Help Required. Modernism.
NG LING LING
going to present: What is the modern condition as portrayed in "serious"
music ?
I teach music appreciiation to dance students and have no problem
summarising or explaining the Baroque, Classical, Romantic etc.
condition.
I haven't really read good books on this...many are just bio-data or
work analysis, but none really discuss :
1. What is the "modern condition" ?
2. How is it portrayed in music ?
Why 12-tone ? Why primitivism ? Why Neo-classicalism ?
Books just describe what (for e.g. serialism ) is but not WHY!
Why break away from tonality ?
Anyone ?
Rob Dobson
>I teach music appreciiation to dance students and have no problem
>summarising or explaining the Baroque, Classical, Romantic etc.
>condition.
>
>1. What is the "modern condition" ?
I have THE DEFINITIVE ANSWER to this question, but unfortunately it
takes up 54,786,890,982 kb, and thats in its compressed form.:-)
>2. How is it portrayed in music ?
>
But seriously, I think part of the reason you find it easy to describe the
"Baroque condition" but difficult to describe the 'modern condition' is
that you are remote from the baroque, but not the modern. Looking back
hundreds of years it is easy to draw broad conclusions; it is difficult
to do so about an era during which you live.
To take a stab at your question, tho, I once (while listening to
ussachevsky) came up with a thought in this direction. I though that
20th c. music lacked coherence and 'melody' becuase modern life is
so fragmented and compartmentalized. I gave up pursuing this one quickly,
because im still not sure whether i agree with myself or could ever argue
this coherently......
--
Rob Dobson University of Virginia Music Library
"Anything that starts with Ellington ends with an assassination attempt
on the Fuhrer!" --SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Hans Reinhardt, July 1944
Roger Lustig
>going to present: What is the modern condition as portrayed in "serious"
>music ?
>I teach music appreciiation to dance students and have no problem
>summarising or explaining the Baroque, Classical, Romantic etc.
>condition.
>I haven't really read good books on this...many are just bio-data or
>work analysis, but none really discuss :
>1. What is the "modern condition" ?
There are many "modern conditions." The ideas of modernism have been
expressed by writers since the mid-19th century. See Baudelaire,
Nietzsche, Wilde, Mallarme, etc. Much has to do with the rejection of
the idea of continuing a steady thread of tradition, but rather treating
the "classics" of the past as something to be connected with more
directly. (Baudelaire.) Harold Bloom would give one one theoretical
angle wrt this -- a Freudian sort of angle, I might add.
>2. How is it portrayed in music ?
Any number of ways. Musically, one might reach back *before* Baudelaire
to Berlioz. Otherwise, one might consider modern life in Marxist
terms (alienation and all that) and view modern musics in that context.
>Why 12-tone ? Why primitivism ? Why Neo-classicalism ?
12-tone music was invented as a reaction to another sort of clearly modern
music -- freely atonal, non-triadic music. Charles Rosen's _Schoenberg_
is a good, short introduction to the composer's thought. Princeton, 1975.
"Primitivism" covers all kinds of musical techniques; I'm not sure which
ones you have in mind. "Neo-classicism" arose around the end of WW I
(though one might accuse Strauss of making the first move in some sense);
it was in many ways a retreat from the experimentation and freedom
that musicians felt before the war. Schoenberg's 12-tone music is
in many ways neo-classical, btw.
>Books just describe what (for e.g. serialism ) is but not WHY!
Try Rosen, Bloom (for literature), Morgan's new book if it's out yet,
and some other composer biographies. Or see what the composers themselves
wrote; Busoni, Ives, and Debussy wrote things that are collected in
_Three Classics in the Esthetics of Music_ (Dover).
>Why break away from tonality ?
Few people did. Much of what happened began as *extensions* of tonality,
and evolved from there. Later, the advent of recordings and broadcasting
made popular music (including "classics") ubiquitous to the extent that
many composers saw the need to differentiate their music far more strongly
from the mass currents. At the same time, they assimilated new currents
from jazz, folk musics, non-European musics (Debussy already!) into
their styles.
Why? Because composers were tired of playing the 19th century game of
trying to write new "classics" that continued the developmental line
from Beethoven and were "new" at the same time. As music evolved, this
became harder and harder to do. Before the 19th C, there had been
no "classics"; very little music by dead composers was ever performed;
even older works by living composers were generally of little interest.
After Beethoven, composers found themselves in a marked dominated not
by the competition, but by previous generations: Beethoven and Mozart
and Bach.
>Anyone ?
There you go. Now, could you tell us how you describe the "Classical"
and "baroque" conditions? I'd be most interested.
Roger
Josh Stern
>going to present: What is the modern condition as portrayed in "serious"
>music ?
Too much caffeine and/or nicotine and not enough sleep.
This especially if the music in question is of German or Eastern European
province.
>I teach music appreciiation to dance students and have no problem
>summarising or explaining the Baroque, Classical, Romantic etc.
>condition.
There's probably no quick shortcut to understanding the musical,
intellectual, social, and political histories of the 20th Century,
but you might try bringing your students to a state approximating the
one described above and then have them look at reproductions of paintings
by Max Ernst. (I'm about half serious)
Other random thoughts:
a) A number of years ago I saw an effective performance by
the American Ballet in which they presented a fairly horrific
tableau on the theme of population explosion, danced to the music
of Ravel's Bolero - the rhythms of the piece being interpred as a
sort of repetitive/mechanical reproduction/love march. I'm sorry
that I can't recall the choreographer, but after that I've never heard
the piece in quite the same way as before.
[boring comments about how "post-modern" it is for the dance to comment
on the `accompanying' musical work omitted here]
b) In the category of "semi-serious" music, American pop variety -
Simon & Garfunkel's "Sounds of Silence" is hard to beat as a song
which is literally about the modern themes of alienation and the
disintegration of language, and it has a great tune too.
Josh
Marc San Soucie
> 1. What is the "modern condition" ?
Answer below.
> Why 12-tone ? Why primitivism ? Why Neo-classicalism ?
> Books just describe what (for e.g. serialism ) is but not WHY!
> Why break away from tonality ?
Why not?
Marc San Soucie
Portland, Oregon
ma...@slc.com
Noam Elkies
A *long* while, that --- a dozen or so generations. :-)
And even now in the late 20th century many composers choose
to write unabashedly tonal music, and most listeners
have not tired of the cornucopia of tonal music of this
and previous centuries. (And quite a few probably find
*atonal* music tiresome, if not worse...)
setenv METAPHOR mixed [up]
>Call it a vitamin deficiency.
So *that's* why Beethoven went deaf and Schubert got VD!
--Noam D. Elkies (elk...@zariski.harvard.edu)
Dept. of Mathematics, Harvard University
Jeff Winslow
>Why 12-tone ? Why primitivism ? Why Neo-classicalism ?
Why not?
>Why break away from tonality ?
You get tired, after awhile. Call it a vitamin deficiency.
Jeff Winslow
Jeff Winslow
agreeing with him on something. :-)
In article <1992Oct30.1...@husc3.harvard.edu> elk...@ramanujan.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies) writes:
>And even now in the late 20th century many composers choose
>to write unabashedly tonal music,
For that matter, *I* write unabashedly tonal music. I also write more
bashedly tonal music. (A well-known example of bashedly tonal music - Le
Sacre) However, I find non-tonal music refreshing. Beyond its own
uncounterfeitable sensual pleasures, it recalibrates one's perspective.
>and most listeners have not tired of the cornucopia of tonal music of this
>and previous centuries.
Oh to be a babe in wonderland. Nice for them. What about the rest of us?
>(And quite a few probably find *atonal* music tiresome, if not worse...)
To the greater part of them I say, fatigue due to knowledge is always a
more difficult malady to treat than fatigue due to ignorance. A statement
I make quite without value judgements, if you can believe me. But one that
also goes to answer the original question somewhat less flippantly than I
already have.
Jeff Winslow
NG LING LING
By the way, how come my posts don't stay on the reader very long ?
Does it mean that people "kill" my file ?
Noam Elkies
je...@or.credence.com (Jeff Winslow) writes:
:You better be careful, Noam. If Eliot shows up again
(He has recently been sighted on comp.music)
: you might find yourself agreeing with him on something. :-)
It has actually happened on one or two occasions...
:In article <1992Oct30.1...@husc3.harvard.edu>
:elk...@ramanujan.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies) writes:
:
:>and most listeners have not tired of the cornucopia of tonal music of this
:>and previous centuries.
:
:Oh to be a babe in wonderland. Nice for them. What about the rest of us?
Come now --- were all musicians and listeners before c.1900
"babes in wonderland"? Or do you suppose that all sophisticated
musicians of that time suffered for lack of atonal music? Or
if not, that their 20th century counterparts must be bored
with tonal music only because atonal music is now also available?
:>(And quite a few probably find *atonal* music tiresome, if not worse...)
:
:To the greater part of them I say, fatigue due to knowledge is always a
:more difficult malady to treat than fatigue due to ignorance. A statement
:I make quite without value judgements, if you can believe me. [...]
What I question here is not the value judgements or lack thereof, but
the presumption that "fatigue" of atonal music can generally be ascribed
to ignorance --- that if only the listeners knew/understood the
music, they would take to it. This especially when you do allow for
"fatigue due to knowledge" of tonal music: why couldn't the same
happen with atonal music? [I see that you qualify your charge with
"To the greater part of them" --- i.e. that only a majority, not all,
are ignorant --- but that still leaves the matter of the considerable
"lesser part". BTW, personally I have enjoyed a few of the many
instances of atonal music I've been exposed/subjected to, but still
get a lot less out of the supposed masterpieces of non-tonal music
than I do from any number of tonal works.]
stephen smoliar
LING LING) writes:
>
>By the way, how come my posts don't stay on the reader very long ?
>Does it mean that people "kill" my file ?
>
What stays on your reader is at the discretion of your System Administrator.
If there is little storage space for news articles, then they will get
garbage-collected frequently. See if your friendly Computer Center can
answer your question.
--
Stephen W. Smoliar; Institute of Systems Science
National University of Singapore; Heng Mui Keng Terrace
Kent Ridge, SINGAPORE 0511
Internet: smo...@iss.nus.sg
Erik Alan Pohl
...(stuff deleted)...
>instances of atonal music I've been exposed/subjected to, but still
>get a lot less out of the supposed masterpieces of non-tonal music
>than I do from any number of tonal works.]
I've sometimes seen the words tonal, non-tonal and atonal used as
separate entities- what is the difference between atonal and
nontonal?
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"It's still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it.
But it's the truth even if it didn't happen."(One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)
---Erik Pohl at ep...@hubcap.clemson.edu---------------------------------------
stephen smoliar
>je...@or.credence.com (Jeff Winslow) writes:
>
>:In article <1992Oct30.1...@husc3.harvard.edu>
>:elk...@ramanujan.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies) writes:
>:
>:>and most listeners have not tired of the cornucopia of tonal music of this
>:>and previous centuries.
>:
>:Oh to be a babe in wonderland. Nice for them. What about the rest of us?
>
>Come now --- were all musicians and listeners before c.1900
>"babes in wonderland"? Or do you suppose that all sophisticated
>musicians of that time suffered for lack of atonal music? Or
>if not, that their 20th century counterparts must be bored
>with tonal music only because atonal music is now also available?
>
(and it won't be the twentieth for much longer)! Musicians and listeners today
carry around all sorts of contextual baggage which were just inconceivable in
the preceding century. Most important is probably the great abundance of
resources for hearing music. (Brahms never had to content with music being
pumped into his elevator.) Couple that with the greater abundance of general
sounds which we take for granted as part of our ambient environment. It is not
at all absurd to say that we just do not hear things (ANY things) the way they
did a hundred years ago. The "babes in wonderland" are not the people of the
nineteenth century; they are the people of the twentieth century who would
retreat to nineteenth-century standards.
Of course they had their own problems a hundred years ago. Brahms may have
articulated the problem of composing beneath the shadow of Beethoven, erected
as a genius by his society; but everyone else was worrying about the same
problem. (Beethoven was luckier. The "cult of genius" had not caught on
in his time. He just had to worry about making a living.) So what they
suffered in the last century was not the lack of atonal music but that same
plague of societal critics who wanted to turn back the clock to a simpler time
when people listened to music they could understand. (They did not have
Slonimsky around to inform them that their argument was specious. Their
admirable predecessors found Beethoven hard to listen to, too, just as they
found "too many notes" in Mozart.)
I do not think there are many of us around who are now bored with tonal music.
We ARE bored with cliches which get worked to death in music which seems to be
churned out by the yard. Some of those cliches are the same ones that Max
Steiner made a living from with his film scores, so there is certainly plenty
of boring tonality around. Others are special effects with electronic
instruments which get rediscovered by every new rock band and pushed off
as some profound new sound. Not all of those are atonal, but many of them
are. Finally, I think any International Computer Music Association member
would be willing to admit that even some of the most intense acts of
composition involving computers can come out sounding like yet another
bag of cliches. When there are cliches wherever you turn, it can be very
relieving to hear a good primal scream come out of a tone row; but it can
also be relieving to hear a new way to play a triad!
Noam Elkies
smo...@iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar) writes:
~In article <1992Nov5.1...@husc3.harvard.edu>
~elk...@ramanujan.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies) writes:
~>In article <1992Nov3.0...@credence.com>
~>je...@or.credence.com (Jeff Winslow) writes:
~>
~>:In article <1992Oct30.1...@husc3.harvard.edu>
~>:elk...@ramanujan.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies) writes:
~>:
~>:>and most listeners have not tired of the cornucopia of tonal music of this
~>:>and previous centuries.
~>:
~>:Oh to be a babe in wonderland. Nice for them. What about the rest of us?
~>
~>Come now --- were all musicians and listeners before c.1900
~>"babes in wonderland"? Or do you suppose that all sophisticated
~>musicians of that time suffered for lack of atonal music? Or
~>if not, that their 20th century counterparts must be bored
~>with tonal music only because atonal music is now also available?
~>
~Noam, in case you haven't noticed, it's not the nineteenth century any more
Believe it or not, I have noticed.
~(and it won't be the twentieth for much longer)! Musicians and listeners today
~carry around all sorts of contextual baggage which were just inconceivable in
~the preceding century. Most important is probably the great abundance of
~resources for hearing music.
True, but...
~(Brahms never had to contend with music being pumped into his elevator.)
*That*'s your example of a new "resource for hearing music"!?
~ Couple that with the greater abundance of general
~sounds which we take for granted as part of our ambient environment. It is not
~at all absurd to say that we just do not hear things (ANY things) the way they
~did a hundred years ago.
Perhaps not absurd, but quite irrelevant to my point. Brahms' music,
and Chopin's, and Bach's, and other music adored by our 19th-century
forebears still offers perceptive contemporary listeners plenty of
substance and, yes, beauty, even if they in some sense do not
hear it ``the way they did a hundred years ago''.
~ The "babes in wonderland" are not the people of the
~nineteenth century; they are the people of the twentieth century who would
~retreat to nineteenth-century standards.
You mean those who would actually dare to value Brahms above elevator
music? You seem to be suggesting that such ``contextual baggage'' as
being subjected to a superfluity of MTV, Muzak, commercial ditties, etc.
invalidates one's experience of the tonal classics to such an extent as
to deserve the dismissive ``babe in wonderland'' insult. I don't buy it.
~I do not think there are many of us around who are now bored with tonal music.
~We ARE bored with cliches which get worked to death in music which seems to be
~churned out by the yard. Some of those cliches are the same ones that Max
~Steiner made a living from with his film scores, so there is certainly plenty
~of boring tonality around. [...]
That's not what I'm talking about. There was plenty of boring tonality
around in the 19th and 18th centuries too, even if it came in different
and less overbearing cultural contexts. There's also good 20th-century
tonal music that might have delighted and astounded Brahms.
~ When there are cliches wherever you turn, it can be very
~relieving to hear a good primal scream come out of a tone row;
Talk about your 20th century cliche!
~but it can also be relieving to hear a new way to play a triad!
depending on context, I suppose (and I mean that in the musical,
not ``cultural'', sense...)
--Noam D. Elkies (elk...@zariski.harvard.edu)
Dept. of Mathematics, Harvard University
===========================================================================
fermat(p,v)= v=cf(p/abs(centerlift(sqrt(mod(-1,p)))));\
[1,0]*pnqn(vector(length(v)\2,n,v[n]))
Jeff Winslow
>Jeff:
>:Noam:
>:>and most listeners have not tired of the cornucopia of tonal music of this
>:>and previous centuries.
>:
>:Oh to be a babe in wonderland. Nice for them. What about the rest of us?
>
>Come now --- were all musicians and listeners before c.1900
>"babes in wonderland"? Or do you suppose that all sophisticated
>musicians of that time suffered for lack of atonal music?
Ah, you're no fun any more. Oh well, since you asked a serious question...
Of course not. But that was then. Now is now. Culture changes, expectations
change, what can be imagined changes, everything changes. It's flippant
of me to call someone who keeps away from half the signature developments
of the music of their time a "babe in wonderland", but it's not entirely
unapt - they live in their own little world which they enjoy (and BTW, which
I also tremendously enjoy), but do not traverse the entirety of the real
musical world of their own culture.
>Or
>if not, that their 20th century counterparts must be bored
>with tonal music only because atonal music is now also available?
There is no "must". There is only "may". And the question doesn't follow:
tired -> availability of atonal music (my assertion) does not imply
or depend on availability -> tired. I mean, you're the mathematician,
but really! :-)
>:>(And quite a few probably find *atonal* music tiresome, if not worse...)
>:
>:To the greater part of them I say, fatigue due to knowledge is always a
>:more difficult malady to treat than fatigue due to ignorance. A statement
>:I make quite without value judgements, if you can believe me. [...]
>
>What I question here is not the value judgements or lack thereof, but
>the presumption that "fatigue" of atonal music can generally be ascribed
>to ignorance --- that if only the listeners knew/understood the
>music, they would take to it.
After all, there is usually a positive correlation between a person's
knowledge of a subject and their enthusiasm for it. Otherwise they wouldn't
have bothered to learn so much about it. A chicken and egg problem, yes?
And the presumption of ignorance is reasonable. From the earliest age, we
depend on a sound that incorporates a simple (that is, non-interfering)
harmonic series, the human voice. Also, the vast majority of music that a
maturing human will hear is tonal music rather than atonal music. And by
the time they are usually exposed to atonal music, their learning capacity
is already well past its peak. Four years of music school isn't likely
to turn that around.
>This especially when you do allow for
>"fatigue due to knowledge" of tonal music: why couldn't the same
>happen with atonal music?
It could, of course, and if I interpret Eliot Handleman correctly, he has
experienced this first hand. But considering the availability and popularity
of tonal vs. atonal music, the likelihood of this being an important factor
is virtually nil.
Because, to have experienced this "fatigue", you first have to have passed
through a period when it did not fatigue you. You don't say that a man
with no arms is tired because he can't do chin-ups any more. How many of
those who rail against atonal music can make that claim? You gotta pay your
dues. Otherwise, how can anyone else be sure you know what it's like on
the inside?
Of course, none of this says you have to like it, or that there's any
negative judgement associated with disliking it. But that wasn't the
assertion, was it? The assertion was, simply, "you get tired". You seem
to disagree with that; I'm still not sure why. Maybe it sounds like
I'm talking about some major watershed in a person's life. No - what
I mean is more like, I had chicken all last week, I don't want any tonight.
[I see that you qualify your charge with
>"To the greater part of them" --- i.e. that only a majority, not all,
>are ignorant --- but that still leaves the matter of the considerable
>"lesser part".
Let's be entirely clear here. I realize that it's common to criticize
people by calling them "ignorant", meaning they don't know what they
should know. But that's not what I mean - I mean simply that they don't
know. There's no particular reason they should know, unless they pride
themselves on a broad knowledge of music, or their knowledge of 20th
century music. Most people don't, and there's no particular reason they
should.
Let me ask you this - you said there is atonal music you like. Why do
*you* like it? What led you to appreciate it? Rather than argue about
vague generalizations, let's have some personal experience. That might
ultimately be far more useful to the person who asked the question
that started this off.
Jeff Winslow
Joseph J. Marcheso Jr.
smo...@argon.iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar) writes:
> Their
> admirable predecessors found Beethoven hard to listen to, too, just as they
> found "too many notes" in Mozart.)
I believe Noam was referring to the Atonal style and not particualar
composers in that vein. Also while SOME may have found LATE Beethoven
hard to listen to NO-ONE rejected the style of composition.People
actually liked the Romantic period!! I can't remember reading one
instance when someone said that "My God!! Let's go back to Baroque."
The "Too many notes" cliche made popular by the movie is becoming a
tiresome attack on the validity of Mozart. Believe it or not many
audiences DURING HIS TIME, actually liked his operas witness the
success of Zauberflote and Figaro (Figaro's success came also in other
productions around Europe). No one rejected the Classical style of
composition either. I defy you to find me another period in which the
STYLE of music has been under such constant and direct attack.
The argument that people don't like it because they don't have a lot of
knowledge about the music is silly. Music is primarily an emotional
medium where the listener FEELS it's expressiveness. If atonal music
needs to be listened to with a manual to fully enjoy its work (and
sufficiently praise its creator) than it ceases to be an emotional
medium. (I don't understand Tristan or Otello at all but I'm still
raptured by them)
Never in History has the weight of enjoyment been placed so much on
the listener and the responsibility removed from the composer. If
knowledge continues to be a criterion then the only people who will
listen (or care to) will be other musicians and then this art will be
firmly out of the realm of the average audience. btw if you look at
music from broadway to R&B to Pop to heavy metal to Christian rock to
Country etc,etc you'll see that they're ALL tonal music and the
audience (those blissfully ignorant babes in wonderland) continue to
find it interesting and exciting and keep coming back for more.
P.S. I find it perfectly dreadful :-)
Hummmmmm,
JJM
Jeff Winslow
>The argument that people don't like it because they don't have a lot of
>knowledge about the music is silly. Music is primarily an emotional
>medium where the listener FEELS it's expressiveness.
That's not the argument. The argument has "understanding" in place of
your "knowledge". The difference is that understanding is a largely
intuitive process. But it depends on familiarity, and I'll lay you
odds most people aren't nearly as familiar with atonal music as they think.
Simply because, as I said before, there's a chicken and egg problem. To
really become familiar with something, you have to like it enough to
want to become familiar, and so on. But if I can do it, so can you.
And, if you can't feel the expressiveness of the last few minutes of
Lulu, you got more problems than I can solve. Nyah nyah.
Finally, all these words describe vague concepts; anybody with an axe to
grind and a marginally clever way with them can make things sound silly
if they want.
>If atonal music
>needs to be listened to with a manual to fully enjoy its work (and
>sufficiently praise its creator) than it ceases to be an emotional
>medium.
But it doesn't, so you can't get there from here.
Jeff Winslow
Roger Lustig
>> Their
>> admirable predecessors found Beethoven hard to listen to, too, just as they
>> found "too many notes" in Mozart.)
>I believe Noam was referring to the Atonal style and not particualar
>composers in that vein. Also while SOME may have found LATE Beethoven
>hard to listen to NO-ONE rejected the style of composition.People
Actually, lots of people did. For instance, those who found Beethoven
turgid and preferred Rossini.
>actually liked the Romantic period!!
While hating much of its great music. That's a bit too general a statement
to mean much.
>I can't remember reading one
>instance when someone said that "My God!! Let's go back to Baroque."
I can think of hundreds that complain about the excess complexity of
leading composers' styles.
> The "Too many notes" cliche made popular by the movie is becoming a
>tiresome attack on the validity of Mozart.
Huh? Who has used it to attack Mozart? The whole point of this (true)
story is Mozart's comeback.
>Believe it or not many
>audiences DURING HIS TIME, actually liked his operas witness the
>success of Zauberflote and Figaro (Figaro's success came also in other
>productions around Europe).
Figaro's success came *mainly* in other productions around Europe.
>No one rejected the Classical style of composition either.
How could they? It iddn't exist. "The classical style" is a poor
way to describe the various styles of music all over Europe in
1750-1820 or so.
But some people *did* reject Mozart's style. Consider the many writers
who wrote things like "Mozart's music is too heavily spiced. What
palate can stand that for long?" Mozart's chamber music passed out of
fashion within a few years because it was too hard to play.
>I defy you to find me another period in which the
>STYLE of music has been under such constant and direct attack.
I defy you to find me another peiod in which there were so MANY styles
as there are in the 20th century. At not time has 12-tone music
or atonal music been "the STYLE." It has always been one of many.
>The argument that people don't like it because they don't have a lot of
>knowledge about the music is silly. Music is primarily an emotional
>medium where the listener FEELS it's expressiveness. If atonal music
>needs to be listened to with a manual to fully enjoy its work (and
>sufficiently praise its creator) than it ceases to be an emotional
>medium.
True but irrelevant. Perhaps the music wasn't *written* for everyone!
Perhaps it was written for people who HAD taken the time to get to know
a lot of music quite intimately (I'm talking about the repertoire from
Bach through Brahms) and thought about the musical possibilities opened
up over the centuries. Perhaps the music was written for people who
don't just like to sit back and "let the music wash over you" (George
Axelrod). Perhaps the music presupposes listeners who want to engage
themselves actively with the music, perhaps hear it several times,
perhaps study it a bit, and THUS achieve a state of mind in which the
emotional appeal of the music becomes apparent.
I might point out that, to perhaps 95% of American listeners, Rigoletto
and Otello and Meistersinger are basically pleasant noise that
doesn't tell them much at all or move them emotionally at all. How
does one get to a condition in which one can appreciate the emotional
value of these pieces? By just the things you deplore: acquiring
knowledge about them. By learning the tunes. The stories. By learning
about the composers and the things the composers cared about, not least
their respective homelands.
For the record, EVERY opera requires a manual for full enjoyment.
It's called the libretto.
>(I don't understand Tristan or Otello at all but I'm still
>raptured by them)
And is that full enjoyment? Wouldn't it help at least to know the
plot? Or would that detract from your enjoyment? (I don't believe
you don't know them at all, btw.)
Now, are you "raptured" by, say, the Missa Pange Lingua of Josquin or
the motets of Guillaume de Machaut? Why not? Is this bad music? Or
do you simply lack the knowledge, the exposure, the interest in the
why and the wherefore of the music?
> Never in History has the weight of enjoyment been placed so much on
>the listener and the responsibility removed from the composer. If
Bullshit. Considering the extent to which composers go out on a limb
merely to compose, this statement is laughable. As for responsibility being
placed on the listener, so what? Perhaps some listeners *want* to take
on some responsibility. (Note also that in this century listeners
have become more and more irresponsible, i.e., lazy, and not even bothered to
get to know the thousands of easy-to-listen-to pieces ritten in their
times, preferring the old warhorses time and again.)
>knowledge continues to be a criterion
Knowledge has *always* been a criterion. Only in the mid-to-late
19th C was the basic listening public for what we consider the "Classics"
anything other than a tiny, elite minority. Most Europeans of Mozart's
day never heard a note of his music.
>then the only people who will
>listen (or care to) will be other musicians and then this art will be
>firmly out of the realm of the average audience.
As has always been the case. The average audience has *never* cared
much for the most advanced music.
>btw if you look at
>music from broadway to R&B to Pop to heavy metal to Christian rock to
>Country etc,etc you'll see that they're ALL tonal music and the
>audience (those blissfully ignorant babes in wonderland) continue to
>find it interesting and exciting and keep coming back for more.
No doubt for the musical qualities. I'm sure the colorful harmonies
of the Nashville sound fascinate you endlessly.
This is your silliest and most irrelevant statement yet. How much of
this music is listened to for its musical qualities? People who like
melody and harmony -- or even the interesting interplay of words and
their settings -- soon grow tired of most of the genres you list above.
Or, if they don't, they don't listen to them in order to appreciate those
things. I like R&B, but I wouldn't want to go to a quiet, sit-down
concert of it. Would you? No. You'd want to dance to it. The music,
and to some extent the words, aren't particularly important. (The
performance is generally more important than what's being performed,
especially with Heavy Metal.)
>P.S. I find it perfectly dreadful :-)
Then you're a damn fool. Or you just don't know how to listen to
those genres.
(Hint: it takes some exposure and knowledge. These are obtained, as
with any music, not through book learning, but through acculturation.)
>Hummmmmm,
I'll fake the rest.
Roger
David V Feldman
category that includes many musics as enormously different from one
another as the compositions of Josquin are from Brahms. (Probably
the very word ``style'' is problematic for much of the output of
the twentieth century, but that is another story.) So let me
ask the various debaters, pro and con, on the merits of atonality:
What composers, what pieces do you have in mind? Babbitt? Cage?
Boulez? Messiaen? Sessions? Varese? Webern? Carter? Berger?
Takemitsu? Ligeti? Nono? Berio? Billy Jim Layton? :)
This would be a frivilous curse on both your houses if it weren't
for the endemic tendency of the public to make some non-existent
Platonic ideal of modern music a perpetual whipping post. *Defenders*
of atonal music do it a disservice if they make their case in broad
term - there is good music and bad music under this rubric and in
many cases it is not the pitch structure that is decisive.
If one is discussing broad stylistic options in the twentieth century,
why always focus on tonality/atonality. The larger listening public
probably doesn't make a sharp distinction between highly chromatic
tonal music and atonal music anyway. Distinctions less well known
are probably more salient: Gestural/nongestural, rhetorical/non-rhetorical,
overdetermined/underdetermined, pulsed/nonpulsed, etc.
David Feldman
x
Stephen Smoliar
(Noam Elkies) writes:
>
>~(Brahms never had to contend with music being pumped into his elevator.)
>
>*That*'s your example of a new "resource for hearing music"!?
>
familiar with THE POETICS OF MUSIC (given the respect you seem to hold for
the Norton lectures). You may recall Stravinsky's crack about organ grinders
who cannot seem to leave Gounod alone. They were the elevator music of an
earlier generation, but they were far less ubiquitous. When you think about
it, this is quite a time when you actually have to go to rather extraordinary
efforts to AVOID exposure to music in some form or another.
>~ Couple that with the greater abundance of general
>~sounds which we take for granted as part of our ambient environment. It is
>~not
>~at all absurd to say that we just do not hear things (ANY things) the way
>~they
>~did a hundred years ago.
>
>Perhaps not absurd, but quite irrelevant to my point. Brahms' music,
>and Chopin's, and Bach's, and other music adored by our 19th-century
>forebears still offers perceptive contemporary listeners plenty of
>substance and, yes, beauty, even if they in some sense do not
>hear it ``the way they did a hundred years ago''.
>
I'll see your irrelevant and raise you one vacuous. Basically, you can define
"perceptive" in such a way as to make your claim circular and, therefore,
meaningless. The reason I brought the elevators in in the first place is
because our who perspective on music perception has changed radically since
the beginning of this century. You can, if you wish, try to force your
perspective back to what it was in Mahler's day; but that will require
denying most of your life experiences. You become a bit like Borges' Pierre
Menard in his efforts to re-write DON QUIXOTE. It makes for an interesting
intellectual exercise if you do not mind negating your life.
> You seem to be suggesting that such ``contextual baggage'' as
>being subjected to a superfluity of MTV, Muzak, commercial ditties, etc.
>invalidates one's experience of the tonal classics to such an extent as
>to deserve the dismissive ``babe in wonderland'' insult. I don't buy it.
>
I realize that it is no longer fashionable to "buy" Sartre these days; but I
happened to be reading "What is Literature?" last weekend and found a passage
which may still be appropriate:
If we no longer write as they did in the eighteenth century,
it is because the language of Racine and Saint-Evremond does
not lend itself to talking about locomotives or the proletariat.
All I am saying is that the situation is not that all different in music and
that "babes in wonderland" seems like an adequate characterization of those
who cannot own up to that situation.
Noam Elkies
smo...@iss.nus.sg (Stephen Smoliar) writes:
"In article <1992Nov6.2...@husc3.harvard.edu>
"elk...@zariski.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies) writes:
">
">~(Brahms never had to contend with music being pumped into his elevator.)
">
">*That*'s your example of a new "resource for hearing music"!?
"
"I didn't put any value judgment on those resources, Noam!
Not that I'm inclined to pretend value judgements don't matter,
but that wasn't my point --- rather that the effect of elevator
music is trivial compared to developments like the ascendancy of
recordings and much more historically informed performance practices.
>I assume you are familiar with THE POETICS OF MUSIC
Yes, ...
>(given the respect you seem to hold for the Norton lectures). [...]
...no, it's the respect I hold for Stravinsky. The Norton Lectures
per se I don't venerate --- for instance I'm not rushing to buy
a copy of "I-VI"...
">Perhaps not absurd, but quite irrelevant to my point. Brahms' music,
">and Chopin's, and Bach's, and other music adored by our 19th-century
">forebears still offers perceptive contemporary listeners plenty of
">substance and, yes, beauty, even if they in some sense do not
">hear it ``the way they did a hundred years ago''.
"
"I'll see your irrelevant and raise you one vacuous. Basically, you can define
""perceptive" in such a way as to make your claim circular and, therefore,
"meaningless.
I *could* define it that way, but that is not my intent; I believe that
there is a sufficiently large community of such listeners who can cite
enough *specific* *musical* things in these pieces to refute grandiose
claims of mass cultural self-deception such as you've come close to in
previous discussions on similar topics.
"The reason I brought the elevators in in the first place is
"because our who perspective on music perception has changed radically since
"the beginning of this century. You can, if you wish, try to force your
"perspective back to what it was in Mahler's day; but that will require
"denying most of your life experiences. You become a bit like Borges' Pierre
"Menard in his efforts to re-write DON QUIXOTE. It makes for an interesting
"intellectual exercise if you do not mind negating your life.
Now don't you try to define my "life experiences" for me! If you were
to insist that *for you* a "perceptive listening" to Bach is merely an
"interesting intellectual exercise" that "negates" *your* life, I would
take you on your word, however reluctantly. But you're making a hell of a
lot of unfounded assumptions about *my* life to suggest I'm wilfully "trying
to force my perspective" anywhere. Of course my perspective is partly
conditioned by cultural upbringing, and is not the same as that of
turn-of-the-century Europe, if only because it includes newer music
by Bartok, Shostakovich, Britten, or Poulenc. But it is a perspective
that shares enough of the musical outlook of the common-practice tradition
to grok music of or continuous with that tradition much more readily than
music that self-consciously breaks with it.
:I realize that it is no longer fashionable to "buy" Sartre these days; but I
:happened to be reading "What is Literature?" last weekend and found a passage
:which may still be appropriate:
:
: If we no longer write as they did in the eighteenth century,
: it is because the language of Racine and Saint-Evremond does
: not lend itself to talking about locomotives or the proletariat.
:
:All I am saying is that the situation is not that all different in music[...]
I know little about Sartre, but if this is a typical passage I'm not
impressed. A bunch of unwarranted assumptions there: what if I can
more effectively and naturally write about locomotives or the proletariat
in old-fashioned prose? What if I don't happen to care to write about
them at all? And I see no reason to think that the situation in music
should parallel that in literature: is Debussy's Violin Sonata "about"
World War I, or anything else outside music for that matter? Sorry,
this doesn't wash either.
Aaron Brockett
(Roger Lustig) writes:
>
> In article <1992Nov7.2...@dartvax.dartmouth.edu> Joseph.J.Marcheso.Jr.@dartmouth.edu (Joseph J. Marcheso Jr.) writes:
> >In article <1992Nov5.2...@nuscc.nus.sg>
> >smo...@argon.iss.nus.sg (stephen smoliar) writes:
>
lots of stuff deleted
>
> >The argument that people don't like it because they don't have a lot of
> >knowledge about the music is silly. Music is primarily an emotional
> >medium where the listener FEELS it's expressiveness. If atonal music
> >needs to be listened to with a manual to fully enjoy its work (and
> >sufficiently praise its creator) than it ceases to be an emotional
> >medium.
>
> True but irrelevant. Perhaps the music wasn't *written* for everyone!
> Perhaps it was written for people who HAD taken the time to get to know
> a lot of music quite intimately (I'm talking about the repertoire from
> Bach through Brahms) and thought about the musical possibilities opened
> up over the centuries. Perhaps the music was written for people who
> don't just like to sit back and "let the music wash over you" (George
> Axelrod). Perhaps the music presupposes listeners who want to engage
> themselves actively with the music, perhaps hear it several times,
> perhaps study it a bit, and THUS achieve a state of mind in which the
> emotional appeal of the music becomes apparent.
>
> I might point out that, to perhaps 95% of American listeners, Rigoletto
> and Otello and Meistersinger are basically pleasant noise that
> doesn't tell them much at all or move them emotionally at all. How
> does one get to a condition in which one can appreciate the emotional
> value of these pieces? By just the things you deplore: acquiring
> knowledge about them. By learning the tunes. The stories. By learning
> about the composers and the things the composers cared about, not least
> their respective homelands.
>
more stuff deleted
I should know better than to take on Roger, but here goes :)
Roger, pardon me if I'm missing your point, but you seem to be saying
that
the difficulties that modern audiences encounter when listening to
contemporary music are not qualitatively different from those
encountered by audiences in the past.
I think this simply isn't true. An average listener from Verdi's
time who heard Rigoletto out of context might have perceived it
as merely pleasant noise, but that's quite different from an
average modern listener who hears Ralph Shapey's latest piece as
_unpleasant_ noise. Verdi's audience (or Liszt's or Brahms' or
whoever's) might not have been familiar with the _particular_
use of harmony in a piece, but the fundamental language it was
written in would have been easily recognizable. The problem is
that the basic musical language of today's listeners' is not much
different from that of audiences in the nineteenth century. We grew up on
Greensleeves and Silent Night and most of us spent a good amount
of time listening to pop music at some point--almost all of the
music in our environment (barring the occassional film score, etc)
is firmly tonal. Our very speech patterns are simply arpeggios of
a triad with an occassional seventh thrown in! What we are conditioned
to hear, from birth, is tonal music. Even those of us who get some
amount of music education merely have the same patterns hammered in.
My school, Swarthmore College, a liberal arts college with (I believe)
a very good music department, offers five semesters of
theory which don't take students past the earliest works of
Stravinsky. Thus even someone with a B.A. in music might have
almost no exposure to works which aren't primarily tonal.
Thus I feel that there very much is a greater challenge to the
audiences of today when confronted by modern music. Now, having gone
through all that, let me say that I feel that much of atonal music
is wonderful; it's just much less intuitive. Listeners in the last
century had to do some work in order to fully understand the music
of their time (or of any time, for that matter; Josquin is a good
example) and we should expect to do the same. However, much music of this
century also requires, I feel, an extensive retraining of the ear
in order to appreciate it. This is the burden that many modern listeners
are unwilling to undergo. It is difficult, but I personally feel that
it's quite an adventure.
--Aaron Brockett
Roger Lustig
>In article <1992Nov8.0...@Princeton.EDU>, ro...@crux.Princeton.EDU
>(Roger Lustig) writes:
> Roger, pardon me if I'm missing your point, but you seem to be saying
>that the difficulties that modern audiences encounter when listening to
>contemporary music are not qualitatively different from those
>encountered by audiences in the past.
On the contrary. I am arguing that there *are* qualitative differences,
and that you've misinterpreted them.
> I think this simply isn't true. An average listener from Verdi's
>time who heard Rigoletto out of context might have perceived it
>as merely pleasant noise, but that's quite different from an
>average modern listener who hears Ralph Shapey's latest piece as
>_unpleasant_ noise. Verdi's audience (or Liszt's or Brahms' or
>whoever's) might not have been familiar with the _particular_
>use of harmony in a piece, but the fundamental language it was
>written in would have been easily recognizable.
But that doesn't explain why so many people are far *less* interested
in, say, Rigoletto, the first time they hear it, than people of a
century ago were. The "common" musical language is still there.
Moreover, the context in which a person would have heard the tune --
as part of *modern* music, of the music of their own culture -- is
not there today. Rigoletto today is a product of historicism, of
a canonized repertory that does not change much over time.
Now, because of the EXISTENCE of this canonized repertoire, composers have
taken a different tack. It's a thankless task to try to break into
the canon, or at least it involves writing in a style pretty much unrelated
to the rest of the living musical world.
>The problem is
>that the basic musical language of today's listeners' is not much
>different from that of audiences in the nineteenth century.
On the contrary: it is radically different. It is based on 150-year-old
music, whereas the musical language of 150 years ago was based on music
then current. This time warp is the crux of the matter.
>We grew up on
>Greensleeves and Silent Night and most of us spent a good amount
>of time listening to pop music at some point--almost all of the
>music in our environment (barring the occassional film score, etc)
>is firmly tonal.
Though most pop music diverges from common-practice tonality in its harmony,
melody, and rhythms. This has been true for about 70 years now.
>Our very speech patterns are simply arpeggios of
>a triad with an occassional seventh thrown in!
No. This is simply wrong, simply irrelevant. Let's not get off on this
track.
>What we are conditioned
>to hear, from birth, is tonal music. Even those of us who get some
>amount of music education merely have the same patterns hammered in.
>My school, Swarthmore College, a liberal arts college with (I believe)
>a very good music department, offers five semesters of
>theory which don't take students past the earliest works of
>Stravinsky.
How embarrassing.
>Thus even someone with a B.A. in music might have
>almost no exposure to works which aren't primarily tonal.
That's utterly shameful at a school like Swarthmore. I'm glad I didn't
go. (At Princeton we *did* learn a little about music of our own
century.)
>Thus I feel that there very much is a greater challenge to the
>audiences of today when confronted by modern music.
Fine. So what? Where have I contradicted any of this?
The key word is "audiences." Modern music wasn't *written* for audiences
not willing to take the time to confront it! The modern movements (e.g.,
Debussy, Stravinsky, Skryabin, Schoenberg) came out of an atmosphere in
which all of educated society considered music to be the central art
form (unlike today -- another basic difference) and in which lots of
people were interested in highly complicated music and its advancement,
and were willing to take the time to confront novelty with patience and
learning.
The AUDIENCE today is far different from the one around the turn of the
century. Among other things, music has lost its primacy: movies, TV,
radio, photography, mass theatre, etc. have taken some of the place of
music. Many people find classical music boring and stuffy.
>Now, having gone
>through all that, let me say that I feel that much of atonal music
>is wonderful; it's just much less intuitive. Listeners in the last
>century had to do some work in order to fully understand the music
>of their time (or of any time, for that matter; Josquin is a good
>example) and we should expect to do the same. However, much music of this
>century also requires, I feel, an extensive retraining of the ear
>in order to appreciate it.
I'm not convinced of that; I think it requires a retraining of the
mind, a willingness to fail to "get" something the first few times.
>This is the burden that many modern listeners
>are unwilling to undergo. It is difficult, but I personally feel that
>it's quite an adventure.
And the Swarthmore music dept. is certainly doing its bit to make it
more so...
Roger
Noam Elkies
je...@or.credence.com (Jeff Winslow) writes:
>[....]
>
>Of course, none of this says you have to like it, or that there's any
>negative judgement associated with disliking it. But that wasn't the
>assertion, was it? The assertion was, simply, "you get tired". You seem
I think I can explain it now... We seem to have two different models
of "tired". When I wrote of listeners who "have not tired" of tonal
music, I didn't mean that they necessarily listened to it exclusively.
It seems that once such a person chooses to listen to some music that
isn't tonal you'd say that this person "got tired" of tonal music.
If that's all you mean then I don't have a problem with it.
>Because, to have experienced this "fatigue", you first have to have passed
>through a period when it did not fatigue you. You don't say that a man
>with no arms is tired because he can't do chin-ups any more. How many of
>those who rail against atonal music can make that claim? You gotta pay your
>dues. Otherwise, how can anyone else be sure you know what it's like on
>the inside?
Well, I suppose Stephen S. would say there's no way anyone else can know
know one way or the other --- while some might suggest that it simply
takes a much smaller dose of atonal music to induce fatigue...
[Earlier in the same post:]
>>Or if not, that their 20th century counterparts must be bored
>>with tonal music only because atonal music is now also available?
>
>There is no "must". There is only "may". And the question doesn't follow:
>tired -> availability of atonal music (my assertion) does not imply
>or depend on availability -> tired. I mean, you're the mathematician,
>but really! :-)
This was not an attempt at logical deduction, but at reconstructing
a chain of reasoning, where one does often provisionally "reverse
the arrows" to guess how the omitted argument goes...
>Let me ask you this - you said there is atonal music you like. Why do
>*you* like it? What led you to appreciate it? Rather than argue about
>vague generalizations, let's have some personal experience. That might
>ultimately be far more useful to the person who asked the question
>that started this off.
What led me to appreciate it? In each case, a specific performance
that brought out musical values I could relate to, albeit without
a tonal harmonic framework. I could give more musical details, but
those would surely not help the person who was seeking the Modern
Condition --- whatever that might be.
Jeff Beer
>In article <1992Nov14.2...@credence.com> je...@or.credence.com (Jeff Winslow) writes:
>>In article <1992Nov11....@Princeton.EDU> ro...@astro.princeton.edu (Roger Lustig) writes:
>>>In article <MQ1S...@cc.swarthmore.edu> abro...@cc.swarthmore.edu (Aaron Brockett) writes:
>
>>|>The problem is
>>|>that the basic musical language of today's listeners' is not much
>>|>different from that of audiences in the nineteenth century.
>
>>|On the contrary: it is radically different. It is based on 150-year-old
>>|music, whereas the musical language of 150 years ago was based on music
>>|then current. This time warp is the crux of the matter.
>
>one case it's common coin, in the other it's artificially preserved.
I would say that not only is it radically different than it was 150
years ago, but 30 years too. I think this anecdote illustrates how much
different it is.
When I was at University of Illinois in the 70s, I remember in jazz band
playing a composition by Morgan Powell that he wrote around 1960
when he was at North Texas State, with their jazz band program.
The piece was in 6/4, with one half the band playing a subdivision of 3
beats, the other half a subdivision of 2, making it very polyrythmic.
We were able to sight read it, and at the end of the rehearsal, we
played it good enough to perform live. One of the persons who was on the
scene at North Texas during that time remarked how easy it was for us
to get it together, while it took the North Texas band the whole semester.
Here was perhaps the premier college band at the time, taking a whole
semester to get a piece of music together, and here was a
_second_ jazz band (above average to be sure, but with many non music
majors) making it in only one day.
Why is this so? If you look at the time (approx 1960) it
was written, and look at what was going on in jazz, you can see that that
music was on par with the then cutting edge. In terms of that kind of
polyrythm, it was being similarly done by John Coltrane on Africa/Brass,
or the tune India. Not too many people were musically prepared to
hear or play that kind of music in 1960. Whereas today, it is far
more commonplace, so there is no trouble in hearing it, and there is no
trouble in playing it, and it is easily taken for granted.
Jeff
Jeff Winslow
>Actually, the blues has a harmonic rhythm that's quite different from
>the uses of the "primary" triads in Western art music in general. You
>have to go back to Banchieri and the like to find anything like it.
>And there's *nothing* to compare to its modal peculiarities, rhythms,
>performance styles, etc.
This reminds me of a day way back in first year music history. We were
looking at 16th century Italy, and the professor put on some music, I
can't remember who by, full of strong rhythms, very little counterpoint,
and all the harmony was I, IV, V, and flat VII, all in root positions. It
sounded so much like a certain kind of rock, a number of people in the class
started laughing. But on rereading what you wrote, I would guess this
was not Banchieri. Who might it have been?
Jeff Winslow
Diarmuid Pigott
: >And what about all those I-IV-V songs, Roger? :-)
:
: Actually, the blues has a harmonic rhythm that's quite different from
: the uses of the "primary" triads in Western art music in general. You
: have to go back to Banchieri and the like to find anything like it.
Actually there is one of the string concerti by Vivaldi that has
definite bompa-bompa R&B rhythm and modality. I've even heard someone
play (extraordinarily tasteless) lead guitar on top when I lent him the
tape (for a joke - there was no intellectual programme involved).
I might also mention the immortal slide-guitar solo shoved down the
throat of Boccherini's minuet by the "Fantastic Pikes play switched on
Popcorn". But then again I might not.
Roger Lustig
Actually, it might have been. Mixolydian mode stuff can have a bVII in
it. Great example: Schuetz's early psalm setting, "Herr, unser Herrscher."
Schuetz exploits the vowels of the opening line by setting the first few
words with tonic G chords and subdominant C chords; when he gets to "Name"
in "wie herrlich ist dein Name", the important word, with its brand-new
vowel, gapes open with a huge, widely spaced F chord. All this is in
root position.
But you can find this sort of harmony in Lasso, too. And when the
standard dance patterns become more and more integrated into "higher"
forms towardthe end of the century, the root-position patterns we're
talking about become standard. Look through late-16th-c and early 17th-c
venetians especially. You'll find tese harmonies again and again.
Roger