Well, well. William, I'm quite surprised to hear such a reactionary tone from you!
To avoid overstating the obvious, I'll first of all simply back up everything Nick said. Mind you, I will also say that I've never held Boulez, or his music, in high regard. He strikes me as a highly intellectual, but only vaguely talented composer, who knows his limitations all too well and thus takes any opportunity he can to reduce the vastness of the contemporary musical world down to a scale at which he can still dominate. A perfect Fascist.
As far as "artists" and "serious" composers go, I'm affraid I've wound up in your crosshairs on that count. My background is actually from the pop/rock world (and as a drummer, no less), but over the past ten years or so I've been surrounded by artists of different disciplines, and have even done an MFA, of all things! The degree I did was an MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies, "majoring" in composition. What was interesting about this program is that there was a fair bit of discussion around the various "isms", and about the general notion of contributing to the development of one's chosen discipline. It was very clear that Modernism has long been dead. The whole project was a failure, with its universals, formulas for beauty, Progress, and so on. In fact, it even became fairly clear, or at least open to debate, that Post-Modernism is also dead... Now where that leaves us, I really can't say. However, what is a fact is that there has never been an "ism" coined before there was a work of art worth identifying by that suffix. Also, that most works which fall too easily within the scope of a given "ism" (except those for which the term was originally coined - i.e., Romanticism --> Brahms) are generally totally predictable, and formally uninteresting. This stands to reason, since the "ism" generally only appears when there have been adequate examples of the formal/conceptual conventions which make up the classification. Thus, when new works appear that clearly satisfy all the requirements for inclusion in a particular "ism", the general impression is that "we've heard this all before". I don't believe that this is an experience particularly limited to "artists", but that most audiences also experience this same sense of boredom. The simple fact is that a great deal of "modern-ism" fails to show any formal innovation. However, the same can be said for "Romantic-ism", and so on, and on and on... A particularly brutal example is "Minimal-ism" -- a pure and valuable idea which nevertheless spawned hours upon hours of mind-numbing shite! Yet, taking the value of the basic idea and moving it forward, Arvo Part managed to create a language of lasting beauty and artistic value.
Now, this being the case, it also follows that those who identify themselves with a particular "ism", or show a pronounced affinity with a particular "ism", _before_ composing a note suffer from the same general sense of formal emptiness. This, in my opinion, is the affliction of a vast number of both "modern" concert music composers, and film music composers alike. But none of this is the fault of the "ism". It is only an identification, a classification derived through observation. What is important, to me, about the "ism" is the fact that it can help keep us on our toes, so that we might avoid the pitfalls associated with past movements. It is simply a case of learning from experience. I mean, this is the supposed miracle of literacy -- the ability to learn from a temporal distance, so to speak. But learning only _begins_ with emulation. It continues with innovation -- that doesn't mean more wild dissonance, or shitting on canvas. It simply means taking stock of what you've inherited and bringing it a step forward, however small that step may be.
Some living "artists" who embody this idea, from my rather limited knowledge?:
Bjork, Tricky, Wolfgang Rihm, Bent Sorensen, Sofia Gubaidulina, Aphex Twin, Arvo Part, Blood Brothers, Missy Elliot, Helmut Lachenmann, Diamanda Galas...
To avoid overstating the obvious, I'll first of all simply back up everything Nick said. Mind you, I will also say that I've never held Boulez, or his music, in high regard. He strikes me as a highly intellectual, but only vaguely talented composer, who knows his limitations all too well and thus takes any opportunity he can to reduce the vastness of the contemporary musical world down to a scale at which he can still dominate. A perfect Fascist.
As far as "artists" and "serious" composers go, I'm affraid I've wound up in your crosshairs on that count. My background is actually from the pop/rock world (and as a drummer, no less), but over the past ten years or so I've been surrounded by artists of different disciplines, and have even done an MFA, of all things! The degree I did was an MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies, "majoring" in composition. What was interesting about this program is that there was a fair bit of discussion around the various "isms", and about the general notion of contributing to the development of one's chosen discipline. It was very clear that Modernism has long been dead. The whole project was a failure, with its universals, formulas for beauty, Progress, and so on. In fact, it even became fairly clear, or at least open to debate, that Post-Modernism is also dead... Now where that leaves us, I really can't say. However, what is a fact is that there has never been an "ism" coined before there was a work of art worth identifying by that suffix. Also, that most works which fall too easily within the scope of a given "ism" (except those for which the term was originally coined - i.e., Romanticism --> Brahms) are generally totally predictable, and formally uninteresting. This stands to reason, since the "ism" generally only appears when there have been adequate examples of the formal/conceptual conventions which make up the classification. Thus, when new works appear that clearly satisfy all the requirements for inclusion in a particular "ism", the general impression is that "we've heard this all before". I don't believe that this is an experience particularly limited to "artists", but that most audiences also experience this same sense of boredom. The simple fact is that a great deal of "modern-ism" fails to show any formal innovation. However, the same can be said for "Romantic-ism", and so on, and on and on... A particularly brutal example is "Minimal-ism" -- a pure and valuable idea which nevertheless spawned hours upon hours of mind-numbing shite! Yet, taking the value of the basic idea and moving it forward, Arvo Part managed to create a language of lasting beauty and artistic value.
Now, this being the case, it also follows that those who identify themselves with a particular "ism", or show a pronounced affinity with a particular "ism", _before_ composing a note suffer from the same general sense of formal emptiness. This, in my opinion, is the affliction of a vast number of both "modern" concert music composers, and film music composers alike. But none of this is the fault of the "ism". It is only an identification, a classification derived through observation. What is important, to me, about the "ism" is the fact that it can help keep us on our toes, so that we might avoid the pitfalls associated with past movements. It is simply a case of learning from experience. I mean, this is the supposed miracle of literacy -- the ability to learn from a temporal distance, so to speak. But learning only _begins_ with emulation. It continues with innovation -- that doesn't mean more wild dissonance, or shitting on canvas. It simply means taking stock of what you've inherited and bringing it a step forward, however small that step may be.
Some living "artists" who embody this idea, from my rather limited knowledge?:
Bjork, Tricky, Wolfgang Rihm, Bent Sorensen, Sofia Gubaidulina, Aphex Twin, Arvo Part, Blood Brothers, Missy Elliot, Helmut Lachenmann, Diamanda Galas...