Elliott Carter, 1908-2012

[Homo Aestheticus]

Cato,

Would the child's brain, upon being exposed to tonal music at a later age (12?  16?), wrinkle his nose and shake his head at the odd sounds?

No, are you serious ?  The notion that someone would wince at all upon hearing tonal music ?

Undoubtedly they'd embrace it with unalloyed wonder and joy...

[karlhenning]

No, are you serious ?  The notion that someone would wince at all upon hearing tonal music ?

Rest easy, Eric; Cato was being a little wry.

Undoubtedly they'd embrace it with unalloyed wonder and joy...

Crikey, you come straight from the cutting-room floor of Bambi, don't you?

[Joe Barron]

Joe, are you thinking of coming to Boston for any of the Carter events at Symphony?

Mosaic Saturday 3 Oct 09
Dialogues Thursday-Saturday 28-30 Jan 10
Flute Concerto (American premiere, BSO co-commission) Thursday-Friday 4-5 Feb 10; Tuesday 9 Feb 10

I have recordings of Mosaic and Dialogues, so there is no reason to travel for them. I would like to hear the Flute Concerto, but it will be impossible if I don't find a supplementary source of income.

[Homo Aestheticus]

Rest easy, Eric; Cato was being a little wry.

Wry ?

It didn't seem that way. His two previous sentences:

In Psychology there are "unthinkable experiments," i.e. experiments one would like to do on human beings, but obviously cannot. I have always wondered what would happen, if one took a child from birth on up and isolated them from all music except Schoenberg and friends after 1920: no tonal music whatsoever, only dodecaphony.

He sounded serious to me.

[karlhenning]

 

No Pelleas spam, Eric.

To the point:  There is no reason why all ages should not embrace atonality with unalloyed wonder and joy.  Many of us here, have.

[karlhenning]

And from my viewpoint, the "unthinkability" of the experiment is not any matter of having children exposed to atonality;  but that perforce the world is full of tonal music.  The "unthinkable" element is in the caging which would be necessary to "shield" the developing person from non-atonal musics, which would also interfere with the child's normal social development.

[Homo Aestheticus]

To the point:  There is no reason why all ages should not embrace atonality with unalloyed wonder and joy.  Many of us here, have.

But I find it very odd that WQXR, the classical station of New York, did not play a single major work of Carter on his 100th birthday.

[Cato]

And from my viewpoint, the "unthinkability" of the experiment is not any matter of having children exposed to atonality;  but that perforce the world is full of tonal music.  The "unthinkable" element is in the caging which would be necessary to "shield" the developing person from non-atonal musics, which would also interfere with the child's normal social development.

Right!  Thank you, Karl!

And to the Unreconstructed Pelleastrian, like bread with Limburger cheese, I was being a little wry!   0:)

To soften the experiment, would children raised in a musically experimental house with e.g. Carter , Boulez, Ligeti, Stockhausen, etc. on the old Victrola find anything "odd" about them in relation to e.g. Haydn ?

One thinks of Chuckie Ives and his father...   0:)

[Joe Barron]

But I find it very odd that WQXR, the classical station of New York, did not play a single major work of Carter on his 100th birthday.

I don't find it odd at all. I find it disgraceful.

To address the serious posters, Karl and Cato, I think the whole thing about raising children in a multi-music environment may be overstated. This is just a thought experiment, but if kids were exposed to tonal and atonal music, I think the majority would gravitate to tonal, but the majority of those would gravitate toward the sort of pop pablum we are force fed on commercial radio. They wouldn't love Haydn and Mozart any more than they would love Schoenberg or Boulez. (Eric wouldn't be pleased with the results of the experiment, either.) In music education, the distinction between tonal and atonal is something of a red herring. The question is, can kids be helped to appreciate any art music if they are introduced to it early enough? I think they can, but the change would only be within a few percentage points. Instead of eight percent classical sales in this country, we might bump up to twelve percent. It would be a wonderful development, but certainly not enough to do away with top 40.

When I was a kid, I had not yet made the transition to atonality. I knew no Schoenberg or Webern, and was just beginning to explore Carter. But I took a lot of crap for liking Beethoven. Beethoven, mind you. The fact that he wrote tonal music made no difference to anyone. The fight wasn't between tonalists and atonalists. The fight was between good old masculine rock (as embodied by the likes of David Bowie and Queen*) and those classical faggotized tunes. For teenagers, everything comes down to sexual politics.

Schoenberg and Carter will probably always be a minority taste, but that fact alone in no way negates their achievement. Beethoven will also be always a minority taste---just a slightly bigger minority. It's hard to argue about natural vs. unnatural approaches to music when the margins are so small.

*For the record, I never tire of Bohemian Rhapsody.

[karlhenning]

But I find it very odd that WQXR, the classical station of New York, did not play a single major work of Carter on his 100th birthday.

Just for the record, Eric, if all you've got to contribute to this thread is how much you don't like Carter (or atonality, or whatever), you'll do everyone a public service by simply posting elsewhere.

[karlhenning]

To address the serious posters, Karl and Cato, I think the whole thing about raising children in a multi-music environment may be overstated. This is just a thought experiment, but if kids were exposed to tonal and atonal music, I think the majority would gravitate to tonal, but the majority of those would gravitate toward the sort of pop pablum we are force fed on commercial radio. They wouldn't love Haydn and Mozart any more than they would love Schoenberg or Boulez. (Eric wouldn't be pleased with the results of the experiment, either.) In music education, the distinction between tonal and atonal is something of a red herring.

Yes.  Tangentially, not long ago I read the book in the 33 1/3 series devoted to Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica.  Not surprisingly (and in ways similar to casual misuse of the terms here at GMG), the author's use of the terms atonal and serial is careless, vague, and at times simply ridiculous.  Most of the album being discussed, even at its most difficult, is perfectly tonal.

The question is, can kids be helped to appreciate any art music if they are introduced to it early enough? I think they can, but the change would only be within a few percentage points. Instead of eight percent classical sales in this country, we might bump up to twelve percent. It would be a wonderful development, but certainly not enough to bump top 40.

When I was a kid, I had not yet made the transition to atonality. I knew no Schownberg or Webern at all, and was just beginning to explore Carter. But I took a lot of crap for liking Beethoven. Beethoven, mind you. The fact that he wrote tonal music made no difference to anyone. The fight wasn['t between tonalists and atonalists. The fight was between good old masculine rock (as embodied by the likes of David Bowie and Queen*) and those classical faggotized tunes. For teenagers, everything comes down to sexual politics.

Schoenberg and Carter will probably always be a minority taste, but that fact alone in no way negates their acheivement. Beethoven will also be always a minority taste---just a slightly bigger minority. It's hard to argure about natural vs. unnatural approaches to music when the margins are so small.

Much of my experience in high school was similar;  and your observations are all sound, Joe.

[Homo Aestheticus]

Joe,

The question is, can kids be helped to appreciate any art music if they are introduced to it early enough?

Seriously, I don't believe timing or age has anything to do with it. After having been surrounded with only 1980's pop music throughout childhood/early adolescence, I discovered opera (Wagner first) very much 'by accident' at age 15.  

People are either born with the the aesthetic sensitivity for Western art music or they are not... And it has nothing to do with elitism.

[karlhenning]

Seriously, Eric, what Carter pieces do you like?

[Joe Barron]

People are either born with the the aesthetic sensitivity for Western art music or they are not... And it has nothing to do with elitism.

We are still waiting for researchers to isolate the Western-art-music-sensitivity gene ...

[Homo Aestheticus]

We are still waiting for researchers to isolate the Western-art-music-sensitivity gene ...

Joe, my point was that no one (i.e. teacher, critic, student, composer, guy on the street) can really do anything that would make someone go home in delight and cuddle up with a piece of music.

Eric, unless you have something to say directly about Carter's music, I ask that if you wish to discuss the aesthetics of modern music you do so in a thread of your own creation, for example, Eric's Thread on P & M. IIRC, that is one of the topics there, is it not?
Thanks,
Gurn

[karlhenning]

Joe, have you seen the DVD of the Naxos 100th anniversary release? What did you think?

[Homo Aestheticus]

Joe, my point was that no one (i.e. teacher, critic, student, composer, guy on the street) can really do anything that would make someone go home in delight and cuddle up with a piece of music.

Eric, unless you have something to say directly about Carter's music, I ask that if you wish to discuss the aesthetics of modern music you do so in a thread of your own creation, for example, Eric's Thread on P & M. IIRC, that is one of the topics there, is it not?
Thanks,
Gurn

Certainly.

[Homo Aestheticus]

Seriously, Eric, what Carter pieces do you like?

None unfortunately.

[karlhenning]

From Carter's notes to the aforementioned Naxos disc:

Rhapsodic Musings (1999) for solo violin.
Rhapsodic Musings is a present to Robert Mann on his eightieth birthday. It is a small tribute to his extraordinary, devoted advocacy of contemporary music. As is well-known, with other members of the Juilliard Quartet he gave such pioneering and commanding performances of quartets by Bartók, Schoenberg, and many others, including my own, that many of these works became part of the performers' repertory. His teaching and other activities brought these scores to the attention of students. Using his initials R.M. in the title of this short violin solo and in its main motive —  re, mi (D, E) — this piece tries to suggest some of his remarkable human and artistic qualities. It was composed in June, 2000, in Southbury, Conecticut.

[Joe Barron]

Joe, have you seen the DVD of the Naxos 100th anniversary release? What did you think?

I posted the following thoughts back in March on this very thread:

I've watched Naxos DVD, which was OK, though the sound quality wasn't as good as the CD, and in Mosiac, the director kept playing with his new toy, an unnecessary kaleidoscope effect. I guess he was looking for a visual analogue to the Mosaic idea, but it was distracting and amateurish --- a shame, since the perfomance was so good. The Dialogues was well done, though, and of course, the Carter interview was interesting and charming, as all Carter interviews are. I can't remember if it was Aitken or Certer who compared the pedal work in Mosaic's harp music to driving a car.