Extremely Long Piano Compositions - What's Their Point?

[Karl Henning]

The repetitive ones (Simeon ten Holt's Canto ostinato) are the worst,

That, I could believe.

[Florestan]

Even a piece like this is part of human life and experience. I don't see that you get to sneer at it for not being a piece about little Bobby playing with his puppy in the spring.

This is a gratuitous remark. If all I had wanted in music was little Bobby playing with his puppy in the spring I'd have never listened to Nuhro or Out in the Sun, let alone appreciated them highly enough to publicly praise them. On the other hand, it's true that had they lasted five hours, I'd most certainly not have been that appreciative.

[Florestan]

Part of the reason for the perceived excessive length of Sorabi's music is cultural: Indian music uses ragas, "a melodic framework for improvisation in Indian classical music akin to a melodic mode" (Wikipedia), which can last for hours. To simply dismiss him as indulgent or insane is frankly rather ignorant.

Except that he composed in England/Europe, not in India, for a (presumably) British/European, not an Indian, audience. 

[Luke]

Mention was made of Rzewski's The Road as being 10 hours long. FWIW The Road is made up of many shorter pieces ('miles') which are segments of the journey to be played alone or in groups. Performance of the whole is not expected.

Re Sorabji, he wanted his works played, but he wanted them played well. The final straw was a dreadful performance that upset him greatly. The 'ban' was not total, in any case.

For discussion: Ronald Stevenson's Passacaglia on DSCH 😎

[Karl Henning]

This is a gratuitous remark. If all I had wanted in music was little Bobby playing with his puppy in the spring I'd have never listened to Nuhro or Out in the Sun, let alone appreciated them highly enough to publicly praise them. On the other hand, it's true that had they lasted five hours, I'd most certainly not have been that appreciative.

I don't deny that my expression of the idea was flippant, and I apologize if it rankled at all, but while you, for instance, have been very gracious about my work, whether abstract or not, I admit that I am still a little tender about an incident in which a couple of fellow composers created an extremely unpleasant environment for me simply because I dared to write abstract music. As a result, perhaps I express myself a little unnecessarily sharply when I try to make the point that yes, Virginia, abstract music has a right to exist and gives audiences pleasure. too.

[Karl Henning]

For discussion: Ronald Stevenson's Passacaglia on DSCH

A piece I need to revisit!

[Luke]

Except that he composed in England/Europe, not in India, for a (presumably) British/European, not an Indian, audience. 

He did, but he was hugely influenced by other cultures- Indian, yes, but also and particularly Arab/Persian (his own heritage was partly Parsi) and also e.g. Sicilian. He was British by birth but he didn't identify with the 'British school'

[Spotted Horses]

Except that he composed in England/Europe, not in India, for a (presumably) British/European, not an Indian, audience. 

That is part of having "something to say about human life and experience," outside of England.

[Cato]

The composer himself created the première of Opus clavicembalisticum, so certainly in this case, it cannot be said that he did not wish to share the work with an audience. And in the case of other works, there is at the least the "audience" of other pianists who find the work worthy of preparation and performance/recording. Sorabji may well have been a megalomaniac, but it may not be fair to classify his work solely as "vanity projects."
Apart from Op Cl, the Sorabji work I "chip away at" is the Sequentia Cyclica super Dies iræ ex Missa pro defunctis, which runs almost nine hours. As has already been suggested, in principle, the piece could be presented to an audience over the space of (say) two or three days.

Like a Noh theatrical performance, I don't see why an audience member need feel obliged to be glued to his seat. I approach the music a little like a sprawling novel (Tom Jones, The Manuscript Found at Saragossa, The Sot-Weed Factor, e.g.) No one is going to read these at a single sitting, and the reader may well get a little lost or at the least baffled in the course of the experience. But you're going on a journey with the author.

As the author of two novels of roughly 700 pages each, I would not expect my reader to swallow everything in a day or two!    Although that would be impressive! 

Someone mentioned Wagner's Ring cycle, which has roughly 15 hours of music: spread it out over four days and you have quite the Gesamtkunstwerk experience!   

[Brian]

I can think of a number of artists like this, who were mostly doing art for their own amusement (Charles Ives, Emily Dickinson, various "outsider" artists). The difference is, they didn't prohibit dissemination of their works; they just weren't interested in promoting themselves. I do find the phenomenon of an artist who doesn't want others to experience his art very odd; it's like a chef who eats all the food he cooks.

David has already replied with an interesting post about origami and the way that it provides its greatest satisfaction to the creator. I enjoyed learning that.

I actually know a couple of chefs who do not much care about (or for) many of their customers. In part this is because they wish they could choose their customers. People who would really appreciate the food and understand the work that went into it, not clout-chasers, the idle rich, status-seekers, or people who book a reservation just because it is hard to get, regardless of what it is. (I once waited 2.5 months to get a seat at a sushi bar...and the guy next to me had never eaten sushi before.)

Anyway. The audience is part of it. (It is still strange and unsettling to imagine, say, Sokolov screening potential audience members for his recitals.) But I think that these perfectionist chefs also get the satisfaction from meeting their own standard. I have met one who I think would be very happy to cook a meal, scrutinize it, taste that it met his standard, and then throw it away.

Of course, that chef I know offers yet another possible answer to Florestan. He is on the autism spectrum.

It's easy to say "not everyone is the same." But it's really true. Some people's minds are very, very, very different! I would not claim Sorabji is autistic. But I would emphasize that there are many varieties of human experience.

[AnotherSpin]

Except that he composed in England/Europe, not in India, for a (presumably) British/European, not an Indian, audience. 

He would not be able to present such a thing to an Indian audience. Indian audience is much harder to bs

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Anyway. The audience is part of it. (It is still strange and unsettling to imagine, say, Sokolov screening potential audience members for his recitals.) But I think that these perfectionist chefs also get the satisfaction from meeting their own standard. I have met one who I think would be very happy to cook a meal, scrutinize it, taste that it met his standard, and then throw it away.

Yeah, it is an interesting phenomenon. I think of the character from The Seven Samurai who "is interested in nothing but the perfection of his art."

Or (again) Schoenberg: "If it is art, it is not for everyone; and if it is for everyone, it is not art."

Still - everyone's gotta eat, so I'd expect those chefs to be a bit more flexible, just for that reason.

[San Antone]

Can somebody please explain me what is the point of such works as Sorabji's Opus Clavicembalisticum, which takes five hours to perform and listen to, or Symphonic Variations for Piano, ditto nine hours? I personally fail to see any at all and honestly, I regard such monstrosities as a sign of the composer's not entirely healthy mental state. I mean, what normal person can imagine that another normal person will have the physical stamina to play the piano for five or nine hours uninterruptedly and yet another normal person will have the mental stamina to listen for five or nine hours uninterruptedly? But then again maybe I'm a philistine, so please enlighten me.

This thread immediately made me think of Morton Feldman's late works, which got longer and longer.  I remember reading an interview with him about this issue where he said something to the effect that he wanted to get beyond the 20th century composer's dilemma of the "20 minute piece." 

He posited that without the harmonic/structural stylistic aspects of previous periods, modern composers had some difficulty with organizing long forms.  So he started experimenting with an intuitive approach of writing longer and longer works, endlessly varying his gestures and motives - and found a path forward, something of a breakthrough.  He noticed that experiencing these works produced a profound effect on his consciousness.

Feldman wanted to engage the audience in this kind of sensual experience. If they were able to concentrate and intently listen to a slowly developing work over a period of hours it would produce a change in their temporal experience, one that would transport them to an altered reality. 

There is a purpose and positive audience engagement these composers are going after.  But it is a completely different kind of approach composers from previous eras were involved in.

Judging from your posts, it sounds like these kinds of works are not for you.  But that does not mean what these composers are going for is not valid or something that others find value in.

[Brian]

Still - everyone's gotta eat, so I'd expect those chefs to be a bit more flexible, just for that reason.

Well, that's an allegory in itself. His last restaurant closed and he's a consultant making burrito recipes now  (  )

[AnotherSpin]

The answer to the original post would be clearer if one sees that music may be created not only for listening. Brian Eno used the term ambient music. Music that serves as a backdrop to life's activities. We won't look at a pattern on the wallpaper the same way we would look at a painting on the wall. Expectations are different and so is the effect. There is music like the pattern on the wallpaper. The duration is not important, it can be as long and repetitive as one wishes. It is probably no coincidence that some of Morton Feldman's opuses are directly related to contemporary visual art.

By the way, Brian Eno composed one of the most known pieces of music in modern history, and a very short one at that, only a couple of seconds long: the theme to Windows 95 boot up.

[atardecer]

This thread immediately made me think of Morton Feldman's late works, which got longer and longer.  I remember reading an interview with him about this issue where he said something to the effect that he wanted to get beyond the 20th century composer's dilemma of the "20 minute piece." 

He posited that without the harmonic/structural stylistic aspects of previous periods, modern composers had some difficulty with organizing long forms.  So he started experimenting with an intuitive approach of writing longer and longer works, endlessly varying his gestures and motives - and found a path forward, something of a breakthrough.  He noticed that experiencing these works produced a profound effect on his consciousness.

Feldman wanted to engage the audience in this kind of sensual experience. If they were able to concentrate and intently listen to a slowly developing work over a period of hours it would produce a change in their temporal experience, one that would transport them to an altered reality.

There is a purpose and positive audience engagement these composers are going after.  But it is a completely different kind of approach composers from previous eras were involved in.

Judging from your posts, it sounds like these kinds of works are not for you.  But that does not mean what these composers are going for is not valid or something that others find value in.

Fair enough, and I think Feldman seemed like an interesting individual and I like some things in his music. This said I think someone could watch static noise on their television set for 6 hours and it would probably produce a change in their temporal experience and transport them to an altered reality.

I have no desire to experience the Feldman quartet and in general prefer concision in music. The longer a piece is I feel the more it is required to be especially compelling to justify it's length. Essentially I am aligned with Edgar Allen Poe's 'Philosophy of Composition' which advocates concision, brevity, and the well constructed unity of mood, atmosphere and emotional tension. 

[Luke]

The answer to the original post would be clearer if one sees that music may be created not only for listening. Brian Eno used the term ambient music. Music that serves as a backdrop to life's activities. We won't look at a pattern on the wallpaper the same way we would look at a painting on the wall. Expectations are different and so is the effect. There is music like the pattern on the wallpaper. The duration is not important, it can be as long and repetitive as one wishes. It is probably no coincidence that some of Morton Feldman's opuses are directly related to contemporary visual art.

By the way, Brian Eno composed one of the most known pieces of music in modern history, and a very short one at that, only a couple of seconds long: the theme to Windows 95 boot up.

This is all true, but it isn't really what Sorabji was trying to do. His longform pieces are highly structured and very eventful - they are meant to be followed, not to become ambient noise. Nor are they minimalist. They are of a different type to such different composers of longform piano works as ten Holt, Feldman, Lamonte Young, all of whose music requires attention but of a less traditional sort. Sorabji's combination of highly inventive free fantasy and strjct counterpoint is more like an expanded Beethoven 106 or, especially, like Busoni Fantasia Contrapuntistica (Sorabji's titles alone show his debt to that piece!)

[Spotted Horses]

This is all true, but it isn't really what Sorabji was trying to do. His longform pieces are highly structured and very eventful - they are meant to be followed, not to become ambient noise. Nor are they minimalist. They are of a different type to such different composers of longform piano works as ten Holt, Feldman, Lamonte Young, all of whose music requires attention but of a less traditional sort. Sorabji's combination of highly inventive free fantasy and strjct counterpoint is more like an expanded Beethoven 106 or, especially, like Busoni Fantasia Contrapuntistica (Sorabji's titles alone show his debt to that piece!)

Sounds like something I should listen to.

[AnotherSpin]

This is all true, but it isn't really what Sorabji was trying to do. His longform pieces are highly structured and very eventful - they are meant to be followed, not to become ambient noise. Nor are they minimalist. They are of a different type to such different composers of longform piano works as ten Holt, Feldman, Lamonte Young, all of whose music requires attention but of a less traditional sort. Sorabji's combination of highly inventive free fantasy and strjct counterpoint is more like an expanded Beethoven 106 or, especially, like Busoni Fantasia Contrapuntistica (Sorabji's titles alone show his debt to that piece!)

It's not just about Sorabji, is it?

I liked your "attention of a different sort". Yes, changing the focus of attention, from particular object(s) — what mind does routinely,  to the perception of the whole, like in a meditation.

[Florestan]

I don't deny that my expression of the idea was flippant, and I apologize if it rankled at all, but while you, for instance, have been very gracious about my work, whether abstract or not, I admit that I am still a little tender about an incident in which a couple of fellow composers created an extremely unpleasant environment for me simply because I dared to write abstract music. As a result, perhaps I express myself a little unnecessarily sharply when I try to make the point that yes, Virginia, abstract music has a right to exist and gives audiences pleasure. too.

Everlasting shame on them, wherever and whoever they are! My bewilderment is not at the abstractness of some music, but at its longueur. Nothing to do with your own music, all the more so as I believe your compositional philosophy is radically different. Correct me if I'm wrong but I inferred from your thread that you usually compose with an eye to the practicability of music; when composing, you usually have in your mind a here-and-now ensemble, choir or venue which might be interested in performing your music, and tailor the instrumentation and duration accordingly. You don't write drawer music meant for future generations but music which you feel, and hope, that can be enjoyed by a contemporary audience. And even if you don't always succeed in having your music performed, or accepted in a competition, it's always your wish and intention that it be performed and in this respect you are not averse to tweaking the score in order to meet the putative performers' or jury's suggestions and requirements. I cannot imagine you banning all performances of your music, at least for a few decades, because that would defeat the very reason for which you compose, namely to share your music with audiences that you neither disregard nor are indifferent to.