I'm glad to encounter a fellow Berlioz enthusiast. 

However, what you are saying is still a great excuse for total collapse of artistic principles, since the worst hackwork can be justified by a variation on your statement.  I think one needs to uphold what may be only ideals, like van Gogh.  Of course he went partly mad and committed suicide.  But his unswerving dedication to pure creation without even a single thought of how to USE art for money making - something he showed as much as any artist in history - is an ideal to strive for.     Also, I can't help thinking of statements like this from Tarkovsky who was not only unswervingly, absolutely idealistic concerning art over money, but even over the worst totalitarian government in history.  He was talking about filmmaking but it applies equally to music:

"The man who has stolen in order never to thieve again remains a thief.  Nobody who has ever betrayed his principles can have a pure relationship with life.  Therefore when a film-maker says he will produce a pot-boiler in order to give himself the strength and means to make the film of his dreams - that is so much deception, or worse, self-deception. He will never now make HIS film."

In my 20s I was obsessed with artistic purity, against anything. I had a great time, met some interesting people, got a big record deal which I frittered away by upsetting everyone who had any power just for my own amusement.

Aged about 33, after a life of poverty, I decided for an experiment to see what would happen if I channeled my energy into making money from music instead seeking artistic nirvana.

Some important things happened:

1. I made money for the first time in my life, more than I ever expected to make (I had small ambitions, so I don't mean millions, I just mean I never expected to have the kind of money I have now; a real living, a nice house).

2. I did music which I found more interesting to make, which took a more open mind, which took more listening, learning and thinking than I ever did before.

3. I did music at a higher level of technical excellence.

4. When I did side projects for old times' sake, for the artistic fun of it, they were better on every level than the stuff I did when I thought I was a tortured artist, because I'd matured and developed while under commercial pressures.

So, in fact during my tortured artist years really I just had ambitions beyond my own ability. I got very closed minded about what I thought was good, I stopped listening to anyone except myself and I got stuck in a rut.  I also ended up depressed and lost my enthusiasm for music.  Ok, I also had some fun and I did make some important leaps of imagination, but I think I progressed further artistically when I stopped trying to be artistic and instead focused on money and the market. It made me work harder, I became happier, I listened more and developed an open mind.

So Tarkovsky's statement is fine for him and his life, but it's not my experience.

:)

to put it maybe more reasonably - I understand how you're saying be practical, etc.  But your reduction of Van Gogh and Tarkovsky to the cliche of "tortured artist" is wrong.  They are far more than that.   Yes, I too went through the adolescent naivete you are talking about.   But after awhile one starts to need some essential meaning instead of mere comfort.  I'll leave it at that.

@Another User said:

However, what you are saying is still a great excuse for total collapse of artistic principles, since the worst hackwork can be justified by a variation on your statement.  I think one needs to uphold what may be only ideals, like van Gogh.  Of course he went partly mad and committed suicide.  But his unswerving dedication to pure creation without even a single thought of how to USE art for money making - something he showed as much as any artist in history - is an ideal to strive for.     Also, I can't help thinking of statements like this from Tarkovsky who was not only unswervingly, absolutely idealistic concerning art over money, but even over the worst totalitarian government in history.  He was talking about filmmaking but it applies equally to music:

"The man who has stolen in order never to thieve again remains a thief.  Nobody who has ever betrayed his principles can have a pure relationship with life.  Therefore when a film-maker says he will produce a pot-boiler in order to give himself the strength and means to make the film of his dreams - that is so much deception, or worse, self-deception. He will never now make HIS film."

 I've had the same thought.  Another example is Hitchcock, who did one of the all time great films Vertigo, and yet was one of the most commercial of all directors. 

But Tarkovsky is somehow still right, because he is an example of uncompromising artistry that could not be conquered either by money or even the Soviet Union.   With only seven films he become known all over the world not for mere popularity, but for his artistic accomplishment and originality.  If you follow his example, you have no excuses.  But if you follow the dagmarpiano philosophy, or the guy who said "to hell with art and society" - what a philosophy! -  you have a beautiful excuse every day for total enslavement to money.  It's called selling your soul to the devil and people do it every hour. 

Tarkovsky was probably reacting to the hardships he faced getting the job done that he wanted to do. His extreme statements about art being above everything were probably a necessary defence he needed to stay true, to stay on course with everything pushing him off course.  The time I got the most like that, that purist attitude, was when I also had everything around me pushing me in different directions and I needed huge defences to stay on track.  Now, when I work on my 'pure' projects, I know what I want, I can do it and no one is stopping me. So I don't need lofty statements to propel me forth. I just need a set of word documents where I develop my theories, and then a lot of to do lists.

Being artistic doesn't have to be hard. Well, not unless you're struggling to raise millions of roubles from a corrupt totalitarian government for film projects that many people didn't understand. Yes, that would be hard so its no wonder it ate him up.

I'm just saying, his statements are probably more to do with his own difficulties than anything grand and universal.

It is also worth remembering Charles Ives.

Made his money in insurance, followed his unique vision in composing.

never mind - I'll sign off of this.

@dagmarpiano said:

Being artistic doesn't have to be hard. Well, not unless you're struggling to raise millions of roubles from a corrupt totalitarian government for film projects that many people didn't understand. Yes, that would be hard so its no wonder it ate him up.

As someone who was born and spent most of his life in Russia I have a question. What do you think is more corrupt and totalitarian: a "corrupt totalitarian state" or the "free" market we all "enjoy"? Oh, and which do you think is easier to escape? [:)]

No worries. I didn't even think you were dismissive or anything and it wasn't Russia my argument was about.

I just didn't agree with your idea that if Tarkovsky's existence hadn't been poisoned by the regime he would have lived a long and happy life, gracing us with his works.

I'll give you an example. I am an English teacher working in an international company which is known all over the world. As a business, its primary goal is to keep afloat on the market and make revenue. In order to achieve this goal one needs to make certain steps which are not the same as the ones needed if your goal is to teach someone English. The two can coincide occasionally, but it's rather an exception than a rule.

If Tarkovsky had to go commercial for even just a second, it would be the end of him as we know him, I believe. This is not to drop a shaddow on you or reduce what you do, it's about Tarkovsky. That's all.

@The Minstrel said:

Wow. I hadn't quited realized that composing film music in the style of Hans Zimmer where morally comparable to working as an assassin or exploiting third world countries, and that the current musical trends would lead to the utter annihilation of our civilization. This thread has been a real wake-up call.

There could potentially be a great composer inside The Minstrel; he summarized everything in two lines! What he says with irony though, I say with conviction, with one modification: I don't believe a professional assassin poses such a threat to our civilization, save for him getting a contract to "off" the next Mozart. If I could "press a button", I'd rather he continued his pitiful profession than all the Zimmerites put together (not Zimmer).

@Goran Now, as far as the more elevated discussion regarding talent is concerned, I brought up the example of the 16 year-olds, not to say that they represent the pinnacle of the art of musical composition, and I agree that the 30 year-old Mozart and Chopin are better than their 16 year-old counterparts (I'm not sure about Mendelssohn if I stretch that to 18 years of age). I also agree that those teenagers were "better" than the 30 year-old Beethoven, however he overtook them a couple of years later. I thought all this went without saying... I made that example to demonstrate that when the 'Gift' has hit early, it has resulted in some unbelievable musical works that rank with the very best any century has to offer, before those kids had enough time to "work hard", to "cultivate musical sensibilities" (to the same extent a 30 year-old has had), or to amass enough experience which potentially can result in the writing of a masterpiece. 

Be that as it may, - and if I may expand the age limit of those youngsters to 17-8, then I'd give up Les Troyens, the complete catalogue of Bruckner and Taneev (and certainly the minor Draeseke and his Tragic - for me he sits somewhere between Gliere and Schmidt) with tears of joy, if I could have Chopin's op.10 for my own. And if I can stretch the youths' ages up to say 23-5, then some of Mozart's, Chopin's, Prokofiev's, Mendelssohn's, Schubert's, Rossini's, Strauss', and Scriabin's offerings up to that point - and forgetting for the moment the eras before and after them - eclipse most other music excepting their own of a later date, and that of the great masters. I am saying this not to initiate a draw of comparisons, but to emphasize that if great composition was the result of talent combined with hard work and the "cultivation of musical sensibilities" on an equal basis, those early works would not have been as brilliant, as perfect as they were. Also, I never said that the gift is something that has to appear early in life or never at all (if Janacek had died before he turned 60 we probably would not know of him today). I also never said that talent alone can create great art. It does require the will, the application and discipline, the "cultivation of musical sensibilities", and the element of luck, in order for it to be allowed to shine through, to be expressed.

However, I am saying that the genetic 'Gift' is by far the most important element, along with something to which I neglected to refer last time, and which is the 'Innate Musical Personality'. These two make the difference between what is accomplished/good/well-crafted music, and what is Great music. Those qualities by far outweigh 'hard work' and the rest, without replacing them (I can't be any clearer than this). So I disagree that the incalculable difference of quality and substance in Ravel's work compared to his classmates can be attributed to them "not possessing the same amount of self-criticism, cultivated the same musical sensibilities, or worked on those as well on his technical proficiency with the same rigour and consistency". The first goes straight out the window when we consider the example of Mussorgsky vs. Balakirev and Rimsky, the second follows when we remember that back then there were no CDs or the Internet, everybody went to each other's house and the same concerts, studied the same scores with the same teachers, and constantly compared notes and showed one another their works, so everybody was aware of everyone else and what they were doing at all times. Finally the third follows the same route when we compare hard working French composers of the time with the almost hobbyist (but gifted...) Poulenc, Italian rigorous and consistent composers with the lazy Rossini, or their Russian, also non-existent, counterparts with the self-proclaimed "inert" Scriabin. And there are numerous other examples... Whatever little differences between Ravel and his classmates in terms of musical experience or work ethic are not enough to account for the vast artistic disparities between their work and the master's.

Also, how many decades of instruction in harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration does one require before he can write Barber's Adagio? It looks like an empty manuscript where a 10 year-old drew some semi-breves and minims here and there. But what music!...I'll also take that any day over Tallis' Spem in Alium (be that the great work that it is).

Now I consider some things self evident, but just in case: I'm not saying that hard work etc. won't improve everybody's skills, or won't allow whatever gift anyone possesses to shine to its potential. With the exception of one's gift and innate musical personality - and you will note I'm saying innate, not merely musical personality which is heavily influenced by period, geography etc. I mean that almost ineffable musical signature that identifies the composer in a piece we hear for the first time (the greater the innate personality the faster this happens) - everything else one can endeavour to acquire and improve to the best of his ability during the course of his life. However, you can't buy those two qualities; you either possess them or you don't (you are a composer or you are not). And all composers possess them to different degrees. I don't talk much about luck and circumstance for two reasons: a) Luck is something outside ourselves and what we control (I'm referring to war, accidents, bad health, etc.), and b) Circumstance is something on which we can have some control (access to money, making the right connections/decisions), but it is something that also lies outside of strictly musical discipline, even if I agree that it can in reality prove to be a more determining factor in terms of survival.

Also, it is a convention for me to say for example "I admire Bruckner because of his 5th and 9th". That doesn't mean I admire Bruckner the man (please...) It is to the work that I am referring. In that respect, I don't care whether he slaved for a decade over a measure, or he wrote both symphonies while reading the morning paper in the toilet in two sessions. I don't care whether he worked hard or not because I'm not admiring him. I am admiring the work for its qualities, per se; not the discipline that went before it (that's a different kind of admiration which I also extend).

As far as the plague being as rare as a masterpiece, don't forget that the former wasn't always rare, the latter always has been, but just in case you're thinking of introducing deformities or other repellant curiosities and ideas, I hereby qualify what I meant, by saying that talent is also admired because of its rarity; if everyone possessed it, it wouldn't be worth bothering with. I could have turned around and say I don't sit there and admire the 'hard work' of a specialist fixing a sewer, but I knew what you meant...

@everybody Insofar as money and art are concerned, let's not forget that before Romanticism - whether it hit with Beethoven, before, or after in music - composers were hardly preoccupied with posterity and the masterpiece for a number of reasons: They were contracted employees for the most part, required to produce a lot of music on frequent demand. No matter how gifted one is, one can't produce landmarks on every page or opus (no one has!) when there's no time for reflection, contemplation, revision. And why should there be? Works were rarely if at all performed a second time (except opera), there were no recordings, and most of all, no mentality that the composer is a higher form of being, bringing us universal insight and Truth; that came later. It was professional pride into one's work and healthy competition that allowed the gifted composers to stand out and above the rest.

Coming to today, not everyone has inherited money or is otherwise employed, allowing him to take their time over every semiquaver, or uncompromisingly reject any musical requirement by a commissioner or a director; not everyone is prepared to live in conditions comparable to former Soviet squalor, particularly if those conditions are not shared by most everyone else in his community. If that weren't enough, all the members of the musical pantheon (with very few exceptions) proved that one can compose intentionally mediocre works on demand (for specific amateur musicians for one example), and the greatest works of music ever offered humanity at the same time. So if you can live from composition when people accept your mediocre music while you're also concentrating in doing your best as often as you can, I have no problem. It is not up to me or anyone else to say "how much is enough". Personally, if I could get paid €2,000,000 per contract I'd take it.

So the question for me is not "how much is the money"; it's "how important is the money" and "what do I have to do/write to get it"... For example, I would not consciously compromise the art and the standards by becoming the conduit through which mutants that never belonged in the industry are finally allowed access, effectively debunking it...

 dagmarpiano

No I don't think your stuff is hackwork, it sounded good.  Obviously going off on tangents here...  (sorry I signed back on  )

 That is a great post by Errikos.  Holy crap!  He should be teaching class! 

One example of somebody who never went to school was Erich Korngold - he didn't need to.  He wrote the Sinfonietta when he was 16!  Has anybody here heard that ?   Listen to it.  It is Mozart-level genius, and absolutely unfathomable how a callow teenager could write that.  It shows what Errikos is talking about in an extreme degree.  He just had it in him.  No need for hard work. 

That corresponds in an extreme way to something I've always thought - if you can write a good melody, you can do anything in music.  If you can't, everything you do will be forgotten, guaranteed. 

(Naturally I'm a bit concerned about whether or not my melodies are good...)

@William said:

 That is a great post by Errikos.  Holy crap!  He should be teaching class! 

One example of somebody who never went to school was Erich Korngold - he didn't need to.  He wrote the Sinfonietta when he was 16!  Has anybody here heard that ?   Listen to it.  It is Mozart-level genius, and absolutely unfathomable how a callow teenager could write that.  It shows what Errikos is talking about in an extreme degree.  He just had it in him.  No need for hard work. 

That corresponds in an extreme way to something I've always thought - if you can write a good melody, you can do anything in music.  If you can't, everything you do will be forgotten, guaranteed. 

(Naturally I'm a bit concerned about whether or not my melodies are good...)

Thanks a lot!

I've never heard the Sinfonietta, and would be keen to at some opportunity. I also agree with the first part of your aphorism regarding melody, and I know people who agree with the whole thing. In fact, off-hand, I can think of ONLY two great composers (out of so many), with no gift for melody whatsoever, and no great gift for harmony either - they seem to go hand in hand most of the time, and that deficiency actually was so important as to steer their careers to the directions they took:

Sometimes I think of Stravinsky as a magnificent, technicolor, circus-like juggling, pyrotechnic charlatan!! Because he could absolutely not come up with the first note of a melody (spare me the folksong stuff, that was a desperate half-measure for such an otherwise cosmopolitan and urbane man), he just used his incredible ear and innate musical personality and incredible technique to fill the obvious void, coming up with unprecedented awe-inspiring dazzling musical events, even for a Russian. That is yet another reason why his music sounded so new and fresh, he freed himself single-handedly from the ties of strict motivic considerations - they became thematically equal to his exorbitant flights and inventions in his work. No matter what anyone says, practically all of his greatest music was episodic in character, for that was the form which fitted his particular gifts the best. He was like a cripple who through talent, invention, determination, and all the rest, managed to tower above able-bodied people in physical feats.

The other great composer that was plagued by the same impotence was of course Bartok, who went to the ends of the known universe in desperate search for the rudiments of melodic structures (musicological interests my ****), and as with Stravinsky, he reluctantly fell back to a very inventive and intelligent use of folksong (for who would do that happily all of his mature career if he could write his own melodies?). It is no coincidence for me, that these two composers were unequivocally the two pioneers, masters of rhythm. I believe it came as naturally to them as melody and harmony come to others.

Come to think of it, even Beethoven was possibly one of the least gifted melodists of his time, and he also had to deal with that and find his own solutions inside the bag of his remaining monumental gifts (including the rhythmic vitality). In fact he is considered by some as the father of symphonic melody.

To downgrade the point a little, I find in film-music that those who are extremely and "naturally" gifted in one of these two respects, they are deficient in the other (I'm not talking about their imitators). For example Williams and Morricone. 

Now I know this is a shocking, radical post for most, I expect people will have the strongest of disagreements, and I'm stuffed if I know what it all has to do with VSL's competition with HS...

P.S.: WIlliam you don't have to worry about the quality of your melodies in Earth and Paradise - I'll be reviewing them shortly, and I'm encouraging everyone here to buy them. They are great!

@ Errikos

Since the amount of time required to further engage in detailed discussion of the points you have made has to go into other activities, I'll just sum up what seem to me to be the most important differences between our views on the issue:

a) You consider talent and innate musical personalities as naturally given factors which can be refined, but not developed in the strict sense of the word. I don't - I have no belief in crucial or even dominant importance of any innate talent whatsoever, and believe that what we refer to as talent is essentially developed by a combination of factors, all of which have to be at least partially present to lead to excellent results. To put it short: what you call talent is in my opinion innate only in very limited and elementary sense, the major part of what we understand under talent is actually developed through a combination of experience, skill and acquired insight, theoretical as well as intuitive.

On a sidnote, the examples you bring I find to be unconvincing, as they leave some of the crucial aspects of the whole story aside (Mozart-Mendelssohn-Prokofiev-Chopin starting with the best of the best quality of musical education and guided composition and starting studying musical literature at an extremely early age, that is, amassing a 10 or even 12-year of intensive listening and composing experience until the age of 16 (the same BTW goes for Korngold), Mussorgsky not being self-critical (which is incorrect, Mussorgsky was a vey self-critical composer, the booze notwithstanding), Scriabin talking of his "inertia" etc.)

b) This is, I guess, to a certain amount a level of personal preference: I would gladly give up Chopin's Op.10 for any single one of Taneiev's mature chamber works, Les Troyens, any symphony by Draeseke or any Bruckner symphony beginning with the 1st. I also don't consider Draeseke to be a minor composer: in my opinion, his 2nd and 3rd Symphony (not to forget the Gudrun Ouverture) stand on the same level with the very best of Brahms' symphonic movements, and at times even surpass them in terms of originality of their formal solutions and their motivic intricacies (the 2nd Movement of the 2nd Symphony particularly being a case in point). The same goes for Taneiev, whose best chamber works I find to be no less masterly then any other I know of.

P.S. The assesment of Stravinsky and Bartok as having no melodic gift strikes me as strange - I find many of their melodic as well as harmonic solutions and idiosyncrasies very memorable as well as very refined (not that I could care less if they didn't posess any "melodic gift" at all, as melody is not the dominant or decisive factor in how I percieve music). Beethoven on the other side seems to me also to be quite "unmelodic" in this sense - which, again, doesn't exactly bother me when listening to Diabelli Variations ;-)

@Errikos said:

So I disagree that the incalculable difference of quality and substance in Ravel's work compared to his classmates can be attributed to them "not possessing the same amount of self-criticism, cultivated the same musical sensibilities, or worked on those as well on his technical proficiency with the same rigour and consistency". The first goes straight out the window when we consider the example of Mussorgsky vs. Balakirev and Rimsky

That is a great point, as Mussorgsky was steeped in the same milieu and yet is savagely, uniquely individual in all of music.  His music is like red hot coals or brilliantly gleaming ice compared to the tepid, carefully controlled temperatures of Rimsky Korsakov.  Though I do like Rimsky, Mussogrsky is on another plane of untouchable genius.  And of course, he was totally out of control in his personal life.

One thing on this I disagree with in general is Beethoven's melody - he did truly great themes, such as the main theme last movement of the 9th,  or several in the 7th or 3rd, but I think because of his extreme mastery of symphonic development they are so perfectly subsumed into the structure  that one stops thinking of them as isolated melodies.   Very interesting discussion by Errikos and Goran...

@Another User said:

The same goes for Taneiev, whose best chamber works I find to be no less masterly then any other I know of.

I think that sentence says it all. I won't argue against Taneev's (or even Draeseke's) mastery, when I have seen and heard the incredible technique he imparted to his students, especially polyphony (Rachmaninov, Scriabin, etc.). That is not what I've been arguing about. There's a lot of mastery in his works sure (as in Draeseke's, as in Franck's, as in so many others'), but little genius, and that makes all the difference.

Anyway, I always say that a lot of worthy composers are unduly neglected, hopefully people like Goran can get together and form societies for different such composers, and perhaps there can be series of concerts organized dedicated to them, or labels recording them (ex. BIS is recording the complete works of Skalkottas - opus numbers comparable to Beethoven's!), how about it sponsors?

@dagmarpiano said:

In my 20s I was obsessed with artistic purity, against anything. I had a great time, met some interesting people, got a big record deal which I frittered away by upsetting everyone who had any power just for my own amusement.

Aged about 33, after a life of poverty, I decided for an experiment to see what would happen if I channeled my energy into making money from music instead seeking artistic nirvana.

Some important things happened:

1. I made money for the first time in my life, more than I ever expected to make (I had small ambitions, so I don't mean millions, I just mean I never expected to have the kind of money I have now; a real living, a nice house).

2. I did music which I found more interesting to make, which took a more open mind, which took more listening, learning and thinking than I ever did before.

3. I did music at a higher level of technical excellence.

4. When I did side projects for old times' sake, for the artistic fun of it, they were better on every level than the stuff I did when I thought I was a tortured artist, because I'd matured and developed while under commercial pressures.

So, in fact during my tortured artist years really I just had ambitions beyond my own ability. I got very closed minded about what I thought was good, I stopped listening to anyone except myself and I got stuck in a rut.  I also ended up depressed and lost my enthusiasm for music.  Ok, I also had some fun and I did make some important leaps of imagination, but I think I progressed further artistically when I stopped trying to be artistic and instead focused on money and the market. It made me work harder, I became happier, I listened more and developed an open mind.

So Tarkovsky's statement is fine for him and his life, but it's not my experience.

😊

Don, I really appreciate the honesty of your sharing. Most refreshing. I had a lot of experiences on the radio/ad agency side of the fence before I went back to writing. I call this period in my 20s, "the other side of the music business," because at that level you see how it all works. I took a lot of that information and created a course called Marketing Your Music and You. It's the slowest selling thing at Alexander Publishing.

There's always this battle between art and bucks. I think in music we need to understand the reality that NASA has had to work with: no bucks, no Buck Rogers. If only we could bring back Leopold Mozart and get his opinion on all this!