Music based on dissonant sonorities.

[Uhor]

This is the thread for all that thorny music, mainly coming from modernism.

Currently listening to Boulez's Éclat conducted by Rattle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hZxInEtbzU

[some guy]

Look up sonority. Dissonant sonorities literally makes no sense.

As for "thorny music," that's a perceptual thing. That is, "thorny" points to the listener, not to the thing being listened to.

Éclat, for instance. I would never in a million years call that piece "thorny." I might, if slightly drunk and not paying attention to what I was saying, call it sparkly. Or maybe glittery. Though neither of those "not really qualities of the music so much as responses I make when I listen to it" are much apparent in Rattle's performance.

Here's Boulez conducting it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyW-xMFvxAw

I much prefer that one, but that doesn't get us beyond perceptions.

It would be nice--I've dreamed about this for several decades--to talk about the music itself rather than about how this or that often unnamed or even mentioned listener's response to the music as if that response were descriptive of the music itself.

Talk about unpopular opinions. That one has pretty consistently been laughed out of court every time it tentatively raises its hand....

[steve ridgway]

Music not played on commercial classical music stations then.

[CRCulver]

I've got to agree about Boulez's Éclat not being "dissonant" or "thorny". Post-1960 Boulez is, at least to my ear, colourful, glittering, magical. It has always baffled me when people on the internet describe the later Boulez works as harsh.

[Florestan]

Music not played on commercial classical music stations then.

When was the last time you heard Nikolai Medtner, Sergei Bortkiewicz or Joseph Marx played on commercial music stations?

I thought so. Yet all three were implacable foes of "dissonant" music. 

[Mandryka]

When was the last time you heard Nikolai Medtner, Sergei Bortkiewicz or Joseph Marx played on commercial music stations?

Presumably that's because their music isn't very good.

[Florestan]

Presumably that's because their music isn't very good.

Does this apply to Boulez, Xenakis and Scelsi as well? They too are never played by the commercial music stations.

[Mandryka]

Does this apply to Boulez, Xenakis and Scelsi as well? They too are never played by the commercial music stations.

No they're not on there because they're dissonant.

[Florestan]

No they're not on there because they're dissonant.

And presumably this equals not very good for the stations in question.

[Mandryka]

More seriously, Andrei, it's at least 30 years since I last listened to any Medtner, but isn't some of it quite chromatic, with scrunchy dissonant harmonies? I used to have a recording by Svetlanov on the piano.

(Listening now to Zhukov play a sonata in G minor!)

[steve ridgway]

No they're not on there because they're dissonant.

Do you need more than one note to be dissonant?

[Crudblud]

It would be nice--I've dreamed about this for several decades--to talk about the music itself rather than about how this or that often unnamed or even mentioned listener's response to the music as if that response were descriptive of the music itself.

Talk about unpopular opinions. That one has pretty consistently been laughed out of court every time it tentatively raises its hand....

Well, it may be unpopular due to the way in which it tends to raise its hand.

Perhaps you should start a thread for the kind of music discussion you want to have. I don't know how far you'll get in a non-specialist community such as this, but why not give it a go instead of more or less telling other people they're stupid for wanting to talk about music in terms of their experience and how they perceive it.

[Florestan]

More seriously, Andrei, it's at least 30 years since I last listened to any Medtner, but isn't some of it quite chromatic, with scrunchy dissonant harmonies? I used to have a recording by Svetlanov on the piano.

(Listening now to Zhukov play a sonata in G minor!)

It has its moments of dissonance, of course, but it's essentialy a Late Romantic language. He wrote a whole book against "modernism".

[springrite]

More seriously, Andrei, it's at least 30 years since I last listened to any Medtner, but isn't some of it quite chromatic, with scrunchy dissonant harmonies? I used to have a recording by Svetlanov on the piano.

(Listening now to Zhukov play a sonata in G minor!)

Medtner is an arch-conservative and anti-avant-garde composer, which at least partly explained his relative neglect over the years (that, and that Rachmaninov is so popular. Medtner was known, in some circles then, as "Rachmaninov Without the Tunes").

I love that Svetlanov recording!

[amw]

Medtner is an arch-conservative and anti-avant-garde composer, which at least partly explained his relative neglect over the years (that, and that Rachmaninov is so popular. Medtner was known, in some circles then, as "Rachmaninov Without the Tunes").

I love that Svetlanov recording!

Medtner's aesthetic and political ideologies were indeed deeply reactionary. But in the actual process of composition, he trusted his artistic instincts above his ideological ones, which results in his music having an overall level of harmonic, rhythmic and timbral experimentation (and, therefore, harmonic dissonance) comparable to middle period Scriabin. It's an interesting tension, and makes his use of triadic tonality at cadences sound oddly incongruous at times.

Of course, this is fully in keeping with Late Romanticism, a label that can be easily applied to any composer from Brahms to Schoenberg, and with a great deal of continuity in the musical language. Even in the work of popular "late Romantics" like Rachmaninov or Mahler there is a great deal more dissonance than there is in "early Modern" composers like Debussy and Satie. In my experience it is not really the dissonance that people object to in composers like Boulez or Scelsi, it is the lack of signposts telling them how to feel about each particular musical event. (i.e., there is no subsequent consonant resolution to a dissonant sonority that can signal to a listener a sense of tension and release, that kind of thing.)

[steve ridgway]

In my experience it is not really the dissonance that people object to in composers like Boulez or Scelsi, it is the lack of signposts telling them how to feel about each particular musical event. (i.e., there is no subsequent consonant resolution to a dissonant sonority that can signal to a listener a sense of tension and release, that kind of thing.)

"Feel"?

[Florestan]

Medtner's aesthetic and political ideologies were indeed deeply reactionary.

Now I know why I like his music: ideological affinity. 

[Mirror Image]

I don't understand the premise of this thread. I mean so much post-WWII could be brought up as being based on dissonant sonorities and this isn't to say anything of what Schoenberg, Berg and Webern achieved earlier. I guess a good example would be Xenakis. I mean right out of the gate you're greeted with dissonance from this composer, but Boulez, Carter, Scelsi, Stockhausen, etc. would fit the bill here as well.

[Florestan]

I don't understand the premise of this thread.

Doesn't matter, really. The thread was derailed by the very first reply. 

[Mirror Image]

Doesn't matter, really. The thread was derailed by the very first reply. 

Yeah, I guess it was, but I seldom read some guy's posts. Not because I think he's a bad person, I just don't like this 'all-encompassing' vibe he puts across in his posts or, at least, to me he does. An intelligent conversation could never be had with someone who likes everything they hear. Our limitations as listeners define us even more than what we actually do like and enjoy. It's what makes us who we are.