Extremely Long Piano Compositions - What's Their Point?

[Karl Henning]

It would take longer to do that instead of just listen to the five hour piano composition!

(* chortle *)

Compare that to reading a five-page analysis of a three-minute Webern Opus.

[Spotted Horses]

I started reading it five days ago, actually, and finished it a few hours ago. Most of the Sorabji quotes I presented earlier are taken from this work. There are still others worth presenting but obviously some people are rather bent on shooting the messenger instead of listening the message.

I don't dispute (nor does anyone else on this thread, that I have noticed) that Sorabji shares with Busoni an "elitist" attitude that a musical performance should be something similar to a religious rite, and that they expected their music would be appreciated by a very select few. What does their contempt for the unkempt rabble matter to me when people get to decide for themselves if they are rabble or elite?

Whatever notions fill a composers head matter not, except for the music they inspire. Sorabji wrote music for an elite cadre of concert goers, but it turns out to be quite suitable for fanatics in their secluded listening rooms with exorbitantly expensive stereos or headphones. Messiaen thought his music had colors (he was fool enough not to realize that the association of musical tones with colors was unique to his own peculiar brain). Scriabin wrote a piece of music (I read in the notes of some recording) that he warned could bring about the end of the world if performed. They were nuts, and so what? The music is glorious (in my opinion).

[San Antone]

I started reading it five days ago, actually, and finished it a few hours ago. Most of the Sorabji quotes I presented earlier are taken from this work. There are still others worth presenting but obviously some people are rather bent on shooting the messenger instead of listening the message.

You can quote from any source as much as you want.  But I for one have heard your message, and simply do not agree with your opinion that the music has no valid point to exist - or the canard it was written for a small elite group (the same charge has been leveled against all classical music). And I am not impressed that you have found a dissertation apparently supporting your opinion.

The message I have tried to deliver to you, which you appear to have been 100% resistant is that a composer is free to write whatever kind of music he wishes and for whatever purpose he imagines or has been attributed to him, or no purpose other than he wishes to bring that music into the world.

Music exists for its own purpose, it does not need permission from any listener in order to exist.  No one is forcing anyone to listen to a 5+ hour work for solo piano.  But I am thrilled that these works exist since they offer a glimpse of the wonderful variety of human creativity and aspiration.

[Henk]

It's quite interesting what's happening here though. It's the conflict between elite and populist in terms of politics. The resemblance is imo striking. For both sides is something to say and it brings democracy into crisis.
EDIT: It's a play of power, Florestan is quite isolated, but real political populists aren't. The elite should uphold human rights, but when the people are treated poorly the power balance changes. The elite want to keep power, so there's debate to win votes, each party has their own tactics. Now of course there are other parties, but the conflict is imo between the elite and populists. The crux is democracy itself.
Human rights should be upholded, both elite and populist threaten it, so in this lies the strenght of the other parties that stand for law and order and human rights.

[Florestan]

The message I have tried to deliver to you, which you appear to have been 100% resistant is that a composer is free to write whatever kind of music he wishes and for whatever purpose he imagines or has been attributed to him, or no purpose other than he wishes to bring that music into the world.

I have no idea from which of my posts did you infer that I denied a composer's freedom to do all that. Asking what is the point of something is not equivalent to saying that that something has no right to exist.

Music exists for its own purpose, it does not need permission from any listener in order to exist.

Certainly and the reverse is also true: listeners don't owe anything to composers and are free to like or dislike the music and also to express their likes or dislikes without needing permission from the composer or from other people in order to do that.

[ritter]

I hate to mention it, but... guess who posted a video (partly) on Sorabji today on YouTube.

Yes, David Hurwitz.

As we say in Spain, "éramos pocos, y parió la abuela" (roughly translated, "as if there weren't enough of us, the grandmother just gave birth")

[Henk]

Florestan is a man of the people I would say, if anyone followed my line of reasoning. A kind of Che Guevara of classical music. The elite is represented by Sorabji attacked by Florestan. Karl is the most prominent defender of the humanity and rights of arts.

[brewski]

As we say in Spain, "éramos pocos, y parió la abuela" (roughly translated, "as if there weren't enough of us, the grandmother just gave birth")

Just chiming in to say (as an occasional Spanish speaker) how much I love that quote!

-Bruce

[Karl Henning]

listeners don't owe anything to composers and are free to like or dislike the music and also to express their likes or dislikes without needing permission from the composer or from other people in order to do that.

I'll go ahead and say, for the benefit of those who actually pay attention, that I have made this point more than once in the course of this discussion. Thanks for putting me in mind of a certain American author again.

If you don't want to listen to the Sequentia cyclica, then by no means listen to it. Be at liberty.

All of us on GMG make free to express musical likes and dislikes. I am grateful that very few of us trouble to create a thread expressly to vent self-righteous musical spleen.

[Florestan]

Florestan is a man of the people I would say, if anyone followed my line of reasoning. A kind of Che Quevara of classical music.

Actually, I strongly and indignantly reject any association with that nefarious henchman, who incidentally was an elitist himself, what with his fanatical belief in the right and duty of an enlightened revolutionary elite to bring happiness to people even if they are reluctant to accept it, and his unflinching willingness and readiness to kill them in the process.

Men of the people in classical music, I don't know, Haydn and Schubert certainly, maybe Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi, Dvorak, Albeniz too.

[ritter]

Okay, this thread has provoked a lively discussion (and kudos to the OP for that), some personal unpleasantness (that has been dealt with quite elegantly in general), but I ask all GMGers to avoid turning this into a political discussion. That's the last thing we need.

[Brian]

I hate to mention it, but... guess who posted a video (partly) on Sorabji today on YouTube.

Yes, David Hurwitz.

As we say in Spain, "éramos pocos, y parió la abuela" (roughly translated, "as if there weren't enough of us, the grandmother just gave birth")

Oh my goodness, what an incredible expression. I can't wait for another chance to use this!

[ritter]

Men of the people in classical music, I don't know, Haydn and Schubert certainly, maybe Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi, Dvorak, Albeniz too.

In Freundschaft, Andrei, but when I read this kind of statements, one name comes to mind. A name you will not like at all.

Yes, the name is Andrei Zhdanov. Sorry 😞

And I can't avoid thinking that what you are accusing Sorabji et al. of is formalism. Sorry again.

[Iota]

As we say in Spain, "éramos pocos, y parió la abuela" (roughly translated, "as if there weren't enough of us, the grandmother just gave birth")

    Brilliant!

[Maestro267]

I need to go refresh my popcorn supply...

[Luke]

Re. Ivory towers - now there's a powerful populist phrase. Ivory towers are bad, right? They're where the snooty elites live, high above the real people, the man in the street, with whom they arrogantly refuse contact.

Another way of looking at them, though - an ivory tower is where you go to be live the way you want to live, surrounded by what you love, and to avoid things that aren't to your taste. In that sense we all live in ivory towers, Florestan included. Ivory towers are our homes, literally if we are luckily (i.e. we live somewhere that keeps the outside world out to the extent that we want to) and figuratively in terms of how we construct our tastes etc.

Sorabji had just as much right to write as he liked, for those people who also liked it, as Mozart or Johann Struass or Offenbach did. His own ivory tower was a place full of highly florid, hyper-complex, fantastical richness and when left to its own devices often of bewildering, numbing length which to him induced a kind of ecstasy. It was a whole musical world, in fact, sufficient unto itself and delightful to explore at length and in depth. Note, though, that Sorabji's ivory tower could also assimilate 'foreign' elements, including those of which Florestan surely approves - see his Spanish Fantasy, his Pastiche on Grieg's Death of Ase, his pieces based on Chopin's 'Minute Waltz,' on Strausses both Ricardian and Johanine, on Bizet's Habanera, Ravel's Rapsode Espagnol, Offenbach's Barcarolle and Rimsky-Korsakov's Sadko - and that when it does so the length of the pieces becomes much more modest.

Florestan's ivory tower has a different tendency, towards simpler and more direct pleasures (neither 'simpler' nor 'direct' used in a pejorative sense, and Florestan's tower certainly has its delights too). But ironically he excludes Sorabji's music from his tower, although Sorabji's tower is happy to assimilate elements from his     

[Brian]

Re. Ivory towers - now there's a powerful populist phrase. Ivory towers are bad, right? They're where the snooty elites live, high above the real people, the man in the street, with whom they arrogantly refuse contact.

I think "ivory tower" also frequently has a connotation with being part of an elite/protected class - i.e., all the elites or academics being in an ivory tower together. Not quite the same as a loner being in a tower all by himself. It's easier for me to imagine, say, Hanslick in an ivory tower, while Sorabji is wandering in the wilderness as a hermit.

But I might be getting carried away with the imagery 

[Luke]

I think "ivory tower" also frequently has a connotation with being part of an elite/protected class - i.e., all the elites or academics being in an ivory tower together. Not quite the same as a loner being in a tower all by himself. It's easier for me to imagine, say, Hanslick in an ivory tower, while Sorabji is wandering in the wilderness as a hermit.

But I might be getting carried away with the imagery 

Absolutely, it does carry negative connotations. But I find in them an inverse snobbery which should get called out. Especially because e.g. in this case (Sorabji) the phrase and its negative connotations are used to tar him with an academicism he did not share (Although would it have been so terrible if he had?)

[Brian]

Oh, yes - agreed - I just meant that I thought it carried group/class connotations as well, rather than meaning a solitary person living in their own world. Like, surely Janacek did not spend his middle age in an ivory tower.

[San Antone]

I have no idea from which of my posts did you infer that I denied a composer's freedom to do all that. Asking what is the point of something is not equivalent to saying that that something has no right to exist.

Asking "what is the point?" and then creating a thread in which you repeatedly expressed your intolerance for these works is essentially calling into question this music's right to exist.

Certainly and the reverse is also true: listeners don't owe anything to composers and are free to like or dislike the music and also to express their likes or dislikes without needing permission from the composer or from other people in order to do that.

Oh you are doing more than simply stating your dislike of it. If all you had said was that you disliked extremely long piano works, this thread would have been short-lived.

But you did much more than that, which caused several members to come to the defense of these works, their right to exist, despite enjoying a small audience and admittedly creating a demanding listening experience.