The Second Viennese School in the 21st Century: Still New?

[Josquin des Prez]

You are funny when you make blanket statements like this!

You can't shatter boundaries when there are none. This is why young composers "struggle" to make a name for themselves. They have nothing to say that is actually worth saying anymore.

[karlhenning]

Nonsense. By their mid 20s, both Mozart and Beethoven had already produced works of genius.

You're so funny, with your 2-D glasses!

Time for me to say Nonsense:  Beethoven was already 30 at the time he wrote his first symphony.  If he'd died then, we shouldn't think much of Beethoven's "genius" at all.

You do make it easy when you flaunt your historical ignorance like this ; )

[DavidW]

I think that the only way now that boundaries could be shattered now would be if composers rejected the concept of music being associated with sound and started associating notes with different colors!

Are there any boundaries left?  And what does crossing them give us?

[karlhenning]

I think that the only way now that boundaries could be shattered now would be if composers rejected the concept of music being associated with sound and started associating notes with different colors!

Are there any boundaries left?  And what does crossing them give us?

Perfectly germane questions.  Probably not the first time I've mentioned another Wuorinen comment: How can there be a musical avant-garde when the revolution-before-last said "Anything goes"?

[DavidW]

That is a great quote.

[karlhenning]

You can't shatter boundaries when there are none. This is why young composers "struggle" to make a name for themselves. They have nothing to say that is actually worth saying anymore.

Now (as must be apparent from the Wuorinen remark I cited) we agree that you can't shatter boundaries when there are none. That does not at all mean that composers whose work does not include boundary-shattering have nothing to say that is actually worth saying anymore.

And you will pardon me for doubting that you have anything at all worth saying to me on the question of the difficulties a composer in our day has in making a name for himself.

[Josquin des Prez]

Time for me to say Nonsense:  Beethoven was already 30 at the time he wrote his first symphony.  If he'd died then, we shouldn't think much of Beethoven's "genius" at all.[/font]

The first symphony was a calculated effort. This is why it sounds so sterile. Revolutionary that he was, he didn't feel comfortable braking into the concert hall for the first time with something that would have alienated his audience right away. But by that time he already had a number of masterpieces under his belt. The three piano trios from 1792, the early piano sonatas, including the opus 13, which he completed in 1797, the cello sonatas opus 5, and the string quartets opus 18, composed between 1798 and 1800. It is true that perhaps he didn't mature as fast as Mozart but its not like there was no indication of his greatness even as far as his early 20s. Listen to the Cantata on the death of Joseph II (WoO 87) and see if it sounds like the work of an 'average' composer.

[Brian]

There are things artistically worse than just copying, too.  Wuorinen once made a surgical comment about how the "neo-Romantics" conveniently forgot that the original Romantics were about passion, musical adventure, and shattering boundaries — not about keeping to your audience's Comfort Zone.

That's a great comment, and that's a reason why many composers who attempt to write "neo-Romantic" music (cough, Higdon, cough) irritate me to no end.

[Luke]

Not that it's the first time I've said this, but it is characteristically fatuous of Boulez to proclaim that music which doesn't play in the arena he wishes, and according to the rules which he wishes, is "useless."

Kyle Gann's sarcastically, resolutely triadic canon on such a statement 

[karlhenning]

Kyle Gann's sarcastically, resolutely triadic canon on such a statement 

Oh, what good fun!

[Luke]

...forgot to say, not just triadic at every point but also using a twelve tone row - after all, that's what Boulez is insisting upon. Nifty. 

[karlhenning]

...forgot to say, not just triadic at every point but also using a twelve tone row - after all, that's what Boulez is insisting upon. Nifty. 

Yes . . . I picked up on that as a consequence of thinking, Gee, I should have added a cautionary natural to that B . . . .

[Josquin des Prez]

And just to drive my point even further, here's a little something Beethoven wrote when he was 15:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCA33B7bOTA

One wonders how far he could have gone even at this stage had he been blessed with the type of opportunities offered to Mozart or Mendelssohn.

[Brian]

And just to drive my point even further, here's a little something Beethoven wrote when he was 15:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCA33B7bOTA

One wonders how far he could have gone even at this stage had he been blessed with the type of opportunities offered to Mozart or Mendelssohn.

I don't think it could possibly argued that, had Beethoven been given Mendelssohn's privileges, he would have been a better composer. Artistic genius is not something which works that way. His music is autobiographical in that it is a representation of his spirit and his psyche at certain points of his life. Over-training and pampered upbringing might have given him a whole different set of neuroses, like Mozart's. Or it might have made him complacent and over-successful. If the institutions had been too accepting of his youthful ideas, he might have never rebelled against them. If you want an example, just look at... uh... frankly, look at Mendelssohn.

[karlhenning]

And just to drive my point even further, here's a little something Beethoven wrote when he was 15:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCA33B7bOTA

Thank you for underscoring my point: that the 15-year-old Beethoven was musically competent, but hardly an earth-shattering genius.  You make yourself ridiculous, cooing over workaday classicism as if it were an egg a Titan laid.  Hint: Beethoven himself did not publish the piece.

[Josquin des Prez]

I don't think it could possibly argued that, had Beethoven been given Mendelssohn's privileges, he would have been a better composer. Artistic genius is not something which works that way. If you want an example, just look at... uh... frankly, look at Mendelssohn.

I'm just refuting the notion he would not have been an artist of great precocity, had historical circumstances worked differently for him. And his genius was evident despite the incompleteness of his musical education.

[Josquin des Prez]

Thank you for underscoring my point: that the 15-year-old Beethoven was musically competent, but hardly an earth-shattering genius.  You make yourself ridiculous, cooing over workaday classicism as if it were an egg a Titan laid.  Hint: Beethoven himself did not publish the piece.

It is more then merely musically competent, since it foreshadows a talent and a form of musical expression which most other composers at the time did no posses even in their adult works. If this work had been written by anybody but Beethoven it would be considered one of the "better" pieces of lesser classical artists.

[karlhenning]

I'm just refuting the notion he would not have been an artist of great precocity, had historical circumstances worked differently for him. And his genius was evident despite the incompleteness of his musical education.

Had circumstances worked out differently is pointless speculation. And your "genius" 15-year-old piece is at the level of an adult Vanhal. So what?

It is more then merely musically competent, since it foreshadows a talent and a form of musical expression which most other composers at the time did no posses even in their adult works. If this work had been written by anybody but Beethoven it would be considered one of the "better" pieces of lesser classical artists.

Thank you for conceding that if Beethoven had died at age 30, we wouldn't think all that much of him.

[Josquin des Prez]

Thank you for conceding that if Beethoven had died at age 30, we wouldn't think all that much of him.

What about the works i listed, which were all written before the his 30th birthday? Surely the opus 13 at least would have been enough to place him on the "tragic" list of geniuses who didn't get the chance to see their talents flourish to their fullest.

[karlhenning]

What about the works i listed, which were all written before the his 30th birthday?

You're still pointlessly obsessed with the notion of a child prodigy.