21st century classical music

[some guy]

Okay Brewski, I guess I needed reminding, and indeed I shouldn't be sauntering with repetitive negativity across here.

I'm still a keen listener and still explore new territory, but focus on the core repertory and great interpretations- of real music...

Till next time, maybe I need to find that cookery class.

You'll doubtless want to make sure you only eat real food....

As for 21st century classical music, two things occur to me. One is that people who do not enjoy it probably won't have useful or interesting opinions about it. Probably what they'll express is only their distaste, nothing about the music itself at all. Sean seems convinced that he's talking about the music itself. What he's actually expressing are only his opinions about the music. Oddly enough, people who do like 21st century classical music are more than likely only going to be expressing their opinions about the music rather than anything about the music itself. But in their case, their opinions are at least coming from understanding and appreciation. That is, their opinions are much likelier to be useful and interesting, and probably more accurate, than those of people who are coming from rejection and disapprobation--even if they think, as they often do, that their understanding is complete. (When I read their stuff, with my understanding, what I think is that they don't really understand.)

Two is that the very worn and tattered term we still use to describe the music we fancy could do with a spot of retirement. It won't affect anyone's production, I'm sure. And just think, all of the contributions of des Prez and Gesualdo and Monteverdi and Vivaldi and Bach and Mozart and Haydn and Gluck were made--all of them--without the benefit of the term "classical music." Didn't seem to have held them back any. I'm not sure if the early romantics or if Beethoven ever referred to what they were doing as "classical music," either. I recall reading stuff by Berlioz in which he calls what he's doing as "modern," and I know that the Romantics generally did think of themselves by that term. It might mean that posters to internet forums argue about which kinds of music are appropriate to talk about, but that's not an altogether new thing, either. After the term was coined, there were decades of debate about what to include under the new moniker. If I'm remembering correctly--I don't have my books with me where I now am (and have been for two years already)--opera and songs were not at first considered to be classical music. There were other things not included at first, too. I don't recall what.

So if "classical music" is used to exclude the likes of Karkowski or Neumann, say, then count me out!*



*What's that you say?

Really?

Well! I never.

[Wieland]

Joey Roukens

Joey Roukens was born in Schiedam, the Netherlands, in 1982. He studied composition with Klaas de Vries at the Rotterdam Conservatory and psychology at Leiden University. Roukens also studied piano privately with Ton Hartsuiker. His works have been performed by major ensembles and soloists in the Netherlands and abroad, such as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, ASKO|Schönberg, Britten Sinfonia, Tokyo Sinfonietta, the Nieuw Ensemble, the Rubens Quartet, the Storioni Trio, the Aurelia Saxophone Quartet, Lavinia Meijer, Ralph van Raat and Colin Currie.

I came across Joey Roukens via a CD by the young dutch Rubens String Quartet which included his (first?) string quartet "Earnest and Game" which I liked. His (second?) string quartet "Visions at sea" is to be seen and heard in full length (17 min) on youtube and I like this piece even more. The composer is listening to this performance (left person in the background).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1G5xTbDvDU&list=PLMrFxVyeT8zQuWdWJGIQSqj1uKXlgOhls

[asin]B008216F6W[/asin]

[San Antone]

Joey Roukens

Joey Roukens was born in Schiedam, the Netherlands, in 1982. He studied composition with Klaas de Vries at the Rotterdam Conservatory and psychology at Leiden University. Roukens also studied piano privately with Ton Hartsuiker. His works have been performed by major ensembles and soloists in the Netherlands and abroad, such as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, ASKO|Schönberg, Britten Sinfonia, Tokyo Sinfonietta, the Nieuw Ensemble, the Rubens Quartet, the Storioni Trio, the Aurelia Saxophone Quartet, Lavinia Meijer, Ralph van Raat and Colin Currie.

I came across Joey Roukens via a CD by the young dutch Rubens String Quartet which included his (first?) string quartet "Earnest and Game" which I liked. His (second?) string quartet "Visions at sea" is to be seen and heard in full length (17 min) on youtube and I like this piece even more. The composer is listening to this performance (left person in the background).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1G5xTbDvDU&list=PLMrFxVyeT8zQuWdWJGIQSqj1uKXlgOhls

[asin]B008216F6W[/asin]

Very nice.  Thanks.

[Rinaldo]

Anyone familiar with Galina Grigorjeva? I just listened to Molitva ('Prayer') and were deeply moved by this beautiful piece.

https://www.youtube.com/v/6w66Ugn2ODM

[San Antone]

Anyone familiar with Galina Grigorjeva? I just listened to Molitva ('Prayer') and were deeply moved by this beautiful piece.

https://www.youtube.com/v/6w66Ugn2ODM

I agree.  There is some information about her on the Estonian Music Information Centre website.

[Sean]

Hi some guy

... people who do not enjoy it probably won't have useful or interesting opinions about it. Probably what they'll express is only their distaste, nothing about the music itself at all. Sean seems convinced that he's talking about the music itself. What he's actually expressing are only his opinions about the music.

Pal, aesthetic experience isn't relative or a matter of opinion. If it was it wouldn't be aesthetic. The aesthetic is universal for all sentient beings with the appropriate sensitivity- which includes me as it happens.

And I'm happy to advise that 21st century music is mostly if not entirely garbage.

...the very worn and tattered term we still use to describe the music we fancy could do with a spot of retirement.

Yes indeed, I also disagree with the use of the word classical instead of art music. It persists out of fear- many people out there want to see fine things misrepresented that are beyond them or they don't understand.

Needless to say, 1750-1820 styles aren't the criterion for judging music- it' aesthetic content or artistic quality.

Presently listening to York Holler's Second piano sonata and Partita for two pianos, intellectualism and cluelessness from another idiotic academic overseeing the demise of our civilization's greatest achievement, though they have just enough reminiscence of past genuine music to keep me interested for my usual five listenings.

[Karl Henning]

Pal, aesthetic experience isn't relative or a matter of opinion. If it was it wouldn't be aesthetic. The aesthetic is universal for all sentient beings with the appropriate sensitivity- which includes me as it happens.

And I'm happy to advise that 21st century music is mostly if not entirely garbage.

I love to laugh. And Sean asserting that his tone-deafness is Universal Artistic Truth is as laughable as it gets.

[Sean]

I know, he knows, and all those who know know.

This thread and the lunatic academic establishment might not know, but everyone else is laughing; chickens in barnyards in mud villages around the world are laughing.

[San Antone]

Phill Niblock turns 82 today. 



Happy Birthday Phill

Phill Niblock is a New York-based minimalist composer and multi-media musician and director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation born in the flames of 1968's barricade-hopping. He has been a maverick presence on the fringes of the avant garde ever since. In the history books Niblock is the forgotten Minimalist. That's as maybe: no one ever said the history books were infallible anyway.

Bio, news and audio clips can be found here.

[jochanaan]

I love to laugh. And Sean asserting that his tone-deafness is Universal Artistic Truth is as laughable as it gets.

Well, yes, but there are serious criticisms to be made for such a viewpoint, and I'm about to make one:

Hi some guy

Pal, aesthetic experience isn't relative or a matter of opinion. If it was it wouldn't be aesthetic. The aesthetic is universal for all sentient beings with the appropriate sensitivity- which includes me as it happens.

And I'm happy to advise that 21st century music is mostly if not entirely garbage.

Yes indeed, I also disagree with the use of the word classical instead of art music. It persists out of fear- many people out there want to see fine things misrepresented that are beyond them or they don't understand.

Needless to say, 1750-1820 styles aren't the criterion for judging music- it' aesthetic content or artistic quality.

Presently listening to York Holler's Second piano sonata and Partita for two pianos, intellectualism and cluelessness from another idiotic academic overseeing the demise of our civilization's greatest achievement, though they have just enough reminiscence of past genuine music to keep me interested for my usual five listenings.

My serious criticism is this: There are people, such as myself and the estimable Karl Henning, who genuinely enjoy such music.  Some of us have spent many years appreciating it, but I enjoyed it before I began my college-level musical studies; I was not conditioned to enjoy it.  What makes your dislike of it any more valid than my love of it?

[San Antone]

Jacob Gotlib : experimental chamber and electronic music



Jacob Gotlib was born and raised in Louisville, KY, and has written music for instruments, electronics, dance, and multimedia.

Bio and audio clips here.

[some guy]

jochanaan, that's just it. Our positive and informed experiences count for nothing against Sean's "aesthetic experience" which is universal--for everyone with the "appropriate sensitivity," that is, which you and I and Karl and some others obviously do not have. It's clear that we don't, because we appreciate things that Sean finds unworthy. Because we appreciate worthless things, our appreciation is as much a delusion as the people's appreciation of the emperor's non-existent clothing.

Oh well.

sanantonio, hey! I know that guy. Met him at a Kansas City do. The EMM festival of 2000 and something. That was some very fun times, I must say. I think the EMM site still has my congratulatory remark up on their first page. (Yep. Right there in a big old banner at the top of the page. ) Well, it's only the truth. Anyway, Jacob's a good guy and does some really fine non-existent music that's worthless which I appreciate very much because my sensitivity to music is innappropriate.

Hey, it could happen....

[Sean]

jochanaan, by the look of your photo you went to college well before the 21st century. And you've been posting here for at least a dozen years... But let's skip the objectivity-subjectivity debate for now, we've been round that bush enough times.

some guy, I also appreciate your argument. You just happen to be wrong and I'm right.

Just how much do you get from the core repertory and its interpretations? It sounds rather like it doesn't mean much to you. You've never had your soul touched by it so, sure thing, post-tonality is just as good as tonality- because it's all equally meaningless surface sound.

But it isn't for everyone.

Best wishes.

[Rinaldo]

You just happen to be wrong and I'm right.

Let's make GMG great again! Vote Sean 2016.

[some guy]

some guy, I also appreciate your argument. You just happen to be wrong and I'm right.

You have revealed the essential vacuity of your position many times before. You needn't keep doing it.

Just how much do you get from the core repertory and its interpretations? It sounds rather like it doesn't mean much to you. You've never had your soul touched by it so, sure thing, post-tonality is just as good as tonality- because it's all equally meaningless surface sound.

What in anything I have ever said anywhere could you have possibly gotten the idea that the core repertory means little to me? How by all that's holy on the basis of no evidence at all (shades of naked emperors, anyone?) could you possibly assert that my soul has never been touched by it?

All of this, all of it--even the part about how I view music as "all equally meaningless surface sound"--is a fabrication of yours, spun out of thin air, with no connection at any point with reality.

It is no wonder that we disagree so fundamentally.

And, even though it's impertinent, I'm going to go ahead and validate your fantasies by telling you a few home truths.

I have been listening to classical music since around 1960, when I received a box of 78s of mostly core classical repertory. I fell in love with that stuff instantly and have remained in love with it for the 55 years or so I've been a listener. Vivaldi, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Bizet, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff. Prokofiev. That's what I started with, and I still listen to it, with pleasure, all the time. Within ten years, I had added all the names that you have doubtless missed from that starting list. That's how much I enjoyed it. In 1972, I had another astonishing experience, probably even more important than the box of 78s. Certainly as important. That's when I discovered twentieth century music, as such. (I knew a lot of it already, as it turns out, but not as part of a category.) That hearing--it was Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra--was going to lead me into the whole wild and wonderful world of that amazing century, Stravinsky, Carter, electroacoustic music generally, Varese, Janacek, Nielsen, Xenakis, Mumma, Cage, Stockhausen, Berio, Oliveros, Shields, Smiley. By 1984, I was listening to music written in 1984. I have kept current ever since.

I still listen to Vivaldi, too. Some of my more recent purchases have been of Vivaldi's operas and of Monteverdi's madrigals. And some performances of Bach that were new to me.

So what, now, do have left to say for yourself? I'm guessing something along the lines of the Black Knight in Monty Python's The Holy Grail, but I have to confess to holding on to a tiny spark of hope that you start to question your certitude as well as your rectitude.

[Sean]

Okay! Maybe it was me who's wrong and you're right. Seriously, I can sometimes speak out of turn.

Actually I've no idea about what you listen to or what it means to you, and I guess I was being a little inflammatory.

This quote from you below makes really marvellous reading and it's heartening to see that you're such a serious listener- you also have about 22 years experience beyond me.

As a closing remark however, you understand that there is a wealth of interpretive possibility for the great works of the repertory- we can hear and understand what performances do with the music and have extraordinary aesthetic experiences. It's amazing.

But we cannot do this with post-tonal music to anywhere near the same extent, if at all. This recording or that recording of Carter or Saariaho or Lachenman or Holler? Who cares? There is no significant convergence of the structural conception with human psychological experience and we just hear contrivance in emptied out tonal terms, the only terms our ears have.

By the way your user name makes you sound like you're a 25 year-old dummy...

Thanks again for this, most interesting-

I have been listening to classical music since around 1960, when I received a box of 78s of mostly core classical repertory. I fell in love with that stuff instantly and have remained in love with it for the 55 years or so I've been a listener. Vivaldi, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Bizet, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff. Prokofiev. That's what I started with, and I still listen to it, with pleasure, all the time. Within ten years, I had added all the names that you have doubtless missed from that starting list. That's how much I enjoyed it. In 1972, I had another astonishing experience, probably even more important than the box of 78s. Certainly as important. That's when I discovered twentieth century music, as such. (I knew a lot of it already, as it turns out, but not as part of a category.) That hearing--it was Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra--was going to lead me into the whole wild and wonderful world of that amazing century, Stravinsky, Carter, electroacoustic music generally, Varese, Janacek, Nielsen, Xenakis, Mumma, Cage, Stockhausen, Berio, Oliveros, Shields, Smiley. By 1984, I was listening to music written in 1984. I have kept current ever since....I still listen to Vivaldi, too. Some of my more recent purchases have been of Vivaldi's operas and of Monteverdi's madrigals. And some performances of Bach that were new to me.

[Karl Henning]

You have revealed the essential vacuity of your position many times before. You needn't keep doing it.

He needn't, but it's often good for a cheap laugh when he does.

You hardly stick your head any deeper in the sand than with, I'm not going to address your objections, nor justify my contrary position, because -- and this is the cruncher -- it just so happens that I'm right, and you're wrong!

[TheGSMoeller]

A new disc that just arrived today, I discovered Marshall's music on Spotify, Fog Tropes to be exact. Adam Shatz is quoted on Marshall's website saying..
"Like the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, much of the music here has a quality of timeless lament, of inconsolable sorrow. Tenderly human in expression yet superhuman in scale, it seems to contemplate our condition from a very great height."
The disc I posted below features works written in the 1980s, but Marshall has works published as recent as 2014. I'm anxious to explore more from this composer.

[asin]B000000R26[/asin]

https://www.youtube.com/v/TROnySIUzVI

[Mr. Three Putt]

Lately I've been getting a lot of enjoyment from Osvaldo Golijov. I had the benefit of seeing Last Round live last year and it piqued my interest in his music. I guess there's benefit from programming horrible 21st century music with sacred cows. Hardly a year later and I own 5 CDs of his. I'm well on my way to being a full time degenerate.

[Karl Henning]

Lately I've been getting a lot of enjoyment from Osvaldo Golijov.

The good thing there is, chances are excellent that you are enjoying some other composer's work, as well!  Or even, instead!