A riddle: Is Shostakovich' music late-romantic? If not, what sort of music is it?
Take a guess, someone. I'm eager to reveal the answer to people.
I'd say Late Sarcastic.
No.
The answer:
Shostakovich' music is GRAND-STYLE!
Without joking, this characterization of Shostakovich' music should really be taken seriously, but I'm aware that in English it sounds funny. But really I think this labeling is like a discovery: with this label we listen with other ears to Shotakovich' music and discover the true greatness of it. Weren't we always looking after the grand-style in music? Until today we were unable to recognize it, but only until today!
Quote from: Henk on August 01, 2010, 05:28:26 AM
No.
The answer:
Shostakovich' music is GRAND-STYLE!
Without joking, this characterization of Shostakovich' music should really be taken seriously, but I'm aware that in English it sounds funny. But really I think this labeling is like a discovery: with this label we listen with other ears to Shotakovich' music and discover the true greatness of it. Weren't we always looking after the grand-style in music? Until today we were unable to recognize it, but only until today!
Couldn't this be said of most any other composer, if we loosen up the connotations of the term? In other words, leave your prejudice at the door and listen to composer x with unbiased ears and let the music move you. I don't see what makes that approach specific to Shostakovich.
Now we need a post-grand-style composer...
What does grand-style mean? Does it mean like Beethoven? Or does it mean really big? Or does it mean universal?
EDIT & REPOST:
Quote from: Brian on August 01, 2010, 05:53:52 AM
What does grand-style mean? Does it mean like Beethoven? Or does it mean really big? Or does it mean universal?
Now this challenges my intellect, compared to Petrarch's pseudo-cynical response :).
Grand style is something which can be found in architecture but less in music. Nietzsche makes use of the term grand-style. His work is according to himself also in "grand style".
free from Nietzsche:
All arts become in their most perfect expressions architecture. In music grand-style is something like architecture with sounds.
Some pictures of Pallazo Pitti, which is in grand-style according to Nietzsche, to get a feeling of what is grand-style:
(http://www.oliera.eu/images/Reisgids/Florence/Palazzo_Pitti/Palazzo%20Pitti%20voorgevel.JPG) (http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/01/0e/44/e4/palazzo-pitti.jpg) (http://www.lebellezzeditalia.it/fotografie/foto%20toscana/foto_firenze/palazzo%20pitti.jpg)
Quote from: springrite on August 01, 2010, 05:53:42 AM
Now we need a post-grand-style composer...
Not so sarcastic.. :)
I'd suggest the term post-romantic, if you have to have a label. But I'm not sure there is a label that would really catch everything of Shostakovich, or indeed most other great composers. For in a sense, while they may typify music of a certain period--say Haydn and Mozart of the Classical period, or Schubert or Berlioz of the Romantic period--there is a certain universality to their music that allows it to speak to almost anyone who listens to it [Teresa being the exception that probes the rule 8) ]
And I have difficulty with the term grand-style, because it is so imprecise and so subjective that it is useless. For instance, Brother Friedrich thought the Pitti Palace grand-style; I think the palace (as opposed to the artwork housed there) is rather dreary and pedestrian, although I see the architectural aesthetics at work there--it's just the overall effect does not work for me. As an example of grand-style, and sticking to Florence, I would pick the Doumo or the Medici Chapels--and there are others who undoubtedly could come and pick out something else as their preferred example of grandstyle in Florence.
What purpose do such labels serve?
More garbage to teach kids in "music appreciation" lessons :(
Labels serve the purpose of grouping music together with similar compositions, so that when someone says "I like that! What else is out there like it?" We can point them towards a genre :)
I like post-romantic for Shostakovich - it's a term that, according to my understanding, refers to a kind of music that explores the sound dynamic of music beyond the traditional harmonic and melodic parameters of classical and romantic music. However, since there are many different ways to accomplish this aim, we group them all under the flag of post-romanticism.
QuoteHowever, since there are many different ways to accomplish this aim, we group them all under the flag of post-romanticism.
How desperately sad.
Just call it Shostakovichism and all problems are solved!
Quote from: False_Dmitry on August 01, 2010, 04:50:52 PM
What purpose do such labels serve?
I guess you missed some of Henk's earlier posts. He is one of those unfortunates who is unable to enjoy music unless he has everything classified according to some complicated intellectual schema.
"post-romanticism"??????????????????? :o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4fdfN4Tk_0&feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4fdfN4Tk_0&feature=related)
Quote from: Velimir on August 02, 2010, 01:01:04 AM
I guess you missed some of Henk's earlier posts. He is one of those unfortunates who is unable to enjoy music unless he has everything classified according to some complicated intellectual schema.
Well, one sure can learn from it. I spend some time yesterday reading about it (grand style etc.) further with a summery in a book of thoughts from Nietzsche. But I rather want to read Nietzsche himself about it, but the texts about this subject are divided among all his books, so that makes it a bit difficult. But I digest something of it with makes it easier to understand more of it later.
I strongly believe in the possibility of civilizing one-self. I like to be critical to what I like. For example I don't listen to late-romantic anymore. I liked it for some time, but there was something wrong with it. Because of what Nietzsche says about it (see signature) I recognize it. Anyone needs to develop a taste, rather a feeling, about art, to learn, and when that's in an intellectual way one can learn more I think. I strive for the best, when one does not, one ends up as a ordinary, dull, uncivilized type of human being.
Henk
Quote from: Henk on August 02, 2010, 03:48:22 AM
For example I don't listen to late-romantic anymore. I liked it for some time, but there was something wrong with it. Because of what Nietzsche says about it
Dare I ask which composers you've put on your banned "late-romantic" list?
Because it seems to me you are running wild with your labels, sticking them to anything you find.
Why is what Nietzsche thought important?
Quote from: Franco on August 02, 2010, 05:45:56 AM
Why is what Nietzsche thought important?
Also Sprach Nietzsche
Quote from: toucan on August 02, 2010, 06:01:55 AM
One would expect to find that kind of question on Lindsay Lohan fan sites, not on sites dedicated to the Fine Arts...
(Granted, nothing clearly recognizable as Nietzscheism has been stated on this thread so far)
I guess there's no explaining expectations. I have managed to enjoy Shostakovich quite a lot without being subjected to Nietzscheism - and frankly, I'm grateful for that gap in my cultural education.
Of course, YMMV.
Nietzsche is mostly famous (if at all) for a youthful naive obsession with Wagner, couched in the most sycophantic terms... followed by an equally childish and petulant sulk against his former hero later in life, in which he made an utter fool of himself in public.
I would frankly suggest that Nietzsche's writings on music are only fit for the garbage dump. As indeed is the rest of his proto-Nazi twaddle.
Shostakovich's music remains impervious to babbling tosh of this kind.
I've always liked the description of DSCH given in a "brief guide to the composers" book I read frequently when in high school and first discovering CM. It called Shostakovich "the last great outcropping of traditionalism in the 20th century's voyage out into unknown waters". (Of course, in retrospect it didn't take long for a whole lot more such outcrops to appear, so many that we're debatably back onshore at this point...)
If I had to describe Shostakovich in a short, simplistic manner, I don't think I could do better than 'post-Mussorgsky.'
Quote from: toucan on August 02, 2010, 05:33:23 AM
As Daffy duck to a Bach Cantata, so Shostakovich to the Pallazo Pitti
Grand style is one thing, pompous is another. The pompous style would seem to describe Shostakovich rather more pertinently, as it would latter Penderecki.
Unless it is no style at all, as there is not much style to that indigest mix of contradictory influences and borrowings, the music of Dmitri Shostakovich.
Nietzsche criticized romanticism itself, not late romanticism. Which is fine, if you are willing to limit yourself to the music of Bizet and of Mendelssohn
Maybe you're right about Shostakovich. I think you're right. Of course I already had doubts about it, maybe therefor I had the need to make a strong statement in which I didn't believe at all. Now I can ignore Shostakovich.
You're right about the fact that Nietzsche criticized romanticism. But late-romanticism is romanticism. Late-romanticism didn't exist in the time of Nietzsche so how could he criticize it? It was more about the format of romanticism which he criticized, because he liked Mendelssohn and Bizet, and the format is actively present in late-romanticism. And that format is criticized in the argument that "(late)-romanticism exposes or unnatural rest or unnatural unrest". That's what everyone can experience when listening to (late-)romantic music and because of that one can reject (others want to hear "ban") late-romanticism. Mendelssohn and Bizet don't give that experience, others like Bruckner, Mahler, Sibelius and all that Scandinavian and Baltic composers do, in a higher degree then earlier romantic music. Really it's all ugliness.
Quote from: toucan on August 02, 2010, 05:33:23 AM
As Daffy duck to a Bach Cantata, so Shostakovich to the Pallazo Pitti
Hardly, but thank you for playing.
Quote from: edward on August 02, 2010, 08:15:36 AM
If I had to describe Shostakovich in a short, simplistic manner, I don't think I could do better than 'post-Mussorgsky.'
Edward has already added the disclaimers, so I will confine myself to appreciating his perspicacity here.
Even the enrichment of Shostakovich's symphonism which came of his friend Sollertinsky's introducing him to Mahler, we can consider a strand within this cord which binds Shostakovich to Musorgsky.
Quote from: Henk on August 02, 2010, 11:56:04 AMNow I can ignore Shostakovich.
You've got his publishers cowering in submission already, Henk. They issued a Profits Warning to shareholders.
Quote from: Henk on August 02, 2010, 11:56:04 AM
Maybe you're right about Shostakovich. I think you're right. Of course I already had doubts about it, maybe therefor I had the need to make a strong statement in which I didn't believe at all. Now I can ignore Shostakovich.
[...]
Really it's all ugliness.
Yes, you are obviously better off sticking with Nietzsche.
Quote from: Henk on August 02, 2010, 11:56:04 AM
Maybe you're right about Shostakovich. I think you're right. Of course I already had doubts about it, maybe therefor I had the need to make a strong statement in which I didn't believe at all. Now I can ignore Shostakovich.
You would be better off ignoring toucan.
I know I am! ; )
Quote from: Henk on August 02, 2010, 11:56:04 AMYou're right about the fact that Nietzsche criticized romanticism. But late-romanticism is romanticism. Late-romanticism didn't exist in the time of Nietzsche so how could he criticize it? It was more about the format of romanticism which he criticized, because he liked Mendelssohn and Bizet, and the format is actively present in late-romanticism.
[drum roll] And that format
is...
Quote from: jimmosk on August 02, 2010, 07:48:49 AMI've always liked the description of DSCH given in a "brief guide to the composers" book I read frequently when in high school and first discovering CM. It called Shostakovich "the last great outcropping of traditionalism in the 20th century's voyage out into unknown waters". (Of course, in retrospect it didn't take long for a whole lot more such outcrops to appear, so many that we're debatably back onshore at this point...)
What do we call that return to traditionalism? I've uneasily settled on neo-romantic, but I'm not totally convinced by it, because oftentimes it isn't a conscious return to a previous style, as was the case with neo-classicism.
It is amazing what happens to a straightforward question, is it not? Cutting through a lot of non-answers and not a few tangential ones -- Shostakovich is a "realist" composer, as in Soviet "realism," who really struggled to be realistic when what the cultural bureaucrats and boot lickers really meant to say was "celebratory" music of the great Red soldier in the sky, not really realistic music. So, he was a honest, sincere, down to earth, extremely tense, not infrequently vodka drunk, realist composer.
To refer to Shostakovich as anything "Romantic" is not only far-fetched but off the mark because Romanticism is not realist music. It's excessively emotional.
On the other hand, Shostakovich did not live and compose in a vacuum and he sought inspiration or, rather, compositional "food" from prior composers. Mahler, that last great Romantic composer who is all too often said to be the last great symphonist, left his mark on D. Shostakovich. I would suggest though that the mark in question was less the mark of Romanticism than of thematic structure.
[Why does the cursor go wild when writing at the bottom of this box? Time to quit.]
Quote from: Benny on August 02, 2010, 05:32:55 PMShostakovich is a "realist" composer, as in Soviet "realism," who really struggled to be realistic when what the cultural bureaucrats and boot lickers really meant to say was "celebratory" music of the great Red soldier in the sky, not really realistic music. So, he was a honest, sincere, down to earth, extremely tense, not infrequently vodka drunk, realist composer.
Your argument is flawed because the term socialist realism isn't a cultural one, it's a political one - referring to the idea that music should praise the Soviet Motherland, and be accessible to people like Ivan the Plumber. If anything, Socialist Realism connotes Gebrauchsmusik - music for use - which does not invalidate the concept of music being romantic, post-romantic, expressionistic, or any other genric labels we might suggest.
Quote from: Benny on August 02, 2010, 05:32:55 PMTo refer to Shostakovich as anything "Romantic" is not only far-fetched but off the mark because Romanticism is not realist music. It's excessively emotional.
Wait, are you suggesting that Shostakovich's music is unemotional? Have you heard the 8th String Quartet, or the Largo from the 5th Symphony? You're using labels to define music, when it ought to be the other way around.
I wrote "excessively emotional" and never implied that non-Romantic composers can never be "emotional."
First of all, "realism" in classical music is not synonymous to "Soviet realism." Second of all, the Soviet cultural environment prior to the early to mid-1930s is totally different from what followed under Stalin's "great" leadership. Shostakovich's formative period occurred during the first of these two cultural eras. Last of all, Soviet composers responded differently to the imposed conservative and celebratory standards of Soviet "realism,' with their own brand of realism.
Quote from: Dana on August 02, 2010, 06:28:38 PMWait, are you suggesting that Shostakovich's music is unemotional?
Indeed. "Rage" and "frustration" are also emotions.
Of course, Shostakovich's music is so predictable... the continuous snare-drum... the soviet marches... all that atonal ear-battering.... just the kind of thing Henk is trying to avoid...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guWcI3EG_kQ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guWcI3EG_kQ)
Quote from: False_Dmitry on August 03, 2010, 04:18:49 AM
Of course, Shostakovich's music is so predictable...
I trust you were being facetious.
Both Shostakovich's music and the comic prose of P.G. Wodehouse have their "predictable" aspects, but this is nothing of a "flaw." Their work is ever fresh, and one marvels at the unerring mastery; so that the "predictability" (which is an element and not The Whole Deal) is one plane of the pleasure one takes in the art. Only one aspect of how Shostakovich's work is always fresh, is his approach to sonata design. So many of his opening movements are an engagement with that traditional formal structure, and yet in no one instance is his employment of it predictable.
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on August 03, 2010, 04:51:58 AM
I trust you were being facetious.
The remark needs to be read in conjunction with the YouTube link (to the Cello Sonata) which appears directly below it :)
Quote from: False_Dmitry on August 03, 2010, 05:06:03 AM
The remark needs to be read in conjunction with the YouTube link (to the Cello Sonata) which appears directly below it :)
Ah! I am relieved.
(You will have guessed that I did not mash the link . . . .)
Quote from: Benny on August 03, 2010, 04:04:48 AMI wrote "excessively emotional" and never implied that non-Romantic composers can never be "emotional."
Umm... That's exactly what you implied in the case of realist music -
Quote from: Benny on August 02, 2010, 05:32:55 PMTo refer to Shostakovich as anything "Romantic" is not only far-fetched but off the mark because Romanticism is not realist music. It's excessively emotional.
My rough translation - Shostakovich is not romantic, because romantic music is not realist music. The only requirement you give for romanticism is that it be excessively emotional. Ergo realist music, and Shostakovich's music, is unemotional. Right?
Please describe the musical characteristics of realist music. You imply that each composer has his own standards of what realism is. If that is the case, than using the term as a way to describe the music is useless, since the point of a genre is to group music together according to their acoustical characteristics - if everyone can't use a term to mean roughly the same thing, than it can't be used to describe the effect of the music from a musical, acoustical, or emotional standpoint.
Quote from: Dana on August 03, 2010, 05:36:50 AM
Umm... That's exactly what you implied in the case of realist music -
My rough translation - Shostakovich is not romantic, because romantic music is not realist music. The only requirement you give for romanticism is that it be excessively emotional. Ergo realist music, and Shostakovich's music, is unemotional. Right?
Please describe the musical characteristics of realist music. You imply that each composer has his own standards of what realism is. If that is the case, than using the term as a way to describe the music is useless, since the point of a genre is to group music together according to their acoustical characteristics - if everyone can't use a term to mean roughly the same thing, than it can't be used to describe the effect of the music from a musical, acoustical, or emotional standpoint.
I wish this site had a "RECOMMEND POST" feature, because this post deserves one :)
I know what I said and it was not what you state I said. Being one among several reactions to what was then perceived as the excessively emotional nature of Romantic music, realism is thus, by its very original conception, not Romantic music.
Realism in classical music can materialize in numerous forms. For some of the more "physical" expressions, think of Mosolov's Iron Foundry or Honegger's Pacific 281. Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin speaks of urban violence! Truly, what is the appropriate label for Bartok's music, folkloric?! And yet these three works were composed well before "realism" was mandated by Soviet cultural agents of Stalin.
A lot of works inspired by war and by tyranny seek to convey realistic portrayals and emotions as opposed to great patriotic fervor and adulation of leaders. In their sincere engagement with such human tragedies, composers can be said to have composed realist music.
Quote from: Benny on August 03, 2010, 11:49:15 AM
And yet these three works were composed well before "realism" was mandated by Soviet cultural agents of Stalin.
As has already mentioned, the aims of "realism" (ie the opposite of "impressionism" and "romanticism") and "socialist realism" are utterly different movements in the arts, and cannot be compared with each other.
The goal of "socialist realism" was to place the lives, dreams and hopes
of ordinary people in socialist countries at the centre of focus in artistic works. Of course we can cackle today about ballets written about attempts to beat the world cement-mixing speed record (I'm afraid I am not making this up).... but the idea of technological progress that brought new and modern housing to people living in slum tenements, this stuff really was
more exciting than a story about a fictional young aristocrat's sexual fetish with pond aviary.
Nor is all Socialist Realist work laughable bilge (although some of it certainly is). Rodion Schedrin's opera NOT LOVE ALONE (NE TOL'KO LIUBOV') tackled issues about the roles of women in the workplace. Our heroine is the Manager, and she loves one of the workers... but he won't obey the rules, he's a slacker who prefers card-games to work, and in the end she has to fire him. It's a strong score that deserves to be heard more often - although I suspect the libretto's topic wouldn't play so well now? There is also stupendous music in works like Prokofiev's STORY OF A REAL MAN (POVEST' NASTOYASHEGO CHELOVEKA) - a kind of Russian version of THE DOUGLAS BADER STORY, although once again the issues that were very real after WW2 have moved on. The moving end in which Morozov is decorated by Stalin and remembered as a hero clunks emptily in modern Russia, where the war vets are remembered on one day out of 365 per year... and those left in wheelchairs don't even get wheeled to see the parade. (In fact Helikon Opera in Moscow have taken the piece and controversially changed the ending, making it into a protest piece about the neglect of WW2 veterans).
(http://www.helikon.ru/img/wysiwyg/n%20(2).jpg)
But, ehem, it isn't all gloom and doom. Shostakovich's ballet "The Bright Brook" (also translated as "The Silver Stream") is classical socialist realist codswallop, subverted into a delicious comedy that sits neatly alongside Hollywood movies of a similar vintage like HELLZAPOPPIN'! It's a
"let's do the show right here!" show-within-a-show piece. Ballet dancers from "a big ballet theatre in Moscow" are deployed in summer to farms in Russia's south to help with the harvest (this kind of thing really used to happen). Of course, they bring their costumes, an accordion in place of an orchestra, and whaddyaknow? We gotta show! The neat twist is that one of the farm-girls is a former Bolshoi star who threw-over her dance career FOR THE AGRONOMIST SHE LOVED! But she's hurt by the attraction her husband shows to the lead girl dancer in the troupe... who is, of course, her former ballet-school classmate. The gals resolve to teach the boys a lesson, and meantime there are some silly old stick-in-the-mud locals who've been getting a bit frisky with the "actresses", and they too need a comeuppance. It's all a huge big excuse for two solo scenes in which the Principal Ballerina dresses as a boy (for a sizzling sapphic scene which must have had brows sopping at the premiere), and of course... for the Principal Man to dress up in drag and dance a pastiche on the big scene from LES SYLPHIDES.
Wait!? Socialist Realism? Lesbian love-scenes? Men in drag? Hilarious comedies? Shostakovich writing tangos and foxtrots? Pastiche Tchaikovsky? Male dancers dancing on-point??
What the hell kind of Socialism is this? 8)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdahDCp5uww&feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdahDCp5uww&feature=related)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJl3kXKCt6g (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJl3kXKCt6g)
As has already mentioned, the aims of "realism" (ie the opposite of "impressionism" and "romanticism") and "socialist realism" are utterly different movements in the arts, and cannot be compared with each other.
I beg to differ because your statement is totally out of historical context. The "aim" of whatever was done in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and early 1930s are "utterly different" from what followed under the more oppressive regime of Stalin. To wrap all of that under the generic/static title of "Soviet realism" fails to take into account all the internal conflicts about, guess what?, the meaning of what is "real" to the proletariat. And these fights became really nasty when Stalin took his royal seat. The Limpid Stream is an interesting choice on your part but I would prefer to highlight Shostakovich's bombshell -- Opus 29: "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District", opera in 4 acts after Leskov (1930-1932). I would think that's a more representative work of what Shostakovich himself, not your "Soviet" construct, wished to represent as realist music. But we all know what happened to that work, in 1936, don't we? Even though the general public and state officials were favorably impressed, Stalin was not pleased at all!!! From that point on, Dmitri had to walk the tight rope of what officials viewed as Soviet realism and his own sense of reality.
Quote from: Benny on August 03, 2010, 02:37:34 PMI would think that's a more representative work of what Shostakovich himself, not your "Soviet" construct, wished to represent as realist music.
I haven't a clue what you are talking about here. Who suddenly appointed you Shostakovich's spokesperson anyhow?
Did I step on your toes? You appear to enjoy that role yourself!
Seduction, sex, molestation, more abuse, convicts, murders. Real stuff! What's Soviet about that?
An American music critic called it "pornophony." I'd give D. Shostakovich full credit for being way ahead of his time in projecting such realities in music. But there's nothing inherently Soviet about these themes. They're universal.
Quote from: Benny on August 03, 2010, 03:31:44 PM
Did I step on your toes? You appear to enjoy that role yourself!
Seduction, sex, molestation, more abuse, convicts, murders. Real stuff! What's Soviet about that?
An American music critic called it "pornophony." I'd give D. Shostakovich full credit for being way ahead of his time in projecting such realities in music. But there's nothing inherently Soviet about these themes. They're universal.
Too sweeping.
(See how stupid a comment that is?)
Quote from: Benny on August 03, 2010, 03:31:44 PM
Did I step on your toes? You appear to enjoy that role yourself!
No, I simply discuss more works than one. Then you babble about "historic context". Meaning what? Because the only person here who understands you is you.
You mean yours?
Quote from: False_Dmitry on August 03, 2010, 03:39:44 PM
No, I simply discuss more works than one. Then you babble about "historic context". Meaning what? Because the only person here who understands you is you.
No. I assure you that major changes were occurring in the young Soviet Union after Commissar Anatolii Lunacharskii. It's two different cultural worlds. And that is where we differ. You have argued along politico-geographic lines and I am arguing along historico-cultural ones. Check out this commissar. He was quite remarkable in his openness.
Quote from: Scarpia on August 03, 2010, 03:33:07 PM
Too sweeping.
(See how stupid a comment that is?)
I like his signature though. It's very telling.
As to my man Shostakovich, I simply enjoy his irony and how his works, or the ones I've heard, have a grand element of play involved in them.
Quote from: Benny on August 03, 2010, 02:37:34 PM
As has already mentioned, the aims of "realism" (ie the opposite of "impressionism" and "romanticism") and "socialist realism" are utterly different movements in the arts, and cannot be compared with each other.
I am surprised that you fail to realize that in music, the most abstract of the arts, there can be no such thing as realism as there is in the visual arts.
Period. You can give it a rest now, because that line of discussion has officially gone to earth.
My signature:
Absolutely! There's no need to be absolutely right! And my replies are for those who state that I am "utterly" wrong. Or more diplomatically assert the same by stating, very definitively, that there can be no realism in classical music. That's when I respond, if only to show that nothing is ever absolutely true.
Of course classical music can be realist. Is not death real? It must be expressed as realistically as possible. Poetry is not a visual art either. And there's not a more realistic Soviet poet than Anna Akmatova. Oh, this one really resonated with the proletarian crowd! She must have done something right to be so influential! By the way, Shostakovich loved Akmatova...........
Quote from: False_Dmitry on August 03, 2010, 01:42:15 PM
The goal of "socialist realism" was to place the lives, dreams and hopes of ordinary people in socialist countries at the centre of focus in artistic works. Of course we can cackle today about ballets written about attempts to beat the world cement-mixing speed record (I'm afraid I am not making this up).... but the idea of technological progress that brought new and modern housing to people living in slum tenements, this stuff really was more exciting than a story about a fictional young aristocrat's sexual fetish with pond aviary.
I would suggest that even in 21st century America, "that stuff" is more exciting then any fictional aristocrat's sexual fetish, etc.
If you have a real novel in mind, could you please tell us what it is? I want to make sure I never read it by accident.
Quote
Wait!? Socialist Realism? Lesbian love-scenes? Men in drag? Hilarious comedies? Shostakovich writing tangos and foxtrots? Pastiche Tchaikovsky? Male dancers dancing on-point?? What the hell kind of Socialism is this? 8)
Perhaps to a Russian the effect is different, but I've found some of the things Shostakovich wrote prior to the first condemnation to have more than a touch of hilarity, as if he was trying to see how much satire he could get away with. For instance, the episode titles for the individual sections of The Golden Age--I can't imagine anyone coming up with something like "Touching Coalition of the Classes, slightly fraudulent" for any intention other than to induce hilarity.
And later he was able (in my opinion) to subvert what became the musical conventions of "Soviet Realism" and inform his compositions with a powerful emotional content--of which I would give the Eleventh Symphony as the best example.
Quote from: Benny on August 03, 2010, 04:02:33 PM
My signature:
Absolutely! There's no need to be absolutely right! And my replies are for those who state that I am "utterly" wrong. Or more diplomatically assert the same by stating, very definitively, that there can be no realism in classical music. That's when I respond, if only to show that nothing is ever absolutely true.
Of course classical music can be realist. Is not death real? It must be expressed as realistically as possible. Poetry is not a visual art either. And there's not a more realistic Soviet poet than Anna Akmatova. Oh, this one really resonated with the proletarian crowd! She must have done something right to be so influential! By the way, Shostakovich loved Akmatova...........
Which shows exactly where you lose reality. Music doesn't express anything realistically. What it does is capture the emotional effect of an event or idea--a quite different thing.
Ah, yes, reality: some people know what it is and others don't. How wonderful!!
Vaughan Williams: Sinfonia Antarctica -- emotions? sure, but also ambiance, elements, struggle (is making a streneous effort an emotion?)
Previously mentioned Iron Foundry: lots of percussive, accelerating motion (is motion an emotion?)
Honegger's train music: he loved trains, that's for sure, but what did he express exactly? his emotions or his fascination with the powerful momentum of a most powerful locomotive?
Perhaps music eventually became more than the means to express emotions?
Is minimalism primarily an expression of emotions?
Quote from: Benny on August 03, 2010, 11:49:15 AMI know what I said and it was not what you state I said. Being one among several reactions to what was then perceived as the excessively emotional nature of Romantic music, realism is thus, by its very original conception, not Romantic music.
Could you provide a definition for realism beyond "a reaction to romantic music?" Telling us what something isn't, isn't really telling us what it is. Based on what what you're saying, it sounds like you're referring largely to expressionism.
Quote from: Dana on August 03, 2010, 09:16:29 PM
Could you provide a definition for realism beyond "a reaction to romantic music?" Telling us what something isn't, isn't really telling us what it is. Based on what what you're saying, it sounds like you're referring largely to expressionism.
Correct, that is how it's been called in classical music. But, as an art movement in general, it is referred to as "Realism," beginning with literature and painting. More specifically with respect to the term "Soviet Realism" the corresponding expression outside of the USSR is "Social Realism," which has been defined as:
QuoteSocial Realism developed as a reaction against idealism and the exaggerated ego encouraged by Romanticism. Consequences of the Industrial Revolution became apparent; urban centers grew, slums proliferated on a new scale contrasting with the display of wealth of the upper classes. With a new sense of social consciousness, the Social Realists pledged to "fight the beautiful art", any style which appealed to the eye or emotions. They focused on the ugly realities of contemporary life and sympathized with working-class people, particularly the poor. They recorded what they saw ("as it existed") in a dispassionate manner. The public was outraged by Social Realism, in part, because they didn't know how to look at it or what to do with it (George Shi, University of Fine Arts, Valencia)
Quote from: Benny on August 04, 2010, 04:26:26 AM
Correct, that is how it's been called in classical music.
Strike the passive voice, which is weaselly. Who applies the term "realism" to classical music, and in what context? You're playing fast and loose with this, and you are conveniently "ignoring" any input in this discussion which does not serve your vague purposes.
I have never heard the term "realism" applied to classical music. So the burden is on you to prove that this is not just some paper rabbit you're pulling from a sham hat, and identify facts to support this woolly claim of yours.
You do know what facts are? Good. Let's have some.
TIA.
Such a definition is more apt than "expressionism" in a thread on Shostakovich because that concept is identified in a narrow sense with Schoenberg and his followers. Moreover, "expressionism" is said "to put the emotional expression above everything else." That's not what I have been talking about here. I tend to see Bartok's Mandarin as being more representative of social realism than of "expressionism". Bartok's aspiration to strip the Romantic veneer from folkloric representation in classical music also strikes me as part of that "Realism."
Quote from: Benny on August 04, 2010, 04:38:30 AM
Such a definition is more apt than "expressionism" in a thread on Shostakovich because that concept is identified in a narrow sense with Schoenberg and his followers.
Thank you for conceding that you have no facts to support your fantasy that "realism" is a term applied to music.
The term has been used in classical music but for too many different styles. It's used in reference to Joplin's ragtime music. It's also used in Italian opera as "verismo". Several realist works such as the Iron Foundry are said to be "futurist" in nature. "Social realism" is also said to have applied outside of the USSR during the 1930s and beyond, among "socialist" artists such as Roy Harris.
It has not been used as a clearly defined category like impressionism or expressionism.
How would you label Bela Bartok's music?
Quote from: Benny on August 04, 2010, 04:52:08 AM
The term has been used in classical music but for too many different styles. It's used in reference to Joplin's ragtime music. It's also used in Italian opera as "verismo". Several realist works such as the Iron Foundry are said to be "futurist" in nature. "Social realism" is also said to have applied outside of the USSR during the 1930s and beyond, among "socialist" artists such as Roy Harris.
It has not been used as a clearly defined category like impressionism or expressionism.
How would you label Bela Bartok's music?
The problem with verismo is that the realism lies in the plot, not the untexted music. I think you also need to be careful not to confuse naturalism and pictorialism in music with true realism. The American composer Norman Cazden did try to argue a case for realism in music but it's not something I spend much time thinking about. Judging from KH's posts I would guess these ideas are not widely accepted. You can read Music and Letters 36, 17-38 and Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (1951) 135-151 for further details of his thoughts.
Quote from: Benny on August 04, 2010, 04:52:08 AM
The term has been used in classical music but for too many different styles. It's used in reference to Joplin's ragtime music.
Where? Who used the term "realism"? Of what piece(s)? Quote from: BennyIt's also used in Italian opera as "verismo".
Thank you; this is the beginning of dispelling your smokescreen. Because verismo is not a term applied to musical style. It is (this comes from the Harvard Dictionary of Music, a dictionary which has no entry for "realism," BTW) "a style of operatic composition," which began as a literary movement. This is one reason why even in English we use the Italian term: it is specific to a manner of having music reflect a text. There is no such thing as "realism" in music apart from an extra-musical text. Your idea that verismo can somehow be applied to Shostakovich's work as a whole, is a non-starter. We've already pointed out to you that "Socialist realism" is not a musical term, that historically there is no such thing as specific musical stylistic traits 'belonging' to "Socialist realism," because it was political dogma, and slippery as an eel. Contrary to your fanciful assertions, "realism" is not a term which anyone has applied to classical music; and it is of no use in discussing Shostakovich's music.
Quote from: Benny on August 04, 2010, 04:52:08 AM
How would you label Bela Bartok's music?
I would label it as the music of Bela Bartok.
It shouldn't need to be said, but trying to label composers into well defined, neat and tidy categories, adds little enjoyment to classical music.
All it does is tend to shut doors and closes the mind.
Quote from: kishnevi on August 03, 2010, 05:42:09 PMIf you have a real novel in mind, could you please tell us what it is? I want to make sure I never read it by accident.
Yes, it's Gladkov's novel "CEMENT" (1924)
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8b/CementCover.jpg)
Whatever its literary or sociological merits, it is often cited as an early example of Socialist Realism.
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on August 04, 2010, 05:08:52 AM
We've already pointed out to you that "Socialist realism" is not a musical term, that historically there is no such thing as specific musical stylistic traits 'belonging' to "Socialist realism," because it was political dogma, and slippery as an eel.
Exactly so. Part of the problem with the exegesis is conflating a term ("Socialist Realism") which was introduced as an instrument of State Policy and intended to produce change within society as a whole... with another term ("realism") which is one user's made-up term backwardly and selectively applied to artworks from a century earlier.
It needs to be said - I love the internet.
That Dana loves the internet certainly needed to be said. I knew something was missing in life.
That's Post-Shostakovich sarcasm.
So... Does that mean it was ironic?
Ah, so much confusion for a thread trying to label Shostakovich! I think my question about Bartok was fair in such a thread. If the reply is that it's narrow minded to label anyone than it should be directed to the originator of this thred, no? We lose any sense of logic in the emotional burst of a reply. So to those who replied that Bartok is just Bartok, I should reply that Shostakovich is just Shostakovich (no Soviet Realism, please!), that Brahms is NOT Romantic; he is just Brahms. Etc....
When I try to follow the basic logic of an original thread, there's always the saboteur out there who dismantles the whole logic of said thread.
I gather that we agree that no categories whatsoever will ever be used on these GMG forums? Yes?
Or do I gather that some categories must be officially recognized and even though they don't seem to apply to a lot ..................
of composers, such as Bartok or Shostakovich, in the case of Expressionism, they should nevertheless be respected to the letter because they have been so recognized?
Bartok is no Schonberg. Shostakovich is no Schonberg. ERGO, expressionism does not apply as a category if expressionism is largely traced back to Schonberg.
Which brings us back to the original question. Bartok is not a Soviet composer and yet he is attempting to be realist. But nobody here wants to place him in the existing categories of classical music intelligentsia. I sense a problem with this logic
Mr. Karl Henning's replies are too rigid, too dogmatic to address that question. Others just want to leave Bartok in limbo. "He's Bartok." I believe there does exist a parallel between Bartok and Shostakovich even though the former ridiculed the latter. They are at the fringe of existing academic categories (unless you rely on the meaningless "post-Romantic" label).
My attempt is simply to find a common denominator. I believe that both of them are realists in many of their works, no less than the poets who inspired them.
Eat my heart out. I don't care.
Quote from: Benny on August 04, 2010, 04:50:48 PMWhich brings us back to the original question. Bartok is not a Soviet composer and yet he is attempting to be realist. But nobody here wants to place him in the existing categories of classical music intelligentsia. I sense a problem with this logic
Bartok is a "realist?" What is "realistic" about a Bartok string quartet or the concerto for orchestra? It makes no sense to me whatsoever.
If a composer fits in a category, it suggest to me that we are not talking about a very good composer. I might be persuaded that characterizing composers by their influences can be useful, but the music, almost never.
Quote from: Benny on August 04, 2010, 04:52:14 PM
My attempt is simply to find a common denominator. I believe that both of them are realists in many of their works, no less than the poets who inspired them.
Eat my heart out. I don't care.
You seem to have a strong need to categorize. That's fine, but why do you feel it is necessary to convince others of this. What you are saying about Bartok, Shostakovich, etc, could not make less sense to me.
Be please logical and try to follow my line of reasoning. The very first post in this thread asks how to label Shostakovich. I respect this invitation to label. Can you? So how would you label Bartok? If you don't want to than why on earth are you not arguing with the member who is asking us to label???
By the way, how do you label Shostakovich? And if you don't, then what are you doing in a thread about labeling Shostakovich???
Can we be logical?
Quote from: Scarpia on August 04, 2010, 04:58:05 PM
You seem to have a strong need to categorize. That's fine, but why do you feel it is necessary to convince others of this. What you are saying about Bartok, Shostakovich, etc, could not make less sense to me.
That's a really absurb comment given the original spirit of this thread. My reply:
You seem to have a real need to be spontaneous without paying attention to where you are spontaneous.
Quote from: Benny on August 04, 2010, 05:00:32 PM
Be please logical and try to follow my line of reasoning. The very first post in this thread asks how to label Shostakovich. I respect this invitation to label. Can you? So how would you label Bartok? If you don't want to than why on earth are you not arguing with the member who is asking us to label???
By the way, how do you label Shostakovich? And if you don't, then what are you doing in a thread about labeling Shostakovich???
Can we be logical?
I enjoy both Shostakovich's and Bartok's music - but I feel not need to categorize them and do not find the term "realism" as having any application to music.
OK. Message to Henk: I have tried to obtain some explicit answer to your question but to no avail. The apparent consensus among those who constantly use terms such as "Baroque" composer, "Classical" composer, "Romantic" composer, "Neo-Romantic" composer, and "Expressionist" composer, not to mention minimalist and etc, is that we are misguided in attempting to categorize Shostakovich (or Bartok). End of story.
Quote from: Franco on August 04, 2010, 05:04:49 PM do not find the term "realism" as having any application to music.
Word. If
Benny wants to disagree with us, he's gonna have to quit dodging the question, and lay down some
defining musical characteristics of the genre.
with "us." I admire the spirit of solidarity!
My reply to your quest for a very specific definition in this thread on labeling Shostakovich, ie, placing him somewhere in all the well defined categories you like so much, is
please label both Shostakovich and Bartok.
If you say "Expressionism" I will make sure to express my issue....
That's to you
and, I'm sure,
a-l-l of you.
I'm glad I haven't heard the term "Realism" to describe Shostakovich. Uggghhh...
(though I'd imagine the term could be useful to describe some works that Prokofiev and Shostakovich wrote to get favor from the Communist party, such as Prokofiev's "Story of a Real Man")
What about "Soviet Romanticism?" That has an okay ring to it...
People who make up ever new labels to describe artists have a skewed understanding of how artists work. Sorry.
Quote from: Corey on August 04, 2010, 07:29:11 PM
People who make up ever new labels to describe artists have a skewed understanding of how artists work. Sorry.
What's the original term, before I made up mine.
Sorry.
Do you think Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelsohn, Brahms, Wagner, Dvorak, Tchaikowsky, MUSSORGSKY, Grieg, etc., would appreciate the fact that they are ALL labeled by us as Romantics? I would doubt that. But no problem, right, with calling them just that?
Oh, that wasn't a dig at you — but I mean "grand style"? Come on.
Romantic, Classical period, Baroque are useful because they're convenient, but it would be incorrect to say that even these terms are not fluid. IIRC most of them only became popular during the early years of the 20th Century (please correct me if I'm wrong).
I won't correct you but isn't it obvious that in a thread about labels I'm exploring why some paradigms appear to be so acceptable and others leave out a bunch of composers who, oh, should be understood on their own ground, without labels.
Gees. Give me a break.
I'm not sure what exactly you mean nor why you are coming off so hostile.
Quote from: Benny on August 04, 2010, 05:01:56 PM
That's a really absurb comment given the original spirit of this thread. My reply:
You seem to have a real need to be spontaneous without paying attention to where you are spontaneous.
Some composers can be catagorized and some can't . To say that Schumann was a Romantic is fairly conventional and perhaps says something about his music. I don't see that Bartok's music can be catagorized, and it seems pointless to try to force him into a category.
That could be it (without exclamation). The twentieth-century composers who, for the first in music history, do not fit into any category (without exclamation), belong into the school of hostility (no further exclamation).
I wish Nosyrev was still alive. I could ask him if that is accurate.
And what, pray tell, is the school of hostility?
Oh, when the segmented mind no longer distinguishes irony from category....................
I'm adding a third enigma into the categorically classified mind equation: Mussorgsky. Thus far, nobody has come forth to "fit" Shostakovich and Bartok into any academically sound and heurestically useful category. Fine(exclamation).
I personally do not think that Mussorgsky is a ""romantic"" like his contemporaries, not even like Balakirev, Cui_who remembers him, and Rimsky... the debating stage is open with respect to Borodin, another bold mind.
But, you know what? Mussorgsky is sometimes referred to as a "realist"composer. Surprised? He was unconventional and "utterly" oblivious to what R-K said was "good." Realist because it was more Russian than ever before. Just like Bartok was more Hungarian than ever before.
How do you label Mussorgsky? Merely a Romantic? Oh. come on!!!
Quote from: Benny on August 04, 2010, 09:04:57 PM
How do you label Mussorgsky? Merely a Romantic? Oh. come on!!!
Is it really that important?...
It is in terms of people who have the key, the paradigm, the conceptual framework, which places composers in their academically recognized artistic environment. I assure you that I am not one to accept these buidling blocks. My whole purpose here is to question conceptual frames of reference.
Is not obvious that strong, creative minds will challenge these very concepts? And that is my point. Shostakovich, Bartok, Mussorgsky do not fit neatly into anyh category created by "experts" because, from the beginning, they challenged conventions.
When a bunch of solidarity people here assert that I'm out of my mind in speaking of "realism" in classical music, they're referring to an existing cannon, an orthodox representation of how one should understand artistic development. Yet, composers themselves challenged orthodoxy. When the Romantic cannon is applied to Mussorgsky, it does not fit for the simple reason that he rebelled against it during is life time.
Quote from: Benny on August 04, 2010, 09:04:57 PMCui_who remembers him
Not you, clearly (exclamation mark)
His kids operas are great, we did THE SNOW KNIGHT as our New Year Show last year. PUSS IN BOOTS is a good piece too. But his serious operas are worthwhile... the unusual MADEMOISELLE FIFI is worth reviving (it's not what it sounds like from the title).
QuoteBut, you know what? Mussorgsky is sometimes referred to as a "realist"composer.
ROFL!Quotethey're referring to an existing cannon
(http://0.tqn.com/d/cruises/1/0/1/n/3/Kremlin_123.JPG)
Presumably this one, from which the remains of the Pretender (in BORIS GODUNOV) were fired "in the direction of Poland" after he'd been hung, drawn and quartered.
Quote from: Benny on August 04, 2010, 09:20:05 PM
It is in terms of people who have the key, the paradigm, the conceptual framework, which places composers in their academically recognized artistic environment. I assure you that I am not one to accept these buidling blocks. My whole purpose here is to question conceptual frames of reference.
Is not obvious that strong, creative minds will challenge these very concepts? And that is my point. Shostakovich, Bartok, Mussorgsky do not fit neatly into anyh category created by "experts" because, from the beginning, they challenged conventions.
When a bunch of solidarity people here assert that I'm out of my mind in speaking of "realism" in classical music, they're referring to an existing cannon, an orthodox representation of how one should understand artistic development. Yet, composers themselves challenged orthodoxy. When the Romantic cannon is applied to Mussorgsky, it does not fit for the simple reason that he rebelled against it during is life time.
What does any of that have to do with music?
Quote from: Franco on August 04, 2010, 05:04:49 PM
I enjoy both Shostakovich's and Bartok's music - but I feel not need to categorize them and do not find the term "realism" as having any application to music.
You might be right, but there have been serious articles written on realism in abstract music, so Benny isn't conjuring up this term out of thin air. FWIW, I was reading a couple of those articles and decided that applying "realism" to music is a useless way to communicate with others about a composer's style or idiom.
Quote from: False_Dmitry on August 04, 2010, 09:44:12 PM
ROFL!
Seconded. That was the crowning glory of miraculous series of posts :-\
Mussorgsky is more alcoholic than realist...
Quote from: Benny on August 04, 2010, 08:27:07 PM
I wish Nosyrev was still alive. I could ask him if that is accurate.
And what if he laughed you off, too? You swish in here with a new label, claim (falsely) that the label has already been in use, nor can you bother (even upon repeated invitation) to define that label. And you wonder if someone is going to consider your undefined label "accurate." If requiring of you some intellectual honesty is dogmatic, I consider it an honor to be called dogmatic in this thread. Lots of people here are giving you sound, intelligent feedback; and you just respond with the sound of a mind snapping shut. You already know it all. Nothing you've said in this thread -- not a thing -- indicates that you understand the least thing about Shostakovich's music.
Quote from: Benny on August 04, 2010, 09:20:05 PM
Is not obvious that strong, creative minds will challenge these very concepts? And that is my point. Shostakovich, Bartok, Mussorgsky do not fit neatly into anyh category created by "experts" because, from the beginning, they challenged conventions.
So your "point" is the musicological equivalent of announcing that a wheel is round, eh? No one here -- apart from you, in the case of Shostakovich, and with your patter about "realism" -- has suggested attaching any neat label upon any of these three composers. I have worked with many strong creative minds. Yours seems contraindicated so far.
Yes, there are common labels to lump composers into a style, e.g. Baroque composers (Bach), Classical (Mozart), Romantic (Liszt), etc - but these labels are possible and help to understand the music only when an aesthetic style dominated a period. But the 20th century is notable precisely for a lack of a period-defining style - hence, it is my sense (and I suspect most people on this forum sense) that attempting to apply an all embracing label to 20th century composers is somewhat artificial and has much less meaning than for previous eras.
Quote from: Franco on August 05, 2010, 02:31:54 AM
But the 20th century is notable precisely for a lack of a period-defining style - hence, it is my sense (and I suspect most people on this forum sense) that attempting to apply an all embracing label to 20th century composers is somewhat artificial and has much less meaning than for previous eras.
Yes, my favourite "labels" are:
- eighteenth-century composers
- nineteenth-century composers
- twentieth-century composers
- twenty-first-century composers
Mysteriously these labels are always undisputed :)
Quote from: Lethe on August 05, 2010, 12:12:33 AM
Seconded. That was the crowning glory of miraculous series of posts :-\
It's quite remarkable to hear a composer who doused himself liberally with vodka as a means of blotting-out the awful reality of the world... who was extremely proud of his symphonic scene WITCH'S SABBATH ON ST JOHN'S NIGHT (later reworked as A NIGHT ON THE BALD MOUNTAIN) could be described...
as a
"realist" composer?? :o
Quote from: False_Dmitry on August 05, 2010, 06:23:02 AM
It's quite remarkable to hear a composer who doused himself liberally with vodka as a means of blotting-out the awful reality of the world... who was extremely proud of his symphonic scene WITCH'S SABBATH ON ST JOHN'S NIGHT (later reworked as A NIGHT ON THE BALD MOUNTAIN) could be described...
as a "realist" composer?? :o
Avoiding the "realist" tag here to avoid controversy but I suspect Benny was talking about the songs although he didn't make it explicit. I think Benny needs to think more carefully about how he defines realism vs other isms and some of these problems will go away.
If Benny is talking about any specific works, he is keeping it a deep, dark secret. (Hey! Maybe that's the riddle of the thread header!)
Quote from: Il Furioso on August 05, 2010, 06:31:00 AM
I suspect Benny was talking about the songs although he didn't make it explicit.
Perhaps. I wouldn't call the texts of SONGS & DANCES OF DEATH very "realist" though. Nor in fact many of Musorsky's other songs either.
Without making a big deal of it, I'd also mention that Musorgsky's name only has one "s" in Russian, and a second one in English is probably inessential... even if it is seen in print sometimes.
Quote from: False_Dmitry on August 05, 2010, 07:18:56 AM
Perhaps. I wouldn't call the texts of SONGS & DANCES OF DEATH very "realist" though. Nor in fact many of Musorsky's other songs either.
Without making a big deal of it, I'd also mention that Musorgsky's name only has one "s" in Russian, and a second one in English is probably inessential... even if it is seen in print sometimes.
I agree, I guess my point is that Benny's notion of realism is a bit fuzzy, I was just taking a best guess at what aspect of Mus(s)orgsky he was talking about.
Fine, if you want a label for Shostakovich, you will have it.
Awesome! Mixed in with a bit of terrific, and a dash of magnificent.
Quote from: Brahmsian on August 05, 2010, 09:24:58 AM
Fine, if you want a label for Shostakovich, you will have it.
Awesome! Mixed in with a bit of terrific, and a dash of magnificent.
A.T.M.
Quote from: springrite on August 05, 2010, 09:26:39 AM
A.T.M.
There, that will make it easy for everyone to remember.
From here on, known as the
ATM, DSCH. 8)
Quote from: Brahmsian on August 05, 2010, 09:24:58 AM
Fine, if you want a label for Shostakovich, you will have it.
Awesome! Mixed in with a bit of terrific, and a dash of magnificent.
I'm afraid there is some Overblown and Prosaic mixed in there at times.
To Mr. Henning, sorry, Dr. Henning, who appears to know more about my understanding of Shostakovich than myself.
On page 77 of Ross's The Rest is Noise you will find the subheading "In Search of the Real: Janacek, Bartok, Ravel". In that section of the book, Ross addresses the question "What would it mean for music to render life "just as it is," in van Gogh's phrase? Composers had been pondering that question for centuries, and, at various times and in different ways, they had infused their work with the rhythms of everyday life."
On page 79: "Three great "realists" in early-twentieth-century music --Janacek, Bartok, and Ravel -- were born in villages or outlying towns in their respective homelands: Hukvaldy in Moravia, Nagyszentmilos in Hungary, and Ciboure in the French Basque country. Although they were trained in the cities, and remained city dwellers for most of their lives, these composers never shook the feeling that they had come from somewhere else."
Page 84: "Bartok, likewise, talked about the "highest emotions," a "great reality." Adds Ross, the artist "can stand in for all humanitiy, becoming a "metaphor for wholeness."....................
Bottom of page 84:
"Maurice Ravel is a special case among turn-of-the-century "realists."
I am apparently not the only one to use this concept.
On the issue of whether or not I understand Shostakovich, I am sure that you are correct in that I do not understand him like you. But Ross makes a point that irony, which Shostakovich uses a lot, cannot possibly result in a shared understanding.
Do you agree with Akhmatova that his seventh is a "kind of mad carnival"? That's her understanding. Did she get it right??? ;D
Quote from: Benny on August 05, 2010, 05:07:06 PMDo you agree with Akhmatova that his seventh is a "kind of mad carnival"? That's her understanding. Did she get it right??? ;D
Why don't you take the earplugs out of your ears, put Ross's book back on the shelf, and try
listening to the music for yourself, for a change?
There is a great deal more in the 7th Symphony than most people suspect. Shostakovich never called it "the Leningrad" - a title superimposed upon it by someone at the Council Of Composers, in time of war (DCSH agreed to the name-change in view of events which were overtaking the USSR at the time). Shostakovich's own title for the 7th Symphony was "The Legendary".
QuoteOn page 79: "Three great "realists" in early-twentieth-century music --Janacek, Bartok, and Ravel
Not Shostakovich, then? Not Puccini, the master of
verismo, who lived until 1924? Nor Alfano, who inherited Puccini's
verismo mantle? Ross is predisposed to talk-down music written in Germany & Austria, but it's really surprising he can't find a place in his "realist" pantheon for Alban Berg, whose opera WOZZECK (1925) is the very epitome of the gritty and relentless reality that so shocked its public? Nor for Kurt Weill, who wrote an "opera for beggars" and an opera-ballet about the "seven deadly sins
of ordinary people"?
No, Ross reserves his "realism" for Ravel (whose operas include roles for a singing teapot and vocalising pieces of furniture), and for Bartok (whose "realism" stretches to a fantasy opera about a mythical Duke who collects sexual conquests in a castle... and a ballet about the murder of a mandarin
who then comes back from the dead?).Janacek - a realist, a fatalist, and a pessimist. No question there.
Akhmatova just turned in her grave.
So much smoke in this room! Do I gather from the last comment that "realism" does apply after all?
Berg? Absolutely!
Bartok? The previous references were to the Miraculous Mandarin and to stripping off the veneer of Romanticism from representations of folklore in classical music.
Ravel? As de Falla!
Quote from: Benny on August 06, 2010, 02:28:49 AM
Do I gather from the last comment that "realism" does apply after all?
To the extent that Janacek was interested in naturalism, then yes, perhaps. But I think you would have a hard job persuading anyone that operas about (i) a woman who has lived from the C16th until the 1920s under a sequence of pseudonyms, and seduced hundreds of men (ii) forest animals who sing and dance, have wedding ceremonies, etc... are especially "realist".
But why then has Ross not mentioned Shostakovich as a "realist"??
Quote from: Benny on August 06, 2010, 02:28:49 AM
So much smoke in this room!
All of your brewing, you clown! You don't want anyone to notice your signal lack of facts! You wag!
Now, if Shostakovich's music is fairly to be labeled as "realism" . . . let's see, 147 opus numbers . . . what's a fair percentage?
Benny, you dawg, please list 40 works by Shostakovich which are "realist," and the musical characteristics of each which justify the label.
. . . a label which you still cannot define! High-larious!
Examples of musical stylistic terms found in the index to Alex Ross's The Rest Is Noise:
aleatory music
atonality
bebop
chance music
Futurism
Gebrauchsmusik
jazz
Klangfarbenmelodie
micropolyphony
musique concrète
neoclassicism
ragtime
serialism
stochastic music
total serialism
Absent from the index (and indeed, from the book):
"realism"
Aside from a few operas mentioned (curiously no one has called John Adams a realist despite his Nixon in China and Death of Klinghoffer - both operas taken right out of the newspapers; although the idea of Nixon, Mao and Palestinian terrorists singing is quite unreal) there has been no indication that the label "realism" can meaningfully be applied to purely instrumental music, music with no program - abstract instrumental music.
I defy anyone to convince me otherwise.
If the term realism is to be applied to staged musical works - it really does not have much meaning since operas and oratorios from all periods could fit the bill.
But, in actuality, I find nothing at all real about any opera (no matter how gritty or historical the story), it being the most artificial of the arts - not that that makes it any less enjoyable.
Not from the book!! That's a blatant lie!!!!!
Dr. Henning. Anyone who owns a copy can refer to the pages I have cited. What are you doing?! :o
Quote from: Benny on August 06, 2010, 02:49:44 PM
Not from the book!! That's a blatant lie!!!!!
Dr. Henning. Anyone who owns a copy can refer to the pages I have cited. What are you doing?! :o
Since your passion seems to mainly be for classifying things, I suggest you give up classical music and take up stamp collecting.
"Whatever!", to quote our drug-addicted younger generation. Reason will not prevail here. I cite and it's rejected. I draw attention to composers, non-Soviet composers, who wished to be more "real," less Romantic, and it's rejected too. I argue with the scholar that poetry is very real, in some instances, and greatly influenced some composers, but he persists with the dogma that classical music is abstract and must be differentiated from other arts. I refer to technologically realistic works, but no comment on that. I mention how Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin has recently been analyzed as a portrayal of the underside of urban life, but it's ridiculed.
Frankly, I really don't give a hoot about your close mindedness. And, incidentally, you do demonstrate, one after the other, what I mean in my signature.
Take care of your cherished ideas.
Go to hell, Scarpia. You really don't make any sense anyway.
Quote from: Benny on August 06, 2010, 02:56:40 PMFrankly, I really don't give a hoot about your close mindedness. And, incidentally, you do demonstrate, one after the other, what I mean in my signature.
I think if there is someone here who could learn from your signature, it is you. 8)
And this from a person who never stopped to think about the first post in this thread before he opened his mouth, again, and again, and again. Which I stated before. Which you still don't understand. Which is why I believe you make no sense.
Quote from: Benny on August 06, 2010, 03:17:30 PM
And this from a person who never stopped to think about the first post in this thread before he opened his mouth, again, and again, and again. Which I stated before. Which you still don't understand. Which is why I believe you make no sense.
One way to respond to the first post of the thread is to reject the idea that it is useful to put a label on Shostakovich.
Aside from that, threads are conversations, and are not slavishly tied to the original post. It is perfectly valid to respond to an notion raised in the course of the discussion without referring everything to the original post.
Again, the rigidity of your thinking is an impediment to discussion.
More smoke in my eyes. You never so responded to the original thread, only to my suggestion that there's a "realist" vein among some composers. And what was your response? That I had a tendency to classify! In a threat about classification!!! Your logic, sir, is not really impressive.
Ah, Benny — master of the non-answer!
Quote from: Benny on August 06, 2010, 03:36:44 PM
More smoke in my eyes. You never so responded to the original thread, only to my suggestion that there's a "realist" vein among some composers. And what was your response? That I had a tendency to classify! In a threat about classification!!! Your logic, sir, is not really impressive.
That is correct, I disagree with the implication in the original post that there is a necessity, or even an advantage, in classifying Shostakovitch. That is just as valid a response to the original post as any other. I fail to see what logic has to do with it.
Quote from: Scarpia on August 06, 2010, 03:31:21 PM
One way to respond to the first post of the thread is to reject the idea that it is useful to put a label on Shostakovich.
Aside from that, threads are conversations, and are not slavishly tied to the original post. It is perfectly valid to respond to an notion raised in the course of the discussion without referring everything to the original post.
Again, the rigidity of your thinking is an impediment to discussion.
QFT
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on August 06, 2010, 08:19:51 AM
[P]lease list 40 works by Shostakovich which are "realist," and the musical characteristics of each which justify the label.
The question stands, Benny.
Only if you can give up the comfort of your smoke-machines, to be sure.
You know as well as I do that any artistic mind cannot be so cataloged in every work, Dr. Henning. My reference to Bartok is about specific works, not his entire life production. Similarly with everybody else, including Honegger. To state that some composers had a tendency to be "realist" is not to compile a list of forty works in which they were.
(parenthetically, your notion that classical music can never be realist leaves room for absolutely no such work!)
Shostakovich can be understood as using irony to challenge conventional representations of reality (my signature, right?)
Don't tell me that you know the meaning of his irony!! Nobody can have such a certainty. If I am correct and his sarcasm and irony serve a critical purpose, if I'm correct and his blunt representations of unwanted realities serve to challenge conventionally accepted "reality," then he is indeed a very realist composer.
In reply to your silly quantitative request, I would thus encourage you to question how you understand his irony in classical music.
Quote from: Benny on August 06, 2010, 05:00:56 PM
You know as well as I do that any artistic mind cannot be so cataloged in every work, Dr. Henning.
Not asking for every work, smokemeister, I asked only for 40. I figured that 40 works out of 147 might justify a label.
And, what a surprise! Another non-answer from the Bennster! What a clown!
Quote from: Benny on August 06, 2010, 05:01:48 PM
In reply to your silly quantitative request
Hah, hah, hah! I guess asking for a definition was a "silly quantitative request," too!
No, no surprise -- you aren't ready to give up your smokescreen. If you were an emperor, Benny, what sort of wardrobe do you suppose you would have, hmmm?
You're calling names --indicative that reason is no longer the operative field. My logic is sound. I'm not questioning yours like you did mine. I rest confident in my beliefs, however temporary they are, in 2010. You can hang on to your totally exclusive dogma about reality in classical music.
In the end, my mind is willing to consider the possibility, as Ross put it, that composers thought about this.
In your comments, you revealed that you blocked that possibility out.
That's the truth. Anyone who has been following this exchange knows it too.
Live with the "absolute" impact of your words.
(and keep your personal attacks going; they're being treated just like your own smoke screens).
Dude... someone needs to seriously chill. You're really starting to make me laugh, and I'm almost starting to feel bad about it...
I need to chill. It's so damn hot this year. Have you got a recipe? Bet you that Shostakovich was pretty tense in 1942 (what? no laughing smiley around here?)
If you live anywhere near where I do, I can understand. I work outside, and if I actually focused on how much I constantly sweat, I would probably start throwing stuff.
I did that five days ago -- focusing on how much I was sweating. Ten minutes into this scenario I asked myself: "Is it worth it?"
The answer was, well, complicated. Economically, it was negative. A stupid exercise. But then I thought about my pores and their particular needs and I stuck in there for another hour or so.
They asked me how I knew
His label for Shostakovich was untrue;
I was realist to realize
His smoke gets in your eyes.
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on August 07, 2010, 04:33:43 AM
They asked me how I knew
His label for Shostakovich was untrue;
I was realist to realize
His smoke gets in your eyes.
Would be more bizarre if you wrote this in haiku form...
Labels are for scientists.
Real art eludes
Such simplistic thinking
:D
When I first listened to Shostakovich...hem..no...when I first listened to Mahler (7th), my first thought was that they were strong similarities with Shostakovich's sounds.
But :
1. Mahler is not for me a symbol of romanticism as Berlioz, Liszt or Wagner are. His worked remained partly classicist.
2. Shostakovich's form is strongly classically structured, more than Mahler. There is more Haydn than Berlioz in it.
He's probably regarded as a romanticist because of the emotions inherent to his music.
But emotions did not commence with romanticism. Romanticism was a new way to write music which was usually not applied by Shostakovich, Brahms or Mendelssohn.
My conclusion is that Shosty's a classicist
"Just you leave my cloud-dweller alone!"
Said Joe Stalin - and slammed down the phone.
With his operas all banned
Dima played a new hand
And made abstract music his own.
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on August 06, 2010, 05:52:28 PM
Not asking for every work, smokemeister, I asked only for 40. I figured that 40 works out of 147 might justify a label.
Here, I'll lend a helping hand. I have found the archetypal "realist" work in Shostakovich's oeuvre!
The Nose, je-je-je!
Quote from: Corey on August 07, 2010, 10:26:30 PM
Labels are for scientists.
Real art eludes
Such simplistic thinking
Labels are for stamp collectors, not scientists.
You can't expect a silly joke to be a source of verity!
Quote from: Corey on August 07, 2010, 10:26:30 PM
Labels are for scientists.
Real art eludes
Such simplistic thinking
:D
Haha- sounds nice!
Quote from: quintett op.57 on August 08, 2010, 01:03:09 AM1. Mahler is not for me a symbol of romanticism as Berlioz, Liszt or Wagner are. His worked remained partly classicist.
2. Shostakovich's form is strongly classically structured, more than Mahler. There is more Haydn than Berlioz in it.
1. Curious, as I've most often heard Mahler referred to as a post-romantic, due mostly to the emotional content of his music - the presence of irony, satire, and his tendency to deny happy endings. Your line of thinking is also somewhat valid - I personally wouldn't go so far as to say that there is a strong classicist influence in his work - which shows the difficulty in labeling. If we use the "use of classical forms make the composer classical," argument, than that makes Brahms - pretty much the poster child of romanticism - inarguably a classical composer.
2. This is not quite true. There are classical tendencies in his compositions - he generally has clearly identifiable theme groups, often recapitulates, and some of his compositions could almost be termed neoclassical - such as the 3rd string quartet, or the 9th symphony - by and large, he does not stick to classical blueprints. At any rate, you'd be hard pressed to find very many clear-cut examples of the sonata-allegro form in his output, and the later you go in his career - I'd say he starts veering off the path by about the 5th string quartet - the harder it is to categorize his forms. By the time you get to the 9th string quartet, it's all but impossible.
Quote from: Dana on August 09, 2010, 08:10:22 PM
2. This is not quite true. There are classical tendencies in his compositions - he generally has clearly identifiable theme groups, often recapitulates, and some of his compositions could almost be termed neoclassical - such as the 3rd string quartet, or the 9th symphony - by and large, he does not stick to classical blueprints. At any rate, you'd be hard pressed to find very many clear-cut examples of the sonata-allegro form in his output, and the later you go in his career - I'd say he starts veering off the path by about the 5th string quartet - the harder it is to categorize his forms. By the time you get to the 9th string quartet, it's all but impossible.
And of course, there are very understandable reasons why all of this was the case. DSCH already had a chequered career with the Kremlin, whose ever-changing ideological caprices set an impossible benchmark. Lenin was the only soviet leader until Gorbachev who had any kind of valid tertiary education - the rest were hotheads and fools, whose appreciation of "culture" was merely a public affectation to avoid looking like the knuckleheads they were. Yet as DSCH discovered to his cost with Lady Mac, the appointment of allegedly "qualified" burocrats to manage the USSR's cultural programs didn't offer composers the slightest protection from kneejerk Kremlin lunges if they ventured too far from the genre of 4-square patriotic march-tunes and tub-thumpers.
Shostakovich had the technical ability, and the creative integrity, to shroud his later work in forms which were too complex for the Kremlin's rumpty-tum-loving oafs to penetrate... but which occupied an intellectual plane they dared not criticise for fear of revealing their philistine tendencies. However, if at one end of the spectrum there was the potential charge of failing to write "accessible" music, the charge of "formalism" (whatever this blithering piece of soviet-speak really meant?) was another possible risk. Works written within the terms of identifiable "forms" were also - incredibly - subject to official censure. Shostakovich steered neatly clear of all this in his later works... he simply showed a clean pair of heels to those waiting to tear into his work.
This morning I listened to the Shostakovich Cello Concerto and was struck at just what a great work this is. Peter Wispelwey brought a rugged warmth to the solo part - and aside from the regular complaint I have with Shostakovich (the relentless sequences building building to a climax) this is one of his better works, IMO.
Opus 107 or Opus 126?
Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on August 10, 2010, 06:10:37 AM
Opus 107 or Opus 126?
107 - I did not even know he wrote two.
:-\
They're both very good!