Greatest Composer Since the Time of Beethoven, sorry but it's true.

Started by Simula, August 16, 2016, 05:14:24 PM

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The new erato

Quote from: karlhenning on August 17, 2016, 01:33:47 AM
Hold onto those little dreams!
Reminds me of Tim Hardins wonderful song:

"How can we hang on to a dream
How can it, will it be, the way it seems"

DaveF

To be strictly fair to the OP, he did say "since the time of Beethoven".  Perhaps he meant to compare Stockhausen with Hummel or Kozeluch.
"All the world is birthday cake" - George Harrison

The new erato

In his later years, Beethoven wasn't particularly good at keeping time. So it's easy to become confused.

Andante

Quote from: Mirror Image on August 16, 2016, 08:47:41 PM
Aside from quoting me, why can't you be serious for a minute and answer Jessop's question?

If you think this has 'harmony, melody, rhythm, and structure,' then I'll grant you the 'Golden Ears Award' -

https://www.youtube.com/v/hIeZTxdknLM

Since YouTube seems not to be working, it's a piece of electronic nonsense from Stockhausen. :)
YT worked for me  :( what a ghastly sound, you are right on the ball M I it is just noise as far as I am concerned, I can't imagine what it is meant to be, sounds like Pigs snorting in a pile of garbage.
What is musical about it?











Andante always true to his word has kicked the Marijuana soaked bot with its addled brain in to touch.

ComposerOfAvantGarde

Quote from: Andante on August 17, 2016, 06:40:51 PM
YT worked for me  :( what a ghastly sound, you are right on the ball M I it is just noise as far as I am concerned, I can't imagine what it is meant to be, sounds like Pigs snorting in a pile of garbage.
What is musical about it?
See my post above. Reflections like this are merely reflections of the listener rather than of the composition.

The new erato

Quote from: jessop on August 17, 2016, 09:42:00 PM
See my post above. Reflections like this are merely reflections of the listener rather than of the composition.
All reflections, also yours, are reflections of the listener rather than of the composition.

ComposerOfAvantGarde

Quote from: The new erato on August 17, 2016, 09:45:00 PM
All reflections, also yours, are reflections of the listener rather than of the composition.
The fact that there are people who enjoy the musical content of the given piece of music should be ample reason to say that it is indeed 'musical' isn't it? A sense of musicality derived from Stockhausen's music is simply going to be different for every single person based on what they perceive to be musical or not. I mainly listen to music in a western classical tradition and I enjoy a lot of electronic music in that tradition. Needless to say, in the past I didn't because I had other prejudices which caused a hindrance in my musical appreciation. Also this isn't my favourite electronic work by Stockhausen anyway really. There are other things I find more interesting.

The new erato

Quote from: jessop on August 17, 2016, 09:50:56 PM
The fact that there are people who enjoy the musical content of the given piece of music should be ample reason to say that it is indeed 'musical' isn't it?
Extremely subjective of course, birdsong is musical as well by that definition but I still don't accept birds as composers. One should reflect upon that, enjoyable sound isn't automatically a composition.

I've heard stuff from Stockhausen I like, and things I find totally rubbish, but put that down to me. But I don't accept the premise that because I don't understand some stuff automatically means it is written by a superior musical intelligence. Greatest composer afte Beethoven? Give me a break, that is just plain silly. Weirdest composer after Beethoven? Maybe that'll stick.

EDIT: I'll even grant that he may be an important composer. But as to best? I don't think anybody is in a position to judge, as you yourself say:

Quote from: jessop on August 17, 2016, 09:50:56 PM
A sense of musicality derived from Stockhausen's music is simply going to be different for every single person based on what they perceive to be musical or not.

That's why I find the whole "best" thing just silly. Lets's just say that for me he's not on my list of 50 best composers after Beethoven. But to discuss it, and hence the premise for the whole thread is meaningless. To discuss his music is quite another matter, but we already have threads for that.

Monsieur Croche

Quote from: DaveF on August 17, 2016, 12:05:47 PM
To be strictly fair to the OP, he did say "since the time of Beethoven".  Perhaps he meant to compare Stockhausen with Hummel or Kozeluch.

Ah, ha, haaaa, haaaa.

Thanks.
~ I'm all for personal expression; it just has to express something to me. ~

Monsieur Croche

Quote from: Mirror Image on August 16, 2016, 08:47:41 PM
Aside from quoting me, why can't you be serious for a minute and answer Jessop's question?

If you think this has 'harmony, melody, rhythm, and structure,' then I'll grant you the 'Golden Ears Award' -

https://www.youtube.com/v/hIeZTxdknLM

Since YouTube seems not to be working, it's a piece of electronic music from Stockhausen.

Haul out that "Golden Ear Award" and get ready to send it to me, then.

Harmony / Melody / Rhythm / Structure ~ are neutral terms naming those elements present in just about every piece of (western) music there is.

You may, if you wish, give each of those elements your personal qualifications, while if you do, you must accept that you have qualified them within the parameters of what you think or feel those elements to be while having instantly departed from usage of the actual meaning of each term as defined.

Even then, (J'accuse!) you've been using them like a bludgeon against -- you did say that Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians lacked harmony, melody, rhythm and form -- (oh, irony of ironies) works which are transparently abundant in all four elements. Music for 18 Musicians is teeming with a multitude of confluent melodies which produce a constant stream of harmony; it is driven by dramatically clear and unmuddied pulsed rhythms, and it also has a very transparently clear structure.

Within the definitions of melody and bass line, and as applied in music theory and analysis, melody and bass lines can be those collected series of pitches phrased and set so the ear perceives them as melody, bass line.
Either can be prominent in a structure where the melody is not necessarily 'on top,' and the bass line not always the lowest sounding pitches.
However, the ultimate default setting meaning of each is -- get this:
Melody is simply whatever uppermost pitches are sounding at the moment;
bass line is whatever the lowermost pitches are sounding at the moment.
(That Mahler Symphonic movement where the final sounding low pitch is the Tam-tam? indeterminate pitch though that gong is, that is the last note of the bass line.)

That said, the Stockhausen piece you've nominated as another poster boy lacking all those elements (after having so completely failed to hang that laundry on Reich's Music for 18) meets all the requirements of having all four elements you claimed it lacks, 'struth!
Harmony: more than one pitch sounding = Harmony, as per the definition of the term.
Melody: whatever is sounding on the top, throughout = melody.; it has melody.
Rhythm: rhythm is nothing more than two or more sound events occurring in sequence through linear time: it is not exclusively only about a steady pulse, sounding 'measured,' metric, etc. The Stockhausen has two or more sounds occurring over linear time; it has rhythm.
Form: The piece is an electronic one on tape, playback will be identical each time, there are a series of sonic events, these have a shape, ergo, = form.

Whatever other qualifications you choose to add to those terms which conflict with the actual and neutral definitions of those four terms are yours, based on your personal preferences.  Listing these elements, or claiming there is an absence of any one of them in order to put down a piece you don't care for just does not fly. 

The more I hear these four little soldiers of neutral terms repeatedly used in this manner virtually always as an offensive against music someone does not care for, (you are far from alone in using this 'tactic') it sounds like a mindlessly parroted phrase as used by someone who learned those four terms in the most basic of music appreciation classes where, sadly, the teacher never went properly into fully explaining what those terms actually mean.  Ergo, people who tend to use this list to claim the offensive object lacks those elements also tend to think a melody is always a hummable tune, harmony is something conservative and later harmony isn't - uh - harmony, and form means only the older forms the average person on the street recognizes or vaguely recognizes.

This critique-cudgel of "no harmony, melody, rhythm or form", is at least as limp as a wet rag, but a virtual one, carrying no weight, having no striking force at all.

Maybe it would be way moh better to refrain from the high dudgeon tones of the offended 17th, or 18th, or 19th century (even the early 20th century) ~ take your pick, and for those who parrot this phrase at every opportunity to instead just man/woman up and say, "I don't get it," or "I don't care for this." .... and get on with what they do like.

...or, well, if not, at least they are being consistent ;-)


Best regards.
~ I'm all for personal expression; it just has to express something to me. ~

ComposerOfAvantGarde

Analysing that Stockhausen piece for harmony and melody might not be the most useful analysis to make in terms of its composition. Of course, we can talk about indefinite pitch in the piece and we can talk about contour, but I do believe that one would be able to make a much deeper analysis when thinking more about the 'how' and the 'why' aspects of electronic composition.

We can analyse specific events of silence and sound, how specific sounds were created and how they contrast with one another and why Stockhausen made the decisions he made in the composition.

M. Croche is absolutely right when he mentions 'melody, harmony, rhythm and structure' as neutral terms. Thinking about music only on this level will give us only the shallowest of analyses because it will only answer the question of 'what is happening in the music.' Once we investigate the 'how' and the 'why' then we begin to understand what makes this composition unique and what Stockhausen may have been thinking about whilst composing it and also the reasons as to why we may find the piece of music 'musical.'

Florestan

Re: Jessop and Mr. Croche

You see, gentlemen, this is perhaps the biggest difference between "reactionaries" like Mirror Image or yours truly, and you. For you, apparently, music is all about analysis and the how and the why: intellectual game to the boot. For we of the respectful opposition, knowing the how and the why of a work, or analyzing it until the end of times, is absolutely irrelevant. When all the how and the why of, say, Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, or Schubert's String Quintet, or Beethoven's Appassionata, or Brahms' Piano Trio op. 8 is said and done, all such analyses don't even begin to grasp, let alone explain, the how and the why of their concrete and real appeal, charm and beauty, the how and the why of millions of people's deriving  indescribable joy and delight at hearing those works, be it for the first time or for the zillionth.


Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Jo498

I don't think the linked Stockhausen piece is about analysis. Very few of us are old enough (I certainly am not) to remember or simply imagine how different those electronic sounds must have appeared to almost everyone in the early 1950s and how exciting the possibilities were for youngish composers.

Note that those early electronics were almost the opposite of "dadaist" painting or readymades or something like that. With early 1950s technology it was a HUGE amount of work and required quite a bit of technical expertise to create these purely electronic pieces.
True, they also had a somewhat dubious program of treating all elements "serially" but I think the main point why it is sometimes hard for us who almost grew up with synthesizer sounds from computers and electronic toys is that we simply don't get how special those sounds were 60 years ago.
(Note that this observation is quite independent from any evaluation of this music, whether it has become obsolete really fast etc.)
Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

Karl Henning

Quote from: Florestan on August 18, 2016, 03:13:45 AM
[...] For you, apparently, music is all about analysis and the how and the why: intellectual game to the boot. For we of the respectful opposition, knowing the how and the why of a work, or analyzing it until the end of times, is absolutely irrelevant.

Now, dear fellow, you know you are luxuriating in a false dichotomy here.

You report that the how and the why of a work is absolutely irrelevant to you;  I don't believe it is, but let us concede the point for discussion.  "...analyzing it until the end of times" is a scornful rhetorical exaggeration, but let that pass.

In the first place, you have to expect (should probably demand) that musicians engage in some of that analyzing of the how and what, that that is a significant part of how (how!) they become (become what?) fine artists.

In the second, musicians don't have a toggle, which now is set to "just gonna enjoy the music now" but which when needed we switch to "not gonna do any of that enjoying stuff, it's time to analyze! analyze!"  The mental engagement with the how and why is part of the musician's enjoyment of the music.  (Really, I believe that is true of practically every listener, as well, and it is more a matter of the degree to which that mental engagement is in, or portable towards, the foreground.)

So, if you wish rhetorically to claim that for you as the listener, no analysis is relevant, that's fine.  (I do not entirely credit the claim, but claim away!)  But is an error to project onto any musician the fallacy that his practice of analysis is any hermetical removal from the experience of musical enjoyment.
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

(poco) Sforzando

Quote from: Florestan on August 18, 2016, 03:13:45 AM
Re: Jessop and Mr. Croche

You see, gentlemen, this is perhaps the biggest difference between "reactionaries" like Mirror Image or yours truly, and you. For you, apparently, music is all about analysis and the how and the why: intellectual game to the boot. For we of the respectful opposition, knowing the how and the why of a work, or analyzing it until the end of times, is absolutely irrelevant. When all the how and the why of, say, Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, or Schubert's String Quintet, or Beethoven's Appassionata, or Brahms' Piano Trio op. 8 is said and done, all such analyses don't even begin to grasp, let alone explain, the how and the why of their concrete and real appeal, charm and beauty, the how and the why of millions of people's deriving  indescribable joy and delight at hearing those works, be it for the first time or for the zillionth.

Do you know I spent an afternoon once tracing the key relationships in the scherzo from Beethoven's first Rasumovsky Quartet. It's this wonderful, kaleidoscopic piece where Beethoven is juggling six, seven themes in the air, and I found that even though it touches almost every key center, the one key it never uses is the simple, basic subdominant. And I found that fascinating.
"I don't know what sforzando means, though it clearly means something."

PerfectWagnerite

Quote from: (poco) Sforzando on August 18, 2016, 04:18:23 AM
Do you know I spent an afternoon once tracing the key relationships in the scherzo from Beethoven's first Rasumovsky Quartet. It's this wonderful, kaleidoscopic piece where Beethoven is juggling six, seven themes in the air, and I found that even though it touches almost every key center, the one key it never uses is the simple, basic subdominant. And I found that fascinating.
No I don't know that but greatness is when in music of such complexity and craft it is always musical, all the themes balance one another out and the whole is much more than the sum of its parts.

Karl Henning

Overall, a fine discussion of the points (and in this, fulfilling John's request).  It does not materially alter the res, but . . . .

Quote from: Monsieur Croche on August 17, 2016, 11:54:35 PM

[ snip ]

Melody is simply whatever uppermost pitches are sounding at the moment;
bass line is whatever the lowermost pitches are sounding at the moment.
(That Mahler Symphonic movement where the final sounding low pitch is the Tam-tam? indeterminate pitch though that gong is, that is the last note of the bass line.)

[ snip ]



Of course, the melody is sometimes in an inner voice;  and at times, the melody is in the bass (and therefore doubles as the harmonic foundation).  But as a generalization, it is certainly reasonable to call the melody the highest voice.
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

Karl Henning

Quote from: PerfectWagnerite on August 18, 2016, 04:50:07 AM
No I don't know that but greatness is when in music of such complexity and craft it is always musical [...]

Fine, as far as it goes.

It is worth pointing out that much of the audience of Beethoven's day, and of the following generation, protested that Beethoven's complexity and craft were not especially musical.


(Hint:  They were completely mistaken.)
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

ComposerOfAvantGarde

Quote from: Florestan on August 18, 2016, 03:13:45 AM
Re: Jessop and Mr. Croche

You see, gentlemen, this is perhaps the biggest difference between "reactionaries" like Mirror Image or yours truly, and you. For you, apparently, music is all about analysis and the how and the why: intellectual game to the boot. For we of the respectful opposition, knowing the how and the why of a work, or analyzing it until the end of times, is absolutely irrelevant. When all the how and the why of, say, Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, or Schubert's String Quintet, or Beethoven's Appassionata, or Brahms' Piano Trio op. 8 is said and done, all such analyses don't even begin to grasp, let alone explain, the how and the why of their concrete and real appeal, charm and beauty, the how and the why of millions of people's deriving  indescribable joy and delight at hearing those works, be it for the first time or for the zillionth.




Music isnt just about analysis. I analyse music to learn from it. I listen to music to enjoy it. Of course, analysis can be an enjoyable and enlightening process but it is absolutely not the way I enjoy music at all. I love to go witu the flow and see where music takes me when i listen to it. I love the aesthetics and diversity of music. There is so much stuff to listen to that in reality i prefer not to get bogged down in analysis unless i am trying to work out some composition technique that would be useful for me to know.

ComposerOfAvantGarde

Quote from: karlhenning on August 18, 2016, 04:08:43 AM
Now, dear fellow, you know you are luxuriating in a false dichotomy here.

You report that the how and the why of a work is absolutely irrelevant to you;  I don't believe it is, but let us concede the point for discussion.  "...analyzing it until the end of times" is a scornful rhetorical exaggeration, but let that pass.

In the first place, you have to expect (should probably demand) that musicians engage in some of that analyzing of the how and what, that that is a significant part of how (how!) they become (become what?) fine artists.

In the second, musicians don't have a toggle, which now is set to "just gonna enjoy the music now" but which when needed we switch to "not gonna do any of that enjoying stuff, it's time to analyze! analyze!"  The mental engagement with the how and why is part of the musician's enjoyment of the music.  (Really, I believe that is true of practically every listener, as well, and it is more a matter of the degree to which that mental engagement is in, or portable towards, the foreground.)

So, if you wish rhetorically to claim that for you as the listener, no analysis is relevant, that's fine.  (I do not entirely credit the claim, but claim away!)  But is an error to project onto any musician the fallacy that his practice of analysis is any hermetical removal from the experience of musical enjoyment.


An example of a perfect post explaining something perfectly  (rather than my defensive post which is a tad more argumentative in tone i admit)