Modernism is Old

[William]

This is a statement of a fact obvious to audiences and film composers but lamentably few of the academics and "pure" classical composers.

Shocking atonal dissonances are no longer shocking, since people have heard them so much that to hear a pure consonance in a modern piece is a complete revelation.

Film composers do not have the luxury of pretense that the academics and the "serious" classical composers (of which there are a few right here) indulge themselves in.

The fact is (though these "artists" don't understand it as a fact) that music today is eclectic. A composer must be able to think in "Romanticism" or "Serialism" or whatever silly "ism" you want to come up with. Because music has finally evolved (thank god) beyond the pathetic limitations of "schools" that reject entire realms of accomplishment simply because of the linear thought processes of those in control of the school.

Unfortunately, the "modernists" (including our present day luminaries like Pierre Boulez who stated that he hates Tchaikovsky but will continue to conduct him to ignorant audiences that demand him - how is that for hypocrisy?) - these persons haven't yet caught on to this fact...

They are still stuck in the "shocking" 1920s.

[Nick]

I think you do Boulez a bit of disservice. It was him after all who said that Schoenberg was "dead"; meaning obviously that his use of the method was no longer useful (and therefore it's tonal implications). It may be precisely because modernism has emancipated those dissonances that composers can now use them to create structures rather than to create shock. I think really only very few composers actually went out of their way to use dissonance to shock. Ives and Cowell certainly, beyond that I'm struggling to think of another. Except of course film music which regularly assoicates "shocking" images with dissonance.
Boulez does create controversy. I read a biography of Ligeti recently in which he said he did not much like Ravel, no one bats and eyelid. However when Boulez points out for example that Shostakovich brought nothing new to musical vocabulary then (and as with your Tchikovsky claim) people start getting excited.
Also I'd take issue with you over the use of consonance. It's not as if consonance in music went away, it was after all used in pop music and in minimalism. So to hear "pure consonance" (as in the early Tintinabuli pieces of Part I suppose ?) in itself does not reveal anything especially new.
Lots of composers today feel the very distinction between consonance and dissonance is outdated. Perhaps assuming a piece which uses dissonance "is out to shock" is a 1920s way of hearing, rather than opening your ears up to new structures and new ways of hearing.

I'd be intrested to hear your thoughts.

[jbm]

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...

[jbm]

sorry... I can't stop yet!

It's also worth note that nowhere is the regurgitation of the cliches of modernism so rampant than in the film music world. I mean, how many horror/action/sci-fi scores "borrow" extensively from the Polish Avant-garde? They also happen to "borrow", in the same diluted way, from Holst, Mahler, Brahms, Prokoviev, and on and on...

It is interesting to me that the two schools who get most worked up about this are the high, post-serial modernists, and the film composers...? (BTW, William, among your general heading of "serious" composers, very few are modernists at this point.) They are, of course, at somewhat opposite ends of the spectrum, but I don't think that's all. Speaking of decidedly "minor" composers in both worlds, it seems to me that the high modernists are attempting (naively) to transcend all formal conventions in order to engineer a music of absolute "truth", while the film composers are using psychology-lab tactics to produce a pre-determined emotional response. Don't these sound eerily like the same project to you?

What's interesting is the subject of Shostakovich. I've never been a huge fan, but his talent is undeniable. Now, he is guilty of Boulez's accusation, but only on Boulez's terms -- i.e., those of high modernism (I refuse to capitalize it anymore!). On the other hand, his music is of profound social relevance, in view of his historical position -- a fact of which I think he was fully aware. He chose his artistic path, and succeeded in following it (he also once told Sofia Gubaidulina to "continue down [her] mistaken path"). This, along with his technical prowess, has secured him a place in the "Canon". Whether Boulez would allow this or not, I'm not certain, but it brings up the other side of the "dissonance" argument: that it is not a question of changing the technical language of music forever, but rather of knowing the language you're speaking -- knowing its conventions, as well as its social/artistic context. Knowing these elements, you twist one thing here, turn another there, spend a little too much time on one idea, or cut another short -- ANYTHING to encourage musical dialogue around the form and its conventions. If you simply take it piecemeal, you achieve nothing (I am, of course, using "you" to mean "one"). And ANYTHING that achieves the former is, to me, already art, regardless of "isms" or aesthetic schools. Innovation is never an about-face. A true, die-hard modernist knows this, and may even believe s/he stands as an example. And s/he may be right, I just don't think so... But it is my feeling that painfully few film composers know, or care, about this basic principle. And why should they? They are getting paid to engineer an emotional impact, at just the right moment, without bewildering an audience already absorbed in a different medium: visual/linguistic narrative.

That was a rant. Forgive me!

J.

[William]

JBM

You don't understand the very first thing i wrote: the title of the thread.

I am not reationary - my whole point is that the modernists are now the reactionaries. Music has moved far beyond them.

My other point is that smaller minds need a single style of composition to work within. I find a composer capable of anything from pure romantic melody to serialism to aleatoric to medieval homophony to psycho-acoustic experimentation to be the true innovator of today.

People like Boulez - and he is absolutely the worst of the worst of his kind - want to establish categories of what is "good" and what is "bad" based on a single system of musical thinking. This is simplistic, not to mention stupid. It is obvious at this point in musical history that there is no one system that is the ultimate "perfected" form of musical expression. The naive aplication of the 19th century notion of "progress" - analogous to technological progress - is utterly and laughably superceded. And yet the "post-modernists" (an amusing term now since they are no longer "post" nor "modern") still keep plugging away at it.

In music today, there are many different, often mutually exclusive systems of composition and performance. And they all have a validity (except for disco - I won't budge on that). That Boulez would dare - I repeat DARE - to criticize a composer like Shostakovich, who wrote single compositions worth ten times more than Boulez's entire excruciating output and startingly mediocre conducting put together - is an outrage. Comparing Boulez to Shostakovich is an analogy roughly similar to comparing a flatworm to Einstein.

Nick

I agree with your statement that modernism in its first flowering (perhaps not the correct metaphor) emancipated composers from the necessities of post romanticism. Also your point that viewing dissonance as necessarily a shock is an example of older musical thinking in itself. For example Ligetti's "Lontano" is completely unshocking and even mesmerizing, yet microtonal.

However the entire concept of basing a criticism on whether a composer brings "something new to musical vocabulary" is absurd. In other words, the value of a piece of msic is based on whether it is new, not whether it is good. The problem with this is you can have a new piece of shit. Or an old fashioned work of genius. But many of today's composers' value systems are so skewed to originality at all costs that they overvalue to the point of absurdity the fact that no one ever heard a particular kind of sound. Therefore, it must be genius. Uh-huh. Yeah right.

A perfect contradiciton of this mentality is found in J.S. Bach vs. his sons. (Of course Bach is another composer the astoundingly arrogant Boulez does not like so it would not matter to him.) Though his sons had gone far beyond him in their "progress" and "musical vocabulary" Bach's greatest, late masterpieces were all written when he was hopelessly old-fashioned.

[jbm]

Actually, William, to be fluent in all different genres, and use them interchangably to communicate an idea, is really a Postmodern notion -- "found objects", pastiche/bricolage, etc. This too is arguably dead, or at least "old". There are a great many, well-schooled composers, who are brilliant at this, and many are probably in film, since it's valuable to be able to borrow from a great many traditions in order to evoke a particular era, mood, emotional situation, etc. I would say this is technique, but little more. That is, it doesn't guarantee that the composer will produce anything of lasting musical value. And even a good Postmodernist will attempt a synthesis that communicates something new...

I've much, much more to say on this subject, but no time right now!

J.

[jbm]

...another quick point.

I don't think it necessarily follows that modernism emancipated dissonance. I think that was the historic trajectory, and that whatever "ism" arose would have done the same. I mean, Mahler (there are better examples, I'm sure) had already emancipated dissonance from a classical perspective. And really, modernism is more tied to industrialism than it is to dissonance, strictly speaking. As far as the movement of musical change goes, dissonance was simply "in the air". And I have to confess, I love it! [[;)]]

J.

[mathis]

@William said:

However the entire concept of basing a criticism on whether a composer brings "something new to musical vocabulary" is absurd. In other words, the value of a piece of msic is based on whether it is new, not whether it is good. The problem with this is you can have a new piece of shit. Or an old fashioned work of genius. But many of today's composers' value systems are so skewed to originality at all costs that they overvalue to the point of absurdity the fact that no one ever heard a particular kind of sound. Therefore, it must be genius. Uh-huh. Yeah right.

Bill, you´re aware that this is an anti-romantic statement? [[;)]]

Huh, you had some strange dreams recently? Or concerts?
Basically I do agree with your initial statement, the thread subject, but I hardly know any composer living and working today whom you really could call a modernist. Even Boulez stopped being an "Avantgarde"-composer quite some time ago. (b.t.w. I heard at least two very impressive concerts of his music and one of them he also conducted. I really liked his work.)
At least here in Europe things changed quite a lot. When visiting friends at american academies few years ago I was quite surprised how "modernistic" they still thought. I had the feeling they wanted to be more hardcore "Darmstadt" than even the old protagonists were. But here during the last five or ten years a lot changed in this respect, maybe/probably in the States too. (that´s one of the reasons why I went to continue my composition-study NOW.)

At least I really don´t know anybody who is thinking about consonances or dissonances. At least for me that´s just different material but doesn´t say anything about the music. I assume you think the same and so do most I know.

Actually these years right now seem to be very open and non-dogmatic. All concepts and conceptual ideas are done, there´s simply nothing new you can do. Everthing is done.
This time now is about authenticity. It´s about REALLY doing something, not pretending. Something you (=one) could only do at this certain time at this certain place under these certain circumstances. Something personal, honest and real. tactile.

Good to see you here again. I was already wondering where you were...
Bests,
- Mathis

[mathis]

One more thought:
If there are any composers out there thinking about extending and developing the musical language in music theoretical terms then it´s probably the spectralists around Grisè or Tristan Murail who might be able to claim to be the avant-garde. But wait, they´re also oldfashioned already, right?

[William]

"Actually these years right now seem to be very open and non-dogmatic. All concepts and conceptual ideas are done, there´s simply nothing new you can do. Everthing is done.
This time now is about authenticity. It´s about REALLY doing something, not pretending." - Mathis

I am afraid the attitude of others in "power" (so-called) in the musical establishment are not so open minded. For example Boulez (again) whose vitriolic attacks on other composers are disgusting and which include among others: Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Mozart and J.S. Bach. A musician who does not like those composers is like a scientist who does not like Einstein, a painter who does not like Picasso, or a ballet dancer who does not like Barishnikov. In other words, a f**king idiot whose stupid pronouncements should never have been paid the slightest attention to. And yet, sadly, his name is mentioned over and over again. Why? Another one of the mysteries of modern media culture I suppose.

But to avoid being completely negative I agree totally with this statement by Mathis, and in fact I was trying to get at this very idea though it was dismissed by JBM as mere facile technique. It is not. It is the result of a complete sea-change in the history of music, which allows composers now to do absolutely anything with sound. Something that has never been possible before.

[jbm]

William,

I actually didn't dismiss what Mathis is saying as "facile technique". I simply pointed out that the ability to emulate a vast array of musical languages didn't guarantee valuable music, and that the fact that this is seen as a "strength" to producers who want emotional button-pushing scores only makes matters worse for musical culture. After all, we do want to maintain audiences who still care to think about, or concentrate on, the music they're hearing. Also, there is a marked difference between drawing from different traditions and aesthetic approaches in order to arrive at a new place, and simply taking elements of those traditions piecemeal for their emotional impact. The former is an act of synthesis, the latter is paint-by-numbers. I sincerely believe there are a great number of film scores which perform the latter, which is really nothing but technique -- "compose a 2 minute passage in the style of Strauss", and the like. To me, what Mathis is talking about is a synthesis of stylistic approaches, in which anything can be thrown into the pot, without needing to be somehow theoretically "justified". And I agree with him, and I also agree that we are living at a rare time in that regard.

I also agree with Mathis about Grisey -- he's a consumate artist, and I suppose he is doing new things. But actually, much of his "language" (theoretically speaking) is not terribly new. It's the sum of his influences and interests that have become something new, along with the way in which he understands musical form. This, I might add, is my consuming interest these days... How does one structure a piece of music, when all systems have fallen apart. It's very exciting, to me!

It's interesting to hear Mathis say that nobody thinks about consonance or dissonance anymore. I think that's the best way to put it, and something I certainly agree with. Too bad I was so busy reacting to William's seeming attack on dissonance! [:O]ops:

Anyway, I do think we are basically saying the same thing, William. What happened to get you so pissed at Boulez and modernism? Did you read a bad book, get turned down on a commission? What's up? I have to confess that you seem downright hostile today.

J.

[mathis]

@jbm said:

Anyway, I do think we are basically saying the same thing, William. What happened to get you so pissed at Boulez and modernism? Did you read a bad book, get turned down on a commission? What's up? I have to confess that you seem downright hostile today.

J.

That´s true. Bill, what´s up, friend?

I´m curious from what time these Boulez statements are. They sound as if they are from the seventies. At that time it was simply good tone, it was politically correct to state stupid things like that. (Of course forced by himself and alike). But it´s the same today. Today it´s good tone and politically correct to bash on the "New Music" composers, which I think is the same unnecessary. Allow these human beings to change their minds, too. "New Music" is more than thirty years old. It´s stone age.

jbm, I share your interest in form. It´s indeed one of the most important aspects. Especially in a time when you can do everything it´s about the form which tells the artistic statement. Good point.
And I also didn´t read your statements as "facile technique". Basically we all agree here.


B.t.w., Boulez currently conducts Wagner in Bayreuth...

[Nick]

Perhaps William you could try to explain what it is in the music (not the man) you dislike so much ?

I do have a hard time talking with people (and I am NOT accusing you of this) who say X if better than y without explaining their system of values. It is certain not something I've heard Boulez do.

Obviously some music will appeal to some people on a personal level more than works but I try not to let these prejudices get in the way. I think we can learn to appreciate a composer’s skill, his craft even if the music does not necessarily appeal to us. You might find in later years it comes to you (as with Stravinsky and the Method) or you might never listen to it again, either way I do think we should try to be open minded and curious.

Often criticism is just that and not condemnation. Boulez sets out his terms of reference and argues that Shostakovitch has brought nothing new(or whatever). On that basis alone Boulez criticises the works. But he does not deny that many thousands of people like it, or that a great deal of work, effort and suffering went into creating the pieces. He may even like them for all we know, but simply points outsomething lacking within his terms of reference.

Surely the way to answer this would be to dispense with personal attacks and prove him wrong ?

[William]

Does Boulez conduct Wagner wih gloves on, the way Wagner conducted Mendelssohn?

My dislike of Boulez has come from hearing direct quotes from him and from his conducting, of which I heard an extensive selection of Debussy, and which is banal and incompetent. The orchestra (New York Phil) could have done better with no conductor. The fact that his tenure there was very short is quite indicative.

However in his defense I did like one thing he said, that music is not about expression of emotion or thought, but is a labyrinth to be endlessly explored. That struck me as a great statement even in the midst of my hostility.

Perhaps part of the frustration is this whole concept of a "system of values." I try to change my values if I discover something new (or old) that is worthwhile. But people like Boulez do not. They simply condemn what does not fit into their system. It is a kind of intellectual tyranny oddly reminiscent of Victorian repression over an art that above all must remain completely free to any idea, feeling or influence for its creation.

[Guy Sigsworth]

re: Boulez. I'm basically against him - he is arrogant and imperious, a musical bully - but I'm worried you overdo things. There's a suspicious neatness about it. For instance, you dislike his published musical opinions, and you somehow turn this into him being a bad conductor. There have been several great conductors with terrible opinions (Becham, Furtwangler, and especially Karajan). I think Boulez is a great conductor of certain kinds of music. His recent Mahler cycles are not great, but surely that's no surprise.

Have you ever sat in an orchestra pit yourself and tried to make sense of those vague, windmill-like motions some bad conductors make? If you have, you'd realize why Boulez has been a force for good in conducting. Boulez started conducting because he didn't want to hear inaccurate performances of his music. His obsession has been with giving the precise, unambiguous cues players need if they're going to play rhythmically complex music well. That makes him seem cold, more like a traffic cop than a romantic hero, and in romantic music, it's probably just wrong. But I'd say all younger conductors performing, say, Stravinsky or Messiaen have learned from his example, and the general standard of all performances of this repertoire have improved as a consequence.

Turning to Boulez's own music, I like some - not all - of it. For all that he's obsessed with the "development of musical language", his greatest gift is actually as a colorist. The best thing about much of it is the intriguing choice of timbres. My favorite piece is "Eclat", with its trilling cimbaloms. It's a bizarre thought that, even though Boulez's nemesis as a composer is probably Steve Reich, they actually like very similar sounds (mallet instruments especially).

[William]

Tha's interesting, Guy and yes I've sat in orchestra pits and done my best to avoid conductors. In fact the conductor of one symphony I was in was so bad the entire orchestra had to ignore him as a normal routine or they would be thrown off.

But I wasn't trying to extrapolate from criticism of his composing to his conducting. I was referring to some specific recordings. However I see what you're saying about the specificity of cues, etc.

Along these lines I remember one somewhat insane conductor I knew who was also a composer. He told me that he was rehearsing "Rite of Spring" and the orchestra was unable to play the meter changes, so he put the whole thing into 4/4 with syncopation and they played it just fine.

I doubt if Boulez would approve of that approach...

[DG]

@William said:

Along these lines I remember one somewhat insane conductor I knew who was also a composer. He told me that he was rehearsing "Rite of Spring" and the orchestra was unable to play the meter changes, so he put the whole thing into 4/4 with syncopation and they played it just fine.

I doubt if Boulez would approve of that approach...

All the orchestras that I work with would refuse to play a re-barred version of "Rite" (and have done), because as they point out, when you know how it goes it is almost impossible to read with alternative notation.

DG

[Guy Sigsworth]

It's interesting we're talking about the "Rite Of Spring". I can't think of another piece of music which could ever sound as shockingly, suddenly "new" as that one. Original, new, modern (but atavistic and barbaric too). Stravinsky "samples" so much of it from elsewhere - Lithuanian folk songs, Skryabin, Rimsky Korsakov - but it STILL feels original, modern, new. I don't even hear a historical period in it so much - Stockhausen's "Gruppen", by comparison, sounds far more of its era (though to be fair, I've never heard it in a concert performance).

Here's a thought, one which could unite VSL's hardcore avant-gardists with its film score composers. I think originality must be a product of context. Once you've decided to do a ballet about barbaric pagan rituals & human sacrifice you're forced to come up with noises & rhythms you'd never think of if you're just sat at the piano trying to write a symphony or a string quartet. Once you've decided to write a piece of music to comemorate the horrors of the Hiroshima bomb (as in Penderecki's Threnody) you know you can't just write schmaltzy romantic melodies in E-flat Major - you're going to have to go to the limit to find sounds appropriate to that context. One of my favourite American composers is George Crumb, & his sonic originality always has an extreme context to inspire it; his Black Angels is inspired by the horrors of the Vietnam war, for instance.

(It's always like this. Monteverdi, when Artusi criticizes him for breaking the rules of the Palestrina style, says look, I need stronger music because I need to depict stronger emotions. Wagner pushes the harmonic system further for the sake of the drama.)

Laters

Guy

[JohnA]

@"Guy SigsworthOnce you've decided to write a piece of music to comemorate the horrors of the Hiroshima bomb (as in Penderecki's Threnody)[/quote said:

[quote="Guy SigsworthOnce you've decided to write a piece of music to comemorate the horrors of the Hiroshima bomb (as in Penderecki's Threnody)

HA! That has to be one of the the biggest con-jobs in music. It's original title was 8' 37" (named for its duration, don't you know)
After several people commented on the extreme emotional impact it had on them, Penderecki changed it's name to "Threnody". After more performances and more "emotional impact"-type comments Penderecki changed the title once again to "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima"

How can a title like that not make a difference to the way you hear that piece?

I like the piece, and some other works of P, but I think he's an asshole.

best,
John

[evan evans]

ROFL. That's f***ng hilarious about Pendorecki. What an arse!

Evan Evans

P.S. Although, come to think of it, I might do the same myself someday given the same conditions! [;)]