Some people can redo classical electronically RIGHT

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Teo

Member
I know we usually want our classical music - especially romantic - done in some kind of original way, not all modernized.. but I fear this fellow may have redone romantic classical as beautiful as any symphony, comments?

https://www.reverbnation.com/vasilisginos

Mahler, Debussy and Satie

Thanks for your time
 

JHC

Chief assistant to the assistant chief
Not my cup of tea but I have heard very much worse under the guise of modern music, The Satie was ruined 100%.
 

Teo

Member
The Mahler was sort of OK though eh? I really appreciate the comment! I'm normally allergic to electronic redoings - except maybe Baroque like switched-on-Bach (hope I didn't just make enemies..)

Saying you've heard very much worse, is a great compliment.

Thank you VERY much for your time and comments.
-Teo
:clap:
 

JHC

Chief assistant to the assistant chief
Just slightly off topic well quite a lot really but your siggy quote (Wagner's music is better than it sounds. - Mark Twain's Autobiography) This is what followers of modern music keep telling me
 

some guy

New member
Just slightly off topic well quite a lot really but your siggy quote (Wagner's music is better than it sounds. - Mark Twain's Autobiography) This is what followers of modern music keep telling me
Followers of modern music keep telling you that Wagner's music is better than it sounds? Extraordinary. I don't recall ever saying this to you, but maybe there are others who do. Still, seems odd.
 

JHC

Chief assistant to the assistant chief
I am so sorry some guy I forget that some people have problems in grasping the gist of colloquial English as well as the bleeding obvious, but I think you know very well what I mean.
You are quite right in that you don’t recall saying this to me ‘well done’ but there are other people that communicate with me regarding modern music hard for you to believe but true.
 

some guy

New member
I am so sorry some guy I forget that some people have problems in grasping the gist of colloquial English as well as the bleeding obvious, but I think you know very well what I mean.
You are quite right in that you don’t recall saying this to me ‘well done’ but there are other people that communicate with me regarding modern music hard for you to believe but true.
Yes, I think it is very clear from my post that I do indeed know what you meant.*

It is also true that I do not believe that fans of modern music spend any time at all talking to you and if they do, it is certainly not to say something snarky like "modern music is better than it sounds."

There are, I am sure, people who say that kind of thing to you. I'm just skeptical about their being modernist fans. Fans of modern music, hard as it is for you to believe, think that modern music sounds fine.

*I also know that you did not say what you meant.
 

JHC

Chief assistant to the assistant chief
*I also know that you did not say what you meant.

Please elucidate.

Regarding the rest of your post I did not say “Fans of” they are just ordinary music lovers that appreciate the same type of music that I do.
I realise these Fans that you mention like modern music and good on em but the vast number of music lovers think that most of it sounds just terrible to them.
 

some guy

New member
"Just ordinary music lovers that appreciate the same type of music that I do" sounds quite remarkably different from "followers of modern music." And "the vast number of music lovers" is not even close.

No fair changing categories in mid-argument, you know. Either it's followers of modern music who say these pernicious things about the music they love, or it's someone else saying it. Apparently, you're acknowledging (without acknowledging) that I was right. OK.

On anther topic, perhaps it is true that "the vast number of music lovers think that most of [modern music] sounds just terrible," though I doubt it. For one, that statement presupposes experience with quite a lot of modern music. And that is just what the vast majority of music lovers do not have. Perhaps you want to finesse that statement as well, from "most of it," to "most of what they've heard," which is precious little. Be fair, who goes out of their way to listen to a wide range of music that they already think they don't like just so that they can confidently assert that they don't like it? Easier to just assert without the experience; and that is exactly what happens.

And why, pray tell, is it the people without much experience, and whose limited exposure is pitifully small, who get to be the ones who decide whether or not something "sounds terrible" or not? None of the fans think it sounds terrible at all, not surprisingly. They are fans, after all. But how did they get to be fans? Good question. By liking what they heard.
 

JHC

Chief assistant to the assistant chief
some guy you must be tired try again when you have had a nights sleep! you are getting things mixed up and seem confused.
I made a simple one liner which most people would see as a humorous throw away comment and leave it at that, but not you eh lets milk this for all its worth. It almost seems as if you are attacking me not the fact that I made a remark that makes a joke out of someones signature??
If you really want to twist my every word and phrase to suit some argument you seem hell bent on having then please do it methodically step by step. In the end you will have to admit that only a small percentage enjoy avant garde music.
 

some guy

New member
Well, JHC, you clearly do not want to have a conversation. So I'll leave this particular train wreck with one observation: I have done no twisting at all of any kind. The only person to do any twisting of your words is you, and simply to avoid taking any responsibility for what you said.

Just a joke?

Not funny.:p

[Edit: One more thing. The market share for classical music in its entirety has been pretty stable at 3% for quite some time now. I suppose you'll be admitting now that only a very small percentage of all humans like classical music of any kind.]
 
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JHC

Chief assistant to the assistant chief
Well, JHC, you clearly do not want to have a conversation. So I'll leave this particular train wreck with one observation: I have done no twisting at all of any kind. The only person to do any twisting of your words is you, and simply to avoid taking any responsibility for what you said.

Just a joke?

Not funny.:p
Do you mean that what you have posted is a joke that is not funny because I don’t agree it is hilarious. just absolute rubbish as usual. As I said before “
If you really want to twist my every word and phrase to suit some argument you seem hell bent on having then please do it methodically step by step” but I would rather keep to a musical discussion.
[Edit: One more thing. The market share for classical music in its entirety has been pretty stable at 3% for quite some time now. I suppose you'll be admitting now that only a very small percentage of all humans like classical music of any kind.]

Admitting?? I have never said otherwise so I don’t understand what you are hinting at.
3% is less than I thought but I am not surprised there are many reasons for this but I assume that is not what you want to converse about. btw what percentage of this 3% is represented by your type of music ?
Now if you want to discuss the music that you are so
passionate about how about giving an example and we can take it from there
 

some guy

New member
So, five whole days. Five whole days without one single post to any thread in the classical music forum

Not a very active forum.

So I might as well continue the derailing of this thread. No one's around to object, anyway.

So JHC says that if I want to discuss the music I like, I should give an example, and then "we can take it from there."

Well, here's my question for JHC, aside from the very ordinary liking to talk about the music I enjoy, a thing I share with every other person in the world, no matter what kind of music they prefer, what is my specific incentive for doing something of that sort here at Magle International?

There's some disincentive, for sure, starting with the aspects of the classical music forum that resemble a ghost town.

Other than that, there's JHC. How do you suppose you would respond to an example? I'm thinking, on the basis of this, "most of it sounds just terrible," that the response would not be remarkably colleagial or otherwise friendly.

And these words "just absolute rubbish as usual" do appear to corroborate my conclusion, rather.

I am always amazed by how often people invite their fellow travellers to a nice game of "heads I win, tails you lose," and are even put out by being declined.
 
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sandal

New member
The silence of the forum does not mean we have given in to various antics that some have been trying to pass as "music". There is nothing wrong in being avant-garde, as such. Many great composers of the past were the avant-gard of their times. That's how crafts progress: by "natural selection" among the many avant-gard and consigning the rest to oblivion. Yet the "selected" have always been those who wrote music for listening. It has been the misfortune of the 20th century to witness the birth of a new "aesthetic", championed by people entrenched especially in the academia, the self-assigned gate-keepers of arts, who upheld a "music" not primarily intended for listening but for reading or for even funnier purposes. The art music audiences loathed their preferences and for decades persistently stayed away from any performance (to the extent they could actually be performed) of their antics, and the tide, which peaked sometime around 1950s, 60s now seems to have definitely turned. The serialists, aleatorics, helicopterix, etc&Co are all in steep decline and we are more or less back to a sensible outlook to art music; and now we look forward to the already emerging new avant-gard, writing new, revolutionary music, and of course for listening (are you listening Adorno?) , as it naturally should be.

And now, back to the silence whence I came, hoping not to be disturbed again for a bygone frivolity.
 
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JHC

Chief assistant to the assistant chief
A good post sandal now we have the makings of an informative discussion I look forward with great anticipation to Some guys response and please don't go back to sleep.
 

some guy

New member
Wow. Really, sandal?

All composers have always written music to be listened to. All.*

"Various antics that some have been trying to pass as 'music'" is a dead giveaway. Of an attitude. It is an attitude, just by the way, that started long before the twentieth century, and you can find practically every criticism that has been leveled against twentieth century music also leveled against nineteenth century music. Eighteenth not so much, because the attitude didn't really get going until the turn of that century.

Really, guys. Get the facts right, first. Then we can have a discussion. The only information in sandal's post is information about a history of twentieth century music that consists entirely of chimera. I remember having heard, and accepted, that "history" over forty years ago. Though it always puzzled me that things should have happened that way, as I had already fallen in love (instantly, by the way) with twentieth century music, and was happily listening to all sorts of delightful things. So even though the "history" seemed logical--composers write difficult or hideous music, then audiences begin avoiding it--it bothered me. The music seemed neither difficult nor hideous to me. And as my explorations took me closer and closer to my own time (which was the 1970's, at the time), I still kept finding only music that I enjoyed listening to.

So we have here first of all a situation in which some people like what they hear and some don't. So what's to choose between those two groups? Nothing. So why is it that the second group is always the one that gets to be "the valid perspective"? That just doesn't make any sense. I have found, I must say, that if you are in the second group, it is almost impossible to convince you of the validity of the first group.

In any case, my bewilderment and unease were very sweetly set to rest once I had read some genuine history. There I found that the anti-modernist attitude had started up in the late 18th, early 19th century. It grew throughout the 19th century, peaking in the 1860s and then again right around 1900. In other words, both peaks (and there was a smaller one around 1840**) preceded any of the horrible avant-garde experimentation of Schoenberg or Stravinsky, whose works were supposedly the ones that set off this mass exodus from the concert halls.

Funny thing, too. The concert halls seem still to be occupied by classical music fans--though financially, there's not enough money from them to keep every hall open--but what you don't find in them is very much music of any avant-garde. The halls are quite remarkably free from those kinds of music. Which raises an interesting question, what are people still whinging about?

Well, if the whinging started out rather disconnected to any actual experience--as it seems to have done--then it should be no surprise that it should continue along those lines. In the nineteenth century, the attitude was directed towards whatever was new at the time, Beethoven, Berlioz, Chopin, Bizet (he's the guy who wrote an opera with no tunes in it, recall), Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Bruckner, Mahler, Debussy. The only "new" thing that happened in the twentieth century regarding the attitude was that it somehow got successfully attached to one person (or to one "style," at least) and stayed attached for, well, it still seems to be attached, though people who manage to actually listen to some Schoenberg with open and sympathetic ears find that it is clearly late-Romantic music, all of it. And quite pleasant to listen to.

It has definitely remained attached, however, to an idea. To a chimera called, variously, "avant-garde" or "atonal" or even simply "modern." And since it precedes experience, whenever any particular piece is actually heard (and how often does the opportunity even arise?), it is easy to reject it instantly. So easy, since you already knew it would be horrible. Kinda like avant-garde pieces are the vegetables of the music world, things that you don't like even before you taste them.

*There a couple of exceptions to this, but I doubt that sandal is referring to either.

**This was smaller, but still serious enough for a Viennese critic to say these words: "the public has got to stay in touch with the music of its time . . . for otherwise people will gradually come to mistrust music claimed to be the best." That was written in 1843. Turned out to be quite prophetic.
 
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sandal

New member
The new musics of the past, the successful avant-gardes, by definition, have almost all encountered, to this or that reasonable extent, some initial resistance from the audiences and from the experts of the then prevailing stile anticos, before being embraced sooner rather than later, by significant majorities of both. It was only the antics of the 20th century that particularly the audiences defiantly rejected almost en masse for nearly a century till its imminent demise. That was despite an academic establishment, especially, that regarded as anathema anything not fully compliant with the new "aesthetic" and the relevant techniques, and their arrogant and total(itarian) rejection, outright humiliation and ostracising of anything or anyone who dared question the "new speak" or go her own way.

Though not totally over, people have largely thrown off the yoke. The 20th century, besides the antics, also witnessed the birth or growth of quite a few new styles that created some great works, among the best ever, and we have every reason to hope that the 21st will be even more fruitful. As to the antics, I personally think its practice among consenting adults should not be subject to statutory regulation; they should be absolutely free to practice their cults, hold their rituals including setting to fire a grand piano on stage or pushing it over the edge or not touching it at all and what not, provided they don't get an unproportional share of public funds or of academic posts, and provided they are not allowed to reign terror anywhere.

Yeah, I guess that's about it! I rest my case.
 
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