21st Century aesthetics

[jochanaan]

I can't actually see you because of the online thing, Jo; is there a wall in front of you that you're talking to? 

Oh, is that what that flat thing is?  I thought it might be somebody actually listening.  Silly me!

[stlukesguild]

Franco- By definition, a composer alive today and writing music today is writing music of "the time".

Some Guy- Ah, if it were only this easy.... There's this thing called anachronism, invented by those clever Greek people (who came up with a word for everything, seemingly) to cover what I'm referring to, the phenomenon (also Greek, see what I mean?) of someone who imagines living in another time would have been better, and so who tries to imitate the conditions of that time in his or her own life. Of course, composers today who are writing music as if it were still 1870 also own refrigerators and use cell phones and perhaps even have an mp3 player or two. And one could argue, and perhaps you would, that that phenomenon is a characteristic of this time, because people are indeed doing it now.

But there's something vaguely uncomfortable about that simple notion, don't you think? That whatever is in a time is also of a time. So if a certain group started wearing Elizabethan attire and speaking the language of Shakespeare in 2009 (other than at Renaissance fairs), then that would be of the current time. What's wrong with that, I think, is that we can identify it as different from what's characteristic of 2009. We know that there was a time when people dressed and talked that way, and that that time is past. We no longer, generally speaking, believe in things like the music of the spheres or in any pre-Newtonian conceptions of the universe. We no longer share assumptions about reality like gravity being an attraction, like that between two people. That a rock falling to earth is attracted to the larger stone, as it were, that's why it rushes towards it. That's part of the reality of 1600, too, but no one's interested in imitating that. Only the superficials, the externals are imitatable.

Some Guy... didn't we already have this argument? In another time and another place, perchance? Franco argument is relevant in that it is not up to you or I or any group of self-appointed "serious artists" to decide what is or is not "anachronistic". Now certainly I agree that art which brings nothing new... nothing original to the individual... to the dialog... art which is essentially a "pastiche" or an imitation of an older art is not probably not going to sure as representative of its time. On the other hand, a great many artistic movements began by rebelling against the immediate past and building upon older models. In the visual arts, for example, the movement of Neo-Classicism rejected what were seen as the excesses of the Rococo and the Baroque... and instead they turned to the classicism of the Renaissance (especially as represented by Poussin and Raphael) and the classicism of ancient Roman art. The resulting art, which denied most of the art of the preceding two centuries, became the "art of its time" for the very reason that the artists involved were among the strongest artists of the time and produced some of the work that continued to resonate with later artists and art lovers.

I agree that it would be highly unlikely that a composer writing pseudo-Gregorian chants, pseudo-Baroque concerti grossi, or pseudo-classical symphonies in the style of Haydn and Mozart would be likely to become the art of our time. On the other hand... I don't buy the notion that the art which will survive will necessarily be that which is the most experimental. Rachmaninoff and Puccini continue to speak to us as well as Stravinsky and Prokofiev. A great many of those not altogether ignorant of music find that Copland, Samuel Barber, Korngold, Richard Strauss, and even Alan Hovhaness resonate for them more than Schoenberg, Ligetti, or Cage ever did. Indeed... a great many of today's composers of some real merit build upon the music of the past in a manner that ignores much of the last 50 or 75 years (atonalism?). Arvo Part is surely more indebted to medieval modal chants than he is to much of what some self appointed arbiters of "true music" would have us believe is the only valid direction. Osvaldo Golijov has built a body of impressive work from influences as diverse as  Latin-American music, Middle-Eastern traditions, klezmer, Spanish music, and Western classical music. Jazz, rock music, folk music, blue grass, electronic music, Middle-Eastern music, Latin-American music, Japanese music, minimalism, Byzantine chant, Romanticism, classicism, the Baroque, etc... etc... Any one of these I feel is an equally valid source upon which a talented composer might create music of real merit. The notion that it is only a certain self appointed group of innovators who represent the best music of our time and upon which all future music must evolve is pretentious beyond all measure. Onanistic experimentation for the sake of experimentation can be as boring as yet another mediocre attempt as Romantic bombast.

It is not up to you, or anyone, to decide what style is appropriate for a composer writing today.  It is only up to you to decide for yourself if the music written by any composer today is meaningful to you.

Well I cannot decide for Jennifer Higdon, say, what will inspire Jennifer Higdon. But I can listen to her music, and since I listen to a lot of other composers, I can hear that she's writing as if large chunks of the past century never happened. And I can hear that her tonality is traditional in a way that Ravel's, for instance, was not. That is because other things have happened, and I know that they have happened, and I can hear that she is writing as if they haven't.

And I can deprecate that.

And so your value judgments should be assumed to outweigh those of others... many of whom (again) are not ignorant in the field of music? I can't speak of Higdon... not haven't heard enough to make any judgment one way or another... but I can say that there are other composers who plainly embrace certain "older" musical values (tonalism)... Barber, Hovhaness, Daniel Catan, Copland, Bernstein, Ned Rorem, William Bolcom... who are not without merit. I might also suggest that there are more than a few who would suggest that figures such as Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, and Thelonius Monk are no less innovative than Schoenberg, Ligetti, and Cage... and yet are strikingly far more "accessible" to an audience... in spite of the passage of over half a century.

Obviously, it is meaningful to the composer no matter what you may think about his chosen method of expression.

Of course. And perhaps it is meaningful for some people to live in log cabins and hunt buffalo. And they are free to do so if they can.

Lovely. If you do not agree with that which I perceive as meaningful then surely you must be some sort of aesthetic Neanderthal, eh? And the possibility that the future may just find all that you value as the "true art of our time" to be worthless drivel?

But creative people are supposed to be making something new, hein? Creating, not recreating. Creating, not mimicking (however important mimicking is for learning).

And who decides how "new" something must be to have any real merit? Do we assume the more experimental and incomprehensible a work is the better it is? "I don't get it. It's meaningless. It must be great?" Stravinsky, Alban Berg, and Schoenberg  are clearly more innovative and experimental than Richard Strauss, Rachmaninoff, and Puccini... yet to argue that one group is inherently superior to the other is arguable. Stockhausen is far more experimental than Copland or Bernstein... yet is his work ultimately better music? Ultimately, music must continue to speak to an audience as music without the historical context. Caravaggio, Degas, Monet, Matisse, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, William Faulkner, Beethoven, Ravel, Stravinsky... each created art that initially shocked the audiences... although it is questionable as to whether the intent was ever to do so. These works no longer shock... or no longer shock for the same reasons that they once did. Baudelaire's eroticism and vulgarity now seem tame... and yet he continues to shock because of the strength of his original voice.

What we call romantic music was new when it was being done in the nineteenth century. It was fresh and startling and revelatory--and it pissed off audiences just as Schoenberg still seems capable of doing (talk of being out of time!!). But it has become, as all things must, familiar and comfortable. It may feed a part of our souls that now needs that food (now, because in 1730, say, our souls evidently did not need it), but it is no longer fresh and startling and revelatory. We may like the sounds of 1870 so much that we crave the music written now that mimics that time. But it's not the music of that time. It's a reproduction, a pastiche. It shouldn't satisfy us, it shouldn't satisfy its creators. But, of course, as you pointed out, it's not for me to decide what should or should not satisfy anyone else but me.

Certainly... and who would suggest that what is needed is a return to 19th century Romanticism? The assumption seems to be that if one would move beyond or around the atonalism of Schoenberg and those who followed in his footsteps that the only possibility is a return to 19th century Romanticism. Yet do not John Adams and Philip Glass and Arvo Part and the whole of Minimalism represent another possibility? Is there not further possibilities to be found in Jazz? In the classical traditions of China or India or Japan or the Middle-East? What of the eclecticism of Golijov or Bolcom? Who has decided that Bach or Monteverdi no longer hold anything of worth to the contemporary composer? Did not Stravinsky model The Rite of Spring (almost certainly THE central Modernist composition) upon the most ancient of models?

[some guy]

it is not up to you or I or any group of self-appointed "serious artists" to decide what is or is not "anachronistic".

I listen to a lot of music. Indeed, my current job could be described as simply that, listening to music, and talking to composers and performers. And I have been involved with music all my life. So I suppose I may be forgiven for having an opinion or two about it. Indeed, you have opinions about it too. Hey Presto!

It is up to every person, self-appointed or not, to engage. To listen, to read, to think, and to express. Or at least that's my opinion!

Having said that, I'd now like to see if we could get back to the discussion--of the ideas of 21st century aesthetics, that is, not of whether or not someone who has been involved with music and particularly the music of this time (in the past hundred+ concerts I've attended since August 18, most of the music has been from that last eight years or so) can have opinions or make decisions!

I don't buy the notion that the art which will survive will necessarily be that which is the most experimental.

OK. Has anyone promoted this notion? When someone does, that will be the time (it's always about time, isn't it?) to bring this up.

Rachmaninoff and Puccini continue to speak to us as well as Stravinsky and Prokofiev.

And Grieg and Telemann and Machaut, too, I dare say. But none of my comments was about whether older music can speak to us except the one where I remarked that older music speaks so strongly to some people that they will only admit composers of today who mimic older styles and techniques.

A great many of those not altogether ignorant of music find that Copland, Samuel Barber, Korngold, Richard Strauss, and even Alan Hovhaness resonate for them more than Schoenberg, Ligetti, or Cage ever did.

Yes. But I was talking about composers composing today. What is possible for those people. What is valid? Do I think Ligeti's music is more valid for this time than Korngold's? Why yes, yes I do. (You see? Concealed in your post and in Franco's post is the judgment that Barber, say, is equally valid as Cage, or even more valid. So you get to decide what's valid and I don't? Hahaha. No, we both get to decide, and then we get to defend our judgments in this public forum.)

Indeed... a great many of today's composers of some real merit build upon the music of the past in a manner that ignores much of the last 50 or 75 years (atonalism?). Arvo Part is surely more indebted to medieval modal chants than he is to much of what some self appointed arbiters of "true music" would have us believe is the only valid direction.

Aside from remarking that I (a self-appointed arbiter!) have never promoted a single valid direction, I'd like to point out that "of some real merit" is a judgment. Perhaps there are other arbiters (variously appointed) who would have us believe that Part and Golijov and the like are the only valid direction. Hmmmm. I wonder?

Osvaldo Golijov has built a body of impressive work from influences as diverse as  Latin-American music, Middle-Eastern traditions, klezmer, Spanish music, and Western classical music. Jazz, rock music, folk music, blue grass, electronic music, Middle-Eastern music, Latin-American music, Japanese music, minimalism, Byzantine chant, Romanticism, classicism, the Baroque, etc... etc... Any one of theOOKse I feel is an equally valid source upon which a talented composer might create music of real merit.

OK. The valid direction you promote here is polystylism. I disagree. But then I think there are a number of valid directions, with this in common--that it be beyond recycling. Not necessarily other than, but certainly beyond. That's all.

The notion that it is only a certain self appointed group of innovators who represent the best music of our time and upon which all future music must evolve is pretentious beyond all measure.

But, again, who has expressed this notion? (The only time I've seen it is in posts like yours. I.e., it looks to me like a straw man.) You do seem, by the way, quite enamored of the word "self appointed." That's three already so far.

And so your value judgments should be assumed to outweigh those of others... many of whom (again) are not ignorant in the field of music?

Sure. But everyone thinks their judgments are better than those of others. Why else express them? That this simple reality of the situation should be turned into a criticism of a judgment you disagree with is baffling. You think your judgments are better than mine, as does Franco. Otherwise, neither of you would have replied, would you? The important thing is not in whether I value my own judgments or not but in how I express and defend them.

Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, and Thelonius Monk are no less innovative than Schoenberg, Ligetti, and Cage... and yet are strikingly far more "accessible" to an audience... in spite of the passage of over half a century.

An audience, eh? Which one? I find Schoenberg, Ligeti, and Cage easier to listen to and enjoy than Davis, Ellington, or Monk, much as I also enjoy those three.

Obviously, it is meaningful to the composer no matter what you may think about his chosen method of expression.

Of course. And perhaps it is meaningful for some people to live in log cabins and hunt buffalo. And they are free to do so if they can.

Lovely. If you do not agree with that which I perceive as meaningful then surely you must be some sort of aesthetic Neanderthal, eh? And the possibility that the future may just find all that you value as the "true art of our time" to be worthless drivel?

No. I was referring to 19th century America. And nothing against living in log cabins, either, though I deprecate the hunting part! It's just that those things are not part of the ordinary life and values of the present time. And the future is not my concern. The present is more than sufficient. What my grandchildren or great grandchildren will value is neither here nor there. (I'm not so insecure as to need the accolades of unborn generations to enjoy the present.)

And who decides how "new" something must be to have any real merit?

Anyone who listens and understands and appreciates. You have been at some pains in your own post to promote the merits of several people I think are meritless. Do I question your decisions? Of course. (This is a discussion, after all!)

Do we assume the more experimental and incomprehensible a work is the better it is? "I don't get it. It's meaningless. It must be great?"

You're forgetting that some of us do not find these works incomprehensible. Indeed, it is out of our comprehension that we make judgments, surely. All of us. (You can only have come up with this scenario by conflating two distinct and incompatible viewpoints, that of someone who is bewildered and that of someone who understands.)

to argue that one group is inherently superior to the other is arguable.

Indeed, arguing is arguable.

Who has decided that Bach or Monteverdi no longer hold anything of worth to the contemporary composer?

I don't know. Has someone decided this?

[schweitzeralan]

...and mostly anything but "straightforward" in their use of tonality.

Prediction is always hazardous--you can't expect the next "genius" to appear on schedule--but I foresee an increasing blend of "World Music" and classical disciplines à la Hovhaness, Tan Dun, Golijov and Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble.  Far from believing such a trend will destroy classical music, I see it as perhaps the only way to keep it alive.  Farmers and ranchers know that the "purebred" strains of crops and livestock are least likely to thrive, while hybrids are consistently hardier and more vital.

Acute concept.  This may be quite likely, or something close to it. Its all conjectural @this point.

[schweitzeralan]

Franco- By definition, a composer alive today and writing music today is writing music of "the time".

Some Guy- Ah, if it were only this easy.... There's this thing called anachronism, invented by those clever Greek people (who came up with a word for everything, seemingly) to cover what I'm referring to, the phenomenon (also Greek, see what I mean?) of someone who imagines living in another time would have been better, and so who tries to imitate the conditions of that time in his or her own life. Of course, composers today who are writing music as if it were still 1870 also own refrigerators and use cell phones and perhaps even have an mp3 player or two. And one could argue, and perhaps you would, that that phenomenon is a characteristic of this time, because people are indeed doing it now.

But there's something vaguely uncomfortable about that simple notion, don't you think? That whatever is in a time is also of a time. So if a certain group started wearing Elizabethan attire and speaking the language of Shakespeare in 2009 (other than at Renaissance fairs), then that would be of the current time. What's wrong with that, I think, is that we can identify it as different from what's characteristic of 2009. We know that there was a time when people dressed and talked that way, and that that time is past. We no longer, generally speaking, believe in things like the music of the spheres or in any pre-Newtonian conceptions of the universe. We no longer share assumptions about reality like gravity being an attraction, like that between two people. That a rock falling to earth is attracted to the larger stone, as it were, that's why it rushes towards it. That's part of the reality of 1600, too, but no one's interested in imitating that. Only the superficials, the externals are imitatable.

Some Guy... didn't we already have this argument? In another time and another place, perchance? Franco argument is relevant in that it is not up to you or I or any group of self-appointed "serious artists" to decide what is or is not "anachronistic". Now certainly I agree that art which brings nothing new... nothing original to the individual... to the dialog... art which is essentially a "pastiche" or an imitation of an older art is not probably not going to sure as representative of its time. On the other hand, a great many artistic movements began by rebelling against the immediate past and building upon older models. In the visual arts, for example, the movement of Neo-Classicism rejected what were seen as the excesses of the Rococo and the Baroque... and instead they turned to the classicism of the Renaissance (especially as represented by Poussin and Raphael) and the classicism of ancient Roman art. The resulting art, which denied most of the art of the preceding two centuries, became the "art of its time" for the very reason that the artists involved were among the strongest artists of the time and produced some of the work that continued to resonate with later artists and art lovers.

I agree that it would be highly unlikely that a composer writing pseudo-Gregorian chants, pseudo-Baroque concerti grossi, or pseudo-classical symphonies in the style of Haydn and Mozart would be likely to become the art of our time. On the other hand... I don't buy the notion that the art which will survive will necessarily be that which is the most experimental. Rachmaninoff and Puccini continue to speak to us as well as Stravinsky and Prokofiev. A great many of those not altogether ignorant of music find that Copland, Samuel Barber, Korngold, Richard Strauss, and even Alan Hovhaness resonate for them more than Schoenberg, Ligetti, or Cage ever did. Indeed... a great many of today's composers of some real merit build upon the music of the past in a manner that ignores much of the last 50 or 75 years (atonalism?). Arvo Part is surely more indebted to medieval modal chants than he is to much of what some self appointed arbiters of "true music" would have us believe is the only valid direction. Osvaldo Golijov has built a body of impressive work from influences as diverse as  Latin-American music, Middle-Eastern traditions, klezmer, Spanish music, and Western classical music. Jazz, rock music, folk music, blue grass, electronic music, Middle-Eastern music, Latin-American music, Japanese music, minimalism, Byzantine chant, Romanticism, classicism, the Baroque, etc... etc... Any one of these I feel is an equally valid source upon which a talented composer might create music of real merit. The notion that it is only a certain self appointed group of innovators who represent the best music of our time and upon which all future music must evolve is pretentious beyond all measure. Onanistic experimentation for the sake of experimentation can be as boring as yet another mediocre attempt as Romantic bombast.

It is not up to you, or anyone, to decide what style is appropriate for a composer writing today.  It is only up to you to decide for yourself if the music written by any composer today is meaningful to you.

Well I cannot decide for Jennifer Higdon, say, what will inspire Jennifer Higdon. But I can listen to her music, and since I listen to a lot of other composers, I can hear that she's writing as if large chunks of the past century never happened. And I can hear that her tonality is traditional in a way that Ravel's, for instance, was not. That is because other things have happened, and I know that they have happened, and I can hear that she is writing as if they haven't.

And I can deprecate that.

And so your value judgments should be assumed to outweigh those of others... many of whom (again) are not ignorant in the field of music? I can't speak of Higdon... not haven't heard enough to make any judgment one way or another... but I can say that there are other composers who plainly embrace certain "older" musical values (tonalism)... Barber, Hovhaness, Daniel Catan, Copland, Bernstein, Ned Rorem, William Bolcom... who are not without merit. I might also suggest that there are more than a few who would suggest that figures such as Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, and Thelonius Monk are no less innovative than Schoenberg, Ligetti, and Cage... and yet are strikingly far more "accessible" to an audience... in spite of the passage of over half a century.

Obviously, it is meaningful to the composer no matter what you may think about his chosen method of expression.

Of course. And perhaps it is meaningful for some people to live in log cabins and hunt buffalo. And they are free to do so if they can.

Lovely. If you do not agree with that which I perceive as meaningful then surely you must be some sort of aesthetic Neanderthal, eh? And the possibility that the future may just find all that you value as the "true art of our time" to be worthless drivel?

But creative people are supposed to be making something new, hein? Creating, not recreating. Creating, not mimicking (however important mimicking is for learning).

And who decides how "new" something must be to have any real merit? Do we assume the more experimental and incomprehensible a work is the better it is? "I don't get it. It's meaningless. It must be great?" Stravinsky, Alban Berg, and Schoenberg  are clearly more innovative and experimental than Richard Strauss, Rachmaninoff, and Puccini... yet to argue that one group is inherently superior to the other is arguable. Stockhausen is far more experimental than Copland or Bernstein... yet is his work ultimately better music? Ultimately, music must continue to speak to an audience as music without the historical context. Caravaggio, Degas, Monet, Matisse, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, William Faulkner, Beethoven, Ravel, Stravinsky... each created art that initially shocked the audiences... although it is questionable as to whether the intent was ever to do so. These works no longer shock... or no longer shock for the same reasons that they once did. Baudelaire's eroticism and vulgarity now seem tame... and yet he continues to shock because of the strength of his original voice.

What we call romantic music was new when it was being done in the nineteenth century. It was fresh and startling and revelatory--and it pissed off audiences just as Schoenberg still seems capable of doing (talk of being out of time!!). But it has become, as all things must, familiar and comfortable. It may feed a part of our souls that now needs that food (now, because in 1730, say, our souls evidently did not need it), but it is no longer fresh and startling and revelatory. We may like the sounds of 1870 so much that we crave the music written now that mimics that time. But it's not the music of that time. It's a reproduction, a pastiche. It shouldn't satisfy us, it shouldn't satisfy its creators. But, of course, as you pointed out, it's not for me to decide what should or should not satisfy anyone else but me.

Certainly... and who would suggest that what is needed is a return to 19th century Romanticism? The assumption seems to be that if one would move beyond or around the atonalism of Schoenberg and those who followed in his footsteps that the only possibility is a return to 19th century Romanticism. Yet do not John Adams and Philip Glass and Arvo Part and the whole of Minimalism represent another possibility? Is there not further possibilities to be found in Jazz? In the classical traditions of China or India or Japan or the Middle-East? What of the eclecticism of Golijov or Bolcom? Who has decided that Bach or Monteverdi no longer hold anything of worth to the contemporary composer? Did not Stravinsky model The Rite of Spring (almost certainly THE central Modernist composition) upon the most ancient of models?

A good, "relevant" concept suitable for an interesting and important article.

[stlukesguild]

SLG (quote)- it is not up to you or I or any group of self-appointed "serious artists" to decide what is or is not "anachronistic".

SomeGuy- I listen to a lot of music. Indeed, my current job could be described as simply that, listening to music, and talking to composers and performers. And I have been involved with music all my life. So I suppose I may be forgiven for having an opinion or two about it. Indeed, you have opinions about it too.

A few quotes from the current Gramophone Magazine:

"The violin is no longer played; it is pulled, torn, drubbed... Friederich Vischer once observed, speaking of obscene pictures, that they stink to the eye. Tchaikovsky's violin concerto gives us for the first time the hideous notion that there can be music that stinks to the ear."- Eduard Hanslick

"The fourt movement is, in my opinion, so monstrous and tasteless ad in its grasp of Schiller's Ode so trivial that I cannot understand how a genius like Beethoven could have written it"- Louis Spohr on Beethoven's 9th

"Technically, he was highly gifted, but also severely limited. His music is well-constructed and effective, but monotonous in texture which consists, in essence, of artificial and gushing tunes... The enormous popular success some few of Rachmaninoff's works had in his lifetime is not likely to last and musicians have never regarded it with favor."- Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians (5th ed.)

All of these "critics", one might suppose, were also experienced and involved with music all their lives... some perhaps more than yourself... and yet they had the ability to make such glaringly inept judgments upon the music of their time because the music... the art of our time is always the most difficult to judge. We can easily ascertain that Shakespeare and Dante and Michelangelo and Vermeer and Mozart and Debussy were among the greatest artists of their time because time itself has filtered out the "also-rans" and the period pieces. Successive generations of artists and art lovers have continued to find certain artists continue to resonate profoundly... and others not so much. Had we asked Hanslick... perhaps THE leading critic of his day... he would have dismissed Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Bruckner, etc... from serious consideration while championing many minor followers of Beethoven and Brahms. The leading painters of the 1870s... at least according to the critical opinions of the 1870s... were not Degas, Monet, Manet, etc... but rather William Bouguereau, Alexandre Cabanel, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, and Frederick Leighton. In the 1970s the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull was not merely a popular success but a critical one as well. It was acclaimed by many as a "spiritual classic"... and yet today there are few who would admit to ever having owned the book without the greatest embarrassment.

Having said that, I'd now like to see if we could get back to the discussion--of the ideas of 21st century aesthetics, that is, not of whether or not someone who has been involved with music and particularly the music of this time (in the past hundred+ concerts I've attended since August 18, most of the music has been from that last eight years or so) can have opinions or make decisions!

I don't recall that being an issue in question. The larger question seems to be what direction best represents the "music of our time" and the music that will last. I don't believe that dispute has been settled nor that there is anything approaching a consensus.

SLG (quote)- I don't buy the notion that the art which will survive will necessarily be that which is the most experimental.

OK. Has anyone promoted this notion? When someone does, that will be the time (it's always about time, isn't it?) to bring this up.

Your dismissal of Higdon... and the larger sweeping dismissal of music that brings nothing new to the table but only offers up a rehash of Romanticism (examples?) suggests that you have a notion that a composer must attain a certain degree of "experimentation"... a certain clear modernity... before it might be seriously considered... yet we all know how Bach appeared grossly outdated during his own lifetime and yet his music is among the greatest ever composed. I actually like (or am intrigued by) what I have experienced by Penderecki, Takemitsu, Tan Dun, Ligetti, Arvo Part, Philip Glass, Rautavaara, and other Modern and Contemporary composers that lean more toward an experimental strain. I don't imagine, however, that their achievements negate the possibility that Romanticism (or any past style) may continue to inform and inspire talented contemporary and future composers. 

SLG (quote)- Rachmaninoff and Puccini continue to speak to us as well as Stravinsky and Prokofiev.

And Grieg and Telemann and Machaut, too, I dare say. But none of my comments was about whether older music can speak to us except the one where I remarked that older music speaks so strongly to some people that they will only admit composers of today who mimic older styles and techniques.

My point was not that older composers can still speak to us. My point was that composers such as Rachmaninoff and Puccini who were far more conservative... far less innovative (at least on the surface) can continue to resonate with us as much as the more clearly Modernist composers such as Stravinsky. By the same token it is quite possible that a contemporary composer might achieve something of lasting worth in spite of the fact that his or her work in written in a style that you personally find anachronistic. Indeed... Rachmaninoff has outlasted how many thousands of other Modernists who followed in e footsteps of Stravinsky or Schoenberg only to disappear from the pages of history?

SLG (quote)- A great many of those not altogether ignorant of music find that Copland, Samuel Barber, Korngold, Richard Strauss, and even Alan Hovhaness resonate for them more than Schoenberg, Ligetti, or Cage ever did.

Yes. But I was talking about composers composing today. What is possible for those people. What is valid? Do I think Ligeti's music is more valid for this time than Korngold's? Why yes, yes I do. (You see? Concealed in your post and in Franco's post is the judgment that Barber, say, is equally valid as Cage, or even more valid. So you get to decide what's valid and I don't? Hahaha. No, we both get to decide, and then we get to defend our judgments in this public forum.)

What is possible for composers living today is no different... at least in the sense that there is no single "right" direction. You think Ligetti or Cage is more valid than Korngold or Barber. I don't. I don't. Again... I like some of what I've heard of Ligetti but I don't actually find any of these 4 named composers to be truly brilliant. Richard Strauss... on the other hand... or Shostakovitch... that's another story altogether. Who do you actually feel to be the contemporary musical geniuses? Personally, I would find it difficult to answer this. There are composers whose work I dislike and there are composers whose work intrigues me... some even who seduce me... but in many ways I am less than certain that we are living in one of the great periods in music. This may sound like I am stuck in the past, but actually there are eras throughout history in which one art or another reached certain peaks... or waned. The painting of the Rococo as much as the painting of today surely appears quite lame in comparison to that of the Baroque... to say nothing of the Renaissance or early Modernism.

SLG (quote)- Osvaldo Golijov has built a body of impressive work from influences as diverse as  Latin-American music, Middle-Eastern traditions, klezmer, Spanish music, and Western classical music. Jazz, rock music, folk music, blue grass, electronic music, Middle-Eastern music, Latin-American music, Japanese music, minimalism, Byzantine chant, Romanticism, classicism, the Baroque, etc... etc... Any one of these I feel is an equally valid source upon which a talented composer might create music of real merit.

OK. The valid direction you promote here is polystylism. I disagree. But then I think there are a number of valid directions, with this in common--that it be beyond recycling. Not necessarily other than, but certainly beyond. That's all.

Again... who are these composers producing nothing more than recreations of the past? I don't question that there are those. In my own discipline (painting) we have those who paint not only as if the last 150 years of painting never happened, but also as if the last 150 years of history and all that wrought had never occurred. THis does not negate the works (some of which are quite brilliant) of artists who have rejected the art of the immediate past and chosen to build upon the art of older traditions... and yet still bring a unique vision to the work.

SLG (quote)- And so your value judgments should be assumed to outweigh those of others... many of whom (again) are not ignorant in the field of music?

Sure. But everyone thinks their judgments are better than those of others. Why else express them? That this simple reality of the situation should be turned into a criticism of a judgment you disagree with is baffling. You think your judgments are better than mine, as does Franco. Otherwise, neither of you would have replied, would you? The important thing is not in whether I value my own judgments or not but in how I express and defend them.

But your "defense" has been built upon sweeping statements of unnamed composers (excepting Higdon) writing as if the last century or so never existed... churning out mere "pastiches" of Romanticism... while anyone who suggests that it might be possible for an artist to reject much of the art of the immediate past and to build a body of work that resonates and is meaningful with people who may not be altogether ignorant of music... is dismissed with"

"Of course. And perhaps it is meaningful for some people to live in log cabins and hunt buffalo."


SLG (quote)- Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, and Thelonius Monk are no less innovative than Schoenberg, Ligetti, and Cage... and yet are strikingly far more "accessible" to an audience... in spite of the passage of over half a century.

An audience, eh? Which one? I find Schoenberg, Ligeti, and Cage easier to listen to and enjoy than Davis, Ellington, or Monk, much as I also enjoy those three.

And how many of those "not altogether ignorant of music" would choose Schoenberg, Cage or Stockhausen over Miles Davis or Monk? Or perhaps their opinions hold less weight?