What's Wrong with Contemporary Classical Music
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 7 фев 2025
- In this video I share some opinions about the current state of contemporary classical music.
As broad as the topic is I think there are some generalizations that one can make about how and why it is such an insular and self-refeential branch of music.
I attribute this to two causes: the obsession with musical progress that permeates it and the top-down structure that governs it.
Of course I make some generalized hypothesis and I do not think this is true for all contemporary classical music, but I think people familiar with the "genre" should find some truth to this.
The idea for this video came out of a conversation I had with Samuel Andreyev, you can listen to that here:
www.buzzsprout...
Thank you to my patreons!
Check out my Patreon page if you would like to see more of this:
/ michelez
You pretty much have it - the problem is that modern composers are writing for other insiders, not for audiences. Even Beethoven and Bach intended their music to be listened to by people aside from professional musicians. The irony is that, at least to my ear, most "modern music" doesn't sound remotely experimental or new - lots of it seems to be rehashing the ideas of 50 or 100 years ago. You can imitate Schoenberg or Bartok, but if you write something consonant and tuneful you'll get scorned.
It is so easy to write a dissonant melody than to write a melody that one will remember for eternity.
EXACTLY! I am no insider. I have been primarily classical music listener all my life. I sing a in a classical choir as an amatoure. I know nothing about instrumental technique or much about theory. Most of the contemporary music just sounds like noise to me. Trying to make a cello sound like a freight train or a gaggle of geese doesn't seem very artistic or appealing to my ears.
In my mind, rehashing and originality need not be mutually exclusive. We all stand on the shoulders of giants, and there is nothing new under the sun.
This is such a great explanation! A lot of the contemporary music just seems like some weird experiment, not a feeling that someone had, but something almost robotic done for the sake of doing it.
I love contemporary art music. It speaks to me, it moves me, it thrills me. Not all of it, but a lot of it. I like film as well, not all of it. I like some classical period art music, I dislike an equal amount and so on.
@@andrewjohnstone6418 You are one of the few my friend.
I tend to think that distinctiveness is a more desirable trait in music than innovation, per se. Well argued video.
that would be "to have a personal voice"as opposed to following a rule? if so...agree.
Samuel puts that very well imo. I think as a young composer becomes more and more comfortable with the ideas and emotions that she or he wishes to deploy in their work, the more comfortable he or she becomes with the desirability of creating truly distinctive work. I think that inexperienced composers often mistakenly infer that "being innovative" grants some kind of objective or measurable component of legitimacy to one's work. A sign of increasing maturity for younger artists in all media is the ability to get comfortable with the fact that the whole game centers not around "originality" and/or "innovation" but around the cultivation of a distinctive voice.
Great video. My experience as a music composition student lead me to these same arguments. I will always experiment when composing electronic music, but I went back to melody, harmony, bass, and rhythm. I'm happier for it.
I agree. I felt studying on the conservatory in Gent a certain belief that they were making the new music. I thought they were wrong and that it was only "their" new music. Now 30 years later, that same recognizable idiom, is still used and concerts here often include again another " world creation" of a contemporary work. Despite all the pushing, people applaud polite but nobody wants a CD afterwards if it sounded like a fatiguing, chaotic mess of all kinds of "clever effects". Somebody might explain that at first the war breaks out, and then in part two people argue at first and then fight etc.. but we can explain everything away if we want and music must not become philosophy or literature or science as is said here. Music must somehow please the heart and senses of the public or else what's the point? Then write for yourself only.
If we buy a book, we would not accept it, if the writer jumps around like crazy and not a single sentence relates to another. If we buy a perfume, it must smell good, however "authoritarian and conservative" that may be. I we go to eat spaghetti, I bet those composers would not appreciate somebody serving dried insects instead of cheese with it "in the name of progress and the environment". If we go to theater, the actors must talk in our language and not utter animal sounds for an hour, "in the name of progress".
Absolutly, if you don't care audience, then what's the reason of composing it?
What’s surprising is that the range of expressive techniques to connect with an audience is rather narrow. It’s a challenge to connect without repeating a cliché. If the connection is deep enough, the audience won’t care.
Yes yes yes! This is much clearer and IMHO more accurate than what I encounter from other composers channels on RUclips. I kept thinking I should make a video about this. Thank you!!
I;m sure it takes great emotional maturity dealing with the self-consciousness to be a fully realized contemporary composer. It's OK to be conservative, it's OK to be radical, it's OK to be esoteric, it's OK to be accessible, follow your bliss, as the saying goes. As an audience member, I've found that some of the best contemporary performances are very inexpensive, because of economic problems that the composer faces, alas. RUclips and Spotify both make available so many jewels available free or very cheaply. My impression is that everything is happening all at once! After Minimalism achieved some dominance as a trend, further developments seemed fractional though with an ocean of shining highlights, major works. Forget "progress," here's to heterogeneity! ( love your musical "interludes" here)
Have had this very experience at music college. So many young composers gave up writing because they were ridiculed about what they wrote. Luckily I found a sympathetic "individual lesson" tutor there. Other teachers were very scathing. One comment to someone I knew at the time was that they were simply a "tune-smith" How sad! ...and how wrong, to not let us find our own voices! I ignored them and wrote what was true to me! Excellent video.
As is often said: music is part science and part art. It should stimulate the mind as well as the spirit. Too often, modern music ignores or discards the artistic part in favor of pursuing intellectual curiosities, leaving it a mere shadow of what it should naturally be.
A refreshing critique of contemporary music that doesn't boil down to "I don't like it therefore bad."
There's a missing peice from your analysis. The reason these institutions has the muscle they did to shape the path of musical development. Throughout the Cold War we now know the US government funneled truckloads of money into promoting this sort of art in every field for one simple reason: The Soviets fucking hated it. Kruschev is said to have walked back Stalin's artistic conservatism, but he still had a bonafide meltdown upon first seeing a Jackson Pollock painting.
I'll forever champion the works of people like Schoenberg, Messiaen, Cage, Boulez, and even the unquestionably "progress at the expense of popularity" Babbit and nigh-incomprehensible Stockhausen.
But for every figure like that, whose work seems to me a genuine personal expression of genius artistry, there are dozens of pale imitator careerists whose only goal seems to be emulating those greats convincingly enough to advance in a painfully cloystered and thankfully fading academic environment.
I find more "progress" in a composer like Rochberg who managed to break with serialism without thowing the baby out with the bathwater. His later music is transparently tonal, perhsps moreso than the minimalist rebels he seems to preempt, but under the hood you will find all manner of techniques developed by the serialists that open new possibilities which sound fresh and invigorating.
Champion of tonality throughout the serialism decades, Leonard Bernstein seems paradoxically at his best to me when he breaks out the tone row. When he resorts to the technique, it isn't for academic clout or to show off his supposed intelligence, it is because he has an artistic goal that he feels tonality cannot achieve.
Copland's experimental works grip me more than anything. The early Piano Variations seems to be a celebration of new possibilities, while the later Connotations feels like the exasperated sigh of a man who had no hope left in the world at large, and I don't feel alone in that. I believe it was Jacqueline Kennedy who approached him after the premiere asking if he was alright. Who could blame him if he wasn't? A communist who saw a once shining future wear down into stagnation at best. A gay man who saw a world that would never accept him as such in his life. In his own music, no matter how successful his populist efforts were, he didn't seem to move the needle in the public imagination nor in musical institutions. In music at large, that ocean of new possibilities had dried up into a very narrow and ironically conservative stream. How could anyone be alright with that situation?
Thanks for this insightful response. I don't agree that the reason for promoting modernist aesthetic was just to piss off the Soviets, it could be a part of the reason, but a minor one. The real reason is more complicated and has to do with doing away with the European traditions, which were intimidating in many ways to the progressives, and were ultimately stained with what they deemed to be the evil of nationalism.
In general, my point of view is that music as the sublime art form of the baroque, classical and romantic eras is dead and gone and trying to inject an artificial new life in it with a concocted pseudo rational ideology is ridiculous. Postmodernism makes more sense if it's done lightly and with skill
What's Wrong with Contemporary Classical Music? Short answer: Everything !!!
Check out John Adams' "Harmonium"
What part of Spiegel Im Spiegel is wrong?
Imagine how the musical world will be more than 5 centuries just only "cantus firmus" was the only form counterpoint to make music.
In the other hand i agree when he said "these composers, reasearchers and academic enveriorment could be more oppened in therms preserv the past.
Stravinsky, Stockhaussen, Messiaen, Schoenberg and others, did not agree with breaking chains, completely abandoning the past.
Tell me you know hardly anything about contemporary music without telling me you know hardly anything about contemporary music.
As a composer, I do not care at all about the current corrupt institutions; I want to communicate with real people, and that requires tonality. Here is my formula for success: (1) I have a comfortable retirement, (2) I compose symphonies in the style that I like, (3) I put those symphonies on RUclips, (4) I pay a small marketing fee to get listeners, (5) I get monitized by RUclips, (6) I repeat 2 through 5 as long as I like. Also, as a side note, I have evidence that those corrupt institutions are beginning to notice me. I do not care to communicate with them, but I am willing to let them communicate with me --- on my terms. Who knows where this might lead someday?
I once took my wife years ago to the Univ. of Maryland to hear a concert. It included Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber`s piece for seven trumpets (I love 17th century music) and Messiaen`s Quartet for the End of Time. She implored me after the Quartet to NEVER take her to that sort of concert again. The Quartet spoke personally to me in its depth-my own music tastes go out to the Oort Cloud-but not to her at all-where she stops at the Troposphere. It’s language was foreign to her traditional classical ears raised on the tonal greats from the past. Since then, if there is a Mahler symphony or Rach. concerto we wish to see and there is a modernist type of piece on the program, I warn her in advance. She says, “Well……ok….I’ll get through it.” Even for me, though, George Walker`s music was a real slog to get through. My gosh. At that concert we had to eat the haggis before we got to the Beethoven!
As a contemporary classical composer myself, I agree with you. Modern, serious music has become too institutionalized, too often written to gain the respect of ivory tower intellectuals who expect progress, innovation, and novelty above all else. This leads to composers feeling pressured into going for shock value over musical merit. Of course, what sounds "good" is subjective, and it would be a shame if all modern, serious music still sounded like Bach or Beethoven, but composers should write music which sounds good to them. Some will naturally experiment and perhaps innovate more than others, and that is fine. There is no need to push for "progress." Let music evolve naturally.
Thank you. I think there is a lot of truth in what you said. I think that any honest person who has ever spent 5 minutes in conservatory composition environment must agree with you. I would like to ask your opinion on a thought of mine : I think that perhaps the move away from melodic-harmonic music may also be a way to globalize musical expression and render it "faceless" and "place-less" as opposed to national musical traditions or even personal harmonic/melodic tendencies. That is, I think it would be almost impossible to determine from which country a piece of contemporary music comes from or even who wrote it in most cases. Do you have any feelings/thoughts about that? In any case, the fact that this video exists gives me a feeling of hope for the future of music.
thanks for your comment and for the sub. I never thought about the geographically faceless aspect of CCM. It's definitely there. And it makes perfect ideological sense since after WW2 nationalism and anything attached to it, i.e. national culture, became taboo. I think the styles that dominate CCM today make institutional sense both from an ideological perspective and from a purely functional Machiavellian perspective (in my latest video "Contemporary Classical Masterpiece" I talk about the latter in some detail).
several things: they compose for one another's approval and not for an audience. They seem to think that audiences should learn to appreciate their techniques, not the end result. I'm very sorry but if I create an elaborate recipe for liverwurst flavored cake that might well be a gastronomic accomplishment, but who wants to eat it? Few people go to hear music because they find it "clever". Or if they do they eventually outgrow it. And lastly wrt dodecaphonic music at least - Do we really want to avoid any semblance of tonality or cultural reference? Fine. Split the octave into 11 or 13 parts, not 12. Permutation alone doesn't make great music. Sophistry doesn't make art. As near as I can tell the real intent IS the sophistry. And who has time for that but other sophists?
I agree. My next video about this subject is going to be about "left hemisphere" thinking which is one way to look at how the mentality you mention works
Very good points. I studied composition in Sibelius-Academy in early 2000’s but left because of these reasons, and moved to film music composition, where I can experiment with all possible musical styles.
Developing constructed languages (conlangs) is a fun exercise, but you wouldn't get up in front of a crowd and give a speech in a made-up language only you understand. Yet the musical equivalent of this is commonplace, even encouraged, in contemporary classical music.
Contemporary classical music isn't music at all, it's sonology, sonics for its own sake. Even a lot of professional musicians don't want to be bothered by it, let alone the average classical music lover.
This man said it all. We need to write music for the people. It is as if we have forgotten why music is so loved.
The idea of "progress" or "advancement" is a curse. The problem is they think of music history as if it is the same as evolution in biology. They think older, simpler style must be replaced by newer, more complex style.
But music is not evolution, it is not science and advancement. It is more like fashion, that something trendy in one era will fall out of fashion in another time. They think they are doing something "new" and "innovative", but the truth is they are doing music that has few audience and little social impact in the world.
This. Straight to the point.
From my experience, your final question is answered by the "outside (non-academic) world:" audiences seem to be reluctant to attend (and programmers equally reluctant to present) concerts of modern works that have not been proven to be "audience-friendly."
I enjoyed that but really....you were describing the whole history of formal art music (and fine art, popular music, art film etc etc).
That was my experience when I studied music in an academic setting many years ago. What I have come to realize, though, is that all during that period of the '60's and 70's' there were many composers who sound like they are more rooted in the inherited tradition of classical music and carried it forward rather than trying to overcome it or toss it aside. I am thinking of composers like Roy Harris, Howard Hanson, Ned Rorem, and so forth. In some cases, their music holds up when listened to today. Perhaps they are a bridge contemporary composers can cross to reconnect with their heritage? Thanks for your thoughts.
Your discussion of the capitulation of contemporary classical music to the scientific paradigm of knowing - and of course there is more to it than mere knowing, since all art is fully loaded with rhetorical freight - is very enlightening. Science and art occupy antithetical ends of the epistemological spectrum inasmuch as science is always governed by its orientation to the future. The best science is necessarily later than the earliest. But the same does not hold true of art.
The 'classical' example of this in the field of music would be that it is doubtful that the contribution of an individual like J. S. Bach has been surpassed, and almost just as probable that it might be. Art is epistemologically grounded in the temporal vector of past-to-present. There are many such examples which confirm this and many from media other than music. Artistic expression is not cumulatively 'progressive' in the sense that 'progress' is necessarily from the now to the next. (Technology is a different matter. The improvement in the construction of musical instruments has greatly increased and aided musical expression. At the same time, it has manifestly degraded the manufacture of the same instruments. But art is not technology.) We should be grateful of this. It curtails, and resolutely opposes the privileging of science as the unique and reigning cognitive paradigm. And there are indeed other instances apart from art.
The mention of individual also points to a fundamental disparity between artistic and scientific genius. Musical composition like art in general, is profoundly, the product of an individual. Science cannot afford this same perspective; it arises innately from the collective aspect of human being. Comparatively to art, it is a radically inherently much more collective enterprise.
Thanks for the post; it is one of the best on the topic.
Thank you! Very well said. Two small points: technology might be moving towards something akin progress, though it seems to me that it has lost any goal other than comfort. Letting technology do what I am too lazy to do myself.
I somewhat disagree with art being purely an individual endeavor. It is in the actual creation of the work, but it can only arise from fertile human fabric, a strong sense of spiritual purpose (Spengler is enlightening on the issue). It is not by chance that great artists, especially composers, tend to cluster in certain decades and places in history
I don't see a problem, if these composers like what they do, they should do so. Art is free and should not be measured in terms of right or wrong.
If composers (and musicians generally) were more concerned with substance, rather than style, we'd all be better off -- even if it doesn't pay so well.
But we also exist!! I compose music in the old style. The problem is that there's no visibility and no one is interested in us.
Yes, I agree with your sentiments. My take here:
1) Reality: The majority of people simply doesn't connect or care for contemporary music. In fact, most consumers actively resent it and perceive it as insulting random noise. Most people want to listen to music that is somewhat similar to what they already know and like. The vast majority of people need to connect emotionally with music, not intellectually. Classical music used to be the popular music in its heydays. Contemporary classical music in turn is often only intellectually accessible - usually only to composers of contemporary music.
2) Biology: Our sense for music evolved alongside all other cognitive abilities through thousands of generations. Very few species have any sense for music. No other species can consciously compose. Why can we? The human sense of music is not arbitrary but evolved for a purpose. The primary evolved purpose of music is group identity and emotionally connecting with one another. Purely intellectual, abstract access to music is possible only for a small circle of trained experts.
3) Supply and demand: The commercial success of the various genres of music speaks volumes: Look up the most common classical composers streamed or performed or sold by e.g. Sony, Spotify, D. Gramophone, etc. etc. You won't find many composers from the last 80 or so years. Practically all "classical" genre music that gets consumed is from pre-1920. Or movie, game, or musical music. Same with the number of performances with paid tickets.
4) Contemporary composers are perhaps the only "business" that intentionally produces a "product" that most of their customers hate...
Interesting video, think I share your conclusions.
I honestly think it’s all about the Academic world itself, which pretends to control the progress of something simply called “music”; something that today everybody can create like never before (due to the Tools we have, especially PC). The focus for a real music progress should be only on research and curiosity about new ways of composing music, new rules, new systems…but to be explored freely, and not pretending to define a final “right” solution for music that has to come.
Trying to be original for the sake of it has no sense whatsoever; rather kills spontaneity and creativity.
Thanks Guido. I don't think anyone in their right mind really think to have the "right" solution to progress, but my point, which you seem to agree with, is that the pursuit of it is in itself harmful
@@MicheleZaccagnini yes exactly:)
100% agree and I appreciate your skill in expressing it clearly, yet not patronizing to anyone who might feel differently. I'd also add, though I don't know enough about it, it seems to me that the idea of music as progress and of confusing music theory with science starts already before Adorno et al, in the Germanic world of the late 19th century. It seems to me that this reflects the rise of capitalist economy in that world, and perhaps underlines the musical world (even unconsciously) trying to 'figure out' how to evaluate music within an increasingly market-centered society - just a thought.
I think you're right in general but then why stop at the 19th century, we could go back to the enlightenment. In general what you call capitalistic I would call utilitarian and (hyper) rationalist. The two are related as the former comes out of the latter. What is missing is the spiritual side, the unknown, whatever you want to call it. BTW Adorno wouldprobably murder you for calling him an enforcer of capitalism lol
Obsession with transitory musical styles, experiments and methods, noise and philosophy
There's a serious inability to write beautiful music comprised by melody, harmony and graceful rhythm
Good thoughts. Ultimately, music is entertainment, so yes, the audience has a say. Haydn, who Stravinsky labeled the most innovative of composers, was mostly self-taught and largely guided by audience reaction. Teachers must thoroughly know techniqes but also must be sensitive to individual differences in order to nurture a voice: read up on Dave Brubeck and his different experiences with his teachers Arnold Schoenberg vs. Darius Milhaud. Does anyone discuss asthetics, how to self judge? Also, are the harmonic explorations of Jacob Collier being mined? Real progress expands expression. I think it is an exciting time to be a composer now!
I think of it as people kind of losing the plot. Yes, progression is inevitable and good. But some people only become focused on progress and forget other elements which were essential to value, that being the capacity of the sounds to be emotionally resonant and stimulate meaning which is why music was valuable in the first place, because it had the capacity to make us feel and stimulate meaning. If the only metric is whether or not something sounds new, then you will forget about trying to integrate the stimulation of meaning and your work will only be valuable to a very niche group of people who only like it because they are also invested in simply doing different things, making things sound "new" and unique regardless of its capacity for emotional resonance.
I would challenge the very idea of progress as the main problem and cause of the poor state of the art
@MicheleZaccagnini i didn't really mean to say the attempt to progress was bad but rather progressing merely as making something "new" isolated from other elements which made things what they were
I reread my reply and I actually meant the opposite:) I do think worshipping progress IS the problem!
Very good points to which I can relate to very well.
I myself have always tried to do a more romanticized contemporary music and I always other teachers and peers thought it doesn't sound contemporary, even though I use plenty of dissonance, sometimes microtones or complex textures. As long as you hear a few major and minor chords somewhere and a clear theme, that's tonal music and you're done. And it's very hard to get to festivals and win competitions with styles that are not "generic modernist" (I'll call it that). And even though I've finished masters and have had some success, I assume many talented people who would want to be composers don't apply, or don't get selected or quit these programs because they do not fit the desired profile. I've been wondering myself often how we can get back to a broader public and how we can get out of the box that we created, starting with the 20th century and continuing into the 21st. Something like Darmstadt, as fresh and cool as it once was seems like the the dying Grail society from Parsifal, that still needs to do the ritual in order to survive, but it's slowly dying in loneliness. We need some kind of Parsifal to return the spear.
It's a bit of a vicious circle. Schools and festivals are run by people who have this mindset that you spoke of, but also conductors and orchestras
often go along with what is hot or not from the modern scene. I think orchestras could have a bigger and more significant impact in choosing repertoire that is suitable for the public and lets them wanting for more. However, I'm afraid most conductors are interested in their own careers and playing Mahler 8th with Berlin phil, so they have little interest into digging deep into promoting long lasting contemporary music.
P.S. I have nothing against generic modernism as I called it or against such composers, but it does bother me that there are double standards on aesthetic in general:"ofc you do whatever you want!!! But you better want what we want so you get picked for festivals".
Thanks for the insightful comment! I write textural music with diatonic harmonies, in general I like to experiment. I pretty much stopped applying for festivals some time ago. Lots of mediocre stuff gets in just because it sounds a certain way while I am sure there is a lot of good music being left out :(
@@MicheleZaccagnini also another thing that I've noticed: at least in the Nordic countries, there is a new debate about equality. These debates try to highlight that people of certain gender, sexuality, skin color or nationality have been marginalized here and there and there needs to be a reform of some kind. And the funny thing is that this debate, I feel, has a bit hijacked the debate you're talking about. There is no place for stylistic diversity, or for where to go from here with our field, we mostly talk about equality in a field that is already so obscure and so badly paid, that in a way it doesn't do the whole field much better, maybe in the end just promotes certain composers to the detriment of others, but musically I'm not sure much is changing.
@@mateigheorghiu that's true also for the US. I believe it is part of the issue with progress that i talk about: once you start incorporating philosophy and politics into it, music start losing its "magic". I believe that music is a spiritual effort detached from any political or philosophical issue du jour... But that's an issue worth a long discussion
I know this struggle. My pieces were too conservative for festivals, but too modern for the conservative classical music biz…
@Yeheng Music I am Romanian but have lived in Finland for 14 years.
The problem with modern "notated music" is that some composers try to create something new wihout respecting what came before. Modern composers like Philip Glass do a great job by providing new ideas with some compositions and also keeping older music structures for a better orientationin others. Stravinsky was such a man of grandeur too.
Another problem are artificially raised expectations. Mostly by online journalists and propagandists.
And now here is a twist. If it was not for composers like Schönberg and Stockhausen we might not have this great deal of electronic music as we know it now. Many of their works took the electronic keyboard out of the hands of pseudo artistic prog rock steamers, leaving the ideas on their own to mold new ideas and genres. I really think thet electronic music has its roots in modern contemporary classical music. But that is something to discuss another time maybe.
Frankly I don't see the influence of Schoenberg and Stokhausen in current electronic music. Other composers had more influence especially on the technical side. Take for instance John Chowning who invented FM synthesis. Glass was certainly someone who brought some of the traditional composition method in the popular culture
The problem over the last (7-8) decades was that many composers tried primary to be innovative/new, to be modern - instead of writing "personal" music ... when it's personal and the personality is strong enough it' s automatically NEW ... because every human is singular.
Many "modern composers" have lost the audience (despite some praise by collegues and professors) - music has to give something musically valuable to listeners - if it doesn't why should anybody listen to it? ( better play it at home for yourself)
Very much needed conversation in the contemporary music world! Thanks for sharing, Michele!
Let's not forget the privilege of the people in these institutions, the elitism behind these research-minded musical practices is exacerbated by the lack of ethnocultural diversity in these milieux, mostly upper middle class white people who see their work as a continuation of the western classical canon and its supremacy.
Yes, they are writing from the head not the heart. In my view music is supposed to convey emotions, not intellect.
Do you think it's possible to strike a balance between pursuing progress and simultaneously offering a high level of artistic quality? Since the idea of "progress" is somewhat ambiguous, it's often referred to as something different from what came before; I think of Beethoven's sonatas, revolutionary works yet profoundly artistic. Therefore, one doesn't necessarily have to be disconnected from the other.
That artistic expression changes with the times it's natural, that it moves "forward" as opposed to backwards or sideways is a profound misreading of the nature of such expression. It's the ideological bug that got engrained in our, Western, view of the world. Progress doesn't really exist anywhere outside of one's mind
The kind of thinking of Adorno, Schoenberg, Kandinsky and Wittgenstein is the real cause of this. This kind of thinking, in expressing meaning, is not only progressive but revolutionary, subverts all classical art and the philosophy of the Western tradition. Its conclusion is not some kind of an art or advanced thinking, done by incomprehensible geniuses, which is too lofty and glorious for mere naive mortals, but a complex and schematic work, out of touch with common sense based on the nature of things, made by snobby intellectuals with their anti-tradition and anti-people rhetoric.
"complex and schematic work, out of touch with common sense based on the nature of things, made by snobby intellectuals with their anti-tradition and anti-people rhetoric" wow... could not agree more
The genius is to make the complicated simple. To make the listener have an epiphany by just listening.
Failing to see how Kandinsky is anti-people. Ever read anything by him? He is irrepressibly positive, his art rooted in spirituality.
We composers must, at all cost, be perceived as "serious." Now, either you do have serious new ideas (e.g. Ligeti, or as much as I don't care for his music, Lachenmann), or you don't. And if you don't, you're going to latch onto superficial features of genuinely serious music: to invoke the signifiers of seriousness, without genuine seriousness (such as, expressionist angstyness, but empty, lacking the cultural milieu of expressionism). Composers like Andriessen, or Julia Wolfe, are refreshing because they don't care whether you think they're serious or not.
This got me to suscribe!!! :)
Welcome onboard!
My compositions were all rejected by universities in Turkey because they were too baroque and not "modern" enough.
Many such cases
@@MicheleZaccagnini really? What do you mean by that?
@@PheresMusic I mean there are many composers that are excluded from academia for not adhering to the modernist or post-modernist aesthetics
Count me in. They rejected my audition pieces to get into graduate school and even for a second bachelor's degree because it is clearly tonal and melodic in the common practice/traditionl sense.
Modern compositions can't even attain the level of musicality as Traumerii or Fur Elise, simple as those may seem.
Well - presented and in some ways, liberating. The arts and sciences are not about the same things and the idea of progress as a guiding principle maybe doesn't translate. A mandate to always innovate at all costs can be stifling. I liked the bit at the end about composers operating outside of academe having a little freedom to experiment. Meaningful musical activity comes from working with the media and sharing the artifacts with others - inevitably that will sound "like" an established style or system. There is more to work with if you are open to existing systems than if you feel obligated to throw out all systems and return to first principles - I think, therefore I am - before writing a note.
Agree. One has to start with something and starting from scratch is an illusion that even Schoenberg rejected.
The market has many detractors these days but my point is that is a freer creative space since is more chaotic and allows for "errors", unlike a structure like academia
In recent centuries classical composers seemed to lean to more and more unplayable music. The music of JSBach was said to be too complicated and intellectual. A new, simpler style was preferred by his sons. Beethoven's late works were (and are) hard to understand - and he was proud of this fact. Then Chopin and Liszt brought piano etudes to a new level of difficulty. Scriabin raised from a Chopin like style to an almost atonal style. Then serial music came on the parcours. This could not get on like that. Now computer game music is replacing classical music.
Lately is complexity for its own sake in academia. Hiding behind complexity is lazy
Innovation has been culturally naturalised over the years, and not just in music. The idea that novelty in style or language is an artistic necessity isn't new but it's very recent. The opposite is so alien to our current perceptions and desires that we have a hard time considering it today. Neither Mozart, Brahms, Balinese musicians or any folk culture… were driven by this modern imperative. Innovation as a deliberate substitute to social functionality could only lead to the narrowing of social reception.
The remnants of 20th century philosophical thinking are proving hard to shed
beethoven was all about innovation - its all he did. why is it different in the 20th / 21st century
@@connorcmusician Because he was a innovator but he followed the BASIC composition rules, not making noises like today. Poulenc was a very strange composer, but he composed MUSIC, following the basic rules, and not noises... You just need common sense to understand, the music can be complex, but the music still need to be MUSIC
Is there any contemporary classical music institutions?
I want to research about it .
Thank you .
a lot. eg. zfgm in HMT Leipzig
Jazz has many of the same problems now.
well...lets start with the music part...is it music? pretty doubtful. Is it Classical? imagine Mozart listening to it. I don't think he would recognize it as music. That leaves contemporary. Well yea...its contemporary all right.
Its Name.
You're describing academic composers and their students, not everyone. It's like you've never heard Adams or Rutter or Glass.
Those are outliers that have little in common with one another. They really don't represent anything but exceptions to the rule of what is commonly defined as contemporary classical music. Pointing out exceptions doesn't invalidate a point and it's a lazy way of arguing
Classical music is solidly embedded in traditional understandings of scales. Dvorjak said that the music of Afro and Aboriginal Americans will be the music of the future. There is also Indian classical music which is older than European Classical. Music synthesizers and software are providing new forms of music expression including classical, with which I have some input.
Dvorak was right. I think it was Robert Fripp who put it that as the dominant music of the Renaissance was an Italian Style, the Romantic era a Teutonic style - the 20th century is characterized by a AfroAmerican style
@@edwardgivenscomposer We should remember too that this focus is on European culture. The Chinese, Africans, the mid-east has a wide variety of styles and instruments thousands of years old.
@@steviewax many of which are now part of our culture and we accept this as a matter of course. El Ud became the lute. A more modern example would be the harmonica - derived from Chinese free reed instruments. And here we touch ever so gently on how music theory should be (could be) viewed as part of cultural studies. I'm lucky for having had a very good music theory teacher, who upon day one, when 21 year old me raised his hand with the question "will we cover music theory of other cultures?' - replied "no. This is the theory of the Euro-American Formal Notated tradition".
How is it possible that a subgenre of music so deeply influenced by "postmodernism" which is supposed to question metanarratives of progress, is so totally defined by a very particular notion of what progress means?
Perhaps it is something like Einstein's "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." Postmodernism failed to transcend modernism because it failed to understand that the way it was framing the problem was inescapably modernist and defined by a particular (eurocentric) notion of progress. As a result, it ended up reinforcing the worst things about modernism, but now it became much more difficult to criticize because supposedly it was already beyond the criticisms. If we think of postmodernism less as a philosophy and more as a historical time period (see Frederic Jameson), then perhaps we could turn postmodernism on its head by coming to see "postmodernism" (the way of thinking) as itself the product of a certain era of late capitalism. This is the classic "Hegelian" turn. I really recommend reading Zizek, who is critical of postmodernism in a lot of ways and is more of a Hegelian than a Marxist. But I would also advise anyone to avoid tying themselves to any one thinker or way of thinking, because it always becomes yet another layer of attempting to solve a problem with the same consciousness that created it. I submit that postmodernism as an era will only come to an end when eurocentrism is completely dismantled and becomes totally irrelevant. In a way, the sad state of contemporary classical is part of this inevitable historical "progression" where eurocentric music simply becomes so culturally irrelevant that it will effectively disappear.
I absolutely think that we should be making music outside of the commercial paradigm also. What does music look like which falls prey to neither the Scylla of the vapid profit-driven music industry nor the Charybdis of academic anti-commercial music? I think it will look something like what Kendrick Lamar has done, which is why he will be known as an artistic genius for many years to come, long after all these academic scribblers are forgotten.
Many interesting points. In a way postmodernism seems mostly a genre directed at music critics and musicologists. I don't agree with the eurocentrism label, to me it's a matter of hyperrationalism or utilitarianism which carry the germ of progress. Then again Europe is the birthplace of enlightenment, which generated utilitarianism, so you might have a point. I also don't agree with escaping the market altogether, it has produced many masterpieces. But the patronage system might be better for the arts. What I think we have lost is the metaphysical sphere, aiming for the stars. Thank you for your comments, I really enjoy reading them!
@@MicheleZaccagnini Thinkers labelled as postmodern I think in a lot of ways were prescient in describing the current cultural and musical landscape. Everything juxtaposed against everything else. But they internalized the eurocentric / hyperrationalist / enlightenment / modernist (whatever you want to call it) ethos of progress so much, that even as they were critiquing it, they still assumed that history has a particular uniform direction. And for them everything metaphysical or traditional belongs to the past, to the pre-modern. And it has a vague aura of fascism about it, which they were keen to reject anything even remotely associated with it. Likewise, they assume also that if capitalism is not part of the past yet, it will be soon. So you are contaminated by even entertaining the notion of associating yourself with that also. It is a kind of ethics of purity, which is strange because that is one of the key indicators of a conservative value system. I think it is probably true that if you go far enough left, you end up right. As this "academic leftism" is more enshrined in institutions, it acts in the position of conserving a tradition of anti-traditionalism. It can't escape confronting the contradiction. And that's how history really progresses, not according to anyone's design or plan, but because a contradiction cannot be maintained any longer and something has to give. If they went back and read Hegel they would understand this. There is no place to stand on where you can stand outside of history and maintain a pure position. You are already in it and participating in the contradiction no matter what it is you think you're doing. I think there is something metaphysical and spiritual about this, kind of like fate or destiny if you want to call it that.
Any progressive ideology, left or right, is potentially totalitarian since it ends up in the "end justifies the means" trap. There is definitely a metaphysical aspect to modernism but is not traditionally so, more subconscious than a thoroughly fleshed out acknowledgement of a hyper human , unknowable dimension
@@MicheleZaccagnini I agree. I was just listening to Alana Jelinek being interviewed on the New Book Network, and she was saying she's against politics and in favor of ethics instead, because politics always involves categorization and treating people in a category as if they're all the same, and there is something inherently totalitarian about that. She was previously coming from the Adorno approach but now views art totally differently, I think you're both on the same page. Could you say that this hyper human/ unknowable dimension is the ineffable? There's a book by Michael Gallope on music, philosophy and the ineffable that sounds super interesting.
Kendrick Lamar? Lol
Well for a start, most is crap not music. Composed by people who are trying to out mostly the fantasies of their Parents.
If you want to know what music is just plat 3 Gs and 1 E flat. This is when music changed. (For the Better).
❤
I'll only comment that contemporary classical composers are now all Borodin's. We have day jobs, and use free tools like MuseScore software to write music that we like to write. I know I do. As a result the unlistenable rubbish that you so rightly (and we too) deride, we regard as death throes.
nice!
Answer: Everything.
Everything
As usual...it's Darmstadt's fault.
Interesting how the CIA in its Congress for Cultural Freedom form was based in... Darmstadt
@@MicheleZaccagnini You made me go looking that up, and now I'm *really* annoyed. LOL
good points.however! the music is just the product of the PERSON behind the pen / computer making the music making the choices. what is wrong with contemporary classical music COMPOSERS. i would say. too much ADD. too many options. too much Starbucks caffeine. too little personal vision. too many social media places to share music. less emphasis on music as a community service / community event shared live. contemporary composers also DO NOT PLAY AN INSTRUMENT. in the past you had to play an instrument to compose. contemporary composers therefore do not know ORCHESTRATION how to write your specific parts for the characteristics of each instruments!
almost completely untrue comment
I think it's because it is bad
I just wanted a video that said it all sucks.
It doesn't tho. Turangalila Symphony, for example, is definitely one of the greatest orchestral works ever made (even if admittedly already "old"). For something newer, Ligeti's Violin Concerto (1992) is a masterpiece.
I must say I agree that, currently, academic/art institutions pressure to "innovate" is real, and lots of times it leads to utter garbage. Most academic composers are eager to escalate institutions, and so they write nonsense to satisfy the social snobism. Composers should write for the people and test their creations on that ground, period.