Schonberg on Sibelius

[Sergeant Rock]

You'd better take this to the What Are You Drinking thread.

[karlhenning]

Sarge! Welcome back!

[Sergeant Rock]

Sarge! Welcome back!

Thanks, Karl. I missed your one-liners 

Sarge

[greg]

Perhaps this essay Apparition in the Woods by Alex Ross, already quoted above, can shed some light on the debate.  Even if you don't like Sibelius, Ross does a good job of shedding light on this unconventional composer.  (This essay was expanded into a chapter for The Rest Is Noise.)

Here is an apt excerpt:

"I feel like a ghost wandering in a world grown alien," Rachmaninoff wrote in 1939. "I cannot cast out the old way of writing, and I cannot acquire the new. I have made intense effort to feel the musical manner of today, but it will not come to me. . . . I cannot cast out my musical gods in a moment and bend the knee to new ones." Sibelius felt the same pang of loss. "Not everyone can be an innovating genius," he wrote in his diary. "As a personality and as an apparition from the woods you will have your small, modest place."

And yet the so-called "regional" composers left an imposing body of work, which is integral to the century as a whole. Their music may lack the vanguard credentials of Schoenberg's or Stravinsky's, at least on the sonic surface, but Nielsen, in his 1925 book "Living Music," makes a good counter-argument: "The simplest is the hardest, the universal the most lasting, the straightest the strongest, like the pillars that support the dome." And, precisely because these composers communicated general feelings of mourning for a pre-technological past, or, more simply, a yearning for vanished youth, they remained acutely relevant for a broad public.

Mainstream audiences often lag behind the intellectual classes in appreciating the more adventurous composers, but sometimes they are quicker to perceive the value of music that the politicians of style fail to comprehend. In 1952, Nicolas Slonimsky put together a delightful book,"Lexicon of Musical Invective," an anthology of wrongheaded music criticism in which now canonical masterpieces are compared with feline caterwauling, barnyard noises, and so on. Slonimsky should also have written a "Lexicon of Musical Condescension," gathering high-minded essays in which now canonical masterpieces were dismissed as middlebrow, with a long section reserved for Sibelius.

Was Sibelius a radical, an innovator, or even a modern?  Other than some novel use of form, I doubt many would argue here.  But that is not the point.

The task for any composer is to find a unique, interesting voice.  Many of the modernist composers mistook finding a unique voice for finding a unique system, generating their voice.  But the system does not make the voice, as we can see in all the wonderful variety of serialist music from Schoenberg to Stravinsky to Copland.  Even the chance composers are not immune.  Cage, in his struggle to take himself out of the music, ends up sounding like Cage.  Feldman, like Feldman.  I don't mean to suggest that systems are bad, because for many composers it aided them in finding their niche, but I argue they are not required, even for good, 20th Century music.

Sibelius is an anachronism in the 20th Century because he didn't need a new system.  His system, an extension 19th Century tonal Romanticism, should have been dead, but he proved it still had enough life to provide him with the tools he needed.  There is simply no other figure in music history that sounds like Sibelius, and I cannot imagine life without his music.  But I also cannot imagine life without Boulez, Babbit, or Sessions.  These are all great composers, and it is a mistake to wall ourselves off from any of their music.

Sibelius had a voice all his own, and that is enough for me.  And now you can find that voice filtering through new composers, like Adams, Lindberg, and Saariaho.  What a wonderful world we live in.

I love that book. He just writes everything so............. good.  0:)

[Joe_Campbell]

You mean so well?   

the irony was too tempting

[karlhenning]

You mean so well?   

the irony was too tempting

There are some temptations which it is a civic duty to fail to resist.

[greg]

how about awesomely?

[karlhenning]

No, he writes well; and that is enough 

[some guy]

Nor can a critic be taken seriously who takes John Adams seriously...

Best one-liner ever!

[Mark G. Simon]

Balderdash!!!!  Alex Ross writes like a bad novelist, worst, like a non-novelist who lacks talent to write novels but pretends to write them anyway - still worst, he writes like an essayist who hasn't figured out an essay is not the same thing a novel & shouldn't be written like one. In short, Alex Ross is a poor writer.

"still worst", he he.....

[karlhenning]

Balderdash!!!!  Alex Ross writes like a bad novelist.

Psst! He's not writing a novel!

[Sergeant Rock]

Nor can a critic be taken seriously who takes John Adams seriously...

Nor can a critic be taken seriously who misuses the word worst...twice 

Sarge

[Kullervo]

Alex Ross is a good writer, though slightly pretentious at times — throughout The Rest is Noise there are moments that feel like he was jazzing up the situations to heighten their poetry; as if the situations themselves weren't interesting enough as is.

If he's done anything, it has been introducing a new audience to 20th Century music — be it traditional listeners of classical music who had no prior interest (or possibly an aversion) to modern music, or otherwise-intelligent people who had avoided classical music in toto due to what they saw as ivory tower elitism and pretentiousness.

Good to know GMG has a plethora of proof-readers.
It's just too bad the proof-readers have so little understanding of music...

More of the same nastiness and ad hominem attacks — I won't tangle with you. "Wrestle with a pig and you both get dirty — but the pig likes it."

[karlhenning]

Alex Ross is a good writer, though slightly pretentious at times — throughout The Rest is Noise there are moments that feel like he was jazzing up the situations to heighten their poetry; as if the situations themselves weren't interesting enough as is.

If he's done anything, it has been introducing a new audience to 20th Century music — be it traditional listeners of classical music who had no prior interest (or possibly an aversion) to modern music, or otherwise-intelligent people who had avoided classical music in toto due to what they saw as ivory tower elitism and pretentiousness.

It is indeed a good book.  I disagree with the emphasis that Ross places upon John Adams;  but since I attribute that to a question of his own musical enthusiasms, I should not take that as any occasion to dismiss the book, or his writing (or even, John Adams).

Whatever my quarrels with detail or emphasis in the book, I find much more that is praiseworthy.  I need to buy the paper edition . . . .

[Mark G. Simon]

I think the 5 pages allotted to John Adams in The Rest is Noise are fully warranted. Ross cannot predict which composers of today his readers 50 years from now are most likely to encounter, but he knows his readers today are going to be listening to Adams and wanting to find something about that composer in his book. Clearly personal preference also plays a role in his selection. Admirers of Golijov will have to settle for two paragraphs.

Ross' enthusiasm for 20th century music, as well as his knowledge, is evident on every page, and this makes the book a joy to read.

[bhodges]

It is indeed a good book.  I disagree with the emphasis that Ross places upon John Adams;  but since I attribute that to a question of his own musical enthusiasms, I should not take that as any occasion to dismiss the book, or his writing (or even, John Adams).

Whatever my quarrels with detail or emphasis in the book, I find much more that is praiseworthy.  I need to buy the paper edition . . . .

I agree, and overall find it quite an amazing thing that a book like this even exists at all.  Further, I would probably recommend it to many people just starting out in their listening, in the same way that I'd recommend Copland's What to Listen for in Music. 

Certainly many people might quibble with his emphasis or choices here and there, but hey, I still read The Penguin Guide, even though it can be maddeningly British-centric at times.

Just saw Mark's comment, and yes, the key word is "enthusiasm."  A little of that goes a long way.

--Bruce

[Dundonnell]

I agree, and overall find it quite an amazing thing that a book like this even exists at all.  Further, I would probably recommend it to many people just starting out in their listening, in the same way that I'd recommend Copland's What to Listen for in Music. 

Certainly many people might quibble with his emphasis or choices here and there, but hey, I still read The Penguin Guide, even though it can be maddeningly British-centric at times.

Just saw Mark's comment, and yes, the key word is "enthusiasm."  A little of that goes a long way.

--Bruce

"maddeningly British-centric"('The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music')

Sorry...we in the good old U.K just can't help being the centre of the musical universe

[bhodges]

"maddeningly British-centric"('The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music')

Sorry...we in the good old U.K just can't help being the centre of the musical universe

--Bruce

[karlhenning]

I think the 5 pages allotted to John Adams in The Rest is Noise are fully warranted. Ross cannot predict which composers of today his readers 50 years from now are most likely to encounter, but he knows his readers today are going to be listening to Adams and wanting to find something about that composer in his book. Clearly personal preference also plays a role in his selection. Admirers of Golijov will have to settle for two paragraphs.

Ross' enthusiasm for 20th century music, as well as his knowledge, is evident on every page, and this makes the book a joy to read.

Agreed, entirely.

[Bulldog]

1) I've seen no evidence of your understanding of any music of any century. I've looked through all of your posts here, and see nothing but cheap shots.

I've also looked through the posts of Two-Tone, and he is clearly an obnoxious poster.  However, he has posted much more than just cheap shots.

My problem with Two-Tone is that he makes the same mistake as some other posters who have been on the board in the past.  If he doesn't like a particular composer, style, or work, nobody should.  It's the old "I am the universe" attitude that reveals a lack of maturity.