Audiences hate modern classical music because their brains cannot cope

[mahler10th]

CAUTION: LONG BUT FASCINATING POST
The German newspaper Die Zeit published a more nuanced and much more interesting article on a similar subject several months ago. Near the end, it also presents a fascinating idea for the presentation of new music to audiences.

Please thank your father for a brilliantly translated piece, the contents of which make perfect  sense to me and opens it up to a wider English speaking audience.  I have printed it off for future reference - and for me, there is a great idea in placing 'new' music with corresponding or equally evocative images / art.  There is a very good chance I would listen to Schoenberg and his cronies a lot more working through this idea.

[some guy]

a more nuanced and much more interesting article

And more full of error!

New Music is hard work.  Neuroscientists and musical scientists research, why the sounds of Schőnberg, Stockhausen, and Cage only appeal to a tiny minority.

All art music, even the older stuff, is hard work, then, as is pointed out later in this same article, apparently with no sense of contradiction. It certainly appeals to only a tiny minority. (Three out of a hundred is tiny, right?)

Schőnberg has been dead for 58 years, and his twelve tone series have no more found their way into popular culture than the electronic experiments of Karlheinz Stockhausen or the sound collages of Pierre Henry.

All of these sounds and patterns have found their way into movies, as James just pointed out. You can't get more "popular culture" than the movies, eh?

New Music has gotten old in loneliness, and the contemporaries of "contemporary classical music" are slowly dying off.

I'm not dead, yet! (I'm getting better!!)

The tiny audiences for New Music, who often only come to the concert because it is part of a series, often sits in incomprehension before this music.

Wow. The generalities and assumptions of this article are truly breathtaking!

...they will play new music, and in parallel musical scientists, brain researchers, and philosophers will give their views of the phenomenon.  And in fact, new research results can contribute to the clarification of the question.

Well, not until someone gets serious about identifying WHO they play the music to. (And what, particular music they're playing. What, specifically does "new music" refer to? This whole thing sounds very UNscientific to me.)

...actual events in the brain.

A chimera. Sure there are actual events in brains. But as to what those are or what they mean.... And there certainly is no such thing as "the brain," as witness the vast difference between the actual event in my brain when live electronic improv (read "non-repetitious, complex sounds, non-sequential") is going on and the actual event in someone else's brain who's not um quite as taken with random noises as I am.

The researchers are astonished, how plastic our brains are.

"Howls of derisive laughter, Bruce!" How extraordinary. Researchers into the human brain astonished at its plasticity. Wow. (News flash: Scientists in Antarctica astonished at how cold it is down there.)

But agreed

The brain can "tune in to" the most different musical styles, and it changes constantly in the course of doing so.

...this is how we learn music. At first, we isolate out of the many possible tonal scales the one that dominates in our culture.  This becomes a preference that we can hardly escape from.  The brain is especially good at noticing small melodic elements – a musical phrase – which occurs again later in the piece.  The recognition of repetition is an experience of success that lets us understand the music.

    It is precisely these experiences of success that New Music denies the listener.

Yes. We could really use a workable definition of "New Music" here. Or, better, an acknowledgement that perhaps "New Music" is not going to be a useful term for this particular discussion. Just taking "new music" to mean "twelve tone" (what? that old stuff? apparently), that music is full of clearly discernable patterns and repetition.

Psychological experiments have shown that only very experienced fans of this musical genre who have spent years on the task are able to do this.  The short term memory of most people is simply overwhelmed.

Hmmm. What experiments could these have been? What were their assumptions? How did the experimenters go about setting up the experiment? And how did the "very experienced fans" get to be fans in the first place? What was their motivation? Must have given them pleasure somehow, even before the "very experienced" part happened. Must have been that way for the "very experienced" part to have even happened. That seems such obvious and simple logic....

why the public reacts with rejection

There's that old ahistoricity thing I mentioned earlier. The historical record shows that "the public" was rejecting "new" music in the middle of the NINEteen century, and rejecting "neo-classical" pastiche as well as avant garde. If it was recent, merely, it was rejected. Nothing to do with brains recognizing things after training or anything. (And, again, how do the trained brains get that way? Must be something pleasurable in "new music" or the "training" would never happen.)

Do Schőnberg, Stockhausen & Co. leave us cold because...

Um. Schoenberg, Stockhausen & Co. do not leave "us" cold.

There are other highly complex musical directions, from Bach's fugues to modern jazz, which sound foreign at first, but are sufficiently fascinating that many people are attracted to them.

Well, damn. Ain't that what I was just tryin' ta say? (When did the "tiny" minority turn into "many people"? Jeepers!!)

Why doesn't New Music manage it?

Ah. That new music thing doesn't include modern jazz apparently. Well, of course, New Music does manage it.

Our brains get great pleasure from the expectation game, and modern composers systematically make it difficult for the brain.

Hmmm, let's see. Our brains get pleasure from all sorts of things. And one person's brain gets pleasure where another person's brain gets only pain. "Modern composers" (who are apparently as monolithic as "the public"!!) do nothing of the sort.

completely unpredictable notes are not even recognized as music, but rather only as strange sounds – and nobody has fun with that.

First (in Superhorn's generalization) I'm not human. Now I'm nobody. What a downer this day is turning out to be!! 

"We cannot make music", writes David Huron, "that does not stimulate the machinery of human pleasure, and expect that people will in some mysterious way find the music irresistible."

We cannot limit what stimulates human pleasure to only a few things, writes some guy, and expect to get useful results. Find the people who find "new music" irresistible and then perhaps pay attention to them and their experience (rather than either marginalizing or ignoring it). That will lead to very different conclusions, at the very least!

...is [modern music] intentionally without pleasure, simply an intellectual game?

Is chess intentionally without pleasure, simply an intellectual game? (Note to Christoph Drősser: Games are fun!!)

Those who have made the effort to learn to listen can certainly be emotionally moved.

Good point. Now think one more thought: how did it come about that "those" made the effort in the first place? (And why is that crucial question--the crucial question for this discussion--always left unasked?)

"I also get goose bumps, when I recognize a twelve-tone series again", says Eckart Altenműller.  "But this comes from decades of practice in New Music.  I wouldn't expect that of my secretary."  The secretary agrees unconditionally.

The time scale here seems completely whacked to me. I first started listening to twentieth century music in 1972 with Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra. In a matter of days, I was listening to his Miraculous Mandarin as well. In a matter of weeks, I was entranced by Stravinsky's Les Noces.In a matter of months, I was being fascinated by Carter's double concerto and Variations (oh, and that delightful Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello and Harpsichord). By 1982 (there's a decade for you--one), I was listening to music written in 1982. And everything between 1943 and 1982, too. Mumma, Eimert, Cage, Stockhausen, Oliveros, Galas, Reich, everything. (And a fair bit of that old timey stuff, too. You know, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Varese....)

With their continual striving for innovation and for new sounds, composers leave the broad public behind – a bizarre characteristic of Western classical music.

A bizarre observation. The broad public rejected "new music" several decades before Schoenberg. Before Schoenberg was even born.

...the music of the old masters from previous centuries is repeated again and again with exquisite precision...

This only really got going around 1820 or so, peaking in 1860 or 70, but continuing pretty strong right up to 2010.

...if a modern composer were to use notes in the manner of Mozart, he would immediately be accused of kitsch.

Mozart would be the most perplexed were he able to witness such a thing. The idea in Mozart's time was that you wrote new things, things which simply supplanted the old things. That's just how it was then. 

And, at long last--Brian, please thank your father for me (for us?) for translating this article. That was a lovely thing for him to have done. I am (we are?) most appreciative!

[drogulus]

     Certainly the thesis is correct. There's nothing wrong with either the audience or the music except that you get a mismatch when audiences expect one level of difficulty and get another. And I don't think the problem is hostility to the new, because difficulty can extend beyond unfamiliarity, especially as in the case of the ultras who intended it to be so. Utopian ideas about the infinite plasticity of human tastes and perceptions play an obvious role.

     As for why difficult music is accepted in films, it's a matter of a wider context in which music is playing a supporting role.

     

Interesting how ahistorical such studies are, or at least how ahistorical the conclusions are, and how ahistorical discussions about "modern" music continue to be.

Audiences started to hate modern classical music, noticably and with malice aforethought, around 1810, and really hated it (contents of "it" different by then) by 1860. By then, audiences hated anything new, both avant garde and the consciously regressive. Writing like Mozart in the mid nineteenth century got you nowhere. (Writing like Brahms or even Sibelius in the early 21st century gets you everywhere!!)

The reasons for the hate were many and various, and none of them had to do (or maybe I should say "few of them had to do") with their brains being unable to cope. Besides, look at the modern music that people were hating then. Aside from the stuff that's disappeared, this is Schumann and Liszt and Wagner, folks like that. Bread and butter to today's listener, and apparently just chock-full of patterns to recognize.

Otherwise, I want to point out in regard to this thread's title, that Mr. Ball concluded in his study that listeners do NOT have trouble because their brains cannot cope!! ("...it is not because they are in some way too musically stupid to appreciate it.) That's the assertion we should be/could be talking about! [As Karl just did in the post that appeared while I was writing this.]

      Yet in time people come to accept and even love some new music. So the answer must lie in the common characteristics of music which is not accepted after, say, half a century. What do you think? Could it be that some difficulties can be resolved and others can't?

      The problem is ideological at bottom. If you think that art can't be wrong then the audience is. If you think the audience can't be wrong the art, or artist, is. Either one is simplistic in my view. Art isn't wrong if I don't like it, it's intended for someone else, perhaps, and I might guess correctly in some cases it's intended for an idiot, or an art snob, or someone else who isn't like me. Then again I change my mind, too.

[DavidW]

Interesting how ahistorical such studies are, or at least how ahistorical the conclusions are, and how ahistorical discussions about "modern" music continue to be.

Audiences started to hate modern classical music, noticably and with malice aforethought, around 1810, and really hated it (contents of "it" different by then) by 1860. By then, audiences hated anything new, both avant garde and the consciously regressive. Writing like Mozart in the mid nineteenth century got you nowhere. (Writing like Brahms or even Sibelius in the early 21st century gets you everywhere!!)

The reasons for the hate were many and various, and none of them had to do (or maybe I should say "few of them had to do") with their brains being unable to cope. Besides, look at the modern music that people were hating then. Aside from the stuff that's disappeared, this is Schumann and Liszt and Wagner, folks like that. Bread and butter to today's listener, and apparently just chock-full of patterns to recognize.

I don't think this is true at all.  Wagner, Schumann, Liszt unpopular?  Um no.  Even Mahler's alleged unpopularity in his time is a myth, he was actually well received.  In fact composers at that time had a popularity not established ever before.  These weren't the days where a composer spent most of their time in private employment to only be heard and known by a small local audience.  No languishing in a church writing cantatas or symphonies in an estate, no we are talking about composers writing symphonies and operas to be noticed by many.  They were the 19th century equivalent of rock stars.

The obsession with performing and listening to old music instead of new is more of a 20th century phenomenon.

[karlhenning]

I think it could be commercial.

[DavidW]

Dave you're wrong about Mahler ...for the most part it took time and decades of championing to get him established & understood by the public on the circuit so to speak.

Well Alex Ross' book debunked it as a myth.  He had good turnouts for his premieres, not always good, but more often than not.  And conductors kept playing him throughout the years.  Certainly he is more popular now than he was then, but he wasn't really as reviled or unpopular as many make him out to be.  It's more of a romanticized image of him than reality.

[some guy]

David, the obsession with performing and listening to old music instead of new began quite early in the nineteen century. 1810 or so. And grew until it peaked in the 1860s and 70s, depending on which city you're looking at.

This is all a matter of public record, as gathered together in William Weber's The Great Transformation of Musical Taste: Concert Programming from Haydn to Brahms. The underlying assumption of the 18th century, that music was something for today, were replaced in the 19th century with the idea of a canon. That music was something from the past to be revered. The four or five people we consider "the greats" were all canonized in the first three decades of the nineteenth century, which is when the term "classical music" entered the lexicon, by the way, 1810+ for Germany and 1835/36 for England. And we don't seem to have replaced those particular idols, all of whom would doubtless have been very perplexed by the idolatry. Except maybe that one guy. (You know!)

We think all these things about audiences complaining about new music and the notion that composers were being purposely obscure were twentieth century phenomena. I did, too.

Apparently not.

[DavidW]

In fact, Scorsese's latest (Shutter Island) uses music from Cage, Ligeti, Feldman, Scelsi, Adams, Penderecki etc.

Just wanted to say that the bit from Penderecki's 3rd (the main theme for the movie) is awesome.  Really dark and menacing.  There are other musical pieces used that were achingly melancholic and beautiful.  Say what you want about the film, but the musical choices were pretty darned good.

[greg]

Well Alex Ross' book debunked it as a myth.  He had good turnouts for his premieres, not always good, but more often than not.  And conductors kept playing him throughout the years.  Certainly he is more popular now than he was then, but he wasn't really as reviled or unpopular as many make him out to be.  It's more of a romanticized image of him than reality.

A bit off-topic and random, but what about Bruckner? I've heard that most people hated his music, but is this just a myth, too?

[DavidW]

A bit off-topic and random, but what about Bruckner? I've heard that most people hated his music, but is this just a myth, too?

I was actually reading about that this very week in the Vintage Guide to Classical Music and Swafford seems to think that alot of it has to do with his boorish behavior, and his third symphony only had like 20 people attend the premiere, but he still just managed to get an audience by his late works.  That might be too simplistic though, I'm sure a Brucknerian would know more in detail.

[Brian]

A bit off-topic and random, but what about Bruckner? I've heard that most people hated his music, but is this just a myth, too?

He was a pretty unfortunate personality. Not in the actively annoying sense, but in the sense that the poor guy wasn't exactly suited to being well-known. Depressed, without confidence, reclusive. Other composers overcame more acute personality obstacles on their way to stardom, of course...

[secondwind]

Since the big snow in the DC area has been melting and I have been expected to go back to work, I haven't had as much time to keep up with GMG as I'd like, so I have just now read this topic, slogging through from the first entry to the most recent. 

The discussions and the articles quoted have led me to reflect on myself as a listener.  I grew up with sounds of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven in my ears--along with Motown, the Beatles, Johann Strauss, Elvis, John Philip Sousa, George Gershwin and Cole Porter.  Oh, and probably Rogers and Hammerstein, as well.  These sounds created in my mind and in my ear some sense of "normal", some ideas of what music is, and some expectations of what goes with what, musically speaking.   I think that a lot of my reactions to music as an adult have been influenced by this musical heritage from my childhood.  If a piece of music used similar patterns to music I was accustomed to, and if it satisfied the expectations that I had of music, I was likely to accept it and like it.  If it did not match any pattern in my mind, if it did not satisfy my expectations, I was much more likely to reject it.  I usually wouldn't have had a terminology to describe my reasons for rejecting some music--I would just have said "I don't like it." 

My musical tastes for most of my life have been pretty conventional.  But recently, in the last couple of years or so, I have been listening to more 20th century music, and I think I have been building new neural pathways in my mind, recognizing new patterns in music.  For example, music of Shostakovitch has been speaking to me in the past year or so, whereas if I had heard it even 5 or 10 years ago, I would have said "Oh, please put on some Mozart or Beethoven."   Something that was once so unfamiliar to me that I could not recognize beauty in it has now become more familiar, familiar enough to be beautiful.  Obviously, the music itself has not changed, so I assume that I have changed, or evolved, as a listener.   

[Josquin des Prez]

The ultimate point is that any "patternizing" imposed by the brain is subjective

Nonsense of course, but there's no point in arguing. If you want to believe 2 + 2 = 5, who am i to interfere?

[kishnevi]

David, the obsession with performing and listening to old music instead of new began quite early in the nineteen century. 1810 or so. And grew until it peaked in the 1860s and 70s, depending on which city you're looking at.

This is all a matter of public record, as gathered together in William Weber's The Great Transformation of Musical Taste: Concert Programming from Haydn to Brahms. The underlying assumption of the 18th century, that music was something for today, were replaced in the 19th century with the idea of a canon. That music was something from the past to be revered. The four or five people we consider "the greats" were all canonized in the first three decades of the nineteenth century, which is when the term "classical music" entered the lexicon, by the way, 1810+ for Germany and 1835/36 for England. And we don't seem to have replaced those particular idols, all of whom would doubtless have been very perplexed by the idolatry. Except maybe that one guy. (You know!)

We think all these things about audiences complaining about new music and the notion that composers were being purposely obscure were twentieth century phenomena. I did, too.

Apparently not.

The four or five people we consider "the greats" were all canonized in the first three decades of the nineteenth century, which is when the term "classical music" entered the lexicon, by the way, 1810+ for Germany and 1835/36 for England. And we don't seem to have replaced those particular idols, all of whom would doubtless have been very perplexed by the idolatry. Except maybe that one guy.

So Brahms and Tchaikovksy were canonized as among "the greats" before they were born, and Beethoven before his late period was underway...
Well, that's an interesting concept.  (Unless he's using the term  "Classical" in its most restricted sense, to refer to the music of the generation or two that immediately preceded Beethoven).

On the main topic, I can explain very quickly why I don't like most serialist/serialist style music--it gives me a headache.  Literally.

I think part of the problem is that serialism, in essence, wanted to throw out all the important elements of Euro-American music and replace it with something else.  And the public wasn't ready to follow them. 

I think it works better with smaller instrumental forces than with larger groups.   That struck me when I was listening to the Warner Ligeti box, having purchased not long before Aimard's recording of his Etudes and the Artemis Quartet recording of the String Quartets.  I could follow the music rather easily with the solo piano and the quartets, but on the large scale works all I ended up with was a long wash of sounds blending into each other endlessly until a dissonance decided to rumble into view and send everything screeching away in a new direction that became equally boring.  And further experimentation with other composers has confirmed that idea.  (Although even on the small scale works I sometimes don't find much to interest me.  For instance, Quartet for the End of Time, despite numerous listenings.)

[Bogey]

I love Scorsese (Kubrick too), he's remarkably consistent and all over the map ... even if it's not his greatest film (a tall measure!) it's probably 10x better than most else out there right now! I plan on seeing it this weekend... and i'll be listening for the music on this one!

Perfect post on Scorsese, James.

[Josquin des Prez]

The four or five people we consider "the greats" were all canonized in the first three decades of the nineteenth century, which is when the term "classical music" entered the lexicon, by the way, 1810+ for Germany and 1835/36 for England. And we don't seem to have replaced those particular idols, all of whom would doubtless have been very perplexed by the idolatry.

None of which is even remotely true. I wonder where you people get this type of information.

[Josquin des Prez]

Perfect post on Scorsese, James.

The Departed still sucked huge amounts of ass.

[DavidW]

I love Scorsese (Kubrick too), he's remarkably consistent and all over the map ... even if it's not his greatest film (a tall measure!) it's probably 10x better than most else out there right now! I plan on seeing it this weekend... and i'll be listening for the music on this one!

I actually liked the movie, I saw it last weekend.  Not his best, but the only thing that got me out to the theater since the year started.

[Josquin des Prez]

I saw it at the theatre ... loved it.

I'm sure you did. It still was a gigantic failure of a film, an entirely sub-par effort compared to some of his previous work.

[Bogey]

I'm sure you did. It still was a gigantic failure of a film.