Where have the Great Composers gone?

[Ghost Sonata]

Interesting article from the Guardian several months ago that raises more questions than it answers, though I think the questions well worth the asking.  Sometimes I wonder if we might have evolved beyond the notion of Great Composer, or to phrase it another way, no longer require the notion socially or psychologically.  Or perhaps everything seems so fleeting, so in flux now that we hesitate to identify anything that smacks of enshrined marble statuary.  If so, that didn't stop Sir Simon Rattle from calling Georg Friedrich Haas's In Vain the first masterpiece of the 21st century...

  https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/jul/20/where-have-the-great-composers-gone

[Karl Henning]

If so, that didn't stop Sir Simon Rattle from calling Georg Friedrich Haas's In Vain the first masterpiece of the 21st century...

Well, it's only because he knows no Henningmusick.  One makes allowances.

[Ghost Sonata]

Well, it's only because he knows no Henningmusick.  One makes allowances.

So true that!  He should visit Boston more often to encounter true greatness...

[Cato]

So true that!  He should visit Boston more often to encounter true greatness...

I was about to write that the answer to the question is that the Great Composers are still here, but they are unknown, or not very well known, except to those who have bothered to search for them. 

And so, waiting for a major conductor to find them is not the way to discover them....(although it could happen, depending on the conductor)

Consider therefore Albert Jay Nock's essay on The Remnant: the "You" in this excerpt is the artist-prophet unwilling to vulgarize his art (or his religious message, if he is more prophet than artist) for the masses:

... in any given society the Remnant are always so largely an unknown quantity. You do not know, and will never know, more than two things about them. You can be sure of those — dead sure, as our phrase is — but you will never be able to make even a respectable guess at anything else. You do not know, and will never know, who the Remnant are, nor what they are doing or will do. Two things you do know, and no more: First, that they exist; second, that they will find you. Except for these two certainties, working for the Remnant means working in impenetrable darkness; and this, I should say, is just the condition calculated most effectively to pique the interest of any prophet who is properly gifted with the imagination, insight and intellectual curiosity necessary to a successful pursuit of his trade.

See:

https://mises.org/library/isaiahs-job

[Monsieur Croche]

Since I am pretty enamored of Haas' in vain, and find him an extremely masterly composer, I'll happily go along with Maestro Rattle's assessment.

Without looking at all at the Guardian article, because, well, "Just imagine, every day just enough news to fill the newspapers!" (and articles)....

what does seem to be summarily dispelled with Rattle's announced assessment is that classical music is far from dead and that the human population base has not run out of its usual average of artist geniuses who produce masterpieces.... Considering our numbers and the resources many in the world now have to access, by hook or crook, information and training, probability would have it that more, not less, geniuses and masterworks than in the previous centuries are in our present time as well as our immediate future.

It is mainly a certain type who are quick to assert that there is no great classical music, or classical music went downhill fast, or died after Renaissance composer X / Baroque composer X / Classical composer X / Romantic composer X, etc. who are the fuddy-duds who manage to think and then make the question, "are there any more great composers?" seem even slightly valid -- i.e 'valid' if you accept their fallacious arguments, assertions based on individual personal taste only, and that there is one ideal aesthetic and vocabulary which fits and suits all epochs that is the one criterion by which one can determine and declare anything 'a masterpiece,' lol.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Sometimes I wonder if we might have evolved beyond the notion of Great Composer, or to phrase it another way, no longer require the notion socially or psychologically. 

I haven't read the article (yet), but sometimes I wonder if a concept similar to musica reservata is making a comeback:

"The style of musica reservata, with its implication of a highly refined, perhaps manneristic style of composition and performance along with a very small audience, is reminiscent both of the ars subtilior of the Avignon group of composers of the late 14th century, and also perhaps some of the contemporary avant-garde classical music of the late 20th century"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musica_reservata

In other words, some music will never sell enough tickets to be performed regularly in the big venues, but will rather be "reserved" for occasional performance for small dedicated audiences. In such an environment, a "great composer" will once again be one who is known to conoisseurs rather than to the broad public. Such composers will never be popular, but their work will be "built to last" anyway and passed down through generations.

[arpeggio]

At one time I was preoccupied with only the music of the greats.

I eventually discovered that there is a lot of great music composed by B level composers.

[San Antone]

I don't concern myself with qualifiers such as "great" but as far as young or new composers doing what I consider very interesting and worthwhile work:

KATE SOPER

Jürg Frey

PIETRO RIPARBELLI

TAYLOR DEUPREE

LEI LIANG

TAMAR DIESENDRUCK

SOPHIE LACAZE

And many more have been interviewed and profiled on my blog.

[San Antone]

Relying on recordings to judge how vibrant is an style of music is a distorted metric.  Historically what has been recorded is only a selection of what someone (not the artist) considered commercially worthwhile.  The majority of music is never recorded, and is only found during live performances and, now, on artist websites, and other websites outside the mainstream music business outlets, el.g. YouTube, Soundcloud and others.

Any article circulating the idea that, e.g., classical music is dying is relying on a self-selected small sample in order to come to that (incorrect) judgment.

[Brian]

Just a few days ago I linked elsewhere to a Kenneth Woods (conductor) blog post that might be illuminative here.

http://kennethwoods.net/blog1/2016/09/13/on-funding/

"Why do some artists and composers become "fundable" and others, equally deserving, not? I fear it has far too much to do with the clique-ish and tribal nature of the arts. If you're in the club, you're in the club. If you're not, you're not, and you're probably not going to be. There are many great, great artists in the club, but also plenty whose last ten projects were stinkers, but they're still fundable because of something they did (or someone they knew) in 1974.

"In an industry that seems to be crying out for innovation, an industry that oozes group-think on an industrial scale, why is it so hard make the case that something genuinely new is a good idea worth funding? Rather than subsidize the 1 percent of artists who have already made it, why not invest more in identifying extraordinary talents who have not yet had their time in the sun? It seems that we've reached the point where there is almost no mechanism by which a credible artist or organization can make the case from scratch that a given project is worth funding solely on merit."

[Maestro267]

Any article circulating the idea that, e.g., classical music is dying is relying on a self-selected small sample in order to come to that (incorrect) judgment.

I'm beginning to think now that anyone who circulates the idea that classical music is dying actually wants it to die.

[Ken B]

I'm beginning to think now that anyone who circulates the idea that classical music is dying actually wants it to die.

There is an economist, who wrote a good book I read, who I think falls into this category. What amuses me is how blind he is to his usual arguments in making this claim. He says we are in the golden age of lots of things, such as say oranges, as they are so cheap, so plentiful, so widely distributed, and of such high quality. Um.

If you scroll BRO you see several thousand labels!

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

There is an economist, who wrote a good book I read, who I think falls into this category. What amuses me is how blind he is to his usual arguments in making this claim. He says we are in the golden age of lots of things, such as say oranges, as they are so cheap, so plentiful, so widely distributed, and of such high quality. Um.

If you scroll BRO you see several thousand labels!

I just ate the worst orange I've ever had, bought from a large supermarket chain which freezes genetically modified produce to be available all year round. It had no flavour. The best oranges I've ever had are the ones I picked straight off a tree in the yard.

[ComposerOfAvantGarde]

As for the question: where have all the great composers gone? The answer is rather simple: look and you will find. We have so many people making music these days, so many genres, styles and voices, music being composed for various purposes (concert halls, art installations, film and TV, theatre, competitions, hobbies etc etc etc) that there is plenty of interesting activity in the new music scene happening all around the world all the time.

In 100 years' time guaranteed there will be much more musicological study that has been done on the composers of 2016 than there has been now, so we'd probably be able to get close to the type of answer the question asks by that time.

[Ghost Sonata]

Thanks for the well-considered responses!  I feel like the Cat in Red Dwarf who exclaims "I'm with the smart party!"  He isn't really, hence the comedy, but I sure am!  If I've unintentionally warped your points here apologies up front.   

Cato's interesting quotation, while its focus is mutatis mutandis on the composer him or herself, is one of empowerment and reminds me that we are taste makers – we're the ones who buy the CDs, attend the concerts and recitals, influence others, and to some extent help determine who's a Great Composer.  Honestly, though, I wonder how many GMGers can identify the composers in sanantonio's useful list – I knew only three (Karl makes four!).  The weight of the past hangs heavy on us and the classical music industry as a whole.  (Thank the 20th century for that – it re-discovered and appreciated anew what came before like no other century.  Most of us do not live in the present.)  Johannes has been a good friend to me, but I should get out more...which relates to sanantonio's good point about most music being live, though much more of it is recorded now, posterity and prosperity both in mind. 

Brian's quote about the incestuous nature of the industry rings only too true.  And it ain't healthy.   Archaic Torso of Apollo's suggestion that we are seeing the rebirth of a musica reservata scene falls neatly into line with what sociologists observe about our increased stratification and specialization.  I once worked for a non-profit hobby group and splintered interests were killing us.  So I wonder about the economics of specialization... arpeggio's perspective from experience makes, by implication, if I may, a good case for enjoying new music grade A or B and letting the chips fall (and maybe the mantle of Greatness) where they (and it) may.  M. Croche's point is interesting...perhaps there are many great composers so that Great Composers is an outdated perspective.  And agree with the Maestro – many doomsayers do, I think, unconsciously or not, delight in said doom.  It's certainly wrong to conflate what may be for whatever reason the lack of a laurelled "Great Composer" with classical music's putative decline. Jessop will be here 100 years from now, I'll bet, if he has a fruit and vegetable-based diet, maybe he can time warp back to us the stirring conclusion of all this.

[SimonNZ]

The author is taking a too narrowly British view, and is treating "great composers" as meaning nothing more than name-recognition. There is also far too much of an autobiographical focus, choosing to see his own crisis - in suddenly realizing he hasn't been keeping up with new generations of young composers, rather than having long been smugly comfortable with the trendy-named avant-guardists of his youth - as extrapolated and elevated to a national or worldwide crisis. I thought it particularly telling that among the unproven youngsters he lists Wolfgang Rihm.

As I've said many times before: there's no other time in the history of classical music that I'd rather be living through, and am overwhelmed by all the great works being written and performed every year.

[Cato]

Thanks for the well-considered responses!  I feel like the Cat in Red Dwarf who exclaims "I'm with the smart party!"  He isn't really, hence the comedy, but I sure am!  If I've unintentionally warped your points here apologies up front.   

Cato's interesting quotation, while its focus is mutatis mutandis on the composer him or herself, is one of empowerment and reminds me that we are taste makers – we're the ones who buy the CDs, attend the concerts and recitals, influence others, and to some extent help determine who's a Great Composer.  Honestly, though, I wonder how many GMGers can identify the composers in sanantonio's useful list – I knew only three (Karl makes four!).   

Brian's quote about the incestuous nature of the industry rings only too true.  And it ain't healthy.   Archaic Torso of Apollo's suggestion that we are seeing the rebirth of a musica reservata scene falls neatly into line with what sociologists observe about our increased stratification and specialization. 

Very nice comments on the comments!

Nice point about how a "Great Composer" is determined "to some extent."  Albert Jay Nock is rather against a determination of greatness via mass appeal, and one also thinks of Schoenberg's dictum that art is not for everybody, and if something is for everybody, it is not art.  i.e. Both Nock and Schoenberg expect the "consumer" to expend some intellectual effort in wanting to understand the art, and in spending time (in Nock's view) in searching for new and worthwhile creators.

Thus Nock's group, "The Remnant," by definition a minority and not a mass audience, is open to listening to new composers/artists/authors and giving them a chance, even though these creators lack the acclaim either of the Past or the Present.

Concerning increasing specialization and stratification leading to what the Germans call "Fachidioten," see the essay by Nassim Taleb on people at the top of society who are "Intellectuals Yet Idiots."     The essay would take us severely off-topic if  quoted here: it is a criticism of the present-day political elite whose public ideologies are irrelevant, since retaining a position of authority and increasing their authority over us - says Taleb - are their guiding principles.  They have a contradictory relationship, therefore, with the "mass" of people.

https://medium.com/@nntaleb/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577#.ebigbebtr

For me, as an American, I have always hoped that "the average person" and even the economically below-average person will in fact be able to contradict Schoenberg's dictum.  And I think that does happen, and has happened (in my own case    ), although to be sure it probably will never happen on a "mass" scale.  So, I believe that Great Composers are out there, and that the average person can discover them.

As I've said many times before: there's no other time in the history of classical music that I'd rather be living through, and am overwhelmed by all the great works being written and performed every year.

0:) Amen!  0:)

[SeptimalTritone]

From the article:

"Frey’s music is secret and private; Lachenmann’s is heroically antiheroic, reflecting his intense discomfort at classical music’s vainglorious attachment to its own past. Both composers have gleefully consigned that Romantic great composer archetype to the dustbin of history. And what remains feels speculative and exploratory, sounds that make you think music is in a fragile and vulnerable state, a long way from solidifying into anything approaching confident monuments – let alone masterpieces."

The anti-heroic, exploratory, fragility is precisely what those who enjoy late 20th century/21st century avant garde classical like! A developmental, melodic-accompanimental, "solidified" work is what the contemporary avant garde avoids in order to increase its aesthetic dimension. And 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.

Classical music happens to currently captivate the lay enthusiast middle class public to the starkest degree only in the common practice and early 20th century eras, but not post-1950 or post-Shostakovitch. Therefore, by the standard of captivation of a large quantity of the lay enthusiast public' imagination, there is no great classical music being written these days. But by the standards of aesthetic dimensions: sonic, rhythmic, textural, harmonic, non-harmonic, formal... there is a large amount of great classical being written, year by year, and month by month.

Given the lack of enjoyment of the general lay public of even Schoenberg (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!), I can only see objective, hardcore aesthetic dimensionality as the justification for the greatness of current contemporary classical.

Otherwise, beyond us, and other avant-garde fans, liking the music and purchasing the music, what would be the music's intrinsic worth?

....


And yes, I'm aware of the issue of acclimation, that the more one listens the more one comprehends, and the more one comprehends the more one likes. But would we really justify the greatness of contemporary classical by saying, "in principle, if people, against their will, were asked to acclimate themselves to the avant-garde, then they, in principle, would like it and see how great it is"? I can't swallow that justification. Anyone can say that about anything: "Dittersdorf would be the greatest, if only one listened carefully". The only thing I can think of is aesthetics: Schoenberg's development and working out of a musical Gestalt through the equivalence of harmony and melody, electronic music's timbral and textural associations and free, glacial time scales.

[Florestan]

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!

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

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.

* 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.

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.

Says who?

[SeptimalTritone]

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

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.

* 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.

Says who?

Regarding the Debussy quote, that represents Debussy's artistic style, but not, say, Beethoven's or Mahler's or Schoenberg's. For the more motivic/developmental/Germanic sorts of composers, it does take concentration and memory to follow it. I, and most others, learn more, follow more, and comprehend more each time I listen to these guys. It does take effort and attention. It doesn't seriously take people no effort to listen to Mahler's sprawling, interconnected, and contrapuntal symphonies.

But that's neither here nor there.

The more important question is "says who?" Regarding that question, the aesthetic qualities of Schoenberg, that is, the presentation and working out of conflicts between musical ideas through motif, melody, and harmony are present in a published score and present when turned into sound when performed. No academic is required for these qualities to be there, they are already there.

Just as a novel and important proof of a mathematical theorem, or a world-class level game of chess recorded as a series of moves, is beautiful as an aesthetic entity, even though most people wouldn't see it, so is the case for modern music. However and fortunately, lucky are listeners who wish to comprehend the music at a gut level, for it can be reasonably done with a decent amount of attention and focus. It is infinitely more accessible than the specialized knowledge required to follow math, science, and sophisticated strategy games.

The value of contemporary, avant-garde, electronic, comes from the intrinsic aesthetic patterns that exist in the music independently of an academician's judgement. Academicians aren't arbiters or "police" of what is good and what isn't that people might feel oppressed by, their goal is only to provide light to aesthetic patterns. Academicians don't shed light on the good, for good depends on an individual's taste or a group of individuals' tastes; rather, they shed light on the aesthetic content, and what a listener does with that is up to them. (It's a common misconception that avant-garde music is said to be good or great because the academics say so. Rather, I would say that avant-garde music contains novel aesthetic content that can, but need not, be brought to light by academics, and that the goodness of the music depends on the listener(s)).

This expansion of aesthetics is what makes contemporary serious art music important and interesting. Its value is analogous to Andrew Wiles's proving Fermat's last theorem or Magnus Carlsen's chess games. Without the advancement of the art and science of aesthetics (which again, don't make the music good or great per se, but make it important), temporary music's value is no more than, say, amateur rap music.