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

[James]

That Stockhausen 1952 "music concrete" Study/Etude that MI posted was a student test piece .. nothing serious, just a document, ks was highly critical and not that pleased with the result in fact .. if we follow his evolution within the medium just a few short years later the progress/results made are quite staggering. You have to remember, it was a pretty brand new medium back in those days .. and he was finding his way within that, developing brand new techniques, a new vocabulary .. innovating. And what a painstaking process it was, back then.

[Andante]

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 ;-)

That is the male brain, as you should know the female brain matures much earlier. 

[Monsieur Croche]

That is the male brain, as you should know the female brain matures much earlier.

One more good reason (apart from the differential in average life spans) for women to choose for their spouse a man about ten years older than they are....

Yes, I knew that, 'dear.' 

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

That Stockhausen 1952 "music concrete" Study/Etude that MI posted was a student test piece .. nothing serious, just a document, ks was highly critical and not that pleased with the result in fact .. if we follow his evolution within the medium just a few short years later the progress/results made are quite staggering. You have to remember, it was a pretty brand new medium back in those days .. and he was finding his way within that, developing brand new techniques, a new vocabulary .. innovating. And what a painstaking process it was, back then.

At the time, Stockhausen was a bit of an arsehole towards the other composers who were presenting their respective tape compositions along with this one I believe.....
Somehow I actually prefer this piece to some other pieces he composed in other mediums. Maybe because it isn't very long. I can listen to it if I simply have a little urge to listen to some early tape music and it'll be satisfying to hear for the short time that it lasts. But honestly there are so many more interesting electronic works composed a bit later on which I would rather hear.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

One more good reason (apart from the differential in average life spans) for women to choose for their spouse a man about ten years older than they are....

Yes, I knew that, 'dear.' 

For some reason I have always preferred to be the younger one in a relationship am I normal

[James]

If we are to equate Stockhausen with Beethoven at all, it would be his pioneering work within the field of electroacoustics & spatial composition. He really was at the vanguard and led the way, and his best pieces are really well put together and broke new ground. No other composer came close during that time (or since imo). Most of his work utilitizes electronic media. Just a few short years after that rather crude & primitive student musique concrete piece (not really an official part of his canon which starts with kontra-punkte) he put forth the Song of the Youths (1955-56), a 13 minute piece that took him like 2 years to put together, seamlessly blending purely electronic sound with real sound .. it's one of the first, if not the first to effectively utilize surround sound (common ground today) .. originally 5 channels, but there wasn't the technology then to support 5, so he mixed the 5th channel of music with the 4th .. and had the music projected around the audience in a precise manor. Then we get the monumental Kontakte (1958-60) for electronic sounds, percussion and piano, then Mikrophonie I & II (1964/65), Mixtur (1964/67/2003), Telemusik (1966), Hymnen (1966-67, 69). Mantra (1970) etc.

[Andante]

Yes, I knew that, 'dear.' 

Yes, of course you did 

[snyprrr]

If we are to equate Stockhausen with Beethoven at all, it would be his pioneering work within the field of electroacoustics & spatial composition. He really was at the vanguard and led the way, and his best pieces are really well put together and broke new ground. No other composer came close during that time (or since imo). Most of his work utilitizes electronic media. Just a few short years after that rather crude & primitive student musique concrete piece (not really an official part of his canon which starts with kontra-punkte) he put forth the Song of the Youths (1955-56), a 13 minute piece that took him like 2 years to put together, seamlessly blending purely electronic sound with real sound .. it's one of the first, if not the first to effectively utilize surround sound (common ground today) .. originally 5 channels, but there wasn't the technology then to support 5, so he mixed the 5th channel of music with the 4th .. and had the music projected around the audience in a precise manor. Then we get the monumental Kontakte (1958-60) for electronic sounds, percussion and piano, then Mikrophonie I & II (1964/65), Mixtur (1964/67/2003), Telemusik (1966), Hymnen (1966-67, 69). Mantra (1970) etc.

So, here's my thing. "Stockhausen" isn't what's up for consideration- it's the Ideal of some New Religious Music... and he happens to be the "vessel"... it would have been someone... and, prophetically speaking, I suppose they would have HAD to come from Germany.- isn't this more about Wagner than LvB?? i should just go somewhere else.......

[Karl Henning]

Point of information:

The thesis (still under consideration) that Stockhausen is "the greatest composer since Beethoven" is not the same as "equating Stockhausen with Beethoven." But one sees how an irrational enthusiast would make that leap of illogic.

[kishnevi]

Hypothetically, a few hundred years ago, would you be saying that Beethoven is the greatest composer since:
Bach?
Mozart?
Or
Haydn?

To make the parallel more accurate,  think of  asking that question a decade after Beethoven died...KHS died nine years ago.
But then define greatness.  Greatness as a measure of quality achieved in current musical forms... Mozart was the greatest since Bach
Greatness as a measure of developing new musical forms and language...Beethoven was the greatest since Haydn, who was the greatest since Monteverdi.
I think it will require a couple of decades more to decide who qualifies for greatness in either sense among those composers who flourished in the last half of the 20th century.

[Scion7]

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'd larf, but this is just so sad . . .

[Mandryka]

I don't like the idea of "greatest", it doesn't sit right with me because it's subjective.

A Better thread would be looking at influence, popularity (not that it indicates anything), output (prolific vs small catalogue) but most importantly: innovation.

I do think it is a bit sickening honestly though to think of one single composer as the only thing that matters essentially, treating them like gods. 

One thing I've noticed is that some people who enjoy music think of it as very pure, timeless, eternal, abstract. As if it gets its value, its importance, from something which transcends the hurly burly of reception, influence, popularity and innovation.

In my opinion people sometimes take this stance because they think they can perceive musical value.

[Monsieur Croche]

I don't like the idea of "greatest", it doesn't sit right with me because it's subjective.

A Better thread would be looking at influence, popularity (not that it indicates anything), output (prolific vs small catalogue) but most importantly: innovation.

I do think it is a bit sickening honestly though to think of one single composer as the only thing that matters essentially, treating them like gods. 

I don't like the idea of "greatest", it doesn't sit right with me because it's subjective.

A Better thread would be looking at influence, popularity (not that it indicates anything), output (prolific vs small catalogue) but most importantly: innovation.

I do think it is a bit sickening honestly though to think of one single composer as the only thing that matters essentially, treating them like gods. 

I'm sure you will have found already, if not here then elsewhere, that some people seem to near detest that innovation is one of the prime criteria for who is generally considered great.  Yet, undeniably, of all the rather great and very good composers of the past, it is those who innovated, (not only innovate, because there is a subset list of many who have done that, to one degree or another) while also writing what most consider superb music. and their influence on music which came thereafter, the general direction it took -- those altogether are THE qualities of all those from the past who are 'in all the books' singled out as the greatest of any era.

By that 'rating' system, Prokofiev, much of whose music I love and admire, is barely of no real importance when it comes to changing or influencing much of anything in the general musical landscape.  Ditto goes for the likes of Sibelius, Shostakovich, and many another entirely worthwhile also 'great' composers whose music we still listen to.

Those rigorous and demanding criteria are why Debussy, Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Webern are in those top ranks of composers from the first half of the 20th century and other composers are not, and general public opinion will not really change that.

John Cage, with a lot of pieces less than really good, has had at least as much wide-ranging influence as Stockhausen, if not more.  Your boy, Xenakis, I think has had negligible influence, at least not enough to eventually qualify for the Laurel Crown.

Questions of the type are of interest; it is if not really interesting at least fun to speculate.

To expect any more of a concrete general consensus, even from the experts and 'cognoscenti' who eventually carve those names in stone, and so soon after the era, well... dream on.


Best regards.

[Karl Henning]

I'm sure you will have found already, if not here then elsewhere, that some people seem to near detest that innovation is one of the prime criteria for who is generally considered great.  Yet, undeniably, of all the rather great and very good composers of the past, it is those who innovated, (not only innovate, because there is a subset list of many who have done that, to one degree or another) while also writing what most consider superb music. and their influence on music which came thereafter, the general direction it took -- those altogether are THE qualities of all those from the past who are 'in all the books' singled out as the greatest of any era.

By that 'rating' system, Prokofiev, much of whose music I love and admire, is barely of no real importance when it comes to changing or influencing much of anything in the general musical landscape.  Ditto goes for the likes of Sibelius, Shostakovich, and many another entirely worthwhile also 'great' composers whose music we still listen to.

Those rigorous and demanding criteria are why Debussy, Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Webern are in those top ranks of composers from the first half of the 20th century and other composers are not, and general public opinion will not really change that.

How may this align with (say) Adorno and Leibowitz heaping scorn upon Sibelius? (The question is as rhetorical as one may wish.)

Harold Truscott's defense of Sibelius here at one point characterizes Sibelius's achievement as "enlarging normal speech."  Music which says something which no music had before, ought perhaps to be "innovation" enough.  (Writing superb music, ought to be enough.)

One could argue that mere innovation is trivial.  Sure, we are all grateful that we have hot and cold running water, this was an important innovation.  But the important thing is the life we lead, a life made easier by the technical innovation.

We should consider any individual who praises the innovation as The Thing That Matters, rather a narrow-viewed eccentric, I should think.  (Oh, look!  A string quartet with helicopters!)

[North Star]

I'm sure you will have found already, if not here then elsewhere, that some people seem to near detest that innovation is one of the prime criteria for who is generally considered great.  Yet, undeniably, of all the rather great and very good composers of the past, it is those who innovated, (not only innovate, because there is a subset list of many who have done that, to one degree or another) while also writing what most consider superb music. and their influence on music which came thereafter, the general direction it took -- those altogether are THE qualities of all those from the past who are 'in all the books' singled out as the greatest of any era.

By that 'rating' system, Prokofiev, much of whose music I love and admire, is barely of no real importance when it comes to changing or influencing much of anything in the general musical landscape.  Ditto goes for the likes of Sibelius, Shostakovich, and many another entirely worthwhile also 'great' composers whose music we still listen to.

Those rigorous and demanding criteria are why Debussy, Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Webern are in those top ranks of composers from the first half of the 20th century and other composers are not, and general public opinion will not really change that.

"The people who you think are radicals might really be conservatives. The people who you think are conservative might really be radical."

What became known as spectral music emerged at this time as a viable alternative aesthetic to serialism in France, Germany and elsewhere. Primarily initiated by Grisey and Murail, this music took as its starting point the acoustic structure of sounds and the psycho-acoustics of human perception over time - precisely those factors deemed to have been neglected by the serialists. The first fruits of this tendency - Grisey's Périodes and Partiels (1974 and 1975 respectively) - were characterised by an avoidance of sudden contrasts and abrupt juxtapositions in favour of gradually evolving processes of greater continuity and carefully measured changes of texture. They mark a sharp move away from the parametric thinking of the Darmstadt School in favour of the study of continuity and change.
      This is precisely the area in which Sibelius was to prove a useful catalyst. Repeatedly in Sibelius's music, we encounter a bold and experimental attitude towards time, timbre, musical texture and form which transcends the late Romanticism of his origins and places him amongst the most innovative composers of the early twentieth century. This is especially true of the Symphonies nos. 5, 6 and 7 as well as of Tapiola and the incidental music from The Tempest. The Prelude to The Tempest consists of violent oscillations up and down a single whole-tone mode, together with occasional shifts to the adjacent mode a half-step higher. No resolution is provided by the conclusion of the piece, which consists of an augmented triad repeatedly built up note by note on sustained brass and tremolo strings - a kind of inharmonic spectrum, like the sound of a receding surf, examined partial by partial, shimmering statistically.
      Tapiola features a similarly extreme storm passage near its conclusion. This latter piece has many other instances of what Hepokoski has termed 'sound sheets', many of them distinctly unconventional in spacing and sonority by the orchestration habits of the time. The oddest such passage is perhaps the complex eighteen-part string texture built up between Fig. D and Fig. F, consisting of a single major second octave-doubled through every register including the lowest. (see Ex. 13.1]) The presence here of the lowest three octaves produces very noticeable beats in performance due to the closeness of the adjacent frequencies and the relatively high dynamic indicated. The resultant sonority, which functions as a dense screen through which the woodwinds' chromatic compression of the piece's main motive can only intermittently be perceived, has a startling, almost electronic quality. Sibelius's readiness to produce deep acoustic throbbing, through the cultivation of crushed spacing in the bass register, is found in many places in mature (not just late) Sibelius, and places him at the opposite extreme from the Franco-Russian school of orchestral resonance. It is a tendency which can crop up in the most unexpected places, such as the inexplicable, shocking surge of bass dissonances found at the start of the middle section (Fig. L) in the last movement of the Fifth Symphony. There is little doubt that Sibelius connected such passages with the study of natural sonorities.
       The other factor in Sibelius that attracted the spectral composers was his strangely distended timing. The passage from Tapiola cited in Ex. 13.1 lasts an abnormally long time -nearly a whole minute. The rotating chromatic storm near the end of the same work lasts even longer. The Tempest prelude lasts over three minutes. During all such textures, any clear sense of harmonic direction is virtually suspended in a manner not found in any other music prior to 1960. Furthermore, Sibelius's habit, even in supposedly developmental sections, of simply letting a melodic-rhythmic cell grow progressively  by gradual changes - bypassing the dialectical tension of developing variation - also results in a sense of organic transformation through large areas of time. Whilst not static (unlike the 'sound sheets'), these passages convey to the listener a keen sense of time being stretched out as the transformations take on a life of their own, heedless of traditional symphonic rhetoric. Such passages are found very frequently in the last three symphonies and Tapiola (which, in any case, reduces all melodic activity to the curvilinear oscillation stated at its opening).

The percussion writing in Saturne might superficially remind one of Varèse - but close listening reveals quite readily that it consists of detailed, quasi-canonic figures which are nearer in their sequential, propulsive effect to a Sibelius string tremolo texture. The harmonic substance of the music - on the electronic instruments - is crammed into the extreme treble and bass without any secure middle-range writing. Here the electronic instruments create a mixture of harmony and timbre which is strongly reminiscent of the dense screen of sound from Tapiola in Ex. 13.1.¹¹
  Such slowly transforming aural screens are common in the works of other Itinéraire composers, notably Grisey, who was also interested in Sibelius at this period.¹² This can clearly be detected in the second section of Partiels (1975), which forms a very gradual transition from the extreme bass instruments of the ensemble to octave Es in the middle and high register, dominated by string harmonies (another Tapiola texture). The parallel second section in Grisey’s orchestral work Transitoires (1981) is even more radically dark in spacing and scoring, and its timing still more distended. Sibelius helped to de-gallicise the sound world of the spectralists, opening their ears to a rougher kind of orchestration as well as pointing away from the established habits of thinking in isolated blocs sonores prevalent in Messiaen and Boulez.
   Murail’s orchestral work Gondwana (1980) even incorporates a substantial passage directly modeled upon a Sibelius piece [...] Lemminkäinen in Tuonela from [...] Op. 22 (1896). The principal texture of the piece consists of wave-like ascending string tremolos answered by circuitously descending woodwind lines, the two meeting in a culminating brass and drum chord in the middle register; this sequence is repeated many times with variations in the duration of each part as the piece works up to a main climax. This procedure was borrowed, with obvious differences in harmonic and orchestrational syntax, for the central development section of Gondwana, starting at bar 50, pp. 27-30 (which leads to the climax of the work). Murail took both the wave-patterning and the orchestration from Sibelius’s piece and recreated them in his own terms; the complex harmony is derived from the sum and difference tones of frequency modulation, incorporating quarter-tones, and the rhythmic language is more irregular and fluid in its details. The effect, however, is clearly analoguous, whist not superficially Sibelian to the innocent.

[The Spectralists'] idiosyncratic view of [Sibelius's] work helped Lindberg to see the radical aspects of Sibelius afresh, stripped of nationalist trappings. Lindberg's eloquent statements regarding this change of mind, given in interview in 1993, are worth quoting in full, as they reflect many of the views of contemporary composers on the subject:

"I have often said that it is a pity that Sibelius was Finnish! His music has been deeply misunderstood. While his language was far from modern, his thinking, as far as form and treatment of materials is concerned, was ahead of its time. While Varèse is credited with opening the way for new sonorities, Sibelius has himself pursued a profound reassessment of the formal and structural problems of composition. I do not think it is fair that he has been considered as a conservative .  . His harmonies have a resonant, almost spectral quality. You find an attention to sonority in Sibelius works which is actually not so far removed from that which would appear long after in the work of Grisey or Murail . . . For me, the crucial aspect of his work remains his conception of continuity. In Tapiola, above all, the way genuine processes are created using very limited materials is pretty exceptional."

George Benjamin’s At First Light (1982) for chamber orchestra reflects his own enthusiasm for Sibelius’s bass writing by making reference to Tapiola at the violent opening of his own work’s second movement. The passage being referred to here is just before the the brief Mendelssohnian scherzo of the work, at Fig. F in Tapiola, a slow, chromatically winding progression scored for low clarinets, bass clarinet, bassoons, contrabassoons and timpani. These extremely dark chords are magnified in Benjamin’s piece into a series of crushed, harsh progressions for bass clarinet, bassoon, low horn, trombone, cello and double bass emphasizing similar intervals to the Sibelius - low tritones, fourths and fifths. The chord progressions between these are similarly a semitone apart, here emphasized by numerous glissandi between them, and at one point they almost quote the lower voice progressions of the passage in Tapiola. The effect is an exaggeration of the Sibelius, bringing it closer to the world of Varèse and, indeed, electro-acoustic music. Not coincidentally, At First Light also marks the closest Benjamin has ever come to writing spectral music.
[...]
Morton Feldman (1926-87) is more often associated with Cage and the American experimentalists. This misleading impression conceals the fact that he was a highly knowledgeable and cultured musician whose tastes extended to deep affection for Skryabin, Busoni, and both Stravinsky and Schoenberg, as well as Sibelius, whose music would have been virtually ubiquitous in the America of Feldman's youth. With the deliberate provocation in his Darmstadt lecture of 1984, Feldman spoke up for both Stravinsky and Sibelius, blaming Adorno's influence for the ignorance of young composers with regard to the former. He might well have blamed him for the ignorance of Sibelius, as well, for he recounts, 'I remember a graduate student of mine, I'm raving about the Fourth Symphony of Sibelius and he says, "You really like that?".' According to Feldman, Toru Takemitsu shared his fondness. At a dinner organized by Takemitsu's French publisher, the radio was playing the Fourth Symphony and the publisher rose to turn it off: 'Takemitsu and I jumped up, "Leave it on! leave it on!" He looked at us [in amazement], it was Sibelius.' Feldman raises this anecdote to support his important remark that 'The people who you think are radicals might really be conservatives. The people who you think are conservative might really be radical.'
     Feldman raised Sibelius in connection with one specific work of his own, the orchestral piece Coptic Light (1985). His programme note explains that 'An important aspect of the composition was prompted by Sibelius's observation that the orchestra differs mainly from the piano in that it has no pedal. With this in mind, I set to work to create an orchestral pedal continually varying in nuance.  [...] Thus the whole form of Coptic Light could be seen as an illustration of Hepokoski's definition of rotational forms in Sibelius as a set of varied restatements around a central material, the last of which links up with the harmonic area of the opening. At once static and continuously evolving, Coptic Light is an unexpected instance of Sibelius's effect on one of the most unusual and innovative recent works composed for orchestral in the last two decades.

[Karl Henning]

Nice!

[nathanb]

Karlheinz would have been 88 today. A moment of silence from those who sip the haterade, thanks.

[James]

"Give up on Beethoven .. you've got Stockhausen now." - Miles Davis

[Karl Henning]

Karlheinz would have been 88 today. A moment of silence from those who sip the haterade, thanks.

Surely, merely arguing against the thesis that Stockhausen was "the greatest composer since Beethoven" is not hatred?

[snyprrr]

"The people who you think are radicals might really be conservatives. The people who you think are conservative might really be radical."

I KANT REED!!!

Please, summarize and catch me up on who's hawt right now!!

Surely, merely arguing against the thesis that Stockhausen was "the greatest composer since Beethoven" is not hatred?

Duuude, don't bogart the hatred!

jews-hate-sibelius.com