@William said:

If this is true it shows the obvious equation: DISSONANCE = HORROR

For most people this is true. Students very often use words like "creepy" when asked to comment on music with unresolved dissonances.
I think for the average listener (who, lets face it, is usually rather uneducated musically) a large part of this reaction is due to music's use in film. Your average Joe listener needs to see an image when he hears music.

Schoenberg's comments re beauty I take with a pinch of salt. There is almost no point talking about an interval as an aesthetic entity. How does the thing get used in context? There are achingly beautiful minor seconds in tonal music, and achingly dull ones in non-tonal music...
I always supposed that Schoenberg was on his didactic rant about emancipation of the dissonance, trying to force everyone to think like him.

best,
John

@JohnA said:

There are achingly beautiful minor seconds in tonal music, and achingly dull ones in non-tonal music...

er, lest it be thought I'm FOR tonal and AGAINST non-tonal, I should qualify the above statement and say I don't think all minor seconds behave this way in music...

best,
John

Must defend Penderecki. He is a kind, tolerant, intelligent, artistic human.

There might be a little pompousness, like Verdi maybe; there is certainly a shrewdness when dealing with public perceptions, like nearly any successful artist; the story is true-ish, that the piece came before the title. But the combination of piece and title is what has become important in his work, and his combination of characteristics have made him what he is.

Pantonal vs. atonal is a useless distinction. Pantonality is obviously a class of atonality since all tones simultaneously negate tonality. Schoenberg is however mainly known as a serialist.

A major third a horrible interval? It depends on the scale - tempered or natural or whatever tuning you wish to use.

I agree with John A about how these things are just too subjective to establish as principles. Also about how context is everything. That is what irritated me with Schoenberg's original statement, because he seemed to be removing context. Though perhaps that was not his intention. I also like some of Schoenberg and can easily see why he just had to do something different - after Gurrelieder.

I hope I'm not becoming a conservative reactionary(!), but I basically agree with William. Atonality/pantonality tends to be emotionally monochrome. It’s great for portraying paranoia, neurosis & the dark side, but not so good with other emotions. Schoenberg’s atonal Holocaust document "A Survivor From Warsaw" rightly shocks & horrifies me, but his atonal opera-buffo comedy "Von Heute auf Morgen" doesn’t make me smile at all. Of course the "vulgar" atonality found in film music corroborates this - it's used for tension, disaster, horror, but not for, say, romantic bedroom scenes. Could atonality be used to depict ecstatic happiness, an atonal "Gloria In Excelsis Deo"? If it can, I haven't heard the piece that does this - yet.
Classical tonality is a multi-dimensional universe of 168 (24 times 7) notes. In this universe "A" as the 3rd of F major is completely different from "A" as the key note of A major, & any good musician knows how to play with these multiple meanings. Schoenberg flattens it down to a single 12-note mode, a single chromatic raag, in a single emotional plane. All that multi-dimensional play (or ‘modulation’) is lost. There is a kind of play between serial transpositions, retrogrades & inversions & so on, but it doesn't begin to equal what's been discarded. Imagine a great Indian musician, say Hariprasad Chaurasia, living his entire life performing in a single raag, with a single emotional association, a single time of day. That’s what serialism feels like to me.
I'm not saying serial music is rubbish, because there are masterpieces of that single atonal raag: Pierrot Lunaire, the String Trio, Webern Opus 5 etc.


Laters

Guy

@Guy Sigsworth said:

I hope I'm not becoming a conservative reactionary(!), but I basically agree with William. Atonality/pantonality tends to be emotionally monochrome.

Snort!!!! Of course it is! Bloody rubbish!

Laters

@William said:

Pantonal vs. atonal is a useless distinction. Pantonality is obviously a class of atonality since all tones simultaneously negate tonality. Schoenberg is however mainly known as a serialist.

A major third a horrible interval? It depends on the scale - tempered or natural or whatever tuning you wish to use.

I agree with John A about how these things are just too subjective to establish as principles. Also about how context is everything. That is what irritated me with Schoenberg's original statement, because he seemed to be removing context. Though perhaps that was not his intention. I also like some of Schoenberg and can easily see why he just had to do something different - after Gurrelieder.

Pantonality and atonality are different in that with pantonality a tonal centre is all important. The fact that Schoenberg is known as a serialist has nothing to do with this distinction.

Regarding the major 3rd check out the example I gave. Talk to any string quartet player about intonation and you won't get any sleep for days... [:)]

DG

Yes of course DG but my point is the tonal center is NEGATED.

I think this post of Guy is a profound statement - I have felt this but never thought it consciously. So much is lost with the complete discarding of tonality. The most advanced tonality - what? Scriabin? Late Mahler, Early Schoenberg (before he realized he'd never be able to compete with Mahler and said to hiimself "You know, I better do something different") - these come close to losing all tonal reference, but barely hold onto it with the effect of including subliminally all of those elements that Guy is talking about as potential referents.

@DG said:

Talk to any string quartet player about intonation and you won't get any sleep for days... [:)]

DG

Doesn't 12-note music presuppose equal temperament?

@DG said:

Talk to any string quartet player about intonation and you won't get any sleep for days... [:)]

DG

Doesn't 12-note music presuppose equal temperament?

Theoretically, but to a string player trained within Western tonality I don't believe that it is possible.

DG

I just stumbled over a statement by good ol´ Schoenberg: "Keine Kunst ist in ihrer Entwicklung so sehr gehemmt durch ihre Lehrer wie die Musik."

No art is held back in its development so much by its teachers like music...


(edit: I forgot the development in the translation. But I think it was clear anyway.)

I agree completely with that Mathis.

No, 12 note tuning does not presume equal temperament at all. There are many systems of 12 note tuning that are not equal temperament - for example Vallotti, etc. - and some of them are actually more "beautiful" (if I may use such an emotional word) in specific intervals, yet lead to tuning clashes especially in an orchestral context. Equal is somewhat like a smoothed out compromise that is generally o.k. though not as "spicy" sounding as others.

William -
I didn't mean "12-note" in the sense of "playable on a twelve-note-per-octave keyboard". In that sense, like you, I like Valotti, Young, Werkmeister III, Meantone, Pythagoras - the more the merrier! I meant "12-note" in the sense of dodecaphonic, serial. The theory of giving all 12 semitones equal exposure through note rows, to suppress the feeling of a tonal centre - that logically implies equal temperament. In a serial piece there's no reason ever to write, say, F flat or B sharp. G sharp and A flat are, in serial music, absolutely identical - unlike in tonal music. Maybe some serial music with strong residual tonality - say Berg's violin concerto - would be an exception. But the extreme anti-tonal rows in, say, late Webern, these definitely require equal temperament.

Laters

Guy

Guy,

Very interesting distinction. However think of those 12 tone rows with the distortions of different tunings - delicious! Oh Mathis, where are you? Whatever made me think of you when the subject of "distortions" came up? Could it be your willful timestretched distortion of the vibraphone?

Hey All,

Guy, just thought I'd mention Lutoslawski. Sort of a "disciple" of Penderecki -- in the Polish avant-garde sense. He called his process "triadic atonality", and he created some very interesting and powerful work (mostly the later works -- the early ones sounded like warmed-over Bartok, to me). His music is certainly on the avant-garde side of things, but still has a broad expressive range.

J.

Yes - I've heard some of his music and really liked it. Please recommend some tunes!

My hero of the European avant-garde is Ligeti. He's just got it all. He can be atonal or tonal, he's explored non-standard tunings, he does things which are genuinely new, he never sits on his laurels. He's open to everything from Fluxus-style pranks to minimalism to Conlon Nancarrow to African music, but the results always sound like him and nobody else. Because he never signed up to being a card-carrying serialist, he's never been - like Boulez (sorry Pierre!) - mentally unfree. Some of the music gets through on a first listen, some is difficult and demanding, but, for me, it's always worth the effort. I don't really "get" his opera, but then I don't "get" most operas (my favourite opera is Monteverdi's Orfeo - I think it's all been downhill since then!). Check out "Clocks and Clouds" - it's brilliant!

Laters

Guy

Hi Guy,

yes, I completely agree with Ligeti. I bet you know Volumina (for organ). I once wanted to cross this piece with a song by Harry Belafonte... then I heard your Pop-version and gave up.... [:D]


Bill, about dissonance and horror:
Today I had another opportunity to hear choral works by Perotin. There are so stunning and amazingly beautiful dissonances in there, it´s breathtaking. And no association with horror at all. Furthermore these guys in ars antiqua really had swing, too.
I really find it a pity that with Palestrina everything became very consonant and "beautiful". It took several hundred years to appreciate a dissonance again. I don´t want to go back.

The vibraphon piece indeed deviates from equal or well-tempered tuning simply because the resulting sounds were much too boring.
Composers throughout history were looking for dissonances, NOT consonances, because these are the sounds which are exciting. Today I find a tritone not exciting at all, or a minor ninth. Today we need stronger sounds, probably also connected with noise to get the spice into the music.
Anyway, thanks of course to referring to my piece! [[;)]]

Bests,
- Mathis

I wasn't saying that dissonance really equals horror of course not. I meant that ironically: Mr. Avant Garde Penderecki seemed to be making that equation himself! I find that odd, since I always thought the credo of the avant garde was "Oh, no, all that dissonance isn't ugly! It's just BEAUTIFUL! You only thnk it's ugly because you're stupid and primitive unlike us." Isn't that basically what they believe?

Anyway I agree on Ligetti - one of the few really great hog-wild modernists. Though his microtonal things are the most interesting things I've heard. It's true that he can do anything - somewhat like Picasso in sound.

I realized fairly recently that I seem to like microtonal music, and noise music of various kinds, much more than chromatic dissonant music of whatever persuasion. Perhaps this is because the chromatic music always involves a CONTRADICTION of tonailty - a conflict that is implied whether the composer wants to or not. Whereas microtonal music, or synthesized musical noises for example, do something completel different, something truly beyond tonality rather than a mere contradiction of it. This is not an intellectual statement, but something that I've actually felt emotionally as a direct reaction to such music. For example the "Lontano" of Ligetti. It creates something utterly different than serialism, because it is as if the orchestra is not playing music at all - dissonant or othewise - but instead creating a new pure sound never heard before.

William, do you know any of Scelsi's music?
I'd be interested to know what you think of it, especially e.g. "Anahit" or some of the orchestra pieces.

best,
John

Guy,

Check out Lutoslawski's 3rd Symphony. That's pretty great!

Ligeti I've never gotten into... definitely NOT his fault. It's just me. I'll check out Clocks and Clouds, though.

Scelsi's done some cool stuff, but for that sort of language I really dig Grisey -- I saw a performance of Vortex Temporum here in Vancouver that was one of the most amazing performances -- in all media -- I've ever seen.

I'm a big fan of Rihm, as well. His language is also very personal, and flirts with all sorts of traditions, but never in an obnoxious way.

Glad to see such friendly conversation!

J.