Extremely Long Piano Compositions - What's Their Point?

[Maestro267]

Every minute spent with Mozart is stolen from Sorabji. :devil:

Also everyone should know the answer to the question: The point of extremely long piano compositions is to drive Engagement™ and Debate™ in this fine Venue that we are Privileged to be present in.

[ando]

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.

Music has a point? Maybe you can enlighten me on that. 

[Karl Henning]

There is an excellent YouTube channel called Drumeo where they challenge musicians to step outside their comfort zones, and the larger lesson they are teaching is that it isn't about better or worse but difference.

Here's a Juilliard professor playing Nirvana:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=06xafivFSe4&pp=ygULRHJ1bWVvIGpheno%3D

Nice!

[AnotherSpin]

Every minute spent with Mozart is stolen from Sorabji. :devil:

Please, don't force yourself to listen to Mozart instead of Sorabji.

[Atriod]

I didn't dislike it (at no time did I feel the need to turn it off) but I doubt I'll listen to it again any time soon. Even for an independent waltz, there's still too many notes (pace Joseph II) and it's still too long. I mean, come on, it's almost as long as a Haydn symphony yet not even half as interesting...

Listen to any random Haydn symphony outside of the famous ones blind and name what number it is. It's background music, one big soup of sameness. Music to board airplanes.

You're such a proponent of music for the people, I pretty much never see them programmed at two of the world's largest orchestras.

[Florestan]

Listen to any random Haydn symphony outside of the famous ones blind and name what number it is.

I couldn't care less about what number it is. It's the music, not the numbering, that counts. Back in Haydn's time they were not even numbered, they were simply "a symphony/overture by Haydn".

It's background music, one big soup of sameness. Music to board airplanes.

And yet Haydn was the first worldwide celebrated composer, his fame and popularity far surpassing those of any other composer before him, contemporary to him (Mozart included) and, for a while, after him --- revered and appreciated by aristocrats and bourgeois, connoiseurs and dilettanti, musicians and writers/painters alike. Impressive feat for a purveyor of sameness. Or do you imply that all those people were just stupid, unable or unwilling to tell genuinely great music from background music?

You're such a proponent of music for the people,

That's true. Whatever is expressly composed only for a coterie of initiates and in conscious disdain of, or indifference to, the public at large doesn't find much favor with me.

I pretty much never see them programmed at two of the world's largest orchestras.

I don't know what orchestras you refer to but not having any Haydn in their repertoire is a sign of massive cultural decline.

[San Antone]

That's true. Whatever is expressly composed only for a coterie of initiates and in conscious disdain of, or indifference to, the public at large doesn't find much favor with me.

I think you are making a huge assumption about composers of a kind of music which for whatever reason does not have mass audience appeal.  In my experience no composer has "disdain" for "the public at large". They may be indifferent to writing for mass consumption, but that is a very different idea.

Composers, as is true for all artists (IMO), compose the kind of music that firstly they want to hear.  And usually they develop an audience who also wishes to hear that music.  The fact that this self-selected audience is small does not mean it is a "coterie of initiates" - merely a group of people who share a certain taste in music.

Earlier I suggested that you refrain from being judgmental.  Well, here you are again using loaded language to describe the composers and audience for a music which you don't happen to value.

I'm glad you value Haydn, but that has nothing to do with the composers whose audience is smaller - but have the advantage of being alive today and writing new music. I think they deserve support, encouragement, respect, and not your snide remarks.

[Karl Henning]

Whatever is expressly composed only for a coterie of initiates and in conscious disdain of, or indifference to, the public at large doesn't find much favor with me.

I wonder you have the cheek at this stage of the conversation to offer this strawman.

Are you engaged in the discussion, or are you trolling?

Consider that a rhetorical q.

[Karl Henning]

Earlier I suggested that you refrain from being judgmental.  Well, here you are again using loaded language to describe the composers and audience for a music which you don't happen to value.

QFT

[AnotherSpin]

I actually think this is something I am going to take to heart. Every five years or so, I'll force myself to listen to Mozart's music, and I just find it so boring - not all of, but his symphonies - his operas - snooze fests. (Inspired in part one of the greatest posters - Iago.)

My condolences.

[AnotherSpin]

I think you are making a huge assumption about composers of a kind of music which for whatever reason does not have mass audience appeal.  In my experience no composer has "disdain" for "the public at large". They may be indifferent to writing for mass consumption, but that is a very different idea.

Composers, as is true for all artists (IMO), compose the kind of music that firstly they want to hear.  And usually they develop an audience who also wishes to hear that music.  The fact that this self-selected audience is small does not mean it is a "coterie of initiates" - merely a group of people who share a certain taste in music.

Earlier I suggested that you refrain from being judgmental.  Well, here you are again using loaded language to describe the composers and audience for a music which you don't happen to value.

I'm glad you value Haydn, but that has nothing to do with the composers whose audience is smaller - but have the advantage of being alive today and writing new music. I think they deserve support, encouragement, respect, and not your snide remarks.

That's right, in the modern world where being the best is shameful (well how can you, the worst will take offence) any weird freak should be supported and promoted in every way possible.

[brewski]

As a fan of Morton Feldman, I've heard a few of his longer works live, e.g., Triadic Memories for piano (90 minutes) and For Christian Wolff for flute and keyboards (3 hours). I have not yet heard the six-hour String Quartet No. 2. (And letting listeners know the approximate time commitment required—whether Feldman or Haydn or Brahms—is the right thing to do.)

One of the issues touched on here is attention span, and I have no way of explaining, nor defending, wanting to listen to something for hours. Bruckner and Mahler, two of my faves, both require a willingness to focus for at least an hour, and to my brain, they repay that investment.

But obviously Sorabji is a different animal. His works clearly appeal to some people, even if a small number.

I will say that a long-held belief is "One person's boredom is another's trance." Why? I have no idea, but there's probably something of value in studying brain chemistry, coupled with willingness, perhaps acquired, to focus for a longer period of time.

-Bruce

[AnotherSpin]

As a fan of Morton Feldman, I've heard a few of his longer works live, e.g., Triadic Memories for piano (90 minutes) and For Christian Wolff for flute and keyboards (3 hours). I have not yet heard the six-hour String Quartet No. 2. (And letting listeners know the approximate time commitment required—whether Feldman or Haydn or Brahms—is the right thing to do.)

One of the issues touched on here is attention span, and I have no way of explaining, nor defending, wanting to listen to something for hours. Bruckner and Mahler, two of my faves, both require a willingness to focus for at least an hour, and to my brain, they repay that investment.

But obviously Sorabji is a different animal. His works clearly appeal to some people, even if a small number.

I will say that a long-held belief is "One person's boredom is another's trance." Why? I have no idea, but there's probably something of value in studying brain chemistry, coupled with willingness, perhaps acquired, to focus for a longer period of time.

-Bruce

I listened to the Feldman's Quartet, in two different performances. I liked the experience. The music did not distract me from various activities at home: cooking, surfing the net, reading, etc. I also had a compact with his piano quintet in my car for a while. Used to put it on outside the city when travelling on long empty roads. When I was alone, of course.

Well, trancelike state does not require chemistry. Anyone who tried Eastern meditation practices, even such light versions as TM, experienced it. No brainer.

[Florestan]

In my experience no composer has "disdain" for "the public at large".

I wonder you have the cheek at this stage of the conversation to offer this strawman.

Let's see.

'Around [music] should float something solemn and festival-like. The entrance to it should be through ceremony and mystery as to a Freemasons' Lodge. It is artistically indecent that anyone from the street, railway train, or restaurant is free to clatter in [...].

The essence of music is divined by a few single individuals; to the majority it is unknown or misunderstood. [It] might manifest itself to the inner perception of one of the elect in a moment of exalted vision.

We must make the texture of our music such that no amateur can touch it.

Decidedly [Busoni's Piano Concerto] is not the music for Everyman. It lives and moves in a world of experience that is closed to that gentleman.

...the enormous majority who demand offal and the microscopic minority of connoisseurs...

...the concert-going and concert-giving rabble...

Is it not conceivable that in its very nature and essence this music can and must only appeal to an extremely restricted audience?

I loathe the crowd.

[A] thing, no matter how good, cannot be mauled about by the dirty, clumsy paws of the herd without getting finally repulsive and loathsome. (NB: this, with respect to Rachmaninoff's C-sharp minor Prelude)

If this is not disdain of and indifference to the public at large, then what is it?

Composers, as is true for all artists (IMO), compose the kind of music that firstly they want to hear.  And usually they develop an audience who also wishes to hear that music.  The fact that this self-selected audience is small does not mean it is a "coterie of initiates" - merely a group of people who share a certain taste in music.

And how is this substantially different from a coterie, whose definition is

a small group of people with shared interests or tastes

[San Antone]

If this is not disdain of and indifference to the public at large, then what is it?

A different orientation, without disdain.

how is this substantially different from a coterie

Coterie is another word for clique which has a negative connotation, and suggests an association based on a sense of superiority to everyone else. 

This thread has been an opportunity for you to express your own disdain for composers of a kind of music you don't value. And then you accuse the composers of that music of having disdain for the public at large. But that is a something you have imagined in your head.

[Florestan]

A different orientation, without disdain.

Yeah, right. The concert-going rabble; the dirty, clumsy paws of the herd; the enormous majority who demand offal --- these are actually affectionate terms.

[AnotherSpin]

But that is a something you have imagined in your head.

Could you name something not imagined in a head?

[atardecer]

I found this video featuring one of Rachmaninoff's students, at around 3:45 she begins to talk about his preludes and says that Rachmaninoff stated that it is 'more difficult to write a miniature than to write a large composition.'

Ruth Slenczynska talks and plays two Rachmaninoff Preludes (1963)

[DavidW]

Could you name something not imagined in a head?

The interior of a black hole.  It has to be something, but we don't really don't know what it is.  We can speculate all we want, but its nature is hidden from us and thus can't be imagined.  But it is still real.

[Florestan]

The interior of a black hole.  It has to be something, but we don't really don't know what it is.  We can speculate all we want, but its nature is hidden from us and thus can't be imagined.  But it is still real.

I think that what @AnotherSpin meant was that all imagined things are necessarily imagined in the head, so that the expression "the imagination in your head" is rather pleonastic: one cannot imagine anything save in the head.