Classical Music Torture?

[some guy]

So in other words, it's fine for you to say CB is torture for you, but not fine for others to say the Reich is torture for them - because you like the Reich. And "traduced" yet!

This is exactly what I did not say.

You copied and pasted OK, but you can't have read the post you responded to. Or you would have seen that even though I personally agree that Carmina Burana is awful, I did not like seeing it trashed any more than I liked seeing the Reich trashed.

It's the trashing, poco, it's the trashing. Not what's trashed, the trashing itself.

[Karl Henning]

A few hours ago I heard Reich's Music for 18 Musicians for the first time...at least the first 16 minutes. I couldn't take any more. I had to check my pulse after the first few minutes to make sure I wasn't already in hell.

Sarge

I may have reported it here at the time . . . at one point when I was working in the MFA gift shop, the manager decided to make use of my classical music knowledge, and asked me for a list of classical CDs which might be suitable to stock at the shop for sale.  I gave him a list of, I don't remember, 20 or 30 CDs . . . one of which was Music for 18 Musicians.

And that was actually one of the discs he decided to bring in.

It sharply divided the shop staff.  Two or three of us loved it, both as music to listen to, and as something energizing in the background during a slow night shift.  Probably a clear majority, though, found it (and here it ties in with the thread) torture, and refused to allow us to play the disc.

[Sergeant Rock]

"Stop being such a musical sissy.'[/b] 

I fell in love with Ive's music (Ruggles' too) when I was a teen. I do not fear for my musical masculinity 

Tough Guy Crushed by Piece of Tonal Music ~ Film At Eleven. lol.

  True, it crushed me. But then, tiny drops of water, applied rhythmically and constantly for a long duration, will topple the strongest. That particular Reich piece is, to me, the aural equivalent of Chinese water torture. And let me say here, I do not hate everything by Reich (or Minimalism in general). For example, I'm quite moved (and not to hell) by Different Trains. I heard it for the first time live at a concert in Frankfurt, played by Kronos. I had a front row seat.

This piece shares some similar traits while using a very different approach, and the tempo and feel are rather different, too. I'm wondering if this is for you also at least in the elevator on the way down to the main entrance of Hell?

Unfortunately I can't see the video (there is just a black square showing) but I'm assuming (based on SeptimalTritone's post) that it's Feldman's Piano and String Quartet? If so, the answer to your question is, no...it is not torture. In fact it's heavenly. Probably my favorite Feldman (along with Crippled Symmetry).

Sarge

[Sergeant Rock]

. . . one of which was Music for 18 Musicians.

It sharply divided the shop staff.  Two or three of us loved it, both as music to listen to, and as something energizing in the background during a slow night shift.  Probably a clear majority, though, found it (and here it ties in with the thread) torture, and refused to allow us to play the disc.

Interesting, Karl. I wonder if watching it via YouTube had an influence on how I perceived the music. I felt sorry for the musicians and worried about repetitive strain injury    I'll have to try it again sometime without the visual element distracting me.

Sarge

[Karl Henning]

Interesting, Karl. I wonder if watching it via YouTube had an influence on how I perceived the music. I felt sorry for the musicians and worried about repetitive strain injury    I'll have to try it again sometime without the visual element distracting me.

Sarge

The experience at the shop made the manager reconsider whether consulting me was such a hot idea.  Not that he formed an opinion about the Reich (if he did, I was unaware of it);  but playing a disc quite often meant that someone shopping liked what they heard, and we would sell a disc or two as a result — and as it was rare that a consensus in the shop would permit the playing of the disc, this was an inventory item which scarcely sold at all . . . .

[Simula]

Those who expressed the torture of listening to Reich's Music for 18 Musicians (I feel your pain; the last time I played this piece it nearly ruined my day). That being said, I can see how it is possible that repeated exposure to this piece will "somehow" make it palatable. However, I for one, will not be performing this experiment.

As for Morton Feldman, oddly enough, is not a composer who bothers me... well, I can't say this about all of his pieces, but some of his music simply lingers in the background. I love it because it almost gives me a break from too much noise.   

[Mirror Image]

Even though I went through a short Minimalism phase recently, this is not music that's my bread and butter nor is it music that I would listen to on a regular basis. I like music that more or less follows classical tradition, not in the Romantic sense per se, but music that has all of the ingredients in which I think make up what I believe music essentially is: harmony, rhythm, melody, and structure. Of course, this is me over-simplifying this idea. This said, I can certainly understand how Reich's Music for 18 Musicians would be torture for many people. If I'm not in the right frame of mind, it annoys the hell out of me, too.

[Simula]

What about this, best piece for purgatory: John Cage 4'33. (my apologies if someone already said this). 

[some guy]

what I believe music essentially is: harmony, rhythm, melody, and structure.

I hate to have to be the one to point this out, but I'm also not willing to wait for someone else to do it, so:

Reich's piece has all four of these qualities.

[Mirror Image]

I hate to have to be the one to point this out, but I'm also not willing to wait for someone else to do it, so:

Reich's piece has all four of these qualities.

This may be the case, but it's not music that I'm attracted to in the traditional sense and only has a limited appeal for me.

[some guy]

Actually, this is the case:

I like music that more or less follows classical tradition, not in the Romantic sense per se, but music that has all of the ingredients in which I think make up what I believe music essentially is: harmony, rhythm, melody, and structure.

You like music that has what you believe music essentially is. Reich's piece has all the qualities that you mentioned. You don't like Reich's piece.

There is something wrong, here.

The wrongness is only compounded when you simply double down on your tastes.

[Rinaldo]

I wonder if being exposed to Reich waaaay before I got into classical music actually eased me into the whole minimalist aesthetic. I'm playing M18 right now, instant life-affirming joy!

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Based on what some guy has already posted in this thread, is it safe to say he is currently having some kind of masochist phase?

[SeptimalTritone]

I think that people should not be scrutinized for disliking certain music for wrong/illogical reasons.

Why?

Because people can also like music for wrong/illogical reasons. We all know how people like Mozart because "he has great melody", and while this can be the case in places, remember that there is still a lot of very neutral material: arpeggios, scales, short motifs... and that the main driving force in Mozart's music is pitting of opposites at small and large scales. Texture 1 v.s. texture 2, tonic v.s. dominant, slow harmonic rhythm v.s. fast harmonic rhythm, square rhythm v.s. irregular rhythm, monophonic v.s. homophonic v.s. polyphonic, stability v.s. sequence, separate motifs v.s. joined motifs, etc. And consider the freedom for melodic expressivity that the romantics had to go to far harmonic places or to have wild and spontaneous rhythmic values or chromaticisms in like a Schumann or Chopin, not bound to the shackles of classical balance.

Or consider how people call Beethoven great because he was proto-romantic, when his real achievement is reaching the greatest extremes of tension within classicism: the Romantic enharmonic extremes of Schubert were not for Beethoven, and in fact would destroy what Beethoven was trying to do. Or consider how people call Bach "perfect", when it seems (at least to my beginner ears) that the bravery and variety of pitting his fugal subject against countersubjects seems more important than any kind of perfect structural matching, like in a Mozart or Webern.

Or consider an even greater sin: people liking Chopin because his music is relaxing, when in reality what makes him so good is his extreme harmonic destabilization within his elaborations of melody and his invigorating counterpoint through bassline motion and pianistic texture. And people still call all of that relaxing, and say that relaxing is a good thing!

So if people like music for wrong or illogical reasons, and we don't criticize the legitimacy of their liking, the same goes for dislike. I would suspect that a large amount, or even a majority, of audiences' explanations of why they like certain classical music would be wrong and illogical, and the same goes for dislike.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Or you would have seen that even though I personally agree that Carmina Burana is awful, I did not like seeing it trashed any more than I liked seeing the Reich trashed.

OK, I got it. To say something is awful is not the same as trashing it. Clear as a bell.

[Monsieur Croche]

Certainly not what the OP hopes to elicit, I'm sure, but from another angle, my answer to the question in the OP is:

Questions like the one asked in the OP.

[Monsieur Croche]

Interesting, Karl. I wonder if watching it via YouTube had an influence on how I perceived the music. I felt sorry for the musicians and worried about repetitive strain injury    I'll have to try it again sometime without the visual element distracting me.

Sarge

Really though the music is radically different from Music for eighteen musicians, one can -- and should - then have equal concern about repeat stress injury for the pianist performing Brahms' Piano Concerto no. 2, to name one of hundreds of works from the common practice era. That could be ditto for those poor orchestral violinists playing the endless arpeggios Wagner scored.

Neither Reich or Brahms composed anything which inherently leads to that sort of injury -- 'they' know what can and can not be done without physical harm being a liability, and that numbers of musicians around the world have, ahem ~ repeatedly ~ performed both works testifies to that. -- Yeah, Sarge, I took your glib quip in earnest (well, O.k., only a tiny bit :-)

Your aversion to Eighteen while finding Changing Trains both riveting and moving only goes to show how individual sensibilities and tastes work, or don't, from one person to the next.

I also think / feel Changing Trains is a beautiful and moving (and "important") work.
The Feldman Piano and String Quartet is one of my all time favored pieces, period... which I also think is a truly great piece in the entire body of classical music rep.

Where we diverge is that I find Music for Eighteen Musicians a near equal in that quality of suspended time, or another near to perfect 'float' piece ala the Feldman. Maybe we both like coffee : -)

I have noticed over a lot of time, that some music having a particular tempo and activity can drive people up the wall, even though its import was certainly not intended that way by the composer and not perceived that way by 'enough' listeners.  I cite East Indian sitar music when it is going with rapid note activity amain -- some seem to hear it as a note to note thing, which will give the feeling of 'frenetic,' while others 'ride the wave of all those particles' and get a completely different feeling while listening to exactly the same music. Chacun a "their own tics!"

Always best regards.

P.s. I know you are not a sissy.   I would have to have a dim cap sense of self-preservation to call a guy named 'Sarge' a sissy.  Love the actual circumstance of that story (true) and what Ives said to the heckler... it is just too good to have passed up an opportunity to toss it in.

[Monsieur Croche]

I hate to have to be the one to point this out, but I'm also not willing to wait for someone else to do it, so:

Reich's piece has all four of these qualities.

My commiserations. 

I personally find it beyond irritating to feel near forced to state what is, after all, the more than blazingly obvious.  You deserve a tiny medal for going there ;-)


Best regards.

[Monsieur Croche]

What about this, best piece for purgatory: John Cage 4'33. (my apologies if someone already said this).

Welcome to the lame world of the resurrected walking dead who continue to make futile jabs at the same old and obvious target which it is patently clear they do not at all understand.

[Daverz]

Welcome to the lame world of the resurrected walking dead who continue to make futile jabs at the same old and obvious target which it is patently clear they do not at all understand.

QFT.