Audiences hate modern classical music because their brains cannot cope

[Mirror Image]

Gurn's post from above reminds me of what I said on another thread:

The bottomline is our experiences and preferences are just that: our own and I'm not going to be convinced one way or another that there's a right or wrong way to enjoy music. Draw your own conclusions.

[Karl Henning]

(I'm not quite dead...)

No, but I don't think of any of this crap when I listen to music. All I think about is the music. Even the ones that DO have a title, and even the ones where the title was supplied by the composer, I think about the music. This is all imagination, and anyone is invited to use it however they like, I'm not saying you can't, but on the other hand, no one should assume that everyone does the same thing. I am on the record (or the CD or the stream) as saying 'I don't think, I just listen'. Anyone who knows me will vouch for the fact that I don't think!

I believe that you think you don't think.

[Karl Henning]

But no one is arguing that all composers intend these associations to be made; only that some do. And I say again ... why should they not do so? And why should we not follow their lead, if we wish to engage with the work as fully as possible, without being considered to be delusional?

And the some that do, may not do so all the time.  A lot of artistic practice can be a sometime thing . . . .

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Somehow it seems like everyone here is trying to argue the same thing....that music is there and people can enjoy it in any way they choose because it isn't literal, it isn't objectively representive of the same things to everyone, so people really end up coming to their own conclusions.

Do we all agree? Yes? Good then!

[Florestan]

Do you think works named by form alone, Symphony, Concerto, Sonata, Passacaglia, etc. and without any other name or program given, can "Say anything specific?

Yes, I do. And I have no use for music composed just for the mere sake of it, without any "expressive" intention whatsoever, be it explicit or implicit.

is that something you think all music does

Obviously not all music does that.

or should do?

Nobody and nothing "should" do anything. Composers have the complete liberty to compose for whatever reason they want and to try to achieve with their music whatever goal they want, or none at all. In my turn, I have the complete liberty to like "expressive" music and dislike "non-expressive" or even "anti-expressive" music.

That being said, I am acutely aware that what I perceive as "expressive" is highly subjective and personal, and other people might find "expressive" music which for me is drab, dull and / or unlistenable and "non-expressive" or even "anti-expressive" music which is balm for my heart and soul. That´s fine with me. I don´t pretend that the way I feel about, and experience, music is or should be universally and uniquely valid.

To give you an example of what I mean by implicitly (ie, non programatically) "expressive": Although I cannot read anyone´s mind, much less when that person´s dead, I very much doubt that Schubert set to himself the task of composing a piece for strings which should be approximately 40 minutes long, its forces should be a string quartet plus a supplementary cello, and it should be in the key of C major, and that´s all there is to it, off to work and lo and behold! gentlemen, there you have the String Quintet; I am pretty sure that form, length and forces were dictated by Schubert´s "expressive" intents and purpose, not the other way around, namely the "expressive" qualities of the work being the result of form, length and forces. You mentioned above "tricks that work"; I very much doubt that the great composers were mere "magicians" who pulled the rabbit of expression out of the hat of form using technical legerdemains.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Yes, I do. And I have no use for music composed just for the mere sake of it, without any "expressive" intention whatsoever, be it explicit or implicit.

Obviously not all music does that.

Nobody and nothing "should" do anything. Composers have the complete liberty to compose for whatever reason they want and to try to achieve with their music whatever goal they want, or none at all. In my turn, I have the complete liberty to like "expressive" music and dislike "non-expressive" or even "anti-expressive" music.

That being said, I am acutely aware that what I perceive as "expressive" is highly subjective and personal, and other people might find "expressive" music which for me is drab, dull and / or unlistenable and "non-expressive" or even "anti-expressive" music which is balm for my heart and soul. That´s fine with me. I don´t pretend that the way I feel about, and experience, music is or should be universally and uniquely valid.

To give you an example of what I mean by implicitly (ie, non programatically) "expressive": Although I cannot read anyone´s mind, much less when that person´s dead, I very much doubt that Schubert set to himself the task of composing a piece for strings which should be approximately 40 minutes long, its forces should be a string quartet plus a supplementary cello, and it should be in the key of C major, and that´s all there is to it, off to work and lo and behold! gentlemen, there you have the String Quintet; I am pretty sure that form, length and forces were dictated by Schubert´s "expressive" intents and purpose, not the other way around, namely the "expressive" qualities of the work being the result of form, length and forces. You mentioned above "tricks that work"; I very much doubt that the great composers were mere "magicians" who pulled the rabbit of expression out of the hat of form using technical legerdemains.

The expressive intents and purposes are a result of Schubert's imagination and your imagination combining to become a glorious whole experience for you as a listener. It's not just the music, which seems to be the perspective I am reading in your post.

[some guy]

Here's what I think about this, if anyone cares.

Some of us take music to be complete, sufficient. Some of us think music needs to be propped up, with words, with images, with choreography.

That lots of people fall into the second category is indisputable. That lots of those people are composers is also beyond dispute.

That no one who did not already know the extramusical associations of a nineteenth century tone poem, say, would ever in a million years get the association by listening to the music seems to me also beyond dispute, but I'm obviously wrong in thinking that. It is certainly disputed. Thing is, we have the associations. For better or worse, we have them. Now what?

I think the point that everyone will do whatever they want to be a great distraction. Of course everyone will do whatever they want. Point is, is there any value in examining whatever it is you're doing and perhaps modifying your actions? Is there any value in proffering alternate behaviors?

I think the answer to both is "yes."

And I think it only praiseworthy to promote the idea that music is sufficient. It has its own ways of doing things, ways that are different from language or images or dance. That it can work so well with all three of those other things is certainly a nice thing, but I fail to understand why music should be seen to depend on those things for its meaning. In a song, for instance, music is always described as the accompaniment. Why not the words? The words are accompanying the music, why not?* The dancing is accompanying the music. Or, better, each thing is doing what it does. Each thing does whatever it is that it does and nothing else. That things doing different things can be also understood to sometimes be doing complementary things should take away nothing from the independence of each thing.

*In Jacques Barzun's masterful examination of the story that accompanies the music of Berlioz' Symphonie fantastique, he says something close to this (close as I can recall): It's not that the music "tells" the story. (It's been said before that if music could tell a story, then why the words of programs to tell us what the music is already saying?) It's more that the story "tells" the music. It was a way of getting audiences unfamiliar with music that was genuinely new to be able to get through the experience with some understanding. The story is not the music. But it presents a non-musical analogue so that something that doesn't seem at first to be making any sense, musically, can be understood as making some kind of sense.

And once that prop is no longer necessary--surely it is no longer necessary--it can just as surely be dispensed with. That is, a tone poem without a title or program is not like a bike without wheels; it is like a bike without training wheels.

[Gurn Blanston]

I believe that you think you don't think.

How dare you, sir!?! How dare you?    (I would have come back at that sooner, but I wasn't thinking...)

To give you an example of what I mean by implicitly (ie, non programatically) "expressive": Although I cannot read anyone´s mind, much less when that person´s dead, I very much doubt that Schubert set to himself the task of composing a piece for strings which should be approximately 40 minutes long, its forces should be a string quartet plus a supplementary cello, and it should be in the key of C major, and that´s all there is to it, off to work and lo and behold! gentlemen, there you have the String Quintet; I am pretty sure that form, length and forces were dictated by Schubert´s "expressive" intents and purpose, not the other way around, namely the "expressive" qualities of the work being the result of form, length and forces. You mentioned above "tricks that work"; I very much doubt that the great composers were mere "magicians" who pulled the rabbit of expression out of the hat of form using technical legerdemains.

Perhaps we are at cross-purposes here.  It is possible that Schubert DID have an intention, but that intention was totally abstract (eg - I will make it sound angry here) while the part YOU supply is much more concrete and, dare I say it? Personal (he is angry, just like I am when my wife yells at me). You have supplied enough to know that when you are angry, this is a piece which will exacerbate your feelings, while Schubert really was only looking for some powerful chords to evoke a nebulous sort of anger.

I would accept that sort of interpretation. Hard to see me going further than that though. It would distract from my listening enjoyment.

[Florestan]

The expressive intents and purposes are a result of Schubert's imagination and your imagination combining to become a glorious whole experience for you as a listener.

Quite so.

It's not just the music

For me it´s never just the music (pace Gurn). Rachmaninov once said that "A composer's music should express the country of his birth, his love affairs, his religion, the books which have influenced him, the pictures he loves... My music is the product of my temperament". Well, I think the same applies, and even more forcefully, to us as listeners. The way we perceive, feel about, and experience, music is a product of our temperament and personality and is affected by a lot of extra-musical things, like for instance the country of our birth, our love affairs, our religion (or lack thereof), the books which have influenced us, the paintings we love... The only difference is that some of us acknowledge this and see it as being in the inescapable nature of all things human, while some of us reject the idea altogether and try to rationalize the rejection, not being aware of, or brushing under carpet, the fact that the very rejection and its subsequent rationalization are themselves products of a lot of extra-musical things, like for instance the country of our birth, our love affairs, our religion (or lack thereof), the books which have influenced us, the paintings we love...

[some guy]

The only difference is that some of us acknowledge this and see it as being in the inescapable nature of all things human, while some of us reject the idea altogether and try to rationalize the rejection, not being aware of, or brushing under carpet, the fact that the very rejection and its subsequent rationalization are themselves products of a lot of extra-musical things, like for instance the country of our birth, our love affairs, our religion (or lack thereof), the books which have influenced us, the paintings we love...

That sounds very much like "heads I win/tails you lose" to me.

Good luck getting anyone to play THAT game with you!

[Florestan]

I would accept that sort of interpretation. Hard to see me going further than that though. It would distract from my listening enjoyment.

But that´s my whole point. I have never ever enjoyed listening for the sake of listening, or sounds for the sake of sounds. If a sequence of sounds, be it a two-minute-long etude or an-hour-and-a-half-long symphony does not make me feel something or experience a mood then I have lost my time with it and I will never ever feel the need to hear it again. I am not interested in listening to music for the sake of hearing sounds any more than I am interested in reading books for the sake of reading words, or in contemplating paintings for the sake of seeing colors.

[Florestan]

That sounds very much like "heads I win/tails you lose" to me.

Good luck getting anyone to play THAT game with you!

Why should it be a matter of who lose and who wins? Are there any losers and winners when it comes to how and why laymen perceive, experience and appreciate art?

[Madiel]

There is no 'pouring your emotions out through your instrument,' while via a great command of technique, there is the ability to play it so musically and in any manner and number of ways the composer desires that it will have a strong affect on listeners and evoke some emotion. Players and composers are usually quite concentrated and busy when they play and compose; the romantic notion of their pouring out their soul as they play or compose is just that, a romantic notion.

Well, frankly, you sound like someone who's never learned to play an instrument.

And I'm saying this as a person who by inclination is rather dismissive of the super-Romantic notions of assigning specific descriptions and images to everything. If Chopin had wanted each of his pieces to have a programmatic title, he would have given it one, and Beethoven was perfectly capable of using a title on the infrequent cases that he wanted to.

But that doesn't mean that the equal and opposite reaction of declaring that there is somehow some absolute break between what is in the mind of the composer or performer and what is in the mind of the listener is any better. Because it strips music of any intent or purpose whatsoever. The proposition that a composer or performer is not ever trying to get the listener to think or feel particular things - that Haydn isn't trying to make people laugh - is turning music into a kind of useless intellectual wankery with no social value - with no intent.

Music is not composed, or performed, as a general collection of sounds, any more than what I'm typing is a general collection of letters. I'm selecting which keys to press on my keyboard on the basis of the ideas I'm trying to communicate to you. Most composers select the tools available to them on the same basis.

[Madiel]

Somehow it seems like everyone here is trying to argue the same thing....that music is there and people can enjoy it in any way they choose because it isn't literal, it isn't objectively representive of the same things to everyone, so people really end up coming to their own conclusions.

Do we all agree? Yes? Good then!

If you're trying to imply, by contrast, that novels or plays or films or paintings are "objectively representative", which you rather seemed to be saying before, then no, I don't agree, and we rather have to unpack what you think that phrase means.

I write words for a living, with an intention of communicating particular ideas to a wide, ill-defined audience. As a result I'm acutely aware that words are not nearly as definite as people seem to believe they are, that groups of words placed together can mean quite different things to different people, and that committees are particularly good at creating phrases that everyone can decide sound suitably knowledgeable and impressive without quite pinning down anything, so that everyone can walk away from the table believing that they got what they wanted.

[some guy]

Why should it be a matter of who lose and who wins? Are there any losers and winners when it comes to how and why laymen perceive, experience and appreciate art?

As you probably already know, I was not talking about how one perceives, experiences or appreciates art in my remark. I was referring specifically to your comment about how people who disagree with you on the matter are just fooling themselves. Your verbiage struck me, strikes me, as being roughly equivalent to "heads I win/tails you lose," a reference, if you really do not know this, to determining who gets something by flipping a coin. The flipper, in this case, you, gets to win no matter which way the coin falls.

[Madiel]

Music is not composed, or performed, as a general collection of sounds, any more than what I'm typing is a general collection of letters. I'm selecting which keys to press on my keyboard on the basis of the ideas I'm trying to communicate to you. Most composers select the tools available to them on the same basis.

Quoting yourself is not usually good form, but this is actually extremely important.

I think there's a powerful argument that the reason some modern classical music fails to connect with listeners is that some composers stopped selecting the tools available to them on the basis of what they were trying to communicate. They stopped being interested in communicating anything.

I couldn't help thinking, after writing that last comment about selecting keys on my keyboard, about what would happen if I treated my keyboard like a 12-tone row. Here's my starting row of letters:

f i g w a p e b d m q l z c v r j y t s u h x k o n

And now, if I perform a series of transformations on that row, are you, as a reader, going to get anything out of it?

This isn't to dismiss atonal music entirely. The very best atonal music uses other tools at the composer's disposal - pitch, volume, duration, instrumental tone colour, formal structure - to still convey something.  But the point is to illustrate that writing is not a random assortment of letters, and music is not a random assortment of sounds. Both are organised, and the organisation has a purpose of communication to it, otherwise the effort of organising is simply wasted. If I'm not trying to communicate something to you by the selection of letters that I choose, I might as well just press whatever key on my keyboard feels good to me at the timgkkjdskjhgjg;skjdkjg  h;fd g h s,sdbjkhnrnag;lkh'ljkdf

[Madiel]

Sorry to double post, but I completely forgot to add 'lij'
ae5y[h0cbk;dlgkjm.hkbklbljzlfjlknm bb
df;kcflkhklhklfdnbbc'nfg'hkllgkd;bxc;jlhdg[ep34-2409gofbdnzcbj,drh


I hope we can all at least agree on that.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

If you're trying to imply, by contrast, that novels or plays or films or paintings are "objectively representative", which you rather seemed to be saying before, then no, I don't agree, and we rather have to unpack what you think that phrase means.

I write words for a living, with an intention of communicating particular ideas to a wide, ill-defined audience. As a result I'm acutely aware that words are not nearly as definite as people seem to believe they are, that groups of words placed together can mean quite different things to different people, and that committees are particularly good at creating phrases that everyone can decide sound suitably knowledgeable and impressive without quite pinning down anything, so that everyone can walk away from the table believing that they got what they wanted.

I am merely trying to point out that words and images have been designed in such a way to be able to express things in this real world. There's no question that a novel can be interpreted in many different ways depending on the which style of literary criticism is being employed on a broad level, or what and individual can understand for herself on a completely different level. Henry James' brilliant Turn of the Screw and its many adaptations is the first thing that comes to mind....

But an images and words can be interpreted literally as well.

The equivalent of this 'literalism' in music is like saying 'the strings are playing a soft unmeasured tremolo an an E flat triad and a few bars in to the music, a solo horn introduced a motif solely using the first and fifth degrees of the E flat major scale.' However, a much more subjective response would be 'the strings' tremolo is like a mysterious fog which the horn's simple melody is like the first rays of light emerging from it.' The difference here is that the first description of the opening of Bruckner's 4th (just a piece I chose for this example because I like it) is undeniably true, however, what each one of us feels or imagines in the music can be entirely different and this is perfectly okay. It's even okay to imagine city skylines when listening to Beethoven's 6th, and even Berlioz's symphonie fantastique could evoke absolutely no emotion in many listeners, it just depends on the way each one of us uses our imagination when listening to music or interpreting music.

Composers know this when they compose. If they are attempting to communicate, it is only through the evocation that is ever so powerful in the lisnteners' imaginations. To literally assign certain pieces with certain extramusical interpretations as the gospel truth through writing a 'composer's intention' in a program or even merely writing a story for people to read when listening to the music is really a way of 'dumbing down' the audience by telling them how to react.

[Monsieur Croche]

I don't think of any of this crap when I listen to music. All I think about is the music. Even the ones that DO have a title, and even the ones where the title was supplied by the composer, I think about the music. This is all imagination, and anyone is invited to use it however they like, I'm not saying you can't, but on the other hand, no one should assume that everyone does the same thing. I am on the record (or the CD or the stream) as saying 'I don't think, I just listen'. Anyone who knows me will vouch for the fact that I don't think!

We, the barren, the dry, the emotionally remote, the socially detached, as near sociopaths without empathy, compassion, or passion, must hang together or the romantics will try us, condemn us, and burn us at the stake. 

[Madiel]

I am merely trying to point out that words and images have been designed in such a way to be able to express things in this real world.

But that's not all they do.

Look up "abstract nouns" and then get back to me.

EDIT: It's the dichotomy I'm objecting to. I'm no more of a fan than you are of writing an entire programmatic description of a Bruckner symphony, but Monsieur Croche in particular is coming perilously close to saying that the strings doing a tremolo on E flat can't possibly have any significance beyond the selection of the note and of the bowing technique.

SECOND EDIT: With the inevitable result that if a cellist decides on a whim they'd rather play a loud pizzicato on F sharp, what's to stop them?