I fear it's pandemic right across the fine arts, Errikos. Over the past 100 or so years in particular, P.R. - i.e. what used to be called propaganda - has become virtually ubiquitous and omnipotent such that now it has seduced, suborned and saddled far too many people in western societies with the appalling belief that individuality - indeed one might say the soul itself - is something from outside, not within.

In the following dramatisation of the first rehearsal of Beethoven's Eroica, some important words are ascribed to Joseph Haydn, who attended the rehearsal. (play pointer set to that moment, 1:17:42, in this link)

"He's done something no other composer has attempted: he's placed himself at the centre of his work. He gives us a glimpse into his soul."

Thus began the romantic period in orchestral music.

Today, when the technical means of producing music have become so widely available, convient and affordable, I'm constantly reminded of Kierkegaard's bleak observation on the spread of printing technology, which he regarded as a somewhat comical invention, for:-

"Since when, oh God, have there been so many people with something to say?"

One thing surely has become horribly clear to many if not most of us today. The vast armies of people engaged, professionally or not, in producing P.R. for this, that and the other - and I include "corporate music" and all other kitsch music as part of their productions - are far from being those "with something to say".

@Paul McGraw said:

Now, young people are taught to hate western civilization and everything it stood for. I could rant on about this for days on end. But in the case of music, how can anyone expect anything other than stuff called music that reflects the values (or lack of values) of the modern world?

Sorry to say, I think there is a contradiction in your statements. Isn't the so called 'modern world' attributed largely  to  'western civilization'...planes, trains, automobiles, capitalism...and the corporate music Errikos referred to? Let alone that it was a pure coincidence of history that all this happend in the so called 'western world'? 

Yet you say that young people are taught to hate this 'western civilization' whereas I would think it is quite the opposite. Or perhaps you are referring to something else by 'western civilization'.

Anand

You are referring to technology and inventions. Not culture. 

Paul McGraw

Macker,

Well said, beautifully written and insightful.

Paul McGraw

@Paul McGraw said:

Now, young people are taught to hate western civilization and everything it stood for. I could rant on about this for days on end. But in the case of music, how can anyone expect anything other than stuff called music that reflects the values (or lack of values) of the modern world?

Sorry to say, I think there is a contradiction in your statements. Isn't the so called 'modern world' attributed largely  to  'western civilization'...planes, trains, automobiles, capitalism...and the corporate music Errikos referred to? Let alone that it was a pure coincidence of history that all this happend in the so called 'western world'? 

Yet you say that young people are taught to hate this 'western civilization' whereas I would think it is quite the opposite. Or perhaps you are referring to something else by 'western civilization'.

Anand

You are referring to technology and inventions. Not culture. 

Paul McGraw

Ok, but eveyone is following 'western culture' these days. So I am still not sure what your point is. I hope it is not "no one is following "western culture" thats why the music is pretty bad" 

@agitato said:

As always, I am totally with you on this.

If I can offer any help towards your depression and exasperation at the current state of music, perhaps this will be a refreshing breath of air?....

The "Siren sounds waltz" by the 14 year child prodigy Alma Deuscher (actual music starts around 2:50, unless you want to listen to her intro): 

I think this is pretty remarkable music for a person of that age, or maybe of any age, if we include all the crap music out there. She gives me so much hope for the future.

Anand 

I must disagree here, purely because I think that a well off, incubator-bred wunderkind most certainly isn't what the real world out there needs. These people exist in their own little outside spheres, less affected by how the faceless, soulless mechanisms of corporate culture and algorithm driven reasoning are transfiguring every facet of the everyday world.

Macker that quote from Haydn is fascinating.  Also the Kierkegaard is so appropriate right now.  The statement of your own also struck me  - "the appalling belief that individuality - indeed one might say the soul itself - is something from outside, not within"  - that is almost exactly what is being advised for "creativity" by the so-called experts:  it is a group process, not a deeply personal one.  The "lone genius" is frowned upon.  (Though those are all of the most inspiring artists, thinkers or composers throughout history at least to me.) But today everyone must do what they do in full exhibitionistic view of the world or they don't exist. Everything is a selfie and yet if you look at what selfies and Facebook are, they are 99% bad photography and uninteresting stories.   This grates on me even though I make some attempts at dealing with it...   

agitato,

The culture of Western Civilization has been steadily eroding since the 1960's. Very little of it remains today. I am not sure of the best terminology to use today, post-modernism, perhaps. One of the core beliefs of Western Civilization in the past was that not all art, or music or architecture or poetry or cultures were equal. Some art or music or architecture was of a higher caliber and deserved to be cultivated, treasured and preserved.  In contrast, postmodernists believe everything is just a matter of opinion. A Beethoven Symphony is of no greater value than a I-IV-V pop tune, or better yet 4:33. To postmodernists all cultures are of equal value, except of course the old Western Civilization which is despised and should be destroyed.

I am getting really depressed writing this. 

Paul McGraw

I am happily surprised that the video I posted has elicited some discussion of this sort in this forum which, as a veteran member, I thought had long run its course, save for the discussions on technical matters..

Thank you all for contributing such valuable thoughts.

Paul: Young people today are learning to hate western civilization while not giving up one iota of the materialistic benefits of that civilization, instead they exclude themselves from everything lofty that civilization could offer them...  This happens purposely and from above of course, but I cannot discuss this further without veering into actual politics, which should be left out of this forum. So I'll let Schoenberg do the talking for me:

"One should never forget that what one learns in school about history is the truth only insofar as it does not interfere with the political, philosophical, moral, or other beliefs of those in whose interest the facts are told, coloured, or arranged."

Macker: Thanks for the Kierkegaard quote, I was not aware of it; how apt and topical in an age of Facebook and Instagram!..  I would like to add to your point regarding 'individuality' something from a book that I dearly recommend to all here - Music and the Mind by Anthony Storr. Yung is quoted in the chapter titled 'A Justification of Existence':

"Personality is the supreme realization of the innate idiosyncrasy of a living being. It is an act of high courage flung in the face of life, the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the individual, the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions of existence coupled with the greatest possible freedom of self determination."

Also, I have found that when two people disagree in most important things, what they actually happen to agree upon is often of great consequence. I am anti Post-Modernist and what Paul wrote above I subscribe to, hence here is some MIchel Foucault in Perspectives of Musical Aesthetics (edited by John Rand):

"I have the impression that many of the elements that are supposed to provide access to music actually impoverish our relationship with it. There is a quantitative mechanism working here. A certain rarity of relation to music could preserve an ability to choose what one hears, and thus a flexibility in listening. But the more frequent this relation is (radio, records, cassettes [Ed. Internet!]), the more familiarities it creates; habits crystallize; the most frequent becomes the most acceptable, and soon the only thing perceivable. It produces a 'tracing', as neurologists say.

(...) And what the public finds itself actually listening to, because it's offered up, reinforces a certain taste..." 

Maybe algorithm-driven taste, to paraphrase Jimmy.

And Bill, about everything being a 'selfie' these days: Music must also be incorporated under the moniker of 'everything', so it must be composed with a lot of 'selfie-pleasure', these days...

Paul, thank you so much. I hope at least you may take heart in that here on this forum is a sturdy bunch of individuals who strongly value and support the musical treasures our cultures have produced in times gone by, and who, moreover, are right now aiming and working towards carrying cultural developments forward. Yet this bunch - from what I've seen - do it without espousing this or that hollow, mechanistic ideology which merely provides cheap methods and shortcuts towards utopia. I want to avoid politics here but I will say this: I regard all ideological doctrines, whether on the left or the right, as harmful to music's development as well as to the other fine arts.

William, thank you, thank you. I agree fully with your comments about today's onslaught of groupthink and the untold harm it has done and is doing not only to music but also to our humanity. Yes we're being goaded ever more insistently and cynically towards an automaton-like existence, never mind that nowadays one is free to adopt this or that variety of prefabricated clone identity. Haydn also spoke of Beethoven's great innovation of "the artist as hero". Well we know what that's morphed into recently in western cultures - an army of fake hero multi-millionaire big-time celebs who've sold their souls to .... ok I'll stop there. To be one of Haydn's true heroes these days would be really quite a thing, and I still firmly believe it's possible.

Errikos, many thanks to you, not least for starting this wonderfully energising thread. By the way, I love what I've learned from Jung and admire that he insisted his writings and teachings are philosophy, not paradigmatic science. Various doctrinal disputes between Jung and Freud are not over yet and bear much relevance to the predicament of the fine arts today. However, I spent all too many years pursuing wisdom from books; an end to that came when I switched over to studying music theory and I abandoned philosophy as too densely strewn with fool's gold. Well I made that bed for myself and that's what I lie in these days.

When I first began my journey into the world of virtual orchestra I had heard that many MIDIstrators created Corporate Music.  I had never heard of Corporate Music before so I wanted to aquaint myself with that style.  I happened across a Youtube video that gave these "rules" that you had to abide by if you wanted to be versed in all things Corporate Music. I tried in vain to find the video and post a link here as I thought it would be a great companion piece to the video Errikos posted but from what I remember:

Rule 1.   Never write in anything other than a major key because coproate music is always happy or introspective.

Rule 2.  Never write a chord progression with more than four chords. And even four is pushing it because you can't have the listener think too much.

Rule 3. Only use "Happy" instruments but not whismical.  So violins (fiddle), flutes, clarinets, whistling, Ukuleles yes, but no harmonicas or zithers.  Also, no overbearing instruments like double bass because it's not fair to the violins that the double bass is so overpowering.  Same thing goes for the bassoon but staccato tubas are cool.  No trumpet either because trumpets are blaring loud mouths that display aggression. And definately no ethnic instruments because that shows cultural dominance over other cultures; a cardinal sin.

So basically Corporate Music is music that is, what I would call, "Woke Culture compliant."  It's ironic since the word "corporate" is an offensive and filthy word in Woke Culture society due to its capitalist pig and bourgeoisie connotations.  Be that as it may, Corporate Music compliments Woke Culture and all of its asininity.     

I would add to Jasen's more technical rules a couple of generic ones for that kind of music:

Rule 0: There is no limit to how much and how flagrantly you can insult the consumer's emotional "intelligence".

Rule 0.5: The music should accurately correspond to the vacuous/platitudinous assertions of the script.

I agree entirely on the sentiments in this. I have nothing at all against modern or even avant-garde works if they seem to have some point. But so much music is mindless commercialism these days.

I'm a little in two minds over Alma Deutscher. Performing  both a piano and violin concerto she's written herself at around age of 10 is pretty staggering and the music is not bad at all. I love the enthusiasm which which she meets life and positive outlook. She was lucky enough to be home schooled, otherwise it's virtually inconceivable that she could have developed at this rate. This waltz piece, though, doesn't seem to me a huge stride forward other than, perhaps, in her handling of the orchestra. I get the feeling that she still hasn't developed any real melodic distinctiveness or strongly individual personality. But then, I'm probably being unfair. I can't think of a single composer who wrote anything of real emotional value before the age of around 16. Give her five years and perhaps she will turn out to be more than a remarkable prodigy. I do hope so!

@agitato said:

As always, I am totally with you on this.

If I can offer any help towards your depression and exasperation at the current state of music, perhaps this will be a refreshing breath of air?....

The "Siren sounds waltz" by the 14 year child prodigy Alma Deuscher (actual music starts around 2:50, unless you want to listen to her intro): 

I think this is pretty remarkable music for a person of that age, or maybe of any age, if we include all the crap music out there. She gives me so much hope for the future.

Anand 

Hello, sir. Even music without a soul is not so easy to compose. And what's more, each person hears "music without a soul" differently. It is a soulless set of sounds for someone, and someone will see a sacred meaning in it. Logically, you should have some idea. I can't imagine music without any meaning. Often we can determine an author's mood by his composition. Somewhere it's not hard to detect it. For example, on "Mortal Entrenchment In Requiem" by the band "Malvery." When you have an idea, go ahead and define your genre. There are a lot of musical genres and, therefore, a lot of ways to play them. When you choose your style, just improve yourself in it. And when you write your album, you can promote it on some websites, like https://www.amworldgroup.com/music-promotion. Music

@LiamPullman said:

. I can't imagine music without any meaning. Often we can determine an author's mood by his composition. Somewhere it's not hard to detect it.

I agree and the ancient Pythagoreans also felt that the mere sounding of a tone gave the person hearing the tone, access to the spiritual plane of the gods. Akin to that philosophy and finding meaning in the acoustical presentation of sound waves to the brain, I find lots of music enjoyable that friends in my circle disdain. Art Music (music composed in the common style written from the time of Palestrina to Tchaikovsky), has its detractors but I will not stop listening simply because some critic with a post-Modernist axe to grind, finds it objectionable. Country and Western is found to be made up of outlandishly sentimental lyrics and simplistic, formulaic harmonies (which is true), to large numbers of critics; however, I take moments to listen to examples genre but will not listen to it all the day long. 

I do not subscribe to the theory though that all composed music is equal as I have my preferences. So does Richard Taruskin, author of The Oxford History of Western Music, (volume 3, page 3) when, for example, he relegates the composer Pierre Gaveaux to the outer realms of "otherwise unimportant" in comparison to Beethoven. The discussion there is about composers of Rescue Operas. Having listened to several minutes of  another 'otherwise unimportant' composer's work,  André Ernest Modeste Grétry  Richard Coeur-de-lion, I can quite agree with Taruskin's assessment. I'll save that reasoning for another day. 

The Moderater has locked the pro-v-amateur thread. Probably a good thing.

However, this thread is more apposite for the direction in which that thread was clearly headed, i.e.: soul v soulless, and artists v 'mechs'; neither aspect being particularly germane to the original theme of that thread.

I'm of the opinion that today's music, both popular and 'classical', has not only fallen foul of the rump of modernism (which some insist on calling "postmodernism", wholly incorrectly), but has also become despoiled and besmirched by a minority (now about 6% of the population, according to DSM-5) who do not - because they cannot - honestly, let alone artistically, express what's in their heart and soul.

Today it's become a cultural liability to take everyone at face value and believe the image they seek to portray of themselves and their ostensibly musical endeavours. "Propaganda" (aka P.R.) techniques (or if, like me, you prefer to call a spade a spade: "purposeful falsehoods") have made far too many inroads on music makers and music making, throughout the 20th century and still now. And I fear it'll get much worse before it gets better (given that we don't all end up as radioactive debris).

I completely concur with Errikos' point that it's possible for some - perhaps very many of us - to know intuitively within a few moments of listening to a piece of music, whether or not the maker of the music has "it" - i.e. that gift which we all want from music makers, be they composers, songwriters, or what have you. However, most especially nowadays, it's not possible for everyone to sense or judge this adequately enough for their own good and for the good of their culture.

Modernism has robbed all too many otherwise normal people of the chance to have highly active, well honed and experienced intuitive faculties. And then there's that 6% also, whose deleterious influences have become disproportionally large nowadays. This modernistic 'blindness' is, I suspect, a big reason why so much soulless garbage masquerading as music has gotten its feet as far under the table as it has today.

A little Intellectual frisson here and there? Is that the best that truly modernistic music can offer? It seems so. But I for one want much, much more than that. I want to be moved, heart and soul, by the music I hear. And it seems that all too often I have to go back to pre-20th century music to get what I want. And I know I'm far from unique in that. It's a pretty sad reflection on today's offerings by all too many so-called composers.

Here's an illuminating story that tends to debunk the myth that orchestral compositions are old hat and have nothing to say any more. In this video we get right back to perhaps the greatest ever master of melody - Mozart - but in a somewhat surprising setting.

Mozart y Mambo - Sarah Willis [Berliner Phil. horn player] on KlickKlack [Deutsche, English subs.]

There's no need to dwell on the musically ghastly, aristically abysmal offerings from 'mechs' masquerading as composers or other kinds of music makers, in terms of whether their 'mech' character is a result of the cultural ills of modernism itself, or simply a mental disorder - the two can be very difficult (but certainly not impossible) to tell apart in this day and age.

Of course there's absolutely nothing wrong in anybody making music for themselves as an enjoyable pastime.

However, if we're serious about helping our cultures move forward in music and become artistically vibrant once again, then it behoves us to find effective ways of setting and striving for higher standards in musical offerings made public. And that in turn will be helped enormously by weeding out the cuckoos in the nest - i.e. the 6% who have a strong vested interest in keeping standards low and tolerance high for soulless, mech garbage - no matter what shamelessly nefarious methods they employ to achieve their ends and preserve their toxic interests.