The Belief That Romantic Music Should Have Died 'A Natural Death'

[Homo Aestheticus]

I very much enjoyed this article (below) by American composer and professor  Kyle Gann  even though I strongly disagree with about 99 percent of what he has to say... But I do find him engaging and sort of avuncular.

Here are some of the funnier (and odd) statements he makes:

I consider Josquin des Prez and Claudio Monteverdi composers as great as Beethoven, and how often do we hear their music these days? Sadly, the time is bound to come when we hear Beethoven no more often than that.

Ultimately, it is kind of perverse for a culture to continue taking an interest and define itself via music more than a hundred years old, made on a distant continent and expressing a foreign worldview, no matter how great it is.

Romantic music is a grand ocean liner that's sinking - but they sent us composers off in a tiny lifeboat several decades ago, and I find it counterproductive for the people in the lifeboat to run back and try to get the ocean liner to float. We need to save the lifeboat.

Classical music culture has become trivial and self-indulgent, a game for a tiny group of insiders.

We may need to wipe the slate clean of 19th century European music before 21st century music of an ambitious and thoughtful character is going to be allowed to have any cultural presence.

------

In your view does he make a valid overall point or is he just an eccentric, overlooked, bitter and envious composer ?   

Here in full:

"The audience for Romantic music is getting old. We hear recurring reports of uniformly gray- (if not blue-) haired audiences at orchestra concerts, and I myself recently heard a Beethoven symphony live and found myself, at 47, younger than the median age of those present by a good 20 years. The New York Philharmonic can move to Carnegie Hall, or not; the age of its audience will remain tied to its repertoire, not the acoustics. I teach music at the college level, which brings me in contact with the people absent from those concerts and will argue here that the emotional rhetoric of 19th-century music may be too distant from the experience of today's young people for them to relate to it. True, it's hard to stir any passion in young musicians for Schumann, Brahms, Wagner or even Beethoven. Some of them do attend the college ís free orchestra concerts, but for many, traditional concertgoing is an activity off their cultural radar. Sitting in rows of seats and being quiet while guys in tuxedos play violins seems like something you did on oppressive field trips from elementary school if, indeed, such field trips even still happen these days. On the other hand, I can still knock my students socks off by playing them Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. Bartok's propulsive rhythms make them sit up and take notice. They love that 20th-century composers like Charles Ives and Henry Cowell played the piano with their fists and heaped up great masses of percussion noise. It feels transgressive, something that, to this day, their parents might look at with suspicion. Even past that, they fall in love at first listening with Steve Reich's Drumming (1971) and Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach (1976). The minimalist style of listening, groove-oriented and conducive to a less formal, looser attention mode, is in synch with their social instincts. Computer music that uses recorded samples of live sounds makes perfect sense to them. Heck, half of them make such music on their laptops and audio software.

It seems to me that what ís dead is Romantic music. I don't believe that it any longer addresses lived reality as our young people experience it. It's not that young people don't want to listen to anything but pop songs, that they always need love lyrics and a backbeat to stay interested, it's that the rhetoric of 19th-century European music does not speak to them. The constant tension and release, the emotional roller coaster of Romantic music, doesn't connect with their lives, and the interplay of themes and accompaniments seems like a sterile game. After all, even great art can lose relevance through changes in society. A few years ago, I reread Sorrows of Young Werther Goethe's novel about a man driven to suicide by his fixation on a married woman, which had a tremendous impact on 19th century artists. Goethe's psychological insights were revolutionary for their time, but we are all more familiar with such fixations today, and all I could keep thinking was, "Man, get a therapist."

Around 1600, the chord-based music we call Baroque was invented, and the gorgeous old, polyphonic music of the Renaissance was consigned to antiquity. For the next 300 years, only scholars busied themselves with it. Then, between 1720 and 1740, Baroque music was replaced by the lighter, pop-oriented Italianate style that became what we call Classical. Except among the rare group of specialists, like London's Academy of Ancient Music, Telemann and Vivaldi weren't played anymore. Mozart was the hot thing. And then during the 20th century, the big orchestral music of Romantic era went out of style. The historical anomaly was that during the 20th century, this music, though no longer written, was still played. An entire culture had grown up around that music, and prestigious institutions like the New York Philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera had been set up to promote and play it. Twentieth century composers were writing more dissonant, more complex music that gave voice to the new era's more violent and analytical tendencies, but traditional audiences didn't want to follow along. They stuck with the old, comforting stuff. But ultimately, it is kind of perverse for a culture to continue taking an interest and define itself via music more than a hundred years old, made on a distant continent and expressing a foreign worldview, no matter how great it is. Beethoven has not become irrelevant: no great art ever becomes irrelevant. But languages of art do cease to be spoken. Chaucer is still a great writer, with much to say to humanity, but few people sit on the beach to read how.. "The elf-queene, with hir joly compaignye, Daunced ful ofte in many a grene mede". Scholars and hard-core literature lovers read Chaucer, but the more centuries separate us from him, the greater the effort becomes. Shakespeare remains the most famous writer in the English language, but his footnotes do pile up.  I consider Josquin des Prez and Claudio Monteverdi composers as great as Beethoven, and how often do we hear their music these days? Sadly, the time is bound to come when we hear Beethoven no more often than that.

"Classical" is a commercial marketing term, a section at Tower Records. It has been sold to us by massive corporations as a closed category, and it doesn't include any of the relevant "classical" music that is being made today. Most of the composers I know are insulted if you call them "classical". We do need a category of music for longer, deeper and more thought provoking works, works that are being made today and that are relevant to what's going on in our culture. Classical music culture has become trivial and self-indulgent, a game for a tiny group of insiders but I'm not convinced that as composers it's in our best interest to go to heroic lengths to revive or save it. I'll always teach Josquin, Beethoven and Brahms because I think young musicians should have a thorough grounding in musical technique of the past - the way Mozart and Beethoven studied Bach's Well Tempered Clavier during the decade when audiences weren't listening to Bach. But I feel what's needed is radical advocacy for the serious, thoughtful music of our day and I strongly suspect that "classical" music fans are not allies in that fight - they may be our own worst enemies, in fact. Getting a widespread cultural hearing for new music in the current atmosphere of ignorance and rabid conformity is going to be a massive uphill fight. We may need to wipe the slate clean of 19th century European music before 21st century music of an ambitious and thoughtful character is going to be allowed to have any cultural presence.

Romantic music is a grand ocean liner that's sinking - but they sent us composers off in a tiny lifeboat several decades ago, and I find it counterproductive for the people in the lifeboat to run back and try to get the ocean liner to float. We need to save the lifeboat. I know all the counter arguments. I realize that there is a continuity between Brahms and Stravinsky and today's new music, and that knowing the continuity enriches one's listening - but there was a continuity between Bach and Beethoven too, and Beethoven was enjoyed by people who had never heard of Bach. I own many recordings of old classical music, and I'm deeply attached to a lot of it, but I don't believe that nurturing an appreciation for Beethoven or Brahms among the general public helps people appreciate the new music or makes it easier for it to get a hearing - perhaps just the opposite.

I'm very sad about what has happened to classical music, but I feel the tragedy happened decades ago and we are just seeing the dragged-out tail end of it. Perhaps insofar as "classical music" means 'European orchestral repertoire of the 19th century' - and we can make it mean anything other than that - it's just the natural order of things.

As John Cage said, when asked about the tradition that the Buddha died from eating mushrooms:

"The purpose of mushrooms is to rid the world of old rubbish. The Buddha died a natural death"

********

[Frumaster]

Is it too much to ask this guy just to leave us alone?  I enjoy music composed centuries ago, so what?  The period of time from the Renaissance to present day is NOTHING on the scale of any timeline made with respect to nature (how long humans have existed, how long life has existed here, how long the planet, the universe, etc.).  Talk about blowing this all out of proportion.  Lets say you think a good lifetime for a person is 85 years...now just count how few lifetimes we are away from all of the musical eras.  On the scale of human life, we're practically contemporaries.

I do agree with him on the "classical music" label...I prefer to call it concert music (pick your poison).  But labels arent really important, the music is.  Who is this guy to tell me I can't relate?  We may be a tiny group of insiders, but that doesn't mean we're evil or misguided.  As for modern compositions in the professional concert music arena, I'm not sure much can help them given our rapidly degenerating culture.

Romantic music is just as seldom heard as the renaissance music he's calling dead, if you mean in pop culture.  I also have a hard time understanding his imposing of 'natural death'....uh, its not natural if you force it with these assertions.  There's nothing to worry about, it will go when it damn well feels like it.  As of now, new concerts and recordings of old works are happening daily.

[jimmosk]

I agree with you about the avuncular style of Kyle's piece: I enjoy reading it, even as I disagree with it.  I can't help wondering if, had he been born 150 years earlier, he would be writing an analogous piece praising Louis Moreau Gottschalk as "the future of music" because it's "conducive to a less formal, looser attention mode, [...] in synch with their social instincts".  I for one am glad that Brahms and Nielsen decided to follow in Beethoven's footsteps rather than Gottschalk's...

I'd also be interested if he feels the same way about art.  Rembrandt? Michelangelo?  How could centuries old artworks possibly be of any interest to us in the present? ;^)    I think my most serious rebuttal to his argument would be that he needs to understand that we're living in a world where it's now technologically possible, in fact pretty easy, to preserve the cultural past.  The range of past cultural artifacts (including music) that we have access to is greater now than ever before, and grows every year. So what needs to, in fact what I think automatically will, happen is that we'll have different styles co-existing.  Not so much "Roll Over, Beethoven" as "Make Some More Room On the Bench, Beethoven" -- I see things like World music and sampling... and even Schnittkean polystylism... as reflections of this new technological preservation-capacity.

[Josquin des Prez]

People cling to the Romantics for the same reasons Europeans glorified the ancient Greeks rather then the culture directly preceding them: there is no genius in our decadent society, much like there was no genius during the so called "dark ages" of European history. The only and only reason modern art is allowed to exist is that people have the luxury to fall back on the old masters any time they so wish. If some tragic disaster was to destroy every remaining trace of the music of the past, rubbish like John Cage wouldn't last five minutes and people would devote themselves to create great music anew.

[mc ukrneal]

Interesting read, but his whole premise is messed up. That is, I don't know any young person who actually likes (let alone listens to) Ives, Adams, Cage, etc. This is music that does not make for easy listening. And I have always maintained that the problem is that modern pieces (many of them anyway) lack melody. Atonal and dissonant music does does not allow you to tap your feet or sing along or sing a melody when all is done. This, in my opinion (and in short), is the biggest problem with modern classical music.

[CRCulver]

People cling to the Romantics for the same reasons Europeans glorified the ancient Greeks rather then the culture directly preceding them: there is no genius in our decadent society, much like there was no genius during the so called "dark ages" of European history.

You might want to catch up. Historians haven't used the term "dark ages" for decades. The whole notion of a complete cultural decline between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the Renaissance is basically a myth propagated by Renaissance-era historians with a very limited perspective.

[CRCulver]

Interesting read, but his whole premise is messed up. That is, I don't know any young person who actually likes (let alone listens to) Ives, Adams, Cage, etc. This is music that does not make for easy listening. And I have always maintained that the problem is that modern pieces (many of them anyway) lack melody. Atonal and dissonant music does does not allow you to tap your feet or sing along or sing a melody when all is done. This, in my opinion (and in short), is the biggest problem with modern classical music.

We've had a thousand of these discussions before. Let me just say that there are plenty of young people who like those composers. When I attend concerts of modernists here in Helsinki, the crowd is mostly the younger generation, with plenty of teenagers. When Carter's Symphonia was played last year, a few grey-haired people walked out, but afterwards among the quite young crowd there was animated discussion of how cool it was. It was much the same in Chicago at the few MusicNow concerts I got to attend. I'm active on a filesharing community dedicated to modern composers, and among the 15-30 crowd there, there's a lot of people who only dig those composers and have no interest in older repertoire.

As for "tap your feet or sing along or sing a melody when all is done", any Boulez fan can refute you there. I find the more abstract high modernism a lot more "catchy" than late Romanticism like Sibelius, which is beautiful but difficult to remember anything from when it's all over.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

We've had a thousand of these discussions before. Let me just say that there are plenty of young people who like those composers. [etc.]

Thank you CR - I could have written a very similar post, but you beat me to it.

The only concerts I have been to where young people predominate are those devoted to modern music. And I don't mean the sort of concert where they force-feed the audience some modernist work as a concert opener ("eat your spinach"), or those featuring a "safe," established modern classic a la The Rite of Spring or Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra.

The youngest audience I saw was at the New Music Marathon in Prague in 2002, for a concert of Ligeti, Nancarrow and Messiaen.

[mc ukrneal]

We've had a thousand of these discussions before. Let me just say that there are plenty of young people who like those composers. When I attend concerts of modernists here in Helsinki, the crowd is mostly the younger generation, with plenty of teenagers. When Carter's Symphonia was played last year, a few grey-haired people walked out, but afterwards among the quite young crowd there was animated discussion of how cool it was. It was much the same in Chicago at the few MusicNow concerts I got to attend. I'm active on a filesharing community dedicated to modern composers, and among the 15-30 crowd there, there's a lot of people who only dig those composers and have no interest in older repertoire.

As for "tap your feet or sing along or sing a melody when all is done", any Boulez fan can refute you there. I find the more abstract high modernism a lot more "catchy" than late Romanticism like Sibelius, which is beautiful but difficult to remember anything from when it's all over.

I disagree and that is backed up by the lack of interest (and $) in the genre (compared to the interest in other genres). There will always be exceptions, of course (and not just in Helsinki or Chicago). But if there is so much interest, why are the works not performed more often? The concert halls and the orchestras want to make money, so if this were true, they would program that music more. Or MTV (or some similar channel) would start showing more of this stuff, while it currently is shown mostly on classical music channels or public tv stations. I would argue that film music (like john Williams and such) is a better extension of classical music than modern classical music.

I would also say the problem is one of perception. Classical in general (including modern classical) has a PR problem.

As to Boulez, I don't see how that is possible. His music is not particularly melodic.

[sul G]

As to Boulez, I don't see how that is possible. His music is not particularly melodic.

By what criteria can you judge that? For me, Boulez has an exceptionally interesting melodic voice, and a way of writing lines that go straight to the memory. His vocal lines, particularly - in Le Marteau, in Pli Selon Pli, in Le Soleil des Eaux.... - imprinted themselves on my mind indelibly the moment I first heard them.

[mc ukrneal]

By what criteria can you judge that? For me, Boulez has an exceptionally interesting melodic voice, and a way of writing lines that go straight to the memory. His vocal lines, particularly - in Le Marteau, in Pli Selon Pli, in Le Soleil des Eaux.... - imprinted themselves on my mind indelibly the moment I first heard them.

Well, I can only judge it for myself (it is not fact, just my opinion), and I did so by listening to some of the music (and with some composers, playing it as well). What I have heard does not have much of a line and I have never found myself humming any of it, for example. Compare it to Grainger, a Sousa march or a Prokofiev ballet, and well, the difference is noticeable.

[sul G]

I doubt I've ever hummed much Grainger or Sousa - though I've hummed plenty of Prokofiev - but Boulez's music haunts my mind frequently. These things - these modernist/anti-modernist issues, for want of a better term - are always much more amorphous, complex, many-sided and fluid than many like to maintain.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

I disagree and that is backed up by the lack of interest (and $) in the genre (compared to the interest in other genres). There will always be exceptions, of course (and not just in Helsinki or Chicago).

You disagree based on what, ukrneal? Have you attended any concerts devoted to modern music? CR and I are going by our personal experiences. Is your disagreement based on experience, on knowledge, or solely on distaste for this music?

I would argue that film music (like john Williams and such) is a better extension of classical music than modern classical music.

I don't disparage film music, but it is functional music and largely inseparable from its cinematic function. Hardly any of it is capable of standing alone outside its original context, IMHO.

I would also say the problem is one of perception. Classical in general (including modern classical) has a PR problem.

I won't argue with that.

[mc ukrneal]

You disagree based on what, ukrneal? Have you attended any concerts devoted to modern music? CR and I are going by our personal experiences. Is your disagreement based on experience, on knowledge, or solely on distaste for this music?

I don't disparage film music, but it is functional music and largely inseparable from its cinematic function. Hardly any of it is capable of standing alone outside its original context, IMHO.

I won't argue with that.

As I wrote, I have both listened and attended various concerts, mostly when I was younger and exploring what might be of interest. The most memorable concert I can think of was one with Karl Husa's Music from Prague (might have different name), which I liked a lot, but did not love (he was conducting too I think). It had haunting elements, but was not something that was particularly tuneful. I have also played (mostly on the modern side as I played saxophone, among other things, in a symphonic winds group) and listened to various pieces over the years. I have never attended a concert of Boulez music, nor have I played his music. However, listening to downloads and clips, I ccan say that I think his works are not particualrly tuneful (and maybe this is in comparison to romantic composers as opposed to an absolute).

Grainger is very tuneful. As is Sousa. Some would complain they are too simple, but hard to say they are not tuneful.

[Superhorn]

  It would be helpful if we approached this can of worms with some historical perspective.
  What we call"Classical Music" is a continuum of music stretching back centuries. To complain that we still perform music from the past is ludicrous. Of couse,it's vital for new music to get a chance to be heard, and it does today,more than most people realize.
But why should we limit ourselves to new music? No one objects to reading fiction or poetry from the past,or that the plays of Shakespeare are still performed, or showing the great art works from the past at museums etc.
   Critics such as Gann have created a false dichotomy,and so have people who whine that 20th and 21st century music is horrible and only want to hear their Beethoven,Brahms,Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov etc.
  The fact is that we need both old and new music. We can't do without either. Yes, it would be intolerable if nothing but the same old warhorses from the past were performed. But it would be equally wrong to stop playing music from the past. And if we were to stop playing music from the past,where would we start? Which composers of the past would get the axe?
  And those who say that in the past,all or most music was new, are actually only stating a half truth.
  In the time of Haydn,Mozart and Beethoven, the symphony orchestra as we know it was a relatively new thing. They simply did not have the enormous accumulation of repertoire we have today. Musicology as we know it did not exist yet.
  Music from the past was not as readily available. In addition, there were only a tiny fraction of the orchestras,opera companies,chamber ensembles and choruses etc, we have today.
   There  was  only  a  tiny fraction of all the live performances taking place today. Concerts were much more sporadic and irregular.
  The kind of orchestra we have today, performing a different program every week at a resident concert hall with a music director and guest conductors did not exist.
  Only major cities such as Vienna,Paris and  London etc, had an active concert and operatic life. If you were just Joe Schmo from some remote Austrian village, your chances of hearing performances of Mozart and other leading composers were nonexistent.
   Today, we have a  wider variety of classical music available to us, whether live, on CDs,DVDs,the radio,the internet, PBS on television, etc than lovers of classical music have ever been priveleged to hear.
   We can hear everything from medieval and renaissance music to the latest works of living composers.
  How can this be a bad thing?  If you don't like the music of certain composers,you can hear the music of countless others,living or dead,you might love. We're spolied for choice.

[Josquin des Prez]

You might want to catch up. Historians haven't used the term "dark ages" for decades. The whole notion of a complete cultural decline between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the Renaissance is basically a myth propagated by Renaissance-era historians with a very limited perspective.

Catch up to whom, the liberal cultural relativists who are poisoning history with their idealogically biased revisionism? Give me a brake.

[Bulldog]

Catch up to whom, the liberal cultural relativists who are poisoning history with their idealogically biased revisionism? Give me a brake.

Sorry, the repair shop is closed for the day.

[karlhenning]

. . . there is no genius in our decadent society . . . .

Wondered where that broken record could have gone off to . . . .

[karlhenning]

In your view does he make a valid overall point or is he just an eccentric, overlooked, bitter and envious composer ?   

In my view, the OP is just an eccentric, overlooked, bitter and envious non-musician

[Norbeone]

People cling to the Romantics for the same reasons Europeans glorified the ancient Greeks rather then the culture directly preceding them: there is no genius in our decadent society, much like there was no genius during the so called "dark ages" of European history. The only and only reason modern art is allowed to exist is that people have the luxury to fall back on the old masters any time they so wish. If some tragic disaster was to destroy every remaining trace of the music of the past, rubbish like John Cage wouldn't last five minutes and people would devote themselves to create great music anew.

What narrow-minded, philistinian pap.