Stop and prepare : Cage

[Quijote]

I hope that neither your wife nor German live-in woman are reading this stuff...

PDG, my German significant other is a crazed art-historian/musicologist/journalist whose idea of fun is ...

[send me your private email, for details]

[PDG]

I once had a 'thing' for Claudia Schiffer. I can guess what they get up to...

[Quijote]

Let's continue on the 'Let's Chat' thread, PDG. See you there.

[Peter]

Philip you raise some interesting points and I sense the discussion is moving in a more fruitful direction - I am keen to learn more about the avant garde even though I don't like it! I'll respond to your points over the weekend as more time is needed to digest these complex issues.

[Peter]

I have hardly called you every name under the sun, Peter, and I have retracted the unwarranted labels. I think the majority of my posts are measured and neutral. Nevertheless, I wish to maintain a rigorous defense of contemporary music ("modern classical music") and I will not stand idly by and see my - informed - viewpoint marginalised by populist oratory techniques.

You are indeed voicing a 'majority' opinion (within the equally 'minority' position of classical music, as you have alluded to), but I fail to see what this has to do with our discussion, namely : can various musical genres claim artistic validity. I believe they can.



I have expressed my particular admiration for Cage's early works, and I have already told you about my irritation with some of his 'over conceptualisations'. You do not know where my sympathies lie at all; I merely say that Cage raises interesting - fascinating, rather - questions about how we may approach various art forms. You ask me to consider the sanity of a man who suggests what you mention above : I thought you preferred to keep off politics (cf. the Karajan/Wagner thread)? That said, on the "Let's chat" thread I will be happy to elucidate.



I think I don't really need to address Rolf Harris's view of Emin and modern art in general, though I do wonder what he makes of cubism and the abstract expressionism of the 1920s. Has he made any insightful comments about that era?

You say many avant garde artists and composers denigrate past masters. Are you saying that Rolf Harris considers himself an avant garde artist? And (apart from Cage) which composers denigrate the earlier composers?


PS : Did I say "demagoue"? Apologies for letting that one slip through the net.

No of course Rolf Harris doesn't associate himself with the avant garde - he wasn't the one denigrating the past, it was Emin and I still would like to know if you agree with her or not? As to Picasso, I admire much, but by no means all - I think Guernica a masterpiece.


Now regarding composers let's begin with the fact that the avant garde (as you well know) is a reaction against the past (often this is marked with a strong social or political slant) and that several prominent members of this movement have expressed their disdain for the past - amongst them Cage, and Stockhausen who advocated a complete rejection of the entire canon of classical music. For Boulez even Schoenberg was dead.

Now let us come on to your area of electroacoustic music which I have looked into and have discovered some interesting facts which I don't know if you are aware of or not. The origins of this movement are in the Musique concrète (which you refer to) pioneered by Pierre Schaeffer. What surprised me most was discovering that he agrees with me on every point we have been debating. I know how you dislike it when I produce quotes and articles in my defence, but I think they are valid because I do not have your advantage of a thorough association with the subject which is I admit a failing.

Like many of the pioneers of electronic music, Pierre Schaeffer was not a musician but involved in the science of musical acoustics with himself as the director. He explained how he reacted against Schoenberg and the Vienna school which he describes as coming from a discipline which wasn't music but an algebraic equation. Now allow me to present his views in his own words "Musique Concrete in its work of assembling sound, produces sound-works, sound-structures, but not music. We have to not call music things which are simply sound-structures. There are many people working with sound. It's often boring, but not
necessarily ugly. It contains dynamic and kinaesthetic impressions. But it's not music. Unfortunately it took me forty years to conclude that nothing is possible outside DoReMi...I think of myself as an explorer struggling to find a way through in the far north, but I wasn't finding a way through..There is no way through. The way through is behind us. You have to admit that some periods are simply vile, disgusting, and that this is one of them. The only hope is that our civilization will collapse at a certain point, as always happens in history. Then, out of barbarity, a renaissance."

I would only disagree on the last point in that I hope a collapse will not be necessary for the renaissance I also talked about in a previous post. Now I hope you will not fly off into hysterical reaction and accusations at these comments but will at least recognise that prominent people associated with this 'music' (acoustic science) have renounced it as a failed experiment.

I am finding the whole process educational and I have been listening to pieces by Dennis Smalley for example and others prominent in the current movement so I am grateful for you at least stimulating my interest if not changing my views.

[Quijote]

Here is an excellent article which sums up exactly how I feel about it [...]

I'm going to reply now to the article that Peter has chosen to cite as a summary of his feelings about contemporary music. I think it best to break the article down into its various sub-headings, and these will be spread out over the several postings that follow. As I operate a FIFO (first in, first out) system I will not reply to postings that may well be made by forum members before I have managed to reply to all the points raised by Hellewell, but will address them later.

Before I start, I am very happy that Peter has posted this article, and contrary to what he believes ...

Now I hope you will not fly off into hysterical reaction and accusations at these comments

... I shall offer my personal critique (for what it may be worth).

[Quijote]

Here is an excellent article which sums up exactly how I feel about it :

THE HECKLERS ARE RIGHT ABOUT THE MUSICAL AVANT GARDE

The musical avant garde is now some eighty years old, and for the last forty years or so these composers have been well-funded and promoted, excellently performed, extolled, analysed and proselytised by a global avant garde music establishment of a small, but controlling, cadre of elitist mandarins within the arts establishment: the Arts Council, publishers, critics, universities and colleges, education authorities, opera and orchestral managers, and the BBC. Yet this movement has still not produced anything of worth for the public, or for musicians, who avoid it like the plague that it is; and they are right!

Contrary to what their apologists say, there is nothing you need to know in order to understand a piece of music: WYSIWYG; only in this case What You Get Is What You Hear. If a piece sounds like a dissonant cacophony - that's what it is, just as a pile of bricks (even at the Tate) is nothing more than a pile of bricks.

By way of preamble, I must say I am astonished at the shoddy "scholarship" of this article, firstly for its poor spelling and syntax (I will provide examples if required), and secondly for its blanket assumptions and imprecise terminology. Hellewell's use of the term avant garde is a case in point (for its vagueness); many composers have worked at the avant garde of their genres, and I think the term can fairly be applied to the symphonic works of Bruckner and Mahler, to name but two examples. The term in its 20th century manifestation is more usually applied to the 'fluxus' and 'experimental' movements of the early 60s and 70s, but it has unfortunately come to be adopted in current usage to mean anything atonal, or not notationally based (such as electroacoustic music - a subject not broached by Hellewell). Also particularly irritating is his use of the word 'proselytise', instead of the more apt 'evangelise'. But these are stylistic failings that need not concern us further.

My second point concerning the article's opening paragraph is the UK-centric nature of his argument (the BBC, the Arts Council etc.) : what he says can hardly be applied to Germany and France, and the scenario he paints strikes me as a form of 'conspiracy theory'.

Thirdly, he claims "this movement has still not produced anything of worth for the public or for the musicians who avoid it like the plague". This is a sweeping personal comment, and I would say unsubstantiated.

The second opening paragraph offers the amusing (I admit) WYSIWYG argument, but is equally flawed. When contemporary listeners first heard Beethoven's Eroica, they did indeed hear 'a symphony', but this did not prevent them being completely perplexed by 'an overload of unrelated ideas...' and other negative criticism (probably a dissonant cacophony to critics of the time). How are we to validate the WYHIWYG logic when applied to the great mass of (mainly young) people who do not see (hear) the interest, value, or 'beauty' in classical music? Imagine : "Well kids and rap lovers, let's put on Beethoven's Fifth, shall we? Like it? Well, what you hear is what you get, no?" I think I need not dwell on this lamentably weak argument.

As for the Tate 'pile of bricks' ...

[Quijote]

Here is an excellent article which sums up exactly how I feel about it.

THE HECKLERS ARE RIGHT ABOUT THE MUSICAL AVANT GARDE

ANTI-PEOPLE MUSIC

But although the avant garde isn't new anymore, it is still as damaging. It gobbles up limited funding and precious performance space, so that `alternative' composers are prevented from competing. It actually professes a total disdain for the public (as Sir Harrison Birtwistle only recently stated on Desert Island Discs); and which are the "masterpieces" produced by a Birtwistle. A recent Times leader (2/4/95) called Birtwistle "the finest modern British composer - some would say of all time" but this not the public's, or the vast majority of musicians', view. If Birtwistle is so brilliant, why are his little clarinet pieces Linoi, for example, not in every clarinetist's repertoire, or the Five Little Pieces for piano by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (a studied composer in the music education curriculum) not on every serious pianist's music stand?

Never before has such `anti-people' music been produced. What has come out of Pierre Boulez' multi-million pound, state-of-the-art electro-acoustic IRCAM in Paris, or from the many other heavily-funded studios in universities around the world? If these were actual real scientific R&D establishments they would have been closed down years ago, as failures.

It is in this paragraph in particular that I begin to detect the unmistakable whiff of sour grapes. He speaks about valuable funds and precious performance space being appropriated by the 'politburo' of 'avant garde' music promoters, thereby excluding 'alternative' composers from the 'game', so to speak. Which (or what) alternative composers? Himself? His friends Stocken and Burstein mentioned later in the article? What exactly constitutes an 'alternative' composer, in his lexicon? He also completely ignores the fact that most concert programming, radio and TV air-space is given over to the mainstream repertoire.

Further, he claims that 'avant garde' music (hereafter AV music for reasons of economy, even though I question his use of the term) professes total disdain for the public. Maybe in Bournemouth (where he lives), but not in the many contemporary music (AV if you insist) festivals around the world, not least Huddersfield (UK), Musica (Strasbourg), Darmstadt (Germany), not to speak of their coverage on national radio stations. But those AV mandarins are everywhere, aren't they?

Hellewell asks why certain AV pieces are not in every clarinettist's repertory (citing Birtwistle's piece Linoi) : well, we have Mark Simpson (BBC Young Musician of the Year 2006) playing precisely this work at some event or other. His 'mandarin conspiracy' position is somewhat undermined by his asking why such works are not on every serious performer's music stand. Perhaps he is disgruntled that his works are not? The sour grapes have almost become vinegar ...

He questions the usefulness of Boulez's (he forgets Pompidou) IRCAM centre in Paris, saying that if it were a "real scientific R&D establishment [it] would have been closed down years ago, as [a] failure[.]" Failures of what, precisely? How can he attempt to draw a parallel between scientific/health R&D and aesthetic research? What "results" would he condone, we may ask? This is a rather chillingly totalitarian position that Hellewell adopts. If further proof is required of his Luddite position, he also forgets the fact that new technology (or even the search for it) often leads to an extension in musical possibilities, even to changes in musical 'style'; need we forget the changes in Beethoven's piano writing that accompanied developments in piano 'technology' during the 1800s? New technologies lead to new music, Mr Hellewell, and thank goodness.

[Quijote]

Apologies, I must take a break to prepare dinner.

[Quijote]

Dinner over, back to business.

Here is an excellent article which sums up exactly how I feel about it.

THE HECKLERS ARE RIGHT ABOUT THE MUSICAL AVANT GARDE

By David Hellewell

THE AVANT GUARDE IS A CLOSED SYSTEM

[...]Significantly, an opponent of Popper's, Theodor Adorno, was an advocate of Schoenberg's methods. Popper's "Open Society" is the antithesis of the totalitarian `Closed Society'. The avant garde is such a closed system: state-funded, yet exclusive and elitist. It excludes in its language just about everything that music lovers value. Indeed, it could crudely but accurately be stated, as a working tenet, that a work must, to be `avant garde', be an affront to normal artistic/ audience sensibilities; and especially, that it must not be `popular' or liked by the public! The avant garde equate standing out' with `outstanding'. (They have a great problem with past masterpieces, which are both profound and popular.) Hence, the seeming diversity of styles within the avant garde are merely different facets of the same ideology: what total-seriel Stockhausen and aleatoric Cage (and their mutations that have since been spawned) have in common, is this audience effrontery - a spit in the eye - and the avant garde's colluding critics call this "challenging" or "controversial", terms which were never considered to be aesthetic-judgemental criteria before the twentieth century. We have certainly moved a long way from `Art imitating Life'; it is now `Art intimidating Life'! Today, they can incorporate even popular art forms such as jazz into their idioms, provided that the material is deconstructed and processed (used to be called `composition') so that it deeply offends normal jazz lovers. They can now do this with anything: fox trots, mediaeval motets, the classics, nothing is safe; clever, aren't they?

Leaving aside the Popper/Stein/Adorno trio (I cannot offer any meaningful comment for the time being), I want to turn now to Hellewell's contention that "The AV is ... a closed system : state-funded, yet exclusive and elitist", and that "[I]t excludes in its language just about everything that music lovers value." I do not believe that contemporary music is funded by the state to the extent he imagines. There will be an ensemble coming to Strasbourg soon to offer a rehearsal/workshop of Beethoven's Opus 70, n° 2 - this is state funded, for sure, and who is complaining? More seriously, I fail to see how the language of contemporary composers such as Arvo Pärt, John Adams, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Gorecki etc. can be termed elitist and exclusive. Hellewell seems here to be trapped in the late 50s ethos of total serialism, forgetting (or ignoring) that music has moved on from that somewhat formalist cul-de-sac.

He goes on to say that contemporary composers have 'problems' with past masterpieces, which are both profound and popular. Well, past masterpieces are certainly profound and popular today; were they so in their own time? Further, which composers, and what is the nature of their "problems"?
Of note too, is the chillingly vitriolic language employed in this paragraph : "[...]total-seriel [sic] Stockhausen and aleatoric Cage (and their mutations that have since been spawned) [...]". Does this language in any way remind you of something?

He considers we have moved too far from 'Art imitating Life'. He clearly lives in a time warp (he is not alone). If one requires that art imitates life, we need only take a camera and a tape recorder (my solution to his quest). Is the function of art simply to imitate life? This was perhaps the view some centuries ago, but certainly not after the early 1800s (and the advent of Beethoven).

Hellewell closes this section's paragraph in outrage that 'AV' composers dare incorporate popular art forms such as jazz, even going so far as to appropriate fox trots, medieval motets and the classics. This is a strange position, as he is the "instigator" (according to his website's "blurb") of a groundbreaking genre of music he terms "multi-dimensional" that seeks to assimilate classical, jazz, rock, Latin American, baroque, romantic and popular musics. To mirror his closing question in this section : Clever, isn't he?

[Quijote]

Here is an excellent article which sums up exactly how I feel about it.

THE HECKLERS ARE RIGHT ABOUT THE MUSICAL AVANT GARDE

By David Hellewell

HECKLERS

It takes courage, and probably a great deal of almost heroic anger, to dare to speak out, as Frederick Stocken and his colleague Keith Burstein have done, against these long-standing iniquities. These two composers will be, indeed already have been, vilified by the powerful avant garde establishment for their temerity. As virtually all serious composers these days are behoven to the musical establishment for their living (not usually as composers, but as teachers), they are thereby effectively stifled from speaking out in public, for fear of losing their jobs and opportunities - but they do vent their anger in private." End of citation.

I have no further comments to make concerning this section of the Hellewell article.

That little advert for "Hecklers" placed in the Spectator by Frederick Stocken (and then acted upon!) may well become, through up-front debate (the affair has already generated an enormous amount of media interest - even globally), a symbol, signifying an end to the hegemony of this destructive avant garde, thereby allowing the new more-humanised art to surface, evolve and be created in the future.

With this paragraph we seem to return to our 'sour grapes' theme (with variations). Does Hellewell seriously expect us to believe that it takes an act of heroism to "speak out" against the perceived iniquities of the system? That people can lose jobs over it? I think not.

For a fuller overview of the "Hecklers" movement, please enter the names Frederick Stocken and Keith Burstein - the two composers mentioned [admired?] by Hellewell in this article - into Google (or other search engine of your choice) and follow the links.

For a critique of Stocken's music, I cite this article from the Guardian :

"Romantic flop"

Royal Philharmonic/ Vernon Handley Royal Albert Hall (February 2000)
Just where does one start with Frederick Stocken's Symphony for the Millennium, commissioned by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and premiered by the RPO under Vernon Handley at the Albert Hall on Monday?
What normal criteria can be applied to a work that would have been regarded as hopelessly old-fashioned at the turn of the last century, and would have hardly seemed ground-breaking 50 years before that?
Stocken caught the headlines in 1994 when he became a spokesman for a sad group of disaffected musicians calling themselves The Hecklers, who organised protests - pretty well-mannered ones, it has to be said - against what they saw as the iniquities of contemporary music. Their 15 minutes of fame duly came and went when they strenuously but ineffectually booed a revival of Birtwistle's Gawain at Covent Garden.
Now, apparently, Stocken wants to put all that direct action behind him and let his own music do the talking. If this symphony, with each of its four movements based upon a painting by Lord Leighton, is what he wants to say, then his message is a pitiful one.
Stocken is a born-again early romantic, writing in a style somewhere between Beethoven and Mendelssohn, as if to attempt anything more complex, let alone vaguely chromatic, would be too threatening to the audience he craves. Yet there's no sense of ironic distance in his use of this style; everything is to be taken strictly at face value. Even if it were pastiche, or written as a student exercise, it would be a fifth-rate effort. The symphony's melodic invention is earth-bound; its structure is clumsy, with blocks of indifferent material juxtaposed without any sense of crafted transitions; the scoring is muddy. There isn't a single memorable moment in the entire 30-minute piece.
In this postmodern world stylistically anything goes, and there are no longer any prescriptions for what composers can or cannot do. But whatever language they choose to use they still need some spark of originality, and to possess the technical equipment to reveal that they have something worthwhile to offer. On this evidence Stocken can't summon up any of those qualities, and what the RPO and Kensington and Chelsea thought they were doing in promoting him in such a way is impossible to imagine.

I have no further comments to make concerning this section of the Hellewell article.

[Quijote]

Here is an excellent article which sums up exactly how I feel about it.

THE HECKLERS ARE RIGHT ABOUT THE MUSICAL AVANT GARDE

By David Hellewell

WHERE ARE THE MASTERWORKS?

The avant garde has also failed to fulfil the rightful and legitimate expectations of the many first class professional performers who have performed the music. Their outstanding musicianship, nigh-on-perfect performances (of some of the most complex music ever created), and genuine dedication, should have resulted in commensurate rewards and status for their trust. I have been privileged to have worked with some these musicians, who are of absolutely first rank, but who are now, in middle age, still virtually unknown and struggling to make a living. If musicians have mastered a repertoire of the suppose `master works' of the avant garde canon, and received critical acclaim and awards for their performances, they should be able to reap the benefits. This has not happened. If a pianist, for example, presented a concert of these `master works' by Stockhausen, Boulez, Maxwell Davies, Birtwistle et al, would there be an audience, a paying public? No. And yet acknowledged masterpieces are the very bread and butter of concert promoters' and musicians' livelihood, because paying audiences want to hear them - again and again. Young pianists - such as Ian Pace, a vociferous opponent of The Hecklers - should stop to ponder seriously on how will they feel in, say, twenty years time, when the avant garde works they are now enthusiastically proselytising (and justifying by the same sort arguments that were also used twenty years ago) are not new anymore, and still not earning them rewards?

The London Sinfonietta has commissioned and premiered numerous works over the past decades (heavily subsidised, of course), most of which received critical acclaim at their premiere; where are these works now? In the repertoire? We are not talking about poor, under-rehearsed performances (Schoenberg's complaint) in obscure venues, but outstanding performances at auspicious venues with all the sophisticated promotional techniques of the modern PR industry.

Here Hellewell seems to be conflating commercial success with artistic merit; if this were the case, pop music wins hands down over Beethoven wouldn't you say? His use of "scare" quotes around "masterworks" by Stockhausen, Boulez, Maxwell Davies et al reveals his somewhat skewed position. He asks if there is a paying public for a pianist presenting works (masterworks, even) by such composers. He says : "no". I say : "yes". At last year's Musica contemporary festival I sat among paying members of the public (listening to piano works by Stockhausen) who wold have said "yes", too. What point is Hellewell labouring to make here? I cannot see it.

He mentions a young pianist - Ian Pace. Please also key this name into the search engine/browser of your choice : you may be interested to read what Mr Pace has to say about contemporary music.

To contradict Hellewell, there is a 'core' of contemporary music performers who are dedicated to the art, and they are excellent, conservatoire-trained musicians (who may not be as money-oriented as Hellewell thinks they should be).

[Quijote]

Here is an excellent article which sums up exactly how I feel about it.

THE HECKLERS ARE RIGHT ABOUT THE MUSICAL AVANT GARDE

PERSONAL PLEASURE

Sir William Glock, father figure and patron (with public funds) of the British avant garde, is also an excellent pianist. What does he play for his own pleasure and in public: Haydn and other classics! Why haven't his friends - Maxwell Davies, Birtwistle or Boulez - written works specially for him for his intimate, personal pleasure? No Goldberg Variations here to ease the troubled mind - this is equivalent to a modern architect living in a Georgian house! Can you imagine Beethoven's patron, the Archduke Rudolph, playing nothing but the `Old Masters' like Handel for his pleasure? Now that patronage is corporate, the sponsors don't have put their own personal funds (and trust, and prestige) where their mouths are. In fact the idea of actually playing avant garde music for pleasure is laughable.

The avant garde movement likes to describe itself as being on a par with Space Exploration ("Boldly going ..."), but all it has actually produced, in some eighty years, is the equivalent, in real compositional terms, of the non-stick frying pan. It has primarily been a technical and ideological movement; but it is arguable that even these (admittedly tremendous) technical developments of advance composition and performance techniques would have been been developed anyway through the burgeoning advances in the `other' modern musical culture: film and popular music. (Commercial studios, computer and recording technology has now outstripped that of the experimental avant garde).

For once, Hellewell raises an interesting point : is music for "pleasure"? Is the sole aim of serious art music, "pleasure"? Should music simply be used as a "soothing" sonic backdrop? This is worthy of more debate, and need not be focused just on contemporary music. I would welcome more comments, as it is an issue that continues to exercise me.

Just to round off this section in the Helelwell article, I reject totally his contention that compositional advances and instrumental techniques would have been developed anyway through advances in film and popular music. This is false : film and popular musical culture often 'pick up' on techniques and aesthetic approaches made many years before by serious art music ('AV') composers.

[Quijote]

Here is an excellent article which sums up exactly how I feel about it.

THE HECKLERS ARE RIGHT ABOUT THE MUSICAL AVANT GARDE

By David Hellewell

THE DIALECTIC OF NOTES

All in all, the avant garde has been a negative, destructive movement in the twentieth century. When the time-tested basic elements of Western music - the harmonic (vertical) and melodic (horizontal) dialectic of pitched (Pythagorean) notes are jettisoned, you are left only with the expressionism of colour, orchestration, dynamics, instrumentation, etc. which, although ever present, and an integral part of Western music, never has, nor ever can be, a substitute for music's unique language: the `dialectic of notes'.

We reach now the final section of the article, the "dialectic of notes". Hellewell claims the 'AV' has been a negative, destructive movement in the 20th century. I have to say that this sentence surprises me, coming from somebody who "first made his name internationally as a composer, conductor and performer of avant garde classical music"; we shall forgive him the oxymoron; perhaps it was intentional?

More importantly, what Hellewell fails to recognise is that what he calls the "time-tested basic elements of Western music - the harmonic (vertical) and melodic(horizontal) dialectic of pitched (Pythagorean) notes" is simply the reflection of the development of notational systems, that is to say, the elements of Western music practice that were the easiest to "capture" in notational form : pitch (limited to Pythagorean ratios and later to essentially twelve chromatic notes of the 'modern' scale), and summative rhythm/durational values. It is ironic therefore that Hellewell rejects so-called total serialist composers whose entire raison d'être is just that : the potentially endless (re)combination of the twelve chromatic notes articulated in (summative durational) time. Which can be a bit boring at times, I'll admit.

[Quijote]

To sum up, Peter's 'discomfort' with contemporary art music (and electroacoustic music in particular) is best summed up on his behalf by the Helewell article mentioned (and dissected) above. I have written why I personally find it a shoddy and poorly thought-through article. It is now up to other forum members to make their own judgements and make further comments to help develop this debate.