Audiences hate modern classical music because their brains cannot cope

[Madiel]

Seeing we are throwing Mr Rachmaninov's name around... I've always found the Etude-Tableaux interesting (as well as, frankly, being among my favourite piano music because of the sheer dazzling power of op.39 in particular) because Rachmaninov was never keen on revealing the inspiration behind the pieces.

He made it clear that they were 'Tableaux' but had no real intention of letting audiences know what they were pictures of.

[Florestan]

He made it clear that they were 'Tableaux' but had no real intention of letting audiences know what they were pictures of.

Nice example. Some people here would argue (they actually did) that this is a severe and unwelcome limitation of the listener's imagination on the part of the composer, or even a way of dictating him what to think. I see it quite differently: it is a provocation to imagination, an enhancing of its possibilities and an open invitation to make as wide and wild use of it as possible. Rachmaninoff's own words:  "I do not believe in the artist that discloses too much of his images. Let [the listener] paint for themselves what it most suggests."

Actually he gave Respighi some clues about five of them and Respighi titled their orchestral version accordingly.

[Karl Henning]

Rachmaninoff's own words:  "I do not believe in the artist that discloses too much of his images. Let [the listener] paint for themselves what it most suggests."

And of course, there are illustrations of both sentences in the history of Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique.

[Madiel]

Actually he gave Respighi some clues about five of them and Respighi titled their orchestral version accordingly.

Yes, I remember he told someone eventually, although I couldn't remember why.

Perhaps he felt that Respighi, as orchestrator, needed to know the intention in order not to wreck the pieces when orchestrating them? Just speculation on my part.

EDIT: I've never heard the orchestral versions. Unusually for me, I'd quite like to. I think they would work better in orchestral translation than most piano pieces would.

[Gurn Blanston]

I believe Francisco de Goya thought differently, and I agree with him: 



The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (El sueño de la razón produce monstruos)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sleep_of_Reason_Produces_Monsters

Gordo,

Yes, I know it was unhistorical, but in a broader sense it means what it says. It is true the philosophers as a class arose during the Enlightenment, and in fact were responsible for beginning it and carrying it through to its natural conclusion. It is when these same people stole music from its rightful place and made it their lackey that music as we know it changed its essential meaning from praise or entertainment and became a ventriloquist's dummy for the Magi who each tried to replace Kant as the next worse thing that ever happened to music.

[Wakefield]

Gordo,

Yes, I know it was unhistorical, but in a broader sense it means what it says. It is true the philosophers as a class arose during the Enlightenment, and in fact were responsible for beginning it and carrying it through to its natural conclusion. It is when these same people stole music from its rightful place and made it their lackey that music as we know it changed its essential meaning from praise or entertainment and became a ventriloquist's dummy for the Magi who each tried to replace Kant as the next worse thing that ever happened to music.

c'mon, Gurn! I'm positive you're not so critical about that process because, after all, you love your Ninth, a product of the greatest musical Kant.  I'm free of that superstition. 

[Florestan]

Yes, I know it was unhistorical, but in a broader sense it means what it says. It is true the philosophers as a class arose during the Enlightenment, and in fact were responsible for beginning it and carrying it through to its natural conclusion. It is when these same people stole music from its rightful place and made it their lackey that music as we know it changed its essential meaning from praise or entertainment and became a ventriloquist's dummy for the Magi who each tried to replace Kant as the next worse thing that ever happened to music.

Praise or entertainment. IOW, "the essential meaning" of music is either the Mass or a pleasant cling-clang, ding-dang, bing-bang, omphhh-pah-pah accompanying a bunch of aristocrats or high bourgeoisie chitchatting and flirting at dinner table.

Speaking of lackey, last time I checked that was the official status of Haydn and Mozart, they even had to wear special liveries to show and know their "rightful place" in the "Enlightened" social order.

If anything, Romanticism on the contrary liberated music from the debasing servitude and artificial limitations that were tyrannically imposed on it by the drab, dull and shallow aesthetics of the "Enlightenment". To quote (from memory) the imaginary composer Adrian Leverkuhn from Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus: the main achievement of Romanticism is to have rescued music from its previous communal fanfare status and to have integrated it in the general intellectual frame of the period.

And besides that, romanticism is first and foremost a forma mentis, a psychological inclination, an intellectual preference and an attitude towards life which occurs naturally and is not circumscribed to any specific time or place. What is called the Romantic era proper is only the time when the romantic worldview became prevalent among artists, writers, philosophers and intellectuals, but not prevalent at the level of the whole society. In fact, there was stubborn resistance to, and vigorous denunciation of, Romanticism and romantics all along the period. Had the romantics succeeded in romanticizing society, economy and politics the world would have been a better place for sure. Unfortunately, they failed. The mechanistic, centralizing, command-and-control, standardizing-and-categorizing, all-leveling ideas of sophisters, economists, and calculators --- a class of people which was both the cause and effect of the "Enlightenment" as well as the plague of the modern world --- carried the day in all fields and we live today in the world they created and ruled for more than a century and a half. It is a wonder not that it has recently began to crumble apart, but that it has endured for so long, since it is contrary to man's "essential meaning" and "rightful place" in the world.



(You saw that coming, didn't you?  )

[some guy]

Are you telling me that, on the contrary, your way with music is indeed objective, universally valid and everybody should adopt it if they want to experience music as they should?

No.

[Florestan]

No.

I'm relieved. 

[Wakefield]

Praise or entertainment. IOW, "the essential meaning" of music is either the Mass or a pleasant cling-clang, ding-dang, bing-bang, omphhh-pah-pah accompanying a bunch of aristocrats or high bourgeoisie chitchatting and flirting at dinner table.

Speaking of lackey, last time I checked that was the official status of Haydn and Mozart, they even had to wear special liveries to show and know their "rightful place" in the "Enlightened" social order.

If anything, Romanticism on the contrary liberated music from the debasing servitude and artificial limitations that were tyrannically imposed on it by the drab, dull and shallow aesthetics of the "Enlightenment". To quote (from memory) the imaginary composer Adrian Leverkuhn from Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus: the main achievement of Romanticism is to have rescued music from its previous communal fanfare status and to have integrated it in the general intellectual frame of the period.

And besides that, romanticism is first and foremost a forma mentis, a psychological inclination, an intellectual preference and an attitude towards life which occurs naturally and is not circumscribed to any specific time or place. What is called the Romantic era proper is only the time when the romantic worldview became prevalent among artists, writers, philosophers and intellectuals, but not prevalent at the level of the whole society. In fact, there was stubborn resistance to, and vigorous denunciation of, Romanticism and romantics all along the period. Had the romantics succeeded in romanticizing society, economy and politics the world would have been a better place for sure. Unfortunately, they failed. The mechanistic, centralizing, command-and-control, standardizing-and-categorizing, all-leveling ideas of sophisters, economists, and calculators --- a class of people which was both the cause and effect of the "Enlightenment" as well as the plague of the modern world --- carried the day in all fields and we live today in the world they created and ruled for more than a century and a half. It is a wonder not that it has recently began to crumble apart, but that it has endured for so long, since it is contrary to man's "essential meaning" and "rightful place" in the world.



(You saw that coming, didn't you?  )

Oh, dear Andrei, this time you're so wrong in so many respects that I will need a couple of days to compose a moderately suitable response to your message. I deeply love, for instance, Schubert's music from my teens; he and Chopin were my first loves in classical music. But I have never thought, not even for a second that these guys (and you can add Schumann, Brahms, Wagner and so on, if you want) were freer or healthier than Haydn, Mozart or Bach. No sir, they weren't. But I will need some time to elaborate.   

[Florestan]

Oh, dear Andrei, this time you're so wrong in so many respects that I will need a couple of days to compose a moderately suitable response to your message. I deeply love, for instance, Schubert's music from my teens; he and Chopin were my first loves in classical music. But I have never thought, not even for a second that these guys (and you can add Schumann, Brahms, Wagner and so on, if you want) were freer or healthier than Haydn, Mozart or Bach. No sir, they weren't. But I will need some time to elaborate.   

Spare your time, my friend. That was all tongue-in-cheek, just as Gurn's post was. He wrote what he wrote in order to trigger a reply from me, I'm quite sure of that. There, I dutifully obliged. 

But now that I think of it, all those you mentioned were certainly freer than Haydn, who was under numerous contractual constraints.

[Gurn Blanston]

c'mon, Gurn! I'm positive you're not so critical about that process because, after all, you love your Ninth, a product of the greatest musical Kant.  I'm free of that superstition. 

Yes, but Kant was early times, he was more or less the culmination of Enlightenment thinking and the beginning of Romanticism. In and of himself, he is tolerable. It is only that he opened Pandora's Box, and established Aesthetics as some sort of supreme goal, which over time spelled doom for the sort of music I like. Note here how I subjectivized that statement so it can in no way be construed as a generalization which I would foolishly apply to everyone?  0:)

[Karl Henning]

Note here how I subjectivized that statement so it can in no way be construed as a generalization which I would foolishly apply to everyone?  0:)

OOOOOOOOOOH!

[Florestan]

Yes, but Kant was early times, he was more or less the culmination of Enlightenment thinking and the beginning of Romanticism. In and of himself, he is tolerable. It is only that he opened Pandora's Box, and established Aesthetics as some sort of supreme goal, which over time spelled doom for the sort of music I like.

Actually, the sort of music you like (and which I too like no less and you know that) died a very natural death, just as Baroque music died before it and Romantic music died after it. 

[Karl Henning]

The Music is dead. Long live the Music!

[Elgarian]

I feel like I'm in a room in a museum with you guys. We're looking at a painting, maybe it's by Velasquez, maybe it's by Pollock. Doesn't matter. It's itself, and we're looking at it. And then someone, maybe it's you, maybe it's Florestan, says "Well, this is all very nice, but I think I need some soup to go with it."

Out riding my bike I was thinking some more about this (you always make me think more), and thought of two interesting parallels to this discussion - to try to find a broader context for it.

1. Consider literature. A really topnotch novel, say. It's complete in itself. It needs nothing else. Someone who loves this novel may revisit it several times and never approach it in any other way. The idea of, say, illustrating the novel may seem anathema to such a person. Nonetheless, novels are frequently illustrated; if they're illustrated well, what comes into being is a different art form - a composite art which is neither wholly visual not wholly literary, but both. This has no bearing on the 'completeness' of the novel itself. It is still complete, as a novel. But the illustrations can bring to it a different aspect, dimension, perception - choose your own word - that must surely be acceptable, at least in principle? You may not want such a thing yourself - but the existence of it, and the love of it by those who do, doesn't in any sense diminish your own love of the unadulterated literary experience. When you and I read Sibelius's 1st symphonic novel, I happily choose the illustrated version, you happily choose the unillustrated. I ask you 'one lump or two?', you pour the Lapsang Souchong, and we live happily ever after. Don't we?

2. I also remembered that discussion we had way back in 1582 (written in quill pen on vellum), where we messed about with a wonderful Cezanne watercolour and tried to find quasi-musical ways of talking about it. Now, I can't speak for you, but after working through all that, my own delight in the Cezanne was considerably enhanced. The 'extra-pictorial' musical fantasising had made me see the picture differently, and even, I believe, more clearly. Until I brought my extra-pictorial  musical fantasy to bear on it, I'd been missing some of the complexity of the colour relationships within the picture. I don't see why it can't work the other way round: may not the contemplation of visual images bring attention to musical relationships that might have been missed?( Not, I hasten to add, that this somehow provides a justification for playing visual images in my head as I listen. It doesn't need any such justification beyond itself, any more or less than your approach does.)

I had a bit of difficulty finding that visual/musical/Cezanne stuff, but eventually did. It's here:

http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,15585.msg384508.html#msg384508

[Florestan]

The Music is dead. Long live the Music!

The problem is that there are still legitimists out there who don't, can't or won't accept that the royal branch they swore loyalty to is long since extinct without heirs. 

[Florestan]

Out riding my bike I was thinking some more about this (you always make me think more), and thought of two interesting parallels to this discussion - to try to find a broader context for it.

1. Consider literature. A really topnotch novel, say. It's complete in itself. It needs nothing else. Someone who loves this novel may revisit it several times and never approach it in any other way. The idea of, say, illustrating the novel may seem anathema to such a person. Nonetheless, novels are frequently illustrated; if they're illustrated well, what comes into being is a different art form - a composite art which is neither wholly visual not wholly literary, but both. This has no bearing on the 'completeness' of the novel itself. It is still complete, as a novel. But the illustrations can bring to it a different aspect, dimension, perception - choose your own word - that must surely be acceptable, at least in principle? You may not want such a thing yourself - but the existence of it, and the love of it by those who do, doesn't in any sense diminish your own love of the unadulterated literary experience. When you and I read Sibelius's 1st symphonic novel, I happily choose the illustrated version, you happily choose the unillustrated. I ask you 'one lump or two?', you pour the Lapsang Souchong, and we live happily ever after. Don't we?

2. I also remembered that discussion we had way back in 1582 (written in quill pen on vellum), where we messed about with a wonderful Cezanne watercolour and tried to find quasi-musical ways of talking about it. Now, I can't speak for you, but after working through all that, my own delight in the Cezanne was considerably enhanced. The 'extra-pictorial' musical fantasising had made me see the picture differently, and even, I believe, more clearly. Until I brought my extra-pictorial  musical fantasy to bear on it, I'd been missing some of the complexity of the colour relationships within the picture. I don't see why it can't work the other way round: may not the contemplation of visual images bring attention to musical relationships that might have been missed?( Not, I hasten to add, that this somehow provides a justification for playing visual images in my head as I listen. It doesn't need any such justification beyond itself, any more or less than your approach does.)

I had a bit of difficulty finding that visual/musical/Cezanne stuff, but eventually did. It's here:

http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,15585.msg384508.html#msg384508

Thanks for all that, and especially for the marvelous analysis of Cezanne's painting. Priceless.

[Wakefield]

The problem is that there are still legitimists out there who don't, can't or won't accept that the royal branch they swore loyalty to is long since extinct without heirs. 

I think it's exactly the opposite. We don't trade corpses.  

People aligned with ideas of historically informed performance never think of music in terms of Music with capitals. It's because we don't understand music as a continuum, but a result of its own age, including its system of ideas and beliefs, instruments, practices. Then, as a matter of fact, we need to properly revive those things in order to get the music fresh and alive, as when it was composed.

[Florestan]

People aligned with ideas of historically informed performance never think of music in terms of Music with capitals. It's because we don't understand music as a continuum, but a result of its own age, including its system of ideas and beliefs, instruments, practices. Then, as a matter of fact, we need to properly revive those things in order to get the music fresh and alive, as when it was composed.

No argument from me on that, but it was not HIP that I had in mind when talking about legitimism a outrance. Please re-read the exchange that led to it and you'll see what, or rather whom, I was referring to.