Audiences hate modern classical music because their brains cannot cope

[Gurn Blanston]

Praise or entertainment. IOW, "the essential meaning" of music is either the Mass or a pleasant cling-clang, ding-dang, bing-bang, omphhh-pah-pah accompanying a bunch of aristocrats or high bourgeoisie chitchatting and flirting at dinner table.

Well, we both know these are merely commonplace rhetorical devices which you are using to demean my argument, so we will skip over your characterization of Bach for now...

Speaking of lackey, last time I checked that was the official status of Haydn and Mozart, they even had to wear special liveries to show and know their "rightful place" in the "Enlightened" social order.

And every other composer did too, for that matter. This is the way life was structured in those times. It would be foolish at best to value 18th century life versus 21st century life.

If anything, Romanticism on the contrary liberated music from the debasing servitude and artificial limitations that were tyrannically imposed on it by the drab, dull and shallow aesthetics of the "Enlightenment". To quote (from memory) the imaginary composer Adrian Leverkuhn from Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus: the main achievement of Romanticism is to have rescued music from its previous communal fanfare status and to have integrated it in the general intellectual frame of the period.

And now for the self-inflating puffery part of our program. Do you not see (well, clearly you don't) that "integrated it in the general intellectual frame of the period" is the problem, not the solution?

And besides that, romanticism is first and foremost a forma mentis, a psychological inclination, an intellectual preference and an attitude towards life which occurs naturally and is not circumscribed to any specific time or place. What is called the Romantic era proper is only the time when the romantic worldview became prevalent among artists, writers, philosophers and intellectuals, but not prevalent at the level of the whole society. In fact, there was stubborn resistance to, and vigorous denunciation of, Romanticism and romantics all along the period. Had the romantics succeeded in romanticizing society, economy and politics the world would have been a better place for sure. Unfortunately, they failed. The mechanistic, centralizing, command-and-control, standardizing-and-categorizing, all-leveling ideas of sophisters, economists, and calculators --- a class of people which was both the cause and effect of the "Enlightenment" as well as the plague of the modern world --- carried the day in all fields and we live today in the world they created and ruled for more than a century and a half. It is a wonder not that it has recently began to crumble apart, but that it has endured for so long, since it is contrary to man's "essential meaning" and "rightful place" in the world.

If the first sentence is true, then the remainder of the paragraph merely highlights the elitism on which it is all based. It can't 'occur naturally' and yet be the subject of scorn and derision from the main body of the people. Just sayin'.

(You saw that coming, didn't you?  )

Yes, clearly I did. It doesn't answer my basic premise that Modern music (remember, that's what the subject here is) is a backlash against the bloat of Romantic music, which was nothing more than Classic music gone crazy. "Classic" music, born of galant, which was a backlash (and this is not just me, it is actually so) against the excess of Baroque music. So Modern music is the 20th century's analog to Classic music, and though they were different answers, the questions were essentially the same. What goes around, comes around. 

[Florestan]

Modern music is the 20th century's analog to Classic music

Then you should just love Schoenberg, Hindemith or Bartok.

[Wakefield]

No argument from me on that, but it was not HIP that I had in mind when talking about legitimism a outrance. Please re-read the exchange that led to it and you'll see what, or rather whom, I was referring to. 

Politely, I will say: I'll do! But this bag has so many dogs and cats inside... 

[Karl Henning]

Then you should just love Schoenberg, Hindemith or Bartok.

Well, he does like the occasional Henning score . . . .

[Wakefield]

Not to mention that I feel myself uncomfortable in front of the expression "modern classical" music. 

P.S.: I mean, wasn't "modern" opposite to "classical"?

[Florestan]

Do you not see (well, clearly you don't) that "integrated it in the general intellectual frame of the period" is the problem, not the solution?

(Nota bene: I am now posting seriously and without any implicit or explicit joke.)

No, actually I really don't see any problem with that. Could you please state it in no uncertain terms?

[Florestan]

Well, he does like the occasional Henning score . . . .

Yes, but Henning is actually contemporary, not modern. Just sayin'. 

[Gurn Blanston]

Then you should just love Schoenberg, Hindemith or Bartok.

Ah, you must have missed the implications this part. The italics were subtle, it is true:

So Modern music is the 20th century's analog to Classic music, and though they were different answers, the questions were essentially the same

Actually, I DO love them for what they did. How they did it doesn't appeal to me so much, but I applaud their efforts. Who knows? Without them, the average symphony might be up to 4 hours by now!!    

[Florestan]

Actually, I DO love them for what they did.

Ah, I see: you are perfectly right in admiring people, though not their music, who reacted against the excesses of  exhausted, dying Romanticism, but I am perfectly wrong in admiring both the people and their music who reacted against the excesses of exhausted, dying Classicism. And: the transition from Romanticism to Modernism was perfectly natural and commendable, while the transition from Classicism to Romanticism wass absolutely unnatural and abhorrent --- a problem; that Classicism died is to be lamented, that Romanticism died is to be hailed. I fail to see any logic or sense in that.

[Gurn Blanston]

Ah, I see: you are perfectly right in admiring people, though not their music, who reacted against the excesses of  exhausted, dying Romanticism, but I am perfectly wrong in admiring both the people and their music who reacted against the excesses of exhausted, dying Classicism. And: the transition from Romanticism to Modernism was perfectly natural and commendable, while the transition from Classicism to Romanticism wass absolutely unnatural and abhorrent --- a problem; that Classicism died is to be lamented, that Romanticism died is to be hailed. I fail to see any logic or sense in that.

As you so clearly point out, it is your failure, not mine. This stems from your bullheaded determination to not accept anyone's ideas except your own. Just sayin'. 

[Florestan]

As you so clearly point out, it is your failure, not mine. This stems from your bullheaded determination to not accept anyone's ideas except your own. Just sayin'. 

My dear Gurn, your fighting Romanticism long after he has died and been buried strongly reminds me of those Japanese soldiers who were lost during WWII in some remote Philippines jungle, only to be discovered some full years after the war was over, not knowing that it was over and displaying towards their rescuers the same bellicose attitude they had during the war. 

I have news for you, my friend: the war of the romantics has been over. for more than a century. There is nothing that can prevent a classical music lover in our days from enjoying Mahler as much as Haydn, Berlioz as much as Mozart or Liszt as much as Beethoven (as the WAYLT thread proves authoritatively on a daily basis)--- nothing except a surprisingly prejudiced, outdated and narrow idea about music and its history, that is. 

[Gurn Blanston]

My dear Gurn, your fighting Romanticism long after he has died and been buried strongly reminds me of those Japanese soldiers who were lost during WWII in some remote Philippines jungle, only to be discovered some full years after the war was over, not knowing that it was over and displaying towards their rescuers the same bellicose attitude they had during the war. 

I have news for you, my friend: the war of the romantics has been over. for more than a century. There is nothing that can prevent a classical music lover in our days from enjoying Mahler as much as Haydn, Berlioz as much as Mozart or Liszt as much as Beethoven (as the WAYLT thread proves authoritatively on a daily basis)--- nothing except a surprisingly prejudiced, outdated and narrow idea about music and its history, that is. 

The dispute with the Romantics is not the reason I don't care for the music, that stems, instead, from its inordinate prolixity and nearly complete lack of interest for me. The good parts are deeply buried in a quagmire of turgid dung so I can scarcely stay awake long enough to get to them.

The difference between our arguments is that I admit that my foibles are my own, applicable only to me, while you only will admit everyone else's, while your own ideas remain crystalline and perfect.

[Florestan]

The difference between our arguments is that I admit that my foibles are my own, applicable only to me, while you only will admit everyone else's, while your own ideas remain crystalline and perfect.

Really? Let's see:

I frankly and gladly acknowledge that the way I react to music is highly subjective and personal, not universally valid and nobody is under any obligation to follow it.

Now, if you'll excuse me, there is a quagmire of turgid dung out there screaming for my attention: Tchaikovsky's Manfred. 

[Gurn Blanston]

Really? Let's see:

Now, if you'll excuse me, there is a quagmire of turgid dung out there screaming for my attention: Tchaikovsky's Manfred. 

But if you truly believed that, you wouldn't be trying to belittle MY beliefs as much as trying to understand them.

(PS - German Romanticism and its Russian contemporary are 2 entirely different animals). 

[Monsieur Croche]

Not to mention that I feel myself uncomfortable in front of the expression "modern classical" music. 

P.S.: I mean, wasn't "modern" opposite to "classical"?

If one has a propensity to be utterly literal, just about all the names of the eras of western art music will be at least somewhat disconcerting.

Your comfort zones be damned, those eras are all classical music, with no one persons taste really altering the fact.

Medieval
Renaissance
Baroque
Classical
Romantic
Modern
Contemporary  [sometimes 'post-modern,' and speaking of literalism, having not much of anything to do with that other ism of post-modernism, but quite literally meaning 'after the modern era.']

...but of course, you knew all that 

I thought just about everyone who had an ongoing interest in classical music, including those who are but only most basically informed, knew that "Classical" with an upper case C denotes the era of the same name, and that "classical" with a lower case c denotes western art music from all the eras, including the contemporary.

One could rightly project and assume that some many years from now, both the modern an contemporary / post-modern eras will more than likely be re-named by music historians.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

What do we learn exactly from those labels though? We can talk about various things in music composition and theory and point out certain trends across the years, schools of composition and individual approaches to music.....but I always feel that the least successful labels for musical styles are the ones which have been made in an attempt to link music to movements in art and sometimes literature (impressionism, expressionism and minimalism are some).

[Monsieur Croche]

What do we learn exactly from those labels though? We can talk about various things in music composition and theory and point out certain trends across the years, schools of composition and individual approaches to music.....but I always feel that the least successful labels for musical styles are the ones which have been made in an attempt to link music to movements in art and sometimes literature (impressionism, expressionism and minimalism are some).

They are convenient labels, about as logical as the distance measures for a mile or foot or the alternate while yet another mere set of accepted conventions of metric measurements, and I think those labels either signify way too much to the general listener who investigates a bit of music history, and they are invariably made further limited and reductionist by those who are, apologies in advance for saying it, mentally lazy.

Sure, there will be a general overall ethos of an era, but even that will not nearly cover all of the various art made in that era, at all neatly or in a tidy fashion... and that was why I mentioned that penchant some have of being so literalist-pedant about what the names might really signify.

I don't think much is to be learned from most of them. Medieval and Renaissance are widely known and accepted as the general era, while Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Modern etc. seem to be in and around the arts, but to me are only slightly meaningful as far as anything specific which might be worthwhile.

Since these various shifts aesthetic and general tastes do not occur at 'just the same time,' between disciplines like art, architecture, literature and music, this only re-asserts those era names are a very general guidleine at best.

Both in art and music, the impressionists and the minimalists who actually produced the work later named by some critic or academic, generally disliked, or hated, those names, lol. I think 'the expressionists' may not have given a fig for the appellation given their works either, but I'd have to look it up.

[North Star]

but I always feel that the least successful labels for musical styles are the ones which have been made in an attempt to link music to movements in art and sometimes literature

You mean labels like Renaissance or Baroque or Rococo or Classicism or Romanticism or Modernism? 

[Karl Henning]

[ Cross-post, as it is another view upon the present res ]

Once a fluent, erudite author of program notes, Wuorinen rarely provides them today. "I just don't know what to write anymore," he said. In olden times, when I had a specific compositional method to describe, program notes served a purpose. I had something definite to say, you know, even though it seemed pretty technical to some members of the audience. Now my methods are more general, my solutions more intuitive and local, my preliminary material sparser and sparser, so it is difficult for me to draw any communicable conclusion about what it is that I've done.

"Besides, program notes can do more harm than good" he continued. "I've heard it said that Milton Babbitt's music would never have generated the kind of hostility that it did if he had explained it as the 'yearnings of a passionate soul,' or something like that. Moreover, to describe the methods that a composer used to create a piece may have absolutely nothing to do with the meaning of the piece as a musical experience. There is often a profound difference between what a composition really is and what we think it is when we are making it."

Wuorinen allows that the Fast Fantasy is "just what the title implies: a fantasy based on a big lump of notes, intuitively rhythmed, with some quali­ties of recitative." Like most other celebrated musical fantasies, this one is essentially rhapsodic in form and abounds in pyrotechnical display. From the opening flourish (built around an insistently repeated F note passed, rapid-fire, from instrument to instrument) through the hushed, sus­tained song-like central section, this is a work of charm and unfettered imagination. Particularly effective are the last few bars, when cello and piano join forces to create rich, gonging, multi-textured chords that resound with the authority of conclusion. Yet there is one final surprise in store: As the chords are on the verge of dying out, the cello suddenly scampers off blithely, for an unexpectedly light­hearted ending. The Fast Fantasy is dedicated to Fred Sherry.

-From liner notes to New World CD 385, written by Tim Page ©1990

[Florestan]

to describe the methods that a composer used to create a piece may have absolutely nothing to do with the meaning of the piece as a musical experience.

Quoted for truth. Wisdom. Word. Hear, hear!

There is often a profound difference between what a composition really is and what we think it is when we are making it.

Ditto.