Audiences hate modern classical music because their brains cannot cope

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Depends.

And after encountering Rene Magritte, now it's like Magritte never happened.

As I've already said, I agree that music is one of the most abstract of the arts. But it's a mistake to declare that music IS abstract, or that there's no overlap.

As for when the last time was that I listened to a piece of music that represents a tree, I'm not sure. I confess Beethoven didn't quite specify whether the blindingly obvious birds that appear in the 2nd movement of the 6th symphony were arboreally situated. I always assumed that they were, but I'm no ornithologist and can't swear to the living habits of the species in question.

Aha! Those 'birds' of which you speak are imitations in sound of their sound. This is something that CAN happen in music! Having sounds represent things other than sound is impossible.

[Madiel]

Aha! Those 'birds' of which you speak are imitations in sound of their sound. This is something that CAN happen in music! Having sounds represent things other than sound is impossible.

For someone who is a composer, your lack of imagination is troubling.

Tell me, if sounds cannot represent things other than sound, what exactly is the purpose of a police siren or fire alarm? How do you respond to a ringing phone? And why do quiz shows, computer programs and a myriad of other things use one kind of sound to indicate a correct answer, and a different kind of sound to represent an incorrect answer?

Now, if you'll excuse me, my microwave has just beeped 3 times - according to you signifying nothing, but according to me it represents cooked food.

[Karl Henning]

For someone who is a composer, your lack of imagination is troubling.

He's young, his musical mind is still forming;  allow the chap his liberty 

[Monsieur Croche]

Chewing music is not a safe alternative.

I'll make a note of that.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

For someone who is a composer, your lack of imagination is troubling.

Tell me, if sounds cannot represent things other than sound, what exactly is the purpose of a police siren or fire alarm? How do you respond to a ringing phone? And why do quiz shows, computer programs and a myriad of other things use one kind of sound to indicate a correct answer, and a different kind of sound to represent an incorrect answer?

Now, if you'll excuse me, my microwave has just beeped 3 times - according to you signifying nothing, but according to me it represents cooked food.

These are signals which we have trained ourselves to respond to in specific ways. If you were an alien from another planet you may have a completely different understanding of these sounds altogether really, but in terms of hearing sounds as music then sirens, alarms, bells etc. could work in very different ways for the composer and the listener. That's what is amazing about music! It's abstract. Different people connect with sound in different ways due to the wonderfully unique ways everyone's imaginations work. I only have one imagination, which I use when composing and listening to music. Perhaps there are things I lack as a person, but I'm apparently not as old as a number of others on this forum so I would love to see how it develops over time.

[Madiel]

This last bit of conversation has suddenly reminded me of a song by my friend Sally Whitwell called "Flatworm's Heaven". On her album "I was flying" which is available on various places such as Amazon, iTunes, Spotify.

[asin]B00XF8EC4E[/asin]

The reason it's reminded me of it is that the I think the song is hilarious, and in particular the first 3 notes are completely hilarious... and when I told Sally this a little while after the album had been released, she told me that I was only the 3rd person to get the joke.

I recommend checking it out to see if you get the joke.

[Monsieur Croche]

For someone who is a composer, your lack of imagination is troubling.

Tell me, if sounds cannot represent things other than sound, what exactly is the purpose of a police siren or fire alarm? How do you respond to a ringing phone? And why do quiz shows, computer programs and a myriad of other things use one kind of sound to indicate a correct answer, and a different kind of sound to represent an incorrect answer?

Now, if you'll excuse me, my microwave has just beeped 3 times - according to you signifying nothing, but according to me it represents cooked food.

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
Who are you behind that screen name and avatar, one of Pavlov's dogs?
Remember them?

They were conditioned by association with, "Ding Ding Ding" = "Food Ready."

"Ding Ding Ding," can only express and mean "Ding Ding Ding."

[Madiel]

It's abstract. Different people connect with sound in different ways due to the wonderfully unique ways everyone's imaginations work

Those two sentences are not equivalent.

And I would like to suggest to you, ever so gently, that you're not writing music for aliens. Unless you're intending to push the notion of "writing for future generations" to logical extremes that are in practice likely to have you in poverty.

[Madiel]

"Ding Ding Ding," can only express and mean "Ding Ding Ding."

This is just nonsense.

By the same logic, the fact that I decide to place 5 symbols in order that look like this:

m

u

s

i

c

Can only express and mean that I decided to draw a few squiggly lines on a page or liked an arrangement of pixels on my computer. You are, while having this argument with me, using symbols that express and mean far more than their actual shapes. You are in fact using abstractions that in the original semitic alphabet were little abstracted pictures of particular objects, and your purpose in writing an "a" has precisely nothing to do with the image of an ox head from which it derives.

One of the quotes I have up at work is that "words are only pictures of ideas on paper".  What they express and mean has absolutely nothing to do with the 26 (or 52, allowing for capitalisation but I'm not going to try and work out how many different punctuation marks we're utilising here) squiggles that I'm using to convey those ideas.

You are effectively proposing that all written language should be abandoned in favour of Emojis.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Those two sentences are not equivalent.

And I would like to suggest to you, ever so gently, that you're not writing music for aliens. Unless you're intending to push the notion of "writing for future generations" to logical extremes that are in practice likely to have you in poverty.

I thought the whole point of the 'abstract' in art is that it doesn't represent reality, but rather the interpretation of it is up to whoever is consuming this art. Music can imitate sounds of birds, for example, when a composer wishes, but it can't represent reality in the way words and images can (that's what words and images were designed to do). And no, I don't intend to write music for aliens, I write for musicians, but aliens are always welcome.

[Madiel]

(that's what words and images were designed to do)

Honestly, at this point Rene Magritte is crying into his pipe.

[Brahmsian]

Or Penderecki's masterpiece: '8 minutes 37 seconds'

which was given a very different title much later on!

Hmm, I feel I should already know this?  Google isn't being very helpful.  Which Penderecki work is this?

OK, I now know it was Threnody....

[Madiel]

I'm about to go to bed, but there's one last thing that I was suddenly reminded of and thought was worth mentioning.

Or one person, really.

Haydn.

Not one of Haydn's "jokes" or "surprises" works without semiotics. Without semiotics, there is nothing inherently amusing about a bassoon loudly blaring at the end of a softening and slowing sequence. There is no reason to laugh when a string quartet goes on a few bars longer than predicted. There is no reason to think there's anything odd about the 16th bar of a theme in a symphony having a chord that is much louder than anything in the preceding 15 bars.

I just can't accept any notion that semiotics is something separate and apart from the music, because to do so would be to imply that Haydn did not intend for any of these things to be funny. That he wasn't attempting to get a kind of reaction from his audience. And I can't recall anyone ever seriously suggesting that any of these effects are accidental.

But that's where this conversation is going. It's heading towards assertions that a loud bassoon note can only express pitch and volume.

[Karl Henning]

If sounds can really only express sounds . . . why bother?

[Super Blood Moon]

Sounds do stuff to your brain. Manipulation of sound does cool stuff to your brain...sometimes.

[Karl Henning]

Brainz . . . .

[Monsieur Croche]

This is just nonsense.

By the same logic, the fact that I decide to place 5 symbols in order that look like this:
m
u
s
i
c
Can only express and mean that I decided to draw a few squiggly lines on a page or liked an arrangement of pixels on my computer. You are, while having this argument with me, using symbols that express and mean far more than their actual shapes. You are in fact using abstractions that in the original semitic alphabet were little abstracted pictures of particular objects, and your purpose in writing an "a" has precisely nothing to do with the image of an ox head from which it derives.

One of the quotes I have up at work is that "words are only pictures of ideas on paper".  What they express and mean has absolutely nothing to do with the 26 (or 52, allowing for capitalisation but I'm not going to try and work out how many different punctuation marks we're utilising here) squiggles that I'm using to convey those ideas.

You are effectively proposing that all written language should be abandoned in favour of Emojis.
[/size]

extramusical:
lying outside the province of music;
Extrinsic to a piece of music or outside the field of music.

Words, titles, programs assigned to a piece of music which is otherwise without any other text are extramusical.

The entire above post, how vowel sounds from the spoken word meaning OX became a written symbol, then a group of letters spelling any word become an icon, etc. etc. is all about written language and words, which, by the way, are learned as associated with a symbol for thing or idea, and then by repetition until that association with their meaning is securely set in mind.

All of that is entirely not on the point of a grafted-on title or program on the side to be associated with a piece of music. The only tangential connection is that if you accept a title or program as attached to the music, keep it in mind while you are listening to that piece, and repeat that several times, the listener who does that might come to think -- by association -- that that piece of music is inseparable from the acquired associations.

There is no way that a medium without a specific verbal linguistic construct, or a medium of images, can do anything but remotely evoke words or images.

A bell is a bell is a bell, and until you have repeatedly associated it with something not a bell, it signifies nothing other than a sound produced by a bell.

Music is not birdsong, but it at least shares with music pitch, duration and intensity, those the most basic elements of music. Since both share that, music can give a damned good facsimile of bird song, though not in the exact pitches birds use, but as approximated using the tones of our scale. Bird-song like, enough to conjure up birds in the imagination of the listener. Beyond that, "Hmmm, bird song, must be spring or summer, or..." is only arrived at via the vagaries of an individuals imagination, which because of association of actual bird song, is supplying [and supplanting] the real experience for the facsimile of the real thing. If it is spring, and the composer says its spring, that too, becomes spring by directive and then association.

I'm afraid that tone poems and other program music is, within the medium, the greatest conman of all music; it is all sham, trickery, deceit, and a lot of smoke and mirrors.

In a way, music is only capable of being 'emoticons.' Though I argue music itself can not 'express' anything, it unquestionably has a tremendous power to evoke a hell of a lot in listeners. What this or that sort of music does evoke, if somewhat consistent among its listeners, is also an acquired meaning learned via association.

Yes, music, at its most specific, is that unspecific.

[Monsieur Croche]

And I would like to suggest, ever so gently, that you're not writing music for aliens.

Some of us who do compose get flare signals from reading certain posts, which convince us more and more that we are composing music for aliens.

[Florestan]

A Tone Poem Without A Title Or Program Is Like A Fish WIthout A Bicycle

No. A tone poem without a title or program is like a bike without wheels.

What I meant, and hope I covered [apology due if I did not] is that for many a composer, those titles may be what they actually 'were writing about,' while for others the title may have been a fleeting and tangential analogue idea which helped direct their work, helped to determine the form [especially if the work is not formalist, i.e. Symphony, Passacaglia, etc.] as well help them determine the general tenor of emotional tone, and where, strategically, events within the piece would be.

And how are you able to tell the difference?

In other words, all of the associative things may have been mere analogue working devices, whatever the inspiration, and then, well, heigh-ho, why not name it that, it seems to help people access the music itself more readily, and it is both in fashion and therefore more marketable and 'sexy' if titled.

May have been qua, may have been la, may have been su, may have been giu...

You do realize this is pure speculation, don't you?

Were many of them sincere when titling their pieces, and did they think the pieces actually evoked something related to the title? If they wrote that themselves, somewhere other than what is written on the score, and music historians have those documents from the horses' mouths in writing, who can argue?

Ah, I see. So, if Richard Strauss did not explicitly mention anywhere or to anyone that Don Quixote is really about Don Quixote, we have good reasons to believe it is not. (I don't know if he did mention it or not, I just took the first example that came into my mind)

Certo, if a composer has given a title, please, feel free to run with it. I advocate that you are also free to ignore it, that is all. It is just a title, and the listener is not waiting, like sometimes happens in a play, for that moment when they hear the title spoken in one of the actor's lines. Better, have your cake and eat it too. Listen to the piece without knowing the title or program, guess what that title or program might be, listen to it again to see if what you have guessed 'fits' and is cohesive parallel with the tone and series of musical events, and only then learn what the title is. Nice and fun exercise, which I'm certain would make just about anyone wonder if that tone poem was, really, about a swan, for instance.

That would indeed be an interesting exercise but unfortunately it is impossible, at least for me. I cannot unlearn titles like, say, Sheherezade, The Swan of Tuonela or 1812, listen to these works as they had no title and come up with my own program (incidentally, in the last case I'm pretty sure I'd come as close as it gets to the original). One might try the experiment with someone completely unaware of the title, but then good luck in finding the person who both ignores the program and is willing to take the test.

I highly distrust what many a composer says about their own music

I can see that. My question is: why? Do you have any palpable evidence that many a composer were / are just a bunch of liars?

.
~ Should you or do you want a verbal title or guide to influence or color your perceptions of that piece?

What I want is completely irrelevant in this case. I am presented with a work which the composer has chosen, for whatever reason, to assign a title or program to. I can only judge if he was successful or not in matching the music to the title / program, or viceversa.

Now, I agree that there are titles which cry out loud "tongue in cheek!" or "only a fool would take me literally or pay any attention to me!" but any person with a modicum of discerning powers detects them instantly.

Isn't that a bit like signing up to be told what to think?

Orfeo already answered that. I can only add that "think" is not exactly how I react to music. "Feel" is more appropriate a term.

When listening to La Mer, do I "feel" the same way I would, or actually did, in the presence of the real sea? If yes, then Debussy was successful, if not, he wasn't. (He was). When listening to the March to the Scaffold, do I "feel" like it's me who is going to be beheaded, or am I frightened or "feel" the terror and fear of the hero? If yes, then Berlioz was successful, if not, he wasn't. (He wasn't.) Etc.

What my feelings would have been if the music had no title, or if they had been exactly the same is again irrelevant. The composer presented his work titled and there is no way to escape that.

~ If music is a communicative art, has the artist somehow done less than the job expected if they feel the need to give you a suggestive title or accompanying program?

If they felt the need to give it a title or program, then they felt the need to give it a title or program, period. I don't see why I should be ruminating about why and how or about whether it would have been better not to. I listen to it with the title or program in my mind. If they match, fine, if they don't, fine again.

~ Shouldn't the listener be able to 'supply' their own title or program via their personal reaction to the piece?

The listener is perfectly able and at liberty to do that regardless whether the work has a title / program or not. 

As long as people don't run around thinking that Beethoven titled one sonata "Pathetique", [completed and presented to his publisher as Sonata No. 8 in C minor, Op. 13, who then suggested the title] and another "Moonlight," Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp Minor, Op. 27, No. 2: Sonata quasi una fantasia [named by a publisher's poet son well after Beethoven's death], or an "Emperor" concerto, or that Chopin ever titled any of his Etudes or Preludes other than by form and opus number,

Well, there you have excellent examples of listeners who supplied their own titles and programs via their personal reactions, a practice you seemed to encourage above. Now you seem to actually object to that. What am I missing?

[Florestan]

I'm about to go to bed, but there's one last thing that I was suddenly reminded of and thought was worth mentioning.

Or one person, really.

Haydn.

Not one of Haydn's "jokes" or "surprises" works without semiotics. Without semiotics, there is nothing inherently amusing about a bassoon loudly blaring at the end of a softening and slowing sequence. There is no reason to laugh when a string quartet goes on a few bars longer than predicted. There is no reason to think there's anything odd about the 16th bar of a theme in a symphony having a chord that is much louder than anything in the preceding 15 bars.

I just can't accept any notion that semiotics is something separate and apart from the music, because to do so would be to imply that Haydn did not intend for any of these things to be funny. That he wasn't attempting to get a kind of reaction from his audience. And I can't recall anyone ever seriously suggesting that any of these effects are accidental.

But that's where this conversation is going. It's heading towards assertions that a loud bassoon note can only express pitch and volume.

Finally, I agree, and strongly for that matter, on something with you, Orfeo. Who'd have thought?