Modern Music

Actually, I do listen to modern music, by Stravinsky and others.

But I found that the most I could tolerate was Prokofiev. Any more dissonant than that I cannot listen to it.

Using an analogy from Robert Frost's poem:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I

My analogy is that "old is new". By moving back to tonal music, it is also counted as being original, and would lead you out of the "tunnel".

Darn... I surly work antiquity music... or even prehistoric then with my microtons... but maybe studiing music history wouldn't hurt... but I fear it might hurt greatly these tunnel's (tombs' !?) theories... who knows !?

One interesting point in that view of 'old is new' is that maybe since I'm older than most of you here... I'm newer !!! That's certainly the most logic thinking I saw up to this day !!! A new day is born, fellows !!! The old good time where nothing was old and the only thing that existed was consonnant !!! Y

Darn... I surly work antiquity music... or even prehistoric then with my microtons... but maybe studiing music history wouldn't hurt... but I fear it might hurt greatly these tunnel's (tombs' !?) theories... who knows !?

One interesting point in that view of 'old is new' is that maybe since I'm older than most of you here... I'm newer !!! That's certainly the most logic thinking I saw up to this day !!! A new day is born, fellows !!! The old good time where nothing was old and the only thing that existed was consonnant !!! Y

Looks like someone was having a bad turn there....

oh dear....

can someone explain to me what Dunael was talking about? I didn't get a word of it

haha... I'm sure Javi will be able to explain this...

haha... I'm sure Javi will be able to explain this...

Why don't you explain it? you wrote it

:P

I think you have hit the problem exactly on the head.

Music always has dissonance and conssonance.

Music has always explored in new directions as well as look back on itself.

Most 'modern' music has aspects of tonality in them combined with those that this post defines as 'atonal'.... the moment i start to read the word 'atonality' i have the sneaking suspicion the author doesn't really know what s/he is talking about.. and is commenting on music they havn't heard before.

I think you have hit the problem exactly on the head.

Music always has dissonance and conssonance.....

the moment i start to read the word 'atonality' i have the sneaking suspicion the author doesn't really know what s/he is talking about.. and is commenting on music they havn't heard before.

Agreed! It's an issue with two general parts: technical dissonance (that extends back to the beginning) and colloquial dissonance that the listener finds unpalatable or don't make sense, partly because our aural faculties have been trained to anticipate, partly because disparate sounds presented consecutively don't relate within the listeners experience.

The fact is that this site like many others, along with popular classical radio stations plug the big names: Bach Mozart Beethoven with a few others like Vivaldi and Rachmaninov. You have to search fairly deep for Milhaud, Debussy, Ravel (and certainly Stravinsky who enjoys fame in the UK because Firebird was recently featured in school music exams. Very few people here have ever heard (let alone recently, let alone live) the Cantata, Symphony of Psalms and most of the ballets. The Sack of Printemps used to be known thanks to Fantasia.

And I get fed up with people who dismiss anything post-1900 as "modern music, dissonant, atonal". About 90% of music written since is tonal with a few technical dissonances in it.... but you never hear the names - in the UK: Delius, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Bax, etc, etc, plus a mass of light music composers. In America, countless people from the light-hearted Don Gillis on through Barber, Creston, Piston, Bernstein, Copland, Hovanhess, etc etc, to the more difficult Peter Mennin. But you never hear the names....so the radio stations, concert organisers, tend to avoid them.

They avoid them for many reasons - fashion and risk/money mostly. Few people can afford to risk unknown names on programs. Programs like the Louisville First Edition sibscription series are rare. The radio stations trick listeners by instigating "votes for your favourite" - so they know what to play in future to the exclusion of other names/works. So the breadth of coverage narrows even more.

There's no answer - much of this music is miles from atonal but fashion-wise, it's pass

Sorry if I offended anyone who likes atonal music.

I would like to clarify that music is relative. One man's meat is another man's poison.

But what I am afraid of is the trend of increasing dissonance will lead to no end? From a mathematical perspective, the number of dissonant combinations of notes far exceeds the number of consonant combinations. And the limit of dissonance is infinite.

What I mean is, if music proceeds on in the trend of increasing dissonance, it can go on forever and ever.

So, in my humble opinion, it is suitable for music to take a split path -- one exploring further increasing dissonances, while another path looking back to more tonal music, but adding some touches of creativity to it. This way, we will have the best of both worlds.

yoyo... that's why there is the fields of 'musical writing' and 'composition' at university. Those who wish to use with a better skill writing technics of the past choose 'musical writing' and those who wish to explore new technics choose 'composition'. It's like being a visual art artist and being an illustrationist. Both draw, but one do research and the other explore fully what was already done. I guess that it's better to be a very talented musical writter than a bad composer... (which there is a lot unfortunatly)... and by this I do not want to say that I'm a good composer... but I do lots of research for sure though. But my research aren't always in contractiction with tonality or more widely historical writting, on the contrary. I do study music from 500BC up to the newest technics... and I can find beauties and jewels of the past not only the what can be found in Bach's writing but in Machaut, Archytas or the Gesualdo I always talk about. Sometimes I fear is that the only this we teach at school in writting is... how to be lesser-Bach... and I think that this is really much more unfortunate than even being not too good researcher.

Even Bach is considered a summit of traditionalism... as Palestrina was before him in the renaissance... as Rachmaninoff could be considered nearer to us. This endless war of thoughts between 'those who seek a futur' and 'those who seek a past' tend to melt gradually. We are not any more at the modern period where Boulez crashing words where some kind of laws... but that is not an excuse to write a mediocrely styled tonal music just because any doesn't have enough spirit and imagination to do more. And don't misunderstand... I don't tell this to the youngters here that are just beginning to write... as long as they don't withdraw themselves in their forteress of related tonics without at least knowing what exists beyond theirs own bounds... and I don't tlak about atonal music here... this is just a mean... I talk about the music from all over the world.

But if you need to saty ONLY tonal, at least... refound the thoughts about what is tonality today... is that just using the tonality of the Baroque era... what is tonal harmony today ?... does it goes up to the borders of Atonality as Wagner and Liszt has done ? And anyway... the language you use doesn't make you a good or bad composer... it's all the skill you put in it. I rarely approve 'the new tonalist' personnaly for I find that they are just frustrated composers that aren't able to find their own way of expression. But some, I must confess are really good - like portrait painters that are really portraying with a lot of talent - I could put the example of some film music writters like obviously J. Williams would be part of. But even then... have they really bound themselves in tonality ? Gag themselves to not play a note that isn't in the cycle of fifths ?! eheh I don't think so... but that's an opinion here.

So these splits paths you're talking about always existed... and they are even more than just two. Popular music can be considerer mostly as a modal or very simplistic tonal music... that has no relation with Bach music I would say... it is the music of the Troubadours that was continued all up to our times... so even pop music have their roots in the timeless ages...

Whatever... I just find it frustrating when people simply reject stuff just because they don't understand it. Of course I understand that one cannot know everything either and thus cannot appreciate it... but you have an access to this knowledge here... just ask for it... ignoring something is a problem that can be solved.

Well, enough said for me here...

The point is not about melody or non-melodious, it is about the "habits of the ears". Westerners generally can only recognize 2 modes - Diatonic major or minor, plus 6 Breek modes perhaps. Anything outside that, e.g., one of those hundreds of Indian ragas, will be unfamiliar to them, and so "unmelodious".

Most of 20h century Music is not "unmelodious", but "unhummable", that is, you cannot hum the themes or phrases the way you can hum a Mendelssohn, a Schubert, a Beethoven, a Haydn or a Bach. Moreover, the structure also is not so obvious, making it difficult to memorize. And the music does not "flow" the way the "mellifluous" earlier compositions do. The texture is often very thin too.

I rarely approve 'the new tonalist' personnaly for I find that they are just frustrated composers that aren't able to find their own way of expression. But some, I must confess are really good - like portrait painters that are really portraying with a lot of talent - I could put the example of some film music writters like obviously J. Williams would be part of. But even then... have they really bound themselves in tonality ? Gag themselves to not play a note that isn't in the cycle of fifths ?! eheh I don't think so... but that's an opinion here.

To compare a contemporary composer who writes tonal music (and by tonal I don't mean "in the style of", but music that has tonal axis and functional harmony outside of common-practice) to "portrait painters" is one of the most insulting things I've ever read. Do you care to recharacterize your comment?

If it weren't a question of respect and tact, I might be tempted to add that "experimentalists are just frustrated composers that aren't able to find their own way of expression. But some are really good, like construction workers that are really building with lots of talent."

So I'm going to go on the assumption that you consider people like Professor Alan Belkin at UdeM as nothing more than portrait painters?

I think some people are making big assumptions and accidentally seeming like they have all the answers...

and by this you mean?

who is implying they have all the answers?

I find the likening of neo-tonal composers to "portrait painters" offensive.

I find it particularly offensive coming from someone of Dunael's background.

Sorry if I offended anyone who likes atonal music.

I would like to clarify that music is relative. One man's meat is another man's poison.

But what I am afraid of is the trend of increasing dissonance will lead to no end? From a mathematical perspective, the number of dissonant combinations of notes far exceeds the number of consonant combinations. And the limit of dissonance is infinite.

What I mean is, if music proceeds on in the trend of increasing dissonance, it can go on forever and ever.

So, in my humble opinion, it is suitable for music to take a split path -- one exploring further increasing dissonances, while another path looking back to more tonal music, but adding some touches of creativity to it. This way, we will have the best of both worlds.

There's one specific reason I find it interesting that those who espouse increasingly dissonant music consider tonalism to be lacking in expressive range: no matter how far you explore dissonance, it's still dissonance - and I'm amazed at how eager some people are to remove consonances from their musical vocabulary almost entirely.

Count me as one of those who are skeptical about "innovation" in music. I used to listen mainly to 20th century music, but can no longer stand much of it. The future of art music, in my opinion, is not to continue pushing change for its own sake, but to actually return to expression as the focus of music, which will require striking a better balance between the new and the old.

Corbin, I like your ideas about the evolution of music as an art form. Music will evolve, it will change, precisely because it is an art form; too often I hear composers say "I think this is the direction in which music should go" and then proceed to compose in a certain idiom and feel as if they are Moses leading the people out of slavery. (The Germans did this all the time, up through Schoenberg and probably even later -- it has to do with their conceptions of the history of music and the fact that they are in the Bach-Beethoven-Brahms line of great composers.)

I am of the opinion that here in the 21st century it is not the responsibility of the composer to be standing on a pedestal and screaming "THIS IS ART!" The composer should write music as his/her ear and instincts tell him/her to; better to write music that works, and if it is viable as art it will catch on. Better to stand on a pedestal and scream "THIS ISN'T ART!" -- a phrase that can (sadly) be applied to most music being written today.

But I digress. All I'm saying is that it's overstepping bounds for a composer to think they know where music is and where it "should" be going in the 21st century. Leave that to the musicologists. It's our job to write the damn stuff.

no matter how far you explore dissonance, it's still dissonance -

Sorry, boy, but that comment is to my opinion really unfounded. I make my thesis on that subject and can affirm that every dissonance has a different sound for the partials (harmonics) beats together in a different way for a different dissonance and thus create a different 'shade'. This is a bit why different violin interpretes will create different colors with the same Bach suit... in combination with the bow position, bow pressure, dynamics and all... they also vary the exact place of dissonances to create different stresses and 'shades' of tension. If you play a ornament #4-3 (like F#-E based on a C) the F# can either be played like the pure third up of D or the pure third down of Bb... giving a pretty different sounding dissonance.

And this is only one example... each dissonance... even the quater-toned ones (like in arab music) give different colors. Of course as soon as you pile up intervals... be wary to the combinations you do for it might well end up 'all grey' and confused sound... 'color sketching' in microtonal, tonal or atonal music isn't simple... of course if you limit yourself to the piano with 12 tones... it makes it a bit more simple. But we have already discussed all that ! ehehe

But I digress. All I'm saying is that it's overstepping bounds for a composer to think they know where music is and where it "should" be going in the 21st century. Leave that to the musicologists. It's our job to write the damn stuff.

Hmmm... I have to say that I agree here :P. Let's go back to our music sheets boys and let's go back to our slumbers and dreams !! Maybe few of us will make something out of it that will be great ! :laugh:

Basically, there is merit with everything in music. I can sit down and listen to any period of music and find value and greatness. One period or style isn't better than the other. They are just different. That is all. Saying a return to tonalism is better for expression is flat out wrong. Saying that atonal music can purely express everything is also wrong. Innovation into the 21st centuary and beyond will be more than sticking to a particular school of thought. Basically this forum has stayed inside the box. Some people want to stick to the same old idioms, while others want to abolish them just for the sake of abolishing them. The only person who has come close to defining anything is Marius, without really giving his own opinion and showing favoritism. That favoritism is almost a subtle form of arrogance.

I think you are erroneously attributing comnments to me.

I never made any comment about the value of atonal music.

I think the nail was hit a while back, with the startling epiphany that all music is a set of consonances and dissonances. All dissonant chords contain consonances, due to the harmonic series!

A composer who writes solely in dissonance is ignoring a wealth of expression, just as a composer who writes solely in consonance is.

Ruth Crawford-Seeger exemplifies a good theory of atonality and dissonance for me. Instead of saying, "I will not work with thirds and sixths," she said, "I'm going to define thirds, sixths, octaves, and fifths as dissonance, while defining seconds, fourths, tritones, and sevenths as consonance." In this way, she was able to reverse the conception what is pretty much an arbitrary selection of dichords, but still keep the same type of interest that one uses with dissonance in common practice or neo-tonal music.

And as for consonance being arbitrary: it is.

The major second can now be considered consonant, though of course not theoretically or technically. But to the ear, it is actually now a consonance. Think of how much you hear it in pop music, for instance, and not as a suspension either. Even some clusters are heard as consonances these days.

The ear being used to a dissonance does not make it that dissonance consonant.

A major second is still dissonant - that's WHY we like to hear it in music.

It doesn't mean it's consonant, for the sole reason that it's extremely common.

Just because dissonances aren't prepared or functional in a traditional sense does not make them not dissonances.

But if we define "consonance" in a colloquial sense as that which is pleasing to the ear, then it is a consonance.

I agree on a technical level with you, of course.

The ear being used to a dissonance does not make it that dissonance consonant.

A major second is still dissonant - that's WHY we like to hear it in music.

It doesn't mean it's consonant, for the sole reason that it's extremely common.

Just because dissonances aren't prepared or functional in a traditional sense does not make them not dissonances.

technically speaking, yes, the ear getting used to a sound does make it a consonance.

if you remember your music history courses, a long time ago, the only "true consonances" were octaves and 5ths. That was expanded to include major 6ths and thirds, and eventually minor 6ths and 3rds. So there was an evolution of the "perception" of dissonance.

perfect 4ths were considered "dissonant" for the longest time, but I doubt anyone here would consider that sound to be "unpleasing to the ear".

Dominant 7ths were formed from passing dissonances, and again, I doubt anyone here would consider a dom7 chord to be a particularly dissonant chord.

only in strict "dictionary definitions" do the concepts of consonance and dissonance remain true to early music definitions.

So a minor 7th, while technically a "dissonant interval" is far from dissonant when heard in the context of a series of passing dominant 9th chords in a Debussy piano prelude.

All this to say that the definitions of dissonance and consonance are largely socio-cultural in origin, and also heavily reliant on context.

While I agree with you, my point was in specific relation to the major second, which is definitely in my books a dissonant interval (not the most or least, but definitely dissonant). Others may have their own perceptions.

It is a rather mild (and pleasing to the ear, like its "inversion" - the minor seventh) dissonance which is why it is being written off here as a consonance. That doesn't make it a consonance though.

While I agree with you, my point was in specific relation to the major second, which is definitely in my books a dissonant interval (not the most or least, but definitely dissonant). Others may have their own perceptions.

It is a rather mild (and pleasing to the ear, like its "inversion" - the minor seventh) dissonance which is why it is being written off here as a consonance. That doesn't make it a consonance though.

as I said, however, intervals should be taken in context.

I think we are well past the era of 2-voiced vocal compositions as the sole medium for establishing consonance and dissonance.

I personally like to refer to mildly dissonant and heavily dissonant intervals.