 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: BlockEyeDan
Date: 2005-01-29 17:25
Hello all,
I am a huge fan of the Classical style, as I'm sure many of you are. My question is: who out there today writes music that embodies these ideals? (pleasing variety, the "natural", etc.) I remember that Sergei Prokofiev wrote his "Classical Symphony" (No. 1) in the manner that he believed Mozart would write a symphony if he were alive during Prokofiev's time. Are there any composers who write such music? Or has the evolution of musical style progressed to such a contemporary/post-modern (blech) ideal that such music is simply no longer created?
Thanks all,
Dan
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Author: GBK
Date: 2005-01-29 17:45
Just as, for example, automobiles have changed over the years, musical style is ever evolving and going into newer, unexplored areas., Thus, a composer (or many composers) writing strictly and exclusively in the Classical (a la Mozart) style is probably not going to happen again.
It would be like many of the major car manufacturer suddenly deciding to only make cars of the 1940's. Perhaps it would be a brief novelty, but not a sustainable venture. In music, when the real thing (authentic works by Mozart) still exist, why imitate what is already available?
The general public needs a constant source of new music. Remember, even JS Bach was considered "old fashioned" even in his later years. Mozart was always implored to write something new. Last week's composition was already old news.
I am certain that many of today's talented modern composers could write in the "style of" Mozart if asked to (ex - Peter Schickele) , but it would probably be only a pale, textbook exercise or an intentionally humorous copy.
Time is the best critic of what is quality and what is not. The works with substance and interest always survive, while those which are inferior are quickly forgotten...GBK
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Author: theclarinetist
Date: 2005-01-29 18:06
To continue with the car analogy, no car manufacturer would make cars exactly as they did during the 40s, but many manufactures are included "retro" design concepts that pay homage to models of the past while still remaining fresh and new (like the new ford Mustang).
While there are few composers (or at least those who are well known) who would try to write like Mozart exactly, there are many who do incorporate ideals from the classical (or baroque period). I'm not an expert (or even formally trained at all) in music history, but I have listened to enough music that I have recognized many instances were modern composers do this. There is a schoenberg piece for piano on a CD I have that is written in the form of a baroque suite (although, considering his tonal language, it's pretty funny to me..). This probably isn't a good example because it's so different, but it does show that even the most modern sounding music can have influences from the past.
If you want Mozart, listen to Mozart (you could probably spend your whole life and not exhaust his whole body of work... and even if you do, there are so many more lesser known classical composers that I like). If you want more modern sounding music that is influenced by classical forms/ideals, then there are many composers that are good.
Here is a website with a very basic introduction to neo-classicism in music that also lists some composers who you might be interested in.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoclassicism_%28music%29
DH
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Author: Bigno16
Date: 2005-01-29 23:40
As stated above, change has occurred and will continue to occur for as long as there is time. Look at how far music has gone, from the lack of emotion in the baroque period to the highly structured classicical period to the romantic period where everything started becoming bombastic (and personally where most of my favorites are) to modern, where all the "rules" are broken.
Personally, I am not a big fan of the extent to which some modern music has gone, such as the works of John Cage, but it is definitely a fresh, innovative way to look at things. Like he said, "If you never knew what a 'bad' sound was, how would you know it sounded bad?" paraphrased of course, I can't remember exactly what Cage said.
You can still find some composers that write in that "classical" way, but it's not as often. In my District Orchestra this year, I played a piece in Sonata-Allegro Form, a classical music form (ex. Mozart Symphony No. 40). Haydn Wood's "Mannin Veen" is also a piece that seems to resemble that kind of style. Just to name a few..
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Author: GBK
Date: 2005-01-30 00:38
Bigno16 wrote:
> from the lack of emotion in the baroque period
Lack of emotion in the Baroque era???
Have you actually listened to any Baroque music, or are just parroting a very juvenile misconception you may have heard?
The music of the Baroque is ripe with every conceivable emotion - ranging from ecstasy, tension, passion, drama, and exuberance. The use of contrasting groups, complexity of line, clarity of form, expressive use of dissonance, improvisation, variation, florid ornamentation and a clear rhythmic balance were significant and prominent compositional devices.
The desire for extreme tonal contrast led to the deeper bass sounds. Witness the rise of the contrabassoon and the bass trombone. The orchestra was constantly adding new colors. The French horn and clarinet (when available) became permanent members at the end of the era.
Any method that Baroque composers could contrive to manipulate audiences into having a genuine emotional reaction was what they deliberately strove for.
Do you think it is only a coincidence that most Baroque music is between 76 - 80 beats per minute, just like the human heartbeat?
The birth and subsequent rise of opera? In the Baroque era.
Pick a Bach Cantata - any Bach Cantata. It is impossible to not be emotionally engaged.
(Do I need to go on???)
I can give you the titles of a number of excellent Music History 101 textbooks to read, if you are interested in becoming more informed...GBK
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Author: msloss
Date: 2005-01-30 03:08
Composers constantly reinvent the form and update the language. Each great composer stands on the shoulders of those that came before. Prokofiev used the language of Mozart and others, and added his own voice. Sometimes what they do is try to reject everything that came before, but that is still an acknowledgement of their legacy.
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Author: Bigno16
Date: 2005-01-30 14:37
GBK,
In my music history class, the baroque period was classified was several music characteristics. Looking back at my notes, I apologize. Number one was an "emphasis on emotion." I must have been thrown off by a friend's comment yesterday while listening to some baroque music (and yes, I have and continue to listen to plenty of it), where he said "it has no emotion." My apologies...
Hank,
If you don't think, for example, that the symphonies of Mahler are bombastic, then I just don't know. Perhaps an overstatement at times, but one movement from a romantic symphony was sometimes longer than an entire classical symphony (Take Mahler vs. Mozart)! In the Romantic period, the melodies became more expansive, wide-ranging, more varied and with chromatic inflections. The rhythms had more diversity and elasticity. The harmony had increasing chromaticism and expanded concepts. Everything just expanded, especially the size of the orchestra because of the addition of brass instruments. And then you have Mahler who goes an asks for 4 flutes, 3 oboes, 3 clarinets, 3 bassoons and a contra, 6 horns, and then the percussion. Not to mention Shostakovich, who calls for the brass section to be doubled in his 7th symphony. I see that as pretty bombastic. Perhaps you're just unhappy with that terminology, but I hope you see what I mean when I said it.
Post Edited (2005-01-30 16:01)
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Author: msloss
Date: 2005-01-30 18:25
Schostakovich, Mahler, Stravinsky, Strauss - you name it - have written some of the most exquisite, delicate, even frail moments in the symphonic literature for your bombastic ensembles. The colors and dynamic range that are possible with the extended seating are unbelievable. Bruckner wrote what I suppose you would classify as bombastic moments (4th Symphony for example) and did it with a much smaller orchestra through brilliant orchestration roughly contemporaneously with Mahler. Beethoven, writing for a smaller orchestra than Mahler, scribed some massive, arguably cataclysmic moments for orchestra earlier. Is Don Giovanni bombastic by that standard? Apex of the Classical period. How about Handel's Messiah?
What I'm saying is that composers wrote works of enormous scale well before the Romantic, and Romantic and later composers have written more compactly and transparently than much of what can be found in the Baroque and Renaissance. It has nothing to do with the seating of the ensemble or length of the work. Your bombast is the composer's scale and dynamic. Careful painting art in absolutes because there are none to be found, even within the work of a single composer.
Play on.
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Author: David Peacham
Date: 2005-01-30 18:53
BlockEyeDan,
Not sure whether this answers your question, but there are many composers active today whose music is more approachable than the term "contemporary" music tends to imply.
For example, the minimalist school of Glass, Reich, Adams and others, or the slightly related school of Arvo Pärt and John Tavener.
Or Paul McCartney. No, on second thoughts, maybe not Paul McCartney.
-----------
If there are so many people on this board unwilling or unable to have a civil and balanced discussion about important issues, then I shan't bother to post here any more.
To the great relief of many of you, no doubt.
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2005-01-30 22:02
Bigno16 wrote: "Not to mention Shostakovich..."
I don't quite follow your logic in quoting Shostakovich as an example of a ROMANTIC bombastic composer??!
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2005-01-30 22:31
It seems like the disagreements here are largely on account of vague uses of terminology. Regarding "Classical", "Romantic" and "bombastic", I must quote from The Princess Bride:
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." -Inigo Montoya
To add to the mix, the only composer that comes to mind as writing truly bombastic music is Wagner, and I'll be the first in line for tickets next time the ring cycle is played in its entirety in L.A.
If you're looking at classical vs. romantic as the fluctuating cycle of emphases between apollonian and dionysian ideals, look at 80% of the music of academia from the 1940s to 1980s, and also look at minimalism. As a side note, I don't recall "pleasing variety" being a hallmark of classicism, but I could be mistaken.
In my humble opinion, the vast majority of currently written "art music" today, especially in academia where people often have to write something "interesting" for accepatnce, follows in the classical tradition, and we could use a bit more spice.
To the original poster, what do you have against postmodern music? (assuming we're using the same terminology for it)
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: Ed
Date: 2005-01-31 01:28
To get back to the original question, one composer who writes in a "neo-classical" style is Robert Baksa. You can find more about him on his website-
http://www.rbaksa.com/
His music is very melodic and structurally traditional. I have found it very enjoyable to play and listen to and have found that it goes over very well with audiences.
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Author: BlockEyeDan
Date: 2005-01-31 01:41
To EEBaum:
In my classes on Beethoven and Mozart, the hallmarks of the Classical style put forth by my professors are "pleasing variety" and "the natural." These points are emphasized to display the difference between the Classical style and its immediate predecessor, the Baroque style. Baroque music relies heavily on what is referred to as "the doctrine of affection," where the mood of the music is constant throughout, as well as its metrical aspects. Take most Baroque pieces; the tempo and dynamic range one finds in the first five seconds of the piece are likely to remain constant throughout that piece. The Baroque pieces were meant to convey a single emotion. When one moves on to the Classical style, one sees an emphasis on the departure from this philosophy. Tempos are widely varied, as well as dynamic levels. The music was meant to be approachable to the average listeners, without the aspects of imitative polyphony, counterpoint, and emphasis on fugal/canonical structures. Instead, one sees the birth of the sonata form, where single musical ideas are presented, developed, and recapitulated.
My problem with postmodern music, and postmodernism in general is this: it seems to me that once people considered Campbell's soup cans reproduced on a canvas to be the aesthetic equal of, say, the Pieta or the Mona Lisa, all standards of aesthetically defined beauty went out the window. Postmodernism equates novelty and "newness" with beauty, and postmodernists will usually argue that something is beautiful simply because it is new. Maybe this is simply my biased take on this because I consider myself to be such a traditionalist/classicist, but I feel that a minimalist, atonal piece by the likes of Schoenberg, Cage, et al. to be inferior to the simple, yet pleasing beauty of your standard Classical/Romantic era composition.... (And don't get me started on Stravinsky )
Thank you all for a very interesting discussion!
Dan
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2005-01-31 02:51
Long-Winded Rant ahead: Read at your own risk.
I understand your point, Dan, but I'd hardly call a minimalist atonal piece by Schoenberg and Stravinsky (post-romantics and early modernists) or Cage (who barely skirts the borders of postmodernism) postmodern.
I consider myself a postmodernist, and do not hold most of the views you describe. I might be a bit of a postmodern extremist, though, and personally view a lot of proclaimed postmodernists as "closet modernists" who jump at the chance to drool over anything that hasn't been done before. I agree that postmodern philosophy can often be used to justify a thoughtless piece, which is indeed a shame.
Postmodernists, in my experience, don't claim that the soup cans are equal to the Mona Lisa. Rather, the claim is largely "Why on earth are we trying to rank everything?" and "Who in their ivory tower decides what's good and what's not?"
On one hand, I find the very concept of a "classical music world" snobbish and exclusionist. The declaration, especially by academics, of "I have made this, and I proclaim that it is a piece of art because I have done many things that people who are art people claim is art, and I say it is special; anyone who says it is not art is foolish," I find extremely arrogant. The fact that we, in our concerts, are still playing music by the same two dozen or so people who died 100-300 years ago and demand that the public appreciate it and pay us well disturbs me at times. Playing something less than 30 years old makes us giddy and daring... while non-classical-people would call something of that age a "reunion tour."
On the other hand, I need only drive home past the local elementary school when class is letting out and the SUVs are lining up by the score, put Rossini's Variations into the CD player, and it feels like Rossini himself must have written it last week.
Regarding postmodernism, I gave a presentation in my postmodernism workshop class last semester where I treated Mahler 3 as if it had just been written, noting all the kitschy references to Lord of the Rings, Beauty and the Beast, and Snow White. So perhaps I just proved your point.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: clarinetist04
Date: 2005-01-31 02:54
I would emphatically disagree (to those who have a "problem with contemporary music...aka post-modern music...what a horrible term).
I am studying composition here at my university and I am very much someone who prefers to write classically for orchestra (as in the style of the Romantics) and modern for chamber. I don't know why and I will probably change with time, but for now, this tends to be the case.
I don't know how you can compare the two sets of composers as inferior or superior to one another. That, imho, is rediculous. Basically you're saying that because, say, Magnard Alberic, wrote romantic music (very much like Bruckner, just in France), he is superior to someone like John Adams? And where does John Williams fall into this scheme? An the ENTIRE JAZZ AGE? I am right now finding myself all worked up!
When someone writes a piece in the "style of the romantics" they will be associated with the Romantic period. It won't be that composer's style, it's the "Romantic style." As a composer of contemporary music, I would want my music to be identified with me, a 21st century composer, Robert Bethea, not a group of composers who have been dead for, in many cases, over a century.
Yes, I will admit, there is a lot of music that I strongly dislike...even music that has been accepted for the most part as masterful...e.g. the music of Charles Wuorinen (pulitzer prize for "Time's Encomium"...listen if you dare). But that does not detract from the fact that this man, or any man with a vision for the future of music, invented his OWN style, not immitating that of the past.
I would dare ask who you think is a better composer: Bruckner or Copland? Albeniz or Bernstein? Charpentier or (John) Adams? Delibes or Francaix?
I don't want to overstate my claims, but it frustrates me to no end when musicians, composers...anyone really, try to compare the music of different time periods. There are VERY great differences that you cannot under any circumstances compare. For example, take the Romantic school. They learned technique from the Classical school and applied it, implemented it, brought in NEW IDEAS, and created what we now know as the Romantic period. This then begs the question, is something like 4'33 a piece of music or not? This is on the far, FAR extreme of the spectrum as far as post-modern music is concerned. But take something more rigid, like Corigliano's Clarinet Concerto. Is that better or worse than any other clarinet concerto? It's harder than most of them but it's a beautiful piece of music that is in many cases classical or romantic in nature. Just take a look at the score and you will find how Corigliano uses many old and archaic (well, if that's what you want to call it...lack of words) forms of writing and implements his own ideas to create new forms and new music.
Wow, that was a long breath.
Post Edited (2005-01-31 02:56)
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Author: Markus Wenninger
Date: 2005-01-31 09:31
Yeah, Alex, treat ´em right! How happy it makes me that another "bunter hund" is out there in the hic and nunc!
Dan,
There´s a tiny wee little bit more to postmodernism than You might perhaps feel inclined to admit. Part of what postmodernity means is that the idea of newness is nothing but the metapysics of eigentlichkeit.. It´s never abouth whether it´s new or not, in that respect nearly everything has been done before. It´s about différance, about complexity, Smooth Spaces vs. Measured Spaces, rhizom, repetition, Eigentlichkeit...But you´re not alone, the godfather of the Complex School, Ferneyhough, has never understood anything about postmodernism...that didn´t hinder him to compose some of the most beautiful ultra-post oeuvres ever. The idea of beauty itself changes, Dan, rapidly, and it´s blase and arrogant to despise its differentiation over time. It isn´t art just because it broke with history, but it may be necessary to detect the biasedness of the structuralist relation beautyful/ugly. Muscial (as any) history is still there, but we might allow the recognition of its jumpiness and heterogenity. It´s all very well to say "I don´t like it." and leave it at that - but art as art has nothing to do with taste. If the muses ever heeded to what conservativism and maistream authoritatively claimed to be "it", nothing ever would have moved, everything ever would be played, taught or listened to would be the same old drag. It´d be easy to rant polemics about those aeras you term "classical",Dan, but it´d be just as boring as trying to become part of what already has been left behind.
markus
But, Alex - - - ROSSINI????
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2005-01-31 16:14
I'm telling you, Markus... if I could drive you around my neighborhood at 3pm with Rossini on, you might understand. It sounds like the most sarcastic thing ever written, and you wonder how he could ever have gotten away with such delicious kitsch. When listening to Rossini (or, for that matter, Weber, The Mozart, and many others) with the right mindset, I realize how much of the world never fully emerged from the Victorian high society mentality (it's like I'm living out "My Fair Lady"). Washing your car is the new afternoon tea, soccer games the new horse races, SUVs the new butlers.
I should make a video of my neighborhood to the music of Rossini some day.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: Markus Wenninger
Date: 2005-02-01 05:33
Ehem- rright, I see what You might be hinting at, Alex...
(for me unhip European: Who´s an "SUV"? Or what?). Must be an incredibly strange neigborhood...But I see what You mean, indeed many aspects of the European daily life has been/still is formatted to 18./19. century strata, including the bourgeois notion of "good music", and parallel to that the idea of the rvolution of the younger ones who after some time rompoing settle down to compose and perform just the same mediocre tweet tweet their authoritative predecessors did. What a delight it is to behold a 70 yr-old with glowing eyes telling how much more against the grain music still has to become, and what a shame to stand next to 20 yr-olds babbling about how perfect tonality is.
Make that video, absolutely, we could edit something like an alternative soundtrack, like a subcutaneous ripple, disturbing and unsettling, under all that saccharine.
Keep it up!,
Markus
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2005-02-01 06:05
SUV = Sports Utility Vehicle... Honda CRV, Toyota RAV4, Ford Explorer, Chevy Suburban, etc.
Madness! The video wouldn't be half as effective or delightful without the maximum saccharine! I might even insist on a bit of ostentatious Lawrence Welk / Andre Rieu -esque smugness in the recording.
The inspiration is this: People, especially in the U.S., like to claim (or even deny that the notion exists) that there is no "elite," that the "old world" societies of lords and ladies in grand chambers and gardens, served biscuits and chocolates by uniformed servants, are a thing of the past. However, driving around with Rossini on lends a bit of insight to just about everything I see, showing a hint of putting-on-airs, of a desire for status and acceptance, suggesting that the high societies of old were never really left behind. They used to walk around with badges and medallions; now it's bumper stickers and license plate frames.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: clarinetwife
Date: 2005-02-01 13:39
EEBaum wrote:
However, driving
> around with Rossini on lends a bit of insight to just about
> everything I see, showing a hint of putting-on-airs, of a
> desire for status and acceptance, suggesting that the high
> societies of old were never really left behind. They used to
> walk around with badges and medallions; now it's bumper
> stickers and license plate frames.
>
As someone who picks up the kids at school in a regular old car, I know exactly what you mean, and the idea of listening to Rossini is brilliant. However, sometimes an SUV is just a form of transportation for those who have several kids.
As far as music goes, people have their comfort zone and are generally lazy listeners. I applaud those who challenge that by creating something new. On the other hand, we sometimes listen to the same stuff because it is good and does not wear out its welcome. Even my guitar playing young students and acquaintances gravitate to Clapton, Beatles, the Doors, etc.
Post Edited (2005-02-01 13:48)
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Author: Markus Wenninger
Date: 2005-02-01 15:42
Uhuuh..."comfort zones" really make me aggressive, there´s an urge then to use fuzz boxes, feedback and really altissimo registers...
So we´re still living in Rossini - country? - I see Your point, i´m afraid I have to agree. Considering the ritualized and heavily embedded structuralism in the musical world, the conclusion that nothing´s really shockingly new nowadays and everything has been said and done already has never appealed to me. Neither loose old battleships like Schönberg and Cage their unsettling and infuriating vectors, nor fail all-electronic pieces and solo woodwinds to stab the mediocre harmony-swingers right through the chest. Sorry for the crude metaphor, but I just came home from a enraging seminar, where postmodernism was feuilleton-style remolded to a general logocentrical idea of tradition and structuralism, and a ninecompoop did have the nerve to show that in the evolution of contemorary music.
Such scenes as You describe them, Alex, rather make me think about arranging some "rage against the machine" for sax quartett or the like, and just a few seconds of that dreadful Wiener tremolo make me madhatter home and put on some Xenakis full blast (I can see him saying, with a grin, that if it doesn´t sound like a jetfighter taking off next to you, it´s too soft; he said so to a friend and colleague of mine).
So we still wade through metaphysics...
MArkus
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