FUTURE MUSIC

Ash, we are ALL guilty of not reading everyones messages, including you. As I said before, these concepts are clear to you and no one else. Whatever. I get the impression that your not even a real person, but one of the regulars playing a role. It was 'fun', but let's stop now, ok?

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I've posted this once and here it is again:

Hey everyone. Calm down. This isn't worth getting SO annoyed about. Different people have different views and it damn obvious to me that we won't change Ash's mind so leave it alone. OK?

you're right, rob. This discussion is becoming overheated. let's change topic. let's talk about our favorite food.

Ok, for what it's worth- I am personally of the opinion that Ash DOES have some good ideas about what he likes and doesn't like about Classical, modern and whatever music. In many ways I actually feel the same way. But I think it has been unfortunate that perhaps he has not expressed himself quite the way he could have done. And the blowback from his comments kinda made this thing escalate.. Hm... I'm short of time and brain power...

One more thing to say on this subject.

'"A Celebration" is not an old style. "A Celebration" is more than a chord progression and addresses more ideas than you think it does. Maybe you should look deeper into something you dismiss as superficial and repetitive.'

Yes Ash, I agree. YOU should look deeper into some of the music YOU disregard as "filth" because it uses classical styles and maybe you will no longer see all music as copys of what has come before!?!?!?!

Take your own advice!!!!

I like ice cream! :)

Me too! I like chocolate! (how unoriginal)

I love a pizza with a mountain of cottage cheese and salad on it. Mmmmm

Chocolate, Chris? Hmmm...

Well, I don't know you, but somehow I can't imagine you being a very "Vanilla" kind of guy. :o)

I like chocolate chip cookies and brownies and oreo cookies and peanut butter cookies and fudge and...

no, seriously, my favorite food is Indian food. Tandoori chicken and chicken madras are soooooo delicious.

Ok people- as much as I appreciate the talk of food, (I stand by Roquefort IceCream being the greatest food ever) there really is no reason to, as all it takes is for people to not be mental and insulting. Still, food's cool.

I only like vanilla if I go to a good 'ice cream' bar..... :-)

Personally, I look forward to the carnegie hall debut of Hersch's Symphony no. 2.

"Originality" is a very weak basis for judging music. For example, who cares if someones symphony sounds like shostakovich? More shostakovich symphonies would be nice so long as it is well constructed (which is an entirely different factor for judging.)

Bottom line: don't let the intellectual get in the way of your enjoyment of music.

Until later,

Joseph Sowa

"More shostakovich symphonies would be nice so long as it is well constructed (which is an entirely different factor for judging.)"

I couldn't agree more.

Yeehaa! That's what I've been saying forever! If ones natural inclination is to emulate a certain style, it should be nurtured, as long as it's well-done and genuine; such expression only becomes ersatz or pastiche if it's artificial. People shouldn't have to make themselves something they're not for the sake of mere innovation. That's fraudulent.

Most people don't want to be innovative merely for the sake of being innovative. In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s music passed through a state of progress as had never happened before. In these few decades more happened in music than in any previous 500-year period. We saw the emergence of ample and highly expressive new musical resources and the art of composition became the most intellectual of man's artistic activities in any period. The last two decades were a period of stagnation. We can only hope that music will continue as the most intellectual and most sublime of man's creations. This can only be possible if music "progresses".

"More shostakovich symphonies would be nice so long as it is well constructed (which is an entirely different factor for judging.)" Sure, it would be nice for some people (although I think shostakovich is one of the most overrated composers ever) and if a symphony in the style of shostakovich is what you really want to write, then write it. But I don't see the use of doing something which has been done - and done better - many times before. "Bottom line: don't let the intellectual get in the way of your enjoyment of music." But is it right to reduce the demands on the listener's intellect to a minimum? Many composers of today tend to reduce demands on the listener's perception and intellect to a minimum (Philip Glass, Arvo Part, Gorecki, Bryars, Hersch, etc.). Their music may be very nice, but it's overly simplistic and doesn't offer any intellectual challenges.

Some people are trying to find a new musical idiom because they are looking for NEW CHALLENGES to our intellect and to the elasticity of our perception and sensibility. That's exactly what makes a lot of music from the 50s and 60s so interesting. And that's exactly why we are now in a period of stagnation: most composers don't feel the need to look for such challenges nowadays.

Jared that was the point I was trying to make earlier on this thread. People in the avant-garde camp seem to think that everything that everyone else is listening to is unintellegent unless it something that progresses and is new and "orginal". Unless everyone is thinking exactly like you and people like you they are all wrong and you are right. How can this be? Is this like that thing in that movie with the guy and the baseball field: "If you build it, he will come"? "If you tell them it is art, they must like it otherwise they are stupid". Could it be that people are composing the music that they are composing because they want to? What an ORIGINAL concept! As of now, in my composing, I have no use for 12 tone rows. When the time comes that I have to turn to something like that I will use them but until then I am happy with what I have. When I write an electronic work it is because that is what I wanted to hear at a specific time. But back to my question. For a group that screams they are all opened minded I find very few people in the avant-garde camp that will listen to anything written outside of their little circle. And if they are tricked into listening to something like that they will tell you how stupid you are for enjoying it. But God forbid you tell them the music they enjoy is dumb. Then you are being closed minded and we can't have that. How about this: All music is dumb! Everything in the world of music sucks and is unorginal. It doesnt matter if it is Bach or Cage, NSync of Weezer, Frank Zappa or Radiohead. It is all crap crap and more crap. There now that everything is equal there really shouldn't be a problem.

On many occasion I have come to the conclusion that all music is crap. And then I get really depressed for a bit. Then I hear something (without fail innovative but not avant-garde) that makes me go "Cor blimey, that just kicks arse." And I'm happy again. My personal... hm... quest (what a cheesily awful word).. for new and original music has never been satisfied by the avant-garde as it is nearly always truly unoriginal.

Montague: J.S. Bach's greatest works are generally said to be those he wrote at the end of his career -- his incomplete 'Art of the Fugue', for example. When he wrote that, even his own sons were writing in a quite different idiom, which founds its perfection in Mozart. Bach's music was old-fashioned, trite, and full of fuddy-duddy fugues. Just because everyone was writing a different way, trying a different sort of music because it was the avant-garde of the day, does that mean that Bach shouldn't have written the Art of the Fugue? Does the fact he wrote a great Baroque work in the Classical era make the work any less great?

I heard St. Matthews Passion yesterday and was blown away. Both in the details and in the general wonder of the piece. There is more to music than just the construction side. A lot of the beauty in this piece isn't intellectual, but spiritual. Not that spirituality means being in a state of "Praise the Lawd!" But there is more to learning and to musical experience than just thinking.* There is more to music than just the notes, and by that I'm not refering to dynamic markings and other such notations.

I hate composers who talk about "schmaltz" and "intellectual value" and "who cares if you listen" and so on. To me, the last great composer was Stravinsky,** and since then we've been in that Roccoco area of music where although there has been progress and a sizeable number of good pieces, nothing really exciting has happened. There's no use crying about it, and besides, it sets a bad example to the explosion of lesser composers who write even worse than the best contemporary composers yet cry more. Add to this the fact that the blind judge history determine who's remembered and who's forgotten. Vying for status now will do you no good. At one time, Paul Creston as just as popular as Aaron Copland. He was just as good a composer, but now you're probably asking "Who is this Creston fellow?"***

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In liturature, most conceivable story lines have been developed by now. But what makes a novel great is not the plot or story line, its the details and the overall arguement it makes as a whole. There have been many innocent victim novels before and after Billy Budd, but that doesn't make Melville's story unoriginal and worthless. The construction of the novel is what gives it value.

Likewise what makes a piece of music great is not the idiom, but how the music itself is developed and the sincerity what it conveys. The great question in music is not how the music is expressed but what the music is. Case in point: Bruckner symphonies. Listen to no. 7, first movement. You have to listen to the piece many many times to understand the dramatic arch, the arch of the melodies themselves, and how the different sections fit together. Once you do, the beauty doesn't stop there. The symphony is alive with detail, so that you could listen to it forever (not continuously) and not get bored.****

We are not stagnating because composers aren't out looking for challenges. We are stagnating because composers are too caught up in the superficial and fake questions of aesthetics and originality rather then the overriding and real question of content.

Bottom line: The 50s and 60s burst a siginificant dam, and we're still drying to dry off after the flood.

Footnotes:

* - Which is what I like about jazz: its just fun. (But if you tried to deconstruct it beyond a point, you'd do it more harm than the deconstruction of classical music.)

** - In my opinion the progression of the greats since Bach has gone: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Bruckner (most would say Brahms, but Brahms lacks Bruckner's depth, besides the story concerning the Viennese neglect of Bruckner: "if Brahms wrote symphonies like that the audience would be to their feet with applause"), Stravinsky.

*** - Paul Creston (1906-1985) was one of the great, forgotten self-taught composers of his generation (like Ernst Toch.) A wonderful orchestrator, he wrote a great marimba concerto, several great symphonies, etc. He was trown from the spotlight when the atonalist regime took control of the music scene.

**** - On a tangent is another point: Music and archetypes. At first, listening to Xenakis' Metastasis for orchestra seems formidable for a person used to tonal music. However, listening more closely to it, I realized that its just a typical 19th century overture in new clothes. The glissando is the rise in tension, it builds to a climax, in which you have the 'heroic' horn theme--this time on a tuba--and then it glissandos back down. Then change of character--a lyric section for

[looks like it cut off the xenakis footnote] solo strings. And so the piece continues... It's true impressionistic music: giving the sonic impression of a romantic overture. Its quite wonderful and clever.

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You'll have to forgive all the typos in the previous post. I reread it but, obviously, that wasn't enough. In the 3rd to last paragraph I appear to contradict myself, but I gave only a passing mention to the fact (bluntly and unelegantly put) that I also find the Bruckner spiritual as well as the intellectual I described.

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I just read the whole ash cronicle (I hadn't before.) At first it sounded like the extreme right of minimalism, but really its more like the "one note played well" idea. Neat concept if he could turn it into music: give some architecture to his beautiful note.

lucky for me I get to keep correcting myself. I forgot to add Debussey in between Bruckner and Stravinsky for my list of greats.

Neat concept if he could

turn it into music: give some architecture to his beautiful note.

That's what I said in the very very beginning! I never insulted Ash's music. I just advised him to change it/....

I'm quite new here, but I think that you have left out a few great composers. I mean, if you include Beethoven (who I agree is perhaphs the greatest) you must include Bartok. He extended many of Beethovens ideas of the classical style. He was at times simple, but brilliant. I find many, many parallels between he and Beet.

As well it should be stated that Brahms was very good. I think you should add him , although I can understand that you would like others more. I don't think I can say debby was a composer the calibur of Mozart or Beethoven. I would love to hear your explanation for that one.

Just a few thoughts. You may be one of the few that make sense here. I will have to learn about the others as well before I can judge them .