Has it all been done?

[Mirror Image]

What's the point of this thread, James? It's pointless to ask people has it all been done when there are composers like Karl Henning, Luke Ottevanger, and young Daniel (madaboutmahler) who are working hard at their craft. I mean I just get the feeling that this thread has some kind of negativity behind it and not a way of stimulating conversation.

[starrynight]

Sometimes I wonder if all the threads that it is possible to start here have already been done.  But I suspect, being very positive about things, that that isn't actually the case.

[snyprrr]

I'm sure you know my answer.


I'm going to be bold here and use a Biblical analogy. St. Paul,... and I'm paraphrasing (para-thoughting?)... he said he should fill up that which Christ left 'undone', or something,... meaning

since hardly any of the Composers of High Modernism wrote a Piano Trio, or a guitar piece, or a bassoon solo,... all these areas are ripe for plowing... like my 'Fat' Symphony for six tubas and one violin

Apparently I'm still suffering from what I was under yesterday


Yes,... why not check the MOTIVES for Composing,... all the MOTIVES are the same... WHY??? does someone NEED to Compose??? Surely there is no NEW reason why ANYBODY would Compose?

1) You met a girl you want to impress

2) Daddy didn't love you, and you need to impress

3) Music is easier than engineering degree? It 'sounds' like 'fun'?

4) You were born into a rich family and can do whatever you WANT (as opposed to 'need').

Are Composers really like us, or are they more like a politician's child?


Boy, WHAT would happen if the electricity just suddenly went out? Bring it ON!!!

RIVERDANCE!!

[Superhorn]

  Have you heard of this story about when Brahms,late in life, met Mahler at a  lake resort in Austria ? 
The two were discussing the state of music , and Brahms pessimistically stated that music had gone as far as it could
and there was no possibility of  new developments in the field .  But Mahler pointed  to the nearby lakeshore and said
to the older man, "Look - there goies the  last wave !" 
   Brahms died in  1897 at the age of 64.  Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was premiered in 1913 , and  Brahms  could easily have lived
to hear it  if he had lived to the age of 80 .  Of course, it would have left him speechless .  But he could have lived ot hear it.
Saint-Saens did live long  enough to hear, and was of course shocked .  But now  it's part of the standard repertoire .

[Karl Henning]

Yes,... why not check the MOTIVES for Composing,... all the MOTIVES are the same...

Even for you, lad, that's an extraordinary claim: You know all the motives, for all composers, from all time?

You'd be The Master on Wall Street, you know. Your omniscience would be a phenomenal asset . . . .

[ibanezmonster]

4) You were born into a rich family and can do whatever you WANT (as opposed to 'need').

If composing is your career, and you aren't one of the few lucky ones to be famous, yes...

[petrarch]

I noticed you tend to stay away from much music of the early to mid 20th Century. Why? If you don't mind me asking. You probably stay away from this period for the same reasons I stay away from most Baroque and Classical Eras.

Actually, I stay away from much music from the second quarter of the 19th Century to the mid 20th Century. But I love my Webern and my Varèse; and Pierrot Lunaire and Le Sacre du Printemps... I don't usually like the typical musical discourse, phrasing and sonority of the romantic orchestra--to me, it feels sluggish, heavy and... boring. Give me Darmstadt, Modern, Baroque, Renaissance and Medieval, and I'll be very happy.

[petrarch]

list some of it in HERE if it's 21-C .. I'm always looking for something to take me to that next level.

Done.

[starrynight]

Actually, I stay away from much music from the second quarter of the 19th Century to the mid 20th Century. But I love my Webern and my Varèse; and Pierrot Lunaire and Le Sacre du Printemps... I don't usually like the typical musical discourse, phrasing and sonority of the romantic orchestra--to me, it feels sluggish, heavy and... boring. Give me Darmstadt, Modern, Baroque, Renaissance and Medieval, and I'll be very happy.

Yeh I've said myself a few times here that some of the music of the first half of the twentieth century can feel a bit cumbersome with big gestures as a remnant of the romantic age.  The more intimate style of someone like Webern doesn't really became more prominent perhaps until the second half of the twentieth century and that somehow does seem more modern to me.  Not that there can't be good music in a more heroic style, but when the music seems empty it's just highlighted even more.

[snyprrr]

Even for you, lad, that's an extraordinary claim: You know all the motives, for all composers, from all time?

You'd be The Master on Wall Street, you know. Your omniscience would be a phenomenal asset . . . .

what? was I ranting?

ok, here's the very first thing that pops into my head. How about all the Amateur Composers here ALL write a 'Minute Piece',... perhaps ALL Anonymously (we'll set up some system),... or, however the best way... and we make a cd,...mm, for charity? I mean, thats @60-70 people, no?


But I think I was ranting about current Motives, in this current world we live in. I mean, protest music was cool in 1972... but here in 2012, well, y'know? I mean, where is the Composer whose Motive in not... Academic? (I know what you mean,... I do say a loooot of stuff )

ok, here's another one... Who's writing the War Music today? SIGN ME UP! I mean, do they really write fanfares anymore? Like,... I mean, no... I'm trying to be serious,... I'm,... trying... seriously?, can I write a Fanfare for the War with Iran & Syria, or is that a Motive in bad taste? I just think if I'm provocatively offensive it would never fly in this Political World we live in.

OK, there, I said it,... about Motive. The System by which Composers are brought forth,... and the Industry then that they feed off,... it's all turned Commie!,... SURELY you can't get away with a TRULY un-PC Opera (and I'm... not... even... going... to...) in this Politico-Cultural Environment of Fake Media,... and, that is what Composing is all about these days,... being part of this Fake Media...

Really?,... EVERY Composer is ALWAYS writing EXACTLY what comes from their heart?,... especially in Today's fiscally driven world? OK, here's an angle/question:

WHAT person on the planet today decides to be a Composer? THINK:

1) WHAT must World Class Musical Education cost? $$$ HA,... America is the home of the Student Loan Nightmare. What future minded individual is going to calculate that MUSIC is going to be a wise Career choice. Perhaps I'm ranting out of experience here.

2) WHO'S writing the crappy music I hear everyday in Commercially Based Media? What's THAT Motive? Paying off the Student Loan,... or the joy of torturing normal people with banality?

3) I mean, sure, who doesn't want to hear someone like Ferneyhough just... talk? But how many people do we need sounding like him? WHAT? Is EVERYONE a Total Original Artist? The kids today don't even know what old fashioned reality was like, and we're starting to forget too.

ahhh... Total Original Artist... I like that.

Who?


Yes,.. I agree there can be one or two between the ages of 14-49,... but surely not many more. YES, YES, emphatically YES, there is NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN!

What are we in now... Post Post-Modernism?,... or Pan-Modernism?,... Pan-Universalism?,...

Look, the Classical Music AND the Pop Music were both good in the 60s and 70s,... I'll even go farther than that,... but, have you heard Pop Music today? And, so, what, we're in some hidden Classical Renaissance,... in the middle of a Global Economic Meltdown? Brokeback Mountain?


Find me a Pirate Classical Network, baby!


ok, I'm sorry I'm ranting. I dare you to make an Eric Whitacre(sic?) Thread.

[starrynight]

I suppose there is something to say about music being a relatively conservative activity artistically in that it says something in a particular style which has it's own followers and schools often.  Even quite experimental music composes within a particular rhetoric.  But to speak to an audience music (and I suppose any art) has to relate through a language which an audience can learn and understand. 

Being politically conservative is something different perhaps.  Most composers probably don't put politics in their work, I'm not sure that makes them conservative it just means they focus on other aspects.  Not that it's wrong to give music a political message, but it's the composer's choice as to whether they do that or not.  Because many artists have wanted to make their work more personal (perhaps even more in the modern age) that has meant they have seen it as having less a social/political function.  Maybe it depends on the quality of work whether that makes it more universal or more hermetic and closed off.

[Bogey]

The problem is that we only have about 80 years or so to see if this is the case for just that time period.  IE Chant up to LvB's 9th....those kicking to early jazz may have never heard late Miles.  So, I doubt that we have heard it all and will probably not be around for the next BIG thing.

[Bogey]

list some of it in HERE if it's 21-C .. I'm always looking for something to take me to that next level.

Define level here for me James.  Do you mean something new?  Something that recaptures the lightning that other music did for you in the past the first time you heard it?  Or, have you leveled your music like a stairway?  Just curious.

[snyprrr]

The problem is that we only have about 80 years or so to see if this is the case for just that time period.  IE Chant up to LvB's 9th....those kicking to early jazz may have never heard late Miles.  So, I doubt that we have heard it all and will probably not be around for the next BIG thing.

I disagree. Besides the answer being '42', I truly believe the Singularity of which we speak occurred,... now, this IS just my hypothesis, but I think True Objective Science would back me up... I think 'The Everything' was accomplished in 1971.

I use the Symbolic Icon '1971' to denote 'something' that happened,...mm, let's say, between 1968-74. We all know that 1965-66 is juuuust a little early, and we all SURE know that by 1977 it was all over and had been done. The more I've studied this, the more I hone in on 1971-73, with 1971 just being the catch-all 'Title' I use for this Theory.

Truly, we MUST all agree that there was an integration happening there on EVERY level,... a 'thing' that was pushed together, and as quickly fell apart. This is interdisciplinary, inter-... I mean, just LOOK at what was happening at the time. Had we had the tech then that we have now, we probably would no longer be here,...eh?

I am arguing that, technology aside, we haven't come all THAT far since the height of the High Modernistic Period.


Are we really going to get that many more sounds out of a trombone than the true Giants of the 60s and 70s didn't already exhaust? Did Globokar, Dempster, Lindeberg, Svoboda,... who am I missing?,... is someone going to tell THEM? that they... 'missed' something?

Just as they call the WWII generation the 'Great' one, or what it is, so, I think, we have to lay aside our egos and declare that THEY were smarter than we. We would be NOTHING without the Stock-Nono-lez generation.

Ohhh... I feel my head throbbing again...

I'm gonna go lie down...


James was right, haha!

[johnsmith21997]

I shall never believe it has all been done. But the times right now would certainly convince one that it has. How is a composer supposed to achieve greatness in this philistine uncultured world that is the last sixty years? What I will say, and I am sure that I will get assaulted for this, is that everything that has been composed since Beethoven may as well be tossed into the flames. I am not so much talking about the music itself, but the way the composers after Beethoven ran their lives. Wagner... well you all know his story (and if you don't he had at least four documented affairs in his life, was completely anti-semitic, and spawned Nazism to say the least). Lizst was a womaniser. Chopin was perhaps all uright, but his heart wasn't in the right place. Berlioz was egotistic although I wouldn't want his biography to be burnt, although his Treatise on Instrumentation is pretty much useless now thanks to R. Strauss. Schumann was, well, a bit of a nut. Debussy had affairs and was lazy. Verdi was a business man, as was Puccini. Richard Strauss was a Nazi, and a business man and extravagant like Wagner. Even Brahms frequented prostitutes. But perhaps the worst thing about those who followed Beethoven, is that they worshipped him, a genius and the greatest giant that ever lived -- except for Jesus Christ --  but still no less a man. It became about the greatness about being a "great composer" instead of about composing. And then after the Romantic era, it switched, it became about composing "music" with "advanced" asthetique rather than writing music what actually was in their minds. Hindemith is a composer I like, not so much because of his music, but because of his mentality: the composer owes a debt to society, and that true art is art for society's sake not "art for art's sake" which is really the phrase "art for the artist's sake" disguised. And in this age where every well known person is likely scum, I cannot overlook an artist's great wrong doings -- I know that everyone is a sinner, but one has to draw the line on something. Art will only ever return with when composers realize what allowed Bach to compose such great music. He was not thinking about being a great composer, but was rather just composing.

[eyeresist]

Plenty of great composers wanted to be great composers - witness Brahms burning his juvenilia for the sake of his posthumous reputation.

[some guy]

That's post-Beethoven, though. Before that (e.g., Bach), you don't get that kind of thinking so much. Composers did a job of work and that was that. Sorta like nowadays, at least among the folks I know.

They're pretty famous and all, but they're not really going for "great." They're going for "well-crafted" or "new and intriguing" or for something that will make their audiences think about sound in new ways.

Just the fact that there are new ways of thinking about what composing is--not just how to do it, but what the thing is itself--means there will be new things done by composers.

[eyeresist]

That's post-Beethoven, though. Before that (e.g., Bach), you don't get that kind of thinking so much. Composers did a job of work and that was that. Sorta like nowadays, at least among the folks I know.

They're pretty famous and all, but they're not really going for "great." They're going for "well-crafted" or "new and intriguing" or for something that will make their audiences think about sound in new ways.

The change came about because composers started to be recognised, whereas before they were anonymous toilers of the servant class. But things are getting back to the way they were

[North Star]

Back before Beethoven's time, composers composed for the courts and churches, in order to get bread to the table. Even if they thought that a composition was of lesser value, they wouldn't be burning their income. I'd say that the change came with the birth of the middle class.
Brahms afforded to to burn the compositions he considered to be of lesser value, sadly we know that he might have burned some splendid stuff, too (over ten string quartets among others - surely they weren't all that bad?) - but he still left us plenty of masterpieces. I wouldn't be too sorry if all composers had burned their juvenilia.

[Karl Henning]

. . . and we all SURE know that by 1977 it was all over and had been done.

Thanks for the chuckle, little buddy!