I read an account of Liszt playing the Hammerklavier Sonata in Paris, which was the first time it was played in France, and Berlioz was in the audience with the score in hand following along. Berlioz said that Liszt was unlocking the riddle of the sphinx.
Hey there, have you seen Woody Allen's film "Midnight in Paris"? In it our main lad is transported through a time-portal to a "golden age" 1920s Paris where he meets Hemingway, Dalí and so on. Towards the end it transpires there's a further time-portal beyond, and the protagonists of Paris in the golden 1920s use it to travel to their "golden age" of Paris - the 1890s of Les Folies, Toulouse-Lautrec etc. A Paris full of people who, in their turn, hanker to travel to the "golden age" Paris that they missed, the age of Ingres and the Beaux-Arts... etc. etc. etc. Rinse and repeat, but always missing out ones own real life. Everyone in the cast is basically jealous of the golden age they missed by 50 years, because they are dismissive of and dissatisfied with the golden age in which they are living. It's a tragic but deeply poetic message.
@@GreenTeaViewer Sorry if I've spoiled the ending... Put my comment out of your mind and watch with the innocence of a child. It's an enchanting and witty film.
A fascinating topic for certain, Cole, and as ever, your reasonable, balanced, insightful observations with a call for us to try and be open-minded when challenged by all things unfamiliar is the ideal approach. We are blessed to have so much choice and easy access to the legacy of human creativity to date. Technology is expanding the boundaries of what was once possible. Challlenging our own boundaries is where we can find new rewards . . . but that takes effort and we are intrinsically lazy!
It’s important not to lean too hard in the other direction when talking about stuff like this. I agree with most of the points you make (especially on Beato and the way he speaks about older music) but it’s important to remember that there is a massive difference in the general approach to piano playing between now and a century ago. I myself massively prefer the older approach but love plenty of modern performances and would never claim that there are no good pianists around these days, even if most of the popular ones don’t appeal to me much :)
@@d_r_e_a_m_b_o_a_t the interesting thing is that a lot of pianists now are actually playing in that older style, and are turning it into a contemporary way of approaching the instrument! That’s a change that is all to the good
Great video as always! I've found the comment section particularly interesting this time- so many people insisting that THIS time is different, and the music that is new/alien to them will not be accepted in the future, unlike the music that came before it. I have to say, it makes a certain amount of intuitive sense to me as well. I do think that there is a small group of composers (in particular the total serialists and New Complexity composers) who are almost antagonistic towards obtaining widespread acceptance (I would say this is interesting and worthwhile in its own right, but that's another conversation,) but when it comes to musicians like Bartok, Berg, or Ligeti, I don't think that's the case. Personally, I think that Golden Age thinking can be particularly pervasive in music because of just how intuitively we process music- it's often described as a "universal language" that speaks directly to the soul. Of course, it's a great deal more complicated and subjective than that, but that feeling of naturalness to music makes the familiar feel not only pleasant but "Right" and "Good," and makes the unfamiliar feel like a violation of that "natural order." It can be frustrating to deal with (especially as someone who loves new music,) but it's also sort of a beautiful testament to just how powerful music can be.
One reason, I think, is that the "great personalities" are over-shadowed by whatever is popular at the moment, even in the classical era. What makes someone great is usually revealed over time, rather than some magnum opus that explodes onto the scene, and it takes a lot of effort to find, follow and support new artists that 'can become great'. Even the opposite can happen (e.g. Liszt), where their most revered work appeared when they were the least popular, and the only reason we can appreciate it now is because of their loyal fanbase. The 'Golden Age' exists only for those that do not actively support contemporary artists.
Hey there, Cole! I really appreciate all the work that you do! I was listening to your video in headphones and it seemed pretty bass heavy, and could maybe benefit from boosting the mids trebles, also the panning was off for me - not too much voice audio coming through in my left ear. I tested some other talking videos just to make sure. Not trying to hate just trying to provide feedback since I know you’re independent doing it all yourself! Keep the videos coming!
"Say not, 'Why were the former days better than these?' For it is not from wisdom that you ask this." - Eccles. 7:10 It's also crossed my mind that there may never have been another time in Western music history when music from a hundred years prior was generally referred to as "contemporary."
While I am primarily interested in and focused on classical music, my listening is rather broad - and I confess to a particular liking for the rock and roll that I grew up with as a teen in the '60s. Having listened to Rick Beato's video, I think he had a very good point, although some of your criticisms are also on point. Like any other time, and equally applicable to every genre of music, for every brilliant composer, there were hundreds if not thousands of others who have been lost to history, often (but not always) for good reason, having nothing to do with changing technology. Creative people will use the tools that are available and make creative use of them - some for better and some not. But that said, I often give highly popular pop music stars a shot, trying to hear what it is that makes them so popular, only to find myself turning them off after a few tracks, saying to myself "meh". The engineering that is used so widely today in the production of pop music has a tendency, at least to my ear, to do the music a disservice. It seems to eliminate that part of a musical performance that most gives it life and emotional connection. The edginess that gives so much 1960s rock and roll its vibrancy is lost. Much of contemporary pop music sounds too much alike, all engineered similarly. Pablum. And a little story. I remember going to hear Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company at the Fillmore East as a teen, and noticing how extraordinarily out of tune they were for the entire evening. Still, it was an amazingly great concert! That sound would NEVER be produced these days. And that's too bad. Another story of course is the famous remark by Arthur Rubenstein about note mistakes. And he made some whoppers!
Interesting subject matter. I think there were some differences though at different times in terms of use of improvisation and a performer creating the dynamics in a piece not to mention that a certain times many pianists were composers also not to mention also a possible standardization through the recording technology and the filtration system of competitions but yes I always question the those were the days concepts too. Our attempts at generalization. That is interesting that rear projection as a way to position our identities is something I’ll keep in mind for myself after hearing your talk. Thanks as always
Music becomes more interesting rhythmically and harmonically with every generation simply because it has broader cultural influences and has the benefits of retrospection and reflection. Frank Zappa's statement "People don't know what they like, they like what they know." sums up Golden Age Syndrome.
As a fan of both Popular and Classical music - I'm happy to see you covering this topic from a Classical/Pianistic perspective! I agree with most of your points but think that Classical music composed "post Rite of Spring" became deliberately esoteric and almost deliberately alienating to "mainstream" Classical audiences. I do NOT think that the example of the Hammerklavier can be extended to modernistic 20th Century works - I think it's a step too far even for many adventurous listeners. There will be an audience for it - of course - but a diminishingly small one. I think that it's no coincidence that this occurred just as Popular Music and the recording industry were gaining momentum. Let's be honest - the term "Classical Music" to most casual music fans simply means "old music". "Modern Classical" must seem like such an oxymoron to them! and it takes some explaining to clarify why it shouldn't be! Classical became far too concerned with impressing critics and the "elite progressive establishment" and not concerned with pleasing audiences. Why couldn't more composers continue writing great memorable TUNES like Rachmaninoff did? I'm not criticizing the music - but rather saying that it really is only for a limited audience - and that a snobbish dismissal of "backward looking" Romanticism played a role in turning people off contemporary Classical compositions. They had other music to listen to - Jazz, emerging Rock 'n' Roll, then Progressive Rock for the people looking for more "complexity". I think the perpetual novelty-seeking of musical trends does result in some eras ultimately being "less appealing" than others. I don't mean "inferior" - but I think that as dust settles - we will see that some styles have wider appeal than others. Look at the example of Classical era vs. Romantic era. Comparing similar spans of time - the Romantic era was generally more harmonically and melodically complex and the styles encouraged more individuality. Can we REALLY tell the distinct difference between a Mozart and Haydn string quartet the same way we can tell the difference between a Brahms quartet and a Mendelssohn quartet? The general generic "style" of the Classical era is simply less appealing to the majority of people. That's what makes Haydn, Mozart and later on - Beethoven and Schubert - so remarkable! There were far more interesting and divergent developments in the Romantic era than the Classical era. And the post-Romantic era was certainly interesting and divergent but broadly less appealing to the masses than the Romantic era. Apologies for the rambling but I think my point is that - as time passes, we can look back and make some kind of hierarchical assessment of which eras produced more music of wider "universal" appeal than others. I also think this applies to pianism - I think that the "intellectual" approach does not have as wide an appeal and the free, romantic approach - so I think that's why it's come full circle and in the "post-Brendel" era we are looking back to Friedman etc. for inspiration in how to move forward!
Your points are very well made and concur with my own perspective on this subject. I accept Cole's plea that we should try to be open-minded when confronted by what is new and so unfamiliar, and make the effort to try and connect. I can think of music I really disliked on the first hearing . . . but which I now find more rewarding than music that was instantly accessible and attractive. I am amused by the notion that music from any era that had mass appeal is somehow inferior to minority appeal music enjoyed by the intellectually elite who believe themselves entitled to make value pronouncements. It's still possible to write a good tune today and high quality 'classical' music with mass appeal, as evidenced in many film scores.
For future Q&As, I'd like to know your opinion on Alkan's piano music. Great video btw! Golden age syndrome always brings me back to Midnight in Paris. Love the movie!
On the flip side of the golden age bias there is also the unwarranted optimism that modern music just needs more time to be appreciated because, after all, great masterpieces of the past were often initially rejected by listeners…therefore there’s bound to be great masterpieces in the rejected modern music of today.
13:57 yes, but you cant forget that Bach's music was mostly publicly considered ''crap'' and no one remembered it until like 200 or more years later, so you never know
Lots of talking at cross-purposes here. Beato didn't say that all technology is bad for music, or that all modern pop music is crap. He always tries to find something to like, in music of all eras and genres. But sometimes there's nothing to like, and he makes some plausible guesses as to why.
@@davidanderson215 yes I’m aware of that, and I’m not primarily criticizing Beato as I thought Fantano already did a good job of rebutting his argument. I do agree with him that there is a certain incoherence to Beato’s arguments. It kind of comes out in your comment right here: Saying that there is “nothing to like” is contradictory to the statement that not all modern pop music is crap. So which is it? Is there nothing to like or is in fact not all modern music crap?
I think one point that Beato means and perhaps doesn't address explicitly enough is overlooked, namely that technology has the effect of "educating" listeners to a certain extent. Taking Auto-Tune as an example: of course Auto-Tune can be used very creatively (Billie Eilish "When I Was Older"). But above all, it changes listening habits in such a way that "ordinary consumers" perceive a voice without Auto-Tune, even of a great singer, as unclean. Beato does not deny that there is currently good music (most recently Willow Smith, for example). He points out that the "Top 40" in particular are characterized by a listener expectation that can no longer be satisfied with original music-making, but only with a form of music-making that restricts many expressive possibilities. Basically, Beato is more concerned with the listeners than the performers. My observation as a music teacher in Germany is indeed that the ability to take an interest in music for musical reasons has diminished considerably.
@@christianebbertz7057 These are cogent points, but I wonder how much these things actually “educate” audience members. It reminds me of the controversy over digital editing a few decades ago and how many professionals still feel pressure to deliver note perfect performances in concert as well as on record. But did this really have an effect on the wider audience of general music lovers? I don’t think so. Most audience members don’t particularly notice or care about wrong notes, and similarly I think the majority of people listening to pop music would not at all be turned off by hearing their favorite singers without autotune. I suspect that we overestimate how much these details of technique, which seem so important to the experts, actually matter.
@@christianebbertz7057 I must say I I haven’t had the experience of noticing less interest in music in regards to my teaching. That’s interesting to hear that you have felt that way, and I’m curious how exactly that manifests?
@@TheIndependentPianist I don't teach piano, but at „Gymnasium“ (roughly equivalent to English grammar school). Twenty years ago, about a third of my pupils were “music nerds”. It was part of their self-image to like certain music and to be interested in what was happening musically. Even back then, classical music was hardly important in that respect. But metal and punk, RCHP had a significant following. Around 10 to 15% were also interested in playing in a band (with varying degrees of success). These “nerds” now make up maybe 10% and are so spread out across genres that hardly anyone at school can find someone to share their passion with (one listens to classical, one 70s prog rock, one metal, one R&B, etc. - NO ONE listens to jazz). Not one plays in a band. The other 90% also listen to music through headphones all the time, but it's music that's always turned all the way up (the typical “sausage” if you look at the WAV file) and in which the vocals have the character of keyboard sounds. I don't know any of them who would be able to describe what they like about this music. What these listeners notice about older music is not wrong notes, but an “outdated” sound, much like a black and white movie looks “old”. So we're dealing with a kind of musical Photoshop effect (and the girls tend to put on make-up until they look photoshopped). Accordingly, you don't build an emotional relationship with music that doesn't meet these expectations of sound and form (just as I couldn't relate to choral music as a teenager in the 70s because I couldn't relate to the “sound”). That's why the Top 40 must be so similar. As for the “golden age problem”: of course there is also an incredible amount of good music today. But it has no relevance worth mentioning, i.e. it is not “society” that forms its discourse space (as was the case with Beethoven, Wagner, Rubinstein, Callas), but the small community of fans (I don't know another Esparanza Spalding fan apart from myself, not another Alexandra Dovgan fan, only one Carolin Polachek fan. The audience at the Jacob Collier concert in Cologne was probably 50% musicians or music students). When you teach piano, you notice this development with a delay because you are basically dealing with people who are at least somewhat interested in music for musical reasons...what was the question again😊?
I don't know if Rick said this, i'd have to see the video again, but more or less knowing where he comes from as a musician and a producer, and supposing he centers more on pop music it's the oversimplification and banalization technology brings to music, in an ascending trend over the past 2 decades. That and the profound changes in the music industry, investing only in incredably formulaic sounds. And this produces stagnation. Itt's been happenning in the movie industry also.
@@pedrorocha9722 Yes, I imagine that is where he is coming from. The interesting thing to me is that excessive use of formulas and oversimplification has been going on for centuries, e.g. my Stamitz example. Is it really that much more of a problem right now? It may in fact be more common but perhaps we are nonetheless exaggerating how much this is a novelty.
@@TheIndependentPianist Yes, I have to say that it is much more of a problem now.... Wa can not call it a problem, we can call it a overwellming worldwide trend. For the reasons I pointed earlier. It's not that there is no «good music» (or films) today. It's that they're much harder to find. So, less accecible to a large audience, not inclined to break the offer that comes from cellphones. One can wonder: will there be a time when there'll be no need to learn music and play it? No need for music schools? Because it will all be provided by aplications. And that leaves the question: will there be a time where the will to create is no longer needed? I mean, beyond the choice of this or that sound, this or that style, provided by programs and applications, and so on,. Because, it doesn't take much imagination to think that's where we are headed. A world where creativity is something very different from what it's now. Yes, there is way much more diversity, but Art itself really seems less diverse. Way too much noise, way little singular voices.
@@pedrorocha9722 I can’t agree with the notion that it’s that much harder to find good music or films today, only because technology has made it possible for me to experience music from other creators I never would have encountered otherwise. Even the much reviled Spotify app can give you access to incredible riches if you use it intelligently, rather than just looking at the top 10 whatever. I totally agree that we live in a society with way too much “noise.” On the other hand I think that the will to create is still quite strong and I don’t see your dystopian future becoming a reality, but that is all based on my own experience, so who knows? You might have a better perspective on this, I can’t tell.
@@TheIndependentPianist It's a fascinating and multifaceted topic. I don't want or need to be wrong or right, I feel I must say. Tht's not my point. My point is to debate stuff. But if you ask me directly, yes, i think one day there will be a time where people like you and me will be irrelevant, a thing of the past. Music will be totally composed and played/generated by machines. And the same with painting and Art in general. Im not talking in 10 years time. I'm talkiing a good bit more into the future. It's not too far fetchd to consider that the act (and drive) of creating itself will change through time, like, I don't know, our way of passing the time changed drastically over the last century.
@@TheIndependentPianist And by the way, I just remembered this: where are all the videos of all the below 30 artists explaning their process, why this or thar chord, why these instruments, why those lyrics? There is none, Why?
The "tenor" of your comments make sense. No doubt we all tend to romanticize the past--or at least our own past and the things that we grew up knowing and coming to love. But I disagree with you that the things of the past that once shocked automatically become widely embraced in the future. I don't believe Schoenberg's atonal piano music will ever be anything remotely like widely embraced and loved in the way that, to use an example you mentioned, Beethoven's Op. 90 Sonata has become. I'm talking, of course, about being widely embraced and loved by the larger piano community as a whole. Of course there are some nuts--forgive me, I couldn't resist!--who might actually deeply love the astringently screeching harmonies in Schoenberg's atonal "melodies," but I doubt very much that his atonal piano music will ever be something that a large portion of the piano community (professional and amateur) will come to deeply love and want to perform. Though I admit that oftentimes atonal music makes for effective horror movie soundtracks. ("The Shining" has great examples of that.) But I suspect that the atonal piano music of Schoenberg will always be "on the fringe" when it comes to pianists.
@@Radiatoron88 it is ironic that you described exactly a case where atonal music has already reached the mainstream: Ligeti’s music in the score to the Shining! You might be right anyway about Schoenberg, I don’t know. I do think that the atonal sound is finding a place as a limited option for composers to use, and I think that in a couple centuries it will be a pretty familiar style, even if total atonality never finds a permanent footing.
@@TheIndependentPianist Hi Cole! I really enjoy your programs, and I find I usually agree with the various points that you make. When it comes to atonal music, though, I just can't see it ever being something that people reach for like a Beethoven Sonata or Chopin Prelude. I think it's always going to appeal to a relatively tiny minority of people. Though, for sure, atonal music can work wonderfully as background music in movies, to underscore horror, creepiness, suspense, and so forth. But as for putting on an album to listen to those sounds alone, it's hard for me to imagine many people wanting to do that. But I admit I'm pretty much an arch-conservative in my tastes. For me, Milhaud and Poulenc are plenty "modern" already. I do enjoy the first and second movements of Prokofiev's 7th Piano Sonata though--having heard it performed in concerts by a zillion pianists over the years. But the second movement always seems almost comical to me, a kind of syrupy melody croaked out by some drunken guy. I half expect the pianist to emit a drunken hiccup after playing that opening phrase! By the way, I doubt that the mainstream of classical music listeners would go out and buy an album of music of Ligeti featured in "The Shining." A small minority of classical music lovers would, I guess. But the "mainstream" is only being exposed to that music because it's in a mainstream movie. Most people, I think,--including yours truly--want to hear melodies that move them in music, or at least melodies that they can remember after hearing a given piece. Without that, it's hard to internalize music and "make it your own." Then again, I admit that my ears have been grudgingly--though ultimately happily--stretched by some music that "at first blush" was uncomfortable for my ears. In any case, everyone is--happily--free to love what they love in music. I most envy those people who are able to truly love the widest range of music. Wishing you all the best, and thanks again so much for making so many interesting videos!
I'm going to play elitist here: I think that the majority of music being made today is objectively worse than the majority of what was made earlier. Yes it is true that we forget about all the mediocre pieces written during the Viennese Golden era, but, if we were to take a handful of the "best" music for every decade, the few recent ones are worse. Also, i think I can change people's minds like this: if we were to show Beethoven or Mozart or Liszt today's best music, they could acclimate and replicate it all in a matter of one day. I can confidentially say that modern musicians will never come close to replicating the former's.
@@SiliPiano thank you for playing devil’s advocate! it’s an interesting idea to take a handful of the best music from every decade, the only problem is that as an argument it’s so subjective that you’d have a hard time finding common ground with anyone else as to what qualified as the best and whether or not there was actually a trend towards becoming worse. Again, if we showed Beethoven some of today’s music, no doubt he could replicate much of it very easily, on the other hand, there might be other things that would be quite beyond him at first: how well would he do with complicated jazz/popular harmony, e.g extended chords, and modern rhythmic styles? That’s all academic of course because Beethoven and Mozart and Liszt grew up with a certain sound all around them that influenced how they wrote music. It would be unfair to expect someone who grew up in our very different cultural environment to recreate the past. But I think in reality there are highly skilled musicians who are quite capable of creating music that is of a similar complexity (in its own way) to the music of the past. I’m not talking about those top 10 Spotify artists though ;-)
@TheIndependentPianist I had considered the discussion about Beethoven and his ability yo understand jazz harmonies, but then I remembered the point of Rick Beato's discussion was in relation to music of today. Those are inventions of the early 20th century. I'm not sure, perhaps you're right considering there are indeed musicians today that can come close to replicating the greats... I must admit I hate when people concede that "it's all subjective, there's no such thing as good or better music". It feels like a thought-terminaging cliche, if someone is legitimately unable to admit that Mozart is a better musician than Olivia Rodrigo than the entire conversation is moot
I must admit though that Olivia Rodrigo is not the best this decade has to offer, but then again we must have some biases towards what is currently popular because it's impossible to discover all there is to discover in the internet age
I believe that Beato's point was that, technology notwithstanding, modern composers of popular music just don't have the harmonic chops to write music interesting to the ear. On that point he's hard to argue with.
I think one could be forgiven for thinking in this way as the modern media system inundates the most accessible platforms with music that caters to the lower common denominator similar to Adorno's critiques of the culture industry. However, if you scratch beneath the surface, there is a lot of creative work being done behind the noise.
Golden age thinking is a very interesting issue. Lots to think about. However, I'd like to address the issue of auto-tuning - isn't this one of the technologies that is of concern? You may find Fil @wingsofpegasus interesting. He uses the latest technology to analyse vocal tracks, showing how the great singers use their voice - vibrato, rubato, swoops up/down, being sharp/flat for expressive purposes. Surely the power of the human voice lies in its ability to express emotion, word meaning etc. Use of auto-tuning of the voice makes it sterile - and as Fil says, often out of tune with the backing band, which has NOT been auto-tuned! This technology is being applied in live situations, or even retrospectively to live recordings. As a passionate believer in live music of all sorts, I find this a really worrying degradation of the truth of live performance.
@@karakataka6557 hi there! You need a virtual instrument running through your computer. There are many different ones. I use Ivory II, I think Pianotec is another popular one. Once you have a program like that, you just have to connect your VPC1 to your computer, and you should be able to get sound through the program’s built in platform.
Many people think mainstream film is in decline. Reboot after reboot, no originality and so on. This has alot to do with the business side of things falling apart and there being a few key companies like disney and warner bros buying up everything. Yet, mainstream music gets a free pass and people feel obligated to defend it.
@@Pretzels722 I’m afraid I don’t really buy it. Sure, there’s a lot of reboots and sequels and superhero movies, but on the other hand, we still have amazing films coming out and very serious directors at work. Of course, if you choose only to look at the terrible stuff, it is going to look like mainstream film is in decline. Again, just to give perspective, you only have to look at the endless forgotten titles of films from the so-called “golden age.” Of course, this isn’t to say that film won’t eventually disappear as a serious art form, even as opera practically disappeared (at least compared to its heyday in the 18th and 19th centuries). But I think that the plethora of options right now (both good and bad) is more a sign of how well it’s doing than the reverse!
There are some ideas that aren't really addressed in this debate by you, Rick or anyone else.. the so-called monoculture (radio, MTV) prior to the internet.. the fact that 'old music' such as blues, folk or jazz has been integrated into what someone might consider the golden age (for me, it peaked in the 90's), while new music has of course not, so we're not sympathetic to it.. the fact that new music is competing in the same marketplace as old music... AND we can't ignore the possibility that there's a grain of truth in it-- genres can simply become exhausted of possibilities
I dont think schoenburg or bartok in 100 years will be listened to like we do about chopin. I would elaborate my point but i am incredibly tired and lazy :)
@@TheIndependentPianist I believe that we are moving towards more jazz fusion (and other world genres, thats a big one) then we are with atonalism. In my opinion, atonality lacks the depth required to be developed in itself, so will be used in conjunction with jazz influences (and other genres) (see kapustins middle sonatas, hesangasong's sonatita in F, emilliano mannas music etc.). For that reason, composers like shoenburg, berg, stockenhausen will probably left in the esoteric confines of the conservatory, whilst composers like kapustin gershwin, ravel will be the new chopins of that day. If we take Beethovens case, his music was disregarded beacuse it was forward thinking and innovative, and maybe like schoenburgs case(late schoenberg) was not like the music of his day. But the difference between them is that nowadays, for one you can listen to their piece and at first listen fall in love with them, but for the other you require a certain familiarity with the piece that comes after a few times of listening. Indeed, this is the case with many of kapustins pieces, however, I believe that kapustin is more likely to be accepted as it mirrors many aspects from jazz, whereas at first listen some late schonberg pieces seem completely in their own world. notes: (im only using schoenberg as an example, insert any overly atonal composer, like those in the conservatory making modern music, beat furrer, stockenhausen etc.) (this argument is really poorly made but you can kinda see my point???(i hope)) (when I say "will be listened to like chopin", I am referring to pieces that are easily accessible. Pieces outside this set will definetly be listened to, but will not have a massive influence, as those I discussed prior. Also, i am not attacking schoenburg or any modern composer for being bad, just to be clear, i think you already know that) (being honest, there are barely any composers that compose in strictly atonal settings even in the conservatory, but you got my point hopefully. I think that the "jazz/world movement" will be listened to like chopin, but those composing out of this group or on the boundary of this group will also be listened to, and due to the internet, will never be forgotten (berg, schoenburg, ligeti etc.) (sorry for the long line of text, i might rewrite this such that it is more consice and is just a better argument in general, i waffled/yapped quite alot, i treated it alot like a running conversation haha)
@@TheIndependentPianist I am just going to quote from another video titled (or was titled) "is classical music dying" by nahre sol. This is in favour of my argument that composers such as schoenburg and berg, beat furrer, ligeti etc. will be largely forgotten and composers such as ravel, kapustin will be remembered: Another way of interpreting 'Is classical music dying?" though would be to suggest that the relevance of it is dying, because the bar to entry for listening to it just keeps rising and rising as composers hyper-specialise. Lots of the corpus of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms etc includes music that the average person can immediately understand, enough to gain from listening to it, but also has enormous depth to it, is enormously expressive and deeply meaningful. In my mind the 'killer feature' of music as an art form as compared to visual arts, film, theatre, literature, so on, is its ability to directly reach into people and immediately invoke an emotional state, without that state necessarily being describable in words. The video compared modern classical music to an art gallery, and that feels apt, but it also means it is losing its core value in that sense. I am absolutely not saying that modern classical music doesn't evoke emotion, it does, or that abstract art is a bad thing, it isn't. Still, most people do not have postgrad level education in music theory, and most people do not have the necessary time to read up on everything they need to learn how to interpret works that are that abstract and derive meaning from it. So for most people modern classical music no longer has that power of immediately reaching into them an invoking complex emotions. And this suggests a bifurcation where increasingly you just have commercial pop and film scores that often evoke fairly basic emotions in boring ways, and highly innovative music that cannot be deciphered by the average person being produced for a fringe group of people whose whole lives are devoted entirely to music. It may seem like a 'natural evolution' and something that has happened for ages, but if you take it to its conclusion it means lots of artists with valuable things to say are going to be only saying it to other artists. I would argue that that is a waste of their artistic talent and highly detrimental to society at large. You would have to believe the average person's ability to understand highly abstract art has been evolving as fast as the complexity and abstraction of classical music over the past century, because if that isn't true, then the potential audience is necessarily shrinking. I am a huge cinema fan, and I think as an art form modern cinema often does much better at producing films that are entertaining enough for an average, engaged viewer, but also have huge depth and fascinating things to say if you analyse them a bit more and pay very close attention. And I think this comes from a lack of snobbery. There isn't the same sense that commercial success and impact on the average person is necessarily juxtaposed with technical quality, depth, and complex meaning. I hear a small number of classical musicians talk about 'objective quality' in a way that is not as common in other disciplines and who consider anything with mass appeal as being dirty, cheap and kitsch. And not having that perceived juxtaposition results in a (in my subjective opinion) much healthier landscape of works where some are purely abstract art for people with foreknowledge, some are just commercial entertainment, but there is plenty of stuff that is both. Inclusivity in art is often discussed in the sense of allowing people to enter the profession from different backgrounds, but it also matters that people from different backgrounds (those not raised by wealthy upper-middle-class families who took them to the opera and gave them music lessons) have music that they can understand, love, connect with, and thus have a path towards enjoying the very best of contemporary music output. You can't go from nothing, to listening to 4'33 and finding meaning in it, realistically. Perhaps I am being unnecessarily pessimistic, but it would be an incredible shame if an increasing proportion of new, innovative, exciting music was condemned to be only available to a tiny portion of elite, educated musicians making music for themselves, and it does feel like that is where it is going, as much as I do enjoy some of it.
@@erwinschulhoff4464 I love all this, thanks for sharing your thoughts! it might be too much to go into here, but I think that in large part I agree with you. Maybe I can talk about a few of the issues you raise later on at some point.
The Golden Age in art forms generally occurs early in their development then charts an indefinite decline. This holds true for painting (Golden Age: the Renaissance around the 1600s), for classical music (Golden Age: from early 1700s to early 1900s), for the novel (Golden Age: 1800s), for cinema (Golden Age: 1930s to 1970s) and so on.
As I recall, Ortega y Gasset found a good image for why a golden age effect must inevitably occur in every art form: If you have a new marble quarry, you can first hammer out the big blocks, and the longer you exploit the quarry, the smaller the blocks become from which you can make your objects as a sculptor. The sculptors are of course just as talented as they used to be.
@@christianebbertz7057 Makes a lot of sense. Would account for the metamorphosis of art forms from one into another then another and so on. Painting gives rise to photography which gives rise to cinema which gives rise to digital art etc.
@@TheIndependentPianist I'm no expert but prior to Classical music with Bach, Vivaldi and Handel beginning an extended peak there was church music for many centuries. Prior to that there was non-polyphonic music. Art forms, especially in music, can be seen to begin, rise to a peak fairly early on, then fall away over a long period. As they decline, new forms take root and follow the same cycle. The other commenter @christianebbertz7057 makes an excellent analogy with quarry-mining and sculpture.
I find beato and fantano particularly irksome, especially the latter for his totally egoic content purely opinion based, which to me is obnoxious. It’s nice to hear an opinion (from yourself) which is delivered with as little ego detectable as possible, and can thus be mentally chewed on, swallowed, and digested. I for the most part agree with you. 😂
I tend to give Fantano more credit, because he’s a long time music collector. When art collectors in the past did precisely what Fantano does now, they were revered by the public; particularly when their private collections were converted into public museums. Of course, they were simultaneously unrepentant snobs about the minutiae involved with visual arts, but that was permissible with acknowledged authority in connoisseurship. Fantano has done the same, and even listens to music he dislikes just to know about it. At least Fantano makes an effort to entertain an audience, while making strong statements about contemporary music. Imagine if Wagner had the opportunity to do a similar outpouring of music snobbery today. It would be vicious, egotism with without limits, but obviously informed with expertise in music.
@@ShaneyElderberry I’m a bit more extreme in that I believe in regards to art if you don’t have anything nice to say you shouldn’t say anything at all. And I get that fantano has the right to say terrible things about something that somebody likely put a lot of work and maybe even suffering into, but that doesn’t make it right. I’ve reached the point that all music is good music, because music itself is good, and there’s no reason that I may not like a certain song or artist that makes it bad because I say so. All fantano has is his opinion, and being that he hasn’t even put out art that makes his opinion even more worthless in my eyes. So, I have utter contempt for the internets busiest music turd, regardless of how well learned he is.
@@jacobscardino4330 Anthony is a professional electric bass player. He’s recorded a few albums and singles, and performed as a guest musician. Surely, that means you would like his music too, right? I don’t think you are being serious about enjoying all music. Classical music and sheet music collectors don’t order or download anything without caring what they choose. I’m certain you would only order sheet music you enjoy, unless some obligation to order another work you don’t enjoy became apparent.
@@ShaneyElderberry liking/enjoying or not liking music is different than critiquing it and making a statement that it is good or bad. That is all I’m saying. Anthony makes judgments about peoples music and I think that’s wrong. He’s entitled to not like something, but to state (for entertainment) that something is bad because he doesn’t like it is what I would call being an 🍑🕳
@@jacobscardino4330 One wonders what you would think of the authors who do exactly that action, often with a lot of flourish? Henry James, E.A. Poe, Ambrose Bierce, Balzac, Goethe, Hugo, Jean Lorrain, Huysmans, Proust, etc. Perhaps they were misguided to do so?
![Jack Harlow - Hello Miss Johnson [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Q86_nlRoIGw/mqdefault.jpg)
I read an account of Liszt playing the Hammerklavier Sonata in Paris, which was the first time it was played in France, and Berlioz was in the audience with the score in hand following along. Berlioz said that Liszt was unlocking the riddle of the sphinx.
Hey there, have you seen Woody Allen's film "Midnight in Paris"? In it our main lad is transported through a time-portal to a "golden age" 1920s Paris where he meets Hemingway, Dalí and so on. Towards the end it transpires there's a further time-portal beyond, and the protagonists of Paris in the golden 1920s use it to travel to their "golden age" of Paris - the 1890s of Les Folies, Toulouse-Lautrec etc. A Paris full of people who, in their turn, hanker to travel to the "golden age" Paris that they missed, the age of Ingres and the Beaux-Arts... etc. etc. etc. Rinse and repeat, but always missing out ones own real life.
Everyone in the cast is basically jealous of the golden age they missed by 50 years, because they are dismissive of and dissatisfied with the golden age in which they are living. It's a tragic but deeply poetic message.
@@dwdei8815 Yes, I love that movie! Great suggestion, it’s a perfect illustration of this topic.
will watch it soon, thanks :-)
@@GreenTeaViewer Sorry if I've spoiled the ending... Put my comment out of your mind and watch with the innocence of a child. It's an enchanting and witty film.
A fascinating topic for certain, Cole, and as ever, your reasonable, balanced, insightful observations with a call for us to try and be open-minded when challenged by all things unfamiliar is the ideal approach. We are blessed to have so much choice and easy access to the legacy of human creativity to date. Technology is expanding the boundaries of what was once possible. Challlenging our own boundaries is where we can find new rewards . . . but that takes effort and we are intrinsically lazy!
It’s important not to lean too hard in the other direction when talking about stuff like this. I agree with most of the points you make (especially on Beato and the way he speaks about older music) but it’s important to remember that there is a massive difference in the general approach to piano playing between now and a century ago. I myself massively prefer the older approach but love plenty of modern performances and would never claim that there are no good pianists around these days, even if most of the popular ones don’t appeal to me much :)
@@d_r_e_a_m_b_o_a_t the interesting thing is that a lot of pianists now are actually playing in that older style, and are turning it into a contemporary way of approaching the instrument! That’s a change that is all to the good
Great video as always! I've found the comment section particularly interesting this time- so many people insisting that THIS time is different, and the music that is new/alien to them will not be accepted in the future, unlike the music that came before it. I have to say, it makes a certain amount of intuitive sense to me as well. I do think that there is a small group of composers (in particular the total serialists and New Complexity composers) who are almost antagonistic towards obtaining widespread acceptance (I would say this is interesting and worthwhile in its own right, but that's another conversation,) but when it comes to musicians like Bartok, Berg, or Ligeti, I don't think that's the case.
Personally, I think that Golden Age thinking can be particularly pervasive in music because of just how intuitively we process music- it's often described as a "universal language" that speaks directly to the soul. Of course, it's a great deal more complicated and subjective than that, but that feeling of naturalness to music makes the familiar feel not only pleasant but "Right" and "Good," and makes the unfamiliar feel like a violation of that "natural order." It can be frustrating to deal with (especially as someone who loves new music,) but it's also sort of a beautiful testament to just how powerful music can be.
One reason, I think, is that the "great personalities" are over-shadowed by whatever is popular at the moment, even in the classical era. What makes someone great is usually revealed over time, rather than some magnum opus that explodes onto the scene, and it takes a lot of effort to find, follow and support new artists that 'can become great'. Even the opposite can happen (e.g. Liszt), where their most revered work appeared when they were the least popular, and the only reason we can appreciate it now is because of their loyal fanbase. The 'Golden Age' exists only for those that do not actively support contemporary artists.
Hey there, Cole! I really appreciate all the work that you do! I was listening to your video in headphones and it seemed pretty bass heavy, and could maybe benefit from boosting the mids trebles, also the panning was off for me - not too much voice audio coming through in my left ear.
I tested some other talking videos just to make sure. Not trying to hate just trying to provide feedback since I know you’re independent doing it all yourself! Keep the videos coming!
Really fascinating points Cole and I'm so glad someone has the chutzpah to actually come out and say it
"Say not, 'Why were the former days better than these?' For it is not from wisdom that you ask this." - Eccles. 7:10
It's also crossed my mind that there may never have been another time in Western music history when music from a hundred years prior was generally referred to as "contemporary."
While I am primarily interested in and focused on classical music, my listening is rather broad - and I confess to a particular liking for the rock and roll that I grew up with as a teen in the '60s. Having listened to Rick Beato's video, I think he had a very good point, although some of your criticisms are also on point. Like any other time, and equally applicable to every genre of music, for every brilliant composer, there were hundreds if not thousands of others who have been lost to history, often (but not always) for good reason, having nothing to do with changing technology. Creative people will use the tools that are available and make creative use of them - some for better and some not.
But that said, I often give highly popular pop music stars a shot, trying to hear what it is that makes them so popular, only to find myself turning them off after a few tracks, saying to myself "meh". The engineering that is used so widely today in the production of pop music has a tendency, at least to my ear, to do the music a disservice. It seems to eliminate that part of a musical performance that most gives it life and emotional connection. The edginess that gives so much 1960s rock and roll its vibrancy is lost. Much of contemporary pop music sounds too much alike, all engineered similarly. Pablum.
And a little story. I remember going to hear Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company at the Fillmore East as a teen, and noticing how extraordinarily out of tune they were for the entire evening. Still, it was an amazingly great concert! That sound would NEVER be produced these days. And that's too bad.
Another story of course is the famous remark by Arthur Rubenstein about note mistakes. And he made some whoppers!
Interesting subject matter. I think there were some differences though at different times in terms of use of improvisation and a performer creating the dynamics in a piece not to mention that a certain times many pianists were composers also not to mention also a possible standardization through the recording technology and the filtration system of competitions but yes I always question the those were the days concepts too. Our attempts at generalization. That is interesting that rear projection as a way to position our identities is something I’ll keep in mind for myself after hearing your talk. Thanks as always
Music becomes more interesting rhythmically and harmonically with every generation simply because it has broader cultural influences and has the benefits of retrospection and reflection. Frank Zappa's statement "People don't know what they like, they like what they know." sums up Golden Age Syndrome.
In Louis Malle’s movie, Atlantic City, Burt Lancaster says to a younger Susan Sarandon, “You should have seen the Atlantic Ocean back then.”
Ha!
I think I should send Rick Beato a copy of "Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven's Time". 🙂
As a fan of both Popular and Classical music - I'm happy to see you covering this topic from a Classical/Pianistic perspective!
I agree with most of your points but think that Classical music composed "post Rite of Spring" became deliberately esoteric and almost deliberately alienating to "mainstream" Classical audiences. I do NOT think that the example of the Hammerklavier can be extended to modernistic 20th Century works - I think it's a step too far even for many adventurous listeners.
There will be an audience for it - of course - but a diminishingly small one.
I think that it's no coincidence that this occurred just as Popular Music and the recording industry were gaining momentum.
Let's be honest - the term "Classical Music" to most casual music fans simply means "old music".
"Modern Classical" must seem like such an oxymoron to them! and it takes some explaining to clarify why it shouldn't be!
Classical became far too concerned with impressing critics and the "elite progressive establishment" and not concerned with pleasing audiences. Why couldn't more composers continue writing great memorable TUNES like Rachmaninoff did?
I'm not criticizing the music - but rather saying that it really is only for a limited audience - and that a snobbish dismissal of "backward looking" Romanticism played a role in turning people off contemporary Classical compositions.
They had other music to listen to - Jazz, emerging Rock 'n' Roll, then Progressive Rock for the people looking for more "complexity".
I think the perpetual novelty-seeking of musical trends does result in some eras ultimately being "less appealing" than others.
I don't mean "inferior" - but I think that as dust settles - we will see that some styles have wider appeal than others.
Look at the example of Classical era vs. Romantic era. Comparing similar spans of time - the Romantic era was generally more harmonically and melodically complex and the styles encouraged more individuality.
Can we REALLY tell the distinct difference between a Mozart and Haydn string quartet the same way we can tell the difference between a Brahms quartet and a Mendelssohn quartet?
The general generic "style" of the Classical era is simply less appealing to the majority of people. That's what makes Haydn, Mozart and later on - Beethoven and Schubert - so remarkable!
There were far more interesting and divergent developments in the Romantic era than the Classical era. And the post-Romantic era was certainly interesting and divergent but broadly less appealing to the masses than the Romantic era.
Apologies for the rambling but I think my point is that - as time passes, we can look back and make some kind of hierarchical assessment of which eras produced more music of wider "universal" appeal than others.
I also think this applies to pianism - I think that the "intellectual" approach does not have as wide an appeal and the free, romantic approach - so I think that's why it's come full circle and in the "post-Brendel" era we are looking back to Friedman etc. for inspiration in how to move forward!
Your points are very well made and concur with my own perspective on this subject. I accept Cole's plea that we should try to be open-minded when confronted by what is new and so unfamiliar, and make the effort to try and connect. I can think of music I really disliked on the first hearing . . . but which I now find more rewarding than music that was instantly accessible and attractive. I am amused by the notion that music from any era that had mass appeal is somehow inferior to minority appeal music enjoyed by the intellectually elite who believe themselves entitled to make value pronouncements. It's still possible to write a good tune today and high quality 'classical' music with mass appeal, as evidenced in many film scores.
For future Q&As, I'd like to know your opinion on Alkan's piano music.
Great video btw! Golden age syndrome always brings me back to Midnight in Paris. Love the movie!
@@mvmarchiori me too I love that movie!
On the flip side of the golden age bias there is also the unwarranted optimism that modern music just needs more time to be appreciated because, after all, great masterpieces of the past were often initially rejected by listeners…therefore there’s bound to be great masterpieces in the rejected modern music of today.
Do you think you could put Chopin etude op 10 no 5 on your Liszt of songs to analyze? 🙏
13:57 yes, but you cant forget that Bach's music was mostly publicly considered ''crap'' and no one remembered it until like 200 or more years later, so you never know
15:56 me too, very much so
Lots of talking at cross-purposes here. Beato didn't say that all technology is bad for music, or that all modern pop music is crap. He always tries to find something to like, in music of all eras and genres. But sometimes there's nothing to like, and he makes some plausible guesses as to why.
@@davidanderson215 yes I’m aware of that, and I’m not primarily criticizing Beato as I thought Fantano already did a good job of rebutting his argument. I do agree with him that there is a certain incoherence to Beato’s arguments. It kind of comes out in your comment right here: Saying that there is “nothing to like” is contradictory to the statement that not all modern pop music is crap. So which is it? Is there nothing to like or is in fact not all modern music crap?
I just tried listening to hammerklavier, wasnt bad at all
I think one point that Beato means and perhaps doesn't address explicitly enough is overlooked, namely that technology has the effect of "educating" listeners to a certain extent. Taking Auto-Tune as an example: of course Auto-Tune can be used very creatively (Billie Eilish "When I Was Older"). But above all, it changes listening habits in such a way that "ordinary consumers" perceive a voice without Auto-Tune, even of a great singer, as unclean. Beato does not deny that there is currently good music (most recently Willow Smith, for example). He points out that the "Top 40" in particular are characterized by a listener expectation that can no longer be satisfied with original music-making, but only with a form of music-making that restricts many expressive possibilities. Basically, Beato is more concerned with the listeners than the performers. My observation as a music teacher in Germany is indeed that the ability to take an interest in music for musical reasons has diminished considerably.
@@christianebbertz7057 These are cogent points, but I wonder how much these things actually “educate” audience members. It reminds me of the controversy over digital editing a few decades ago and how many professionals still feel pressure to deliver note perfect performances in concert as well as on record. But did this really have an effect on the wider audience of general music lovers? I don’t think so. Most audience members don’t particularly notice or care about wrong notes, and similarly I think the majority of people listening to pop music would not at all be turned off by hearing their favorite singers without autotune. I suspect that we overestimate how much these details of technique, which seem so important to the experts, actually matter.
@@christianebbertz7057 I must say I I haven’t had the experience of noticing less interest in music in regards to my teaching. That’s interesting to hear that you have felt that way, and I’m curious how exactly that manifests?
@@TheIndependentPianist I don't teach piano, but at „Gymnasium“ (roughly equivalent to English grammar school). Twenty years ago, about a third of my pupils were “music nerds”. It was part of their self-image to like certain music and to be interested in what was happening musically. Even back then, classical music was hardly important in that respect. But metal and punk, RCHP had a significant following. Around 10 to 15% were also interested in playing in a band (with varying degrees of success). These “nerds” now make up maybe 10% and are so spread out across genres that hardly anyone at school can find someone to share their passion with (one listens to classical, one 70s prog rock, one metal, one R&B, etc. - NO ONE listens to jazz). Not one plays in a band. The other 90% also listen to music through headphones all the time, but it's music that's always turned all the way up (the typical “sausage” if you look at the WAV file) and in which the vocals have the character of keyboard sounds. I don't know any of them who would be able to describe what they like about this music.
What these listeners notice about older music is not wrong notes, but an “outdated” sound, much like a black and white movie looks “old”. So we're dealing with a kind of musical Photoshop effect (and the girls tend to put on make-up until they look photoshopped). Accordingly, you don't build an emotional relationship with music that doesn't meet these expectations of sound and form (just as I couldn't relate to choral music as a teenager in the 70s because I couldn't relate to the “sound”). That's why the Top 40 must be so similar.
As for the “golden age problem”: of course there is also an incredible amount of good music today. But it has no relevance worth mentioning, i.e. it is not “society” that forms its discourse space (as was the case with Beethoven, Wagner, Rubinstein, Callas), but the small community of fans (I don't know another Esparanza Spalding fan apart from myself, not another Alexandra Dovgan fan, only one Carolin Polachek fan. The audience at the Jacob Collier concert in Cologne was probably 50% musicians or music students).
When you teach piano, you notice this development with a delay because you are basically dealing with people who are at least somewhat interested in music for musical reasons...what was the question again😊?
I don't know if Rick said this, i'd have to see the video again, but more or less knowing where he comes from as a musician and a producer, and supposing he centers more on pop music it's the oversimplification and banalization technology brings to music, in an ascending trend over the past 2 decades. That and the profound changes in the music industry, investing only in incredably formulaic sounds. And this produces stagnation. Itt's been happenning in the movie industry also.
@@pedrorocha9722 Yes, I imagine that is where he is coming from. The interesting thing to me is that excessive use of formulas and oversimplification has been going on for centuries, e.g. my Stamitz example. Is it really that much more of a problem right now? It may in fact be more common but perhaps we are nonetheless
exaggerating how much this is a novelty.
@@TheIndependentPianist Yes, I have to say that it is much more of a problem now.... Wa can not call it a problem, we can call it a overwellming worldwide trend. For the reasons I pointed earlier. It's not that there is no «good music» (or films) today. It's that they're much harder to find. So, less accecible to a large audience, not inclined to break the offer that comes from cellphones. One can wonder: will there be a time when there'll be no need to learn music and play it? No need for music schools? Because it will all be provided by aplications. And that leaves the question: will there be a time where the will to create is no longer needed? I mean, beyond the choice of this or that sound, this or that style, provided by programs and applications, and so on,. Because, it doesn't take much imagination to think that's where we are headed. A world where creativity is something very different from what it's now. Yes, there is way much more diversity, but Art itself really seems less diverse. Way too much noise, way little singular voices.
@@pedrorocha9722 I can’t agree with the notion that it’s that much harder to find good music or films today, only because technology has made it possible for me to experience music from other creators I never would have encountered otherwise. Even the much reviled Spotify app can give you access to incredible riches if you use it intelligently, rather than just looking at the top 10 whatever. I totally agree that we live in a society with way too much “noise.” On the other hand I think that the will to create is still quite strong and I don’t see your dystopian future becoming a reality, but that is all based on my own experience, so who knows? You might have a better perspective on this, I can’t tell.
@@TheIndependentPianist It's a fascinating and multifaceted topic. I don't want or need to be wrong or right, I feel I must say. Tht's not my point. My point is to debate stuff. But if you ask me directly, yes, i think one day there will be a time where people like you and me will be irrelevant, a thing of the past. Music will be totally composed and played/generated by machines. And the same with painting and Art in general. Im not talking in 10 years time. I'm talkiing a good bit more into the future. It's not too far fetchd to consider that the act (and drive) of creating itself will change through time, like, I don't know, our way of passing the time changed drastically over the last century.
@@TheIndependentPianist And by the way, I just remembered this: where are all the videos of all the below 30 artists explaning their process, why this or thar chord, why these instruments, why those lyrics? There is none, Why?
The "tenor" of your comments make sense. No doubt we all tend to romanticize the past--or at least our own past and the things that we grew up knowing and coming to love. But I disagree with you that the things of the past that once shocked automatically become widely embraced in the future. I don't believe Schoenberg's atonal piano music will ever be anything remotely like widely embraced and loved in the way that, to use an example you mentioned, Beethoven's Op. 90 Sonata has become. I'm talking, of course, about being widely embraced and loved by the larger piano community as a whole. Of course there are some nuts--forgive me, I couldn't resist!--who might actually deeply love the astringently screeching harmonies in Schoenberg's atonal "melodies," but I doubt very much that his atonal piano music will ever be something that a large portion of the piano community (professional and amateur) will come to deeply love and want to perform. Though I admit that oftentimes atonal music makes for effective horror movie soundtracks. ("The Shining" has great examples of that.) But I suspect that the atonal piano music of Schoenberg will always be "on the fringe" when it comes to pianists.
@@Radiatoron88 it is ironic that you described exactly a case where atonal music has already reached the mainstream: Ligeti’s music in the score to the Shining!
You might be right anyway about Schoenberg, I don’t know. I do think that the atonal sound is finding a place as a limited option for composers to use, and I think that in a couple centuries it will be a pretty familiar style, even if total atonality never finds a permanent footing.
@@TheIndependentPianist Hi Cole! I really enjoy your programs, and I find I usually agree with the various points that you make. When it comes to atonal music, though, I just can't see it ever being something that people reach for like a Beethoven Sonata or Chopin Prelude. I think it's always going to appeal to a relatively tiny minority of people. Though, for sure, atonal music can work wonderfully as background music in movies, to underscore horror, creepiness, suspense, and so forth. But as for putting on an album to listen to those sounds alone, it's hard for me to imagine many people wanting to do that. But I admit I'm pretty much an arch-conservative in my tastes. For me, Milhaud and Poulenc are plenty "modern" already. I do enjoy the first and second movements of Prokofiev's 7th Piano Sonata though--having heard it performed in concerts by a zillion pianists over the years. But the second movement always seems almost comical to me, a kind of syrupy melody croaked out by some drunken guy. I half expect the pianist to emit a drunken hiccup after playing that opening phrase! By the way, I doubt that the mainstream of classical music listeners would go out and buy an album of music of Ligeti featured in "The Shining." A small minority of classical music lovers would, I guess. But the "mainstream" is only being exposed to that music because it's in a mainstream movie. Most people, I think,--including yours truly--want to hear melodies that move them in music, or at least melodies that they can remember after hearing a given piece. Without that, it's hard to internalize music and "make it your own." Then again, I admit that my ears have been grudgingly--though ultimately happily--stretched by some music that "at first blush" was uncomfortable for my ears. In any case, everyone is--happily--free to love what they love in music. I most envy those people who are able to truly love the widest range of music. Wishing you all the best, and thanks again so much for making so many interesting videos!
I'm going to play elitist here: I think that the majority of music being made today is objectively worse than the majority of what was made earlier. Yes it is true that we forget about all the mediocre pieces written during the Viennese Golden era, but, if we were to take a handful of the "best" music for every decade, the few recent ones are worse. Also, i think I can change people's minds like this: if we were to show Beethoven or Mozart or Liszt today's best music, they could acclimate and replicate it all in a matter of one day. I can confidentially say that modern musicians will never come close to replicating the former's.
@@SiliPiano thank you for playing devil’s advocate! it’s an interesting idea to take a handful of the best music from every decade, the only problem is that as an argument it’s so subjective that you’d have a hard time finding common ground with anyone else as to what qualified as the best and whether or not there was actually a trend towards becoming worse. Again, if we showed Beethoven some of today’s music, no doubt he could replicate much of it very easily, on the other hand, there might be other things that would be quite beyond him at first: how well would he do with complicated jazz/popular harmony, e.g extended chords, and modern rhythmic styles? That’s all academic of course because Beethoven and Mozart and Liszt grew up with a certain sound all around them that influenced how they wrote music. It would be unfair to expect someone who grew up in our very different cultural environment to recreate the past. But I think in reality there are highly skilled musicians who are quite capable of creating music that is of a similar complexity (in its own way) to the music of the past.
I’m not talking about those top 10 Spotify artists though ;-)
@TheIndependentPianist I had considered the discussion about Beethoven and his ability yo understand jazz harmonies, but then I remembered the point of Rick Beato's discussion was in relation to music of today. Those are inventions of the early 20th century. I'm not sure, perhaps you're right considering there are indeed musicians today that can come close to replicating the greats...
I must admit I hate when people concede that "it's all subjective, there's no such thing as good or better music". It feels like a thought-terminaging cliche, if someone is legitimately unable to admit that Mozart is a better musician than Olivia Rodrigo than the entire conversation is moot
I must admit though that Olivia Rodrigo is not the best this decade has to offer, but then again we must have some biases towards what is currently popular because it's impossible to discover all there is to discover in the internet age
I believe that Beato's point was that, technology notwithstanding, modern composers of popular music just don't have the harmonic chops to write music interesting to the ear. On that point he's hard to argue with.
@@tubezaspiak Eh I don’t buy it. There are plenty of composers with harmonic chops out there-sometimes it is necessary to find them though.
I think one could be forgiven for thinking in this way as the modern media system inundates the most accessible platforms with music that caters to the lower common denominator similar to Adorno's critiques of the culture industry. However, if you scratch beneath the surface, there is a lot of creative work being done behind the noise.
Golden age thinking is a very interesting issue. Lots to think about. However, I'd like to address the issue of auto-tuning - isn't this one of the technologies that is of concern? You may find Fil @wingsofpegasus interesting. He uses the latest technology to analyse vocal tracks, showing how the great singers use their voice - vibrato, rubato, swoops up/down, being sharp/flat for expressive purposes. Surely the power of the human voice lies in its ability to express emotion, word meaning etc.
Use of auto-tuning of the voice makes it sterile - and as Fil says, often out of tune with the backing band, which has NOT been auto-tuned! This technology is being applied in live situations, or even retrospectively to live recordings. As a passionate believer in live music of all sorts, I find this a really worrying degradation of the truth of live performance.
Rick Beato was talking about POPULAR music. The classical world is a different one. This doesn't apply to us.
@@jdbrown371 Is it really that different? Personally I don’t think so…
Hi cole, i’ve just bought a kawai vpc 1, and i’d really like to ask u, how u made it sound? Cause i-ve serious troubles with setting it up
@@karakataka6557 hi there! You need a virtual instrument running through your computer. There are many different ones. I use Ivory II, I think Pianotec is another popular one. Once you have a program like that, you just have to connect your VPC1 to your computer, and you should be able to get sound through the program’s built in platform.
Many people think mainstream film is in decline. Reboot after reboot, no originality and so on. This has alot to do with the business side of things falling apart and there being a few key companies like disney and warner bros buying up everything.
Yet, mainstream music gets a free pass and people feel obligated to defend it.
@@Pretzels722 I’m afraid I don’t really buy it. Sure, there’s a lot of reboots and sequels and superhero movies, but on the other hand, we still have amazing films coming out and very serious directors at work. Of course, if you choose only to look at the terrible stuff, it is going to look like mainstream film is in decline. Again, just to give perspective, you only have to look at the endless forgotten titles of films from the so-called “golden age.”
Of course, this isn’t to say that film won’t eventually disappear as a serious art form, even as opera practically disappeared (at least compared to its heyday in the 18th and 19th centuries). But I think that the plethora of options right now (both good and bad) is more a sign of how well it’s doing than the reverse!
Where are the links to the Rick Beato and other video?
They are in the description box, just scroll down past the timestamps.
There are some ideas that aren't really addressed in this debate by you, Rick or anyone else.. the so-called monoculture (radio, MTV) prior to the internet.. the fact that 'old music' such as blues, folk or jazz has been integrated into what someone might consider the golden age (for me, it peaked in the 90's), while new music has of course not, so we're not sympathetic to it.. the fact that new music is competing in the same marketplace as old music... AND we can't ignore the possibility that there's a grain of truth in it-- genres can simply become exhausted of possibilities
Alfred Brendel English??
@@charlesbluett8195 well he lives there and has for 50+ years, but not originally english you are right.
@@TheIndependentPianist the more you know
I dont think schoenburg or bartok in 100 years will be listened to like we do about chopin. I would elaborate my point but i am incredibly tired and lazy :)
@@erwinschulhoff4464 You never know! You might be very surprised when you take that time machine ride a hundred years into the future…
@@TheIndependentPianist I believe that we are moving towards more jazz fusion (and other world genres, thats a big one) then we are with atonalism. In my opinion, atonality lacks the depth required to be developed in itself, so will be used in conjunction with jazz influences (and other genres) (see kapustins middle sonatas, hesangasong's sonatita in F, emilliano mannas music etc.). For that reason, composers like shoenburg, berg, stockenhausen will probably left in the esoteric confines of the conservatory, whilst composers like kapustin gershwin, ravel will be the new chopins of that day.
If we take Beethovens case, his music was disregarded beacuse it was forward thinking and innovative, and maybe like schoenburgs case(late schoenberg) was not like the music of his day. But the difference between them is that nowadays, for one you can listen to their piece and at first listen fall in love with them, but for the other you require a certain familiarity with the piece that comes after a few times of listening. Indeed, this is the case with many of kapustins pieces, however, I believe that kapustin is more likely to be accepted as it mirrors many aspects from jazz, whereas at first listen some late schonberg pieces seem completely in their own world.
notes:
(im only using schoenberg as an example, insert any overly atonal composer, like those in the conservatory making modern music, beat furrer, stockenhausen etc.)
(this argument is really poorly made but you can kinda see my point???(i hope))
(when I say "will be listened to like chopin", I am referring to pieces that are easily accessible. Pieces outside this set will definetly be listened to, but will not have a massive influence, as those I discussed prior. Also, i am not attacking schoenburg or any modern composer for being bad, just to be clear, i think you already know that)
(being honest, there are barely any composers that compose in strictly atonal settings even in the conservatory, but you got my point hopefully. I think that the "jazz/world movement" will be listened to like chopin, but those composing out of this group or on the boundary of this group will also be listened to, and due to the internet, will never be forgotten (berg, schoenburg, ligeti etc.)
(sorry for the long line of text, i might rewrite this such that it is more consice and is just a better argument in general, i waffled/yapped quite alot, i treated it alot like a running conversation haha)
@@TheIndependentPianist I am just going to quote from another video titled (or was titled) "is classical music dying" by nahre sol. This is in favour of my argument that composers such as schoenburg and berg, beat furrer, ligeti etc. will be largely forgotten and composers such as ravel, kapustin will be remembered: Another way of interpreting 'Is classical music dying?" though would be to suggest that the relevance of it is dying, because the bar to entry for listening to it just keeps rising and rising as composers hyper-specialise.
Lots of the corpus of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms etc includes music that the average person can immediately understand, enough to gain from listening to it, but also has enormous depth to it, is enormously expressive and deeply meaningful. In my mind the 'killer feature' of music as an art form as compared to visual arts, film, theatre, literature, so on, is its ability to directly reach into people and immediately invoke an emotional state, without that state necessarily being describable in words. The video compared modern classical music to an art gallery, and that feels apt, but it also means it is losing its core value in that sense. I am absolutely not saying that modern classical music doesn't evoke emotion, it does, or that abstract art is a bad thing, it isn't. Still, most people do not have postgrad level education in music theory, and most people do not have the necessary time to read up on everything they need to learn how to interpret works that are that abstract and derive meaning from it. So for most people modern classical music no longer has that power of immediately reaching into them an invoking complex emotions.
And this suggests a bifurcation where increasingly you just have commercial pop and film scores that often evoke fairly basic emotions in boring ways, and highly innovative music that cannot be deciphered by the average person being produced for a fringe group of people whose whole lives are devoted entirely to music. It may seem like a 'natural evolution' and something that has happened for ages, but if you take it to its conclusion it means lots of artists with valuable things to say are going to be only saying it to other artists. I would argue that that is a waste of their artistic talent and highly detrimental to society at large. You would have to believe the average person's ability to understand highly abstract art has been evolving as fast as the complexity and abstraction of classical music over the past century, because if that isn't true, then the potential audience is necessarily shrinking.
I am a huge cinema fan, and I think as an art form modern cinema often does much better at producing films that are entertaining enough for an average, engaged viewer, but also have huge depth and fascinating things to say if you analyse them a bit more and pay very close attention. And I think this comes from a lack of snobbery. There isn't the same sense that commercial success and impact on the average person is necessarily juxtaposed with technical quality, depth, and complex meaning. I hear a small number of classical musicians talk about 'objective quality' in a way that is not as common in other disciplines and who consider anything with mass appeal as being dirty, cheap and kitsch. And not having that perceived juxtaposition results in a (in my subjective opinion) much healthier landscape of works where some are purely abstract art for people with foreknowledge, some are just commercial entertainment, but there is plenty of stuff that is both.
Inclusivity in art is often discussed in the sense of allowing people to enter the profession from different backgrounds, but it also matters that people from different backgrounds (those not raised by wealthy upper-middle-class families who took them to the opera and gave them music lessons) have music that they can understand, love, connect with, and thus have a path towards enjoying the very best of contemporary music output. You can't go from nothing, to listening to 4'33 and finding meaning in it, realistically.
Perhaps I am being unnecessarily pessimistic, but it would be an incredible shame if an increasing proportion of new, innovative, exciting music was condemned to be only available to a tiny portion of elite, educated musicians making music for themselves, and it does feel like that is where it is going, as much as I do enjoy some of it.
@@erwinschulhoff4464 I love all this, thanks for sharing your thoughts! it might be too much to go into here, but I think that in large part I agree with you. Maybe I can talk about a few of the issues you raise later on at some point.
@@erwinschulhoff4464oo free yappuchino thank u
The Golden Age in art forms generally occurs early in their development then charts an indefinite decline. This holds true for painting (Golden Age: the Renaissance around the 1600s), for classical music (Golden Age: from early 1700s to early 1900s), for the novel (Golden Age: 1800s), for cinema (Golden Age: 1930s to 1970s) and so on.
@@shantihealer good to have that sorted out! Are you sure you want to say that the 1700s is early in Classical music development?
As I recall, Ortega y Gasset found a good image for why a golden age effect must inevitably occur in every art form: If you have a new marble quarry, you can first hammer out the big blocks, and the longer you exploit the quarry, the smaller the blocks become from which you can make your objects as a sculptor. The sculptors are of course just as talented as they used to be.
@@christianebbertz7057 Makes a lot of sense. Would account for the metamorphosis of art forms from one into another then another and so on. Painting gives rise to photography which gives rise to cinema which gives rise to digital art etc.
@@TheIndependentPianist I'm no expert but prior to Classical music with Bach, Vivaldi and Handel beginning an extended peak there was church music for many centuries. Prior to that there was non-polyphonic music. Art forms, especially in music, can be seen to begin, rise to a peak fairly early on, then fall away over a long period. As they decline, new forms take root and follow the same cycle. The other commenter @christianebbertz7057 makes an excellent analogy with quarry-mining and sculpture.
I find beato and fantano particularly irksome, especially the latter for his totally egoic content purely opinion based, which to me is obnoxious. It’s nice to hear an opinion (from yourself) which is delivered with as little ego detectable as possible, and can thus be mentally chewed on, swallowed, and digested. I for the most part agree with you. 😂
I tend to give Fantano more credit, because he’s a long time music collector. When art collectors in the past did precisely what Fantano does now, they were revered by the public; particularly when their private collections were converted into public museums. Of course, they were simultaneously unrepentant snobs about the minutiae involved with visual arts, but that was permissible with acknowledged authority in connoisseurship. Fantano has done the same, and even listens to music he dislikes just to know about it. At least Fantano makes an effort to entertain an audience, while making strong statements about contemporary music. Imagine if Wagner had the opportunity to do a similar outpouring of music snobbery today. It would be vicious, egotism with without limits, but obviously informed with expertise in music.
@@ShaneyElderberry I’m a bit more extreme in that I believe in regards to art if you don’t have anything nice to say you shouldn’t say anything at all. And I get that fantano has the right to say terrible things about something that somebody likely put a lot of work and maybe even suffering into, but that doesn’t make it right. I’ve reached the point that all music is good music, because music itself is good, and there’s no reason that I may not like a certain song or artist that makes it bad because I say so. All fantano has is his opinion, and being that he hasn’t even put out art that makes his opinion even more worthless in my eyes. So, I have utter contempt for the internets busiest music turd, regardless of how well learned he is.
@@jacobscardino4330 Anthony is a professional electric bass player. He’s recorded a few albums and singles, and performed as a guest musician. Surely, that means you would like his music too, right? I don’t think you are being serious about enjoying all music. Classical music and sheet music collectors don’t order or download anything without caring what they choose. I’m certain you would only order sheet music you enjoy, unless some obligation to order another work you don’t enjoy became apparent.
@@ShaneyElderberry liking/enjoying or not liking music is different than critiquing it and making a statement that it is good or bad. That is all I’m saying. Anthony makes judgments about peoples music and I think that’s wrong. He’s entitled to not like something, but to state (for entertainment) that something is bad because he doesn’t like it is what I would call being an 🍑🕳
@@jacobscardino4330 One wonders what you would think of the authors who do exactly that action, often with a lot of flourish? Henry James, E.A. Poe, Ambrose Bierce, Balzac, Goethe, Hugo, Jean Lorrain, Huysmans, Proust, etc. Perhaps they were misguided to do so?
I only like golden age piano music / recordings. I only rate that as seriously good. I may be a soundophile.
Know Comment