When Did Modernism Begin?

[Dancing Divertimentian]

Yes, and the question has been avoided every single time without fail. I think that means precisely what i think it means.

You have a very short memory if you think we're constantly "dodging" your queries. I myself got stuck in one of your fantasy-argument dead-ends a few months back which IN FACT went on for days. So wake up already.

Don't go blaming us if you can't digest it all.

[karlhenning]

As I have come to understand it, the Modern era is characterized by the objective not just to achieve beautiful and convincing art, but to also somehow move the very fabric of art forward.  Schoenberg's music is undoubtedly beautiful, but it is modern because it achieves that beauty through novelty.  This is entirely different from the achievement of Bach, who, as everyone knows, was operating in an antiquated style when he wrote his masterpieces.  And it is different from Mozart because Mozart wrote in the style of his contemporaries, but just better than anyone else.  It was not really until Beethoven that we see an appreciation for unusual techniques.  But still, I would say, Beethoven was not trying to create a new music, he simply pushed it in the direction he needed it.

And in this way Modernism is indebted to Beethoven, although he was not modern.  There has always seemed to be a recognition of Beethoven as a precedent, not because Beethoven tried to move music ahead, but because he was so successful at it.  The universal acknowledgment of Beethoven's achievements laid the groundwork for composers to take a small piece of his genius, novelty, and make it their raison d'etre.

It didn't happen overnight, of course.  For their part, Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner pushed music a little, but it didn't consume them.  I don't think you reach it until Schoenberg, who was the first composer who sought novelty for its own sake, not at the expense of beauty, but in order to nudge music toward a perceived higher beauty.  In that way, music ceased to naturally progress and started to be pushed ahead, at times rather forcefully.  Stravinsky, I don't think, was a modernist, because he was more after shock value and effects than in the history of Art music.  You can see that by his career; he had no progression.  For him, serialism was a tool, not a higher calling.

That is what separates the modernist from the other composers of the 20th Century, a gazing toward the future and an active role of the composer to force it there.  The modern composer thinks, "Well, music was going to do that anyway, so why not just do it now?"  There is no time to sit and let things take their course.  So you see a lot of, perhaps, silly things happening.  Music composed upside down, without notes, on instruments that are unplayable, etc.  Of course, some of these silly things ended up producing amazing music, but we can look back now and see that it was not the silliness itself we have to thank, but the craft the composer, as it has always been.

I think in the coming years we will begin to separate modernism from its social and political implications and simply enjoy it.  We no longer have to believe that serialism is an emancipation of the notes to enjoy Milton Babbitt's music.  Nor must we go into meditative trance to find the hidden beauty of Cage's music.  Although these ideas are undoubtedly linked to their music, I think we can get beyond that now.

All very interesting remarks, Brett.

[Homo Aestheticus]

There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that I would have been able to recognize the genius of Bach had I come across his works in the early 18th century.

Of course.

Also, a few members here make the ridiculous claim that had I lived in the 19th century I'd be clamoring for more Meyerbeer, not Wagner.

The entire argument is based on a fallacy, that a genius is such only when society as a whole becomes aware of his existence.

It is such a tired argument, isn't it ?

At least we have Harold Schonberg on our side who wrote in his book The Lives Of The Great Composers:

"Whatever the complex of reasons, the period after World War II and the following decades saw a hiatus in the mighty line of powerful, individualistic composers that had extended from Monteverdi and Beethoven, through Wagner and Schoenberg.... "

[Henk]

We can define classical music as music in which there's always a kind of journey and homecoming at the end. This in contrast to serial music being "Exodus music", which shares this characteristic with jazz and also the music of Prince. This is what Sloterdijk says about it (he talks about "new music", I think he means serial music then) and I think he's right. So when composers start making music that had not the journey/homecoming sense but Exodus sense modernism began, and this has of course been an evolving process, completed when serialism had formed.

Henk

[DavidRoss]

We can define classical music as music in which there's always a kind of journey and homecoming at the end. This in contrast to serial music being "Exodus music", which shares this characteristic with jazz and also the music of Prince. This is what Sloterdijk says about it (he talks about "new music", I think he means serial music then) and I think he's right. So when composers start making music that had not the journey/homecoming sense but Exodus sense modernism began, and this has of course been an evolving process, completed when serialism had formed.

Thank you, Henk.  This is a point of view I've not seen before.  I will consider it.  Is this original with you, or is it your spin on what Sloterdijk (and others?) have to say about it?  And if you're referring to Peter Sloterdijk, can you provide a link to something of his explaining his conception of "new music" and the "journey vs destination" dichotomy?  Thank you.

[karlhenning]

It is such a tired argument, isn't it ?

Not so tired as the fallacy that genius is such only when "Josquin" (or Eric) endorses it.

[Henk]

Thank you, Henk.  This is a point of view I've not seen before.  I will consider it.  Is this original with you, or is it your spin on what Sloterdijk (and others?) have to say about it?  And if you're referring to Peter Sloterdijk, can you provide a link to something of his explaining his conception of "new music" and the "journey vs destination" dichotomy?  Thank you.

Peter Sloterdijk doesn't say much about it, he's very short in explaining his view in "Weltfremdheit". In summary, and this is all he says about it, he says the following:
There is an ontological difference between seeing and hearing: The seeing subject is on the edge of the world, the subject doesn't have to be involved with the world to do so. This in contract to hearing. The ear doesn't have an against maar is inside the acoustic happening.
The being-in-the-world-of-music is not a static thing, it's more nomadic.
Sloterdijk distinguishes two forms of music. There is sedative, calming, functional music and there is progressive, exodus-music. With the first form of music one hears everything what helps the world and otherness not to hear, one wants to escape the world. Amusement music (popular music), but also classical music belong to this type of music. Exodus-music, on the other hand, concentrates to the world, reaching to new horizons, new forms, new experiences. "Performance music" (from Prince to free jazz) and "new music" (I think Sloterdijk means serial music here) belong to this exodus-music.
Both relations to sounds, to music make clear that when we hear music we are always travelling, we are never in-the-world, unless we imagine this as being on the way (exodus music) or going home (sedative music).

[jochanaan]

We can define classical music as music in which there's always a kind of journey and homecoming at the end...

Hmmm...I'm not sure I quite see that in all classical music.  Many of the greater pieces, of course, are journeys.  But when journeying, you have only two options at the end: Come home, or stay somewhere else.  And not all musical journeys even from early music end at home, or even in a home key.  Take Bach's "B minor" Mass, for one: it begins in the "stated" key, but ends very clearly in D major; and like all Masses, it begins with "Lord have mercy" and ends with "Give us peace."  Beethoven's Fifth Symphony begins with the famous, ferocious C minor motive, which doesn't sound at all like "Victory" , but ends in a blazing C major triumph.  Those are only a couple of musical journeys that end somewhere else than where they began.

[jochanaan]

Yes, and the question has been avoided every single time without fail. I think that means precisely what i think it means.

I wasn't "avoiding the question;" I was out doing other things, including some musicmaking.

[Ten thumbs]

We can define classical music as music in which there's always a kind of journey and homecoming at the end. This in contrast to serial music being "Exodus music", which shares this characteristic with jazz and also the music of Prince. This is what Sloterdijk says about it (he talks about "new music", I think he means serial music then) and I think he's right. So when composers start making music that had not the journey/homecoming sense but Exodus sense modernism began, and this has of course been an evolving process, completed when serialism had formed.

Henk

This is an interesting distinction but I find it hard to discover in the music itself. The 'homecoming' in much classical music represents the completion of a thematic plan. Serial music is very much about working out a twelve-tone thematic plan often quite rigorously and I do not see the loose structures implied by the term 'Exodus music'.

[schweitzeralan]

Debussy's and Ravel's harmonies were still more-or-less tonal, although some of late Debussy is amazingly indeterminate tonally.  Also their rhythms were not a total break from the past.  So although they anticipated Modernism, they weren't really Modernists.  (Actually, though, I consider Boléro a "proto-minimalist" composition. )  Of the nineteenth-century Modernist precursors, Liszt, of all people, anticipated Modernism most strongly with his Étude sans tonalité and the twelve-note theme from his Faust Symphony.

But I feel we can pinpoint the actual beginnings of musical Modernism to two works: Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra (1909, first performed in 1912) and Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring (1913).  The Five Pieces were the first orchestral pieces to use full "pan-tonality" (Schoenberg preferred this term to "atonality"), and The Rite of Spring, although not atonal in the formal sense, was the first major work characterized by ever-changing rhythmic meter.

Your perspective is not dissimilar to my own perspective concerning the origins of 20th century Modernism.  The many post on this thread bear a variety of views. I don't know if muicologist agree on the subject.  For me personally the likes of Debussy, Ravel, Scriabin, Gliere, (early) Roslavets, Gauberg, Griffis, Suk, Schmitt, Szymanovsky, late Bridge, were primarily Pre-Modernists.  There tended to be emphasis on the growing elements of dissidence for its own sake, plus the awareness, or rediscovery of the tight rhythmic structures of Baroque and Classicism structures which were to inform the Modernist aesthetic.There is probably much more to this music theory, or music history academic studies, as the posts on the thread suggest.  Mow, Post Modernism is an adjunct all into itself.

[snyprrr]

When did modernism end?

[ChamberNut]

When did modernism end?

Never.  Once you use the term modernism, you can't really go back, can you?     Every new work afterwards ends up technically being more "modern" than the previous, n'est ce pas? 

[drogulus]

   When did it stop being today? 

[Catison]

Never.  Once you use the term modernism, you can't really go back, can you?     Every new work afterwards ends up technically being more "modern" than the previous, n'est ce pas? 

Not really.  By that definition music has always been modern, because technical innovation has always been going on.  But innovation is ceasing to be the raison d'être for composers now.  Because, as Charles Wuorinen suggested in 1962, "How can you make a revolution when the revolution before last has already said that anything goes?" This has now fully caught up to composers.

[ChamberNut]

Not really.  By that definition music has always been modern, because technical innovation has always been going on.  But innovation is ceasing to be the raison d'être for composers now.  Because, as Charles Wuorinen suggested in 1962, "How can you make a revolution when the revolution before last has already said that anything goes?" This has now fully caught up to composers.

I know.  I was speaking in jest.  I should have put the  or  emoticon.

[schweitzeralan]

   When did it stop being today? 

Probably with the Post Modernists.  This is is a subject unto itself.  I personally lament the fact that music no longer is conceived as it was during the epoch of the "Pre-Modernists." That's my own view, of course.  Also Western culture no longer composes like Bach, Chopin, Strauss, Weber, and so on.  Obviously we all must go along with change.  It's the status of the "Au courant." As I intimated in previous posts, music (along with so many other cultural life) wil be totally different from that which was conceived by Western artists, writers, painters and so forth.

[Anglican Scholar]

When did modernism end?

The 1980's

Premises of modernism:
Querelle des Bouffons (new-fangled Italians versus Rameau)
Beethoven 3rd Symphony
Robert Schumann's criticism
Tristan Prelude

[schweitzeralan]

All very interesting remarks, Brett.

Time changes, and people within varing time structres change accordingly.

[karlhenning]

Time changes, and people within varing time structres change accordingly.

Hence, the difficulty of asserting immutable artistic 'truths'.