Some people can redo classical electronically RIGHT

[some guy]

It'd be more of a "case," if there were some specifics. Pretty much the second post repeats the points of the first post, but without providing any sort of support. And of course, resting your case sends quite a strong signal that the conversation, such as it is, is over. And you get the last word.

Um, no.

Time, first of all, for some specifics. Name some names. Who are these monsters that did all these terrible things? What are the terrible things? What, if nothing else, are these "antics" you keep referring to? And why do you think you get to dismiss them with words like "antics"?

Here's what happened to me. As briefly as possible. I started listening to classical music when I was around nine. That meant, just because of the particular 78s I inherited that year, Haydn, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Grieg, Schumann, and Weber. Beethoven followed shortly thereafter. I was insatiable. This music was so compelling, so addictive. In about eleven or twelve years, I had listened to most of the standard repertoire and quite a lot of non-standard stuff. (Berwald, Biber, Suk.) Then I heard some Bartok. And that started off round two, which was even more impressive, even more addictive than the first round. I was insatiable. I went to Stravinsky, then Carter, then Varese and electronic (electroacoustic) music generally. And more Prokofiev. And Shostakovich and Mumma and Cage and Stockhausen and Ligeti and Xenakis and Oliveros and Shields and Tudor and on and on. And then Galas and Lachenmann and Amacher and Dhomont and eRikm and Marchetti (Walter and Lionel--no relation). And of course, more on and on.

Then, after having sidestepped them for thirty years, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Wellesz, Sessions, Searle, and such. (I'd already become enamoured of Gerhard and Skalkottas.) Lovely, lovely stuff. Compelling and addictive. And wildly beautiful.

This is the stuff you're dumping on, in a way that ignores history, that ignores the development of the anti-modernist bias that you exemplify, and that ignores the most salient fact about it, that it was fully developed and fully established before the twentieth century antics you reference. (Reference without identifying, still. Do some of that, now, please.) Before the twentieth century had even started.

And you are trampling on stuff* that I love and that I have found lovely. And traducing some anonymous academics for arrogance and rejection and humiliation and ostracising. Which is all my eye.

As for audiences defiantly rejecting things for nearly a century, well, which audiences? I have gone to hundreds of concerts of new music--hundreds a year for the past ten years. There's always somebody there, defiantly enjoying all these antics. And they are not, your name-calling notwithstanding, cult members holding rituals. Do you actually know any of these people who do attend new music concerts and who do enjoy new music? Why, they're quite lovely people, too. They listen to top 40 radio, too, some of them. They listen to Haydn and Schumann, too, many of them. (I know I do.) They have spouses and children and pets. They have jobs in shops and in hospitals and in schools. They drive trucks and serve meals in restaurants and spend free time in parks and in movie theaters. Quite ordinary folk, really, these terrorists of yours.

But all of that is off-topic, as all ad hominems and ad populums are, by definition. Which is why those two things, among others, are considered to be off-limits for civilized conversation.

*Well, near as I can guess. Because until you start naming some names, we none of us really know what you are talking about aside from some vague "antic" music.

 

[JHC]

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..........................................................

A good try but lets concentrate on the actual music and not the history which is perhaps a little circumstantial, the reason that most people don’t care for it are surprisingly few but very basic and you have touched upon some but without getting bogged down on the definition of “MUSIC” I must say for me music should have melody, harmony, form, pattern, rhythm, consonant intervals, tonality now if it only has a couple of these I can listen to it but some that I have heard on the radio and in the concert halls falls short on that content.
It is not for the want of trying believe me I still attempt some Tuesday evenings to listen to our local radio station that has a program devoted to AG and modern music but its not for me.
Remember Schoenberg after an unsympathetic comment on his music reputedly replied “one day newspaper boys will be whistling my music” well that didn’t happen.
Before you accuse me of knocking this type of music I am saying why many others and I find little to nothing in it that is enjoyable.
You admonish sandal for saying it is over yet you said similar on your post #12 “So I'll leave this particular train wreck with one observation,”
I ask once more for you to post some piece of music and explain it to us in your own words.

 

[some guy]

JHC, I too have a request, that you stop asking for something you're just not going to get, and to stop making that the idee fixe of this conversation. Just have a conversation, maybe. I've already said what I think about your request. I'll add that the last hundred years have been a veritable explosion of creativity, and that there is no one piece (there are no hundred pieces) that can represent all the incredible variety of the last hundred years.

I would also like from you what I have asked for from sandal, some specifics. Not "this type of music" but specific pieces that exemplify "this type of music." What is your local radio station and what, specifically, do they play on Tuesday evenings? "AG" could be just about anything. Do they play Skalkottas? Do they play Mumma? Do they play Tudor? Do they play Wellesz or Searle or Ferrari? What? These few people are all quite different from each other, but could any of them be referred to as "avant-garde" or as "modern." And, given that it's a radio station, it is more than likely going to be something quite old and hardly avant any more.

And, in any case, if "it" is not for you, if there is nothing in "it" for you that is enjoyable, why do you not just leave "it" be? Why do you keep swiping at "it"? Why not just listen to what you like and let other people listen to, and talk about, what they like without the constant stream of reminders that you don't like "it" and that most other people don't like "it" either? So what? Most people don't like any classical music of any kind. Means nothing. (It certainly does not mean that Justin Bieber is the best music in the world.)

 

[Krummhorn]

This thread has seriously gone off topic and is now closed to further posting.