Clinging to the past
ja...@max.cc.brandeis.edu
> Permit me to offer my own somewhat different explanation for the "clinging
> to the past" phenomenon in classical music, which, as others have observed,
> is largely a twentieth century phenomenon.
I'm not gonna offer any explanation. I'm only wondering if the identification
of the phenomenon ("clinging to the past") is accurate. I'd like to stress
that _wondering_ is not a rhetorical figure of speech here. I'm trully
wondering. That is I don't know...
Instead of "clinging to the past" could it not be rather a phenomeon
of "canonization" whereby the cultural products of some era are made
into a "canon"?
The reason I'm saying this is
(1) "clinging to the past" would be very untypical in the context of
Western civilization where everywhere else it is on the contrary
novelty and originality which are stressed and valued
(2) "canonization" has occurred with other cultural artifacts in cases
where it just _can't_ be a "clinging to the past" thing: a typical
example are the plays of Shakespeare. Is the cultural importance attached
to the plays of Shakespeare also a "clinging to the past" phenomenon?
How come then that Dryden and Congreve are far from having the same
cultural importance? Too recent? What about Marlowe and Nashe?
I'm not gonna even try to offer an explanation as to why a society
"chooses" to canonize this or that, it's hard enough to pinpoint what
distinguishes the two proceses although intuitively (to me) they are quite
different while superficially they may look the same.
Maybe in "clinging to the past" a culture values something because it has
been tried and it proved itself and in that resides its guarantee from
arbitrariness and chaos and that culture "accepts" only incremental changes,
whatever that means, whereas in the "canonization" processe some cultural
productions are used as examples because they are supposed to give an insight
into universal principles (or principles deemed universal at one time or
another), and it is precisely the understanding and identification of those
universals that is deemed to give a guarantee against arbitrariness and chaos.
Hmm. Looks to me like 19th century unsubstantiated pretentious oversimplifying
pseudo-universal statements. Like Frazer's stages of primitive people,
Freud's "psychoanalysis" or Comte's stages of humanity. Sorry.
Alas only mathematics and music survive...
But what the hell, it's Friday and this is only r.c.m. Who's got time for
accurate statements?
Cheers and a good weekend one and all
Jacob
Jerry Young
to form some master explanation of all of this.
In article <1993Oct1.1...@news.cs.brandeis.edu> ,
ja...@max.cc.brandeis.edu writes:
>(1) "clinging to the past" would be very untypical in the context of
> Western civilization where everywhere else it is on the contrary
> novelty and originality which are stressed and valued
It is interesting to me that this contradicts the post a few layers down
that gave rise to this discussion that spoke of how listeners were
looking under every rock for new stuff. It's also interesting to me that
up until this century, musical innovation was more highly regarded (the
fact that this sentence is in passive voice sidesteps the question, "By
whom?") Palestrina, Monteverdi, Bach, Haydn, all in their turn became old
hat. Richard Strauss, Liszt, Wagner, and Rachmaninoff do not seemed to
have experienced such a widespread and healthy death. Was it some pact
they signed with the devil or some gods in one of those romantic rituals
that made them immortal? It seems like them and all of their ancestors
got raised from the dead within the last hundred years and are hanging
around eating all our food and taking up real estate, etc. Robert Graves
has a nice poem about the dangers of identifying too closely with a dead
man (I take it to mean an artist in this context), that you run the risk
of changing places with him -- you die and he lives instead of you.
>
>(2) "canonization" has occurred with other cultural artifacts in cases
> where it just _can't_ be a "clinging to the past" thing: a typical
> example are the plays of Shakespeare. Is the cultural importance
attached
> to the plays of Shakespeare also a "clinging to the past" phenomenon?
> How come then that Dryden and Congreve are far from having the same
> cultural importance? Too recent? What about Marlowe and Nashe?
I don't encounter too many people though who would argue that theater
ended with Shakespeare or Chekov or Ibsen or even Pinter. I wouldn't say
that appreciating and respecting the importance of Shakespeare or Bach or
Liszt is "clinging to the past," (I seem to have coined this motto for
this thread -- If I had known it would be taken up I might have chosen it
more carefully). If I did meet someone who did think that there was no
need to investigate plays written after Shakespeare, I would probably
think that they were clinging to the past.
Jerry
AD...@psuvm.psu.edu
(clovis lark) says:
>
>
>We should remember that while change seems to have been promoted in the past,
>"zuviel auf einmal" as Wagner mentions in Meistersinger often made sunami
>waves. We have during each generation outspoken critics of new styles and
>techniques. Jacob of Liege in the 14th c. was ademant about the lack of
>quality of the Ars nova. Martini, similarly had little good to say of the
>early Baroque. Each stylistic upheaval met with similar resistance. Hanslick,
>Pfitzner, you name 'em. They all had cases for maintaining the status quo.
>When we think of past preferences for new things, we tend to forget that
>rarely
>were these preferences for new or radically changed STYLES. Everyone wanted
>new music a la Haydn c. 1800. They loved new Parisian Grand Opera in the
>1850's, but Wagner wasn't what they wanted and they let it be known. 30 years
>later, all that had changed and Wagner was establishment and all his clones
>who composed Maerchen Opern, Humperdinck et al. were better than sliced bread.
>And so it goes. Neo-romantic music is all the rage. The pieces are new and
>the style is safe, it requires no extra concentration to comprehend, unlike
>Scelsi or Crumb. Hence, we sit in an era where people still have difficulty
>with serial Schoenberg but love a new composition by Gorecki although it was
>written 50 years later. We all love new shoes. We all hate waking up in a
>strange place with no map and having find our way home in them.
A few additional thoughts here. First, both radical and conservative
viewpoints, it seems to me, have a *use*, and the cultural tradition
(such as it is) emerges and proceeds by this "Hegelian dialectic"--
though it's hard to see how fulfillment, in the aesthetic realm,
could ever be reached in some final synthesis. Spokesmen for both
sides inevitably forget that the other has a powerful case or an
important contribution (though some do not: they pursue their side
vehemently and uncompromisingly for the rhetorical reason of
popularizing a viewpoint, style, etc.). From an historical vantage
the "fights" are fun to relive--and instructive, too (Hanslick v. the
perfect Wagnerites, Thomas Arnold v. Newman, Matthew Arnold v.
Huxley, New Criticism v. German philology, post-structuralism v.
New Criticism, Schoenberg v. The World).
As far as the situation today goes, though, I wonder if Schoenberg
can be placed in a position analogous to that of Wanger later in
the nineteenth century. On the basis of the model Clovis suggests
in his post, serialism would be all the rage today, having
first been the radical usurper and then having run its course
through being adopted by most of the important composers of the
world in the fifties and sixties. But that hasn't happened, and
the lesson to draw from it is difficult indeed. Schoenberg's
music, I would argue, constitutes one of the undeniably great
contributions to the art of the twentieth century; but can it
ever be popular? "Can" may be strong: is it likely it will ever
be popular the way Clovis suggests neo-Romanticism currently is?
I tend to think not. Perhaps Adorno should be consulted here, and
his argument for the importance of works in a capitalist environment
that resist assimilation (Schoenberg and Beckett are among his
examples). Perhaps, then, the state of affairs is not
really to be lamented.
I also tend to think more highly of neo-Romantic music than Clovis
does. (We had this debate early in the summer. I have no desire
to start it back up in earnest, but I will state my case.) I think
the history of art is more like a palimpsest than a linear
progression; it accumulates, and possible positions (e. g. Romantic
or Classic) are recycled many times in new forms; the question is
whether these forms are vital and dynamic. I think composers like
Diamond and Simpson have created such forms (but others may disagree,
though I hope not because they think a neo-Romantic position is
not viable in our time. Time itself, it seems to me, has
nothing to do with aesthetic values. If Diamond is a "new Bruckner"
as Schoenberg said, then it matters little to me whether he
appeared in 1850, 1910, or 1940).
Just a few tangential thoughts.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
--Allan Burns
clovis lark
>A couple of observations that I offer not that they might fall together
>to form some master explanation of all of this.
>In article <1993Oct1.1...@news.cs.brandeis.edu> ,
>ja...@max.cc.brandeis.edu writes:
>>(1) "clinging to the past" would be very untypical in the context of
>> Western civilization where everywhere else it is on the contrary
>> novelty and originality which are stressed and valued
In some regards. But remember that Ronald Reagan held the US in his grip
partially through evoking a Norman Rockwell past culture ithat had been
betrayed through detrimental societal evolution. Architectural innovation
also has a hard time initially, for example the Beaubourg, the Vietnam
Memorial Wall, Pei's Louvre pyramid. I've heard many people complain how
the Bauhaus derived skyscrapers on NY's 6th Ave. were trash compared to
the Chrysler Building.
>Jerry
We should remember that while change seems to have been promoted in the past,
clovis lark
>A few additional thoughts here. First, both radical and conservative
>viewpoints, it seems to me, have a *use*, and the cultural tradition
>(such as it is) emerges and proceeds by this "Hegelian dialectic"--
>though it's hard to see how fulfillment, in the aesthetic realm,
>could ever be reached in some final synthesis.
I would like to suggest that progressive be substituted for radical. None
of the examples come close to radical, an example of which might be Italian
futurism.
>Spokesmen for both
>sides inevitably forget that the other has a powerful case or an
>important contribution (though some do not: they pursue their side
>vehemently and uncompromisingly for the rhetorical reason of
>popularizing a viewpoint, style, etc.). From an historical vantage
>the "fights" are fun to relive--and instructive, too (Hanslick v. the
>perfect Wagnerites, Thomas Arnold v. Newman, Matthew Arnold v.
>Huxley, New Criticism v. German philology, post-structuralism v.
>New Criticism, Schoenberg v. The World).
Please. Not AS vs. the world! He had numbers of people on his side. In
fact, he may also be placed on the side of conservatism for his stance on
mastering the rules of tonality, harmony and counterpoint before encouraging
people to strike out on their own path. This continues to be a valid point
as it regards conservatism balancing out progressive ideas. Knowing the
rules etc. must be a prerequisite if change is to be directed at the old.
If not, you are left with shotgun blasts. Some hit the target, many miss.
>As far as the situation today goes, though, I wonder if Schoenberg
>can be placed in a position analogous to that of Wanger later in
>the nineteenth century. On the basis of the model Clovis suggests
>in his post, serialism would be all the rage today, having
>first been the radical usurper and then having run its course
>through being adopted by most of the important composers of the
>world in the fifties and sixties.
Mind you I didn't suggest that at all. What I said was that society's
acceptance of new art was generally predicated on accessibility of con-
tent. The example of neoromanticism was specifically cited because not
only is the pitch organization something that average music listeners
can identify with but also because it is something that they will be
exposed to as new music. We return to mainstrean concert, radio, TV
programming and the question is: when will anyone ever get their bearings
with the music of Scelci, Dallapicolla, Wuorinnen, Martino, Ligeti, Nono
if it isn't presented to them with, say, the speed and intensity that
the MTV crowd is exposed to the latest pop fads (well not latest--how
long did the Feelies, Joy Division, et al. wait?). Ending in the early
20th Century, concert goers and players were supplanted by the new era
of passive consumers who gained their say through the radio, TV and finally
the concert hall. No longer were concert halls the focal points of
cultural battles over styles of composition. (And of course the fisticuffs
over such horrors as ballets in the wrong act, The Rite of Spring, and
Altenberg Lieder) They became museums in which
one might marvel in silence at the masterpieces of the past, objectified
masterpieces which could be preserved at home in chiselled marble sameness
on tape and record. And this chiselled sameness is now asked for in the
concert hall, not new music. New interpretations of the old that can mimic
or even outdo the latest Solti CD of the same work. So we end up in a new
cultural setting. Classical music is appreciated by more than ever before
yet that appreciation ends roughly with the advent of HiFi and TV. Music
since then is banished to the performers. Yet these performers are judged
and paid for their renditions of the chiselled past. And of this past,
technical perfection is lauded far and above musicianship because the
majority of consumers are not musically literate (I don't believe that
literacy means playing an instrument or even reading notes. I like to
think it means getting a sense of the history of performance so that
one may judge for themselves the balance between technical proficiency
and interpretation).
>But that hasn't happened, and
>the lesson to draw from it is difficult indeed. Schoenberg's
>music, I would argue, constitutes one of the undeniably great
>contributions to the art of the twentieth century; but can it
>ever be popular? "Can" may be strong: is it likely it will ever
>be popular the way Clovis suggests neo-Romanticism currently is?
I think I may have addressed this in my rambling above, but I'll say it
again just to be boring. New Viennese School's music and all the others
I mentioned before don't stand a rat's chance in hell with the current
marketing of the repertory. These musics may be hard to get into, but they
have a worse battle than any other repertory of the past in that an entire
industry's policy making is not in the hands of its greatest proponents.
>I tend to think not. Perhaps Adorno should be consulted here, and
>his argument for the importance of works in a capitalist environment
>that resist assimilation (Schoenberg and Beckett are among his
>examples). Perhaps, then, the state of affairs is not
>really to be lamented.
All music as commodity and fetish is to be lamented. The tragedy of Brahms
is no less than that of AS.
>I also tend to think more highly of neo-Romantic music than Clovis
>does. (We had this debate early in the summer. I have no desire
>to start it back up in earnest, but I will state my case.) I think
>the history of art is more like a palimpsest than a linear
>progression; it accumulates, and possible positions (e. g. Romantic
>or Classic) are recycled many times in new forms; the question is
>whether these forms are vital and dynamic.
I absolutely agree with your analysis of nonlinear history and also with
your assessment of the vitality and dynamicism of art. It is the loss of
those very things that I mourn.
I think composers like
>Diamond and Simpson have created such forms (but others may disagree,
>though I hope not because they think a neo-Romantic position is
>not viable in our time. Time itself, it seems to me, has
>nothing to do with aesthetic values. If Diamond is a "new Bruckner"
>as Schoenberg said, then it matters little to me whether he
>appeared in 1850, 1910, or 1940).
Except that his reality should be of the time he lives in not of the past,
no matter what medium he chooses to express his ideas in.
Roger Lustig
>A couple of observations that I offer not that they might fall together
>to form some master explanation of all of this.
>In article <1993Oct1.1...@news.cs.brandeis.edu> ,
>ja...@max.cc.brandeis.edu writes:
>>(1) "clinging to the past" would be very untypical in the context of
>> Western civilization where everywhere else it is on the contrary
>> novelty and originality which are stressed and valued
Sophocles, Homer, Plato, Vergil, Dante, Leonardo, etc. would disagree with
you. Music is unusual in that, outside the Church, there was no "classical"
canon until recently.
>It is interesting to me that this contradicts the post a few layers down
>that gave rise to this discussion that spoke of how listeners were
>looking under every rock for new stuff. It's also interesting to me that
>up until this century, musical innovation was more highly regarded (the
>fact that this sentence is in passive voice sidesteps the question, "By
>whom?")
But around the 1830's, innovation became paired with greatness and
comparison with Beethoven.
>Palestrina, Monteverdi, Bach, Haydn, all in their turn became old
>hat. Richard Strauss, Liszt, Wagner, and Rachmaninoff do not seemed to
>have experienced such a widespread and healthy death. Was it some pact
>they signed with the devil or some gods in one of those romantic rituals
>that made them immortal? It seems like them and all of their ancestors
>got raised from the dead within the last hundred years and are hanging
>around eating all our food and taking up real estate, etc.
You got that right. It started with Mozart, who remained popular after
his death, and then took on huge proportions with Beethoven, whose music
set a standard for other composers to emulate (or to avoid, which is
similar; he could not be ignored). Other composers began to be added
to the new canon, and musicians reached back to Bach for a historical
foundation. Mendelssohn and Liszt were two of Bach's early advocates
in the concert hall.
Anyway, the *possibility* of being immortal was raised by Beethoven,
and composers took this idea up, and began to compose with posterity
in mind as well as for the contemporary audience. Mahler said, "My
time will come!" A century before, no composer *could* have said that.
>Robert Graves
>has a nice poem about the dangers of identifying too closely with a dead
>man (I take it to mean an artist in this context), that you run the risk
>of changing places with him -- you die and he lives instead of you.
Harold Bloom has made an entire career out of this idea...
>>(2) "canonization" has occurred with other cultural artifacts in cases
>> where it just _can't_ be a "clinging to the past" thing: a typical
>> example are the plays of Shakespeare. Is the cultural importance
>attached
>> to the plays of Shakespeare also a "clinging to the past" phenomenon?
With Shakespeare, it's more a revival of the past. The tragedies and
histories weren't respected all that much in the century after his
death; the romances (Tempest, MND) were the big thing. Gary Taylor makes
a good case for the continual-revival model in _Reinventing Shakespeare_,
with the corollary observation that Shakespeare is useful as a mirror
for one's own time in so many different ways.
>> How come then that Dryden and Congreve are far from having the same
>> cultural importance? Too recent? What about Marlowe and Nashe?
>I don't encounter too many people though who would argue that theater
>ended with Shakespeare or Chekov or Ibsen or even Pinter. I wouldn't say
>that appreciating and respecting the importance of Shakespeare or Bach or
>Liszt is "clinging to the past," (I seem to have coined this motto for
>this thread -- If I had known it would be taken up I might have chosen it
>more carefully). If I did meet someone who did think that there was no
>need to investigate plays written after Shakespeare, I would probably
>think that they were clinging to the past.
James Tyrone comes to mind...8-)
Roger
ja...@max.cc.brandeis.edu
(apparently referring to my statements)
>>ja...@max.cc.brandeis.edu writes:
>>>(1) "clinging to the past" would be very untypical in the context of
>>> Western civilization where everywhere else it is on the contrary
>>> novelty and originality which are stressed and valued
>
>Sophocles, Homer, Plato, Vergil, Dante, Leonardo, etc. would disagree with
>you. Music is unusual in that, outside the Church, there was no "classical"
>canon until recently.
Ok. Let me fill in what I understand the objection to my statement is:
I wrote that I thought Western civilization "stresses novelty and originality"
and Roger Lustig writes that "Sophocles, Homer,... would disagree with" me.
I understand that to mean Roger considers the cultural importance
of Sophocles, Homer, Virgil and the others as a proof that novelty and
originality were _not_ stressed and valued in Western culture.
Is that correct?
There's two things here. The principle as stated (verbally) in a culture
by whoever is in position to state the dogma of that culture and the
actual practice... One should not make Margaret Mead's mistake and
confuse the one with the other.
Maybe my mistake was to use the word "stressed" that has got a verbal
connotation. "Valued" should have been enough. Actual practice rather
than theoretical statements show what's actually valued in a culture.
Of course one could counter that if we don't know the "internals" of
what moves change then how do we differentiate between "clinging to the
past" and "canonization". Only the quantitative difference of how fast
change occurs? (Then what's the cutoff rate?) How can we know the inner
attitude towards change except thru those verbal statements? (Those precisely
I'm rejecting)
Well I'm not gonna get into all this here. I'll just assume there is a
way to tell and that I can tell and Roger can't :-) Despite the many
words below this is the gist of my "argument" and this is also the gist
of Roger's counterargument (implicitly) as far as I can see.
Repeat: I don't think you can differentiate between "clinging to the past"
and "canonization" by superficial examination alone but only internally.
Furthermore I regard verbal dogmas made thru the ages by those who were in
charge of stating them of as much relevance to the inner motivations of our
culture as that statements on the grammar of the English language made in
the 16th century might have to the actual grammar of English... See that
"historical arrogance"? I'm simply saying that we know better...
Anyway I would argue that Western civilization (even in cultural activities
under the direct domination of the Catholic Church such as music
was until let us say 14th century and partially even much later -- culturally
the Catholic Church is a very progressive organized religion :-)
stresses novelty _in practice_ even when not in theory. As to the Catholic
Church I've become convinced of this by comparing how static the evolution
of Eastern liturgical chant had been as compared to the evolution of Western
chant leading to polyphony.
It doesn't matter what those who are in charge with verbalizing the dogmas
were saying -- that polyphony is bad, that Ars Nova sucks, or whatever --
_in reality_ western chant evolved and led to our music -- Eastern
chant did not evolve.
Similar observations apply to architecture of the church (building) and the
sculptures and paintings inside the church.
(Again what I'm I saying here? That Western chant evolved more rapidly than
Eastern chant? It could be only a quantitative difference of how fast
change occurred. After all Eastern chant also evolved a little bit. The
"kalophonic" practice of the 15th century certainly is somewhat different
from earlier practice. Still I'm saying there's a fundamental difference.
How do I know? The "principles" are identical. Officially both churches
"cling to the past". So how do I know? I don't. I just "feel" it. There's
zero reasoning here and elsewhere. But I'm not the only one. I claim I saw
just as much reasoning in the statements of those who'd argue the other
position. Just two different views of the world maybe :-)
But to our tale...
No matter what the importance of Aeschylus, Sophocles & Euripides is, it is
clear that there is much difference between their works and the Western
European works that allegedly "refer" to that tradition (Italian opera,
Corneille, Racine, Lope de Vega, Calderon, maybe more remotely Elizabethan
theatre). So I would argue that that Sophocles is involved into a "canon"
business rather into a "clinging to the past" business.
As an (amusing) aside, to the men of the 16th century the "canon" was
represented more by the statements found in Aristotle's "Poetics" (well,
the 1st book as the second one was burnt during the shooting of the movie
"The Name of the Rose") and the derivatives works of Latin tragic
playwrights, mostly Seneca. The Greek trio started to be read later...
and had much less influence in practice. Canons
behave in strange ways sometimes.
As another (certainly less amusing) aside I have _just_ read a book on the
state of text of Aeschylus's tragedies as it has come down to us. The Greek
tragic trio was conferred the status of "canonical" very early on. Actual
staging of their plays had stopped by the 3rd century B.C. but their plays
continued to be read and studied in schools, academies, by cultured people,...
(See my comment on the canonical status of Palestrina below)
Of all the something like 90 tragic Greek playwrights whose names have
come down to us only plays by the trio have come down to us because of
that "canonization" (of the others we've got only fragments -- mostly from
quotations by other authors). Can we even say that they were the "best"?
How can we ever tell? All we can say is that they must have represented
the "inner ideas" of what tragedy "is" to those who made that choice.
(And can we even say that?)
>>>(2) "canonization" has occurred with other cultural artifacts in cases
>>> where it just _can't_ be a "clinging to the past" thing: a typical
>>> example are the plays of Shakespeare. Is the cultural importance
>>>attached
>>> to the plays of Shakespeare also a "clinging to the past" phenomenon?
>
>With Shakespeare, it's more a revival of the past. The tragedies and
>histories weren't respected all that much in the century after his
>death; the romances (Tempest, MND) were the big thing. Gary Taylor makes
>a good case for the continual-revival model in _Reinventing Shakespeare_,
>with the corollary observation that Shakespeare is useful as a mirror
>for one's own time in so many different ways.
Oh ok. How do we know? A temporary eclipse does not preclude the
possibility that an author will be put into the canon. See J-S Bach?
If something is continuously "reinvented" and reexamined I would say it
makes it even more convincing that that something has been put into some
canon. (Or maybe the misunderstanding here is on the meaning of the
word "canon")
Note that a canon can function at various levels. In "classical" music it
functions also at the level of performance practice. That's not true of
Shakespeare. Nobody performs Shakespeare in a round Elizabethan theatre
like the Globe. But there's is generally a certain quality of English
(be it just diction or the accent) that one uses while performing Shakespeare
"in general". Maybe me and Roger will disagree on what "in general" means...
But I disagree that "canonical" implies rigidity. If fixes some parameters
and lets others vary freely. In the case of Shakespeare actual staging
is a free parameter. There are such free parameters in performance practice of
"classical" music. Tempos are more or less free (within bounds) even when
MM is indicated. Orchestration is definitely not (try performing the 9th
with a bunch of synthesizers) but has been fixed to the early 19th century
orchestra "in general".
One peculiarity of the musical canon (or one of its dogmas as stated by
the "oracles") is the reliance on the "intention of the composer" thing.
True.
It's true I've never seen that line used with Shakespeare. That doesn't
mean it's got to be used in every canon. It's just a peculiarity of the
musical canon. I think that it was invented because in the actual
"performance" of a work of instrumental music where the only leading thread
is some "inner logic" of the work w/o possibility to rely on anything
external this seemed to provide some guarantee against arbitrariness
(again :-) -- I think I've used this in another post. But seriously though,
one of the hardest things facing anybody about to perform an action is
_choice_ so we cling to anything that makes it appear that the choice was
not random. Happens all the time.) If you perform Richard III you can choose
to focus on some feature of some character and stage the whole play with that
in mind and you can even sell it that way to the "oracles"...
But what do you do with a work of instrumental music? You can rely on some
totally personal understanding from examining the inner logic of the
work as it appears to you. That's the only sensible way but as a marketing
device that's not the thing. Cause "who the hell are you?" You'll say then
that you've tried to follow the "intentions of the composer" (as he spoke
to you from the grave no doubt)
An amusing anecdote: the Danish singer Axel Schiodt (I don't know he might
still be alive) was very big on the "composer's intention" thing. He wrote
a book on interpretation in singing where every other sentence was to
state that dogma. At some point he examined some indication in some
Schubert work with which he really didn't agree musically. He then wrote
that that must have been a "typo"! (In what? The manuscript? It's not clear
from what Schiodt writes)
Btw one of the earliest statements that I've seen of the "composer's
intention" as an almost absolute dogma was in a book on the art
of violin playing by the French violinist Baillol (Baillot? spelling?)
the first violin professor at the Conservatory of Paris. Who knows maybe that
dogma originated in the French musical educational system as created
after the Revolution. Must have been the first such system. (The Italian
conservatories were something else altogether, they were institutions for
orphans). The French system might have also something to do with the
constitution of Harmony and Solfeggio as independant disciplines (Solfeggio
before in Italy was simply for singers, one of the first stages of the study
of a singer. In French conservatories it was made into something everyone,
singers and instrumental players had to take. Harmony didn't exist as a
discipline for study). If all of this is true then the influence of the
French conservatory system on both the way we view classical music, the
theoretical foundations and the educational system through which that skill
is transmitted would be very great indeed.
But to our tale...
Roger argues Shakespeare's a "revival". Ok. Who's to say he's wrong? But
now that's a third phenomenon nobody'd mentioned in this thread yet.
I assume he means a phenomenon akin to our "early music" thing.
And btw what are we to make of the "rediscovery" of early music starting this
century of styles that are clearly not in the "canon".
What moves a 20th century listener to discover Perotin? How does he relate
Perotin to his inner musical language? Is this just the same way he listens
to Indian music for the "exotic" value? Or is there something deeper?
And does that make Pertion join the canon? Yeah, what _is_ a "revival"?...
Ah. Problems, problems...
And all those digressions on Shakespeare, Sophocles, Leonardo and Dante
don't advance the original point: is "classical" music a "clinging to
the past" or a "canonization" phenomenon?
I stated what I thought in another post (Roger Lustig's opinion on this
precise point will remain a mystery :-) unless he's stated it somewhere
else...)
Maybe that stated as such the debate can appear a bit Byzantine. But
underlying the question (or rather the answer we give to it) of course is
where we think the "future" of music (as an evolving and experimenting
intellectual activity) lies.
Ironically the "anxiety" generating this question is something
like a "clinging to the (golden) past" thing. Like we just don't understand
what happened to that blessed golden age were audiences were at one with
the creators and you could go and hear Beethoven direct his symphonies etc.
Hey just because things are not _exactly_ like that now doesn't mean that
nobody's creating in music and that there are no audiences and no channels
and no markets. Things can change even if they don't move like in the 19th
century.
A final observation: Palestrina was used by J.J. Fux as the example to
follow to write strict counterpoint. I don't know if only his name or also
principles extracted from his music. I've never seen the "Gradus" let alone
compared its principles with the actual music of Palestrina... But is it
that important? The "canon" can sometimes be a very imaginary thing. Homer
as a canonical figure: how many people could really read Homer in the Greek
in the 16th century? So Palestrina didn't "die" at the end of the 16th
century. Maybe his music was not peformed but he was studied or at least
his name was used to referr to a something that had taken on canonical
status.
That brings up another question: that music from the 18th century is performed
in concert halls today whereas it used to change every 10 years before
the 18th century (insofar as the institution of the concert even existed)
might be saying more about how we view the "concert" than
how we view the music. See what I mean? Is there such a difference between
how 18th century viewed Palestrina and how we view Mozart. Or is the difference
between how 18th century viewed the "concert" (they didn't play Palestrina)
and we view the "concert" (we play Mozart)
Maybe a "concert" now is more equivalent to the "classroom". Sometimes I
wonder. Can those people really be having fun? It does look to me like a
classroom :-)
Cheers
Jacob
ja...@max.cc.brandeis.edu
>
>(apparently referring to my statements)
>
>>>ja...@max.cc.brandeis.edu writes:
>>>>(1) "clinging to the past" would be very untypical in the context of
>>>> Western civilization where everywhere else it is on the contrary
>>>> novelty and originality which are stressed and valued
>>
>>Sophocles, Homer, Plato, Vergil, Dante, Leonardo, etc. would disagree with
>>you.
It's suddenly occurred to me that Roger might mean that Sophocles, Homer,
Plato, Virgil, Dante and Leonardo might have made statements contradicting
mine. I'm not familiar with them except vaguely Plato's conservative attitude
(for example in "The Republic" or "The Laws") Fortunately Plato's
conservative and anti-art statements are contradicted by his productions
themselves. I'd argue that Plato expressed a conservative dogma
not a descriptive statement as to what he thought the trend was and
where things were going.
Note that I personally when I use
"Western civilization" I mean "Western Europe after say 11th-12th
century" so I wouldn't care much about either true trends or statements
of ancient Greece or Rome. Take my statement to mean: "Clinging to the
past phenomenon would be unusual in Wester culture after 11th-12th
century". How's that? Out go Plato and the Greek bunch along with Virgil.
We're left with Dante and Leonardo... (Probably Roger meant something
like "the people who disagree with you include but are _not_ limited to...":-)
I wouldn't be surprised about Dante but (as a digression) did Leonardo,
who invented the parachute, the starship "Enterprise" and alternative life
styles (that's not true -- Plato intvented those) really write anything to
the effect that Western
culture "clings to the past"? I guess it could be in the same vein as Plato
but backwards. But where was that? (Just out of curiosity)
Oh I'm sure there were others. But mostly "Who Cares?". Who says they knew
more about the inner trends of Western culture? What kind of perspective
did they have? Throw them in with the other false "oracles" of that other post
of mine.
To discover the real trends of Western culture one should look at
facts not at dogmatic statements even by people deemed "important".
What other culture developed into something
like Western culture? Wouldn't this indicate a fundamentally different
attitude to change? The question then would be: when did this start?
I'd think somewhere between 11th and 15th century would not be missing it
by much. Crusades. Beginning of polyphonic music. "Magna Carta". Giotto.
Henry the Navigator. Northern Italian and Flemish independant cities.
Litterature in vulgar languages. Struggle between concepts of centralized
states and feodal states. Etc. etc. etc. (And this seminal period ends with...
(shoulda put a ^L here) the crowning achievement in the 16th century the
solution of the Cubic by Cardano and Tartaglia, the first essential step
beyond Greek Mathematics:-)
Seriously though I think it's much older than "common practice" so by
the the time we reach the issue at hand I think it's fair to say that
clinging to the past is not a typical feature of Western culture.
Cheers
Jacob
B7QL000
>.
"The art of being a bore is to say everything."
--Andy
Received from: Vikram Seth
Received from: Voltaire
clovis lark
>With Shakespeare, it's more a revival of the past. The tragedies and
>histories weren't respected all that much in the century after his
>death; the romances (Tempest, MND) were the big thing. Gary Taylor makes
>a good case for the continual-revival model in _Reinventing Shakespeare_,
>with the corollary observation that Shakespeare is useful as a mirror
>for one's own time in so many different ways.
And in the 2 centuries after his death, he was heavily rewritten.
Michael L. Siemon
ja...@max.cc.brandeis.edu ( ) writes:
>In article <1993Oct1.1...@Princeton.EDU> ro...@astro.princeton.edu
(Roger Lustig) writes:
>>Sophocles, Homer, Plato, Vergil, Dante, Leonardo, etc. would disagree with
>>you. Music is unusual in that, outside the Church, there was no "classical"
>>canon until recently.
>I understand that to mean Roger considers the cultural importance
>of Sophocles, Homer, Virgil and the others as a proof that novelty and
>originality were _not_ stressed and valued in Western culture.
>
>Is that correct?
Not as far as I can see. I take it that Roger is alluding to the simple
fact that, from classical Greek times on our various ancestral cultures
HAVE created canons in most art forms. The Greeks were particularly prone
to this: with each of the categories of poetry developing a canon very
early on -- and then eseentially ceasing to be a "live" form as the new
poets felt unable to compete. The best known example is the tragedians;
After Euripides, there were some attempts for a generation or two to
match the "classic" 3; these continued to form the basic performing and
teaching curriculum until the fall of (New :-)) Rome in 1453 AD. The
same pattern existed in sculpture (Pheidias) and painting (Zeuxis.)
In Europe, each of the national vernaculars is associated with some
particular form and author or set of authors who DEFINE Italian, or
French, or English. Within a language, new forms create new canons
(that of the novel being different from that of English tragedy, e.g.)
Similarly painting had very soon after Michaelangelo its Renaissance
canon in painting and sculpture, which has persisted. And when new
forms arise (often with difficulty, but they do appear from time to
time), new canons arise with them (e.g. the Impressionists) and these
canons PERSIST through later cultural inheritance.
Roger is pointing out that such "canonical" formulations of the art
are, in music, not much of a phenomenon of Western culture (though
I'd appreciate his comments on possibly "canonical" status of the
Netherlanders in the 16th century) -- until the formulation of OUR
"symphonic" canon post-Beethoven.
You are correct that innovation has at times been a major value in
Western art forms. That, however, has generally stood in *tension*
with established (and often oppressive) canons in each field. Music
mostly escaped that tension -- it was ephemeral art -- until the
creation of our "Classical Music" canon in the 19th century.
--
Michael L. Siemon "We honour founders of these starving cities
m...@panix.com Whose honour is the image of our sorrow ...
m...@ulysses.att.com They built by rivers and at night the water
-standard disclaimer- Running past the windows comforted their sorrow."
Roger Lustig
[much deleted; Michael, I couldn't have said it half so well myself.]
>In Europe, each of the national vernaculars is associated with some
>particular form and author or set of authors who DEFINE Italian, or
>French, or English. Within a language, new forms create new canons
>(that of the novel being different from that of English tragedy, e.g.)
>Similarly painting had very soon after Michaelangelo its Renaissance
>canon in painting and sculpture, which has persisted. And when new
>forms arise (often with difficulty, but they do appear from time to
>time), new canons arise with them (e.g. the Impressionists) and these
>canons PERSIST through later cultural inheritance.
>Roger is pointing out that such "canonical" formulations of the art
>are, in music, not much of a phenomenon of Western culture (though
>I'd appreciate his comments on possibly "canonical" status of the
>Netherlanders in the 16th century)
Not canonical so much as exemplary. For one thing, the Netherlanders
kept coming, and instead of keeping the Italians and French out of
the business, they encouraged them to join in. After the late
15thC group (Ockeghem, Josquin, etc.), more and more French joined
the ranks (historians will rightly point out that the 15thC movement
was as much Burgundian as Netherlandish, an important distinction
in non-geographic terms); after a century of almost no Italian music,
there's Festa, Rore, Clemens, etc., etc. All this while the Netherlands
was still producing Willaert, Wert, Lasso, etc.
Only a few older works stayed in repertories beyond a particular church;
things like Josquin's greatest hits (Benedicta Es, Miserere Mei Deus).
Josquin was so highly prized that he contintued to compose long after
his death, as Luther said; because attribution was such a dicey thing
(it's worse now wrt the old guys!), a lot of fakes came on the market.
Which isn't exactly the way a canon works, either.
>-- until the formulation of OUR "symphonic" canon post-Beethoven.
>You are correct that innovation has at times been a major value in
>Western art forms. That, however, has generally stood in *tension*
>with established (and often oppressive) canons in each field. Music
>mostly escaped that tension -- it was ephemeral art -- until the
>creation of our "Classical Music" canon in the 19th century.
Exactly.
Roger
AD...@psuvm.psu.edu
(clovis lark) says:
>
>In <1993Oct1.1...@Princeton.EDU> ro...@faust.Princeton.EDU (Roger
>Lustig) writes:
>
>>With Shakespeare, it's more a revival of the past. The tragedies and
>>histories weren't respected all that much in the century after his
>>death; the romances (Tempest, MND) were the big thing. Gary Taylor makes
>>a good case for the continual-revival model in _Reinventing Shakespeare_,
>>with the corollary observation that Shakespeare is useful as a mirror
>>for one's own time in so many different ways.
In the mid-18th C Dr. Johnson still was able to say that Shakespeare's
genius for comedy was greater than that for tragedy. It was really
the Romantics, esp. Germans like the Schlegels and Goethe, who
elevated the tragedies by a return to a Longinian notion of the
sublime. ("Deutchland ist Hamlet" became a familiar motto.) Then, at
the beginning of this century, A. C. Bradley came along, and after
WW II we had Jan Kott and the supreme glorification of _Lear_; but
see below. (This looks like it belongs on r.a.b.!)
>And in the 2 centuries after his death, he was heavily rewritten.
The most notorious of the these re-writes was the "happy ending"
Nahum Tate appended to _King Lear_, which held the English stage
for approx. a century (but I don't have the exact dates on hand).
An analogous case in music might be the cuts and added forces in
Mendelssohn's revival of the B minor Mass. The "fidelity" creed
of the 20th C is almost certainly a by-product of the "canonizing"
process we are talking around here.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
--Allan Burns
AD...@psuvm.psu.edu
(clovis lark) says:
>
>> Schoenberg v. The World).
>
>Please. Not AS vs. the world!
Joke! Joke!
>> On the basis of the model Clovis suggests
>>in his post, serialism would be all the rage today, having
>>first been the radical usurper and then having run its course
>>through being adopted by most of the important composers of the
>>world in the fifties and sixties.
>
>Mind you I didn't suggest that at all. What I said was that society's
>acceptance of new art was generally predicated on accessibility of con-
>tent.
I understood your argument to be that the "prgressive" innovations of
one generation tend to become the orthodoxies of the next. Your
example was Wagner, and I wonder if his music was considered generally
"accessible" in the mid-19th C and if it was at all "predictable"
that he would take Europe by storm in the decades to follow. In any
event, that Schoenberg's music has not followed the same route
(even though composers imitated him to the same degree earlier
composers had imitated Wagner) is interesting and suggests to me
that the "palimpsest" theory (see below) may be able to account
for this in part in that after a certain "thickness" of accural
in an art, the only options left to the artist are complacently to
imitate past models (with, in the best cases, at least an eye
toward re-invigorating them) or to experiment with possibilities
that effectively remove the work from the realm of common
appreciation by the very unfamiliarity of their idiom or technical
innovations.
>All music as commodity and fetish is to be lamented. The tragedy of Brahms
>is no less than that of AS.
Could you elaborate on this? I don't necessarily disagree, but
I'm not wholly sure I follow you either. (The pronouncement strikes
me as a bit cryptic.)
>>I also tend to think more highly of neo-Romantic music than Clovis
>>does. (We had this debate early in the summer. I have no desire
>>to start it back up in earnest, but I will state my case.) I think
>>the history of art is more like a palimpsest than a linear
>>progression; it accumulates, and possible positions (e. g. Romantic
>>or Classic) are recycled many times in new forms; the question is
>>whether these forms are vital and dynamic.
>
>I absolutely agree with your analysis of nonlinear history and also with
>your assessment of the vitality and dynamicism of art. It is the loss of
>those very things that I mourn.
>
>I think composers like
>>Diamond and Simpson have created such forms (but others may disagree,
>>though I hope not because they think a neo-Romantic position is
>>not viable in our time. Time itself, it seems to me, has
>>nothing to do with aesthetic values. If Diamond is a "new Bruckner"
>>as Schoenberg said, then it matters little to me whether he
>>appeared in 1850, 1910, or 1940).
>
>Except that his reality should be of the time he lives in not of the past,
>no matter what medium he chooses to express his ideas in.
But are you smuggling a "historicist" argument in through the
backdoor here with that "reality" bit? Reality for whom? I don't
think any aesthetic response to "our times" can be ruled out simply
as not valid *for "our times"*. If you really reject a merely
linear account of music history, then you have to accept this as a
corollary, no? I believe art must be judged on its own terms, not
by reference to a simplified notion of the context from out of which
it arose. (New Historicists may disagree; but then again I am an
unregenerate aesthetician who rejects any account of an artwork that
assimilates it to something else--the artist's psychology, history,
rhetoric, semiotics, etc.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
--Allan Burns
clovis lark
>>
>>Mind you I didn't suggest that at all. What I said was that society's
>>acceptance of new art was generally predicated on accessibility of con-
>>tent.
>I understood your argument to be that the "prgressive" innovations of
>one generation tend to become the orthodoxies of the next. Your
>example was Wagner, and I wonder if his music was considered generally
>"accessible" in the mid-19th C and if it was at all "predictable"
>that he would take Europe by storm in the decades to follow.
Possibly, but judging from what was written at the time, not likely.
>In any
>event, that Schoenberg's music has not followed the same route
>(even though composers imitated him to the same degree earlier
>composers had imitated Wagner) is interesting and suggests to me
>that the "palimpsest" theory (see below) may be able to account
>for this in part in that after a certain "thickness" of accural
>in an art, the only options left to the artist are complacently to
>imitate past models (with, in the best cases, at least an eye
>toward re-invigorating them) or to experiment with possibilities
>that effectively remove the work from the realm of common
>appreciation by the very unfamiliarity of their idiom or technical
>innovations.
But this is my point. What makes this music unfamiliar and hence removed from
the realm of common appreciation, but not the "strange" passages in Lennon-
McCartney's THE END, is that nobody gets to hear it because it isn't pro-
grammed in concerts, radio etc.
>>All music as commodity and fetish is to be lamented. The tragedy of Brahms
>>is no less than that of AS.
>Could you elaborate on this? I don't necessarily disagree, but
>I'm not wholly sure I follow you either. (The pronouncement strikes
>me as a bit cryptic.)
What I was getting at is that overplaying and, in effect, making Brahms
mundane and suitable for background music is as lamentable as never
being played.
>But are you smuggling a "historicist" argument in through the
>backdoor here with that "reality" bit? Reality for whom? I don't
>think any aesthetic response to "our times" can be ruled out simply
>as not valid *for "our times"*. If you really reject a merely
>linear account of music history, then you have to accept this as a
>corollary, no? I believe art must be judged on its own terms, not
>by reference to a simplified notion of the context from out of which
>it arose. (New Historicists may disagree; but then again I am an
>unregenerate aesthetician who rejects any account of an artwork that
>assimilates it to something else--the artist's psychology, history,
>rhetoric, semiotics, etc.)
Here I was trying to suggest that were Diamond trying to be Bruckner
today, he would be creating a false image with no basis. I.e., he is
not Bruckner, these times are not Bruckner's and such thoughts contradict
the essence of his personality.
Noam Elkies
ro...@astro.princeton.edu (Roger Lustig) writes:
>things like Josquin's greatest hits (Benedicta Es, Miserere Mei Deus).
>Josquin was so highly prized that he contintued to compose long after
>his death, as Luther said; because attribution was such a dicey thing
>(it's worse now wrt the old guys!), a lot of fakes came on the market.
>Which isn't exactly the way a canon works, either.
Well, there's Casadesus/Haydn. One possible side-effect of a canon
(or at any rate of an enduring interest in music of the past) is
that a composer, especially one drawn to more traditional styles,
might figure his music will have a better chance of surviving if
he presents it as a newly discovered masterpiece by a certified
Great Composer.
--Noam D. Elkies (elk...@zariski.harvard.edu)
Dept. of Mathematics, Harvard University
ja...@max.cc.brandeis.edu
>ja...@max.cc.brandeis.edu ( ) writes:
>
>>In article <1993Oct1.1...@Princeton.EDU> ro...@astro.princeton.edu
>(Roger Lustig) writes:
>
>>>Sophocles, Homer, Plato, Vergil, Dante, Leonardo, etc. would disagree with
>>>you. Music is unusual in that, outside the Church, there was no "classical"
>>>canon until recently.
>
>>I understand that to mean Roger considers the cultural importance
>>of Sophocles, Homer, Virgil and the others as a proof that novelty and
>>originality were _not_ stressed and valued in Western culture.
>>
>>Is that correct?
>
>Not as far as I can see. I take it that Roger is alluding to the simple
>fact that, from classical Greek times on our various ancestral cultures
>HAVE created canons in most art forms.
Excuse me (I might have been guilty of too much editing) but in the original
post Roger Lustig's statement was right after (and most people would
assume was in response to) a statement of mine that was saying something
like "Western culture stresses originality and novelty" (if there's any
doubt on that account I can try and go unearth the posting...)
The word "canon" was not even used in that statement of mine Roger Lustig's
seemed to be in response to so unless Roger has a pretty nonstandard thought
process (and you are aware of it) his statement would not in general be
intrepreted the way you do in your post (as interesting as the substance
of your post might be)
Note I'm not concerned here whether Roger Lustig might or might not hold the
opinions that you are saying, which it seems he does, only how that one
statement can be interpreted.
When confronted with an exchange of the type above (schematically)
Person A utters Statement A
Person B utters "<list of people> would disagree with <statement A>"
it usually is taken to mean either (litteraly) that person B has reason to
believe (from whatever reason) that <list of people> do disagree with
<statement A> or (metaphorically) that something otherwise related to
<list of persons> (life, work, actions, ...) contadicts <statements A>
I do not believe that your interpretation of Roger Lustig's response is
anything like the above. You were using a wider context and what you know
otherwise of Roger Lustig's opinions. Which is fine. But don't present it
then as a interpretation of the meaning of one statement. A little rigor
goes a long way. Thank you.
Cheers
Jacob
AD...@psuvm.psu.edu
(clovis lark) says:
>
>
>Here I was trying to suggest that were Diamond trying to be Bruckner
>today, he would be creating a false image with no basis. I.e., he is
>not Bruckner, these times are not Bruckner's and such thoughts contradict
>the essence of his personality.
I don't think Diamond is trying to *be* Bruckner: that would be rather
silly and unoriginal of him, no? Schoenberg called him a "new Bruckner,"
and the comparison has been invoked many times since. The comparison
depends less on idiom than on a sense of orchestral architecture.
(Of symphonists born this century, only Holmboe, Simpson, and Shostakovich
at his best come to mind as equals to Diamond in this respect.)
Diamond's orhcestral music is generally overlaid by a baroque wealth
of detail that is wholly unlike what one finds amidst Bruckner's
long ostinato figures and repetitions. Diamond was a pupil of Sessions
and deeply admired (like Sessions) Schoenberg's music: I think, despite
his choice to employ a "Romantic" idiom, both of these things show
and contribute to a music that is powerful and vibrant and cannot be
dismissed simply because recordings of it recently have made the
"Classical Top 10."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
--Allan Burns
Francois Velde
|I have no doubts that economic factors play their part. I
|object only to the rather stronger claim that they *determine*
|aesthetic factors.
|I think Francois' most recent post on
|this topic was well balanced and stated the more moderate position
|with some cogency.
But balanced posts don't make good flame-bait ;-)
clovis, who's the businessman from Texas? Is Ross Perot on the net,
reading Marx?
--
Francois Velde
clovis lark
>clovis, who's the businessman from Texas? Is Ross Perot on the net,
>reading Marx?
If it's Ross, he's hiding under a nom d'plume. Actually, he was the person
who questioned the vague terminology on the net.
Karl Wee
clinging to the past may serve a very basic need and has reasons for
existing.
There was much commonality among the baroque, classical and romantic
works. (Techniques of development, tonality, harmony, rythmic
progression, etc.) This is true at least for works within each of these
styles. Each of these works drew on the listener's memory of other
music and the common understanding of what music "should" be. It just
seems to me that 20th-Cent. styles mostly don't do this and you're
required to learn a whole new paradigm for listening to each piece.
This is not only inefficient but also makes the structure of musical
ideas very shallow. It seems that there's something in the human
psyche that genuinely respects deeper structures such as science and
pre-20th-Cent. music. (Science being the art of minimizing one's
effort required to deal with phenomena by recognizing as much structure
as possible.)
From a superficial survey of 20th-Cent. music, it seems that it has
failed to agree on, set up and popularize a new set of commonalities
between different works. It was not that people were too reluctant
to adapt to a new style, it was more like that "style" has never been
one. People may be reluctant, but that shouldn't be enough to kill
a genre of music, given Western civilization's penchant for things
"revolutionary" and the successes of older styles with a less developed
mass media.
AD...@psuvm.psu.edu
Wee) says:
>
>There was much commonality among the baroque, classical and romantic
>works. (Techniques of development, tonality, harmony, rythmic
>progression, etc.) This is true at least for works within each of these
>styles. Each of these works drew on the listener's memory of other
>music and the common understanding of what music "should" be. It just
>seems to me that 20th-Cent. styles mostly don't do this and you're
>required to learn a whole new paradigm for listening to each piece.
Repetition can quickly become tedious, but here goes. First of all,
the catch-all phrase "20th C music," as someone pointed out previously,
is simply meaningless. Compositional styles in the 20th C have been
heterogeneous, to say the least. If there is no 20th C music you
have found that you like, you probably haven't heard much.
But, look: Mahler, Strauss, Sibelius, Nielsen, Busoni, Vaughan
Williams, Rachmaninov, Ravel, Falla--these guys are all "friendly,"
all part of the 20th C, too. No generalization about this century's
music that fails to include them will do.
Now, there have also been more "radical" or "prgressive" developments,
but these too are continuous with the past (as, for instance,
Schoenberg and Stravinsky are). Even the most radical experiments
show the influence of the past, for radical innovation and
originality generally only emerge when tradition becomes a burden.
But . . .
The notion of a "crisis" in contemporary composition seems to me
an instance of the boy crying wolf. How many of the "music lovers"
and journalists who moan about the current "situation" have
bothered to familiarize themselves with a wide swath of recent
music? I usually see only careless generalizations made on the
basis of X piece by Stockhausen or Y piece by Druckman--but, if
you don't like this kind of thing, it's certainly not the only
"show in town." (Go listen to Diamond, Husa, Simpson, Rochberg,
Lloyd, Rzewski, recent Maxwell Davies, Zwillich, Adams, Albert,
Kerniss, and the list goes on . . .)
To be fair, the situation is sometimes exascerbated by the "other
side" when its spokesmen (in the voices, ironically enough, of
Matthew Arnold and Van Wyck Brooks) exhort the "philistines" or
the "lowbrows," or when music "history" irresponsibly falls into
a linear history of development (following a scientific, progressive
paradigm alien to the arts), which inevitably becomes merely a
history of the avant-garde.
My advice is this: stop complaining, start listening--to a wide
variety of stuff and with an "open mind."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
--Allan Burns
clovis lark
>The notion of a "crisis" in contemporary composition seems to me
>an instance of the boy crying wolf. How many of the "music lovers"
>and journalists who moan about the current "situation" have
>bothered to familiarize themselves with a wide swath of recent
>music?
Just so that we are clear, the crisis that the thread has been addressing
is not a crisis in contemporary composition per se, it is a crisis in
the public desemination of this music. The "music lovers" you cite, by and
large, are passive lovers, unlike those prior to the era of the huge con-
cert hall, radio, and recording, who were players of whatever quality. Webern,
Cowell, whomever take on a different guise when you tackle them yourself. I
continue to reiterate that unless the producers of recordings, radios and
concerts take the music of their time to heart, these passive music lovers
will remain ignorant and uncomfortable with the new sonorities and will con-
tinue to reject them. We will continue to see the isolated efforts of those
like the late Nono, who take the issue in their own hands, as eccentric.
Furthermore, we run the danger of creating whole schools of composition
centered around Universities whose faculty members have their music played
for their friends only and cease to interact with a heterogenous music loving
public. We will perpetuate and polarize the "Uptown" - "Downtown" battle.
>My advice is this: stop complaining, start listening--to a wide
>variety of stuff and with an "open mind."
And how would you have someone whose ears are not used to these sounds to
do this?
AD...@psuvm.psu.edu
(clovis lark) says:
>
>Just so that we are clear, the crisis that the thread has been addressing
>is not a crisis in contemporary composition per se, it is a crisis in
>the public desemination of this music.
Ah, well, I suppose I might even be disappointed if Clovis didn't
immediately admonish me about something . . .
In any event, my response was to the most recent revival of this
thread, not to the general tumult. Take a second look and see
what you think the issue has *become*.
>>My advice is this: stop complaining, start listening--to a wide
>>variety of stuff and with an "open mind."
>
>And how would you have someone whose ears are not used to these sounds to
>do this?
Well, my ears certainly aren't used to an infinitive as you use it in
that sentence . . .
But my point was not that a listener must acclimate himself or herself
to all types of modern music. You may think me a provincial, but
there's plenty of stuff out there that does nothing for me and that
I would not dish out hard-earned cash to add to my personal collection.
My point, which you conveniently elided, is that the contemporary scene
is heterogeneous and that, if one only bothers searching a bit, one
may indeed find "there's something for just about everyone" and that
the claims of staunch know-nothing-about-it conservatives and of
apologists for the avant-garde are equally unreliable.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
--Allan Burns
Roger Lustig
>As a simple listener and not a music professional, it seems to me that
>clinging to the past may serve a very basic need and has reasons for
>existing.
>There was much commonality among the baroque, classical and romantic
>works. (Techniques of development, tonality, harmony, rythmic
>progression, etc.) This is true at least for works within each of these
>styles. Each of these works drew on the listener's memory of other
>music and the common understanding of what music "should" be. It just
>seems to me that 20th-Cent. styles mostly don't do this and you're
>required to learn a whole new paradigm for listening to each piece.
And yet, 20thC music is often *about* the music of the past; by reference,
allusion, contrast, etc. The listener's memory of other music is quite
important, and obviously so. Think of Schoenberg, Ives, Bartok,
Stravinsky, even Boulez (vis-a-vis Debussy).
>This is not only inefficient but also makes the structure of musical
>ideas very shallow.
Lovers of this music would disagree rather strongly. What's shallow about
Wozzeck?
>It seems that there's something in the human
>psyche that genuinely respects deeper structures such as science and
>pre-20th-Cent. music. (Science being the art of minimizing one's
>effort required to deal with phenomena by recognizing as much structure
>as possible.)
And yet most instances of the human psyche have little use for science;
and most people on this earth don't spend all that much time on Western
classical music. Let's not generalize *too* hard, hm?
>From a superficial survey of 20th-Cent. music, it seems that it has
>failed to agree on, set up and popularize a new set of commonalities
>between different works. It was not that people were too reluctant
>to adapt to a new style, it was more like that "style" has never been
>one.
Was there ever an intent to set up a global style? Could there be
such a style, with the interest in "classical" music changing drastically
in its nature? Keep in mind that one of the driving forces was a lack
of interest in new music that had already been manifesting itself for
some time.
>People may be reluctant, but that shouldn't be enough to kill
>a genre of music, given Western civilization's penchant for things
>"revolutionary" and the successes of older styles with a less developed
>mass media.
Nobody's killed anything. Tonal music is still being written--as always.
What killed interest in new music was in place long before they started
writing the yucky stuff.
Roger
Karl Wee
>In article <1993Oct7.1...@das.harvard.edu>, kw...@speed.harvard.edu (Karl
>Wee) says:
>>
>>There was much commonality among the baroque, classical and romantic
>>works. (Techniques of development, tonality, harmony, rythmic
>>progression, etc.) This is true at least for works within each of these
>>styles. Each of these works drew on the listener's memory of other
>>music and the common understanding of what music "should" be. It just
>>seems to me that 20th-Cent. styles mostly don't do this and you're
>>required to learn a whole new paradigm for listening to each piece.
>
>Repetition can quickly become tedious, but here goes. First of all,
Drawing on something is different from repetition. It's simply basing
a musical idea on what you know your listener already knows, and building
on it.
>the catch-all phrase "20th C music," as someone pointed out previously,
>is simply meaningless. Compositional styles in the 20th C have been
>heterogeneous, to say the least. If there is no 20th C music you
>have found that you like, you probably haven't heard much.
Well, the phrase WAS used by me to refer to the collection of these
heterogeneous styles. I didn't try all of them and decide not to like
each of them, because I didn't have the time. I tried
some of them and simply said, "f*ck this!". But you agree that they
lack commonality, right? At least I got this point right. One has to
act under uncertainty anyway, because one doesn't have infinite time
and memory.
>But, look: Mahler, Strauss, Sibelius, Nielsen, Busoni, Vaughan
>Williams, Rachmaninov, Ravel, Falla--these guys are all "friendly,"
>all part of the 20th C, too.....
>Now, there have also been more "radical" or "prgressive" developments,
>but these too are continuous with the past (as, for instance,
>Schoenberg and Stravinsky are). Even the most radical experiments
>show the influence of the past, for radical innovation and
>originality generally only emerge when tradition becomes a burden.
Of course, it's relative. These works have much LESS commonality than
pre-20th Cent. music did.
It's interesting you mentioned "when tradition becomes a burden". "Burden"
for whom? The point of burden may be different for composers vs. the
average listener. Under what criterion of music quality? Have musicians
changed the criterion to "newness" from "emotional appeal", for example?
>But . . .
>The notion of a "crisis" in contemporary composition seems to me
>an instance of the boy crying wolf. How many of the "music lovers"
>and journalists who moan about the current "situation" have
>bothered to familiarize themselves with a wide swath of recent
>music?
Perhaps this points to the core of the debate. I think an ideal analogy
can be made thus: consider 20th-Cent. composers as poets who are each
inventing his own language and writing poetry in that language. Some poetry
may indeed be rich and beautiful, if you know their respective languages well.
But for the average person, who has time for all this? If yuo have to
learn a new language for every poet, would it not be reasonable to say
"f*ck this!"? Now, it may indeed be necessary for each poet to invent a
new language to express his special, novel ideas. But who knows? Maybe
it's all arrogance! Maybe it's all hiding incompetence behind technical
barriers! But people sure as hell don't have the time
and energy to investigate this for a pastime. So the enterprise
is almost doomed to failure (in a "popular" sense) from the beginning.
Now is this good or bad? Who knows? But you sure have to agree that
it's the reasonable thing for people to do.
>I usually see only careless generalizations made on the
>basis of X piece by Stockhausen or Y piece by Druckman--but, if
>you don't like this kind of thing, it's certainly not the only
>"show in town." (Go listen to Diamond, Husa, Simpson, Rochberg,
>Lloyd, Rzewski, recent Maxwell Davies, Zwillich, Adams, Albert,
>Kerniss, and the list goes on . . .)
>
>To be fair, the situation is sometimes exascerbated by the "other
>side" when its spokesmen (in the voices, ironically enough, of
>Matthew Arnold and Van Wyck Brooks) exhort the "philistines" or
>the "lowbrows," or when music "history" irresponsibly falls into
>a linear history of development (following a scientific, progressive
>paradigm alien to the arts), which inevitably becomes merely a
>history of the avant-garde.
>
>My advice is this: stop complaining, start listening--to a wide
>variety of stuff and with an "open mind."
After wasting away 30% of my leisure time for the next 20 years,
perhaps I'll find something I really like.
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------
>--Allan Burns
Roger Lustig
>In article <93280.12...@psuvm.psu.edu> <AD...@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
>>In article <1993Oct7.1...@das.harvard.edu>, kw...@speed.harvard.edu (Karl
>>Wee) says:
>>>There was much commonality among the baroque, classical and romantic
>>>works. (Techniques of development, tonality, harmony, rythmic
>>>progression, etc.) This is true at least for works within each of these
>>>styles. Each of these works drew on the listener's memory of other
>>>music and the common understanding of what music "should" be. It just
>>>seems to me that 20th-Cent. styles mostly don't do this and you're
>>>required to learn a whole new paradigm for listening to each piece.
>>Repetition can quickly become tedious, but here goes. First of all,
>Drawing on something is different from repetition. It's simply basing
>a musical idea on what you know your listener already knows, and building
>on it.
Do you suppose that 20thC composers didn't do that? That they were
unaware of what people knew and listened to? Remember, one may also
draw on something by being as different from it as possible; that is
in no way the same as ignoring the "influence." Think of 1830, when
composers tried to move drastically *away* from Beethoven.
>>the catch-all phrase "20th C music," as someone pointed out previously,
>>is simply meaningless. Compositional styles in the 20th C have been
>>heterogeneous, to say the least. If there is no 20th C music you
>>have found that you like, you probably haven't heard much.
>Well, the phrase WAS used by me to refer to the collection of these
>heterogeneous styles. I didn't try all of them and decide not to like
>each of them, because I didn't have the time. I tried
>some of them and simply said, "f*ck this!". But you agree that they
>lack commonality, right? At least I got this point right. One has to
Well, it wuld still be useful to know what pieces you're talking about.
But trying a few and rejecting the whole thing makes the point quite
effectively: we don't live in the world of that older music anymore.
One *can* try all kinds of different styles nowadays. Our world
is *based* on wide choices. There are all kinds of art forms that
didn't even exist a century ago, and we have access to far more
variety within walking distance (or at home) than the inhabitants of
gerat cities might expect to see in five year back then.
That limitation, that restriction, was the source of the "commonality"
you speak of.
>act under uncertainty anyway, because one doesn't have infinite time
>and memory.
Right, which makes complaining about the great diversification an
odd attitude.
>>But, look: Mahler, Strauss, Sibelius, Nielsen, Busoni, Vaughan
>>Williams, Rachmaninov, Ravel, Falla--these guys are all "friendly,"
>>all part of the 20th C, too.....
>>Now, there have also been more "radical" or "prgressive" developments,
>>but these too are continuous with the past (as, for instance,
>>Schoenberg and Stravinsky are). Even the most radical experiments
>>show the influence of the past, for radical innovation and
>>originality generally only emerge when tradition becomes a burden.
>Of course, it's relative. These works have much LESS commonality than
>pre-20th Cent. music did.
Commonality with what? With each other? Perhaps. Perhaps composers
decided that there were new and different things they wished to say,
things that the old "common" ways didn't allow them to do.
>It's interesting you mentioned "when tradition becomes a burden". "Burden"
>for whom? The point of burden may be different for composers vs. the
>average listener. Under what criterion of music quality? Have musicians
>changed the criterion to "newness" from "emotional appeal", for example?
No.
The *audience* set the criterion of tradition, to a lasrge extent. By
1900, 80% of the music on concert programswas by dead people. The audience
*imposed* a burden on the composers: write music that it both progressive
and very much like the "tradition" by which we have come to define music.
It must be great like beethoven's and forward-looking as well.
To this, not a few composers said, "Fuck it." Asterisks ad libitum.
They knew that this tension between newness and tradition was just fine
with the audience, but a burden on *them*; it was an impossible task.
Brahms had already seen that, and wrote symphonies that progressively
renounced the Beethovenian mantle.
As for the criterion of quality, suffice it to say that composers have
usually been far more interested in quality than large portions of their
audiences.
>>But . . .
>>The notion of a "crisis" in contemporary composition seems to me
>>an instance of the boy crying wolf. How many of the "music lovers"
>>and journalists who moan about the current "situation" have
>>bothered to familiarize themselves with a wide swath of recent
>>music?
>Perhaps this points to the core of the debate. I think an ideal analogy
>can be made thus: consider 20th-Cent. composers as poets who are each
>inventing his own language and writing poetry in that language. Some poetry
*Terrible* analogy. The languages they invent *are* the poetry. This
is the difference. And it's been the difference for far longer than
you think; Wagner reinvented his language five or six times, for instance.
>may indeed be rich and beautiful, if you know their respective languages well.
>But for the average person, who has time for all this?
the average person has *never* been the measure of classical music. Why
impose such a standard now? "Average people" have not, in general,
flocked to the new and difficult in music at any time.
>If yuo have to
>learn a new language for every poet, would it not be reasonable to say
>"f*ck this!"?
Only if you don't care much about poetry. But it's only an analogy,
and not much of one: musical language *is* its own poetry. (And many
great poems *do* require you to learn their language first, from
Milton to Pound.)
>Now, it may indeed be necessary for each poet to invent a
>new language to express his special, novel ideas. But who knows? Maybe
>it's all arrogance! Maybe it's all hiding incompetence behind technical
>barriers! But people sure as hell don't have the time
>and energy to investigate this for a pastime. So the enterprise
>is almost doomed to failure (in a "popular" sense) from the beginning.
And yet some of the new music *is* popular. How is that? Bartok invented
*his* own musical language(s), and so did Shostakovich. Why are they
so popular?
"Maybe it's all arrogance and incompetence!" You'd feel better if it
were, Im sure, but do you really want your great music composed
by modest composers? Arrogance is practically a prerequisite for
the job, and always has been.
And in a diversified world, "people" sure as hell don'thave the
time to investigate *anything* -- or at least, not all of them.
Some people do. The market for mew music isn't the universal one
that "classical" music used to have; but why blame the music?
>Now is this good or bad? Who knows? But you sure have to agree that
>it's the reasonable thing for people to do.
No, I do not. I can only point out that it's unreasonable to
*expect* all people to be interested in any one art form at all.
>>I usually see only careless generalizations made on the
>>basis of X piece by Stockhausen or Y piece by Druckman--but, if
>>you don't like this kind of thing, it's certainly not the only
>>"show in town." (Go listen to Diamond, Husa, Simpson, Rochberg,
>>Lloyd, Rzewski, recent Maxwell Davies, Zwillich, Adams, Albert,
>>Kerniss, and the list goes on . . .)
>>To be fair, the situation is sometimes exascerbated by the "other
>>side" when its spokesmen (in the voices, ironically enough, of
>>Matthew Arnold and Van Wyck Brooks) exhort the "philistines" or
>>the "lowbrows," or when music "history" irresponsibly falls into
>>a linear history of development (following a scientific, progressive
>>paradigm alien to the arts), which inevitably becomes merely a
>>history of the avant-garde.
>>My advice is this: stop complaining, start listening--to a wide
>>variety of stuff and with an "open mind."
>After wasting away 30% of my leisure time for the next 20 years,
>perhaps I'll find something I really like.
Well, if you consider active, intellectual engagement with music
a waste of your precious leisure time, why not just go fishing?
For that matter, just what constitutes a *waste* of leisure time?
What an odd concept.
Roger
AD...@psuvm.psu.edu
I'd like to note a few things to set records straight.
In article <1993Oct9.0...@das.harvard.edu>, kw...@speed.harvard.edu (Karl
Wee) says:
>
>>
>>Repetition can quickly become tedious, but here goes. First of all,
>
>Drawing on something is different from repetition. It's simply basing
>a musical idea on what you know your listener already knows, and building
>on it.
"Repetition" here means, simply, repetition of old arguments that
we should all have memorized by now; it's not a musical judgment.
>
>It's interesting you mentioned "when tradition becomes a burden". "Burden"
>for whom? The point of burden may be different for composers vs. the
>average listener. Under what criterion of music quality? Have musicians
>changed the criterion to "newness" from "emotional appeal", for example?
"Burden" here was an allusion to W. J. Bate's book _The Burden of the
Past and the English Poet_. My point here is similar to one raised in
literary circles by Bate and Harold Bloom, namely that the strength of
a continuous "canonical" tradition becomes something of an impediment to
artists and forces them to seek whatever unused expressive materials and
techniques that are left to them. I think it is useful to see some of
the more extreme musical experiments of this century (such as those
perpetrated by Cage and Stockhausen, etc.) in this light. It helps
"make sense" of them--and perhaps allows one to extend that sympathy
which is a prerequisite to all "responsible" critical judgment--even
if that judgment, ultimately, is negative.
>>But . . .
>>The notion of a "crisis" in contemporary composition seems to me
>>an instance of the boy crying wolf. How many of the "music lovers"
>>and journalists who moan about the current "situation" have
>>bothered to familiarize themselves with a wide swath of recent
>>music?
>
>Perhaps this points to the core of the debate. I think an ideal analogy
>can be made thus: consider 20th-Cent. composers as poets who are each
>inventing his own language and writing poetry in that language.
Roger already noted this was a poor analogy. What poet has ever
created his or her own language? Music might be conceived of as a
"language," but no 20th C composer invented it; many have simply
used it in innovative ways.
>But for the average person, who has time for all this? If yuo have to
>learn a new language for every poet, would it not be reasonable to say
>"f*ck this!"? Now, it may indeed be necessary for each poet to invent a
>new language to express his special, novel ideas. But who knows? Maybe
>it's all arrogance! Maybe it's all hiding incompetence behind technical
>barriers! But people sure as hell don't have the time
>and energy to investigate this for a pastime. So the enterprise
>is almost doomed to failure (in a "popular" sense) from the beginning.
>Now is this good or bad? Who knows? But you sure have to agree that
>it's the reasonable thing for people to do.
This seems pretty murky to me. What "people" are you talking about?
I want specifics! (incl. specific composers, pieces of music, etc.).
Otherwise you're just flailing in the void. ("Reasonable"? Ha!)
>>I usually see only careless generalizations made on the
>>basis of X piece by Stockhausen or Y piece by Druckman--but, if
>>you don't like this kind of thing, it's certainly not the only
>>"show in town." (Go listen to Diamond, Husa, Simpson, Rochberg,
>>Lloyd, Rzewski, recent Maxwell Davies, Zwillich, Adams, Albert,
>>Kerniss, and the list goes on . . .)
>>
>>To be fair, the situation is sometimes exascerbated by the "other
>>side" when its spokesmen (in the voices, ironically enough, of
>>Matthew Arnold and Van Wyck Brooks) exhort the "philistines" or
>>the "lowbrows," or when music "history" irresponsibly falls into
>>a linear history of development (following a scientific, progressive
>>paradigm alien to the arts), which inevitably becomes merely a
>>history of the avant-garde.
>>
>>My advice is this: stop complaining, start listening--to a wide
>>variety of stuff and with an "open mind."
>
>After wasting away 30% of my leisure time for the next 20 years,
>perhaps I'll find something I really like.
With a pathetic attitude like this, why do you imagine anyone should
bother with your musical opinions at all? Listening to music is a
process of discovery. If you close yourself off from that, at least
have the decency to admit you've become a stuffy curmudgeon who knows
what he likes and likes what he knows. But to pass this off as an
"argument" here on r.m.c. is sheer impudence, an advertisement of
your own lassitude masked as a sardonic rejoinder. If more music
listeners had an attitude like this, maybe composers would have just
given up the effort with Gregorian chants.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
--Allan Burns
Jeff Winslow
>can be made thus: consider 20th-Cent. composers as poets who are each
>inventing his own language and writing poetry in that language. Some poetry
>may indeed be rich and beautiful, if you know their respective languages well.
>But for the average person, who has time for all this?
The average person doesn't read poetry, and doesn't listen to or care much
about any kind of classical music. I don't understand your fascination
with the average person, and I don't understand how what such a person
might or might not like is at all relevant to anything that might be
reasonably discussed on this newsgroup.
I don't see anything wrong with any of this, either. But a point is, if
they aren't familiar with something, where do they get off moaning about it?
> If yuo have to
>learn a new language for every poet, would it not be reasonable to say
>"f*ck this!"?
Possibly. And possibly those who seem to have little trouble learning
would be entirely reasonable in withholding their sympathy, yes?
And it's nothing so complicated. You don't have to learn grammar, syntax,
ecch. You only have to become familiar with a sound, and want to hear
something new, not necessarily in that order. Please pay no attention
to those who go on and on about such and such kind of music being
"cerebral" or "intellectual" - in the unlikely event that they actually
know what they're talking about, they're talking about qualities in
music *in addition* to those usually found there.
> But people sure as hell don't have the time
>and energy to investigate this for a pastime. So the enterprise
>is almost doomed to failure (in a "popular" sense) from the beginning.
Well yes, but hamburger isn't a very good building material, either.
Isn't it odd how most people learn how to do only a few things well, but
yet somehow there is a myriad of things out there that somebody is doing
well. Lose this average person(a). (S)he ain't worth it.
Jeff Winslow
Karl Wee
>In article <1993Oct9.0...@das.harvard.edu> kw...@speed.harvard.edu (Karl Wee) writes:
>>In article <93280.12...@psuvm.psu.edu> <AD...@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
>>>In article <1993Oct7.1...@das.harvard.edu>, kw...@speed.harvard.edu (Karl
>>>Wee) says:
>
>>>>There was much commonality among the baroque, classical and romantic
>>>>works. (Techniques of development, tonality, harmony, rythmic
>>>>progression, etc.) This is true at least for works within each of these
>>>>styles. Each of these works drew on the listener's memory of other
>>>>music and the common understanding of what music "should" be. It just
>>>>seems to me that 20th-Cent. styles mostly don't do this and you're
>>>>required to learn a whole new paradigm for listening to each piece.
>
>>>Repetition can quickly become tedious, but here goes. First of all,
>
>>Drawing on something is different from repetition. It's simply basing
>>a musical idea on what you know your listener already knows, and building
>>on it.
>
>Do you suppose that 20thC composers didn't do that? That they were
>unaware of what people knew and listened to? Remember, one may also
>draw on something by being as different from it as possible; that is
>in no way the same as ignoring the "influence." Think of 1830, when
>composers tried to move drastically *away* from Beethoven.
Drastically moving away from something being equal to being influenced
by that thing is merely academically true. Do you think people really
enjoy music that's radically different from what they're used
to and recognize the "influence" as well as enjoy it as a further
development?
>
>>>the catch-all phrase "20th C music," as someone pointed out previously,
>>>is simply meaningless. Compositional styles in the 20th C have been
>>>heterogeneous, to say the least. If there is no 20th C music you
>>>have found that you like, you probably haven't heard much.
>
>>Well, the phrase WAS used by me to refer to the collection of these
>>heterogeneous styles. I didn't try all of them and decide not to like
>>each of them, because I didn't have the time. I tried
>>some of them and simply said, "f*ck this!". But you agree that they
>>lack commonality, right? At least I got this point right. One has to
>
>Well, it wuld still be useful to know what pieces you're talking about.
I've listened to Berg, Schoenburg, Piston and many others who I don't recall
on account of their failing to interest me after giving them a good try.
The only piece I remember faintly liking was Wozzeck. My decision with
regard to modern music is that I won't waste any moretime with it unless
it's strongly recommended by someone who knows the piece. But even with
something as established as the Rite of Spring and Petruchka and which
I'm very familiar with, the music is only interesting in an academic
way.
>
>But trying a few and rejecting the whole thing makes the point quite
>effectively: we don't live in the world of that older music anymore.
>One *can* try all kinds of different styles nowadays. Our world
>is *based* on wide choices. There are all kinds of art forms that
>didn't even exist a century ago, and we have access to far more
>variety within walking distance (or at home) than the inhabitants of
>gerat cities might expect to see in five year back then.
>
>That limitation, that restriction, was the source of the "commonality"
>you speak of.
You forgot a new limitation imposed by modern life: time. For this reason
it would quite make macroscopic sense for there to be only a small and
slowing growing core of commonly agreed good music. But, alas, most
modern musicians are not content with any degree of mediocrity, so
they may have destroyed the very standards used for judgment by writing
radically different music. Gone are the days when most musicians simply
(willingly or unwillingly) wrote music that re-inforced people's notion
of musical norm so that a few geniuses were able to stand on their
shoulders by writing revolutionary music. Every modern musician wants
to be a revolutionary, and the result is that we may never see truly
great music again. I'm not a proponent of censorship, but only saying
this is indeed a sad state of affairs. However, it must be remembered
that most academic musicians are subsidized by taxes in one way or
another.
>
>>act under uncertainty anyway, because one doesn't have infinite time
>>and memory.
>
>Right, which makes complaining about the great diversification an
>odd attitude.
???
>>>But, look: Mahler, Strauss, Sibelius, Nielsen, Busoni, Vaughan
>>>Williams, Rachmaninov, Ravel, Falla--these guys are all "friendly,"
>>>all part of the 20th C, too.....
>
>>>Now, there have also been more "radical" or "prgressive" developments,
>>>but these too are continuous with the past (as, for instance,
>>>Schoenberg and Stravinsky are). Even the most radical experiments
>>>show the influence of the past, for radical innovation and
>>>originality generally only emerge when tradition becomes a burden.
>
>>Of course, it's relative. These works have much LESS commonality than
>>pre-20th Cent. music did.
>
>Commonality with what? With each other? Perhaps. Perhaps composers
>decided that there were new and different things they wished to say,
>things that the old "common" ways didn't allow them to do.
With each other. By diverging so radically with each other, they've
fragmented the industry and made everybody miserable.
>
>>It's interesting you mentioned "when tradition becomes a burden". "Burden"
>>for whom? The point of burden may be different for composers vs. the
>>average listener. Under what criterion of music quality? Have musicians
>>changed the criterion to "newness" from "emotional appeal", for example?
>
>No.
>
>The *audience* set the criterion of tradition, to a lasrge extent. By
>1900, 80% of the music on concert programswas by dead people. The audience
>*imposed* a burden on the composers: write music that it both progressive
>and very much like the "tradition" by which we have come to define music.
>It must be great like beethoven's and forward-looking as well.
>
>To this, not a few composers said, "Fuck it." Asterisks ad libitum.
>They knew that this tension between newness and tradition was just fine
>with the audience, but a burden on *them*; it was an impossible task.
>Brahms had already seen that, and wrote symphonies that progressively
>renounced the Beethovenian mantle.
>
>As for the criterion of quality, suffice it to say that composers have
>usually been far more interested in quality than large portions of their
>audiences.
Judging from the postings in this group, it seems that the innate
Western worship of "newness", "knowledg" (in the form of knowing
arcane but insignificant pieces of complex information) is the un-
questioned ethos. If this is any reflection of musicians'attitudes,
perhaps it's not difficult to see why they write such new music. Perhaps
that's their definition of "quality", but it sure isn't mine.
>
>>>But . . .
>>>The notion of a "crisis" in contemporary composition seems to me
>>>an instance of the boy crying wolf. How many of the "music lovers"
>>>and journalists who moan about the current "situation" have
>>>bothered to familiarize themselves with a wide swath of recent
>>>music?
>
>>Perhaps this points to the core of the debate. I think an ideal analogy
>>can be made thus: consider 20th-Cent. composers as poets who are each
>>inventing his own language and writing poetry in that language. Some poetry
>
>*Terrible* analogy. The languages they invent *are* the poetry. This
So all romantic music is the same poem? All baroque music is another?
>is the difference. And it's been the difference for far longer than
>you think; Wagner reinvented his language five or six times, for instance.
>
>>may indeed be rich and beautiful, if you know their respective languages well.
>>But for the average person, who has time for all this?
>
>the average person has *never* been the measure of classical music. Why
>impose such a standard now? "Average people" have not, in general,
>flocked to the new and difficult in music at any time.
Nobody is suggesting that we impose any standard on composers. Also, the
average person doesn't have to time to investigate the quality of most
modern music. However, musicians are supported by the public (at least
partially) and they SHOULD ask themselves if their music is simply
disguised crap.
>
>>If yuo have to
>>learn a new language for every poet, would it not be reasonable to say
>>"f*ck this!"?
>
>Only if you don't care much about poetry. But it's only an analogy,
>and not much of one: musical language *is* its own poetry. (And many
>great poems *do* require you to learn their language first, from
>Milton to Pound.)
>>Now, it may indeed be necessary for each poet to invent a
>>new language to express his special, novel ideas. But who knows? Maybe
>>it's all arrogance! Maybe it's all hiding incompetence behind technical
>>barriers! But people sure as hell don't have the time
>>and energy to investigate this for a pastime. So the enterprise
>>is almost doomed to failure (in a "popular" sense) from the beginning.
>
>And yet some of the new music *is* popular. How is that? Bartok invented
>*his* own musical language(s), and so did Shostakovich. Why are they
>so popular?
The enterprise was still doomed to failure, by and large. And your use
of such old people as your examples is illustrative of that.
>"Maybe it's all arrogance and incompetence!" You'd feel better if it
>were, Im sure,
Quite the contrary. I'd be more than jubillant if I could tell that
it were not. What makes you think you can read my mind?
>but do you really want your great music composed
>by modest composers? Arrogance is practically a prerequisite for
>the job, and always has been.
Arrogance MAY be a necessary condition for greatness, but is certainly
not a sufficient one.
>And in a diversified world, "people" sure as hell don'thave the
>time to investigate *anything* -- or at least, not all of them.
>Some people do. The market for mew music isn't the universal one
>that "classical" music used to have; but why blame the music?
So, if we want to change this sad state of affairs, who should change
themselves first?
>>Now is this good or bad? Who knows? But you sure have to agree that
>>it's the reasonable thing for people to do.
>
>No, I do not. I can only point out that it's unreasonable to
>*expect* all people to be interested in any one art form at all.
????
>>>I usually see only careless generalizations made on the
>>>basis of X piece by Stockhausen or Y piece by Druckman--but, if
>>>you don't like this kind of thing, it's certainly not the only
>>>"show in town." (Go listen to Diamond, Husa, Simpson, Rochberg,
>>>Lloyd, Rzewski, recent Maxwell Davies, Zwillich, Adams, Albert,
>>>Kerniss, and the list goes on . . .)
>
>>>To be fair, the situation is sometimes exascerbated by the "other
>>>side" when its spokesmen (in the voices, ironically enough, of
>>>Matthew Arnold and Van Wyck Brooks) exhort the "philistines" or
>>>the "lowbrows," or when music "history" irresponsibly falls into
>>>a linear history of development (following a scientific, progressive
>>>paradigm alien to the arts), which inevitably becomes merely a
>>>history of the avant-garde.
>
>>>My advice is this: stop complaining, start listening--to a wide
>>>variety of stuff and with an "open mind."
>
>>After wasting away 30% of my leisure time for the next 20 years,
>>perhaps I'll find something I really like.
>
>Well, if you consider active, intellectual engagement with music
>a waste of your precious leisure time, why not just go fishing?
I'd be much happier if there were worthwhile musical adventures
available to me. I'd much love to be one of the people who eagerly
waited for each Brahms symphony to come out, for example.
>
>For that matter, just what constitutes a *waste* of leisure time?
>What an odd concept.
Not if you throw away semantics and think about it.
>
>Roger
>
Karl Wee
>Roger has already adequately responded to this stuff, but
>I'd like to note a few things to set records straight.
>
>In article <1993Oct9.0...@das.harvard.edu>, kw...@speed.harvard.edu (Karl
>Wee) says:
>>
>>It's interesting you mentioned "when tradition becomes a burden". "Burden"
>>for whom? The point of burden may be different for composers vs. the
>>average listener. Under what criterion of music quality? Have musicians
>>changed the criterion to "newness" from "emotional appeal", for example?
>
>"Burden" here was an allusion to W. J. Bate's book _The Burden of the
>Past and the English Poet_. My point here is similar to one raised in
>literary circles by Bate and Harold Bloom, namely that the strength of
>a continuous "canonical" tradition becomes something of an impediment to
Here's the loaded word: "impediment". This word implicitly assumes a
certain standard of quality. What is this standard? Has it been
corrupted to newness for the sake of newness? That was my question.
>artists and forces them to seek whatever unused expressive materials and
>techniques that are left to them. I think it is useful to see some of
>the more extreme musical experiments of this century (such as those
>perpetrated by Cage and Stockhausen, etc.) in this light. It helps
>"make sense" of them--and perhaps allows one to extend that sympathy
>which is a prerequisite to all "responsible" critical judgment--even
>if that judgment, ultimately, is negative.
Why should anybody have sympathy with a person who composes a "symphony"
of mashed-up radio programs? This kind of work, plus much of what I
see in the Guggenheim Museum of Modern Art, should be rejected
immediately by any sensible person! But no, the academics haveto
talk ad nauseum about their value. (Why not use
street traffic as another unused expressive technique for music? I'm an
instant musician and innovator!) I appeal to nothing other than simple
common sense,which seems to be lacking in academic circles of art
these days.
>
>>>But . . .
>>>The notion of a "crisis" in contemporary composition seems to me
>>>an instance of the boy crying wolf. How many of the "music lovers"
>>>and journalists who moan about the current "situation" have
>>>bothered to familiarize themselves with a wide swath of recent
>>>music?
>>
>>Perhaps this points to the core of the debate. I think an ideal analogy
>>can be made thus: consider 20th-Cent. composers as poets who are each
>>inventing his own language and writing poetry in that language.
>
>Roger already noted this was a poor analogy. What poet has ever
>created his or her own language?
Irrelevant. Perhaps poets have more sense than musicians?
>Music might be conceived of as a
>"language," but no 20th C composer invented it; many have simply
>used it in innovative ways.
>
>>But for the average person, who has time for all this? If yuo have to
>>learn a new language for every poet, would it not be reasonable to say
>>"f*ck this!"? Now, it may indeed be necessary for each poet to invent a
>>new language to express his special, novel ideas. But who knows? Maybe
>>it's all arrogance! Maybe it's all hiding incompetence behind technical
>>barriers! But people sure as hell don't have the time
>>and energy to investigate this for a pastime. So the enterprise
>>is almost doomed to failure (in a "popular" sense) from the beginning.
>>Now is this good or bad? Who knows? But you sure have to agree that
>>it's the reasonable thing for people to do.
>
>This seems pretty murky to me. What "people" are you talking about?
>I want specifics! (incl. specific composers, pieces of music, etc.).
>Otherwise you're just flailing in the void. ("Reasonable"? Ha!)
What I said was completely self-explanatory.
>>After wasting away 30% of my leisure time for the next 20 years,
>>perhaps I'll find something I really like.
>
>With a pathetic attitude like this, why do you imagine anyone should
>bother with your musical opinions at all? Listening to music is a
>process of discovery. If you close yourself off from that, at least
>have the decency to admit you've become a stuffy curmudgeon who knows
>what he likes and likes what he knows. But to pass this off as an
>"argument" here on r.m.c. is sheer impudence, an advertisement of
>your own lassitude masked as a sardonic rejoinder. If more music
>listeners had an attitude like this, maybe composers would have just
>given up the effort with Gregorian chants.
First of all, you can't tell me or anyone what our attitudes "should"
be. I have closed myself to modern music because I regard it as
not worthy of the risk I take in wasted time, based on my, admittedly
limited, experience. This IS an argument in the sense that it
brings out the real issues in music appreciation with regard to limited
time resources.
Time, as I've said many times in various forms, is the key issue,
and the key argument, macroscopically, against over-diversity. Over-
diversity creates a lack of standards of judgment, an opportunity to
pass off dirt as unappreciated good work, and hence a general lack of
interest. The lack of general interest is fairly apparent already.
You have no right to call anything lassitude masked as a sardonic
rejoiner until you've thought about it. This is an example.
Karl Wee
Then I propose removing ALL forms direct and indirect subsidies by
taxpayers for the writing of "intellectual" music. Sounds fair?
AD...@psuvm.psu.edu
(Karl Wee) says:
>
>
>First of all, you can't tell me or anyone what our attitudes "should"
>be. I have closed myself to modern music because I regard it as
>not worthy of the risk I take in wasted time, based on my, admittedly
>limited, experience. This IS an argument in the sense that it
>brings out the real issues in music appreciation with regard to limited
>time resources.
Look, I don't care what your attitude is; but I reserve the right
to call pathetic what I think is pathetic. Judging music without
even bothering to listen to it is pathetic in my book.
>Time, as I've said many times in various forms, is the key issue,
>and the key argument, macroscopically, against over-diversity. Over-
>diversity creates a lack of standards of judgment, an opportunity to
>pass off dirt as unappreciated good work, and hence a general lack of
>interest. The lack of general interest is fairly apparent already.
Time may be the key issue insofar as this "argument" is concerned.
I certainly consider it a waste of my time. Listening to Diamond,
Simpson, Adams (etc.--the whole list you don't even want to bother
with) is, OTOH, not a waste of my time. One of these days I hope
you catch part of a Diamond symphony on FM, like it before you know
what you're listening to, and then feel just a bit foolish.
>You have no right to call anything lassitude masked as a sardonic
>rejoiner until you've thought about it. This is an example.
I have a right to call a spade a spade--and will continue to do so.
But let me make it clear I have nothing more to say on this issue,
at least nothing that will be directed at someone who can't even
be bothered to find out something about what he's "arguing" against.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
--Allan Burns
Todd Michel McComb
>Jeff Winslow writes:
>>Isn't it odd how most people learn how to do only a few things well, but
>>yet somehow there is a myriad of things out there that somebody is doing
>>well. Lose this average person(a). (S)he ain't worth it.
>Then I propose removing ALL forms direct and indirect subsidies by
>taxpayers for the writing of "intellectual" music. Sounds fair?
Sure, go for it. And while you're at it eliminate ALL of the government
subsidies that directly benefit only a minority of the population, especially
the money that never leaves the politicians' pockets. That should put our
fiscal house in order pretty fast, particularly once those trillions of
dollars going to artists are out of the budget. I'd vote for the expanded
measure.
T. M. McComb
Jerry Young
kw...@speed.harvard.edu writes:
>Then I propose removing ALL forms direct and indirect subsidies by
>taxpayers for the writing of "intellectual" music. Sounds fair?
Then are you also willing to add "performing" to your criteria and then
let someone else define "intellectual?" I don't know if yours is "a
modest proposal" or if you are being serious, but I'll bet there are
plenty of people who would say that classical music (Tchaikovsky,
Puccini, anyone with music recorded by Deutsche Grammophon) is
intellectual and they don't have the time to have to understand its
special language(s).
I am not proposing that the answer should be "no" to both
(writing/performing) or "yes" to both, but I can't think of why the
answer shouldn't be the same for both.
Jerry
Jeff Beer
Karl Wee <kw...@speed.harvard.edu> wrote:
>it's strongly recommended by someone who knows the piece. But even with
>something as established as the Rite of Spring and Petruchka and which
>I'm very familiar with, the music is only interesting in an academic
>way.
>>
>Western worship of "newness", "knowledg" (in the form of knowing
>arcane but insignificant pieces of complex information) is the un-
>questioned ethos. If this is any reflection of musicians'attitudes,
>perhaps it's not difficult to see why they write such new music. Perhaps
>that's their definition of "quality", but it sure isn't mine.
>
>partially) and they SHOULD ask themselves if their music is simply
>disguised crap.
Did it ever occur to you that the people that write, play, and listen to
the new music do so because they can hear it?
The last orchestra concert I saw was a Beethoven Violin Concerto, a
Wagner overture, and Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra. For me,
the Beethoven was a snorer (and I like his 5th, 6th, and 7th symphonies,
his string trios, his late quartets, and much of his piano music a lot),
the Wagner was ok, but relatively lightweight, but the Schoenberg kept
my at the edge of my seat with its dynamics and subtleties.
Who knows why some people hate one kind of music so much, and like
others. But I can assure you, there are people who listen to the new
music, and it isn't the academic excercise as the Stravinsky you
mentioned is unfortunately for you.
Jeff
Todd Michel McComb
>on account of their failing to interest me after giving them a good try.
>The only piece I remember faintly liking was Wozzeck. My decision with
>regard to modern music is that I won't waste any moretime with it unless
>it's strongly recommended by someone who knows the piece. But even with
>something as established as the Rite of Spring and Petruchka and which
>I'm very familiar with, the music is only interesting in an academic
>way.
Someone who knows the piece and knows you, I presume. While I am very
enthusiastic about modern music in general, I am not especially fond of
any of this music you have mentioned -- I don't care for Stavinsky or
Piston at all, Schoenberg can be interesting sometimes but in the end
what he is expressing is not of particular relevance to *me*, and then
Berg had his life truncated at the peak of his powers. The Lyric Suite
does have appeal for me, though.
>You forgot a new limitation imposed by modern life: time. For this reason
>it would quite make macroscopic sense for there to be only a small and
>slowing growing core of commonly agreed good music. But, alas, most
>modern musicians are not content with any degree of mediocrity, so
>they may have destroyed the very standards used for judgment by writing
>radically different music. Gone are the days when most musicians simply
>(willingly or unwillingly) wrote music that re-inforced people's notion
>of musical norm so that a few geniuses were able to stand on their
>shoulders by writing revolutionary music. Every modern musician wants
>to be a revolutionary, and the result is that we may never see truly
>great music again. I'm not a proponent of censorship, but only saying
>this is indeed a sad state of affairs. However, it must be remembered
>that most academic musicians are subsidized by taxes in one way or
>another.
I do not understand how time is any more of a limitation in modern life
than it ever was. I believe there are still 24 hours in a day, and if
anything people's lifespans have expanded. Perhaps you refer to the
hectic pace which is so much an expected part of so many careers, but one
can always turn elsewhere if one wants more time. So much of what demands
time is really unchanging -- for example, my little boy keeps screaming
and forcing me to stop writing this after every sentence. And yet
supermarkets have made finding food *so* much easier, in fact one can
even buy prepared dinners and heat them in a microwave, but I wouldn't
recommend that as homemade food is so much better.
I can hardly believe that I am reading that you would prefer mediocrity,
simply because it makes it that much easier to pick out something which
is actually good. And I don't see how the standards have been destroyed:
I mean, in the end, you either like it or you don't; that's the only
standard I have. There have been new styles, yes, but it also seems that
there is still a slowly growing core of accepted good music, and a lot of
other music that slowly or quickly falls by the wayside as there has no
doubt always been.
It also seems to me that there has been rather little reenforcing of
norms in the history of western composition, at least in the compositions
that are remembered. There have been periods of consolidation, periods
of explorations, and lots of eras and composers trying to do both. Suppose
one listens to a 14th century chanson, a 15th century motet, a 16th century
mass, a 17th century suite, an 18th century concerto, a 19th century symphony,
and a 20th century string quartet. One will find changes in style, many in
fact. Compare the 15th century motet with the 19th century symphony. They
are rather different in technical language, expressive goals, feeling for
sound.... What makes the last jump that much harder? I have two possible
explanations (and no doubt there are more): first, we have greater distance
and perspective on older music and so it is easier to hear the points of
commonality and follow the trends, whereas in modern music we are in the
midst of it and these connections are that much harder to make; second, I
speculate that many people who dislike modern music don't listen to early
music either and wouldn't find it any more to their taste. That leads to
another supposition, namely what if the single thread of style you are
advocating were the norm and the path it took into the 20th century were
not one you liked? I suspect you'd be pretty bummed then, and wish for some
variety. I know I feel this way with the classical and romantic periods, as
for me they were wrong turns and there isn't much there that I really want to
hear. If you want things to stay exactly how they were at some point in time,
you might want to give up on that because it just doesn't happen.
And I don't think all that many composers want to be revolutionary -- in a
sense they do, since it is a bit more satisfying to write one's own work
than copy a Beethoven score -- and almost all of them build on tradition(s)
in one way or another.
>By diverging so radically with each other, they've
>fragmented the industry and made everybody miserable.
Well, not everybody. I'm definitely with Roger here. I like variety.
Percentage-wise there isn't that much modern music I like, but in most
pieces I can perceive the expression and the form and go on to speculate
about what sort of people would like them if they took the time to
listen (and perhaps I even know some). There are different tastes and all,
and different reasons people listen to music. For example, Mozart makes
me want to wretch -- I can't stand his brand of "cute" and in fact sharing
this opinion is one of the first things my wife and I discovered we had
in common when we were dating.
Back to something more useful, the key to making one's way through the
great variety out there is to discover what one likes (in any period),
find friends or critics with similar tastes, and help each other out. Not
everyone can listen to everything, though I try. So tell me, what music
*do* you like of any period? Email me if you want, I can give you a list
of things -- and don't worry about liking Mozart as I also know what
modern pieces share his brand of expression just as well.
It is hard, though. It's hard to listen to everything and it's frustrating
to painstakingly buy a recording or go to a concert and be disappointed
because it's not what one expected. Or one can be pleased that one's
expectations were thwarted -- I am more this sort of person, as my
expectations are so rarely thwarted and I get bored.
>Judging from the postings in this group, it seems that the innate
>Western worship of "newness", "knowledg" (in the form of knowing
>arcane but insignificant pieces of complex information) is the un-
>questioned ethos. If this is any reflection of musicians'attitudes,
>perhaps it's not difficult to see why they write such new music. Perhaps
>that's their definition of "quality", but it sure isn't mine.
Mine either. It's good to have something new to say (but how often can
that really happen?) but one should still say it well and be interesting
at the same time. The western worship of newness is kind of a new thing.
I think it will be dying down, but who knows. There is an operative
principle that Arnold Toynbee introduces in his monographs which I find
rather interesting. This is that our current era is remarkably similar
to the stone age in one important aspect: during the stone age, the rate
of innovation was so slow that communication lags were not serious and
the result was a largely homogenous culture; in the intervening few
millenia, the rate of innovation was much larger than the rate of
communication, and there were all sorts of interesting effects caused by
or associated with this lag; and now in our own time, while the rate of
innovation has been even faster, the rate of communication is faster still,
and in theory we should be approaching a homogenous culture (and to some
extent we are). It will be interesting to see how this affects things
in our lifetimes, assuming we live long enough to see a noticeable change.
I will go on to speculate that the incredibly hectic lifestyle so many
people lead is the last gasp of the innovation over communication thrust
burning itself out. But hey, Toynbee and I could be very wrong. And
you could be wrong about not liking modern music, if you find the right
composers.
>Nobody is suggesting that we impose any standard on composers. Also, the
>average person doesn't have to time to investigate the quality of most
>modern music. However, musicians are supported by the public (at least
>partially) and they SHOULD ask themselves if their music is simply
>disguised crap.
Oh, they probably do.... There is the opposite side of young performers
being afraid to perform anything new because they cannot be sure yet
whether it is a masterpiece or not.
>The enterprise was still doomed to failure, by and large. And your use
>of such old people as your examples is illustrative of that.
Well, producing a great work of Art is a pretty risky enterprise. Most
people do fail on that standard; I have yet to satisfy myself, for example.
But there have been successes, and I would never go so far as to say the
whole enterprise is a failure. There are later examples too -- but, see,
the problem with naming them is that old thing about distance. We don't
want to be too hasty about saying that something is really good, but that
does *not* mean that it is all bad. I know a lot of people who want to be
told what is great and what is not -- taking the plunge and deciding for
yourself can be pretty daunting, and time consuming as well.
[Roger Lustig:]
>>"Maybe it's all arrogance and incompetence!" You'd feel better if it
>>were, Im sure,
>Arrogance MAY be a necessary condition for greatness, but is certainly
>not a sufficient one.
In the immortal words of my Dunster House wife, saying or producing anything
is supremely arrogant for it assumes that someone else wants to hear or see
it. Composing music and posting to usenet are no exceptions to this.
But then, as you say, arrogance is not a sufficient condition for anything.
As Roger points out, though, I do think there are a lot of people who will
react to anything unfamiliar by dismissing it as a waste of time. This is
fully justified as a coping mechanism, because as has been said time and
again here, we don't have time for everything. Still, I think it's pretty
sad when people are willing to dismiss *everything* outside of their little
bubbles and go along happily with the idea that they know all there is which
is worthwhile to know. But I don't think that is true of you Karl, as you
are taking the time to post here and are apparently hoping to get something
out of it. I don't really believe that your only concern is in making sure
that no $1 of your taxes go to some "intellectual" composer somewhere, since
after all there are much bigger fish to fry if one only wants to save money.
>So, if we want to change this sad state of affairs, who should change
>themselves first?
If I don't like the way something is going, I look to myself first. But
that's just me.
>I'd be much happier if there were worthwhile musical adventures
>available to me. I'd much love to be one of the people who eagerly
>waited for each Brahms symphony to come out, for example.
But see, there *are* worthwhile musical adventures available to you. You
aren't going to strike gold on every stroke of the pick, but then that's
also part of the adventure.
And you can still eagerly await for each Brahms symphony to come out --
on yet another recording -- if that's what you want. Or you can start
exploring the modern symphonic works (possibly with someone else's advice)
and find something which appeals to you as much (or maybe more).
T. M. McComb
Roger Lustig
>In article <1993Oct9.1...@Princeton.EDU> ro...@astro.princeton.edu (Roger Lustig) writes:
>>In article <1993Oct9.0...@das.harvard.edu> kw...@speed.harvard.edu (Karl Wee) writes:
>>>In article <93280.12...@psuvm.psu.edu> <AD...@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
>>>>In article <1993Oct7.1...@das.harvard.edu>, kw...@speed.harvard.edu (Karl
>>>>Wee) says:
>>>>>There was much commonality among the baroque, classical and romantic
>>>>>works. (Techniques of development, tonality, harmony, rythmic
>>>>>progression, etc.) This is true at least for works within each of these
>>>>>styles. Each of these works drew on the listener's memory of other
>>>>>music and the common understanding of what music "should" be. It just
>>>>>seems to me that 20th-Cent. styles mostly don't do this and you're
>>>>>required to learn a whole new paradigm for listening to each piece.
>>>>Repetition can quickly become tedious, but here goes. First of all,
>>>Drawing on something is different from repetition. It's simply basing
>>>a musical idea on what you know your listener already knows, and building
>>>on it.
>>Do you suppose that 20thC composers didn't do that? That they were
>>unaware of what people knew and listened to? Remember, one may also
>>draw on something by being as different from it as possible; that is
>>in no way the same as ignoring the "influence." Think of 1830, when
>>composers tried to move drastically *away* from Beethoven.
>Drastically moving away from something being equal to being influenced
>by that thing is merely academically true.
What does "academically" mean? It's true in the most practical sense.
>Do you think people really
>enjoy music that's radically different from what they're used
>to and recognize the "influence" as well as enjoy it as a further
>development?
Do you think people necessarily go to hear music to recognize
"influences"? that's more of a parlor game than musical enjoyment
and edification.
To answer your question, though: yes. In the 19thC, when musical
progress was a central issue in European culture, people *did*
look for novelty with respect to the tradition, and often for
radical changes.
>>>>the catch-all phrase "20th C music," as someone pointed out previously,
>>>>is simply meaningless. Compositional styles in the 20th C have been
>>>>heterogeneous, to say the least. If there is no 20th C music you
>>>>have found that you like, you probably haven't heard much.
>>>Well, the phrase WAS used by me to refer to the collection of these
>>>heterogeneous styles. I didn't try all of them and decide not to like
>>>each of them, because I didn't have the time. I tried
>>>some of them and simply said, "f*ck this!". But you agree that they
>>>lack commonality, right? At least I got this point right. One has to
>>Well, it wuld still be useful to know what pieces you're talking about.
>I've listened to Berg, Schoenburg, Piston and many others who I don't recall
>on account of their failing to interest me after giving them a good try.
>The only piece I remember faintly liking was Wozzeck. My decision with
>regard to modern music is that I won't waste any moretime with it unless
>it's strongly recommended by someone who knows the piece. But even with
See the FAQ for some strong recommendations.
>something as established as the Rite of Spring and Petruchka and which
>I'm very familiar with, the music is only interesting in an academic
>way.
Sorry to hear it. I find those pieces endlessly fascinating, gripping,
and, yes, full of influences from the past.
>>But trying a few and rejecting the whole thing makes the point quite
>>effectively: we don't live in the world of that older music anymore.
>>One *can* try all kinds of different styles nowadays. Our world
>>is *based* on wide choices. There are all kinds of art forms that
>>didn't even exist a century ago, and we have access to far more
>>variety within walking distance (or at home) than the inhabitants of
>>gerat cities might expect to see in five year back then.
>>That limitation, that restriction, was the source of the "commonality"
>>you speak of.
>You forgot a new limitation imposed by modern life: time. For this reason
>it would quite make macroscopic sense for there to be only a small and
>slowing growing core of commonly agreed good music. But, alas, most
Why? Why would there be a core at all? Why would there necessarily be
this "common agreement" in the first place?
>modern musicians are not content with any degree of mediocrity, so
>they may have destroyed the very standards used for judgment by writing
>radically different music.
Bosh. Most modern composers have incredibly *high* standards; and most
of them know the music of the past extremely well, too.
>Gone are the days when most musicians simply
>(willingly or unwillingly) wrote music that re-inforced people's notion
>of musical norm so that a few geniuses were able to stand on their
>shoulders by writing revolutionary music.
What days were those? Revolution was not always made by geniuses.
>Every modern musician wants to be a revolutionary,
Bullshit.
>and the result is that we may never see truly great music again.
Given your comments on Stravinsky, I don't know that I'd send you to
do the judging for me. Perhaps *you* can't see it. Or hear it.
>I'm not a proponent of censorship, but only saying
>this is indeed a sad state of affairs.
I agree. The teaching of music history is in an execrable state.
>However, it must be remembered
>that most academic musicians are subsidized by taxes in one way or
>another.
So are military bands. More so, in fact.
>>>act under uncertainty anyway, because one doesn't have infinite time
>>>and memory.
>>Right, which makes complaining about the great diversification an
>>odd attitude.
>???
Look: just because YOU don't like all the music being written doesn't
mean it's no good. Most of it wasn't written for you, and if that makes
you resentful, so be it. Others take this opportunity to *learn* about
the music.
>>>>But, look: Mahler, Strauss, Sibelius, Nielsen, Busoni, Vaughan
>>>>Williams, Rachmaninov, Ravel, Falla--these guys are all "friendly,"
>>>>all part of the 20th C, too.....
It took 50 years for Mahler to become all that "friendly," I might
add. Nor is all of Busoni's music all that accessible...
>>>>Now, there have also been more "radical" or "prgressive" developments,
>>>>but these too are continuous with the past (as, for instance,
>>>>Schoenberg and Stravinsky are). Even the most radical experiments
>>>>show the influence of the past, for radical innovation and
>>>>originality generally only emerge when tradition becomes a burden.
>>>Of course, it's relative. These works have much LESS commonality than
>>>pre-20th Cent. music did.
>>Commonality with what? With each other? Perhaps. Perhaps composers
>>decided that there were new and different things they wished to say,
>>things that the old "common" ways didn't allow them to do.
>With each other. By diverging so radically with each other, they've
>fragmented the industry and made everybody miserable.
So why not let us in on the big secret: how SHOULD their music have
sounded?
And, no, they haven't made everybody miserable. Speak for yourself.
There are lots of people who have lived with this music and *liked* it.
Or even loved it.
>>>It's interesting you mentioned "when tradition becomes a burden". "Burden"
>>>for whom? The point of burden may be different for composers vs. the
>>>average listener. Under what criterion of music quality? Have musicians
>>>changed the criterion to "newness" from "emotional appeal", for example?
>>No.
>>The *audience* set the criterion of tradition, to a lasrge extent. By
>>1900, 80% of the music on concert programswas by dead people. The audience
>>*imposed* a burden on the composers: write music that it both progressive
>>and very much like the "tradition" by which we have come to define music.
>>It must be great like beethoven's and forward-looking as well.
>>To this, not a few composers said, "Fuck it." Asterisks ad libitum.
>>They knew that this tension between newness and tradition was just fine
>>with the audience, but a burden on *them*; it was an impossible task.
>>Brahms had already seen that, and wrote symphonies that progressively
>>renounced the Beethovenian mantle.
>>As for the criterion of quality, suffice it to say that composers have
>>usually been far more interested in quality than large portions of their
>>audiences.
>Judging from the postings in this group, it seems that the innate
>Western worship of "newness", "knowledg" (in the form of knowing
>arcane but insignificant pieces of complex information) is the un-
>questioned ethos.
Then you need to take a course in reading comprehension.
(How anyone could get the idea that *anything* is "unquestioned"
around here is way beyond me.)
>If this is any reflection of musicians'attitudes,
>perhaps it's not difficult to see why they write such new music. Perhaps
Well, it isn't.
>that's their definition of "quality", but it sure isn't mine.
Since yours doesn't involve things like Petrushka, either, forgive
me for saying that I'm not surprised.
>>>>But . . .
>>>>The notion of a "crisis" in contemporary composition seems to me
>>>>an instance of the boy crying wolf. How many of the "music lovers"
>>>>and journalists who moan about the current "situation" have
>>>>bothered to familiarize themselves with a wide swath of recent
>>>>music?
>>>Perhaps this points to the core of the debate. I think an ideal analogy
>>>can be made thus: consider 20th-Cent. composers as poets who are each
>>>inventing his own language and writing poetry in that language. Some poetry
>>*Terrible* analogy. The languages they invent *are* the poetry. This
>So all romantic music is the same poem? All baroque music is another?
Only if you consider it all to be the same language. Which it isn't,
by a long shot. You're confusing general stylistic traits with the
specifics of a composer's technique.
>>is the difference. And it's been the difference for far longer than
>>you think; Wagner reinvented his language five or six times, for instance.
>>>may indeed be rich and beautiful, if you know their respective languages well.
>>>But for the average person, who has time for all this?
>>the average person has *never* been the measure of classical music. Why
>>impose such a standard now? "Average people" have not, in general,
>>flocked to the new and difficult in music at any time.
>Nobody is suggesting that we impose any standard on composers. Also, the
No, you've just been yammering about their having the *wrong* standard.
>average person doesn't have to time to investigate the quality of most
>modern music.
Or of most older music, either.
>However, musicians are supported by the public (at least
>partially) and they SHOULD ask themselves if their music is simply
>disguised crap.
Why should they, with the likes of you asking for them?
Besides, the vast majority of public subsidy of music goes to
highly conservative things like music education (would there were more!),
military bands, symphony orchestras, etc.; plus non-classical things
like jazz, non-Western musics, etc.
So don't go wringing your hands over the horrors of taxation in this
case. All the public money *ever* spent on "new music" wouldn't
buy a jet fighter.
>>>If yuo have to
>>>learn a new language for every poet, would it not be reasonable to say
>>>"f*ck this!"?
>>Only if you don't care much about poetry. But it's only an analogy,
>>and not much of one: musical language *is* its own poetry. (And many
>>great poems *do* require you to learn their language first, from
>>Milton to Pound.)
>>>Now, it may indeed be necessary for each poet to invent a
>>>new language to express his special, novel ideas. But who knows? Maybe
>>>it's all arrogance! Maybe it's all hiding incompetence behind technical
>>>barriers! But people sure as hell don't have the time
>>>and energy to investigate this for a pastime. So the enterprise
>>>is almost doomed to failure (in a "popular" sense) from the beginning.
>>And yet some of the new music *is* popular. How is that? Bartok invented
>>*his* own musical language(s), and so did Shostakovich. Why are they
>>so popular?
>The enterprise was still doomed to failure, by and large. And your use
What enterprise? You think the composers got together and *planned* this?
>of such old people as your examples is illustrative of that.
Ah, modern youth. Always in a hurry. they want music to withstand the test
of time -- *in only fifteen minutes!*
>>"Maybe it's all arrogance and incompetence!" You'd feel better if it
>>were, Im sure,
>Quite the contrary. I'd be more than jubillant if I could tell that
>it were not. What makes you think you can read my mind?
Don't tempt me...
>>but do you really want your great music composed
>>by modest composers? Arrogance is practically a prerequisite for
>>the job, and always has been.
>Arrogance MAY be a necessary condition for greatness, but is certainly
>not a sufficient one.
Your point? You just spent a couple hundred lines whining about how
composers dared to follow their own leads rather than knuckling under
to constraints of style they found untenable, and how it might be the
right thing to withhold their funding because of it.
>>And in a diversified world, "people" sure as hell don'thave the
>>time to investigate *anything* -- or at least, not all of them.
>>Some people do. The market for mew music isn't the universal one
>>that "classical" music used to have; but why blame the music?
>So, if we want to change this sad state of affairs, who should change
>themselves first?
WHAT sad state of affairs? I haven't seen you describe anything that
remotely resembles the musical history of this century.
Look, if you want music to regain its primacy, you first have to
outlaw pop and jazz recording, close the movie theatres, burn
all the videotapes, and shut down the TV stations. Music isn't
centered anymore because music isn't *central* anymore. It has
to compete with a dozen new and different and, to most people,
more exciting art forms.
Even the good *old* music doesn't attract most people anymore.
>>>Now is this good or bad? Who knows? But you sure have to agree that
>>>it's the reasonable thing for people to do.
>>No, I do not. I can only point out that it's unreasonable to
>>*expect* all people to be interested in any one art form at all.
>????
See above. Who *needs* classical music the way the 19thC did?
>>>>I usually see only careless generalizations made on the
>>>>basis of X piece by Stockhausen or Y piece by Druckman--but, if
>>>>you don't like this kind of thing, it's certainly not the only
>>>>"show in town." (Go listen to Diamond, Husa, Simpson, Rochberg,
>>>>Lloyd, Rzewski, recent Maxwell Davies, Zwillich, Adams, Albert,
>>>>Kerniss, and the list goes on . . .)
>>>>To be fair, the situation is sometimes exascerbated by the "other
>>>>side" when its spokesmen (in the voices, ironically enough, of
>>>>Matthew Arnold and Van Wyck Brooks) exhort the "philistines" or
>>>>the "lowbrows," or when music "history" irresponsibly falls into
>>>>a linear history of development (following a scientific, progressive
>>>>paradigm alien to the arts), which inevitably becomes merely a
>>>>history of the avant-garde.
>>>>My advice is this: stop complaining, start listening--to a wide
>>>>variety of stuff and with an "open mind."
>>>After wasting away 30% of my leisure time for the next 20 years,
>>>perhaps I'll find something I really like.
>>Well, if you consider active, intellectual engagement with music
>>a waste of your precious leisure time, why not just go fishing?
>I'd be much happier if there were worthwhile musical adventures
>available to me.
There are. They just require some active engagement.
Or is everyone else faking it?
>I'd much love to be one of the people who eagerly
>waited for each Brahms symphony to come out, for example.
Would you trade all the movies, all the jazz, all the travel
(speaking of entertainment) that's available to you?
THAT'S WHAT IT WOULD COST.
>>For that matter, just what constitutes a *waste* of leisure time?
>>What an odd concept.
>Not if you throw away semantics and think about it.
I have thought about it. And messing about with music is
just as important to me as messing about in boats was to
Mole. Even if I turn out not to like it, I at least know
*why*, and have found out something new about my ear.
Roger
Margaret Mikulska
>of mashed-up radio programs? This kind of work, plus much of what I
>see in the Guggenheim Museum of Modern Art, should be rejected
>immediately by any sensible person!
>I appeal to nothing other than simple common sense, [...]
>[...]
>First of all, you can't tell me or anyone what our attitudes "should"
>be. I have closed myself to modern music because I regard it as
>not worthy of the risk I take in wasted time, based on my, admittedly
>limited, experience.
So your experience with modern art is limited, yet you claim that much
of it should be rejected, and immediately at that. In other words, you
say that much of the art you haven't even experienced should be rejected
by _any_ (sensible) person. I like this kind of "simple common sense".
It really makes life so much simpler.
>Time, as I've said many times in various forms, is the key issue,
Parkinson's Law sums it up very nicely.
>and the key argument, macroscopically, against over-diversity. Over-
>diversity creates a lack of standards of judgment, an opportunity to
>pass off dirt as unappreciated good work, and hence a general lack of
>interest. The lack of general interest is fairly apparent already.
"Standards of judgment" are convenient for those who are unable or
afraid to think for themselves. You obviously want to have somebody who
would tell you that it's OK to like this or that work or who would tell
you if such-and-such thing is a work of art or dirt.
Diversity makes it possible for people to find something for everybody.
You also say in one breath:
>This kind of work [...] should be rejected immediately by any sensible person!
and
>First of all, you can't tell me or anyone what our attitudes "should" be.
So, which is it? When you make up your mind, come back to this discussion.
-Margaret
Roger Lustig
>>Roger has already adequately responded to this stuff, but
>>I'd like to note a few things to set records straight.
>>In article <1993Oct9.0...@das.harvard.edu>, kw...@speed.harvard.edu (Karl
>>>
>>>It's interesting you mentioned "when tradition becomes a burden". "Burden"
>>>for whom? The point of burden may be different for composers vs. the
>>>average listener. Under what criterion of music quality? Have musicians
>>>changed the criterion to "newness" from "emotional appeal", for example?
>>"Burden" here was an allusion to W. J. Bate's book _The Burden of the
>>Past and the English Poet_. My point here is similar to one raised in
>>literary circles by Bate and Harold Bloom, namely that the strength of
>>a continuous "canonical" tradition becomes something of an impediment to
>Here's the loaded word: "impediment". This word implicitly assumes a
>certain standard of quality. What is this standard? Has it been
>corrupted to newness for the sake of newness? That was my question.
We've been over this several times. In the 19thC, the standard was
the Romantic view of Beethoven: canonic greatness and progress all
in one.
But no, it *doesn't* imply anything but the expectations of those
who read, and the feelings of the author with regard to the past.
>>artists and forces them to seek whatever unused expressive materials and
>>techniques that are left to them. I think it is useful to see some of
>>the more extreme musical experiments of this century (such as those
>>perpetrated by Cage and Stockhausen, etc.) in this light. It helps
>>"make sense" of them--and perhaps allows one to extend that sympathy
>>which is a prerequisite to all "responsible" critical judgment--even
>>if that judgment, ultimately, is negative.
>Why should anybody have sympathy with a person who composes a "symphony"
>of mashed-up radio programs?
HE JUST TOLD YOU WHY. Because it's a commentary on the state of
musical affairs, and on our changed way of listening.
>This kind of work, plus much of what I
>see in the Guggenheim Museum of Modern Art, should be rejected
>immediately by any sensible person!
What a pompous ass you are! (Not that the Guggenheim is called that...)
Anyone who doesn't agree with *your* tastes and *your* interests
and *your* reasons for "engaging" yourself with art is -- not
sensible!
Why not just say, "I don't like it" or "I don't care about these
things" and let others feel differently without calling them
names?
>But no, the academics haveto
>talk ad nauseum about their value. (Why not use
And you have to piss and moan about them. At least the academics
spend some time getting to know them and thinking about their
value as commentaries on past art.
For you, ignorance seems to be a prerequisite of art appreciation.
And when someone explains something to you (see above) you don't
even recognize it as explanation.
>street traffic as another unused expressive technique for music? I'm an
Happened long ago. Satie. Bartok.
>instant musician and innovator!)
No. That would involve making music. Ever try it?
>I appeal to nothing other than simple common sense,
Tell it to the marines. You appeal to ignorance. To unwillingness
to exert oneself a little, especially between the ears; to the idea
that art must not demand a little effort on the consumer's part. That
the terms on which art are made must not change over time, and that
things were wonderful in the past, and that everyone who made things
the way they are now is evil.
>which seems to be lacking in academic circles of art these days.
How the hell would you know? You've never explored those circles.
That would be a waste of your precious leisure time.
>>>>But . . .
>>>>The notion of a "crisis" in contemporary composition seems to me
>>>>an instance of the boy crying wolf. How many of the "music lovers"
>>>>and journalists who moan about the current "situation" have
>>>>bothered to familiarize themselves with a wide swath of recent
>>>>music?
>>>Perhaps this points to the core of the debate. I think an ideal analogy
>>>can be made thus: consider 20th-Cent. composers as poets who are each
>>>inventing his own language and writing poetry in that language.
>>Roger already noted this was a poor analogy. What poet has ever
>>created his or her own language?
>Irrelevant. Perhaps poets have more sense than musicians?
Uh-uh, pal. That was YOUR analogy, and YOU get to explain it now.
In what way *is* music a language in the first place?
>>Music might be conceived of as a
>>"language," but no 20th C composer invented it; many have simply
>>used it in innovative ways.
There, see? ANOTHER explanation you missed.
>>>But for the average person, who has time for all this? If yuo have to
>>>learn a new language for every poet, would it not be reasonable to say
>>>"f*ck this!"? Now, it may indeed be necessary for each poet to invent a
>>>new language to express his special, novel ideas. But who knows? Maybe
>>>it's all arrogance! Maybe it's all hiding incompetence behind technical
>>>barriers! But people sure as hell don't have the time
>>>and energy to investigate this for a pastime. So the enterprise
>>>is almost doomed to failure (in a "popular" sense) from the beginning.
>>>Now is this good or bad? Who knows? But you sure have to agree that
>>>it's the reasonable thing for people to do.
>>This seems pretty murky to me. What "people" are you talking about?
>>I want specifics! (incl. specific composers, pieces of music, etc.).
>>Otherwise you're just flailing in the void. ("Reasonable"? Ha!)
>What I said was completely self-explanatory.
Well, it certainly explained your self.
But it's still nonsense, and you still haven't told us who "people"
aside from yourself are, and why the "enterprise" you speak of
(whatever it is) *must*be judged a failure.
To some of us, Cage was one of the most *successful* musicians of
the century. He did what he set out to do. In spades, doubled
and redoubled.
>>>After wasting away 30% of my leisure time for the next 20 years,
>>>perhaps I'll find something I really like.
>>With a pathetic attitude like this, why do you imagine anyone should
>>bother with your musical opinions at all? Listening to music is a
>>process of discovery. If you close yourself off from that, at least
>>have the decency to admit you've become a stuffy curmudgeon who knows
>>what he likes and likes what he knows. But to pass this off as an
>>"argument" here on r.m.c. is sheer impudence, an advertisement of
>>your own lassitude masked as a sardonic rejoinder. If more music
>>listeners had an attitude like this, maybe composers would have just
>>given up the effort with Gregorian chants.
>First of all, you can't tell me or anyone what our attitudes "should"
>be.
Memo to the person who just told us that his attitude is THE "common
sense" one: fuck off. After telling us that all other attitudes are
lacking in such sense, that composers are hiding their incompetence,
that there's some sorry state of affairs centered on *your* unhappiness,
this last sentence of yours is offensive.
>I have closed myself to modern music because I regard it as
>not worthy of the risk I take in wasted time, based on my, admittedly
>limited, experience.
Then don't bitch. Spend your time on DOING something. Or is complaining
somehow *not* a waste of your valuable leisure hours?
>This IS an argument in the sense that it
>brings out the real issues in music appreciation with regard to limited
>time resources.
Bullshit. It brings out the real issues with regard to laziness.
We all have limited time. Some of us manage.
>Time, as I've said many times in various forms, is the key issue,
>and the key argument, macroscopically, against over-diversity. Over-
That's no argument at all. One doesn't need to listen to everything;
or, for that matter, to anything. That would be true no matter what the
level of diversity.
>diversity creates a lack of standards of judgment,
Backwards. Insufficiency of previously accepted standards causes
diversity. If old truths are found to be untrue, they no longer
control.
>an opportunity to pass off dirt as unappreciated good work,
When you show us that you can possibly tell one from the other,
we'll start listening to your arguments about how this has
actually been a problem.
>and hence a general lack of
>interest. The lack of general interest is fairly apparent already.
Evidently not. You're still interested enough to complain.
>You have no right to call anything lassitude masked as a sardonic
>rejoiner until you've thought about it. This is an example.
I've thought about it. That's *exactly* what it is.
Do you ever *play* music? Sing? Get involved? Read about it?
Roger
Jack Campin
> Why should anybody have sympathy with a person who composes a "symphony"
> of mashed-up radio programs? This kind of work, plus much of what I
> see in the Guggenheim Museum of Modern Art, should be rejected
> immediately by any sensible person! But no, the academics haveto
> talk ad nauseum about their value.
What is this symphony, and who praises it? You're fantasizing: imagining
works that don't exist so you can hate their imaginary progenitors. It's
exactly the same kind of mental process that produces racism. Imagine
unknown evils perpetrated by people you know only as names and then
generalize till your accumulated bile prevents you from listening to what
your own ears tell you or what you could see in your other-race neighbour
if you turned off the bigotry.
There IS one piece I know of that uses material drawn from radio;
Stockhausen's "Kurzwellen". It is a very long way from being "mashed
up radio programs" and equally distant from being a symphony; it's a
chamber work where the players mix live effects with transformations
of the radio material.
Is that what you mean?
If so, have you ever been to a performance of it? (I have; I don't regard
it as one of Stockhausen's best works but it's certainly worth a few
listens. Maybe a better performance someday might change my mind).
--
-- Jack Campin -- Room 1.36, Department of Computing & Electrical Engineering,
Mountbatten Building, Heriot-Watt University, Riccarton, Edinburgh EH14 4AS
TEL: 031 449 5111 ext 4192 FAX: 031 451 3431 INTERNET: ja...@cee.hw.ac.uk
JANET: possibly backwards BITNET: via UKACRL BANG!net: via mcsun & uknet
Robin Fairbairns
|> kw...@speed.harvard.edu (Karl Wee) wrote:
|> > Why should anybody have sympathy with a person who composes a "symphony"
|> > of mashed-up radio programs? This kind of work, plus much of what I
|> > see in the Guggenheim Museum of Modern Art, should be rejected
|> > immediately by any sensible person! But no, the academics haveto
|> > talk ad nauseum about their value.
|>
|>
|> There IS one piece I know of that uses material drawn from radio;
|> Stockhausen's "Kurzwellen". It is a very long way from being "mashed
|> up radio programs" and equally distant from being a symphony; it's a
|> chamber work where the players mix live effects with transformations
|> of the radio material.
There was such a piece on (*real*) Radio 3 recently - a chamber piece
with interpolated bits of old BBC. (It was a BBC commission.) The
title was something like `London Story', and it even made its way onto
pick of the nose (sorry, week)! I found it highly compelling, even
though I tend to find new music difficult to accept at first hearing
other than live.
--
Robin (Campaign for Real Radio 3) Fairbairns r...@cl.cam.ac.uk
U of Cambridge Computer Lab, Pembroke St, Cambridge CB2 3QG, UK
Bill Harrison (713)-743-2789
>There IS one piece I know of that uses material drawn from radio;
>Stockhausen's "Kurzwellen". It is a very long way from being "mashed
>up radio programs" and equally distant from being a symphony; it's a
>chamber work where the players mix live effects with transformations
>of the radio material.
>
>Is that what you mean?
>
The previous poster may(??) be referring to the Imaginary Landscape #??
by Cage, which rebroadcasts several radio programs in real time. So far
as I know, it hasn't been recorded, or maybe even performed since its
first airing in the 1940s? (Actually, it was a bit of a flop, beacuse
many of the stations had gone off the air when the late-night performance
occured).
>If so, have you ever been to a performance of it? (I have; I don't regard
>it as one of Stockhausen's best works but it's certainly worth a few
>listens. Maybe a better performance someday might change my mind).
>
The re-release of the '60s DG performance is
available on CD on the Stockhausen Edition...
Bill
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Bill Harrison -- University of Houston, TX -- CHE...@JETSON.UH.EDU |
| "The music of the future will be played by loudspeakers" -- Stockhausen |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
donald_pajerek
[stuff deleted]
>
>First of all, you can't tell me or anyone what our attitudes "should"
>be. I have closed myself to modern music because I regard it as
>not worthy of the risk I take in wasted time, based on my, admittedly
>limited, experience. This IS an argument in the sense that it
>brings out the real issues in music appreciation with regard to limited
>time resources.
>
>Time, as I've said many times in various forms, is the key issue,
>and the key argument, macroscopically, against over-diversity. Over-
>diversity creates a lack of standards of judgment, an opportunity to
>pass off dirt as unappreciated good work, and hence a general lack of
>interest. The lack of general interest is fairly apparent already.
>
>You have no right to call anything lassitude masked as a sardonic
>rejoiner until you've thought about it. This is an example.
So your point boils down to this:
"The music of the past has been filtered for me by preceding generations.
Because of this, I can 'safely' listen to a piece by, say, Brahms, in
the assurance that I will be experiencing a masterpiece, and the investment
of my time is therefore justified. Since newer music hasn't been filtered
by others to the same extent, there is a greater risk that I'll hear
something offensive, or second-rate at best. This is, I feel, an unjustified
waste of my time."
My problem with this is that it totally excludes the possibility of discovery,
that possibility of being pleasantly surprised by something. This happens
to be, IMHO, one of the very greatest pleasures available from music, or
any of the arts.
Don Pajerek
Standard disclaimers apply.
Jerry Young
>|> kw...@speed.harvard.edu (Karl Wee) wrote:
>|> > Why should anybody have sympathy with a person who composes a
"symphony"
>|> > of mashed-up radio programs? This kind of work, plus much of what I
>|> > see in the Guggenheim Museum of Modern Art, should be rejected
>|> > immediately by any sensible person! But no, the academics haveto
>|> > talk ad nauseum about their value.
There's also Silvestre Reveultas' "Ocho X Radio" that uses regular
instruments to recreate the sounds of several Mexican radio stations
bleeding over one another on the AM band.
But I don't really think this is what Mr. Wee is talking about. I think
Jack Campin is onto to it -- it's one of those strawman bugbears he's
created in his own mind just to have something to thrash about.
Leave him alone. Soon enough he'll just cuddle up with it and go to sleep
-- to dream perhaps of Vienna.
Jerry
Karl Wee
"Classical" music (before the Viennese school) was never
supported by tax dollars. Composers had to find patrons or sell. They
lived or died in the free market, and look what great music they produced.
Do we now have something so certifiably precious and fragile that we have
to use the government to protect it? Sure, our economy is much more
affluent now and we're able to afford it, but this kind of subsidy is
an open invitation to parasitic behavior, or worse, behavior that makes it
difficult or impossible for people to find out the good works among the
junk.
Jeff Beer
Karl Wee <kw...@speed.harvard.edu> wrote:
>"Classical" music (before the Viennese school) was never
>supported by tax dollars. Composers had to find patrons or sell. They
>lived or died in the free market, and look what great music they produced.
>Do we now have something so certifiably precious and fragile that we have
>to use the government to protect it? Sure, our economy is much more
>affluent now and we're able to afford it, but this kind of subsidy is
>an open invitation to parasitic behavior, or worse, behavior that makes it
>difficult or impossible for people to find out the good works among the
>junk.
A big thing is made about tax dollars keeping the new music alive. You
mean they don't spend more tax dollars on institutions playing Bach
Brahms Beethoven?
Jeff
Karl Wee
>Did it ever occur to you that the people that write, play, and listen to
>the new music do so because they can hear it?
>
>The last orchestra concert I saw was a Beethoven Violin Concerto, a
>Wagner overture, and Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra. For me,
>the Beethoven was a snorer (and I like his 5th, 6th, and 7th symphonies,
>his string trios, his late quartets, and much of his piano music a lot),
>the Wagner was ok, but relatively lightweight, but the Schoenberg kept
>my at the edge of my seat with its dynamics and subtleties.
The Beethoven violin concerto is one of my favorites (1st movement). I
think it is indeed possible that people write, play and listen to the
new music do so because they can hear it. I have never questioned this
point. But to really appreciate a piece
of music you have to first establish some kind of mental connection with that
music beforehand, in the form of having common expectations and assumptions
with the composer. This brings us back to my poetry analogy again. You
have to know the language before you like the poetry, and it seems that
every composer in the modern era is writing in a different language. (Of
course the divisions among compositions are not as strong as language
differences, but the idea is the same.) The question is why they do that.
Is it truly necessary or is it a form of arrogance or incompetence-
hiding paid for by tax dollars? Now I have never disputed that I'm not
in a position to judge this. The musicians have to be their own judge.
But certainly people have to be aware of this phenomenon and I really
think it's the musicians' responsibility to convince people of their
cause.
Bill Schottstaedt
> Karl Wee <kw...@speed.harvard.edu> wrote:
> >"Classical" music (before the Viennese school) was never
> >supported by tax dollars. Composers had to find patrons or sell. They
I haven't been following this thread, so someone may have already
said this, but... The nobles who supported most classical composers
were doing it on what we would call tax dollars -- i.e. rents that
were equivalent to a property tax, used to do things like maintain
roads, run local government, fight an occasional war, etc. I doubt
that there was anything like a "free market" at the time either.
Karl Wee
At least during the classical era and before, serious music was largely
patronized by nobility with financial independence and more than enough
time.
>It also seems to me that there has been rather little reenforcing of
>norms in the history of western composition, at least in the compositions
>that are remembered. There have been periods of consolidation, periods
>of explorations, and lots of eras and composers trying to do both. Suppose
>one listens to a 14th century chanson, a 15th century motet, a 16th century
>mass, a 17th century suite, an 18th century concerto, a 19th century symphony,
>and a 20th century string quartet. One will find changes in style, many in
>fact. Compare the 15th century motet with the 19th century symphony. They
>are rather different in technical language, expressive goals, feeling for
>sound.... What makes the last jump that much harder? I have two possible
>explanations (and no doubt there are more): first, we have greater distance
>and perspective on older music and so it is easier to hear the points of
>commonality and follow the trends, whereas in modern music we are in the
>midst of it and these connections are that much harder to make; second, I
>speculate that many people who dislike modern music don't listen to early
>music either and wouldn't find it any more to their taste. That leads to
>another supposition, namely what if the single thread of style you are
>advocating were the norm and the path it took into the 20th century were
>not one you liked? I suspect you'd be pretty bummed then, and wish for some
>variety. I know I feel this way with the classical and romantic periods, as
>for me they were wrong turns and there isn't much there that I really want to
>hear. If you want things to stay exactly how they were at some point in time,
>you might want to give up on that because it just doesn't happen.
I'm all for innovation and experimentation but not those for the pure sake
of sounding new or to confuse people. The one difference between our times
and the old days that has made the latter possible is our academic
financial arrangements that seem to permit this kind of behavior. In
the old days, even if you had a rich and powerful patron, you still had
to write music he or his many musically conscious (and rich) friends like.
Now you can dismiss ANY person (or practically even the whole of mankind)
who has heard but does't like your music as naive. This is purely a
financial issue. E.g., what else could have made such trash (and I don't
appologize for the term) as the "symphony" of random radio programs
possible? While I don't mind the small amount of tax dollars eaten up
by parasitic behavior, this has really corrupted the art and stuck it to
the face of anybody who really wants to do a good job and may have made
such persons extinct.
Karl Wee
>In article <1993Oct13.1...@das.harvard.edu> kw...@speed.harvard.edu (Karl Wee) writes:
>>
>>Why should anybody have sympathy with a person who composes a "symphony"
>>of mashed-up radio programs? This kind of work, plus much of what I
>>see in the Guggenheim Museum of Modern Art, should be rejected
>>immediately by any sensible person!
>>[...]
>>I appeal to nothing other than simple common sense, [...]
>>[...]
>>First of all, you can't tell me or anyone what our attitudes "should"
>>be. I have closed myself to modern music because I regard it as
>>not worthy of the risk I take in wasted time, based on my, admittedly
>>limited, experience.
>
>So your experience with modern art is limited, yet you claim that much
>of it should be rejected, and immediately at that. In other words, you
>say that much of the art you haven't even experienced should be rejected
>by _any_ (sensible) person. I like this kind of "simple common sense".
It doesn't follow. THINK about it.
>It really makes life so much simpler.
>
>>Time, as I've said many times in various forms, is the key issue,
>
>Parkinson's Law sums it up very nicely.
>
>>and the key argument, macroscopically, against over-diversity. Over-
>>diversity creates a lack of standards of judgment, an opportunity to
>>pass off dirt as unappreciated good work, and hence a general lack of
>>interest. The lack of general interest is fairly apparent already.
>
>"Standards of judgment" are convenient for those who are unable or
>afraid to think for themselves. You obviously want to have somebody who
>would tell you that it's OK to like this or that work or who would tell
>you if such-and-such thing is a work of art or dirt.
>
>Diversity makes it possible for people to find something for everybody.
>
>You also say in one breath:
>>This kind of work [...] should be rejected immediately by any sensible person!
>and
>>First of all, you can't tell me or anyone what our attitudes "should" be.
>
>So, which is it? When you make up your mind, come back to this discussion.
Again, THINK about it.
>
>-Margaret
>
Karl Wee
>In article <1993Oct13.1...@das.harvard.edu> kw...@speed.harvard.edu (Karl Wee) writes:
>>of mashed-up radio programs?
>
>musical affairs, and on our changed way of listening.
And I've just told you that it's ridiculous.
>>This kind of work, plus much of what I
>>see in the Guggenheim Museum of Modern Art, should be rejected
>>immediately by any sensible person!
>
>What a pompous ass you are! (Not that the Guggenheim is called that...)
>Anyone who doesn't agree with *your* tastes and *your* interests
>and *your* reasons for "engaging" yourself with art is -- not
>sensible!
>
>Why not just say, "I don't like it" or "I don't care about these
>things" and let others feel differently without calling them
>names?
>
>>But no, the academics haveto
>>talk ad nauseum about their value. (Why not use
>
>And you have to piss and moan about them. At least the academics
>spend some time getting to know them and thinking about their
>value as commentaries on past art.
>
>For you, ignorance seems to be a prerequisite of art appreciation.
>And when someone explains something to you (see above) you don't
>even recognize it as explanation.
>
>>street traffic as another unused expressive technique for music? I'm an
>
>Happened long ago. Satie. Bartok.
>
>>instant musician and innovator!)
>
>No. That would involve making music. Ever try it?
>
>>I appeal to nothing other than simple common sense,
>
>>First of all, you can't tell me or anyone what our attitudes "should"
>>be.
>
>Memo to the person who just told us that his attitude is THE "common
>sense" one: fuck off. After telling us that all other attitudes are
>lacking in such sense, that composers are hiding their incompetence,
>that there's some sorry state of affairs centered on *your* unhappiness,
>this last sentence of yours is offensive.
>
>>I have closed myself to modern music because I regard it as
>>not worthy of the risk I take in wasted time, based on my, admittedly
>>limited, experience.
>
>Then don't bitch. Spend your time on DOING something. Or is complaining
>somehow *not* a waste of your valuable leisure hours?
>
>>This IS an argument in the sense that it
>>brings out the real issues in music appreciation with regard to limited
>>time resources.
>
>Bullshit. It brings out the real issues with regard to laziness.
>
>We all have limited time. Some of us manage.
>
>>Time, as I've said many times in various forms, is the key issue,
>>and the key argument, macroscopically, against over-diversity. Over-
>
>That's no argument at all. One doesn't need to listen to everything;
>or, for that matter, to anything. That would be true no matter what the
>level of diversity.
>
>>diversity creates a lack of standards of judgment,
>
>Backwards. Insufficiency of previously accepted standards causes
>diversity. If old truths are found to be untrue, they no longer
>control.
>
>>an opportunity to pass off dirt as unappreciated good work,
>
>When you show us that you can possibly tell one from the other,
>we'll start listening to your arguments about how this has
>actually been a problem.
>
>>and hence a general lack of
>>interest. The lack of general interest is fairly apparent already.
>
>Evidently not. You're still interested enough to complain.
>
>>You have no right to call anything lassitude masked as a sardonic
>>rejoiner until you've thought about it. This is an example.
>
>I've thought about it. That's *exactly* what it is.
>
>Do you ever *play* music? Sing? Get involved? Read about it?
I have much more experience with music than you think. But I have no
wish to influence arguments with credential displaying here.
>
>Roger
What an interesting spectacle. Here is this person (me) with very limited
knowledge about modern music. He is just one of five billion people on
earth expressing his own limited opinion of what "common sense" is, or
more precisely, what everybody should have in common wrt art, with
no power to influence anyone unless they want to be. Of course he can't
insert such a disclaimer into every sentence. Yet this other person
(Roger Lustig) who is obviously an expert on modern music and probably
one who has vested interests in keeping things as they are, bothers
himself so much as to rise into ad homineid attacks against what he
sees as obviously idiotic and insignificant arguments. One wonders why
such idiotic and insignificant statements of an ignorant person like
myself are able to raise such giants. Perhaps they are true? I does
make me wonder after a while.
Anyway, I will terminate this thread with Roger here and now as no longer
productive. I will let Roger Lustig speak (loudly) for himself.
Karl Wee
>In article <1993Oct13.1...@das.harvard.edu> kw...@speed.harvard.edu (Karl Wee) writes:
>
>[stuff deleted]
>
>>
>>First of all, you can't tell me or anyone what our attitudes "should"
>>be. I have closed myself to modern music because I regard it as
>>not worthy of the risk I take in wasted time, based on my, admittedly
>>limited, experience. This IS an argument in the sense that it
>>brings out the real issues in music appreciation with regard to limited
>>time resources.
>>
>>Time, as I've said many times in various forms, is the key issue,
>>and the key argument, macroscopically, against over-diversity. Over-
>>diversity creates a lack of standards of judgment, an opportunity to
>>pass off dirt as unappreciated good work, and hence a general lack of
>>interest. The lack of general interest is fairly apparent already.
>>
>>You have no right to call anything lassitude masked as a sardonic
>>rejoiner until you've thought about it. This is an example.
>
>So your point boils down to this:
>
>"The music of the past has been filtered for me by preceding generations.
>Because of this, I can 'safely' listen to a piece by, say, Brahms, in
>the assurance that I will be experiencing a masterpiece, and the investment
>of my time is therefore justified. Since newer music hasn't been filtered
>by others to the same extent, there is a greater risk that I'll hear
>something offensive, or second-rate at best. This is, I feel, an unjustified
>waste of my time."
True. Except that given the diversity of modern music, it's hard to
extrapolate the past and say for sure there WILL be filtered-down and
safe recommendations in the future for the music of today.
Todd Michel McComb
>"Classical" music (before the Viennese school) was never
>supported by tax dollars. Composers had to find patrons or sell. They
>lived or died in the free market, and look what great music they produced.
Hmm... and where did these patrons get the money to give to composers? It
wouldn't have been *taxes* would it?
And I wouldn't exactly say that church and royal composers were participating
in the free market. Later in music history one does see some living or
dying by the free market, however.
T. M. McComb
Karl Wee
>But I don't really think this is what Mr. Wee is talking about. I think
>Jack Campin is onto to it -- it's one of those strawman bugbears he's
>created in his own mind just to have something to thrash about.
On the contrary, I learned about such works in a music course. There
was at least the example of a Cage piece. Now about creating something
in your own mind just to have something to thrash about...
Karl Wee
As I've said in a different article, I have no problem with taxes
supporting art, but only with the behavior that the subsidy may be
permitting. BTW, Beethoven Brahms and Bach have all survived withOUT
tax dollars before there was any subsidy, so I think if there is to
be any subsidy more of it should go to their music.
Todd Michel McComb
>At least during the classical era and before, serious music was largely
>patronized by nobility with financial independence and more than enough
>time.
So what's your point? That you'd like to be a financially independent
noble? I can second that wish....
>I'm all for innovation and experimentation but not those for the pure sake
>of sounding new or to confuse people. The one difference between our times
>and the old days that has made the latter possible is our academic
>financial arrangements that seem to permit this kind of behavior. In
>the old days, even if you had a rich and powerful patron, you still had
>to write music he or his many musically conscious (and rich) friends like.
>Now you can dismiss ANY person (or practically even the whole of mankind)
>who has heard but does't like your music as naive. This is purely a
>financial issue. E.g., what else could have made such trash (and I don't
>appologize for the term) as the "symphony" of random radio programs
>possible? While I don't mind the small amount of tax dollars eaten up
>by parasitic behavior, this has really corrupted the art and stuck it to
>the face of anybody who really wants to do a good job and may have made
>such persons extinct.
Hardly any innovation is simply for the sake of sounding new, and certainly
not for confusing people -- at least that's my opinion.
On to these financial arrangments.... Do you really think that there is
such a big difference between satisfying a rich patron and satisfying an
academic committee or grants office? It still boils down to some small
set of people's opinion, and if anything the current situation is more
likely to include democratic sentiments.
I think you are operating under some real illusions, Karl. Do you think
John Cage was a rich man? Maybe toward the end of his life he was doing
alright, but he was one of the lucky ones. Lots of people are operating
on the edge of financial ruin because they want to pursue their musical
interests -- and the type of music one writes is no determiner one way
or the other when it comes to financial or academic support. There's a
lot of luck and the ever-present "who you know." Let me continue your
discussion of "random radio symphony" (I am suspecting this is a Cage
piece)... by extension, what with the utter lack of value we are attributing
to this work, it must have taken no time at all to throw together, right?
So, financial considerations aren't too important here: any of us has the
requisite thirty seconds to spare.
If you want to hear what I really think about the current financial
situation, I think the economic motive has grown so over-sized that anyone
who really wants to do a good job is screwed in any industry -- no
capital institutions want to take the time for anything requiring thought
and patience to come to fruition, and the result is a lot of people
scurrying around and accomplishing nothing. If anything, composition is
better for this than most "industries." But hey, I'm just a jaded cynic
locked out of the job market, so what do I know? And to think I got a
technical doctorate just because I thought it would make it easier to
make a living....
T. M. McComb
Jeff Beer
Karl Wee <kw...@speed.harvard.edu> wrote:
>of music you have to first establish some kind of mental connection with that
>music beforehand, in the form of having common expectations and assumptions
>with the composer. This brings us back to my poetry analogy again. You
I don't know about that. You certainly have to be serious about
listening, in terms of giving it attention, but that is the same way
with your three B's. In fact, the violin concerto we were talking
about.
However, I think that sometimes a listener's most profound musical
experiences come when he or she first hears a work that doesn't fall
along the lines of your usual expectations. You grow when your previous
categories are blown away, and in the process you develop new ways to
hear or parse music. When that happens, it enriches your familiar
music, or at least the good pieces. That is probaly how some things
are merely fashionable, and other things are enduring.
That is why I am always intriuged by Xenakis' statement that music is
influenced by the future as much as the past. What did he mean? Here
is what I think:
I find that when I go back to my old favorites, things I listened to
twenty years ago and enjoyed a lot, but then for some reason they fell
by the wayside, but then many years later, you hear them again. You then
compare how you hear them today with how you remember them yesterday.
I didn't listen to as much classical music back then as I do now, so
some of my examples would be the Beatles or Frank Zappa. Getting into
jazz the way I did, I went 20 years without hearing them. Then I heard
them by chance in one case, and by design in the other (CD reissues
probably are a big thing in this), and I was amazed at how much my
hearing has developed. How many more formal details you pick up.
Hearing the augmented dominant chord at the end of the bridge, and since
you hear a difference between that and a regular dominent chord, you thus
becoming aware of the different musical effect.
I first noticed that phenomenal with Charlie Parker, I was a die hard
listener of Bird, but then I got into the later things such as Ornette,
Coltrane, Braxton. Then I hear him again, and it was amazing how much
Braxton I heard in Bird. That's right, Braxton in Bird, even though
Bird was chronologically before Braxton. So that is a case of the future
influencing the past.
For me, in the case of classical, it is probably different than that,
just because my individual history is somewhat different for classical.
>have to know the language before you like the poetry, and it seems that
>every composer in the modern era is writing in a different language. (Of
>course the divisions among compositions are not as strong as language
>differences, but the idea is the same.) The question is why they do that.
Well, I don't know, I seemed to have found my way from a solid jazz
thing to classical. But the first classical composers I copped were Stravinsky
(no surprise), Ives, a few Beethoven piano pieces, Bach, Xenakis, and a
few of the 20th century tonal composers. Those were first. Now I can
listen to most of everyone, or at least a good variety within the
particalar periods and genres. But it was the "out" composers first.
>Is it truly necessary or is it a form of arrogance or incompetence-
>hiding paid for by tax dollars? Now I have never disputed that I'm not
>in a position to judge this. The musicians have to be their own judge.
Who makes their living solely on tax dollars? The grants agencies that
make an artists life secure are your private ones, your MacArthur's.
And what is the difference between that and some composer going around
and kissing some prince's ass? I think the latter is worse.
Jeff
Jeff Beer
Yeah, what about today? Name me an orchestra that would have a nickel
to go to the toilet on the breaks of one of their Mozart performances if
they had to rely on ticket sales to cover costs. They get big bucks
from the NEA.
Jeff
Bradford Kellogg
In article <1993Oct13....@Princeton.EDU>, ro...@faust.Princeton.EDU (Roger Lustig) writes:
|> In article <1993Oct13.1...@das.harvard.edu> kw...@speed.harvard.edu (Karl Wee) writes:
|> >In article <93284.13...@psuvm.psu.edu> <AD...@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
|> >>In article <1993Oct9.0...@das.harvard.edu>, kw...@speed.harvard.edu (Karl
[much rancourous polemizing deleted]
I'm getting this feeling of dejavu. Perhaps Brian Yoder has returned
in disguise, dangled some tempting bait, and several people have
eagerly leapt into the fray.
But I don't imagine we need Mr. Yoder to start a flame fest. The
attitudes he expressed (whether real or invented for purposes of
gratuitous confrontation) do in fact reflect attitudes held by many
people who (in the words of Thomas Campion) seek with pain their
ever-during night.
If, as it seems was done in this thread, someone dismisses Stravinsky
in one fell swoop, there is definitely something seriously amiss.
Stravinsky (to anyone who samples more than a few of his works) falls
into no single category. I can't think of any even remotely recognizable
trademark that distinguishes a Stravinsky work from that of others, so
varied is his music. Yet, he is judged good or no good based on Le Sacre
or Petrouchka.
More generally, the dismissal of "modern" music as meaningless trash
indicates an insidious form of conservatism where learning and growth
are feared and despised.
When someone takes such an extreme position, it appears evident there is
an obscured hurdle to clear before any reasoned discussion of music can
take place. That hurdle involves a certain degree of tolerance and the
ability to keep the door to one's mind at least slightly ajar. Without
these prerequisites, we may as well have a Spanish Inquisition.
Cardinal Fang, fetch the soft cushions!
- BK
Todd Michel McComb
>tax dollars before there was any subsidy, so I think if there is to
>be any subsidy more of it should go to their music.
Karl... who do you suppose paid Bach's salary at Leipzig? Where did
Beethoven's patrons get their money? Didn't Brahms have a some-time
academic position? Maybe Roger will be nice enough to answer these
questions for us. Or maybe Francois Velde would be kind enough to tell
us about the history of economic support for music.
T. M. McComb
Bradford Kellogg
In article <1993Oct15.1...@das.harvard.edu>, kw...@speed.harvard.edu (Karl Wee) writes:
|> In article <29i2e2$b...@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu> uj...@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Jeff Beer) writes:
|>
|> >Did it ever occur to you that the people that write, play, and listen to
|> >the new music do so because they can hear it?
|> >
|> >The last orchestra concert I saw was a Beethoven Violin Concerto, a
|> >Wagner overture, and Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra. For me,
|> >the Beethoven was a snorer (and I like his 5th, 6th, and 7th symphonies,
|> >his string trios, his late quartets, and much of his piano music a lot),
|> >the Wagner was ok, but relatively lightweight, but the Schoenberg kept
|> >my at the edge of my seat with its dynamics and subtleties.
|>
|> The Beethoven violin concerto is one of my favorites (1st movement). I
|> think it is indeed possible that people write, play and listen to the
|> new music do so because they can hear it. I have never questioned this
|> point. But to really appreciate a piece
|> of music you have to first establish some kind of mental connection with that
|> music beforehand, in the form of having common expectations and assumptions
|> with the composer.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, noooooooooooooooooo! How in blazes can you
say that? For as long as I have been listening to new music, I have been
intrigued and enthralled with music that I know nothing about; not who
composed it, when it was composed, the title, who is performing it,
nothing. I often decide I want a recording of something without knowing
anything about it other than what I heard in the piece.
I heard a string quartet by Rochberg, for example, for the first time
recently, and I love the piece. I never heard of Rochberg before this,
nor any of his music. Are you saying I really cannot like this piece
without first building a framework from within which to justify and
legitimize my liking his music? Have you ever heard of spontaneity?
|> This brings us back to my poetry analogy again. You
|> have to know the language before you like the poetry, and it seems that
|> every composer in the modern era is writing in a different language.
Once again, no, no, no, no, no, no, noooooooooooooooooo! What different
languages? I hear only one, the universal language of music. You think
Boulez and Messiaen write in a different language? Of course they don't
sound the same, but neither do James Earl Jones and Ross Perot. Do you
want everyone to sound the same? Should there be only one composer in
the whole world?
|> (Of course the divisions among compositions are not as strong as language
|> differences, but the idea is the same.) The question is why they do that.
|> Is it truly necessary or is it a form of arrogance or incompetence-
|> hiding paid for by tax dollars?
Individuality in style is arrogance and incompetence? Is art supposed to
be creative or should it simply pander? And how many composers do you suppose
are supported by tax dollars? Damned few.
Now I'm engaging in polemics. Ay carajo.
- BK
Roger Lustig
>Karl Wee <kw...@speed.harvard.edu> wrote:
>>"Classical" music (before the Viennese school) was never
>>supported by tax dollars. Composers had to find patrons or sell. They
This is utter nonsense. Did the church collect no duties? Did princes
and kings and counts not receive tribute and tariff? Did governments
not support opera houses?
>>lived or died in the free market, and look what great music they produced.
I can't believe I'm reading this. Feudalism as free market...The free
market as we know it was hard to find anywhere in the time of classical
music, except in England and America to some extent. And I don't recall
19thC English and American music being all that important to your argument.
Just what do you study at Harvard? What do they teach there now?
>>Do we now have something so certifiably precious and fragile that we have
>>to use the government to protect it?
That's a good question, actually, but the fact remains that we *do* spend
a fair amount on arts education (less and less below the college level),
and a small amount on arts grants. This is to encourage diversity in an
age of mass media and mass art, for the most part; is your wallet hurting
so terribly from the 75 cents you pay annually for the NEA?
>>Sure, our economy is much more
>>affluent now and we're able to afford it, but this kind of subsidy is
>>an open invitation to parasitic behavior, or worse, behavior that makes it
>>difficult or impossible for people to find out the good works among the
>>junk.
You keep saying that. What makes you think it's true? People can listen as
they always did; it seems that you want some magical market force to decide for
you what you like. It's unlikely to happen.
As for parasitic behavior, artists have *always* been accused of that. Go
read some history for a change instead of making it up. Free market, indeed.
>A big thing is made about tax dollars keeping the new music alive. You
>mean they don't spend more tax dollars on institutions playing Bach
>Brahms Beethoven?
Good point. The vast majority of public funding is for extremely
conservative arts education.
And most of the rest is to fund symphonies, operas, jazz, ballet,
and other conservative institutions. The total amount of public funding
for "new music" is pennies per capita annually, not counting salaries to
teachers of music who also dare to write music that doesn't measure up to
Wee standards.
Roger
Roger Lustig
>In article <29i2e2$b...@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu> uj...@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Jeff Beer) writes:
>>Did it ever occur to you that the people that write, play, and listen to
>>the new music do so because they can hear it?
>>The last orchestra concert I saw was a Beethoven Violin Concerto, a
>>Wagner overture, and Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra. For me,
>>the Beethoven was a snorer (and I like his 5th, 6th, and 7th symphonies,
>>his string trios, his late quartets, and much of his piano music a lot),
>>the Wagner was ok, but relatively lightweight, but the Schoenberg kept
>>my at the edge of my seat with its dynamics and subtleties.
>The Beethoven violin concerto is one of my favorites (1st movement). I
>think it is indeed possible that people write, play and listen to the
>new music do so because they can hear it. I have never questioned this
>point. But to really appreciate a piece
>of music you have to first establish some kind of mental connection with that
>music beforehand, in the form of having common expectations and assumptions
>with the composer.
Perhaps--but you seem to demand a great deal more than most listeners
do, while showing far less willingness to meet the composer halfway.
>This brings us back to my poetry analogy again. You
>have to know the language before you like the poetry, and it seems that
>every composer in the modern era is writing in a different language. (Of
>course the divisions among compositions are not as strong as language
>differences, but the idea is the same.) The question is why they do that.
>Is it truly necessary or is it a form of arrogance or incompetence-
>hiding paid for by tax dollars?
Here's a little thought-experiment: do composers wit hfunding do this more
than composers without?
No, of course not. Schoenberg, Ives, Varese, Berg, Stravinsky, Bartok, Cage,
Ruggles, Becker, etc. invented new musical "languages" with no funding
such as you complain about.
And what composer will write music that doesn't ingratiate itself with
listeners, if that composer wants to get *further* funding? The most
prosperous composers are neither the radicals nor the funded ones. Go
and look who gets money from where.
>Now I have never disputed that I'm not
>in a position to judge this. The musicians have to be their own judge.
>But certainly people have to be aware of this phenomenon and I really
For that to happen, the phenomenon would have to exist. But things
are not at all the way you say.
>think it's the musicians' responsibility to convince people of their
>cause.
Do you suppose they don't do that? Musicians have written more prose in
this century than in all previous centuries combined. To be sure, you
haven't *read* any ofwhat they've said, but that's not
exactly their fault.
Roger
Roger Lustig
>I'm all for innovation and experimentation but not those for the pure sake
>of sounding new or to confuse people.
What music is written to confuse people? Give examples. Don't just sneer.
>The one difference between our times
>and the old days that has made the latter possible is our academic
>financial arrangements that seem to permit this kind of behavior. In
WHAT kind of behavior? You haven't mentioned a single piece.
>the old days, even if you had a rich and powerful patron, you still had
>to write music he or his many musically conscious (and rich) friends like.
Which stifled not a few musicians. Others had enlightened patrons who
were willing to be challenged with something new.
(And in any case, much of what you speak of was funded by taxation.)
>Now you can dismiss ANY person (or practically even the whole of mankind)
>who has heard but does't like your music as naive.
So some artists are arrogant. What's your point? That's nothing new
either. Schumann was arrogant. Berlioz was arrogant.
>This is purely a financial issue.
Like the "free market" of feudalism? No, it's an issue related to the
value we place on art; to the place of art in our lives.
>E.g., what else could have made such trash (and I don't
>appologize for the term) as the "symphony" of random radio programs
>possible?
Well, perhaps you could apologize for the bullshit you've been
spreading. Who wrote such a symphony? Was it funded by any
tax dollars?
>While I don't mind the small amount of tax dollars eaten up
>by parasitic behavior,
Most of which exists in your imagination...
>this has really corrupted the art
How the hell would you know that? What would music be like without
funding today?
>and stuck it to
>the face of anybody who really wants to do a good job and may have made
>such persons extinct.
a) Lots of artists *do* good jobs. including composers.
b) The pieces you so sneeringly refer to are generally *not* funded
by tax dollars, and are generally intended to *comment* on artistic
practices and audience expectations.
c) Your attitude, and the attitude of people like you, who don't want
to be challenged by art, but want composers to write for YOU without
your having to pay for it, has made the kind of music you want extinct.
You can have any kind of music you want; are you willing to pay the price?
Roger
Roger Lustig
>I have much more experience with music than you think. But I have no
>wish to influence arguments with credential displaying here.
And yet much of your argument involves credentials. Official labels
of "greatness" attached to music, and claims of incompetence.
>What an interesting spectacle. Here is this person (me) with very limited
>knowledge about modern music.
But sufficient gall to act as though this was no impediment to understanding.
With too little interest to bother to learn history or economics, and yet
enough arrogance (!) to lecture everyone else on it.
>He is just one of five billion people on
>earth expressing his own limited opinion of what "common sense" is, or
Opinion? When did you couch *anything* you said in terms of opinion?
Too late to back out now.
>more precisely, what everybody should have in common wrt art, with
All the while arguing in the teeth of the evidence: that most of the
five billion have *never* had these things in common.
>no power to influence anyone unless they want to be. Of course he can't
>insert such a disclaimer into every sentence.
Sorry, that one won't fly. You didn't insert that disclaimer *at all*;
nor did you use language that might suggest that this was no more
than your opinion. (Specious) historical argument is not opinion.
(Supposed) fact is not opinion.
>Yet this other person
>(Roger Lustig) who is obviously an expert on modern music and probably
>one who has vested interests in keeping things as they are, bothers
As opposed to you? You have a vested interest (your laziness) in
taking things back to never-never land.
In case you care, I don't find much of the modern music scene interesting
and spend most of my time studying and writing about earlier music.
But I've taken the time to find out about the things I write about.
It's worth a try.
>himself so much as to rise into ad homineid attacks against what he
Well, if you're a hominid, I'll take your word for that...
>sees as obviously idiotic and insignificant arguments. One wonders why
No, I see them as arrogant, false, misinformed, fantastic, and often
offensive arguments. They insult hard-working musicians and interested
listeners.
>such idiotic and insignificant statements of an ignorant person like
>myself are able to raise such giants. Perhaps they are true? I does
Your ignorance is, of itself, of little interest to me (except for
its relationship to your posting site). It is the deliberate
offensiveness of what you write that causes my response. And your
unwillingness even to consider that someone else might have some
information or insight that you don't; that bothering to find out
about the music of one's time is not a "Waste of leisure time."
>make me wonder after a while.
>Anyway, I will terminate this thread with Roger here and now as no longer
>productive. I will let Roger Lustig speak (loudly) for himself.
With the time you save, why not learn some new music?
Roger
Roger Lustig
>>In article <1993Oct15.1...@das.harvard.edu>,
>>Karl Wee <kw...@speed.harvard.edu> wrote:
>>>"Classical" music (before the Viennese school) was never
>>>supported by tax dollars. Composers had to find patrons or sell. They
>>>lived or died in the free market, and look what great music they produced.
>>>Do we now have something so certifiably precious and fragile that we have
>>>to use the government to protect it? Sure, our economy is much more
>>>affluent now and we're able to afford it, but this kind of subsidy is
>>>an open invitation to parasitic behavior, or worse, behavior that makes it
>>>difficult or impossible for people to find out the good works among the
>>>junk.
>>A big thing is made about tax dollars keeping the new music alive. You
>>mean they don't spend more tax dollars on institutions playing Bach
>>Brahms Beethoven?
>As I've said in a different article, I have no problem with taxes
>supporting art, but only with the behavior that the subsidy may be
>permitting.
Like listening? Thinking? How about a few examples of this terrible
behavior?
>BTW, Beethoven Brahms and Bach have all survived withOUT
>tax dollars before there was any subsidy,
Yeah, right. Bach was a church and court employee. Every penny he ever
earned came from tax money. Beethoven got a good deal of his income
from the nobility too.
As for their music surviving, remember that public funding of orchestras
is nothing new; that Bach's music was utterly forgotten for most of
a century; that most subsidy for music *has* historically gone to
just such musical activities.
>so I think if there is to be any subsidy more of it should go to their music.
They should get it because they don't need it? Uh huh.
Roger
Michael J Valinis
substantial amounts of bandwidth here. I quite enjoyed reading them when they
consisted only of substantive dispute. Hoever, a growing amount of
vituperation, name-calling, and snide asides have been creeping in... to the
point where I find it distasteful to continue reading them. I know of at least
one friend who quit reading this newsgroup because of such behavior on the part
of some self-styled experts who were inflexible enough to consider another's
opinion without lowering themselves to personal attack. If you want to play
nasty without introducing anything new and useful to the threads, I suggest you
take it to alt.flame, alt.I.can.outlast.you.and.get.the.final.word.in or better
yet e-mail. I have better things to do (like listen to the John Tavener CD I
just bought?) than indulge someone who is doing little more than exercizing his
vocabulary skills, shaky logic, and questionable wit.
Josh Stern
>As I've said in a different article, I have no problem with taxes
>supporting art, but only with the behavior that the subsidy may be
>permitting.
Dear Mr. Wee, since we are on the subject of taxes, subsidies, and
behavior, may I bring the following to your attention:
USENET is supported by taxes. Every time each of us makes a posting,
the taxpayer (in the U.S. and elsewhere) at least partially supports
the following incurred costs.
a) maintenance of the communication facilities that support the net
b) cost of transmission of the posting to various worldwide sites
c) cost of storing the the information on computer facilities at
various publicly supported institutions
d) cost of usage for the hardware involved in retrieving and reading
said posts at various publicly supported institutions
e) cost due to loss of productivity of workers reading the posts -
such costs can be due to both the derived requirements for a
larger work force to do a given job or the loss of taxes due
to decreased revenues ensuing from loss of productivity.
Private individuals and institutions may also incur some of these costs.
For these reasons, it makes sense to EDIT OUR POSTS CAREFULLY, before
we send them. We should try to ELIMINATE SUPERFLUOUS CHARACTERS
such as those contained in quoted lines from earlier posts that are NO
LONGER DIRECTLY RELEVANT to the current flow of discussion, and to
produce TEXT THAT CAN BE QUICKLY SCANNED by your potential readers.
If it is time consuming for you to edit, think about how much more
time is collectively spent by all of the other people out there who
are forced to wade through line after line of `>'s in order to
arrive at the pithy kernels of wisdom that you have to offer.
You may have noticed the notation "[..]" in other postings.
Perhaps, upon reflection, you may conceive of some application of
these characters within your own correspondence.
This is not a flame (the shards of sarcasm in my remarks are embedded
only for sake of casual humour - they are not an attempt to draw blood),
and you are not the only person around here who could do a better job at
this. But since you are explictly concerned with public expenditures,
perhaps you should be particularly interested in trying harder
to set a good example.
- Josh
Margaret Mikulska
>In <93280.12...@psuvm.psu.edu> <AD...@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:
>
>>The notion of a "crisis" in contemporary composition seems to me
>>an instance of the boy crying wolf. How many of the "music lovers"
>>and journalists who moan about the current "situation" have
>>bothered to familiarize themselves with a wide swath of recent
>>music?
>>My advice is this: stop complaining, start listening--to a wide
>>variety of stuff and with an "open mind."
>
>And how would you have someone whose ears are not used to these sounds to
>do this?
It's not your ears that are "not used", it's your mind.
-Margaret
Francois Velde
>>BTW, Beethoven Brahms and Bach have all survived withOUT
>>be any subsidy more of it should go to their music.
>
>Beethoven's patrons get their money? Didn't Brahms have a some-time
>academic position? Maybe Roger will be nice enough to answer these
>questions for us. Or maybe Francois Velde would be kind enough to tell
>us about the history of economic support for music.
Still working on it... Actually, government support for the arts in
historical perspective is an interesting question, but not quite what
I'm looking at right now.
and Roger Lustig wrote:
>Yeah, right. Bach was a church and court employee. Every penny he ever
>earned came from tax money. Beethoven got a good deal of his income
>from the nobility too.
But the nobility isn't the government, by Beethoven's time. They happen
to have a lot of money, and some of it may still come from dues levied
on peasants, but that's just a certain kind of property right that they
happen to own.
>>Karl Wee <kw...@speed.harvard.edu> wrote:
>>>"Classical" music (before the Viennese school) was never
>>>supported by tax dollars. Composers had to find patrons or sell.
Roger answers:
>This is utter nonsense. Did the church collect no duties? Did princes
>and kings and counts not receive tribute and tariff? Did governments
>not support opera houses?
Certainly opera started as a publicly-financed form of court entertainment,
with obvious political purposes. It was soon commercialized (Venice 1637),
but opera-houses have often been subsidized in some form or other. Typically,
the city or government would pay for the theater (France, Naples), or
bail out the theater in bad times (Naples), or give the theater some sort
of monopoly, which is an implicit subsidy (Paris, London). There are
other examples, though: Venice, Hamburg, Milan initially operated as purely
private enterprises, including the cost of the building. In Dresden,
commercial theaters operated alongside the court theater. London, aside
from the Patent monopoly, and in Handel's time some subsidies, operated
pretty much free from government through the 19th c.
Churches is an interesting case: certainly up to the late 18th century
in Catholic countries, the Church collected taxes, and could be thought
of as a government entity (but what of Protestant countries? Was the
Thomaskirche a government entity?). Does that mean that their employment
of musicians represented a "subsidy to the arts"? Would one say that
church purchases of bread and wine for liturgical purposes represented
as subsidy to agriculture? Or that keeping a sexton in its employment
was a form of subsidy? I think of a subsidy as a sum which given
to a producer for a product beyond what the producer would get on the
market for his product. Some functions of government involve the purchase
of goods and services on the market, with tax dollars: I don't see these
purchases as instances of subsidies. Likewise, it's not obvious to me that
Bach was subsidized. The local population needed music every Sunday for
services, and they purchased it from Herr Bach through an intermediary, the
church. Otherwise he would have employed his time elsewhere, in a court or
giving music lessons. [Note that I take an American view of things here:
for European officials, US government contracts to Boeing, even if they
are made at market prices, count as a subsidy to Boeing].
>>>lived or died in the free market, and look what great music they produced.
>
>I can't believe I'm reading this. Feudalism as free market...The free
>market as we know it was hard to find anywhere in the time of classical
>music, except in England and America to some extent. And I don't recall
>19thC English and American music being all that important to your argument.
You're carried away a bit, Roger. Feudalism (which Karl Wee did not mention)
as the basis of society is pretty much extinct by the time of Palestrina.
And the fact that societies did not operate *completely* on the basis of free
unhindered markets does not preclude that some sectors did. One could argue
that musicians were subject to market forces even if other producers weren't.
The question we really have in mind is: would musicians have composed
less, had they not received any money from government? That's clearly
hard to answer. Conceivably, had the government not supported some
musicians, interested consumers could have organized and funded the
composer themselves. Concert societies, which sprout in the 18th century,
can be seen as examples of that; as well as benefit concerts, which
go back to Handel. It is hard to tell whether the German Emperor's
or the French King's spending on music was part of a program to keep
that music from extinction, or whether it was sumptuary spending like
silk tapestries and gilded door-handles.
--
Francois Velde
Josh Stern
>>>Karl Wee <kw...@speed.harvard.edu> wrote:
>>>>[Composers] lived or died in the free market, and look what great
^^^^^
>>>>music they produced.
[much, by several people, deleted]
>The question we really have in mind is: would musicians have composed
>less, had they not received any money from government? That's clearly
^^^^
>hard to answer. Conceivably, had the government not supported some
>musicians, interested consumers could have organized and funded the
>composer themselves.
But this is clearly not the real question that is being debated. Karl
Wee is not complaining, in the main, that contemporary composers
produce too little music. He is basically claiming that what they do
produce stinks.
This whole issue of govt. vs. private funding is primarily relevant to
the substantive issues of this discussion to the extent that the
source of funding is thought to affect the quality of the music that
is ultimately produced.
Karl also happens to be of the opinion that composers who produce `bad'
music should not receive public funding, but I'm not sure whether anyone
is actually disagreeing with him about that, in the de dicto sense
of `bad' music at least.
So what is relevant about the economic history of classical composition
is how the prevailing economic conditions in various periods affected
the nature and quality of what composers wrote. Regarding the `quality'
part of this question, I have yet to see any really interesting arguments
from Karl or anyone else, though that does not mean, of course, that
there are none to be made.
- Josh
Francois Velde
|[I wrote]
|>>>Karl Wee wrote:
|>>>>[Composers] lived or died in the free market, and look what great
|
|>The question we really have in mind is: would musicians have composed
|>less, had they not received any money from government?
|But this is clearly not the real question that is being debated. Karl
|Wee is not complaining, in the main, that contemporary composers
|produce too little music. He is basically claiming that what they do
|produce stinks.
You are quite right; I confused the intensive margin (how much each
composer produces under certain conditions) with the extensive margin
(how many people go into the composing business): see below.
|So what is relevant about the economic history of classical composition
|is how the prevailing economic conditions in various periods affected
|the nature and quality of what composers wrote. Regarding the `quality'
|part of this question, I have yet to see any really interesting arguments
|from Karl or anyone else, though that does not mean, of course, that
|there are none to be made.
I'm really out of my depth here, but I'll give it a try.
The argument would run as usual: imagine that $ X is available to
fund composers. Rank composers by quality of output: the quantity
X will induce a cut-off point on the quality scale, so that the best
composers always gets funded, the next best also, down to the
marginal composer whose work is barely good enough to entitle him to
some of that funding. Suppose the government arbitrarily decides
to increase X by throwing in $ Y in tax dollars: then many more
composers, who would have turned to woodcarving instead, will now go
into composing and produce lousy compositions that would otherwise
have never seen the light of day (that's the extensive margin). You may
also have the result that the best composers also produce worse
compositions because the general level of quality of music has gone
down (the intensive margin).
Another, more direct effect would be if the government not only
increased the pool of money for the arts, but also allocated it
itself, presumably arbitrarily/incompetently: then lousy composers
will be subsidized to produce music nobody ever wanted.
I didn't say I believed any of these arguments. And, even if you
believe in them, the only loss to society is that rather more dreck
than less is produced, but Beethoven will still write the 9th no
matter what.
If the argument is that lousy composers *displace* good composers,
it's harder to figure out, as long as the market is capable of
recognizing quality (which you probably want to assume if you argue
that a market-based allocation of funding for the arts is better).
I'm sure you could get effects of that kind with asymmetric information
(quality is difficult to ascertain) but then what sense does that
make for music?
--
Francois Velde