@Another User said:

Most of them are harmonically illiterate beyond the very basics of functional harmony (even university graduates!)

Just want to relay my own university experience from a number of decades ago:

I was really looking forward to studying 18th century counterpoint.  It was a subject I knew little about, but something, given my interests, that I knew I would find vauable...

The class was taught by the music department's new music prof.  He spent almost the entire semester - when he was there that is (the class only met about 1/2 the scheduled sessions) talking about new music.  I came into class knowing little, I exited the class knowing little (quite a contrast from the "old school" harmony prof who drilled us endlessly).

A few serious general comments:

Given the culture of postmodernism, coupled with Nietzsche and other subsequent philosophers (French deconstructionists in particular), that the noise of so much "modern" work reflects much of where the West, in particular, is at is not a shock.  That the skill levels are declining is not unexpected. 

Consider the reversal regarding knowledge that exists under the deconstructionists (Foucault especially).  Instead of knowledge being power - for example a noted heart surgeon being more highly regarded than a first year general intern - that has been reversed so that power now determines knowledge.  Simply stated, those who have power dictate what is considered knowledge.  The philosopher then insists that anyone who claims to have knowledge actually is merely trying to exercise his/her power over another person, that the claim to having real knowledge is false, and the person/group claiming knowledge can simply be disregarded (of course one is not to treat the philosopher's own writings in the same manner).

While it is sometimes easy to ignore what goes on in some of the "ivory towers" the difficulty comes when those philosophies trickle down into day to day life.  They morph in very different ways, and it is then no surprise that someone who simply strings loops together will disdain someone who practices a serious musical craft.  The one practicing the serious craft is merely trying to play power games over the "loop stringer".  The reality that the serious composer is actually correct is of no consequence.

One only needs to examine Roman architecture/sculpture from say the early 4th century compared to the 1st to see a parallel historical decline.

Personally, it is worth it to proclaim a different position than what is going on with much of so-called "creativity".  That is also one reason I enjoy many of the discussions on the VSL forums.

"Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible."

    Frank Zappa

@kenneth.newby said:

 

"Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible."

    Frank Zappa

Only in case you know the norm and know rules that you are breaking and why 😉

@Another User said:

I was really looking forward to studying 18th century counterpoint.  It was a subject I knew little about, but something, given my interests, that I knew I would find vauable...

The class was taught by the music department's new music prof.  He spent almost the entire semester - when he was there that is (the class only met about 1/2 the scheduled sessions) talking about new music.  I came into class knowing little, I exited the class knowing little (quite a contrast from the "old school" harmony prof who drilled us endlessly).

A few serious general comments:

Given the culture of postmodernism, coupled with Nietzsche and other subsequent philosophers (French deconstructionists in particular), that the noise of so much "modern" work reflects much of where the West, in particular, is at is not a shock.  That the skill levels are declining is not unexpected. 

Most people here and in universities don't care much for 18th century counterpoint, and most wouldn't know there are differences between that and 16th century counterpoint, let alone what those are... In fact, they don't care for anything in music that is actually pretty hard and takes years to learn, let alone master. People claim they are serious about being "composers" of orchestral music - both in and out of academia, however they refuse, or are never required, to build those skills that everybody in the past - even John Cage - did possess to at least an acceptable degree, before they branched out into experimentation. The complexity of modern music 'proper' for the last 100 years (that most guys in film could never fathom, nor do they need to) is directly derived and based on the highest and most intricate achievements in harmony and polyphony over the last 500 years. 

Finally, I don't see much to connect Nietzche and the dreary French post-modernist bunch, although I am far from an expert. I just know that I have enjoyed reading most of Nietzche's work and regretted wasting time on the latter.

Errikos wrote:

"Most people here and in universities don't care much for 18th century counterpoint, and most wouldn't know there are differences between that and 16th century counterpoint, let alone what those are..."

Oh I see you obviously dont know my site which favours not only very much of for instance bach's and others counterpoint but also many interesting examples of little known but very well developped 19th century counterpoint-compositions (Klengel, Draeseke, Nicode and some others which I am trying to propagate a bit with my web-project).

Even if I confess that I am guilty to have studied at an university, there is at least a tiny hope that I am not completly ignorant when it comes to counterpoint, but I also confess that does not keep me from apreciating music of the 20th century as music of the 20th century as I appreciate music of the 18th century as music of the 18th century.

(But of course I am nearly completly ignorant on the field of christmas carols so please errikos post at least one or two of your finest CC-Masterworks to bring my poor academic mind on a higher level of musical conciosness 😉)

noldar, that is a very interesting post and profoundly true about post modernist thought.  I believe Post Modernism originated in valuable observations about the debatable relativity of "truth," "knowledge," etc. but has degenerated into a devaluation of any meaning in any field of endeavor.  A brilliant, massive book called "Madness and Modernism" by Louis Sass, a psychiatrist with wide-ranging erudition in psychology, philosophy, literature and art has pointed out the astonishingly close parallels between schizophrenia and modern - especially post-modern - art, philosophy and literature.  In fact, to most perfectly create a genuinely Modern work of art, one MUST adopt a schizoid frame of mind. 

I hasten to add that many of the works created in this way I really like - works as divergent as de Chirico's great early paintings or one of my favorite films, Resnais' "Last Year at Marienbad" or as Errikos mentioned the great writings of Nietchze whose philosophy prefigures so much of the modern era.  But still,  it is unsettling to think that "to be modern"' is to be mentally ill.  😛

However cool, smart, sophisticated and so on Foucault, Derida, Sloterdijk and their friends might be, to me the most significant knowledge we got from "post-modernism" is just what the name itself tells us.

"Modern" is no longer "modern" but just another page of (musical) history.

OK, now we must no longer try to do anything "better as" it remains enough to do things just "good". That is true for me not only for Boulez, and Nono, Xenakis or Ligeti (who all defenitly have done enough things good to remain interesting even after Modernis is gone), as it is true for Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms Mahler, Berg and so on. who all likewise have done enough things that good, that I personally dont need to decide who ever was "better as".

That is why I dont have any problem wether someone does film, or intended "serious" music, tonal or atonal music. Even if I have studied at the university, read Kant, Adorno, Foucault, Derrida etc blabla, I do still have my ears that judge what I like.

I can not find any necessity to be "schizoid"  or "ill" at all, I feel in best health when I just do today what I like to do today let it be historic inspired, or by modernism, by an specific functional occasion, or simply by christmas😉.

(Post retracted)

Reading some of the remarks uttered in this thread, I assume some of you guys have nice patches of lawn in front of your houses that you frequently tell whippersnappers to get off of ... 😕😃

Thank You errikos, that you corrected you last posting. It was definitly right and necessary to do so.

Please dont take the difference between "good" and "better" to easy. "Good" does as I understand it not necessarily needs "Progress" like "better" does. Modernism is as far as I know based on the Idea of progress.

This central aspect seems to me lost since "postmodernism". This difference is at least for me important, because it gives different historic solutions/styles/musical languages their own historical ("relative") justification in "relation" to their own context.

I do not belong to those who only think of something "nihilating" when they hear thatt postmodernism makes values "relative". For me to judge in relation to a certain concret context allows useable positive (relative) judgements which seem to me in a general meaing at least difficult if not simply wrong. At the end of this for me one still has to judge if something is in its own context "good",  And again in my eyes no one needs do be ill or schizoid just to make the difference between different contextes. (For instance to let 18th century be the 18th century, the 20th century the 20th and today again something quite different.)

And yes that is why I personally do not take any offense in the fact that others follow other values than I do. If I would write filmmusic. I presumably would try to use all available technical means to let the music do their job in the certain film, But I am personally not that interested in that what allows me to put my focus more on other things I am more interested in. 

I don't really want to derail the direction of the thread...

Very briefly the connection between Nietzsche and the French Postmondernists has to do with the latter's buidling off of some of Nietzche's positions, especially as it relates to morality, the death of God, and the corresponding death of truth.  Personally, philosophically, I would say "no" to both, but that is an entirely different subject, and one not really suitable for this forum.

In terms of my own compositions (I do not claim to be a "pro"), even without any formal composition training, I came out of college being able to write all kinds of atonal works, serialism, etc., etc.  Could I write (at that point) an actual fugue that worked harmonically?  No.  That is not to say or imply that no "good" atonal works exist.  Penderecki in particular struck me as someone who really knew what he was doing (unlike some others).  The point is, to actually understand how harmony and counterpoint work and compose accordingly takes a degree of effort that I suspect most are just not interested in.

As for Cage, my favorite story about him remains his interest in mushrooms.  He remarked that if he approached his mushroom collecting and eating in the same way he approached his music, he would soon be dead.  One simply can't eat any old mushroom by chance.  IMO, whatever one may think about his music, a cohesive thought-system is not part of the equation.  Of course, postmodernism would debate if any sort of a cohesive thought-system is possible.

To me, some of the "modern" composers do have serious things to say, regardless of whether I "like" their music or not.  Others, and I would put Cage in this camp, even though they are saying things, seem to be selling form rather than substance.

"Mushrooms. Teaching machines. Therapy-machines aiding people to form their brainwaves, shifting waves shape from that of anxiety to that of poise, invention."

     John Cage - M (Writings '67-'72)

The way you experienced composition teaching, reminds me how,

- Frederic II was not satisfied by Bachs "oldfashioned Fugues,

- Schumann was not satisfied by the "verzopfte" classical Harmonic and formal Cnventions,

- Wagner was tired of Mendelssohn brilliant compositions

- Brahms was tired of Liszts "neudeutsche" chromatic experiments,

- Schoenberg (who wrote one of the best and most comprehensive Theoriy of traditional Harmony) was no longer satisfied by harmonic and melodic conventions of late romantism

and so on......

I think I would be likewise not satisfied, if the dodecaphonic theory and Cages experiments would be all that would be told me when I would have asked for composition-advice.

But honestly: if ever I would compose anything, (I am currently not that much interested in) I would never start doing anything other teach me what I "should" do, but first would care for what I want to do and then search a way to learn all I need to realise what I intend. That is the reason, why I would not give oldfashionteachers that much significance.

One standard I use shamelessly to evaluate 'the good stuff' is to review, occasionally, what's in my digital music library.  When I look at the entries for Cage's music I find a lot of his works for prepared piano... The Perilous Night, Sonatas and Interludes, etc.  A lot of the work from that period shows his interest and, yes, skill in a more structured, intentional, expressive kind of music.  

The later work, after he got discouraged by having his 'intentional' work 'misunderstood' and moved to using chance procedures to take out those intentions, is largely absent from my library.  I don't care to hear it often enough to take up the space.  The one exception being Atlas Eclipticalis (for 85 musicians), interesting as an example of how relatively random selection of events sounds on that large scale.  Kinda interesting, but not something one needs to repeat too many times. Interesting to compare to the total serial works produced by Babbit, or Boulez in the '50s.  Extreme indeterminacy, extreme structure... they sound much the same.  The sweet spot is somewhere between the chaos and the order.  The chaosmos as Joyce punned it.  

With respect to studies of the musical systems of the past, Knud Jeppesen's book Counterpoint: the Polyphonic Vocal Style of the Sixteenth Century is very interesting as he spends the first part of the book tracing the evolution of theories of melodic relationships and movement leading up to the practices of 16th century polyphonic writing. That's one of the gems of his book as it provides a lot of interesting theory that suggest alternate ways of thinking about how to work more than one line together at a time than the tried and true avoidance of parallel 5ths, 8vas, working with contrary motion, balancing contour, etc.  And you don't need a university education to learn any of this stuff.  It's all at the library, i.e. the internet.

I thought I stated that Nietschze was the basis of Post Modernism.   Didn't I say that?  Anyway, he was certainly the greatest philospher of modern times, and his essential critique of intellectualism self-destructing, science reaching an end-point in understanding resulting in total stasis, etc. was then merely developed further by the Post Modernists. 

I myself notice no one else notices my statements about Sass's contention that Post Modernism is the equivalent of artistic schizophrenia.  Though contradictorily, I love a lot of the results of that schizoid tendency.

Hi Willliam,

But of course I answered to your Citing of Sass contention. since I twice stated, that as I understand the merits of post modernism there is at least in my eyes no need to become schizoid or ill over the fact of just relative interdependent and not general values.For me it moreover seems pretty healthy and reasonable to accept context dependent values instead of pretended general values.

I must confess I am not that much a friend of pessimism, or insane (and as I fell just pretended ingenious) "Philosophers". As far as I know Nietzsche was defenitly not a studied Philosopher, but a studied Philologue more or less dabbling in the field of Philosophy, strongly disturbed by his own mental problems, that's what doesn't make me that enthousiastic about his.conclusions, while the questions posed in his Works might of course still be interesting to think about. And to be honest, I still am simple hearted enough to believe in the principle of democracy to prevent at least a little bit that anyone becomes to much inappropriate power over others decisions. In my eyes at least no pessimism of no philoloogue or real philosopher would change the fact, that at all times people have been and will be very different in their mental abilities. That seems to me nothing worth to complain to much.

But what ever anyone might have predicted, I am pretty sure no Nitzsche and no one else has predicted me and my personal opinions and decisions, or did you really feel being nothing else but the fullfilment of Nitzsches Prediction???

OK now I think now we are finally completly offtopic but still a funny discussion for a samplelibrary-forum 😃

fahl5:

I am so happy that you managed to read my post before I deleted it, as it was intended for you, and I eventually did not wish for the rest of the forum to be subjected to that kind of message; I have done it in the past and lived to regret it.

However I didn't delete the message because I didn't mean what I said. And I still believe that it is a problem of comprehension (at least I hope it is). I am sure you are very erudite in German but in English the points keep escaping you... There is no shame in that of course, but it is becoming tiresome for me to be consistently misinterpreted and misunderstood, and having to constantly re-write the same things in different ways until I get through. So, on to a more polite post:

You posted a list of great composers chronologically from the past, basically pointing out how one generation succeeded another while rejecting the previous style and introducing a new one. How does that have anything to do with what I have been saying?

Every composer you mention was a consummate master of the "previous" craft, and while seeking new paths of expression, they all employed the rock-solid theoretical foundations they inherited from past generations. Mozart and Beethoven did not employ as much counterpoint as Bach did, but they knew more than enough about it to create their own masterful polyphony. Schoenberg abandoned functional chromaticism for dodecaphony, but the key word here is 'abandoned'. Id est, he was a master of it in the first place. Debussy and Ravel did the same in their own ways, etc. Maybe there are one or two exceptions here and there in an overwhelming majority of rule.

So, bringing back the discussion to a little bit on-topic, I re-iterate (in yet another way), that my condemnation of most YOUNGER "modern" and film composters is that the former hypocritically and conveniently shun tonal relationships and polyphony and jovially don the 'Emperor's new clothes' of complexity and convolution, and the latter litter the fine film-music repertoire by mapping a different kind of music's structure on symphonic writing (dumbing it down mercilessly to their level), and offensively presenting other people's work for their own (see my signature).

Finally on that, I never said that everybody should write tonal music, or WIlliams-like music in film (quite the opposite; cloned Williams I find hilarious). You - and many others in the western world - appear to be confusing the current liberty one has to write for orchestra in any style and idiom they see fit without attracting criticism for that choice (as they would in the past), with the actual right to criticize the execution of that work, for that style or idiom. I won't criticize anyone for writing in a style that is repellant to me, but I know enough about this to be able to say whether someone has written a piece of s*it, in that or other style.

So far as your philosophical musings and beliefs are concerned, remember that they are not universal or correct just because they are more recent. For myself, I am enthusiastically going against the zeitgeistian grain by not being a relativist, but an idealist instead.

Everybody else: I never said that one needs to know 16th century counterpoint to write film-music for God's sake! It was an example mostly directed at academically trained composers, and an example that to be able to write for orchestra convincingly (Herrmann, Jarre, Williams, Mancini, Steiner, Broughton, Bernstein convincingly), you cannot do it no matter how many cookbook 'phrases' and Symphobic chords you buy. And Hans is not a successor of Williams as the latter was say of Tiomkin's. He is a conqueror and a plunderer. None of the habitual passing the torch from 'previous to next' there. Whoever is sequencing loops for orchestra is a) because they very simply cannot do any better, and b) is adding to the general brain damage. And yes, those are my personal views.

Dear Errikos,

a) It is a pitty that you obviously did not understand, that deformation of my nickname, accusing me of alledged inappropriate postings without the least concrete proof, constantly blaming me for your personal judgement of my english is nothing else but personally insultive and thus not only completly offtopic but highly personally offending. It is good that you deleted such a posting, which does not bring any reasonable aspect to the discuassion but just seriously would have disturbed it. I wish you would have done it for your own insight that postings like this are simply inacceptable in any way.

b) If you would have read the thread more attentive, you would have noticed, that my naming of composers being tired with the tradition they experienced must not have anything to do with your last posting, but simply answered directly on noldar12 who wrote about his experience with composition teaching. two postings before. Just imagine that here are some more guys posting and discussing than only you allone.

c) Again you completly mistook the point about my personal opinion about the discussed aspects of "post-modernism". How could you reasonably believe that someone who argues like me for context dependent "relative" values instead of any assumption of general (what means context indifferent) values would pretend anything "universal" (??!!!). I dont think this is not only a lack of reading english ability, but more obviously you simply have not read at all what you criticise and seem to be defenitly in danger to simply criticise your own fantasy you just project on my person.

d) concerning "Idealism" at least in europe and especially in germany we have made the most horrible experiences how idealism tends to terrifying absolutism, simply for his lack of loving understanding of the imperfect reality. If you talk of "relativism" it seems to me as if you just talk moreover of "nihilism" perhaps believing that your own "idealistic opinions" might be in danger from the insight, that they are simply not a bit less subjective than the ideals and opinions of others, depending completly on the context in which you formed yours - as others formed their differing opinions in their own differing contexts. 

To allow others being and thinking different, following others rules and values is (at least in my personal view) nothing "zeitgeistian", but a chance to get in contact and communication with others if not even the only way to an understanding of others. I hope that we also might finally come along accepting that different opinions are not a threat for your privat ideals but simply a reality which gives any comunication its life.