Balancing "Contemporary" and Older Eras

[karlhenning]

Heck, if credit is to be got so cheap:  the bulk of the evidence is that "Elgar" did not write the works commonly attributed to him.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Classical music opinions are TOO MUCH cemented. People should keep questioning things and see how wrong general conceptions can be.

I agree, BUT in my experience this is true of fans of ALL genres of music. It's not just a classical thing.

I give credit to Rob Newman for questioning Mozart's status even if he is completely wrong.

There's a difference between "questioning" and being psychotic (or an attention-seeking troll).

[DavidW]

That is actually a very good question! I have asked that myself many times. It would be nice to discuss about classical music but most people here are on complete different wavelength. Maybe the world of classical music really is this single-minded. If you dare to see things differently you are automatically wrong. If I think Beethoven's orchestration skills lacked compared to the music that is how I see it, no matter how many "experts" tell me otherwise. Classical music opinions are TOO MUCH cemented. People should keep questioning things and see how wrong general conceptions can be. I give credit to Rob Newman for questioning Mozart's status even if he is completely wrong.

Well actually George and Andy posted that they didn't like many of Beethoven's symphonies as a whole, and only liked bloody chunks.  They were not attacked for saying so. 0:)  Though I was tempted!

There is a forum where the people are a little more respectful about the opinions of others, and are laid back (they used to not be that way but they've really changed!)

http://www.classicalmusicguide.com/

Have you given them a try?

I would like it if you stick around though, you did get me into Caldara who is a fine composer.

[bhodges]

1)  How do I gain a better appreciation of more contemporary works (or perhaps it's all about "listen, listen, listen" as stated to me on the Composer Discussion side of things).

It's important to listen to as many different composers as you can handle, so you are exposed to a broad array of voices.  Today there is really no single style; composers write using whatever tools they wish, whether tonal or atonal, minimal or complex.  Important also: not all music will appeal to you at a given time.  And some music requires more concentration, even intense concentration.  But the reward can be huge.

2) For those of you that truly appreciate all eras of this music, how do you balance the old with the new; the traditional with the modern; the apparent harmony of some with the surface dissonance of others?   

Listening to a lot of 20th and 21st-century music, I approach it slightly differently: balancing things with which I'm familiar (meaning, have heard 10-12 times at least) with things I've never heard before, from whatever eras.  It's important to give music new to you the chance to enter your consciousness.  My ears like mixing it up: listening to something very tonal and mellow, followed by something spikier...hearing something for small forces (e.g., a quartet), then something for 200 people onstage.

--Bruce

[Superhorn]

  I think it's also good to keep in mind the fact that so many great composers of the past were considered way out avant-gardists in their day, even though they are now part of the canon.
There were those who actually questioned Beethoven's sanity when they heard his late music. Berlioz ,Wagner, Bruckner, Mahler, Richard Strauss, Debussy, Bartok, Stravisnky, and others were once baffling to many.
  Try that great book"The Lexicon of Musical Invective" by the inimitable Nicolas Slonimsky, available at amazon.com, which quotes in detail the terrible reviews great composers have gotten over the centuries.
And remember- there's still no substitute for repeated hearinigs on recordings.

[jochanaan]

...there is a little concern that I may lose some of the interest in some of the music I like from older eras... 

Not gonna happen. This is not like a marriage wherein you agree to "forsake all others;" it's more like adding new loves to your old ones.  And the good thing is, the old ones are always there waiting to enthrall you when you go back to them.

[71 dB]

you're wrong because your logic is a shambles. 

Is that so? I wonder how I did well in Math in school. Can you demonstrate my problems with logic or are you just saying that?

There's a difference between "questioning" and being psychotic (or an attention-seeking troll).

Yeah, psychotic.

I agree, BUT in my experience this is true of fans of ALL genres of music. It's not just a classical thing.

Perhaps, but classical music seems to be the worst in this sense. On Tangerine Dream forum it's ok to like "Pergamon" more than "Poland".

There is a forum where the people are a little more respectful about the opinions of others, and are laid back (they used to not be that way but they've really changed!)

http://www.classicalmusicguide.com/

Have you given them a try?

No, I haven't. One forum takes too much time.  Thanks for the link, I will check it out.

I would like it if you stick around though, you did get me into Caldara who is a fine composer.

Hah, I don't even remember promoting Caldara but I'm glad you like his music. 

[ChamberNut]

Well actually George and Andy posted that they didn't like many of Beethoven's symphonies as a whole, and only liked bloody chunks.  They were not attacked for saying so. 0:)  Though I was tempted!

I did attack them.....with a foam hammer. 

[karlhenning]

I did attack them.....with a foam hammer. 

And noodles were assiduously dampened for whip duty.

[Grazioso]

The idea of sticking with a specific genre is interesting.  I've been a symphony-guy, so I have naturally gravitated towards those types when I've purchased more contemporary works. 

I too am a symphony guy and have found it very illuminating and enjoyable to collect and get to know symphony cycles from across the eras and styles. That approach provides a good basis for comparison and understanding as you move into unfamiliar terrain. And it just so happens that the 20th century was (so far) the highpoint for symphonic writing, with an amazing wealth of great works to explore.

Btw, as you approach contemporary music (broadly understood as Modernism to the present), be sure to read

[jochanaan]

I too am a symphony guy and have found it very illuminating and enjoyable to collect and get to know symphony cycles from across the eras and styles. That approach provides a good basis for comparison and understanding as you move into unfamiliar terrain. And it just so happens that the 20th century was (so far) the highpoint for symphonic writing, with an amazing wealth of great works to explore.

True.  However, the symphony is a very traditional form, and has for about a century and a half been considered the "epitome" of classical music; as such, composers (aside from a few radicals like Berlioz and Mahler) hesitated to experiment with it.  You find earlier and more radical experimentation in songs, solo and chamber music, and even opera than you do in symphonies.  (This was true as far back as Beethoven's time; he switched the scherzo and slow movement in his first Rasumovsky quartet many years before he did it in the Ninth Symphony, and introduced singers in his Choral Fantasy nearly two decades before the Ninth.)  That's probably why most of the really radical 20th-century composers didn't do many symphonies.  We have Schoenberg's Chamber Symphonies and Webern's lone Symphony, but none by Varèse or Stockhausen or Boulez, and the one Penderecki symphony I've heard is far more conservative than most of his other music.

[not edward]

Boulez actually wrote a symphony in 1947, but it was thrown in the trash by a cleaning lady while he was off at Darmstadt.

It would be interesting to hear how it sounded: from the description he gave, it had about as much to do with the conventional symphony as Webern's.

[karlhenning]

Yea...the symphony is an old dinosaur

There's your closed parachute again.  The symphony is more robustly adaptable than, well, your ears, for instance.

. . . guys like Stockhausen [...] by taking into account the advances made in technology he could take a significantly much smaller amount of players and have things multipled & projected with just a few loudspeakers to do the very same thing!

Comments like this do not flatter your ear.  "The very same thing"?  Hardly.

[jochanaan]

Boulez actually wrote a symphony in 1947, but it was thrown in the trash by a cleaning lady while he was off at Darmstadt.

It would be interesting to hear how it sounded: from the description he gave, it had about as much to do with the conventional symphony as Webern's.

I stand, uh, sit corrected. And yes, it would be very interesting to hear if we could.

...Comments like this do not flatter your ear.  "The very same thing"?  Hardly.

As a player of traditional, non-electronic instruments, I am forced to agree.  There's a big difference between recordings, even the best, and real "live" instruments.

[Grazioso]

True.  However, the symphony is a very traditional form, and has for about a century and a half been considered the "epitome" of classical music; as

That's part of why I love it, the other being that it tends towards the grand and serious and towards "extended narratives," so to speak. Either way, what you say also explains why delving into the symphony across the eras provides solid ground for comparison (and perceiving continuity--not everything was a radical break, by any stretch) when you move into the changes and challenges of 20th-century music.