Standards for New Music

[diegobueno]

Suggested listening:

Piano music of Guy Sacre ( 1948 - ),pianist Billy Eidi, my Timpani cd released 1995:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r0XmFx ... Zbx7PDNtXI

Sacre, what a name for a modern composer to have, especially one that writes in a style reminiscent of the early 20th century! The only thing I can think of comparable is Tristan Murail, but nobody would say his music sounds like Wagner.

The Sacre piano pieces are very attractive in any case, and I'm glad to have heard them.

[Rach3]

Glad you enjoyed the Sacre piano works. The Preludes are a bit of a French
“Visions fugitives.”

[Belle]

Glad you enjoyed the Sacre piano works. The Preludes are a bit of a French
“Visions fugitives.”

Yes, I enjoyed these too. Thank you.

[absinthe]

New music gives a lot of classical listeners no end of grief, apparently. And a lot of listeners return the compliment, with interest, complaining about all the things new music does or fails to do. I recently read a long post on FB about how the hideosities of new music were all the result of a universal lack of talent compared with the geniuses of the past, a post blissfully unaware that this criticism of the new is--as most criticisms are, come to think of it--about two hundred years old, or more.*

Agreed it's about lack of compositional talent. It's become all too mechanical; analytic. Aside from being an avid fan of Die Reihe in my younger years when it was fashionable for the young "classical" listener to be into this kind of thing, I recently encountered Allen Forte's Structure of Atonal Music and his stuff on set theory, pitch classes and things.

I'm open minded about people who want to analyse music to and at whatever level they want (just as there are those who do with verbal language, classifying parts of speech, clauses, getting into the phonemes of words and the like) - but one or two then seek to put together "music" compositions based on practices that don't conform to the conventions of communication. I presume these composers achieve satisfaction from process rather than product - but are not expecting their work to be listened to - or, if they are they're counting on the inclination of a few people just to listen with no expectations - which means the listener is not expecting communication.

Besides, the one problem with serial or related techniques is that much of the composition is decided at the stage of choosing the thematic material. The rest is little more than bureaucracy.
Is this talent? It needs almost no development of the "inner ear" to imagine and manipulate instrumental sound across intervals of time; it doesn't matter what it sounds like as long as it obeys the rules (because the listener expects nothing more than get their money's worth. If performers make mistakes no one would notice)....etc.

This is before we move on to the vagaries of performance. In this, music generated/recorded electronically wins because a performance is definitive (giving a listener the chance of exact repeat performances, so they acclimatise until they can sing it! - or more likely start to make deeper associations with it). Not so with acoustic live performances.

So, is music intended to communicate something? If not, why is it there? Because as I see it, any other sound would do to catch a person's attention if they're able to, and feels the need to, hear - like traffic or birdsong, the sounds of a building site or indeed, a different collection of pitched sounds that seem just as random to them.

I have to admit recently giving up on "contemporary" music simply because it takes too much time for too little satisfaction. Of course, there are plenty of 1960s onward recordings I still play and enjoy but that's because they're very familiar - because they're recordings. Perhaps it's an issue of age pushing me into more conservative realms - or perhaps I just need to move on to something else.

My own composing has grown more conservative. (Although I've always been able to write around CPP, I did a few serial and aleatoric pieces to prove how easy they were compared with writing a cohesive (even through-composed) work along the lines of traditional modernism or impressionism.

If communication is to be achieved then certain criteria between sender and receiver must be satisfied.
Just my views.

[Belle]

Very interesting, coherent argument. As I read it I kept thinking, "oh, is this the kind of criticism which was being made 200 or more years ago"? Do you enjoy being 'blissfully unaware"? I know I do. (And when I'm sipping sago through a straw in Happy Valley Nursing Home I'll be even more glad that I'm "blissfully unaware".)

I think there are generic issues too; there's a difference between new music and contemporary music. The latter seems to have found melody again and that's what I'm hearing from people who are taking an interest. For me, the former - 'new music' - means that anything 'new' by way of sound construction can be music. When there are readily available alternatives, like 'sonic art' or 'sound design', that's where I beg to differ with the notion of its being labelled 'music'.

[THEHORN]

If you're hearing a new or recent work by a contemporary composer at a a concert , or experiencing a new opera in an opera house , it's often difficult to judge it based on one hearing, if it's a work of any length or complexity .
In many cases, only repeated hearings will enable you to decide if you like a new work or not . And if one initially doesn't like a work, you should be willing to give it repeated hearing,s because you could begin to like it more this way .
So if you're a music critic attending a world premiere in New York or London, Berlin, or other major centers of classical music , you are stick in a difficult situation . But let's say the New York Philharmonic is playing the world premiere of a major orchestral work by some prominent composer, it would be a good idea to attend not only he first performance of the work, which usually takes place on a Thursday evening but the ones on Friday, Saturday and Tuesday, which is how concerts are scheduled there before forming judgement . But this is not always possible with say, the way the NY Times has critics work .

[Belle]

I've always said that one of the important ingredients to a successful appreciation of art music is FAMILIARITY, so I think your comments have definitely struck the right, er, chord.

[barney]

In many cases, only repeated hearings will enable you to decide if you like a new work or not . And if one initially doesn't like a work, you should be willing to give it repeated hearing,s because you could begin to like it more this way .

That wasn't Rossini's motto. He reportedly said "it is impossible to understand Lohengrin on first hearing. And I certainly don't intend to hear it a second time."

[Belle]

George Cukor commented on the length of his original version of "A Star is Born" and the studio's reduction of it - to death - "there's only so much the human a*** can endure"!!

[absinthe]

In many cases, only repeated hearings will enable you to decide if you like a new work or not . And if one initially doesn't like a work, you should be willing to give it repeated hearing,s because you could begin to like it more this way .

True - but over a period of time this usually needs a recording in which case one can acclimatise. One always hears the same performance. Live repeat performance only works when some kind of score records enough performance instructions to produce approximately the same work. That isn't always the case: aleatoric works and those reliant on some level of improvisation.

So if you're a music critic attending a world premiere in New York or London, Berlin, or other major centers of classical music , you are stick in a difficult situation . But let's say the New York Philharmonic is playing the world premiere of a major orchestral work by some prominent composer, it would be a good idea to attend not only he first performance of the work, which usually takes place on a Thursday evening but the ones on Friday, Saturday and Tuesday, which is how concerts are scheduled there before forming judgement . But this is not always possible with say, the way the NY Times has critics work .

My views on trade critics are frowned upon here so I'd better keep quiet except to say yes, they'd need repeat listenings for that reason. When music breaks conventional semiotics enough to "sound alien" no communication takes place. Therefore one has to ask again what such music is for and by extension, what's the point of criticising it? Sure, there will be a handful of people to whom the communication "my ears are being assailed by sound (and sometimes the act of performance is interesting to watch)" is where it's at, most though need some kind of emotional and/or visceral stimulus.
I have a shelf of off-air recordings from comtemporary/new music broadcasts. I record them in case something catches my ear but I might as well throw most of them away because I can't imagine myself listening repeatedly. Too much like hard work!

[Belle]

Really interesting comments, with which I largely agree. The 'semiotics' of music; excellent!

[John F]

In many cases, only repeated hearings will enable you to decide if you like a new work or not . And if one initially doesn't like a work, you should be willing to give it repeated hearing,s because you could begin to like it more this way .

That wasn't Rossini's motto. He reportedly said "it is impossible to understand Lohengrin on first hearing. And I certainly don't intend to hear it a second time."

I never heard that one, but I suppose everybody knows Rossini's judgment of Wagner's operas: "Wagner has beautiful moments, but awful quarters of an hour."

[some guy]

Just a reminder that there are listeners for whom new music is not too much effort but an instantaneous joy. There are few of those listeners on this particular board (one?), but those listeners do exist, listeners who actively seek out music they've never heard before (the model of listening that was in place in Haydn's time, by the way), who enjoy the moment because they are receptive, because they are willing to let pieces "speak" even if (especially if?) those pieces aren't saying anything familiar to them.

I spent ten years happily working through a large pile of money to attend new music concerts all over the world. I met a lot of people in those years, composers, performers, listeners. There was no lack of enthusiasm. It may be difficult for the people who post frequently to CMG to imagine or to even acknowledge the existence of people for whom new music is a blast, a sheer delight, but there they are--existing, enjoying, creating.

It's not a sheer delight for you? OK. No one ever is under any compulsion to enjoy any particular thing. But all these things that all of you report as things you struggle with, as things you've rejected, as things you've found unsatisfying or even hoax-some, are all things that other people do not struggle with, as things they've accepted, as things they've found satisfying and genuine.

Not sure why that has to be such a hard sell. Seems pretty easy to me, anyway. Oh well. I'm sure there will be no lack of announcements that this or that person just ain't buying it. In the meantime, composers will continue to compose. They will write things that some people are sure make no sense at all, that some people will reject out of hand as sonic junk that communicates nothing. And some listeners will continue to listen to those things with pleasure.

[barney]

Just a reminder that there are listeners for whom new music is not too much effort but an instantaneous joy. There are few of those listeners on this particular board (one?), but those listeners do exist, listeners who actively seek out music they've never heard before (the model of listening that was in place in Haydn's time, by the way), who enjoy the moment because they are receptive, because they are willing to let pieces "speak" even if (especially if?) those pieces aren't saying anything familiar to them.

I spent ten years happily working through a large pile of money to attend new music concerts all over the world. I met a lot of people in those years, composers, performers, listeners. There was no lack of enthusiasm. It may be difficult for the people who post frequently to CMG to imagine or to even acknowledge the existence of people for whom new music is a blast, a sheer delight, but there they are--existing, enjoying, creating.

It's not a sheer delight for you? OK. No one ever is under any compulsion to enjoy any particular thing. But all these things that all of you report as things you struggle with, as things you've rejected, as things you've found unsatisfying or even hoax-some, are all things that other people do not struggle with, as things they've accepted, as things they've found satisfying and genuine.

Not sure why that has to be such a hard sell. Seems pretty easy to me, anyway. Oh well. I'm sure there will be no lack of announcements that this or that person just ain't buying it. In the meantime, composers will continue to compose. They will write things that some people are sure make no sense at all, that some people will reject out of hand as sonic junk that communicates nothing. And some listeners will continue to listen to those things with pleasure.

Of course you are right, of course there are people such as you describe. Sometimes I am one of them - often I am swept away by a work new to me, and sometimes it is new music. But there's nothing wrong with people describing their reaction - negative or positive - on a music board set up for musical discussion, surely?

As I just said on the Handel opera thread, attraction is a mystery. It's usually subconscious and we become aware of it, or supra-rational. And afterwards we spend considerable energy rationalising or explaining it, and we may be right, or not. But I know that for me to enjoy new music - and this is purely personal - I have to detect something in it, progress, motif, melody, whatever but not just what seems a random collection of sounds.

Just musing aloud, really, but doesn't music require some sort of organising principle? It doesn't have to be rhythm, melody or harmony but it's pretty hard without at least one of them for me to enjoy it. You might see that simply as a personal failure by me, and you might be right. Some people just have a tin ear sometimes, whether its for music or morality or interpersonal relationships... And perhaps by some people I mean most of us.

[absinthe]

I've got living relatives who were in WW2 so it's still fresh in our family's memory.

Belle I am concerned when I read something like this though-and of course there's Trump and his fine people on both sides! Regards, Len

as Germany Forgotten the Lessons of the Nazis?
The country’s culture of remembrance is crumbling.

I read this article with interest since, as you probably know, the UK is trying to leave the European Union which is dominated by Germany as very recent evidence shows. It's lined up its forces to make it nigh impossible for the UK to leave; has through its negotiators put every possible obstacle in the way and there's a flavour among the "leavers" in the UK that Germany's intention, Nazis or not, is to rule Europe.
It pays the most towards its EU "club" (the UK is the second biggest net contributor) so I suppose it feels it should run the show. There is a cynical view in the UK that it uses Brussels as its rubber stamp - plenty of evidence that decision making there is increasingly Germanic. There's also its expansionist agenda: it wants to entice two or three new, very poor economies to join, Albania, Macedonia and somewhere else. At any rate they'll need big subsidies. The feeling is that Brussels (i.e. Germany) doesn't want them falling back under Russian influence, so regardless of how many criteria these countries meet, things will most likely be bent to ensure they can join (as happened with Greece). Where will the money come from?
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Hence it won't let the UK go. It will lose the £20 billion annual membership fee and access to UK markets about which a trade deficit favours the UK. In its current state it needs every scrap of trade it can get: a moribund economy; the euro on life support AGAIN!, unemployment still at c 30% in the southern states.


Quite aside from all that, I felt the article missed a few points some of which do admittedly stem from Germany taking the initiative regardless of what the rest of the EU want or can do. Merkel is the sinner. It's doubtful the AfD would have appeared but for Merkel. Under the excuse of Germany's past, she "welcomed" all migrants from Iraq and Syria to the EU. Most headed for Germany and she allowed them in - with no check as to where they really came from, (many came from Africa and S.E Asia) who they were (they needed no papers) etc. Among the two million were jihadis (as Germany has since found out), the best estimate was 2%. There was the Cologne New Years incident and many others, as Germans learned to their cost. Well, it caused too many problems to list here. EU (inc German) citizens soon learned that most migrants had been tutored to aim for Germany and Sweden because welfare is excellent in both countries. Thus they refused to apply for asylum in safe countries en route. Anyway, I won't keep on. The reports are there if you're interested in reading them.
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The AfD is seen as a natural reaction to the situation. At the Cologne New Years celebration, 150 police were on duty and it was carnal chaos with rape and violence rife as you've probably read. When the AfD and others put up a protest days later, more than 1500 police with water cannons were drafted in to ensure it could be rendered harmless. Resent is bound to build up.
Merkel, you see, often speaks out without any reference to or agreement with Brussels. She's often called Europe's most powerful politician. She has also imposed censorship on German MSM, Facebook and similar and has a department of people continually vetting these outlets.
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Last week, the British PM was in phone contact with her. She declared that Northern Ireland (part of the United Kingdom as things stand) must never be allowed to leave the EU's "customs union". A significant reaction was that Germany has annexed part of the UK. Brussels was put on a nasty spot. It couldn't interfere because of the rather delicate negotiations under way. Of course, by extension, a good few UK "Leavers" have declared that at last - third time lucky in a century - Germany has almost conquered the UK but without tanks and bombs. Perhaps fortunately, Britain is not indebted to Germany like so many EU member states so it can shout back.
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Anyway:

The most damning evidence is the hard-right Alternative for Germany party, which surged into the Bundestag in 2017; in parts of eastern Germany it is the most popular party. The AfD is riding a shocking rise of German anti-Semitism and xenophobia. Forty percent of Germans say it’s right to blame Jews for Israel’s policies in the Middle East. In my neighborhood in Berlin, and others across the country, people wearing Jewish headgear are harassed on the street. And in the aftermath of the refugee crisis of 2015-16, many Germans — including mainstream, middle-class citizens — embraced the far right’s premises. In surveys, ever more say they desire an authoritarian leader and distrust liberal democracy.

The AfD gives cover to expanded expressions of intolerance and hate. In the Bundestag, the party’s members speak about foreigners, the Holocaust and Muslims in a way that a decade ago would have triggered a full-blown scandal — but that today is commonplace. They downplay the significance of the Nazi era, and demean efforts to reconcile with the past, like the Holocaust memorial in Berlin. Popular TV shows and best sellers set in the Nazi era treat Germans as victims, not perpetrators. At the same time, 40 percent of young Germans say they know very little or nothing about the Holocaust.

This misses the point. It's less xenophobia than the damage done a) to the culture, b) to the country's economy and resources and c) individuals, by Merkel's immigrant policy, misguidedly taking a moral high ground but being totally naive (she comes from E Germany along with her Stasi spy Anetta Kahone). You bring in 2 million unemployable people most of whom can't read or write or understand the basics of hygiene, who can't speak German and who may be terrorists - then you have a problem.



I appreciate this is off-topic somewhat but felt the point had to be made.






https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/15/opin ... nazis.html
[/quote]

[Belle]

What a pleasure to read your comments, as an insider. I agree with much of what you've said as my husband and I keep up to speed on all this through our reading, particularly "Spiked Online", and the estimable Brendan O'Neill, and "The Spectator". Also the comments of average people on those and other sites, many of which are enlightening and funny in sometimes equal measure.

[absinthe]

Thank you for your kind comments, Belle. It's the liberal lefties who call the AfD "far right". Yes, they lean to the right and are nationalists only inasmuch as they want to preserve the Germany they know and love. It's less xenophobic than trying to mend the fracture in their culture. There are plenty of foreign nationals working there from far afield. They have integrated. (If I were forced to relocate to an EU state it would be Germany.) They're a hard working people, proud of their economic achievements (particularly assimilating the Eastern side), their world-class engineering - and on, and Merkel the Fuehrerin arrives and creates havoc, never once admitting that she may have made a mistake. But she knew she'd have to decant many of these migrants to other member states. She broke Brussels own rules to dictate that the other member states MUST take a quota. Such laws ordinarily need to be unanimously agreed. This one wasn't. So she changed the rule to a "majority vote". It proved to most that the Brussels elite, was a dictatorship. States that didn't comply were threatened with sanctions. (As you know, Poland and Hungary were the biggest protesters). Like a certain previous German Chancellor, she's seized executive powers.
Anyway, if you keep up with The Spectator, you'll know what's REALLY going on so best I leave it there and try to return to "new music"!
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Again, thanks and best wishes!

[barney]

Just got Conrad Tao's American Rage, with two works by Rzewski. Winnsboro Cotton Mills Blues strikes me as quite brilliant. Haven't listened to the other yet - Which Side Are You On? Also Copland piano sonata - beautifully played - and Julia Wolfe's Compassion, composed after 9/11, which I have yet to play. Political music, protest music, new music, brilliant music!

[absinthe]

Just a reminder that there are listeners for whom new music is not too much effort but an instantaneous joy. There are few of those listeners on this particular board (one?), but those listeners do exist, listeners who actively seek out music they've never heard before (the model of listening that was in place in Haydn's time, by the way), who enjoy the moment because they are receptive, because they are willing to let pieces "speak" even if (especially if?) those pieces aren't saying anything familiar to them.

Agreed. But it questions the purpose of music. Should it entertain - should it communicate something - or (à la Cage) just be listened to without expectation? I am among many, I'm sure, happy to listen to blackbird song in May of a warm evening for example, or a thunderstorm; and I do listen to new music but in the sense that it impinges on my hearing but conveys no particular meaning. At times it's enjoyable - possibly because deeply within some meaning has emerged beyond outer recognition?

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I question much new music as being part of a closeted academia. I mentioned Forte and other analysts creating and teaching new compositional tactics entirely removed from convention. There are even degree courses in composition for what use they may be - mostly self-perpetuating it would seem. The students compose. Sometimes their work is playable, sometimes not. Often they haven't a clue what it sounds like anyway (which has led to embarrassing situations I've witnessed); some of these works are put before a public that also hasn't a clue what's going on so they're received presumably as random sounds. Does it matter which of a thousand works is being performed? Do "wrong notes" and performance problems matter?
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There are works in which the time "canvas" has been used in such a way to make the sonic events interesting, perhaps enjoyable but usually that's because art has been applied at a different level, the timing of events, the provision of some kind of anchor, excitement that can be achieved through dramatic dynamic changes. Sometimes with smaller ensembles the performance itself is exciting.
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Although I tend to impressionist/neo-symbolic composition I've composed works that sound as if they fall into the new music category and I admit it's been more for mischief than music. To students it presents challenges so I'm told. To the charlatan (me) it's dead easy. Far easier than composing a conventionally-sounding work (but far enough away to achieve some difference).
Quite recently I tried to render a string quartet movement I "composed" long ago along new music lines (i.e. I threw it together so it sounded weird and discordant). Its limit was resource-bound - I couldn't achieve all the articulations I wanted. So I was playing it one evening with a couple of friends 'in the know' one of whom said "Don't tell me you've gone out and bought some Ferneyhough!" "Nope," I replied, confessed and said much as I have here. I could bung a couple of bars of it onto soundcloud if anyone were interested.
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A few of us aren't so hidebound to tradition that we'd refuse to give it a try. Others don't want to stray from their "comfort zone" (I think it's called). And why should they? They want to relax after a day's work, get soothed, re-invigorated or whatever so they turn to music that achieves that. If they're inclined to new work it's fine if convention is bent a little bit but there's enough anchoring to give the result a feel of normality. Others like the rarefied realm of new music - or sit in the garden listening to the blackbirds.
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As for your (rather loose) standards for new music, I'd say there are no standards other than it must be based on syntactical rules that deny any association with CPP and its derivatives. "Key" and "discord" are obsolete terms. "Accidentals" are wrong notes played on purpose!
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[Belle]

As usual, very thought-provoking comments. Interesting to read and process.

[John F]

it questions the purpose of music. Should it entertain - should it communicate something - or (à la Cage) just be listened to without expectation?

Music has no one purpose, of course. A large body of music has been composed for use in religious services, though today it may no longer serve that purpose and has become concert music. Another enormous repertoire was composed for use in the theatre, either subordinate to a spoken performance of a play (incidental music) or as the dominant element (opera). Up to the 19th century, most music for a solo instrument was intended for domestic use, whether as entertainment or instruction (Czerny, Bach, etc.) And so on. And as I suggested, music composed specifically for one purpose may eventually wind up serving a very different one.

And then there's the fact that we don't talk about, that most music is composed to make money and earn the composer's living. To achieve this, normally (perhaps until the 20th century) it has to please the person or institution that paid for it, and/or the audience that pays to hear it. The same piece of music can give different kinds of pleasure (or not) to different people; either entertaining them (perhaps as background or dinner music or music for dancing, as with Mozart's serenades and divertimentos) or engaging them emotionally (as with some of Mozart's serenades and divertimentos).

This thread in on a level of generalization that doesn't really fit the phenomenon of music. I know, I invited exactly that from some guy, but in order to understand better his very individual tastes in new music, not to get into esthetic philosophy. Which is certainly an interesting topic, but as I've suggested, a slippery one, and one that requires whole books to treat at all adequately.

[diegobueno]

Just musing aloud, really, but doesn't music require some sort of organising principle? It doesn't have to be rhythm, melody or harmony but it's pretty hard without at least one of them for me to enjoy it. You might see that simply as a personal failure by me, and you might be right. Some people just have a tin ear sometimes, whether its for music or morality or interpersonal relationships... And perhaps by some people I mean most of us.

I think your expectations for music are reasonable. I don't know that music requires some sort of organizing principle, but to me it's more enjoyable when it does, and very pleasurable when I can detect what that organizing principle is, or at least detect that something logical is behind all of the sounds being presented. Finding that gives me a basis for further listening until the music really clicks with me. At that point an emotional reaction to the music may begin to set in. The whole process of familiarization and discovery is what drives my enjoyment of music.

[maestrob]

Just musing aloud, really, but doesn't music require some sort of organising principle? It doesn't have to be rhythm, melody or harmony but it's pretty hard without at least one of them for me to enjoy it. You might see that simply as a personal failure by me, and you might be right. Some people just have a tin ear sometimes, whether its for music or morality or interpersonal relationships... And perhaps by some people I mean most of us.

I think your expectations for music are reasonable. I don't know that music requires some sort of organizing principle, but to me it's more enjoyable when it does, and very pleasurable when I can detect what that organizing principle is, or at least detect that something logical is behind all of the sounds being presented. Finding that gives me a basis for further listening until the music really clicks with me. At that point an emotional reaction to the music may begin to set in. The whole process of familiarization and discovery is what drives my enjoyment of music.

It looks like I agree with both of you. Thanks for saying it so well.