Full Member
My mum - a brilliant pianist in her time - used to say the same thing, and I could never figure it out. Surely some kind of emotional reaction has to be anticipated to be motivated to listen to music of any kind - unless for reasons of duty, or survival?Originally Posted by french frank
Full Member
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Administrator
There are many pursuits that I find rewarding and enjoyable without there being any emotional element. The terms that TS uses to describe his own reactions, convey feelings that I would find extremely uncomfortable - not in the good, constructive way that leads on to a better evaluation, or a fruitful questioning, of some aspect of being (or even self-evaluation). But in the way that - for example - embarrassment or humiliation are (physically?) 'uncomfortable'; and would be, I suppose, to most people. This to me is part of the 'magic' of music, that the appreciation of it isn't completely comprehensible.My mum - a brilliant pianist in her time - used to say the same thing, and I could never figure it out. Surely some kind of emotional reaction has to be anticipated to be motivated to listen to music of any kind - unless for reasons of duty, or survival?
I'm not clear where the difference lies between dismissing Adès or Stockhausen, Tavener or - who? Mendelssohn/Brahms/Tchaikovsky, perhaps.
Full Member
I think it's a good rule never to be put off listening to music you haven't heard by the negative report of any other listener, as their taste in music is rarely likely to coincide exactly with your own.
I suppose in one way it's to be welcomed that anyone is trying in a national newspaper to get people interested in contemporary "classical" music. The "classical" bit sticks in my craw though; it comes loaded with so many assumptions that using it makes TS's "popularisation" job much more tortuous than it needs to be. Nobody would call, say, Francis Bacon (since he's been mentioned here) a "contemporary classical" painter, and I don't think anyone would find his work somehow more palatable if they did. IMO you can't really be "contemporary" and "classical" at the same time. There isn't much that's "contemporary" about Adès, and Service unconsciously admits as much: "Adès's music could not speak more fervently or fearlessly about the essential truth of the way historical patterns repeat themselves" - there's always room for music which has a pseudo-contemporary veneer beneath which are the same old sounds, same old structures, same old expressive vocabulary etc. etc.I don't understand what he means 'bypassing the world of intellect' - what is 'the world of intellect' when it's at home? I also think "There's a good argument that the less you know about Mozart or Schubert, the more directly you can understand the sounds composers create today" is flawed: I don't think knowing about Mozart or Schubert is any impediment, I think knowing about Mozart or Schubert and knowing that it is obvious what music is is an impediment (one that could as easily get in the way of responding to Machaut as responding to Lachenmann).
Actually Lachenmann is a poor example of 'bypassing' since his music is a critique of a 'tradition' (among many other things). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebsF16Ywwsk And while 'visceral impact' is fine it's a bit like saying never mind the content just feel the bass.
As usual in The Guardian there seems to be the idea that everything was destined to arrive at Thomas Adès. Which does make the odd cornflake go down the wrong way. Grumble, grumble.
Administrator
I quite agree that such an article in the Guardian is a "good thing" and that it will dispel myths among some audiences who haven't even heard enough of it to 'dislike it'. The term 'classical music' is frequently disputed (I'm rather surprised that TS used it - if he did (can't be bothered to check whether he did use it or whether it was a sub's addition) ). But the painting comparison hardly holds as we don't speak of 'classical painting' in that way anyway. The term would surely refer, for example, to works by Poussin, Le Brun and similar schools, not to Delacroix or the Impressionists.
You say: "There isn't much that's "contemporary" about Adès,", but, in music, at least, I find it difficult to understand what critics would intend by the term if it doesn't include the works of a range of living composers, of whom Adès would be one but Tavener might not.
Full Member
If one thinks of music of the past, it was always "contemporary", insofar as one can "age" works by, say, Purcell, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Wagner, Ravel, Schoenberg or Stockhausen, and even those composers contemporary with them who composed in different styles, because each of these particular figures added something to the received idioms, respectively speaking, even at the same time as incorporating trusted principles of construction from the past.
The fact that, since the demise of atonality as a defnining characteristic of 20th century modernism, the revealing of this "dependence on the past" now seems to loom so large in "contemporary classical music", sometimes under the rubric of "postmodernism", with commentators prone to statements to the effect of art being, in a manner of speaking, perpetually condemned to recycle principles deemed intrinsic to itself, speaks to me of a lapse in confidence in a hopeful future - one in which humankind is eternally condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past and never learn vital lesons of history.
I remain to be persuaded to the contrary. Any offers welcomed!
Yes.
Full Member
I don't really understand why it seems to be expected of every composer that s/he contributes something new and original to musical composition, I mean apart from what is distinctive in terms of his own personality. There are of course ground-breaking composers such as those you have mentioned but for each of those there are many more that are not and that has surely always been the case - those composers providing the background idiom for Mozart for instance. One of the unfortunate consequences of concentrating only on the ground-breaking composers is that a large number of very fine composers have been extensively neglected (as Suffolkcoastal's researches show). Surely it is possible for a composer to contribute meaningfully by providing music that is recognisably his or hers and not anyone else's, without necessarily providing revolutionary advances?If one thinks of music of the past, it was always "contemporary", insofar as one can "age" works by, say, Purcell, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Wagner, Ravel, Schoenberg or Stockhausen, and even those composers contemporary with them who composed in different styles, because each of these particular figures added something to the received idioms, respectively speaking, even at the same time as incorporating trusted principles of construction from the past.
Full Member
I absolutely agree, aeolium. Sir Wiliam Walton may not have been to the forefront in terms of being an innovative composer, but I still love works of his, such as the Violin Concerto. I am not saying that a composer's only value lies in offering something new and worthwhile, encouraging to generations present and future to think ahead. What I am trying to say is that figureheads of this kind seemed to achieve greater prominence in the past than now, in terms of offering leadership and direction, such that lesser figures defined themselves in their light. One only has to read any book on contemporary music from the 1950s and 1960s to see how quickly these leading lights were recognised by the more perceptive critics of the time. Today we have figures like Alexander Goehr bemoaning the ironic fact that the last generally recognised greats in the canon of western music, Shostakovitch, Britten and Messiaen, are now gone, and unreplaced, and this, to me, bespeaks a lapse of confidence - one that is illustrated in the little discussion taking place on this forum about contemporary music, in my view.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote