Where have the Great Composers gone?

[Mahlerian]

"You like Brahms and LvB? Well these guys are their successors in that they too lived in Vienna and composed what they called music."

It's not nearly that facile.  The Second Viennese School used the developmental and contrapuntal techniques of the former masters, they extended the harmonic tradition as they had, and they even contributed in the same forms, etc.

Why do you hate the music so much?  What's wrong with it exactly?

[lisa needs braces]

It's not nearly that facile.  The Second Viennese School used the developmental and contrapuntal techniques of the former masters, they extended the harmonic tradition as they had, and they even contributed in the same forms, etc.

Why do you hate the music so much?  What's wrong with it exactly?

"Hate" is far too strong a word. I barely ever listen to the stuff. I have a suspicion though that such music goes against human nature and will fail to catch on beyond academic/ideological commitment to it. It's really hard to create lasting and beautiful works, and I fear that the bizarre avant-garde nature of much 20th century and contemporary music is designed in part to make judgement about worth impossible.

[Mahlerian]

"Hate" is far too strong a word. I barely ever listen to the stuff.

Well, I could have told you that.

I have a suspicion though that such music goes against human nature and will fail to catch on beyond academic/ideological commitment to it. It's really hard to create lasting and beautiful works, and I fear that the bizarre avant-garde nature of much 20th century and contemporary music is designed in part to make judgement about worth impossible.

Which is my commitment, academic or ideological (actually, it's just because it's great music)?  What part of human nature does this music violate?  Where does your suspicion come from if you don't even know it well enough to recognize or remember a piece of it?

The music is beautiful, and it's lasted for over a century.  How long do you need?  Also, it's perfectly fine to judge the music of the Second Viennese School on the basis of traditional measures.

[lisa needs braces]

"The public must be cured of the delusion that the aim of the artist is to create beauty." --Arnold Schoenberg

No wonder we aren't all whistling in 12 tone like he (or one of his disciples?) predicted. 

What part of human nature does this music violate?

The part that, when presented with the despicable, goes "eeww."

[Jo498]

I am not sure about the numbers but I think that Wozzeck might be the most frequently played 20th century opera after Puccini and Strauss. It is certainly fully established as a repertoire piece. As is his violin concerto and most other pieces. If one listens to e.g. Brahms 4th symphony and Weberns (still tonal) Passacaglia op.1 or to Mahler's 6th or (especially) 9th and Berg's orchestral pieces op.6 the close relations should become fairly obvious. It is really a step, not a huge gap. Even a "disturbing" piece (partly because of the subject matter) like "Erwartung" is basically Tristan, 3rd act (beginning, feverish raving Tristan) on steroids (or maybe rather absinthe or cocaine or whatever the fin de siècle drug of choice was)
I agree that this stuff can sometimes sound "thorny" despite being almost/around 100 years old. But Beethoven's op.133 sounds still thorny to many listeners and it's about 190 years old. Gesualdo's sometimes highly dissonant madrigals are more than 400 years old. And Joyce's "Ulysses" still is not quite an easy read compared to many other books of the last 90 years.
There are some artworks that remain somewhat "edgy" for a long time (or maybe forever).
Others, like early Stravinsky or most of Debussy that were left contemporaries as puzzled as did difficult works by Schoenberg have been "assimilated" more easily. Although you can still find quite a few listeners who dislike or do not care for them because they are "too modern".

[Karl Henning]

There are several types of threads I really do not care for.

One of the types is the classical music is dying and one of the culprits is contemporary music.  I really do not know if it is declining.  I do know that contemporary music is more popular than some think.  I have been to several music festivals that featured contemporary music.  I attended the Tanglewood festival back about fifteen years ago when they had a contemporary music festival.  I have been to Ojai twice.  There is a nice music festival in Stanton, Virginia.  They program all sort of music from HIP performance to modern music.  At the last festival in September they performed a work by Cage that got a standing ovation.  Beyond listing some of my experiences I really do not know what to say.

Part of the blindspot of those who mourn the alleged death of classical music, is that their frame of reference is symphony orchestra seasons.

New music has consistently flourished in chamber music settings (without being absent from the big concert halls and the opera stage).  And there has always been an appreciative, enthusiastic audience for it.

[Karl Henning]

Oh, and the idea that love for post-Common-Practice music is any sort of neurological quirk is a pernicious canard.

It's only a matter of not having accumulated an ingrained prejudice for a certain musical rhetoric.

[Jo498]

yes, biologist explanations are not plausible here. On the contrary, evolution might work faster than we think but 1000 years of music history are still not much on the evolutionary timescale. Whatever psychophysical structures are fit for liking Monteverdi must be fit for liking Carter or Rihm. If the brain was used to "tribal music" for many millenia there has not been enough time to adapt for Monteverdi in the 500 years of more artifical polyphonic music before him, so Carter's music must still be possible for our brains (of course it must because a human wrote it).

[Mahlerian]

"The public must be cured of the delusion that the aim of the artist is to create beauty." --Arnold Schoenberg

Yay for quote mining.  It can make people say anything.  It's made people attribute stupid things to Darwin, Margret Sanger, or any other figure one wants to malign.

In this case, Schoenberg is not saying that his music is not beautiful; he said often that beauty is a byproduct of the creative process and of the audience's reception of a work, rather than a goal of the composer as such.

No wonder we aren't all whistling in 12 tone like he (or one of his disciples?) predicted. 

If I could whistle (never could), I would whistle his music.  Themes in a 12-tone work are just like themes in any other music.  I could hum many of them for you.

The part that, when presented with the despicable, goes "eeww."

There's actually a page for this line of thinking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_repugnance

Despicable?  I don't understand why you attach such moral revulsion to music.

[Karl Henning]

"The public must be cured of the delusion that the aim of the artist is to create beauty." --Arnold Schoenberg

Okay, I'll argue in defense of Schoenberg.

In the first place, I find a great deal of Schoenberg's music beautiful, and as a composer myself I am certain that he meant it so. So Schoenberg clearly has no quarrel with an artist's creating beauty.  What might he mean?

That the artist is free to have aims in addition to, or at times other than, beauty.

That different people differ as to what is beautiful (the music of Schoenberg's whose beauty we readily recognize, you may be deaf to).  The artist is not bound to paint only pretty pictures, write only pretty music, because of the narrow wishes of some subset of the audience.

Someone seeing a painting, or listening to a piece of music, who imagines that the artist is obliged to adhere to his notions of beauty, is in fact under a delusion.

Such a person ought, for his own benefit, be cured of that delusion.

[zamyrabyrd]

yes, biologist explanations are not plausible here. On the contrary, evolution might work faster than we think but 1000 years of music history are still not much on the evolutionary timescale. Whatever psychophysical structures are fit for liking Monteverdi must be fit for liking Carter or Rihm. If the brain was used to "tribal music" for many millenia there has not been enough time to adapt for Monteverdi in the 500 years of more artifical polyphonic music before him, so Carter's music must still be possible for our brains (of course it must because a human wrote it).

Maybe I missed part of thread but cultural conditioning should be substituted for evolution. Tribes that never heard Western music might be confounded by early or late music and anything in between. By way of example, Oriental music sounded like gibberish to me for a long time, until my ear was accustomed to it and I began to identify patterns.

[Monsieur Croche]

If it sounds as natural as Brahms and Mozart....

There is nothing natural about music -- of any kind.  "Natural" and "natural-sounding" are simply inadmissible as part of any discussion or argument about music because, sorry, it is as false a premise as it is a wildly invalid one.

There is nothing natural about music and the very materials from which it is made, its scales (of varying amounts of tones per octave, modes, tunings); there is nothing natural about the forms it takes, whether simple folk-song like formats, dance forms, or more elaborate forms.

There is nothing natural about any particular scale, its tuning, the harmonic system upon which music is based; nothing natural about, say, the concept of a leading tone, resolutions, etc.

Music -- folk, traditional, classical, pop, from any culture (i.e. "Ethnic music,") -- all of it as we have it and know it, is wholly based upon a cumulative body of conceits.

The only reason people routinely could think to say one sort of music sounds 'natural' and another sort does not is their relative degrees of familiarity with one (the one they think sounds natural) and lack of familiarity with another (the one they claim is not natural.)

There is not much which is made by man that is not more utterly synthetic, contrived, and artificial, as, say, a piece of music by J.S. Bach -- or truly, any piece of music by any other composer.

I just wanted to take this fallacious premise of natural / unnatural out of the running in the discussion on any kind of repertoire from any era. It often comes up, is based on the very false assumption that there is anything natural-sounding about "the repertoire with which I am familiar," while there just is not.


Best regards.

[Karl Henning]

There is nothing natural about music -- of any kind.

Hence, Art, as in artifice.

[Karl Henning]

... It often comes up, is based on the very false assumption that there is anything natural-sounding about "the repertoire with which I am familiar," while there just is not.

Yes! Exactly.  The fallacy that my experience of music is Universal Artistic Truth, and that if your experience is otherwise, your ears are pathologically deviant.

[Mahlerian]

Yes! Exactly.  The fallacy that my experience of music is Universal Artistic Truth, and that if your experience is otherwise, your ears are pathologically deviant.

This goes along with the idea, much beloved of anti-intellectuals everywhere, that something that they particularly fail to see the point of is necessarily elitist obscurantism that nobody really enjoys.

[James]

Well done! These are indeed good candidates for criteria for application of the idea of "greatness" Many of them are framed using evaluative concepts aren't they?  I have highlighted some of them.

Quality of material (nuts & bolts, raw materials .. well-constructed?, interest? balance? etc.), economy of means (i.e. few small germ ideas?, or new idea after idea to propel music in rambling fashion?) .. simplicity vs. complexity .. is the music simple, exposed in character, not needing to junk up the sonic canvas, or emptiness due to poverty of ideas/expression? .. if music is complex, is it intriguing and immersive with an undergirding logic to it, or is it out of control, undisciplined, and overwhelming? ... clarity of expression, well designed with communicative purpose/power? is it confusing or widely varied intentionally? or is it confusing  because the creator did not have a message or figure out how to express the one they had? .. novelty musician seeking out new ideas & procedures in struggle to express or an exploratory desire? OR relying on established conventions out of lethargy or lack of imagination? historical context & intelligibility .. finding place within applicable established conventions for type of work, adding voice, enriching tradition? OR  relying on novelty for its own sake, out of lack of an authentic communicative voice? etc., etc., etc.

We could go on and on, and these are the types of issues that taken together form a craftsman's perspective on music and can provide the basis for an almost-objective, or at least a well-grounded discussion. Of course, not all people hold the same considerations in the same esteem. Some are quite insistent on novelty: avant-garde or bust, a position which some extremely intelligent and capable artists espouse. But in my experience/view, many folks tend to perceive music that aggressively pushes the envelope as lacking communicative sincerity or technique. While other folks are more focused on historical context and integrity of architecture when it comes to music, perhaps a more classical perspective in the strict sense. And for some, none of these issues may matter much at all, either by preference or out of ignorance of them. It's hard to care about things that we aren't even aware of, to say the least. Sheer visceral taste in music is totally valid for all persons at all times, and that's what makes it possible to adore some pretty terrible music. But at the same time, music is written according to traditions and processes, and in conceptual spaces, that can be meaningfully evaluated on common ground with a constructive outcome. These evaluations address the "form" in "art form," so to speak, tend to be generated by the artistic language itself, and are far from arbitrary in my opinion.

[Mandryka]

But at the same time, music is written according to traditions and processes, and in conceptual spaces, that can be meaningfully evaluated on common ground with a constructive outcome. These evaluations address the "form" in "art form," so to speak, tend to be generated by the artistic language itself, and are far from arbitrary in my opinion.[/size][/font]

I expect that this is correct, though I haven't thought about it enough.

[Karl Henning]

But at the same time, music is written according to traditions and processes, and in conceptual spaces, that can be meaningfully evaluated on common ground with a constructive outcome.

Come on:  you got that from the Deepak Chopra Bullshit Generator bot, didn't you?

[San Antone]

Quality of material (nuts & bolts, raw materials .. well-constructed?, interest? balance? etc.), economy of means (i.e. few small germ ideas?, or new idea after idea to propel music in rambling fashion?) .. simplicity vs. complexity .. is the music simple, exposed in character, not needing to junk up the sonic canvas, or emptiness due to poverty of ideas/expression? .. if music is complex, is it intriguing and immersive with an undergirding logic to it, or is it out of control, undisciplined, and overwhelming? ... clarity of expression, well designed with communicative purpose/power? is it confusing or widely varied intentionally? or is it confusing  because the creator did not have a message or figure out how to express the one they had? .. novelty musician seeking out new ideas & procedures in struggle to express or an exploratory desire? OR relying on established conventions out of lethargy or lack of imagination? historical context & intelligibility .. finding place within applicable established conventions for type of work, adding voice, enriching tradition? OR  relying on novelty for its own sake, out of lack of an authentic communicative voice? etc., etc., etc.

We could go on and on, and these are the types of issues that taken together form a craftsman's perspective on music and can provide the basis for an almost-objective, or at least a well-grounded discussion. Of course, not all people hold the same considerations in the same esteem. Some are quite insistent on novelty: avant-garde or bust, a position which some extremely intelligent and capable artists espouse. But in my experience/view, many folks tend to perceive music that aggressively pushes the envelope as lacking communicative sincerity or technique. While other folks are more focused on historical context and integrity of architecture when it comes to music, perhaps a more classical perspective in the strict sense. And for some, none of these issues may matter much at all, either by preference or out of ignorance of them. It's hard to care about things that we aren't even aware of, to say the least. Sheer visceral taste in music is totally valid for all persons at all times, and that's what makes it possible to adore some pretty terrible music. But at the same time, music is written according to traditions and processes, and in conceptual spaces, that can be meaningfully evaluated on common ground with a constructive outcome. These evaluations address the "form" in "art form," so to speak, tend to be generated by the artistic language itself, and are far from arbitrary in my opinion.

Pfft

[Monsieur Croche]

Tell that to Samuel Wesley!
Honestly though, J.S. Bach's 80-year disappearance from memory is very exaggerated to the point of it now being one of the more infamous musical myths.

"...only known to a tiny minority for nearly eighty years...."

is entirely different from, "80-year disappearance from memory."

Just sayin'


Best regards.