Where music meets science
rmcc
music was subjected to the same test of progressivity as
science � an attitude that shaped much of 20th-century
music. "We're in a period of music now which is a big
reaction to the ideological modern music of the '50s and
'60s. This is a music that is ahistorical. It doesn't say,
we are here and we must go there. That was the position of
[Pierre] Boulez and [Luigi] Nono, and it wasn't a bad
thing�the music was beautiful. But it wanted to be like
science where the present would disprove the past and would
determine the future. The younger composers have totally
abandoned that idea."
More: http://tr.im/PhilipGlass
Adam
This is a deep subject, and only lightly touched on by
Mr Glass here, whose antipathy to Schoenberg was mentioned
in The Rest is Noise. Am still struggling with modernism
per se myself, and so can't really help nor clarify.
ahistorical is almost a surprising choice of word. Is the
music he mentions beautiful or didactic, and are they
necessarily contradictions? Many talking points. Indeed
creationism seems to be the ideological movement du jour.
Pawlly Phonic
gets both art and science wrong. Both build on the past to create
something new. It's interesting that the Darmstadt composers and
those who have followed (Lachenmann, Ferneyhough, etc.) evince a far
greater knowledge of earlier music (not just late romantic, but
baroque, renaissance, medieval) than do any of the neo-Brahmsians.
>The younger composers have totally
>abandoned that idea
Totally abandoned, huh? Like Fukuyama, that End of History guy? And
who are these "younger composers"? Real composers or would-be
composers? Younger than who?
The vast majority of younger composers simply want to "be composers".
They will succeed based on luck and how good they are at networking,
though that success is a nebulous, ephemeral concept. The few who
really feel the need to create something new will do so and enhance
the future of our culture without reference to Glass, Fukuyama, or any
Philistine Idols.
Paula