GMG Consensus: Who was the greatest composer of the 20th century?

[Florestan]

The classical reserve of Stravinsky is the most extreme of all composers after Beethoven (historically after, not with Beethoven at the top of the reserve tree!).

No-one wants to comment on this?

Is it worth commenting? 

[Cato]

Quote from: Guido on April 07, 2011, 06:27:46 AM

The classical reserve of Stravinsky is the most extreme of all composers after Beethoven (historically after, not with Beethoven at the top of the reserve tree!).

    Quote from: eyeresist on April 07, 2011, 09:03:40 PM

        No-one wants to comment on this?

Is it worth commenting? 

Well, why not?  Although I am not sure I completely understand Guido's comment at the end, here goes:

How "classically reserved" (and what exactly does that mean?) are e.g. All the symphonies, all the piano concertos, the Opus 111, etc. etc. etc.?

Since many would say that Beethoven is one of the stormiest of composers, that he is the best example of "classical reserve" seems indeed an odd comment.

[karlhenning]

Then too, it is unjust to establish Tchaikovsky arbitrarily as the "emotive norm" in music.  To castigate Stravinsky for being "less emotional" than Tchaikovsky (or to call the one emotionally arid and the other emotionally juicy) . . . well, rather than observe that Merlot is drier than Catawba Pink, let's consider it a fault of Merlot's, that it is not so sweet as Catawba Pink . . . .

[Luke]

I don't think Guido was castigating anyone...

[Guido]

No-one wants to comment on this?

+ Cato, + Il Conte Rodolfo

Sorry, my own parenthesised clarification wasn't clear enough clearly! I meant of composers after Beethoven, historically, not with Beethoven as the apogee of classical restraint. Of course there's the Boulezes and Stockhausens and so on, but it's hard to call their unemotionalism classical.

Anyway, the point of this whole digression is that although I think Stravinsky does what he does supremely well, and it works incredibly well on its own terms, in terms of what music can do, he doesn't quite manage to tick as many boxes (horrible phrase but I hope people get the meaning) as say Bach or Schubert I think, and so I hesitate to agree without more debate (however spurious!) that he is the greatest figure of the last 100 years. He's certainly one of the strongest contenders.

And to Leon: no Tchaikovsky is not the baseline, he is the extreme of that aspect of music - I used him as an example because his case is so clear - my question was is Stravinsky doing the same sort of thing as Tchaikovsky? (to whatever lesser degree). I don't think so. Part of why The Rite is so significant is that it is a rejection of Romanticism, coming exactly as that era began to fold and buckle under it's own gargantuan weight (think of all the post Wagnerian teutons - Strauss, Reger, Schreker, Korngold etc. etc. their writing becoming ever more opulent, extravagant, deluxe) and a work of extraordinary genius at that. The romantic rejection continues with the neo classical phase and even into the wonderful final serial phase, where in Schoenberg there was never a rejection at all.

[Guido]

Shall we consider Messiaen? A more controversial choice than Stravinsky perhaps, for various reasons, but he is also surely in the running. As I say, I'm dubious that in this of all eras we could nail it down to just one, but it's interesting as an excercise in getting our ideas about music in order, and trying to define what we value in the greats, and how we do say that "Bach is the greatest composer of the baroque".

[karlhenning]

I don't think Guido was castigating anyone...

Sorry; arid still strikes me as the wrong word, and a strongly prejudicial word.

If I am doing our mate Guido a disservice by considering that castigation, I do apologize.

[Guido]

Sorry; arid still strikes me as the wrong word, and a strongly prejudicial word.

If I am doing our mate Guido a disservice by considering that castigation, I do apologize.

Well it's not a well of emotion (Tchaikovsky) or an ocean of emotion (Bach) - I'm sticking with my water related lingo!

I was awaiting a beautiful and well thought out post from Luke, but he's gone off line.

[Florestan]

+ Cato, + Il Conte Rodolfo

Sorry, my own parenthesised clarification wasn't clear enough clearly! I meant of composers after Beethoven, historically, not with Beethoven as the apogee of classical restraint. Of course there's the Boulezes and Stockhausens and so on, but it's hard to call their unemotionalism classical.

I see now. Thanks for clearing things up.

Anyway, the point of this whole digression is that although I think Stravinsky does what he does supremely well, and it works incredibly well on its own terms, in terms of what music can do, he doesn't quite manage to tick as many boxes (horrible phrase but I hope people get the meaning) as say Bach or Schubert I think

He certainly doesn't --- but then again, I don't think he ever intended to. 

[karlhenning]

Well it's not a well of emotion (Tchaikovsky) or an ocean of emotion (Bach) - I'm sticking with my water related lingo!

Hah!

Well . . . I don't know that Bach stands in that relation to Tchaikovsky, so far as emotion is concerned.  I am apt to think of Bach and Stravinsky as inhabiting more or less the same neighborhood, so far as a talent for dispassionate note-management goes.  (Maybe I just tend to listen to the more arid stretches of Bach's work!)

[Guido]

Hah!

Well . . . I don't know that Bach stands in that relation to Tchaikovsky, so far as emotion is concerned.  I am apt to think of Bach and Stravinsky as inhabiting more or less the same neighborhood, so far as a talent for dispassionate note-management goes.  (Maybe I just tend to listen to the more arid stretches of Bach's work!)

Two words: Erbarme Dich.

[Luke]

Sorry, Guido, in and out today, the weather's too nice to stay inside!

Sorry; arid still strikes me as the wrong word, and a strongly prejudicial word.

If I am doing our mate Guido a disservice by considering that castigation, I do apologize.

It's only that I understand Guido to be using language in the purely literal sense, as Wilfrid Mellers did - in fact, Guido says as much himself. When Mellers describes Tchaikovsky, for instance, as the most adolescent composer of all, he does so not in a pejorative sense but in a purely literal one (he also thinks Tchaikovsky is an utter genius, just as Guido thinks Stravinsky is, I think). It may be argued that, in that case, Mellers could choose his words better, but I don't think so; I think he chooses his words carefully and perfectly, in general, and just needs to be read with understanding to be revealed as the illuminating musical thinker he was. In the case of his description of Tchaikovsky - strip the word 'adolescent' of any acquired pejorative associations and it describes Tchaikovsky perfectly: adolescence is the time when emotions are heightened, passions more passionate, pain more painful, a time when there is, quite necessarily, a dominance of in-the-moment nervous feeling over order, structure, perspective, retrospection. This is how things should be; adolescence is as valid a point in life as childhood or maturity, not only a transition, and Tchaikovsky is therefore not being dismissed by Mellers but implicitly seen to be as 'valid' a composer as any other.

Well, Guido's description of Stravinsky as' emotionally arid' strikes me similarly - fine, arid is a word that is often used pejoratively, but I'm certain that G didn't mean that here. He can speak for himself, but he's a great lover of Stravinsky's music, I think. 'Arid' also simply implies dryness, asperity even, and also implicit in its use is the idea that emotion in music is something that can be parcelled-out by the composer as they see fit, or that can, at least, derive from the composer's attitude and working method. Stravinsky did work in a very precise, distanced, constructivist way much of the time, and his music has a precise, distanced, highly constructed sound which is beautiful and full of its own unique charms. A very different working method to Tchaikovsky, with very different results.

The whole issue of Stravinsky and emotion/expression is a thorny one, as we've seen here(!), and Guido's problem here is simply that a throwaway phrase of his has been blown out of context. Some see emotion and expression in music as inherent in or existing in the listener - Stravinsky's music expresses something to me, therefore it is expressive. Nothing wrong with that. Some take Stravinsky's own attitudes to musical expression as evidence - nothing wrong there, either. Does the emotion come from the composer? How? Is Tchaikovsky more emotional because the music seems to flow in a less meditated, mediated flood, where Stravinsky's appears more coolly calculated? What do we mean by emotion, anyway? That the music makes us feel something? Or that the music makes us feel aware of an emotion (the composer?) without actually feeling it ourselves? Or that the music is clearly designed to me 'emotional' even if it doesn't actually affect the listener at all? If a composer uses the signs and signifiers of emotion in his music, does the music count as emotional, even if these signs are strictly controlled and objectively used? The list of issues and questions is very long, so the issues isn't easily resolved.

My own feeling is that a composer with personality will exhibit that personality throughout his music. As long as the music is making us feel something, it is expressive; but if the composer's personality is of the disguised, distanced, emotionally ambivalent type described above, as was the case with Stravinksy, then the music will reflect this. So to me - yes, Stravinsky's music is expressive, it makes me feel emotions that no other music does. But those emotions, when I analyse them, are very often* to do with the beauty of the construction and the artifice, and the distance that composer has put between himself and the audience; I find that charming and moving.** In other words, for me, the peculiar expressive qualities of Stavinsky's music derive in part from the strategies the composer uses to mask expression.

* not always, and I'm really talking about the post-Rite music onwards
** it's a similar story with Ravel, for me, except that Ravel's beating heart is closer to the surface and revealed more frequently.

[karlhenning]

Two words: Erbarme Dich.

Igor Fyodorovich can play that game even better. One word: Lacrimosa.

Trying to set up such a distinction seems to be in part a matter of selective characterization of the oeuvre of either Master; in part, relying too much upon present perspectives viz. the relation of music and emotion, as some kind of fixed standard.

[Florestan]

Excellent post, Luke!

[karlhenning]

Great post, Luke, though if you've got beautiful weather, this Bostonian says you're a fool not to go out and bask in it! : )

[Luke]

Going back out to bask! 

[Guido]

Thanks Luke for the defence and clarification. As ever you describe my thoughts better and more fairly than I could. I'm learning still! People get so hung up on words and preconcieved meanings! (though I knew this already - glad to have stimulated some debate at least).

And I should have mentioned the expressive/emotional distinction that is very pertinant here. Again, with literal meanings intended here.

The weather is glorious.

And for the record, if it wasn't already abundantly clear, I think Stravinsky is an extraordinary genius, as I do Tchaikovsky also.

[Cato]

Some years ago I wrote a small essay on why - despite having composed for several years - I decided I really could not be a composer.  I destroyed everything and have not looked back.

The few times when a work was performed (a few organ pieces, piano sonata, and a quarter-tone work a la Bach for a primitive synthesizer) the experience disturbed me in the following way: they made me feel completely exposed psychologically!  The last work, in my quarter-tone system, was especially disquieting, although at the time of its composition I was "coolly" more worried about the internal logic of the piece than about any emotional expressivity.

And yet I was extremely unsettled, when others heard it, and reacted (often with astonishment, and comments such as "Be careful!  They will use that against you at your sanity hearing!"       )

The point here is that emotional content can be quite different for the composer vs. the listener. I thought I could handle letting other people hear my subconscious calculus: I could not.  I also thought I knew what my work expressed, having built it note by note.  But the actual sonic experience was often too much.

Mahler, after hearing his Sixth Symphony, became scared of it.  Scriabin had the same experience with his Piano Sonata #6.


And Bach with his herd of children and two marriages can hardly have been "cerebral" all the time!   0:)

As Luke has pointed out: the composer might carefully disguise his emotional content, or parcel it out, and the listener might pick up that reticence (a similar charge has been made against Busoni) and consider it a negative.

[not edward]

As Luke has pointed out: the composer might carefully disguise his emotional content, or parcel it out, and the listener might pick up that reticence (a similar charge has been made against Busoni) and consider it a negative.

And of course, you also have listeners who find Busoni's reticence a positive, such as myself: I find the restraint with which he expresses emotional content in his late works heightens the emotional experience greatly.

One might make a similar point with Stravinsky: in a work like Symphony of Psalms the composer's reticence is overwhelmed by the fervour of the music--once again this, for me, intensifies the emotional content.

[karlhenning]

Well, and in general (the man was Russian after all), the music which is (or hovers near the) liturgical is designedly outside the emotions . . . whether we're talking of the Symphony of Psalms, the Mass, the three motets, the Canticum sacrum, the Requiem Canticles, or Threni . . . .