Now HERE is an assessment that I completely agree with.... It is vintage Kyle Gann.
:)
I think the individuals at the IRCAM Pompidou Center in Paris especially should listen up:
Ding ! Dong ! The Witch Has Died
by Kyle Gann
May I be the only classical music critic in town to welcome the new century with open arms ? Hurrah ! Hurrah ! Twentieth-century music is dead.
Uh-oh: I've just denounced what I'm supposed to pledge allegiance to. Of course, there were actually two 20th centuries. The first, symbolized by Stravinsky, Bartok and Ives, was a dramatic irruption of violent, irrational energy, as music abruptly claimed all those sonic phenomena that earlier centuries had prohibited. The second 20th century, which began as World War II ended, was quite the opposite, a worship of technical devices by people who, in any other generation, would have likely become lab technicians rather than composers. Yet by a quirk of inadequate terminology, both 20th centuries -- the lion's roar and the ferret's jargon-blurred murmur -- became yoked together under the term "modernism." And by another ironic inadequacy that made no difference until this month, "20th-century" and "modernist" were synonymous with music.
It's not that the late 20th century didn't produce great music. Any era that can boast Nancarrow, Feldman, Ashley and Scelsi can hold its head up with the best. But while bad 17th century music is merely dull, and bad 19th century music is tediously grandiose, the late 20th century's bad music was pervasively ugly, pretentious, and meaningless, yet backed up by a technic apparatus that justified it and even earned it prestigious awards. Twelve-tone technique -- the South Sea Bubble of music history, to which hundreds and perhaps thousands of well-intended composers sacrificed their careers like lemmings, and all for nothing -- brought music to the lowest point in the history of mankind. Twelve-tone music is now dead, everyone grudgingly admits, yet its pitch-set manipulating habits survive in far-flung corners of musical technique like residual viruses. The effect of the rolling over of the Christian-historical odometer is purely psychological, but nevertheless potent: Post-modern (not "postmodern") 21st century music has been around for years, and the last argument for denying its existence has just collapsed. Treating "20th century" and "modernist" as synonymous was a critical ploy for keeping modernism alive and current-seeming long after the aesthetic had begun to erode in the 1970's. Attendant to that ploy, the uptown critics have pounced on every young composer, no matter how mediocre, who promised to extend the lease on modernism a few more years; John Zorn, Tan Dun, and Aaron Kernis all benefited from that psychology, which now devolves on Britain's young Thomas Ades, whose music is hailed as "serious" for being merely confused. While early modernism was an honest blow for freedom of expression, late modernism deteriorated into a web of pretensions and syllogisms, an insiders' game of careerist one-upmanship.
At the start of this new, still-promising century, let us reiterate some eternal musical truths that the 20th century lost sight of:
There is nothing wrong with simplicity. It is easier to write complicated music than simple music; Beethoven's sketchbooks show how hard he struggled to achieve simplicity. It occasionally happens that profound music is difficult to understand, but it does not follow from this that music that is difficult to understand is therefore profound. Most difficult-to-understand music is simply unclear. The value of music is not proportional to the quantity or intricacy of its technical apparatus. Like many great composers throughout the ages, Mozart believed in an "artless art" in which the effort of composing is hidden beneath an effortless surface; this is as it should be. The audience wants to be delighted, inspired, entertained and moved, not reassured that the composer is highly educated and worked hard. There is nothing wrong with occasionally writing an ostentatiously technical piece for the delectation of one's colleagues, but to do nothing but that is to pretend that composers have no obligation to society, and by extension that neither do doctors, politicians, generals, or any other profession. A piece of music is not good just because it is popular, nor is it bad just because it is popular. The music profession has many incentives to bestow fame and honor on certain of its members; the quality of their music is only one of those incentives and never an essential one.
Let us keep these truths in mind and see if we can create a 21st century less burdened by boring, ugly, pretentious music than the 20th century was.
******
Yep, Kyle is a good one...
:)
Quote from: The Unrepentant Pelleastrian on April 05, 2009, 07:57:38 PM
Now HERE is an assessment that I completely agree with.... It is vintage Kyle Gann.
:)
I think the individuals at the IRCAM Pompidou Center in Paris especially should listen up:
Why do you single out IRCAM? Except for Boulez (who never had much control over the institution's output) and Mantoury (who's a minor figure), there's not too much interest in twelve-tone serialism there. But IRCAM did become the home of Kaija Saariaho, a neo-tonalist who has won herself a popular audience. Most of the composers I can think of who have visited IRCAM to realize a piece don't see any affinity with mid-20th century Darmstadt modernism.
Quote from: The Unrepentant Pelleastrian on April 05, 2009, 07:57:38 PM
... the uptown critics have pounced on every young composer, no matter how mediocre, who promised to extend the lease on modernism a few more years ... which now devolves on Britain's young Thomas Ades, whose music is hailed as "serious" for being merely confused.
Unfortunately, Gann loses credibility here.
Quote from: Symphonien on April 05, 2009, 11:04:28 PM
Unfortunately, Gann loses credibility here.
Or maybe you just don't agree with him :)
Gann certainly knows an awful lot of stuff, and this makes him interesting, but I find him kind of eccentric as a writer. Much of what he writes is devoted to unearthing composers who are so obscure, it's possible that only he and these composers' friends and relatives have heard any of their work. He has proclaimed a certain Mikel Rouse to be "the greatest opera composer of his generation." OK, maybe he's right, let's not judge what we haven't heard - but how can we judge these composers when their work seems to be never performed or recorded, at least for the benefit of ordinary schmoes like us?
Quote from: Symphonien on April 05, 2009, 11:04:28 PM
Unfortunately, Gann loses credibility here.
The idea that Ades is a charlatan is fairly widespread in contemporary criticism, and has served as a healthy balance to the quasi-messianistic heraldings of the British press. I've always felt there was something missing in his music, and my already low opinion of him became even lower when it was revealed he had been hiring out orchestration of his pieces.
Quote
May I be the only classical music critic in town to welcome the new century with open arms ? Hurrah ! Hurrah ! Twentieth-century music is dead.
Uh-oh: I've just denounced what I'm supposed to pledge allegiance to. Of course, there were actually two 20th centuries.
He forgot the third--and best ;D--of the 20th centuries, the 20th century of Barber and Bernstein, Alwyn and Atterberg, Sibelius and Strauss, and so on and so forth.
Quote from: Grazioso on April 06, 2009, 04:26:14 AM
He forgot the third--and best ;D--of the 20th centuries, the 20th century of Barber and Bernstein, Alwyn and Atterberg, Sibelius and Strauss, and so on and so forth.
Yes!
And what of Shostakovich, who defies any such categorization?
Regardless, this essay seems like it was written in 2000. New century? Really?
...is the writer talking about Ligeti, Xenakis, Berio, Lutoslawski...or Herchet, Goldstein, Martino (as differing between the first and second rank).
At least NOW we have a bunch of really cool sound effects!
I wanted to write a Haydn-style quartet, but using all the different cool effects...
I mean, the effects can sound just as cool in a tonal setting as they can in a 12tone context, no?
Who is the composer who made academicism FUN?
I'm now thinking of Dutilleux's string quartet "Ainsi la Nuit" (1976)...this thing just overflows with great effects, and is very "communicative" to boot. Couldn't have been written at any other time.
Ligeti's web-like polyphony...what's wrong with that?
Xenakis' fun glissandos?
I just can't think of the composer most responsible for all the "worshipping"...unless it IS Boulez? Who IS the biggest dick of 20th century music?
The only problem with an article like Gann's is that there are folks, including a few right here at GMG, who have been genuinely moved by the music Gann dismisses as "pervasively ugly, pretentious, and meaningless". Obviously "the Witch"'s enchantment works on a few of us. ;D
Quote from: Corey on April 10, 2009, 02:09:23 PMGann's own music sucks and so does his "downtown".
How much have you heard ?
Quote from: jochanaan on April 10, 2009, 12:57:01 PM
The only problem with an article like Gann's is that there are folks, including a few right here at GMG, who have been genuinely moved by the music Gann dismisses as "pervasively ugly, pretentious, and meaningless". Obviously "the Witch"'s enchantment works on a few of us. ;D
A
jochanaan sighting! :D
Quote from: The Unrepentant Pelleastrian on April 10, 2009, 02:15:50 PM
How much have you heard ?
you can hear 4 hours of it on his website. Though, quite why anyone would want to is a complete mystery to me. Horrible stuff.
Guido,
Quote from: Guido on April 11, 2009, 08:59:39 AMyou can hear 4 hours of it on his website. Though, quite why anyone would want to is a complete mystery to me. Horrible stuff.
Thanks..... I just downloaded a few snippets and my first impressions are not positive.
:-\
Still, as an eccentric/entertaining commentator on music Gann is the gift that keeps on giving... :)
Here he is on Mozart:
The Mozart myth, I've always felt, was 1. a condescending image created by his father, and 2. a distant, divine image intended to make all future composers feel inferior, and to reinforce a public feeling that musical genius is something distant and fated, not something we should ever expect to meet up with on a daily basis. Does this sound right to you [that there's no sign Mozart has lost his relevance among composers]? Does Mozart still have some overwhelming relevance to our time? Does 'Don Giovanni' contain a cautionary message that young men of the 21st century need to hear? Does 'The Magic Flute' reflect the needs of our social life? Does Mozart's music contain anything that we, today, would understand as emotional certainty, or the fleeting quality of serenity? Or do our classical mavens just feel an overwhelming need to reinforce the status quo, by recentering our musical life on a distant figure with whose music we have pretty much lost any capacity for real intellectual and emotional engagement? Doesn't the real purpose of Mozart worship remain to retard any progress into a musical future?****
Yes, hmm, I find myself in the previously unknown position of disagreeing with Guido and agreeing with James. I've heard a lot of Gann, and it's pretty clear to me that he is, at his best, a superb composer. He's also a man of deep knowledge and with a deep love of the music of the preceding centuries. As I said before here, there's a danger of misrepresenting the man if we start seeing him in the black-and-white ways some are tending to do on this thread.
Quote from: The Unrepentant Pelleastrian on April 05, 2009, 07:57:38 PM
There is nothing wrong with simplicity. It is easier to write complicated music than simple music; ... It occasionally happens that profound music is difficult to understand, but it does not follow from this that music that is difficult to understand is therefore profound. Most difficult-to-understand music is simply unclear.
How refreshing to read this. This is by no means applicable only to music. Substitute 'prose' for 'music', and it remains a great truth.
Quote from: Elgarian on April 11, 2009, 11:17:30 AM
How refreshing to read this. This is by no means applicable only to music. Substitute 'prose' for 'music', and it remains a great truth.
Yes, refreshing indeed! Proves what they say about stopped clocks.
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on April 10, 2009, 07:40:36 PM
A jochanaan sighting! :D
Indeed. Probably every once in a while I'll drop in--that was the "thud" you heard. ;D
BTW, Pelleastrian, everything they said about Schoenberg and company in the 20th century was said about Wagner and Debussy in the 19th. :)
Quote from: jochanaan on April 11, 2009, 12:09:51 PM
Indeed. Probably every once in a while I'll drop in--that was the "thud" you heard. ;D
Hey jochanaan, I'd like to hear that thud more often!
;D
--Bruce
Quote from: jochanaan on April 11, 2009, 12:09:51 PMbtw, Pelleastrian, everything they said about Schoenberg and company in the 20th century was said about Wagner and Debussy in the 19th. :)
???
But not nearly to the same extent....
Wagner and Debussy were beloved long before they died.
I'm more than willing to admit I was wrong - just the three pieces I sampled on his website struck me as being really rather dull and unimaginative. I don't remember their names apart from Venus. Do recommend me good things, I'm more than willing to discover a superb new composer! But his statements in the initial post of his disgust me.
Quote from: The Unrepentant Pelleastrian on April 11, 2009, 01:12:23 PM
Wagner and Debussy were beloved long before they died.
As were
Schoenberg & Co.
Quote from: Guido on April 11, 2009, 04:50:29 PM
I'm more than willing to admit I was wrong - just the three pieces I sampled on his website struck me as being really rather dull and unimaginative. I don't remember their names apart from Venus. Do recommend me good things, I'm more than willing to discover a superb new composer! But his statements in the initial post of his disgust me.
Try his Disklavier studies (or rather, wait for me to help you out on this....). They are the true modern successor to Nancarrow's player piano studies (Gann is one of the leading Nancarrow scholars) and have the most tremendous wit and virtuosity, exhibited in all manner of surprising and exhilarating ways. but they only work because, beneath the surface, all sorts of precise compositional skills are being practised.
As I said before, Gann is a fine musical thinker - we are all allowed our more extreme opinions (reading The Rest is Noise at the moment reminds me once again quite how repellent the views of many 20th century musical giants were at times, many times more than Gann's purely musical opinions). IMO Gann has 'proved his right' to express them in this sort of way more than most other writer I can think of, certainly more than most critics. And as I said, they need to be read in context.
. . . and context is not the friend of the pot-stirrer OP.
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on April 11, 2009, 07:17:38 PM
As were Schoenberg & Co.
Not to mention that contemporaries intent on hearing Beethoven, Mozart and Mendelssohn would've hated Debussy just as much as the same people came to hate Schoenberg...
Sarah,
Quote from: Lethe on April 12, 2009, 09:34:45 AMNot to mention that contemporaries intent on hearing Beethoven, Mozart and Mendelssohn would've hated Debussy just as much as the same people came to hate Schoenberg...
Just as much ? ???
I really believe that the contemporaries of Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn would have very much liked and admired Debussy's
Prelude To The Afternoon Of A Faun.
Quote from: The Unrepentant Pelleastrian on April 12, 2009, 10:09:21 AM
Just as much ? ???
I really believe that the contemporaries of Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn would have very much liked and admired Debussy's Prelude To The Afternoon Of A Faun.
They may have liked that piece, but that's Debussy's mature style in its infancy.
Jeux is still a controversial piece.
Quote from: Lethe on April 12, 2009, 09:34:45 AM
Not to mention that contemporaries intent on hearing Beethoven, Mozart and Mendelssohn would've hated Debussy just as much as the same people came to hate Schoenberg...
Exactly. The OP fondly imagines that, had he lived in
Debussy's time, he would have been a great
Debussy fan. Ha, ha, ha!
Quote from: The Unrepentant Pelleastrian on April 12, 2009, 10:09:21 AM
I really believe that the contemporaries of Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn would have very much liked and admired Debussy's Prelude To The Afternoon Of A Faun.
Well, there you're just playing at your Composers' Doll-House again, Eric.
Quote from: James on April 12, 2009, 09:07:00 AM
THIS (http://www.amazon.com/Private-Dances/dp/B0013PHX06/ref=dm_cd_album_lnk?ie=UTF8&qid=1239469704&sr=8-2) is a great Gann album...i'd recommend it to anyone who loves music.
Much much better (organic, human) than his rather still-born & mechanical sounding Disklavier studies IMO.
I know both. I play the
Private Dances myself. They are great,
Sentimental especially so, but the Disklavier studies are much finer IMO. Mechanical sounding? Yes, of course - that's the point! But only to the extent that Nancarrow is. But no, actually
less than him - because of the vast amount of quotation and stylistic reference they include (Beethoven, Bud Powell, Terry Riley, James P Johnson, Chopin, Nancarrow himself, Tango....) they make much more audible play between what is human and what isn't; each one explores the dichotomy in new, strange and revealing ways. I find them oddly poignant and moving, in a way which Nancarrow never is.
Most interesting, Luke.
QuoteThere is nothing wrong with simplicity. It is easier to write complicated music than simple music;
Not always... I wonder who has more skill- Soulja Boy or Wagner?
Hi Culver,
Quote from: CRCulver on April 12, 2009, 10:46:48 AMJeux is still a controversial piece.
In what way ? According to who ?
Quote from: The Unrepentant Pelleastrian on April 12, 2009, 08:07:33 PM
Hi Culver,
In what way ? According to who ?
According to my local news, this piece is banned in my area... :-[
I would agree with Kyle that listening to mediocre 18th century music is much preferable to mediocre late 20th century music, but that is not much of an argument against the best of late-20th century music
but Kyle seems to be falling for the perpetual false hope of the last 80 years of a revival of the relevance of contemporary classical music. Truth is, the relevance of new music is an exponentially declining small tail to a distribution where the bulk of the mass remains anchored in the 19th century. Every new composer who wants to be part of the tradition and wants his or her music performed by others is bound to some extent by the limits of 19th century instrumentation and performance practice. There is room for only a handful of contemporary orchestral composers because the burden of competing with Mahler and Brahms for shelf space is too difficult and the majority of classical music listeners will devote only a small portion of their time and attention to new music. While the barrier to entry for orchestral music, operas and established chamber music forms becomes higher every year as more new music enters the repertoire, the costs to self-produce have fallen to essentially nothing. This means that the bulk of creative talent will not try the pointless exercise of competing with Beethoven for a slot on the local symphony's season but will instead self-produce , distribute and perform - like Frank Zappa, John Zorn and alot of the minimalists have. This will make the distinctions between who is & isn't a "classical composer" become harder to define.
Quote from: sul G on April 12, 2009, 04:15:04 PM
I know both. I play the Private Dances myself. They are great, Sentimental especially so, but the Disklavier studies are much finer IMO. Mechanical sounding? Yes, of course - that's the point! But only to the extent that Nancarrow is. But no, actually less than him - because of the vast amount of quotation and stylistic reference they include (Beethoven, Bud Powell, Terry Riley, James P Johnson, Chopin, Nancarrow himself, Tango....) they make much more audible play between what is human and what isn't; each one explores the dichotomy in new, strange and revealing ways. I find them oddly poignant and moving, in a way which Nancarrow never is.
Both sound fascinating from the clips I have heard on Amazon (sadly they're not on spotify). Predictably, I like the Ives inspired piece from the Private Dances, though they all sound great. Much better than what was on his website... how odd that he would not put the best of himself on his own site...
Quote from: Guido on April 13, 2009, 11:55:12 AM
Both sound fascinating from the clips I have heard on Amazon (sadly they're not on spotify). Predictably, I like the Ives inspired piece from the Private Dances, though they all sound great. Much better than what was on his website... how odd that he would not put the best of himself on his own site...
They are on his website. Or they were, anyway. That's where I got them, scores and mp3s
F*** Kyle Gann. He's great on Ives, but on the rest of it, he's snide and self-satisfied and an absolute dick. And his music's not that great, either.
He must have taken them down as soon as the commercial recording was available. The score is still up there.
Quote from: Guido on April 13, 2009, 12:50:19 PM
He must have taken them down as soon as the commercial recording was available. The score is still up there.
well hang on in there a little while....
Will do! I just realised that the album also includes other pieces - so "the Ives inspired one" is actually not one of the Dances at all! Sorry for the confusion!
Quote from: bwv 1080 on April 13, 2009, 09:25:16 AM
I would agree with Kyle that listening to mediocre 18th century music is much preferable to mediocre late 20th century music...
I wouldn't--but maybe that's because I haven't heard a lot of mediocre 20th-century music except on the non-classical charts! ;D
Quote from: James on April 13, 2009, 12:02:52 PM
zappa & zorn aren't classical composers, though they have touched that world on occassion. and minimalism is kind-of a joke. i'm sure there are plenty who are of the classical tradition-learning who do write scores, perform, pool resources, are members of groups, and even produce their own recordings, we simply don't hear about them through the major media channels though, or even the classical media marketing lobby who endlessly promote dead & over-rated guys like Mozart & Beethoven ad nauseum and which all the sheep automatically flock to, no different than the sort of thing you see with pop and how people will mindlessly flock to what they are told is good...so for those who are really into music, it becomes a specialized interest and you have to really dig around and put in extra effort to find the really good stuff.
You have a point, but less of one than you might imagine. Despite the record dictators, uh, producers' attempt to keep "classical" and other genres in their own niches, a lot of great musicians from both sides of the divide insist on crossing over to explore the other side; think Gershwin, Bernstein, Golijov and even Yo-Yo Ma with his Silk Road Ensemble.
It might be an interesting debate, whether the record producers nearly killed great music and whether their apparently impending demise is a good thing...