Ok
,
First of all: a nice, controverse and constructive topic!
godzillaviolist said:
But you are not arguing for what is natural but what is traditional. Our lives are not "natural" in the sense that we live in a world we have created. If we used nature's rules for music, we would only have nature's music; raindrops, wind in the trees, thunder ect.
Now, can you honestly imagine something so bizzare and unnatural as a piano existing in nature?
I am not! I am writing abut natural feelings. What you describe are natural sounds and of course kind of music. But this is physical nature. Natural is what way the natural rules go. Difficult to describe (especially because here I feel my English vocabulary limitated). You can describe emotions, feelings, behaviors in music. Any motion is sound or music. And you are like one filtering out of this "flow" of life. You concentrate it on a paper and - express your idea! But you didn't "create" it, it is what you made of existing material, like a focus. What is the intension do you have? This are personal questions, and any composer finds his own answer. I respect them all.
godzillaviolist said:
Also the sense of classical harmony is not inborn; perhaps you feel that way because you grew up surrounded by it and thus don't have a conscious memory of imbibing it. Classical harmony only became stable around 1700 and stopped becoming so around 1900; two hundred years in the thousands of years of human history.
I disagree. It is inborn, but sometimes hard to find. Maybe if you grow up with only dissonant music for example, I am completly sure you'll find it "normal", but I am also completly sure, that you destroy the human soul and sensitivity.
Disharmony remains disharmony, harmony remains harmony. Consonance remains consonance, dissonance remains dissonance. This are facts, you cannot change it. And for me life is they way to reach harmony. So it is definately logical to go for harmony. That it can be a way with dissonances also, which are cleared up, is included.
And another thing, I can understand the way how music went, but do I have to follow the time, if it is absolutlely against my convinction? No!
godzillaviolist said:
Not solved in the traditional way, but you were reffering to them never having any consonances at all.
I must repeat: I said "mostly" not "only".
godzillaviolist said:
Could you tell me some of the modern works you've listened to? If I knew that, I think I could better understand where you are coming from ( for example; Penderecki's threnody is a world apart from Stravinsky's Sacre ).
Some works which I have been listened to or in exerpts:
Ligeti: work with sounds and voices (Don't remember the title)
Rautavaara: Etude (this is very interesting)
Stockhausen: Song of the youths
Some works by German Professors (mostly atonal)
Schönberg
Rihm: a piano piece; or so
Berg or Webern
Höller: organ piece (if I remember the name right)
...
Yes many of "older" avant garde, but the problem I do have in many works is: It hurts me so much, that I must turn off the sound.
Another question I want to ask you all: Is
any music worth to listen to?
godzillaviolist said:
But I'd hardly blame dead modernist composers for unhappy people.
I didn't mean that. For many composers music can be kind of a therapy in writing, if you understand what I mean.
godzillaviolist said:
I hate to be harsh, but writing music in tonal idiom is unlikely to change people's moods. Unless of course what's getting them down is someone playing Boulez twenty-four hours a day.
It may come as a suprise to you, but dissonant music doesn't make me grim, it can even make me happy
I often listening to Scriabin to cheer myself up, and Prokofiev can always brighten my day and relax me.
It comes up that things are a question of taste (which sounds very general, but one cannot change it). You can change moods with tonal music, definately! (yes difficult to argue here, because one says yes, the other one no)
For my inner belief many music of our days (I say many, I don't generalize it) is writing more for the brain as for the heart of listeners.
From a sunny Germany
Daniel