 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: theclarinetist
Date: 2003-11-26 01:43
I was just thinking this the other day.... thought it might make for some interesting conversation.
A lot of people dislike modern sounding music, which is fine. Everyone has a personal opinion. I pretty much base my opinion of music on the individual pieces as opposed to making generalizations about genres -- I'm not going to say that there aren't genres that offer more pieces that I typically like. I personally prefer classical and 20th century French music, but I also like some baroque, romantic, and ultra-modern and serial. Anyway, that was completely off subject...
ANYWAY, my teacher was talking the other day about how when he was in college the Poulenc Sonata had just come out and it was "all the rage" and new, and now it's just a standard. I wonder if this will be the case for a lot of pieces? Will there ever be a time when Brahms and Weber sound "antiquated" and Berg, Berio, and Bouliez (uhh! alliteration) will be old standards? Will the Corigliano ever replace the Mozart as the "best clarinet concerto ever written"? I highly doubt that'll actually happen, and please, don't go off on the Mozart Concerto - it was just an example = )
Certain pieces seem to dominate the repertoire, and they are all excellent pieces. However, considering that the new and "abrasive" music of today might be the standards of tomorrow, how much attention should we give them? I realize the importance of understanding the chronological aspects of music (it's hard to understand classical without baroque, and romantic without classical, etc....), so it's not like we should abandon the older pieces, and they are an essential foundation to the more modern works. Where should this delicate balance lie?
Just stuff to think about
DON HITE
theclarinetist@yahoo.com
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Author: ned
Date: 2003-11-26 02:32
"However, considering that the new and "abrasive" music of today might be the standards of tomorrow, how much attention should we give them?"
Give them the attention they rightly deserve.......and that is, what?........ it's personal really, it's what appeals at the time.
I'll confine my comments to jazz as this is the genre I know best.
It took me quite a while to start listening to"modern" jazz [ie] Parker/Gillespie/Monk etc...because I was brought up on "trad" jazz....I then found the New Orleans roots and added swing later, and so on it went to more progressive stuff.
So whilst I like contemporary jazz (mainly the boppers, hey...is this the new "trad" jazz) I draw the line at purely introspective and seemingly unstructured "free" jazz.
I have listened extensively to Coltrane, for example, and mostly I can't figure out what's going on. I put this down to MY musical limitations actually, because SO many people swear by him, I figure it's just that I don't get it (I'm almost ashamed to say)............."My Favourite Things" is sort of pretty though.
The "delicate balance" is purely a subjective one, residing within each individual.
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Author: diz
Date: 2003-11-26 04:00
G'day Don - I adore contemporary music and now consider Boulez, Berg and Berito as "old pot boilers" - many may not, however.
As to people enjoying a certain piece of music seemingly everlastingly, the "great unwashed" spending money by the fist full on routine mainstream music, to the delight, I'm sure, of record company marketing boffins. Hence the (disgusting) preponderance for "the Best of" labels in classical music: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Water Musik ... spare me.
Without music, the world would be grey, very grey.
Post Edited (2003-11-26 21:48)
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Author: JMcAulay
Date: 2003-11-26 04:43
Wow, what a concept for an album of "modern" stuff: "Alois Haba's Greatest Hits!"
That's intended to be an expression that some startling innovations in music, as in any field of the arts and humanities, don't track with all others. "Sacre du Printemps" was vilified initially, with audiences walking out just about en masse. In later times it has become... well, a standard. On the other hand, some weird stuff will gain adherents almost immediately, those fans then all die off, and that's it. The end. Does anyone actually listen to, let alone enjoy, any of Haba's fractional-tone stuff nowadays?
Regards,
John
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Author: Markus Wenninger
Date: 2003-11-26 12:17
Yes, John, there are some, and then some.
As I begin to think by now, to judge works of art by subjective, personal standarts, all this "taste"-matter, it seems to me a genuine American way of approach. There is progression in art - music itself is evolving, and this has nothing to do with our likes and dislikes. Never before there has been not only the possibility but the necessity to bring out the full and total potentials the clarinet for example represents, all possible sounds this extremely fertile and subtly powerful instrument has. This is NOT just the charm of a new fancy which "dies off" after the hype is gone but once quarter-tones and electronics and multiphonics and extreme registers are discovered, they change what it means to play the clarinet completely. And hey, there has been evolution in jazz beyond Coltrane by large. It is a highly questionable task to distinguish amongst pieces of contemporary music the lasting ones from those which wont - and such a judgement will not even contain anything whether it is a work of art or not. It is reassuring that Boulez, Berio, Stockhausen, Carter, Crumb, Penderecki, this whole generation is backing us up, as performers as well as composers we can rely on their oeuvre, with Cage happily romping around. Despite all whimpy retro-movements, there is no need to listen to some well-tempered 19th-century stuff, honestly, if we have access to pieces like "Chute d´Icare" by Ferneyhough or "Domaines" by Boulez. Maybe, when I will be older than now, I will be patient enough to grant saccharine Salzburgian compositions and them bearded Brahms-pieces their right, but for now I neither can stand nor play anything older than let´s say 60 years backwards - those "traditional" pieces, however one may name them, are just so boring and so foreseeable.
I don´t think there´s much of a "delicate balance" - tradition will always be played to its most extent, it is easier to listen to, it doesn´t change much in the audience which in itself knows ahead everything it will be confronted with. If there is any chance at all, it is the modern music which has to have a boost, mostly in respect to economical means. Everything which doesn´t fit into the so-calles "healthy middle", as it is titeled at least in Europe, has to endure more and more of a fight to claim a piece of the cake; the result is often a contemporary piece "embedded" in between some Brahms concerto and some Busoni, or candy-players haveing fed on sure hits from the tradition now take a dab at New Music, because it is so "excitingly modern"...there´s hardly a possibility to do without polemics, really. To cut it short - I am toppeled over to the contemporary side completely; and guess what, I am balanced perfectly.
Markus
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Author: ginny
Date: 2003-11-26 15:38
Markus Wenninger wrote:
>There is progression in art - music itself is evolving, and this has
> nothing to do with our likes and dislikes.
I find the neo-Spenserian view of everything from economics to culture unsubstantiated, personally. Evolution requires the death of an organism before its genetic material is passed on. Analogy arguements are often made for other fields but they are seldom supported as a scientific model of behavior.
That said I continue with the analogy. If anything music is evolving into rock and pop and classical is rapidly joining the endangered species list, precisely due to the general population's likes and dislikes. Pop and rock styles (which are not among my great loves) are breeding, spawning and thriving. They have taken over the niches held by many ethic music styles, to my sorrow. We sort of think of evolution as creating a better organism, but in fact it is one that survives the current environment. Modern music only survives with great prodding in music schools, sort of like breeding California Condors. I don't know that it could even survive in the wilds.
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Author: msloss
Date: 2003-11-26 19:08
Allow me to rant on behalf of composers.
We speak of the war horses as though they were the only works that existed in their time. For every Mozart there were a hundred other composers of his era who vanished into obscurity. To beat the evolution analogy to death -- survival of the fittest. Great works of art resonate through time, which is why we can admire Eroica or the Blue Guitarist as magnificent works of art even though they belong to different eras and different art forms. Of the current crop of so-called modern works, great art will survive and the rest will go away. Le Sacre du Printemp wasn't exactly well received at its debut, but it is a staple work of the symphonic repertoire now.
Now, we have to stop lumping everything contemporary until the same heading of "modern". There are pieces from 100 years ago that stand today right at the edge of tonality, rhythmic construction, and every other characteristic we use to classify music. There is also neo-romantic work written 10 minutes ago that sounds like it could have been composed before Schostakovich was out of diapers.
The great composers are the visionaries who not only use but extend the compositional devices at their disposal to create great works. The greatest push the boundaries and and change how we listen, and even redefine our instruments and performance practices. Consider Beethoven and his impact (pardon the pun) on the piano. What we as listeners find "abrasive" or impossible to play today often becomes integrated into the musical language going forward. The way we react to that first hearing has a lot to do with how we are preprogrammed - The older you are when first being exposed to it, the less accepting you are likely to be of it. Parents can't stand the racket from their kids' stereos, and kids can't stand the "oldies" their parents enjoy.
Anybody remember musique concrete and how far out on the vanguard that concept was? Aren't dance mix beats, the staple of hiphop, trance, etc. exactly that? How about what Louis Armstrong thought of that god-awful noise that came to be known as bebop? Perhaps "classical" is another one of those labels that is too broad and too prone to sweeping generalities (like the one I'm making, ha ha).
Since what we understand as classical has changed radically from the days of plainchant, perhaps we need to take it out of the museum and allow the definition to continue to change dynamically. There is art music performed by string quartet, and art music performed by symphony orchestra, and art music performed by the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, and art music performed by the Beatles. What goes on in the music schools is just one facet of that.
Time to crank up the iPod and listen to some Berlin Phil followed by The Band...
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Author: JMcAulay
Date: 2003-11-26 20:36
To me, the "evolution" analogy doesn't apply to any of the arts worth diddly-squat. And ginny, your statement "Evolution requires the death of an organism before its genetic material is passed on" is false. In biological evolution, reproduction passes on genetic material; no death is required. Of course, if no organisms experienced death, things would become extremely crowded.
All of us seem to be different in our artistic appreciations. However, there are keys to appreciation that are often unrealized until stumbled upon by accident. A researcher, not a professional in the field of art, discovered a few years ago that in almost all famous portraits -- those that have been around for a long time, even centuries -- one eye of the subject is very close to a line vertically bisecting the painting. Almost all have an eye no farther from that line than five percent of the painting's width. A great number of these have an eye precisely on that line. Why? No one has determined that such a technique has ever been taught. Do the artists have some inner awareness that viewers will appreciate this, or do viewers appreciate these for some unknown reason, to such an extent that other portraits not painted in this manner simply have not "lived on" as these have?
On the other hand, sameness is hardly ever exciting. Perhaps the eye position is sort of like the framework of a fugue, offering unlimited variation within some defined or unknown rationality of its own. Wonder what the audience thought and felt the first time a performer added a sixth to a major triad? After all, thinking or feeling differently is the only reason to seek appreciation of any area of the arts and humanities. For example, if one spends time reading a book and does not think or feel differently when the book is finished, that time was wasted. Something new may seem good, or it may seem bad -- but it will seem different, and that bit of difference from the ordinary will be stimulating to the one who perceives it. And how long will that special something remain sufficiently stimulating? Rameau's music has been around for centuries. The Lascombe cave paintings, for millennia. Yet we appreciate both greatly to this day. But if I composed in the style of Rameau, or if I went into a cave and began making marks on the walls representing animals and the like, well... I'd better keep my day job.
Plainsong is neat, but I prefer hearing new organum. MOO. Years ago, I listened to Haba's music a lot, trying to understand it. I tired of it, as it seemed to hold little for me. My tastes are now rather eclectic, but they are narrow compared to those of my wife. She almost equally appreciates Chant, Oratorios, Opera, Symphonic music, Gospel music, and Country music. And although we have heard almost forever that there is no accounting for taste, perhaps there is. But maybe it's in some way that we cannot now understand, rather like eyes in a portrait.
Regards,
John
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Author: Markus Wenninger
Date: 2003-11-27 06:33
Yes, John, there´s some truth in what You´re saying about making a difference. And thank You for the remark on evolution - for my part didn´t use evolution as an analogy or metaphory but in the literal sense, the way system theory and cybernetics use it. It bitters me when I read statements like ginny´s, a bit, I must admit, for it lets contemporary music sound like an academical freakshow.
There´s a long scientific tradition on trying to discover a common root or dimension to all being-different-ness, a strive for monism - and this way I interpret Your statement, John. Personally I´m inclined to stand in that line as well, if it wasn´t for the danger that exactly the painstakingly and with great effort won differentations between the individual works of art ist nivellated in the final outcome, reducing our question of monism versus pluralism to "almost equal appreciation". I agree, this appreciation e.g. of Your wife can be the developed ripeness of coming to grips with auditive experiences - but the danger of relating art just to one´s subjective choices looms just around the same corner. Unlike most on this board, I fear, I see contemporary music badly represented in nowadays concerts; what really makes me "wonder whether America doesn´t have it better" is that musical academies do not at all promote or further New Music here in Europe - for every individual professor or teacher courageous enough to do so (there are some, yes, still) there are literally hordes of static traditionalists, to whom musical evolution ends let´s say around Debussy. Modern times are left to personal quest and choices, and it is not part of any curriculum usually. New Music is everything but "greatly prodded" here, really. Indeed the funds for concerts with New or Avantgarde Music are reduced by the season, and not marginally. To speak for myself and the ensembles I play in, we´re happy when we get the money for travel-expenses and find someone who lets us sleep on their couch; which is not so bad as it may sound, but it´s be nice if Í´d meet someone again saying "This was the most exciting thing I heard for some time." or such.
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