Unpopular Opinions

[bwv 1080]

Bernstein's Mass is bad 70s kitsch, the point in his career where Lenny went from a mediocre imitator of Stravinsky to writing purely bad music

[Ken B]

Bernstein's Mass is bad 70s kitsch,... purely bad music

+1

[PerfectWagnerite]

Bernstein's Mass is bad 70s kitsch, the point in his career where Lenny went from a mediocre imitator of Stravinsky to writing purely bad music

Supposedly Lenny left the NYPO to concentrate on composing. Took him a few yrs to come up with this garbage...

[Abuelo Igor]

Shostakovich owes much of his prestige to Testimony and to being considered a kind of hero who battled the evil Soviet empire from the shadows, which does not match very well the kind of personal power he actually got to wield at some times of his life. I think it unfair that he has pushed out of the picture many other Soviet composers who wrote music I find much more enjoyable but who were less "historically significant".

The reason why his stuff, in spite of not abandoning tonality, has found favor with many fans of the 20th century avant-garde is that it rarely falls into the temptation of being "beautiful", which to some people is the cardinal sin.

And my session of Dmitri-bashing would not be complete without stating that, in my ill-formed opinion, the Leningrad symphony, far from being the fluff decried by many serious-minded music lovers, is actually the best thing he ever did.

[Mahlerian]

Shostakovich owes much of his prestige to Testimony and to being considered a kind of hero who battled the evil Soviet empire from the shadows, which does not match very well the kind of personal power he actually got to wield at some times of his life. I think it unfair that he has pushed out of the picture many other Soviet composers who wrote music I find much more enjoyable but who were less "historically significant".

I think that enhances his aura among some, but I don't think it's the main reason.  He's hardly the only composer of the 20th century who resisted a dictator, and many others have fallen more or less by the wayside in spite of compelling personal stories (KA Hartmann, for example).

His music does have a compelling drive and his sense of form and timing were excellent, and I think that these elements account for a good deal of his popularity.

The reason why his stuff, in spite of not abandoning tonality, has found favor with many fans of the 20th century avant-garde is that it rarely falls into the temptation of being "beautiful", which to some people is the cardinal sin.

None of his music (well, none of the serious stuff, anyway) is really conventionally tonal, though it's in the mainstream stylistically and not fully chromatic like the music that's often incorrectly called atonal.

But I actually don't find his music especially beautiful either.  Not in the way that I find Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Boulez, Stravinsky, Messiaen, Takemitsu, and others of his time (even Milton Babbitt sometimes!) beautiful, and that's part of the reason I prefer Prokofiev generally.

The idea that people who like Second Viennese or Darmstadt modernism think beauty is anathema is really only something critics express; the composers said they found their own music beautiful, and people who enjoy the music often talk about its beauty.  I sometimes dislike the music that people who dislike those composers think of as "beautiful," but that's hardly an aversion to beauty in general; if I liked the music, I probably would hear beauties in it.

[amw]

People like Shostakovich because he sounds like film music and uses a recogniseable language of emotional "tropes" or "topics" that comes from that world. It's easy to recognize when something is supposed to be Sad, or Happy, or Sounding Happy But Actually Sad. It always keeps us at some distance from the emotions, and audiences like this, because it is uncomfortable for them to feel things (in particular negative emotions) too deeply. Much of the criticism against avant-garde composers of previous generations, such as Beethoven or Wagner, was based on their music being too emotionally raw and therefore improper, and they only found widespread acceptance once their musical languages had become mainstream. In fact this is still a criticism we level at some composers of the past.

Opera is a notable example, where the composers who are popular create musical distance between the often horrific events on stage and the empathy of audience members (e.g. every scene where someone goes mad and dies in a bright major key) and the composers who actually invoke the audience's empathy are seen as being difficult and abstruse (the music of Wozzeck is well suited to its subject matter, but it is considered significantly harder to listen to than, say, Tristan und Isolde because we come away with the actual feeling of two people having died).

Shostakovich's music was easy to listen to, because that is what government officials demanded of him. Judging by his popularity both in his lifetime and since then, they were absolutely right to do so, and Stalin bears responsibility for the most popular and accessible music of the twentieth century. Maybe Zhdanov wasn't so bad after all?

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Bernstein's Mass is bad 70s kitsch, the point in his career where Lenny went from a mediocre imitator of Stravinsky to writing purely bad music

Well I actually like it

[amw]

I was going to listen to Bernstein's Mass, but I realised I could just look at this picture instead:

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

I declare myself winner of this thread

[Madiel]

My unpopular opinion is that the popularity of the opinions are opinionated population increase studies have proved, unpolulated polluted islands on the east coast. Populated onions: insect reformation. Sad to the future generations, preservation. Popular solutions? Opinions on matter wanted, mr Speaker. Opinions onions populated non-preparatory? where will this end for our agriculture?

This is unpopular opinions. Incoherent opinions is 3 doors down on the right.

[mc ukrneal]

I declare myself winner of this thread

Haha! That's hilarious!

[ritter]

Since we're at it, Shostakovich and Britten are the musical "middle class" of the 20th century.

[Pat B]

Judging by his popularity both in his lifetime and since then, they were absolutely right to do so, and Stalin bears responsibility for the most popular and accessible music of the twentieth century.

Well, that's... uncomfortable.

[amw]

Definitely. I try not to think about things in that way, but on the basis of the evidence -- including the relative popularity of Mitya's pre- and post-1936 music -- that is a defensible (if unpopular) opinion.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Shostakovich wrote some pretty spectacular compositions that I don't really perceive as something trying hard to be accessible. The Nose? Symphony no. 2? Some of my favourite music to come out of Russia. Really quite complex stuff.

[Mahlerian]

Shostakovich wrote some pretty spectacular compositions that I don't really perceive as something trying hard to be accessible. The Nose? Symphony no. 2? Some of my favourite music to come out of Russia. Really quite complex stuff.

Both of those are among his less popular works and predate his censure by the government at any rate.  I don't think his music is popular solely because people who dislike other modernists find it accessible, as there's a lot more music of the mid-20th century out there that's far less modernist than Shostakovich.

[amw]

Shostakovich wrote some pretty spectacular compositions that I don't really perceive as something trying hard to be accessible. The Nose? Symphony no. 2? Some of my favourite music to come out of Russia. Really quite complex stuff.

Same (I also enjoy his early piano music) but those are obviously pre-1936. His post-1936 works start with the Fifth Symphony and continue with basically everything famous that he did. The only pre-1936 works by him that are regularly heard now seem to be the Fourth Symphony and First Piano Concerto, the latter of which is already in a more accessible vein even without Stalin and Pravda's "Muddle instead of Music" editorial.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Same (I also enjoy his early piano music) but those are obviously pre-1936. His post-1936 works start with the Fifth Symphony and continue with basically everything famous that he did. The only pre-1936 works by him that are regularly heard now seem to be the Fourth Symphony and First Piano Concerto, the latter of which is already in a more accessible vein even without Stalin and Pravda's "Muddle instead of Music" editorial.

The thirteenth string quartet is pretty good, I think. Another favourite of mine from after 1936.

I agree with Mahlerian that there is plenty of music from the mid 20th century which is more conservative albeit less popular than Shostakovich. Perhaps it is because it is more difficult to say anything new or contribute to art in a new way whilst being stylistically in opposition to modernist trends?

[Karl Henning]

People like Shostakovich because he sounds like film music and uses a recogniseable language of emotional "tropes" or "topics" that comes from that world.

What, all people?

What if some people like it because of the music's excellence?

For the record, "sounds like film music" is (rather like Socialist Realism) a squishy phrase at best.  Some use it as a positive.  Some as a negative.  One wonders just what it means.

[BasilValentine]

The thirteenth string quartet is pretty good, I think. Another favourite of mine from after 1936.

I agree with Mahlerian that there is plenty of music from the mid 20th century which is more conservative albeit less popular than Shostakovich. Perhaps it is because it is more difficult to say anything new or contribute to art in a new way whilst being stylistically in opposition to modernist trends?

All of the Shostakovich string quartets except the first were written after 1943 and they are all good. Several are great.