Stop and prepare : Cage

[Quijote]

So, the thread continues here ...

[Peter]

OK fire away!

[Quijote]

After you. I am the canon; please provide me with the canon fodder. Add icon.

[Peter]

Well it's your baby really but if you insist. Let's start by being frank - most contemporary music/art is simply not my thing - it doesn't speak to me, it doesn't move me and for those reasons it doesn't really interest me. Whether we are talking about an unmade bed, a hole in a piano or a composition lasting centuries, it is empty sensationalism as far as I am concerned and I honestly couldn't care what they think they are trying to say. You are of course free to sling accusations of philisitine, but that really is a cop out that you can lop at anyone who doesn't share your tastes which would probably be the vast majority of people!

I find real enjoyment and depth by actually going back in time and the older I get I find myself able to appreciate going back much further than I could as a student. There is a whole world of music before Bach that I have only really touched the surface of and its there that I intend to explore - Perotin being a good place to start, though I'm particularly into Monteverdi's 8th book of madrigals at the moment.

There I hope that provides enough fodder!

[PDG]

I find real enjoyment and depth by actually going back in time and the older I get I find myself able to appreciate going back much further than I could as a student.

Do you own a TARDIS, Peter?..

[Michael]

Do you own a TARDIS, Peter?..

Trust you to bring down the tone of the discussion, PDG, just when Peter was telling us about Perotin. (Can you get it without a prescription?)

[Peter]

Do you own a TARDIS, Peter?..

Actually I think that is quite a relevant point as listening to music does enable you to travel back and forward in a sense. This morning at the piano I've been in the early 18th century and the early 19th - Probably this afternoon I shall be back in the 16th and may respond to ye in appropiate fayre so frame your mind to mirth and merriment, which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life!

[PDG]

This morning at the piano I've been in the early 18th century and the early 19th - Probably this afternoon I shall be back in the 16th and may respond to ye in appropiate fayre so frame your mind to mirth and merriment, which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life!

Hmmm...If you say so.

I agree with Michael. You're taking too much Perotin in your coffee...

[Quijote]

Actually I think that is quite a relevant point as listening to music does enable you to travel back and forward in a sense [...].

So we shall be seeing you in that church in a couple of hundred years then?

[Quijote]

Well it's your baby really [...]

Look, I never touched her, and I don't have the money to get tied up in yet another paternity suit. I'll send you a sample of my DNA later ...

[Quijote]

Well it's your baby really but if you insist. Let's start by being frank - most contemporary music/art is simply not my thing - it doesn't speak to me, it doesn't move me and for those reasons it doesn't really interest me. Whether we are talking about an unmade bed, a hole in a piano or a composition lasting centuries, it is empty sensationalism as far as I am concerned and I honestly couldn't care what they think they are trying to say. You are of course free to sling accusations of philisitine, but that really is a cop out that you can lop at anyone who doesn't share your tastes which would probably be the vast majority of people!

I find real enjoyment and depth by actually going back in time and the older I get I find myself able to appreciate going back much further than I could as a student. There is a whole world of music before Bach that I have only really touched the surface of and its there that I intend to explore - Perotin being a good place to start, though I'm particularly into Monteverdi's 8th book of madrigals at the moment.

There I hope that provides enough fodder!

Fair comments, overall. Contemporary music (and art; some, at least) does speak to me, though in a very different voice to when I listen to earlier, essentially "tonal" music. But please don't forget that there is much contemporary music that operates diatonically : Reich, Pärt, Gorecki, Taverner etc, and I think you would very much enjoy composers such as these.

Concerning the Cage piece under discussion : it needs to be pointed out that the duration (600 years or so) was never stipulated by Cage, though it is probably fair to say that he would have agreed to the idea!

The piece itself is (get ready, now) one where the "idea" is greater than the "music", and for me this is often the case in Cage's later compositions. I have already alluded to this when I mentioned his EurOpera II, and the irritation I felt at the duration (50" or so) after having got the "conceptual message" after 10 minutes. That said, I admire Cage's works from the 40s, 50s and 60s (Constructions in Metal I and II, the Piano Concerto, pieces for prepared piano and the string quartets etc) as they fulfill one important function of music : that it should be listened to. Cage's music from those periods speaks to me more, as it involves the "discursive" aspects that provide a musical framework for 'meaning', above and beyond the purely conceptual.

So, whilst ASLP2/organ is a fine idea, it is more of an idea than a 'piece', though even here Cage challenges accepted notions of what constitutes an art work (as he did throughout his career, notably 4'33", to cite one example). I don't think this work is sensationalist, though the media coverage of it certainly attempts to make it so. But, once again, it is a 'piece' that one doesn't really need to hear, which I find a fascinating concept : "music one doesn't need to hear". This is a personal view, by the way, not one that will find resonance in academia or elsewhere.

If I defend modern music, I do not do it indiscriminately, but I admit I have a doctrinaire agenda : I think it vitally important that modern music receives a fair hearing, to let it escape from the narrow élitist circles that currently enclose it, as I truly believe there are masterworks being written today (and to just mention a couple of Brits doing so : Birtwhistle, Ferneyhough, Benjamin, Adès, Macmillan ...). It is the same for me with literature; I admire authors such as Hardy or Dickens, of course, but I want to be part of what is happening now, to read what writers are creating today.

You are quite right in saying there is a whole world of music that predates Bach; I only wish I had another hundred years to explore it all.

So, these are my first comments concerning Cage. I'm sure I will have more to say as others enter the fray.

[Peter]

Fair comments, overall. Contemporary music (and art; some, at least) does speak to me, though in a very different voice to when I listen to earlier, essentially "tonal" music. But please don't forget that there is much contemporary music that operates diatonically : Reich, Pärt, Gorecki, Taverner etc, and I think you would very much enjoy composers such as these.

Concerning the Cage piece under discussion : it needs to be pointed out that the duration (600 years or so) was never stipulated by Cage, though it is probably fair to say that he would have agreed to the idea!

The piece itself is (get ready, now) one where the "idea" is greater than the "music", and for me this is often the case in Cage's later compositions. I have already alluded to this when I mentioned his EurOpera II, and the irritation I felt at the duration (50" or so) after having got the "conceptual message" after 10 minutes. That said, I admire Cage's works from the 40s, 50s and 60s (Constructions in Metal I and II, the Piano Concerto, pieces for prepared piano and the string quartets etc) as they fulfill one important function of music : that it should be listened to. Cage's music from those periods speaks to me more, as they involve the "discursive" aspects that provide a musical framework for 'meaning', above and beyond the purely conceptual.

So, whilst ASLP2/organ is a fine idea, it is more of an idea than a 'piece', though even here Cage challenges accepted notions of what constitutes an art work (as he did throughout is career, notably 4'33", to cite one example). I don't think this work is sensationalist, though the media coverage of it certainly attempts to make it so. But, once again, it is a 'piece' that one doesn't really need to hear, which I find a fascinating concept : "music one doesn't need to hear". This is a personal view, by the way, not one that will find resonance in academia or elsewhere.

If I defend modern music, I do not do it indiscriminately, but I admit I have a doctrinaire agenda : I think it vitally important that modern music receives a fair hearing, to let it escape from the narrow élitist circles that currently enclose it, as I truly believe there are masterworks being written today (and to just mention a couple of Brits doing so : Birtwhistle, Ferneyhough, Benjamin, Adès, Macmillan ...). It is the same for me with literature; I admire authors such as Hardy or Dickens, of course, but I want to be part of what is happening now, to read what writers are creating today.

You are quite right in saying there is a whole world of music that predates Bach; I only wish I had another hundred years to explore it all.

So, these are my first comments concerning Cage. I'm sure I will have more to say as others enter the fray.

And I think also a fair response. I don't indiscriminately condemn modern music either and I am aware of some of the music of the composers you mention such as Gorecki's 3rd symphony and Tavener's 'The protecting veil'. None of this music effects me on the same level as that of earlier composers and quite frankly I can take it or leave it. What I've heard of Birtwhistle has not impressed and I'm not sure I would refer to his music as masterworks - personally I doubt whether posterity will view them that way, though a quick flash forward in my time machine should confirm this - I don't see 30,000 people turning out for Birtwhistle's funeral! There is little music written post 1950 that I regard as a masterwork in the same vein as Beethoven, Bach's or even Bartok's great achievements.

It seems to me that modern 'art' culture has lost touch with people and is (and has been for some time) desperately in search of ways of saying what has already been said many times before. You rightly refer to the narrow elitist circles that enclose contemporary music and surely the question has to be why? Why do more people not relate and connect to it? Is this not the duty of the artist and are they not failing seriously somewhere?
In the 18th century there was a huge demand for contemporary music and really old music was of little interest to them. I personally think we are in what future generations will come to think of as a cultural dark age and I think we are in need of a new renaissance.

[Quijote]

[...]What I've heard of Birtwhistle has not impressed and I'm not sure I would refer to his music as masterworks - personally I doubt whether posterity will view them that way, though a quick flash forward in my time machine should confirm this - I don't see 30,000 people turning out for Birtwhistle's funeral!

The turnout at funerals is no yardstick for the issues we are trying to address. Let us stay focused, please.

There is little music written post 1950 that I regard as a masterwork in the same vein as Beethoven, Bach's or even Bartok's great achievements.

I have to disagree, of course : Boulez, Ligeti, Stockhausen (to name but a few) spring to my mind. But such an argument does not enlighten us at all. We need to address how we define a masterwork, how such a concept operates in our culture. Do you mean "groundbreaking"? Or something else?

It seems to me that modern 'art' culture has lost touch with people and is (and has been for some time) desperately in search of ways of saying what has already been said many times before.

It is true that there is a feeling of alienation in the public when listenening to contemporary music (or "modern classical music" if you prefer). Why this has come about seems to me the question. I have some ideas, by no means the only ones. I believe there are musics (for the moment excluding non-western) that truly have "new things" to say, in particular electroacoustic music (purely tape or with live instruments).

You rightly refer to the narrow elitist circles that enclose contemporary music and surely the question has to be why? Why do more people not relate and connect to it? Is this not the duty of the artist and are they not failing seriously somewhere?

A huge (and hugely vital) point. Schoenberg, Boulez and Birtwhistle have alluded to this in their writings. Does a composer have to take into account his/her audience? Would Beethoven share this view? More needs to be said, but the problem with forums is that nobody wants to read a 90-page introduction to the issue. I dearly wish to engage with you about this, but cannot see how to do it concisely.

In the 18th century there was a huge demand for contemporary music and really old music was of little interest to them. I personally think we are in what future generations will come to think of as a cultural dark age and I think we are in need of a new renaissance.

I think this is a very conservative, reactionary position. Personally, I think we are at the brink of vast possibilities, and have been so since the invention of recording technology (a mere 50 [or more] years or so). I must ask you what form this "renaissance" should take.

[Quijote]

And I repeat my last question : what form should this renaissance take?

[Peter]

The turnout at funerals is no yardstick for the issues we are trying to address. Let us stay focused, please.

Yes flippant, but actually it is a relevant point - most great composers of the past were well known names to ordinary people and much of their music eagerly anticipated, can the same be said of composers born after 1950? Interestingly all the composers you mention were also born pre 1950.

I have to disagree, of course : Boulez, Ligeti, Stockhausen (to name but a few) spring to my mind. But such an argument does not enlighten us at all. We need to address how we define a masterwork, how such a concept operates in our culture. Do you mean "groundbreaking"? Or something else?

It is true that there is a feeling of alienation in the public when listenening to contemporary music (or "modern classical music" if you prefer). Why this has come about seems to me the question. I have some ideas, by no means the only ones. I believe there are musics (for the moment excluding non-western) that truly have "new things" to say, in particular electroacoustic music (purely tape or with live instruments).

They're certainly making new awful sounds and provide a sample link for members to make their own judgement of my remarks.
http://www.digital-music-archives.co...plication.php? .
I wouldn't even describe it as music, it is an acoustic science and it would possibly be better appreciated if split from the wider category of western art music.

A huge (and hugely vital) point. Schoenberg, Boulez and Birtwhistle have alluded to this in their writings. Does a composer have to take into account his/her audience? Would Beethoven share this view? More needs to be said, but the problem with forums is that nobody wants to read a 90-page introduction to the issue. I dearly wish to engage with you about this, but cannot see how to do it concisely.

Mozart thought so and Beethoven generally did - he only made two notable exceptions - Op.95 and writing a new finale for Op.130. Let's be clear here, Beethoven's music did cause some critics to indulge in tirades of abuse on first hearing but within his lifetime his music was generally accepted by critics and public - even contrary to popular belief were some of the late quartets such as Op.127. Chamber music and sonatas however cannot be viewed in the same way as today because they were not really intended for public performance. Beethoven knew what the public would come to appreciate and has been proven correct. Schoenberg on the other hand has been proven wrong and his music has led to a dead end - that doesn't mean that I would dismiss him as unimportant or not a serious figure.

I think this is a very conservative, reactionary position.

You would - oh dear shock horror!

Personally, I think we are at the brink of vast possibilities, and have been so since the invention of recording technology (a mere 50 [or more] years or so).

Over 100 years surely?