The Unanswered Question of the 20th and 21st Centuries: A Discussion of Music

7 minutes ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

But do you think the emergence of eclecticism is due to the increase of the number of people who can compose? Before 20th century the number of composers are way fewer than now, and the occupation of composer doesn't even appear in many cultures. Being a composers is a conscious and culture one. With the globalization and more advanced education throughout the world, more composers emerged from different cultures and that's why more styles appear. 

Eclecticism also occurs with the increasing diversity and complexity of human mind in these two centuries. For example in the medieval period everyone just has one official idea which is predominant Christian, that's why medieval music tends to be much less diversified than music now with wide diversity of national, philosophical and cultural value.

I think to reconsolidate the music is to go to back to the core of our heart and soul, if it sounds stupid to say so. Your music can be as diversified as it can, but it must tell what the heart feels. I think it's a great thing for composers to get to know as many styles as he can, if this doesn't prevent what he wants to express.

 

Honestly, I don't think the number of composers has really increased over the past few decades. There were certainly a LOT of composers who we never heard of -or at least didn't find a place in the continued performance repertoire. 

In terms of music from the medieval period.... we know music was well spread amongst the full throngs of society as we also have traces of this fact in our own folk music histories. One exceptional example is the troubadour and trovatores of southern europe. There's an extensive tradition of pub drinking songs in England as well. 

That said, I like your view at the end. Very heart felt!

10 minutes ago, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

For the comparison of language with music, it may be right within the western music tradition. But what about different languages? Within the 26 alphabets you can use it with different syntax, grammar e.t.c to represent the difference of tonal of atonal music. But if there are different languages like Chinese which is not Indo-European but Sino-Tibetan? Despite the difference in the language and linguistic content, what's expressed behind it should be the same, which is the musical instinct, just as language instinct in the case of language.

 

I think that's a good question. I'm not too familiar on the linguistic-musicological research in that arena. I'm sure, though, if we find linguistic connections in western music, then it most likely also exists in eastern traditions. There's probably also a connection between the two regions as well -that I'm sure has relics here and there. 

2 hours ago, jawoodruff said:

I think that's a good question. I'm not too familiar on the linguistic-musicological research in that arena. I'm sure, though, if we find linguistic connections in western music, then it most likely also exists in eastern traditions. There's probably also a connection between the two regions as well -that I'm sure has relics here and there. 

I actually think that the analogy of music with language a crucial one to the development of music. For me even though eclecticism happens and will continue to exist, I think a reverse trip to human's musical instinct a great one to consolidate our positions and prevent the beguiling eclecticism. It's very easy for us to lose our track in loads of musical styles and approaches. We can do this, do that, use this, use that, but why?　Is there necessity in the usage of certain style? Why do you use one style instead of the other one, given that there are lots of styles you can choose?

As a Chinese, in our traditional thought there's the origin of poem, music and dance. You have something you must express, so you express it through speaking. "Speaking is not enough, thus you express it through poem. Poem is not enough, thus you express it through music. Music is not enough, thus you express it through dance." (Sorry for my bad and unprofessional translation of the Book of Rite) I actually don't think the eclecticism a big problem at all. Once you know why you compose, what you have to compose, how to express it to the utmost... Then you don't worry about the style at all. 

On 1/23/2023 at 11:37 PM, AngelCityOutlaw said:

Thus, to teach atonalism is to teach musical ignorance, and I would say that qualifies such teachings as being anti-music.

I agree but that's because atonality can't really be taught (except that colleges can make a bit of money trying). I doubt even serial composition can be taught. It has its basic rules about which a brief explanation should suffice. These can be modified by a composer ad lib or carried to their extreme. 

It's all too easy to slap anything together under the aegis of atonal music, along with some elaborate pseudo-intellectual programme notes and a clever looking complicated score. I've painfully heard results on BBC's Hear and Now, splatters of noises different from an orchestra tuning up only because it isn't based on the oboe's A. - Premières that are usually dernières too, thankfully. A professor at a local university with whom I'm acquainted tries to teach it (he says) by hinting at form but he’s most cynical about it. Tells me what I already knew – that most such composers really haven’t a clue what they composed when it comes to rehearsing it.

However, I distinguish them from those who knowingly, deliberately move into working with less tonality as a result of their development - the symbolists among the first (for want of a category). Results will not adhere to the aesthetics of the tonal era and if one's definition of beauty rests solely on that era the door is shut for them.

But as tonality evolved into chromaticism the aesthetics evolved with it. The harmonic minor scale eventually became acceptable because by a trick of melodic movement (perhaps started by the Romantics) the interval of an augmented second was allowed. To me it would be pointless claiming the classicist Brahms 'had' the aesthetics (and beauty) where Bruckner did not. So we move on to the likes of Debussy, Delius and their ilk. While Delius held to a basic tonality albeit chromatic, Debussy showed signs of moving away from key. His use of a whole tone scale was just one indicator. 

As far as aesthetics go then, we have at least one big consensus – the one you speak of. But it isn’t an absolute. Sure, it can't be applied to “stuff thrown together” which can be fashion or the promotion of critics (the problem when any art gets involved with money). But it and beauty can lie in the hands of individual composers and listeners who have less expectation of tonal syntax and language. It can move into the realm of deeper and darker emotions beyond just the pleasurable by avoiding linguistic traps.

As I said somewhere else, atonality can be amenable to a bigger audience if it allows that audience enough time to adapt to a work’s evolving structure. (Let's be honest - for some even the most atonal work can start to sound normal and likeable with repeated listening, but it's a matter of first impressions).

So the difference (to me) comes down to craft. I believe that it’s an error to dismiss work not conforming to traditional structures as craftless. There can be as much craft in an atonal as a tonal work. In technical terms I suppose I write atonally – in that I have no regard for key or rhythm but it’s far from slapped together. I’m obsessive about harmonic shift, progression, contrast; intervals, timbre, timing. I can write pretty tunes if I want (my fake Mozart didn’t do too well here though!) but I don’t want to. Thousands of people already do that but for me, self-expression would be frustrated. I'm no way putting down those who still embrace tonality and many self-express very well like that. Ultimately it depends what one wants to do with sound. In art terms I’m probably the poor man’s Turner rather than a wealthy Titian. Whether my stuff is judged to have craft is not my call but I certainly put the effort in.

Teaching atonality suggests it can be reduced to a procedure. It can’t.

On 1/26/2023 at 6:26 AM, Henry Ng Tsz Kiu said:

I think a reverse trip to human's musical instinct a great one to consolidate our positions and prevent the beguiling eclecticism. It's very easy for us to lose our track in loads of musical styles and approaches. We can do this, do that, use this, use that, but why?　Is there necessity in the usage of certain style? Why do you use one style instead of the other one, given that there are lots of styles you can choose?

This is the best approach. As I listened to Bernstein's lecture (most of it anyway) I thought he was over-analysing and classifying music too heavily. It could have been an issue of his time, though - the 60s and 70s, when tonality and traditional modernism were "done for", and the avant garde was starting to clatter forth. I suppose for a musicologist to earn his/her living they need this stuff but for a present day composer, no.  Musicologists are so very fortunate as hangers-on, dependent on composers to do things that they can write about. 

But a composer will call in whatever 'technique' is needed as part of producing a work, no matter where it's from. (That makes us all "post moderns" I'm told!) Hopefully, what's pulled in will be filtered through the composer's own voice so, even if it is recognised as an "imported style" it'll still fit in with her/his work. 

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11 hours ago, Quinn said:

But a composer will call in whatever 'technique' is needed as part of producing a work, no matter where it's from. (That makes us all "post moderns" I'm told!) Hopefully, what's pulled in will be filtered through the composer's own voice so, even if it is recognised as an "imported style" it'll still fit in with her/his work. 

Yes a composer must have input to have output. She can absorb all styles, but the result of the output, which is her own choice and voice, should have her own style and in turn becomes other composers' nutrient. Just like in the nature with the role of plants I guess.

11 hours ago, Quinn said:

Musicologists are so very fortunate as hangers-on, dependent on composers to do things that they can write about.

Their job is very important though, since the good musicologists can group and analyze the instinctive works from composers to reasonable paradigms and even "rules" for easy digestion of later composers and musicians. But of course composers should have the claim on it as the Prometheus who "stole" the inspiration from the Heaven for musicologist to research on.

I watched 2 lectures, the first and the last (the latter speeded up to x1.25) but could have missed much on eclecticism – and stopped when he started on Mahler.

Interesting and informative from a renowned master.

But I wasn’t convinced about his dichotomy existing into the time of his lecture let alone beyond. Ok, it’s a viewpoint thing. Yes, there was a crisis and there was a split. Culturally in continental Europe there were a few splits around then – in art, in literature, architecture – must have been a right turmoil - the craving to break established boundaries.

Schoenberg’s basic ideas were expanded into the 1950s with total serialism, and there were aleatoric processes and electronic techniques. But by the late 60s all but electronics had started to fade out. A German journal, Die Reihe (the row or series) dealt with musical developments between 1955 and 1965 when it seemed past its sell-by. So in 1973, the year of Bernstein’s lectures, the distinction between atonal, serial and tonal music were still fairly distinct in the ears of musicologists but to UK composers they were already blurred. Composers here tried them out then mostly dropped them or blended them with other approaches. Very few achieved “pure” atonality. I think Tippet was the only one.  People like Searle and Birtwistle did some serial work and Lutyens blended her brand of serial with chromatic tonality.

Bernstein goes into some detail about “the split” although I think it was Schoenberg who split off really. Stravinsky went on doing what he did with The Rite, then realising he’d never beat that returned to classicism. Most others outside Europe went on in their separate ways. Interesting that Bernstein notes how Schoenberg never lost the pull of tonality giving the reason as the continued use of the same 12 notes used by tonal composers. He also confessed that Schoenberg had to revert to established musical semantics to do it.

Quoting from Bernstein’s 5th lecture, he says after the ‘crisis’, composers “Write out of the same need for newer and greater semantic richness, they are all, whether tonal or nontonal, motivated by the same drive: the power of expressivity (agreed), the drive to expand music’s metaphorical speech (disagree).” That suggests that composers’ drives are to expand music’s metaphorical speech. But it could be vice versa: the drive could be to prioritise self-expression and to heck with metaphorical speech. Like, let’s not worry about rules, syntax and who’s done what. Just do it and if moments of tonality or serial emerge, so what? Pulling just the right sound out of the air or what-have-you, overrides anything else, perhaps altering the entire course of a composition. (Sadly, a luxury not allowed college students while they learn procedures.)

As for eclectism, I think there’s a big difference between composers who choose to write in various established styles drawn from their styles kitbag; and those who compose and innately draw on what, to an outside observer, happen to be different styles, but of which the composer is not fully aware. In the latter case, eclecticism doesn’t strictly apply for me.

I felt, overall, that Bernstein over-analyses. I'm unsure that's a good thing. The more you pull individual creations to pieces, the more exceptions you find.

I made a Reddit post about this a while back:

I've noticed some commonalities in the music of a lot of contemporary living composers for orchestra:

• Timbre takes center stage: The purpose of the composition is to generate its own sound-world and different, sometimes exotic, instruments are used or highlighted for their evocative power.

• Limpid harmonies: the tones of the chords all blend well and sound clean as opposed to strident, blurry or muddy.

• Detailed rhythmic patterns that can be performed with good fidelity by top musicians.

• Rhythmic dissonance is preferred over harmonic harshness: complex polyrhythms permeate the compositions and the many interactions between them are at the crux of climaxes.

• De-emphasis of counterpoint: Any multiple lines present are treated primarily as texture rather than as independent lines.

• Clear self-similar textures: every element of the textures is necessary and can be discerned well, the textures seem to be constructed either by expanding a motivic pattern (bottom-to-top) or by carving a large structure in an ordered way (top-to-bottom).

• Textural layering: different contrasting textures are juxtaposed, each with their own direction or function, supporting each other or generating chaos.

• Abrupt accentuation: contrasting sounds that appear as point-objects can mark the transition from one section to another and/or have a smaller role as foreign elements that spice up the music.