Where Is The Value In Classical Music?

July 21, 2000

Just imagine you're sitting in some coffee house in some college town or in the artist's quarter of a big city, listening to some stimulating conversation among a half dozen people sitting at another table, while sipping your espresso or cappuccino. Hopefully it's not some dreary discussion about some worn out social ideology that has at this point in human history become as dead as the Dodo. That of course would be boring. If this discussion becomes boring, you certainly have my leave not to waste your time further. But if not, then please read on. This is going to be a long piece.

Many who are old enough to have grown up in the 1960's may recall the old Paul Simon, Art Garfunkl song, The Dangling Conversation, that asked such supercilious questions as "can Analysis (i. e. Freudian Psychoanalysis) be worthwhile?" (My immediate answer, NO!) "Is the Theatre (stage plays), really dead?" (My answer is still, NO!), all of this in order to avoid serious questions. I certainly hope that we can get into some serious questions in this piece. The topic is again taken from the discussions in the moderated classical music list.

But first a little introduction....

This discussion seems to have been started by Bill Pirkle who has in mind creating a computer system to generate new Classical Music in mass quantities. Assuming that such a system is feasible, he seems to have wanted to start this discussion in order to figure out what properties of value could be used to design his system and produce acceptable specimens of Classical Music. Pirkle supplied a simple poll in order to determine what characteristics attract people to Classical Music; he asks people to set percentages to four attributes, 1) Historical value, 2) Composer, 3) Musical merit and 4) Performer. The discussion goes off in several directions, many of which I have lopped off. Of course I have a few points I want to make. Again, I hope you enjoy the discussion.

Steve Schwartz weighs in....

Historical - 5%. Composer - 40%, Musical merit - 50%, Performer - 5%

Historical - 0%, Composer - 0%, Musical merit - 100%, Performer - 0%

In my practice, most likely:

Historical - 1%, Composer - 5%, Musical merit - 89%, Performer - 5%

Steve Schwartz

OK: I guess I'll weigh in too.

Historical - 5% This is of negligible concern to me. I never much ever even consider it. On the rare occasions that I do, it's usually to marvel that a particular musical expression is actually as old as it is. Musical examples are endless. However, it is essential to the discussion to mention that in every reference to Classical Music TIME matters. The more time that passes, if a particular piece of music remains interesting or popular enough to be programmed into the "standard repertoire", more than likely its age adds something to its intrinsic value. Older styles also give greater opportunity for musical revivals and as long as human beings hunger for something different, whether it's really new or not (since there's really nothing new under the sun anyway), there will be musical revivals.

Composer - 15% If and only if I am already focused on an interest in a particular composer, particularly an obscure one. Occasionally this percentage can get as high as 40%.

Musical merit - 50% The most obvious concern is the quality of a musical composition. This will be a primary focus of my attention for the remainder of this discussion. Just what in fact constitutes this "merit" provides one of the bases for the conceit of Classical Music as better than all other music.

Performer - 30% Some may object that I am far too concerned with this aspect, but without performers there would be no music. I may be letting the cat out of the bag if I say right at the outset that even when a machine is reproducing a musical performance, in some way or another that performance had to have had a human originator. If I happen to like the way a particular soloist plays or sings something, I'm far more likely to seek out more performances by that artist. Every art form has its "feet of clay." Classical Music's is its performance. If the performance is poor or "uninspired," the music will fail to communicate all of which it is capable, whether or not the "composer's intentions" were followed or not. Musical examples are again endless.

Bernard Chasan weighs in...

historical 3%, musical value 75%, composer 21%, performer 1%

Bernard Chasan

Jim Tobin sums up...

This leaves "musical value." Without that, nothing else counts for anything, and the other categories are entirely dependent on this. So on my interpretation, if I had to play your quantitative game, I'd give this 100% and the others nothing.

Jim Tobin

Even so, we haven't gotten to what exactly forms the basis for this musical value. Hopefully we will.

More sound bites...

The value of anything is in the doing of it. As long as people enact classical music, it will have value, when people merely listen to it, it will be a ruin.

Stirling Newberry

OK, so the value of Classical Music is existential; if people do it, it must have value. I'm not sure that's really all there is to it, but I really liked these pithy aphorisms anyway, especially that word "enact". Thanks Sterling. The following is also good.

We wouldn't give a damn about Mozart if the works he wrote weren't especially good.

Steve Schwartz

No kidding! That goes for just about all the music I would choose to listen to, except in cases where I am really just trying something out to see, in some cases, whether I can even really ever like it. If I decide I don't really like it, it has no musical value for me. It may still have some musical value for someone else, but not for me. Does this big area "musical value" boil down to mere subjective judgment then? To some extent it must. We are after all discussing art. Thomas Mann said that interest was the strongest emotion, without interest, nothing has any conceivable value. Even so, I'm not completely happy with a merely existential explanation for the value of Classical Music or anything else, which brings us to....

Bill Pirkle's Big Question.

There will now be an abundance of CM in the future because the tedious task of writing it down is gone. Nor is there a requirement to hire a symphony at great expense to perform it. Nor does it have to get published in the traditional way. Now any talented person can write a symphony, piano sonata, concerto, render it to print, hear it via midi, and distribute both the midi file and the sheet music via the Internet.

WOW, what a proclamation! Time and technology have always altered what is possible in music and there is no reason that this will not be a continuing trend into the future. Technological influences are much more likely to show up first in pop music rather than in Classical Music for a number of reasons, including the importance attached to live performances and reliance on written music in Classical Music. For example, a concert featuring Elton John had him playing a piano in London while signals were bounced off a satellite so that a piano in New York played exactly what he played, while the audience watched the rest of the concert on a huge screen. During the 1960's certain pop music groups, notably the Beatles, eventually became recording artists exclusively, never performing live concerts again. Yes, it is conceivable and even probable that many composers might spring up, given the technical opportunities of the internet and midi technology, but....

The question is, "will these people be wasting their time?"

The question might rather be, "will any of them be any good at the craft of composing music, specifically music that a Classical Music audience would buy?"

Will it not be accepted by CM types for reasons of historical value, lack of composer recognition, etc. or will this music be accepted based on its musical value, even if it were written by a computer using "expert system" artificial intelligence technology.

Well, whether one decided to use an "expert system," artificial intelligence technology, twelve tone serialism or some other system is not as important as whether the final result is any good. Indeed music must be good enough that it can be reproduced by live performers, which I maintain is one of the vital salients of all Classical Music. Whether after all that effort, the music communicates its message to human senses, whether the music is good enough to survive centuries is an open question. So far we have two requirements; that the music be capable of being reproduced by human means using any instrumentation and that the "music" be notated in some way.

Here's another requirement. Any music that's notated can be reproduced by another performer and interpreted by that performer in a slightly different way. In fact literally every performance, even by the same performer will be different from all the rest. The best performances will have something like an immediacy and deliberateness about them as if the performer was both playing the piece for the first time and knew ahead of time exactly what to play. It isn't just that a piece of music should be performed "as the composer intended" but also "as the performer interprets what the composer intended." These are elements that are traditional to this musical genre. They form a unique set of relationships; the audience with the composer through the vehicle of the performer. In many cases the best music results when the composer and the performer are not the same person because the performer may possess a greater virtuosity on the chosen musical instrument than the composer possesses. Even if a midi file performance is "realized" by a hypothetical internet composer, that performance will forever be static, the same, dead! Without the vitality of individual interpretation, the music we admire and call Classical would not inspire us as much. This explains why there are so many versions of the same piece out there and why people will hotly debate the merits of this or that performance. Performance is a critical part of the experience of Classical Music. Bill continues,

I can't believe that on a planet of 6 billion people, there is not another Mozart out there right now. Does he (or she) have a chance? That's what I am trying to find out. I would think that all of today's composers would want to know this too.

My my, these are weighty issues! It is always a perilous choice to become an artist of any sort. It's almost an act of mad compulsion, like taking a leap in the dark, especially the decision to become a composer. It's almost as bad as deciding to become a poet. If one were to decide to become a poet, at least one might aspire to write lyrics, to become a lyricist. Most of those people these days who call themselves "song writers" are nothing more than musically illiterate lyricists. Like their troubadour antecedents, they know just a few guitar chords to make their songs work. If one would be a composer, one might better devote oneself to something less dangerous than trying to write music in the traditions of the Classical masters. That's why a lot of composers end up getting themselves jobs in college music departments where they can teach more practical aspects of music to cover the expense of the time they spend writing music, much of which may never be performed anyway.

Pirkle and many others might think that somewhere at some time in the past, it was different. But the truth is that all these artists had to work hard at more than their composing in order to publicize their efforts and try and get their musical message across. One example that comes to mind is the more than 90 letters that Gustav Mahler penned as well as the numerous visits he made to various people all over central Europe just to get someone interested in premiering his second symphony, The Resurrection, which was an instant success and turned out to provide Mahler with the most opportunities to conduct his works for the rest of his life. For the physically weak but usually arrogant Mahler, this activity was nothing short of bending the knee.

Far easier to do pop music. For one thing pop music is generated these days by people who make it a business to sell as much of it as possible. They manufacture bands, schedule and promote tours, distribute CD's, radio spots, etc. If you get people's attention, which can be manipulated, they will throw money. In order to be a successful pop musician, you don't have to be particularly talented as nobody is really interested in listening to your music anyway as just hearing it in connection with some other activity is all most people are capable of. That's why Juliard trained James Taylor decided to do what he did. Was he mistaken? They do call the pop music business, the "music industry." By comparison, Classical Music is a "hand made" art form.

I suspect that Pirkle really wants to know whether any of these internet composers can ever become universally popular? I sincerely doubt it, even if they are as good as Mozart. I always give a wry chuckle to people who talk as if there may be another Mozart or Beethoven somewhere waiting to be discovered. The hard truth is that there will never be another Mozart or Beethoven and the world the way it is has had a hard enough time coping with their significance to endure any more like them. That doesn't mean that the world, or at least some small interested fraction of it, may not be ready for a Bill Pirkle. They may be. A lot would have to do with the qualities of Bill Pirkle's music; whether it successfully communicated anything to anyone.

We do well to remember that in every age, along with the Mozarts and Beethovens, there are the lesser lights, some that shone more brightly during their own lifetimes, whose lights are all but extinguished today. Classical Music is in fact that music which TIME has honored as good enough to survive. Rare is the music that is acclaimed when it's written and never surpassed even after 150 years or more have gone by. Chopin's music was such a case. He was lucky, but his case is also quite rare. Bill continues,

Bill Pirkle

Well Bill, I suppose we have to call it something. Calling it just plain "music" I guess just won't do. Nothing that is composed today can really be called Classical until a certain amount of TIME has gone by, usually only after the composer has died. That's a dreadful thought isn't it? I don't really even like saying that the music I write is "Classical" even though it uses classical music forms. In the antique trade, a thing has to be at least fifty years old to be considered a genuine antique. I hate to break it to all of you but Classical Music is antique, all of it is more or less "museum pieces." Is it any wonder that most of the people who attend Classical Music concerts are themselves antiques? That Classical Music is also something transcendent, is perhaps a subject for another piece.

HSCM? I really don't like having to call my favorite music by an acronym and this one doesn't even roll off the tongue. Many of us use Classical Music as a refuge from the rest of the contemporary world of acronyms, newspeak, sound bites, spin doctoring, etc. Why bring that world into what is rightly a refuge? I don't like it.

Bernard Chasan

So do I, LOL Peter Varley counters,

What I'm not in favour of is people using computers to do their thinking for them. Wasn't it Dijkstra who said "the danger is not that computers will come to think like people, but that people will come to think like computers"?

Someone also said, "we shape our tools, and our tools shape us." Edsgar Dijkstra, the great Dutch algorhymician was someone I actually got to meet in person. At the time, 1980, he was very concerned that artificial intelligence would eventually take over the world via something like the internet, which he envisioned would usher in a new age of techno-repression. At the time Dijkstra was working on a signal processing operating system that was to be the basis for such a system, so he was in fact helping to create the monster he feared. He needn't have worried. Human nature is far too feisty to let techno-repression take over.

I don't think that a consensus "judgement of history" exists any more. The invention of the CD player has done away with it. It seems that anything written down will sooner or later be recorded (probably by Naxos), people will buy the CD out of curiosity, and some of them will like what they hear. The judgement of history was dismissive about Sibelius' piano music, and didn't mention Kraus's symphonies at all, but I suspect I'm not the only one to get pleasure from listening to them.

Peter Varley

Well Peter, maybe the "judgment of history" isn't quite what it used to be. Maybe the audience for Classical Music isn't what it used to be either. These days, someone like me might actually be curious enough to dig up Sibelius' piano music, since I like everything else Sibelius did. Multiply me a few thousand fold and one has an audience. Sure it's thin but it's there. TIME has again decided our curiosity in this matter. Sibelius stopped composing in the 1920's. He's dead. His music, that which is still widely performed, are museum pieces. Any of his music that hasn't yet been widely performed is almost an archaeological artifact.

In recent threads, we seem to have been trying the impute some element of the ‘supernatural' to composers, ourselves as listeners, and various periods such as the baroque, the classical, and the romantic. Perhaps we take ourselves too seriously.

Or not seriously enough!

After all, classical music is what we like to listen to, some composers more than others. Cheers to all,

Alex Renwick

Ottawa, Canada

This is a subject for another piece, one which will have tremendous implications for the way most of us who love Classical Music view performances, the music, composers, performers, ourselves, etc. I promise to do one in future dealing precisely with these ideas as they may indeed reveal the truest value of Classical Music.

Who owns a musical style? Is this important?

Bill Pirke wants to know since he might like to put these Classical Music styles into his system for generating mass quantities of it.

Bill Pirkle

If this is true, that those of us who compose music at the present time "stand on the shoulders of giants," then it seems to me that Bill is saying something fundamental about the importance of the traditions in Classical Music. In another post Bill says,

But before going on into Bill's incredible art story, a few more points. Just because one might like to be a composer doesn't mean that the person has any real talent for doing it and even where it clearly exists, musical talent can be overlooked or go unrecognized. However, what the internet may offer is the opportunity for many more people to get their products to a market, regardless of their talent. But it makes no sense to me that an "untalented" person would really be interested in "playing" with a computer system that composes music that sounds Classical. Nor does it make much sense to try and bring such a gismo to "the masses." They have enough "gee whiz" gismos foisted on them as it is.

POINTED DIGRESSION: I'll tell all of you reading this right now that I have tremendous disgust for the phrase "the masses." This is a phrase used by most snot nosed socialist ideologues who thought (and still do) that they know better than everyone else how to run other's lives. They have no great love for "the masses." Quite the opposite. All they care about is getting absolute political power for themselves. Their program hasn't changed: they still want to rule the world, whether they expect to do it by incremental steps or a violent takeover, their aims are the same. As time passes perhaps their evil designs are more widely revealed. We are hopefully moving into an era where each person from every background, no matter how humble, is regarded as a unique individual rather than just part of "the masses". By the way, most of the great composers came from fairly humble backgrounds.

Now, on to Bill's incredible art story,

Last week I saw a thing on the TV where someone has taught an elephant to hold a artist's brush in its trunk and paint pictures. They were quite good and most people, even art critics, would not be able to distinguish them from today's modern art, AND, they are being auctioned off at Sotheby's (sp?) in New York! Surely a person that would pay good money for a painting by an elephant would accept a CM composition written by a computer.

Not being combative, I remain, sincerely,

Bill Pirkle

Did you ever see a movie called The Magic Christian? This reminds me of a scene out of that movie. What kind of a statement is someone with means making by buying a piece of elephant made art at auction? What could be a more cynical act? First of all, the number of paintings actually made by elephants has to be quite small, therefore the rarity of such an artifact itself gives it some value, whether it's any good compared with human made paintings or not. In this sense, the purchase could even be justified. But the broader implications are that modern painters are no better than animals and their work could just as easily have been created by elephants or chimps.

I happen to know that there really are many people with means to burn who buy modern art simply because they regard it as bad. They do what they do with their money simply because they're bored and cynical, but not so bored and cynical as not to make some kind of statement about themselves such as, "At least I'm better than the run of the mill artist. Even if their art is bad, if I buy enough of it the rest of the world will think they have talent." Is this really what we want to extend to the creation of Classical Music, or any other music for that matter? I for one don't think so: the ethics of it bothers me.

What would we like?

I would love to hear a modern piece written in the baroque or classical style.

Ron Chaplin

Iselin, New Jersey, USA

There is some, although even with similar instrumentation, it doesn't really sound Baroque or Classical. There's so much genuine run of the mill Baroque or Classical music anyway. Why on earth do we need to make more of it? Just go to your local CD store and start collecting everything you can find by G. P. Telemann. LOL.

Chris Bonds, A Music Educator, Responds....

The same discussion could be applied to music. You could even have elephant music, if it could be shown that an elephant had a preference for certain percussion sounds (assuming the instrument isn't destroyed in the creative process), and recorded an elephant improv. But in the human realm we already have a composer, John Cage, who has successfully pulled the wool over people's eyes (or stuffed cotton in their ears) for decades.

I actually knew John Cage. I met him when I was a teenager growing up in California. He was a complex man. In many ways Cage seemed more content with being considered a humorist or a philosopher than a composer. He seemed to be taking on the traditional mantle of a composer only to stretch our conception of what a composer should or could be. I really think that Cage was trying to expand consciousness in some cases by obliterating concepts held as sacred, a loaded word, by his audiences. I'm not sure how successful a lot of Cage could be as recreated by others simply because they would probably be trying to recreate it the way they would a piece by say Johannes Brahms. That wouldn't work. But if anyone is really interested, most if not all of Cage is notated. The C. F. Peters company in Germany holds most of his scores in their catalog. What I liked most about Cage was that in all the various stages he went through, he never became an artifact himself. He seemed to recognize that this would have been a bad move. This is what a pop music artist usually does. People are drawn to a rock concert as much to SEE the performers, who have made themselves into artifacts, as much as to HEAR their music. This explains why rock music videos exist. Hearing is not enough. The architypical pop artist as artifact is of course, Michael Jackson.

Chris Bonds

Composing and Teaching.

Somehow I doubt that the really great composers were thinking about teaching while they were composing. It's a very wild guess, of course. Who can tell what another person is thinking while he is in the act of creation?

Mimi Ezust

Well, there were some compositions, most not nearly as popular as Chopin's etudes, that were written expressly to teach musical technique to musicians. As far as whether composers were trying to teach their audiences anything, perhaps tech isn't quite the right word. It is pretty difficult to express in words just how music effects people, but it is something that sensitized people can experience.

Varley's Critique.

As a further approximation, there are particular composers whose music has a special appeal. These are the ones where, to a particular listener, even the minor works sound like masterpieces. I think most CM listeners recognise the quality of Mozart's C minor piano concerto or Tchaikovsky's 6^th symphony, but there are a few who will go out of their way to hear Mozart's early symphonies or Tchaikovsky's "The Seasons" too. In my case, it's Sibelius and Schubert. It's still the quality of the music (as perceived by me) that's important, not the composer, but I've learned from experience that there's something about the way Sibelius and Schubert wrote which makes their music consistently appealing to me in a way that the music of Tchaikovsky or Mozart isn't.

I think it likely that only those composers who have their own voices can communicate in this way. Mozart does (to some people), but another composer trying to speak with Mozart's voice couldn't. The people to whom Mozart speaks would recognise it as an impersonation, and those of us who aren't interested in minor Mozart wouldn't see the point of the exercise.

Peter Varley

Again, there can really only be one Mozart or Schubert or Beethoven or Tchaikovsky or Mahler, etc. One could find composers who were contemporaries of these who wrote in similar styles (which answers in part who owns a musical style), and sometimes their music seems just as good as music by the great composers, occasionally even better. But what marks out the great composers from their less great contemporaries is the preponderance of the greatness of their music. Part of this "greatness" is associated with the mere continuance of its performance and that individual performers aspire to perform it.

The Experience of Listening.

Don Satz

I wonder if Don prefers the modern approaches to the performance of baroque pieces over those with "original instruments" and techniques?

I have been reading Peter Kivy's "Only Music". You seem to be saying that music that does not "speak to the historical and social issues" of his/her time (and Kivy would argue that much of the greatest music is such) is without merit?

len.

Never read Livy, but it seems to me that music that speaks to the historical and SCOIAL issues of the time of the life of any composer is more properly called "folk music" which would include protest, labor, anti-war and temperance movement songs. If Kivy is saying that much of the greatest music; well known Classical Music masterpieces, do not speak to the historical and social issues of the times they were written, he would be correct. There was something else at work in the minds and hearts of the great composers, the desire to achieve transcendence. This is a subject for another piece.

I think that one thing that unites all lovers of music is the desire to hear something genuine, to hear a sincere expression. I would have no interest in hearing a knock-off trying to be in the exact style of Haydn or Mozart. I apologize for being so thick.

Ron

Bill Pirkle take note. Ron's vote magnified thousands of times suggests that modern rehashes of the musical styles of the late 18th century may not be widely acceptable whether generated by a computer system or not. My vote's with Ron. By the way, what's genuine? We should know what's fake too.

More On Modern Composers Imitating Earlier Styles.

Richard Todd writes:

"There is so much extant great music from both periods. Who needs more? No matter what he did, the modern composer could only imitate and there is no way that he could avoid sounding like either an imitator or a very third-rate baroque or classical composer or, more likely both."

I don't understand the rationale behind either of these statements. They seem to imply that there is a finite upper bound on the amount of music that can be "meaningfully" written in any given style, and that that upper bound has always been reached for any given era. This would be, to me, a miracle of serendipity.

Surely, the fact that the "modern" composer does not live in the same milieu as an earlier composer could be used to argue that the modern composer's take on an earlier style would necessarily be innovative and non imitative. How could it be otherwise? How can someone imitate something that you seem to be arguing is inaccessible to them?

len.

How far do you stretch a style before it becomes something sounding different? For instance if I decided to write a symphony using the typical instrumentation Haydn used; 35 players, strings, 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 bassoons, would I have to include the pulses, the modulations, the mannerisms? I'd certainly use the forms. But how far could I stretch this style before it was no longer "Classical"? Would the result be successful from a musical standpoint? This might be an interesting exercise.

I would love to hear a modern piece written in the baroque or classical style. Because I think it would be very interesting to hear how a modern composer, aware of the modern "achievements in harmony, form, etc.," would compose in either the classical or baroque style. In my post, I didn't mean to imply that a modern composer would be able to create a work in the musical styles of 200 or 300 years ago. I guess another reason I would like to hear a modern baroque work, for example, is that, although I am making progress dragging my sensibility into the 20^th century, I feel more comfortable listening to baroque and classical music than I do more modern music.

Ron

Well, I don't know about "modern achievements in harmony, form, etc." I tend to think that people like Joe Haydn, created a robust structure called the Sonata-Allegro form that has not outlived its usefulness by a long shot. I'm also interested in some of the technical improvements of some of the woodwind and brass instruments as well as adding more newer instruments into new mixes. But this desire to recreate music in these old styles seems by itself to be sort of missing the point. I'm sure that we have not exhausted possibilities for creating epiphany producing music using traditional forms and instrumentation, but just how much they would sound like their classical precursors is hard to predict. What isn't as hard to predict is that most composers wouldn't really be interested in writing Beethoven's 10th symphony, 2nd violin concerto or 33rd piano sonata. Of course there is always curiosity about what a Beethoven might have written next had he lived longer, but we all want to write our own stuff.

Pablo Massa wrote:

Well, if Beethoven only started being Beethoven with Op. 55, I guess the Moonlight Sonata Op. 27 #2 and his first three piano concertos weren't really Beethoven, or at least not quite. It's always true that composers are influenced by other composers. None of them have a pure style. But there are enough "signature" indicators to identify one from another no matter how close. Schubert was a contemporary of Beethoven's though much younger. He died a year after Beethoven and admired him greatly, wanting his remains to lie next to those of his revered master. Play a Beethoven string quartet and then one by Schubert and you can hear many similarities. But Beethoven preferred certain effects while Schubert preferred others, enough so that these composers can be distinguished from each other. These distinctions are even more apparent when considering their piano sonatas and comparing these to those by Haydn and Mozart. There are places where it might seem they all influenced each other while there are other ways in which they remain distinct. Nevertheless, they all share the Classical style.

So, What's Boring and What's Great?

Steve Schwartz

One of the most oft mentioned complaints against Classical Music from those who aren't into it is that it's boring. Compared to what? Frankly I find that most pop music these days sounds pretty much the same; boring. That which becomes too familiar becomes boring. It is part of the built-in sensory response circuits in human beings as convincingly demonstrated by many tests devised by experimental psychologists; behaviorists, etc. who in my opinion are the only psychologists worthy of my respect. The experiments focused on the effects of repeated sequences of stimulants. One of the most common of these tests concerns the sense of smell. Think back to the last time you were ever forced to endure a really bad odor, one you couldn't escape from for several minutes or even hours. At first the shock of the odor on your senses is almost overwhelming perhaps resulting in nausea. But as time passes, even though the odor may still remain sensibly bad, the senses get accustomed to it. If even more time passes and the odor still persists, it may even be ignored. This is what happens to people who must live in industrial towns lying close to paper mills and other kinds of industrial plants or in places like the San Jouquin valley during the autumn when the whole area smells like all the cattle in the world farted. Driving through such places one wonders how people can live there. They simply don't smell it. Their senses have been bored.

Until we understand exactly/objectively what it is that causes us as human beings to perceive (i.e., subjectively) a work of art as "moving" or "meaningful" or "transcendant", we have only random choice within a set of structural principles to guide algorithmic composition. And though that set of structural principles may have grown considerably in scope and complexity over the past fifty years, our understanding of what choices within that space make music "great" remains primitive.

len.

We are at the limits of our science to determine exactly what these factors might be and are here very much up against what Heizenberg described as the observation affecting the outcome of the experiment should we attempt to find out what exactly makes the appreciation of music "moving" or "great." We are also living in a world and in an age when the cultural referents which allowed say our great grandparents to assert with conviction that a given composer's music was "great" are fast fading away. What passed for the "judgment of history" was probably nothing more than a shared subjectivity based on a set of aesthetic values that were themselves subjective. One can observe this in the landscape of Europe as one takes a train from Paris to Budapest. The architecture in France gives way to that which is typically German to that which is more and more influenced by the Slavic. Who is to say which is greater architecture?

Even if there was a more universal aesthetic of what was "great" music in 1899, in Europe and America, that standard has been at times quite willfully challenged and replaced by nothing. There is no universal standard anymore, even if there ever was one. In the past, say at the end of the 18th century, there may have been a standard of what would be accepted as "great" music by the aristocratic classes. To this set of aesthetics we attribute the word "classical" even though that word more properly describes that which comes from ancient Greece and Rome. But even at that time there were forces of challenge, notably in the person of Beethoven.

Mimi Ezust Weighs In.....

I don't know if Bach WAS trying to teach "us". His composed works are there, in print, and student composers study the music scores, which is a traditional way of learning, but I don't think that was the main reason for Bach's compositions, just as I do not believe that writers of novels ply their trade in order to teach other writers. They have a story to tell and money to earn, and if new writers want to read those novels for themselves and draw conclusions about style and diction they are free to do so, but if they want to be printed themselves, they had better have something original to say!

Well, I am sure that most if not all novelists are primarily interested in selling copies of their books to as many readers as possible. Should other novelists be learning from them, and they do, this is merely a side issue. They want to sell books: that's the nature of their game. But so many composers, from Bach right on down to the present, have couched their often most significant compositions in terms of studies for the very reason that the primary means of getting their music across was through influencing musical performers. Believe it or not, the sonata at one time was strictly a study piece and very few of them were heard in public performances until around the mid 19th century when various musical revivals began to take place, chiefly the revival of Beethoven's music. From about 1850 on, the sonata became a principal and expected stock for recitals. It may not have exactly been the intention of the great Baroque and Classical composers to write mere music for study, to teach with, but they knew that they had to sell enough printed copies of their work to make the efforts worthwhile and these mostly were sold to music students.

The neo-classical movement in music parallels the cubist movement in art. Both were reacting against the Wagnerian and post-Wagnerian romanticism of the late 19th century. Mimi I think rightly characterizes this as a "parody" of the earlier late 18th century "classical" style and that's saying something insightful here in that fundamentally anything that attempts to bring back a bygone musical style must be at best a mere parody of that style.

Just saying "enjoy the music itself" means nothing much to me. When I listen to music, there are many variables that affect the way I hear it. If any of the items below are missing, I might want to hear the composition again, but in different hands. We cannot always tell if a composition is worth another hearing if the first performance was done badly. I am totally convinced that is why so-called "modern" music gets such a bad reputation.

Absolutely! I remember many years ago attending a concert of 20th century music at the Merkle Pavilion in New York. I went prepared to be bored stiff, another nodding session. Instead I was riveted into sharp awareness by how well each instrumentalist articulated his part with the same conscious intensity that usually attends great performances of more standard repertoire. A piece by Elliot Carter in particular struck me as deeply profound. It is wonderful to be surprised in this way. I might even like hearing this composition again, but I don't know whether I'd ever hear it the same as the performance would probably not be as good.

These are things that matter to me and they are IN SERVICE to the music; technique of performers, quality of overall performance, tone colors and instrumentation, emotional quality of performance, emotional content of composition, phrasing, rhythmic vitality, dynamics, type of composition, variation of repeated phrases or sections (if appropriate), if vocal lines - all performance values associated with voice including diction, intonation, togetherness, breath control, tone quality, etc. interesting individual melody lines, balance of parts (ability to bring out proper melody lines), interesting inner parts, variety of elements (more important in a long composition). I realize the slippery quality of such qualifiers as "interesting" ... but I can't do any better at the moment. Subjective qualities all.

Mimi Ezust

Thanks Mimi for giving us a list of properties that might be tested to obtain some empirical result. But as I already suggested, such testing might produce very ambiguous results. Science provides a limited set of tools. For what we want to know, how a person apprehends a work of art as "moving" or "great" we probably must rely on other means.

More From Bill Pirkle.

As computer generated CM will no doubt, indeed hopefully, become a genre of its own, that genre will have "defining characteristics". Perhaps a mechanical sound will be one of them. But as art reflects the times, that would be as it should be since we live in mechanical times.

Other defining characteristics of CG (computer generated) CM might be melodies that no human would think to write, exciting passagework that even Liszt would have trouble playing, unique sounds like one oboe playing chromatic thirds, orchestration that transcends traditional rules for orchestration, and inventive rhythmic accompaniment. The questions are 1) would the overwhelming majority of committee of 100 musicologists, agree that it is, in fact, CM? 2) are there enough people who like it well enough to hear it again? 3) would it pass the music "Turing Test" i.e. most people can't tell if it was written by a computer or a person?

Why don't we think of CGCM as at least an "idea generator" for composers since it does have its moments. This technology could be a big boost for modern CM which might be an improvement over 1) writing a melody that uses all the notes in the chromatic scale before repeating one, 2) demonstrating that E flat can be the tonal center for a composition written in E maj. 3) demonstrating that there need not be a tonal center at all, 4) proving that a formal structure in not necessary, 5) dispensing with the cadence, 6) writing a composition with no discernable themes at all, 7) using a tempo of 13/4, et. al.

Bill Pirkle

Jeff Grossman Weighs In On Some Issues Discussed Thus Far...

There is an inherent difference in studying someone else's style and replicating that person's style. In the former, his or her style may very well appear in your work; in the latter, his or her style will become your work. Let's use your example of Chopin and expansion of harmonies beyond an octave. You could certainly find that type of harmony in composers other than Chopin, and, if I were to compose something, I might use it myself. But that alone make it the style of Chopin?to make you think it is Chopin, it would take a lot more than just a specific type of harmonic voicing.

And I doubt that, as Chopin wrote his pieces, he thought to himself, "I wonder if I can patent this," just as I doubt that Picasso thought that as he painted, or Dickens as he wrote. Can I be certain? No. But I would like to believe that creation is not as cold-blooded as patents and "non-transferable rights."

Again, learning from Chopin's gorgeous harmonies, or Picasso's use of color, or Dickens's prose, is not anything to be ashamed of?indeed, it is something any aspiring musician, artist, or writer should do. But shamelessly imitating one of the above masters will not prove original thought (or provide it to the rest of the world) and it will certainly not contribute to the living tradition that is classical music.

In discussing the Etudes of Chopin, Bill Pirkle then wrote: "Do we really know what Chopin was trying to teach?."

Well, that is one way to avoid discussion. No, we can never be certain of what Chopin was trying to teach. But it is remarkably convenient to notice that each etude presents a specific pianistic problem, and the mastery of each etude effectively solves that problem. Are you saying that this was an accident, and Chopin was not planning on using these Etudes to help his students? I think that those with better reference material than I could easily deflect that argument.

Mimi Ezust wrote: "Somehow I doubt that the really great composers were thinking about teaching while they were composing."

Mimi's distinction stands?was teaching first in their minds while composing? There isn't a whole lot of argument that, if our hypothetical Bach or Chopin were to think about it, he would have figured out that someone would learn something from his works. But I think that in most cases, they were not thinking about teaching. But this is where we disagree.

Do we really know what Bach was trying to teach? Yes, Bach was trying to teach something. But not necessarily was he attempting to teach his compositional methods, and I disagree that he handed over the "rights" to his style merely by writing in that style.

(I hope that, if I were to write a novel, you would not then tell me that by writing it, I had been attempting to teach you my style and that I implied that it was OK for you to use it. That hardly seems fair, no less legal.)

I think that Bach developed his style and that will be his, forever. You are certainly free to study his music and his methods and learn from them, but I do not believe that anyone would create something merely to give others the right to imitate him. I don't think that was Bach's purpose.

This is the distinction between writing a set of variations and discovering that it sounds like Beethoven wrote them and writing them with the goal of Beethoven in mind.

There is a difference in composing a symphony and finding that it sounds like it came from the 19^th (or 18^th, or 17^th) century, and composing a symphony so that it sounds like it came from that century. You mentioned earlier that you are interested in the future of classical music, but now you are talking about living in the past. Music must progress?and if, in that progression, it appears to regress, then perhaps that is good. But to start out with the past in mind, that doesn't bode well for the future of classical music.

There is a difference between my perceived enjoyment of the music and "the music itself." I don't think that many MCML (modern classical music lovers) members would say that the music doesn't matter (that seems ridiculous to me, personally), but my feelings of a piece the moment I hear it?those are not always relevant. My feelings at the time of listening, the time of day, the way in which I hear it (in the car, while doing homework, at a concert, from a friend, etc.), and more can all impact my answers to the questions, "Did I enjoy hearing it?" and "Would I like to it again?"

The difference between the questions and the music is the difference between a subjective and an objective measurement. And as much as I would love to base all my opinions on spur-of-the-moment subjective measurements, I hardly think that is the way to gain long-term enjoyment and fulfillment from classical music.

 Jeff Grossman

Bill Pirkle Responds.

Nobody NEEDS more CM but more is not necessarily to be avoided. If one likes Bachish music, one might find pleasure in hearing more, different, fresh Bachish music. Its like wondering how Chopin would have treated a melody by Beethoven or how Beethoven would have treated a melody by Chopin.

Chopin who admired Mozart could have written a composition in that style and it would have been, no doubt, a good composition, worthy of listening to - Mozartish with a touch of Chopin. I would like to hear something like that.

Chopin, Mozart and others wrote fugues which sound as though they could have been written by Bach. They are all just fine to listen to. Perhaps the curiosity they arouse is not what was expected in that one cannot discern the composer so easily from the form. Perhaps this was true of Bach as well.

This was and is quite a statement! I wouldn't attempt to refute anything said. I'd just rather offer a different set of observations about artists, society, technology, human values, etc. First of all one does not embark on a musical career without getting fair warning that it is in most instances a hard road, a difficult way to earn a living, requiring more hard work and dedication than many would consider warranted by the rewards. Artists may well feel rebellious, but that is their own affair. Society may or may not care about them. Technology runs ahead on its own set of possibilities, changing human beings and societies as it insinuates itself everywhere around the globe. Such is the way of technoilogy.

As for artists emphasizing the bad, they may not be the only group in society to be doing this. News people do the same. Some politicians do also. The bad gets attention while the good passes by or is ignored. This may be due to a flaw in human nature itself, that we tend to be excited, to pay attention more to the bad, rather than being attracted to the good. In fact this attraction to the bad has even influenced our ideas about what constitutes beauty. We used to value classic forms in human flesh as well as art, whereas these days one is more likely presented more images of the weird, the sordid and the frankly ugly, all daring us to believe they are beautiful. The same goes for music in all forms.

Some of it (movie music) and actually very little of it, stands up on its own. I'm going to hear howls of protest from those who champion the movie scores of John Williams as either "serious" or "music for the ages," but I maintain my opinion that movie scores can never be taken seriously. Erich Korngold knew this, having written his share of movie music. However he was able to transcend all of it when he wrote his violin concerto which is one of the best ever written! Now, if John Williams wanted to, perhaps he could take some of the music from Star Wars and write a Star Wars symphony that would transcend his move score, in form, in conciseness, in overall music quality. Then perhpas.

It remains to be seen whether atonal, formless, amelodic music is an achievement. Today's modern art with no perspective, subjectless, formless, etc. is not what I would call an achievement in art but a disintegration in form.

Indeed so, but has this come about due to the factors influencing what an artist and hence what art is? How much of this general absurdism and alienation expressed by art is simply the result of too much of an emphasis on originality for its own sake? How much of this obvious disfunction can be traced to the endpoint in this disintegration, where the artist becomes an artifact? This happens in pop art more than fine art and in some sense it even works better for the artists; Michael Jackson, Marilyn Manson, The Spice Girls, etc., etc.

Putting perspective in art in an achievement in art, dropping it takes art back to the caveman days and is often done by those incapable of producing traditional art. Putting moving, dramatic harmonies & melodies and exciting passagework in music is an achievement, removing them, because the resulting music better reflects the state on modern, chaotic society, is not to my mind an achievement.

One used to hear more often the notion that artists do represent the societies in which they live and that it's even expected that their art should do this. Therefore anything that would constitute "going backwards" to a former style is regarded as reactionary, counter-progressive, etc. Well, let me take my gloves off. First of all I do not believe in social progress including all the Marxist, socialist claptrap that goes along with it. Nor do I believe in the Big Bang, Darwinism or any of the other pseudo-scientific nonsense that most people accept with uncritical thought these days. And no, I'm not a Biblical creationist either. I'm a real skeptic. There is a lot we still don't know for sure and I for one am content with the answer, sorry I don't know, to any pretended knowledge. Second I do not believe that art must reflect either the personal state of the artist or of the society an artist lives in, nor is it made particularly better thereby. Thirdly, that art which is and will remain above and beyond time can be created in any epoch, ours as well as Mozart's or Beethoven's. Therefore it seems to me that we could get further in our quest for great art in our own time by considering what made the great art of the past great aside from personal and social considerations. Very few people are taking this approach.

I am suggesting that today's composers not be limited to today's state of music evolution but be allowed, if not encouraged, to produce music in historical styles.

If they take up formal studies, many are encouraged to do this already. These works are usually considered "student" works by critics and thus never programmed.

It seems to me that it is not an either/or case. In popular music there are fusions like jazz/rock, country/rock, blues/rock, country/blues, etc. Why can't there be music that is Beethoven/Chopin or Mozart/Rachmaninoff?

Fusions always exist, or top put it another way, no music is ever really pure. Going back 400 years ago one had all sorts of "serious" music that was indebted to the simple folk tunes that went back even further. There was also a lot of international currents of style, from Flanders and Italy, influencing everyone else's music. It's going on today. What I'd rather hear more of than music that sounds like the styles of past composers are modern compositions using the forms of the classic composers but with thematic, harmonic and rhythmic elements derived from the pop soup of today.

That means the great music of the 18^th & 19^th century written by today's composers who can become as admired in their time as Beethoven was in his. I hope Paul McCartney does write CM maybe he can start a trend.

So far, I'm not impressed. I think it's either that Paul lacks real talent in this area, composing serious music, or that he is deliberately trying to "reach the masses." In either case, he's doomed. His triumphs as a pop music star are left undiminished. That's what he was knighted for.

If Beethoven were to come back to life, he could write more great music in his style as could Bach, Mozart, and the rest. I think it can be done.

I am alive today and I do not want to write more Bach or Beethoven sorry. I wouldn't presume for one thing. For another, I have plenty of my own I'd rather be writing. That's how most composers really feel.

I confess that I would not listen to any music that sounds like today's art looks. I am not convinced that different is better, newer is better, today's values are better than yesteryears. It is entirely possible, despite our ego, that we have peaked in the arts and going downhill. An excellent book on this is Erich Kahler's "The Disintegration of Form in the Arts".

Bill Pirkle

Disintegration in form is no doubt at the root of it. But there's a lot else that has contributed to general failure in the fine arts. Meanwhile on the electric, electronic, medical, agricultural, aeronautical and industrial fronts, there is no doubt, absolutely none, that developments in these areas have improved the standard of living in most of the developed world and not, as has been often said, with consummate ignorance, that the rest of the world has been despoiled thereby. So what if art has failed? It only shows how little we need it. Here's what Peter Varley had to say in response to Bill...

Anything people agree on gets tacitly dropped. To find out what people agree about, you have to look for what they're NOT saying.

Enjoyment of music has nothing to do with the pleasures of problem-solving (finding the key concept in a complex middlegame, or nailing a bug (in a computer program), for example).

Peter Varley

Agreed, in fact as a listener, I'd prefer knowing, or not having to be reminded by poor performance, of all the "problem solving" that went in the rehearsals for the music I'm listening to. I'm listening to music for something else, another kind of pleasure.

I don't think that the great composers understood this either, yet they wrote great music. I assume they thought "this sounds great to me so others will like it too" but they did not know why from a scientific "how the mind works" point of view.

Bill Pirkle

Nor do we, and perhaps we shall never know by scientific means, or else our science must be expanded to cover it. Bill continues...

When I play compositions I learn from them and I assume that people would learn from things that I write. Is possible to write a great book without having read some? I think that they knew that they were teaching as well as communicating their feelings, many of them were in fact teachers of music in addition to being composers. I once saw a filmed interview with Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Harry Firestone. The interviewer asked Henry Ford to give some advice to young men starting out. He said "A young man should look as far back in his field as he can. The farther back he looks, the farther ahead he will see." I though that was a wonderful thought. I look back in music to see what to do with my music. Some composers seem to look back to see what to avoid doing in their music. (not directed at you) as if those first principles discovered by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin et al were not solid foundations to be used, but mere starting points to be improved on. The discovery of the V7--> I cadence was a master stroke. Why such a effect would be dropped in the interest of progress is beyond me.

It's not too difficult to understand, Bill. This is the logical outcome of believing in certain things like progress and individuality; if something has already been done, it can't be any good to keep it, else those who do would be keeping back the flow of "progress" as well as inhibiting their own individuality.

But perspective was dropped in art, after all. As the early mathematicians discovered the foundations of math that today's mathematicians use, early composers discovered the foundations of music. Modern composers can choose to ignore these since they don't have to stand up at the blackboard and defend their work logically. They can depend on the subjectiveness of music to justify anything. And that's still alright with me if people like the music.

Oh, come on, it's even all right if people don't like their music. LOL.

The problem I have is calling that the way today's music HAS to be written as if using past styles is somehow forbidden. I once played the piano (improvising) for a music professor who said "that's very pretty but it sounds a lot like Chopin". To which I replied "So what, did you enjoy it?". He was not amused.

Typical, but he probably had no idea what's any good either. He's just suffering from an inability to move his own bowels!

Out of a desire to be congenial, I did not bang my hands on the keyboard for 3 minutes and say "that was a modern piece", looking back, I should have.

Yeah, he might have liked that better, but don't count on it. There are some out there who wouldn't like anything anyone did. Most of these inhabit conservatories of music.

But I think that its fair to say that more CM types enjoy the music of the 18^th & 19^th centuries than they do the 20^th century's music.

Yes, I do too. But in my musical history timeline, the 20th century really didn't begin until after World War I.

If you were stranded on a desert island with only one century's music, would you choose the 19^th or the 20^th century? For me, most modern music is like most modern art - interesting but not profound.

Bill Pirkle

Well, I'd hate to have to part with anything of value from any century. I'm sure that it took a lot of people a while to appreciate The Rite of Spring but now, the 20th century is drawing to a close (it will be over at the end of THIS year) and with its passing and the inevitable effects of TIME, certain pieces are bound to stand.

The Real Questions.

About the value of "classical" music:

1) The musicianship. In classical music the musicians and singers earn less than in other kinds of music, so they must really like music to follow their career, so its easy to find a good classical musician!!!! :-):-)

It isn't that easy. In fact there are probably fewer classical musicians being produced all the time. Certainly money has something to do with it, hard work has more to do with it. To a certain extent, in order to do classical music, one must turn one's back on a lot of what's going on out there as needless distraction. This takes an enormous amount of will. What really motivates classical musicians to do what they do has to be love. That's for another piece.

2) The age. Time is a very good critic of the music. So both in classical music and in folk music there is some choice made along the times, by many people, and "statiscaly" the choice was made by so many people that the choice must be correct. :-):-)

Time is that which settles out what will remain "classic" and what will be forgotten or discarded.

3) The price of the CDs. There are many good classical CDs at low cost. :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)

Those who favor classical music will inevitably buy more CD's than those into other kinds of music. Marketeering people take note!

4) The variety of classical music. Take for instance: Vivaldi, Beethoven, Wagner, Bruckner. All different, and even if you only like one of them, or if you don't like any one of them, you can still like classical music. :-):-)

Because there's also Bach, Mozart, Brahms, Mahler and more and more and ven more!

5) Classical music has feelings. Strong feelings. That's out of fashion nowadays. Music should be background noise to stop us from feeling and thinking. :-):-):-) :-) :-) :-)

Another subject for an entire piece. A great deal of the focus on political correctness, diversity, etc. is to diminish strong feeling on every conceivable level. This can even be done through means of shocking people into numbness, the opposite of strong feeling. A lot of stuff that's happening in society these days is allowed to persist because it has the effect of dulling the senses rather than stimulating them and concentrating them into strong feeling, especially strong group feeling which if allowed would challenge the powers that be.

People who like music and have the chance to hear many kinds of music, like good music. A great part of classical music is good music. The real question is that many people today are not in touch with good music. The radios and tv's are controlled by the big companies (too few of them) and they push bad music. Why? Because with bad music, one gets tired of it and soon wil be buying another "BIG NEW HIT". :-):-):-):-):-)

There are other reasons besides the commercial ones, but yes, the commercial reasons are foremost. Too bad that these same factors never consider how much more music they'd be able to sell if it were classical; if there were more people interested in classical music, more CD's would be sold since each classical music lover usually buys many more CD's than even people who prefer pop music.

The real questions are:

What is the value of MUSIC? What does MUSIC do for you? Why do you like X and do not like Y? Do you make a distinction between the sentences: I don't like music Y. -and- Music Y has no value whatsoever.

Greetings to all.

Paulo Ferreira

The value of any music lies in that it continues to be played and listened to and hence appreciated. What any particular music does for any individual is a subjective matter not easily addressed by science, even some statistical scoring. O do make a distinction between the two sentences.

Music as a way of avoiding boredom? That just does not capture the essence of the enterprise, at least IMHO. These are grim and joyless precepts which move music out of the "humanities" column and into something else- perhaps an exercise in behavioral psychology. There is no emotion, no spark, no soul, no vision here. Music minus music.

Bernard Chasan

What else could you expect? This what happens whenever the cold, dry hand of materialistic science touches anything. Like a vampire, it sucks the life blood out of everything. There must be an end to analysis.

A few years ago, three movies directed by Kieslowski were very popular ("Red", "White", and "Blue"), and they featured music by Zbigniew Preisner in Baroque style, hiding behind the fictitious name "Van Budenmeyer". People liked it. Plenty of movie music has been written in the style of previous epochs.

Margaret Mikulska

Which nevertheless does not make of it, in its form as movie music, acceptable as "serious" music or "classical" music. These sound like avant garde movies to me, not what any average American would ever see.

Many people says that this hypothetical piece would not have any value (or, a least a little value, for example, as an exercise). But this would be a judgement based on considerations external to musical beauty and pleasure. If a composer can handle these styles, and writes a beautiful piece, why would we reject it?,? Aren't pleasure and beauty good aims for an artist?. The question seems to be too innocent, but... I never could know why this aesthetic choice is generally accepted in literature, and not in music.

What most composers could do is determine that their productions pleased themselves first for perhaps as innocent a set of reasons. Then if more people liked them, eventually their pieces might become immortal, or what's about the same thing, being performed for centuries after the die.

Another question: what does the style of a piece have to do with its originality?. Can a good composer write a piece in the general style of the second half of the 18th century (for example) and even so, being original?. I believe that he can.

It's certainly possible, but let's say that I decided to write a piano sonata in classical style (I already use classical form), how might I be affected by what I already know of the individual themes, flourishes and mannerisms of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven or Schubert? Why would I do this? What would be the point?

We are accustomed to think with the parameters of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and so, we think that "originality" means strictly a new style and even a new aesthetic. But originality is also a matter of "personality".

There were many composers who wrote music during the times of Mozart through Schubert whose personal style was sufficiently different from them as to provide some interest. Why not revive them? Why ask modern composers to write like them? Frankly the only reason to ask anyone to do this is because there is not clear understanding of what "good" is anymore, in music or any other art. There's probably no consensus on what constitutes "good sex" anymore either. The notion of what "good food" is certainly died a long time ago among the vast majority of people, yes, among "the masses," sheesh!

I think that a good composer can write in the style of Bach, and even so, show his own personality. Sounds difficult, and seems a challenge, but this is what art means, after all.

Pablo Massa

Fine, all we need are half a dozen more Bachs. The world can't deal with one genuine Bach as it is.

Bill's Persistence.

Bill Pirkle

So write one. Then you'll know just how hard it was and is to write one. Make sure you keep to the forms too.

More On Boredom.

Jeff Grossman

What then? I suppose you can get back to it if you really want to. We're dealing with motivational issues here. Why do people do things? Is it always because they'll get something out of it? Why do people eat so much even when they aren't hungry? Boredom? What would happen if they decided to fast for a day? What would happen if they decided to fast a day a week?

Christopher Webber, Blackheath, London, UK.

"ZARZUELA!"

Well Chris, er Zarzuela, or whatever, and wow is this discussion ever getting long. If this were a real coffee house, anyone who sat this long would have had half a dozen espressos by now, this business of suffering the difficult to listen to as a virtue isn't really what most people who really appreciate Martinu, Bartok or others are doing. They don't listen to it especially after the first time because to do is is particularly more difficult. They do so because after first hearing it, they were curious enough about it to want to hear it again. People who really like avant garde 20th century music really dig it, they aren't purposely abusing themselves with hard to listen to stuff just hoping someone out there will think them virtuous for their efforts. One man's noise is another's music and vice versa.

I agree that there is too much emphasis on instant gratification, but I do find boredom the ultimate evil. It seems to me to be totally unproductive, often resulting in mild depression. There is nothing wrong with wanted to be entertained, even if its self-entertainment. We all look for and expect different things from music, but I expect not to be bored by it. I fully realize that music the bores me would inspire others.

Bill Pirkle

I am much more agreement with this than others on the subject of boredom. But boredom is far more the responsibility of the bored, not the music or other activities they engage in, or don't engage in.

Boredom isn't the ultimate evil, but it isn't a desired condition either. Being bored is more than just finding external stimuli of no interest; it also involves lack of interest from within oneself.

Oh yes!

Chris Bonds

Well, kind of convoluted, I guess so...

I'm here to tell you that Martinu and Bartok wash over me just as easily as Mozart and Beethoven. It takes an effort of will on my part to listen to anything.

Steve Schwartz

Just as I said...

I, too, would take 20^th century music, but it would probably kill me to give up Bach... I am not sure I could live without Bach, but I believe 20^th century music is more interesting and has more appeal if I had to make such a ridiculous choice.

Ray Bayles

I'd not want to give any century's music up. Questions of this sort always strike me as silly.

Except in the circumstances mentioned below, I personally find it extremely difficult to be a "half-listener". Whether it's Taverner from the first Elizabethan era or Tavener from the second, either the music commands my attention and I have to stop whatever else I'm doing and listen to it, or the music is an unwelcome intrusion - depending on what the music is and what else is going on at the time, of course.

Hummmm, sounds like me, either I listen to music, usually doing little or nothing that might distract me, or I like it quiet. Better not to try and fill all of my time, and space, with music, just to play music. I practice the piano the same way.

I do, however, occasionally "use" music for various illicit, nefarious and highly dubious private purposes.

LOL, who doesn't, but it might not be "classical" music.

When alone I might sing to it, or dance to it, or conduct it, or all three. Singing along to something like ‘The Rite of Spring' or ‘The Mask of Time' at the top of my voice while driving fast is one of life's great pleasures.

That's fairly strange.

Britten is much better for my purposes than Brahms. Did Brahms ever give us a rollicking English sea-shanty to compare with "Old Joe has gone fishing"? And how about "The Ploughboy"? Or "When as the rye reach to the chin / And chop-cherry, chop-cherry ripe within"? This is "using" music as accompaniment rather than as aural wallpaper - for the latter one can always visit the shopping mall.

Alan Moss

Indeed, and I was wondering whether you were making a comparison, accurate, between classical music and "store" music.

A Kind of Digression: Beethoven.

This thread got into a lengthy discussion about Beethoven, his reputed lovers, his music, etc. Much of it I felt didn't really belong here so I deleted it.

For me, Beethoven's power stems from the way his architectural sense manages just to hold these primal forces in check?at least in his "heroic" works such as the Eroica.

Chris Bonds

"Primal forces?" Compared to what? Thus Spake Zarathustra? The Rite of Spring? Music for Strings and Percusssion?

I see much structure in Beethoven's music?as if, for example, he decided all along that he wanted to end up in C minor, and he picks a specific way to do it. In some pieces (the sonata in D major, op. 28), the only reason that the recap in the first movement doesn't take us back to the exposition is that Beethoven changes one note in the recap. The movement was constructed that carefully that one note changed the entire goal of the passage. That is only one example, but I think that most of the pieces I've studied by Beethoven have that kind of structure behind them. Perhaps the most impressive thing about Beethoven is that, on first glance, so many of his works appear impulsive, but, on closer study, they are actually masterworks of a careful mind.

Jeff Grossman

Now, if anything of Bill Pirkle's ideas for improving the state of classical music makes sense, it seems to me that a recognition of the power and importance of an underlying musical form, is something that contemporary composers should continue to use. I have written a piece on this matter for another thread which will appear here shortly. But meanwhile,

Beethoven, unlike Mozart didn't compose easily. One part of Mozart's genius is that he can compose spontaneously in his head and simply write down what he already composed. Beethoven composed in his head, too (of course) but he usually wasn't satisfied with the rough ideas that came to him. I read somewhere that his ideas came to him unpolished, they didn't come in finished form. This may be why he carried his ideas with him for a long time before finally writing them down. His choral symphony was a good example. He agonized over some of his works, meticulously sketching and revising his works.

I'd venture that more of us were like Beethoven than like Mozart.

I can still sense some kind of spontaneity in Beethoven's composing. Some ideas probably did come to him out of nowhere. But his ideas came to him like an unfinished diamond and he had to carefully finish them. His earlier music is somewhat lighter and classical in style. His later music, especially his piano sonatas, were more fiery and brilliant. Some people say his deafness made him more of a romantic figure. One of friends from theory class made this funny comment regarding the ‘Pathetique' sonata: "Man, I think Beethoven was pissed off when he wrote the ‘Pathetique'!" Of course he was referring to the turbulent passages in the piece.

Jeremey

Pissed off or pissed off is hard to say. Beethoven's earlier works displaying his fire were often termed "theatrical" by some of the first who heard them. I happen to think that not all of Beethoven's moments were full of storm and stress. Even in his later works, or maybe even especially in his later works, one cannot miss the distinct savor of humor in his music. Those who cannot hear the winking cynical laugh in Mahler's music are likewise missing it. The reason Beethoven was accorded status as a romantic composer, indeed the first great romantic composer, was because his music was and is romantic sounding. It was a different sound for those who first heard it. But it succeeded because it resonated with something in the hearts of those who heard it. The romantic style is with us still, despite all the attempts of some 20th century composers to supercede it. Even popular music is basically romantic. Whether contemporary composers should or inevitably do continue to be romantic composers could be the subject of another piece.

Mimi Ezust writes.

Bill Pirkle wrote: "Being a boring day, I decided to go into meta-composition even more. If you render printed music on an adding machine tape format which is the way it is heard, one long stream of sounds, the Appassionata would be approx. 115 feet long (if I counted and measured staves properly). This is a one dimensional surface, length. ... When Beethoven said (ref my recent post) "... I have the whole thing in mind", I am curious what he had in mind, the adding machine tape format or the white spaced "chunk" structure."

I would hazard a guess that when most composers have something in mind, they are not thinking in symbols, but instead thinking in SOUNDS.

Mimi Ezust

Well, this one does. Putting notes on paper may be essential, but that's not how I think about music when it's still in the formation stage.

Joyce Maier writes.

William Strother wrote: "Beethoven had a miraculous ability to take great pains over a long period of time to create a musical moment that sounds completely spontaneous."

Exactly and that's tricky. He sounds very spontaneous indeed, but he wasn't.

"His works were anything but spontaneous, but infinite reworking to reach a kind of perfection. He spent so long working out his music that whatever emotion generated a piece, that emotion was long gone before he finished."

Unless, and this is my guess since I think about music the same way, that Beethoven conceived of his ideas, emotional content and all, as above and beyond time itslef, a kind of emotional spontaneity that is forever instant.

Keeping in mind what I know about Beethoven I tend to agree, though there must have been some exceptions. See, for instance, the Cavatina of Op. 130. If we may believe pupil/colleague Czerny (and why not, for mostly he's reliable witness) Beethoven himself once said that every time when he heard (insofar possible after 1825 when he was almost stone-deaf) the Cavatina, it "cost him some tears." The sad event that must have been the background of the composition (the "program", if you like) most probably had passed away, but nevertheless he obviously very easily could recall the underlying emotion.

Greetings,

Joyce Maier

The historical trend of the concerto was to eliminate the cadenza, either by allowing the orchestra in, or by elevating the cadenza into a kind of apotheosis of the themes rather than a place for a virtuoso's display. The process was complete with Beethoven's 5th piano concerto. By that time, every single note was written down, nothing was taken for granted. Everyone else pretty much followed Beethoven's lead in this regard.

Kevin Sutton writes.

Jeremey McMillan wrote: "Before that the pianist, who was usually the composer himself, would use the cadenza almost like a showcase after the orchestra finish playing, almost like the drummer will do take a solo towards the end of a song in a jazz band concert. Impulse...Impulse...SPONTANEITY!!!!!!"

Well, LvB may have improvised his own, but he carefully wrote them out for all us other schmucks to play!

Kevin

The best way to play any of these cadenzas is as if one is improvising them.

Joyce Maier writes.

Kevin Sutton, in response to Jereme McMillan, wrote: "Before that the pianist, who was usually the composer himself, would use the cadenza almost like a showcase after the orchestra finish playing, almost like the drummer will do take a solo towards the end of a song in a jazz band concert. Impulse... Impulse... SPONTANEITY!!!!!!"

"Well, LvB may have improvised his own, but he carefully wrote them out for all us other schmucks to play!"

Very true. This is a typical case of "quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi." Instructive is his short quarrel with Czerny, who had had the guts to take too much liberties when playing one of Beethoven's sonatas, at least to the taste of the composer, who got very angry. Obviously he began to regret this the next morning and he wrote an apology letter. A sentence (my translation of the original text): "...you should forgive the author that he prefers to hear his music played as he wrote it down..." Czerny in his memories (again my translation): "...I had allowed myself in my youthful frivolity various changings - difficult passages, use of high-pitched octaves, et cetera..."

Greetings,

Joyce Maier

Perhaps we can credit Beethoven with "reverence for the text" although the idea was widespread at the time, as much a dictum at the then new Paris Conservatoire as anywhere else. It was something that Beethoven felt quite strongly about. It's possible he inherited this from one or more of his teachers, who included F. J. Haydn.

Bill Pirkle

Mats Norrman replies to Mimi replying to me, "Mimi Ezust replies to Bill Pirkle: 'I would hazard a guess that when most composers have something in mind, they are not thinking in symbols, but instead thinking in SOUNDS.' I would hazard a guess that when most composers have something in mind, they are not thinking in symbols, but instead thinking in FORMS."

I agree with all that. I think the issue on the thread was sketching (writing down) the stuff, which would require some symbols - words are symbols as is music notation. And, I had asked the list to comment on how it may be sketched, offering some symbolic notation as a possibility.

Certainly Beethoven thought in sounds but as a sight reader and notator of music, I expect the symbols of music notation quickly came to mind.

This sidesteps the subject at hand - "how would one sketch a symphony?" so that they could see the "whole" in their mind as B. said he did.

Bill Pirkle

Then do it first for yourself, put your name on it Bill, and if its any good the rest of us will surely know it when we hear it.

Margaret Mikulska writes.

Jeremey McMillan wrote: "One part of Mozart's genius is that he can compose spontaneously in his head and simply write down what he already composed."

Will this myth be perpetuated forever??? It's been 150 years since Otto Jahn, Mozart's first serious biographer, debunked the forged "Letter to Baron B" and wrote that we are doing Mozart a disservice by claiming that he simply wrote down, effortlessly, whatever just came, miraculously, to his head. There are very few composers who left so many sketches, drafts, and fragments as Mozart, and it is quite obvious to anybody who bothers to look into Mozart's compositional process that this "spontaneous composing" is a Romantic myth. To be fair, even many scholars in the past preferred to ignore both the sketches, etc. and Mozart's his own words to the effect that "people think composing comes easily to me, but in reality I have to work hard on writing music" (not en exact quotation, but that the gist of it). No evidence will convince people who want their Mozart mythical and Romantic - and totally distorted.

-Margaret

So, another myth bites the dust. I guess we can also do away with a similar myth concerning Tchaikovsky which suggests that when he had a symphony in him, he would closet himself away for two or three weeks until it was done, only accepting the barest contact, food, etc. during these periods. I don't know how many sketches of any of these survive. Supposedly there's a posthumous symphony as well. I've never heard it.

Well, I don't know whether this discussion got anyone close to where the value really lies in classical music. Like most discussions, a bunch of ideas are aired, people get tired, get up from their chairs and go home. But when they get hjome they might sit down and play something at their piano or put something on their stereo, a CD of something that most people would recognize as "classical" and they sit somewhere close by and listen, sometimes for the hundredth time. They know the value of this music all right. Nothing else does what this music does for them. It's a very individual thing, the meeting of music, composer, performer and listener, now, miraculously available at any time, anywhere. And maybe on this hundredth time listening, our listener has what amounts to an epiphany, and starts to weep, or laugh. They don't know why, or how, but they got it.