Admit It, You're As Bored As I Am

[Homo Aestheticus]

It is an established classic

And comparable in its own way to the Brahms Fourth, right ?

This is not great music, there is no inner substance and I don't care what the musical academics think.

[karlhenning]

And comparable in its own way to the Brahms Fourth, right ?

In some respects, I suppose.  You're still taking baby steps, if you think that one can simply put one piece from the late 19th century on a kind of scales with a piece from the late 1960s.

This is not great music, there is no inner substance and I don't care what the musical academics think.

Ah, the sound of a mind snapping shut.

In order:

1.  No one designated you as any authority on whether any piece of music is great or not.  That burden has been found too great for you.  Your remark, then, just means that you don't like it.  Big deal.

2.  I don't know of anyone on the forum who has any confidence in your ability to determine whether there is "inner substance" in the piece or not.  Your remark, then, just means that you don't like it.  Big deal.

3.  Neither you nor most of us on the forum "care what the musical academics think" (those bugaboos!).  Just another strawman to dangle around before ringing in the new year, eh?

[karlhenning]

. . . Or that Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra somehow does NOT presage the coming violence of WWI!!! 

And again the titles were afterthoughts (Premonitions, (!!!) etc.)

Such is the mystery of music!

Oh, if I were at home . . . I know this is somewhere in the anthology Style and Idea.  I have an idea that he furnished the titles at the request of the publisher . . . his commentary on the five subtitles is un peu drôle.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

[ Don, I know, I know . . . the latest attempt to "teach a pig to sing." ]

At least give Pink credit for clueing us in to this:

...contriveness factor...

It's a good thing somebody can sniff out "contriveness".

[karlhenning]

It's a good thing somebody can sniff out "contriveness".

Smell your harmonica, go on, smell it, son.

[Cato]

Oh, if I were at home . . . I know this is somewhere in the anthology Style and Idea.  I have an idea that he furnished the titles at the request of the publisher . . . his commentary on the five subtitles is un peu drôle.

Yes, the publisher found the work impenetrable without titles for each of the 5 movements.

Interesting: I await a response from the Unrepentant and apparently Unreconstructed Peeling Astro Van.

[Homo Aestheticus]

In some respects, I suppose.  You're still taking baby steps, if you think that one can simply put one piece from the late 19th century on a kind of scales with a piece from the late 1960s.

Highly intelligent men like Stockhausen, Berio, Boulez, Carter, Wuorinen had no business sitting at a composer's desk. They would have done so much better had they devoted all of their energies to musicology or conducting or teaching. Their music will not last the next 100 years.

David Zalman put it best:

"They know perfectly well that they are no match for Wagner or any of the great masters.  They are to be esteemed for keeping classical music composition, which without the likes of them would become entirely derivative and antiquarian, alive rather than deprecated for not being up to the literally impossible task of rising to the level of their titanic forebears..."

[karlhenning]

Yes, the publisher found the work impenetrable without titles for each of the 5 movements.

One thread of particularly keen interest to me, in both the two-volume bio of Igor Fyodorovich by Stephen Walsh, and this wee Sibelius book by Guy Rickards, is the cagey nature of composer-publisher relations.

It would have been easier if both I. F. and Janne just offered the publishers readily saleable Product . . . .

[karlhenning]

Highly intelligent men like Stockhausen, Berio, Boulez, Carter, Wuorinen had no business sitting at a composer's desk.

You get funnier with each post!  Thank you.

There are musicians who find that (to choose just the last three) Boulez, Carter & Wuorinen are excellent and noteworthy composers.

Encore une fois: Your remark just means that you don't like it (well, and that you don't understand it).  Big deal.

[karlhenning]

Not this futile Queenan thing again!! (Just be sure to read the Service rebuttal, conveniently linked right at the top there and, gasp, right here, too! http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/tomserviceblog/2008/jul/09/nowerenotasboredasyouar

I won't retail Service's rebuttal. You can read it (or ignore it) for yourself. But I will say this about the Guardian's subtitle for Queenan's article: "After 40 years and 1,500 concerts, Joe Queenan is finally ready to say the unsayable: new classical music is absolute torture - and its fans have no reason to be so smug," and that is that 1) people have been saying bad things about new classical music at least since Beethoven and 2) in all my own conversations with people about new classical music since I first started listening to it in 1972, the anti-moderns have had that smug thing pretty thoroughly wrapped up. I've met a couple of smug pro-moderns, true, but they are by a long ways the exception, their presence amply accounted for by the fact that you can find a few smuggies in any group.

At first glance, the antis might seem to have some justification. They have after all Bach's St. Matthew Passion, Mozart's Requiem, Beethoven's ninth symphony and so forth as their exclusive property. (Or DO they?) What has the twentieth century offered to compete with those masterpieces? And, if you answer with Rite of Spring or Hymnen, say, your picks will be dismissed with a wave of the hand and an uptilt of the nose. Never mind that advocates of Christian Marclay and Zbigniew Karkowski, for instance, can easily and sweetly enjoy Bach and Mozart as well; that inarguable fact diminishes the antis' superciliousness not one whit.

F'rinstance:

The problem is that Queenan seems to equate a composer making a "breakthrough" not with whether audiences actually go to hear this stuff - they do - but whether he likes it or not. If he doesn't get on with it, that's fine, but it makes the argument a soupçon self-aggrandising.

Pretty much answers the OP, what?

[Homo Aestheticus]

This ignoramus still easily pushes your buttons i see. 

Ignoramus ?

Let's see what you wrote:

Many artists suffer from overindulgence. And Mahler was one of thee worst in the dept, and nothing you say here will change my view

You claim that Mahler suffers from overindulgence and yet you praise Stockhausen ?

Please, you're the ignoramus obviously.... And how dare you question Mahler's greatness!

[greg]

Please, you're the ignoramus obviously.... And how dare you question Mahler's greatness!

huh? I thought you hated Mahler.

[Josquin des Prez]

How can something abstract, a sequence of tones, meaningfully reflect a culture or time?

Well, it doesn't reflect our culture, that's for sure. The history of the 20th century is the history of the psychological and cultural domination of a small minority upon an unsuspecting civilization. This domination was achieved thanks to a biological advantage in intelligence and a deep ethnic commitment and group interest mentality. I'll let you guys guess who am i referring to.

[Josquin des Prez]

There are musicians who find that (to choose just the last three) Boulez, Carter & Wuorinen are excellent and noteworthy composers.

No genius there that i can see though. What gives? Or is that of no importance nowadays?

[Josquin des Prez]

Tell me that -even if you did not know the title - you would NOT place Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima in the post-WWII era! 

As I recall the title in fact was an afterthought. 

Or that Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra somehow does NOT presage the coming violence of WWI!!! 

And again the titles were afterthoughts (Premonitions, (!!!) etc.)

Such is the mystery of music!

Where are all the pieces by the various masters of the past reflecting on the horrors of their respective eras, or is the warfare of the 20th century to be considered the most horrific event of them all?

[karlhenning]

No genius there that i can see though.

Optical failure.  Your inability to perceive the talent, does not determine the question of its presence.

The other point being:  You introduced the factor of genius here.

[Josquin des Prez]

Optical failure.  Your inability to perceive the talent, does not determine the question of its presence.

The other point being:  You introduced the factor of genius here.

Only because the factors you introduced are in fact utterly irrelevant. Genius is what is relevant here. Nothing else.

[karlhenning]

Where are all the pieces by the various masters of the past reflecting on the horrors of their respective eras, or is the warfare of the 20th century to be considered the most horrific event of them all?

You're falling into Pink's error, of imagining that there is some flatline against which the matter of [artistic reflection upon the vicissitudes of life] is to be measured.  Culture is cumulative;  and each era is a distinct, non-duplicable environment.

The idea that a genius after Beethoven has to "reproduce" Beethoven is a fallacy.

[Brian]

The vast majority of the new music lovers I've known also love much of the mainstream repertoire. But they're much more likely to get excited about a live performance of Berio's Sinfonia than Brahms' 4th, say, simply because the Berio shows up so much less often in concert programs.

I'd probably get more excited by, say, a performance of the Carter violin concerto than the Brahms, even though the Brahms is my very favourite work in that genre... simply because I've probably heard the Brahms live a dozen times and the Carter live zero times.

I had never before expected to say this, but apparently this means that I am fortunate to have never heard the Brahms 4th live!

[karlhenning]

Only because the factors you introduced are in fact utterly irrelevant. Genius is what is relevant here. Nothing else.

You've forgotten that no one appointed you the determiner of what is genius.