Music without tiers

[ritter]

...but a group of "muscians" banging on "pots and pans" (clips you've posted) great music.
....

What clips are those? I can't find them. Just curious...

[Madiel]

We may be using the verb differently. What I think is that "discriminate" implies knowledge. It's how I end up preferring Gielen's recording of Mahler's ninth. But that preference is only important for me. Other people may and do prefer other ones.

It's important to note that with conductors it is sensible to discriminate because they're all trying to do the same thing.

But discrimination does not help me decide which unknown thing to buy next. Or which unknown thing to stream next. Discrimination might be of some very limited and trivial utility in deciding which known thing to listen to again. But even there.

But is it really "unknown"? Not completely. It's highly unlikely that anything you listen to is just so totally outside your previous experience that you have no reference point. When I listen to brand new composer, it's not without knowing something about where and when they lived. It's not without knowing whether the label on the music says "symphony" or "string quartet" or "Troilus and Cressida" or whatever. Certainly not when buying things.

When listening on streaming or radio or similar, that's the only time when something can be thrown at you completely unexpectedly. I own a disc of the music of Linley the Younger entirely because ABC Classic FM decided to play one track from it on a morning about... 15 years ago. But even then, the notion of "unknown" has to take into account that I could recognise it as a piece of English choral music from around the Classical period pretty quickly, from my existing experience.

Oh, and talking about pop music is not a cheat. If you want to talk about "classical music without tiers", go ahead, but recognise you've already illustrated the problem with the notion of total equality. However much you want to think you are just plucking unknown things at random, it's most unlikely you're actually being fully random.

[Madiel]

"Liking everything equally" is a concept foreign to the idea of listening without tiers. The whole idea of tier-less listening is that you are fully aware of and engaged with each piece on its own terms. (The whole idea or tiers is that the things you're ranking are comparable. I'm suggesting that they're not, at least not to any great or significant extent. And only comparable things are rankable. A non-ranking situation is not equivalent to "liking everything equally." The whole idea of equality and inequality belongs to a ranking situation. Non-ranking is different from ranking.

Well, then, you seem intent on demolishing a concept of "tiers" that was never in the thread about tiers. It's pretty clear in that thread that people are describing their personal preferences, not some objective ranking of music.

We're not ranking Bach against Mozart, we're ranking our liking for Bach against our liking for Mozart.  And two likings are indeed comparable things, capable of ranking.

[aligreto]

And after 40 years of listening to classical music... how does it compare to pop? 

This calssical music thing is beginning to grow on me 

[Monsieur Croche]

It's all so rigged . . . .

Rigged is the correct word. You'd think it would at least be the Viennese, the French, and the Italians. But No, instead due to the great capitalist PR via the nineteenth century hegemony of the German music business with its music publishers and press, the placing of German conductors at the heads of orchestras throughout Europe, a British queen who barely spoke English on the throne of a world-wide empire further promoting the German myth to the English speakers of the world throughout near the entire romantic era, a powerful German critic [Hans von Bulow] making a pun in an editorial on the key signature of E-Flat, ''the three B's -- i.e. E,A,B-flat [flats x three = bbb] which then got picked up on by every simple-minded primary school teacher who then rote fed that tidbit that classical music is represented by Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms to generations of children, and the bourgeois and petite bourgeois classical consumer masses of that century -- the new and largest consuming audience -- eating up what was fed them, well, German music in general and a Protestant Thuringian and a Flemish near peasant then ended up being the heroes of the classical music world. What a manipulated triumph... the hype, the success of the hype, is parallel to the crowning capitalist twentieth-century cultural promo-hype that has Barbie dolls known, sold, and consumed world-wide.

With all that, it is amazing classical music of any quality other than the hyped and inflated emo-flavor of the day tailored to please the average tastes of the  bourgeois and petite bourgeois punters would re-emerge at the end of the nineteenth century and find any audience at all.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

My 'Three Bs' are Boulez, Birtwistle and Babbitt.

[Madiel]

Rigged is the correct word. You'd think it would at least be the Viennese, the French, and the Italians. But No, instead due to the great capitalist PR via the hegemony of the German music business with its music publishers and press, the placing of German conductors at the heads of orchestras throughout Europe, a British queen who barely spoke English on the throne of a world-wide empire further promoting the German myth throughout near the entire romantic era, a powerful German critic [Hanslick] making a pun in an editorial on the key signature of E-Flat, ''the three B's -- i.e. E,A,B b, [flats x three = bbb] which then gets picked up on by every simple-minded primary school teacher and then rote fed generations of children, and the bourgeois and petite bourgeois classical consumer masses eating up what was fed them, well, German music in general and a Protestant Thuringian and a Flemish near peasant end up being the heroes of the classical music world. What a manipulated triumph... the hype, the success of the hype, is parallel to the crowning capitalist twentieth-century promo-hype that has Barbie dolls known, sold, and consumed world-wide.

With all that, it is amazing classical music of any quality other than the hyped and inflated emo-flavor of the day tailored to please the average tastes of the  bourgeois and petite bourgeois punters would re-emerge at the end of the nineteenth century and find any audience at all.

What are you proposing? That all places at all times have made an equally important contribution to the history of music?

The logic of that escapes me. For instance, I would argue that Paris was an amazing place culturally in the late 19th and very early 20th century, but by recognising that I am inevitably saying that Paris was not quite so amazing culturally at some other times. In terms of music, the key changes that happened around the 1860s and 1870s didn't happen because everyone thought things were wonderful in French music before that, they happened because people thought that French music was becoming academic and stale.

[Monsieur Croche]

My 'Three Bs' are Boulez, Birtwistle and Babbitt.

Bartok, Boulez, Berio -- there, a variation on ''three dead great classics'' of classical music.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Bartok, Boulez, Berio -- there, a variation on ''three dead great classics'' of classical music.

Bartók instead of Birtwistle for me too (Birtwistle is still alive isn't he?). I'm afraid I don't know a huge amount of Berio....I really need to fix that!!!!

[Florestan]

Rigged is the correct word. You'd think it would at least be the Viennese, the French, and the Italians. But No, instead due to the great capitalist PR via the hegemony of the German music business with its music publishers and press, the placing of German conductors at the heads of orchestras throughout Europe, a British queen who barely spoke English on the throne of a world-wide empire further promoting the German myth throughout near the entire romantic era, a powerful German critic [Hanslick] making a pun in an editorial on the key signature of E-Flat, ''the three B's -- i.e. E,A,B b, [flats x three = bbb] which then gets picked up on by every simple-minded primary school teacher and then rote fed generations of children, and the bourgeois and petite bourgeois classical consumer masses eating up what was fed them, well, German music in general and a Protestant Thuringian and a Flemish near peasant end up being the heroes of the classical music world. What a manipulated triumph... the hype, the success of the hype, is parallel to the crowning capitalist twentieth-century promo-hype that has Barbie dolls known, sold, and consumed world-wide.

With all that, it is amazing classical music of any quality other than the hyped and inflated emo-flavor of the day tailored to please the average tastes of the  bourgeois and petite bourgeois punters would re-emerge at the end of the nineteenth century and find any audience at all.

This rant has a markedly Rob-Newmann-esque flavor...

[Jo498]

This seems historically completely implausible. How should England, the Land ohne Musik, influence musical culture such that Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner etc. became the all important composers, either "canonized" or daring avantgardist in the last case in the mid-late 19th century? One of the greatest "Beethovenians" was Berlioz, after all. Gade emulated Mendelssohn, Grieg and Tchaikovsky Schumann etc.

The bonmot with the three Bs would by itself never lead to a cultural dominance. The only forces that can achieve the latter (in the middle/long run) are impressing other composers, musicians and audience with music, not with silly bonmots and anecdotes. And that's what the "three Bs" and others did.
As you well know this was different in earlier centuries when (mostly) Italian or sometimes French masters set the style and the Germans and others usually started by imitating them. Schuetz and Handel travelled to Italy, but Gade and Grieg to Leipzig. (And if you read Tovey's essays from the early 20th century even he is still yearning for a musical culture like the one in Germany/Austria, despite championing Elgar and others.)

The main difference is that 19th century bourgeois culture is still OUR culture to a much larger extent (of course distorted etc.) than e.g. 17th and early-mid 18th court culture is.

[Madiel]

Basically, Vienna held sway at the critical point in time when the notion of 'the classics' was being developed.

[Jo498]

I don't think it was as simple as that. Vienna between 1780 and 1880 certainly was an important musical centre. But so was Paris and Italian and French Opera were still dominant in Europe for the better part of the 19th century. The "canonization" of Handel had set in much earlier (and started, of course, in Britain, neither was he considered there a "German" any more), for Bach's Berlin and Leipzig were far more important than Vienna and even Beethoven and Schubert had hardly a chance in popularity against Rossini in 1820s Vienna.

There are of course plenty of quite plausible theories why musical life was so strong in German-speaking countries already in the 17th century (although set back for decades by the devastations of the 30 years war) when Italian and French music were clearly dominating. Two factors are the multitude of petty prince- and dukedoms etc., all striving to become a "second Versailles", which led to far more musicians in diverse settings than in centralized France, and the importance of music in the Lutheran faith, not only in church but also as a favorite pastime (better than drinking and gambling). The Thuringian peasants of 1700 might have been musically more literate (singing in church choirs) than the typical Howard's End style wealthy Englishman around 1900 whose pastimes were hunting and betting at the races.

In the 19th century, there were other factors. There were still many smallish states, some of which still had their court orchestras. There was a strong desire for cultural achievement and unity because of the lack of national unity (before 1871). Some of the main genres of romanticism were suited for and rooted in bourgeois Hausmusik, namely the Lied and the shortish piano piece, whereas in Italy and France opera continued to dominate everything. And opera may give the most fame and money for a short time but it seems often also more ephemeral than some other genres. (Best witness for that is Handel and the reception of his music after his death.)

Whatever. I can certainly sympathize that e.g. Rameau, Boccherini or Saint-Saens should be better known or "ranked higher". But I do not see that it is a rigged game that they do not replace Bach, Haydn/Mozart, Brahms or Wagner as people's favorites.

[some guy]

This rant has a markedly Rob-Newmann-esque flavor...

Ad hominem is never pretty.

But this one seems particularly ugly.

The bonmot [sic] with the three Bs would by itself never lead to a cultural dominance.

The confident assertions countering nothing are becoming more and more confident recently, it seems to me, and the countering more and more assertive, too.

With the nothing continuing to be nothing more than nothing.

No one has ever asserted that the three Bs would by itself lead to cultural dominance. (No one would ever assert that, either, as that would be silly beyond the capacities of even the silliest person in the room.) But the expression could illustrate the persistence of an already dominant dominance, eh? Especially when you consider that the original three Bs (coined by the German Peter Cornelius) consisted of two Germans and a Frenchman. Several decades later, near the end of the 19th century, Hans von Bülow appropriated the phrase, substituting Brahms for Berlioz, whom he had originally identified, a couple of years before Cornelius' coinage, as the "immediate and most energetic successor to Beethoven."

There's another element that is almost universally ignored in discussions of this topic, how old the idea of "nation" is. [Edit: Jo498 does make reference to the then new desires for unity which lead, eventually, to nationalism, but continuing to use the words France and Italy and so forth as if they referred to actual things.]

It's not very old. Late 18th century, but not really getting up steam until the early 19th century. (Except in England, maybe, where it all started.)

So the "Germany" that had dominated music for centuries wasn't even really a thing. The official unification of all the various bits of what we now call "Germany" didn't happen until 1871. [Edit: As Jo498 also just mentioned, but without noting any significance to it.]

To talk about Germany and France and Italy and England as if those things had been around forever* and pretty much as we think of them now is just silly. Not as silly as asserting that bon mots lead to cultural dominance, it's true, but still pretty silly. It's a great illustration of the power of retro-fitting, though. Once the idea of nationalism is a thing, it is childishly easy to behave as if that idea has always been true. Why, the very subject of this board, classical music, is a prime example itself--the phrase dates from 1810, after the so-called "classical era" was pretty much over. But look how easy it was to retro-fit earlier music to the new term. Ridiculously. (Indeed, that was the whole idea of coining the phrase. Retro-fitting was the reason.)

*I thought I would give the confident counter-assertion of a thing that has not been asserted a try for myself. And it IS good fun, I admit.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

This rant has a markedly Rob-Newmann-esque flavor...

That faker with the initials R. N. only made one good point....which was implying that there's a lot of good music out there besides the most famous names of all.

[Madiel]

So the "Germany" that had dominated music for centuries wasn't even really a thing. The official unification of all the various bits of what we now call "Germany" didn't happen until 1871. [Edit: As Jo498 also just mentioned, but without noting any significance to it.]

But the concept of German people and German language, and a region called Germania dates back a couple of thousand years. It's not as if the culture sprang into life in 1871. On the contrary, the push towards unification happened because there was already a sense of having a culture in common.

[Monsieur Croche]

This rant has a markedly Rob-Newmanesque flavor...

Ad hominem is never pretty.

Yeah, poor Rob Newman... though I'd never heard of him before, lol.

[mc ukrneal]

The use of tiers, in and of itself, is not very useful. The question is: why was a particular composer put in a particular tier? The criteria behind the ordering is far more important (and far more interesting too). The reasons for why a composer engages us are just as interesting as the reasons for why a composer doesn't engage/connect with us.

Unfortunately, many people use tiers to show off, to put down others, etc. This is another reason why tiers are usually not very helpful.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

How do tiers work to show off and/or to put down others??

[some guy]

The tiers are about ourselves, how we decide, what we like. Putting the "right" things in the right tiers shows others what good taste we have.* Putting the "wrong" things in the wrong tiers leaves us open to the sneering criticisms of those who have "better" taste than we do.

None of the about, note, has anything to do with music. Always always always the music is just an excuse to talk about something else. It seems to be, at best, a trigger. Music plays and we think of love or kittens or war or Tchaikovsky's sexual orientation or Beethoven's deafness or Soviet politics. The music has little or no importance in and of itself. It is good only in so far as it encourages us to think about other things.

Balls to that, I say.


*El principal enemigo de la creatividad es el buen gusto. --Picasso