Audiences hate modern classical music because their brains cannot cope

[DavidW]

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.)

I have the same experience too.  Love piano, chamber works, and selected chamber orchestra works (thinking Carter here), but the overwhelming complexity of a full blown atonal orchestral piece leaves me confused and dismayed.

[Bogey]

I have the same experience too.  Love piano, chamber works, and selected chamber orchestra works (thinking Carter here), but the overwhelming complexity of a full blown atonal orchestral piece leaves me confused and dismayed.

You have to admit though, it did work for Goldsmith in Alien.

[jochanaan]

Have we adequately considered the changes in society over the last several hundred years?  There is now a greater mix between the "intelligentsia" and other folks than ever before--but that also means that more "untrained" folks are hearing new and challenging music, thanks to various recording technologies; and now, thanks to the Web, their "untrained" opinions are spread worldwide.  Also, the "powers that be" have changed over the years; through the 19th century in Europe most real power and influence still lay with the royalty and nobility, but now it lies mostly with corporations and politicians, who may or may not (I tend to think mostly "not) have any sense of noblesse oblige.  I'd venture to guess that "Mad" King Ludwig of Bavaria did more than any other human to speed Wagner's eventual canonization. But there is no King Ludwig to perform a similar function for Schoenberg.  (Arnold tried Hollywood, and from comments I've read, it was a deservedly forgotten attempt.)  And the corporations now won't take any chances on new and challenging music unless then can foresee a clear and present profit.   So it falls to organizations like National Public Radio and the BBC (which still have some noblesse oblige), and forums like this, to carry the torch.

(I'm always amused when people describe Schoenberg's music as "free association" and "unorganized."  He, more than any other modern composer, was conscious that music needs organization; that's why he developed the twelve-tone serial method. )

[secondwind]

A couple more thoughts on this subject.

Like contemporary music, contemporary poetry appeals to a very small audience.  Given their druthers, most literate Americans would prefer the verse inside a Hallmark card to any poetry published this year.  The Hallmark verse probably at least has meter and rhyme!    Even among college educated readers, tastes would be stuck somewhere in the past--Frost, perhaps, e. e. cummings, Sylvia Plath, or William Carlos Williams--some poets they had studied in college.  Only a small percent of people who studied poetry in college continue to study and read contemporary poetry.  Heard anyone discussing The Dream of the Unified Field at any cocktail parties recently?  But that lack of name recognition doesn't mean that Jorie Graham isn't a better poet than the nameless hacks who pen doggerel for Hallmark.  It's just that such poetry is an acquired taste, and acquiring it requires effort and education. 

Which bring me to my next point--how do we acquire tastes?  Certainly, some tastes may be inborn, but I think a great many are acquired, and usually the acquisition is accomplished with the help and support of other people.  We usually don't acquire tastes by being forced into new experiences.  Rather, we are invited by admired friends or loved ones to explore new experiences, and we are supported and encouraged in the process, and gradually we develop a "taste" for these new experiences and come to choose them freely on our own.  Since I seem to be in a confessional mood tonight, I'll give a personal example.  I didn't always have a taste for beer.  In fact, when I was a good deal younger, I actively disliked the stuff.  But a group of friends, dedicated beer lovers all, took me in hand and made it their purpose in life for a few months to help me learn to love beer as they did.  They coaxed me to try a little of this, a little of that, all the while telling me what it was they especially liked about each beer.  Gradually, I learned a fair amount about different types of beer and eventually I even came to enjoy drinking some of them.  Left entirely to my own devices, I'm sure I would have just said "Oh, I don't like that!" and been done with it. 

I think acquiring a taste for new music is sometimes like that for me.  I might not seek it out on my own, but when a friend I trust recommends something to me, I am inclined to try it, and to try it with as open a mind as I can muster.  And if that friend accompanies me and serves as guide and educator, and, most of all, makes the experience fun, I may actually develop a liking for the stuff, surrounded as it eventually is by good feelings and happy memories. 

[zamyrabyrd]

Excellent points, Jochanaan.

In a truly plebian society, from where would the idea of "noble" spring?
Who would understand the idea of King in a Shakespearian play?

Grandeur in art is not unrelated to temporal glory, and I believe that there is probably more freedom in a benign autocracy than in society reduced to a common denominator where not only one's actions are subject to scrutiny, but thoughts as well.

I am now reading the third volume of Alan Walker's EXCELLENT biography of Liszt.
It is uncommon for a colleague to support the work of another to the degree that he did for Wagner. When Liszt went to Bayreuth in the 1870's he became an appendage to his son-in-law. But this was the fate of others sucked into Wagner's sphere of influence.

ZB

[some guy]

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.

Beauty!! (The bolding is mine.)

kishnevi, the four or five I was thinking of are Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. As for your headaches, read the quote from secondwind, above!!

Josquin, how dare you make me break my oath never to respond to any of your posts!! The information you mistakenly attributed to kishnevi, but which was my distillation, is from a work of history that relies largely, if not solely, on primary sources. None of this information is well known, yet. But it's right there, in the record.

jochanaan, the nineteenth century was a time of great instability, of ceaseless revolution and counter-revolution. It was the time when the power began to shift inexorably to "the people." We think of the twentieth century as volatile; the nineteenth was equally so. (Otherwise, loved your post, just by the way!!)

secondwind, Jorie Graham also reads her own poetry like an angel and looks like a goddess. Huge crush on her back in the day!! Your idea about listening to music with friends came to me just today, about the same time you were typing out your post. Must be something in the air. It's a great idea. A lot of animosity and antagonism would vanish were that idea carried out with any regularity and consistency.

[Elgarian]

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.

Just echoing Michael's comment here. This is a key realisation. I'm reminded of some trouble my grandfather once had with his false teeth - he took them back to the dentist and said that after many years they'd become uncomfortable and must have changed in some way.

I can't see why 'modern music' should be singled out as a 'brain not coping' situation. One of the most valuable insights I've gained is the recognition that my brain doesn't cope too well with a whole range of stuff. It spent an awful lot of years not coping with Mozart, but now it's learned how to. It spent several years not coping with Cezanne's paintings until one day it shrugged its shoulders and said 'OK, I get it now. Enjoy'.

The numbers game doesn't seem relevant here. It doesn't matter (except commercially) whether two or two thousand people's brains cope with a particular piece of art. For the two people who get it (I mean, really get it), they know something that we don't. Their brains have coped, and ours haven't (though we may or may not care about our not-coping). I'd guess that more people today listen to Schoenberg than read Milton, because largely our brains are forgetting how to cope with epic poetry. The 'brain not coping' syndrome works backwards as well as forwards.

But having said all this ... weeping my way through La Boheme last night at the Lowry theatre, I reminded myself of the intensely rewarding experience offered by the kind of music that 'seems' effortlessly to hand itself over to me, compared with the music that I have to battle towards, sometimes against the odds.

[Florestan]

Eckart Altenműller or the college of music and theater in Hannover describes the paradox of New Music: "We can understand New Music better, if we listen to it more often – but it is composed in such a way that most people are not attracted to listen more often."

That good ol' chap Rossini preceded Herr Altenműller by 150 years: "One can't judge Wagner's opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I certainly don't intend to hear it a second time"

"Mozart and Bach completely exhausted central European music", says Herbert Bruhn.  [...] there is nothing more to add [...]

OMG! I just cannot believe that an apparently educated and moderately intelligent person can speak such nonsense.

I believe that there is probably more freedom in a benign autocracy than in society reduced to a common denominator where not only one's actions are subject to scrutiny, but thoughts as well.

Agreed.

[CRCulver]

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.

Perhaps Darmstadt serialism, but when Schoenberg began to write 12-tone music, very little in fact changed in his music. He continued to use orchestration and rhythm that was pretty typical of Vienna at the turn of the century. There are waltzes everywhere in his music. Where I live, Schoenberg is programmed quite regularly, because audiences perceive him to jive fairly well with Brahms and other late Romantics.

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....

Ligeti did not write serialist music, and a good half of those orchestral works are not even totally chromatic.

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 yet Ligeti is one of the few avant-garde composers to really appeal to a wide audience. Fans of other musical genres -- rock, jazz, IDM, the Detroit or Japanese noise scenes -- respond pretty well to the sound masses of Ligeti or (even more so lately) Xenakis.

Not only do you make the mistake of bringing up Ligeti in a discussion of serialism, but you try to use this fairly successful figure to illustrate reasons for a lack of success.

[Cato]

Quote from: Cato on February 23, 2010, 12:08:33 PM:


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?

Then shut up!  0:)

To believe that a pattern which one person finds in a piece of music will always be heard or agreed with by another is "nonsense."

Maybe they will agree that such a pattern exists, maybe they will not.

Without such subjectivity, if you have not noticed, Monsieur, Good Music Guide would not exist!


And many many thanks to the incredible demolition job by Some Guy on the article from Die Zeit!

And what exactly is a "musical scientist" anyway?   

[DavidW]

And yet Ligeti is one of the few avant-garde composers to really appeal to a wide audience. Fans of other musical genres -- rock, jazz, IDM, the Detroit or Japanese noise scenes -- respond pretty well to the sound masses of Ligeti or (even more so lately) Xenakis.

Not only do you make the mistake of bringing up Ligeti in a discussion of serialism, but you try to use this fairly successful figure to illustrate reasons for a lack of success.

He was talking in the first person.  It means that he was describing his personal reaction.  Your reply really doesn't make any sense.  Let me rephrase it simpler to show you how it reads to me--

Kishnevi: I personally don't enjoy Ligeti's orchestral music.
CRCulver: Wrong, many people enjoy those works, and thus you fail to make your point (ZING!).

Perhaps Darmstadt serialism, but when Schoenberg began to write 12-tone music, very little in fact changed in his music. He continued to use orchestration and rhythm that was pretty typical of Vienna at the turn of the century. There are waltzes everywhere in his music. Where I live, Schoenberg is programmed quite regularly, because audiences perceive him to jive fairly well with Brahms and other late Romantics.

Ligeti did not write serialist music, and a good half of those orchestral works are not even totally chromatic.

Whenever someone says that they don't enjoy atonal music, but they're sloppy with how they express it, confusing serial with all atonal music or labeling something polytonal or simply excessively dissonant it is certainly a blunder, but not cause for simple dismissal of what they have to say.  I say this because it happens on every one of these threads on this forum.  The antimodernists will not know the precise way you distinguish and classify various forms of music that they don't enjoy because they don't care to. 

My point is that the "I don't like it" opinion is still valid, even when described the wrong terms.  Too often the anti-antimodernist brigade pushes glasses up and says [nasally] "well actually..." as if that was all there was to it, as if they somehow expect the poster to say "oh you're right, I magically love that music now that I understand the correct language to describe it as".  

Now you say that Schoenberg jives well with Brahms, Mahler etc in terms of orchestration and rhythm.  Okey doke.  But the thing is that what we associate with romantics is not those things, it's the harmony.  When we hear chromatic music we think of Strauss, when that rule is broken it doesn't sound romantic anymore.  The harmony is the key defining feature of music.  Schoenberg's early works sound romantic because they are.  His later works sound very different because they are.  Let me give an example that illustrates how overwhelming important harmony is: Alot of people can listen to and enjoy Bax (he can actually receive radio play) even though he is rhythmically more complex/strange than a traditional romantic, and that is because he is harmonically closer to that chromatic sound than more avant garde composers.

[DavidW]

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

That kind of sweeping generalization is just as bad what JdP said.

To believe that a pattern which one person finds in a piece of music will always be heard or agreed with by another is "nonsense."

Person A: "look it's variations on a theme!"
Person B: "I strongly disagree!  No way am I hearing that."
Person A: "It's called Variations on a Theme by Haydn."
Person B: "I'm still right!!"
Person A: "Well look the theme is played, but next time it's played again, but a little bit different.  As if they're varying the theme."
Person B: "I'm not listening!!!"

What like that?  I'm fine with sometimes it's subjective, but you absurdly claimed that it's always subjective:

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

And to say that people can't hear or agree on patterns on music would make centuries of music based on harmonic consonance/dissonance merely a confusing mess of notes instead of something that most people intuitively understand and enjoy.  Which do you think more likely?  The "everything is subjective! what is knowledge anyway?" kind of meaningless, pseudo-deep pontification signals the death of the discussion.

[karlhenning]

Mozart and Bach completely exhausted central European music.

OMG! I just cannot believe that an apparently educated and moderately intelligent person can speak such nonsense.

That citation really is the most signally pin-headed remark to appear in this thread.

[karlhenning]

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

Nonsense of course, but there's no point in arguing. If you want to believe that the perception of music is reducible to tidy mathematical equations, who am I to interfere?

[mahler10th]

Tonics and Dominants.
Melody.
I don't need much more than that to keep me happy.

[Superhorn]

  There's another factor in why audiences often have extremely negative reactions to difficult 20th and 21st century music. When they hear something at a concert, they get only one hearing ,but it often requires repeated hearings to grasp an unfamiliar work.
  That's why recordings are so valuable. The same listener who might be puzzled or upset by hearing one of Schoenberg's 12 tone works in concert might come to understand it or the composer's other works by giving a recording repeated hearings.
  This can be true even with works like the late Beethoven quartets , which are anything but easy to grasp on first hearing.This has happened to me so many times with recordings. A work which seems confused an incoherent on first hearing often comes to make perfect sense with repeated hearings.
  Years ago, I played a performance of Webern's "Six Pieces For Orchestra" at a concert.  As the rehearsals progressed, this esoteric music started to make much more sense to me,and it even came to seem melodious!

[DavidW]

Tonics and Dominants.
Melody.
I don't need much more than that to keep me happy.

Heck yeah.   But I would add a thumping rhythm.  Bartok baby!

[Cato]

That kind of sweeping generalization is just as bad what JdP said.

Person A: "look it's variations on a theme!"
Person B: "I strongly disagree!  No way am I hearing that."
Person A: "It's called Variations on a Theme by Haydn."
Person B: "I'm still right!!"
Person A: "Well look the theme is played, but next time it's played again, but a little bit different.  As if they're varying the theme."
Person B: "I'm not listening!!!"

What like that?  I'm fine with sometimes it's subjective, but you absurdly claimed that it's always subjective:

And to say that people can't hear or agree on patterns on music would make centuries of music based on harmonic consonance/dissonance merely a confusing mess of notes instead of something that most people intuitively understand and enjoy.  Which do you think more likely?  The "everything is subjective! what is knowledge anyway?" kind of meaningless, pseudo-deep pontification signals the death of the discussion.

I said nothing like that: you and Josquin have misunderstood the word "patternize."

By no means is "everything subjective" at all!  We agree!   

"Patternize" is the invention of patterns, not their discovery. 

The result therefore leads to the "difficulties of perception" mentioned in the article.

[karlhenning]

Tonics and Dominants.
Melody.
I don't need much more than that to keep me happy.

Heck yeah.   But I would add a thumping rhythm.  Bartok baby!

Bartók, of course, would have chafed at being restricted to tonics & dominants.

[Cato]

Heck yeah.   But I would add a thumping rhythm.  Bartok baby!


Bartók, of course, would have chafed at being restricted to tonics & dominants.

Let's hear it for MINOR NINTHS!    

Not to mention the     Diabolus in Musica!!!