You're all wrong and you all need to study what Glass and Reich have achieved in their chosen genre. No, I can't sit there and listen to it all on a regular basis. And there is plenty that could be called the Emperors New Clothes. But these guys more or less invented a style of music. I had to give all this stuff a listen once before embarking on a stylised version of their form of minimalism.
You may not like it, but it's good at what it does.
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I'm in the middle here. Reich's Music for 18 Musicians, in my humble opinion, is one of the remarkable works of the late 20th century. I can still and do listen to that one on occasion. I still recall walking into my favorite jazz record store in Vancouver in the late 70's and hearing this playing on the store's sound system. It sounded like some kind of luscious electronic orchestral pulsing, constantly evolving. I was amazed when I learned that it was all acoustically rendered by players.
William, I have to respectfully disagree with your assessment of Glass' treatment of Beauty and the Beast. Auric's score sounds extremely stodgy and old-fashioned, to my ears. I simply can't listen to it. What Glass did to "freshen" it up is actually quite remarkable. He analyzed the speech patterns of the dialogue in the film and wrote songs to replace that dialogue, in French, and in prosodic phrases that virtually lip-sync to the actors speech in the film. This forced him to take a novel approach to the melodic-rhythmic writing that's a sort of minimalism-meets-sprechstimme. Something new: a kind of cinematic opera in which the actors sing their dialogue. I'm not a huge fan of Glass' music. He has a tendency to repeat himself (pun fully intended) from composition to composition. His middle period of film work, in particular, was dreadfully manneristic. But his later work, beginning with the film sound replacement projects of the Cocteau films at least offered some new approaches. I find the music he wrote for Belle et la Bete to some his most lyrical and about as successful as that approach to scalar patterning can get. The Belle/Bete love theme is really quite beautiful and works as aural dramaturgy to support the narrative, as does the theme he wrote for the magical scenes in the Beast's castle. He thought this through. It's a creative concept, works on several levels, and is an enjoyable look-listen.
Kenneth.
P.S. For anyone interested in surround mixing of this kind of music the Criterion Collection release of Beauty and the Beast features the Glass replacement and can be listened to in 5.1. Another layer of loveliness.
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Minimalists are always the antipathy of anything that involves melody. Comparisons of two extremely differing genres could be construed as futile. The kind of changing pattern based constructs will seem two dimensional to many but sometimes the mathematical effect of this kind of music can be hypnotic.
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"Auric's score sounds extremely stodgy and old-fashioned, to my ears. I simply can't listen to it." - kennethnewby
It is inconceivable that anyone except someone who hates music could say this.
"Stodgy"? Because anything written in a post Romantic style is "stodgy" ? It is not even remotely stodgy, it is lyrically beautiful.
Old-fashioned? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? Are we talking Mahler who is "old-fashioned' or maybe Beethoven or J.S. Bach who are even older fashioned? So something "old fashioned" is THEREFORE bad? Is that your assumption or implication?
The fact is Auric's score for Beauty and the Beast is ethereally beautiful and powerful, and compliments the great film so far beyond the dull droning of Glass, it is like comparing Einstein's brain to the nervous system of a flatworm. This holds true as well for Auric's score to Cocteau's Orpheus, which fortunately Glass has not yet got his grubby mits on.
Check these out and the reviews for them -
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Sorry William... the Auric just doesn't do it for me. It's true, I *do* have a taste for more modern music. Blame my childhood music teacher who made me learn from Bartok's Mikrocosmos... It's got nothing to do with how old the music is, but how it relates to the music of its time.
And... sorry to say:
http://philipglass.com/compositions/orphee/
He's done a Cocteau trilogy. I don't care for the others but stand by the Beauty and the Beast score as a lovely thing, for all the reasons I cited.
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I agree. Personal taste is not a sufficient criteria for establishing the value and meaning of a piece of music.
I'm reading a book by Julian Johnson: Who Needs Classical Music? - Cultural Choice and Musical Value, that tries to address just this issue:
“Debate about music, even technical debate between musicians, has always been an attempt to wrestle with this conundrum: music flows from individuals to other individuals and yet seems to be shaped by supra-individual forces. The basic model of that conundrum does not change whether it is understood in terms belonging primarily to magic, religion, mysticism, natural science, philosophy, psychology, sociology, or politics. This debate has an important ancillary presence to that of music itself, and its marginalization today should provoke some reflection. This discourse was a way of thinking not just about music, but about the way music mediated ideas of the world. It was thus a way of reflecting on our conceptions of the world, which is why musical theory was for centuries inseparable from theories of cosmology, natural science, and politics.
The lack of serious discourse on music today implies an absence of this self-reflection about music and its mediation of the ideas by which we live. This might give us some cause for concern. Argument about music has never delivered permanent answers; rather, its significance lay in its role within the continuous process of social change through a self-critique of cultural ideas. The absence of such musical debate today suggests a stasis underneath the rapid surface movement in contemporary culture. It also suggests an unquestioning acceptance of current musical practice and a passivity in relation to its products. This, in turn, suggests a certain lack of concern about music—a sign, perhaps, that music is not as important as it used to be even though it is far more ubiquitous. Argument, discourse, and debate point to things that are of importance, that wield power, that influence and impinge upon our lives. What doesn’t matter to us, we never argue about.”
When I consider the French music of the late 19th and 20th centuries I appreciate—that touches me most deeply—I'm going for Debussy, Ravel, and from Les Six... it's Poulenc, probably because I sense a meaningful continuity with those first two in their deep, for their time, explorations of texture and expansions of harmony... pushing boundaries... things the French approach to classical music seems notable for since at least Perotin's melismatic music and on. At the other end you see it in the contribution of the French contemporary composers to the development of spectral music—more explorations of texture, timbre and harmony. I obviously value music that pushes the boundaries, that points a way forward.... I just don't hear that in Auric. Sure, it's lyrical. But I don't go there for inspiration on the way forward to a future music. One could argue that the music of Philip Glass is informed by the proposal for a music of simplicity coming out of Eric Satie's practice, and influenced by an awakening to the music of non-Euro-American musical traditions. He did, after all, study in Paris with Boulanger while assisting Ravi Shankar with his film scores.
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Well I'm contradicting myself but ...
"I just don't hear that in Auric..."
Who cares? You don't because you can't. Also, so what if the music doesn't indicate some complicated trend of the future? It sounds beautiful to many people. That is ultimately the only thing that matters. And Auric is considered one of the greatest film composers.
I think one of the things that really irritated me is that Glass has the arrogance to TAMPER with a masterpiece. I don't like that because he has no right to do it. He ripped out Auric's score, without Cocteau's approval or permission obviously, and stuck his own stuff in there. I hate that when it is done and I don't care if people always do that with remixes etc. It is bullshit. The original should be valued for what it is and not tampered with.
By the way the added music score for the Bela Lugosi Dracula was equally disturbing and ruinous to a great film. The original film has no music except at the main title and it actually is more powerful because of it. There is only the silence of the tomb, and the faint white noise of the optical sound background. Joyce Carol Oates identified the reason for this silence being so good: the entire film is like a dream and dreams have no music score.
Of course that is debatable as music can create the emotional tone of a dream, but that is another subject...
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Also - here is something on Auric that features many great recordings -
The reason why people write stuff against Auric is because he was not aligned with the group that championed Debussy, who was at the time the most modern, but Auric became more conservative. Though his early scores - such as Blood of a Poet - were quintessentially modern film scoring.
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con·serv·a·tive
kənˈsərvədiv/
adjective
adjective: conservative
1. holding to traditional attitudes and values and cautious about change or innovation
Synonym: old-fashioned (and many other less than complementary ones).
pro·gres·sive
prəˈɡresiv/
adjective
adjective: progressive
1. happening or developing gradually or in stages; proceeding step by step.
2. (of a group, person, or idea) favoring or implementing social reform or new, liberal ideas.
William wrote: “I don't like that because he has no right to do it. He ripped out Auric's score, without Cocteau's approval or permission obviously, and stuck his own stuff in there.”
Au contraire:
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/pasatiempo/music/musical-bestiary-the-sounds-of-jean-cocteau/article_fffedab1-9ed6-52f2-a00b-db0004a1c080.html
“After securing permission from the estates of both Cocteau and Auric, Glass had the soundtrack (the actors’ speech as well as Auric’s music) stripped away from the film. He composed his new score as an entirely original piece, making no reference to Auric’s, and set the vocal line in French, following the text exactly as it was spoken by the actors. The opera was recorded by singers, and technical adjustments were effected to synchronize their singing as closely as possible to the lip movements of the actors. The resultant work could be screened as a film opera with a prerecorded soundtrack, or it could be performed live by singers plus instrumental ensemble as the film was projected.”
And you might have a listen to the overture to the “approved” version of Glass’ score:
https://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/glass-la-belle-et-la-be-te-1-ouverture/634025085?i=634025149
I would hardly characterize this as “dull droning”.
I had a listen to a recording of the Auric score as played by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra and, to be fair, it sounds a lot better than the awful optical sound I’d only ever heard on the film prints. That’s certainly been part of my reaction to the original score.
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I'd rather you didn't either. Friendly debate aka rational discourse is always a much more productive way to interact, particularly online.
Philip Glass - La Belle et la Bete 2014
Jean Cocteau 1889 - 1963
Georges Auric 1899 - 1983
:-)
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Minimal music proffers its own aesthetic; you either like it or you don't (same as with serialism, spectralism or whatever).
Having said that, between the four most famous exponents of the genre (Glass, Reich, Adams, Riley), I'd say Glass is the least learned in the art. This is as obvious as it is incontrovertible. That is not to say that he has nothing to say musically, he does have his own "sound", and although it would not be outrageous to quip that he is the Hans of 'serious' music, it wouldn't be fair to Glass, even though there are similarities.
My listening suggestions would include Reich's Variations for Winds, Strings, and Keyboards, Adams' Shaker Loops, and Riley's Salome Dances for Peace. I don't think anybody could argue that there is no real music in these works. These (and others) are much better than purely experimental, empty works such as In C, and Random Round (both of which I have performed in ensemble situations, 🤢).
Of Glass' more "meaty" works I would include Akhnaten and Koyaanisqatsi. Einstein on the Beach is pure methane.
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... or pure methamphetamine? I used to enjoy Einstein on the Beach whilst on driving trips back in my student days.
The closing aria of Satyagraha is a gorgeous thing, with that rising vocal line and the gradually more ornamental accompaniment. The rest is more Glass' mannerism. He has glimmers of creativity, but tends to get stuck. I suppose that's easy to do when one gets a life-time contract with a major record label.
I watched a documentary on him years ago that featured him at work in his apartment, at the piano, explaining how he works. "It's quite simple really" he stated as he proceeded to write the same figures over and over again on the staff. I had to laugh out loud, and thought of the King's New Clothes.
I agree with you that he's the light-weight of the founders of the style. Contemporary music as easy-listening.
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Ken You speak of Debussy, Bartok etc., in the same level as Glass in the sense that they are all 'modern' as opposed to, I guess Mahler or Beethiven who are 'old fashioned.' While I disagree with this categorization (Beethoven is more modern than any in some of his works....take the grosse fugue for example)....I would question a grouping Glass with Bartok or Debussy. Here is a simple test. Show me one work of Glass that is 'old fashioned.' Can he write a competent work in tradional harmony? Debussy ravel Bartok all showed many times they can write masterful tonal works. I doubt Glass can do that. But you can prove me wrong. A composer who can't show mastery in the foundations of the form is not a composer to me at all. The best analogy I can give is in painting...Picasso could paint in every genre before he broke tradition. I suggest that 'minimalism' has been exploited as a way to hide behind lack of knowledge or skill. Minimalism should not mean minimal knowledge! If you truly want modern, how about Ligeti as William mentioned? He truly creates incredible soundscapes, I've even heard the sound of tearing paper blended with the orchestra. To me there is only high quality art or mediocre art. I don't care about modern or old fashioned. Anand
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Anand,
Where did you get the impression that I had stated either Mahler or Beethoven were "old-fashioned"???? Not my words my friend, but William's. I've loved Mahler since I first heard the early Bernstein recordings with the New York Philharmonic. I'm of the opinion that Mahler, in many ways brought the symphonic tradition to it's culminating point—a true progressive. Beethoven... well, let's talk about those last few string quartets of his, not just the big fugue. That was music that was considered to be avant-garde in its day. Debussy? Better to compare Debussy to Vincent D'Indy if you want a more useful comparison... or, as I did, in comparison with his French compatriot, Auric.
I think it's silly to compare the music of Philip Glass and the other innovators of his time with those of earler eras. Each artist is working with the materials at hand, which are profoundly the cultural conditions of their time. The American minimalists were responding, to some extent, to the chaos that John Cage had led contemporary music into in the U.S., as well as the chaos of complexity that total serialism had led to in Europe at the time. Both approaches were based on the idea that music can be largely precomposed according to some kind of process, be it throwing dice, mapping musical pitches to a star map, or devising a sequence of numbers that map to every parameter of the music. Steve Reich's response to this, as he wrote in his essay Music as a Gradual Process http://www.bussigel.com/systemsforplay/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Reich_Gradual-Process.pdf , was that the processes in the music should be able to be heard.
Of course Ligeti... but again, to compare his music to that of the so-called "minimalists" is to compare frogs with grandmothers. Better to compare his music to his fellow composers of the Darmstadt school... Boulez, Nono, Stockhausen, Berio, Kagel, etc. That makes sense and is actually pretty interesting if you look at Ligeti's standing in that group at the time and who's music is still left standing in the present. And if you don't like their music, fair enough. But let's not take the attitude that we can flatten history out and compare the Gregorian Chants of Perotin to the string quartets of Brian Ferneyhough and come to the conclusion that one is "better" than the other. They're not. They're the product of their time—their music is the way each composer thought about music in a creative way—both innovators in their own right. I can say I prefer to listen to Perotin over Ferneyhough for a variety of reasons... use of consonance, voice vs. instrumentation, level of complexity, their respective place in the history and evolution of European art music, etc., but to come to the conclusion that one is better than the other? I don't think so. I can only say I enjoy one more than the other and try to understand why, hopefully in a way that can inform my own musical creativity.
About your test. Which tonal tradition are you speaking of? Since when does one have to be proficient at the harmonic practice of a particular era to be given the stamp of approval for music being made now? Functional harmony? Palestrina? Bach? Haydn? Or the triadic harmony articulated by Riemann that seems to better describe the chromatic practices of the late Romantic composers? Do we need to be able to reproduce a sculpture in a Hellenic style to a bona fide sculptor? I think it's interesting to consider that Glass was taken on as a student by Nadia Boulanger in Paris. She was not known to suffer fools gladly, or take on just any student, having refused Astor Piazzola among others.
Somehow people get the idea that Glass is some kind of untutored hack. I think you should be careful before judging the level of education and musical knowledge a composer has. He, apparently, wrote a substantial amount of "traditional" music in his youth which was destroyed precisely because it lacked an individual voice. And please consider, for instance, the following text shows some of Glass' thinking about the harmonic relations in his Einstein on the Beach work:
"Glass describes one of the main harmonic ideas of the work is taken from the closing section of “Train.” He states that this particular progression resembles a traditional cadential formula, though presented with an altered chord in the middle that serves as a pivot chord, ultimately leading to a resolution of the cadential figure a half step lower than expected. The harmonies of this thematic idea are F minor – D-flat major – B-double flat/A major – B major – E major. Thus, the progression begins in the key of F minor and ends in the key of E major, with the B-double flat/A harmony serving as flat- IV in F minor and IV in E major.27 This particular analysis of the pivot chord in this progression is taken from Glass’s own writings, presumably to show how this particular harmony would function if the context remained in the realm of F minor. However, since this harmony never appears in the exact form of B-double-flat major, only as A major, a better understanding of this harmony in terms of F minor is that it is a chromatic mediant in this key. As the progression moves forward, its new E major context becomes clear, so that this A major pivot chord can also be heard as IV in the new key."
So, perhaps he's not describing the harmonic structure of one of Handel's oratorios, but you've go to admit, there's a level of sophistication in the thinking here about harmonic structure—an awareness of the way tonality can be manipulated, its ambiguities leveraged.
If you're interested in knowing more about this you should read the whole piece. It's a good read:
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1072&context=musicstudent
Anyway... I don't know why I'm defending the music Philip Glass here. I don't really much of it, but I wish there were a higher level at which the dialogues on music could be shared here. Not with people throwing out misinformation, putting words in other's mouths, and using language like "bullshit" to describe the work of others. If we have something useful to say... we should say it, in an intelligent and respectful way. Back it up with evidence, not just hearsay and "I know what I like" subjective statements. That's the issue with the sorry state of our post-modern era. It all comes down too often to "what I like" instead of taking the time to understand how we got here and how we might move forward based on that realization of the deeper meaning of such a divine thing as music.
OK... I'll shut up now (for the moment).... ;-)
Kenneth.
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Ivry Gitlis said something interesting a few years ago; he opined that all music should be viewed and performed as 'modern' and 'contemporary', as Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Wagner, Debussy, etc. were all considered 'modern' and 'contemporary' in their own time. On the other end of the spectrum the names thrown here and in other threads, like Ligeti, Ferneyhough, Kagel, Stockhausen, etc., these composers also are old news, so far as the 'modern' composition world is concerned. Even Ferneyhough and Glass -who are still alive- are part of history, in the same way that Verdi and Saint-Seans were not part of 'modernity' in 1900 and 1920 respectively. It doesn't matter that a Ferneyhough page looks (and sounds) like if through some printing error four pages of music were printed onto one, this is still 'old' music; older than the crap Ades and Golijov are churning out today, even if Ferneyhough composed it yesterday. Strict chronological contemporariness isn't relevant.
Is this an important point? Hugely in my opinion, as people tend to consider composers in film that are very much current and relevant (mostly to disparage them), but have somehow stopped the clock in the 60s and 70s (occasionally 80s), when it comes to 'serious' music (almost 40, 50, and 60 years ago respectively!). That is an enormous period of time that is ignored, and is indicative of the compositional desert we have been traversing these past few decades, compared to the past (again, I exclude historical composers that due to their good fortune reached very old age and are still with us, or were until a few years ago). I would argue the same about film music, and pop music. Collins, Anderson, Sting, Waters, May, Gibb, McCartney, Jagger, Lynne, Diamond, Simon, Bacharach, insert names of preference, are all very much alive today and most still release music, but who would claim that they are part, representative, or relevant in 'modern'/'contemporary' pop musical creation?
I exclude 'serious' computer music from all this (no, DJs or Jean Michel Jarre are not part of this world), but wonder whether this swamp of an artistic impasse is common with other arts. I do keep only half an eye on what's happening in visual arts and architecture, and don't consider myself expert enough to be confident of my opinion.
At any rate, when I hear around academia "This is an exciting time to be a composer", I laugh out silly. Yeah, very exciting times, when one can make a living from 'serious' composition ONLY if one is part of academia, so only if one teaches it. We have come down from all the major orchestras in the world pleading with Sibelius for an 8th symphony for decades, and completing supposed sketches of it 70 years later, to orchestras (not major) doing us a grudging favour workshopping our works (these can rarely be called performances even when in concerts). And so it should be as most people's music today transforms music manuscript into (used) toilet paper...
If these mutants find anything "exciting" today, is that anybody can claim to be a "composer".