is modernism evil?
gravity
Wuorinen and really liked it. i guess it was a serial composition.
i'm a fan of Impressionism and Surrealism (but not Cubism). i try to
understand Mondrian and Kandinsky.
atonal / serialism / dodecaphonic remains an elusive goal for me.
Gravity
Samuel Vriezen
M.E.A.
Samuel Vriezen wrote:
> It didn't invade Iraq or anything.
You know, somebody (even posting in this newsgroup) still see modernism
as "Entartete Kunst"...
;-)
Getting more serious now and answering the original first post, how in
the hell could be any art expression considered "evil" (or "good", for
that matter) , as a quality to be assigned to its >formal structure<
or its >allocation in time< ?
Gravity, you still don't "get" atonal music. You are fond of Surrealism
(but not cubism).
OK. So what?
Should not be a surprise. We all have different tastes you know?
But then why do you post with a subject like "is modernism evil" ?
Just to trigger curiosity (option 1) or to trigger some flame (option
2)?
Sorry, but due to the recent trolls invasion here I became
overskeptical....
Cheers,
M.E.A.
RyanT
Depends on your taste. Serialism (an other types of structures) can be
treated as a language, and depending on the composer you may or may not
like what they have to say. Just like how we can use English to say
good or bad things, the medium itself is not to blame, but what the
composer is trying to convey. It's very possible to write accessable,
very "nice" sounding serial music -- it just depends on whos writing
it.
Serialism, by the way, is not atonal, meaning anti-tonal. It's
pan-tonal, meaning the shifts of keys are just happening at very fast
rates. A tone row is a self contained shift between the 12 keys on the
equal tempered scale.
schofe...@yahoo.com
paintings of trees and nature and the whole thing became more and more
distilled to the essential of pure form you maybe get an idea of the
process he was following till he gets to the playful abstraction of
"Broadway boogie woogie" etc.
Same with Kandinsky. Follow his journey from Russian pagan stuff to the
swoosh and stab of abstraction. Interestingly enough, both Mondrian and
Kandinsky were students of Theosophy (qv) and the search for pure form
behind the surface of the world.
Try the same with Schoenberg (a friend of Kandinsky). Follow his
journey from the early days of pieces like Verklaerte Nacht, through
the piano pieces, the second string quartet, the chamber symphony and
Pierrot Lunaire and you get the development.
Or Webern. Follow the progress from the Passacaglia Op 1, through the
songs, the six pieces for orchestra and on to the later pieces like the
Variations for Orchestra. Again, a process of distillation.
Maybe you can't follow them all the way on their journey. Maybe you
leave them at a certain point. But maybe you get an idea of the
necessity of their creative process that led them to new language.
* * *
Alternatively I could say go to Varese. Listen to Arcana or Ameriques.
Forget about tonal/atonal distinctions. Get off on the sheer beauty of
the sound. Play Ionisation loud till your neighbours bang on the wall.
Then get into John Cage - the electronic version of Fontana Mix,
Cartridge music, Atlas Eclipticalis. Loud. If your neighbours still
complain then move to a new house.
Listen until you hear the noise that is all around you in the city as
music.
Then go back to Mozart or Dvorak or Tchaikovsky and listen to them with
your new ears.
Repeat this journey as many times as you like. Or stop when you've had
enough. Or when you've found a place where you are comfortable. Between
tonal and atonal, between sound and noise. Between heaven and hell.
Do let us know how you get on
Schoferhoffer
gravity
"M.E.A." <no...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:1148114736....@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
i guess there's no shortcut. no one can tell me how to understand
serialism, Second Viennese School, etc. i have to work at it.
yeah it's not evil of course, but some Christians might view modernism and
postmoderism as evil (other Christians embrace postmodernism actually). i
view Mondrian's neoplasticism as art for aliens since of course aliens would
not view realism in the same fashion as we do. i mean a "tree" or a "dog"
may have no meaning outside the Milky Way. so perhaps "atonal music" or
"pantonal music" is less human than some other forms of music. or maybe
it's more human. i don't know.
i think some Modernist architecture is more in touch with the people than
the old stuff that could get gaudy and overplayed. perhaps it's Communism,
in concrete.
i'm just rambling, i don't totally understand Modernism yet. all i can do
is buy more CDs and make another attempt at understanding. i just don't
want to be an uneducated Philistine, and that's how i feel.
Gravity
gravity
i'm not a troll, but i can be kind of antagonistic or confrontational. it's
just my posting style, and personality. no harm intended.
Gravity
Ian Pace
"gravity" <gravity...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:44709a8f$0$15990$892e...@authen.yellow.readfreenews.net...
>
> "M.E.A." <no...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
> news:1148114736....@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>>
>> Samuel Vriezen wrote:
>> > It didn't invade Iraq or anything.
>>
>> You know, somebody (even posting in this newsgroup) still see modernism
>> as "Entartete Kunst"...
>>
>> ;-)
>>
>> Getting more serious now and answering the original first post, how in
>> the hell could be any art expression considered "evil" (or "good", for
>> that matter) , as a quality to be assigned to its >formal structure<
>> or its >allocation in time< ?
>>
>> Gravity, you still don't "get" atonal music. You are fond of Surrealism
>> (but not cubism).
>> OK. So what?
>> Should not be a surprise. We all have different tastes you know?
>> But then why do you post with a subject like "is modernism evil" ?
>> Just to trigger curiosity (option 1) or to trigger some flame (option
>> 2)?
>> Sorry, but due to the recent trolls invasion here I became
>> overskeptical....
>>
>> Cheers,
>> M.E.A.
>>
>
> i guess there's no shortcut. no one can tell me how to understand
> serialism, Second Viennese School, etc. i have to work at it.
Serialism is a compositional technique rather than a style or genre (which
is not to say that technique and result can be easily dissociated). Try
approaching the Second Viennese School as you would the more
through-composed works of Brahms, whilst bearing in mind that the forms of
rhetorical closure and even archaicising tendencies in Brahms seem to
require for Schoenberg a different approach in the light of Wagnerian
chromaticism and other musical developments.
>
> yeah it's not evil of course, but some Christians might view modernism and
> postmoderism as evil (other Christians embrace postmodernism actually). i
> view Mondrian's neoplasticism as art for aliens since of course aliens
> would
> not view realism in the same fashion as we do. i mean a "tree" or a "dog"
> may have no meaning outside the Milky Way. so perhaps "atonal music" or
> "pantonal music" is less human than some other forms of music. or maybe
> it's more human. i don't know.
There are different ways in which the 'human' can be expressed in music. I
read of a test whereby a range of uninitiated viewers were shown some of
Mondrian's most abstract compositions together with other works identical
other than for slight change in the proportions. The vast majority of the
viewers picked out correctly which was the real Mondrian. If this survey has
any scientific truth (which of course is debatable), then it would suggest
that Mondrian's work does appeal to some aspects of human perception.
>
> i think some Modernist architecture is more in touch with the people than
> the old stuff that could get gaudy and overplayed. perhaps it's
> Communism,
> in concrete.
That's interesting - if high abstraction in architecture seems to have a
'for the people' quality to it, to you, could you not believe that in theory
at least it might be possible for music (and other art forms) to do the
same?
Ian
Ian Pace
>i still don't "get" atonal music. i'm trying though. i listened to some
> Wuorinen and really liked it. i guess it was a serial composition.
Wuorinen is one type of atonal music. Try Brian Ferneyhough's Second String
Quartet, and see if that makes an impression? I find it a charged, visceral,
and hyper-expressive work. The approach that Ferneyhough takes, of pushing
inherited tropes of expression to their extremes, is something one finds
much less often in American music, I would say.
Ian
Ian Pace
> the hell could be any art expression considered "evil" (or "good", for
> that matter) , as a quality to be assigned to its >formal structure<
> or its >allocation in time< ?
>
Alas, many have done so from Plato onwards. In recent times, we have seen
attacks on modernism and formalism from Nazis, Stalinists/Zhdanovites (and
later neo-Stalinists and Maoists, including the likes of Cornelius Cardew),
and also from many of the New Musicologists who are most prominent in
Anglo-American universities. All of these people want to force art to
satisfy pre-ordained notions of social utility. As such, their
prescriptiveness is in opposition to genuine artistic creativity per se.
Ian
Jeffrey Quick
Samuel Vriezen <sqv.do....@xs4all.nl> wrote:
> It didn't invade Iraq or anything.
BWAHAHAHA! How do you know Donald Rumsfeld isn't carrying your music
around on an ipod?
Most of the "modernism is evil" arguments I've read have been from
fundamentalist Christians. Then there's Cyril Scott (Music: its secret
influence through the ages) who claimed that Schoenberg was sent by the
Great White Brotherhood to break up the last of the rigid thought forms
that resulted when Handel (who had been sent by the GWB to break up the
licentiousness of Restoration England) became too popular.