Clearing up a few things... it's very hard to get a full thought into one of these reply installments!

William. It was actually me who said "I think he responded brilliiantly. You, among others, do not." - meaning simply "I think he responded to the dilemma appropriately, but you do not appear to feel the same way. And there are many who would agree with you, thinking that everything after the early Russian period was forced, reactionary, and musically next-to-worthless". I am not one to bring judgments of another composers work into an intellectual debate, and use my own opinions as a mode of attack. That's just weak-minded. And besides, I always appreciate a little friction. It keeps me on my toes!
Also, as an afterthought... You're attack on composers who "cobble together music by thinking" is utterly Stavinskian in its ferocity! [;)]

dpcon. Quite true about his response to the early work being a much later phenomenon. I was actually obsessed with I.S. for a few years, and read carefully all the Stravinsky/Craft books... sorry to be a little vague in entering that debate. Also, because I spent a great deal of time with old I.S., I also appreciate your statement about his position with regard to Romanticism. However, as was mentioned in another thread somewhere, I was trying to get at William's suggestion that he had Romantic drives, "at heart". Now, at first this statement seemed absolutely impossible to me. But upon closer study of what William was saying, and in the context of earlier statements from William about his general philosophy of music, I decided that we were not so much talking from a musicological point of view, but rather from the standpoint of the emotional life of a musical work. Personally, I have never been able to listen to the 3rd movement of the Concerto in D (vln & orch.) without being deeply moved. And I really can't accept the notion that this is in no way related to the fact that he had recently lost his wife and first-born to TB when he wrote it. I know he would say "music expresses nothing", but I've always felt that this was, at least in a certain sense, an intellectual pose -- which I think is what William is reacting to. Now, to continue that quote: "...It expresses only itself. And in expressing itself, eloquently, it creates forms." I don't think this statement places him too far from what William strives for in music. Too often only the first part the statement - "music expresses nothing" - is quoted. But when read in the context of the entire quote, we see that it is more _his_ (i.e., the composer's) relationship to expression that he takes to task in Romanticism, not the notion of expression itself. And this I connect (again to an earlier discussion, in another thread) to his idea of the Artist as an artisan - a maker of things, a craft's person - not the tortured, self-expressing, deeply emoting Romantic "Genius". In this I agree whole-heartedly. I can honestly say that I have never composed from within a state of high emotion, though my music has often be called "neo-Romantic". To me, the mental challenge of composition is completely insurmountable from a state of emotion. And further, I can often become quite ecstatic during composition, even when writing very "dark" material. Thus, the thrill of composition itself is entirely divided emotionally from the subjective content of the music's self-expression.
and so on, and so on... (to be continued, I'm sure)
I also must confess to finding much of "The Rake" absolutely sublime... I was a little scared to mention it, since it's a piece that receives a fair amount of "flak".

(I'm worried again that i'm going to run out of words - a live counter would be handy!)

...

Just a quick response to finish!

William. Stravinsky did, in fact, "skewer" himself on a regular basis.

"I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge."

"I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it."

"Sins cannot be undone, only forgiven." (about his work Persephone)

There's more, but I haven't the time to find them all.

J.

Sorry about that misquote DG.

Very interesting JBM. I think most of the problem may lie in the terms of Romanticism, Classicism, Modernism etc. You are right in your conclusion about what I am suggesting in the "Romantic" impulse in Stravinsky. i am thinking in the most elemental way possible when I refer to musical espression in the sense of "Romantic," not in the lace-collared Byronesque prettiness that today is assumed, especially by people who know nothing about the era and its artists but have decided they hate it. They were rebels against the crushing intellectualism of the Enlightenment, as well as the burdens of an intensely repressive society. The Rite of Spring, contrary to what everyone thinks - it absolutely pure Romanticism, because it returns to the roots of the movement - expression of primeval emotive impulses that destroy in order to create new forms. That is the essence of the Romantic Era.

Also, one thing about Classicism that should be kept in mind: in its purest form, it strove to unite the emotional (the Dionysian) with the intellectual (the Apollonian). If such a thing can be done in music, of course that is the ideal. But many adherents of the Classical went too far in one direction, just as many Romanticists did in the opposite. For me the ideal Romantic composers are Brahms, Schubert and Schumann, not Wagner or Strauss (though they are obviously great composers too) because the former three combined those "higher" elements of form and idea with the more "basic" one of emotion. But of course you can make the same case for any successful composer of any era.

One other thing I wanted to comment on:

"...I mean, I've already found myself a little irritated when people close to me wonder why I don't write like I did a few years ago. But the fact is, there's nothing so unfulfilling as regurgitating the same language over and over. We all need to find something new to strive for in our music. If we lose that deep urge to push ourselves forward, we lose the very inspiration that makes our music worth listening to..." JBM

This is true and a very important point. I would go even farther and say once you have done something, it is impossible to do it again without losing the energy and drive that you need in order to work at all. I absolutely cannot write in the "mode" that I wrote in years ago. It is an empty and meaningless exercise, even if back then I produced something that I liked. So people expecting someone like Stravinsky to re-do Firebird just with new notes have no idea of what is involved.

Having fun here guys.

Bill,

I understood your use of Romantic in regards to Stravinsky's Rite immediatly for the reasons you sighted (primal etc.) Yet semantically it begs for misunderstanding because of the historic use of the term. Since the notion of any composer at any time sitting down to compose music is utterly romantic the net widens even further to include the most severe serialist. A can of worms to be sure.

On the well understood concept of Apollonian and Dionysion elements of classicism my point was, that regardless of what the composer was pouring into the form content-wise, the form itself was highly intellectualized (culminating in Beethoven's astonishing formal creations) yet always serving the expression of at least the personality if not the soul of the artist. Back to a very Romantic concept!

I agree on the composer's you mentioned as having attained the ideal of Classical principles. Listening to the supercharged Romantics is something you have to be almost needing like a certain wine or something.

Dave

Dave,

Actually I think that Beethoven started to burst the bounds of any intellectual form with the third Symphony, and completed the job with the Ninth which took music farther than it had ever gone before. And he accomplished this with sheer intuition and feeling, rather than a consciously created form. The musical ideas were so powerful they created their own form. When Schubert was inspired by Beethoven - writing with the pen he found on top of his grave for example - he was only continuing the development of Romanticism which Beethoven created.

Yes, from time to time I think you do need a few shots of 100 Proof "Old Romantic" like Berlioz or Franck or Bruckner or even some moonshine like 200 Proof Pure Grain Strauss once in a while. But please drink responsibly.

William,

It's good to get all the terms clear... Often times I'm not sure whether we're speaking colloquially or by the history-book definitions. And the fact is that I believe both to be valuable, since I don't think either has done a complete job of capturing the final meaning of _any_ given term (I have only a flickering faith in Academia).

I've enjoyed this discussion immensely, and appreciate your well-informed comments. Please have a listen to the samples on my web site, when you have a chance... There are no VSL-ized works (only chamber music, and some contemporary dance work) at this point, since I haven't been using them long enough to get anything recorded, but there are a few samples of what I do for you to check out.

http://www.rubato-music.com

go to the "sharp", which will link you to some music/score excerpts.

cheers.

J.

Hi.

I'm joining this discussion rather late in the day, so sorry in advance if I go over old ground.

I love Stravinsky and I mostly loathe "Romantic" music, so I'm trying to get used to this idea that my most loved composer is really part of my most loathed stylistic movement.

Ever since childhood I've known I like music starting from the primordial swamp up to about 1750, then almost nothing until about 1900. So Perotin, Machaut, Josquin, Bach, Reich, Ligeti yes, but Wagner no. Sorry - this is just who I am.

I'm very resistant to schmaltz in music. I have an aversion to heavy-handed surface sentimentality. I hate operatic vocals. I hate "trill on every note" vibrato vocals. I love folk singers, I love early music singers, I love Indian Drupad singers. But I hate - with almost physical revulsion - the Pavarotti style, and I have done since I was tiny. My favourite singers would include the Hilliard Ensemble singers, June Tabor, Stina Nordenstam, Robert Wyatt, even the "robot" vocalist from Kraftwerk (Ralf or Florian?); but would exclude virtually the entire classical mainstream.

Stravinsky said that music is incapable of expressing anything except itself. I don't really agree with him, but I know why he might have wanted to say that. He was rejecting the Wagnerian Romantic tradition. What I think he means is that great music can have a completely impersonal surface - it can have no more overt personal subjectivity than a ticking clock - and, precisely by transcending the "look at me" self-obsession of its composer and performers, actually achieve greater resonance, greater meaning. The Symphonies Of Wind Instruments is an example. It's so important simply to play the right notes, with the right articulation, in the right tempo proportions. But a player who tries to subjectivize their line (say with a mannered rubato) may actually diminish the music. Stravinsky loathes what he calls "The performance of performance", by which he means the tortured histrionics of the celebrity conductor (he doesn't mention names, but Leonard Bernstein seems to be the particular object of his disaffection).

Stravinsky likes ritual (hence the "Rite" of Spring). Lots of his music has a ritualized quality. The performance becomes a kind of ceremony. Listen to the end of the Requiem Canticles, with its clock-like chiming bells. It's a complete rejection of Wagnerian Romanticism, with its determination to smother, to overwhelm, the listener. And it's incredibly moving to listen to, even though it's so impersonal.

I'm not an expert on Balinese Gamelan music, but I imagine there's something similar going on there. Renaissance polyphony, a Bach fugue, neither should be performed completely deadpan, both need inflection, but both seem to be aiming at a kind of objectivity - exactly the opposite of what's needed to play a Chopin nocturne or sing Isolde's Liebestod.

Laters

Guy

You don't like Pavarotti? O.K....

You apparently don't like singing.

You like no composers from the Romantic Era? O.K....

You apparently don't like music.

Anyone who does not like Mahler, Bruckner, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Sibelius, Chopin, Lizst, Strauss, Franck, Berlioz... to name but a few -

that person does not like music. End of discussion.

Well, Bill, sorry to be harsh, but this is pretty ... I´m loosing words. Please say that you don´t mean that. You´re kidding, right?

[...

Well, it´s sad for me to see both of you (I love you both, bear in mind) can´t accept musical taste differing from yours. You both form a kind of music police here. For me it´s perfectly acceptable that Bill is admiring the romantics, but why should someone be a musical cretin if he doesn´t like it? That´s so much out of my system of values, that´s where I´m losing words.

[...

@William said:

You don't like Pavarotti? O.K....

You apparently don't like singing.

I think that this statement is a bit harsh. I happen to think that Pavarotti was over-rated when he was in his prime, compared with other singers that I could mention, and certainly in these days is not worth hearing (IMO), but I wouldn't say that I didn't like singing based on these opinions.

DG

[...

Mathis,

I am not the person who is saying other kinds of music are crap. The previous post stated this direcltly and I was reacting to that. I am saying that a judgement which condemns music that you personally don't like - that judgement is crap. I had a longer version of this post, and this is the toned down version.

I was going to add - why do people have to disparage music that they just plain don't like? Simply as a matter of taste? Or why can't they accept different kinds of music - open their minds just a little? I always notice that modernists MUST hate Romanticism, as part of their code of honor. This simplistic equation "Romanticism = Schmaltz" is garbage. It is a straw man. The fact is "Bad Romanticism = Schmaltz." But the disparagers always pick something lousy and then generalize for everything else. I suppose you think Schubert's "Ave Maria" is Schmaltz? Or Brahms' 4rth Symphony? It is a joke and a sham, this attitude, and I am sick of it.

I am not acting like music police - what the hell have I been saying about Varese and Ligetti for crying out loud? I like different kinds of music without feeling the need to HATE anything different from one form I embrace. I do not and will never accept the narrow minded mentality that is stated in this rejection of two hundred years of music.

I hear you. More clear now.

Still I disagree with your notion that someone who´s not loving the romantics is not loving music. That´s absurd.

Mathis, I don't give a damn if someone listens only to Kazoo-Rap music. That is just fine. I'm sure the sounds of sewage flowing through a pipe are beautiful to someone. Whatever turns you on is just fine with me.

But what I don't like is when somebody says kinds of music other than what HE likes are worthless in a contemptuous, arrogant way. That is what was done here. So this person wanted a reaction. Well he got one. If he doesn't like it then he shouldn't show utter contempt for things that other people like.

Hey All,

First off, if you look at Guy's opening statement, he's actually telling you how uncomfortable he is with previous statements made about Stravinksy (a composer he admires), and generalisations about modernists being 'loathsome'... So, go easy on him, as he's basically just responding to the negativity he's already observed. Also, he continues to make it very clear that he's only stating his personal opinions and tastes. (BTW, I agree about singers, Guy. It's not so much that I "hate" the 'LFO' on the big Operatic Voice, but rather that I adore a simpler, cleaner production -- check out Sister Marie Keyrouz sometime (I hope I spelled it right!), she's breath-taking.)

Anyway... I've become very interested (once again) in this famous quote of Stravinsky's, since the original posting of this thread. From what I've been able to understand of him, over a long period of interest in his work and thought (a period which ended several years ago, I should add), Stravinsky was really most annoyed by the idea of 'Kunstreligion', epitomized by the worship of Wagner. It was not just the music itself (although he obviously had little time for it), but rather the ideology which arose around the obsession with its Maker, bestowing upon him a God-like status. So in stating that music expresses only itself, I think he was really just trying to extract the physical phenomenon of music from the interpretive influence of the listener, and more specifically, from the emotional relationship the listener might have with the individual "Genius" who composed it (or, in the case of Bernstein, who was currently performing it). So, this does not necessarily need to be seen as a blanket statement about music, per se, but rather as one composer's way of paring down a wild infinitude of almost supernatural influences to get at the central problem of composition: how to arrange notes and sounds in time.

If I remember some of our discussions from previous posts correctly, many of us were in agreement that the actual ACT of composition is basically a highly demanding process of problem solving -- we are largely occupied with what happens next, or with how to make a passage "work". At the actual moment we are composing, this is often our biggest question: "how does this work?". So, with such a statement, Stravinsky really did nothing more than switch chronological positions between composition and listening, between the question and the answer. That is, if the central question of a composer is "how does this work?", then the answer to that question, as expressed in the music itself is just "like this!" Obviously, there are social, ideological, and political influences at play in resolution of this question -- resulting in the fact that Stravinsky sounds different from Mahler -- but the question itself remains essentially the same. So if the question stays the same, but the answers appear markedly different, something must be happening in between -- something we have little control over. And THAT, I suspect, is the music "expressing itself", which is to express the social, ideological, and political influences of its time. [edit: and yes, of course, personal influences too! [:)]]

I certainly know that I'm often suprised by the emotional "drift" of a passage of music I've composed. If the affect is not what I'm after, I simply scrap it and try again. But that doesn't mean there was anything wrong with the first draft -- that it didn't "work", internally -- but simply that my relationship to the result was not what I was after. I twisted and tweaked until everything fell into place. The music spoke. And it wasn't what I wanted to hear! :-0

More often, however, I accept the outcome. Because I know by now that it is generally more honest than I would ever care to be, if I thought over the emotional content of every phrase before committing it to paper!

cheers,

J.

@Guy Sigsworth said:

I like music starting from the primordial swamp up to about 1750, then almost nothing until about 1900. So Perotin, Machaut, Josquin, Bach, Reich, Ligeti yes, but Wagner no. Sorry - this is just who I am.

I can understand all the sentiments regarding aversion to any style. I must confess I've never met an accomplished musician that didn't thrill at Mozart, Beethoven, or Haydn. I mean these are the cats so - to - speak. It's like a sax player not liking Coltrane or something - it's just hard to understand. I'm not offended by it, just baffled.

Perhaps since I am a composer myself and am affected, excited and pleased by music on more than just the listening level. Beethoven gives me no end of joy in just looking at his scores without any listening at all. I thrill at the mastery that is apparent on several levels whether it's form, phrase, rhythm, modulation, orchestration, on and on. Then I can forget about that ten tons of genius of creativity and then listen as if I had never heard of Middle C and listen to another ten tons of wonder that might as well be unrelated. Just listen to a gush of expression.

My point is: I can understand some one not liking anyone's music (including Beethoven's.) But a practitioner of the same art disliking someone who seems to sum up all the best elements of all western musical styles (which Beethoven does more than any other) mystifies me indeed. In fact I listened at a friends house to some Ligeti string quartets the other day and found them incredible. I immediately said, "You should hear the late Beethoven quartets, they're just as radical and use the same principals of composition." He purchased them on line before I left (he is a novice at composition.)

My two cents,

Dave Connor