21st century classical music

[Brian]

An organist accidentally puts an interesting new spin on Handel's Messiah. Contrary to the text on the video, I kinda liked it!

http://www.youtube.com/v/_9gBGaB5bwI

[Sergeant Rock]

An organist accidentally puts an interesting new spin on Handel's Messiah.

"The organist didn't Handel that very well."




Sarge

[Karl Henning]

Shit.

This is one of those times when I very much wanted to be wrong!

Well, I still have my 15 albums and soundcloud and bandcamp.

https://soundcloud.com/experimedia/zbigniew-karkowski-nerve

http://danielmenche.bandcamp.com/album/unleash

I used to live about sixteen blocks from Menche.

Separately . . . Michael, are you going to the Wuorinen opera next month?

[some guy]

Sadly, I am no longer in Madrid. At the moment (or "ahora" as we say ) I am in Barcelona (where we actually say "ara." It's so confusing).

By the 28th of January, I'll be in Southern California, for my sins.

I'll be back in Spain at the end of March. Too late to see Brokeback, though.

[Karl Henning]

Barcelona! That's a city I need to spend more time in . . . .

[kishnevi]

By the 28th of January, I'll be in Southern California, for my sins.

Pero dicen en California, como acqui en Florida,  ahora.


(It does remain true that two of the most important cities in Latin America are Los Angeles and Miami.)

[some guy]

Es verdad.

[Brian]

Sadly, I am no longer in Madrid. At the moment (or "ahora" as we say ) I am in Barcelona (where we actually say "ara." It's so confusing).

Might I recommend this tapas bar. If it's the way it was three years ago, they do tapas the old-school way: each item is served on a toothpick, and at the end of the meal they charge you something like 1.40 euros per toothpick. Nobody there spoke English and they all just looked at me like I was a crazy person, but they kept bringing food around and I kept eating it. At one point I was so thrilled with a sandwich that I asked, que tipo de queso, or something, and the waiter said "guwAHHHT". For a while I marveled at this new guwaht cheese that Catalonia had... then realized it was "goat".

Anyway. Amazing place. I left at 2:15 p.m. and the lunch crowd was just arriving. A million times better than the armada of tourist rip-off places closer to the center.

The only really good patatas bravas I had were at Meson David, which is in the heart of the old town and is also where I met the New York Ska Jazz Ensemble, who were tucking in to massive meals before their gig at the Sala Apolo and put me on the list for VIP entry. They do a great show. 

[San Antone]

The blog A Closer Listen has posted this -

Top Ten Modern Compositions of 2013

Their description:
This may be called Neoclassical, Modern Classical or Modern Composition, but everyone knows what it is: classical music for a modern generation.  When it comes to honoring remarkable writing and playing, Modern Composition is the genre to which we turn.

Some of these composers fill concert halls.  Others perform in smaller venues, solo or with ensembles.  One creates his own orchestra.  Each is identified with at least one specific instrument.  While some kids grow up wanting to play the guitar, bass, and drums (not that there's anything wrong with that!), these composers prefer the piano, cello and baton.  One might call this "serious minded music", except in many cases, it's downright fun.

[some guy]

Their description:
This may be called Neoclassical, Modern Classical or Modern Composition, but everyone knows what it is: classical music for a modern generation.

I wonder who they mean by "everyone"?

This site reminds me of the time I co-taught a class in experimental music a few years ago. The three of us gradually became aware of some vague unrest in the class, but it wasn't until almost the end of term that someone was brave enough to tell us why--seems that a certain number of students had signed up for the class thinking they were going to be able to talk about the music that they called "experimental." We oldies (!) hadn't realized that the word "experimental" had more or less replaced the word "alternative" some time in the early 2000s. We were offering a class in the musics of the fifties and sixties and beyond that were called "experimental." Generally, this refers to music where the results are outside the composer's control.

They had no sense of history going into the class, just an expectation. And they didn't appreciate the history they got as it did not correspond with their expectation.

This site has a similar lack of historical sense. It's as if music started up some time in the 1990s, and all the terms they use have never been used to describe anything else. "Neoclassical," for instance. I think any classical listener would be quite surprised that "neoclassical" seems now to refer to modern instrumental music that is not pop or rock or jazz. I went to the "experimental" section and found roughly what one would find in the same section of Bandcamp, a mish-mash of "alternative" new music, none of it "experimental" in the original use of that word. Same for electronic, which was co-opted back in the 80's to refer to, well, all the things it refers to now: house, techno, dubstep, ambient, trance, and so forth.

Of course words change, but technical vocabulary usually changes more slowly and is more disorienting when it changes rapidly. "Electronic" used to mean Eimert and Varese and Stockhausen. Now it means Moby and Bangface and The Chemical Brothers. And the people who are doing electronic music today (or electroacoustic, to keep things straight--or more confusing) don't even register: Emmanuelle Gibello, Ludger Bruemmer, Michele Bokanowski, Lionel Marchetti.

This site also uses words like "song" and "band," which pretty well identifies where they are coming from. Which is fine, for what it is, but it isn't "neoclassical" or "modern classical," either one. "Modern composition" seems to be their own neologism, though Itunes has a "modern composition" section, populated with such items as the London Symphony Orchestra, Brian Eno, The Knife, and Kraftwerk, to name the first four items.

I don't know if you all know The Knife, but Itunes lists their genres as "Electronic, Music, Classical, Modern Composition, Dance, Rock."

Oh well.

[San Antone]

I wonder who they mean by "everyone"?

This site reminds me of the time I co-taught a class in experimental music a few years ago. The three of us gradually became aware of some vague unrest in the class, but it wasn't until almost the end of term that someone was brave enough to tell us why--seems that a certain number of students had signed up for the class thinking they were going to be able to talk about the music that they called "experimental." We oldies (!) hadn't realized that the word "experimental" had more or less replaced the word "alternative" some time in the early 2000s. We were offering a class in the musics of the fifties and sixties and beyond that were called "experimental." Generally, this refers to music where the results are outside the composer's control.

They had no sense of history going into the class, just an expectation. And they didn't appreciate the history they got as it did not correspond with their expectation.

This site has a similar lack of historical sense. It's as if music started up some time in the 1990s, and all the terms they use have never been used to describe anything else. "Neoclassical," for instance. I think any classical listener would be quite surprised that "neoclassical" seems now to refer to modern instrumental music that is not pop or rock or jazz. I went to the "experimental" section and found roughly what one would find in the same section of Bandcamp, a mish-mash of "alternative" new music, none of it "experimental" in the original use of that word. Same for electronic, which was co-opted back in the 80's to refer to, well, all the things it refers to now: house, techno, dubstep, ambient, trance, and so forth.

Of course words change, but technical vocabulary usually changes more slowly and is more disorienting when it changes rapidly. "Electronic" used to mean Eimert and Varese and Stockhausen. Now it means Moby and Bangface and The Chemical Brothers. And the people who are doing electronic music today (or electroacoustic, to keep things straight--or more confusing) don't even register: Emmanuelle Gibello, Ludger Bruemmer, Michele Bokanowski, Lionel Marchetti.

This site also uses words like "song" and "band," which pretty well identifies where they are coming from. Which is fine, for what it is, but it isn't "neoclassical" or "modern classical," either one. "Modern composition" seems to be their own neologism, though Itunes has a "modern composition" section, populated with such items as the London Symphony Orchestra, Brian Eno, The Knife, and Kraftwerk, to name the first four items.

I don't know if you all know The Knife, but Itunes lists their genres as "Electronic, Music, Classical, Modern Composition, Dance, Rock."

Oh well.

Yeh, I know what you are saying.  And while I agree with you that labels, in many ways, have lost much of their meaning, genre bending is an important aspect of what is going on these days, and I find that music worth pursuing.  That blog is only one of many places to find creative  new music which, while it is far from the conservatory contemporary classical scene, will still have some folks producing music that I like to hear.

[petrarch]

Just some thoughts & observations, while I'm waiting for some specific pieces from our new music guru ..

Seems to me you worry too much about other people.

Generally, a musician that has no control or plays 'games' which greatly relinquishes control of what they are writing or playing, mostly produces rubbish compared to music that is in the opposite direction of that - as history clearly shows us. Musical materials are simplified too, generally. The results also lack shape, sharpness, clarity, detail etc. And experimentation, exploration, discovery can imply a great deal more than that sort of thing - obviously.  The best musicians to a greater degree are able to hear & control what they write and play.

Well, nothing like stating a few platitudes and generalizations, eh?

I'll wait for some specific observations and critique from you regarding open form, 'games' and 'relinquishing control' in, say, Stockhausen's Momente (to avoid the beaten path of his Klavierstück XI and Spiral and especially the rabbit-hole of his intuitive music pieces).

[some guy]

genre bending is an important aspect of what is going on these days

Which is quite different from putting any label to any genre.

will still have some folks producing music that I like to hear.

Agreed.

[Karl Henning]

Well, nothing like stating a few platitudes and generalizations, eh?

Artfully done, amico.

[San Antone]

What James is talking about reminds of a quote attributed to Pierre Boulez by Morton Feldman:  "Boulez once said in an essay that he is not interested in how a piece sounds, only how it is made."

The method or process that produces the music is a means to an end.  What is important is the music, not how it is produced.  If what we hear is an amazing piece of music, that's all that matters.  Morton Feldman, John Cage, Christian Wolff all wrote amazing pieces of music using methods of indeterminacy.

[Karl Henning]

There's the odd chance that Feldman is tendentiously paraphrasing Boulez.  OTOH, it is plausible.


It is an extraordinarily inartistic remark, and (let it be said) a laughable lapse on the speaker's part.  Like saying you don't care what a painting looks like, only how it is made.


Truly, if the music sounds great, who cares how it was made?  The method is only a means;  the sound is the end.

[petrarch]

Well, I did use the word 'generally' .. 

I noticed; however, for someone asking for substance, you didn't provide much. You see, there is a lot to be said about using chance in art, there are degrees of uncertainty and there are intermediate shades of artistic expression that can go all the way to the complete removal of intention. But not, it seems, in your world of absolutes, however couched your observations might be in get-out-of-jail-free words like 'generally', 'mostly', and so on.

We already talked about this before, the last time I made a statement along these lines. It was a curiousity for him .. and there is a period of his career where he gradually explored (& documented) these ideas to varying degrees. Generally, the stuff with less and less control holds the pattern of what I said earlier. So what I said earlier in the last post generally applies to his efforts in this area of his output too. In the end, he was a rigorous formal composer ultimately absorbed by shape, sharpness, detail, clarity, unity.. in what he was rehearsing & writing. This includes the uber-complex Momente, a work of synthesis bringing together so many strands of his work that he was building upon for quite some time, with a hierarchy, texts .. "cantata-like in scale", "operatic in scope" .. feat. a modular type of writing where he strived for these things to the extreme - but for each composed moment - and there is a mobility where you can re-order sections which toy with notions of narrative and psychological time. It is a dynamic work that certainly has a dramatic thrust dealing with the subject of love with elements of autobiography in it too.

I already know all of the above. What I was asking for was your personal critique of the use of those methods in Momente, since you appear to have a very firm opinion on what constitutes valid artistic expression. Are they a felicitous use of mobility? Do chance and rearrangement of the sections work well? In your estimation, does it fit with your statements about the meaninglessness and futility of giving away control?

Let me make it easier for you, all re Momente: 1. Where do you find the synthesis you talk about? 2. Can you elaborate on what you mean by "cantata-like" and "operatic in scope"? 3. Can you elaborate on the "[toying] with notions of narrative" and of 4. "psychological time"? 5. Which specific elements are you saying are autobiographical?

Let's try to avoid regurgitating any pre-canned opinion found in the literature. There is only so much of it, and I probably already have most of what you'd reference anyway.

[San Antone]

Just some thoughts & observations, while I'm waiting for some specific pieces from our new music guru ..

Generally, a musician that has no control or plays 'games' which greatly relinquishes control of what they are writing or playing, mostly produces rubbish compared to music that is in the opposite direction of that - as history clearly shows us. Musical materials are simplified too, generally. The results also lack shape, sharpness, clarity, detail etc. And experimentation, exploration, discovery can imply a great deal more than that sort of thing - obviously.  The best musicians to a greater degree are able to hear & control what they write and play.

I read it again, and nothing changes.  For sure, you couch it in CYA language like "generally"and "mostly", however, you still sound more concerned with how the music was made instead of the music itself. 

[kishnevi]

I posted this in the Philosophy of Music thread, but it seems germane to the current discussion

The more likely a piece of music is to receive what might be called a "definitive performance", the less likely it is to be worth hearing more than once.

And in elaboration,   the less control a composer has on the music as heard,  the more important the performer becomes, and the more likely that the piece will be able to yield different but equally artistically interesting results from different performers.

[Karl Henning]

This is just meaningless blah, blah, blah.

Yes! Petrarch winds the first round of James Cliché Bingo!


Reset the chips.