The greatest art music since 1985...

[Gurn Blanston]

Comedy is Art also!

e.g.

http://www.youtube.com/v/Pp8y62pn1PE

As a golfer myself (more than slightly better than Jackie appears to be here) I can relate to that so much it hurts. However, I note that it is pre-1985, so Sean appears to still be on solid footing still.

[Brian]

As for dyn's "legalised prostitution and the complete breakdown of authority"--not too up on history there are we? Legalized prostitution and the complete breakdown of authority have been around for thousands of years. Maybe more. At least as long as there's been history, there's been legal prostitution and the idea that authority is completely broken down. (I don't know if ancient Sumeria or Assyria or China or Greece had anything like "atonal" music. )

Sounds like you need to replace the batteries in your sarcasm detector.

[some guy]

Hahahaha.

Done!

[Todd]

Sounds like you need to replace the batteries in your sarcasm detector.

A sarcasm detector would be very useful.

[Karl Henning]

Maybe someone is auctioning one off cheap on Ebay . . . .

[Gurn Blanston]

Maybe someone is auctioning one off cheap on Ebay . . . .

BEEP - BEEP - BEEEeeepp.....

[North Star]

A sarcasm detector would be very useful.

Dang, it overheated. 

[jut1972]

A sarcasm detector would be very useful.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I vote that the best post ever.
You may want to buy one of these.  Or you may not.  What do I know.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2029497_2030615_2029717,00.html

[Todd]

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2029497_2030615_2029717,00.html

What if such powerful software falls into the wrong hands?

[snyprrr]

Girl, snyprr, girl. Pay attention! She's a she.

Sarge

So I HAVE lost the scent?!?! aye aye

[snyprrr]

I look at it this way:

In the '50s, Elvis shaking his hips was horrible.

In the '70s, the Stones' 'Star Fucker' was the worst.

THEN IT'S THE SEX PISTOLS(oops) Gangsta Rap, and the Boy Bands,... er

Right now, there hasn't been any Rock Music in years, so, Country Music has been using Rock's Bass+Drums for the last few years = Nickleback with Kenny Neckie singing Gyuk gyuk gyuk.



Yes, the Age of Art is waaay over. We're living in a perpetually rehashed 1966. There is certainly nothing new under the sun.

Consumerism... Gorecki... Kronos... 1993... Nigel Kennedy... 1984...


btw- i'd say Aperghis is doing the Art Music of the day. Yes.

[snyprrr]

Feldman got it all wrong .. masterpieces elevate the art UP and show what is possible amoungst the overwhelming effluent.

You know they're not going to like!!

But, since this is a Comedy Thread, what's funny? Are farts still funny? Is Woody Allen funny? Really? Arrested Development is 'funny'?, not JUST 'sarcastic'?

Sarcasm is the lowest form of humor. No one gets hurt in my jokes. I try to find jokes that have, say, 'broccoli' as the punchline, or whatever.

zzzZZzz... uh, sorry...

[Sean]

dyn

By the time one reaches a such state of cultural decadence that Tristan und Isolde is taken seriously as a "work of art" rather than banned as aural obscenity, society has reached rock bottom and started to dig. It's only a small step from there to complete atonality, legalised prostitution and the complete breakdown of authority.

Well there might well be something in the relation between post-tonality and postmodern nihilism but this sociology of music stuff can go too far- tonality is the fixed infrastructure of any music that can be intelligible to us, not a historically situated cultural product as those horrible, horrible music academics would have it, none of whom of course are familiar with any art music and literally don't know what they're talking about.

I bring up Mozart as a counterpoint to those who rightly point out that the music of Bach and his followers is full of unkempt chromaticisms and dissonances, and that therefore one should consider the age of art in music to have ended with Palestrina: the Enlightenment was the final flowering of art. Bach can be excused his licenses for they were committed in the name of true religion, of which he was among the last practitioners (modern religion is as undeserving of the name as modern art).

Okay, I can see we're almost in agreement but the understanding of tonality here is far too narrow- it doesn't have to be classical order and balance, it just has to respect acoustic consonance and dissonance: tonality is that unique harmonic system with the highest levels of correspondence between subjective sensation and acoustic fact. In tonality and acoustics the minor second is the most dissonant and the octave the most consonant, etc etc. But no more tonality talk- it's been done to death...

Had the Enlightenment lasted, and not been displaced by Romanticism and its male-dominated worldview, I imagine women's suffrage would have been universal by 1825.

Nice thought.

[Sean]

Cato, thanks for the suggestions but although all those works have undoubted merit I feel that both contemporary technical and cultural conditions make it difficult to write meaningful music to compare with the past, and really we're just charting the decline here.

[some guy]

Yeah, and one critic compared Mozart unfavorably to Boccherini--since Boccherini had already done everything that was worth doing, it was left to Mozart to try to plow the rocky soil. Or something like that.

Certainly the level of art criticism online is low low low, with nothing much different from what has been said over and over again for hundreds of years.

Pretty soon someone's gonna assert that it's been downhill since creation or the big bang.

Be fair, once that big bang is over, it's pretty much over. Nothin' to see here, folks. Move along.

[Sean]

Gurn

Sean is the King of Comedy.

Don't you laugh at me!!

[Sean]

The point about tonality though is that it's exhausted- all the major areas of its expressive are done and dusted and there's been nothing much for the last quarter century. Minimalism was the last gasp.

[ibanezmonster]

How does it feel to be trolled, Sean? 

[Sean]

Thanks for the honesty Brian; I only know the Penderecki and Glass but as with others' suggestions my point is rather proved with that list...

[Sean]

snyrrr & Sarge somehow dyn forgets how shocked the romantics were by Cosi and its moral corruption...