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

[jowcol]

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!

Didn't Scriabin and Messiaen already mine some of that territory?

[snyprrr]

People who need to have it proved to them that contemporary music is worthwhile will never be convinced by any arguments or by any you tube clips.

I don't think any of the clips proffered so far are representative of what young(er) composers are doing nowadays. Jay Greenberg certainly deserves whatever condign punishment snyprrr wants to mete out to him, but he's not at all representative of new music. To lament the demise of good music by pointing to a crappy composer or two is so obviously silly that I feel silly pointing that out!

There are plenty of fine composers out there. The ones on my list that gave JdP such fits are all very talented people who have written quite powerful and splendid music.

After a dozen years of listening to 17th, 18th and 19th century music, I spent another ten years devouring the music of the twentieth century. Since 1982, when I got "caught up," I have spent the bulk of my listening, both in concerts and in my living room, on contemporary music. I now listen largely to music of the past 15 years. In none of this have I ever stopped listening to (or even discovering new examples of) the music I started with when I was nine. If that suggests to you the possibility that the people on my list of younger composers might actually be worth listening to, why, that's the same possibility that occurred to me!!!

At least I have experienced contemporary music first hand, with sympathy and love and understanding. And I reached my conclusions about it AFTER listening, not before!! I know, that's so backwards. Conclusions are what you're supposed to start with. I guess I'm just a rebel.

ok, here's my New Deal.

some guy, it is obvious to me that you and PetRarch (ugh,..PetRock,..PetrArch??) are the two closest to m,y own sensabilities, because you two are generally the only ones who folow me down some of these rabbit holes.

Plus, you just generally exude a sense of total immersion, so, after this, your last post, I am totally willing to follow you wheresoever you would take me.

I will, from NOW on, engorge myself with the "now" until either I succumb to it, or barf it up in disgust.



IF you would let me limit myself to String Quartets, I would be more than happy to switch most all of my listening to this new endeavor. I will take on all comers,... I'll even listen to a Save the Whales Quartet, if there is one.

So, anyone who has written a String Quartet, I'm all ears.



btw- I AM glad that you concur on Greenberg. I seem to recall a certain, certain person on THIS thread bringing him to my attention.



No one has mentioned Thomas Ades. Karl, here IS a good example,...I CAN hear what Ades is saying in his SQ. I don't hear him saying anything particularly NEW, but I do hear him saying, "Here,...I like this", and, "Here,...I like this other thing too", meaning, I can hear (in the, what? five mvmts) different snippets from the past, put together in a way I haven't heard yet. In other words,...kind of original.

ok, so I WILL lift up this SQ as something by someone born in 1971,...written in the '90s,...that SAYS< Hi, I'm in the '90s and I'm trying to find my own voice in a culture glutted on itself, and here, this is what I have come up with.

The SQ itself is pleasant. There are no Xenakian moments. Perhaps Henze on Elgar? Each mvmt takes a different stylistic tack on a basic, slightly elegiac tone. The second to the last mvmt is an Elgarian melos of typically great beauty.

Anyhow,...it's nice,... but it's not genius. And yes, it's 2010, I think we can all tell.



I am simply going to declare that we have reached a consensus on Masterpieces of Genius in the 21 Century. There are none.

Silence is the True Composer of our times!

We SHOULD be quiet!



Honestly, I'd love Beethoven to get on this Thread and tell us what he thinks about all this new music stuffery.



QUESTION:
What is the latest music that hit you like the opening of LvB's 5th? POW!!!
Bam!!!

[snyprrr]

I don't have a scroll feature on my mouse. He might be the first poster I ignore.

Was it the turtle comment?

[some guy]

I don't listen to music according to genre or nationality (which is a real handicap in online music board games, let me tell you!), but I do have a string quartet or two.

One I got recently, which I liked way more than I thought I would, is Beat Furrer's string quartet number 3. Starts out cool and never lets up. So there's one for you.

All of the Lachenmann quartets, of course, though these two composers are not exactly young. Generally the younger people in my collection are working with electronics somehow. Since I don't listen according to age, either, I'd have to shuffle through my six or seven string quartets to find the birth dates of the composers

And going through all twenty or thirty of those quartets is going to be a bit tedious. I mean, what if I get through 80 or so of the 100 string quartets I have and all the composers turn out to have been born in 1952 (Rihm) or earlier? Then what? (And going through 160 or so string quartets to find when these composers were born is going to take a long time!)

[Philoctetes]

Was it the turtle comment?

Yes. I'm sure that must be it.

[petrarch]

QUESTION:
What is the latest music that hit you like the opening of LvB's 5th? POW!!!
Bam!!!

During the last year, probably Wolfgang Mitterer's Obsoderso. The unusual combination and interplay of saxophone, church organ and computer always pricks up my ears when I listen to it. But then some of the aspects of music I most enjoy and actively listen to is timbre, texture and colour, so YMMV.

[petrarch]

ok, so I WILL lift up this SQ as something by someone born in 1971,...written in the '90s,...that SAYS< Hi, I'm in the '90s and I'm trying to find my own voice in a culture glutted on itself, and here, this is what I have come up with.

I have a handful of SQs or works for violin written by composers born in the late 60s and beyond, a couple of them in 1977 and played by no other than the Ardittis: Iván Naranjo, Uno (2002); Rogelio Sosa, Espasmo fulgor for violin & electronics (2002); Juan Felipe Waller, De jaque, sal, gala y luna for solo violin (1999); Luis Tinoco, Quarteto (1995); Saed Haddad, Joie voilée (2006). Olga Neuwirth also has a couple of interesting SQs.

[karlhenning]

Honestly, I'd love Beethoven to get on this Thread and tell us what he thinks about all this new music stuffery.

Why should that be authoritative?  History is replete with instances of composers, ripened into their own mastery, who are simply out of sympathy with what the next musical generation is after.  Personally, I don't care what Beethoven thinks of any music past his own epoch.  (Heck, I don't care if he liked Dittersdorf.)

[karlhenning]

Hmm . . . I think I may have recordings of some relatively recent string quartets by living Hungarians . . . .

[drogulus]

As to "still new?" . . . I see no reason why the work of Schoenberg, Berg & Webern would not make new friends among listeners in each generation.  And whether their work continues to be compositionally "relevant" is likewise going to be a matter of individual composers finding inspiration in the music.

     I agree with this, however it's generally true of any music that attracts the interest of contemporary composers. The issue that is raised for me, the one that distinguishes the 2VS group from other less ideological composers, is the teleological vision of music. Would music be dragged kicking and screaming into the future where a plan would govern the tastes of composers and listeners alike? The issue is not"does music progress?", it's "is the way music changes progressive?" or even "is music supposed to progress?".

     No, the way music changes is not usefully described as progressive, it does not move towards a goal beyond itself, nor is there any sense in saying that music is supposed to be something beyond what it plainly is. All of the intellectual and emotional appeal art has comes from the art, though the doctrines appended to it might have some use for the artist. This use for the artist does not bind listeners or other artists, however. In the end art is as unprincipled as any human activity can be. An interesting consequence of this is that radical art can't be invalidated for being different.

[drogulus]

     Schoenberg's "plan", therefore, could not be used against Sibelius any more than Beethoven's "plan" could be used against Schoenberg.

[snyprrr]

I don't listen to music according to genre or nationality (which is a real handicap in online music board games, let me tell you!), but I do have a string quartet or two.

One I got recently, which I liked way more than I thought I would, is Beat Furrer's string quartet number 3. Starts out cool and never lets up. So there's one for you.

All of the Lachenmann quartets, of course, though these two composers are not exactly young. Generally the younger people in my collection are working with electronics somehow. Since I don't listen according to age, either, I'd have to shuffle through my six or seven string quartets to find the birth dates of the composers

And going through all twenty or thirty of those quartets is going to be a bit tedious. I mean, what if I get through 80 or so of the 100 string quartets I have and all the composers turn out to have been born in 1952 (Rihm) or earlier? Then what? (And going through 160 or so string quartets to find when these composers were born is going to take a long time!)

I saw that Beat Furrer SQ,... and yes, I wanted to snap it right up.

I guess my problem with the Furrer or Lachenmann reference is that I kinda consider them in the 'previous' generation. Same with Rihm.

I know, I know, but any Composer that the Arditti championed early on, and is still living, I consider to be of the 'previous' generation.

This is "my" up-to-date list of String Quartet cds I'm looking at:

Alberto Posadas (Kairos)
Beat Furrer (Kairos)
Hendrik Ole Moe (some Arditti label)
Jesus Rueda (ditto)
Ulrich Gasser (ditto)
Frank Michael Beyer (Edel)
R. Febel (Wergo)
Jorg Herchet (Wergo; hated it, sold it, need it back!)
Ph. Boesmans (Ricercare)



The trouble is, even if any of these guys are youngerish (which I don't think), I still consider them "part" of the Machine of High Modernism (our usual suspects). My point is is that even if they write music 'today', I still consider them part of an earlier tradition, ergo, I can make myself enjoy just about anything by them (usually, cause I know what it's going to sound like).

I just got an SQ by C. Halffter from 2007, but I can't judge it the same way as an under-30 writing an SQ at the same time. Yes, I am pre-judging that the younger guy is gonna suck, but when there are still Really Big Guns ALIVE!!!, I can't allow myself to give any respect to the youngers. I'll see about working on that.



However, it seems you guys took me seriously, so, I'll just let you know that I was taking it seriously too. I'm rolling up my sleeves here for a 'project.'

I have a handful of SQs or works for violin written by composers born in the late 60s and beyond, a couple of them in 1977 and played by no other than the Ardittis: Iván Naranjo, Uno (2002); Rogelio Sosa, Espasmo fulgor for violin & electronics (2002); Juan Felipe Waller, De jaque, sal, gala y luna for solo violin (1999); Luis Tinoco, Quarteto (1995); Saed Haddad, Joie voilée (2006). Olga Neuwirth also has a couple of interesting SQs.

Yes, I have them, and yes, that 'Mexico' cd really IS the younger generation trying to sound like the Classics of High Modernism; and in this case, I like listening to all the works on this cd. I also have other 'geographical' cds I'll listen to for this.

Getting excited!

[drogulus]

Honestly, I'd love Beethoven to get on this Thread and tell us what he thinks about all this new music stuffery.

     Interesting? Perhaps. What if what he said was as unenlightening as any other composers judgment? I continue to be surprised that people think art is something practitioners must have views about rather than might have views about, or that there was something for these opinions to be authoritative about.

     I would listen to what a great dead composer says. Who wouldn't? But why imagine it would have special meaning? That would depend on what he said. What did he say, btw, that would cause anyone to think that his utterances had anything like the distinction his music had? He wasn't a famous critic, was he?

[Sid]

I think that basically, the implications of what Ford was saying in the lecture (especially for the listener) can be boiled down to:

1. Music is not ideology, it is simply music.
2. It doesn't really matter if music is about "progress" or not.
3. It was a mistake to mix ideology and dogma with the music of the Second Viennese School. In the end, it probably didn't do their music much help.

[Josquin des Prez]

I think people are a bit too harsh on Greenberg. How was he when he recorded his last composition. 15?

[Josquin des Prez]

What if what he said was as unenlightening as any other composers judgment?

That's something that's thrown around here a lot, but, is a composer's judgment really unenlightening merely because it often turned at the expense of others?

[snyprrr]

I think people are a bit too harsh on Greenberg. How was he when he recorded his last composition. 15?

He's not a Genius, and you're doting!

[some guy]

Things that make you go "Hmmmm."

I think that basically, the implications of what Ford was saying in the lecture (especially for the listener) can be boiled down to:

1. Music is not ideology, it is simply music.

There's nothing simple about anything that humans do, particularly things, like the arts, that tap something deep and mysterious and inchoate. Everything that humans do has something ideological about it.

2. It doesn't really matter if music is about "progress" or not.

But what creative artist worth her salt wants to simply repeat what's already been done? Only the kind who has her eye on the main chance, I'd say. Fame and money.

3. It was a mistake to mix ideology and dogma with the music of the Second Viennese School. In the end, it probably didn't do their music much help.

Maybe. Didn't seem to do Wagner any harm, though. But he had much better press than Schoenberg ever did. Why, he had people sold on the idea of "The Music of the Future" before he'd ever even written a note of it. Not a single note. Amazing.

[Sid]

Things that make you go "Hmmmm."There's nothing simple about anything that humans do, particularly things, like the arts, that tap something deep and mysterious and inchoate. Everything that humans do has something ideological about it.

True, there's even a type of ideology in Ford saying that ideology and music don't mix. But when the ideology becomes more important than the music, then that could be a problem, imo.

But what creative artist worth her salt wants to simply repeat what's already been done? Only the kind who has her eye on the main chance, I'd say. Fame and money.

Yes, Shostakovich also said something to the same effect - that the most important thing for him as an artist was approaching every new work with a different angle, so not repeating what he had done before (I think Henze and Feldman also said something to the effect that every work of theirs was part of their 'journey' as an artist - basically that all of their output was one huge continuous work).

But I disagree that those who were repeating older styles (of theirs or others) had their "eye on the main chance." I'd disagree that someone like Hovhaness, who probably didn't do anything radically different or new after his 2nd symphony 'Mysterious Mountain,' was interested in "fame and money" just because he tended to repeat himself after that. As a matter of fact, from what I've read about the man, he was quite contemptuous and dismissive of the "establishment," premiering many of his new works in university campuses, played by student performers in free concerts. The same could perhaps be said about other composers, like Bax, Korngold or Rachmaninov, whose styles (once they were established) basically stayed the same. I don't think they were opportunists for not creating works that radically departed from their main styles, they just felt comfortable doing what they did, what they felt came naturally to them.

Maybe. Didn't seem to do Wagner any harm, though. But he had much better press than Schoenberg ever did. Why, he had people sold on the idea of "The Music of the Future" before he'd ever even written a note of it. Not a single note. Amazing.

I'd agree that the Second Viennese School were not the only ones touted as 'future makers' in the history of music or the other arts. But there were many people who simply jumped on the bandwagon of a going trend, and this didn't do them any good. One I can think of was George Antheil, whose Ballet Mecanique was touted as the next Rhapsody in Blue in the 1920's. The first performance appropriately created a sensation but this didn't last and Antheil's music (for better or worse) was forgotten for the next half century. Now, without the baggage of such and such a work being the 'best thing since sliced bread' or some such nonsense, we can just enjoy pieces of music whether or not they aspire to be great masterpieces of high modernism (or post modernism, or whatever). We can just simply enjoy the music without creating these artificial and unrealistic false hopes and expectations...

[drogulus]

But what creative artist worth her salt wants to simply repeat what's already been done? Only the kind who has her eye on the main chance, I'd say. Fame and money.

     That's a false dichotomy. What I think all of us taking a sceptical view of musical progressivism are saying is that unplanned change is in no way inferior to the mapped out kind. Music will change and there's no reason to think an ideology of guided change produces better results and some evidence that it doesn't. Music changes in an unplanned manner, bottom up rather than top down. Musical creationism is a bad idea, and even worse as a necessary idea. The best that can be said for it is that the music doesn't suffer much.