Communication: a vital essence of music

[Brian]

"purging" composers. Or where orfeo or I cheered on nazis or soviets.

I wasn't talking about purges. I wasn't talking about sending them to camps. I was talking about the aesthetics and censuring. A good book you should read is Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics.

[Cato]

Expertly communicated!

Heh-heh: for those who will be driven nuts trying to identify my opinion, it is not a piano work per se, but a piano reduction of the Opus 7 String Quartet by Arnold ("Smiley") Schoenberg.   

[Madiel]

A piano reduction?!?!?!?

*faints*

[Brian]

But... isn't it very likely that somebody will not understand what you say to a large group of people who come from different cultures? As people need to learn languages in order to understand them, so it is with music. We have first languages, and 'first musics' - the music we're first exposed to. Somehow I don't think the soprano Marc talked to would have responded similarly had they been at a seminar with a speaker of some foreign language.  0:)

I agree altogether. 

[Karl Henning]

Okay. What I have are the following two passages:

The citations are:

For the first one: Dika Newlin, Schoenberg Remembered: Diaries and Recollections 1938-1976. Newlin was Schoenberg's pupil and he's recorded as saying this in 1940.

music need not be performed any more than books need to be read aloud, for its logic is perfectly represented on the printed page; and the performer, for all his intolerable arrogance, is totally unnecessary except as his interpretations make the music understandable to an audience unfortunate enough not to be able to read it in print.

For the second one: It's a letter from Schoenberg to Alexander von Zemlinsky on 20 March 1918, which has been published in a collection of Schoenberg's letters.

All I know is that he [the listener] exists, and insofar as he isn't indispensable for acoustic reasons (since music doesn't sound well in an empty hall), he's only a nuisance.

Thank you for your pains!

I submit that we still have two remarks which are being recontexted in a an arguably hostile manner.

For the first, he does not say performers are unnecessary, he merely qualifies their necessity — and that qualification is the matter of service to an audience.  That citation demostrates Schoenberg's interest in communicating to an audience — which is the opposite of much assertion on this thread!

And again: Schoenberg himself conducted concerts of his own, or of his pupils', music;  he wanted to share his work with an audience.  He would not have done, if he had this exaggerated obsession with the music being perfect on the page, let's not sully it, shall we?

The second is a privately expressed opinion, firstly. Secondly, again, I think an unnecessarily hostile construction is being put upon this, and (whether hostile or not) the calm way in which this is taken as a lasting statement of policy and principle is poor judgement (at best).  I could easily imagine a situation in which Schoenberg had had a bad experience with a listener, or a group of listeners, and why shouldn't he vent that spleen in private, to a fellow composer?

[Brian]

Taruskin prefers audience-centred music to composer-centred.

"audience-centred" and "composer-centred" music sounds like a whole new can of worms!

[Karl Henning]

Well, and is there a sense in which Taruskin's book suggests what music is worthy of our attention, and which not?

[Madiel]

Well, and is there a sense in which Taruskin's book suggests what music is worthy of our attention, and which not?

Not that I can see. I mean, the chapter I've most focusing on is the one where Babbitt is the primary figure, and there's some clear admiration expressed for Babbitt and his commitment to his principles. After quoting from an attack on Babbitt by another composer (one who very much thought that music that wasn't 'audience-focused' was scarcely music at all), Taruskin's response is to say that the attacker has no more inherent right to define what is and isn't music than Babbitt does.

[Karl Henning]

Then he's done a rarely good job!

[Ken B]

I wasn't talking about purges. I wasn't talking about sending them to camps. I was talking about the aesthetics and censuring. A good book you should read is Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics.

Read it.

[amw]

This is absurd since it was Boulez and his ilk who tried to suppress other music, who called composers useless if they did not conform, who controlled the purse strings of government subsidy.

FYI Ken, Boulez and his kind tried to suppress other music, but so did the Soviets and so did the Nazis.

This is a ridiculous comparison to make. Boulez did not try to "suppress" anyone's music—how could he have done so? What gives him the power to ban music? Is he putting people in prison for writing/playing the wrong kind of music, or ensuring they lose their jobs, or preventing their music from being published or recorded? Did any composers have to flee France in order to write their kind of music in freedom? I mean, you may as well be arguing that any critic who writes a negative review of a piece of music is trying to "suppress" it if you look at what Boulez and co. have actually done.

Don't say government subsidies because IRCAM (which claims to be 50% self financing anyway) had taken on many different artistic directions within a few years of its creation—I hardly think any of those composers were "suppressed" for creating a different kind of music than Boulez's. (GRM was also government-funded, incidentally; CEMAMu as well though not until after Xenakis's death I think.)

This is also worth bearing in mind, btw:

Joseph N. Straus (1999) [...] conducted a research study that considered five questions about American compositional activity from the 1950s and 1960s: (1) who controlled the academy? (2) whose music got published? (3) whose music got performed? (4) whose music got recorded? (5) who got the prizes, awards, and fellowships? (6) whose music got reviewed? From this evidence the author concluded, "As the period drew to a close, the American academy was dominated, as it had been throughout the 1950s and 1960s, by tonally oriented composers" (Straus 1999, 307).

[Madiel]

Boulez did not try to "suppress" anyone's music—how could he have done so?

According to Henze, that was what Boulez was doing at the Darmstadt summer school. Of course that doesn't automatically mean it had much effect in the wider world.

[Ken B]

According to Henze, that was what Boulez was doing at the Darmstadt summer school. Of course that doesn't automatically mean it had much effect in the wider world.

I think the establishment of the avant-garde in institutional positions controlling much funding actually did have an effect. There are only so many hours of time available for new music in concert halls. Orchestras must choose which pieces to perform. Control of subsidies, much less prestige, as an influence on these decisions. In the absence of such control by the institutional avant-garde that would've been a wider choice of music available orchestras or to chamber groups. It's simply a matter of subsidized competition for limited number of spaces.
There is also snowball effect. If you look at what audiences were listening to in the 1950s they were listening to a lot of 20th-century music. After the rise of the Boulez faction that changed. One reason it changed is that audiences, consisting of normal concertgoers, learned to be gun shy of new music. Happily the pendulum is swinging the other way these days.
Not just Henze but other composers have complained of intimidation or attempts to squeeze out their music. Boulez was part of plots to suppress performances of Stravinsky after the war.

[Karl Henning]

According to Henze, that was what Boulez was doing at the Darmstadt summer school. Of course that doesn't automatically mean it had much effect in the wider world.

And there was his tenure with the NY Phil.  Now, a composer who has his preferences for whose music he admires, is one thing.  As a conductor, though, your preferences translate into opportunities for those whom you grace with opportunities;  and if there are prominent New York composers whose work you do not program, well . . . it is not suppression, per se.

[amw]

Funnily enough, around here I was under the distinct impression I was giving the alternative view.

EDIT: And straight away I can see that that review of Taruskin is silly, because it asserts that Taruskin prefers audience-centred music to composer-centred. It's quite clear to me from what I've read this evening that Taruskin isn't picking between the 2 sides, he's presenting them and explaining them. I've just quoted for you a passage that quite explicitly says that neither side of such an argument is objectively 'right'. He does not say the composer-centred approach to music is wrong. All he says is that the composer-centred approach is not the only approach.

Taruskin is very good at that sort of gesture, yes—every time he seems to be asserting an opinion he turns it into an unanswered question in order to give lip service to the other view as well. Yet through wording he does make it clear which view we're supposed to support, if we're reasonable people. If we have been reading for a while (and I have in fact read the entire History though not for some years now) we are to associate the "literate tradition" with elitism and privilege and cheer for its eventual downfall, though Taruskin will never say so in so many words. Of course Taruskin's view is the mainstream one now so perhaps to notice these little biases one has to be disagreeing with him from the start.

According to Henze, that was what Boulez was doing at the Darmstadt summer school.

Darmstadt summer school is a different story. Essentially there was a power-struggle between Boulez, Stockhausen, Nono and Henze with everyone being hyper macho and trying to assume a position of dominance. Each one had their own ideas about serialism and, more importantly, considered himself the true "heir" to the Second Viennese School. Thus students did have to rewrite compositions, for instance, to conform more to the principles of their teacher and therefore be used as ammunition against the others. Henze seems to have gotten tired of the contest by 1953 or so and left Germany altogether (he was also a socialist, and perhaps had gotten wind that Darmstadt was being funded by the Americans). By the later 1950s they managed to settle their differences enough that Nono could call them a "Darmstadt School", only to break up again within two years. Also, the food was terrible. Basically, the lesson seems to be, don't go to Darmstadt.

[Madiel]

Also, the food was terrible.

Not nearly enough research has been done on the connection between compositional technique and diet.

[mc ukrneal]

I don't understand your remark.  Is my objection to the thesis that "communication is a vital essence of music" the result of my not listening to music?

I do not flat out disagree with your assertions that music is essentially a language or a vehicle of communication;  but such theses (it seems to me) are made possible by broad stretches of the nouns language and communication.

My brain must be wired differently, because I simply cannot follow the flow of this discussion well. Music communicates to us whether we like it or not. We may think it ugly or beautiful, deep or shallow, pleasing or displeasing, etc. But even if someone tries to write something random and meaningless, well that too commnicates something (and will not necessarily be received as it was intended).

[amw]

I think the establishment of the avant-garde in institutional positions controlling much funding actually did have an effect. There are only so many hours of time available for new music in concert halls. Orchestras must choose which pieces to perform.

Most of the institutional positions that controlled funding were musical research institutes producing electronic music. This is not usually performed by orchestras. I do not know of any "avant-garde" individual(s) installed in positions of power over traditional concert music apart from William Glock whose dominance was nowhere near absolute.

In the absence of such control by the institutional avant-garde that would've been a wider choice of music available orchestras or to chamber groups. It's simply a matter of subsidized competition for limited number of spaces.

I don't see how the Ensemble Intercontemporain is meant to be "in competition with" the Orchestre National de France. They draw in pretty much entirely different audiences for a start.

There is also snowball effect. If you look at what audiences were listening to in the 1950s they were listening to a lot of 20th-century music. After the rise of the Boulez faction that changed.

correlation/causation? Around the same time, other kinds of music were becoming much more popular—could orchestras becoming more conservative in terms of repertoire for fear of losing even more of an audience share than they already had, have something to do with that? Was 20th century repertoire a guaranteed draw before Boulez or simply a risk orchestras could afford to take because there were no real alternatives? Ooh, I'm doing the Taruskin thing now

Boulez was part of plots to suppress performances of Stravinsky after the war.

9/11 was an inside job by the Bush administration

[Karl Henning]

My brain must be wired differently, because I simply cannot follow the flow of this discussion well. Music communicates to us whether we like it or not. We may think it ugly or beautiful, deep or shallow, pleasing or displeasing, etc. But even if someone tries to write something random and meaningless, well that too commnicates something (and will not necessarily be received as it was intended).

I appreciate your patience and participation.

As a composer, I am trying to work out how the art which I make is communication, when I have only a limited power (much more limited than communicating via words) over what the listener may take as my work's meaning.

This is not an abstact question for me.  I am going to say a few words about a piece of mine at a performance, day after tomorrow.  I may just break the ice by joking, "Relax!  Music is communication, so just sit back and tune in."

[Karl Henning]

9/11 was an inside job by the Bush administration

Um, Boulez staged cabals razzing performances of Stravinsky.  (He was ever a publicity whore  )