Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicola Canzano
I said this in an earlier thread. Without going into too much detail, I think classical music today has become too unfollowable to the casual listener. The genius of Penderecki and such composers is only discernible to a highly competent musical ear, or...with a score, and even then, you would need to be able to read music, let alone the complex music of some of the contemporary stuff. Some compositional techniques these days are not extraordinarily apparent in sound form as they are on paper. "Good on the page, not on the stage" as I like to say.
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Nico, you're talking about music that is now nearly 50 years old.
Do you actually KNOW any "new" music?
Even Corigliano, who is FAR from being an "avant garde" composer is either hitting 60 soon, or has done so already (the earliest published works of his that I have date from the early 70's, so he's obviously a bit older than I am).
I wish people would stop referencing Penderecki and Ligeti as "new music". It's not! Neither is Boulez. Nor Stockhausen. These are all composers who had their heyday in the 1950's for god's sake. Many of them continued to compose until now, but still, their entire aesthetic is mid-20th century.
It's like saying that Schoenberg is "contemporary". He died more than 50 years ago.
Listen to new music (and hell, my own age is showing now... I'm naming composers who are only a few years older than myself) by Adams, Del Tredici, Goldenthall... it's all lyrical and beautifully communicative music.
Anyone who tells you tonality and lyricism are "dead" probably already has one foot in the grave himself.
"New Music" ensembles have a need to feel relevant, and have built up this wall of defence around themselves, trying to convince everyone that music needs to be "modern" or else it isn't new enough. And the only way they've found to do this is to systematically denounce everything that came before them. However, most "new music" ensembles are playing either music from the 1950's or music so heavily influenced by that period that it makes you wonder just how relevant they really are.
The REAL new music has nothing to do with Boulez, Penderecki, Ligeti, Xenakis, et compagnie...
As a matter of fact, some of the most "rabid" avant-garde proponants of the 1950's have turned their backs on what they were doing before and made a slow about-face with a return to lyricism and some form of tonal root.