Modern classical music is primarily a project of the classical music industry’s managerial elites which has no basis in consumer demand. Despite decades of evidence that audiences do not like this music, the managerial elites continue to push this agenda. When challenged, their response is to blame the classical music audience for not liking the music.
Much of my thinking about the arts has been informed by Mises faculty Paul Cantor’s ten-part lecture series on Commerce and Culture. The main theme of his lectures is that high culture has its roots in popular culture and that popular culture has always been a commercial product. While there are some instances of great art that have not been commercially successful, there is no systemic conflict between great art and commercial success. By this standard, the modernist classical agenda is a failure because it has failed the market test.
Two articles illustrating the “the consumer is wrong” crossed my web browsing path this week – Why do we hate modern classical music? by Alex Ross writing in the Guardian, and a response, Why does contemporary music spurn melody? by Michael Fedo in the Christian Science Monitor.
Fedo provides evidence of the lack of popular acceptance of the modernist agenda. New commissions hardly ever “get legs” and receive a second performance because…well…no one wants to hear them again. Actually, no one wanted to hear them the first time either.
[his father, a French horn player in the Duluth symphony] said that during his tenure Duluth conductors scheduled at least one modern unconventional score each season. “During all those years, the orchestra repeated Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky – most of the classical canon – many times,” he said. “But we never again replayed a modern composition.”
While I say that “no one” likes this stuff, that is clearly wrong. As evidenced from Ross’s piece, hardly anyone likes this stuff. A typical concert program provides the following clues to the real demand for modernist music: 1) a gnarly modernist work is always programmed with Beethoven or some other popular work (disparagingly know as a “warhorse” or a “chestnut”) and 2) the popular work is always programmed after the intermission because, well, it would be very embarrassing if everyone left after the intermission and most people will not deliberately arrive late. (I am the exception to this, timing my arrival for the second half of these programs if it is something that I want to see.)
Fedo relates the following story illustrating the “blame the listener” reflex that is so common among the managerial class:
In 1986, when he became music director of the Minnesota Orchestra, Edo de Waart was an advocate of contemporary composers. On a radio talk show, a caller asked him, “Why do we have to listen to music that sounds like bus crashes?” To which the maestro replied, “Sir, you’re living in the wrong century.” In other words, get used to the dissonance.
Ross — a tireless advocate of the audience-blaming agenda — admits that “modern classical music remains an unattractive proposition for many concertgoers” and in the next paragraph refers to it as a “problem” (Ross later uses the word “unappreciative” to describe concert-goers who do not like the new music). Mr. Ross, why is it a “problem” if people don’t like something? This happens all the time in markets – consumers do not like something; a product is not commercially successful. This is, from the point of view of the producer of the product a problem if he takes a loss, but it is not a systemic problem for the industry as such. It is a market signal indicating that the classical music industry is producing poor quality music.
Ross — taking the agenda of the managerial elites as a given and the preferences of listeners as changeable — argues that classical music is an acquired taste and that it is the audiences who should, well, just go about acquiring it, as distasteful as that might be.
Ross analyzes number of theories, such as the rejection of novelty, the idolization of the past, and poor marketing that seek to explain why listeners do not like modernist classical music. This effort only serves to illustrate his view of the fixity of modernism, to which audience tastes must eventually yield. The only question that remains is whether it is the classical elites who should try harder to foist this music on us, or whether we as listeners must try harder to digest this distasteful menu.
But why should it be so? Why not some public apologies on the part of the classical music elites for their poor judgment in funding composers? Why does the classical-managerial class after a century of its failed agenda not admit that they were wrong and start trying to fund music that people might like? In what other industry would entrepreneurs continue to pour funding into a failed business model?
That compositional talent still exists is proven by the film industry, which produces several great classical-sounding scores every decade. Yet Ross, predictably, draws exactly the wrong conclusion from this data:
Indeed, it’s striking that film-makers have made lavish use of the same dissonances that concertgoers have found so alienating. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, with its hallucinatory György Ligeti soundtrack, mesmerised millions in the late 1960s. Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, which deploys music by Cage, Morton Feldman, Giacinto Scelsi, and Ligeti again, was a recent box-office hit. Michael Giacchino’s score for the TV series Lost is an encyclopedia of avant garde techniques. If the human ear were instinctively hostile to dissonance, these and 1,000 other Hollywood productions would have failed.
When I think of the score of 2001, I think of the music of the younger and the older Strauss, not of dissonances. Setting that aside, I would point out that movie-goers also like action movies with car crashes that sound like car crashes. Would Ross take that as evidence that the human ear is not hostile to dissonance? Maybe people like these films in spite of the score, or maybe we have different tastes for musical scores that act as a sort of enhanced sound effect track but are not perceived as music.
The classical-sounding film scores that have taken off commercially in their own right, such as John Williams’ brilliant Star Wars efforts and Howard Shore’s Lord of the Rings all have recognizable melodies that any movie-goer could hum after a single hearing.
The human race has not lost the ability to write good — and popular — music. It is only that the managerial elite who run symphonies and granting agencies controlling the funding of composition have placed themselves in opposition to the tastes of classical music, and justify this by blaming the audience for their tastes.
Ross and the classical-managerial elites should question their assumption that modernism is a permanent feature of musical composition that may or may not be accepted by audiences one day. But there is nothing so permanent about modernism. The classical-managerial elites have put the modernist program on welfare to shield it from a market test. A big part of the welfare program has been the constant drum-beat of propaganda suggesting that audience should like this music, and that the problem — if they do not — is with the listener, not the music.
Even after a century, the public does not accept the a-melodic, dissonant, car-crash, sound-effect-driven compositional output of the modernist school as music. It is ultimately audience acceptance that drives composition, not the other way around. While we have been on a bit of a detour for the last 100 years, that should be long enough to declare the modernist agenda a failure and move on to something that people do like.
The classical music audience wants melody. What needs to change is not public tastes, but musical composition. It’s time to give the nascent John Williams and Howard Shores of the world the the new commissions instead of pouring more money and symphony programming space a dark hole in the ground. C’mon Alex Ross, give melody a chance.
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Another reason modern movie scores are popular even though dissonant is the context. We have a story here in which the music lives and breaths. Symphony halls are already very abstract – bloodless in most cases. Super abstract music in an abstract venue gives the listener nothing to hang onto, nothing that permits the music to have real meaning in a flesh and blood way.
This problem isn’t a new one. Many classical pieces from long-dead composers were played to an opera setting. A classical symphony is just the soundtrack to an existing story. When the emotions were tied to the music, people better understood it. As time went on, people became aware of the meaning of the piece through prior listeners, stretching back to the original viewer of the opera.
So many of the classic symphonies aren’t really that abstract or bloodless. Context was provided, it’s just that most of the listeners have become unaware of the origin of the intended emotion and how it was basically told to the first audiences that listened to it. Isolate a person in a room who never heard the classical piece before, even if it is popular, and they likely will not know what to feel, or to feel at all.
Music without some other input is just noise. Movies are the modern day operas and long in the future, the scores may be played on and the emotions understood without even being aware it came from a film, just because a long line of people were made aware of what they were supposed to feel.
Modern symphonies don’t comprehend that link and the composers are unskilled because of that complete misunderstanding of what music is. Instrumentals cannot stand on their own. They require lyrics or visuals to get the point across. Otherwise, it’s just karaoke night without anyone standing in front of the mic.
Symphonies cannot be said to nothing more than the soundtrack to an existing story. Symphonies from the classical period (i.e., those of Haydn, Mozart, and contemporaries) were often completely abstract creations based on the rules of harmony and voice leading. They were written they way they were simply because tonal music theory allows the result reached. Haydn’s sturm und drang period is a departure from this; the “storms” and pastoral scenes were musical depictions of real-world phenomena. Beethoven’s symphonies were more programmatic. The third, “Eroica,” is loosely based on a battle program. However, the first, second, and fourth lack programs. The fifth, for Beethoven, was an abstraction, but his publisher understood it as a depiction of Fate, although no particular story was put forth to go with it. The sixth, “Pastoral,” is a musical depictions of nature scenes in the sturm und drang vein. But enough about Beethoven.
I cannot agree that “instrumentals cannot stand on their own.” Nearly the entire corpus of Western string quartets stands in clear opposition to that claim. Mozart’s piano sonatas are pure music in the sense that no program, no story, is implied. The sonatas are more like mathematical proofs than anything else outside of music. To say that “music without some other input is just noise” is sell short the keyboard literature of Mozart, Scarlatti, Clementi, Haydn, Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin, and so many other composers who produced beautiful music for the sake of the music and for the pleasure of those who would hear it.
The difference in modern music is that it is often based on a system other than Western tonality (which, by the way, shows up in less developed forms in aboriginal music systems across the globe) that was invented and theoretically works. Unfortunately, it sounds like bus crashes. As a result, it needs the bus crashes in order to be complete. But Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony (which he didn’t name) would be meaningful if the solar system extended only to Mars.
Some of the public’s appreciation of storyless classical symphonies at the time had to do with broad understanding of how the pieces were constructed from the perspective of large-scale form. People understood how broad patterns such as sonata-allegro form and so forth played out over time and could draw on this knowledge to follow the music as it progressed.
Most people today have no idea how classical forms work. But to suggest that learning about form might enhance their appreciation of classical music would make me an “elitist,” right? Or does that label apply only to people who suggest education can improve one’s appreciation of modern music?
I disagree that music without input is noise. We understand the emotions meant to be evoked by a piece of music without context very well. You can put someone in a room and play them a sad song and they will understand that it’s supposed to be sad without having it explained. We understand because we hear in music the same tonalities that we use to convey emotion in regular speech. You can tell if someone over the phone is sad, and that skill is the same you use to recognize whether a piece of music is sad. One of the problems with a lot of modern classical is that it spurns those tonalities, or just misuses them. For example, the harsh dissonant tonalities are really good for evoking tension and ominousness: just think of the screeching music in the shower scene from Psycho. This music can, thus, work well in movies when used in the right place. For example, Ligeti is used in 2001 when the monolith appears to evoke the idea of something ominous, terrifying and otherworldly; other works by Ligeti are similarly used in Eyes Wide Shut & Shutter Island as well to evoke foreboding and tension. But playing a whole long song of such dissonance (like say Pendereck’s Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima) in a concert hall is a bit too much for most listeners. But even Ligeti is more easy to listen to than, say, Schoenberg’s Serialist work, which are completely devoid of emotional cues. Serialism is sort of like the static that modems use to communicate over the phone line: I know it’s comprised of sophisticated patterns, but it just sounds like noise.
One of the largest problems is that many modern composers don’t write for audiences. They write for their peers — other composers and academics. There’s nothing wrong with this, per se, but it can’t be done without commandeering the massive resources of concert halls, orchestras, and audiences. (Or at least can’t be done traditionally — more on that in paragraph 3.) Whereas most academics who talk to each other rather than to the public have journals (or something comparable) in which to publish their work, orchestral composers can’t even fully see their work to completion without large-scale use of others’ time and money.
The scale-of-resources issue is the biggie here. If you look at the field of modern electronic and electroacoustic music, which is even more avant-garde than modern symphonic music, you find 1) that venues are much smaller and often sponsored by academic institutions, 2) the audience, although small, actually wants to hear the music, and 3) the performers are using $1500 MacBooks to create the music instead of hugely expensive orchestras.
It will be interesting to see what happens in the near future. We have the computing power now to mock-up almost perfect orchestra performances in software, but schools that teach the type of composing that concert audiences hate don’t teach their students how to use this software and look askance at anyone who uses it extensively. I think the younger generation of composers (of which I am a part) tends to be much more open to this technology than the current establishment is. As long as orchestras are willing to prop up composers by playing their music for people who don’t want to hear it, though, it seems likely that we won’t move forward to explore the alternatives.
The psychologist Eric Berne called his theory Transactional Analysis and wrote the book “Games People Play”. He wrote that every action is rational from the viewpoint of the actor. There is a payoff, however hidden and unusual that exceeds any more obvious costs. Someone may even see a benefit where others see a cost.
The game of “modern music” has a payoff in self-congratulation and self-esteem. People contribute to modern composers. Even better, they convince others to contribute for the good of “art”. The compositions don’t please general audiences, which is a feature, not a failure.
The composers and contributors congratulate themselves for having a higher and more refined taste than the masses. They presume that they understand more than the common man.
If they composed music which was appreciated by general audiences, then they would be working for the common man, and making a profit. Their unappreciated music proves that they are working for themselves, for “art”, independent of the common man, and not for profit.
Motto: My better and more refined brain allows me to appreciate things that your more common brain cannot. Someday, you may learn to appreciate some of this, if you try really hard.
EasyOpinions.blogspot.com
I recommend Avner Dorman (Concerto in A) before you bury modern classical music.
How coincidental that this article appears right after I have fallen in love with Hans Zimmer.
I mean, how can you not feel a rush when listening to these intense songs?
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW4PbQSthdU&feature=related
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imamcajBEJs
No other composer creates music like this. This is the heavy metal of contemporary classical music. Simply mind blowing.
Tyrone –
I really like Zimmer. I place him right below Williams and Shore among my fave film composers. He is absolutely chamelon-like in his ability to produce the exact right musical style for any given film. Did you know that he did the score of Madagascar 2 and or Pirates of the Caribbean 3? While I hated the PoC3 as a film, his score was amazing. But this just proves my point – the commercial sector is producing music that people like while the oligarchic/centrally planned classical orgs are not.
-Robert
I’ve always liked Clint Mansell personally.
Lux Aeterna (Requiem for a Dream) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKLpJtvzlEI
Dead Reckoning (Smokin’Aces) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa33P9A5iHs
Death is the Road to Awe (The Fountain) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihF_aXi-Huk
His soundtrack for Broken Arrow is my most favorite by far (and I’ve listened to others). It’s listenable by itself.
Video game and film scores have proven to be very popular with the masses while not shaming the music snob in me. The former consisting of many amateur works who gained popularity by word of mouth (and downloading) among players. video game concerts are now more popular now than film concerts. Definitely more popular than opera, and stand alone orchestral scores; And, not surprisingly, these concerts are performing well without subsidies. Now, we just need to get rid of these oppressive music trade unions.
This is absolutely the dumbest thing I have ever read. You have no idea what you are talking about in the slightest. Learn something about music before you write an article on it. This sort of ignorance is what makes the world hate America.
John How about giving some reasons and evidence for your views rather than asserting things to be true with no supporting arguments.
This is to both Robert and Matt Gilliand.
To Matt: did you consider checking Robert Blumen’s Credentials? Though he is entitled to his own opinion, taking an article on music written by a software consultant for an economics blog isn’t the best of ideas. Also not challenging what anyone says against your own views/considering whether or not the author’s views can help advance your own views of aesthetics really makes you lazy in terms of your own growth.
To Robert: For one, forgive me if someone has already brought these points up…I got a little lazy and didn’t want to read through all of the comments that were posted in reaction to your article.
Though your entry does raise some good points about audience reactions to 20-21st century composition, it seems that your main convictions come from a profiteering mode of thought rather than aesthetics. Yes. It is a lot more challenging to listen to and appreciate a modern piece of music. There is a lack of melody, but that doesn’t mean there is lack of emotion (however there are definitely pieces written with lack of emotion in mind). Schoenberg once commented on people’s reactions to his music, and he asked that people give his pieces at least five listens before making a fair judgement.
The avant-garde is extremely important. It challenges our perception of beauty. It makes way for further experimentation (the Star Wars and LOTR scores would be nothing without composers like Prokofiev, Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Ligeti: all composers who pushed their limits and music’s limits. All composers John Williams and Howard Shore emulated in their scores). And the avant-garde inspires some to push even harder at the limits of their art.
Nobody is going to like every piece they hear. Admittedly, I will attend a Chicago Symphony concerts and they will have a modern piece I think sounds like a stack of butts programmed. However, grouping all modern composition into the lump-sum is flawed. More people are into modern music than you think. I’m around them all the time.
If you want to check some great stuff out, try these:
Stravinsky- The Rite of Spring
Ligeti- Lontano
Strauss (Richard)- Elektra. Pushed the limits of atonality.
Schoenberg- Chamber Symphony
@Andy Frickle –
The credential issue is a complete sidetrack, for two reasons. First, it’s what a writer says that matters, not his credentials. If I make valid points, then what does it matter whether I am a software engineer or not? The second reason is, what are the types of credentials that authorize someone to have opinions about culture? The cultural elites, who I am very critical of, might be said to have credentials, but they are part of the problem. In any case, we all live in a culture, participate, and consume culture. Accordingly we all have opinions about what is the best or worst about culture.
I do want to clarify one thing in my original post. I am not condemning all modern music where “modern” is defined by the date of composition being after 1904. I am critical of what I would call the “modernist” style — the a-melodic, a-tonal, car-crash music that is painful to listen to. There are plenty of 20th century pieces that are audience-friendly and are not modernist. To name a few most of Gershwin’s work, a lot of Copland, most of Richard Strauss’ operas especially Rosenkavalier, Prokofiev’s “War and Peace”, the late Mahler symphonies, the 20th century compositions of Elgar, Vaughan Williams, and Bernstein’s Candide’.
While I am trying to pick out specific things about the modernist style that make it a failure — and lack of melody is one of those things — I am not only critical of this music for lacking melody. I am critical of it because it is on many levels audience unfriendly. It is painful to listen to.
While it is true that some great works of art are challenging and can produce negative emotions in the listener, it does not follow that any works that are challenging and produce negative emotions are therefore worthwhile. That would be a logical fallacy. (Some A are B) does not imply (if B then A).
While I am trying to pick out specific things about the modernist style that make it a failure — and lack of melody is one of those things — I am not only critical of this music for lacking melody. I am critical of it because it is on many levels audience unfriendly. It is painful to listen to. My criticism of the modernist style is that a mode of composition that has no real audience has become entrenched, and that the cultural elites continue to blame the audiences for not liking the works.
You misunderstood the credential comment (I seriously have no credentials whatsoever). It’s intent was to show someone else the flaw in their calling someone out for something that was really petty. Also, I further commented on how cool it is that you are this into the arts. It’s hard to come by people these days who have the appreciation and enthusiasm for culture and music that you show. It’s awesome.
I am completely on board with you regarding cultural snobbery. It’s silly and 9 times out of ten you’ll find the snob really is only into the music to seem on a higher status level. They have no real emotional connection to the music at all, so yes their opinion is moot. However, cultural elitists are not the only people/are maybe a tiny fraction of the people that are proponents for the “modernist” style of music.
This is where I have a problem with your argument. One, you speak as if what you are saying is self-evident for everyone with the exception of the culturally elite (they suck). Two, I feel it is very hard for one person to speak for millions of concert goers worldwide as if they all feel the same way you do (that was kind of an expansion on number one..).
I think you misunderstood my point about avant-garde music and its ties to movie music/20th century symphonic music. The scores of John Williams, Prokofiev, Hindemith, Stravinsky, Howard Shore, or whoever else, wouldn’t be the way they were without music that was fundamentally pushing the limits of its listeners. The wander scene on Tatooine from A New Hope is a compositional conglomerate of Schoenberg and Stravinsky. Shostakovich and Prokofiev would have had entirely different compositional outputs if they were allowed to experiment with Western compositional techniques, but they were forbidden by Stalin. Hindemith tried serialism out for a bit, rejected it and created his own theory of compositional tonality, but he never would have gotten to the point he did if there wasn’t something that extreme for him to challenge and make his own.
Do you see what I’m getting at? The two have to coexist in order for music to continue to progress. When Wagner was writing his operas, people thought he was way too over the top but he kept doing it anyways because of the deep conviction for his art. This was the other problem I had with your argument, that since modern music was “audience unfriendly” that it should be written off (or at least that’s the tone I’m getting from your article). The thing is, masterworks of music are the most deeply felt emotions by the composer (in most cases) though the audience may have been taken to account here and there, the composers that truly progressed the art and are beloved today (like Beethoven, Wagner, Stravinsky) are the composers who truly composed what was in their hearts. So, I think in a way what you may be looking for is more of compositional genuineness than, compositional catering to the audience? When the composer has to cater to the audience, then musically we have regressed to Mozart’s day where you had to compose what you were told.
This seemed a bit rantish and long winded. So, I’m sorry for that. As to who the blame goes for modernism’s failure, the blame can go to nobody. Elitists, can blame audiences for not taking the time to learn, which is in a way valid. But audiences can blame the elitists for not being sensitive to everyone’s cultural needs. Which is again, valid.
@Andy Frickle.
Sorry for missing your point about credentials.
I was just listening to the Star Wars scores this last week, and I did notice especially in movie #6 a lot of what sounded like Stravinsky influences.
It is certainly true that there people who like modernist music. I even like two or three really gnarly pieces.
There are really two points that I was trying to make here. What I mean when I say that it is a failed model is that there are not enough people who like it to justify that amount of funding and program space that it gets. Even a few people go to see really unsuccessful films. Even 132 people or whatever the number is bought the Microsoft cell phone, but that was no where near enough to make the product successful.
For a stylistic movement to be successful, there have to be enough people who like it that it can stand on its own two feet. As I pointed out in my blog post, everybody, even the elites who are backing this music, admit that it has not achieved widespread audience acceptance at scale. That is what accounts for the proliferation of articles lamenting the fact that audiences won’t accept this stuff.
The second point that I was trying to make is the impulse to blame the audiences for not liking this music. That supports my first point, which is that everyone admits that this movement does not have much of an audience. It also shows the mindset of the cultural elites who are unwilling to admit failure, unwilling to acknowledge that they have been on the losing team for nearly a century, and finally unwilling to let some other approaches have a go at it.
Surely some of this music has had influences on other works in very different styles, such as Williams. Even failed movements have some positive influences. My question, though, is opportunity cost. After a century which has produced a small handful of notable works, especially in comparison to the 18th and 19th centuries, what is the opportunity cost of continuing to poor money, talent, and concert programming time into a failed style? As a result, other styles and talented composers are squeezed out. If the movement had been abandoned after, let’s say 25 years, around 1930, in favor of something that sounded more like Gershwin, Copland, or Vaughan Williams, then how many popular audience-friendly works would we have now? And those works would have influenced film scores as well.
Robert Blumen
It should be stated bluntly: this music sucks donkey dick, esp. when compared to Ministry or GWAR.
Ministry has some good music. Gwar is just entertainment.
A couple Ministry songs worth checking out:
Just one fix.
Jesus Built My Hotrod
And the song that is the most relevant to Mises:
New World Order
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhthPDycHB0&feature=related
Features President George Bush himself. Very nice. (towards the end)
Oh, and welcome to the 21st century you little nineties reject.
(I know the feeling)
Check out the back-and-forth here:
http://blog.mises.org/16534/i-hate-the-taxman/#comments
Also,
I think it is great that you are this vehement about your defense for the arts.
Just sayin.
@John
And your credentials are? You’ve convinced no one with vitriol and ad hominem.
John sounds like a musician who likes hearing the technical virtuosity of musicians and composers. It doesn’t matter if the composition is actually any good. It’s music written to impress other musicians.
In the modern era, free jazz, fusion and progressive rock fit this model, replete with dissonant melody and harmony, key changes, odd time signatures, odd instrumentation, and almost impossibly complex phrases. Frank Zappa was a master at this. Yet, his music, before he got rid of musicians and started composing with his Synclavier, is actually accessible due to his ribald sense of humor. I’m at once floored by the technical mastery of the musicians playing his compositions, and I laugh hysterically at the lyrics and playful arrangements and instrumentation.
It is difficult and challenging music to listen to, and that’s the point. Yet, the most commercially successful progressive artists are the ones who can write good pop songs. By that I mean non-dissonant, hummable melodies with classic pop song structure. Yes, Genesis, and Rush come to mind.
I personally find it frustrating to hear modern classical music because of the lack of melody. Dissonance rules the day and the human ear just isn’t acceptable to non-stop dissonance. At least my ears do not accept it. I want to hear a major 7th chord every now and then.
Dissonant music works well in movies because it is not the focus. It is accentuating the images on screen. 2001 without György Ligeti would not be the same. It is crucial to the atmosphere of the picture.
Finally, on the subject of great film composers, my all time favorite is the late John Barry. He wrote some of the most beautiful film music ever. This guy knew how to write a melody. Just look at his work for the James Bond movies, and my personal favorite, Somewhere in Time.
I disagree with your assessment of ‘progressive’ rock, in particular as a fan of the early works of those bands you mentioned.
Rush, in its early days was a straight-up rock band in the mold of Led Zeppelin. But they were geeks and once they grabbed onto Neil Peart – who is also one of the most diehard libertarians in popular music – there was no way they weren’t going to embrace their interests. Frankly, in later years as they’ve moved back into a more rock aesthetic, the songs themselves haven’t really been that strong, with exceptions. They’ve just kind of gotten boring.
Genesis in their early days, along with Yes, were masters at implementing traditional Anglo-European styles and instrumentation as well as straight-up classical themes into their work whilst their contemporaries were en masse embracing American cultural forms like blues and R&B. Some of the early Genesis pieces are really, beautiful and melodic and frankly catchy as hell. Once Anthony Phillips, Peter Gabriel, and Steve Hackett left the band, despite their pop leaning, the work became so cloying and syrupy, it had little to no substance left.
Frank was an anomaly because whilst he grew to loathe working with musicians whom he felt couldn’t deliver what he wanted for his music, he was keenly aware that he was providing a product to audience. True, as a serious fan of Zappa, I find a lot of his modern classical work very hard to listen to; however, he was at his absolute best when he melded popular forms with his avant garde passions. The idea of melding a rock band with an orchestra – what Frank did all the time – is really what ‘modern’ composers should be doing.
You’re asking for credentials??? what are you an elitist snob of commonality?
Who ever claimed to be representing America?
Personally my favorite modern classical composer is Frank Zappa. To bad he didn’t sit well with the managerial class either.
Here is a classicallist score of his, called ‘Dog Meat’
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xh83m_dog-meat-by-frank-zappa_music
To bad for the poor audio quality.
It’s a acquired taste, but it’s NOT BORING. That’s a good thing. It’s music that demands attention. No screwing around, your going to have serious honest fun if it kills you.
Of course there are other reasons to like him other then just music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFdJjVyKD8s&p=5E6DB56C11BD293B
His is a refreshing attitude that your never going to see out of MTV.
be sure to listen to all 5 parts of the that interview. It’s one of the best that I’ve ever seen with him.
How about a YouTube link to one of these modern pieces you’re talking about, for those of us who don’t know anything about it?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7l6GFcFE9cc
I actually enjoyed what I listened to of it, you’ve piqued my interest in this composer. While modern, it’s not necessarily un-musical. Here’s John Cage’s “piano concerto”… what a steaming pile of crap:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SmXNDYlNJM
Sounds sweet to me – each to their own I guess. I don’t have much interest in classical music audiences – they seem so tame for the most part. It’s crazy for wild composers to be trying to interest such an audience in adventurous music – they’d be better off pursuing generally adventurous music lovers, interested in thrash or darkstep or various flavours of indie etc etc. Not the people content with the golden oldies.
Clayton,
I am glad you liked it. These examles were my counterarguments.
Enjoy them!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkCbnBvKjLk&feature=related
That is quite correct, and there is a very good reason for it. The more government subsidies that music receives, the less dependent they are on the judgment of paying audiences and the more dependent they are on the opinions of the composers and academics who are appointed by government bureaucrats to adjudicate applications for grants and other subsidies.
Another reason why modern “classical” music is so un-listenable is that when government does something, it must claim as its reason for doing so that it (the group of elites who control government) has some great wisdom that the ordinary public do not. What would happen if the government subsidized very popular, well-liked music. People would say, “Then why the h_ll do we need a really high paid board of directors of this symphony orchestra, and a huge bureaucracy of state culture czars – anyone could have picked that music.” So in order to justify their existence, the elites must pick weird, obscure and inaccessible music, as a way of reinforcing their status as the Gatekeepers of the Mysteries of Arts and Culture.
I think it should be pointed out that one of the consequences of the copyright cartel and copyrights in general, is that it tends to promote hype over substance, by distorting the market to make hyped stuff more profitable.
Classical Music is an art form. And like any art form be it painting,sculpture,jazz,acting,dance,poetry etc.it is very subjective. As far as classical music is concerned Bach was a genius,but most of his music consisted of coral music that was very tedious.Mozart was also a genius,but I wouldn’t pay to hear a mostly Mozart concert. My tastes are very eclectic,but tend to the later Romantic and 20th Century masters. It is all very subjective and up to individual tastes.However,with that said, I would agree that much of “Modern” music isn’t music at all,but noise. The fact is that many of these “Modern” composers will be a footnote in musical history and forgotten forever. Yet there are some fine composers that have written music over the last 60 years or so that are rarely performed in the concert halls of today. A few are Martinu, Alan Hovhaness, Randal Thompson, Rodian Schederin and many others. In the end it is up to the individual listener to decide what he likes. Finally,as the so called “Music Elites” try to ram down the throats(or should I say ears) of the paying public “noise music” if you follow the money,you’ll find the odious footprint of the various “cultural” government agencies that have,at their disposal, extorted,stolen tax money to shower on these various noise maker composers.In the end,If the noise maker composers had to make it on their own merits they probably would starve to death.
A lot of the best music is actually noise – noise can be wonderful. If you don’t like it, don’t listen to it. Don’t try and stop more open-minded people enjoying it.
My thought here:
http://theliteraryorder.blogspot.com/2011/02/why-do-we-hate-modern-classical-music.html
I’ll add some of my favourites (in no particular order). They are not necessarily classical music but I think those who like classical music might like them too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuki_Kajiura (Canta per me is is a great example)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Project (this one is a bit acquired taste)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobuo_Uematsu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noriyuki_Asakura
http://www.wowwiki.com/World_of_Warcraft_%28soundtrack%29
I think the creators of modern “classical” music (and pop as well), along with the other arts, have gradually lost their sense of creativity, which is a result of many decades of cultural decline in general, especially in America. Americans have licked up the Keynesian scam of discouraging personal responsibility, hook, line and sinker. And with that abandonment of personal responsibility, familial and cultural reinforcements of individuality have gone out the door. When the youngins’ individuality is encouraged, that naturally brings about genuine creativity.
And it used to be that “modern” musical composers took ideas and concepts from earlier composers, but gradually the newer music reflects perhaps a contempt for the geniuses of the past, much reflecting the contempt modern society has had for the ideas and principles of the past, such as those of Thomas Jefferson and John Locke. (Thanks to people like Ron Paul, let us hope for a renaissance of liberty, individualism and encouragement of entrepreneurship that will make its way into the creative arts and our culture.)
Great post, Robert! I hope this becomes a Mises Daily!
Since I actually like a lot of the compositions you are disparaging I find this article fascinating. Perhaps you have made a slight tactical error in saying that the music you dislike is ‘bad’ in some objective sense, rather than merely ‘poorly matched to it’s market’. Much great art does not reach it’s audience until after the artist’s death, sometimes a LONG time after. That doesn’t mean that some great art does not also become popular during it’s time, for surely that great fortune has befallen some lucky creators. The key here is that we not confabulate popularity with quality. If we do that, we go to a system of thought that destroys the bleeding, innovative edge of the arts. The question is, if one is ‘ahead of one’s time’, how should one proceed. Likewise, if one is a public ‘steward’ of an institution with a popular role (like a symphony orchestra), how does one balance the need to give the audience their ‘money’s worth’ with the need to use one’s heightened training to recognize products whose innovations may not be generally understood until the future? If we took your article at face value, we would have no Stravinsky — whose music absolutely appalled the majority of theater-goers during its first couple decades of introduction. Yet a separate issue that you raise is that young, innovative composers should not be afraid to comment and enhance on the past, and therefore that tools like melody should remain in the composer’s ‘toolkit’. This is an excellent point, but I see no reason this should discourage experimentation in atonality, micro-tonality and similar areas. In fact, those compositions where contrast between traditional methods and new ones is the starting point of the creative idea of the piece are often amazingly interesting. Wendy Carlos exemplifies this kind of musical invention — looking at her career she has gone from ‘Switched on Bach’ to ‘Beauty and the Beast’…the latter being one of the most fascinating, unrelentingly modern works of all time, and yet I cannot help but hope, when I am listening to it, that at some point it will move from obscurity to being ‘obvious’ to the ear of the future listeners…though it may take a hundred years.
@Matthue –
Although I think that modernist music is bad music, or maybe just not music, my argument is primarily that the this genre or style has a small clique or supporters in the managerial class of the classical music industry. Their response to the lack of any broad acceptance of this music is to blame the audience.
In relation to your points about great music not always being popular at its own time and popularity not being a good measure of quality, I largely disagree with this after having listened to Paul Cantor’s lecture. His reading of the history can be summarized that the market pretty much got it right at the time most works of art were produced. Most of the best art has been the most commercially successful. He does say something specific about the story of Stravinsky’s compositions being unpopular not being true but I can’t remember the details.
I am not against experimentation. Experiments are good and they have an outcome – either success or failure. What I am against is something being called an experiment after it has failed for about 100 years. After a decade of failure it is no longer an experiment. At that point it is closer to Einstein’s definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over expecting to get a different result. And I am against blaming the audience for the failure of the experiment. The audience is the reality against which the experiment is measured.
You can point to individual composers and specific works that did not find acceptance at the time but have since gone on to become recognized as classics. That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about the failure of an entire stylistic movement that is now nearly a century old, represented by many composers and works of which it is hard to recognize more than a handful that have any staying power or popular demand. It is true that some works are not recognized until years after the composer’s death but isn’t 100 years of modernism long enought?
My question is this: at what point is a stylistic movement recognized as a failure? How many years/composers/compositions/or whatever other measure you use must fail to find acceptance among audiences before the movement itself is a failure?
Noise is noise no matter how you couch it. There are certain things that are pleasing to the human ear and certain things that are not. A person crying in pain is not pleasing, a C chord is. Leaving aside those who are only trying to follow modern conventions or worse yet, only looking to insult, too many modern musicians are not very creative and only seek to compose something different. Different in the sense that it does not follow from any precedence. Different is not always better. Simply combining noises in a different structure does not make great music. A real creative and excellent musician seeks to create something new by combining and melding pleasing sounds together in a new and different way.
Whoever made the rule that music had to be pleasing? You need to get out more. Pleasing music is all very well, but it’s not what huge numbers of people love about music.
Whoever made the rule that music should be made of sounds at all? I will make a composition of silence that will last for an hour, with a few coughs and claps scattered here and there. If people ask “what? is this music?”, I will blame them for being narrow-minded. After all, I am the post-modern Beethoven whose works will be appreciated after his death. Or wait. There must already be someone who has done something similar to what I am planning of.
Does Prokofiev count as a modern composer? He seems popular. Also Gershwin (Rhapsody in Blue).
As soon as I saw the title of the article I wondered if someone would mention Frank Zappa.
You can’t help but wonder if its just a spoof.Hes quite fond of the kazoo.
Prokofiev and Gershwin are obviously not modern composers if we define modern as contemporary. They composed unconventionally in their day but were accessible to average classical music listeners — Gershwin, mainly a popular songwriter anyway, all the more so. Unfortunately, in his later years, Prokofiev, like Stravinsky, decided he should move in the direction of the technically interesting, but esthetically vacuous, extreme “modernist” dreck.
The decline in classical music happened gradually over the 20th century but really picked up steam in the 1950s.
I hate modern classical music for the same reason I hate modern abstract art: It sounds, or looks, like random, or little less than pure random, noise. Random noise does not move me. Vaguely annoys me perhaps, but that’s all. Art should do something more than always vaguely annoy.
There is plenty of dissonance in modern popular music (aka rock, heavy metal, etc), and it is both popular and financially successful. Thus, the dissonance (by itself) of modern classical music is not the problem. The qualities that modern popular music has that modern classical lacks (or has less of) are rhythm and ‘melody.’ The rhythm aspect should be self-explanatory. I put ‘melody’ in scare-quotes because much modern pop does not have very interesting melody (.e. rap). However, it does have repeated, recognizable tonal phrases, such as the inflections of human speech produced by rhyming couplets. My experience with modern classical music is that it either has no recognizable repeating phrases, or it repeats to the point of monotony. Also, my understanding of non-western musical forms that make use of “dissonance” is that they do so within a stronger structure of rhythm or melody.
I love Modernism. Writing, that is. I think it was the high water mark of fiction and doubt if we shall ever reach it again. In the other arts, I can only see it as walking down a one-way-dead-end road. In painting, you have a very similar conundrum between those who produce and sell abstract works. If you don’t like it, you simply don’t get it. This is easier to promulgate since only one person has to be persuaded of this mind-set to make a sale. For classical music, the people who do the buying (fund composers) are not the people who do the appreciating. Imagine if someone said they would spend tens of thousands of dollars in paintings to hang in your house and then showed up with a truckload of abstract nonsense you didn’t like.
I will admit, I have a very limited knowledge of classical music, but like my taste in wine, I know enough to know what I like. I will admit it might take the ear a little while to become accustom to new things. But these things are usually rhythms and scales. I had a hard time when I first started exploring African and Asian music, but did come to like and appreciate it. The few things I have heard in the modernist genre of classical music, have not appealed to me at all. Not because I don’t understand it (I have a very clear idea of the political, social and economic issues that informed much of the modernist ideas all across the arts), but because I just don’t like it.
A similar thing is happening today in writing. Students get their MFAs in creative writing, and write well-polished novels that say absolutely nothing. They have been taught to write this way is what will gain them a position, perhaps a reward or prize, but it is the absolutely worst thing that could happen to fiction. We need more iconoclasts within the system, but how can they attain such a position if those embedded in the system won’t open it to outside thought. It is group-think inside an echo chamber.
As a composer of contemporary classical music, I find this post (and much of the ensuing discussion) extremely offensive, closed-minded and generalizing, not to mention completely ignorant of much of 20th-century music history. Modern composers are not by any means in the business solely to offend the ears of listeners; in fact the composition of intentionally abstruse music is something that has historically been practiced by a very small cadre of composers and has today been largely rejected by the new music community. I can say with absolute certainty that any sound you hear in most modern compositions is put there for an express reason, and composers are only trying to introduce audiences to new sounds that are outside traditional tonal practice (with which, I might add, composers as early as Wagner were extremely dissatisfied).
With regards to your criticism of modern music’s lack of melody, the fact is that melodies are everywhere in modern music, they just don’t fit your extremely narrow definition of what a melody is, i.e. most likely something traditionally tonal with regular phrase lengths and rhythms. There are plenty of beautiful melodies to be found in modern music if one does not hold oneself to the expectation that they will hear techniques that were in use two centuries ago and have long since faded from relevance.
Finally, to address the ridiculous claim that there is some kind of elitist plot to be blamed for the survival of new music, I can speak from personal experience. The days of aristocratic patronage are long since past, and it is EXTREMELY difficult to build a career as a professional composer today, especially in America. The truth is that modern composers, once equipped with the necessary education, are essentially left to forage for themselves in terms of commissions and performances of their work. Even if one can manage to get one’s work commissioned and performed, it is still next to impossible to make a living solely as a composer; one must rely on teaching positions and other sources of supplemental income, none of which are self-sufficient. Sadly, sir, on this point you are completely misinformed.
Next time you want to publish something this offensive and divorced from demonstrable fact, please take the time to consult with someone working in the field first.
@Max
I believe that I was too vague and over-broad in my use of the term modern. There is a substantial amount of music that has been written in the last 100 years that is popular with audiences and has earned a place in the repertory. I should have defined a particular term, and here I will use the word “modernist” to refer to a specific style, characterized primarily by a lack of hummable melody and secondarily by harsh dissonances and chaotic or overly intellectualized structures.
I do not wish to reject music based on the date when it was composed. I am rejecting a particular genre of music. During the last approximately 100 years, there have been many composers who for at least some of their works did not fit compose in the modernist style – Prokofiev, Korngold, Vaughan Williams, Gershwin, Bernstein, and Copeland come to mind.
The issue that I raise is the advocacy of the modernist style by the managerial class and the punditocracy. I do not deny that some people like the modernist music, and you may be one of them. What I do deny is that the modernist style has earned its place in the repertory through popular success. The fact that no one — no wait — hardly anyone like this music is well recognized even by its advocates, accounting for the endless stream of articles such as the one I cited by Mr. Ross discussing how to “solve” this “problem”.
People who like modernist music are entitled, as all of us are, to their likes and dislikes. My complaint is with the unwillingness of the managerial class to accept that the tastes of the music listening public is, and has been for about 100 years, different than their own tastes, and different than the tastes that they would like the public to have. The modernist style has failed the market test.
As for a conspiracy, or not, I cannot say for sure. For the purpose of my point it doesn’t matter whether the advocates of the modernist style have conspired to act together or they are all acting independently based on a true and sincere dedication. What I have observed is over my years of concert going and music listening surely hundreds of articles, quotations statements, and pre-concert lectures in which the modernist idiom was praised by either a classical music administrator, a conductor, or a pundit such as Mr. Ross. As far as I can tell, near 100% of the advocacy of modernism comes from the managerial class of the classical music industry and writers who cover it. As noted above, it is well recognized even by the advocates of modernism that this style is not supported by consumer demand.
And so what do the modernists do? They blame the audience for not liking the music. And I I read your comment accurately, that is what you are doing as well.
The difficulty of making a living as a composer is not the point. Out of those new works that do get funded and programmed by symphonies, that vast majority that I have heard are lacking in any hummable melody, very confusing in their structure, and otherwise show the characteristics of the modernist style. Whatever funding dollars there are to commission these works and whatever amount of space exists for new music in symphony programs is going to modernist composers. While there may have been 100 other composers of the same or different styles who applied for the same grants of commissions is not so important as who ended up with the grant.
Finally in response to your suggestion that I consult with someone working in the field, I have listened to a lot of music both live and recorded. I am not an expert in the field in the sense in which you use the term, but I am a consumer of music. I am looking at the market from a consumer’s viewpoint and from an economic view point. What I see here is clearly a product being produced for which there is no — sorry, very little demand — not enough anyway to make it on its own, and a producers’ cartel that is unwilling to take responsibility for their own views being different than those of the majority of consumers.
Did you hear that? That was the authors point going right over your head.
Statements such as “new sounds that are outside traditional tonal practice” or “fit your extremely narrow definition of what a melody is” are exactly the rationalizations the ‘managerial elite’ use to justify ‘blaming the listener’.
I checked out some of your work ((Max Grafe (http://maxgrafe.net/index.html) Eg. Mural, (Winner, 2007 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award)), and I suspect your compositions are directly on point. This IS exactly the type of music written for the ‘managerial elites with no basis in consumer demand’. If you had managed to write something beautiful and moving such as this ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4ov_YIfi4s&playnext=1&list=PLFA90874BB5196872), I suspect your days as a starving artist would be soon over.
-Minroad
PS. To paraphrase Stephen Crane;
“Don’t criticise modern classical music,” said a man,
“Or you are close-minded, ignorant and offensive;
You are a toad.”
And after I had thought of it,
I said, “I will, then, be a toad.”
How about, instead of playing up Williams and Shore (and falling into the obvious double-standard of “melodic” in a score is “good”, while dissonant music in a score has nothing to do with anything), you sing the praises of contemporary (last 50 years) and overtly-tonal orchestral composers like Michael Daugherty, Alan Hovhaness, Anthiel, Hanson, William Schuman, Cascarino, Rorem, Amy Beach, Joan Tower, Michael Hersch, and the many more that have written tonal neo-Romantic works that not only have had successful premieres, but have had recordings released.
If strictly avoiding the dissonance inherent in some aspects of contemporary composition was enough to make music attractive to a larger audience, these composers would be millionaires, or at least household names.
The fact that it is highly likely you’ve never even heard of them shows that something else going against contemporary composition beyond just the sound it makes.
BTW, most of them can be found on recent recordings from Naxos records. Get their streaming subscription service and give it a try.
@Joe -
I have listened to some music by a few of the names you list – Hovhaness and Schuman. I own some Hovhaness music and enjoy it. I am pleased to find out that these composers have been successful with their work. You suggest that “there is something else [other than dissonance] that is going against contemporary composition”. Do you have an idea what it is? I am not sure that you have provided an explanation in the comment
-Robert
Strange text …
//The classical music audience wants melody// – is it true ? I think, no. Music for them is kind of a mirror in which they wants to see themselves solely. They wants to hear something habitual or maybe sentimental. But this is only part of whole audience
A big part of this story is generally not told nor understood, and that is that there actually is a lot of new music being written that is very melodic and which makes a strong emotional connection with its audience, but which is overlooked or ignored by most critics and by those who do the programming for large music organizations. Those people have a ridiculously narrow view of what new music is, or is supposed to be, and so the general audience has the same notion as expressed by Mr. Blumen–that new music is necessarily unpleasant and ugly and absent of recognizable melodies.
Composers in Southern California have been writing concert music that is very melody oriented for decades, and we do have an audience for what we do. But even here, it is virtually impossible to have any of this music programmed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic or other big symphonies in the region.
I am writing this in part to ask you not to tar all of new classical music with the same brush. There is a lot being written that you would probably love, but you’re not going to find it acknowledged by critics at major publications nor by big-budget orchestras.
I have been writing melodies that I know for a fact bring tears to people’s eyes (in a good way!) for over 30 years, so I know personally that it is being done.
@Mark,
I may be too broad with my use of the term modern. I am mainly writing against a particular musical style or genre that started about 100 years ago, primarily characterized by lack of melody, or maybe better said the lack of a hummable melody. Secondary characteristics are a high degree of dissonance and chaotic or overly complex organization. During the last 100 years there have been many composers who do not fit this description at least for some of their works – Profkofiev, Gershwin, Korngold, Vaughan Williams to the ones that I am most familiar with. Some contemporary composers I like are Hohvaness and Arvo Part.
I understand that new music does not all fit into the style that I criticize. The main point that has been bothering me for some time is the advocacy of the modernist style by the managerial elites and punditocracy of classical music. It does not surprise me that there is melodic music being written, nor does it surprise me that the major classical institutions do not program it.
-Robert
Evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker has actually written on this very subject (search “Steven Pinker: Chalking it up to the blank slate” in YouTube to watch a brief lecture on the subject by Pinker). I am an amateur (classical) pianist and I take exception to the bright-line distinction which you draw between “consonance” and “dissonance”. In the modern, Western equal-tempered scale, all intervals except the octave are dissonant. Just ask someone from India who doesn’t listen to Westernized Hindi pop music whether Mozart’s “consonant” music sounds out of tune. To them, it does. And when you look more deeply into just temperament, you find that all musical scales are a compromise between this or that dissonance. You can have an augmented 4th but not a diminished 5th or vice-versa. Take your pick.
Pinker’s explanation is nearly Austrian: elite art (including “modern” classical music) has been largely disconnected from the music market since the early 20th century as a result of public endowments. And I think this makes Ross’s quoted statement actually self-indicting and not wrong for the reasons you give – “dissonant” movie music is popular and appealing to the masses precisely because it is that “dissonant” or “avant-garde” music which the directors and producers reasonably believe will be able to stand the market test. The root problem is not any technical attribute of the music itself. Bach’s music is infused with divinely powerful dissonance, just listen to his famous Tocatta & Fugue. Used at the right time and right place any musical technique – from shooting a cannon (1812 Overture) to raking a fork across a washing-board (American Southern folk music) can be used to please the audience. But it’s precisely the fact that classical music since the advent of the Progressive era has not needed to please an audience that is the problem. But I think there’s a recovery underway. Listen to the music of (conservatory trained) Ludovico Einaudi, for example; it is simple, beautiful, musical and yet completely modern.
The problem is not that the managerial elites, as you correctly term them, are not funding the right composers, the problem is that they are funding any composers. They are central-planners of elite music and they are, therefore, damned to failure for the reasons which Mises and the other great Austrians have expounded. A cynical observer might wonder whether the express purpose of public art subsidy is to crowd out genuine entrepreneurial musical innovation as we had during the golden age of classical music, from the time of Mozart to around the mid-20th century (pickings got pretty thin around 1930). Almost all the great classical composers – the ones that wrote “warhorses” or “chestnuts” – were commercial successes. And even the composers that historians say were not “recognized” in their own day – e.g. Bach – were at least able to support themselves handsomely through hard work and voluminous musical output into a variety of market niches.
On the subject of modern classical music, I’m currently in the process of really exploring modern music in greater depth than I ever have. The process is complicated by the fact that the gems are buried under piles of worthless gunk but with time I am discovering that many people continued to make truly awesome music despite the many obstacles facing professional composers in the 20th century. Check out Gubaidulina’s Chaconne (available on YouTube) for an example of really avant-garde piano music that, in my view, is still musical even though it’s “way out there” in terms of tonality, dissonance, rhythmic organization and melodic line. Most of Prokofiev’s music (e.g. Tocatta op. 11) is also very musically experimental but still recognizable as music. Scriabin’s highly dissonant Etude Op 8 No 12 achieves unsurpassed heights of musical expression (note that it is better categorized as “late Romantic” than “modern” but it uses modern harmonic progressions throughout). Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings (originally the 2nd movement of his Op. 11 string quartet) is also thoroughly modern and unsurpassed for expression. I recently discovered Swedish composer Kurt Atterberg – listen to his Op. 37 Piano Concerto… wholly modern yet simply breathtaking. Listen to Ravel’s Ondine movement from Gaspard de la Nuit and you will be an instant convert (then listen to the piece from beginning to end). Also check out his Piano Concerto in G; bear with it, you will be handsomely rewarded for your patience. Debussy and Rachmaninoff are late Romantic but their respective uses of dissonance and tonal ambiguity were innovative and modern. Check out Rachmaninoff’s Prelude Op.23 No. 7 – wow is the only word for it. Consider Debussy’s Prelude Book 1 No. 7 – very modern yet clearly musical. Gershwin’s music is also modern, check out anything of his, best place to start is the famous Rhapsody in Blue. Not all of these pieces are going to suit the musical tastes of the general public but that’s exactly what elite art is, it appeals to a niche market but at least it appeals to *some* real market. The filth being peddled by the foundation-funded music bureaucrats is excremental. It is a perversion of music in the truest sense of the word. But there’s a world of difference between music that nobody would ever pay to hear a second time and music that simply appeals to a niche market.
I think us as the audience are a bit to blame as well. When people look back at earlier periods of music and remark how wonderful all the composers and their pieces were, they forget that we’ve had centuries to sort through all the chaff; we perceive the earlier periods of music to be better because we’ve lost or forgotten the plethora of less-than-stellar composers and their works.
The theory of “Transactional Analysis” that Andrew Garland references in his post is a two way street; it affects audience members as well as composers. While the composers write things that are deliberately outside the typical musical palate in order to feel superior in their musical sophistication, the audience members are afraid to show their displeasure for fear of “not getting it,” and being branded “musically unsophisticated.”
One only need look at a music program with one established classical standard and one “modern” piece of music. After the performance, concertgoers will tear the classical piece’s performance apart, talking about intonation or the conductor’s interpretation, or the soloist’s style, you know what I mean. But when asked about the performance of the “modern” piece, I would bet most of their responses would be something along the lines of, “Oh, it was nice.” or other similar half-hearted attempts to make it appear as if they enjoyed it and understood it.
In the era of any of these past masters, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, if audiences didn’t like a piece, they would let the performers and the composer know. Not only would that weed out bad composers and pieces faster, but also helped existing composers shape their music to public tastes. When was the last time you heard a less than lukewarm reception for a “modern” piece, let alone outright booing or displeasure?
One can suggest that composers have lost sight of their audience as a reason for the current state of modern music, but audience’s willingness to simply accept it certainly hasn’t helped either.
Perhaps, audience immediate (and vocal) criticism during a concert is not the best means of weeding out the “chaff”.
Pieces we would have lost if the premiere concert audience determined ultimate success of failure include Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, Ravel’s Daphnes and Chloe, Shostakovich’s 9th Symphony, Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, a significant number of Chopin’s works, Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantasique, and Brahm’s Deutsche Requiem.
The truth is that immediate reaction is NEVER a reasonable judge of a piece’s worth.
If anything the whole “compose, premiere, get criticism, hope someone else plays it later” is the real flaw in the classical process – yes, the process itself. In order to build an audience, contemporary music needs to take a playbook from popular music and acknowledge that the recording is the key to recognition. Even if just released as a download, composers need to get their premieres (or a recording made during the rehearsal process, where there’s no audiience noise) available almost immediately because people can discuss what they feel about music they just heard but they are unable to discuss the music itself because they just won’t remember it.
The REAL elitism problem is not that of modernist-sounding music being treated by some as the only music of value, or that “melodic” (re: tonal and perhaps tuneful) music is treated as second-class by the academics. The real problem is that for ALL contemporary music the medium of exchange is not the noise that people can talk about, but dots on an expensive piece of paper that mean nothing to 99.9% of the population.
As I stated in my 1st blog(see above) Classical Music is VERY subjective. Listen to what YOU like and don’t be bothered with what people say you should enjoy or not enjoy.
Wow! I sure wish I’d read this entry a few days ago – this is one of the most interesting discussions (to me, anyway) I’ve seen in a long time. The topic is really the issue of art and its appreciation (and abstraction), and I’d like to mention a few examples to make a point. The examples are from literature, visual art, and music.
Visual art first. There is a novel by Jack Finney, Time and Again, in which the main character travels back in time to the nineteenth century. During a cold evening at the Dakota in New York City, this man sketches the face of a young woman in the moisture on a window. The people in the room do not recognize the drawing as a caricature because they are accustomed to seeing drawings with much more detail rather than such an abstraction. See any news engraving of the time for an example.
Literature. Well, just compare novels by Dickens to novels by Hemingway. One of the difficulties I have in reading Dickens is having to accommodate all of the details he provides, most of which I do not need or which I am accustomed to providing/inventing myself.
Music. There is no more easily understood discussion of abstraction in music than Leonard Bernstein’s Norton Lectures of 1973 at Harvard University, called in their entirety The Unanswered Question, with the six topics
Musical Phonology
Musical Syntax
Musical Semantics
The Delights and Dangers of Ambiguity
The 20th Century Crisis
The Poetry of Earth
(Recommended for anyone who wishes to better understand how “classical” music got to where it is today.)
For the most part, I have difficulty appreciating any serious music after just one hearing. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy anything on first hearing – I happen to be listening to music by Hans Zimmer as I write this (OST from The Dark Knight – one of my favorites). The problem is that I tire of “popular” music much more quickly than I do of music that requires more mental participation on my part.
For example, I heard a CSO broadcast in 1982 of a symphony by Allan Pettersson, a Swedish composer who died in 1980 and whose music is enjoyed by very few listeners, apparently. I was fortunate that something about this work attracted me, and over the past nearly thirty years I have become much more acquainted with his sound and structure, to the point that his is the work I listen to most often. It wasn’t easy, but the outcome was worth the effort.
That leads me to the extreme but useful generality: any art worth pursuing isn’t quickly appreciated (and contrapositive). Obviously, this doesn’t mean that all music is worth pursuing. But we must never forget that the music of Bach mostly ignored during his lifetime and for the first 100 years after his death. And Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring caused a “classical music riot” in 1913.
I’m all for trying new art. I know it takes work, but I also know the value of the result of that work. I just wish we’d get back to the benefactor mode and get the state out of art altogether. In the long run, the art that lasts will be a spontaneous order rather than a made order, and we’ll all be the better off for it.
I too have started to develop a taste for Petterson and the other (obscure) Nordic 20th Century composers featured on CPO’s label and elsewhere (like Rautavaara, with recent releases by Naxos).
In ancient Greece, the word ‘music’ was only used to describe sounds that were played within specific harmonious proportion, melody and rhythm. I would describe the sound that is known as ‘modern classical music’ as being ‘dissonance’ instead.
The basic difficulty with contemporary classical music (though its practitioners tend to prefer to call it “new music”) is that its funding and hiring sources arise from among the composers themselves.
In the past, people who weren’t composers formed judgments about they wanted to hear, and what they wanted to hear, which, in brief, was something that seemed engagingly beautiful. They didn’t know much about the technicalities of music and they didn’t care. They knew what sounded good to them, which was intuitively beautiful and engaging sound. Those who put up the funds for this music — kings and nobles, or capitalist philanthropists, or just esthetically sophisticated music audiences paying for tickets — put it up for those whose music sounded good to them.
But things began changing a century or so ago. For one thing, government took upon itself the accreditation of universities — which, given the accompanying rise in government-imposed licensing requirements in many professions — resulted in universities having to hire for opening whoever the extent faculty chose, rather than people who would teach what students shopping for an education wanted. And classical music organizations — orchestra, chamber ensembles, etc. — were pressured into commissioning works from composers selected by committees of composers themselves.
You’ve got a big problem when academic composers choose who to hire or composer committees choose who will get a music commission. Let’s face it, at any given time there are only a very limited number of composers (or other creative artists) who have it within themselves to write first-rate music time and again. But when you expect every university music department to have a composer on its faculty, or when composers choose who will get the commission, the standard of quality changes. Very few composition professors will have talent for creating beauty, and very few of the committee composers will, so what ends up happening is that the criteria of good music changes from one of beauty to one that most can meet: technically innovative music, even if it lacks any more beauty than starting the engine of your car.
Eventually those composers focused on beauty get out of the music business, or stick with instrumental music, or go into film composition, because the venues for classical music composition become closed to them. What you end up with are “new music” composers, academic or nonacademic, who are music geeks. These geeks think the end-all of music is to create odd, innovative sounds, and, subliminally at least, resent any serious concern with beauty, because that’s something they lack ability in.
And so it goes with contemporary painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, academic creative writing, and literary and other esthetic criticism. We’re in a dark age of the arts, fostered by government interference in the markets for the arts and education.
I’ll finish with the following quote. In it the author, who was a literature professor, discusses the decline of academic literary criticism, but remarks apply to many other field with esthetic components:
“[...] W. K. Wimsatt, the most influential [literary] analytical theorist of his day, noted that literary criticism was decidedly moving in a new direction, one he evidently felt was unsound. In considering the reasons for this shift, he made a remark that would be incomprehensible in most other fields of [academic] inquiry, though it is all too relevant in the case of literary criticism and other fields in the humanities. ‘New persons,’ he said, ‘need new platforms.’ New careers needed to be launched.
“A remark such as this would seem odd if made by, say, a biologist; why would anyone thing that a commitment to some ill-considered ideas might advance one’s career simply because the ideas were new? In the natural sciences, such a misjudgment would wreck a career. The difference here cannot be explained by the usual notion that the sciences demand more precise thought; even if intelligence manifests itself in different way in different fields, it is hard to understand why unintelligent thought should help, rather than hinder, a career.
“The relevant difference between the sciences and at least some of the humanities is this: in the former, but generally not in the latter, new discoveries constantly open up new areas for research. When the structure of DNA was discovered, one area of career possibilities was taken out of circulation, while, at the same time, dozens of new possibilities were created. This breakthrough in
research opened up entirely new questions, thereby helping the careers of the next generation of scientists. But in the study of literature (and to a greater or lesser degree in other fields of the
humanities) we return again and again to the same basic stock of the great texts; each new book or article on _King Lear_, far from opening up new fields of inquiry, generally makes it harder for those following to say something new and intelligent about the play. Yet in all fields, academics are rewarded more for their originality than for any other aspect of their performance. The few outstanding critics always find ways of demonstrating their originality, but the rest are put under increasing pressure as time goes by and the bibliographies get thicker. To be sure, new additions to the canon occur from time to time, and occasionally a piece of literary criticism suggests further intellectual pursuits for others, but such innovation in thought are too infrequent to relieve the pressure on humanists.
“This pressure produces a crucial feature of literary studies, namely, its proneness to fads and fashions. Some of these grow large enough to predominate at a particular time, as deconstructionism did, but others — for example, literary Freudianism — are never more than a minority cult within the
larger profession. Whatever the extent of their influence, however, their function is similar: once a new intellectual fashion arrives on the literary scene, the way is open for a new reading of every classic text. The process is quite simple: one learns the terms and categories of the new fad and applies those terms to any text, and new thought seems to have been created. New fads are thus a tremendous boon to the great majority of practitioners in the field of literary studies, which is why they are embraced with such enthusiasm. They provide professional opportunities for many who otherwise might languish.”
– John M. Ellis, _Literature Lost: Social Agendas and the Corruption of theHumanities_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997, pp. 208–10.)
I think you’re missing the historical point of Schoenberg and Stravinsky: it is trivially easy to create “beautiful” music, particularly within the diatonic framework. It’s been done. To their ears, it had been done to death. Anybody with a minimal amount of training can produce a pleasing melody around a pleasing chord structure. Many still do, in the “popular” world, and many of these pieces will likely be remembered decades and centuries from now, including works by The Beatles and Pink Floyd.
But being “beautiful” is not why music is composed, and it wasn’t why most of the works that are considered beautiful today, including many that at the time of their composition were considered horrendous (see that list I posted above, including Debussy’s Faun that had the Boston Symphony audience ranting for weeks about “crazy modern music”), were composed.
If being beautiful was all that music should aspire to, then we should all give up and just listen to works that are 150-300 years old and forget about every creating anything else because it has been done and nobody will ever be able to do it better.
oh, I guess if one listens to classical music on the radio, one might already have the impression that we’ve all already done that.
Originial and profoundly beautiful music isn’t trivial. Yes, trained people can create pretty little trivial chords and note sequences. To focus on that is obscurantism.
But it takes a driven creative musical genius to compose music as did Mozart or Beethoven or Wagner. Even lesser geniuses like Rakhmaninov or Hanson continue astound with their sublime inventions.
What you’re suggesting is that tonal music is old hat and the only way to write good new music is to undertake radical technical innovation. I agree to this extent: Tonal music was already old when, say, Grieg and Debussy and Satie revealed rich new possibilities for it.
You’re creating straw men with Debussy and Stravinsky. Debussy’s compositions were rich and gorgeous, and this has been generally recognized even in his later lifetime. Similarly, Stravinsky’s, at least up until the Symphony of Psalms, showed him thoroughly capable of creating beauty. The fact that he abandoned such composition reflects a combination of savvy in knowing where the commission grants were coming from, plus a weakness of character.
Yes, as Blumen noted, beautiful new music can be a little too alien at first. No objection there: Wagner, Bizet, Debussy, and the early Stravinsky all had trouble being understood by the larger audience for classical music. But two or three decades later the audiences did get it. (Even the notoriously middlebrow Walt Disney chose to include the music from _Le sacre du printemp_ in his kiddie film _Fantasia_.)
Not so for the unesthetic (except when a spot of beauty occurs by accident), technically charged compositions of Stockhausen, Imbrie, Xenakis, and other musical geeks who have turned off many generations from even wanting to learn about new music.
I like how you implicitly admit that “the new music” isn’t beautiful when you write, “If being beautiful was all that music should aspire to, then we should all give up and just listen to works that are 150-300 years old [...].” That’s ridiculous, though: People are always interested in new works of beauty. That’s why Broadway audiences keep going to new plays: They don’t just see Shakespeare, along with, say, O’Neill. Because Broadway plays operate on a profitability basis, without the government skewing things much toward technically self-referential geekiness.
Oops, I meant “Original” and not “Originial”.
Thanks for your article. I am a classical musician. In fact, I have a Master’s degree in instrumental performance. As I went through undergraduate school and graduate school and the requisite courses on 20th century music in both, I was left, despite their best efforts, with a real distaste for the modern “art music.” As you can well imagine, my viewpoint was not the popular one among the students, many of whom fully embraced modernism, and the more dissonant the better, eager to please their professors and show their “with-it”-ness.
There are some modern works that are truly “art music,” but the majority of it sounds like crap and deserves to be called out as such. My husband and I have season tickets to one of the professional orchestras in our area. Nearly each concert is the same story – a long and painful first half of new work, followed by a work (either known and unknown) of a great composer in the second half. At a recent concert, someone came out to “preface” the first work – as usual, a modern work. He extolled its virtues, letting us know what a great privilege it would be to hear this work. The second half was, as usual, a fine work of a great composer. You guessed it – no pre-piece verbal advertisement there. Great art stands on its own.
I’m uncomfortable with the assertion that the truest test of value is the market. There are too many corrupting factors in the drive for capital for it to be any kind of ultimate arbiter of taste. If this were as true as you say, you would have to accept that the artistic merit of Friday by Rebbecca Black is judged to be greater than that of the first movement of Beethoven’s Pastoral, and without being snobbish I don’t think a definition of quality which accepts this conclusion can be true.
I also disagree with the statement that “It is ultimately audience acceptance that drives composition, not the other way around.” Perhaps I am misunderstanding you, but it seems like you are genuinely saying the noblest and strongest drive to create is a populist one, that artists actually *create* to fulfill consumer demand and receive acclaim and acceptance. I do not believe any such consideration does (or should) come into it, and that artists create to fulfill some inner drive to create rather than for some cheap accolade or praise.
There is so much in this article that is just wrong. Sensationalist statements are presented as fact, such as the notion that most modern works are performed after intermission (the opposite is true in my experience) so that audience members don’t abandon ship. What is the purpose of such an article, which substitutes provocative accusation in place substantive discussion? At least there is interesting discussion taking place in the comments section.
A lot of modern classical music is not just cerebral, but also possess great emotional depth. I present the following composers as some good examples: Schnittke, Takemitsu, Vasks, Part, Gubaidulina, etc. (I’ll put some youtube links at the bottom for those interested). As a previous commentator pointed out, certain strains of modern music are not pretty, but they are often nonetheless profound. Is this dissonance so surprising in the aftermath of two world wars, the creation of weapons capable of destroying our planet several times over, and other revelations of humanity’s darker aspects? Modern classical music in its variety encapsulates the breadth and depth of the human experience.
Certainly, there is disconnect between the general public and most modern composers (film composers aside). But the public has also largely abandoned classical music in general. Less than 4% of Americans listen to any classical music. Some modern composers, such as Babbitt, have shown a disdain for their audiences, but I do not think that this is endemic to modern classical composers. From where does the author of this article come up with the notion of a “modernist classical agenda?” What agenda? And whose agenda?
Modern classical music encompasses so many radically different kinds of music, that to use it as an umbrella term does great injustice to the modern works that are truly inspired. Today is an exciting time for music- the lid has been blown wide open and the array of ways to even conceptualize music and sound is staggering. It is easy to see how a member of the general public could get lost in such in an environment, and the implications of the modern classical have yet to be reconciled. I think patience is nonetheless required. Both Mahler and Debussy where abandoned for a time before their music underwent a second Renaissance.
A number of scientific studies have shown that musical preference is largely determined by the music we are exposed to in our youth. We are thus accustomed to a generally standard system of major and minor keys and other common modes built from the twelve tones that encompass the Western octave. Music in other parts of the world does not conform to this well-developed system, and there is no reason that modern classical music, in its creative expression, must also be shackled to this system.
I’ll leave this forum with Evelyn Glennie’s inspired TED talk about really listening to any music:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/evelyn_glennie_shows_how_to_listen.html
Also, as promised, some examples of modern classical music that are worth giving a chance-
-Choir concerto (Schnittke):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8fsxFRziKs
-Ritual for Large Symphony Orchestra (Schnittke):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqINd-7XJW8
-String Quartet #4 (Vasks):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQBLCeg5UtM
-From me flows what you call Time (Takemitsu):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cwvnp3OWLiE
-Rain Tree Sketch (Takemitsu):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCsLYC_AKos
-Piano Quintet (Schnittke)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0YKQsrg8SU
-String Quartet #2 (Gubaidulina)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NSV5q7oefk&playnext=1&list=PL4E3A633A9C678C6D
-Harmonium (John Adams):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O84SdWltveM
and for fun
-Grab It (Jacob TV):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCTukXFOY_w
-Theme and variations (Louis Hardin):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3r-vzwQWRU
I am a young music student hell-bent on becoming a composer, and I just have to say that I love this article. It says everything that I have ever felt about “modern” music but have never been able to say out loud.
That’s weird, because the most prominent contemporary classical music is very melodic. John Adams is probably the most prominent contemporary classical composer – he writes tunes.
So, if we were to extend this deconstruction into the realm of disciplines other than music, we would say that Frank Gehry decidedly ‘new’ vision of how buildings can look and Kenneth Patchen’s vision of how literature should look and sound (Albion Moonlight) and so on and so forth – are not valid because they eschew traditional trappings of convention and form?
The first time I heard one of Webern’s super-condensed but achingly beautiful little jewels (the Opus 30 Orchestral Variations for example) I had one of those lightening-struck moments and the overwhelming feeling of – ‘where-has-this-been-all-my-life!?’ Exactly the feeling I had 2 weeks later when I heard ‘Are you Experienced’ (J.M. Hendrix) for the first time. Where, and from behind what wall did this music erupt and ravish the world? -my world anyway!
I believe the issue here is that of personal taste – educated or not – acting as the arbiter of what is valid and good. Taste applied this way is susceptible to the foibles and vagaries of fear and loathing – the proverbial knee jerk reaction to *anything* different from what you were raised-up with @ home and, ahem, in church.
To encourage an evolution in listening skills take, into account that Music is merely – Sound Organized in Time. Nothing more and nothing less. With this as a baseline, it is useful to think of Music as a sequence of gestures alternating tension and release.
Have fun… or not…
David
As a so-called “Modernist composer”, I have to mostly disagree with everything. But I’m fulfilling my own personal agenda to write “random” music, music that is “ugly”, and to only write music that will satisfy the analyst.
Now that I’ve set that aside, I think that the modernist music era that you are talking about is probably one of the most important eras of music in influence. Not only has it given us some of the best pieces, but it has given us, the composers, a new language to use in our pieces to make them stand out (cause everybody loves 32 piano sonatas that all sound the same). Are we writing for ourselves? Somewhat. But so did other composers. Beethoven wrote for himself. Look at his piano sonatas. All of them, except one are basically the same. His only different sonata, the “Moonlight” sonata, is completely radical for his time period. So why is it, that when you ask a person off the street what Beethoven piano sonatas do they know, they reply with the Moonlight? It’s because it’s different. It stood out. Not because it’s pretty. The second movement to the Pathitique is just as “beautiful”, and the Pathitique isn’t as well known because the form is typical.
Without these abrasive composition techniques, we wouldn’t have some of the great music we have today. You like Copland? We he liked being modern. He used serialism in a lot of his pieces. So why doesn’t it come off that way? He bloody wrote for himself and said, I’m not going to write like Schoenberg, I’m going to write like bloody Aaron freaking Copland. And so he did. It’s still there, that serialism, no matter what fluffy words you put around it. He retrogrades it, inverts it, and did everything Schoenberg does, put in a Copland context.
Tan Dun is my favorite example of this (Copland’s my second favorite). He uses Aleatory techniques (ew), Improvisation (ew), bending of pitches (ew), unusual instrumentation (oh god, I don’t think we can handle anymore), retrogradable rhythms (ew), and all these modern techniques to create piece such as the Water Concerto. This piece was played at my local Symphony, and it had fantastic reactions. It was a modernistic composition that people liked. (Next thing you’ll know, pigs will fly.)
Now lets get to me: A sophomore composition major. I like modern music a whole bunch, but yes, there are some pieces I could deal without. But I love Carter. I love Messiaen. Both composers are more “academic” than your average mid-twentieth century composer, without having to rely on avant-garde techniques. But most of their music has a purpose. I think that personally, bad music is music that has no “back-story” so to say. “I just wrote this because I felt like it” is a very greedy response to writing music. But music that is based off of an interpretation has that connection people get. You know, we throw Threnody under the bus a lot, but it’s one of my favorite pieces. Why? I had that connection with Hiroshima. I got done with it (Yes, I got past the first 45 seconds-I tell you, it’s a rather neat piece, but hardly anyone listens past the first 45 seconds of the piece cause they all suddenly don’t like string instruments), and I sat back in my chair, and I couldn’t move. I was emotionally dead. Nothing mattered anymore.
That is what the composer felt after the first performance. I don’t think I would have had the same reaction had the piece been titled what he was to originally call it. 8’37 doesn’t evoke much emotion.
Now back to me a bit. I like writing complex pieces. But I don’t do it for my sake. I don’t do it to show off. It all comes naturally. I like fragmenting melodies. I like inverting stuff. It’s fun, I have a blast trying to figure it all out. And people enjoy my works (for the most part). Maybe they are all lying to me, and calling me arrogant behind my back because I basically screwed up the sonata form (There’s billions of sonatas with all the same form. Why should mine adhere to it?), or had the bass clarinet player playing above the flute (I like that sound. It sounds neat, though my orchestration professor would fail me for it). It doesn’t matter what people think. I like my music. The modern composers liked their music. If they didn’t, well, that’s their problem.
I think there is a solution to all of this as well. Listen to more modern music. I hated Carter (You remember, one of my favorite composers?). It made no sense, and it was “garbage”. But, I got my hands on a score, and the more I looked at it, the more I would catch. The more I caught, the less clutter it sounded like, and the clarity of it astounded me. You see, we establish a base of what the general population perceives as good music and then we tell children that Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky are gods, and anything else is rubbish. If we listen to “dissonant” music as a norm, we accept it. Look at Rite of Spring. It cause a riot. No other piece in the past 75 years have done such a thing. So it must be the worst piece ever made, right? Well, tell that to Disney. I think the general mass should get out of their tonal bubble and explore. You won’t like everything at first. No one likes practicing their instrument until they realize how it works and what not (I still don’t, and I’ve played it for fourteen years). But you’ll find something, despite the LABELS people have given it, that you like, and you’ll wonder why most people don’t like it. But I do. It’s because we give it a label. “That’s modern, I’m not going to listen to it.”.
You know,someone mentioned melody and modern music lacking it. Don’t be lazy with your listening. Sometimes, you have to dig. You have ears, make them work. Phillip Glass has no obvious melody, HELL he writes the same two chord progressions over and over and over and over again. And people like his music. It’s because we tag the word “Minimalism” to it. He doesn’t even consider his music minimalist.
Funny.
Ok, I’ve talked long enough, and you are probably going to have some hot retort.
It’s still subjective, some people do like modern music (no matter what you say), saying that you don’t like it won’t make it go away, it’s useful, and farewell good sir.
Lots of great links for good modernist music here. The soundtrack of Shutter Island is a goldmine of meaningful music. I got tired of discussions of harmony and melody as a child and enjoy essentially all kind of music. The Penderecki Passacaglia is atonality at some of its best.
I don’t like this article. Classical music has developed to this point out of a dialectic between composers over the course of history. The classic ‘Art vs Industry’ issue has long been discussed in music institutions. In truth classical music was once the popular music but not anymore – it was replaced in this function by jazz at the turn of the 20th century and by Pop around 30 – 40 years later. The function of classical music in the modern world is to explore artistic/compositional ideas free from commercial pressure. It’s not about the simple aesthetic pleasure anymore as that function has been taken over by film score, Pop and even Jazz (although a similar trend has occurred there as well) – it is about ideas and exploring new musical territory.
The argument that it is some sort of managerial promotion of bad sounding music is absurd. The blame-the-listener approach is equally absurd. Modern Classical Music is not there as an aesthetic platitude. It is dead serious (no pun intended) and programmers understand that it is way over the heads of most listeners hence why they couple it with canonical pieces. Modern classical music is the exploration/criticism of the western musical system if you just want something that sounds nice and is catchy – well that’s there in the canon and pop and jazz and film score. Modern classical music is for something else. “If you judge a fish by it’s ability to climb a tree – it will spend it’s whole life as a failure”. That’s what this article is, a failure – judging a fish by it’s ability to climb trees.
For what it’s worth I think modern classical sounds like shit but it’s valid.
I stumbled upon this while doing some research into audience reactions. Very interesting viewpoint, and though I love the general “modernism” that you are talk about here (and am slightly offended that it seems as though you feel no one thinks of it as simply beautiful art) I appreciate your write-up. Thank you.
When the author writes “modern classical music”, what kind of music is he, or “we” referring to?
He seems to use the term modern music to refer to today’s music. Strictly speaking, modern music refers to western “classical” music written during the early-to-mid twentieth century. Stravinsky, Shoenberg, and “ultra modernist” composers like Ruth Crawford Seeger come to mind. He doesn’t list any composers he dislikes nor any works, but relies on cliche’ generalizations.
In my view, an artist is not supposed to be a pawn of the marketplace; in completely caving into market demand, the artists no longer says anything, he/she loses his identity and becomes a mirror, reflecting the fickle tastes of the masses. To argue this point is not to be an “elitist”, but to defend the artist’s role as someone who says something, (or perhaps doesn’t say anything), profound about the mysterious human condition that cuts across time. And lastly, I’ll leave you with, “The artist should never try to be popular. Rather the public should be more artistic.” (Oscar Wilde)
seems like the managerial class IS the consumer…so then there is a market demand for the music, yes?
Wow. What on Earth are you talking about? “Modernism” is an artistic movement that happened in the first half of the 20th century, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, for example, is modernist. Are you telling me audiences are still having difficulty enjoying The Rite of Spring? That is almost a hundred years old, and if you really have that much difficulty enjoying it, then you’re just another slave to mass culture, and you’re listening with closed ears. Is that the ‘modernism’ that you’re talking about? Or are you talking about 21st century music?
The problem is, a certain class of people refuse to listen to anything new. They listen to what they’ve been bombarded with in film and TV – late romantic style music, and as soon as something outside of their little box hits their ears, they close them. It’s sick. I am utterly sick-to-death of late-romantic music, it’s absolutely everywhere because people are hilariously conservative in their taste. If Beethoven had done that, we wouldn’t even HAVE romanticism. I enjoy very modern music. I find it extremely easy to enjoy very modern music. Why? Because I opened my ears, and in doing do, I discover what the music is trying to do. If you can’t do that, then it’s your loss.
Seriously, it’s hilarious that people are still having difficulty with Schoenberg. Really? Schoenberg? Come on now. We’ve already come 100 years further than Schoenberg and yet people still have to point the “elitism” finger. I’m not “elitist”, you’re just closed-minded. It’s not my fault that the majority of Western listeners are completely absorbed in pop culture.
@David
Rite of spring is modernist, everybody knows that rite of spring is good.
I think the first 5 seconds of horn solo is nice. Then it’s crap. And because I don’t like it I’m a close-minded tool of mass culture. Whoever you are, are you even listening to yourself, and to how pretentious you sound? I just don’t get it. I don’t think I’m better than you because I listen to Vivaldi/Mozart/Beethoven/Dvorak. Your remark reveals your snobbism. In grade school, instead of listening to matchbox 20-whatever-they were called, or N-sync, or whoever else I listened to Vivaldi and Beethoven.
Anyways, I am by no means a fan of Austrian economics, but the point the auther makes is interesting, I wonder if it is true that classical music programs are not really determined by audience demand. I have noticed how Programs tend to have one modern piece surrounded by older stuff.
@ the Author of the origional post: Thank you so much. I’ve had to perform Hindemith twice, and I also did an awful Nino Rota piece in a chamber musics class. Looking around at other High School/University programs, It looks like I got off lucky. If there’s anything more annoying than listening to contemporary classical music it’s practicing it.
You know what David, I’ll take some of the bait. I would rather practice the tune to a Lady Gaga song than ever perform that Nino Rota piece again.
It seems to me that it is quite obvious what the author is saying. There is a kind of music -for want of a name he calls it modernist-, that is quite common with contemporary composers, that has been cultivated by many, many composers during the past 100 years, that is devoid of a classical sense of melody and that very few in the audiences want to listen. I believe this is almost a truism.
I am just arriving home after Webern’s Six Pieces for Orchestra. The audience listened respectfully in silence, but between the second and third piece a soft ululating sound gradually grew out louder and louder. I noticed the conductor froze. A few seconds later it was clear the sound was not coming from the orchestra even though it was perfectly tuned to the last sounds emerging from the orchestral piece. A short moment later it became perfectly clear that an ambulance was cruising in the outside avenue. The audience burst out laughing. The conductor waited for quite a while before going on.
By the end we were all quite bored waiting for the Schumann cello concerto. These pieces at best get a formal short applause. Webern composed them more than 100 years ago and the audiences still seem not too interested in listening to them.
This kind of music is fun to listen once in a while but most of the time it is just plain funny.
An opera singer once told me that of all music composed as classical music about 95% is gone and forgotten. The scores are lost. And that’s good he said, it was all a bunch of crap anyway. Take Telemann. He wrote 3700 works. And an anecdote about him reveals that when the Thomas Church in Leipzig were to hire a new organist it had to make do with Bach because the best according to everyone’s opinion, Telemann, declined. And now? Well, all but maybe a hundred of his works are burried at the graveyard of crap music.
The same goes for the contemporary. Maybe Gubaidulina will stand the test of time, although I very much doubt it. She is way to caught up in the contemporary dogma of serialism and such. Her peers are also mortal and when both she and they are gone her music must stand it’s own ground, without the managerial support.
If you want to go down in history as a great composer, be timeless and independent. Today’s winners are too often tomorrow’s losers. Don’t think “serialism” or “commission”, think Telemann.
Day in and day out, we’re inundated with sounds: at the mall, in the car, at home, even on the street corner. Music is more a part of our daily lives than at any other point in history. Yet we expect people to devote two hours of their day to pure listening, sitting quietly, and politely applauding at the end of a piece. This has its place, but it doesn’t have to be the steadfast rule.
I noticed the same thing Randal did when I read the original article: not once does the author cite a composer or work as an example in his attack on hateful modern classical music. The same is true of the CS Monitor work he mentions in the third paragraph. Despite the author’s claim that “decades of evidence” (whatever that means) prove that audiences hate modern classical, it’s anyone’s guess what composers or works he’s actually talking about. Does he mean Schoenberg and Stravinsky? Stockhausen and Xenakis? Elliott Carter? Kaija Saariajo? All of the above? It seems it’s not unfair to say that those who make such sweeping, dramatic generalizations about modern composed music argue from a position of ignorance.
I also agree with B7alt that the article “judges a fish by its ability to climb trees,” i.e. takes modern classical to task for not being something it isn’t meant to be. Is it reasonable to equate the assertion that modern classical isn’t popular with the conclusion that people hate it? I’m sure Josquin Des Prez, despite being an acknowledged genius of Renaissance music, sells very few CDs, and I’ve never seen his work performed except by specialist musicians. In conclusion, then, would the author insist that audiences hate Renaissance music? That Josquin has failed the market test?
Having recently attended the Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood, I can assure Robert Blumen that modern classical music is alive and well. The audience I was among in Ozawa Hall didn’t find the music painful in the least. Composer Charles Wuorinen premiered a wonderful new piece for vocalists and chamber orchestra that was full of drama, humor, and fascinating music. We who appreciate modern classical music aren’t elitist phonies, we’re just educated, enthusiastic listeners.
My policy is always to listen to a piece of music a few times before I pass any judgment. My all time favorite albums and symphonies didn’t really excite me that much the first few times I heard them. Instead of using my gut reaction to judge a piece of music, I try to be patient (hard now a days I know) and listen to what the artist is trying to say even if it isn’t immediately pleasant. It can be very rewarding to find and cherish a piece of music that you might have otherwise dismissed. Listening 5 or 6 times is my usual goal. Also, I find sleeping on it and coming back the next day helps too.
Many artists have overblown egos about their work and claim their music isn’t successful because of a dumb audience but how else could an artist be motivated to take such bold risks if not to serve the higher cause of art. I’m not condoning this behavior, just offering a possible explanation.
@ Michael the way you judge a piece music is good. Previously i used to forward the music while listening to any new music and sometimes feel it like a piece of garbage some times. But now i use to listen 3 or 4 times first before making any judgement.
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