Well, not really... but I was killing a few minutes earlier and decided to see which of the more "crappy" composers had the most recordings available (using ArkivMusic's count as a figure). The ones I found with 100 or more recordings available are as follows:
Schoenberg 511
Messiaen 467
Ives 364
Berg 364
Cage 318
Ginastera 236
Schnittke 235
Lutoslawski 198
Ligeti 179
Webern 177
Carter 163
Berio 150
Tippett 140
Henze 129
Dutilleux 110
Gubaidulina 102
http://www.youtube.com/v/E8_GVfPuw4M
About what I'd expect. And thanks for reviving the term "atonal crap" (AC for short). Makes me nostalgic for CI times. :)
I love atonal crap!
I can either watch countless episodes Harcore Pawn with Lester and family from Detroit, or watch this thread unfold. Either way, let the train wrecks begin. ;D
*munches on popcorn*
Quote from: Bogey on November 09, 2013, 09:31:59 AM
I can either watch countless episodes Harcore Pawn with Lester and family from Detroit, or watch this thread unfold. Either way, let the train wrecks begin. ;D
*munches on popcorn*
Huge smile here,
Bill, thanks!
Atonal crap is better than tonal shit.
I think it's a typo, it was meant to read "A tonal crap."
Quote from: Scarpia on November 09, 2013, 01:19:29 PM
People are gonna panic. There's going to be gold riots, atonal music, political chaos, mass suicide.
AND...
http://www.youtube.com/v/O3ZOKDmorj0
Quote from: edward on November 09, 2013, 09:05:59 AM
Well, not really... but I was killing a few minutes earlier and decided to see which of the more "crappy" composers had the most recordings available (using ArkivMusic's count as a figure). The ones I found with 100 or more recordings available are as follows:
Schoenberg 511
Messiaen 467
Ives 364
Berg 364
Cage 318
Ginastera 236
Schnittke 235
Lutoslawski 198
Ligeti 179
Webern 177
Carter 163
Berio 150
Tippett 140
Henze 129
Dutilleux 110
Gubaidulina 102
It did strike me as curious when I saw the words
popular and
atonal adjacent to each other. Not normally a combination you see.
Of course to be totally reliable, you'd have to deduct the tonal works out from, for instance, Schonberg's count. There must be a considerable number of recordings of
Verklarte Nacht, for instance. And a few other composers have works that might be considered more not-quite-tonal than atonal, episodically atonal, or other gradations of the curve--Ives, Tippett, Dutilleux, for example.
Quote from: Jeffrey Smith on November 09, 2013, 04:39:40 PMOf course to be totally reliable....
Well, to be
totally reliable, you'd have to stop mixing descriptive terms (tonal) and non-descriptive terms (atonal) together and treating them as equally descriptive.
Hah! That's logical. When's
that ever gonna happen?
No. Popcorn. In a situation like this, popcorn's your only option.
The Messiaen I've heard ain't sound nothing like the Schoenberg I've heard.
As they say in Glasgow: I'm jus watchen youse guys.
Knight
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_CyCxq9MJLmY/S8j2LLI0gdI/AAAAAAAADFY/dvqvU5T_vIE/s1600/Canada+Goose,+banded,+big+bully_1830.JPG)
;D
There are several hundred in the soccer field, across from my apartment. Sure to make their way soon to my GMG friends down south.
Atonal honking, and they love to crap! :D
Atonal honking: it's the way I roll.
$:)
Wait a minute!!
Those geese are in nature.
Everything that's in nature is good.
Therefore atonal honking is good.
Quote from: some guy on November 10, 2013, 05:15:04 AM
Wait a minute!!
Those geese are in nature.
Everything that's in nature is good.
Therefore atonal honking is good.
:D Their honking is good, but they could simmer down on crapping everywhere. :laugh:
Quote from: some guy on November 10, 2013, 01:07:56 AM
Well, to be totally reliable, you'd have to stop mixing descriptive terms (tonal) and non-descriptive terms (atonal) together and treating them as equally descriptive.
Hah! That's logical. When's that ever gonna happen?
Maybe we should be mathematical about this and apply advanced statistics. Perhaps a Honking Index (HI), where 0 indicates nary a single honk and 100 is maximal honking.
Example in a sentence:
"I tried getting through that Boulez notation, but with this hangover my ears can only handle up to 30 HI."
Yeah, that's what we need, to apply math to something that cannot be counted.
I say we go whole hog (or 100% porcine).
Let's have an SI for GMG posts. An SI of 25 or higher gets you a warning.
100 gets you banned for life. From everything.
Does microtonal crap count as "atonal crap" ?
Some of it can be pretty mellifluous!
http://www.youtube.com/v/lOihGnn6HoE
The key is, that "atonal crap" needn't actually be atonal! It's just a term of derision from someone who had rather be listening to [Almost] Anything Written Before 1897 . . . .
Quote from: karlhenning on November 11, 2013, 06:24:42 AM
The key is, that "atonal crap" needn't actually be atonal! It's just a term of derision from someone who had rather be listening to [Almost] Anything Written Before 1897 . . . .
My mom once accidentally inverted the usual sentiment by referring to some 20th century composer derisively and mis-scoffing, "I can't stand that tonal crap!"
One person's atonal crap is another person's Great Music. 8)
Quote from: jochanaan on November 11, 2013, 07:52:10 AM
One person's atonal crap is another person's Great Music. 8)
(Raises up glass)
Hear! Hear!
Quote from: karlhenning on November 11, 2013, 06:24:42 AM
The key is, that "atonal crap" needn't actually be atonal! It's just a term of derision from someone who had rather be listening to [Almost] Anything Written Before 1897 . . . .
And to put into perspective, while much 20/21th century music can be described as crap, so can a large proportion of the music composed and performed in the five centuries before then. It's only that the accidents of time and the aesthetic taste of preceding generations have winnowed out the crap already, and so for us the task for the music of that period is to reverse the process and figure out what music should not have been winnowed out. Whereas, for the music of roughly the last 100 years, it's up to us to do our own personal winnowing.
As for the actual meaning of "atonal"--well, as Humpty Dumpty says, a word means what I say it means, and I say "atonal" has a rather literal meaning: "does not use a tonal pattern in which the traditional European system of chords (thirds, fifths, sixths, etc.) can be aurally recognized." That means a work that uses, f.i., an Asian scale as its basis is not necessarily atonal, and a work in which traditional chord structure (such those of the Second Viennese School) can not be discerned by listening (even if on paper it seems to use such structures) is atonal. For the vast amount of works composed in the last century which are not atonal, but are also not really tonal (tonal meaning 'traditional European harmony'), I'd just use a chronological reference--modern, contemporary, 20th century, etc.
Quote from: Brian on November 10, 2013, 07:05:49 AM
Maybe we should be mathematical about this and apply advanced statistics. Perhaps a Honking Index (HI), where 0 indicates nary a single honk and 100 is maximal honking.
Example in a sentence:
"I tried getting through that Boulez notation, but with this hangover my ears can only handle up to 30 HI."
Now you're making me want to write something
over 100 HI... because 100 isn't extreme enough.
Quote from: karlhenning on November 11, 2013, 06:24:42 AM
The key is, that "atonal crap" needn't actually be atonal! It's just a term of derision from someone who had rather be listening to [Almost] Anything Written Before 1897 . . . .
I'm pretty sure there's some Polytonal Crap in that list.
Quote from: Greg on November 11, 2013, 11:47:04 AM
Now you're making me want to write something over 100 HI... because 100 isn't extreme enough.
:P
I'm a big fan of unpopular music.
Quote from: 7/4 on November 11, 2013, 05:54:31 PM
I'm a big fan of unpopular music.
As one can tell by your handle/time signature! ;D
Definitely unsquare.
Quote from: Jeffrey Smith on November 11, 2013, 11:32:54 AMAnd to put into perspective, while much 20/21th century music can be described as crap, so can a large proportion of the music composed and performed in the five centuries before then. It's only that the accidents of time and the aesthetic taste of preceding generations have winnowed out the crap already, and so for us the task for the music of that period is to reverse the process and figure out what music should not have been winnowed out. Whereas, for the music of roughly the last 100 years, it's up to us to do our own personal winnowing.
I'd like to put in a word if I may for jettisoning this particular metaphor. And not just because "crap" isn't what one winnows. I'd like to see the whole crap thing disappear.
First of all, crap is not a descriptor, so no, none of the music of any century can be described as crap. It can be judged; it can be dissed; but it cannot be
described as crap.
Second, why winnow? That's not what music is for. Music is for listening. And, unlike wheat, there is no unequivocal difference between chaff and kernel in music. I.e., winnowing wouldn't really accomplish anything. Of course, you can always find things you don't particularly like. And you can decide not to spend any more time listening to those things. Though who knows? You might come back to those things later and think they're feline bedtime attire. It's happened before.
For myself, I find that listening to music is a very satisfying thing, so satisfying that I also find I have no interest in judging or in ranking or in winnowing or any of the other activities other than listening that so many music lovers seem to engage in with such passion and such fervor.
It seems, sometimes, that music lovers in actual fact love quite a lot of other things quite a lot more than listening to music. Deciding who's the greatest, for instance, Bach or Beethoven. As if listening to anything by either of those guys has anything at all to do with deciding which is the greatest.
I can tell you what I find to be easy. If Beethoven's opus 111 is playing, I'm listening to Beethoven. Bach in that moment does not even exist for me, nor does any other composer. If the St. Matthew Passion is playing, then in that moment only Bach exists, and not even Bach, but that one piece by Bach.
Those are two pieces that other people have decided (having taken a short break from listening to music, I suppose) to call great, so I will add, for their benefit, that the same thing happens with Gunter Becker's oboe concerto. Is it great? Im-pertinent. Is it atonal? Im-pertinent. What's pertinent is that when it's playing, I'm listening to it. Listening to it and to nothing else. It is sufficient.
Well, that feels good to have gotten off my chest. Breathing is so much easier now.
Nice.
Grain, we can winnow. Music, we needn't.
Sorry, I don't agree. For the simple reason that the number of minutes of music in the world is far greater than the number of minutes available to me to listen to it.
Excluding what I'll do with my spare time in heaven, of course. But here on Earth, the time available is not infinite. Therefore prioritisation is required.
Some of the people on this forum do appear to listen to truly extraordinary amounts of music every day, but I still strongly suspect that more than 24 hours worth of new recorded music is being released every 24 hours. So you choose.
And that's not even counting all the recorded music that sneaked into the world before I was born, never mind before I was old enough to have a CD player and a credit card.
Quote from: some guy on November 12, 2013, 10:00:13 AM
I'd like to put in a word if I may for jettisoning this particular metaphor. And not just because "crap" isn't what one winnows. I'd like to see the whole crap thing disappear.
First of all, crap is not a descriptor, so no, none of the music of any century can be described as crap. It can be judged; it can be dissed; but it cannot be described as crap.
Second, why winnow? That's not what music is for. Music is for listening. And, unlike wheat, there is no unequivocal difference between chaff and kernel in music. I.e., winnowing wouldn't really accomplish anything. Of course, you can always find things you don't particularly like. And you can decide not to spend any more time listening to those things. Though who knows? You might come back to those things later and think they're feline bedtime attire. It's happened before.
For myself, I find that listening to music is a very satisfying thing, so satisfying that I also find I have no interest in judging or in ranking or in winnowing or any of the other activities other than listening that so many music lovers seem to engage in with such passion and such fervor.
It seems, sometimes, that music lovers in actual fact love quite a lot of other things quite a lot more than listening to music. Deciding who's the greatest, for instance, Bach or Beethoven. As if listening to anything by either of those guys has anything at all to do with deciding which is the greatest.
I can tell you what I find to be easy. If Beethoven's opus 111 is playing, I'm listening to Beethoven. Bach in that moment does not even exist for me, nor does any other composer. If the St. Matthew Passion is playing, then in that moment only Bach exists, and not even Bach, but that one piece by Bach.
Those are two pieces that other people have decided (having taken a short break from listening to music, I suppose) to call great, so I will add, for their benefit, that the same thing happens with Gunter Becker's oboe concerto. Is it great? Im-pertinent. Is it atonal? Im-pertinent. What's pertinent is that when it's playing, I'm listening to it. Listening to it and to nothing else. It is sufficient.
Well, that feels good to have gotten off my chest. Breathing is so much easier now.
If you think the word
crap is not a useful term in this exercise, I have no problem in refraining from its use.
But I think "winnow" is a valuable term, because we all do it. You do it, even if you deny you do it. You choose to listen to that Beethoven piano sonata, and when you do so, you are choosing it in preference to other music--Boulez's piano sonatas. for instance--and Beethoven's other piano works, too. When you listen to the Bach, you are choosing to listen to it rather than Penderecki. You do it when you choose to listen to the Becker concerto instead of an oboe concerto by Vivaldi or the Strauss oboe concerto. And you will make your own judgments on matters of technical expertise of the composer and emotional communication through the music. Orfeo is right. It's not possible to not prioritize, unless you have an Ipod with enough storage to hold all the music ever composed, and put it on "shuffle".
What you don't do is play the game (and I'm guilty of playing the game myself sometimes, of course) of telling other people that they should agree with you on those judgments. You do judge and rank; you simply don't feel it a good thing to force those judgments on other people. You prefer to let them hear the music and decide for themselves. So you keep the results of those judgments and ranking to yourself.
I think you may have simplified my reality a bit.
I don't choose based on rankings or judgments. I'm tempted to say I have no idea why I choose to listen to anything.
But that's not entirely true. If I have listened to Beethoven's opus 111 recently, I probably won't listen to it again right away. But how, in its absence, to I choose between all the other music there is?
Well, I'm certainly not aware of thinking "That's a great piece; I should listen to it." I am aware, sometimes, of thinking "that's a piece I like," and then listening to it. I suppose in that situation one could argue that I have done some winnowing. My point about that would be that if I am winnowing, unconsciously, it does not register as an activity. It does not register as necessary. Maybe it just happens. OK. I'm willing to let it just happen. What I'm not willing to do is make it happen, to take it in hand, consciously, and do winnowing on purpose.
For one, what is the end result of winnowing? That one has separated grain from chaff. But, as I've already said, in music there is no grain and chaff. There are likes and dislikes, of course, which change from day to day. (Hopefully, they change. Especially the dislikes.)
I don't approach the situation with the givens that winnowing implies. I approach the situation not to separate, not to rank, not to judge, but to explore. If there's anything besides simply listening--if there's "deciding what to listen to before I can do the listening" (which y'all are making way too much of--really)--then it's exploration. Exploration does not imply knowledge as winnowing does. I don't know what I'll like or dislike. And once I dislike something, I either put it in the "never again" bin and forget about it or I put it into the "maybe later" bin for further exploration.
That's the only categorizing I do any more. And my actions aren't really affected all that much by that categorizing, either. I had put Scelsi into the "never again" bin at one time, if you can believe it. A friend gently suggested that I reconsider. I did. I had put Hanson into the "never again" bin, too. Which, for me, is easier to believe. Then one day, I was innocently driving along in some car or other, minding my own business, when I thought I'd turn the radio on. It was in the middle of some mid-century orchestral piece. Pretty interesting stuff, if I may be allowed to say so without being judgmental ( :D).
It was Hanson's sixth symphony. Well. I liked it. Prejudices notwithstanding. So I very sweetly went to my corner record store (remember those?) and bought a copy. I may have prejudices like everyone else, but I'm not married to them.
How I choose what to listen to:
1) Haven't listened to it recently
2) Am on a * kick (so listen to everything by Sibelius in a very short span)
3) Have listened to it and not liked it (the real category there being "I want to like if if that's possible"--i.e., it's unfinished business.)
4) Have not heard it yet.
For me, #4 is probably the option I chose most frequently nowadays, but again. Things change.
Winnowing implies that things don't change. There's grain, and there's chaff, and the purpose is to separate them. Done. That's not how I see the situation with music at all.
And I don't put such emphasis on how and why I choose, either. (I only did it just now for the purposes of this post. I'll probably forget all about it in a what were we talking about?)
What I do is listen. Whatever it is that's playing, however it happened that it was playing--my choice, the radio station's choice, a friend's choice--that it's playing means one thing for me: I listen to it.
Done.
Quote from: some guy on November 13, 2013, 03:10:12 AM
I don't approach the situation with the givens that winnowing implies. I approach the situation not to separate, not to rank, not to judge, but to explore. If there's anything besides simply listening--if there's "deciding what to listen to before I can do the listening" (which y'all are making way too much of--really)--then it's exploration. Exploration does not imply knowledge as winnowing does. I don't know what I'll like or dislike. And once I dislike something, I either put it in the "never again" bin and forget about it or I put it into the "maybe later" bin for further exploration.
Nope, I still don't agree. Even though exploring in the way you describe is precisely what I do as much possible.
Because how do you make decisions as what to listen to? I doubt it's purely random. It's based on information - things you read, from reviewers, from other fans, friends... You're writing on a message board the purpose of which is basically for other music lovers to say "hey, check this out". There's still a kind of knowledge involved. Are you seriously trying to suggest that you add things to your listening list completely at random?
I don't buy it. Even exploring involves direction. That direction might not be the utterly simplistic "if you like this, you should also like that" that all the automated services try to employ. It might well be based on filling gaps instead - new directions not tried yet - but it is still directed.
None of that requires ranking as such, but it still requires choice.
Quote from: some guy on November 13, 2013, 03:10:12 AM
[...] For one, what is the end result of winnowing? That one has separated grain from chaff. But, as I've already said, in music there is no grain and chaff.
As a listener, I am apt to agree. Because, as a composer, my workplace is the threshing floor . . . .
But some like whole grain and some don't, and some like wheat, while some like rye...
Tangentially . . . when I was in So Carolina recently, I happened upon two (count 'em) places whose bar did not stock any rye.
Is it the Apocalypse?
Quote from: some guy on November 12, 2013, 10:00:13 AM
I can tell you what I find to be easy. If Beethoven's opus 111 is playing, I'm listening to Beethoven. Bach in that moment does not even exist for me, nor does any other composer. If the St. Matthew Passion is playing, then in that moment only Bach exists, and not even Bach, but that one piece by Bach.
Agreed, with the proviso that sometimes a piece of music does trigger associations with other pieces: to take a particularly blatant example, if Berio's
Sinfonia is playing, I'm listening to Mahler (and, by now, for me, if I'm listening to the third movement of Mahler's Second, I'm listening to Berio as well).
Quote from: edward on November 13, 2013, 05:48:47 AM
Agreed, with the proviso that sometimes a piece of music does trigger associations with other pieces: to take a particularly blatant example, if Berio's Sinfonia is playing, I'm listening to Mahler (and, by now, for me, if I'm listening to the third movement of Mahler's Second, I'm listening to Berio as well).
You're focused on the music while you are listening to it. Which is what how it should be. But you do make choices of what you listen to, and are aware of what you're doing when you make those choices.
Some guy seems to be of the opinion that all music is equally good, and when we don't like a particular piece or performance, the fault lies in our ears, and therefore he simply listens to whatever presents itself to his attention. This may be a good way to practice Theravada style mindfulness meditation, of course.
Quote from: karlhenning on November 13, 2013, 04:35:17 AM
As a listener, I am apt to agree. Because, as a composer, my workplace is the threshing floor . . . .
But some composers thresh less expertly or less aggressively than you (and
sanantonio) do.
Quote from: Jeffrey Smith on November 13, 2013, 06:45:49 AM
But some composers thresh less expertly or less aggressively than you (and sanantonio) do.
Though I hope to be preserved from the vice of Pride, I cannot deny your point.
Quote from: James on November 13, 2013, 04:20:02 AM
Michael you live in your own world severed from reality. Essentially what you're saying here
is that your approach to music, and perhaps life itself is a mindless one.
It must be nice to live in such a black-and-white world, without varying shades or hues. I for one can listen very mindfully, with ALL of my mind, without the kind of winnowing, ranking or immediate judgment that happens on these boards. In fact, my listening is much more mindful if I do NOT keep in mind "This is supposed to be great music!!!" In the words of Lennon and McCartney, "Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream..." And to paraphrase Francis of Assisi, it is often in turning off our mind that we become most mindful.
As for trying to "reduce" my collection or listening habits to "what is Greatest," that would defeat the main reason I listen to music: to hear something new that will give me a moment of "Wow, what's this?!" The thrill of discovery is one of the greatest thrills of music. Why should I limit my listening to what I already know? I'd rather add to my knowledge than subtract from it.
James said essentially, everybody chug your beer!
Every sound is sacred
It's scientific experiments for the lot of you!
Quote from: sanantonio on November 13, 2013, 09:24:29 AM
Your post is flippant; but not far from my own idea. The caveat I will add is that someone somewhere will find the sounds in Work X "sacred" while other people will not, maybe even all other people will not. So what? Does that mean the music in question is "crap? Maybe to those 5.9 billion others but not to that one individual. And his experience outweighs all the others, IMO. Cumulatively this can apply to "all sounds". Of course my example is an exaggeration, but it goes to the center of my own thinking.
Declarations such as James' can only apply to a one-person set. As soon as the audience expands to 2, 20, 200, 2000, etc, people the decision about which pieces of music are good, better, best will no longer be the same.
And that is as it should be.
Well, my post was only half-flippant. :)
As a spokesman for grammarians, I observe that it ought to have been "[ i ]t applies to those who operate within the field...."
To clear up a couple of points, I do not recall saying or even suggesting that my process does not involve choice.
Interestingly enough, I was thinking about this thread and what I had tried to articulate about things I hardly ever think about. (James doesn't seem to understand that if I'm not thinking about one thing that does not mean I'm not thinking about any thing.) A bit from Janacek's Katya Kabanova popped into my head, and I thought (!) "I'll give that listen later." Then I thought of Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth and thought maybe I'd listen to that, too. When I opened up my folder of music, it was open in the middle of the H's. I scrolled up to "G" and picked the "Essential Gorecki" folder.
I have so much music; I have listened to it all, several times. Caprice works just fine for playing from my collection.
As for the remark that apparently I think that "all music is equally good," I have addressed that many times. I hate to do it again. Maybe this time I'll put a stamp on it, too, and send it away. Ahem. I could only think that all music is equally good if I thought that ranking was a valid exercise. I do not. There are things I like better than I like other things, sure, but I don't even pay all that much attention to that. (I like the two operas I mentioned much more than anything by Gorecki, even that nice pre-symphony three avant garde stuff on that album. But the fact remains, I'm listening to Gorecki right now. And that's fine.)
What I do think is that the proper activity for a listener is listening, not judging, not ranking, not constructing elaborate critical structures for how one should approach "great" music. Listening. Is all music equally good? That question is im-pertinent. It doesn't belong in this discussion. All music is music. And what music is for is for listening.
And that's what I do with it.
(That means, to take up one other point, that since I'm familiar with a lot of music, practically everything I listen to reminds me of something else I've listened to. For me that means that what I would like to hear some time is something that reminds me of nothing else I've ever heard. I used to get that all the time. No more. The sorrow of knowledge, eh?)
Bottoms up!
Quote from: karlhenning on November 13, 2013, 08:56:47 AM
James said essentially, everybody chug your beer!
Quote from: some guy on November 13, 2013, 01:21:42 PM
As for the remark that apparently I think that "all music is equally good," I have addressed that many times. I hate to do it again. Maybe this time I'll put a stamp on it, too, and send it away. Ahem. I could only think that all music is equally good if I thought that ranking was a valid exercise. I do not. There are things I like better than I like other things, sure, but I don't even pay all that much attention to that. (I like the two operas I mentioned much more than anything by Gorecki, even that nice pre-symphony three avant garde stuff on that album. But the fact remains, I'm listening to Gorecki right now. And that's fine.)
What I do think is that the proper activity for a listener is listening, not judging, not ranking, not constructing elaborate critical structures for how one should approach "great" music. Listening. Is all music equally good? That question is im-pertinent. It doesn't belong in this discussion. All music is music. And what music is for is for listening.
And that's what I do with it.
Here. Have One Direction's latest album. It's for listening to. And then Metallica. And then this bloke I found on Youtube strumming away in his bedroom. It's all for listening to.
I think you are
far too hung up on the word 'ranking' as if it implies some kind of objective universal standard that all 6 billion people on the planet are expected to comply with. (And many of the responses to James seem to treat it in the same way.)
It doesn't. I would think that was obvious, but it seems it needs to be stated explicitly. I have my own personal loose system of 'ranking'. It's called having favourite pieces, or favourite composers. Every single person on this thread who's ever participated in one of the board's polls or 'Top 11s' or anything of that nature had indicated some form of ranking preference.
And saying that you pick more or less randomly from your collection misses the point that 'your collection' is itself a process of deciding that some things go in the collection and some things don't. I actually have a spreadsheet set up to try and ensure that I distribute my listening across the whole of MY collection, but I don't kid myself that my collection is actually representative of the world of music as a whole. The very act of putting music in my collection gives it a higher 'rank' than anything that I didn't put in my collection.
And unless you buy every CD issued,
when it is issued, you are engaging in ranking all the time.
Many of the things in my collection are there because I have bought something I wanted to explore. Many are there because I had already done some exploring elsewhere and was now ready for the relative comfortableness of multiple relistens.
The two-CD set of Becker, for instance, the one with the oboe concerto on it. Sure, the words "elektronische modulierte" caught my eye. But dividing the world into likes and dislikes isn't much of ranking. I bought that because I didn't know anything about Becker. Then I did. Then I bought some more Becker.
You see? I think that you're just trying to force each of my actions into a black box or a white box. In the meantime, my real life is not only full of all shades of grey but of reds and yellows and greens and blues and purples and oranges and so forth.
It's not so difficult. I do not think of ranking when I add things to my collection. I do not think of ranking when I listen to any particular piece in my collection. (When I listen to Khachaturian's third symphony, I don't think, "this isn't as good as Gerhard's third symphony." When I listen to Gerhard's third symphony, I don't think, "this is much better than Khachaturian's third." As you can see, I DO think that. But while I'm listening? No. And does my thinking that affect my enjoyment of either? No. In fact, do I ever think about things like that unless I'm online on a music discussion site? No.)
If it helps you sleep at night to point to all those shades of grey and all those other colors and insist that I'm inconsistent because I have other options besides black and white, then by all means keep on doing it. :) My only point was simple: when I'm listening to music, I'm engaged with that piece. I'm not thinking about whether that piece is better or worse than any other piece. Better or worse doesn't enter into it. It's im-pertinent. Each piece is just exactly itself. Some of those selves please me, some irritate me, some intrigue me, some puzzle me. There. I just ranked all music.... :P
Quote from: some guy on November 14, 2013, 01:01:31 AM
Some of those selves please me, some irritate me, some intrigue me, some puzzle me. There. I just ranked all music.... :P
You did. And that is precisely my point.
Oh, godamercy, but this thread is God's gift to unintentional humor! ". . . really what you are trying to tell us is that you are not really a critical thinker." Next time, Michael, don't mince words: Let us know outright that you're not a critical thinker, and stop teasing James so!
And James, try harder: you could really have fit more reallys into that sentence. Apply yourself a little, dammit!
Really?
La dee la! The ruckus I have raised (alright, I admit I had a hand in making it bigger) in trying to make a point about proximity bias. Let me try to restate it, more precisely and fruitfully. Or at least, less controversially.
First off, let me point out that all of us, when listening to any piece of music new to us or any particular performance of a work we already know, react in one of three ways: positive, negative, or neutral. And those reactions guide our future listening--whether it be "I want more of that" or "I never want to hear that again" or "interesting, glad I heard it but I could live without it", and sometimes "why did I ever think that was so great" and sometimes "Hmm, let me listen to that again, and see if it was as bad as I remember it being". And of course a wide variety of other possible responses. Even if you don't get into the "greatest X" game, you do at least that much.
Now the actual point I tried to make was this--when we listen to, for instance, music from c. 1800, our choice of music is already influenced and to some degree limited by the listening habits of previous generations of listeners, who reacted to the music of, f.i., Dittersdorf less positively than they did to that of Haydn, and that shaped our attitude to Dittersdorf--if we have a positive reaction to his music, it's with the knowledge that we are disagreeing with those preceding generations, and we are in a way rescuing him from their neglect. It also means that there are fewer recordings of music by Dittersdorf than of music by Haydn, and often enough those musicians are of less celebrity [which of course is a far different thing from saying they are of less quality] than those who routinely record Haydn, which means when they do record Dittersdorf, their recordings may be harder to acquire--or even to be aware of. When I used the term "winnowing" that's what I had in mind. And every time we listen to Dittersdorf, we are in a way saying that preceding generations made a "mistake" in "winnowing" him out of the listening line up.
This is almost a physical fact. And it does have one important consequence--we are apt to accept, under the influence of preceding generations of listeners, the idea that Haydn was a better composer than Dittersdorf, and therefore a (biased?) reaction to Dittersdorf's music that is less positive than our reaction to Hadyn. Our listening preferences, shaped as they are by those who came before us, incline us from the start to not listen to music from that period to which we might have a negative reaction (or, in the more brusque phrasing of this thread's title, might decide it's "crap").
On the other hand, in listening to music by modern and contemporary composers, that shaping of our habits and preferences by prior generations has not yet kicked in totally. (It has, of course, in part, especially in regard to composers who flourished in the first half of the 20th century. Which is why , for instance, Schoenberg has so many recordings in that Arkivmusic listing.) We are therefore more likely to listen to music to which we end up having a negative reaction than we would in listening to music of the Classical period. And that fact can lead us to mistakenly feeling that modern music has a higher quotient of "crap"--whereas in fact, were we to listen to a greater diversity of c. 1800 music, untrammelled by the listening habits and influence of the intervening generations, we would likely have (albeit for different reasons) had negative reactions to the same proportion of 1800 music. Contemporary music is just as likely and unlikely to be as 'crappy' as music from the time of Bach or Beethoven or Brahms, and the fact that we have more negative reactions to music of our own time than to music of those times does not stem from the fact that contemporary music is worse than music of c. 1800--it merely stems from the fact that it is music of our own time.
Mr Smith, I entirely agree. And forgive me for not saying so the first time around, as there were... other distractions.
History tends to engage in a filtering process. Although, it should also be remembered that history can reverse that filtering process. There were at least a couple of generations who didn't know much about J S Bach for example, although some of his fellow-composers were paying attention. But I imagine that most folks in the latter half of the 1700s would be most surprised to discover that Leipzig's reasonably competent 3rd choice would end up being as famous as he is now.
Quote from: orfeo on November 15, 2013, 01:46:27 AM
... There were at least a couple of generations who didn't know much about J S Bach for example, although some of his fellow-composers were paying attention.
Which is to say, that he was at no point forgotten, or neglected. He was only (in a larger cultural sense) ... unsung.
Which is to say, I wonder the extent to which many of us think about it wrong, just as a result of the interaction between (a) the cultural given in our day of The Man in the Street knowing The Beatles and Michael Jackson, and (b) the fallacious equation which leads us down the garden path of If The Man in the Street, towards the end of Bach's life, had not heard of the great composer, this maps onto Neglect.
Quote from: karlhenning on November 15, 2013, 03:01:52 AM
Which is to say, that he was at no point forgotten, or neglected. He was only (in a larger cultural sense) ... unsung.
Or to put into a different perspective: because of a greater interest in the German Baroque in the last few years, our view of Bach has changed. Instead of being a lonely mighty mountain among many hills that represent the ranks of his contemporaries, we know see him as an Everest set amid a long chain of other mountains--the greatest, but far from the only composer of the German Baroque who produced music to which we now react positively.
That, too, is true.
Quote from: Jeffrey Smith on November 15, 2013, 05:34:18 AM
Or to put into a different perspective: because of a greater interest in the German Baroque in the last few years, our view of Bach has changed. Instead of being a lonely mighty mountain among many hills that represent the ranks of his contemporaries, we know see him as an Everest set amid a long chain of other mountains--the greatest, but far from the only composer of the German Baroque who produced music to which we now react positively.
Quote from: karlhenning on November 15, 2013, 05:57:38 AM
That, too, is true.
I think immediately of the splash made c.15-20 years ago by the "discovery" of music by
Johann David Heinichen.
Aye. And it's nice that we've found the place where admiration for Bach need not mean disdain for Vivaldi, e.g. 0:)
Quote from: karlhenning on November 15, 2013, 03:01:52 AM
Which is to say, that he was at no point forgotten, or neglected. He was only (in a larger cultural sense) ... unsung.
Oh, please, not THAT word.
;)
Had to.
Just had to.
James: To expand on some guy's point (already pretty expansive, and thank you, some guy!), there is a time and place for comparative thinking regarding composers, performers and recordings--but that time is not when one is listening. If I start thinking immediately "This is like Shostakovich" or, "This is better than/not so good as such-and-such", I am not actually listening to the music. Listening becomes fully mindful when I set aside such thought patterns and just, simply, fully, listen. Afterwards, I can begin to think "What did I just hear?" or even, as I sometimes have, "Why in the world haven't I heard of this musician?!"
Perhaps there's a middle ground, or perhaps some of us are, er, more mindful of external factors than others are in our listening. Which is to say that we don't necessarily "listen" in the same way. Everyone's brain operates in an individual way, and therefore how we listen is something that is to some degree bound to be done in an individual way.
What you seem to describe is what I will call (strictly for terms of this particular post) passive listening. But that's not how I listen most of the time. (Some of the time, yes.) For me, the intellectual faculties must be engaged for me to be fully listening. That does not mean, usually, comparing music to other music. Comparing music to other music or other performances is for me definitely something that come after the actual listening is over. But attention to what the composer is doing or what the performer is doing (in a work I know well enough to be able to discern such details) is almost necessary. Call it (for purposes of this post, and mainly to contrast it to what I called passive listening before) active listening. "Oh, there's that theme he used in the first movement, only now it's in a higher register and faster tempo!" That sort of thing.
I don't usually render a verdict of "good/not good" or "reminds me of......" or anything like that while I'm physically listening. As I said, that comes afterwards. But I do pay attention to what might be called the contributing factors to that eventual verdict as I listen.
I am NOT saying that for a valid listening experience, everyone should engage in what I'm calling "active listening"; I am primarily describing how I listen. What I am calling passive listening is for me a suboptimal experience, usually indulged in only at the end of a long tiring day, and usually after such a listening session I wouldn't be able to describe what I heard or whether I liked it or what it reminded me.
Quote from: James on November 15, 2013, 05:12:28 PM
No, critical thinking can occur during active listening .. this of course can bring about all sorts of associations with other stuff we've heard before, and everything we've learned.
But those sort of associations don't necessarily occur. I can listen actively and think critically about the music I'm hearing without bringing in associations connected to other musical works or performances.
To illustrate: at the moment I'm listening to the Chailly/Gewandhaus recording of Brahms's First Symphony. I'm paying attention to the music and how it's performed, but comparisons to other symphonies, to other recordings by Chailly of other symphonies, to other recordings of this symphony have no bearing on how I'm reacting to the music as I listen. That will come after the listening is done.
Quote from: James on November 15, 2013, 05:25:39 PM
...a more professional seasoned listener...
The only "professional...listeners" are music critics. The rest of us have never received a dime for listening--and generally, don't give a dime :) about critics. Sir Thomas Beecham once said about a proposal to establish a Professorship of Music Criticism: "If there is a chair for critics, it had better be an electric chair." ;D
Quote from: Jeffrey Smith on November 15, 2013, 05:34:18 AM
Or to put into a different perspective: because of a greater interest in the German Baroque in the last few years, our view of Bach has changed. Instead of being a lonely mighty mountain among many hills that represent the ranks of his contemporaries, we know see him as an Everest set amid a long chain of other mountains--the greatest, but far from the only composer of the German Baroque who produced music to which we now react positively.
What I think is interesting is
why only now people are "discovering" German baroque and it's value?
I call it
distorted writing of history. When history is written again more carefully, distortion diminishes and the true nature of things becomes visible.
Why is such an important word, isn't it?
Sorry, my post had nothing to do with "
The World's Most Popular Atonal Crap".
Quote from: James on November 16, 2013, 03:58:07 AM
Everyone is a critic actually. But regarding the field of music it is the professional musicians, specialists & connoisseurs that do have much more exposure, knowledge & experience naturally.
I see you fixed the typo :).
Yet presumably you disagree with whole swathes of professional musicians and specialists, viz. those that went to the unjustified trouble of putting together Xenakis'
Terretektorh or the many recordings of Cage--e.g. the Ardittis, capable of premiering Stockhausen's quartet, but also recording plenty of Cage, taking a deep interest in, for instance his
Freeman Etudes. So, what gives?
Quote from: James on November 16, 2013, 05:04:30 AM
I don't really think it has much to do with what we were talking about. Musicians have to make a living too, and they try things out.
We were talking about making use of the argument of authority to justify or explain that there are 'better' ways of listening. I just gave you a counter-example that said authorities seem to have a lot more respect and to think highly of works and/or composers you deride too easily--and that therefore can only be the province of those who don't listen critically. They "try things out"... HA! Some of them do indeed, but some others must enjoy the thankless effort, because they kept going back and back and back again to that worthlessness.
Quote from: James on November 16, 2013, 05:30:20 AM
I don't deride professional musicians for making a living or trying things out.
Let me quote what I said, to be precise: "of works and/or composers you deride too easily". You see, nowhere did I say you deride professional musicians (except composers, of course).
The word "teflon" comes to mind, hein?
Ahem. Thread duty. Mustn't forget thread duty.
So, how's it goin'? Good thread so far?
Had any popcorn lately?
The key is: the reference is not to music. The atonal crap is to be found in this thread!
Next up, something a bit fishier: atonal carp.
And for the forensically minded: carpal tunnel atonal crap.
Quote from: karlhenning on November 16, 2013, 03:05:33 PM
And for the forensically minded: carpal tunnel atonal crap.
Carpal Tunnel: must be under a river. :)