Ding ! Dong ! The Witch Has Died.

[Homo Aestheticus]

Now HERE is an assessment that I completely agree with.... It is vintage Kyle Gann.



I think the individuals at the IRCAM Pompidou Center in Paris especially should listen up:

Ding ! Dong ! The Witch Has Died
by Kyle Gann

May I be the only classical music critic in town to welcome the new century with open arms ? Hurrah ! Hurrah ! Twentieth-century music is dead.

Uh-oh: I've just denounced what I'm supposed to pledge allegiance to. Of course, there were actually two 20th centuries. The first, symbolized by Stravinsky, Bartok and Ives, was a dramatic irruption of violent, irrational energy, as music abruptly claimed all those sonic phenomena that earlier centuries had prohibited. The second 20th century, which began as World War II ended, was quite the opposite, a worship of technical devices by people who, in any other generation, would have likely become lab technicians rather than composers. Yet by a quirk of inadequate terminology, both 20th centuries -- the lion's roar and the ferret's jargon-blurred murmur -- became yoked together under the term "modernism." And by another ironic inadequacy that made no difference until this month, "20th-century" and "modernist" were synonymous with music.

It's not that the late 20th century didn't produce great music. Any era that can boast Nancarrow, Feldman, Ashley and Scelsi can hold its head up with the best. But while bad 17th century music is merely dull, and bad 19th century music is tediously grandiose, the late 20th century's bad music was pervasively ugly, pretentious, and meaningless, yet backed up by a technic apparatus that justified it and even earned it prestigious awards. Twelve-tone technique -- the South Sea Bubble of music history, to which hundreds and perhaps thousands of well-intended composers sacrificed their careers like lemmings, and all for nothing -- brought music to the lowest point in the history of mankind. Twelve-tone music is now dead, everyone grudgingly admits, yet its pitch-set manipulating habits survive in far-flung corners of musical technique like residual viruses. The effect of the rolling over of the Christian-historical odometer is purely psychological, but nevertheless potent: Post-modern (not "postmodern") 21st century music has been around for years, and the last argument for denying its existence has just collapsed. Treating "20th century" and "modernist" as synonymous was a critical ploy for keeping modernism alive and current-seeming long after the aesthetic had begun to erode in the 1970's. Attendant to that ploy, the uptown critics have pounced on every young composer, no matter how mediocre, who promised to extend the lease on modernism a few more years; John Zorn, Tan Dun, and Aaron Kernis all benefited from that psychology, which now devolves on Britain's young Thomas Ades, whose music is hailed as "serious" for being merely confused. While early modernism was an honest blow for freedom of expression, late modernism deteriorated into a web of pretensions and syllogisms, an insiders' game of careerist one-upmanship.

At the start of this new, still-promising century, let us reiterate some eternal musical truths that the 20th century lost sight of:

There is nothing wrong with simplicity. It is easier to write complicated music than simple music; Beethoven's sketchbooks show how hard he struggled to achieve simplicity. It occasionally happens that profound music is difficult to understand, but it does not follow from this that music that is difficult to understand is therefore profound. Most difficult-to-understand music is simply unclear. The value of music is not proportional to the quantity or intricacy of its technical apparatus. Like many great composers throughout the ages, Mozart believed in an "artless art" in which the effort of composing is hidden beneath an effortless surface; this is as it should be. The audience wants to be delighted, inspired, entertained and moved, not reassured that the composer is highly educated and worked hard. There is nothing wrong with occasionally writing an ostentatiously technical piece for the delectation of one's colleagues, but to do nothing but that is to pretend that composers have no obligation to society, and by extension that neither do doctors, politicians, generals, or any other profession. A piece of music is not good just because it is popular, nor is it bad just because it is popular. The music profession has many incentives to bestow fame and honor on certain of its members; the quality of their music is only one of those incentives and never an essential one.

Let us keep these truths in mind and see if we can create a 21st century less burdened by boring, ugly, pretentious music than the 20th century was.

******

Yep, Kyle is a good one...

[CRCulver]

Now HERE is an assessment that I completely agree with.... It is vintage Kyle Gann.



I think the individuals at the IRCAM Pompidou Center in Paris especially should listen up:

Why do you single out IRCAM? Except for Boulez (who never had much control over the institution's output) and Mantoury (who's a minor figure), there's not too much interest in twelve-tone serialism there. But IRCAM did become the home of Kaija Saariaho, a neo-tonalist who has won herself a popular audience. Most of the composers I can think of who have visited IRCAM to realize a piece don't see any affinity with mid-20th century Darmstadt modernism.

[Symphonien]

... the uptown critics have pounced on every young composer, no matter how mediocre, who promised to extend the lease on modernism a few more years ... which now devolves on Britain's young Thomas Ades, whose music is hailed as "serious" for being merely confused.

Unfortunately, Gann loses credibility here.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Unfortunately, Gann loses credibility here.

Or maybe you just don't agree with him 

Gann certainly knows an awful lot of stuff, and this makes him interesting, but I find him kind of eccentric as a writer. Much of what he writes is devoted to unearthing composers who are so obscure, it's possible that only he and these composers' friends and relatives have heard any of their work. He has proclaimed a certain Mikel Rouse to be "the greatest opera composer of his generation." OK, maybe he's right, let's not judge what we haven't heard - but how can we judge these composers when their work seems to be never performed or recorded, at least for the benefit of ordinary schmoes like us?

[CRCulver]

Unfortunately, Gann loses credibility here.

The idea that Ades is a charlatan is fairly widespread in contemporary criticism, and has served as a healthy balance to the quasi-messianistic heraldings of the British press. I've always felt there was something missing in his music, and my already low opinion of him became even lower when it was revealed he had been hiring out orchestration of his pieces.

[Grazioso]

May I be the only classical music critic in town to welcome the new century with open arms ? Hurrah ! Hurrah ! Twentieth-century music is dead.

Uh-oh: I've just denounced what I'm supposed to pledge allegiance to. Of course, there were actually two 20th centuries. 

He forgot the third--and best  --of the 20th centuries, the 20th century of Barber and Bernstein, Alwyn and Atterberg, Sibelius and Strauss, and so on and so forth.

[Brian]

He forgot the third--and best  --of the 20th centuries, the 20th century of Barber and Bernstein, Alwyn and Atterberg, Sibelius and Strauss, and so on and so forth.

Yes!

And what of Shostakovich, who defies any such categorization?

Regardless, this essay seems like it was written in 2000. New century? Really?

[snyprrr]

...is the writer talking about Ligeti, Xenakis, Berio, Lutoslawski...or Herchet, Goldstein, Martino (as differing between the first and second rank).

At least NOW we have a bunch of really cool sound effects!

I wanted to write a Haydn-style quartet, but using all the different cool effects...

I mean, the effects can sound just as cool in a tonal setting as they can in a 12tone context, no?

Who is the composer who made academicism FUN?

I'm now thinking of Dutilleux's string quartet "Ainsi la Nuit" (1976)...this thing just overflows with great effects, and is very "communicative" to boot.  Couldn't have been written at any other time.

Ligeti's web-like polyphony...what's wrong with that?
Xenakis' fun glissandos?

I just can't think of the composer most responsible for all the "worshipping"...unless it IS Boulez?  Who IS the biggest dick of 20th century music?

[jochanaan]

The only problem with an article like Gann's is that there are folks, including a few right here at GMG, who have been genuinely moved by the music Gann dismisses as "pervasively ugly, pretentious, and meaningless".  Obviously "the Witch"'s enchantment works on a few of us.

[Homo Aestheticus]

Gann's own music sucks and so does his "downtown".

How much have you heard ?

[karlhenning]

The only problem with an article like Gann's is that there are folks, including a few right here at GMG, who have been genuinely moved by the music Gann dismisses as "pervasively ugly, pretentious, and meaningless".  Obviously "the Witch"'s enchantment works on a few of us.

A jochanaan sighting! 

[Guido]

How much have you heard ?

you can hear 4 hours of it on his website. Though, quite why anyone would want to is a complete mystery to me. Horrible stuff.

[Homo Aestheticus]

Guido,

you can hear 4 hours of it on his website. Though, quite why anyone would want to is a complete mystery to me. Horrible stuff.

Thanks..... I just downloaded a few snippets and my first impressions are not positive.



Still, as an eccentric/entertaining commentator on music Gann is the gift that keeps on giving... 

Here he is on Mozart:

The Mozart myth, I've always felt, was 1. a condescending image created by his father, and 2. a distant, divine image intended to make all future composers feel inferior, and to reinforce a public feeling that musical genius is something distant and fated, not something we should ever expect to meet up with on a daily basis. Does this sound right to you [that there's no sign Mozart has lost his relevance among composers]? Does Mozart still have some overwhelming relevance to our time? Does 'Don Giovanni' contain a cautionary message that young men of the 21st century need to hear? Does 'The Magic Flute' reflect the needs of our social life? Does Mozart's music contain anything that we, today, would understand as emotional certainty, or the fleeting quality of serenity? Or do our classical mavens just feel an overwhelming need to reinforce the status quo, by recentering our musical life on a distant figure with whose music we have pretty much lost any capacity for real intellectual and emotional engagement? Doesn't the real purpose of Mozart worship remain to retard any progress into a musical future?

****

[sul G]

Yes, hmm, I find myself in the previously unknown position of disagreeing with Guido and agreeing with James. I've heard a lot of Gann, and it's pretty clear to me that he is, at his best, a superb composer. He's also a man of deep knowledge and with a deep love of the music of the preceding centuries. As I said before here, there's a danger of misrepresenting the man if we start seeing him in the black-and-white ways some are tending to do on this thread.

[Elgarian]

There is nothing wrong with simplicity. It is easier to write complicated music than simple music; ... It occasionally happens that profound music is difficult to understand, but it does not follow from this that music that is difficult to understand is therefore profound. Most difficult-to-understand music is simply unclear.

How refreshing to read this. This is by no means applicable only to music. Substitute 'prose' for 'music', and it remains a great truth.

[DavidRoss]

How refreshing to read this. This is by no means applicable only to music. Substitute 'prose' for 'music', and it remains a great truth.

Yes, refreshing indeed!  Proves what they say about stopped clocks.

[jochanaan]

A jochanaan sighting! 

Indeed.  Probably every once in a while I'll drop in--that was the "thud" you heard.

BTW, Pelleastrian, everything they said about Schoenberg and company in the 20th century was said about Wagner and Debussy in the 19th.

[bhodges]

Indeed.  Probably every once in a while I'll drop in--that was the "thud" you heard.

Hey jochanaan, I'd like to hear that thud more often!



--Bruce

[Homo Aestheticus]

btw, Pelleastrian, everything they said about Schoenberg and company in the 20th century was said about Wagner and Debussy in the 19th.

But not nearly to the same extent....

Wagner and Debussy were beloved long before they died.

[Guido]

I'm more than willing to admit I was wrong - just the three pieces I sampled on his website struck me as being really rather dull and unimaginative. I don't remember their names apart from Venus. Do recommend me good things, I'm more than willing to discover a superb new composer! But his statements in the initial post of his disgust me.