If music history should have been slower...
Samuel Vriezen
>When looking on the past century, I am astonished by the high speed at
>which music has evolved, and I wonder why it had to be so quick?
I think that's mainly a function of having a bigger population that
lives longer in reasonable health, has more free time, and is on the
average more highly educated, combined with the effects of
globalization that have spread 'classical music' to far beyond its
core geography in Northern and Western Europe. Things give the
impression of going faster not only in music, but also in consumer
electronics, visual arts, science and many other areas.
OTOH I also think this whole feel that things are moving faster may
well be illusory, and that we think things moved slower in the past
because we have access to the summary of history and not to the actual
lived experience. In other words, perhaps it's just a question of
perspective.
>In the past, composers weren't haunted by the necessity of going
>forward (at least not at such a pace). Vivaldi composed hundreds of
>violin concertos that looked quite the same, Haydn symphonies are
>rather homogeneous (there is of course an evolution in style, but slow
>and spread out on many years). Beethoven seems to be the first quickly
>evolving composer (compare Symph. 1 & 9!!!) but romantic composers
>were more constant in the style of their output (Chopin, Brahms,
>Schumann, Liszt...)
You might like to take a look at the evolution of the masses by
Ockeghem (as far as it can be traced). And the developments in
composers such as Monteverdi or Bach don't strike me as trivial
either.
>But what happened in the XXth? Stravinsky is the best example of a
>composer that wanted that each new work would mark a change in style
>and direction (for instance Rite of Spring, Pulcinella, Story of the
>Soldier...).
Though many of his style changes did not involve taking a new artistic
stance. For me, Stravinsky really seems to have two sides: the
romantic big gestures side more prevalent in earlier works and the
stylistic ironies of his later works. Very generally speaking,
Stravinsky may be thought of giving the same treatment to a different
musical subject all the time.
Similar things happen in experimental composers such as Cage or Tenney
whose stylistic range is enormous. By the sound of their work, you
might not be able to tell that two pieces were in fact by the same
composer. Yet the attitude is remarkably coherent.
>Some composers introduced the concept of "tabula rasa"
>(unheard before in music) with the desire of creating something
>totally new.
>
>I wonder why this has not happened let us say 2 times slower since
>1900?!? For instance, Stravinsky would have written his Rite of Spring
>in 1926 instead of 1913, but would have written then a second piece in
>that style! Ravel Bolero would have appeared in 1956, and the Boulez
>Flute Sonatine would only have premiered in 1992. We would be then in
>the blowing years of serial music. Next, Steve Reich would have
>written his first minimalist essais in 2040, his Desert Music in 2070,
>and Stockausen would have finish his Licht in 2106.
Israel and India would have only just been founded...
>I know, this must seem a bit foolish, but if music history had been
>twice slower, then we would have had two times more masterworks, and
>two times more pieces written in the style we like.
But is that necessary? We have one Rite of Spring, why would you need
a second? Isn't it great that Stravinsky went on to do something else?
--
Samuel
http://concerten.free.fr
Samuel Vriezen
>When looking on the past century, I am astonished by the high speed at
>which music has evolved, and I wonder why it had to be so quick?
[...]
>I know, this must seem a bit foolish, but if music history had been
>twice slower, then we would have had two times more masterworks, and
>two times more pieces written in the style we like.
BTW, it seems to me that you must really love this 639 year
performance of ASLSP in Germany.
--
Samuel
http://concerten.free.fr
Rod Stasick
> When looking on the past century, I am astonished by the high speed at
> which music has evolved, and I wonder why it had to be so quick?
we bore easily.
Samuel Vriezen
wrote:
>> But is that necessary? We have one Rite of Spring, why would you need
>> a second? Isn't it great that Stravinsky went on to do something else?
>
>Of course, but let's have an example: Bach wrote 6 Brandeburgish
>Concertos. The first one is of course marvellous, but I think anybody
>is always happy to discover numbers 2 to 6.
>
>We could perhaps have had the same joy discovering a Rite of Spring
>n°2 (and maybe 3, 4, 5, 6...). Not of course the same piece, but
>something as close to and different from the original as Brand. Conc.
>n°5 is close & different from n°1, if you understand what I mean.
>
>The question is then why this did not happen? Or are the ideas in Rite
>of Spring n°1 so well developed that they coudn't inspire something
>similar?
I guess that if Stravinsky had felt the need to 'over-rite' the Rite
he'd have done that. I mean, if for him there had been room to
articulate the musical ideas of the Rite even better, more clearly, I
think he would have done so. As it is, he saw other possibilities
instead. I'm very happy about that because I think I admire the
Symphonies for Wind Instruments even more than I do the Rite.
BTW, there have of course been composers enough who have stuck more to
1 procedure. For example, Messiaen's language was completely ready by
his mid twenties. In the later music sometimes he developed his sound
world a bit more, in terms of timbres, density, lengths etc. but in
principle his work is stylistically extremely homogenous. But you can
find many more composers whose work remained very much in one style.
In fact I think composers such as Stravinsky, Cage and Stockhausen who
change style with every piece are in the minority.
--
Samuel
http://concerten.free.fr
Mark Stratford
> Or are the ideas in Rite
> of Spring n°1 so well developed that they coudn't inspire something
> similar?
>
Someone once suggested that the bassoon's solo opening ( C an octave
above middle-C) should be raised by a minor third *every* ten years to
keep the audience in a state of shock. Who said this....? Messiaen..?
Victor Borge...? Andre Previn...? Sorry - can't remember
The work is 90 yrs old this year which would make it top Eb of the
piano :-)
mark stratford
Rod Stasick
> Someone once suggested that the bassoon's solo opening ( C an octave
Raised? Wow! Ask a bassoon player what they think of it's current range.
R
?
Generator Press - http://www.generatorpress.com/pages/2/index.htm
NP: A single cricket chirping.
Jeffrey Quick
bter...@hotmail.com (Rob Benton) wrote:
> When looking on the past century, I am astonished by the high speed at
> which music has evolved, and I wonder why it had to be so quick?
Speed of communication. It became increasingly easy for composers to
hear other people's music and build on their work. Also, in a culture
that has recording, there is less redundancy, not only within works, but
between works.
> I know, this must seem a bit foolish, but if music history had been
> twice slower, then we would have had two times more masterworks, and
> two times more pieces written in the style we like.
But now we have the chance to explore techniques that weren't written
out by the people who pioneered them.
Vincent Kargatis
news:3df60055.03020...@posting.google.com...
> I know, this must seem a bit foolish, but if music history had been
> twice slower, then we would have had two times more masterworks, and
> two times more pieces written in the style we like.
Ha! And we would have half as many styles/works as we do now. Who's
the 'we' in 'we like'? :)
--
Vincent Kargatis
np: Prince - One Nite Alone: the Aftershow
Samuel Vriezen
wrote:
>> But is that necessary? We have one Rite of Spring, why would you need
>> a second? Isn't it great that Stravinsky went on to do something else?
>
>Of course, but let's have an example: Bach wrote 6 Brandeburgish
>Concertos. The first one is of course marvellous, but I think anybody
>is always happy to discover numbers 2 to 6.
>
>We could perhaps have had the same joy discovering a Rite of Spring
>n°2 (and maybe 3, 4, 5, 6...). Not of course the same piece, but
>something as close to and different from the original as Brand. Conc.
>n°5 is close & different from n°1, if you understand what I mean.
You know, something else I find problematic about your reasoning here
is the implicit idea that the point of music history is the
accumulation of masterpieces. In my view, there are more masterpieces
than I have time for already. (In Western art music alone - I'm not
yet even thinking of all those other cultures and all those other art
forms...)
Rather than seeing music as a chain of musical objects called
'masterpieces', I prefer to see music as a process and masterpieces as
signal points of that process. Mssterpieces are like blossoms - they
come and go and as long as they do so that's a sign that the tree is
doing well.
--
Samuel
http://concerten.free.fr
Jeffrey Quick
sqv.remo...@xs4all.nl (Samuel Vriezen) wrote:
> On 10 Feb 2003 03:59:23 -0800, bter...@hotmail.com (Rob Benton)
> wrote:
>
> >> But is that necessary? We have one Rite of Spring, why would you need
> >> a second? Isn't it great that Stravinsky went on to do something else?
> >
> >Of course, but let's have an example: Bach wrote 6 Brandeburgish
> >Concertos. The first one is of course marvellous, but I think anybody
> >is always happy to discover numbers 2 to 6.
> >
> >We could perhaps have had the same joy discovering a Rite of Spring
> >n°2 (and maybe 3, 4, 5, 6...). Not of course the same piece, but
> >something as close to and different from the original as Brand. Conc.
> >n°5 is close & different from n°1, if you understand what I mean.
>
> You know, something else I find problematic about your reasoning here
> is the implicit idea that the point of music history is the
> accumulation of masterpieces.
Yes, but that's how it's taught. It's sort of like the Great man theory
of general history...first there was Napoleon, then Metternich, then
Karl Marx. It would be perfectly possible to teach Western Art Music in
terms of the evolution of style, but to do so presupposes knowledge of
harmy, counterpoint, orchestration, form. Much easier to do the begats:
"And Bach knew Haydn, and they begat Mozart and Beethoven. And Beethoven
begat Schubert and Schumann. And Schubert begat Bruckner, who begat
Mahler. And Schumann begat Brahms. And Wagner and Brahms begat
Schoenberg, whose children were as the sand of the sea, but Berg and
Webern were the firstborn."
In my view, there are more masterpieces
> than I have time for already. (In Western art music alone - I'm not
> yet even thinking of all those other cultures and all those other art
> forms...)
>
> Rather than seeing music as a chain of musical objects called
> 'masterpieces', I prefer to see music as a process and masterpieces as
> signal points of that process. Mssterpieces are like blossoms - they
> come and go and as long as they do so that's a sign that the tree is
> doing well.
And for me the interest is in the bits of process that didn't meet up to
beget anything. Maybe much po-mo music is like artificial insemination.
Scott Kurtz
did not have at their disposal the sheer amount of recorded repertory that
we have now. The music industry is in a decided slump right now but that's
only relative to four or five years ago. Compared to 1950, we have an
embarrassment of riches at our disposal.news:3df60055.03021...@posting.google.com...
> > Ha! And we would have half as many styles/works as we do now. Who's
> > the 'we' in 'we like'? :)
>
> 1950 less happy than we are now?
Samuel Vriezen
wrote:
>Yes, but that's how it's taught. It's sort of like the Great man theory
>of general history...first there was Napoleon, then Metternich, then
>Karl Marx. It would be perfectly possible to teach Western Art Music in
>terms of the evolution of style, but to do so presupposes knowledge of
>harmy, counterpoint, orchestration, form. Much easier to do the begats:
>"And Bach knew Haydn, and they begat Mozart and Beethoven. And Beethoven
>begat Schubert and Schumann. And Schubert begat Bruckner, who begat
>Mahler. And Schumann begat Brahms. And Wagner and Brahms begat
>Schoenberg, whose children were as the sand of the sea, but Berg and
>Webern were the firstborn."
And they all lived for 300 years. Verily.
>> Rather than seeing music as a chain of musical objects called
>> 'masterpieces', I prefer to see music as a process and masterpieces as
>> signal points of that process. Mssterpieces are like blossoms - they
>> come and go and as long as they do so that's a sign that the tree is
>> doing well.
>
>And for me the interest is in the bits of process that didn't meet up to
>beget anything. Maybe much po-mo music is like artificial insemination.
Hee-hee... or perhaps it's like jurrassic park?
--
Samuel
http://concerten.free.fr
Samuel Vriezen
wrote:
>> Ha! And we would have half as many styles/works as we do now. Who's
>> the 'we' in 'we like'? :)
>
>perhaps, but, we should not be aware of that! were the music lovers of
>1950 less happy than we are now?
Yes, but that's because of Prozac.
--
Samuel
http://concerten.free.fr
Scott Kurtz
1913. I can't imagine a riot erupting at a world premiere performance of
anything on the order of what happened in 1913 at the premiere of Le Sacre.
Maybe if someone, without announcing it, decided to do Morton Feldman's
String Quartet No. 2 at a Mostly Mozart concert and the doors were locked
preventing attendees from leaving before the end of the 5.5 hour work, then
just maybe a riot might erupt.
Samuel Vriezen <sqv.remo...@xs4all.nl> wrote in message
news:3e49b5a5...@news.xs4all.nl...
Walter Ekelin
audience doesn't "react on provocations", see
http://www.maxopus.com/essays/listen.htm. It's a rather conservative view
that I don't entirely share, but I think there's some truth in it.
greetings
Walter Ekelin
Kalmar, Sweden
walter...@telia.com
http://w1.480.telia.com/~u48018896/index.html personal homepage
http://w1.480.telia.com/~u48022134/index.html The Hilding Rosenberg Pages
"Scott Kurtz" <kur...@worldnet.att.net> skrev i meddelandet
news:GTj2a.32954$rq4.2...@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
Samuel Vriezen
>> Music lovers today are less ill-tempered today than they were in Paris in
>> 1913. I can't imagine a riot erupting at a world premiere performance of
>> anything on the order of what happened in 1913 at the premiere of Le
>Sacre.
Walter:
>Peter Maxwell Davies has a more pessimistic view on the reason why today's
>audience doesn't "react on provocations", see
>http://www.maxopus.com/essays/listen.htm. It's a rather conservative view
>that I don't entirely share, but I think there's some truth in it.
People did have strange ideas back then. Today's warmongering for
example is less idiotically romantic and more pragmatic - we're going
to war supposedly to make the world a safer place, i.e. for sound,
pragmatic geopolitical and imperialist reasons, and not because we
feel like a refreshing expression of primal human nature in a
'frissche und frohe Krieg' or anything like that.
(Not that I think there is any fundamental reason to be less cynical
about the coming war than about the World War twins...)
--
Samuel
http://concerten.free.fr
Steve Layton
> In article <3df60055.03020...@posting.google.com>,
> bter...@hotmail.com (Rob Benton) wrote:
>
> > When looking on the past century, I am astonished by the high speed at
> > which music has evolved, and I wonder why it had to be so quick?
>
>
> But now we have the chance to explore techniques that weren't written
> out by the people who pioneered them.
.........
Jeffery's hit an important point there, but one that's going to take
the biggest shift in our artistic psyche as opposed to what it's been
for many generations before.
As the more general process of allowing new modifications to our
musical language accelerated, "process" became more-or-less "credo" or
even "cult". Instead of that time-neutral process, the norm became
acceleration. In a sense, it was almost like there couldn't be any
"school" or "style" beyond it's "founder" and maybe one or two others;
everyone else in that style, instead of members became only
*imitators*.
One of the most significant aspects of this acceleration is that both
the speed and the extent or limit aren't infinite. What was really
accelerating and expanding beneath any of the technical or stylistic
aspects in music and the other arts, was simply the more basic
cultural force of Allowance and Restriction. It's a bit like a big
series of concentric doors; each new one opened gives us one more
Allowance and one less Restriction, while still being able to see and
pass back through any of the others. But whether we do or not is also
governed by the general cultural mind-set of where we "should" be
looking, and that's been focused on the "out" for some time.
Yet there's a door we open at some point, that is really the final
Allowance, the "anything goes" or "all is good" door, and once you
reach that you've reached the limit of our particular "universe". We
can go back through any of the doors now in any order, settle on a few
or range through many, but the "onward and outward" impetus that was
really making another restriction fall, has evaporated. This is our
real inheritance, our unique "moment" in our culture; we're among the
first to learn what it means to live and create when every door is
open.
At the same time, that very acceleration (and the mind-set that went
with it) meant that things were thrown aside much more quickly, often
with their potentials and implications hardly explored. That's what
has to come now; there are still lots of valuable things for composers
to "say", to themselves and others, once our mind-set adjusts to our
situation.
Steve Layton
Samuel Vriezen
wrote:
[snip]
>Yet there's a door we open at some point, that is really the final
>Allowance, the "anything goes" or "all is good" door, and once you
>reach that you've reached the limit of our particular "universe". We
>can go back through any of the doors now in any order, settle on a few
>or range through many, but the "onward and outward" impetus that was
>really making another restriction fall, has evaporated. This is our
>real inheritance, our unique "moment" in our culture; we're among the
>first to learn what it means to live and create when every door is
>open.
[snip]
Some good points, Steve, but I like to add that 'progress' (or to use
less laden words, 'developments in artistic consciousness' doesn't
just have to do with allowance and restriction but also with concepts,
modes of thought and how much you can think using them. And the
development of this doesn't stop somewhere.
For example, Cage is often thought of having broken into this stage of
total permission. However, now that he's been dead for a few years, it
increasingly strikes me that he in fact instituted a vast complex of
ideas - not in order to restrict, but as alternative tools for making
an artistic universe happen. And when you start realizing a little
what sort of tools these are, you get to see that these too can be
starting points rather than final permits - or possibly that the
limits on the 'totally free' style were governed by the structure of
those tools themselves.
An example: his use of time structures which coincides with his total
allowance of sounds. But the time structures he uses were constructed
using definite means such as 'rhythmic structure' or 'flexible time
brackets'. In my view, these in fact represent the basic elements of a
musical grammar, and this can be expanded on for quite some time to
come.
Just as the complete sonic universe had to fit in some sort of
taxonomy in order to make every sonic element available for the
composition: the structure of this taxonomy is itself a grammar.
If any restrictions have structurally disappeared a bit they are
rather of the social pressure type. You really can pull off a lot of
crazy stuff and not get people too upset that you think of it as art.
It's hard to think of things nowadays that you can not pass as art.
But that's not saying anything about the real restrictions on artistic
vision, which are internal and can never be completely lifted.
--
Samuel
http://concerten.free.fr
Steve Layton
>
> Some good points, Steve, but I like to add that 'progress' (or to use
> less laden words, 'developments in artistic consciousness' doesn't
> just have to do with allowance and restriction but also with concepts,
> modes of thought and how much you can think using them. And the
> development of this doesn't stop somewhere.
(Damn, this is annoying... I'm having problems with newsgroups on my
ISP, and can only read & post through Google just now. That means I
only see new postings about two times a day...if I'm lucky!)
You're right to drop that word "progress" for anything other than the
purely technical. "Developments" is a much better description. But I'd
spend a little more time with "allowances and restrictions" (or
whatever other better words might come to mind). Somewhere at the core
of what we do is the idea of restriction, or maybe better "exclusion"
even more than "allowance", allowance simply being the removal of some
previous exclusion. And there's a big problem when we remove all
exclusions: all concepts of value and worth fall apart. There's no way
to say "this is excellent, valuable, interesting, etc..." without
something else that's judged to be *not* that thing.
>
> For example, Cage is often thought of having broken into this stage of
> total permission. However, now that he's been dead for a few years, it
> increasingly strikes me that he in fact instituted a vast complex of
> ideas - not in order to restrict, but as alternative tools for making
> an artistic universe happen. And when you start realizing a little
> what sort of tools these are, you get to see that these too can be
> starting points rather than final permits - or possibly that the
> limits on the 'totally free' style were governed by the structure of
> those tools themselves.
I'm in complete agreement about Cage he was one of the most careful
and commited structuralists I can think of. In fact, it's one of the
few traits that stays in his work, no matter where the rest of it
takes off to. Many of his structures may be things hardly ever seen in
music before, but that doesn't affect their aesthetic elegance and
strength at all.
>
> An example: his use of time structures which coincides with his total
> allowance of sounds. But the time structures he uses were constructed
> using definite means such as 'rhythmic structure' or 'flexible time
> brackets'. In my view, these in fact represent the basic elements of a
> musical grammar, and this can be expanded on for quite some time to
> come.
>
> Just as the complete sonic universe had to fit in some sort of
> taxonomy in order to make every sonic element available for the
> composition: the structure of this taxonomy is itself a grammar.
>
> If any restrictions have structurally disappeared a bit they are
> rather of the social pressure type. You really can pull off a lot of
> crazy stuff and not get people too upset that you think of it as art.
> It's hard to think of things nowadays that you can not pass as art.
> But that's not saying anything about the real restrictions on artistic
> vision, which are internal and can never be completely lifted.
That's why I wrote that these "doors" were opened much more on a deep
cultural level, than on purely musical (or even artistic) terms. And I
agree that what Cage introduced can be explored, even "expanded", for
a loooong time to come. But that expansion is not necessarily "out",
in the sense so many artists have held for quite some time. We'll each
still search for (and maybe even find) our "unique voice"; but it
can't be found in the same way that was considered *the* way thes last
dozen decades or more. ...Well, maybe I should say that it *can* be
found, but only in as much as one wants to retreat into a fiction
(after all, there are still "flat-earth" believers out there!).
And just as there's a lot left to create with Cage as our guide,
there's just as much in the work of other composers, going back much
farther than most of us are willing to allow. It gets back to the
original point made in this thread: If certain styles were felt to be
sufficient for saying whatever most anyone needed to say over rather
long periods of time, why wouldn't there be at least the same amount
to say in any of the styles that have come along in the past century?
Because it's "old", "tired", etc.? The only thing that makes it so is
the *belief* that it's so. In fact, since that last "anything goes"
door was opened, that belief is the only thing that can make any
current work *not old* in the greatest measure, since in a way
everything now can only turn "back" (that's not meant as a negative at
all).
Samuel Vriezen
wrote:
>You're right to drop that word "progress" for anything other than the
>purely technical. "Developments" is a much better description. But I'd
>spend a little more time with "allowances and restrictions" (or
>whatever other better words might come to mind). Somewhere at the core
>of what we do is the idea of restriction, or maybe better "exclusion"
>even more than "allowance", allowance simply being the removal of some
>previous exclusion. And there's a big problem when we remove all
>exclusions: all concepts of value and worth fall apart. There's no way
>to say "this is excellent, valuable, interesting, etc..." without
>something else that's judged to be *not* that thing.
Your last sentence indicates nicely something that I've been thinking
about this issue, that is, this idea of thinking of music in terms of
restrictions has less to do with actual creation than with reception.
I would in fact guess that Mozart felt as free as you can feel when he
was composing. To me, his music does not seem to be subjected to
restrictions, really.
>That's why I wrote that these "doors" were opened much more on a deep
>cultural level, than on purely musical (or even artistic) terms. And I
>agree that what Cage introduced can be explored, even "expanded", for
>a loooong time to come. But that expansion is not necessarily "out",
>in the sense so many artists have held for quite some time. We'll each
>still search for (and maybe even find) our "unique voice"; but it
>can't be found in the same way that was considered *the* way thes last
>dozen decades or more.
Again, I would say that this has more to do with the criticism side of
it than with the actual creation part.
I think that anytime someone manages to hit his or her 'rock bottom'
of musical style, it will come out as 'new'.
>...Well, maybe I should say that it *can* be
>found, but only in as much as one wants to retreat into a fiction
>(after all, there are still "flat-earth" believers out there!).
>
>And just as there's a lot left to create with Cage as our guide,
>there's just as much in the work of other composers, going back much
>farther than most of us are willing to allow. It gets back to the
>original point made in this thread: If certain styles were felt to be
>sufficient for saying whatever most anyone needed to say over rather
>long periods of time, why wouldn't there be at least the same amount
>to say in any of the styles that have come along in the past century?
The question here is (and always has been) how much you can make those
past styles your own. And this is of course not a thing particular to
our moment of history, either - Beethoven in his later pieces was
doing just that, making past styles his own (take the C# minor quartet
with its 'Bach' opening) - and the 'Bach' style he quotes there would
in Bach proper have been a rethinking of a much older tradition in
itself...
>Because it's "old", "tired", etc.? The only thing that makes it so is
>the *belief* that it's so. In fact, since that last "anything goes"
>door was opened, that belief is the only thing that can make any
>current work *not old* in the greatest measure, since in a way
>everything now can only turn "back" (that's not meant as a negative at
>all).
Perhaps, in a way - but not in a way that I find very relevant!
"anything goes" nowadays, but perhaps it always did - it's just a
question of what you can imagine 'anything' to entail. Certainly, it's
still possible to hear a new piece and find yourself thinking, 'Wow! I
didn't know this music was possible, too!' - I'm even still hearing
pieces that make me wonder what 'music' really is... (but I do admit
this wondering 'is this still music' seems to be less of our time than
of the, say, century before ours)
--
Samuel
http://concerten.free.fr
Steve Layton
>
> Your last sentence indicates nicely something that I've been thinking
> about this issue, that is, this idea of thinking of music in terms of
> restrictions has less to do with actual creation than with reception.
> I would in fact guess that Mozart felt as free as you can feel when he
> was composing. To me, his music does not seem to be subjected to
> restrictions, really.
I agree, except that we're just as much audience as creator. In
Mozart's case, the idea of pushing or breaking the limits of a style
in search of one's own "voice" meant something very different than
what's been the common attitude in the last century. There's a place
in there where it doesn't just become a simple matter of continuation;
rather, the the goal became *not* continuing. Of course that's just as
impossible as to just simply "continue"; in either case something
can't help but be different, and something can't help but reference
the past. What really changes is the focus and perspective of the
culture, whether on the creative or receptive end. And those two can
be more-or-less aligned or, as we've come to see, sometimes quite
divergent.
> Again, I would say that this has more to do with the criticism side of
> it than with the actual creation part.
And I don't think these can be so neatly separated.
> I think that anytime someone manages to hit his or her 'rock bottom'
> of musical style, it will come out as 'new'.
The "new" part I agree totally with, but the "rock bottom" part is way
too vague about what (or where) it is.
> The question here is (and always has been) how much you can make those
> past styles your own. And this is of course not a thing particular to
> our moment of history, either - Beethoven in his later pieces was
> doing just that, making past styles his own (take the C# minor quartet
> with its 'Bach' opening) - and the 'Bach' style he quotes there would
> in Bach proper have been a rethinking of a much older tradition in
> itself...
Right, but where is the "break" between what we accept becoming one's
own and not? There's obviously some limit we set, that makes
somebody's work in a certain style be heard as not their own voice,
even though it is. Like going back to Beethoven or Bach, say. The
closer to the "pure" style one gets, no matter how creative within
that style, the more it loses any relevance and value in the here and
now. Some would say that what would be needed is for the composer to
bring something of his own "now" to the older style. But what is
"now"? I mean, is it a bit of Cage or Lucier, or something supposedly
exclusively the composer's "own"? And where does this "break" in
acceptance happen, and why? We feel it when somebody goes for
Beethoven or Mozart, but what if the style is middle late Schoenberg?
Or Feldman? We might very well be able to hear the difference between
an original voice and the simply derivative in there, but is there
still the same degree of discrimination?
> "anything goes" nowadays, but perhaps it always did - it's just a
> question of what you can imagine 'anything' to entail. Certainly, it's
> still possible to hear a new piece and find yourself thinking, 'Wow! I
> didn't know this music was possible, too!' - I'm even still hearing
> pieces that make me wonder what 'music' really is... (but I do admit
> this wondering 'is this still music' seems to be less of our time than
> of the, say, century before ours)
There's the rub with the "it's all music" (or should I say "it's all
X", where "X" is the activity of your choice). A lot rides on whether
we truly believe this or not. If we do the cultural landscape is
utterly different from here on out. Value, "good" and "bad",
creativity, become completely relative, unfixed and atomized. There
becomes nothing whatever to hold any act in relation to any other
between more than one person. It's obviously envisionable, but I'm not
sure so many really want to live under its implications.
There are some physical clues to its unworkability: I can make a vast
pile of plastic sheeting and drinking straws and say "it's an office
building", but it never will be; or I could hand you a big rectangle
of used rubber cut from an old tire and say "here's my book", not as
anything "conceptual" but as an actual *book*... These are the
implications of embracing "it's all X". If we're going there, then
even Cage is carrying too much historical baggage! And if we're not,
some shift will occur as we pull back from that edge.
Steve Layton
Samuel Vriezen
wrote:
>In
>Mozart's case, the idea of pushing or breaking the limits of a style
>in search of one's own "voice" meant something very different than
>what's been the common attitude in the last century.
I'm not convinced of this. Or, rather, perhaps our situation is no
less different from Mozart's than Mozart's was from, say, Monteverdi's
or Ravel's.
>There's a place
>in there where it doesn't just become a simple matter of continuation;
>rather, the the goal became *not* continuing.
Well, that's what some people have claimed about their work, but take
historical distance and you can see all the continuities you need.
>> Again, I would say that this has more to do with the criticism side of
>> it than with the actual creation part.
>
>And I don't think these can be so neatly separated.
A good point; what composer believes to be doing, or dreams of doing,
very likely influences what he's actually doing. The question for me
resolves to - just how fundamental is that? Does this mean for example
that composers raised against the background of having lots of
avantgardes-by-ideology really undergo a fundamentally different
maturation process than composers who do not have that background, but
are still having to face the problem of finding out what they have to
do in art and of finding their own solutions? Personally, I believe
that the most intense parts of the process of artistic maturation are
much the same throughout the ages, because ultimately all human
beings, and certainly artists from whatever background who are
artistically ambitious, will find themselves having to face the
question 'Why am I doing this?' and come up with an anwer.
>> I think that anytime someone manages to hit his or her 'rock bottom'
>> of musical style, it will come out as 'new'.
>
>The "new" part I agree totally with, but the "rock bottom" part is way
>too vague about what (or where) it is.
It is vague, if only because a real stylistic rock bottom will not
exist - composers can always continue to question their own attitudes.
But I do think that at some point a composer may feel, 'Hey, I'm
really doing something very precise, very particular and how strange,
nobody else seems quite to be doing it my way'.
>Some would say that what would be needed is for the composer to
>bring something of his own "now" to the older style. But what is
>"now"? I mean, is it a bit of Cage or Lucier, or something supposedly
>exclusively the composer's "own"?
It's when you get to the point that even though you seem to rely on a
past style, you really _are_ doing something precise and particular,
and _therefore_ unprecedented.
>There's the rub with the "it's all music" (or should I say "it's all
>X", where "X" is the activity of your choice). A lot rides on whether
>we truly believe this or not. If we do the cultural landscape is
>utterly different from here on out. Value, "good" and "bad",
>creativity, become completely relative, unfixed and atomized. There
>becomes nothing whatever to hold any act in relation to any other
>between more than one person. It's obviously envisionable, but I'm not
>sure so many really want to live under its implications.
>
>There are some physical clues to its unworkability: I can make a vast
>pile of plastic sheeting and drinking straws and say "it's an office
>building", but it never will be; or I could hand you a big rectangle
>of used rubber cut from an old tire and say "here's my book", not as
>anything "conceptual" but as an actual *book*... These are the
>implications of embracing "it's all X". If we're going there, then
>even Cage is carrying too much historical baggage! And if we're not,
>some shift will occur as we pull back from that edge.
I think we never had a point where people seriously could say that
'everything is music'. Cage used slogans not too far removed from
that, but when you look at what he was doing, he was providing quite
specific frameworks for determining just how this 'everything' could
be music. Things he never seemed to include, for example, are those
things having to do with the erotic. His take on 'nature' and natural
sounds seems very much opposed to that, focusing rather on things such
as the weather and traffic - and, also, he made sure in his
compositions to get a certain sort of variation in his materials.
I actually think you can only truly have the 'anything goes' attitude
if you completely and fundamentally lack artistic ideas, if, in other
words, you are a complete bore. Serious art never reached that point.
At most, it could _suggest_ that anything went - but only got away
with it because it chose interesting things for this 'anything'!
But again, I think that Mozart made this suggestion that 'anything
goes' (or 'everything is possible') no less than Cage.
And there's something to be said for trying to suggest this. I think
people want to be astonished by art, by the opening up of possibility.
And if you now write 'in the style of Mozart', you really have a hard
time coming up with something that suggests that 'everything is
possible' - rather than suggesting, 'Although for Mozart himself
everything was possible, for me only Mozart is possible'.
And note that for Mozart, 'everything was possible' even though I
wouldn't really be able to cite any sort of facile 'compositional
breakthrough' of his. (Apart from, say, the Jupiter symphony
itself...)
--
Samuel
http://concerten.free.fr
wf...@ptnospam.com
Vriezen) wrote:
>On 8 Feb 2003 08:01:24 -0800, bter...@hotmail.com (Rob Benton) wrote:
>
>>When looking on the past century, I am astonished by the high speed at
>>which music has evolved, and I wonder why it had to be so quick?
>
>I think that's mainly a function of having a bigger population that
>lives longer in reasonable health, has more free time, and is on the
>average more highly educated, combined with the effects of
>globalization that have spread 'classical music' to far beyond its
>core geography in Northern and Western Europe. Things give the
>impression of going faster not only in music, but also in consumer
>electronics, visual arts, science and many other areas.
>
>OTOH I also think this whole feel that things are moving faster may
>well be illusory, and that we think things moved slower in the past
>because we have access to the summary of history and not to the actual
>lived experience. In other words, perhaps it's just a question of
>perspective.
it might not be illusory. consider 2 things:
1. communications.
today people around the world can hear the latest compositions
relatively quickly. more people today know more music (probably) than
at any other time in human history.
2. the existence of the 'arts'.
in the past, artists had patrons. today, there is a market for art,
and it's often supported by governments. with the widespread access
to music via 1 above, and the existence of a professional class of
artists, evolution can happen pretty quickly.
Samuel Vriezen
>>OTOH I also think this whole feel that things are moving faster may
>>well be illusory, and that we think things moved slower in the past
>>because we have access to the summary of history and not to the actual
>>lived experience. In other words, perhaps it's just a question of
>>perspective.
>
>it might not be illusory. consider 2 things:
>
>1. communications.
>
>today people around the world can hear the latest compositions
>relatively quickly. more people today know more music (probably) than
>at any other time in human history.
Well, you know the law of inertia. Perhaps if everybody has access to
the same huge body of music, this will not in fact increase the speed
of development. Just as in the economy, you get more work done if you
specialize.
>2. the existence of the 'arts'.
>
>in the past, artists had patrons. today, there is a market for art,
>and it's often supported by governments. with the widespread access
>to music via 1 above, and the existence of a professional class of
>artists, evolution can happen pretty quickly.
The governments of today are the patrons of the past.
--
Samuel
http://concerten.free.fr
Steve Layton
> On Sun, 16 Feb 2003 03:53:55 GMT, wf...@ptnospam.com wrote:
>
> >>OTOH I also think this whole feel that things are moving faster may
> >>well be illusory, and that we think things moved slower in the past
> >>because we have access to the summary of history and not to the actual
> >>lived experience. In other words, perhaps it's just a question of
> >>perspective.
> >
> >it might not be illusory. consider 2 things:
> >
> >1. communications.
> >
> >today people around the world can hear the latest compositions
> >relatively quickly. more people today know more music (probably) than
> >at any other time in human history.
>
> Well, you know the law of inertia. Perhaps if everybody has access to
> the same huge body of music, this will not in fact increase the speed
> of development. Just as in the economy, you get more work done if you
> specialize.
There was an interesting article I was reading somewhere recently,
where the author was commenting on just this problem. Namely, that
everything is being "recorded" on a scale never known before. Problems
enough for History, but as far as music is concerned the
multiplication of works available to be heard creates quite a dilemma,
since experiencing a piece of music takes the time of the music
itself. It's essentially impossible to become familiar with more than
a tiny fraction of what's been created even under the best
circumstances.
That was already hard to do long ago, and only gets more hopeless
today. To get a really broad exposure means sacrificing any depth of
familiarity in most of the areas. Multiple listens to works are quite
often the only way to gain real insight, but of course each time we
revisit a piece will take that much time away from what else is out
there to discover. I'm sure a lot of people out there become
by-and-large musical "skimmers", taking in a few minutes of this or
that, putting something else on while they do the dishes, etc. A
concert setting focuses them on the piece at hand, but it's likely
that if it's a new piece, that's probably the only time they're going
to hear it.
I can see this becoming something of the aesthetic "norm"; if so, it
will not only be the way that people listen, but will have to be in
some fashion part of the way musicians create.
>
> >2. the existence of the 'arts'.
> >
> >in the past, artists had patrons. today, there is a market for art,
> >and it's often supported by governments. with the widespread access
> >to music via 1 above, and the existence of a professional class of
> >artists, evolution can happen pretty quickly.
>
> The governments of today are the patrons of the past.
Maybe that's a Dutch thing; in the USA, for quite a while the only
real "patron" for new classical music is the academic institution. And
they're "it" not through much in the way of active patronage; they
simply provide the job, venue and performers to let pieces get made
and played. But it's a pretty closed system, that rarely reaches
beyond itself.
Commercial music is the only other significant "patronage" for
classical guys, but then of course it's music-for-hire, very good
within the limits or very bad within the limits, but always within the
limits. And those limits often require having having to leave
classical behind for things more related to pop and sound-design.
The government has effecively gotten out of the patronage business
here, aside from some opportunities that generally demand work that is
"relevant" or "useful" in the community. Stuff that "connects with
people "interests" and "concerns", which means that the music is often
the least of their considerations.
The number of non-academically supported composers who can freely
create and make a living doing so is really statistically close to
zero in comparison to any of this. The tiny few who can live well from
it do so because of a lot of non-musical considerations; the other
fraction do it only by living close to what most would think of as
poverty.
Recording labels are the last important patron, but that system is
geared almost entirely toward certain kinds of popular music, except
for a sprinkling of classical performers. In either case, it works a
lot more like straight commercial music-for-hire.
Steve Layton
Samuel Vriezen
wrote:
>> >1. communications.
>> >
>> >today people around the world can hear the latest compositions
>> >relatively quickly. more people today know more music (probably) than
>> >at any other time in human history.
>>
>> Well, you know the law of inertia. Perhaps if everybody has access to
>> the same huge body of music, this will not in fact increase the speed
>> of development. Just as in the economy, you get more work done if you
>> specialize.
>
>There was an interesting article I was reading somewhere recently,
>where the author was commenting on just this problem. Namely, that
>everything is being "recorded" on a scale never known before. Problems
>enough for History, but as far as music is concerned the
>multiplication of works available to be heard creates quite a dilemma,
>since experiencing a piece of music takes the time of the music
>itself. It's essentially impossible to become familiar with more than
>a tiny fraction of what's been created even under the best
>circumstances.
Exactly. This is, I believe, going to be, or perhaps already, one of
the main artistic issues of our time. Also, what are the consequences
of all this in the long run?
As I see 'music history', you have two sorts of forces in operation
which I think of as 'historical' and 'posthistorical'. The historical
is when somebody achieves a breakthrough and everyone gets interested
in (or upset about) it. That's how Beethoven, Cage and Stravinsky for
example could root themselves deeply into what we now think of as
music history. In the post-historic, these radical things are not the
norm and the play of ideas becomes more fluid, as composers may get
drawn more into the inner workings of their music rather than in the
ostentatiously new. (among others I'm thinking here of Bach, late
Schumann, Mahler and today perhaps people like Saariaho). A sense of
ironic availability of past styles is part of this post-historic too
(and since these play a big role too in Beethoven, Cage and Stravinsky
you can see that the historical and the post-historic can coexist).
Now our age of huge availability seems to have shifted the balance
very much to this posthistoric side of the axis - and as far as we can
tell, perhaps even for good!
I strongly believe that if composers and other creators wish to remain
being able to see a relevance to what they're doing, they have to find
an alternative to the idea of music history as the accumulation of
masterpieces.
>> >2. the existence of the 'arts'.
>> >
>> >in the past, artists had patrons. today, there is a market for art,
>> >and it's often supported by governments. with the widespread access
>> >to music via 1 above, and the existence of a professional class of
>> >artists, evolution can happen pretty quickly.
>>
>> The governments of today are the patrons of the past.
>
>
>Maybe that's a Dutch thing;
It is, still.
>in the USA, for quite a while the only
>real "patron" for new classical music is the academic institution.
It might actually be interesting to get anthropologists to study the
difference between a government patronage and an academic patronage
music culture.
--
Samuel
http://concerten.free.fr