Unpopular Opinions

[Karl Henning]

Music was much more fun, engaging and interesting before the advent of the concert hall and especially of the recording industry.

That is Unpopular Speculations, next door  0:)

[arpeggio]

I have just done a lousy job of expressing myself again    Sorry about that.

I did not mean that these types of threads are bad.  I was just explaining why I am personally uncomfortable making a contribution to such a thread.  Please note that I said that I like to read these types of threads.  It appears that my post is an unpopular opinion.

Anyways I do not have the expertise to explain why I like Mahler.  I have no idea why.

This reminds me of the classic professor Irwin Corey joke (He just passed away).

Question: Professor Corey, Why do you wear tennis shoes?

Response: Why do I wear tennis shoes? That's two questions.  The first is "Why?" That's a question philosophers have been pondering for centuries.  The second is do I wear tennis shoes? The answer to that question is, "Yes."

I think I will keep my other unpopular opinions to myself before I get myself into trouble with members of this forum which is one of my favorites.  I do have a horrible habit of alienating people.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Music was much more fun, engaging and interesting before the advent of the concert hall and especially of the recording industry. Passively listening to music in a stiff and still environment has deprived music of its essentially social and interactive nature and has transformed the educated amateur of yore into a mere consumer of music.

You trying to say that making music together for fun with friends isn't a thing any more? You can't be serious. Either that or you're deluded. Difficult to tell!

[Monsieur Croche]

Pizzicato is the main piano technique, the keys are only for regulating timbre, this is why it is best as a four or more hands instrument.

Pizzicato keyboard = Harpsichord!

Piano strings are struck, not plucked (plucked = pizz.)  The material of striking the strings is felt, where the actual strike is next to inaudible... what we hear is the string set in motion, not the strike.

I like fuller piano music, the four-hand duet, piano duo, etc.  Some old player piano rolls of some great transcriptions of orchestral music were done by one player overdubbing on the same roll, giving a wonderful full effect of a multi-hand piano arrangement :-)

[Uhor]

I was thinking on someone plucking the guts of the instrument with the fingers, which is not unheard of. It is clear I have reservations on many things.

[ritter]

Music was much more fun, engaging and interesting before the advent of the concert hall and especially of the recording industry. Passively listening to music in a stiff and still environment has deprived music of its essentially social and interactive nature and has transformed the educated amateur of yore into a mere consumer of music.

Have you ever attended an amateur performance of, let's say,  Bruckner's Eighth, or Wozzeck . I certainly hope I never have to...

[Florestan]

Have you ever attended an amateur performance of, let's say,  Bruckner's Eighth, or Wozzeck . I certainly hope I never have to...

That's precisely one of my (implicit) points. When all the bonds and cooperation between composer, performer and audience are completely broken, and the latter two are mere tools at the disposal of the first, as either faithful executors or passive witnesses, the joy and the fun of musicmaking and musiclistening are gone.  Writing something even remotely similar to your examples would have been inconceivable for Haydn or Mozart, who instead wrote tons of music for educated, and quite profficient, amateurs --- a species which for centuries was the very backbone of music as a performing art, and which all but disappeared when music began to mean hundreds of professionals playing on a stage completely and ostentatiously separated from an audience which was supposed to be stiff and still and in attentive awe for ninety minutes or more.

[ritter]

That's precisely one of my (implicit) points. When all the bonds and cooperation between composer, performer and audience are completely broken, and the latter two are mere tools at the disposal of the first, as either faithful executors or passive witnesses, the joy and the fun of musicmaking and musiclistening are gone.  Writing something even remotely similar to your examples would have been inconceivable for Haydn or Mozart, who instead wrote tons of music for educated, and quite profficient, amateurs --- a species which for centuries was the very backbone of music as a performing art, and which all but disappeared when music began to mean hundreds of professionals playing on a stage completely and ostentatiously separated from an audience which was supposed to be stiff and still and in attentive awe for ninety minutes or more.

Mmmm. .. I give you Don Giovanni or Idomeneo. ..

But even beyond Mozart's time,  there was nothing "stiff" about the audience,  and a good chunk of the show and fun was in the stalls and boxes,  not onstage.  . Only in the mid-19th century did things change  (dimmed lights,  a silent public,  etc. )....Fortunately for us 

[Florestan]

Mmmm. .. I give you Don Giovanni or Idomeneo. ..

Opera was indeed a different matter even back then, so fair enough (and still, arias were usually written for a specific performer, thus taking into account his or her strengths and weaknesses). Now give me something for an educated amateur by Bruckner or Berg. 

But even beyond Mozart's time,  there was nothing "stiff" about the audience,  and a good chunk of the show and fun was in the stalls and boxes,  not onstage.  .

Ah, the good old days... 

Only in the mid-19th century did things change  (dimmed lights,  a silent public,  etc. )....

Sounds as joyless and grim as it really is. 

[Ken B]

I am surprised to see Florestan agree that it was the Romantics who got it wrong. Live and learn!

[Sergeant Rock]

Sounds as joyless and grim as it really is. 

Yeah, hearing the Cleveland or Berlin or Vienna is really a grim experience. Horrible, horrible 

Really, Flor, you honestly think that listening to, say, your aunt playing the spinet and yodeling would be preferable to hearing a great professional group? Of course you don't. You're just in your normal argumentative mood. You would not give up your CDs or concert tickets for a relative or friend singing.

Sarge

[Ken B]

So Andrei, Shakespeare and Burbage ruined theatre?

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Pizzicato keyboard = Harpsichord!

Piano strings are struck, not plucked (plucked = pizz.)  The material of striking the strings is felt, where the actual strike is next to inaudible... what we hear is the string set in motion, not the strike.

I like fuller piano music, the four-hand duet, piano duo, etc.  Some old player piano rolls of some great transcriptions of orchestral music were done by one player overdubbing on the same roll, giving a wonderful full effect of a multi-hand piano arrangement :-)

But piano pizzicato is my favourite effect!!!!

[ritter]

So Andrei, Shakespeare and Burbage ruined theatre?

Not to speak of the disastrous impact Rembrandt had on painting...

[Florestan]

I am surprised to see Florestan agree that it was the Romantics who got it wrong. Live and learn!

Yeah, hearing the Cleveland or Berlin or Vienna is really a grim experience. Horrible, horrible 

Really, Flor, you honestly think that listening to, say, your aunt playing the spinet and yodeling would be preferable to hearing a great professional group? Of course you don't.

Whoever said anything about aunts, spinets and yodels? I was thinking about, say, Sylvester Paumgartner and his friends playing the Trout Quintet.

You're just in your normal argumentative mood.

The thread asks for unpopular opinions, right?

You would not give up your CDs or concert tickets for a relative or friend singing.

Depends on CD, concert, relative or friend.

But it seems that only Ken got the idea right. It's not about what we do or don't nowadays, it's about what we could have done in older times. I maintain that passively listening to recordings is less fun and engaging than making music oneself, and that the overabundance of choice and ready availability of music has fundamentally altered the way music is viewed and experienced, not always for the better.

[Florestan]

I mean, someone whose only dilemma when it comes to music is "which one of my 3,652 Mahler sets should I be listening to?" has ipso facto a different perception of music than someone whose chances to hear Mahler's music were one in a lifetime, and live only. For the latter, that unique instance should have been really cathartic, while for the former it's just one of the zillions opportunities to either compare and dissect, or have expectations confirmed.

Furthermore, music used to be a collaborative effort, in which composers, performers and audiences were bound by common interests and formed a genuine community. Concerts, be they chamber music or larger ensembles, were social events where Kenner and Liebhaber got together not only to play music, but also to talk about music, and other topics, related to music or not, often in an informal and relaxed setting. All this is gone and music has become a self-absorbed affair, devoid of any sense of community and sharing. Composers compose for the sake of composing, performers perform for the sake of performing while the audience is supposed to just come in time, sit still and silent, listen in awe and leave in order. Hundreds of people get together not for communing and sharing, but for wanting to be left alone: I'm willing to bet that many, if not most, concert attendees would prefer the others to suddenly disappear from the hall, so as they could enjoy the music without disturbance. God forbid that someone make the slightest noise or move while the music sounds, or --- horribile dictu --- comment upon it (all that being actually normal and natural; abnormal and unnatural is forcing oneself to be still, silent and immobile for an hour long): a hundred pair of reprimanding eyes and tens of shhhhhs put the felon back in "concert" mode.

So bottom line, of course I go to concerts and listen to recordings, but I feel and think that it's somehow a limited experience of music. There's no gain without a loss: by concerts and recordings we have certainly gained width and breadth when it comes to repertoire but I fear we have lost depth when it comes to how we perceive and consider music.

[Karl Henning]

[...] but I fear we have lost depth when it comes to how we perceive and consider music.

I'll repeat that this strikes me as a Romantic expression of speculative dread.

There is no such blanket "loss," unless you are asserting that composers (to start with) in our day perceive and consider music more shallowly than in the past.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

I enjoy Florestan's posts

[Karl Henning]

I enjoy Florestan's posts

At first, I thought you were proposing that this as (per the thread) an Unpopular Opinion  0:)

[Florestan]

There is no such blanket "loss," unless you are asserting that composers (to start with) in our day perceive and consider music more shallowly than in the past.

I assert no such thing. My perspective is that of an audience member.