Quote:
Originally Posted by jujimufu
Harry Partch, created a whole new kind of music, with new scales, instruments, harmonies, everything.
It is exactly because people are able to manipulate the public that we are having this kind of conversations. When the "media" didn't practically exist (i.e. there were no CDs, no tapes, no LPs, no radio, no TV, nothing), people only listened to the music that was being played in concerts, whatever that was. They had no choice. That was the only music they could listen to, whether they liked it or not. So the "human ear" used to develop alongside the "human culture", as someone crudely put it in a few posts above (or was it another thread - I don't remember). But then, with the commodities that the 20th century offers, people reside in what they're used to, and they refuse to go for any change, refuse to do something different, because they feel safe and sound where they are, and because they have that ability. So, basically, the reason we're having this kind of conversations is because a) people are misinformed/uninformed and it's their bad, because they don't bother reading about terms, musicians, listening to music, or getting to know things properly, yet they seem to have a very grounded opinion on things that they can actually barely start to understand, and b) people have been denying "contemporary" and "modern" music on the grounds that they don't like it, and because it "clashes" with all the music they're used to listen, or have grown up with.
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Well yeah. But what I was getting at, is that we can't ALL influence the culture to a degree that we can create what is popular. It's pretty much impossible for logical reasons.
I think the whole technology/choice take is very accurate. It is indeed because people have options, that they willingly choose to limit themselves because they can. But composers, hell, going back as far as Bach have been always able in some degree to explore beyond what the general audience knows. I find it inexcusable that, if even Bach went to visit Buxtehude, learned all about Händel and Vivaldi, Couperin, and so on, why the hell not keep up with the modern times? They were all contemporary to him, just like Penderecki or Reich are to us.
It's also evident that in Bach's times there were also plenty to choose from if you were a composer, considering instrumental music had already made it's debut, and you had pretty different schools depending on where you looked in Europe. Of course, you had to have some sort of connections in the musical biz at the time, so to speak, to find this out. Though, since there a lot less people, it wasn't so difficult so long as the physical distances between places weren't too great.
I find it extremely sad that people try to pretend they don't live society which has questioned the "worth" of any given type of music enough as to make such argument pointless. It's not just John Cage, you can thank from Ives, Martinu to Schoenberg, Debussy and Satie to putting the whole tradition thing into context.
Few people realize that Debussy, Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Ives (and many others) were all contemporary to eachother, yet its unthinkable to consider their music similar. Music history doesn't happen "first was this, then come this", things are much more complicated. The 20th century marked the first time radically different composers would come together and actually do things, and it marked also the first time that the actual central-european music scene actually looked OUTSIDE for influence, or people from other places would contribute.
Before the 20th century, even goddamn Spain was considered exotic if you lived in France, Germany or Italy.
Anyone who thinks they "know" about the 20th century because they listened to something from Ligeti they didn't enjoy is a fool. Sadly, that's what tends to happen when people have the choice to retreat to whatever they like. This is why a formal education actually CAN help people since they'll be forced to KNOW about the world they live in, as well as the history of that world.
I'm aware that young people are less likely to be writing essays on 20th century art history, but only out of ignorance. And, ignorance also does a great deal to shape taste and aesthetic preference. After all, how do you know you don't like (or like) something if you don't know anything about it?
I've been assistant in seminars for promoting new music and such things for a couple of years now, and one thing I can say is that even if you may not enjoy the music, there's a vast amount of fascinating topics to discuss and look at. The music is a result and a reflection of these topics, of people's uncertainties, of the social and cultural climate of the world.
In times where many things happened, for example look at the cultural revolution of the 60s, it's unsurprising that a lot of really amazing music was written in this period. In a way, modern music is not only important, but it's VITAL.
The thing is, look at art tendencies such as Futurism, inspired by Marinetti's manifesto which came around as a reply, a cry to arms to all artists who were fed up of being repressed by traditions, history's relevance over modern affairs, etc etc. The manifesto exaggerated it's points to great effect, such as the famous section:
10: We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.
It's unquestionable that the outrageous nature of the document can only be attributed to the need to shake things up, make artists aware that they weren't living in the past anymore and it was time to actually think that their time mattered more than what came before.
Though futurism itself didn't have a strong palpable consequence in music, it is undeniable that music was also going through a lot of turbulence. Turbulence which didn't settle until the 80s-90s arguably.
Today, things are much different than in the 60s, or 70s. History is much more compressed and even post-modernism is becoming passé, some say, without even really knowing what it meant at all.
You can argue that there is nothing new in music to be done, after all sound has been accepted as music. Objectively, the 20th century ensured that the "progression" of music history would come to a halt as we've always known and studied it. Indeed, it's precisely when we start pushing the boundaries of definition and including everything we hear as "music" that we realize just how little our ears are capable of. How small our range of perception is.
It's impossible to move backwards in time, and it's impossible to erase the knowledge gained from the 20th century. You can ignore it, but you're only fooling yourself as that knowledge is crucial in understanding the current world we live in and how we got to it.
As such, I always say that the study of modern history is not only a necessity, but it should be a REQUIREMENT to anyone who wants to compose anything, regardless of what it is. It's a way of being "brought up to date."
The 20th century is evidence that people will listen to anything and everything when given contexts and other such reasons to do so. They'll even like it and popularize concepts despite how it could've alienated the previous generation or for that matter part of the current one. The fact there is an audience for Penderecki, Cage, Bach and all these other composers is a clear indication that there are no inherent values in music that dictate anything. It's all created as people experience things collectively and the culture absorbs these things into itself.
As more people born into a world of diversity grow older, the acceptance for this diversity will become entrenched in the public consciousness since they will be the people teaching the new generations, and so it is entirely plausible that in the future the music landscape is going to be radically different.
It is already enormously different than 100 years ago. 100 years can feel like a long time, surely, but in history terms it's only a tiny fraction of all human history which is just a fraction of a fraction of the entire history of the world, universe, etc.
So, in perspective, things are going damn fast towards an acceptance for diversity in arts altogether despite certain regimes or attitudes against it, nobody can really stop it.
Which is why I insist that arguments such as popularity of things, or any given objective worth of music as assigned by people is entirely unfounded as history shows the entire opposite.
Music has never closed up in itself, or in any single tradition. It's the other way around, as we've moved to where we are, music has grown to include everything under the sun and beyond. I'd say that at this point there's enough evidence of the impossibility to find a way to define music in a way which actually holds true under even the slightest scrutiny.
And it only takes having a definition of music to know how to go and break it.
So really, devote as much time to studying the world you live in, were raised in, actually learn about people who influenced it as you would to studying old music, traditions of theory. There's always time for those, but only if you know where the hell you presently are.
If you can't tell where you're standing, how can you even know where you want to go?
May 24 2008, 10:05 AM
or the prepared piano, I bet he'd like that.
That's "doing something new" and seeing if it has artistic merit / if people like it.
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