I hate Arnold Schoenberg
Michael Thomas
And the proposition for which he stands. I'm not
a musicologist. I don't even play one on TV. I
expect to be flamed; my tough noogies. I can't
stand what I perceive Arnold Schoenberg's having
done to modern classical music.
My subscription to the San Francisco Symphony
finally resumed after 3 missed concerts due to a
strike (no, I didn't honk for them in case you
were wondering). We were treated to the US debuts
of two modern era composers, one from Finland, one
from the UK. My normal reaction to this in the
program notes is "I'll try to keep an open mind;
I'll really try", but the first piece proved to be
the Same Old Shit: a large orchestra with lots of
do-dads, but another contestant in the long line
of composers hell bent on scoring "Nightmare on
Elm Street, part 107." I'm sure these guys think
they're being all profound and deep, but I'm sorry
it's just pretentious and sophomoric.
This guy seemed to be trying to channel
Stravinsky but it didn't work. Not even close.
Stravinsky, IMO, uses the achromatic schtick (and
yes, I know my misuse of jargon is where I'm going
to really get in trouble) to convey raw emotion
and fury in a way that just *connects*. To him,
still, it seems like it's a tool rather than an
ends. However, it seems that ever since Stravinsky
and more or less personified by Schoenberg the
tool became the Object d'Art and it just sucks.
The overuse of achromatic scales (isn't that what
they're called? It's been a long time since I've
kept up with the nomenclature) leaves me flat and
bored. It's just cacophony -- like a brain firing
random neurons ala an acid trip, but without the
benefit of constructing a hallucination to make it
interesting.
I realize that Western Classical music has been
a steady march from perfect harmony symbolized by
Bach et al, to the more gut wrenching, emotional use
of a-harmonic chords seized on in large part by
Beethoven and culminating, IMO, with Stravinsky,
but they all used that mode as a *tool* to achieve
their ends.
I'd be remiss to pin this totally on the use of
achromatic scales because it's not just that.
There has also been a march from very tightly
structured, mathematical, and even formulaic
strategy, rhythm structure, and jargon I don't
know how to express, toward a more rambling
unconnected style where themes come and go in a
more transient manner. To me, this hit its height
with Mahler and Sibelius. Their work often conveys
a dreaminess which a rigid structure would fail at
miserably.
From Schoenburg on, however, it seems that
disconnected rambling is the ends again, rather
than a tool to convey mood. It, again, leaves me
totally flat. There is no story being told, there
is no mood being created other than the
uncomfortable spectacle of watching the ramblings
of a madman -- something that instead of engaging
me to think further, cautions me to stay away.
I wish it would stop. I really like to think
that I'm fairly progressive when it comes to
thinking about different classical musical styles,
and I'm by no means asking for a return to the
classical style that, say, Stalin pressured
Prokofiev and Shostakovich into, but this new
genre is just plain *bad* and it needs to be
purged from the minds of every aspiring composer.
This day and age hold *so* much promise for a
revolution in classical music, but as I see it,
either we are squandering our talent on this junky
genre, or the late 20th century is just barren of
the genius that only a half a century ago still
thrived.
It sucks, and I'm not a happy camper.
ObMotss: I saw Jim Meehan who was with his sister
in law. Apparently Jim remarked to her that it
was the first US performance to which she tartly
replied "and last". Meow.
--
Michael Thomas (mi...@mtcc.com http://www.mtcc.com/~mike/)
"I dunno, that's an awful lot of money."
Beavis
Arne Adolfsen
In article <v7u3mnl...@fasolt.mtcc.com>,
Michael Thomas <mi...@fasolt.mtcc.com> wrote:
> And the proposition for which he stands. I'm not
>a musicologist.
Neither am I. Even so, I'd rather die than live in a world without
_Ervartung_ and _Verklaerte Nacht_. And even though I think the
*vast* majority of PoMo LitCrit is absolute bullshit, I do still
treasure Schoenberg's 12-tone scale and all that it has wroght.
I mean, we'd have no _Wozzeck_ if we listened to Mike here.
--
-- Arne Adolfsen --------------- ar...@mtcc.com --- http://www.mtcc.com/~arne --
"Asked how it felt to be 104, she trumpeted: 'Madame, I am officially 32. If
you print anything else I will sue.'" -- from Lucie Young's interview of
Beatrice Webb, "the Mama of Dada", in the New York Times, 3/6/97
Kenji Andrew Matsuoka
In article <E6p66...@mtcc.com>, Queen of the Damned <x...@mtcc.com> wrote:
: Michael Thomas (mi...@fasolt.mtcc.com) wrote:
: : Stravinsky, IMO, uses the achromatic schtick (and
: : yes, I know my misuse of jargon is where I'm going
: : to really get in trouble)
I guess you want "atonal".
: : to convey raw emotion
: : and fury in a way that just *connects*.
The trick is that it's *not* raw in Stravinsky -- it's
highly organized ;-)
: Stravinsky represents the intellectualization of
: the primitive
As if Stravinsky's appeal were only intellectual.
: - a suffocating shellac of post-
: conceptualized rationalizations inflicted upon
: harmony and melody.
Tee hee!
Speaking of Stravinsky, did y'all notice the quotes from
part II of "Rite of Spring" during the desert scene in
"Star Wars?" Worked well, I thought.
--
Kenji Andrew Matsuoka (ke...@hana.physics.sunysb.edu)
http://hana.physics.sunysb.edu/~kenji/
"I've written an exciting Unix program to grep an NNTP spool."
-- E. McManus
Joseph C Fineman
As a shameless philistine, I will leave the musical debate to the
better-educated members of this company. However, as a connoisseur of
asininity, I cherish Herr Schoenberg for the following remark that he
made after devising the 12-tone system in 1922:
I have discovered something which will guarantee the supremacy of
German music for the next hundred years.
One should not be seduced into sniggering at this merely because
Schoenberg happened to be Jewish. To appreciate the monumental
fatuity of this boast, one has to try to imagine Beethoven saying such
a thing.
--- Joe Fineman j...@world.std.com
||: Most of the evil in the world comes from nature, and most :||
||: of the ugliness comes from art. :||
Conrad Sabatier
In article <E6p66...@mtcc.com>,
x...@mtcc.com (Queen of the Damned) writes:
> Michael Thomas (mi...@fasolt.mtcc.com) wrote:
>
>: Stravinsky but it didn't work. Not even close.
>: Stravinsky, IMO, uses the achromatic schtick (and
>: yes, I know my misuse of jargon is where I'm going
>: and fury in a way that just *connects*.
>
> so *cute*!
>
> Stravinsky represents the intellectualization of
> conceptualized rationalizations inflicted upon
> harmony and melody.
>
Blasphemer! Stravinsky was *God*!
Every composer since -- what, 1912? I forget exactly when its historic
premier took place -- has been trying to write a better "Le Sacre", and
failing miserably at it, I might add.
BTW, Michael, I think the word you're looking for is "atonal".
--
Conrad Sabatier http://www.neosoft.com/~conrads
Kenji Andrew Matsuoka
Marc Talusan <tal...@fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
: Kenji Andrew Matsuoka (ke...@panix.com.nospam) wrote:
: : : Michael Thomas (mi...@fasolt.mtcc.com) wrote:
:
: : : : Stravinsky, IMO, uses the achromatic schtick (and
: : : : yes, I know my misuse of jargon is where I'm going
: : : : to really get in trouble)
:
: : I guess you want "atonal".
:
: Or chromatic, right?
Naw. "Atonal" means "not using the traditional harmonic system".
"Chromatic" just means "using lots of flats and sharps" (loosly).
Marc Talusan
Kenji Andrew Matsuoka (ke...@panix.com.nospam) wrote:
: : Michael Thomas (mi...@fasolt.mtcc.com) wrote:
: : : Stravinsky, IMO, uses the achromatic schtick (and
: : : yes, I know my misuse of jargon is where I'm going
: : : to really get in trouble)
: I guess you want "atonal".
Or chromatic, right?
Marc, vaguely remembering music theory
--
< >
Marc Talusan |Jack be nimble, Jack be quick,
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~talusan|Jack jump over the candle stick.
tal...@fas.harvard.edu |Silly Jack, he should jump higher,
|Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!
--- from Caryl Churchill's _Cloud 9_
Michael Palmer
On Sat, 8 Mar 1997 23:00:13 GMT, in <E6qyK...@world.std.com>,
j...@world.std.com (Joseph C Fineman) wrote:
>As a shameless philistine, I will leave the musical debate to the
>better-educated members of this company. However, as a connoisseur of
>asininity, I cherish Herr Schoenberg for the following remark that he
>made after devising the 12-tone system in 1922:
> I have discovered something which will guarantee the supremacy of
> German music for the next hundred years.
>One should not be seduced into sniggering at this merely because
>Schoenberg happened to be Jewish.
One can be Jewish and write German music.
--
Michael Palmer
Claremont, California
mpa...@netcom.com
John Fox
Michael Thomas wrote:
> [a lot of deep and meaningful things]
I really like to think
> that I'm fairly progressive when it comes to
> thinking about different classical musical styles,
I said the same thing at the last bjork concert
David W. Fenton
Michael Thomas (mi...@fasolt.mtcc.com) wrote:
: And the proposition for which he stands. . .
[I think you're asking Schoenberg to stand for lots of things that have
nothing whatsoever to do with his theories or his music. And I think you
don't really have a very deep understanding of either Schoenberg or of
much modern music]
: . . .I'm not
: a musicologist. I don't even play one on TV. I
: expect to be flamed; my tough noogies. I can't
: stand what I perceive Arnold Schoenberg's having
: done to modern classical music.
My response is not in any way intended as a flame -- I understand your
point extremely well. You are not alone in believing that modern music has
lost its way.
But I think you finger the wrong suspects.
: My subscription to the San Francisco Symphony
: finally resumed after 3 missed concerts due to a
: strike (no, I didn't honk for them in case you
: were wondering). We were treated to the US debuts
: of two modern era composers, one from Finland, one
: from the UK. My normal reaction to this in the
: program notes is "I'll try to keep an open mind;
: I'll really try", but the first piece proved to be
: the Same Old Shit: a large orchestra with lots of
: do-dads, but another contestant in the long line
: of composers hell bent on scoring "Nightmare on
: Elm Street, part 107." I'm sure these guys think
: they're being all profound and deep, but I'm sorry
: it's just pretentious and sophomoric.
It's often been remarked that people do not like modern music because
they don't understand what it's trying to say.
On the contrary, it seems to me that often people understand exactly what
the music is trying to say, and what they are rejecting is the content.
They often simply don't like the message itself.
The question boils down to the eternal "what is beauty?" argument, in some
respects. Ugly sounds can be expressive and moving.
As to sophomoric pretension, I agree that many modern composers are not
well educated musicians, and seem more pre-occupied with novelty of
presentation than with any craft or content. This is a legacy of
19th-century romantic notions of the artists, I think.
But, of course, the majority of practitioners in any field of art will be
hacks, in any age. Most composers throughout history have been bad
composers. It shouldn't be surprising that many today are not too great.
: This guy seemed to be trying to channel
: Stravinsky but it didn't work. Not even close.
: Stravinsky, IMO, uses the achromatic schtick (and
: yes, I know my misuse of jargon is where I'm going
: to really get in trouble) to convey raw emotion
: and fury in a way that just *connects*. . .
"Achromatic" is certainly not the term you're looking for, but I'm not
sure if there is one. Perhaps you were thinking of atonal, but
Stravinsky's music (I assume you're referring to his early period, the
sound of the ballets from the first 15 years of the century) is not
atonal. It is not strictly tonal, but it does indeed use tonal centers.
One term that is useful is non-tonal.
Something which you should consider: Stravinsky's music sounds right to
you precisely because it is a part of our musical culture, having been
absorbed into film music very early on. The sounds are not foreign to _us_
because we know how to hear them, we know what they signify through
decades of familiarity.
And, since the esthetic standard is built on that music (in part), it is
impossible for it to fail the test of meeting our expectations. The
esthetic filters through which we experience new music are built from the
music that has made it into the "canon" and into the vocabulary of popular
music.
: . . .To him,
: still, it seems like it's a tool rather than an
: ends. However, it seems that ever since Stravinsky
: and more or less personified by Schoenberg the
: tool became the Object d'Art and it just sucks.
I don't really think you have a very firm idea about what you are talking
about. What Schoenberg and Stravinsky did was a break with the musical
language of the past, but was also inherently tied to that older musical
style.
But both composers did very different things.
Most of the sins of serialism were not committed by Schoenberg, but by his
followers. I for one have never understood the music of Webern. It just
makes no sense to me. I've also always despised Boulez and his "total
serialism" There seems to be no music in it.
Yet, Berg was also a serialist, and along with Schoenberg's music, shows
what serialism can accomplish.
As in any musical style, it's not the musical language that makes the
difference, but what the composer does with the language.
: The overuse of achromatic scales (isn't that what
: they're called? It's been a long time since I've
: kept up with the nomenclature) leaves me flat and
: bored. . . .
I guess you mean you prefer music with tonal centers, or music that
doesn't overuse chromaticism.
I suspect that what you don't like is music that doesn't fit into your
ideas of the satisfying balance between tension and release, both in pitch
and rhythm. You might consider the degree to which the limitations of
your musical exposer (we all have them!) may be keeping you from
understanding music which doesn't fit them.
It is my experience that familiarity tends to help one understand what a
composer is trying to do, and helps the ear learn to make connections that
it may never had made without this added training.
Indeed, most of the music one hears at concerts is music one has already
heard, so it seems unfair to me to make sweeping critical judgments
based on only one hearing.
: . . .It's just cacophony -- like a brain firing
: random neurons ala an acid trip, but without the
: benefit of constructing a hallucination to make it
: interesting.
. . .as far as _you_ are able to understand.
Perhaps you don't understand the language well enough to understand what
the composer is trying to say.
This is not the same thing as saying that the piece is bad.
: I realize that Western Classical music has been
: a steady march from perfect harmony symbolized by
: Bach et al, to the more gut wrenching, emotional use
: of a-harmonic chords seized on in large part by
: Beethoven and culminating, IMO, with Stravinsky,
: but they all used that mode as a *tool* to achieve
: their ends.
Well, let me dispute you. Western Classical music has _not_ been any such
steady march. Most of musical history is lost to us. We know only those
works that have come into the canon of musical history, and, as in the
writing of any history, selections have been made. More has been omitted
than has been included.
And our modern esthetics are inextricably intertwined with that canon. The
works that are not in the canon will fail to measure up to the standards
implied by the canon, by definition.
And the canon is inherently conservative, and behind the times.
Stravinsky's ballets were written almost a hundred years ago, so it
shouldn't be surprising that those works now have canonical status. Yet,
little of the last 30 years can be said to be canonical. Indeed, I can
think of little from after WWII that seems to have any kind of status in
the musical culture, works over which there is any kind of "universal"
agreement on their importance, value and centrality.
From this we should not include that no great pieces have been written. We
are simply too close to the time to be able to have any idea what is
likely to survive and what won't.
The process of constructing this canon is a process of enforcing musical
values. Thus, certain musical styles and innovations received the
imprimature and others don't.
This doesn't necessarily mean that the pieces that don't make it into the
canon are bad pieces. There are quite a few very good pieces of music and
composers who are not in the traditional canon, for whatever reasons.
(BTW, chords cannot ever be "a-harmonic" for any chord is by definition
harmonic. It's the type of harmony that you seem to have problems with)
: I'd be remiss to pin this totally on the use of
: achromatic scales because it's not just that.
: There has also been a march from very tightly
: structured, mathematical, and even formulaic
: strategy, rhythm structure, and jargon I don't
: know how to express, toward a more rambling
: unconnected style where themes come and go in a
: more transient manner. To me, this hit its height
: with Mahler and Sibelius. Their work often conveys
: a dreaminess which a rigid structure would fail at
: miserably.
Here you would be very wrong. There is often a very rigorous structure and
very close connections between the parts of pieces by these composers. The
looseness is at the surface alone.
: From Schoenburg on, however, it seems that
: disconnected rambling is the ends again, rather
: than a tool to convey mood. . .
This statement makes no sense to me.
Schoenberg made the system of the organization of tones even _more_
organized. In his music there are myriads of connections between the
parts. And he also used a lot of traditional forms.
For Schoenberg, serialism was not an end in itself. Serialism was a way of
_theorizing_ about the kinds of sounds Schoenberg felt compelled to write.
That's right -- the _sound ideal_ came first, and Schoenberg's method was
a way of systematizing that sound ideal that allowed him a rationale for
the sounds that he wanted to use.
This was brought home to me in a class in college taught by a composer.
One day during a lull in class, one of the students asked the instructor
what he'd been working on lately. He got very excited -- he was a
serialist, and he explained "I just had a breakthrough. I've been looking
for a tone row that gave me a particular sound, and I finally found it.
Now I can write the pieces with that sound."
Indeed, this is what serialism is about -- each tone row (the ordered
collection of the twelve chromatic pitches upon which a serial piece is
based) is a "tonality" in itself. And the organization of the tone row is
a map of the musical space through which the composer can move. The row
_organizes_ the musical space in a particular way.
: . . .It, again, leaves me
: totally flat. . .
Much serial music leaves me unmoved. There seems to be little _music_ in
it (Boulez, for instance), only process without feeling. The music doesn't
seem to express anything other than the compositional process, which is to
me completely uninteresting.
However, some serial music really moves me. When I'm not conscious of the
_way_ the notes are organized, and feel only the musical expression, the
peice has been successful for me.
In fact, I've often said that the rhythm has been more of a problem for
the modern audience than the pitch content. Western music has been
organized around the concept of consonance and dissonance since the
beginnings of polyphony, and consonance and dissonance is connected with
rhythmic context. When the distinction between conssonance and dissonance
is removed (as in serialism), rhythm is the only area in which there can
be tension and release.
Schoenberg's rhythm, however, is very quirky, and seldom regular. This
makes it difficult to organize the sounds upon first hearing.
Indeed, Schoenberg himself had quite a bit to say about this in regard to
his Variations for Orchestra (Op. 31, 1928). He was very careful, he said,
to make the rhythms perceptible so that the listener would be able to
follow the 12-tone theme. He also structured the theme to give it
recognizable and memorable contures (tri-tone and 6ths). He desperately
wanted his listeners to be able to hear the process of variation upon
first hearing.
To me, it's quite audible throughout the piece, even on first hearing,
and becomes moreso upon continued exposure.
And it doesn't seem nearly as "dissonant" as it actually is. I believe
this is because of its rhythmic organization.
: . . . There is no story being told, there
: is no mood being created other than the
: uncomfortable spectacle of watching the ramblings
: of a madman -- something that instead of engaging
: me to think further, cautions me to stay away.
Some music just isn't very good, or not very interesting.
I think, though, that you are tarring all music with the same brush, based
on a very superficial understanding of it.
If composers were to write only music that people would like on first
hearing, there's an awful lot of great music that never would have been
written in the first place.
Composers have almost always been slightly ahead of their audiences in
this respect. I think it would be unfair to the gifted composers among us
today to ask that they straitjacket themselves with the limitations of
today's mostly musically uneducated audiences.
(and please don't take that as a swipe against you personally -- the vast
majority of listeners today has little or no formal training in music)
: I wish it would stop. I really like to think
: that I'm fairly progressive when it comes to
: thinking about different classical musical styles, . . .
I think this post demonstrates that you are mistaken in thinking that.
You've basically rejected that last 80 years of music.
Progressive it ain't.
: . . .and I'm by no means asking for a return to the
: classical style that, say, Stalin pressured
: Prokofiev and Shostakovich into, but this new
: genre is just plain *bad* and it needs to be
: purged from the minds of every aspiring composer.
"Genre" is surely not the right word.
You have a problem with certain musical styles of the 20th century. You
don't like how they sound, you don't understand them, and you wish
composers would stop using them.
Well, there is music that I certainly wouldn't miss, such as all of
Boulez, most Philip Glass after Einstein on the Beach, and any number of
other composers and their works.
However, there are more styles of musical expression than you can imagine.
The so-called academic style (the serialists) is almost non-existent
today. Hardly anyone is a serialist any more (I would guess that neither
of the pieces you heard was serial in any strict sense, or even atonal).
But I'd be hard pressed to give any kind of description of exactly what
kinds of musical languages people are using. There are almost as many as
there are composers, however much most of them may sound the same to some
general audiences.
There was a time once when Brahms sounded just like Mozart to me.
Familiarity and study have taught me otherwise.
: This day and age hold *so* much promise for a
: revolution in classical music, but as I see it,
: either we are squandering our talent on this junky
: genre, or the late 20th century is just barren of
: the genius that only a half a century ago still
: thrived.
Don't forget -- the only music we know of a half century ago is that which
has made it into the standard repertory. Most of the chaff has fallen
away, and we don't hear it any more. As someone said during a discussion
of artificial intelligence during the celebrations of Hal 9000's birthday
in January, a modern computer faced with an encyclopedia could conclude
that everyone born before 1800 was a genius. When one tries to compare the
whole modern landscape of music with just the works from the past that
have been found to have sufficient merit and interest to continue to be
played today, the modern works on the whole will come up lacking for two
reasons: the works from the past are only a selection of what was, and our
standards of what is good are often based on those selected works in the
first place.
: It sucks, and I'm not a happy camper.
It's too bad you don't know any composers. I'd bet they could help you
understand a bit more about modern music.
David W. Fenton | "What do you need to know? I weep. I
New York University | suffer. Farewell." -- famous "Musi-
dfe...@bway.net | cologist" Joseph Machlis on translating
http://www.bway.net/~dfenton | opera from languages he doesn't know.
Conrad Sabatier
In article <5ftde1$j...@panix2.panix.com>,
ke...@panix.com.nospam (Kenji Andrew Matsuoka) writes:
> Marc Talusan <tal...@fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>: Kenji Andrew Matsuoka (ke...@panix.com.nospam) wrote:
>
>: : : Michael Thomas (mi...@fasolt.mtcc.com) wrote:
>:
>: : : : Stravinsky, IMO, uses the achromatic schtick (and
>: : : : yes, I know my misuse of jargon is where I'm going
>: : : : to really get in trouble)
>: : I guess you want "atonal".
>:
>: Or chromatic, right?
>
> "Chromatic" just means "using lots of flats and sharps" (loosly).
Yes, but the word was "achromatic", meaning what? Using no flats
and sharps?
But there's already a word for that. Diatonic.
I'll go with "atonal" here.
Steve Dyer
>(and yes, I know my misuse of jargon is where I'm going to really
>ends. However, it seems that ever since Stravinsky and more or less
>personified by Schoenberg the tool became the Object d'Art and it
>they're called? It's been a long time since I've kept up with the
>a brain firing random neurons ala an acid trip, but without the
>benefit of constructing a hallucination to make it interesting.
Are you referring to Schoenberg's serialism or 12-tone music?
This is not a style you'd typically associate with Stravinsky,
except for his experiments with it in his last decade of composing
(say, 1956-1966), during a period when serialism seemed to be the
dominant musical language of the academy. Even so, Stravinsky's
12-tone works sound unmistakably like Stravinsky.
Also, Stravinsky wrote "Rite of Spring" once, and never looked back.
The bulk of Stravinsky's output comes from his neoclassical period
(1930?-1955?), and isn't characterized by the bombast you might
remember from the Fantasia soundtrack.
In college, I was charmed by Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" until I heard
Stravinsky's "Les Noces", written 15 years earlier, and realized what
Orff had ripped-off and recycled. Once again, Stravinsky wrote it
only once, and wrote it better.
ObMikeMusicEducation: Try a few of these. You'll like 'em:
Les Noces
Pulcinella
Orpheus
Oedipus Rex
Dunbarton Oaks Symphony
Symphony of Psalms
The Rake's Progress
Canticum Sacrum (the middle piece for tenor solo is 12-tone)
Has anyone else seen the Kabuki-inspired "Oedipus Rex" on cable or
laser disk featuring Jessye Norman as Jocasta? I wish I knew who
directed it (I initially thought it was Peter Sellars). It's brilliant.
--
Steve Dyer
dy...@ursa-major.spdcc.com
Scot Grogan
Michael Thomas (mi...@fasolt.mtcc.com) wrote:
: expect to be flamed; my tough noogies. I can't
: stand what I perceive Arnold Schoenberg's having
: done to modern classical music.
: miserably.
If it's not your cup of blare, well, it just isn't. But I like
Arnie, and I think he gets a bum rap.
: than a tool to convey mood. It, again, leaves me
: totally flat. There is no story being told, there
: is no mood being created other than the
: uncomfortable spectacle of watching the ramblings
: of a madman -- something that instead of engaging
: me to think further, cautions me to stay away.
Well, no... Schoenberg's intention (though you can argue whether it was
realized successfully) was, in part, to make music more language-like,
while retaining music's putatively unique ability to go beyond language:
to gain access to the unconscious and explicitly, coherently shape it
into a narrative. Much (if not most) of Schoenberg's music is explicitly
narrative, with linear plots (though these plots are not always
explicitly laid out as programs). For what it's worth, you might try
taking a listen to the String Trio (one of my favorite pieces, bar
none)--written late in Schoenberg's career, during the phase that has
been described as something of a reconciliation or compromise with
tonality within a serial framework (though that's something musicologists
say, so you'd be well-advised to take it with a grain of salt). The Trio
is a narrative of Schoenberg's heart attack in... oh, 1948 maybe? The
plot archetype is something like descent into the abyss and return to
life... there is obvious tone-painting (like the pizzicato chord that
represents the adrenaline needle restarting Arnie's heart), but it's
mostly very allusive, though *not* loose or disjointed or in any way a
random stream of sounds (either in theory or in this listener's ear). I
think the Trio is very much of a piece with Transfigured Night
(definitely a more warm-and-fuzzy work)
Then again, if it's not your cup of blare, it just isn't...
FWIW: chromatic--featuring much of the twelve-note chromatic scale
in a tonal framework, or making frequent modulations to
distantly related keys;
atonal--having no tonic (melodic and harmonic home, center of
gravity, keynote, whatever);
twelve-tone--atonality achieved by weighting each of the twelve
notes in the chromatic scale equally (ie, trying not to
use one note any more than any other);
serial--equal weighting of each of the twelve notes in the chromatic
scale achieved by putting them in a sequential order and
manipulating the resulting "row".
: This day and age hold *so* much promise for a
: revolution in classical music, but as I see it,
: either we are squandering our talent on this junky
: genre, or the late 20th century is just barren of
: the genius that only a half a century ago still
: thrived.
Well, I like Arnie's music; I think it works. I don't see that one
should hold it against him because:
1) people take models that are inappropriate for who they are--
either as expressive individuals or as representatives of a
particularly culture;
2) academe is not often a conducive environment for learning to create
(who was it that said earlier in the century something like "I'm
surprised no charlatan has decided to open a writing school"?)
3) most folks passing through music school, writing school,
art-school, whatever, are mediocrities at best--nitwits, even.
Kinda like people.
Y'know, I think maybe you can blame Arnie a bit for #2 above, but whatever.
Sorry to go on, but AS really is an undeserved whipping boy, and I like
to stick up for those that can't stick up for themselves.
Bye for now--
Scot
Greg Weeks
I would suggest that you redirect your ire at Robert Craft, who takes
credit for nudging Stravinsky in the direction of serialism. If Stravinsky
hadn't switched sides...
On this issue I find myself confused. I love Septet and Agon. I get
nothing out of Threni and "Abraham and Isaac". And while, say, the
"Movements for Piano and Orchesta" is nice sounding Plink, Plonk, Screech,
Screech music, it sounds like a lot of other PPSS music. So I don't know.
Greg
Michael Pettersen
Michael Thomas (mi...@fasolt.mtcc.com) wrote:
: And the proposition for which he stands. I'm not
: a musicologist. I don't even play one on TV. I
: expect to be flamed; my tough noogies. I can't
: stand what I perceive Arnold Schoenberg's having
: done to modern classical music.
I once thought that too. In Music 1 I had to write a paper
comparing a selection from the Bach St. John Passion with one of those things
that incorporate whale songs. "Twentieth century man," I wrote, "has found
dissonance in his heart, and he expresses it in his music."
(I'd choose more gender-neutral terms if I were writing today.)
But there is a great deal of later twentieth century music besides
whale song stuff: Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Rodrigo, Poulenc,
Barber, Martinu, Khatchaturian, Holst, Ravel, to name a few of
the more famous. Of later works, I've discovered a few by less
well known composers that I like: for instance, the ravishing
Song of Peace by Persichetti that I sang with the Columbus Gay Men's Chorus
(but when we recorded it, our conductor allowed the haunting, etherial lydian
mode F#'s to droop to bright, cheerful major mode F's... grrrr!)
: My normal reaction to this in the
: program notes is "I'll try to keep an open mind;
: I'll really try", but the first piece proved to be
: the Same Old Shit: a large orchestra with lots of
: do-dads, but another contestant in the long line
: of composers hell bent on scoring "Nightmare on
: Elm Street, part 107." I'm sure these guys think
: they're being all profound and deep, but I'm sorry
: it's just pretentious and sophomoric.
It's true, I think, that Hollywood has had an impact on "modern
classical music" (a contradiction in terms, by the way, isn't it). Some
modern music has been influenced by film scores, which need to rouse emotions,
but not distract; to provoke a mood, without necessarily being melodic.
But I don't think this style of music owes much to Schoenberg.
By the way, I saw Philip Glass and his ensemble perform "La Belle et la
Bete," an opera set to the film by Jean Cocteau, and I loved it (but I
wouldn't want to hear the piece without the film.)
Another factor in the modern world is that orchestras can barely
maintain themselves, so that to mount a production of an unknown composition
becomes a risky business venture. Because of the lack of opportunity, I
think, there are fewer composers who write for the symphonic medium, and
there may be a tendency to favor those who stand out by having some kind of
gimmick that makes them stand out as different or "avant-garde" in some way.
--
Mike Pettersen
Joseph C Fineman
mpa...@netcom.com (Michael Palmer) writes:
Yes, indeed, but that someone had that ambition in 1922 might tempt
one to have some sour thoughts.
--- Joe Fineman j...@world.std.com
||: Hogamus, higamus, Men are polygamous. :||
||: Higamus, hogamus, Women, monogamous. :||
Kenji Andrew Matsuoka
In article <au2uf5...@dolphin.neosoft.com>,
Conrad Sabatier <con...@neosoft.com> wrote:
: Yes, but the word was "achromatic", meaning what?
Maybe he really meant "anachronistic" ;-)
Jack Hamilton
dy...@spdcc.com (Steve Dyer) wrote:
>ObMikeMusicEducation: Try a few of these. You'll like 'em:
[..]
> Oedipus Rex
Some of which appears to have been lifted from Aida.
--------------------------
Jack Hamilton j...@acm.org
David W. Fenton
Michael Pettersen (mspe...@freenet.columbus.oh.us) wrote:
: whale song stuff: Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Rodrigo, Poulenc,
: Barber, Martinu, Khatchaturian, Holst, Ravel, to name a few of
The bulk of these composers' works were written before 1960.
[snip]
: modern music has been influenced by film scores, which need to rouse emotions,
: but not distract; to provoke a mood, without necessarily being melodic.
: But I don't think this style of music owes much to Schoenberg.
I don't have the citations at hand, but I believe there were several film
composers who freely admitted to studying Schoenberg's work and his method
precisely because they wanted to use the sounds in their film scores.
Michael Pettersen
David W. Fenton (dwf...@is2.nyu.edu) wrote:
: Michael Pettersen (mspe...@freenet.columbus.oh.us) wrote:
: : Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Rodrigo, Poulenc,
: : Barber, Martinu, Khatchaturian, Holst, Ravel, to name a few of
: : the more famous. . .
: The bulk of these composers' works were written before 1960.
Yes, but a lot of it was written after Schoenberg, which was my point,
and it is all in a markedly 20th century style without being serialist
I didn't name names of later composers, because I didn't feel as familiar
with the literature, though I've discovered a smattering of pieces I like.
Most of the composers since the 60's haven't yet become famous in the same way
as the ones I mentioned; does it perhaps take a generation
to become canonical?
: I don't have the citations at hand, but I believe there were several film
: composers who freely admitted to studying Schoenberg's work and his method
: precisely because they wanted to use the sounds in their film scores.
Interesting, I didn't know that.
...
Motss relevance? Barber, Britten, Bernstein (the 3 B's), and
perhaps Poulenc.
--
Mike Pettersen
Michael McKinley
Conrad Sabatier wrote:
> Blasphemer! Stravinsky was *God*!
I'm gonna puke blood. Mozart *IS* God.
Michael Thomas
FSVO "God".
--
Michael Thomas (mi...@mtcc.com http://www.mtcc.com/~mike/)
"I dunno, that's an awful lot of money."
Beavis
Howard A Goldstein
Michael Thomas (mi...@fasolt.mtcc.com) wrote:
: And the proposition for which he stands. I'm not
: a musicologist. I don't even play one on TV. I
: expect to be flamed; my tough noogies. I can't
: stand what I perceive Arnold Schoenberg's having
: done to modern classical music.
: My subscription to the San Francisco Symphony
: finally resumed after 3 missed concerts due to a
: strike (no, I didn't honk for them in case you
: were wondering). We were treated to the US debuts
: of two modern era composers, one from Finland, one
: from the UK. My normal reaction to this in the
: program notes is "I'll try to keep an open mind;
: I'll really try", but the first piece proved to be
: the Same Old Shit: a large orchestra with lots of
: do-dads, but another contestant in the long line
: of composers hell bent on scoring "Nightmare on
: Elm Street, part 107." I'm sure these guys think
: they're being all profound and deep, but I'm sorry
: it's just pretentious and sophomoric.
I've deleted the rest of your post and will not address the replies to
it, all wonderfully written and musically sound. I wish you had named
the exact composers involved. However, I happen to have the SFSO
schedule in front of me. I assume you are referring to Lindberg and
Walton. I know Lindberg is a radical, young Finnish composer whose style
owes something to Schoenberg, but filtered through even more radical
serialists like Webern and Boulez. But Walton? I don't know the piece
you heard (Sonata for violin and orchestra), but I know that every other
piece of Walton I've heard is in a fairly conservative, tonal idiom. It
may not have been one of Walton's best, but to blame Walton's longeurs on
Schoenberg is liking blaming Jackson Pollack on Picasso.
Which brings my second point: if you don't like the
Schoenberg/atonal/dodecaphonic approach, there is plenty of other
contemporary music that has nothing to do with it. Upcoming at Davies
Hall is a piece by Daugherty, whose inspirations are comic books and
American pop music. You also have a piece by Morton Feldman, whose music
is atonal, but very quiet and pure, and much more structurally free than
Schoenberg's. Next week the orchestra is doing Bernstein's Halil, which
is in fact a twelve-tone piece, but it still sounds like Bernstein.
Again, the choice of a musical language is less important than what the
composer says within it.
even Schoenberg admitted that there were plenty of good pieces still to
be written in C major.
Shawn Hicks
In article <5fvirr$d...@panix2.panix.com>, ke...@panix.com.nospam (Kenji Andrew Matsuoka) wrote:
>In article <au2uf5...@dolphin.neosoft.com>,
>Conrad Sabatier <con...@neosoft.com> wrote:
>
>: Yes, but the word was "achromatic", meaning what?
>
>Maybe he really meant "anachronistic" ;-)
>
For some reason I keep reading this subject as:
"I *ate* Arnold Schoenberg"
========================================================
Shawn Hicks bali...@wizard.com
Las Vegas, NV, USA http://www.wizard.com/~balistik/
Queen of the Damned
Pure poopoo.
--
Queen of the Damned---x@mtcc.com---http://www.mtcc.com/~x/
Splat X Splat
*X*
Mary Ballard
Michael Thomas (mi...@fasolt.mtcc.com) wrote:
[a buncha stuff that went over my rock 'n roll head]
Um, I like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Mary, clueless
--
Copyright 1997 Mary Ballard - All Rights Reserved // I do not speak for
Appalachian State U. // ball...@xx.acs.appstate.edu
---
He's the one who likes all our pretty songs - and he likes to sing along
- and he likes to shoot his gun - but he don't know what it means... kc
Ned Deily
Mary Ballard:
>Michael Thomas:
>[a buncha stuff that went over my rock 'n roll head]
>Um, I like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Pressing your luck these days?
>Mary, clueless
--E.D. the jerk, snatching Victory from de feet of Jaws
--
Ned Deily,
n...@visi.com -- []
Doron E. Meyer
Perhaps you should examine art music that is not written for
a full symphonic orchestra, or even any instrument that you
might find in such an ensemble.
Doron
Farrell Steven
> Subject: Re: I hate Arnold Schoenberg
> Conrad Sabatier wrote:
>
> > Blasphemer! Stravinsky was *God*!
>
>
> I'm gonna puke blood. Mozart *IS* God.
>
Michael McKinley
Please forgive my previous blasphemy. Marc T. is God.
Tim Wilson
In article <5g2v89$krh$1...@apakabar.cc.columbia.edu>
Oh, I think he should be TIED DOWN in a room full of BIG SPEAKERS and
made to listen to JOHN CAGE for hours on end. That'll learn him.
I was at the BSO once when they were doing a new Cage piece. It was
*really*neat* sounding, with gamelans and prepared pianos (one played
by a big, long, piece of horsehair pulled around the strings). The
timbral aspects alone were worth sitting for twenty minutes and
listening to.
The BSO season ticket holders boo'd, I guess because they weren't
getting their regular diet of Brahms and Shubert.
--
Tim Wilson http://www.ee.memphis.edu/~tim/ mailto:t-wi...@memphis.edu
Arne Adolfsen
In article <w4r67yy...@banquo.csp.ee.memphis.edu>,
Tim Wilson <t-wi...@memphis.edu> wrote:
>I was at the BSO once when they were doing a new Cage piece. It was
>*really*neat* sounding, with gamelans and prepared pianos (one played
>by a big, long, piece of horsehair pulled around the strings). The
>timbral aspects alone were worth sitting for twenty minutes and
>listening to.
John Cage was a fraud and the music he "wrote" is entirely without
merit. He's only interesting in terms of aesthetics. That is,
since he didn't compose his music, how is it that he can nevertheless
be considered the composer of that music?
>The BSO season ticket holders boo'd, I guess because they weren't
>getting their regular diet of Brahms and Shubert.
Brahms and Schubert are infintely preferable to Cage. Hell, I'd even
prefer an evening of Lieber and Stoller orchestrated for strings or
Lloyd Weber for glockenspiel ensemble to anything Cage ever wrote.
--
-- Arne Adolfsen --------------- ar...@mtcc.com --- http://www.mtcc.com/~arne --
"Asked how it felt to be 104, she trumpeted: 'Madame, I am officially 32. If
you print anything else I will sue.'" -- from Lucie Young's interview of
Beatrice Webb, "the Mama of Dada", in the New York Times, 3/6/97
Michael McKinley
Arne Adolfsen wrote:
> Hell, I'd even
> prefer an evening of Lieber and Stoller orchestrated for strings or
> Lloyd Weber for glockenspiel ensemble to anything Cage ever wrote.
Even Sondheim.
Ron Rizzo - Sun PC Networking Operations
Michael,
The next time you see a movie, listen to the music of the score.
Chances are it will be pretty "avant-garde." Yet it makes sense
in the film, it gets you emotional, excited, etc. and seems to
"say something" vis-a-vis what's going on in the movie.
But is what the music does, its, say, emotional intelligibility
completely dependent on the movie? Become aware of what in the
music itself causes you to respond.
Then try to hear the music divorced from the film:
- close your eyes for short stretches of the film when
there's no dialog but only score.
- listen to a recording of the score if one exists. Pick
a really adventurous score.
It may be hard at first admitting that the music is intelligible
on its own, even harder trying to say anything at all about it in
words (but how easy is it to describe Beethoven's 5th, the Nutcracker
or a suite by Bach? Music is hard to put into words).
If you can even partially see how the music contains some of the expressive-
ness you attributed to the movie, then ask yourself, why can't such music
without any other context than itself be valid as music, as a form of
expression?
It's a little like suddenly discovering you've been speaking in prose all
your life. Most people's musical, and perhaps visual and dramatic, tastes
are much more avant-garde than they realize: mass culture is filled with
styles, techniques and quotations from all periods of 20th century art.
I'm a certifiable (classical) music lover and have been listening since
I was 9 or 10. To me now, Schoenberg and even Messiaen are familiar,
old hat. I really have to concentrate to hear the dissonance and atonality,
I'm not exaggerating! There still are composers and pieces I have a hard
time with, eg, some Steve Reich, some Henze, some Maxwell Davies. Stravin-
sky's Rite of Spring sounds euphonious to me after the dozens of times I've
heard it and almost seems Mozatian in its precise and impeccable scoring.
So a lot of things are relative. What made the difference in my case is
that I've not only heard pieces many times, but listened to them assuming
the music was coherent if not easy, and that it was up to me to try and
understand it. It's like studying for an exam. It may be entertainment
but you'll only appreciate it by working at it. In a way the concert hall
isn't a good place to hear new or difficult music, which you've got to
really study at first, until your ears get the hang of it.
Your friend among the cubists,
Ron
Kenji Andrew Matsuoka
In article <5g2v89$krh$1...@apakabar.cc.columbia.edu>,
Doron E. Meyer <d...@terve.cc.columbia.edu> wrote:
: In article <v7u3mnl...@fasolt.mtcc.com>,
: Michael Thomas <mi...@fasolt.mtcc.com> wrote:
: [missive about the decline and fall of "Western classical music"]
:
: Perhaps you should examine art music that is not written for
: a full symphonic orchestra, or even any instrument that you
: might find in such an ensemble.
I'd like to put in a plug for a very short, listenable 12-tone song.
It's called "The Pennycandy Store Behind the El", and it's Leonard
Bernstein's setting (for baritone solo and orchestra) of the
Ferlinghetti poem of the same name. I listened to it and liked it
and didn't realize it was 12-tone until I read the liner notes. The
song is part of a Bernstein collection of American poem settings
called "Songfest", which is fabulous but apparently not widely known.
Ellen Evans
In article <E6w4t...@mtcc.com>, Arne Adolfsen <ar...@mtcc.com> wrote:
[]
>John Cage was a fraud and the music he "wrote" is entirely without
>merit.
Yeah, but tell us how you really feel.
--
Ellen Evans 17 Across: The "her" of "Leave Her to Heaven"
je...@netcom.com New York Times, 7/14/96
Greg Weeks
Jack Hamilton (j...@acm.org) wrote:
: > Oedipus Rex
: Some of which appears to have been lifted from Aida.
As noted by Leonard Bernstein and acknowledged by Robert Craft. [I don't
know why we're talking about Stravinsky here, but I think it's great.]
Stravinsky certainly played with musical styles. Tonality provides a set
of expectations that music can violate or realize to varying degrees,
resulting in the tension and release that we expect of tonal music.
Stravinsky used existing musical styles in the same way. At least, that is
how I would summarize Bernstein's Norton lecture on Stravinsky, which
sounded pretty reasonable to me.
But he didn't lift styles. He used them as raw materials.
Furthermore [okay, I'm a fan], he would sometimes create styles of his own,
sometimes for a single piece, and he did this far more than any other
composer I know of. The Rite of Spring, Renard and Les Noces, The
Soldier's Tale, Symphony of Wind Instruments, Symphony of Psalms,
Persephone (sort of), Agon -- each of these brings a new sound into the
world.
As the years have gone by, other composers whom I like (eg, Prokofiev,
Barber, Shostakovich, William Schuman) suffer by comparison by sounding
so much like THEMSELVES. Stravinsky make a career largely of sounding
not like Stravinsky.
Of course, it all comes down to taste in the end. But it would be
interesting to know of others who suffer the same fanatical feelings about
Stravinsky. Other composers pale (more or less). And he didn't write
enough, wasting a significant portion of his energies conducting and
performing. (A tragedy.)
Sigh,
Greg Weeks
David W. Fenton
Arne Adolfsen (ar...@mtcc.com) wrote:
: In article <w4r67yy...@banquo.csp.ee.memphis.edu>,
: Tim Wilson <t-wi...@memphis.edu> wrote:
:
: >I was at the BSO once when they were doing a new Cage piece. It was
: >*really*neat* sounding, with gamelans and prepared pianos (one played
: >by a big, long, piece of horsehair pulled around the strings). The
: >timbral aspects alone were worth sitting for twenty minutes and
: >listening to.
: John Cage was a fraud and the music he "wrote" is entirely without
: merit. . .
Cage had periods, too. Not all of his music is the same.
: . . . He's only interesting in terms of aesthetics. . .
I would agree that his philosophy is much more compelling than his music.
And it was certainly his ideas, not his music, that has had such broad
influence on modern art in all fields.
: . . . That is,
: since he didn't compose his music, how is it that he can nevertheless
: be considered the composer of that music?
Chance procedures were used only in _some_ of his pieces, not all.
Indeed, there is a certain amount of chance involved in any music. No two
performances of Brahms or Schubert are precisely the same, as chance
intervenes and makes differences. We don't question that the pieces were
still composed by Brahms or Schubert.
Chance music is only a difference of degree. As long as the composer has
set the parameters within which the players are supposed to work, the
composer is indeed the source of the ideas, and is still author.
What Cage wanted was to give much of the specific creative control to the
performers.
He was still author of the context within the performers create the piece.
: >The BSO season ticket holders boo'd, I guess because they weren't
: >getting their regular diet of Brahms and Shubert.
:
: Brahms and Schubert are infintely preferable to Cage. . .
I suspect, Arne, that you really know very little of Cage's music at all
or you wouldn't be charactizing his output so narrowly.
Doron E. Meyer
>since he didn't compose his music, how is it that he can nevertheless
>be considered the composer of that music?
Would you like us to assume that you, Arne, are the final arbiter of
what is and what is not musical composition, much less what
constitutes music of merit, or would you perhaps care to backup your
assertion with something approaching a rationale?
I'm especially curious about how a piece of music can be interesting
w.r.t. "aesthetics" yet be "entirely without merit."
Doron
Tim Wilson
In article <E6w4t...@mtcc.com> ar...@mtcc.com (Arne Adolfsen) writes:
>
>In article <w4r67yy...@banquo.csp.ee.memphis.edu>,
>Tim Wilson <t-wi...@memphis.edu> wrote:
>
>>I was at the BSO once when they were doing a new Cage piece. It was
>>*really*neat* sounding, with gamelans and prepared pianos (one played
>>by a big, long, piece of horsehair pulled around the strings). The
>>timbral aspects alone were worth sitting for twenty minutes and
>>listening to.
>
>merit. He's only interesting in terms of aesthetics. That is,
>since he didn't compose his music, how is it that he can nevertheless
>be considered the composer of that music?
>
chance structures that structure sounds, and the results are pleasant
or interesting or challenging to listen to, so it passes several
criteria on my checklist of "is it composed music?". It's certainly
not "fraud".
Cage's music uses a different language than the language of Brahms or
Schubert. To my knowledge, it's never been claimed by anyone with a
lick of sense that they were all supposed to be the same.
>>The BSO season ticket holders boo'd, I guess because they weren't
>>getting their regular diet of Brahms and Shubert.
>
>Brahms and Schubert are infintely preferable to Cage. Hell, I'd even
>prefer an evening of Lieber and Stoller orchestrated for strings or
>Lloyd Weber for glockenspiel ensemble to anything Cage ever wrote.
Well whoop-de-doo! You are just sooooooo precious.
Look: People buys their season tickets (Hi, Season!), and they can
boo if they want to. But if they buys their season tickets (Hi,
Season!) without looking at the fuckin' set of programs, then they're
operating under false assumptions. It's hard for me to have a lot of
sympathy for such people, when all they had to do was look at what was
supposed to be played.
Michael Thomas
dwf...@is2.nyu.edu (David W. Fenton) writes:
> Arne Adolfsen (ar...@mtcc.com) wrote:
> : . . . That is,
> : since he didn't compose his music, how is it that he can nevertheless
> : be considered the composer of that music?
>
> set the parameters within which the players are supposed to work, the
> composer is indeed the source of the ideas, and is still author.
> What Cage wanted was to give much of the specific creative control to the
> performers.
You mean like the second movement of Bach's
third Brandenburg Concerto?
Michael Thomas
t...@banquo.csp.ee.memphis.edu (Tim Wilson) writes:
> Look: People buys their season tickets (Hi, Season!), and they can
> boo if they want to. But if they buys their season tickets (Hi,
> Season!) without looking at the fuckin' set of programs, then they're
> operating under false assumptions. It's hard for me to have a lot of
> sympathy for such people, when all they had to do was look at what was
> supposed to be played.
Er, uh, when's the last time you've had season
tickets? I've had them for about 10 years now.
You don't find "ideal" schedules, just schedules
that sound more or less interesting. Programs are
formulaic: before intermission, you start with
something obscure or new, perhaps two, sometimes
with the second more recognizable; a variation on
this theme is a piano or violin concerto --
usually recognizable. After the intermission comes
the war horse. Now, if you really like the war
horse, you're usually willing to sit through Ode
to Chalkboard Squeaks before the intermission. You
also get somewhat locked into a series where,
through bribery, you work your way up the seating
food chain. There's strong incentive to stay put.
Arne Adolfsen
>In article <E6w4t...@mtcc.com>, Arne Adolfsen <ar...@mtcc.com> wrote:
>>John Cage was a fraud and the music he "wrote" is entirely without
>>merit.
>Yeah, but tell us how you really feel.
A friend of mine from a long time ago performed in a piece Cage "wrote"
for students at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (or whatever
it's called), and he said that Cage basically just told them to do whatever
they wanted. So David sang show tunes and vocalized for two hours, while
other singers sang snatches of lieder and chansons and arias and various
instrumentalists played whatever they wanted. This cacophony was "staged"
in the hallways of the conservatory and it was all watched over by Cage,
who was seated on a throne-like chair. David told me that one audience
member was so incensed that he had paid money to attend this performance
that he went up to Cage and started screaming at him something like "You
motherfucking asshole! You talentless fraud! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck
you!" Cage started to laugh which only made the guy angrier. Eventually
the guy had to be physically restrained by security guards.
I feel sort of like that guy when it comes to Cage.
Arne Adolfsen
In article <5g5n9n$87i$1...@apakabar.cc.columbia.edu>,
Doron E. Meyer <d...@vanakam.cc.columbia.edu> wrote:
>Would you like us to assume that you, Arne, are the final arbiter of
>what is and what is not musical composition, much less what
>constitutes music of merit,
Yes.
>or would you perhaps care to backup your
>assertion with something approaching a rationale?
See my followup to Ellen regarding Cage's compositional technique.
>I'm especially curious about how a piece of music can be interesting
>w.r.t. "aesthetics" yet be "entirely without merit."
I'm surprised you're having difficulties here. Cage's compositions
are interesting from the standpoint of aesthetics -- you know, "a
branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of the beautiful and
with judgments concerning beauty" -- even though they are, in
themselves, entirely without merit.
Kenji Andrew Matsuoka
In article <5g55vq$gr0$1...@news.nyu.edu>,
David W. Fenton <dwf...@is2.nyu.edu> wrote:
: Arne Adolfsen (ar...@mtcc.com) wrote:
: : John Cage was a fraud and the music he "wrote" is entirely without
: : merit. . .
:
: Cage had periods, too. Not all of his music is the same.
: I suspect, Arne, that you really know very little of Cage's music at all
: or you wouldn't be charactizing his output so narrowly.
Look, David, if we can't make sweeping generalizations based on scant
knowledge, how are we ever going to talk about ANYTHING on motss?!
The Schno Pianist
Michael Thomas <mi...@fasolt.mtcc.com> wrote:
: Michael McKinley <mp...@mail.utexas.edu> writes:
: > Conrad Sabatier wrote:
: >
: > > Blasphemer! Stravinsky was *God*!
: >
: >
: > I'm gonna puke blood. Mozart *IS* God.
: FSVO "God".
FSVO "*IS*". For example, hasn't Dave Barry
discovered that he (Barry) was Mozart in a
previous incarnation?
--
Andrew D. Simchik
wy...@bi.org
http://www.bi.org/~wyrd/
Arne Adolfsen
In article <5g6urq$2...@panix2.panix.com>,
Kenji Andrew Matsuoka <ke...@panix.com> wrote:
>In article <5g55vq$gr0$1...@news.nyu.edu>,
>David W. Fenton <dwf...@is2.nyu.edu> wrote:
>: I suspect, Arne, that you really know very little of Cage's music at all
>: or you wouldn't be charactizing his output so narrowly.
>Look, David, if we can't make sweeping generalizations based on scant
>knowledge, how are we ever going to talk about ANYTHING on motss?!
I may not have book-learned knowledge of Cage's music, but I have
experienced a hell of a lot of it. I did work full-time for almost
six years at a classical music-only record store, after all. At a
guess I'd say I've heard at least once most of the major compositions
and at least some of the compositions of all of the major composers --
and the most major of the minor composers -- in Western art music.
So although I couldn't begin to provide a detailed technical explication
of a piece of music, I could describe to you what, say, _Siberia_ and
_Jeanne d'Arc au Boucher_ and _La Muette de Portici_ are like, what's
interesting about, say, Zimmermann and Gibbons and Balfe', who the better
performers of music by, say, Duparc and Berio and Turina are.
But go ahead and snear, boys.
Ellen Evans
In article <E6xz4...@mtcc.com>, Arne Adolfsen <ar...@mtcc.com> wrote:
[]
>I feel sort of like that guy when it comes to Cage.
The fact that he also enjoyed the guy yelling at him seems to me to be
perfect Cage, and is probably why I like him.
I once went to a dress rehearsal of the Merce Cunningham troupe at the
Paris Opera. It was set to a piece by Cage. Afterwards there was a
question and answer session with both Cage and Cunningham. About five
minutes into it, a fellow in a beret stood up and denounced the two of
them as profaners of the very building in which they sat, sure to bring
about the demise of true French culture, an affront to Frenchmen
everywhere. Their response was about what Cage's was in the case you cite.
Brian Vogel
Tim Wilson wrote:
>
> Look: People buys their season tickets (Hi, Season!), and they can
> boo if they want to. But if they buys their season tickets (Hi,
> Season!) without looking at the fuckin' set of programs, then they're
> operating under false assumptions. It's hard for me to have a lot of
> sympathy for such people, when all they had to do was look at what was
> supposed to be played.
Ignoring the discussion about the merits of various composers, how
do you propose that the season (or other) ticket buying public show its
disapproval?
I've gone to many an NSO concert where I was desperate to hear one
and only one piece on the program. I've often wondered who selects some
of the pieces that are performed together and if they're insane.
Placing Elliot Carter and Rachmaninoff, as an example, on the same
program is an insult to the fans of either composer. But I've seen
juxtapositions just as unfathomable on more than one occasion.
Brian
--
~ Brian Vogel | bvogel AT polaris<.>attmail<.>com | Herndon, VA
~ There is no hope of joy except in human relations.
~ -- Saint-Exupery
Kristin Bergen
[redfaced value-for-money guy deleted]
>I feel sort of like that guy when it comes to Cage.
How do you like Marcel Duchamp?
Arne Adolfsen
In article <1997Mar12....@galileo.cc.rochester.edu>,
The Schno Pianist <schn...@cif.rochester.edu> wrote:
>FSVO "*IS*". For example, hasn't Dave Barry
>discovered that he (Barry) was Mozart in a
>previous incarnation?
Dunno, but I saw a piece on Dave Berry last night on TV in which he
was talking about the World Wide Web and stuff. He said his single
favorite site is the exploding whale page, and he showed some of
the video to be seen there. It is *hilarious*. Does anyone have
the URL for it?
Arne Adolfsen
In article <332726...@dev.null.com>,
Brian Vogel <no...@dev.null.com> wrote:
> I've gone to many an NSO concert where I was desperate to hear one
>and only one piece on the program. I've often wondered who selects some
>of the pieces that are performed together and if they're insane.
>Placing Elliot Carter and Rachmaninoff, as an example, on the same
>program is an insult to the fans of either composer. But I've seen
>juxtapositions just as unfathomable on more than one occasion.
I don't think having Carter and Rachmaninoff on the same program is
a priori insane. I actually enjoy odd juxtapositions. What I can't
stand are programs such as the ones the LA Phil had when Giulini
was the conductor -- Giulini apparently knew only a handful of pieces
and was uninterested in learning anything new, so any given season
would be made up of around a dozen pieces that would be mixed and
matched in every possible combination. Worse yet were the programs
during Andre Previn's short and turbulent tenure. Every concert
no matter what would feature Vaughan Williams, Delius, and their
ilk. I remember one that I went to because Elisabeth Soederstroem
ws to perform Sibelius' thrilling "Luonotar" and some other interesting
pieces. But to hear her, we had to sit through a deadly dull Vaughan
Williams symphony -- I think it was the Antarctic Symphony, but it
may have been the Pastoral; who can stay awake long enough to tell
the difference? -- and, in the second half, some Delius. Blech.
But Soederstroem made the concert worthwhile.
Arne Adolfsen
In article <5g7a7r$j...@news.duke.edu>,
Kristin Bergen <kbe...@acpub.duke.edu> wrote:
I adore Duchamp. From descriptions of the kind of stuff Arthur
Cravan did, I think I would have loved him too, even though it
appears that his antics arose from mental illness rather than a
desire to thumb his nose at the establishment. Except for Mannerism,
especially at its feverish peak, I can't think of an art movement
I enjoy more than Dada. But Cage doesn't seem to me to come
out of the Duchamp/Dada world, and I find Cage's disingenuousness
about his work -- especially _6'33"_ -- to be really irritating.
Kristin Bergen
In article <E6yEt...@mtcc.com>, Arne Adolfsen <ar...@mtcc.com> wrote:
>In article <5g7a7r$j...@news.duke.edu>,
>Kristin Bergen <kbe...@acpub.duke.edu> wrote:
>>How do you like Marcel Duchamp?
>But Cage doesn't seem to me to come
>out of the Duchamp/Dada world, and I find Cage's disingenuousness
>about his work -- especially _6'33"_ -- to be really irritating.
Then why did you listen to it for so long?
Tim Wilson
>But go ahead and snear, boys.
Whatever you say. After all, you're the expert.
Conrad Sabatier
In article <5g55r3$3...@panix2.panix.com>,
ke...@panix.com (Kenji Andrew Matsuoka) writes:
> In article <5g2v89$krh$1...@apakabar.cc.columbia.edu>,
> Doron E. Meyer <d...@terve.cc.columbia.edu> wrote:
>: In article <v7u3mnl...@fasolt.mtcc.com>,
>: Michael Thomas <mi...@fasolt.mtcc.com> wrote:
>: [missive about the decline and fall of "Western classical music"]
>:
>: Perhaps you should examine art music that is not written for
>: a full symphonic orchestra, or even any instrument that you
>: might find in such an ensemble.
>
> I'd like to put in a plug for a very short, listenable 12-tone song.
> It's called "The Pennycandy Store Behind the El", and it's Leonard
> Bernstein's setting (for baritone solo and orchestra) of the
> Ferlinghetti poem of the same name. I listened to it and liked it
> and didn't realize it was 12-tone until I read the liner notes. The
> song is part of a Bernstein collection of American poem settings
> called "Songfest", which is fabulous but apparently not widely known.
Way back when, this really avant-garde dude wrote a fugue for
keyboard whose subject included all twelve tones of the chromatic
scale. Really forward-looking, radical stuff.
His name was...uh...Bach or something.
--
Conrad Sabatier http://www.neosoft.com/~conrads
Jess Anderson
In article <E6yDp...@mtcc.com>, Arne Adolfsen
<ar...@mtcc.com> wrote:
>But to hear her, we had to sit through a deadly dull Vaughan
>Williams symphony -- I think it was the Antarctic Symphony, but it
>may have been the Pastoral; who can stay awake long enough to tell
>the difference? -- and, in the second half, some Delius. Blech.
>But Soederstroem made the concert worthwhile.
No doubt. I'm no great fan of Vaughn Williams, but if I
*had* to submit to a symphony of his, the Antarctic would be
the one.
--
Jess's homepage URL is http://www-jsbach.macc.wisc.edu/~anderson/
Copyright 1997 Jess Anderson. *All rights reserved.* Copying in
whole or in part prohibited except for direct response on Usenet.
Permission to archive for any reason explicitly refused herewith.
--
<> We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses,
<> but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but
<> by those images we have put in place of reality.
<> -- Daniel J. Boorstin
--
Opinions expressed herein have no connection with the UW-Madison.
Jess Anderson * Send no commercial email * ande...@doit.wisc.edu
Jess Anderson
>Placing Elliot Carter and Rachmaninoff, as an example, on the same
>program is an insult to the fans of either composer.
Slightly overgeneralized, wouldn't you say? Unless you
don't think there people who like the music of both, in
which case you would be dead wrong.
--
Jess's homepage URL is http://www-jsbach.macc.wisc.edu/~anderson/
Copyright 1997 Jess Anderson. *All rights reserved.* Copying in
whole or in part prohibited except for direct response on Usenet.
Permission to archive for any reason explicitly refused herewith.
--
<> If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along
<> the corridor in the other direction.
<> -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
<> The Way to Freedom
Andrew D. Simchik
Arne Adolfsen <ar...@mtcc.com> wrote:
: A friend of mine from a long time ago performed in a piece Cage "wrote"
: for students at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (or whatever
: it's called), and he said that Cage basically just told them to do whatever
: they wanted. So David sang show tunes and vocalized for two hours, while
: other singers sang snatches of lieder and chansons and arias and various
: instrumentalists played whatever they wanted. This cacophony was "staged"
: in the hallways of the conservatory and it was all watched over by Cage,
: who was seated on a throne-like chair. David told me that one audience
: member was so incensed that he had paid money to attend this performance
: that he went up to Cage and started screaming at him something like "You
: motherfucking asshole! You talentless fraud! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck
: you!" Cage started to laugh which only made the guy angrier. Eventually
: the guy had to be physically restrained by security guards.
: I feel sort of like that guy when it comes to Cage.
Apparently that's the way he liked it.
"I reserve the right to urinate in different
[brilliant] colors." -- Tristan ["Crayola"] Tzara
Jess Anderson
In article <E6yEt...@mtcc.com>, Arne Adolfsen
<ar...@mtcc.com> wrote:
>I find Cage's disingenuousness about his work -- especially
>_6'33"_ -- to be really irritating.
It must have seemed longer than it is. What specifically is
it that irritates you about that work?
--
Jess's homepage URL is http://www-jsbach.macc.wisc.edu/~anderson/
Copyright 1997 Jess Anderson. *All rights reserved.* Copying in
whole or in part prohibited except for direct response on Usenet.
Permission to archive for any reason explicitly refused herewith.
--
<> You ever notice how the ones against abortion are for
<> capital punishment? Typical fisherman's attitude: throw 'em
<> back in when they're small and kill them when they're
<> bigger.
<> -- Elayne Boosler
David W. Fenton
Kenji Andrew Matsuoka (ke...@panix.com) wrote:
: In article <5g55vq$gr0$1...@news.nyu.edu>,
: David W. Fenton <dwf...@is2.nyu.edu> wrote:
:
: : : John Cage was a fraud and the music he "wrote" is entirely without
: : : merit. . .
: :
: : Cage had periods, too. Not all of his music is the same.
:
: : or you wouldn't be charactizing his output so narrowly.
:
: Look, David, if we can't make sweeping generalizations based on scant
: knowledge, how are we ever going to talk about ANYTHING on motss?!
You're right of course.
I certainly wouldn't want too many of the posts actually be meaningful,
or interesting or informative or anything like that.
I mean, it wouldn't be Usenet.
David W. Fenton
Michael Thomas (mi...@fasolt.mtcc.com) wrote:
: dwf...@is2.nyu.edu (David W. Fenton) writes:
: > Arne Adolfsen (ar...@mtcc.com) wrote:
: > : . . . That is,
: > : since he didn't compose his music, how is it that he can nevertheless
: > : be considered the composer of that music?
: >
: > Chance music is only a difference of degree. As long as the composer has
: > set the parameters within which the players are supposed to work, the
:
: > What Cage wanted was to give much of the specific creative control to the
: > performers.
:
: You mean like the second movement of Bach's
: third Brandenburg Concerto?
I seriously don't get it.
There are only two movements. Of course, there's a one-measure Adagio in
between, with a fermata, upon which a soloist might be expected to
improvise a cadenza.
Cadenzas, of course, operate within very specific parameters, which
musicians of the time would have understood very well.
Is this what you're talking about?
Arne Adolfsen
In article <5g7pvn$o...@news.duke.edu>,
Kristin Bergen <kbe...@acpub.duke.edu> wrote:
>In article <E6yEt...@mtcc.com>, Arne Adolfsen <ar...@mtcc.com> wrote:
>>But Cage doesn't seem to me to come
>>out of the Duchamp/Dada world, and I find Cage's disingenuousness
>>about his work -- especially _6'33"_ -- to be really irritating.
>Then why did you listen to it for so long?
I worked in a record store. Each employee, in turn, got to listen to
one side of any LP of his or her choosing. We did make arrangements
with each other occasionally to play, say, two sides in a row and
then skip one's next turn. Since there were rarely more than 3 employees
on duty at any one time, that meant that you'd be able to listen to
around 2.5 hours' worth of music of your own choosing every day. It
also meant that you were subjected to around 5.5 hours of your co-workers'
selections every day. Over the years we had a number of employees
who rilly rilly rilly liked Cage and Stockhausen and Nono and Messiaen
(I never want to hear the Turangalila Symphony ever again) and Sorabji
and Vaughan Williams and Wagner and any number of other composers I don't
particularly care for, so I got to hear lots and lots and lots of stuff I
never would have listened to otherwise.
Arne Adolfsen
In article <5g7mgj$3t...@news.doit.wisc.edu>,
Jess Anderson <ande...@doit.wisc.edu> wrote:
>In article <E6yEt...@mtcc.com>, Arne Adolfsen
><ar...@mtcc.com> wrote:
>>I find Cage's disingenuousness about his work -- especially
>>_6'33"_ -- to be really irritating.
>It must have seemed longer than it is. What specifically is
>it that irritates you about that work?
It's not the work that irritates me so much as what Cage had to say
about it. The initial audiences' growing irritation and boredom at
watching a man sit at a concert grand for six minutes and thirty
three seconds doing nothing was, Cage claimed, really an expression
of their irritation and boredom with themselves. That's a load of
hooey. If you're going to play with artistic conventions and your
audiences' expectations, then at least own up to it.
Arne Adolfsen
In article <w4rohco...@banquo.csp.ee.memphis.edu>,
Tim Wilson <t-wi...@memphis.edu> wrote:
>In article <E6y75...@mtcc.com> ar...@mtcc.com (Arne Adolfsen) writes:
>>But go ahead and snear, boys.
>Whatever you say. After all, you're the expert.
I do know what I'm talking about and I think the overvaluation of
Cage's music and theoretical writings is, at best, unfortunate.
Éamonn McManus
ar...@mtcc.com (Arne Adolfsen) writes:
> Dunno, but I saw a piece on Dave Barry last night on TV in which he
> was talking about the World Wide Web and stuff. He said his single
> favorite site is the exploding whale page, and he showed some of
> the video to be seen there. It is *hilarious*. Does anyone have
> the URL for it?
You can find any number of copies on the Web by searching for, e.g.,
"whale Oregon explosives". Here is one:
http://www.ne.ksu.edu/~holland/whale/
,
Eamonn http://www.mtcc.com/~eamonn/
"Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora" -- Occam
mlam...@fia.net
In article <E6w4t...@mtcc.com>,
ar...@mtcc.com (Arne Adolfsen) wrote:
>
> John Cage was a fraud and the music he "wrote" is entirely without
> since he didn't compose his music, how is it that he can nevertheless
> be considered the composer of that music?
I tend to think of Cage more in terms of performance art than
music. I think most of his ideas are interesting intellectually
and are thought-provoking, but I wouldn't necessarily want
to listen to his stuff for very long.
I simply don't get the same experience out of Cage that I
normally get from music. It's more an appreciation of
how clever the idea is, rather than how beautiful the
music is or how it moves me.
Michael, who would, however, get a thrill from performing Cage's fish
piece
---- Michael P. Lambert -- mlam...@fia.net -- mlam...@nuera.com
\ / <*> Visit my custom figure /custom AOL disk webpage at:
\/ 1:1 http://home.fia.net/~mlambert
-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet
David W. Fenton
Arne Adolfsen (ar...@mtcc.com) wrote:
: . . . David told me that one audience
: member was so incensed that he had paid money to attend this performance
: that he went up to Cage and started screaming at him something like "You
: motherfucking asshole! You talentless fraud! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck
: you!" Cage started to laugh which only made the guy angrier. Eventually
: the guy had to be physically restrained by security guards.
:
: I feel sort of like that guy when it comes to Cage.
No doubt he would have loved having you as a collaborator.
He was surely thrilled with the audience member's "performance."
Leith Chu
Brian Vogel wrote:
> Ignoring the discussion about the merits of various composers, how
> do you propose that the season (or other) ticket buying public show its
> disapproval?
Phone calls.
Letters.
E-mail.
Did the musicians perform well? If they did, why would you boo them?
Would you stiff a waitron who served well because the chef fucked up?
Do you curse the mail person when you're overcharged on your bills?
The musicians in an orchestra don't have a heck of a lot of control over
the repertoire.
> I've gone to many an NSO concert where I was desperate to hear one
> and only one piece on the program. I've often wondered who selects some
> of the pieces that are performed together and if they're insane.
Why? Did they break up one multi-movement work with another?
Did they play them at the same time?
> Placing Elliot Carter and Rachmaninoff, as an example, on the same
> program is an insult to the fans of either composer. But I've seen
> juxtapositions just as unfathomable on more than one occasion.
Why? Are Rachmaninoff and Elliot Carter fans soccer hooligans?
Let me put it this way: I'm glad I never waited on your table,
and I hope I never perform for you.
Leith Chu | Helpdesk tip #2:
panda cub, pushy bottom, | When the support analyst says
dizzy Chinese leather smurf | "Click..." or "Type...", wait
le...@queernet.org | for the rest of the sentence.
Tim Wilson
>I simply don't get the same experience out of Cage that I
>normally get from music. It's more an appreciation of
>how clever the idea is, rather than how beautiful the
>music is or how it moves me.
The piece I heard at the BSO was simply fascinating in terms of
beautiful tones and colors that used the entire hearing instrument
*and* the way they either fell or were put together, which was
symphonic in scope. It was an extremely pleasant twenty or thirty
minutes.
Brian Vogel
Jess Anderson wrote:
>
> In article <332726...@dev.null.com>,
> Brian Vogel <no...@dev.null.com> wrote:
>
> >program is an insult to the fans of either composer.
>
> don't think there people who like the music of both, in
> which case you would be dead wrong.
I will agree that this is slightly, and I do mean slightly,
overgeneralized. Even those who adore both of these composers are
seldom in the frame of mind to hear the styles of music created by each
on the same program.
I would venture to guess that in most circumstances when a person is
in a "Carter-listening" mood that they are almost certainly *not* in a
"Rachmaninoff-listening" mood. I realize I could be wrong, but that's a
limb I'm willing to climb out on.
Brian Vogel
Arne Adolfsen wrote:
>
> In article <332726...@dev.null.com>,
> Brian Vogel <no...@dev.null.com> wrote:
> >Placing Elliot Carter and Rachmaninoff, as an example, on the same
> >program is an insult to the fans of either composer. But I've seen
> >juxtapositions just as unfathomable on more than one occasion.
>
> I don't think having Carter and Rachmaninoff on the same program is
> a priori insane. I actually enjoy odd juxtapositions.
I can also enjoy some very odd combinations, if there seems to be
some sort of thematic thread on the part of the programmer. What I
don't like is the: "We need one *modern* piece, that looks good, now we
need a war horse, yeah, that will do, oh, one more, let's throw darts"
school of program selection. It's happening more and more frequently
these days.
I'm finding this thread most interesting in that I'm seeing so many
people with musical tastes just as inexplicably ecclectic as mine.
Andrew D. Simchik
Arne Adolfsen <ar...@mtcc.com> wrote:
: It's not the work that irritates me so much as what Cage had to say
: about it. The initial audiences' growing irritation and boredom at
: watching a man sit at a concert grand for six minutes and thirty
: three seconds doing nothing was, Cage claimed, really an expression
: of their irritation and boredom with themselves. That's a load of
: hooey. If you're going to play with artistic conventions and your
: audiences' expectations, then at least own up to it.
For years I've thought it was 4'33", and that the point
was for the audience to listen to its own rising murmur
of irritation and confusion. That made sense to me;
I've always liked the sound of a concert hall filled
with talking or whispering people, before or after
the concert.
Michael Thomas
> : > What Cage wanted was to give much of the specific creative control to the
> : > performers.
> :
> : You mean like the second movement of Bach's
> : third Brandenburg Concerto?
>
> I seriously don't get it.
>
> There are only two movements.
A-doy!
> Is this what you're talking about?
Actually, I had a Klezmer Dyke Band in mind.
--
Michael Thomas (mi...@mtcc.com http://www.mtcc.com/~mike/)
"I dunno, that's an awful lot of money."
Beavis
Arne Adolfsen
In article <1997Mar13.1...@galileo.cc.rochester.edu>,
Andrew D. Simchik <schn...@cif.rochester.edu> wrote:
>For years I've thought it was 4'33",
You're the second to correct me -- hi Eamonn! -- so I guess you're
right. It hardly matters, though.
>and that the point
>was for the audience to listen to its own rising murmur
>of irritation and confusion. That made sense to me;
>I've always liked the sound of a concert hall filled
>with talking or whispering people, before or after
>the concert.
What Cage's point may have been is really immaterial -- and, in
this case, is hardly worth thinking about. What irritates me
about what Cage had to say is his claim that the audiences were
irritating and boring *themselves*, rather than that they were
being irritated and bored by Cage's violation of artistic conventions
and audience expectations. As I said before, if you're going to
rebel against convention, then own up to it.
Kristin Bergen
In article <E6yuo...@mtcc.com>, Arne Adolfsen <ar...@mtcc.com> wrote:
>In article <5g7pvn$o...@news.duke.edu>,
>>In article <E6yEt...@mtcc.com>, Arne Adolfsen <ar...@mtcc.com> wrote:
>>>But Cage doesn't seem to me to come
>>>out of the Duchamp/Dada world, and I find Cage's disingenuousness
>>>about his work -- especially _6'33"_ -- to be really irritating.
>>Then why did you listen to it for so long?
>I worked in a record store.
[...]
Um, nevermind.
Anyway, I'm just curious why you'd love Duchamp and loathe Cage - *based
on the reasons you've offered so far*. I mean, wouldn't you have felt
just as enraged had you paid your ticket and been presented with...a
snowshovel?
I think the question that motivated my asking about Duchamp is, what do
you imagine you're buying when you pay (whether in cash or time, or
whatever currency) to experience art?
Arne Adolfsen
In article <5g9i8l$o...@news.duke.edu>,
Kristin Bergen <kbe...@acpub.duke.edu> wrote:
>Anyway, I'm just curious why you'd love Duchamp and loathe Cage - *based
>on the reasons you've offered so far*. I mean, wouldn't you have felt
>just as enraged had you paid your ticket and been presented with...a
>snowshovel?
First of all, Duchamp the man and artist comes across as brilliant,
complex, and incredibly witty. Cage, on the other hand, has always
struck me as disingenuous, shallow ("oooh! I'm so into Zen this week!"),
fey, and obvious. But perhaps it boils down to me having a double
standard when it comes to musical versus visual arts.
>I think the question that motivated my asking about Duchamp is, what do
>you imagine you're buying when you pay (whether in cash or time, or
>whatever currency) to experience art?
I would never have complained about paying to experience one of Cage's
groovy happenings. My complaint would have been more squarely focused
on the groovy happening and my misfortune at having been in attendance.
2QT2BSTR8
Arne Adolfsen (ar...@mtcc.com) wrote:
: about his work -- especially _6'33"_ -- to be really irritating.
Actually, that's 4'33", as if it made a difference.
David
** mailto://im1...@virgil.harvard.edu **
*** http://mario.harvard.edu/im1ru12/ ***
2QT2BSTR8
Jess Anderson (ande...@macc.wisc.edu) wrote:
: In article <332726...@dev.null.com>,
: Brian Vogel <no...@dev.null.com> wrote:
: >Placing Elliot Carter and Rachmaninoff, as an example, on the same
: >program is an insult to the fans of either composer.
: Slightly overgeneralized, wouldn't you say? Unless you
: don't think there people who like the music of both, in
: which case you would be dead wrong.
As a 'fan' (and performer) of both, I'd say so. Actually, juxtaposing
Carter and Rakhmaninov strikes me as good marketing, though perhaps not
good programming.
2QT2BSTR8
Arne Adolfsen (ar...@mtcc.com) wrote:
: motherfucking asshole! You talentless fraud! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck
: you!" Cage started to laugh which only made the guy angrier. Eventually
: the guy had to be physically restrained by security guards.
I was at Tanglewood the summer Cage died. One of the other composition
fellows commented that he felt Cage was one of the 'last happy composers.'
The statement was meant to be vague, but the spectacle you related above
certainly helps reinforce what _I_ thought was meant by it.
Arne Adolfsen
In article <5g9jc5$6go$2...@news.fas.harvard.edu>,
2QT2BSTR8 <im1...@peter.harvard.edu> wrote:
>Arne Adolfsen (ar...@mtcc.com) wrote:
>: about his work -- especially _6'33"_ -- to be really irritating.
>Actually, that's 4'33", as if it made a difference.
Well, it seems like it's actually a couple of hours in length.
Eamonn wrote me privately to point out that 4'33" is 273 seconds
and that -273 (Celsius? Fahrenheit? I can't recall) is absolute
zero. Or something like that. So I guess Cage had some motive
here, as if it made a difference.
--
-- ar...@mtcc.com -------------------------------- http://www.mtcc.com/~arne --
"Asked how it felt to be 104, she trumpeted: 'Madame, I am offically 32. If
David Stevenson
ande...@doit.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson) writes:
>In article <E6yEt...@mtcc.com>, Arne Adolfsen
><ar...@mtcc.com> wrote:
>
>>_6'33"_ -- to be really irritating.
>
Maybe he's referring to the disco remix version.
Kenji Andrew Matsuoka
In article <E6yut...@mtcc.com>, Arne Adolfsen <ar...@mtcc.com> wrote:
: In article <w4rohco...@banquo.csp.ee.memphis.edu>,
: Tim Wilson <t-wi...@memphis.edu> wrote:
:
: >In article <E6y75...@mtcc.com> ar...@mtcc.com (Arne Adolfsen) writes:
: >>But go ahead and snear, boys.
:
: >Whatever you say. After all, you're the expert.
:
: I do know what I'm talking about
You said John Cage didn't compose his music. Were you suggesting he
didn't ever use musical notation?
Kenji (he meant "expert sneerer")
--
Kenji Andrew Matsuoka (ke...@hana.physics.sunysb.edu)
http://hana.physics.sunysb.edu/~kenji/
"I've written an exciting Unix program to grep an NNTP spool."
-- E. McManus
Kenji Andrew Matsuoka
In article <5g7kp5$u7n$4...@news.nyu.edu>,
: : Look, David, if we can't make sweeping generalizations based on scant
: : knowledge, how are we ever going to talk about ANYTHING on motss?!
: I certainly wouldn't want too many of the posts actually be meaningful,
: or interesting or informative or anything like that.
:
: I mean, it wouldn't be Usenet.
Well, I wouldn't go *that* far. It wouldn't be a soc group, anyway.
To break the sarcasm for a minute, I do appreciate it whenever someone
with detailed knowledge of a subject makes an informative post, as you
did in reply to Mike's original article. Over in
misc.fitness.weights, Tim Fogarty does so with startling regularity,
and provides my main motivation to read the group.
Kenji Andrew Matsuoka
Conrad Sabatier <con...@neosoft.com> wrote:
: ke...@panix.com (Kenji Andrew Matsuoka) writes:
: > I'd like to put in a plug for a very short, listenable 12-tone song.
: > It's called "The Pennycandy Store Behind the El", and it's Leonard
: > Bernstein's setting (for baritone solo and orchestra) of the
: > Ferlinghetti poem of the same name. [...]
: Way back when, this really avant-garde dude wrote a fugue for
: keyboard whose subject included all twelve tones of the chromatic
: scale. Really forward-looking, radical stuff.
:
: His name was...uh...Bach or something.
Bach is *still* radical, if you ask me. But he wasn't a serialist.
2QT2BSTR8
Arne Adolfsen (adol...@almaak.usc.edu) wrote:
: Well, it seems like it's actually a couple of hours in length.
: Eamonn wrote me privately to point out that 4'33" is 273 seconds
: and that -273 (Celsius? Fahrenheit? I can't recall) is absolute
: zero. Or something like that. So I guess Cage had some motive
: here, as if it made a difference.
Yup! (Absolute zero is -273.15 C, but I thought Americans favoured
Farenheit over Celsius?)
You would probably prefer the 1962 piano solo- 0'00".
I've often wondered whether some of his notational quirks were jokes, or
simply mistakes. I suspect the latter. The persistent use of '16va' is
amusing. Didn't Schoenberg teach him anything? ;-)
David W. Fenton
Arne Adolfsen (ar...@mtcc.com) wrote:
: In article <w4rohco...@banquo.csp.ee.memphis.edu>,
: Tim Wilson <t-wi...@memphis.edu> wrote:
:
: >In article <E6y75...@mtcc.com> ar...@mtcc.com (Arne Adolfsen) writes:
: >>But go ahead and snear, boys.
:
: >Whatever you say. After all, you're the expert.
:
: Cage's music and theoretical writings is, at best, unfortunate.
You do _not_ know what you are talking about, or you'd be more careful
what you said.
As always, you're much more interested in making dismissive statements
than you are in furthering what was originally a quite interesting and
profitable discussion.
So you don't get Cage?
Who gives a fuck?
David W. Fenton
Arne Adolfsen (ar...@mtcc.com) wrote:
: In article <5g6urq$2...@panix2.panix.com>,
: Kenji Andrew Matsuoka <ke...@panix.com> wrote:
:
: >In article <5g55vq$gr0$1...@news.nyu.edu>,: >: I suspect, Arne, that you really know very little of Cage's music at all
: >: or you wouldn't be charactizing his output so narrowly.
:
: >Look, David, if we can't make sweeping generalizations based on scant
: >knowledge, how are we ever going to talk about ANYTHING on motss?!
:
: experienced a hell of a lot of it. I did work full-time for almost
: six years at a classical music-only record store, after all. At a
: guess I'd say I've heard at least once most of the major compositions
: and at least some of the compositions of all of the major composers --
: and the most major of the minor composers -- in Western art music.
: So although I couldn't begin to provide a detailed technical explication
: of a piece of music, I could describe to you what, say, _Siberia_ and
: _Jeanne d'Arc au Boucher_ and _La Muette de Portici_ are like, what's
: interesting about, say, Zimmermann and Gibbons and Balfe', who the better
: performers of music by, say, Duparc and Berio and Turina are.
If you were actually listening to any variety of Cage's music, why did
you misrepresent that experience by speaking as if chance music was the
only thing Cage ever did?
Having it play in the background while you worked is not exactly the same
thing as knowing anything about what it sounds like, how it works, and
what it's about.
: But go ahead and snear, boys.
If education makes one more open to different kinds of music and less
likely to make sweeping generalizations, I can't help but think that it's
actually a good thing, despite its reputation to the contrary.
David W. Fenton
Arne Adolfsen (ar...@mtcc.com) wrote:
: In article <5g7a7r$j...@news.duke.edu>,
: Kristin Bergen <kbe...@acpub.duke.edu> wrote:
:
: >In article <E6xz4...@mtcc.com>, Arne Adolfsen <ar...@mtcc.com> wrote:
: >
: >[redfaced value-for-money guy deleted]
: >
: >>I feel sort of like that guy when it comes to Cage.
: >How do you like Marcel Duchamp?
:
: I adore Duchamp. From descriptions of the kind of stuff Arthur
: Cravan did, I think I would have loved him too, even though it
: appears that his antics arose from mental illness rather than a
: desire to thumb his nose at the establishment. Except for Mannerism,
: especially at its feverish peak, I can't think of an art movement
: I enjoy more than Dada. But Cage doesn't seem to me to come
: out of the Duchamp/Dada world, and I find Cage's disingenuousness
: about his work -- especially _6'33"_ -- to be really irritating.
The original was 4'33", but I'm sure Cage wouldn't have minded your
interpretation one bit.
David W. Fenton
Arne Adolfsen (ar...@mtcc.com) wrote:
: In article <5g7pvn$o...@news.duke.edu>,
: Kristin Bergen <kbe...@acpub.duke.edu> wrote:
:
: >In article <E6yEt...@mtcc.com>, Arne Adolfsen <ar...@mtcc.com> wrote:
: >>But Cage doesn't seem to me to come
: >>about his work -- especially _6'33"_ -- to be really irritating.
: >Then why did you listen to it for so long?
:
: I worked in a record store. Each employee, in turn, got to listen to
: one side of any LP of his or her choosing. We did make arrangements
: with each other occasionally to play, say, two sides in a row and
: then skip one's next turn. Since there were rarely more than 3 employees
: on duty at any one time, that meant that you'd be able to listen to
: around 2.5 hours' worth of music of your own choosing every day. It
: also meant that you were subjected to around 5.5 hours of your co-workers'
: selections every day. Over the years we had a number of employees
: who rilly rilly rilly liked Cage and Stockhausen and Nono and Messiaen
: (I never want to hear the Turangalila Symphony ever again) and Sorabji
: and Vaughan Williams and Wagner and any number of other composers I don't
: particularly care for, so I got to hear lots and lots and lots of stuff I
: never would have listened to otherwise.
FSVO "listen."
FSVO "hear."
David W. Fenton
Arne Adolfsen (ar...@mtcc.com) wrote:
: In article <332726...@dev.null.com>,
: Brian Vogel <no...@dev.null.com> wrote:
: >and only one piece on the program. I've often wondered who selects some
: >of the pieces that are performed together and if they're insane.
: >juxtapositions just as unfathomable on more than one occasion.
:
: a priori insane. I actually enjoy odd juxtapositions. What I can't
: stand are programs such as the ones the LA Phil had when Giulini
: was the conductor -- Giulini apparently knew only a handful of pieces
: and was uninterested in learning anything new, so any given season
: would be made up of around a dozen pieces that would be mixed and
: matched in every possible combination. Worse yet were the programs
: during Andre Previn's short and turbulent tenure. Every concert
: no matter what would feature Vaughan Williams, Delius, and their
: ilk. I remember one that I went to because Elisabeth Soederstroem
: ws to perform Sibelius' thrilling "Luonotar" and some other interesting
: pieces. But to hear her, we had to sit through a deadly dull Vaughan
: Williams symphony -- I think it was the Antarctic Symphony, but it
: may have been the Pastoral; who can stay awake long enough to tell
: the difference? -- and, in the second half, some Delius. Blech.
: But Soederstroem made the concert worthwhile.
Translation: I'm just an opera queen, so I really don't like instrumental
music, or anything without a diva to worship.
David W. Fenton
Arne Adolfsen (ar...@mtcc.com) wrote:
: In article <5g7mgj$3t...@news.doit.wisc.edu>,
: Jess Anderson <ande...@doit.wisc.edu> wrote:
:
: >In article <E6yEt...@mtcc.com>, Arne Adolfsen
: ><ar...@mtcc.com> wrote:
: >>_6'33"_ -- to be really irritating.
:
: >it that irritates you about that work?
:
: about it. The initial audiences' growing irritation and boredom at
: watching a man sit at a concert grand for six minutes and thirty
: three seconds doing nothing was, Cage claimed, really an expression
: of their irritation and boredom with themselves. That's a load of
: hooey. If you're going to play with artistic conventions and your
: audiences' expectations, then at least own up to it.
This may have been _one_ of the things Cage said about it, but he also
said that one of the points of the piece was to find the music in the
sounds around you.
It sounds trite today, but it was a pretty interestingly made point at the
time, certainly quite unusual for its time.
Tim Wilson
In article <1997Mar13.1...@galileo.cc.rochester.edu> Andrew
D. Simchik <schn...@cif.rochester.edu> writes:
>Arne Adolfsen <ar...@mtcc.com> wrote:
>
>: It's not the work that irritates me so much as what Cage had to say
>: about it. The initial audiences' growing irritation and boredom at
>: watching a man sit at a concert grand for six minutes and thirty
>: three seconds doing nothing was, Cage claimed, really an expression
>: of their irritation and boredom with themselves. That's a load of
>: hooey. If you're going to play with artistic conventions and your
>: audiences' expectations, then at least own up to it.
>
>For years I've thought it was 4'33", and that the point
>was for the audience to listen to its own rising murmur
>of irritation and confusion. That made sense to me;
>I've always liked the sound of a concert hall filled
>with talking or whispering people, before or after
>the concert.
I always thought that the point was to point out the framing aspect of
sitting down and listening to a piece. As Arne and Mike are pointing
out, nonintentionally I think, the expectations one bring to a
supposed performance of music are immediately part of the experience
of listening to the performance.
I don't think there's any way around that.
Arne Adolfsen
In article <5ga8vg$i...@panix2.panix.com>,
Kenji Andrew Matsuoka <ke...@panix.com> wrote:
>In article <5g7kp5$u7n$4...@news.nyu.edu>,
>David W. Fenton <dwf...@is2.nyu.edu> wrote:
>To break the sarcasm for a minute, I do appreciate it whenever someone
>with detailed knowledge of a subject makes an informative post, as you
>did in reply to Mike's original article.
An informative post in which it is claimed that Arnold Schoenberg
(1874-1951) *post*dates Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971).
Uh-huh.
Brian Vogel
Leith Chu wrote:
>
> Brian Vogel wrote:
> > Ignoring the discussion about the merits of various composers, how
> > do you propose that the season (or other) ticket buying public show its
> > disapproval?
>
> Phone calls.
>
> Letters.
>
> E-mail.
>
All of which are legitimate forms as well.
> Did the musicians perform well?
Quite possibly. Or even yes.
> If they did, why would you boo them?
Quite possibly. When you are at a performance of classsical
music, and particularly if you are at the premiere of a new work, your
assessments are as much about the work itself as the craft of those
musicians that produce it.
I, personally, have never booed but have sat in stony silence
after the performance of a piece I considered dreck.
I have been at several world premieres of commissioned pieces
with the composer at the performance where significant number within the
audience were icily silent or actually booed. I've also been at some
where the audience leapt to it's feet in a standing ovation.
> Would you stiff a waitron who served well because the chef fucked up?
Absolutely not, but the parallel is highly tenuous, at best.
> The musicians in an orchestra don't have a heck of a lot of control
> over the repertoire.
This is true and absolutely beside the point.
>
> > I've gone to many an NSO concert where I was desperate to hear one
> > and only one piece on the program. I've often wondered who selects some
> > of the pieces that are performed together and if they're insane.
>
> Why? Did they break up one multi-movement work with another?
> Did they play them at the same time?
>
Because concerts, at one time, used to be thematically structured
by the folks programming them. This does *not* mean a consistent style
of music, by the way. I was once at a concert structured around the
theme of personal loss and they played Takemitsu (I think, and possibly
sic) _Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima_ and Ravel's _Pavane Pour
Une Enfant Defunt_ (sic, I don't have the program here).
These two works are hardly similar but perfectly compatible.
*You* try to get into a symphony hall for the second piece of a
three-piece concert without having to sit through any of the first one,
that you despise, to catch the second, that you love, prior to
intermission. If it's post-intermission the task is much easier. Also,
around here the advertisements listing the pieces to be performed often
have no relation to the order at the actual concert. How am I to know,
prior to arriving at the concert hall, what's being played when?
> > Placing Elliot Carter and Rachmaninoff, as an example, on the same
> > program is an insult to the fans of either composer. But I've seen
> > juxtapositions just as unfathomable on more than one occasion.
>
> Why? Are Rachmaninoff and Elliot Carter fans soccer hooligans?
No, neither set of fans are hooligans. As I pointed out in a
response to Jess, fans of both composers are not *likely* to be in the
mood to hear the music produced by each on the *same* program. There
may be a few fans of both who would, but they're almost certainly not in
the majority of the fans of either composer.
>
> Let me put it this way: I'm glad I never waited on your table,
> and I hope I never perform for you.
If you waited on my table and performed your duties as a waiter
well, you would be tipped very well by me. I used to be a waiter. But,
if the kitchen fucks up, I tell you that, and you react in a "And this
is my problem in what way?" way, I'll stiff you if necessary. Part of
your job as wait staff is to attempt to help in fixing these situations.
If you are performing artist who cannot comprehend that the audience
is reacting as much to the piece being performed, whether music,
theater, or otherwise, as your skill as a performer, then you had better
stay off stages. I also perform and don't take every audience reaction,
or the lack thereof, as a personal reaction to *me*me*me*. There are
other considerations involved.
Brian
P.S. Believe it or not from the tone of this response, I actually do
believe the sentiment in my .sig.
Arne Adolfsen
In article <5gamcr$d2a$2...@news.nyu.edu>,
David W. Fenton <dwf...@is2.nyu.edu> wrote:
>Arne Adolfsen (ar...@mtcc.com) wrote:
>If you were actually listening to any variety of Cage's music, why did
>you misrepresent that experience by speaking as if chance music was the
>only thing Cage ever did?
Because I like to make sweeping generalizations.
>Having it play in the background while you worked is not exactly the same
>thing as knowing anything about what it sounds like,
Huh?
>how it works, and
>what it's about.
Oh, dear. Dr.-to-be Fenton, can you tell me what "Atmosphe`res" is
about? Howzabout the Franck Sonata?
>: But go ahead and snear, boys.
>If education makes one more open to different kinds of music and less
>likely to make sweeping generalizations, I can't help but think that it's
>actually a good thing, despite its reputation to the contrary.
So, Dave, tell us: what is *your* opinion of the quality, both musical
and dramatic, of _Siberia_?
Arne Adolfsen
In article <5gamkn$d2a$4...@news.nyu.edu>,
David W. Fenton <dwf...@is2.nyu.edu> wrote:
>Arne Adolfsen (ar...@mtcc.com) wrote:
>: I don't think having Carter and Rachmaninoff on the same program is
>: a priori insane. I actually enjoy odd juxtapositions. What I can't
>: stand are programs such as the ones the LA Phil had when Giulini
>: was the conductor -- Giulini apparently knew only a handful of pieces
>: and was uninterested in learning anything new, so any given season
>: would be made up of around a dozen pieces that would be mixed and
>: matched in every possible combination. Worse yet were the programs
>: during Andre Previn's short and turbulent tenure. Every concert
>: no matter what would feature Vaughan Williams, Delius, and their
>: ilk. I remember one that I went to because Elisabeth Soederstroem
>: ws to perform Sibelius' thrilling "Luonotar" and some other interesting
>: pieces. But to hear her, we had to sit through a deadly dull Vaughan
>: Williams symphony -- I think it was the Antarctic Symphony, but it
>: may have been the Pastoral; who can stay awake long enough to tell
>: the difference? -- and, in the second half, some Delius. Blech.
>: But Soederstroem made the concert worthwhile.
>Translation: I'm just an opera queen, so I really don't like instrumental
>music, or anything without a diva to worship.
Yep, that's *exactly* what I was saying.
BTW, what's your opinion of "Luonotar"? Do you agree that it's
thrilling?
Arne Adolfsen
In article <w4rbu8m...@banquo.csp.ee.memphis.edu>,
Tim Wilson <t-wi...@memphis.edu> wrote:
[re: 4'33"]
>I always thought that the point was to point out the framing aspect of
>sitting down and listening to a piece. As Arne and Mike are pointing
>out, nonintentionally I think, the expectations one bring to a
>supposed performance of music are immediately part of the experience
>of listening to the performance.
>
>I don't think there's any way around that.
And I don't think anyone with a head on his or her shoulders has
ever been in doubt of that point -- while attending any kind of live
performance, that is. There may be some doubt about this while
listening to recorded performances because the act of turning on a
radio or TV or putting a CD in the CD player is so much more passive
an activity than the ceremony that surrounds attendance at live
perfomances. But how could anyone ever have been unaware of this?
Arne Adolfsen
In article <5gc72a$40...@news.doit.wisc.edu>,
Jess Anderson <ande...@macc.wisc.edu> wrote:
>I've only gone to concerts for 46 years, but I have yet to
>hear boos, other than at the opera.
And vocal recitals, too. I've only heard boos at an instrumental
concert once that I can remember. I don't recall what the piece
was, but this was its American (or West Coast?) premiere and it
involved non-standard -- and by then REALLY old-hat -- ways of
performing on the instruments, like plucking and banging on the
piano strings themselves. I thought the piece was pointless,
but I didn't boo. I *have* booed at the opera (once) and vocal
recitals (once, sort of under my breath) and at the theater (once,
at Debbie Reynolds' self-adoring shennanigans in _Annie Get Your
Gun_), but never at a non-vocal concert. It might make for an
interesting sociological essay to investigate why singers are so
much more likely to be met with boos and catcalls than any kind of
instrumentalist is.
Robert Feiertag
In article <5gcamk$j...@news.doit.wisc.edu>,
Jess Anderson <ande...@macc.wisc.edu> wrote:
>
>Where there clearly *has* been a noticeable decline in the
>quality of programming, with some exceptions, is public
>radio. We have both an NPR station and a listener-sponsored
>FM station here, and both of them have gone more or less
>completely to hell in this regard over the past 10 years. I
>think it's common elsewhere as well.
>
It's nice to live in an area that's "exceptional". WOSU has maintained
its high standards, and continues to provide a wide variety of classical
music 24 hrs a day. Admittedly, the overnight broadcasting is one of the
services, but even there, the range of music is quite good. Not a whole
lot of Cage or Schoenberg though. (-:
Bob