Audiences hate modern classical music because their brains cannot cope

[Florestan]

To deny the validity and legitimacy of associating music with non-musical things is to deny the validity and legitimacy of communicating / expressing existential experiences through the medium of a specific art, that is to deny the validity and legitimacy of one of the most important functions of that art, and of art in general.

What? Is a composer not allowed to, or should refrain from, being musically inspired by a painting he has seen, a poem he has read or a landscape he has walked through? In other words, a flesh-and-blood human being who thinks and feels is not allowed to, or should refrain from, letting his existential experiences influence and inform his art. Says who and on what grounds?

Imagine Mahler in the Alps, or Rachmaninoff contemplating a Böcklin´s painting, or Liszt taking a stroll in the gardens of Villa d´Este, or Richard Strauss reading Till Eulenspiegel. And then imagine that, as they reach for their sketchbook, a voice whispers to, nay! shouts at, them: "Don´t even think about it! It´s against the rules! It´s an offense against music! Music is all about sounds and nothing else! At most, it is about praise and entertainment! Your associating it with cowbells and pastures green, or with the fanciful vision of a painter, or with some hydraulic devices, or with the tribulations of a maverick is a gross betrayal of music´s essential meaning, besides being an avowal on your part that you have no idea about music´s rightful place in the world! If you still want to go on, be warned that you are nothing more than a conman and the result of your work will be nothing else than sham and trickery!" So far, so good. What I imagine next is Gustav, Sergei Vassilyevich, Franz and Richard answering in unison: "Vade retro, Satanas! Whoever prescribes rules for art, whoever wants to compartmentalize human experience in tightly sealed boxes with no communication whatsoever between them, whoever assigns once and for all rightful places for music, whoever proclaims that music´s essential meaning is to be exactly and forever like the music he loves, whoever dismisses novelty on the sole ground of its being novelty and exalts old ways on the sole ground of their being old (or the other way around), whoever, finally, is unable or unwilling to accept that music, just like every other art, just like every other human endeavor, is in permanent and inescapable change, evolution and development --- precisely he deceives (mostly himself), precisely he is wrong about music, about art in general and about what it means to be a flesh-and-blood human being and artist!"

[Elgarian]

"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."

These are matters concerning not merely music, but all the arts. I used to have the privilege and pleasure of long chats with Sandra Blow (abstract painter and Royal Academician) before she died, and what she said has some bearing on what we've been talking about. She said whern she started painting abstract work in the 1950s, she couldn't understand how to get the feeling into it; she decided in the end to construct the painting as if it were a piece of non-functional architecture, subject to all the necessary checks, balances and counter balances that that would require, and she then discovered that somehow the 'feeling' would be there if the architecture of the picture came good. She pursued this course throughout her life, seeking to achieve a 'startling rightness' in each picture. So the artist's search itself was purely technical, but the result for the spectator could be profoundly moving. She spoke of the mystery of it all: 'I might be wrong - maybe it's just 'splosh on splosh' - but there's a mystery there, and I don't know what it is.'

It all sounded very much like musical composition to me, and with a very similar outcome.

[Elgarian]

To deny the validity and legitimacy of associating music with non-musical things is to deny the validity and legitimacy of communicating / expressing existential experiences through the medium of a specific art, that is to deny the validity and legitimacy of one of the most important functions of that art, and of art in general.

Perfectly expressed! And in my book, perfectly true. I live much of my life based on the understanding and acceptance of this.

[Florestan]

Frankly, I don´t see what fault can even the most hardcore Classicist find with Liszt´s piano concertos. Barely half an hour long each, they´re full of gorgeous, emminently hummable melodies, in turns dramatic, lyrical, bold, subdued, melancholy, frolicsome, sad, joyous, resigned, triumphant --- and above all, profoundly beautiful at the strictest aural level.

[Karl Henning]

To deny the validity and legitimacy of associating music with non-musical things is to deny the validity and legitimacy of communicating / expressing existential experiences through the medium of a specific art, that is to deny the validity and legitimacy of one of the most important functions of that art, and of art in general.

Yes.

Perfectly expressed! And in my book, perfectly true. I live much of my life based on the understanding and acceptance of this.

And yes, again.

Now, as I understand (and to whatever agree accord with) the objection to music's expressing anything, the reality is that (to pluck a number out of the air) in 87% of the cases, the composer is powerless to convey to the listener his own non-musical associations, other than by non-musical means.

[Karl Henning]

And, you know, maybe that's been said already in this thread.

And perhaps more than once.

Still, the present company and chat are worthy on their own merits.

[Karl Henning]

Frankly, I don´t see what fault can even the most hardcore Classicist find with Liszt´s piano concertos. Barely half an hour long each, they´re full of gorgeous, emminently hummable melodies, in turns dramatic, lyrical, bold, subdued, melancholy, frolicsome, sad, joyous, resigned, triumphant --- and above all, profoundly beautiful at the strictest aural level.

Neither turgid, nor dungly;  yes, I am with you there, assuredly.

[Florestan]

Now, as I understand (and to whatever agree accord with) the objection to music's expressing anything, the reality is that (to pluck a number out of the air) in 87% of the cases, the composer is powerless to convey to the listener his own non-musical associations, other than by non-musical means.

Well, it depends. The issue is best decided on a case-by-case basis.

For instance.

Tchaikovsky´s 1812. Even if he had not titled it, the interplay between La Marseillaise and Bozhe, Tsarya khrani, the canvas on which it is painted (talk about extramusical associations!...) and the canon shot would have been self-explanatory, meseems.

Berlioz´s Au bal. If a waltz is not suggestive of a ball, I don´t know what else could actually be.

[Karl Henning]

Well, it depends. The issue is best decided on a case-by-case basis.

For instance.

Tchaikovsky´s 1812. Even if he had not titled it, the interplay between La Marseillaise and Bozhe, Tsarya khrani, the canvas on which it is painted (talk about extramusical associations!...) and the canon shot would have been self-explanatory, meseems.

Berlioz´s Au bal. If a waltz is not suggestive of a ball, I don´t know what else could actually be.

I think they both illustrate the point, though.  The nationalist music invokes [elements of] the program;  and the social functions associated with a given dance style, likewise.

[Florestan]

I think they both illustrate the point, though.  The nationalist music invokes [elements of] the program;  and the social functions associated with a given dance style, likewise.

Ah, now I see what you originally meant.

Yes, of course, absolutely.

But your point illustrates another point, if I may, namely that music does not, and I would say even cannot, operate in a vacuum. Each musical composition has a social and historical context from which it cannot be divorced --- or better said, divorcing it from its social and historical context sometimes results in misconstrueing it entirely.

[Karl Henning]

Ah, now I see what you originally meant.

Yes, of course, absolutely.

But your point illustrates another point, if I may, namely that music does not, and I would say even cannot, operate in a vacuum. Each musical composition has a social and historical context from which it cannot be divorced --- or better said, divorcing it from its social and historical context sometimes results in misconstrueing it entirely.

There is where I might say, it depends.  Apart from agreeing that no art exists in a vacuum, I mean . . . the degree to which removal of an artwork from aspects of its context results in misconstruction . . . depends 

[Florestan]

There is where I might say, it depends.  Apart from agreeing that no art exists in a vacuum, I mean . . . the degree to which removal of an artwork from aspects of its context results in misconstruction . . . depends 

No doubt. It depends from person to person, which is another way to state the obvious, namely that there are as many meanings and functions of art as there are artists and art lovers. 

[Madiel]

There is where I might say, it depends.  Apart from agreeing that no art exists in a vacuum, I mean . . . the degree to which removal of an artwork from aspects of its context results in misconstruction . . . depends 

I think it's very true that in some cases the original audience might 'get' something, because of a shared context with the composer, that a later/different audience won't pick up - or won't understand unless someone explains it to them/they are knowledgeable about the original context.

This of course doesn't apply just to music. It applies to Shakespeare, for example. And in fact, my own personal experience of this effect has to do with arguing with people about interpretation of the Bible.

[Monsieur Croche]

There is where I might say, it depends.  Apart from agreeing that no art exists in a vacuum, I mean . . . the degree to which removal of an artwork from aspects of its context results in misconstruction . . . depends 

Some seem to not only think, but believe, that if they do not know of that scene or illustration printed on the tin, the date and history of the picture printed on the tin, the history of society in relation to the making of that picture and tin, and do not eat the cookie that is in that tin along with the tin [which includes the picture and all those ancillary bits of history] while thinking about 'the rest of all that,' then the eating of that cookie is going to be less than the full experience of the eating of the cookie. Go figure.

The listener knowing those references can add another dimension of interest for the listener, while none of those references on their own can in any way strengthen whatever is innate to the piece itself. In my book, any piece of music has to stand completely on its own apart from 'all of that' to be given a listen by 'the open ears,' and if a piece is in any way dependent for its success on its extramusical / non-musical contexts, or any 'references' it makes, it is an inherently weak[er] as a piece of music.

All the 'contextual asides' associated with a piece, the history or 'sociology' of it, the composer's biography, etc. i.e. anything but the piece itself, are mere props.

[Madiel]

Some seem to not only think, but believe, that if they do not know of that scene or illustration printed on the tin, the date and history of the picture printed on the tin, the history of society in relation to the making of that picture and tin, and do not eat the cookie that is in that tin along with the tin [which includes the picture and all those ancillary bits of history] while thinking about 'the rest of all that,' then the eating of that cookie is going to be less than the full experience of the eating of the cookie. Go figure.

The listener knowing those references can add another dimension of interest for the listener, while none of those references on their own can in any way strengthen whatever is innate to the piece itself. In my book, any piece of music has to stand completely on its own apart from 'all of that' to be given a listen by 'the open ears,' and if a piece is in any way dependent for its success on its extramusical / non-musical contexts, or any 'references' it makes, it is an inherently weak[er] as a piece of music.

All the 'contextual asides' associated with a piece, the history or 'sociology' of it, the composer's biography, etc. i.e. anything but the piece itself, are mere props.

You must really hate ballet. And opera. All those sets! Why ruin a perfectly good oratorio like that?

[Monsieur Croche]

You must really hate ballet. And opera. All those sets! Why ruin a perfectly good oratorio like that?

Did I really need to be so pedant as to spell out that any work with sung text and all musical theater works are a genre apart, with libretti, sets, costumes, lighting, etc. Ergo, by their nature these are considered quite differently -- as they should be -- from a piece written solely for concert presentation?

I guess I did, after all.

For example, and I mean, this overall production, well, Hot damn!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIdimmUtYOI

[Madiel]

You did need to spell it out. Because it's the flavour of absolutism in your posts that is getting a reaction from me.

In terms of "absolute" music versus "programmatic", I'm a fan of absolute all the way. If you ask me to choose between listening to a marvellously constructed sonata form and a symphonic poem, it'd be pretty uncommon for me to go for the latter.

But you keep going to the extreme of declaring that any extramusical associations are somehow a weakness. And this is the part that makes me want to bang my head against a wall. No, they're not a weakness. They are in fact inevitable. Even if you avoid the road of giving pieces titles and programs and all that stuff which I, too, think is rot if someone besides the composer did it, no sane composer produces their music unaware of the things that their music will evoke in listeners, and evoking something is the entire bloody point.

It's certainly the point of writing down music, performing it and publishing it. I've "written" well over 100 songs in my life (though the number that are totally complete to my satisfaction is somewhat less than that). If I'm not interested in anyone else getting something out of that music, then I can quite happily run those songs through my brain, complete with the required instrumentation.

Your tendency to treat music as a hermetically sealed system - surrounded by a vacuum - really does turn it into intellectual wankery. Now obviously, the fact that you post on a music forum suggests that you in fact get something out of the experience of listening to music, yet the philosophy you're putting forward tends to the conclusion that the composer of that music simply doesn't give a shit that you got something out of it, and wouldn't be interested to know how you reacted.

And that's rubbish. There might be some composers who had no social purpose, and who for scribbling dots on a page was the end of the matter and may have constituted nothing more than a memory aid for when their internal 'ear' wasn't quite up to scratch. But that would be a minority. Most artists want a response to their work. It's why they do it. It's the goal.

EDIT: And it's why they do things like write 2 or 3 sonatas or quartets in a set where one is "lyrical" and one is "dramatic" and other extra-musical terms that you're about to jump and down and tell me are analogies. 

SECOND EDIT: You're also incredibly foolish if you believe that the musical resources that composers employ in staged works somehow completely disappear from view when they turn to 'absolute' music.

[jochanaan]

'Evoke' implies that the extramusical elements are imagined by the listener, using whatever piece of music as its basis. What I do like about that word is that it doesn't suggest that 'one way' communication from composer to listener. It isn't so directional, or 'fixed' in its implications as 'communicate' is. 'Communicate' to me implies that someone is trying to say something specific to someone else....but I've never thought of music as a medium to transmit precise moods, feelings, stories or images.

'Evoke' is a great word.

It's the word I use in these discussions. 

[Monsieur Croche]

But you keep going to the extreme of declaring that any extramusical associations are somehow a weakness.

They are in fact inevitable

That inevitability I think we agree includes the fact that just about any music, without text, and even without addressing the degree of its effectiveness, is somehow innately recognized by the listener as 'communicative.' I doubt if there is a composer who does not know and feel that, or otherwise, why compose? Communicative is even more blazingly apparent when there are sung texts, or theatrical stage works.

Using that production of Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex to which I supplied a link:
I was more than familiar with that work from repeated listening and following the score decades before I saw this stunning staging of same. The film of that staging I found thrilling, while at the same time I can say that every aspect of what that score imports was already known to me prior viewing that production from having listened to the score alone... i.e. it was great to see it while hearing it, but the production was a gloss, an icing on the cake which was enormously pleasurable, effective, while it in no way was 'further informative' compared to what I had gotten from auditioning the piece 'only as a piece of music.'

I think the same sort of experience can be had with an opera, and I've had the exact parallel experience when I [finally] saw a full re-creation of the original production of Petruschka. I won't go down the garden path of theatrical pieces which do not give the full experience without all the trappings of being seen in production -- because they were built that way with the other elements as part of the calculated overall effect, and I don't think there is much faulting that until you get to my 'absolutist' or 'purist' tic that some of those scores really do not stand well as music alone, which is but the criterion for 'music that stands well on its own without production or title needed.'

My raising what to me is a surprising storm of reactions was not intended to raise a storm, but to raise questions -- and read about from respondents -- as to 'what people thought they were hearing' as suggested by titles and programs -- essentially, then and for the most part, "program music."

Well, it seems that some took that as my having a magic tool which gives me, via a bit of writing on the internet, a draconian and magical ability to achieve a sort of musical lobotomy in the reader as per some agenda of 'purism of music listening.'

Cobsnuts....

People are going to have whatever associations they have while listening to anything, and I, nor any composer, even, can stop them from doing so.

I did, and I guess some found it more than a little alarming, put forth that the suggestive titles composers give to particular works might have nothing more than the most ephemeral and friable 'actual meaning,' -- for the composer the 'title' might have been the catalyst for the most tangential of associations, which they then anyway named the work, and I did advocate not taking any such title too literally. That said, I want and expect people to make their own images, stories, etc. if that is their reflex and or wont to apply their own imaginations in such a manner to those works; that was my other reason for advocating taking extramusical titles and programs with a grain of salt. Somehow, that got taken as a cry to erase all such titles from music history and any and all such associations from the listener, or some such ridiculous scheme.

Big whup, really, and some reactions were near to reactionary as if I had broken into the individual's home and savaged everything in their picture albums, killed their beloved pet, and slashed their entire collection of visual artworks.

I would think everyone participating on an internet forum would not require a large heading on each entry, "THIS IS MY OPINION ONLY," as I would hope that is well-understood about what everyone writes or reads on fora like this.

The strength of reaction has shown me, once again, that lots of people really love the image-story world they've conjured up as catalyzed by a suggestive extra-musical title, and saying 'it might be / could have been anything else' is, evidently, way controversial!

[Madiel]

The strength of reaction has shown me, once again, that lots of people really love the image-story world they've conjured up as catalyzed by a suggestive extra-musical title, and saying 'it might be / could have been anything else' is, evidently, way controversial!

So, basically, you close your complaint about how people react to your opinion by creating a caricature of theirs.

EDIT: I simply couldn't have been any clearer that I am not a 'Romantic' and am not given to creating specific stories/images to go with music that was not assigned it by the composer.