20th century 'classical'music

[TristezaOrange]

Two points:

1. I have noticed that there is a certain "Wall of China" effect with music appreciation, this huge thing that prevents you from appreciating music of all styles unless you've devoted a lot of years of your life listening to it and loving it intently. When I was a kiddie listening to pop/rock stuff, I never thought I'd be able to appreciate Stockhausen or Xenakis or the usual suspects of 20th century music.

However, I loved music (and still do, obviously) and I started getting into the more obscure stuff day by day. I was not satisfied with what I'd been listening, I wanted more excitement. I finally reached a stage where I jumped over that huge Wall and started loving almost anything that made sound. I enjoy the frequencies, the interplay (or lack of interplay) in instruments/voices/sounds, the reverb, anything really. So I think it's not a matter of formal education per se, but of self-accomplished cultivation of the love of both sound and music.

Play me anything nowadays and I'll find something to appreciate in it.


2. Have you noticed that the more rule-based and mechanical music is (twelve-tone, total serialism) the less it sounds like music, especially to casual music listeners?

[ViktorW]

I agree with jancivil to a certain degree, and Murky had a good point as well.

There are different qualities to like about music.
Music is sound.
Music is architecture.
Music is an intention and a meaning.
Music is movement and development.
Music is Groove and Rhythm.
Music can be made to move the body, or to move the mind, or both.
There may be more aspects, but they're all somehow tied together, can be part of each other. Each aspect can be a science on its own.

However you label it, most people aren't into all aspects of music, they care about one particular aspect, maybe two, rarely three, etc.
Neither aspects is universally better than the other, but you shouldn't also be shy in admitting that you don't appreciate certain aspects, that they don't interest you, or that you don't get them.
Don't look to Salsa or Punk for architecture and development in the composition, but also don't look for groove in the score of a 19th century symphony. (Well, you know what I mean - please don't start nitpicking over these examples, thank you.)

As someone pointed out, it's like learning a language. Someone already speaks that language, learn from him if you want, or don't.
We have to know where we're standing when discussing topics like 20th century music.

As important as immediate response to music can be when judging sound and feel of the performance or production, the 'sound' aspect doesn't apply to all music equally. As a composer from the 18th century, how would you determine the sound of your music? By instrumentation of course. But the piece might have been performed and interpreted in 50 different ways in this century. Beethoven didn't write for a modern orchestra, his symphonies were performed by an orchestra of about 35 musicians, not 120. The sound was completely different. The architecture, then, was more important. As a listener today, you might prefer one conductor's work over the other. But what is it then you respond to, the composition? Or the sound? I can't answer for you, of course, but might ask yourself that. Me, I mostly respond to sound when I hear music. It takes a while before I understand the structure and can respond to it.

A less elitist example maybe:
I hate the sound of Mozart's music, but think that, from a compositional point of view, he's worked brilliantly. I've had to study his Operas at university. I admire him, and can't listen to his music at the same time. Sound is a very personal thing, and can't really be discussed. Sound is a matter of taste.

As a classical composer, you had not only to rely on the sound of your orchestra, but also on the architecture, you had to play a little mind-game, as your audience was mostly very much educated in music theory.
The good or popular composers were those who could combine intellectual challenge with interesting sound (melodies, instrumentation). This means it was pleasing for the ear, but would also offer more pleasures when studied as a composition, as a musical architecture.

What I'm trying to say, some 20th century composers might sound "weird". But the sound might not have been the most important aspect for the composer. On the other hand, if it was, the composition might be evaluated by what came before it, what it responds to, what idea it tries to express.
I am in no way saying that whatever is "heady" music is automatically valuable, it should be evaluated with a different vocab in mind.

All that has actually already been said, I think, but a summing up can't hurt, can it?

[vurt]

before i was born, i had been using my ears to learn about the world around me.
from the moment i was born, sounds became associated with images.
even when i sleep, my ears are working, delivering sounds to my brain.
60/60/24/7/365/36.

[aMUSEd]

There is no reason why saying it helps to have a "trained" ear is "elitist" in itself. The fact is we are trained by our experiences as much as by formal systems so all this is really saying (unless you took it just as formal academic learning or something to do with intellect) is our experiences colour and inform our perceptions of stuff. Which is just as much the case for a westerner experiencing say Gamelan for the first time. That doesn't mean one can't appreciate it either - appreciation of music as music is on many levels, many of them non intellectual and emotional, a small child can appreciate Mozart as much as anyone in that sense. The intellectual aspects simply add more dimensions of appreciation and more reference points from which to savour its meaningfulness.

The other thing that needs to be recognised is that to be open to something very new often requires a considerable amount of unlearning. Which also takes a form of training paradoxically.

[whyterabbyt]

There is no reason why saying it helps to have a "trained" ear is "elitist" in itself.

'precondition' != 'it helps to have'

[aMUSEd]

There is no reason why saying it helps to have a "trained" ear is "elitist" in itself.

'precondition' != 'it helps to have'

Well yes of course - I chose my words carefully.

[shamann]

You guys say elitist like it's a bad thing.

I agree with Jan, most works by Stockhausen and Boulez do have a precondition of a musical education. That was their stated intention to a large degree, to be rarefied and exemplary.

To be fair to Stockhausen, some of his works are really lovely things, in a simple sit and listen fashion. Not Boulez though. I don't believe that anyone really likes Boulez, he's like the Queen, admired for status rather than accomplishment.

[jancivil]

2. Have you noticed that the more rule-based and mechanical music is (twelve-tone, total serialism) the less it sounds like music, especially to casual music listeners?

well, it has that danger more than about anything else in music. except maybe music which ignores the basic physicality of music in the opposite way, which starts one into ugly for ugly's sake. play three chords fast and shitty and out of tune because you're angry at music...

the thing which serialism misses is this: it ignores the physical nature of sound, the harmonic series to boil it down, for a mathematic elegance.

OH. And I happen to like Hammer Without a Master by Boulez, I think it's pretty. Not based on any thing he's written about this or that procedure, I just like the sound of it. All tinkly and silvery, and nice.

[jancivil]

The other thing that needs to be recognised is that to be open to something very new often requires a considerable amount of unlearning. Which also takes a form of training paradoxically.

Yes.

[vurt]

2. Have you noticed that the more rule-based and mechanical music is (twelve-tone, total serialism) the less it sounds like music, especially to casual music listeners?

the thing which serialism misses is this: it ignores the physical nature of sound, the harmonic series to boil it down, for a mathematic elegance.

i think i would agree in part with this idea.
if were honest, serialism is quite simple to reproduce, a set of rules,followed to the letter, it pretty much is painting by numbers.
but the movements/pieces we remember are those where the composer has remembered what they are actually doing, making music, not just going through excercises.

i guess what im saying is a lot of people "think" too much instead of just doing. sort of.
there has to be a balance and something of the emotion of the composer within the music for me to feel.
otherwise i may as well just listen to some scales? no?

[jancivil]

it is painting by numbers. and in the academy, the numbers are the thing, you have to make a case for, 'I did the numbers exactly right', and the sound goes by the board, in too many cases.

Anton Webern, beautiful music, he found the formula, but the rarest of geniuses there. Berg made some gorgeous things, breaking the law in some places as far as the series, in the sense I mention above. There is some Arnold S, I cannot stand, makes me near to physically ill. Boulez in some cases, went for the sound, a physically sounding object. Sometimes not so much.

It's probably harder to do and get something anybody wants to hear really than about anything, because it isn't necessarily interested in the way it sounds in the first case. (I was thinking of something Messiaen said, after we brought up birdsong. The academics which were interested in series uber alles liked to say that Messiaen was serializing rhythm when he worked with the bird rhythms, but I doubt that was his thrust.)

Serializing 12 tones, to 'democratize' and eschew a tonal center is a logical extension of dividing the octave into 12 equal steps to get equal values when you modulate.

There are many who won't get this, but to me, a lot of regular piano, sounds not so much in tune. While arranging, as I am restricted to it obviously in many cases, I am always up against things which just aren't right. Wind players and string player (non-fretted) naturally adjust their intonations in harmonies, because 12T et just isn't really sounding true. (With samples, I have to go for the pitch bend wheel a lot, and scripts where the tuning is stretched and the like.). 12 tones, equal, is a very western type of thought, in terms of philosophy. Persian musicians for just one example find the idea loathsome.

[vurt]

It's probably harder to do and get something anybody wants to hear

that was kind of my point, its not difficult to do it right, but to do it so it is also a piece of music people will listen to for any emotional purpose is something else entirely.
its the being able to add something of ones self to a piece, the thing that makes you recognise one composer over another just by hearing a piece.

[jancivil]

i guess what im saying is a lot of people "think" too much instead of just doing. sort of.
there has to be a balance and something of the emotion of the composer within the music for me to feel.
otherwise i may as well just listen to some scales? no?

There are people who like to listen to a thing for the architecture, and get satisfaction from formal balances and such. It's the same as with an appreciation of JS Bach. One is likely to get a little more out of it if s/he recognizes certain felicities in the inner workings of the counterpoint. 12 tone in the original schools is a contrapuntal music. So, there's that.

How dry, emotionally, maybe is kind of relative or subjective to the person listening? There are people who would say that Boulez second piano sonata is dry as dust, when to me it's rather violent, a restrained sort of psychotic is on the verge of losing it, but always finds a limiting factor in his reason.

I've been in an argument recently where it was put forth that planning is per se superior in a consideration of the 'form' of the thing, which I felt was pointed at me, with my 'formlessness' factor; which to me is quite wrong. Where some people here would say I'm the classical anal person in the room, because I *can* do that. Everything is relative where there is an audience I think.

I can't plan a piece, even when there are things which I want to do, the idea rules, and I have to get out the way of it. Today and yesterday I had the idea to take this deeply dark electronic thing into Penderecki string glissandoes of terror (out of a pitch bend I did on the screeching top end), and I got out a cello patch to build a section on... and now it's something very late romantic, quietly tragic tearjerker stuff. The sound rules, idea comes from sound, sound is form, to me.

[jancivil]

It's probably harder to do and get something anybody wants to hear

that was kind of my point, its not difficult to do it right, but to do it so it is also a piece of music people will listen to for any emotional purpose is something else entirely.
its the being able to add something of ones self to a piece, the thing that makes you recognise one composer over another just by hearing a piece.

yeah, totally.

but to me, getting that personality in there and conveying, is doing it right. when I was a kid the short time I was in a music school, we had to do this serial thing for the one class I did take. I, naively perhaps, felt that this was a danger, everybody's thing would sound the same, just a wash. I never liked the idea of being graded on a work, so I dropped it.

[keyman_sam]

There is a fine line between music appreciation and music enjoyment, imo.

To appreciate music, all you need is a pair of open ears, understanding of whats going on, some theory, cultural and historic context, and simply to say "ahh...I see!!"

To enjoy music, it varies from person to person. Some people DIG ear candy(nice popish drums, guitars, the usual pre-teen stuff) and many artists make tons of money based on that fact.

Some people make intelligent ear candy. This is the stuff you can appreciate AND enjoy. Most classical music i listen to fit this category.

Glass is minimalist music. You can appreciate it, but I wonder if many people actually enjoy listening to it.

I remember when I was a kid, i would go up to the terrace at 6 am in the morning and just listen to the birds and the distant adhan from the nearby mosques (call for prayer for muslims). It had a magical, captivating sound to it that I wish I can relive some day. It was accompanied by the sound of the city waking up at around 7am - paper delivery bicycles, cows, whipping of clothes, people taking baths in nearby slums, people shouting at a distant, etc., It really had a magical quality to it!