Composers who don't sacrifice form for expression

[jochanaan]

   

     Some composers are foundational, or at least elements of listener psychology say so. We tend to hear Beethoven as inevitable and Bruckner as "evitable"...

Some of us seem to have missed that particular element of our "education."

[zamyrabyrd]

I am unceasingly fascinated with how inevitability and notes get associated.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see any "inevitability" in music composition unless a work is previously known (like having read the back of the book) or there is enough acquaintance with the style, so as to expect a tonic chord at the end.

ZB

[drogulus]

Some of us seem to have missed that particular element of our "education."

    The "narrative" will be different for everyone. Probably most people started their listening experience with one of the big names and branched out. That wasn't true in my case, though. I started with a very odd combination: Vaughan Williams, Stravinsky, Beethoven, Gabrieli, Hovhaness and Berlioz were the first composers I listened to, followed by Ives and Hindemith. I had to reverse-engineer the foundational aspects of Beethoven, to learn how what he did led to what came after. When I read books about music I picked up some of what I missed by skipping around the way I did.

[drogulus]

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see any "inevitability" in music composition unless a work is previously known (like having read the back of the book) or there is enough acquaintance with the style, so as to expect a tonic chord at the end.

ZB

     Some of it is subliminal. I must have picked up some cues from music on the radio or TV before my serious exploration started. That must play a role in deciding what the default is and what departs from it. I do think everyone has such expectations however they may have formed. You might get it like I did or you might receive it from school. In my case part of the influence might have come from long forgotten lectures by Leonard Bernstein. Whenever I see one of these I'm amazed at how much of it is familiar.

[jochanaan]

...In my case part of the influence might have come from long forgotten lectures by Leonard Bernstein. Whenever I see one of these I'm amazed at how much of it is familiar.

I think I know at least one of the lectures you're talking about, the one on Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.  Remember, though, that Bernstein did emphasize how much work went into making that symphony sound so "inevitable"--it was hardly inevitable that Beethoven would leave the symphony exactly as it stands today.

Like zamyrabyrd, I can appreciate how little true inevitability there is in music.

[drogulus]

I think I know at least one of the lectures you're talking about, the one on Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.  Remember, though, that Bernstein did emphasize how much work went into making that symphony sound so "inevitable"--it was hardly inevitable that Beethoven would leave the symphony exactly as it stands today.

Like zamyrabyrd, I can appreciate how little true inevitability there is in music.

     Yes, that's the lecture I was thinking of. My point was that what you think of as "inevitable" has to do with different factors like the place a composer occupies in a line of development in musical style, which causes other composers to react in ways that are heard as noninevitable. We might be reacting to such cues, especially if we process other information about the music derived from various sources.

    That would be consistent with your view that there is little intrinsic inevitability in music. But there may be some, in the form of the same predisposition to favor some tonal combinations over others that governs musical choices generally. There's no tabula rasa in music, it appears. Many designs will work, but not all designs. A composer who founds or substantially alters musical style is at a great advantage versus his descendants. The measure of a composers greatness is how his example prevents us from hearing those who come after as great in the same way. You do something first and it's yours, and if someone else does it it's not as good even if it "really is".

[zamyrabyrd]

I think I know at least one of the lectures you're talking about, the one on Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.  Remember, though, that Bernstein did emphasize how much work went into making that symphony sound so "inevitable"--it was hardly inevitable that Beethoven would leave the symphony exactly as it stands today.

Like zamyrabyrd, I can appreciate how little true inevitability there is in music.

I remember that film too and unfortunately have come to the conclusion that Bernstein frequently oversimplified to the point of distortion.  I was reviewing some of his videotapes to see if they could be used a course and found the one on Sonata form was way off.  (He did a lot to bring classical music to the public though and should be credited for that.)  There are some good ideas in his Unanswered Question but mixed in with too many of his mugs and unsubstantiated arguments.

Charles Rosen showed that Sonata is not a simple concept at all.  In fact, expression in search of a form might describe its significance in the classical period.

ZB

[Ten thumbs]

It may be that music reaches a peak when the wealth of possibilities in the material presented makes inevitability impossible. Don't we relish surprise any more? It seems to me that Beethoven was a composer who was always ready to sacrifice form for expression if the need arose and that is one of the sources of his greatness.

[Superhorn]

   Which composers "sacrifice form to expression?"  This is a non-sequitur as far as I am concerned.  Form and expression are two completely different things. 
  I'm not sure what you mean by sacrificing form to expression.
Could this be composers like Bruckner and Mahler, whose symphonies are very long and involved?  I don't think they sacrifice form to expression at all,whatever that means.
  I suppose what is meant by this is that composers such as Anton and Gustav have often been accused of writing music which is sprawling and incoherent.
But having been intimately familiar with their symphonies for so long,I don't find their symphonies in any way formless or incoherent.
  They make perfectly good structual sense on their own terms,and there's no use faulting them for not being as concise as those of Mozart and Haydn,etc.