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

[Andante]

When all is said and done the basics of music being melody and rhythm are essential for the vast majority of music lovers and this holds true for all music of any country that I know of (some one will now be frantically searching to show I am wrong) we can add harmony and of course structure.
In the example given by Mirror Image I find none of these so to me and I would suggest the majority this is not worthy of the name "Music" and to say " Its music Jim but not as we know it " does not in any way justify it.

[Ghost Sonata]

On a side note, the idea of greatest has always seemed like a sales strategy anyway.

E.G:

"the Greatest bar of soap"
"the GREATEST seafood restaurant in town"
"the GREATEST pizza shop you'll eat at"
"the GREATEST music ever written, now half price"
"the GREATEST football league in Britain"
And so on..

Agree - the notion of the Greatest serves complex psycho-social and likely economic needs that I think should be explored and possibly exploded.  Mostly, I think it both a form of human self-congratulation and reassurance (antidote to the worst that humans are capable of) somewhat on the order of once thinking we were the center of the universe.  Everyone else in the universe knows that the greatest composer is Spiexrom412.3 on planet Draugr.  More interestingly, perhaps: is the concept of 'Greatest' or even 'Great' an inducement or disincentive for other artists?  (Brahms was so dis-enabled by the Greatness of Beethoven he put off writing symphonies; how many more of his symphonies might we have today if he hadn't been so overwhelmed with LvB's 'dominance'?)

[Monsieur Croche]

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.)

The above holds true for much of the audience of Bach's day, Mozart's day, and on and on, it seems, ad infinitum.

Like that saying about the poor, this type of audiences are always with us... each and every generation deeply affronted, calling those composer's works, 'not music,' and near hysterically screaming, "Melody, Harmony, Rhythm and Structure.'

This is probably nearly as old as the classical music tradition itself 

[SeptimalTritone]

I'm not so sure that everything has melody.

Yes, everything has harmony (spectral content), rhythm (time structure of individual or group elements), and structure (long term differences/similarities in a piece).

But melody, I'm not so sure. Yes, the Stockhausen example easily has individual pitch content of all of its sounds, and therefore melody. Some of the components almost sound like an electric guitar: the pitch basis of this work should be readily hearable for everyone.

But something like Francisco Lopez's Wind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBlx42LB5F4 I don't see having melody. Granted, I like his work 100%. But the sound components of rustling leaves, wind, rain, grass, storm, river: they emit a continuum noise distribution. Some of these distributions are weighted towards higher or lower frequencies than others, i.e. the wind is lower pitched than the leaves, but there is no definite pitch picked out, and no highest pitch (the Fourier distributions trail off, but don't sharply end) and therefore no melody.

I don't think this lack of melody is a bad thing. I think the freedom of not having to be locked onto specific pitch is what makes Lopez's Wind able to do its thing.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

It is at this point when I think we must go back to basics and realise that the most fundamental elements common to all music are pitch, duration and intensity. I am sure M. Croche will be able to explain it better than I can, but 'pitch' also refers to whether something is of definite pitch or indefinite pitch.

SeptimalTritone posted a composition which has these elements.

Anyone can decide for themselves whether they find it musical or not, but the fact that it exists as music in the first place means that the composer finds these sounds musical and there is an audience who finds it musical as well.

[Monsieur Croche]

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.*[/b][/color] 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.

*You couldn't be more wrong in this estimation if you worked at it as hard as you could.

Speaking only for myself:
The prime, uppermost, most important thing about any piece of music is that it has a strong visceral / sensual import to me as a listener, and automatically inclusive with this is that it brings to me some emotional import as well.

That, of course, is what I think you were getting at in the rest of the body of your text. Without it, there is nothing to draw anyone to music in the first place, let alone to take the time to bother to learn how to analyze it or get the non-visceral intellectual aspects. Those intellectual aspects are but an extraneous layer of cerebral only pleasure to those who find that interesting.

Analysis, on its own, has never been near enough, nor do I think it ever will come near enough, to demonstrate or prove that a piece of music is good, even, let alone that it is great.  It may 'confirm' some strengths about the intellectual aspects of the piece, something interesting or ingenious about its structure or inner workings, but the most 'appealing' analysis can have a piece looking technically good on paper, showing the clever devices in play, etc. while all that analytic 'proof' is moot if the music analyzed does not come across to the listener, consciously or other, as the music is played, and without any need to look at or know what the analysis shows.

I have the impression that you think anyone trained who even begins to point out the more technical, analytical or cerebral aspects of a piece somehow believes themselves superior to the peons who listen but don't know much else about music, or at least have lost all vestiges of their humanity and instead "live only in their head."

An inverse snobbery is quite strongly implicit in what you've written.  Your text sounds to me like that more visceral and emotive way of taking music in (just look at all those rhapsodic adjectives re: in what way it is appreciated) has the import of making that out as vastly superior and a contrast to the spiritually impoverished academics who 'only' go at a work technically.

This is a drastic misconception about those more academically trained, and it is more elitist and laden with snobbery than the camp so often named as being just that.  The fact is, since those with the training have this other vocabulary, they use it. There is no other significance than that.

Basically, you've thrown down a gauntlet repeating in different terms this recurring nightmare of the parroted 'Harmony, Melody, Rhythm, Structure' defense, as usual put forth by those who have no idea of the full meaning as defined by those terms, a vastly reductive simplification so lacking as to be near completely false, and that is wildly distorted in order to support what is actually a non-argument. Those who take this position, use that 'defense,' have no awareness of how completely neutral those terms and definitions are, or that they cover, and are present in, virtually just about every piece of western music yet composed, including the music they don't care for.

Too, even if I mistook it, there seems to be something about those more emotive reactions being extolled that hints at the odor of a contest of "who is more sensitive," which I think is at best an ego contest better suited for self conceits held by tweens, and I ain't goin' there.

Reactionary (or even 'conservative') is far too flattering a term when applied to a mentality of mere stubborn bull headed resistance to openly exploring, learning the definitions of those musical elements without distorting them, Humpty-Dumpty like, "To mean whatever you wish them to mean," and experiencing a piece, listening to it for what it is vs. listening to it while all the time being terribly busy with what it isn't -- and all that due to a shaky and shallow misunderstanding of the neutral and full meanings of "Harmony, Melody, Rhythm, Structure." That is more a door slammed shut mentality than an open door mentality.

Then too, I wonder if these so-called reactionaries find themselves in a conundrum when they hear from so many who seem to love this more current music --  those 'modernists' -- and find those modernists also tend to love truckloads of the old repertoire spanning at least as far back as the 1300's.  That must throw up a very serious question and doubt, "How can they love all the old stuff and love this new stuff?"  Because to some of a more limited scope, it seems it must be one or the other.  If that is what makes people comfortable and feeling less self-doubt and insecurity, that's O.K.-- but that is simply setting up a wall of defense around the parameters of their personal taste and cannot be taken as a valid general argument for or against any other kind of music.

"Going into Neutral" to understand and use terms properly, for your own understanding as well as making for intelligent discussion, does not require abandoning your feelings, or personal tastes, while it might just make some aware of what is useless (and conversely what is useful) in any kind of lively discussion involving more than one point of view.

I don't find the Stockhausen electronic etude of much any interest, while I would feel totally foolish and embarrassed if I said it was not music, not musical, or had no harmony, melody, rhythm, or structure -- because knowing the meaning of those terms and how neutral they truly are, I know better that it does. 

The fact those elements are all present in that etude in no way should affect anyone's opinion of what they think of the piece itself, or convince, or -- Apollo forbid -- force them into liking it.  It would have them conceding, with a little bit of grace one might hope, that whether they like it or not it is music, musical, and meets all the criteria of those four terms. Why that should be humiliating, or skin off of anyone's nose is really beyond my imagination.


Best regards.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

I am just gonna put this out there as an electroacoustic work by Stockhausen which I personally enjoy much more. It's also probably his most well known electroacoustic work.

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

[SeptimalTritone]

Jessop, of course there's pitch: indefinite pitch distributions, aka Fourier spectra. I never said it didn't have pitch.

I said it didn't have melody: which requires a "picking out" of pitch. Read what Monsieur wrote on page 2: melody being a picking out of pitch. He suggested the highest pitch as by default being melody, or at the very least some picked out pitch, but none of these pitch spectra have a highest upper cutoff or any pitches picked out: they trail off.

Of course it's musical. I highly recommend Lopez. It has spectral distribution and indefinite pitch distributions, but no melody. The lack of melody is, in this work's case, a good thing. For picking out any definite pitch would be a distraction.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Jessop, of course there's pitch: indefinite pitch distributions, aka Fourier spectra. I never said it didn't have pitch.

I said it didn't have melody: which requires a "picking out" of pitch. Read what Monsieur wrote on page 2: melody being a picking out of pitch. He suggested the highest pitch as by default being melody, or at the very least some picked out pitch, but none of these pitch spectra have a highest upper cutoff or any pitches picked out: they trail off.

Of course it's musical. I highly recommend Lopez. It has spectral distribution and indefinite pitch distributions, but no melody. The lack of melody is, in this work's case, a good thing. For picking out any definite pitch would be a distraction.

I agree with you on all points though

[Monsieur Croche]

I am just gonna put this out there as an electroacoustic work by Stockhausen which I personally enjoy much more. It's also probably his most well known electroacoustic work.

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

^^60 years old, fresh as a newly opened flower, and still beautiful.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

^^60 years old, fresh as a newly opened flower, and still beautiful.

Yeah but....what about the music?

I fail to understand what is really 'fresh' about this music. Personally I think it sounds more 'of its time' when composers began to understand more about the techniques of electronic/tape music and began to explore various aesthetic possibilities from manipulating the raw recorded material. In my opinion, it is much more developed and purposeful approach to the manipulation of recorded sound than, say, Russolo's futurist musical presentations of recorded sounds decades earlier.

[Florestan]

Those intellectual aspects are but an extraneous layer of cerebral only pleasure to those who find that interesting.

Analysis, on its own, has never been near enough, nor do I think it ever will come near enough, to demonstrate or prove that a piece of music is good, even, let alone that it is great.  It may 'confirm' some strengths about the intellectual aspects of the piece, something interesting or ingenious about its structure or inner workings, but the most 'appealing' analysis can have a piece looking technically good on paper, showing the clever devices in play, etc. while all that analytic 'proof' is moot if the music analyzed does not come across to the listener, consciously or other, as the music is played, and without any need to look at or know what the analysis shows.

We are then in perfect agreement. Great!

The rest of your post is a furious diatribe against points I have not even implied, let alone made. Not worth replying.

[nathanb]

I think Stockhausen is the greatest composer because I like his music the best. Greatest is a matter of opinion, and "like" is a matter of opinion, so everything matches up here. Everyone being a turd to Stockhausen... Quit being turds, yo.

[Mirror Image]

Everyone being a turd to Stockhausen... Quit being turds, yo.

Speaking of turds...I listened to another Stockhausen work and...ummm...yeah.

[nathanb]

Speaking of turds...I listened to another Stockhausen work and...ummm...yeah.

I laid it out as clean as possible without stepping on any toes, and all you had to do was choose whether or not to be a turd. YOU HAD ONE JOB.

[zamyrabyrd]

Brahms was a hard act to follow.

[Monsieur Croche]

Truly nothing wrong with these enthusiasms, and a great many of us have, in our enthusiasm, conflated “Gosh, I am so excited by the music of N.” with “N. is the Greatest Composer Since Beethoven.”

If the enthusiasm for Stockhausen lasts for longer than 48 months, though, the sufferer should consider medical advice.  It may indicate a more fundamental reasoning disorder 

There is this, about which I am accountable for forgetting once in a while when interacting with people:

The human brain is not fully developed until the 25th year of life ;-)

[snyprrr]

I don't even like his music, but he is perhaps the greatest composer since Beethoven... that is to say, the innovative genius Stockhausen.

I mean, sure, I guessed correctly.

I'm just not a big fan of the Luciferian Sound... its melodies are kind of wan, and it wallows in a faux luxury of silences and extraneous sounds, and vocalizations, in a somewhat pompous and haughty manner? I hear KHS and Cage very similar here, whereas someone like James usually wants to argue the point... to me, the EFFECT of both Composers on me is about the same (in the Late Works)... ennui.

So, Cage could be argued (LISTEN TO ME!! WTF???) (Must've been the mushrooms!!!!!!)

[Monsieur Croche]

Aside from quoting me, why can't you be serious for a minute and answer Jessop's question?

I didn't quote you; I cited a cliché phrase -- used in a cliché contextual response as supplied in a topic of discussion on music which has also repeated itself many times over centuries -- its author Anon, its use so frequent in music discussions and found on classical music fora at such a high and regular frequency that one should understand it is like a penny, a coin of the realm that has long been in circulation and passed through the hands of countless numbers of people.  Tis pity 'twas not a penny; by now it would have been completely worn away by having been handled by so many previous generations.

I did not answer Jessop's question because it was not addressed to me.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

I didn't quote you; I cited a cliché phrase -- used in a cliché contextual response as supplied in a topic of discussion on music which has also repeated itself many times over centuries -- its author Anon, its use so frequent in music discussions and found on classical music fora at such a high and regular frequency that one should understand it is like a penny, a coin of the realm that has long been in circulation and passed through the hands of countless numbers of people.  Tis pity 'twas not a penny; by now it would have been completely worn away by having been handled by so many previous generations.

I did not answer Jessop's question because it was not addressed to me.

The first essay in the a collection of writings by Pierre Boulez called 'Orientations' pretty much addresses every single one of the clichéd responses against contemporary classical music and provides a strong argument against them. Have you read it?