what is the critical feeling twards Arvo Part?
AlphaChnal
Does any one know ? Has any one seen any critism of his work "Litany" Any
information you have would be appreciated.
David Badagnani
AlphaChnal (alpha...@aol.com) wrote:
: Does any one know ? Has any one seen any critism of his work "Litany" Any
: information you have would be appreciated.
Interesting question. There is distrust of Part and other "new
simplicity" composers like Tavener and Gorecki, not only among some
contemporary composers (many in the complex music camp) but among
critics as well. I think some composers think (as with minimalism):
that music is too easy to write.
With critics it's a similar situation: their feeling is
that music (new simplicity)
ignores the real world--how can you write such music when the world is
so chaotic...
A very good example of this view was in an article in an issue of
_Musical Times_ (England), which was extremely critical of Part's
aesthetic. Really quite amusing, I found.
Finnish new simplicity composer Olli Kortekangas once made the
statement that (paraphrased): sometimes the most "profound" music can
be the most banal, and the most banal, hackneyed music the most
profound.
--
David Badagnani (dbad...@kent.edu)
Webpage: http://Phoenix.kent.edu/~dbadagna
Robert Davidson
David Badagnani wrote:
> Interesting question. There is distrust of Part and other "new
> simplicity" composers like Tavener and Gorecki, not only among some
> contemporary composers (many in the complex music camp) but among
> critics as well. I think some composers think (as with minimalism):
> that music is too easy to write.
>
> With critics it's a similar situation: their feeling is
> that music (new simplicity)
> ignores the real world--how can you write such music when the world is
> so chaotic...
>
> A very good example of this view was in an article in an issue of
> _Musical Times_ (England), which was extremely critical of Part's
> aesthetic. Really quite amusing, I found.
While I never miss a copy of the Musical Times, I often find this sort of
attitude often displayed quite annoyingly anal retentive. Unfortunately
a similar feeling is often found here in the colonies (Australia) amongst
disciples of a certain flagwavingly modernist critic (from Britain). The
problem is one of judging one form of music by the criteria of another,
and assessing it, imho, quite inaccurately.
I'd love to check it out properly, but I seem to remember some of the
critics of Gorecki's Third Symphony having written quite admiringly of
the very same piece before it became a hit. Even if it's not true, it's
certainly believable; I certainly experienced such turnarounds in private
conversations with critics. There is undeniably a feeling of elitism
around "new music" critics - a use of aethetics to exclude.
Another problem is the holding to the idea of music needing to be
difficult to compose in order to be any good. Of course, skill in any
art is a useful parameter to extend, but the idea that it is a
prerequisite for worth has been passe in all the other arts (except
perhaps needlework) for several decades. Modernism persists largely in
old-fashioned contemporary classical music, whereas in the main arena of
the arts, people are already finding their way out of postmodernism, just
as it's beginning to be widely written about in music.
How much skill is required to write one of *the* classics of the century?
(4'33")
Robert Davidson
Andy Groves
In article <32BF6F...@student.uq.oz.au>, Robert Davidson
<s03...@student.uq.oz.au> wrote:
Bear in mind that Tavener, Part and Gorecki are all certainly capable of
writing modernist music. They just choose not to any more. Although it's
not an analogy I would push very hard, I sometimes compare it to Matisse
creating his simple but beautiful paper cut-outs in the last years of his
life.
Jeff Harrington
Robert Davidson (s03...@student.uq.oz.au) wrote:
: Andy Groves wrote:
: > Bear in mind that Tavener, Part and Gorecki are all certainly capable of
: > writing modernist music. They just choose not to any more. Although it's
: > not an analogy I would push very hard, I sometimes compare it to Matisse
: > creating his simple but beautiful paper cut-outs in the last years of his
: > life.
: Agreed. And of course, it has often been repeated (perhaps because it
: tends to be true) that the simplest things are often the most difficult
: to create/pull off. Nowhere to hide.
Which makes it all the more astonishing now that these folk are being
taken seriously! :-/ I find their music neither spriritually insightful,
heavenly, nor anything more than momentary ear candy. It's an interesting
take on spirituality, for sure, though. Something so mundane as to be
absolutely false to me. How can one say you're writing spiritual music
and have it be continually peaceful? (I'm not speaking of the Gorecki
SQ's btw). To me, really spiritual music has moments of incredible doubt
and longing, dashed hope, Michaelangesque apocalyposes, dance, fury, and
sometimes, only sometimes stasis. Their stases for me, represents the
beginner's false peace. That fleeting moment when you first start
studying mediation and you get high as a kite with quiet.
In zen, (sorry about being pretentious) one is always hearing, "Not that,
it's not that either..." For Part, Gorecki, Taverner, recent Kancheli,
all I can think of when I hear their stasis is, "not that." It's a cheap
spirituality. Give me the Mass of animals, chaos, noise, dance to
oblivion, before this lame California idea of spiritual music.
Seriously, I think they're so over-rated and we're all so damn eager to
find some new diatonicisms, we'll rave about anything...
Just my perspective...
Jeff Harrington "Art does not make peace...
je...@parnasse.com That is not its business...
http://www.parnasse.com/jeff.htm Art is peace." --Robert Lowell
http://www.parnasse.com/netnewmusic.shtml - Today's Music On 'Da Web
Mark Mushet
rus...@nntp.best.com (Jeff Harrington) wrote:
regarding Part et al:
>How can one say you're writing spiritual music
>and have it be continually peaceful? (I'm not speaking of the Gorecki
>SQ's btw). To me, really spiritual music has moments of incredible doubt
>and longing, dashed hope, Michaelangesque apocalyposes, dance, fury, and
>sometimes, only sometimes stasis.
Bravo! Perfect truth. I think this kind of "spirituality" (as
suggested by Part et al) is very old world, ridden with cliche, and
good marketing fodder to bombard a confused world with. OTOH I do like
Part's Te Deum and some Kancheli. It's very lovely at the right
moments. But a cohesive spiritual statement? Not.
>Give me the Mass of animals, chaos, noise, dance to
>oblivion, before this lame California idea of spiritual music.
Well, given that Part is Estonian, Kancheli is Georgian and Taverner
is British and that ECM is German and often pairs the music with
images of Norway, I'd hardly call it a "California idea of spritual
music". Might you be thinking of Daniel Lentz' work on New Albion?
MRM
Non-commercial e-mail may be sent to my address by
changing suture@portal.c to sut...@portal.ca
Spammers get e-mail bombed. Really.
Robert Davidson
Andy Groves wrote:
> Bear in mind that Tavener, Part and Gorecki are all certainly capable of
> writing modernist music. They just choose not to any more. Although it's
> not an analogy I would push very hard, I sometimes compare it to Matisse
> creating his simple but beautiful paper cut-outs in the last years of his
> life.
Agreed. And of course, it has often been repeated (perhaps because it
tends to be true) that the simplest things are often the most difficult
to create/pull off. Nowhere to hide.
Robert Davidson
Dave Dalle
Jeff Harrington (rus...@nntp.best.com) writes:
> SQ's btw). To me, really spiritual music has moments of incredible doubt
> and longing, dashed hope, Michaelangesque apocalyposes, dance, fury, and
> sometimes, only sometimes stasis. Their stases for me, represents the
> beginner's false peace. That fleeting moment when you first start
> studying mediation and you get high as a kite with quiet.
>
But what about one of the most popular pieces by one of these composers?
I'm referring to Gorecki's 3rd sympohny. The first movement builds up to
such fury, just to die away while the soprano comes, singing a song of
such unbearable longing and pain, she reaches her peak, than the full
cannon bursts in again in full force, a thundering apocalypse to carry
everything away. If someone thinks that's stasis, then that person has
little understanding of the power and momentum of polyphony, and hence how
could they, then, understand the profundity of Bach?
As for Part, listen to his early (1968) "Credo", it is quite startling to
listen to, particularly if you have a 'fratres-stasis' conception of Part.
I think the problem lies not so much with the music, but in its audience.
Much of this music has been marketed and bought by the 'new-age' crowd,
and is often 'listened' to as a form of new-age, McSpirituality
(Exemplified by the "Celestine Prophecy" [I still don't understand how a
book written with the same quality as a 4th grade writing assignment can
sell so many copies]). Because most copies of Gorecki's 3rd, and other
popular music from these composers are being consumed in this brain-dead
state, the music is held to be at fault. But anyone can listen to any
music with deaf ears, the music is not to blame. So, to sum it up, I
think there is a prejudice against this music from certain quarters
because there are tone-deaf yuppie housewives who buy this music as
pretentious 'spiritual' background sound. Part, Gorecki, Kanchelli etc.
have all written some great music, and some not so great. If you don't
like any of it, point the finger at yourself, because the fault lies with you.
Dave
--
Tu as entendu l'histoire de l'homme qui est tombe de l'appartement? A chaque
niveau, il disait pour se rassurer "A ce point la, tout va bien...a ce
point la, tout va bien...a ce point la, tout va bien" Mais c'est pas la
chute qui conte, c'est l'atterissage.
Dave Sieber
Jeff Harrington <rus...@nntp.best.com> wrote
> SQ's btw). To me, really spiritual music has moments of incredible doubt
> and longing, dashed hope, Michaelangesque apocalyposes, dance, fury, and
> sometimes, only sometimes stasis. Their stases for me, represents the
Sounds like your personal experience of spirituality might have those
qualities, but I'd say you're describing emotions rather than spirituality
-- not the same thing. Of course, one can "emote" about spirituality, but
"it's not that either" :-)
-- Dave Sieber
dsi...@terminal-impact.com
http://www.terminal-impact.com
Jeff Harrington
Dave Sieber (dsi...@terminal-impact.com) wrote:
: Jeff Harrington <rus...@nntp.best.com> wrote
: > SQ's btw). To me, really spiritual music has moments of incredible doubt
: > and longing, dashed hope, Michaelangesque apocalyposes, dance, fury, and
: > sometimes, only sometimes stasis. Their stases for me, represents the
: Sounds like your personal experience of spirituality might have those
: qualities, but I'd say you're describing emotions rather than spirituality
: -- not the same thing. Of course, one can "emote" about spirituality, but
: "it's not that either" :-)
The musical representation of a spiritual experience has to represent a
process, unless we're thinking of something process-less, like 4:31. This
process, if you've ever meditated before *is* extremely violent and
turbulent if you get beyond, as I described before, the quick high of the
quietude. This leads me to believe that these composers who indulge us
with these quick and easy states are just feeding us pablum. Take a look
at early zen depictions of Bodhidharma with his arm ripped off, the
Sistine Chapel, practically any depction of St. Anthony. These, to me, at
least are much more profound. Late Beethoven, where's the silence? It's
hysteria piling up to profound trilled oblivion. The quiet of
Turangalila is achieved through noisy, obscene LOVE! In Part, Taverner,
recent Kancheli, some Gorecki, you're just there. It's cheap and it's a
gimmick. No process! It's not even human. It's purity is propaganda,
decadent, enslaved to quiet as symbol of stress-free nothingness. It's
phoney; it's lazy...
I keep thinking of the great Zen monk of this century Suzuki, (not D.T.,
the other) who was an extreme fan of the noise of Beethoven 9th. What
would he think of this quiet stuff? "Not that, always, it's not that,"
I'd bet he'd say...
And just so anybody thinks I'm critiquing these composer from the
perspective of hyer-modernism, anything tonal sucks, you're way off base.
I'm a composer, myself, of jazz-influenced funky tonal music who would
rather dance than get sacharrinned into spiritual candy-land.
Mark Rimple
: >Give me the Mass of animals, chaos, noise, dance to
: >oblivion, before this lame California idea of spiritual music.
Hear hear!
Well, I do admit that I've enjoyed SINGING some Paart, as a
countertenor. It is idiomatic in an idiosynchratic way. There are some
very subtle structural elements involving his use of silence and
proportions. Unfortunately, it all sounds like watered down organum. If
you want real organum, listen to the Hilliard Ensemble's Perotin. I
guess their performance of that music is informed by their performance of
Paart, interestingly, but the end result is better than the Paart by
leaps and bounds.
Also, spiritual music can be more subtle than fiery. What about
renaissance and medieval motets and masses? Victoria and Palestrina
aren't full of animal noises on the SURFACE, but exist in subtle
rhetorical devices. THis music is extremely attractive and spiritual.
Much more than the diluted penitence of Paart and Gorecki.
I have a book on "Contemporary European Music" from the 1970's, which
lists Paart as a very maximalist composer. Much like Penderecki. Funny
turn-about. Maybe he'll return to it someday, and it will be much
stronger. Working with fewer materials as he does can only be helpful in
clearing out unnecessary fluff.
M
--
Mark Rimple
mri...@astro.ocis.temple.edu
"Remember, Always Pillage BEFORE you burn!" - Viking truism
Robert Davidson
Mark Mushet wrote:
> Well, given that Part is Estonian, Kancheli is Georgian and Taverner
> is British and that ECM is German and often pairs the music with
> images of Norway, I'd hardly call it a "California idea of spritual
> music". Might you be thinking of Daniel Lentz' work on New Albion?
Dan Lentz is hardly in the same category, as he ain't trying to be
earnestly spiritual. More of a Koonsian sprituality if anything, but
with a big debt to the prettiness of Lou Harrison. I love it.
>
> Spammers get e-mail bombed. Really.
Is this really a wise solution to spam?
Robert Davidson
Robert Davidson
Jeff Harrington wrote:
<SNIP>
> In Part, Taverner,
> recent Kancheli, some Gorecki, you're just there. It's cheap and it's a
> gimmick. No process! It's not even human. It's purity is propaganda,
> decadent, enslaved to quiet as symbol of stress-free nothingness. It's
> phoney; it's lazy...
Jeff, what do you think of LaMonte Young with all his talk of purity and
eternity? Does the music express it? (I know Tony Conrad has trouble
with his attitudes). How about Indian attitudes toward spirituality and
music?
I'm glad you said "some" Gorecki; I don't hear "Lerchenmusik" as
particularly pure or trouble free. As for Messiaen, I agree with you;
there's a fair bit of the old Catholic kitsch there I find, humanising
the spirituality in quite a nice way to my ears.
Robert Davidson
Robert Davidson
Dave Dalle wrote:
> I think the problem lies not so much with the music, but in its audience.
> Much of this music has been marketed and bought by the 'new-age' crowd,
> and is often 'listened' to as a form of new-age, McSpirituality
> (Exemplified by the "Celestine Prophecy" [I still don't understand how a
> book written with the same quality as a 4th grade writing assignment can
> sell so many copies]). Because most copies of Gorecki's 3rd, and other
> popular music from these composers are being consumed in this brain-dead
> state, the music is held to be at fault. But anyone can listen to any
> music with deaf ears, the music is not to blame. So, to sum it up, I
> think there is a prejudice against this music from certain quarters
> because there are tone-deaf yuppie housewives who buy this music as
> pretentious 'spiritual' background sound. Part, Gorecki, Kanchelli etc.
> have all written some great music, and some not so great. If you don't
> like any of it, point the finger at yourself, because the fault lies with you.
I love that word "McSpirituality"! I tend to agree; it's very
unfortunate how marketing mucks around with our perception of music. I
for instance find it difficult to hear Gregorian Chant now without
thinking of all that new-age marketing and of the dreadful Enigma tracks,
and even a lot of West African traditional music, which used to give me
no end of pleasure, now feels irreparable tainted by its commodification
by the likes of Deep Forest et al. It's a great pity, and I feel quite
ripped off - it's akin to cultural pollution.
Gorecki's Third has been similarly affected for many who loved the piece
before its mass marketing a few years ago. Evidence for the deep-seated
function of music as a social marker.
Robert Davidson
Mark Mushet
Robert Davidson <s03...@student.uq.oz.au> wrote:
>Mark Mushet wrote:
>> Well, given that Part is Estonian, Kancheli is Georgian and Taverner
>> is British and that ECM is German and often pairs the music with
>> images of Norway, I'd hardly call it a "California idea of spritual
>> music". Might you be thinking of Daniel Lentz' work on New Albion?
>Dan Lentz is hardly in the same category, as he ain't trying to be
>earnestly spiritual. More of a Koonsian sprituality if anything, but
>with a big debt to the prettiness of Lou Harrison. I love it.
Koonsian? As in Jeff!? Actually I don't mind it either but his Oh-kee-
Pa (sp?) on the Missa Umbrarum release sure conjurs up visions of
California yuppies in the woods dressed in cheesecloth and sandals!
>> Spammers get e-mail bombed. Really.
>Is this really a wise solution to spam?
Yes. The threat, plus the tweaking of my mail address header field has
reduced commercial e-mailer's (who skim newsgroups) dirty deeds
considerably. They get one warning, with a demand for an apology and
the specific source of the address. If I receive nothing in two days,
they get hit. I am now collecting apologies (and not auto generated
ones) too! Fun for the whole family!
MRM
Non-commercial e-mail may be sent to my address by
changing suture@portal.c to sut...@portal.ca
Spammers get e-mail bombed. Really.
Robert Davidson
> >Mark Mushet wrote:
>
> >> Well, given that Part is Estonian, Kancheli is Georgian and Taverner
> >> is British and that ECM is German and often pairs the music with
> >> images of Norway, I'd hardly call it a "California idea of spritual
> >> music". Might you be thinking of Daniel Lentz' work on New Albion?
>
> >Dan Lentz is hardly in the same category, as he ain't trying to be
> >earnestly spiritual. More of a Koonsian sprituality if anything, but
> >with a big debt to the prettiness of Lou Harrison. I love it.
>
> Koonsian? As in Jeff!? Actually I don't mind it either but his Oh-kee-
> Pa (sp?) on the Missa Umbrarum release sure conjurs up visions of
> California yuppies in the woods dressed in cheesecloth and sandals!
I expect Dan Lentz would take this as a great compliment! He's got a
very fine sense of irony, and I think a far more refined one than Koons,
who I nevertheless enjoy when he's not driving me crazy. And Dan Lentz'
music doesn't cost millions like Koons' work.
Like Harold Budd and some other Californians, Lentz has been a great
example of aggressive prettiness - in the faces of the establishment. I
really enjoy their work as beautiful ironic and quite nasty in some ways.
Lentz is the guy, remember, who wrote danger music in an earlier
incarnation.
>
> >> Spammers get e-mail bombed. Really.
>
> >Is this really a wise solution to spam?
>
> Yes. The threat, plus the tweaking of my mail address header field has
> reduced commercial e-mailer's (who skim newsgroups) dirty deeds
> considerably. They get one warning, with a demand for an apology and
> the specific source of the address. If I receive nothing in two days,
> they get hit. I am now collecting apologies (and not auto generated
> ones) too! Fun for the whole family!
> I'm glad you are finding some way to get rid of spam - I find it aconstant irritant. Almost feel like stopping newsgroup posting because
of it in fact.
Robert Davidson
jaq...@en.com
In article <grovesa-2312...@131.215.15.185>,
gro...@starbase1.caltech.edu (Andy Groves) wrote:
> Bear in mind that Tavener, Part and Gorecki are all certainly capable of
> writing modernist music. They just choose not to any more. Although it's
> not an analogy I would push very hard, I sometimes compare it to Matisse
> creating his simple but beautiful paper cut-outs in the last years of his
> life.
Good point. I think that Gorecki's _Scontri_ is a wonderful piece, and
modernist enough for anyone.
******************************************************************************
In article <59p2qf$9...@nntp1.best.com>, rus...@nntp.best.com (Jeff
Harrington) wrote:
> Robert Davidson (s03...@student.uq.oz.au) wrote:
> : Agreed. And of course, it has often been repeated (perhaps because it
> : tends to be true) that the simplest things are often the most difficult
> : to create/pull off. Nowhere to hide.
>
> Which makes it all the more astonishing now that these folk are being
> taken seriously! :-/ I find their music neither spriritually insightful,
> heavenly, nor anything more than momentary ear candy. It's an interesting
> take on spirituality, for sure, though. Something so mundane as to be
> absolutely false to me. How can one say you're writing spiritual music
> and have it be continually peaceful?
I agree with your take on musical spirituality, but not on your
application. I don't hear "peaceful" in much of Gorecki's music at all.
Maybe in the "Amen" or "Totus tuus", but there you're looking at music
which was written specifically for liturgy. And liturgical music tends to
back off from making extreme demands on a captive audience, for better or
worse. I find most of Tavener too harmonically astringent to be really
peaceful. Paert.....you may have a point, though I find he is often
disconcerting.
To me, really spiritual music has moments of incredible doubt
> and longing, dashed hope, Michaelangesque apocalyposes, dance, fury, and
> sometimes, only sometimes stasis. Their stases for me, represents the
> beginner's false peace. That fleeting moment when you first start
> studying mediation and you get high as a kite with quiet.
Stasis is death....
> Seriously, I think they're so over-rated and we're all so damn eager to
> find some new diatonicisms, we'll rave about anything...
Well, there is that... for sure, these guys rode in on the back of a
triad. But if I wanted to write a "Gorecki piece", I really don't think
I'd do anywhere near as well. Sure, the things chosen are simple; that
doesn't necessarily make the act of choosing simple.
--
Jeffrey Quick
http://www.en.com/users/jaquick
LEOCAPRI
>>Bear in mind that Tavener, Part and Gorecki are all certainly capable of
writing modernist music.>>
Really, anyone is capable of writing modernist music or minimalist music.
Both styles are utterly accessible to the bored 10 year old piano student,
who can waste his/her practice time dreaming over triads or fantasizing
great emotional expressiveness by randomly jumping around the keyboard. It
takes a degree of personal taste to fine tune these products, and a great
deal of marketing skill and energy and good luck to get them heard -- but
neither style really needs a trained professional musician. It's only the
music in between the two which can immediately reveal a degree of mastery
of the long-evolved, civilized craft of music.
Two opposed aesthetics: do you want to write something that sounds like it
just happened, like a piece of nature, or something that sounds like it
could not have been any other way, like a creation of culture. Both of
course are illusions.
Mark Shulgasser
jaq...@en.com
In article <19961230170...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
leoc...@aol.com (LEOCAPRI) wrote:
Mark-
I think that here you're getting lost in labels a bit, instead of being
involved in the music. When you say, "Anyone can write minimalism", yes,
that's probably true of the sort of process piece where you set up the
plan and it just goes, like some of the earlier works of Reich (_Four
Organs_ comes to mind). but minimalism in that sense has been dead for 15
years now; Tom Johnson said so. Which leaves us with what Chris Rouse
calls 'the holy minimalists" (listed above) and Glass-Reich-Adams (the
unholy minimalists? :-) ) I find that the general level of complexity
and formal repetition in the American minimalists is comparable to
Vivaldi, yet most people don't go around dissing Vivaldi as a minimalist
(aside from the "one concerto 600 times" joke). Likewise, an analog to the
"holy minimalists" might be something like the Rachmaninov Vespers, a work
I find not as interesting as Paert's. My point is that by lumping these
people together as "minimalists", we have a convenient excuse to not
experience what's in the music. And no, there's nothing in my own music
that could fairly be called "minimalist" (unless you count a strong
tropism toward tonality). I don't have any particular ax to grind for any
of these composers, except that I like their music better than, say,
Ferneyhough's. I just think they need to be treated fairly, on their own
terms. Have you done that in this post?
Dave Dalle
LEOCAPRI (leoc...@aol.com) writes:
>>>Bear in mind that Tavener, Part and Gorecki are all certainly capable of
> writing modernist music.>>
>
> Really, anyone is capable of writing modernist music or minimalist music.
And anyone with proper training is fully capable of four-part writing in
the style of Bach. Obviously the mere technical facility is not nearly
enough.
LEOCAPRI
Jeffrey Quick wrote:
>>yet most people don't go around dissing Vivaldi as a minimalist
(aside from the "one concerto 600 times" joke).<<
In certain circles Vivaldi is quite dissed. I would say that Vivaldi and
the minimalists are very similar. I can think of nothing more dreary and
tiresome than an evening of Vivaldi, Teleman etc. Wallpaper music. It
became fashionable in the 50s among unmusical intellectuals. A friend of
mine recalls general agreement among a table full of poets, novelists,
architects etc at Yaddo that Vivaldi was greater than Chopin. What a
nightmare!
Mark S.
Michael P. Mossey
Mark,
I've got a question for you. When you hear music that falls into your
categories of "modernist" or "minimalist" and you don't like it, how
do you distinguish between these two situations?
- The composer lacked skill, fantasized expressiveness that wasn't
present in the music, etc.
- You, the listener, aren't in touch with the composer's intentions.
In article <19961230170...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
LEOCAPRI <leoc...@aol.com> wrote:
>>>Bear in mind that Tavener, Part and Gorecki are all certainly capable of
>writing modernist music.>>
>
>Really, anyone is capable of writing modernist music or minimalist music.
>Both styles are utterly accessible to the bored 10 year old piano student,
>who can waste his/her practice time dreaming over triads or fantasizing
>great emotional expressiveness by randomly jumping around the keyboard.
Wasting practice time has very little to do with style. To whatever
extent the student is responding to their own feelings as they create
music, the practice time is valuable.
It seems that you would be likely to interfere with the natural
process of creative development by lumping together concepts and/or
discouraging lines of development by declaring them fruitless before
you've explored them.
Mike Mossey
Robert Davidson
LEOCAPRI wrote:
>
> >>Bear in mind that Tavener, Part and Gorecki are all certainly capable of
> writing modernist music.>>
>
> Really, anyone is capable of writing modernist music or minimalist music.
> Both styles are utterly accessible to the bored 10 year old piano student,
> who can waste his/her practice time dreaming over triads or fantasizing
> takes a degree of personal taste to fine tune these products, and a great
> deal of marketing skill and energy and good luck to get them heard -- but
> neither style really needs a trained professional musician. It's only the
> music in between the two which can immediately reveal a degree of mastery
> of the long-evolved, civilized craft of music.
>
> Two opposed aesthetics: do you want to write something that sounds like it
> just happened, like a piece of nature, or something that sounds like it
> could not have been any other way, like a creation of culture. Both of
> course are illusions.
>
Mark, in my humble opinion, any worthwhile form of music could be written
by just about anyone who takes the time. It's not that hard to write
music which superficially sounds like Bach or Mozart for instance. Where
the magic comes in is how it's done, and that remains mysterious - there
is not that much superficial difference between Mozart and Kozeluch. Or
Reich and a great many mediocre imitators. Simply, it ain't what you
dance it's the way you dance it.
LEOCAPRI
Mike Mossey asks:
>Mark,
>I've got a question for you. When you hear music that >falls into your
>categories of "modernist" or "minimalist" and you don't >like it, how
>do you distinguish between these two situations?
>- The composer lacked skill, fantasized expressiveness >that wasn't
>present in the music, etc.
>- You, the listener, aren't in touch with the composer's >intentions.
Good question. I don't think it can be answered. However, I do think that
the immediate supporters of a contemporary style are more influenced by
questions of socio-economic milieu and group/generational identity issues
than they are by the "lasting aesthetic value" (difficult term) of the
work.
Earlier I wrote:
>
>>Really, anyone is capable of writing modernist music or minimalist
music.
>>Both styles are utterly accessible to the bored 10 year old piano
student,
>>who can waste his/her practice time dreaming over triads or fantasizing
>>great emotional expressiveness by randomly jumping around the keyboard.
MM replied:
>Wasting practice time has very little to do with style.
> To whatever
>extent the student is responding to their own feelings
>as they create
>music, the practice time is valuable.
>It seems that you would be likely to interfere with the >natural
>process of creative development by lumping together >concepts and/or
>discouraging lines of development by declaring them >fruitless before
>you've explored them.
I have to confess that I'm completely out of sympathy with the Bang on a
Can in Red Sneakers image. Which is not to say that I believe nothing good
can come out of either group. But, although we all know that the artist is
one who stays in touch with childhood in a very special way, the
educational movement which has sought the direct development of creativity
from mudpies, fingerpainting and noisemakers -- the idea that everyone is
au fond and artist, has led to a loosened grip on the very important way
in which art is a disciplined, even severe, achievement of a highly
civilized, maturely trained, specially fated few. The child Mozart was
revered because he did so very well what only adults could do. It doesn't
work the other way around.
But I'm just saying what I think about what I hear, here in ephemeral
cyberspace. I certainly don't think that I'm likely "to interfere with"
anyone's "natural process of creative development". The thought that I
should censor my comments here (or anywhere frankly) for that reason,
makes me think of tiptoeing past the crib so as not to wake the baby. The
artist who will withstand all that it is necessary to confront in a life
of art will only profit from hearing honest responses clearly expressed --
or choose not to hear them.
Mark Shulgasser
Robert Davidson
Well Bach must have had pretty bad taste then, as he loved Vivaldi. I
can't agree with you. Some Vivaldi is quite sublime, as is other
seemingly simple music such as Dittersdorf's symphonies. I'm afraid it
does strike me that people are simply not hearing what is really going on
in the music when they dismiss it as trite, banale and simple. Same
mistake when they dismiss the brilliant works of Glass. Often in the
same breath condemning people who don't hear the beauties in Webern -
inconsistent imho. Some of us love Webern, Vivaldi and Glass.
Robert Davidson.
Fiona P
On 23 Dec 1996 08:31:34 GMT, dbad...@kent.kent.edu (David Badagnani) wrote:
:AlphaChnal (alpha...@aol.com) wrote:
:: Does any one know ? Has any one seen any critism of his work "Litany" Any
:: information you have would be appreciated.
:Interesting question. There is distrust of Part and other "new
:simplicity" composers like Tavener and Gorecki, not only among some
:contemporary composers (many in the complex music camp) but among
:critics as well. I think some composers think (as with minimalism):
:that music is too easy to write.
And among performers, too easy to sing. Gorecki and (some parts of) Part, and
the like, are terribly easy, technically, to sing. The skill and difficulty
lies in drawing all the emotions, feelings and coherence out of the piece, and
communicating that to the audience.
Sometimes it works. In a recent performance of Gorecki's Miserere, we, the
choir, were crying as we were singing (Canberra, July 1996). That was
incredible. (The same choir, however, tended not to think much of Part's Te
Deum. I loved it, personally). By the end of the piece, the audience was also
in tears. How it was done, I really have no idea, as it was, as with many
Gorecki works, incredibly repetitive, and we hadn't had the same response with
Totus Tuus two years beforehand. Those simple and repetitive chords managed to
strike something. And trust me, it wasn't easy to do THAT bit. The notes were
pat in two rehearsals. The emotion only got right at the last dress
rehearsal...
Fiona P.
bi...@matra.com.au
PS The choir in question was the 47th choral intervarsity festival choir,
meeting, rehearsing and performing in Canberra, Australia, this year.
jaq...@en.com
In article <19961231004...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
leoc...@aol.com (LEOCAPRI) wrote:
> Jeffrey Quick wrote:
>
> >>yet most people don't go around dissing Vivaldi as a minimalist
> (aside from the "one concerto 600 times" joke).<<
>
> In certain circles Vivaldi is quite dissed. I would say that Vivaldi and
> the minimalists are very similar. I can think of nothing more dreary and
> tiresome than an evening of Vivaldi, Teleman etc. Wallpaper music.
We're in agreement on parellels, if not taste.
It
> became fashionable in the 50s among unmusical intellectuals. A friend of
> mine recalls general agreement among a table full of poets, novelists,
> architects etc at Yaddo that Vivaldi was greater than Chopin. What a
> nightmare!
I don't think I could say that, in fairness, even though I loathe Chopin.
I think it's necessary in this business to be able to separate personal
taste from critical evaluation.
> I have to confess that I'm completely out of sympathy with the Bang on a
> Can in Red Sneakers image. Which is not to say that I believe nothing good
> can come out of either group. But, although we all know that the artist is
> one who stays in touch with childhood in a very special way, the
> educational movement which has sought the direct development of creativity
> from mudpies, fingerpainting and noisemakers -- the idea that everyone is
> au fond and artist, has led to a loosened grip on the very important way
> in which art is a disciplined, even severe, achievement of a highly
> civilized, maturely trained, specially fated few. The child Mozart was
> revered because he did so very well what only adults could do. It doesn't
> work the other way around.
Er, uh, Mark? Strikes me that you're dissing some very good composers
associated with both groups, some people doing some pretty sophisticated
work. Don't confuse a marketing tool with a compositional aesthetic.
H.BEL...@qut.edu.au
In article <59lg16$f...@tombstone.kent.edu> dbad...@kent.kent.edu (David Badagnani) writes:
>AlphaChnal (alpha...@aol.com) wrote:
>: Does any one know ? Has any one seen any critism of his work "Litany" Any
>: information you have would be appreciated.
>
>Interesting question. There is distrust of Part and other "new
>simplicity" composers like Tavener and Gorecki, not only among some
>contemporary composers (many in the complex music camp) but among
>critics as well.
Perspectives can be so diverse! I remember playing Part's "Cantus" to a
die-hard lover of italian opera, and being astonished by his judgment
that it was "dissonant". I think that all this didn't start as anything
like "new simplicity". Personally, my first contact with what I would
refer to as neo-romanticism was when I heard Penderecki conduct the
Houston Symphony in his Symphony #2 in 1980. I was overwhelmed by its
dark and savage intensity. I thought it was a purely personal evolution,
which had already found sour criticism from the betrayed avant garde.
It was only a few years later that I first heard Part's "Cantus", and
Gorecki's Third (in the soundtrack of a French movie, which failed to
reach its later success), and all of a sudden it seemed that many
composers in the years 1977-1980 had started to change their views and
turn back to emotionality. In this perspective, simplicity has nothing
to do with it. Corigliano and Del Tredici visited Brisbane for the music
biennial six years ago, and the latter appeared with a T-shirt that
proclaimed: "Tonality lives". Well, it's true that this year the "Cantus"
will be twenty-years old, and I'm not convinced that "new simplicity" is
the right way to look at this movement. May be we are being misguided by
the marketing forces that pretend to sell Part as new age. It's the same
people who had attached the name "Elvira Madigan" to Mozart's Concerto
as if it needed some help to sell records. But let us try to keep our
heads over the foam.
Hector
I think some composers think (as with minimalism):
>that music is too easy to write.
>
>With critics it's a similar situation: their feeling is
>that music (new simplicity)
>ignores the real world--how can you write such music when the world is
>so chaotic...
>
>A very good example of this view was in an article in an issue of
>_Musical Times_ (England), which was extremely critical of Part's
>aesthetic. Really quite amusing, I found.
>
>Finnish new simplicity composer Olli Kortekangas once made the
>statement that (paraphrased): sometimes the most "profound" music can
>be the most banal, and the most banal, hackneyed music the most
>profound.
>--
>David Badagnani (dbad...@kent.edu)
> Webpage: http://Phoenix.kent.edu/~dbadagna
Chris Koenigsberg
Robert Davidson <s03...@student.uq.oz.au> writes:
> It's not that hard to write
> music which superficially sounds like Bach or Mozart for instance. Where
> the magic comes in is how it's done, and that remains mysterious - there
> is not that much superficial difference between Mozart and Kozeluch. Or
> Reich and a great many mediocre imitators.
Also there is something to be said for being the first to do
something, to invent a whole new style which people want to imitate
afterwards. Who wrote the very first "string quartet" piece? Or the
first piece for an "orchestra"? Beethoven and his Eroica as the first
example of a "modern symphony", Bach and his pieces that we derive
"the rules of counterpoint" from, Wagner and his total art, Cage's
numerous precious discoveries, the "emancipation of the dissonance" by
Schoenberg & Berg & Webern, Stockhausen's electronic music, Glass &
Wilson's "Einstein on the Beach", Miles Davis' invention of "jazz-rock
fusion" with his "Bitches Brew" band, Dolphy's crazy riffs and
Coltrane's sheets of sound and Ornette's insane harmolodics, Fripp's
laser beam lead and geometric angular dissonant rhythm guitar, the
Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album, etc. etc.... all share this characteristic
of being the first to go where countless others now regularly follow.
Even, the first person to do "Disco" music at the dawn of the 70's
invented something new, though we should shoot everyone who imitates
them ...
But of course there was a point made during the recent N'th round of
the endless recurring thread from hell about "unpopular atonal music",
where someone criticized all those nasty modern guys for trying to do
something new with each piece, instead of just doing something in a
familiar style, which would please the palate (conditioned by too much
Bach and Mozart etc.) of the one doing the criticizing...
I don't know, though; doing "music in the style of XXX" just isn't as
interesting to me, even if I LOVE the style of XXX... but the problem
is, when asked to describe some music, usually people say "It's sort
of like XXX".
--------------------
Chris Koenigsberg: c...@pobox.com
<URL: http://www.pobox.com/~ckk>
Boycott Internet Spam! <http://www.vix.com/spam/>
Marc San Soucie
leoc...@aol.com (LEOCAPRI) writes:
> However, I do think that
> the immediate supporters of a contemporary style are more influenced by
> questions of socio-economic milieu and group/generational identity issues
> than they are by the "lasting aesthetic value" (difficult term) of the
> work.
Is it impossible to imagine that at least some of those supporters
simply love the sound of that style?
Marc San Soucie
Portland, Oregon
ma...@netcom.com
Michael P. Mossey
In article <19961231190...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
LEOCAPRI <leoc...@aol.com> wrote:
>Mike Mossey asks:
>>Mark,
>
>>I've got a question for you. When you hear music that >falls into your
>>categories of "modernist" or "minimalist" and you don't >like it, how
>>do you distinguish between these two situations?
>
>>- The composer lacked skill, fantasized expressiveness >that wasn't
>>present in the music, etc.
>
>>- You, the listener, aren't in touch with the composer's >intentions.
>
>Good question. I don't think it can be answered.
If you are saying that there is no reliable way to distinguish, I
agree, and furthermore, I think that's important to realize. I wonder
how much you realize this while you are writing sentences like "anyone
can write modernist music."
I can give any number of ways that I go about getting in touch with
the composer's intentions and/or developming my relationship with a
particular composer's music, and I'm concerned that you don't seem to
have any.
However, I do think that
>the immediate supporters of a contemporary style are more influenced by
>questions of socio-economic milieu and group/generational identity issues
>than they are by the "lasting aesthetic value" (difficult term) of the
>work.
Maybe. I still think the important thing is *how* you know what
influences or motivates any particular composer, or when you admit
that you don't know.
>
>Earlier I wrote:
>>
>>>Really, anyone is capable of writing modernist music or minimalist
>music.
>>>Both styles are utterly accessible to the bored 10 year old piano
>student,
>>>who can waste his/her practice time dreaming over triads or fantasizing
>>>great emotional expressiveness by randomly jumping around the keyboard.
>
>MM replied:
>
>>Wasting practice time has very little to do with style.
>> To whatever
>>extent the student is responding to their own feelings
>>as they create
>>music, the practice time is valuable.
>
>>It seems that you would be likely to interfere with the >natural
>>process of creative development by lumping together >concepts and/or
>>discouraging lines of development by declaring them >fruitless before
>>you've explored them.
>
>I have to confess that I'm completely out of sympathy with the Bang on a
>Can in Red Sneakers image. Which is not to say that I believe nothing good
>can come out of either group. But, although we all know that the artist is
>one who stays in touch with childhood in a very special way, the
>educational movement which has sought the direct development of creativity
>from mudpies, fingerpainting and noisemakers -- the idea that everyone is
>au fond and artist, has led to a loosened grip on the very important way
>in which art is a disciplined, even severe, achievement of a highly
>civilized, maturely trained, specially fated few. The child Mozart was
>revered because he did so very well what only adults could do. It doesn't
>work the other way around.
Couple of points. First of all, you have to make a case that the
"grip" you speak of was really tighter in the past. A student of two
hundred years ago, performing species counterpoint to all the rules,
and yet producing awkward, ugly harmony...is that really discipline?
You can't show someone how to walk elegantly just by showing them
where to put their feet. I'm not sure the "grip" you speak of really
secures us to anything. Given the vast quantities of music produced
in the past and lacking, to my ear, any redeeming qualities, I doubt
you will be able to make a case that "tighter grip" equals "more
quality art." Zen would say that the harder we try to grip anything
of quality, the easier it slips away.
Next, you have to consider that your concept of "mudpies and
fingerpainting" just may cover too much. That is, imagine a student
making mudpies and fingerpainting *with discipline*. Would you even
notice the discipline? Or would you just notice the "mudpies and
fingerpainting"? Is your "oh no! that's undisciplined art" reflex set
on a hair trigger?
>
>But I'm just saying what I think about what I hear, here in ephemeral
>cyberspace. I certainly don't think that I'm likely "to interfere with"
>anyone's "natural process of creative development". The thought that I
>should censor my comments here (or anywhere frankly) for that reason,
>makes me think of tiptoeing past the crib so as not to wake the baby.
One of my main concerns is to help *listeners* relate to music, and in
a sense, compared to composers, they are young and sometimes
vulnerable to professionals who express absolute ideals. So are
student composers, and plenty of both read this newsgroup. I'm not
asking you to censor your thoughts; I'm hoping that I might influence
you to change the way you express them. Sure, my hope is probably an
ego thing.
>The
>artist who will withstand all that it is necessary to confront in a life
>of art will only profit from hearing honest responses clearly expressed --
>or choose not to hear them.
I'm having trouble constructing the meaning of this sentence. Are you
saying the only result of hearing honest responses clearly expressed
is profit? Or are you saying the only profit available to an artist
is to hear honest responses clearly expressed?
I disagree with both. The important thing is be honest *with
oneself*. And that doesn't mean believing every thought that pops
into my head---in fact, that's a way of being *dishonest* with myself,
failing to explore the underlying meaning or biases that go into a
thought.
Putting too much stock in the words of others can be a way of being
dishonest with myself. Yes, that is what I fear your words may do;
that is why I can't agree that only profit can come from hearing
others' thoughts.
Mike Mossey
Robert Davidson
H.BEL...@qut.edu.au wrote:
> Corigliano and Del Tredici visited Brisbane for the music
> biennial six years ago, and the latter appeared with a T-shirt that
> proclaimed: "Tonality lives".
That was the same festival (Musica Nova, 1990) at which Warren Burt
sported a very prominent badge reading "Postmodernism is old-hat". A man
ahead of his time.
Were you at Musica Nova?
Robert Davidson
Robert Davidson
Marc San Soucie wrote:
>
> leoc...@aol.com (LEOCAPRI) writes:
>
> > However, I do think that
> > the immediate supporters of a contemporary style are more influenced by
> > questions of socio-economic milieu and group/generational identity issues
> > than they are by the "lasting aesthetic value" (difficult term) of the
> > work.
>
> simply love the sound of that style?
>
Right on. "If it sounds good, it is good" - Duke Ellington
Robert Davidson
Robert Caponi
In article <32D28B...@student.uq.oz.au>, Robert Davidson
<s03...@student.uq.oz.au> wrote:
** That was the same festival (Musica Nova, 1990) at which Warren Burt
** sported a very prominent badge reading "Postmodernism is old-hat". A man
** ahead of his time.
Well I doubt the emergance of "post-postmodernism" took many people by
surprise :)
Anyway, I stopped being a postpost *weeks* ago.
--
T.W.I.D.N € http://www.infi.net/~tagutcow/
Robert Davidson
Robert Caponi wrote:
>
> In article <32D28B...@student.uq.oz.au>, Robert Davidson
> <s03...@student.uq.oz.au> wrote:
>
> ** That was the same festival (Musica Nova, 1990) at which Warren Burt
> ** sported a very prominent badge reading "Postmodernism is old-hat". A man
> ** ahead of his time.
>
> Well I doubt the emergance of "post-postmodernism" took many people by
> surprise :)
>
> Anyway, I stopped being a postpost *weeks* ago.
Chuckle. A lot of people (like architects and designers) are talking
about "neo-modernism" now. Combining the best of modernist and
postmodernist ideas into one neat package; Louis Andriessen is an example
of a composer who is sometimes termed neo-modernist. Gotta keep those
labels fresh!
Robert Davidson