Typically French

[Sylph]

It is answerable by vague generalities that contradict each other.

Then do so.

[drogulus]

Yes but he doesn't make architectures its own justification, which is what i meant. Berlioz developments play along a simple natural line or narrative progression. There's an abyss between him and Beethoven, who's almost archetypically German.

     I think this is correct. The difference is undeniable. In the German tradition architecture is in the foreground. You admire how all the pieces fit together and how they fit together is what the composer is trying to show you. This was Tchaikovsky's beef against Brahms (the one he could talk about, that is). He mocked Brahms as a musical academician. This is from a letter to Nadezhda von Meck in 1880:

     "Brahms's [Violin] Concerto appealed to me just as little as everything else he has written. He is of course a great musician and even a master, but [in his works] there is more mastery than inspiration. Lots of preparations as it were for something, lots of hints that something is going to appear very soon and enchant you, but nothing does come out of it all, except for boredom. His music is not warmed by genuine feeling; it has no poetry; what it has instead is enormous pretension to depth. However, in this depth there is nothing—it's just empty space."

     I can hear it his way if I want. Or I can go the other way and hear all the details as the point. In some way it's like the difference between Anglo-American philosophy and what is usually called "continental" philosophy. They seem to be looking at the same thing but one of them is squinting, so it's all different.

[some guy]

Yes but he doesn't make architectures its own justification, which is what i meant. Berlioz developments play along a simple natural line or narrative progression. There's an abyss between him and Beethoven, who's almost archetypically German.

Development = making architecture its own justification, eh? No. No changing the rules mid-game, JdP.

Otherwise, what could "play along a simple natural line" possibly mean? I have spent many happy years listening to, reading about, thinking about the music of Hector Berlioz, and I cannot make these words correspond to anything in the music I've heard. (Well, be fair. I cannot make them correspond to anything else, either, but that's by the way.)

As for the abyss between him and Beethoven, that likely accounts for the wide-spread sense in his life-time that Berlioz was Beethoven's successor, for the sense Berlioz had that he was picking up music where Beethoven had left off, for the remarkable coincidence that, as Jacques Barzun points out, the late Beethoven works--the ninth symphony, the late sonatas and quartets--contain "the prototypes of Berlioz' melodic variation, the development by altered restatement, the harmonic concision, and the construction by interweaving rather than juxtaposing sections within a movement."*

It accounts as well for the widely held view that Berlioz was the most Germanic of all those working in mid-century. Yes. It must be true....

Well, no. There's no abyss but a tightly bound progression (if I may be permitted a little harmless metaphor mixing) of ideas from one to the other.

As for drogulus' comment that "in the German tradition architecture is in the foreground, well, maybe for Mozart and Haydn, yes. But Beethoven was the guy who was credited as having turned form from an obvious thing to "a hidden presence."* And that is certainly something Berlioz continued on with.

*"Fetish of Form," in Berlioz and the Romantic Century, Third Edition, Vol. II, p. 349. (The reference to Beethoven's form is from Sir George Grove's A Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 3rd edition revised (ed. H.C. Colles), 1935, is from p. 348 of the Barzun book.)

[Josquin des Prez]

Development = making architecture its own justification, eh? No. No changing the rules mid-game, JdP.

I'm not changing anything. It was implied what i meant when i said development based on the subtext of the topic. Duh. And while Berlioz does employ development, technically speaking, the fact he does not make development a primary concern it means it is essentially irrelevant to his work. Development is simply not an important part of music.

As for the abyss between him and Beethoven, that likely accounts for the wide-spread sense in his life-time that Berlioz was Beethoven's successor

There was no such wide-spread sense. Everybody was referred to as the hair of Beethoven at one point or another, it was an extremely common form of praise, and everybody believed that they were carrying the torch. Of course, those statements were issued by individuals who understood very little about Beethoven in the first place (like Paganini).

for the sense Berlioz had that he was picking up music where Beethoven had left off

A delusion of course. Berlioz took one single element of Beethoven's work (the underlying programmatic element of his orchestral music) and developed it as an entity onto itself, adding ideas about harmony and orchestration which had nothing to do with Beethoven. Your effort in trying to use public opinion during the times of Beethoven and Berlioz as some sort of appeal to authority falls flat in the face of reality.

for the remarkable coincidence that, as Jacques Barzun points out, the late Beethoven works--the ninth symphony, the late sonatas and quartets--contain "the prototypes of Berlioz' melodic variation, the development by altered restatement, the harmonic concision, and the construction by interweaving rather than juxtaposing sections within a movement."*

None of of those elements has anything to do with formal development. Berlioz worked under the assumption that Beethoven wanted to "free" music from form, which we all know just wasn't what Beethoven intended. 

It accounts as well for the widely held view that Berlioz was the most Germanic of all those working in mid-century. Yes. It must be true....

He was in fact one the least Germanic composers of the mid-century.

Well, no. There's no abyss but a tightly bound progression (if I may be permitted a little harmless metaphor mixing) of ideas from one to the other.

No, there's only a delusion of progression. Berlioz took elements from Beethoven's work and stripped from them everything that made Beethoven who he was. You can hardly find a case of two composers so different, so diverse, as that of Beethoven and Berlioz.

As for drogulus' comment that "in the German tradition architecture is in the foreground, well, maybe for Mozart and Haydn, yes. But Beethoven was the guy who was credited as having turned form from an obvious thing to "a hidden presence."*

And there in lies your mistake, and that of the Romantics. The very fact that Brahms could claim direct descendancy from Beethoven as much as the Romantics did obviously demonstrates that the progression the Romantics envision in the music of Beethoven wasn't as clear cut as they believed.

[some guy]

Well, you certainly have strong opinions about this. Or did I mean fixed?

And they're all wrong. All of them. So so so much wrongness, I don't even know where to begin. That is, I don't even want to begin. What would be the point? You'd just come back (I'm guessing here--with some justification) with more wrongnesses.

I think I'll just slip quietly away from this discussion (I should never have entered it!) and listen to some music. Might even be Berlioz. I wonder when was the last time JdP actually listened to Berlioz. Heigh ho.

[Philoctetes]

Well, you certainly have strong opinions about this. Or did I mean fixed?

And they're all wrong. All of them. So so so much wrongness, I don't even know where to begin. That is, I don't even want to begin. What would be the point? You'd just come back (I'm guessing here--with some justification) with more wrongnesses.

I think I'll just slip quietly away from this discussion (I should never have entered it!) and listen to some music. Might even be Berlioz. I wonder when was the last time JdP actually listened to Berlioz. Heigh ho.

What are you? Fucking 5?

[some guy]

What are you? Fucking 5?

According to Hitchens, this means I win!!

(..."because I always think it's a sign of victory when they move on to the ad hominem".
Christopher Hitchens)

[Philoctetes]

According to Hitchens, this means I win!!

(..."because I always think it's a sign of victory when they move on to the ad hominem".
Christopher Hitchens)

Doesn't really make you any less of a retard though.

[drogulus]

As for drogulus' comment that "in the German tradition architecture is in the foreground, well, maybe for Mozart and Haydn, yes. But Beethoven was the guy who was credited as having turned form from an obvious thing to "a hidden presence."* And that is certainly something Berlioz continued on with.

*"Fetish of Form," in Berlioz and the Romantic Century, Third Edition, Vol. II, p. 349. (The reference to Beethoven's form is from Sir George Grove's A Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 3rd edition revised (ed. H.C. Colles), 1935, is from p. 348 of the Barzun book.)

     I probably got part of my idea about the significance of form from Groves. It's been a long time, so I should look at it. My point is not that the French have abandoned an idea of form that the Germans maintain. It's more like a figure/ground relation where form in the German tradition assumes an overt role in a listeners aesthetic judgment. It's the difference between a holistic functionalism versus an appreciation of the mechanism. When I listen to French music I don't feel like I'm missing very much when I just go along with the music, not that there isn't anything to miss, but that I'm not supposed to notice the "hidden presence".

     An example would be the difference between a Volkswagen Jetta and a Toyota Camry. A Camry is not French, it's just not German, so it will stand in for a French car. Both of these are "the better car" according to which end of the telescope you're looking through. Toyotas are made so that you don't think about how they work. Toyota drivers/listeners want an experience that excludes the mechanism. Jetta drivers/listeners are surprisingly unimpressed by the high failure rate of the complicated mechanism they care so much about. My father drives a VW Golf and swears by it. The ludicrousness of Mahler's 3rd symphony doesn't matter to him.* What a grand achievement! Meanwhile the Toyota drivers look on smirking: "I don't want to drive a science project, I just want a car!". The difference, in my view, is that an aesthetic predisposition is mistaken for a supposed fact about what an automobile or symphony is "for".

     _{* I mean it wouldn't.}

     

[Josquin des Prez]

I probably got part of my idea about the significance of form from Groves. It's been a long time, so I should look at it. My point is not that the French have abandoned an idea of form that the Germans maintain. It's more like a figure/ground relation where form in the German tradition assumes an overt role in a listeners aesthetic judgment. It's the difference between a holistic functionalism versus an appreciation of the mechanism. When I listen to French music I don't feel like I'm missing very much when I just go along with the music, not that there isn't anything to miss, but that I'm not supposed to notice the "hidden presence".

Sums it up perfectly.

[snyprrr]

Next locked Thread?

I'm afraid to see what happened in The Diner, tee hee!

[Brian]

French style generally means an emphasis on wind instruments, tone color, and dance.

Of course, the same could be said about the Czechs.

[schweitzeralan]

French style generally means an emphasis on wind instruments, tone color, and dance.  The lightness or smoothness to French music can be attributed to the soft sounds of the French language (which also accounts for the angular composition styles of the Germans who have a more consonant based language with hard T's and K's).  This is why the Germans tended to excel in instrumental music based on motivic development, and why the Italians, whose language has the perfect mix of hard and soft sounds, created a music based on melodic line and vocally conceived music.  This also serves to explain why the French were the ones to come up with the idea of tone color being exploited as a musical element in its own right (Impressionism), as their language and culture are more about the experience than the details.  Less formal structure, more ambiance.

Good response.  Quite analytical and exact. During the early decades of the 20th century there were composers who created, or defined a style, or "amalgam of chords, harmonies, etc" which had become somewhat standardized musical "language" derivative of a country. I had come to recognize the '"British" sound exemplified by several composers: Elgar, Bliss, Ireland, Howells, and others.  Also there was an American "sound," which surfaced with the works of Harris, Copeland, Donovan, Piston, etc.  Then there is the "Russian epiphany," the Nordic, the Czech or Bohemian (Novak, Suk, the "Spanish," and so on.  Since the 1960's all was never quite as evident, at least to me.