The Crisis of Tonality

[karlhenning]

Gawd, imagine the wig! Imagine the powder for the wig!

[Luke]

when he was younger

well, except for the great stuff he (Liszt) wrote when he was younger....

(there is some amazing early music by Liszt, totally original in every way - the Apparitions, for instance. Where the late music is harmonically iconoclastic, and texturally too, with its tremoli and its monophonic lines, the early stuff is, ocassionally, equally unique in its textures and its rhythmic dislocations, unlike anything else in 19th century music)

[Florestan]

IMO:

1. Such a general, major and universally felt and acknowledged crisis of tonality never happened, actually. The fact that a handful of composers in Vienna around 1900  felt that tonality is no longer suited to their artistic vision and goals is nowhere near an indication of a universal crisis (BTW, the theory of it having to do with war is seriously flawed, as atonal compositions predate WWI with a few years). On the contrary, parallel to the trend initiated by the Second Viennese School and developed by their pupils, followers and imitators, a lot of composers went ahead producing profoundly original and beautiful music staying within, or minimally departing from, traditional tonality. Is anyone other than the most fanatic avant-garde-ist, going to argue that R. Strauss, Sibelius, Rachmaninoff, Bartok, Prokofiev, Shostakovich or Enescu, to take just a few names contemporary with the first and second generation of atonalists, are somehiow inferior to these just because they continued composing in C major?

2. The Second Viennese School is never that far from Romanticism. Take Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony, Berg's Piano Sonata and Violin Concerto or Webern's Variations for Piano or String Quartet: though difficult to discern at first listening, one can hear in them echoes or even whole melodic lines from the Romantic past, I confess this is not the kind of music I'll have on a daily basis --- but every now and then when I force myself to listen to it I find it moderately enjoyable (the pieces being very short help enormously in this respect).

2.1. There is atonality and atonality. What do Boulez and Rautavaara have in common?

3. My personal taste, my own likes and dislikes can never constitute a universal yardstick by which all music should be judged. While hardcore atonality and serialism is definitely not my cup of tea, I don't feel entitled to trash it in any way. It is just as valid an artistic approach as any other. The fact that its results leave me cold and move me in only a minimal way does not mean that it cannot have any genuine value or it cannot move and delight someone with a different personality, a different taste and a different worldview than mine. I never understood why some people seem not to be able to fully enjoy their favourite music without trashing the music they don't like.

So there.

[Josquin des Prez]

when he was younger

The quality of his music didn't change one yota through out the years, it just became more radical.

[Franco]

I find it a bit humorous that some are still outraged and predicting the demise of Schoenberg and his school over 100 years after the second string quartet, Op. 10 - 1908 - generally considered containing his first really atonal music (the last movement).

[Luke]

2.1. There is atonality and atonality. What do Boulez and Rautavaara have in common?

...is another way of saying what I said earlier - that tonality is a fluid thing, not an on-off matter.

[Sergeant Rock]

Oh my God, seriously!  Does every single thread on this site now have to be about Schoenberg, or Schoenberg bashing or defending Schoenberg.

It's getting a little ridiculous.

I was going to start listening to Schoenberg this afternoon (and thereby contribute more Schoenbeg to the Listening thread)....but in deference to you, Nut, I will listen to Schumann instead 

Sarge

[karlhenning]

I love you guys! : )

[Brian]

Nicely said, Brian.

toucan, it is no great endorsement of your musical insight, that you see no difference between Sibelius and "earlier Romantics," and that your sole evaluation of Shostakovich is "a pilferer." Fooey, have you ever gauged yourself there.

Why thank you. I was beginning to wonder if maybe writing long posts like that was futile in any thread where James/Teresa/toucan/etc. tread. 

[karlhenning]

Why thank you. I was beginning to wonder if maybe writing long posts like that was futile in any thread where James/Teresa/toucan/etc. tread. 

I was especially interesting in your take on the Sibelius Sixth, which I don't read in quite that tragic vein . . . but then, it isn't like everybody has to hear the music the same way I do, and I do enjoy well-articulated alternative views.

[karlhenning]

Perhaps it's one of the purposes of message boards such as this one to debunk such a tired, dated, over-generalised and "progressive" approach to music history. With stuff like this, one wonders where to start.

Interestingly, Watkins mentions (in The Gesualdo Hex) that Fétis (IIRC) began assailing the "progressive" model of music history as early as the mid-19^th century.

[Brian]

IMO:
3. My personal taste, my own likes and dislikes can never constitute a universal yardstick by which all music should be judged. While hardcore atonality and serialism is definitely not my cup of tea, I don't feel entitled to trash it in any way. It is just as valid an artistic approach as any other. The fact that its results leave me cold and move me in only a minimal way does not mean that it cannot have any genuine value or it cannot move and delight someone with a different personality, a different taste and a different worldview than mine. I never understood why some people seem not to be able to fully enjoy their favourite music without trashing the music they don't like.

Indeed. I certainly don't like the Second Viennese School, count Berg's Violin Concerto among my least favorites, have only found one atonal piece that I really like as opposed to respect (Hartmann's Sixth), - but the result is I just keep my mouth shut about all that so that folks who enjoy that stuff can go on enjoying it without worrying about me.

[Brian]

I was especially interesting in your take on the Sibelius Sixth, which I don't read in quite that tragic vein . . . but then, it isn't like everybody has to hear the music the same way I do, and I do enjoy well-articulated alternative views.

Hey, I might even disagree with it next week. That final coda, so empty, so lonely, so hopeless, is a challenge to me - to understand how it fits in to the overall structure of the symphony, to understand why he wrote the piece that way. And that post contains my answer du jour. 

[karlhenning]

Well, I can see why Karl Henning will not gauge himself: as the [realization] he is a failed composer is not one his fragile ego will be able to withstand

Amusing assertions, every last one. Thanks for the laughs!

[Brian]

Well, I can see why Karl Henning will not gauge himself: as the realization he is a failed composer is not one his fragile ego will be able to withstand

Nor does the critical accumen need be taken seriously, of one who smears the great man, Gustav Mahler, but praises the second fiddle, Sibelius (Amazon review of a Sibelius boxset)

But then, if Henning's view were defensible on their merits, he would not be degrading the level of discourse on this site, with his pettily self serving categorizations of other contributors

I wonder if toucan's ego will handle the realization that he is a failed poster.

[karlhenning]

At some earlier point I meant to suggest that minimalist noodling with a triad isn't strictly the same thing as tonality, but the moment has probably passed ; )

[karlhenning]

It's just one aspect of musical history ... it's not all inclusive. There are those who re-acted against it .. those who didn't have an experimental or progressive streak, others ignoring it etc...

This remark is a tendentiously 2-D notion of experiment and progress, and how they hinge upon composition, BTW.

[Florestan]

Listen to the emotional arc of Sibelius' Sixth Symphony, from springlike freshness to false confidence to a nearly bottomless sense of loss, and try to find a predecessor who was able to speak these words. No, don't answer Tchaikovsky's Sixth; that is a symphony preoccupied from beginning to end with its own doom and utterly convinced of its tragedy. Sibelius' Sixth is the tragedy of a fresh-faced innocent climbing up out of the dregs and then, through forces beyond his power, falling back down again, despairing, friendless, and completely lost. It is the eager stranger in a new land which does not extend a welcome.

I must confess that not even at the point of a gun would I be able to discern all these in Sibelius's Sixth. 

[karlhenning]

The conversation here was proceeding well enough, untillthe failed composer came in to spew his bile at others...   
(Is it a wonder internet discussion forums never get much traffic? What with lower common denominator folk always dragging the discussion into the mud}

The only bile and mud introduced here were your cartoonish dismissals of Sibelius and Shostakovich.  It is part of your comic routine here that you protest my pointing out the insufficiency of your "critique."

You are a hoot!

[Brian]

I must confess that not even at the point of a gun would I be able to discern all these in Sibelius's Sixth. 

See, that's why I love music.