 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: ruben
Date: 2020-07-02 12:44
What I mean -right or wrong- by the avant garde is esentially what was called the Darmstadt Scool: Boulez, Bruno Maderna, Luigi Nono, Stockhausen. Other composers were associated with this school (not "school" in the institutional sense of the word): Ligeti, Berio, etc. Maybe we are wrong to lump all of these composers together, who were actually very different. They composed a lot for the clarinet, but these days, I seldom see them programmed and are much less often on the core syllabus of music schools. Why is this and do you still play these composers or have you played them?
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: brycon
Date: 2020-07-02 18:29
It might be two different questions: 1. What happened to high-modernism as a style of composition and artistic movement? 2. Why aren't more high-modernism pieces programmed?
Whatever answer you give to the first question no doubt plays into the second. And because most composition programs (in the U.S. at least) have turned their focus elsewhere, there are fewer young composers churning out total-serialized pieces in the style of early Boulez.
I will push back, though, and say that Boulez's chamber works and clarinet works are part of the standard repertoire and are pretty frequently (for high-modernist music, at least) performed. And the same goes for Carter and Berio, among others. Moreover, Ligeti's wind quintet bagatelles is one of the most popular pieces in that repertoire.
I think with orchestras, younger audiences have been pushing (rightfully, I think) for more programming of living composers, especially composers whose voices have historically been excluded from the orchestra world. But it seems as though most orchestras in the states will program only a single token modern piece--usually a substitute for an overture--on a concert. These forces combined with the immense difficulty of, say, a Boulez orchestral piece have pushed this music out of orchestra concerts in favor of newer pieces (or just John Adams).
This all, however, could be entirely wrong. I have no data on who gets performed most often and in what settings.
I myself frequently play modernist music--Carter, Boulez, Denisov, Donatoni, Wourinen, Babbitt, etc. I find this music very beautiful in its own way--the Bachian counterpoint in Babbitt, for instance, or the theatricality in Carter--and very rewarding to study and to perform.
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Author: davyd
Date: 2020-07-02 20:38
"Avant garde" = New, experimental, unusual, radical, unorthodox.
At what point does an "avant garde" work become a "mainstream" work? To what extent can 'Le Sacre', first performed (as I write this) over 107 years ago, still be considered "modern" or "contemporary"?
Here in Communityville, simply the cost of renting "new" or "newer" music can be a prohibitive deal-breaker. The roughly US$500 for Stravinsky's Two Suites For Orchestra was a lot of money for the ensemble I play in.
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Author: ruben
Date: 2020-07-03 01:07
Brycon: if I remember right, Ligeti disowned his "Bagatelles". Maybe he considered the work as a tuneful concession to the Stalinist Hungarian regime of the age. I would say the flavour of the day for contemporary music is minimalist music and a sort of neo-romantic fare.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2020-07-03 01:48
Last year, before the Covid-19 virus, just about every live clarinet performance I heard, featured selections from composers like David Maslanka, Michele Mangani, Oscar Navarro, Paquito D'Rivera, and the Bela Kovacs Hommages book--music with quite recognizable melodies and formal structures. Representation from the high-modernists (whose works are usually more demanding for both performer and audience) was scant. So what happened to them? I guess you could say they were, for the moment, displaced by more traditional and easily assimilated composers.
Post Edited (2020-07-03 16:17)
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Author: brycon
Date: 2020-07-03 05:45
Quote:
"Avant garde" = New, experimental, unusual, radical, unorthodox.
At what point does an "avant garde" work become a "mainstream" work? To what extent can 'Le Sacre', first performed (as I write this) over 107 years ago, still be considered "modern" or "contemporary"?
Very true. Ezra Pound's famous slogan "Make it New" points to the main issue with Modernism: its primary artistic impulse results in constant self destruction. But as a period of art and attitudes about art, we can bracket off Modernism from roughly the end of the 19th to the middle of the 20th century (and call what comes next Postmodernism).
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Brycon: if I remember right, Ligeti disowned his "Bagatelles". Maybe he considered the work as a tuneful concession to the Stalinist Hungarian regime of the age. I would say the flavour of the day for contemporary music is minimalist music and a sort of neo-romantic fare.
Well the bagatelles come from his Musica Ricercata. I wasn't aware of Ligeti disowning one or both the pieces. But admittedly, I know very little about him. Aside from the wind quintet, however, I remember Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre being the hottest ticket in NYC a few years ago. All my school friends and I scoured the NY Phil's website for a cheap ticket, but there weren't any seats at any price. So in New York, at least, there's an audience for modernist music.
If you haven't already read it, the recent translation of Pierre Boulez's lectures from the College de France, many of which address Modernism and modernist composition, might be something you'd be interested in.
Backing up a bit, in his insightful essay on Schoenberg, Theodor Adorno makes the point that the 12-tone method consumes the non-pitch parameters of music, leaving them largely impotent. Rhythm, for instance, is used simply to set off presentations of the row; Adorno uses the opening of Schoenberg's 4th quartet as an example.
And if all the musical parameters are going to serve the method, the next logical step becomes, as Boulez argues in one of the College de France lectures, submitting them to their own serial methods, i.e. total serialization. But for Boulez, total serialization wasn't just another step but rather an endpoint, or, as he said about his Structures, an "experiment that was absolutely necessary."
In a sense, modernist music had nowhere else to go once it reached the frontier of total serialization. Boulez, of course, later inserted the composer and the sonorous event (that is, music composed by the ear rather than by any strict method) back into music with his incredible Le Marteau sans maitre.
So maybe high modernist music isn't around as much because it doesn't have anything left to say beyond what Boulez, Babbitt, and a few others said. All that was left was for music's parameters to splinter off into their own isms--rhythm in minimalism, timbre in spectralism, harmony in neo-Romanticism--or for hack composers, such as Michele Mangani, to serve up kitsch for Clarinetfests.
Post Edited (2020-07-03 07:25)
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Author: ruben
Date: 2020-07-03 09:46
What I feel doomed the avant-garde, just to be the devil's advocate:
1. Its ideological tabula rasa position: making a clean break with music of the past.
2. Its lack of accessibility: try singing Boulez or Luigi Nono in the shower! I'm not just being frivolous-though, admittedly, I am a bit. The Rite of Spring, on the other hand, is one of the most tuneful works you could imagine. Modernist music is deemed too cerebral; lacking in any emotion and feeling in music came to be regarded as a maudlin value of the past by avant-gardists of the 60s and 70s.
3. The fact that members of the avant-garde began to wield a lot of power and received a lot of funding: the revolutionaries became the new potentates and orthodoxy,as so often happens. Things come full circle. I am French and for a long time, it was hard to take a decision regarding the musical life here in France without getting Pierre Boulez's approval.
4. It being horrendously difficult to play and the fact we played it basically because we had to "take our medicine", more than as a form of musical enjoyment.
I'm probably one of the first people that was exposed to the Darmstadt school plus Cage, etc as of childhood, because my first teacher was Phil Rehfeldt and then I studied with Cornetti in Italy who was one of the developers of multiphonics. It is not because I was exposed to this meta-music that I developed a taste for it. So much for the argument that one's reaction to it is simply a question of what you are exposed to.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
Post Edited (2020-07-03 10:05)
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Author: ruben
Date: 2020-07-03 09:48
brycon: I was hoping to get you into the discussion! I thought there was a good chance the topic would interest you more than plastic reeds and ligatures.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: brycon
Date: 2020-07-03 22:59
Quote:
What I feel doomed the avant-garde, just to be the devil's advocate:
1. Its ideological tabula rasa position: making a clean break with music of the past.
If by "avant garde" you mean Boulez and his disciples, you may very well be right. But I'm speaking more broadly about Modernist music. And Schoenberg and Stravinsky were very much avant garde composers of the early Modernist period who were steeped in the past. Schoenberg, of course, drew a line from himself back through Brahms to Bach. And aside from Stravinsky's obvious borrowings in his Neoclassical period, The Rite uses two of the main elements of Russian opera--that is, equal division of the octave into minor thirds and descending "Russian" tetrachords--that date back to at least Glinka (see Taruskin's essays on Russian music).
In Boulez's early writings, he thinks that Schoenberg couldn't fully let go of the past, especially with regard to form and rhythm (as a fun experiment, take a Schoenberg 12-tone piece, recompose the pitches so that the music becomes tonal, and the result sounds oddly similar to Mozart). Boulez saw Webern as the great prophet of the second Viennese school. But Webern too was steeped in the past, writing his dissertation on Heinrich Isaac, orchestrating Bach ricercars, using older forms, etc. And even Boulez, despite his efforts to destroy the past, still draws on it. His lush orchestrations, for instance, recall those of Messaien and Debussy.
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2. Its lack of accessibility: try singing Boulez or Luigi Nono in the shower! I'm not just being frivolous-though, admittedly, I am a bit. The Rite of Spring, on the other hand, is one of the most tuneful works you could imagine. Modernist music is deemed too cerebral; lacking in any emotion and feeling in music came to be regarded as a maudlin value of the past by avant-gardists of the 60s and 70s.
Perhaps, but try singing a "tune" from the Symphony in Three Movements! I think you're right, but I think it's more nuanced. The "issue" with 12-tone music or total-serialized music is that it gives up the ability to differentiate. What I mean is that in a Haydn sonata, for instance, a raised scale-degree 4 signals a transition into the secondary key area; the tiny move from, say, an F to an F# triggers a formal division. Because 12-tone music lacks the intervalic pull of tonality, however, it cannot make this differentiation between formal divisions. That is, 12-tone music is so over-saturated with variation and difference (all tones and intervals being equal) that the repetition and patterning necessary to make changes of expression, character, form, and so on aren't really available to it (at least not on a level that's within most people's perceptive abilities). For some listeners, then, the music becomes a wash of atonality.
As far as Modernist music being too cerebral, I find that a lazy argument. As though Bach is any less cerebral than Webern. Or as though Schoenberg's Erwartung, Berg's Wozzeck, or Messaien's quartet don't reach profound expressive depths.
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3. The fact that members of the avant-garde began to wield a lot of power and received a lot of funding: the revolutionaries became the new potentates and orthodoxy,as so often happens. Things come full circle. I am French and for a long time, it was hard to take a decision regarding the musical life here in France without getting Pierre Boulez's approval
Yes. And one of the funny things about the situation is that as the early-Modernist period moved toward completely autonomous artworks (framed earlier as "art pour l'art"), the works themselves became so highly technical that only a few experts and fellow artists could make sense of them. It was left to governments, universities, and other forms of patronage to commission Modernist artists as a sign of cultural prestige. And therefore, things circled back around to where they were several centuries prior.
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Author: fbjacobo
Date: 2020-07-03 23:59
And now for the contrarian view:
I think what happened was that audiences and musicians got tired of playing music that was either ugly, overly complicated, or able to be appreciated by only those cogniscenti (sp?) who specialize in it. Basically, most people want a tune, not a tone row. As a musician, I want an audience of more than 5 people, and was not getting that with serial, abstract expressionist or other non-tonal music.
So audiences flocked to (amongst others) 'minimalist' composers, and a whole new generation of composers who want art music to be heard are writing music with noticeable tonality.
I make no judgement about the artistic value of atonal/serial music. If you like it, GREAT. I personally don't, which is why I don't play very much of it; and I think there are many more people who agree with me. There clearly is a market for new music. Just not atonal new music.
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Author: ruben
Date: 2020-07-04 00:04
brycon: In this post, I am referring more to what is called the Darmstadt school-a post WWII movement, than Vienna or Stravinsky. Once again, I feel we are wrong to lump together composers as different as Bruno Maderna, Boulez and Ligeti. Though it is true that composers of the past such as Zelenka and the Bach of the "Art of the Fugue" were extremely cerebral and even mathematical, it is the mathematics of the soul: there is always strong emotion in even their most abstract works, which you don't get in Boulez and Luigi Nono and which they didn't BELIEVE in. I personally would like to champion very independent composers like the French composer Maurice Ohana, some pieces by Hans Werner Henze, etc. (every country had/has one). composers more interested in expression than ideology (though it is true that Henze was an orthodox communist and Messiaen a devout Catholic). ps: what kind of ligature do you use? ha, ha!
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: ruben
Date: 2020-07-04 00:43
Fbj: while I basically agree with you, I feel that by turning to minimalist music we are jumping from the pan to the fire: going from one extreme to the other.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: brycon
Date: 2020-07-04 02:42
Quote:
brycon: In this post, I am referring more to what is called the Darmstadt school-a post WWII movement, than Vienna or Stravinsky. Once again, I feel we are wrong to lump together composers as different as Bruno Maderna, Boulez and Ligeti. Though it is true that composers of the past such as Zelenka and the Bach of the "Art of the Fugue" were extremely cerebral and even mathematical, it is the mathematics of the soul: there is always strong emotion in even their most abstract works, which you don't get in Boulez and Luigi Nono and which they didn't BELIEVE in. I personally would like to champion very independent composers like the French composer Maurice Ohana, some pieces by Hans Werner Henze, etc. (every country had/has one). composers more interested in expression than ideology (though it is true that Henze was an orthodox communist and Messiaen a devout Catholic). ps: what kind of ligature do you use? ha, ha!
Ah, gotcha. When you wrote about "avant garde," I interpreted it as all thorny high modernism.
I do think Boulez softened some in his older age. And keeping in mind that "everyone likes what he/she likes," I myself find Boulez's music very beautiful. I performed his Rituel (in memoriam of Bruno Maderna) several years ago in a memorial concert for Boulez. I think most the musicians and audience members rather liked it. And his solo piece Dialogue de l'ombre double is highly effective in concerts.
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I think what happened was that audiences and musicians got tired of playing music that was either ugly, overly complicated, or able to be appreciated by only those cogniscenti (sp?) who specialize in it.
When I hear this argument, I often wonder why, then, modern art is so popular. Less of a time commitment?
Moreover, Wozzeck (or, if you want a newer example, George Benjamin's Written on Skin) sells out opera houses. The music is purposefully dense to fit the subject, incredibly complicated, and probably isn't understood by very many people. What makes them popular? The spectacle?
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Basically, most people want a tune, not a tone row.
Maybe, but there aren't many tunes in minimalist music, which you use as an example of "good" modern music, either.
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Author: liam_hockley
Date: 2020-07-04 03:33
brycon wrote:
> I do think Boulez softened some in his older age.
Agreed. In addition, it's also extremely facile and reductive to categorize the output of these so-called Darmstadt composers as being only a 'soul-less' integral serialism, as some on this thread are doing. The Luigi Nono of "Il Canto Sospeso" (hardly a soul-less work in its subject matter!!) is very different in technique and affect from the Nono of "Prometeo".
Similarly (and more to the point of integral serialism having "nothing left to say" after a certain point), you can look at the highly varied output of Stockhausen across works like Stimmung, Mantra, Sirius, the Licht cycle, and certain pieces from the Klang cycle and observe ways in which compositional techniques typically associated with 12-tone or serial composition—but also found in certain works of Bach—were re-purposed to explore different (non-serialized) musical materials. (There are also plenty of singable tunes in Sirius and Licht, if this is any metric to go by.)
reuben wrote:
> composers more interested in expression than ideology
Musical kitsch aside, expression and ideology are more often than not two sides of the same coin—regardless of the musical aesthetic.
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Author: ruben
Date: 2020-07-04 09:50
It is true Boulez "softened up" with age. His late- stage works are actually very ornate and colourful. He also conducted music he had condemned when he was an arrogant young man.
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: Jarmo Hyvakko
Date: 2020-07-04 10:42
Avant-garde is a broad term in art. If you had asked a dadaist in the early 20's is his art dadaistic, he would propably have answered "no"!
Jarmo Hyvakko, Principal Clarinet, Tampere Philharmonic, Finland
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Author: ruben
Date: 2020-07-04 13:49
Jarmo: it is true that 'avant-garde' is a broad term. That's why I insisted on the term: "the Darmstadt school"; to narrow down the topic and debate. "Dadaiste" is perhaps not a very good example, because these people adhered to a movement with its explicit manifesto. On the other hand, Debussy was not at all happy about being called "an impressionist". Composers deserving more recognition and promotion: the Finns!
rubengreenbergparisfrance@gmail.com
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Author: ruben
Date: 2020-07-04 14:03
I would like to add to my list of interesting, inspiring maverick composers: Bernd Alois Zimmermann. -a composer of great vision and inspiration.
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Author: brycon
Date: 2020-07-04 19:43
Quote:
Similarly (and more to the point of integral serialism having "nothing left to say" after a certain point), you can look at the highly varied output of Stockhausen across works like Stimmung, Mantra, Sirius, the Licht cycle, and certain pieces from the Klang cycle and observe ways in which compositional techniques typically associated with 12-tone or serial composition—but also found in certain works of Bach—were re-purposed to explore different (non-serialized) musical materials. (There are also plenty of singable tunes in Sirius and Licht, if this is any metric to go by.)
Thanks for the recs! When the Met Museum put on Klang several years ago, I had a number of friends and classmates performing and went to as many of the concerts as I could. To make sense of it, I would need many re-listenings. I remember, in the moment, simply being struck by the grandness and also the weirdness of it all.
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Musical kitsch aside, expression and ideology are more often than not two sides of the same coin—regardless of the musical aesthetic.
Excellent point. Certainly any self-professed absence of ideology is itself an ideological position.
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