Posted on 11/30/2010 1:33:53 PM PST by mojito
A full century after Arnold Schoenberg and his students Alban Berg and Anton Webern unleashed their harsh chords on the world, modern classical music remains an unattractive proposition for many concertgoers. Last season at the New York Philharmonic, several dozen people walked out of a performance of Berg's Three Pieces for Orchestra; about the same number exited Carnegie Hall before the Vienna Philharmonic struck up Schoenberg's Variations for Orchestra.
The mildest 20th-century fare can cause audible gnashing of teeth. Benjamin Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings is a more or less fully tonal score, yet in 2009 at Lincoln Centre, it failed to please a gentleman sitting behind me. When someone let out a "Bravo!" elsewhere in the hall, he growled: "I bet that was a plant." I resisted the temptation to swat him with my pocket score.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Mozart was primarily a lyrical composer. Beethoven, on the other hand, was not a great melodist. You wouldn’t call his music bad I trust.
>Wagner, but unfortunately, not forgotten
Why unfortunately, the man was a genius, such stirring and monumental works.
A Giant.
I’ve really tried to like zappa. I mean really hard. I just can’t.
Well, with the exception of Dynamo Hum and Montana.
Yep.
Reminds me of the PBS commercial where the 5 or 6 birds land on the power lines and the ‘composer’ makes symphony out of it.
Sounded like crap.
Try The Night of the Mayans by a contemporary Mexican composer.
I have always suspected that modern composers, knowing that they could never approach the level of the old masters, decided to go in the opposite direction. As a result, their works sound like chimps banging on a keyboard.
Very very few compositions of the new stuff lasts.
Perhaps the yianni at the accropois
perhaps the arkenstone into the wind because it is used so much.
but most all modern “stuff” has the skill of pong video game sounds.
What a stupid article. Most movie scores are “Classical” music and there are some real good ones. But, Country Music rules!
He meant Art music that’s written for the concert hall.
Dang I shoulda read down a bit.
I agree. There's some excellent music written for film. The work that Howard Shore did for the Lord of the Rings was excellent. In fact, I went to a Seattle Symphony performance, with Howard Shore conducting his own music from LOTR. It was a fantastic concert. Loved every second of it.
I would submit that modern composers writing for film scores really isn't substantially different from the classical composers writing for the stage, or in fact an opera. Same thing, different time. Same mission.
Get a Pollock design on a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle if you want to go over the edge.
I'll settle for the dinner party.
It's a great companion piece to Tom Wolfe's "The Painted Word," written in the 1970s, which gave the same treatment to modern art.
I heard Glass being interviewed once, and when asked about his oh-so-predictable style, he compared himself (favorably, of course) to Mozart, Beethoven, et. al, who he also labeled as "monotonous."
The guy has a titanic ego.
Peter Schikele did a hilarious send-up of Glass by "glassing" Bach. The Wikipedia description:
There is often a startling juxtaposition of styles within a single P. D. Q. Bach piece. The Prelude to Einstein on the Fritz, which alludes to Philip Glass's opera Einstein on the Beach, provides an example. The underlying music is J.S. Bach's first prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier, but with each phrase repeated interminably in a minimalist manner that parodies Glass's. On top of this mind-numbing structure is added everything from jazz phrases to snoring to the chanting of a meaningless phrase ("Koy Hotsy-Totsy," alluding to the art film Koyaanisqatsi for which Glass wrote the score). Through all these mutilations, the piece never deviates from Bach's original harmonic structure.
I chuckle every time I hear that....
That’s because, I believe, most modern ‘music’ is composed from Julliard drop outs or wanna be’s.
Or hippies who are desperately trying to keep their ‘cool’ from the 60’s.
I'd happily listen to the score of Shawshank Redemption or The Mission live.
>>Same thing, different time. Same mission.<<
In complete agreement. At times, the music has amplified the emotion of a scene to the point of bringing me to tears.
On the other hand, Comfortably Numb, on the Pink Floyd Pulse DVD has the same impact with the combination of the music and the increasingly complex light show. Shucks, I’m tearin’ up just thinking about it. :)
I'll see your Merle Haggard, and raise you one George Jones.
My head just exploded thinking about it.
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