Audiences hate modern classical music because their brains cannot cope

[DavidW]

No one listens to music and uses random guessing.  Everyone listens and begins to expect something from the music because of what the composer has set us up to expect.  Often the composer will produce what most people would expect him to do, but just as often the composer will alter the expected result slightly (or not so slightly) in order to create a surprise.  How well a composer handles the balancing act of producing surprises as opposed to an expected result is what produces bad, average, good or great music.

Music that only produces surprises frustrates an audience, and music that produces no surprises bores an audience.  And as has been pointed out, there and many variables in music that produce surprise or an expected result besides pitch selection.  And I think we enjoy hearing "a well prepared surprise" over and over, kind of like enjoying seeing some movies again even though we know how they turn out. 

You haven't said anything that contradicts what I've said so far.

A possibly relevant fact is that no matter how often we hear the same work, say the Beethoven 9th Symphony, and know what to expect 100% - many people still enjoy it.  I have doubts that the ability to predict what pitch will happen in a piece of music is a strong indicator if the music is good or not, or even if someone will use that as a factor in judging whether they enjoyed the music or not.

If you recall I already said that the writer of the article was wrong to equate predictability with quality, but the study indicates a different interesting question: is modern music unpredictable?

Because of all this, I find the study this article describes rather limited in advancing an understanding of music and how people respond to it.

Illogical conclusion.  Because of everything that you said, logically you should be interested in the specifics of the study instead of simply dismissing it for no good reason.

[Franco]

If you recall I already said that the writer of the article was wrong to equate predictability with quality, but the study indicates a different interesting question: is modern music unpredictable?

Since they were only measuring pitch selection, then they created a study that was biased against atonal music, which does not rely on the kind of expectations most people have learned from the majority of music they have heard.  Because they did not study other elements such as rhythm, sequencing, phrasing, etc., then their study is ill-equipped to form any conclusions about anything other than tonal music.  Speaking personally, I find my ability to predict tonal or atonal music is about the same, but this is not how I consciously listen to music (and doubt anyone else does) - what happens on a subconscious level is what the study is attempting to get at, and the elements which produce pleasure at hearing music are vastly more subtle and nuanced than predicting pitches.

Illogical conclusion.  Because of everything that you said, logically you should be interested in the specifics of the study instead of simply dismissing it for no good reason.

See above why I dismiss this study.

I am more interested in reading the book, which covers more territory than a study designed to test the predictable-ness of music.  The book, discusses the importance of music for people beyond this narrow subject.

Even so, I doubt I will actually get around to reading the book.  I'd rather spend that time listening to music, tonal and atonal.

[Florestan]

Even so, I doubt I will actually get around to reading the book.  I'd rather spend that time listening to music, tonal and atonal.

Music is not to be understood. It is to be listened to. - Hermann Scherchen

[Elgarian]

Because of all this, I find the study this article describes rather limited in advancing an understanding of music and how people respond to it.

and then DavidW said:

Illogical conclusion.  Because of everything that you said, logically you should be interested in the specifics of the study instead of simply dismissing it for no good reason.

He's not dismissing it though, David - well, not here in so many words, though I see in a later post he goes further. But here he's only saying it's rather limited. And I think that's right - it is. Interesting perhaps, to some, and perhaps indicative of a way future research might go - but limited in the conclusions we can draw from it, in itself.

[jochanaan]

...it can be in simple 4/4 time and then the rhythm is well understood...

LOL I've played some stuff in 4/4 time that was so unpredictable the conductor had to come up with a new way of beating time for it!

...A possibly relevant fact is that no matter how often we hear the same work, say the Beethoven 9th Symphony, and know what to expect 100% - many people still enjoy it.  I have doubts that the ability to predict what pitch will happen in a piece of music is a strong indicator if the music is good or not, or even if someone will use that as a factor in judging whether they enjoyed the music or not...

But Beethoven's Ninth, with many other musical masterpieces "classical" and "modern," is so rich in every element of music--pitches, dynamics, instrumental tonal variations, even verbal meanings--that despite long acquaintance over nearly four decades, I discover new beauties in it every time I listen or study the score, or get reminded of something that I've forgotten.  And, speaking as a performer, every performance brings out something different.  One orchestra may have string players who can dig deep into every note, another may have a sparkling woodwind section, another group might have choristers who sing all those high notes effortlessly and flawlessly... Do you see?  There's so much in even the acknowledged masterworks that they are new every time you play, listen, or study.

Karl brought out an excellent point earlier when he asked if it were admissible to question the scientific method itself.  Now, music is as much a science as an art--but it is also as much an art as a science.  Its elements can be quantified to a degree, but its total effect on humans--well, we'd need to know a lot more about who we are in our inner spaces to quantify the total effect.  Studying its elements in isolation, mechanistically, cannot answer the deep questions.  But that doesn't mean they're unanswerable.  Perhaps if somebody, or some people, obtain mastery in several different disciplines and bring them all to bear...

[Superhorn]

   I like this quote by the distinguished music critic Andrew Porter. 
    He once declared that he prefers the music of Elliott Carter to that of Philip Glass, because "he would rather have his mind challenged than his patience".





                                                                         

[Scarpia]

Karl brought out an excellent point earlier when he asked if it were admissible to question the scientific method itself.  Now, music is as much a science as an art--but it is also as much an art as a science.  Its elements can be quantified to a degree, but its total effect on humans--well, we'd need to know a lot more about who we are in our inner spaces to quantify the total effect.  Studying its elements in isolation, mechanistically, cannot answer the deep questions.  But that doesn't mean they're unanswerable.  Perhaps if somebody, or some people, obtain mastery in several different disciplines and bring them all to bear...

You act as though this is unique to the study of music.  All science makes use of one or more simplifying paradigms to characterize one aspect of a more complex phenomena.  The goal is to distill out the essence from the myriad details.  It is certainly valid to question whether the statistical test applied is being applied appropriately.   However the details required to do this are not available here, and what we have are people dismissing the results without having a clear idea of the methodology, which indications that they are simply giving voice to their prejudices.

[karlhenning]

However the details required to do this are not available here, and what we have are people dismissing the results without having a clear idea of the methodology, which indications that they are simply giving voice to their prejudices.

No, we have a group of people not nearly so simple;  some of us are raising questions about the methods and front-loadings, as the discussion is progressing.

I honestly fail to see what is so egregious about this.  If I am at fault, I should happily learn why.

[DavidW]

This whole thing reminds me of musicologists in the past being dismissed and even kicked out of conferences for daring to present their research on authentic performance practice.  Musicians are naturally intolerant of anyone infringing upon their territory, even if it's to address issues that they can't.  Case in point, this discussion has not even touched on the details of the study yet, and most likely never will.

[DavidW]

No, we have a group of people not nearly so simple;  some of us are raising questions about the methods and front-loadings, as the discussion is progressing.

I honestly fail to see what is so egregious about this.  If I am at fault, I should happily learn why.

Nope.  You and others are providing a smoke screen to prevent the discussion from progressing.  We're still talking about the same thing that we were on page 1.

[karlhenning]

Case in point, this discussion has not even touched on the details of the study yet, and most likely never will.

Perhaps, as a scientist yourself, you might assist in this?

Nope.  You and others are providing a smoke screen to prevent the discussion from progressing.  We're still talking about the same thing that we were on page 1.

I do not accept the accusation that I am throwing smoke;  but thank you for the suggestion.

[DavidW]

Perhaps, as a scientist yourself, you might assist in this?

I've provided a reasonable definition of pitch predictability in a statistical survey and it's been ignored twice.  And no one that has dismissed the survey (without knowing the details) has tried to constructively build a thought experiment on what statistical survey would work, or even how to either qualify or quantity predictability.

[Franco]

Beethoven's Ninth, with many other musical masterpieces "classical" and "modern," is so rich in every element of music--pitches, dynamics, instrumental tonal variations, even verbal meanings--that despite long acquaintance over nearly four decades, I discover new beauties in it every time I listen or study the score, or get reminded of something that I've forgotten. 

This is precisely what I was trying to point out.  Since interest in Beethoven 9 is not weakened despite being able to predict with absolute certainty which pitches will play - that aspect of it is not important.  Obviously there is more to Beethoven 9 than the series of pitches that make it up.

By constructing a study based on giving subjects a "test" in which they are played various musical selections and asked to predict what the next pitch or series of pitches or harmonic progression might continue after the selection has ended will not produce what I would consider useful information about music.

It may likely produce a result that a majority of subjects were alike in what they predicted concerning tonal music over atonal music - but this piece of information is not of value, IMO.  Since what makes music interesting, all music - tonal and atonal, is not just the series of notes defining a melodic phrase or line or the harmonic progress and the knowledge that the melodic or harmonic patterns of some music is easier to predict than other, verges on being so superficial as to be worthless.

It certainly will NOT offer any worthwhile conclusion about atonal music and why fewer people seem to enjoy it compared to tonal music.  Something I don't understand either, but also am not too worried about.

[Scarpia]

This is precisely what I was trying to point out.  Since interest in Beethoven 9 is not weakened despite being able to predict with absolute certainty which pitches will play - that aspect of it is not important.  Obviously there is more to Beethoven 9 than the series of pitches that make it up.

Even if you become familiar with a work you can still distinguish between a "standard" passage where the composer does just what is expected and a "deceptive passage" where the composer does something out of the ordinary (like the sudden shift of harmony in the big cadence that leads to the Turkish March).   And I'd be surprised that someone would claim that such passages don't make a peculiar impression the first time you encounter them that is not duplicated after hearing them for the 100th time.

[Franco]

Even if you become familiar with a work you can still distinguish between a "standard" passage where the composer does just what is expected and a "deceptive passage" where the composer does something out of the ordinary (like the sudden shift of harmony in the big cadence that leads to the Turkish March).   And I'd be surprised that someone would claim that such passages don't make a peculiar impression the first time you encounter them that is not duplicated after hearing them for the 100th time.

I can only speak for myself and I can say with some confidence that my enjoyment is in hearing the music not in knowing in my mind what it will do.  It is the actual realization of the music, the sound as it is happening that is enjoyable, and this does not change whether it is the first time or 100th time I've heard any work I love.  I wrote in an earlier post that a well written/prepared "surprise" is enjoyable no matter how often it is experienced, at least this is true for me.

There is a short piece written by William Walton from his film score for Henry V, Touch her soft lips and part, that is very beautiful and touching - and I can listen to it over and over, even in one sitting, and not find the 5th hearing any less effecting than the first.

[Cato]

Well if you give a double blind test about predicting notes in a piece of music, and the participants perform statistically no better than just guessing, then I think one can conclude that the music is completely unpredictable.

From another writer earlier:

In any event, however random a "piece" of music is, our brains are not random. We humans can "make sense" of anything we perceive. (Can, note. Not that all humans are going to actually do it!)

DavidW wrote:

I disagree, the study shows otherwise.

How can the study know that people actually CANNOT find a pattern, rather than being unwilling to expend the energy do so?


I am also reminded of the following analogy from Physics:

By placing both stochastic and deterministic in the same definition, the mathematicians have formed a bridge between the two sciences - two sciences that were regarded as mutually exclusive until then. Chaos is the study of deterministic systems that are so sensitive to measurement that their output appears random.

Edward Lorenz found out all of that the hard way. In 1961, he had managed to create a skeleton of a weather system from a handful of differential equations. He kept a continuous simulation running on an extremely primitive computer that would output a day's progress in the simulation every minute as a line of text on a roll of paper. Evidently, the whole system was very successful at producing ``weather-like'' output - nothing ever happened the same way twice, but there was an underlying order that delighted Lorenz and his associates.


...Line by line, the winds and temperatures in Lorenz's printouts seemed to behave in a recognizable earthly way. They matched his cherished intuition about the weather, his sense that it repeated itself, displaying familiar patterns over time, pressure rising and falling, the airstream swinging north and south.[8, p.15,]
What Edward Lorenz had discovered was a chaotic system. Even though a computer had control of the simulation, and certainly possessed the capability to generate random numbers at will, there was nothing random about any portion of the way the simulation was supposed to work.

From: http://www.gweep.net/~rocko/sufficiency/node10.html

Could one therefore say that the seemingly "random nature" of Le Marteau by Boulez is belied by the existence of the systematically organized score itself?

Therefore, like Edward Lorenz observing clouds and the weather, is it perhaps not true that the listener must become more aware of the subtle nature of what is heard, rather than saying there is no rhyme nor reason?

[Cato]

High level composers & musicians have frightening ears....

Captain Ahab in Universe X: "Aye Starbuck, I seek the maker of the music, whose sonic atoms and twirbling tones dared to smite and shatter and sunder my leg from my soul!"

Starbuck of Universe X: "So we seek the Great White Wailer after all!  But how, Captain, how canst thou know that the musician, if thou hast the right to find him, whom we hunt will be the right one?"

Ahab: "How?!  HOW?!!! Starbuck, do ye not know that granted from the terrible depths of Gehenna itself, the Great White Wailer has been possessed of...the frightening ears?!"

[DavidW]

Cato, yes I understand chaos.  And yes we are talking about chaos.  12 tone row composition has a logical set of rules that result in music that appears random to the listener.  I completely agree.

[Franco]

The music of Arnold Schoenberg, or Alban Berg or much other 12-tone music does not sound random to me.  Far from it.  Not that there isn't music which was designed to sound random, and there is nothing wrong with that either, and it is very enjoyable to hear as well.

[greg]

Penderecki--yes, and the difference between large scale and small scale works holds here. I particularly like the Sextet and the work for solo 'cello (don't remember the title of the piece) which is included on the Naxos recording of the Sextet.

Lutoslawski--mmeh.  From what I've heard of his work, nothing grips me for good or for ill.

Gorecki--discovered the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs was a good cure for insomnia, and haven't gone looking for more since then.  (Perhaps it have helped if I understood enough Polish to follow the texts as they were being sung...)

Xenakis--nothing, for the simple reason I was under the impression that  his stuff more properly belonged in the "New Age" category.

And two others:

Part--same as Lutoslawksi, with some of the problems of large scale Ligeti (the washes of sound, for instance) present.  Not in a rush to get more of him

Taverner--Protecting Veil is extremely good; for the rest, I would say he is similar to Part and Lutosklawski.

There's also the fact that I have enough other musical interests that 20th century music has a low priority.    Better a Renaissance motet or bel canto opera that I know I will have a high probability of enjoying than a modern piece I've heard little or nothing about and which I will quite possibly end up disliking.

Ah, okay, I was just wondering... 
btw, I'm sure you'll come to find out Xenakis isn't quite "New Age".  (though i guess you could say there may be elements of that in some of his music)