Stravinsky on Ansermet
David7Gable
Ernest Ansermet introduced himself to me in a street in Clarens one day in 1911
and invited me to his home for dinner. Although I had heard of him as a
schoolmaster and amateur musician, his appearance--the beard--gave me an
unpleasant turn; for a moment I took him for someone masquerading as the
Charlatan in Petrushka.
Shortly after that Ansermet became the conductor of the Kursaal orchestra in
Montreux, and our next encounter was at the home of the chanson composer Henri
Duparc, a morose gentleman living in retirement near Vevey (in fact, near a
hotel in which I had stayed as a child in the 1890's and in which I had once
seen the Empress Elisabeth of Austria). At about this time, and I think with
Ansermet, I also met the Geneva composer Ernest Bloch, an egregious type of man
whom I saw rather frequently in my first years in Switzerland, and then again
many years later in Portland, Oregon.
When Pierné and Monteux had left the Russian Ballet in 1914, I recommended
Ansermet to succeed them. He was skillful in regulating orchestral balances
and he understood the Franco-Russian new music of that day. I was on close
terms with Ansermet in the 1920's and 1930's and, in fact, until 1937 when he
made an unauthorized cut in Jeu de Cartes and began, some years after that, to
criticize my revisions of earlier pieces--though he had been the first to
perform the 1919 revisions of the Firebird and the Nightingale. Since then he
has been decrying my new music with a priori and "The Emperor's New Clothes"
types of arguments, and he has even had the temerity to express himself in a
heavy but not very weighty tome on the subject, one which uses phrases such as
"conscience logarithmique," but which only proves, and sadly, that he cannot
hear or follow this music. In spite of all that, however, I am still fond of
him, and I cannot forget many merry hours we shared together. I remember one
evening when, after we had drunk a bottle of Framboise together, he pretended
to be a dog and began barking like one, under my studio piano in the Salle
Pleyel. It was a very convincing performance.
Igor Stravinsky, Themes and Episodes (Knopf, 1966), pp. 153-154
Ansermetniac
orchestrations. One of his last recordings is the Firebird in the original
orchestration. Ansermet wrote a book using mathematics to prove that twelve
tone music was wrong. I guess that did not sit well with Stravinsky. Rhey
reconciled in the 60s when the NY Phil did a Stravinsky festival
Abbedd
"David7Gable" <david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20030501182645...@mb-m28.aol.com...
Raymond Hall
news:aCjsa.72124$A41.10...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net...
| Very Interesting. Even till the end, Ansernet would not record the revised
| orchestrations. One of his last recordings is the Firebird in the original
| orchestration. Ansermet wrote a book using mathematics to prove that
twelve
| tone music was wrong. I guess that did not sit well with Stravinsky. Rhey
| reconciled in the 60s when the NY Phil did a Stravinsky festival
|
| Abbedd
Publications: Le geste du chef d'orchestre (1943); Les fondements de la
musique dans la conscience humaine (engl. The foundations of music in the
human consciousness, Neuchatel 1962); Ernest Ansermet/J. Claude Piget:
Gespräche über Musik (engl. Discourses on music, Munich 1985).
Link
http://www.osr.ch/orchestre/english/ansermet.htm
Regards,
# http://www.users.bigpond.com/hallraylily/index.html
See You Tamara (Ozzy Osbourne)
Ray, Taree, NSW
Ramon Khalona
> I was on close
> terms with Ansermet in the 1920's and 1930's and, in fact, until 1937 when he
> made an unauthorized cut in Jeu de Cartes and began, some years after that, to
> criticize my revisions of earlier pieces--though he had been the first to
> perform the 1919 revisions of the Firebird and the Nightingale. Since then he
> has been decrying my new music with a priori and "The Emperor's New Clothes"
> types of arguments, and he has even had the temerity to express himself in a
> heavy but not very weighty tome on the subject, one which uses phrases such as
> "conscience logarithmique," but which only proves, and sadly, that he cannot
> hear or follow this music.
My respect for Ansermet grows by leaps and bounds.
RK
Fred Bloggs
And mine for Stravinsky.
lastvisibledog
Time has certainly approved his verdict on serialism. I never had
anything but respect for Ansermet.
David7Gable
>Time has certainly approved his verdict on serialism.
To the extent that this statement is aimed at extant pieces of music and not at
something mythological, time has done nothing of the kind. There is no such
thing as "serialism." There is no single such system that will entirely
explain any piece of music in existence. And didn't Ansermet change his mind
and conduct Berg's Violin Concerto?
-david gable
Scott Kurtz
Frank Martin. I think he was willing to accept twelve-tone works if he felt
they were strongly rooted in tonality and only used dodecaphony for
decorative filigrees and the like. I'm not sure if he ever conducted Karl
Amadeus Hartmann or what he thought of the early expressionistic works of
Webern, not to mention other Swiss composers besides Martin, like Armin
Schibler or Rudolph Kelterborn. He certainly would have found works like
Stravinsky's Movements or the Huxley Variations to be anathema to his
ideals. Then again, Ansermet's repertory, on the whole, was not that wide
ranging.news:20030503001636...@mb-m02.aol.com...
lastvisibledog
> >
> >Time has certainly approved his verdict on serialism.
>
> To the extent that this statement is aimed at extant pieces of music and not at
> something mythological, time has done nothing of the kind. There is no such
> thing as "serialism." There is no single such system that will entirely
> explain any piece of music in existence.
Well, but you know what I mean. There was a time when musicians and
writers had to concede that Schoenberg/12-tone/serial/WHATEVER music
was something you had to come to terms with. Those days are over.
Musicology of mid-century (the last century) still abounds with
knitted brows over what now seems unbelievable. I was reading Charles
Rosen on Schoenberg recently and it seemed quaint.
Not long ago one had to "grapple" with Marx in the same way. This,
too, is now merely quaint.
Samir Golescu
lastvisibledog wrote:
Good dog!! (-:
All I can see in a lot of these arguments is: if one feels
12-tone/serial/WHATEVER is bad music is because one doesn't get the
"language". Once one gets the "language" one allegedly has to "grapple"
with it and accept as a matter of course that "WHATEVER" (I liked that) is
good music.
Thanks, I pass. And don't give me the Berg Violin Concerto. This gripping
piece is good music perhaps because Berg's innate musicality and his
capacity to blend abstract stupidities and, "malgrado suo", aural
consistency were too strong for him not to compose something good
regardless of whether he did it with a hand tied behind his back. And I'd
still take Bartok over Berg any day, for the little that's worth.
regards,
SG
Scott Kurtz
available to composers. It was not good to the extent that it so many cases
it seeemed to limit the expressive universe to expressions of angst (or at
best) irresolution. Too much of it became too "self-resembling" in Aaron
Copland's words. American film composer David Raksin once remarked that
perhaps if, after World War II, composers had lionized Berg the way they
lionized Webern a more humane musical culture might have been more
widespread and listeners might have been less alienated. This is not to deny
that a fair amount of interesting music has been written using twelve-tone
technique, across an enormous stylistic spectrum, from Boulez's Pli Selon
Pli or Rituel, to Karl-Birger Blomdahl's opera Aniara, Ginastera's Bomarzo,
Rochberg's Symphony No. 2, Henze's Symphony No. 4, symphonies by Gerhard and
Roger Sessions, Berg's Violin Concerto, Stravinsky's Agon or The Flood,
Schoenberg's Piano Concerto, Imbrie's Violin Concerto, Aaron Copland's Music
for a Great City, William Alwyn's Sinfonietta for Strings. One could go on
and on. On the other hand, one is confronted with such sterile expressions
of intractible thorniness as Schoenberg's Wind Quintet or Variations for
Orch. or Stravinsky's mercifully brief Movements for Piano .
Samir Golescu <gol...@uiuc.edu> wrote in message
news:Pine.GSO.4.31.03050...@ux13.cso.uiuc.edu...
David7Gable
Do you find Beethoven merely quaint? The fact of the matter is, there are more
performances of Schoenberg today than ever before. Because Schoenberg has
performers passionately committed to performing his music. You would be hard
pressed to find a celebrity maestro under the age of 60 who does not include
Schoenberg in his repertory as a matter of course with the possible exception
of Slatkin. The period of the late 50's and early 60's is a thing of the past,
the styles forged during that period now period styles. But the heydays of
impressionist painting, the Lake Poets, and the Viennese Classical style have
also come and gone. On the other hand, today there are rather surprisingly
large numbers of young musicians who can play Le marteau sans maitre without
batting an eye, who can throw together a performance with limited rehearsal
time. A far cry from the 40 rehearsals required for the premiere under
Rosbaud. Funny thing. The same thing has happened to Beethoven's symphonies
(but you might not have read about the staggering number of rehearsal Habeneck
had before the French premieres of several of the symphonies). Even more
remarkable than that, that avant garde piece of noise the Grosse fugue,
basically unplayed for the first century of its existence, is now a part of the
standard repertory of every string quartet.
I also suspect from your attitude that you have not really had any experience
of the repertory you excoriate but are only resorting to the same kind of a
priori and Emperor's-New-Clothes arguments Stravinsky (rightly) accused
Ansermet of.
-david gable
David7Gable
>Rosen on Schoenberg recently and it seemed quaint
IThis can only mean on thing: that you consider it quaint to take Schoenberg
seriously. If I am wrong, I would like to know what it that you consider
quaint about Rosen's discussions of the historical and cultural context in
which Schoenberg's music arose or his discussions of the style of Schoenberg's
music.
-david gable
David7Gable
>12-tone/serial/WHATEVER is bad music is because one doesn't get the
>"language".
Have you ever considered the possiblity that this may be true? If all that you
hear when you listen to, say, Boulez's Figures, doubles, prismes is an opaque
wall of noise, then what you have heard is not the piece that Boulez wrote.
You have only heard random sound. No wonder you dismiss it as non-music.
>And don't give me the Berg Violin Concerto. This gripping
>piece is good music perhaps because Berg's innate musicality and his
>capacity to blend abstract stupidities
Ah! Once you come to terms with a piece, I can no longer use it as an example.
Just as the Pastoral symphony found an audience long before the Grosse Fugue,
Berg's Violin Concerto is only the tip of the iceberg. If you were willing to
give other examples from the so-called "atonal" repertory half a chance, you'd
discover that Berg was not the only composer of this repertory who exhibited a
profound innate musicality. A miniscule number of course, but a number
nonetheless.
As for "abstract stupidies," Berg's abstract stupidities are no different in
kind from the abstract stupidities underlying Mozart's music. Mozart's music
depends on a number of abstract facts about the diatonic collection: that you
can make a major scale out of it, that you can make exactly three major triads
out of it, that it can be arranged in a series of perfect fifths, that there is
only one tritone available in the collection, etc. etc. etc. Once you start
using the whole chromatic collection, the number of possible combinations
increases exponentially, so composers delimit the possibilities by means of a
pre-compositional series that stands in the same relationship to the piece as
the abstract properties of the diatonic collection stand in relationship to
Mozart's music. But serialism is not "a facile and mechanical procedure for
producing unpopular works." Except in the case of certain exceptional
doctrinaire and stillborn pieces that have never acquired and never will
acquire a passionate following (e.g., Boulez's First Book of Structures), the
composer is as free to make compositional choices as Mozart was within the
constraints he accepted. And the choices that really matter are not made a
priori for the composer by the series any more than the abstract composition of
the diatonic collection made choices for Mozart.
You must also be aware of the long history of the use of precompositional
orderings of pitch and rhythm in Western music (and by precompositional I mean
orderings made before composing the piece to aid in the composition of the
piece). Surely you know about the isorhythmic motets of the Ars nova in which
the tenor line is generated from a repeating pitch pattern and a repeating
rhythm pattern: generally the two are of different length so that these
mutually modifying precompositional determinants of the actual piece modify
each other differently with each statement. Similar constraints operate in all
the contrapuntal voices written around the isorhythmic tenor. Then there are
canons, of which Ockeghem and Bach have produced the most stupifying examples,
pieces in which all of the voices are generated from a single line, and there
are rules (or canons) governing where in pitch and time the lines have to enter
in order to work together and at what speed they must unfold. (Generally the
answer is "at the same speed as the first voice," but that is not true of
Ockeghem's mensuration canons.) And you know perfectly well I could go on and
on about such "abstract stupidities."
As for the more outrageous claims made by the European apostles of total
serialism in the early 50's, the authors of those claims have long since moved
well beyond those claims, but you insist on using those claims to bash the 50
years of music they've written since, no doubt because you don't know really
know the music, which you dismiss a priori and not on the basis of experience.
It is perfectly possible not to like Boulez after you know it. I have a
friend, an Australian pianist, who once played Carter's Double Concerto with
Arthur Weisberg conducting and who more recently played in the Australian
premiere of Boulez's Sur incises. He really doesn't like Boulez's music, which
is too French for him. But he can hear it as music. It is impossible to know
whether you like it if you haven't come to terms with it (and I mean that in
the same sense I would if I had said "come to terms with" Bach or Chopin). For
that matter, "history" has already made a selection from this repertory. Out
of all the so-called Darmstadt composers, there are only a very tiny number who
really have a following. (Have you heard of Bo Nilsson?) And that following
is not going to go away, any more than the readers of Emily Dickinson are going
to renounce her poetry just because more than 99.99% of the people in the world
ignore it.
-david gable
David7Gable
>Copland's words
But Copland wasn't talking about Boulez, whose music he admired very early on,
in part because it showed that you could do something utterly French with an
"atonal" language. Poulenc and Milhaud were equally enthusiastic. As for
Virgil Thomson, he hailed Boulez as "the most talented of the Paris under-25's"
in the late 40's, claiming that Boulez's early Sonatine for Flute and Piano
sounded "like out-of-tune Ravel." In the 60's Thomson wrote a passionate
defense of Boulez's music entitled "The Genius Figure" for The New York Review
of Books. Stravinsky's early interest in Boulez is of a piece with the
enthusiasm of these other Francophone and Franco-American composers.
Then there's Ned Rorem, who hated both Boulez and his music in the 50's. He's
gradually come around as a result of Boulez's later music. According to Rorem,
Eclat/Mutliples (1970) "flows in the continuing stream of impressionism, but
don't tell HIM [Boulez] that." As for the late works, pieces written since
1980 like Repons, ...explosante/fixe..., and Sur incises, he has written of
their extreme gorgeousness and sensuality. (I can't remember Rorem's clever
apothegm about the later music, unfortunately.)
>American film composer David Raksin once remarked that
>perhaps if, after World War II, composers had lionized Berg the way they
>lionized Webern a more humane musical culture might have been more
>widespread and listeners might have been less alienated.
I don't see why Webern's music is less humane than Berg's. I don't even
understand what your statement means. It's only (as far as I can tell) less
rich and more limited. In any case, what you've described is exactly what
happened. By the later 50's Boulez and Stockhausen were much more interested
in Berg and Debussy than they were in Messiaen and Webern. Stockhausen even
wrote an essay on Debussy's Jeux, its form and textures. The example of Berg
and Debussy enabled Boulez and Stockhausen to throw off the shackles of a
doctrinaire total serialism and produce a more flexible and more sweeping
continuum.
-david gable
Bloom
>>I was reading Charles
>>Rosen on Schoenberg recently and it seemed quaint
>
>IThis can only mean on thing: that you consider it quaint to take Schoenberg
>seriously.
>
>-david gable
Of late on this NG I've seen people write they think Beethoven is a
second-rate composer, that his ninth in particular is a piece of
trash, that Schoenberg is quaint, that serialism doesn't result in
music or that it is at least tantamount to a composer tying his hands
behind his back, etc, etc. ...I think I we need another firebrand on
the level of a young Boulez to come around here and start declaring
people useless. ;-)
I would, but despite my being young enough to perhaps get away with
those sorts of comments, I lack the fortitude. ;-)
-Bloom
Raymond Hall
news:mp1abvshudgu6m54u...@4ax.com...
Perhaps with more fortitude, you too would speak from the heart. What is
wrong with posters giving their honest opinions anyway? I wouldn't want it
to be any other way, whether young or old.
It was precisely because Boulez was very young, that he gave way to some
early remarks, which doesn't endear him to some. But what the heck, that was
he thought at the time, and so why not?
Bloom
Oh, I agree, why not? I for one am quite enamored with individuals
who are willing to state their views, and forcefully. For example,
Nietzsche's later comments on Wagner: priceless (and right on, even
though I happen to suffer from Wagner-addiction myself)! Or some of
the things Boulez had to say: you have to love them. ;-)
I, however, am no Boulez, and certainly no Nietzsche. In other words,
I'm not a genius, and so wise enough to keep my mouth shut. ;-)
Anyway, I was mostly kidding with my previous post. While a lot of
the things people say about music around here completely baffle me, or
even make me want to reach through my computer monitor and throttle
someone, those moments quickly pass. After all, I realize we're all
not going to like the same things. While I'm left in a state of
disbelief every time I hear someone say they don't like Beethoven's
Ninth, for example, I'm sure there are many people around here who
would be equally incredulous over some of the things I don't like.
-Bloom
Praetorius
in message news:aCjsa.72124$A41.10...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net...
> orchestrations. One of his last recordings is the Firebird in the original
> orchestration. Ansermet wrote a book using mathematics to prove that
twelve
> tone music was wrong. I guess that did not sit well with Stravinsky. Rhey
> reconciled in the 60s when the NY Phil did a Stravinsky festival
I remember (IIRC) reading (I think in _High Fidelity_) an anecdote
(related by John Culshaw, Nicholas Slonimsky or the like) about
Ansermet and Stravinsky meeting after their "rift," and Ansermet
played a bunch of his Stravinsky records for the latter. Stravinsky
listened silently. After the last piece, Ansermet asked him what he
thought. Starvinsky sat up and replied, "I think that you need a new
pickup."
--
Frank Decolvenaere
To reply by e-mail, replace NMBR with 1612.
"You are no bigger than
the things that annoy you."
Jerry Bundsen
Ansermetniac
Abbedd
"Praetorius" <Praetor...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:anata.65652$cO3.4...@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
Simon Roberts
>
>Of late on this NG I've seen people write they think Beethoven is a
>second-rate composer, that his ninth in particular is a piece of
>trash, that Schoenberg is quaint, that serialism doesn't result in
>music or that it is at least tantamount to a composer tying his hands
>behind his back, etc, etc. ...I think I we need another firebrand on
>the level of a young Boulez to come around here and start declaring
>people useless. ;-)
>
>I would, but despite my being young enough to perhaps get away with
>those sorts of comments, I lack the fortitude. ;-)
Monteux wasn't young enough, but you remind me of an anecdote someone told me
about him (I hope it's true): after a performance of Brahms 3 he conducted
someone came up to him and said "I think Brahms is boring," to which Monteux
responded: "Yes, but it doesn't matter."
Simon
>-Bloom
TansalQ
> Nietzsche's later comments on Wagner: priceless (and right on, even
> though I happen to suffer from Wagner-addiction myself)! Or some of
> the things Boulez had to say: you have to love them. ;-)
Would someone be kind enough to supply these, not necessarily precisely?
Tansal
Van Eyes
news:BADAE5FA.1D3D7%tan...@hotmail.com
http://home.c2i.net/monsalvat/nietzsch.htm
http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Cult/CultScot.htm
http://www.yale.edu/yup/books/076401.htm
http://www.aatonal.com/Boulezquotes.html
http://www.flash.net/~jronsen/boulez.html
http://www.allianceforlifelonglearning.org/er/tree.jsp?c=42544
Regards
--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Larry Rinkel
news:anata.65652$cO3.4...@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
> in message news:aCjsa.72124$A41.10...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net...
> > Very Interesting. Even till the end, Ansernet would not record the
revised
> > orchestrations. One of his last recordings is the Firebird in the
original
> > orchestration. Ansermet wrote a book using mathematics to prove that
> twelve
> > tone music was wrong. I guess that did not sit well with Stravinsky.
Rhey
> > reconciled in the 60s when the NY Phil did a Stravinsky festival
>
> I remember (IIRC) reading (I think in _High Fidelity_) an anecdote
> (related by John Culshaw, Nicholas Slonimsky or the like) about
> Ansermet and Stravinsky meeting after their "rift," and Ansermet
> played a bunch of his Stravinsky records for the latter. Stravinsky
> listened silently. After the last piece, Ansermet asked him what he
> thought. Starvinsky sat up and replied, "I think that you need a new
> pickup."
>
Larry Rinkel
news:b93nb...@drn.newsguy.com...
Precisely. It is only as a result of frequenting Internet newsgroups and
message boards that I learned how deeply some "music lovers" hold in
contempt composers of the stature of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and/or Wagner.
(Or conversely, what paroxysms of ecstasy some go into over - I kid you
not - Dittersdorf or Joaquin Rodrigo: "this purest of sheer genius
creations, the highest achievement of mankind," to quote a young admirer's
endorsement of the slow movement from the Concierto de Aranjuez, on a
now-defunct message board.) Whenever I read "opinions" like "I think
Beethoven is not worthy of performance" and the like, my immediate internal
response is invariably, "Who are -- 'you'?" Monteux, of course, put it more
cleverly.
- LR (swinging his lighted torch in all directions)
There are ironies within ironies, however, and perhaps Mr. Bloom would enjoy
reading for himself Stravinsky's contemptuous opinion of the finale to
Beethoven's 9th ...
Simon Roberts
>>
>Is that what Stravinsky said, or was it edited by Craft?
>
Perhaps it's time to ask whether Stravinsky said anything about Craft that was
not edited by Craft....
Simon
TansalQ
written in collaboration with Robert Craft. It broke with an article in the
New York Times on March 3, 1972, in which Lillian Libman, Stravinsky's
personal representative, claimed that much Stravinsky-Craft was pure
fabrication. She had written a book about Stravinsky, and in it she
asserted that the brilliant, literate, witty Stravinsky depicted by Craft
bore no relationship to the tired old man who spoke little and was prepared
to go along with anything Craft suggested. Many musicians and scholars had
felt all along that the books were much more Craft than Stravinsky. Now the
subject was out in the open. It was not a minor episode. For years to come
scholars will be trying to separate the essential Stravinsky in these books
from the elleged embellishments that Libman insisted were purely the work of
Robert Craft." -- Harold C. Schonberg, The Lives of the Great Composers
(third edition), page 491.
lastvisibledog
Crikey. Got something invested in Schoenberg?
I respect your enthusiasm and hope you can do something with it. As
far as I am concerned the whole experiment now lacks the only thing it
had going for it, which was novelty. I am satisfied (I'm glad to see
some others are too) that the few workable passages of 12-tone music
are so by virtue of their slipping into the realm of tonality. (Berg.)
Other than that, I don't think it works -- atonal music can sound (1)
threatening (2) minatory (3) hair-raising. Apart from using it in
suspense movie soundtracks I don't think it really works.
Cross-bred with tonality -- like in David Shire's score for "The
Taking of Pelham 123" -- it can be quite stimulating. A garnish, if
you will.
Bloom
Probably Boulez' most (in)famous comment as a youngster was that all
the opera houses should be burned to the ground. A number of his
other controversial statements have been thrown about in various
threads around here lately, so I won't repeat those.
As far as Nietzsche is concerned, his mature philosophy is very much
opposed to the pessimism of Arthur Schopenhauer (who earlier in life
he had called his "guru"; he later would say AS was a "philosopher for
melancholy youths"), and one of the ways that Nietzsche goes about
attacking Schopenhauerian pessimism (or rather, offering a remedy to
it; Nietzsche after all was very much suffering from it) is by
focusing on the operas of Wagner, especially Tristan und Isolde (which
is essentially an artistic representation of Schopenhauerian thought).
Two essays in which Nietzsche deals with Wagner explicitly (he does in
many other places as well) are "The Case of Wagner" and "Nietzsche
Contra Wagner". In the latter he states his objections to Wagner
thus:
"My objections to the music of Wagner are physiological objections:
why should I trouble to dress them up in aesthetic formulas? ...My
"fact" is that I no longer breathe easily when this music begins to
affect me; that my foot soon resents it and rebels: my foot feels the
need for rhythm, dance, march -- to Wagner's "Kaisermarsch" not even
the young German Kaiser could march -- it demands of music first of
all these delights which are found in good walking, striding, dancing.
...And so I ask myself: what is it that my whole body really expects
of music? For there is no soul. I believe, its own ease: as if all
animal functions should be quickened by easy, bold, exuberant,
self-assured rhythms; as if iron, leaden life should lose its gravity
through golden, tender, oil-smooth melodies. My melancholy wants to
rest in the hiding-places and abysses of perfection: that is why I
need music. But Wagner makes me sick."
For what it's worth, I think Nietzsche is exactly right in regard to
Wagner, and more importantly his diagnosis of the decadence of Western
culture. As far as his solution to the problem, well, that's another
story. ;-)
Anyway, I'm suffering from the sickness myself: I can't stop
listening to Wagner. ;-)
Btw, the composer Nietzsche liked most in his later years was Mozart,
who he presented as the polar opposite of Wagner.
-Bloom
Raymond Hall
Nietzsche was also an absolute fanatic about Bizet's Carmen, and it also
helped that he was one well known philosopher who was a considerable pianist
and a composer. He was very positive towards the effect of music on the
body, and the receptiveness of music through bodily movement. Dance must
have been dear to him, and hence his love for Carmen.
"Art and nothing but art! It is the great means of making life possible, the
great seduction to life, the great stimulant of life". Friedrich
Nietzsche
Ramon Khalona
Thanks for an interesting post. For those who haven't read it, I
would like to recommend a very interesting book along these lines:
"Music and the Mind," by Anthony Storr, who is a noted psychiatrist.
Nietzsche is quoted (and analyzed) often.
RK
Raymond Hall
news:98061e3f.0305...@posting.google.com...
|
| Thanks for an interesting post. For those who haven't read it, I
| would like to recommend a very interesting book along these lines:
| "Music and the Mind," by Anthony Storr, who is a noted psychiatrist.
| Nietzsche is quoted (and analyzed) often.
Agreed. A superb and thought provoking book.
Samir Golescu
[catching slowly with my mail after a busy weekend]
David G:
> As for "abstract stupidies," Berg's abstract stupidities are no different in
> kind from the abstract stupidities underlying Mozart's music. Mozart's music
> depends on a number of abstract facts about the diatonic collection:
[explanation of what we all know snipped]
I am afraid I cannot buy in the least that serial assumptions are "no
different in kind", even if a talented composer can compose music despite
them, from the tonal assumptions which underlie Mozart's or Bach's music.
What you are asking me to believe is that Spanish is as abstract as
esperanto (the concoction of which asked for so much more cleverness than
serialist dogma anyway) is.
regards,
SG
Lena
> >All I can see in a lot of these arguments is: if one feels
> >12-tone/serial/WHATEVER is bad music is because one doesn't get the
> >"language".
>
> Have you ever considered the possiblity that this may be true? If all that you
> hear when you listen to, say, Boulez's Figures, doubles, prismes is an opaque
> wall of noise, then what you have heard is not the piece that Boulez wrote.
> You have only heard random sound. No wonder you dismiss it as non-music.
I dunno. I'm getting tired of this "language" business too. Now that
the conversational equivalent of uncontrolled delirium (who contested
your grammar analogy) seems to have dropped out, I guess I can say it:
of course music has some similarities with some aspects of language,
but they're on an extremely general level, and the analogy is far from
perfect.
Don't take this wrong; I basically agree with you, but find the
metaphor sufficiently wanting to be a bit useless except in some less
informal contexts. So all that it really does here is invite
hairsplitting threads about the metaphor itself... (!) I think using
the concept "musical style" is much clearer than the term "language".
Anyway, I don't think full unfamiliarity with the style is the reason
some people dismiss new music, and I doubt they hear random sounds.
OK, one's memory is taxed a bit more with an atonal melodic fragment
than with Rossini - and with any complex piece, tonal or not, there's
a very valid question of how much of the piece an arbitrary listener
actually "gets" (I think there are famous works people routinely do
not get much at all...) - but there's also a distinct possibility
that some listeners get sufficient parts of it and that their reaction
is simply a matter of taste.
Why is that not a reasonable response?! To have defined tastes is not
the same as being a philistine.
I think it's also OK to be turned off by smaller aspects of a work.
One doesn't have to actually come to grips with the entire work. This
happens very often with taste in tonal music. Sure, it may be a loss
to the listener - and since I'm a saint :) I always overcome such
deplorable exhibitions of human frailty :) - but it may be hard to
regulate such reactions.
So AFAIC you may say "I don't like music X" on any basis you want. OK,
so you don't like it because you're allergic to dissonance, because
you hate melodies, because it's not tonal, because the structure is
too tight, because it's too loose, because the composer is not
fashionable, because he reminds you of an unpleasant aunt, because he
was not a shining example of progressive feminist thinking. Fine. I
consider all those legitimate reasons (some more legitimate than
others :) ).
The only thing I'd ask in such situations is that the listener have
some minor modesty in the face of the work, and not attribute his
failure to be entertained to the work, but actually consider the
possibility that he really does *not* get all of it.
Otherwise, tonal music is based on a pretty compelling set of acoustic
principles so it's a bit misleading for you to talk about Mozart's
"collections of abstract facts". Again, I'm not saying that you deny
any of the underlying principles - but why not simply admit that
tonality has qualities which have an undismissable effect on
listeners? (In the same way, post-tonal music really can choose:
ignore acoustics or not, develop other, perhaps equally compelling
forms of the tension-relaxation principles at work in tonality, or
not...)
However, I think you're right in that listeners who are extremely
addicted to tonality :) do seem to somehow miss the positive points
about atonal music. They also seem to miss the point that very good
composers like Boulez don't actually ignore other aspects of how
sounds "work", whatever organizing principles they adhere to. (They
don't even really ignore the tonal aspect.)
I don't know what the solution to this listening problem is; perhaps
there isn't a "solution"...
>> Berg's Violin Concerto is only the tip of the iceberg. If you were
willing to
> give other examples from the so-called "atonal" repertory half a chance, you'd
> discover that Berg was not the only composer of this repertory who exhibited a
> profound innate musicality.
Agreed on this. Except that, really, some people find it difficult to
give half a chance to things they half dislike...
> As for "abstract stupidies," Berg's abstract stupidities are no different in
> kind from the abstract stupidities underlying Mozart's music.
Some are, some aren't.
> You must also be aware of the long history of the use of precompositional
> orderings of pitch and rhythm in Western music
[sure, but this is essentially a snow job]
I'm not making some kind of an attack on non-tonal works. Obviously.
And much less so on you, of course. I also really think your
proselytizing for new music is indispensable. I just wish you wouldn't
talk too much about "learning the language" being the main point in
hearing new music - it's not helpful, I think; I also think it's a bit
insulting to the many pretty musical people here.
I also don't see why there's this necessity for everyone to like
everything. (You should see the major tonal music composers I have
trouble with. Of course I respect their skills, but temperamentally,
I'm not up for it. So am I required to give them a lot of chances
because I don't get their language? Because, in a sense, it's quite
true that I don't understand it or hear it... not the way people who
love it do. So?)
Lena
ulvi
news:6b33de45.03050...@posting.google.com:
> david...@aol.com (David7Gable) wrote in message
> news:<20030503215705...@mb-m14.aol.com>...
>> >All I can see in a lot of these arguments is: if one feels
>> >12-tone/serial/WHATEVER is bad music is because one doesn't get the
>> >"language".
>>
>> Have you ever considered the possiblity that this may be true? If
>> all that you hear when you listen to, say, Boulez's Figures, doubles,
>> prismes is an opaque wall of noise, then what you have heard is not
>> the piece that Boulez wrote. You have only heard random sound. No
>> wonder you dismiss it as non-music.
>
> I also don't see why there's this necessity for everyone to like
> everything.
Indeed. The only necessity I can think of is for everyone
to like what I like :)
> (You should see the major tonal music composers I have
> trouble with. Of course I respect their skills, but temperamentally,
> I'm not up for it. So am I required to give them a lot of chances
> because I don't get their language?
I am waiting for someone to tell dgable that he should repeatedly
listen to rap and hip hop until he gets the language...
Ulvi
TansalQ
> I am waiting for someone to tell dgable that he should repeatedly
> listen to rap and hip hop until he gets the language...
I wouldn't wish that on anyone who doesn't have an affinity for it.
Tansal