writing. Schoenberg's compositional technique and dodecaphony create a much more complex system than many tonal ones. He composed according to very clear rules. I haven't yet listened to _Moses und Aron_ but I have listened to bits of Berg's _Wozzeck_ - the more I listen, the more I start to understand it. By the way, I'm not a particularly huge fan of atonal music, though I'd love to actually enjoy it, but I certainly think that Schoenberg should be held in high regard no matter if I enjoy his compositions or not.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

1996D said:


> Atonal music is inherently corrupt because it has no rules. It represents an inversion of what the world is, because nature always has order.
> 
> If you don't understand what I'm saying I encourage you to watch _Moses und Aron_, if you can bear it. Schoenberg was a very sick man.


Give it up, please! You've made your point ad nauseam. Everyone here knows you hate serial music. But it really means nothing concerning the music of Schoenberg.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

consuono said:


> They were both Christians, for one thing. What does a Hollywood soundtrack have to do with science and civilization?


As far as I'm concerned they could have been pastafarians. Don't put other music between me and what I criticize.

The second question I would normally consider a simple (if a bit under the rock) lack of information, but here I think you are just being provocative.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

Fabulin said:


> As far as I'm concerned they could have been pastafarians. Don't put other music between me and what I criticize.
> 
> The second question I would normally consider a simple (if a bit under the rock) lack of information, but here I think you are just being provocative.


But it wasn't pastafarians you were referring to. You're the one being provocative.


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## Fabulin (Jun 10, 2019)

consuono said:


> But it wasn't pastafarians you were referring to. You're the one being provocative.


This goes nowhere.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

Here's some Schoenberg. Required reading for composers from a brilliant teacher who'd mastered his craft.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

Fabulin said:


> This goes nowhere.


Like modern art.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Fabulin said:


> What does Bach have to do with Messiaen?


Probably as little as possible.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

JAS said:


> Probably as little as possible.


...and yet both men of God.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

mikeh375 said:


> Here's some Schoenberg. Required reading for composers from a brilliant teacher who'd mastered his craft.
> 
> View attachment 137302
> 
> ...


You should really try to understand Moses und Aron.

You miss the point completely of what Schoenberg was trying to do. His harmony is irrelevant to what you do, and it results in incoherent music.

Each piece is its individual problem, there are no laws you can follow to produce good music, not at this point.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

annaw said:


> Where did he indicate such an intention? This claim has to be proved by his own writing. Schoenberg's compositional technique and dodecaphony create a much more complex system than many tonal ones. He composed according to very clear rules. I haven't yet listened to _Moses und Aron_ but I have listened to bits of Berg's _Wozzeck_ - the more I listen, the more I start to understand it. By the way, I'm not a particularly huge fan of atonal music, though I'd love to actually enjoy it, but I certainly think that Schoenberg should be held in high regard no matter if I enjoy his compositions or not.


He destroyed the classical music tradition, that's what I meant.

He did say it, that his music would rule for 100 years, and it has - he produced hundreds of copycats.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

mikeh375 said:


> ...and yet both men of God.


That claim covers a wide range of people, including some very bad actors. (My comment, of course, was mostly meant as a play on the way it was phrased.)


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

1996D said:


> He destroyed the classical music tradition, that's what I meant.
> 
> He did say it, that his music would rule for 100 years, and it has - he produced hundreds of copycats.


he influenced a lot of composers for sure, but even if you don't like his style it's hard to destroy the classical music tradition. Which actually had an unprecedented diversity in styles.

In the 20th century we had:

impressionist music
neoclassical music
romantic music
jazzy classical music
contaminations with a lot of folk traditions
freely atonal music
serialist music
polytonal music
concrete music
minimalism
maximalism
drones
microtonality
stochastic music
electronic music
wild experiments with rhyhtm
wild experiments with sound

there's a diversity that should inspire awe and literally something great for every taste, conservatives and modernists.
In the previous century you had one thing: romantic music (two, if we want to consider the end of the classical era at the beginning). How can something that produced so many experiments, so many different directions (and certainly Schoenberg as important as he was showed just one of those many directions) be seen as the death of the genre is incomprehensible.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

norman bates said:


> he influenced a lot of composers for sure, but even if you don't like his style it's hard to destroy the classical music tradition. Which actually had an unprecedented diversity in styles.
> 
> In the 20th century we had:
> 
> ...


Yes, the experiments came because he destroyed tradition, so there was room.

What happened happened, I'm not regretting the past, but to continue to copy Schoenberg is banging one's head on a steel wall. Schools are not catching up though, that's still what they teach.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

1996D said:


> Yes, the experiments came because he destroyed tradition, so there was room.


maybe looking at what was happening in the world of art (painting, sculpture, architecture, literature) you would see that the experiments didn't started with Schoenberg. In the 19th century Beethoven composed the Grosse fuge, Berlioz the Symphonie fantastique, Wagner started dissolving tonal harmony with Tristan and Isolde, Liszt basically wrote some of the first atonal works (actually the first atonal work was written in the 18th century, but that's another story), Debussy and Fanelli started impressionism. In the other arts it happened exactly the same,because the world was changing and Schoenberg (who wasn't even the first to make atonal or even serialist works) was just one of the many names in that process that had already started. If Schoenberg had died before starting composing, you would see in any case an incredible amount of changes in modern music. And as said, what is considered tradition simply changes with time.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

norman bates said:


> maybe looking at what was happening in the world of art (painting, sculpture, architecture, literature) you would see that the experiments didn't started with Schoenberg. In the 19th century Beethoven composed the Grosse fuge, Berlioz the Symphonie fantastique, Wagner started dissolving tonal harmony with Tristan and Isolde, Liszt basically wrote some of the first atonal works (actually the first atonal work was written in the 18th century, but that's another story), Debussy and Fanelli started impressionism. In the other arts it happened exactly the same,because the world was changing and Schoenberg (who wasn't even the first to make atonal or even serialist works) was just one of the many names in that process that had already started. If Schoenberg had died before starting composing, you would see in any case an incredible amount of changes in modern music. And as said, what is considered tradition simply changes with time.


Yes, but Schoenberg is what they teach today, he had the lasting impact after destroying the tradition that came before him.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

1996D said:


> You should really try to understand Moses und Aron.
> 
> You miss the point completely of what Schoenberg was trying to do. His harmony is irrelevant to what you do, and it results in incoherent music.
> 
> ...


Yes, each 'coherent' piece will generate its own laws (actually not "laws", rather techniques), based on fundamentals and/or learning that can subconsciously underpin decisions. One ideally needs to have mastered and assimilated fundamentals to one's own satisfaction in order to be able to create convincing flights of imagination.

In my experience, the methods of Schoenberg where only a small part of the curriculum at my Alma Mater, individual composition lessons where always geared to the proclivities of the student in the main.
One was expected to know and understand his work - and I do - but I for one was never coerced to write using the Method and rarely did. In fact technique in general per se, was only given cursory attention, the focus being on searching for and encouraging one's own unique way even though that actually meant probing and pushing techniques on occasion.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

"Colour lies at the heart of Messiaen's music. He believed that terms such as "tonal", "modal" and "serial" are misleading analytical conveniences. For him there were no modal, tonal or serial compositions, only music with or without colour. He said that Claudio Monteverdi, Mozart, Chopin, Richard Wagner, Mussorgsky and Stravinsky all wrote strongly coloured music."
Olivier Messiaen


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## Guest (Jun 5, 2020)

1996D said:


> Yes, the experiments came because he destroyed tradition, so there was room.


Part of the narrative that, to paraphrase, "The entire classical musical establishment was turned over by a single individual who wrote horrible music that no one wanted to listen to."

Somehow, I don't buy it.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

1996D said:


> Yes, but Schoenberg is what they teach today, he had the lasting impact after destroying the tradition that came before him.


the previous tradition of classical music was "destroyed" (I prefer the word changed) also by Monteverdi, by Haydn, by Beethoven and Weber, by Wagner, by Debussy, and then Stravinsky, and then Russolo and Varese, Cage etc.
he had a lasting impact like the composers before him... therefore maybe somewhere there's something to appreciate in his work. Personally I think so, even if he's not one of my favorite composers.
And the good thing is that nobody today has to necessarily use serialism, that is just one of the many possibilities a composer has.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

hammeredklavier said:


> "Colour lies at the heart of Messiaen's music. He believed that terms such as "tonal", "modal" and "serial" are misleading analytical conveniences. For him there were no modal, tonal or serial compositions, only music with or without colour. He said that Claudio Monteverdi, Mozart, Chopin, Richard Wagner, Mussorgsky and Stravinsky all wrote strongly coloured music."
> Olivier Messiaen


I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. I get the same reaction to his music.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

MacLeod said:


> Part of the narrative that, to paraphrase, "The entire classical musical establishment was turned over by a single individual who wrote horrible music that no one wanted to listen to."
> 
> Somehow, I don't buy it.


To be honest, I think Common Practice had reached such a plateau that that kind of "destruction" was inevitable. The only other alternative seems to be riffing on the CP masters with a lot of derivative stuff. I don't think that possibilities of creativity within a medium practiced in pretty much the same way are limitless. It's going to become repetitive. And anyway I think Stravinsky, Bartok, Ives and others had as much if not more to do with the "destruction" or "change" as Schoenberg.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

It does seem as if once a building has stood for a long time, it becomes seen as old-fashioned, and there comes an inevitable point when it just gets torn down to put up a parking lot. (Fortunately, this fate has not happened to all buildings.)


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

JAS said:


> It does seem as if once a building has stood for a long time, it becomes seen as old-fashioned, and there comes an inevitable point when it just gets torn down to put up a parking lot. (Fortunately, this fate has not happened to all buildings.)


the difference is that while some great building have been sadly been destroyed, old music keeps being played (actually much more than the music of the twentieth century to be fair), and there are modern composers who in the twentieth century has kept making romantic music, neoclassical music and melodic music in general. So I don't think it's a very good comparison. No one is going to burn the scores of Mozart, Brahms, Handel or Beethoven.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

consuono said:


> To be honest, I think Common Practice had reached such a plateau that that kind of "destruction" was inevitable. The only other alternative seems to be riffing on the CP masters with a lot of derivative stuff. I don't think that possibilities of creativity within a medium practiced in pretty much the same way are limitless. It's going to become repetitive. And anyway I think Stravinsky, Bartok, Ives and others had as much if not more to do with the "destruction" or "change" as Schoenberg.


and Wagner, Liszt, Smetana and Debussy, and before them Beethoven and Berlioz, and before them other composers. It's a process of transformation and while there's been at a certain point in the twentieth century a certain "dictatorship" (thanks to figures like Boulez and other composers and critics) at the end of the day today we just have much more options available, and to me that's a great thing.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Although it must be admitted that most experiments produce failures.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

JAS said:


> Although it must be admitted that most experiments produce failures.


still it's the key of progress. Without experiments we would still be in the stone age.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

norman bates said:


> still it's the key of progress. Without experiments we would still be in the stone age.


That may be true. I just don't want to have to drink the 6 attempts before they made 7-Up. (And there may be a reason that there is no 8-Up)

Edit: I am aware that the story of the name indicating a 7th attempt is mythical, and that it was probably really named after the size of bottle it was marketed in. Still, it makes my point.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

JAS said:


> That may be true. I just don't want to have to drink the 6 attempts before them made 7-Up. (And there may be a reason that there is no 8-Up)


well sometimes it's also a thing of acquired tastes. Not everything can be appreciated immediately, especially if it's different from what we already know.
With time and experience I've learned to genuinely love things that at first didn't say much to me (or that I even hated). I'm not saying that everything could be appreciated listening to it enough (there are those who believe that, I don't), but certainly a lot of modern music since it's different could not be instantly appreciated because of its difference in terms of harmony, melody, rhyhtm and even scope. 
Then of course, there are also personal differences. Since you were talking about Messiaen: he's (like Bach) one of my very favorite composers and I appreciated him from the beginning and his music gives me emotions that simply don't exist in the music of the previous centuries. You could hate him forever even after having heard him hundreds of time, who knows.
Like I still struggle with Mozart, a thing that could seem strange to many.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

mikeh375 said:


> Yes, each 'coherent' piece will generate its own laws (actually not "laws", rather techniques), based on fundamentals and/or learning that can subconsciously underpin decisions. One ideally needs to have mastered and assimilated fundamentals to one's own satisfaction in order to be able to create convincing flights of imagination.
> 
> In my experience, the methods of Schoenberg where only a small part of the curriculum at my Alma Mater, individual composition lessons where always geared to the proclivities of the student in the main.
> One was expected to know and understand his work - and I do - but I for one was never coerced to write using the Method and rarely did. In fact technique in general per se, was only given cursory attention, the focus being on searching for and encouraging one's own unique way even though that actually meant probing and pushing techniques on occasion.


That's false, form is something that has to come natural to the individual. Otherwise you're just copying.

Beethoven said that the goal was for there to be no rules, and that's the future. Each composer has to create his own form depending on what he wants to express and the story he wants to tell.

We're at a point now where art is liberalized enough for artists to do that.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

norman bates said:


> the previous tradition of classical music was "destroyed" (I prefer the word changed) also by Monteverdi, by Haydn, by Beethoven and Weber, by Wagner, by Debussy, and then Stravinsky, and then Russolo and Varese, Cage etc.
> he had a lasting impact like the composers before him... therefore maybe somewhere there's something to appreciate in his work. Personally I think so, even if he's not one of my favorite composers.
> And the good thing is that nobody today has to necessarily use serialism, that is just one of the many possibilities a composer has.


I agree, but now it's time we destroy Schoenberg.

Schools should teach everything without emphasizing any composer, then the artist is free to do as he pleases. The trend is still to push how bad a piece can sound to a higher limit; how can we violate the instruments further; how uniquely deranged can my piece sound etc.

In my opinion you can't beat Moses und Aron, that's about as deranged as anything can get while remaining somewhat logical.


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## Chris Hewett (Jan 5, 2018)

Crikey. This is dangerous territory. I communicate as a non-musician, my teenage years behind a drum kit notwithstanding, and I consider my appreciation and understanding of "classical" music, such as it is, to have been hard won. In my less charitable moments, I may even think it all the sweeter for the fact that so many of my friends and acquaintances have chosen not to engage in the process. Does this make my more culturally "aware" than them? Therein lays the road to snobbery, which is also the road to nowhere. Louis MacNeice, the least celebrated of his particular generation of poets but by no means the least interesting, put it this way, and I defy anyone to sum it up better.

"What you want is not a world of the free in function
But a niche at the top, the skimmings of the cream."
And I answer that that is largely so for habit makes me
Think victory for one implies another's defeat,
That freedom means the power to order, and that in order
To preserve the values dear to the elite
The elite must remain a few. It is so hard to imagine
A world where the many would have their chance without
A fall in the standard of intellectual living
And nothing left that the highbrow cared about.
Which fears must be suppressed. There is no reason for thinking
That, if you give a chance to people to think or live,
The arts of thought or life will suffer and become rougher
And not return more than you could ever give."

Of course we need more new music and more platforms on which it can be played. Of course we need fewer recordings of Beethoven 9 and Mahler 5. But hell, if we can't be evangelists for our musical tastes, where does our love of music lead? Inwards, ever inwards. Call me a sentimental left-wing fool if you like, but I'd sooner be my kind of fool than the other sort. What next? Shakespeare wasn't Shakespeare because nobody but an aristocrat could have set his words down on paper? Puhleeeese.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

1996D said:


> I agree, but now it's time we destroy Schoenberg.
> 
> Schools should teach everything without emphasizing any composer, then the artist is free to do as he pleases. The trend is still to push how bad a piece can sound to a higher limit; how can we violate the instruments further; how uniquely deranged can my piece sound etc.
> 
> In my opinion you can't beat Moses und Aron, that's about as deranged as anything can get while remaining somewhat logical.


Why are you so focused on Arnold Schoenberg? I understand that that you obviously don't like his music, and I concede that his musical ideas can be difficult. But that doesn't explain to me why would you want to see Schoenberg's music gone and forgotten. It's not as if anyone is forcing you to listen to Schoenberg. Right?


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

Coach G said:


> Why are you so focused on Arnold Schoenberg? I understand that that you obviously don't like his music, and I concede that his musical ideas can be difficult. But that doesn't explain to me why would you want to see Schoenberg's music gone and forgotten. It's not as if anyone is forcing you to listen to Schoenberg. Right?


He's the best modernist composer by a large margin, he makes the people that followed him look like turkeys. There is nothing to add, that's why I urge everyone to watch Mosen und Aron.

A different direction must be taken.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

1996D said:


> .......That's false, form is something that has to come natural to the individual. Otherwise you're just copying.


No it's not false at all but I know why you would think that. 
Form is malleable and up to what the composer feels is appropriate for the music, that is obvious. What is less obvious is that learning and practice underpins and subconsciously supports a composer when he/she makes choices. There are no shackles, quite simply, knowing the craft offers candles in the dark and gives a composer a chance to find their own voice and not be so reliant on influence.

This is all self evident to composers who have studied and mastered what they need in order to write.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

1996D said:


> He's the best modernist composer by a large margin, he makes the people that followed him look like turkeys. There is nothing to add, that's why I urge everyone to watch Mosen und Aron.
> 
> A different direction must be taken.


 If anything, Webern was the key to the 20thC as it unfolded, not Schoenberg. The Method was his, but the influence is more Webern's.
Schoenberg was just one of many brilliant musical minds in the last 100 years. 
You don't seem to have enough experience of the diversity of music written in the 20thC. There are many directions one can take, tonal and non-tonal and the last 100 years has masterpieces written with both approaches.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

mikeh375 said:


> No it's not false at all. Form is malleable and up to what the composer feels is appropriate for the music, that is obvious. What is less obvious is that learning and practice underpins and subconsciously supports a composer when he/she makes choices. There are no shackles, quite simply, knowing the craft gives one candles in the dark and gives a composer a chance to find their own voice and not be so reliant on influence.
> This is all self evident to all composers who have studied and mastered what they need in order to write.


That's not what we're discussing, yes craftsmanship is a prerequisite, but any musical person can learn this with proper diligence, that's not what's hard about composing great music.

It's the creativity and inspiration, the power behind the music, that makes lasting works.

This overemphasis on studying the past, because there are so many composers, hampers originality and creates many copycats.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

mikeh375 said:


> If anything, Webern was the key to the 20thC as it unfolded, not Schoenberg. The Method was his, but the influence is more Webern's.
> Schoenberg was just one of many brilliant musical minds in the last 100 years.
> You don't seem to have enough experience of the diversity of music written in the 20thC. There are many directions one can take, tonal and non-tonal and the last 100 years has masterpieces written with both approaches.


He's nowhere near Schoenberg's level; he composed slow, uninspired works, so in that way many more can imitate him, giving the impression of impact, but he's simply an uncreative Schoenberg.

Moses und Aron is the pinnacle of atonal music, a large scale work of true inspiration, with complexity that no other serial work can match. It's baffling that you reject this.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

1996D said:


> That's not what we're discussing, yes craftsmanship is a prerequisite, but any musical person can learn this with proper diligence, that's not what's hard about composing great music.
> 
> It's the creativity and inspiration, the power behind the music, that makes lasting works.
> 
> This overemphasis on studying the past, because there are so many composers, hampers originality and creates many copycats.


Well I'm discussing it. Your generalisations are too simplistic, especially concerning Webern. The past is a proven track record and has to be assessed by a composer. Studying does not hamper anything, in fact it can help to bring out an individual voice. One understands this or doesn't.
I hinted earlier that my experience at my Alma Mater was not a study on the past and I doubt mine was a unique experience.

I don't believe I have mentioned Moses und Aron in previous posts. But as you might expect, although I don't use it, I know the Method as a writing tool so no need to be baffled.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

mikeh375 said:


> Well I'm discussing it. Your generalisations are too simplistic, especially concerning Webern. The past is a proven track record and has to be assessed by a composer. Studying does not hamper anything, in fact it helps to brings out an individual voice. One understands this or doesn't.
> I hinted earlier that my experience at my Alma Mater was not a study on the past and I doubt mine was a unique experience.
> 
> I don't believe I have mentioned Moses und Aron in previous posts. But as you might expect, although I don't use it, I know the Method as a writing tool so no need to be baffled.


You think too highly of method and have not taken the time to understand the underlying inspiration that produces great music. Moses und Aron is a great example of amazing creativity even within a system that so many have created dull works in, because Schoenberg put all of his hate into it; all the pressures he was battling lead to this work.

It's unsurpassed and there is nothing more to add in that style. It was what he felt was necessary to express what he wanted to, and everything that comes after is a copy, because atonality is not as broad as tonality; it's a limited system with a limited range of possible expression.


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## Guest (Jun 6, 2020)

1996D said:


> Beethoven said that the goal was for there to be no rules


Did he? Can you provide a source please? Thanks


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## GWD1 (Jun 6, 2020)

An excellent piece. The word 'elite' does bring with it many problems, as does the word 'spirit'. One often hears the word 'elite' in the sporting world (athletics especially) used in a very positive sense, as something for others who are not in the 'elite' bracket to aim for and be proud of if achieved, through some work on their part. However, in music 'elitism' is hardly ever seen, in my experience, as something really worthwhile and positive. This is a great pity, as with a little effort from the 'plebeians' the great and unique world of classical music would reach a far wider audience, which it needs to flourish and grow. The music deserves to be heard on it's own terms and not as a watered down version of same (eg see Classic fm as an example of exactly what I mean, the end result of which might be a whole generation of people thinking that classical music is merely a series of unrelated pieces that can only be described as 'sleepy mush'). Has radio fallen below television for the first time in history, with its banalities and trivia making up so much of the air time? So, let us hope for a better future for classical music, with great concert programmes making a return.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

1996D said:


> He's the best modernist composer by a large margin,


I'm a fan of modern music and while I quite like some works of Schoenberg (he's far from being one of my favorite composers though) personally I prefer a to listen to a LOT of modernist composers to Schoenberg. Ligeti, Ohana, Scelsi, Messiaen, Takemitsu, Ives, Partch, Ustvolskaya, Webern, Matthijs Vermeulen, Stravinsky, Koechlin, Per Norgard, Scriabin, Fartein Valen, Dane Rudhyar, Sorabji, Bartok, Giovanni Salviucci, Porrino, Henry Brant, Barbara Pentland, Xenakis, Nancarrow, John Foulds, Skalkottas... Schoenberg could be one of the most important ones and one of the most famous ones, but from my perspective "the best modernist composer by a large margin" is definitely not true. 
And the things is that many of the composers above went also in completely different directions that don't have a lot to do with Schoenberg.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

1996D said:


> You think too highly of method and have not taken the time to understand the underlying inspiration that produces great music. Moses und Aron is a great example of amazing creativity even within a system that so many have created dull works in, because Schoenberg put all of his hate into it; all the pressures he was battling lead to this work.
> 
> It's unsurpassed and there is nothing more to add in that style. It was what he felt was necessary to express what he wanted to, and everything that comes after is a copy, because atonality is not as broad as tonality; it's a limited system with a limited range of possible expression.


You're _assumptions_ concerning musical history, education and especially me, are way off the mark but never mind. Your highly polarised position is not conducive to anything constructive.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

1996D said:


> He's nowhere near Schoenberg's level; he composed slow, uninspired works, so in that way many more can imitate him, giving the impression of impact, but he's simply an uncreative Schoenberg.


actually Webern was the real inspirator of a lot of modern music, going in a new direction. Schoenberg is seen by many as a romantic, even in his serialist works. 
Webern is no more a romantic and there's a different and new sensibility in his work that his widely considered a leap forward, and that's what inspired a generation of composers.
The composers at Darmstadt were looking at Webern much more than at Schoenberg. That's why Boulez wrote "Schoenberg is dead" (meaning that he was the past and not the present anymore) and not "Webern is dead", even if the pupil died earlier.
So you could dislike his music but to define him as "uncreative Schoenberg" is simply wrong.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

norman bates said:


> I'm a fan of modern music and while I quite like some works of Schoenberg (he's far from being one of my favorite composers though) personally I prefer a to listen to a LOT of modernist composers to Schoenberg. Ligeti, Ohana, Scelsi, Messiaen, Takemitsu, Ives, Partch, Ustvolskaya, Webern, Matthijs Vermeulen, Stravinsky, Koechlin, Per Norgard, Scriabin, Fartein Valen, Dane Rudhyar, Sorabji, Bartok, Giovanni Salviucci, Porrino, Henry Brant, Barbara Pentland, Xenakis, Nancarrow, John Foulds, Skalkottas... Schoenberg could be one of the most important ones and one of the most famous ones, but from my perspective "the best modernist composer by a large margin" is definitely not true.
> *And the things is that many of the composers above went also in completely different directions that don't have a lot to do with Schoenberg.*


Exactly Norman. Simple facts are all that is needed.
(going to google Barbara Pentland and Skalkottas now...)

EDIT - just listening to and enjoying the Symphony for 10 Parts onYT by Pentland.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

mikeh375 said:


> Exactly Norman. Simple facts are all that is needed.
> (going to google Barbara Pentland and Skalkottas now...)


well actually those two didn't went in completely new directions... Skalkottas was alongside Berg and Webern the other important pupil of Schoenberg, and Pentland (I discovered her thanks to Glenn Gould) was deeply inspired by Webern, altough her music is sounds more atmospheric and less formal than Webern.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

mikeh375 said:


> You're _assumptions_ concerning musical history, education and especially me, are way off the mark but never mind. Your highly polarised position is not conducive to anything constructive.


On the contrary, it's been exceedingly constructive.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

norman bates said:


> actually Webern was the real inspirator of a lot of modern music, going in a new direction. Schoenberg is seen by many as a romantic, even in his serialist works.
> Webern is no more a romantic and there's a different and new sensibility in his work that his widely considered a leap forward, and that's what inspired a generation of composers.
> The composers at Darmstadt were looking at Webern much more than at Schoenberg. That's why Boulez wrote "Schoenberg is dead" (meaning that he was the past and not the present anymore) and not "Webern is dead", even if the pupil died earlier.
> So you could dislike his music but to define him as "uncreative Schoenberg" is simply wrong.


Because they had no ability, music has been in steady decline and has attracted no bright minds in a long time. That's what the wormhole of atonality has created - no interest by the brightest artistic minds. They've instead gone into film.

Whoever sees Romanticism in Schoenberg's atonal works is not only deaf but uneducated historically. Schoenberg wanted nothing with Romanticism after the wave of 'free love' in Europe at the time ruined his marriage; his movement was precisely a reaction to hypersensuality in music.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

1996D said:


> Because they had no ability,


they WHO? I've mentioned a lot of composers who had tons of ability



1996D said:


> music has been in steady decline and has attracted no bright minds in a long time.


there are a lot of people in modern music that are absolutely brilliant and sometimes geniuses. I'm not sure what youre assumption is based on.



1996D said:


> That's what the wormhole of atonality has created - no interest by the brightest artistic minds. They've instead gone into film.


but there's a lot of modern classical music that it's not atonal at all.



1996D said:


> Whoever sees Romanticism in Schoenberg's atonal works is not only deaf but uneducated historically. Schoenberg wanted nothing with Romanticism after the wave of 'free love' in Europe at the time ruined his marriage; his movement was precisely a reaction to hypersensuality in music.


Expressionism (and Schoenberg could be definitely be seen as a expressionist) was a big part of romanticism, in music and in art (like late Goya, Van Gogh, Soutine, Ludwig Meidner, Francis Bacon, Max Beckmann etc) in general. 
And his work wasn't a reaction to "hypersensuality" (but I would say that for late Webern). Expressionism is actually something that put a emphasis on the interior world of a person and his feelings and torments.
His gurrelieder for instance were clearly inspired by Wagner. His Erwartung is a very dramatic work about a woman that finds a dead body in the night. His a survivor from Warsaw is about the horrors of the war. So no, I think you're simply wrong.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

norman bates said:


> Expressionism (and Schoenberg could be definitely be seen as a expressionist) was a big part of romanticism, in music and in art (like late Goya, Van Gogh, Soutine, Ludwig Meidner, Francis Bacon, Max Beckmann etc) in general.
> And his work wasn't a reaction to "hypersensuality" (but I would say that for late Webern). Expressionism is actually something that put a emphasis on the interior world of a person and his feelings and torments.
> His gurrelieder for instance were clearly inspired by Wagner. His Erwartung is a very dramatic work about a woman that finds a dead body in the night. His a survivor from Warsaw is about the horrors of the war. So no, I think you're simply wrong.


Educate yourself historically, you've just made a very ignorant statement. Schoenberg began as a Romantic then completely transformed, it's a perfect parallel to the decadent 20s and the reaction that was Nazism.

Moses und Aron is Schoenberg imposing his order on the world.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

1996D said:


> Educate yourself historically, you've just made a very ignorant statement. Schoenberg began as a Romantic then completely transformed, it's a perfect parallel to the decadent 20s and the reaction that was Nazism.
> 
> Moses und Aron is Schoenberg imposing his order on the world.


So are you saying that you are more educate that all the historians, critics and composers that have always seen a romantic side in the work of Schoenberg. Interesting, it says a lot about your personality.
Talking about education, how do you see the expressionist movement?


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

norman bates said:


> So are you saying that you are more educate that all the historians, critics and composers that have always seen a romantic side in the work of Schoenberg. Interesting, it says a lot about your personality.
> Talking about education, how do you see the expressionist movement?


You don't understand his magnum opus, but it's very obvious and widely agreed upon that it's about law and order.

Expressionism is a term for painting just like impressionism. These worlds don't mix well and many composers have rejected the terms.

Schoenberg is a distinct artist and I don't believe there is a term for what he was: he was unique. He's the most important composer in the last hundred years and is the father of all atonal music to this day.

With Moses und Aron he became a tyrannical figure in music whose style all schools and composers followed, effectively destroying all previous musical culture.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

1996D said:


> You don't understand his magnum opus,


which one, Erwartung? That's often considered his most important work. The Pierrot Lunaire?
I don't think I haven't talked about any of those works. It's obvious though (to me and to the vast majority of composers and critics) that he was a expressionist composer, and therefore a part of the romantic movement.

but it's very obvious and widely agreed upon that a lot of his work can be seen as expressionism.



1996D said:


> Expressionism is a term for painting.


expressionism is a term for art. There's expressionist architecture, expressionist cinema, expressionist painting, expressionist comics, and there's expressionist music. Schoenberg is considered one of the most significative expressionist composers.
And expressionism in general was like "romanticism on steroids" so to speak. If romanticism was about inner feelings (and that is reflected on a increased chromaticism, with Wagner and Liszt already being extremely chromatic to the point of atonality), expressionism went even further, exploring the dark side (it was the period of crisis, with "the death of god", the birth of psychoanalysis, the war, the industrial revolution) with all the torments and the anguish of the individuals. That's why a lot of art of that movement is so dark and even nightmarish. But there's a clear route from Wagner and Liszt (who even wrote a brief composition called Bagatelle sans tonalitè) to Schoenberg, we're not talking about like they were completely different things. Tristan and isolde is already an expressionist work to me (and since I've mentioned Erwartung, a work that wanted to represent the inner feelings of a second, with an expansion of time... I think that's already there in Tristan and Isolde, where the action is like super slow and a dialogue that normally would be very brief is dilated in very long pieces of music).


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

1996D said:


> Schoenberg is a distinct artist and I don't believe there is a term for what he was: he was unique. He's the most important composer in the last hundred years and is the father of all atonal music to this day.


The break down of tonality was incipient before Schoenberg and would have almost certainly reached some form of saturation with or without him - so why was he the most important composer of the last 100 years for you?


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

norman bates said:


> which one, Erwantung? That's often considered his most important work. The Pierrot Lunaire?
> I don't think I haven't talked about any of those works. It's obvious though (to me and to the vast majority of composers and critics) that he was a expressionist composer, and therefore a part of the romantic movement.
> 
> but it's very obvious and widely agreed upon that a lot of his work can be seen as expressionism.


Moses und Aron



> expressionism is a term for art. There's expressionist architecture, expressionist cinema, expressionist painting, expressionist comics, and there's expressionist music. Schoenberg is considered one of the most significative expressionist composers.
> And expressionism in general was like "romanticism on steroids" so to speak. If romanticism was about inner feelings (and that is reflected on a increased chromaticism, with Wagner and Liszt already being extremely chromatic to the point of atonality), expressionism put that even further, exploring the dark side (it was the period of crisis, with "the death of god", the birth of psychanalisis, the war, the industrial revolution) with all the torments and the anguish of the individuals. That's why a lot of art of that movement is so dark and even nightmarish. But there's a clear route from Wagner and Liszt (who even wrote a brief composition called Bagatelle sans tonalitè) to Schoenberg, we're not talking about like they were completely different things.


We can simplify things:

Baroque is Bach and Handel; Classical is Haydn and Mozart; Romantic is Beethoven and Schubert; post-romantic Wagner and Mahler; modernist Schoenberg and Webern.

The two most important of each era; any other terms are redundant.

Impressionism is a sort of hyper-romanticism that reflected the sexual decadence of the 20s and was a precursor to modernism. It was prominent for a very short period, and Ravel was the peak of it.

What you call expressionism is really modernism and is the exact opposite of Romanticism, not at all 'on steroids', it's a complete rejection of sensuality.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

janxharris said:


> The break down of tonality was incipient before Schoenberg and would have almost certainly reached some form of saturation with or without him - so why was he the most important composer of the last 100 years for you?


Because his wave has lasted 100 years.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

1996D said:


> Because they had no ability, music has been in steady decline and has attracted no bright minds in a long time. That's what the wormhole of atonality has created - no interest by the brightest artistic minds. They've instead gone into film.


This is simply and patently not true and such a bizarre notion. I suggest you get fully conversant with all the trends and composers in music for the last 100 years if you want to appraise the situation factually and accurately.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

1996D said:


> Moses und Aron


I don't think I've said a word about it (even because I don't even remember it onestly).
But I know that a lot of works, from both the early Schoenberg to the late Schoenberg are without a doubt expressionist works.



1996D said:


> We can simplify things:
> 
> Baroque is Bach and Handel; Classical is Haydn and Mozart; Romantic is Beethoven and Schubert; post-romantic Wagner and Mahler; modernist Schoenberg and Webern.


and in what way that would simplify things? Because Wagner and Mahler were without any sort of doubts romantic composers. Wagner is often considered (and rightly so in my opinion) THE romantic composer, the one who incarnates romanticism more than anyone else with its lush sensual harmonies, the titanism, the turmoil, the sense of longing. 
So calling him post romantic... what should make him different from proper romanticism?



1996D said:


> The two most important of each era; any other terms are redundant.


I think that post-romantic (I don't even know what you mean) is much more redundant than expressionism, that it's a very useful term.



1996D said:


> Impressionism is a sort of hyper-romanticism that reflected the sexual decadence of the 20s and was a precursor to modernism. It was prominent for a very short period.


Actually impressionism in music was in many ways the opposite of romanticism. Instead of putting in music the inner self of the composer they wanted to give an impression of the external world, and the music it's often much more lighter in tone. That's why Debussy wrote pieces where he for instance tried to give a musical impression of the reflections of the water, or even mocked Wagner and his heaviness (I don't remember in what piece of the Children corner he used a theme from Wagner and put it in a almost comical music context).

Than of course even things are not not so clear even there, there are also composers who had traits of romanticism and impressionism like Delius, Szymanowski or Ysaye but that's another story.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

norman bates said:


> I don't think I've said a word about it (even because I don't even remember it onestly).
> But I know that a lot of works, from both the early Schoenberg to the late Schoenberg are without a doubt expressionist works.
> 
> and in what way that would simplify things? Because Wagner and Mahler were without any sort of doubts romantic composers. Wagner is often considered (and rightly so in my opinion) THE romantic composer, the one who incarnates romanticism more than anyone else with its lush sensual harmonies, the titanism, the turmoil, the sense of longing.
> ...


Golliwog cakewalk.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

1996D said:


> Because his wave has lasted 100 years.


That didn't actually address what I said.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

1996D said:


> Moses und Aron
> 
> We can simplify things:
> 
> ...


The two most important in your view of course. Probably not many would debate the likes of Mozart and Beethoven (though Beethoven had a foot in both eras); the rest is not settled though imo.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

1996D said:


> Impressionism is a sort of hyper-romanticism that reflected the sexual decadence of the 20s and was a precursor to modernism. It was prominent for a very short period, and Ravel was the peak of it.


I don't think so. One cannot reduce Impressionism to a reflection of 'sexual decadence' (for one thing it was invented about 26 years before the 20's so your comment regarding that makes no sense), nor over-look it's impact. The harmonic language spread to major composers such as Prokofiev, Bartok and Stravinsky and beyond. To most listeners and concert goers these composers are some of the most important names of the early 20th century. After that we have Messiaen, Boulez, Dutilleux and Takemitsu who all were heavily inluenced by impressionism. So the 'prominent for a short period' is provably false and to say all of it is merely about sexual decadence is silly. Mozart's music has been described as 'voluptuous' and 'sensual', but of course it would be fallicious to reduce his music to just that. It is just one aspect of it.

Impressionism is arguably more integral to modernism than Schoenberg's atonality because it came first and its impact has spread far deeper into the mainstream repertoire. The 12 tone system came after modernism had already been firmly established by Debussy. Yes dodecaphonic music was influential but also highly polarizing. Many composers then and now want nothing to do with it.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

tdc said:


> I don't think so. One cannot reduce Impressionism to a reflection of 'sexual decadence' (for one thing it was invented about 26 years before the 20's so your comment regarding that makes no sense), nor over-look it's impact. The harmonic language spread to major composers such as Prokofiev, Bartok and Stravinsky and beyond. To most listeners and concert goers these composers are some of the most important names of the early 20th century. After that we have Messiaen, Boulez, Dutilleux and Takemitsu who all were heavily inluenced by impressionism. So the 'prominent for a short period' is provably false and to say all of it is merely about sexual decadence is silly. Mozart's music has been described as 'voluptuous' and 'sensual', but of course it would be fallicious to reduce his music to just that. It is just one aspect of it.
> 
> Impressionism is arguably more integral to modernism than Schoenberg's atonality because it came first and its impact has spread far deeper into the mainstream repertoire. The 12 tone system came after modernism had already been firmly established by Debussy. Yes dodecaphonic music was influential but also highly polarizing. Many composers then and now want nothing to do with it.


Liszt and Debussy foresaw it but it didn't reach public acceptance until the 20s and Ravel was the peak. La valse perfectly represents the 20s and impressionism.

The composers you say were influenced by it are not impressionists, they were influenced like Schoenberg was influenced by Mozart but have little in common.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

I might suggest that if modern classical music reflected sexual decadence, in any meaningful sense, it would be more popular.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

JAS said:


> I might suggest that if modern classical music reflected sexual decadence, in any meaningful sense, it would be more popular.


Yes, but it's the exact opposite. Modernism and post-modernism reject sensuality, it started as a reaction but has extraordinarily continued to this day.

One thing going for it though is that if you're prone to sexual amorality modernism certainly won't tempt you to it. It is an asexual purely intellectual movement .


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

I think I have misinterpreted your position. At the risk of extending a discussion that has already consumed a thread (albeit a thread for which the original track has already mostly expired), are you postulating that the failure of modern classical music is that it rejected anything other than a purely intellectual response? (I ask this as someone who has no love for modern classical music, as I think my many posts have sufficiently demonstrated.) I note that many fans of modern classical music have often described or claimed a kind of emotional response, particularly to, for example, the music of Messiaen. (This is not a response that I share, but do not necessarily question.)


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

1996D said:


> Liszt and Debussy foresaw it but it didn't reach public acceptance until the 20s and Ravel was the peak. La valse perfectly represents the 20s and impressionism.
> 
> The composers you say were influenced by it are not impressionists, they were influenced like Schoenberg was influenced by Mozart but have little in common.


Actually Messiaen had a lot in common with the impressionists especially harmonically, Debussy was one of his greatest influences, maybe the greatest one.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

JAS said:


> I think I have misinterpreted your position. At the risk of extending a discussion that has already consumed a thread (albeit a thread for which the original track has already mostly expired), are you postulating that the failure of modern classical music is that it rejected anything other than a purely intellectual response? (I ask this as someone who has no love for modern classical music, as I think my many posts have sufficiently demonstrated.) I note that many fans of modern classical music have often described or claimed a kind of emotional response, particularly to, for example, the music of Messiaen. (This is not a response that I share, but do not necessarily question.)


Messiaen is a exception, he said so himself that he was out of place in the modernist movement. Like Stravinsky he doesn't really fit anywhere.

Modernism is by intention asensual and purely intellectual.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

1996D said:


> Yes, but it's the exact opposite. Modernism and post-modernism reject sensuality, it started as a reaction but has extraordinarily continued to this day.
> 
> One thing going for it though is that if you're prone to sexual amorality modernism certainly won't tempt you to it. It is an asexual purely intellectual movement .


I don't even know what it means "sexual amorality modernism", but while it's true that modernism was often very cerebral (nothing necessarily wrong with it in my opinion) there are modernist composers who made very sensual music.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

1996D said:


> Messiaen is a exception, he said so himself that he was out of place in the modernist movement. Like Stravinsky he doesn't really fit anywhere.
> 
> Modernism is by intention asensual and purely intellectual.


Messiaen and Stravinsky were modernists without a doubt. It's like your idea of modernism instead of including all the different things of the twentieth century (actually I think that usually modernism starts even before the twentieth century) means just "serialist music". But Stravinsky not only wrote works like Rite of Spring, l'histoire du soldat, Las Noces, but also he wrote serialist music himself and he had words of great admiration for composers like Webern, Takemitsu and even Boulez (I'm not a fan of Boulez at all, but still).


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

Scriabin... Seriously? He's a post-romantic and impressionist. 

Modernism is 12 tone atonal music and postmodernism is what we have today. They are related even closer than romanticism and post-romanticism in that they are purely intellectual movements that reject sensuality.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

norman bates said:


> Messiaen and Stravinsky were modernists without a doubt. It's like your idea of modernism instead of including all the different things of the twentieth century (actually I think that usually modernism starts even before the twentieth century) means just "serialist music". But Stravinsky not only wrote works like Rite of Spring, l'histoire du soldat, Las Noces, but also he wrote serialist music himself and he had words of great admiration for composers like Webern, Takemitsu and even Boulez (I'm not a fan of Boulez at all, but still).


Stravinsky is a lot of things, he composed in a wide range of styles, that why he doesn't fit anywhere.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

norman bates said:


> It's like your idea of modernism instead of including all the different things of the twentieth century (actually I think that usually modernism starts even before the twentieth century) means just "serialist music".


Modernism is serialism, they go hand in hand.

It's not my opinion, you need to read before you write.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

1996D said:


> Scriabin... Seriously? He's a post-romantic and impressionist.
> 
> Modernism is 12 tone atonal music and postmodernism is what we have today. They are related even closer than romanticism and post-romanticism in that they are purely intellectual movements that reject sensuality.


Modernism to many starts with the impressionism of Debussy with his Prelude of the afternoon of a faun. I don't think it's necessarily true, besides the fact that Debussy himself was inspired by Fanelli, there are works like Tristan and Isolde, Smetana's Macbeth and the Witches and others that could be mentioned (even going back to Beethoven's Grosse fuge, or Bach's Art of the fugue) to me it's more a gradual transformation, the late eighteen century/early twentieth century was just the moment where a lot of things happened at the same time. But in any case impressionism, expressionism and free atonality, concrete music, minimalism, electronic music, microtonality, experiments with ryhthm (like Nancarrow) are all parts of modernism.
About Scriabin:


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

1996D said:


> Modernism is serialism, they go hand in hand.
> 
> It's not my opinion, you need to read before you write.


I read before I write and I know that modernism is not just serialism, exactly as in the architecture modernism wasn't just Le Corbusier or Mies Van Der Rohe but also Gaudi and Frank Lloyd Wright, and in painting it wasn't just Mondrian or Malevic but it was also Kandinsky, Klee, Soutine, Bacon etc. Modernism was about an attitude, the idea of create something new, not strictly a style.
Varese, Bartok, Ravel, Messiaen, Takemitsu, Scelsi, Ohana, Harry Partch, Ligeti, Sorabji, Vermeulen, Stravinsky, John Cage etc (just to mention a few) were all modernists and their music wasn't about serialism at all. Some of them hated or rejected serialism. Even Gerswhin was a modernist, with his absolutely melodic music.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

The main movement is rooted in the 12 tone technique, some say that it's then postmodernism but that's because they consider post-romantics and impressionists modernists, but they're not because their music is extremely sensual.

The main figure is Schoenberg and he rejected sensuality and destroyed the tradition, springing a rebirth in music. If you consider post-romanticism and impressionism modernism then Schoenberg is not a modernist but a postmodernist.

If however you tie post-romanticism and impressionism to romanticism, as simply an extension of it; then the reaction can be called modernism and that's Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School.

Of course Schoenberg started as a post-romantic and impressionist, but later completely rejected it, founded a school, and made his impact on the world which lasts to this day. Moses und Aron is his masterpiece and it's the premier work which defines modernism and postmodernism. He intended it to be the law.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

1996D said:


> The main movement is rooted in the 12 tone technique, some say that it's then postmodernism but that's because they consider post-romantics and impressionists modernists, but they're not because their music is extremely sensual.
> 
> The main figure is Schoenberg and he rejected sensuality and destroyed the tradition springing a rebirth in music. If you consider post-romanticism and impressionism modernism then Schoenberg is not a modernist but a postmodernist.


It's a generally accepted fact that impressionism is a part of modernism. 
And if Schoenberg destroyed the tradition, he did it with the help of Gesualdo and his madrigals, Bach and his art of the fugue, Beethoven and his grosse fuge, Wagner and his Tristan and isolde, Debussy with his entire work, Stravinsky with the rite of Spring, Ives with his entire work, Liszt, Scriabin, Busoni and many others. Because as others and myself has already said to you, music were going in that direction already.

Schoenberg has been a crucial figure, but even without him the music would have gone in the same direction, like paintings and sculpture and architecture and literature and movies were going in that same direction of a drastic change. The world was accelerating, science was changing everything, psychoanalysis and phylosophers were questioning a lot of things and composers were immersed in that same world and they would have changed with or without Schoenberg (and Hauer made serialism before him), even if you see him as the source of all evil and you have this naive idea that without him music would have stayed the same (the same as what? Brahms? Stravinsky? Ives? Russolo?).


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

norman bates said:


> It's a generally accepted fact that impressionism is a part of modernism.


No it's not, different writers have different opinions.

Wagner did begin the hyper-sensuality movement with Tristan, which lead to the bohemianism and 'free love' that Schoenberg loved at first but then hated after it destroyed his marriage. He reacted to it with the 12 tone technique with the goal to destroy sensuality in music, an effect that lasts to this day.

Moses und Aron wasn't performed until the 50s and continued to have an impact for the rest of the 20th century in which serialism became the main element in music, and all schools and composers started following it. It was a complete takeover.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

1996D said:


> No it's not, different writers have different opinions.


ok. A LOT of writers, critics, historians and composers think that modernism begins with impressionism.



1996D said:


> He reacted to it with the 12 tone technique with the goal to destroy sensuality in music which last to this day


how strange that you didn't reply to the other part of my last comment. I wonder why


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

1996D said:


> The main movement is rooted in the 12 tone technique, some say that it's then postmodernism but that's because they consider post-romantics and impressionists modernists, but they're not because their music is extremely sensual.
> 
> The main figure is Schoenberg and he rejected sensuality and destroyed the tradition, springing a rebirth in music. If you consider post-romanticism and impressionism modernism then Schoenberg is not a modernist but a postmodernist.
> 
> ...


Your theory is interesting, if not somewhat convolunted, at least to the point where it prompted me to listen to my recording of Schoenberg's _Moses Und Aron _(George Solti/Chicago & friends). It's quite an impressive piece of material. Interesting that you hail _Moses Und Aron_ as a masterpiece, and, yet, also identify Schoenberg in such negative terms. You say that Schoenberg rejected sensual experience in music, but it seems to me that in _Moses Und Aron_, he is able to convey various feelings through tone and texture, even if his music is intentionally devoid of melody. I think that the terms getting thrown about; _Romantic_, _Neo-Classical_, _Impressionism_, _Expressionism_, _Modern_, _Post-Modern_; are better used for the purpose of discussion as opposed absolute categorization. The above terms have often been applied to classical music but have also been linked to movements that have also taken place in visual arts and literature, not always in ways where the terms can have the same meaning across the arts.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

Coach G said:


> Your theory is interesting, if not somewhat convolunted, at least to the point where it prompted me to listen to my recording of Schoenberg's _Moses Und Aron _(George Solti/Chicago & friends). It's quite an impressive piece of material. Interesting that you hail _Moses Und Aron_ as a masterpiece, and, yet, also identify Schoenberg in such negative terms. You say that Schoenberg rejected sensual experience in music, but it seems to me that in _Moses Und Aron_, he is able to convey various feelings through tone and texture, even if his music is intentionally devoid of melody. I think that the terms getting thrown about; _Romantic_, _Neo-Classical_, _Impressionism_, _Expressionism_, _Modern_, _Post-Modern_; are better used for the purpose of discussion as opposed absolute categorization. The above terms have often been applied to classical music but have also been linked to movements that have also taken place in visual arts and literature, not always in ways where the terms can have the same meaning across the arts.


It's quite complex but it's my living to study these things, a requirement as a composer. I've finally realized what the next step is, but only through vigorously studying history and attempting to explain it here, and thus learning further: teaching is absolutely the best way to learn; the final step.

The Modernist movement as a whole (not the musical one) holds Moses und Aron as its representation in music. After that it was easier to understand things.

When you tie music to other art forms and especially to politics, things start to make sense. Postmodernism is a further politicized extension of Modernism, but they are essentially one.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

1996D said:


> The Modernist movement as a whole (not the musical one) holds Moses und Aron as its representation in music.


no it doesn't, even in the production of Schoenberg for instance is a lot less known composition than The Pierrot Lunaire or Erwartung, and there are other pieces like The Rite of spring (which is actually THE most famous modernist work), Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, or the operas of Berg and his Violin concerto, or The quartet for the end of times, Le marteau sans maitre, Ionisation, 4'33'' and many other possible examples.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

norman bates said:


> And if Schoenberg destroyed the tradition, he did it with the help of Gesualdo and his madrigals, Bach and his art of the fugue, Beethoven and his grosse fuge, Wagner and his Tristan and isolde,


Of all these masters, Schoenberg considered Bach and Mozart his two most important influences, btw. I'm not sure if he ever considered Gesualdo to be one of them.

In the second of his 1931 essays on 'National Music', Schoenberg acknowledged Bach and Mozart as his principal teachers and told his readers why.
"My teachers were primarily Bach and Mozart, and secondarily Beethoven, Brahms, and Wagner."

"Schoenberg now proudly described himself as Mozart's pupil - and the final movement of the Suite, the 'Gigue', comes close to explicit homage to the G major Gigue, KV 574, in which Mozart at his most neo-Baroque and most harmonically chromatic seems almost to anticipate elements of Schoenberg's serial method."
( Arnold Schoenberg, By Mark Berry, Page 135 )






Schoenberg: "From Bach I learned:
1. Contrapuntal thinking; i.e. the art of inventing musical figures that can be used to accompany themselves.
2. The art of producing everything from one thing and of relating figures by transformation.
3. Disregard for the 'strong' beat of the measure.
From Mozart:
1. Inequality of phrase-length.
2. Co-ordination of heterogeneous characters to form a thematic unity.
3. Deviation from even-number construction in the theme and its component parts.
4. The art of forming subsidiary ideas.
5. The art of introduction and transition."


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

hammeredklavier said:


> Of all these masters, Schoenberg considered Bach and Mozart his two most important influences, btw. I'm not sure if he ever considered Gesualdo to be one of them.


why do you have to use every possible occasion to post things about Mozart? I'm sure that if we were talking about cheese you would say something like "that was Mozart's favorite cheese".
I wasn't talking about Schoenberg's influences there, I was saying that tradition isn't a static thing but it drastically change with time and a lot of composers have produced revolutionary things for their period through the centuries.
But yes, I knew about that work.


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## Guest (Jun 7, 2020)

Have we drifted away from the OP's thesis? The focus on a single composer seems quite disproportionate to the general question about whether classical music should become more elitist.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

I'll bet that Mozart liked cheese. (In days before refrigeration, cheese and bread were pretty much staples.) This comment is not to suggest that anything Mozart might have written could be considered cheesy.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

norman bates said:


> why do you have to use every possible occasion to post things about Mozart? I'm sure that if we were talking about cheese you would say something like "that was Mozart's favorite cheese".
> I wasn't talking about Schoenberg's influences there, I was saying that tradition isn't a static thing but it drastically change with time and a lot of composers have produced revolutionary things for their period through the centuries.
> But yes, I knew about that work.


Sorry, I didn't quite get you. With the kind of argument you were making, I'm pretty sure you could make an argument virtually every composer in classical music is revolutionary in his own way. You could make the same argument about John Cage. I just didn't see the point. You might as well just say "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", "art is subjective", to convince 1996D



norman bates said:


> if Schoenberg destroyed the tradition, he did it with the *help* of Gesualdo


You said it; "help". That implies "influence", "inspiration" in art. And we can't leave out Mozart when discussing the "help" Schoenberg got from his predecessors. The same way we don't leave out Beethoven when discussing Bartok in a similar way. 



 (ex. Philip Glass singled out Schubert a crucial influence on his own music)
How many times I mention Mozart's name shouldn't matter. It doesn't matter if I mention it a million times, the important thing is to get facts straight. =) And I didn't even mention Mozart only, I mentioned both *Bach and Mozart* (that they were Schoenberg's biggest inspirations) this time. You're the one overreacting, I think. =)


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

hammeredklavier said:


> Sorry, I didn't quite get you. With the kind of argument you were making, I'm pretty sure you could make an argument virtually every composer in classical music is revolutionary in his own way. You could make the same argument about John Cage. I just didn't see the point. You might as well just say "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", "art is subjective", to convince 1996D


I don't think that being revolutionary and making beatiful music aren't the same things at all. John cage was indeed revolutionary, I don't like his music at all. On the other hand Gerald Finzi was extremely conservative for his time (and not revolutionary at all) and I absolutely love his work. 
And I don't disagree with everything 1996D is saying, the fact that a lot of modern classical music removed the focus from sensuality is quite true (even if there's a lot of distinctions to do about it, even in terms of value, because a lot of cerebral music has produced masterpieces in any case).



hammeredklavier said:


> You said it; "help". That implies "influence", "inspiration" in art. And we can't leave out Mozart when discussing the "help" Schoenberg got from his predecessors. The same way we don't leave out Beethoven when discussing Bartok in a similar way.
> 
> 
> 
> (ex. Philip Glass singled out Schubert a crucial influence on him)


that was more a coincidence that I get led to a misuderstanding. I'm not even sure that I knew that Schoenberg was a fan of Gesualdo (I knew that Stravinsky was though). I was just saying that this idea of modern music (meaning twentieth century) vs music of the past seems to imply that before the twentieth century there was this tradition that never changed and suddenly it was "destroyed" by a single person, while tradition has changed during the centuries with the contribution (the "help" I was talking about) of many composers. That was essentially my point, I wasn't mentioning just the composers that inspired Schoenberg (I don't even know what he thought about Busoni or Ives or even if he knew their work).



hammeredklavier said:


> How many times I mention Mozart's name shouldn't matter. It doesn't matter if I mention it a million times, the important thing is to get facts straight. =) And I didn't even mention Mozart only, I mentioned both *Bach and Mozart* (that they were Schoenberg's biggest inspirations) this time. You're the one overreacting, I think. =)


I think you're closer to the billion times though, the effect is a bit like seeing again and again a commercial :lol:
In any case that one is an interesting work for sure.


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## caracalla (Feb 19, 2020)

MacLeod said:


> Have we drifted away from the OP's thesis? The focus on a single composer seems quite disproportionate to the general question about whether classical music should become more elitist.


OK then, let's go back to Babbitt. What he was arguing is that advanced music should be regarded as on a par with advanced mathematics or physics, and that it was quite unreasonable to expect ordinarily well-educated people (the sort who might be expected to listen to CM) to understand or appreciate it. Without appropriate academic preparation, they had no hope of doing so, and it was just wasting everyone's time (and causing frustration all round) to try ramming it down people's throats at mainstream concerts etc. Urging them to be more broad-minded or 'open their ears' was never going to cut it, and served only to breed resentment.

This was a plea for people like him to be put on academic life-support, which in his case was successful. Whatever one thinks about that, I can't help feeling his basic argument was at least honest - what I do is way beyond ordinary folks' ken, I admit it and so should everyone else. But if we allow people like Babbit to be as elite as they like, to join advanced mathematicians &c doing whatever incomprehensible things they do in their ivory towers, the fact remains that there is still significant demand for comprehensible new music more sophisticated than popular culture can offer. And for rather too many decades now, the musical supply side's ability to connect with that demand has been unimpressive.

Why so? This hasn't happened in literature. There was a time when it might have done, but it took a different path. If most writers since the war had spent their time trying to outdo or go beyond 'Finnegan's Wake', obsessed with advancing literature to the exclusion of all else, no doubt most of us would now be re-reading the Victorians for the umpteenth time and/or ransacking earlier centuries for new material. They haven't, and - in that field - we don't. On the whole, serious new writers and the 'ordinarily well-educated' public have remained in contact. So what is the difference here? Is is it that wannabe writers are more realistic about what they can do and still attract a decent audience? Do they have a stronger sense that it's no use having something important to say if hardly anyone's listening? Or is it just that the institutional brokers that mediate between those who want to write and those who want to read have been a whole lot more successful than those who perform the same function in music? And if that is so, why?


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## Luchesi (Mar 15, 2013)

^^^I think it's because you need to learn so much in order to appreciate music.

People say what? 'just to appreciate music?


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

caracalla said:


> OK then, let's go back to Babbitt. What he was arguing is that advanced music should be regarded as on a par with advanced mathematics or physics, and that it was quite unreasonable to expect ordinarily well-educated people (the sort who might be expected to listen to CM) to understand or appreciate it. Without appropriate academic preparation, they had no hope of doing so, and it was just wasting everyone's time (and causing frustration all round) to try ramming it down people's throats at mainstream concerts etc. Urging them to be more broad-minded or 'open their ears' was never going to cut it, and served only to breed resentment.
> 
> This was a plea for people like him to be put on academic life-support, which in his case was successful. Whatever one thinks about that, I can't help feeling his basic argument was at least honest - what I do is way beyond ordinary folks' ken, I admit it and so should everyone else. But if we allow people like Babbit to be as elite as they like, to join advanced mathematicians &c doing whatever incomprehensible things they do in their ivory towers, the fact remains that there is still significant demand for comprehensible new music more sophisticated than popular culture can offer. And for rather too many decades now, the musical supply side's ability to connect with that demand has been unimpressive.
> 
> Why so? This hasn't happened in literature. There was a time when it might have done, but it took a different path. If most writers since the war had spent their time trying to outdo or go beyond 'Finnegan's Wake', obsessed with advancing literature to the exclusion of all else, no doubt most of us would now be re-reading the Victorians for the umpteenth time and/or ransacking earlier centuries for new material. They haven't, and - in that field - we don't. On the whole, serious new writers and the 'ordinarily well-educated' public have remained in contact. So what is the difference here? Is is it that wannabe writers are more realistic about what they can do and still attract a decent audience? Do they have a stronger sense that it's no use having something important to say if hardly anyone's listening? Or is it just that the institutional brokers that mediate between those who want to write and those who want to read have been a whole lot more successful than those who perform the same function in music? And if that is so, why?


I've read many discussions on TC of Babbitt's essay, but yours stands out as perhaps the most well argued and insightful. You suggest a set of pointed questions with the last two particularly interesting. I actually read Babbitt awhile ago and don't remember all the details so perhaps I should try again.

I used to be an experimental particle physicist, and in some sense my work was similar to many mathematicians. No one understood our work, no one cared, and our work did not affect anyone. Society funds particle physicists and mathematicians mostly because their work could eventually have significant real world consequences. Much mathematics does seem to eventually find practical applications, and particle physics could become the next electromagnetic theory (going from seemingly useless results to effecting almost everything people do).

I doubt classical music will ever have the kind of effect electromagnetic theory does, but perhaps the compositions of those like Babbitt could eventually result in a new musical era that could move modern/contemporary music into a new era which profoundly moves a great number of classical music listeners. I don't know enough about composing specifically whether giving composers the freedom that Babbitt enjoyed might help or hinder expanding the reach of contemporary classical music.

I wonder if it's actually true that "there is still significant demand for comprehensible new music more sophisticated than popular culture can offer." I suppose it depends on what significant means. Many here at TC find modern/contemporary music up to that challenge (i.e. the supply has met their demand). Others vastly prefer pre-modern music, and it's not obvious to me that they seek more than is readily available to them from Romantic, Classical, Baroque and earlier.

You ask, "_s it just that the institutional brokers that mediate between those who want to write and those who want to read have been a whole lot more successful than those who perform the same function in music? And if that is so, why?"

I suspect the answer to the first is "yes." I once asked a professional artist here at TC why so much contemporary art seems so silly (for want of a better term). His response was that there are few people who commission art and those people have specific views of what new art should be. So one sees plenty of accessible contemporary art in art galleries, but exhibits in museums tend toward the more extreme or avant-garde. The art galleries are the brokers who match the artists with the vast majority of the interested public.

As to why, possibly there are many more people who read than listen to classical music. Many more people have been trained in reading through literature classes in grade school and high school. Almost no one in the US is trained in listening to music. So there is a greater market for books and even decent books, and therefore, for institutional brokers to bring the producers and consumers together._


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

caracalla said:


> OK then, let's go back to Babbitt. What he was arguing is that advanced music should be regarded as on a par with advanced mathematics or physics, and that it was quite unreasonable to expect ordinarily well-educated people (the sort who might be expected to listen to CM) to understand or appreciate it. Without appropriate academic preparation, they had no hope of doing so, and it was just wasting everyone's time (and causing frustration all round) to try ramming it down people's throats at mainstream concerts etc. Urging them to be more broad-minded or 'open their ears' was never going to cut it, and served only to breed resentment.


Personally while I like to listen to modern music I think that the only things a listener needs are a good pair of ears, curiosity and a open mind, and the awareness that new things could not click immediately. But the idea that a listener needs academic preparation, that's complete bs in my opinion. That's like admitting a failure of the music to communicate on its own terms, needing a "explaination" with paper and theory. A chef could make the most elaborate and complex recipe but everybody has the right to judge the result, even not having the ability to cook an egg.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

mmsbls said:


> As to why, possibly there are many more people who read than listen to classical music. Many more people have been trained in reading through literature classes in grade school and high school. Almost no one in the US is trained in listening to music. So there is a greater market for books and even decent books, and therefore, for institutional brokers to bring the producers and consumers together.


Also, you can read on your own. (A book club might be the closest equivalent to a concert. But people also generally read a book once, or may go back to it after some time. Music, if recorded, can be listened to over and over. There is also no mediator between the author and reader, unless you consider an editor or a book designer, so it is inherently a different experience.) And you can even self-publish. Music requires a performer. But it might also be noted that experimental literature has never had the kind of production-side support that has tried to push modern classical music (mostly unsuccessfully).


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

caracalla said:


> OK then, let's go back to Babbitt. What he was arguing is that advanced music should be regarded as on a par with advanced mathematics or physics, and that it was quite unreasonable to expect ordinarily well-educated people (the sort who might be expected to listen to CM) to understand or appreciate it. Without appropriate academic preparation, they had no hope of doing so, and it was just wasting everyone's time (and causing frustration all round) to try ramming it down people's throats at mainstream concerts etc. Urging them to be more broad-minded or 'open their ears' was never going to cut it, and served only to breed resentment.
> 
> This was a plea for people like him to be put on academic life-support, which in his case was successful. Whatever one thinks about that, I can't help feeling his basic argument was at least honest - what I do is way beyond ordinary folks' ken, I admit it and so should everyone else. But if we allow people like Babbit to be as elite as they like, to join advanced mathematicians &c doing whatever incomprehensible things they do in their ivory towers, the fact remains that there is still significant demand for comprehensible new music more sophisticated than popular culture can offer.* And for rather too many decades now, the musical supply side's ability to connect with that demand has been unimpressive. *
> 
> Why so? This hasn't happened in literature. There was a time when it might have done, but it took a different path. If most writers since the war had spent their time trying to outdo or go beyond 'Finnegan's Wake', obsessed with advancing literature to the exclusion of all else, no doubt most of us would now be re-reading the Victorians for the umpteenth time and/or ransacking earlier centuries for new material. They haven't, and - in that field - we don't. On the whole, serious new writers and the 'ordinarily well-educated' public have remained in contact. So what is the difference here? Is is it that wannabe writers are more realistic about what they can do and still attract a decent audience? Do they have a stronger sense that it's no use having something important to say if hardly anyone's listening? Or is it just that the institutional brokers that mediate between those who want to write and those who want to read have been a whole lot more successful than those who perform the same function in music? And if that is so, why?


It's because Postmodernism has destroyed knowledge and has promoted extreme self-criticism, irony, and skepticism. A composer must be in a strong mental state in order to create good music, and all strength is dissolved by the skeptic postmodern professor who believes in nothing. It's like a virus that's passed down.

The result is this wave of extremely insecure and self-conscious artists who have no knowledge of history, philosophy, or metaphysics, and therefore no mental strength.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

1996D said:


> It's because Postmodernism has destroyed knowledge and has promoted extreme self-criticism, irony, and skepticism. ...


I would absolutely positively 100% have to agree with that. That is the rot that's killing everything. And it's "progress", dontchaknow.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

consuono said:


> I would absolutely positively 100% have to agree with that. That is the rot that's killing everything. And it's "progress", dontchaknow.


The sad part is that people are affected without even knowing it, and I believe there's no cure, once you've been exposed it's for life. There are just too many structures of thought that you have to go through, and this ideology prevents even the most basic blocks: it's complete obscurantism.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

In the thread <Personal blind spots>, I expressed opinion that music like Stockhausen's still has its uses, in my reply to tdc's comment: _"I think the jury is still out on the long term value of music of a composer like Stockhausen or Ferneyhough etc. They may actually fade into obscurity (they may not)"_, and DavidA's: _"Most modern music which sounds horribly discordant to me. Music is meant to be enjoyed not endured."_

This was my reply:
_"It has its uses. It works well as soundtrack for spooky media contents such as documentaries on mysteries, horror films. I think the modern culture encourages composers to keep developing skills in this area"_:


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

1996D said:


> The sad part is that people are affected without even knowing it, and I believe there's no cure, once you've been exposed it's for life. There are just too many structures of thought that you have to go through, and this ideology prevents even the most basic blocks: it's complete obscurantism.


I think it depends on what you're fed in school during your formative years. I was fortunate enough to escape the professional education boards pushing their leftover scraps of 50s French philosophy. What's funny is that those who still reflect that sort of thing often pride themselves on how "free thinking" they are.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

norman bates said:


> A chef could make the most elaborate and complex recipe but everybody has the right to judge the result, even not having the ability to cook an egg.


I can agree with this. The fact that René Leibowitz was also a composer himself didn't affect his right to write the essay "Sibelius the Worst Composer in the World". I was a bit bewildered by some of our forum members who talked as if 1996D had no right to criticize other composers if he couldn't compose better than them. I'm also reminded of those numerous people in other sites who were furious at David C F Wright about his articles on composers: "Is DCFW really a composer himself as he claims? If so, let's hear his works, to see how good he is compared to all the composers he bashed."


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

consuono said:


> I think it depends on what you're fed in school during your formative years. I was fortunate enough to escape the professional education boards pushing their leftover scraps of 50s French philosophy. What's funny is that those who still reflect that sort of thing often pride themselves on how "free thinking" they are.


It's everywhere though, it's a true political and societal wave, not the ideology itself but what it leads to. Everything becomes subjective, and even the most basic truths are broken down so that everyone can have an equal voice. It's the worship of equality of outcome, and the three enforcers; self-criticism, irony, and skepticism are there to ensure that.

It is what it is, I'm not against it, but for an artist to produce good art in this environment he must be a polymath.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

1996D said:


> ...
> It is what it is, I'm not against it, but for an artist to produce good art in this environment he must be a polymath.


Well I'd have to say that I am most definitely against it. It produces nothing at all of value - "value" of course being meaningless - and in the name of righting past wrongs it throws the baby out with the bathwater. I think its essence is narcissistic nihilism. It tears down.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

consuono said:


> Well I'd have to say that I am most definitely against it. It produces nothing at all of value - "value" of course being meaningless - and in the name of righting past wrongs it throws the baby out with the bathwater. I think its essence is narcissistic nihilism. It tears down.


It's wrong and the people that promote it are bent, but it can't be stopped at the moment so I'm not against it. It's possible to adapt to it, and once you do you have a sizable advantage.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

1996D said:


> It's wrong and the people that promote it are bent, but it can't be stopped so I'm not against it. It's possible to adapt to it, and once you do you have a sizable advantage.


The "West" is indeed probably too far gone, which is why I find that most of the most compelling artistic efforts over the past 50 years or so have come from elsewhere (I'm not counting Latin America as part of that Western Europe-Anglosphere group).


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

consuono said:


> The "West" is indeed probably too far gone, which is why I find that most of the most compelling artistic efforts over the past 50 years or so have come from elsewhere (I'm not counting Latin America as part of that Western Europe-Anglosphere group).


It's just in a phase, it'll bounce back. It's possible to actually enjoy this time, just stay equipped mentally; if you know the why then it's easy to accept.

Timeless art certainly won't be coming from any Western school for the moment, that's a given.


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## Guest (Jun 8, 2020)

caracalla said:


> OK then, let's go back to Babbitt. [etc]


Thank you. An excellent post.

I have no problem with Babbitt's views.

And I agree that part of the problem is that literacy is more or less universal; the ability to read music isn't. And that the levels of post-modern thinking that have influenced music composition (a narrow specialist field in the first place, despite the wish of some that it take centre stage of all the arts) have not impacted literature to anything like the same extent.

Ironically, though literature is easier to consume than some of the more experimental music, such music can actually be listened to, regardless of the ability to make sense of it or enjoy it. The equivalent in literature would be written in an untranslatable language which only a few obsessives would attempt to solve. The rest of us would give up at the sight of the first page.



1996D said:


> It's because Postmodernism has destroyed knowledge and has promoted extreme *self-criticism, irony, and skepticism*. A composer must be in a strong mental state in order to create good music, and all strength is dissolved by the skeptic postmodern professor who believes in nothing. It's like a virus that's passed down.
> 
> The result is this wave of extremely insecure and self-conscious artists who have no knowledge of history, philosophy, or metaphysics, and therefore no mental strength.


Well, it's a point of view I suppose. IMO, there is nothing wrong with the three things I've highlighted. I wouldn't conclude that the consequence of them is the destruction of classical western civilsation.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

MacLeod said:


> Thank you. An excellent post.
> 
> I have no problem with Babbitt's views.
> 
> ...


But that's not what it is, contemporary music is not hard to solve; it's offensive and inaccessible tonally, yet not complex enough structurally to be enjoyable that way.

Moses und Aron is hard to solve, it has true complexity; a story that inverts the world; a true universe with law and order created by one man and his enormous hate for the world he lived in.

Contemporary music is a fraction of what Schoenberg was able to create, I'd be even hesitant to call it classical music. It just doesn't have the creativity and complexity that defines the genre.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

MacLeod said:


> Well, it's a point of view I suppose. IMO, there is nothing wrong with the three things I've highlighted. I wouldn't conclude that the consequence of them is the destruction of classical western civilsation.


When those three things you've highlighted become the air we breathe, there is no such positive thing as "civilization", classical Western or otherwise. It's merely a power structure, like the traditional family or the church. Civilization indeed may even be completely evil, and certainly nothing worth saving from destruction. Tearing down those power structures and leveling is what it's all about.


> The end result of four decades of postmodernism permeating the art world is that there is very little interesting or important work being done right now in the fine arts. Irony was a bold and creative posture when Duchamp did it, but it is now an utterly banal, exhausted, and tedious strategy. Young artists have been taught to be "cool" and "hip" and thus painfully self-conscious. They are not encouraged to be enthusiastic, emotional, and visionary. They have been cut off from artistic tradition by the crippled skepticism about history that they have been taught by ignorant and solipsistic postmodernists. In short, the art world will never revive until postmodernism fades away. Postmodernism is a plague upon the mind and the heart.


I would certainly agree.
https://faustomag.com/camille-paglia-postmodernism-is-a-plague-upon-the-mind-and-the-heart/


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## Guest (Jun 8, 2020)

1996D said:


> contemporary music is


You are presumably referring to a particular narrow variety that you find "offensive and inaccessible"

Not all 'contemporary' music strikes everyone this way (and you might say what you're including in your sweeping denunciation).


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

MacLeod said:


> You are presumably referring to a particular narrow variety that you find "offensive and inaccessible"
> 
> Not all 'contemporary' music strikes everyone this way (and you might say what you're including in your sweeping denunciation).


I wasn't referring to my own experience of it, I was able to enjoy Moses und Aron without feeling disgusted - I accepted Schoenberg's pain and respected his creativity, even if the piece is filled with evil.

To 99.9% of people contemporary music is offensive, but I'm telling you that structurally it's a tenth of the complexity and creativity that Schoenberg managed, so it's certainly not "an untranslatable language which only a few obsessives would attempt to solve", it's actually quite simple structurally and shows very little creativity.

I think you meant that emotionally it would be hard for people to understand, which is true, but that doesn't make it good art because it's been done already and much better.


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## Guest (Jun 8, 2020)

1996D said:


> I wasn't referring to my own experience of *it*, I was able to enjoy Moses und Aron without feeling disgusted - I accepted Schoenberg's pain and respected his creativity, even if the piece is filled with evil.
> 
> To 99.9% of people contemporary music is offensive, but I'm telling you that structurally it's a tenth of the complexity and creativity that Schoenberg managed, so it's certainly not "an untranslatable language which only a few obsessives would attempt to solve", it's actually quite simple structurally and shows very little creativity.
> 
> I think you meant that emotionally it would be hard for people to understand, which is true, but that doesn't make it good art because it's been done already and much better.


But you still don't say what 'it' is. Schoenberg (him again?) is not what I take 'contemporary' music to mean, unless you mean that hsi music was contemporary with Mahler's or Stravinsky's.

In the meantime, stop projecting your distaste for 'it' onto the rest of the CM listening population.


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## Guest (Jun 8, 2020)

consuono said:


> When those three things you've highlighted become the air we breathe, there is no such positive thing as "civilization", classical Western or otherwise. It's merely a power structure, like the traditional family or the church. Civilization indeed may even be completely evil, and certainly nothing worth saving from destruction. Tearing down those power structures and leveling is what it's all about.


You too with the 'it'?

Yes, of course, what western civilisation is is open to discussion, but I think we know what 1996D is referring to when he laments (as he has in other threads) the decadent music that threatens it.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

MacLeod said:


> But you still don't say what 'it' is. Schoenberg (him again?) is not what I take 'contemporary' music to mean, unless you mean that hsi music was contemporary with Mahler's or Stravinsky's.
> 
> In the meantime, stop projecting your distaste for 'it' onto the rest of the CM listening population.


You're not understanding... Postmodernism is Modernism with less intellect, with less genuine cause, with an artificial, political objective rather than one coming from the heart.

Schoenberg inverted the world but he did so genuinely, his music comes from the heart and he was a man that believed in what he wrote. 'It' is contemporary music influenced by Postmodernism that has the same rejection of the natural order as what Schoenberg did, but with not nearly the same power behind it.

Singling out one composer would be unnecessary because it's all of them; Postmodernism is not an art movement, it's a political one, and therefore its art is mediocre.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

1996D said:


> I wasn't referring to my own experience of it, I was able to enjoy Moses und Aron without feeling disgusted - I accepted Schoenberg's pain and respected his creativity, even if the piece is filled with evil.
> 
> To 99.9% of people contemporary music is offensive, but I'm telling you that structurally it's a tenth of the complexity and creativity that Schoenberg managed, so it's certainly not "an untranslatable language which only a few obsessives would attempt to solve", it's actually quite simple structurally and shows very little creativity.
> 
> I think you meant that emotionally it would be hard for people to understand, which is true, but that doesn't make it good art because it's been done already and much better.


One of the things that makes modernism and post modernism distinct from past eras is that stylistically music went in a lot of different directions in a relatively small period of time. So 'post-modernism' as it relates to music is often used as a vague umbrella term that groups together many disparate musical trends. It is probably more useful to speak about specific composers or styles rather than trying to frame modernism and post-modernism as monolithic things, embodying only specific traits found in one particular composer. (ie - Schoenberg's atonality = modernism).

As far as _Moses und Aron_, it is actually not one of Schoenberg's more radical works, on the spectrum of atonality he has pieces that go farther in that direction. I would classify the aesthetic of _Moses und Aron_ as essentially highly chromatic romanticism. In fact Schoenberg's music was seen as basically just that by composers like Boulez and Carter, the latter calling it 'just more of that Brahms stuff'.

So I think it is false of you to dismiss impressionism as a minor offshoot of romanticism, and declare Schoenberg as the true modernist. The irony here is that Schoenberg's music is probably even more closely related to romanticism than impressionism is. I suspect the fact that _Moses und Aron_ is so closely related to romanticism is precisely why this work had such a big impact on you.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

tdc said:


> One of the things that makes modernism and post modernism distinct from past eras is that stylistically music went in a lot of different directions in a relatively small period of time. So 'post-modernism' as it relates to music is often used as a vague umbrella term that groups together many disparate musical trends. It is probably more useful to speak about specific composers or styles or rather than trying to frame modernism and post-modernism as monolithic things, embodying only specific traits found in one particular composer. (ie - Schoenberg's atonality = modernism).
> 
> As far as _Moses und Aron_, it is actually not one of Schoenberg's more radical works, on the spectrum of atonality he has pieces that go farther in that direction. I would classify the aesthetic of _Moses und Aron_ as essentially highly chromatic romanticism. In fact Schoenberg's music was seen as basically just that by composers like Boulez and Carter, the latter calling it 'just more of that Brahms stuff'.
> 
> So I think it is false of you to dismiss impressionism as a minor offshoot of romanticism, and declare Schoenberg as the true modernist. The irony here is that Schoenberg's music is even more closely related to romanticism than impressionism is. I suspect the fact that _Moses und Aron_ is so closely related to romanticism is precisely why this work had such a big impact on you.


It's because I'm not talking musically but what the message of the music says. Moses und Aron has a story with a very powerful meaning, and the music is highly creative and fitting to the message.

It's like Mozart Great Mass in C minor, only inverted. One brings you to God the other to worshipping yourself. It really can't be topped, I don't care if Per Norgard's music sounds more disturbed, it doesn't have nearly the same creativity and encompassing world as what Schoenberg did.

Artistry must always be the number one goal, and contemporary music does a poor job at that.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

1996D said:


> ............
> Artistry must always be the number one goal, and contemporary music does a poor job at that.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

Per Norgard is much better than what you posted yet still well below what Schoenberg left. You can't say that music is progressing because it's not.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

.... it's interesting to note that you obviously didn't listen to these pieces in their entirety. I'm not surprised.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

mikeh375 said:


> .... it's interesting to note that you obviously didn't listen to these pieces in their entirety. I'm not surprised.


Pieces? You posted one initially which I did listen to.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

1996D said:


> Pieces? You posted one initially which I did listen to.


...well there are two now, but as I had an issue uploading both your forgiven just this once.
Don't bother with the Dutilleux, I know your response already. It's such a shame you wont feel the artistry and poetry in that work.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

The second one is an unnecessary pastiche of Schoenberg... I thought you were against that?

The thing with art is that you can't repeat the same thing, it just simply doesn't have the same effect. An atonal string piece is a big no no, there is nothing left to do there, unless you want to violate the instruments in new ways.

There should be some violin banging and scratching next, and farting into a tuba too.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

1996D said:


> It's because I'm not talking musically but what the message of the music says. Moses und Aron has a story with a very powerful meaning, and the music is highly creative and fitting to the message.
> 
> It's like Mozart Great Mass in C minor, only inverted. One brings you to God the other to worshipping yourself.


and there we are, this seems the core of this discussion. A believer who dislike the uncertainty of music that doesn't represent the value of the believer.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

1996D said:


> The second one is an unnecessary pastiche of Schoenberg... I thought you were against that?


wow 1996d your ears? 
Dutilleux is a million miles away from the dodecaphonic Schoenberg in all aspects, from rhythm, to line, to the vertical, to the sensual. You can't hear that???????


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

norman bates said:


> and there we are, this seems the core of this discussion. A believer who dislike the uncertainty of music that doesn't represent the value of the believer.


And there it is.

Modernism didn't have the nonsense subjectivism and obscurantism of postmodernism. Schoenberg knew what he was doing; he was inverting the natural order and creating his own law. He was a man that was betrayed by his wife, and a Jew that converted to Christianity only to reconvert to Judaism, and of course experienced the Nazis and the realization of his alien status as a Jew in Europe. He went through a complete crisis of identity, and reacted to that by becoming a tyrant of his own world; reestablishing order in that way - order that he never had in his life and that he longed for to such an extent that he became obsessed with numbers - the only certainty he saw in the world.

It's 'Moses und Aron' instead of the correct 'Moses und Aaron' because of how crazy and superstitious he became. It just couldn't have 13 letters.

There is no uncertainty, only the obscurantism brought on by postmodernism.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

mikeh375 said:


> wow 1996d your ears?
> Dutilleux is a million miles away from the dodecaphonic Schoenberg in all aspects, from rhythm, to line, to the vertical, to the sensual. You can't hear that???????


It's nonsense because it has no purpose. Atonality is not an art form to be enjoyed, it was used to make a statement.

It was shocking and that was the purpose - now it's not - and thus has lost its value. It doesn't matter than he improved some technical elements over Schoenberg's 4th, if he enjoyed writing it then great, but it makes no difference to the world.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

1996D said:


> And there it is.
> 
> Modernism didn't have the nonsense subjectivism and obscurantism of postmodernism. Schoenberg knew what he was doing; he was inverting the natural order and creating his own law. He was a man that was betrayed by his wife, and a Jew that converted to Christianity only to reconvert to Judaism, and of course experienced the Nazis and the realization of his alien status as a Jew in Europe. He went through a complete crisis of identity, and reacted to that by becoming a tyrant of his own world; reestablishing order in that way - order that he never had in his life.
> 
> There is no uncertainty, only the obscurantism brought on by postmodernism.


I'm not defending post-modernism (in fact I'm highly critical of it, altough certainly not because of irony, self-criticism and skeptikism that in my world are values and were values for composers centuries before post-modernism was a thing). I have more issues with the fact that "music that brings you to god" as something positive (and I'm saying this loving a lot of religious music).


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

norman bates said:


> I'm not defending post-modernism (in fact I'm highly critical of it, altough certainly not because of irony, self-criticism and skeptikism that in my world are values and were values for composers centuries before post-modernism was a thing). I have more issues with the fact that "music that brings you to god" as something positive (and I'm saying this loving a lot of religious music).


That's your personal issue then. The purpose of masses is to promote the faith.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

1996D said:


> It's nonsense because it has no purpose. Atonality is not an art form to be enjoyed, it was used to make a statement.
> 
> It was shocking and that was the purpose - now it's not - and thus has lost its value. It doesn't matter than he improved some technical elements over Schoenberg's 4th, if he enjoyed writing it then great, but it makes no difference to the world.


 I'm not surprised that you can't musically 'place' Dutilleux nor understand the musical aesthetic.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

MacLeod said:


> You too with the 'it'?
> 
> Yes, of course, what western civilisation is is open to discussion, but I think we know what 1996D is referring to when he laments (as he has in other threads) the decadent music that threatens it.


If it were "decadent" most of it might at least be interesting. "Decadent" became passé a long time ago. Now it's just tired, for the most part (thinking primarily about overall style and mindset, which I think can be generalized to a certain extent).


tdc said:


> It is probably more useful to speak about specific composers or styles rather than trying to frame modernism and post-modernism as monolithic things, embodying only specific traits found in one particular composer. (ie - Schoenberg's atonality = modernism).


It is an artistic attitude, maybe more properly called "post-structrualism". "Postmodern" really is just odds and ends left over from "modernism", a sort of clichéd appendix.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

1996D said:


> That's your personal issue then. The purpose of masses is to promote the faith.


Usually yes, but that's not what makes me say that the music is good. In any way I don't think that to judge the value of music in terms of proselytism is a even remotely decent basis for any criticism to modern music. Actually it shows all the huge fallacies of it.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

mikeh375 said:


> I'm not surprised that you can't musically 'place' Dutilleux nor understand the musical aesthetic.


You have no understanding of the place of art in society. Dutilleux has a fine symphony that has greater artistry than the piece you posted.

You're simply obsessed with purposeless technique.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

1996D said:


> You have no understanding of the place of art in society.


and what's the purpose of art in society to you?


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

1996D said:


> You have no understanding of the place of art in society. Dutilleux has a fine symphony that has greater artistry than the piece you posted.
> 
> *You're simply obsessed with purposeless technique*.


Except I'm not. I didn't even mention anything resembling technique other than to point out the obvious _surface _differences between Duttilleux and Schoenberg - obvious to any composer. The fact that you call technique purposeless is not a surprise of course. The fact that you can't hear the patently obvious differences in approach between the two aforementioned composers _should _trouble you.

Duttilleux has 2 symphonies. Both are _technically and musically_ brilliant, as are all masterful pieces in the repertoire. I have the score to the first as you can see here....

https://www.talkclassical.com/64869-current-listening-vol-vi-625.html#post1851747

(I wonder if 'Ainsi la Nuit' would have had "more artistry" if someone else had posted the link and given that you didn't listen to it fully, how do you even think your opinion is credible?).


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

norman bates said:


> and what's the purpose of art in society to you?


Purpose and impact; if the artist was the first to do something that lasts through the ages and changes things; if it represents something timeless; if the artist creates a unique world.

Something that will elevate and inspire humanity, something of perpetual value.

Otherwise we're just navel-gazing.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

mikeh375 said:


> Except I'm not. I didn't even mention anything resembling technique other than to point out the obvious _surface _differences between Duttilleux and Schoenberg - obvious to any composer. The fact that you call technique purposeless is not a surprise of course. The fact that you can't hear the patently obvious differences in approach between the two aforementioned composers _should _trouble you.
> 
> Duttilleux has 2 symphonies. Both are _technically and musically_ brilliant, as are all masterful pieces in the repertoire. I have the score to the first as you can see here....
> 
> ...


Of course I hear the difference, that work is just purposeless.

I don't think atonal music should be written anymore, it had its purpose and there is nothing to represent with it that hasn't already been done. That piece should've had tonal elements, I've no idea why he decided against it.

You should listen to Bernstein talk about the future of music, it would help you.



> The fact that you call technique purposeless is not a surprise of course.


It is if it has no substance.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

1996D said:


> Of course I hear the difference, that work is just* purposeless*.


...just like our talk David....see you in the next round.

L8rs


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

mikeh375 said:


> ...just like our talk David....see you in the next round.
> 
> L8rs


Well Mike, excuse me for directing all our talks to my benefit, try to get something out of it next time.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

1996D said:


> Purpose and impact; if the artist was the first to do something that lasts through the ages and changes things; if it represents something timeless; if the artist creates a unique world.
> 
> Something that will elevate and inspire humanity, something of perpetual value.
> 
> Otherwise we're just navel-gazing.


There's a lot of modern music that just just look at its navel and I agree about that. But I think there's also a good amount of modern music that creates unique worlds, that is beautiful and inspiring, otherwise I would not listen to it. Because music is a pleasure for me, it's not a obligation, I'm not a critic. I don't listen to Messian or Maurice Ohana or Takemitsu just because I want to punish myself or any other weird reason.


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## Luchesi (Mar 15, 2013)

norman bates said:


> There's a lot of modern music that just just look at its navel and I agree about that. But I think there's also a good amount of modern music that creates unique worlds, that is beautiful and inspiring, otherwise I would not listen to it. Because music is a pleasure for me, it's not a obligation, I'm not a critic. I don't listen to Messian or Maurice Ohana or Takemitsu just because I want to punish myself or any other weird reason.


I don't study the modernists for a world they awaken, but for the ideas (the crafting of the musical elements) and the cleverness. People who think they can do better, I just don't know about them..

I need a moderate amount of brandy or herb to hear the worlds. lol I can only hear snippets without aids. ...But it's the same with late Beethoven or Bruckner/Mahler symphonies. I know other people hear these worlds but I only hear snatches.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

norman bates said:


> There's a lot of modern music that just just look at its navel and I agree about that. But I think there's also a good amount of modern music that creates unique worlds, that is beautiful and inspiring, otherwise I would not listen to it. ...


Any recommendations from the past 20 years or so?


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

consuono said:


> Any recommendations from the past 20 years or so?


You might want to browse the 1980-2000 Listening Group thread. It's slightly more than 20 years, but there's plenty of discussion of the works so you can get a feel for them. You could also look at The TC Top 200 Recommended Post-1950 Works List. There are plenty of works in that list from 2000 or later.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

consuono said:


> Any recommendations from the past 20 years or so?


In one of the games we looked at compositions of the 21st century as nominated by many of the players (and beyond). In total 300 works were nominated (list here).

The final consisted of these 20 pieces:

Abrahamsen - Schnee (2008) 
Aho - Theremin concerto 'Eight seasons' (2011) 
Chin, U - Double Concerto for piano, percussion and ensemble (2002)
Chin, U - Violin Concerto (2001) 
Dusapin - Aufgang (Violin Concerto) (2012)
Fujikura - ice (2010) 
Fujikura - prism spectra (2009) 
Gubaidulina - Fachwerk (2009) 
Gubaidulina - Triple Concerto (2016) 
Gubaidulina - Violin Concerto 2 "In Tempus Praesens" (2007)
Koppel, A - Concerto no. 4 for Marimba and Symphony Orchestra (2006)
Lindberg, M - Clarinet Concerto (2002) 
Nørgård - String Quartet No. 10 "Høsttidløs" (2005) 
Pärt - Lamantate (2002) 
Saariaho - Clarinet Concerto D'om le vrai sens (2010) 
Saariaho - Flute Concerto "L'aile du songe" (2001) 
Saariaho - L'amour de loin (2000) 
Sculthorpe - String Quartet no. 16 (2005) 
Sumera - Symphony no. 6 (2000) 
Thorvaldsdottir - In the Light of Air (2014)

and this was the top 10:

01 Gubaidulina - Violin Concerto 2 "In Tempus Praesens" (2007)
02 Saariaho - Clarinet Concerto D'om le vrai sens (2010)
03 Sumera - Symphony no. 6 (2000)

04 Abrahamsen - Schnee (2008)
05 Lindberg, M - Clarinet Concerto (2002)
06 Aho - Theremin concerto 'Eight seasons' (2011)
07 Fujikura - prism spectra (2009)
08 Thorvaldsdottir - In the Light of Air (2014)
09 Dusapin - Aufgang (Violin Concerto) (2012)
10 Gubaidulina - Fachwerk (2009)

Seems these works would be a good place to start.


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## Guest (Jun 9, 2020)

1996D said:


> You're not understanding... Postmodernism is Modernism with less intellect, with less genuine cause, with an artificial, political objective rather than one coming from the heart.
> 
> Schoenberg inverted the world but he did so genuinely, his music comes from the heart and he was a man that believed in what he wrote. 'It' is contemporary music influenced by Postmodernism that has the same rejection of the natural order as what Schoenberg did, but with not nearly the same power behind it.
> 
> Singling out one composer would be unnecessary because it's all of them; Postmodernism is not an art movement, it's a political one, and therefore its art is mediocre.


I'm not understanding because you started talking about 'contemporary' music without explaining what music you refer to except Schoenberg. Now, you've switched to 'Modernism and Post-Modernism'

Then, back to 'its all of them'.

Can you just confirm whether you're making any reference at all to composers of the present day, when you say 'it's all of them'? And how any of this answers the OP's question, which, to my mind, implies an analysis of the present day, and not the early/mid 20thC.?


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

MacLeod said:


> I'm not understanding because you started talking about 'contemporary' music without explaining what music you refer to except Schoenberg. Now, you've switched to 'Modernism and Post-Modernism'
> 
> Then, back to 'its all of them'.
> 
> Can you just confirm whether you're making any reference at all to composers of the present day, when you say 'it's all of them'? And how any of this answers the OP's question, which, to my mind, implies an analysis of the present day, and not the early/mid 20thC.?


The original post makes little sense because very few people listen to contemporary music already...

All of it is influenced by postmodernism directly or indirectly and that what's killing its potential. Because 'There are no truths, only interpretations' artists don't have any convictions, and therefore nothing to write about. What I was trying to say is that Schoenberg had a genuine cause and felt his music deeply, the postmodernists do not.

The result is music that lacks authenticity, they just write in that way because that's the trend, not because they feel that essence.


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## Guest (Jun 9, 2020)

1996D said:


> The original post makes little sense because very few people listen to contemporary music already...
> 
> All of it is influenced by postmodernism directly or indirectly and that what's killing its potential. Because 'There are no truths, only interpretations' artists don't have any convictions, and therefore nothing to write about. What I was trying to say is that Schoenberg had a genuine cause and felt his music deeply, the postmodernists do not.
> 
> The result is music that lacks authenticity, they just write in that way because that's the trend, not because they feel that essence.


I don't think your post makes any more sense than the OP. In fact, I quite easily understood what Couchie had to say.

Your dismissal of all contemporary composers as lacking convictions, and that Post-Modernism has killed all contemporary music's potential rather suggests that you've actually listened to very little 'contemporary' music at all.

Try giving some specific examples instead of talking in generalities. And please, give up on talking only about Moses und Aron and only about Schoenberg.


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## 1996D (Dec 18, 2018)

MacLeod said:


> I don't think your post makes any more sense than the OP. In fact, I quite easily understood what Couchie had to say.
> 
> Your dismissal of all contemporary composers as lacking convictions, and that Post-Modernism has killed all contemporary music's potential rather suggests that you've actually listened to very little 'contemporary' music at all.
> 
> Try giving some specific examples instead of talking in generalities. And please, give up on talking only about Moses und Aron and only about Schoenberg.


There is nothing more to discuss, you'll see for yourself the damaging effects that postmodernism had once it dies and an explosion of great art emerges.


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## Guest (Jun 9, 2020)

1996D said:


> There is nothing more to discuss


Only because you can't see past your own viewpoint, and refuse to elaborate in response to legitimate questions about which composers you're referring to. "All of them" is just unreasonable.

I'm not sure the OP's thesis was meant to be taken seriously - perhaps because it was an analysis of what has already happened: contemporary classical doesn't seem to have a popular audience at all, but I'm not sure how large the classical audience was in earlier times.


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## That Guy Mick (May 31, 2020)

Couchie said:


> Instead of attempting to eradicate the elitist label, it should be embraced and enshrined. Instead of lowering the podium down to the masses, let us elevate it, so that they may look up at it in fear and wonder, pronouncing to them unmistakably their inferiority.


Yes! Absolutely! Do it real big and serve 40 ouncers with a bucket of chicken wings! Huzza!


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