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 ...
My perspective on Zappa is that he was very intelligent and actually wrote some very, VERY good and highly communicative lyrics. But quite often the music to which he attached his lyrics was not very good. I saw a video of a live concert on youtube and was quite impressed with the musicianship. As a musician myself I can tell you some of his stuff is seriously challenging to play. The problem is that some styles don’t reward you for the work you put into them.
It also happens that Beethoven's "avant garde" work was immediately embraced by audiences. Hence there is a much deeper side than your phony attempt at trying to be modern. Likewise Schoenberg, et al were in the sink of just trying to be "cool," innovative, recognized, while undoubtedly having some talent, but not that much talent. Kind of like Barack Obama incidentally.
Now there's nothing wrong with any of us hackers trying to push the envelope and attempting new things. But any author/critic who is incapable of enough honest analysis, no matter how painful, to accurately differentiate mediocrity from brilliance (e.g. Bartok), is hardly worth lecture attendance. You picked a truly revealing example (of yourself) when invoking Pollack.
Oh... and on John Williams: I would say that Williams suffers from the effect of being so masterful at his craft that he has become too popular with people outside the pretentious environs of the symphony... the "little people" like him too much, so the starched-shirts discount him.
What Williams does *really* well is to capture in just a few measures of music an essential theme that becomes iconic in popular culture. Whether it's the theme from Jaws, Star Wars, Harry Potter or Indiana Jones-- he has managed to capture something essential about a film and distill it into a theme that is instantly identifiable and iconic, and planted deep in the popular culture.
Not bad, really. We should all be so gifted. :-)
There’s an excellent program called “The Score” on a classical station I listen to. Each week, the host Edmund Stone, explores the work of film composers, and often interviews a guest composer as their works are played.
The programs are on Saturdays and Sundays from 2 to 3 pm Pacific time, and can be listened to on streaming audio.
http://allclassical.org/programs/our_programs/locally_produced_programs/the-score
Beethoven’s late quartets weren’t really understood till the 20th century. Schoenberg was a tremendous musician and didn’t have slightest interest in being ‘cool’.
I wrote this a few months ago about a piece of modern music I heard...
The Cleveland Orchestra preforms Dream/Window by TÅru Takemitsu
A review 9/26/2010
I was riding in my car with the radio tuned to WCLV. It was announced that the Cleveland Orchestra would be playing a work by TÅru Takemitsu. Shirley and I looked at each other and we each said “Who?”. Perhaps it would have been better had I remained ignorant of this composer
A few days later, WCLV broadcast the entire performance. It appears that TÅru Takemitsu was commissioned by a Kyoto bank, or perhaps an industrial firm or civic institution to write a piece celebrating the city. I cannot help but think, that, upon hearing this work, the commissioner would have asked Takemitsu to return the commission and then commit seppuku to atone for the embarrassment he caused not only to the institution but the city and the artist as well.
The piece is entitled Dream/Window and purports to envision the view of a Japanese garden through a window and through the window of a dream. A 55 gallon drum of Windex would have done a great deal to help this piece, as the view from this window at high noon with not a cloud in the sky is darker than that of the deepest twilight, but then, after a good cleaning you would have seen nothing but dead flowers over-run by weeds.
Mind you, I like weird music, very weird music, hell, I make music myself that is so far out of the mainstream that most listeners would run out of the room rather than listen to another moment of one of my works. It gives me hope, though, perhaps someday my noodlings will be given a performance by one of the great orchestras on the planet as they are no worse (or better) than Takematsu’s.
I would probably like this piece by TÅru Takemitsu in another setting, as chill-out music or as a film score. It does not belong at Severance Hall in the company of giants, and, sadly, it was a colossal waste of the talented musicianship found in the Cleveland Orchestra. This is not to say anything bad about the Cleveland Orchestra, as I believe that their true genius shone through in this performance in that they were able to play such execrable music with such virtuosity.
Normally, the orchestra tunes up, the conductor comes on stage and the music starts. I can only assume that the orchestra tuned up beforehand, but after the conductor came on stage and started playing Dream/Window, it sounded like the orchestra was tuning up all over again, not that one could have easily noticed the difference when listening to this piece. This marks the first time that I’ve heard the orchestra tuning up just before the work was over. In fact, I wounder if the orchestra ever stopped tuning up throughout the performance.
Takemitsu was obviously a Trekkie, as in this piece the Enterprise quickly becomes lost in the Nebulous Nebula and nobody can find their way out. Not once did the Captain (or the composer) consult a road map, stop at a gas station to ask directions or use his GPS. While wandering aimlessly through this piece, the listener is, on one occasion, attacked by huge minor chords that go on for far too long, (as did this piece), and is occasionally aware of disembodied bits and pieces of melodies floating by outside the window, but which never stop in and say hello. One just knows that the Atomic Mutant Monsters will be showing up any moment now, and although a little change of pace would have been welcome, sadly, in the end they never did.
“Daddy, Daddy, are we there yet”?
“Shadup ya little So & So or I’ll feed you to Godzilla”
“Oh please do, at least I won’t have to listen to any more of this”.
I’m in complete agreement. And, frankly, those that disrespect him for “appealing to the masses” remind me of the “bad guys” in “Strictly Ballroom” who mentioned, with disdain, the use of “crowd pleasing steps”. ;)
Quit shilly shallying around with niceties. Tell us what you really think.
Well, thank ewe very much for that!
Slathering notes all over a perfectly good piece of paper does not make it "music".
“Why do we hate modern classical music?”
Because it goes so well with modern crap they call art.........
I may be the outlier, according to the author. I enjoy 20th century classical music. Perhaps, like Charles Ives, I just hear differently. :)
Perhaps that’s why my daughter thinks my taste in music is wierd. But I can also enjoy Bach or Berlioz or Obrecht. Ah well.
I’ve tried modern music, on DVD, of course.
I don’t like spinach, either, and it’s spinach.
Frankly, I feel pretty much the same way about modern theater, most modern film, and most, but not all modern art.
What’s the reason. my best guess is that it is the Marxist world-view that informs most of it. But maybe it’s just that it’s ugly
Some “modern” music isn’t really classical ... its just pretentious. To my mind, the best genre for modern classical music is the old-fashioned orchestral movie score.
Listen to “The Battle” from Gladiator, and tell me that doesn’t rival some of the best classical stuff.
SnakeDoc
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