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#161 ·
Chordalrock said:
So how about those Shostakovich symphonies, dudes, written to please Stalin's aesthetic guidelines? Shouldn't he have written them because, after all, his true preference was for esoteric modernist stuff, which you can hear in his string quartets that he had to hide from publishers?

How can you be a fan of the Shostakovich symphonies and at the same time argue that composers shouldn't "sacrifice" in order to write in popular styles? Cognitive dissonance, much?
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Except that wasn't a decision to write in a more popular style to gain popularity, it was possibly (probably) to save his life...
 
#163 · (Edited)
Chordalrock said:
Didn't Arvo Pärt change his style to become more popular? How do we know why great composers sometimes change their styles so that the end result is that their music is much more approachable?
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Let me propose something for anyone to ponder. People who think composer X set out to be popular, or changed styles to become popular or more popular, are either thinking of practical income from the result, or are daydream fantasizing vaguely about some romanticized notion of "glamorous fame," and in their imagination are putting those in the forefront as the artist's motivations. This is, by most changes of style on record as done by composers, and by what composers know of themselves and other artists, about as in reverse from the real reason as could be.

Some of the minimalists returned to simple triadic harmony because of the undeniable sonorous power of a simple triad. Those Slavic 'spiritual minimalists' were experiencing a blast of fresh air after decades of suppression of both religion, things mystical and having to adhere to something more literal and supportive of a Stalinist notion of 'what the proletariat need and can relate to.' That Spiritual Minimalist label could as readily be called neomedieval, and the switch to it a direct return to the freedom of expressing things spiritual or religious. A number of them jumped to return to what is literally associated with early Christian music, old modes and modal / tonal harmony.

The only contemporary classical composer I would dare name as having converted from a very advance musical vocabulary (while studying under Luciano Berio) to something wholly simple, harmonically retro and accessible for sheer gain in both popularity and monetary return is Ludovico Einaudi.

The rest of them are following what for them are very natural inclinations, and I can almost guarantee you they were not first directly thinking of 'popularity' and only a little, if much at all, thinking of 'accessiblity' or 'communicating with more people.'

I think you project this other angle on these situations because you seem very concerned with composers writing something which is easily accessible for you, and readily within your comfort zones re: 'not too dissonant.'

Most people really compose "what they can."

It is in the as the employer wants it / made to order arena of the more / most commercial musics -- music for films, video games, pop music, music for advertisements -- where composers calculatedly 'write to' audiences and are highly conscious about writing something which is instantly accessible to the world at large.
 
#164 ·
Chordalrock said:
Which should make his symphonies even more fake and fabricated in your opinion. So why do you still listen to them? Again, cognitive dissonance, much?
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Ok dude, I never said I couldn't enjoy more popular styles of music, first of all. Second of all, I never said to what degree I liked Shostakovich's symphonies. Try and stick to the real arguments instead of trying to pull a "gotcha question" on me.
 
#165 · (Edited)
Chordalrock said:
So how about those Shostakovich symphonies, dudes, written to please Stalin's aesthetic guidelines? Shouldn't he have written them because, after all, his true preference was for esoteric modernist stuff, which you can hear in his string quartets that he had to hide from publishers?
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This is silly. Shostakovich hid his quartets from publishers? Odd, given that he had them published! Several of his symphonies were certainly written "to order" since that was, after all, his job as a kapellmeister to the government (who employed him). In this he was no different from many composers through Haydn. In fact, several of his "to order" works are very fine indeed. Why shouldn't they be?
 
#166 · (Edited)
KenOC said:
This is silly. Shostakovich hid his quartets from publishers? Odd, given that he had them published!
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I can't find information on when he published them. Obviously, he lived a long life so could have published them at some point. Whatever, I was simply paraphrasing (perhaps incorrectly) something I read in a CD whats-it-called. It said he composed them for himself.

KenOC said:
Several of his symphonies were certainly written "to order" since that was, after all, his job as a kapellmeister to the government (who employed him). In this he was no different from many composers through Haydn. In fact, several of his "to order" works are very fine indeed. Why shouldn't they be?
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Composing "to order" and changing your style to compose "to order" are completely different things. I don't think Haydn drastically changed his style to please his patrons, but if he did, then you're simply arguing for my case rather than against it. :confused:
 
#167 · (Edited)
Chordalrock said:
I can't find information on when he published them. Obviously, he lived a long life so could have published them at some point.
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Shostakovich's opus numbers were assigned roughly in order of composition and publishing. see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Dmitri_Shostakovich

His quartets were eagerly awaited by their audiences and performed immediately, hardly a "secret" from anybody. The only works I know of that were kept "secret" were a few written after 1948, written "for the drawer" so to speak. These include his first violin concerto, certainly a notable work.
 
#168 · (Edited)
Chordalrock said:
Which should make his symphonies even more fake and fabricated in your opinion. So why do you still listen to them? Again, cognitive dissonance, much?
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I have yet, through all your posts, to hear any good argument why your particular taste and sense of what music should be ought to be humored and accommodated (especially when there is more than enough of what you like to satisfy and sate for decades to come, with more very much in line with that being regularly produced and coming along daily) -- while any who have a variant taste for music which is outside your personal parameters of what is musically acceptable are, it seems, to be systematically denied.

That is not discussion by any known definition of the word.
 
#170 · (Edited)
Chordalrock said:
I think that secretly every composer wants to be popular.
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Insert the word 'almost', between 'secretly' and 'every' and I'll agree with you. I'm sure someone here would be able to offer the name of a composer who didn't want a favourable response from the audience he wrote for (or who wrote only for himself and not for public consumption at all) but most wrote for an audience and I would say that they would be happy for the size of that audience to grow.

[Sorry, having trouble with my tenses - this is true of dead composers as well as the living.)

However, that doesn't mean that composers simply want to satisfy popular demands.

BTW, I listen to music because I like it, not because it has been composed by someone with a particular attitude to popularity.
 
#171 ·
PetrB said:
I have yet, through all your posts, to hear any good argument why your particular taste and sense of what music should be ought to be humored and accommodated (especially when there is more than enough of what you like to satisfy and sate for decades to come, with more very much in line with that being regularly produced and coming along daily) -- while any who have a variant taste for music which is outside your personal parameters of what is musically acceptable are, it seems, to be systematically denied.

That is not discussion by any known definition of the word.
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I agree with this. I have hundreds of CDs of music that satisfies me. When I went into a shop the other day and bought 42 CDs of Perahia which were being sold at less than 50p each the girl behind the counter said, "When are you going to listen to them?"
Point taken! I have enough good music to last me a lifetime. This is music I enjoy.
Hence modern composers, if they like, can go ahead and compose music which consists of banging, scrapings and general dissonance and it doesn't bother me in the slightest. Let them go ahead and compose it if people enjoy it. The only objection I have is when people suggest I should listen to music that I find unpleasant, go to concerts where it is played, buy recordings of it, or finance it in some way.
If people want music like this let them finance it. It is their choice. But please don't make it mine!
 
#172 ·
It's true that game music is composed with the popular taste in mind. For me and many others however, it is mostly unsatisfyingly simple and/or small-scale. For whatever reason, the pieces often last no more than half a minute or minute, and then are looped in the game. For example, while I really like that excerpt I posted, it's just a short section from an already short piece. And here's another example, a cool fugue, but it lasts only 50 seconds and I'd expect a great composer to do a lot more with that sort of material.

Movie music similarly has issues, at least in contemporary films that I'm familiar with. It's mostly composed as background music with typically only fleeting moments of musical interest. Sometimes its issues are the exact same as those of game music: too small scale, too much repetition. It's not even meant to be listened to on its own.
 
#173 ·
Mahlerian said:
No, that instinct is wrong. I also doubt that you yourself point to Schoenberg's op. 25 as some sort of turning point for the downfall of musical civilization. Don't you hate Pierrot lunaire just as much, if not more?

Schoenberg's music is very melodic, too.

Sorry - but I have to disagree with you. Yes - I do find 'Pierrot Lunaire' painful to listen to; there was a time when I persuaded myself otherwise, and even composed some 'atonal' and serial music myself! However - my argument is that Schoenberg was already experimenting with music 'without a tonal centre' well before he instituted the 12-tone system, but that it was the institution of that system that really sealed the major problem with so much 20th century music - it's being based on an *abstract* intellectual process that has no genuine relationship with how music works in practice for the vast majority of music lovers. Highly intellectual listeners (like yourself, perhaps?) may indeed get pleasure from the contemplation of mathematical formulae presented in sound, but for most people this is not the case. I'm fairly sure you won't agree with me, and I've had this argument repeatedly, but I believe that the 'meaning' of music derives fundamentally from the hierarchy of the harmonic series - when you ignore that, the results are musically unsatisfactory -however *intellectually* satisfying. Also I agree Schoenberg was a great melodist - *in his tonal music* - but in my opinion, however you may try, a 'melody' consisting of all 12 notes of the chromatic scale in succession is a complete non-starter; unless you do what Berg did and incorporate tonal elements in the series in the first place (which is why his serial music is more listenable than others.) For me the main reason why Stravinsky was the greatest composer of the 20th century, apart from his intrinsic musical talent, is that he found a way to write 'new' music which did not try to dispense with tonality (apart from in his late serial works, which for me are a failure, however ingenious they may be).
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#174 · (Edited)
'Most great composers do want people to enjoy their music...

But most great composers also aren't going to sacrifice their language, style and musical values just for the sake of "popularity" (thank God).'

I agree with this, but it does raise the question of why composers compose at all! If they are composing just for themselves and their own amusement, then their style is entirely their own business. If on the other hand music is a 'language' (which of course it is), then surely language is for communicating with other people; then the question arises - if the language you choose to compose in actually *doesn't* communicate very well to most other music-lovers, then should you not consider changing it? This is not the same thing as pursuing popularity for its own sake (and the money, of course!) - but it is about what you think the purpose of music is!

The New Lyricist
http://thenewlyricist.wordpress.com/
 
#175 ·
thenewlyricist said:
(apart from in his late serial works, which for me are a failure, however ingenious they may be).
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So, they are ingenious, but a failure nonetheless just because they are serial. Give me a break...

All your rant in a nutshell: "I don't like serial music...". Ok, point taken... NEXT!.
 
#176 ·
thenewlyricist said:
'Most great composers do want people to enjoy their music...

But most great composers also aren't going to sacrifice their language, style and musical values just for the sake of "popularity" (thank God).'

I agree with this, but it does raise the question of why composers compose at all! If they are composing just for themselves and their own amusement, then their style is entirely their own business. If on the other hand music is a 'language' (which of course it is), then surely language is for communicating with other people; then the question arises - if the language you choose to compose in actually *doesn't* communicate very well to most other music-lovers, then should you not consider changing it? This is not the same thing as pursuing popularity for its own sake (and the money, of course!) - but it is about what you think the purpose of music is!

The New Lyricist
http://thenewlyricist.wordpress.com/
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No, it's not a language for communicating to other people. Why it should be?, for that we already have.. well, languages!.
 
#177 ·
aleazk said:
All your rant in a nutshell: "I don't like serial music...". Ok, point taken... NEXT!.
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It seems that at some point, composers no longer wanted to hear about natural limits & tendencies inherent to certain types of sound and how they interacted with the human physiology. Of course, when you stop acknowledging reality, everything seems to boil down to pure opinion. This doesn't mean reality ceases to exist, and typically marginalisation results even for the greatest artist (e.g. Stravinsky's serialist stuff).

There is a fetish for everything a bit twisted, and there is also a fetish for types of music that are a bit twisted and that normal people would never care for. Being into this sort of thing doesn't make you open minded and better than other music lovers, it just means you like something that the vast majority of people will never understand the appeal of at all, period. If you plan to be a composer, you may want to think about this fact before wasting thirty years composing stuff you'll later regret wasting time on.
 
#178 ·
thenewlyricist said:
... it's being based on an *abstract* intellectual process that has no genuine relationship with how music works in practice for the vast majority of music lovers... mathematical formulae presented in sound... a 'melody' consisting of all 12 notes of the chromatic scale in succession is a complete non-starter...
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Evidently, you have very little idea about 12-tone composition...

First, once you establish the row, all the music is composed using the exact same criteria that are used for composing any music: gestures and counter-gestures, motivic development, etc., and it's completely up to the composer, there's no abstract intellectual method, just the old fashioned "inner ear" of the composer.

Second, mathematical formulae?, where?... a permutation, an inversion?... then almost every composer that used even basic counterpoint was using "mathematical formulae"...

Third, nobody uses the tone row as a melody... in fact, in most serial pieces you don't even hear the row, it's used in the background as a structural device for the music. What you actually hear are small motifs, which compose just a section of the row. A typical example is Webern, who selected his rows based on the properties they had regarding the inner motifs in them.
 
#179 ·
Chordalrock said:
It seems that at some point, composers no longer wanted to hear about natural limits & tendencies inherent to certain types of sound and how they interacted with the human physiology. Of course, when you stop acknowledging reality, everything seems to boil down to pure opinion. This doesn't mean reality ceases to exist, and typically marginalisation results even for the greatest artist (e.g. Stravinsky's serialist stuff).
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Please, explain to me these natural limits posed by physiology... I'm all ears...

Chordalrock said:
There is a fetish for everything a bit twisted, and there is also a fetish for types of music that are a bit twisted and that normal people would never care for. Being into this sort of thing doesn't make you open minded and better than other music lovers, it just means you like something that the vast majority of people will never understand the appeal of at all, period. If you plan to be a composer, you may want to think about this fact before wasting thirty years composing stuff you'll later regret wasting time on.
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No, I don't plan to become a professional composer, I already have a career in another field.

Also, I'm neither an expert in 12-composition nor I use it in my own compositions. My harmonic language is chromatic.
 
#180 · (Edited)
aleazk said:
Please, explain to me these natural limits posed by physiology... I'm all ears...
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Like physics, I'm not an expert, but I know there are laws.

My impression is that there are a very limited number of ways in which you can perceive harmony and melody: as color, as color + dissonance / consonance (jazz), as functional + dissonance / consonance (CPP), and as color + functional + dissonance / consonance.

I can't think of any other way to perceive harmony, and some of those ways you have to be careful exactly what kinds of sounds you are producing or you end up producing dissonance when you mean simply to add color. And of course when you produce too much unresolved dissonance when you're meaning to produce colour, you're failing badly at what you're doing.

I also suppose if you listen to very dissonant stuff a lot, you may become desensitised to its dissonant quality and begin to perceive it more as color, which is a problem if this isn't how the vast majority of people perceive it.

Also, if you mean to write functional harmony, but you use harmony too much as color, you're going to fail. And if you want to use jazz harmony but the melody note isn't far enough from the chord or different enough in timbre, and you want it to be in a dissonant relationship, it will just fuse itself to the chord and become color. I'm sure there are other considerations that I'm not able to think of right now.
 
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