Great composers that are not your cup of tea

[AllegroVivace]

Judging Cage's music by 4'33" is asinine.  If you're judging him based on a representative selection of works, fine, but otherwise your opinion on the matter is less than worthless.

If you only knew how little I care whether my opinions are worthless to you or not!

Far from judging him based on 4'33 alone... I've heard a lot more from Cage - all without any resonance. Let's take this piece, for example, for solo violin. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YflfGMo3O2Q  Now, try flossing your teeth, then put your tongue on your upper-front teeth and suck air in and out. What you hear might be more interesting than this composition (although the sound will be very similar).

[Mirror Image]

Hate Cage, by all means. But this description of him is wrong - science and maths textbooks? Really?

It's a joke, Luke.

[Rinaldo]

I've heard a lot more from Cage - all without any resonance. Let's take this piece, for example, for solo violin. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YflfGMo3O2Q  Now, try flossing your teeth, then put your tongue on your upper-front teeth and suck air in and out. What you hear might be more interesting than this composition (although the sound will be very similar).

To cite one of the commenters on YouTube: "I WISH my teeth sounded like this, I'd floss all day!"

Jokes aside, that is a very misleading example. Like, say, linking Poème Symphonique for 100 metronomes to prove Ligeti was a hack.

Cage ain't my cup of tea either (except for the Sonatas and Interludes which I find arresting & beautiful) but is there really any need to dethrone him from his well-documented role in the history of music?

[Luke]

It's a joke, Luke.

I know, but it doesn't work as one because to work it would have to have some relation to reality - Cage would have to have used maths and science just a little bit. Whereas in fact, he didn't at all. It would have worked as a joke if you'd said philosophy textbooks, Zen textbooks. Or if you'd been talking about Xenakis. But as it is, it just showed a misunderstanding of how Cage worked at a fundamental level.

[Josquin des Prez]

Judging Cage's music by 4'33" is asinine.

I don't see why. All of his music is like that. I mean, is all chance after all, doesn't that make the existence of sound essentially incidental as well?

[Josquin des Prez]

A lot of music by Mozart sounds like a child's play to me.

You need to specify which compositions you are talking about. A lot of music by Mozart was in fact child play. Literally.

Well, a lot of it literally is.

Opps, beaten to it.

[Josquin des Prez]

Different strokes for different folks

Yeah but not all people are created equal.

[Luke]

I don't see why. All of his music is like that. I mean, is all chance after all, doesn't that make the existence of sound essentially incidental as well?

You need to take the words of your next post to heart - 'You need to specify which compositions you are talking about' - because 'all' John Cage's music isn't 'chance'. Nothing is, in fact, pre-1951. Honestly, MI saying Cage is all maths and science, you saying it's all chance....talk about misconceptions!

[Josquin des Prez]

Isn't chance the underlying idea behind his musical development? Arguing that we can't judge his work because not all of his compositions conform to that particular idea when it was that idea that marks his most significant historical contribution to musical development is a bit disingenuous. Its like arguing we can't judge Ligeti for his micropholiphonic work merely because there was a time when he wrote in a traditional vernacular. I don't think we would even know who Ligeti was if he had stuck to the style of his first string quartet.

[Brahmsian]

Isn't chance the underlying idea behind his musical development? Arguing that we can't judge his work because not all of his compositions conform to that particular idea when it was that idea that marks his most significant historical contribution to musical development is a bit disingenuous. Its like arguing we can't judge Ligeti for his micropholiphonic work merely because there was a time when he wrote in a traditional vernacular. I don't think we would even know who Ligeti was if he had stuck to the style of his first string quartet.

By the way, welcome back JdP! 

[Luke]

Isn't chance the underlying idea behind his musical development? Arguing that we can't judge his work because not all of his compositions conform to that particular idea when it was that idea that marks his most significant historical contribution to musical development is a bit disingenuous. Its like arguing we can't judge Ligeti for his micropholiphonic work merely because there was a time when he wrote in a traditional vernacular. I don't think we would even know who Ligeti was if he had stuck to the style of his first string quartet.

Well, in fact, we can't judge Ligeti on those works alone because there were other things he did, before and above all after. Ligeti is as much about the instrumentation and the tuning and the textures and the broken machines etc. etc. etc. as he is about the micropolyphony. Before turning to 'chance' Cage had made many 'contributions to musical development' which were at least as significant in 'their implications for later music. There's the prepared piano, for one, the duration-based structural devices for another; there's the beautiful use of 'gamuts' and modes, too. And although there are a hard core of 'chance pieces' which resist it, mostly from the earlier years of the chance experimentation, there are plenty of wonderful examples of pieces in which the chance procedures are just tools serving another end - pieces like Cheap Imitation, for instance, where the shape and rhythm of the lines comes from Satie's Socrate but the modes and gamuts are moved through by chance

[Josquin des Prez]

Not exactly.  "Chance" is a method Cage employed to have music come into being that expressed one of his underlying ideas - which, as best I understand it, was to remove the creator from the creation. 

It is a subtle difference, but one that I think is an important distinction to make.

Fair enough, but the way i see it this type of conception is the musical equivalent of something like nominalism in philosophy. Its a way of saying that only the predicate of musical concepts exist, which is where i find objection (being as i am, a musical realist). Cage is saying that there are no universals, removing the creator's role from the creation is then automatic once you have extricated the object of a musical concept from he concept itself.

[Mirror Image]

I know, but it doesn't work as one because to work it would have to have some relation to reality - Cage would have to have used maths and science just a little bit. Whereas in fact, he didn't at all. It would have worked as a joke if you'd said philosophy textbooks, Zen textbooks. Or if you'd been talking about Xenakis. But as it is, it just showed a misunderstanding of how Cage worked at a fundamental level.

Luke, at this juncture, I think we know how I feel about Cage and Xenakis. My opinion of Cage is he was composer with nothing to say musically. He thought he was being clever, but he ended up being a sad joke. The guy couldn't write an interesting harmony or melody to save his life. The same applies to Xenakis, Boulez, Babbitt, and Stockhausen.

Give me 12-tone Schoenberg any day over this musical nonsense!

[Luke]

Luke, at this juncture, I think we know how I feel about Cage and Xenakis. My opinion of Cage is he was composer with nothing to say musically. He thought he was being clever, but he ended up being a sad joke. The guy couldn't write an interesting harmony or melody to save his life. The same applies to Xenakis, Boulez, Babbitt, and Stockhausen.

Give me 12-tone Schoenberg any day over this musical nonsense!

Well, as I said in my first post, hate Cage if you want to. That's fine by me. I was only responding to the incorrect description of his working methods. He isn't comparable toany of the other composers you mention in that respect.

As far as interesting melodies and harmonies - well, I simply think you are wrong, seeing as I can right this second recreate dozens of examples of both in my mind. The earlier Cage - the Cage of The Seasons and the Sonatas and Interludes and the Six Melodies - is stuffed full of beautiful ides, beautiful sounds, wonderful rhythms, intriguing sonorities and haunting melodies. I know it is because, as I say, I can recreate them in my mind instantly: they've had a profound effect on me. But if that doesn't float your boat and you still think he 'couldn't write a melody to save his life' I suggest you try the Four Dances or Fads and Fancies in the Academy, two obscure little pieces which no one would ever believe were by Cage, being full of marvellous jazz/folk pastiche. Not major Cage, but proof that the guy was fluent in that stuff when he wanted to be.

[Josquin des Prez]

     Chopin is not my cup of tea.  If you'll pardon my use of alliteration ,  it's music of   pallid prettiness,
  perfumed preciosity and  swooning salonish sentimentality .  You can't deny the elegant craftsmanship of the music,
   but it's just too swooningly pretentious for me.

I think this is fruit of an approximate understanding. I find Chopin's music to be contrapuntally, harmonically and rhythmically nuanced to the point of being manic and pianistically he is nearly masochistic. Obviously the product of an exceedingly complex personality, full of conflict, contradictions and paradoxes.

[Luke]

BTW not trying to convert, just trying to show that Cage was perfectly capable of beautiful sounds and haunting ideas...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF1DoVdHM9M
In a Landscape - one of Cage's most seductive pieces.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TUW8NcvoaQ&feature=related
Sonatas 12, Interlude 4 and Sonata 13 from the Sonatas and Interludes. (this is Boris Berman, with the score running underneath - his whole recording is on youtube in this form  ) This is Cage's early masterpiece, and a treasure trove of amazing sounds. No 13 is almost a folksong-lullaby in its clear E minor - begins about 6.25

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5ssRFrgF2k&feature=related
The Six Melodies for violin and piano

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg1_s9picY0
Beginning of The Seasons (ballet score, in orchestral version). A gorgeous piece.


EDIT - forgot this one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TES3SII1_Y&feature=related
Last movement of the 1950 String Quartet. You might hate it (it isn't the most lyrical movement of the four) but you can't deny it is chock full of melody!

Just sayin'...

[Daverz]

If you only knew how little I care whether my opinions are worthless to you or not!

You're obviously feeling defensive now.

Far from judging him based on 4'33 alone... I've heard a lot more from Cage

Oh, bullshit.  If you'd heard a lot more Cage, you could have mentioned it in your first post.  You probably just went out on Youtube just now to find something to attack.  This kind of know-nothingism is really tiresome.

[Lethevich]

ITT: getting angry about composers you don't know much about

A really amazing music/anger ratio.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I think this is fruit of an approximate understanding. I find Chopin's music to be contrapuntally, harmonically and rhythmically nuanced to the point of being manic and pianistically he is nearly masochistic. Obviously the product of an exceedingly complex personality, full of conflict, contradictions and paradoxes.

This is very well put. If Chopin's music were truly as pallidly pretty and sentimental as Super asserts, it would all come out sounding like the earlier (and very popular) Nocturne in E-flat from Op. 9, instead of more mature and complex examples like the C# minor and C minor, both big dramatic pieces, or the late B major from op. 62; or the snarling, angry B minor scherzo; or the powerful final three etudes from op. 25; or sparkling virtuoso pieces like the F major from op. 10 or the Db from op. 25; or any of the Ballades - the fourth especially, which has a complexity and fluidity of form and idea that I think is rarely equalled in Romantic music. Superhorn's characterization is more appropriate to Chopin's predecessor John Field - a worthy composer, but not even close to Chopin in range and power. I speak here as a pianist who's played through most of this music (even though I can't manage most of the etudes except at half speed), but I think the direct contact with playing the notes adds some degree of understanding.

[AllegroVivace]

You're obviously feeling defensive now.

Oh, bullshit.  If you'd heard a lot more Cage, you could have mentioned it in your first post.  You probably just went out on Youtube just now to find something to attack.  This kind of know-nothingism is really tiresome.

Don't be hysterical. I don't like the music of John Cage. What's so difficult for you to understand? I've known his music for a long time, studied him in college and heard dozens of works, and none ever resonated with me. The thread is asking us to list famous composers who we don't like. I don't like John Cage, and I will say it here even if it kills you.