The Second Viennese School in the 21st Century: Still New?

[snyprrr]

A) Who, EXACTLY, is responsible for Ford's "terrible music"? Donald Martino? Who?

B) Excuse me, but, how many Opus Numbers are between the three? Is it no big deal that the actual amount of "seed music" here is really quite small? How can't anyone like S, B, & W? You could listen to it all in how many hours and be done with it?

We're not really talking about SBW, are we? We're talking about Roger Sessions, Donald Martino,... basically the US University System,...I am asking,...why won't anyone ever name names (Abramoff did it!) I love to hear the names of Composers Who Suck. I love mocking all those CRI-various discs, or Composer Society discs, or any number of these types of discs hanging around (Susan Blaustein?),... 

I'm sorry, I love hating,...I'm working on it.

Stuff like the Masters of High Modernism (of which Carter and Boulez are the last) blaze a trail so molten, so catastrophically GREAT that simply there is nothing

someguy IS GMG's guy on this, and I would love to have the YouTube videos of any pertinemt thing that someone might think someone else might enjoy.



C) What then ARE the Masterpieces that we may behold them, to praise or mock?

D) I'm not one of those to give people free will. People, by nature, choose CRAP!

E) JdP is right. WE, The Elite, are the ones having this discussion. Let them eat cake! or listen to Yanni, or whatever.

Honestly, I'd like to kick some kid who told me he'd want to be a Composer.



Once again, HOW MANY CDS worth of solo flute music



I) Anything post-Brahmsian is still new, c'mon guys,... Mosolov still sounds as new as in the day, Varese,...lots of the '20s,...I hear "new", novel harmonies in Haydn (the prankster), obviously Late Beethoven still CAN sound new...Satie,...obviously even ancient music sounds new.





What? Are there 100,000 Living Composers? How many are there? Let's do this scientifically, and take all the fun out of it. Let's quantize this fucker! Booom! In a box! Done.



I think we are in the Age of the Performer. Think about it. At this point the Arditti String Quartet gets the billing on their cds, not the (newish) composers. The Ardittis are the Genii, not the composers. Right?




I hope some of those names mentioned are on YouTube. I loooove to Judge. And I Will Judge. And my Judgment Shall Be Just!



Give things the freedom to totally SUCK! I think you should righteously HATE sucky music, and the propagators of it it, and shun them, to show the pitiful world out there what IS True Greatness!!!!

of course, William Shatner's The Transformed Man IS True Greatness!!! of course, that's not the kind of Greatness we're talking about here.

After all, WE'RE The Elite, guys.



At least as far as the gentiles are concerned.

[snyprrr]

wooooah, watch out, that's one monstrous post,....



Back,....BACK!!!

[Sid]

I'm not sure either who was responsible for the "terrible" serial music that Ford talked about. I should have asked him when I was talking to him after the lecture, but I talked to him about completely different things (Liszt & Ives would you believe?). I was also thinking, maybe Sessions or Babbitt, but who knows which composers he was thinking about?

[some guy]

I'm not sure either who was responsible for the "terrible" serial music that Ford talked about. I should have asked him when I was talking to him after the lecture, but I talked to him about completely different things (Liszt & Ives would you believe?). I was also thinking, maybe Sessions or Babbitt, but who knows which composers he was thinking about?

I wonder if even Ford knows. An anonymous target is much easier to hit. And since the profession of necessity for the vast majority of composers is teaching, one can hardly help actually painting a crappy composer or two with such a broad brush.

Do I mix metaphors? Very well. I mix metaphors.

Also, Sid, I wasn't referring to getting inspiration from the past. I was referring to mimicking a whole style, a whole sound, from an previous era. Partying like it was 1880, as it were. Of course composers get inspiration from the past, but that's a whole nother thing from writing your music as if the past were still present. As if the present and the recent past had never happened.

[The new erato]

wooooah, watch out, that's one monstrous post,....



Back,....BACK!!!

Down, boy.....DOWN!

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

I was referring to mimicking a whole style, a whole sound, from an previous era. Partying like it was 1880, as it were. Of course composers get inspiration from the past, but that's a whole nother thing from writing your music as if the past were still present. As if the present and the recent past had never happened.

I don't think I've ever heard such a thing, however. The neo-Romantic stuff I've heard, like Penderecki, Rochberg and Rouse, contains all kinds of influence from modern composers. No attentive listener could mistake it for something written in 1880, just as nobody would mistake Stravinsky's Symphony in C for a Haydn or Mozart symphony. I don't think it's possible for any composer to get the sound of the present out of his ears, even if he wants to.

[karlhenning]

I'm not really sure that I fully agree with your argument, many composers have reached far back into the past to shed new light on things that had gone before. Didn't Stravinsky reach right back to the age of Mozart with his opera The Rake's Progress? Also, Arvo Part with his Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten and other works like the Berliner Messe, going back & learning from ancient Christian church music? (his 'holy minimalist' style seen by some as a virtual declaration of war on atonality). & how about Frank Martin, with his Mass for Double Choir, combining vague tonality with the influence of church music. I could go on. I don't think it matters if you reach back for inspiration (or to use as a starting point?) musical styles from very far back (look at the ancient Greek modes used by Ravel in Daphnis et Chloe). It's what you do with these influences that really counts. If it's just copying, then I agree with you that that is pointless, but if it's creating something interesting out of what went before, then that can qualify as good (or even great) art, imo...

There are things artistically worse than just copying, too.  Wuorinen once made a surgical comment about how the "neo-Romantics" conveniently forgot that the original Romantics were about passion, musical adventure, and shattering boundaries — not about keeping to your audience's Comfort Zone.

[karlhenning]

I don't think I've ever heard such a thing, however. The neo-Romantic stuff I've heard, like Penderecki, Rochberg and Rouse, contains all kinds of influence from modern composers. No attentive listener could mistake it for something written in 1880, just as nobody would mistake Stravinsky's Symphony in C for a Haydn or Mozart symphony. I don't think it's possible for any composer to get the sound of the present out of his ears, even if he wants to.

I think there are some retro-amnesiacs out there; but Penderecki, Rochberg and Rouse aren't among them.

[karlhenning]

There are things artistically worse than just copying, too.  Wuorinen once made a surgical comment about how the "neo-Romantics" conveniently forgot that the original Romantics were about passion, musical adventure, and shattering boundaries — not about keeping to your audience's Comfort Zone.

Revolutionaries, that's the word I was forgetting so early in the day.

Revolutionaries, and not reactionaries.

[Josquin des Prez]

that the original Romantics were about passion, musical adventure, and shattering boundaries

Everything modern composers are not.

[karlhenning]

Everything modern composers are not.

You are funny when you make blanket statements like this!

[karlhenning]

. . . In the music schools of England, there was an ideology of "regression versus stagnation" which had been exemplified by Pierre Boulez's comments to the effect that unless composers worked to "advance the language of music" then their works would be "useless." For Ford at 18, being at the vanguard of music was an "attractive, Romantic notion," and the Second Viennese School "clearly lead the way."

What attracted Ford and others to this music was it's completely different harmonies and the unique sounds that atonality could render. Schoenberg's (apparent) comment to friend Joseph Wolfe that his discovery of serialism would ensure the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years was also read by Ford to mean (in his teens) that "this was the future of music."

Not that it's the first time I've said this, but it is characteristically fatuous of Boulez to proclaim that music which doesn't play in the arena he wishes, and according to the rules which he wishes, is "useless."

Arguments over "the future of music," too, are IMO an irrelevant circus.

The first serial pieces were composed in the mid-1920's. Since 1945, Webern's music in particular appealed to some composers (but not audiences). Webern's music was analysed and studied, and used as an example as to how to compose serial music. Ford said that with Webern's music "every note mattered" and in adopting this technique, composers were "slowed down a bit" and "made accountable" for everything they did.

Here's an example of taking an artistic lesson from one of the Second V. School.

But, these lessons are a matter of one's context, of application. It isn't the only lesson one might draw from Webern.  Nor is it the case (I shouldn't think) that there is any particular lesson that every composer from here on out must take! Or be irrelevant!

There was a "purity" in Webern's music, and it was easy for young composers to "jump from that idea of purity to believe that we were coming up with something new." This attitude made them "dismiss and question music that didn't fit the bill" like Britten, Copland, Vaughan Williams, Sibelius. Ford said that he even got rid of his pop music collection at that time, only to buy it back again later. They also dismissed minimalism which was seen as "so simple, so missing the point of what music could be." Now, of course, it is seen as an important style.

Boulez sets a tone here (or, let us say, there was a Zeitgeist to which Boulez wholeheartedly gave himself), but one of my points is that the artistic value of the lessons is in the quality of the work one does — not in blanket scorn for those who take other lessons.

Composers like Harrison Birtwistle show that Schoenberg's music doesn't have to be understood by the composers of today for them to be good composers. "Schoenberg never actually was the future of music, neither was Berg or Webern." We have come to "think of composers as composers and simply listen to their music, not necessarily think that it's the future (or not), just hear it as music."

Plain good sense, really.

[DavidW]

I'm not really sure that I fully agree with your argument, many composers have reached far back into the past to shed new light on things that had gone before. Didn't Stravinsky reach right back to the age of Mozart with his opera The Rake's Progress? Also, Arvo Part with his Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten and other works like the Berliner Messe, going back & learning from ancient Christian church music? (his 'holy minimalist' style seen by some as a virtual declaration of war on atonality). & how about Frank Martin, with his Mass for Double Choir, combining vague tonality with the influence of church music. I could go on. I don't think it matters if you reach back for inspiration (or to use as a starting point?) musical styles from very far back (look at the ancient Greek modes used by Ravel in Daphnis et Chloe). It's what you do with these influences that really counts. If it's just copying, then I agree with you that that is pointless, but if it's creating something interesting out of what went before, then that can qualify as good (or even great) art, imo...

Since Eric is not here, I'll add to your list with the medieval chant inspiration for the harmony of Debussy' Pelleas and Melisande.  I think that one of the strengths of 20th and 21st century music is that composers felt free to find new uses for old ideas.

[karlhenning]

Since Eric is not here, I'll add to your list with the medieval chant inspiration for the harmony of Debussy' Pelleas and Melisande.  I think that one of the strengths of 20th and 21st century music is that composers felt free to find new uses for old ideas.

Good!

[karlhenning]

I never changed my tune, and i thought it was obvious what i was hinting at. Obviously there are young composers working today, why the hell would i ask such a thing?

Well, and just as obviously, you wouldn't judge the ultimate greatness of Mozart or Beethoven by the music of their youth.

Your gambit of "name five young composers who are the genius composers of tomorrow" is disingenuous at best.

[karlhenning]

I sneer because your attitude revealed all i needed to know about them.

Thanks for the chuckle!

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

You are funny when you make blanket statements like this!

What else do you expect from a guy who wears a blanket on his head?

[karlhenning]

You take the blonde, I'll take the one in the toiban.

[Josquin des Prez]

Well, and just as obviously, you wouldn't judge the ultimate greatness of Mozart or Beethoven by the music of their youth.

Your gambit of "name five young composers who are the genius composers of tomorrow" is disingenuous at best.

Nonsense. By their mid 20s, both Mozart and Beethoven had already produced works of genius.

[karlhenning]

Another lesson which I think it is possible to draw from the Second V. School is related to . . . .

There are things artistically worse than just copying, too.  Wuorinen once made a surgical comment about how the "neo-Romantics" conveniently forgot that the original Romantics were about passion, musical adventure, and shattering boundaries — not about keeping to your audience's Comfort Zone.

There aren't always boundaries to shatter, and when you've settled on what your fences are, there is ample work to be done on your own ground. Schoenberg applied a novel method, but in many cases, to traditional genres and forms.