Classical music or art music?

[ChamberNut]

Enlightening post, Brian! 

Although I am scratching my head a bit at the poo-pooing of Berg's Violin Concerto.  I don't think it's a difficult piece at all to enjoy, and I'm surprised that it isn't more or a crowd pleaser. 

[Brian]

Enlightening post, Brian! 

Although I am scratching my head a bit at the poo-pooing of Berg's Violin Concerto.  I don't think it's a difficult piece at all to enjoy, and I'm surprised that it isn't more or a crowd pleaser. 

Dunno, the applause seemed pretty tepid, although the violinist was naturally incredible (Kathleen Winkler). I may be biased, because I really hate the piece. 

[ChamberNut]

In the experience of my friends here, as well as some random black guys I once met, the greatest force for the spreading of the Word of Classical to emerge in the last seventy or so years is Shostakovich.

Gotta have my Shostakovich! 

[ChamberNut]

1. Young people, or people of my generation (there are more than a few of us: I'm 19, Greg is 21, Corey is 22 - if my memory is right, that is; you guys can correct me if I'm wrong) can and do enjoy exploring lots of different realms of music, and we are most certainly apt to give serious consideration to classical music! Several of my friends have been converted to classical music largely due to the influence of our university, its music school, its knowledgeable students, and its capacious library of CDs.

Hey, what about me? I'm young too!!  I'm only 34 you know     0:)

[Superhorn]

  Like it or not,I think classical music is the term we'll all have to stick with. If you're talking about the music of Haydn,Mozart and Beethoven,you should describe it as"music from the classical period" of western classical music to avoid confusion.
  Yes,the terms classical music and art music are loaded with baggage,and the preconceived notions of people who know little or nothing about it and have never gone to orchestral concerts and opera etc.
  It's so unfortunate that so many people assume that it's "pretentious" to like classical music and to attend performances of it or collect classical CDs. And that rich,snobbish people go to concerts and opera just for social reasons and to see and be seen,and to show off their finery even though they're bored to tears.
  They don't realize that people who do this go because they GENUINELY love classical music and they love it every bit as much as fans of Rock, pop,country, Jazz, or whatever.
  Myths about classical music close people's minds. What a pity.


            

[Novi]

My point is twofold:

1. Young people, or people of my generation (there are more than a few of us: I'm 19, Greg is 21, Corey is 22 - if my memory is right, that is; you guys can correct me if I'm wrong) can and do enjoy exploring lots of different realms of music, and we are most certainly apt to give serious consideration to classical music! Several of my friends have been converted to classical music largely due to the influence of our university, its music school, its knowledgeable students, and its capacious library of CDs.
2. Young people do not necessarily like young music the most. In fact, quite the contrary; while our generation is more willing to explore and be adventuresome than, say, our parents (my mom still can't believe I listen to Sibelius; my dad keeps asking me who these composers are I've put on his iPod) - it is wrong to say that we are most attracted to music of recent decades. In the experience of my friends here, as well as some random black guys I once met, the greatest force for the spreading of the Word of Classical to emerge in the last seventy or so years is Shostakovich.

NOTE: James, I do agree with you that classical music's image is way too close to the "easy breezy" public radio persona you described. What really draws people to classical for good - for LIFE, is music that takes you somewhere emotionally that regular old pop music could never go.

Interesting post, Brian, especially what you say about your young conservat-ory/ive friends. I've had somewhat of a difference experience though. We don't get a lot of 'young' or new music, but there's a society that sponsors a couple of concerts a year (Rzewski, Stockhausen, that kind of thing). The few times I've been, the audience has predominantly been what looked like young music students. I know because I have nothing better to do during intervals than twiddle my thumbs and overhear enthusiastic conversations about playing Ligeti etudes .

Incidentally, I've never heard the term 'art music' used. Is it primarily a North American thing or do I need to get out a bit more ?

[Guido]

Actually, I am a student at a university with a very well-respected music school - one of the five or so best in the United States - and I have a very great number of friends in the conservatory's orchestra and in theory and musicology departments. I have found that, although music theory and music history majors tend to enjoy works by Stravinsky and Bartok a great deal, they are not at all fans of the other composers you mentioned, and, even more interesting to me, the performers themselves, based on conversations I have had with several violinists and pianists and a bassoon player, almost universally loathe music from post-1950 or so. The other day I was sitting in the music building's main lounge, people-watching, and I heard a group of students saying that they were quite surprised to enjoy Ligeti, because from what they heard of him in lectures they expected him to be another "avant garde bullshitter," but they were very pleasantly surprised. (I forget which piece they had heard.) Several performance students have told me that their theory professors are all agog over the composers you listed, particularly Varese, but that the professors' passionate lectures were greeted by blank stares from the kids. Berg's Wozzeck has been described to me as "messed up" (which it is even objectively; as one critic noted, blood drips from every note!), and a violin-playing friend of mine whose professor was about to perform the Berg violin concerto consoled me when I expressed my dismay at having to sit through said concerto; she told me, "Yeah, I don't know why they'd choose that piece." (This was Alumni Weekend and all our donors were in town, so I really don't get the choice of such a non-crowd-pleaser.) I know a (quite attractive) young lady who composes music in 12-tone and actually went to the Berg concert and left before the half so as not to sit through Beethoven's Third, but this seems to be a reversal of the usual pattern. Some students who are required to attend symposia of living composers' works tell me that they do so dreading what they might hear.

Sometimes I kid with my music-major friends along these lines:

FRIEND: I'm off to practice piano, I guess.
ME: John Cage?
FRIEND: Hah!

Or:

FRIEND: Pachelbel's Canon is boring.
ME: Ever heard of Milton Babbitt?
FRIEND: Oh, gawd. Don't remind me.

A violinist friend of mine recently was tasked with finding a piece dating from after 1950 for her recital but told me she had never heard one she liked (she cited Tower in particular for not being to her taste). We went looking, and she seriously considered the idea of programming either Salonen or Henning (  ) before settling on a piece by our conservatory's composer-in-residence.

I'm afraid I've given Stravinsky short shrift in this post - but he really does not belong in the same category as many of the others. For what it's worth, most of my performer friends' favorite works come from the mid-to-late romantic era (with some Vivaldi for the wind players who love his concertos for their instruments), stretching up to Ravel, who seems to be loved by just about everybody.

-----------

My point is twofold:

1. Young people, or people of my generation (there are more than a few of us: I'm 19, Greg is 21, Corey is 22 - if my memory is right, that is; you guys can correct me if I'm wrong) can and do enjoy exploring lots of different realms of music, and we are most certainly apt to give serious consideration to classical music! Several of my friends have been converted to classical music largely due to the influence of our university, its music school, its knowledgeable students, and its capacious library of CDs.
2. Young people do not necessarily like young music the most. In fact, quite the contrary; while our generation is more willing to explore and be adventuresome than, say, our parents (my mom still can't believe I listen to Sibelius; my dad keeps asking me who these composers are I've put on his iPod) - it is wrong to say that we are most attracted to music of recent decades. In the experience of my friends here, as well as some random black guys I once met, the greatest force for the spreading of the Word of Classical to emerge in the last seventy or so years is Shostakovich.

NOTE: James, I do agree with you that classical music's image is way too close to the "easy breezy" public radio persona you described. What really draws people to classical for good - for LIFE, is music that takes you somewhere emotionally that regular old pop music could never go.

This is incredibly depressing to read. Being that jaded, closed minded, unadventurous and unopen to and actually damning of new experiences and ideas when you are young is a terrible thing in my opinion. What a depressing environment to be in, one in which people hate the modern world that much... On the other hand, your professors might not be very good communicators... But yeah that sounds like an utterly terrible group of people - I do not envy you at all.

[Brian]

This is incredibly depressing to read. Being that jaded, closed minded, unadventurous and unopen to and actually damning of new experiences and ideas when you are young is a terrible thing in my opinion. What a depressing environment to be in, one in which people hate the modern world that much... On the other hand, your professors might not be very good communicators... But yeah that sounds like an utterly terrible group of people - I do not envy you at all.

I started meeting music majors expecting to find a pattern of "Well, we could keep playing Beethoven and Mozart over and over, but haven't you heard of X new composer?" What I found was something closer to the opposite, at least among performers. I leave it to readers such as yourself to draw conclusions from my observations, and to leaven your findings with reports from others like Novi who observe very different situations indeed.

For what it's worth, I have no reason to believe that my university's music school is particularly "different" or that it recruits and admits a certain kind of music lover.

(As for myself, my main beef with music I don't like is never doctrinal, but merely that I don't like it. And always with the qualifier "yet." I wonder if you were equally depressed by the performers who think Cage was a joke and with the budding composer who left early to avoid Beethoven, or if one bothered you more than another?)

[Guido]

(As for myself, my main beef with music I don't like is never doctrinal, but merely that I don't like it. And always with the qualifier "yet." I wonder if you were equally depressed by the performers who think Cage was a joke and with the budding composer who left early to avoid Beethoven, or if one bothered you more than another?)

Both are irksome, but the former is the more troubling, as one person's dissent on Beethoven is hardly going to make a difference. But if a whole generation of performers are too narrow minded and provincial to even consider the great composers of the late 20th century we really are in the shit. It really doesn't have to be one or the other in terms of likes - I love both Beethoven and Ligeti...

[karlhenning]

James, you're drooling.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Actually, I am a student at a university with a very well-respected music school - [rest of interesting post snipped]

I am curious as to how much of your fellow students' disdain for contemporary composers may be due to Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is crap"), which is operative in every era and form of art as far as I know.

In particular, the comment about Ligeti was interesting. They expected another sterile avant-gardist and were pleasantly surprised when he turned out not to be. Perhaps they will discover other such composers who upend their expectations.

I have never been in an academic music course, but many have asserted the existence of a certain avant-garde dogma there. Others have asserted that such a dogma either doesn't exist, or statements about its grip on the academy are exaggerated. But certainly academic politics and fads exist, and I wonder how they affect the environment you are in.

[karlhenning]

I am curious as to how much of your fellow students' disdain for contemporary composers may be due to Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is crap"), which is operative in every era and form of art as far as I know.

In particular, the comment about Ligeti was interesting. They expected another sterile avant-gardist and were pleasantly surprised when he turned out not to be. Perhaps they will discover other such composers who upend their expectations.

Another brace of factors which were likely in play:

1.  Students enrolled in a music major become acquainted with a vast stretch of history and literature in a telescoped time-frame.

1a.  For many music majors (but especially performers) the more-recent stretches of literature are peripheral to both their own listening 'comfort zone', and the area of music which they wish to focus on (though of course, for many musicians, that is a moving target over time).

1b.  Music majors are not always unlike the general public in considering (at times, and perhaps regularly) music outside their zone something of an 'inconvenience'.

2.  Again with the telescoped time-frame:  there is at least the short-term need for pegs on which to hang a lot of the new information.  The pegs sometime assume an appearance of greater permanence than in fact they possess.  So, with musicians-in-training, there is also the risk of lapsing into fallacious preconceptions and prejudices, which it only requires actual listening and an open mind to shatter.

I have never been in an academic music course, but many have asserted the existence of a certain avant-garde dogma there. Others have asserted that such a dogma either doesn't exist, or statements about its grip on the academy are exaggerated. But certainly academic politics and fads exist, and I wonder how they affect the environment you are in.

Depends on the place, at least here in the States.  I spent some time in one heavily "new-music-oid" environment; but by then, I already had some accumulated experience, so (a) I understood that the center of musical gravity was not quite where they wished to claim it, and thus (b) I had a 'filtration' system well under construction.

[sul G]

...They expected another sterile avant-gardist and were pleasantly surprised when he turned out not to be...

Who are these mythical beasts, the 'sterile avant-gardists'? I'm not sure I've even heard one. When one actually listens to the music and doesn't just soak up lazy cliches, one discovers quite how false they are.

[Brian]

I have never been in an academic music course, but many have asserted the existence of a certain avant-garde dogma there.

I just finished taking a music history course spanning 1750-present, in which we spent a day on Ives and 4'33" was part of the syllabus, but Shostakovich was not mentioned, even in passing, even for a sentence.

[karlhenning]

I just finished taking a music history course spanning 1750-present, in which we spent a day on Ives and 4'33" was part of the syllabus, but Shostakovich was not mentioned, even in passing.

Two semesters (or, when I was at Wooster, three quarters) for the history sequence?

Offhand, I think Shostakovich was (but do not specifically remembering him being) mentioned in our history sequence (and we would have looked at the first movement of the Fifth Symphony, I am certain).

I do distinctly remember, though, Vaughan Williams taking up one (or one-half of a) class, and we looked at (while listening to) the first movement of his Fifth.

— the possibility of our having in fact touched upon Shostakovich, but my not recalling, would (I imagine) be partly a function that I took his stature (and the value of the Opus 47) as read.  Where the Vaughan Williams Fifth at that time was a new acquaintance.

[Brian]

1a.  For many music majors (but especially performers) the more-recent stretches of literature are peripheral to both their own listening 'comfort zone', and the area of music which they wish to focus on (though of course, for many musicians, that is a moving target over time).

I think Karl's post has a lot of good points - and want to buttress it by mentioning that, as far as I can gather, it is generally accepted that to get into a good graduate program you have to program Bach for your auditions. There is no other composer or time period for which this unstated requirement exists, except Beethoven perhaps for pianists, resulting in recitals like this (taken from the actual slate of events at my school):

Master's Recital
[name withheld], piano
Music of Bach, Scriabin, Chopin, and Schubert.
8:00 p.m., Duncan Recital Hall

Master's Recital
[name withheld], cello
Music of Bach, Barber, and Tchaikovsky.
8:00 p.m., Duncan Recital Hall

Senior Recital
[name withheld], violin
Music of Bach, Brahms, Mozart, and Ysaÿe.
5:30 p.m., Duncan Recital Hall

Two notes:
1. The general pattern is for Bach to interrupt a slate of Romantic Era All-Stars.
2. I am, of course, cherry-picking events that suit the point at hand. There are plenty of students, even (actually, mostly) undergrads, who are playing - just looking at one single week in March - Carter, Hindemith, Cimara, Bozza, Ketting, Previn, Berio, Persichetti, Penderecki, and two student composers. Undergrads, especially sophomores and juniors, are asked to choose one piece for their recital dating from after 1950.

EDIT: Karl, my course was one semester - but the semester prior there was a course, which I didn't take, on the middle ages up to 1750. No British composers (and I mean NO British composers) were mentioned in the class I took.

[jochanaan]

Well, "classical" may be inaccurate and incomplete and even inept, especially when discussing living composers , but it's the only immediately-understood word we have.

[karlhenning]

EDIT: Karl, my course was one semester - but the semester prior there was a course, which I didn't take, on the middle ages up to 1750. No British composers (and I mean NO British composers) were mentioned in the class I took.

Well, I feel pride in my modest-scaled liberal arts college, Brian, which in this at least has done a bit better than Rice 

I'm sure that in the earlier class not taken, they must have mentioned Handel (though it is arguable whether he is a British composer).

Our music history prof certainly mentioned Tallis, Purcell, Vaughan Williams & Britten through the course of the annual sequence.  (I am honestly doubtful even of Elgar.)

We had a separate '20th-c./contemporary lit', which was actually the sixth and last quarter of the theory sequence for majors . . . quite a few Britons on the slate there.

[karlhenning]

James, you're drooling again.

[DavidRoss]

Well, "classical" may be inaccurate and incomplete and even inept, especially when discussing living composers , but it's the only immediately-understood word we have.

Seems we can always count on you for common sense, Jo.