modernist technique
mp4...@albnyvms.bitnet
group.
1. I think it is agreeable to all that music is a form of self expression.
2. Music which finds and audience does more than express, it must do something
for that audience. This can be either in the music itself, or in the
event surrounding the music. Usually it is both.
3. The baroque period is usually labled tonal, this is not exactly
the case, this generalization has been made as part and parcel of the
"tonal is old, we have run out of old, so we must do new, atonal is new,
so we must do atonal" argument which is at the core of the modernist
takeover of the symphonic program. Baroque music, is based on intervals,
partially because the scalles they were playing with were also based
on intervals. The buidling of a baroque piece involves the movement
between these intervals.
4. Haydn and Bach lead the rise of tonality, in the sense that they
were writing more and better tonal music sooner than anyonese else. Tonality
is not shapped by the interval, but instead by the dissoance. The dissonace
that was first used was the vii th which resolved towards the double root
(example in Cmaj:
Soprano B C
Alto G E
Tenor E G
Bass C C
vii I
the second major part of tonality was the movement between keys. This
was very similar to the movement between basic intervals of the baroque in form
(that is on the page) but has an entirely different meaning. The farther
from home a baroque piece moves the more wolfish and distorted the intervals
become (which is what the baroque is concerned with. Bach had lots to
say on the subject of intervals, he never accepted full even temperment).
At first the motion proceded this way:
First play a chord which is in one key,
Then play a chord which could be in this first key or another,
the ear assumes it is in the first key because it just heard the
first key.
Then play a chord which is in the second key, but not in the first.
The more distant (the less it could be in the first key) the
more startling the effect.
This leads us to:
4. classical music (small c)
With the motion between keys becoming the established means
of composing (the interval based method was called the "italian style" at this
point look at the younger Salieri: he is using interval based composing tech-
niques in an orchestra that was moving beyond them. He sounds *better* in
a baroque tuning than in a classical one, and is really a late baroque compos-
er (until the end.. but this is later)
The other central chord is the inversion of the V chord (that is for
C the G chord) because motion from the I to the VI to the V is natural
for tonal reasons and *for reasons of the insturments then available) which
while tuned in the new style, did not have vlaues for the winds or brass,
and thus certain intervals were "wolfed" to make the holes reachable
(this is to change later, again getting ahead of things).
So the basic harmonic language of the classical period is the
motion through the variations of a key to a dissonace that resolves. There
are numerous variations (differnet kinds of VI chords, interupted cadences
and the like). The important alteration to music was the creation
of the melodic and harmonic minor keys.
The reason for this is simple: if the I+vii chord is the defining
moment or sensation of a tonality, then the minor key has a problem, the
seventh note of its scale (for A minor this is G) is a full step short
rather than half, its resolution is not as powerful, and so it was sharped.
The problem now is that the step to it is a step and half (in A minor
the sharped viith or leading tone is G#, the note below it is F) so it
is sharped for the melodic minor. We now have a family of four scales assoc-
ciated with a central key: The major, the minor, the Vth (or dominant) and
the variations on the minor.
5. Him
The composer to upset the apple cart was Beethoven. The classical
aesethic was about delaying of the moment of repose. The original techniques
became codified, but is was Bethoveen (and to a lesser extent Mehul) who
relaized that what was really going on was the motion through differnt colors
of sound. He began annexing forbidend modulations and by wandering
farther and farther made familiar, unfamiliar, by shaking the balance
he made the stable seem, unstable, by carring the melodic thread
through all of its variations (Last movement of the Eroica) and by
centering everything on the driving chord vs contrapunctal tecture
shattered the way composer thought about harmony.
Two other things were happening. The first was that instruments
were being made to be pure in temprament. (Boehm flutes etc.) and
valves being added to horns (to give full chromatic melody).
The second was that technique was expanding. Just as earlier
the motion away from intervals toward scales changed the way composers
could think about keys, so to did this, now all of the intervals
were close together. Beethoven did not need to write dissoance
into his woodwind parts, it is there from the nature of the instruments,
but as the instruments changed, later composers had to. (Wagner as late as
1870 is using the stopped note as a horn effect, that is placing the hand in
the horn, this changes the sound quality and lowers the note by 1/2 a step.)
(in B's time a horn was in a key, and any note not in that key's compass had
to be played with a stopped note see Berlioz art of instrumentation).
7.Romanticism (Chromaticism)
Romanticism is the journey of harmony towards two things:
Extension, adding notes to existing chords (the ix th chord is
the I + vii + ix (for C it is C E G B D)
Chromaticism that is the adding of new notes to the scale of
a key.
The first chromatic addition was the melodic minor, but then
other tones began being added (the German VIth) and inversions, finally
by Liszt and Wagner even the dreaded tritone was added. (for C F#)
Extension has two effects:
1. it strengthens the dissonance of the sensation of the chord.
2. Since development is the motion through the notes of the chord
to the chord and then its resolution, it lengthens the
meoldy required to get there.
TYhus we have longer developments (single movements that
would have swallowed whole symphonies).
This is used in pursuit of greater emotional response to
each moment of the piece, and a greater motion along thelines of the
piece.
8. Late Romanticism
Resolution now takes a particularly strange form, not
resolving at the chord expected or extending the time between
"mini-resolutions" (called cadences).
Beethovens Grosse Fugue is the first, but Tristan und Isolde
is the shattering break with the old order. The Wagnerians (and Impressionists
though they disagreed on presentation and philosphy had remarkably similar
techniques as well as Verdi) continue on the motion towards chromaticism.
The other central figure here is Brahms.
Brahsm attemtps to fuse the contrapunctal layers of haydn and
the developmental force of Beethoven. This goes in two directions. As
music becomes more complex, musicians choose instruments which make
it easier to play the notes on the page (which is what they see) and
the sound of the orchestra changes as a result. Brahms densely packed
layers lead to a deeply clustered sound in this new orchestra.
Then comes Mahler. Mahler dirves all of these techniques
over the edge, but is primarily a Wagnerian in outlook. He is seeking
a new modern style of composing based on the full use of the chromatic
in a key centered (but increasing not tonal) piece.
9. Him II
Into this stage are born a generation of young and quite
radical composers Sibelius, R Strauss and Scheonberg. Each puts
forward a vision of modernism:
Sibelisu follows Brahmsiam severity of form, with a reduction in
density. He pushes chromaticism (symphony #4) to the center of the composition.
Of similar propensities is Elgar, who reduces the teutonic excess and build
long melodies that turn inwards rather than outwards.
Strauss tries the approach of more Wagner than Wagner. More notes,
longer sustains, more brilliant orechstration.
Scheonberg takes the dissonant chromaticism of Mahler and the extended
tonality of brahms and pushes three things:
1. Rythmic irregularity: phrases stop and start between beats,
cadences fall everywhere (see SQ #1) or nowhere at all.
2. More notes in the octave. (leading to 12)
3. Mechanism laid out before the composition that produces the
choices in the work. In a way a return to the baroque interval
based schemes.
More important that his music in many respects is his work as a
teacher and professor (he trains Webern,Berg,Cage and others). His work
on harmony defines the modernist look on harmony: a sequence of instants
linked in their succession. He states that since there are no new
instants that can be added to tonality, it must be abandoned. The work is the most
influential text on composition since Fux' counter point.
It is also dead wrong.
This leads to the redefinition of "old music is tonal"(and the ridiculous
classification of baroque as tonal!). It is THE ARGUEMNT for going
serialist or atonal (actually anti-tonal).
10. Who wins
Well everyone.
Strauss is not only a composer, but an operatic composer and a conductor,
his hyper-romanticism carries the day in opera, and in playing for the next
70 years (examples: Mahlers disciples Walter and Klemperer, as well as
Szell, Karajan, Bernstien, Furtwangelr). One of the reasons modernist
pieces went over so badly , is that the were being overhammered by conductors.
(Bernstiens Brahms 2 movement I takes 19 minutes!)
Schoenberg takes over the academicestablishment, almost every compositional
teaher in a major conservatory can trace their intellectual lineage back
to him.. This leads to a delayed revolution. People are only trained to
write modnerist pieces,except for film scores, musicians have to more and more
bend their technique to play these scores. And eventually conductors soaked
in them lead orchestras (as most current conductors are.)
Sibelius at first seems the great loser, but it is his reduction
in density and severity of form that is seminal to the chromaticism of
the 20th century (Vaughn-Williams,Powell,Holst,Williams,Elfman). The
other major strain is interval based composing (a la Stravinski).
The real winner however is the modern world.
By 1920 europe had been through WWI and the great influenza
epidemic (caused in part by the war). Two major factors become
appearant:
1 is the mechanistic and bureaucratic nature
of the societies that were emerging (partly caused by
the military organization of the war, WWI was the first total war), this
includes the Soviet Union (interesting note, Stalin forbids atonal
and "dissonant music, but creates a random, ugly, dissonat contry to
live in, which means that people were more able to feel and understand
the music that he was attempting to destroy. Shostakovich at then end is
more modernist (though less actually dissonant, than if Stalin had
left him alone.)).
2 as alluded to above is the radnomness as seen from the
view point of the particular person. The modern world is far more filled
with events that seem to ahve no connection with what else is
occuring, or the evidence at hand. This is why quantum theory
is so philisophically powerful, it seems to mirror the view
of life that we have.
12. Music is expression
In the beginning music was labeld self - expression by this
essay (of collection of thoughts). Now the point is driven home. If people
are subjected to and see the world (and must deal with the world, there is
little room for a pastorialist in a fox hole! or corporation or party
meeting or death camp) then that is what composers will write. Some
may long for a more melodic past, but until there is a basic change in
philosphy, or experience, this will remain. We do not need to write
atonal modernist music, but it will be the dominant mode until composers
think differently about pieces and how to write them.
Until then classicism will divide away from modnerism,
the Symphony orchestras will be less and less able to play Beethoven
Brahms and even Mahler, as their techniqu (and patrons) is centered
on the modernist view.
13. Modernism is dying.
The core ideas of modernism, systemtization, randomly ordered
experience (see Slaughter House Five for the best explanation, vonnegut
is perhpas the premier late modernist apologist and writer)
statization, have begun to fail, in economics, evolutionary biology and
mathematics as well as in medicine. Chaos theory and computers give us two
roads out. The easier, and hence more likely view is to center everything
around the individuals own world view (Feyerabend,Schnittke,Derrida and
pop culture all all excellent examples). Physicist is now
being done this way, a computer model is set up and the results compared
by eye to the expected result. Some physicists talk about "computational"
physic being added to theoretical and experimental).
this is a dead end, it leads to hyper fragmentation and
no one being able to talk to anyone else. It will disintegrate
out of its own tendancy to rump people based on ever finer distinctions.
(eg modern feminism, which was once women's lib etc).
The other road is to realize there there is a nonlinear relation
ship to mechanism from resutl, and that art must prcoede not
from some sense of avante-gardism (see Sol Greenberg's essays for
the modernist view on painting and what art is about). But out of an
attempt to find more than momentary sensations held in common
and the use of that vocabulary to do more than merely build an atmosphere.
The question is not "good music vs bad" nor "modern vs classical" but
of what sort of world we want to live in, and what sort of people
we wish to be.
Margaret-Mary Petit Internet: MP4...@uacsc1.albany.edu
Rockefeller College Bitnet: MP4...@albnyvms.bitnet
SUNY Albany, NY
----`---,---{@
Margaret Mikulska
>In article <1994May12....@sarah.albany.edu>, <mp4...@albnyvms.bitnet> wrote:
>>
>> The first chromatic addition was the melodic minor, but then
>>other tones began being added (the German VIth) and inversions, finally
>>by Liszt and Wagner even the dreaded tritone was added. (for C F#)
>
>dominant seventh chords in Bach or Mozart?
There is a very amusing tritone (melodic, not harmonic) in Mozart's
Missa in c minor KV 139 ("Waisenhaus Messe") - it's not certain when it
was written, it could be 1766 or 1768:
Cum Sanc- to Spi-- ri- tu
C C C F# F# G
It's the beginning of a, um, sort of fugue, or at least an attempt to
write a fugue.
And there are great sevenths, secondth, and ninths (this time harmonic)
in one of the Divertimento KV 136, 137, or 138 (middle movement); the
"dissonances" are definitely emphasized - sounds great and spicy..
-Margaret
Fred Goldrich
>the horn, this changes the sound quality and lowers the note by 1/2 a step.)
It *raises* the pitch by a half-step (as opposed to hand-muting,
which ordinarily lowers it). And both techniques are still being used as
"horn effects."
> The first chromatic addition was the melodic minor, but then
>other tones began being added (the German VIth) and inversions, finally
>by Liszt and Wagner even the dreaded tritone was added. (for C F#)
No one used the tritone before Wagner and Liszt? No dreaded
dominant seventh chords in Bach or Mozart?
-- Fred Goldrich
--
Fred Goldrich
gold...@panix.com
Roger Lustig
>This is somewhat in reply to, and an extension of several threads on the
>group.
>1. I think it is agreeable to all that music is a form of self expression.
What does that mean? Is all music self-expression? Isn't *every*
product of human endeavor tautologically self-expression?
>2. Music which finds and audience does more than express, it must do something
>for that audience. This can be either in the music itself, or in the
>event surrounding the music. Usually it is both.
Depends on how you define "the music itself."
>3. The baroque period is usually labled tonal, this is not exactly
>the case,
Well, it's not exactly the case that the Baroque period is usually labeled
tonal. Music after 1680 or so is usually labeled tonal, because it *is*
tonal.
>this generalization has been made as part and parcel of the
>"tonal is old, we have run out of old, so we must do new, atonal is new,
>so we must do atonal" argument which is at the core of the modernist
>takeover of the symphonic program.
a) Bullshit.
b) It was labeled tonal in the mid-19th century, too.
c) Where's this "takeover"? How come the symphonic program doesn't
seem to be responding? Less than 20% of orchestra programs is
20thC music.
>Baroque music, is based on intervals,
As opposed to what?
>partially because the scalles they were playing with were also based
>on intervals.
As opposed to scales *not* based on intervals?
>The buidling of a baroque piece involves the movement between these intervals.
Give us an example.
>4. Haydn and Bach lead the rise of tonality, in the sense that they
>were writing more and better tonal music sooner than anyonese else. Tonality
That's not what "Rise" means, but we'll let it pass. Anyway, in what way is
Bach's music tonal, while, say, Corelli's is not?
>is not shapped by the interval, but instead by the dissoance.
Huh? Tonality isn't shaped by intervals? Fascinating. Like, major and
minor thirds are merely incidental?
>The dissonace
>that was first used was the vii th which resolved towards the double root
More nonsense. All kinds of dissonances were around long before tonality.
>(example in Cmaj:
>Soprano B C
>Alto G E
>Tenor E G
>Bass C C
> vii I
^^^^
We need to talk...
>the second major part of tonality was the movement between keys. This
This happened in the Baroque, too.
>was very similar to the movement between basic intervals of the baroque in form
>(that is on the page) but has an entirely different meaning. The farther
I had no idea that it had a meaning to begin with. What kind of meaning do
you have in mind?
And could you explain those "Basic intervals" before you're done?
>from home a baroque piece moves the more wolfish and distorted the intervals
>become
Depends on where you started!
>(which is what the baroque is concerned with. Bach had lots to
>say on the subject of intervals, he never accepted full even temperment).
Do tell. Where did he say these things? (Also, he wrote for the lute,
which was even-tempered.) As for what the baroque was concerned with,
how come this concern never voiced itself in, say, a treatise? And why
did many leading writers on music at the time explicitly reject such ideas,
noting that tunings varied from place to place, and that ensembles of voices,
winds, and strings didn't hold to a single keyboard tuning anyway...
>At first the motion proceded this way:
>First play a chord which is in one key,
>Then play a chord which could be in this first key or another,
> the ear assumes it is in the first key because it just heard the
> first key.
>Then play a chord which is in the second key, but not in the first.
> The more distant (the less it could be in the first key) the
> more startling the effect.
This happens in later music, too. What's your point?
>This leads us to:
>4. classical music (small c)
> With the motion between keys becoming the established means
>of composing (the interval based method was called the "italian style" at this
>point look at the younger Salieri: he is using interval based composing tech-
>niques in an orchestra that was moving beyond them. He sounds *better* in
>a baroque tuning than in a classical one, and is really a late baroque compos-
>er (until the end.. but this is later)
Except that his technique is no more or less "interval-based" than any
other. Could you tell us what you mean? So far your examples only
confuse, when you give them at all..
> The other central chord is the inversion of the V chord (that is for
>C the G chord) because motion from the I to the VI to the V is natural
>for tonal reasons and *for reasons of the insturments then available) which
>while tuned in the new style, did not have vlaues for the winds or brass,
>and thus certain intervals were "wolfed" to make the holes reachable
>(this is to change later, again getting ahead of things).
Not to mention getting ahead of your syntax. What *are* you trying to say?
> So the basic harmonic language of the classical period is the
>motion through the variations of a key to a dissonace that resolves. There
That's also the basic harmonic language of the later Baroque: Handel,
Vivaldi, Bach, etc. We call it tonality.
>are numerous variations (differnet kinds of VI chords, interupted cadences
>and the like). The important alteration to music was the creation
>of the melodic and harmonic minor keys.
Oh, lord. You're confusing scales with keys.
> The reason for this is simple: if the I+vii chord is the defining
>moment or sensation of a tonality, then the minor key has a problem, the
>seventh note of its scale (for A minor this is G) is a full step short
>rather than half, its resolution is not as powerful, and so it was sharped.
Four centuries before the Baroque, but who's counting? Alteration at the
cadence is common in medieval polyphony. This has nothing to do with the
Baroque or "classical" periods. It was in place long before.
>The problem now is that the step to it is a step and half (in A minor
>the sharped viith or leading tone is G#, the note below it is F) so it
>is sharped for the melodic minor. We now have a family of four scales assoc-
>ciated with a central key: The major, the minor, the Vth (or dominant) and
>the variations on the minor.
Good. Now how do these scales become keys?
>5. Him
> The composer to upset the apple cart was Beethoven. The classical
>aesethic was about delaying of the moment of repose. The original techniques
>became codified, but is was Bethoveen (and to a lesser extent Mehul) who
>relaized that what was really going on was the motion through differnt colors
>of sound. He began annexing forbidend modulations and by wandering
>farther and farther made familiar, unfamiliar, by shaking the balance
>he made the stable seem, unstable, by carring the melodic thread
>through all of its variations (Last movement of the Eroica) and by
>centering everything on the driving chord vs contrapunctal tecture
>shattered the way composer thought about harmony.
Except that they thought about harmony pretty much as before. How
do you mean this?
> Two other things were happening. The first was that instruments
>were being made to be pure in temprament. (Boehm flutes etc.) and
Uh, flutes were *never* pure in temperament, or equal-tempered, which
I think is what you mean.
>valves being added to horns (to give full chromatic melody).
> The second was that technique was expanding. Just as earlier
>the motion away from intervals toward scales changed the way composers
>could think about keys, so to did this, now all of the intervals
>were close together. Beethoven did not need to write dissoance
>into his woodwind parts, it is there from the nature of the instruments,
and yet
a) he did
b) it's there in the nature of Mozart's winds too.
>but as the instruments changed, later composers had to. (Wagner as late as
>1870 is using the stopped note as a horn effect, that is placing the hand in
>the horn, this changes the sound quality and lowers the note by 1/2 a step.)
Also Mahler as late as 1910, Strauss even later. What's your point?
>(in B's time a horn was in a key, and any note not in that key's compass had
>to be played with a stopped note see Berlioz art of instrumentation).
Brahms wrote for natural horns, too.
>7.Romanticism (Chromaticism)
> Romanticism is the journey of harmony towards two things:
> Extension, adding notes to existing chords (the ix th chord is
>the I + vii + ix (for C it is C E G B D)
Something found in the Baroque, too.
> Chromaticism that is the adding of new notes to the scale of
>a key.
Also found in previous centuries.
> The first chromatic addition was the melodic minor, but then
Nonsense. Chromatic inflections were around long before tonality.
>other tones began being added (the German VIth) and inversions, finally
So were inversions.
>by Liszt and Wagner even the dreaded tritone was added. (for C F#)
The dreaded tritone can be heard in 17th C tonal music--in fact, in
*all* tonal music. It's a defining characteristic.
> Extension has two effects:
> 1. it strengthens the dissonance of the sensation of the chord.
> 2. Since development is the motion through the notes of the chord
> to the chord and then its resolution, it lengthens the
> meoldy required to get there.
>
> TYhus we have longer developments (single movements that
>would have swallowed whole symphonies).
Longer than the development of the Eroica? Few Romantics ever wrote
one like that.
> This is used in pursuit of greater emotional response to
>each moment of the piece, and a greater motion along thelines of the
>piece.
Whatever that may mean.
This last sentence is 100% platitude. What does it mean?
> Strauss tries the approach of more Wagner than Wagner. More notes,
>longer sustains, more brilliant orechstration.
> Scheonberg takes the dissonant chromaticism of Mahler and the extended
>tonality of brahms and pushes three things:
> 1. Rythmic irregularity: phrases stop and start between beats,
> cadences fall everywhere (see SQ #1) or nowhere at all.
> 2. More notes in the octave. (leading to 12)
> 3. Mechanism laid out before the composition that produces the
> choices in the work. In a way a return to the baroque interval
> based schemes.
Bosh. For one thing, Schoenberg's octave has just as many notes in it
as Beethoven's. For another, there are no Schoenberg pieces composed
according to "mechanism." As we don't know what these baroque interval
schemes *were*, or at least you haven't told us, it's hard to tell
what you mean by the comparison.
> More important that his music in many respects is his work as a
>teacher and professor (he trains Webern,Berg,Cage and others). His work
He had Cage in a class, but he could hardly be accused of having trained
him. And, no, his teaching was *not* more important than his music.
It was his music that inspired Berg and Webern and a hundred others.
>on harmony defines the modernist look on harmony: a sequence of instants
>linked in their succession.
You've said that twice now, and it's still wrong.
>He states that since there are no new
>instants that can be added to tonality, it must be abandoned.
Nowhere does he state anything like that. Could you give us a footnote
to where you think he does?
>The work is the most
>influential text on composition since Fux' counter point.
Except that it's not about composition, and it wasn't very influential.
Schenker has had more of an effect.
>It is also dead wrong.
So are the symphonies Martinu composed in Czechoslovakia. Why should
we take your word on this?
>This leads to the redefinition of "old music is tonal"(and the ridiculous
>classification of baroque as tonal!).
You still haven't told us what makes this so ridiculous. Why do
Schenker and Riemann and Sechter and all the rest disagree with you?
>It is THE ARGUEMNT for going serialist or atonal (actually anti-tonal).
COuld you show us where anyone made such an argument?
>10. Who wins
>
> Well everyone.
>
> Strauss is not only a composer, but an operatic composer and a conductor,
>his hyper-romanticism carries the day in opera, and in playing for the next
>70 years (examples: Mahlers disciples Walter and Klemperer, as well as
>Szell, Karajan, Bernstien, Furtwangelr). One of the reasons modernist
>pieces went over so badly , is that the were being overhammered by conductors.
>(Bernstiens Brahms 2 movement I takes 19 minutes!)
>
> Schoenberg takes over the academicestablishment, almost every compositional
>teaher in a major conservatory can trace their intellectual lineage back
>to him..
Except for the majority, who studied with Boulanger, Hindemith, or
someone else entirely. Get real.
>This leads to a delayed revolution. People are only trained to
>write modnerist pieces,except for film scores, musicians have to more and more
>bend their technique to play these scores. And eventually conductors soaked
>in them lead orchestras (as most current conductors are.)
More "modernism." After four requests, I don't suppose I'm ever
going to get a coherent definition, am i?
if you could even spell chords right, the point would be more
likely to have a chance of surviving the drive.
>If people
>are subjected to and see the world (and must deal with the world, there is
>little room for a pastorialist in a fox hole! or corporation or party
>meeting or death camp) then that is what composers will write. Some
>may long for a more melodic past, but until there is a basic change in
>philosphy, or experience, this will remain. We do not need to write
>atonal modernist music, but it will be the dominant mode until composers
>think differently about pieces and how to write them.
Well, if they think like you, or at least the way you *write*, they'll
be too confused to compose at all.
> Until then classicism will divide away from modnerism,
Neither of which you've successfully defined yet...
>the Symphony orchestras will be less and less able to play Beethoven
What makes you say they can't?
>Brahms and even Mahler, as their techniqu (and patrons) is centered
>on the modernist view.
You keep saying this, as though music and symphony orchestras were the
same thing.
>13. Modernism is dying.
>
> The core ideas of modernism, systemtization, randomly ordered
>experience (see Slaughter House Five for the best explanation, vonnegut
>is perhpas the premier late modernist apologist and writer)
>statization, have begun to fail, in economics, evolutionary biology and
>mathematics as well as in medicine. Chaos theory and computers give us two
>
>roads out. The easier, and hence more likely view is to center everything
>around the individuals own world view (Feyerabend,Schnittke,Derrida and
>pop culture all all excellent examples). Physicist is now
>being done this way, a computer model is set up and the results compared
>by eye to the expected result. Some physicists talk about "computational"
>physic being added to theoretical and experimental).
None of which has anything to do with modernism.
Of course, "Modernism is dying" is an old, old trope. The New York
Times usedto run an article about it once a year.
> this is a dead end, it leads to hyper fragmentation and
>no one being able to talk to anyone else. It will disintegrate
>out of its own tendancy to rump people based on ever finer distinctions.
>(eg modern feminism, which was once women's lib etc).
>
> The other road is to realize there there is a nonlinear relation
>ship to mechanism from resutl, and that art must prcoede not
>from some sense of avante-gardism (see Sol Greenberg's essays for
>the modernist view on painting and what art is about). But out of an
>attempt to find more than momentary sensations held in common
>and the use of that vocabulary to do more than merely build an atmosphere.
>
>The question is not "good music vs bad" nor "modern vs classical" but
>of what sort of world we want to live in, and what sort of people
>we wish to be.
Well, most of us don't want to be *confused* people, so we're going to have
to ask for a little explanation of what you mean here.
Roger
William Hsu
>
> The question is not "good music vs bad" nor "modern vs classical" but
> of what sort of world we want to live in, and what sort of people
> we wish to be.
Why, the kind of people who can dance to Elliot Carter's 3rd
string quartet and Xenakis' Oresteia, of course.
Bill
Robert W. Fink
There is much in this potted history of music with which I could
take issue (couldn't we all), but it ends up, quite eloquently,
at a place that pleases me greatly:
The question is not "good music vs bad" nor "modern vs classical" but
of what sort of world we want to live in, and what sort of people
we wish to be.
Amen to that!
BUT...
I want to take issue with this "baroque music isn't tonal" idea.
Rameau's treatise and most of the codifications of things like
the circle of fifths come from the period we would call the
"Late (or High) Baroque: aprox 1710-1740. You could say without
too much contradiction that most of our standards of "common-
practice" harmony and voiceleading are derived from the works
of Bach. Remember all those chorale harmonizations we all had
to do in theory class?
Now if you want to separate out large-scale modulation theory
and call that "tonality" (and you might well have a point), then
it is possible to say that Haydn and Mozart basically perfected
that.
But you can't tell me that Bach's harmonization of "Ein fest'
Burg" is not tonal; for many, this kind of music taught them
what tonal was...
a little history...?
robert fink
eastman school of music
Ed Price
>>by Liszt and Wagner even the dreaded tritone was added. (for C F#)
>
>The dreaded tritone can be heard in 17th C tonal music--in fact, in
>*all* tonal music. It's a defining characteristic.
A cool example of tritones in Bach (my favorite modernist composer),
partita #2 in C minor, which I've been attempting to play:
Ab -
F F - G - F -
D - Eb - Eb D Eb D - D -
B - C - B -
G - G A G
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
-Ed