"New music"

[Henk]

I think you should clear your head of this rubbish (Nietzsche, Peter Sloterdijk [whoever the hell he is], "pampering" etc.) and just try to listen to the music with an open mind.  

You're always biased in some kind of way. Even a little bias can make the difference of liking a piece of work or not. First I was biased in a way I didn't like Boulez, now I'm biased more the oppossite and I actually like Boulez.  

[jochanaan]

Do you really mean to say that the late-romantic composer do more challenging composing then the serialists and their inheritors?

Not at all!  And in fact I don't see how you could have gotten that from my statement. Nor do I mean to imply that they are the stylistic inheritors of Wagner et al.  I mean to say that the great modernists, serial or otherwise, have continued the tradition of experimentation and thus taken music in some intriguing directions.

[jochanaan]

the high culture that existed in the 19th century is dead and classical music is now completely irrelevant except to a small subculture of fans...

If it is indeed gone, what has replaced it?  "Nature abhors a vacuum."

[Henk]

Not at all!  And in fact I don't see how you could have gotten that from my statement. Nor do I mean to imply that they are the stylistic inheritors of Wagner et al.  I mean to say that the great modernists, serial or otherwise, have continued the tradition of experimentation and thus taken music in some intriguing directions.

Who are the great modernists in your opinion?

[jochanaan]

Who are the great modernists in your opinion?

Schoenberg.  Ives.  Webern.  Varèse.  Babbitt (for better or worse).  Boulez.  Stockhausen.  Carter.  Crumb.  And probably Wuorinen, Ferneyhough, and Birtwhistle, although I'm not yet familiar with their music.  I should also add that not all of those are technically "last-century composers" since several are still alive in the present century.   Also, this is by no means an exhaustive list.  I'm not such an expert on modernism that I can claim any right or ability to make any absolute judgments.

(Notice that I haven't included Stravinsky, who after his two great modernist masterpieces Petrushka and The Rite of Spring chose the path of Neoclassicism for several decades and only came to serialism when it was already well-established as a viable alternative to tonality.  Nor Bartók, whose most radical innovations were firmly based in Hungarian folk music.)

[bwv 1080]

If it is indeed gone, what has replaced it?  "Nature abhors a vacuum."

why does it need something to replace it?  Nature seems to like vacuums just fine

[Henk]

Not at all!  And in fact I don't see how you could have gotten that from my statement.

"It could be argued that the most radical of last century's composers were the Romantics' true inheritors, while more conservative composers actually broke with the Romantic trend of ever-increasing innovation and complexity."

Ok, understand now. The accent is on the word "true" referring not to the late-romantic composers, what would be normal, but to the innovaters.

I like this view really!

But what about Sibelius or Shostakovich, doing quite advanced things? Innovators or conservative composers?

[Henk]

Schoenberg.  Ives.  Webern.  Varèse.  Babbitt (for better or worse).  Boulez.  Stockhausen.  Carter.  Crumb.  And probably Wuorinen, Ferneyhough, and Birtwhistle, although I'm not yet familiar with their music.  I should also add that not all of those are technically "last-century composers" since several are still alive in the present century.  Also, this is by no means an exhaustive list.  I'm not such an expert on modernism that I can claim any right or ability to make any absolute judgments.

(Notice that I haven't included Stravinsky, who after his two great modernist masterpieces Petrushka and The Rite of Spring chose the path of Neoclassicism for several decades and only came to serialism when it was already well-established as a viable alternative to tonality.  Nor Bartók, whose most radical innovations were firmly based in Hungarian folk music.)

However Debussy, Ravel, Bartok, Stravinsky made music that wants to a affirm life, the self (upwarding) and had much influence considering this, the self instead of the late-romantics want to deny life (downwarding).

And the twelve-tone system was not a good development at first at all, meaning "equal rights" in music. When it evolved to serialism however things got better and with "new music" it has arrived somewhere. But the inspiration came from Debussy, Bartok, Stravinsky and Messiaen then and less from Schoenberg.

Henk

[jochanaan]

"It could be argued that the most radical of last century's composers were the Romantics' true inheritors, while more conservative composers actually broke with the Romantic trend of ever-increasing innovation and complexity."

Ok, understand now. The accent is on the word "true" referring not to the late-romantic composers, what would be normal, but to the innovaters.

I like this view really!

Thanks!  I didn't think my original statement was that unclear.

But what about Sibelius or Shostakovich, doing quite advanced things? Innovators or conservative composers?

Betwixt and between.  Sibelius "looked forward by looking back" in his harmonic and orchestrational vocabulary, and Shostakovich's innovations, while unique to him, were more a recombination of already-occurring trends than truly radical innovations.  This in no way lessens their uniqueness and greatness.

[Superhorn]

  BWV , or is it BMW, what makes you think that our orchestras are
"dying out" and "petrifying", or that they will do so in the future?
The music of Mozart,Haydn,Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Bruckner ,Mahler and other great composers of orchestral music isn't dated in the least bit, nor will it ever be.
  Nor is the music of Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Britten, Tippett, Copland,Ives, Elgar,Ravel,Debussy, Martinu, Szymanowski, and other great 20th century composers. The financial problems they face in America and the possible "graying" of the audiences aren't their fault in the least bit.
  The wonderful thing is the sheer diversity of what they play.
   Old music,new music, familiar works, and unfamiliar ones. 
   There are always going to be new generations of young people who will eventually discover the music of the past and then perhaps,that of the 20th and 21st centuries.
  Whatever its problems, the symphony orchestra is very much alive and kicking, and reports of its death are greatly exaggerated.


                                         
 

[gomro]

Music of Boulez, Rihm and followers is like a toxic.

You misspelled "tonic."

[jochanaan]

why does it need something to replace it?  Nature seems to like vacuums just fine

Oh really?  That's not what I see.  Folks of all ages want music, and if they aren't connected to the classical masterworks they'll find something.  The only difference is in who sets the styles and who pays the pipers.  In 18th- and 19th-century Europe, it was usually the royalty and nobility; now (for better or worse) it's Wall Street, Madison Avenue and Hollywood.

[eyeresist]

I mean pampering as a condition to listen to music. I mean not just to enjoy music. Enjoying music is pampering.

It could be argued that the most radical of last century's composers were the Romantics' true inheritors, while more conservative composers actually broke with the Romantic trend of ever-increasing innovation and complexity.

But to what end did the Romantics innovate? To shock the bourgeois (épater la bourgeoisie) is really a very bourgeois ambition. Rather childish too. Same can be said of the idea of art appreciation as some sort of combination of painful duty and self-improvement regimen.

[max]

If it is indeed gone, what has replaced it?  "Nature abhors a vacuum."

...which is the reason you can throw ANYTHING into it and there is ALWAYS something available. You may notice there is allot available these days! Nature doesn't distinguish between Sid Vicious - an oldie, I know - and a Beethoven quartet, an even older oldie! At the end of the day what difference does it really make?

[jochanaan]

But to what end did the Romantics innovate? To shock the bourgeois (épater la bourgeoisie) is really a very bourgeois ambition. Rather childish too. Same can be said of the idea of art appreciation as some sort of combination of painful duty and self-improvement regimen.

Very few of the great composers, Romantic or recent, desire merely to shock the bourgeois or anyone else; they've got bigger, more visionary ideas to develop.  That's why I love them--not out of "painful duty and self-improvement," but because one of the great pleasures in my life is to have my mind expanded.