Where have the Great Composers gone?

[Florestan]

I have no idea what Schoenberg dictum you mean.

If it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art

[Monsieur Croche]

Math is an intellectual pursuit. Chess is a game. If the value of "contemporary serious art music" is analogous to their value, then is it the value of an intellectual game?

Analogous to the value of major contributions in the areas of -- two other highly abstract disciplines having 'functions.' 

And a highly intellectual game it was for all those glorious early Medieval to late Renaissance contrapuntal composers, and then when it comes to a highly intellectual game, the musical chess game and musical crossword puzzle composer J.S. Bach is enshrined as the master of all when it come to those games. 

Ergo,  intellectual games, puzzles, though not all that music is about, are at the core of every note ever written.  The greater composers make of these games something wholly aesthetic, hugely pleasing, and have the ability to make the game a vehicle for expression.

The same can be said, is said, has been said, and often enough, about Schoenberg and other equally 'horrible' modern and contemporary composers -- they managed to make their musical puzzles and games hugely expressive.  The intellectual game gambit in your attempt to devalue is an utter failure.  Music's foundation is nothing but intellectual games in the service of expressing something.

Anyway, if I understand you correctly, one needs to be familiar with the latest researches in aesthetics in order to understand "contemporary serious art music" and appreciate its value. Is that right?

That Mahlerian dude said there was no need whatsoever of the cognoscenti to first pronounce and then explain the current aesthetic, nor that the public needed to intellectually understand it -- or be aware of it at all -- in order for them to enjoy the resulting music.

When it comes to Schoenberg and his serial approach, he is exactly in a direct line from those Medieval and Renaissance polyphonists, and Bach and the masters who came thereafter.  His music is very much part of the tradition and a direct continuation of that tradition.  He set out, just like those who came up with Musica Ficta or any newer harmonic turn or compositional technique, to write music with an intellectual rigor (durability and value continued over repeat hearings) that was, first and foremost, expressive.  To understand that is perhaps a passage to then next being able to hear that in his music.

I find Brahms more difficult to 'access' than Schoenberg, but that's just me.  Schoenberg was a huge admirer of Brahms, and he went so far as to write the monograph, "Brahms the Progressive."

The seeming barrier for so many, and the flak tossed Arnie's way because he eschewed the hierarchy of common practice diatonic and triadic practices strikes me as next to absurd, i.e. the most rigorously adhered to serial method is still about pitches, with one or several individual pitches becoming the 'center,' and acting, not like a tonic triad chord, but a single tonic pitch.  Too, one has to remember and recognize that Schoenberg was steeped in the older repertoire and knew it intimately.  So he did away with I, IV, V.  Big Whup.  He didn't, really and truly, do away with anything else.  Wagner had already near to completely unbuttoned the hierarchy of diatonic harmony over half a century before; Debussy did away with it in a snap, prior Schoenberg... and all have had their opponents, and all are still with us as some of the greatest composers who have yet composed.

Schoenberg is, it is a matter of fact, by dates from the beginning to the end of his career, the last great true German Late Romantic. He was, in the truest sense of the word, a conservative.... while of course his music is not going to sound like Brahms, though to me it often enough does :-)

~~~~~~~~~~~Elliot Carter was asked why he hadn't pursued the serial approach, and he answered,
~~~~~~~~~~~"I looked into it, but it just seemed like more of that old Brahms stuff."


Best regards.

[Ken B]

If it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art

That's wrong. So's it's opposite, if Schoenberg said it.

[Monsieur Croche]

That's wrong. So's it's opposite, if Schoenberg said it.

It is more than a good idea to take any artist's verbal pronouncements with less than the proverbial grain of salt.

Debussy, upon reading through Ravel's Oiseaux Tristes, 'declared' that it was wonderful, and that "All music should take this form."
He then proceeded to compose whatever he next composed, and continued along his own way 

If you want to know what any composer truly "said" (said in quotes because I now bring it to the non-verbal) pay attention instead to the music they wrote by listening to it.

People, even 'artists,' say what they believe they mean -- at the time they are saying it ;-)

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Just a few more thoughts I've been thinking......

I don't know about anyone else here, but I find the current music being made to have a lot of interesting voices 'saying' lots of interesting and unique things. I hope I don't become boxed in to the music of composers I particularly admire who were born from the late 60s to the late 80s and become so attached to their music that I end up being old and bitter about the composers of younger generations in decades to come. However, I do find (and I hope I still continue to feel this way) that I have this personal connection or feeling with music composed in the last couple of decades that is very different to how I feel about music from, say, before the 1980s. I feel like listening to the music of now makes me get a sense that this music is more alive, more appropriate and reflective to the world I live in because it's of a culture I'm familiar with. Listening to Schoenberg, for example, is like looking into a time period, looking into a world I have no experience of and looking into it from the outside as an observer. Even earlier music from the 19th century is more removed from the world as I know it because it's the music of a culture I have never and will never be able to truly experience.

I can like/enjoy/appreciate any (read 'most') music but if I have a direct connection with a certain time, place and culture associated, then it seems to me that its music is something which almost 'comes out of' or 'is the product of' a world I understand and love. I would have do distance myself quite a bit from music AND the world later in my life if I were to start believing that composers with new things to say have disappeared.

[Sergeant Rock]

I can like/enjoy/appreciate any (read 'most') music but if I have a direct connection with a certain time, place and culture associated

Isn't that only because you're studying music now, in an environment where you hear current "classical" music? Most of us don't have that experience. When I was your age I heard no classical music composed even roughly around those years. What I did hear were the "classics" (including the dodecaphonic dudes, dead already) and, of course, various forms of current popular music. When I think 1966, I hear the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, nothing classical. To me classical music is timeless: Cage and Feldman and Henning, no more alive, no less alive, than Bach and Beethoven and Bruckner.

Sarge

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

Isn't that only because you're studying music now, in an environment where you hear current "classical" music? Most of us don't have that experience. When I was your age I heard no classical music composed even roughly around those years. What I did hear were the "classics" (including the dodecaphonic dudes, dead already) and, of course, various forms of current popular music. When I think 1966, I hear the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, nothing classical. To me classical music is timeless: Cage and Feldman and Henning, no more alive, no less alive, than Bach and Beethoven and Bruckner.

Sarge

Well it's the same for everyone anyway. I am currently growing up in a culture where I am exposed to certain types of music more than others and in my mind I associate musical styles with the culture I'm living in and other styles as something separate. I don't know and I can't recognise current pop music (the only thing I know are a few names) when I hear it, but I recognise it as a certain part if this culture that I am actually rather out of touch with. For you, it would certainly be different; the music you've been exposed to in 1966 is reflective of who you were, your interests as well as the world at that time and the culture you were most exposed to at that time.

[Ken B]

Isn't that only because you're studying music now, in an environment where you hear current "classical" music? Most of us don't have that experience. When I was your age I heard no classical music composed even roughly around those years. What I did hear were the "classics" (including the dodecaphonic dudes, dead already) and, of course, various forms of current popular music. When I think 1966, I hear the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, nothing classical. To me classical music is timeless: Cage and Feldman and Henning, no more alive, no less alive, than Bach and Beethoven and Bruckner.

Sarge

One hopes Henning will remain more alive than Bruckner for at least a tad bit longer.

[SeptimalTritone]

Either music is good or bad per se, in which case the most up-to-date advancements of aesthetics cannot make it better or worse than it is; or music´s value is dependent on the advancements of aesthetics, in which case it is neither good nor bad until the latest advancements of aesthetics have pronounced on it.

Anyway, if I understand you correctly, one needs to be familiar with the latest researches in aesthetics in order to understand "contemporary serious art music" and appreciate its value. Is that right?

First, the words "good, bad, or great" depend on the person or group of people receiving it. Indeed, for the average classical musical listener currently, Schoenberg is bad: an unenjoyable frenzy of dissonance. Aesthetic theory cannot change that, and with that I agree.

The problem is that classical music, for the majority of the population, is bad as well. It's boring, overrated, or for snobs. At best, it's relaxing. But still, the top 40 beats classical by a long shot and is better, for the majority of the population. Aesthetic theory cannot change that either.

So then, what is the value of classical music, or modern classical music? What makes it not more valuable than the over twice as popular, and thus enjoyed, rap music? https://infographic.statista.com/normal/chartoftheday_1783_Album_sales_in_the_US_by_genre_n.jpg

The answer can only be aesthetics inherent in the music. The evaluation of these aesthetics does require musical training. Even evaluating Beethoven is extremely complex: do you know, for example, what the thematic instability in the first theme of the Appassionata sonata is, and how the thematic instability is combined with motif and interval to be gradually worked out and resolved throughout the piece? Do you know the different resolving functions of the recapitulation and coda... not just in key, but in theme, especially the chromatic dissonance in the theme? Do you know how the exposition and development, for this particular piece, prefigure this thematic resolution? Such knowledge would be required to evaluate the aesthetic quality of the piece.

But to enjoy the music and to comprehend it as a listener requires zero understanding, and that makes Beethoven's art for all. You definitely enjoy, comprehend, and follow the Beethoven. You might even rank the Appassionata amongst other works as more or less enjoyable. But to evaluate, only technical knowledge makes evaluation possible. And this sort of evaluation isn't to decide whether it's good or bad (you still have this misconception), but to describe the mechanics.

The same goes for Schoenberg, Cage, and Lachenmann. Evaluation requires knowledge and technique. Enjoyment and comprehension require no knowledge and technique, just a bit of attention and memory.

At no point am I saying that Stockhausen is great, or that it is great because academicians say so. You've missed this point several times. I am only saying that Stockhausen's, and Beethoven's value, comes from the more or less objective aesthetic mechanical content, and that that is more important than enjoyment or expressivity or communicativity for listeners, because for listeners out there in the real world, pop music or rap music is much more enjoyable and expressive and communicative. Yes, the goal of Stockhausen and Beethoven is expressivity, but if one tallied up points for everyone in the world, pop music is more enjoyable, expressive, and communicative. "The lyrics! The beats! Who needs dun-dun-dun-dunnnnnnnn or fat viking women singing and jumping into the fire? All that stuff is school stuff anyway. At best, it's relaxing. At best, Chopin is relaxing, but unstable, dramatic, and contrapuntal? No, I'm not into that school kind of stuff."

Even the greatest composers, e.g. Beethoven or Bach, still only enjoy a fraction of the audience of most pop musicians.  I don't think Schoenberg's point can be ignored.  But, it is irrelevant.  The fact that most people do not have the wherewithal to devote their time and money to classical music does not invalidate the still sizable minority that does.

As far as composers who write music of an allegedly more difficult style for even the most fervid classical music fan - it is simply subjective and a matter of taste.  Some people have no trouble at all with listening to and enjoying "difficult" music but may be uninterested in Dvorak. 

It is right that the relative unpopularity, and therefore bad-ness of classical music or modern classical music by the majority of people, does not invalidate it. But that's a non-negative statement of classical music's value, if you get my drift. What would be a positive statement of classical music's value? I would say aesthetic.

And... a-yep, taste = an aesthetic, though some may be unconscious they have an aesthetic which is subjective and that guides them in their likes and dislikes, they've got one nonetheless.

Yes, and thankfully the aesthetic web of classical music (it's a web, not a ladder, as Karl Henning here said above) goes beyond any particular person's taste. And thankfully the aesthetic merits of different parts of the web can be incommensurate and still valuable, and comprehensible by anyone willing to put in a reasonable degree of attention and focus into listening. Debussy, Schoenberg, Boulez, Reich: all aesthetically incommensurate, and all potentially enjoyable and expressive to anyone. The evaluation, though, as I mentioned even with Beethoven's works, does require knowledge of the mechanics and chess moves of music.

[Andante]

A musical work can be clever and technically the most advanced thing ever created but unless it delivers to the majority of music lovers something that they will enjoy it is merely an exercise to be understood by a very small minority. IMO of course.

[NorthNYMark]

First, the words "good, bad, or great" depend on the person or group of people receiving it. Indeed, for the average classical musical listener currently, Schoenberg is bad: an unenjoyable frenzy of dissonance. Aesthetic theory cannot change that, and with that I agree.

The problem is that classical music, for the majority of the population, is bad as well. It's boring, overrated, or for snobs. At best, it's relaxing. But still, the top 40 beats classical by a long shot and is better, for the majority of the population. Aesthetic theory cannot change that either.

So then, what is the value of classical music, or modern classical music? What makes it not more valuable than the over twice as popular, and thus enjoyed, rap music? https://infographic.statista.com/normal/chartoftheday_1783_Album_sales_in_the_US_by_genre_n.jpg

The answer can only be aesthetics inherent in the music. The evaluation of these aesthetics does require musical training. Even evaluating Beethoven is extremely complex: do you know, for example, what the thematic instability in the first theme of the Appassionata sonata is, and how the thematic instability is combined with motif and interval to be gradually worked out and resolved throughout the piece? Do you know the different resolving functions of the recapitulation and coda... not just in key, but in theme, especially the chromatic dissonance in the theme? Do you know how the exposition and development, for this particular piece, prefigure this thematic resolution? Such knowledge would be required to evaluate the aesthetic quality of the piece.

But to enjoy the music and to comprehend it as a listener requires zero understanding, and that makes Beethoven's art for all. You definitely enjoy, comprehend, and follow the Beethoven. You might even rank the Appassionata amongst other works as more or less enjoyable. But to evaluate, only technical knowledge makes evaluation possible. And this sort of evaluation isn't to decide whether it's good or bad (you still have this misconception), but to describe the mechanics.

The same goes for Schoenberg, Cage, and Lachenmann. Evaluation requires knowledge and technique. Enjoyment and comprehension require no knowledge and technique, just a bit of attention and memory.

At no point am I saying that Stockhausen is great, or that it is great because academicians say so. You've missed this point several times. I am only saying that Stockhausen's, and Beethoven's value, comes from the more or less objective aesthetic mechanical content, and that that is more important than enjoyment or expressivity or communicativity for listeners, because for listeners out there in the real world, pop music or rap music is much more enjoyable and expressive and communicative. Yes, the goal of Stockhausen and Beethoven is expressivity, but if one tallied up points for everyone in the world, pop music is more enjoyable, expressive, and communicative. "The lyrics! The beats! Who needs dun-dun-dun-dunnnnnnnn or fat viking women singing and jumping into the fire? All that stuff is school stuff anyway. At best, it's relaxing. At best, Chopin is relaxing, but unstable, dramatic, and contrapuntal? No, I'm not into that school kind of stuff."



It is right that the relative unpopularity, and therefore bad-ness of classical music or modern classical music by the majority of people, does not invalidate it. But that's a non-negative statement of classical music's value, if you get my drift. What would be a positive statement of classical music's value? I would say aesthetic.



Yes, and thankfully the aesthetic web of classical music (it's a web, not a ladder, as Karl Henning here said above) goes beyond any particular person's taste. And thankfully the aesthetic merits of different parts of the web can be incommensurate and still valuable, and comprehensible by anyone willing to put in a reasonable degree of attention and focus into listening. Debussy, Schoenberg, Boulez, Reich: all aesthetically incommensurate, and all potentially enjoyable and expressive to anyone. The evaluation, though, as I mentioned even with Beethoven's works, does require knowledge of the mechanics and chess moves of music.

This is wonderful post, especially in the clarity with which you explain your position. At the same time, coming from a background of aesthetic philosophy in the visual arts, I feel that you are using both the terms "aesthetic" and "evaluation" very differently from how I would, and I'm wondering if your usage is common in musicological circles. To me, what you are referring to as "aesthetic evaluation" is what I would call description or analysis (rather than evaluation) of formal or structural (but precisely not "aesthetic") qualities. Now, I can imagine such description or analysis (of instabilities, resolutions, etc.) being used as the basis for a system of evaluation (whereby greater complexity of such patterns of instability and resolution, for example, would constitute a "better" work). But since evaluation to me implies making a judgment, you haven't actually described the criteria on which such a judgment would be made. Now, the term "aesthetic" is even trickier, as different historic thinkers have proposed very different definitions. I tend to think of Kant as a starting point; he claimed aesthetic judgment to reside in a kind of middle ground between the subjective and the objective (and aesthetic judgment, for him, could involve neither sensual gratification, which was too subjective and particular, nor adequacy to some concept or purpose, which would be too objective and universal). What you are labeling "aesthetic" seems to fall into the second (objective) category, to me. Whether it's really possible or even desirable to avoid those two aspects of judgments, such avoidance is arguably the basis for considering "the aesthetic" to be independent mode of experience, reducible neither to subjective opinion nor objective fact.

None of this is meant to challenge the content of your post, as what you describe may well be the best way to analyze music, and could provide a perfectly valid way of making judgments. I just wouldn't call such judgments "aesthetic." I also am not so sure I see any need to grant more or less value to classical or "art music" in relation to rap or pop, but I certainly agree that it is worthwhile to draw distinctions at the structural levels you describe.

[Monsieur Croche]

At best, Chopin is relaxing, but unstable, dramatic, and contrapuntal? No, I'm not into that school kind of stuff.

First, a really fine and finely written post, for which I thank you.

Next:  Chopin ~ "unstable, dramatic, and contrapuntal" (and wildly so,) and not just "pretty and relaxing music"?

Hell Yeah and thanks a second time for slipping that little nugget in. 

[Monsieur Croche]

Isn't that only because you're studying music now, in an environment where you hear current "classical" music? Most of us don't have that experience. When I was your age I heard no classical music composed even roughly around those years. What I did hear were the "classics" (including the dodecaphonic dudes, dead already) and, of course, various forms of current popular music. When I think 1966, I hear the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, nothing classical. To me classical music is timeless: Cage and Feldman and Henning, no more alive, no less alive, than Bach and Beethoven and Bruckner.

Sarge

A lot of "the kid's" (lol) context is a matter of circumstance, family, upbringing, what he's showed an interest in and then a talent for, what was provided by family (and society!) which fed that interest, his current study, all stem from a household where he got a fairly early exposure to classical, and more specifically, modern and contemporary classical, in his earlier years.  In that, being a generation and a half older than this youngster in training to become a musician / composer, I share a very similar background, and also a set of circumstances I consider 'capricious' in that they lined up that way at all.  [Speaking only for myself, it is difficult to be unaware of how atypical it is.]

IF a body had been inculcated (lol) or exposed to, say, Bartok and Berio while just a tot, and that was part of the musical environment while they were growing up, both Beethoven and the Beatles, when later gotten to, could very likely sound to that person as 'remote' compared to the more immediately contemporary stuff to which they first became accustomed.  That is not at all to say older music does and will sound very much from another place and era and therefore be perceived as emotionally remote to the listener... after all the proof is in the very immediacy older music has in that it still speaks to us quite directly from across the eras.

But older rep also does have a 'quaint' accent, if you will accept that as non-pejorative as saying that even the old masters, no matter how great, are in fact, 'dated.'  Rock 'n Roll is dated; its coming into being is unthinkable without the internal combustion engine, automobiles, and a generation of teens in an affluent era who either owned or had access to cars.  It too, is very much 'from and of its time.'  No matter how 'timeless,' Guillaume de Machaut, Josquin, Bach, Beethoven, Berio -- or Rock 'n Roll, it all dates itself, is dated.

If your exposure is first or mainly to the older classical rep, that sets up expectations within that particular spectrum of established listening habit, and as we've read about or directly experienced, those expectations can (and do) make the music of the modern or current time seem equally 'remote.'

The 60's (more accurately the mid to late 60's) for this curmudgeon was a time of Samuel Barber, the Webern resurrection and such trends, Varese, Berio, Messiaen, as well as the Beatles, Stones, Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, (leaving out an easily extensive list) etc.  For me, pop music first entered my life in my mid to later teens  -- circumstantially 'by accident' -- via its ambient presence through what my peers were listening to, and hearing it while out, via FM pop stations in cars, diners, etc.

If it is good, regardless of its vintage, it will have some sort of immediacy to those in the present, while just as an older usage of language in literature or films still communicates, there is still nothing so direct or familiar as how we now speak and write, and of what, i.e. the usage and concerns, topics, of the present.

Every bit of this points to being presented with classical, and the modern and contemporary of the arts, in ones very earliest years -- right along with the developing consciousness of speech before it is ever formally taught is the optimum window -- and that is something very few get, and I think that more the pity :-/

[Monsieur Croche]

Why wonder? Art is not for all, remember? Schoenberg dixit*.

With the holding estimate that only three percent of the entire population consume classical music on an at all somewhat regular basis, and most of that the older 'chestnuts,' or in considering that part of the population who has something above and later than, say, a framed print of a painting by Claude Monet, Schoenberg was simply stating a consistently demonstrated and relatively (so far, anyway) universal fact.

* The extreme, but only too logical, corollary of this is that the smaller the audience, the greatest the art, and the greatest art of all is that which has just one person admiring it: the artist himself.

From the point you cited in this dropped in footnote -- hey, have your fun in what seems an attempt to spin some wit -- there is absolutely nothing remotely resembling actual logic in what you've said here.

Otoh, I think Debussy would be delighted to learn that he was just right in taking a completely different approach: Music should humbly seek to please; within these limits great beauty may perhaps be found. Extreme complication is contrary to art. Beauty must appeal to the senses, must provide us with immediate enjoyment, must impress us or insinuate itself into us without any effort on our part.

~~~~Listen to Debussy's Études and get back to us on this one. (Link below)
First, there is very little 'humble' about many an overt large symphonic work, whether it is an older symphony by a German master, Debussy's very much a symphony in all but name, La Mer, or the later Berio Sinfonia. "Extreme complication is contrary to art,"  Have you listened lately to the final movement, the climax and build up to it most specifically, of La Mer?  Puleeze... the Medieval and Renaissance polyphonists, Bach, the masters who followed, Mozart, etc.   Beethoven is still complicated, and was in its own time extremely complicated.  We are all somewhat bound to the conceits of the languages we speak, but it would be cool, healthy, even if I dare say so, to not take so much so literally. 
"Humble," like so many other words, is a defined quality as equally as the word and its concept is a conceit.  Bach "humbly" dedicated almost all of his extremely complicated works to The Deity!

FWIW, Debussy wrote that as a composer, he thought of himself as a musical chemist -- finding new elements, combination of elements, compounds, resulting in new harmonic 'chemistry.'  Humility and all the rest were no where on his mind when he called himself a musical chemist.  :-)

[flash=425,350]https://www.youtube.com/v/FymZsN_NiB4[Flash]

[Florestan]

The answer can only be aesthetics inherent in the music. [...]

[...]Evaluation requires knowledge and technique. Enjoyment and comprehension require no knowledge and technique, just a bit of attention and memory.

Okay, thanks for replying. If I understand you correctly you draw a distinction between the intrinsic value of a work, which is a matter of aesthetics and technical/theoretical analysis and as such cannot be assessed but by specialists, and its enjoyment value, which does not require any special knowledge from the general audience.

So far, so good. We are in perfect agreement.

With this in mind and with your permission, let´s return to the two statements of yours that triggered my original reaction.

The first:

whenever I play on youtube to my science major friends a Schoenberg third or fourth quartet, they wince in pain, but when I play a Debussy piano prelude, they are in rapture!

My question is: why is this so? We have two bodies of works, Schoenberg´s late SQs and Debussy´s Preludes, whose intrinsic value has long since been established by the specialists as being very high in both cases --- yet they ellicit markedly different, and strongly emotional, reactions from casual listeners. What makes the difference in the end?

The second:

expansion of aesthetic dimensions, both at the level of breadth and depth, to places that have not yet been charted is the goal of classical music.

Assuming for the sake of discussion that this is true, would you please explain me in what way(s) the aesthetic dimension of this:

[

]
Sachiko M / Toshimaru Nakamura / Otomo Yoshihide - Good Morning, Good Night https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHs0LkixGvY&list=PL6kbKbt4ZO4ZiobvZAacH7T-Jtsb4jugX

is broader and wider than the aesthetic dimesnion of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfOJCKN148M

TIA.

[Karl Henning]

A musical work can be clever and technically the most advanced thing ever created but unless it delivers to the majority of music lovers [....]

Hmm, the Tyranny of the Majority, eh?  0:)

[zamyrabyrd]

My question is: why is this so? We have two bodies of works, Schoenberg´s late SQs and Debussy´s Preludes, whose intrinsic value has long since been established by the specialists as being very high in both cases --- yet they ellicit markedly different, and strongly emotional, reactions from casual listeners. What makes the difference in the end?

Venturing an answer: Debussy's musical language is more familiar to the general public.

[Karl Henning]

Venturing an answer: Debussy's musical language is more familiar to the general public.

That's one answer.

One oblique remark is that, again, not all casual listeners react to Schoenberg the same.  It really is worth pointing out (again) that a sizable minority of GMGers reacted positively, from the start, to a range of modern lit which is often the poster child in this sort of discussion for "What kind of beast would like this piece on first hearing?  Well, all right, I allow that it starts to seem like music if you grow accustomed to it ...."

[Jo498]

The real question of aesthetics seems to me to find the connections between the "deeper" properties and structures revealed by technical analysis and the subjective enjoyment. This seems often very difficult but there has to be a connection, otherwise analysis would be a "merely academic" task. Tovey used once a nice metaphor, that beauty was only skin-deep but it needed bones, muscles etc. to have a beautiful shape. Is music like that?

There are composers who are considered as technically extremely accomplished and who were admired by many contemporaries and colleagues but who linger in some obscure niches. Max Reger (who died 100 years ago) would be such a case.

Another point: If one looks at contemporary criticism of Debussy's music it is as sometimes as harshly dismissive as anything written about avantgarde music. But to most of us it sounds more appealing and colorful than e.g. dodecaphonic Schoenberg (but maybe more "modern"/less familiar than the "late romantic" Schoenberg of Verklärte Nacht).

[Mandryka]

Re the Debussy and Schoenberg thing.

In Debussy you have long melodies and some building of tension and resolving of tension over quite long stretches of music, that's what you're average guy expects from music, that's what he's learned to listen for.

In the Schoenberg you have short melodies and the tension does build and get resolved, but in quite short timeframes. Appreciating it involves a different listening skill and most people can't be bothered to acquire it.

There's also a sense of continuous change, rather than being trapped in some sort of structure like a sonata, that's another thing which your average listener may find disorienting and just can't be bothered to stay with  it enough to get over the sense of culture shock, dépaysement.

Am I talking rubbish?